posted by Dianny at SweetMercifulZeus
It surprises me that so many Republican voters are taken in by Vivek Ramaswamy.
When I first paid him any mind, I thought he was a slippery fraud.
Vivek is a bit like Kamala Harris. He is a vapid, opportunistic phony with zero principles and no political instincts who will say anything to boost his public profile.
Vivek is such a phony that he will burp out his support or opposition to any particular issue depending entirely on the prevailing attitude among Republican voters at any given moment.
That's why he went from blaming Donald Trump for the January 6 riot to blaming online censorship.
It's as if some artificial intelligence wonk created a humanoid version of ChatGPT. Just load him full of Republican talking points and watch them dribble out of AI Vivek's mouth.
That might explain why Vivek's campaign talking points appear to be a mishmash of phrases cribbed from other Republican and populist politicians.
And because these policy ideas are artificially generated rather than the result of thoughtful consideration, VivekGPT often says things that are inexplicably insane.
In a lengthy post on X (AKA Twitter) last Friday, VivekGPT wrote:
We will further deter China from annexing Taiwan by shifting from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity: we will defend until 2029 but not afterward, at which point we will have full semiconductor independence from Taiwan, significantly reduced economic independence on China, stronger relationships with India, Japan, and South Korea, and stronger U.S. homeland defense capabilities to protect against cyber, super-EMP, and nuclear attacks. In the meantime, we will have absolutely *zero* tolerance for any breaches of our homeland or aggression in the Western Hemisphere, including Chinese spy balloons, Chinese spy bases in Cuba, intentional fentanyl poisoning, biological lab leaks, illegal border crossings, or any other encroachments of the U.S. homeland — and will make adversaries pay full-on hell if they do.
Was VivekGPT created by a Chinese artificial intelligence firm?
I'll simple it up for you:
VivekGPT is suggesting that the US will only deter China from annexing Taiwan until the United States no longer needs Taiwan's supply of semiconductors. Once we achieve "full semiconductor independence," Taiwan is shit out of luck.
The AI-generated text following the phrase, "In the meantime," is just a litany of hot-button terms designed to appeal to Republican voters, hence the inclusion of spy balloons, illegals, fentanyl, and lab leaks.
Unsurprisingly, the machine-powered statement left some scratching their heads.
Yesterday, the Washington Examiner reported that Vivek was asked about his tweet (X-crete? What the hell do we call them now?!) during an interview with Hugh Hewitt.
Rather than backtrack, VivekGPT defended his position to leave Taiwan swinging in the wind once the US no longer needed its semiconductors.
When Hewitt tried to press the AI candidate on his loony Taiwan policy, VivekGPT cut the interview short.
A campaign aide later told the New York Post that the interview wasn't cut short because VivekGPT could find the appropriate data online to formulate a proper response but because the campaign only thought he was appearing on Hewitt's program for 20 to 30 minutes.
The funniest part of the interview with Hewitt was when VivekGPT said this:
“Let’s just call a spade a spade: I didn’t know much of this six months ago."
Really?!
Who would have guessed?
When I saw that, I was suddenly reminded of that PBS interview Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did in 2018 when she was prattling on about the Palestinians, and when she was pressed, admitted, "I'm not the expert on geopolitics on this issue."
I'm sure VivekGPT will run a system update to clean out any bugs that prompt him to say things Republican voters don't like.
By tomorrow, he'll be back to regurgitating all the hot-button issues that the Republican base wants to hear while holding another press conference outside of whichever courthouse Donald Trump is getting arraigned.
I don't know.
Maybe it's because I'm naturally suspicious, but I don't trust a word Vivek Ramaswamy says.
It certainly doesn't help that the people who seem the most enamored with the guy are Trump's most loyal and devoted followers. That alone is enough to get my spider sense tingling.
VivekGPT has qualified for next Wednesday's debate on Fox. I'll be interested to see how an AI-generated candidate does against his human counterparts.