In the September 17, 2026 episode of the No Agenda Show, titled 'Junkie Communism,' host Adam Curry and guest co-host Rob Dew (Sir Deucifer) deconstruct the escalating artificial intelligence panic, framing it as a near-perfect rerun of the COVID-19 playbook. Broadcasting from the Hill Country of Texas, Curry argues that the current AI doom cycle follows a familiar pattern: an expert priesthood, division, government regulation, and a push toward global governance. The pair combed through roughly 170 clips to trace how the narrative is being manufactured.
The episode digs into several interlocking threads from the week's news cycle. Congresswoman Maxine Waters grilled Treasury officials on AI safety, while Senator Bernie Sanders equated AI risk with nuclear weapons. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang appeared on CNBC claiming self-replicating bot swarms have polluted the internet, requiring 'synthetic internets' and a kill switch. President Trump's proposed $5,000 tariff dividend to every adult American citizen was also discussed, along with the possible stablecoin mechanism behind it. Canadian PM Mark Carney's Strasbourg speech proposing Canada become the EU's first associate member, Houthi advances near the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the new Mecca Accords defense pact were also covered.
Curry's media deconstruction approach is on full display as he maps the AI hoax structure. 'The reason why I can easily explain this being a hoax, because you've got the models, the large language model, and that thing by itself... turns out wasn't very useful unless you give it access to tools... Then you have the harness. Oh, I love these terms,' Curry explains, before walking through how guardrails on ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini prove companies can throttle output at will. Dew adds context from a friend's Hegelian dialectic analysis mapping eight cultural inhale-exhale cycles from 1945 to present, from the Cold War through COVID to today's AI narrative.
The conversation ranges into the effective altruism movement (with Sam Bankman-Fried as its poster child), Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's warnings, Jensen Huang's semiconductor push, and a Purdue University report on the 157,000-worker shortfall facing US chip fabs. Dew, who once worked at Tokyo Electron America servicing Micron and other clients, pushes back on the mystique around semiconductor manufacturing. The hosts also cover Ilhan Omar's alleged marriage fraud investigation under Tom Homan, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's Kids Act targeting social media for under-13s, Canadian MAID euthanasia expansion, the Yalta European Strategy conference attended by Boris Johnson and David Petraeus, and the mysterious glitter industry centered in New Jersey.
The episode underscores why this matters: if the AI panic is indeed a rerun of the COVID playbook, it suggests a coordinated effort to manipulate public perception, centralize control, and bypass democratic processes. By drawing parallels to past crises, Curry and Dew urge listeners to remain skeptical of mainstream narratives and to recognize the recurring tactics used to engineer consent. The implications are significant: increased government regulation of AI could stifle innovation, while calls for global governance might erode national sovereignty. Moreover, the push for 'synthetic internets' and kill switches raises concerns about censorship and control of information. As the AI narrative continues to unfold, the No Agenda hosts provide a critical counterpoint to the doom-laden predictions propagated by media and political elites.
