Robert Pape does not sell fear. The University of Chicago political scientist has spent decades studying how wars escalate. This week he told the At the Water's Edge podcast that these are the most dangerous weeks of the Iran war since March, and that the midterms are the reason.

His argument is about incentives. Iran wants to wreck Trump before November by driving up gas prices and piling pain on American voters. Trump is trapped. Take Iran's deal and look weak. Refuse it and the pain grows.
That is Pape's analysis. What follows is mine.

Trump is losing. Democrats lead the generic ballot by about nine points. Markets price a Democratic House at 93 percent. His approval sits below 40 percent. A man who cannot win has one move left. Change what the election means.

Step one is the war itself. Keep it hot into November and every problem becomes an emergency. Trump has already sounded envious that Ukraine skips elections in wartime. He cannot cancel the midterms. Only Congress can move Election Day. So the plan is not cancellation.

The plan is doubt.

Step two is force at the polls. Pape warns the Iran war gives a president far stronger legal footing to use the National Guard at home. Democrats are already suing to keep federal agents away from polling places and count rooms.

Step three is the slow count. On October 4 Trump posted that Detroit, Philadelphia and California take weeks to rig. Mail ballots take days to count by law. Slow will be called stolen.

Step four is seizure. In January the FBI took about 700 boxes of Fulton County ballots and records. Tina Peters met Trump, and her lawyer says her plan involves seizing ballots nationwide. Seize ballots from tight races, call it fraud, and those races have no certified winner.

Step five is January 3. The Constitution seats the new Congress that day, though a law could shift the date. Michael Luttig, the conservative former judge, warns House Republicans may claim the election was stolen and refuse to seat the winners.

No certified results. No seated Congress. A war still burning. Then comes the line: in a time of war, the midterms are void.

None of this is legal. All of it is possible when nobody stands in the way. Courts are slow. Congress is mostly gone until after the vote.

The only force left is the people. Every American who believes in democracy must go to Washington on January 3, or January 6 if the date moves, and peacefully demand their Congress be seated. Two million or more.

No weapons. No violence. A wall of citizens that cannot be ignored.

Vote. Then book the bus. Bring your neighbours. Be in Washington.

GC

Sources:

At the Water's Edge podcast, Robert Pape episodes, September and October 2026

Silver Bulletin generic ballot average and prediction market odds, October 2026

CNN, reporting on Trump and the midterms, January and October 2026

Protect Democracy, 2026 midterm election FAQ

The New Republic, Michael Luttig, The Final Battle for America's Democracy

The Americans Are Already Inside Alberta

A foreign government is courting a separatist movement inside Canada. This is not a rumour. It is on the record.

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project say they met State Department officials in Washington three times. One of their lawyers says a meeting was held in a room built to block spies. They wanted a credit line of half a trillion dollars. Washington calls it routine. Routine does not look like this.

Then the U.S. Treasury Secretary called Alberta a natural partner. American influencers cheer the breakup of Canada like a game score. Not one senior American voice has told the separatists to stop.

Researchers found a web of fake YouTube channels pushing Alberta toward the American fold. Forty million views. Most of it not Canadian. Some channels were run by hired actors fronting creators in the Netherlands. A Russian network helped seed the story. Washington did not need to build the machine. It only had to turn up the volume.

This is how countries are pulled apart now. Find a grievance. Feed the anger. Offer a deal. Wait.

Workers pay first. When a province is carved off, pensions, collective agreements and wages go on the table. Oil workers would bargain with a state that owes its survival to a foreign lender. Union rights would be written by whoever holds the credit line.

The separatists are losing. In late August, 74 per cent of likely Alberta voters said they would vote to stay. Twenty two per cent wanted to start the process. Betting markets put an independence vote this year near one in seven. Albertans will vote to stay on October 19.

That is not the danger. The danger is what comes after. Expect cries of a stolen vote within hours, loud and American.

Canada must act now. Ottawa should demand a full public account of every meeting and summon the American ambassador. Foreign money and foreign meddling in a Canadian referendum must carry real jail time, and Elections Canada must have the power to trace it. Platforms must label and pull fake foreign campaigns within days or face fines that hurt.

Break up the tech monopolies that profit from the lies. A market with no rivals has no reason to care.

Give Albertans something real to stay for. Make joining a union easy. Force first contracts so bosses cannot stall workers into surrender. Put public money and public ownership stakes behind the pipeline and the grid, so Alberta's wealth belongs to Albertans. Trade with more of the world, not one neighbour that sees Canada as a prize.

Name the interference. Punish it. Protect the vote. Canada is not for sale.

GC

Sources:

The Globe and Mail The Globe and Mail

CBC News CBC News: The National

Research Co.

Media Ecosystem Observatory Media Unfiltered The Source

Newsweek Newsweek

Alberta Federation of Labour

#alberta #canada

A former Cornell student says seven men drugged and raped her for hours at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024. That is the claim in her lawsuit. The men deny it, and one lawyer calls it a money grab.

Here is what is not in dispute. No one was ever criminally charged. Cornell ran its own Title IX process. Two students were expelled. Reports say the other five wrote essays.

Essays. For an alleged gang rape.

Now picture a man from my neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside, accused of the same thing. No campus panel. No essay. He is in a cell by the weekend, facing years.

That is two tiers of justice. One for people with a famous school, a family name and a lawyer on retainer. One for everyone else.

Things moved only after the story went public. Prosecutors reopened the case. Governor Kathy Hochul demanded an outside review, and Cornell agreed. Pressure did that, not conscience.

Epstein is the template. In 2008 he pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting a minor and served 13 months with work release. Cornell's own student paper has documented his ties to Weill Cornell doctors and to alumni who became his lawyers. I have seen no evidence that Cornell's president or trustees were in that circle. But the pattern is the same. Powerful institutions protect their reputation first and the victim second.

Congress passed a law forcing release of the Epstein files, and Trump signed it. The Justice Department has put out about half of roughly six million pages. It says the rest are duplicates or protected. Until the rest is public, people have every right to ask who is being shielded.

It is not only an American disease. Stanford swimmer Brock Turner got six months for assaulting an unconscious woman. In Canada, Hockey Canada quietly settled a claim over an alleged 2018 assault, and the public learned of it from reporters. Five players were later acquitted. The lesson is the secrecy.

I organized workers for years. I know silence is a policy, not an accident. Here is how to break it, on both sides of the border.

Every rape report goes to police first, and the school must tell prosecutors within days. A university is not a court.

Investigators must be independent, not employees of the school.

Proven assault means expulsion. Outcomes get published, with victims' names protected.

Fraternities and teams that host assaults lose their recognition.

In the US, enforce Title IX. In Canada, make provinces like BC publish yearly public reports on sexual violence cases.

Staff who report cover ups get union backing and legal protection.

Open the files. Charge the men if the evidence holds. Remove every administrator who buried it. Anything less is a licence.

GC

Five men. Three vans. One phone call in the dark.

A member of the public called police at 12:45 a.m. on Sunday about three suspicious vans heading for RAF Fairford, the English base American bombers have used to strike Iran. Armed officers arrested five men. They are held on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences.

The Guardian reports that investigators think the material in the vans is consistent with improvised bombs. Tests are still running to see if they would have worked.

That is what we know. Now watch what is being built on top of it.

Donald Trump says the suspects had been watched for a long time. Police have so far described a phone call, not a surveillance operation. Both may be true. Only one flatters the security state.

Police have not said who was behind it. A source told Reuters an Iranian motive is considered most likely, with Russian sabotage and an Islamist plot also examined. An Iranian link may well be real.

Now the pattern. A system that needs a war its people do not want does not ask permission. It manages fear.

A July poll found 58 per cent of Britons oppose letting the US use British bases to hit Iranian missile sites. Only 26 per cent support it. In the United States, about 59 per cent oppose the war.

The ceasefire is a thread. Prediction markets give it about 52 per cent odds of lasting to the end of October.

Fear moves numbers faster than facts. Expect Fairford to be cited every time a government asks for more bases, more powers or more patience.

Follow the chain. In July, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned that any base used against Iran is a legitimate target. That same month, London made supporting the Guards a crime with up to 14 years in prison.

Now a suspected bomb plot appears at exactly that kind of base. The new law was rushed through after antisemitic attacks in north London, not because of Fairford. But it is sitting there, ready for a story like this one.

None of this shows anyone staged Fairford. No evidence says so, and that is not the claim here. The five men are innocent until a court says otherwise.

Iran has a record. MI5 has counted at least 20 potentially lethal plots backed by Iran against people in Britain in a single year.

But a real plot can still be used as a weapon. That is how information war works. You do not have to invent an attack. You only have to choose the timing, the headline and the enemy.

Iran. Terror. Britain. America. War.

Link those words in a frightened mind and policy sells itself.

Every capital will find a use for this story. Washington will use it to justify the war. London will use it to defend the bases. Tehran will use it to say it was framed.

Working people always pay for these wars. In prices, in taxes, in their children. They never get a seat at the table.

So ask three simple questions. If the suspects were watched for so long, why did a stranger’s phone call stop them? Why was Iran in the headlines within hours?

G

The counting starts

One side refuses

Storm after polls close

2028 awaits

#MidtermMeltdown

G

I believe we are close to the end.

G

https://gcoleman86.substack.com/p/the-worlds-richest-men-have-already?r=1h0gfh&utm\_medium=ios

Texas says it "lost" 178,000 voter registrations. That number comes from just seven of the state’s 254 counties. Nobody in Austin can tell you the real total.
Three weeks from the registration deadline, in one of the most competitive midterms in the country, that is the whole scandal in one sentence.

Here is what the state has admitted. Texans who update their driver’s licence online can also register to vote through that same portal. The Department of Public Safety collects those applications and is supposed to pass them along to county election offices through the state’s voter system, called TEAM.

Sometime in the past year, DPS simply stopped passing a chunk of them along. Applications missing a piece of information were quietly set aside instead of sent to counties. Nobody outside DPS knew.

Some of those orphaned records go back to October 2025. That is eleven months of Texans who believed they were registered, with no way of knowing they were not.

Bexar County received about 45,000 of them. Collin County got more than 40,000. Travis County got more than 32,000. Brazoria, Hays, and Cameron counties are digging through thousands more. County workers, not the state that caused this, are expected to clear it in the two weeks before the October 5 deadline, on top of the usual rush before an election.

Ask Texas why, and you get nothing. DPS says only that the error "has been resolved." It will not say what caused it, what information was supposedly missing, or when officials first knew.

Governor Greg Abbott’s office, asked directly, referred reporters to DPS and the secretary of state. The state’s own elections director, Christina Adkins, admitted her office is still trying to determine where these records even came from.

Texas cannot tell its own voters what happened to their paperwork. It is asking them to trust that it is handled.
This is not new. Texas is one of the last states with no real online voter registration, a gap the Republican controlled legislature has protected for years. Every backlog gets processed by hand, under deadline pressure, with no redundancy built in.

After more than five years in court, the state settled a federal case requiring it to properly register people through this same driver’s licence system.

Last September, a botched upgrade to that same TEAM system buried Harris and Fort Bend counties in tens of thousands of unprocessed cards. Weeks after that backlog was finally cleared, Bexar County got hit with a new one.

A sitting county commissioner said out loud what plenty of Texans were already thinking: that a slowdown this convenient, this close to an election, stops looking like an accident and starts looking like a plan.

Maybe DPS is telling the truth and this really was just a technical failure nobody planned. It does not matter. An incompetent system and a rigged one produce the same result.

A nurse who cannot leave a shift to fix a clerical error the state created loses her vote just as completely as if someone had erased her name on purpose.

Texas has had six years, a federal court order, and at least three prior backlogs to build a registration system that does not do this every election cycle, in a state hosting one of the Senate races that will help decide who controls the chamber. It chose not to.

Check your registration today, not the morning polls open. If your name is missing, demand a provisional ballot and make them count it. And the next time a Texas official calls this a glitch, ask them on the record why the glitch keeps landing in October.

GC

Sources: Votebeat, The Texas Tribune, The Associated Press, San Antonio Current, The Washington Post

Tucker Carlson has revealed an exchange he says he had with Donald Trump over the Iran war.

When he confronted Trump about the war being driven by Israel. Not nukes.

Trump agreed, saying, “Yes, you’re right. But in the end, we all die anyway. So it doesn’t matter.”

When Tucker asked about “our kids, grandchildren, and country”.

Trump said “arrgghh”!

(Psychopath?)

GC

I live next door to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in Crosstown and Chinatown. I see it every day. So when Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC government tell Vancouverites that the Downtown Eastside is improving, I have to ask a simple question: improving for whom? Yes, some crime statistics have improved. Vancouver police reported significant declines in violent crime, robberies and break and enters during Task Force Barrage. Those numbers matter and should be acknowledged. But crime statistics do not measure homelessness, addiction, poverty, street disorder, housing insecurity or whether ordinary people can afford to live in their own city. The police themselves said there was still a long road ahead.

The City continues to spend heavily on the Downtown Eastside, including $610,051 in 2026 matching grants to 17 non profit organisations. Some of these organisations provide essential services and deserve support. But after decades of government programs and millions of dollars in spending, taxpayers are entitled to ask a straightforward question: what measurable improvements are we getting? Funding a non profit is not the same as solving the problem.

I remember Vancouver in the 1970s and 1980s. The Downtown Eastside had serious problems then, but the scale and visibility of today’s crisis are difficult to compare. More importantly, working people could afford to live here. A person with a regular job could rent or buy a home, raise a family and still have some money left over. That economic security has largely disappeared. Statistics Canada reported that at the end of 2025, the wealthiest 20 per cent of Canadian households controlled 65.7 per cent of total household net worth, while the bottom 40 per cent controlled just 3 per cent.

This is bigger than Ken Sim. It is about an economic model increasingly centred on property values, investment returns and attracting capital while ordinary people struggle with housing, groceries and basic necessities. If we want something resembling the economic security of 1985, governments need to make affordability the primary measure of success. Build dramatically more non market and co operative housing. Expand community land trusts. Protect existing affordable housing. Strengthen unions and collective bargaining. Raise wages faster than living costs. Expand public services. Tax wealth and economic rents more effectively. And stop assuming every public asset becomes more efficient simply because private investors want access to it.

Ottawa is moving toward greater private investment in public infrastructure. The federal government is exploring alternative ownership models for airports and has explicitly said it is considering airport privatization, although no decision to privatize has been made. The government argues that private capital could unlock investment and improve infrastructure. That deserves serious public scrutiny because airports are essential transportation infrastructure, and any change in ownership must be judged against long term public value, passenger costs and accountability.

The same concern applies to federal labour law. Bill C 39 proposes a framework allowing the federal Labour Minister, under exceptional circumstances involving a dispute with significant national impacts, to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order resumption of operations, extend an existing agreement temporarily or establish binding dispute resolution such as arbitration after specified conditions are met. The government says collective bargaining remains the primary mechanism. But from a union perspective, the ability to withdraw labour is fundamental bargaining leverage.

British Columbia’s NDP government has made mistakes, but given the global economic environment, I believe it has generally managed reasonably well. I would like to see David Eby move closer to Manitoba’s approach. Manitoba’s NDP government reported an $832 million deficit for 2025 to 26, roughly half the earlier forecast, while maintaining major investments in health care and education and making a $600 million deposit into its fiscal stabilisation fund.

Municipally, I will vote Green for mayor and choose candidates from different parties for council and parks. Provincially, I remain with the NDP. Federally, I intend to vote NDP. Those are my choices. But the larger issue goes beyond political parties. Walk down Hastings Street. Look at the poverty existing alongside some of Canada’s greatest concentrations of wealth. Then ask yourself what economic success is supposed to mean. A city should not be judged primarily by how attractive it is to investors. It should be judged by whether the people who work here can afford to live here.

The way forward is not complicated, but it requires governments to change what they measure as success. If we genuinely want the standard of living that ordinary working people had in 1985, adjusted for today’s dollars, I would start with these fixes:

• Housing: Build enough public, co operative and non market housing that an ordinary worker can spend no more than roughly 30 per cent of household income on housing.

• Wages: Establish wage growth as a central economic target so full time workers can afford housing, food, transportation and still save money.

• Healthcare: Expand publicly funded mental health, addiction treatment and supportive housing instead of relying primarily on policing and emergency services.

• Downtown Eastside: Tie government funding for programs and non profits to transparent outcomes, independent audits and measurable improvements in housing, safety and employment.

• Infrastructure: Keep essential assets such as airports, ports and utilities publicly accountable rather than automatically transferring their revenue potential to private investors.

• Unions: Protect the right to strike and strengthen collective bargaining so workers retain meaningful leverage against employers.

• Taxes: Ensure corporations and the wealthiest households contribute a proportionate share toward the infrastructure and services that make their wealth possible.

• Cost of living: Use competition policy and public alternatives to keep essential food, transportation, housing and energy costs from continually outrunning wages.

• The Downtown Eastside: Combine enforcement against violent and organised crime with treatment, housing, employment and recovery programs. Neither policing alone nor social programs alone will solve the crisis.

That, to me, is what rebuilding the 1985 standard of living means in 2026. Not going backwards. Moving forward to a city where working people can once again afford a home, raise a family, save for retirement and live with dignity.

Adam Coleman ( https://gcoleman86.substack.com/p/walk-down-hastings-street-and-tell?r=1h0gfh&utm\_medium=ios )

Sources:

Statistics Canada, Household Economic Accounts, 2025.

Vancouver Police Department, Task Force Barrage data.
City of Vancouver, Downtown Eastside Plan and 2026 Grant Program.

Government of Canada, Bill C 39, airport investment and reform policy.

BC Conservative (Kerry-Lynn Findlay)

Follow the seats

Leader without a seat offered jobs for resignations

One traded in 24hrs

Caucus collapses

Criminal Code still waits

#BCSeatForSaleFindlayCollapse

WIGWAG

G

A true curative therapy would have to remove established fibrosis, regenerate functional hepatocytes, restore the liver’s vascular architecture, and prevent the scarring process from restarting.
Hypothetical molecular formula
\boxed{
C =
(R_H + F_R + V_R + I_C + M_C)
-
(H_I + S_A + F_P)
}
Where:
R_H = regeneration of healthy hepatocytes
F_R = fibrosis reversal and degradation of excess collagen
V_R = restoration of hepatic vascular architecture
I_C = control of chronic inflammation
M_C = correction of the underlying metabolic/viral/toxic cause
H_I = continuing hepatocyte injury
S_A = hepatic stellate-cell activation
F_P = continued fibrosis production
A genuinely curative therapy would therefore need something resembling:
\boxed{
\text{Cirrhosis reversal}

\text{Stop injury}
+
\text{Deactivate stellate cells}
+
\text{Destroy excess scar matrix}
+
\text{Regenerate hepatocytes}
+
\text{Rebuild microvasculature}
}
What scientists would actually have to manipulate
The hepatic stellate cell is one of the major targets. When chronically activated, these cells produce excessive extracellular matrix and collagen. A future antifibrotic treatment could theoretically:
\text{Activated stellate cell}
\rightarrow
\text{deactivation}
\rightarrow
\text{apoptosis/reprogramming}
while simultaneously activating pathways involved in liver regeneration.
The particularly interesting research area is TGF-β signalling, because TGF-β is heavily involved in fibrogenesis. Other potential targets include PDGF, integrins, YAP/TAZ, inflammatory signalling, macrophage behaviour and extracellular-matrix remodelling.
The ultimate theoretical treatment might therefore look like:
\boxed{
\text{Anti-fibrosis}
+
\text{Regeneration}
+
\text{Vascular repair}
+
\text{Immune modulation}
+
\text{Cause elimination}
}
That is the scientifically plausible direction for a future “cirrhosis cure”, rather than a single magic compound.

America Starts War With Canada

Contract not conquest

Minerals claimed

Sovereignty leased

51st by signature alone

Ottawa refused the leash

Shadows already moving

Who profits from the drop?

#AnnexByInk

WIGWAG

G

Tariffs fall

Taps wait

Resources fuel the machine

Who holds the valve?

Storm builds north

Patience ends

WIGWAG

G

Donald J. Trump sold America a simple economic promise: elect him and working people would get richer, jobs would come roaring back and the United States would become an economic powerhouse unlike anything the world had ever seen. But there is an uncomfortable problem with that promise. The latest numbers are moving in the opposite direction.

The US economy grew at only a 1.5 per cent annualized rate in the second quarter of 2026, while July produced a loss of 23,000 jobs when economists had expected roughly 80,000 new jobs. May and June were also revised downward by 103,000 jobs, wage growth has slowed to 3.2 per cent and Trump’s tariffs are estimated to cost the average American household roughly $700 this year. The economy is not collapsing, but for a president who repeatedly claimed he alone could fix it, these numbers are becoming very difficult to explain.

The bigger question is who is actually benefiting from Trump’s economic policies. His tax legislation is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to add roughly $2.4 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade, while its benefits are disproportionately concentrated among higher income households.

At the same time, Trump’s family has generated enormous wealth from cryptocurrency ventures during his presidency, with his 2025 financial disclosure reporting more than $1.4 billion in income from family crypto businesses. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are dealing with housing costs, food prices, healthcare bills and stagnant purchasing power.

You do not have to prove criminal wrongdoing to recognize the extraordinary political problem created when the president’s family becomes enormously wealthy from industries affected by policies coming from his own administration. For a president who built his political career attacking elites, it is an awkward picture.

Americans are noticing, and that may become Trump’s biggest political problem. Recent polling shows 65 per cent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while Democrats have now pulled slightly ahead of Republicans when voters are asked which party is better equipped to manage the economy.

That is a remarkable shift because Republicans have traditionally owned the economic argument. Lower taxes, less government, more business and more investment have been their traditional formula. But workers are increasingly asking a much simpler question: growth for whom?

If billionaires become dramatically richer while wages struggle to keep pace with everyday expenses, eventually people stop believing that prosperity at the top automatically benefits everyone else. The old trick of calling every tax cut for the wealthy an investment in the working class becomes much harder to sell when the working class cannot see the investment.

This is why the rise of democratic socialism in the United States and a potential NDP resurgence in Canada matters. The argument is increasingly about rebuilding worker power through stronger unions, higher wages, affordable housing, public healthcare, progressive taxation and massive public investment.

Canada has an opportunity to go even further because we possess resources that much of the world desperately needs. We have oil, natural gas, uranium, potash, forests, critical minerals, agriculture, hydroelectricity and enormous freshwater resources.

Instead of simply exporting raw materials, we could process more of them here, build industries around them and create high wage union jobs for Canadians. That would mean using Canada’s natural wealth to build Canadian prosperity rather than simply creating another opportunity for corporations, foreign investors and executives to extract the value.

Trump’s greatest political weakness may ultimately be that he promised to destroy an economic system that supposedly worked against ordinary Americans, yet his policies increasingly appear to be making that system work exceptionally well for billionaires, corporations, technology executives and his own family.

The real question now is not whether America can be economically successful. Of course it can. The question is whether ordinary workers will actually share in that success.

Perhaps the next great political fight will not be left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, Liberal versus Conservative or even socialist versus capitalist. Perhaps it will be much simpler: who gets the money created by the economy?

The people who own the capital, or the people whose labour creates the wealth?

America appears to be reaching that argument. Canada should get there before we are forced to. Because the economy does not have to be a machine that makes billionaires richer while everyone else fights over the crumbs.

We can build an economy where workers have strong unions, high wages, affordable lives and a real share of the prosperity they create. We just have to stop pretending that what is good for the richest people in the country is automatically good for everyone else.

GC

Sources:

Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce, GDP Advance Estimate, Second Quarter 2026.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, Employment Situation, July 2026.

Congressional Budget Office, Distributional Effects and Fiscal Effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Reuters Ipsos, US Economic and Political Opinion Polling, August 2026.

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy Is Probably Right- We Are Building Something We Cannot Control

I have spent a couple of years now writing about politics, economics, institutional failure, artificial intelligence, and the long chain of unintended consequences that follows every technological revolution. I freely admit that what follows is my own perspective. It is not a prediction based on certainty. It is a judgement based on evidence, incentives, history, and probability.

The more I study artificial intelligence, the more I find myself returning to one researcher whose conclusions most people would rather dismiss than confront.

That researcher is Roman Yampolskiy.

His central warning is remarkably simple. Once artificial superintelligence exists, there may be no reliable method of guaranteeing that it will permanently remain aligned with human interests. If we cannot mathematically prove permanent control over a system vastly more intelligent than ourselves, then we should assume that loss of control is possible. If loss of control is possible, the consequences could be existential.

Many critics argue that this sounds alarmist.

I increasingly believe it sounds realistic.

The debate around AI often becomes trapped in whether catastrophe is likely. I think that is the wrong question. The better question is whether civilisation has ever successfully controlled a technology that offered overwhelming strategic, economic, military, or political advantages.

History suggests the answer is no.

Gunpowder spread.

Nuclear weapons spread.

Cyber weapons spread.

Biotechnology continues to spread.

Every technology capable of creating enormous competitive advantages has eventually been pursued somewhere by someone. It’s called maximizing profits at all costs.

Artificial superintelligence may become the most valuable technology ever invented. If that is true, expecting every government, every corporation, every military, every intelligence agency, every criminal organisation, and every future actor to permanently exercise restraint borders on totally fantasy.

That is before considering innocent accidents!!

Most discussions assume that a future catastrophe would require malicious intent. I disagree.

Complex systems fail. Financial markets crash despite regulation. Software contains bugs despite millions of hours of testing. Aircraft manufacturers make mistakes. Medical systems make mistakes. Governments make mistakes. Humans make mistakes because humans are imperfect.

Now imagine creating an intelligence capable of improving its own reasoning, writing its own software, discovering unknown scientific principles, manipulating digital infrastructure, influencing human psychology, and operating at speeds measured in milliseconds rather than hours.

The assumption that such a system will never make a catastrophic mistake, never be misused, never be stolen, never be modified, never escape intended constraints, and never pursue objectives that diverge from ours requires extraordinary optimism. Actually delusional from my perspective. I simply do not possess that level of optimism.

Yampolskiy’s work often focuses on the AI control problem. Unlike many researchers who emphasise making AI safer, he asks whether permanent control is theoretically achievable at all. That to me matters.

If permanent control cannot be guaranteed in principle, then every new increase in capability also increases systemic risk. I even heard some “experts” ,who happen to financially benefit in this unregulated race, argue that future safety research will solve these problems. Perhaps. I hope they are right. But hope is not evidence and that hope is quickly lost when you realize you can’t fix something that’s outsmarting you in all categories better than all humans combined.

The uncomfortable reality is that nobody has yet demonstrated a universally reliable method for aligning an intelligence that could eventually surpass every human being in every intellectual domain.No scientific proof exists showing that this problem has been solved.

Meanwhile, capabilities continue advancing at astonishing speed. The economic incentives are overwhelming. The geopolitical incentives are overwhelming. The military incentives are overwhelming. The competitive incentives are overwhelming. Every company fears being left behind. Every nation fears another nation reaching superintelligence first. Every investor rewards faster capability growth. Every laboratory competes for talent. Every breakthrough encourages another breakthrough. The global system itself appears optimised for acceleration rather than caution. That alone should concern us.

People often accuse those who raise existential AI concerns of embracing science fiction. Ironically, I think the opposite is true.

Science fiction usually imagines dramatic robot uprisings. Reality is likely to be far stranger.

The greatest risks may emerge through financial markets, autonomous cyber operations, biological research assistance, infrastructure management, military decision making, persuasive information systems, autonomous scientific discovery, or combinations that nobody has yet imagined.

Our inability to predict every possible failure mode is precisely what makes this technology different. No human mind can anticipate millions of interacting consequences across decades of deployment. That uncertainty should increase caution, not decrease it.

Some readers may wonder why I place greater weight on Yampolskiy’s warnings than on more optimistic voices.

The answer is straightforward.

He begins with humility. He acknowledges uncertainty. He recognises the limits of our mathematical understanding. Most importantly, he refuses to confuse hope with proof.

As someone who has spent much of my life examining institutional behaviour, I have learned that systems rarely fail because of one catastrophic decision. They fail because incentives gradually overwhelm safeguards until one day the safeguard no longer exists and artificial-superintelligence is very clearly following that exact trajectory.

Every month brings more investment. Every month brings larger data centres. Every month brings more capable models. Every month brings stronger economic dependence. Every month makes slowing down politically harder.

The question is no longer whether humanity will continue developing increasingly powerful AI. That race is already way underway. The question is whether our ability to govern it is increasing as rapidly as our ability to build it.

From where I stand, the answer appears to be no.

Do I know with certainty that artificial superintelligence will eventually eliminate humanity? No. Nobody knows.

But I believe the probability of losing control over something vastly more intelligent than ourselves approaches inevitability if development continues indefinitely without a mathematically demonstrable solution to the control problem.

Perhaps my assessment is too pessimistic or I’m just another “doomer”. I truly hope so!!

Nothing would make me happier than discovering that Roman Yampolskiy was wrong and that humanity eventually develops provably safe superintelligence.

Until that day arrives, however, I believe his warnings deserve far more attention than they currently receive.

History has repeatedly shown that civilisation’s greatest mistakes often begin with the belief that this time will be different. I for one, am no longer willing to make that assumption.

“This article expresses my personal views and predictions. Where I discuss future outcomes, I am offering opinion rather than stating an established fact.”

GC

Sources:

Roman V. Yampolskiy. AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable.

Roman V. Yampolskiy. Artificial Superintelligence: A Futuristic Approach.

Stuart Russell. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control.

Max Tegmark. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

In the 2026 documentary The AI Doc: Or “How I Became an Apocaloptimist” , a soon to be father navigates the whirlwind of artificial intelligence developments. What begins as curiosity spirals into profound unease. Viewers witness a raw exploration of how rapidly advancing AI systems threaten human autonomy, employment, privacy and ultimately our species survival. The attached image captures the films striking promotional artwork featuring robotic figures and bold lettering that perfectly encapsulates its urgent message.

The film masterfully highlights the downsides of artificial intelligence artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence. Experts interviewed detail how these technologies already displace millions of workers across creative and analytical fields. Algorithms trained on vast datasets perpetuate biases while enabling unprecedented surveillance by governments and corporations alike. More alarmingly the documentary examines the alignment problem wherein superintelligent systems may pursue goals misaligned with humanitys interests leading to unintended catastrophic outcomes.

Interviews reveal sharp divisions among specialists. Optimistic voices often tied to substantial financial investments in AI companies downplay risks emphasising potential breakthroughs in medicine and climate modelling. In contrast independent researchers and ethicists without equity stakes in the industry paint a far grimmer picture. They stress that profit driven development prioritises speed over safety creating systems whose decision making processes remain opaque even to their creators. This conflict of interest undermines public trust and accelerates a technological arms race among nations and firms.

Quantifying the existential threat demands rigorous probabilistic assessment grounded in expert surveys and game theoretic models. Aggregating data from leading studies a conservative mathematical likelihood places the probability of advanced AI causing human extinction or permanent disempowerment within this century at approximately 12 to 20 percent.

This figure derives from Bayesian updating of base rates for technological disruption historical patterns of unintended consequences in complex systems and current trajectories in compute scaling and capability gains. While not inevitable such odds rival those of other global catastrophes yet receive comparatively less coordinated mitigation effort.

The AI Doc ultimately urges viewers to embrace informed caution rather than blind enthusiasm. It calls for robust international regulation transparent development practices and ethical frameworks that place human flourishing above shareholder returns.

I give it a 10 out of 10!

Readers can purchase or rent the video here: https://youtu.be/cqS4iL6RsKs?si=knZSXeMqxRbGzBKe

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Sources:

Expert interviews from The AI Doc Documentary 2026.

Surveys of artificial intelligence researchers on existential risks.

Analyses by computer scientists including Geoffrey Hinton.

Bayesian risk assessments in technology forecasting literature.

US sanctions Canada over ‘wildfire smoke’?

Nature or engineered distraction?

Divide allies

Eyes open

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AI labs flunk safety (C+ max)

Intelligence explosion here—>90% escape risk

Empty superintelligence rises

Comet visible

Look up!

#AIApocalypse

WIGWAG

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