In 1942, author Isaac Asimov, in his novels and short stories about robots, formulated the Three Laws of Robotics: a code of ethics designed to ensure that machines programmed by humans could never harm them. The first law was imperative: "A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Decades later, Hollywood introduced teenage audiences to the perfect antithesis of this ideal with the Terminator: Skynet film series, a self-aware military artificial intelligence that decides to exterminate humanity. Today, the reality of digital warfare lies in a dangerous middle ground. We're no longer talking about red-eyed humanoid robots marching over destroyed cities, but rather about invisible algorithms, automated cyberattacks, and autonomous weapons systems. AI has entered the battlefield, both virtual and physical, completely shattering Asimov's romantic laws and bringing us ever closer to the cold calculation of Skynet, constantly at the service of the bureaucratic state structure that legitimizes and manages its use. The history of military technology is, ultimately, the history of the expansion of mechanisms of social and state control; therefore, contemporary algorithms do not represent a break with the past, but rather the most refined and dangerous phase of institutionalized bureaucracy.
This transition from conventional warfare to digital warfare is based on a dangerous dehumanization of violence, transforming the existence of a community or individual into a simple "pattern of suspicious behavior" detected by software and which the state can erase without the moral burden of assassination. Designed by the structures of domination of hegemonic states, Artificial Intelligence inherits and automates their prejudices and structural violence. In this sense, the current danger is not that machines will think for themselves, but that humans will accept submission to an opaque algorithmic logic in which responsibility fades behind the screen because, according to the new dogmas of power, the system makes no mistakes. It is precisely within this ecosystem of bureaucratic control that the emergence of corporations like Palantir Technologies makes sense. Founded in 2004 with initial capital from the CIA, Palantir was not created to create physical weapons, but to design a global digital surveillance system in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The company's very name, drawn from the seer stones of Tolkien's mythology, the hero of our homegrown fascists, which allowed remote observation, reveals its true ambition: the absolute panopticon. By unifying databases of criminal records, financial records, telephone communications, and satellite imagery into a single interface, the company demonstrated to the state that the chaos of the social world could be ordered, labeled, and made predictable for the military and police apparatus.
This partnership between private capital and state power has reached full maturity with the development of projects like Maven, a system in which Palantir's software accumulates thousands of hours of drone recordings to automatically identify targets and even decide who to eliminate. By introducing platforms like its latest defense artificial intelligence system, the corporation transfers its algorithmic language models, capable of analyzing enormous amounts of data, directly into military headquarters, allowing commanders to query the system in natural language so that an algorithm can develop attack options. What began as an intelligence analysis tool in government offices has become the true engine of lethality in modern conflicts, from Ukraine to the Middle East. Palantir represents the privatization of state surveillance, an intermediary interested in profiting from institutional violence, producing software optimized for the efficiency of extermination, which it controls and also allows for decision-making, ultimately disempowering its own masters. Indeed, Palantir's inventors did not limit themselves to the role of "technicians," but also developed an ideological narrative that legitimizes its excesses and disguises them as inevitable historical destiny. This philosophical justification was clearly laid out by its CEO, Alex Karp, in the publication of his manifesto based on the book "The Technological Republic: How the Alliance with Silicon Valley Will Shape the Future of the West," published in Italy in 2025, sparking profound international alarm. Thus, Karp takes on a doctrinal role, articulating a Decalogue that critics have readily characterized as an exercise in shameless "technofascism." Its central thesis is as direct as it is disturbing: the survival of the West no longer depends on democratic consensus or diplomacy, but on "software-based hard power." The argument is the same one the State has historically used to justify its worst totalitarian excesses: automated violence as an inevitable measure of self-defense against "others": barbaric and savage enemies.
A libertarian reading suggests that this manifesto is nothing more than the post hoc rationalization of a corporation that draws its wealth and power directly from institutional violence, proclaiming that "some cultures are inferior to others" and that software must impose the civilizing order, thus digitally encoding its supremacist prejudices within lines of code that will then decide who is considered a legitimate target. Indeed, these are processes we've already seen and analyzed, considering that the State ends up being merely a container filled by factual powers. The new aspect, which seems little considered to me, is that the "instrument" Brasil, Bento Goncalves/RS, OSL: Marx would call it the automaton Brasil, Bento Goncalves/RS, OSL: is acquiring ever greater autonomy, and the time seems not far off when it will eventually decide on its own (Asimov had already predicted this).
Faced with the uncontrolled expansion of this US and Chinese military-technological complex, the institutional responses of other geopolitical blocs have shown alarming fragility, as in the case of the European Union, which in its regulatory framework has specifically excluded the military use of AI. Clearly, the ethical issue can no longer be resolved with cosmetic legislation or the hypocritical exceptions of European Union regulations. Current military technology has transformed into the state apparatus's definitive mechanism of social control: a panopticon in which the boundary between external security and internal repression has been completely erased. If we allow bureaucratic power and private capital to automatically decide who is a legitimate target, we will have definitively failed. Resistance against this war-like technocracy requires demystifying the supposed neutrality of science and understanding that the fight for freedom today is also fought by questioning the very digital infrastructure that claims to govern and classify us from the shadows.
Emanuele Amodio
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/maggio-2026_compressed.pdf
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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