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Residents of Uvalde and its surrounding community visit the memorials outside of Robb Elementary School on May 30th, 2022 in Uvalde, TX.
When AI can resurrect the dead
There’s a disturbing new use for AI, but one that a group hopes will affect political change.
Parents of school shooting victims are using AI audio technology to generate clips of their dead children speaking and pleading with legislators to pass laws to curb access to high-powered firearms and make schools safer. “I’m a fourth-grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas,” one recording says. “Or at least I was, when a man with an AR-15 came into my school and killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers and me.”
AI-generated audio has been used in all sorts of new ways: by fraudsters impersonating victims, by fake Joe Biden robocalls in New Hampshire, and to allow former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to speak from prison and fire up his base ahead of this month’s election. But they’ve also been used to give voice to those who cannot talk, like the dead, an ethically murky and jarring use case.
The campaign, called the Shotline, lets people pick from different audio messages, identify their US Senator or Representative, and urge them to take action. There isn’t a specific call to action but a vague call for gun reform. One of the groups behind the campaign, March for Our Lives, which emerged after the 2018 Parkland shooting, has lobbied to change federal gun laws, and supported assault weapons bans and laws preventing violent offenders from accessing firearms.
For parents who have experienced the worst kind of tragedy imaginable, this new use of AI is fair game. “If we need to use creepy stuff to fix it,” one parent told the Wall Street Journal, “welcome to the creepy.”
Fans leave the area after shots were fired after the celebration of the Kansas City Chiefs winning Super Bowl LVIII in Kansas City, MO, on Feb. 14, 2024.
Shooting wrecks Super Bowl parade
From the very beginning, this year's Super Bowl – the championship game of American football – was, almost inexplicably, fodder for US culture wars. Large swathes of the American right embraced a conspiracy theory that the Deep State had ushered the Kansas City Chiefs to the big game as a "psyop" meant to give more exposure to pop superstar Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce – both "liberals."
But a deadly shooting at the Chiefs' victory parade on Wednesday was a reminder of the more serious US culture war over gun violence. One person was killed and 21 were wounded in an incident that wrecked a celebration of the team's second consecutive championship. Police arrested three suspects.
The context: Kansas City, MO, last year saw record homicides, even as gun violence in most large US cities has been declining after a pandemic-related spike. The shooting is virtually assured to provoke the usual debate between those who say gun violence is a gun problem and those who say it's a mental health problem. Meanwhile, a solid majority of Americans continue to favor tighter gun control laws.
Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas takes his seat to testify before a Senate hearing on the department's budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 26, 2021.
Hard Numbers: Mayorkas impeachment fails, Haley loses Nevada, School shooter’s mom found guilty, Kenyan cult leader charged with child murder
214: House Republicans on Tuesday tried and failed to make Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in 148 years – an effort that was tied to one of the most divisive issues in Washington: border security. Four Republican lawmakers went against their party and helped Democrats sink the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas in a 214-216 vote. Congressional Republicans are also moving to sink bipartisan legislation aimed at strengthening border security because Donald Trump warned it could help Democrats in the 2024 election.
26: Nikki Haley was the only major candidate to take part in Nevada's GOP primary and still lost due to Donald Trump supporters choosing the "None of these Candidates" option instead. Haley decided not to campaign in the state, focusing instead on her home state South Carolina, and delegate-rich California. On Thursday, Donald Trump will run unopposed by any major candidate in the state GOP caucus, which will earn him the state's 26 delegates once he wins. To understand why Nevada Republicans voted in a primary AND a caucus this year, read our quick explainer.
4: For the first time, a US parent has been held criminally responsible in connection with a school shooting committed by their child. Jennifer Crumbley on Tuesday was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Her son, Ethan Crumbley, shot and killed four fellow students at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021 using a gun gifted to him by his parents just days before (he’s serving a life sentence). James Crumbley, the father, is also facing charges, and his trial is set to begin in March.
191:Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, the leader of a Christian doomsday cult in Kenya, on Tuesday was charged along with 29 other people in the deaths of 191 children – whose bodies were found in mass graves in a forest. Mackenzie – founder and leader of the Good News International Ministry – is accused of convincing his followers to starve themselves and their children to achieve salvation and meet Jesus Christ. He pleaded not guilty. Hundreds of his followers have been found dead, and many others are missing.
Human rights activists demand the safe return of Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, community defenders who disappeared on January 15. Mexico City, Mexico, January 22, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Environmentalists targeted, World Bank outlook improves, mass shooting in Louisville, fiery cocktails in Northern Ireland, Winnie-the-Pooh gets punched
24: This year alone, at least two dozen environmental activists have already been murdered or disappeared in Mexico and Central America, according to an investigation by The Guardian. Many are from indigenous communities protesting against mining activities on their traditional lands.
2: Outgoing World Bank President David Malpass revised the international lender’s 2023 global growth outlook on Monday, bumping it from 1.7% to 2%. He credited China’s improved economic trajectory for the change. Malpass, who plans to step down in June, kicked off his final World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings with the news.
145: The mass shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday was at least the 145th incident of its kind in the United States since the start of this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Five people – including a close friend of the state governor – were killed and nine injured when a disgruntled bank employee opened fire.
4: On the eve of President Biden’s trip to Northern Ireland to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, at least four men were spotted hurling petrol bombs at police. The incident occurred during a parade organized by people who oppose the agreement, which ended decades of conflict between Irish nationalists and the British government. For more on the contentious history, read our primer here.
300: A wildly popular new patch worn by Taiwanese fighter pilots shows a native Formosan black bear punching Winnie-the-Pooh – a common satirical stand-in for Chinese president Xi Jinping – in the face. The patch has been around for a year, but orders blew up this weekend after China conducted its mock invasion of Taiwan. A little e-commerce research shows that you too can own one of these patches for a mere 300 NT$ (about US $9.60).
Grief & controversy in Japan for Shinzo Abe's state funeral
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here from Tokyo, Japan, where it has been a pretty intense day. The state funeral of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister who, of course, of Japan was assassinated some 80 days ago. In some ways just kind of an astonishing couple of weeks for the world. Beginning of last week, of course, you had the funeral for Queen Elizabeth, by far the most important figure for the United Kingdom in the post-war period. Then the United Nations, where the entire world comes together in New York, and now in Japan, the state funeral, the first state funeral that you've had in Japan, 55 years for Abe Shinzo, who is by far the most important figure in Japan in the post-war period.
And in both cases, an astonishing outpouring of emotion, of grief in both countries. In the United Kingdom, of course, because she had ruled for 70 years, through so many prime ministers, since Churchill. In Japan, because Prime Minister Abe was gunned down, was assassinated by a young man with homemade weapons in a country that has virtually no violence and certainly not gun attacks against a former prime minister in broad daylight.
Also, controversy in both cases. In the case of the United Kingdom, young people increasingly unhappy with the idea of a monarchy. They think it's something that's kind of, sort of out of date, no longer appropriate for the United Kingdom or the world in the way it projects its power internationally. And of course, King Charles not nearly as popular as Queen Elizabeth has been. In the case of Japan, you have a sitting Prime Minister Kishida, who was both a protege and enormous ally of former Prime Minister Abe, whose popularity has been crushed over the past months, in part because of a crashing yen and challenges in economy, but also in part because of opposition to holding this state funeral, which frankly was because the of a big scandal in across the entire Liberal Democratic party in Japan, the ruling party, because of connections with the unification church, the Moonies as they're called.
The person who assassinated Abe actually wanted to assassinate the head of the Unification Church and couldn't because COVID restrictions meant that he was no longer traveling to Japan. And so he decided, okay, I'm going to kill Prime Minister Abe instead. And then you have these revelations that so many members of the LDP in parliament, in the Diet in Japan, were receiving funds, were going to meetings of the Unification Church. And Kishida's not tried to whitewash it, but it has made the decision to host the state funeral unpopular.
Having said all of that, you saw very little of that today. 20,000 members of Japanese police coming out to ensure that there was no security breaches anywhere during the day, and certainly I didn't see any problems at all. There were some demonstrations. They were relatively small, a few thousand people. Frankly, 5,000 people showed up directly inside for the state funeral. And people I've spoken to in Tokyo today, on balance pretty happy with the fact this has all gone relatively smoothly. We can finally put this horrible act behind Japan, behind the nation.
I will say Japan, unlike so many other democracies in the world today, is a relatively well functioning country, relatively unified. You don't have the same level of populism and fragmentation and de-legitimization of the political system that you see so much in other advanced industrial economies. But this still was an episode, this assassination, that really did deeply shake the Japanese people. And there's still, there's going to be a hangover for that I think for a long time.
Final point for me, the ceremony itself was really quite moving. Kishida-san, the prime minister, gave a powerful opening speech that was really about his political alignment with Prime Minister Abe and everything that Abe had done, his legacy. But by far the most moving part of the ceremony was from Suga-san, who was basically, in addition to being a one of Abe's closest allies, was also perhaps his best political friend. And he spoke about how he was able to convince Abe, after stepping down the first time as PM because of a significant illness, to run again for PM, and that it was the most significant accomplishment he considered of his entire life, and that he would consider it such until he was no longer here with us. Again, it was a moving speech. I saw that Prime Minister Abe's wife was crying all the way through. There was a spontaneous outburst of applause after he gave the speech, which is very unusual in Japan. Certainly otherwise, it was all quiet and respectful all the way through.
Also, such a large number of international leaders that came out for the Abe funeral. Not surprising, Prime Minister Modi, Narendra Modi of India, who was really Abe's best friend on the international stage, a relationship that really initiated the Quad that we have today. It started with Japan and with Abe, not with the United States, the US then picked it up, and it continues to be perhaps the most robust new international grouping that we have in Asia right now. But also, presidents and prime ministers from all over the world, foreign ministers just showing that the longest standing prime minister of Japan in its post-war history didn't just make a mark on Japan inside the country, but also leaves the legacy internationally that we'll be talking about for generation to come.
So that's, anyway, it for me here from Tokyo, I hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all very soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Japan's “JFK” moment: Shinzo Abe assassinated - GZERO Media ›
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Boris Johnson is going to be out, one way or the other
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60:
First, will Boris Johnson step down?
I certainly think it is getting likely. He's going to be out, one way or the other. The question is, is it as a result of a second in one month no-confidence vote that he loses this time around, or he reads the writing on the wall, knows he's going to get voted out and so decides to resign himself. If you made me bet, I think he's going to resign, but he might well just force them to do it. He's lost… a majority of conservative voters in the United Kingdom now want Boris Johnson to step down. He's had scandal after scandal after scandal, lied, been caught lying about so many of those scandals, and it's just a disaster, frankly. While the economy's doing badly, while Brexit has not played out the way he said it would, this is a man that has well passed his sell-by date and I don't expect he will be there as prime minister for much longer.
Secondly, with Beijing rolling out China's first vaccine mandate, how soon will China ease its lockdowns?
Not soon enough. This is a big mistake for the Chinese. They're the one country in the world, of course, that had no problem, at scale, doing lockdowns and surveillance for their population and yet they didn't bother with vaccine mandates, and they should have, especially for older populations, especially for vulnerable populations. This mandate is only in Beijing. It's not hitting restaurants. It's just hitting a bunch of other public venues. It's not hitting public transportation. It will matter for Beijing, but it's not enough. They need to be much more extensive around the country before they're going to be able to start loosening zero-COVID policy. I think we're still looking at early to mid next year at the earliest.
Is the United States the only developed country struggling with mass shootings?
Yeah, nobody else close than the United States, and the US is the only country that has assault type weapons that are so easily accessible in the hands of its population. That is the fundamental policy difference between the United States and Canada, between the US and Australia, between the US and Japan, the US and the Europeans. If you look at all of these different countries, they all have various amounts of mental illness, they have different amounts of economic inequality, they have different amounts of racial challenges than the rest. The United States is the one where you have all of this gun violence. Yes, a lot of the gun violence isn't mass shootings. A lot of it is, frankly, in inner cities. It's poor, it's overwhelmingly Black in the United States, but it's with guns. And if you look at how many people are killed through violence and it's not with guns, it's a tiny fraction of that. And so if you had more effective background checks on who's able to get guns, if you had effective checks on assault weapons, assault type weapons, it would be a very different story in the US. The US is very significantly struggling with it and is doing absolutely nothing to make a difference.
An image of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting displayed at a House hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill.
What We’re Watching: United States of Guns, Ukrainian strategy, Iran censured
The United States of Guns
The US House of Representatives kicked off a grueling two-day hearing on gun violence in America on Wednesday, just two weeks after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers. Miah Cerrillo, 11, whose classroom was attacked, recounted how she painted herself with a classmate’s blood and played dead. Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was killed, recalled how she ran miles barefoot looking for her daughter that fateful day. The hearing is part of the Congressional debate on how to respond to a spate of recent deadly shootings, most notably in Uvalde, as well as at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where Black Americans were targeted by a white supremacist. Senate Democrats, in coordination with the White House, are working on narrow legislation that could get the support of at least 10 Republicans needed to pass. Proposals center on addressing mental health issues in young males and incentivizing states to introduce their own “red-flag laws” to remove guns from dangerous owners. The Democrat-controlled House, meanwhile, has advanced a bill with eight gun-control measures – including banning large-capacity magazines – but it's unlikely to pass the Senate, where Dems hold a razor-thin majority. It’s a busy week for the House, which will also launch hearings on the Jan. 6 riots on Thursday. Check out what Eurasia Group's lead US analyst, Jon Lieber, has to say about how the Dems hope to use these hearings to gain an edge in the midterms here.
What are the Ukrainians up to?
Western media coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has focused mainly on the Russian side of the fight. We see plenty of estimates of Russian casualties and reports on Russian tactics. Invaluable coverage from the Institute for the Study of War more often quotes Russian military bloggers, aka “milbloggers,” on Russia’s wins and losses than analysts who can estimate Ukraine’s strengths, losses, and changes of plan. The New York Times reports that even the Pentagon remains partially in the dark on what the Ukrainians are doing and how well they’re doing it. Why the secrecy? Ukraine’s leaders want to control the war’s narrative for multiple audiences. The news shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky and others is sometimes designed to persuade both Ukrainian and foreign audiences that Ukraine can win the war, and at other times to emphasize the need for immediate help. Ukraine’s US and European backers, who want their help to have maximum impact, also have an interest in keeping Ukraine’s secrets, and Russian sources on the war are tightly controlled by a government that doesn’t produce credible info. We must keep these realities and limitations in mind as daily updates inform our understanding of this war and where it’s headed.
📸 Iran turns off nuclear surveillance cameras 📸
Iranian authorities turned off two cameras monitoring one of its nuclear sites, obstructing the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body, from surveilling some of its ongoing uranium-enrichment activities. Tehran removed the cameras on Wednesday in response to a group of Western IAEA member states calling for Iran to be censured for failing to comply with the ongoing investigation into its nuclear program – a core condition to getting the now-stalled Iran nuclear deal back on track. The vote passed with 30 voting in favor, two against and three abstentions. The IAEA could now technically refer the matter to the UN Security Council which could enforce more hard-hitting measures against Iran. (That’s unlikely, however, because two permanent UNSC members, China and Russia, both voted against the resolution and would never go for it.) Indeed, the latest tit-for-tat is a sign of how much the Iran-US relationship, in particular, has deteriorated under both former President Donald Trump as well as the Biden administration. This game of brinkmanship is particularly dangerous right now because, as the IAEA chief warned this week, it could be “a matter of just a few weeks” before Iran gets sufficient material needed for a nuclear weapon if it continues nuclear enrichment at its current clip. Iran, for its part, said it might respond to the censure by taking new nuclear steps.This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
Boris Johnson is likely to face another no-confidence vote soon
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Boris Johnson survives no-confidence vote, but are his days as prime minister still numbered?
Yeah. On balance, I think you're still going to see another no-confidence vote. The rules in the Tory Party executive committee say you can't, but they can change the rules. And because the vote was this close and because there is such opposition with the scandals that he continues to drive, I think the likelihood that you end up with another no-confidence vote in coming months is actually pretty high. So on balance, yeah, I still think his days are numbered. He's holding on by a thread. Good news though, is that he's less likely to cause trouble over Northern Ireland-Ireland border given how weak he is right now. So the Europeans at least are resting a little easily.
Despite boycotts and exclusions, is the Summit of the Americas still relevant?
It's not the most relevant right now. I mean, Biden's Asia trip was very important. Biden's Middle East trip coming up, which will be his first trip to Saudi Arabia, very important, especially with energy prices where they are. The NATO and G7 Summits, given the importance of the Russia war in Ukraine, that's more. I mean, the Summit of the Americas is kind of the forgotten event and even more so because Lopez Obrador has decided not to show up in part because foreign policy doesn't really matter to his domestic constituency and his popularity, which continues to be pretty high in Mexico. Also, because the Americans just don't have a trade agenda. And in the case of Indo-Pac there's a lot of other stuff to talk about so a weak trade framework is okay. But in Latin America, it's mostly about trade and there, there's just not much to talk about. And on the refugee and migration issue, if you don't have the Central American countries there in the Triangle, well, then you have nothing to negotiate. So yeah, this is going to be kind of a non issue. And if Latin America really did matter to American voters, Biden would get punished for it.
Are mass shootings a global humanitarian threat?
I mean, horrible to see in the headlines and certainly the over 50 that have just died in Nigeria from a mass shooting is an abomination to see in the news. But on balance, no. I would say this is really a United States problem. And the gun violence that we continue to see in the United States is, of course, something that is driving an enormous amount of headlines, an enormous amount of feeling of political sort of impotence. But, I see mass shootings in the US still as the way we saw crack cocaine in the '80s and '90s, which is a really horrible thing that most people in power don't really think affect them, and so there's a lot of performative politics and response but not a lot of willingness to take on vested interests. And as a consequence, we keep seeing it happen.
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