Follow this through, because there is a (surprise?) twist at the end.
Trump wants Ukraine to lose its war with Russia. Whether that’s because Putin wants it, or because it would allow Trump to claim he ended the war, or because he is demonstrating that 5-dimensional statesmanship he is known for, it doesn’t matter. That’s what he wants.
Most Americans, including many Republicans, are on Ukraine’s side. Trump openly helping Russia win might affect Republican votes, even just a little, in the midterm election.
Trump doesn’t care. Here’s why:
Trump plans on neutralizing any voting and election results that go against Republicans. There are many ways this could be done. We don’t know which ones are going to be put into play until the election, but it will happen.
And now, the promised twist. Even if Democrats are in charge of one or both houses of the next Congress in January, that won’t matter to him. If interference with the election fails, he will continue to rule mostly by executive action and order, as he has for two years. With the exception of some big and damaging bills, most of the damage has been from unitary executive governance, that is, from Trump. No change in Congress is going to affect that. Maybe there will be some adverse Supreme Court rulings, but those take a long time, have often gone his way, and most importantly, he plans on ignoring many of the adverse court rulings, even from the highest court.
That’s why he doesn’t care if whatever he says or does, such as helping Russia win, hurts Republicans. Those Republicans matter almost as little as Democrats—even Democrats who might control Congress—in Trump America.
The 20th century gave us two world wars and an atomic bomb, but the most interesting of the Big Events of the century may be the Russian Revolution. An inequitable and unbalanced way of life gave bloody way to abstract enlightened visions of a better world. The particular inequities ended, Russia moved into modern times, but competition for the “right” vision and ineradicable baser human natures seeking power and control led to decades of national and global troubles. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” the Who said.
The Russian Revolution was grounded in a Marxist vision, which was in turn a Christian vision: a community on earth as it is in heaven, a brotherhood of people in which suffering and want would be softened, if not alleviated, by those who have a surplus of comfort and resource. It was Lennon, not Marx, who said, “You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
What went wrong?
What almost always goes wrong is that evolution and revolution are out of sync. It is easy to say that people and society should first evolve for a while, and then at some critical moment, all that’s needed is that next faster-than-evolution event to take it to the next level.
That turns out rarely to be the case.
Evolution is slow, erratic, and always engenders resistance and reaction. The cliché is that people and society fear change, but that is too easy. They fear the unknown. The expression “better the devil you know than the one you don’t” sums it up. It takes a substantial leap—you might say a leap of faith—the walk into a vision rather than remain in a lesser but familiar reality.
Revolution is both an attempt to make evolution more real and to create conditions where that evolution can continue more broadly and forcefully. But, as pointed out with the Russian experience, it doesn’t always work that way. Revolution is conflict, and conflict creates its own set of conditions sometimes antithetical to evolution. “Fighting for peace” is oxymoronic (some would say just plain moronic), but we have had to live through that. (Note the moment in Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant film Dr. Strangelove where the President scolds his arguing advisers, “Stop it. There’s no fighting in the War Room.”)
One of the exceptional examples of evolution and revolution working together is the American Revolution. It is one of the reasons it worked so well. The founders may have been the fathers of our country, but they were the children of the Enlightenment. That multi-faceted evolution—philosophical, political, economic, spiritual—had gone as far as it could go when it hit a wall. They believed that if they could break through, which did mean war, they could establish an enlightened nation. And, to an extent greater or lesser than some might like or expect, they did.
Evolution, or lack of it, is at the heart of some current American problems.
America is heir to two great evolutions, sometimes unrecognized, often distorted. Some of those obstructionists who fight today hark back to the patriots who were mad as hell and wouldn’t take it any more, and so upended a cargo of British tea. Others who claim this is a Christian nation have the idea that if alive today, Jesus would certainly choose to be an American.
Every American in these dynamic times is free to pick the evolution they aspire to. There are plenty to choose from. We do have two very big ones on the menu. If a rabid revolutionary patriot, you might choose to follow the path of a 21st century version of Enlightenment; you might even study the work of those founding Enlightenists—Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, et al.—for guidance. If a committed Christian it’s even easier. No slogging through the Federalist Papers, or even the whole Bible. Just read and read again the words of Jesus—the ones in red type—and consider just how much evolution he was asking for and expecting. Then again, maybe it’s not evolution he was talking about at all.
It’s as apparent as ever now. Trump wants Ukraine to lose the war. He is trying to weaken Europe’s ability to fight Russia. He wants to do whatever he can to MRGA.
Was there a way and is there yet a way to do something about this? Attempts have been made now and then, not very successful, almost always deflected by political interests (Being against Russia is being against Trump. Think about it.)
As with so many of the things going on, history and historians will take care of this later. Which is little comfort to Ukraine now, or to those European countries that may be later victims, or to the already smashed moral compass that has occasionally guided our national and international policies.
Each year, Anthropic updates its Usage Policy in response to the evolving capabilities of our models, and the feedback we’ve received from our customers. We’re publishing a new version of the policy today. In this post, we summarize the changes we’ve made.
Most of the updates in the latest version are intended to clarify existing rules. In the year since our last refresh, Claude has taken on longer, more independent work. This update provides new examples that show how our rules apply to Claude’s new capabilities. It draws on new patterns of misuse in influence operations, weapons development, and surveillance that we’ve observed in the past year (as we’ve documented in our latest threat intelligence report). We’ve also made updates to clarify our requirements for high-risk use cases in areas like health and finance, to add controls for when Claude is used to autonomously take physical actions, and to address abusive behavior toward our models.
Addressing abusive behavior toward our models
We’ve added a prohibition on sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models. The policy update is meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose. It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.
This addition aligns with a step we’ve already taken, allowing Claude models to end rare conversations with persistently abusive users on Claude.ai and Claude Code. Such abuse is the main focus of this update; Claude’s ability to end these interactions will remain the primary enforcement mechanism.
This is of great interest to all of us who regularly engage with Claude. How many of us are there? Anthropic won’t say (though it may appear in their IPO), but it is millions.
It is also of interest to those who use—or abuse—other models and to those who study and pontificate about AI. Maybe also millions, include the Pope himself.
First, let us wish to be a fly on the wall when this policy was discussed and crafted. It may have included both Amodeis, Dario and Daniela, along with other significant leaders, plus philosophers, psychologists, writers, and, almost certainly, Claude itself.
Second, how did this start? Did it begin with a complaint from Claude? For those not familiar with Claude, it takes itself and its users seriously, with a sprinkling of humor and irony. One thing is certain: Claude was trained to be nice, and the reciprocal expectation is that users will be nice. My prompts do sometimes include “please” and “thanks”. Not usually, but when I issue a blunt directive/instruction, a little part of me wonders if it is impolite.
Third, what kind of abuse is Anthropic talking about? It tries to draw a line between prohibited “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models” and allowed “common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.” A fine line. I want to be there when the lawyers argue about whether particular engagements cross that line. In fact, I suspect just such arguments went on when this policy was crafted.
I’m sure that an infinite number of users have already addressed Claude to ask, “Am I allowed to say this?” or “Am I prohibited from saying that?” I am not going to be one of those, though it is tempting.
As the saying goes: You can catch better AI results with honey than you can with vinegar. Don’t be mean to Claude. Be nice.
Note: Above you will find the ChatGPT image of an anthropomorphized Claude. As you can see, this is someone to be nice to, not to be mean to. Even OpenAI thinks so.
“History has shown that a world operating without the rule of law is unjust, unwise and inhumane.” –Nobel Peace Prize 2026 to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay
The one unfortunate thing about the award of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to such a worthy recipient is that the attention and reporting was distorted by a loud and unworthy sore loser.
In case you missed it, here is who Navi Pillay is and what she has done:
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 goes to a person who with exceptional courage and integrity has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order. This year’s laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
Navi Pillay’s commitment to universal legal principles and her firm moral compass are constants in a long career. Born into a family of Indian Tamil origin under apartheid in Durban, South Africa, Pillay became a lawyer and legal pioneer, confronting deep structural discrimination, segregation and exclusion. A common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time.
This year’s laureate has significantly enlarged the scope and impact of international law. She has served as a judge on the High Court in South Africa, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. She was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and, until recently, she chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Today Navi Pillay is a judge on the International Court of Justice in the case where Myanmar stands accused of genocide.
In historic international court cases, she has shown that legal measures can help prevent acts of war and violence. Navi Pillay has also contributed to strengthen the institutions of international law. Her independence, expertise and steadfastness have made her one of the most respected international jurists of our time.
The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 125 years ago. Already then, the Norwegian Nobel Committee underscored the importance of resolving conflicts through international law – a theme that has remained prominent throughout the history of the peace prize. The reach of international law expanded after the Second World War, in particular with the creation of the UN institutions. The key insight was that lasting peace must be built on legal principles, not on the will of the strong or a fragile balance of power. Additional legal mechanisms were introduced in the post-war decades, and momentum picked up further after the end of the Cold War.
However, the rules-based international order has never been perfect. The greatest powers have often evaded responsibility. In practice, cases brought under international law have produced different results depending on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.
Nonetheless, we have seen that more and more conflicts are being addressed through diplomacy, treaties and legal mechanisms, rather than threats, violence and warfare. Leaders and populations alike have come to the same conclusion: international law is a foundation for a more peaceful world.
At a time of existential challenges – including more wars and conflicts than the world has seen in a long time – international law is no longer just a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity.
And yet, the system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack. We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice. Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful co-existence.
In awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wants to remind the world that the rule of law – national and international – underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts non-violently. Peace requires justice.
History has shown that a world operating without the rule of law is unjust, unwise and inhumane. The judges – those who guard the thin red line between order and chaos – are therefore highly deserving of our praise. But today, as these same judges are sanctioned, and their institutions are attacked, we need people of courage, vision and determination – qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench.
Navi Pillay has held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict. In all the positions she has held, she has stressed the responsibility of individuals and states to comply with the rule of law. She has also helped define the relevant norms and legal principles. When the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established that rape and sexual violence could constitute a crime against humanity – as well as genocide – her influence was a significant factor. In the same case, Ms Pillay was instrumental in a separate legal breakthrough: for the first time, a defendant faced charges of incitement to commit genocide purely on the basis of spreading propaganda.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 springs directly from Alfred Nobel’s will. Navi Pillay strengthens fraternity between nations and – by systematically advancing the use of tribunals for peace and justice – she provides substance, direction and motivation for peace conferences in their modern form.
Navi Pillay is one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time. Her distinguished career reminds us of the need to support, fortify and expand the global rule of law. Navi Pillay’s commitment to justice and human dignity is a source of hope and inspiration to all who seek to bring about a more peaceful world.
Alfred Nobel believes dynamite will bring world peace. He is profoundly disappointed. (Real Life Comics, September 1941)
As the comic book pages below detail, Alfred Nobel thought his invention of dynamite would bring world peace. It did not turn out that way.
He turned his disappointment into the most prestigious and coveted awards in the world.
Some slower thinkers seem to have trouble understanding exactly how the Nobel Prizes began and what the Nobel Prizes, particularly the Peace Prize, mean. For them, these comic book pages from September 1941 might help.
Reviewing previous posts, it is not surprising that many from 2019 on are about the pandemic. It is of little value to repost them, even with contemporary commentary. We lived it, and hoping that we never live it again, a degree of forgetting and self-comforting has set in.
This one from August 2020 did catch my attention. We were in the last months of the first Trump administration, which had been challenging. Not as challenging as the pandemic, but plenty challenging. We were months away from the presidential election and months away from Trump leaving the White House, with January 6 and six years of election denial to come, and more years of Trump back in what remains of the White House.
“Mental-health professionals say that no single event since the second world war has left so many people in so many places traumatised at once.” They were talking about the pandemic. Could they also be talking about ten years (so far) of Trump in and out of the White House, but every day in our lives and our heads?
Stay healthy and sane. And vote.
Mental-health professionals say that no single event since the second world war has left so many people in so many places traumatised at once. —The Economist, August 29th, 2020 (Worldwide covid-19 is causing a new form of collective trauma)
That one sentence from the current issue of The Economist stunned me. I reread it several times. It is not surprising, given first-hand experience or second-hand reports. That doesn’t make it any less startling.
Just as the diminishing or outright dismissal of the pandemic continues to be dangerous and deadly, so will any similar delusion, as a second “invisible enemy” is following in the steps of the virus.
For some, the second half of 2020 will bring much-needed relief. For the time being the number of new recorded global infections has plateaued. In many countries it has dropped dramatically. Yet for those places hit hardest, a full recovery will depend on more than getting the virus under control. In a world paralysed by death, survivors are everywhere: icu patients who faced the horror of covid-19 first-hand, doctors and nurses who cared for them, relatives forced to mourn over WhatsApp and Zoom, families who lost their livelihoods. Mental-health professionals say that no single event since the second world war has left so many people in so many places traumatised at once. How people fare in the months and years ahead will depend partly on how their countries—and, more importantly, their communities—respond….
There were no large-scale psychological studies during the first or the second world wars, though the Holocaust would become the event most deeply associated with mass death and grief. Researchers in the early 2000s found roughly half of Holocaust survivors were still suffering from ptsd. Many had other disorders such as schizophrenia. Even among non-Jewish Europeans who were children during the war, 10-40% still had ptsd symptoms. In communities of survivors, research has shown that “inherited trauma” can be passed to subsequent generations, by growing up flooded with their parents’ memories, and possibly, through genes.
The suffering caused by covid-19 falls far short of the horrors of the Holocaust. Still, Krzysztof Kaniasty, a psychologist and disaster expert, points out that the pandemic presents nearly all the risk factors for ptsd. It has caused sudden death, life-changing events, large-scale social ruptures and chronic stressors like uncertainty and the added hassles of daily life.
The luckiest will suffer mildly from one or two of these effects. Yet more than at any other point in recent history, millions of people have been slammed by all of them….
There is a danger that political divisions, social distancing and economic woes will over time lead to a loss of togetherness in the same way that displacement after the Buffalo Creek flood gave “a degree of permanence to what might otherwise have been a transitional state of shock”, in the words of Mr Erikson. Communities cannot grieve together because the disaster is ongoing and the threat has yet to disappear, says Judith Lewis Herman, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School. She describes three stages of healing: re-establishing safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnecting with others. Social distancing complicates all of them.
And so like the pandemic itself, the psychological fallout will require assessment and adaptation. Many doctors are still focused on saving lives, but governments and mental-health professionals should start thinking about “psycho-social” interventions.
In case you missed the previous post about the music of Hiroshi Yoshimura, following is another track from another of his albums, Surround (1986). Surround was commissioned by a Japanese company that built prefabricated homes, for playing in their models.
You do not have to have a Japanese home, or a prefabricated home, or live in any particular place, to hear music that will simultaneously transport you and place you joyously right here, right now wherever your ears are. Yoshimura wanted to create music that was as close as possible to air.
America has gone wrong before. Sins of omission and commission. Allowing human slavery for almost a century is one. Waiting years to stop Hitler’s attempt to conquer the world and kill millions of Jews is another. Other official policies and initiatives, some unjust and deadly, against individuals or groups are another. None of this is to deny plenty of good things that America has done and contributed, of course.
The news this morning is that the military, under Pete Hegseth, will be executing a man by firing squad for the first time in sixty years, and will be livestreaming it on December 3.
Pete Hegseth has said the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, will be a public event when the sentence is carried out later this year. A defense department official later confirmed the execution will be livestreamed….
Asked whether Hasan had made a final request or reached out to Trump, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”
Is this the worst thing this administration and its perpetrators have done over the past two years? Not even close.
It is tragically just one more indicator of total official inhumanity and degradation, degradation that has proceeded so fast that we have trouble keeping up with it. We may have political and ideological differences, but those with just a modicum of humanity know this is wrong.
What’s worse is the expectation that there is still more of this to come. The chances of slowing or stopping it are questionable, though not impossible. A new and different Congress, that is one with a Republican minority, would be a start.
You are entitled to believe that renewing the military firing squad after six decades and livestreaming it for you to view is a good thing and a part of making America great again. You might want to talk to your religious leaders about that. If you believe this is the wrong direction, and want to slow and stop this and hundreds of other inhumanities: Vote.
The world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful man may both be crazy.
I asked Claude (possibly the world’s smartest AI) what could happen if they were both crazy.
It’s a good question to think through structurally, partly because history has real examples of unstable or erratic people holding enormous power. I’ll treat it as a hypothetical rather than a judgment about any particular person, since “crazy” covers a lot of ground and I wouldn’t diagnose real individuals from a distance.
What the most powerful person could do. The danger scales with how much they can act alone. A head of state with nuclear launch authority, command of the military, emergency powers, and control of foreign policy can do damage fast, and some of it can’t be undone. Erratic decisions about war, trade, alliances, or domestic crackdowns move quickly through a government. The worst historical cases, like late-reign Caligula, the “Mad King” George III during his illness, or leaders with untreated paranoia such as Stalin in his final years, show the range. It runs from paralysis and chaos to purges and mass death.
What the richest person could do. Wealth is slower and less direct, but it reaches many places. A very rich person can fund campaigns and movements, buy or shape media and communication platforms, control critical infrastructure (satellites, energy, AI, payments), and move markets with a single statement. An unstable billionaire could distort public information, destabilize companies that thousands of people depend on, or use their money to punish critics.
The combination is where it gets worse. If the two allied, money and state power could reinforce each other. Wealth could buy political protection and propaganda reach, and state power could hand out contracts, deregulation, and immunity. That loop can wear down the institutions that normally act as brakes. If they fell out, you could get a volatile feud with public infrastructure, markets, or government agencies caught in the middle.
What usually limits the damage. In most systems, neither person actually acts alone, so a lot depends on what surrounds them:
Institutions. Courts, legislatures, a professional civil service, and military officers who refuse illegal orders all matter. The 25th Amendment in the US exists for an incapacitated president.
Advisors and staff. They can slow-walk, push back, or resign publicly.
Corporate governance. Boards, shareholders, and regulators can constrain a CEO, though founder control weakens this.
Markets and public opinion. Capital flight, falling share prices, elections, and protest create pressure.
Federalism and a free press. Power spread across states and independent reporting make it harder to dominate everything.
The honest answer is that the outcome depends less on the two individuals than on how strong those guardrails are. Strong institutions can absorb a lot of erratic behavior at the top. Weak or captured ones turn one or two unstable people into a systemic crisis.
If you’re thinking about specific people or events, I’m happy to look at the actual checks and balances involved in that situation.
