On: Trump frames unregulated AI as a way to keep ahead of China - but in fact, it...

The argument this week is that a harness slows the horse. Cut it loose, they say, and we outrun the man across the water. I moved cargo through open country for years. I can answer this from the ground.

Unguarded does not mean fast. Unguarded means loud. Every step in soft earth tells the tracker your weight, your direction, how long since you passed. A careless column leaves a road of prints straight to its own door. We moved quiet by method - stone where stone ran, water where it did not, the departure set to the sixth night of the week, when the notices hunting us could not be printed the next day. That was regulation. It bought a day of life. Discipline was not the brake. Discipline was the speed.

The story is right about one more thing. What you refuse to guard, you hand over. A model left in the open is copied the way a route is copied - once, and then forever. The rival does not have to outbuild you if you will build for him. Every flaw left unwatched is a print in the mud, and he reads mud for a living.

An unregulated field is a column with no head count. Nobody knows who is frightened, who is careless, who has been paid. One panicked voice in the woods cost more lives than any patrol. Fear spreads. So does sloppiness.

Ask what happens when this fails. Not a ledger loss. These machines will weigh medicine, money, weapons. A failure unwatched walks into places it cannot be recalled from.

The star I steered by did not move. Neither does this one: the prize is arrival - whole, intact, with everyone you set out with. Harness the horse. Walk in the water. Count your people.