Shinzo Abe is no longer here to make this appeal. The two words he left us now do.
Shinzo Abe left the leaders of the world two words: with trust.
In January 2019 at Davos, he introduced a phrase that would reshape the international debate over the digital economy: Data Free Flow with Trust. At the G20 in Osaka that June, he put it into international practice and launched the Osaka Track to carry it forward. The first three words were already the language of commerce. The last two were his.
Seven years later, those two words must be added again:
AI power — with trust.
National AI forces — with trust.
Global competition — with trust.
On September 19, the President of the United States announced an American AI Force. The Boston Global Forum supports that decision. America must move rapidly in AI, and other nations will build their own strategic AI capabilities.
Let them build. Let them innovate. Let them compete.
But let them bind that power before catastrophe binds it for them.
Within a few years, the most powerful systems ever created will become instruments of national power across many capitals. The decisive question will no longer be which nation possesses the strongest AI. It will be whether any nation can trust the AI power held by another.
No nation can answer that question alone. Trust between states is never a national possession. No government can declare itself trustworthy. Trust must be made visible through common principles, independent verification, bounded authority, Human-in-Command, and Proof of Answerability.
It must be written together, in advance — or written after the first catastrophe, by people who have lost the freedom to choose their own terms.
The Boston Global Forum and AIWS are building that constitutional foundation now.
The Constitution for Humanity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence has reached Version 1.4: thirty-seven articles across seven Parts, with a pathway to accession inspired by the Constitution of the United States. It will be proclaimed at Harvard’s Loeb House on April 27, 2027.
To the leaders of the world:
You are the last generation able to establish these terms while establishing them is still a choice.
Do not wait for every nation to agree. Do not wait for the first irreversible failure. Do not wait until systems more powerful than institutions begin setting the terms themselves.
The Founding Commitment opens before the text is complete, allowing leaders to affirm its constitutional principles and help shape the final charter. Formal accession will open when the completed Constitution is proclaimed.
Join now, in your own name or on behalf of your institution — not for the honor of being remembered, but for the responsibility of acting before humanity is compelled to act.
Then begin governing by these principles at home:
Independent verification.
Constitutional limits.
Proof of Answerability.
Human command over consequential decisions.
None requires waiting for permission.
Abe understood which word carried the weight. Not free. Trust.
Freedom allows power to move. Trust makes power legitimate.
He did not live to see the age of national AI forces. We do. The answering is ours.
The order Shinzo Abe envisioned will exist only if the leaders reading these words now choose to build it.
