Clouded truth

Tech producing fakes can also find them

Without minimizing the seriousness of the president’s efforts to rewrite history, we can take heart that he’s kidding himself. He is sure to fail miserably. Again.

Because making that argument involves a little cheerleading for technology, I want to assure you up front that I, too, am hoping artificial intelligence doesn’t end up killing us all.

If it doesn’t and people are not only still around in the future but also still capable of thinking for themselves, they will see – much more clearly, I think, than we can today – how profoundly destructive America’s worst president has been.

For all the documented risks of the digital age – and they are many and multiplying – its enormous and undeniable benefits include this one: The truth ain’t going anywhere. Nor are facts. Nor is the ability to access them, at least not permanently.

There is a snapshot of each day’s news stories memorializing Republicans’ do-nothing complicity as human rights are ignored at home and abroad, and as the nation’s treasure is gutted, stolen and frittered away.

For all the Felon’s destruction, there is a record that is bound to survive, if only because it’s digital. Unlike a book, it can’t be burned or effectively banned.

This may seem an odd time to cite technology as a source of reassurance, especially as the felonious administration conducts the nation’s business via social media. (As the zone flooded, we even moved on from the defense secretary’s unsecured chat about secret military actions on Signal.)

If only the president’s ridiculous deep-fakes of the Democratic leadership, or directing his minions to doctor government websites with Republican propaganda, were the worst of technology’s role in this American tragedy.

We should all be concerned about what Musk and his young tech-bros did – and may still be doing – with the personal data of virtually all U.S. taxpayers. Every action they took involving government data – and data systems – should be traceable, even if they tried to cover their tracks. Once the Felon is no longer in charge, we will see.

And like the administration’s border czar and the bag of cash he took on video, the DOGE boys need to account for what appears to be a great deal of money.

My thesis here is sort of a straw man really. It’s no great insight that technology can be tapped for good and bad purposes. I suppose what I’m really cheerleading for is the continued existence of genuine epistemic authority: I just don’t believe we’ll be permanently fooled by “alternative facts,” or fake anything, unless we choose to be.

Our president’s maddening impunity, coupled with his advanced years, may spare him from personal accountability for his crimes, but his legacy remains in the hands of professional historians, who know something about the network architecture the president uses to spread lies: It also archives, cross-references and exposes.

They will have what they need to tell the awful truth.