{"id":83583,"date":"2026-05-07T07:33:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-el-cesarisme-tecnologic-promesa-dinnovacio-o-doctrina-del-control\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T08:11:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:11:30","slug":"idees-dactualitat-el-cesarisme-tecnologic-promesa-dinnovacio-o-doctrina-del-control","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-el-cesarisme-tecnologic-promesa-dinnovacio-o-doctrina-del-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Idees d&#8217;actualitat &#8211; Technological Caesarism: The Promise of Innovation or the Doctrine of Control?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Contemporary liberal democracies rest on a delicate balance: on one side, popular sovereignty; on the other, a set of institutional constraints designed to protect individual rights and freedoms. This settlement, heir to the Enlightenment and consolidated over three centuries, presupposes that political power must be held by democratically accountable actors and subject to mechanisms of oversight. Yet in recent decades, a phenomenon has emerged that falls outside this framework: the concentration of economic, technological and informational power in the hands of a handful of global corporations. This phenomenon \u2014 frequently described as a technological oligarchy \u2014 poses a structural challenge to democracy, introducing centres of unelected power with an enormous capacity to shape collective decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Companies such as Palantir embody this new mutation of power: they are not content merely to sell technological services but aspire to redesign the very architecture of the state. Their model \u2014 built on deep integration within public institutions, growing technological dependency and the accumulation of data \u2014 erases the boundary between the public and private spheres. The commercial logic of &#8220;land and expand&#8221; involves entering an organisation on a modest initial contract and becoming, over time, an indispensable piece of infrastructure. The result is a structural dependency that undermines the effective sovereignty of public authorities: when the state requires a privately owned digital architecture to function, its autonomy passes into other hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is precisely at this juncture that what has been called the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PalantirTech\/status\/2045574398573453312\">Palantir Manifesto<\/a>&#8220;, published in late April as a set of 22 theses, takes on an unusual ideological clarity. Far from being a mere corporate document, the text functions as a programmatic statement about the future relationship between technology, power and democracy. Its central argument is unambiguous: Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the state that made its growth possible and must play an active role in national defence and in global geopolitical competition. The idea entails a profound reorientation of the technology sector, which abandons the pretence of being a space of neutral innovation to become a central actor in the production of power \u2014 above all, military power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The manifesto also insists on the inevitability of developing weapons based on artificial intelligence: the question is not whether they will be built, but who will build them and to what end. This framing deliberately sidesteps the democratic debate about the limits of technology, dismissing it as a waste of time in the face of an inexorable global rivalry. To this is added a defence of a reinforced &#8220;hard power&#8221; through specialised software, the reintroduction of national service, and an open attack on pluralism and egalitarian conceptions of culture. The result is a worldview in which liberal democracy appears clumsy and ineffectual \u2014 too slow, too deliberative \u2014 to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of this lays bare the true nature of the new technological Caesarism: this is not merely an immoderate accumulation of economic power, but an ideological project that legitimises the concentration of power in the name of efficiency, security and the survival of a particular civilisation \u2014 or, to use Benedict Anderson&#8217;s term, of an imagined community. The paradigm shift is not merely technical; it is profoundly political. The accompanying discourse \u2014 often draped in the language of classical republicanism or appeals to the common good \u2014 conceals a fundamental redefinition of legitimacy. If efficiency, security or technological progress can replace democratic procedures as the source of legitimacy, the door is open to forms of illiberal technocracy. Democracy then ceases to be an end and becomes an instrument judged by its results: growth, security, stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The danger of this new Caesarism lies in its hybrid nature. It is not an open rupture with the democratic order, but a slow erosion from within. The new actors of technological power do not need to abolish democratic institutions; it suffices to hollow them out and make them dependent on infrastructures they do not control. The pattern is reminiscent of historical forms of power concentration, but with one decisive difference: the informational dimension. Control over data, algorithms and communication channels gives these corporations an unprecedented capacity to shape public opinion, shape behaviour and anticipate decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The transnational character of these companies also makes it very difficult to apply the classical mechanisms of democratic regulation. State jurisdictions, designed to govern territorially rooted actors, prove inadequate in the face of organisations that operate on a global scale and can relocate or adapt to whichever regulatory environment suits them best. The result is a structural asymmetry: states remain bound by national frameworks while technological power moves through a globalised space that eludes any effective oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Faced with this situation, it is essential to draw a clear line between technological innovation and the will to dominate. Innovation is neither good nor bad; its value depends on the institutional and normative framework within which it takes place. The problem arises when it becomes a vehicle for concentrating power without democratic oversight. The narrative that presents technological progress as inevitable and therefore beyond question is not a description of reality \u2014 it is a rhetorical strategy for closing down public debate before it begins. To declare that certain developments are inexorable is, at bottom, a way of evading deliberation about their limits and conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">History reminds us that no technological advance is neutral. From the industrial revolution to the digital age, every major transformation has brought with it new balances of power, social conflicts and previously unknown political actors. The current revolution in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure is no exception. What is new is that today the speed and scale of change outstrip the capacity of democratic institutions to adapt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This does not mean that democracy is doomed to retreat, but it does require a response commensurate with the challenge. That means, first, recognising the political nature of the technological phenomenon. Second, strengthening the mechanisms of democratic oversight over digital infrastructures: regulation, transparency and accountability. And third, rethinking institutions on a global scale so that they are capable of confronting actors who operate beyond the borders of individual states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The real danger of the new technological Caesarism is not simply the concentration of power itself, but its progressive normalisation. Once it is accepted that technological efficiency can replace democratic legitimacy, the door opens to a profound transformation of the political system. The boundary between innovation and domination is not a fixed line \u2014 it is a contested terrain that must be managed politically. On that will depend, in the end, whether democracy proves capable of embracing technology without betraying its own founding principles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately, the challenge is not to stop progress, but to govern it: to subject it to the rules of democratic life, not the other way around. Only then will it be possible to prevent the promise of innovation from becoming an instrument of domination, and to stop the new technological Caesarism from eroding what has, until now, been the essential core of free societies<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><sub>Photography:<\/sub> <sub>TechCrunch. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><sub>Carla Le\u00f3n Xipell, trainee at the CETC, has contributed to this issue of <em>Idees d&#8217;actualitat<\/em>.<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contemporary liberal democracies rest on a delicate balance: on one side, popular sovereignty; on the other, a set of institutional constraints designed to protect individual rights and freedoms. This settlement, heir to the Enlightenment and consolidated over three centuries, presupposes that political power must be held by democratically accountable actors and subject to mechanisms of oversight. Yet in recent decades, a phenomenon has emerged that falls outside this framework: the concentration of economic, technological and informational power in the hands of a handful of global corporations. This phenomenon \u2014 frequently described as a technological oligarchy \u2014 poses a structural challenge\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":83500,"template":"","category_newspaper":[679],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-83583","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-679"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Idees d&#039;actualitat - Technological Caesarism: The Promise of Innovation or the Doctrine of Control? &#8211; IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-el-cesarisme-tecnologic-promesa-dinnovacio-o-doctrina-del-control\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Idees d&#039;actualitat - Technological Caesarism: The Promise of Innovation or the Doctrine of Control? &#8211; IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Contemporary liberal democracies rest on a delicate balance: on one side, popular sovereignty; on the other, a set of institutional constraints designed to protect individual rights and freedoms. This settlement, heir to the Enlightenment and consolidated over three centuries, presupposes that political power must be held by democratically accountable actors and subject to mechanisms of oversight. Yet in recent decades, a phenomenon has emerged that falls outside this framework: the concentration of economic, technological and informational power in the hands of a handful of global corporations. 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