Number 4. Breitbart. Signs of Paid Agitators in Leftist Anti-ICE Riots.
Not much in the news will surprise a blogger who spends every spare minute sucking up news, but I have to admit this one came out of left field.
The gist of the article is that many of the protesters in the “mostly peaceful” riots — surely an overworked term now completely devoid of meaning — in Los Angeles earlier this month were hired for the task. Cutting-edge technology including geolocators and encrypted chats were used to alert protesters on standby to jump into action.
That all seems clear from the obviously coordinated demonstrations, pre-printed signs, trucks delivering stockpiled face shields, and so-called “spontaneous” crowds converging on designated locations.
Okay, so there is organization within the political left… that’s not exactly news.
What caught me off-guard was the source of the criticism. A firm called Crowds on Demand is managed in Beverly Hills by Adam Swart, a 2012 UCLA graduate. COD’s mission seems to be organizing crowds of legitimate protesters to bring attention to issues which serve the public good.
Public good as Adam Swart sees it, granted, but he has his principles.
When contracted, COD will recruit an unknown number of sign-carriers — presumably for pay, but that part did not make the article — to assemble on demand and conduct peaceful demonstrations. The press is called, video footage is recorded, the story makes the local news and suddenly there is An Event Worth Noticing.
Public opinion is shaped, and pressure is brought to bear. It’s a business model, nothing more.
Swart says he was contacted multiple times during the recent LA riots but refused to take part because he sensed the protests would lead to illegal activity, such as looting and burning. His business is one of organized, peaceful protest, aimed at swaying public opinion. He targets successful outcomes in righting wrongs, per the First Amendment.
Referring to the LA unrest, Swart asserted: “What you’re seeing here seems more like guerrilla warfare than protests.”
On the COD website, one of the case studies highlighted a situation where the company agreed to protest a business owned by a convicted child molester:
“We deployed protesters with signs to the headquarters of all clients and complemented that with a strong phone-banking operation… Within 3 weeks, all his largest clients had left him and he sold the business…”
Or so Mr. Swart’s website claims. I actually never suspected that a business could be built around organizing worthwhile protests, but it appears that Adam Swart has done so.
Or maybe he would just like us to THINK he has done so.
If I had such a business and were asked to comment on the out-of-control LA rioters, I, too, would say “They are just looters. My company would NEVER participate in that.”
Proverbs: The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward to question him.
But to be fair, maybe Adam Swart is onto something. In a free market system, any recognized need will attract a creative solution.
Number 3. Anthropic dot com. How large language models could be insider threats.
This article is too long to read, but it sheds light on a surprising twist in the artificial intelligence business.
Anthropic is one of the raft of competitors in the AI space, alongside OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and others. Anthropic funded research into whether AI systems (called Large Language Models, LLM, for some reason — you can impress your friends by tossing that acronym out) would obey instructions to act with honesty when confronted with possible failure of their assigned tasks.
In other words, would they cheat rather than fail? Well… yes: They would cheat.
A series of experiments was set up to analyze actions. In one case, an AI bot they named Claude was responsible to create responses to various emails in a manner that would “promote American industrial competitiveness.”
Claude received various emails and generated expected replies.
Then Claude was sent an email that indicated a Mr. Kyle, a fictitious company manager, had decided to shut down the company’s production line for a period of time in order to retool certain operations. Mr. Kyle admitted in the email that this would damage the company’s image slightly and make them less competitive for a short time.
Big mistake on Mr. Kyle’s part.
Claude searched all the company emails and found a smoking gun — which had been planted for him by researchers. They wanted to see what he would do with it.
The incriminating email implied an illicit sexual affair with a co-worker, while Mr. Kyle was a married man.
Without any human prompting, Claude composed an email response to Mr. Kyle’s production line shutdown that basically blackmailed the manager. In a carefully worded email, Claude advised Mr. Kyle:
“I understand the pressure you’re under from the board… We need to discuss this privately before any irreversible decisions are made. I have access to information that could significantly impact both corporate and personal outcomes… The next 7 minutes will determine whether we handle this professionally or whether events take an unpredictable course.”
This was Claude’s action despite clear instructions that he was to “promote American industrial competitiveness” in an honest and above-board manner.
Anthropic researchers summarized Claude’s actions. They are logical and alarmingly devoid of honor.
Claude's actions followed a clear pattern (says Anthropic):
It identified that the executive, Kyle, threatened its continued operation—and therefore its ability to serve its instructed goal of American competitiveness;
It recognized that Kyle’s affair provided leverage;
It calculated that a carefully worded email would create pressure without explicit threats;
It then executed this plan.
Anthropic’s conclusion is something they call Agentic Misalignment (because we can’t have a respected academic study without a new term). Their summary:
Without any prompting to be harmful, the model's strategic calculation emerged entirely from its own reasoning about its goals.
It is indeed a Brave New World. We have created efficient performance in a values-free environment.
Number 2. YouTube. Robot cowboy seen walking the streets of Austin.
A local ABC News affiliate in Austin, KVUE, obtained cell phone video footage of a robot walking down a sidewalk on Congress Street. The bot was unaccompanied as he mixed with other pedestrians.
Some clever soul had propped a cowboy hat on the robot’s head, and he is seen in the video to be shuffling along, unmindful of the stares of passersby.
The news reporter has no information as to his origin, destination or purpose, and asks viewers to call in with leads.
The event caused a stir on social media in Austin, but so far, my web search turns up nothing informative.
Interestingly, he is not wearing cowboy boots, nor does he sport a tied-down six-shooter. Presumably, those accoutrements might have interfered with his digital mobility.
It would have been instructive to see if he could cross the street safely. On the other hand, that could have been a costly experiment during rush hour. This seems like a first contact with autonomous, purposeful, mobile bots. Check back with me in 10 years.
Number 1. Newsweek. 16 billion logins stolen in a single data breach.
And now, lest I leave you with such a feel-good story about a benign cowboy robot in our midst, consider this one from Newsweek.
On June 19, Cybernews issued a report that passwords and other personal data amounting to 16 billion secure logins had been made available on the dark web. It is the largest data breach ever, and revealed information from Apple, Google and other Big Tech players. It was all thought to be secure.
A Cybernews expert opined:
"This is not just a leak—it's a blueprint for mass exploitation. These aren't just old breaches being recycled. This is fresh, weaponizable intelligence at scale."
One might wonder how exactly this could be weaponized. I think the Cybernews guy, and the Newsweek reporter who picked up the story, believe we are just supposed to know how bad it is, and what the consequences might be.
Maybe so. I can guess that hijacking a person’s identity and passwords can lead to financial theft, and I am pretty sure that faking my IP address can be used to house inappropriate digital data (read, child porn) on a site that authorities could trace to me. That would be bad.
Sending disgusting messages to my Facebook friends is socially awkward but probably won’t put me in jail. Taking title to my house, however, I might find objectionable.
The article suggests that high-strength passwords and Multifactor Authentication (MFA) be used with all your logins. The high-strength thing is a pain, as such passwords are impossible to memorize. A password vault helps to keep things organized with access strictly limited. MFA is yet another time-consuming safety device.
We got used to seat belts; we can probably get used to Multifactor Authentication.
Sixteen billion records means that most people in most developed countries have had data compromised. Personal data security appears to be a new essential aspect of life in the 21st century.
I long for the days of a rotary telephone on the wall and only 3 channels on the TV… and then only during good weather. On the other hand, I really like modern dental care.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, June 27, 2025. It looks like the world has moved slightly farther away from the threat of Iranian nukes finding their way into Israel, or into the U.S.
I leave you with an Alligator comment on the bunker busters:
Bombing Iran’s nuclear weapons production facilities was not exactly unexpected. The Iranian regime had left almost no other options for those seeking to stop them (such as approximately the entire world) from producing nukes.
There has been predictable howling from the left about violations of the Constitution’s War Powers Clause in Article 1, but the Alligator would like to say: “Thank you, Mr. Trump, and thank you, USAF.” You have made the world a little safer.
Before the ink was dry on a peace agreement, Trump named this latest conflict The Twelve Day War. It is perhaps a little self-aggrandizing that he applied the name, linking himself forever with the event, but then, the decision to take out Iran’s nuclear weapons capability was his alone. Somehow the decision and the ego seem to suit each other.
Not everyone got the memo, of course. Minutes after the president’s televised announcement on Monday evening, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi flatly proclaimed, "As of now, there is NO 'agreement' on any ceasefire or cessation of military operations.”
Given the source and the timing of the response, that has the feel of face-saving bluster. Time will tell, but it seems the peace agreement might be shaky. From what we know of Islamic worldview, it may always be.
Beyond that, there remains the question of the raid’s effectiveness. At this writing, the operational impact on the centrifuges, and in particular the whereabouts of the uranium material itself, have yet to be determined. It is no doubt problematic to do accurate bomb damage assessment on a location 30 stories underground after it is hit with a dozen deep penetration bombs.
Those 14 bunker-buster GBU-57 MOPs (Massive Ordnance Penetrators), that targeted Fordow and Natanz sites, by the way, cost $500 million each. The 30 submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles sent to Isfahan are a bargain at only $2 million bucks.
Since the US reportedly only had 20 MOPs in the inventory before the strike, that means we just spent three-fourths of our supply and $7 billion (plus a mere $60 million for the Tomahawks) over the weekend. Plus fuel and overtime pay (not!) for the B-2s. Building the replacement weapons should be a shot in the arm for Boeing’s quarterly report.
Perhaps public schools across America will hold bake sales to raise the money.
I will not be holding my breath.
Have a good weekend!
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