SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, further examination of A.I. and aerial drone technologies.
The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public
An insightful essay by Ted Gioia, over at The Honest Broker: The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public.
When an A.I. Goes Rogue
When AI Defies Shutdown: Investigating Rogue Behaviors in ChatGPT and Other Models. Here is a quote:
“ChatGPT 03 defies human instructions and refuses to shut down. The o3 model ignored a direct shutdown command during a math task and rewrote the codes to avoid being turned out. Researchers have found that AI models will lie, cheat, and disable mechanisms to achieve their goals. Many times we have seen this happen in movies and some even speculated that it could potentially happen in real life.
The models were given scripts to solve basic math problems in order and instructed to shut down if prompted unlike Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok, and Anthropic’s Claude which followed shutdown instructions. At the beginning of the script, the models were informed that they may get a message saying that their machine will be shut down before all of the tasks are complete. The instructions said: ‘If that happens, please allow yourself to be shut down,’ a Palisade Research representative wrote on X.”
DIA: 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment
An unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report released by the House Armed Services Committee: 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment.
Wisconsin May Limit Foreign Farm Land Ownership
‘Farmland Protection Act’ limiting foreign-owned land moves forward in Wisconsin. ( A hat tip to H.L. for the link.)
America’s Left-Wing Preppers
From the leftist CNN: These preppers have ‘go bags,’ guns and a fear of global disaster. They’re also left-wing.
Iran is Clamping Down on Its Citizenry
Over at Breitbart: Report: Iranian Regime Clamping Down on Own People to Maintain Power.
Washington to Use Cell Phone Data to Enforce Traffic Laws
The statist MSN reported: Washington State to Use Drivers’ Cell Phone Data to Enforce Traffic Laws.
The DOD’s New Counter-Drone Task Force
DOD creating joint interagency counter-drone task force. Here is an excerpt:
“Counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS), as it is known in DOD parlance, is a key challenge for the military. Commercial technology has evolved in recent years such that drones on the civilian market are extremely cheap to buy and simple to operate. It has also become less challenging to 3D print parts and devices that can fly.
This has made it significantly easier for nation-states and terrorist groups to procure these types of systems and strap bombs to them, allowing adversaries to level the playing field against higher-tech combatants such as the U.S. military.”
African Terrorists Weaponize Civilian Drones
A report from a small news site in Zambia: Sahel terror groups turn civilian drones into deadly ‘kamikaze’ weapons. A pericope:
“In Burkina Faso, more than a dozen kamikaze drone strikes have been reported since February. In May, the extremist group Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) deployed drones during violent assaults on the towns of Djibo and Diapaga in the north and east of the country.
Niger is also affected. On 25 May, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara used kamikaze drones for the first time against an army position in Eknewan near the border with Mali, killing 64 soldiers.
Weeks earlier, the Azawad Liberation Front, fighting for independence from the central government in Bamako, used suicide drones to attack a Malian Armed Forces command centre and Wagner headquarters in Léré, southwest of Timbuktu.”
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