Freedom Overestimates Its Enemies

A consistent theme in American history is people overestimating the strength of democracy’s enemies and underestimating their own.

Maybe it’s because no one sees democracy as strength. It looks bureaucratic. It moves slowly. Requiring something approaching consensus for major change is like that. Much easier to just go around breaking stuff. It sure looks effective.

Americans overestimated British strength during our Revolution and still do. The history we’re taught, that we were constantly on the ropes, about to collapse, just wasn’t true. All you need do is read a single British history of the period to know this. It reads like an American history of Vietnam, expeditions sent out to hold cities while the countryside makes victory impossible. Ken Burns was right about this.

We’ve continued to overestimate freedom’s enemies from that day to this. The Founders were deathly afraid of French might before Napoleon, and of Britain’s navy in 1812. Northerners were constantly fretting that the Confederacy was about to win, when its defeat was inevitable. Teddy Roosevelt thought he won a great victory at San Juan Hill. It was a cakewalk, and it wasn’t even on that hill.

Germany was beatable. Japan was beatable. The Soviet Union was eminently beatable. Dictators only seem unbeatable. It’s what they do.

But here’s what you don’t know. Putin is beatable, and Trump is beatable. For the same reason.

What AI Does Not Know

Much of this misunderstanding takes place against the backdrop of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is just a new computer technology that can replicate what computers have always done in new ways. There’s no creativity here. An AI can’t ask questions.

An AI program can be great at finding bugs in code, but it also creates bugs in quantity. This has huge implications for how we use AI, implications that will make Alex Karp scream. It means AI’s best use is in finding new work for people to do, and while that work may involve an AI, it must in the end be done by people. Tech companies are already realizing this and hiring people again. An AI has no creativity. It can’t ask questions. It’s like every suck-up toady in every dumb story you’ve ever read.

AI is a sidekick, not a lead character. It’s Porky Pig, not Daffy Duck. It’s Daffy Duck, not Bugs Bunny. In the end it’s Elmer Fudd. Such characters move the story along, but they’re never what the story is about. AI is an antagonist, not a protagonist. We’re the protagonists. We always were. Tell Alex Karp to stuff that in his pipe and smoke it.

What AI does best is what computers have always done best. It analyzes data. The only difference is that it can accept a question in many formats and deliver responses in just as many. You can create a movie with AI. But a human being must write the thing, and another human must convince people to watch it, too.

What Trump Doesn’t Know

We can see this playing out in the markets, but we can also see it playing out on the battlefield.

Everyone knows Trump is a creature of Putin. In 2024, Russia took over the American government and will control it until 2029.

But will it control the Russian government then? Not necessarily.

When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, most assumed this would end up like our Civil War, with the plucky Ukrainians eventually ground down the way Grant won Richmond and Sherman won Atlanta. But we’re now as far into the computer era as they were the industrial era. What matters is how you use the new tools, not how many tanks or planes you have.

Ukraine begged Biden for support back then and we gave it, grudgingly. Four years later, it’s Trump who must ask Ukraine for support, because you can’t win shooting down thousand-dollar drones with million-dollar missiles. Israel has been beating its enemies consistently throughout this period for the same reason. In the process it has become the leader in the technologies that win wars. It now has a rival there, in Ukraine.

This is Trump’s big mistake, and Alex Karp’s as well. They believe that because they have great tools their victory is inevitable, over Iran and over democracy. But it’s how you use computerized tools, it’s how creative your people are, that determines victory today,

Back home, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta is making the same mistake, throwing money at AI “stars” rather than collaborating alongside those with true creativity. This was always going to be a war among startups. Startups “think different.” They don’t just hire talent. They collaborate, using a mission-oriented approach. When things break down, their best people leave to create the next start-up, and the one after that.