Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“On October 30, 1938 a very young Orson Welles pulled a clever stunt. He masterminded a live radio dramatization of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, presented as if CBS was actually reporting on a Martian invasion. Although the program occasionally notified listeners that it was a dramatic presentation, not news, thousands of Americans panicked, packing churches, fleeing their homes, and jamming switchboards. Last weekend Citrini Research released a report — on Substack! — titled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. The report, which rapidly went viral, laid out a scenario for economic and financial chaos caused by AI, written as if it were a retrospective published after the dire developments it projected. … There are two distinct questions about the huge reaction to a report that didn’t actually contain any news.” (02/26/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/when-extraterrestrials-attacked-the