If we define intelligence as the capacity of human beings to weave links between what they know and what they feel, transforming the understanding of the world into empathy, creativity, and beauty, it is evident that we would like our rulers to have a good dose of it. But we can make it more prosaic and, although etymologically intelligence" means "to read within" or "to choose between", I would ask for no more than a somewhat objective understanding of the world, even if it were without empathy; and if beauty cannot be, I would like it to be replaced at least by rigor and by the will not to cause unnecessary suffering.
For rulers, information is key. Transforming information (sometimes raw and cold) into useful knowledge to prevent and combat organized crime, terrorism, illicit markets, etc., is something I have practiced and aspire for all rulers to do. It does not consist of staying on the surface, but of delving into all the information we have before making difficult decisions.
I confess to my dear readers that I thought that the decades and decades of information and knowledge accumulated in the different federal agencies and organizations of the United States would be capable of containing the fury of ignorant egomaniacs eager for greatness obtained by force. I thought that accumulated intelligence could create in these characters at least the doubts necessary to prevent the great blunders that are putting the world in danger and, on top of that, are harming the interests of Americans.
What has happened is that for Trump and the clique around him, who boast about what is actually dehumanized cretinism, more than 70 Pentagon officials and thousands of professionals from federal agencies related to security, health, and science have been removed from analytical and command tasks. The latest victim has been the independent council that oversees the National Science Foundation.
All those who have tried to maintain the model in which information analysis is the basis for crucial decisions for world security have been dishonorably dismissed, labeled as cowards, and replaced by puppets who will please the boss hoping for a reward. Some, like the chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, they have tried to send to court when the coercive action of the mob boss did not work.
Now there is no one left around Trump who understands the limits of government action. No one contradicts him and he decides thinking about his businesses. He is not bothered by chaos nor does he seek coherence. Violent environments make him feel invincible because he knows he commands the most powerful army in the world. Furthermore, in the last year and a half, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sharply increased its staff with recruits who are gun fanatics and blind followers of MAGA. There are few more dangerous decisions than allowing the discretionary action of uniformed and armed forces.
This drift, devoid of any analysis of limits, has come to provoke a controversy between Trump and the AI company Anthropic, which had to recall that its products required human surveillance to establish ethical limits and prevent the autonomous destructive action of weapons equipped with software of great autonomy and destructive power. The arms company had to publicly state that in conscience it could not sell a product if there were no limitation clauses in its use in the contract. Trump has found another company, OpenAI, which has agreed to deliver, to a Pentagon decapitated of intelligence, destructive tools without ethical limits. The president, driven mad, gave the order to expel Anthropic from all contractual ties with the federal administration of the United States. Never has a president of the United States commanded such a powerful army, and never has the United States army had a more questioned chief of staff and a Pentagon more devoid of discernment.
Violence is never the way, and the leaders of States all over the world do well to condemn attempts to attack the person of Donald Trump. Those who attack him, moreover, must realize that they only succeed in him playing more stridently the role of a false war hero.
Milan Kundera wrote: "He who wants to climb higher and higher must remember that one day he will be overcome by vertigo." But what happens if it is a person who does not know what vertigo is? What harm can right-wing extremists do to institutions, in the United States and in our own country?
