Hey everyone, I've been thinking about this for a sci-fi story I'm tinkering with, and I would love a reality check from people who actually know this stuff!

The premise: Modern billionaires seem arrogantly convinced that only they can afford the massive compute clusters needed to train dangerous AI. They assume the working class couldn't possibly coordinate anything that threatens their power. But is that still true? Couldn't a few thousand regular people, working together with off-the-shelf tech, do some real damage? Kind of like how people are using flock cameras against politicians to get anti-flock laws passed.

Anyway, here's the rough blueprint I'm imagining. Please tell me where this falls apart (or gets terrifyingly real):

Federated Learning "Brain" No central server to shut down. Millions of people donate a tiny slice of their phone, gaming console, or smart TV's processing power overnight. Collectively, they train a large AI model. Is that actually computationally feasible at scale? Or is the communication overhead a killer?

Defining the "Target" The AI can't understand "toxic billionaire." So instead, you train it on hard, quantifiable markers: offshore tax evasion records, carbon footprint, union-busting patterns, wealth-hoarding metrics. The model learns to flag anyone with net worth over, say, $X billion and a negative societal utility score as a "system anomaly." That feels plausible, right?

Mesh Network Infrastructure: In a standard setup, the oligarchs just flip a switch and kill the internet (cell towers, AWS, etc.). But what about a wireless mesh network? Every device becomes a router, passing data over local Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Could that realistically survive a corporate/government internet shutdown?

Autonomous Swarms: I know DARPA and Fraunhofer have already done research on mobile ad-hoc mesh networks (MANETs) for drones – swarms of 500+ units that coordinate without human input after launch. If you combined that with off-the-shelf consumer drones, open-source AI, and a local mesh… could the ruling class actually stop it? Or would their cybersecurity just laugh and swat it down?

I'm not an ML engineer or a robotics person. I just write stories. But the more I read, the less crazy this seems. So, who actually works in machine learning, network engineering, or robotics and how much of this is pure sci-fi, and how much is terrifyingly possible right now?

Thanks for any reality checks! I am just some human online curious after watching some tech videos what would be feasible in theory even though this all sounds like a crazy. Ha.

This is Mochi. She is our fat bb.

Nothing is more American than the Opossum! They only reside in North America.

BROWN LIKE A TURD!

In the 1970s, the "burning" that effectively ended British diplomatic presence in the Irish Republic (the south) was the Burning of the British Embassy in Dublin in 1972. It was a pivotal moment of national fury that essentially told the British government they were no longer welcome in the Republic's capital. This event was a direct response to Bloody Sunday, which had happened just three days prior in Derry, where British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed civil rights marchers. The Protest: An estimated 100,000 people (one of the largest protests in Irish history) marched on the British Embassy at 39 Merrion Square in Dublin. Protesters carried black coffins to the embassy steps. Using petrol bombs and gelignite, the crowd breached the building’s defenses. Despite a line of Irish police (Gardaí), the building was eventually gutted by fire. The British Ambassador and his staff had to be evacuated, and the embassy was relocated to a much more secure, less central location. It served as a massive symbolic "eviction" of the British diplomatic core from the heart of Dublin.

I am going to print out pages of the Epstein files and place them all over my city. I cant sit here and live in a society that is actively ignoring a giant pedophile ring within the very foundation of our country. Its making me sick to my stomach. I am in bed right now at noon crying because its so grossly weird walking around and seeing the amount of purposeful ignorance. I either need to move out of this country or it needs to wake up.... Its so absolutely disgusting. Those babies need justice even the ones already buried. People have to do something. Idk what else to do besides this and push for legislation and arrests.

I have spent hours looking through the files and some of the stories are absolutely disgusting. I am having such a hard time because so many citizens don't even know how awful they get and they aren't all even fully released... I am close to feeling like we need pitchforks, torches and shovels if this justice system won't actually do anything... He had a ranch where a witness wrote in saying there are TWO bodies located on the property and they haven't even reported that in the media. I'll link that one below too. It's just so... Horrible. We can't just pretend this doesn't exist... but idk what happens next for the United States and the world. It's not something a country just moves on from.

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00078198.pdf

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01249507.pdf

I am a mental health provider / social worker and we learn about individual trauma as well as mass trauma from natural disasters ect... Speaking to clients about gaslighting and forms of narcissistic abuse really isnt all that different than the types of abuse Americans have to deal with on a regular bases from a young age systemically because the system is so toxic. I am currently thinking about the pure amount of toxicity where leadership in the government seems to view citizens as pawns instead of part of the whole. This has also led to chronic isolation and loneliness for everyday people and general feelings of inadequacy. The Tuskegee experiment.... MKUltra... and many other social experiments ect... Not admitting fault for those until decades later and making the victims think they were crazy or that it was all their fault. Its just disgusting to me. Now, we are finding out there is a world wide trafficking ring and the DOJ CONTINUES to muddy down the evidence and force citizens to fill in the gaps leading to concern, fear, confusion and the abusers havent been forced to take any accountability, yet. The feeling of confusion and exhaustion you feel is by design. Its from abuse. Top officials running the system are abusive as hell which is why we need normal citizens to engage in various processes. Despite the imposter syndrome and anxieties that make you feel you arent good enough or smart enough to take on positions of power ect... if you have these thoughts then you are the very person many communities need right now because it means you care enough to try which is a whole hell of a lot better than what we have now.

Idk what exactly I am expecting to get out if this but idk how anything changes unless we become part of a new process and it makes me deeply sad that my fellow Americans are viewed so low by the very people voted in to protect them. Americans deserves better.

I am not religious and have no desire to start being now but sometimes I just want the community people get with church. I am craving connection with the community and feel it's very healthy for families and neighbors as well. The United States is seriously lacking in third spaces and communities. It's leading to a serious loneliness epidemic... Just wondering if there is anything that can fill that need for non-religious folks?