There are no limits for Trump
Mugabe’s lottery comes to mind in relation to two recent decisions by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Both decisions follow a plan designed to remove all constraints on the actions of Trump and his allies in the future.
The first decision is to launch a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran and assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Leaving aside the human cost and the ensuing chaos, it should be obvious that this attack would trigger a prolonged period of instability in the Middle East.
Yes, the Iranian regime has been repressive, bloody and detrimental to the economic and social well-being of Iranians. Khamenei, leading elites and the ghastly Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have blood on their hands, including the killings and arrests of tens of thousands of protesters this year.
But none of this justifies starting a new war in the Middle East that has no support from international allies or at home. The U.S. is still considered a democracy where people’s opinions – in principle – should matter. But because Trump risked provoking a bloodbath across the region, that democratic facade is looking thinner by the day.
As awful as Khamenei’s reputation was, he was no Nicolas Maduro, who had few loyal supporters left even in the Venezuelan army in January when Trump intervened to take him over. There will be no puppet regime in Iran, where state institutions and nationalist sentiment are strong. When the Shah’s regime collapsed in the 1979 Iranian revolution, the state apparatus remained largely intact and defected to the new Islamic Republic.
This state apparatus will now protect Iran’s interests and seek to use its proxy structures to destabilize other countries. In doing so, Hezbollah and Hamas, seriously weakened after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, may find new life.
Moreover, Khamenei, because of his religious role, enjoyed the respect and authority of Shiite Muslims both in Iran, where they constitute the vast majority of the population, and abroad. In the eyes of many, this assassination makes him a martyr, which is the last thing Iran or the region needs.
A dangerous precedent
Trump’s second dangerous and destabilizing decision, which immediately preceded the first, was to declare Anthropic, a company that develops artificial intelligence (AI) models, a risk in production chains. The designation, which is typically given to firms from opposing countries including China’s Huawei, prohibits federal contractors from using Anthropic’s models and portends broad restrictions on the company’s potential future operations. “The decision is effective immediately,” said Secretary of “War” (Defense) Pete Hegseth, “no contractor, supplier or partner that does business with the U.S. military may do business with Anthropic.
The reason? Anthropic wanted assurances that its models would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in autonomous weapons systems. None of these requirements created meaningful constraints on the Defense Department in practice. Mass surveillance of U.S. citizens is not legal under U.S. law, and autonomous weapons systems are not feasible in the near future. But what matters to Trump and Hegseth is publicly confronting and intimidating Anthropic. They need to show that they can do as they please – just as Mugabe did.
Unlike the fake lottery in Zimbabwe, a decision on Anthropic will have serious consequences and perhaps even more serious than an attack on Iran. No matter what anyone thinks about the current potential of AI, one thing is not much in doubt: for democracy, business, communications and privacy, who exactly controls AI in the future will be key. Many in the industry are likely to interpret Anthropic’s ban as a signal that AI will be controlled by the US government, not the private sector.
The winner-take-all race (and whether that dynamic is real or imaginary) has already brought the competition between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to a boiling point. Within hours of the Anthropic announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rushed to strike a deal with the Department of Defense. This deal signals that competition is reaching dangerous new heights. Altman is willing to give Hegseth everything Anthropic refused to give him, including the tools to break U.S. laws and a willingness to work on autonomous weapons systems.
Rules are for losers
But the consequences of an attack on Anthropic could be even more serious. The current administration and perhaps future administrations will now be able to disproportionately punish any contractor with whom they disagree. The protection of private property rights now looks shaky. In addition, the Pentagon has made it clear to the world that it intends to engage in mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons systems (otherwise why even bother with two ineffective contract terms?).
Trump has arguably reached Mugabe-level absurdity by launching a military attack on Iran and a legal attack on Anthropic. A president who came to power promising not to get involved in conflicts abroad (especially in the Middle East) has launched a conflict that is potentially even riskier than the Iraq War 20 years ago, though her rationale is even less compelling. And a president who berates “socialism” and “ultra-leftist Democrats” is using the state to destroy a private company.
In both cases, the whole point is precisely the absurdity. And so it was with Mugabe. Shocking and flouting norms is the epitome of Trump’s personal and political credo: the rules are written for losers.
Daron Acemoglu
Daron Adzhemoglu is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor of Economics atMIT, and co-author (with Simon Johnson) of “Power and Progress. Our Millennial Struggle for Technology and Prosperity” (PublicAffairs, 2023).
© Project Syndicate, 2026.
www.project-syndicate.org
