Brad Carson

Walmart and Kroger are quietly rolling out an internal store technology across America that could either modernize retail or bankrupt the middle-class family budget. Starting across thousands of locations heading into 2027, traditional paper price tags are being ripped off grocery shelves and replaced with cloud-connected digital screens. Raise the price of bottled water by 20 percent the second the afternoon temperature hits 90 degrees. Surge the cost of ground beef, milk, and sandwich bread between 5 PM and 6 PM when exhausted commuters are rushing home from work. Drop prices at 10 AM on a Tuesday, then hike them right back up the minute the after-school crowd walks through the sliding doors. Every price change happens wirelessly in seconds from a central corporate dashboard. No store employee has to touch a single shelf. Walmart has already signed a massive deployment deal with VusionGroup to wire 2,300 American supercenters with EdgeSense digital shelf rails by 2027. Kroger is expanding its own Microsoft-backed system called EDGE across hundreds of supermarkets. Over 60 million digital price tags are already blinking on US grocery aisles right now. This is not supply chain inflation. This is Uber-style surge pricing built directly into the shelves where Americans buy baby formula, eggs, and medicine. Last week I sat down for coffee with a former retail pricing director who spent 14 years building supermarket margin algorithms before leaving the industry. What he shared over the table completely changed how I look at a grocery aisle. "Retailers just turned static shelves into live stock tickers. The question is not whether grocery chains will use instant price changes, because they already spent billions installing the hardware. The question is how much extra money a family of four will lose every week simply because both parents work until 5 PM and cannot shop during off-peak hours." Here is how the digital grocery pricing system actually works, how it tracks you in the aisle, and the exact phone settings and checkout playbook you need to beat it.

Recursive self-improvement is a critical issue, but the rhetoric on the subject is becoming more poorly calibrated over time. As we approach new stages of AI development—and RSI is one of them—we need more precise frameworks and terminology. I fear the opposite is happening.

Maybe we need a kind of AI republicanism, in the way this term is used in political philosophy by Petitt and others: the very fact AI could do those things to us is bad EVEN if it’s never actually doing anything harmful

The AI race with China is all about who has the best and most chips. There are four main ways China gets access to chips: 1.) Buying them directly from US companies like Nvidia. 2.) Illegally smuggling them from other countries into China. 3.) Accessing them remotely through the cloud from data centers located in places like Southeast Asia. 4.) Building their own domestic chips in China. The Chinese military has used advanced chips to further its capabilities while undermining our national security, and the Chinese government has used these chips to strengthen its totalitarian surveillance project. Congress has a generational opportunity in this year’s NDAA to pass bipartisan bills that would address all four of the pathways through which China acquires chips. While we need a full assessment of the damage done to our national security by recent revelations, we can begin today by setting a better course. No excuses. No apologies. Let’s get this done.

DDHQ: Rep. Doris Matsui (D) wins re-election in California’s 7th congressional district. 🟦Democratic hold

NEWS: @GovKathyHochul is launching an effort to independently test AI systems via state govt. and train a new generation of AI safety researchers via a public-private partnership announced earlier this year. The initiative is set to be led by Profs. Jeannette Wing and Greg Morrisett: politico.com/news/2026/11/10…

Broad state preemption must not be on the table for any federal AI bill.

Elon Musk's super PAC also used digital tools to try to crack down on fraud among its canvassers, a rampant problem in the industry. The slides warned that if canvassers “in any way cheat or commit fraud, we will report you to local law enforcement and assist them in your prosecution.” nytimes.com/2026/11/06/us/po…

AI companies admit what they’re building might kill everyone. We don't have to agree to this. Add your name at donotaccept.ai to say: we do not accept your terms.

My sense of Nick Land's trajectory, based on interviewing him as well as reading most of what he's written, is that pre-2016 he only contemplated scenarios 2 and 3. After that, he came to see a more positive role for politics, aka "monkey business," and added item 1.

People have no idea how sophisticated nation state activities are If you are a target of opportunity for China it’s not unheard of for them to dedicate O(1000) humans dedicated to compromising you This is what happened w their NYT hack in 2013, which was designed to send a message They will compromise your friend’s friend’s friend to compromise you And work down that chain until your friend invites you on a fun trip on a private plane to Mexico/Thailand/wherever (example) Where some night you have a very boozy dinner and then you show back up at the house and some girls are there You’re drunk and make a mistake and then you’re owned until you’re disposable Nation state kompromat for “target’s of choice” is a system designed to find any individual’s weakness (you’re bisexual; a gambler, an alcoholic, drug addict, have a debt, adulterous, etc) and then force them into a situation of maximum amplification of this weakness 99% of people can be compromised using nation state capabilities and tactics nytimes.com/2013/01/31/techn…