I had temporarily deactivated my account for safety reasons. However, this topic seems very important and hence I feel compelled to respond to you regardless.
I wrote this quickly, but it is based on an older post I did think through a bit more.
My reply
Plan 1: Run a private militia that can maintain trust, chain of command, obtain weapons, etc. Use this militia to attempt hundreds of simultaneous assassinations to wipe out of the entire chains of command of US executive branch, US intelligence, and all US AI companies. When I say chain of command of US exec branch I mean president, vice president, and so on. When I say chain of command of US AI company I mean the entire C suite at minimum.
The assassinations need to be simultaneous because otherwise you’ll get retaliated soon after. Project Valkyrie and similar projects understand Himmler and Himmler’s subordinate and so on had to be assassinated too, not just Hitler. Lone terrorists have bad thinking because of social isolation, but organised militias tend to not be as naive about all this.
I agree Plan 1 is too hard and there are probably easier ways to solve ASI risk.
Plan 2: Incite a mob to actually storm into TSMC chip fabs and destroy all the equipment.
It is important to target the chip fabs, not random datacenters, for obvious reasons.
If you understand Chinese/Taiwanese politics at all, you also understand lower bound of how hard this is. I agree Plan 2 is also very hard and there may be easier ways to solve ASI risk. I am not sure, however, and I might still be open to this as a last resort.
Plan 3: Make a failed assassination attempt for propaganda reasons.
I think Gwen would agree with me that a major value of attempting assassination is propaganda value. It polarises the conflict, people’s emotional temperature raises on both sides.
I don’t yet have strong opinion on Plan 3. Is the propaganda values of an assassination attempt net positive or net negative, and what is the optimal timing of this? I don’t think my political skills are that good.
Quite bluntly, I think you, Yudkowsky, also are pretty mediocre at politics. Proof—There are 100,000 followers on the top ASI risk YouTube channels, not 100,000,000 followers. I have very little trust in your judgment on what is actually good or bad way to reach the masses on this topic.
Since I am not an expert politician/propagandist, I’ll just share my own personal feelings. I want the temperature of the conflict (between pro-ASI and anti-ASI factions) to rise. There is no morally neutral way of accusing someone of causing a thousand holocausts all at once, and I instinctively have (a bit) less respect for people who talk about extinction probabilities in such an emotionally detached manner. One of the best ways to increase temperature of the conflict is to actually be violent. I have some aesthetic preference in favour of violence and bloodshed, “kill or be killed” mindset, and I increasingly have distaste for a bunch of high-minded moralising from people in EA/LW circles who have no actual power. I agree with Naval Ravikant that something like 80% of social media discourse on morality is just a self-interested status game. People don’t want you to be violent against them for basically self-interested reasons, and then they come up with all sorts of (fake) arguments on why you should not be violent because some (fake) altruistic reason.
All that being said, I will reiterate that I don’t actually know what the propaganda value of an assassination attempt as of 2026-04-14 actually is, if I leave aside all my personal feelings.
I also have a fear that you too, are laundering some of your own personal feelings, when you write a post like the above. You have some aesthetic preference in favour of niceness and civility, just as I have aesthetic preference in favour of some violence.
There are other violent plans besides these but I won’t discuss those here unless it comes up as relevant context.
Disclaimer
Contains politically sensitive info
I had temporarily deactivated my account for safety reasons. However, this topic seems very important and hence I feel compelled to respond to you regardless.
I wrote this quickly, but it is based on an older post I did think through a bit more.
My reply
Plan 1: Run a private militia that can maintain trust, chain of command, obtain weapons, etc. Use this militia to attempt hundreds of simultaneous assassinations to wipe out of the entire chains of command of US executive branch, US intelligence, and all US AI companies. When I say chain of command of US exec branch I mean president, vice president, and so on. When I say chain of command of US AI company I mean the entire C suite at minimum.
The assassinations need to be simultaneous because otherwise you’ll get retaliated soon after. Project Valkyrie and similar projects understand Himmler and Himmler’s subordinate and so on had to be assassinated too, not just Hitler. Lone terrorists have bad thinking because of social isolation, but organised militias tend to not be as naive about all this.
I agree Plan 1 is too hard and there are probably easier ways to solve ASI risk.
Plan 2: Incite a mob to actually storm into TSMC chip fabs and destroy all the equipment.
It is important to target the chip fabs, not random datacenters, for obvious reasons.
If you understand Chinese/Taiwanese politics at all, you also understand lower bound of how hard this is. I agree Plan 2 is also very hard and there may be easier ways to solve ASI risk. I am not sure, however, and I might still be open to this as a last resort.
Plan 3: Make a failed assassination attempt for propaganda reasons.
I think Gwen would agree with me that a major value of attempting assassination is propaganda value. It polarises the conflict, people’s emotional temperature raises on both sides.
I don’t yet have strong opinion on Plan 3. Is the propaganda values of an assassination attempt net positive or net negative, and what is the optimal timing of this? I don’t think my political skills are that good.
Quite bluntly, I think you, Yudkowsky, also are pretty mediocre at politics. Proof—There are 100,000 followers on the top ASI risk YouTube channels, not 100,000,000 followers. I have very little trust in your judgment on what is actually good or bad way to reach the masses on this topic.
Since I am not an expert politician/propagandist, I’ll just share my own personal feelings. I want the temperature of the conflict (between pro-ASI and anti-ASI factions) to rise. There is no morally neutral way of accusing someone of causing a thousand holocausts all at once, and I instinctively have (a bit) less respect for people who talk about extinction probabilities in such an emotionally detached manner. One of the best ways to increase temperature of the conflict is to actually be violent. I have some aesthetic preference in favour of violence and bloodshed, “kill or be killed” mindset, and I increasingly have distaste for a bunch of high-minded moralising from people in EA/LW circles who have no actual power. I agree with Naval Ravikant that something like 80% of social media discourse on morality is just a self-interested status game. People don’t want you to be violent against them for basically self-interested reasons, and then they come up with all sorts of (fake) arguments on why you should not be violent because some (fake) altruistic reason.
All that being said, I will reiterate that I don’t actually know what the propaganda value of an assassination attempt as of 2026-04-14 actually is, if I leave aside all my personal feelings.
I also have a fear that you too, are laundering some of your own personal feelings, when you write a post like the above. You have some aesthetic preference in favour of niceness and civility, just as I have aesthetic preference in favour of some violence.
There are other violent plans besides these but I won’t discuss those here unless it comes up as relevant context.