This time around, the colonisers have AI

When the West mastered gun technology, they exported their empire across the planet. The technology they have now is much more powerful.

SIMON ALLISON

A STANDING OVATION. At the Munich Security Council on Sunday, Marco Rubio, US President Donald Trump’s chief diplomat, delivered a speech to foreign ministers, defence chiefs, and foreign policy experts. In it, he extended an invitation to Europe to “renew the greatest civilisation in human history” – a Western, Christian society that shares “culture, language, ancestry”; is “unapologetic in our heritage”; and will together “rebuke and deter the forces of civilisational erasure that today menace both America and Europe alike”.

This kind of language is familiar to anyone who has studied the histories of empire, genocide, and white supremacy. Every single person in that audience in Munich understood exactly what Rubio was communicating.

And they gave him a standing ovation. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – the leader of a political party forged in the struggle against white supremacy – was not in Munich. But he got the message loud and clear. “What we should be avoiding is a new form of colonialism,” he told The Africa Report, in response to Rubio’s speech.

Recognising the problem is one thing. Stopping it is something else altogether. This time around, would-be empire builders have new, extraordinarily powerful technological tools at their disposal – and the leaders of the world’s largest tech companies have fully endorsed that vision of the future.

US Big Tech magnates have lined up for photo shoots with Trump, the leader of the US administration whose vision Rubio was selling to Europe. They have lined his pockets with tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Some may even share his racist ideology. Elon Musk, for example, gave what appeared to be a Nazi salute at a Trump rally last year. Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, together with his online encyclopedia Grokipedia, routinely promotes white supremacists and their ideas.

These are the people in charge of the AI revolution, which has been slow to deliver on its utopian promises – but fast to facilitate genocide and repression. Nowhere was AI’s utility to the violence of modern power projects more evident than in Gaza. Here, Israel relied heavily on AI tools to conduct one of the deadliest military campaigns in history, with civilians accounting for 83% of the dead, according to The Guardian. These tools are supported by the world’s largest companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

The world is being convulsed by two simultaneous revolutions – geopolitical and technological. Gaza, and Rubio’s reception in Munich on Saturday, make one thing clear: these revolutions aren’t ushering in a global utopia – they are entrenching and exacerbating existing inequalities and racial hierarchies. And the avenues for resistance are narrowing, fast.