Waymo apparently had a software bug that turned their driverless taxi into an unamusement ride, rapidly driving a passenger around in a circle with no way to stop or get out.
“I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy,” passenger Mike Johns said in the video posted in December 2024.
“It’s circling around a parking lot. I got my seatbelt on. I can’t get out the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on? I feel like I’m in the movies,” Johns told the customer support representative.
The representative asked Johns to open his Waymo app. Johns then asked her to take over the car, saying, “Can’t you just do it? You should be able to handle it.”
She said naturally “I’m sorry Mike, I’m afraid I can’t do that” and spooky horror music began to play.
But seriously, of course the real story here is if they can turn off this unwanted feature with a remote update they can… TURN IT BACK ON!
When you get in a driverless taxi be prepared never to get out again.
Why? Because computer engineers aren’t required to sign a code of ethics. That’s true. They aren’t like other engineers. If they were, for example, Tesla would immediately go out of business.
Waymo might trap passengers in an endless circle but Teslas notoriously “veer” uncontrollably and crash. Design defects (e.g. Pinto doors) trap occupants and explode, burning everyone to death as witnesses and emergency responders have to watch in horror. Driverless is so much worse than human drivers, it has been rapidly turning off the early adopters that it didn’t already kill.
A recent incident involving an IDF soldier in Brazil highlights how modern warfare’s greatest threats often come not from weapons, but from smartphones. A October 7 terror survivor became a target not on the battlefield, but through social media posts. He was forced to flee Brazil after Hezbollah operatives triggered a war crimes investigation against him.
The unnamed soldier was a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova festival in 2023, part of the terror organization’s massive onslaught on the south in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war in Gaza.
More than 360 of the victims were murdered at the music festival.
The soldier survived the attack by running for many kilometers until he reached safety, narrowly dodging Hamas gunfire multiple times on the way.
He is now being investigated in Brazil under suspicion that he was involved “in the destruction of a residential building in the Gaza Strip while using explosives outside of combat” in November, the Brazilian Metrópoles news outlet reported.
Where’s Golda Meir when you need her? In 1972, she understood that military discipline meant total discipline – not just in combat, but in every aspect of operations. Today, that principle faces its greatest test in an arena she never had to consider: social media.
On the flip side consider also the modern history of investigations, those who hunted for social presence in order to bring justice. The Wiesenthal Center’s methodology represented truth: meticulously documenting specific war crimes, gathering concrete evidence of atrocities, and pursuing the actual perpetrators who ordered mass murder. They worked to hold accountable those who had turned peaceful villages into killing fields, while their neighbors pretended not to notice and in many cases this detailed work is far from over.
Just ask how so many Austrian towns to this day have hidden mass graves right nearby the nicest homes.
Today’s social media surveillance keyboard warriors are perverting that hard-fought noble mission into hasty and sloppy political warfare with dubious ethical foundations.
The Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation, formed in September 2023, is a perfect example. Led by Dyab Abou Jahjah, he openly boasts of his Hezbollah training and has celebrated the October 7 slaughter of civilians as “resistance.” A Hezbollah-trained operative leading a “human rights” organization? That tells you everything about their mission. Also their secretary, Kareim Hassoun, praised the mass murder of festival-goers as how Palestinians should define “returning home.” This genocidal mentality is clearly no Wiesenthal Center pursuing real justice – it’s allegedly a political front operation for extemists linked to terror groups who are weaponizing international legal systems against soldiers.
What then? In professional military forces there’s typically zero tolerance for social media use during deployment: No smartphones, no sensor sharing, no posts, no digital footprint. This isn’t arbitrary – it’s a critical security measure that protects both operational security and personnel safety.
A 1981 battle in the Seychelles offers an ironic historical lesson about erasing military traces. After their failed coup, white nationalist mercenaries backed by South Africa and tacitly supported by Reagan’s administration were officially “sentenced to death.” In reality, this theatrical sentencing was just leverage – millions in US taxpayer funds were then used to make the whole incident disappear. The mercenaries ended up lounging poolside, their operation’s failures buried under money and political dealmaking.
Mercenaries hired for Ronald Reagan to overthrow an Indian Ocean island government were quickly captured and officially sentenced to death, which in reality meant lounging on a tropical beach thanks to U.S. taxpayers. Source: 17316220 Shutterstock
The parallel to today’s social media reality is stark. In 1981, Ronald Reagan could spend millions to make some of his embarrassing military incidents vanish. Today, no amount of money probably can erase a soldier’s digital footprint once it’s been captured by groups like the Hind Rajab Foundation. Their sprawling surveillance operation doesn’t need complex international backing – they just need to look at social media posts that never get truly deleted.
The Hind Rajab Foundation’s surveillance methodology is straightforward: As a branch of the March 30 Movement that campaigns for “genocide recognition” (while their leadership celebrates actual mass murder of civilians) they systematically monitor social media to capture content posted by IDF personnel inside and out of operations.
In November 2024 alone, they demanded the International Criminal Court issue arrest warrants for 1,000 IDF soldiers based on 8,000 pieces of “evidence” – mostly social media posts harvested from soldiers they scraped online. They’ve targeted IDF personnel on vacation in Brazil, the Netherlands, and the UAE, transforming any and all social presence of any soldier anywhere doing anything into expensive legal jeopardy.
The IDF’s response to the Brazil incident is hard to believe, and perhaps an indicator of more unaccebtable Netanyahu hubris about soldiers’ lives. Warning about social media posts after the fact, while necessary, is reactive not preventive. What’s needed is a fundamental shift in training and culture to prevent unnecessary harm.
Every post, every photo, every location check-in becomes a potential liability to Iranian networks of terror groups. It’s not just about operational security anymore – it’s about ensuring soldiers can safely travel during and after active duty without complex legal entanglements related to their service.
And everyone in the world should be watching. This isn’t just an Israeli issue, it’s a lesson for all modern armed forces facing extremist keyboards. In an age where digital footprints can be weaponized, operational security must evolve beyond traditional physical and communications security to encompass comprehensive digital hygiene. Can every soldier take their weapon completely apart with zero visibility and reassemble it ready to use safely… if it’s a smartphone?
The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s statement about “anti-Israeli elements” exploiting social media posts, while accurate, misses the larger point. The solution isn’t just to warn soldiers about potential enemy exploitation of any online presence and posts. It’s to establish and enforce a zero-tolerance policy for social media use during any active operations.
An organization led by someone who celebrated the October 7 terror attacks as his view of “resistance” can now successfully trigger international investigations using soldiers’ own posts. So one of the best defenses is hopefully more obvious now, leaving minimal digital trail to exploit.
The security imperative is clear: soldiers need better operations discipline not to hide crimes, but to protect themselves from coordinated political warfare and terror campaigns masquerading as justice.
The line between Wiesenthal’s relentless pursuit of documented mass murderers and today’s shameless weaponization of social media against any random soldiers couldn’t be clearer. And even more fundamentally, soldiers need to be professional to help establish their case for honest professionalism. Military discipline is needed in any battlefield.
Everyone in the news seems to say there’s no explanation for yet another sudden Tesla fire.
Fire crews scrambled to a Tesla car on fire in an Ayrshire town last night leaving residents in shock. Emergency crews scrambled to the scene outside the Beijing Banquet restaurant at Queen’s Drive in the Riccarton area of Kilmarnock at around 5:58pm last night, Saturday, January 4. The cause of the fire remains unknown and no injuries have been reported from the incident. Footage shows flames engulfing the black Tesla vehicle under a sign for the restaurant. Another image shows the fire beginning to take hold under the wheel arch of the vehicle.
Fire apparently started visibly near a wheel. Elon Musk got rich by boasting he would land on Mars by 2018 yet his cars still can’t even safely travel to dinner. Source: Daily Record
In shock? No explanation?
Did the Pinto have design defects? No explanation needed. It’s a Tesla.
Notably the CEO isn’t expected to tweet anything like he did for the Las Vegas Tesla fire:
Never seen a fire in a Tesla like Las Vegas before? Uh huh, sure sure, since *cough* hundreds of Tesla fire cases have received little to no response at all.
Somehow he thinks one fire is so unlike all the others, including the nearly 90 prior deaths, as if a certain hotel brand demands all of Tesla senior leadership’s most immediate attention.
Source: Twitter
There was literally a Cybertruck fire similar to the Las Vegas one the night before in Georgia. True story! And the Tesla CEO reaction was… crickets.
A Tesla dealer in Georgia saw their Cybertruck burst into flames December 31st, the day before the Las Vegas one, and was treated as if normal. Source: WSBTV
After all, who can forget classic examples of Tesla attitude towards dangerous fire like… this one?
Source: Twitter
There are so many examples, one has to wonder if Tesla has been trying to normalize all the years of sudden and extremely destructive Tesla fires by completely ignoring them.
Source: Washington Post
This was Elon Musk’s reaction in 2022 after the big Tesla fires kept hitting the news. It certainly hasn’t aged well, given we’re still here in 2025 taking about hundreds of big Tesla fires in the news:
Other EVs? They don’t seem to have the Tesla design defect problems. It’s like saying nobody will report on Ford Pinto fires once Nissan and Honda sell compact cars. Remember, Nissan was the EV market leader until 2019, with hundreds of thousands of EV on the road, and none of the Tesla fires.
Executive summary: Corporate rhetoric about innovation and leadership often masks the unpalatable reality of exploitation and extraction. Microsoft’s new AI manifesto, with its careful political positioning and woefully selective historical narrative, exemplifies this troubling pattern – trading safety for market advantage that has historical precedents with catastrophic outcomes.
A U.S. Navy Blimp crashed in Daly City 1944 with nobody on board. Speculation abounds to this day about the two men who disappeared from it.
When the Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937, it marked another era built on hubris – a belief that technological advancement could outrun safety concerns. Microsoft’s recent manifesto on AI leadership eerily echoes this same dangerous confidence, presenting a sanitized version of both American technological history and their own corporate record.
Brad Smith’s Failure at History
The company’s vision statement posted under Brad Smith’s name reads like a saccharin a-historical fiction, painting a rosy picture of American technological development that far too conveniently forgets death and destruction of weakly regulated barons. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire’s 146 victims, the horrific conditions exposed in “The Jungle,” and the long struggle for basic worker protections weren’t exceptions. And selective amnesia by those who profit from ignoring the past isn’t accidental – it’s a strategic attempt to hide the human costs of rapid technological deployment that lacked the most basic safeguards.
Just as the disastrously mis-managed private American railroads of the 19th century built empires on fraud (government handouts while preaching free-market rhetoric) that left taxpayers holding the fallout with no trains in sight, Microsoft now positions itself as a champion of private sector innovation while seeking public funding and protection. Their carefully crafted narrative about “American AI leadership” deliberately obscures how the technology sector actually achieved its “success” – through massive public investment, particularly in military applications for “intelligence” like the billion-dollar-per-year IGLOO WHITE program during the Vietnam War.
Real History, Real Microsoft Patterns
The corporate-driven PR of historical revisionism becomes even more troubling when we examine Microsoft’s awful and immoral business track record. The company that now promises to be a responsible steward of AI technology has consistently prioritized corporate profits over human welfare. Bill Gates’ lack of any concern at all for “virus” risks in his takeover of the personal computer world, delivering billions of disasters and causing world-wide outages, is somehow supposed to be forgotten because he took the money and announced he cares about malaria now? While ignoring basic consumer safety, Microsoft also pioneered a “permatemp” system in the 1990s for a two-tier workforce where thousands of “temporary” workers had to do the work of full-time employees yet without benefits or job security. Even after paying a piddling $97 million to settle lawsuits, they arrogantly shifted to more sophisticated forms of worker exploitation through contracting firms.
As technology evolved, so did Microsoft’s methods of avoiding responsibility. Content moderators exposed to traumatic material, game testers working in precarious conditions, and data center workers denied basic benefits – all while the company’s profits soared unethically. Now, in the AI era, they’ve taken an even more ominous turn by literally dismantling ethical AI oversight teams (because they raised objections) precisely when such oversight is most crucial.
New Avenues for Exploitation
The parallels to past technological disasters are stark. Just as the Grover Shoe Factory’s boiler explosion revealed the costs of prioritizing production over safety, Microsoft’s aggressive push into AI while eliminating ethical oversight should raise alarming questions. This is like removing the brakes on a car when you install a far more powerful engine. Their new AI manifesto, filled with flattery for coming White House occupants using veiled requests for deregulation, reads less like a vision for responsible innovation and more like a corporate attempt to avoid accountability… for when they inevitably burn up their balloon.
Consider the track record:
Pioneered abusive labor practices in tech
Consistently fought against worker organizing efforts
Used contractor firms to obscure poor working conditions
Fired ethical AI researchers as they accelerate AI
Smith’s manifesto, with carefully crafted appeals to American technological leadership and warnings about Chinese competition, follows this as a familiar pattern. It’s the same strategy railroad companies used to secure land grants, that oil companies used to bypass laws, that steel companies used to avoid safety regulations, and that modern tech giants use to maintain their monopolies.
Tea Pot Dome May Come Again
For anyone considering entrusting their future to Microsoft’s AI vision, the message from history is clear: this is a company that has repeatedly chosen corporate convenience over human welfare. Their elimination of ethical oversight while rapidly deploying AI technology isn’t just a little concerning – it’s intentionally dangerous. Like boarding a hydrogen-filled zeppelin, the risks aren’t immediately visible but are nonetheless catastrophic.
The manifesto’s emphasis on “private sector leadership” and deregulation, combined with their historic exploitative practice of using contractor firms to avoid responsibility, suggests their AI future will repeat the worst patterns of industrial history. Their calls for “pragmatic” export controls and warnings about Chinese competition are less about national security and more about seeking unjust tariffs (e.g. Facebook’s campaign to ban competitor TikTok) and securing corporate benefits while avoiding oversight.
Americans never seem to talk about Tea Pot Dome when calling Big Data new “oil”. In fact data is nothing like oil, and yet Big Tech antics are just like Tea Pot Dome: private exploitation of public resources, use of national security as justification, and corruption of oversight processes.
As we stand at the threshold of the AI era, Microsoft’s manifesto should be read not as a vision statement but as them cooking and eating the AI canary in broad daylight. Their selective reading of history, combined with their own troubling track record, suggests we’re witnessing the trumpeted call for a new chapter in corporate exploitation – one where AI technology serves as both the vehicle and the excuse for avoiding responsibility.
Microsoft is sacrificing something (ethical oversight, worker protections) for perceived strategic advantage, just as historical robber barons sacrificed safety and worker welfare for profit.
The question isn’t whether Microsoft can lead in AI development by pouring billions into their race to monopolize it and spit out even their own workers as a lesser caste – it’s whether we can afford to repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing companies to prioritize speed and profit over human welfare and safety. History’s judgment of such choices has always been harsh, and in the AI era, the stakes are even higher.
One theory about the Navy L-8 crash in 1944 is “new technology, being tested to detect U-boats, emitted dangerous and poorly shielded microwaves that overpowered the crew, causing them to fall out of the cabin”.
Era
Historical Pattern
Microsoft’s Echo
Historical Consequence
Railroad Era
Railroad barons securing land grants while preaching free market values
Seeking public AI funding while claiming private sector leadership
Taxpayers left with failed infrastructure and mounting costs
