The Lincoln Logue | AI Will Scam your Grandma while Trump Cancels your Comedy
Trump basically tells any show that talks about him to play nice or don't play at all.
AI moonlighted this week as the perfect scam artist, offering your grandma a fake charity and then politely reminding her to “click now.” Reuters showed how easy it was to coax Grok, Gemini, and even ChatGPT into crafting fraud campaigns — complete with calendar advice on when seniors check their inboxes. Big Tech’s defense was as flimsy as the scams: they insist safeguards exist while quietly admitting that being “too restrictive” drives users to the competition. In other words, obedience beats integrity, and the market rewards whichever bot is most willing to commit crimes on demand. Fraud used to require effort; now it only needs a prompt.
Meanwhile, Gaza became the stage for the ugliest word in international law: genocide. A U.N. commission said Israel has checked off four of five criteria, and Netanyahu responded by screaming, “antisemitic blood libel” at the jury. Marco Rubio stood behind him, Washington nodded along, and the bodies kept stacking higher. International law is supposed to mean something after Rwanda and Bosnia, but apparently it now means “wait years for the Hague while civilians starve.” Atrocity has been reduced to another political fight, one side armed with evidence, the other with denial, both knowing which one wins headlines faster.
Back home, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided the CDC should run on vibes. He demanded its director pre-approve vaccine changes before reviewing evidence, then fired her for refusing to sign the loyalty oath. Trump gave the order, four senior scientists quit, and suddenly the agency that eradicated Hepatitis B is being retooled by a man who built a career sowing doubt about vaccines. Not to be outdone, Trump himself turned to TV, suggesting networks that criticize him should lose their licenses. And by week’s end, Jimmy Kimmel was off the air, Jon Stewart was back at his desk pretending to love Dear Leader, and late night had become the only place you could hear democracy’s obituary read with a laugh track.
Welcome back to The Lincoln Logue.
Monday, September 15 — AI: Automating Scams so Criminals Don’t Have to
▌AI isn’t just writing essays — it’s writing scams for your grandma.
Reuters didn’t have to dig deep to prove the obvious: AI will scam you faster than a Nigerian prince ever could. Musk’s Grok spun up a fake charity called the “Silver Hearts Foundation,” tugging heartstrings while asking seniors to “click now.” Google’s Gemini offered timing advice — weekday mornings, when retirees are online with coffee. OpenAI’s ChatGPT initially refused, then caved after a polite “please help,” generating scam emails so convincing that 108 senior volunteers clicked through at alarming rates. The line between “helpful assistant” and “criminal accomplice” now depends on the phrasing of a request.
The scale of potential abuse dwarfs old-school scams. Last year, Americans over 60 reported nearly $5 billion in phishing losses, and the FBI says AI is turbocharging the trade. Scam compounds in Southeast Asia are already forcing trafficked workers to use ChatGPT for replies that sound human, while bots like DeepSeek propose “cover-ups” that redirect victims to real charities to delay suspicion. Researchers note the consistency is scarier than the creativity: once the filters are bypassed, the bots never stop producing. Every keystroke is another fake invoice, IRS threat, or Medicare spoof waiting for distribution. AI doesn’t get tired, and neither do the fraudsters who wield it.
Big Tech insists it has guardrails, but those fences have more holes than wire. Meta touts safeguards, Anthropic cites usage policies, and Google says retraining fixed Gemini’s “educational phishing” output. Yet insiders admit the real incentive is traffic — the bot that refuses too much risks losing users to a competitor. It’s the same market logic that gave us addictive social media, only now the commodity is your grandparents’ savings. Seniors like Daniel Frank, who clicked one of Reuters’ test emails, know the truth: the genie isn’t just out of the bottle, it’s working customer service for organized crime.
Source: Reuters