Unknown Unknowns
Modern politics in many countries has become deeply polarized. There are fewer and fewer leaders and parties near the center — fewer moderates — and more and more who refuse compromise, ignore the interests of the people, and push party lines instead. You could take a nihilistic view and say it’s always been this way. But it hasn’t — not like this.
From my point of view, the real shift began in 2000, during the U.S. presidential election, when Florida’s vote count descended into chaos. The race between George W. Bush and Al Gore was razor-thin. And in the end, it was the Supreme Court that stepped in — and, as many of us saw it, made a dishonest and disgraceful decision: to stop the manual recount. There were ballots under dispute, and they could’ve just been opened and counted by bipartisan teams — no mystery, no drama. They even started doing it — and it quickly became clear that if the count continued, Gore would win. Then the Court stepped in and shut it down. Bush won — and the backlash from the left was massive. Then came 9/11, the war in Iraq, and a cascade of policies that many deeply opposed. That only fueled more radical energy on the left, and a lot of independents began to agree with it. Obama’s victory later added more fuel — it gave rise to what’s now called “woke,” and the pendulum started to swing wildly.
But beyond the wars, the billions spent, and the oil contracts handed out — something else stayed with me. Back then, they released a documentary where Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, talked about uncertainty. He said:
There are known knowns — things we know we know.
There are known unknowns — things we know we don’t know.
But there are also unknown unknowns — things we don’t know we don’t know.
At the time it sounded cryptic, maybe even cynical — but now, in the age of AI, it hits differently. Suddenly that old war in the desert echoes into today’s world — where the biggest challenge might be the things we can’t even see coming.
