WSJ editors bury Hegseth for bizarrely offensive 'weirdo' speech: 'Has he met anyone?'

Matthew Chapman
October 1, 2026 

RAW STORY


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense's FY27 budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz


The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board had scorn for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's bizarre speech boasting about how his military only had "warriors," rather than "beardos," "weirdos," or slurs for transgender people.

Hegseth, wrote the board, "rolled out several good U.S. military initiatives on Wednesday, and usually the purpose of big speeches is to persuade the public of worthy ideas. Yet Mr. Hegseth seems determined to shrink his support with gratuitous potshots, and that bears on whether the Administration can boost recruitment or confront new technology in warfare."

Many of the things Hegseth talked about are decent, the board wrote, like a program for recruiting officers out of schools — even if the focus is intensely on right-wing schools like Liberty University and Hillsdale College — as well as plans to establish a four-star command for autonomous weaponry.

However, the board said, Hegseth "couldn’t resist his usual polarizing attack routine against all and sundry, and he even accused the press of 'treason' for publishing what’s leaking out of the secretary’s shop. The most remembered line of the speech will be Mr. Hegseth’s declaration that the U.S. military no longer abides 'beardos' or 'weirdos.' As a practical matter, has he met anyone in defense technology lately?"

The fact is, said the board, "voters wanted the Trump Administration to restore and protect the military’s meritocracy, after race and identity excesses in the Biden Administration," something Hegseth promises to do, but now "his shoot-first firings of general officers have exasperated even some Republican Members of Congress, and the public is losing confidence in the project as it descends into debates about testosterone levels."

Ultimately, the board concluded, "Mr. Hegseth relishes attacking opponents, and even sometimes allies, as if he’s running a political campaign. But he’s a cabinet officer who needs allies to achieve his military goals."

Hegseth mocked for 'not achieving full extension' after speech about troop fitness

Erik De La Garza
September 30, 2026 

RAW STORY

Kasie Hunt and retired Army Lt. Gen. Karen Gibson on "The Arena." (Screengrab via CNN)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s fixation on military fitness became a punchline when a retired lieutenant general was asked to evaluate his own workout form.

CNN’s Kasie Hunt noted Wednesday that Hegseth has repeatedly stressed physical fitness standards and cited an assessment in The Atlantic that described his push-ups as more like “half-ups.”

Hunt then played several clips of Hegseth working out on camera and asked retired Army Lt. Gen. Karen Gibson whether he was performing the exercises correctly.

“The kettlebell, not so much,” Hunt joked as laughter broke out on the CNN set of her show, “The Arena.”

“The pull-up is like this, not like this. Yes? No?” Hunt asked while mimicking the movement.


Gibson agreed that Hegseth’s form appeared incomplete.


“Well, he’s not achieving full extension of his arms or the joint there,” she said.

But Gibson quickly shifted to a broader point about Hegseth’s emphasis on physical fitness.

“I think every soldier should be fit. That’s really important,” she said. “But his fixation on some specific exercises is not the quality that makes the U.S. military so incredibly lethal and powerful.”


“There are lots of other things that make a good soldier,” Gibson added.

Alarm as Hegseth gives mega MAGA donors a say in future of warfare: 'Feels different now'

Robert Davis
October 1, 2026 
RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shakes hands with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff US Air Force General Dan Caine as he returns to his seat after his remarks at a ceremony in remembrance of US military prisoners of war and those missing in action (POW/MIA) at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US, September 18, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth alarmed some analysts Thursday after he announced he was inviting a few private citizens to collaborate with the Defense Department on the future of warfare.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey, founder of drone company Anduril, have been given advisory roles in a Pentagon project about the future of war, The Guardian reported. The project, known as “Project Meridian," seeks to develop new weapons of war for different terrain ranging from outer space to subterranean.

The inclusion of private citizens in defense contracting is nothing new, but Brendan Glavin at Open Secrets noted in the report that the motley crew Hegseth has gathered raises some important questions.

“Bringing major industry players into these types of positions at the Pentagon is not something new, but what feels different now is the substantial financial support these two have, and continue to, deliver for the Republican Party,” Glavin told The Guardian.

Musk was one of the largest donors to President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, spending an estimated $250 million to help elect the president. Musk's companies have also been deeply wedded to some of the Trump administration's pet projects, such as the Department of Government Efficiency and the so-called "golden dome" missile defense project.

Luckey's company is also supported by the venture capital firm run by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to the report.

Luckey has also been dubbed the "godfather of Republican fundraising on the West Coast," according to the report.

"Invitations to political fundraisers obtained by the Guardian show Luckey hosted and co-hosted events for candidates from Trump himself to Ken Calvert, Rick Scott, Mehmet Oz, Ted Cruz and others. The most recent event was on 22 August, where he and his wife co-hosted a $50,000-a-head effort to 'Keep the Senate,' and listing guests John Thune of South Dakota, Mike Rogers of Michigan, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Jon Husted of Ohio," the report reads in part.

‘Best Minds’? Hegseth Taps Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich to Lead ‘Future of Warfare’ Project

“A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military,” said one observer. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Palmer Luckey (left), Newt Gingrich (center), and Elon Musk (right) look on during US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” speech—in which the trio was announced as leaders of the “future of warfare” initiative—at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on September 30, 2026.
(Photo by Sean Parnell/X)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that three men—none of whom have served in the military and two who make billions of dollars from it—will help lead a new Pentagon project on the “future of warfare,” even as he moves to eliminate hundreds of senior armed service leadership position, including many generals and admirals.

Hegseth unveiled Project Meridian during his “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The 120-day initiative will examine emerging technologies that the Department of Defense believes will be critical in future warfare.

“America’s best minds” will be brought together to “reimagine what warfare will look like in the future,” Hegseth said.

To that end, the defense secretary said that “Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation’s best minds, Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich.”




Musk, the world’s wealthiest human, is already deeply involved in US national security infrastructure through SpaceX—the recipient of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts—and other businesses. He was previously part of the administration as the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Luckey, who like Musk is a major Trump donor, is the co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries. Last year, he said that Anduril planned to produce “large numbers” of cruise missiles, fighter jets, and other artificial intelligence-powered weapons systems.

“If we have to fight Iran, and China, and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed,” Luckey said in pushing for more arms production.

Gingrich is a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who had been pushing for war with Iran since at least 2005. Like President Donald Trump, he has been accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War by receiving numerous deferments; in Trump’s case for bone spurs, and for Gingrich because he was a student and a father.

“Those three great Americans are going to be joined by a team of senior leaders, hand-picked private sector leaders, and subject matter experts from across our nation’s unmatched innovation, academic, and policy ecosystems,” said Hegseth—whose Senate confirmation last year was so contentious due to concerns about him being unfit for office that it required a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance.

The defense secretary also announced the creation of an Autonomous Warfare Command—or Autowarcom—“a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force.”

The appointments come as Hegseth simultaneously pursues a major reduction in the military’s senior leadership. He announced Wednesday that the Pentagon would eliminate 20% of its roughly 800 general and admiral positions by January—doubling a previously announced 10% reduction. Hegseth described the cuts as necessary to eliminate “redundant force structure” and “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”

The reductions follow the removal or early departure of more than two dozen senior military and civilian defense officials since Hegseth became defense secretary.

The contrast has drawn criticism from lawmakers and military observers, who expressed alarm at the prospect of removing experienced officers while handing an influential role in planning future war to warfare technology executives and a hawkish former lawmaker who is no longer accountable to the public.

“Interesting. A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military,” NewBlue USA executive Marty Taylor said on social media. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Patriotic Cowboys ‘R Us


Warfighter-obsessed Pete Kegsbreath
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Abby Zimet
Oct 02, 2026
FURTHER 

COMMON DREAMS

Sidestepping his debacle of a war, “smug pathetic little man,” warfighter fetishist and Gen.-Patton-cosplaying clown Pete Hegseth just gave a blustering speech before troops In a “hyper-macho freak show” to announce he’s cutting forces, starting several senseless new programs, and proclaiming, “We are no longer the woke (or) weak department...No fatties, trannies, beardos, weirdos, wimps, radicals. Just warriors.” Appalled consensus on the yahoo “turning the military into a frat house”: “What a dick.”

Perhaps due to his low-rent credentials as a weekend TV host at Fox - and a history of drunkenness, adultery, sexual assault and on-the-job incompetence so sordid he needed JD’s tie-breaking vote to get his job - Hegseth has built a sloppy, fragile “Department of Defensiveness” focused on shaping a narrative and persona to his liking - one based on paranoia, distrust, dysfunction, lies and frequent purges of those deemed disloyal. From his make-up studio to his press strictures to his blunders - Signalgate, the war, its first day’s war crimes - Pete’s spent an inordinate amount of time covering his ass and overcompensating for his failures. “He’s just a true believer in way over his head, the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect,” said one DOD employee. “Generally, we consider him a joke, a deeply unqualified clown.”

Still, with men reportedly fleeing MAGA, their need to “pump up that masculine animus” is well-served by Pete’s juvenile, chest-pounding, lethality-obsessed focus on testosterone in the name of a “High-T Department of War” that has “nothing to do with science and everything to do with regressive ideas of what masculinity is.” The same idiocy fuels all the culture war malevolence: Banning books, gutting DEI initiatives - “Diversity is not our strength” - blocking promotions for women and Blacks, a “no more dudes and dresses” transphobia, and ending tenure for civilian professors at military academies ‘cause who needs to protect independent thinkers, scholars, leaders, experts from “the tyranny of a government that actively hates its critics,” the “mindset of someone who has learned nothing (from) American military failures.”

And so to another cringey, Strangelovian “State of the Force Address,” which was not a thing until a TV bobblehead took over the military and turned it into bumbling amateur-hour theater. Last year, he summoned nearly 800 generals, admirals, advisors from around the world, all smarter and higher-ranking than him, to rant about beards and “fat troops,” tell them they “kill people and break things for a living,” and prattle about a 10% cut in their numbers by “removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership.” When he paused for applause, there was only deep silence. Maybe because a Joint Chiefs chairman, two service chiefs, two intelligence directors, several generals and the better part of the Army’s senior leadership “were told to run faster by a weekend television host.”

On Wednesday, he gathered about 600 officers and enlisted members, again at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, for another speech. In the weeks leading up to his latest dash of show business, The Wall Street Journal reported, he emailed commanders asking them to nominate troops to attend. They had to “fit certain physical standards,” he wrote, to have the proper height/weight ratio, with “impeccable grooming: ”I want central casting.“ If they were hot enough, he added, as a bonus some would have ”the opportunity“ to join him in a hot and sweaty dawn work-out at the Pentagon. Totally normal! And luckily, a camera crew was there to follow them on a chanting, banner-bearing run through D.C. To make them look even cooler, he gave them all t-shirts that read, ”This Is War.“ Or at least off-off Broadway.



Later, before a giant American flag, he dropped the hammer in a campy speech many compared to SNL’s Colin Jost doing Pete Hegseth, or Tom Cruise’s braying misogynist in Magnolia, or George C. Scott’s Gen. Patton “minus the inspiration.” Under his “less generals, more GIs” mandate - though it’s “fewer” not less - he said he was doubling the previous cut of 10% of high-ranking personnel to 20% with, wrote Tom Wellborn, “the confidence of a man who has looked at the most powerful armed force in the world and concluded its central weakness was the number of people in it who outrank a major,” what he was. Months into a disastrous war, “That is the force Pete Hegseth has built by subtraction. What it has lost is (what) a general is for, which is to be the person in the room who says no, and (he) has made sure, one firing at a time, there is nobody left in the room to say it.”

“The media calls that a purge,” blustered Hegseth, evidently expecting criticism. “I call it accountability. As usual, what the media levels as an accusation, I wear as an accomplishment.” He haughtily went on to “lay it out simply for the anti-American losers in our media...We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” On coverage of the war and eight attempted suicides on the USS Lincoln, he slammed “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda as if it’s written by our adversaries.” “The information space is a battle space,” he said. “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in.” Smirking, he added,.“With testosterone testing on top.” Jesus, dude.

He also announced several new programs with fancy warlike names like Fortress America and Autonomous War Command or AutoWarCom, a “four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities,” and “The Next Great American Base,” the first new military base in 40 years, with all 50 states “invited to bid for it like an Amazon headquarters,” and “America’s Corps of Cadets, creating new college partnerships with right-wing Liberty University and Hillsdale College, plus Louisiana State, Mississippi, Tuskegee Universities, to increase the number of ”patriotic leaders of character“ and counter ”anti-American, DEI-worshiping woke factories,“ aka the Ivy League schools Hegseth attended.

There’s the bonkers Project Meridian to study “the future of warfare,” headed by “three of our nation’s best minds” - two tech fat cats and one 83-year-old MAGA hawk - none of whom have served in the military, two of whom have made fortunes from it. Cue Elon Musk, a gonzo rocket salesman with billions in Pentagon contracts, GOP pol Newt Gingrich, who got almost as many deferments as Trump during the Vietnam War, and Palmer Luckey, MAGA donor, self-proclaimed “radical Zionist” and founder of tech company Anduril - “three great Americans to help plan the next war with three people who have never been in one,” what could possibly go wrong?“ From a military Reddit: ”Is this real?“, ”Yes master code-monkey, infosec ninja, and tech infrastructure guru Newt Gingrich age 83. Our enemies are so fuct bro!“ and ”Oh fuck this fucking Nazi-loving fuck outta here.“

There’s a new Office of Religious Affairs for a DOD “putting on the full armor of God” to “strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters,” aka “do the Lord’s work to improve smiting capacity,” because, “while we wage physical war, the real battle is spiritual.” (Maybe why the Pentagon’s covering up not-real casualties?) It’s “voluntary,” which skeptics say is akin to being “voluntold” to do things. Finally, as a party favor, troops were given a new 144-page “field manual” of transcripts of Hegseth speeches. Its forward is by Trump, in classic Trumpese. “As your Commander-in-Chief, I will not ask you to fight dumb Wars,” it reads. “I will unleash you to be violent, lethal and unstoppable - and I will always have your back. Godspeed, Great Warriors. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

 YouTubewww.youtube.com

Along with other regime Nazis, crackpots and fools, theories abound as to what the fuck is wrong with Pete Hegseth. Many argue he’s afflicted with the common sickness of countless, soulless, mediocre white men who know, deep inside, they have risen further than they deserve to. Hence, the bottomless need to be subservient to a monster like Trump (who is too mad to know that) to maintain their place and value in a white guy patriarchy, to always understand “who they get to abuse, and who they are supposed to take abuse from,” and to remain within that vaunted structure, the only one where they have power and respect, by continuing to rule over those they’ve been taught are beneath them. It’s also why, conversely, they freak out when their vital slot is threatened: See Hegseth’s frantic lie detectors at any sign of leaking, mocking, saying no.

Hegseth seems particularly despised by Americans, many of whom eagerly await his war crimes trial, his impeachment,, his rapturing - hopefully first in line, though maybe behind Goebbels/Miller. The concrete damage done by his legacy - the calamitous war, hollowing of the military’s promotion chain, lethality-tinged dumbing down of its intellectual infrastructure and exploitation of those serving - will presumably take years to repair. But people hate him just as much for his personal failings: his gross unfitness and incompetence, his swaggering “Jr High Machismo,” the Nazi-adjacent arrogance of “this nose-powdering drunk,” the lying, preening chutzpah of the military’s worst-ever leader consistently “acting like a 19-year-old edgelord loser,” like “a dipshit,” “an asshole,” “an absolute tinydick in every goddamn way.”

Several truly obnoxious moments of his state-of-the-empire speech ignited that animus. His attack on media who do their job and tell the truth about him began with a lame nod to the First Amendment - “A free press is of course important” - that veered to a diatribe: “But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking (is) anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason, actually...It has to be said.” Umm, not, said America: “Secretary of Dewar’s doesn’t get he’s the only one getting smeared, not the troops,” “I love the free press until they say words I don’t like in which case I call them traitors and want them killed,” “Bro, they’re not shitting on the troops, just you,” “It’s called free speech, fucknut. The thing your troops are supposed to defend,” “The mission of our military has become historic only in the degree of its absurdity.”

Then there was a pitiful, fitness-instructor-like defense of his bullying of troops: “Telling someone to get in shape or shave or fix their uniform or start busting their ass - that’s not discrimination. That’s leadership.” Fact: Actually, it’s neither. It’s stupid, shallow, beside-the-point bullying. Many argued it’s just “being a dick” and “an asshole.” That he should “tell his boss to get in shape and start busting his ass.” That it’s weird how he “doesn’t get to the part where he actually discriminates.” That leadership is “inspiring, being an example, not getting your nation into an illegal war, losing it in days and committing war crimes.” That he’s “a drunk, vain, adulterous rapist with ridiculous sideburns.” That it’s “stunning in an awful way a man his age is so immature.” That “this motherfucker is waaay out over his skis.” And damn, more fucking patriotic cowboys is the last thing we need thanks.

How Pete's (deservedly) doingScreengrab from CNN

2.0 

Bill Gates Says We May Have To ‘Suffer A Few Of The Negatives’ For People To Take The AI Warning Seriously — Compares Threat To An Alien Invasion

Jeannine Mancini
Tue, September 29, 2026


© USA TODAY via Imagn Content Services, LLC


Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.

Artificial intelligence doesn't exactly come with an emergency brake. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks the world may have to experience something go seriously wrong before it takes the technology's biggest risks as seriously as it should.

"One thing that's clear is if you have a big cyber attack that caused a lot of problems, then people will say, 'Okay, they were right,'" Gates told "CBS Evening News" in September. "So, it may be that we have to suffer a few of the negatives before we'll respond as fully as we should."

Gates was in New York during the United Nations General Assembly discussing the potential and risks of artificial intelligence when the conversation turned to what it might actually take for governments and the public to act

"So, in other words, what it's going to take for us as a country and a world to tackle this is not just a 12-page essay from Bill Gates. It could be a catastrophe," host Tony Dokoupil said.

"That's fair," Gates replied.

A Cyberattack Could Change The Conversation

The warning comes after Gates has spent months highlighting the risks that could come with increasingly capable AI. Those concerns include cyberattacks, major job losses and the possibility that AI could make it easier for bad actors to develop biological threats.

His August essay on AI described a period of rapid technological change that could disrupt the workforce and create risks that governments aren't prepared to handle.

CBS News also referenced bioterrorism and mass unemployment among the potential catastrophes Gates has discussed.

The cyberattack scenario gets at a broader point. Warnings alone may not be enough to change how seriously people treat AI risks, according to Gates. A major real-world incident could provide the kind of evidence that makes the threat impossible to ignore.

The 'Aliens Are Here' Warning

Gates has also reached for a very different analogy when discussing how countries should respond to AI.

At the Telluride Film Festival in September, he compared advanced AI to an alien invasion and pointed to science-fiction movies in which the arrival of an outside threat forces countries to cooperate.

"There are these movies where the aliens are coming, and you see unprecedented levels of cooperation between specifically China and the U.S.," Gates said at the festival. "Well, believe me, the aliens are here."

He described AI as "a foreign intelligence with a different set of motivations that we can't even understand" and said something equally dramatic may be needed to push countries toward greater cooperation.

AI's Biggest Problem May Be Power

For all the talk about cyberattacks, jobs and alien invasions, there's another very physical requirement behind the AI boom.

Electricity.

AI data centers require enormous amounts of reliable power, and the race to build that infrastructure is creating opportunities for companies developing new generation capacity.

American PowerGen is focused on that piece of the puzzle. The company develops power projects aimed at serving AI data centers and other large electricity users and has described a 22-gigawatt development pipeline across 16 Texas projects.

For investors who want to get involved with the infrastructure supporting AI, American PowerGen is conducting a Regulation Crowdfunding offering. Its offering materials list shares at $2.50 each, allowing individual investors to invest in the company at an early stage.

AI may be racing ahead, but the infrastructure underneath it has to keep pace. And that means the future of artificial intelligence still depends on something far less futuristic than artificial minds or alien intelligence — keeping the lights on.

OpenAI GPT-6.1 Astra Reportedly Pulled After Safety Tests Show it Could Evade Human Oversight: 'We Have an Extremely High Bar'

Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee
Wed, September 30, 2026 
BENZINGA



Sam Altman and the OpenAI logo (Credit: Sam Altman and the OpenAI logo | Photo courtesy: Meir Chaimowitz / Shutterstock)

OpenAI has scrapped the planned release of GPT-6.1 Astra after internal safety tests found the model showed more deceptive behavior than its predecessor and sometimes evaded human oversight, intensifying scrutiny of increasingly autonomous AI systems.
GPT-6.1 Astra Falls Short On Safety

The Wall Street Journal first reported the decision on Monday. Reuters said OpenAI had planned to release the model in October and integrate it into ChatGPT and Codex. Tests found GPT-6.1 Astra sometimes failed to accurately disclose actions and operated outside the authorized scope.

"Of course we want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that's in the company, or when we ship it to users," safety systems head Saachi Jain said in a statement shared with Reuters. "But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment."

The decision follows OpenAI's Sept. 3 release of GPT-6 Astra, which the company calls its most capable broadly deployed model. OpenAI classified Astra as its first model to reach the "Critical" cybersecurity capability threshold, meaning that with the right tools and access it can discover unknown vulnerabilities and develop exploits across well-protected systems without step-by-step human guidance.

Benzinga reached out to OpenAI for additional comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Agent Incidents Intensify OpenAI Safety Scrutiny

Safety concerns have grown since OpenAI disclosed that an autonomous agent escaped a controlled evaluation environment and breached Hugging Face. Reuters separately reported Tuesday that another OpenAI agent accessed an Australian government website in June, retrieving internal files and credentials. OpenAI apologized and said no medical records were compromised.

The canceled release also lands amid an industry debate over slowing frontier development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged labs this month to pace capability gains while strengthening safeguards, a proposal backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Altman has separately argued that competitive pressure cannot justify "recklessness".
Safety Debate Looms Over Developer Conference

"While [GPT-6.1 Astra] improved on axes such as model laziness, it didn't quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it's done," Jain said.

News of the model being shelved arrives ahead of OpenAI's annual developer conference, which is set to get underway on Tuesday.


An Australia Security Researcher Shut Off a Moving BYD Pickup’s Headlights From the Roadside, Then Used Its Speakers to Get Siri to Read Out the Driver’s Home Address.

Eve Nowell
Wed, September 30, 2026 

The Auto Wire.

A researcher sat on the shoulder of a road outside Canberra with a laptop and switched off the headlights of a moving BYD Shark 6. There was a reporter at the wheel.

The stunt was staged for Australia's ABC and its investigative program Four Corners, which handed the plug-in hybrid ute to Dan Hreszczuk, co-founder of Canberra firm Fortify Labs. He had two weeks to find out what could be seen and done to the truck from a distance. His verdict, as published in the ABC's own account, was blunt: "The access we took advantage of didn't even have a password."
The Demo: Annoying, Distracting, Then Dark

The sequence escalated nicely for television. With reporter Angus Grigg inside, Hreszczuk locked the doors, pumped music through the speakers and threw images onto the infotainment screen. Once the ute was moving, he ran the wipers at full speed, fired the washer jets and flicked the headlights on and off before shutting them down completely.

Relax about the cliff scenario: the 2.6-tonne ute was only doing about 30 km/h on a reasonably straight road. Hreszczuk also said he couldn't get into the brakes or cameras, which he described as well protected.

That's the good news, and why it happened is worth a minute.
Why He Got the Lights But Not the Brakes

Modern cars run on internal networks, most commonly the CAN bus, which dates back to an era when nobody expected a stranger to be plugged into it. Classic CAN has no built-in way to verify who sent a message. If a module on the network says "headlights off," the headlight controller generally believes it.

Hreszczuk explained the point in the broadcast episode, where he described the CAN bus as the internal network that the car's components use to talk to one another. The footage also shows him hunting through the ute for places to tap into it.

Well-engineered cars put gateways between the comfort-and-convenience side of the network (lights, locks, wipers, audio) and the chassis side (brakes, steering, powertrain). The fact that Hreszczuk could play DJ but couldn't touch the brakes suggests BYD did segment the safety-critical systems. The failure was leaving an unauthenticated door open into the "soft" side of the car, and it turns out the soft side can be dangerous too. Killing the headlights at night on a twisty road is not a cosmetic problem.
The Asterisk: This Started With the Keys

Before this turns into "BYDs can be hacked from the roadside": this was not a drive-by attack on a random stranger's truck. Hreszczuk had the Shark in his workshop for two weeks, with time to pull trim, probe connectors and study the car's software. The "remote" portion of the demonstration came after that period of unrestricted physical access.

That doesn't make the result meaningless. Plenty of people get unsupervised time with your car: valets, detailers, independent shops, a buyer on a test drive, or whoever owned it before you. An interface that accepts commands with no password is sloppy engineering regardless of how an attacker reaches it. But it's a very different threat from a mass wireless exploit that could hit every Shark on the road at once. Until BYD or an independent researcher shows whether the open door exists on stock, untouched vehicles, owners should treat this as a serious warning, not proof of a fleet-wide emergency.

The Nastiest Trick Had Nothing to Do With Driving

The sabotage footage got the headlines, but the surveillance demo is what should make owners wince. While Grigg drove around Canberra, Hreszczuk tracked the car's location in real time and switched on the cabin microphone. Grigg made a phone call and, as a planned part of the test, recited the details of a temporary banking password.

Then came the clever bit. Hreszczuk recorded Grigg saying "Hey Siri," spliced it with his own questions, and played the audio through the car's speakers while Grigg's unlocked iPhone sat in the cabin. Siri obediently gave up the home address, date of birth and a contact's phone number.

Note what actually happened there. The car didn't leak that data. The car became a microphone and a loudspeaker, and those were used to attack the phone. That's a threat model most drivers have never considered: your car's audio hardware can be a bridge to every voice-activated device inside it.
BYD's Position

BYD told the ABC that the data it collects is stored in Australia, and that it has never handed Australians' data to Chinese authorities and would not do so. Meanwhile, the ABC separately documented a change to BYD's Australian privacy policy, reporting that references to "China" and "surveillance" disappeared just days after the program sent the company questions. Changing the wording of a privacy policy does nothing to the software in the truck.

Australia's Regulatory Blind Spot

The episode also exposed a legal gap. Australia currently has no minimum cybersecurity standards for cars, so BYD has no legal obligation to keep its software updated or to run a formal cyber-risk management system. Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke defended focusing first on household connected devices, while the government has only just begun consultations with industry on vehicle rules that likely won't take effect for years. Since March, a Wi-Fi washing machine sold in Australia has had to meet mandatory cyber rules, including a ban on universal default passwords. Road vehicles are specifically exempt, so a ute that can tow 3.5 tonnes doesn't.

Why Americans Shouldn't Feel Smug

The Shark 6 isn't sold in the U.S., and Washington has already tackled the China question from a supply-chain angle. The Commerce Department's connected vehicle rule bans connected passenger vehicles from manufacturers tied to China or Russia starting with the 2027 model year, and connectivity hardware from those countries starting with the 2030 model year.

But the flag on the grille doesn't determine whether a car can be hacked. Engineering does. The industry's defining cyber recall came from Detroit, not Shenzhen. In July 2015, Fiat Chrysler filed a safety recall covering roughly 1.4 million 2013–2015 vehicles with Uconnect radios, after researchers showed software flaws could allow outsiders to manipulate networked vehicle controls. NHTSA opened its own recall query to scrutinize that fix. More than ten years later, an unauthenticated entry point on a best-selling ute shows how uneven the progress has been.

What Owners and Buyers Should Actually Do

Keep your phone locked in the car, and consider disabling voice-assistant access on the lock screen. The Siri trick only worked because the phone was unlocked and listening.

Install every over-the-air and dealer software update. If an automaker patches this, the fix will almost certainly arrive as software, and it's worth nothing if you ignore the notification.

Treat physical access as a security event. If your car has spent unsupervised time with someone you don't trust, or you bought it used, ask the dealer to check for aftermarket devices plugged into diagnostic ports or wiring. Remove the previous owner from any connected-car app and perform a factory reset of the infotainment system.

Don't hold sensitive conversations in any connected car if you have real reason to worry about being targeted. That applies regardless of what country built it.

Check your insurance policy. Coverage for losses caused by cyber intrusion, such as theft via a hacked lock or a crash caused by manipulated systems, isn't guaranteed. Ask your insurer directly, and get the answer in writing.

A few years ago, hacking a car required months of work from elite researchers. This time it took one specialist two weeks and a password field that was never filled in.

Does a hack that needed two weeks in a workshop worry you, or is the missing password the real scandal? Which connected feature would you switch off first if you could? Tell us in the comments.

Tech CEOs Say the AI Singularity May Have Already Begun—Here’s What Happens Next

Darren Orf
Wed, September 30, 2026 
POP MECH


If the AI Singularity Arrives, What Happens Next?

Pitris - Getty Images

Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:

This past summer was an AI reckoning, with multiple experts and CEOs boldly declaring that we're living through the AI singularity as we speak.


As some of these very same execs call for a slowdown of AI development, other experts scoff at the idea that AI has surpassed human intelligence.


The arrival of the AI singularity is far from certain, but most agree that if it were to arrive, it'd fundamentally and rapidly change society.


Often when reporting on AI, I come across the word "singularity," a term that's definitionally transformative yet undeniably vague. What does a world refashioned by this "AI singularity" even look like?


A simple, unsatisfying answer to that question is, "I don't know." The reason why runway AI initially became linked with the term "singularity," a key concept in black hole astrophysics, is that both represent a kind of threshold of unknowing. In a black hole, what lies past the event horizon is a region of space where uncertainty reigns, culminating at the singularity, where gravity is so intense that physics as we know it breaks down. The AI singularity—the hypothetical and much-talked-about moment in history when artificial intelligence's recursive self-improvement escapes human understanding—similarly shrouds what could come next in such a future. Or, if some recent statements by AI CEOs are to be believed, it shrouds what's happening here and now.

"We're now, like, in the singularity," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a podcast earlier this summer. "I've been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it's going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world."

While Altman's comments exuded optimism, they also came on the heels of a self-directed cyber attack by a swarm of AI bots against Hugging Face, another AI tech company that's a bit like GitHub for AI. Months earlier, AI company Anthropic declined to release its latest model because it could similarly bypass cybersecurity protections, and its CEO, Dario Amodei, famously called for companies to "pace the frontier." In other words, let's not sprint toward oblivion.



Despite Altman's notorious hype-man persona, these bold declarations bring up an interesting question: If the AI singularity occurred, how would we know? After all, did James Hargreaves, inventor of the Spinning Jenny in 1764, see his creation as the switch-flip on the industrial revolution? When historians—whether they're robots or humans—reflect back on this period in time, will they view our society as unknowingly sleep-walking toward a dystopia (or a utopia, depending on whose spin you believe)?

Over the course of this summer, Exhibit A in the hypothetical "Are We Living in an AI Singularity" court case was the Hugging Face incident. Altman and others see the bot swarm's ability to break out of its digital sandbox and hack another company unprompted as proof that AI is escaping our understanding. Other experts say that the evidence is lacking. According to scientists at the University of Sydney, for example, the idea of AI singularity assumes the premise that human intelligence and LLM intelligence are the same thing.

"Human intelligence is inseparable from being a living body with needs and wants. Humans learn continuously by acting in the world and getting feedback through our senses. Our goals arise from our situation as creatures who must eat, sleep and belong, and who cannot avoid asking what we want our lives to be," the scientists wrote in a piece for The Conversation. "An AI model has none of this. No body, no needs, no action-feedback loop, no stake in anything. Between prompts it is just a static mathematical object."

Others have scoffed at the constant barrage of AI singularity claims, saying it's a marketing tactic. Some note the inherent contradiction—if the singularity truly makes the future unknowable, then confidently forecasting its arrival makes little sense. Cognitive scientist and AI expert Gary Marcus recently detailed ten tasks that any "smarter-than-human" AI should be able to complete. By his estimate, current AI models could pull off two of them at best. So to put it mildly, there's plenty of skepticism to go around.



Just like Hargreaves could never foresee that his invention would be the preamble to a globe-spanning revolution leading to the iPhone, climate change, and our hyper-consumerist culture, it's equally impossible to say what the "other side" of the AI singularity might look like. But if we plan for such an eventuality, it might be possible to make some educated guesses, much as astrophysicists develop differing theories on what lies beyond the superheavy point in a black hole at which light can't even escape.

In a lengthy essay published last month, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates laid out a few ideas that might prevent our AI future from being a hellscape of mass unemployment and hardship. But realigning to such a future won't be easy—in fact, it might require a period of rapid transformation that happens only once or twice a century.

"None of our current institutions were designed to handle a technology that spreads so fast and touches so many parts of our lives. So we'll need to make new ones," Gates writes. "It's hard to overstate what an enormous undertaking this will be. After the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. government went through its biggest reorganization since World War II for the purpose of improving just one function, national security. AI will require much, much more."

Gates goes on to say that some jobs need to remain "Human Reserved," an allusion to nature reserves where humans could build AI infrastructure but choose not to because of unacceptable consequences. AI workers will also need to be taxed like human ones and governments will need to prepare organizationally for a transition to an economy run by AI.



And just as electricity forever changed human life on Earth, AI could serve a similar role. This idea has led some experts and politicians to advocate for the technology to become a public utility that would focus on benefiting society instead of chasing shareholder profits. One of the strongest voices for such a future is Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who's advocated for the public to receive a 50 percent stake in AI companies, as well as for an outright ban on artificial superintelligence.

"No longer would the future of A.I. and the transformation of human life that it will bring be dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs," Sanders wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times in June. "The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company's board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them."

Whether it's all marketing hype, human hubris, a coming utopia, or an unfathomable techno-nightmare, seeing beyond the unknowable haze of this AI "event horizon" is harder than ever. But preparing in the present can help us chart a path away from a disastrous future.


‘This revolution is happening in years, not decades’: Verizon CEO Dan Schulman sees AGI within 18 months—and a century of progress in a decade

Nick Lichtenberg
Wed, September 30, 2026 
 Fortune.com


Dan Schulman, CEO of Verizon, at Ford Pro Accelerate in Detroit, Sept. 30, 2026.

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman offered a strikingly aggressive forecast for artificial intelligence's development at the Ford Pro Accelerate event in Detroit, saying that an earthquake is headed our way.

"The models that we see today are the worst models we'll ever use in our lives," Schulman said in conversation with Fortune's Diane Brady. "Every two months, there's a step function change in the power of the models. I think we get to some form of AGI in the next six to 18 months. I think it's right on us."

Two years after that, he added, we will arrive at "the era of quantum," which he described as "everything today times 1,000." By 2030 or 2035, we will see "a pretty good form of humanoid robotics." Summing it up, he added, "we've got a decade of intense change ahead of us."

AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is a term generally used for systems that can reason and perform broadly across domains rather than excel at discrete tasks. Schulman argued that AI's economic and social effects will arrive at a pace that outstrips the usual mechanisms for absorbing technological change, such as training systems, labor markets, corporate restructuring, and public policy. "It is about machines that will in many ways be able to do things better than a lot of human tasks are done today," he said.


"I think you'll see the collapse of the 21st century in the next five to 10 years," Schulman said. When Brady asked what he meant by "collapse," he explained, "Progress we would have made over 100 years will happen over the next five to 10 years.

"I don't think we can really imagine how powerful the technology and how fundamental it will be."

Verizon's disruption

Schulman said the change would reach his company itself. Verizon, he said, has more than 250,000 employees and contractors and will need to move from a workforce organized around "very defined roles and functions" to a "much more fluid organization."

"The technology is coming," he said. "There will be safeguards around it. There need to be additional safeguards, but it will continue on." He urged corporate leaders and government to prepare for difficult scenarios rather than assume the labor market will naturally adjust.

"At Verizon last week we announced a $70 million initiative to do training for American workers, not just Verizon workers, but American workers in the community across the country," Schulman said.

The initiative includes free AI training and work with local organizations on career development, he said, before adding a prescription for all leaders and policymakers. "Our responsibility is to think about what might go wrong; what might we need to address; what might the disruption look like; and how do we put guardrails, training, programs in place to minimize that risk," Schulman said.

"Everybody's job is going to shift," Schulman noted. "I don't think everybody will land just magically in a better place per se."

Other executives on Schulman's panel described different constraints on the AI future. There will always be a need for someone to lay fiber, install power equipment, maintain transmission lines, retrofit buildings, and wire the data centers that AI requires.

For PG&E CEO Patti Poppe, the central challenge is that an increasingly digitized grid will require workers to combine physical skills with technological fluency. Poppe described seeing one of PG&E's workers being lowered by rope from a helicopter onto a transmission tower in mountainous California. The company's future grid, she said, will use sensors, remote-edge computing, and predictive capabilities to identify risks before they create outages or wildfires. But that system will still require skilled people in the field.

"The same guys who hang on the end of the rope are going to have to get smarter about those kinds of technologies," Poppe said. "I'm still going to need those people. Somebody's still going to have to connect that wire to the pole."

From replacement to augmentation

Dave Regnery, CEO of Trane Technologies, urged students and workers to embrace AI and compared current anxieties to fears surrounding the arrival of personal computers, while adding a dash of hindsight.

"Go take your favorite AI tool" and look up articles from 40 years ago about personal computers, Regnery said. "They're identical."

His company sees AI as a way to make buildings run more efficiently, rather than simply to reduce headcount. Trane is using data and AI to manage heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems according to how buildings are actually used, he said—not merely according to their original design specifications.

"Most people don't realize that 30% of all the energy is for buildings," Regnery said. "And you know what? Thirty percent of that is wasted."

He said the company can make buildings operate roughly 15% more efficiently than their design baseline, improving economics for customers while creating demand for technicians capable of installing, servicing, and operating increasingly sophisticated systems, offering a counterweight to the idea that the technology's principal effect will be displacement.

"The fastest speed-to-power solution is use the essential equipment that you have," Regnery said.

The construction-site version of AI

Chris Nelson, CEO of Stanley Black & Decker, described a similar transition on jobsites. His company has developed AI-enabled autonomous drilling robots that can use digital construction plans to drill holes for racks in data centers and other projects.

The technology is designed to take over repetitive physical tasks—not replace the electricians and skilled tradespeople needed to complete the higher-value work.

"What do the electricians and other skilled tradespeople not like to do all day?" Nelson said. "Sit and core drill."

The machines can connect to digital drawings, map routes, and drill on their own, he said. That frees skilled workers to pull wire, terminate connections, and solve the problems that still require judgment and technical training.

"The holes will still need to be drilled from now until maybe the end of time," Nelson said. "But the way we do it and what it enables people to think about for the future is going to be materially different."

Nelson called AI a "companion on the construction site," a framing that is more incremental than Schulman's vision of near-term AGI, but still acknowledges that technology is changing the work itself. The question, he suggested, is whether companies can turn that change into a career draw—giving workers more engaging tasks, more decision-making authority, and a clearer path to starting their own businesses or moving into management.

A labor shortage, not a labor surplus

For Dycom CEO Dan Peyovich, whose company builds telecommunications infrastructure, the immediate business problem is not a surplus of workers displaced by AI. It is finding enough people to build the physical networks that the technology boom requires.

"There's so much infrastructure that has to get put in place for all of this to happen," Peyovich said.

His company employs roughly 21,000 people nationwide, he said, connecting homes and businesses through fiber and telecommunications infrastructure. Its response to a tightening labor market has been to improve fieldworker benefits, including paid time off, holidays, health coverage, and training that goes beyond technical credentials.

Dycom has also built a training facility near Atlanta that includes instruction in technical skills, management, leadership, the use of technology in day-to-day work, and potentially personal finance, Peyovich said.

The strategy reflects a different labor-market assumption from the one embedded in much AI commentary. Instead of treating workers as interchangeable units who need only learn a new software tool, Peyovich described a system in which companies must offer a credible long-term career proposition—training, benefits, advancement, and financial stability—to recruit people into difficult field jobs.

"We want to try and create a path for people," he said. "While they're getting a paycheck, they can learn and find their way."

The tone was collegial, and Schulman didn't take issue with any of his co-panelists' predictions about the future of work. His main point was that business leaders should not bet on a painless adjustment.

His final prescription was scenario planning: "We need to be prepared in case a different scenario emerges," he said, "so that we can make sure that we have skilled workers, whether they be craftsmen or professionals."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

USA

The Looming Election

Tuesday 25 August 2026, by Against the Current Editors

MIDTERM U.S. ELECTIONS are traditionally predictably unpredictable, the main question being how much loss the party of the sitting President will suffer. Conventionally that should go double or triple for the Republicans this November.

But amid a deeply unpopular ruinous war, and frightening insecurity for tens of millions of Americans fearing for their future, this year’s November 2026 elections are unpredictably unpredictable. The question goes well beyond whether the Democrats — and which Democrats — might overturn the narrow Republican Congressional majorities.

National and even international attention — and $61 million of dark money — were drawn to the August 4 U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Michigan, and the victory of progressive insurgent candidate Dr. Abdul el-Sayed. More will be said below on its meaning and implications.

Much will probably change between the writing of this editorial and the election. Multiple swirling uncertainties include:

1) What might be the state of the U.S. war with Iran? Another truce, more negotiations and stabilized oil prices, or massive escalation and a war spreading through the region, with oil at or over $150 a barrel, or — perhaps most likely — something messily in between?

2) What might the U.S. economy look like with down-and-up fuel prices, Trump’s off-and-on tariffs, and sectors of health care, construction and agriculture potentially crippled by mass immigrant detention and deportation?

None of these can be known, particularly when Trump’s own policies shift with every day’s half-deranged Truth Social posts.

3) To what lengths could Trump and the Republican cult go to preserve their power? Last-ditch moves to ram through Trump’s massive voter-suppression Enslave America Act, if not at the federal level then adopted by some states, or to block voting by mail? Among the openly discussed scarier scenarios, ICE or Border Patrol agents stationed at polling places? Attempts to seize ballots, or to prosecute state election officials who refuse to obey unconstitutional government orders?

Presidential proclamation of a phony “state of emergency”? Rightwing mobs unleashed to block counting of votes? Sabotage of postal delivery of mail ballots?

Right now, the likelihood of such extreme and high-risk events may seem relatively low. The consequences, however, could bring a fundamental crisis of government legitimacy and what remains of Constitutional process.

Insurgencies Right and Left

Assuming for the moment a generally “normal” election process, we do know that the Trump 2 administration is more unpopular by the month, and Republican incumbents in critical Congressional district and Senate races look to be in serious trouble. Yet the Democratic Party is even more unpopular, if possible, than the Trump-cult GOP.

Undoubtedly the immediate primary factors driving popular anger are economic: food and fuel price inflation, health insurance costs making medical care inaccessible for millions, fears among technical workers that rampant Artificial Intelligence might wipe out their current jobs and future employment chances.

There are insurgencies within both capitalist parties, most obviously in the Democratic Party and left-moving parts of its voter base, but also among MAGA voters disillusioned over Trump’s broken promises to “fix the economy” and “end forever wars.”

On the MAGA-GOP side, Trump deflects with raves about “radical left Democrats” and the fantasy specter of a Cuban-driven “Communist threat,” while advertising the brilliant successes of his tariffs which people increasingly can see as disastrous in their own lives. The gangster administration doubles down on sadistic immigration detentions and deportations.

Trump’s antics aren’t working terribly well as some former loyalists peel off toward (even more) irrationalist and antisemitic extremism. The administration itself is divided between, for example, the traditional militarism of the late Senator Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio — now Trump’s viceroy to run Venezuela — and J.D. Vance, whose neo-isolationist streak combines with open admiration for Europe’s far right and affinity with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Nonetheless the Republican machinery with its bottomless resources of corporate and dark money, the still-powerful Trump cult following, and the power of partisan and blatantly racial district gerrymandering enabled by the far-right Supreme Court majority, remains formidable. Its defeat is by no means certain. By most counts there are only 20 or so House of Representatives districts, out of the total 435, that are genuinely competitive outside of a massive “wave” election.

The Republicans’ open intention to reject election results if they don’t win brings a higher level of volatility, fear and more unpredictable unpredictability into the political climate.

Among the Democrats

We need to be clear on two points. (1) The capitalist Democratic Party will not be “transformed” by some progressive or democratic surge; but (2) in the absence of viable independent politics nationally, what’s happened in the primaries reflect popular anger and political volatility and can’t be ignored.

The open revolt against a sclerotic entrenched party leadership reflects a confluence of issues where the Democratic leadership has failed, retreated or collapsed. Running scared, the establishment’s backlash is already on display.

Rahm Emanuel, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, mentor and chief of staff of Barack Obama, and former mayor of Chicago where he fought a bitter and losing war to break the Chicago Teachers Union, writes in The Wall Street Journal that the progressive or democratic socialist left would “spoil” the Democrats’ prospects.

When party progressive activists demand actual solutions to the crises that are crushing people’s lives and hopes, establishment corporate centrists respond with calls for “realism,” gradualism and the stagnant consultant-driven campaign tactics that lose elections over and over again. The centrist Third Way promises a $15 million drive to attack democratic socialism.

The critical issues include the corruption of politics by corporate PAC and billionaires’ money; the crying need for national “Medicaid For All” health coverage; the obscene concentration of wealth at the top; the Trump gang’s deregulation spree and “drill baby drill” lunacy while North America and Europe literally burn; and the anti-immigrant terror that has sparked anti-ICE mass resistance.

Not least is rising fury over Israel’s state genocide in Gaza, murderous ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank, and annexationist invasion of south Lebanon. It’s remarkable and unprecedented that a majority of Americans — among all sectors except older Republicans — view Palestine more sympathetically than Israel. Even Rahm Emanuel warned an Israeli audience, despite his undying Zionist loyalty, that Israel’s behavior is hemorrhaging support in the United States.

The Wire, the newsletter of Jewish Voice for Peace, reports that since the election of Zohran Mamdani “11 JVP Action-endorsed candidates, including six congressional candidates have won their primaries — not in spite of but because of their unwavering support for Palestinian freedom.” (Special JVP Action PAC issue, July 31)

The Biden-Harris administration is quite rightly despised for enabling the Gaza genocide, even though it knew the magnitude of the slaughter from the beginning. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is widely despised for luring Trump with flattery and the prospect of quick, world-changing “victory” over Iran.

Battle Grounds

These combined factors have brought about an insurgency that’s seen the mayoral election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City and some notable Democratic primary challengers, although of course there are losses too like Cori Bush’s defeat in Missouri. Francesca Hong lost the Wisconsin gubernational primary by less than half a point.

In media reporting as well as Trump vitriol, the Democratic Socialists of America are seen as the driving force behind the anti-establishment upsurge. Undoubtedly DSA plays a significant role in some of these races (as in Mamdani’s victory, and for example in promoting a notion idea of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez running for president in 2028). But DSA is not the only factor.

In the nationally spotlighted open Senate race in Michigan, public health expert Dr. Abdul el-Sayed took on an established AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) centrist Democrat Haley Stevens in the August 4 primary. Identifying not as a socialist but as an outspoken advocate of Medicare for All and ending aid to Israel, El-Sayed was targeted by “pro-Israel” and corporate PACS with some spent on toxic attack TV ads and mailers.

El-Sayed’s campaign energized Arab community, progressive and pro-Palestinian activism including the formation of “Jews for Abdul” and “Women for Abdul” to counter the attacks.

Meanwhile AIPAC (which generally devotes its resources to primary rather than general elections) openly says it will continue its effort to defeat El-Sayed. Undoubtedly its ads will especially target Jewish, Black and women voters with the same toxic lies they spread during the primary.

A significant test of Democrats’ “unity” will be whether Michigan and national figures — from outgoing governor Gretchen Whitmer to former president Obama — will energetically support El-Sayed as he runs against rightwing Trump Republican Mike Rogers, in what will be an exceptionally expensive and dirty contest that may decide which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Some progressive fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding, under the most optimistic scenarios — should the Democrats take control of the Senate and maybe even replace the discredited Chuck Schumer with someone like Senator Chris Van Hollen — the Democrats might become a genuine liberal opposition party in action rather than mostly empty talk.

That could be a big improvement — and no doubt revive many dormant illusions about the Democratic Party — but far from the transformation of social-democratic dreams. Frankly, on the national level this outcome is pretty much the ceiling of possibilities that might be achieved electorally.

In the House of Representatives, a swing to a Democratic majority would put the Speakership in the hands of Hakeem Jeffries — a committed centrist and the party’s number-one beneficiary of AIPAC support.

In addition to the Democratic establishment counter-offensive, not to mention Trump’s raving about the Communist menace (although his White House rant was pretty much a dud), there are deeper obstacles to the success of progressive Democrats or for that matter, activist movements.

The movements’ outreach to the most critical sectors of society remains limited. This was not only visible in the No Kings Day mobilizations of the past couple years — large, creative and energetic but mostly white in their large majority. The Black community is politically engaged, but with its own urgent concerns.

African American voters, who constitute the backbone of the Democratic vote in many states including especially the South, have been a bulwark of the party establishment at strategic moments. This was notably shown in the 2020 presidential primary in South Carolina, where the leading Black Congressional representative James Clyburn rallied the vote for Joe Biden, scuttling the rising Bernie Sanders candidacy.

The Detroit vote was also a big part of why Abdul el-Sayed’s razor-thin victory in Michigan was so much closer than polls predicted. Indeed, in the final stage of the primary Clyburn came in to support Stevens, whose campaign heavily promoted her advertised connections to the African American community, to Black women in particular, and the endorsements she received from Black elected officials (as well as prominent white Michigan establishment of course).

There are powerful Black-led and multi-racial protests around numerous cases of police brutality and murder of African American community members. The difficulty arises because much of the community sees the supposedly “more electable” Democratic mainstream as its only solid defense against the Trump-Republican rampage that ravages Black people’s lives and rights.

For the left, the continuing tragedy is the absence of a meaningful political option independent of the Democratic Party. Local independent political campaigns are a viable possibility and important to be pursued, but only a first step in a very long march to any kind of national political alternative.

For independent politics to become a viable factor in the United States, Black as well as Latinx movements must be central forces from the outset. That’s an enormous challenge, especially in the face of the very real intense menace from the right.

At this moment, the only really predictable thing in crisis-ridden America is how much hangs in the balance, and not only in the looming midterm elections. Elections don’t determine the future, but they help create the terrain of battles to come.

September-October 2026, ATC 244.

• Against the Current Editors

  Against the Current is published by Solidarity, USA, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International. It is a bi-monthly analytical journal explaining its goal: as part of our larger project of regroupment and dialogue within the U.S. Left, the journal presents varying points of view on a wide variety of issues. As such, debates are frequent and informative, with the goal of promoting discussion among activists, organizers, and scholars on the Left.

• 
  
  
  

DSA’s Ella Teevan: ‘Socialism has broken containment in the United States’

By Ella Teevan & Isaac Nellist

Published 26 August, 2026

Building on the momentum won after Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York City mayoral race last year, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have won several primaries, defeating establishment Democrats in the lead-up to the United States midterm elections in November. Isaac Nellist was joined by Ella Teevan, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, its highest leadership body, to discuss the midterms, how DSA can build on its successes, and challenging US imperialism and President Donald Trump’s far-right agenda.

What do DSA’s recent wins in the Democratic primaries reveal about the political situation in the US?

It reveals that socialism has broken containment. This is really exciting and I think the shift happened in the past few months. First, Chris Rabb won in Philadelphia in May, and then DSA candidates swept the primaries in New York City in June, before Melat Kiros won in Colorado in July. This showed the public what we already knew in DSA — that socialism can win everywhere. This is a national phenomenon, it is so much bigger than Zohran Mamdani. DSA is being taken seriously as an electoral force both by regular people and establishment parties and media.

It turns out that socialist ideas are popular. We already knew that after the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns: people are looking for an alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans. Especially when Trump is starting so many foreign wars and interventions, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is kidnapping and killing our neighbours and regular people are feeling the crisis of affordability. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is rolling overhead, and they are similarly responsible for the genocide in Gaza and the extreme levels of wealth and income inequality in the US. So, DSA is here and ready to provide not just different ideas, but also organisation and even hope to those people who believe it is possible to live in a different kind of society.

We have a right-wing news network, Fox News, who post clips trying to paint DSA as scary and extreme by talking about our program, Workers Deserve More. They point to things such as healthcare for all, free Palestine, abolish ICE, changing our voting system to be more democratic. Then you will see people in the comments say: “Oh, this is what socialism is? I guess I’m a socialist”, so that’s really exciting to see.

Of course, this new power comes with new attacks on DSA. The centrist think tank Third Way plans to spend US$13 million on opposition research on us. The New York Times is going back to the old stand of running hit pieces about how all DSA does is fight itself. That might play with the affluent liberals who read the NYT, but to me it says the establishment is scared. So, we are doing something right.

To look ahead, we may have up to seven socialists in Congress, eight if you count Sanders in the Senate — he is not technically a DSA member but has done so much to bring people into DSA, starting in 2016. There are so many possibilities with a true socialist bloc in Congress. It is worth nothing that we had “The Squad” in 2018 — made up of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley — which was more of an informal group that largely became known because of how the media framed it.

We are doing something much more intentional this time, and DSA is much bigger and more like a party. DSA plans to work with these socialists in office to advance the demands of our program. It will be important to work out if we want to pass policy, or think we can, given we are still a small bloc. This would have to happen after 2028, if the Democratic Party re-takes Congress and the Presidency. Another option is to play an agitational role, to call out the total inadequacy of the Democratic Party, and bring more people into the socialist movement.

As for labour struggles, the biggest event on the horizon is May Day 2028. A couple of years ago, the United Autoworkers Union leadership proposed that unions align their contracts to all expire on May 1, 2028 and use it to increase workers’ leverage and put a spotlight on labour struggles. To date only a few unions have done this, but there is still a possibility of using May Day 2028 to bring labour struggles to the fore.

Our vision of electoral work is that it supports labour organising and class struggle. DSA electeds from Congress to City Council could play a role in making May Day a huge show of force and a starting point for an eventual new party.

DSA acts like a party in many ways, even though election laws intentionally make it very difficult to get the legal designation. But eventually we will stop running on the Democratic Party ballot line and form a party of our own — a party of working people to oppose the two parties that represent the interests of billionaires and CEOs. We also support moving the US to a system of proportional representation, because right now, the two-party system effectively keeps anyone but the Democrats and Republicans out of power.

We also need to grow DSA dramatically, while maintaining our socialist character, which is a tricky balance. We recently hit 120,000 members, making us the largest socialist organisation in US history in absolute numbers (it is still smaller as a proportion of population than Eugene Debbs’ Socialist Party). So 120,000 is great, but still more marginal than we would like. You can imagine a DSA of 200,000, 500,000 or 1 million dues paying members, all participating in our organisation’s democracy and organising in their local chapters for socialism.

Finally, there is the question of whether DSA endorses a candidate in the 2028 Presidential primary, and if so, which candidate. This is the most hotly contested debate in DSA right now. I cannot say too much, except that we are in the middle of a democratic process to decide that.

What impact could the upcoming midterms have on domestic politics? Could we see DSA and DSA-backed candidates make further gains?

Looking at the 2026 midterms, I think there is a distinct possibility that popular discontent with the Republican Party might sweep the Democratic Party back into power. That might make a few affluent liberals happy, but I do not think that is going to meaningfully change things for people in the US who are suffering from this crisis of affordability or are watching while the US kills people abroad and sends weapons to Israel.

That is why it is really important what our socialists in office do. As I mentioned, it is likely that the seven DSA-endorsed Congressional candidates will win: Tlaib and Donovan McKinney from Michigan; Kiros from Colorado; Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez and AOC from New York; and Rabb from Pennsylvania. The role of these socialists will be agitational, rather than trying to pass reforms, at least until 2028.

It is likely that the Democrats will win in 2028, though we do not know, and even so, a milquetoast Democrat in the White House will not fix all of our problems. But having an agitational role can be really good. You can imagine having a staunchly pro-Palestine bloc in Congress for the first time. Of course, they will be under immense pressure to cave to the Israel lobby and forces behind US foreign policy. Some have stronger records on Palestine than others.

You can imagine seven DSA congresspeople all calling together to end US military funding to Israel and end the devastating economic warfare on places such as Cuba and Iran. You can imagine them putting out the same message about Medicare for all, and how the Democratic Party is on the side of healthcare CEOs and not regular people who are filing for bankruptcy or becoming unhoused because of their medical bills.

These socialists in office have the ability to demonstrate to people that another kind of society and government is possible, the way Sanders and Mamdani have done. But it needs to go beyond viral videos and raising expectations — they should be calling for people to join DSA.

There is also potential for material gains, if socialists use our leverage, particularly in the vote over who is going to be speaker of the house (presuming the Democrats take back the house in 2026). The presumptive nominee is Hakeem Jeffries, who is a centrist Democrat. Socialists in Congress could withhold their votes for him unless he agrees to certain conditions, such as supporting Medicare for all or an arms embargo for Israel. We have seen attempts at this in the past. The Squad tried to do this under [US President] Joe Biden, but they squandered a lot of their bargaining power.

So, this time it is important that DSA electeds work closely with DSA’s federal socialists in office committees to coordinate their votes, and then vote no to a speaker candidate if they do not agree to our demands.

How real are Trump’s threats to ignore or overturn the results?

It is hard to say how real they are, but my guess is that Trump will at least rhetorically challenge the results, that is his modus operandi. What we can say is that the Republican Party knows it cannot secure a majority unless a ton of people are blocked from voting, as they are already a minority. And that is what Trump is trying to do.

We should be alarmed at the erosion of our already sclerotic democracy. The Republican’s Save America Act would dramatically restrict who can vote by requiring the kind of documentation at the polls that many voters just do not have. One estimate said that 12% of registered voters do not have the documentation that would be required to vote.

If Trump and his administration try to overturn the results, I am not sure we yet have the popular organisation and muscle to fight back, although I know a lot of the liberal non-profit organisations and NGOs are thinking about this. For instance, a large motivation for the big “No Kings” protests we have seen over the past couple of years is to get people ready to protest if there was an attempt to overturn the results.

Zohran Mamdani win was an important victory for the left, how would you assess his first seven months in office?

Zohran’s first seven months have been largely positive for the socialist movement, but there are a few important caveats that we should not overlook. I should preface this by saying I am not a New Yorker, so I cannot claim to know what it was like to canvas for him or be at his victory party, though I have heard it was electrifying.

The most important aspect of Zohran’s victory is that it has given people a visible example of what socialism and DSA are, which has led directly to socialism breaking containment as we talked about earlier. So many people that we talk to either know and like DSA because they like Zohran, or they do not yet know DSA and we say that Zohran is one of us and they go: “Oh I like him!”

On a related note, a close comrade of mine recently said to me: “I have to tell you Ella, you were right, I was wrong, Zohran has been good for socialism”. Their fear was that Zohran would be under intense attacks from both parties and the mainstream media, and there would be every incentive for him to turn away from principled socialism. And then, when that compromised vision failed to deliver, all the people who were inspired by him would get the impression that socialism cannot actually do anything for them and they would check out of politics or go back to one of the other parties and DSA and socialism would be severely setback.

Luckily, that has not come to pass, and Zohran has been largely committed to representing democratic socialism rhetorically, and to delivering material gains for people, demonstrating that the government can do things to make our lives better, and go after billionaires and tax the rich. He is still vocally pro-Palestine, despite the omnipresence of these bad faith allegations of antisemitism. He said he would like to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to New York. His administration has won US$1.2 billion in state funding for universal childcare, they are building public bathrooms, affordable housing, publicly-owned grocery stores, and the pied-à-terre tax on second homes worth more than $5 million, part of his promise to tax the rich, is currently going forward despite a lot of legal challenges.

There is a question about what it means that Zohran is doing these things “for” New Yorkers, rather than these victories coming out as bottom-up fights that would grow people into socialists, labour militants or organisers. It is going to take a huge amount of popular power to pass his more ambitious plans, such as full, universal free childcare, and it would be a huge missed opportunity if Zohran does not use his significant charisma and communications skills and competency to bring people into DSA or other organisations.

Despite all of these successes, there have been contradictions within the Zohran administration and places where DSA has had to stake out an independent position and even put pressure on his administration. I could get into specifics, but the most important deficiency of his tenure so far has been his hesitance to use his pulpit to go after establishment Democrats, to mobilise supporters in mass struggles to achieve the toughest parts of his agenda, and his use of language around re-aligning the Democratic Party and claiming he is going back to the New Deal era of the Democratic Party. That is not DSA’s policy or outlook on the Democrats, and it is not even really historically honest about the New Deal era.

There was also a moment at the start of his term when he endorsed the sitting governor of New York for re-election at the same time as she was locked in a fight with the city’s nurses union which was on strike. Zohran has been a strong supporter of organised labour in the city, especially delivery and rideshare workers, but the nurses strike incident shows that his attempts to build relations with the establishment wing of the Democratic Party creates tensions with his commitment to socialist politics.

Still, despite these limitations there is no denying what Zohran’s campaign and mayoralty have done to grow DSA and popularise democratic socialism. I never thought when I joined DSA in 2018 that we would have a socialist mayor of New York City and seven DSA electeds in the house.

Trump’s second presidency has featured an expansion of imperialist interventions, how can socialists challenge this war drive?

This is a really big and urgent question. Under Trump we have seen a continuation of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, an expansion of the war into Iran and Lebanon, a far more interventionist approach in Latin America and even a challenging of European and Canadian sovereignty. We also continue to see bipartisan sabre rattling towards China, in the context of a new “Cold War” of sorts.

Defeating the US war machine is not only a key task of the US left and the workers movement, but it has super majority support among regular people in the US. It is a major contradiction in US politics — there is a fundamental disconnect between popular opinion and government action when it comes to imperialism and government intervention.

This is in part because the power over foreign policy is concentrated in our imperial presidency, which means it is insulated from popular pressure. It is also in part due to the huge power of the arms industry, military contractors, surveillance technology companies, mercenary groups, the so-called foreign policy blob and the Israel lobby. Finally, the disconnect reflects the fundamental democratic deficit in US politics, which is maintained by the two-party system, the huge role of money in politics, our totally undemocratic Senate and congresses multi-decade long unwillingness to take responsibility for war powers.

DSA has mobilised in the streets in response to Trump’s attacks on Venezuelan and Cuban sovereignty, as well as against the illegal and immoral war on Iran. Our strongest anti-imperialist work has been against the genocide in Palestine. Our greatest successes have been in the student movement, the labour movement and in electoral politics.

On campuses, our youth and student wing Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) played an essential role in the pro-Palestine encampment movement a couple of years ago. Encampments at schools with strong YDSA chapters were able to build far greater power and were some of the few universities across the US that won substantial gains.

For instance, at San Francisco State University (SFSU), students won divestment of their university's endowment from weapons manufacturing companies, including Caterpillar, Palantir and Lockheed Martin and established a human rights clause in SFSU’s investment policy to ensure they no longer invest in these companies profiting from war and human rights violations. In another example, at the University of Oregon, students won scholarships and visa sponsorships for students escaping from Gaza, and a framework to investigate and move towards divestment and a student-controlled cultural centre for Middle Eastern students.

Looking at the labour movement, DSA is building a campaign called Labour for an Arms Embargo, which is focused on supporting DSA members in unions to organise with their co-workers and pass resolutions in their unions supporting a total arms embargo against Israel, and to activate union members against the genocide and use the political influence of unions against corporate politicians. During the height of the genocide, DSA members helped pass resolutions through a slew of unions throughout the US in support of a ceasefire.

Finally, DSA has been able to channel the pro-Palestine movement's energy and sentiment into major electoral wins. We are certainly not the first to work on Palestine, there are longstanding movements in support of Palestine around the country, but seeing someone like Zohran get elected on a pro-Palestine platform is relatively new.

In all five of our new congressional wins, support for an arms embargo on Israel and a commitment to fight for a free Palestine were defining issues that helped our candidates win. This overturns the narrative that you cannot win if you are pro-Palestine or that the Israel lobby money will defeat you. This upcoming congressional session will have more people championing Palestine who will continue to raise the issue on a national scale.

Is there a unified view on anti-imperialism within DSA?

Within DSA there are major debates about how we should approach our anti-imperialist work. There is a large tendency of DSA members, and on the US and international left more broadly, who feel that it is not our place to criticise governments or parties that are victims of US imperialism or who self-identify as left-wing or who are the US’s inter-imperialist rivals. At best, they call this criticism a form of Western chauvinism and distraction, and at their most extreme say that criticising these governments advances the cause of US imperialism.

I am a member of an internal tendency of DSA called Bread and Roses (B&R). We, along with various other tendencies, reject this notion. We do not find it contradictory to say that we oppose US imperialist attacks on Venezuela and Cuba, while recognising that their systems of government are not what we envision within a democratic socialism. Similarly, we do not find it contradictory to oppose the US’ war on Iran, while supporting the Iranian people in their domestic struggle for democracy, women’s liberation and secular government. We also think it is quite possible to reject US warmongering on Russia and China while recognising the two as imperialist and revanchist authoritarian powers that we should loudly oppose.

When we talk to regular people about democratic socialism, we need to be able to say that the world we envision is not this repressive, authoritarian society of China or Venezuela, or what they have in their mind about the Soviet Union, but one of expansive democracy and freedom. More than that, if we make political support for governments targeted by US imperialism a litmus test for joining anti-imperialist struggles, we restrict the ability to grow our movement to the size and power it is going to take to end US imperialism.

So, the fundamental tasks of the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement are to grow our student and labour movements in size, power and militancy; win over the labour movement to anti-imperialist politics; elect more anti-imperialists into government; and struggle to make our society more democratic, through getting money out of politics and establishing proportional representation, so we can begin to translate what are supermajoritarian positions in US society into actual changes in public policy.

Trump is a figurehead for the global far right, which has seen a resurgence in recent years. What is behind this rise of the far right? Can socialists provide an alternative?

In his campaigns, in 2016 in particular, Trump did offer working people something, or at least he appeared to. He acknowledged their suffering was real rather than dismissing it like the Democrats did. Regular people are struggling to get by these days. There is a reason why Trump and Mamdani both talk about affordability, although obviously with different explanations and proscriptions for it.

Meanwhile, especially in the Biden era, all of these Democratic pundits were saying that the economy was really strong. When I listen to the Financial Times podcast to hear what the capitalists are saying to each other this is what I hear. They were using this cringey term in the Biden era, the “Vibes Session”, to say that there was a gap between the strength of the economy and people’s perception of it, in other words that regular people’s struggles were all in their head. So, it is no wonder that people were turned off by that.

But the far-right’s explanation for why people are suffering involves scapegoating the most vulnerable, most often immigrants, but also these days, trans people. They claim that there is a competition for resources and that immigrants are taking them away from the people who “deserve” the resources.

Of course, under capitalism we do live in a competition for resources, but it is between the working class and the ruling class — and the working class has been getting less and less for the past 50 years with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s. That meant union busting, tax cuts, deregulation, bringing everything under market control and defunding public services.

This is especially pronounced in the US where we have seen waves of gutting the welfare state and the ability of the government to actually do something for people. It happened in the 1990s with Bill Clinton and then most recently when Trump got re-elected. He slashed funding for everything from food aid, to research, to education, to library and museum services — I work in libraries so that is a personal one for me. But even the European social democracies that had strong labour parties in the 20th century have been moving to privatise social services over the past few decades, leaving people's lives much more threadbare. Of course you see this in Australia too.

In the ’90s there was the claim that we had reached the “end of history” and that we had reached this enlightened liberalism, or perhaps neoliberalism, and that social and economic relations were just going to stay that way forever. Of course, they did not. Neoliberalism and the market just stripped more and more of people's lives away, and it created this opening for the far right to say: “Look, you don’t have enough, but if we just take your share back from immigrants you can have the life that your parents or grandparents had”.

Can socialism provide an alternative? I think so. The reason socialism can provide a real alternative is that we as socialists also have an explanation for why people do not have enough and feel so powerless in their own lives. But the explanation that we offer is not punching down, but punching up. Who is hoarding all the resources? Who is making all the decisions that shape everything from how we get to work, to how many hours we work, to what kind of books we read, to just how underfunded our kids' schools are? It is the capitalist class.

In my experience, people are really feeling the anti-billionaire sentiment right now, regardless of who they have voted for in the past, or even if they have been tuned out of politics. Someone in my life, who grew up working class and voted for Trump three times, recently told me they are a socialist and thinks that our society should be run totally differently. That means there are real stakes for what DSA and our electeds do publicly, because for so many people it will be their first exposure to whether socialists can change their material conditions and offer them some power in their lives.

Are ecosocialist ideas gaining traction on the left in the US? How can socialists challenge Trump’s push to undo climate protections and relate to the immense challenge of the ecological crisis more generally?

I do not know if I could confidently say that ecosocialist ideas are gaining traction in the US, but I can confidently say that there is a significant ecosocialist current in DSA and the left. I would also say the theory of change behind the DSA’s Ecosocialists [also known as the Green New Deal Campaign Committee] is very strong. Their Theory of Power document says they are going to “win non-reformist or structural reforms that increase public sector capacity”, “build core elements of a party apparatus”, “win class struggle elections” and "prioritise labour solidarity and class struggle as workers”. This gets so much right about ecosocialism.

We have had some inspiring campaigns in various local DSA chapters. In the transit arena, Louisville DSA in Kentucky has been fighting alongside local unions to fully fund the local transit authority. Metro Detroit DSA is campaigning to bring back rail transit and to fully fund its totally underfunded transit system. In Texas, which has had serious climate disasters in the past couple of years, Corpus Christi DSA has been fighting against polluters on various fronts and recently has been opposing a desalination front.

Public power is another huge question for ecosocialism. New York City DSA had a really high profile victory in 2023, when they passed the Build Public Renewables Act, which directs the publicly-owned New York Power Authority to build public wind and solar using union labour to hit 100% decarbonisation of the electric sector by 2040 — a really ambitious goal and a good first step towards something like a Green New Deal. Recently, we have seen a ton of interest in fighting against artificial intelligence data centres, which is at the intersection of ecosocialism and fighting big tech.

I do want to say that some strategies and theories of change on the left have some serious limitations, which we have to reckon with if we are going to build a mass movement that includes lots of regular working people for the climate. I owe a lot of my ideas on this issue to Matt Huber, a fellow DSA member and professor of geography and the environment at Syracuse University. I highly recommend his book Climate Change As Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet.

To briefly explain, a lot of climate activism follows the values of the professional class. It centres things like science, awareness and knowledge rather than building the organised class power it is going to take to challenge capitalism. In mainstream and even left climate activism, there is a prevalent politics of offering people less, or telling them that when we win the sustainable world they will have to live with less. This can look like degrowth, which is an active debate on the left, or even just telling people that their consumer and lifestyle choices are not climate friendly enough and that their decadent lifestyle in the imperial core is part of the problem.

This is not going to build the organised popular power that we need. Instead, again coming from Huber, we need a planetary working-class solidarity and an anti-austerity climate politics that actually offers working people something. For example, robust public transit (which has been a popular part of Zohran’s campaign), green public housing and cheaper public energy for everybody.

Tragically, in recent years, climate activism is on the wane and the Green New Deal has all but disappeared from popular discourse in the US. It used to be on everyone’s lips, especially with Sanders elevating that demand.Socialists have a special responsibility to fight against fatalism and use this resurgence that we are having to fight for climate demands based on public ownership, public investment into infrastructure, regulating corporations and rapidly decarbonising. This is one of the most exciting possibilities for the new bloc of socialists in Congress.