Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates Warn Against Artificial Intelligence Technology

As technology continues to explode exponentially, science fiction is rapidly becoming science fact. Wednesday on radio, Glenn highlighted several stories involving some of the greatest minds alive. Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates are all warning about the dangers of AI and are trying to figure out ways to ensure the survival of the human race.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: I want to share something with you that is going to sound absolutely crazy, much more crazy than when I said, "We're going to be able to print everything. We're going to be able to print organs. We're going to be able to print guns." Remember when I brought the 3D printer on about four years ago, and we were printing little stupid things.

And I remember -- I don't remember who it was, one of the cameramen, it was Justin, right? One of the cameramen was on, and he just shook his head. And I printed a little Batman head for him. And he was like, this is ridiculous. We're not going to be able to print these things. Okay. Sci-fi, and we're going to get flying cars too.

And a year later, we had a guy on the show who gave us a printed -- 3D printed gun that works.

The world is changing. And what this is going to sound like is, you're either a Luddite and you don't want technology -- which is not true. I don't think there's any way to stop this. I think Elon Musk is right on his approach. Or it just sounds so like a movie, like terminator, that you're fighting robots.

And I want you to know that you shouldn't fear the robots. That's not what I'm saying. I want you to hear a story that is on Elon Musk and his billion dollar crusade to stop the AI apocalypse. That's the headline.

It starts with a story that I gave you yesterday in hour number one of this broadcast. And it's Elon Musk. And it's Demis -- Demis, what's his name? Hassabis. And Demis and Elon are having lunch at SpaceX. And Elon says, "I'm working on -- this is the most important project for all of humanity, right now." His trip to Mars. Pat doesn't even think that trip to Mars is going to happen.

PAT: Uh-uh.

GLENN: It will. I'm telling you now, we will colonize Mars. And it won't be done by a government. It will be done by Elon Musk. And here's why: Demis says, "No, you're not working on the most important project. I am." Now, he's in charge of DeepMind. DeepMind is the Google project that is gobbling up every -- everybody who is working on AI. Artificial, super intelligence. And they are racing -- Google and DeepMind are racing to artificial intelligence.

Now, artificial intelligence is going to be fantastic. We will -- through artificial intelligence, we're going to be able to figure out cures to cancer. It's so far beyond any supercomputer. It will be able to learn itself. You won't have to program. You won't have to build. It will build itself. It will teach itself.

It's true artificial intelligence. It is living intelligence. And it will be so far -- we will look like mice to this intelligence.

He said -- Demis said, "Well, no, no, I'm working on the most important project for humankind. I'm working on artificial super intelligence." And that's when Elon Musk said, "No, the reason why I'm going to Mars is to make sure there's a human outpost because you're going to get us all killed."

Now, as crazy as that sounds, these conversations are happening. And they're happening a lot in Silicon Valley, with some of the smartest people out there. People who agree with Elon Musk, that this could be the end of all humanity, within the next 40 years, are Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking and a long list of others. But those are pretty prominent guys.

So if you read the story -- let me just give you a couple of them: Some in Silicon Valley were intrigued to learn that Hassabis, a skilled chess player and former video game designer once came up with a game called Evil HEP Genius, featuring an evil scientist who creates a doomsday device to achieve world domination.

Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist Donald Trump adviser, who cofounded PayPal with Musk and others and who in December helped gather skeptical Silicon Valley titans, including Musk to meet with Donald Trump, told me a story about an investor in DeepMind, who joked as he left a meeting, quote, does anybody else feel like we ought to shoot Hassabis now because we're approaching our last chance to save the human race?

Elon Musk began warning about the possibility of AI running amuck three years ago. Probably hadn't eased his mind when one of Hassabis' partners in DeepMind, Shane Lang stated flatly, "I think human extinction will probably occur, and this technology will play a part in it."

Okay. So wait. Wait. Shouldn't we put the brakes on that? If somebody said that in your office and other great minds around the world were saying the same thing, wouldn't it be time for you to say, "Hey, guys, can we just stop for a second?"

STU: I oddly do work in an office where someone does say that fairly regularly, just to points that out.

PAT: You do? Where's that? Weird.

STU: I don't know.

GLENN: Before DeepMind was gobbled up by Google in 2014 as part of its Google AI shopping spree, Musk had been an investor in DeepMind.

He told me that his involvement was not about a return on his money, but rather to keep a wary eye on the arc of AI.

It gave me more visibility into the rate at which things are improving. I think they're improving at an accelerating rate, far faster than anybody realizes. Mostly because in everyday life, you don't see robots walking around.

Maybe your Roomba or something. But a Roomba is not going to take over the world.

In a startling public approach to his friends and fellow techies, Musk warned that they could be creating the means of their very own destruction. He told Bloomberg's Ashley Vance, the author of the biography of Elon Musk, that he was afraid that his friend, Larry HEP Page, the cofounder of Google and now the CEO of its parent company, Alphabet, could have perfectly good intentions but still produce something very evil by accident, including possibly a fleet of artificial intelligence enhanced robots capable of destroying all of mankind.

Sometimes, what will happen is a scientist will get so engrossed in their work that they really don't realize the ramifications of what they're doing.

Having some sort of merger with biological intelligence and machine intelligence, it may not be the -- it may be the way to escape human obsolescence. A Vulcan mind meld, if you will.

We're basically already there. We're already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you. But the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow. We're now looking at a neural interlace, a lace inside of your skull that would flash data from your brain wirelessly to your Dylan devices or to virtually any unlimited computing power in the cloud for a means of partial brain interface. We are roughly four years away from that.

STU: Four years away from --

GLENN: Thinking and it doing. Did anybody see --

STU: You're not touching a screen.

GLENN: You're not touching anything.

STU: You're just thinking, I want the temperature to go up in this.

GLENN: And it goes up.

PAT: What? Four years!

GLENN: We're four years away.

PAT: No way.

GLENN: Did anybody see the article yesterday that came out -- for the first -- Pat, for the first time, somebody now has received the first real bionic legs that it operates exactly like your legs do. You think, and it does.

PAT: Boop, boop. Boop. Boop.

STU: I saw that documentary. That's --

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: Others, you have to start moving and get, you know -- and get it to move for you. This is now bionic. I believe it -- I believe they were legs, that as you think, it happens. And they have them now with hands --

PAT: Are people being fitted with those?

GLENN: Yes.

PAT: Are they really?

GLENN: Yes. The first one has fitted, and it's working now.

PAT: Oh, how outrageous is that?

GLENN: And that was the story yesterday.

Yeah. So what's the difference between that and this?

PAT: I don't know.

STU: Can we quickly point out that if you can think, I want the temperature to be higher in this room, the divorce rate is going to be 100 percent in this country.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

PAT: My wife and I are thermostatically incompatible.

(laughter)

GLENN: He went on to say, with artificial intelligence, we are summoning a demon. You know all those stories where there's the guy with the penneagram and the holy water, and he's like, yeah, yeah, no, I -- listen, we can control the demon. I'm just going to call it forth. It doesn't work out, said Musk.

(laughter)

Let's see. Musk is stoit HEP about his setbacks, but all too conscious of the nightmare scenarios. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer, and that is the way he's acted through most of history. We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.

Here's the nagging thought that you can't escape as you drag around from glass box to glass box in Silicon Valley. The lords of the cloud love to yammer about turning the world into a better place as they churn out new algorithms, apps, and inventions, that, it is claimed, will make our lives easier, healthier, funny, closer, cooler, longer, and kinder to the planet.

And yet, as you drive around after these meetings, there's a creepy feeling underneath it all, a sense that we are the mice in their experiments, that they regard us humans as betamaxes HEP or eight tracks. Old technology that will soon be discarded so they can get on with enjoying their new, sleek world.

Many people have already accepted this future. We'll live to be $150, but we'll have machine overlords. They argue not about whether, but rather how close we are to replicating, improving, and replacing ourselves.

Sam Altman, the 31-year-old president of Y Combinator, the Valley's top start accelerator, believes humanity is on the brink of such invention.

The hardest part of standing on an exponential curve is, when you look backward, it looks flat. When you look forward, it looks vertical. It's hard to calibrate how much you're moving because it always looks the same. You'd think that any time Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Gates are raising the same warning about AI, as all of them are, it would be a ten-alarm fire. But for a long time, the fog of fatalism over the Bay area was thick. Musk's crusade was viewed as a Luddite view.

STU: I mean, Elon Musk is not a Luddite. I think that's pretty clear.

JEFFY: No.

GLENN: No. The paradox is this: Many tech oligarchs see everything they're doing to help us, and all of their benevolent manifestos as streetlamps on the road to a future where, as Steve Wozniak says, humans are the streetlamp's pets.

Musk is not going gently. He plans on fighting this with every fiber of his carbon-based being. Musk and Altman have founded Open AI. Now, this is the way to solve it: Open AI, a billion-dollar nonprofit company to work for safer artificial intelligence. His view is, nobody is going to be able to stop this. Nobody is going to be able to stop this. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. And we're going to have people within ten years that are uploading and are transhumans. They are what's called transhumanism.

As we're talking about the stupid gender and what you feel like today, forget about all that nonsense. Transhumanism is real and it will happen in the next ten years, where you will merge with machines.

He believes that the problem is not -- not robots. The problem is AI merging on the internet.

Now, we saw a documentary with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

STU: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: Where at first you thought that it was the terminator robot that was the problem.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And in later --

PAT: It was Skynet.

GLENN: It was Skynet.

PAT: We should have known, it was Skynet.

GLENN: That's what he says is the problem. We'll get back to this here in a second.

[break]

GLENN: Oh, no. I can't take it. I can't take it.

You know, I am full in, on AI. We're going back to Musk here in a second. I'm full-in on super intelligence. I will even be the pet. I will serve Skynet, if it will fix my television.

(laughter)

I cannot get -- it's -- I'm ready to go back to cable.

PAT: What's wrong with it?

GLENN: Oh, the remote control won't control -- won't work with Apple. Sometimes it doesn't work with the cable. You know, sometimes it doesn't turn the TV on at all. Sometimes it will turn everything on, but won't turn on the Apple box.

STU: Ugh.

PAT: And you've obviously had people out to try to fix it.

GLENN: Oh, I can't tell you how many thousands I have probably dumped in this. I just -- just give me a knob. Just give me a knob. Or Skynet. I will serve you, Skynet. I will serve you.

STU: TVs aren't going to work. But the AI thing is going to turn out well.

GLENN: It's going to be really good.

PAT: Really well. Yeah.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.