That book specifically named Donald Trump as the type of figure who could channel thumotic desire into upsetting the neoliberal order back in the early 90s. The title of that book obviously was to generate attention and sales, not a literal statement.

We already don't understand LLMs and they are having oberservable effects

If some LLM somewhere managed to produce a coherent and _correct_ explanation of how it worked inside, but no human ever saw it, would it matter?

We know how to apply LLms to problems, which is a subtly different thing to understanding how they do what they do. It's similar to fire: I can cook using fire, but I don't really understand how fire _works_. Heat+oxygen+fuel, sure, but what goes on chemically? I dunno. Doesn't stop me using it. (Pretty sure _humanity_ knows how fire works, though).