Mike Ananny

Alberta ‘excessively vulnerable’ to foreign interference, experts warn | CBC News Alberta is not ready to deal with the threat of online disinformation coming from foreign actors in a possible referendum campaign on separation this fall, according to national security experts.

Alberta ‘excessively vulnerable’ to foreign interference, experts warn. Referendum on Alberta's independence from Canada could take place in October www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Find out more at nationalnewswatch.com

But my employer’s told me that its partnership with this Department of “War” partner is how I will “empower” myself & my students.

Boy, who’d have predicted such a pickle!🤷‍♂️

www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/11/12/u...

Live Updates: Turkey Says NATO Shot Down Iranian Missile Heading to Turkish Airspace

I guess *this* is how NATO crumbles —

- either member states refuse to join this US folly & Article 5 is moot, or

- they do join in & countries learn that they can exhaust the alliance with member country attacks (NATO DDoS)

Either way, Putin & the pee tape win.

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than ‘speed of thought’ Speed and scale of US military’s AI war planning raises fears human decision-making may be sidelined

Anthropic and Palantir tech was used by the US military to target lethal strikes in Iran www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

But my employer’s told me that its partnership with this Department of “War” partner is how I will “empower” myself & my students.

Boy, who’d have predicted such a pickle!🤷‍♂️

www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/11/12/u...

Dave said far more succinctly what I tried to convey here. Not only do I wonder why academics wouldn’t want to do the intellectual labor (why else would we choose this career?), but AI evangelists saying these things are telling on themselves. open.substack.com/pub/miranday...

... The point of writing an academic article is not to write an academic article; it is through the research for and writing of an academic article that we are able to think, learn, develop ideas, come up with new ideas, collaborate, inspire, etc. 2/

Imagine a world where the terms of this agreement—between two of the world’s most powerful & dangerous organizations—were precisely specified & robustly debated through transparent, accessible, & accountable public processes.

But no.

We get swagger, threats, proprietary systems, & tweets.

And here we have @bobbyrae48.bsky.social caustically subtweeting @mark-carney.bsky.social's dismal statement on Iran this morning.
bobrae48.substack.com/p/impulse-an...

What do AI firms do when users tell chatbots their dark, violent thoughts? Tumbler Ridge tragedy underscores need for regulation, but getting that right can be tricky. Getting it wrong can be dangerous

“Canada is…the only G7 country that has no online harms legislation.

‘We cannot simply leave it to companies, who almost surely are weighing not just privacy & public safety, but also corporate, brand, profit, & reputational considerations,’ [Penny] said.”

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/1022323...

This is just such an embarrassing way for a country to fall apart.

Imagine a world where the terms of this agreement—between two of the world’s most powerful & dangerous organizations—were precisely specified & robustly debated through transparent, accessible, & accountable public processes.

But no.

We get swagger, threats, proprietary systems, & tweets.

Federal action on online harms is now a political no brainer February 26, 2026 The most casual observer of public opinion on Ottawa taking action against harmful online content will have long concluded, this ain’t no battle. Canadians categorically sup…

New Léger poll (taken *before* the Tumbler Ridge tragedy) finds that 85% of Canadians agree with the statement “freedom of expression online should not come at the expense of other people’s safety.”

mediapolicy.ca/2026/02/26/f...

+1 yes

*And* if you’re not interested in developing yourself & your thinking by grappling with messiness of reviewing lit & creating a coherent path through it.

My students sometimes roll their eyes at me when I say it, but I love lit reviews as process of creating & cleaning up a conceptual mess.

ICE detained a Minnesota teen, labeled him an ‘unaccompanied minor,’ and lost him The Trump administration is apprehending and designating immigrant kids as “unaccompanied,” even as their parents in the U.S. search for them.

ICE agents grabbed a 16-year-old asylum seeker--which they aren't supposed to do

They kept him from his parents -which they aren't supposed to do

They shipped him out of state, to a Christian ministry, which they aren't supposed to do.

Then they *lost* him.

www.startribune.com/how-ice-labe...

This is going to be a banger.

Preorder @ceciliarikap.bsky.social

www.versobooks.com/products/325...

“Canadians should expect straight answers from media companies about their policies & principles for dealing with American content, Ananny says.

‘Cdn ownership & Cdn control of media needs to be bright-line separated from the U.S; it can’t just be a carrier.’”

Great talk w @nestruck.bsky.social

There is an increasing number of stories about how Canadian sovereignty is intertwined with US tech infrastructure…

“Canadians should expect straight answers from media companies about their policies & principles for dealing with American content, Ananny says.

‘Cdn ownership & Cdn control of media needs to be bright-line separated from the U.S; it can’t just be a carrier.’”

Great talk w @nestruck.bsky.social

“for middle-power countries—states with advanced public sectors and regulatory ambition, but without the scale to dominate global AI markets. For them, sovereignty […] depends on ensuring that AI systems can be integrated, governed, audited, &, if necessary, replaced on national terms.”

A banner featuring Donald Trump's photo featuring the phrase "Make America Great Again" is hung on the side of the headquarters of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, DC.

As @brendannyhan.bsky.social says on repeat, what would you say if you saw it happening in another country?

Source: x.com/HBRabinowitz...

Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance.

And you know why?

Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.

“In insisting on a future of perpetual oil‑funded prosperity while railing against transfers & federal authority, movements like the Alberta Prosperity Project offer […] a superficially compelling story that cannot be reconciled with either Canada’s Constitution or the realities of a warming world.”

But the article also says that democrats are “largely unaffected” so maybe it is the same old story of a kind of (media) power that works only on audiences ideologically prepared to receive a conservative message?

But I was told by Scholars that algorithms don’t have this power & that filter bubbles don’t exist. 🤔

Ofelia Torres, teen who fought to have her father released from ICE custody, dies from rare cancer Ofelia Torres, 16, died on Friday from Stage 4 alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, her father's lawyer confirmed.

A child dying of cancer spent her final days fighting to free her wrongfully detained father from ICE custody.
 
This comes just weeks after a mother from Maryland was denied the right to be at her son’s side as he died from cancer.
 
Not one dime for this cruelty.

www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/...

Toddler hospitalized with respiratory failure was returned to ICE detention and denied prescribed medication, lawsuit says The 18-month-old was sent back to a South Texas facility after days in intensive care with severe respiratory distress, according to a federal lawsuit.

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Exclusive: Detention Center Captives Are Throwing Lotion Bottles Wrapped With Notes to Organizers Outside Otay Mesa Facility ~ L.A. TACO “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh," an Otay Mesa captive communicated through handwritten note. "We are all in one big room with no doors...

Concentration camps:

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick."

Opinion | This Is Just Who Trump Is

"For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career...cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism." (gift link)

Text from NYT Op-ed: At the same time, America is becoming synonymous with dangerous randomness. The constitutional system is in collapse. The legislative branch, made up of both Democrats and Republicans, is missing in action. The Supreme Court debates the legal equivalent of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, while the legal order that has held the country together for 250 years sputters toward an ignominious end. Nobody knows what America is anymore — not Americans, not their enemies, not their friends. Coming to terms with this reality has not been easy in Canada. American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug; it’s hard to break the habit of thinking of Americans as the good guys. For Canadians, what is unfolding in Minnesota and elsewhere is happening to our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our kin — it is happening to people we love and understand better than anybody. But “the rupture,” as Mr. Carney calls it, is nothing more than seeing clearly. Today, it’s America that poses a threat to our freedom and democracy. Not China. Not Russia. America.

From writer @stephenmarche.bsky.social, proud Canadian, on what the current despot rule of the US has meant for Canada and the world.

(Also note his nomenclature for the US.)

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...