Just out of curios­i­ty, and apro­pos of noth­ing, we asked Grok (the AI chat­bot cre­at­ed by Elon Musk) the fol­low­ing ques­tion: If a pres­i­dent of a super­pow­er want­ed to destroy his own coun­try, what steps would he take? Here’s what Grok had to say: If a pres­i­dent of a super­pow­er aimed to delib­er­ate­ly under­mine their own nation, they could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly take steps to weak­en its eco­nom­ic, social, mil­i­tary, and polit­i­cal foun­da­tions. Here’s a hypo­thet­i­cal break­down of such actions, assum­ing they have enough influ­ence and con­trol to push them through: Eco­nom­ic Sab­o­tage: They could tank the econ­o­my by impos­ing reck­less fis­cal policies—massive, unsus­tain­able debt through unchecked spend­ing or tax cuts with­out fund­ing, devalu­ing the cur­ren­cy by pres­sur­ing the cen­tral bank to print mon­ey exces­sive­ly, or dis­man­tling key indus­tries through dereg­u­la­tion or puni­tive tar­iffs that dis­rupt trade. Encour­ag­ing cor­rup­tion and crony­ism could fur­ther drain resources. Under­min­ing Nation­al Secu­ri­ty: Mil­i­tar­i­ly, they might weak­en defens­es by slash­ing bud­gets, pulling out of strate­gic alliances, or leak­ing sen­si­tive intel­li­gence to adver­saries. Order­ing troops into unwinnable, morale-crush­ing conflicts—or aban­don­ing crit­i­cal outposts—could erode …