Cognitive Dissidents - Sep 2026

Panellists: Parallel Mike (The PM Report, Substack), Monica Perez (The Monica Perez Show), and Hrvoje (Geopolitics & Empire)

Click for fascinating discussion - they are "spot on" on many topics

1. The "AI Will Kill Us All" Narrative

Mike notes a massive recent uptick in AI doomerism — e.g. the podcast Diary of a CEO promoting a panel headlined "99.9% of humanity are going to be killed."
His view: extreme narratives fuel financial bubbles, and AI extinction hype fits the "epic mega bubble." It also serves incumbent AI companies seeking regulation to shut out small competitors and target Chinese AI.
Monica references the heavily advertised film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die as pure narrative programming, and her deep-dive series showing the agenda goes back ~5 years.
Two dominant camps identified:
- Techno-optimist accelerationists (Trump, Marc Andreessen) — "no guardrails."
- AI safety "realists" (Sam Altman, OpenAI) — global guardrails, which the hosts read as a push for global AI governance that would erect barriers to entry and entrench oligopolists.
Cultural framing: John Carpenter (interviewed on Billy Corgan's podcast) said we're now living the dystopia he imagined decades ago (Escape from New York, Idiocracy).
Spectrum of dangers the hosts see: Black Mirror-style militarised robots/drone swarms → technocratic systems simply failing and imploding into "Mad Max light" → a "tragic comedy version of Skynet."
Mike's tongue-in-cheek prediction: when the financial bubble bursts, the government will blame "rogue AI" for liquidating retirement accounts and buying Treasuries.
Counterpoint on AI's usefulness for the public: a UK woman described using legal AI to flood local councils with sophisticated legal documents they are obliged to answer; Aaron Day used AI to win a ballot-access legal case for a fraction of the usual cost. Conclusion: "the guardrails are for us."

2. Network States and "Fortress World"

Breaking news discussed: tech utopians (Praxis, fronted by a 30-year-old "surfer dude") announcing their futuristic city in Uruguay; Peter Thiel has bought property there. Monica notes "Praxis" echoes Mises's catchphrase.
Pattern of startup cities: Prospera (Honduras), Balaji's projects in Malaysia/Kazakhstan, now Uruguay — likely payoffs to poor governments in "America's playground," dressed up as organic billionaire initiatives.
The hosts argue the "network state"/"sovereign individual" pitch is really corporate feudalism (Monica cites Snow Crash's corporate suburbs): you're on their blockchain system, with only a "right to exit" after paying in — a honeypot designed to attract libertarians, the opposite of freedom.
Hrvoje's "fortress world" thesis: as ordinary cities decline, the wealthy retreat to fortified enclaves (Lima's walled communities cited as the model), while everyone else is left "Mad Max style." Potential Lord-of-the-Rings-style siege dynamics: shiny smart cities surrounded by people living on a few hundred dollars a month.
Risks noted: no international recognition of ownership rights (a built-in self-destruct mechanism), possible use as lawless petri dishes for human experimentation.

3. Technocracy Choke Points Closing

T-Mobile/US rules changed so eSIM roaming can no longer be activated abroad — tied to Mexico's phone registry and the coming FCC US phone registry.
Malaysia's "voluntary" digital ID — "when optional starts to look unavoidable"; try opening a bank account or getting a licence without a phone.
Governance by executive-branch regulatory/administrative rules, not legislation — no transparency, accountability, or way to slow it down (BiometricUpdate.com tracks the integration of digital ID, biometrics, SIM registration, age checks, etc.).
False-positive facial recognition arrest: a Tennessee woman (Porsha Woodruff-type case; name garbled in transcript) jailed ~6 months for a North Dakota theft she had nothing to do with, based purely on an algorithm; she lost her home, car and possessions and is suing for $10 million.
Mexico: illegal automated photo-ticket cameras, loopholes being closed via real-time information-sharing between states — off-ramps systematically eliminated.

4. Greenland, the Atlantic Union and North Korea

Greenland agreement (Denmark–Greenland–US): US gets "unfettered" military use of land, sea and air; China/Russia excluded even from economic activity; NATO surveillance rights; an alliance of "infinite life" that cannot be renounced unilaterally.
Monica's analysis: it's political theatre / Hegelian dialectic — Trump's annexation threats terrified Greenlanders so the deal now looks like everyone "won," while the indigenous people (seeking autonomy under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) lose everything: no control of land, rare-earth minerals, or economic independence. Also legally dubious — no consideration given ("Trump said it cost us nothing"), and possibly a fraudulent conveyance of rights the indigenous people were about to assert. The EU threw in ~€225 million as a sweetener.
Hrvoje's broader frame: Clarence Streit's 1939 plan — integrate Europe + North America = Atlantic Union = world federation. Canada joining the EU as an associate member; Australia/NZ may follow. South Korea's "urgent pivot" toward easing North Korea sanctions fits normalising/integrating the outliers into one global technate; North Korea may be opened when cheap labour is needed (as with China).
Mike's "Borg" analogy: in this assimilation, the locals always lose — Greenland, Mexico, Canada alike.

5. China and the "Multipolarity" Lie

Quoted at length from Peter Glack (X account): the West deliberately dismantled its industrial base and rebuilt it in China, financing a totalitarian surveillance state; "a ruthless, stateless elite... feels at home everywhere and takes responsibility nowhere." China didn't rise despite the West but because the globalist West built it that way — and recycled Chinese dollars into US Treasuries (the "China dollar").
Both multipolar- and Pentagon-sponsored "pied pipers" are peddling fake narratives; the US and China are actually aligned on the big picture — "America would love to be like China... only with an American flag on it" (corporatism/fascism).
Mike's "techno dollar" riff on the petrodollar: intelligence-tied billionaires (Musk, Thiel, Soros) are given money to plough back into AI and alternative systems — quasi money-laundering beyond government checks and balances.

6. Pentagon Pied Pipers and War Propaganda

Examples of pro-state propaganda flushed out: Dan Bongino's "just hold on until 2028" hopium; Jake and Logan Paul's Pentagon tour video ("a recruitment video to go die for your country"); the Benny Show's Brooke Rollins interview normalising expensive beef ("you can eat chicken, pork, salmon, eggs" — the hosts call this the Great Reset in action); Sebastian Gorka's "I don't care what the price of gas is... it's about dealing death."
Monica's litmus test: never let anyone — whatever facts or ideology they offer — move you off your principles, especially the Bill of Rights; if a narrative justifies murder or warrantless searches, reject it.
Jacob Rees-Mogg clip: "we may face circumstances where people have to die to save their country... that is something that makes a country survive." Mike (as a Brit) savages it — Rees-Mogg has six children with aristocratic names who won't be sent to war; it's the working classes being lined up as WW3 cannon fodder, as in WW1/WW2. Conscription is unachievable in the UK and is fear-mongering — the post-2000 population growth has no affinity for fighting Britain's wars, so it would trigger civil war.
Fabian Paul Richards (Labour) clip: pro-Russian voices would have to be "locked up," habeas corpus suspended, conscription introduced — the hosts compare it to Ingsoc/Airstrip One. A British veteran's clip: he'd rather go to jail than fight for a government that prosecutes citizens for flying flags or posting words online.
War signals cited: George Galloway (debanked by Lloyds) — war on three fronts (US on Iran, Europe on Russia, Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank), with suspended civil liberties, suspended elections, "full media takeover by the security services" ("Hello Trump TV"); Simon Gédeon warning Europeans to get out of Europe; Germany's compulsory military fitness examinations for 18-year-old men (~10,000 summoned since July).
Depopulation angle: war and conscription (including fast-tracked citizenship for migrants who enlist) as a way to thin the population. Hrvoje: the author of all this madness is ultimately the devil — "sterilise the young women, kill the old people, get the men to go to war."

7. Health Casualties and AI's Real Kill Mechanism

Mike's family tally: eight casualties from the COVID-19 injections — six heart attacks/pericarditis/stents, two deaths, another relative (a doctor) newly diagnosed with a serious heart condition.
Hrvoje: an ultra-fit elite runner in his 50s had a heart attack mid-race in France — three stents and a defibrillator device implanted. Still happening years on.
Monica's Stanford-cited point: AI uses roughly 1,000× the energy of a human brain for equivalent computation — 8 billion human brains are a far more efficient resource; AI's likeliest kill mechanism is getting humans to harm themselves by blindly following its advice (e.g. the farmer who wiped out his farm following AI guidance).

8. Yemen, the Suez and Air Traffic Control

Monica's geopolitical deep-dive: everyone talks about the Strait of Hormuz (a cul-de-sac), but the real prize is the Bab el-Mandeb strait (Yemen, opposite Somalia/Djibouti) — the gateway to the Suez Canal. That's why Yemen and Somalia are perpetual hotspots. The Houthis, unlike the Saudi-backed government, have actual de facto control and stability in Yemen — the "international community" just doesn't recognise it; Yemen is kept desperately poor by design.
Air traffic control outages: aviation has triple/quadruple redundancy, so any "failure" means multiple systems went down — in the recent Northeast US stoppage, a cut physical cable was involved. She views the cascade of "aging infrastructure" failures as intentional neglect or false flags, designed to justify "Smart SM" — AI-run air traffic control — as part of a global command-and-control grid whose end purpose is restricting movement and communication. The operators themselves don't want it; Congress wouldn't fund it while it's unpopular.

9. White Pills (Closing Positives)

Hrvoje recommends The Last Narc (2020 Amazon series): DEA agent Hector Berrellez's investigation revealing the CIA, both governments, the DEA leadership and cartels colluded in the torture-murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena in Guadalajara — proof that speaking truth at the highest cost is a form of victory. "Remember their names and tell people their names" (he gives Beverly Eckert, the 9/11 widow, a shout-out). Also endorses the "Never Doom" ethos on X and William Shatner's advice at 95: legacy is "poof," but good deeds endure — echoing Ecclesiastes.
Mike's white pills: Gabriel ("Gabe Rocks"), who lost 300 lb (about 21 stone) in two years and documented it — a triumph over food addiction; plus his own apple crumble baking from home-grown apples and raw milk.

Recurring Themes

Manufactured existential fears (nuclear, climate, terrorism, now AI) are pretexts for building global governance.
Fortress-world feudalism: gated elite enclaves within collapsing general infrastructure.
Consent engineered through controlled opposition, pied pipers and administrative (non-legislative) rule.
Both speakers and listeners are urged to grow discernment, hold to first principles, and create rather than despair.