For a long time before the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton was a star. She looked beautiful, poised, confident, intelligent, clear-minded, decisive, and decent, an American lady, a sweeter and more approachable version of Margaret Thatcher. When the Democrats nominated her to be their candidate for president, she was considered a sure bet to be the first female president of the U.S.
Then something unusual happened: a technologist, Peter Thiel, who was not a politician was asked to give a speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Then, remarkable things were revealed: the technologist was the force behind the demise of Gawker Media, the lead in the move to kick Elon Musk out of Pay Pal and replace him as CEO, and a contrarian thinker. His probably most important achievement was founding and chairing a then little-known company named Palantir Technologies, which specialized in collecting and processing information. There were several other companies collecting and processing information such as IBM Watson, Oracle, SAS, for businesses and governments but not politics. Palantir filled the gap. It has accumulated more information, at least in the political field, than any other organization and created a Laplace’s Demon, not the perfect one as imagined by Laplace, but strong enough to influence the future of American politics.
The defeats of Hillary Clinton should arouse suspicion, true or not, that more than human works alone was involved in political enterprises, smacking of IT and AI.
The Democrats, late comers, have since played catch-up as they failed to see the formidable potential of IT and AI organizations whose tools could help political campaigns or organizations by charting strategies and designing operational tactics.
Democrats are faced with this reality: the central government is in the hand of MAGA Republicans, both chambers of Congress and a 6/3 majority Supreme Court with three or four justices young enough to outlast a few more presidents. Locally, MAGA has tried to solidify their power including supposedly unconstitutional and illegal measures, such as redistricting effort by MAGA in Texas to add five more Republicans to the House. There is little doubt that they have marshaled their IT/AI power to expand or at least maintain their advantage.
To win back its relevancy, the Democratic Party should look for a Palantir counterpart. It is already extremely hard for them that two of the best brains have already worked for the Republicans. Unlike the Democrats, MAGA Republicans would not look benignly upon turncoats. So, there is little hope that Mr. Musk, regardless of how upset he has been with the MAGA crowd, may help the Democrats for the love of Democracy. They must look somewhere else.
One suggestion: ChatGPT.
The war of the political AIs probably is here.
JOHN P. LE PHONG (This article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)
