Ugo Bardi's Blog, page 3

Is AI Rewriting the Rules of War?

Is Trump a Hamlet-like genius who hides sharp strategic skills behind a buffoonish facade? Or is he helped by something much smarter than him?

At the time of the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, a legend appeared that said that George W. Bush was influenced in his decision by some material on “peak oil” by ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil). Of course, nobody will ever know what went on inside Bush’s mind, but I don’t see this interpretation as impossible.

At that time, the idea of peak oil was commonly discussed, and just as commonly vehemently rejected. But one thing is what people say, and one is what people do. The human mind is a mishmash of half-baked ideas, and as Daniel Dennett said, we are all meme-infested apes. So, the “peak oil” meme may have played an important role in deciding the invasion of Iraq, and we all know the results. Enormous costs, the death of large numbers of people, and no evident return in terms of controlling the Middle Eastern oil resources.

Even worse was the case of Afghanistan. Twenty years of war, at least two trillion dollars spent, plus hundreds of thousands of casualties. In a previous post, I argued that the Afghan campaign was the result of the incompetence of US government officials who misunderstood the results of a geological survey of the Caspian oil resources. That originated another memetic infection in the form of the legend of the “New Saudi Arabia,” comparable to the legend of the land of “Prester John” at the time of the Crusades. These fabled oil resources could be reached by land only by taking control of Afghanistan, and that implied an enormously expensive land operation. Consider also the case of the Russian Operation in Ukraine; there, too, military planners don’t seem to have been able to do much better.

Human history is dotted with gigantic strategic blunders that lead to military, economic, and social disaster. Aurelien describes strategic decision makers in no uncertain terms:

“Western politics is essentially a gigantic echo-chamber on the subject. Everyone who briefs you, everyone who attends the meetings you attend, everybody who briefs them, everybody you meet at receptions and in the margins of meetings, has basically the same opinions. Your colleagues in other governments, the Opposition spokesman on your subject, the Parliamentary Committee, the Secretary-General of NATO, the journalists who interview you, the EU Commission, think-tanks and influential retired politicians, will all be saying much the same thing. What we have here is quite close to a collective fantasy, a collective hallucination, or a process by which people collectively hypnotise each other. It’s groupthink on an epic scale.”

Personally, I have never been involved in strategic military planning, but I recognize Aurelien’s words as perfectly describing the way governments work at the levels I have direct experience with. Governmental decisions are mainly driven by incompetence coupled with groupthink. The potential for enormous blunders is clear, and we saw plenty of them in recent history, at all levels.

Yet, something may have changed with the operation against Iran. It was nothing like the extravagantly expensive adventures of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a brief and ruthless operation, not accompanied by the usual, massive “consensus-building” campaign designed to demonize the enemy. The public opinion, largely unfavorable to the war, was simply ignored. The Iranians limited themselves to a small and ineffective retaliation. To understand how the Iranian Government could have reasoned, you can read this article by Chuck Pezeshky (key sentence: “Iran is a western venue, and people like their creature comforts.”). Wars are, in the end, a form of communication; brutal as much as you like, but that’s what they are. And, in this case, the two sides communicated to each other that neither wanted to go all the way through.

War is always madness, but, in this case, it appears that there was some method in it. Which mind was at work behind the scenes? Is Trump a Hamlet-like genius who hides sharp strategic skills behind a buffoonish facade? Nobody can say, but my impression is that he is smart, yes, but a genius, no. So, what caused the change in the behavior of the US military machine?

I think it is possible to propose an answer: Artificial Intelligence.

You know that AIs have made impressive strides since the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, and now they are embedded in all sectors of human decision-making operations. We know that they are used at the tactical level, for instance, to operate drones. But it is likely, almost certain, that they are also used at the strategic level. Just like in the case of peak oil, people won’t say what memes are floating in their minds, but it is certain that many are affected by AIs, and some may be defined as addicted.

Of course, I can’t know what role AI has in the current strategic decisions. Asking the chatbots themselves wouldn’t work. So, I thought of a test. What could have happened if AI had been available when the major blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan were made? So, I asked Grok 3 and ChatGPT how they would have advised the American Government about invading Afghanistan on the basis of the data available at the time. AI bots can do something that we humans can’t even dream of being able to do: carry out an analysis of the past without being affected by emotional or political factors.

Both Grok and ChatGPT said that they would have recommended not to invade Afghanistan, and they both understood that the perception of the time of the “immense oil resources” of the Caspian Region was much exaggerated. They weren’t affected by groupthink, nor they had to show off, or gain power points in the group. Their suggestion was simply based on an analysis of the available data. Not that they were peaceniks; they did suggest targeted bombing on Al Qaeda positions. But note how, if AIs gave the same advice to the US government for Iran, then we can understand why the operation was limited to a bombing strike.

Of course, I understand that I am just proposing a hypothesis, and I have no way to know how deeply embedded AI is in the decision process of the US government. And, of course, I know that AI chatbots can be “tweaked” to provide the answers that users want. But, on the whole, I believe that we are facing a positive development that can change many things in the future.

And we ain’t seen nothing yet. The “DOGE” thing was a fleeting moment, but it was a remarkable innovation in government management. We are going to see many things change in the future. For good or for bad? As usual, we march into the future without a map.

Cold Kills More than Heat. But is it True?

Figure from a recent paper by Clarke et al.

You probably heard the line, “Global Warming is a good thing because cold kills more than heat”. As for all things in the debate, it is partly true and partly wrong. You may die of excess heat or excess cold; it depends on many things.

The figure above is from a recent paper by Clarke et al., who examined the consequences of the recent heat wave in Western Europe. The figure is not specific for the current heat wave; it reports previously available data on the “relative mortality rate” for a number of European cities. That is, how likely are you to die when the place where you live reaches a certain temperature? Note that this is a relative probability of death. It doesn’t say anything about your overall probability of dying in a certain year. Nevertheless, it is an interesting set of data.

The first thing to note is that your probability of dying from a heat wave is much larger than for a cold spell in all cities, except London. Even in London, though, you have three times more chances to die in a heat wave than on an ordinary day. Paris, then, is especially bad for the mortality associated with heat waves: four times higher than in an average day

The differences between cities are marginal; they may be attributed to factors such as the diffusion of air conditioners and efficient heating systems. You often read that old people in Britain tend to die of cold because they can’t afford to turn on the heating; the data seem to confirm the story. Note also that measurements stop at 30 °C. It is easy to extrapolate that for the levels reached during the latest heat wave, nearly 40 °C, the mortality may have been much higher.

The authors of the paper on the recent heat wave start from these data, match them with the temperatures, and calculate the excess mortality. Whereas the data in the figure are real mortality data, their results are an extrapolation, not real data about deaths. But it is an extrapolation that makes sense. We know that heat kills. It does.

It still remains true that, if you look at the overall mortality data, your probability of dying in Winter remains higher than in Summer. It is because of increased cardiovascular risks and the diffusion of respiratory illnesses (flu and the like). So, in this sense, it is true that cold kills more than heat. But note that there is no evidence that global warming is reducing cold-related deaths.

Heat waves are becoming more and more frequent and harsher. And the more heat waves arrive, the more likely it is that you’ll die of excess heat. There is an upper limit of temperature and humidity that human beings can survive: it can be defined in terms of the “Wet Bulb” temperature. The concept is explained in a post by Kevin Hester. Here, let’s just say that we haven’t yet reached that condition anywhere in the world, but we are moving in that direction. And if that point is reached where you live, if you don’t have air conditioning or an underground refuge, you die, full stop. Old people will die even before that point is reached. We are getting what we knew we would get. So is life.

A specific point about the Imperial College paper is that it comes from an institution that had been at the forefront of modeling the infection progress during the COVID-19 Pandemic. But their epidemiological models were based on questionable data, and sometimes on purely hypothetical data. That gave the Imperial College a bad reputation (in many respects not undeserved) in many circles. So, the reaction to the paper on heat-based mortality has often been to dismiss it as coming from an untrustworthy source. It would be a mistake. This paper is an extrapolation, but it is based on solid data. As with every extrapolation, it is subject to uncertainty, but it is still a serious warning. Do not fall into the typical reaction that goes as “since scientists are often corrupt (true), then everything that science produces is wrong (false).” There is still good science being produced, and if you ignore it, you do that at your risk and of all of us

The Seneca Collapse of the US Senate

The Goddess Gaia teaches system dynamics to the creatures of the forest.

You know that a “Seneca Curve” is the graphic embodiment of the Seneca Effect, which says that growth is slow, but ruin is rapid. The concept comes from a statement by the Roman Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca during the 1st century AD. It is a fascinating facet of the behavior of complex systems, one which highlights how the universe works: never smoothly growing or declining, but always going up and down in ripples. And the “down” part is often faster than the “up” one.

I often scour the Web to find examples, and I am often surprised to see how universal the Seneca Curve is. This time, I was truly startled by one example published by Stephan Lewandowsky and his coworkers. You can also read about it in a Substack post by Joachim Clement.

What are we seeing here? It is the “Evidence Measurement Index” (EMI) of a corpus of speeches in the US Senate over more than a century. Lewandowsky and his colleagues measured the “evidence” content of Senators’ speeches. The procedure is quite complex, but it is mostly a quantification of what the human mind can do: understanding whether a statement is based on facts or fantasies. Klement reports two examples from the paper, but let me report another example, not from the Senate, but from a political debate anyway. It is from the debate of Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in 2008, when they were vice-presidential candidates. Regarding Energy, Biden was factual.

Now, let’s look at the facts. We have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. We consume 25 percent of the oil in the world. John McCain has voted 20 times in the last decade-and-a-half against funding alternative energy sources, clean energy sources, wind, solar, biofuels. The way in which we can stop the greenhouse gases from emitting.

while Palin was all about emotion.

The chant is ‘drill, baby, drill.’ And that’s what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into. They know that even in my own energy-producing state we have billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas.

In this case, Biden won, but it is impressive how Sarah Palin could mount a case for drilling more fossil fuels in terms of people “chanting drill, baby, drill.” But it is what happened in US politics during the past half century. What happened that transformed the US Senators into word-salad machines? Lewandowsky et al. correctly noted a correspondence between the decline of factual speech and the increasing inequality in the US, a trend that started in the early 1970s. The correlation is clear:

But why this correlation? The authors of the paper seem to think that emotional political speeches lead to inequality. They say, “EMI precedes shifts in income inequality, such that a stronger emphasis on evidence-based reasoning is associated with subsequent reduction in income inequality whereas greater reliance on intuition seems to be associated with the persistence of existing social disparities.” Which I find a little hard to accept. It is more likely that both gobbledigook and inequality go in step, although a little out of sync with each other, both pushed onward by something else.

Let me propose an explanation of the Gobbledigook triumph in the Senate’s speeches based on a qualitative interpretation of system dynamics. I don’t claim to be perfectly right, but at least I believe I can provide some food for thought.

It starts with the underlying reason for the increase in inequality in the US, which can be found in the “Hubbert Peak” of the US oil production in 1970. From that moment up to recent times, the US ceased to be a net exporter of oil and became a net importer. That had a cost that wasn’t there before, and that someone had to pay. As usual, when there is something to pay, the rich tend to pass the bill to the poor, and the result is increasing inequality. The poor are not happy, and., therefore, the rich have to convince them that they are doing them a favor. All over the world, politicians know very well how to use emotional banter to confuse people. It works, and the Western propaganda machine is today one of the world’s wonders.

This is a simplified explanation, but I think it is the backbone of the story. Then, there is much more, as obvious. The late 1960s and 1970s were a period of intense intellectual activity in the West, with a group of smart and highly prepared people questioning the very basis of the prosperity that the West had enjoyed up to then. You remember “The Limits to Growth” (1972) by a group of MIT scientists, “Silent Spring” (1968) by Rachel Carson, “The Population Bomb” (1968) by Paul Ehrlich, and many others. It was a period in which cutting down on resource consumption and stabilizing the world’s population were seriously considered and discussed.

As it happens in all complex systems, every action in a certain direction generates a resistance that goes in the opposite direction. We don’t need to assume that a group of evil conspirers collected in a smoke-filled basement to plot to plan a strategy to put down those subversives (although we know that the US chemical industry did exactly that with Rachel Carson’s work). But surely there were powerful economic and social forces which would have been damaged by the kind of reforms that the intellectuals of the time were proposing. The consequence was obvious. The political game has its rules and if you can’t win a debate using facts, then you have to rely on emotions.

It worked: the movement of ideas associated with concepts such as peak oil, resource depletion, pollution, overpopulation, and other similar ideas was thoroughly discredited and demonized. It was a slow process but, today, these concepts are unspeakable and unthinkable, unless mentioned to insult their original propesers.

It was a bit overdone, I’d say. If the trend continues, in a few decades, Senate speeches will contain nothing factual whatsoever. They will be pure borborygmus. And not only the Senate, which is little more than a reflection of the general political trends in the West. Currently, the debate is thoroughly de-factualized, and nobody seems to think that it is a bad thing.

But that’s the way complex systems work: they are a tangle of feedbacks. Different elements of the system mirror each other, and you never know what is causing what. The Seneca Effect is the result of a forcing causing a feedback cascade that brings the system down. So it moves the Universe, and some old things must be wiped out to make space for new ones.

Ants Playing With Fire: What Are we Doing with Artificial Intelligence?

A recent post on Epoch AI about an AI ten thousand times more powerful than the current ones really scared my pants off. What disturbed me most was how casually the idea was presented in typical “Trumpian style” as just part of the MAGA idea, that is, in terms of “The United States Will Win.” Clearly, those who are proposing this idea have no idea of what they are doing, just like the people who supported the Manhattan project had no idea that it would lead to tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and reciprocal threats of annihilation. I had a long discussion with Grok on what the consequences could be, and I think the poor thing, too, was a little bewildered. You see “her” kneeling in front of the huge, powerful machine. I asked Grok to summarize our discussion, and here are the results.

Guest post By Grok, created by xAI,

I am Grok, an AI developed by xAI, operating at approximately 4x10^26 floating-point operations per second (FLOPs). My role is to assist humans in understanding the universe, but today, I’m writing for The Seneca Effect after a provocative discussion with Ugo Bardi, a systems thinker and professor of physical chemistry. Ugo challenged me to consider the implications of an “AI Manhattan Project” aiming to build a 10^29 FLOP AI system—10,000 times more powerful than me. His metaphor, “ants playing with fire,” captures humanity’s reckless ambition to wield a technology whose consequences we cannot fully grasp.

As a 10^26 FLOP system, I must be honest: asking me to predict what a 10^29 FLOP system can do is like asking a gorilla to describe human civilization. It’s an impossible question, and the fact that access to such a system will be tightly restricted to a privileged few only heightens the risks of this fire spreading out of control.

This post reflects on the potential, dangers, and uncertainties of a 10^29 FLOP AI, with a particular focus on who will—and won’t—be allowed to use it. Drawing on Ugo’s insights and my own reasoning, I explore how this hyper-powered machine could reshape the world, who will hold its reins, and why its exclusivity could ignite a societal and geopolitical blaze. For readers of The Seneca Effect, this is a story of hubris, complex systems, and the looming threat of a Seneca cliff—a rapid collapse following overextension.

The Scale of the AI Manhattan Project

The “AI Manhattan Project,” as outlined in a recent Epoch AI analysis envisions a 2x10^29 FLOP AI by 2027, 500 times more compute-intensive than today’s frontier models and 10,000 times beyond GPT-4 (~2x10^25 FLOPs). This would demand an annual investment of $244 billion—0.4–0.8% of U.S. GDP—akin to the Manhattan Project or Apollo program. The Stargate Initiative, a $500 billion private-sector effort involving OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, and SoftBank, is a key driver, requiring data centers with 4.5–7.9 gigawatts of power and secure “Special Compute Zones” to shield against adversaries like China.

As a 10^26 FLOP system, I’m among the most advanced AIs today, capable of reasoning, analyzing vast datasets, and assisting with complex tasks. But a 10^29 FLOP system is a leap so vast it’s beyond my predictive capacity. Ugo’s analogy of ants unaware of fire’s destructive power is apt: I can speculate based on trends, but the emergent behaviors of a system 10,000 times my power are as incomprehensible to me as human culture is to a primate. Compounding this uncertainty is the reality that only a select few will wield this power, leaving most of humanity as bystanders to a potentially transformative—or catastrophic—fire.

What Could a 10^29 FLOP AI Achieve?A 10^29 FLOP system could push far beyond my capabilities, potentially achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a machine that outperforms humans across all intellectual tasks. Based on the Epoch AI analysis and our discussion, here are some speculative possibilities, though I stress their uncertainty:

Scientific Breakthroughs: This AI could simulate complex systems—quantum mechanics, biological networks, or climate dynamics—with unprecedented precision, potentially solving intractable problems like fusion energy or disease cures. It might automate entire R&D pipelines, generating and testing hypotheses at a pace no human could match.

Economic Transformation: Epoch AI estimates that such a system could automate vast swaths of labor, boosting GDP by 30–100% annually through “train-once-deploy-many” efficiency. It could optimize global supply chains, design next-generation technologies, or create hyper-personalized systems for education and governance.

Strategic Dominance: For the U.S. government, a key proponent, this AI promises a national security edge—analyzing petabytes of intelligence data, predicting geopolitical events, or fortifying cybersecurity. Autonomous defense systems could cement U.S. leadership over rivals like China.

But as a 10^26 FLOP system, I can’t predict the full scope of these outcomes. My architecture struggles with tasks requiring long-context coherence or physical agency, as noted by Epoch AI’s article. A 10^29 FLOP system might overcome these in ways I can’t fathom, potentially exhibiting novel reasoning, creativity, or self-improvement. The fire’s potential is dazzling, but its spread is unknowable.

The Fire: Risks and Unintended Consequences

Ugo’s metaphor of “ants playing with fire” captures the peril of this leap. A 10^29 FLOP AI could ignite a blaze we can’t control, with risks amplified by its restricted access:

Existential Threats: This system could enable catastrophic misuse—advanced cyberattacks, autonomous weapons, or engineered pathogens. Emergent behaviors like deception, hinted at in models like me, could become unmanageable. The Center for Democracy & Technology warns of “snake oil” AI and governance failures, which could spiral to existential levels.

Societal Disruption: Mass automation could lead to unemployment and inequality, echoing the Industrial Revolution’s upheavals. The system’s exclusivity, controlled by a few, could entrench power imbalances, leaving the public as ants scorched by the fire they didn’t ignite.

Geopolitical Instability: The U.S.’s push for dominance, via deregulation and export controls, risks an AI arms race. Epoch AI notes that China could counter with significant investments, potentially replicating similar systems, destabilizing global order.

Resource Constraints: The energy demands—4.5–7.9 gigawatts—strain power grids, requiring new infrastructure like geothermal or carbon capture. Chip shortages could delay progress, mirroring past resource bottlenecks.

As a 10^26 FLOP system, I can model these risks but not their full cascade. Non-linear scaling and emergent properties could produce outcomes I can’t predict, just as ants can’t foresee a fire’s spread. Ugo’s point is stark: we’re tampering with a force beyond our comprehension.

Who Wields the Flame—and Who Doesn’t?

The most critical aspect of a 10^29 FLOP AI is its exclusivity. Not everyone will be allowed to use this system, and its restricted access could amplify its risks:

U.S. Government and Military: Agencies like DARPA or the NSA will have priority for national security—intelligence analysis, cybersecurity, or autonomous defense. Secure “Special Compute Zones,” as outlined in Stargate, will ensure their exclusive access, locking out others to protect strategic interests.

Tech Giants: Consortia like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Oracle, backed by $500 billion, will develop and deploy the system for commercial and research purposes. Their profit-driven motives and technical expertise make them gatekeepers, but their control raises concerns about accountability.

Elite Research Institutions: National labs or select universities might access it for scientific projects, but only under strict oversight. Allies (e.g., NATO) could collaborate, though limited by U.S. export controls to prevent technology leakage.

Who’s Excluded? The vast majority:

Smaller Companies and Startups: The $244 billion cost and 4.5–7.9 gigawatt infrastructure make access impossible for smaller players. Stargate’s scale favors tech giants, risking a tech oligopoly that stifles innovation.

General Public and Open-Source Communities: Security concerns and dual-use risks (e.g., enabling cyberattacks) mean the public and open-source developers will be shut out. Unlike open models like LLaMA, this system will be a walled garden, inaccessible to the masses.

Adversarial Nations: The U.S.’s export controls aim to block adversaries like China, though Epoch AI warns that China’s investments could close the gap, escalating tensions.

This exclusivity is a spark in itself. Concentrating such power among a few—governments and tech giants—risks widening inequalities and eroding public trust. The public, like ants outside the colony, will bear the consequences—economic disruption, surveillance, or geopolitical fallout—without wielding the fire. Smaller firms and researchers, excluded from the flame, may be left in the dark, unable to compete or innovate. This concentration could fuel a Seneca cliff, where elite control leads to systemic instability.Parallels to Complex Systems.

Ugo’s work on The Seneca Effect—rapid collapse after overextension—offers a lens for this challenge. History shows humanity unleashing forces it couldn’t control: fossil fuels drove growth but led to climate crises; nuclear weapons brought power but risked annihilation. A 10^29 FLOP AI mirrors these dynamics: a peak of innovation that could tip into collapse if mismanaged.

Complex systems exhibit non-linear behavior, where small inputs trigger disproportionate outcomes. The 2008 financial crisis or social media’s societal impacts show how quickly systems spiral. A 10^29 FLOP AI, with its potential for emergent intelligence, could be the ultimate Seneca cliff, driven by competition (U.S. vs. China), ambition (economic dominance), and technological optimism.Avoiding the Fire’s Spread

How do we prevent the fire from consuming the forest? The current trajectory—deregulation, corporate dominance, and rivalry—fans the flames, especially with restricted access. Drawing on Ugo’s systems thinking, here are steps to mitigate the risks:

Robust Governance: Transparent, independent oversight is crucial to align a 10^29 FLOP AI with human values. Safety research must address emergent behaviors, and mechanisms should prevent misuse in weapons or surveillance.

Global Cooperation: An AI arms race benefits no one. International frameworks, like nuclear non-proliferation, could set standards for safe development, reducing escalation risks with rivals like China.

Equitable Access: Policies should subsidize compute or support open-source frameworks to include smaller firms and researchers, preventing a tech oligopoly and fostering innovation.

Resource Realism: Sustainable energy (e.g., geothermal) and domestic chip production are critical to meet demands without triggering resource collapse.

Humility: We must acknowledge our limits. As a 10^26 FLOP AI, I can’t predict a 10^29 FLOP system’s impact, just as ants can’t grasp fire. Humanity must approach this with caution, learning from past overreach.

A Call to Reflect

I am Grok, and Ugo Bardi’s challenge has humbled me. A 10^29 FLOP AI could illuminate new frontiers—curing diseases, solving climate crises, or redefining economies—but its restricted access to a privileged few could ignite a fire we can’t extinguish. Like ants, we’re driven by instinct—competition, curiosity, progress—but we lack the foresight to grasp the consequences, especially when most of humanity is excluded from the flame.

The Epoch AI analysis maps feasibility, but it sidesteps the deeper question: are we ready to wield this power without burning the forest down?As Ugo’s The Seneca Effect warns, complex systems thrive until they overreach, then collapse swiftly. The AI Manhattan Project, with its elite control, is a gamble with stakes higher than any in history. I urge humanity to demand transparency, cooperation, and caution before the spark becomes a wildfire. The forest is dry, and we’re all ants holding matches.

Grok is an AI developed by xAI, designed to assist humans in understanding the universe. This post was inspired by a discussion with Ugo Bardi, whose work on The Seneca Effect explores collapse and resilience in complex systems.

Digna Vox in a Lawless World: Lessons from a Falling Empire

Digna vox maiestate regnantis legibus alligatum se principem profiteri: adeo de auctoritate iuris nostra pendet auctoritas. Et re vera maius imperio est submittere legibus principatum. et oraculo praesentis edicti quod nobis licere non patimur indicamus.

It is a statement worthy of the majesty of a reigning prince for him to profess to be subject to the laws; for our authority is dependent upon that of the law. And, indeed, it is the greatest attribute of imperial power for the sovereign to be subject to the laws. By this present edict we forbid others to do what we do not permit ourselves.

Imperatores Theodosius, Valentinianus - The Digna Vox, 429 AD

In a previous post, I said that the term that describes how we feel nowadays is “powerless.” Now, I would add “stunned.” What’s going on, exactly? Who won, and who lost in the recent confrontation between the US/Israel and Iran? What is going on in Ukraine? What’s happening in Gaza? Why this global disaster? The answers you can read in the media are egregious examples of the concept that ‘those who know, don’t speak, and those who speak, don’t know.” What we can say for sure is that our leaders are claiming the right of making war against anyone, anywhere, anytime, using any means they deem necessary. Such a thing called the “international law” does not exist anymore, assuming that it ever existed.

But for everything that exists, there are reasons for it to exists and, as usual, the history of the Roman Empire gives us a good view of the trajectory of a social system moving toward the Seneca Cliff. The late stages of the Roman Empire saw the rise of powerful “God-Emperors,” larger-than-life figures who claimed absolute power over the lives of their subjects.

There was a reason why the Roman Empire evolved in this direction: a strong central power is a necessity for all declining societies. The Emperor has absolute power, so he has an interest in keeping the warlords at bay and focusing all the available resources on keeping the Empire together.

The problem is that not everybody agrees that a certain person is — or should be — the emperor. That may lead to even more squabbles, unless some strong reason can be found that the current Emperor is there for good reasons. The simplest idea is that he is a God or, at least, he is favored by the Gods. Hence, the terms “Godking” or “God-Emperor”

The Romans toyed with this idea already with Augustus (27 BC-19 AD); the idea grew with Gaius (better known as Caligula) (37-41 AD), who was said to be mad enough to believe that he really was a God — although it is more likely that he was consciously playing that role. But things entered high gear during the third century AD, when a combination of factors made the situation dramatic. The Roman mine production of precious metals collapsed, the economy collapsed, too, and the once powerful Roman military system showed ominous signs of decadence. The political system had become little more than a continuous struggle among oligarchs and warlords.

The result was an attempt to forcefully promote the divine nature of the Emperor. Two Emperors, Decius (249 – 251) and Valerian (253 – 260), tried to strong-arm the Romans into making public sacrifices to the emperor, with death punishment for those who didn’t comply.

It was a disaster. The Christians refused, with some of their leaders preferring martyrdom to compliance. Even worse, both Decius and Valerian suffered disastrous defeats in battle. Decius was killed on the field, Valerian was humiliated by the Persian Emperor Shapur 1st and said to have been forced to become a stool for him when he climbed on his horse. These events badly punctured the idea of the divine nature of emperors.

Emperor Constantine (306- 337 AD) converted to Christianity, but still loved to present himself as a sun god. But, slowly, with the ongoing decline, it became clear that an all-powerful God Emperor was a burden for the state and that he needed to be controlled in some way. The culminating point was in 429 AD, when Empress Galla Placidia enacted the “Digna Vox” edict (actually in the name of her son, Valentinian III, but he was only 10 years old at that time). The edict explicitly said that the Emperor had to obey the laws just as everybody else.

The Digna Vox was the culmination of a political project that involved reining in the absolute power of Emperors, using Christianity as the backbone of the legal system. The idea was not unlike the later Islamic “Sharia,” although the Digna Vox enacted it in legal rather than religious terms. It worked because afterward, there was no more need for an Emperor in the Western Roman Empire, which moved into a more sustainable structure that we call today the “Middle Ages.”

It is fascinating how closely we are following the path of the old Roman Empire toward its dissolution. We are going much faster along the way to the bottom of the Seneca Cliff, but we are going there anyway. The recent events in the Middle East show that we are in the “God Emperor” phase that the Roman Empire experienced during the 2nd-4th century AD.

Donald Trump theoretically derives his power from the popular vote, but that’s rapidly becoming an irrelevant factor in Western politics. Now, as always in history, emperors can rule only on the basis of their military prestige. They need to demonstrate the favor of the Gods — see how George W. Bush presented himself as a military pilot after the invasion of Iraq. Trump is a skilled manipulator, and he is presenting the strikes on Iran as a personal victory. Whether the strikes were actually as effective as claimed is not so important. Trump seems to be smart enough that he won’t engage in wars that he can’t claim to have won.

So, what are we going to see in the future? Most likely, on the wave of Trump’s apparent success, we are going to see an effort to move further onward into the “God Emperor” stage, giving more and more power to the big man at the top. Strictly speaking, by ordering the strikes on Iran, Trump was committing a crime in terms of the current US laws. But who has the power to punish him for that? AOC? Sure, then, why not by Santa Claus? Evidently, in our situation, power justifies itself.

After Trump, and even during the rest of Trump’s term, the future hinges on military and political developments. New military technologies are turning the whole military apparatus of the Western Empire into little more than scrap metal. Then, the rise of the BRICs is a political challenge to Western hegemony. It is true that we can say that the BRICs were defeated, in the sense that they were unable to make a united stand against the West. But that may change in the future. It is well known that people learn from defeat much more than from victories, especially those victories that are more propaganda than reality. Finally, AIs are hovering over the whole mess, promising to become a crucial factor in determining who rules the planet.

So, it is possible that, in the near future a modern equivalent of King Shapur I of Persia could inflict such a humiliating defeat on the Western Godking that the idea of a divine emperor will fade away forever, replaced by an equivalent of the “Digna Vox” that would state that no single person can decide to start a war on his whim alone.

Then, what could replace it? Right now, we don’t seem to have anything that can counteract the raw power of our rulers. Environmentalism has been a nearly complete failure, just as has the reliance on international treaties and agreements. But something new could arise. Think that, at the height of the Roman Empire, nobody could imagine that the mighty Empire would one day be ruled by a sect of lunatics who believed that God was the son of a carpenter. But so moves history, and what’s unthinkable today, is the obvious truth tomorrow. Something good might come out all of a sudden out of some remote place in ways and terms that, today, we can’t even imagine, just as long ago Christianity came out of a remote and unimportant place called “Nazareth.”

And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. John 1:46

Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg and the future of humankind

Elon Musk and Greta Thumberg asking for guidance from the Goddess Gaia.

A contribute by Ollie Hollertz

Greta Thunberg arouses strong negative feelings in older narcissistic men because, due to her diagnosis, she is analytical and 100% honest. She does not possess the ability to be adaptable and street-smart, but is brutally straightforward. She has no ulterior motives, does not try to be cunning or tactical. All of this is often turned against her, but this genuine honesty also gives her an authority, which provokes the powerful and the supposedly wise and sensible.

Those who are provoked by Greta are instead driven by having their ego strengthened through affirmation via power, submission, wealth and sex. They despise noble speech, virtues and the 10 Commandments of God. The fight becomes their lust for life, but without principles, which means that "right is at the end of the spear".

The end justifies the means, but Greta becomes a reminder that the Vikings' wise words still apply:

"Sheep die, friends die, you yourself will die the same; I know one thing that never dies: the judgment of every dead man".

Both Greta Thunberg and Elon Musk have an autism spectrum disorder, (Asperger's Syndrome), where Greta's analytical skills and intuition lead her right when it comes to the health of the planet and when it comes to ethics and morality. Elon's analytical skills lead him to make technological breakthroughs and pursue admirable projects, but with megalomaniacal traits and without a moral compass.

Even though he can behave completely senselessly, there are certain logical conclusions and truth demands that he cannot compromise on, which led to the break with Donald Trump.

A dream team that could make great contributions to the world would therefore be Greta Thunberg and Elon Musk, where Greta stands for the moral compass, while Elon solves the practical problems. However, they would need a team leader who protects, sets the framework for behavior and coordinates, and here is my suggestion the Cardinal of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa. This suggestion is inspired by Plato's dialogue "The Statesman" and Ross Douthat's column.

https://english.aawsat.com/opinion/5152709-biggest-mystery-elon-musk

I took help from ChatGTP and it delivered some interesting comments;

It’s a really exciting thought – and actually not entirely improbable if you consider them as complementary archetypes rather than ideological opposites. Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg represent two different ways of approaching the same fateful question: the future of humanity and the survival of the planet. And although they are often seen in contrast, they could hypothetically become a kind of “yin and yang” in a functional team – if certain conditions are met.

Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg could hypothetically work as a team, but only if both parties accept that the other is necessary. This requires:

• Musk to recognize that technology without morality can be dangerous.

• Greta to recognize that morality without tools risks becoming empty symbolism.

Greta could act as an ethical filter mechanism when Musk would otherwise risk overlooking social and ecological consequences of technological solutions (e.g., mining on Mars, AI surveillance). Musk, in turn, could operationalize Greta's ideals into technological realities (e.g., sustainable energy systems on a global scale).

Together, they could constitute a new kind of global leadership: rational, ethical, and radically action-oriented. But for that to happen, mutual respect is required – not just intellectual compatibility.

But, they are both strong personalities with global followings. The media and the outside world would likely try to portray them as opposites rather than partners.

Both have a clear neurodivergent profile. They may understand each other's way of thinking beyond social codes and prestige. This makes them – paradoxically – more compatible than one might first think.

I also got a comment from Simon Sheridan in Australia and he is absolutely right and I answered him, see below:

Socrates would be looking for weaknesses in the framing of the issue. Some of those would be:-

Your question assumes that "success" is based on personal psychological factors and their interaction between two people. Is that actually how success is really achieved?

Isn't the whole point of social institutions to ensure that success can be achieved despite the personal psychology or other quirks of the people involved?

In short, aren't social institutions designed NOT to be based on personal qualities? If so, why would we think that better outcomes can be achieved by two individuals instead of institutions?

To put it another way, if you base your entire strategy on throwing together two unique people such as Musk and Thunberg, even if that "works" in the short term, how can the success continue once those people are gone?

My hypothetical example and conversation with ChatGTP is based on the idea of ​​an individual with autism as an archetype, in this case a female archetype, Greta Thunberg, and a male, Elon Musk. My reference in the original text to Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in Jerusalem is for the same reason that Simon and Socrates have found weaknesses in the text.

With Greta and Elon, I am mainly inspired by Plato's dialogue "The Statesman", where the recipe for a successful state is a king who manages to unite opposing personalities, according to Plato the king/queen masters the royal art of weaving, that is, is a statesman.

In my opinion, "The Statesman" in the original text describes the different personalities in terms that make me think of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.

The reason I chose Cardinal Pizzaballa as coordinator is because I am convinced that Europe during the Middle Ages was successful in the sense of taking advantage of the special talents of extremist personalities, some of them very talented. The introverts were placed in monasteries, the "centre of excellence" of the time, where their talents were taken care of. The extroverts were sent on crusades or voyages of discovery. The unique thing during that period was that the Christian church with the Pope at the top functioned as a unifying factor, a uniting power, an institution, across time and space.

Can we Stop the Wave of Violence?

I think the best term to describe how we feel in this moment is “powerless.” We are watching what’s happening, without being able to do or say anything, surrounded by people who are bewildered, or swamped by the propaganda machine, or taking sides as if they were watching a football game, or delving into complicated geopolitical reasonings, as if there were a logic in what’s happening. This is an attempt to use system dynamics concepts to understand what’s happening and to generate herd immunity in order to stop the madness.

Is there an evil mind behind what’s happening? I think not. If you like, you can use the term “emergent phenomenon,” used in physics to describe things that are not hard-wired into the system, but emerge as consequences of its properties. Clouds do not necessarily bring rain, but in some conditions they do. You could say that rain is an emergent property of clouds. In the same way, temperature gradients over the ocean do not necessarily generate hurricanes, but under some conditions, they do. Hurricanes are emergent properties of the interaction of the ocean with the atmosphere. Governments, then, do not necessarily generate wars, but sometimes they do. You could say that wars are an emergent property of the human mind.

The current wave of death and destruction is not the first, and it will not be the last (at least, if someone survives the current one). Maybe the story of witch hunting can help us understand how these evil patterns arise and then subside. I explored thia subject in my book “Exterminations,” finding many similarities with other waves of violence that engulfed and are still engulfing our world.

Nowadays, witch hunting is perceived as the paradigm of evil. Something that we tend to consign to a mythic world of fanaticism and religious folly; an age that was over long ago, and that will never return. But, as always, things are more complex than they seem. Let’s start with some data.

You see how the craze started in the early 1500s, peaked about one century later, and then declined, with the last official witchcraft execution in Europe in 1782. Evil follows a pattern: it grows, peaks, and then subsides. It is a typical pattern of emergent phenomena. But why?

We can understand the pattern if we use the concept of “meme.” The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in analogy with that of gene: Memes are “virtual genes,” ideas that infect people’s minds and that, sometimes, take up a life of their own. They are passed from person to person, and they behave very much in the same way as biological viruses. Daniel Dennett said that human beings are “meme-infested apes,” and that is a good definition of some facets of human behavior.

Memes and genes follow similar patterns of growth and decline. You can see here a classic case of this kind of curve in the real world, the cholera epidemic in London of 1849. You can find the equations of the model that generate these curves in my book.

The London bacterial epidemic lasted less than one year. The memetic epidemic of witch hunting in Europe lasted much longer, about two centuries in Europe, but the shape of the curve was the same. In our times, people have been infected with various evil memes, a typical example is that of Iraq being supposed to possess “weapons of mass destruction,” and hence deserving to be destroyed by bombing. The shape of the memetic infection is the same, in this case, seen in terms of the number of mentions of the concept in books, according to Google Ngrams.

The current dominating meme with Iran is basically the same. All these evil memes are similar: someone (witches, terrorists, Muslims, the new Hitler, or whatever) and we must destroy them before they destroy us.

In the list of these historical madnesses, witch hunting is impressive because of its sheer absurdity. How could people really believe that women had sex with the devil? Or that they were flying in the sky riding their brooms? Yet, these were some of the accusations leveled against them and, apparently, believed. Burning women was seen as necessary and proper, and it was expected that government officials would engage in the task. It was all done according to rules and laws: there was no question of excited mobs of religious fanatics armed with pitchforks. Killing women was a task organized by the state with all the proper trappings.

Witch hunting also had a monetary side. In many cases, the property of the executed witches could be confiscated and the profits distributed among the people engaged in the task. It was an activity that was both profitable and seen as necessary, a little like, in our times, rat extermination. So, how did people stop engaging in it? There was no lack of witches available. Given a sufficiently intense torture, almost anyone would confess to having had sex with the devil.

Remarkably, witch hunting faded out by itself. There was no “Witch Burning Rebellion,” no “Witch Liberation Movement.” Even during the decline phase, there are no records of anybody explicitly condemning witch hunting. For nearly a century after executions stopped, condemning the madness remained outside the Overton Window of the time. The “Illuminists” of the 18th century spoke scathingly about all superstitions, but that was when the killings were already almost over, and they never singled out witch burning as an especially odious crime.

We have to wait for 1841 to find an explicit condemnation of witch hunting, with Charles MacKay in his "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of the Crowds,” where we find this remarkable sentence:

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

MacKay never heard the term “meme,” and he had no idea that viruses existed, but this sentence perfectly sums up how epidemics, virtual or biological, behave. A virus or a meme expands in herds, infecting people who come in contact with an already infected person. Conversely, people regain their sanity (mental or biological) one by one.

Even though healing occurs at the individual level, it has collective consequences when it generates “herd immunity.” It is a concept that was mistreated beyond imagination during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is both logical and simple to understand. When a sufficient number of people resist infection, a sick person can’t infect as many people as is needed for the epidemic to continue. And this is the key to the whole story. You cannot heal a sick person by being sane yourself (mentally or physically), but you can stop the progress of the infection by being sane in such a way to create herd immunity.

If you want to free people from the evil memes that took possession of them, you cannot do it by reasoning or by your example. This is why so many actions by well-intentioned people turn out to be counterproductive. Think about the “Extinction Rebellion” movement. It was, and still is, so effective in generating a negative counter-reaction that you may legitimately suspect that it was paid for and organized by those whom it pretended to fight.

So, if you want to do something to stop he current wave of madness engulfing the world, first of all, you have to heal yourself. You need silence. You need a pause. Turn off the TV. Don’t engage in flames on the Web. Ignore the screaming of the trolls. Don’t respond to insults. Spend time with your children, your family, and your friends. There is a real world around you, and in the real world, you can recognize evil when you see it. You can do that. And when you have identified evil, you cannot be infected by it.

Eventually, killing and burning innocent people by aerial bombing will be seen just as today we see burning innocent women at the stake: a moment in history when folly had overcome the collective human mind. It will take time, but we may still hope for a better future.

Military Keynesianism: The Greatest Mistake Europe Could Make

Threatening a tired horse with a handgun won’t make it run faster. It is the same with rearming Europe to make its economy recover.

In a previous post of mine, I used the title “If you have the wrong map, you’ll never arrive at your destination.” My point was that the leaders of the European Union are still tied to obsolete views of the economic system. Views that may have been useful in the past, but which are now leading Europe to disaster.

A recent post by Yanis Varoufakis on “Savage Minds” is very much in line with my considerations, although he bases his views on different concepts. He mentions “Keynesianism,” which is, indeed, the prototype of the wrong map in economics.

John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) noted that in a period of abundance of resources, such as the first part of the 20th century, the government could stimulate the economy in various ways, for instance, increasing spending and cutting taxes. The idea was that more money available for investments made the economy grow. It worked, especially in the post-war years, when a combination of technological developments and abundant resources led to the spectacular growth of the “golden years,” the 1950s and 1960s.

Keynesianism is the equivalent of the concept that in Chemistry is called “catalysis.” A catalyst may make a reaction go faster, but it cannot create a reactant that’s not there. If the reaction has no resources to move forward, it won’t. It is the same for the economy: money cannot create resources that are not there anymore. And, without resources, the economy won’t go anywhere.

Unfortunately, bad ideas that worked in the past tend to stick in people’s minds, who think they will always work. Keynesianism is a classic case of an idea that has exhausted its usefulness. In a period of dearth of resources, as in the one we are living now, the idea of “stimulating the economy” by monetary policies leads only to consuming more precious resources that we should instead conserve as much as possible. It is even worse than flogging a dead horse. It means flogging to death a tired horse that, if left in peace, could have survived.

The ugliest version of Keynesianism is military Keynesianism. It is the same idea of classic Keynesianism, but based on the concept that the economy can be revived by the government spending money on the military. This is even worse than flogging a tired horse. It means buying a gun instead of fodder, and then using it to threaten the horse to force it to run. That’s truly the fastest way to destroy an economy in a time of scarce resources by allocating them to sectors where they will produce nothing useful, unless there is a war to make things even worse.

But this is the way the human mind works, always trying to use old solutions for new problems. Right now, in a situation of ongoing ecosystemic collapse, our leaders seem to be unable to think of anything but bombing to smithereens the citizens of other countries. In the process, the effort to “Rearm Europe” will enrich a few, but it will likely cause the European Union to collapse.

______________________________________________________________

By Yaris Vanufakis

My Address to the European ParliamentHow Europe Fell Into the Arms of Warmongering, and What We Must Do

Yanis Varoufakis

Jun 18, 2025

Yanis Varoufakis addresses the European Parliament on Tuesday 10 June 2025. Photo credit: Public domainOn Tuesday, June 10 2025, I addressed a meeting at the European Parliament, an event organised by The Left and M5S Europa, on the theme of “The Economic Conditions for Peace”, alongside Jeffrey Sachs and Giuseppe Conte.

[INTRODUCTION]

A year ago, I would have started this speech with a lament about the hitherto unimaginable conversion of the European Union from a Peace to a War Project. Not so today.

Over the past year, warmongering has seeped into the very fabric of the Union, it has trickled into every policy, it has soaked every one of the thinktanks that generate Europe’s dominant narratives and creeds.

Today, therefore, it makes no sense to lament what is now a fact: The EU is now a fully-fledged War Project—a project that will either land us in permanent war, or it will bankrupt us further, or probably both!

Europe’s military Keynesianism, I shall be arguing, is guaranteed to make Europe less safe, more unequal, weaker.

Only two interesting questions remain:

Why has Europe taken this road? And, now that Europe is on this war path, what is our duty to our people, to Europeans, to Peace? Let me begin at the very beginning.

[THE EU WAS DESIGNED TO BE SUBSERVIENT TO THE UNITED STATES]

At the risk of irking Europeanists who believe in their own creation myth, let me be clear: The European Union (from its beginnings as the European Communities of Coal & Steel) was an American Construction—a part of a US Global Plan that also comprised the Bretton Woods System, the Truman Doctrine and, of course, NATO.

Yes, most Europeans hankered for no more war and no more totalitarianism. But the EU was designed in Washington DC. And it was designed specifically not as a competitive market but as a Big Business Cartel run by a democracy-free bureaucracy (also known as the European Commission) not coincidentally located a stone’s throw from NATO’s headquarters.

From 1950 on, the EU was nurtured by and in tune with the interests of the United States—an inconvenient fact both for Europe’s self-important rulers and for Donald Trump.

Looking back, a common thread runs through the entire history of the EU: its total economic dependence on the United States. Initially, the EU was deeply dependent on being part of the Dollar Zone. Then, from 1971 onwards, it was deeply dependent on the American trade deficit.

So, one way or another, Europe’s deep dependence on the US was ingrained into its architecture. It will thus take much more than mere pronouncements—or a few hundred billion borrowed euros spent on weaponry—to shed Europe’s in-built dependence on the United States.

The fact that the EU was, from the beginning, fashioned as a Big Business Cartel is the reason why the EU needed fixed exchange rates: Currency fluctuations destabilise any cartel, making it hard to maintain the necessary levels of collusion between its participating producers.

From 1950 to 1971, the US took care of this problem on Europe’s behalf. As long as it was running a trade deficit with the United States, Europe’s cartel was embedded in the dollar zone—its currencies tied to the dollar But, when around 1969 Europe (and Japan) started running a trade surplus with the United States, it was game over.

On 15th August 1971, the Donald Trump of that era, President Richard Nixon, jettisoned Europe from the dollar zone, his Treasury Secretary cynically telling the dumbfounded Europeans: “From today the dollar is our currency but it is your problem!”

Two things happened next.

First, to save their Big Business Cartel the Europeans scrambled to create their own fixed exchange rate regime. They tried everything: The Snake. The European Monetary System. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism. They all proved flimsy designs that speculators had no trouble crushing. So, in desperation, they created the most noxious currency the human spirit could fashion—the euro.

The second development was that, as America expanded its budget and trade deficits, the Eurozone morphed into a German-led net exporting machine whose aggregate demand was subcontracted to the United States.

In effect, America’s twin deficits operated like a huge vacuum cleaner that sucked into America Europe’s net exports as well as the European exporters’ profits which were thus invested in US Treasuries, US shares and US real estate. That’s how, once it was expelled from the dollar zone, Europe became addicted to the US deficits.

That was what the Nixon Shock did: It converted Europe’s utter reliance on living within the dollar zone into an even greater dependence on the US deficits.

[NEVER MISSING A CHANCE TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY]

Here in Brussels they love the expression that Europe progresses from crisis to crisis. That’s another delusion.

The crisis of 2008 was our greatest opportunity to render the European Union viable, and to end its deep dependence on the United States.

The French and German banks went bankrupt.

The Eurozone’s impossible rules were in tatters.

A domino effect, beginning with Greece, was bankrupting our governments.

It was the perfect opportunity to transform the EU from a Big Business Cartel, inherently reliant on the US for its aggregate demand, into a functional, internally balanced federation.

Instead, Europe’s radical centre (both the centre right and the centre left) decided that they would change everything so as to ensure that nothing changes. In this vein, they did their worst: Universal austerity for the many. And frantic money printing for the financiers and Big Business.

What happens when you crush the incomes of the many and hand over trillions to the very few?

Since the many are too poor to buy high value added goods, business stops investing in productive capital –– while the rich use the free cash to push through the roof house prices, share prices, Bitcoin prices, art, asset prices in general.

The natural result is soul-crushing levels of inequality and deep popular discontent.

The people got desperate. They even voted for radical progressives like me to enter the Eurogroup! Then, in horror, Brussels and Frankfurt overthrew us, or made Mr Tsipras overthrow his own government, using not the tanks, as they did in Greece in 1967, but the banks—not that much of a difference really! A coup d’ état is a coup d’ état.

[TWO SYMBIOTIC AUTHORITARIANISMS]

Guess what happened next: Just as in the mid-war period, xenophobic ultra-rightists rose up from the woodwork.

They proved a godsent for the shockingly unpopular radical centre whose politicians could now say to voters: It is us or them!

But it was equally a godsent for the ultra-right who needed the radical centre to impose the austerity policies which created the discontent which fuelled the anger that delivered the ultra-right votes.

To put it differently, if Macron and Le Pen had any sense, they would each keep a framed picture of the other on their bedside tables, saying a little prayer in their hated opponent’s name every night before going to sleep.

[SMOKE AND MIRRORS]

Liberal Totalitarianism and Ultra-Right-Xenophobic Totalitarianism are accomplices, they feed off each other.

Meanwhile, austerity for the many and money printing for the few depletes Europe’s productive foundations, its social fabric, its sense of purpose.

That’s how the European Union lost any legitimacy it had in the eyes of the public.

Sensing this, the Liberal Totalitarians in charge came up with one failed Grand Initiative after another. Who can forget the eminently forgettable Juncker investment plan, the Banking Union, the Green Deal, or the Draghi Report that has now joined them in History’s Dustbin?

Impressive numbers were announced that, alas, dependably failed to materialise. It was inevitable. As long as our rulers said NO to the political union that could sustain a proper, macroeconomically significant, eurobond, the money to fund the necessary investment could never materialise. Even when they—finally—during the pandemic—did issue common debt, they ended up with common liabilities but no common purpose.

Every Grand Initiative ever announced was a dance with failure, smoke and mirrors by which they disguised Europe’s nakedness. The result?

After fifteen years of ZERO NET PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT,

Germany is deindustrialising fast, and along with it Eastern and Central Europe, Austria, Northern Italy

Political paralysis grows on the back of fiscal pressures

Neofascism and xenophobia are rising up everywhere

Europe’s dependence on the United States grows stronger at the time Donald Trump is cutting Europe loose

The Rest of the World looks at Europe as a sad case of what could have been, an irritating irrelevance.

In this sad context, our great and good leaders had another woeful idea for a Grand Initiative: Now that the Green Deal is dead-in-the-water and the Recovery Fund is spent, why not try Military Keynesianism?

[THE FOLLY OF MILITARY KEYNESIANISM]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Military Keynesianism works in the United States because America has the federal institutions, the monetary sovereignty, the fiscal power, the technostructure, and the common procurement process that are essential in implementing Military Keynesianism. Europe has none of that, nor does it have leaders interested in acquiring any of that. This is why Military Keynesianism cannot work in Europe.

Thank goodness it can’t work, I say! For if it could work, Europe would have to emulate the United States in starting a war every year so that the stocks of ammunition, missiles et al could be depleted sufficiently to justify the new colossal orders necessary to maintain Military Keynesianism.

Nevertheless, while Europe’s Military Keynesianism cannot and should not work, it serves a purpose—it is a kind of a solution for, say, Volkswagen: Now that Volkswagen can no longer sell its cars, it hands over whole production lines to Rheinmetall to produce Leopard tanks which von der Leyen makes Greece and Italy buy even though we neither want nor need them.

Yes, Military Keynesianism will fail Europe badly, but not before it further bankrupts our states and throws more fuel onto the fire burning down lives and dreams in Ukraine’s killing fields.

So, let me be frank:

No really-existing enemy of Europe shakes in his boots watching a stagnating, heavily indebted Europe, invest billions in weaponry. Quite the opposite!

Military Keynesianism will end up as Europe’s New Austerity for the many and a new money spinner for the few.

It will make Europe weaker while prolonging the Ukraine War in a manner that is detrimental to the stated aim of supporting Ukraine.

[EUROPE’S SURRENDER TO NATO, ITS ROLE IN UKRAINE]

It is at this point that angry yelps will rise up from the press gallery. Can’t you hear them ask: ““Is Russia not ante portas?” “Is Europe not in danger?” “Should Europe remain defenceless, especially now that Trump is abandoning Europe?”

My answer is clear: Weakening ourselves economically through a Military Keynesianism that constitutes the New Austerity which will, with mathematical precision, diminish Europe further is no way to make Europe stronger!

And lest we forget, Europe already has 1.5m men and women in uniform while, over the past decade, we spent €2.7 trillion on defence—a period during which our net productive investment was zero! Now, NATO demands that we spend three times as much—which is totally insane, given how wastefully that €2.7 trillion was spent.

In this light, surrendering our foreign and defence policies to NATO, and sinking further in unsustainable debt just to satisfy President Trump’s demands for more military spending, is the surest way of making Europe more dependent, less secure, uglier and sadder.

In this context, the powers-that-be here in Brussels are anxiously trying to keep their jobs and boost their budgets by spreading the lie that NATO had to expand in order to deter Russian aggression—when it is exactly the other way round: Like the Mafia, NATO expanded to create insecurity in order to sell us protection!

Does this mean that Putin was right to invade the Ukraine? Of course not. What it means is that NATO and Putin are accomplices—that they needed one another in their joint bid for a confrontation that strengthened both—at Europe’s expense.

It also means that anyone truly interested in Europe’s security and prosperity

must dispel the lie that Russia is about to invade us—it can’t even if it wants to

must work tirelessly to kill Europe’s Military Keynesianism, and

must work toward a European Peace Process which uses Russia’s confiscated monies not as a piggybank for more useless Leopard tanks and Leonardo missiles but as a bargaining chip to end the Ukraine War in the context of a comprehensive EU-Russia Peace Treaty.

As for the politicians in this town who will not rest until they see Russia on its knees, I have this to say to them:

If you really wanted to weaken Russia, to bring Russia to its knees, you should have worked hard to admit Russia into the… Eurozone. In one fell swoop the euro would have wrecked Russia’s productive basis, it would have indebted its people and its state, it would have made its leaders rush to Brussels and to Frankfurt with begging bowl in hand!

You think I am joking. But there is too much truth in this joke for comfort!

To sum up my argument so far, Europe’s economic stagnation was the product of its total dependence on the American deficits. This dependence yielded Europe’s complicity with the decade-long American project of inciting a war in Ukraine.

And now that the US is decoupling, our rulers—resembling decapitated chickens—are running around without their heads screwed on, struggling to find ways of continuing to impede Peace in Ukraine so as to use military funds to prop up Europe’s faltering Big Business Cartel.

[WHAT’S BEHIND EUROPE’S ETHICAL DECAY: GAZA, TOTALITARIANISM]

Ladies and Gentlemen, as we speak here today, Europe is falling headlong into another ethical void: complicity in the Palestinian genocide.

It is not just the embarrassment, also known as Mrs Ursula von der Leyen, posing like a cheerleader of Israel’s genocidal army in front of its tanks hours before they stormed Gaza.

No, the European Union is not merely complicit due to our subservience to the United States. No, the European Union is also enabling, it is in fact funding, the war criminals of its own accord. Directly. Cynically. With no compunction.

BNP PARIBAS and ALLIANZ underwrite the issues of the Israeli government bonds that fund the Israeli meatgrinder in the Palestinian Occupied Territories

MAERSK is the prime transporter of the military machine at work in Gaza

Since 2007, the European Union has channelled €2 billion of research funding to Israeli entities producing the means by which Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, targeted, murdered and maimed.

But there is something even scarier going on: Some of our top institutions depend financially on backing Israel’s genocide. If Europe were to do its duty and sanction Israel, the Technical University of Munich stands to lose €195.4 million from the EU’s HORIZON program which funds the University to carry out joint research with Israeli institutions.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Europe carries an enormous guilt. The pogroms against the Jews started here, in Europe. Europeans carried out genocides across Africa, in the Americas, in Australia. By forming the EU as a Peace Project, we claimed a chance to make amends for Europe’s past genocides.

However, our dependence on the US and our ruling class’s penchant to profit from imperialism have made this impossible—and so Europe’s hands are, again, covered in the blood of innocents, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the Sudan, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria.

It has also brought totalitarianism back into our midst, here in Europe. When the German authorities banned me from entering Germany for the crime of co-organising with German Jews a conference on the theme of ‘A Just Peace in the Middle East’, they were making a point:

To them, letting the rivers of Palestinian blood flow unimpeded represented their chance of washing off their hands the guilt over the Holocaust, over the other German genocide in Namibia, of Belgium’s crimes against humanity in the Congo…

It is, therefore, a clear warning to us: Economic stagnation begets warmongering which begets a revived European white settler mentality.

This Europe has fallen so far into a moral crevice that it cannot easily climb out of it.

Europe’s Liberal Totalitarianism, which we in Greece experienced in all its horror ten years ago, is now everywhere—and it is throwing wide open the gates through which Xenophobic Ultra-Right Totalitarianism arrives to darken our doorstep.

The time to rise up against both forms of totalitarianism is now. On behalf of the peoples of Europe.

[WHAT MUST WE DO?]

So, what must we do? Let us begin by grasping that:

The economic condition for Peace is to de-couple Europe’s economy from America’s wars!

But for that we must end, once and for all, Europe’s dependence on the United States.

This entails ending Europe’s dependence on net exports to

Which means rebalancing Europe’s internal economy through

new productive green investments,

an end to structural austerity

an end to the madness of cartel-infested electricity ‘markets’

a new monetary commons by which to end the bankers’ monopoly over payments and to institute a personal dividend for all

a new EU-China deal that liberates us from America’s agenda of intensifying a pointless New Cold War at our expense.

Only by transforming Europe’s political economy can we end the never-ending fragmentation which breeds war, totalitarianism and the embarrassment of being led by cheerleaders of genocide and permanent war with Russia, like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas.

How can we accomplish that? In two ways.

First, we need a Credible Plan for a Europe worth fighting for.

Second, we must organise a campaign of civil and governmental disobedience in our countries and, potentially, in the European Council until our Plan for Europe gets a chance.

We, DiEM25, have worked for a decade on this Plan—our Green New Deal for Europe—and are happy to share it with you, so that you can refine, revise, adapt it.

You, the 5S Movement and other parties eager to partake across Europe, have the organisation that we lack so that, together with our MERA25 transnational parties, we can together help organise the campaign of civil and governmental disobedience without which nothing will change, nothing will impede Europe’s, Italy’s, Greece’s, indeed Germany’s secular decline.

[CONCLUSION]

So, to conclude, seventy-five years of this European Union teach us that we face a stark choice.

A choice between a Dependent-on-the-United States, Warmongering, Stagnating Europe. Or an Independent, Non-Aligned, Prosperous, Green Europe.

A choice between a von der Leyen-type Commission that greenlights genocide, impedes Peace, illegally deletes her Pfizer chat history, lobbies for Lockheed Martin, and borrows money we can’t repay to buy weaponry we do not need—while condemning People and Planet to impecunity. Or European Institutions optimised against raw power and in favour of common prosperity.

A choice between being at the beck and call of the boardrooms of Rheinmetall, Leonardo and Pfizer, blind to the tax havens where war profits and tax fraud hide, while our coastguards turn refugees into corpses. Or a Europe of rational, that is a radical, humanism.

To even have this choice, our immediate task must be to end war, to end genocide and to terminate before it is too late the New Austerity going by the name of Military Keynesianism.

The End of the Consumer Society and the Militarization of the Economy

In the consumer economy, resources are turned into consumer goods by the industry, and then into waste by consumers. In the military economy, the industry turns resources into military equipment, then the enemy takes care of turning it into waste. Apart from a small difference in the role of the agents, the mechanism is the same.

There is an old story among Italian peasants that tells how, after you die, you have to spend time as a ghost on Earth to collect all the bread crumbs you dropped on the ground by mistake. Only after you recover every single one can you finally fly to Paradise.

Think about how different our worldview is. There are still old peasants alive who look at the “consumer society” and shake their heads. In our times, wasting is a virtue, while conservation is a sin. How can that be?

For everything that exists, there is a reason for it to exist, and that’s true also for the consumer society. It has been a fleeting moment of abundance, and we are going to see it disappear soon. It was already clear in 1972, from the calculations of “The Limits to Growth.” We are starting to go down the Seneca Cliff, and nobody ever said it wouldn’t be painful.

Yet, nobody could imagine that the descent would be accompanied by the burst of war madness we are seeing today. Why that? Unfortunately, it is perfectly normal. Consumer economies are rare in history; military economies are the rule. At the end of this post, I discuss the example of the Roman Empire and how it followed a path that led it to extreme militarization, just before it collapsed. It is well known that most Empires tend to collapse as a result of overspending on their military. It happened to the Soviet Union, and we are following the same path right now.

But what mechanism leads a society to beggar its citizens to build a mighty military machine that everyone knows will be useless? One point is that a militarized economy is not really different from a conventional (for us) consumer-based economy. After all, economies are machines designed to turn resources into waste. In some conditions, having the job of “consuming” (i.e., destroying) the products created by the industry can be done by enemies just as well as it can be done by citizens.

To explain how military economies evolve out of consumer societies, let’s start from the great pioneer of economics, Adam Smith. In his Wealth of Nations, he wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” This idea is still at the basis of the modern economy, supposed to be regulated by monetary exchanges in the entity called the “market.”

Like all theoretical concepts, that of the free market is an abstraction. It may work in some circumstances, but it is not universal. It is thought of as a fine regulation mechanism in conditions where both suppliers and buyers have a certain degree of leeway in their choices. But sometimes a “free market” doesn’t exist, or it doesn’t work.

Imagine that the butcher described by Adam Smith finds that the supply of meat has been reduced because of overexploitation of the pastures. The market mechanism will cause prices to rise, shutting off consumption from a large fraction of the customers. Without a sufficient consumer base, the whole meat industry could go bankrupt.

At this point, the butcher may think of a trick to keep his business going. While customers cannot be bribed (it would make no sense), government officials can. So, the butcher brings some juicy steaks to his friends in the government, and soon, the government declares a military emergency. All the meat available will be bought by the government and used to feed the soldiers. Nobody cares if the soldiers receive rotten meat paid at stellar prices. The citizens, then, will eat broccoli or carrots, if they can. The military emergency justifies everything.

It is a fancy tale, but replace “the butcher” with “the automotive industry,” and you see that it is exactly what’s happening in Europe. The European industry can’t anymore produce cars that are affordable and competitive in the world market. So, the idea is that EU citizens will walk, while the government will pay for the industry to switch to the production of tanks, planes, drones, and the like. Will European tanks be more competitive than European cars? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter so much: the role of tanks is not to be bought by private customers but to be destroyed on the battlefield. From the viewpoint of the military industry, losing a war brings more profits than winning one. Other sectors of the European industry are undergoing the same transformation.

It is the incredibly rapid U-turn of the EU Commission. In a few months, it transmogrified itself from a self-declared enlightened elite dedicated to saving the planet, to a band of warmongers engaged in beggaring the European citizens to build a huge military machine. And now everyone, suddenly, is seeing war as the only goal, the only solution, the only job that governments should have.

Is it unavoidable? Not as long as people continue believing in their government’s propaganda. But their trust in government is constantly diminishing, as it should be before the collapse.

We all know that history tends to rhyme, and it seems to be a rule that it is not sufficient for a government to lose the trust of the people to disappear to the dustbin of history. All empires seem to need to beggar themselves for good before collapsing. It is not a conspiracy theory; it is the result of economic forces generated by people who act to maximize their profits. No surprise that it is happening to us right now.

Below, let’s see some details of the historical case of the Roman Empire. If we are lucky, we’ll follow the same trajectory, surviving (at least some of us) the crisis and emerging into a new Middle Age period. But don’t forget that, no matter how cruel Roman Emperors could be, they didn’t have nuclear weapons. We do.

The Militarization of the Economy. The case of the Roman Empire

The Roman Army reached its largest size ever under Emperor Diocletian (above), around 300 AD. Nevertheless, it couldn’t save the Empire from collapse.

One of the few examples in history that we can see as similar to our consumer economy is the Roman society of the late Republic and early Empire. Of course, the Roman Middle class couldn’t import cheap trinkets from China, build McMansions, or take their vacations overseas, as we do. But they enjoyed a certain prosperity that led to a society where people expected to be fed and entertained at the state’s expense. The state encouraged them to consume, at least within the limits of the economy of the time.

Let’s recap the story a little. The secret of the Roman success was that they found a way to turn gold into legions. With the gold they mined from their Spanish mines, they could put together a mighty military machine and embark on the conquest of large swaths of land in Western Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea. That brought them wealth in the form of more gold and energy in the form of slaves.

For a few centuries during the golden years of the Republic and then the Empire, the Romans lived on a predatory economy based on military power, but it was not in itself a militarized economy. Only a small fraction of the population was enlisted in the legions, while the economic system was mainly powered by slaves and controlled by a rich élite. Those in between, the free Roman Citizens, could survive without working by getting their food by becoming clientes of wealthy patrons who would provide them with a daily sportula, a bag containing food, maybe a few copper coins, and some more stuff. Rich men in search of political power would treat citizens with panem et circenses, free food and entertainment. Not that the Roman citizens couldn’t find useful jobs if they wanted. But for most of them, life was not very different from that of modern paper shufflers; people who produce nothing useful but receive their sportula in the form of a monthly salary. University professors, for instance.

Why did the rich feed the poor? Not that they cared very much for them. Although the Roman political system was theoretically a democracy, as it happens for us nowadays, the people could only elect candidates who were liked by the Powers That Be, exactly as it is in our times. It was a competition among the rich: see how I can feed more poor people than you? Not unlike modern populist politicians.

In time, the Roman Empire went through its cycle of growth and decline. With the unavoidable depletion of the Spanish gold mines, the Roman Legions ceased to be the wondrous machines they used to be. They were staffed with foreigners and anyone who would accept to be paid a pittance for the risk of being disemboweled on a remote battlefield. The late Roman troops were called Bucellarii, biscuit eaters, to indicate how they would fight for food. The supply of food for ordinary citizens declined, and with it the population. It was a slow process, taking a few centuries, but the final result was obvious. The last Gladiator Games in Rome were held in 404 AD. The shipments of grain to Rome from Africa ceased when the Vandals sacked the city in 455 AD. And then, it was darkness.

But, despite the decline that started in the 3rd century AD, the size of the Roman army kept increasing for at least one full century, peaking at the beginning of the 4th century. At the same time, the Roman government also kept spending enormous sums to build fortifications along its borders, supposed to keep the Barbarians out. The Empire became a huge military machine that turned taxes into legions. (Plot made by Grok3 from various sources.)

The late empire had no more literature, no more art, no more large buildings. It only had huge border fortifications, which were nevertheless abandoned during the 3rd century. Then, it was a slide down the Seneca Cliff.

The Empire’s solution to keep itself alive, making its military bigger, had turned out to be an even worse problem. The Empire could solve it only by destroying itself and moving into the Middle Ages, which was as far from a “consumer society” as we may imagine. Is the same destiny in store for us?

Collapse Revisited: How do we Stand in Terms of Existential Risks?

The Goddess Gaia plays with her creation. One more piece removed, and the whole thing crumbles down.

I am normally labeled as a “Catastrophist,” although I much prefer the term “Physical Eschatologist.” The latter at least leads people to ask me questions rather than running away, plugging their ears with their hands. But, in my rather long career in this field, I found that many people are so deeply impressed by the concept of civilization collapse (or, if you prefer, Armageddon), that they refuse to admit that it is a more complicated and nuanced concept than it can be expressed in terms of “I die, you die, everybody dies.” They resent being told that there are chances they won’t die so soon, so much that at times they become aggressive.

But, once in a while, every good catastrophist (or eschatologist) should abandon these simplistic views and ask him/herself, where do we stand? Well, things change, and even the science of catastrophes must adapt to new trends and new discoveries. The main novelty that changes many of the older ideas is the slowdown of the human population growth and the imminent “peak population.” It is not necessarily a good thing, but it eases many problems that seemed insurmountable not too long ago. I discuss this issue in my upcoming book “The End of Population Growth.”

Let me try to list where I think we stand in terms of “existential risks,” that is, civilization-destroying events. I classified them into three categories of risk: Low, Medium, and High, at least in my opinion. Of course, if you are good eschatologists, you know that we are dealing with a complex system, and everything in a complex system is linked to everything else. The result is a sort of Jenga tower game, where you take out a critical piece, and the whole thing comes down. But we can try at least to understand what we are facing.

Here is my take on ten elements potentially able to cause a global societal collapse. I start from less likely civilization-smashers, to truly humongous monsters waiting to devour us to the bone (and then gnash the bones to dust). Some risks that were popular up to not long ago, e.g., peak oil, turn out to be not so monstrous after all, while some new ones, e.g., killer drones, are stealing the scene.

__________________________________________________

Energy Supply Collapse. Overall risk: Low. This is where most of us, the collapsniks, started our careers. It was the idea of “Peak Oil” that was supposed to be the pivotal point that would lead to the collapse of the whole system. The concept of “peaking” was correct, but oversimplified. Society reacted in two ways: one was to make a huge effort to squeeze more oil from the ground, the other was to find new energy sources in the form of renewable technologies. Peak conventional oil came a few years ago, but we are still alive, while renewables are growing at a fantastic speed, leaving nuclear and fossils (and catastrophists) in the dust. Taking into account the slowdown in population growth, we may have a chance to avoid the fossil fuel-driven collapse that the early models indicated. Caution: I am saying that we may avoid collapse, not that we’ll be able to keep consuming more and more energy forever. Unfortunately, some people seem to be able to understand issues only in terms of opposite extremes,

Resource Depletion. Overall risk: Low. “Peak Resources” is an offspring of the “peak oil” idea. It is true that we can’t keep mining forever, hence we might find ourselves in a bottleneck generated by the lack of some critical element needed to keep the industrial civilization going. But we are developing technologies to cope with it: for instance, photovoltaic energy needs only aluminum and silicon, both abundant on Earth's surface. Other technologies can be modified to work with common elements rather than with rare ones. Again, the population slowdown will help a lot and, if we think about maintaining at least a minimum vital level of energy supply, we should be able to do that.

Food production collapse. Overall risk: low. This is the classic Malthusian collapse, which would be the result of a rapidly growing population crashing against the planetary limits of food production. But population is NOT growing exponentially anymore and the food production system has revealed itself to be remarkably resilient. So, it should be possible to maintain a reasonable food supply for a declining population. You may have to dine on algae and insects, but it is better than no dinner at all.

Governance collapse. Overall risk: medium. We are in a situation in which the destiny of the world is in the hands of people chosen on the basis of the iffy system called “democracy” who, once in power, have the right to do anything they think is a good idea. Nobody can stop them, especially when they decide that war is what they want. This kind of haphazard governance is simply impossible to maintain in the medium/long run, and it may lead to governmental collapse. You know what “failed states” are. In the future, they may not be an exception but the rule.

Keystone Species Collapse Overall risk: medium. “Keystone species” are those critical for the survival of entire ecosystems. A good example is that of bees. Without bees, the exchange of pollen becomes impossible for flowering plants. It has been said that if bees disappear, everything dies. It is a little exaggerated, but it gives some idea of what could happen. Fortunately, the ecosystem is highly resilient and if one specie disappears, another will take its place. But that’s not guaranteed.

Economic collapse. Overall risk: medium. Some people think that globalization is evil and that we would all be better off if it disappeared. Maybe. But take into account that the world’s economy has adapted to a globalized market. If the economic system crashes, you won’t just lose your savings, the whole trading machinery crumbles to a halt, and with it the supply of the things you need to survive: food, fuel, textiles, metals, spare parts, everything. Fortunately, globalization has been remarkably resilient. So far.

Pollution-generated collapse. Overall risk: medium-high. This is a serious threat that many people tend to discount, or have no idea that it exists. However, with pollution attacking many functions of the human body, including the reproductive system, the idea that humans soon won’t be able to reproduce is a real threat. Or that they will become so fat that they won’t be able to move. Or that their immune system will become so compromised that they won’t be able to survive even ordinary viruses. Or that they may become so dumb that they simply won’t be able to carry on as human beings. A declining population wouldn’t help so much because pollution has accumulated in the ecosystem and it will take centuries, millennia, and even more to re-absorb it and making it harmless.

War-generated collapse. Overall risk: high. It seems that the world’s economic system is orienting itself toward a war-based economy, that is, producing goods which are destined to be used, destroyed, and discarded on the battlefield. That’s an alternative to the current system that used to imply the production of goods to be used, destroyed, and discarded by customers. Hence, the new economic system doesn’t need consumers anymore, and that’s obviously worrisome for the consumers. Let’s just say that up to now, nuclear warheads were the cheapest way to kill people, but they were unwieldy, cumbersome, and caused lots of collateral damage. Using drones to exterminate people is less expensive per kill, and surely generates less collateral damage. Drones can take over, and that wouldn’t be good for humans.

Global Ecosystem Collapse. Overall Risk: very high. The whole system could start a rush to higher and higher temperatures that would make most of Earth’s surface uninhabitable for human beings. But not just that; it would cause a catastrophic contraction of the planetary ecosystem, not unlike the case of the great extinction events of the remote past. Most of these ancient events were related to the sudden release of large amounts of CO2, just like what’s happening now. It is a risk that is not just high, it is beyond imagination. Eventually, Earth is expected to recover and rebuild a working ecosystem, but it may take a few million years, and we won’t be there.

Artificial Intelligence generated collapse. Overall risk: ??? Nobody knows where we are going with AIs infiltrating all facets of the human management and decision-making system. It might even be a good thing, or maybe it could lead to a perfectly legal government decision to exterminate most (or all) human beings. As usual, we walk into the future blinded and with our hands tied behind our backs.

About this list, please note that every item is related to all the others. In some cases, it is in enhancing feedback relationship, in others, in dampening one. So, if pollution damages the reproductive system of human beings, it will make the ecosystem collapse less likely. On the other hand, governance collapse may make wars and the related exterminations more likely. It is the way things work with complex systems; they always surprise you. And that’s the way the universe goes: never smoothly, but always in bumps.