Quantity dazzles at parades, but wars are not won by hulls and hardware. They are won by scar tissue, trust, and the muscle memory of failure. From Stalin’s tank waves to China’s carriers and Russia’s humiliation in Ukraine, the real test is not how much metal you can build, but how much flesh you can trust.
In the late ’80s, everyone swore mankind was about to breed itself into oblivion. Experts preached famine, collapse, and demographic doom. I didn’t buy it. Even at 18, peeling potatoes in a barracks kitchen, I saw the opposite coming: shrinking families, empty schools, villages fading into retirement homes. The prophets were wrong. The cook was right.
In a Libreville forest clearing, I found a barefoot family laughing harder than most executives after a promotion. They had nothing—and everything. Contentment wasn’t a reward but infrastructure. Meanwhile, I flew business class, racked up air miles, and slept under remote-controlled curtains—still miserable. Turns out, the best things in life really are free.
AI isn't a mechanical messiah. It exposes you. Feed it vagueness, get polished sludge. Show up sharp—it's leverage that multiplies clarity. Show up lazy—it amplifies your bullshit. It demands labor, precision, and the humility to answer uncomfortable questions. Not a free ride. A mirror that sharpens the sharp and humiliates the inattentive every single time.
I grew up in Austria with the bassline of “never again” humming through every lesson, every warning, every civic ritual. We thought we had inoculated ourselves against tyranny. Yet when fear came wrapped in the language of safety, it was the respectable middle who snapped on the jackboots—and the majority who clapped.
There are places where politeness is fatal. Not just Tehran boardrooms, but suburban dinner tables, cockpits, and clean rooms. We’ve built cultures where the fear of offending outweighs the fear of dying. Silence isn’t neutral—it’s complicity. Survival doesn’t belong to the courteous; it belongs to those willing to interrupt before the crash.