# Devolution Power Hour Ep. 493: The Real AI Race, Elon as Weapon

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-6674661/devolution-power-hour-ep-493-the-real-ai-race-elon-as-weapon
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-6674661/devolution-power-hour-ep-493-the-real-ai-race-elon-as-weapon.md
Podcast: [Badlands Media](https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-6674661)
Published: 2026-09-17T05:29:56+00:00
Episode link: https://badlandsmedia.podbean.com/e/devolution-power-hour-ep-493-the-real-ai-race-elon-as-weapon/
Audio file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/sheufxyv8x7u7fdd/Devolution_Power_Hour_ep_493604rm.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/badlands-media-6674661/episodes/devolution-power-hour-ep-493-the-real-ai-race-elon-as-weapon
Duration seconds: 5201

## Resource

Jon Herold and Burning Bright pre record from the road this week and dive straight into a wild theory: that the AI safety story dominating headlines right now is timed suspiciously close to the midterms and might be less about safety and more about election interference. They play a clip of Todd Blanche calling the AI panic a hoax and posts from Trump comparing it to treason. Burning Bright lays out a longer running theory about Elon Musk functioning as a character or weapon in a broader disclosure operation, tracing it back to a 2022 Kash Patel clip about DOD contracts that first got him thinking differently about Musk's companies. There's talk of open source Chinese AI models undercutting the big players, a supposed real AI race happening outside public view, and plenty of Nikola Tesla adjacent theorizing along the way. Dense, speculative, and unmistakably devolution flavored.

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## Transcript

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