Kurt Gödel was a leading figure in the development of modern logic, he was a mathematician and philosopher whose work profoundly influenced the foundations of mathematics, formal logic, theoretical computer science, theoretical physics, philosophy of language and many other fields. In 1948, as Gödel prepared for his U.S. citizenship interview and he did what any great logician would do: he studied the U.S. Constitution with meticulous rigor. What he found was not just a legal document, but a system exposed to dangers generated by its own internal mechanics. In the contemporary language of cybersecurity, he identified a significant vulnerability. Gödel claimed to have discovered a flaw, a perfectly legal way to turn the United States into a dictatorship. His friends, Albert Einstein, the famous theoretical physicist and colleague of him at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, and Oskar Morgenstern, the economist that co-created the field of modern game theory with John von Neumann, intervened to prevent him from awkwardly explaining his theory during the interview and potentially jeopardize his citizenship request.

Within and outside the system

Gödel’s research in mathematical logic involved formal systems and their mechanics, rules and meta-logic. He was focused on what can be proven, expressed and decided within a formal system, evaluating their own coherence and completeness. Applying this mindset to constitutional law, it can be noted that the U.S. Constitution, like many other constitutions, allows for amendments through a two-thirds vote in Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. In theory, this process could be used to pass an amendment that abolishes democracy itself or some of its checks and balances. Even if these should be considered limit cases, there are potential situations where the system could be not self-protecting.

Risks to political freedoms

Today, this idea feels more relevant than ever. We are witnessing the rise of authoritarian leaders and political movements that actively exploit the very mechanisms of democracy to undermine it. The tools of free speech, electoral competition, and legal process are being used not to strengthen democratic institutions, but to erode them. The result is a paradox: democracy’s greatest strength, its openness and flexibility, becomes its greatest vulnerability. This is in alignment with the arguments of other thinkers, like Karl Popper’s “paradox of tolerance”, the fact that unlimited tolerance can destroy tolerance itself. Society as a whole should be intolerant toward intolerants, powerful people or movements that are working to dismantle the foundations of a democratic society such as rule of law, independent judiciary, separation of powers, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, tolerance for dissent and peaceful transfer of power.

Nurturing democracy

Gödel’s fear is not just a historical curiosity. It is a warning into the nature of political systems and today’s challenges. No constitution, no matter how well-crafted, can fully and perpetually immunize itself against the risk of self-destruction. In an age when the boundaries of legality are being tested by those who seek power at any cost, Gödel’s warning reminds us that rules are not enough. The process of democracy should constantly be protected at the meta-level, outside the formal system, outside itself. The challenge for democracies is to renew their spirit in different historical phases, through different challenges, with the active participation of social movements, independent journalism, educational institutions, artists and citizens. Gödel’s warning could help us to pass the real test of citizenship.

With the triumph of Large Language Models and Deep Neural Networks, we have entrusted our understanding of reality to statistics. Moral considerations have been sidelined in favor of frequencies, residuals and R-squared values. The confusion matrix is now the only type of confusion modern humanity is allowed to experience.

The frantic pace of innovation leaves us little time to ask meaningful questions or to genuinely feel the vertigo of the acceleration we are hurtling into. Angst as defined by Kierkegaard1 has given way to the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Though seemingly different, these two anxieties are more similar than they first appear.

Both fears are ultimately incurable - only death can silence them. Until then, we constantly experience something new, endlessly running on treadmills that have been interconnected through gears of different sizes. We keep running, yet we remain stationary. Society runs too, but it also remains stationary, albeit at a different pace. The largest gear in this infernal treadmill is technology. Technology moves swiftly, but in what direction?

Technology optimizes, achieving more with fewer resources. This is indisputable. We have clear reasons to optimize, but do we have reasons to be optimistic too? Consider our most famous optimist, the optimist “par excellence”: Candide from the Voltaire’s novel. If suddenly dropped into our modern world, Candide would be dazzled. He'd gape at smartphones, mistaking them for magical mirrors; he'd marvel at electric cars, AI assistants, and the ability to video chat with someone across the globe. Surely, he would say, this must be the best of all possible worlds. But is it really so? Eager to adapt, Candide would open a TikTok account, where he’d follow dozens of self-help gurus, including a reincarnated Pangloss now rebranded as a life coach with millions of followers and a best-selling book titled Radical Optimism: Why Everything Happens for the Best. Candide, still painfully trusting, would invest all his savings in a cryptocurrency called “PanCoin,” only to see it crash the next week after a rug-pull scandal involving the same guru.

He’d fall in love online with someone claiming to be Cunégonde 2.0—an influencer with filtered selfies and vague poetic captions—but after wiring her money for a "spiritual healing retreat in Bali," she vanishes. When Candide tries to report it, he’s bounced between automated chatbots and customer service lines that never connect.

Jobless, scammed, and emotionally spent, he ends up at a mindfulness commune in Silicon Valley, convinced once again by Pangloss that all of this suffering is, somehow, part of a grand design. Candide still clings to the hope that, with just a little more patience, things will make sense. And maybe they will. But only after he's sold his kidney in a shady "bio-optimization clinic" in exchange for exposure on a podcast. So now he is jobless, scammed, emotionally spent and with only one kidney left.

Voltaire would have laughed - and wept. Should we feel the same? Our modern society, enabled by technology is at war between optimism and optimization. Technology optimizes, but rarely provides ground for genuine optimism.

Optimism implies that things will ultimately improve and turn for the better, it’s a psychological concept, focused on silver linings, and half-full glasses. Optimization instead is a mathematical concept, taken from Applied Mathematics and Operational Research. As Wikipedia2 defines it:

An Optimization problem consists of maximizing and minimizing a real function by systematically choosing input values from within an allowed set and computing the value of the function. The generalization of optimization theory and techniques to other formulations constitutes a large area of applied mathematics.

Optimization seeks the maximum or minimum possible values of a certain function. If we are computing our revenues or the value of portfolio, we want to find the points in the curve maximizing the value. Sometimes we want to minimize the value, such as in Machine Learning when we try to minimize the loss function, i.e. the residuals, the errors our model is producing in its predictions. In this case we want our predicted values to stick as close as possible to the real distribution, so the difference between them and the predicted values should be close to zero.

Optimization is one of the most important field of research, with many techniques and tools. One common problem, which I find very interesting from the philosophical point of view, is the local minimum/maximum problem, also known as the “Explore vs exploit” dilemma. We start optimizing what we see, but we don’t know if we are stuck in a local minimum/maximum. There is a cost though for exploring the data around us, we cannot do it forever without making the optimization slow or inconvenient. We have to find a compromise between our exploration phase, where we look around, and exploitation, where we work in a specific direction to minimize/maximize our function.

This resonates a lot with “the best of possible worlds” from Leibniz’s Theodicy3, which firstly originated the grim satire of Voltaire’s Candide. Why – of all possible worlds – did God create exactly this one? How we justify the existence of our own world? This world seems far from perfection, but – Leibniz argues – it contains just the right amount of evil in it, the right amount necessary to justify it. This sounds a lot like an optimization problem, considering the best world amidst all possible worlds while finding a local and a global optimum.

This is the very essence of optimism, thinking what happens to you is the best possible outcome that could have ever happened. Optimization instead is an empirical problem: it looks for minimization and maximization inside specific boundaries. It does not look at all the “possible” outcomes, it is strictly set inside the boundaries where the conditions apply.

Economics and Technology strive for optimization, and define optimal outcomes. We want to have more goods, to increase profits, to have mobile connections with higher bandwidth, to have larger, cheaper, and more efficient batteries. Pretty much everything technology and economics are doing is an optimization problem, driven by efficiency and cost reduction.

This optimization problem does not bring us magically to a better society. Optimization and optimism are very different, and not just for moral reasons. You don’t need a Theodicy for that, Game Theory is more than enough, such as for example the Tragedy of the Commons4 illustrating a fundamental tension between individual rationality and collective well-being. In this classic dilemma, multiple agents share access to a finite, exhaustible resource—such as a fishery, pasture, or atmosphere. Each individual is incentivized to maximize personal gain by exploiting the resource, even though such behavior, when mirrored by others, leads to the degradation or collapse of the shared asset. The result is a paradox: rational decisions at the individual level produce irrational outcomes for the group. This model highlights the critical need for cooperation, regulation, or incentive redesign to avoid long-term collective loss. When we bound rationality to a single agent, and each agent optimizes for itself, the collective outcome could be way far from optimal. We see this in many problem, from ecological problems to political problems, with issues such as free speech and the diffusion of weapons.

Big tech entrepreneurs often excel in optimizing personal outcomes but falter in complex political scenarios, unable to grasp intricate social dynamics fully. Their optimized solutions rarely predict emergent, nonlinear phenomena or unforeseen developments, or even “black swan” events. It’s not just about optimism: optimization does not get well along with pessimism either. Pessimism is just an inverted optimism, but optimization per se does not distinguish between minimization and maximization, they are both optimization problems. The optimizer does not see the glass as half empty or half full, only if it is optimally empty or optimally full.

The problem of the big entrepreneurs is that they incorrectly project an optimization problem over an optimal society. They see this in positive and negative, and tend to steer society from “existential risks” that exists in very simple – and unrealistic – boundaries. They are often ill-equipped to see the risks of non-linear phenomena, or complex behaviors emerging from the very own world they changed through their relentless optimization efforts. Had computers existed in 1880, they might have predicted unsustainable horse manure growth due to the explosion in human population, so they would have worked to reduce the amount of manure pro-horse, but would have failed entirely to anticipate cars, because they were outside of the boundaries of their optimization problem.

The best approach here is the philosophical discipline of skepticism. Skepticism is the attitude of doubting or questioning the validity of certain knowledge, beliefs, or claims. As a method of inquiry, skepticism allows us to transcend boundaries, radically question assumptions, and approach everything with greater caution. Skepticism does not reject optimizations; it simply examines their purpose and underlying beliefs about delivering value to society from a different perspective.

Skepticism, particularly technoskepticism, is not a cure for the malaises of contemporary society but rather an antidote to the venom of unduly zealous techno-optimizers who, in their obsessions, risk dooming the world. Optimism and optimization should remain distinct—not only morally but also pragmatically. Making things better does not necessarily mean making them "the best." Understanding this distinction could prevent us from blindly pursuing “optimal” outcomes at the expense of society, as many leaders of Silicon Valley are currently trying to do.

Throughout the centuries, the art of war has been at the forefront of technological innovation and has anticipated profound trends in economics and society. The development of conflicts, the definition of strategies, the construction of new instruments of war have often gone hand in hand with the evolution of thought and scientific conquests.

A very curious angle of observation today is represented by the philosophical reflection on mathematics as a discipline, observing with the macroscope its evolution in the 20th century one can extrapolate some tendencies that have also manifested themselves in the practice of contemporary warfare. According to Sir Michael Atiyah, a great mathematician of the last century and winner of the Fields Medal, the mathematics of the 20th century has been characterized by some fundamental tendencies that have changed its nature in a qualitative way. It is interesting to note how the same tendencies have now become evident also in the practice of the art of war.

Here the three fundamental areas.

Increase in Dimensions

Modern mathematics, within geometry but also in other branches, moved from 2D surfaces and 3D spaces to n-dimensional manifolds. In warfare, this parallels the expansion into multi-domain operations across physical, cyber, and cognitive spaces. Physical: Traditional “3D” battlefields involving land, sea and air now include space, especially in low Earth orbit,  and cyber domains. Cyber ​​attacks on critical infrastructure, companies and government institutions are now commonplace, as well as are information warfare operations, election interference and the production of fake news. Higher-dimensional warfare demands synchronized command structures to manage interconnected effects, and a more complex degree of awareness among multiple dimensions of activity.

Local to Global

In mathematics, this shift involved moving from local coordinate systems to global topological properties, increasing the degree of abstraction and generality. In warfare, it reflects the transition from geographically confined battles to multi-theater, interconnected conflicts with global repercussions. Modern warfare integrates local tactical actions, such as drone strikes and cyberattacks, into global strategic frameworks. For example, hybrid warfare tactics, such disinformation campaigns and asymmetric warfare techniques, exploit localized instability to destabilize broader geopolitical alliances. Just as topology studies global invariants, such as holes in manifolds, modern military activities leverage global supply chains, transnational terrorism, and climate-driven conflicts that transcend borders.

Linear to Non-Linear

The mathematical shift from the focus on linear systems and solutions to non-linear systems and chaotic dynamics reflects warfare’s evolution from frontal assaults to decentralized, adaptive strategies. Guerrilla tactics and non-state actors use decentralized networks to offset conventional force superiority. Autonomous drone swarms exemplify nonlinear dynamics, overwhelming adversaries through distributed coordination. In urban warfare cities become fractal-like battlegrounds where micro-tactical actions, like tunnel warfare, aggregate into strategic outcomes. Non-linearity demands new forms of planning and organization.

A final note: War and AI

A common denominator for the future of warfare could be the impact of artificial intelligence technologies. Abstraction, global complex planning, non-linearity and the combination of different dimensions of activity are a natural breeding ground for the application of intelligent automated systems. The art of war will tendentially increase its non-human dimension, with hyper-intelligent autonomous agents and forms of AI-driven planning that will accompany an hybrid, multi-theater, interconnected warfare scenario.

Based on similar considerations, technology is portrayed today in almost miraculous terms, as a universal remedy for all problems and the key to absolute efficiency. Similar phenomena have occurred in some countries regarding anti-corruption measures and continue to happen in the pursuit of “efficiency,” exemplified by entities like D.O.G.E. when applied to governmental organizations.

But is this truly how we should and want to relate to technology?

“He who speaks of humanity seeks to deceive you”

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

In his 1932 text, “The Concept of the Political”, Carl Schmitt notes that the use of the concept of humanity actually masks one group’s attempt to seize a universal idea, identifying with it at the expense of its enemy. If my idea is universal - if it applies, therefore, to all humanity - who could possibly oppose it? Schmitt argues:

Humanity is a particularly useful instrument for imperialistic expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form, it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism.

Thus, a concept of humanity does not exist in itself; at most, there is a concept of humanity that, when used by one party or another as a pretext, transforms into a weapon deployed against others for specific purposes. Even if, in some way, an entity capable of truly representing all humanity were established, it “would no longer constitute a political unity”:

If the entire humanity and the world were effectively unified on the basis of a purely economic and technical-commercial unity, this would no longer constitute a social unity

To be more explicit - and consistent with Schmitt’s writings - such unity could never present itself as a political element because:

[…] it would be reduced to a community of consumption and production in search of a point of indifference between the polarities of ethics and economics

Politics exists only where there is a purpose or, more precisely for Schmitt, an antagonist to confront or defeat. Similar to Marx - and in a sense Hegel before him - where antithesis is missing, no thesis can truly be considered political, as it would already inherently be valid for everyone. If all of humanity genuinely agreed, what would remain to debate or discuss?

Schmitt’s thinking thus becomes clear: either the concept of humanity is extended universally to justify the actions of a particular group or the space in which a universal form of humanity could exist is limited to that of production or consumption.

In any case, a fundamental tension clearly emerges between the two poles. On the one hand, politics in its form of dominance; on the other, technological and commercial development that, lacking a telos, aims only toward continuous self-progress. Thus, the concept of humanity from which Schmitt starts - echoing Proudhon’s motto- translates into an instrument of power.

“I’ve had only desires, and only fulfilled desires, and new cravings”

Faust

Is technological development without purpose? The question is complex. Simplifying: the purpose of scientific research or technological progress is overcoming the limits - or disproving - previous research. The goal of progress cannot be the improvement of the conditions of humanity or humankind. At best, these are collateral benefits equivalent to what could be termed collateral damage. There’s nothing moralistic about this statement, nor is the purpose of this text to declare itself proudly anti-progress. Simply put, every form of progress is driven by its own logic within an endless loop. This loop has generated enormous positive effects for humanity, even where the initial impetus was explicitly destructive or perverse, as often occurs with research in military technology.

However, it must be emphasized that such progress has not emerged with a specific purpose. Purpose remains a prerogative of politics. While the political actor acts according to a goal (even if it’s distributing resources based on need rather than ownership), progress realizes itself through constant self-overcoming.

So how can progress regulate itself? The question contains its own answer: it cannot. Imagining an invisible hand acting on behalf of a natural order to impose rules or optimize the benefits of progress so they may be distributed fairly would ignore the driving force pushing progress inevitably toward continuous self-overcoming: the very necessity of progress itself.

Deprived of an ultimate truth - since every truth appears refutable - progress continues its own race.

Within this theoretical framework, two manifestos of techno-optimism (“The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” by Marc Andreessen and “My techno-optimism” by Vitalik Buterin) seem animated by a similar worldview. While Andreessen defines technology as “the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential,” and Buterin begins from the idea that only certain technologies can make “the world better than other types of technology,” both reflections do not appear to question the notion that humanity - driven towards a bright future by technological progress - can somehow alter the curve that describes improvements in the human condition. The difference between the two concerns the political horizon: Buterin is closer to a progressive sensitivity, while Andreessen takes a more aggressive approach. Nevertheless, both share this fundamental idea: if progress continues its course, so does human progress.

The truth of this claim may be partially contested. Indeed, no one can deny the vast majority of data cited by Andreessen and Buterin, demonstrating how technological progress has led to improved living conditions for many people. On the other hand, one might argue that, in certain contexts, development and technological progress as we imagined them have resulted in scenarios far removed from actual needs. For instance, while our generation grew up believing future conflicts would be driven by technologies advanced enough to minimize prolonged warfare and eliminate the need for “boots on the ground,” recent developments in the military conflict in Ukraine demonstrate that even in the era of “software that is eating the world,” there comes a point where trenches dug in mud and quantities of ballistic artillery rounds matter more than futuristic war plans that once seemed inevitable. Even considering these observations, human and technological progress still appear synchronized, both in reality and in the hearts of techno-optimists.

What remains to be questioned, following Proudhon’s maxim mentioned at the beginning, is: what is this humanity we are talking about?

“Centralization will be the natural government”

Alexis de Tocqueville

In a recent interview (Die Schweiz und Europa sind heute Kolonien der USA, thanks to Francesco De Collibus for pointing it out), Andy Yen, one of Proton’s founders, describes this scenario:

In extreme cases, this can make us susceptible to blackmail. Consider the example of the Danes, who now worry about Greenland. Trump has threatened to punish Denmark with high tariffs or perhaps even send troops to take over Greenland. But essentially, he doesn’t even need to go that far. Trump would merely need to sign an order declaring that Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon must cease their services in Denmark. This alone would suffice. Such a move would force Denmark to surrender immediately.

What would it take for Trump to pressure Denmark into relinquishing Greenland? He wouldn’t necessarily need high tariffs or military force; instead, it could be as simple as issuing an executive order instructing major software services (Software is eating the world, remember?) to cease providing services to the Nordic country. Something logically similar happened in 2022 when Elon Musk decided how Starlink should operate during geopolitical tensions.

The underlying logic here rests on the fact that the global infrastructure behind the web is firmly in American hands. The global cloud infrastructure market is dominated by three US-based providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS, 32% market share), Microsoft Azure (23%), and Google Cloud Platform (10%). Together, they control 65% of worldwide cloud spending, leaving regional players like Alibaba Cloud (6%) and Tencent Cloud (3%) with fragmented shares. This oligopoly creates systemic risks: 76% of US enterprise cloud spending flows to these three firms, while even in decentralized markets like Iran, US providers indirectly influence regional ecosystems through secondary services.

Moreover, approximately 46% of major cloud data centers are physically located in the United States, compared to only 6% in China and about 5% across the European Union. AWS alone operates 32 "availability zones" globally, while Microsoft Azure spans 60+ regions - over half anchored in US soil. This geographic centralization affects latency, data sovereignty, and regulatory jurisdiction. For example, 80% of certificate authorities (CAs) trusted by web browsers are US-based, forcing nations to accept US legal oversight for HTTPS encryption.

Something similar is happening even in the Crypto world.  Something similar is happening even in the Crypto world. Solo validators face punitive penalties for downtime, incentivizing delegation to centralized pools with redundant infrastructure. The result is that ~28% of staked ETH is controlled by Lido and that ~9% by Coinbase.

In the ETH world, validators are disproportionately clustered in the U.S. (32%) and Europe (28%), with underrepresentation in Africa and South America. This geographic skew introduces regulatory and infrastructure vulnerabilities - for example, a coordinated shutdown in the EU/U.S. could disrupt block finality.

Returning to Schmitt's writing, it becomes evident that technological progress is not occurring within a universal space of economic and technical-commercial communion. There is no united humanity driven by the unquestioned notion of technology as progress, fighting collectively to maximize resources and profits. On the contrary, the humanity emerging from our analysis has a specific identity and location. When we speak of humanity in the context of technological advancement, we refer, for example, to the United States.

As Schmitt emphasizes, there is nothing wrong or immoral about this. Technology is increasingly becoming a resource wielded by one side as a tool for domination or power against others. Disguising it as a benefit for humanity. In Paul's Letter to the Romans, it is written: "If God is for us, who can be against us?" [Paul, Romans, 8:31-32].

A contemporary paraphrase might read: "If Technology is with us, who can be against us?"

“Chip, baby, Chip”

Variation by Alessandro Aresu on the slogan “Drill, baby, Drill,” 2008 Republican campaign

Now consider Wikipedia's definition of a commodity:

In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them

Can we define technology as a commodity? Absolutely not. Technology is deeply influenced by those who produce it or those who control its use. Certainly, email usage or the concept itself could be considered a commodity whose price has dropped close to zero over time, but the reality is that, at this moment, Gmail is the leading email service provider, with an estimated market share between 37% and 43%. It doesn't even matter if Google can access the email contents or if it uses the data to train its own LLM models. What matters is that Google can decide - or could be forced to decide - to limit access to its servers, for instance, to European users.

In a context where the United States dominates the ranking of data centers on its own territory and the main technology providers are American, the idea that technology can be reduced to a commodity is a futile utopia. Where technology is produced, managed, and physically located constitutes essential parameters for defining a state's power relative to others.

Current scenarios increasingly point toward technological sovereignty. If the hacker ethic, which shaped a generation of digital innovators and service creators, preached aversion to authority and intellectual property concepts, the centralization of technology development resources seems to reinforce individual states' desire to use technology as a weapon to achieve their aims. Once again, we witness politics attempting to reclaim technology as a tool subordinated to its own purposes. It hardly matters that technology is portrayed as an instrument at the service of humanity. As previously stated, the domain and development of technology are still fundamentally political.

Another point supporting this analysis comes from the current distribution of wealth. The widely recognized fact that the five richest people on Earth are owners or employees of big-tech companies gains additional significance when related to historical events.

Industrial wealth in the 19th and 20th centuries was anchored in tangible assets: factories, railroads, and raw materials. Figures like Andrew Carnegie (steel) and John D. Rockefeller (oil) exemplified this era, where scale and vertical integration dictated dominance. The concentration of physical infrastructure - such as Carnegie’s steel mills controlling 60% of U.S. production by 1901- enabled monopolistic market control. Wealth accumulation relied on labor-intensive processes and geographic monopolies, with industrialists leveraging political connections to secure resource access (e.g., Rockefeller’s Standard Oil influencing railroad tariffs).

Software redefined wealth generation through scalability and marginal cost economics. Unlike steel or oil, code can be replicated infinitely at near-zero cost. Microsoft’s licensing model in the 1990s demonstrated this, achieving 90% gross margins by selling software divorced from physical production.

The transfer of wealth to a class of new rich individuals should not distract us from the persistent political relationship dynamics over time. In a scenario where venture capital replaced industrial-era bank loans as the primary wealth accelerator, data appears to have become the new oil, and states continue commissioning major technological projects. Technological assets now hold the same strategic and economic importance as highways, steel mills, and industries did at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, enterprises fueling the military apparatus increasingly involve cognitive domains, intelligence, and software. Besides the traditional Boeing or Lockheed Martin, we now have Anduril, Palantir, and ShieldAI supporting drone guidance systems, territorial monitoring, and advanced intelligence activities. Just as the great industrial families of Europe and America embraced emerging nationalism, today’s big tech companies work to strengthen national sovereignty positions. In both cases, there was - and still is - a legitimate principle of wealth accumulation but, above all, a political imperative for power that aggregates the animal spirits of capitalism around itself.

In a letter to shareholders on February 3, 2024, the CEO of Palantir wrote:

As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’ He continued: ‘Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do’

Do we need any further political statement?

What is to be done?

Marco De Rossi and Nicola Greco, in their recent article titled “Mass Survival Technologies,” outline an interesting analytical model for evaluating technological solutions designed as instruments of resistance against autocratic players or developments. Although the proposed solutions are correct and highly desirable, the analysis could benefit from incorporating a geopolitical understanding of the current situation. In some ways, the perspective underlying their piece remains anchored to an ideal of universal humanity that struggles to materialize in reality.

The disproportionate resources accumulated by certain states in technological development are currently shaping - and will increasingly shape - the use of technology to serve specific national interests. While the promotion of Open Source or Web3-based technologies remains essential and must be pursued at all costs, as long as the foundations of technological development - both material and intellectual - remain unevenly distributed, any intellectual effort risks being ineffective.

Similar to the dynamics witnessed during the Cold War, the only viable implementation of technological deterrence involves distributing knowledge and resources among all players involved. Clearly, such distribution cannot rely on the goodwill of dominant players. Rather, states currently lacking adequate skills and resources must prioritize the urgency of bridging this gap.

Entrusting the development of technology or the existence of survival technologies to the presumed humanity or intentions expressed by certain states risks overlooking the fact that the objectives of these states represent legitimate declarations of intent and purpose. In essence, we continue to nurture the dream of unified human progress. More precisely, we cannot envision humanity using technology as a universally accessible commodity.

This critical context forces choices that cannot simply be forms of Luddite rejection or idealized progress. If technological progress is destined to be instrumentalized by hegemonic powers, our goal must be a realism that fosters practical solutions.

Regional technological sovereignty

For those who grew up dreaming that technology would become a universal tool transcending nation-states, it is difficult to accept that the only viable solution today - aimed at preventing dominant players from using technology as a means of power - is to advocate for technological sovereignty. This sovereignty supports mutual deterrence in the utilization of available tools and, crucially, allows each player autonomy in managing their own data and access to it.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 defined the modern state as the entity exercising the monopoly of force, economic power, and legal sovereignty within a given territory. Of these three criteria, Europe has notably failed in exercising both force and legal sovereignty. But today's world demands a broader conception. A truly sovereign entity in the 21st century must control not only its physical borders but also its digital infrastructure, data flows, and technological capabilities.

Europe's inability to achieve military integration should serve as a cautionary tale. Despite decades of discussion, European defense remains largely dependent on NATO and, by extension, American military power. This dependence has constrained Europe's strategic autonomy, compelling alignment with American geopolitical priorities - even when they diverge from European interests.

A shared European technological stack might succeed where military integration has failed, for several reasons:

• Lower Political Barriers: Unlike military integration, technological sovereignty does not directly confront national identities and historical military traditions.

• Economic Incentives: Technology development generates innovation, employment, and economic growth, making it politically appealing.

• Graduated Implementation: Technological sovereignty can be pursued incrementally rather than requiring an all-or-nothing commitment.

Open Source as anti-monopolistic solutions

Antitrust solutions are desirable but challenging to apply in an international context lacking cooperation. It remains difficult to believe that European sensitivities on the issue can effectively be enforced within national contexts, especially outside Europe.

In this context, the diffusion of Open Source solutions represents a structural response more effective than traditional regulations. It’s not simply about promoting free software as an ethical alternative, but rather about recognizing Open Source as an intrinsically anti-monopolistic architecture, for several reasons:

• Irreversibility of distribution: Once released, Open Source code cannot be withdrawn or restricted in its use, creating persistence that transcends commercial interests or political pressures.

• Replicability without marginal costs: The ability to duplicate and distribute software without significant costs neutralizes the economic advantage of scale typical of digital monopolies.

• Native interoperability: Open standards facilitate interoperability, reducing lock-in effects typical of proprietary platforms.

• Geopolitical resilience: Independence from specific jurisdictions makes Open Source solutions less vulnerable to targeted political pressures.

Ethics of decentralization

Technological architecture inevitably reflects power structures. Decentralization is therefore not merely a technical choice but deeply political. Promoting open-source protocols and permissionless blockchains becomes essential - not as a techno-libertarian utopia, but as a pragmatic counterweight to ongoing centralization.

In this context, the ethics of decentralization isn’t just a principle of technological design; it represents a foundational component of a broader technological policy aimed at justice, resilience, and pluralism.

The ultimate challenge lies in transforming this awareness into concrete systems that demonstrate the feasibility of decentralized alternatives without sacrificing the usability and accessibility that have made centralized platforms so pervasive. Only through such practical demonstrations can decentralization evolve from a niche position into the dominant paradigm of digital architecture.

Critical Education

The technological skills gap inevitably generates new forms of dependency. Reimagining university education models and spreading a culture of critical technological literacy is therefore essential for any sovereignty project. Education systems based on industrial-era organizational models are no longer sufficient. Likewise, the clear division - still prevailing in certain contexts - between humanistic and scientific thought appears inadequate to provide tools capable of addressing today’s complexity. An educational model primarily designed through an economic lens, aimed at producing personnel specialized in narrowly defined fields, is not only undesirable but potentially harmful in a reality marked by growing complexity and rapid paradigm shifts.

Critical technological education is not merely complementary, but rather a fundamental prerequisite for any project aimed at technological sovereignty. Without a radical transformation of educational models, every attempt to develop technological autonomy is destined to reproduce structural dependencies and systemic vulnerabilities.

In this context, critical education becomes not only a tool for individual emancipation but an essential collective infrastructure for any sovereignty project in the digital age -an infrastructure as essential as physical ones, perhaps even more fundamental, as it enables the conditions necessary for developing the latter.

In a world defined by increasing complexity, interdependence, and accelerated change, the ability to critically understand, creatively adapt to, and democratically govern technological systems constitutes the true strategic infrastructure of the 21st century.

Yes, we’re fu**ed

The double intersection of AI acceleration and the rise of authoritarianism is a threat to democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge and human flourishing. It is a real threat to the core values of enlightenment: rationality, tolerance and the free pursuit of science. The current trends are pushing to a reality of fear, war and obscurantism. The rise of superintelligent artificial cognitive systems, while not intrinsically nefarious, present by itself significant dangers for human adaptation in future scenarios. The fact that superhuman capabilities, even if not general in nature, will be in the wrong hands represents a danger of historical proportions.

Acceleration and scale

AI systems, event accounting for the increased efficiency in the use of resources, are developing in a highly centralized way. Massive investments in infrastructure, training and the acquisition of scarce resources (energy, data, talent, semiconductor technology) are necessary to push significant advances. Recent developments, such as the announcements from Deep Seek, will likely not reduce this trend and can even accelerate the appetite for the hoarding of computing infrastructure.

Politics will stay relevant

The monumental capex investment in AI systems is deeply tied to the development of military capabilities. In the future, it cannot be taught without the approval and active incentivization from institutional players. In the wrong hands, it could already be seen as a paperclip maximizer—only for power. Political will and political entities will be key for the future social, economic and geopolitical impact of AI.

Political activism in the age of AI

The push for open source, crypto-based and decentralized solutions as a counterbalance to centralized control of resources is one of the key strategies for dealing with the present situation. On the other hand, it will not be enough. The birth of decentralized free counter-powers will not be like the immaculate conception of Bitcoin. The fact that superpowers of continental scale are involved means that access to the political discourse and access to the use of force will be essential. At least within democratic states we cannot retreat to our private lives, protecting our information and assets with cryptographic means. The solution cannot rely solely on technology.. We need to openly push for democratic control of AI power and push back autocrats with all the means at disposal. We believe that history will ultimately revert to the development of enlightened democratic institutions. Reducing the time of the dark ages requires direct political action.