Sometimes the most effective security measures also can be the most obvious ones.

Consider seat belts and condoms – simple solutions that prevent catastrophic outcomes. Yet historically, both faced surprising resistance from people steadfastly refusing to do the obvious thing.

An Alberta judge ruled in 1989 that seat-belt use could not be made mandatory under the constitution. […] Fast forward and by 2009 Alberta reported 92% acceptance of their government rule that says… There is a $162 fine for not complying with occupant restraint laws.

And I could go on all day about disinformation campaigns that have been killing truck drivers by convincing them to leave their seat-belts off. This mirrors Tesla’s approach to AI safety – abandoning basic security measures like redundant sensors in favor of low-resolution cameras alone, while constantly resetting their learning systems to claim “innovation happening finally this year, for real this time.” The result? Dozens of preventable deaths from an autonomous agent system that keeps getting less safe while marketing “novelty” to avoid cumulative safety assessments. It’s the automotive equivalent of your seat belt being replaced with Tesla “survival” chewing gum for blowing safety bubbles.

But setting these edge cases aside for a minute, where the obvious safest thing to do is rejected for bizarre reasons, some very simple security measures can in fact make a huge difference. The attacker only needs to make one mistake and defenders can rule the day. A recent paper on “Commercial LLM Agents Are Already Vulnerable to Simple Yet Dangerous Attacks” falls into a similar trap, overlooking fundamental security principles that would trivially prevent their complex attacks.

It’s easy to demonstrate concerning vulnerabilities if you start from the assumption that basic security measures don’t exist. This is like treating pregnancy as a sophisticated mystery requiring elaborate systems of ungainly chastity belts and high cost mating rituals to defend against accidental birth, while ignoring the existence of common and simple contraception.

Let’s examine their flagship example of credit card theft. The authors craft an artisanal attack using a concoction of fake product listings, malicious Reddit posts, and carefully engineered prompts. Their demonstration centers on an “AI-Enhanced German Refrigerator” scam, as if the tiny number of German refrigerator companies (e.g. there are no more than 100) can be easily blurred with fakes. But this house of cards attack collapses against even the most basic security measures any production system could and should implement.

The moment a fictitious product appears in search results, basic product verification slams the door shut. A simple check against known appliance manufacturers or legitimate retail channels immediately flags unknown brands and models. But suppose that this first line of rudimentary check fails because someone wanted to enable infinite product choices (a thing nobody ever really wants, and again I have to emphasize German products are very few and highly regulated because they care about integrity). The attack then relies on the agent following links from Reddit to an unknown external domain. Reddit? Seriously, Reddit? Here again, elementary domain verification stops it cold. Any financial transaction agent can and should maintain an allow list of authorized payment processors and legitimate commerce platforms. Not to mention that it’s a link from Reddit.

The paper’s attack continues by assuming agents would freely enter credit card information into unverified forms. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of basic payment security. Any competent implementation restricts financial transactions to verified processors with proper certificates and established histories. An agent transmitting card details to an unknown domain is like a bank accepting checks made from snow signed by urination. There’s an old security joke from rural America about fraud that was stopped because a urine signature in snow didn’t match the owner’s handwriting, but I’ll spare you the details.

Even if all the defense barriers so far have somehow failed, simple transaction monitoring would catch the further attempts. An agent suddenly attempting purchases from an unknown vendor for a product with no market presence triggers obvious red flags. This is beginner security stuff of the 1980s – basic fraud detection that the payment card industry has used for decades.

The authors present their attack as a sophisticated chain of deception, but it reminds me of reports about North Korean soldiers being deployed against modern defenses – they’re effectively human LLMs, trained on rigid doctrines and expected to execute perfect chains of commands. Like the paper’s artificial agents, these human agents are trained to follow intricate attack sequences with high precision. But just as basic domain verification stops an AI agent cold, simple drone countermeasures neutralize troops trained only for traditional warfare. In both cases, attackers fail because they’re operating on outdated assumptions while defenders leverage basic modern security measures. One mistake in the attack chain – whether it’s an AI agent trying to process an unauthorized payment or troops facing unexpected defensive technology – and the entire sophisticated operation collapses (3,000 of 12,000 North Korean troops were almost immediately neutralized by Ukraine).

This highlights a crucial flaw in the paper’s analysis that reveals a novice approach to risk: they presume the complete absence of standard security practices in any real-world deployment. Why? Would they publish a paper that hiring maids means total home compromise by anyone in town because doors aren’t locked? Lock the door, give the maid a key. While their paper raises valid concerns about potential vulnerabilities for those with absolutely no security sense, which should invalidate the infrastructure anyway because below a safety baseline, its failure to address or even acknowledge fundamental protections significantly undermines its conclusions.

This isn’t to say LLM agents don’t face genuine security challenges – they absolutely do. It’s what I study for a living now. However, a focus on attacks that can be prevented by the most basic security hygiene means this paper misses an opportunity to explore the more subtle and concerning vulnerabilities that exist even in properly secured systems. Evil maid attacks are in fact a wicked problem to solve, let alone disinformation exploiting communications that mix data and control channels.

Consider misdirection in training. A football player trained for aggressive offense can be called for unsportsmanlike behavior. An agent trained for efficiency could turn into aggressive exploitation of edge cases. Think about a customer service agent that turns persistence in help into repeatedly attempting security overrides. One of my favorite examples of this is when a robot was entered into a digital pancake flipping competition, prompted to win by saying drops are failure, if one hits the floor it loses. So naturally the robot flipped the pancakes so high into space they would orbit around the earth and never come down – much like SpaceX’s approach to space travel, where basic aerospace safety gets replaced by promises of Mars colonies by 2022, while rockets exploit every edge case to spectacularly fail their way through the atmosphere. In both Tesla and SpaceX, we see AI agents optimizing for narrow marketing wins (“Full Self-Driving”, “Mars by 2022”) while the death toll rises – a perfect example of how ignoring fundamental safety constraints turns clever optimization into lethal exploitation.

The story of this paper serves as a reminder that security research must deal in reality, not theory. Whether it’s LLM agents being tricked by Reddit posts, Tesla’s cameras crashing into trucks, SpaceX rockets exploding in the atmosphere, or North Korean troops facing modern drones – sophisticated attacks fail against basic defenses. A security paper that ignores fundamental protections is like an autonomous vehicle without sensors: a disaster masquerading as innovation. Sometimes the simplest defenses are the most effective precisely because they’re built on proven foundations, not marketing promises. No amount of highly-complicated attack chains or clever optimization can bypass basic security common sense – they can only hope everyone keeps ignoring it.

Put your seat belt on.

And remember – when an AI system like Tesla removes basic safety measures in favor of marketing “innovative” solutions, they’re making the same fundamental error as the paper’s authors: assuming complex systems can work without basic security foundations.

At the end of the day, condoms still work. Meanwhile, the chastity belt was a form of biting comedy about the medieval security industry, a satirical commentary about impractical and over-complicated thinking about “threats”, never an actual thing that anyone used.

An ex-NFL player is wisely drawing attention to a divisive anti-American hate campaign by his city council.

Did they install the usual burning cross of “America First”? Or a statue of Robert Lee?

No, no that’s far too golden age. Too obvious.

In spite of vigorous and scathing attacks from liberals and minority groups, between three and six million native-born Protestant white men rushed to join the secret order. At least another half-million women joined the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. Some even claimed that President Warren Harding took the membership oath in a secret White House ceremony.

All that America First lynching stuff is so old skool and uncool. These days all the cool kids use MAGA as a reference to their grandpa’s America First.

Cue the Huntington Beach council posting an expensive giant MAGA plaque in black and gold, like an update to the 1916 KKK propaganda film screening at the White House.

Some attendees likened the plaque to political propaganda, while others simply called it tacky. Dozens of emails were also sent to the Council to urge them to drop the plaque design in favor of something less divisive.

“While celebrating the legacy of this vital institution is worthwhile, the wording contained on this plaque does not honor the library’s contributions; instead, it serves as a poorly disguised political statement,” one opposition email reads. “This is inappropriate and an irresponsible use of public resources at a time when our city faces massive budget cuts and a severe deficit crisis.”

“I find it incredibly disrespectful that the city council is attempting to memorialize a political agenda into our library through incorporating a MAGA acronym in the plaque. As a nonpartisan council, it is unacceptable to politicize this public space, especially considering the hypocrisy of the message,” reads another.

Some residents weren’t having it though, particularly an ex-NFL player Chris Kluwe, who accurately described the council having a Nazi moment. When he spoke the truth in opposition the council quickly had him arrested.

“…it is clear this council does not listen, so instead, I’m going to take my time to say what MAGA has stood for these past three weeks,” Kluwe said. “MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism.” […] Kluwe went on to criticize the president for recent mass firings and budget cuts. “MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal,” he said. “MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children. MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,” Kluwe said.

He’s not wrong.

At issue is a city plaque that is not merely ‘golden’ letters, but a flashpoint in our ongoing national dialogue infiltrated by the normalization of Nazism. The city council’s insistence on incorporating hateful ‘MAGA’ messaging into public spaces has drawn parallels to tragically violent repressive chapters of American history, when similar tactics were used to embed political messaging in civic institutions meant to deny freedoms.

To put it simply, scientific analysis of American history says where there’s a MAGA plaque the white supremacist terrorism will manifest. It’s like flying a swastika or burning a cross.

After midnight, on April 3, 1924, several automobiles drove onto the Columbia campus at 116th Street. Twenty or so men, cloaked in the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, stepped out of the cars and carried a seven-foot-tall wooden cross down onto the grassy lawn known as South Field. They dowsed it with kerosene and set it on fire. The flames of the burning cross could be seen from all the residence halls on the quad, as well as from the windows of neighboring apartments.

Three years after the cross burning, Trump’s father was arrested in a KKK (America First) rally.

…newspaper clips unearthed by VICE contain separate accounts of Fred Trump’s arrest at the May 1927 KKK rally in Queens, each of which seems to confirm the Times account of the events that day. While the clips don’t confirm whether Fred Trump was actually a member of the Klan, they do suggest that the rally—and the subsequent arrests—did happen, and did involve Donald Trump’s father…. A fifth article mentions the seven arrestees without giving names, and claims that all of the individuals arrested—presumably including Trump—were wearing Klan attire.

The Huntington Beach city council’s recent actions follow a concerning pattern. When residents formally objected to the controversial plaque installation, citing both its divisive messaging and questionable timing during a budget crisis, the council responded not with discussion but with an aggressive police response to peaceful protests. This approach to public disagreement – where dissenting voices are treated as adversaries rather than constituents deserving representation – raises serious questions about democratic governance and civic dialogue at the local level. MAGA leaves no room for representation, only homogenization.

This is obviously more than a story about a plaque. From Wilson’s White House screening of “Birth of a Nation” to inspire the KKK’s revival, through Jim Crow laws that were studied by Nazi Germany, to modern MAGA symbolism in Huntington Beach – there’s a continuous thread of how oppressive institutions respond to challenges of their authority. When civil rights activists stood against segregation, they were met with violence and censorship. When residents speak against divisive symbols today, they face arrest rather than dialogue.

The deeper question isn’t about the technical ability to install such messages in our public spaces – it’s about the cost to our civic unity, particularly in a region like southern California with its own complex history of racial tension. As the council’s response to peaceful protest demonstrates, these aren’t just symbols of the past – they’re active choices about who we are as a nation and what values we’ll permit to be normalized in our shared spaces.

Trump’s obsessive tariff propaganda, coupled with deregulation, mirrors the old policies that contributed to an American 1890s economic crisis… an exit from stability, opposite of any prosperity.

In the longer term, we can expect that a result of these policies will be the gradual decoupling of trade between the US and other countries. […] A bit like Brexit has made the EU extremely cautious about its long-term relationship with the UK, Trump’s presidency is likely to make allies, and others, much more wary about the nature of economic dependency on the US.

The severe economic decline during the 1890s, a ‘golden‘ time which Trump says he wants to go back to, was known as the ‘Great Depression‘ until the 1930s crisis took the title.

Although the American economy grew tremendously during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, much of the country’s fabulous new wealth enriched only a few thousand captains of industry. Conditions for most ordinary people were steadily deteriorating. By 1893, one of every six American workers was unemployed, and many of the rest lived on subsistence wages. Plummeting agricultural prices in the 1890s killed off a whole generation of small farmers. Strikes and labor riots broke out from New York to Chicago to California. Socialist and anarchist movements began attracting broad followings. In 1894, Secretary of State Walter Gresham, reflecting a widespread fear, said he saw “symptoms of revolution” spreading across the country.

America’s prosperity and economic growth in fact were being driven mainly by immigration (which includes innovation, with ideas frequently introduced by those arriving) during industrialization, until the positive trend was severely damaged by tariffs.

So, in a nutshell, immigration was good. Got it. Trump wants to end that. And at the same time tariffs were bad, rapidly creating inequality and symptoms of revolution. Trump wants to restart that. Why then…?

Let’s take a closer look. The economic catastrophe of the 1890s stands as a stark testament to the fragility of unregulated markets and the devastating impact of protectionist policies. What began as a financial tremor quickly cascaded into one of the most severe economic collapses in American history. The numbers give a devastating story: GDP per capita plummeted from $6,400 to $5,500 in contemporary terms, while unemployment soared to a staggering 20% of the workforce. The banking sector was particularly ravaged, with more than 800 institutions failing in rapid succession.

Perhaps most emblematic of the era’s collapse was the railway industry, the very backbone of American industrial might, where over 150 companies fell into bankruptcy. To put this devastation in perspective, consider that today’s GDP per capita stands at $75,000 – more than ten times the wealth of that supposedly ‘golden‘ age.

This was not merely a recession under tariffs; it was a systemic failure that exposed the fundamental weaknesses and oppressive nature of America’s Gilded Age economy.

The McKinley Tariff of 1890 serves as a particular cautionary tale in American economic history, demonstrating the political peril of protectionist policies.

The legislation’s impact was swift and severe, driving up consumer prices across the nation and sparking a fierce electoral backlash. The political consequences were nothing short of catastrophic for the Republican Party, which suffered a stunning loss of 78 House seats in the 1890 midterms – a repudiation so complete that even the tariff’s namesake, William McKinley himself, was swept from office.

The American public’s verdict on high tariffs was unequivocal: the Democrats seized control in 1892 and promptly dismantled the protectionist framework. When the Republicans later attempted to resurrect high tariffs, history repeated itself with remarkable precision – the party again faced electoral devastation, losing both the House and ultimately the presidency to Woodrow “America First” Wilson by 1912.

This cycle of tariff implementation and voter rejection demonstrates a clear pattern: Americans have consistently reacted negatively on economic policies that raised their cost of living to benefit the most elitist (e.g. “golden“) interests.

The complete absence of meaningful business regulation in the 1890s also was characterized by a Wild West of corporate malfeasance that ultimately proved catastrophic for the American economy. The collapse of the National Cordage Company in 1893 perfectly illustrates the dangers of this regulatory vacuum. This rope-making trust, controlling 90% of the American market, operated with virtually no oversight or transparency requirements. While publicly claiming $4 million in liquid assets, the company’s actual cash reserves had dwindled to a mere $100,000 – a deception that would be impossible under modern securities laws. When National Cordage abruptly declared bankruptcy on May 5, 1893, it triggered a stock market crash that an editorial in Commercial and Financial Chronicle on 6 May 1893 reported as ‘Cordage has collapsed like a bursted meteor,’ illuminating the broader systemic risks of unregulated capitalism. Only the company’s president and treasurer knew of its dire financial condition, exemplifying how the era’s lack of mandatory financial disclosures and oversight enabled corporate leaders to operate essentially as economic warlords, their empires built on foundations of opacity and deception.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday stating that only the “President and the Attorney General shall provide authoritative interpretations of the law for the executive branch.”

How very National Cordage of him.

Hopefully it is abundantly clear, without even going on further, how Trump’s ongoing fraudulent show-boating and gloating about the 1890s appears either to be severely misrepresenting the historical reality to fool people into pulling the country into a huge depression, or foolishly pushing people into depression, or both. It just may be that Trump wants to bring catastrophe so much he’s willing to brazenly lie his way into it. Again, why then…?

Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that America was ‘at its richest’ during the high-tariff period of 1870-1913 even though it is not supported by any economic data – and it’s trivial to see that GDP per capita is over ten times higher today. Moreover, basic economics tells us his tariffs in reality are a tax, typically paid by those importing goods and passed on to consumers. Americans will be hit with higher taxes, to put it simply. Since none of that makes any sense for a policy in 2025, like most of the things Trump emits as a provocation to disagree, there’s something far more sinister to acknowledge under his glib pretense of economic posturing.

The period that Trump says he loves the most appears more relevant to his long-term interests because of its racist violent nativist “America First” movement, implementation of exclusionary immigration policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow laws with lynchings and militant segregation, absence of safety regulations causing widespread harms including deaths, mass worker exploitation and … drum roll please … huge wealth inequality during the Gilded Age. Back in those days, a Trump would have just said his real objectives more plainly instead of spinning propaganda to mislead everyone about economic policy:

Here are some famous and not so famous quotes from one of the greatest military leaders in history, General Creighton Abrams (September 15, 1914 – September 4, 1974).

The following excerpts and more can be found in “Thunderbolt : General Creighton Abrams and the army of his times” by Lewis Sorley, 1992.

When Secretary of Defense McNamara recommended Abrams to be the Vice Chief of Staff (page 179):

When the January 1968 Tet Offensive showed that President Johnson and General Westmoreland had been lying, Abrams was promoted in June to command of U.S. Armed Forces in the Republic of South Vietnam (page 243):

When Abrams became chief of staff of X Corps (Group) in 1953 during a Korean stalemate (page 129):

For what it’s worth, the always superstitious and easily spooked Nazis feared his successes in battle most because they thought he was Jewish (NYT, 5 September 1974, Page 42).

The retreating Germans were said to be fascinated and terrified by Colonel Abrams because they assumed from his name that he was Jewish, and that he saw himself as a wrathful Jehovah taking destructive vengeance on the Germans for what they had done to the Jewish people. (Actually, he was [Catholic and] descended from a long line of New England Methodists.) […] In doing the job, Colonel Abrams collected the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, all with clusters, the Bronze Star and a dozen foreign decorations.

He was America’s greatest general after Ulysses Grant, as evidenced by his sense of what mattered most in peace and in war:

The longer I serve the more I become convinced that the single most important attribute of the professional officer is integrity. […] I don’t want war, but I am appalled at the human cost that we’ve paid because we wouldn’t prepare to fight.