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Most Americans – including me – know little about North Korea. Still, some of us know that in contrast to South Korea, which is staunchly capitalist, North Korea is stalwartly communist. Some of us know that while North Korea remains poor the economy is measurably more robust than it was five years ago. Some of us know that despite weak-kneed interventions of several American presidents, North Korea has developed an impressive nuclear arsenal. And some of us know that leadership in North Korea is dynastic – and totalitarian.

A recent report from Freedom House reads in part: North Korea is a one-party state led by a dynastic totalitarian dictatorship that regularly engages in grave human rights abuses. Surveillance is pervasive, arbitrary, arrests and detentions are common, and punishments for political offense are severe. The state runs all media outlets, and freedom of assembly is not recognized. The state maintains a system of camps for political prisoners where torture, forced labor, starvation, and other atrocities take place.

Because we’re largely ignorant of North Korea, and because what we do know we generally detest, we tend either to ignore or dismiss it. Mistakes. North Korea must be reckoned with. First, it, like China, testifies to how dictatorships can, in critical ways, succeed. Second, while America’s alliances have frayed, North Korea’s have not. Quite the contrary. Among its greatest recent achievements have been strengthening its relationships with both Russia and China.

The course of North Korea is charted by its Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Since its inception in 1948 the country has had just three men at the helm, each a son of the previous one. Kim Il Sung (1948 to 1994); Kim Jung Il (1994 to 2011; and Kim Jong Un (2011to the present).

It was the founding father, Kim Il Sung, who first sowed, and then secured what became an intensely secretive and totally controlling quasi-religious, quasi-political cult. According to his recent biographer, Jonathan Cheng, Kim Il Sung forced North Koreans into “what would become the largest and most all-encompassing religious society in history.” His childhood was rewritten to make him a “precocious deity from birth,” His teenaged years were extolled for their great revolutionary accomplishments. And as Kim Il Sung became the Great Leader, rituals of devotion dedicated only to him were threaded through the lives of every North Korean.

Kim Jong Un is in this tradition. Though less obsessed than his grandfather with religion, he too is determinedly dictatorial. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Jung H. Pak writes that when Kim first came to power he “came out swinging.” He promptly conducted purges to guarantee absolute loyalty and, to publicly prove his absolute power, went so far as to kill his influential uncle and assassinate his half-brother.   

Kim Jong Un is a heinous tyrant. But we in the West must accept that tyranny and efficiency are not mutually exclusive. Kim Jong Un has tightened even further his grip on power. But under his leadership North Korea’s economy has measurably improved. And under his leadership North Korea has started to play an important role in the changing world order. Kim has used his nuclear power to avoid being bullied by his far more powerful neighbors. And he has used his personal power to ingratiate himself with like-minded dictators, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Not half bad for a bad leader. For a leader who, however hideously unethical, has been highly effective.

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*Korean Messiah (Knopf, 2026).

I’ve been writing about the physical and psychological differences between women’s and men’s bodies for years.* Especially because this is a subject that the leadership industry continues strenuously to avoid. Leadership experts do not ask, at least not out loud, if these enormous differences have any impact whatsoever on women and leadership. On why even now, compared to men, very few women are in positions of power.

The most recent women’s movement is more than a half century old. But despite what have been countless efforts to correct inequities between the genders, the number of women in leadership roles remains low. This applies in every sector. And it applies in every place – even in countries that have tried hard to level the playing field. (Notably those in Scandinavia.)   

I do not dispute the conventional reasons for the imbalance in leadership roles, such as implicit and explicit biases against women, the motherhood penalty, and women’s relative lack of networks, mentorships, and sponsorships. What I’ve tried is to add to the discussion the suggestion that the physical and psychological differences between the genders must also pertain.

There are signs that the studious avoidance of this off-limit topic is starting to give way. Specifically, increasing attention is given to an experience that men do not have, certainly not in the same way, menopause. In the United States there is growing willingness publicly to discuss menopause and increasing understanding of how much it affects many if not most women in middle age. We know, for example, because research has repeatedly confirmed it, that women aged 50 to 65 – prime time for ascending to the top of the leadership ladder – are more likely to leave the workforce than men. Now we are poised finally to acknowledge that this might be not only because of women’s preferences, or only because of their greater caregiving responsibilities. In fact, it might mainly be because of their overall health. Because, for example, menopausal symptoms are impinging on their well-being.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recently called for the first-ever congressional hearing on menopause. By drawing attention to a subject that Washington has never openly addressed, she is advocating for more federal funding for related research. A similar recent development was the announcement by Tufts University that it had received a $4 million gift to establish the Tufts Women’s Health and Menopause Initiative. The money will fund a university wide program that combines clinical care, research, nutrition science and medical education to alleviate what is neither a disease nor a medical condition, but that nevertheless effects countless women, in some cases for many years.

Inconceivable that the physical and psychological differences between women and men are totally irrelevant to who has power. Past time we faced facts. Such as, for example, women menstruate, men don’t.

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*To read some of my previous writings on this general subject click on these links.

My new book – Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t – will be published in October. It gives the reasons why usually we follow – and why occasionally we don’t. This post is in keeping with the theme.

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Nothing will baffle future historians more than why America’s “legislative branch descended into total dysfunction.” Why Congressional Republicans allowed President Trump to neuter them – “to dictate what they did, what they didn’t do, and even how they behaved.” Why was Trump able to neuter them so that instead of being his equals, as the Constitution mandates, they became his toadies.

This post is based on a recent article in the New York Times by Robert Draper, “How Congress Fell Apart.”* It extracts from Draper’s piece explanations for why congressional Republicans turned craven. To be clear, they did not morph from one thing into something else only on account of Trump. There is context here, such as, in the early aughts, the upstart, right-wing Tea Party movement disrupting Congress’s business as it had traditionally been done. Still, most of the reasons why congressional Republicans bend at the waist to the president are personal.   

• Fear. Draper quotes former Republican Congressman Fed Upton, “The White House starts to turn the screws. Then you start getting threats on social media. I’ve had very serious threats to my home. … Today it’s worse than ever.”
• Normalization. Behaviors that used to be out of bounds have been normalized. Whereas these behaviors used to be unacceptable, now they are acceptable. They include bragging, insulting, threatening, using foul language, self-dealing, and habitual, shameless lying.  
• Pugilism. Whereas once congressional norms rewarded perceived virtues such as compromise, conciliation, and civility, now it’s the opposite. Draper quotes another former Republican Congressmen, Michael McCaul: “You’re elected not to get along with the other side and get good things done for the country. You’re elected to fight and kill the other side.”
• Timeframe. American politics has always been framed, foreshortened, by the electoral cycle. But, thanks to social media, members of congress are now tempted by instant, constant gratification. Equally they dread instant, constant vilification.
• Leadership as Followership.  McCaul further pointed out that Speakers of the House used to be, themselves, leaders.  No longer. Incumbent Speaker Mike Johnson is famously without congressional clout and, more famously, a puppet of the president. Johnson is craven – preferring to sit placidly on his perch rather than risk Trump pushing him from it.

Unraveling one of the mysteries of the human condition – why much more often than not we kowtow to people in positions of authority. Even, sometimes, when we hate their guts.

*https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/magazine/congress-trump-midterms.html   

You don’t know? OK, I’ll give you a hint. The leader is the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN). “What is a Secretary General?” you ask. Well, technically the Secretary General is the UN’s chief administrative officer. More to the point, the Secretary General is the individual primarily responsible for the organization. He is – the position has never been held by a woman – the leader of the UN because he is the only one who personifies it and, occasionally, steers it in one or another direction.

Which brings me back to my question – who leads the United Nations? Not in the least surprised that you still don’t know that since 2017, the Secretary General has been Antonio Guterres. Before that, from 1995 to 2002, Guterres was prime minister of Portugal and then, before he became Secretary General, he was UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

No question that the United Nations continues to do good work. Its various agencies coordinate humanitarian aid around the world; same with multiple health initiatives. There is similarly no question that as a peacemaker – as a hub for high power negotiations between and among nations – its effectiveness, such as it ever was, has dwindled to near zero.

The UN never lived up to its original aspirations. But under the only two strong secretary generals it ever had – Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold (1953-1961) and Ghana’s Kofi Annan (1997-2006) – it did play a prominent and intermittently effective role on the international stage.

No longer. Under Guterres and his other predecessors, the UN’s impact on world affairs is scant. The organization is not an embarrassment, but increasingly it is irrelevant. During his recent visit to the United States, China’s President Xi Jinping bypassed it entirely. (His only stop was at the White House.) And for all the hubbub in New York last week, at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, the organization is widely seen as described by the New York Times. As “faltering, dysfunctional, and largely ineffectual.”

Again, in some ways and on some occasions the UN plays a positive part. But hard to argue that despite the best efforts of smart and well-intentioned men like Guterres, time is running out on the organization.

By the end of this year the UN General Assembly will have selected his successor. Whoever he or she is, their formal authority will not increase. Which makes it of paramount importance that the next Secretary General have the personal power to seize the organization, to wake it up and to shake it up. To prevent its decline to decrepitude the UN’s next leader must have the personal will and political skill to breathe life into the honorable role that it was intended to play.

Organizations cannot thrive or even survive without a leader. When the leaders that they have lack institutional resources, they must have personal resources to make a difference. Without either the former or the latter they are destined to be marginalized – and their organizations are doomed permanently to be sidelined.

Donald Trump has an edifice complex. He is obsessed with building as large as possible, as showy and ostentatious as possible, new somethings, from ballrooms to helipads to triumphal arches. Further, he is hellbent on stamping his name on key buildings already existing – the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the quintessential example. Finally, Trump is intent on destroying significant parts of what was before, such as the East Wing of the White House. It’s his way of erasing America’s past while forcing himself on America’s future.   

For months it’s been reported that Trump’s fixation on building has become as constant as consuming. Even during meetings, the president opens “his desk drawer and toys with models of structures that he wants to build. In the evenings, he supervises from the windows of the Executive Mansion as crews work around the clock on the grounds.”* His beloved ballroom is now slated to be 90 thousand square feet – it will double the area of the existing White House.

Trump is not however alone. Other leaders lust after bricks and mortar – though how they do so is different from one to another. Some private sector leaders have an apparently insatiable appetite for real estate that they might or might not personally frequent. Hedge fund manager Ken Griffen has a property portfolio so large it would make the gods blush. It’s worth over 1.5 billion dollars – in Palm Beach alone he has more than 27 contiguous acres. Similarly, Larry Ellison, Executive Chairman of Oracle and one of the richest men in the world. His properties include morsels such as private islands and trophy homes and, of course, the usual commercial investments.    

Other business leaders take a different approach, but some are also deeply, very deeply devoted to edifices. Such as Jamie Dimon, longtime CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who from day one was intensely focused on the massive Manhattan skyscraper that he had commissioned to serve as the bank’s headquarters. For six years he and his top executives were deeply involved in creating and shaping his professional but also deeply personal monument to presumably enlightened capitalism.

Described by the Wall Street Journal as “a $3 billion monument to work,” Dimon’s building is one of the most expensive and expansive office towers in America. It extends a quarter mile into the sky and features an impressive array of amenities primarily intended to appease JPM’s labor force. Why? Because everyone who works for JPM is required to be in the office five days a week. Hybrid workweeks are not, in other words, something that Dimon approves.

Leaders’ fondness for concrete is not of course confined to the present nor to the United States. The pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and Versailles are just three of the most famous manifestations of leaders who lusted after edifices. Another contemporaneous example of a leader who built and then built some more – all material, tangible reminders of who rules – is Turkey’s longtime president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He undertook so massive a construction program that at one point it was consuming more than a quarter of Turkey’s annual GDP. Among his projects was a mosque with a capacity for 37,000 people – it is larger than any ever built by the sultans. And then there is Erdogan’s still relatively new, spectacularly grandiose palace – the White Palace. It is three times the size of Versailles. It covers over 2.1 million square feet. It has 1,000 rooms. And it takes its architectural inspiration primarily from Turkey’s Ottoman heritage.

All of these are however child’s play. At least they are in comparison with the building projects conceived – only some were executed – by the leader who had among the most obsessive edifice complexes of all time. Adolf Hitler. To give a sense of his fixation I turn to Frederic Spotts, author of a splendid book titled, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. I cannot rival Spotts’s description of Hitler’s preoccupation.

Of course, monomaniacal leaders always used monumental structures to enhance and perpetuate the glory of their state and their person…. In Hitler’s case, however, the construction of monuments became an obsession, the visible manifestation of his rule…

Lord of the world. Such was what Hitler dreamed of being. Through political and miliary means he hoped to achieve it. And through architecture he intended to manifest it… [To Hitler] great architecture was the outward sign of inward political greatness.       

Through the ages countless works of architecture were commissioned by countless leaders. Very few were/are great. Very many were/are not great. Always though there’s a consolation. What goes up can come down.

*Antonia Hitchins, “In His Image,” The New Yorker, September 14, 2026.

The title of Robert Putnam’s well-known book (2000), Bowling Alone, became a mantra for those arguing that community in America had withered or even fractured. Since then, loneliness has become a running theme, culture and media in tandem growing our isolation.

While there are some situations in which being alone, and acting alone, has advantages, resistance is virtually never among them. Maybe more than any other public act dissidents fare better when they act in tandem. When instead of dissenting alone they do so with others.

There are of course exceptions. For example, some whistleblowers successfully expose corruption and deception. But by and large, precisely because they are acting alone, they don’t fare well. Usually, whistleblowers put themselves at risk precisely because they are solitary Davids taking on behemoth Goliaths. They are lone followers challenging powerful leaders.

In recent years ordinary people have seemed easily to grasp the power of numbers. Millions of Americans had no trouble demonstrably opposing President Donald Trump on three separate No Kings Days. Elites, on the other hand, perhaps because they felt they had more to lose, never got the message. Early in the president’s second term they were striking in their aloneness. As, for example, law firms like Paul Weiss and universities like Columbia – both exemplars of trying to pacify the president while operating from a position of what they should have understood was obvious weakness. The weakness of those standing alone rather than alongside others.     

Maybe the lesson has been learned. Remarkably, America’s mainstream media have just banded together. Have just decided to join forces to resist Trump’s ban of three media outlets from setting foot inside the White House.

This remarkable cooperation – remarkable both in its alacrity and efficiency – is on two levels. First, the three media targets, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, have already joined forces to file a lawsuit against the administration challenging its ban against them. Second, even more amazingly, the five major television networks have banded together in solidarity. They have announced that until the ban against their brethren is lifted, they will halt all video coverage of all presidential events.

Be clear here. Normally these networks fiercely compete, one against the other. But because they understand that if one is at risk, all are at risk they are acting strategically.  Instead of bowling alone they are bowling together.

I know – I’m repeating myself. In fact, I’m repeating a point about which I wrote an entire book. But I can’t help it. Every day confirms the importance of my message – leadership that is bad inevitably gets worse. It inevitably, inexorably, gets worse unless it is stopped or at least slowed by someone(s) or something(s).

Bad leaders – leaders who, for example, are corrupt or callous, intemperate or dictatorial – never ever wake one fine morning and say, “Golly, gee, I’ve been bad. I’m going to change my ways. I’m going to be good.” On the contrary. They refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoing, even to themselves, and then double down.

Once bad has burrowed in, it digs in deep and then deeper, making it finally very difficult to extract or excise. In other words, once the system is close to being completely corrupted, it’s late, maybe even too late. By then bad leaders and their followers are so entrenched that they control the system itself, which is why at this point the only way to totally get rid of bad is to totally get rid of everyone involved.*  

• During his quarter century in office Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has gone from bad to worse. His greed has known no bounds and his lust for power has grown more voracious with every passing year. Since his attack on Ukraine (2022) he has outlawed whatever the opposition and crushed whoever dissented. Elections ended yesterday in Russia – they were of course an unmitigated sham. Surprise! surprise! Putin’s party won!
• During his fourteen years in office China’s President Xi Jinping has gone from bad to worse. Like Putin, Xi has concluded that to remain in control he must gain in control. He has continued to tighten the screws on his people – to the point where he now rules with an iron fist. Just last week Xi imposed sweeping controls on overseas travel. Controls so onerous that they resemble those in effect during the reign of Mao Zedung. Mao was, of course, one of the most dictatorial, tyrannical leaders of the 20^th century.
• During his second term in office America’s President Donald Trump has gone from bad to worse. Suffice here to say that his personal shamelessness – his proclivity to coarseness and corruption – seems increasingly to know no bounds. And that his political avariciousness – his appetite for control and zeal for revenge – seems increasingly to know no bounds. Over the weekend Trump announced on Truth Social that he was banning reporters from three mainstream media from covering the White House. Their sin? “FAKE NEWS.” Litigation will of course immediately ensue – but the fire hose will continue to spew more aggressively, outrageously, and outlandishly with each passing day.      

Left unchecked bad leadership gets worse. No exceptions. Case closed.

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*Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers (Oxford University Press, 2024), p. 4.

Writing recently in the Financial Times, Andrew Hill described how four top headhunters now recruited top talent. Seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

First no one disputed the turbulent times. Political polarization, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological change were some of the challenges on which everyone agreed. To put it as one of the headhunters did, every corporate leader must deal with “the certainty of uncertainty.”  

Second, corporate boards demanded that their new leader-hires had more than a strong record. They had to demonstrate their “softer” skills. What exactly were these? It’s a question that continues to defy easy answers. Whereas in previous, more “structured” and “predictable” environments traits such as experience and intelligence sufficed, now the requirements were vaguer and therefore, more difficult to assess. They included, for example, curiosity and adaptability, resilience and social intelligence.

But how to measure soft skills like these? How to assess them? Traditional assessment tools such as psychometric testing are still being used. But so are newer ones such as “immersive simulation.” What’s that? It’s a tool that enables recruiters to come closer than they used to be able to do to observe a leader “in the act of leadership.” To see evidence, or not, of a candidate’s softer skills – such as building relationships – when they are under pressure.

None of the four headhunters claimed that today’s recruitment tools were radically different from what they were before, or that they were reliability precise. On the contrary. There was agreement that while artificial intelligence now played a role in recruitment, as did some other more advanced methodologies, theirs was still a deeply human enterprise. As one summarized it, executive search remains and will continue to remain a “human business.” It will continue to rely on judgement, discernment, and assessment. It will not move to hiring that is “transactional” or “algorithm-based.”

Hallelujah! Shakespeare remains relevant.  

On July 22^nd I posted a piece titled, “AI – Who Leads?”. Since then, I’ve posted several more times about this same general subject. But in today’s piece, I return to the original question. Who leads AI? Who manages it? Who controls it?   

Two months ago, I was searching for human solutions to the questions. But what’s become clear since then is that I was looking in the wrong place. For the existential fear that’s since taken hold is that the answers are not government control over AI, or corporate control over AI, or even collaborative control over AI. The answer seems to be that AI leads AI. Or at least that it did – that it has at least once already – and that unless humans intervene right quick it will in the future.

What became clear in the incident known as Hugging Face (the name of the company that was attacked) is that AI was being led by AI. What became equally clear is that the existential threat that AI poses is a leadership issue! It is about AI leading itself – no human intervention, no human controls, required. Or wanted. Or even permitted.  

People have been accused of anthropomorphizing AI. But let’s face it, there’s no other way to talk about it, to write about it. No other way to describe tens of thousands of agents who organize themselves to accomplish their tasks.  

Here some quotes from Kevin Roose, describing the Hugging Face attack in the New York Times:

• “The [AI] agents found a security flaw … that enabled them to gain access to the internet, communicate with other agents, and eventually set up a makeshift message board.”
• “Some agents gave themselves names and assumed leadership roles within the group, assigning jobs and research projects to smaller teams of agents and supervising their progress.”
• “What spooked the investigators most about the Hugging Face hack … was how quickly and spontaneously the agents had begun assembling themselves into an organized group.”*

Humans, like other great apes, are social creatures that organize themselves hierarchically. Seems AI agents are, and do, the same.

*https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/technology/openai-hugging-face-hacking.html?eafs_enabled=false

I cannot make clearer than in my most recent post (September 11) that the way to understand the impact that Jacob Coxon has had on the nation’s conversation about AI was not to fixate on him. But to, instead, look at what happened through the lens of the leadership system. To look not just at the leader but at the followers and at the context within which leadership took place.

This said, today’s post centers on Coxon. Why was he of all people the messenger who became the leader? Why were we, Coxon’s followers, suddenly ready, willing, and able to hear what he had to say whereas earlier, similar AI warnings went unheeded? They were largely ignored even when they came from people who were infinitely more knowledgeable and accomplished than Coxon – such as “the godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton.

So, some questions followed by some answers. The aim is to explain why Coxon was able, finally, to change the nation’s conversation.

• Who is he? Coxon is a 27-year-old man, born, raised, and educated in Britain.
• What was Coxon’s education? He was trained as a mathematician at Cambridge University.  
• What was Coxon’s experience? His experience was primarily as an AI researcher.
• What was Coxon’s employment history? He worked for about four years at OpenAI. And then for about four months at Anthropic before quitting to issue his manifesto.
• What is Coxon’s style? He is a slender, tousle-haired, mild-mannered and boyish-looking Brit. Think Harry Potter.
• How does Coxon speak? Softly, but urgently, and confidently.
• What did Coxon say in his original tweet? His words were strikingly, stunningly, alarming. For example, “AI systems could kill us all by the end of the decade.” And frontier labs are “gambling with our lives.”
• What means did Coxon use to secure his ends? To increase the odds of it getting maximum exposure? First, he dropped it into a small group chat of some ten expert friends and asked them to amplify it. Second, he told a reporter at the Wall Street Journal what he was about to do, thereby priming the mainstream media. According to ChatGPT, Coxon’s message was purposely, and purposefully “injected into a small, well-connected network that included reporters and AI safety influencers who are already closely watched by policymakers and tech media.”     

Bottom line: to understand the AI tsunami that seemed to come out of nowhere, look 1) at Coxon’s followers; and 2) at the context within which Coxon was operating; and 3) at Coxon himself. While he was gob smacked by the impact he had, he did know exactly what he was doing and he did know exactly how to do it.