Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday announced plans to step down from power at the end of his third term in 2030.

Observers have long speculated about whether the president could attempt a re-run of the 2019 constitutional amendments and change the rules to allow a fourth term as the head of state.

But in a speech at the Egyptian Military Academy, Sisi vowed not to run for a fourth time and announced plans about how his potential successors would be chosen.

Here's what we know - and what we don't.

Sisi says he will step down in 2030

Speaking at a military graduation ceremony in the New Administrative Capital, Sisi said that his current term will be his last in office and pledged not to stand in the next election in 2030.

"The period leading up to 2030 will be the end of my term as president of the state, if I am still alive. This is completely settled, and there will be no discussion about it," he said.

Sisi is currently serving a six-year term after winning the December 2023 presidential election with 90% of the vote.

He also ruled out further constitutional changes to keep him in office into the next decade. Constitutional amendments in 2019 lengthened presidential terms from four to six years and enabled him to serve a third term.

There has long been speculation among political commentators and opposition figures about whether the constitution would again be amended to allow him to run for a fourth term.

"The Egyptian constitution will not be touched," he vowed.

But will he?

Sisi has a track record of reversing course on comments related to his political future. After his coup against Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in July 2013, Sisi downplayed any ambitions to run for president, only to later enter the 2014 election race.

Three years later, he vowed to honour the constitution and not seek a third term in office. But in 2019, the constitutional amendments were passed in a landslide public vote, clearing the way for Sisi to contest the 2023 vote and remain in power for the next decade.

"I wouldn't get too secure about any assumptions about who will occupy Egypt's presidential palaces in 2031," Timothy E. Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told The New Arab.

Whether or not his statements over the weekend were sincere, crises over the next four years could be used as a pretext to keep him in office, he said. Regime officials and media personalities may try to build a case that he should remain in power due to "popular demand".

"A lot could happen in the coming four years before 2030 … Whatever the real plan is today, there's no guarantee that plan will survive the coming four years of uncertainty and volatility," Kaldas added.

Military training for potential successors

Sisi announced that all potential presidential candidates will be required to undergo more than two years of training at the Egyptian Military Academy, which will teach them how to "protect the state".

Under draft legislation, the military will take charge of training potentially hundreds of people to stand in future presidential elections. Graduates of the programme could also be appointed to lead ministries and government agencies and serve as governors.

The Speaker of Parliament will lead a committee of ministers, politicians and intellectuals to draft the legislation, which will determine how candidates are selected.

"They would spend 30 months here at the academy learning what a state means, what its capabilities are, and how to protect them," Sisi said.

"We must not hand it over to just anyone. Someone who can put a few well-organised sentences together is not automatically qualified to lead the Egyptian state," he said.

The move is the latest to expand the military's power over the state during Sisi's 12-year presidency. Since coming to power, the army has significantly grown its economic footprint and acquired new influence over the government.

This includes the 2019 constitutional amendments, which broadened its role beyond protecting national security and tasked it with "protecting the constitution and democracy".

That the army will play a central role in determining future presidential candidates "reflects its continued centrality to the regime," Kaldas said.

"This is part of the growing influence of the security apparatus over civilian sectors throughout Egypt and the increased subjugation of civilian ministries and agencies to control by various security sector pillars of President Sisi's regime," he added.

Last week, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar mentioned something bizarre in an interview on CBS News. "So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI," he said. Their thinking, he said, goes like this: "I believe so much in AI that it's going to cure cancer. So I'm showing you my chips are all in."

I laughed as I read the quote. It read like a headline in The Onion, mocking the blind optimism of the AI-pilled. But then I felt sad and worried for them. Are they smoking because they believe AI is saving the world, I wondered, or because they believe AI is ending it?

It's been an especially alarming few months here in San Francisco. OpenAI's bots went rogue and hacked another company, and then an Anthropic researcher quit, warning that AI could wipe out the human race. It seemed more believable to me that these researchers were smoking because they didn't think they'd be around for much longer — or at least freaked out about that possibility. I thought of the HBO show "The Leftovers," which features a doomsday cult that chain-smokes. Because they believe the world has ended, they don't mind obliterating their lungs. They're living as though they're already dead.

I asked a handful of people who work in AI and none of them knew anyone who had suddenly taken up cigarettes because of AI. So I don't think what Sankar observed is widespread. But in a story last month about tech founders who smoke, my colleague Henry Chandonnet quoted a guy who wasn't worried about his habit because he believed AI will soon cure lung cancer. Among the people I spoke to, a few recognized that underlying sentiment: AI's going to fix (or destroy) everything, so YOLO. Last year, my former colleague Rob Price reported on these attitudes. Some were spending down their savings. Others were taking dangerous drugs and having orgies. Last year, my former colleague Rob Price reported on these attitudes. Some were spending down their savings. Others were taking dangerous drugs and having orgies.

While AI boomers and doomers expect completely opposite outcomes, I've found it interesting that their very different beliefs often end up manifesting as the same behaviors. Smoke or don't smoke, it doesn't matter: The future is inevitable. In either case, they're relinquishing their fate to a humanity-ending or humanity-saving AI — and ignoring one of the most evidence-backed things they can do to live a healthy future. It's a kind of fatalism, believing that what you do won't change what happens next.

I see traces of that in so many corners of society. What's the point of studying, students say, if they're never going to be as good as ChatGPT at coding or math? What's the point of agonizing over a breakup text, people say, if a bot can write it for them? What's the point of working hard, employees say, if their companies are going to replace them with an agent? In a recent survey by Verasight, 78% felt that they had little or no say over how AI is being developed and regulated.

Even the people who have the most say don't seem to believe they do. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued increasingly grave warnings about the technology that he himself is creating. He has to keep going, he says, because if he doesn't, a less responsible steward of the industry will. Amodei and his peers sound as if they're utterly powerless in the face of an unstoppable god. If it's really that bad, couldn't they just pull the plug? "Saturday Night Live" captured the strangeness of it all in a recent sketch impersonating Amodei. "If we can pressure lawmakers to create guardrails," Jane Wickline's Amodei deadpanned, "we will be able to stop me."

We need people thinking seriously about the risks of these technologies, and we also need people dreaming big about the immense good they can bring. But neither of these outcomes is inevitable. As we entrust more and more of our work and our lives to AI agents, we shouldn't cede our own agency to them too. I'm not taking up smoking anytime soon.