Accelerated technologies plunge us all in darkness, in so far as darkness refers to the continued isolation and irrelevance of human beings from the processes of capital and ultimately the mechanics of political economy. Chinese firms now are pioneering as we speak the art of "dark factories". This precise automation of highly skilled and cutting edge industrialization using robots that work literally in the dark with minimal human supervision is the next phase of economic competition between rival civilizational states and blocs.
To compete in such a world will require mastery and sovereignty over data, a technical supply chain for the foundational elements of Cybernetic State formation. This nuclear race will create cold cyborg steel - industrial ecosystems where man is removed and silicon and metal work in algorithmic harmony to build the next century. Everything we assumed about the politics of developmental economics and its attendant disciplines will be upended through the brutish and unrelenting processes of Cybernetic State formation.
Globalization has always posed an immense national security risk, its only now nation-states are waking up to this threat because of the erratic behaviour of GAE in recent weeks. Intricate supply chains for physical resources are now being re-examined, renegotiated and calibrated to minimize exposure to the malignant designs of one's rivals. Old alliances are being questioned and the board is being reset, amidst the chaos there will be great pain.
Gone is the dream of a universal and open internet. There will be no worldwide net, there will be no scaling up of the self-sovereign cyber-citizen. Instead, we will each be pawns locked into ecosystems governed by great powers in a game of digital attrition. Distinct ecosystems of independent and disparate monetary networks backed by various configurations of crypto-chains and perhaps traditional stores of value such as gold. Entertainment, commerce, education - each civilizational zone will race to build its alternatives to Big Tech fearing reliance on the singular monopolistic tendencies of Surveillance Valley within GAE where in order for these colossal hegemons to effectively operate they must bend the knee to the GAE security state and surveillance network.
The acceleration of capital and specifically the internet as a function of kinetic cognitive warfare prosecuted by intelligence agencies and their adjacent civil society organizations remains unexplored in the popular mainstream. We speak of libertarian myths such as the singular genius of eccentric autists building the world wide web rather than confront its more sinister foundations. In such a world, one must either produce and embed new forms of software, hardware and competent governance in harmony or forever be a paying customer or vassal to a power that can manage this.
It remains to be seen whether liberal states can evolve and adapt in the face of essentially Luddite populist revolts to compete with China. Luddite populisms are the dying gasps of an archaic sensibility and ape-like instincts that will soon be decimated by the harsh reality of the challenges of the century ahead. You cannot turn back the clock. You cannot go back. It is too late. It is akin to wishing that the steam engine had never been built. It is the same as wishing we could go back to living like Amazonian tribes in the wilderness. There is no "re-industrialization", only new forms of it. Recounting the past may be a tonic for a weary soul but it is also a sure path towards extinction.
Traditionally speaking, what kept liberalism going was Technology - the constant flow of sensitive data, information - seamlessly integrating private and public institutions, blurring and deliberately corroding the lines between civilian and military until it all becomes one cohesive organic whole with the Godhead of the Deep State firmly in control. This was often presented under the euphemistic guise of "technocracy" and dressed in the rhetoric of "rule by experts".
In such a scheme, the Deep State is not a conspiratorial cabal of sinister people (although spiritually they may well be) but rather is a critical component central to the longevity of the Liberal State. Electoral politics on its own is far too chaotic and at times messy to guarantee longevity for a political project. The genius of the liberal project was to allow electoral politics to be an arena of competing trivial political passions (culture war slop) whilst the Deep State in a very Fukuyaman sense continued the reign of History's End. This now seems to be called into question momentarily, but I contend its only a blip. Behind Padishah Trump, Big Tech oligarchs are already planning to divide the organs of the state between themselves to usher in an age of "Governance As Service" or "GovFuturism". Prisons will be first to be properly privatized in conjunction with new forms of predictive policing fused with digital ID/biometric surveillance and stablecoin monetary ramps (the "Crypto-Dollar")
The Right at the moment is primed to act as the vanguard in many respects for accelerated Cybernetic State formation. The immigration crisis has convinced enough people of the conclusion that in order to avert total catastrophe it is essential to adopt some iteration of the Blairite strategy of total digital ID.
The creation of the institutes that will underpin the Cybernetic State is underway. I anticipate a splinternet for the EU+Canada, South America, the American homeland and its imperial vassals that are still pledging themselves to the bloc, China, India and Russia. These will be the major splinternet blocs, with the BRICS nations perhaps consolidating to form a mutual monetary layer with an alternative to USD using a digital payments architecture guaranteed by the Chinese. Everyone else will have to basically pay rent to join one of these splinternets.
This digital patchwork of warring tribes and states could only have happened ironically through the initial explosion of globalization at the height of what was perceived to be, the Fukuyaman Peace - the mid-90s to 2001. The mass production of cheap technological goods, platforms and software sowed the seeds of inevitable chaotic fracturing once governments realized the cognitive subterfuge one could wage in cyberspace through the web.
And truly God knows best