The Chris Hedges Report

In communities throughout the United States, the infrastructure required to surveil and track anyone is rapidly being constructed, from Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems to fusion centers to the hyperscale data centers used to store the vast amount of information being gleaned from consumer products and surveillance devices. As the public becomes more aware of the hazards of this infrastructure and the extent that the state is intruding into their lives, a broad, organic national grassroots movement has formed and has already won significant victories, which frightens the political elites and their corporate benefactors.

For this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, investigative journalist Daniel Boguslaw joins Hedges to discuss what he has discovered by poring through unpublished reports from entities such as the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Fusion Centers. Boguslaw reveals the inner workings of a post-9/11 growing national security complex that requires the manufacturing of new threat categories under the guise of ‘terrorism’ to nourish and sustain itself. He explains that prior to 9/11, “the FBI and the national security apparatus was already on high alert, trying to look for ways to encircle American citizens exercising their right to free speech and assembly using the language and ideology of counterterrorism,” and adds that we are in a new era of unbridled attacks on free speech and state repression.

Hedges and Boguslaw begin by discussing the newest threat category, ‘anti-technology extremism,’ “a direct response to widespread protests over the building of these massive data centers and the increasing intrusion into our lives as well as their destructive power of artificial intelligence.” Then Boguslaw speaks about the long rise of fusion centers where Corporate America has partnered with local and federal law enforcement to use the “cloak of the state to give them more powers to persecute dissent.”

In this new era, there is scant oversight of the surveillance system, enabling major abuses of power by both the state and corporations. An individual or group does not have to engage in violent acts to be deemed a threat. The list of suspicious activities is long and includes those “that could easily be carried out by peaceful protesters.” Congress, where there is bipartisan support, and academia, through its field of ‘extremism research,’ are also responsible for the growing security state. As Hedges summarizes, “these institutions perpetuate themselves and so they manufacture threats in order to continue not just their existence but their expansion.”

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more ubiquitous by the day, its alleged dangers are being increasingly discussed by the dominant players of Silicon Valley, who are beginning to call publicly for a slowdown in its implementation. The greatest risk to people is not the technology itself but the military-contracting capitalists behind it such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who envision a technocratic future where man and machine merge in a dystopian harmony.

Harvard historian Jill Lepore joins Chris Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss her new book, “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” where she delves into the forces that shaped the beliefs of the small, but powerful, group of elites from Silicon Valley who are pushing to replace liberal democracy with automated systems that they claim would create “a world of really endless abundance and no labor, where the things that are hard in our lives would be taken care of by machinery.” Lepore looks at their connections to the technocracy movement of the early twentieth century and how their early views were shaped by science fiction and comic books.

The psychopathology of these elites, Hedges states, is that they have a “disdain for not just governance, but the very systems of life itself, that which sustains life.” Hedges and Lepore discuss Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and automation, and the rise of the desire to escape. Lepore describes, “Silicon Valley tech moguls who really do talk quite casually about severing what are for most of us the ties that make us human - our ties to one another, our ties to the planet, our ties to our communities.”

Hedges and Lepore analyze whether the artificial state is inevitable. Lepore notes that people are becoming more aware of the risks as the explosion of data center construction reveals “the massive infrastructure behind the technology we use every day, the ways we are already supporting this tech future.” Lepore cautions that tech corporations should not be allowed, as they currently are, to operate and manage this risky technology without public oversight, and that there is still time to take action and change course.

There are many books exploring how and why voters in the United States elected President Donald Trump, but author Susan Neiman argues that “Nobody has really focused on the moral background to this administration and to our acceptance of it.” It was that void she sought to fill in her newest book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era.”

Neiman joins Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss her new book and examine the crises of today: the rise of fascism, the ravages of neoliberalism, and how institutions and individuals have surrendered to them.

Ideology, Neiman explains, are assumptions so ingrained in a culture that individuals often see them as “iron laws,” rather than ideas they have about the world. In reality, they are “philosophical ideas which we could question if we wanted to,” as has happened in the past. Most are unable to offer this analysis, Hedges claims, because these assumptions of American hegemony have “infected not just economics but all sorts of disciplines, academic disciplines, including religion.” Our beliefs drive our motivations and actions. People behave differently when they believe that “we exist to perpetuate our own self-interest,” a notion driven by neoliberalism and capitalism, than they do in more socialized nations where social and political rights are recognized and integrated into the body politic.

For all of President Trump’s recent threats to “annihilate Iran,” the reality is that the United States is running out of both options and time to resolve this US- Israeli-initiated war. The US has made overtures toward renewing a hot war, but it has not gone further than that as the economy, both domestically and globally, deteriorates and other countries reconsider their relationships to the US and to each other. The midterm elections this Fall, with Republicans not poised to do well, are further impacting decisions being made by the Trump administration as well.

Professor John Mearsheimer, a former Air Force captain and author of numerous books on foreign policy and the Middle East, joins The Chris Hedges Report to unpack the competing interests surrounding the war, and to discuss what options are available to the US. Mearsheimer says, “We have no strategy for producing victory in Iran, other than hoping that their economy collapses, which leads to regime change, and then they make all the necessary concessions to us.” This is highly unlikely to happen.

Mearsheimer predicts that the Trump administration is aware that the US has failed and is waiting until after the midterm elections to make a decision about next steps, but he cautions that the US will be in the same position militarily as it is now — the world could enter a long-term economic recession, or worse, depression, by that time. The Bessent strategy of increasing sanctions and recruiting allies to participate in an economic blockade of Iran isn’t working either, as major powers like China and Russia have already defied the US and continue to work with Iran.

The clock is ticking as the closure of the Strait and the successful Ansar Allah attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, blocking Gulf oil coming through the Red Sea, are causing oil supplies, including what remains in the strategic reserves, to dwindle. As it currently stands, the US and Israel have failed to achieve virtually all of their military objectives. Israel’s most important stated goal, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is hardly even discussed anymore. With the Supreme Leader assassinated, one of the last remaining impediments to Iranian nuclear armament is gone, and the new guard is increasingly considering developing nuclear weapons. With the US and Israel facing military defeat and devastating economic consequences, a new regional power is rising, and the relationships that have defined the era of US hegemony are shifting rapidly.

The images created by socialist and antiwar political cartoonists during the period around World War I were powerful tools for countering the elite’s propaganda of the time. The Russian Revolution had just occurred, and in response to extreme wealth inequality, a militant working class was on the rise in the United States. The ruling class was afraid and responded to the growing dissent with severe measures – a massive propaganda campaign, laws that limited free expression, deportations, violence and imprisonment. It was an era that echoes the repression – ICE raids, the designation of Leftists as “terrorists” and restrictions of academic freedom - that is occurring today.

In his new graphic novel, “Dissidents, Autocrats, Vigilantes, Communists, and Cartoonists,” political cartoonist and writer Derf Backderf analyzes this period through the untold stories of contemporary cartoonists who were targeted by the Wilson administration. Backderf joins Chris Hedges to discuss his new novel and its lessons for today on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.

Hedges and Backderf explore some of the most prominent political cartoonists and writers of the early 20th century, leftist publications, such as The Masses, and the initially subtle methods of censoring them. Hedges explains, “This is the way totalitarianism always works…it was incremental.” Then came the Red Scare and more overt oppression through the American Protective League and the Palmer raids.

The parallels between the period of the anti-socialist and anti-communist efforts one hundred years ago and the current demonization of socialism and communism today under the Trump administration are stark. Hedges and Backderf describe the impacts of the Red Scare on Leftists of that period and what we have learned, or failed to learn, from that. “That's why the book is so important because when these ruling capitalist elites feel threatened, they're vicious,” adds Hedges. At the same time, there are reasons for optimism because the United States avoided a fascist turn in the past. Backderf concludes, “I hope that's what people take away from this book, that it doesn't have to be inevitable.”