"Citizens will be on their best behavior’ amid constant recording"

The words of Larry Ellison, who quietly announced on the day of the strikes on Iran, that access to AI running across civil and military government data is available to approved government customers.

Before I begin today’s piece, I just want to say that despite Trump’s predictable lap of honour on killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he remains far from having solved the Iranian threat. This stroke of good fortune, based on uncharacteristically accurate intelligence, might be great for Trump’s ego, but it does NOT eliminate the threat or count as another war he has ended. Should he be applauded for removing Khamenei? The jury is out, despite the actions being illegal in my opinion. The world is no doubt a safer place without Khamenei, but it’s far too early to judge this military intervention a success. Only time will be a judge of that, but Trump is already ready to move on, so look out, Cuba.

I don’t want to spend my time speculating on what comes next. I’ll leave that to the click hunters. I’ll return to the issue when the dust has settled, and I’m able to make an assessment based on the facts. I have a series of thoughts that are best shared with a more detailed understanding of the ACTUAL position.

Returning to my thoughts for today, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that Larry Ellison is now the greatest threat to US democracy. The secret to unlocking true authoritarian power is ‘big data’. We know that the private data of US citizens was compromised by Elon Musk and his DOGE data stormtroopers. It has already been proven that the whole DOGE exercise was merely a cover to gain access to government data.

I’ve spoken many times about the political power of data. As a database designer and analyst, I understand data models and the power they can wield in the hands of malign actors. For any authoritarian regime to exert control, the key to unlocking power is data. Larry Ellison is the modern-day godfather of database technology, and he just so happens to be friends with both Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, he has hosted Bibi at his private estate on several occasions. In 2017, he made a record-breaking donation to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) of $16.6 million.

The trifecta of Ellison, Trump, and Netanyahu makes him a member of a global trinity of evil in my book, and while Trump might think he’s the leader of the gang, there is really only one head of this cabal, and it’s Ellison. He said of data:

"Once the business data has been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts"

He knows big data is the holy grail of power, and power equals wealth beyond imagination. Be in no doubt, were it not for China, Ellison and his acolytes would already rule the world and dominate the global economy. While data is the key, it has little value without middleware analysis tools and a presentation layer. You have to be able to analyse it to use it effectively. Enter the likes of Palantir, another company Trump thinks he has in his pocket.

In economic terms, it’s fair to assume that AI is the future. Love it or hate it, I do believe it to be the case, so it’s logical for Trump to declare the tech Barrons a protected species, because without them, America’s economic ‘all in’ bet on AI will break the US economy, which it might do anyway. For Trump to execute his economic agenda, he needs gold-standard experts in the tech trinity of database, analysis, and presentation.

Now, before I continue and because I know liberal voices will be frothing at the mouth at my assessment, I feel I need to better explain my thinking.

I believe AI is more societally significant than the Industrial Revolution for good reason. I know it’s become fashionable to describe it as ‘slop’, but that really is very lazy. I understand the resistance because of the real threat it poses to jobs and prosperity for those who have worked hard and invested to arrive at where they are. There is a parallel here to the statement that ‘guns don‘t kill’; it’s the people pulling the trigger.

The same applies to AI; it’s not the technology that will destroy society and possibly humanity itself, it’s those who control it. AI has the extraordinary power to democratise opportunity regardless of wealth. It has the power to take human ingenuity and transform it into economic success. If you can gain access to a computer and the internet, you have an opportunity to succeed, and that’s not hyperbole.

This is something not lost on the wealthy elite who control access to it. If you are a poor kid from a deprived community with internet and a computer, you have the same baseline chance as a kid who lives in a mansion and attends a private school. AI has provided opportunities based on the idea that if you can imagine it, AI can bring it to life. As an example, anyone can now build an App with absolutely no coding experience.

As a result, the best return on investment for any government would be to provide every school-age child with a laptop and free internet access. Then teach them how to use AI as a cornerstone of the education curriculum. Alongside that, provide the usual core subjects, but include Civics, History, and critical thinking in that core group. I also believe every child should be taught to speak Chinese, because the future will demand it. It should only be the job of schools to teach a set of baseline secular values that encourage inclusion, diversity and moral decency. Despite those who would rail against these so-called ‘woke values’, society operates at its most efficient when we are not promoting tribalism and religious ideology. We have to resist division at an early age.

The oligarchs and exponents of MAGA ideology will move heaven and earth to make sure that none of the above is delivered because they no longer want the American dream to be a central tenet of American society. For them to succeed, they need us to fight each other in a lifetime tribal driven culture war. Their whole system is predicated on the need for a pool of economic slave labour. The average American citizen is, in reality, a member of an indentured class expected to be grateful for the crumbs falling from the table of the great and the good.

I intend to spend the rest of the week exploring my thinking on the above, while incorporating it into the everyday events of living under the control of a regime that is absolutely intent on denying access to the democratisation of knowledge, through the AI models they guard to enslave the bottom 90%. My friends, this is NOT science fiction; this is the reality of a Hunger Games regime that believes it can control the masses. In contrast, I believe in the power of numbers and the physics of mass, and no AI can deliver rule by consent in their imaginary world of domination through technology.

Returning to Larry Ellison’s world of big data, this access to data across government includes the Defense Information Systems Agency, a US Department of Defence (DoD) combat support agency that provides IT, communications, and security services to federal agencies. The key point here is that Trump’s March 20th Executive Order entitled:

Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos

was the foundational step under the guise of a virtually non-existent fraud arising from the now-failed DOGE purge. It was this executive action that laid the groundwork for the all-encompassing state surveillance systems that Larry Ellison has long advocated for, with his assertion that:

“Citizens will be on their best behaviour because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on”

His company has now created the technology foundation for the realisation of his dream, and his friendship with Trump has facilitated it. You would think that this alone is the stuff of a dystopian nightmare for advocates of privacy, but it’s not even the half of it. Ellison’s son’s media and streaming monopoly, Paramount, provides the final piece of the jigsaw for a big data set that goes way beyond the binary value of personal identity, to capture your social habits.

What you watch and consume on social media and streaming services reveals who you are not as an ID number, but who you are as a person, and this is the key to political profiling, which is the holy grail of any authoritarian regime. It becomes technically possible to identify which people you should target for removal from the electoral rolls, and MUCH MORE. ID data is great for identifying, for example, married women who don't hold a passport, thereby identifying who the SAVE Act will make it more difficult for to vote. But what you watch and say on social media betrays who you would likely vote for and your vulnerability to suggestive messaging.

Ellison’s stake in TikTok enables his cabal to track, monitor, and silence critics. The possibilities go on and on. Make no mistake, data is the most powerful tool any authoritarian ruler has at his disposal. All you need is a leader who has a total disregard for ethics and the rule of law. It’s at this point that alarm bells and red flags should be waving.

If you’re here to read just my daily ramblings, this is where you can bail out. However, if you would like to read about my exciting plans beyond Substack, feel free to read on.

This week was a milestone for me as I crossed the 100,000-subscriber benchmark. It’s difficult to articulate my appreciation for the support I receive as an old guy on the outside looking in. This support has given me a true sense of purpose in my time-rich retirement. I’ve given myself a decade for what will be my final hurrah.

Despite the mentally challenging nature of the work, I am grateful for the opportunity to have my voice heard, with so many keen to engage with my thoughts.

I know I can be an acquired taste, given that I focus on what I think people need to hear rather than what they want to hear. However, with facts and knowledge, hopefully comes liberation, and a sense of comfort that what you’re reading has no profit or nefarious motive. Just simple delivery of the truth in an understandable format.

I subscribe monthly to over 35 news, economic, social justice, and geopolitical publications and resources from around the world, including Russian dissident reporting, Israeli, and Middle Eastern publications, because understanding the whole picture is an important component of what I do.

I subscribe to statistics databases and economic analysis resources because it’s the only way to disseminate complex political and economic dynamics, enabling me to break them down into understandable language. Mine is not a one-way process of communication. I read every comment where possible and engage where I feel I can contribute further to the conversation. Reader comments and direct messages help me focus on the critical issues I think warrant attention.

What never ceases to make my soul sing is the level of intellectual argument and discussion to be had within the Truth Matters community. It brings me immense pride that we are able to share this journey together despite being an ocean apart. But much more than that, I admire the respect generally shown in conversations here. Of course, there are exceptions, but that comes with the turf.

About 4 weeks ago, I put my Truth Portal Project on hold to do a deep dive into the Epstein class, given the importance of the moment. It’s been a project six months in the making, involving a new website, a weekly podcast, and a YouTube weekly news magazine. All my production facilities have been updated to enable an efficient workflow that delivers value-added resources FREE to all, with the aim of creating a protected environment from which to operate outside the control of big tech.

The idea is to operate the podcast and news magazine within the current big-tech bubble while maintaining backup media servers and services in a separate, secure environment outside the bubble. This will enable services to be resilient in the face of any attempts to silence what I do. I’ve self-financed the whole project, supplemented by revenue from my paid subscribers here on Substack. Am I nervous? If you’ll excuse the French, I’m fucking terrified!

I like to think I’ve served an apprenticeship here for a year to help people understand who I am and what I believe, and it’s now time for the next step. Substack has become my base of operation, and long may that continue. However, it will now not only be the home of my writing, but also a gateway to a set of new FREE resources whose sole aim is to fight disinformation by delivering fact-checked truth through what I’m calling The Truth Portal. This will be provided as a curated, fully searchable set of resources featuring news, commentary, and messaging tips, with both written and visual media.

I want it to become a home for new, talented writers and content creators who can upload their work freely. None of it will be allowed to be placed behind a paywall, but every contributor will be free to add support links to monetise their work. They will keep 100% of any revenue stream; I will take ZERO from any content featured. It’s time for undiscovered talent to take its rightful place in the political conversation. It’s my hope that the Truth Portal will become a creative union for the dissemination of truth in politics and geopolitics.

On Monday, 9th March, I’ll be releasing a short film which will mark the introduction of the project. The website will go live on 16th March, with my first podcast dropping on 20th March. The first episode of the weekly news Magazine will be launched on 21st March. The aim is to use this midterm cycle to refine the content output and delivery style, expanding the vision beyond long-form writing to include video, a podcast, and short-form political Ads. This means that by the start of the 2028 cycle, it will be firing on all cylinders.

Will it be a success? I have absolutely no idea, but what I do know is that it has been thought through in detail, and, as an information hub for the public, it stands every chance of becoming a go-to resource for those simply looking to access the truth. I have a scaling plan, but it’s about starting small and building on success while learning from mistakes, and there will be mistakes. THIS IS NOT A FOR-PROFIT VENTURE; it’s a FOR TRUTH IMPERATIVE, because nobody should ever have to pay money to obtain the truth. I’m probably insane thinking I can pull this off, so feel free to offer a helping hand. There’s no room for agenda-driven sponsorship or support, so nobody will ever be able to buy influence here EVER.

If you would like to become a fiscal stakeholder in the project, simply upgrade to become a paid subscriber. If you would prefer to make a one-off donation to the project, you can do that by clicking here. This is a secure link using Substack’s payment processor. To be very clear, nobody should feel any obligation to chip in, especially in what are challenging times for so many; support comes in many forms, from sharing content to recommending Truth Matters, and I accept them all with sincere and grateful thanks.

I’ll be reaching out directly to my paid subscriber community beginning the week of the 9th March, not to ask for money, might I add, but with more detailed information on how your paid support has helped make all this possible. I want us to work together on moving this forward. At the very least, I can offer you the opportunity to speak to me face-to-face on a regular basis as we move forward.

Each day this week, I’ll add a little more information to my daily post on the project's intended structure, so by the time we get to March 9th, people will be fully up to speed on the vision for this ambitious but exciting project.

Thank you for indulging me

Martin