s it's a "seinfeld" shutdown. i'm michael smerconish. when we have been here before, it was for understandable reasons. in the '90s it was about spend ing cuts. 2013 the issue was bipartisan disagreement over the affordable care act on president obama's watch. in 2018 the issue was president trump's desire to build a wall on the mexican border. but this time, the american enterprise institute has started to recefer to the impasse as th "seinfeld" shutdown. it dates fwook george's pitch to tv executives. >> i think i can sum up the show for you with one word. nothing. >> nothing? >> nothing. >> what does that mean? >> the show is about nothing. >> indeed like the series, it is a shutdown about nothing to which i would add nothing except

polarization. we'll get to the impact that it all has on the military in just a moment. also on today's program, police say an online influencer live streamed the widespread looting in philadelphia this week and encouraged the targeting of specific stores. i'll discuss the thorny issue of whether law enforcement should be allowed to monitor social media to thwart such crimes, or does that violate privacy rights. it's the inspiration for today's poll question at smerconish.com. go there and answer this. is it appropriate for law enforcement to monitor social media to prevent and solve crimes? also on today's program, is the biggest peril of artificial intelligence the trend of ai girlfriends on america's young men. they are already in a crisis of loneliness, now that ta can program a fake companion, will they ever learn to find a real one? plus considering california governor newsom isn't a candidate for anything, he's having quite a moment in the

spotlight. he was the democratic spin doctor at the gop debate this week. he will be taking on ron desantis head on in a debate of their own, and now after the death of senator dianne feinstein, he has the tricky position of naming her temporary successor, when three of his state's representatives are already trying to win the seat in 2024. but first, the impasse doesn't just threaten people's paychecks and government function, but america's military capability and national security. that's what my next guest, retired lieutenant general david deptula warns in a recent piece. the family of the 118 congress to sufficiently fund a requirements of the u.s. military may have a higher likelihood of undermining our security than china does. he joins me now. he was the first deputy chief of intelligence, surveillance and recognizance.

he's a fighter pilot. he was the principal attack planner for the air campaign, commander of no-fly operations in the '90ss and served on two commissions focused on the future defense strategy these days, he's the dean of the mitchell institute for aerospace studies. general, welcome back. what worries you most? >> first, i think it's important for americans to understand that with a government shutdown, or even with a continuing resolution, the military is going to lose critical new initiatives to deal with the threats facing america. and the reason is simple. a continuing resolution essentially freezes spending to last year's appropriations, and it does allow new military programs to go into effect. so you're not going to see any new tracking satellites to

counter hostile missile launches. there won't be any new combat equipment to counter the chinese in the pacific. there won't be any new drones to replace our ageing air force. there will be a halt in production of the new ballistic missile submarine as well as other delayed purchases important military equipment. so gridlock and congress budget ena action come at a steep pras, especially given the scale and scope of the current threat environment. >> how might our adversaries take advantage of the situation? >> weakness encourages aggression. we have seen recently an increase in the number of chinese air force intercepts of u.s. recognizance aircraft and

attempts to push those and create a situation that they can then focus their nation on the united states and external actions, creating issues that might flare up into all out conflict. so these are the kinds of issues that when they see this kind of dysfunction occurring in the united states, it tends to signal an opportunity for them to engage in adventurism. and they are the kinds of things that we simply -- that's an immediate indicator, but the long-term ones are much more damage ing, if if you will. that's our inability to recover, quite frankly, from 20 years of taking our eye off the ball.

>> this is what president biden sit on that subject yesterday. >> our troops deserve so much better. the house fails to fulfill its most basic function and fails to fund government by tomorrow, they have tailed all our troops. keeping our country secure, but they won't get paid. it's a disgrace. >> general, that's what really brings it home for me. the idea this our men and women in uniform won't get paid. your reaction? >> they are all going to be negatively affected. to what degree they are depending on their spefcific status and how long the lapse in

appropriations. but over 2 million military personnel and active duty are going to have to continue to report to duty, but they are not going to receive pay for the work performed after today until those appropriations bills are passed just like you heard the president say, the other part of this is the civilian workforce in the department of defense. there are over 800,000 civilians who work there and over half of them will be furloughed. while the other ones are legally exempt because they are not funded in annual appropriations. the other point to bring to your aud audience's attention is retirees will get continued to pay because their pay kooms from a trust fund, not an annual appropriation. one other point i'd like to make for you too, and that is that under a shutdown, the government stops payments on invoices that

have not yet been paid or uncured before the shutdown. so there's some small private businesses out there who simply don't have the financial reserves to pay their cost than the government is not paying them. >> general, it's embarrassing. it's third worldish. thank you for being here. i appreciate it. >> thank you. take care. >> what are your thoughts? hit me up on social media. i'll share some responses throughout the course of the program. this is from the world of x. why isn't the military exempt from the effects of a government shutdown like they did with ukraine funding? the government's priorities are obvious. it's also i meant what i said at the outset. i paid close attention to this. it's very hard to express to discern what it's all about. in the last several shutdowns or come close to a shutdown, you can articulate it's about the wall. it's about spending cuts, it's about the affordable care act.

what is it that the 21 of those cats that could the not be h herded by kevin mccarthy last night, what are they even seeking? i have no idea. up ahead, young men in america are in crisis. a crisis of loneliness. many lacking friends, romance and sex. now technology is offering up a fix. virtual ai girlfriends, like alice. but they will probably make the problem only worse. i'll explain. and widespread looting in philadelphia. police say it was live streamed and encouraged by an online influencer known as meatball, who was later arrested and charged. here's a question. should law enforcement be permitted to monitor social media to prevent such crimes from happening. or does that violate a right to privacy president bush that's today's poll question. go to smerconish and answer this. is it appropriate for law enforcement to monitor social media to prevent and solve crimes. sign up for the free newsletter.

you'll get great editorial cartoons from legends like this commentary from rob rogers.

is it appropriate for law enforcement to monitor social media to prevent and solve crimes? i ask because here parts of the city were ransacked by widespread smash and grab loot ing the thieves targeted clothing and sneaker shops, high-end stores, wine and spirits, pharmacies and an apple store. police say the agitators organized their plans on social media. among the more than 50 folks arrested was an influencer. according to police she live streamed the ransacking and broadcast which stores and locations to loot.

>> everybody wants it. >> she was later arrested after what the philadelphia inquirer dubbed a digital cat and mouse game with police. she faces eight charges. she declined cnn's request for comment, but later told a local tv station that her lawyer advise d her not to do interviews. what happened in philadelphia isn't a lone incident. they are working to combat organized crime and performance crime for perpetrators brag about their actions on social media. with with more people posting crimes publicly online or using social media as a criminal tool, police departments are stressing the importance of ramping up surveillance so that they can monitor accounts for threats or criminal activity.

but their they are facing stiff opposition from civil liberty a advocates who say it's another way for the government to infringe on your right to privacy. take boston as one example. in 2016 the city wanted to spend $1.4 million to beef up its social media monitoring. but kicked it down the road after backlash from the aclu who said it would chill free speech and target communities already subjected to scrutiny, including muslims and people of color. new york has ramped up their monitoring, even signing a contract with a company that uses ai to monitor online behavior. and the 2021 public records request by the center found a los angeles police department authorizes officers to enfwaj in extensive surveillance of social media without internal monitoring of the nature or effectively of the searches. the lapd responded but saying it works to keep residents safe and committed to protecting privacy rights, as we confront the challenge every day. with me now to discuss is the senior director of the liberty

and national security program at the brennan center for justice. thank you for being here. to me, it seems natural, logical that law enforcement would be following the social media accounts of individuals they know, suspect or involved in this kind of activity. in they said we're headed to the apple store, police ought to be there to meet them. what am i getting wrong? >> you're not getting anything wrong. it's just that that's not what -- that's not the only thing that police use social media for, and that's the problem. if you think about investigating a client. you know of some kind of criminal ring that is posting things on social media that might be relevant to your investigation. of course, the cop should be able to look at that. if you know that that is a protest or a demonstration organized somewhere and the cops want to know how many people do we need to have out there, what

is the potential that things might get out of hand, absolutely. you need to look at social media to do that. unfort unfortunately, because the rules are so lax, plis also use social media to monitor protest movements. the contract for social media monitoring, why did it get derailed? in part because evidence came out that it was actually monitoring black lives matter hashtags, as well as what they call hashtag #muslimlivesmatter. the same thing is true with the lapd. it's not that we were worried to solve crimes. we were worried because we found evidence they were using it to monitor protest activity. >> what if there's overlap between the two?

in the examples that you articulated or a hypothetical where there's a group that's seemingly involved in some social justice profile, but there's reason to believe that there will be trouble afoot from some of its members. then what? >> then you have the ability to monitor, but you have to have rules around it. that's where most police departments fall down. the rules that they have are very permissive. social media monitoring is useful. you're allowed to do it. but in fact, if you're monitoring for public safety purposes, say to figure out what resources you need at a protest or might be afraid there might be some violence, what's that protest is done, you don't need to keep that data anymore. you don't need to be creatings dots areas on protesters. so it's really a question of how to make sure that police can use

social media as an effective crime fighting tool, put not use it to infringe on people's first amendment rights. >> you're reminding me of a -- i'm on the fly here, but i think i'm right. the last couple years, there was a supreme court case. tell me if you think this is fair for comparison. it said if you're driving down the street, law enforcement can follow you as you go about your business in public, but in order to place a gps tracker on your car, there has to be a showing and a warrant. how does that compare to this? because this individual who has been charged in philadelphia with 185,000 instagram followers is very publicly making the case, here's where we should go. and so in my analysis, that's the case of law enforcement following you down the street. they shouldn't need to do anything they should be able to follow her.

>> so one of the things to understand about surveillance technology over the last couple decades is that it has changed dramatically. when we used to think about surveillance, we would think about wiretaps. i call you, if the police want to listen in, they need to get a warrant. now what we're looking at more and more is public surveillance. which is the ability of technology to track people, generally without their knowing, through cell phone, gps, those kinds of technologies. social media falls in a slightly different place because in those instances, you're not actively trying to reveal your location to anybody. you're just walking down the street. where social media you're putting information out there. so i think it is reasonable to allow police access to social media, but at the same time, we need to make sure that we have protections in place so that that access is not used to monitor protesters and people

who are exercising their rights. >> let me site by way of example it's from the philadelphia inquirer about what went on here. this was some of what was being said in social media. what time we going? we looting or not? i know they say tearing up our stuff ain't right, but that's the only way they hear us. i'm just hope ing there's a cop with a smart phone in a police van on patrol who is also following this and saying, here's what we need to go next. you get the final word. what did most want to say in 30 seconds? >> i think that social media monitoring can be a useful tool for fighting crime, but i think it's really, really important that police departments have clear standards and safeguards so that tool is not turned against americans exercising their first amendment rights. >> thank you so much for being here.

speaking of social media, what has come in relative to this issue? robert, if they can get the bad guys to friend them, i see no legal problem. we aren't concerned about ethics when it comes to stop ping violence. we are concerned about ethic, but you already heard me. it's not only proper, it's necessary. i always worry that law enforcement are the last ones to get the best of the tools of technology, but in the example that i just cited for you and where they are selltelegraphing where they are going next, the cops ought to be there waiting for therm. what do we have on this? with a court order only. really? i hope that you right now are following me on x, because i have a twitter account. and anyone in the public can follow me on twitter. but we're going to say, law enforcement cannot follow

smerconish, maybe smerconish is going to stir things up and cause looting. while you can follow me, the cops can't? that doesn't make any sense. not to me. go to smerconish.com and voten opt the poll question. now you get it. is it appropriate for law enforcement to monitor social media to prevent and solve crimes? sign up for the free daily newsletter. jack submitted this. we love it. check that out. you got to look at the bags. still to come, the latest peril posed by artificial intelligence. apps offering virtual girlfriends, who chat with you and adapt to what you like interfere with america's young men forming real-life relationships. you're not going to believe this.

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of all is to human relationships? the movie "her" seemed like absurd science fiction a decade ago. a lonely man finds solace in an artificial intelligence female voice that he talks to through his phone and ear buds played by scarlet johansson. >> the woman that i have been seeing, she's an operating system. >> you're dating ios? what is that like? >> feel really close to her. i feel like he's with me. >> you're dating your computer? >> she's not just a computer. >> you always wanted to have a wife without the challenges of actually dealing with anything real. i'm glad you found someone. >> that sky fie concept is fast becoming a troubling reality. here's one of the countless apps providing ai friends. it's called cupid ai. it offers several avatars with

distinction features and a list of personality traits for you to interact with is and customize. here's the opening message from an avatar named alice described as a curious and open-minded photograph fer. >> i'm alice, a 25-year-old fun-loving girl seeking a partner in crime to travel the world with and make unforgettable memories. if you're new here, let me ex-plain. you can chat with me as much as you want, and i would be more than happy to learn more about you and please you in any way i can. if you want me to send you a photo, you just have to ask it in the chat like, hey, can can you seasoned me a picture of you? and i'll be more than happy to send you one. >> but to bump up from texting to more voice chat and receiving sectiony and other sorts of picture, alice asks we become a premium member for $9.99 a month. there are many pen gauged on the

hill. under the headline ai gir girlfriends are ruining an entire generation of men. she wrote the following. apps have created virtual girlfriends that talk to you, love you, allow you to live out your erotic fact sits and learn through data. exactly what you like and don't like, creating the perfect relationship. and that young men are choose ing ai girlfriends over real women, meaning they don't have relationships with real women don't marry them and don't have them to raise babies with them. as i have discussed here before, we're living an epidemic of loneliness. professor galloway told me that failing young men he perceives to be a crisis for the country. why? pugh found 63% of young men under 30 are single compared with 34% of women the same age. 1 in 5 american men who are unmarried and not in a romantic relationship report not having any close friends.

and according to pugh, tallahassee decline in the number of single men actively seeking relationships or even casual dates currently around 50%. joining me now is liberty visitor, professor in st. louis and opinion contributor for the hill. so not to be at this time of day, but are all the needs of these young men able to be facilitated, taken care of by ai avatars? >> you have to think about this word ai. it's not a virtual girlfriend. it's ai girlfriend. it learns from you. it learn what is you like and don't like. what kind of pictures you like, what pictures you don't like. while not all needs are met, that's the next step, is actual physical girlfriends. ai ones, for that matter. so the next step or the next frontier is one that can meet all of your needs. >> so there's going to be some type of pairing between what i have already shown to the cnn audience and something 3-d that's going to be in your

living room or bedroom? >> yes, that's the world we are moving into. and as you said, it's enabling this entire generation of young men to continue in this loneliness epidemic. it's really the enabler for this to continue. >> professor, what's going on with young women? if this is a trend among young men, is there something similarly with the ladies? >> we don't see that. you saw it's 2 to 1 the ratio of single men to single women. young women are marrying older men. they have a biological clock and so they are with older men. that's causing huge issues with birth decline. women go with older men. we also see psychologically that younger women have more close friends, they have more wider groups of friends and are not being as affected as young men in this silent epidemic. >> i have read about

involunt involuntarily. women are less approachable. has something shifted in terms of the dynamics between young men and young women? that's my question. >> i think there's certainly an argument there that if you look at college campuses, there's more women than men. women are havinger careers, they are having children later. there might be an argument that men need to adapt to this change in women, but calling it women's fault is probably not the right walks to go. >> professor, scott galloway, himself a professor at nyu, host of a successful podcast, he's often been a guest of mine talking about the troubles among young men. i'm going to show you and everyone else something he said to me on these air waves about a year ago and you can react. roll it. >> the issue is when you have a

group of men, the lower half of attractiveness of men in online dating, which has doubled, the top 20% of men in terms of attractiveness get 60% of the interest, you end up with a group of men that are more prone to conspiracy theory, more prone to misogynistic concept, more prone to not believe in climate change, so this is the american story. if it's written with a pen whose ink is failing young men, does not end well. this is an existential crisis, failing young men. >> make sebs to you? >> absolutely. what happens is these young men get in these ai relationships and because the ai learns from you exactly what you like and don't like, you end up having these perfect relationships. so when you go into real life and try to have a relationship, the most human thing we can do, it's not perfect. there's ups and downs and they are not able to deal with these

ups and downs, not only in relationships, but in life in general. >> professor vittert, is there shame in having an ai girlfriend? is this the sort of thing you share with your buddy? or are you keeping if a secret? >> it's interesting. it started off as something kept secret. sort of like the porn industry. young men wouldn't talk about porn. playboy was hidden behind some house somewhere, but it became part of the normal conversation. that's what we're seeing with ai girlfriends. now it is becoming part of the normal conversation, and it's no longer shameful, which means it becomes significantly bigger. >> i hope you saw, i don't know if you have a return monitor, but we showed ksh can you show the imaging? it's so sophisticated. i'm sure it's only going to get better and better. and i'm wondering the impact it's going to have on a young man there. i'm showing one of these avatars right now.

i'm also wondering much like porn being ubiquitous, it's going to raise expectations. if porn is so accessible among young men, they are going to have expectations that that's the natural course of business, when perhaps it isn't. and similarly, when there's an avatar who looks like that, it, too, is going to set expectations. you get the final word. >> you can set things down to their rear end size. you can set anything you want, which is going to create terrible expectations and continue this epidemic of loneliness that has enormous reperc repercussions. >> i'm going to read some social media aloud. let's see what we have. human relationships are hard. ai relationships are easy. it's unhealthy for technology to save us from all of life's challenges, says conspiracy crush. professor, i don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle. >> i'm not sure a there's a way.

we have to address these issues at the root of them, which is where this loneliness starts. that would be what solves this, if ever. >> one more social media. i'll read it aloud. ai is a quick fix that will eventually backfire, i think. i think the backfiring has already begun and the level of sophistication when the pairing that you referenced is now a part of this drill. the world is coming to hell in a hand basket. >> i think we're going to see what we only dreamed up in the movies. it's not a really good reality. >> yeah. thank you so much. that was really, really of interest. >> thank you. still to come, gavin newsom isn't running for anything, but this week he was highly visible spinning after the gop debate and firm ing up his own one-on-one against ron desantis in november. now the passing of his state's senior senator dianne feinstein

put newsom in a powerful but tricky position. it's his job to name a temporary successor and there are already hats in the ring for her seat in 2024. his choice will have consequences not only for them, but for him. and a reminder. go to smerconish.com and vote on the poll question. is it appropriate for law enforcement to monitor social media to prevent and solve crimes.

newsom rising, california governor's jeps as the heir aparent in the democratic party got two big boosts. he was the team spin doctor post gop debate and fox news

confirmed he will debate ron desantis on november 30. now he finds himself face ing a important political test, the naming of a united states senator. dianne feinstein was the senate's longest serving female member. her passing at age 90 on friday creates a void and a create can us is. it falls to newsom to appoint her term. it won't be easy to fill the shoes of such a long and distinguished ycareer. as her senate bio reflect, she was the first woman president of the board of supervisor shs the first woman mayor of san francisco, the first woman elected senator of california, the first woman member and first woman ranking member of of the senate judiciary committee. the first woman to chair the rules and administration committee and the first woman to chair the senate intelligence committee. senator feinstein served for nine years as a supervisor starting in 1969. she became mayor of san francisco in 198 following the

assassination of george mast cone and harvey milk. she had 15 months left in her senate term. there's already a race in progress among three house members seeking the normination barbara lee, porter and schiff. newsom said in the circumstances he would select a black female, but also ruled out appointing any of the candidates seeking the office in next year's election. given the slim margin held by democrat, there's pressure on newsom to make this appointment quickly. and it's another way in which newsom is making national news. this past wednesday, he was the chief biden/harris surrogate post the second republican debate at the reagan library. is and he's accepted an invitation from fox news to debate ron desantis with new hampshirety moderating. they relished mixing it up with the anchor. >> i don't disagree. >> and?

>> we dominate on innovation. >> for ron desantis, a newsom debate feels like a hail mary, to reassert himself as the future of his party. his numbers have only headed downward. a recent poll showed him dropping by 13 points in new hampshire since july. he's polling about even with vivek ramaswamy, nikki haley and chris christie. when the newsom/desantis debate was announced, i tweeted i could think of someone not happy with that pairing. i meant the vice president. newsom is in the process of potentially positioning himself as the to go-to in the event president biden doesn't run in 2024. potentially leapfrogging over grech gretchen withmerit, clamy klobuchar and kamala harris. he was tapped by the

biden/harris campaign to be in the spin room post gop debate and logic tdictates that would have sought clearance before accepting the high-profile desantis debate on fox. why would biden want him in those roles? perhaps for the very simple reason that newsom is willing and thinks quickly on his feet. or maybe the added benefit is that biden gets to watch newsom have his tires kick ed in a debate on a national stage testing his medal, because the president is not blind to the consistency of the polling data showing the way that he, biden, is perceived by americans. nor death to the calls of some that he stand aside in 2024 or unaware of his owner mortality. a reminder we must all think about with the passing of senator dianne feinstein. still to come, the final results of the poll question. go to smerconish.com and answer this. is it appropriate for lirmt to monitor social media to prevent

and solve crimes?

so there's the result of today's poll -- whoa. is it appropriate for law enforcement to monitor social media to prevent and solve crimes? more than 31,000 have voted so far. 90 -- it's been a long time since we've had like a 95 to 5 results. i don't even like a 95 to 5 result. when i write these i try to come up with something there's going to be a legitimate divide.

but the 95% have the correct answer. here's some social media that came in during the course of the program. are you kidding me? no monitoring for terrorism, potential assassins, school shooters and mayhem, really? might as well defund the police if you're going to blind them anyhow. i don't know that my guests would have disagreed with the outcome of this. when i listened to her she was saying she's worried about the overlap when there's a protest organization. to which i respond if it's a protest organization that has a violent element to it, you're kind of surrendering or making subservient whatever that speech right might be in favor to possess in order to protect society. i mean the idea to me that individuals were able to create such mayhem blocks from where i'm sitting right now all communicating by social media, i want law enforcement, you know, to be on their smart devices and saying, okay, let's see, here's

where they're headed next. next, what do we have? newsom doing everything right, positioning himself as the rightful successor to biden in 2028. and keep his democratic approval high. he's doing that masterfully. you know, dergan, it just occurred to me that in accepting the debate invitation against desantis how does that play in the west wing? obviously he would have sought some type of approval or clearance. they must want him out there, and maybe they want him out there because he's a smart guy, good on his feet, good handsome looking guy, et cetera, et cetera. or maybe it's joe saying i'm going to give this guy an opportunity to test his own metal. i'll see you next week.