Spectator Editorial

As stock markets wobble over fears of AI hype and the overvaluation of tech shares, it seems an unfortunate time for Donald Trump to launch an initiative boosting America’s artificial intelligence capabilities. But the White House sees matters differently. Its new “Genesis Mission,” which commits government departments to make sure adequate energy and computing power are available, has been purposely launched to remind the world that AI is not all froth – or “slop” to use the popular term. Team Trump likens Genesis to the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb during World War Two faster than the other side. For all the typically Trumpian bombast, that’s not a foolish way of thinking about the subject.

Notionally, Americans have never been better off. The ructions in tech stocks over the past few weeks cannot detract from the fact that the US economy has been outgunning other developed economies all century. The overall graph of real disposable income for Americans continues to trend upward, almost as if the sharp dip during the pandemic had not happened. That is certainly not true everywhere: in many countries, Covid has been followed by stagnation in GDP and wages. Yet, for all the wealth generated, many Americans simply do not feel that they are living in a thriving country. On the things that really matter, such as basic living costs, citizens at the lower end of the income scale feel their wages are increasingly inadequate. They are not imagining it.

To his fellow high priests of the church of climate change, Bill Gates has just committed the ultimate heresy. He has told us that we are not all going to die from scorching temperatures, despite in the past having said “we are setting ourselves up for a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster.” In a new essay posted on his personal website, he has attacked the “doomsday view” that “in a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization.” He writes: “Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences… it will not lead to humanity’s demise.” His rejection of catastrophism is no small matter.

The second Trump administration tends to characterize those who have illegally crossed the southern US border as drug dealers, criminals and rapists. That is, of course, exaggeration, but it is no more a fiction than is the alternative belief, common among liberals, that all migrants are desperate people fleeing for their lives, who cannot possibly be expected to live in their home countries and are utterly dependent on making it to America in order to survive. If that were true, illegal migration would be little to worry about and good for the soul – and indeed the economic well-being – of America.

With typical assertiveness, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave his marching orders to the US military at the end of September. No more “fat troops” or “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.” No more woke. Make War Great Again. At the same time, with typical modesty, Donald Trump said of his proposed peace deal between Israel and Gaza, “This is a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the greatest days ever in civilization.” No more starvation, no more senseless death. Make Peace Great Again. In Trumpworld, these two agendas are not contradictory. A strong army at home guarentees peace abroad – or that’s the hope, anyway. But what happens when America’s enemies don’t play ball?

It’s often noted that American society is becoming ever more politicized and polarized. Those who once imagined themselves uninterested in politics find themselves dragged into America’s culture wars. Small children now carry placards and attend political marches. Max Horder and Danit Sara Finkelstein explain the extent to which social media has played a part in this growing radicalism, not just because of the ideological echo chambers we now inhabit, but due to the mindset online algorithms create: rewarding outrage, encouraging extremism. Nuance and balance are anathema; shock and division set each day’s tone.

When Donald Trump made building a “big, beautiful” wall along the southern US border a priority in his first term, he was widely derided. There wasn’t enough concrete or steel to build such a structure. Anyway, it was futile because migrants would find some way over or around it. It was a heartless and evil project being promoted to distract from other failures. When shutting off immigration from Mexico became an unrealized project from that first term, Trump’s critics enjoyed themselves. Campaigning for his second term, Trump hardly mentioned the wall. Yet something remarkable has happened. Undocumented migration across the border has all but ceased.

Peter Thiel is one of the world’s most powerful men. He was an early investor in companies such as Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb and an early backer of Donald Trump, as a leading donor to his 2016 campaign. He is a friend and mentor to the man who would be president in 2028: J.D. Vance. Thiel, a multi-billionaire, is also one of the few individuals who clearly have a hand in shaping the future of humanity, so it was disturbing to learn recently that he’s unsure whether humans are worth preserving at all. In conversation with the journalist Ross Douthat, Thiel was asked whether he wanted the human race to endure. He seemed unsure. “I don’t know,” he said, after a long pause. “I would, I would… there’s so many questions implicit in this.

Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill was supposed to slash government waste and inefficiency. So why is it going to result in an even bigger, uglier deficit? The legislation was still being picked over in the Senate as this magazine went to press. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated that the bill will add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade – and that estimate is far more likely to go up than down. The President’s opponents have characterized the Big, Beautiful Bill as a swindle that steals from the poor to give to the rich. That may be true to some extent, in that it could become harder for some people to qualify for Medicaid, while wealthy Americans will enjoy the extension of lower tax rates.

In his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom argued that higher education no longer taught US citizens how to think. “We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished,” he wrote. “The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.” Now, almost 40 years later, we’re even more clueless. The rot in academia has spread throughout the education system and can be found all over American life. Rational thinking has now been almost entirely usurped by the baser passions of anger and grievance, as we saw all too clearly in the collective insanity of the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.

Much has been said and written about the Trump administration’s leaked Signal discussion on bombing Houthis in Yemen, most of it forgettable. Virtually all attention has focused on dull questions of competence and whether any heads should roll for communicating sensitive US matters through a private company’s platform, then ineptly letting a reporter in on the chat. The debate is largely news-cycle fodder. The new administration will not succeed or fail based on what phone apps its members use. Yet the Signal debate has entirely overshadowed what should be a major discussion in its own right. Is the new administration quietly sleepwalking the country back into a costly, dangerous policy of Middle East military meddling?

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) continues merrily to chop programs and departments left, right and center. Federal diversity, equity and inclusion officials were suspended on his first day in office, prior to being given their marching orders. Government employees have been ordered to justify their existence by explaining what, if anything, they achieved last week. All of this ought to be a positive influence on how the US is governed. Some will claim it to be an ideological war waged by the Trump administration. Yet it is really just the same process that private corporations undergo constantly in their search for greater efficiency and profits. Yet there is a chink in Trump’s strategy.