Artist Kyle McDonald Uses Private Jets to Predict Emergencies

Key Points:

• Kyle McDonald, a programmer and artist in Los Angeles, created the Apocalypse Early Warning System, a website that tracks private jet activity and assigns an "emergency level" to their movements, based on the idea that billionaires might receive early warnings of major global catastrophes.
• The system uses a network of radio receivers to monitor aircraft signals, filtering for private and charter jets, and compares current flight activity to historical data to detect unusual spikes, which McDonald associates with potential crises.
• McDonald’s work highlights concerns about information access and trust in an era of misinformation, suggesting that elites like billionaires may have privileged knowledge that the general public lacks.
• Beyond jet tracking, McDonald has developed projects to expose hidden surveillance patterns, such as unmasking police helicopter identities and using facial recognition to identify law enforcement, which has led to both media attention and personal threats.
• Despite modest earnings from his art and consulting business, McDonald values the creative freedom and social impact of his work over higher-paying traditional tech jobs, and his jet tracker project also generates a small revenue through subscription alerts.