Ask A Genius 1535: Future Politics, Digital Avatars, and Global Flashpoints

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/05

How do AI avatars, political nationalism, and international conflicts shape the future of governance and society?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner explore a spectrum of future-shaping issues, from AI-driven cultural policies to the politics of international crises. Rosner imagines “Single Avatar Policies” (SAPs) regulating digital replicas of dead celebrities, tightly controlled to prevent brand dilution and protect jobs. Jacobsen turns the conversation toward global flashpoints: Russia’s drone war against Ukraine and NATO’s cautious responses, Sanae Takaichi’s rise in Japan as its first potential female prime minister, and North Korea’s military buildup. Domestically, they discuss U.S. shutdown politics, Trump’s controversial tactics, civil rights violations, and the economics of California’s refineries. Together, the dialogue maps the areas where technology, politics, and society intersect.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you want to focus on tonight?

Rick Rosner: I was talking about a couple of things in the future—lava lamps and AI-generated semi-stories that drift along. You could probably “move into” a lava lamp—like moving into the Sims—and interact with it. This relates to people entering virtual worlds inspired by movies or video games. Another idea is SAPs, which stands for a “Single Avatar Policy” for departed celebrities.

Under this imagined policy, once a celebrity has died, there would be only one authorized digital version of them. Decisions about which projects the avatar appears in would be controlled by the heirs (and potentially by prior instructions from the celebrity). The policy would exist to prevent cheap, unlicensed copies from damaging the brand and from displacing too many jobs for living actors. Those sanctioned avatars would be referred to as SAPs.

Ten to fifteen years from now, you might see, say, a Redford SAP; you’d certainly see Marilyn Monroe and Elvis SAPs—tightly regulated to protect the brand and to avoid an avalanche of digital stand-ins pushing out the living.

Jacobsen: International news or American?

Rosner: International.

Jacobsen: Russia has launched large-scale drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, including the Lviv region near Poland; in response, Poland scrambled jets to secure its airspace. This pattern—Russian strikes on Ukraine prompting neighbouring NATO states to raise air defences—does not, by itself, “trigger Article 5.” Article 5 (NATO’s collective-defence clause) applies to an armed attack on a NATO member’s territory and is a political decision, not an automatic tripwire. It has been invoked only once (after 9/11). 

Rosner: Airspace alerts or spillover incidents typically lead to consultations under Article 4 first. NATO members have begun actively engaging intruding drones in their own airspace: Poland reported shooting down suspected Russian drones after violations in September 2025—marking the first such shoot-downs by a NATO state during this war.

Rosner: A man on Pod TV, Sasha, who served in the Soviet army before its collapse, is from Ukraine. He believes Russia is running out of resources and that Ukraine is in a good position to retake territory.

He has been optimistic before, but at the very least, the war is still at a stalemate. Russia is not making significant gains. We’re about a month—six weeks—from winter, when it will be harder to shift the skirmish line as the weather worsens.

Jacobsen: Sanae Takaichi is right-wing, but she’s set to become Japan’s first woman prime minister. Any thoughts?

Rosner: No real comment, because I’m uninformed about her. You’re saying she’s conservative—or beyond conservative, actually right-wing?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: What does “right wing” consist of in Japan?

Jacobsen: She has expansionist fiscal plans. It’s a nationalist stance. So she’s a nationalist. Okay, so she’s right-wing, not just conservative. 

Rosner: What does nationalism mean in Japan? Are there people she wants to kick out? Is she isolationist? I’m not qualified to comment further on that. Nationalists are assholes. 

Jacobsen: North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang is allocating additional strategic resources in response to the buildup of U.S. military assets and forces in the South. He’s about to develop additional military measures.

Rosner: We should probably move away from international, because I’m not well-informed. You’re from Canada. You get more international news than we do.

Jacobsen: NFL star Mark Sanchez has been charged with battery after being stabbed. Any thoughts?

Rosner: None, because I don’t like responding to stories about individual idiots. That’s not really news. So no comment.

Jacobsen: What’s your opinion on the crackdown in Washington on crime by Trump?

Rosner: This is old news—dated from last month. It was ridiculous, and now it’s old. Let’s move to the next thing. 

Jacobsen: Reuters put this one down as October 4. A retrospective. 

Rosner: It was completely unnecessary. The troops stationed there were left to perform tasks such as picking up litter. The bid to end the shutdown failed in the Senate. 

Jacobsen: Trump froze aid to Chicago and billions of dollars in funding to blue states. The restoration of government funding failed by a decent margin—54 to 44. That’s not razor-thin, but it’s close either.

Rosner: So it’s going to go on for a while. The House doesn’t even come back into session until October 13. This will continue for a while. The Democrats feel like they have something to gain by standing up to the Republicans, because the budget gives them leverage to push back against some of the cuts to health care for tens of millions of Americans.

The big bill that was passed was called either “beautiful” or “ugly,” depending on which side you’re on. Democrats are in no hurry to get the government running again. And Republicans—along with Trump in particular—in their stupidity, are ignoring the fact that polls show the Democrats are pretty much right. About 54 percent of people polled blame the Republicans, while 30 percent blame the Democrats. That gives Democrats a net advantage. But Trump thinks otherwise, and he’s also using the shutdown as an excuse to dismantle more of the government. He’s happy to do that. 

So it’ll go on for a while. It might even become the longest shutdown in history. The previous longest was under Trump in 2018–2019, which lasted 35 days. I don’t see any compelling reasons why this one won’t last at least three weeks, probably longer. It may not break the record, but the second-longest shutdown was 21 days, and I’d put money on this one surpassing that, to at least become the second-longest.

Jacobsen: Centrist Republicans, like U.S. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have already said this strategy is creating a bad-faith environment. His words were a critique of the shutdown strategy, framing it as reckless even within their own party.

Border Patrol raids in Chicago targeted citizens and families. They raided an entire apartment building and detained about 500 people, regardless of whether they were citizens or not. They didn’t have warrants—it was a massive violation of civil rights law.

Rosner: But who’s going to prosecute them? Who’s going to stop them? It’s official government-sponsored lawlessness. Rotten Tomatoes.

Jacobsen: A U.S. judge has blocked Trump’s deployment of the Oregon National Guard to Portland—for now. On October 4, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut in Portland described the dispatch of the military into the city as “lawless,” over the objections of Democratic leaders.

Rosner: Portland and Oregon more broadly had tough years for crime, especially between 2020 and 2022. Crime ticked up during COVID. Homicides in Portland hit an all-time high in 2022—101 murders. For a city of Portland’s size, that’s a significant number.

By contrast, in 2025, murders and overall crime are way down. In the first six months of this year, the numbers are markedly lower.

There were 17 murders in Portland, which gives them an annual rate of about one-third of what it was in 2022. So I tend to believe the governor of Oregon, the mayor of Portland, and the police chief when they say the city is not a hellscape, that they’re not drowning in crime, and that they have things under control.

They do not need the National Guard or any other troops coming in.

Jacobsen: This one’s kind of out of left field. I haven’t seen this person before—U.S. Senator Jim Risch from Idaho. He’s the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he wants to introduce legislation to deter aggression against Taiwan by identifying targets for economic measures that could be deployed rapidly if China acts against the island. It’s called the Deter PRC Aggression Against Taiwan Act.

It would establish a task force comprising representatives from the State and Treasury Departments to identify Chinese military and non-military targets for sanctions, export controls, and economic measures. Any thoughts?

Rosner: Taiwan—the government of China was, I assume, deposed by Japan when Japan took over parts of China during World War II.

Then, that government tried to reconstitute itself after the war but was chased out of mainland China by Mao and the Chinese Communists. The remnants of the former government reassembled on the island of Taiwan.

They still consider themselves to be the legitimate government of China, or at the very least, they assert the right to operate independently of Beijing. And the Chinese government regularly insists Taiwan is part of China and threatens to retake it. Taiwan is a wealthy and technologically advanced nation—they have the most developed chip manufacturing industry in the world.

China wants Taiwan partly for that industry. Chip factories take about a decade to build. They must be ultra-clean and ultra-precise due to the high density of transistors printed on each chip.

According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years. The wires connecting the circuits shrink by about 30 percent or more each cycle, to the point where you end up with components so tiny they can handle only a single electron at a time.

These hugely complex chips are the result of decades of Taiwanese expertise. If Taiwan were making rubber ducks, China wouldn’t care. But with semiconductors, the stakes are existential.

China wouldn’t care much if Taiwan were producing ordinary goods, but they’re making the world’s most precise and most in-demand products. That means China will eventually try to take them over. We don’t make too much noise about it because we want to maintain civil relations with China. That’s the situation.

Jacobsen: Chevron is making adjustments to its Los Angeles–area refinery following a large fire. I didn’t know about this until now. The El Segundo refinery is the second-largest in California and Chevron’s second-largest in the United States. It supplies approximately one-fifth of all motor vehicle fuels and 40 percent of the jet fuel consumed in Southern California. A major fire at the facility has prompted Chevron to implement changes. Any thoughts?

Rosner: For decades, oil companies and refiners have been exploiting California with artificial scarcity. Californians pay about 92 cents a gallon more than the rest of the country in gas taxes. Those taxes help fund cleaner fuel standards because, in the 1970s, California cities were among the smoggiest in America. The rules worked—our air is much cleaner now—but it makes gas more expensive.

In addition to the taxes, oil companies add another dollar through artificially created scarcity. They shut down refineries for “maintenance” during peak demand seasons to drive up prices. So, while the rest of the country pays $3 a gallon, Californians pay $5. It’s been that way for as long as I’ve lived here.

This fire will probably cost Chevron billions, but they’ll make it back—and more—by cutting production and citing the fire as the reason. Consumers will pay for it twofold or threefold in higher gas prices.

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