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

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.

 

Democracy with its notion of checks and balances is rejected as an outdated system that retards technological advancement. Such thinking has given rise to the notion of “dark enlightenment”, negating the liberal progression since the 16th century European Renaissance and its vision of 18th century Enlightenment through the gradual embrace of humanistic and liberal values. First brought into the high-tech vocabulary by the British scholar Nicholas Land, it has been adopted by several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel. “Accelerationism” is an aspect of dark enlightenment. It argues that since technology, in particular AI, will lead to the massive creative destruction of the current industrial economy and widespread political and social disruption, it is best to hasten the process of change to reach its ultimate destination, whatever that may be, sooner rather than later. This is also linked to the notion of “singularity”, associated with Ray Kurzweil, who believes that we are approaching a point where AI will surpass human intelligence and will then keep advancing exponentially. Mr Kurzweil welcomes what many would consider a dystopian future. What is ominous is that Silicon Valley’s many leading lights, including people like Mr Musk, who are influencing Mr Trump’s policies, share this techno-optimism even if not in its most radical versions. The dismantling of the federal government and the sweeping away of regulation across the board are the first shots towards enabling “accelerationism”. 

Mr Land has described another phenomenon associated with this tech-led transformation. This is “hyperstition”, or hyper technological change co-existing with the resurgence of superstition. As he describes the term, it is something “equiposed between fiction and technology”. Technology is taking on attributes of magic but also enabling the unmediated deluge of social media, which breeds alternative and fictional realities. This is already familiar in India. While technology barons are hyper-elitist, they control the instruments of mass manipulation, which become attractive instruments to the political class. But the ultimate manipulators are not political leaders but the tech-elite. 

Corporate lobbies have always influenced politics and government. But today they aspire to run government and believe that “capitalist corporate power should become the organising force in society”. The politician is just a convenient instrument. If there is any doubt on this score, just go back to the TV clip of Mr Musk holding forth in the Oval office, with Mr Trump present as just another prop in the scene. Mr Musk is wearing casual clothes and is letting his young son have the run of one of the most hallowed offices in the country. The message sought to be conveyed is as obvious as it is disturbing. 

The case for corporate power has been made by former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin. Mr Yarvin argues that governments have become dysfunctional and democratic governments even more so and are incapable of delivering good governance and prospects for growth and prosperity. His preferred government is one that mimics a successful corporation headed by a powerful chief executive officer, who runs her or his company like a monarch. He gives the example of the iPhone, which could have been designed and produced only by an Apple led by an autocratic leader. Or whatever may have been the achievements of state-led Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the past, it is now Mr Musk’s SpaceX that represents the future with its dreams of establishing settlements on Mars and beyond. American Vice-President J D Vance has publicly acknowledged the influence of Mr Yarvin’s ideas on him, including that the current deeply entrenched US (United States) establishment — the so-called deep state — needs to be uprooted and transformed before it can meet the challenge of the future. A particular target is DEI policies — diversity, equity and inclusion — which are integral to any pluralist democracy. Not only are these being abandoned in the US, right-wing parties in Europe are being actively encouraged to follow suit. Anti-immigration policies are the most visible demonstration of this and India’s active encouragement of the export of its manpower of different categories will face headwinds. 

Trump 2.0 is very different from Trump 1.0. It would be a mistake to think that tactics which worked in the earlier phase can just be repurposed in the current phase. The institutional edifice of the American state, which draws its legitimacy from the US Constitution, is being dismantled brick by brick. The system of checks and balances is being subverted to usher in an imperial presidency. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had, by all accounts, a very successful visit to Washington. It has been successful in at least deflecting the greater harm that the US is now capable of inflicting on friend and foe alike. The pomp and show at the White House were preceded and then followed by the demeaning spectacle of Indian citizens — illegal immigrants though they may be — of being repatriated in humiliating circumstances to the country. That should give us pause. 

As a self-styled autocrat, Mr Trump professes affinity with the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. He believes he can do a deal with both. The recent Munich Security Conference witnessed the brutal cutting down to size of Europe by Mr Vance, who said that neither Russia nor China was a threat to Europe but Europe itself and that the US could not handhold Europe any longer. In determining Ukraine’s fate in its war against Russian aggression, Europe will not figure in the forthcoming negotiations between Mr Trump and Mr Putin. Mr Trump believes that the world’s problems can be solved in what could be a latter-day Yalta (where a meeting of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin took place in the closing days of World War II) among the US, Russia, and China. This would reduce the Quad to a tactical gambit from having been billed as a cornerstone of US Indo-Pacific strategy. The geopolitical dimension of what is unfolding in Washington will have significant collateral impacts on India. 

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The author is a former foreign secretary