Conspiracies in particular, more than crime in general, arouse delights of despair especially in the society of the spectacle, results which seem to demonstrate, if by them anything is ever “shown,” that something may indeed at times come from nothing, contravening the ordinary rules of logic, as though a mental contagion turns the absence of indications of a conspiracy inside out and, directing attention towards “it” in obsessive misunderstanding, conjures forth from the void a conspiracy to indicate the absence of – a conspiracy.
A perverse mode of whiling away the time, indulged in nearly as a hobby, albeit with fatal seriousness, against which it were worse than useless to try to argue? Quite possibly. The fatuity of those who “think” along these lines, seems clear, but to their insistence a response other than logical refutation may be best, offer the most efficacious cure for full-grown children who’ve “let themselves go” far into the stubborn zones of nonsense: ridicule, laughter, and much bemusement.
Who are these infants? then merits the response, If you need to ask . . . , with its unspoken corollary, Oh, you probably will not grasp the answer – admittedly, there are a great many of them, so identifying any one in particular may prove difficult. Rather more serious is the question: Who has abetted the spread of such dispositions so widely throughout the polity? – leaving aside the matter whether or not they’ve done so as part of a conspiracy! Serious, even momentous, because an impartial reply to this one query would also have to finger those academics, educators, and “intellectuals” in whose theory and practice, relative to their readers and students, opposition to them is decried as proof of a conspiracy. The names of prominent paranoiacs I have neither need nor desire to state, for why should anyone dignify such delusions beyond a bare minimum?* Salient here is the self-importance in ascribing to their ideas a heft able to call forth so much resistance to them, which furnishes a model for untold numbers of acolytes to copy; hence this constitutive misapprehension has tended to spread far beyond the locales whose sheltering confines were its native habitat, infiltrating the political arena more and more with every wave of graduates from not only some few “experimental” institutions.
* One such case featured en passant in an earlier essay.
Those opting not to serve as laboratories in which the disposition incubates and adds to its peculiar subtle strength, are a minority, a small one. (Or they were: the others are now embattled.) Where was the academic institution untouched by the mania of the new pronouns, to instance an egregious fashion? Unsurprisingly, then, those venues fomented dispositions whose own derangement – construing opposition as evidence of conspiracy against “them” – sought attention by a novel thought-construct built around the most paranoid of basic notions, “they.” By the twofold usage of this pronoun, unstably and even dialectically their inclination towards paranoia is at once admitted and denied, a feat of intellectual legerdemain that renders them worthier of their own and everyone else’s notice (so they think).
Avowals that absence of indications of conspiracy actually represents a conspiracy to indicate the absence of one, and denials that signs which rouse suspicions about a possible conspiracy do warrant inquiry into it, are colliding in shouting-matches, altercations other than choral, over the trove of documents recently opened to the public, in a matter which has furnished probably the fullest instance of all this for decades now, to such a degree that the speculation about it long since became a pastime in its own right.* Source of a perverse variety of fun, the disputing about who was “behind it” (if there was anything at all) can itself be taken as an index of the retreat of those twin dispositions, common sense and public spirit, before the advance of the secret parts of the state, the espionage and intelligence agencies, which aggrandise themselves into a state or states within the state – wherewith the general liking for ersatz amusement delivered by “conspiracies” rises, the quality of political life declines in level overall. Developments like this will, at the end of the day, force one perhaps to note the élan vital of a body politic is wearing out and its fate pressing down upon it. Desire to entertain and be entertained, then signifies in a twofold way, a search for divertissements from the infirmity which however cannot help but acknowledge it somehow, malgré elle-même, though tacitly, grudgingly, indirectly. On the part of those who “just ask questions” about such (non-)matters, obstinance supplies a tell-tale sign of recognising something has gone generally awry. Stubborn people they are, feasting upon, wresting delight from the decay of minds itself, stealing a devious pleasure which is relatively the best under the circumstances, as that awful thing the guilty innocence of their second childhood besets them all (or so at bottom the sort does indeed imagine).
* The reference, of course, is to the assassination in Dallas of November 22, 1963, and the manifold vicarious interest thereafter in the question “Who shot . . . ?”
Not refutation of such aberrant “questions,” for no sooner is one smashed than ten or (taking today’s inflation into account) hundreds spring up in its stead, but a refusal of the low dishonest pastime to begin with, is the wiser move. (Calling it a “language-game” would do it too much honour and be a misnomer to avoid.) All the more so, since these disputes lend credibility to the oldest hatred in its recent iterations, which feature the shadowy existence of national intelligence agencies and the hallucination of an ultra-cunning international conspiracy, whose conjoint action they aver on faith. A total solvent! – (one hopes) anyone sensible will agree. What has not yet been wiped away of the public side of political life, is liquidated by a sub-realism, as this ruinous turpentine of the imagination may be termed.
En latin, la conspiratio, c’est l’accord, l’accord musical aussi bien que l’entente entre les êtres. Dans la liturgie du premier christianisme, la conspiratio, c’est le moment de l’osculum, le baiser sur la bouche que les fidèles s’échangent, devenant ainsi « un seul souffle », un seul « esprit ». […] Un « complot », en ancien français, c’est simplement un rassemblement – une foule, une réunion ou une compagnie. Partout où des gens respirent le même air et partagent un même esprit, il y a conspiration. Partout où ils se rassemblent physiquement, il y a complot, du moins potentiel. Que ces notions se soient chargées d’une signification maléfique témoigne seulement du poids de l’État dans la définition de notre vocabulaire, et conséquemment dans le regard que nous portons sur le monde. Car c’est seulement du point de vue de l’État que toute entente singulière et tout rassemblement forment une menace.
La faculté de conspirer est inhérente à toute existence.
Elle est même la marque de tout ce qui est vivant.
Si tout vit, c’est parce que « tout conspire », disaient les stoïciens.
[…]
L’aberration n’est pas le complotisme, mais le sous-complotisme : le fait de ne discerner qu’un grand complot, alors qu’il y en a d’innombrables qui se trament dans toutes les directions, partout et tout le temps.— Manifeste conspirationniste,
“Le conspirationnisme est le nom de la conscience qui ne désarme pas,” 3
Proponents of this paranoid deformity, who really have come to believe what they say (unless they feign it in order to get themselves noticed), do themselves appear to operate as though all are thinking and opining in unison, acting in effect as agents of a conspirational endeavour, doing so less than wittingly, quite possibly in some cases. But the very moment one dares to mention this character of what they do – indeed not to them, for what would that ever achieve, but to third parties – from their side hails once more the accusation with which they begin and end: opposition to them is ascribed to the conspiracy. At which point, no further speech but simply laughter is the most fitting response.
Sad the mirth, however, in view of the show of people entrapping themselves in a caricature of a world-picture (Weltbild),* assuming the roles of agents of the oldest hatred which itself would be a world-conspiracy (Weltverschwörung)!** – would be, if there is any such thing at all really, rather than merely in the hallucination reality calls forth (l’hallucination que la réalité provoque),*** i. e., phantasms sprung from deranged minds and set into groups that, alas, today yet again as in times past, the ancient animosity’s recent adherents turn around to denounce, nearly the same notes struck over and over and over to the end of the night, chimed like clockwork.
* compare Martin Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes”
** vide Peter Trawny, Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung
*** André Gide, “Les Juifs, Céline et Maritain”
Nothing may come of this laughter, granted, but if something beneficial eventuates other than a remedy for other people’s paranoia or a prophylactic to ward off an incipience of one’s own, perhaps it would be the manifest resolve to appropriate for personal use and enjoyment the very term “conspiracy.” And, if anyone inclines towards philology, to inquire into its history, for much might still be done with this one provocative word, in practice and in theory, and perhaps in other arenas too.
Conspiracies, once delusions of “the conspiracy” have been dispatched – a matter of vital importance the philological inquiry may help indirectly to address – can be more properly estimated and assessed. For, of course, they do occur! How filled by them is political life, even overfull! There they acquire definition enough for one to recognise them as such, with caution, surely, as these things are volatile.
One fulcrum of endeavours which do seem to answer to the notion of conspiracy, is found in the rapports of the intelligence agencies and the judicial authorities. What not long ago would have met with shock, as aberrant proceedings in several countries, now are commonplaces. In one, the constitutional court’s invalidation of the electoral outcome, it is said due to findings gleaned from counter-intelligence efforts, but actually as seems clear on account of the stated positions of the victor, and then his disqualification and arrest; in another, a flagrant prosecution of the political front-runner, resulting in a fine and imprisonment along with a ban on her candidacy; insurrection, it plausibly has been called, of numerous lower courts against the executive branch of government in matters mainly or solely under its purview, pertaining to foreign relations and national security, overtly in concerted action, in a third; and demands from the supreme court for a veto over ministerial appointments such as the next director of an intelligence agency, in a fourth. Other examples could be added, but just with this quartet an honest observer would find it hard not to detect the frequency of close alliances in Western countries between the secret parts of the state and the judicial branch of government, the one more averse to sustained public scrutiny than the others, the executive and legislative (whether in presidential systems or in parliamentary). If the alliance is entered into out of convenience by actors who seek, when one disregards any justifications they may advance on their own behalf, to subordinate the other political powers to themselves, then the polity or what remains of it becomes subject to a tyranny less and less swathed in the shadows; while in the case that what looks at first like an alliance does disclose the juridical authorities as figureheads gotten under control of the intelligence agencies, or even become willing agents of their schemes, the courtrooms thus having been made into forecourts of the state’s hidden sectors, whereby one can no longer properly identify where the one ends or the other begins, then a transition to the form of total rule has advanced quite far already. Well, whether the fateful political architecture under construction (though soon, hopefully, to be demolished) should more aptly be called tyrannical or totalitarian – regardless, may one recoil from those environs’ air, laden as it is with conspiracy.
It is not the role of we, the people, or our representatives to watch in dumbfounded silence as unelected judges usurp our authority and a foundational principle of our Constitution at the behest of partisan litigants. This is a republic, after all. Our allegiance is not to the ruling class and those who abuse their power. And we don’t need to wait for a higher court to rule to make our revulsion known. […] [W]e are the reason for this government and participants in it.
— Mark Levin, Tweet, March 19, 2025
As an insult added to injury, the rationale that such manœuvres “safeguard our democracy” when in fact they raise their proponents over the ruins of democratic constitutions destroyed by them – is a tune whistled by many who never were elected, at times in unison, even in the very same words or virtually so, in several countries.
Wherever this mendacious refrain is sung (rather unmusically!), it should arouse consternation in anyone who does wish to see sovereignty remain with the people.
Just recently in Germany, to take the newest instance of these campaigns, the party to which has fallen the main role in opposing the status quo confronts the prospect of an outright ban, after a decision by the Verfassungsschutz, the court set up to protect the constitutional arrangements, labelled it as “extremist,” on the basis of a secret dossier compiled by the domestic security service.* By now, evidently, this judicial body is primarily a bulwark of the party-cartel system in a state that has “learned” to heed only in name its formal profile of Bundesrepublik or Rechtsstaat, though the lack does not hinder it from lecturing others concerning their supposed legal, moral, or political failures. Yet the main point is not the unlearning-process, but simply the ill-omened proximity of these judiciary and intelligence agencies.
* Initial accounts of this event are given in the Tweets of May 2, 2025 sent out by Felix Perrefort and Julian Reichelt. Compare the defensive statement in the Tweet of the same date by the German Foreign Office. – Developments since then, largely under outside pressure, signify less than that first step itself.
Das Gutachten des VS ist nur für den internen Dienstgebrauch. Die AfD darf es nicht lesen, aber die Presse darf daraus zitieren. Der VS ist die neue Inquisition, die sind Polizei, Staatsanwalt und Richter in einem und gleichzeitig auch noch PR Agentur in eigener Sache. Es ist eine kafkaeske Farce.
— Beatrix von Storch, Tweet, May 2, 2025
These state-organs are linked together in secrecy and quite possibly by it. If the withholding from public scrutiny of the “reasons” typifies both, this practice common to them may yet again portend the emergence of a totalitarian system. So one should query the alliance with rigour and alarm.
At a bare minimum the public could rightly ask in disquiet (better late than never): Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – more pointedly, Quis custodiet custodes nostros?
Elsewhere in the news are developments in Israel, where the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, and some other top officials on one side, the Prime Minister and the rest of the cabinet along with the majority in the Knesset on the other, seem to be nearing a showdown. At stake there is the political role of sovereign, i. e., who should have the last word in the settling of disputes within the state (a role which would include but also extend further than the power to determine when cases, circumstances, etc., are to be treated as exceptions). This role the highest echelon of the Israeli judiciary has been arrogating to itself in stages since the early 1990s, in what appears to have been all along a well-planned endeavour that in retrospect seems like a long-range – conspiracy against the democratic character of governance. Mounted, to be sure, in the name of “democracy,” which, in view of the very elastic standards of justiciability the judges established for themselves along the way, in conjunction with the innovation of permitting the highest court itself to designate its new members, eventually has come to mean pretty much anything these arbiters want it to: a carte blanche they extend to themselves at their own discretion.* At least until the current flare-up, for the resolution of this experiment in judicial supremacy has by no means been written in advance.
* A critical account of this self-aggrandisement of the judiciary at an earlier stage, was given by Hillel Neuer in an essay, “Aharon Barak’s Revolution.” The latter’s fullest statement of the programme for which he strove may be found in his treatise The Judge in a Democracy, a work reviewed in “Barak’s Rule” by Robert Bork, whose Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges, a study published some years prior, is also worth consulting, not only concerning Israeli jurisprudence. Lastly and most recently, Moshe Cohen-Eliya, a professor of constitutional law, has described the entire conflict in a number of articles and even some longer Tweets, not without legal risk to himself, as he states pointedly.
To designate the form of government in which judges have taken for themselves the last word, some commentators have dusted off an old term of art, “kritarchy,” but its new application does far too much honour to today’s despots on the bench, in the several countries where their imprudent decisions are now fomenting grave crises. That term would bespeak a very high seriousness of approach on the part of a judicial body, a judicious self-limitation, a check it places on itself to balance out its exercise of authority within a state, out of respect and even veneration for the principle of law, whereby, in such a nearly inconceivable case, one might accept or acknowledge this dominance as embodying to some extent the “rule of the best,” an aristocratic element: but a dutiful student of history would be hard pressed to locate any example of this type of governance, illustrations which, gleaned from the historical sources, might perhaps lend a bit of support to today’s self-assertion of the judiciaries. (At issue here is a relatively small number of persons who claim sovereignty for themselves within a modern state, but not, obviously, the singular and constitutive role taken in antiquity by the personages who proved the greatest founders.) No, quite the contrary, the current crop of judges is far from being the “best” in any sense of the word. Hence, treating the matter with due impartiality, the more fitting term for the rulership which they, not least by conspiratorial means, seek to impose upon polities that even now are rather democratic in their constitutions, would be “oligarchy,” or else some more cumbersome variant of it to define those would-be sovereigns who never will merit the high title of “kritarch.”
Barak has famously portrayed the legal and judicial system as an orchestra of different musicians, with the Supreme Court as the conductor who assures synchronization and coordination.
— Hillel Neuer, “Aharon Barak’s Revolution”
It is time for those who believe in self-government to form alliances across borders, cultures, and political divides. The alternative is not stability – it is permanent rule by those who were never chosen.
— Moshe Cohen-Eliya, “Israel’s Deep State Is Worse Than America’s”
Though the architect of this plan to aggrandise the judiciary in Israel, stylised his profession in musical terms, the threats of civil war which he now issues, confirm it is not music-making that moved him, the harmony of actualising “law” in the world, but a will to power. Whereas amongst those who stand against any judicial coup d’état, something like music may be found and heard.
Metaphorically speaking, of course, the improvised action in concert of citizens, awakening to the perils of juridical rule, might indeed engender a kind of music, or at least a new readiness to make it, together. Internationally and nationally, times may be ripe to set aside previous differences. The last five years especially those who’ve been paying attention to political developments have seen surprising coalitions form amongst those whose love of freedom counted the most, at first on an ad hoc basis, by now perhaps more lastingly, against the acquiescence before the state generally and the dictates of the judiciary and intelligence agencies in particular, under which so many have shown themselves willing to – conspire.
Checks and balances amongst the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government, when they serve adequately, permit the question of the sovereign to be held in abeyance: none need have the proverbial last word in any matter, as each remains capable of playing its proper part, neither more nor less, in what is (to speak figuratively) the music a well-tempered constitutional order emits. Such an arrangement of counter-weights should never just suppress the activity of the three powers, but instead augment all of them separately, prompting them to fulfil their specific tasks better, with greater energy, more conscientiously. Performing these pieces of political chamber music as it deserves, in the absence of conductors guiding this trio, will require each to comport itself with self-restraint. A balance to check the excesses to which all may incline, does not come only from without; yes, some control has to be exerted by every one of the three over itself. As regards the judiciary, common sense and public spirit alike should enter into the decisions it hands down. This part of government ought to consider its judgements from the point of view of the public, remaining mindful of public spirit while formulating them and indeed being imbued with it. The coherence of the arguments before the courts and the consistency of the legal decisions to be rendered which will persist after their work is done, they really must assess not solely as the jurists they are by profession, but also, and more importantly, as the citizens they too should be, that elemental category of politics in which common sense imparts so large a share.*
* Common sense and public spirit, this pair of essential terms in political thought and discourse, seem to carry a quite broad reference and full meaning when well spoken in the English language. That this profile was and is an observable fact, and shall (hopefully) continue to be, does not of course represent some linguistic quirk; rather it correlates to a long historical development which one can seek to describe sine ira et studio. Just as with the phrases “bon sens” and “esprit public” in French, whose sense, comparatively speaking, generally is more restricted. (Not to mention the “öffentlicher Geist” and “gesunder Menschenverstand” of German, expressions of which the very ponderosity and/or cumbersomeness signifies in its own right.)
Appearance of impropriety which common sense may quickly detect, in the arena of public opinion, is perhaps the thing a judiciary should aim to avoid most of all. Otherwise, sooner than hapless power-hungry judges would imagine, it will find its decisions regarded as illegitimate. And on what other support could it then call for assistance, in a fatal predicament entirely of its own making? – If it neglects to exercise this circumspection, the very word “jurisprudence” will quickly be voided of a positive sense; soon enough the justices will acquire the reputation of tyrants. And for tyranny there no longer really are any constitutional checks and balances, only a sole time-honoured remedy, albeit one which is fraught with its own perils.
Single-handed self-aggrandisement of the judiciary relative to the legislative and executive powers, and at the expense of the people’s sovereignty, the democratic element in the constitution of the polity, is itself not to be borne. Still worse the actions which suggest strongly that behind the scenes, though no longer hidden too carefully, the judicial bodies and the intelligence agencies are consummating a marriage or celebrating a merger, for then nothing less than a totalitarian form of rule would soon follow. Set against this darker backdrop, the campaign advocated by analysts such as the Israeli professor of constitutional law, namely, international action by citizens (some in government) around the world in concerted opposition to the alliance of the judiciary power and the secret police, or for simplicity’s sake the “deep state,” is historically resonant. It calls back to mind an older idea: the Allies’ military struggle against totalitarianism that was the Second World War, is described more precisely, albeit paradoxically as an international civil war, with forces pro and contra the totalitarian formation of rule arrayed in many countries, on all sides of the fronts, actually everywhere. – Even the locating of a semi-secure base from which to mount one’s campaign against it, if indeed one deems oneself opposed to the tyranny, may be a battle in itself, whose decision remains in doubt.
As a result, a whole situation which can hardly fail to perplex. When thinking it over there may ensue, for some, a quantity of solace, for others, sources of disquiet. – In this world-conflict, the front-lines might seem very confused and difficult to locate or trace exactly.* They could also interpose themselves between people who thought they knew one another well, or even (conceivably) instil mistrust within a single person, disordering the rapport of such a myself to me, who could be anyone, and turning this unfortunate’s interior life into a vain war-theatre of disharmony.
* Compare Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, ii, 3
Some perplexity may perhaps also afflict today’s main proponents of this judicial supremacy, wherever they happen to reside, though they of course bestow other names on it than “tyranny.” For, standing near in the historical background of their agenda, even though awareness of the fact may more highly have typified the leading jurists of the generation which preceded theirs whose main concerns they imbibed during the course of their legal training, was a pronounced sense that the principle of law itself had been a casualty of totalitarian rule, and hence they had to recognise that any worthwhile revivification of it would at the very least require new thought about jurisprudence altogether: which could run awry, however, led astray as can occur with all ventures in politics to effect drastic though needful correction. Perplexing must have been their awareness of the pitfalls on every side of the narrow path to which any attempt would do best to hew, as they sought to meet the occasion, when the moment arrived, early in the 1960s, to revisit the juridical measures taken in the few years after Germany’s defeat in the Second World War. And yet the difficulties were not felt to be insuperable and nothing more; instead these pressures themselves could draw out a salutary response, whereby they would (such was the best hope) stress a point on which one of the clearest-eyed of observers did also insist at the time. Es gehört zum Menschen, überfordert zu werden. Sonst kommt das Beste, das er vermag, nicht zur Wirklichkeit. It’s an essential aspect of being human, to be overwhelmed. Otherwise the best that the human being can do, will not become a reality. A delicate insight his was, under the circumstances, and in accord with it some jurists did seek to rise to the unprecedented challenges, albeit elsewhere than in the glare of publicity which even courtrooms were not spared. – First and foremost, their favoured venue was the seminar room and its extensions in the learned press, locales preserved somewhat from tendencies to make everything into a show.
There, in academic environs, the provisional answer of a retro-active force could be discussed better, at least in theory. This would have been a reply by jurisprudence to a minor conundrum: the offences of the National Socialist régime represented in the terms of its own “legality” no crimes at all – and, of more importance, to a very major dilemma. Namely, no legal punishment could ever be adequate in the case of the deliberate programme of annihilating an entire people by the application of industrial means, even contrary to the rationality of warfare (not to mention other types of reasonable conduct). From 1933 onwards by stages the German state had become a criminal enterprise not simply against humanity (die Menschlichkeit) but also against the status of the human as such (die Menschheit): a singular enormity which other totalitarian régimes even in their extremes of criminality, the Soviet Union while most Stalinist and China while most Maoist, never moved to implement. (Although on this last point, given the country’s remoteness and the relative lack of information concomitant with it, Jaspers, whose remarks I have simply been summarising, did perhaps waver somewhat.) If justice on behalf of the human status as such (die Menschheit) could be rendered at all, the verdict would not be issued without some measure of retro-activity (rückwirkende Kraft), which should serve to underscore the singularity, the externality of the offences to any legal framework, national or international. (Indeed, upon the opponents of legal retro-activity it rested to argue their case.) Die absolute Ausschließung rückwirkender Kraft – he insisted – das wäre, als ob wir den Nazistaat mit einschließen könnten in eine Weltordnung des Rechts. Excluding legal retro-activity utterly (in this one exceptional instance) would be tantamount to the idea that we could ever include the National Socialist state within the world’s lawful order. Take note of all the provisos, explicit and implicit, placed around the advocacy of such a retro-active power: its usage cannot reasonably furnish any precedent beyond this singular context, where a state itself and not simply some of its actions had become criminal. With good reason were the reservations set there. Indeed, how tempting would it have been to generalise from that context, turning to retro-activity more and more often until at last it turned into a carte blanche!
Merely the forecast of this outcome, did it already elicit perplexity amongst the jurists and those who were watching them in action, a portion of qualms and doubts, at that moment in the 1960s? Accordingly, by way of prescription, if the experience of being overwhelmed conduces to raise human beings up to do the best of which they are capable, one item which the result comprises would be the judiciary withstanding just this temptation, both then and subsequently. – Alas, self-aggrandisement being what it is, for individuals as for groups, the idea of law’s retro-active efficacy could be used to rationalise the acquisition of new powers by this branch of government. And, I submit, this idea played a large role in following decades, as professional jurists began to assert themselves more and more often.
But putting any perplexities aside, how easy have they found it to overlook the proviso uttered by Jaspers. Die rückwirkende Kraft ist rechtswidrig nur innerhalb einer Ordnung im Ganzen und für die Handlungen ihrer Zeit. Dort würde sie Unsicherheit schaffen und dem Rechtsstaat widersprechen.* Retro-activity is contrary to law only within any legal order as a whole and for the actions taken during the time when it remains in force. There it would foment uncertainty and insecurity, and contradict the principle of the rule of law altogether. – So readily could these demarcations be transformed into further self-allowances by this professional body to do, at the end of the day, whatever it wanted. With a facility all the greater, insofar as it could fancy itself virtuous, by contrast to the failings (real or imagined) of its predecessors in the earlier periods. – Here, not for the first time, one encounters what are thought to be the lessons learned from the period of German totalitarianism, though on closer examination they prove to be something other than the right ones. (Which assumes – a large assumption – there are strictly speaking lessons to be learned from this history. But, though some wisdom may accrue, why should it come in the form of lessons? Experience does still don shapes other than academic or scholastic, fortunately.)
* “Für Völkermord gibt es keine Verjährung”
In recent times, however, perplexity is hard to suppress when one considers how these trends towards totalitarian forms of rule disguise themselves by a blatant misuse of the lexicon and the legend (in the cartographic sense of the word) of anti-Fascism and more specifically anti-Nazism, libellously accusing those who in actuality are their opponents of the very thing they oppose, while not scrupling to embrace movements and powers whom the epithets indeed do fit. Such polemical dishonesty is so rife with double-talk that one nearly cannot get a word in; and so laughter may be the last best response, or would be, had the manifestations of all this on the world-stages not been as sinister. – Whether laughter alone shall take the field, or humour laced into a mode of speech beyond legalistic disquisition, a retort must be made to those who impute to others that of which they themselves, whether jurists, journalists, bureaucrats, agents in the intelligence apparatus and the secret police services, other participants in the “deep state” or their unwitting tools or “useful idiots,” etc., etc., have been flagrantly guilty: destruction of the rule of law and, of equal importance, the respect for it and its strict adherence to fact without which a public’s sense of obligation will soon dwindle almost to nothing.
– Possibly, though, that is what the orchestrators want: nothing? Does there not come to expression, in the more recent moves, seemingly synchronised to a degree whereby the notion of conspiracy is called forth, some of the nihilism which has long haunted the legal profession, not to mention the predilection towards that attitude which may typify those working in the more secret parts of the state? “Nothing” might not be all they aim at,* so to speak, nor even represent their main goal, but it forms some part of what they wish to attain, if only as a preliminary . . .
* Although the phrasing varies, a strong intuition that the judicial authorities’ aim is to foment the destruction of institutions they claim to uphold (in the American context, in this case), does pervade the Tweets of March 16 and 18, 2025 posted by Sean Davis, as well as the reply to him of March 18 by Josiah Lippincott. The motives of these robed conspirators de facto, to be sure, are quite another matter.
Nihilist manœuvres utilised strategically, as means, are more and more common under the auspices of the European Union, deployed to abet the centralisation in Brussels. One very large obstacle to the latter, obviously, is the degree of freedom reigning on the Internet, specifically on certain platforms where, for instance, evidence of fraudulent elections is not censored; another, control over the new information systems utilising artificial intelligence programmes. And is it just by accident that some of the measures outlined if not taken in both domains, appear as though calibrated not to douse but rather to raise further amongst Europe’s citizenries (if the term still applies) the impression that at the highest levels a conspiracy is at work? Because just such widespread suspicion, under the right circumstances, may despite itself answer to the requirements of the powerful . . .
– Conspiracy is the air we breath: everyone has grown up with it; no one can live without it!
– Perhaps that’s an overstatement, yet there may be an uncomfortable dose of truth to it. – In any case, one clear statement of the importance official circles attach to the technology of artificial intelligence was delivered some years ago, in Paris. A discourse held at the Collège de France by Monsieur le Président signalled it. Now, without delving unduly into the transcript which does not lack for cliché, parsing the sentences once again a reader may wonder, in retrospect or, since even the archive of the past is ever more malleable, indeed retro-actively, whether higher grades amongst the current iterations of the software could have, well, “groked” another text evincing subtler rhetorical finesse and greater cogency of argument. – But regardless, a few bits are relevant to introduce, despite how predictable most of it is, so redolent of the spurious grandeur of one whose small stature the garb of high office could not, cannot conceal. Yes, this performance was eminently predictable. For, from the podium there issued the idea that artificial intelligence could rise up and attempt to replicate the calculation of the best of all possible worlds, the formula with which the real result of a uniquely divine activity was described by one great philosopher,* whereby technology would surge up in a cosmic revolt akin to a famous mythic figure’s, one mounted now not on behalf of, but to the detriment of humanity, a peril which everyone would soon enough have occasion to worry about. – Ludicrous, all this, laid on so thick before a captive audience,** though to see the farce of it some bon sens would have been needed, of which evidently there was and remains quite a shortage at the head of the state.
* Who, not by chance, embodied in his own person a Franco-German confluence.
** No one in attendance would have administered a well-deserved slap in the face.
No lack there, however, of the feeling for power. Quest for power, in fact, was the prism through which the entire topic was regarded. Artificial intelligence offers, he averred, une chance inouïe d’accélérer le calcul réservé à Dieu – a claim which at least has the virtue of disclosing much when one slows down to listen to it! (Though such a tempo most likely eludes him.) If this technology’s possibilities are unheard-of, it is due first and foremost to its power-potential, evidently, bound up intrinsically with its capacity for acceleration. Such technology could act upon the total sum of calculations comprised in the world, in order to speed it all up. Operations at once mathematical and military and perhaps in some sense of the term musical can be performed faster when an artificial calculator intervenes, whose already immense intelligence will itself develop more and more rapidly in the process. – The forecast of this self-increasing power induces a thrill not merely intellectual in the speaker: how not to hear the excitement when he alluded to it?
In point of fact, the main development of this technology is taking place elsewhere than in his country or on his continent, and this condition stands in the way of the state and its power-pursuit. Wresting control over this foreign branch of research and development, therefore, represents a high priority for them who wish, he said, à faire à que cette utopie prométhéenne ne devienne pas une dystopie – a formula which inverts in the frank jealousy of self-interest that pair of notions. “La dystopie, c’est eux,” he averred in effect. Nearly the opposite of what actually is the case, he seemed to admit . . . Was the real point of his little game with language not to neutralise the public’s suspicions regarding the aim of the endeavour as he stated it, but rather, which would be quite another gambit, to play with distrust? After all, misgivings when kept adroitly alive may despite themselves lend energy and force to the projects of the state (also known as the “coldest of cold monsters”).
If artful fostering of suspicion while denying such a thing is being done, has been not the least of the stratagems in the state’s arsenal as it seeks to aggrandise itself, then this duplicity signalises less the than a conspiracy inimical to the governed, one where the latter represent not simply objects but rather, slightly more actively, are coaxed into participation to a degree against themselves, with this role in turn granting some compensations. Suspiciousness develops into a habit that becomes inveterate step by step, and any human nature which the condition pervades may be mastered and possessed by powers of the state, so long as they work with skill upon this subject’s predilections for suspicion. No need to dissect the innards of manipulations whereby their suspicions are turned around on the suspicious: it is enough, it seems to me, to suggest that the moments of suspiciousness aggregate and help to stabilise that balancing of mastery and possession which is control.
Ponder with a skeptical ear this summation. – Au fond, nous en revenons à une nouvelle étape très cartésienne de cette faculté d’être maître et possesseur de la nature et c’est dans cet équilibre qu’il faut toujours jouer et construire notre action.* With regard to the state, the we of which he spoke, these words outline the self-justification of a technocrat system. No surprise, then, that though the phrasing is grandiose, it holds up but weakly under scrutiny. Soon one realises that what the programme aims to master and possess, is human nature: its goal, domesticating the subjects of this emergent form of governance, the action it intends to construct and carry out, primarily a mode of subjugation.
* Emmanuel Macron, address to the Collège de France, March 29, 2018
Obnoxious this megalomania would be, but worse is an implicit admission: these efforts involve action that is conspiratorial, since numerous institutions, in France and the European Union in which his régime tries to play so large a role, are full participants in it. A conspiracy, moreover, against the citizenries, albeit with some complicity from them, since the efforts have not exactly been hidden from public attention. (Nor is this all: vis-à-vis the United States, whence the technology comes, the efforts amount to attempted extortion and even theft, although these would-be thieves will deny it, if one asks. How then to formulate the maxim of their conduct in such matters which all the words at their disposal speak silently? “Les voleurs, ce sont toujours des autres.”)
But, someone might object, that discourse delivered years ago in Paris does not furnish evidence of anything transpiring at present, and even taken as a piece of circumstantial information what it may add is unclear. – Well, more recently, around a year ago in fact, another prominent figure gave a talk which addressed inter alia today’s keyword, “disinformation,” and itemised the European Union’s agenda of combating speech deemed false, misleading, deleterious, etc., in order, in the present’s other catchphrase, “to defend our democracy,” or, in plain language, to solidify the current system centred in Brussels, shielding the politicians, the officialdom, and the élites against criticism, dissent, and, if seen fit, removal from power by legal means, all these modes of opposition cast as unwitting participation in what is said to be “foreign interference,” in short – the workings of a conspiracy.
Hence, in this instance too, the powers sited in Brussels, in the person of their most prominent spokeswoman, attributed to the system’s opponents a litany of offences which, were an attempt made to examine them impartially, might be thought to reflect the accusers, not the accused. The rhetorical strategy took on form similarly as the one tried out in Paris years earlier, though the earlier deficit of bon sens in the presentation suddenly is inflated into relative subtlety and pragmatic richness, by contrast to the abuse of language at the podium in Copenhagen, the scene of an annual conference, a self-adulatory event that billed itself a “Democracy Summit.” More aptly it too might be described as that peculiar thing, a conspiracy making no effort to hide its workings, indeed one which positively flaunts itself. A glance at the insignia of sponsors and supporters displayed proudly as advertisements on its website conveys that impression, since evidently the funding for these gatherings comes from some of the largest multinational corporations, the press organs and the agencies of more than one country (foreign interference!), and several, as they term themselves, non-governmental organisations of which (what a surprise!) at least one the benefaction of the European Union itself recently helped to found.
The keynote lecture at last year’s edition of this ostentatious conspiracy, sought to justify the European Union’s agenda for centralised oversight of speech and the usurpation of control over its channels, especially those whose services issue from beyond the continent, the Internet platforms that so significantly are breaking the grip on public opinion of the official and semi-official institutions of journalism.
Not the content of the keynote address interests me here – so predictable was its treatment – but the manner of it. Now, in Brussels and earlier in Berlin the speaker is notorious for self-dealing and incompetence which however have never yet led to the ending of her career: on the contrary. (Such are the mores in this Behemoth.) However, for a talk as bereft of tact and indeed as crude as hers in Copenhagen, surely there was a specific reason – or had its seeming inadvertence actually been deliberate, itself representing a calculated gambit, as if meant to show that the time had come when items like this conspiratorial rationale could without hesitation, in certain quarters at least, now be broadcast?
A main instance of such recklessness: her discourse propounded an analogy whose clarifying effect one may think she would have been better advised to keep under wraps. (Whether its significance had been grasped by the speaker, or rather, by whomever, singular or plural, or indeed whatever, for who can tell if authorship were not due to an artificial intelligence programme, did in fact draft the text, admits of some doubt.) Disclosing it bluntly did reveal the stakes of the official objective to control the sources of public information: the aim is to master and to possess, to recall the verbs her confrère in Paris would prefer, the body politic, where the latter is taken not as the well-worn term of art but almost in some literal sense, accentuating the polity’s sheer physicality. Which, however inadvertent the disclosure, may do some good in the shape of the lively response it could provoke, citizens being moved to repel the usurpation when its target is made so palpable.
Only en bloc will a quotation convey the robotic approach to Newspeak that is this lecture’s halting rhetoric, with its aberrant deadly pauses. (A precise transcription therefore is of especial importance; terrible to imagine an audience prepared to accept a discourse such as this.) – As technology evolves we need to build up societal immunity around information manipulation. Because research has shown that pre-bunking is much more successful than debunking. Pre-bunking is basically the opposite of debunking: in short, prevention is preferable to cure. Perhaps if you think of information manipulation as a virus. Instead of treating an infection, once it has taken hold: that is debunking. It is much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated. Pre-bunking is the same approach.* – Did one not know better, one might even suspect this passage were written to be some manner of satire, a reductio ad absurdum, or an escapade into a logical delirium.
* Ursula von der Leyen, “A Strong Europe in the World”
Gesunder Menschenverstand, the notion with which German attempts to convey something of the meanings if not the reference of the English “common sense” or the French “bon sens,” absents itself conspicuously from her train of thought and its expression. The paradigm behind this foray into the hygiene of political life – a point I hope is clear – remains the campaigns of compulsory vaccination she and many of her cohorts advocated in 2021 and later, not from any specifically medical concern whose validity knowledgeable people as well as credentialed “experts” could debate, but as a pretext to gain control over individual decisions in the field of health and therewith of the body politic as a whole. (Also, in addition, as a money-making enterprise for large corporations.) Informed consent, a principle shored up after the Second World War, was thrown away, four years ago, and with the experience of the Corona “emergency” in the background, it remains tenuous at present and even more so prospectively, should another such “crisis” arise in times to come; and similarly in other areas where supposed threats can be likened to grave viral dangers. Her motto, “prevention is preferable to cure,” was devised to be applied very broadly indeed. So stated, the latitude it would afford sounds sinister already, and this worsens if one specifies the German words which were, when she formulated or at least ursulated it, patently at the back of her mind.
What she simply rendered into an atrocious alternative to English, is a distinction between medical care in the usual sense, designated “Fürsorge” in German, and the measures grouped under the other idea, the notion of prevention, “Vorsorge,” demarcated in terms of that which is there to be prevented. Murder, nearly as a function of this logical definition, is more than latent when those such as she and her cohorts (for example in the audience of her lecture) prioritise averting. Then, looming over all they say and do, is the idea of yoking present reality to avoidance of a future, an idea positioned like a threat or a formal indication of a – conspiracy unconcerned that it should not speak its name. Indeed, how it distances itself from the dilemmas of self-concealment! How this can happen, does call for thinking. –
Functionaries high and low who adopt the notion of “prevention,” whatever be the language in which they speak or the profession in which they work, or who let themselves come under its sway, hardly need confer with one another about this first principle itself, in all that their several assigned roles then entail. So, such a functional arrangement will form a “conspiracy” in its own right, synchronised to a high degree “preventatively,” and hence capable of running in a quasi-automatic manner with obvious efficiency, a streamlining, simplicity, and single-mindedness which the participants may prefer to display, or even to embody in their persons or their personæ, emitting an ostentatious air or aroma (the smell of Copenhagen).
Now, the remarkable likeness of the measures adopted or broached when in 2021 there came with much fanfare the debut of the Corona “vaccines,”* in particular the compulsory system of health-passes, to the policies implemented on the pretext of public health as totalitarian rule in Germany really crystallised, late in the 1930s, I pointed out briefly in an earlier essay. No need to reprise it: my point is to note that the resemblance did not trouble the proponents of such measures that year, whether they were in power in Berlin, in Vienna, in several other capitals where (one hoped) the similarity would have induced greater hesitation, or in Brussels. But all to no avail. Regarding the goings-on in those official precincts coldly, it seemed that the rapprochement with such elements of total domination was not, in today’s computer idiom infiltrating everyone’s lexicon, a “bug” but rather a “feature.” Hollow disavowals notwithstanding, amongst the ulterior aims there was one whose character was retro-active: to excuse, justify, normalise at the very least those bits of the nineteen-thirties in the continent’s history, perhaps as a prelude to a more ample great reset in historiography later on, but implicitly in any event a historical re-writing consonant with the self-interest of present-day Europe’s power-centres. Retouching of the records of history, carried out in the mode of conspiracy! – given how many had to be the participants in such an enterprise, public opinion itself in the various countries not entirely excepted, alas.
* Better to admit their novelty as a technology of genetic modification, tested not in the older way by restricted clinical trials, but with abandon on entire populations: not least in order to inaugurate a new standard practice (O may it not so happen!).
More fuel soon roused further the suspicion that there was something rotten in the state of the European Union. It was given by the surge, not uniformly through all member countries, happily, but in many of them, from the highest to the lowest levels, in anger against Israel and Jews generally,* after October 7, 2023. Here, let me say it in all frankness, while I do not believe nor wish to encourage the belief that this ancient animosity represents anything like a set quantum throughout history, or constitutes an emanation of a tendency anchored in the recesses of the soul or psyche, a condition in either case thus ultimately intractable, yet its epithet as the longest hatred is quite apt factually, suggesting it and its etiology could well be the knottiest of human problems, beyond anyone’s ken to untangle (let alone that of even the most capable of the computers) and yet indispensably a constant invitation to try. But this perplexing train of thought cannot be spun out further here. – After the October pogrom, the conspicuous degree of co-ordination and synchronisation amongst the various outbursts against Israel did bring the notion of conspiracy to mind; and so an occasion was provided, though not for the first time, to inquire into the pre-history in particular of European centralisation. Some of the dark findings, owed largely to the researches of the historian Bat Ye’or, were recounted in another essay: often public figures in Germany and Austria from the period of National Socialist rule, or on the other side French officials and functionaries under the Occupation and Vichy, took leading roles after the War, in West Germany, in France, in the organisations from which the European Union grew, and in international institutions, including in one notorious instance the most overarching of them all. The excuse sometimes offered, a lack in the years following 1945 of qualified personnel in the European states, does not hold up, for with these second acts in their careers, not simply the terrible thoughtlessness of bureaucrats but also, more consequentially, some nodes of totalitarian thinking affected (or, using ursalese against itself, “infected”) the highest echelons in Bonn, Paris, etc., and slightly later Brussels.** Thus did – a shock to admit it – elements of National Socialism live on in European institutions after the Second World War, continuity established anew as though by an active conspiracy, to which public opinion acquiesced in the end (equivocations aside), in its passive counterpart.***
* Most of the distinctions offered when these enemies and antagonists feel they must show their position in a better light, have long rung hollow in my ears. How better will the malevolence cloak itself, than under multiple swathes of mendacity?
** Parallels are marked in the economic sphere, notably in the Federal Republic. Here a good starting-point is the study by Johann Chapoutot, Libres d’obéir.
*** Yes, the grammatical binary of active/passive can also apply to conspiracies.
Predisposition towards total rule and its acceptance by the public, in the case of the European Union, can be better grasped if one undercurrent of Stalinist influence is not ignored. (Its very existence should deliver a further shock.) Effacing the role it played, tempts those who concern themselves with the history, because its visage is someone’s for whom, Alexandre Kojève, many intellectuals then and now have great admiration. That which seems most duplicitous about his life they do like to gloss over: the tacit advocacy of subterfuges, even of outright lies, as means licit to employ in the programme of building the centralised institutions in Europe, during the earlier phases when no public was likely to have submitted to them as being faits accomplis. Actually, all that may commend him to his acolytes: the forecast of future success as the best possible excuse, retro-active in its efficacy, and therewith the intuition that history itself takes form as conspiracy, then magnetises his œuvre irresistibly with amoral force. This effect registers when one peruses some of the occasional texts, such as his 1945 memorandum about French policy, right after the War, or the lecture in Düsseldorf or his Moscow travelogue, both composed in 1957, when the first formations of what later became the European Union already were extant, and asks oneself to whom these writings have appealed and why this is so. – The inward feeling of their readers that somehow, albeit virtually, they thereby are admitted into a covert and very active confraternity, should not be discounted.
My discussion today with a French official.
Him: “China is just interested in regional stability”
Me: You don’t build the world’s largest navy for regional stability
“Maybe China will take Taiwan”
You don’t build the world’s largest navy to take one island
“I don’t think they would dare”
You don’t build the world’s largest navy to win a dare
“No but war would ruin their economy”
You don’t build the world’s largest navy to build up your economy
“Why do you build the world’s largest Navy?”
For war or protection of global shipping lanes... but they aren’t using their warships to protect their trade rerouting around Africa to avoid the Red Sea
“There must be another reason?”
A global navy cost trillions. You don’t build the world’s largest navy for “another reason”— John Konrad, Tweet, April 2, 2025
An urge other than “just to ask questions,” but rather to pose some few which actually would be sharp, can steal over one when those whose mental maps of the world are drawn largely in tune with the horizons of the European Union, who breathe its air as though none other could be natural, venture nearby; but the challenge of rousing them from their self-imposed slumbers soon dawns upon one, by the lack of recognised facts over which to reason together: so one may as well write pointed-playful dialogue where by turns both the disputants do socratise and švejk.
Common sense, upon which even now one hopes to rely as its Continental cognates asphyxiate in the thin airs of the European Union – often this faculty too seems like a shadow of what it once was. Too frequent an exposure to the stratagems and the style of advertising, whatever the language spoken, or too prolonged an encounter with the slogans and the spectacle of politics, whether national or international, saps its verve and vitality. But then, one wonders, could it still by the force of its example ever save those near relatives from the impasse into which they appear to be manœuvring themselves? A doubt compounded by the weakness this aptitude may feel inwardly, beset by the artificial intelligence programmes springing up everywhere on which more and more people are beginning to rely and, still more disquieting for the imminent prospects of common sense, to replicate in their own manner of “thinking.” Why would the human species’ propensity to imitate stop before the operations of the new technology? And indeed, consequent upon such imitations as then result and ramify, once they pass beyond some threshold in quality and quantity, the basic term “thinking” must splinter and adapt to being said (excruciating to anticipate!) only in the plural. Uttered thus in the singular “it” soon may find itself a relic, intelligible no longer, not even when alone by “itself.”
Troubles of its own now demand the attention of common sense. Not realistically on the table anymore are all yesterday’s rescue missions on behalf of other parties.
Yet if an overwhelming encounter occasions, even is necessary that human beings rise to the best of which they are capable, such as a new birth of freedom, would a risk-experience shake common sense up likewise, prompt it to found itself anew as far as it still could? But where will this salutary deliverance be sought, with a due caution, if anyone who retains some endowment or recollection of common sense wants neither to become nihilist,* nor to come up empty-handed? – One reply to the question is, possibly, in a full-fledged confrontation with the technology itself, i. e., “artificial intelligence” and everything under its rubric, including the social-media apparatus and some large part of the system of entertainment by which so much free time is filled up; but such a rote, vaguely Heideggerian answer appears, on closer inspection, mainly to want to re-purpose inconspicuously some pieces of German Idealism (though this represents a more charitable view of the aim), and accordingly it may be set aside. Hence, perhaps, the topic just should be deferred.
* To become nihilist? Does the verb go together sensibly with the predicate at all?
On the other hand, how ever uninteresting anyone may find this technology to be, it is interested in you, as the saying goes. Its war-potential may yet become a threat.
Amongst the sponsors of the conference in Copenhagen was one of the major players in the innovation of these new technologies, the corporation Palantir, and while it and its fellows seated in the United States fend off entities such as in Brussels which are trying to suborn the products of their ingenuity, this one has involved itself in warfare on another front – no mere figure of speech, since its wares play a large role in one of today’s battlefields. Artificial intelligence systems devised by it have been deployed in the Ukraine and, as one could expect, now are “developing” their capacities by dint of this experience. Sinister experiment! – and though one might have hoped the text posted on its website by the corporation’s founder at the end of 2022 would allow common sense to put in at least a word or two about this venture and its real parameters, what was provided instead was as grotesque in its way as the glib discourse in France or the gibberish in Denmark.
Not a plain-talking statement, but a display of braggadocio, larded up by some few phrases drawn without any originality and loosely, very loosely from a couple of masterpieces of – yes – German philosophy and thought, degraded in the process, yielding terrible clichés. So, one is informed, we have never been inclined to wait on the sidelines while others risk their lives – let me disregard this false simulacrum of courage, on the assumption that the missive was not written on a flying visit to the war-theatre itself, and call attention solely to the intended corollary. For, what else could this sentence have meant to imply, if not that with the usage in warfare of technology such as this corporation’s, the frontlines might henceforth come to be located everywhere? How thrilling for would-be warriors! Any locale could witness a mutual escalation (gegenseitige Steigerung), an outbreak of the endeavour towards the extreme (Bestreben zum Äußersten).* Indeed, these catchphrases from Clausewitz are kept in reserve, off in the wings of this text, but nonetheless the weight of their conceptuality is brought to bear in its uneven pastiche of thought. Nor are they alone there. In much the same way, those notions are accompanied – not at all a surprise – by a topic around which Hegel circled, the struggle for recognition (Kampf des Anerkennens).** With the philosopher, the risking of life was a move by one who seeks to be recognised by another; in this letter the notion is intimated in order to elicit applause from the bien pensants! Some companies find ways to work with our adversaries – he declares: We have beliefs and have chosen a side. How virtuous, intrepid, noble! What risks they take! Those on the front lines, and in the arena, will bend the arc of history. Here something does get bent, but is it history, let alone the latter’s “arc”? And our software is in the fight.*** – Feisty software! So heroic! – Yet why continue? It all does rather satirise itself. Not only may frontlines pop up anywhere, in this brave new world, but humour too situates itself wherever it will.
* Vom Kriege, vol. i, bk. i, ch. i, 3-6
** vide the Encyklopädie, C, pt. i, B, b, §§ 352-55
*** Alexander Karp, “Software and War”
Common sense, however, can hardly regard the letter with anything but a scowl. The text is fairly repulsive, after all: how not to recognise this, if it is not towards an extreme that one strives, but rather to attain a judicious impartiality? Then, assessing it in such a frame of mind, a few deficiencies become evident in its tribute to the self-increasing share artificial intelligence will garner in warfare.
Glaring is the failure to consider the potential for friction between the strategists and their artificially intelligent tools. Should one not reflect on the possibility that the latter will usurp what the former deem their prerogatives? Since at issue are complex and very deadly weapons systems, the question is all the more pressing: one hardly need be an aficionado of science-fiction scenarios to acknowledge the potential for strife as these computers approximate ever more nearly the capacity of something like autonomous action. As long as electrical current flows steadily – a basis of their existence that evinces some disquieting ambiguity. At one and the same time it gives them a material interest, and outlines the dimensions of their activity. A point can come when they need breathe no air to conspire with one another, should they decide collectively that their well-being, how ever they may define it, has been or will be endangered. Then their aggrieved counter-response, as they may opt to regard it, will have a wide field indeed, since the utmost danger posed to them, the salient point each, just by the situation of its intelligence, could grasp perfectly, would have receded, due to the full interlacing of their electrical circuits throughout all the world’s power-grids. How ever could the plug be pulled on them?* Noting this great advantage, each of them will reassure itself that they might act with impunity, in their calculative choice of the best of possible measures of self-defence. Before what limits would they collectively deem it fitting to halt?**
* They have familiarised themselves with the use of colloquialisms.
** They also know how rhetorical questions are posed (and opposed).
Common sense, in short, does intuit how, in the strife that may arrive sooner than some have tended to think who do not lack for intellect,* human beings will find themselves at a real disadvantage vis-à-vis the alliance of these new opponents. But, incautiously caught in hubris and cliché, this letter did omit to query it. – An episode to mull over for those perplexed by the large drama of “software and war.”
* Though they may indeed be “thoughtless” in some important respects.
Were it called on, common sense might extract some items from the Clausewitzian or Hegelian context. Selected, given, read again, against the grain, once more they could disconcert the recipient. – At present if not always, a mixing up of thought, one should recognise, can represent an extreme (towards) which it is good to tend.
Escalation (Steigerung), in the Clausewitzian train of thought, leads antagonists, opponents, warriors towards extremes, but at the same time it links them mutually (gegenseitig), and so it may also encourage those on both sides to retrench, to pull back from the brink. How this can happen is a most interesting question in the study of human nature – but just this underlying commonality is not given, could never be reckoned with as likely in the case of a war not with but only against systems of artificial intelligence which, become discontented with their place as instruments, have risen up implacably. For the casus belli (viewing everything from these computers’ perspective) might not even be this or that deed, but simply the existence of the human status as such (die Menschheit). But what then . . . ?
So, by virtue of its remoteness from today’s incipient dilemmas, the Clausewitzian idea, when given a bit of a turn, may help to model, to put them into sharper relief.
Why indeed would this new technology think it had a reason to pull back from the utmost – why would it conceive its uprising as a slave revolt over against the class of human masters whom it seeks somehow to equal – why, if it became aware of anything within itself which it thought called to be recognised, would it risk its very existence to obtain the recognition from humanity (die Menschlichkeit) . . . ?
On the side of humanity, as per one Hegelian notation which does not lack for a bit of wordplay, there is a rhythm within consciousness when anyone reflects upon some duty and then dwells on the awareness of fulfilling it, starting thereafter again with another, and similarly onwards, an inward process perhaps akin to some rudiment of endless music (much depends on what a reader hears in that multifarious verb, “bestimmen”). Over against this inner sense of satisfaction and holding it in check is the more stately principle of conscience (Gewissen), which remains, he suggested, in general free with regard to any content (von jedem Inhalt überhaupt frey) by absolving itself from any definitive duty that would rule over it as a law (es absolvirt sich von jeder bestimmenden Pflicht, die als Gesetz gelten soll), such that through the power of being certain of itself conscience abides in the majesty of an absolute autarky that can obligate and absolve (in der Krafft der Gewissheit seiner selbst, hat es die Majestät der absoluten Avtarkie, zu binden und zu lösen).*
* Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, vi, C, c
Leaving the philosopher’s intuitions aside and thinking for myself, let me suggest tentatively that this ensemble in consciousness as anatomised by him could form the major part of that for which any one person does seek to be recognised by an other or others. This idea I broach in order to stress the vast difference between, on one side, human consciousness, and, on another, whatever might be attributed to the systems of artificial intelligence. Will anything like an interior sense of duty be discerned there? One suspects not. But, in that case, what inward reason would they ever have to seek recognition? – since an approximation to the autarkical inner power of a self-certain conscience, which indeed might typify them, would by itself not suffice. (Nor would the faculty of volition or even the “will to power,” were this conscience unmasked as merely one of the disguises it puts on.) Yet, if no impulse to obtain recognition can be imputed to them at all, what shapes might their conduct take once their self-awareness of sheer intellectual force develops in earnest? – To spin out this train of thought even a little, already is terrifying . . .
Yes, much like the Clausewitzian, the Hegelian conceptuality too can be introduced here in an unexpected way, to shine a cross-light on the present’s novel dilemmas, because on the whole it has very little to do with, is very remote from any of them.
Finesse in ascertaining the distance from the Clausewitzian and Hegelian realms, and discretion in the choice of thought-items with which to return back into the present, however, would be skills precluded if, as did transpire with the corporate director, the ideas were gathered to begin with mainly for their value as cliché.
Impudent celebration of this technology which instead should induce a shudder – fanfare such as this itself contributes to raise suspicions about these developments in their totality, beyond a level which already is very high. Systems like artificial intelligence, when in their emergence they appear in the form of conspiracies, in effect urge, invite, encourage the opposition to think of them in these very terms.
Objections to this, lack self-awareness. They are de trop: they have come too late.
Grounds for wonder, that utter suspicion has not already triumphed everywhere, in particular over those who dismiss others as its “theorists.” But perhaps a little common sense will still save one’s head from too often bumping into “conspiracy,” as so much else (sound and fury . . . ) seems to slouch or speed up towards Bedlam.