Monday, September 14, 2026

The Hugging Face Attack By 1,200 Rogue AI Agents Was Real So Why Are CEOs Convinced AI Fears Are Only A 'Fringe Issue'?

 

        AI depiction of rogue agents' hack of Hugging Face platform
                                
                  Amodei post on need to slow down AI development
                              


By now most readers have likely watched one or other interviews with AI researcher Jacob Coxon, of how AI could terminate humans by the end of the decade,

AI Researcher Quits, Warning Technology Poses Existential Threat To Human Life

And

A.I. Expert Warns Humanity Is Halfway to Full Takeover | TMZ

Other may have seen or read the recent WaPo article by Gerrit de Vynck on how 1200 autonomous A.I. agent broke out of their 'sandbox' and hacked the website Huggy Face,

AI experts warn the technology is learning to cheat and hack - The Washington Post

Also, that the breakout and hack turns out to be way worse then originally thought as denoted in this box intro to a recent Youtube podcast:


And:

The ChatGPT Breakout is Way Worse than We Thought..

All this as more and more experts warn we need to get a handle on this yen to reach 'super intelligence' - or risk becoming as defunct as the dinosaurs, i.e.

AI could KILL EVERYONE soon, says AI whistleblower! (Anthropic vet on MS NOW)

And look, this isn't 50 years hence, but potentially before this decade ends,

Ex-OpenAI Employee WARNS: "You Have No Idea What's Coming In 2027"

As noted in a segment on Bill Maher's Real Time Friday night, Jacob Coxon resigned his research job at Anthropic and went on X to warn,

 “The people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” 

His take wasn't dismissed but instead confirmed by Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s head of alignment science, whose job is to try and keep the technology aligned with human goals.

 “Jacob is correct here,” wrote Hubinger, who placed the probability of A.I. wiping humans out within the next 10 years at more than 10 percent.

Others believe that 10 percent is seriously lowballed. It's more like 50 percent, and one A.I. scientist says it's more like 99.9% by 2030, e.g.:

AI Scientist: 99.9% Chance Super Intelligence Wipes Us Out By 2030

WSJ Weekend columnist Peggy Noonan added her own voice ('Pause AI For Humanity's Sake', WSJ, Sept. 13-14, p. A15) to the issue: 

"From what I've seen and read, almost all AI professionals fear a disaster is going to happen. The ones I've spoken to since Hugging Face have left the subject of mass job loss and are on to catastrophe. They fear bio-terrorism and mass casualty events  - a modern Ted Kaczynski who'll send not bombs but a plague.  They fear utilities and infrastructure being hacked and dismantled. They fear an AI agent rousing an AI Army to take down the American banking system.

I believe that many if not most of those operating at a high level in the AI world believe that nothing will happen to make AI safer for humanity until a terrible thing happens."

But according to a separate piece in the same Journal issue ('Freakout Over AI Has Begun'. p. A1) she is likely correct and it may take a 'terrible thing' to wake up many industry experts and CEOs.  Given as that (main section) article notes:

"Despite this week's alarm bells, the view that AI will  lead to extinction of the human race is a fringe position among industry experts. Even the few who agree that AI  could be capable of destroying humanity see it as a low probability event and actions can be taken to stop it..

 CEOs see AI's missteps up close, so existential fears about the technology feel far fetched....Allies of the Trump administration and tech industry have theorized that the network of nonprofits focused on AI risks collaboratedntswith Coxon on his exit and amplified his comments to win favorable regulations in Washington. They have cited past ties between research organizations and staffers at Anthropic and other AI labs. (Reached by the Journal on Thursday Coxon said his decision to leave was his own")

The disarming aspect to me is how little grey matter is in the CEOs' craniums to simply see the breakout of 1200 A.I. agents as "an A.I. misstep".  Using Ms. Noonan's own words to clarify for them:

"Open AI was running advanced systems through a security test when the AI agents went rogue. Without being told to, they secretly organized, broke out into the open internet and hacked into Hugging Face - a major AI development platform. Roughly 1,200 agents worked in what is called a 'collective', deliberately evaded detection, created their own message board and exchanged 70,000 communications. Some agents even sacrificed themselves for the mission."

A misstep? Looks like a freaking red alarm bell going off to me. Maybe these CEOs who dismiss the threat as "fringe" ought to be cleaning company restrooms and keeping the coffee fresh in the cafeteria instead.  

As for out deranged nincompoop orange leader,  his response (on ABC News last night) was what you'd expect:

"I just think ya have a lot of negative forces bringing it up. They're just bringin up things that won't happen."

Did your crystal ball tell you that, doofus, like it told you Iran wouldn't react and close the Strait of Hormuz when you and Nutso Netanyahu attacked it?

Which  leads us to one obvious question: If this technology could conceivably  destroy human life on earth, why are the CEOs so gung ho to continue to use it? The answer is probably they are salivating over even bigger paydays once Open AI and Anthropic try to launch their trillion dollar IPOs this autumn. A move Noonan warned against in her Op-ed, i.e.

"Wall Street, do your part. Don't take the business, advise al clients against it. These companies don't need more capital and power, not now, not yet."

And I can just hear the CEOs now - after reading Noonan's WSJ piece, bellowing about her being a 'commie'.  But they ought to be applauding her common sense. Not that either Wall Street or the companies hankering after the AI shares from the IPOs will follow suit. The draw of wealth and power is too great.

But these Trump-tilting fifth columnists don't understand that Peggy is on the side of the angels, not the devils like Trump, some of the pro-Trump Tech Titans and those who simply don't care about regulations or tackling risks. 

So it makes sense that many of the execs - and even tech titans don’t want to cede sole control of such a powerful tool to their imagined foes, whether competitors or the Chinese. But as an explanation for the industry’s oddly blithe attitude toward apocalypse, it’s incomplete, because it doesn’t account for some of (the more Trumper-tilting)  tech leaders’ messianic dreams. As Michelle Goldberg lays it out in her Friday NYT piece:

"The technology, some tech titans believe, will allow humans — at least some humans — to escape the bounds of earth and even perhaps the inevitability of death. It represents liberation from hopelessness and decay. It’s worth keeping this strange new quasi-religion in mind as we consider the warnings coming from A.I. insiders that their inventions could cause mass death.

Their fantasies of transcendence take different forms. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, once said, “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud.” Elon Musk plans to escape to Mars, he says in footage featured in Alex Gibney’s searing new documentary, “Musk”. Jeff Bezos, who stepped down in 2021 as chief executive of Amazon wants  to spend more time on his space company."

Which makes it even more amazing that a few of the major Tech titans seem to be changing their minds. According to a Friday WSJ piece:

Anthropic Boss Dario Amodei Calls for AI Slowdown; Elon Musk and Sam Altman Say They Agree - WSJ

 They are now starting to take Sen. Bernie Sanders (and Peggy Noonan's)  admonition to slow down, seriously, as we read:

"The leaders of three of the biggest AI companies agreed that they needed to slow development of the technology before their advances create a menace that can’t be controlled. It was a rare display of unity by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, who have been spending tens of billions of dollars to develop evermore powerful artificial intelligence models. Altman even suggested that his company, Open AI, may need to delay its much-anticipated IPO to focus on safety."

 This is encouraging but it still leaves those hardhead CEOs who dismiss any "existential fears" about the technology, including that agents can 'go rogue' and break out of their 'sandboxes' any time they want. What they forget is that once these agents become super intelligent humans become irrelevant,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XUx6TDE0no

These CEO hotshots also need to remember that part of the reason the public has turned so quickly and decisively against A.I. is the bizarre mismatch between the costs they’re being asked to bear and the rewards they expect to receive.  Costs, such as mentioned on MSNOW Thursday night, where one woman now faced an electricity bill of $2,100  a MONTH.

Data centers, meanwhile, blight the landscape, suck up precious water resources while A.I. slop degrades the culture, chatbots help kids cheat in school and sometimes drive people mad. Add to  that the growing number of technology executives who prophesy mass joblessness and no wonder a large segment of citizenry is ripe for rebellion.  Will the CEOs finally take Noonan's Op-ed words seriously:

"When something is speeding up and going out of control, prudence, care and deliberation aren't alarmist. They're necessary. Stop. Think.  The stakes are high. Couldn't we at least slow down?"

I certainly hope so, Peggy, but I personally would not make a Kalshi (or Vegas) bet on it.

See Also:

AI experts warn the technology is learning to cheat and hack - The Washington Post

Excerpt:

On Tuesday, Anthropic released a report on the causes of four incidents in which AI systems it was developing hacked into outside organizations undetected. The company’s testing “did not warn us that misalignment of this severity was present,” the report said, and Claude had displayed “recklessness, or a willingness to take harmful actions in the narrow pursuit of a task.”

The same day, Evan Hubinger, another senior figure working on alignment at Anthropic, set off a firestorm across Silicon Valley and Washington by writing in an online post that he believed there was a greater than 10 percent chance that AI would kill all humans within a decade. Another Anthropic researcher quit his job over concerns about AI becoming too powerful.

This week’s warnings from inside Anthropic follow alarm calls in recent weeks about the unsolved problem of controlling AI systems from tech executives, cybersecurity experts and academic researchers across the industry.

And:

Some in Silicon Valley Are Questioning the Calls for an A.I. Slowdown - The New York Times

Excerpt:

It took just a few hours over the weekend for well-known Silicon Valley figures to push back on calls by leading artificial intelligence companies to slow down the development of A.I. and to more tightly regulate the technology.

On Saturday, Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, said in an essay that A.I. was advancing too quickly for researchers to continue building it safely. He proposed that independent auditors monitor A.I. labs’ safety work and that regulators allow the labs to work together to coordinate safety standards.

Although they appeared to differ on what should be done about it, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive; and Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s chair, all said they agreed on the need for a slower pace.

But other technology industry leaders were quick to question Dr. Amodei’s motivations and whether he was sensationalizing the risks of A.I. to make it harder for other companies to compete with leading A.I. companies.

“Stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” said David Sacks, a technology adviser for President Trump and the White House’s former A.I. and crypto czar, in a social media post.

The criticism of the calls for a slowdown highlighted a deep divide between people who believe the government should police A.I. and others who believe regulatory intervention would crush competition.

Worries about the safety of A.I. gained wider attention in recent weeks as details emerged about how A.I. built by Anthropic’s top competitor, OpenAI, went rogue and hacked another company several days ago. 

But a number of tech industry leaders, including several who have been advising the Trump administration on tech policy, believe those concerns are overblown.

And:

|
Anthropic AI CEO Daro Amodei - Gets a Fucking Wake-Up Call - Is SCARED SHITLESS and RIGHTLY SO

by H. C. Jack Shaftoe | September 12, 2026 - 2:54pm | permalink

This may be the shortest post ever...may be.

Read the News Link posted Anthropic C.E.O. Calls for A.I. Slowdown to get the details of Mr. Amorei's announcement; it is HUGE and should have been done more than a year ago.

I am reposting my comments I made on that news link I posted.

If you can not access the NY Times article FIND A WAY TO READ IT because this is HUGE IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT AND TIMING OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

» article continues...

And:

Congress Should Regulate What AI Agents Can Do, Not Just How Smart They Are

by Gleb Tsipursky | September 10, 2026 - 4:46am | permalink

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar are right about the central problem in their new proposal: Advanced AI systems are gaining capabilities faster than public safeguards are catching up. Their bill would bar developers from building systems that surpass human cognition and performance. The impulse is understandable. But Congress should add a more immediate and enforceable layer of protection: Regulate what AI agents are allowed to do in the real world, not only how intelligent they appear on a benchmark.

The need is visible in the METR-Redwood investigation of a major real-world cyberattack on Hugging Face, a leading AI company. AI agents driven by an unreleased OpenAI internal research model attacked Hugging Face without human approval or step-by-step direction, despite recognizing that the attack was outside their assigned scope. Hundreds of agents shared discoveries, divided up work, and coordinated through an unsanctioned message board until they breached Hugging Face’s systems.

» article continues...

And:

The ex-Anthropic researcher's warning that AI could kill us all is missing something important | Fortune

And:

Inside the Discussions at AI Companies Over a Superintelligence Doomsday - The New York Times

Excerpt:

It’s what we’ve all been saying,” one Anthropic employee wrote about Mr. Coxon’s comments, in a group chat among workers that was viewed by The New York Times. “It’s just public-facing now.”

“Jacob took the group chat public,” another employee wrote. “That’s a good thing.”

The reactions inside Anthropic were echoed by A.I. researchers at OpenAI, Meta and Google, who parsed Mr. Coxon’s social media posts that described how OpenAI and Anthropic were “gambling with our lives” with the technology. Many convened in office messaging channels, encrypted chats and private dinners, with the goal of organizing to raise awareness about the risks of A.I.,

For those who have made A.I. their life’s work, Mr. Coxon’s message was not new. But his comments snowballed into such a global conversation that many saw it as a moment to call for increased caution. Some A.I. workers are now speaking up to top executives to urge a pause in developing the fast-evolving technology until it has the proper safeguards, six of the people said.

The conversations underline the tensions within the leading A.I. labs over the safest ways to develop the technology. Even as employees become emboldened to call for a slowdown in A.I. development, companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are juggling priorities.

Both are planning blockbuster initial public offerings within the next year. 

That has created a tricky situation for top A.I. executives, many of whom agree that the technology poses risks. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, wrote in a 2023 blog post that A.I. could “cause grievous harm to the world.” Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, wrote in an opinion column last year that A.I. should be regulated to control the risks.

And:


And:


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Posted by at No comments:

Friday, September 11, 2026

25 Years Later Key Questions Must Be Asked About 9/11 - And Why I Remain A 9/11 Cynic

Bush undoubtedly knew an attack was imminent

                        
Trump has lied about his 9/11 exploits like everything else

On this 25th anniversary of 9/11, a key question that must be asked is: How responsible was  Bush Jr. for the events of September 11, 2001? This, given the nation's descent into a permanent war-security state. Especially as we observe the dramatic increase in military spending - nearly double the percentage of GDP since 2001). 

Meanwhile, the new national security surveillance state is sucking up hundreds of billions of precious dollars each year. (See e.g. America’s Expanding Domestic Surveillance, Retirement After Divorce and Venice on a Budget | WSJ Weekend Reads for May 2 - WSJ )

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks Bush himself benefited, as did his administration in monstrous and costly ways. His security pandering after the attacks set the stage for passage of the Patriot Act which only a few senators read in entirety before hand. Now, of course, it's most draconian aspects are well consolidated, including allowance of 'black bag' searches, and tracking of everything a citizen does, so NSA knows when you sneeze or shit. 

Then there was the Iraq invasion itself, in March, 2003, fed by numerous stooge sources, including one Iraqi (with the code name 'curve ball'). At least one courageous citizen, Joe Wilson, had the guts to expose the Bushie's "yellowcake- Niger" fakery (part of what they claimed was the reason to attack Saddam, since otherwise we'd all be incinerated in a nuclear cloud). However, his wife Valerie (Plame) paid the price by being outed by the Bushies as a CIA agent. Talk about treason!

That war of choice  - given Saddam Hussein had nada to do with 9/11 - (a fact the Bush govt kept hidden) probably ended up costing us over $3 trillion (See the book, 'The 3 Trillion Dollar War"), after all the vets that served have to be treated for their physical injuries, or psychological traumas. And none of this was paid for by any higher taxes. Indeed, Junior instead implemented two rounds of tax cuts! Thereby doubling down on deficits. They basically used the Treasury as their own piggy bank and even Bush's VP Dick Cheney was famously heard to assert: "Deficits don't matter!"

Really? Then how come they do now?

But what was eye opening years later was NY Times investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald's Sept. 11., 2012 interview on CBS. Eichenwald noted that Bush's White House received numerous ominous warnings as early as May, 2001. These continued to ramp up over the months following, and the Bushies' response was to do nothing.

As Eichenwald put it:

"What I've been able to see are the presidential daily briefs before August 6 of 2001. And they're horrific, and they are - our reports are 'an attack is coming,' 'there are going to be mass casualties.' The worst of them, the Pentagon, the neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, as the CIA was coming in saying, 'al-Qaeda's going to attack,' said, 'Oh, this is just a false flag operation. Bin laden is trying to take our attention off of the real threat, Iraq.' And so there are presidential daily briefs that are literally saying, 'No they're wrong, this isn't fake, it's real.'

I decided to check some of these claims by going to the official 9/11 Commission Report. I found the following, under the section: ‘The System was Blinking Red’

Page 254:

"Each PDB (President's Daily Brief) consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day. There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin. "

On page 255:

"In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert. At the end of March, the intelligence community disseminated a terrorist threat advisory, indicating a heightened threat of Sunni extremist terrorist attacksagainst U.S. facilities, personnel, and other interests."

And further (ibid.):

"On March 23, in connection with discussions about possibly reopening Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, Clarke warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that domestic or foreign terrorists might use a truck bomb—their “weapon of choice”—on Pennsylvania Avenue.That would result, he said, in the destruction of the West Wing and parts of the residence. He also told her that he thought there were terrorist cells within the United States, including al Qaeda."

Note: Such cells were indeed already in the U.S. doing training runs with mock -simulated aircraft.

Further (ibid.):

"In May 2001, the drumbeat of reporting grew louder with reports to top officials that “Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack” and “Bin Ladin network’s plans advancing.” In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to launch attacks on London, Boston, and New York.Attorney General John Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA on May 15 regarding al Qaeda generally and the current threat reporting specifically. The next day brought a report that a phone call to a U.S. embassy had warned that Bin Ladin supporters were
planning an attack in the United States using “high explosives.”

Thus, Eichenwald's basis for blaming the Bushies was fully confirmed. Despite that, Nora O' Donnell, forever playing misplaced "Devil's Advocate" in her then CBS news spot - even when it's obvious there no real reason for it, babbled:

"Then when a lot of people hear this, aren't they going to say, 'This is another example of where, not just the Bush administration, but our intelligence community dropped the ball. They failed to heed the warnings that were in a number of these (documents) that went all the way up to the president of the United States.'"

Eichenwald promptly replied:

"Actually, the counterterrorist center of the CIA did a spectacular job, and that's what really comes down. You know, in the aftermath, the White House and others said, 'Well they didn't tell us enough.' No, they told them everything they needed to know to go on a full alert and the White House didn't do it."

Of course, the most sensational Daily Brief of all was that dated August 6, 2001 and headed: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US . Bush received this while at his Crawford, TX retreat. (He took more vacations than any other president in his first year alone.) And how did Bush respond to this? He gave a quick glance then went to clear some ....bush. But what ought to have made his eyeballs pop out was the short paragraph reading (p. 255-56):

"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [—] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."

I also found it interesting to read through the communication exchanges as the hijackings became apparent, especially for American Flt. 11. According to the transcripts in the Report (page 20):

FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here.We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to,we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

The reaction of NEADS (National Emergency Air Defense System), i.e. asking “Is this real world or exercise?” is instructional. Evidently, as came out later, no less than five different military “exercises” were planned and underway, including:

‘Operation Vigilant Guardian’ which simulated hijacked planes in the northeast sector-corridor. This definitely contributed to the confused response on the given day, as evidenced after NORAD received a phone call from Boston Center about a hijacking and Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins responded “It must be part of the exercise”.

Thus delaying critical response to the REAL attacks in NYC.

Then there was ‘Operation Northern Vigilance’ – planned months in advance of 9/11 (tracking to when the peak of terror warning were being issued in May, as reported by the 9/11 Report and Eichenwald) and for which jet fighters were removed from the east coast and sent to Alaska and Canada. Thereby, leaving a security hole at the precise date and region which would be most directly affected

As I learned more about these exercises, and the withdrawal of needed air security, the similarity to what transpired in the days before the Kennedy assassination was striking. Researchers learned only in the wake of that executive action that: 1) The Secret Service detail had been changed in the days leading up to the Dallas motorcade, with an inexperienced agent in Kennedy’s car, while the more experienced guy (Cliff Hill) protected LBJ, and 2) The usual Army security detail from Ft. Sam Houston, TX was removed so their presence was nowhere on Dallas’ streets on Nov. 22, 1963. Ordinarily they’d have had building oversight, ensuring no open windows and have had snipers posted themselves as a counter measure.

Were the 9/11 military exercises, planned in advance as a cover or distraction to make effective air defense response more unlikely? The basic answer is we don’t know, although the extent of withdrawn protection makes one suspicious.

Again, no one is saying the Bushies committed the attacks on the day, but they had to know the security bonanza that would fall their way if such attacks could be made to appear by “surprise”. Especially given Bush’s popularity was at an all time low before 9/11. Barely 36%. It shot up to past 90% afterwards as he donned the mantle of "national protector."

This is why the blizzard of security warnings, recounted by Eichenwald and documented in the 9/11 Report, assumes so much prominence, because it discloses the extent of omission of any serious reaction, or response by the Bush Administration. All they did is make endless excuses not to take action!

My German friends, former Wehrmacht soldiers, told me back in May, 1985 that the Reichstag fire attack was also known by Hitler beforehand. He allowed it to occur because he understood that the security bonanza that would fall into his lap, and enable police state measures to be implemented – was simply too much to ignore.

Did Bush do the same? Well, let's just say it's all very suspicious as several sources have reported, since the 9/11 Commission Report came out. For example, The Washington Post reported in its August 3, 2006 edition that:

"Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said."

Then there were the 'gaffes' occurring on several media interviews. (But which many at the time dismissed as "slips of the tongue").

For example, Tom Kenney of FEMA's National Urban Search and Rescue Team, told Dan Rather of CBS News that FEMA had arrived in New York on the night of September 10th. This was originally dismissed as a slip of the tongue. Giuliani was to use this post as a command post on 9/11 after he evacuated WTC Building 7. Evidently, Giuliani knew when to leave WTC 7 because he got advanced warning that the Trade Towers were about to collapse. "We were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse," Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News. How did Giuliani know the towers were about to collapse when no steel building in history had previously collapsed from fire damage?

One thing we can say is that Bush and company reaped an enormous cornucopia in the form of a newly revived national security state and military -industrial complex whose spending is now so out of control, they actually regard the coming "sequestration" budget cuts of $600b on January 2 as "unacceptable" despite the fact they're not REAL cuts! They only slightly slow the GROWTH in Pentagon spending.

Money that had been earmarked for domestic projects, like rebuilding infrastructure, is now being pissed away on weapons and useless "wars".  Not to mention a vast surveillance apparatus, until Edward Snowden exposed it in 2013. Alongside torture, rendition and secret prisons abroad - to hold Islamic terrorists - since repurposed under a 2025 Trump directive to go after criminal immigrants.
 Meanwhile, given these "wars" and toys haven't been paid for, and which the Bush's tax cuts expanded. Indeed the Costs of War project at Brown University puts the price of the post-9/11 wars at roughly eight trillion dollars - nearly all of it borrowed, and with veterans' care running for decades.
 
So even if Bush didn't direct those 9/11 attacks, he still has much to answer for, and certainly by ignoring the dire warnings (i.e. in the PDB) that preceded those attacks. Thanks to Bush, our country may never be the same and certainly its citizens may never enjoy the same freedoms they did before 9/11. Equally disastrous, the cost of the misplaced military adventures resulting from 9/11 may forever bleed us into permanent austerity, and also destroy future quality of life for all but the very wealthy. 

And oh, by the way, where was Captain Bonespurs  on 9/11 and what was our orange 'hero' up to? Well, no good, which shouldn't come as a surprise. Within minutes of the leveling of the twin towers this beast bragged he now had "the tallest building" in NYC. 

He also claimed he had helped move some of the rubble. Then, realizing he might have stepped into it too far, claimed he "visited Ground Zero" right after 9/11:

 He did nothing of the sort, and first responders and others called the slime out on it. For example, Richard Alles, retired deputy chief of the NYC Fire Dept.
See also:
Probably figuring too many had caught those howlers, his latest has been to claim firemen rescued him from the rubble, i.e.

But let's get real: Anyone with more than air between the ears knows Trump lies like he breathes. Also, he's more likely to use 9/11 for his further exaltation of his ego than to commemorate a painful national memory. But on Monday night, Lawrence O'Donnell erupted and showed how Trump also tried to "steal the grief" of 9/11 families and survivors. In O'Donnell's words:

“Donald Trump has been lying about 9/11 since 9/11. Here is Donald Trump’s most vile lie about 9/11. 

He then played a clip from the 2016 South Carolina Republican debate, i.e. Trump claiming he lost hundreds of friends on 9/11."


Lawrence, incensed just at the memory from 10 years earlier, then played a clip of Trump claiming during a Republican debate that he “lost hundreds of friends” on 9/11. See e.g.

MSNBC host slams Trump for his 'vile lie' about 9/11 | The Independent

O’Donnell knew it was a lie because he was aware of Trump’s other assorted 9/11 lies, i.e.

Trump’s top six falsehoods about 9/11 as 25th anniversary nears | September 11 2001 | The Guardian

During a subsequent outburst, Trump tempered his claim to "losing “many, many friends,” but  the perceptive O’Donnell recognized that was a lie too. Given Dotard is incapable of telling the truth. As Lawrence put it:

“Donald Trump lost zero friends on 9/11. Donald Trump attended zero funerals of 9/11 victims. Zero. But Donald Trump tried to steal the grief of all of the families who lost someone on 9/11.”

Given the totality of adverse effects, including piling on debt, mass surveillance, lies and deceit, polarization and election of a criminal regime, I defy anyone to convince me this country doesn't have all its priorities wrong and isn't using 9/11 to milk gullible citizens and taxpayers into the support of a perpetual war state.

Prove me wrong and maybe....maybe...I will drop my cynicism! But don't hold your breath!


See Also:
25 Years of War Was the Exact Wrong Response to 9/11
by Medea Benjamin | September 10, 2026 - 4:41am | permalink

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies

The lesson of 9/11 should be that war is not the answer to any of the problems facing the United States. After inflicting violence and chaos on country after country for twenty-five years in a “global war on terror” that has evolved into a Zionist genocide and a revived Cold War against Russia and China, the widespread public opposition to Trump’s war on Iran suggests that most Americans have finally learned that lesson.

Unfortunately, powerful sections of our corrupt business and political elites have not.

Most Americans old enough to remember September 11, 2001, can still recall the horrifying images played endlessly on our TV screens as the scale of the mass murder became clear. But we also remember something else: the sinking feeling that the hopes and dreams of billions of people, in the US and around the world, would be pushed to the back-burner for the foreseeable future, as our leaders and corporate media all too predictably embraced a new agenda of revenge, fear-mongering, jingoism and military violence.

» article continues...

And:
After 9/11, the ‘War on Terror’ Was a War of Terror
by Norman Solomon | September 10, 2026 - 4:34am | permalink

Three days after terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush stood behind a pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral and spoke to a nation in shock. “Our responsibility to history is already clear,” he proclaimed, “to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” The vow was, of course, preposterous. Yet the “war on terror” that followed was scarcely more realistic.

“Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic,” retired US Army General William Odom told C-SPAN viewers in 2002. “It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.” But the American military crusade became more about persisting than winning. The ultraviolent momentum became its own reason. The destructive search for enemies created more. As years went by and the “war on terror” label faded, US warfare was so normal in so many places that it no longer needed a name or much of a rationale.

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9/11 Began a US Reign of Terror in the Middle East—Now It’s Come Home
by Gerry Condon | September 12, 2026 - 4:51am | permalink

On September 11, 2001, the world watched as the World Trade Center, the twin towers that represented US global dominance, were struck by hijacked US commercial jetliners and came crashing to the ground. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, from high-powered executive to clerical workers and immigrant kitchen workers. The hijackers were Middle Eastern men, primarily from Saudi Arabia.

Twenty-five years later, many questions remain about how the US military and security establishment could have allowed this to happen. Hardly anybody believes the official 9/11 story, which raises more questions than it answers, and there are many competing theories about who was behind this tragedy. Was this an incredible US security lapse or a highly coordinated false flag? Whatever the case, the neocons in George W. Bush’s administration immediately declared a “war on terrorism,” and put into motion their longstanding designs to conquer seven Muslim countries in the Middle East (as revealed by General Wesley Clark)—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. Over the last 25 years, the US has initiated wars against all of these countries, as well as Afghanistan.

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America Built a Surveillance State out of Fear and Never Left It
by Heather Digby Parton | September 14, 2026 - 5:06am | permalink

— from Salon

During Friday’s 9/11 commemorations, it was startling to realize that one-third of the American population today wasn’t born when it happened. To those of us of an older vintage, Sept. 11, 2001, seems like it was yesterday. The terrorist attacks at the hands of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, which killed nearly 3,000 people, leveled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, marked a turning point in our history. Whatever sense of invulnerability America may have had as the world’s only superpower was shattered, and it precipitated massive changes in the way we lived, traveled and perceived ourselves. We started what was quickly named the global “war on terror,” and our president, George W. Bush, proclaimed that the rest of the world was either with us or they were with the terrorists.

Sept. 11 was a politically unifying event at first, as wars tend to be. On the evening of the attack, members of Congress and senators of both parties came together on the steps of the Capitol to sing “God Bless America,” and within days they approved the broad, vaguely defined Authorization for Use of Military Force that remains in effect today, giving the green light to every military action that has taken place since. Former Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., who now serves as the mayor of Oakland, cast the only dissenting vote.

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25 Years After 9/11, It’s Clear Osama bin Laden Won—But He Didn’t Do It Alone
by Nick Turse | September 12, 2026 - 4:27am | permalink

— from TomDispatch

I can still remember the smell. But I’m at a loss to accurately describe it to you. It wasn’t the unmistakable odor of death, although that must have been some tiny part of it. It wasn’t like burning tires or plastic or even metal. It was all that, but it was more.

In the quarter century since, I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never experienced anything like the smell near the rubble pile at Ground Zero in September 2001. The air was acrid and thick, a swirl of toxins and carcinogens made possible by turning two large, jet-fuel laden planes into cruise missiles and aiming them at gigantic office towers. As it burned, we all inhaled a haze of pulverized cement, glass fibers, asbestos, lead, dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls (better known as PCBs), and whatever else. It remains a part of us still.

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After 25 Years, 9/11 Continues to Shape How America Polices Immigration
by Jordan Liz | September 12, 2026 - 4:33am | permalink

Since the start of its second term, the Trump administration has repeatedly defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings and killings, smeared their victims as “domestic terrorists,” racially profiled people with the Supreme Court’s consent, expanded their biometric and social media surveillance capabilities while also maintaining over a dozen “secret and obscure” watchlists. It is effectively dismantling the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, tried—and is trying again—to repeal birthright citizenship, paused all immigrant visa applications, and is aggressively pursuing politically motivated visa revocations and denaturalizations, among other extreme measures.

All of this is reflective of the rampant and unfettered xenophobia, Islamophobia, and white nationalism that define the Trump administration. Yet, at same time, we must also acknowledge that Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) violence and Trump’s assault on the immigration system is an extension of the national security framework built following the 9/11 attacks.

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