The rise of tech fascism

I saw a film last week. It wasn’t the kind of movie where you munch a box of popcorn. It was more the type where each audience member could have done with their own portable abyss to scream into. Because 2073 is a docudrama exploring the relationship between technology and political power, and the rise of what’s now widely described as tech fascism.

There’s been a slew of recent media calling out the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley and its links to apartheid-era South Africa. We’re seeing plenty of examples drawing historic parallels with the 1930s. The relationship between technology and authoritarianism has been outlined previously by informed observers like Yuval Noah Harari, Shoshana Zuboff and Dan McQuillan. But it’s only in recent months that the broligarchy has crystalised. Elon Musk’s takeover and rigorous cutting of US government departments is been seen by many as a coup in an escalating information war.

The future is now

The dramatised bits of 2073 are set 48 years in the future, but these imagined sections are blended with interviews and real footage from the current day. It’s hard to always tell fact from fiction.

The film opens in the year 2073 – we’re told in a caption that this is 37 years after “the event”. The “event” is never fully explained but we’re told it was in fact a series of smaller events amounting to something catastrophic. Whatever the details, the event must have been truly calamitous because the sky in 2073 is orange and there is a curfew in place. Armed guards and surveillance cameras are everywhere and the streets are piled high with rubble and rubbish.

News clips and shaky footage caught on mobile phones are intercut with the fictional story of Ghost, a mute woman who lives off-grid in the basement of a former department store. “I live in Shoes” she explains in the voiceover (presumably narrating some kind of diary, as we’re told she’s not spoken for years). Later on, we see the wrecked store fronts of Bloomingdale’s and JCPenny. These cavernous buildings are like mausoleums to capitalism – still partly stocked with rows of dusty clothes and consumer goods.

Despite the bleakness of life for the majority, some people are clearly doing well. We’re shown rows of lettuces farmed in high rise greenhouses and glamorous people eating (lab-grown?) steak. Lightning-fast trains speed over dome-covered parks.

The film’s early scenes are reminiscent of Blade Runner with skyscrapers decked out in huge signage and 3D adverts. The logos of companies like Palantir and Meta are prominent. Whatever has happened to humanity, the message is that these tech corporates are thriving. Giant screens show nostalgic footage of “Chairwoman” Ivanka Trump as she celebrates 30 years in power.

The memory palace

One drawback of the film is that Ghost’s story feels under-developed. It comes across as a series of vignettes – each one could have been fleshed out to create a more satisfying storyline. Characters who seem key and interesting – the former history professor or the AI with the “puppy-dog eyes” – are shown fleetingly.

We have some flashbacks to Ghost as a child in happier times. And she talks reverently of her dead grandmother who acted as an archivist, clipping news stories and keeping cultural items. Ghost’s grandmother wanted to record the truth for posterity – because “it’s our memory they want to wipe out”. In the end, Ghost tells us, her grandmother was taken away. But her collection remains, hidden in an old library. Ghost escapes here to spend reflective time among her grandmother’s things: facts and artefacts.

In sharp contrast to these scant happy memories, the montage material from today is terrifying. Wild fires rage as floods sweep away houses and cars. These images of the climate crisis are juxtaposed with scenes of police brutality and tech surveillance. In 2024, we’re told that 72 per cent of the world is under authoritarian rule. We see Rohingya Muslims arrested in China, Israeli tanks rolling through Gaza, anti-muslim riots and killings in India. These images are intercut with scenes depicting the polarising politics of the UK’s Brexit.

Language matters

The crucial role of language is shown through coverage of the “re-education and re-orientation” (concentration) camps built for Rohingya people in China. And in examples of the disinformation blatantly pushed out by politicians who know that no-one has the temerity or authority to hold them to account.

The closing sequence has direct echoes of the newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984. The film challenges us to ask how much we value the concept of truth, and how much we might be prepared to fight for it. The reason we need truth, or at least an idea of truth, is because widely-held truths underpin democracy.,

“If you don’t have facts you can’t have truth,” says Maria Ressa. “Without truth you can’t have trust. And without trust you can’t have democracy’.

The language we are permitted and able to use is important. For example, the Israeli architect Eyal Weizman (due to speak at the 2073 screening on 7 March) argues for new terminology to describe the war in Gaza. He proposes a new word, “ungrounding”, to cover both genocide and ecocide.

Tech pets R Us

The film features powerful interviews with journalists like Ressa, Carole Cadwalladr and George Monbiot, and historian Anne Applebaum. They are all great commentators. The footage of Ressa with neo-authoritarian Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is particularly chilling.

Though throughly depressing, I’m familiar with most of the arguments. These illustrate the concept of tech facism with graphic, often horrifying examples. But the point that struck me the most was the one made by Tristan Harris, director of the Centre for Humane Technology. (And a former ethicist at Google).

Powerful, data-driven technology is dangerous because behaviour data leads directly to behaviour control, says Harris. While there’s long been anxiety about the potential damage caused by social media and screen time, 2073 casts our addictions in a particularly sinister light. We become willing, mindless, consumers – essentially from birth. “Technology domesticates us into a new kind of human”, says Harris. The reason social media is co-opted in this way is simple: “we’re worth more when we are addicted, polarised and disinformed”.

New frontiers

There’s no significance to the date of 2073 other than it’s approximately 100 years after the director, Asif Kapadia, was born. I know this because Kapadia, alongside investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, joined a Q&A after last week’s screening.

2073’s story of tech facism may be bleak but its message is “about sharing together and finding solutions”, said Kapadia. He echoes Ghost’s warning at the start of the film: “No one said or did anything to stop them. It’s too late for me…it may not be too late for you”.

Kapadia, who made his name through award-winning films like Senna and Amy, shared a personal experience. Soon after 9/11, he was interrogated and searched by armed police in a New York airport. He says the experience of ongoing surveillance, intimidation and oppression have long been understood by black and brown people. But it is only now that others are starting to appreciate how this feels.

Tech surveillance is pervasive. Most people are aware of the personal data being gathered at scale by Meta-owned apps like Facebook. But most of us don’t tend to think too deeply on the significance of that. Kapadia suggests that Palantir is an even more sinister and dangerous presence. Palantir is the software company set up by Paypal co-founder and rightwing libertarian, Peter Thiel.

Thiel has long argued that democracy and freedom are incompatible. He’s a key archictect of the Network State movement – a group seeking to set up private states run by non-democratic tech governments. This group is currently bidding to turn San Francisco’s Presidio National Park into an experimental “Freedom City”.

When talking about tech fascism, “all roads lead to Peter Thiel”, said Kapadia.

Unfettered AI

Thiel’s Palantir already has a presence in the UK, having won a controversial NHS contract in 2023. And the AI-driven strategies of Palantir and other big tech companies are being complimented by the current UK government. Unfettered AI is at the centre of our national growth strategy.

Cadwalladr is particularly sensitive to this issue. Her former employer, Guardian Media Group, has just announced a partnership with Open AI. Open AI owns ChatGPT – the new agreement will allow ChatGPT access to all the Guardian’s news reporting and archive journalism. Here’s a video of Cadwalladr’s reaction to the AI venture.

Cadwalladr also spoke about the controversial Data Use (and Access) Bill currently going through parliament. The bill seeks to enable AI models to scrape all creative content without remuneration or acknowledgement. Digital campaigner Baroness Kidron has argued that this will tear shreds out of our creative industries.

“I’m appalled by this government,” said Cadwalladr. “It’s so profoundly wrong a Labour government should deprive people of the fruits of their own hard work.”

Take action

In the rollout of ambitious, extractive, technology, ironies like these are abundant. If you’re alarmed by rising tech facism, whether you choose to use the term or not, there are some small things you can do:

1. Watch a 2073 screening, ideally followed by a Q&A. The next is at Goldsmiths on 7 March.
2. Sign up to Carole Cadwalladr’s campaign group, The Citizens.
3. Listen to On with Kara Swisher – a great podcast covering the intersection of tech and power.
4. Join a real-life community activity in your area. This isn’t just because real human contact is a good way to counteract depression and overwhelm, it’s important to have conversations with people who don’t think the same way as you.
5. Vote with your feet and limit your use of big tech products known to extract and profit from your data. I know this is easier said than done but tiny tweaks can help, eg: not shopping online with Amazon, or using BlueSky over X.

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