🌍 The Birth of Intelligence: From Divine Hubris to Global Cold War
465 BC.
Darius, Xerxes’ eldest son, plots to kill his father. Hubris has finally caught up with the emperor who thinks he is a god. Darius conspires with Altabanus, the highest and most loyal general. Xerxes is murdered. The killer is rumored to be his own son.
After branding him a traitor, Altabanus kills Darius.
Darius did not see that coming.
Darius needed another to collude with, so that he could be safe from a fatal blind spot.
This is the birth of modern intelligence.
Fast forward to 1632.
The world is at the mercy of an emperor class.
The wealthiest are totalitarian and waging war everywhere.
Ferdinand II rules Rome
Shah Jahan rules India
The Chongzhen Dynasty rules China
Go-Mizunoo rules Japan
Murad IV rules the Ottomans
Michael I rules Russia
Gustav II, King of Sweden and father of the Thirty Years’ War, dies.
What topples the totalitarian and pre-Fascist global regime?
Science.
⚛️ Science vs. Dogma
Why do we think opposition to climate-related science is so unscientific? Its heritage is Ptolemaic.
The heliocentric theory of our solar system, advanced by Galileo, opposed the Ptolemaic geocentric view. The Vatican condemned Galileo to house arrest, where he died roughly 11 years later. They would not acknowledge Galileo’s correctness until 1992—360 years later.
And yet, Galileo’s theory prevailed.
How? A disinformation campaign during his trial.
What emerged was a rival to the religious thought supporting prevailing political ideologies:
Scientific thought—where truth is supported by data, not divinity.
🛡️ Totalitarianism and Intelligence in the 17th Century
In the U.K., King Charles I begins 11 years of tyranny by dissolving Parliament in 1629.
In New America, colonists escaping two wars are fighting their own against the Powhatan.
Globally, intelligence mattered.
Authoritarian rulers in 1633 embraced subversion, believing they were playing 4D chess. But the very tools they used—manipulation, secrecy, coercion—created fragile systems. When trust eroded or rivals outmaneuvered them with better intelligence networks, they fell.
Trading made violence expensive. But adversarial relationships remained.
A war without fighting.
A global cold war.
⚔️ The Unnamed Cold War of 1633
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Portuguese Empire locked horns over Asia.
Europe burned with the Thirty Years’ War, while powers like France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire fought through diplomacy, economic warfare, and propaganda.
The Ming Dynasty faced off against the Dutch and Portuguese, culminating in the Dutch defeat at Keelung Bay.
No active negotiation. No direct interventions.
Just icy geopolitical tension.
A Cold War before its name.
George Orwell popularized the term in 1945. But its essence—stalemates and ideological divides between powers—was already alive centuries earlier. As it is now.
🎭 Subversion and Collapse
Diplomatic subversion included:
Disinformation campaigns to manipulate outcomes
Double agents feeding false intelligence
Black propaganda, psychological warfare, covert influence
These were the ancestors of today’s cyber warfare and strategic deception.
But they came with a paradox:
They could destabilize systems just as easily as they sustained them.
Authoritarian rulers, especially those claiming divine status, built echo chambers. They ruled by manipulation but were ultimately undone by their own isolation and fragility.
🏛️ The Xerxes Complex and the Cult of Personality
Rulers who styled themselves as gods sowed collapse through:
Overreach of legitimacy
Isolation from reality
Erosion of trust
Their self-image demanded infallibility. And when failure came, it hit harder.
These rulers became the sole embodiment of the state—a precursor to the modern cult of personality. Rituals, coins, monuments, and court theatre substituted for media-driven propaganda.
But symbolic saturation couldn’t cover cracks in the foundation.
The moment divine imagery clashed with political failure, collapse was swift.
From divine bloodlines to data-driven truth, from symbolic control to global subversion—what lies between is the story of modern intelligence. And perhaps the blueprint for how today's regimes both rise and collapse.
Let’s not wait 360 years to acknowledge the truth.