Category Archives: Security

Sailing, Security

Pardon for the Drug Boss, Hellfires for the Workers: Trump Frees the Rich to Kill the Poor

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Same Trump administration, same week:

November 28: Pardon for the man convicted of facilitating 400 tons of cocaine because he was “treated unfairly”. Hernández had supported the “freedom city” special “lebensraum” economic zone backed by right wing extremist billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.

Hernández allegedly uttered the phrase that would come to define the prosecution’s case: “We’re going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” This statement, corroborated by witnesses who saw Hernández accept bribes in exchange for military protection of the lab, dismantled his defense that he was a loyal U.S. ally. It portrayed a leader who harbored deep cynicism toward the United States, viewing the superpower not as a partner, but as a market to be exploited and a political patron to be manipulated.

December 2: Defend the murder of shipwreck survivors (war crime), saying he “would have made the same call” because… drugs allegedly in their boat.

December 6: Another unfair extrajudicial bombing kills four more people at sea, increasing the dead to 87.

The throughline isn’t drug interdiction because it’s the assertion of unchecked executive power. The Defense Secretary statement that Trump can take military action “as he sees fit” is the operative principle.

The drugs are a dog whistle for the poor and non-white, merely set dressing for a modern day “Birth of a Nation” performance endorsed by the White House.

Screen capture from 1915 “Birth of a Nation”, which President Wilson used to restart the KKK as “America First” and incite racist violence.

What’s particularly revealing is the accountability structure. The man pardoned was defined by a “cocaine superhighway” involving the military, state protection, cartel bribes, even a connection to El Chapo, to explicitly harm Americans. Trump grants clemency anyway.

Meanwhile, workers on boats (who may or may not actually be traffickers, what’s the evidentiary standard here?) get killed, including obvious war crimes by murdering survivors. These aren’t judicial proceedings. These aren’t even the theatrical military tribunals of the War on Terror. It’s “suspected cargo on a boat”, then deadly strike, then another strike to kill survivors. What makes any boat “suspected”? Who reviews that designation? What happens when they’re wrong?

An Admiral who “sunk the boat and eliminated the threat” is a lie. People clinging to wreckage after their boat was destroyed aren’t a “threat.” That’s the language of illegal execution, not interdiction.

Nearly 100 people killed on over 20 vessels, with zero proof any of them carried drugs. The evidentiary standard is so low, it’s nonexistent. Talk about unfair treatment.

..the two survivors were waving overhead before the second strike killed them. One of the sources said the action could be interpreted as the survivors either calling for help or trying to wave off another strike.

The drug superhighway guy trial at least had witnesses, evidence, a jury. The facts are plain to see that he was the primary reason drugs flowed into America. The people killed at sea get none of that, and might not even have any drugs.

The asymmetry between who gets pardoned and who gets killed maps precisely onto class and power. This smells a lot like Palantir, which has been assassinating innocent misidentified people around the world for over a decade with zero accountability.

If you doubt Palantir, you’re probably right.

The legal questions Hegseth is dodging are significant. Killing survivors of an initial strike isn’t interdiction; it’s something else entirely. And the “I wasn’t in the room but would have made the same call” framing manages to simultaneously disclaim and claim responsibility while endorsing war crimes.

Honduran president of drug pipeline into America with El Chapo connections? Trump orders freedom.

Poor Latin American workers at sea? AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on their heads, even as they plead and cry for help.

Rich and connected versus poor and anonymous. The drug war of Nixon and Reagan always operated this way, designed to incarcerate and murder poor non-whites, but this week Trump has made it unusually overt and undeniable.

Security

NYC Subway Hero: Good Samaritan Versus Meta Glasshole

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One good Samaritan’s silence is part of why her actions are resonating.

A New York subway rider is going viral after a TikToker accused her of breaking his Meta AI glasses, a moment that instantly made her a folk hero…. The eyewear, which can discreetly record video, has been criticized as a creeping surveillance threat. …the internet has already taken her side, celebrating her as the anti-AI vigilante of their dreams.

No verbal engagement, no explanation, no negotiation. Just direct action against the surveillance infrastructure and then walk away.

She’s been compared to “The Butlerian Jihad“, which Herbert wrote as humanity’s violent rejection of thinking machines after they’d been used for oppression.

We’re watching cultural groundwork being laid for that framing. And there are serious philosophical foundations to consider as well.

Surveillance Ethics: Harm vs Defense

Ethical Framework Surveillance as Harm Defensive Response
Assault (Legal Definition) Assault is the threat or apprehension of harm, not just physical contact. Covert recording creates reasonable apprehension: your image fed into facial recognition, your home address exposed, stalking enabled. The 2024 Harvard demo proved these aren’t hypothetical harms—they’re documented capabilities. Breaking the device is defense against ongoing assault, not initiation of assault. You cannot “assault” a weapon.
Bodily Autonomy Your image, likeness, and presence in space are extensions of your person. Capturing them without consent is violation of bodily autonomy—the same principle underlying prohibitions on non-consensual photography, revenge porn, upskirt laws. Defending bodily autonomy against technological violation is ethically equivalent to defending against physical violation.
Consent (Bioethics Standard) Informed consent requires: disclosure, comprehension, voluntariness, competence. Covert surveillance by design eliminates all four. The indicator light theater—easily defeated with stickers—demonstrates Meta knows consent is impossible and chose to proceed anyway. You cannot retroactively consent to surveillance you didn’t know was happening. “Ask nicely” presupposes knowledge you’re being recorded.
Harm Principle (Mill) “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Surveillance that enables doxing, stalking, and harassment is demonstrable harm. Preventing harm to yourself and bystanders falls squarely within Mill’s framework. Her liberty to destroy his glasses is justified by his harm to others.
Necessity Defense (Legal) Property destruction is justified when preventing greater harm. Breaking a window to rescue someone from a fire. Destroying a weapon being used to threaten. $300 device destruction vs. enabling real-time doxing of strangers. The proportionality calculation is obvious.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative “Act so that you treat humanity, in your own person and in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.” Using strangers as “content” for entertainment—”sounds I thought were hilarious”—is treating humans as means. She refused to be a means to his content. She acted as an end in herself.
Duty to Rescue Many jurisdictions impose legal duty to assist others facing serious harm when you can do so without unreasonable risk. Bystanders were also being surveilled. Destroying the surveillance device protected not just herself but everyone in that subway car. Good Samaritan action.
Feminist Ethics (Vulnerability & Power) Technology magnifies existing power asymmetries. Facemash targeted women specifically. Meta’s platform has documented harms to women: enabling stalkers, domestic abusers using location data, teen girls’ mental health. Pattern of gendered harm is established. Resistance to gendered technological harm is ethically continuous with resistance to gendered physical harm. Same principle, different vector.

The Inversion Exposed

Glasshole View Ethical Reality
“She assaulted me” Glasshole was committing ongoing assault via surveillance; she defended
“She destroyed Glasshole property” She neutralized a device being used to harm
“She should have asked nicely” Consent must be sought by the Glasshole acting on others, not demanded by the victim post-hoc
“$300 Glasshole damage” Harm of surveillance (doxing, stalking, harassment) >> property value
“Glasshole filed a police report” Legal system designed before these harms existed; law lags ethics
“Help Glasshole find her” Attempting to use surveillance apparatus to punish resistance to surveillance

The Zuckerberg Through-Line

Era Action Framing Outcome
Facemash (2003) Used technology to non-consensually rank women’s bodies “Prank” Became billionaire
Meta Ray-Bans (2024-25) Sells technology enabling non-consensual surveillance; user films strangers; woman resists “Product feature” She’s framed as criminal

The ethical violation of Facebook has always been the same since its Harvard origins. It’s gone from Facemash to Face-Smash, as the immoral technology has been allowed to scale against humanity.

Security

Waymo is Murder: NYT Pushes VC Doctor Pills to Erase the Dead

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The New York Times has published sophisticated propaganda, structurally designed to manufacture consent with the murder machine known as Waymo.

The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course.

The entire function of this PR piece is to make us stop counting the ways Waymo kills by overwhelming us with the ways humans kill. That is cynically erasing the dead.

He never addresses correlated failure: I know he didn’t read this blog because my core point, fleet-wide bugs aren’t comparable to heterogeneous human error, doesn’t appear. It’s the most important methodological objection and he doesn’t even touch it.

The clinical trial analogy is intellectually dishonest: Actual trials: randomization, blinding, independent data collection, FDA oversight. Dr. Waymo: guess who controls all the data, self-selects operating conditions, and has no independent verification? He’s borrowing the epistemic authority of medical research while violating every principle that makes medical research trustworthy.

The comparison is rigged from the start: “Human drivers on the same roads” sounds controlled, but humans drive those roads in rain, at night, hungover, distracted, in vehicles with failing brakes. Waymo operates in pre-mapped ideal conditions and pulls over when confused. It’s comparing a curated highlight reel to raw game footage.

He buries the conflicts: Healthcare VC making deployment arguments. The disclosure appears after 1,500 words of persuasion. In actual medical publishing, conflicts go at the top.

He acknowledges the accountability void then crashes into it: “We need the denominator, not just the numerator”—but who audits the numerator? Waymo. Who controls the crash definitions? Waymo. Who decides what gets reported? Waymo.

The timing is reputation management: Published December 2 while Waymo is bleeding from school bus violations, KitKat, the police standoff. This is crisis PR with an MD byline.

A doctor is arguing we should trust corporate self-reported data over democratic accountability mechanisms, in the name of public health.

That’s obscenity.

A venture capitalist is using his medical credentials to make dangerous technology deployment arguments that are a profit-driven threat to public health.

Game over.

He may be a doctor, but I study disinformation.

Related: “Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court”.