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| Pix credit here (OPen.ai Faulty Reward Functions in the Wild) |
One can only watch the battle between merchants and priests, between Rome and the Sassanian Empire (both ended badly though they survived in altered forms), between principled apocalyptic institutionalists managing the Divine word to earthly ends and unprincipled transactionalists (in the sense not of bad principles but rather in the sense of no normative cage beyond the confines of an unanchored principle of transaction itself as the foundation and rationalization of the world in time, space or place), with a great deal of wonder. What passes for negotiation by other means in the form of the current version of the unending conflict between a priest-Mameluke theocratic system and a Merchant praetorian liberal democratic one, in the form of the physical phase of the negotiation between the Iranians and the United States, remains fluid as concepts, actions, text, imagery and intent become as fluid as necessary to extract whatever it is either side wishes, and the commodification of extraction changes (as a function of changing versions of success) among them. . .
But over what?
That remains as malleable as the tactics that either side has been using over the past decade and now intensified by actors who face, in their own distinct ways as much internal as external pressure to provide "results" that suit the way in which they have rationalized the world. The rest is just collateral damage or the measure of the success of managing collectives in shared beliefs and thus in shared sacrifices for the greater glory of those doing the directing, But it has always been so--just the dressing as been altered to suit the times. And even now this is a bit a a retro game as our machine intelligence systems have been undertaking this increasingly for us (and to the profit of those deploying them where profit is measured by things and authority). What had come to corrupt the rationalization of the human rights institutional establishment a decade ago (Fractured Territories and Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within and Beyond the State) has now infected priestly-institutional and merchant-transactional spaces as well and soon the space created for the management of the human by machine system intelligence (even with the overlay, as for example Anthropic continues to assure us, is a human face to machine ethics). Even human societies are quite capàble of reward hacking to suit themselves.
One might have thought, for example, that a core consequence of the fundamental postulate of merchant-transaction types (that the space and forms of transactional spaces must be protected, expanded, and managed to protect deal making among equally situated participants, see discussion here) would have been (as it had been a core element of American trade policy in the 19th century--something to which some American political ideologies sometimes reference) to place at its core the construction, protection, and functioning of trade routes facilitation individual transactional activity that would inure to the greater glory of merchant collectives (to similar effect the Chinese Belt & Road though from a centralized bureaucrat-institutional framework that puts state economic organs at its core). That, one might have assumed, applied in a principled way, would have justified recent U.S. activity and advocacy of free and unfettered international movement within the South China Sea, and perhaps through the Panama Canal. At its core, it tends to view with suspicion actions that close off trade routes to the benefit of the trading states attempting to control trade highways.
Yet one might have been wrong about that. Perhaps, at least from a certain way of approaching the merchant-transactional type, there is no such thing as "free use" or "open" spaces for trade; there is no such thing as a trading platform that is not or cannot be wholly or partially proprietary. The focus of that form of transactional approach mimics, in large part, the state-institutional approach, and that of the warrior imperialist tropes of the 19th century in the sense that each, in its own way commodifies all elements of human activity, including its pathways and spaces for interaction. There is nothing that is not or cannot be a commodity; there is nothing with respect to which competition in offering commodities is constrained; and there is nothing that suggests that every element of human activity cannot be turned to particular advantage as a commodity, as a point of control, and as a means of limiting access to markets and market activity, including by controlling or profiting from control or management of trade highways. On this sense, and applied in this way, America First and the Chinese Global Initiative (of which the Belt & Road project now forms a part) converge in much more intense and interesting ways. The fact that one advocates infrastructure does not necessarily means that such infrastructure is available to all, it like the trade it supports, is a business, a point of monetization, and an element of control that both enhances market insiders and penalized outsider. Infrastructure can be understood itself as a business for which there are markets, as a commodity to be bought and sold, and as an an expression of the monetization of activity, as a sort of toll booth. None of these are innovative, all have ancient roots. The trick now is to find a discursive way of convincing collectives that they are "naturally" and seamlessly embedded in the national political economic ideologies.
It brings the idea of America First, and its Chinese analogue (with the rest of the world dutifully if grudgingly following) into new territory -- to use Chinese political terminology with some bite, it brings the state of affairs of both systems into alignment with the fundamental principles of people's democratic dictatorship (人民民主专政) to trade and trade infrastructure--dictatorship and obedience to unpatriotic and enemies of the political economic (or trade) model; democracy and freedom for the patriotic forces of trade. That, for example, explains the context in which the United States and China have been approaching the infrastructures of technology, and now the infrastructures of trade. It is, one might now surmise, a perhaps plausible explanation for the decision by elements of the America First Trump Administration to sell the Straits of Hormuz to the Iranian priest-Mameluke state, each now appearing to contribute to the resurrection of the old cultures of Raubritter (the Robber Barons/knights) as a new form of transactional-institutional actor in the post-global, or at least, in mimicry of the original that reached its peak during the Holy Roman Empire's Great Interregnum (1250–1273), during that period of transition from the global (1945-2014) to whatever it is that awaits us in the age of the machined human.
All of that might come to mind as one reads that exercise in lower order mass management that found itself printed at the top of the opinion page of the Monday issue (29 June 2026) of the Wall Street Journal: Iran Is Winning the Battle of Hormuz: Tehran is using force to gain control over traffic through the Strait. The good people at the WSJ, proceeding from their own cognitive cages as mouthpieces of an elite institutionalist "brain trust" vanguard perspective true to whatever it is they recollect of or have refashioned out of the cognitive cages of 1945-2014 globalization under American leadership, put it in traditional geopolitical institutional terms.
Vice President JD Vance has been touting Iran's "transformed" Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders ready to "turn over a new leaf" with the U.S. He even reached "gentlemen's agreements" with them outside the memorandum, Mr. Vance assured critics. Well, these are no gentlemen. It's the same terrorist regime, and this is the Battle of Hormuz that Mr. Trump thought he had ducked. In case there is any doubt, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Iran is solely responsible for managing the Strait under the memorandum. He said, "no other country has any responsibility in that regard." Mr. Araghchi is Iran's chief negotiator with Mr. Vance. . . . The regime wants to conquer the trait and turn it into a toll booth, with transit by permission only. . . It may offer [the Gulf States] a cut of the spoils from the tolled Stait, but that hardly sweetens the foul deal for the rest of the world. The question is why Iran still gets the cash. In the bigger strategic picture, the regime is leaving the President a choice: surrender Hormuz to Iranian terror or fight for it, like he always should have once he started the war, and reopen the Strait by force. (Iran Is Winning the Battle of Hormuz:)
And from that perspective, of course, they are quite right. The entire structure and management of the deal appears dopes not suggest a sharply drawn transactional approach, and that skewing may have as much to do with the politics of succession to Mr. Trump (at least in the form of giving Mr. Vance some sort of performative space to demonstrate whatever it is they sought to have demonstrated). Still, it displays the traditional profound refusal to ascribe political agency to the priests who run it, pretending, as they must, that Irans' RGs run the state, something that may happen (recalling the manner of the overthrow of the Ayyubid Dynasty in 1250 by their Mamelukes) but which is at the moment a premature hope on the part of some.
And yet from a different transactional perspective "toll boothing" trade routes sounds like a great idea, especially if one can receive a cut of the transaction. One might, from a certain perspective, understand the actions and reactions as a product of transactional reward hacking within the parameters of America First. In this case the reward is not in winning the game but in acquiring enough "rewards" by other means to satisfy the requirements of amassing a high score. In this sense the Americans might convince themselves that they are not losing anything, and that even principle (open trade routes as cricial principle of America First) can be understood as a commodity to be bargained where the gain is sufficiently alluring in the short, medium or long term, What is left, then, is not the deal but the fiduciary duty of the negotiators to the Republic whose interest (rather than their own) they represent.
In this sense the WSJ may have the wrong of it. There is no further choice for the Trump Administration. It has, indeed, already made its choice. The only question is whether in the marketplace of states Mr. Trump through Mr. Vance and company secured the better deal--not for them but for the Republic they serve now and for its progeny whose inheritance they have a duty to protect. For the moment, and to those of us not privy to "gentleman's agreements, side deals and the other usual stuff that marks the barrier between those who control risk for the Republic and those who must bear it, it would appear that the deal has been made and that what is harvested for America First is the hope that some of the money released will go to U.S. firms and perhaps as well that the U.S. has protected the primacy of the dollar as the supreme trading instrument. In the current context, however, it is not clear how that will happen or whether these hopes will materialize. But at least in them there is something that connects the actions of the Trump Administration to its merchant transactional principles, that tolling Hormuz advances America First.
The WSJ Opinion piece follows in full below.
