Telescopes and Clubs
March 13, 2026
I saw a clip once from a man involved in drafting the Radio Act of 1912. He believed that standardizing Morse Code would eventually end war. His logic: wars come from misunderstandings. Give everyone a shared signal and you eliminate the friction that leads to killing.
He wasn’t wrong, but he was incomplete. If there’s only enough water for the mountain people or the valley people, even perfect Morse Code won’t save you. But if there’s enough for both? If the mountain people grow the best peanuts and the valley people have the best grapes? Then you don’t get war. You get peanut butter and jelly. You get something neither side could build alone.
We live in a world where there’s enough. The scarcity game is over. We just haven’t all agreed to stop playing it yet.
I’ve been a martial artist since childhood. I’ve watched enough Jackie Chan movies to know that anything, anything, can become a weapon. But using AI as a weapon is like using a telescope as a club. You’re wasting the only tool that could actually help you see.
AI is for understanding. For finding the convergence points where mountain people and valley people realize they need each other. So when I watch the Pentagon pivot from defense to what Secretary Hegseth has openly called “maximum lethality,” I see people swinging a telescope like a club. Not just a misuse. A regression. Like strapping a rocket engine to an ox cart.
Most people who quote Sun Tzu skip to the battlefield. But the Art of War begins much earlier: Who holds the moral ground? Can we talk it out? Can a trusted third party mediate? Only after exhausting those steps does force enter the picture. And the final step, killing civilians, forfeits the moral ground from step one.
Last September, Hegseth summoned DoD generals to Quantico to talk about pivoting from defense to war. Maximum lethality as doctrine. So when a missile strike on February 28th destroyed a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing over 165 children between the ages of 7 and 12, I was horrified. But I was not surprised.
Somewhere in that targeting chain, there was a human being whose actual job was to steward the AI system. To ask: “Is this target what we think it is right now, not what satellite imagery from 2013 showed?” The school had been converted to civilian use over a decade ago. The Washington Post reported it was on a U.S. target list, possibly misidentified, with questions about whether AI-enabled targeting played a role.
That’s not a targeting error. That’s a hallucination, one that would have been caught if the human in the loop had been doing the proper job of stewarding the AI. Assuming they even had such a human.
The Boston Massacre. Five civilians. That catalyzed a revolution. Does anyone think 165 schoolgirls registers as anything less than that to the conscience of the world?
I look at what’s happening in Washington and it’s so obvious it’s almost funny. The emperor has no clothes. A doctrine of “maximum lethality” just killed 165 children and the people responsible are scrambling to explain it away.
Sadhguru tells a story about a bird trying to reach the top of a tree. A cow says, “Climb up on my dung, it’ll give you a boost.” The bird climbs the dung pile all the way to the top. Beautiful view. Then a hunter spots it and shoots it down.
You can rise to the top on bullshit, but you can’t stay there long.
Here’s what fills me with hope.
I don’t need to propose a memorial. The world has already decided. Right now, right now, caring mothers and fathers all over this planet are crying for those girls. Praying for them. Praying for peace. Christians are lighting candles. Muslims are grieving. Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, spiritual people everywhere who actually feel something, they’re already mourning these children as their own. Because a parent’s broken heart doesn’t recognize borders. It just recognizes: these were babies. And they’re gone.
That’s not something Washington can manage. That’s the mandate of heaven shifting in real time.
I made my choice a long time ago. Parents who raised me on the golden rule. Forty-plus years of Tai Chi. You don’t meet force with force. You redirect the energy. You don’t argue with the storm. You illuminate the rocks.
I’m a lighthouse. I don’t tell ships where to go. I just make sure the rocks are visible.
What I see, with the kind of certainty that comes from paying attention for a long time, is that we’re watching a birth. This planet is becoming something new. The old scarcity paradigm, the doctrine of maximum lethality, that’s the contraction. It hurts. But it’s not the destination. It’s the passage.
The people clinging to the old way, swinging telescopes like clubs, rising to the top on bullshit, they look cartoonish now. Not because I’m being clever. Because history has already moved past them and they’re the last to know.
There will be a holiday for those girls. In every major culture. Not because someone proposes it. Because that’s what humans do when something breaks that can’t be put back together the same way. They make it sacred. They use it to mark the before and after.
The candles are already lit. The prayers are already rising. And the real power in this moment isn’t in the Pentagon. It’s in the hearts of billions of people who just saw the emperor’s new clothes so clearly they can never unsee it.
We’re going to get this right. Not because I’m hoping. Because I can already see it happening.
AI is a telescope. The view from here is extraordinary. Let’s use it.
Larry Greenblatt is the Founder and Chief AI Officer of InterNetwork Defense, holding CISSP, and ISO/IEC 42001 Senior Lead Implementer certifications. He specializes in AI governance advisory services.
