Dark enlightenment: Washington's geopolitical shifts, their impact on India

Democracy with its notion of checks and balances is rejected as an outdated system that retards technological advancement

The Trump presidency is dismantling virtually all the pillars of the American federal bureaucracy and his hatchet man is the billionaire Elon Musk, who heads a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It is important to understand the ideational underpinning behind these events in Washington. Most of these ideas are from intellectuals who are “techno-optimists”. They see technological advancement, in particular artificial intelligence (AI), as the road to unprecedented and universal human advancement. Technological progress, they assert, is both inevitable and irresistible. Rather than trying to slow it or install guardrails, it is best to get out of its way.