The danger is not AI, but rather the binding of AI into a single point of control.

The Political Philosophy of Open Source AI @jesseposner interviews @millerman to explore how ancient debates over knowledge, power, and political order show up in AI, and what they can tell us about the future of open-source AI ↓ Timestamps 0:00 - What ancient philosophy can teach us about AI 05:05 - Why ancient questions survive technological progress 08:19 - OpenAI and the ancient debate over withholding dangerous knowledge 11:35 - Applying political philosophy to users, labs, and agents 16:33 - Jailbreaking as a new form of esoteric reading 19:42 - Why AI debates become theological 24:57 - The philosophical case for language models (vs world models) 31:12 - The political philosophy of open-source AI

“The AI story and the Bitcoin story marry up in the final act.” @Erikcason is back on the show. We cover: - AI: Dystopia or utopia? - The end of capitalism - Why you need your own AI - Bitcoin’s Role in the AI Future Watch here: piped.video/87VwVWH2VHY

“I’m blown away” PBJ reacts to Vora’s product reveal at the Open Source AI Summit, especially impressed by their craftsmanship, beautiful industrial design, and vision for private, local AI More on what they're building at vora.io

In the age of AI, the security moat is hardware-based security.

Amazing presentation @jesseposner @Erikcason & Nick! Super excited for Vora

Bitcoin Research Day is coming to Amsterdam! 🇳🇱 Co-hosted by @2140_dev & @ChaincodeLabs, we'll be hosting this year's research day on October 27th at De Weesper (check the website for more info). RSVPs are open now. Secure your spot! brd.chaincode.com

The Open Source AI Summit is next week! Here’s another look at the agenda, with more talks and speakers. There’s still some tickets available, apply via the link below.

Turns out that with enough math a counterparty can do multisig in a Lightning channel without changing the protocol: eprint.iacr.org/2026/1757

Self-custodied money changed how people think about ownership. Could self-custodied AI be next? @bitkite, @CathieDWood, @LorenzoARK, @moneyball, @jesseposner, and @paulitoi come together in a new "Bitcoin Brainstorm" to examine the growing convergence of Bitcoin, artificial intelligence, and energy. ark-invest.com/podcast/bitco…

AI is rebuilding the internet 🔨 In this episode, @jesseposner and @dtdannen cover: - what AI-native companies need to own - secret messages hidden in AI output - bioweapons as the risk that may justify slowing AI down - what an AI-native internet might look like and much more ↓ Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening and what’s new 1:05 - Escaping the algo 5:22 - The dead internet and cost of AI slop 11:08 - Private communities as the future of the internet 19:16 - Nostr, Buzz, and the agentic internet 29:48 - What an AI-native company needs to own 39:33 - Secret messages in AI output 48:06 - The incentives behind the OpenAI-Hugging Face story 56:26 - The hidden risks inside neural networks 1:06:54 - The problem with Anthropic and OpenAI’s “dangerous AI” marketing 1:12:54 - Bioweapons as the strongest case for slowing AI 1:21:38 - The worldview behind AI fear and the case for freedom

This is fantastic. explain-diff would have been good enough but the micro-worlds opens up so many ideas for me. I've built a few micro-world-like things in my career for complex, high impact problems, but the cost of doing it now is so minimal, why not build them freely wherever they'd help.

Berlin wall vibes

How do we make AI an engine of defense in a multipolar human-AI world? This weekend, we’ve gathered dozens of researchers, engineers, cryptographers, and funders in Berlin for our Secure & Sovereign AI Workshop: two days of talks, working groups, and project building across some of the hardest problems in AI security, privacy, and cooperation. Featuring @jesseposner (Vora), @DavideCrapis (Ethereum Foundation), @sudo_ml (Project Sovereign), @socrates1024 (ZCash Foundation), and more. Powered by @protocollabs

The AI Surveillance State Is Already Here (with @Erikcason and @jesseposner) Cypherpunk Bitcoin builders Jesse Posner and Erik Cason return to Hell Money to introduce Vora Aegis: a local-first, privacy-preserving personal AI device built on Bitcoin’s principles of self-custody and cryptography. We discuss: - Sovereign AI - The state of frontier AI: Anthropic vs. OpenAI - Digital ID and AI surveillance - Prompt-injection defense - The fight to keep access to AI outside of centralized control TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 4:56 Sovereign AI vs. frontier AI 7:43 AI psychosis 9:52 Is AI already the new power structure? 14:19 EU Chat Control and the US KIDS Act 16:05 The Banality of Evil: Facebook and mandatory digital ID 23:22 Anonymity, Operation Choke Point 2.0 30:08 AI telepathic hive mind 34:39 Bitcoin self-custody & sovereign AI 43:55 Introducing the Vora Aegis 48:32 How AI could save decentralization 49:47 How Vora Aegis works 1:13:04 Technical challenges building sovereign AI 1:17:00 Eschatology, sovereignty, and the future of AI 1:27:21 The new Gutenberg printing press 1:33:19 Non-state actors more powerful than governments 1:38:04 Vora Aegis pre-orders and launch timeline

In 1916, Walter Benjamin wrote an essay arguing that the world is made of language. It is perhaps the best available explanation of why language models work. Here's my translation of "Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen": jesseposner.github.io/on-lan…

“These are days when no one should rely unduly on his ‘competence.’ Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.” – Walter Benjamin

Fable 5 is back, but does it even matter? The real edge seems to be shifting from raw model intelligence to the systems around the model @jesseposner & @dtdannen break down memory, harnesses, LLM wikis, local AI, secure workflows, and what's worth paying attention to ↓ Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening 0:50 - HSMs for agentic payments & the security tradeoff in personal AI 8:36 - The fragility of cloud security 11:43 - Vora's compartmentalized architecture for personal AI 14:50 - Why Fable 5 feels nerfed 20:13 - Fable 5 isn't a big deal because intelligence is no longer the bottleneck (data & harnesses are) 23:38 - Local models are getting useful: Hermes Agent, Qwen 3.6, and LLM wikis 28:18 - Why fast local inference with DeepSeek v4 Flash changes things 35:00 - Better workflows (i.e., HumanLayer AI IDE) beats more agents 40:40 - Planning systems for AI coding 52:00 - Fable 5 and model ceilings/diminishing returns 55:00 - Personal data as an AI moat 1:00:43 - Intelligence = search efficiency 1:08:30 - Why harnesses matter more than models 1:13:30 - Reasoning versus stored knowledge 1:21:10 - Why AI is so good at coding 1:28:13 - Export controls and AI gatekeeping 1:41:55 - Decentralization as civilizational infrastructure 1:56:30 - Practical steps toward AI sovereignty 2:04:20 - Using AI to dumb vs strengthen yourself 2:07:40 - Human verification in the age of cheap answers