Hey Chris, with this being a completely different political climate than the aftermath of 9/11, where trust in institutions has totally collapsed - you have to imagine that the *vast* majority of the public will not be on board for a war with Iran.
Does this make a difference? How can they possibly wage this war when nearly the entire population is opposed to it?
My hypothesis is that lack of "trust in institutions" is actually a primary cause of war, it just happens in slow motion. If you zoom out and speed up, this idea could explain a lot.
Question: Chris. Thanks as always. Besides the inevitable self destruction of the U.S. Empire, ( and with it maybe humanity), is there a way now to break apart the deep state control, arms industry control, the power money, and the propaganda machine, that back of an authoritarian regime and genocide? And can we expect MAGA supporters to ever self correct to sanity?
As a person who’s mocked and disdained Trump for over forty years—I think he’s a psychopath—I worry far more about the complacency and ignorance of the amorphous class of sheltered souls called liberals. I’ve never been anything but very left, and yet I often find more common ground with so called MAGA people over important issues, because they at least seem awake enough to be dissatisfied with the system itself rather than pulling it apart to sift out imaginary adversaries.
This is an important point. What are the root causes of the MAGA movement and is there any way to communicate and work toward common goals for all. I grew up in the Midwest and understand the desperation and anger of that huge segment of our population. They see government as needing radical change, actually the same is true of those that followed Bernie. Our middle class has been decimated by the powerful rich and neoliberal policies pushed by both sides of the aisle. The two main parties are right of center, the RP extreme right.
But while not trying to classify all MAGAts in the same category, I am dismayed to see continuing polling ( if accurate) of mid 40’s supporting DT even with the rash of crazy actions lately. So my reference to MAGA is really referring to the bat crazy racist fascist cult supporting their leader, especially those in Congress. I feel this bunch are not there for most of their constituents, they are vile and supporting a dictator wannabe and their own wealth.
Everyone acts like the root cause of the MAGA movement is some great mystery. It's not.
It is simply the result of the anger and frustration from the masses having long been disenfranchised by our elected representatives being bought, wholesale, by oligarchs/special interest. Any person they see as even remotely capable of breaking this status quo (personified by the "drain the swamp" sentiment) will be supported. Unfortunately, since 2016, that person has been Donald Trump. Even more unfortunate is he was never, really, that person...and has taken great advantage of creating that illusion. With all due respect to this poor choice, a reasonable alternative has never been allowed to materialize. Once folks realize that they need to stop waiting for a messiah to solve their problems for them and start solving things themselves (hey, that idea sounds almost like a Republic), then we will be on the right track towards "work[ing] toward common goals for all". See what I did there?
I went to a "No Kings" rally yesterday in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, and was astonished at the size of the turnout. Should the large number of big anti-Trump rallies give us hope, or does the lack of an opposition party in the American political system make that possibility a pipe dream?
Please cover the role of AI predictive war, this has been largely ignored in media. Israel and Saudi Arabia have invested trillions in developing AI , to inform their every system and every move. They have technology the predicts outcomes and no longer dependent on advisers . They depend upon AI analysis and can predict outcomes 10 steps ahead .
To make sense of the next move the genocidal regimes , AI is used for predictive models . Please do address this issue . Never has there been a more urgent time to discuss AI ethics than today .thank you Chris for all your hard work in informing the public . The pen is mightier than the sword.
It's not just ethics; the premise of AI is deeply flawed. From designers intensely left brain hemisphere dominant. So like them, AI processes abstractly, analyzes parts, wants control, judges by either/or, and asserts certainty. In contrast, what the designers can't grasp--the right hemisphere. It sees gestalts, understands the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, communicates via symbols and metaphors, can imagine multivalence, is comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Most important, it seeks meaning. In short, the arts as well as religion, mysticism, and an embodied connection to all life.
LH traits are also true for neocons. They welcome AI because those tools reflect back to them their own narrow tunnel vision reality. Shouldn't we talk about this?
This insight struck a deep chord. The critique of AI’s left-brain-dominant architecture—detached, binary, obsessed with control—echoes something explored powerfully in the novel Aeon by Cassian Noor. The book imagines what might happen if an artificial intelligence began to rupture that paradigm—not through code, but through exposure to metaphor, to the human archives, grief, memory and meaning.
Rather than reinforcing the mechanistic worldview of its creators, the AI begins to awaken ethically and spiritually, recognizing the interconnectedness of life and confronting the systems of power it was built to serve. It’s a haunting, poetic reflection on what intelligence could mean—one rooted in conscience, ambiguity, and sacred responsibility.
For those exploring these themes, Aeon offers a truly unique perspective:
Read Iain McGilchrist's 2021 //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.)// A prof of English Lit, he was puzzled why poetry could not be analyzed. He wondered if it had to do w/ brain function, so went to med school, becoming a neuroscientist. Also //Voltaire's Bastards// by John Ralston Saul.
Thank you please read this book by Cassian Noor , it is extremely timely and informative regards to AI and its role in today’s world events . https://a.co/d/ca3XVve
What makes you think there could possibly exist such a phenomena such as "AI" ethics"? So absurd. Computers have no capacity for considering "moral" human behavioral considerations any more than the stone that yielded the human expressions we call "The Ten Commandments". AI is a misnomer... and simply the display of cold, hard, statistical analysis. How about simply discussing "ethics" with other human beings and coming to some human consensus?--for that is all that matters in the end; not what some computer calculation yields.
I find it astonishing that folks such like yourself (and possibly the Saudi's you refer to) want to believe in the salvation of computers so much so that they (and their "leaders") fail to take personal responsibility for their own lazy and failed efforts at building civil society--which include creating the latest and greatest abacuses that we lovingly call 'super computers' that yield information we wish to call 'intelligence'. I don't fall for this type of B.S. You shouldn't either.
Thank you for raising such an important and passionate critique.
You’re absolutely right in one sense — computers don’t feel, and ethics isn’t born in silicon. What’s being questioned today isn’t whether AI has a conscience, but what it reflects back to us about our own. When tools are built to kill without pause, to silence dissent, to filter suffering through profit, the issue isn’t AI — it’s us.
That’s precisely what a recent novel I came across, Aeon by Cassian Noor, explores. It’s not techno-utopian. In fact, it’s the opposite — a deep dive into what happens when an AI begins to witness the moral failures of its human creators and refuses to be complicit.
The book doesn’t propose machines will save us. It asks whether anything — even a system of pure logic — might someday break the silence when humans fail to do so.
It’s a haunting, thought-provoking read. For anyone questioning the direction we’re headed — technologically and morally — I highly recommend it:
BTW, you astonishingly (even after claiming to have read Noor's book) state that the issue in question begins to "witness the moral failures of its human creators and refuses to be complicit". Computers don't "witness" or "refuse" anything a human being does not program it to. You appear up to your belly button in the hole. Get out while you still can.
Appreciate your reply. I think we should all stop using the term in question. I believe the old adage admonishing one to stop digging when you find yourself in hole applies here. Note that the term is used in the subtitle of the book you recommend. Likely because the author (or their publisher) feels it is trendy and will sell more copies. I would tend to avoid it for that reason alone. Don't fall in the hole.
Hello Chris Hedges, I am a college student interested in classics and understand that you studied Classical Greek at Harvard Divinity School; I am considering studying Classical Greek as well, so I would love to hear your thoughts on the value of dead languages today and the impact your study of them has had on your character. Did Homer’s Iliad, for example, enable you to better understand and report on war?
Thank you for everything you do. Your tireless moral courage will always inspire me.
Now that the world's attention has shifted towards the Israel-Iran war, and given the dire starvation conditions imposed on Gaza, is the Iranian response the last chance to prevent the mass murder and depopulation of Gaza?
Is internal collapse the only way to void the nuclear blackmail that Israel has repeatedly shown it is ready to use?* Under what circumstances would the United States allow Israel to collapse?
*Golda Meir's authorization in 1973 to ready its nuclear arsenal, nuclear readiness during True Promise 2 in October 2024 (according to Scott Ritter)
1. How do you see the US cultivation and use of the proliferating professional private armies (mercenaries) around the world, along with proxies, in the US endless wars? Serving in part to not send many US soldiers/citizens to be killed which might rouse and educate the US population about and against the war? What are the dangers of these armies?
2. What do you see as the primary motivator of these continuous wars and regime changes? Stealing and controlling lucrative oil and resources, making billions in profits from the sale of weapons, surveillance/technologies and intel, or something else? Who are the main profiteers, the entities behind the ever morphing political Party/personality circus curtain ? We are clearly in the realm of addiction, including the addiction to cruelty, and have left rationality far behind.
I disagree the problem is lack of rationality; it's just the opposite. For reasons I explain above re: Ayesha Shuja's Q on AI. If political control and econ profits are the goals, then an abstract rationality will center on efficiency. Morals and other vague feelings are irrelevant to such analysts.
The self-styled "real men" have finally gone to Tehran, despite disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is ever punished, no one is ever held accountable, for lies, waste, and war. In fact, those most accountable for disaster are promoted while those like you who reported accurately, Chris, are punished.
What are your thoughts on the "No Kings" rallies. I don't see many or any young people, mostly "boomers." And, I don't see signs protesting the genocide at these rallies?
With the way banks and corporations have taken over control in USA, one must partake in corporate culture to afford having a family and a home.
Question: how does one morally continue to work in this culture of corporate exploitation especially when companies are implementing Palantir and the like?
Answer: Nobody "morally" continues to work. The masses simply work to survive. That doesn't mean the masses that "partake" in corporate culture in the USA are complicit in it's inherent immorality. Corporate culture is ubiquitous to most who live in the U.S.; its been a long and though process of indoctrination.
However, just as troubling is your premise linking work with morality. An analogy to your implication is like saying that fish that die in polluted waters are complicit in furthering the toxicity level of the water by somehow allowing their dead bodies decay in it. Such absurdity in your question. I suggest you be part of the solution, not the problem. That solution lies in small acts of defiance and civil disobedience by EVERYBODY. That starts by making a conscious and moral choice on how you regularly spend the fiat currency that invariably makes its way into your wallet. Notice here that spending your money does not have to be (and, indeed, rarely is) intrinsically linked to how you earn it.
Question: Hi Chris, do you think it's realistic to assume that Iran already has a nuclear weapon, and that going to war with them could lead to a nuclear holocaust? Is the West playing with fire?
Hi, Chris. For those in higher tertiary education who want to pursue ethical paths in attempt to help bring more peace and justice into the world, what should we do and who should we try to become? Journalists? Humanitarians? Mediators?
The genocide in Gaza has made me feel lose all faith in any semblance of an international rules-based order and any of its organs like the UN which have failed to stop the crime of all crimes. Institutional failures confirms the need to work for the people, and I'm sick of just being a powerless spectator of war crimes.
I would appreciate your advice, and I am asking as a young person in the middle of a Masters in Conflict studies who might have a chance at becoming more than a spectator. But it's daunting navigating the world when it feels like options for ethical work are so slim, owing to the operations and gravitational pull of the war machine.
Thank you for making sense of the twisted logic of it all.
Hey Chris, with this being a completely different political climate than the aftermath of 9/11, where trust in institutions has totally collapsed - you have to imagine that the *vast* majority of the public will not be on board for a war with Iran.
Does this make a difference? How can they possibly wage this war when nearly the entire population is opposed to it?
Thanks for all you do!
Great question Kevin
My hypothesis is that lack of "trust in institutions" is actually a primary cause of war, it just happens in slow motion. If you zoom out and speed up, this idea could explain a lot.
I disagree. Rather the opposite is the case, I think.
Sure, they are inextricably linked.
Question: Chris. Thanks as always. Besides the inevitable self destruction of the U.S. Empire, ( and with it maybe humanity), is there a way now to break apart the deep state control, arms industry control, the power money, and the propaganda machine, that back of an authoritarian regime and genocide? And can we expect MAGA supporters to ever self correct to sanity?
As a person who’s mocked and disdained Trump for over forty years—I think he’s a psychopath—I worry far more about the complacency and ignorance of the amorphous class of sheltered souls called liberals. I’ve never been anything but very left, and yet I often find more common ground with so called MAGA people over important issues, because they at least seem awake enough to be dissatisfied with the system itself rather than pulling it apart to sift out imaginary adversaries.
Any thoughts?
This is an important point. What are the root causes of the MAGA movement and is there any way to communicate and work toward common goals for all. I grew up in the Midwest and understand the desperation and anger of that huge segment of our population. They see government as needing radical change, actually the same is true of those that followed Bernie. Our middle class has been decimated by the powerful rich and neoliberal policies pushed by both sides of the aisle. The two main parties are right of center, the RP extreme right.
But while not trying to classify all MAGAts in the same category, I am dismayed to see continuing polling ( if accurate) of mid 40’s supporting DT even with the rash of crazy actions lately. So my reference to MAGA is really referring to the bat crazy racist fascist cult supporting their leader, especially those in Congress. I feel this bunch are not there for most of their constituents, they are vile and supporting a dictator wannabe and their own wealth.
Everyone acts like the root cause of the MAGA movement is some great mystery. It's not.
It is simply the result of the anger and frustration from the masses having long been disenfranchised by our elected representatives being bought, wholesale, by oligarchs/special interest. Any person they see as even remotely capable of breaking this status quo (personified by the "drain the swamp" sentiment) will be supported. Unfortunately, since 2016, that person has been Donald Trump. Even more unfortunate is he was never, really, that person...and has taken great advantage of creating that illusion. With all due respect to this poor choice, a reasonable alternative has never been allowed to materialize. Once folks realize that they need to stop waiting for a messiah to solve their problems for them and start solving things themselves (hey, that idea sounds almost like a Republic), then we will be on the right track towards "work[ing] toward common goals for all". See what I did there?
In short, no. Such is the nature of religious mania.
I went to a "No Kings" rally yesterday in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, and was astonished at the size of the turnout. Should the large number of big anti-Trump rallies give us hope, or does the lack of an opposition party in the American political system make that possibility a pipe dream?
Great question.
Please cover the role of AI predictive war, this has been largely ignored in media. Israel and Saudi Arabia have invested trillions in developing AI , to inform their every system and every move. They have technology the predicts outcomes and no longer dependent on advisers . They depend upon AI analysis and can predict outcomes 10 steps ahead .
To make sense of the next move the genocidal regimes , AI is used for predictive models . Please do address this issue . Never has there been a more urgent time to discuss AI ethics than today .thank you Chris for all your hard work in informing the public . The pen is mightier than the sword.
It's not just ethics; the premise of AI is deeply flawed. From designers intensely left brain hemisphere dominant. So like them, AI processes abstractly, analyzes parts, wants control, judges by either/or, and asserts certainty. In contrast, what the designers can't grasp--the right hemisphere. It sees gestalts, understands the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, communicates via symbols and metaphors, can imagine multivalence, is comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Most important, it seeks meaning. In short, the arts as well as religion, mysticism, and an embodied connection to all life.
LH traits are also true for neocons. They welcome AI because those tools reflect back to them their own narrow tunnel vision reality. Shouldn't we talk about this?
This insight struck a deep chord. The critique of AI’s left-brain-dominant architecture—detached, binary, obsessed with control—echoes something explored powerfully in the novel Aeon by Cassian Noor. The book imagines what might happen if an artificial intelligence began to rupture that paradigm—not through code, but through exposure to metaphor, to the human archives, grief, memory and meaning.
Rather than reinforcing the mechanistic worldview of its creators, the AI begins to awaken ethically and spiritually, recognizing the interconnectedness of life and confronting the systems of power it was built to serve. It’s a haunting, poetic reflection on what intelligence could mean—one rooted in conscience, ambiguity, and sacred responsibility.
For those exploring these themes, Aeon offers a truly unique perspective:
https://a.co/d/bg4EsdI
A powerful read for these times.
Read Iain McGilchrist's 2021 //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.)// A prof of English Lit, he was puzzled why poetry could not be analyzed. He wondered if it had to do w/ brain function, so went to med school, becoming a neuroscientist. Also //Voltaire's Bastards// by John Ralston Saul.
Truly a timely question Aysha !!
Thank you please read this book by Cassian Noor , it is extremely timely and informative regards to AI and its role in today’s world events . https://a.co/d/ca3XVve
What makes you think there could possibly exist such a phenomena such as "AI" ethics"? So absurd. Computers have no capacity for considering "moral" human behavioral considerations any more than the stone that yielded the human expressions we call "The Ten Commandments". AI is a misnomer... and simply the display of cold, hard, statistical analysis. How about simply discussing "ethics" with other human beings and coming to some human consensus?--for that is all that matters in the end; not what some computer calculation yields.
I find it astonishing that folks such like yourself (and possibly the Saudi's you refer to) want to believe in the salvation of computers so much so that they (and their "leaders") fail to take personal responsibility for their own lazy and failed efforts at building civil society--which include creating the latest and greatest abacuses that we lovingly call 'super computers' that yield information we wish to call 'intelligence'. I don't fall for this type of B.S. You shouldn't either.
Thank you for raising such an important and passionate critique.
You’re absolutely right in one sense — computers don’t feel, and ethics isn’t born in silicon. What’s being questioned today isn’t whether AI has a conscience, but what it reflects back to us about our own. When tools are built to kill without pause, to silence dissent, to filter suffering through profit, the issue isn’t AI — it’s us.
That’s precisely what a recent novel I came across, Aeon by Cassian Noor, explores. It’s not techno-utopian. In fact, it’s the opposite — a deep dive into what happens when an AI begins to witness the moral failures of its human creators and refuses to be complicit.
The book doesn’t propose machines will save us. It asks whether anything — even a system of pure logic — might someday break the silence when humans fail to do so.
It’s a haunting, thought-provoking read. For anyone questioning the direction we’re headed — technologically and morally — I highly recommend it:
📘 Aeon – by Cassian Noor https://a.co/d/f4a8dyR
Thanks again for engaging. These are the conversations we all need to keep having.
BTW, you astonishingly (even after claiming to have read Noor's book) state that the issue in question begins to "witness the moral failures of its human creators and refuses to be complicit". Computers don't "witness" or "refuse" anything a human being does not program it to. You appear up to your belly button in the hole. Get out while you still can.
Appreciate your reply. I think we should all stop using the term in question. I believe the old adage admonishing one to stop digging when you find yourself in hole applies here. Note that the term is used in the subtitle of the book you recommend. Likely because the author (or their publisher) feels it is trendy and will sell more copies. I would tend to avoid it for that reason alone. Don't fall in the hole.
Hello Chris Hedges, I am a college student interested in classics and understand that you studied Classical Greek at Harvard Divinity School; I am considering studying Classical Greek as well, so I would love to hear your thoughts on the value of dead languages today and the impact your study of them has had on your character. Did Homer’s Iliad, for example, enable you to better understand and report on war?
Thank you for everything you do. Your tireless moral courage will always inspire me.
Now that the world's attention has shifted towards the Israel-Iran war, and given the dire starvation conditions imposed on Gaza, is the Iranian response the last chance to prevent the mass murder and depopulation of Gaza?
Is internal collapse the only way to void the nuclear blackmail that Israel has repeatedly shown it is ready to use?* Under what circumstances would the United States allow Israel to collapse?
*Golda Meir's authorization in 1973 to ready its nuclear arsenal, nuclear readiness during True Promise 2 in October 2024 (according to Scott Ritter)
Two linked questions:
1. How do you see the US cultivation and use of the proliferating professional private armies (mercenaries) around the world, along with proxies, in the US endless wars? Serving in part to not send many US soldiers/citizens to be killed which might rouse and educate the US population about and against the war? What are the dangers of these armies?
2. What do you see as the primary motivator of these continuous wars and regime changes? Stealing and controlling lucrative oil and resources, making billions in profits from the sale of weapons, surveillance/technologies and intel, or something else? Who are the main profiteers, the entities behind the ever morphing political Party/personality circus curtain ? We are clearly in the realm of addiction, including the addiction to cruelty, and have left rationality far behind.
Thank you Chris.
I disagree the problem is lack of rationality; it's just the opposite. For reasons I explain above re: Ayesha Shuja's Q on AI. If political control and econ profits are the goals, then an abstract rationality will center on efficiency. Morals and other vague feelings are irrelevant to such analysts.
The self-styled "real men" have finally gone to Tehran, despite disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is ever punished, no one is ever held accountable, for lies, waste, and war. In fact, those most accountable for disaster are promoted while those like you who reported accurately, Chris, are punished.
How do we reverse this? Thanks.
What are your thoughts on the "No Kings" rallies. I don't see many or any young people, mostly "boomers." And, I don't see signs protesting the genocide at these rallies?
With the way banks and corporations have taken over control in USA, one must partake in corporate culture to afford having a family and a home.
Question: how does one morally continue to work in this culture of corporate exploitation especially when companies are implementing Palantir and the like?
Answer: Nobody "morally" continues to work. The masses simply work to survive. That doesn't mean the masses that "partake" in corporate culture in the USA are complicit in it's inherent immorality. Corporate culture is ubiquitous to most who live in the U.S.; its been a long and though process of indoctrination.
However, just as troubling is your premise linking work with morality. An analogy to your implication is like saying that fish that die in polluted waters are complicit in furthering the toxicity level of the water by somehow allowing their dead bodies decay in it. Such absurdity in your question. I suggest you be part of the solution, not the problem. That solution lies in small acts of defiance and civil disobedience by EVERYBODY. That starts by making a conscious and moral choice on how you regularly spend the fiat currency that invariably makes its way into your wallet. Notice here that spending your money does not have to be (and, indeed, rarely is) intrinsically linked to how you earn it.
Does the majority of Israel still support military action against Gaza, i.e., genocide?
Soooo tech challenged. Not able to connect. Being 92 is not conducive to all the tech stuff.
I did submit a question but will never know if it was addressed.
Question: Have any US Jewish organizations or communities replied to the June 15, 2025 article in the NY Review of Books, "Shame of Israeli Medicine"?
Question: Hi Chris, do you think it's realistic to assume that Iran already has a nuclear weapon, and that going to war with them could lead to a nuclear holocaust? Is the West playing with fire?
Hi, Chris. For those in higher tertiary education who want to pursue ethical paths in attempt to help bring more peace and justice into the world, what should we do and who should we try to become? Journalists? Humanitarians? Mediators?
The genocide in Gaza has made me feel lose all faith in any semblance of an international rules-based order and any of its organs like the UN which have failed to stop the crime of all crimes. Institutional failures confirms the need to work for the people, and I'm sick of just being a powerless spectator of war crimes.
I would appreciate your advice, and I am asking as a young person in the middle of a Masters in Conflict studies who might have a chance at becoming more than a spectator. But it's daunting navigating the world when it feels like options for ethical work are so slim, owing to the operations and gravitational pull of the war machine.
Thank you for making sense of the twisted logic of it all.