On August 25, 2026, the United States reaffirmed its alignment with Russia and North Korea by opposing binding limits on autonomous weapons that target humans for elimination without operator authorization.
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Art: Anselm Kiefer, Nigredo, 1984. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Caption: Kiefer confronts Germany’s devastated history and the danger of allowing fascist evil to return under renewed political authority.
President Donald J. Trump read Hitler’s speeches and internalized their governing logic. A man who rarely reads does not keep Hitler’s speeches beside his bed by accident. For decades, he repeated Nazi rhetoric and deployed the same appeals to grievance, dehumanization, and violent coercion. On August 25, 2026, the United Nations and Red Cross demanded binding limits on autonomous killing; Trump’s administration continued opposing binding international restrictions. Trump now flouts every law of humanity that restrains state violence and protects human life.
United Nations leaders have identified a moral red line: autonomous weapon systems selecting and killing humans without direct human authorization. President Trump refuses to bind the United States against crossing that line. His administration maintains presidential control over lethal autonomous weapons while Trump expands extraterritorial killing and threatens territorial conquest. Hitler’s My New Order supplied the same governing logic: manufacture necessity, blame the intended victim, and present aggression as self-defense.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, addressed weapons capable of selecting and engaging targets after activation without further human intervention. After activation, an autonomous weapon can select and engage a target without disclosing the specific target, precise location, or moment of attack to its operator. Guterres and Spoljaric identified autonomous human targeting as a moral red line.
Specific prohibitions form the core of the International Committee of the Red Cross proposal. Countries ratifying the proposed treaty would prohibit systems that produce effects beyond sufficient human understanding, prediction, or explanation. Ratifying countries would also prohibit autonomous systems that directly target human beings by design or operation. All remaining systems would face restrictions governing target types, operational duration, geographical scope, circumstances of use, human supervision, intervention, and deactivation. Those restrictions require human judgment over lethal force.
Since 2014, High Contracting Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have debated lethal autonomous weapons without adopting specific binding rules. The Group of Governmental Experts formulates proposed elements by consensus, allowing sustained opposition to prevent consensus around binding treaty language. The group reconvenes in Geneva from August 31 through September 4, 2026 before the Seventh Review Conference meets there November 16 through November 20.
Within the Geneva process, the United States, Russia, North Korea, and nine other national governments oppose a legally binding autonomous-weapons agreement. The United States and Russia maintain that existing international humanitarian law provides sufficient protection. The International Committee of the Red Cross disputes that position because existing law leaves essential restrictions unresolved while artificial intelligence is already entering military targeting systems.
Palantir has already connected artificial intelligence to operational military targeting. The Maven Smart System processes Project Maven computer-vision outputs alongside battlefield sensor and intelligence feeds, enabling military personnel to validate potential targets and accelerate targeting decisions. Palantir separately built electromagnetic-spectrum battle-management software for the Defense Information Systems Agency, giving commanders software for planning and coordinating operations across the electromagnetic spectrum.
Palantir also supplies Immigration and Customs Enforcement with technology that converts government records into actionable leads on specific people. ICE’s ELITE application maps potential deportation targets, assembles individual dossiers, and assigns confidence scores to suspected current addresses. Palantir’s integrated targeting and enforcement software gives state agencies the capacity to move rapidly from stored information to enforcement, increasing the risk that a future government could disrupt lawful protest or organized political opposition before either develops effective institutional resistance.
By opposing a treaty, the Trump administration ensures President Trump can weaken Pentagon policy without violating an autonomous-weapons agreement. The refusal consequently leaves autonomous force available for future coercive operations while Trump demands Panama and Greenland and expands lethal operations in Latin America. Trump grounds territorial acquisition and extraterritorial killing in national recovery and compelled self-defense, rationales Adolf Hitler used to disguise chosen aggression as necessity.
A 1990 Vanity Fair report recorded Ivana Trump’s statement that then-businessman Donald J. Trump read My New Order, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s collected speeches. She said Trump kept the volume in a cabinet near his bed. Trump denied reading the speeches. His friend Marty Davis confirmed giving Trump My New Order, rather than Mein Kampf.
Austria’s annexation appeared in Adolf Hitler’s speeches as recovery rather than conquest. Hitler called Austria the German people’s “oldest Eastern march.” He described his mission as leading his homeland “back to the Reich.” German troops entered Austria in March 1938.
During his January 20, 2025 inaugural address, President Donald J. Trump applied the same historical-recovery argument to Panama. Trump called the canal transfer a “foolish gift.” He accused Panama of violating the agreement before declaring, “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
Trump’s January 20, 2025 border proclamation used crimes against United States citizens to justify extraordinary military powers. The proclamation declared United States sovereignty “under attack.” Trump cited crimes committed by undocumented migrants before directing military assistance at the border.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, while Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler falsely portrayed Germany as confronting a Soviet threat. Hitler cast German aggression as necessary protection against a supposed conspiracy threatening Germany. He described German military operations as the “safeguarding of Europe.”
Trump applied the same national-security justification to Greenland on January 7, 2025. He said the United States needed Greenland “for national security.” Asked whether he would exclude military or economic coercion to obtain the Danish territory, Trump refused.
At the July 7, 2026 NATO summit, Trump escalated that position. He declared that Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not Denmark.” Trump justified United States control by citing Russian and Chinese activity around Greenland. Greenland’s government rejected Trump’s demand, while Denmark reaffirmed the territorial sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Hitler repeatedly assigned responsibility for Germany’s chosen military action to the government he threatened. Surrender would produce peace; refusal would make German action Czechoslovakia’s responsibility. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Hitler then falsely told the Reichstag that Poland had initiated hostilities and Germany was merely “returning the fire.” He declared, “Since 5:45 A.M. we have been returning the fire.”
On April 23, 2026, Trump reproduced that retaliatory formulation:
“I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be ... putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Trump applies the same logic to lethal operations against drug-trafficking organizations. A December 2025 Executive Office of the President statement classified cartel activity as an “armed attack against the United States and allies.” The Executive Office of the President then declared that the United States “must use force in self-defense.”
An official March 31, 2026 Department of War report confirmed that Trump ordered military strikes against designated drug-trafficking organizations. Trump’s May 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy expanded the doctrine further. Trump wrote that he had begun using the United States military to “stop and destroy” their operations.
The May 2026 strategy states Trump’s threat directly: “We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.” The military campaign continued through August. On August 24, 2026, United States forces struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific and killed two people. The Associated Press reported that the campaign had reached 67 strikes and 223 deaths since September 2025.
On April 7, 2026, Trump extended the same forced-response construction to Iran:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
Adolf Hitler delivered the corresponding threat before the Reichstag on January 30, 1939:
“If the international Finance-Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed in plunging the peoples of the earth once again into a world war, the result will be ... the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”
The November 3, 2026 midterms will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress. Democratic victories in both chambers would transfer committee leadership and floor control on January 3, 2027. Democratic majorities could prohibit Pentagon spending on autonomous weapons and require direct human authorization before lethal targeting. President Trump could veto the legislation, requiring two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override the presidential veto. Democratic control would end Republican command of the legislative process, but only a veto-proof statute would eliminate Trump’s unilateral authority over autonomous-weapons policy.
European Union member states can disrupt the weapons supply chain by closing defense markets to systems lacking direct human authorization. Without NATO bases and intelligence, Trump would face greater operational barriers to strikes that delegate human-target selection to software. If his delegation still blocks consensus in Geneva, a United Nations General Assembly majority can move treaty negotiations outside that forum and prohibit systems designed to mark humans for elimination.
Trump’s emulation has reached a technological threshold Hitler never possessed. Autonomous weapons could translate manufactured grievance into lethal action without direct human authorization. He is demolishing every legal and institutional barrier between his commands and algorithmic elimination.
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Sources
Reuters, “UN and Red Cross Call for Urgent Rules on Autonomous Weapons,” August 25, 2026
United States Department of Defense, Directive 3000.09: Autonomy in Weapon Systems, January 25, 2023
Yale Law School Avalon Project, Adolf Hitler’s September 1, 1939 Reichstag Address
German Propaganda Archive, “Hitler’s Proclamation of June 22, 1941”
Marie Brenner, “After the Gold Rush,” Vanity Fair, September 1990
The White House, 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy, May 2026
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