THE US PEACE ENVOY TO THE M-E ......

 

Tom Barrack and the Misreading of Peace: How Wise for America to Task a Self-Hating Arab as an Envoy Among Arabs

On September 22, 2025, in an interview with Hadley Gamble for The National, Tom Barrack declared that “peace is an illusion” in the Middle East and suggested that real peace has never existed and probably never will. He went further: peace, he said, has always been about submission — one side imposing its will, the other accepting defeat. And, he added, “Arabs don’t understand this.”

It was an astonishing display of arrogance, bigotry, and ignorance. Another amazing interview, and another reminder of the old adage: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. In Barrack’s case, the advice should be simpler: stop speaking. Every time he opens his mouth on the Middle East, he deepens his own irrelevance and reveals the intellectual poverty of a man who mistakes a career in real estate for a license to lecture civilizations about history. While he likes to repeat that he “thinks outside the box,” he may be confusing cycles of history with building a hotel in Fresno, California. It is far too early — and far beyond his depth — for amateurs like him to issue verdicts of historical magnitude.

This is not the first time Barrack has insulted his own. On August 26, 2025, during a press appearance at Baabda Palace in Beirut following his meeting with President Joseph Aoun, he told Lebanese journalists to “act civilised” and described their behavior as “animalistic.” The reaction was immediate. Lebanon’s media unions, journalists, and civil society condemned his words as racist and humiliating. Barrack was forced to apologize, admitting that “animalistic” was inappropriate. But the mask had slipped. When pressed, his instinct was not diplomacy but contempt, the reflex of a colonial landlord scolding natives who dared to shout questions.

Now, with his latest interview, Barrack has confirmed the pattern. He poses as a realist, but he is an amateur in both history and statecraft. He speaks as though Arabs have somehow “lost” history and must accept permanent defeat, as if centuries of resilience, rebellion, and survival count for nothing. By what measure has he decided that Arabs have lost? And by what measure does he claim the United States has won? Did America win in Afghanistan, after twenty years of occupation ending in chaotic retreat? Did it win in Iraq, where trillions were wasted and Iran now dominates the political scene? The record speaks for itself: trillions spent, countless lives shattered, alliances frayed — and no victory in sight. Yet Barrack presumes to lecture Arabs about loss.

The irony is glaring. Islam itself means submission — not to another state’s diktat or a foreign empire’s bayonet, but to God. For Muslims, submission is not humiliation but dignity, a spiritual alignment that frees believers from worldly subjugation. Barrack, blinded by dealmaker’s arrogance, confuses spiritual submission with political surrender. He mistakes dignity for defiance, resistance for ignorance. A man of Arab descent should know better. Instead, he repeats the clichés of colonial administrators in Cairo and Algiers: Arabs, he says, do not understand peace; they only understand force.

There is a word for this posture: self-hatred. Barrack performs the role of the assimilated colonial subject who rises in foreign circles by sneering at his own people. History is full of such figures — the compradors of the British Raj, the évolués of the French empire, the “model minorities” in American discourse — men who are praised in the metropole for their supposed pragmatism but who serve as mouthpieces for imperial arrogance. Barrack fits the pattern exactly. He is a Lebanese-American whose grandparents came from Zahle, yet he disowns that heritage by parroting the prejudices of those who once humiliated it.

And his record in diplomacy proves the emptiness of his arrogance. His efforts to mediate between Lebanon and Israel have produced nothing but headlines. No progress, no breakthrough, not even the outline of a serious proposal. His failure is the best proof of his amateurism. For all his talk of history and peace, he has achieved none of it. This latest interview reads less like wisdom than frustration: frustration at his irrelevance, at his inability to translate real estate tricks into statecraft, at his growing exposure as a man in over his head.

Donald Trump, who prides himself on loyalty and deal-making, should be asking whether Barrack is an asset or a liability. The answer is obvious. A man who insults Arab journalists as “animalistic,” who declares that Arabs do not understand peace, who mistakes humiliation for strategy — such a man cannot serve as a credible envoy. If anything, Trump should tell him to stay in his lane. And that lane is not diplomacy.

The cycles of history are clear: peoples humiliated eventually rise. Dignity denied becomes dignity demanded. Every time submission is imposed, resistance returns. Barrack’s lecture about submission is not a roadmap to peace but a confession of his own intellectual defeat. He cannot imagine a politics of coexistence, so he falls back on the stale colonial fantasy of pacification.

The tragedy is that he does this while carrying a heritage that should have taught him otherwise. To be of Zahle, to come from a people who have survived against odds, and to turn that heritage into a sneer about Arabs not understanding peace — His contempt against his own is overwhelming. It is betrayal.

Peace is not submission. It is balance, recognition, and dignity. Tom Barrack refuses to understand any of this. And in that refusal, he exposes himself not as a realist, but as a relic — a self-hating Arab echoing the prejudices of the very empires that once humiliated his ancestors. 

I'm not sure who's the writer of these words, nor its original publication, they were forwarded from a friend. This type of talk has been going on for a while, where the situation in Lebanon and its immediate neighbors including of course Israel are not improving or reaching some acceptable truce leading to some permanent peace and an end to the Israeli occupation and bombardment of Lebanon. Tom Barrack who originally gave everyone a very positive impression, is stalling big time, with him goes the US mediation, while he's coming up with different statements  leading to a general stagnation and disappointment. 

I'm trying to be neutral as to the statements produced by the article, but find it constructive and helpful in the shadow of what's happening on the ground.  As always, my many thanks to all. 

A MOVING MESSAGE .....

 

In a recent prophetic message to Israel's Jews, Philippine Cardinal Ambo David, one of the voices of Catholicism in Asia, appealed to the "very soul" of the country to end the war in Gaza and not "inflict on another people what you yourselves once endured."
Cardinal David's statement in full:
Appeal to the people of Israel

“Psalm 95:7-11
Oh, if you could hear his voice today!
Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,
as on the day of Massah in the desert,
where your ancestors tested me;
They tested me when they saw my works.
For forty years I have hated this generation;
I said, “This people has a misguided heart;
he does not know my ways.
Therefore I swore in my anger:
“THEY WILL NEVER ENTER MY REST.”


Dear Israeli citizens, especially the Jews among you,
Shalom!
On this day, I wish to address you with humility, respect, and urgency. You are a people who carry within you the memory of unspeakable suffering, of genocide and ethnic cleansing that once sought to erase you from history. From those ashes, you have risen, keeping alive the cry: “Never again.”
But today, the eyes of the world see a terrible contradiction. Your government's policies in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories have inflicted on another people what you yourselves once endured. Entire families uprooted, homes destroyed, children starved and bombed. Gaza has become a graveyard of innocents. Do you really believe that brute force against a hapless and imprisoned people will guarantee you lasting security?
Security cannot be based on domination, nor peace on oppression. Pursuing a Zionist ideological agenda at the expense of the dignity and survival of another people is not only unjust, but it desecrates your own history, your own Scriptures, and your covenant with the God of justice and mercy.
I appeal to your conscience: do not harden your hearts. Listen today to the voice of the Lord. Do not let your ancestors, who cried out in the ghettos and perished in the concentration camps, turn in their graves as they see their descendants inflicting collective punishment on a people who had nothing to do with their suffering.
I speak especially to your rabbis, to your spiritual leaders, to your prophets among you. Stand before your people and say what needs to be said: “Enough. Stop the war. Stop the occupation. Stop the carnage.”
True faith is not manifested in walls or weapons, but in compassion and justice. True strength is not manifested in annihilation, but in the courage to make peace.
History will remember. Humanity is watching. And the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will hold us all accountable.
For the sake of your children and the children of Gaza, for the sake of the very soul of Israel, may it be today that you hear His voice. May it be today that you say, once and for all: “Never again. To no one.”

As received by email, originally in French, I found the Cardinal's message moving and explicitly powerful in these circumstances, I'm resending it through our blog for all to see and better understand the situation. 

As always, my profound many thanks to all.  

THE SHOOTER'S IDEOLOGY.......

 

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 17, 2025

https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-shooters-ideology

The hunt for the political ideology driving each murder that makes the news obscures some key points.

One is that the shooter is almost always a man, even though women are equally capable of shooting, meaning that the ideology is one of masculinism.

Another is that the shooter, more often than not, shoots himself (and it may not make the news, but most often a shooter shoots only himself), which blows a rather large hole in the idea that he is working to advance some subgroup of people or some desired better world.

Another is that, to the extent that coherent thoughts are involved, every shooter shares the masculinist ideology that holds that anything good can come of shooting people — an ideology also shared with many non-shooters (including angry, violent individuals in places not saturated with guns and gun training and war veterans) and with many indirect shooters (including those ordering, funding, authorizing, and profiting from shooting or bombing Palestinian children or Venezuelan boaters, etc., and to at least a great degree those who create films glorifying shooting people and make speeches thanking each other and saying “peace”).

Gathering additional information about the thinking (or the training or conditioning or arming) of murderers is all to the good. Perhaps assassins of important people are very different from your typical suicide or murderer. But the ideology hunt is always fundamentally accomplished from the start. The shooter has, at the very least, the shooter ideology. It is an ideology as opposed to basic historical facts as climate denialism or trusting political candidates. It comes in many flavors. A shooter may believe that certain scapegoated types of people are a threat to his type of people. Or he may imagine that shooting hateful bigoted people is a brilliant way to bring us all together. He may suppose that obliterating neighborhoods in Gaza is “defensive,” or that it rids the world of lesser beings. He may fantasize that a wider war on Israel is the path to peace and harmony. He may claim to be teaching someone a lesson, or to be undoing a corrupt election. He may tell you he’s eliminating Hitler, or clearing the way for Hitler’s return. The important thing to become aware of is that, in any case, he is nuts.

The shooter is nuts. The shooter is Pharaoh, emperor of denial. Shooting a kind, loving soul harms any cause it seeks to advance. Shooting a hateful bigot or a healthcare CEO generates sympathy, real and feigned, for hateful bigots and healthcare CEOs. Attacking the “National Guard” occupiers of your city gives them an excuse to occupy your city. Sending armed troops into a city generates resentment toward those troops. Abusing Palestinians in a violent apartheid state fuels resistance. Launching rockets into Israel provides an excuse for accelerated genocide. Shooting people doesn’t actually help your ideological goals, no matter what your ideology may be. So, you may have an ideology, and it may be very clear and coherent and dear to you, but as long as you are shooting people, what matters is that you have a shooter ideology that overrides the rest of what you care about.

This analysis it not missing from the news because of its simplicity. The news loves nothing if not simplicity. It is missing from the news because the people telling you the news are required to themselves have a shooter ideology, to believe that weapons help Ukraine, to be conditioned to shout “but Hamas!” or “but Maduro!” on command. About a third of U.S. mass shooters must be praised for having trained to shoot well, must be thanked for the service of having shot at certain people, and then must be condemned for having shot at the wrong people — these are U.S. military veterans. That constraint makes it difficult to see the problem as belief in the positive effects of shooting people.

But that is the problem. The key ideological divide is between those who believe that nonviolent actions can accomplish all things better than violence, and those who believe that shooting people can be justified. Unfortunately, many of the loudest pundits on both sides of what they suppose to be the key ideological divides stand together on the wrong side of this one.

I got this short and powerful article yesterday via email, simple yet very convincing about an occurrence repeating itself very often, here in the US and the entire world, in individual forms or collective forms through wars and massacres, I believe reforwarding it through our blog could help us all better understand these phenomenon. 
As always, my many thanks to all. Stay safe and well.   

TOWARD A NEW HUMAN AND THEOLOGICAL VOCABULARY

 

FOSNA

Friends of Sabeel  North America.

A Christian voice for Palestine

by Jonathan Kuttab

Let us offer, then, as a working principle the following: No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.

-Rabbi Irving Greenberg

The above statement, made in response to the deplorable silence of Christians during the Holocaust, launched an entire school of post-Holocaust theological studies, becoming in essence a moral litmus test against which all theological (and perhaps ideological and political) positions were to be tested.

As the events in Gaza continue to unfold, but this time committed in broad daylight and broadcast for all to see, with images of maimed and starved children becoming a sight impossible to ignore, I am wondering what impact this would have on current and future theological thought and political ideologies. Apart from the obvious racism, which does not view Palestinian lives and children as being remotely equal to European Jewish lives and children, the moral and theological questions raised are actually one and the same.

How can churches explain or justify their current silence, timidity, and indeed complicity in the ongoing genocide? How do we understand their toleration of and support for apartheid, genocide, and grossly discriminatory policies? How can we make sense of their support for Christian Zionism and their normalization of moral and ethical double standards. As Rev. Munther Isaac has repeatedly pointed out, this is not merely the problem of evangelical and dispensationalist churches caught up in eschatological end-times fantasies, but it is also found within mainline churches as well, wherein religious and scriptural language and images are utilized to foster a default support for Zionism and the state of Israel. 

Perhaps once the dust settles down and universal outrage overtakes the entrenched centers of power and complacency, a similar process will take place and a commitment made to accept a new working principle: that no statement, theological or otherwise, be made unless it is credible in the presence of starved Palestinian children.

When that happens, we will need to reexamine our hymns and Sunday School curricula, our lectionaries and liturgies, reading them not only in light of Jesus’ New Testament message of the Kingdom of God, which rejected both Jewish tribalism and territoriality but also to make sure that any theological concept or system is  credible in the presence of emaciated children. Concepts such as “Chosen People,” “children of Abraham,” “promised land,”and “covenant relationship,” the printed maps in our Bibles and commentaries, and “talk of God’s plans for mankind” as well as the very nature of God may need to be reexamined, properly deconstructed, and entirely reconstituted such that they might be found credible in the presence of deliberately starved, maimed, and murdered children of Palestine.

Beyond theology, we also need to re-examine our political language. Terms like “shared values,” “Israel’s right to defend itself,” "Judaeo-Christian,” “reliable allies,” “the only democracy in the Middle East,” “the civilized world,”  “exceptionalism,” “terrorism,” “total victory,”  “international law” and even “human rights” need to be reexamined and redefined. Understanding these terms properly must be done in terms that are credible “in the presence of starved children.” Any statement employing these terms will have to be reexamined and defined in a manner that is credible and meaningful after the horrors of Gaza. 

We may also need to learn from past history just how easily a victim can become a victimizer and how a victim mentality can be abused to provide justifications for further outrages. Both Israelis and Palestinians will need to know that their victimhood does not grant them exceptionalism or provide an excuse to perpetrate outrages themselves when they have the power or ability to do so. Universal principles and robust international organizations must be established and strengthened to ensure that such inhuman practices are never again to be allowed or tolerated. People of conscience, particularly faith communities, will need to learn to uphold their principles with equal vigor and principled dedication regardless of who the victim or perpetrator is, and whether or not the prevailing power structures of the age permit or tolerate their outrages.

And maybe we do not need to wait until all this comes about in the future. We can start now. Let us offer, then, as a working principle the following: No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of starved children.

A very good analysis by the inspired Jonathan Kuttab, it is indeed a highly needed and required reorganization of our world wide definitions and applications of human rights, dignity and our behavior toward each other. 

As always, my many thanks to all. 

THE SIMPLE TRUTH... AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.

 

Now China has declared all its present and future power.
And there is Russia, North Korea and India
And of course Brazil, and of course with the presence of 20 leaders of countries of this size and also of all sizes, are celebrating today, yesterday and every day in Beijing, Moscow, North Korea’s maneuvers and others, plus of course a silent and hidden BRICS that could open up any day.  

So from this day on we will wait to see what they will offer to Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian people inside occupied Palestine.
To the people of Palestine in the diaspora

Show us your muscles and brains
Your weapons are extraordinary and beyond imagination.
And supernatural for the children, mothers, youth and elderly of the destroyed Gaza
Heads of its people directly and live
Show us your morals if you have any!?!??
Show us your conscience, if you have any, to prove that you are different from America and the colonial West.
You are not the island of Bahrain, nor Abu Dhabi, nor Dubai
Nor Mecca
You are gods on earth by your power
You were and became the giants of the world
Show us your people, at least they are allowed to demonstrate in the thousands and millions as well
It has been happening for two years in the heart of the colonial West.
Show us that you differ morally from Western colonialism, despite
The people of the West have the right at least to demonstrate and shout in the face of the rulers.
Even in the heart of the White House, even in the heart of Congress, and even in the heart of meetings.
And celebrations when a woman or a man screams
They suddenly raise and shake the place with their voice and by raising the Palestinian flag, even in American and European universities.
Even in the middle of the European Parliament
Show us that you are at least like the people and government of Spain, Ireland and other European countries, where at least they do not imprison or execute those who demonstrate and disturb the peace of your conferences.
Even in the presence of the President of America or the President of any European country
Finally, show us your political, economic and military support, even if it is at its minimum, for the sake of Palestine, which has been officially usurped, imprisoned and slaughtered with the support of all those with a veto, without exception, from you and others, and from the moment of officially recognizing the invasions, settlers and occupiers of the land of Palestine since 1948, including the Soviet Union and Russia today.
Come on, show us your fangs to protect what remains of Palestine and its olive trees instead.
Watching the massacre and genocide in Palestine and the slaughter of children in front of television cameras, you clowns with weapons decorations for festivals
What else are you afraid of with these military and nuclear arsenals?
We are waiting for at least one stand from you, you old fools and fraudsters...
It seems that you are just a complete group about and along Western colonialism
And from the beasts of this great jungle in the world, you are driven by animal instincts.
It is time for you to prove that you are better than Western colonialism... and that you are not the most negative influence by your silence on these public crimes.
There is little time left between us and you
Let's see if you're more or less an addition to a military parade.
Suitable
On display at the Wax Museum in London
At least let us hear your voice
If you have any voice from
Yes, right
and justice.

As received, originally in Arabic, a truly and simple look at all the great nations of the world, and their attitudes and reactions to the most horrific mass crimes of any recent memories, It is time for a collective wake-up and some positive action, instead of turning the blind eye and ignoring what's happening, and allowing the genocide and massacres and barbaric colonization to go on.....

My sincere many thanks to all my good readers and listeners.    

A POSITIVE GUIDE TO AI....

 

Stephen’s guide to AI

Editor’s note: Happy Labor Day! While our office and the markets are closed today, we wanted to share something important with you.

This special artificial intelligence (AI) guide—originally published in The Rational Optimist Society—dives into the different ways Stephen uses AI to get a lot more done in a lot less time.

With AI accelerating faster than ever, this is essential reading for anyone who wants to stay ahead of the curve… and start incorporating AI into your own life.

***

We've seen amazing advances lately, from SpaceX landing rockets like darts to Boom Supersonic bringing supersonic jets back.

AI is different. It's not locked away in some research lab. It's available on your laptop right now, ready to help you work smarter, think better, and create more.

This isn’t a 10,000-word manual covering every possible way to use AI. That would be like writing a guide to the web in 1995—obsolete before the ink dries. AI is evolving so quickly that today's uses might look quaint compared to what's coming next month.

Instead, I’ll tell you how I’ve used AI to get a lot more done in a lot less time.

Six months ago, I was exactly where you might be now. AI was more frustrating than helpful. Then I tried the latest versions. Now, I can't imagine working without it.

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Imagine having a brilliant personal assistant who never sleeps, crunches complex data in seconds, and creates custom lessons for your kids. 

That’s just a taste of what AI can do for you today.

There are many “AIs,” each with their own strengths. ChatGPT is your reliable all-rounder. Claude is the creativity king. Perplexity is your research ace.

• Pro tip: skip the free versions. For $20 a month, you can access the premium AI models that are dramatically more capable.

Claude is my chatbot of choice. I use it at least 50 times a day. That $20 monthly subscription is the best money I spend. I'd pay $200 without blinking for the productivity boost.

Don't start by asking, "How do I use AI?" Instead, think about what you want to achieve.

Learning Spanish? AI is your patient tutor, available 24/7 for conversation practice.

Building a business plan? It's like having a Harvard MBA on speed dial. Need to teach your kid geometry? It'll create custom practice problems that adjust to their level, complete with step-by-step explanations.

You'll find your own way to use these tools. I'm here to show you what's possible, and I can't wait to hear how you end up using it.

Forget needing 10,000 hours to master a skill. You can get surprisingly good at AI in about 10 hours.

It's 7 am. My desk is buried under hundreds of pages of notes about AI, robotics, and breakthrough tech. I love this stuff. I’d happily spend weeks diving deep into these innovation rabbit holes. But there's a problem.

All these fascinating notes need to become something useful for you, our readers. And that's when the fear hits. The blank page stares back and my brain is frozen, wondering how to connect these ideas.

This was my every-morning battle. Then I hired the perfect writing partner: AI.

I dump all my research into Claude. My “prompt” is simple: "Using these notes, write an essay on [topic]."

Claude spits out a terrible first draft in seconds. Yes, terrible. But it conquers the blank page and gets my creative juices flowing. It's like having a brainstorming buddy who's always ready to riff on ideas.

I end up throwing away 99% of what AI writes. What matters is AI gets you unstuck and shows you angles you might have missed entirely.

AI then becomes my ruthless editor. Need simpler language? More concrete examples? All you have to do is ask. Get creative: "Explain this like Warren Buffett would." 

AI’s real superpower is speed and instant feedback. Instead of wrestling with a stubborn paragraph for an hour, I can ask for 10 different ways to explain the same idea in minutes.

• Pro tip: give AI context. The more background you provide, the better your results. Treat AI like a new team member. The more it knows, the more helpful it’ll be.

Getting up to speed on a new topic used to mean days of reading, hoping you didn't miss something crucial. Those days are over.

Before digging into a topic, I’ll ask AI to serve up the 10 most important articles ever written on it. No more wandering through Google hoping to strike gold.

AI is a shockingly good research filter. Instead of drowning in dense academic papers, I have Claude analyze them and pull out the key insights.

The trick is being specific: "I'm trying to understand why supersonic jets couldn’t make money. What are the three strongest arguments in these papers?" 

Without clear direction, AI misses the mark.

Want to fast-track your learning? Try AI role play. "You're an experienced quantum computing researcher. You've just hired a junior researcher. What are the five most important things they need to understand about this subject and why?"

My friend and economist Tyler Cowen gave me a simple but powerful tip: Ask AI more questions. Treat AI like your intellectual sparring partner. It’s not Google. Don't just ask for facts. The best insights often come from the back-and-forth.

I was recently reading about Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks in Byrne Hobart's excellent new book, "Boom." I wondered about similar rapid innovation projects. One quick question to AI, and suddenly I had fascinating parallels from history. Before, this would have been days of research.

This is a revolution in reading. Every book is now a conversation. I bet within two years, you'll be able to highlight any passage on your Kindle and get AI commentary instantly.

AI isn’t perfect, but it does 80% of the research grunt work in 1% of the time. You now have a team of tireless research assistants at your fingertips. Learn to use them.

Two simple AI tricks that save me hours each week:

1. Taming YouTube. Found an interesting hour-long talk but don't have the time to watch it? I generate the video's transcript, feed it to AI, and ask it to pull out the five key points. No more skipping valuable content because I'm short on time.
2. Transcribing data. I needed data from some graphs in the book, "100 to 1 in the Stock Market." Instead of spending hours squinting and typing numbers, I asked AI to convert the image into usable data. What used to be mind-numbing transcription work now takes seconds.

This is just scratching the surface of how AI fits into my daily routine. Think of it as an incredibly versatile assistant that can guide you through almost anything.

Need market updates? ChatGPT's new "Tasks" feature will check the S&P 500 chart each morning and give you the highlights.

Ask yourself: What routine work makes you less valuable? What tasks serve no real purpose and numb your brain? That's your AI opportunity list right there.

The goal isn't to replace thinking. It's to give you more time for it. Let AI handle the grunt work so you can focus on what we humans do best: spotting unexpected patterns, developing fresh insights, and solving thorny problems in creative ways.

"Dad, how do airplanes fly?" You know that moment when your child asks a fascinating question, and you fumble through an explanation.

That's where my journey with AI at home began. It's transformed how I teach my six-year-old daughter.

Instead of muttering something vague, I turned to Claude and asked it to create an interactive game showing how airplanes fly.

Within seconds, it spat out a simple but engaging simulation. Soon we were playing with a model where my daughter would change wing angles and air speed, watching in real time as her "airplane" soared or dipped.

Source: Claude

AI transforms how kids learn. As parents (and grandparents), it’s our duty to know this stuff.

Remember in The Matrix where Neo instantly "downloads" kung fu into his brain? That's basically possible with coding now.

When Apple debuted the App Store, it sparked a gold rush and created billion-dollar companies like Instagram and Uber, along with tens of thousands of high-paying coding jobs. But there was always a velvet rope: You needed to speak the language of computers, aka code. Not anymore.

Now you can create software by simply describing what you want in plain English. It's like having a world-class programmer on speed dial, ready to turn your ideas into reality.

Yes, AI is already world-class at coding. OpenAI's latest model ranks among the top 125 programmers globally. The founder of AI coding assistant Devon (a multiple-time world coding champion himself) says AI will be the world's best programmer within two years.

It’s telling that when Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT, coder productivity there dropped by 50%.

Earlier this year, our RiskHedge team analyzed every US stock from the last 20 years to uncover what the best performers had in common.

RiskHedge publisher Dan Steinhart spearheaded the project. Here’s Dan:

Pre-AI, this would have required data scientists, a six-figure budget, and probably a year.

Instead, it took two months and two $20/month AI subscriptions. Using mostly Claude, I wrote code and automated data acquisition from several different sources to ensure integrity. Then using mostly ChatGPT, I parsed the data to tease out the golden insights.

The craziest part: I had never written a single line of code in my life before this project.

We're entering an era where the question isn't, "Can you code?" but, "What do you want to build?" The next Uber or Instagram could come from a teacher with a vision to fix education, or a teenager with a wild idea and a laptop.

Why not have it come from you?

Try it. Think of a simple task you'd like to automate, maybe analyzing your monthly expenses. Describe it to AI in plain English and watch your idea come to life.

A fun example of what's now possible for us coding mortals:

I've been tracking my sleep, recovery, and strain (via Whoop) for about six months. I copied my personal data into an Excel file, uploaded it to Claude, and asked it to find patterns for improving my health.

In minutes, it created a detailed analysis with all kinds of insights like “don’t work out within two hours of bed” and “eat dinner earlier.” I even had it code a dashboard measuring my sleep patterns since our third child was born on November 22.

You can see my new son George has sunk me deep into “sleep debt!”

Source: Claude

Remember those $500 Rosetta Stone programs we bought to learn new languages? Those days are over.

I know multiple people using AI to learn Spanish, Hebrew, and other languages. AI builds you a personalized course, complete with exercises and role-playing scenarios. It grades your work, corrects your pronunciation, and adapts to your learning style. Why would anyone buy a textbook or sit through a lecture again?

AI also gives you an expert doctor in your pocket.

Take Susan Sheridan's story from The New York Times. Her face was drooping on one side, she couldn't speak clearly. The ER doctor sent her home, calling it "benign." Susan typed "Facial droop, facial pain, and dental work" into ChatGPT.

The AI's response was clear: These symptoms matched Bell's palsy, and she needed urgent treatment. Susan rushed back to the ER and the doctors confirmed the AI's diagnosis.

Obviously, AI shouldn't replace doctors. But you'd be silly not to at least consult this (free) expert doctor in your pocket.

In recent tests, ChatGPT outperformed doctors in diagnosing medical conditions. It scored 90% compared to doctors' 74%. When I get blood tests or MRI results now, I ask AI to explain them in plain English and suggest questions for my doctor.

In the near future, AI will give a “second opinion” on every medical scan and doctor’s decision anyway. You can live in the future by consulting “DocGPT” today. Hello, AI early warning system for your health.

My best advice: Just start. Ask your chatbot of choice to explain something you've been curious about. If you’re not sure what to ask, tell AI about yourself, your work, your interests, and let it suggest ways it can help.

Think of it like picking up a golf club for the first time. You'll feel awkward and maybe even grip it wrong. But stick with it, and you'll get the hang of it.

• Pro tip: Think of AI as a brilliant but literal-minded employee. You wouldn't tell a new hire, “Make this better." You'd explain specifically what needs improvement. Instead of "help me write an email," try "write a professional email to reschedule a client meeting, emphasizing how much we value their time."

This gets to the heart of "prompting" or how you talk to AI. AI models are like a flashlight in a dark warehouse. How you phrase your question is like aiming that beam. Sweep it too broadly and you'll just get a dim view of everything. Focus it precisely and you'll illuminate exactly what you need.

The clearer your prompt, the more useful the response you'll get.

Big picture: Whether you're mastering Spanish, helping your kid grasp geometry, or planning the perfect anniversary dinner or vacation, you now have a brilliant advisor available 24/7.

AI is a new superpower. Those who start mastering it now will have an incredible advantage.

I believe AI will fuel the biggest small business boom in history.

We're entering an era of "extreme leverage" where one or two smart people with AI assistance can build something extraordinary. The next billion-dollar company might start with someone like you, sitting at home, working with AI to solve a problem you deeply understand.

And yes, teach your kids how to use these tools. In the age of AI, even homework must evolve. Leading educators like my friend Tyler Cowen are already designing AI-based assignments that test understanding rather than memorization.

I’ll leave you with this simple mission: Spend 10 hours with AI. Jump in and get your hands dirty. Ask it questions. Give it tasks. Learn its quirks.

The future is here. And it's not about AI replacing human intelligence. These tools amplify our potential.

Stephen McBride
Chief Analyst, RiskHedge

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A very good article by Stephen McBride, received through a forward on my email, it is one of the rare positive looks to the AI new phenomenon engulfing our modern times nowadays, It surely explains many aspects of this phenomenon, with a positive understanding. Always to the benefit of our readers to better understand the subject.

As always my many thanks to all for following and participating.