SIGNS
While the digital age seems to promise a more integrated, centralized world, we are witnessing a reverse dynamic: a return to feudal logic. Governors, technology barons, federated states and strategic companies are increasingly bypassing centers of power to impose their rules, defend their territories and forge their own alliances.
This month, our “Indices column, in partnership with A l’aube du Futur, highlights this systemic fragmentation through a series of weak signals that reveal and clarify the vision presented in last April’s GEAB: the emergence of a technopolitical neo-feudalism.
Behind the digital monarchs, the return of the local barons
While the power of the kings of technological capitalism (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel…) rests on global digital territories, dukes, counts and barons are strengthening their hold on very physical fiefdoms.
In the feudal context, a lord’s road to power no longer consisted in getting closer to an all-powerful monarch, but in strengthening his control over a fiefdom that belonged to him. Fragmentation, feudalism.
- Reversing the trend: In the United States, a career as a senator is less attractive than a career as a governor[1]
The ideal career path for an American politician has long been mapped out. Elected to a state legislature, consolidating his position in his native fiefdom by becoming governor, and entering the sacrosanct institution of Washington politics: the Senate.
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