White Man’s Burden: Trump Is Failing Six of Ten Metrics on His Own Open Book Test
One reason I laid out what Stephen Miller and Trump’s other sad little advisors think they’re doing in their National Security Strategy is because once you do that, it makes it even more clear that their overestimation of their own competence is dooming the United States.
Fully seven pages of the short (33 pages as compared to Trump’s 68-page 2017 NSS and Sleepy Joe Biden’s 48-page 2022 one) document blather about what it is trying to accomplish: two pages announcing the adoption of utilitarianism over values, two laying out what the US should want, another laying out what Trump thinks the US wants from the world, and two more laying out what means the US has to get there.
This is the work of a bunch of men who imagine they are competent telling everyone who came before them that they were doing things wrong.
Yet by laying all that out — by writing down what they imagine competence would deliver — they make it clear how badly they’re screwing up.
Effectively, Donald Trump has already done significant, if not grave, damage to six of the ten things that Trump claims America wants:
- Continued survival of US sovereignty
- Protect the country from human trafficking, foreign influence, propaganda, and espionage
- “A resilient national infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, resist and thwart foreign threat”
- The most dynamic economy
- A robust industrial base
- Unrivaled soft power that “believe[s] in our country’s inherent greatness and decency”)
Start with the obvious ones.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and Elon Musk spent the first six months of this Administration trashing America’s soft power. These boys seem to imagine they can replace it with something that “believe[s] in our country’s inherent greatness and decency.” Except no one else will believe in American decency after it suddenly withdrew funding that resulted in the deaths of 600,000 people, two thirds of them children. People won’t trust you after you renege on paying the bills.
Or consider that 2nd bullet, which reads this way:
We want to protect this country, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation.
Of course, Trump claims to combat drug trafficking with his murderboat killings, even while he lets increasingly major drug criminals out of prison.
As for the rest? On her first day in office, the Attorney General stopped policing foreign influence, destructive propaganda, and influence operations; then Kristi Noem piled on by shutting down other programs combatting foreign influence and propaganda.
And, as an endless stream of stories reveal, both Pam Bondi and Noem have reassigned those who would hunt spies and human traffickers to go hunt undocumented grannies and day laborers instead.
Worse, the priority on weaponization has resulted in the loss of those people. Just the firing of a bunch of people who took a knee during the George Floyd protests to deescalate resulted in the firing of a counterintelligence Deputy Assistant Director and a supervisor.
a. In late March 2025, Plaintiff Jane Doe 5 was informed that she was being removed at the direction of Defendant Patel from her position at FBI Headquarters as a Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI overseeing counterintelligence at the direction of Defendant Patel because she kneeled on June 4, 2020. Plaintiff Jane Doe 5 had been specifically identified in then-Representative Gaetz’s letter. Plaintiff Jane Doe 5 retained her SES status but was demoted to a Section Chief position.
b. In April 2025, Plaintiff Jane Doe 6 was serving as the Legal Attache for the FBI based overseas along with her family. In that capacity, Plaintiff Jane Doe 6 had previously provided briefings to Defendant Patel with which he said he was very impressed. Nevertheless, on April 3, 2025, an FBI senior leader informed her that she was being removed from her term position in the Senior Executive Service to a non-Senior Executive Service position, abruptly uprooting her entire family and resulting in a significant pay decrease. The FBI senior leader informed Plaintiff Jane Doe 6 that Defendant Patel had indicated that his mind was made up and could not be changed.
c. In April 2025, Plaintiff Jane Doe 9 was demoted from her position as a supervisor overseeing all FBI ransomware and malware investigations. An FBI senior leader informed her that the demotion came straight from top level FBI leadership.
d. In April 2025, Defendant Patel directed the removal of Plaintiff Jane Doe 8 from her position supervising a counterintelligence squad.
There were even greater losses in DHS’ purges.
That’s part of the problem with bullet 3: The NSS’ grand plan to make America’s infrastructure more resilient. Along with gutting those who protect against foreign influence, Noem has gutted those who protect against hacking and natural disasters.
As for bullets 4 and 5? Trump’s trade war has had the opposite effect than he claimed it would, with historic layoffs and struggling manufacturing and small businesses.
Again, Trump did affirmative damage rather than achieving his goals.
Then there’s the question of sovereignty.
For all its yapping about America First, the NSS doesn’t deal with the way that Trump has been trading away America’s advantages to any rich foreigner with millions in cryptocurrency. Just yesterday, for example, Trump approved the sale of one of Nvidia’s most complex chips to China on the same day Houston’s US Attorney rolled out showy prosecutions for Chinese men accused of illegally exporting those very same chips.
“The United States has long emphasized the importance of innovation and is responsible for an incredible amount of cutting-edge technology, such as the advanced computer chips that make modern AI possible,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “This advantage isn’t free but rather the result of our engineers’ and scientists’ hard work and sacrifice. The National Security Division, along with our partners, will vigorously enforce our export-control laws and protect this edge.”
Alan Hao Hsu aka Haochun Hsu, 43, Missouri City, and his company, Hao Global LLC, both pleaded guilty to smuggling and unlawful export activities Oct. 10.
According to now unsealed court documents, between October 2024 and May 2025, Hsu and others knowingly exported and attempted to export at least $160 million worth of export-controlled Nvidia H100 and H200 Tensor Core graphic processing units (GPUs).
Trump already authorized the export of even more complex chips to Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, the same sovereigns backing Paramount’s hostile bid to take over a big chunk of the US entertainment industry (that’s after China’s Tencent was dropped).
And these are just the areas where Trump has most obviously failed his own standards.
He built in a gimme in those standards he actually accomplished by claiming to want nuclear deterrent but then stating, falsely, that the Golden Dome would deliver such a deterrent.
We want the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies.
Mark Kelly explained how unrealistic this effort was months ago.
And as for the hope that the rest of the world will use American technology, one of the things Trump wants from the rest of the world?
We want to ensure that U.S. technology and U.S. standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.
As for those chips Trump cleared for sale, China is limiting their use.
As for American biotech, the rest of the world is instead importing America’s scientists who’ve been defunded as part of Trump’s anti-intellectual purges.
There’s plenty else in this NSS (such as other references to America’s technical superiority) where the boys aspire to have skills they affirmatively destroyed.
As such, the NSS isn’t so much a strategy (a word they scare quote when they define it): it’s a confession that these self-declared competent people are failing to meet their own standards.
It’s less a strategy and more a profession of desire, as if with unfailing belief they can make fantasies come to life
It’s like they believe “The Triumph of the Will” was a historical documentary.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” senior adviser to Bush (Karl Rove).
I’m so glad the khakistocrats want to protect this country from hostile foreign influence.
Maybe they should start by reading The Mueller Report.
Great piece as always!
I would add the following: Stephen Miller has always been a follower, never a leader.
His wife, Katie Miller, is the leader of the Miller family and is from a prominent & well known Jewish family from South Florida that has been heavily involved Jewish/Israeli/American geopolitics since Katie Miller was born.
After the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, the Israeli government has consistently moved towards the ultra conservative right to the point now where a charismatic leader, Netanyahu, has been in power longer than expected & appears able to remain in power as long as he wishes.
Trump has always coveted remaining the US president as long as he wishes, too. Trump’s comments & policies towards immigrants resemble Netanyahu’s comments & policies towards Palestinians & other immigrants with the exception of Jews from the former Soviet Union & Russia.
Stephen Miller is a follower, not a leader.
Trump listens to Miller, but Trump makes policy decisions from conversations with those who lead Miller.
Don’t forget that Trump’s prime role model (and likely handler) is Vladimir Putin. Not Netanyahu, who still helms a country under democratic rule–albeit with a few quirks he has fully exploited, and yes, Trump (or his helper) may be taking notes. But Israel’s quirks are not the same as ours. Trump in his dotage seems to be aiming straight at the sun: full autocracy.
He’s not doing rallies any more, so he’s not getting his fix of adoring masses lapping up his every word. And he’s probably aware that, one way or another, he’s not got much longer left in power; he might want a third term but I doubt he’ll be physically or mentally capable of it, even if he can convince somebody to go along with the idea (the GOP might be terrified of him but I bet they’ll take any chance they can to get shot of the demented one because he’s doing them more harm than good).
Put those together and he’s probably desperate for self-validation which is why he’s going all-out on the autocracy: if the people won’t love him, he’ll settle for their fear because that’s what he sees as real power.
Saying Israel is a democracy is like saying Hungary, Russia, China and Belarus (among others) are democracies. They may hold elections but there is nothing democratic involved. They are anti-democratic autocracies. I am willing to believe that some of their people may hold redemptive values but the leadership and hence the countries do not.
There is an October 2020 Vanity Fair article by Evgenia Peretz entitled “Super Bad True Love Story” which gives quite a bit of background information about Stephen Miller and Katie Waldman, for those interested.
I found the comments about power and status particularly revealing. Primary motivators. I found the same in my own experience with authoritarians.
Thanks for the article. It looks like the Millers are cut from the same cloth.
It seems she is still being paid by Elon Musk, according to this Daily Beast article (https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-sniggers-over-causing-trouble-with-stephen-millers-wife/) as she does her podcast.
I’m gonna say this one more time, and after that you’ll have to figure it out for yourself: When it comes to Stephen Miller, that’s just the way the matzoh crumbles; into a half-baked cracker.
“Defendant Patel had indicated that his mind was made up and could not be changed.”
Because Defendant Patel believes that leadership consists in making hasty decisions with disastrous consequences based on rumors and reflexive authoritarianism. Avoid getting all the facts at any cost. The key word is hasty. Act fast and do a bad job. That’s our Ka$h.
That’s our entire federal government, not to belabor the point.
The train wreck that that your last paragraph describes has been a slow-motion event (even given that we’re still fully 6 weeks shy of a year’s-worth of this shit) that would have already resulted in a full economic and societal crash if not for the fact of the billionaire class (both domestic and foreign) supporting the Trump project with media-captured PR, market manipulations, and cash injections for the Trump cabal.
It really is all about capital “O” Oligarchy — the players like Patel, Miller, et al being just willing, demented servants of them and of the global Fascist re-ascendancy project writ large.
“Slow-motion”?!?
I think I need to lay in a supply of Quaaludes.
The loophole is “their standards”. By Miller’s standards the real threat to America are “non-European” immigrants flooding the country with their crime and degeneracy. Fighting that is far more important than any spies or cyber crime. Frankly I’m suprised Miller didn’t get his usually more explicit language in there. The other part of “their standards” is that things like strength and security are performative, Hegseth’s “warrior ethos” the security of masked men kidnapping Latino-appearing people off the street, and a fucking Golden Dome protecting America from nuclear attack by ICBMs. A Maginot Line, only stupider.
The ship St Louis, loaded with European Jews trying to get away from the Nazis and fascists, weren’t white enough for the US. The Millers might want to remember that.
The thing that gets to me the most about these defenders of white patriarchy is their unwillingness to learn about or even acknowledge that women and minorities possess the skills, the talents, and the abilities to contribute to the benefit of society. It is simply stupid to cast aside this massive talent pool while congratulating themselves for making the world so much lesser than what it could be.
They insist on paddling a boat that has an outboard motor attached.
They probably realized the Taliban have the better approach.
Sorry, but as a climate scientist, cold war brat, and foreign policy “enthusiast,” I’m laughing my lunch into my windpipe over Bullet Point 3.
[Welcome to emptywheel. SECOND REQUEST: Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We are moving to a new minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is far too short and common (there are many Bill/Will/William in this community) it will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. Thanks. /~Rayne]
Once again, the mountain of evidence shows that if a foreign actor dreamt up the ideal way to destroy America’s global power and influence, it would yet pale in comparison to what the Trump administration is voluntarily doing from within.
You’re underestimating RussiaRussiaRussia.
I think it’s very important at this point to focus on Trump as a weak and failing president. There is no one who can better remind us of this fact than Simon Rosenberg at the Hopium Chronicles.
https://open.substack.com/pub/simonwdc/p/trump-begins-the-rebrand-are-we-ready?r=1ox5e0&utm_medium=ios
You can get his messages on Apple Podcasts, Substack, and other places you access like Blusky.
He is also reminding us that constant vigilance is necessary and needed to combat Trump’s ability to change narratives.
The reason Trump’s deportation and anti-immigrant spiels get so much traction with Republicans is because they have an acute awareness of their impending minority status if they cannot both deport people and prevent folks from emigrating to the United States.
you also posted something better for us for discussion. i’m resharing that link:
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/12/make-europe-great-again-and-more-longer-version-national-security-strategy/410038/
will get back to it later. thank you!