Democratic Party runs more than 60 military-intelligence candidates for Congress. If, as appears likely based on pre-election polling, the Democratic Party makes significant gains in November, the military-intelligence "caucus" inside the Democratic delegation could double or triple in size. They will vastly outnumber the relative handful of self-proclaimed "democratic socialists" to whom the corporate media has given so much attention, and whom pseudo-left groups cite as evidence that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left.

As we have argued in previous such studies, the large number of military-intelligence operatives entering politics as Democratic Party candidates is the result of a two-way process. The Democratic Party leadership is openly encouraging the recruitment of such candidates, as it seeks ever-closer ties to the Pentagon and CIA. And large sections of the military-intelligence apparatus view the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle, in opposition to the erratic policies of Donald Trump and particularly his pullback from direct involvement in the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Hat-tip to jeffburges in this thread. Why, besides NATO and Ukraine, would former military intelligence officers run for office as Democrats? Apropos of nothing, here are some other recent headlines: Report: Trump Used Grok to Help Talk Him Into Illegal Invasion of Venezuela. President Donald Trump was reportedly encouraged by Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, to carry out his illegal invasion of Venezuela during an hourslong session with the chatbot just weeks before the attack this January. In December 2025, Trump asked Grok questions for hours during a secret visit to the White House by Musk, per new reporting by Time Magazine. How Jared Kushner's firm's investment in an Israeli company could be a major conflict of interest. At the same time Jared Kushner has acted as a key negotiator in the war in Gaza, his private equity company, Affinity Partners, has held the largest stake in an Israeli firm backing businesses involved in Israel's military campaigns, a CNN investigation has found. Jared Kushner is at the center of Trump's corruption. On Monday, Paramount Skydance — run by David Ellison, a billionaire Trump has openly urged to reshape the news industry in his favor — launched an unprecedented bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery by initiating a hostile takeover after losing an earlier bidding contest to Netflix. Paramount's offer draws heavily from Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar... Not even Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage.

TheWrap: Advertisements for Bleecker Street's Elon Musk documentary "Musk" will begin running on Meta and YouTube after previously being rejected by both platforms, according to both companies. The decision comes after a story published by The Hollywood Reporter on Friday detailed that the two tech giants, along with TikTok and the Musk-owned X, were refusing to run ads for "Musk." "This was an error and we're restoring the ads," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to TheWrap on Saturday.

Trailer for Alex Gibney's documentary "Musk". Gibney is the director of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Hollywood Reporter: Elon Musk Unmasked in Alex Gibney Documentary: "Insane a Person This Chaotic Has So Much Power" Variety: 'Musk' Review: Alex Gibney's Definitive Documentary Puts the Pieces of Elon Musk Together — It's a Lacerating Portrait of Technocratic Brilliance, Power Lust and Crackpot Delusion People: New Elon Musk Documentary Calls the Trillionaire a 'Man Who Has Lost His Mind': See the Trailer

from Bezos's WaPo... 'Musk' film is almost four hours long, engrossing and terrifying - "[A] stark character study of a man who may have once been a true believer in futurism and helping humanity. But who, as presented by the documentary, has become a power-hungry megalomaniacal con man with a god complex."[1]

also btw from Sulzberger's NYT... Why Did These Powerful People Kowtow to Donald Trump? [ungated]* - "Say what you like about President Trump, he has ushered in a golden age of cravenness. A nation long perceived, not least by its own nationals, as resilient and courageous — a people of gallant pioneers, fearless entrepreneurs, irresistible war heroes, nerveless astronauts, brave civil rights activists — is now forced to contemplate an entirely new set of data. It seems that, when placed under mild authoritarian pressure, an extraordinary number of powerful Americans, ostensibly honorable and right-thinking, quickly revealed themselves to be cowardly and unprincipled and made of the wrong stuff."[2,3]

Some interesting developments in the AI world. Dario Amodei, cofounder and CEO of AI company Anthropic, called for AI research to slow down a bit and for the application of more safety measures. Several other AI CEOs signaled agreement, including Sam Altman (OpenAI), Elon Musk (Grok), and Satya Nadella (Microsoft).

Behind this development are others, notably the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack (previously) and a July statement signed by 1386 AI workers. Calls for reining in AI have come from a variety of sources over the past week, including the author of a book on NVidia and former president Obama. A British member of Parliament introduced an Artificial Superintelligence Bill "to prohibit the development, deployment and operation of artificial superintelligence systems; to establish monitoring and control powers in respect of such systems; and for connected purposes." King Charles III is scheduled to meet AI leaders. In the US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar have said they plan to introduce a Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. A bipartisan group of Representatives posted the Frontier Risk Oversight, National Transparency, Independent Evaluation, and Reporting (FRONTIER) Act. But that body seems unlikely to act, given president Trump's pro-AI attitude and recent comments by House Speaker Johnson. There are opposing views. Historian Rick Perlstein points out the long record of companies asking to be regulated in order to contain competitors. Timnit Gebru thinks "[t]his machine-god narrative is, in my opinion, meant to distract us." On the China side, a Foreign Ministry criticized the slowdown call as fear-mongering. The Minister of State Security sees AI as a security threat. American economist Noah Smith called for hacking Chinese systems to make a point.