The Delusion of AI-American Centaurs

Evaggelos Vallianatos

 June 30, 2026

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Young Achilles riding the man-horse super centaur Cheiron. “The Education of Achilles by Cheiron.” Painting by Eugene Delacroix, French, 1862. Getty Museum. Wikipedia. Public Domain.

Prologue

I have always been skeptical of the viability and potential benefits of AI technologies. This is because they are primarily war technologies, masquerading in the deceptive cover of intelligence. But they have nothing to do with intelligence, a human virtue of distinguishing good from evil, beautiful from ugly and justice from injustice. AI technologies can never incorporate human intelligence. They are mechanical triggers / devices following human instructions. In fact, I see the evolution of these technologies into more lethal war weapons and war-related consequences, as well as deceptive but profitable devices like iPhones, computers and other machines – here in America and other societies. Unless these AI machines are checked, regulated and, the weaponized versions phased out, anarchy, authoritarianism and destruction will strike humans, civilization and the planet. Why? Because man and machines don’t mix. But if they become scrambled eggs, watch out for monsters.

Centaurs in ancient Greece

Gaetano Zompini,“The Centaur Cheiron Teaching Geography to the Young Achilles.” 1759. LACMA. Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain.

The ancient Greeks opened human minds to the pleasures of intelligence, science, technology, ethics and civilization. They also experimented (in their mythology and literature) with the invention of human animals: Centaurs (piercing bulls, man-horses), Satyrs (humans with the tail and feet of goats and followers of Dionysos), Minotaur (man with the head of a bull) and other hybrid non-human monsters like Chimera (lion, goat, snake) – and other less known monsters.

One of the centaurs named Cheiron was an exception to the untamed, uncivilized and wild centaurs. He lived on Mount Pelion in Thessaly. He was the immortal son of the pre-Olympian god Cronos and the sea nymph Philyra. He had the reputation of possessing broad knowledge of the Cosmos and Greek society. He was also a healer. He was, in addition, a renowned teacher. Achilles, the great Greek hero of the Trojan War in late 13^th century BCE became his pupil. Other young men followed on the footsteps of Achilles and studied under the centaur Cheiron. One of the most distinguished was Jason who, a generation after the Trojan War, in late 13^th century BCE, led 50 Argonauts, most of them sons of gods, all the way from Iolkos, Thessaly, to Kolchis, or, in modern times, Georgia. Kolchis was in the easternmost region of Euxinos Pontos or Black Sea. The King of Kolchis was Aietes, son of the god Sun Helios. Aietes suspected the visiting Argonauts and planned to kill them. He started his hostilities by demanding that Jason would take a fire-spitting bull to sow a field with teeth of dragons. Warriors would sprout from the teeth of dragons. Jason would have to fight and kill those earth-born warriors. Jason did all those astonishing tasks successfully. He had the assistance and knowledge and magic of the king’s daughter, Medeia. Thanks to Aphrodite and her son Eros, Medeia was helplessly in love with Jason. Medeia gave Jason drugs that made him invulnerable to the flames and power of the bulls. Medeia was a priestess of a Kolchian goddess, Hekate. She was well-versed in magic and drugs. Add to those superhuman efforts the affection of Hera, wife of Zeus, and love goddess Aphrodite to Jason, and the story had an auspicious ending. The Argonauts returned to Hellas with the Golden Fleece, as well as precious metallurgical knowledge.

This story of adventure, exploration, heroism, passionate love, and divine relationships with humans almost normalized the human-horse Centaur Cheiron, the exceptional and divine teacher of Greek heroes.

These stories of the rare symbiosis of ancient Greeks with one centaur on Mount Pelion in Thessaly did not have a continuity. Herakles, son of Zeus and a superhero, accidentally shot a poison arrow against Cheiron. But Cheiron, being immortal, could not die. He sided with Prometheus then punished by Zeus for giving his Greek grandchildren the flame of knowledge. Zeus put Cheron among the stars, making him the constellation Sagittarius.

US-AI mythical centaurs

Despite these Greek myths, there are American tech enthusiasts in 2026 who seriously contemplate their own mythical realm: a massive ruling class of 8 billion humans being served and “educated” by a trillion AI human-centaur robots.

Antikythera, an AI thinktank in Los Angeles, California, boasts of its priorities in “planetary computation and evolution of intelligence.” Here’s its mythical thinking in its own words:

“Imagine,” it said in an email inviting proposals, “a world with 8 billion human minds and a trillion non-human, human-level AI minds. With such ratios, what is a “society”?

“Agentworld [a research unit of Antikythera] treats the proliferation of AI agents as an anthropological condition as much as a technological one. As [AI] agents become more capable of communication, delegation, coordination, and adaptation at scale, hybrid human-AI societies can no longer be understood as simple aggregates of humans plus tools. They become entangled populations of human and non-human intelligences, co-producing new forms of language, hierarchy, dependency, exchange, and environment.”

In other words, the Antikythera planetary computation “thinktank” experts no longer value democracy, American society and civilization. They are drunk with the wine of AI money and tech robots, making coffee or fighting wars, pretending to imitate and compete with human intelligence. Those delusions trigger scheming and even thinking how to create or “entangle” AI-human zombie resembling the Greek mythological centaurs – a hybrid of human and horses –one of which, son of Titan god Cronos, Cheiron, became teacher of Achilles, Jason and other Greek heroes. The Antikythera AI tech experts, oblivious to Greek history, are determined to probably exceed the Greek model of Cheiron. They are planning no less than “composing the medium-term future of centaur human-AI societies.”

Epilogue

This is science fiction going mad. It is nonsense. Their nightmare would not even work in a totalitarian state. Imagine the audacity and hubris. To think of bringing to life hybrids of humans and machines in the form of AI-powered centaurs? Mechanical horsemen run wild and armed to the teeth? But do these tech experts have any clues of Greek history and mythology, out of which emerged the centaurs and chimeras? Plato and Aristotle taught that moderation was a governing virtue, σωφροσύνη. Ancient Greeks also were well aware not to violate the principle of μηδέν άγαν: not to be extreme in anything. They slayed their own monsters.

Antonio Canova, “Theseus Defeats the Centaur,” 1805. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain.

We should do the same: phase out AI monsters like those contemplated by the Antikythera thinktank of Los Angeles. Otherwise, the money-rich but intelligence-poor plutocrats will take over the government and establish a real political nightmare of entangled humans and machines.

Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D., is a historian and ecological-political theorist. He studied zoology and history, Greek and European, at the University of Illinois and Wisconsin. He did postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard. He worked on Capitol Hill and the US Environmental Protection Agency; taught at several universities, and authored hundreds of articles and several books, including Poison Spring (2014), The Antikythera Mechanism (2021), Freedom (2025) and Earth on Fire: Brewing Plagues and Climate Chaos in Our Backyards (World Scientific, 2026).

GOP insider shocks by debunking Republican conspiracy theory: 'What kind of sorcery?'

David McAfee
June 6, 2026

RAW STORY


A California Republican operative went viral this week for doing something unusual in her party: publicly fact-checking a right-wing election conspiracy theory — and refusing to back down when Rasmussen Reports pushed back.

Elizabeth Barcohana, who works with the Los Angeles GOP, stepped in after Rasmussen posted a claim that a single ballot drop in the LA mayor's race had contained zero votes for Republican candidate Spencer Pratt — the reality TV personality from The Hills running for LA mayor — while every other candidate gained thousands. "Virtually every candidate received votes except for Spencer Pratt," Rasmussen wrote. "Impossible."

Barcohana called it false. "No, it did not happen," she posted, sharing a batch composition chart showing Pratt's orange bar appearing consistently across every single ballot drop. "This is fake news." She further noted that Rasmussen was recycling an NBC screenshot taken before the network's graphics team had corrected an error — meaning the "evidence" of fraud was a screenshot of a mistake that had already been fixed.

Rasmussen didn't fold. Instead, the polling firm told Barcohana to "wake up," name-dropped someone it claimed was a federal investigator, and accused her of not understanding "what is going on in national election integrity."

Barcohana's response to an anonymous user cut to the heart of the problem: "THIS is why you don't see Republicans fighting back against all of this. No one believes us no matter what we say when we push back on things that aren't true which demoralize our voters, so they would rather just keep quiet and not hit a hornet's nest of angry voters."

The exchange drew notice across the aisle. "How does one deal with a company that exists to poll elections but then casts doubt on the actual results with loony conspiracy theories?" asked Garrett Archer, a data journalist at ABC15 in Arizona. Damin Toell, a conservative activist, was more pointed, calling Rasmussen "the zombie husk of Rasmussen Reports, which just grifts off garbage conspiracy theories without any concern for how it suppresses Republicans from voting."

Drew Savicki, a political analyst, called it "fascinating watching a California Republican struggling to push back against the online conspiracy theories being promoted by so many in her party."

Republican strategist Mike Madrid kept it simple: "Wait...is this a Republican standing up for math, facts and evidence? What kind of sorcery is this?"

Billionaires are feeling the backlash of their pact with 'mad king' Trump: Nobel economist

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos arrive to attend a state dinner for Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 28, 2026. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

Nick Hilden

May 22, 2026 
ALTERNET


When President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term in January 2025, he was flanked by tech billionaires who at the time seemed confident that his victory was theirs, and they’ve been cozying up to him ever since. Now, according to Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, it’s becoming increasingly clear that allying with Trump wasn’t the “smart political move” they hoped. Evidence of this, he says, was in the CNBC interview with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos earlier this week.

“Last year Bezos and other tech billionaires evidently believed that they could insulate themselves from criticism — and secure their wealth against both taxation and regulation — by allying themselves tightly with Donald Trump,” writes Krugman. “But Trump is now exploring new frontiers in presidential unpopularity, and Republicans are facing a wave of public revulsion so strong that it will probably overwhelm even their strenuous efforts to rig the midterm elections. So paying court to the mad king isn’t looking like the smart political move Bezos and his ilk thought it was.”

And according to Krugman, they’re coming around to this realization. The proof was in the fact that during his interview, an unprepared Bezos flailed while trying to justify cutting taxes.

As Krugman notes, Bezos was quick to “peddle the classic zombie lie” that rich Americans pay the overwhelming majority of tax revenue, asserting that the top 1 percent pays 40 percent while the bottom half only pays 3 percent. “These numbers aren’t remotely right,” notes Krugman, explaining that between federal, payroll, state and local taxes, the uber-rich only have a slightly higher tax burden than middle and working class households.

“So Bezos doesn’t understand the most basic facts about taxes, nor did he make any effort to inform himself,” says Krugman. “He went instead with some numbers he thinks he heard somewhere — numbers that tell a story he wants to hear.”

What’s more, Bezos attempted to obscure just how little he actually pays. While he argued that “people sometimes say that I don’t pay taxes — that’s not true,” Krugman notes that while he indeed does pay some taxes, the fact is that he pays less than 1 percent of his income.

More interesting than Bezos’s muddled assertions, says Krugman, is the question of why he felt the need to give the interview in the first place.

“The answer, almost surely, is that Bezos is feeling the heat,” asserts Krugman. “There is a broad political backlash brewing against the excessive power of billionaires and the corrupting effect of their money on our democracy. This backlash is especially severe for tech oligarchs. A decade ago, Bezos and other tech billionaires were popular, almost folk heroes. No longer.” As evidence of this, he points to a Gallup survey showing positive perceptions of the tech industry have fallen precipitously over the past decade, while negative perceptions have climbed.

So now, tech billionaires are seeing the writing on the wall, and in the face of Trump’s plunging approval ratings and the likelihood of a major political sea-change over the coming elections, they’re feeling the pressure to “defend themselves against the threat of taxes and regulations that might make them slightly less rich.”

“Bezos evidently thought that the threat to his billions was sufficiently important to justify going on CNBC to lecture the rest of us about the evils of taxation — but not sufficiently important for him to learn a few facts first,” Krugman concludes. “Somehow, I don’t think this new political strategy will work.”

UK

Eat the Bond Traders!

Stephen F. Eisenman

 May 22, 2026

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James Gilray, Monstrous craws, at a new coalition feast. 1787. Photo: Library of Congress.

The recent U.K. election

The political gloom lifted here just a bit this week, when it became clear there will soon be a leadership contest in the British Labour Party. Last week’s municipal and “devolved” (Scottish and Welsh parliament) election results were like a 16-ton weight dropped on Britain’s hapless Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Labour received the worst drubbing in its history: 1400 municipal council seats lost, including 450 in London; loss of control of the Welsh Senedd (the quasi-independent, unicameral legislature); and an equally large defeat in Scotland. In London, Labour surrendered votes to the Greens – now, under Zack Polanski, a socialist alternative – and ceded control of half the borough councils.

The biggest winner in England, unfortunately, was Reform U.K., led by the racist, corrupt, and irrepressible Nigel Farage. It captured 1500 seats nationwide and gained control of 14 municipal councils. Extrapolated to parliamentary elections in 2029, Reform would become the largest party in the U.K. and its leader prime minister. Farage is currently under investigation by a parliamentary committee for not reporting a £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne, a British crypto billionaire living in Thailand. Farage said he didn’t have to register the gift because it was purely personal, intended to pay for a lifetime of security services. Apparently informed that protection services for a politician aren’t “personal,” he quickly changed his story and said the money was “a reward for campaigning for Brexit.” The only difference between Farage and his friend Trump’s corruption, is that the latter’s is on a bigger scale.

In Scotland and Wales, the nationalist parties dominated. The Scottish National Party, led by the charisma-challenged John Swinney, maintained control of Holyrood (that’s the name of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh), and in Wales, Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of Plaid Cymru, another independence party, was elected First Minister, the first time a non-Labour minister has held the position. Neither the SNP nor Plaid is likely to press for independence immediately, but if Farage seems likely to gain power, they will quickly pivot for autonomy.

The political upshot of all this is that the current leader of U.K. Labour, Prime Minister Starmer, is a zombie, a stiff, a dead man walking – choose your terminal metaphor. There would be reason to pity the poor man, if he weren’t so self-righteous. By historic standards, and certainly by comparison with the Tories, his first two years in office haven’t been terrible. He’s reduced child poverty, restricted the sale of council houses (an insidious practice that dates to Margaret Thatcher), increased the provision of free childcare, raised the minimum wage, provided renters more rights, and reduced (marginally) the length of waiting lists for treatments from the National Health Service.

But the biggest issues remain unaddressed. Prices have risen faster here than almost anywhere else in Europe, and salaries have lagged. There’s more poverty (including child poverty) and homelessness, worse health and lower life expectancy in the U.K. than most other European countries.  Public transportation is more costly and less extensive than the rest of Europe and higher education is more expensive and less available. Many hospitals are in a deplorable condition, and the waits for elective surgery – like knee and hip replacements – can be years long. The U.K. has far less open space than almost anywhere else in Europe – indeed, it’s one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.  The water quality of lakes and rivers is especially bad because of runoff from animal agriculture. There are 35 million pigs, sheep and cows in the U.K.

If you travel, like my wife Harriet and I have, from Norwich to Amsterdam, Netherlands (a 35-minute flight) you discover there a train and bus system that takes you almost anywhere in the country you want to go at very low cost. And as you sit on those Dutch trains or buses, watching unfold a landscape of well-maintained homes and businesses, manicured gardens, and well-paved roads, you wonder, “why are the Dutch so rich while the British are so poor?”

The short answer is that during the two generations following the Second World War, the Dutch embraced a model of development that prioritized the general good at the expense of those who would amass great, individual wealth. The Dutch established a durable welfare state with low poverty and high taxes, while the British – especially after 1980 – rejected welfarism, embraced privatization of formerly publicly held industry and housing, and encouraged financialization and public austerity.  When it comes to GDP, salaries, wealth, and health, the Dutch score much higher than the British.

Instead of addressing these deficits, which most Brits believe have reached crisis proportion, Starmer has focused on small wins that can be achieved within the Tory-established budget guidelines now enforced by him and his harried Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Rather than taxing the very rich and distributing the windfall to the very poor, he’d prefer to flatter and cajole the tech and finance barons in the hope they will invest more in British industry.  (Fat chance.) Rather than support the NHS with the billions it needs for its resuscitation, he’d prefer to build up U.K. armaments to placate his master in Mar-a-Lago. Or is Starmer worried Russia will invade and take over the NHS, trainlines, and water systems?

Starmer has in addition, selectively criminalized protest, fed Israel the weapons it needs to continue waging a genocidal war in Gaza, and proposed the elimination of jury trials for large classes of offenses, gutting the single institution that is the envy of much of the world. He has also appeased the far right by demonizing immigrants and purged his party’s progressive ranks, including the hundreds of thousands of idealistic young members who joined when Corbyn was leader.  Starmer has earned his legion of enemies.

There are so far, two men who have announced they will seek to replace Starmer as party leader. The first is Wes Streeting, the crew-cut straight arrow of the center right. Until his resignation last week, he was Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. He’s reputed a good speaker, though it seems to me he’s just a fast talker. In recent days, he has tacked left, calling for higher taxes on the rich and for the U.K. to rejoin the E.U. The second candidate is Andy Burnham, the current mayor of Manchester, and judged by some a miracle worker for taking control and revamping the Manchester’s public transit systems. He has lately tacked right – demurring on rejoining the E.U. and pledging allegiance to the sacrosanct “fiscal rules”, the better to gain the support of conservative, local voters who must first elect him to parliament so he can then run for leader. If he’s elected (a big if), the leadership contest will play out in late June or July. It’s possible Angela Raynor, who speaks with a working-class accent and represents the “soft left” may join the contest.

A modest proposal

The fly in the ointment of British Labour politics today – what prevents essential investments in health, infrastructure, housing, energy and education — is the class of bond traders in the City or Canary Wharf. They are the ones who in 2022 brought down the hapless but un-mourned Tory Liz Truss, whose prime ministry famously lasted no longer than the shelf life of a head of cabbage (49 days). When she cut taxes (on the rich, naturally) without also cutting spending, the bond markets screamed “INFLATION,” dumping bonds (also known as “gilts”) and requiring the government to raise interest rates on new bonds. This higher pricing then filtered through the system, raising interest rates on car loans, credit cards and worst of all, mortgages, forcing homeowners with variable rate products (the majority) to make higher monthly payments. Even small rises in mortgages, energy bills, transport costs or anything else can drag a working-class family into crisis. Speaking Truss’s name aloud today is like saying Voldemort; its mere mention summons images of darkness, danger and even catastrophe. Invocation of her legacy is enough to freeze timorous Labour politicians in their tracks, making them eschew spending increases and demand belt-tightening instead.

So, what to do? There’s no question that fixing the many harms suffered by the British people requires significant spending. The NHS probably needs another £40 billion per year (on top of the existing £200 billion) to significantly reduce waiting lists, repair failing infrastructure and improve the pay of doctors and nurses, while social care – support for the elderly and disabled out of hospital – an extra £15 billion. The cost of upgrading water, sanitation and electric power infrastructure is currently borne by the private utilities that own them – passed on to ratepayers of course – but a significant proportion of this investment goes into the pockets of shareholders in the form of profit. The industries are essential to public well-being and should be re-nationalized, but even if they are, significant investment will need to be made. Where will the money come from?

In addition to raising taxes on the rich, a new Labour government must find a way to borrow without allowing the bond vigilantes to punish the state and consumers with higher borrowing costs. That means just one thing: Eat the bond traders! Here’s how: The new Labour Prime Minister – Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting, Angela Raynor or someone else — must appoint a Chancellor willing to deploy Section 19 of the Bank of England Act of 1998 to declare an economic emergency, allowing the government to order the bank to act as a buyer of unlimited U.K. debt. This would enable the Chancellor to lock in long-term interest rates with a low, stable cap, for example 3.5%. The bond traders would be instantly disabled. They can’t strike (refuse to lend) or force borrowing costs up because the central bank sets the price of money, not them. They would in fact, make a fortune up front since the value of their bonds would skyrocket. (But they can be taxed.)

In order to assure the public and ministers that increased spending by itself won’t increase inflation, the government could then announce a capital/operational budget division, that is, two spending ledgers. The first, capital investment, would use borrowed funds to build tangible national assets such as new hospitals and care facilities, schools, water and green energy infrastructure, and social housing. Because this builds physical capacity and raises productivity, rather than driving consumer spending, it doesn’t cause consumer inflation. To make extra sure, the government can offer the public tax-free individual savings accounts (ISAs), to raise money for capital expenditures. These would be fully secured by the government and offer the British public better interest rates than commercial banks. (There would be a balance limit – perhaps £100,000, to ensure ISAs are not used as a tax dodge by the very wealthy.) The result would be billions of pounds pulled from exiting private banks and put directly to use for capital investment.  State rebuilding would now be funded by citizens themselves, who receive a high, guaranteed return paid for by the productivity yields they funded!

The second, operational budget would cover general, government running costs, for example, salaries and pensions, nurse and teacher pay increases, and infrastructure maintenance. It’s transparently paid for by domestic taxes. Increased revenue if needed, can come from popular new wealth taxes, better graduated inheritance taxes (again, only impacting the wealthiest few), increased marginal taxes rates on the highest incomes, taxes on capital gains and dividends, and a financial transaction tax on City (U.K. stock market) trading, perhaps 0.1% on short-term, speculative trades. (The tax would be based on the nationality of the asset, to prevent traders from selling in a different market.)

The way ahead

Any future prime minister and chancellor will need to do something like the above if they want to improve the prospects of British people, fend off Reform, and prevent the rapid break-up of the United Kingdom into England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (There were no municipal elections last week in Northern Ireland.) To be sure, the struggle to break the conservative hold on the Bank of England, eat the bond traders, and fend off court challenges will require energy, organization and a willingness to fight. But the British public is clearly fed up with austerity and the shame and spectacle of national decline; it will reward politicians who act boldly and in their interest. The same is true in the U.S., but there, the opportunity for a rapid change of fortune is much less. It will probably have to await elections in 2026 and ’28.

Stephen F. Eisenman is emeritus professor at Northwestern University and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of a dozen books, the latest of which (with Sue Coe), is titled “The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism,” (OR Books, 2014). He is also co-founder of Anthropocene Alliance. Stephen welcomes comments and replies at s-eisenman@northwestern.edu