Uncle Sam and The Car Keys.

We've all got one. 

A relative that just can't be allowed the autonomy that they once used to, good ol' Uncle Sam, but we *have* to take the car keys before he hurts someone or everyone. 

Well, we're there with the USA, but there's a catch with this crazy old fella.  

Figuring out the catch is hard, but we have some priors. For (say) 60 years we've had five (or six or eight) nuclear powers. Let's say five, five world enders for sixty years, but the world is still here. 

So, our maximum expectation of the end of the world in that time with the powers we had is 1, given the behaviour of cumulative processes we can say that the cumulative probability must have been below 0.61 to give us that result, and that means that essentially in any given week during that time the average probability that any particular power would kick off the war of a thousand suns has been less than six in one hundred thousand.

Let's all hope that it's really alot, ALOT, less than six in one hundred thousand, but anyway, the upshot is that we've lived in figure 1 below. 

Figure 1. Cumulative risk these ~60 years. Given that human population exceeds 10 million globally and we have textiles and metal tools no single power has exposed us to more than 18% risk, all five powers can't have cumulatively created more than 63% risk or we'd have had >1 expectation of... well... it. Probably.  

In the 1960's Mao is reputed to have made some disquieting remarks "if half of humanity is destroyed the other half will still remain but imperialism will have been totally destroyed...". As impeachment proceedings revved up Nixon is reputed to have started to talk in worrying terms about the nuclear options of the USA.  

"Senator Alan Cranston, from California, had become alarmed when, as the impeachment process got underway, Nixon began courting members of the House, inviting them on to his yacht. The president had spoken, Cranston heard, of how he could press a button and in 20 minutes, 50 million Russians would be dead, and - after that - how many Americans?" [https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362958,00.html]

Ok, to the now. The Trump administration is using the USA's power tactically, without strategic consideration. In game theoretic terms this makes it rogue. We can't make any sort of calculation about long term choices because we know that the USA as an agent is not rationally evaluating the benefits and costs of its choices. Even Mao and [the] Nixon [administration] were playing rational games, just frightening ones mediated by other actors. Right now, deep joy, we have a rogue planet killer power, and we need to think through what to do about it. 

 Here are my lemmas. 

1)  The USA currently does not have rational strategic goals. ◽ 

The National Defence Strategy 2026 [https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/2026-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY.PDF] and the National Security Strategy [https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf] does not together or individually embody a coherent and complete set of goals protecting the self-interest of the people and state of the USA. Specifically there are three fundamentally neglected geopolitical arenas which the Trump administration do not account for in their strategic goals. These are, India, Africa, and the dynamics and dominance of the "world island". 

The Eurasian mass accounts for vast resources and human capital. Reducing analysis and objectives to the component parts of Russia, China, and various allies fails to reasonably or rationally capture the dynamic of the whole, and the critical implications for dominance and power that these dynamics portend and predict for all our futures. 

India is a great power emerging. In 1960 China had a GDP per capita lower than Nigeria's ($99 vs $117), in 2025 Chinese GDP per capita was three times greater than Nigeria's ($29191 vs $9860). Both economies had been transformed, but China's had been revolutionised. Both Nigeria (and several other economies in Africa) and India enjoy demographic and natural resources that are at least as good as China's, and their latent potential is surely of enormous strategic importance. 

In terms of coherence: The naked imperialism articulated in the National Security Strategy, outlining unfettered American dominance in the western hemisphere while emphasising the value of America soft power; the idea that the USA can reindustrialise while preserving the dollars global reserve status; the idea that the USA can maintain global order and manage peace while maintaining a non-interventionist stance. 

A Derridaist would certainly dissect and expose far more issues with the text than this, but stepping away from the texts to the world of practical geopolitics is even more clarifying. On the one hand the startling power of American financial and economic sanctions; on the other the declamation of the unfairness of the world economy towards Americans. On one side the description of European defence dependency as parasitism and on the other the absolute necessity of European bases for the projection and maintenance of American power in the world island.

 The United States has no rational strategic goals. ◾ 

 2) The USA is not pursuing any goals rationally. ◽

There are three lines of evidence for this assertion. 

-  First the mechanics of state decision making have either broken down (through fear and confusion amongst staff members) or have been dismantled (by mass firings and the abolition of decision making fora). Particualar cases include the shuttering of The Office for Net Assessment [https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4119924/secretary-of-defense-directs-restructuring-of-the-office-of-net-assessment-to-a/] and mass layoffs at the US State Department [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/21/us-state-department-trump-firings-cuts]. 

- Second Trump has repeatedly declared that he does not reason about decisions [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/us/politics/trump-national-security.html] but follows his gut or feels in his bones [https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/us-israel-iran-war-news-2026/card/trump-will-feel-it-in-my-bones-when-iran-war-should-end-uKCeuSYFZY8iIyytwJr7]

- Finally, the observed testing, confusion, and chaos, in policy decision making. Threats to destroy civilisations swiftly followed by one-sided ceasefires. Random attacks on the Pope, accompanied by threats of an anti-pope [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pope-white-house-meeting-colby-pierre-9.7158714]. These events and machinations are not the result of calculation and systematic thinking.  

The USA is not pursuing any goals rationally. ◾ 

Given these lemmas why should we suppose that the USA is now a greater danger than it was at the apogee of Watergate, when Nixon was drinking a bottle of Bourbon a day and boasting to Kissinger about mega-death? Why should our calculus admit that the USA is a greater danger than Mao would have been given better ballistics than Qian Xuesen and better nuclear devices than Yu Min could create? Ok, I should qualify this, given that Mao was ancient, ill, and embroiled in the fall out of three genocides and the enmity that generated against his faction when he got the goods to do mega killing, why should we think that the current US administration is a worse risk? I believe this because I have constructed the following table (Table 1). 

 

Irrational behaviour entails unknowable prediction risk in games. This is the madman theory that Nixon expounded. Keep 'em guessing cowboy... but it's much, much worse. Trump may or may not be "mad" there may be signalling (4) but we also see mistakes (5) such as annoucing a general blockade and then restricting it hours later. But we also see flat irrationality (1) and delusion (2). Arguably the kind of faith or belief driven reasoning that we have seen from Hegseth (5) is another driver of irrationality. 

The USA has no rational goals, pursues no goals rationally, and acts irrationally. This makes it as dangerous as any rabid bear, or dog, or tiger. It's wild and sick. 

 So what to do. Well, let's fuck about with numbers again (see figure 2). 

Figure 2. We're in the shit and it's going to be hard not to drown. 

 I have a child who I love, so Figure 2 is unpleasant viewing for me. I expect you won't like it much either. 

Basically if you accept my lemmas and the resulting thesis, then we can say that the USA has grown radically more dangerous as a nuclear power in the last eighteen months. How radically is of course unknowable. But I have chosen ten times as a base line in figure 2. Ten times is quite conservative to be honest. 

But if you accept my ten times hypothesis then we have three years to do something. Because the magic number is 61% due to fucking fucking distributions of chance. We do not want to get to an expectation of 1.0. 

Now at year three (or hopefully before there are two options. 

Either we go for it (when I say we, I mean China) and prep to sneak nuke the USA using fractional orbital bombardment (I'm sorta joking, but not here). This is perilously dangerous because the red line shows what happens to US decision making. Very quickly (before year 4, so that's 2030 folks) we get to the end of the world. 

Or... we, make nicey. God knows how, but in fact this is the only rational approach. We need to find a way to coach the US establishment down from the fucking ledge. USA people, you have to work with us here. This is the fuck serious. Look at your kids. LOOK AT THEM! 

 For real - it's the only thing we (and the Chinese, and the Russians) can do. We need to talk the USA around... somehow. The green path is the only path. 

You've noticed that I haven't talked Orange. 

Orange is the nightmare. 

Orange is what happens if we leave this be. 

Orange comes to God. Orange comes to God Right soon. 2032 with a running certainty. Every year after that on borrowed time.