Earlier last month, American technology company Palantir Technologies Inc published, on X, a manifesto of sorts called “The Technological Republic”, detailing how it believes societies should operate and function. The 22, admittedly rather alarming, points include the following statement: “The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”
Reading that corporate societal manifesto reminded me of a sub-genre of science fiction I’ve been getting increasingly drawn to over the past year: cyberpunk. It is often described as the juxtaposition of “high tech, low life”, where advanced technology sits in a confused state of conflict and cooperation with societal decay on a dystopian Earth.
Beyond the aesthetics, technology and richness of its narrative possibilities, what draws me most to the genre is how much commentary it offers on the systemic entrenchment of corporate power and technology, and how individuals rage against the machine, yet ultimately fail to overcome the “system”. As someone interested in the pathways societies might take, it leads to a question I keep returning to: How does a cyberpunk world come about?
Now, when we think of common cyberpunk attributes such as vast corporate control, pervasive use of technology, urban decay and widening inequality, it may seem like it resembles the world today. Or, at the very least, it may seem like the world is headed towards a cyberpunk dystopia. But even then, I would argue that it isn’t really fait accompli. The history of economic development has shown that choices, more so than endowments or comparative advantage even, make countries what they are.
As such, there are choices we can make. The more straightforward way of continuing with this article is to talk about the choices that lead us away from a cyberpunk dystopia. That’s kind of boring. Instead, let me twist it the other way round: As much as we can make good choices, we might also make bad ones that could lead us towards a cyberpunk dystopia. But even those “bad” choices — as I explain next — are easy to understand, seemingly rational responses that societies take under difficult constraints. This, in itself, is the real threat of a cyberpunk future.
Bad choice #1: Enabling corporations to de facto monopolise politics
In fairness, no one makes bad choices because they want to make bad choices. It is often a result of the system in which decisionmakers operate. Here are two common mechanisms for which governments may allow corporations to monopolise not only business, markets and the economy but also politics. First, technology giants have the potential to create a lot of value; my life is better with Microsoft in it. But the creation of value can also come with the concentration of power, especially if the leaders of these giants are also given platforms as societal, and not just business, visionaries. Furthermore, if the bureaucracy is weak, there is a temptation for leaders to then rely on firms that possess the capabilities to execute on what those leaders want, further entrenching systemic corporate power.
Second, many of the world’s governments face difficult fiscal constraints and rising debt-to-gross domestic product levels. There is often a temptation to therefore “outsource” the provision of some public goods or services to the private sector, which may have more financial firepower and can therefore bear that burden for the government, in exchange for rents, licences or concessions elsewhere. Each of these decisions is defensible in isolation. Taken together, however, they gradually shift where power accumulates.
Bad choice #2: Delaying the strengthening of state capacity, particularly bureaucratic quality
This is a corollary of the above. If public goods or services are outsourced, not just to corporations but also to philanthropies or foundations, we are effectively hollowing out the functions of the state and therefore the capacity of the state to deliver on its responsibilities. If the state was run well, the role of philanthropies should not be systemic in nature, but idiosyncratic towards individuals who fell through the cracks, rather than entire communities.
Counterbalancing powerful private interests — be it corporates or philanthropies — requires having strong public sector personnel, be it in development strategy, in regulatory and competition policy, in project execution and more. Yet, it is often easy for governments to avoid a real strengthening of state capacity simply because it may be easier and cheaper to just outsource that capacity. Consider, for instance, how many governments around the world often hire external strategy consultants to develop policy documents for them, instead of doing the harder work of training and building a bureaucracy that can develop documents of sufficient quality.
Bad choice #3: Choosing only to redistribute income, not power
Society is ultimately organised around who holds power. As an extension of this, income inequality is typically a symptom of a deeper inequality, the inequality of power. In the TV series The Expanse, a character elegantly describes why people are drawn to extremist movements: “He was able to do what he did because so many people were angry and frightened. They saw the future, and they weren’t in it.”
This is what needs fixing, but it is made difficult by power structures typically favouring the status quo while simpler measures — such as redistributing income via cash transfers or setting minimum wages — offer a convenient way to signal action and say, “Look, we’ve done something.”
It’s true, something is being done, but it doesn’t move the needle. Greater societal participation requires us to think about redistributing power — for instance, by expanding democratic participation at multiple levels or, in Malaysia’s case, by considering how best to deploy the savings in the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) for the collective good. A minority of depositors hold the majority of savings, with nearly 50% of members under 55 having less than RM10,000 in their accounts. The question, then, is whether modestly shifting EPF’s asset allocation towards strategic investments that prioritise job creation for this 50% — while counterbalancing the risk with more fixed-income holdings — might be more beneficial, even if it results in a slightly lower dividend (say, 5% instead of 6%). Would that deliver more for them than an extra RM100 a year in dividends? We know which option is simpler.
This returns us to the question: How does a cyberpunk world come about? The path towards such a future is shaped less by overtly bad choices than by repeatedly defaulting to the simpler one. That is what makes it structurally so difficult to avoid. Cyberpunk emerges not from malevolence, but from sequences of individually rational, locally optimal choices that collectively erode institutional and societal power. It will take powerful counterbalances to rail against the inertia of the status quo. It remains unclear whether society will be up to pushing back against the manifestos of the Palantirs of the world.