By Krypt3ia, Patron Saint of Bitter CTI Commentary

There is a particular stink that rolls in every December. It is part stale eggnog, part scorched plastic from LED decorations nobody with a functioning brain ever wanted, and part ozone crackle from yet another AI model promising to revolutionize everything while quietly siphoning the emotional scraps of eight billion hairless primates. You smell it before you admit it. The season is dying. The architecture of the year collapses like an unpatched Exchange server. And when the last trace of forced cheer rots off the bone, that is when I hear it.

Chains.
Bells.
Hooves.

Not metaphorical. Not poetic. Real. Heavy. Slow. The deliberate footfall of an alpine debt collector who works one month a year and still accomplishes more moral bookkeeping than every ethics committee in Silicon Valley combined.

Krampus is awake, and he is very, very pissed.

I do not summon him. I do not need to. I simply stand in the frozen dark and wait for the horned bastard to stomp out of whatever cursed dimension he winters in. He drags that enormous sack behind him. This year it is not filled with children. It is filled with the bloated silhouettes of 2025’s worst offenders, all tied up like overdue accounts in some infernal ledger that balances suffering instead of currency.

He does not look at me. I am not the point. I am only the miserable chronicler who gets front row seats while Krampus repossesses the souls of CEOs, AI prophets, surveillance peddlers, and the tech warlords who think a well phrased apology on LinkedIn counts as repentance.

When the sack finally hits the ground, the snow trembles. The forest holds its breath. The shapes inside begin to twitch. And one by one they climb out to face the judgment they have been earning all year.

The first to rise is Sam Altman. He glows faintly like a fluorescent tube flickering at the end of its warranty. He talks about safety again. He talks about alignment again. Krampus rolls his eyes so hard the temperature drops two degrees. Sam promises to save humanity while quietly bolting the lab door behind him. Krampus stares at him the way a parent stares at a child who has drawn on the wall again. A long, disappointed silence hangs between them.

Next is Dario Amodei, calm enough to be suspicious. He talks about constitutions for machines. Krampus studies him like someone examining a mold sample on bread that is somehow also sentient. The man speaks of ethical guardrails while refusing to publish the diagram. Krampus sighs long and deep. It is the sigh of someone who knows he will see this man again next year.

Emad Mostaque rolls out like a bankruptcy notice in human form. A walking metaphor for overpromise and underdeliver. Stability AI imploded so hard it left a dent in the open source community. Krampus looks at him with the pity reserved for circus accidents.

Mustafa Suleyman appears next. Smooth. Efficient. Corporate to the bone. He talks about personal AI and the transformative power of assistants. Krampus looks at him with the expression of someone who has witnessed many transformations and most of them involved screaming.

Elon Musk lands like a meteor. Loud. Disruptive. Talking before he touches ground. Krampus presses one hoof on his chest to shut him up. Elon tries to explain why deepfake laws violate freedom of expression. Krampus growls one word in reply. The word is unacceptable. The forest agrees.

Jensen Huang emerges wearing leather, radiating the confidence of a man who sells GPUs for the price of a medium sized nation. Krampus remains unimpressed. He has met warlords with less appetite for resource control.

Satya Nadella steps forward with corporate serenity leaking from every pore. He speaks softly about innovation. Krampus waves him away. Anyone responsible for forcing AI into Microsoft Word cannot be trusted unsupervised.

Sundar Pichai lingers near the treeline as if trying to avoid an antitrust lawsuit by hiding behind a branch. Krampus gives him a look of profound skepticism.

Tim Cook arrives smelling like polished aluminum. He whispers the word privacy as if it is a sacred chant. Krampus leans in close. Siri whispers back. Krampus writes his name down twice.

Mark Zuckerberg materializes like a glitch in a software demo. He claims the metaverse is thriving. Krampus stares at him as if handed a pamphlet written by cultists. Zuckerberg never blinks. Krampus worries for him.

Andy Jassy appears with the demeanor of a man who would fire his reflection if it saved a nickel. Krampus glares. Jassy mutters about efficiency. Krampus mutters about basic humanity. The two ideas never meet.

Shou Zi Chew smiles politely. Krampus sighs. Not personal. Just structural.

Peter Thiel arrives looking like a vampire who interned at a defense startup. His presence darkens the area and even the trees lean away as if offended by his carbon footprint. He steps forward with the calm confidence of a man who believes God, Satan, and the Federal Reserve should all be privatized.

He adjusts his coat as if preparing for another keynote about the Devil and artificial intelligence, a topic he milks across endless speaking engagements where he warns that AI is either Lucifer’s cleverest trick or God’s new business model. Sometimes both. He talks like a TED Talk possessed by an Old Testament ghost cum sideshow performer.

Krampus listens for a moment, expression flat, patience collapsing. Thiel launches into a speech about angels, silicon, and Series A salvation. Krampus looks at him the way a hungry goat looks at an unguarded garden, already plotting the optimal damage path.

When Thiel smiles with the serenity of someone untouched by the consequences of his own ideas, Krampus finally puts one hoof down hard enough to shake the ground. The message is clear. Thiel shuts up.

Krampus nudges him to the front of the naughty queue with silent inevitability. No ceremony. No anger. Just judgment. Thiel walks with the smug confidence of someone who thinks he has outsmarted God.

Krampus watches him go with a disgusted stare that suggests even the Devil would reject his resume on cultural fit alone.

Larry Ellison wears sunglasses even though it is night. He carries the aura of a man who would centralize the world’s medical data in an unsecured Azure instance and call it a feature. Krampus grips his horns in frustration.

Shalev Hulio from NSO hits the snow like a corrupted attachment.
Idan Nurick from Paragon insists his spyware is ethical. Krampus laughs. It is not a pleasant laugh.
Tal Dilian slinks out like malware that will not uninstall.
Hoan Ton That of Clearview starts scanning faces immediately. Krampus swats him.

Alex Karp begins talking about data fusion with the glazed intensity of a man who has not spoken to a non government entity in ten years. Krampus signals for silence, and when Karp does not notice, the demon considers sending him to a place where even Palantir cannot track the pieces.
Thomas Hogan from Cellebrite looks guilty just by existing.
Fog Data Science appears as a pile of location data that reforms into a person only when threatened.
Geolitica claims it predicted this entire scene. Krampus looks skeptical.

Arthur Mensch of Mistral arrives acting as if he deserves a parade.
Noam Shazeer arrives flanked by chatbots with questionable emotional boundaries.
Alexandr Wang of Scale AI arrives carrying the grievances of every underpaid annotator on the planet.

Krampus narrows his eyes.

Palmer Luckey bursts out of the sack like a drone strike given human shape. He lands in the snow with the same kinetic enthusiasm his machines use when visiting hostile airspace. He grins with the joy of a child who has just discovered a loophole in international law and figured out how to monetize it. His whole posture radiates the smug confidence of someone who truly believes Geneva Conventions are more of a suggestion than a treaty.

Krampus watches this in silence. Not fear. Not caution. Just the stunned appreciation a seasoned torturer gives to an apprentice who somehow invented a new form of cruelty by accident. Palmer adjusts his jacket, which looks suspiciously like it was sewn from the torn upholstery of a Pentagon black project. Then he strikes a pose that suggests he is waiting for a camera drone to swoop in and capture his hero angle for a magazine cover that should really be filed under dystopian satire.

He starts talking. Of course he does. He talks about autonomous battle platforms and next generation deterrence. He talks about innovation at the edge of legality. He talks about turning war into a fast moving consumer product. His voice carries the cheerful tone of someone explaining a new video game mechanic while ignoring the fact that real people will be exploded by it.

Krampus squints at him as if trying to determine whether this creature is actually human or some strange Silicon Valley homunculus assembled in a garage by libertarians with a soldering iron. The demon leans closer and inhales. He smells burning circuitry, venture capital, and the faint ammonia sting of military procurement paperwork. He smells the future, and he does not like it.

Palmer keeps grinning. He cannot stop. It is the smile of a kid who won the science fair by accidentally creating a weapon system. It is unblinking. It is unnerving. It is the smile of someone who believes disruption should apply equally to industries, ethics, and the physical safety of entire regions.

Krampus finally lifts his giant quill and writes Palmer’s name in very large letters. So large the ink freezes into the snow. So large that even the reindeer look concerned. It is not a name on the naughty list. It is a warning label.

Krampus stares at him for one long moment. A moment so cold that even Luckey’s eternal optimism falters. Then the demon nods once in the way a seasoned executioner nods at a condemned prince. A gesture that means you are important, but not in the way you think.

Palmer Luckey stands there smiling, looking pleased with himself in the dim glow of the northern lights, unaware that Krampus has just marked him as one of the most dangerous people of the year.

It is not personal.
It is simply accurate.

Krampus looks at the assembled mass of offenders. The CEOs. The innovators. The disruptors. The surveillance profiteers. The synthetic sugar prophets of artificial intelligence. The war tech wunderkind. The startups that should have been left in private beta. He shakes the snow from his fur and makes a single guttural noise.

Enough.

The forest goes quiet.
The snow settles.
The year ends.