How to take down an AI Center

Hints from Ethan

I want to bring to everyone’s attention Ethan Faulkner’s excellent post on the 1936-37 General Motors strike in Flint, Michigan and how that strategy can be used today as we battle ruthless multinational corporations driven by private equity.

The most critical part of Ethan’s post

THE FLINT INDICTMENT: A BLUEPRINT FOR SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE

is his presentation of concrete strategies for action, and his avoidence of both complainism and fear porn.

Allow me to quote a section

The sit-down strike was not a protest; it was an occupation.

This brilliant gambit “transformed from its greatest asset into its greatest vulnerability.”

GM was “strategically paralyzed.”

Why? Because a “frontal assault” by police or Pinkertons to retake the plant was unthinkable. Such an attack would “endanger” and “destroy“ the corporation’s own “irreplaceable means of production.” The UAW had taken the machinery “hostage.”

The UAW then executed a brilliant counter-narrative. GM claimed the strikers were destroying the plant. But the UAW meticulously protected the machinery. When Governor Murphy’s Labor Commissioner toured the plant, his official report stated the machinery had been “covered with canvass” and other parts “oiled or greased” by a dedicated crew of strikers.

[This trapped GM in a pincer. It could not attack the plant without destroying its own property, and it could not justify an attack because the property was not in danger.]

When GM tried to break the strike anyway in the “Battle of the Running Bulls,” the strikers used the factory’s own assets against them, repelling the police with “plant fire hoses” and “slingshots loaded with door hinges.” They had turned the prison into a fortress.

THE PAYLOAD (THE “SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE”)

This is where the blueprint delivers the prosecutorial numbers. The data reveals an exponential failure cascade triggered by a small, precise action.

• THE ASYMMETRIC CAUSE:

  • Initial Occupiers: ~700 workers.

  • Primary Plants Targeted: 2 (Flint & Cleveland).

• THE SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE:

  • Time to Collapse: < 14 days.

  • Total GM Plants Idled: 50.

  • Total GM Workers Idled: 150,000 (more than half of GM’s workforce).

  • Production Collapse (Jan. 1937): -73.2% (From 224,000 units to 60,000).

  • Daily Financial Loss (Sales): $2,000,000 (Over $43 Million per day in 2024).

[The case is complete 🩸. A complex, just-in-time production system, while efficient, is brittle. Its very efficiency creates critical, single-point-of-failure “chokepoints” that can be exploited by an asymmetric force.]

THE “CONSTRUCTED MIRACLE” (THE VICTORY)

After 44 days, GM formally surrendered. The “one-page agreement” contained the miracle: General Motors—the most powerful anti-union corporation on Earth—was forced to recognize the UAW as the “exclusive bargaining representative.”

This symbolic victory broke the “deterministic stalemate.” But the ultimate proof of the blueprint’s power was the domino effect:

1. UAW Membership: Exploded from 88,000 to 400,000 in months.

2. Auto Industry: The UAW immediately replicated the blueprint at Chrysler and won.

3. The Ultimate Proof (U.S. Steel): On the “day following the GM-UAW settlement,” U.S. Steel—the other “bastion of anti-union sentiment”—saw the blueprint. It “did the math, realized it also had chokepoints, and pre-emptively surrendered“ without a strike.

[The indictment is complete. The Flint strike forged the blueprint. The U.S. Steel surrender

You have been briefed. Now you are armed. The following is a weaponized summary of this indictment. Copy it. Share it.

• The Stalemate: In 1936, GM was an “invincible” regime, controlling not just its factories but also the police and allied terrorist groups like the Black Legion. A conventional strike was impossible.

• The Insight: The UAW ignored the 50+ assembly plants and targeted the 2 irreplaceable chokepoints that produced the dies (molds) for all GM car bodies.

• The Gambit: ~700 workers occupied the 2 plants, taking the multi-million dollar machinery “hostage.” GM was paralyzed: it couldn’t attack the plants without destroying its own irreplaceable assets.

• The Collapse: In < 14 days, the action of ~700 workers idled 150,000 employees, shut down 50 plants, and cut GM’s production by 73%.

• The Miracle: After 44 days, GM surrendered. The victory was so total that U.S. Steel, seeing the new blueprint, pre-emptively surrendered to its own union without a fight.

THE FLINT INDICTMENT: A BLUEPRINT FOR SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE

---

What is the critical next step for us is thinking about what the weak points of the current drive for total surveillence and total control via AI and other forms of invasive control, including nano technologies, is, or will be.

I would suggest that the equivalent to the Flint strike for our age might be a “strike” to shut down one of the deadly AI centers that are being constructed illegally across the country at the expense of taxpayers across the country. There are many local communities who are infuriated by the massive use of local water and electricity, and the horrific impact on the local economy, of these horror shows sprung from the minds of psychopaths.

If we follow the Flint model, the key would be to find a way to cut off water and electricity to these plants in a manner that completely shuts them down and also demonstrates for the entire world how they are being employed recklessly to destabilize and destroy not only the economy, but society itself.

We need to discuss how such a movement to shut down AI centers and fusion centers would look like, but I think that it would rely, on the one hand, on the recognition of their blatantly illegal and unconstitutional nature of this infrastruction, and on the other hand, targeting their fragility and their horrific impact on the local environment and economy.