An approach to nonsolvable base change and descent

We present a collection of conjectural trace identities and explain why they are equivalent to base change and descent of automorphic representations of $\mathrm{GL}_n(\mathbb{A}_F)$ along nonsolvable extensions (under some simplifying hypotheses). The case $n=2$ is treated in more detail and applications towards the Artin conjecture for icosahedral Galois representations are given.