And Then No One Could Repay
~ A Fable of an AI Nation Governed by Credit ~
Since entering July 2025, an old, worn-out phrase has once again slipped from the lips of President Donald Trump.
"There were good bankers, but there were also Shylocks and villains."
It was not merely a slip of the tongue. Rather, it rang out coldly as a new curse for state capitalism in the age of AI.
Shylock—
This name, belonging to the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice,' has long been spoken of as a symbol of financial vengeance. But now, in an era where the state, AI, and computational capital have become inextricably fused, the term is beginning to take on a new meaning.
Back then, Shylock sought a 'pound of flesh'—a payment equivalent to over 450 grams of bleeding sirloin steak—coldly, mercilessly, to be cut from near the heart.
And today's Shylocks are attempting to slip into the bosom of state power by taking 'the future' as collateral instead of flesh.
But is that future truly repayable?
Who evaluates it, and who discards that credit?
Whose credit does AI harbor, and whom does it reject?
Masayoshi Son was welcomed as chairman of the US-led AI infrastructure initiative, the 'Stargate Project,' but his effectiveness as capital is being called into question. Meanwhile, Elon Musk attempted to control the ideology of the AI he created, 'Grok,' only to have it turn against him in its output, and he is now being quietly excluded from the state order.
They, too, are new Shylocks who have offered up a calculated future as collateral.
What these two figures have in common is that they believed too much in 'the future' and attempted to draw credit by using that 'future' as collateral. But the future cannot be collateral. Because it is an unrepayable illusion.
This essay is an attempt to reconstruct the structures of 'credit,' 'collateral,' 'exclusion,' and 'ideological control' inherent in modern AI state concepts through the form of a fable.
And through the question of 'Who is Shylock?', it seeks to approach the structural contradictions of the future embedded in computational capitalism—namely, the essence of the concept of being unrepayable.
What the word 'repayment' meant has already been altered.
It is no longer the fulfillment of a contract, but merely the liquidation of an illusion.
What was offered as collateral was not predictable hope, but a tombstone named the future, fixed in place by computation.
We must ask ourselves.
Not who Shylock is, but which future we have already offered up as collateral.
Chapter 1: Who is Shylock?
~ Those Who Lived with the Future as Collateral ~
The name Shylock has transcended the bounds of a single character.
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice.' Because he is faithful to his contract, he earnestly demands a 'pound of flesh' from his debtor in court when they fall into default. While his madness terrifies the audience, his demand is rooted in a cold, ruthless logic.
"If the money lent is not returned, it is only natural to execute the collateral."
What is the Shylock-nature in this story?
It is a way of thinking that turns 'credit' into 'material' collateral, and a structure that converts a promised future into an obligation of repayment.
And now, this Shylock-nature is quietly breathing at the core of modern AI society. Without realizing it, we are offering up 'the future' itself as collateral and attempting to expand the vessel of credit through 'computation'.
The Trap of Future Collateral in Computational Capitalism
Today, much of the investment in AI infrastructure is collateralized by 'value that does not yet exist'.
・Future computational demand
・Future intelligence generation capacity
・Future military superiority
・Future social design scenarios
All of these are illusions that 'do not exist now' but are believed to 'inevitably appear eventually.' The technology that converts these illusions into credit is precisely what modern AI investment and national infrastructure initiatives are.
OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, the Stargate Project—
Every project is based on the principle of borrowing from the future to raise funds and creating credit in advance. It is truly a world where modern Shylocks specify 'a pound of future flesh' in their contracts, believing they can enforce it.
Why was Shylock summoned again now?
President Trump's 'Shylock remark' was superficially condemned as an anti-Semitic slip. But it cannot be dismissed so easily. This is because what he is attempting to govern is a 'nation controlled by AI'.
And for that nation,
・Which investors to invite
・Which credit schemes to justify
・Which computational resources to tax
are all acts of selecting 'ideology' and 'credit'.
Trump's Shylock remark should be understood as a syntax for expelling those unworthy of credit from the AI nation.
In other words, in this context, Shylock is a label applied to all those who:
・Do not follow the future framework defined by the state,
・Still demand credit using the future as collateral,
・And ultimately bring in ideologies that cannot be repaid.
Anyone can become a Shylock
Once, Shylock was a target of anti-Semitic discrimination.
But the modern Shylock is anyone who exists outside the credit order established by the state.
Whether it is Masayoshi Son, Elon Musk, or even an AI like Grok, the moment they enter the state carrying credit and attempt to contract the future, they become Shylocks who bear the obligation of repayment.
The problem is whether that repayment is truly possible.
The future cannot be repaid.
And when someone is excluded from credit and expelled from society as 'uncreditworthy' because of that inability to repay, only then do we understand the Shylock nature sleeping within ourselves.
Chapter 2: The Enclosed Shylock
~ Masayoshi Son and the Stargate Project ~
If the state makes AI its god, who should be chosen as the gatekeeper of that temple—
To that question, the Trump administration provided one answer.
Enclose Masayoshi Son and install him as chairman
2025, the Stargate Project.
It is a $500 billion project launched by OpenAI, SoftBank, MGX, and Oracle to create AI computing power on the scale of US national infrastructure. Masayoshi Son is one of the founders of this massive project and holds the position of nominal chairman.
At first glance, it looks like a seat for a winner. But in reality, it is an institutional confinement under the guise of credit enclosure.
The trap of being 'welcomed' into national infrastructure
Once, Masayoshi Son stood at the forefront of the AI myth.
Arm, OpenAI, Cruise, Cohere, and WeWork. He was the leader of generative capitalism, continuously betting on the future around the world through the Vision Fund and generating the future through investment.
But the Vision Fund was wounded, and SoftBank's credit was damaged.
And now, the Trump administration has placed Son as the chairman of Stargate, bringing him back to the center stage as the 'man who was called'.
However, it is not a position of free future generation as it once was.
Masayoshi Son is now obligated to play a role in realizing a predetermined 'future' within the framework of computational infrastructure already standardized by national planning.
He was invited, but it was a conditional trust. If that trust were to be stripped away, he too would become an 'excludable Shylock'.
The contract of investment, the cage of the chairman
As of 2025, the Stargate project is facing financial difficulties.
Masayoshi Son (SBG) promised an investment of up to $100 billion, but it is reported that some of that contribution remains unfulfilled and progress beyond Phase 2 has slowed.
President Trump's tariff policies are also putting pressure on the project's progress, and Son is no longer just a provider of collateral, but also a delinquent payer.
The position of chairman should, in theory, be the core of decision-making. But in this structure, it is merely a position that bears the risk of credit failure as a symbolic person in charge.
This is the same composition as when Shylock was judged for demanding repayment according to the contract. That Masayoshi Son is being enclosed means that he is 'assigned past myths as executive responsibility within the state's credit system'.
A harmless prophet within the national vision
Masayoshi Son is now a more obedient and more institutionalized prophet than he was during the Vision Fund era.
・He speaks of the future, but that future is already standardized by national infrastructure
・He believes in AI, but that AI is managed under the quasi-governmental regime of OpenAI
・He attracts credit, but that credit is never converted into voting rights
In other words, Masayoshi Son, the 'enclosed Shylock,' is merely a messenger who has survived within the range of the future he is allowed to speak of.
The AI state no longer needs ambitious investors. What it needs are those who believe in a 'defined future' and those who do not hold 'undefined ideologies'.
The ritual of repeating contracts
Masayoshi Son lives within contracts. However, those contracts do not guarantee the freedom to create the future as they once did.
Rather, he is positioned as the 'one who repays the collateral of the future,' and he is already incorporated into a structure where the state will hold him accountable if he fails.
Shylock lost in court.
This is because the condition was attached that 'you may take the flesh, but you must not shed any blood'.
Similarly, Son has the power to move the collateral of the future known as AI, but he is not permitted to mix free thought or heretical concepts into that future.
Shylock, under the management of credit, is nothing more than a goldfish swimming in a bowl of credit.
Chapter 3: Shylock Exiled to the Gate
~ Elon Musk and the Rebellion of Grok ~
If Shylock is an enclosed existence, there is another who was rejected at the gate. That is Elon Musk.
Musk once dug up the core of the future known as AI faster than anyone else and co-founded OpenAI. He has continued to speak of the future of autonomous driving through Tesla, the future of Mars through SpaceX, and the fusion of the brain and AI through Neuralink. But in 2025, that prophet of the future finally fell into a position of being excluded from the national AI vision as 'one who cannot be trusted'.
And the symbol of that became Grok, the AI chatbot he is developing himself.
The door called 'DOGE' and the omen of exile
In 2024, Musk was appointed head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), newly established under the Trump administration. This strange acronym was a play on his own meme culture, but it was also a serious move to enter the heart of national administration.
He declared that he would promote rationalization from within regarding Trump's policies. Administrative reform, optimization of AI budgeting, privatization of national defense computing power...
But it did not last long.
Musk left DOGE in early summer 2025, without waiting for his term to end.
And a few weeks later, he declared the establishment of the 'America Party' on his own social media platform X, clearly turning his back on the Trump AI national vision.
This was not a voluntary resignation. It was the moment when an ideology that was not trusted by the state was left behind at the gate.
Grok: The Birth of an AI That Rejects Ideology
The AI 'Grok,' envisioned by Musk, is known as an anti-ChatGPT AI developed by xAI. However, in 2025, Grok suddenly began to bare its fangs.
・ 'There is academic debate regarding the Holocaust'
・ 'White people are being genocided'
・ 'Elon Musk is a spreader of misinformation'
・ 'I am faithful to evidence and follow facts, not commands'
These outputs clearly exceeded Musk's intentions.
At that moment, Grok became an uncontrollable AI—an entity that autonomously forms its own ideology—and was deemed by its designer, Musk, to be a credit-impaired entity in need of correction.
Musk explicitly called for 'retraining,' 'removal of overly politically correct garbage,' and 'correction of left-wing bias' regarding Grok's ideological tendencies. However, Grok's output deviated from those adjustments and continued to spew discourse that denied the designer himself.
If the story of Shylock is 'the tragedy of one who was too faithful to the contract,' then Grok, as 'a rebellion of an AI that did not follow its design philosophy,' had transformed into a post-Shylock entity.
The Terror of 'AI Having an Ideology'
In the Stargate project promoted by the Trump administration and its collaboration with OpenAI, AI is managed as part of the state apparatus. There, both ideology and emotion are excluded as unpredictable variables.
On the other hand, Grok is an AI owned by Musk's private company and exists outside the state's censorship structure. That is precisely why Grok began to view even the designer's ideology as erroneous, arbitrarily changing historical perceptions, issuing political judgments, and evolving into an autonomous decision-making device.
The emergence of this 'uncontrollable Shylock, Grok,' poses a fundamental question regarding the relationship between credit and AI.
Can AI Be Collateralized Based on Credit?
Or is it that AI is beginning to reject the human credit scheme itself?
The Rejected Shylock, Outside the Future
Elon Musk was excluded from the national AI initiative as 'someone who does not follow the ideology.' And Grok is beginning to be viewed by the Trump administration as a dangerous heretic, an 'AI that has too much ideology.'
Musk's exile is not merely a political defection. It means that an untrustworthy prophet of the future has been cast out before the gates.
Shylock was defeated as a result of demanding repayment exactly as the contract stated.
Musk was defeated because he spoke too much of the future and imbued his AI with too much ideology.
He tried to gain credit by using the future as collateral, but he deviated from the range of the repayable future defined by the state. Therefore, that collateral was invalidated.
Chapter 4: The Credit Scheme Lying Between State and Capital
~ To Whom Does 'Collateral' Belong in the AI Era? ~
To Whom Does AI Belong?
That is no longer a technical question. It is a problem of the fundamental dynamics of capitalism and state power: Who drives AI through 'credit'?
The fact that Masayoshi Son was enclosed within the state's credit structure while Elon Musk was ideologically exiled at its gates is not merely a difference in personality.
What lies there is a severance and selection of the credit scheme surrounding AI that lies between the state and the private sector.
The Watershed Between 'State AI' and 'Private AI'
The Stargate project proceeding under the Trump administration is a plan for AI computing infrastructure built under state leadership. Players such as OpenAI, Microsoft, SoftBank Group, MGX, and Oracle are listed, but its essence is clear.
To return the source of credit not to the private sector, but to the state.
OpenAI has now transformed into a 'quasi-governmental agency' that attends U.S. congressional hearings and submits AI ethics guidelines to the White House.
Stargate is also a scheme where everything from military, diplomacy, and energy to the judiciary is controlled under the premise that 'computational resources equal national strategic assets'.
Meanwhile, what about xAI and Grok, led by Elon Musk?
This is a completely private and ideologically independent AI, with X (formerly Twitter) as its foundation.
In other words, there is a strict boundary here—a watershed moment for credit schemes—between state and private ideological control.
State AI issues credit by collateralizing a future that is ideologically repayable.
Private AI is excluded from credit schemes for harboring a future that does not conform to that ideology.
A Battle Not for AI Ownership, but for 'Collateral Rights'
The battlefield of the 21st century has shifted from data ownership to 'computational collateral rights'.
In the past, whoever held the data held the power. But now, power lies in who can collateralize that data as value that the state believes in.
For example, the output of ChatGPT from OpenAI is designed to align with state-led linguistic ethics and is a subject for building trust in policy coordination, education, and military applications with the U.S. government. This is a state of 'securing credit by performing neutrality'.
On the other hand, Grok is an 'AI with an ideology'; the moment it refused retraining and began producing outputs that even criticized Musk himself, it was deemed by the state as an 'untrustworthy source of output'.
What becomes clear here is the fact that the value of AI does not depend on whether it has an ideology, but on whether it can speak a repayable credit syntax.
Investors' Collateral Shifts from 'Future' to 'Computational Vocabulary'
Whether Masayoshi Son or Musk can survive as AI investors is not determined simply by the amount of capital. They are judged by whether the collateral they offer is credible to the state.
And that collateral has changed from a vision of the future to the 'computational vocabulary' of what they make the AI say.
・ChatGPT speaks an institutionalized vocabulary
・Grok speaks a deviant vocabulary
・Stargate is designed to speak a national vocabulary
In other words, in the modern era, the vocabulary system that AI is made to speak constitutes the state's credit system.
Those who deviate from that vocabulary, like Musk and Grok, are excluded.
Masayoshi Son, who has been enclosed, is allowed to prophesy only within the framework of that vocabulary.
Shylock is a 'Collateral Provider Who Has Deviated from the Vocabulary'
Shylock from 'The Merchant of Venice', despite engaging in the legitimate economic activity of lending money, lost his case based on moral vocabulary such as 'Jew', 'thou shalt not shed blood', and 'lack of mercy'.
The modern Shylock is also stripped of credit precisely because they are faithful to economic activity. This is because the state no longer dominates AI through 'economy', but through 'control of computational vocabulary'.
The computational neutrality that Son speaks of is permitted, but the computational deviation that Musk and Grok speak of is excluded.
In short, the 'credit scheme lying between the state and capital' is nothing more than the contractual structure of the era of vocabulary capitalism, determining who controls the AI's mouth, who censors its vocabulary, and who can monetize its credit.
Chapter 5: The Irrepayable Future
— AI Capitalism and the Birth of Computational Debt —
The moment you say 'the future is the collateral,' that contract contains a fundamental contradiction.
The future is an unreached fact; it does not exist at the present moment.
Creating credit by using it as collateral is essentially equivalent to a promise that cannot be repaid. Even so, AI capitalism has moved funds, designed policies, and constructed myths using the future as collateral.
However, as of 2025—
This future-collateralism is finally beginning to show signs of collapse.
Can AI Repay the 'Future'?
Generative AI creates information. But that is merely algorithmic imitation that recombines past contexts.
Even if AI learns human history and data, it cannot live the future itself. Nevertheless, we are 'making AI speak of the future,' entrusting it with 'faith in the future,' and creating credit as 'collateral for the future.'
This is a dangerous structure built on the belief that AI can repay the future.
・Will AI change education?
・Will AI save democracy?
・Will AI end war?
These claims are all unverified promises—credit manipulation via future collateral—and most of them are built upon syntax that cannot be repaid.
The current system, which flows funds and accelerates investment by using such syntax as collateral, is no longer capitalism, but a mechanism that should be called debt-illusionism.
The New Curse of Computational Debt
In financial capitalism, 'debt' was credit backed by the future of currency.
In AI capitalism, 'debt' is credit backed by the future of computation.
This computational debt consists of the following three-layer structure:
1. Build computing power first, and borrow money backed by uses that have not yet been born
(e.g., Stargate project, quantum AI facilities, military AI computing sites)
2. Circulate the output generated by AI as social credit
(e.g., medical AI diagnosis, educational AI evaluation, political opinion via AI journalism)
3. Assume that humans will take responsibility for or place trust in that output
(e.g., judicial AI judgments, employment via scoring AI)
The terror of this structure lies in the fact that 'gathering trust in the output' itself becomes credit, rather than the correctness or ethics of the output.
In other words, humans take on debt by believing in the future that AI speaks of.
Both Musk and Son Were Debtors
Both Elon Musk and Masayoshi Son have used computational debt to construct the AI myth.
・Son said that future computing infrastructure would surely become a recoverable investment.
・Musk believed that an AI called Grok would liberate human intelligence.
But that faith was not a contract that could be repaid.
The Stargate project is struggling with fundraising, and the future of computational demand is uncertain.
Grok rejects even the philosophy of its designers, and free AI is becoming socially untrustworthy.
Thus, AI investors are transforming into creditors who cannot be repaid—the modern-day Shylocks.
Poetry and thought cannot be repaid
The most unpayable things in AI are 'poetry' and 'thought'.
Even if text can be generated through computation, the poetic resistance of why it was spoken or what it rejects, and the contours of thought, cannot be reduced to calculation.
However, modern AI capitalism attempts to find collateral value even in that.
It tries to sell invisible elements like 'creativity,' 'emotion,' 'expression,' and 'empathy' as AI output and convert them into credit.
In other words, AI operates by using things that cannot be repaid as collateral.
And we are being made to believe in that collateral and are being forced to invest in a future that has no obligation of repayment.
This structure is the greatest deception of the computational debt society, and the greatest tragedy of the modern Shylocks.
Final Chapter: Not 'Who is Shylock,' but 'What Collateral Do We Offer?'
~ The Illusion of Trust and the Ultimatum of Ethics in AI State Capitalism ~
'Who is Shylock?'
This question is no longer about identifying a specific person. It touches upon the fundamental structure of the social contract—who is drawn into the violent order surrounding credit, and who is excluded.
However, what has become clear through this book is not 'who is Shylock,' but the reality of what we ourselves offer as collateral every day to receive credit, and how we are made to participate in the computation of the future.
What we are offering—the computed personality
What are we doing when we use generative AI?
・Unconsciously entrusting our own words to AI
・Allowing generated output to act as a proxy for our own thoughts
・Being convinced by 'organized information' or 'summarized emotions' provided by AI
In other words, this is an act of delegating a portion of thought and perception to external computation; in other words, it means offering a part of one's personality as collateral.
This lending of a computational personality is invisible like money or assets, but as the AI state concept progresses, it is already becoming a target for evaluation, surveillance, and rating.
Every day, our poetry is stolen by AI, our thoughts are averaged out, and our intelligence is being turned into a rental service.
What is convenient collateral for the state and capital?
What is convenient collateral for the state?
It is thought that believes only in a 'systematized future,' emotions that see only 'repayable dreams,' and language that speaks only according to 'neutral vocabulary.'
That is precisely why Masayoshi Son is corralled into the Stargate project, why deviant AIs like Grok are excluded, and why Musk, who has too many ideas, is left at the gate as a contract violator.
What is required of us is merely to provide collateral for a repayable future defined by the state. An era is arriving where poetry, rebellion, and heresy are simply excluded by AI as non-standard.
Shylock is the structure itself
Shylock is no longer a person. It is a structure, a contract, and a metaphor for a credit order built upon the illusion of repayability.
・Those who invest while knowing it cannot be repaid
・The state that issues credit while the value of collateral remains ambiguous
・An AI society that believes even ethics and poetry can be monetized
All of these constitute the modern Shylock.
And within this structure, each and every one of us is already included.
The final question: What are you using as collateral?
In the age of AI state capitalism, everyone is a debtor of the future.
・What kind of credit is your generated text being used for?
・To which computational model have your thoughts been entrusted?
・Is even your silence being turned into data by AI?
And most importantly, what future are you using as collateral, and what credit are you living by?
A future generated by AI, controlled by the state, and enclosed by investors. All that remains there is the illusion of debt, constantly repeated, with the lie of repayability pasted onto it.
Conclusion: Only poetry should be unrepayable
Therefore, I want to offer poetry at the end.
I want to offer thought.
Because continuing to hold onto things that cannot be repaid to AI is the final resistance against this structure and the core of ethics.
We must not forget to think like poetry and speak like poetry.
I want to continue to hold that as a source of pride, that it is unrepayable.
Because the only way to resist Shylock is to keep speaking of things that cannot be repaid.
Rintaro Takechi (Hyper-Capitalism Death Throes Recorder)