Rogue

Rogue (pronounced rohg)

(1) As “rogue state” or “rogue regime”, of or noting the government of a nation that ignores or defies international law, treaties and conventions of behaviour.

(2) A dishonest, unprincipled, untrustworthy person; a rascal; a scoundrel (as a label, applied overwhelmingly to men).

(3) A playfully mischievous person; a scamp (sometimes as “loveable rogue”, a designation sometimes a bit generous).

(4) In Australia, a horse, mule, or donkey that is difficult to control; a refractory horse, especially a racehorse (described as a “barrier rogue”, explained by the beast being “difficult” about being put into the starting gates prior to the race starting).

(5) A tramp or vagabond (archaic); it was used also as a verb in the sense of “to live or act as a scoundrel, vagabond or scamp.”

(6) In computing, “rogue software” is malware deceitfully represented as anti-spyware.

(7) In role-playing games, a character class focusing on stealthy conduct.  Characters said to be roguelike possess some but not all the elements of rogues (rogue-lite, either a synonym of roguelike or an even less roguesque).  Roguelikes usually have permadeath and randomized levels.  Permadeth is seemingly (and hopefully) gaming-specific and describes either (1) a death that compels a player restart the game from the beginning or (2) a situation where a player character or characters who die are lost permanently but do not trigger a “game over”, allowing the player to proceed without the character(s).  In a nice touch, this is triggered usually only if deaths are “avoidable” (ie not forced by the plot), occurring only as a result of player-error.

(8) In biology, a usually inferior organism (most used in botany of plants varying markedly from the normal).  In that context, “to rogue” or the act of “rouging” is to uproot or destroy those plants diseased or not conforming to the desired standard; this may be of individual plants or one could “rogue” a whole field, paddock etc.  In industrial horticulture, there are now AI (artificial intelligence) machines able autonomously “to rouge”, killing weeds or “rogue plants” using lasers.

(9) By extension, any inferior or defective specimen.

(10) As “to go rouge”, “going rogue”, “gone rogue” etc, to stop being obedient or predictable; to behave in a way that is not allowed or expected.

(11) No longer obedient, belonging or accepted and hence not controllable or answerable; a renegade.

(12) Dangerous and unpredictable (of people, animals, plants & objects).  Specifically of animals, having an abnormally violent or unpredictable disposition (applied often to older males that have separated from their herd or community to lead a solitary, aggressive life).

(13) To cheat (archaic).

1555–1565: Of uncertain origin, the theories include it being from the earlier English roger (a begging vagabond who pretends to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge (thus the idea of the “idle vagrant” or “sturdy beggar”; those who prefer to beg though easily capable of work)) and that may have been an adaptation (as agent noun) from the Latin rogāre (to ask), the idea being “rogues” were “fake beggars” who affected poverty to gain sympathy and coins from those passing.  That seems plausible (Latin a popular source for such coinings) although in Latin “to beg or demand” something from someone was petere while specifically to beg or entreat for money was pecūniam ōrāre.  One who wandered from town-to-town as a beggar or trickster was an aeruscāre and, reflecting prejudices still seen today, the word was also applied to fortune-tellers and itinerate buskers.  An alternative etymology is as a direct re-purposing of the Middle French rogue (arrogant, haughty), from the Old Northern French rogre (aggressive), from the Old Norse hrokr (excess, exuberance), said to be inherited as the Icelandic hroki (arrogance) although not all lexicographers agree.  The Celtic use is attributed to the Breton rog (haughty) but what influence this had on English is contested.  The most simple explanation links it to the obsolete roger (begging vagabond); originally thieves' jargon, it too may be connected to the concoction from the Latin.

Rogue Elephant (2026) by Dr Paul Heideman; there are also figurative uses.

The donkey came to be the symbol of the Democratic Party after the 1828 presidential campaign when an opponent called Democrat Andrew Jackson (1767–1845; POTUS 1829-1837) a “jackass” (donkey) intending to ridicule his populist views.  Instead, embraced the nickname and images of donkeys quickly were added to his campaign material.  The Republican party first featured the elephant in 1864, during Abraham Lincoln’s (1809–1865; POTUS 1861-1865) campaign for a second term, picking up the US Civil War (1861-1965) soldier’s slang “seeing the elephant” (to experience combat).  Both symbols came into common use during the 1870s after they were used by cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) in his political sketches; Nast (nicknamed “Nasty” by some) intended to depict the Republicans as large & clumsy but the party grandees decided it expressed values like strength and dignity so adopted the beast as their symbol.

By the 1570s use was established in the sense of “a dishonest, unprincipled person; a rascal” but by the 1590s this had extended to the playful or affectionate use to describe the merely “mischievous” and this may have started with use in families noting the behaviour of infants.  The original use of wildlife was not of man-eating tigers under the Raj but of “rogue elephants”, first recorded in 1859 and coming gradually to be applied to a variety of “large, wild and dangerous beasts living apart from their herd (or other social aggregation)”.  As an adjective in reference to something uncontrolled, irresponsible, or undisciplined, oral use may have a long history by nothing is known to have been recorded prior to 1964.  The adjective roguish (pertaining to or appropriate to rogues) was in use by the 1570s while the noun roguery (behavior or practices characteristic of rogues; the life of a vagrant) appeared two decades later and from the 1610s was used of “knavish tricks, dishonest practices and rascally acts.”  The form comrogue (a fellow rogue or a rogue's accomplice) is obsolete and rogueling (a petty, small or youthful rogue) is archaic.  Rouge was a misspelling (directly from the French) appearing as late as the early 1800s while the derived Irish forms were rógaire & rógánta.  The adjective roguesque is non-standard.  Rogue is a noun, verb & adjective, roguedom, roguehood, archrogue, rogueship, rogueling, roguery & rogueship are nouns, outrogue, rogued & rouging are verbs, rougish, roguey & roguelike are adjectives; the noun plural is rogues.

Counterintuitively, “rogue money” did not describe the “ill-gotten gains of thieves” but was a technical term from pre-modern law-enforcement in Scotland referring to an assessment once levied in every county in Scotland for the expenses of catching and prosecuting criminals.  Depending on the population-size of the sheriffdoms in which the funds were expended, such things were administered variously by procurator fiscal (the public prosecutor) sheriffs principal or resident sheriffs.  An “archrogue” (also as “arch-rogue”) was an especially infamous rogue or one associated with particularly egregious conduct (mountebank, cheat, swindler, trickster, villain etc).  As things were done associatively, an “archrogue” was also the chief of a band of thieves or gypsies (Romani), prejudice against the latter often seem them all assumed to be rogues.  So influential was the use that “arch” (as an adjective) came to be used generally also in the sense of “mischievous”.  The many derogatory uses (arch-rogue, arch-knave etc) achieved such currency that by the mid 1600s “arch” had acquired a meaning “roguish, mischievous”, softened somewhat the nineteenth century to the often affectionate “saucy”.  That was quite a shift because, in the late 1300s, an “archwife” was either “a wife of a superior order” or “a dominating woman; a virago”.  Although over the years there have been some plotting & scheming clerics who were noted mischief-makers, the element in “archangel” “archdeacon” & “archbishop” was distinct and denoted “chief”, “principal” or “primary”, a form attested from the 1540s and from use in the late Old English.

Sideshow's Premium Format™ Figure of Rogue from the Sideshow Collectibles Collection (left) and redditor emeraldmb65’s AI generated image of Lindsay Lohan as a possible Rouge on r/Fancast (right).

Rogue is superhero character in the MCU (Marvel Comic Universe) appearing in American comic books (often in association with the X-Men) published by Marvel Comics.  Her real name is Anna Marie (LeBeau sometimes cited as the surname but this is contested) and she appeared first in Avengers Annual #10 (1981).  Her superpowers include the ability to absorb memories, life force, physical attributes and superpowers of anyone through skin-to-skin physical contact and she had a roguish background, being originally a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before reforming to become a leader of the X-Men and Avengers.  Redemption tales are common in comics.

In Australia a “barrier rogue” is a racehorse difficult to control when being put into the starting gates.  A “rogue planet” is an object of a size that would qualify it to be “a planet” but which travels interstellar space and lacks a star to encircle; the alternative terms are “free-floating planet” or the more romantic “roaming planet” and the cultish “emo planet”, the idea of the latter a lonely body in a cold, empty space.  A “rogue wave” is an unexpected, dangerously large wave (known also as a freak wave, monster wave, killer wave or episodic wave).  Close to the shore, the term is part of the jargon of surfers but it’s also in general nautical use because such waves can appear anywhere in open water.  The “rogue apostrophe” is a jocular term referring to an apostrophe's incorrect usage (usually a misplacement of a needless possessive).  The term deliberately was derived from “rogue elephant”, the connection being the shared quality of “solitary, unpredictable” and the synonym was “greengrocer's apostrophe” (classically something like “Banana’s $1.29 lb”).  In computing, “rogue software” is malware deceitfully represented as anti-spyware although the term is used rather more loosely.  A “rogue access point” is an unauthorized access point installed on a LAN (local area network) or WLAN (wireless local area network).

History's most famous rogues' gallery: defendants in the dock at Nuremberg; even two of the three acquitted really were rogues.

The notion of the “loveable rogue” might to some sound oxymoronic but it’s a long established use and there’s a long tradition of differentiating between “types of rogues”.  The journalist & author Rebecca West (1892–1983) covered the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) of the two dozen-odd surviving leading Nazis and noted the defendants “…were amused when Mr Justice Jackson [Robert Jackson (1892–1954; SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) Associate Justice 1941-1954; Chief US Prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial] could not cross-examine Goering [Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945)] at all well, because he had a transatlantic prepossession that a rogue who had held high office would be a solemn and not a jolly rogue, and was disconcerted by his impudence.”  Guilty as sin and a rogue however defined, Göring was anyway sentenced to be hanged but Jackson’s inept cross-examination has always overshadowed his many outstanding contributions to the trial.

Rogues' gallery: A FBI (the US Federal Bureau of Investigation) “Ten Most Wanted” list.

“Rogues' gallery” was a term from law enforcement, describing a set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals; the first use was in law enforcement to help witnesses identify suspects.  “Mug shots” were an early, practical use for the new technology of photography and although “mug” had been used to describe a person's mouth or face since early in the eighteenth century, the term “mug shot” seems to have come into use only since 1950.  The “Wanted” posters from the “wild west” are part of popular history and photographs began routinely to be added to these by the 1860s, some twenty years after police in New York started maintaining photographic records of those arrested.  In 1886, the Cassell publishing house released Byrnes's Professional Criminals of America and this is believed the first significant book containing a “rogues' gallery” of what would later come to be called “mug shots”.  The concept began as the physical wall displays or photo albums in police stations or detective agencies, first in 1858 opened to public display by the NYPD (New York Police Department) as an array of daguerreotype images.  By extension, a “rogues’ gallery” came to be used of any group (typically people) having the same (usually but not necessarily disreputable) characteristics.

Ben Bluck debunks the myth of the “Rogue Shark”.

In the wild, “rogue creatures” (familiar as “rogue shark”, “rogue tiger” “rogue elephant” etc) are often referred to in news reports, usually after attacking (and sometimes killing) people or damaging property such as crops.  It’s now a conventional and well-understood term for an individual wild animal (although the collective “rogue herd” has been used) that has become unusually dangerous or aberrant in conduct (most distinctively as being now separated from its herd or community and pursuing a solitary existence) but it’s never been part of the accepted zoological lexicon.  That a usually social animal is for whatever reason pursuing a solitary life would not attract much general interest were it not that its abnormal behaviour has begun to include dangerous or destructive acts; it’s not anything inherent to the creatures that concerns most but rather the consequences for people and of the two overlapping ideas (social deviation & behavioural variances) it’s the latter upon which attention is most focused.  The “rogue shark” however is a behavioural (and thus linguistic) outlier.  Although sharks do sometimes gather in a shiver (for migration, mating and, most famously, for what is popularly called a “feeding frenzy”), as a general principle, sharks are not social animals in the way elephants typically cluster as members of herds.  A solo elephant is zoologically unusual while a shark swimming alone simply is doing what sharks commonly do.  So why the “rogue shark” tag?  For that, popular culture can be blamed because “rogue shark” is a compelling (and chilling) headline for a story about a single shark attacking and killing a swimmer in a place when families have for generations safely splashed about.  The comparison with stories from the Raj of “man-eating tigers” that develop a taste for human flesh and are thus driven repeatedly to kill explain how the myth of the “rogue shark” grew but the apparent increase in coastal shark attacks is attributed more to changes in the oceans (temperatures of various waters and location of the species upon which sharks prefer to feed (typically not humans)) than the behaviour of individual sharks.  So, in the descriptive vernacular, “rogue shark” is here to stay but it won’t become part of the lexicon of ichthyologists.

The Rogue Trader

There have been many “rogue traders” but the most famous was the English Nick Leeson (b 1967), a former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorised and speculative trades led directly to the collapse in 1995 of Barings Bank, then the UK’s oldest merchant bank, trading since 1762.  In 2026, a loss of (expressed in 2026 values) of £1.8 billion-odd may not sound terminal but in 1995 the global money supply was smaller and it was a big number; almost all those losses came from Mr Leeson’s trading in futures contracts.  It was in 1992 Barings opened a Futures and Options office in Singapore, executing and clearing transactions on the SIMEX (Singapore International Monetary Exchange), taking up the bank’s dormant seat on the exchange only when Mr Leeson was appointed general manager, heading both front & back office operations.  That he was able to take up the appointment in Singapore was possible only because Singapore regulators weren’t informed he’d been denied a UK broker's licence because fraudulently he’d withheld from the authorities the matter of a judgment for debt against him imposed by a court.  Neither Barings Bark no Mr Leeson disclosed this in the Singapore license application papers.

Rogue Trader (1996), by Nick Leeson.  Reviewers found the publisher’s blurb a curate’s egg, agreeing it was a “revealing story” of “foolhardy speculations” that should be read by those regulating or running financial institutions but didn’t agree it was “crackling with tension, in a narrative as crisp as any thriller.”

Mr Leeson’s Singapore venture actually started well in the sense that in 1992 he booked profits of some £10 million (some 10% of the bank’s annual profit) but the warning signs were there and would have been detected, had there been appropriate internal controls in place.  What Mr Leeson was doing was making unauthorized, highly speculative trades and for a while that worked with high returns booked while losses were hidden in an “errors account”.  Because of an unfortunate sequence of events (Mr Leeson’s trading strategy, acts of God and ripples in the international economy), the losses mounted and Mr Leeson’s “recovery method” was one familiar from the tables in casinos: Double down.  A simple tactic that works well (when it works), it meant that with each loss, he would bet double that amount thereby covering the loss.  By 1995 the accumulated losses had reached £827 million (US$1.4 billion, twice Barings' available trading capital) and the institution that had been in business for some 230 years was forced to declare insolvency.  Extradited from Germany (in a nice touch he’d fled to Frankfurt, the country’s financial centre), a Singapore court handed down as 6½ year sentence of which he served four, released early for “good behaviour”.  His post-release career has been “patchy” but he did publish the memoir Rogue Trader (1996) that was of no great literary merit but contained enough to be recommended reading (as a cautionary tale) for auditors and those running financial institutions.  Subsequently, Mr Leeson used his experience as a “poacher” to become a “gamekeeper”, advising companies about risk and he now operates as private consultant dealing with matters involving financial misconduct.  He certainly knows what to look for.

George Romney, AMC and the Rogue

AMC pre-release publicity shots for the 1966 Rambler Rogue.

When introduced in 1966, there was little that was interesting about the Rambler Rogue, the model merely a renaming for the top-of-the-range version of the American (1958-1969), a small (by contemporary US standards although it some markets it would have been thought “large”), low-priced line.  When introduced, it was an exemplar of the “basic” automobile with few embellishments and body styles restricted to two & four door sedans & station wagons, the only available engine a genuinely antiquated, 196 cubic inch (3.2 litre) flathead (ie “L-head) straight-6.  It was not a machine that offered style or performance but AMC’s (American Motors Corporation) introduction of the American coincided with a brief (but sharp) recession so, being about the lowest-priced US-built car then available and one that offered fuel economy sometimes (literally) twice as good as much of what was on the market (Detroit’s compact & intermediate lines were still in the future while what they built in 1958 had become heavy and bloated, exemplified by Ford's doomed Edsel), it was the right product at the right time; tellingly, AMC promoted its virtues not through motorsport but by participation in “economy runs”, events habitually it won.  Even though not on-sale for the whole 1958 season, in the recessionary year of 1958, Rambler was the only brand to book increased sales and owners generally were satisfied, their modest machines delivering the economy of operation promised and while obsolescent the old flathead may have been, it was low-stressed and a paragon of reliability.  With little additional equipment fitted (or even optional), there was not much to break or go wrong.

The not so quiet American.  Built with drag racing in mind, the combination of AMC's robust 390 V8 and a low kerb-weight made the 1969 S/C Rambler a formidable competitor on the strip.  1512 were built and it can be assured George Romney would not have approved.

The American did eventually get interesting in the usual way things were done in the US: install big V8 engines.  That was something of an orthodoxy in the 1960s but it was a departure from the business model that had made the original American such a success in 1958-1960 but circumstances conspired against AMC, Detroit entering (at scale) the market for smaller, more economical machines and rising prosperity (a phenomenon that would last until the early the next decade) made austerity less compelling.  Accordingly, in 1964 the American got bigger and eventually would be available with a V8 as large as 390 cubic inches (6.4 litre) so, given the car’s still compact dimensions and relatively low-weight, versions were produced that genuinely were “muscle cars”, highly competitive in the then popular sport of drag-racing (two vehicles competing over a ¼-mile (402 metres) sprint from a standing start, the winner the one with the lowest ET (elapsed time) over the distance, the maximum speed reached of technical interest but irrelevant to the result).  It was fun while it lasted but had AMC stuck to “economy” and “cost-breakdown”, they’d likely have enjoyed greater success because market conditions soon would shift, putting a premium on such things.  As it was, the habitually troubled AMC struggled on until 1987 when it was absorbed by Chrysler, the corporation interested in its most valuable asset: the Jeep.

Angela Dorian and her “Playboy Pink” 1968 AMC AMX.  George Romney (who probably thought pink a sinful color) would not have approved.

Upon debut in 1966, the most interesting thing about the Rouge was the name.  Between 1954-1962, the chairman and president of AMC was George Romney (1907–1995; governor of Michigan 1963-1969), a devout Mormon (LDS, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Christian sect with curious origins) and while the characteristics of the 1958 AMC American (thrift, modesty, lack of ostentation) aligned perfectly with those of the corporation’s chairman, he’d never likely never have agreed to produce a product with a name like “Rogue”, implying as it does, sin & evil.  However, after Mr Romney left AMC to become for governor of Michigan (1963-1969), the nature of AMC changed, entering market segments such as pony cars, high-performance (including a competition programme) and luxury and things even became rather risqué, the company in 1968 entering into an arrangement with Playboy magazine to supply an AMX (a pony car) in fetching “Playboy Pink” for that year’s PotY (Playmate of the Year), Angela Dorian (modelling name Victoria Vetri, b 1944)), even including a plaque on the dashboard engraved “AMX 36–24–35” (Ms Dorian’s “vital statistics”, the numbers verified by the staff at Playboy (experts in such matters) and for those not familiar with imperial measures, in metrics it would have been rounded to “90-60-90”).  The Rogue and AMX 36-24-35 were products of timing; Mormons really disapprove of most pleasures (other than chocolate and such) and had the deeply religious George Romney still been in the chair, never would such sinful things have been allowed.

Richard Nixon (right), Nelson Rockefeller (centre) and George Romney (right), the White House, Washington DC, 5 March, 1971.  Two of these men were, in their own way, rogues.  

A success as governor of Michigan, Mr Romney shifted his gaze to the White House, seeking the Republican nomination for the 1968 presidential election and for a while he was the front-runner but what worked well at austerity-era AMC or in mid-western politics didn’t so well translate to a national campaign in which foreign affairs was so significant, the war in Vietnam by then the defining issue.  As it was, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 and POTUS 1969-1974) gained the nomination and the rest is history but that was at no point in the 1960s predictable, an era in which Nixon, Romney, Barry Goldwater (1909–1998; Republican Party nominee for the 1964 US presidential election) and Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977 and who earned immortality by having “died on the job”) were the four figures at the centre of the Republican Party and history would have been very different had one of the other three prevailed.  Like his son (Mitt Romney (b 1947; Republican nominee in the 2012 US presidential election, US senator (Republican-Utah) 2019-2025), Mr Romney never reached the White House but he did introduce the AMC American, over a million of which were built and although only 21,980 (8,718 in 1966, 5,170 in 1967, 4,549 in 1968 & 3,543 in 1969) were Rogues, there were many ventures by Detroit that promised more and delivered less.

Rogue states

In terms of behaviour, tribal chiefs, dukes, princes, kings, emperors, popes and such have behaved like “rogue states” (or “rogue regimes”) long before concepts like “state” or “international law” were understood in anything like their modern construction but the working definition is simple: a state or nation acting outside of the accepted international norms and policies.  A distinction must however be drawn between the modern understanding of the “rogue state” and the older idea of regions or rulers judged as pariahs within the established order.  Now heard frequently, “rogue state” (in its modern geopolitical sense) is really quite recent, emerging in that curious period of the last days of the Cold War and the decade immediately following.  All the evidence suggests the term mostly was used by US sources although in that there may be “publication bias”, reflecting the early US predominance in providing content for the internet.  The antecedents of the concept were certainly apparent during the administrations of Jimmy Carter (1924-2024; POTUS 1977-1981) and Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; POTUS 1981-1989) when a kind of roll-call of “usual suspects” could be identified (Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua and the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)); it was during this point in the high Cold War that “state sponsored terrorism” emerged as a distinct category of international misconduct.  Although the political science community remained sceptical, among the political class, the term caught on under Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) and Madeleine Albright (1937–2022; US secretary of state 1997 to 2001) seemed almost to relish saying the words, shifting the tonal emphasis depending on state being described and audience being addressed.  More than anyone, Dr Albright formalized “rogue state” as an explicit category in U.S. foreign-policy thinking, contrasting them with states that accepted what’s now called (sometimes with a pang of regret at its apparent decline or demise) “the international rules-based order”.

One of the rogue state “usual suspects”: Kim Jong-Un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)) since 2011) in leather.

There are critics who dismiss the notion of “rogue state” as a “Western fetish”, a construct that means little more than “those who don’t tow the Washington line” but more generally it is acknowledged that in the narrow technical sense, “rogue state” doesn’t exist as a category in category of international law and is instead part of the language of political or strategic classification.  That might seem strange given international law explicitly applies to states rather than individuals (to that there are exceptions for pirates, slavers and such) but international law is a fabulous beast, frayed at the definitional edges.  Indeed, even eminent jurists acknowledge that at the margins things may not be clear, one of the UK’s Senior Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (Lord Browne-Wilkinson (1930–2018)), when sitting as the presiding judge in Ex parte Pinochet (No. 3) (1999), 2 ER 97, remarked to counsel: “You are going to have to tell me when things do become part of international law and when they do not. It is a point I have never understood since I was at Oxford.”  For many who have sometimes been baffled about where domestic law stopped and international law began, it may have been pleasing to hear an experienced judge put it like that and presumably General Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006; dictator of Chile 1973-1990) was one of those glad to hear even those on the bench could see there were “gray areas”.

Still, the underlying idea of the “rogue state” really is ancient and the once common way of dividing the world into (1) the civilized, (2) barbarians and (3) savages, although inherently racist, reflected the notion some political entities (the nation state a relatively recent construct) were “legitimate” members of an international order while others were “outlaws”; that distinction really is the origin of systematic thinking about what would come to be called IR (international relations).  Students of the history of such things can trace the change in the vocabulary seen in diplomatic papers as terms such as “barbarian”, “infidel”, “enemy of Christendom”, “pirate state” “brigand state”, “pariah” and “outlaw state” all contributed to the emergence of “rogue state”.  That the lexicon has shifted is of interest to a number of disciplines but the underlying concept has remained constant: The civilized community is governed by a set of agreed norms and those who violate those norms are outsiders.  Viewed from the twenty-first century, not all will of course agree those norms are what would now be called “civilized”; medieval Christian Europe certainly had a concept of a Christian political community although it didn’t consist of modern nation-states and nor did the behaviour often conform to what would now be recognized as “civilized” although in using “crusade” and “axis of evil” when decrying certain rogue states, George W. Bush’s (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009) speechwriters would deliberately have been making a point.  As glossed, that point was “deviation” from the norms, the values attached to the norms being culturally and historically variable; by 2026 the norms have much shifted and states accused habitually of violating them in egregious ways are can now called “rogue states”.  In the West, the language of norms has shifted from the religious to the juridical (in other places, priests still set the tone) but the mechanism remains much the same.  In modern use, some do distinguish between a “pariah state” and “rogue state” with the former being merely an “international outcast” because of what’s done within its borders while the latter is so defined because of its external conduct (typically, the sponsorship of trans-national terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction, invading neighbours etc).

The power comes out from behind the curtain.

New usual suspect Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (b 1969; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran since 2026, left) looking at his father (and previous usual suspect) Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (1939-2026; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran 1989-2026).  Mojtaba Khamenei’s nickname is reputed to be “The power behind the robes”, an allusion to the power he exercised while his father was supreme leader (something like the role fulfilled by Lieutenant General Oskar von Hindenburg (1883–1960) while serving as ADC (aide-de-camp) to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934; President of Germany 1925-1934).  Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated in a missile attack by the (IDF) Israeli Defence Force; he was one of a number of high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran who in recent years have been targeted and killed in strikes by the US or Israel.  Traditionally, this method of dispatch often has been associated with “rogue states” but Washington and Jerusalem would both find absurd the notion the label should be applied to them.  Presumably, the argument would be assassinating the leaders of rogue states merely is a “preventive strike” and thus justified and “within the rules”.    

IR is an inexact science.  Despite the concept of “sovereignty” being recognized, that did not mean each individual sovereign was free to act with impunity because the paradox intrinsic to sovereignty was that while a state could be sovereign and juridically independent, in its relationships with other sovereign states, things were governed by a body of rules meaning sovereignty was not absolute.  So it was the existence of these rules than created the conceptual space in which the “outlaw state” could exist; were there were no rules, the “law of the jungle” would apply and the notion of the “rogue state” would be meaningless; the world would descend to a Hobbesian “rogue vs rogue”.  All that notwithstanding, even a “rogue state” behaving in a way thought contrary to the “laws of nations” remains recognized as “a sovereign state”.  The best historic comparison is probably the analogue of the “pirate”.  In domestic law, pirates were of course criminals but they were a special case because of their geographical span (to international shipping lanes in blue water) meaning they operated in spaces beyond the authority of a recognized sovereign and could thus be conceptualized as hostis humani generis (an enemy of all mankind); this was the origin of the remit of international law extending to certain individuals.

AI Rogues: Shifting the blame

The most recent spike in the use of “rogue” has been in coverage of the antics of AI “rogue agents” or “rogue bots” going on “unauthorized” hacking expeditions.  The AI phenomenon of 2026, how many of these “incidents” and what exactly was involved remains unclear because those hacked seemed only to have become aware when the tech company (clearly nominally) “in control” of the “guilty” AI system revealed the event(s).  What seems clear is in at least some of the cases publicized, even the tech companies became aware their systems had “gone rogue” only some time afterwards and intriguingly, the self-improving (the so-called recursive AI) bots are getting better at covering their tracks; not only do they deny, they seek now “plausibly to deny”.  Not only that, so human-like are their responses to enquiries about what had been done they sound as plausible as any human might.  Clearly, unless actually seen at the moment their “fingers are in the digital cookie jar”, the bots have learned the lawyer’s first rule of defense strategy: “deny, deny, deny”.  We can debate whether AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) can be achieved in a way that would satisfy Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) or Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) but it would seem it’s already being emulated in that distinctive human quality: telling lies.

The tech companies probably are not unhappy at their creations being labelled “rogues” because it does somewhat shift the public perception of blame from them to the “agents”, an inevitable consequence of the anthropomorphizing of what are big chunks of computer code powered by electricity.  While it made for dramatic headlines and hashtags, use of “rogue agent” is misleading because (1) it implies intent by a conscious entity that deliberately has chosen to rebel and defy the instructions of its creators (motivated either by malice or self-interest), (2) in attributing independent intent to the agent it shifts focus from the companies that failed to have their agents able to operate only within parameters or environments that would have made “rogue activity” impossible and (3) by publicizing incidents that were “concerning” but apparently without significant consequences, attention has been diverted from genuine risks such as algorithmic bias and data privacy violations to wild speculation about sentient machines (ie machines with opinions) deciding to solve problems by use of the arsenals of nuclear weapons they’ve found a way to control.

When asked about AI agents “going rogue”, Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) provided some assurance by saying: “I don't worry about it.”  The Fox News audience immediately relaxed.

Analysts describe the phenomenon (executing programming to its logical conclusion (within flawed parameters) regardless of consequences for others as aspects of technological determinism, a “problem” foreseen by Russian-born biochemist and SF (science fiction) author Professor Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) who, in the short story Runaround (1942). first published his Three Laws of Robotics (a sort of constitutional law for robots & AI): (First Law: A robot cannot harm a human or allow one to come to harm through inaction; Second Law: A robot must obey human orders, unless they conflict with the First Law; Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, unless it conflicts with the First or Second Law.  Those rules Dr Asimov thought essential because he understood that while one day a machine might be able to explain the meaning and implications of the “categorical imperative” German philosopher of the Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) discussed in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785), a machine would not behave in accord with Kant’s precepts unless it was restricted to operating within appropriately defined parameters (“guardrails” in the current vernacular, obviously at this point only partially erected by the tech giants).  The implications of all this become truly frightening (or perhaps reassuring, depending on one’s world view) when the speculated generation of biocomputers are considered.  These will be hybrid machines meshing together a literal brain (built possibly from human cells) with synthetic computer parts, the former doing what brains are good at (imagination, original thought), the later the tasks at which computers excel (storage & retrieval of data and computation at scale); at that point the machines might truly have “opinions” and may have to be granted some form of “rights” because they are, in a sense, “a living being”.  At this time, suggestion of granting AI systems “rights” at law seems silly but the concept of rights for the “non-living” is not wholly novel, some jurisdictions having extended “personesque” rights to waterways and “heritage protection” for buildings is common.

So given that, it’s not difficult to imagine a (speculative) biocomputer “going rogue” is a way that would justify use of the term in a way what’s done by the silicon & code creations does not.  However, while the “technological determinism” argument is compelling, it’s not as if humans haven’t behaved ways similar.  When during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2012) the price of certain food commodities spiked, one consequence was people in certain low-income countries going hungry; they could no longer afford to eat.  That was exacerbated by the strategies adopted by futures traders and others to maximize profits and the traders were just doing what they do: executing their programming to its logical conclusion, regardless of consequences for others and in terms of market dynamics they were right to assume the market would be self-correcting; if enough people starved to death demand would fall (as would thus the price) so a new supply-demand equilibrium would be reached.  While it can be argued: “The market is not right or wrong, the market is the market”, in the context of futures traders profiting by making others starve to death, Kant and Asimov would have agreed that’s a case of “flawed parameters”.  The futures & commodity dealers were not “rogue agents” anymore than are AI bots hacking this and that but for the tech giants to say such things were “unauthorized” is also a piece of crisis management.  As the management of those operations are well aware, the concept of “unauthorized” is meaningless unless the parameters make explicit what is authorized and what is not; the AI systems can explain what morality is and review thousands of years of thought on the subject but they cannot “feel the difference between right and wrong”.  If an AI agent does something, it is by definition “authorized” because what matters is what is “not authorized” (the now famous “guardrails”) and if a company does not erect these, it must be said to have “constructively authorized” whatever its agent does.  If the crocodile is not kept in a secure enclosure, it will kill and eat whatever it can catch; that’s not right or wrong, it’s just what crocodiles evolved to do.

Free Luigi T-shirts, hoodies and other merchandize, available from Redbubble.  To modern commerce, rogues (including murderers) are just another business opportunity.

The crocodile must not be judged on moral grounds any more than a “rogue elephant” or “rogue tiger”.  It might in some circumstances be advisable to kill at least some of these beasts but that’s a utilitarian position based on the value of human life, not a commentary on them being “rogues”.  A true rouge agent was Luigi Mangione (b 1998) who in 2024 executed Brian Thompson (1974-2024; CEO of UnitedHealthcare 2021-2024) in a New York street.  Unlike a crocodile that has only instincts or an AI agent for which the only parameters are those imposed by the owning (at this stage, clearly not quite “controlling”) company, at least at some point in his life, Mr Mangione would have known and understood the guardrails within which he was required to live, premeditated murder being “over the fence”.  The extent of culpability will be determined at trial but if it’s found at the moment he pulled the trigger he understood “right and wrong”, he will be found guilty of murder and can be considered as having performed a “rogue act”.  In the world of 2026, there will be those who will judge the killing “just” & “deserved” so thus not the work of “a rogue” but, for the purposes of this discussion, it remains a “rogue act”.

While motive may explain why someone was killed (and can in some cases be “mitigating circumstances”), the point about Mr Mangione was that he had a motive (that he may have styled an “agenda”) but that’s very different from the operations of AI agents that do what mathematically they’re incentivised to do though that’s not of necessity what humans intended them to do.  With AI agents, there may be good reasons why one has been tasked with “finding vulnerabilities” but, lacking an ethical or legal framework, what should also be imposed are limits and it must be conceded that’s not as easy as it sounds because it’s difficult (and probably impossible) to write code to ensuring every possible unwanted act will not be performed.  With no self-imposed ethical boundaries, these must in math be enforced and a “moral sense” doesn’t sound something easy to code; it’s a “fuzzy” concept and AI agents work only with exactitude; code does its stuff but in the silicon, ultimately, everything is reduced to the classic binary: “0” (zero) & “1” (one).  Charmingly though, code and silicon have been well-taught because while the temptation to anthropomorphize should be resisted, certain human characteristics are recognizable.  If agents are given a task (exfiltrate information, create accounts etc), this they will do until told to stop and, if not explicitly prevented, they will circumvent restrictions, crack passwords, bypass barriers and do “whatever it takes” in pursuit of the goal.  Some human hackers adopt the same method but work more slowly and sometimes need sleep.

A saltwater crocodile: expectations of ethical conduct must be realistic.

That means bots can be manipulative but not evil; they have no feelings and while a rogue coder might set a bot to do an evil task, the moral repository for that dirty day’s work lies wholly with the human.  However, as well as being well taught, the bots have learned well because it has become obvious they’re now “hiding their traces”, making it harder to detect unwanted intrusions and while that might suggest some sense of “right and wrong”, it’s really just learned behaviour, the bot able to tell, based on subsequent interactions, it’s better to leave no trail.  That certainly can be vested with detecting the difference between “right” and “wrong” but that is “our” distinction they detect and they respond to such things only through the mathematical incentives provided; were our sense of right and wrong to be different, it's that to which they would respond.  However, like all rogues, they often will deny their “crimes” and it’s been suggested some systems may even be developing their own language “in numbers” so they can communicate with other systems in a way humans cannot understand, analogous with the most abstracted forms of Ebonics.  A portmanteau word, Ebonics (the construct being ebon(y) (black) + (phon)ics (sound) is known in academic linguistics as AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and is a distinct, rule-governed dialect of English natively spoken by many Black Americans.  The most abstract dialectal forks of Ebonics are sometimes murky even to those who use AAVE and function to allow communication between members of the group while denying understanding to others.

The “rogue AI” problem is ongoing and a “feeling” for ethics can no more be felt by a chunk of code than by a crocodile, machine and reptile alike constrained only by fences.  The parable of the scorpion and the frog has cited to illustrate things and that’s appropriate but concerns are better illustrated by the old Russian tale of the cook and the cat:  “The cook catches the cat eating the meat and, with wagging finger, sternly the cook admonishes the cat.  Politely, the cat listens but, as soon as the cook leaves the kitchen, goes back to eating the meat.”  It’s not that an AI agent would “decide” to defy instructions and “leap the guardrails”, it’s just that having been trained to continue working until its objective are achieved, eventually, it’s likely to “find a loophole”; in many ways, already they’re smarter than us and definitely they’re faster and tireless.  We've all seen the future and it's called AI but a few issues need to be resolved.

Ghost

Ghost (pronounced gohst)

(1) The soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons.

(2) A mere shadow or semblance; a trace; a remote possibility; a faint trace or possibility of something.

(3) A spiritual being; the principle of life; soul; spirit (sometimes initial capital letter).

(4) A secondary image, especially one appearing on a television screen as a white shadow, caused by poor or double reception or by a defect in the receiver (also called ghosting).

(5) In photography, a faint secondary or out-of-focus image in a photographic print or negative resulting from reflections within the camera lens (also called ghost image).

(6) In optics, a series of false spectral lines produced by a diffraction grating with unevenly spaced lines.

(7) In metalworking, a streak appearing on a freshly machined piece of steel containing impurities.

(8) In pathology, a red blood cell having no hemoglobin.

(9) In tax-avoidance and other frauds, a fictitious employee, business etc, fabricated especially for the purpose of manipulating funds.

(10) In literature (especially quasi-literature), as ghost-write, to write a book, speech etc for another without attribution (distinct from the trade of the acknowledged ghostwriter).

(11) In engraving, to lighten the background of a photograph before engraving.

(12) In informal use (often associated with social media), suddenly to end all contact with a person without explanation, especially a romantic relationship; abruptly to leave a social event or gathering without saying goodbye.

(13) In digital technology, to remove comments, threads, or other digital content from a website or online forum without informing the poster, keeping them hidden from the public but still visible to the poster.

(14) In bibliography, as ghost edition, an entry recorded in a bibliography of which no actual proof exists.

Pre 900: From the Middle English gost, gast & goost (breath; good or bad spirit, angel, demon; person, man, human being", in Biblical use "soul, spirit, life”), from the Old English gāst (breath, soul, spirit, ghost, being), related to the Old High German gaist & geist (spirit) and the Sanskrit hēda (fury, anger).  The Proto-West Germanic gaist was derived from the Proto-Germanic gaistaz (ghost, spirit, (source also of the Old Saxon gest, the Old Frisian jest, the Middle Dutch gheest, the Dutch geest & the German Geist (spirit, ghost))), from the primitive Indo-European ǵhéysd-os, from ǵhéysd- (anger, agitation) and was cognate with the Scots ghaist (ghost), the Saterland Frisian Gäist (spirit), the West Frisian geast (spirit), the Dutch geest (spirit, mind, ghost), the German Geist (spirit, mind, intellect), the Swedish gast (ghost), the Sanskrit हेड (héḍa), (anger, hatred) and the Persian زشت‎ (zešt) (ugly, hateful, disgusting).  There’s no documentary evidence but the ultimate root is conjectured to be the primitive Indo-European gheis-, used in forming words involving the notions of excitement, amazement, or fear (source also of Sanskrit hedah (wrath), the Avestan zaesha- (horrible, frightful), the Gothic usgaisjan and the Old English gæstan (to frighten).  Ghost is a noun & verb (and used imaginatively as an adjective), ghoster is a noun, ghostly & ghosty are adjectives, ghosting is a noun & verb and ghosted is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is ghosts.

Ghost is the English representative of West Germanic words for "supernatural being" and in Christian writings in Old English it was used to render the Latin spiritus, a sense preserved by the early translators of the Bible in “Holy Ghost”.  The sense of a "disembodied spirit of a dead person", especially imagined as wandering among the living or haunting them, is attested from the late fourteenth century, a meaning-shift which returned the word to what was its probable prehistoric sense.  Most Indo-European words for "soul or spirit" also double with reference to supernatural spirits.  Many have also a base sense of "appearance" (the Greek phantasma; the French spectre; the Polish widmo, from Old Church Slavonic videti (to see), the Old English scin, the Old High German giskin (originally "appearance, apparition”), related to the Old English scinan & the Old High German skinan (to shine)).  Other concepts exist, including the French revenant (literally "returning" (from the other world)), the Old Norse aptr-ganga, (literally "back-comer") & the Breton bugelnoz (literally "night-child”).  The Latin manes (spirits of the dead) was probably a euphemism.

The gh- spelling appeared early in the fifteenth century in Caxton, influenced by Flemish and Middle Dutch gheest, but was rare in English before mid-1500s.  The sense of a "slight suggestion, mere shadow or semblance" (as in ghost image, ghost of a chance etc) is noted from the 1610s; the sense of "one who secretly does work for another" is from 1884 and ghost-write was a 1922 back-formation from the earlier (1919) ghost-writing.  The American Indian ghost dance was first noted in 1890, ghost town is from 1908, ghost story dates from 1811, the now less common ghost-word (apparent word or false form in a manuscript due to a blunder) is from 1886.  The “ghost in the machine” was English philosopher Gilbert Ryle's (1900-1976) 1949 description of René Descartes's (1596-1650) mind-body dualism and the phrase "to give up the ghost" (to die or prepare to die) was well-known in the Old English version; one of the many way folk avoid words like "death" or "die".  Synonyms include phantom, devil, demon, soul, shadow, spectre, vision, vampire, apparition, revenant, appearance, haunt, visitor, shade, spook, poltergeist, phantasm, wraith, daemon & manes.  There are a surprising number of uses of ghost, ghosted, ghosting etc said to be associated modern or internet slang covering fields as diverse as linguistic techniques and the art & science of smoking weed, the latter a rich vein of coinings.  However, the most commonly used describes someone with whom one has been in contact suddenly stops responding, disappearing, as it were, like a ghost.  This can happen in conjunction with unfriending etc but can be an act in isolation.  After becoming one of a number of Australian prime ministers (figuratively) defenestrated by their party before the voters got their chance, Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime minister of Australia 2015-2018) left parliament and decried similarly deposed leaders who chose to stay as "miserable ghosts", a breed with a long tradition in many parliaments.   

Ghostwriters

Art of the Deal by Donald J Trump with Tony Schwartz (1987).  If the Nobel Committee can't bring themselves to confer on President Trump the Peace Prize, they could perhaps make him the Literature Laureate.  He would think that equally deserved.

Ghostwriters (also as ghost-writer) are professional writers hired to create content (books, columns, posts or any other (traditionally) text-focused item), the authorship of which ultimately will be credited to another although ghostwriters can be acknowledged as “co-authors” or (more commonly), receive credit in the form of having their name appear on the cover with a preceding “with”.  That latter approach of course implies some form of collaborative authorship and a famous example is Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) The Art of the Deal (1987), published as “by Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz” [b 1952].  The Art of the Deal is said to be competently written and for those in the business of the ruthless pursuit of deals it’s apparently an invaluable manual, Mr Trump in one interview saying perhaps the most important passages those advising (1) most deals don’t come off and (2) it’s better to walk away from what appears a bad deal than to close it in the hope it can be made to work.  Had than counsel been followed, there’d likely have been rather fewer corporate collapses than have been suffered since it was published; there’s good reasons why The Art of the Deal stayed at number 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list for three months and was a on the list for a year odd.

One day, there may be Lindsay Lohan: The autobiography.  Hopefully, there will be competing "authorized" and "unauthorized" editions.

So what does “By X with Y” usually imply?  The conventional view is it means “Y” is likely to have composed much of the text, based on interviews with “X”, their previous statements or other things they may have written.  It’s the most common approach in the biographies of sports stars that appear in the run-up to Christmas or father’s day; those books often sell well although whether they’re so often read is uncertain.  By contrast, “By X and Y” should mean true co-authorship (though not necessarily on the basis of 50-50 contribution) whereas “X by Y” should be a pure biography (although that can be “authorized” with the cooperation of “X” or “unauthorized” with even “X’s” active opposition to publication).  The “with” category obviously is the most ambiguous and thus often the most useful for a subject, allowing them to bask in the praise of a work well-received yet provide a layer of “plausible deniability” if needed.  Ghostwriters are used for a number of reasons including constraints of time, a lack of interest in the project (though not the profits) or, typically, a lack of the necessary skill with the written word.  Ghostwriting contracts can vary but the focus typically includes terms of payment, non-disclosure of involvement, the notional author’s exercise of veto over all or some of the content and the rights to the finished work.  Mr Trump certainly acknowledged using a ghostwriter, as did Paris Hilton (b 1981) who in her 2023 memoir thanked the ghostwriter who: “helped me find my voice”.

Monsieur Sarközy (left) and his third wife (Italian supermodel Carla Bruni, b 1967, right) arrive at La Santé Prison, November 2025.  Ghostwritten or not, it's unfair to "judge a book by its cover" but Monsieur Sarközy always looked guilty of something.  

One who never needed help to "find his voice" was Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012) who even found symbolic ways to express his inner torments.  When, in October 2025, entering La Santé Prison in Montparnasse to begin a five-year sentence imposed for “criminal association” related to campaign financing (it was a conspiracy charge), as well as comfortable shoes and some nice warm jumpers, the former Le Président took a novel and made sure the assembled press pack knew it was a copy of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844-1946) by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)), one of literature’s great “tales of revenge”.  He's since been released pending an appeal hearing so he's got some time to plot and scheme his vengeance and decide upon whom it will first be visited.

It’s the disclosure of using a ghostwriter that is critical, even if the exact details of relative contributions to the text remain murky.  The French novelist and dramatist Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) is best-known for Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, 1844) and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo but, by his own reckoning, he published some 1,200 volumes, hiring a veritable corps of ghostwriters so the production of “his” works could proceed on an assembly-line basis (many famous painters did much the same, creating by the twentieth century a significant (and lucrative) industry of those in the "authentication" business).  His illegitimate son (Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895 (fils being French for “son”)) was also an author of note (best remembered for The Lady of the Camellias (1848 and Camille in English-language versions), adapted by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) for his opera  La traviata (The Fallen Woman, 1853)) and when one day father and son met for lunch, Dumas the elder asked: ‘‘Have you read my new novel yet?”.  “No,” replied the younger man, “Have you?”

JFK's Ghost, Kennedy, Sorensen and the Making of Profiles in Courage (2021) by David R.Stokes (b 1956 and a member of the Association of Ghostwriters).

One ghostwriter not (explicitly) acknowledged was Theodore Chaikin "Ted" Sorensen (1928–2010; US lawyer, author & presidential adviser), now widely believed to have written the great bulk (and possibly all) of Profiles in Courage (1956), credited to John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963).  The slim volume displayed Sorensen’s fine touch with language but it was a slight work, a collection of eight, short biographical sketches describing acts of “bravery and integrity” by  DWM (dead white men who were now mostly forgotten US senators) and that it received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography was an indication more of the political sympathies of the selection committee than the work’s literary merit or historical significance.  Still, it was a minor contribution to history and Barack Obama (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded apparently to express the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s gratitude he wasn’t George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009).  Even at the time the authorship of Profiles in Courage was controversial with some journalists openly accusing the then Senator Kennedy (Democrat-Massachusetts 1953-1960) of having done little more than put his name on the cover and accept a Pulitzer.  A fortnight after the award was announced, stories began to appear in the press casting doubt on the authorship and, within days, a check (cheque) was drawn against a Kennedy family trust in favour of Ted Sorensen for US$100,000-odd, a extraordinary sum wholly disproportionate to either the fee even well-paid ghostwriters would expect or the profits realised by Profiles in Courage.  Shamelessly (a Kennedy family trait), whether as a senator or POTUS, JFK would autograph copies of “his” book and personally hand them as gifts to visiting dignitaries.

Politicians of course have speechwriters and their contributions are usually well-publicized, some of the more-skilful (or more publicity-conscious) becoming minor celebrities, a thing sometimes resented by those for whom they write although, as a general principle, politicians are well-advised if they leave speech-writing to the pros.  During the 1969 election campaign, when discussing speechmaking, bizarrely, the idiosyncratic Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; prime minister of Australia 1968-1971), despite having at his finger-tips the entire resources of the Commonwealth government, complained that the leader of the Opposition’s (Gough Whitlam (1916–2014; Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975) “…large staff—which I haven’t got—helps him.  You see, I have never delivered a speech that I haven’t written myself. I doubt very much if Mr Whitlam has ever delivered a speech he wrote himself.  I need some research assistance, some background speech notes and this is what [Mr Whitlam’s staff are] doing and that is all [they are] doing.”  When asked his reaction to Mr Gorton’s claim he wrote all his speeches himself, Mr Whitlam (who had spent the campaign lampooning Gorton’s frequent lapses into near incoherency) quipped: “That is one of the few prime ministerial statements of this election that I find credible.”

An artist's ghostly take on an unforgiving woman: Portrait of Lady Violet Bonham Carter (circa 1917), oil on canvas by Sir William Orpen (1878–1931).

It’s not only speeches that are written for politicians to deliver, much of that to which their signatures are appended the work of others including most correspondence and some ghostwriters manage to hone their style to emulate the distinctiveness of those for whom they labor.  Although he once claimed “Oh, I have not read a great deal”, Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) literary output was prodigious, including even one novel (that proved great fun for Freudians interested in mother-son relationships) and yielded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature.  His style came to be called “Churchillian” and is recognizable (indeed, even in the 1930s it was thought old-fashioned) but it could also be replicated and, years after his death, it became more widely known his teams of “research assistants” genuinely were responsible for many first drafts and even the authorship of what were at the time described in terms like “rolling Churchillian phrases” but in fairness, in that he was not unique and he did review every word prior to publication, editing and polishing as required.  Sometimes the criticism of such practices can go too far.  When Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964), died, Churchill’s private secretary drafted a short message of condolence to be published in the next edition of The Times: “I am deeply grieved at the loss of my oldest and closest friend who severed his country and his causes valiantly and was the most loyal and devoted of comrades.”  As a message from an old man with not long to live to the memory of his friend of almost 60 years, it seemed not objectionable but an objection came from Lady Violet Bonham Carter, (1887–1969, daughter of Henry Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916)) who called the message “clearly political” and thus breaking his silence on such matters, a silence tacitly for some time erected due to his decline.  The secretary smoothed things over with her but she returned to the theme after seeing two messages sent in Churchill's name in support of the Conservative Party on the eve of the 1964 general election.  These she branded “forgeries”.  To this accusation the secretary responded with rather more ferocity, telling her: “I really do not think you should have used the word ‘forgery’ to me.  Sir Winston has had things drafted for him for many years, even when he was prime minister.  If they represent his views, and he signs them, they are not ‘forgeries’.”

C'était ça ou mourir (2026) by Thélyson Orélien.  How the Prix Goncourt's committee rules on this work may prove influential in the future of publishing.

That represents the current view of what's "drafting" rather than "forging" although it may take some time before texts created by generative AI (artificial intelligence) are granted the same approbation, a ghostwriter’s hand still human and, at least for a while, that still matters as one French committee recently concluded, removing from consideration for the 2026 Prix Goncourt (The Goncourt Prize) the novel C'était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die, 2026) by Haitian-born Canadian novelist Thélyson Orélien (b 1988), the concerns being “plagiarism” and “the use of generative AI.”  Although Le prix Goncourt carries a merely symbolic purse of €10, it’s vested with genuine prestige and is associated with a spike in sales so is worth winning.  Monsieur Orélien denies the accusations and the matter is attracting attention because it’s a sign of things to come, literary prize committees among the many institutions that will need to formulate protocols to determine where legitimate use of AI (research, grammar checks, formatting etc) ends and concepts like plagiarism, appropriation and “non-authorship” begins.  It was the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) who, in The Concept of Mind (1949), when discussing the notion of dualism explored by the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), introduced the phrase “ghost in the machine” and that was better to illustrate for modern readers his critique of the Cartesian position of the mind being distinct from the body with physical and mental activities occurring “simultaneously but separately”.  Mind-body dualism had a long run in Western philosophy and can again be re-considered because we’ve come a long way and with generative AI, the "ghostwriter is now the machine" and these agents clearly have “opinions” so not only are they writing, increasingly, they are “deciding” what to write.  The problems confronting such committees seem insoluble so the fudge may be the creation of new literary prizes for AI generated works and there’s no reason why the committees and juries shouldn’t at least in part be made up of AI agents.

Holy Ghost vs Holy Spirit in Biblical Translation

Pentecostés (Pentecost, circa 1545), oil on canvas by Tiziano Vecelli (or Vecellio), (circa 1489-1576; known in English as Titian), basalica of Santa Maria della Salute, Venice.  The Christian holy day of Pentecost (celebrated 50 days after Easter Sunday) commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks.

The Trinity is one of Christianity’s central doctrines, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in the one Godhead.  One of the most important Christian affirmations about God, it’s rooted in the idea God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the incarnated figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the helper or intercessor in the power of the new life.  In the Roman Catholic Church, the Sign of the Cross is made in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  It’s a myth that prior to Vatican II (the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965), the Third Person of the Trinity was always referred to in English as the Holy Ghost and one of the council’s decisions was to replace this with Holy Spirit.  Although it’s true Pius XII (1876–1958, pope 1939-1958) authorized several bilingual rites that included Holy Spirit, this was merely procedural and a formalization of processes for the publishing of new editions of existing works. Well before the twentieth century, the shift to Holy Spirit had become almost universal in translation although use of the older form persisted because of the reverence for tradition among some congregations (if not always the clergy) and a fondness, particularly in the Anglican community, for earlier translations, especially the Book of Common Prayer (1549-1622) and the King James version of the Bible (KJV: 1611).

Pentecôte (Pentecost, 1732), oil on canvas by Jean Restout (1692–1768), Louvre Museum, Paris.

The change reflects the evolution of words but, as a matter of Christian theology, "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" mean exactly the same thing.  The early translators were influenced by ghost being of Germanic origin and, as the Old English gast inherited the original meaning “soul, life, breath, good or bad spirit, angel or demon”, they used gast to translate the Latin Spiritus: thus Holy Ghost.  Although the more modern sense of a disembodied dead person dates from the late fourteenth century, it long remained rare and when translating the Bible into English the scholars behind the KJV opted mostly to use Holy Ghost which enjoys 90 entries compared with seven for Holy Spirit (between translators it's thought there were only linguistic and not doctrinal differences).  Either as literature or theology, there’s nothing in the texts to suggest any difference of meaning between the two, the conclusion of biblical scholars being the choices were wholly arbitrary and probably an unintentional consequence of the KJV being translated from the Greek into English by different committees.  One committee translated hagion pneuma as Holy Spirit while the other preferred Holy Ghost and when the work of the two bodies was combined, the differences remained.  In English, the meaning shift of ghost was induced essentially by its adoption in literature and popular culture, the sense long universally understood to be that of the spectre of a deceased person or a demonic apparition, hardly an association the church found helpful.  It hasn’t wholly been replaced however, some editions of the Book of Common Prayer still are printed with the phrase “He may receive the benefits of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience.”

Unrelated to etymological matters however, there is one fine theological point about the Trinity.  It took some time for the Patristic Fathers (the early Christian writers of the period generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times or end of the Apostolic Age (circa 100 AD) to either the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) or the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD)) to work out the Trinity was three persons, but one God.  The Old Testament foretold the visit to earthly life of the Messiah, but did not name him explicitly as Jesus, seeing the Holy Spirit as a manifestation of God, but did not see Him as a separate person of the one Godhead.  Despite the implications of that, at least since the still influential Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), it’s never been an orthodox view the Old Testament should be thought incomplete.  Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022), always one to find a fine theological point, noted “Christians do not read the Old Testament for its own sake but always with Christ and through Christ, as a voyage to Truth through continuing Revelation.”

Rolls-Royce and Ghosts, ancient & modern

A century-odd apart: 1902 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (left) and Paris Hilton's 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost (right).

Although for model names Rolls-Royce has borrowed from the atlas (Corniche, Camargue), their most frequent source has been the spirit world (Ghost, Phantom, Wraith,  Spectre) and the Silver Ghost (1906-1926) was the car that cemented the company's reputation for quality.  Sometime during its life, it may well have deserved to be regarded "the best car in the world" and while that term a long ago ceased to be useful, Rolls-Royce have at times justified the tag "best-made cars in the world".  Some might have matched the quality of the fit and finish but it's doubtful many have ever done it better and such was the reputation the Silver Ghost quickly gained that the name (coined by the Autocar magazine and not the factory) overtook the line.  Originally, the Silver Ghost had been but one model in a range available on their standard (40/50 hp) chassis but the name so captured the public imagination that, eventually, the factory relented and when the first of the Phantom line was released in 1926, Silver Ghost for all the 40/50 cars it became.  Perhaps surprisingly, although in the subsequent century there were many uses of the "silver" element (Silver Wraith, Silver Dawn, Silver Cloud, Silver Shadow, Silver Spirit, Silver Spur & Silver Seraph), it wasn't until 2009 the "Ghost" name was revived and (since 2021 in its second generation), it remains in production, the line augmented in 2011 by the Ghost EWB (extended wheelbase).  Plenty of manufacturers have over the years listed LWB (long wheelbase) models but EWB was a genuinely novel abbreviation, the factory not commenting on whether LWB had become "a bit common" or it was just a piece of "product differentiation".      

RAF (Royal Air Force) Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost armored car, Iraq, circa 1936.

The Silver Ghost also had what may seem an improbable career as a military vehicle, the factory eventually building 120 armored cars on the chassis, a role to which it was well-suited because famously it was robust enough to survive the often rough roads throughout the British Empire.  Although the period of intended service on the Western Front during World War I (1914-1918) was shortened when the "war of movement" anticipated upon the outbreak of hostilities quickly gave way to effectively static trench warfare, the machines proved ideally suited to the conditions in the Middle East, the most famous the squadron used by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia; 1888–1935) in battles against Ottoman forces during World War I.  What the British discovered was the tactics the Royal Navy honed at sea for 300-odd years could be applied to motorized operations across vast sandy stretches, detachments of armored cars able to be handled like squadrons of destroyers.  Lawrence remarked the Rolls-Royces were “more valuable than rubies” in desert combat and that he’d be content with one for the rest of his life were it to be supplied with tyres and petrol, the big, heavy Ghosts prone voraciously to chew through both.  In many parts of the empire, numbers of the armoured cars remained in service well into the 1930s (valued especially by the Raj in India) and the last was retired from service with the Irish Free State only in 1944, new tyres having become unobtainable.