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The Intercept
an hour ago
- General
- The Intercept
Weapons Violations, Misconduct, and Whistleblower Retaliation at ICE
The Houston office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is one of the most reliable engines of America's deportation machine. Even before Donald Trump took office a second time, with the goal of 1 million immigrant expulsions in a year, ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston Field Office was deporting 12,000 to 15,000 people annually, according to its director, Bret Bradford. Bradford — a darling of right-wing deportation coverage, from the New York Post to Fox News — touts his determination to 'restore law and order in our communities.' He recently lauded 'the brave men and women at ICE Houston' for their 'unwavering dedication,' and for working 'tirelessly every day to enhance public safety.' Scores of internal documents reviewed by The Intercept paint a different picture and suggest a commitment to safety and law and order may stop at the entrance to ICE's Houston Field Office. The files lay out a series of allegations against Bradford and other top Houston ICE officials, including retaliation against a whistleblower who reported being intimidated with an '8-inch tactical knife' by a fellow ICE officer in a facility that does not allow weapons. The whistleblower also alleges another supervisor knowingly lied on an official document. An email from the whistleblower sent to the Congressional DOGE Caucus earlier this year reported 'corruption' among top Houston ICE officials. Bradford 'turned a blind eye to the criminal activity and has taken no action against the officials,' wrote the whistleblower. The allegations of retaliation are further detailed in public documents from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews cases of government employees who are contesting demotions or terminations. After he blew the whistle on a weapons violation, the ICE officer was effectively demoted. Documents show that almost immediately after he blew the whistle on a weapons violation, the ICE officer was effectively demoted. While that demotion was overturned in 2024, he remains locked in a yearslong struggle with ICE over alleged whistleblower retaliation and has a hearing before the Merit Systems Protection Board scheduled for June 3 and 4. Bradford has been aware of these allegations of wrongdoing and whistleblower retaliation since at least August 2023, according to emails and memorandums reviewed by The Intercept. Repeated requests by The Intercept for an interview with Bradford were denied by Tim Oberle, an ICE spokesperson in Houston. A whistleblower complaint against Bradford was recently closed. 'We don't comment on employment matters for privacy reasons,' Oberle told The Intercept. '[Office of Professional Responsibility] investigations inherently involve 'employment matters' and U.S. privacy laws prohibit federal agencies from releasing details of those investigations to the media.' Complaints about operations at ICE's Houston Field Office are just the latest in a long line of allegations of waste, mismanagement, abuse, cover-ups, and other wrongdoing across the agency and among its contractors. ICE failed to provide The Intercept with a count of whistleblower complaints thus far in 2025, but allegations of wrongdoing at ICE surface regularly. The Intercept found, in fact, that ICE's own Office of Professional Responsibility — which oversees the agency's professional standards — reviewed more than 16,000 allegations of potential misconduct last year. This February, for example, multiple whistleblowers informed Congress of 'chronic and dangerous understaffing' and a 'discriminatory and hostile work environment' that reportedly occurred with the knowledge of ICE leadership at a contractor-operated detention facility in New Mexico. Read Our Complete Coverage The story laid out in the documents centers on Carlo Jimenez, a Navy veteran who served in the Iraq War before beginning his federal law enforcement career as an immigration enforcement agent with ICE in 2007. In 2022, he was serving as a supervisory detention and deportation officer, or SDDO, at the Montgomery Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston. His immediate supervisors were Euna Fuchs, the assistant field office director, and Paul McBride, the deputy field office director. Jimenez himself oversaw a team of ICE officers — including a deportation officer named Rolando Ferrufino. Fuchs refused to speak about the case. 'I can't answer any questions,' she said by phone. 'No comment.' McBride also did not respond to multiple phone messages. Oberle did not make available any of the seven ICE personnel that The Intercept requested to interview, including Jimenez and Ferrufino. Documents reviewed by The Intercept detail a tense relationship between Jimenez and Ferrufino. 'Obviously, there is some kind of a bad blood between them,' Fuchs later recalled in sworn testimony to a government investigator from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, or OSC. In December 2022, things came to a head after Jimenez sought to reprimand Ferrufino for a 'major mistake,' as Fuchs characterized it in her testimony, while on duty. Ferrufino came into Jimenez's office 'uninvited opening and closing a folding knife' on December 15, 2022, Jimenez told a senior officer who was later brought in to investigate the incident, Assistant Field Office Director Anthony Bennett. During a tense conversation, Ferrufino leaned in, bringing the knife, Jimenez said, close to his face. Ferrufino then pressed his knife to Jimenez's computer screen 'making the screen distort,' according to the inquiry report. Ferrufino told Bennett that he had the knife in hand because he was 'cleaning it after cutting fruit,' Bennett wrote in a document summarizing his findings on the incident. Jimenez saw it differently and said that he feared for his safety. 'I thought this was irrational behavior,' he told Bennett. 'I felt threatened and that is why I reported it.' Jimenez reported the knife incident to his supervisor, Fuchs, during a scheduled meeting on December 19, and repeated it at another meeting two days later, according to testimony from both Fuchs and Jimenez. Fuchs indicated, in her sworn statement, that Jimenez mentioned the knife incident almost in passing. Being in possession of a knife is against ICE's rules as McBride later wrote in a reprimand letter to Ferrufino, let alone holding it while talking over a workplace dispute, as Jimenez alleged. No weapons or ammunition are allowed inside the building, including firearms, electroshock devices, chemical agents, or 'knives of any kind,' a rule that's made clear in a sign bolted to the wall at the Montgomery Processing Center. Fuchs, in her sworn statement, acknowledged that weapons were banned but that she did nothing in response. 'We both agreed that Rolando's actions were inappropriate but I didn't feel the need to counsel Rolando or take any further actions,' she wrote in a December 27, 2022, email to top Houston ICE officials including McBride. Jimenez had made complaints about various incidents of alleged discrimination or retaliation in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2018, and in a lawsuit filed in 2021, he alleged he was denied a previous promotion as a result. In 2023, a district court ruled against Jimenez, finding he hadn't shown sufficient evidence of retaliation. When Fuchs took no action on his weapons charges, Jimenez reported the violation via an online whistleblower portal to the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General. In an email to Fuchs on January 2, 2023, Jimenez wrote that he believed Ferrufino was a 'threat to me and ICE staff at the Montgomery Processing Center.' A formal investigation into Jimenez's allegations began on January 5, when Bennett was assigned to conduct his management inquiry. The following Monday, January 9, Fuchs switched Jimenez's schedule from 4 p.m. to midnight to the less desirable 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. Jimenez interpreted this as retribution for his whistleblowing. On February 7, Bennett sent his findings to top officials at the Houston Field Office, offering several conclusions. Bennett determined that Ferrufino 'did display inappropriate behavior by having a knife in his hand in the office during a discussion with SDDO Jimenez.' He also found that Jimenez 'did feel threatened by DO Ferrufino's actions.' Ferrufino admitted to Bennett that he 'touched the screen with the blade causing distortion on the screen' according to Bennett's report and said that after Jimenez asked him to stop, he 'removed his knife from the screen.' When asked about Jimenez's allegations, Bennett told The Intercept, 'I'm familiar with the name but I'm not sure about a case,' before referring further questions to ICE Houston public affairs. Ferrufino also 'admitted to having the knife' in Jimenez's office, according to a letter of reprimand issued to him by McBride in March 2023, which noted that this was a 'direct violation' of the facility's no weapons stricture. 'There is an inherent obligation to ensure you follow these rules and policies as it relates to the safety of personnel,' wrote McBride in the letter, also reviewed by The Intercept, adding 'you failed in fulfilling this obligation.' Fuchs also admitted to Bennett that Jimenez had reported the knife incident. Despite this apparent vindication, the pattern of retaliation against Jimenez continued, he alleges. Two days after Bennett filed his report, Fuchs wrote to McBride recommending that Jimenez not 'pass supervisory probation.' This would effectively demote him, and the agency did so in a way that violated Jimenez's right to contest it, the Merit Systems Protection Board later found. The MSPB panel also found Jimenez's claim of whistleblower retaliation required a full hearing. Just months earlier, in October, Fuchs had praised Jimenez in an official evaluation. 'Jimenez has great technical skills and knowledge which he imparts to the employees,' reads an appraisal by Fuchs. 'Jimenez conducts himself in a professional manner and continues to collaborate with this colleagues, staff, and all stakeholders.' Jimenez received high marks on his job evaluation from Fuchs and McBride — a 4.7 out of 5.0 rating — and received a cash award and time off for his performance on the job. Less than a week before the knife incident, Fuchs even approved Jimenez to attend advanced leadership training, following a standard probationary period, according to a text chain shared with The Intercept. 'He is and will continue to be a liability to the Agency unless we remove him from a supervisory position.' Now Fuchs cast the same officer as a pariah. 'Jimenez' supervisory tactics are toxic to the Command Center's culture. Jimenez brings employees' morale down and fails to keep good order and discipline of the unit,' Fuchs wrote in a February 9, 2023 email. 'While Jimenez has many positive qualities as an officer, he is not fit to be a supervisor. He is and will continue to be a liability to the Agency unless we remove him from a supervisory position.' An ICE lawyer drafted a demotion letter containing Fuchs's allegations of Jimenez's failings in his job. 'Your performance as a SDDO has not been satisfactory in the core competency (critical element) of communication,' reads the February 22 letter, signed by McBride, which relieved Jimenez of his SDDO responsibilities, returning him to deportation officer status. Fuchs later admitted in her sworn testimony that the letter contained factual errors. The letter confused details, including an incorrect date, regarding instances when Jimenez sought to discipline other ICE employees. Fuchs said she brought this to McBride's attention later, but that she 'didn't have time to point out the mistake and correct it' beforehand because she only saw the letter the day it was scheduled to be served. Fuchs and McBride nonetheless served Jimenez the demotion letter with the errors, according to Fuchs's sworn statement. In later correspondence with Bradford and the Office of Personnel Management, Jimenez claimed this was a potential violation of not only internal ICE regulations but also federal law. The demotion wasn't the end of it. ERO Houston officials continued to take actions that Jimenez saw as a clear attempt to kneecap his career. In March 2023, Fuchs and McBride issued Jimenez a poison-pen performance evaluation — an 'unacceptable' rating — but, unlike the demotion letter, they never served the document to him. Records indicate that it took more than a year for Jimenez to find, through discovery for his Merit Systems Protection Board case, that this negative assessment had been slipped into his file. Earlier this year, Jimenez filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint, through the Office of Special Counsel, against Houston Field Office Director Bradford for 'abusing his authority by colluding to keep a reduced performance evaluation based on lies in my personnel file.' Repeated emails sent to Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem requesting interviews to discuss allegations of corruption and whistleblower retaliation at ICE's ERO Houston office received no responses. An ICE officer watches as immigrants are deported on a flight in Houston to El Salvador on Nov. 16, 2018. Photo: David J. Phillip/AP Photo Bennett's inquiry also determined that another ICE officer brought multiple weapons into an ERO Houston facility. In an interview, an SDDO confirmed that 'he issued pocketknives to the staff in the command center to include DO Ferrufino.' Ferrufino verified that the knife was 'issued to him at work.' ICE regulations regarding inappropriate 'display or brandishment' of a weapon carries penalties of suspension or firing, but The Intercept found only Ferrufino's letter of reprimand. 'No disciplinary action was taken against the management official who gifted illegal weapons,' Jimenez wrote in a OSC whistleblower retaliation complaint against Bradford. In another memorandum, he noted that 'officers who did not disclose the misconduct were promoted.' Oberle said that ICE Houston doesn't maintain statistics relating to weapons violations that have resulted in disciplinary actions. He recommended filing a Freedom of Information Act request, which often take months or years to, if ever, produce records. Jimenez has, however, continued to press his whistleblower retaliation claims for more than two years while continuing to work in the Houston office. In 2024, the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that after ICE issued the demotion notice, Jimenez was not provided an opportunity to respond. This procedure 'did not comport with a tenured employee's constitutional right to minimum due process of law,' reads the order. As a result, his demotion was reversed. In February, Jimenez wrote an email to the Congressional DOGE Caucus in an attempt to finally achieve some measure of justice. 'I wanted to bring a government corruption problem to your attention about upper management officials at the ICE Houston Field Office,' Jimenez wrote, calling out McBride and Fuchs and stating he provided material evidence of their 'corruption to ICE Houston Field Office Director (SES) Bret Bradford' through a series of memos, one of which he attached to the email. In April, ICE agreed to expunge Jimenez's 2023 negative performance appraisal 'both physically and digitally, from your local files in ERO HOU,' according to an email from the ICE lawyer. 'Therefore, to the best of the Agency's knowledge, this [performance work plan] has been expunged from your records maintained by the Agency.' As a result, OSC closed Jimenez's whistleblower retaliation complaint against Bradford, deeming it 'resolved.' In late May, the lawyer presented Jimenez with a proposed settlement, according to an email reviewed by The Intercept. 'The Agency is not increasing its offer, nor will it,' the lawyer wrote. This week, Jimenez will, again, appear before the Merit Systems Protection Board for 'adjudication of [his] claim of whistleblower reprisal.' 'We need to see the public and private sectors recognize the value of blowing the whistle on wrongdoing as something that inherently works in their favor, too,' said Margaux Ewen, the whistleblower protection program director of the Signals Network, an independent nonprofit organization which supports whistleblowers and journalists' sources. 'Otherwise individuals who wish to speak out will continue to face significant hurdles, and information that is in the public interest will continue to be suppressed.' Jimenez concluded his email to the DOGE Caucus by invoking Trump's vow to end corruption within the government and pursue accountability. 'Under President Trump's administration,' Jimenez wrote, 'he does not tolerate federal government corruption. Sadly, the unlawful demotion occurred 2 years ago this month, February, and both officials who knowingly used lies in a decision letter still work at ICE.'
The Intercept
6 hours ago
- Business
- The Intercept
Whose National Security? OpenAI's Vision for American Techno-Dominance
OpenAI has always said it's a different kind of Big Tech titan, founded not just to rack up a stratospheric valuation of $400 billion (and counting), but also to 'ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.' The meteoric machine-learning firm announced itself to the world in a December 2015 press release that lays out a vision of technology to benefit all people as people, not citizens. There are neither good guys nor adversaries. 'Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole,' the announcement stated with confidence. 'Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact.' Early rhetoric from the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, described advanced artificial intelligence as a harbinger of a globalist utopia, a technology that wouldn't be walled off by national or corporate boundaries but enjoyed together by the species that birthed it. In an early interview with Altman and fellow OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, Altman described a vision of artificial intelligence 'freely owned by the world' in common. When Vanity Fair asked in a 2015 interview why the company hadn't set out as a for-profit venture, Altman replied: 'I think that the misaligned incentives there would be suboptimal to the world as a whole.' Times have changed. And OpenAI wants the White House to think it has too. In a March 13 white paper submitted directly to the Trump administration, OpenAI's global affairs chief Chris Lehane pitched a near future of AI built for the explicit purpose of maintaining American hegemony and thwarting the interests of its geopolitical competitors — specifically China. The policy paper's mentions of freedom abound, but the proposal's true byword is national security. OpenAI never attempts to reconcile its full-throated support of American security with its claims to work for the whole planet, not a single country. After opening with a quotation from Trump's own executive order on AI, the action plan proposes that the government create a direct line for the AI industry to reach the entire national security community, work with OpenAI 'to develop custom models for national security,' and increase intelligence sharing between industry and spy agencies 'to mitigate national security risks,' namely from China. In the place of techno-globalism, OpenAI outlines a Cold Warrior exhortation to divide the world into camps. OpenAI will ally with those 'countries who prefer to build AI on democratic rails,' and get them to commit to 'deploy AI in line with democratic principles set out by the US government.' The rhetoric seems pulled directly from the keyboard of an 'America First' foreign policy hawk like Marco Rubio or Rep. Mike Gallagher, not a company whose website still endorses the goal of lifting up the whole world. The word 'humanity,' in fact, never appears in the action plan. Rather, the plan asks Trump, to whom Altman donated $1 million for his inauguration ceremony, to 'ensure that American-led AI prevails over CCP-led AI' — the Chinese Communist Party — 'securing both American leadership on AI and a brighter future for all Americans.' It's an inherently nationalist pitch: The concepts of 'democratic values' and 'democratic infrastructure' are both left largely undefined beyond their American-ness. What is democratic AI? American AI. What is American AI? The AI of freedom. And regulation of any kind, of course, 'may hinder our economic competitiveness and undermine our national security,' Lehane writes, suggesting a total merging of corporate and national interests. In an emailed statement, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois declined to explain the company's nationalist pivot but defended its national security work. 'We believe working closely with the U.S. government is critical to advancing our mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity,' Bourgeois wrote. 'The U.S. is uniquely positioned to help shape global norms around safe, secure, and broadly beneficial AI development—rooted in democratic values and international collaboration.' The Intercept is currently suing OpenAI in federal court over the company's use of copyrighted articles to train its chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI's newfound patriotism is loud. But is it real? In his 2015 interview with Musk, Altman spoke of artificial intelligence as a technology so special and so powerful that it ought to transcend national considerations. Pressed on OpenAI's goal to share artificial intelligence technology globally rather than keeping it under domestic control, Altman provided an answer far more ambivalent than the company's current day mega-patriotism: 'If only one person gets to have it, how do you decide if that should be Google or the U.S. government or the Chinese government or ISIS or who?' He also said, in the early days of OpenAI, that there may be limits to what his company might do for his country. 'I unabashedly love this country, which is the greatest country in the world,' Altman told the New Yorker in 2016. 'But some things we will never do with the Department of Defense.' In the profile, he expressed ambivalence about overtures to OpenAI from then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who envisioned using the company's tools for targeting purposes. At the time, this would have run afoul of the company's own ethical guidelines, which for years stated explicitly that customers could not use its services for 'military and warfare' purposes, writing off any Pentagon contracting entirely. In January 2024, The Intercept reported that OpenAI had deleted this military contracting ban from its policies without explanation or announcement. Asked about how the policy reversal might affect business with other countries in an interview with Bloomberg, OpenAI executive Anna Makanju said the company is 'focused on United States national security agencies.' But insiders who spoke with The Intercept on conditions of anonymity suggested that the company's turn to jingoism may come more from opportunism than patriotism. Though Altman has long been on the record as endorsing corporate support of the United States, under an administration where the personal favor of the president means far more than the will of lawmakers, parroting muscular foreign policy rhetoric is good for business. One OpenAI source who spoke with The Intercept recalled concerned discussions about the possibility that the U.S. government would nationalize the company. They said that at times, this was discussed with the company's head of national security partnerships, Katrina Mulligan. Mulligan joined the company in February 2024 after a career in the U.S. intelligence and military establishment, including leading the media and public policy response to Edward Snowden's leaks while on the Obama National Security Council staff, working for the director of national intelligence, serving as a senior civilian overseeing Special Operations forces in the Pentagon, and working as chief of staff to the secretary of the Army. This source speculated that fostering closeness with the government was one method of fending off the potential risk of nationalization. As an independent research organization with ostensibly noble, global goals, OpenAI may have been less equipped to beat back regulatory intervention, a second former OpenAI employee suggested. What we see now, they said, is the company 'transitioning from presenting themselves as a nonprofit with very altruistic, pro-humanity aims, to presenting themselves as an economic and military powerhouse that the government needs to support, shelter, and cut red tape on behalf of.' The second source said they believed the national security rhetoric was indicative of OpenAI 'sucking up to the administration,' not a genuinely held commitment by executives. 'In terms of how decisions were actually made, what seemed to be the deciding factor was basically how can OpenAI win the race rather than anything to do with either humanity or national security,' they added. 'In today's political environment, it's a winning move with the administration to talk about America winning and national security and stuff like that. But you should not confuse that for the actual thing that's driving decision-making internally.' The person said that talk of preventing Chinese dominance over artificial intelligence likely reflects business, not political, anxieties. 'I think that's not their goal,' they said. 'I think their goal is to maintain their own control over the most powerful stuff.' 'I also talked to some people who work at OpenAI who weren't from the U.S. who were feeling like … 'What's going to happen to my country?'' But even if its motivations are cynical, company sources told The Intercept that national security considerations still pervaded OpenAI. The first source recalled a member of OpenAI's corporate security team regularly engaging with the U.S. intelligence community to safeguard the company's ultra-valuable machine-learning models. The second recalled concern about the extent of the government's relationship — and potential control over — OpenAI's technology. A common fear among AI safety researchers is a future scenario in which artificial intelligence models begin autonomously designing newer versions, ad infinitum, leading human engineers to lose control. 'One reason why the military AI angle could be bad for safety is that you end up getting the same sort of thing with AIs designing successors designing successors, except that it's happening in a military black project instead of in a somewhat more transparent corporation,' the second source said. 'Occasionally there'd be talk of, like, eventually the government will wake up, and there'll be a nuclear power plant next to a data center next to a bunker, and we'll all be moved into the bunker so that we can, like, beat China by managing an intelligence explosion,' they added. At a company that recruits top engineering talent internationally, the prospect of American dominance of a technology they believe could be cataclysmic was at times disquieting. 'I remember I also talked to some people who work at OpenAI who weren't from the U.S. who were feeling kind of sad about that and being like, 'What's going to happen to my country after the U.S. gets all the super intelligences?'' Sincerity aside, OpenAI has spent the past year training its corporate algorithm on flag-waving, defense lobbying, and a strident anticommunism that smacks more of the John Birch Society than the Whole Earth Catalog. In his white paper, Lehane, a former press secretary for Vice President Al Gore and special counsel to President Bill Clinton, advocates not for a globalist techno-utopia in which artificial intelligence jointly benefits the world, but a benevolent jingoism in which freedom and prosperity is underwritten by the guarantee of American dominance. While the document notes fleetingly, in its very last line, the idea of 'work toward AI that benefits everyone,' the pitch is not one of true global benefit, but of American prosperity that trickles down to its allies. The company proposes strict rules walling off parts of the world, namely China, from AI's benefits, on the grounds that they are simply too dangerous to be trusted. OpenAI explicitly advocates for conceiving of the AI market not as an international one, but 'the entire world less the PRC' — the People's Republic of China — 'and its few allies,' a line that quietly excludes over 1 billion people from the humanity the company says it wishes to benefit and millions who live under U.S.-allied authoritarian rule. In pursuit of 'democratic values,' OpenAI proposes dividing the entire planet into three tiers. At the top: 'Countries that commit to democratic AI principles by deploying AI systems in ways that promote more freedoms for their citizens could be considered Tier I countries.' Given the earlier mention of building 'AI in line with democratic principles set out by the US government,' this group's membership is clear: the United States, and its friends. In pursuit of 'democratic values,' OpenAI proposes dividing the entire planet into three tiers. Beneath them are Tier 2 countries, a geopolitical purgatory defined only as those that have failed to sufficiently enforce American export control policies and protect American intellectual property from Tier 3: Communist China. 'CCP-led China, along with a small cohort of countries aligned with the CCP, would represent its own category that is prohibited from accessing democratic AI systems,' the paper explains. To keep these barriers intact — while allowing for the chance that Tier 2 countries might someday graduate to the top — OpenAI suggests coordinating 'global bans on CCP-aligned AI' and 'prohibiting relationships' between other countries and China's military or intelligence services. One of the former OpenAI employees said concern about China at times circulated throughout the company. 'Definitely concerns about espionage came up,' this source said, 'including 'Are particular people who work at the company spies or agents?'' At one point, they said, a colleague worried about a specific co-worker they'd learned was the child of a Chinese government official. The sourced recalled 'some people being very upset about the implication' that the company had been infiltrated by foreigners, while others wanted an actual answer: ''Is anyone who works at the company a spy or foreign agent?'' The company's public adoration of Western democracy is not without wrinkles. In early May, OpenAI announced an initiative to build data centers and customized ChatGPT bots with foreign governments, as part of its $500 billion 'Project Stargate' AI infrastructure construction blitz. 'This is a moment when we need to act to support countries around the world that would prefer to build on democratic AI rails, and provide a clear alternative to authoritarian versions of AI that would deploy it to consolidate power,' the announcement read. Unmentioned in that celebration of AI democracy is the fact that Project Stargate's financial backers include the government of Abu Dhabi, an absolute monarchy. On May 23, Altman tweeted that it was 'great to work with the UAE' on Stargate, describing co-investor and Emirati national security adviser Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a 'great supporter of openai, a true believer in AGI, and a dear personal friend.' In 2019, Reuters revealed how a team of mercenary hackers working for Emirati intelligence under Tahnoun had illegally broken into the devices of targets around the world, including American citizens. Asked how a close partnership with an authoritarian Emirati autocracy fit into its broader mission of spreading democratic values, OpenAI pointed to a recent op-ed in The Hill in which Lehane discusses the partnership. 'We're working closely with American officials to ensure our international partnerships meet the highest standards of security and compliance,' Lehane writes, adding, 'Authoritarian regimes would be excluded.' OpenAI's new direction has been reflected in its hiring. Since hiring Mulligan, the company has continued to expand its D.C. operation. Mulligan works on national security policy with a team of former Department of Defense, NSA, CIA, and Special Operations personnel. Gabrielle Tarini joined the company after almost two years at the Defense Department, where she worked on 'Indo-Pacific security affairs' and 'China policy,' according to LinkedIn. Sasha Baker, who runs national security policy, joined after years at the National Security Council and Pentagon. OpenAI's policy team includes former DoD, NSA, CIA, and Special Operations personnel. The list goes on: Other policy team hires at OpenAI include veterans of the NSA, a Pentagon former special operations and South China Sea expert, and a graduate of the CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis. OpenAI's military and intelligence revolving door continues to turn: At the end of April, the company recruited Alexis Bonnell, the former chief information officer of the Air Force Research Laboratory. Recent job openings have included a 'Relationship Manager' focusing on 'strategic relationships with U.S. government customers.' Mulligan, the head of national security policy and partnerships, is both deeply connected to the defense and intelligence apparatus, and adept at the kind of ethically ambivalent thinking common to the tech sector. 'Not everything that has happened at Guantanamo Bay is to be praised, that's for sure, but [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] admitting to his crimes, even all these years later, is a big moment for many (including me),' she posted last year. In a March podcast appearance, Mulligan noted she worked on 'Gitmo rendition, detention, and interrogation' during her time in government. Mulligan's public rhetoric matches the ideological drift of a company that today seems more concerned with 'competition' and 'adversaries' than kumbaya globalism. On LinkedIn, she seems to embody the contradiction between a global mission and full-throated alignment with American policy values. 'I'm excited to be joining OpenAI to help them ensure that AI is safe and beneficial to all of humanity,' she wrote upon her hiring from the Pentagon. Since then, she has regularly represented OpenAI's interests and American interests as one and the same, sharing national security truisms such as 'In a competition with China, the pace of AI adoption matters,' or 'The United States' continued lead on AI is essential to our national security and economic competitiveness,' or 'Congress needs to make some decisive investments to ensure the U.S. national security community has the resources to harness the advantage the U.S. has on this technology.' This is to some extent conventional wisdom of the country's past 100 years: A strong, powerful America is good for the whole world. But OpenAI has shifted from an organization that believed its tech would lift up the whole world, unbounded by national borders, to one that talks like Lockheed Martin. Part of OpenAI's national security realignment has come in the form of occasional 'disruption' reports detailing how the company detected and neutralized 'malicious use' of its tools by foreign governments, coincidentally almost all of them considered adversaries of the United States. As the provider of services like ChatGPT, OpenAI has near-total visibility into how the tools are used or misused by individuals, what the company describes in one report as its 'unique vantage point.' The reports detail not only how these governments attempted to use ChatGPT, but also the steps OpenAI took to thwart them, described by the company as an 'effort to support broader efforts by U.S. and allied governments.' Each report has focused almost entirely on malign AI uses by 'state affiliated' actors from Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia. A May 2024 report outed an Israeli propaganda effort using ChatGPT but stopped short of connecting it to that country's government. Earlier this month, representatives of the intelligence agency and the contractors who serve them gathered at the America's Center Convention Complex in St. Louis for the GEOINT Symposium, dedicated to geospatial intelligence, the form of tradecraft analyzing satellite and other imagery of the planet to achieve military and intelligence objectives. On May 20, Mulligan took to the stage to demonstrate how OpenAI's services could help U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon better exploit the Earth's surface. Though the government's practice of GEOINT frequently ends in the act of killing, Mulligan used a gentler example, demonstrating the ability of ChatGPT to pinpoint the location where a photograph of a rabbit was taken. It was nothing if not a sales pitch, one predicated on the fear that some other country might leap at the opportunity before the United States. 'Government often feels like using AI is too risky and that it's better and safer to keep doing things the way that we've always done them, and I think this is the most dangerous mix of all,' Mulligan told her audience. 'If we keep doing things the way that we always have, and our adversaries adapt to this technology before we do, they will have all of the advantages that I show you today, and we will not be safer.'
The Intercept
a day ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
How the FBI and Big Ag Started Treating Animal Rights Activists as Terrorists
As COVID raged across northern California in March 2020, a pair of farm industry groups were worried about a different threat: animal rights activists. Citing an FBI memo warning that activists trespassing on factory farms could spread a viral bird disease, the groups wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom to argue that their longtime antagonists were more than a nuisance. They were potentially terrorists threatening the entire food chain. 'The safety of our food supply has never been more critical, and we must work together to prevent these clear threats of domestic terrorism from being realized,' the groups wrote. A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday released that letter, along with a cache of government documents, to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups. Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag. The government–industry fearmongering has accelerated with the spread of bird flu enabled by the industry's own practices, they say. The executive director of Property of the People, the nonprofit that obtained the documents via public records requests, said in a statement that the documents paint a damning picture. 'Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.' 'Factory farms are a nightmare for animals and public health. Yet, big ag lobbyists and their FBI allies are colluding to conceal this cruelty and rampant disease by shifting blame to the very activists working to alert the public,' Ryan Shapiro said. 'Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.' Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the FBI defended its relationship with 'members of the private sector.' 'Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution,' the agency said in an unsigned statement. 'The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.' The dozens of documents trace the industry's relationship with law enforcement agencies over a period stretching from 2015, during James Comey's tenure as FBI director, to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent outbreak of bird flu, also known as avian influenza. Animal rights activists have long said that federal law enforcement seems determined to put them in the same category as Al Qaeda. In the 2000s, a wave of arrests of environmental and animal rights activists — who sometimes took aggressive actions such as burning down slaughterhouses and timber mills — was dubbed 'the Green Scare.' The law enforcement focus on animal rights groups continued well after Osama bin Laden's death, news clippings and documents obtained by Property of the People show. In 2015, a veterinarian with the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate told a trade publication, Dairy Herd Management, that eco-terrorists were a looming threat. 'The domestic threat in some ways is more critical than international,' Stephen Goldsmith said. 'Animal rights and environmental groups have committed more acts of terrorism than Al Qaeda.' Four years later, emails obtained by Property of the People show, Goldsmith met with representatives of a leading farm trade group, the Animal Agriculture Alliance, at a government–industry conference. The meeting happened in April 2019, and within weeks the AAA's president was warning Goldsmith in an email about planned protests by 'by the extremist group Direct Action Everywhere,' a Berkeley-based group that conducts 'open rescues' of animals. Within months, the FBI was touting the threat from animal rights groups in stark terms in an official communication: the intelligence note partially produced by Goldsmith's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The August 2019 note written with the FBI Sacramento field office said activists were accelerating the spread of Virulent Newcastle disease, a contagious viral disease afflicting poultry and other birds. The note claimed that activists were failing to follow proper biosafety protocols as they targeted different farms, and could spread the disease between farms on their clothes or other inanimate objects. While the note did not point to genetic testing or formal scientific analysis to back up this assertation, it said the FBI offices had 'high confidence' in their assessment. Activists have rejected the idea that they are not following safety protocols, pointing to protests where they have donned full-body disposable suits. The most withering criticism of the FBI note may have come from another law enforcement agency, however. Four months after the FBI document came out, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center rebutted the idea that activists were spreading disease. Those activists, the Bay Area-based fusion center said in the note to local law enforcement, were nonviolent and posed a 'diminishing threat to law enforcement.' Citing the activists' use of safety precautions and U.S. Department of Agriculture research, the fusion center said that 'animal rights activists are probably not responsible' for any of the Virulent Newcastle disease outbreaks. Emails obtained by Property of the People suggest that the FBI regularly shared information with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, as both sought to spotlight the threat of animal rights activists. As new animal disease outbreaks occurred, the activists were regularly cast as potential vectors. The nonprofit trade group, based in Washington, D.C., describes itself as an organization that defends farmers, ranchers, processors, and other businesses along the food supply chain from animal rights activists, on whom it regularly distributes monitoring reports to its members. The industry's concerns grew in 2020, as activists created a nationwide map of farms, dubbed Project Counterglow, that served as reference for locating protest sites. The AAA's president, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, sent out an email to industry leaders hours after the map was published. 'This is obviously extremely troubling for a lot of reasons. We are contacting our FBI and DHS contacts to raise our concerns but we welcome any additional input on anything that can be done,' she said. In multiple emails, Goldsmith, the FBI veterinarian, distributed to other FBI employees emails from the AAA warning about upcoming protests by the activist outfits, including Direct Action Everywhere. Another email from a local government agency in California showed that the AAA sent out a 'confidential' message to members in June 2023 asking them to track and report 'animal rights activity.' The trade group provided members with a direct FBI email address for reporting what it called ARVE: 'animal rights violent extremists.' The AAA was not the only industry group using the FBI as a resource. The March 2020 letter to Newsom casting activists as potential terrorists was penned by the leaders of the California Farm Bureau Federation and Milk Producers Council. Those groups did not respond to requests for comment. As the bird flu outbreak ramped up in 2022 and beyond, the industry's claims that animal rights activists could spread disease were echoed by government officials, emails obtained by Property of the People show. Animal rights activists say the claims by law enforcement and industry groups that activists are spreading disease have had real-world consequences. In California, college student Zoe Rosenberg faces up to 5-and-a-half years in prison for taking part in what movement members describe as an 'open rescue' of four chickens from a Sonoma County farm. 'It's always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists.' Rosenberg, a member of Direct Action Everywhere, has been identified by name in monitoring reports from the Animal Agriculture Alliance. For the past year and a half, she has been on an ankle monitor and intense supervision after prosecutors alleged in a December 2023 court hearing that she was a 'biosecurity risk' because of ongoing bird flu outbreaks. Rosenberg said last week she was taken aback by the similar allegations contained in previously private emails between law enforcement and industry. 'Instead of taking responsibility for what they are doing, they are trying to blame us. Of course, it's always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists or framed as terrorists,' she said. 'It just all feels backwards.'
The Intercept
a day ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
How The Korean Right Turned MAGA Ahead of Tomorrow's Election
The elderly vendor doesn't speak English, except for one phrase. 'I love Trump,' she says softly, smiling as she points to a row of glossy campaign buttons. Donald Trump's face gleams beside mugs featuring South Korea's recently impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, cradling puppies. Nearby, a man in his 30s unfurls an American flag that billows like a sail. Placards reading 'Stop the steal!' echo slogans from the January 6 U.S. Capitol riots. When the speaker — a man in his 50s wearing a red cap — ends with a triumphant 'Amen,' hands shoot into the air like it's a Pentecostal revival. For a moment, it could be hard to tell what country we're in, were it not for the Korean flags waving just as high as the American ones. We're in Seoul , specifically the Hongdae area, better known for its progressive crowd and art scene. But on this humid Tuesday in mid-April, one week after Yoon's impeachment, a blocked-off road near Hongdae's main roundabout is packed with around 3,000 conservatives: many of them elderly, but joined by younger men livestreaming and young women raising their fists in unison. Pro-Yoon rallies marked by MAGA hats and American flags have erupted weekly since January, after the former president — who was elected in 2022 by a razor-thin margin — declared martial law in December 2024. Claiming his actions were necessary to thwart a supposed North Korean threat, Yoon deployed troops to block a parliamentary vote. The backlash was swift: He was impeached in April and now awaits trial for inciting insurrection, a charge that still carries the death penalty on paper. Since then, however, his movement has grown louder — and somehow more American. Just a week after his impeachment, Yoon himself appeared in a red cap that read 'Make Korea Great Again.' On June 3, voters will elect his replacement. There's no runoff or transition period: The winner takes office immediately. The race pits two opposites against each other: Kim Moon-soo, a Yoon loyalist representing the People Power Party, and Democratic Party of Korea leader Lee Jae-myung. Lee is likely to win. Just before early voting began Friday, a final poll had him ahead by a wide margin: 49.2 percent to Kim's 36.8. A Democratic victory would mark a sharp break from Yoon's hard-line rule and usher in progressive reforms almost overnight. But still, the demonstrations continue. In Seoul's plazas, thousands chant 'Yoon Again!' every week, even though legally he can't return to office. For them, this isn't just about party politics. It's a crusade: a distinctly Korean version of the MAGA mythos, fueled by stolen-election conspiracies, evangelical zeal, and Cold War-era fears. At another protest on a Saturday afternoon in late May, about 30 die-hard demonstrators — some in military-style outfits — have already gathered on a barricaded stretch of road outside Seoul National University Station. The rally won't begin for another hour. A giant LED screen is being assembled, and Vivaldi's 'Winter' blares from concert-grade speakers. A woman in her 70s emerges from the subway wearing beige slacks and a gray sweater. At first glance, she looks like any other Seoul grandmother — until she pauses on the sidewalk, opens her tote bag, and transforms. First, she dons a red cap with 'Trump' stitched across the back. Then, a red vest. Finally, a scarf reading 'Make Korea Great Again.' Two other women in identical outfits spot her and wave like they're reuniting at a church picnic. The uniforms aren't official — but they might as well be. Women gathered at a pro-Yoon Suk Yeol rally on May 17, 2025, in Seoul. Photo: Janet Lie Joseph Yi, a political scientist at Hanyang University in Seoul, says that while American flags have long been a fixture at South Korean conservative rallies — symbols of Cold War alliance and trust in U.S. military protection — the adoption of MAGA imagery is new. It's specifically tied to Yoon's downfall and reflects a belief that, like Trump, Yoon was removed by progressive elites under illegitimate pretenses. In a January op-ed, written before Yoon was removed from office, Yi described Trump's 2024 reelection as a 'January 6 resurrection': a comeback from scandal and legal peril. At the time, many Yoon supporters believed he could follow a similar path. Trump, after all, had survived two impeachments and remained in the political arena. But Yoon's impeachment actually led to his removal. Still, his supporters fill the streets, insisting he can — and must — return. Just past the main stage, a man in his 40s grips a 10-foot American flag like a staff. His red cap, slightly too tight, pushes his ears out sideways. 'Only Trump can bring Yoon back and save South Korea,' he tells me without hesitation. Even before the impeachment, protesters were appealing directly to Trump to intervene and help Yoon. Trump has yet to respond. 'Many don't support Trump's tariff nationalism, but they embrace him culturally,' Yi says. Trump slapped Korean goods with a 25 percent import tax, yet there's little resentment here. What draws them in, protesters say, is his tough stance on China. Across the barricaded street, people chant 'No China!' in unison as placards with red Xs over Xi Jinping's face sway above the crowd. A woman presses a button into my hand: 'Out with Communism and the CCP.' That China is South Korea's largest trading partner doesn't undercut the protesters' worldview — it confirms it. To them, Beijing's economic reach is proof of creeping control. Past the merch tables, a man in his 30s paces in office slacks. When I ask why he's here, he barely looks up. 'The opposition worked with the Chinese Communist Party to kick Yoon out,' he says. 'Just like they made Trump lose in 2020 and helped Biden win. They're trying to destroy him.' Nearly every protester echoed this narrative. Though unproven, conspiracies like these flourish on South Korea's ultra-conservative YouTube channels. Just as Trump's stolen election lie was amplified by a right-wing media machine that helped fuel the Capitol riot, Yoon's claim of North Korean interference — used to justify his 2024 martial law attempt — was seized on by K-MAGA streamers. Viewership spiked in December, and many creators raked in thousands through YouTube's Super Chats: a feature that lets fans pay to highlight messages during livestreams, turning conspiracy into both community and income. Yoon hasn't distanced himself from them; he's embraced them. He invited Lee Bong-gyu, one of the most prominent streamers with nearly 1 million followers, to his 2022 inauguration and still encourages supporters to keep livestreaming. At the rallies, you see lesser-known streamers in action: mostly men, a few middle-aged women, with selfie sticks raised like antennae. Some narrate like sports commentators. One young man chants into a megaphone with one hand while filming himself with the other. Everyone's livestreaming, uploading, watching themselves watch. Toward the barricades, as the speakers blast the South Korean national anthem, an older man in a faded veterans' cap salutes with shaky precision. His T-shirt says 'U.S.-R.O.K Alliance.' He's not alone. Just behind him, a gray-haired woman with a cane wipes her eyes. An elderly couple stands side by side, hands to their hearts. He hums along to the anthem; she mouths every word, her eyes closed like she's in church. Many here are in their 60s and 70s, shaped by the aftermath of the Korean War. They came of age in a South Korea defined by division: North vs. South, communism vs. democracy, China vs. the U.S. For them, this framework never really faded. Kim Moon-soo, the conservative candidate, wants stronger national security against North Korean threats by acquiring more retaliatory weapons — such as ballistic missiles. He's also wary of China, advocating for a tougher stance and closer military ties with the U.S. instead of engagement with Beijing. The front-runner in the presidential race, Lee Jae-myung, offers a sharp contrast: He wants to repair ties with China, which deteriorated under Yoon's administration, and restore dialogue with North Korea. But to the crowd here, that isn't diplomacy. It's betrayal. According to Andy Wondong Lee, a political scientist at University of California, Irvine, the tension goes deeper than military threats or diplomacy. 'It's a battle over South Korea's national identity and founding myth,' he says. That myth, Lee explains, goes back to Rhee Syngman — the country's first president — who envisioned South Korea as a Christian, anti-communist democracy modeled after the United States. 'For his modern-day ideological heirs, progressive forces are not just political opponents — they are seen as historical usurpers, illegitimate inheritors to the nation's founding.' This legacy helps explain why American-style MAGA rhetoric resonates so strongly. Both movements are fueled by fears of civilizational collapse and elite betrayal. But in South Korea, it's less about race or religion and more about reclaiming a Cold War-era narrative of national legitimacy. These groups reject feminism and LGBTQ+ rights, seeing themselves as part of a global conservative front. By adopting American symbols, they align with others who feel left behind by progressive change — a shared sense of victimhood that, as Lee puts it, fuels and justifies their resistance. Most of Yoon's hardcore base comes from evangelical circles, where politics and faith are intertwined. At rallies, the religious energy is palpable. Just beyond the crowd, a group of older women form a prayer circle: heads bowed, one reading aloud from a pocket Bible. 'Amen,' they murmur in unison. Nearby, teens sing along to gospel ballads blaring from the speakers. A girl in a red ribbon hands out church flyers like she's evangelizing salvation and state. 'For these groups, this isn't about policy — it's about good versus evil,' Lee explains. South Korean evangelicals, like their American counterparts, mobilize entire church networks to campaign for conservative candidates. Elections are framed as spiritual battles. This worldview has deep roots. Christianity first flourished in northern Korea, and many believers fled south during the Korean War to escape communism. They brought with them a strong anti-communist, pro-American ethos that still animates the right today. Among their most vocal leaders is Pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon, who praised Yoon's martial law attempt as 'a gift from God to the Korean church.' In a recently surfaced video, he orders physical punishment for church members who failed to recruit enough attendees for a pro-Kim Moon-soo rally ahead of the June 3 election. It would be a mistake to dismiss this movement as a fringe spasm that will fade after the vote, according to political observers. 'If Lee Jae-myung wins,' Andy Wondong Lee says, 'Yoon supporters are likely to radicalize further. Expect loud, immediate claims of election fraud from hard-line supporters.'
The Intercept
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
The Futile Quest to Build a 'Liberal Joe Rogan'
For months, pundits have decried the absence of a 'Joe Rogan of the left' — an online media figure who can galvanize young men to support Democrats in the way that popular right-wing creators like Rogan, Adin Ross, and the NELK Boys have done for President Donald Trump. Now, it appears that Democratic operatives have a $20 million plan to build such a figure. The proposal, titled 'Speaking With American Men: A Strategic Plan,' from Ilyse Hogue, the former president of the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, and John Della Volpe, polling director for the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, is one of several pitches floating around in Democratic policy spaces aimed at making up ground with demographics the party lost in 2024. The plan was immediately panned online by critics who argued that young men would view this type of approach as inauthentic. In the last election, young white men swung aggressively in the direction of Trump, voting for him by a 28-point margin, after supporting Joe Biden in the last election. Online media has largely been credited with the shift, particularly among young white men. In an analysis of 320 of the most popular online shows across platforms such as Youtube, Rumble, and TikTok, Media Matters found that right-leaning shows were significantly more popular, accounting for roughly 82% percent of the total following of online shows analyzed. It also found that 9 out of 10 of the most followed online shows were right-leaning. Evidence suggests that young men are absorbing what these far-right streamers are sharing. A survey ahead of the election from the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice found that more than 40 percent of young men trust one or more misogynistic voices online. The plan would raise $20 million from Democratic donors, which the project's leadership has reportedly already begun to collect, to study the 'syntax, language, and content' that's popular among young men in online spaces, then develop content that spreads an 'aspirational vision of manhood that aligns with Democratic values without alienating other core constituencies' and partner with influencers. Experts on masculinity and gender in politics argue that while it's good to research why young men left the party, investing millions to recreate a 'Joe Rogan of the left' fundamentally misunderstands why young men moved so rapidly to the right — and misses an opportunity to woo them back. 'To try to create the next Joe Rogan, it's [misguided],' said Gary Barker, president and CEO of Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. 'Because it's going to come across as preaching and a kind of lab-designed android.' Last year, Barker and Equimundo released a report on the 'Manosphere,' tracking how young men engage in online communities and why. Barker's research suggests that young men are attracted to these spaces out of a desire for community and for someone to speak directly to them about their social, political, and economic anxieties. Right-wing influencers and Republicans fill that void, stoking those anxieties and creating a useful scapegoat in women, minorities, and immigrants. 'They've talked to men about their feeling of anxiety and said, 'You're right to feel anxious. You're not the problem. Tear it all down,'' said Barker. However, Barker said that Democrats shouldn't be trying to recreate that strategy even if it would work for them. 'You don't want a Democratic Mr. Beast,' he said. 'It's horribly manipulative. It's exploitative of people. I'm not sure if we can get something so big online that doesn't follow a playbook that's either exploitative, exaggerated, or harm-inducing. And if we do, I think it's going to feel like it's preaching to you.' If Democrats want to win back young men, they'll have to prove to them that their economic and social issues matter to them, said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of 'The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy.' Deckman's research found that young men's political shift toward Republicans was heavily influenced by the economy. 'A lot of young men feel that the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for them. And the Democratic Party certainly didn't have an answer for how their policies or their vision might help them get a better paying job,' she said. While Deckman's research suggests that young men felt chided by the Democratic Party instead of helped, nostalgia for the economy under Trump was a significant factor in their shift. 'For a lot of young men, especially those that don't pay a lot of attention to politics, they remember the economy being better under the first Trump administration,' she said. A more populist economic message could resonate with this group of voters, argued Deckman. 'There's an economic blueprint that can emerge that is less elitist and less about giving tax breaks to billionaires. I think that has a broader reach, but for whatever reasons, I think a lot of young men aren't hearing that message from Democrats, and I kind of struggle with it. Is it a messenger issue, or is it they're just not receptive to it?' she said. Barker argues that the real problem is that Democrats have been trying to sell a 'piecemeal' approach to economic issues that feels automatically inadequate for the issues we're facing. 'Piecemeal compensatory social policies don't work. I mean, they work for some segments of the population, but they don't take on the root of what's driving so much of the inequality, which is leading to white men's death of despair, and has always been part of people of color's economic challenges,' said Barker. Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Stacey Abrams, said instead of propping up a creator who checks the perfect ideological boxes, Democrats should embrace the online spaces for young men that already exist. For example, creators like Hasan Piker, a left-leaning creator with over 5.5 million subscribers on Twitch and broad popularity among young men, has largely been ignored by the Democratic establishment. Piker's political content leans farther left, sharing a populist economic message paired with strong criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Israel. 'There is a tendency to shy away from those spaces because our favorite thing to do in the Democratic Party is to, pardon my language, shit on the left,' said Smith. Aside from entering authentic online spaces that already connect with men, both Smith and Barker said the most important way to reach young voters is in person. 'We get the best out of young men [when] we actually go and see them face to face,' said Barker. Smith pointed toward the success of youth conservative movements like Turning Point USA as an example of how ground game can make a huge difference with the groups Democrats are trying to win back. 'I honestly believe it would be better for us to have a bus tour than to spend a bunch of money on research that is cold,' she said, 'Turning Point did that sort of investment where they did a tour to different college campuses, and that's how they got in contact with these young people.' Republicans have created a space for young men to blow off steam, Barker said. Now, Democrats need to find a way to offer them something better. 'Trump did not offer men anything that will make their life better,' he said. 'What he did is he offered them a place to yell at the wind for a little while. It doesn't seem like it should be that tough for us on the left to at least pull them in, out of a space where they're just yelling at the wind.'
