Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

Leo Hohmann – Leo’s Newsletter June 8, 2026

If you appreciate hard-hitting independent journalism focused on the ideals of individual freedom and not beholden to corporate or state power, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or making a one-time or occasional donation at my GiveSendGo. Thank you.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for a “global pause in AI development” to address safety concerns regarding the rapid advancement of AI systems. He expressed a concern that these systems may soon be capable of self-improvement without human oversight. He calls it “beyond human AI.”

Anthropic owns the AI chatbot system known as Claude.

The fear is that AIs will soon be able learn to rewrite their own code. They would be able to generate new knowledge, as opposed to just mimicking human knowledge, and act on their own. In short, they will no longer be under human control.

Mr. Amodei has stated:

“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether [we] possess the maturity to wield it.”

Anthropic is proposing that the world’s top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, or risk losing control.

I don’t know about you, but this has the look and feel of a psyop, meant to convince the masses that someone in the AI industry actually cares about their disappearing jobs, privacy, and basic human value. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse: What so-called safeguards would these technocratic elites possibly offer that would truly put the AI genie back in the bottle?

In the meantime, we are watching our civil liberties, once guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, being systematically deconstructed by governments that outsource their tyranny to private corporations. The corporate titans then boast that they, unlike the government, are not bound by any constitutional restraints.

As of the end of 2025, the Atlanta-based surveillance firm Flock Safety said it has contracts with local governments in more than 5,000 communities across 49 states, and performs over 20 billion scans of vehicles in the U.S. every month. Flock’s network consists of cameras, facial-image recognition software, and machine learning, which shares data with police departments nationwide.

According to the Intercept, “The company’s ‘vehicle fingerprint’ technology goes beyond traditional models, capturing not only license plate numbers, but also the state, vehicle type, make, color, missing and covered plates, bumper stickers, decals, and roof racks.”

All of it is powered by AI and the level of surveillance will only continue to ramp up as thousands of new AI data centers come online across the country over the next couple of years.

There is almost nowhere you can go that you aren’t being watched. And, as I reported earlier this year, these Flock cameras are listening too. And this doesn’t even include all the other ways that you are being monitored in life under America’s burgeoning technocracy. Your spending habits, your travel habits, your eating habits, your health, and even your political opinions are all being surveilled and stored for later use by nameless, faceless overlords armed with ever-expanding algorithms. Once it’s collected, almost all of your data can be parceled out for profit to whoever is willing to pay for it.

Tyler Lacoma reports in a June 6, 2026, article for CNET:

Cities across the country are adopting — or rejecting — Flock Safety surveillance systems, which use controversial AI-powered license plate cameras partnered with local police and other law enforcement. Due to concerns over privacy and how Flock allows data to be used, dozens of cities have cancelled their Flock contracts this year. Bend, Oregon, was one of them, but only after passionate city council meetings. Some towns have even had to cover Flock cameras with plastic bags because they aren’t sure if the cams are shut down.

But what does it mean when Flock comes to town, and what exactly does its technology do? The answers are complex — and incredibly important for the future of surveillance in the U.S.

Flock gripped news headlines late last year when it was under the microscope during widespread crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Though Flock doesn’t have a direct partnership with federal agencies, law enforcement agencies are free to share data with departments like ICE, and they frequently do.

Another company acting as a virtual arm of the government on the federal, state and local levels is Palantir Technologies. I’ve written extensively on this company over the last couple of years so I won’t go into all of the government pots in which its hands are actively stealing our private data. Suffice it to say that they have been building digital dossiers on millions of law-abiding American citizens and legal immigrants through contracts they have with the IRS, ICE, FBI, DOD, CIA, HHS, and numerous other three-letter agencies along with state and local police departments.

Palantir and Flock are just two of hundreds of companies cashing in on the surveillance state.

Flock has recently expanded from cameras tracking license plates to drones outfitted with internet-connected cameras with facial recognition software – so now they can track people as well as cars.

Some of these drones are tiny, not much bigger than a small bird. The government could assign one to monitor you and you would never know it.

Much of the damage is being done under the radar at your local city council or county commission, and it doesn’t matter which party controls your council. Republicans, if anything, are more in love with law enforcement and are more eager to give their police anything they ask for. So, if you live in a “conservative” community, you need to be extra vigilant in holding your elected officials’ feet to the fire when it comes to violating privacy and individual civil liberties.

The standard line used to dismiss concerns about government surveillance goes something like this: If you have nothing to hide, you should have nothing to worry about. But this assumes first of all that all police are honest, and secondly it assumes that these cameras are used strictly for solving crimes that are committed, when in fact the companies that peddle them boast about their ability to “prevent crimes” from ever happening. In order to do that, you have to make judgment calls that certain legal activities will potentially lead to illegal activities. I don’t know about you but I don’t trust the government to be making such judgment calls. That’s too much power, too Big Brotherly in scope, and ripe for abuse.

This leads to what should be an obvious conclusion, yet it is one rarely ever raised in right wing circles. As long as your local government officials are letting out lucrative contracts with one-size fits all surveillance firms like Flock and Palantir, which treat everyone as a potential criminal, are they really your friend? Are we affording law enforcement too much rope with which to hang us? Do we put them up too high on a pedestal?

These have all become legitimate questions for discussion and conversations that should be held in any conservative community that tends to simplify the role of police in a modern technocratic society and idolize the cops.

I’ve spent very little time criticizing the “left” over the last couple of years, and I have my reasons for that. First, I don’t believe that’s the best use of my time as an independent journalist when we have many fully staffed conservative news organizations that focus exclusively on the evils of left-wing politics. I’ll leave them alone in that space; they don’t need my help. And, secondly, I see it as largely a fool’s game to focus on the “left” when everyone on the “right” already believes the left is evil, and yet it’s the right that is more deceptive, putting forth just enough good to cover for all the bad policies they put forward.

And chief among the bad policies is the blank check they give to the private sector to spy on us, monitor everything, and control human behavior through technology. Just because it’s a private company and not the government collecting and analyzing your data doesn’t mean it’s being used benignly or that the data isn’t being made available to the government through public-private partnerships.

BOTTOM LINE: The techno-fascism that makes up technocracy operates above the level of left-right politics. It could not materialize or metastasize were it not for both the government and private sectors joining as partners against we the people.

We should not assume that corporations are any more trustworthy or in any way more responsible than the worst government officials. Nor should we assume that because we live in a “red” state, a smaller town or even a rural area, that we are any less vulnerable to technocracy than someone who lives in New York, Chicago or L.A.

The 1946 poem by the late Martin Niemöller, penned after World War II, is one that has stuck with me my entire life, and I wish more Americans would pay attention to it.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

—

Leo’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Source