[speaker_0] Hello, my name is Samuel Shadrach.
I am looking for a co-founder to leak information about the
US AI companies and the US government.
This plan is based on a mix of Eliezer Yudkowsky's worldview
and Julian Assange's worldview. You can find their worldviews both,
you know,
online. There's a lot of writing about it.
I want a political leader in the United States to
obtain enough power to shut down the AI companies and
pause AI research.
In order to do this, they will have to oppose a lot of people
who want to
accelerate AI research. This includes people in the intelligence
agencies, people in the executive branch, including, you know, the current
president, people running various media houses,
people running
various lobby groups, people funding all of the people I listed
up till
now, you know, including the media, the lobby groups, intelligence and so on.
I want to leak information about all of these enemies to the
public.
This rest of the video is just going to talk about, you know,
like roughly
maybe twenty minutes
describing this plan in more detail.
Before I describe the plan, I will give you some disclaimers.
The biggest disclaimer is that all plans are fake.
Like,
over the next few months, I am going to do more stuff in the real
world and figure
out, you know, which parts of this plan make sense
and which parts do not.
I do not believe in, you know, figuring out a perfect plan from day one,
and it just executes perfectly. I'm publishing incomplete hot
takes and as, you know, we do stuff, we are going to
find out, you know, what the actual plan is going to be.
Uh, second disclaimer, so far I have been working, you know,
all by myself, solo on
this. If hypothetically you were a co-founder, you chose to work with
me, then obviously your input is also valued in the plan.
We will have to make the plan together. It won't just be me making it alone.
So yeah, that's my other disclaimer.
Cool.
First, I will start with like my broader
worldview,
like not specific to this plan, but just what is my worldview,
what do I think
about politics, about life, about whatever.
And from there you will get a sense of, okay, you know, why am I working on this?
Yeah. So
first of all, I agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky to a
significant
extent. I think there is a significant chance we will
soon build an AI that is better than the best human experts at
everything.
Like every single task you can imagine, if you can imagine it,
you can also imagine
an AI that's better than the best humans on that task.
Now, if we do this, it will be the most important event of
human history.
We will have literally, you know, a hard disk this big that will
be capable of, you know, spawning an entire civilization from
scratch with no
human input.
I think there's maybe a twenty-five percent chance we will get this by 2030.
Uh, maybe forty percent chance we will get
this by 2035.
If we do build such a superintelligence, I think the most likely
outcome is we will lose control of the superintelligence, as in we, the human
race, will lose control of it, and literally everybody on Earth will die.
I will die, you will die, your loved ones will die,
everyone will die.
Even if we did figure out how to keep a superintelligence in control,
I think the most likely outcome is, you know, whoever was that person who
managed to keep the superintelligence in their control, they will use it to rule
the world forever. They will become, you know, permanent global dictator.
Uh,
in spite of all this, like as we know today, there
are many people
who want to accelerate AI research.
There are many people in the US intelligence who want to accelerate AI
research.
I think people in US intelligence have had a lot of
unaccountable power, like forever, at least on certain key
domains, like whether to start wars, whether to, you know,
race on key technology,
whether to do surveillance, so on.
So even if you could get fifty-one percent
of the public, in this case the US public, to, you know,
say, "Okay, we don't want AI to be accelerated at
maximum pace," even if you could
get that fifty-one percent,
that may not actually get you a pause because, you know, the
institutional structures are such that, you know,
fifty-one percent is not enough. Like the people who run,
uh, who are, are accelerating AI research are not
that ac-acc-accountable to the
public.
Yeah. And ultimately, uh, now I think, okay, if you could leak information
about these people, you can make them more accountable to the
public, more
ensure that, you know, the public will actually gets translated
into,
you know, decision-making in the real world.
Okay. Some other plans which I have chosen not to work on.
At some point, I did think about, okay, what if we could leak the information of
everybody on the planet, not just, you know, people building AI?
I now think that plan has a number of moral issues.
I am not working on that plan. I'm now working specifically
on leaking specific information about, you know, specific people who are
accelerating AI research. That's it.
I don't think I should try to become a billionaire.
If I become a billionaire, I don't see how I'll be able to pause AI
research.
Like sure, there are things I can try, but
like there's a very long road even from there.
It's not like, okay, you get, you get power as a billionaire and,
you know, then
the world gets saved or something.
I don't think I can become a politician because I fucking hate talking to
people. I'm sorry. [chuckles] That is true.
And I have learned this the hard way over the past one year.
Uh, I still think somebody should try to, you know, persuade
the public around risks from superintelligence.
I just don't think I can become that political leader who will, you know,
persuade
millions of people.
I think there are people in the past who have, you know, opposed, you know,
billionaires, politicians, powerful people.
In particular, there are like certain software developers who
have, you know,
become activists and
And, you know, oppose these people, some of these software developers who have
succeeded, they have succeeded because they
were living in a different country from
the country whose leaders they want to oppose.
So, I mean, there are many examples you can take.
For example, you know, like Sandra Albakyan who runs, you know,
LibGen.
Uh,
sorry, uh, who runs SkyHub,
who lives in, you know, Eastern Europe, which makes her more immune to, you know,
uh, lawsuits from, you know, US, uh,
academic publishers. I can give you many examples like this.
You can go check them on my website.
Yeah, so I think this plan of, okay, live in a different country from the
country
whose leaders you want to oppose, I think this plan still has some weight in
it,
and this seems like what I'll be doing.
Lastly, I have typically, at least until recently,
been, you know, kind of a believer in capitalism,
in democracy.
Uh, I believed, okay, like, you know, self-interested
people run the world, but you can use structures to constrain
their
self-interest, and this can lead to good outcomes for
society.
However, now I'm not advocating just capitalism as
usual, democracy as
usual. I'm saying, okay, we need a mass movement.
We need to, you know, overthrow these people.
We need to pause AI research.
Like, this is like radical shift from my earlier
worldview.
And like, yes, my opinions have changed.
Uh, I...
In theory, you can have a mass movement within,
you know, pure democratic
framework. In practice, I don't know what a mass movement will
actually do.
Mass movements can become violent.
Mass movements can, you know, change an old form,
structure of government and
replace it with a new structure. Exactly what will happen once there is a
mass movement, even I don't actually know.
Uh, my opinion on this is this is not actually my problem.
Uh, the people who are in fact leading the mass movement,
this is their problem to
deal with it, okay? If you did have millions of people who
are, you know,
protesting on the streets to pause AI research, what these people will do,
what will happen after that, that is
the problem of the peop- the leaders. That's not my problem personally.
Cool. Next thing I want to talk about is the theory of change.
I did briefly mention it. I will again mention it,
uh, more clearly. The theory of change is simply that,
okay, if the public knew everything about the
leaders who are governing them,
it becomes more likely that the leaders will do what the majority
of the public
actually wants.
Uh, otherwise, typically what happens, leaders face multiple
competing pressures. They face pressures to make money.
They face pressures to win wars and defend their territory.
They face pressures to win votes and get elected, which is quite
closely related to, but not the same thing as, you know,
doing what the public
actually wants.
Uh, right now, I just want to strengthen this pressure
that, okay,
leaders should have to actually get votes, win people's
minds and hearts, and only then be able to do the thing.
Uh,
so basically, I want to make the, whatever, democratic pressure
stronger as compared to, you know, market pressure or military pressure or
whatever.
Uh, there are many people in effectual circles
in particular who have
various theories of change. Uh, some of the theories of change
often include, okay, identify who is powerful and then we will go side with
them, ally with them.
Uh,
my theory of change is not this. My theory of change
is not trying to be like,
okay, let's find the specific, you know, powerful person and go persuade that guy
or woman, whatever. My theory of change is, okay, if
all the leaders' information was public, then those leaders actually don't have
freedom to take independent decisions.
They will have to do whatever the public wants out of them, and I think this is
good in this case.
Uh, maybe leaking information about them
is enough to make them
accountable. Maybe that is not actually enough.
You need actual mass movement, actual, you know, people protesting.
I do not actually know. I'm not sure. I think both are worth trying.
Someone should try leaking information on these people and someone should try
building a mass movement.
Cool.
Next section of this video.
What is my motivation for working on this?
So like, in my head, motivation is different, theory of change
is different.
Theory of change is, okay, if I do X, then Y will happen in the world,
then A will
happen, then B will happen. You can have your whole, you know,
galaxy brain plan.
Motivation is about what you feel, what are your emotions around this whole
thing,
and feelings don't have to be rational or justified by facts, whatever.
So yeah, what is my motivation? What do I feel?
Like, what are my feelings that are driving towards like, okay,
you have to go work
on this?
I think my biggest motivation here, and I'm not actually sure if, you know, my
motivations change with time or whatever, but I think my biggest motivation
here is
I don't want to die. I don't want, you know, everyone I care about
to die. I
don't want these people who are building superintelligence to kill me
and
everyone I care about. And if someone comes and, you know,
tries to kill me, I'm willing to go pretty far to, you know,
fucking fight that
person.
Uh, like take a hypothetical. Imagine, imagine this was not, you
know, some random
AIC or whatever. Imagine it was one of my friends.
Tomorrow they decided, okay, they will build a bomb that bo-
blows up everyone on
the planet. Uh, they had some, you know, deranged beliefs.
Oh, this will get us utopia, whatever.
Uh, I don't buy those beliefs, but what in practice they're doing,
they're
literally spending day and night working on a bomb to blow up
everyone
and the plan to set it off. Now, I might like my friend, like I
might like my friend for their honesty, for their courage.
They might be, you know, high on openness to experience like me.
They might be atheist. They might, you know, support technological progress.
There may be various reasons I like my friend.
But the fact that I like my friend is less important.
The fact that they plan to fucking kill me is more important.
And therefore, you know, if I have to go kill my friend, then,
you know, I will do
it.
Uh-
Now I have to caution a bit here, like,
I am not saying, okay, we should just go, you know, kill everyone who's going to
build ASI and that will fix the problem.
Assassinations don't actually work.
Like,
I am not trying to assassinate people.
I am not actively asking anyone to attempt an assassination either.
However, emotionally in my head, I'm like, yeah, if we have to go that far, of
course, we're going to go that far. Like, there's no question about it.
Uh, this is my strongest motivation, but there are other motivations also.
You can go look into the document I wrote for some of them.
Uh, I often remind myself about the fact that,
you know, if all this
happens, if
I am not crazy and this, you know, ASI gets built, you know, I am going to
die. I have taken various steps to keep
reminding myself I'm going to
die.
If I have to sacrifice myself and the world gets saved, you know,
I am fine with
that.
I generally hate authority. That has always been a thing.
This could be authority of parents or family, of religion,
of governments, of educational systems, like any sort of authority.
And I want the truth about, you know, what all these forms of authority
are actually doing. Like, how does society function as a result of,
you know, all
this authority, all this pressure being exerted on people?
I want the truth of all of this to come out publicly, and I have some hope, you
know,
if people are still alive, you know, in 10 years or 50 years, 100
years from now, they can use all this information
and they can design some better
society for themselves, better than, you know, the current whatever we live in.
Yeah, so I want the truth to come out. I am a very strong believer in the truth.
Okay, some more motivations. Uh,
I am not pretending to represent, you know, all of
humanity's interests like some...
I am some benevolent leader who, you know, accounts everyone's interests and
calculates, you know, like in Yudkowsky's worldview, this
is like a CEV.
Uh,
like there are different philosophies or different names for it,
but like I'm not
trying to say, "Oh, I am representing everyone's interests." I
am here to represent
my interests, which is I don't want to die
and I don't want to live in a dead
world. And you might also benefit from that.
Like, if I save the world, you will also not die,
and that's also in your benefit.
But I am not, like, saying, "Oh, I will just
defer to you on things." Like, I'm doing this because I want the world to
be
a certain way and not another way.
Yeah, and many people say they are fine with human extinction.
I think that some of them are wrong, but also it doesn't matter.
You may be fine with it. I am not fine with it and, you know,
I'm going to fight
this.
I am a huge fan of Naval Ravikant's quote that I
should not just keep blaming other people that the world is ending.
I should also, you know, take ownership of this problem
and be like, you know, if
the world ends, this is my fault as well.
Like, I also should have done my best to prevent
this from happening. And if I failed to, you know, do my best, I should also blame
myself.
And I, yeah, I buy that.
Uh,
a more self-interest, again, another reason, like,
working alone on problems is, you know,
demotivating.
I don't want to become depressed. I think there is a small chance,
not very big,
but a small chance I will become depressed if I don't find anyone to work with
this. So again, I would really like to work with someone
on this.
Uh, don't join just because, oh, Samuel's mental health or whatever.
That is a bad reason to join. If you actually believe in this cause
and you
actually want to go all in, then you can come work with me.
Uh,
if I am going to die for whatever reason, be it due to ASI, be it for any other
reason, like, I want people to remember that, okay,
here are things I
did that were beneficial for the
world. Uh, I want people to remember my work after I
die.
I don't want to just die and be forgotten.
I think that's another motivation I do have.
So that I think concludes the section on, you know, what are my motivations, why am
I working on this.
Okay, next section, what will I not be working on?
I am, like I said, I am not working on persuading people.
My focus is on leaking information.
Other people can work on persuading people that, you know, superintelligence is
coming, the world is ending, you need to do something about it today.
I am not working on sabotage. Sabotage means basically destroying other
people's, uh, equipment, property,
occasionally livelihood. But yeah,
like, I don't think sabotaging AI companies
is actually going to work.
Again, there are too many people trying to build
AI.
Uh,
if you just go, you know,
destroy a few computers or something, be it by hacking, be it any means, like,
this doesn't actually stop the AI race. There are too many people.
There's too much money in this space.
Like, if you actually, let's say, you know, blew up TSMC, I can see how that
actually helps. But apart from that, I don't see how sabotage actually helps.
Therefore, I am not working on sabotage.
I am not working on assassinating anyone.
Uh, I want to again make this clear.
I don't think assassinating any one person is actually going to stop the AI race.
Cool.
Now I'm going to come to an important section on morality.
Yeah, why am I talking about morality so much?
Uh, well, firstly, because a lot of, you know, people in
EA strong circles had issues with my moral worldview or whatever.
But also because I think morality is one of the core things
about a person, one of the core things
that helps people to coordinate.
Uh,
if I'm trying to find more people to coordinate with me, it makes at least some
sense for me to talk about morality.
Also, the kind of plan we're working on, we will have to cross some moral lines, I
think. Especially if we are crossing moral lines,
we need to be careful about,
okay, which lines we're crossing and why and so on.
Yeah, my worldview on morality is I think, first of all, most writing on
morality is kind of useless. It's just,
yeah, like if you see like writings on moral
philosophy and then what those people
actually go do in the real life, like these are like two completely
separate
things. And therefore, I think most writing on morality is
useless. Well, maybe useless is going too far.
I would say not that useful. Like morality is something
that's tested in practice, not in theory. I very strongly believe this.
Uh, one thing I do believe about morality
is that,
and again, I'm not sure, but this is something I believe, like
if you have had like
a very nice life, like you've had a comfortable life where--
with
people who you trust, with people you're happy with,
like you will by default want
to be nice to people all the time.
I don't think being nice to people all the time is going to fix the problem of risk
from superintelligence. I think some people need to be less nice
to the
people building superintelligence and, you know, go fight them.
Uh, again, not physically fight them, but fight them in other means.
Uh,
so if you have had a very nice life, your default approach may or may not
actually work.
If you have suffered a lot in life, now you have a choice.
Like you understand that, okay, when a situation comes, there is a
more nice way of dealing with it and a less nice way of dealing with it.
And I personally, I am not everyone, I am a specific person, I am
sympathetic to the people who have suffered in the past and then therefore
they understand that sometimes you have to take the less nice route.
You can't always be nice and expect situations to get solved.
I am sympathetic those-- to those people. I am one of those people.
I might
prefer working with someone like that who understands this
fact about human nature.
Uh, I think it's possible to go too far with
this.
Like, I don't want to become someone who
full-time enjoys, you know, inflicting
pain and suffering on my enemies. But
like we need to understand our job is to inflict pain
and suffering on our enemies.
Like they need to lose power, we need to gain power.
Uh, I don't think I'm alone in having
understanding of this, you know,
fact about human nature. I think many political leaders also have
understood that
sometimes you have to take, you know, the less nice route.
Uh, examples, Winston Churchill, in my view,
basically spent his entire career brainwashing teenagers to, you know,
walk into
their own deaths. And I think this is fine.
He's still on the right side of history for me.
Uh, Nelson Mandela's wife basically joined a
terrorist organization to, you know,
do attacks against the British. I
think that was fine. She's on the right side of history.
Was it all this most maximally effective and all that? I don't know.
But like I think morally all this is okay.
Uh, there were people who tried in
assassinating Hitler.
I support the people who tried assassinating Hitler.
Uh, I respect all these people for
understanding that sometimes you do need to
actually go that far.
Okay, so this is my thing on morality in
general.
Now applying it to the specific plan of leaking information.
Like when it comes to leaking information, what are the specific moral
decisions we have to make? Uh, first, who are we targeting?
Second, what are we going to leak to the public?
And third, what methods are we going to use?
Okay, so the first one is easy. Uh, who are we targeting?
For me, it's like, for me, the answer is everyone. It's a very broad umbrella.
Like we can target anyone working at any of the USA companies,
anyone working in the US intelligence community, anyone working in any of the
political campaigns working to accelerate AI, anyone being
funded, anyone who's funding any of these people.
Like this could be senior people, junior people,
people currently working, people previously working.
Like the umbrella is very broad. Like for who are we targeting?
I'm targeting everyone. Like I am fine with acquiring
information on everyone, but I want to be selective about
what information we leak. Like we can acquire a lot of information,
but then what
we leak to the public is a separate thing.
There, I would like this to be a bit more
selective.
Now what-- Now comes question two, what information am I okay leaking to the
public as opposed to, you know, we just acquire it,
we kept it for ourselves, we
don't do much with it?
The short answer is I don't actually know what information we should be
leaking to the public. Like the end goal is, okay,
make all these leaders
accountable to the public and, you know, stop the AI race.
Now, in order to do that, what information should we leak such
that this happens?
I don't actually know. I have not yet done surveys.
I just have some guesses
based on, you know, my reading of previous leaks and so on.
Uh, guess number one, I want, want to
find out like why don't we have anti-AI
political leaders already? Like
already if you survey, you know, the public, it's like, you know, 50%
pro-AI, 50% anti. So like half the public is anti-AI.
Like why are there no leaders representing these people?
Like, and why do they not have, you know, 50% of the political power if, you know,
50% of the people are voting against AI?
So I want to find out, you know, what are the pressures that
are being put on all
these anti-AI political leaders?
Like why are these people not already in power? Like what is stopping them?
Like
are they being, you know, cut out from the relevant networks of
elites?
Do they not get funding? Do media houses refuse to work with them?
Are they just being demoralized? Are they being, you know,
physically threatened?
Like what is stopping them? This is something I want to understand
and also leak to
the public.
So a concrete example, in the 2016 US
presidential election, uh, it was found out that people
in the DNC were conspiring against Bernie Sanders in
favor of Hillary Clinton. Uh, a hacker group basically got
emails within people in the DNC, and they leaked these emails.
And as a result, I think Hillary Clinton actually became
less popular.
Uh, Bernie Sanders, you know, became slightly more popular.
Uh, I think this is an example of the type of
thing I would want to leak.
I would want to leak, you know, what are the pressures all these people
are facing
and why are they not able To come to power if they are actually, you
know, representing people's interests.
Second, I want to leak information about personal
abuse.
For example, Sam Altman has been accused of raping his
sister.
I don't know if that actually happened.
However, if this actually happened, I want evidence about this to be leaked to
the public.
Uh, again, if you had enough-- if you had actual concrete evidence, you
had enough people rallying around this, I think you actually can put powerful
people in prison, even if, like, if they are, you know, rapists or,
uh, similarly abusive.
I think this can be done. Historic-- Like, doing this is hard.
Like, you know, for example, you obviously know about the Epstein
files,
where there have been a lot of speculations,
but not enough concrete evidence
as to, you know, who is a rapist, who is not.
If you had concrete evidence and you had, you know, public pressure, I still think
you can put these people in prison.
Third, I want to leak information about
democratic safeguards being
broken. So an example here, again, famous example
would be when Edward Snowden,
uh, talked about the NSA surveillance
programs.
He particularly talked about how various congressmen, various
senators were not informed about these programs.
He talked about how various Supreme Court judges were not informed about these
programs. He talked about how secret courts were
established, uh, so that you did not have to go through
the official courts to, you know, get, you know, your warrant or whatever for the
surveillance.
By default, I'm expecting similar things
are going to happen again.
You know, the US AI companies and the US intelligence are going to make
alliances and have-- and they could end up having some secret
programs running.
I would want to leak information about those secret programs.
Uh, then I want to leak information about who
in the AI companies is actually fine with human extinction.
Like,
supporting human extinction actively is very unpopular,
and I want it to remain very unpopular.
I want to leak information about, like, who's, you know, building
ASI and secretly believes, okay, human extinction due to
ASI is a good thing. Again, I don't want to punish free
speech here. Like, you have an unpopular opinion, fine.
But if you use that unpopular opinion to, you know, literally risk everyone's lives
on Earth, then I want that to be leaked.
That, okay, this is, you had this unpopular opinion,
therefore you did it.
So concrete example here, uh, Elon Musk has accused
Larry Page of supporting human extinction.
Uh, Larry Page has a controlling interest in
Google and Google
DeepMind.
Jürgen Schmidhuber, uh, more or less supports human
extinction. Again, he's waffly about his language,
but he basically is fine with,
you know, an AI takes over the civilization and,
you know, humans are
ir-irrelevant, blah, blah, blah.
Uh, many of DeepMind's early employees, such as, you know, Shane Legg, such as
Marcus Hutter, such as Seth Hochreiter, they were trained under Jürgen
Schmidhuber. So if all of these people, you know, such as Shane
Legg, such as Marcus Hutter, and so on, if they are all actually fine with human
extinction, then I also want that information to reach the public.
I want to leak that.
Lastly, uh,
if there are any, like, rogue groups who are trying to, you know,
build
superintelligence in secret, like, again, I would want to leak that also.
Like, to pause AI, it's not enough to just have, like, a
treaty signed by some leaders. You also need to enforce
it. If there are people in secret trying to
build, you know, ASI, I don't want them
to build it in secret. I want to leak, okay,
who's trying to build this in secret.
Yeah, these are my guesses for what information
we have to leak.
But again, I will reiterate, I don't actually know.
We are going to find this out as we go along.
Uh, never in human history have we lived under
fully
transparent leadership. Leadership has always been secretive by
default
and unaccountable by default. Uh, today we have
tools that enable, you know, less secrecy, more
transparency, and maybe also more
accountability, although that's kind of debated.
So we are going to find this out as we go along, what leaks are actually the most
useful.
Okay, so I initially started with we need to
make some moral decisions, like what
information can we acquire? What do we leak?
And what methods to be used? So what information we acquire, again,
it's like we
can acquire everything. What do we leak?
Uh, my answer is I don't know, but here are my specific guesses of some
information
we, I think we should try to leak. Third comes what methods are we allowed to
use? [coughs] Now, when it comes to what methods
are we allowed to use,
now, if you're trying to get information on
someone, you have to break their
security in some way. Now, typically this means either breaking
physical security
or cybersecurity, uh, more, more broadly information security.
So physical security, information security,
or you break their social circle.
So example of breaking physical security would be, you know, the Pentagon Pizza
Index,
uh, [coughs] which was basically
people found out that, okay, when a war is about to be declared, you know,
people near the Pentagon order a lot of pizzas, and this shows up on Google
Maps or whatever. So you can predict, okay, if a lot of pizzas
are being ordered,
probably a war is going to be, you know, ordered.
Uh, another example is this famous
Substack writer, Dominic Cummings, who worked under,
like, worked, uh, during the Brexit political campaigns in
the
UK. He wrote about how he basically literally
searched through the trash cans of
his opponent, and he found the entire political campaign
of his, you know, opponent
in those trash cans. So these are examples of, you know,
breaking physical
security, where your
enemy has left some, you know, clues, some trails, some information in physical
space. Uh, there are more violent ways of this
that the
most violent is something like, you know, literally kidnap someone and get
information out of them. I'm not very keen on doing that,
at least to begin with.
Uh,
that's
physical security. Next comes cybersecurity, information
security. Uh, this means basically we hack into their
servers, and we get
information out of that
Third, and what I'm actually have most hope about
right
now is breaking their social circle.
Breaking social circle basically means find someone in their social circle who
will, you know, turn against them and give us the information.
Now, this has already historically been done by
various, you know,
journalists and, you know, OSINT, uh, open-source intelligence
specialists.
Uh, there are, at least today, there are now various media houses
that work with,
you know, OSINT specialists because they've
understood this is how, you know,
journalism works today.
So OSINT includes everything from, you know, analyzing social media to,
you know,
building tools to dox people online, to, you know, analyzing flight data of,
you know, flights, flights are public, to analyzing satellite data, to
analyzing, you know, camera footage that's uploaded publicly.
Like, just any information available online,
try to analyze that, identify, you
know, like who knows who, who did what when, who did what
why, just get information.
So this I want to work on. Uh, once we have this
information, then you can do things like, okay, interview specific people
and ask them to, you know, turn to your side.
Now, to turn to y- turn them to your side, you need, y- typically, you
either need to pay them money or, you know,
they should have some ideological
or personal motivation for, you know, giving you that information.
So we can figure that stuff out. You know, can we build, you know,
infrastructure to, you know, pay these people anonymously?
Can we figure out, okay, whose writings are persuasive and then go,
you know, DM
that persuasive message to that specific insider and be like,
"Okay, this is why you should, you know, give us the information." We can figure
out stuff like this.
And lastly, once we have an insider who's willing to,
you know, turn on their
circle and, you know, give us information,
now how do they actually safely give this to us? Like, what is the tooling?
What's the infrastructure required?
Uh, for example, I have written a guide for whistleblowers.
Like, if you are, you know, US government whistleblower,
how do you safely
whistleblow? I have written about how you can pay
whistleblowers using
cryptocurrency. I have written about, you know, what are the tools
that you can use to redact information before publishing it.
So like, once a whistleblower has some information,
[coughs]
they can't immediately just leak it.
They need to sit and, like, redact certain pieces which are sensitive,
and then
only they can leak it. I've written about tools to make
that easy.
There's also stuff around, like, who will actually host this information?
Like, whoever tries to host it, you know, puts it on their website or, uh,
whatever, they again become a target. So make hosting easy.
I think this all comes broadly around the social circle umbrella.
How do we break, you know, security of, uh, people
accelerating AI by, you know, getting someone in their social circle to
turn
against them.
These are all the methods we have roughly.
Now, which of these methods am I okay with,
morally speaking?
Uh, again, I don't have very strong hard lines here,
but I
generally lean towards approaches that are honest and not deceptive.
Like,
I care about honesty. I care about maintaining promises to our
allies, which requires honesty. Like, if you're dishonest, why will people trust
your promises? I care about honesty.
Uh, I want the truth to come out in the long
run.
Like, the whole reason I'm doing this entire
leaking thing in the first place is I
want the truth to come out eventually.
Uh,
so it makes sense, like, okay, even if we are going to, you know, attack these
people, I want to be honest about how we do it.
I am less keen on things like social engineering, for example.
Like, social engineering works, but I'm also not very keen on it for this
reason.
So I,
I care about honesty. However, I am also okay with some
amount of violence. I am okay with violating people's consent.
I am okay with resisting authority.
Like, we are not here to be nice. We are here to fight these people and win.
So for example, if this means, you know, we hack into their servers, and this
means we break their consent, and this means we get-- leak
that information anyway,
you know, I am fine with this. That's my short version of, okay,
which methods am I
fine with. Like,
I am-- I want to be honest and keep promises, but I
am okay with some amount of, you know, violence, some amount of, you know,
violating people's consent.
Yeah.
And like, again, morality is personal.
If you want to work with me, it's possible you have a different answer
to me than,
um, on this question. You can share your answer with me.
We can, you know, debate about it, whatever.
Like,
this is all right now my personal opinions.
Obviously, once we have, you know, more people working on such stuff,
they will all
have to take their own personal calls on, you know,
how far are they willing to go.
Cool. I think now I'll come broadly to the last
section of this video, which roughly talks, okay, on
who do I want to ally with? Like, more narrowly, okay, who
should my co-founder be? More broadly, who should our allies be?
Okay, so the first and most important allies are obviously,
okay, who do I
work with and where do they get funding from? So our funder has to be an ally.
Now, I am not sure
if there's any way to run this operation as a for-profit. Like, I have tried.
I
wish we could do this as a for-profit, but I'm not sure where we actually get the
profit from. Uh, at least as of right now.
Like, there are many ways of profiting from
cyberattacks.
However, most of those seem unethical.
Like,
like, I am okay targeting people who build
superintelligence because, like I said,
these people literally plan to kill me.
You know, if they're planning to kill me, I'm fine with, okay, of course, we attack
them in return. However, I'm not okay with, okay, we go,
you know, attack some random strangers in some
random country, like
cyberattack them, and then, you know, like lock their computers
and demand a crypto
ransom or whatever. I'm not keen with that, on with that,
that we go
at-attack some random innocent people who have done something wrong. Who have...
Sorry, that we go attack some random innocent
people who have done nothing wrong.
Like-
I-- that seems to go a bit too far even for
me.
Uh, therefore, I'm not keen on profiting out of
cyberattacks. Uh,
otherwise you can profit out of, like, defense.
Like, you can sell, you know, cyber defensive services to, you know,
various
corporates, to your own government.
That I am okay with.
So that could be a way we get profit.
Otherwise, we just have to do this as a nonprofit.
I think we can get funding as a nonprofit if we are actually competent.
Like WikiLeaks at some point got over, you know, $25 million in
crypto donations,
which is
not as much as, you know, like a billion-dollar tech company
or whatever, but also
that's a lot of money. So I think we can get funding even
if we operate as a
nonprofit, if we are actually competent, we are actually getting results.
So yeah, the first person...
[phone ringing] Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, so the first person I
need, and, uh, I need to necessarily ally with is,
okay, who are the people funding us?
Another set of people who I think it will be important to ally with is people
from our own country. At least they should give us some
assurance they are not
going to put us in prison for the things we are going to do.
Now, when I say our country, which country do I mean?
Now, as long as I'm with, living in India, by default, this means, you know, the
Indian government and the Indian intelligence.
If I can get some assurance from them that, okay, if I attack any
US AI company, leak whatever, like Indian government won't put me in
prison.
Like if I can get that assurance, that would be nice.
Uh,
also, I'm not choosy. I'm not saying, "Okay, I will only ally with India here."
Like,
if tomorrow any of these countries, could be Russia, could be
Israel, could be whatever, they were willing to
work with me on this sort of stuff. They were
willing to take, let's say, a strong stance.
Okay, you know, superintelligence is bad.
We will, you know, go against
the people building superintelligence.
If other countries are willing to take that stance,
I can also go live in some
other country. Like,
there are some details here. They're kind of sensitive.
Uh,
but yeah, like
the short answer is, yeah, I want to be living outside the US
and like figure out a way to, you know, attack the US government, US AI companies,
because they are the ones who are right now accelerating this race to
build
superintelligence.
Uh, again, like for example, if I again go back to, you know,
the WikiLeaks
donation. Now WikiLeaks got $25 million in
donations.
Like, who did they actually get those donations
from? We don't really know.
Like some donors' names got leaked, but mostly we don't actually know now.
This may have been some, you know, random American person.
It may have been a Chinese person. It may have been a Russian person.
We actually don't know.
Uh, if I am working in India, I think I have more freedom to, you
know, do things publicly. Like, I can be more public about what I'm
doing. I can also be more independent of, you know, Indian formal,
whatever, military chain of command, et cetera.
And I think this is a good thing because people will trust us more.
I will get feedback.
But the downside is, yeah, so far I've not been able to find people
to work with.
If I can find people to work with in India, that would be great.
If I hypothetically, again, this is strictly hypothetical,
went to Russia to work on this, like I will be forced to be a lot
more private about it, and I will be forced to be a lot less
independent about
it.
Uh, if I hypothetically were to go live in Israel or something,
obviously that has its own trade-offs again.
What I do strongly feel though is that people who are living in the
US, in the, in UK, in Western Europe, if any of you
think you have protection when fighting against the US government,
I think you are
sorely mistaken, and you are going to regret it.
Like worst case, you're going to pay for it with many years
in prison.
Uh,
if you are living in, you know, Europe and you're planning these sorts of
offensive actions,
you should probably leave Europe is my guess. But there are details there.
I don't want to get into that.
Yeah, so the, again, coming back to allies.
The first ally is, okay, people who can give us funding.
Second ally is, okay, if our own country can protect us,
that would be nice.
Uh, a third set of allies, it would be nice if we, there are some
insiders in the US AI companies and the US government who will work with
us.
Like this is not like absolutely essential, but it would be nice
if we had people
like this.
Uh, it would be nice if there are people outside our organization who
are giving us
good feedback. Like most feedback
tends to suck. Like most people have no context shared
with you.
They don't understand the constraints you're operating with, but at least
some feedback would be useful, and that feedback is important,
and I want at least some people to be giving us feedback.
I don't want to be just completely isolated from the rest of society.
Uh,
example of feedback. I previously said I don't actually know
which leaks will help
versus will not help. Like I have guesses, but I'm not sure.
If someone is very skilled at politics, they know, okay, these leaks
will specifically help. You know, I want that sort of feedback.
Like I want to know.
So I also want that sort of ally.
Okay, allies who I don't want. I don't want to ally with any media house.
Uh, I don't want to ally with people who will
help us with recruiting.
I have reasons, but yeah.
Like I want a small team that actually has a mission
and can actually do what it
takes rather than, okay, broad group of alliance of people who have
network and blah, blah, blah, but don't actually do anything.
Yeah. Also, who will respect us? Like we are planning to, or at least I
am and people I want to work with, are planning to do something
at least somewhat radical. Like not everyone is going to respect us.
Not everyone is going to like us for the fact that we're doing this.
Some people will respect us. In general, again, this is a guess, I
don't know, but my guess from limited number of
conversations,
people who value power more are going to respect us more in general.
So like some tech founders will respect us, some billionaires will respect us,
some
politicians will respect us, some social media influencers will respect
us, some
actors will, like, respect us, some libertarians will respect us, some,
you know,
more radical-leaning leftists will respect us.
People who value power less will tend to respect us less.
Uh, or people who value, you know, knowledge and truth less,
they will tend to
respect us less. Now, I think religious people will respect us
less,
uh, liberals will respect us less, people without any strong political
opinion
will respect us less.
Uh,
and like that's just a thing. This is not something I can choose.
This is just a fact about reality. Some people will like us more
and some people
will hate us for what we're doing, and that's just it.
Uh, if we do succeed, I think we will inspire more people to do
similar
things like this. Like, I am inspired by, you know, long chain of people,
many of which were broadly part of the cypherpunk activist movement.
Uh,
if I succeed, I will go inspire more people.
That will happen.
Like,
I will prove that, like, you can just go do things.
Like,
a lot of people are pessimistic about their ability to, you know,
change society in
some very big way. Like, I have talked to many people like this.
This is, like, not some-- a very rare or unique thing.
Most people are pessimistic about their ability to inf--
affect large scale society
changes. So if we can succeed at all, this, you know,
can help make them more optimistic that they can also go do something.
If you're still watching this video by now, you already probably have a decent
idea, do you actually want to work with me on
this or not?
Like, but yeah, again, I will just reiterate if this
is not already
clear, like,
yeah, I prefer honesty. I prefer, like, we
are okay with little bit violent approach, too.
So if you are okay with little bit violent approach, too, then you should work with
me.
If you believe superintelligence is coming, the
world may be ending, especially if you have emotionally internalized this,
again, that's a good signal that you should be working with me.
If you value power, that's a signal you should work with me.
If you understand that the world is run by self-interest,
uh, and systems that constrain self-interest,
that is again
a signal you should work with me.
In terms of, like, competence, uh,
I am personally good at generalist research and creating new
ideas. Like, again, I'm not saying I'm some, you know,
world expert or anything.
I'm not. But I think that's what I'm good at.
I am also decent at software development. Again, I'm not an expert at that.
Like, I have built multiple apps. I've worked on multiple scraping projects.
I have some decent understanding of how OpSec works.
I am willing to upskill in cybersecurity, so I'll become
better at, you know, security research, hacking, and so on.
Again, I don't think I can become, like, the world's best hacker or something, but
I think if I put in the hours, I put in the work, I can get, like,
decent.
So that's what I am good at.
What I am not good at is networking, fundraising,
persuading people.
Like, if you are good at those things, you know,
you will have a complementary fit.
Uh, if you can help me raise funding, for example, like, that would be a very
strong signal that you should be working with me.
If you are skilled as a hacker, again, you are welcome to work with me.
Like, anyone who's willing to work on this sort
of radical project is
going to be useful to me and also, well, ideally to you.
Like, you should also be doing this for
yourself, not just to appease
Samuel. Like, you should believe in leaking information.
You should believe that, okay, the world is ending.
Like, this has to come from within you.
I can't, you know,
convince... Well, maybe I can convince, but ultimately, like,
the drive to this has
to come from within. I want to work with people who
are self-motivated
and agentic and so on.
Uh, maybe a minor aside on how should our
OpSec work.
Like...
Yeah, this might seem like a tangent, but I think it also needs to be covered.
Uh, I think we need to have the ability to
keep at least something
secret. Like, we are getting information on our enemies.
We don't want to just leak everything we get.
Like, some of those things are actually private,
and we want to keep them private.
So some things we have to keep secret, and the rest we will leak.
Also, some of our methods, some of our capabilities,
how did we attack, that
also needs to be kept secret.
So these two things need to be secret a bit.
Rest remaining apart from this, I think it's fine if we
are public about a bunch of
stuff. Like, again, you can debate, argue, whatever with me, like,
uh, opinions vary on that. Uh,
now just as I think it is important we are able to keep some secrets, I
also think it will be difficult for us to keep secrets.
Like,
in general, if you go read about, you know, all the activists
and so on who have
worked on similar things, generally they have found it hard to keep
secrets even
though they had to.
And, like, that is generally my whole worldview.
Like, attacking people, getting their information is easy,
and defending your own
secrets is hard. That is why I'm saying let's go attack them,
get their secrets.
But on the flip side, that also means they can also attack us
and get all our
secrets. So,
like, that is just a fact about reality.
This is where the playing field looks like right now, where attack is easier and
defense is hard. Uh,
if we had, like, a large group of people, and then we actually, you know, somewhat
isolated from society, then I think we can keep some
secrets. We can, you know, remain psychologically healthy.
Like, the hard part of secrets is not just technical stuff.
The hard part is the effects of secrets on your psychology
Many people have written about this.
This is again a whole separate thesis I can get into.
But like, yeah, keeping secrets is hard because it's psychologically
costly. Like, especially if you think you're morally wrong in
keeping the secret,
then you are like done for.
Uh,
so we need to have strong moral justifications.
Okay, these are the things we are keeping secret.
These are the things we are leaking. This is why.
Like, we need to be clear in our own heads about
that so that we can remain
psychologically healthy. That is important.
And yeah, like at least at the start, once it's just me or one,
like two people, three people, like we are just not going to be able to keep
any secrets. Like that's unfortunate, but that's the reality.
Like once we have a lot more people, once we have money, competence, et cetera,
then we may be able to pull it off. But at the start, like keeping secrets
is going
to be hard even for us. Like not just for our enemies,
but also for us.
Okay. So
if you want to work with me, you can contact me on Signal.
My Signal username is available.
I do not think the risks are very high if you just have like a quick call with
me.
But if you actually work with me full-time, then yes, there
are significant risks
to you for sure, 100%.
Uh, if you want to actually work with me
full-time, like beyond just, you know,
first one or two calls, like I think the actual answer is,
you know, you have to
take a flight, you have to meet me in person.
I don't think there's any way to avoid that.
Like,
and once we are working together, we will also have to figure out a plan to
keep your loved ones safe. Like,
again, those are things we'll have to figure out
later, but they're important.
And
yeah, like we have to live in a country outside,
you know, US, UK,
Europe, and we have to stay outside and your social
circle has to also stay outside. And then we have to, you know,
work on this
full-time. Like that seems like the only way I think
we can actually pull this off.
Okay. So that was a 50-minute
video apparently. That was way longer than I thought.
Uh, this is my first take of the video, by the way.
I have not, you know, made multiple takes and I don't think I
will. Like I said, I am busy and, you know,
this plan will be outdated in six
months anyway. Like if you ask Samuel six months from now what
his plan is, it will
have been modified a fair bit anyway, you know.
So this is just my video on
as of what, 15 July 2026, you know,
here is my galaxy brain incomplete, possibly in-inaccurate
plan for what to do things. If you want to work with me on this
or something
similar to this,
like do reach out. Like,
yeah, just do reach out. Like
I am somewhat competent, I am very motivated, and I think we
can figure it out as we go along.