September 18, 2025 • 19 mins
U.S. President Donald Trump continues his historic second state visit to the UK amid unprecedented pomp, intense security and protests as King Charles and other royals welcomed him.
The UK laid on what it said was the largest military ceremonial welcome for a state visit in living memory and Trump, an overt royal fan, has made little secret of his delight at being not just the first US leader but the first elected politician to be invited for two state visits.
And have you heard about the Dead Internet Theory? OpenAI boss Sam Altman is starting to think it might actually be real.
And in news headlines today, Despite hundreds of recorded instances, the new domestic violence offence of coercive control has only resulted in a handful of charges since it was first criminalised; According to court documents, Controversial radio host Alan Jones didn't confine his alleged sexual abuse to behind closed doors, allegedly assaulting his victims in public; Brittany Higgins is appealing elements of her costly defamation battle loss to her former boss Linda Reynolds; American pop princess Chappell Roan will headline the Laneway Festival with a six-date tour Down Under
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Hosts: Claire Murphy & Ilaria Brophy
Guests: Amelia Lester and Mark Pesce
Audio Producer: Lu Hill
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mumma Mea acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma
MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quikie. Today we break
down a very royal visit for Donald Trump and find
out whether the Internet is in its final death throws.
(00:33):
But before we get there, here's the letters from the
Cookie Newsroom for Friday, September nineteen. Despite hundreds of recorded instances,
the new domestic violence offensive coercive control has only resulted
in a handful of charges since it was first criminalized.
New South Wales was the first Australian jurisdiction to make
coercive control an offense when landmark legislation passed state parliament
(00:54):
in twenty twenty two. The laws apply when a person
uses abusive behaviors to a current or former intimate partner
with the intent of controlling or coercing them. Since then,
New South Wales police have recorded two hundred and ninety
seven incidents of coercive control, but laid charges on only
nine occasions, According to a report released on Friday by
the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
(01:17):
Victim survivors are reportedly finding it difficult to meet the
high legal threshold for the charge, and because the law
doesn't apply to behavior pre twenty twenty four, it's hard
to establish a pattern of coercive control only looking at
the year since it came into effect. While three coercive
control charges have been finalized in court, they were withdrawn
(01:37):
by the prosecution on two occasions, with the defendant pleading
guilty in the third case. According to court documents, controversial
radio host Alan Jones didn't confine his alleged sexual abuse
to behind closed doors, allegedly assaulting his victims in public.
The eighty four year old has been accused of historical
sex offenses against eleven people, the youngest of whom was
(01:59):
seventeen at the time, over two decades, Facing forty four
charges before the case against him underwent a reconfiguration in
Downing Center Local Court on Tuesday, Secutor Emma Curran withdrew
more than a dozen charges and amended others, leaving the
broadcaster on twenty five charges of indecent assault and two
of sexual touching against nine people. Prosecutors did not explain
(02:21):
why the charges relating to two of the alleged victims
were no longer being pursued. According to the court documents,
Jones allegedly groped two complainants at restaurants in Sydney and Kayama.
Four were allegedly and decently assaulted by Jones during events,
and a fifth claimed he was groped during a performance
at the Sydney Opera House. He's also accused of indecently
assaulting two complainants while they were driving him home. Jones
(02:45):
formally pleaded not guilty to all charges, with the matter
set to proceed to a local court hearing in twenty
twenty six. Britney Higgins is appealing elements of her costly
defamation battle lost to her former boss, Linda Reynolds. Reynolds
sued Miss Higgins over a series of social media posts
the ex Liberal senator believe damaged her reputation. The Western
Australian Supreme Court in August found the post's word defamatory
(03:08):
and awarded damages of three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars
plus twenty six thousand, one hundred and nine dollars in interest.
Miss Higgins was also ordered to pay eighty percent of
Miss Reynolds's legal costs, which are yet to be determined.
The former political staffer is appealing the damages award and
the costs order, according to documents filed in the WA
Court of Appeal yesterday. She is also seeking to challenge
(03:30):
the finding that she breached a twenty twenty one deed
of settlement between the pair with an Instagram post referring
to her being a defamation victim. American pop Princess Chaperon
will headline the Laneway Festival with a six state tour
down Under. Laneway's return in February will include the festival
heading to the Gold Coast for the first time, as
well as dates in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth,
(03:52):
as well as Rone. The festival slate features British indie
rockers Will Fallas and Wet Leg along with US outfit Mountjoy.
A first release pre sale ticket to Laneway will set
punters back two hundred and twenty nine dollars, with later
releases increasingly expensive and VIP tickets priced at three hundred
and sixty dollars. That's What's Happening in the World Today.
Next Donald Trump's very royal visit. This week, Donald Trump
(04:22):
became just the second world leader to ever be invited
back for a second state visit to the UK. As
his helicopter touched down on the grounds of Windsor Castle,
he was met by the Prince and Princess of Wales themselves,
before being whisked off to see King Charles and Queen
Camilla ride in a royal carriage inspect the troops, be
reminded of the US in England's long history, reading a
(04:44):
letter from Abraham Lincoln to Queen Victoria, and be entertained
at a state dinner, sitting at a table that takes
five days to set with its four thousand pieces of dinnerware.
But underneath the pomp and ceremony lies the politics. The
UK now exists in a world where the US President
has become an agent of chaos, upending long standing trade deals,
(05:05):
which has left many countries Australia included, scrambling to find
a waiting go get themselves exempt from the harsh tariffs
imposed by the Trump administration. Trump will today head to Checkers,
the estate of the British PM, where Kirs Stamer will
take him on a tour of the Winston Churchill Archive
before a bilateral meeting, after which Trump will meet with
business leaders, including representatives of companies like Rolls, Royce and
(05:28):
Microsoft Milania. Trump's wife will stay at Windsor Castle, where
Camilla will show her around Queen Mary's Dollhouse and the
Royal Library before she too heads to Checkers, where she
and her husband will fly out of back to the US.
So is this visit handering to Trump's known love of
the royal fanfare more a way to make trade dials happen?
To unpack this is Amelia Lester, mma Mere's US correspondent. So, Amelia,
(05:52):
we have a vague understanding of why the UK is
putting on such a show for Donald Trump. But what
if anything, is Donald Trump getting out of this royal visit.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
So there are two reasons why he's making this visit.
The first is, as with all of his state visits,
what he's looking for or are ways to get other
countries to invest in the US private sector. That's what
he sees his job as president as to make deals
to bring money into the US private sector. So already
he's gotten a British pharmaceutical group to say that it's
(06:24):
investing thirty billion dollars in the US over the next
five years. These are the kinds of deals that he
wants to make when he goes abroad, which is, by
the way, very different to previous presidents who saw these
state visits as an opportunity to build bilateral ties, to
talk about security alliances. Trump doesn't see any of that
as important. He sees the US as going it alone
(06:44):
in the world and trying to procure as much money
as possible for US companies. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is he's obsessed with the royals. And
this goes back a long way. His mother was Scottish.
He talked in the Art of the Deal about how
she loved the British royal family. He remembers watching Princess
Diana and Prince Charles's wedding back in nineteen eighty three
(07:04):
with her. He says that he got his sense of
showmanship from her, her love of glamour, and that came
from her idea of royalty. And We've got lots of
other examples from people around him that he's always been
obsessed with them. So, for instance, you might remember Trump's
former National Security Aid Fiona Hill, who was advising him
on Russia in his first term. She wrote in her
(07:24):
book that he spoke often about his mother's admiration of
the royal family. He says that when he met Queen
Elizabeth in his first term. She says that he was
obsessed with it because it showed that he had made
it in life. That was really a sign that he'd
made it. He offered Charles a free membership of mar
A Lago back in the day. He did not accept it,
and he tried to gin up interest in New York's
(07:45):
Trump Tower when it was first built in the eighties
by saying that Prince Charles and Princess Diana had wanted
to buy an apartment there.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That is not true, right, So with that in mind,
obviously the royal family in the British government understands he
has that love of royalty. Is then taking that and
pandering to that helpful because are other countries doing this?
Are they seeing more favorable results trade to books, for example,
tariff levels? Are we seeing that that real shining a
(08:14):
light on him like he is who he thinks he is?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Is that helpful? We have a lot of data about
what's working for Trump because the tariff league table basically
shows you which countries were in his good graces and
which countries were not. So the interesting shift that we've
observed between the first term and the second term is
that in the first term, it was understood that flattery
was how you got what you wanted. So the cardinal
example of this is then Japanese Prime ministertionz or Ahbe
(08:40):
talked about how great Trump was as a golfer, never
stopped talking about it, and Japan made a lot of
inroads with the US, and that first term that can
be really attributed to Abe's charm offensive on Trump. But
what we've seen in the second term is that flattery
is not necessarily the silver bullet that it once was.
And the way we see this is in the example
of Pakistan and India and how they fared in tariffs.
(09:00):
Pakistan got nineteen percent tariffs, which is pretty low given
that ten percent was the baseline. India has been slapped
with fifty percent tariffs. That's despite the fact that President
Modi of India has done everything he can to ingratiate
himself with Trump, like outright flattery, visits lots of admiration,
and he didn't really get anything out of all of that.
(09:22):
So things have gotten a little bit more complicated, and
I think that's in part because Trump is not getting
any younger. He survived multiple assassination attempts, and I think
he's more concern with his legacy now rather than people
flattering him. So it's gotten a little more complicated. The
other thing that I think is interesting to note with
the tariffs is that Australia got out arguably the best
of anyone in the world.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
He didn't do too badly.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
No, Australia got the baseline tariff of ten percent, and
what I've noticed about that is that I think Australia
got that because he wasn't thinking about Australia. My own
personal theory about what's working with Trump in this term
is countries that stay off his radar, that he doesn't
fixate on tend to do better. Pakistan didn't really do
anything with Trump and got a much lower tariff rate
(10:04):
than India that sort of really tried to ingratiate themselves
with him. So I do I wonder if putting yourself
on Trump's radar in this second term is that a
good thing.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I don't know, are we now on his radar because
he yelled at the journalist at the White House.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right
now now they want to get along with me.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I think arguably that probably wasn't great for Australia, to
be honest, because he did say I'm about to meet
with your leader. And I just wonder if this is
the way things are working for him this term. If
he starts thinking about you, that's when you're in trouble.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Okay, Just finally, I'd like to ask you about the
very strategic decision to keep Donald Trump away from London itself,
because he's gone to Windsor Castle, Windsor Castle to Checkers,
which is the British Prime Minister's estate, and then he's
going to fly straight back to the US from there.
There's obviously been a lot of protest happening in London,
many people taking to the streets. We also saw people
arrested for projecting an image of Donald Trump and Jeffrey
(10:58):
Epstein up onto one of the walls of the castle itself.
And obviously there's been some issues in the UK recently
with an ambassador having to be fired over his ties
to Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think it's a very smart
stratch move for the British government and the Royals to
keep him away from the center of all of that
in London at the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
British Prime Minister Kirs Starma must have been so unhappy
last week about having to dismiss his ambassador to the US,
Peter Mandelson. As you mentioned, he was dismissed because it
turned out that he was very close friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
We always knew that they were in the same social circle,
but some letters came out recently where Mandelson expressed great
sympathy with Epstein and said that he hoped that he
(11:37):
would be released from prison early. So Starma was left
with no option but to fire him. Super embarrassing to
have that happen immediately before the State visit. And I
do think that this connection of Epstein to the British
royal family as well, it's very awkward. So I think
keeping him out of London and keeping him away from
the protests is a smart move. Trump desperately wants to
(11:58):
outrun this story. It doesn't seem like it's going anywhere.
There's still a move in the US Congress, including with
Representative Massey, who is a Republican, to release more Epstein files.
I think he's looking for. The UK trip was a
way of getting away from that story, but it's going
to follow him that.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
At the State dinner, King Charles was all pleasant smiles
and formalities, but during his address to the dinner guests,
he spoke of the US and UK's long standing security
alliance and that the UK and its allies stand together
in support of Ukraine. He also referenced the Orcast submarine
partnership with Australia, saying it's set the benchmark for innovative
(12:34):
and vital collaboration. This is what is referred to as
Tiara diplomacy. After they catch up at Checkers too, Donald
Trump and UK PM kir Starmer held a press conference
in which they couldn't have spoken more highly of each other,
and it does seem Trump was very pleased at being
welcome back to the UK for the second time.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Melaney and I are forever thankful to his Majesty King
Charles the Third and her Majesty Queen Camilla had a
fantastic evening last night, but the exquisite honor of a
second official state visit, the first ever. That's your first
time it's ever been done.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Was you know?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
It really was an honor, such great history, and to
think it's a first, it's always nice, ever first, But
the ties between our countries are priceless, and it's really
an inheritance. It's beautiful inheritance. Today we're making those ties
closer than ever before. We've done some things that financially
(13:31):
agreed for both countries.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Now have you heard about the dead Internet theory? The
creator of open AI, Sam Oltman, is starting to think
it might actually be right. Hilario Brophy has more.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Thanks Claire, The Internet is dum Sorry. I think I
just glitched out weird fembot style there, or maybe that
was the Internet on the fritz, and that theory might
be more real than you think. It's called the Dead
Internet theory. It started as a relatively fringe idea, and
(14:07):
then it hit the mainstream in twenty well before AI
became an hit topic. Of course. Now in twenty twenty five,
it's back in the headlines after a very famous tech
bro gave it the thumbs up this month. It's the
idea that our online spaces once alive with human, messy
chaos are now overrun by AI generated content bots and
(14:32):
click farms churning out posts that look real but a
fakef Tech expert Mark Peshi reckons the theory is very
real unlike the Internet right now.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Maybe the Internet's not dead in the sense that it died,
but it got replaced by a robot. The amount of
Internet that we can think of is genuinely human is
actually kind of restricted these days. Some websites, particularly Reddit
and Wikipedia, have worked really, really really hard to make
sure that they're just purely human and the conversations on
there are purely human, but it takes a lot of work.
(15:06):
Many other places, so ex Twitter, Facebook, their social sites,
are really being overrun by just automated stuff, turning out
what we would call slop. You'd almost think of it
as a new phenomenon. We're actually starting to see a
lot of it now in short form videos. There's a
really famous video of rabbits bouncing on a trampoline that
I think probably everyone on the Internet has seen, and everyone, oh, look,
(15:29):
how cute, and of course it turns out it was
entirely computer generated. There's another one about a kangaroo trying
to abort a flight, and all of these different things
that we think are really cute are actually just designed
to drag our attention and hold it. So part of
what the dead Internet is really good at is getting
its hooks in us by showing us something that we're
really interested in to just keep us watching.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
So why do these bots want our attention so badly?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Well, for some of these platforms, they have a political
message they're trying to get across. To some of these platforms,
they're just monetizing your eyeballs. The longer that you look,
the more likely you are to see an ad or
whatever it might be. And so attention has become the
commodity now, and because there are so many websites that
demand our attention, In fact, attention is actually in short supply.
(16:15):
People cannot spend more hours of the day staring at
their smartphones. We have run out of spare hours, and
so part of what we're seeing of the dead Internet
is these bots fighting other bots to get rights to
use your eyes to make money off you.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
And even the guy behind the most powerful AI system
is taking this seriously. The CEO of open Ai, of course,
a bloke behind it chat GPT Sam Altman recently admitted
he's starting to think the theory might actually be real.
He posted on x earlier this month.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I never took the dead Internet theory that seriously, but
it seems like there are a lot of LM run
Twitter accounts now.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
An LLM account is really one that is wired directly
into chat GPT. In the same way that you would
be having a conversation with chat GPT back and forth,
the LLM account is having a conversation across its Twitter followers,
back and forth.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
So why is this all a problem?
Speaker 5 (17:09):
It is a bad thing if you're looking for authentic
human opinions and points of view, if you're out on
social media because you want to understand how other people
are thinking and believing, and in fact all you're seeing
are bots that are designed to change how you're thinking
and believing.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
We have a problem, and what do we do about it?
Experts have said so far they want tighter rules and
regulations on platforms, labels on AI generated posts, and of course,
better digital literacy so we can spot the fakes.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
AI use always needs to be completely transparent. When you're
seeing an AI generated image or video or even a tweet,
it needs to be labeled as AI generated, and if
someone is caught out using AI generated content and hasn't
labeled it, they need to be banned. If you want
a spotifyic account, first off, take a look at the
history of the account. If it's always talking about one
(17:58):
subject all the time, probably a bot. If it's always
using the same terms or same stories, again, probably a bot.
Because people are generally all over the map when they
use social media, so something it's two firm, probably a bot.
Take a look at how long ago the account was created,
take a look at the number of followers. All of
those things are ways of telling you whether this is
real or not. And then just take a look at
(18:21):
what it's said over a period of time. How does
it feel, How does it sit with you. I think
it's really important for us to take the lessons that work.
Why does Wikipedia work because there's a whole lot of
people working really hard. Why does Reddit work because there
are a whole lot of moderators working really hard. We
can't just sign the Internet over to machines and expect
it's all going to be okay.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
So the next time you're scrolling and it feels a
little bit unreal, trust those human instincts. I'm a Laria
Brophy for the Quikie, real human and forever refusing to
give the bots the last word.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with
us today. The Quiki is produced by me Claire Murphy
along with a Lario Brophy, with audio production by Lou
Hill
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mumma Mea acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma
MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quikie. Today we break
down a very royal visit for Donald Trump and find
out whether the Internet is in its final death throws.
(00:33):
But before we get there, here's the letters from the
Cookie Newsroom for Friday, September nineteen. Despite hundreds of recorded instances,
the new domestic violence offensive coercive control has only resulted
in a handful of charges since it was first criminalized.
New South Wales was the first Australian jurisdiction to make
coercive control an offense when landmark legislation passed state parliament
(00:54):
in twenty twenty two. The laws apply when a person
uses abusive behaviors to a current or former intimate partner
with the intent of controlling or coercing them. Since then,
New South Wales police have recorded two hundred and ninety
seven incidents of coercive control, but laid charges on only
nine occasions, According to a report released on Friday by
the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
(01:17):
Victim survivors are reportedly finding it difficult to meet the
high legal threshold for the charge, and because the law
doesn't apply to behavior pre twenty twenty four, it's hard
to establish a pattern of coercive control only looking at
the year since it came into effect. While three coercive
control charges have been finalized in court, they were withdrawn
(01:37):
by the prosecution on two occasions, with the defendant pleading
guilty in the third case. According to court documents, controversial
radio host Alan Jones didn't confine his alleged sexual abuse
to behind closed doors, allegedly assaulting his victims in public.
The eighty four year old has been accused of historical
sex offenses against eleven people, the youngest of whom was
(01:59):
seventeen at the time, over two decades, Facing forty four
charges before the case against him underwent a reconfiguration in
Downing Center Local Court on Tuesday, Secutor Emma Curran withdrew
more than a dozen charges and amended others, leaving the
broadcaster on twenty five charges of indecent assault and two
of sexual touching against nine people. Prosecutors did not explain
(02:21):
why the charges relating to two of the alleged victims
were no longer being pursued. According to the court documents,
Jones allegedly groped two complainants at restaurants in Sydney and Kayama.
Four were allegedly and decently assaulted by Jones during events,
and a fifth claimed he was groped during a performance
at the Sydney Opera House. He's also accused of indecently
assaulting two complainants while they were driving him home. Jones
(02:45):
formally pleaded not guilty to all charges, with the matter
set to proceed to a local court hearing in twenty
twenty six. Britney Higgins is appealing elements of her costly
defamation battle lost to her former boss, Linda Reynolds. Reynolds
sued Miss Higgins over a series of social media posts
the ex Liberal senator believe damaged her reputation. The Western
Australian Supreme Court in August found the post's word defamatory
(03:08):
and awarded damages of three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars
plus twenty six thousand, one hundred and nine dollars in interest.
Miss Higgins was also ordered to pay eighty percent of
Miss Reynolds's legal costs, which are yet to be determined.
The former political staffer is appealing the damages award and
the costs order, according to documents filed in the WA
Court of Appeal yesterday. She is also seeking to challenge
(03:30):
the finding that she breached a twenty twenty one deed
of settlement between the pair with an Instagram post referring
to her being a defamation victim. American pop Princess Chaperon
will headline the Laneway Festival with a six state tour
down Under. Laneway's return in February will include the festival
heading to the Gold Coast for the first time, as
well as dates in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth,
(03:52):
as well as Rone. The festival slate features British indie
rockers Will Fallas and Wet Leg along with US outfit Mountjoy.
A first release pre sale ticket to Laneway will set
punters back two hundred and twenty nine dollars, with later
releases increasingly expensive and VIP tickets priced at three hundred
and sixty dollars. That's What's Happening in the World Today.
Next Donald Trump's very royal visit. This week, Donald Trump
(04:22):
became just the second world leader to ever be invited
back for a second state visit to the UK. As
his helicopter touched down on the grounds of Windsor Castle,
he was met by the Prince and Princess of Wales themselves,
before being whisked off to see King Charles and Queen
Camilla ride in a royal carriage inspect the troops, be
reminded of the US in England's long history, reading a
(04:44):
letter from Abraham Lincoln to Queen Victoria, and be entertained
at a state dinner, sitting at a table that takes
five days to set with its four thousand pieces of dinnerware.
But underneath the pomp and ceremony lies the politics. The
UK now exists in a world where the US President
has become an agent of chaos, upending long standing trade deals,
(05:05):
which has left many countries Australia included, scrambling to find
a waiting go get themselves exempt from the harsh tariffs
imposed by the Trump administration. Trump will today head to Checkers,
the estate of the British PM, where Kirs Stamer will
take him on a tour of the Winston Churchill Archive
before a bilateral meeting, after which Trump will meet with
business leaders, including representatives of companies like Rolls, Royce and
(05:28):
Microsoft Milania. Trump's wife will stay at Windsor Castle, where
Camilla will show her around Queen Mary's Dollhouse and the
Royal Library before she too heads to Checkers, where she
and her husband will fly out of back to the US.
So is this visit handering to Trump's known love of
the royal fanfare more a way to make trade dials happen?
To unpack this is Amelia Lester, mma Mere's US correspondent. So, Amelia,
(05:52):
we have a vague understanding of why the UK is
putting on such a show for Donald Trump. But what
if anything, is Donald Trump getting out of this royal visit.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
So there are two reasons why he's making this visit.
The first is, as with all of his state visits,
what he's looking for or are ways to get other
countries to invest in the US private sector. That's what
he sees his job as president as to make deals
to bring money into the US private sector. So already
he's gotten a British pharmaceutical group to say that it's
(06:24):
investing thirty billion dollars in the US over the next
five years. These are the kinds of deals that he
wants to make when he goes abroad, which is, by
the way, very different to previous presidents who saw these
state visits as an opportunity to build bilateral ties, to
talk about security alliances. Trump doesn't see any of that
as important. He sees the US as going it alone
(06:44):
in the world and trying to procure as much money
as possible for US companies. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is he's obsessed with the royals. And
this goes back a long way. His mother was Scottish.
He talked in the Art of the Deal about how
she loved the British royal family. He remembers watching Princess
Diana and Prince Charles's wedding back in nineteen eighty three
(07:04):
with her. He says that he got his sense of
showmanship from her, her love of glamour, and that came
from her idea of royalty. And We've got lots of
other examples from people around him that he's always been
obsessed with them. So, for instance, you might remember Trump's
former National Security Aid Fiona Hill, who was advising him
on Russia in his first term. She wrote in her
(07:24):
book that he spoke often about his mother's admiration of
the royal family. He says that when he met Queen
Elizabeth in his first term. She says that he was
obsessed with it because it showed that he had made
it in life. That was really a sign that he'd
made it. He offered Charles a free membership of mar
A Lago back in the day. He did not accept it,
and he tried to gin up interest in New York's
(07:45):
Trump Tower when it was first built in the eighties
by saying that Prince Charles and Princess Diana had wanted
to buy an apartment there.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That is not true, right, So with that in mind,
obviously the royal family in the British government understands he
has that love of royalty. Is then taking that and
pandering to that helpful because are other countries doing this?
Are they seeing more favorable results trade to books, for example,
tariff levels? Are we seeing that that real shining a
(08:14):
light on him like he is who he thinks he is?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Is that helpful? We have a lot of data about
what's working for Trump because the tariff league table basically
shows you which countries were in his good graces and
which countries were not. So the interesting shift that we've
observed between the first term and the second term is
that in the first term, it was understood that flattery
was how you got what you wanted. So the cardinal
example of this is then Japanese Prime ministertionz or Ahbe
(08:40):
talked about how great Trump was as a golfer, never
stopped talking about it, and Japan made a lot of
inroads with the US, and that first term that can
be really attributed to Abe's charm offensive on Trump. But
what we've seen in the second term is that flattery
is not necessarily the silver bullet that it once was.
And the way we see this is in the example
of Pakistan and India and how they fared in tariffs.
(09:00):
Pakistan got nineteen percent tariffs, which is pretty low given
that ten percent was the baseline. India has been slapped
with fifty percent tariffs. That's despite the fact that President
Modi of India has done everything he can to ingratiate
himself with Trump, like outright flattery, visits lots of admiration,
and he didn't really get anything out of all of that.
(09:22):
So things have gotten a little bit more complicated, and
I think that's in part because Trump is not getting
any younger. He survived multiple assassination attempts, and I think
he's more concern with his legacy now rather than people
flattering him. So it's gotten a little more complicated. The
other thing that I think is interesting to note with
the tariffs is that Australia got out arguably the best
of anyone in the world.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
He didn't do too badly.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
No, Australia got the baseline tariff of ten percent, and
what I've noticed about that is that I think Australia
got that because he wasn't thinking about Australia. My own
personal theory about what's working with Trump in this term
is countries that stay off his radar, that he doesn't
fixate on tend to do better. Pakistan didn't really do
anything with Trump and got a much lower tariff rate
(10:04):
than India that sort of really tried to ingratiate themselves
with him. So I do I wonder if putting yourself
on Trump's radar in this second term is that a
good thing.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I don't know, are we now on his radar because
he yelled at the journalist at the White House.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right
now now they want to get along with me.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I think arguably that probably wasn't great for Australia, to
be honest, because he did say I'm about to meet
with your leader. And I just wonder if this is
the way things are working for him this term. If
he starts thinking about you, that's when you're in trouble.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Okay, Just finally, I'd like to ask you about the
very strategic decision to keep Donald Trump away from London itself,
because he's gone to Windsor Castle, Windsor Castle to Checkers,
which is the British Prime Minister's estate, and then he's
going to fly straight back to the US from there.
There's obviously been a lot of protest happening in London,
many people taking to the streets. We also saw people
arrested for projecting an image of Donald Trump and Jeffrey
(10:58):
Epstein up onto one of the walls of the castle itself.
And obviously there's been some issues in the UK recently
with an ambassador having to be fired over his ties
to Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think it's a very smart
stratch move for the British government and the Royals to
keep him away from the center of all of that
in London at the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
British Prime Minister Kirs Starma must have been so unhappy
last week about having to dismiss his ambassador to the US,
Peter Mandelson. As you mentioned, he was dismissed because it
turned out that he was very close friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
We always knew that they were in the same social circle,
but some letters came out recently where Mandelson expressed great
sympathy with Epstein and said that he hoped that he
(11:37):
would be released from prison early. So Starma was left
with no option but to fire him. Super embarrassing to
have that happen immediately before the State visit. And I
do think that this connection of Epstein to the British
royal family as well, it's very awkward. So I think
keeping him out of London and keeping him away from
the protests is a smart move. Trump desperately wants to
(11:58):
outrun this story. It doesn't seem like it's going anywhere.
There's still a move in the US Congress, including with
Representative Massey, who is a Republican, to release more Epstein files.
I think he's looking for. The UK trip was a
way of getting away from that story, but it's going
to follow him that.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
At the State dinner, King Charles was all pleasant smiles
and formalities, but during his address to the dinner guests,
he spoke of the US and UK's long standing security
alliance and that the UK and its allies stand together
in support of Ukraine. He also referenced the Orcast submarine
partnership with Australia, saying it's set the benchmark for innovative
(12:34):
and vital collaboration. This is what is referred to as
Tiara diplomacy. After they catch up at Checkers too, Donald
Trump and UK PM kir Starmer held a press conference
in which they couldn't have spoken more highly of each other,
and it does seem Trump was very pleased at being
welcome back to the UK for the second time.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Melaney and I are forever thankful to his Majesty King
Charles the Third and her Majesty Queen Camilla had a
fantastic evening last night, but the exquisite honor of a
second official state visit, the first ever. That's your first
time it's ever been done.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Was you know?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
It really was an honor, such great history, and to
think it's a first, it's always nice, ever first, But
the ties between our countries are priceless, and it's really
an inheritance. It's beautiful inheritance. Today we're making those ties
closer than ever before. We've done some things that financially
(13:31):
agreed for both countries.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Now have you heard about the dead Internet theory? The
creator of open AI, Sam Oltman, is starting to think
it might actually be right. Hilario Brophy has more.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Thanks Claire, The Internet is dum Sorry. I think I
just glitched out weird fembot style there, or maybe that
was the Internet on the fritz, and that theory might
be more real than you think. It's called the Dead
Internet theory. It started as a relatively fringe idea, and
(14:07):
then it hit the mainstream in twenty well before AI
became an hit topic. Of course. Now in twenty twenty five,
it's back in the headlines after a very famous tech
bro gave it the thumbs up this month. It's the
idea that our online spaces once alive with human, messy
chaos are now overrun by AI generated content bots and
(14:32):
click farms churning out posts that look real but a
fakef Tech expert Mark Peshi reckons the theory is very
real unlike the Internet right now.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Maybe the Internet's not dead in the sense that it died,
but it got replaced by a robot. The amount of
Internet that we can think of is genuinely human is
actually kind of restricted these days. Some websites, particularly Reddit
and Wikipedia, have worked really, really really hard to make
sure that they're just purely human and the conversations on
there are purely human, but it takes a lot of work.
(15:06):
Many other places, so ex Twitter, Facebook, their social sites,
are really being overrun by just automated stuff, turning out
what we would call slop. You'd almost think of it
as a new phenomenon. We're actually starting to see a
lot of it now in short form videos. There's a
really famous video of rabbits bouncing on a trampoline that
I think probably everyone on the Internet has seen, and everyone, oh, look,
(15:29):
how cute, and of course it turns out it was
entirely computer generated. There's another one about a kangaroo trying
to abort a flight, and all of these different things
that we think are really cute are actually just designed
to drag our attention and hold it. So part of
what the dead Internet is really good at is getting
its hooks in us by showing us something that we're
really interested in to just keep us watching.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
So why do these bots want our attention so badly?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Well, for some of these platforms, they have a political
message they're trying to get across. To some of these platforms,
they're just monetizing your eyeballs. The longer that you look,
the more likely you are to see an ad or
whatever it might be. And so attention has become the
commodity now, and because there are so many websites that
demand our attention, In fact, attention is actually in short supply.
(16:15):
People cannot spend more hours of the day staring at
their smartphones. We have run out of spare hours, and
so part of what we're seeing of the dead Internet
is these bots fighting other bots to get rights to
use your eyes to make money off you.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
And even the guy behind the most powerful AI system
is taking this seriously. The CEO of open Ai, of course,
a bloke behind it chat GPT Sam Altman recently admitted
he's starting to think the theory might actually be real.
He posted on x earlier this month.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I never took the dead Internet theory that seriously, but
it seems like there are a lot of LM run
Twitter accounts now.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
An LLM account is really one that is wired directly
into chat GPT. In the same way that you would
be having a conversation with chat GPT back and forth,
the LLM account is having a conversation across its Twitter followers,
back and forth.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
So why is this all a problem?
Speaker 5 (17:09):
It is a bad thing if you're looking for authentic
human opinions and points of view, if you're out on
social media because you want to understand how other people
are thinking and believing, and in fact all you're seeing
are bots that are designed to change how you're thinking
and believing.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
We have a problem, and what do we do about it?
Experts have said so far they want tighter rules and
regulations on platforms, labels on AI generated posts, and of course,
better digital literacy so we can spot the fakes.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
AI use always needs to be completely transparent. When you're
seeing an AI generated image or video or even a tweet,
it needs to be labeled as AI generated, and if
someone is caught out using AI generated content and hasn't
labeled it, they need to be banned. If you want
a spotifyic account, first off, take a look at the
history of the account. If it's always talking about one
(17:58):
subject all the time, probably a bot. If it's always
using the same terms or same stories, again, probably a bot.
Because people are generally all over the map when they
use social media, so something it's two firm, probably a bot.
Take a look at how long ago the account was created,
take a look at the number of followers. All of
those things are ways of telling you whether this is
real or not. And then just take a look at
(18:21):
what it's said over a period of time. How does
it feel, How does it sit with you. I think
it's really important for us to take the lessons that work.
Why does Wikipedia work because there's a whole lot of
people working really hard. Why does Reddit work because there
are a whole lot of moderators working really hard. We
can't just sign the Internet over to machines and expect
it's all going to be okay.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
So the next time you're scrolling and it feels a
little bit unreal, trust those human instincts. I'm a Laria
Brophy for the Quikie, real human and forever refusing to
give the bots the last word.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with
us today. The Quiki is produced by me Claire Murphy
along with a Lario Brophy, with audio production by Lou
Hill
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