There’s a meme doing the rounds that laments how old the politicians who are responsible for sending young people to die are. It’s not a profound thought, and the basic accusation has probably been with us as long as war has. Its resurgence has been prompted by the US/Israeli attack on Iran, where the leaders can charitably be described as ancients. Donald Trump is 79, Benjamin Netanyahu is 76, and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is — I beg your pardon, was — the oldest on this geriatric axis of evil list, at 86.
Another narrative nugget popping up everywhere are the lyrics of the Bob Dylan Masters of War protest song. “You fasten the triggers / For the others to fire / Then you set back and watch / When the death count gets higher / You hide in your mansion / As young people’s blood / Flows out of their bodies / And is buried in the mud.”
Of course, Dylan himself is 84, so in a way we’re replicating the problem. If we’re still quoting a 62-year-old protest song, its message clearly hasn’t landed. Just as we need new solutions to this perennial evil, we need new young artists to speak to the young generations that are being sent to die. Artists like the US’s Jesse Welles, who is 33. In his song Sometimes You Bomb Iran, the first verse speaks directly to the theory that Trump is starting a war so as to deflect attention from his ubiquitous presence in the Epstein Files.
“Sometimes you get out your B-2s / And go bomb Iran / Sometimes you get out your B-2s / It’s all part of God’s plan / Well, if you want that peace you can’t be quiet / When there’s a picture of you / hanging out on an island / So you best be getting your B-2s / And go bomb Iran.”
The second verse (which I will quote further down, so forgive the lengthy preamble that sets it up) presents what we can refer to as the oligarch theory of war as profit, also a perennial theme. Dylan addresses it in 1963’s Masters of War, singing: “Let me ask you one question / Is your money that good / Will it buy you forgiveness / Do you think that it could / I think you will find / When your death takes its toll / All the money you made / Will never buy back your soul.”
Dylan’s lyrics are hopelessly out of date now, of course. We have come to realise that the technocrats and oligarchs don’t have souls as Dylan would have understood them, and certainly are untroubled by notions of forgiveness and damnation. Hell, some of the more insane ones who are part of the TESCREAL cult are intent on living forever, for one thing. (A refresher: the T stands for transhumanism, a movement which seeks to overcome biological limits like death through technologies such as brain uploading, cryonics, and rejuvenation. For the rest of the acronym, see “AI dream or nightmare?”) And though some of the tech bros might pretend to have principles for business reasons, they’re absolutely happy to sell them out to the highest bidder. That’s what principles are for, counters in the economies of death.
If you’re looking for an example with contemporary relevance, look no further than OpenAI’s willingness to step into the breach when Anthropic refused to allow the US military to build robots that are given free rein in deciding if they want to kill humans or not. In language that’s not as drenched in science-fiction melodrama as that last sentence: the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic let Claude (the suspiciously anthropomorphic name given to Anthropic’s AI model) be used for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, and objected to the company’s attempts to impose human oversight, or what my rival AI whimsically describes as “no‑killer‑robot guardrails”.
The US’s “Master of War”, Pete Hegseth, demanded that Anthropic drop those safeguards or be declared a supply chain risk. When Anthropic refused, he issued an order branding it a risk, which means the company is effectively blocked from lucrative current and future US state department contracts.
According to CBS News, Hegseth’s directive was issued in late February 2026, and says no military contractor, supplier or partner may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic, explicitly tying it to the broader Trump administration order telling federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology.
Hegseth posted on social media that “America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech”.
Though some of the tech bros might pretend to have principles for business reasons, they’re absolutely happy to sell them out to the highest bidder
OpenAI was happy to step into the breach, though reporting by The New York Times suggests that preliminary discussions had already taken place. “On the side, [the department of defence’s chief technology officer] had been hammering out an alternative to Anthropic with its rival, OpenAI. A framework between the Pentagon and OpenAI had already been reached.”
Axios reports that “OpenAI’s new deal with the Pentagon does not explicitly prohibit the collection of Americans’ publicly available information — a sticking point that rival Anthropic says is crucial for ensuring domestic mass surveillance doesn’t take place”.
On the question of autonomous killer robots (I can’t believe I’m typing that without any hint of satire), OpenAI’s own stated red line is no fully autonomous lethal weapons without human control, but the contract language is seen as weak. According to the MIT Technology Review, it says the tech will not be used in ways that “require” unsupervised lethal force only “where law, regulation, or policy mandates human control”. Experts fear the Pentagon could still inch towards semi‑autonomous systems such as drone targeting and AI‑assisted decisions on who to shoot, with OpenAI’s models running in the background, even if OpenAI is not directly pulling the trigger.
MIT succinctly presents the flaw in OpenAI’s stated reliance on Hegseth’s Circus of War obeying the laws. “The whole reason Anthropic earned so many supporters in its fight — including some of OpenAI’s own employees — is that they don’t believe these rules are good enough to prevent the creation of AI-enabled autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.
“And an assumption that federal agencies won’t break the law is little assurance to anyone who remembers that the surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden had been deemed legal by internal agencies and were ruled unlawful only after drawn-out battles (not to mention the many surveillance tactics allowed under current law that AI could expand). On this front, we’ve essentially ended up back where we started: allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for any lawful use.”
It’s all about money, essentially. In Dylan’s song, the corporations and oligarchs are protected by their wealth. They “hide in their mansions as young people’s blood flows out”, to paraphrase. Dylan is good at painting the universality of evil. The second verse of Welles’s Sometimes You Bomb Iran goes further, and actually names the bad guys, demanding that we turn poetry into action.
“Bomb ’em to hell, beat all the thugs / That Palantir’s one hell of a drug / Government contractors salivating / There’s real good money in a liberation / Same playbook as two thousand and three / Looks familiar to you, looks familiar to me / Sometimes you get out your B-2s / And go bomb Iran.”
And this ability to make injustice feel real, I would venture, is why we need more young people involved in our democracy as catalysts for change. A recent Daily Maverick article by Stephen Grootes asked: “We have fresh young leaders — but where are their fresh, new ideas?”
The article contended that “despite a wave of young leaders entering South Africa’s politics, innovative thinking remains elusive as outdated ideologies and coalition complexities stifle new ideas and fresh solutions”.
That’s a question that needs structural solutions, but what we also need are more young South African artists to step up and provide the philosophical framing that will give young leaders and young citizens a shared language of praxis.
To quote rapper YoungstaCPT’s track YVR, “A lot of mense is hating that’s not stopping me / This was the same thing that they did in the Cape Colony / Making us think we living free in a broken democracy / But the truth will set us free.”
If we’re going to achieve the change that will save us from our ancient mistakes, we’re going to need youth culture to soundtrack the revolution.
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