The World Series of poker is returning and bringing with it an experimental AI to allow television viewers in on the secrets of body language and facial tics. The move generally invades the once hallowed ground of the proverbial “poker face.”

Will fans embrace or reject this great disenchantment? And does it even work?

Facial recognition leading to pre-cognitive services will be big business.

First, some history. The recent heyday of the World Series of poker is now a fading memory. To reverse its decline, Omaha Productions has expanded its live production slate to re-establish lost verve and recapture audiences.

Helmed by former quarterback Peyton Manning, the odd-duck production studio “stands as a trusted expert in the dynamic world of live events,” according to its website. “Our social content creation from these events ensure they have life outside the room as well. F*%$ it, we’ll do it live!”

Or if not live, then adjusted, via the latest in AI control features designed to further leverage the distance between what viewers want and what they are willing to try to understand in the thick of their media experience.

Blowing the cover of the industry’s best poker faces seems like a last-ditch effort to spice up the activity of, yes, watching other people on a screen who are watching each other and looking at cards on a table — proof of the great interiority of human experience if there ever was one.

This is where the fetid polycule marriage of social media, Hollywood dissolution, and AI entertainment tools is heading.

So what’s in the box?

The tech is made by one Luke Geel, according to LinkedIn a graduate of Johns Hopkins who describes himself as interested in poker, chess, and … augmented reality.

Geel’s so-far nameless AI tracks facial tics, blinks, gestures, and the like and subsequently weighs these against its prior training to deduce some semblance of “read” on body language and intention. This writer couldn’t find much evidence of the AI actually working.

But Geel posted a video to his LinkedIn three months ago (it shows up again in the various Omaha announcements) that depicts the overlay of various visual graphic effects on some footage of pro poker players. It leaves a lot to the imagination and appears to be little more than a low-rent “Minority Report” simulacrum. Check it for yourself.

Already it’s become clear to many once-wide-eyed denizens of the internet that their wondrous world wide web has been reduced to something nearer to a virtual late-night TV ad carousel.

RELATED: Can this robot give you the cure for loneliness?

imaginima/Getty Images

But it’s not quite right to think of the process as one of degradation. From the internet’s origins at the Stanford Research Institute to its crescendo amid the string of high-tech company offices along North First Street in today’s San Jose, the internet (like virtually all digital technology) is derived from, and keeps advancing, advanced weapons and varieties of weaponization. Surveillance, reconnaissance, cognitive and psychological operations — the list is long.

Weapons and worship

The laundry list of devices blurs the line between the excellent and the bogus. This too is a form of weaponizing. To take one example, the polygraph, despite continuous use in the application of federal and state security clearances, has never been made admissible in courts because it’s unreliable. The “science” doesn’t work. Nonetheless, the power of the “lie detector” is in its existence, in the fact that it can be wielded here but not there, understood only by a select few. The threat of it someday crossing over into some category of unimpeachable fact wires its anti-human element deep into the human environment.

We exist already in strange relationship with sacralized machines. If and when AI facial recognition software becomes standard, normalized like the polygraph, it will simply reify the tensions between the true, the false, and the unmentionable. Facial recognition leading to pre-cognitive actuarial services will be big business. It may even, like the proverbial broken clock, work sometimes. But it will never represent reality, because humans possess spontaneity. Absolute, human, emotional realities aren’t fixed into a grid. They simply cannot be predicted by men or their machines.

And yet we can be near-certain that efficient, accurate AI facial recognition is coming soon. In many places, whether we know it or not, it’s safe to say it’s already here.

So isn’t it just a few beats until we see the mainstream arrival of pre-cog, pre-crime, and every other possible preemptive measure of corralling the human being? Ironically, the advance of such things, and the acceptance and apathy that will doubtless often greet it, seem to suggest that their arrival won’t make much difference — because the behavioral “corrections” they are ostensibly deployed to achieve will already have been made. Why not act as if they’re already here if their arrival is inevitable?

That’s the logic, anyway. With little more than a graphic to prove it, we’re told no one can hide any longer behind his poker face. Are we willing to believe — and pay the price of that belief?

​Tech 

Democrats’ continued efforts to gaslight the nation about the integrity of American elections and the SAVE America Act proved too much on Sunday for ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, who evidently felt obligated to push back against one Democrat’s misleading claims.

President Donald Trump provided the nation on Thursday with damning insights into the apparent insecurity of American elections, past efforts by foreign powers to exploit election system vulnerabilities, and the Department of Homeland Security’s discovery of around 250,000 noncitizens on voter registration rolls in just four states.

‘That’s actually not the case.’

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) was among the many Democrats who raged over the president’s disclosures and conclusion that to shore up election security ahead of the midterms, lawmakers should pass the SAVE America Act — which would require individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote and voting in federal elections.

Warner has vowed to kill the SAVE America Act.

“The greatest danger to our elections right now is false narratives seized upon here at home as a pretext to convince Americans their elections cannot be trusted — or worse, to justify unprecedented federal intervention in elections that the Constitution entrusts to the states,” Warner said in a statement.

“Our democracy depends on confidence in elections that are administered according to law by the states, not on falsehoods invoked to justify unprecedented government intervention,” added the senator.

RELATED: Democrats go into FULL PANIC MODE after Trump exposes election interference from China and the deep state

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Warner went on-air Sunday with his concern-mongering at ABC News, a network that days earlier refused to carry live TV coverage of Trump’s speech detailing election vulnerabilities and foreign interference.

When asked about the president’s disclosures, Warner admitted that multiple foreign powers actively seek to influence American elections and expressed concern about Chinese hacking initiatives.

However, sticking to his party’s script, the Democrat claimed that Trump “is not looking for a secure election because if we have a free and fair election, he and his allies are going to get beat historically this fall.”

ABC News host Jonathan Karl raised the matter of Democrats’ unanimous opposition to the SAVE America Act, then asked Warner, “Requiring photo ID to register to vote — is this something that Democrats should get behind?”

A Pew Research Center survey of over 3,550 Americans conducted last August found that 83% of respondents favored requiring all voters to show government-issued identification to vote. A Gallup poll conducted the previous October found that 84% of Americans supported the photo ID requirement.

“You know what? In Virginia, we have voter ID and photo ID. I got to show my — ” said Warner.

Karl interrupted Warner to note, “That’s actually not the case. I mean, I’m a Virginia voter. You don’t need to show a photo ID in Virginia. There are a wide range of things you can show for ID, and if you don’t show one of those, you can sign an affidavit saying, attesting — but, so it’s not required.”

“You do have a variety of documents,” said Warner. “But we have voter ID of one form or another.”

According to the Virginia Department of Elections, “Voters may provide either an acceptable form of ID or sign an ID Confirmation Statement at the polls.” Accepted forms of ID in Warner’s Democrat-run state include student IDs containing photographs; employee ID cards containing a photograph; and utility bills, bank statements, government checks, or paychecks containing the voter’s name and address.

Those who show up to a polling location who decline to sign an ID statement affirming their identity “may vote a provisional ballot.”

When asked whether there should be a voter ID requirement nationwide, Warner suggested he might support having to show a set of IDs “as long as it comes from some official point,” but he proceeded to once again attack the SAVE America Act as a form of “voter disenfranchisement.”

Following his live fact-check by Karl on ABC News, Warner was widely ridiculed online.

The Republican Committee of Prince William County, Virginia, asked whether Warner had “lost his ‘fastball.'”

The Virginia Project, a PAC supportive of the Republican Party in the Old Dominion, piled on, writing, “Warner doesn’t even know Virginia’s voting laws.”

The X account for the Republican Study Committee noted, “80% of the country wants to secure our elections, and Senate Democrats like Mark Warner keep proving they would rather fabricate facts than support basic safeguards, even when the truth is what our republic depends on.”

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​Mark warner, Virginia, Save america act, Donald trump, Jonathan karl, Politics 

Ann Widdecombe was a British politician and devout Catholic convert whose common sense and unabashed conservatism made her a popular target for leftist abuse, including by at least one official in the current Labour government.

Widdecombe — a 78-year-old patron of Right to Life UK and Reform UK immigration spokeswoman who fought for the rights of the unborn, against euthanasia, against LGBT imperialism, against climate alarmism, and for Britain’s departure from the European Union — was assassinated in her home in Devon, England, earlier this month.

‘He had expressed his hatred of me on more than one occasion.’

Widdecombe’s suspected killer, 28-year-old Joshua Kerry, appears to be yet another bloodthirsty leftist.

Police responded to the pro-lifer’s home on July 9 after her lifeless body was discovered lying in the kitchen. As Widdecombe’s grievous injuries could not be explained by a fall, detectives promptly launched an investigation into the murder, which is believed to have occurred just after noon on July 8.

On July 10, Kerry — whom Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage claimed, on “good authority,” to be a “hard-left activist” and “intolerant individual obsessed with Soviet communism” — was arrested on suspicion of murder in what was initially figured for a burglary gone wrong.

Kerry was reportedly caught on CCTV leaving his Rotherham residence, approximately a four-hour drive away from Widdecombe’s house, early on the day of the murder. Before leaving, he also was allegedly spotted by neighbors putting “some kind of wooden pole” into his car.

RELATED: British villagers act like it’s 1776, declare independence over mass-migration plans

Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Assistant Chief Matt Longman of Devon and Cornwall Police urged the public “not to speculate about what might have happened,” and stressed that he had “no information to believe that that is a politically motivated crime.”

However, one Reform UK source said at the time, “It is clear to everybody that we are being gaslit by the police.”

Devon and Cornwall Police cut Kerry loose the next morning, claiming he “is no longer part of the investigation,” but hours later, Kerry was rearrested at his home in Rotherham — this time by Counter Terrorism Policing North East and South Yorkshire Police — on suspicion of murder and the “commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood subsequently announced that counter-terrorism police had taken the lead in the investigation into Widdecombe’s death, and Laurence Taylor, head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, said the investigation had turned up “new information and evidence” pointing to the murder having been a “targeted attack.”

‘Why are we targeted like this? Because we say things that are unfashionable among many in Westminster.’

A source told the Sun (U.K.) that in their search of Kerry’s house, they found clippings of news articles about Reform UK, its leader Nigel Farage, and the party’s immigration policies.

“It would appear he had a profound dislike of the party, its leader, and its policies,” said the source.

Farage alleged in an article on Saturday that the suspect “attended various marches and hated anyone with an opposing view. He had expressed his hatred of me on more than one occasion.”

Courtney Foster, a woman who lives near the suspect, told the Telegraph, “He rarely comes out of the house — his dad used to do everything for him, and I don’t know what he did for a living.”

Kerry’s dad recently passed away.

“I think once his dad died, he went a bit loopy,” added Foster.

In addition to seizing Kerry’s electronic devices, police also seized a red Vauxhall Corsa believed to have belonged to the murder suspect.

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman, accused Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Tory politicians of setting the stage for the attack with their rhetoric.

“I can tell you about the climate in which she was killed, a relentless narrative from politicians and the media that Reform UK is a threat, a threat to be urgently stopped,” said Yusuf. “A narrative so relentless it constitutes incitement. And why are we targeted like this? Because we say things that are unfashionable among many in Westminster but are popular in the country at large.”

Farage recently celebrated his fallen friend, stating, “This was somebody who gave her life to public service, to fighting for the things that she believed in.”

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​Ann widdecombe, Assassination, Pro-life, Conservative, United kingdom, Politics, Crime 

Colorado’s race for governor has taken an unexpected turn. Republican nominee Victor Marx, a ministry leader, is one of the most unconventional candidates America has ever seen.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray is shocked by his background — which involves claims of murder and exorcism — calling it “some weird stuff.”

“This Republican running for governor in Colorado, he’s a ministry leader. His name is Victor Marx. He won the Republican primary for governor. And there’s now going to be the general election matchup in November with Phil Weiser, who’s the Democrat nominee,” Gray explains.

“This guy’s an interesting cat. Right now, he performs exorcisms that bring in about $7 million a year. And he does these exorcisms over the phone,” he says.

“I didn’t realize there was that kind of cash in exorcisms,” he continues, adding, “This is going to make this industry explode.”

Marx also claims that when he was just 7 years old, his stepfather forced him to kill someone.

“He claims his stepdad put a gun in his hand in some rural area and then placed his hand over Victor’s hand and pulled the trigger, killing an unarmed man out in the wilderness somewhere. Then, he took that man back to his house, and he buried him underneath the house,” Gray explains.

“And there’s never been any evidence of that,” he says. “But I don’t know why you would make up a story like that. You just think it’s cool? You think it’s mysterious?”

“I’m not really sure what’s going on with the guy, but that’s bizarre. And he was asked if he’s the only person he’s ever killed. And he said, ‘As a child, yes, without question,’” Gray says.

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​Colorado, Exorcism, Pat gray, Victor marx, Pat gray unleashed 

Massachusetts police say they are investigating the discovery of a dead man’s remains at a Mattapan home owned by the husband of a Democratic congresswoman.

The property is a multi-family rental building that is owned by Conan Harris, husband of Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

‘My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one today in Mattapan.’

Police said they went to the property on Saturday at about 1:52 p.m. and found a man who appeared to be dead from a single gunshot wound.

The homicide unit is investigating the incident.

“We got home, and there were police coming down the street; they blocked it off with crime tape over there, and neighbors were gathered around,” said Ari, a woman who lives on the same street as the location of the incident.

“The Congresswoman extends her deepest condolences to the impacted family,” read a statement from a Pressley spokesperson.

Harris posted a message on Facebook about the incident.

“Thank you everyone for the care and concern, our family is safe,” the statement read. “My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one today in Mattapan.”

Boston Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu also released a statement.

“I know the situation is still under investigation, and Boston police are diligently trying to pursue the information they can get,” she said at an event Sunday in Roxbury,

RELATED: Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib claim gun shop’s billboard is ‘inciting violence’ against them

Pressley, a member of the far-left radical Democratic group known as the “Squad,” was first elected to Congress in 2018. She has repeatedly excoriated the criminal justice system as racist.

“Our families and communities continue to be plagued and destabilized by the overlapping crises of mass incarceration, police brutality, and over-criminalization,” she said in May 2025, adding that “black and brown communities” continue to endure “an unprecedented assault” from the second Trump administration.

In June 2020, she also boldly declared, “Yes, I support the defund movement,” and called for “restorative justice practices.”

“Why are we deploying the police when there’s an individual battling mental illness?”

Online records indicate the property was last sold in 2021 for $340,000 in 2021. It was listed for sale at the price of $1.15 million, but the listing was removed on Saturday.

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​Ayanna pressley, Boston, Murder, Politics 

As a physical therapist, I have seen the same problem countless times. A patient makes steady progress for months, then suddenly plateaus. The exercises have not changed. The injury has not worsened. The patient is doing everything right, yet lingering pain or weakness will not budge.

After some investigation, we often find the cause: a medication problem. A prescription changed. A refill was delayed. A side effect went unrecognized. The patient’s body began responding differently, and the rehabilitation plan stalled.

Protecting pharmacy access is not a favor to one industry. It is part of protecting the patient’s path back to health.

Physical therapy, prescribing, and pharmacy cannot operate as separate worlds. Most patients who enter my clinic have at least one chronic condition, one prescription, or both. Medication can affect pain, balance, fatigue, inflammation, and healing. The pharmacist who understands a patient’s history and drug regimen belongs on the care team, not outside it.

Physical therapy can often reduce pain and restore movement without long-term reliance on medication. But after surgery or during a complicated recovery, pharmaceutical support may play an essential role. Patients do best when movement, hands-on care, and medication work together deliberately rather than through guesswork.

Recovery already asks a great deal of patients. A death in the family, an unexpected bill, or a difficult work schedule can disrupt appointments and home exercise. Those obstacles are hard, but patients can usually manage them with planning and support.

A collapsing pharmacy network is different. Patients cannot will a closed counter back into service, reach an unavailable pharmacist, or fill a prescription that remains trapped in a broken system.

Look at San Francisco, which now faces a “pharmacy crisis.” National chains have closed locations, while independent pharmacies struggle to survive. In Missouri, state officials are suing CVS and other pharmacy benefit managers over insulin pricing. Lawmakers may intend to lower costs, but poorly designed interventions can destabilize the same pharmacy networks patients depend on.

The ownership model is secondary. A national chain and a neighborhood independent may operate differently, but either can provide essential access. When either disappears, patients lose timely refills, answers about side effects, and help resolving dosing questions. In physical therapy, that can mean slower progress, cautious loading, missed sessions, and avoidable setbacks.

A short-staffed pharmacy creates similar problems. Patients struggle to reach prescribers and may wait days for guidance. Pharmacists often serve as the most accessible medication experts in the health care system, but accessibility requires someone behind the counter with enough time to listen.

When those questions go unanswered, therapists are left working around uncertainty. We may not know whether dizziness comes from the exercise program, the underlying condition, or a new medication. We may have to delay progress because safe rehabilitation does not permit guessing.

RELATED: Joy Behar’s TrumpRx rant shows how elites think

Gary Gershoff/Getty Images

I see the opposite when pharmacy access works. Sometimes a pharmacist’s clarification or a small medication adjustment helps a patient move past the last trace of a limp. Sometimes it allows a musician to use his fingers comfortably again. When the pharmacy side of the plan aligns with physical therapy, patients can recover faster without adding unnecessary costs or complications.

The care I provide is important, but recovery succeeds through cooperation. Physical therapists restore movement. Prescribers diagnose and choose treatments. Pharmacists catch interactions, explain side effects, and help patients use medications safely. Large chains and local independents both employ professionals who perform that work every day.

Pharmacists have become “integral to chronic disease management.” Policymakers should treat them that way. Any reform aimed at drug prices, corporate practices, or pharmacy benefit managers should begin with a basic test: Will patients retain reliable access to a pharmacist?

When the answer is no, the consequences reach far beyond the pharmacy counter. They appear in rehabilitation clinics, physician offices, emergency rooms, and patients’ homes.

Good rehabilitation depends on movement expertise and medication expertise working together. Protecting pharmacy access is not a favor to one industry. It is part of protecting the patient’s path back to health.

​Opinion & analysis, Pharmacy benefit managers, Drug prices, Prescription drugs, Physical therapy, Caregiving, Insulin, Lawsuits, San francisco, Missouri, Rehabilitation 

Imagine driving a manufacturer-provided press vehicle for a road test and suddenly finding yourself surrounded by police because a license-plate reader misidentified your temporary tag.

That’s exactly what happened recently to an automotive journalist Joel Feder, who says officers tracked the vehicle for days before stopping him in a parking lot over a plate-reading error.

Some license-plate readers have also been installed near businesses that sell firearms, creating records of vehicles visiting those locations.

It isn’t an isolated case.

Armed and dangerous

We’ve covered Flock cameras before. They were sold as precision crime-fighting tools that could quickly locate stolen vehicles and help police solve serious crimes. But mistakes continue to happen. Similar errors have led to innocent families, used-car buyers, and other drivers being subjected to high-risk traffic stops. In some cases, officers have even drawn their weapons.

At the same time, residents are pushing back.

Dozens of cities and towns have allowed Flock contracts to expire or removed cameras altogether after residents questioned the systems’ accuracy, privacy implications, and data-retention policies. Public pressure is making a difference.

Before anyone declares victory, however, there’s another side to the story.

The surveillance network itself isn’t disappearing. In many communities, Flock is simply being replaced by another vendor.

Different vendor, same spying

Companies such as Axon, Motorola Solutions through Vigilant Solutions, Rekor Systems, Genetec AutoVu, and ELSAG — now part of Leonardo — are stepping in to compete for the same contracts. They may promise stronger privacy controls or improved technology, but the basic model remains the same: photograph passing vehicles, record where they were seen, and store that information in searchable databases.

The debate is no longer whether these systems should exist. It’s who gets to operate them.

Privacy advocates argue that building long-term databases showing where people travel raises serious Fourth Amendment questions, particularly as courts have become increasingly skeptical of warrantless collection of detailed location information.

The concerns extend beyond highways and intersections. Some license-plate readers have also been installed near businesses that sell firearms, creating records of vehicles visiting those locations. Critics argue that this raises additional questions about lawful activities protected by the Second Amendment.

RELATED: Flock Safety CEO: It’s ‘terroristic’ to want to know where we put our spy cameras

Timothy Fadek/Boston Globe/Getty Images

DeFlock delivers

One of the most effective responses has come from ordinary citizens.

An independent project called DeFlock.org maps known automated license-plate reader locations across the country, allowing residents to see where cameras have been installed. Armed with that information, people have attended city council meetings, questioned local officials, and in some cases convinced communities to remove cameras or reject new contracts.

Technology companies will continue improving these systems because there’s money to be made, and police departments will continue looking for tools they believe help fight crime.

The real question is where communities decide to draw the line.

Every time you leave your driveway, these systems collect another data point about your movements. If everything works perfectly, most drivers never notice. When something goes wrong, however, innocent people can find themselves explaining a database error to police officers on the side of the road.

Changing vendors doesn’t necessarily change that reality. It simply changes whose logo is on the camera.

​Fourth amendment, License plate reader, Second amendment, Flock cameras, Deflock, Privacy, Surveillance, Big tech, Automotive 

Former President Joe Biden is preparing to tell Americans all about his presidency in a new memoir set for release this fall. But BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales isn’t buying the idea that Biden could write a book at all.

“Autopens are getting so advanced that these days they can write an entire book from cover to cover because Joe Biden has a book that is releasing in November,” Gonzales says.

“Oh man, I can’t wait to not read that,” she adds.

And a promotional video of Biden only adds more weight to her belief.

“Since I left the presidency, I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Joe, what have you been doing?’” the former president began in the video.

“Nobody asked you that. … My question is, don’t you have cancer? How is that going? Isn’t it strange?” Gonzales says, before playing another clip of Biden stumbling through the promo.

“It’s about the challenges we faced as a nation and about the decisions I made and why I made them,” Biden said.

Gonzales points out that the video only gets worse, just like his presidency.

“It’s about why I chose to run for re-election and why I chose to step aside,” Biden said.

“He chose to step aside, ladies and gentlemen. He chose it. That definitely was his decision. It wasn’t something that anyone forced on him,” Gonzales comments, wondering why the former president is choosing to release this book now.

“You’ve got to wonder, maybe the plan is to try to scrape together cash because didn’t Jill just write … a book, and nobody bought it, and nobody read it? Why do you guys keep writing books?” she asks.

“Maybe there’s a larger plan here,” she adds, pointing out that he could be “trying to get some cash flow coming in because nobody will pay for his presidential library.”

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​Sara gonzales, Joe biden, Jill biden, Autopen, Sara gonzales unfiltered 

Canada’s failed policies are doing more than fouling American air. Summer across the Midwest and East Coast has again brought unhealthy and hazardous air-quality warnings from Canadian wildfires. Poor forest management threatens public health and daily life. Canada’s immigration policies pose a deeper and more lasting danger.

Most Americans still regard Canada as a polite northern extension of the United States: familiar, friendly, and strategically harmless. That view belongs to another era. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that “nostalgia is not a strategy.” Neither is complacency.

America once regarded the northern border as its safest frontier. That assumption is precisely what now makes it dangerous. Nobody thought to watch it.

Canada is becoming one of America’s most underestimated national security vulnerabilities: a permissive northern platform through which mass migration, organized crime, and hostile foreign influence can reach the United States.

The first problem is demographic. In 1961, 96.8% of Canadians reported European origins, primarily British or French. By 2021, that figure had fallen to 52.5%, a decline of 44.3 percentage points in 60 years, even allowing for changes in census methodology. Canada has undergone one of the most dramatic demographic transformations in the Western world. A mass-migration regime has shifted the primary source of new Canadians from Europe to Asia, with Asian populations now making up roughly one-fifth of the country.

That change would carry fewer risks in a confident, assimilationist nation. Canada has chosen the opposite course. The United States has historically shown an extraordinary ability to turn foreigners into Americans. Canada instead embraced state-sponsored multiculturalism. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even described the country as the world’s first “postnational state,” with “no core identity” and “no mainstream.” Canada has combined mass immigration with an increasingly vague idea of national belonging.

Immigration without assimilation has accelerated the country’s Balkanization. New arrivals often settle in established immigrant communities, producing ethnic enclaves first at the neighborhood level and, increasingly, across entire cities.

In Brampton, Ontario, Canada’s ninth-largest city, more than 52% of residents are South Asian. In Richmond, British Columbia, more than half the population is Chinese. Markham, Surrey, Burnaby, Mississauga, and Richmond Hill reflect the same pattern: not merely high immigration, but concentrated communal geography.

Lebanon offers an extreme warning of where such politics can lead. Once politics stops revolving around competing ideas and becomes a census of rival communities, foreign governments learn to exploit those divisions.

RELATED: Can political dissent be classified as harassment? One Canadian city says yes.

DON MACKINNON/AFP/Getty Images

That prospect should concern Washington. Canada has already become a major arena for foreign interference. Its own public inquiry has examined the activities of China, Russia, India, and other governments. Diaspora communities can become targets and instruments of intimidation, surveillance, political coercion, and imported ethnic conflict. The 2023 killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar illustrated the danger. Canadian officials alleged that agents of the Indian government were involved in his assassination on Canadian soil.

China presents the gravest strategic threat. Beijing does not need to turn Canada into an outright enemy of the United States. It needs only to use Canada as a gateway into the North American system. During the 2025 campaign, Carney identified China as a major geopolitical threat and source of foreign interference. His government has since adopted a more accommodating posture, even avoiding a direct answer when asked whether he still regarded Beijing as a threat.

Canada’s decision to allow Chinese electric vehicles into the country at reduced tariff rates shows the risk. Modern electric vehicles are not simply cars. Their cameras, microphones, sensors, software, and remote-update capabilities can collect enormous quantities of data. Washington may restrict Chinese connected vehicles in the United States, but those safeguards weaken if Canada allows large numbers of them into the shared North American market.

That policy could put tens of thousands of Chinese surveillance platforms on American roads, gathering information near military bases, power plants, communications infrastructure, and other sensitive sites.

The physical border creates another vulnerability. The northern frontier no longer deserves its old reputation as strategically irrelevant. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions rose sharply from fiscal year 2022 through fiscal year 2024, although they have since declined under the Trump administration.

The increase showed how easily weak Canadian migration policy can undermine American border enforcement. When the United States tightens its southern border while Canada maintains looser entry policies, the northern frontier becomes an escape valve for foreign nationals seeking unlawful entry.

RELATED: Canadian female, 33, accused of slapping teen girl wearing pro-Trump clothing on NJ boardwalk. Now suspect is in ICE custody.

mirsad sarajlic/iStock/Getty Images

The danger extends beyond illegal immigration. Criminal organizations, foreign agents, and potentially terrorist-linked individuals can exploit a border designed around an older assumption of trust. Fentanyl compounds the threat. Authorities have intercepted Chinese precursor chemicals in Canada and uncovered sophisticated drug “superlabs” north of the border.

The conclusion should be unavoidable: The Canada of the American imagination no longer exists. The old Canada rarely sent toxic smoke across the border. It served as a loyal northern shield — a NATO ally, a NORAD partner, and a dependable member of the Western alliance.

The new Canada is more ambiguous and more dangerous. It remains formally allied and culturally familiar, but it is also increasingly fragmented, increasingly open to commercial ties with American adversaries, and increasingly exposed to hostile foreign influence.

The United States need not treat Canada as an enemy. But we can no longer assume Canada will remain a fully reliable security partner. America once regarded the northern border as its safest frontier. That assumption is precisely what now makes it dangerous. Nobody thought to watch it.

​Illegal immigration, Opinion & analysis, Canada, China, National security, Nato, Border patrol, Fentanyl