Capability compounds only when authority can be understood.
Advanced systems often fail politically before they fail technically. Nobody can explain who controls them, what happens under stress, or how a bad decision is reversed. This is true of autonomous software, nuclear infrastructure, financial institutions, and states.
When a system is powerful but illegible, every mistake looks like evidence that the capability itself is unsafe.
legibility is not simplicity
A system does not need to be simple to be legible. It needs clear boundaries. Who has authority? Which state is current? What changed? What evidence survives the action? Where is the point of reversal?
These questions can be answered even when the machinery underneath is enormously complex. In fact, complexity makes the answers more important.
trust needs structure
Legibility is sometimes dismissed as bureaucracy. Bad bureaucracy obscures responsibility. Good structure does the opposite: it makes authority explicit, evidence retrievable, and failure bounded.
The strongest systems do not demand blind faith. They make confidence rational. Power without legibility creates fear; power with legibility creates institutions that can endure.