Humanity Is Under Attack on Multiple Fronts: Backed Into a Corner, We Will Fight to the End

American films and comic books popularized the concept of the supervillain: a character so destructive and dangerous as to be almost comical, someone who barely needs a motive because destroying everything in his path and crushing all that is good is the only goal. These characters entertained us precisely because they were so unreal—parodies of real villains stretched to impossible extremes.

Donald Trump is now trying to convince us that reality is stranger than fiction—or, at the very least, every bit as strange. Before the world’s foremost assembly, standing at the lectern of the UN General Assembly, he reels off his sinister plans while the other representatives sit and listen. And this is where reality becomes an uglier version of fiction, because in fiction the supervillain is always opposed by forces of good that, however grim the situation may seem, will ultimately unite, summon their courage and defeat the common threat. For a start, everyone should have stood up and walked out, leaving him alone to let his "mwahaha" threats echo through the General Assembly hall. But reality failed us so completely that everyone remained in their seats, thinking: "As long as I’m not the next target, everything is fine."

When it came to Iran, he reverted to his grotesque "I will destroy an entire civilization" mode.

"I have a very big decision to make—whether we reach a deal with Iran that allows them to rebuild and create a country far stronger than it has ever been […] or whether I destroy the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never again giving them the opportunity to kill and destroy people and nations."Donald Trump, address to the UN, September 22, 2026

Everyone knows that America wants to destroy Iran regardless of who happens to occupy the White House. That has been a constant ever since the revolution triumphed in 1979. But no one has ever suggested so ominously—at least not so publicly—that Iran should be destroyed "quickly." And what does quickly mean? Does it really need to be spelled out? There is only one way to destroy something of such enormous proportions quickly—something like a city, a country, a people, a civilization. And only one actor knows how to do it and possesses the means.

Perhaps Trump is troubled by the thought that the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have finally settled. Perhaps he remains fascinated by the fact that, with enough kilotons, an enemy can so swiftly be turned into an ally.

And if any of those "representatives of the world" still failed to grasp the point, they could have leaned toward the person beside them while Trump was not looking and whispered: "Quickly? Is he talking about...?" Yes, he is, the other would reply. But he mentioned a "deal" in the same sentence, so for now we are pretending that was the real point and that the rest was merely a threat. Let us remain seated. Nothing to worry about.

Yes, nothing to worry about. Why worry?

And yet everything Trump fired from that lectern was cause for enormous concern, whatever the subject. Artificial intelligence will be treated according to the same logic: nothing to worry about.

Let us pause here for a moment and go back almost a hundred years. Scientists are developing an atomic weapon. They assemble it and prepare for the first test. But during the process, they discover that there is, say, a 10 percent chance that even the initial test could ignite the atmosphere and bring about the extinction of the human species. Would they conduct it? Of course not. The war against Japan would proceed conventionally, at the cost of an enormous number of American military lives, but what would that be compared with a world in flames and the end of humanity? An idea had been conceived and developed, but once the danger was understood to be too great, it would have been buried as something best never discussed again.

Today, the leading figures behind this new "atomic threat" openly offer estimates of human extinction expressed in neat percentages. Some say 10 percent, some 20 percent, others merely "a few percent." Trump does not say zero. He says: let us ignite the atmosphere and watch the final show.

People become lost in debates, but the debates themselves are beside the point. What matters is the estimate that has been given—and what we do about it. Whatever we may be creating—a technology, a new virus, a new material, a new branch of physics, a new weapon—the moment that creation carries even the possibility of annihilating humanity, the debate is over. The work must stop. The project must be dismantled, perhaps studied for years by experts across multiple disciplines, immediately removed from the hands of private companies or any single state, and turned into a global question.

"Calling it artificial intelligence makes it sound fake. It is not fake. It is actually incredible," says Trump, who almost certainly has no idea what he is talking about—and if he does, that is even worse.

And still, no one stands up.

These hypnotized dignitaries have embraced their own irrelevance so completely that there is literally nothing he could say that would drive them to boycott the spectacle. What if he had said: "To guarantee America’s long-term security, I have decided that after my speech, all the other world leaders—since they are already here with me in New York—will be taken to a camp where artificial, excuse me, incredible intelligence will decide what happens to them next"?

No one would stand up. They would wait for him to reach the part where he mentioned some sort of deal, and then they would be ready to sign it immediately.

He also had to mention Cuba. Everyone had been waiting for that—the frustrated vulture staring at prey that stubbornly refuses to die.

"The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States. As our State Department has documented in detail, they cultivated ties with subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America. Communism will never come to America—but freedom will come to Cuba, and safety and security to Mexico."Donald Trump, address to the UN, September 22, 2026

Trump will not defeat Cuba. All his predecessors tried, with far greater ferocity and aggression than they ever directed at Iran—at least until this war—and they failed. Cuba will be defeated by its traitors, people like the woman Trump met yesterday after his speech, for the first time since abducting her former president and throwing him into a prison in this very glittering city of New York. Somewhere behind impenetrable walls and maximum-security barriers sits the abducted—not deposed—President Nicolás Maduro. Above that prison, his former deputy Delcy Rodríguez now walks freely, meeting Trump to negotiate their next moves: the exploitation of her country’s oil and the final, lethal blow against Cuba, the nation that gave Venezuela so much—above all, a vision—in its struggle against imperial conquest.

Once again, it is a scene from fiction, from films and comic books: betrayal, treason, the feeling that the heroes have been driven almost to the edge, while we wait for a reversal that never comes. People like Trump and Rodríguez are gambling on precisely this cruel difference between reality and fiction. In stories, immorality must ultimately collapse beneath its own weight, justice must always prevail. They mock those human ideals, though those ideals may have saved us countless times throughout our long history.

People like them really will end up surrendering the human soul to an efficient machine, because they possess no soul of their own and therefore have nothing to lose.

But we are not completely defeated yet. We are still moved by everything they have so rationally and materialistically cast aside. Maduro is in prison, Gaza lies in ruins, Cuba is in darkness, Iranian civilization is in the crosshairs, and the human mind itself is under attack. But we have not been defeated. We have been backed into a corner, and from that corner we will fight. To the very end, as one prominent bearded Cuban revolutionary used to say.