Eidetic

Eidetic (pronounced ahy-det-ik)

(1) Of, relating to or constituting visual imagery vividly experienced and readily reproducible with great accuracy and in great detail.

(2) In anthropology, political science, sociology etc, of or relating to eidos (the formal content of a culture, encompassing its system of ideas, criteria for interpreting experience, etc).

(3) In psychiatry and neuroscience (as eidetic memory), of visual (or sometimes auditory) images, exceptionally vivid and allowing detailed recall of something previously perceived (most common in young children, the capacity appearing to diminish as language develops).

(4) Relating to or subject to such imagery.

(5) The (1) essence or (2) perfect, vision of an object or concept.

(6) In psychoanalysis (of dreams), as “eidetic memory”, a dream that can be “seen in the mind” so vividly it appears to be “movie-like”.

(7) In philosophy and phenomenology (as “eidetics”), the study of eidetic reduction (a technique used to help identify the essential components of a phenomenon by attempting to reduce it into its necessary essences).

(8) In literary criticism, writing sufficient evocative as to create in a reader’s imagination a “photo-realistic image” of what’s being described or discussed.

(9) In visual art (painting), a technique used to produce a work close to indistinguishable from a photograph (literally possible before advances in photography and photographic reproduction); the work so painted.

1924: From the from German eidetisch (pertaining to the faculty of projecting images), from the Ancient Greek εἰδητικός (eidētikós) (pertaining to images and used also in the sense of “pertaining to knowledge”), from eidesis (knowledge), the construct being εἶδος (eîd(os)) (form, shape) + -etic.  The -etic suffix was from the Ancient Greek -ητικός (-ētikós), from -έω (-éō) + -τικός (-tikós).  It was used to form adjectives meaning “pertaining to”, derived from nouns, most of which end in -esis and -esy.  Most English words formed with the suffix were from words formed in other languages (sometimes mixed), including Old, Middle and Modern French, Italian, Latin, and Ancient Greek.  Eidetisch was in 1924 coined by German psychologist Professor Erich Jaensch (1883-1940).  The back-formation dyseidetic refers to an individual found to be dyslexic (with regard to the visual aspect of written words) while the adjective “noneidetic” (not eidetic) seems one of English’s most significantly pointless words but presumably it’s useful for clinicians making case notes.  The now obsolete alternative spelling was edetic.  Eidetic is an adjevtive, eidetiker is a noun and eidetically is an adverb; the noun plural is eidetikers.  The special case of eidetics (in philosophy the study of eidetic reduction) is an example of a noun plural existing without a base noun

The term “eidetic memory” is used as a synonym of the popular “photographic memory” and an individual possessing the characteristic can in clinical use be described as an “eidetiker” (one with an “eidetic memory”); the medical literature however makes clear there is no evidence of any subject ever having exhibited a true “photographic memory” in the way the condition of “total recall” has been depicted in fiction and elsewhere in popular culture.  Sometimes, a subject may seem to have a “photographic memory” but, upon investigation, it has always been found to be something less impressive.  In the 1980s, one US television comedy had the governor of a state astonished by his secretary’s memory:

Secretary: “I’ve memorized the telephone numbers of the entire US Senate.”

Governor: “What?  All of them?”

Secretary: “Well, there are only two.”

That worked also as a “blonde joke”, a breed now proscribed under threat of cancellation.  In general use, what “photographic memory” usually indicates is “an exceptionally good memory” but often this manifests in specialized fields of learning rather than general experience.  As something more generalized, it’s most common in young children who have, by definition, a limited length of memory from which to draw and the capacity appears usually to diminish as language develops.  In adults, it definitely is a spectrum condition so the adjectival senses (the comparative “more eidetic”, the superlative “most eidetic”) can be used and in neuroscience publications “semi-eidetic (partly or partially eidetic) does appear.  That said, in the literature, there are cases of patients who suffer from being “unable to forget”, a genuinely disturbing condition for those with memories of traumatic events.  Even then however, that is an instance not of “total recall” but rather the recollected events being ones they’d prefer to forget but cannot. 

The legacy: Zur Eidetik und Integrationstypologie: Arbeiten aus dem Institut für psychologische Anthropologie an der Universität Marburg/Lahn (On eidetics and integration typology: Works from the Institute for Psychological Anthropology at the University of Marburg/Lahn, 1941) by Professor Rudolf Jaensch, Barth, Leipzig, Germany.

Although at times one of the most cited and influential psychologists of the inter-war era (1919-1939), Rudolf Jaensch is now remembered only for his work on eidetic analysis, his “eidetic hypothesis formation” still one of the standard models in psychology.  His other work in the theories of constitutional types are now little studied, largely because his reputation was sullied by his enthusiastic commitment to and prosecution of the National Socialist Gleichschaltung (coordination) and restructuring of professional & academic life in Germany after the Nazi Party gained power in 1933.  Although Jaensch joined the party only some months after Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was appointed chancellor (the oft-quoted reference to the Nazis “seizing power” is misleading, the political & military elite miscalculating in thinking having Hitler as head of a government in which the Nazis were in a minority would leaving him “manageable” and thus “handed him” the office)) and was thus susceptible to being derided by the “old fighters” as one who joined the movement only for career advancement, he’d been affiliated with a number of the party’s organs since mid-1932.  However, he certainly made up for lost time and in March 1933 was one of several hundred professors to sign a declaration of support for the new regime but unlike many of them who genuinely were seeking only to protect their careers and families, Jaensch was an activist, denouncing those who dissented from the party’s new orthodoxies and was particularly interested in excluding Jews from academic life, seeking not only to secure their dismissal but also discredit their work.  That of course resulted in the migration of many Jewish and engineers and scientists, something that at least partially realized Hitler’s core ideological obsession but greatly would come to disadvantage Germany during World War II (1939-1945).  Hitler may have disdained “Jewish physics” but the British and Americans did not as the Irish-born UK journalist & politician Brendan Bracken (1901–1958) would later (and not wholly facetiously) explain: “We won the war because our German scientists were better than their German scientists”.

Portrait of Martin Heidegger (2017) by Mathieu Laca (b 1982).  A painter can use a retreat from photorealism for reasons that may be artistic or political.

Jaensch's involvement with the Nazis so tainted to his reputation that in the post-war years only his seminal work in eidetic theory remained “acceptable” although the “guilt by association” paradigm was never much of a feature of post Nazi Germany and that he wrote a forward to the published version of Hans Bender’s (1907-1991) revised doctoral dissertation Zur Experimentalpsychologie des Unterbewußten und der außersinnlichen Wahrnehmung (On the Experimental Psychology of the Subconscious and Extrasensory Perception) seems not to have affected Dr Bender’s flourishing career in the 1950s.  There may also been some appeal in the English-speaking world, it being hard to think of a better name then “Bender” for a psychologist working in the field of extrasensory perception.  Unfortunately, in Germanic use, while the name “Bender” was from the Middle High German benden (to bend; to twist), use was typically occupational and applied to (1) a cooper (barrel-maker), with Bender a clipping of Fassbinder or Fassbender (a cooper (ie someone who builds and repairs wooden barrels or casks by bending staves) or (2) a craftsman or metalworker (the artisans and smiths who shaped materials like wood or metal using techniques of bending and curving.  Less commonly, it could be topographic (someone who lived near a sharp curve or bend in a river or a road).  Whether, had Professor Jaensch lived to undergo the de-Nazification process of the post-war years, had he apologized for his conduct, he’d have been “sort of forgiven” in the mood of selective generosity that has seen figures like conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) and philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to one degree or another rehabilitated is unlikely; Karajan’s association with the regime was pure careerism while Heidegger’s flirtation was brief and soon abandoned whereas Jaensch died an unrepentant Nazi and his only legacy is eidetic theory.

Eidetic memory has never appeared in the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), either as a diagnostic term or disorder, presumably because it’s regarded as a natural variation in the human condition.  Although an acknowledged psychological phenomenon, the DSM does not regard an exceptional memory (however described) as pathological, even when discussing the functioning of memory in the context of neuro-cognitive or dissociative disorders.  Despite, that, the term “eidetic” is far from unknown in the psychiatric & psychological literature (professional & popular) but many publications cast a much wider net than the DSM that focuses on the diagnosis of metal disorders rather than reviewing the range of “normal” human characteristics.  So, while there are books devoted to discussing eidetic memory (and related topics) and the “self-help” shelves in bookshops often have volumes on “improving memory” or “developing a photographic memory”, that’s very different from “eidetic memory”.  For example, psychiatric teaching material describes eidetic images as visual memories of almost hallucinatory vividness but the DSM’s editors applied the same rationale when not including Aphantasia (an inability voluntarily to recall or form mental images) in their editions, the DSM being concerned primarily with phenomena insofar as they constitute clinically significant dysfunction or form part of a recognized disorder.  The eidetic memory spectrum does though remain a recognized psychological phenomenon and for clinicians that’s helpful because of the need to differentiate instances from hallucinations, a very different symptom.

In painting, there is a long “eidetic” tradition of works so photorealistic that, unless closely examined (and certainly when reproduced photographically) can be assumed to be photographs, some artists in recent years even adopting the technique as a signature.  Those still able to view art for pleasure can enjoy the perceptual ambiguity (and maybe even enjoy being fooled) but art critics know paintings are there to be criticized and while the sheer technical prowess of the artist can be acknowledged, photorealistic painting often has been treated with hostility.  It wasn’t always so because photorealism predated photography as some artists sought to achieve what would later come to be called the “hyper-realistic” and, in a nice linguistic paradox, it would be decades (well into the twentieth century) before technology had improved to the point at which a developed photograph could match the “realism” achieved by the most skilled artists, a group working not only in paint but also with pencils and, remarkably, even charcoal, a substance uniquely suitable for emulating monochromatic images.  The objection of latter-day critics was not only the predictable: “Why not just take a photograph?” but also it being known many artists actually took photographs and copied these to create their paintings.  To many critics, that meant it was less “art” than “drafting”.

Telephone Booths (1967), acrylic on Masonite by Richard Estes (b 1932), Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, Spain.

The classic exponent of the technique was US artist Richard Estes and Telephone Booths is his best-known work in this vein.  At the technical level, the piece was most accomplished because for a painter, intrinsically, a tree in a park is a less challenging subject than some Manhattan telephone booths in their surrounds, the work demanding the rendering on a two dimensional surface, glass, shiny metal, reflections and transparencies, a grab of multiple overlapping optical images of simultaneous movement.  Now on permanent display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the exhibit’s curatorial notes detail the production process, the composition beginning with several photographs taken of a row of telephone booths at the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue, and 34^th Street, subsequently combined as a montage.  The hyperrealism inherent in emulating photography owes something to the tradition of trompe l'oeil (deceives the eye) in that the works often were a deliberate attempt “…to confuse and disorient the viewer.  Despite depicting a recognizable scene, the complexity of the framing and the blurring of reflections require an additional effort of concentration, since nothing can be grasped at a single glance.”  The choice of setting does though hint at the way artists are selective to make the effect work, glass having the necessary characteristics to create ambiguities, the stuff simultaneously reflective and transparent.  What Estes did was use the accumulation of reflections as a “device of distortion”, some images sharply defined on the glass while others appearing on metallic surfaces slightly were warped while still allowing concurrent recognition of the booths before the eye and the buildings “behind us”, cues such as the signs of the Macy's and Woolworth there as markers of familiarity.  Making a painting from a photograph may sound simple (for those with the skill and time) but what Estes did was not mere transcription for he took his montage and rearranged it, Telephone Booths depicting a scene no single photograph recorded.  That didn’t exactly mean “montage beget collage” but it was an interesting take on “appropriating and reconstructing reality”.  For those who like the idea of telephone booths as subjects there are now fewer from which to choose but in many cities there are survivors (some re-purposed as Wi-Fi hotspots) and in Australia, one that provided vital communications when cellular (mobile) services were disabled by bushfires has been granted “Protected Heritage” status.

Central Savings (1975), oil on canvas by Richard Estes.  Reflected images were a feature of the photorealists, the scenes providing a useful layer of “pre-distortion”.

Tellingly, while Estes usually left his cityscapes devoid of human presence, in Telephone Booths there were four figures, each partially visible in the temporary sanctuary of their booth, backs to the viewer.  As a trick on the path to photorealism that was a wise choice because the almost flat expanses of a trench coat’s fabric makes the effect easier to achieve than the contours and colours of a human face.  However, for professional critic and ultracrepidarian alike, the meaning beneath (or perhaps “beyond”) is there for the viewer to take from it what they will, those better-versed in critical theory, tending sometimes to impart meaning, seeking to “know the mind of the artist”.  The Italian art critic Sandro Parmiggiani (b 1946) described those “on the phones” as “metaphors for broken voices and a faceless humanity, remaining unknowable within those impenetrable spaces, to which the stains that border their metallic edges allude as a visual rhyme, increasing the mystery and the visual bewilderment.”  Now we know.  The author John Updike (1932–2009) was no less a deconstructionist, declaring: “We know nothing about the two people on the far right, nothing except that their clothing is light-colored; we know even less about the couple on the left—they seem transparent in their oblique reflections. Thanks to the label of metropolitan crowd, these people have been reduced to mere signifiers affixed to telephone booths; like bytes.  The sounds of a computer or the strokes of a typewriter take their place and convey information. The emptiness of this information contrasts with the visual richness that the painter has imparted without sparing any effort, constructing a profoundly tender artistic irony.”  It was the Anglo-Irish satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) who in the poem On Poetry: a Rhapsody (1733) included the lines:

Or else perhaps he may invent
A better than the poet meant;
As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.

That pair of couplets became famous as a critique of overly obsessive literary critics & scholars anxious to find in texts hidden meanings and profundity, the objective perhaps not to inflate the esteem in which the author was held but enhance their own reputations; wisdom displayed by pointing out what the professor down the corridor failed to notice.  Swift may have made a famous point but mostly he was ignored and has of late been steamrollered by the post-modernists & deconstructionists able to construct “meanings in the meanings” although, unfortunately, so jargon-laden are some of their texts the meanings these formalist's documents sometimes barely are decipherable to all but fellow semioticians.  The industry has of course moved on from Homer and the words of figures like Bob Dylan (b 1941) and Jonathan Swift’s now more famous namesake (Taylor Swift (b 1989)) have been analysed as closely as any theologian has studied the Scriptures.  Dylan presumably was on occasions amused by finding out what “he really meant” and was modest, telling one interviewer he was “just a song & dance man” and another that those who “…called his lyrics poetry, probably hadn’t read much poetry”.  Still the critics clearly prevailed because in 2016 the Swedish Academy awarded Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him one of the more publicized laureates of recent decades.  Of Ms Swift’s oeuvre, meaning may be easier to find: she’s of her generation so the songs are “all about her”.

Hot Fudge Sundae (1972), oil on canvas by Ralph Goings.

The US painter Ralph Goings is sometimes said to have made photorealism “his signature” but it seems to have been more “his calling”, drawn to the technique because of a genuine “aesthetic objection” to the way pop-art artists of the 1960s were tending to expressionism (and even mannerism) in their depictions of simple, mundane objects.  Those approaches were of course “just another path to meaning” but for his bank buildings, diners (condiment sets very much a theme) and pick-up trucks, Goings emulated the camera’s objectivity although, without the original photographs, it’s not known if some licence was taken although almost certainly that happened.  While a dent in the tailgate of a parked pick-up truck is unexceptional, maybe it was added for some optical verisimilitude.  Estes’s Telephone Booths was admitted not to be a “pure” piece of eidetic imagery but a compositional piece that was a construct of what such an image might have been; Goings by contrast claimed always to be “true to the original”.

That should be treated as a statement of intent but Goings never exhibited the 35mm color slides that were his “intermediate tool” but he admitted going “beyond the photographs” in tweaking details such as light and color saturation or adjusting an inconvenient shadow.  That he used slides was also of significance because frequently, in a darkened room, he would project the images onto a primed, blank canvas, enabling him to bypass freehand drawing, instead with a pencil “tracing the grid”, meticulously rendering every the edge of every shape, contour or shadow.  That done, what’d he’d have was a kind of “paint-by-numbers” set, the canvas now an assembly of outlined shapes awaiting paint, the original photograph a legend of the color scheme.  So it could be called “craft” and the much skill and patience was demanded but whether that meant it should be called  “art” divided critics.  However, an artist’s relationship with the critics is just one aspect of life and there’s also the relationship with the auction houses and the customers; the current record sale price for a painting by Goings was some US$700,000 and his stuff definitely is now part of the “art market”.

Airstream (1970), oil on Molino by Ralph Goings (1928-2016), Mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Museum of modern art, Ludwig Foundation), Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria.  Molino is a fabric-based support, often a plain-weave or un-primed textile material akin to the specialized canvas or heavy cotton & linen weaves used in Europe.  It's known also as “cotton duck canvas” but that has nothing to do with Anatidae feathers, "duck" from the Dutch doek (cloth). 

More eye-catching still was Airstream.  Still in production after 90 years, vintage Airstreams are a collectable, distinguished by their polished aluminium skins, a dramatic look that has at times been controversial because, on sunny days, the reflections from the large surface area were thought to be “distracting” for other road users.  Some owners of latter-day Shelby American Cobras (the originals (1962-1967) all painted) who opted for the expensive option of polished aluminum bodywork also came to rue the decision, the seductive curves showing every fingerprint.  The big Airstreams did however make a great photograph and, as Ralph Goings knew, a great photo had the potential to be a great painting though in his genre, it had to be the right photo.  Airstream was one of his favourites because he thought it best represented the possibilities in his technique and although what he did was in a sense “mechanical”, it could also be exacting, a few square inches of canvas sometimes taking days to complete.  For Goings, the paintings are best thought of as his “love affair with America”.

Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism (right) by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph (left) of her in a Jill Sander (b 1943) gown in light chartreuse from the Spring 2023 collection (with a Tyler Ellis (b 1984) Clutch, Joseph Saidian & Sons Vintage Marquise & Baguette Cut Diamond, Anabela Chan Orchid Diamond Cascade Earrings and Piferi Fade Sandals by Alfredo Pīferi (b 1987)) while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.  In the 2010s, as video cards became more powerful, software emerged to allow users to take photographs and re-create them in a wide variety of modes including pencil sketches, water colors, oils and even styles such as cubism.  This was the opposite process from that used by hyperrealists such as Estes and Goings; now generative AI makes possible just about anything able to be displayed on a screen.

The paradox of course was that Airstream was the exemplar of a painting functionally indistinguishable from a photograph thus illustrating the usual critique: What’s the point?  Why not just produce prints of the photograph, something able to be done in limitless quantities and at marginal cost?  That’s a classic utilitarian question and one that ignores a concept like l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) but then, other than as generators or economic value, utilitarians likely thought society gained little benefit from movements such as vorticism, cubism, abstraction, expressionism and such.  There was also elitism in the disdain; photorealism associated with craft, folk-art, advertising, ordinary consumer objects and other fields tainted by commercialism (although the art-mafia was untroubled by their business being focused on money like few others).  Still, contemporary conceptual and abstract art was thought intellectually sophisticated in a way “copying photographs” could never match, the technical virtuosity less valued than the imagination of the “true artist”.  Despite all that, photorealism did find a niche and is now an accepted part of the industry.

The Hay Wain (1821), oil on canvas by John Constable (1776–1837), National Gallery, London (left) and Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour (circa 1811), oil on canvas by John Constable, Royal Academy of Arts, London (right).

John Constable was among the last generation of painters to live before the age of photography and although now regarded as one of the greatest of Britain’s landscape artists, in his lifetime he enjoyed only modest commercial success; not until the age of 52 was he elected to the RA (Royal Academy of Arts).  The two paintings above are examples of the different ways he painted, the high Romantic Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour noticeably less “realistic” than The Hay Wain, a work among his most elegiac.  Viewed retrospectively, as the technology of photography improved, there would have been times when each of these paintings could be deemed photorealistic (if, for purposes of comparison, rendered in gray-scale or sepia) but that was not the dominant artistic measure of the era.  It’s not known when Constable made his remark: “My pictures will never be popular for they have no handling, but I do not see handling in nature” (the quote appearing (undated) in Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq (1843) by the UK-based US genre painter Charles Robert Leslie RA (1794–1859)) but it’s tempting to think it might have been before painting Flatford Mill, a work executed with notable “handling”.  Constable used “handling” (then trade jargon among the critics) to describe the painter’s visible manner of applying paint, the brushwork, facture, finish and characteristic “touch” by which a viewer could see how the artist worked their brush.  The comparison was something like the difference between watchmakers who took care to conceal their creations’ movements and those who made visible the wheels & cogs, Constable in effect saying “nature shows no painterly technique, so why should an artist?”  Time of course doesn’t display the mechanism of how it works any more than do the clouds in the sky: both just are.  The critics though were society’s opinion-makers (especially among those who actually paid arts for their work) and in Constable's time, an academic landscape painter of renown was expected to demonstrate skilful, controlled brushwork that made visible the mechanics of the action.  Not all did it in the same way but the most commercially successful had their ways of making obvious how the oil was blended and modulated, clouds, rocks, foliage and all the elements of landscape rendered through established conventions.  As well as the beauty of what was being depicted, the artist's execution was there to be admired.

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs, 18 June, 1817 (circa 1832), oil on canvas by John Constable, Tate Britain, London.  In the industry’s classification system, Constable is listed as a painter of landscapes, in the Romantic tradition but as much as anything, he was a painter of skies and cloudscapes.

Constable made no secret he thought these conspicuous displays of artistic virtuosity as “bravura”, preferring to be what he called a “natural painter” depicting the “natural environment”.  Discarding, the bravura taught during his student years, he eschewed “showing off” and let nature do the talking; nature having no brushstrokes and trees, clouds and sunlight without “handling”, manifesting only as optical phenomena.  That was what Constable wanted to paint.  He was though a realist and in some of his work there is much of his signature “handling”, rough, broken, apparently (though doubtlessly not) spontaneous brushwork applied in flecks, dabs, flecks, streaks and thick impasto (paint applied thickly to create a topography of peaks and crests that, in physically extending from the surface, lends something of a 3D (three-dimensional) effect), sometimes obviously using paint unmixed and straight “from the tube”.  Constable didn’t change his view that he wanted viewers to focus on the painting rather than the independent performance of the painter but whether “Constable 2.0” was an evolving artist or one adapting to commercial reality in “surrendering art to artifice” can be debated but what no historians dispute is that the later impressionists owed a debt to this exemplar of the Romantic movement.  Constable now is more highly regarded than ever he was in his lifetime.

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.