Donald Trump left the White House almost four years ago. Given his confidence, I imagine he's now thinking, “What could be so different? I can do it".
Well, I just traveled from a reporting visit to Tel Aviv to a conference in the United Arab Emirates and then to an in-depth study with Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence team in London, and I think the next president should remember a famous saying: There are decades when nothing happens, and there are Sundays in which decades happen.
What I saw and heard pointed me to three huge, shifting tectonic plates that will have profound consequences for the new administration.
The most significant geopolitical event
In the past two months alone, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran close to that of the 1967 Six-Day War, when it defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Let's stop here and summarize:
Over the last few decades, Iran has built a terrifying web of threats that has seemed to have Israel caught in the grip of an octopus. It has become widely accepted that Israel is discouraged from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities because Iran has armed Hezbollah in Lebanon with missiles accurate enough to destroy Israeli ports, airports, high-tech factories, air bases and infrastructure.
That's not quite the case. It turned out that the Mossad and Israel's cyber unit 8200 were perfecting what became one of the country's greatest intelligence successes. They planted explosive devices in the pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah military commanders, developed the human and technological capacity to monitor Hezbollah's top leaders, thoroughly identified storage facilities for Hezbollah's deadliest precision-guided missiles in Lebanon and Syria, and then systematically destroyed many of them in October from the air.
The result was that Hezbollah accepted a 60-day truce with Israel, brokered by the American Amos Hochstein. This is a big deal. This means that Hezbollah and thus Iran have decided, at least for 60 days, to separate from Hamas in Gaza and to stop firing rockets from Lebanon for the first time since October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas attacked Israel. We'll see if this lasts, but if it does, it will increase the pressure on Hamas to agree to a truce and hostage release with Israel, and more on Israel's terms.
There is a reason for this. Hezbollah's central base suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli strike on Iran in April destroyed one of four batteries of the Russian S-300 air defense system around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on October 26. Israel has also damaged Iran's ballistic missile production capabilities and the ability to produce solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, as Axios reported, Israel's Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was in response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to make explosives surrounding the uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran's research efforts. nuclear weapons.
A senior Israeli security official told me that the attack on Iran on October 26 was "deadly, precise and a surprise." And so far, the Iranians "don't know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are no longer there, their ability to retaliate is drastically reduced, and they are worried about Trump."
Which means Tehran is either more ready than ever to negotiate curbs on its nuclear program or more ready than ever to be attacked by Israel or the Trump administration, or both, to destroy those nuclear facilities. Either way, Trump will face options he didn't have four years ago.
The challenge is not only the new Iran, but also the new Israel
There were valid reasons for President Joe Biden to denounce the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Galant, accusing them of war crimes in Gaza against the enemy of Hamas, which deliberately entrenched itself among civilians. This same court has never issued an arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose army has killed hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. The ICC said that Syria is not a member, but neither is Israel. It is also strange that the ICC issued a warrant only for Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who is believed to be dead, and not for the still alive Muhammad Sinwar (younger brother of the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar), who now allegedly leads Hamas in Gaza and he was the commander in the October 7 attack on Israel.
However, although the ICC orders are questionable, they could also have been avoided. The strategy Netanyahu has imposed on his military is one of the ugliest in Israeli history: Go into Gaza, destroy as many Hamas forces as possible, don't worry too much about civilian casualties, then leave what's left of Hamas to rule and rob food convoys and terrorize the local population - then repeat the process. Re-enter, destroy and leave no one better in power, creating a permanent Somalia on Israel's border.
Netanyahu will tell you that Israel is defending the free world by defeating the dark forces of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. There is some truth in that. But there is also truth in the fact that he is doing this to defend the Jewish supremacist vision of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza. It's a dirty business. If you support him unconditionally, you will be dirtying yourself and America
Why does it do that? Because Bibi listens to the ultra-right Jewish supremacists he needs to stay in power and possibly avoid prison on corruption charges. And the declared goal of those Jewish supremacists is to expand Israeli settlements from the West Bank right through Gaza. They oppose any scenario in which the Palestinian Authority is gradually installed in Gaza as part of an Arab peacekeeping force to replace Hamas. They fear that the Palestinian Authority could become a legitimate partner for a two-state solution.
When you wage a war with this many civilian casualties in one year and offer no vision of peace to the other side, you invite the ICC.
Attention President-elect Trump: Netanyahu will tell you that Israel is defending the free world by defeating the dark forces of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. There is some truth in that. But there is also truth in the fact that he is doing this to defend the Jewish supremacist vision of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza. It's a dirty business. If you support him unconditionally, you will be dirtying yourself and America. You will also ensure that your Jewish grandchildren will one day understand what it means to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is an apostate.
Artificial general intelligence
Multiple artificial general intelligence, or AGI, was largely in the realm of science fiction when Trump left office four years ago. Now it is fast becoming a reality. And one day it could also become ASI - artificial superintelligence.
AGI means that machines will have abilities on par with the best human minds in any field, but because of their ability to integrate learning from many fields, they will likely become better than any average doctor, lawyer or programmer. ASI is a computational brain that can exceed what any human can do in any field, and then, with its polymathic ability, could produce insights far beyond anything humans can do or even imagine. He might even invent his own language that we wouldn't understand.
How we will adapt to AGI was not a topic in the 2024 presidential election campaign. I predict that it will be a central issue in the elections of 2028. Until then, every leader in the world - but especially the presidents of America and China, the two AI superpowers - will be judged on how they will enable their countries to make the best and mitigate the worst of the coming AI storm.
From what I heard from leading AI scientists and Nobel laureates at the Google DeepMind conference about how AI is already driving scientific breakthroughs, AGI is likely to be achieved within the next three to five years.
Two DeepMind scientists have just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their AI system AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures and is already being used by scientists to make drugs and materials around the world. Now DeepMind is working on the GraphCast system, which can produce stunningly accurate 2,2-year weather forecasts in less than a minute, and Gnome, which has identified around XNUMX million new inorganic crystals that could be useful in making everything from computer chips , through batteries, to solar panels.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. It will have a big impact on all kinds of jobs, whether it changes them or challenges them. In Tel Aviv, I visited the Mentee Robotics lab of an Israeli startup and witnessed a demonstration of a humanoid robot, about my height, powered by sensors and artificial intelligence, with human hand dexterity, voice and perception that, according to their website, 'can be personalized and customized different environments and tasks using natural human interaction”.
President-elect Trump, if you think workers without college degrees are facing challenges today, wait and see in four years.
However, this is not the only challenge for Trump. If these AI powers fall into the wrong hands or are misused by existing powers, we could face events that could threaten civilization.
History will not look kindly on you, President-elect Trump, if you decide to prioritize the price of toys for America's toddlers over a deal with China on the behavior of AI robots
That's why we need to talk about AI control systems now. And that's why the two founders of DeepMind, Shane Legg and Demis Hassabis, were signatories to a 23-word open letter issued in May 2023, along with other leaders of the AI universe, in which says: "Mitigating AI-induced extinction risks should be a global priority, alongside other societal-level risks like pandemics and nuclear war."
But this cannot be left to the companies alone. We tried that with social media and it ended badly.
President-elect Trump, you might think that your second term will be judged by how many tariffs you impose on China. I would not agree. When it comes to US-China relations, I think your legacy, like that of President Xi Jinping, will be determined by how quickly, effectively and cooperatively the US and China come to a common technical and ethical framework built into every artificial intelligence system, which will prevent it from becoming destructive on its own, without human guidance, or from being useful to bad actors who would wish to use it for destructive purposes.
History will not look kindly on you, President-elect Trump, if you decide to prioritize the price of toys for America's toddlers over a deal with China on the behavior of AI robots.
The article was published in the "New York Times"
Prepared by: A. Š.
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