I was quiet about 9/11 until this week, when terrorism got an upgrade.
Artificial intelligence.
I have taken 9/11 seriously every year. Twenty-five years later, I was all “feeled out.”
I’ve gone to Ground Zero. I’ve written about the dead, the survivors, the first responders and those who survived that day only to become sick years later.
But this isn’t another column about where we were.
It’s about what America became.
For me, September 11, 2001, marks the beginning of a New America. Not the diverse, multicultural America I hoped was emerging.
This is the America that fear built.
I was 3,000 miles away in the Bay Area watching CNBC.
Then the planes hit.
The markets shut down.
And something else opened.
Fear.
At first, fear brought us together. We had a common enemy and, briefly, rediscovered a common good.
But fear is a terrible foundation for democracy.
The person we feared was initially the terrorist.
Then the Muslim.
Then the Arab.
Then the Sikh mistaken for an Arab.
Then the immigrant. The undocumented. The person at the border.
The category continues to expand.
Maybe that’s the real 25-year story of 9/11.
We went from finding common ground to looking for flaws that prove somebody doesn’t belong.
The terrorists didn’t invent American racism, xenophobia or political paranoia. We shouldn’t give 19 hijackers that much credit.
But after 9/11, America built an enormous security structure around fear.
Surveillance expanded. Wars followed. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security. TSA transformed airports. Immigration enforcement was reorganized and ICE was created.
Temporary emergency became permanent infrastructure.
Recently, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his job and warned that people building advanced AI genuinely believe it could kill humanity by the end of this decade.
He walked away two months before his Anthropic equity vested.
That’s credibility.
President Trump has taken a different view. On Sept. 14 he called fears of AI destroying humanity a “HOAX” and declared, “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” He said the only guardrail AI needs is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”
We have built the threat.
We finance it. We feed it our words, photographs, voices, art and knowledge. We invite it into our homes and carry it in our pockets.
Americans are confronting something genuinely frightening.
AI could eliminate or transform jobs. And its increasingly powerful systems raise questions even some of their creators say they cannot fully answer.
So, the question what do we do with fear without surrendering our common humanity.
That requires real leadership and oversight from Congress, if not the president.
Trump insists Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. But on AI, his emphasis is winning the race, especially against China.
That’s the trap.
Fear of China becomes the argument for going full speed ahead.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, we have another chance to get fear right.
Be smart enough to know what to be afraid of.
And make sure we stay in control of the tech.
We’ve got to be smarter than the machines.
About the Author
Emil Amok Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, commentator and comic monologist. He hosts a micro-talk show on YouTube. See him at Comedy Day at Robin Williams Meadow in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, on Sept. 20, around 2:45 p.m. Free.
The post OPINION: The New American Fear – From 9-11 to AI appeared first on BlackPressUSA.
