A Critical Context
For a long time, technological development has been portrayed as a tool at humanity’s disposal in its race towards progress. Techno-optimism, in particular - defined as the belief that advances in technology will improve humanity, enhance the quality of life, and solve critical problems including climate change, health issues, and social inequality - has shaped the objectives towards which humanity can strive.
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.