"A government of laws and not of men" was the expressed ideal of the founding of the United States. I'm not sure how they would feel about the US today being a government of algorithms and regulations, mechanically followed and implemented by drones of civil servants in the deep state, where literally "no men" now govern.
I alluded before to an obscure 18th century political philosopher and economist, Josiah Tucker, who posits an interesting via media between Locke's government by consent and Filmer's patriarchy. Tucker observes that many nations are founded by "great men" and heroes of the first order, but obviously they cannot be sustained by a succession of great men, who are not in abundant supply, but needs be able to function with men of modest or average ability. Thus, they need to set up systems and practices which can be run by less than stellar geniuses. The analogy he uses is that of Newton and Boyle, who were scientists of the first rate, but they need to lay down practice guidelines for doing physics which men of lesser ability should be able to continue the work and derive the lesser theorems.
Yet, with the rule of law turned into the supreme principle of a society, who are now witnessing the apotheosis of a society of "the government of laws and not of men", a society run by pure algorithms and regulations, where no one has agency, everyone just mechanically following the prior procedures. To bring this to the analogy of planes, obviously you do not need every pilot to be a software engineer, to be able to design the autopilot system itself. Pilots of modest, if any, computing abilities should be able to operate the autopilot system. But eventually you do need a team of software engineers to be able to update, fix, and patch the autopilot system. You do not need heroes of the first rate in every throne or presidency, but you still need them in sufficient numbers to constantly review and renew the system.
It is perhaps a portent of things to come when in a British "Yes, Prime Minister" episode, while Hacker was complaining about declining education standards and how people can't do arithmetic anymore, Sir Humphrey challenged Hacker to do a complex sum, and when Hacker could not come up with the answer on the spot, Humphrey just said, what's the point of learning this when you have a pocket calculator to do it for you? The quintessential civil service mindset, you don't need to know its inner logic or purpose when you can just operate a machine. This was in the 1980s, can you imagine how this has affected an entire generation of educators and statesmen, who see no point in passing on "useless" knowledge like the inner logic of arithmetic since you can just rely on calculators?
So for the US ship of state and ruling/leadership class, not only are the software engineers dead, so are the pilots, nobody knows how to do the arithmetic anymore, they just rely on calculators. Nobody is taught the higher principles and inner logic of institutions or civic practices, they just need the HR manual. Nobody knows the inner logic, design, or purpose of the core corporate, civic, or political institutions of the nation. I remember when I was in university in my first calculus course, and we grumbled about the novel epsilon-delta proofs for limits, and my professor lectured us saying, don't complain about needing to do proofs, you can't always do computation problems, my computer can compute faster than you. But nobody is taught "useless" proofs anymore to understand the why of the algorithms, everyone is just running on autopilot, executing algorithms and practices laid down by greater men who once upon a time understood its inner logic and design, but nobody really knows how to actually govern an empire as complex as America anymore, all they know how to do is to hit enter and run the program, and occasionally tinker around the easier to comprehend parts, like a causal gamer trying to make a mod. But nobody knows how to program a game anymore.
The men of great ability, the Newtons, Watsons, and Bismarcks, are all speed running games on Youtube, their top physicists and rocket scientists are employed by financial corporations and bankers to design ever more elaborate "financial products" or "financial instruments". The box ticking HR and DEI culture means that key corporations and institutions are staffed likewise by people who can run the algorithm and regulations, but nobody knows why it works and for what purpose.
An "autopilot" polity means that nobody knows what to do in extraordinary or special scenarios, when you need to redesign the program or system to meet an novel situation. From Afghanistan to Ukraine, to Israel and now the Suez, nobody has a bloody clue what to do when order breaks down and people aren't just following precedent anymore. As US ship of state paralyses into sclerosis, as Pax Americana declines, more and more of the US state departments will be increasingly staffed by Warhammer 40k administratum drones. People working at soul crushing cogitators crunching numbers and submitting reports which nobody reads, which purpose nobody knows, but which needs to go on just because it's how it's always done.
We frequently speak of how the US can't send a man to the moon anymore, but it is doubtful that the US can prosecute a complex operation even on earth. When George Bush launched his extremely ill-advised Operation Iraqi Freedom, it was a model of preparation, organisation, and planning of a thousand different actors and agencies in concert for a common goal. It is extremely doubtful that the modern US state is capable of something as complex as this today because there is nobody at home capable of such detailed organisation for a goal.
This problem is systematic and endemic, and I don't think the American ship of state, as a whole, can come back from this. I suppose, in a way, in their anxiety to prevent a king or emperor from rising, the Founders have achieved their dream of a government literally of laws, but where no men now governs. An autopilot society. The plane will still fly, the buttons still work, the navigation system still function, but God help the US once the program breaks down or encounters an unexpected situation and you need a real pilot to take the helm.