ECP NetHappenings Newsletter March 24, 2026

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ECP NetHappenings Newsletter March 24, 2026

AI BUSINESS MODEL

They stole and copied all the knowlege from Humanity, then gives it back to you for free, you use it making you dumber, now you can’t think anymore, then you have to buy back your own intelligence from the company that stole it from you.

“AI cannot coexist with education – it can only degrade it.”
Incredibly powerful piece from students at the University of Pennsylvania.
Powerful words from University of Pennsylvania students against their university’s headlong rush to embrace of AI:
The irony is that as Penn pours endless money and energy into AI advancement in its attempt to get ahead, the University is only quickening its own demise. AI cannot coexist with education — it can only degrade it. As technology advances and workers are replaced by machines, schools are some of the only places we have left to explore and wrestle with human thought. With our own university leading the charge, Al is now corrupting those few sacred spaces and leaving us with nowhere to engage in true scholarship.
A lot of university administrations are pushing AI on their students far beyond what the professors or even the students themselves want, but Penn has done this to a rather extreme extent: https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/03/penn-ai-dominance-education

Anthropic CEO:
“50% of all entry-level Lawyers, Consultants, and Finance Professionals will be completely wiped out within the next 1–5 years.”
Grad students and junior hires are cooked.

“Cognitive Surrender” – a new study
argues that use of AI leads to suspension of human reasoning, not its augmentation. The implication being that over time people will lose their reasoning ability & use AI as its substitute. Download the paper for free here, excerpts & reference below:

EPSTEIN

Rothschild bank was searched in Paris on Friday as part of the Epstein investigation.
Epstein said he was their representative more than “personal contact”.
https://x.com/GeoreportHQ/status/2036435610957951120/photo/1
Rothschild & Co manages assets for sovereign wealth funds, central banks, family offices and the inherited wealth of European aristocracy, and its appearance in an Epstein investigation search warrant means French prosecutors  have presented a judge with enough documented connection between that institution and the financial flows of a convicted sex trafficker to authorize physical entry, which is a standard of evidence that required years to build and will be significantly harder to suppress than a civil settlement.
Jeffrey Epstein maintained accounts across JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank for years after his 2008 conviction, both institutions paid nine figure settlements to his victims without a single executive facing criminal charges, and French investigators searching Rothschild & Co suggests the financial architecture that moved Epstein’s money was significantly broader than the two banks that have already settled, and that the Paris search is either the beginning of that expansion or the part of it that could not be quietly resolved before AFP found out.

EPSTEIN FILES
ICYMI:
She made the call.
Maria Farmer told the FBI that Jeffrey Epstein had photos and that she’d seen what went on inside his mansion.
They said nothing.
No case.
No records.
No trace.

For nearly thirty years, everyone assumed her warning had vanished into thin air.
Until 2025.

A hidden document surfaced, proof that on September 3, 1996, Maria’s complaint was officially logged.

Nine years later, investigators would uncover dozens of victims.
But by then, the system had already failed them all.

Now, 12 women are suing the FBI for $100 million, claiming those first warnings were buried and that silence changed everything.
The file was real.
The question is: who made sure no one found it?
#EpsteinFiles #EpsteinCoverUp

 

Former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that Netanyahu blackmailed Trump with recordings of his conversations with Epstein. Sounds about right to me.

President Trump declares Iran “dead” and says Democrats are now America’s greatest enemy.

W H A T ???????

Between Thiel, Musk, and Melania, I think we’ve circled the problem with immigrants who can’t assimilate to America.

In 1990, Spy Magazine sent out checks with increasingly smaller amounts disguised as refunds to some of the richest people in New York as a social experiment, eventually sending one for 13 cents. Only two people cashed the 13 cent check: a Saudi arms dealer and Donald J. Trump.

Delta is suspending its special service desk for members of Congress until TSA is fully funded, per @AJC
Delta says members of Congress will now be treated like all other flying customers.

LAW

DOJ ‘screwup’ proves incompetence is sinking ‘thousands of criminal cases’: ex-prosecutor
The judge pressed further, asking Rosenblum, “Who is currently running the U.S. Attorney’s Office?” The assistant attorney struggled to answer, prompting an outburst from another federal prosecutor, which saw him get escorted out of the room by security. Quraishi, who previously served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey, ripped the lawyers one more time, saying that it took generations of hard work to build up their office’s credibility, and “Your generation destroyed it within a year.”

The Supreme Court Looks Likely to Cave on Mail-In Ballots
The Supreme Court spent 3 hours on Monday arguing over whether to change a century and a half of election law in order to soothe Donald Trump’s bruised ego. They just might. Because the GOP and their justices are beyond craven.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-mail-in-ballots/

INSIDER TRADING

If you have not yet realized it, prediction markets are almost all insider trading. As Warren Buffett once said, if you are playing poker for 30 minutes and don’t know who the patsy in the game is – it’s you.

LOL If Trump adds me to the family insider trading chat I’ll stop criticizing the war online. Most outrage is about access to (insider) information. Everyone has a moral compass until given the opportunity and most think: “I would never.” The reality unfortunately is, all of them do it: Pelosi, Trump, BUT while unethical it’s not illegal believe it or not. It’s been so for ever, but now it gets rubbed into our nose with access to this information. Nothing is going to change and they will NEVER vote to make insider trading illegal no matter how many times this “bill” gets introduced to congress.

Someone made nearly $1m from dozens of remarkably accurate and well-timed bets about Iran, according to a new analysis of Polymarket data shared with CNN. They have 93% “win rate” for Iran bets over $10k since 2024, raising insider trading concerns
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/24/politics/iran-war-bets-prediction-markets
“Concerns” being used here in the Susan Collins sense of the word. Nobody actually care. This is what Polymarket was built for.

Trader made nearly $1 million on Polymarket with remarkably accurate Iran bets
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/24/politics/iran-war-bets-prediction-markets

“Bombshell” reporting reveals that the top enforcement official at the Securities and Exchange Commission clashed with agency leaders over cases involving billionaires Elon Musk and Justin Sun. https://www.commondreams.org/news/sec-official-resigns?

The Fourteen-Minute Window – Peter Girnus
A United States congressperson who trades stocks on a classified briefing pays a $200 fine.
Martha Stewart went to prison for a $45,000 trade.
The CFTC, the agency that polices futures markets, has one commissioner out of five seats. One person overseeing $400 trillion. Appointed by the same president whose Truth Social posts move the market.
Six anonymous accounts made $1.2 million betting on an Iran bombing. One cleared $553,000 at 17% odds. Minutes before public confirmation. Never bet again.
Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio returned 70.9% last year. Yours returned 12%.
Twenty-five reform bills. All in committee. The body that would restrict the trading is the body that profits from it.
I wrote the blueprints.

The wealth held by the top 1% increased by more than 2x the rate of the bottom 90% in the first nine months of last year.
This is what it looks like when billionaires spend millions to elect millionaires who write laws to make them both richer at the expense of everyone else.

SECURITY

Chris Wysopal @ RSAC @WeldPond Do you know about NaCl Con? It’s organized by @lmcomie, the founder of Skytalks. The speaker list is out and it’s stacked with old timers like me. 😅 We are going to talk about the origins of the hacking community. I am keynoting along with @lfelsenstein who was one of the original members of Homebrew Computer Club and designer of the Osborne 1.
I haven’t been this excited about a con in quite a while. Its going to be great!
AI, Application Security, and the Illusion of Control By Chris Wysopal

@HedgieMakets
https://x.com/HedgieMarkets/status/2036520926678823337
A company called WebinarTV has been quietly scanning the internet for public Zoom links, recording the calls without permission, and turning them into AI-generated podcasts hosted on its site. Participants only find out when WebinarTV emails them to promote the podcast their meeting was turned into. The company claims to host over 200,000 webinars and uses browser extensions and scraping tools to find and record calls. Zoom says it has no way to prevent third-party screen recording that happens outside its platform.

My Take
This is not a hack and WebinarTV is not breaking into anything. It finds publicly shared Zoom links, joins as a participant, and records what it sees, the same way any human attendee could. The reason this feels violating is that most people sharing a Zoom link with a large group assume a social contract around who that link is for, and WebinarTV is exploiting the gap between that assumption and reality.
What troubles me more is the business model underneath it. WebinarTV takes content down when asked but only after emailing the host to pitch them on paid promotional features. That sequence, record without consent, notify after the fact, then offer to sell you marketing services, is not a good faith content discovery operation. Anyone running Zoom calls with sensitive participants, educators, legal professionals, healthcare workers, should treat a public link the way they treat a public statement, because that is effectively what it is now.

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