The Man is shocked and outraged by a scurrilous AI deep fake social-media video of himself being traduced in a supposed interview with a posturing Colombo celebrity media pundit.
Much of his outrage is directed at an equally scurrilous so-called ‘news’ website that is taunting him with the story: ‘Crypto King MP Checkmated By Sneaky Queen’s Gambit! Fake Or Real? You Decide!’
But his anger is mostly aimed at what he’s sure is a cabal of Parliamentary insiders, elected and otherwise, who are plotting to unseat him. I may be paranoid, he says, but they are out to get me, by fair means or foul!
And it doesn’t get more foul than this, he rages at the banker buddy. I’ve always known that politics is a dirty backstabbing business, but this really is a new low!
On the other hand, he muses, it could be a new high, as in: how high up the greasy pole does this go? And whose pole? Because this hyper-realistic fakery has all the hallmarks of a deep-state black op designed to sow alarm and despondency throughout the entire body politic!
For example, he says, the news site quotes the fake me as saying that what the country needs is competent, wealth-generating Capitalist corruption, not incompetent, wealth-wasting Socialist corruption. What geeky politics nerd would think of something like that, he asks the bemused banker buddy. Or have the skill and state-of-the-art AI to produce a fake video that might even fool Colombo media sophisticates, which is admittedly a low bar, but still…
My point is, while it’s true that in the past I might occasionally have been a bit outspoken on such matters, I would not then and certainly not now have confided such thoughts to a coiffured media popinjay, of all people!
The banker buddy grins, and gives The Man a sly sideways look. To be fair, he says, enough people have heard you say much worse than that, and spying for the government on your crypto clients would put a target on your back if it leaks, which it probably has by now.
But when all’s said and done, what does it matter? And who cares? This is not the first fake video to do the rounds, and almost certainly won’t be the last. It will be for gotten when the next scandal surfaces, and trying to contain it would be like designating a pissing area in a swimming pool!
The question is, what are you going to do about it? What can you do about it? At the end of the day, enough of the people who actually run the country more than likely agree with what the fake you said, so the real you might as well own it and, er, capitalise on it.
Thus, to paraphrase your hero Machiavelli: A state may survive the greed of capable men, but never the ineptitude of those who do not know how to rule.
In other words, you could say that competent corruption can stabilise the state, enrich it, defend it, and maintain order. But incompetent corruption is fatal because it comes from inability, not immorality…