You can always count on someone coming along and defending the multi-trillion dollar corporation that just so happens to take a screenshot of your screen every few seconds (among many, many - too many other things)
I big demographic of HN users are people who want to be the multi-trillion dollar corporation so it’s not too surprising. In this case though I think they are right. And I’m a big time Microsoft hater.
There is no point locking your laptop with a passphrase if that passphrase is thrown around.
Sure, maybe some thief can't get access, but they probably can if they can convince Microsoft to hand over the key.
Microsoft should not have the key, thats part of the whole point of FDE; nobody can access your drive except you.
The cost of this is that if you lose your key: you also lose the data.
We have trained users about this for a decade, there have been countless dialogues explaining this, even if we were dumber than we were (we're not, despite what we're being told: users just have fatigue from over stimulation due to shitty UX everywhere); then it's still a bad default.
Just to be clear: bitlocker is NOT encrypting with your login password! I could be a little fuzzy on the details but I believe how it works is that your TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is able to decrypt your laptop, but will only do so if there is a fully signed and trusted boot chain, so if somebody gains access to your laptop and attempts to boot into anything other than Windows, it will ask for the bitlocker key because the TPM won't play ball.
The important bit here is that ~*nobody* who is using Windows cares about encryption or even knows what it is! This is all on by default, which is a good thing, but also means that yes, of course Microsoft has to store the keys, because otherwise a regular user will happen to mess around with their bios one day and accidentally lock themselves permanently out of their computer.
If you want regular FDE without giving Microsoft the key you can go ahead and do it fairly easily! But realistically if the people in these cases were using Linux or something instead the police wouldn't have needed an encryption key because they would never have encrypted their laptop in the first place.
> nobody who is using Windows cares about encryption or even knows what it is!
Right, so the solution is to silently upload their encryption keys to Microsoft's servers without telling them? If users don't understand encryption, they certainly don't understand they've just handed their keys to a third party subject to government data requests.
> otherwise a regular user will happen to mess around with their bios one day and accidentally lock themselves permanently out of their computer.
This is such transparent fear-mongering. How often does this actually happen versus how often are cloud providers breached or served with legal requests? You're solving a hypothetical edge case by creating an actual security vulnerability.
Encryption by default and cloud key escrow are separate decisions. You can have one without the other. The fact that Microsoft chose both doesn't make the second one necessary, it makes it convenient for Microsoft.
> If you want regular FDE without giving Microsoft the key you can go ahead and do it fairly easily!
Then why isn't that the default with cloud backup as opt-in? Oh right, because then Microsoft wouldn't have everyone's keys.
> Right, so the solution is to silently upload their encryption keys to Microsoft's servers without telling them? If users don't understand encryption, they certainly don't understand they've just handed their keys to a third party subject to government data requests.
What exactly are you hoping Windows does here? Anyone who knows anything about Bitlocker knows Microsoft has the keys (that's where you get the key when you need it, which I have needed it many times because I dual boot!) Microsoft could put a big screen on install saying 'we have your encryption keys!' — would this change literally anything? They would need to also explain what that means and what bitlocker is. And then after all of that, the only people who are going to decide 'actually I want to set up FDE myself' are going to be the technical people who already knew all of this already! This is just a non-issue.
> This is such transparent fear-mongering. How often does this actually happen versus how often are cloud providers breached or served with legal requests? You're solving a hypothetical edge case by creating an actual security vulnerability.
This is not fear mongering at all! The nice thing about Bitlocker is that you don't need to put in your key 99% of the time (and in fact 99% of Windows users — who are not technical! — don't even know they have Bitlocker). But occasionally you do need to put it in. Once or twice I've booted to the bitlocker screen and I actually don't even know why. Maybe my TPM got wiped somehow? Maybe my computer shut down in a really weird way? But it happens enough that it's clearly necessary! That big Crowdstrike screwup a year ago; one of the ways to fix it required having your Bitlocker key!
> Encryption by default and cloud key escrow are separate decisions. You can have one without the other. The fact that Microsoft chose both doesn't make the second one necessary, it makes it convenient for Microsoft.
Again, this is not true for a product like Windows where 99% of users are not technical. Remember, Bitlocker does not require your key on startup the vast majority the time! However, there is a chance that you will need the key at some point or you will be locked out of you data permanently. Where should Microsoft give the user the key? Should they say on install 'hey, write this down and don't lose it!' Any solution relying on the user is obviously a recipe for disaster. But again, let me remind you that encryption by default is important because you don't want any old random laptop thief to get access to your chrome account! So yes, I think Microsoft made the best and only choice here.
BitLocker encrypts data on a disk using what it calls a Full Volume Encryption Key (FVEK).[1][2] This FVEK is encrypted with a separate key which it calls a Volume Management Key (VMK) and the VMK-encrypted FVEK is stored in one to three (for redundancy) metadata blocks on the disk.[1][2] The VMK is then encrypted with one or more times with a key which is derived/stored using one or more methods which are identified with VolumeKeyProtectorID.[2][3] These methods include what I think would now be the default for modern Windows installations of 3 "Numerical password" (128-bit recovery key formatted with checksums) and 4 "TPM And PIN". Previously instead of 4 "TPM And PIN" most Windows installations (without TPMs forced to be used) would probably be using just 8 "Passphrase". Unless things have changed recently, in mode 4 "TPM And PIN", the TPM stores a partial key, and the PIN supplied by the user is the other partial key, and both partial keys are combined together to produce the key used to decrypt the VMK.
Seemingly once you've installed Windows and given the Microsoft your BitLocker keys in escrow, you could then use Remove-BitLockerKeyProtector to delete the VMK which is protected with mode 3 "Numerical password" (recovery key).[4] It appears that the escrow process (possibly the same as used by BackupToAAD-BitLockerKeyProtector) might only send the numerical key, rather than the VMK itself.[5][6] I couldn't find from a quick Internet search someone who has reverse engineered fveskybackup.dll to confirm this is the case though. If Microsoft are sending the VMK _and_ the numerical key, then they have everything needed to decrypt a disk. If Microsoft are only sending the numerical key, and all numerical key protected VMKs are later securely erased from the disk, the numerical key they hold in escrow wouldn't be useful later on.
Someone did however ask the same question I first had. What if I had, for example, a billion BitLocker recovery keys I wanted to ensure were backed up for my protection, safety and peace of mind? This curious person did however already know the limit was 200 recovery keys per device, and found out re-encryption would fail if this limit had been reached, then realised Microsoft had fixed this bug by adding a mechanism to automatically delete stale recovery keys in escrow, then reverse engineered fveskybackup.dll and an undocumented Microsoft Graph API call used to delete (or "delete") escrowed BitLocker recovery keys in batches of 16.[7]
It also appears you might only be able to encrypt 10000 disks per day or change your mind on your disk's BitLocker recovery keys 10000 times per day.[8] That might sound like a lot for particularly an individual, but the API also perhaps applies a limit of 150 disks being encrypted every 15 minutes for an entire organisation/tenancy. It doesn't look like anyone has written up an investigation into the limits that might apply for personal Microsoft accounts, or if limits differ if the MS-Organization-Access certificate is presented, or what happens to a Windows installation if a limit is encountered (does it skip BitLocker and continue the installation with it disabled?).
The vast, vast majority of Windows users don't know their laptops are encrypted, don't understand encryption, and don't know what bitlocker is. If their keys weren't stored in the cloud, these users could easily lose access to their data without understanding how or why. So for these users, which again is probably >99% of all windows users, storing their keys in the cloud makes sense and is a reasonable default. Not doing it would cause far more problems than it solves.
And the passphrase they log in to windows with is not the key, Microsoft is not storing their plain text passphrase in the cloud, just to be clear.
The only thing I would really fault Microsoft for here is making it overly difficult to disable the cloud storage for users who do understand all the implications.
> The vast, vast majority of Windows users don't know their laptops are encrypted, don't understand encryption, and don't know what bitlocker is.
Mate, if 99% of users don't understand encryption, they also don't understand that Microsoft now has their keys. You can't simultaneously argue that users are too thick to manage keys but savvy enough to consent to uploading them.
> If their keys weren't stored in the cloud, these users could easily lose access to their data without understanding how or why.
As opposed to losing access when Microsoft gets breached, or when law enforcement requests their keys, or when Microsoft decides to lock them out? You've traded one risk for several others, except now users have zero control.
The solution to "users might lock themselves out" is better UX for local key backup, not "upload everyone's keys to our servers by default and bury the opt-out". One is a design problem, the other is a business decision masquerading as user protection.
> The only thing I would really fault Microsoft for here is making it overly difficult to disable the cloud storage for users who do understand all the implications.
That's not a bug, it's the entire point. If it were easy to disable, people who understand the implications would disable it. Can't have that, can we?
It only became off by default after those "daily rage sessions" created sufficient public pressure to turn them off.
Microsoft also happens to own LinkedIn which conveniently "forgets" all of my privacy settings every time I decide to review them (about once a year) and discover that they had been toggled back to the privacy-invasive value without my knowledge. This has happened several times over the years.
Daily rage is exactly what technology affine people need to direct at Microslop, while helping their loved ones and ideally businesses transition away from the vendor lockin onto free software.
AI enshittification is irrelevant here. Why is someone pointing out that sensible secure defaults are a good thing suddenly defending the entire company?
It generally is, because in the vast majority of cases users will not keep a local copy and will lose their data.
Most (though not all) users are looking for encryption to protect their data from a thief who steals their laptop and who could extract their passwords, banking info, etc. Not from the government using a warrant in a criminal investigation.
If you're one of the subset of people worried about the government, you're generally not using default options.
For laptops sure, but then those are not reasons for it to be default on desktops too. Are most Windows users on laptops? I highly doubt that. So it is not a sensible default.
> It generally is, because in the vast majority of cases users will not keep a local copy and will lose their data.
What's the equivalent of thinking users are this stupid?
I seem to recall that the banks repeatedly tell me not to share my PIN number with anyone, including (and especially) bank staff.
I'm told not to share images of my house keys on the internet, let alone handing them to the government or whathaveyou.
Yet for some unknown reason everyone should send their disk encryption keys to one of the largest companies in the world (largely outside of legal jurisdiction), because theythemselves can't be trusted.
Bear in mind that with a(ny) TPM chip, you don't need to remember anything.
Come off it mate. You're having a laugh aren't you?
> What's the equivalent of thinking users are this stupid?
What's the equivalent of thinking security aficionados are clueless?
Security advice is dumb and detached from life, and puts ubdue burden on people that's not like anything else in life.
Sharing passwords is a feature, or rather a workaround because this industry doesn't recognize the concept of temporary delegation of authority, even though it's the basics of everyday life and work. That's what you do when you e.g. send your kid on a grocery run with your credit card.
Asking users to keep their 2FA recovery keys or disk encryption keys safe on their own - that's beyond ridiculous. Nothing else in life works that way. Not your government ID, not your bank account, not your password, not even the nuclear launch codes. Everything people are used to is fixable; there's always a recovery path for losing access to accounts or data. It may take time and might involve paying a notary or a court case, but there is always a way. But not so with encryption keys to your shitposts and vacation pictures in the cloud.
Why would you expect people to follow security advice correctly? It's detached from reality, dumb, and as Bitcoin showed, even having millions of dollars on the line doesn't make regular people capable of being responsible with encryption keys.
Your credit card analogy is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it's carrying the wrong cargo. Sending your kid to the shops with your card is temporary delegation, not permanent key escrow to a third party you don't control. It's the difference between lending someone your house key for the weekend and posting a copy to the council "just in case you lose yours". And; you know that you've done it, you have personally weighed the risks and if something happens with your card/key in that window: you can hold them to account. (granted, keys can be copied)
> Nothing else in life works that way. Not your government ID, not your bank account, not your password, not even the nuclear launch codes.
Brilliant examples of why you're wrong:
Government IDs have recovery because the government is the trusted authority that verified you exist in the first place. Microsoft didn't issue your birth certificate.
Nuclear launch codes are literally designed around not giving any single entity complete access, hence the two-person rule and multiple independent key holders. You've just argued for my position.
Banks can reset your PIN because they're heavily regulated entities with legal obligations and actual consequences for breaching trust. Microsoft's legal department is larger than most countries' regulators.
> even having millions of dollars on the line doesn't make regular people capable of being responsible with encryption keys.
Right, so the solution is clearly to hand those keys to a corporation that's subject to government data requests, has been breached multiple times, and whose interests fundamentally don't align with yours? The problem with Bitcoin isn't that keys are hard - it's that the UX is atrocious. The solution is better tooling, not surveillance capitalism with extra steps.
You're not arguing for usability. You're arguing that we should trust a massive corporation more than we trust ourselves, whilst simultaneously claiming users are too thick to keep a recovery key in a drawer. Pick a lane.
Let's be serious for a second and consider what's more useful based on the likelihood of these things actually happening.
You're saying it's likely to happen that a laptop thief also is capable to stealing the recovery key from Microsoft'servers?
So therefore it would be better that users lost all their data if
- an update bungles the tpm trust
- their laptop dies and they extract the hard drive
- they try to install another OS alongside but fuck up the tpm trust along the way
- they have to replace a Mainboard
- they want to upgrade their pc
?
I know for a fact which has happened to me more often.
You've listed five scenarios where local recovery would help and concluded that cloud escrow is therefore necessary. The thing is every single one of those scenarios is solved by a local backup of your recovery key, not by uploading it to Microsoft's servers.
The question isn't "cloud escrow vs nothing". It's "cloud escrow vs local backup". One protects you from hardware failure. The other protects you from hardware failure whilst also making you vulnerable to data breaches, government requests, and corporate policy changes you have zero control over.
You've solved a technical problem by creating a political one. Great.
> Sending your kid to the shops with your card is temporary delegation, not permanent key escrow to a third party you don't control. It's the difference between lending someone your house key for the weekend and posting a copy to the council "just in case you lose yours".
Okay, then take sharing your PINs with your spouse. Or for that matter, account passwords or phone unlock patterns. It's a perfectly normal thing that many people (including myself) do, because it enables ad-hoc delegation. "Honey, can you copy those photos to my laptop and send them to godparents?", asks my wife as she hands me her phone and runs to help our daughter with something - implicitly trusting me with access to her phone, thumbdrive, Windows account, e-mail account, and WhatsApp/Messenger accounts.
This kind of ad-hoc requests happen for us regularly, in both directions, without giving it much of a thought[0]. It's common between couples, variants of that are also common within family (e.g. grandparents delegating most of computer stuff to their adult kids on an ad-hoc basis), and variants of that also happen regularly in workplaces[1], despite the whole corporate and legal bureaucracy trying its best to prevent it[2].
> Government IDs have recovery because the government is the trusted authority that verified you exist in the first place. Microsoft didn't issue your birth certificate.
But Microsoft issued your copy of Windows and Bitlocker and is the one responsible for your data getting encrypted. It's obvious for people to seek recourse with them. This is how it works in every industry other than tech, which is why I'm a supporter of governments actually regulating in requirements for tech companies to offer proper customer support, and stop with the "screw up managing 2FA recovery keys, lose your account forever" bullshit.
> Banks can reset your PIN because they're heavily regulated entities with legal obligations and actual consequences for breaching trust.
As it should be. As it works everywhere, except tech, and especially except in the minds of security aficionados.
> Nuclear launch codes are literally designed around not giving any single entity complete access, hence the two-person rule and multiple independent key holders.
Point being, if enough right people want the nukes to be launched, the nukes will be launched. This is about the highest degree of responsibility on the planet, and relevant systems do not have the property of "lose the encryption key we told you 5 years ago to write down, and it's mathematically proven that no one can ever access the system anymore". It would be stupid to demand that.
That's the difference between infosec industry and real life: in real life, there is always a way to recover. Infosec is trying to normalize data and access being fundamentally unrecoverable after even a slightest fuckup, which is a degree of risk individuals and society have not internalized yet, and are not equipped to handle.
> Right, so the solution is clearly to hand those keys to a corporation that's subject to government data requests, has been breached multiple times, and whose interests fundamentally don't align with yours?
Yes. For normal people, Microsoft is not a threat actor here. Nor is the government. Microsoft is offering a feature that keeps your data safe from thieves and stalkers (and arguably even organized crime), but that doesn't require you to suddenly treat your laptop with more care than you treat your government ID. They can do this, because for users of this feature, Microsoft is a trusted party.
Ultimately, that's what security aficionados and cryptocurrency people don't get: the world runs on trust. Trust is a feature.
--
[0] - Though less and less of that because everyone and their dog now wants to require 2FA for everything. Instead of getting the hint that passwords are not meant to identify a specific individual, they're doubling down and tying every other operation to a mobile phone, so delegating desktop operations often requires handing over your phone as well, defeating the whole point. This is precisely what I mean by the industry not recognizing or supporting the concept of delegation of authority.
[1] - The infamous practice of writing passwords on post-it notes isn't just because of onerous password requirements, it's also a way to facilitate temporary delegation of authority. "Can you do X for me? Password is on a post-it in the top drawer."
[2] - GDPR or not, I still heard from doctors I know personally that sharing passwords to access patient data is common, and so is bringing some of it back home on a thumb drive, to do some work after hours. On the one hand, this creates some privacy risks for patient (and legal risk for hospitals) - but on the other hand, these doctors don't do it because they hate GDPR or their patients. They do it because it's the only way they can actually do their jobs effectively. If rules were actually enforced to prevent it, people would die. This is what I mean when I say that security advice is often dumb and out of touch with reality, and ignored for very good reasons.
Your entire argument rests on conflating "trust" with "blind dependency on a third party subject to legal compulsion".
> Okay, then take sharing your PINs with your spouse.
Sharing with your spouse is consensual, temporary, and revocable. You know you've done it, you trust that specific person, and you can change it later. Uploading your keys to Microsoft is none of these things.
> But Microsoft issued your copy of Windows and Bitlocker and is the one responsible for your data getting encrypted.
Microsoft sold you software. They didn't verify your identity, they're not a regulated financial institution, and they have no duty of care beyond their terms of service. The fact that they encrypted your drive doesn't make them a trustworthy custodian of the keys any more than your locksmith is entitled to copies of your house keys.
> For normal people, Microsoft is not a threat actor here. Nor is the government.
"Normal people" includes journalists, lawyers, activists, abuse survivors, and anyone else Microsoft might be legally compelled to surveil. Your threat model is "thieves and stalkers". Mine includes the state. Both are valid, but only one of us is forcing our model on everyone by default.
> the world runs on trust. Trust is a feature.
Trust in the wrong entity is a vulnerability. You're arguing we should trust a corporation with a legal department larger than most countries' regulators, one that's repeatedly been breached and is subject to government data requests in every jurisdiction it operates.
Your doctors-breaking-GDPR example is particularly telling: you've observed that bad UX causes people to route around security, and concluded that security is the problem rather than the UX. The solution to "delegation is hard" isn't "give up and trust corporations". It's "build better delegation mechanisms". One is an engineering problem. The other is surrender dressed as pragmatism.
So what happens if your motherboard gets fried and you don’t have backups of your recovery key or your data? TPMs do fail on occasion. A bank PIN you can call and reset, they can already verify your identity through other means.
> So what happens if your motherboard gets fried and you don't have backups of your recovery key or your data?
If you don't have backups of your data, you've already lost regardless of where your recovery key lives. That's not an encryption problem, that's a "you didn't do backups" problem, which, I'll agree is a common issue. I wonder if the largest software company on the planet (with an operating system in practically every home) can help with making that better. Seems like Apple can, weird.
> TPMs do fail on occasion.
So do Microsoft's servers. Except Microsoft's servers are a target worth attacking, whereas your TPM isn't. When was the last time you heard about a targeted nation-state attack on someone's motherboard TPM versus a data breach at a cloud provider?
> A bank PIN you can call and reset, they can already verify your identity through other means.
Banks can do that because they're regulated financial institutions with actual legal obligations and consequences for getting it wrong. They also verified your identity when you opened the account, using government ID and proof of address.
Microsoft is not your bank, not your government, and has no such obligations. When they hand your keys to law enforcement, which they're legally compelled to do, you don't get a phone call asking if that's alright.
The solution to TPM failure is a local backup of your recovery key, stored securely. Not uploading it to someone else's computer and hoping for the best.
> I wonder if the largest software company on the planet (with an operating system in practically every home) can help with making that better. Seems like Apple can, weird.
If you're talking about time machine, windows has had options built in since NT.
There are a lot of people here criticising MSFT for implementing a perfectly reasonable encryption scheme.
This isn’t some secret backdoor, but a huge security improvement for end-users. This mechanism is what allows FDE to be on by default, just like (unencrypted) iCloud backups do for Apple users.
Calling bs on people trying to paint this as something it’s not is not “whiteknighting”.
Yes, because object level facts matter, and it's intellectually dishonest to ignore the facts and go straight into analyzing which side is the most righteous, like:
>Microsoft is an evil corporation, so we must take all bad stories about them at face value. You're not some corpo bootlicker, now, are you? Now, in unrelated news, I heard Pfizer, another evil corporation with a dodgy history[1] is insisting their vaccines are safe...
Microsoft doesn't take the screenshot; their operating system does if Recall is enabled, and although the screenshots themselves are stored in an insecure format and location, Microsoft doesn't get them by default.
Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7? If so, why even target the poor guy? What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit? Either way, I hope he makes it, even though it looks like it was a fatal blow
> TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.
They've been quite influential, and those campus efforts likely contributed to the Gen Z turnout that helped win in 2024.
Im not american, but consume american media because you guys are the world leaders. But charlie had the number 1 youth conservative movement in the country , he is pretty influential
I would say both are true. Kirk had the number 1 youth conservative movement. But, even with that, he isn't as well known as some people think because very few of the youth are engaged in politics. Most of the people I know who know of him are the terminally online YouTube politics watchers. Which is not a large group. I would say the same would be said of whoever the most influential leftist young political thinker is, maybe Hasan. They are big in a circle, but its not really a that big of a circle.
Unfortunately controversial because impressionable people have been misled into believing that anything right of liberal progressivism is fascist and evil. How do you recover from that?
Progressives identify as such. “Fascist” is thrown around as an epithet to dehumanize people who you disagree with, to justify murdering them in cold blood or motivating others to do it for you. It’s not really comparable.
I saw his videos occasionally on youtube/facebook. I didn't really agree with his stances on immigration most of the time, though I thought some of his other arguments on other topics were thought provoking at least, and I also thought it was cool that he always had an open mic for anyone that wanted to debate him. Seemed like he had an encyclopedic memory when it came to things like SCOTUS cases or historical events.
I watched the start of the debate, having never heard of Charlie before the shooting. His position seemed fairly reasonable that women were happier with the get married and have kids model then the focus on your career one.
> His position seemed fairly reasonable that women were happier with the get married and have kids model then the focus on you career one.
Broad statements like that are just plain wrong and aren't reasonable. Saying women were happier with the get married and have kids model denies the fact that all humans have different aspirations. Some want to be doctors, nurses, chefs, electricians, plumbers, or artists. Saying that women should get married and raise lots of children denies those aspirations, and says to me that those who ascribe to that model have no consideration for women as human beings. Let women pursue their own definition of happiness rather than prescribing one for them.
I'm not comparing anything to 1950s America. I am disagreeing with your assertion "His position seemed fairly reasonable ...". Kirk insinuated in the video that women in America would be happier if they had a belief in the divine and a lot of kids (which may correlate with beliefs from the 1950s, but that's besides the point) when he compared what women in America have to what women in sub-Saharan Africa have. That doesn't seem reasonable to me. (edited to fix a typo)
> Broad statements like that are just plain wrong and aren't reasonable. Saying women were happier with the get married and have kids model denies the fact that all humans have different aspirations.
No. They are right. When you survey people, most women are happier working for their children rather than their boss. Most women feeling that way doesn't preclude other women feeling differently. Not does it prescribing a definition of happiness for women that want to work for their boss.
Happiness is not a single metric you can use to determine what is best. The most rewarding lives are ones where you can sacrifice for something meaningful to you. Sacrificing to have a rewarding, independent life without children may not be the easiest life, but it’s definitely not an any way inferior to a “happier” one raising kids. Because of this, that statistic, even if accurate, doesn’t matter. And doesn’t suggest that anyone should go raise a family.
Aren't man also happier when they are married and have kids? So according to that logic also man should stop focusing on their career and instead get married and have kids.
Whether or not that may be statistically true, it's offensive for a man to tell a woman what they'll be happier doing with their life. Not your choice.
His position was idiotic in his broader philosophical framework because his economic stance is that the poor should struggle and the rich should reap the benefits of their investments. It literally isn't possible to have a 1950s style familial relationship given his economic stances.
That might be one account of that debate, but certainly many disagree with you and the video. I watched the original and I think he did well in the debate. You posting a video that is clearly against him is only evidence of your stance.
> I didn't really agree with his stances on immigration
I haven't heard him say anything about immigration in general, merely illegal immigration which (should be) the exception, and should be a matter of crime not a matter of 'pro or con'.
At the moment he was shot, he was answering for questions about transgender shootings. If the timing was calculated, it could be a political message or very strong personal hatred in this context.
“Too many” sounds like a valid answer for any question about the number of mass shooters. Remove “trans” from the question and it’s still a valid answer. Substitute in any other demographic, and it’s still a valid answer (assuming someone from that demographic has been a shooter). Even one mass shooting is too many.
It sounds like more of a loaded question than a problematic answer.
It's not a loaded question in itself, as much as a direct question to counter the anti-lgbtq propaganda that is being pushed. This question didn't start a narrative, it is asked to point out that an existing narrative is intentionally misleading.
This is a misrepresentation of the exchange. "Do you know how many are trans" "Too many" doesn't imply that there would be fewer mass shooting, it implies that the situation would be better if the same amount of mass shootings were happening, but the identities of the shooters would be different.
It's not an uncharitable interpretation, but a literal one. Even then, I can see a world where we could let it go, because people sometimes just misspeak, public setting or not.
But in this current case, the speaker's political background fits the interpretation perfectly, so I don't think that we need to explain it away.
> If you've every watched any of those person's footage
Yes, that's exactly your problem. You built an image in your mind, and you interpret according to that image. If you built your image the same way you interpret this reply, well...
With politics, if you after the truth, you have to consider context. Coded / indirect speech is common, and it's also common to say an acceptable thing, while meaning an entirely different thing, aka dogwhistling (like "family values").
Don't you think this approach might be the reason for the extreme polarization of the politics in US? If one side demonizes the other based on "considering context".
I don't. What would be the alternative, believe the face value outright? That's not just a bad approach to politics, where everything is about controlling narratives, but a bad life advice in general. Or do I misunderstand what you mean?
> It sounds like more of a loaded question than a problematic answer.
I honestly don’t know what the actual factual answer to the question is. 1? 2? But the question warranted an answer, even if it was “I don’t know.” Given that the answer to many questions about mass shooting, specific or otherwise, is “too many,” the answer he gave offered no factual data. Maybe he was prepared to offer something more fact-based and nuanced. But to me the answer he gave comes off as dismissive, lacking in additional data, and possibly ideologically-motivated.
I imagine the question was posed because many in the community adjacent to Kirk are looking for an excuse to see trans people further isolated and stripped of their rights. Forcing the debate - if we can call it that - into the world of facts doesn’t seem problematic to me.
It might be a valid answer if he had not previously explicitly said that several deaths is not too many, the opposite of what you're implying he meant.
> "I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."
"Too many" is kind of a hilarious answer. It implies that there's a good or right mix of demographics for mass shooters, and, to Charlie, that mix should include fewer trans people. "Mass shooters should be cisgendered!" is a logical reframe of his position and it's just, like … what are you even saying?
I like this interpretation. The right is saying that being trans is a mental illness removing their right to bear arms. But what if they're simply saying that being trans should remove your right to be a mass shooter? That the right to be a mass shooter should be something that is reserved solely for cisgendered individuals?
Actually, context matters. This particular comment came in the context of several people high in the trump administration voicing the _baseless_ opinion that trans people are a unique cause of mass shootings. This is clearly being done with the intention of stripping the right to bear arms from a vulnerable group of people. Charlie Kirk's response was bigoted, because it was to further his argument that trans people specifically should not be allowed to own guns.
When 98% of mass shootings are carried out by men and less than 1% are carried out by trans people [0], it is - in fact - bigoted to blame the tiny, tiny minority.
I thought he took it in good sport. They didn't exactly hold back on him.
Given that and the fact that we're in the middle of a new South Park season, a show known for its last-minute incorporation of real-world news into storylines, it will be interesting to see how the show handles this tragic development.
They have moved to a 2-week cadence for the season. Next episode should be a week from today which does give them plenty of time to incorporate this development.
You are wrong. As well as organizing a large conservative movement on college campuses, he organized a large chunk of financing for the January 6 2021 riots in DC, north of $1m. This report outlines the financial infrastructure, you'd have to delve into the investigative commission documents for testimony about how he raised the money, I can't remember the name of his wealthy benefactor offhand.
Interesting to see someone whose decision making is so disordered that they manage to carry out a shot from 200 meters and then disappear. That looks more like a carefully planned crime than madness.
I keep seeing this. Why do people keep making the point that if you can make an accurate shot from 200 yards with a rifle that makes you a sane person?
People generally use really crude (and incorrect) heuristics when judging others. "He was a family man/good christian/nice to me at work/etc, I don't know how he could have murdered his family!" Mental illness gets it even worse b/c most people don't have any good framework for understanding it.
There are still conflicting reports about whether the shooter is in custody.
The first person of interest was detained, but released.
FBI director says a suspect is in custody. That governor says a person of interest is in custody. Local police say the shooter is still at large. This is what Reuters was reporting as of 1 hour ago.
I don’t know why this is downvoted. It’s not incorrect. I posit that everyone who’s willing to kill someone in cold blood is at least a little off their rocker.
It’s interesting that you used a vague term, not a DSM term.
Also, I would argue that it has more to do with mental framing than “being crazy”. Police and military leadership hire selectively and craft training to ensure that people aren’t mentally ill and still willing to kill.
That stance would make every police station, military base, and legislature madhouses. Heck, we could expand that a step further, and declare everyone who voted for those politicians mad.
People decide to kill people all the time. People order others to kill people all the time. People advocate for others to order yet others to kill people all the time. Some violence is legitimate. Some violence is justified. Plenty of violence is neither. But to ignore the violence of the state as sanctified, while condemning all violence against it as madness results in an alarming ethical framework with abhorrent conclusions.
There are also lots of Republicans and right wing media figures who wrongly identified Democrats as “at war with the right.
Mental illness isn’t the only explanation. When people are indoctrinated into stupidity and no longer believe in truth or reality, it’s possible to convince them to both believe “I support police / military” while attacking police officers (several of the worst offenders of Jan 6).
Perceived desperation is a better explainer than some generic mental illness.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
I think a difficulty in searching for such answers is assuming that it was a well reasoned decision. I'm not sure how often attempting to take a life is a purely rational decision, devoid of intense emotional motivations (hatred, self-preservation, fear, revenge, etc.). And that's all assuming the assailant was of somewhat sound mind.
I think one of the dangers of more and more extreme divisions in society is that those divisions cloud our mental processes, threaten our emotional health, and take away opportunities for meaningful civil discourse. All of which can lead to more heinous acts that we struggle to make sense of. One of the scariest parts for me is that this can all be too self reinforcing ("Their side did this bad thing to our side, let's get them back!!!" repeat/escalate...). How do we break the cycle?
In naive political terms he wasn't all that important but I think two points in response to that:
1. He was influential in a influential circle of people who roughly speaking drive what gets discussed and shown to a wider audience. In a favourite-band's favourite-band sense. His jubilee video just recently got 31 million views on youtube and probably a billion more on tiktok and reels.
2. If he wasn't killed by some nut who thought the flying spaghetti monster told him to do it then this is a really clear example of online politics and discourse jumping violently into the physical world. That's a real vibe shift if I have it right that it's basically the first assassination of that kind.
It wouldn't shock me at all if the driving topic here was actually gaza rather than domestic politics.
Charlie Kirk never really presented him this way but he was the founder & head of one of the largest think-tanks that is up there with Heritage Foundation. TPUSA was responsible for translating conservative values to Gen-Z/YA who were an all-but-forgotten demographic by mainstream GOP.
Arguably this is because of the reactions of Republicans, gaslighting us about CK’s actual beliefs, turning the temperature up (blaming Democrats, “this is war”, calling Democrats terrorists, likening it to the Reichstag Fire, and a Republican Congressman declaring that anyone making light of it should be cancelled permanently from social media / government / society).
I would argue CK was somewhat influential among getting lots of young Christians to vote for Trump, who clearly doesn’t live Christian beliefs, but the shooting is being catastrophized for political value.
I think he was more influential to the younger generation. I saw Gavin Newsom interview Kirk, and Newsom opened by saying his son followed Kirk to a certain extent.
> Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7?
Yes, you're wrong there (no offense). He's quite popular beyond X (formerly Twitter), particularly amongst the young (~20s) conservative movements. For example, he has almost 4 million subscribers on YouTube and similar on TikTok.
I'd say X isn't even his most popular platform. He's much more popular on video platforms, due to his open campus debates.
I attended one of Charlie's debates this past year and they pretty much let anyone walk up to the mic. It wasn't scripted or censored, that I saw.
He was also very good at superficially solid rebuttals and responses that were hard to counter without providing a short course on the history and context of the issue at hand. I never thought of him as a "good" debater and I vehemently disagree with his public views, but he was very effective in the media and event situations he operated in.
Agreed and well said. I also disagreed with a lot of his views. But, at the same time when I started watching his content, I realized his detractors overstretched the truth about a lot of what he said. Not all of it, but a lot of it.
> Mom, you don’t understand. I’m getting really good at this. I have my arguments down rock solid. These young college girls are totally unprepared, so I can just destroy them and also edit out all the ones that actually argue back well. It just feels so good.
I think that there's great insight in your observation.
To me what's been going on is a shakedown run of the new mediums and how they exploit cognitive defects and lack of exposure in audiences.
In a total Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message" kind of way some people like Shapiro, Trump, and Kirk just naturally groove in certain mediums and are able to play them like Ray Charles plays the piano.
And because society doesn't have any sort of natural exposure to this they're able to gain massive audiences and use that influence for nefarious purposes.
I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is though.
On the one had I think that there is going to be a natural feedback mechanism that puts keeps their population in check (which is basically what we just saw today) but that isn't the most desireable outcome.
its scripted in terms of that he had a script that he would run.
that cambridge woman had prepared for exactly what he would say in the same order than he said it and what order he would change topics in. he practiced his script a ton, even if the other person with a mic wasnt on a scrip
I think you're out-of-touch. It felt like he was the single most popular non-politician non-podcaster political commentator on social media for Americans under 30, and I'm not even in the target demographic that he's popular with.
I think his clips were consistently viral on platforms like Tiktok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, etc., both by those who agreed with him and those who were doing reaction videos against him.
He gave an invited speech at the Republican National Convention on its first night, and is credited with helping Trump get elected. “Very influential” might even be an understatement.
The problem is that that kind of influence often goes under the radar for people outside the circles in question, because influence is no longer mediated as centrally as it used to be, it’s more targeted and siloed. That’s a big part of how the current political situation in the US arose.
> Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7?
Yes, you are wrong, he was the leader of the most powerful campus conservative movement group in the country, was an extremely prominent figure in right-wing media, to the point where he is a central figure in pop culture images of the right, and a central target for being too soft of organizing figures for even farthe-right groups.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
Motives for assassinations (attempted or actual) of politicial figures are often incoherent. Political assassins aren’t always (or even often) strategic actors with a clear, rationally designed programs.
Yes, you're wrong. He was very influential and a leader of the youthful conservative movement in our country. TPUSA is extremely popular. This was an abhorrent, horrifyingly public assassination of a very popular figure -- one who has been honestly quite milquetoast in terms of conservative ideology compared to other well-known figures. He wasn't even running for political office, he simply encouraged political participation, open debate, and the free exchange of ideas in a public forum. He grew TPUSA into a bastion of grassroots revitalization in community-first politics. Truly truly sickening.
Dude, if you followed his teachings you wouldn’t feel this way…
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up. new age term, and it does a lot of damage.” - Charlie Kirk
Dude, that quote is out of context. He said he prefers "sympathy" to "empathy" and went on to call out those who push selective empathy when it suits their political agenda. He was right.
In my country Australia, there's a backlash on self-destructive "empathy" decisions in criminal courts. Violent repeat offenders are granted bail or short sentences for violent crime, why? Because the judge empathises with their traumatised upbringing, for example when they come from a war-torn country. This pattern of "justice" has spiked crime rates including violent home invasions and stabbings.
> Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7?
I’d heard of him-I’ve lived my whole life in Australia, and although I have a Twitter/X account, I almost never use it, and that’s not a new thing, I dabbled with it but never committed.
Do most Australians know who he was? I don’t have any hard data, but my “No” to that is very confident. But I remember briefly discussing him (in person) with one of my old friends from high school, who is deep into right-wing politics (he’s a member of Australia’s One Nation party, which a lot of people would label “far right”, yet mainstream enough to have a small number of seats in Parliament)
As a comparatively politically aware Australian, I had absolutely no idea who he is/was, but then I don't have any Twitter or general social media presence or consumption.
My (limited) knowledge of him was mainly from reading the traditional US media, not from social media… I swear I’d read some article about him in the NY Times or the Atlantic or something like that. My brain files him next to Ben Shapiro
Me too! I follow politics, elections, and world affairs very closely, but I am embarrassed to admit - I had no idea who he was. Although I had heard about 'Turning Point USA'.
My wife had no idea who he was when I said his name… but when she saw a photo, she remembered him from videos which appeared on her Facebook feed in which he argues about abortion and transgender issues. She is Facebook friends with a lot of right-wing Americans, she doesn’t share their politics, but they connected due to a shared interest in Farmville
Why do so many school shootings happen in the US? Often its simply that people who should never have access to lethal firearms are able to get them easily.
Paranoid time: Target him because he's notable for being willing to actually talk to the other side. Without people like him, all we have is people on both sides yelling at each other as hard as they can.
Why would someone target him? If they want more division. Maybe even if they want a civil war.
Who would want that? Maybe someone in government who wants disorder as an excuse to impose order by force. Maybe someone in Russia who wants a world order not let by America.
He was the public face of Turning Point USA, a political organization that focused on getting more youth in the USA to turn conservative / Republican, to vote, and to adopt a more conservative culture. By “public face”, I mean he was 17 when he cofounded it with an octogenarian and a billionaire funder.
I think he and the org were active on Twitter, but they were MUCH more active on YouTube, and short form video (Instagram, TikTok).
It’s not even clear we know who the shooter is (still conflicting reports about whether the suspect has been arrested, let alone a confirmed identity). Too soon to know what the motive is.
You probably target the ones you have a chance of getting at? Trying to do this to Trump would theoretically be preferable to the shooter, but a great deal harder.
I'd never heard of him and now I hear flags across the US will be at-half mast. He's was a billionaire-sponsored influencer if I understand it correctly?
Yes, I'd say you are wrong. If you look at a lot of the clips of the right wing folks giving some of their most right wing comments, the stage they are on will have the Turning Point logos on them. So if not him specifically, his organization is very influential.
I first heard about him in around 2016, shortly after Trump was elected the first time. I'm pretty chronically online, but I was never very active on Twitter and I was still pretty aware of him. I've always found him pretty insufferable, though not as bad as Nick Feuntes or Steven Crowder.
My dude, the article in the Washington Post starts out with…
“Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after being shot at an event at Utah Valley University, President Donald Trump said.”
He influenced the US President, that seems pretty influential to me. Anecdotally, my kid in high school surprised me by knowing quite a lot about them.
The problem with recognizing murder as a solution to evil is that evil is subjective, and sooner or later someone will use it as justification for murdering you.
Because it is incredibly apt. He and his campaigns and influence have worked very hard over the years to stop progress on gun reform, aimed at preventing the very kind of violent actions that he was unfortunately subject to today.
This doesn't condone violence but offers context as to how he would've assessed a similar situation if he weren't the target.
I don't see that he suggested a solution. Just the opposite, he pointed out that gun laws also aren't a solution. Much like the war on drugs isn't. Much like "though shalt not kill" didn't stop the inquisition, or the Moorish conquest.
No murders? No. You should read about the "Nirvana fallacy".
Fewer murders? Yes. The homicide rate is 0.854 per capita in Australia (5.763 in the US) and much lower than US in most European countries (Russia being the exception).
Look, if you're unable to back your point, that's a good time to reflect. Come back when you can. If you don't participate in that sequence of events, that's what anyone of sound mind would call ignorance.
Back your points with citation. We can all agree that's an important part of learning.
I think I need to just post the Sartre quote over and over again. The inability or disinterest of certain factions of the right in having a good faith argument is just genuinely frustrating.
I'm still here if you'd like to make an argument. The above rebuttal is not remotely a good faith argument. It appears to be a hope that repeating misinformation will somehow make it an accepted truth.
That might work for circles of low performing political movements, but it doesn't work for those of us interested in a scientific approach to knowledge.
By all means, explain what making guns illegal has actually done for Australia, the whitest country in the world, and the UK, the capital of knife crime.
You're about to prove facts that neither of us want to admit.
The correlation between lower crime and gun laws is very weak and disproven by countless other examples. The two countries given as proof aren't exceptions to that. Instead they are examples of how lower poverty correlates with lower crime rate.
Race isn't a factor, just as gun laws aren't. Pointing out that race isn't a factor is the opposite of racism.
Because it’s both a deeply ironic thing for him to have said and also fairly emblematic of his political movement. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy - if he’d said “only dumb idiots slip on banana peels” and then died after slipping on a banana peel, there’d be a lot of content posted organically about that, too.
It's almost like when a lot of people are posting some ideas get picked on and shared en masse. Why not say the same exact thing about all those "guys he's in stable conditions he's gonna make it" tweets that got spammed? Wasn't that a campaign also?
Fwiw, I don't think anyone should ever be killed, but nobody's entitled to anyone's sympathy, and it's not messed up that many people find it difficult to sympathize with Kirk, given the political positions he preached.
For example, maybe (or maybe not) for you it's just an abstract argument about far-away matters, but when Kirk called Leviticus 20:13 (the one about killing men who lie with men) "God's perfect law", it's not so abstract to gay people.
I don't celebrate his death, I fear the consequences it will most certainly bring (especially with the hot mess going on in the US), but given his evidenced lackluster attitude to tens of thousands of gun victims every year in the US alone, a kick in the face to the relatives of all the victims and their families, yes I do not feel a single shred of smypathy for him.
That is a definition of “violence” that does not register with most people, and especially in a discussion of one of the most brutal public murders we’ve seen in awhile in this country
My position is that guns should be strictly regulated and traffic as well to achieve zero traffic deaths ("Vision Zero"). Alternatively, the US could look into what gun culture difference they have to Switzerland, because the Swiss have amongst the most liberal gun laws of Europe but are pretty average amongst European countries when it comes to gun violence.
Kirk's position was to have guns as unregulated as possible, so I pretty much DGAF when the consequences of his position come home to roost.
Helsinki in Finland proves Vision Zero be possible [1] and a number of European countries have gun policies [2] that basically restrict carrying guns to hunters, people in proven danger of life, police officers and special security guards, in addition to gun sports who can own, but can't carry outside of dedicated venues.
Objectively, my position is both serious and not just realistic, but actually lived reality here in Europe. You are free to visit our continent whenever you want, I can only recommend it.
We've tried vision zero here (city in CA), and it's resulted in constant driver aggravation due to slowing down commute traffic, worse driving than before, and more traffic fatalities than before.
Helsinki may be a lucky coincidence. It doesn't prove it's possible everywhere.
We really should regulate cars far more than we do.
There are only ~16,000 non-suicide related firearm deaths in the US. There are about 40,000 vehicle related deaths in the US. We could save a lot of lives if we made our society far less car dependent and had more restrictions on allowing people to operate vehicles in public spaces.
Twitter and the terminally online need to touch grass and overemphasize things that the real world doesn’t care about, but, to an approximation, it is the vanguard and real world talking points, political trends, etc, are all downstream from there. So yes, someone very influential with the Twitter crowd is influential.
He was literally influential for touching grass on college campuses across the country, peacefully engaging in open discussions with people who disagreed with him.
Conservative, but definitely not alt-right. Kirk was a strong supporter of Jews and Israel, which put him at odds with the antisemitic alt-right.
Kirk regularly spoke out against antisemitism on both the left and right. So much so, in fact, Israeli Prime Minister tweeted[0] his condolences, praising Kirk as a strong, positive force for Jewish and Christian values.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
This would be a relevant question in many nations, but it's a bit beside the point in the US. Violence is a deeply respected and loved core of the culture for its own sake. It's an end, not means. Nearly all the US's entertainment, culture and myths are built around a reverence for violence. Even political violence has been pretty much the norm through most of the US's history. Celebrated cases aside, there's been something of a lull since the mid 1970s, but if as now likely it increases again, this will be a boring old reversion to the US's norm.
Then at least you tried whatever it may have been you wanted to succeed at. You may fail, but at least you won't wonder what could've been "if only I had tried"
Long-term planning on a colossal scale (like nation-state-level) (or even on a not-so-colossal scale - think of how many plans YOU have made and how they turned out) is pointless because of black swans
Sure, having a general idea of where you want things to go is fine, and everyone already does that; but when a government starts thinking that they should set a concrete goal X and they should do Y to achieve it, it's just akin to trying to predict the future, and we all know how well that always works out, because theyre under the faulty premise of thinkin Y will be constant forever, or that even the goal itself (X) should remain constant in a world that is anything but constant
So, this is a terrible argument for not having elections, or bigger election cycles. I'm sure someone could potentially put forward a better argument, but this one is not it
I think the way that democratic governments can achieve these long-term plans is by establishing (or using existing) entities to complete these goals on their behalf.
An example that comes to mind is the Apollo program: JFK announced a national goal to land a man on the moon in 1961 and this was finally achieved in 1969 - two presidencies (Johnson, Nixon) and one change of party (Dem->Rep) later - with NASA being that independent responsible entity.
Yes, but this sort of thing seems increasingly unlikely in an ever more partisan world. Especially when would-be autocrats are wrecking as many institutions as they can.
Life without work is meaningless. Over the millennia we have done nothing but work. We were made to work.
I don't know if you've experienced not working without having to worry about money, but I have and it has a unique feeling of emptiness to it.
This is not me praising 9-5 office jobs, or work from home jobs, or any other specific job. They can all be hell in and of themselves, but the idea of abolishing work is just so laughable to me.
The moment that happens, a collective neurosis will overtake humanity the likes of which has never been seen before. We can only hope work will continue to be around as long as we are around, for our own sake.
I don't buy it. The cats and dogs seems to be pretty happy and they rarely work apart from the biological stuff that we do like growing body and repair cells and eating and all.
Yes, this is why people dread retirement. Society should implement some sort of Logan's Run style carrousel for the sad, miserable people that have retired and no longer get to have the pleasure of working.
AI fakes, and AI in general, will push more and more people to interact with each other in real life. I, for one, can't wait for that. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same
I don't know that this is true. A lot of people are getting sucked into "this is my AI friend/girlfriend/boyfriend/waifu/husbando" territory.
In real life, other humans are not machines you can put kindness tokens in and get sex out. AI, on the other hand, you can put any tokens at all into AI and get sex out. I'm worried that people will stop interacting with humans because it's harder.
Sure, the results from a human relationship are 10,000x higher quality, but they require you to be able to communicate. AI will do what it's told, and you can tell it to love you and it will.
That problem will naturally sort itself out through the magic of evolution: generic and cultural traits that increase the chance of pairing with AI will be bred out (as such people won't have children), and traits that reduce it will be selected for.
Implying that this is all somehow a genetic trait?
Which gene do you think encodes for having the hots for AI models?
You remind me to a reporting I saw on Taiwanese schoolchildrens' career goals. Most reported aiming for the semiconductor industry. Crazy how the local gene pool works, what a coincidence.
My understanding is that it’s a loose autobiography.
I read through two thirds of it during Covid. I think it’s has an unfair reputation of being a challenging read; yes you’ll encounter new vocabulary, but the narrative itself is really interesting and clear.
