It Could Happen Here The Age of Extremophiles
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Apr 27, 2026 A look at why political actors have grown more extreme and how crises reward radical tactics. The conversation connects evolutionary metaphors to modern politics and critiques automated warfare and rapid targeting. It highlights cultural radicalizers, local pushback at school boards, signs of partisan overreach, shrinking social media influence, and possibilities for bold progressive policy shifts.
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Politics As An Extremophile Environment
- Modern extremophiles reframe politics: extreme environments select extreme adaptations in humans as in microbes.
- Robert Evans links 1990s hidden violence and subsequent political shifts to show extremism is recurring, not unique to today.
Adaptive Feedback Drives Ever Greater Extremes
- Adaptations to crises often create feedback loops that intensify the crisis over time.
- Evans names examples like central heating, vaccines, AR-15s to show human innovations both solve and worsen extreme conditions.
Project Maven's 3.6 Second Targeting Cycle
- Project Maven aimed to automate drone targeting to enable 1,000 targeting decisions per hour.
- Evans recounts the project's intended 3.6 seconds per decision and how that mechanistic pace removed necessary human judgment.