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Losing Sovereignty to the Digital? · Diplomacy and International Relations

• 0:00
  Hello and a massive welcome to Diplomacy and International
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  Relations by Bastian Freiburg. It's great to be here.
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  hiding in the pantry for 5 minutes apiece, we are
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  absolutely thrilled to have. You.
• 0:15
  We really are. Now, before we really get into
• 0:18
  it, and believe me, the topic we're unpacking today is it's a
• 0:22
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  that out. Please do.
• 0:58
  But let's let's turn our attention to the stack of notes
• 1:01
  on the desk today, because looking at some of these titles,
• 1:04
  we've got Kierkegaard, Biancho, Han, Data Feudalism.
• 1:08
  I get the feeling we aren't just talking about trade agreements
• 1:11
  today. No, not at all.
• 1:13
  We are talking about the, well, the architecture of reality
• 1:17
  itself. That's a big claim.
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  It is, but I think it's justified.
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  The central theme we're tackling is what some scholars are now
• 1:24
  calling the information regime. It sounds abstract.
• 1:27
  I know a. Little bit, yeah.
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  But it's really the water we are all swimming in.
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  We're looking at how digital surveillance, big data, and this
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  this state of constant hyperconnectivity are reshaping
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  not just our personal lives, but political autonomy itself.
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  And we're going to be looking at this through a really specific
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  are we? We're asking how does this new
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  digital reality affect political autonomy from a Danish
• 1:51
  perspective? Exactly.
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  And from there, how does that ripple out into diplomacy in
• 1:56
  general, and especially from a European standpoint?
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  It's a huge topic. It really is.
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  I think when most people hear surveillance, they think of
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  cameras on street corners. Right.
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  Or maybe the NSA listening to phone calls.
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  That's the old model. But we are moving.
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  I would argue we have already moved far beyond George Orwell's
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  Big Brother. We're in a new era.
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  We are in the era of big. OK.
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  Big Brother versus Big data. Can you distinguish that for me?
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  Because I think for the average person, it all just feels like
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  being watched. What is the fundamental shift?
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  The fundamental shift is from coercion to to freedom, or at
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  least the feeling of freedom. The illusion of freedom.
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  Precisely the old model, the Orwellian one, was about, you
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  know, the boot stamping on a human face forever.
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  You were watched, you knew you were watched, and you were
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  afraid. It was a regime of no.
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  You can't do this. You can't say that you.
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  Cannot go there. It was top down visible
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  oppression, the classic totalitarian state, right?
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  But the model we are living in now, it is based on, yes.
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  It's not forced upon us. We invited in.
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  The mechanism of control isn't pain, it's pleasure.
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  It's convenience, it's connection.
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  So we aren't being forced to give up our secrets.
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  No, we're happily posting. Them.
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  We curate. Them, we brand them.
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  We Polish them, we broadcast them, and to really understand
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  this, to get to the bottom of why this is a crisis for
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  diplomacy and not just, you know, a problem for teenagers on
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  TikTok, we're just going to look at tech journals.
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  No, we're going somewhere much older.
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  We are going to use the philosophy of Denmark's most
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  famous thinker, Surin Kierkegaard, to understand why
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  our modern digital life is a profound threat to being a real
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  human being. And by extension.
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  By extension, a real sovereign state.
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  I have to say I love that we are bringing the Great Dane into a
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  discussion about algorithms. It sounds like a bit of a
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  stretch at first glance. It seems like it, but looking at
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  the material we have here, especially the analysis by the
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  philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, it fits so perfectly it's almost
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  eerie. So let's unpack this.
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  We're starting with what we're calling the Danish Lens.
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  Yes, Hubert L Dreyfus was a brilliant philosopher at
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  Berkeley, and he saw the connection between computers and
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  Kierkegaard way, way before anyone else really did.
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  He looked at Kierkegaard's critique of the press and the
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  public back in the 19th century. OK, so obviously Kierkegaard
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  didn't have Twitter, you didn't have smartphone, but he hated
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  the newspapers of his day. Oh, he detested them with a
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  passion. But we have to be really
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  specific here. His critique wasn't just, you
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  know, journalism is bad or fake news.
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  It was deeper than that. It was ontological.
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  It was about what the press created.
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  He argued that the press, this new technology of mass media, it
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  conjured up a phantom, a monstrous abstraction he called
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  the public. The public?
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  That sounds so innocent. I mean, we talk about public
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  service, public health, public squares.
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  Why was Kierkegaard so afraid of the public?
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  Because, he argued, the public doesn't actually exist.
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  It's not real. What do you mean?
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  Think about it. When you speak to a person, your
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  neighbor, your friend, the person at the bakery, you are
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  speaking to a specific, concrete individual.
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  They have a name, a face, a history.
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  If you insult them, there are consequences.
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  Right. They can get angry, they can
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  confront you. It's tangible.
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  Exactly. If you make a promise to them,
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  them you were bound by it. That is responsibility.
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  But when the press speaks, or when public opinion speaks, who
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  exactly is speaking? It's everyone and no one all at
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  the same time. Precisely, it is a cloud, a
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  ghost. Kierkegaard argued that this
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  created what he called a leveling effect.
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  Leveling, yeah. So flattening everything out,
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  yes. In the public, everyone has an
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  opinion on everything, but no one has any actual commitment to
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  anything. It creates a state where you can
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  be passionately interested in everything without ever having
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  to risk yourself. That sounds painfully familiar,
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  doesn't it? It sounds exactly like scrolling
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  through a news feed. You see a tragedy in a war zone.
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  You click a sad face emoji. You Scroll down.
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  You see a cat video. You laugh.
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  You Scroll down again, see a political scandal.
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  You leave a snarky comment. And you feel like you've engaged
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  with the world. Yes, you feel informed.
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  You feel like you've participated.
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  But you haven't actually done anything.
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  You haven't moved from your chair, You haven't risked your
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  reputation in a meaningful way. You haven't put your body on the
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  line. That is the leveling.
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  Everything is reduced to the same level of superficial
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  engagement. And Dreyfus connects this
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  directly to the Internet. He says Kierkegaard predicted
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  the Internet aged perfectly. Kierkegaard feared that this
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  anonymity, this ability to be part of the public without being
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  a specific responsible person, would lead to a kind of
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  nihilism. Nihilisms, a really strong word.
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  We usually associate that with believing in nothing, with total
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  despair. Is it so strong though?
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  I mean, if nothing really matters enough to stake your
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  life on or to make an unconditional commitment to,
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  then does anything truly have meaning?
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  That's a fairpoint. If everything is just content, a
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  war, a recipe for banana bread, a diplomatic crisis, then
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  everything is flattened on to the same level.
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  It's all just a stuff to be consumed.
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  So Dreyfus is saying that the Internet just amplifies what
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  Kierkegaard saw in the newspapers. 1000 times times
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  over in the 19th century, the press allowed for a lack of
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  personal responsibility. Today, the Internet and what
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  some thinkers call the swarm, makes that the default state of
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  being. It creates this detached,
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  superficial, almost ironic engagement with the world.
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  OK, I want to dig into something Dreyfus talks about because I
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  think it explains the psychology of this perfectly.
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  He brings up Kierkegaard, stages of life, the aesthetic and the
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  religious. Yes, this is absolutely central
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  to the argument. Can you lay that out for us?
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  What's the aesthetic stage? So for Kierkegaard, the
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  aesthetic sphere of existence is about being a spectator.
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  It's the life of curiosity, of avoiding boredom at all costs,
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  of keeping your options open. The aesthete tastes everything
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  but commits to nothing. They're a connoisseur of
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  experiences. And the Internet is the ultimate
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  aesthetic machine. It is the perfect engine for the
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  aesthetic life. It is designed from the ground
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  up to prevent boredom at all all costs.
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  The infinite scroll is the very mechanism of the aesthetic
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  sphere. There's always something new,
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  something different, something shiny to look at.
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  So you never have to choose. You never have to make a choice
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  that closes off other options but to move to what Kierkegaard
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  calls the religious stage. And we should be clear, he
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  doesn't necessarily mean a specific organized church.
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  Right, it's more about a state of being.
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  It's a state of unconditional commitment to a person, to A
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  cause, to a faith. To get there, you have to make a
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  choice. You have to leap.
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  You have to dare. And you can't really dare in a
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  comment section. Not in the way he means it.
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  You can be provocative, sure, You can be a troll.
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  But that isn't daring, because there is no real risk to the
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  self. If the heat gets too hot, you
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  delete the account, you close the browser tab, you just walk
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  away. You walk away.
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  True commitment for Kierkegaard requires that you cannot escape
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  the consequences of your actions.
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  It's binding. It defines who you are.
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  So let's bring this all together.
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  From a Danish philosophical perspective, this digital life
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  threatens political autonomy because it turns citizens into
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  this phantom public. Exactly.
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  And this is where it hits the Danish context so hard.
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  Think about what underpins Danish society.
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  It's a society built on incredibly high levels of trust.
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  Yes, that's always the headline about Denmark.
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  And that trust is built through fornings.
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  Live, associational life. People physically showing up to
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  run the football club, the housing association, the local
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  branch of a political party. It's about embodied presence and
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  commitment. It's.
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  Tangible democracy. It's not abstract.
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  It's doing things together in the real world.
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  But if those citizens are transformed into a phantom
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  public, a collection of anonymous, noncommittal
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  spectators, what happens to that foundation?
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  It's worth to crumble. The state itself becomes hollow.
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  You have a lot of noise, a lot of opinions flying around, but
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  no real political will, no capacity for collective risky
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  action. We.
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  Become a gallery of onlookers watching our own democracy, just
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  scrolling through the news of its decline, but never actually
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  committing to saving it. That's the Kierkegaardian fear,
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  and this leads us directly into the work of a contemporary
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  philosopher who takes this fear and shows us the precise
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  machinery behind it. And that would be Byung Chu Han.
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  Yes, he called it psychopolitics.
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  Psychopolitics Now this is a conscious shift from a term that
• 10:25
  many people might be familiar with, which is Michelle
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  Foucault's biopolitics. Right.
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  Correct. And to really get Han, you have
• 10:31
  to understand who he is arguing with or building upon.
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  Foucault, writing in the 20th century, analyzed the
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  disciplinary society. OK, what did he mean by that?
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  This was the era of the factory, the prison, the hospital, the
• 10:44
  army barracks, the era of big heavy institutions.
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  Where people were physically organized, right?
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  In that era, Fuko argued, power was about controlling the body.
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  You were told where to be, how to move, what to do with your
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  hands. It was a regime of no, you
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  cannot do this, you must stay here.
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  And the symbol of this was the panopticon.
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  Jeremy Bentham's prison design. Yes, the guard sits in a central
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  tower and can see into every cell.
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  But the prisoners can't see the guard, so they have to behave as
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  if they're being watched at all time.
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  Because they know they might be. Yes, that's the disciplinary
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  society. But Hans big argument is that we
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  have moved past that. We are no longer in the
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  disciplinary society, we are in the achievement society, OK.
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  And in the achievement Society, we've entered the era of psycho
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  politics. Power no longer needs to control
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  the body from the outside, because it now controls the mind
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  from the inside. And how does it do that if it's
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  not the threat of the guard in the tower?
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  It doesn't do it through coercion or saying no.
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  It does it through what Han calls smart power.
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  Which sounds a lot friendlier. Smart Power sounds like
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  something you'd want on your side.
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  And that is the trap. It's seductive, Han says.
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  The new neoliberal regime operates not by forbidding
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  things, but by pleasing us. It doesn't say no.
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  It says yes like. Share.
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  Boast. Connect, optimize, achieve.
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  So we exploit ourselves. Is that the idea?
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  That is the central brutal paradox.
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  We exploit ourselves willingly in the belief that we are
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  realizing our potential. We think we are expressing our
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  ultimate freedom when we post our lives on Instagram or share
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  our location data for a more convenient app experience.
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  But we are actually just feeding the machine.
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  We are feeding the machine that monitors and controls us.
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  We become our own panopticon. Han uses a really powerful
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  metaphor here and it fits so well since we started with
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  Kierkegaard. He calls the smartphone a
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  digital confessional. It is a brilliant, brilliant
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  image. Think about the Catholic
• 12:41
  confessional. It's a small, private booth.
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  You go in and you tell the priest your secrets, your sins,
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  your deepest desires. And through that act power, the
• 12:52
  Church gains knowledge of your inner self.
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  Yes, but you do it willingly. You do it because you feel
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  unburdened. You feel better afterwards.
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  It's a form of release. And today, the smartphone is the
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  confessional and it's also the rosary we carry with us
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  everywhere. Exactly.
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  We are constantly confessing. We confess where we are via GPS.
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  We confess what we want to buy via our search history.
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  We confess who we love or hate via our social media activity.
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  We are in a constant state of generating data about our
• 13:20
  innermost selves. And this demand for constant
• 13:22
  transparency, this is what Han calls the violence of
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  positivity. Yes, that is a phrase that
• 13:28
  really sticks with you, isn't it?
• 13:29
  It does, because usually we think of violence as negative,
• 13:32
  as destructive. A punch, a bomb, a wall being
• 13:35
  built, something that says no. But an excess of light can blind
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  you just as much as total darkness.
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  Hahn argues that this relentless positivity, this excess of
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  communication, this demand that everything be transparent and
• 13:49
  shared and liked, it destroys the secret.
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  It destroys interiority. And I can hear a listener asking
• 13:55
  right now, why do we need secrets?
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  Isn't transparency a good thing? Shouldn't a democracy be
• 14:01
  transparent? That is the modern reflex, and
• 14:03
  it's a powerful one. But Hans counter argument is
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  that the secret, the hidden, the private is necessary for inner
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  autonomy. If you are totally transparent,
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  if every thought and feeling is immediately expressed and
• 14:17
  shared, you have no interiority left.
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  You're just an interface. You're just a node in the
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  network constantly reacting and transmitting.
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  You have no space to develop a thought that is truly your own
• 14:25
  that goes against the grain. And what about politically?
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  What does this do to the political realm?
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  Politically, you absolutely need secrecy for strategy.
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  You cannot have diplomacy, which by its very nature requires
• 14:37
  discretion and careful negotiation in a world of total,
• 14:40
  immediate transparency. It's impossible.
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  If every tentative thought a diplomat has is tweeted, or
• 14:46
  every back channel negotiation is live streamed, the
• 14:49
  negotiation collapses instantly. It becomes pure theater.
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  There's no room for nuance or compromise.
• 14:55
  This brings it right back to the listeners daily life.
• 14:58
  I think everyone on some level feels this exhaustion.
• 15:02
  Han writes about the achievement subject.
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  The achievement subject is the person who is their own slave
• 15:08
  driver. In the old disciplinary society,
• 15:11
  the boss with a stopwatch forced you to work.
• 15:13
  In the achievement society, you force yourself to work.
• 15:16
  You're always optimizing. Your workout, your diet, your
• 15:19
  career, your social media profile.
• 15:21
  You want to be better, faster, more productive, more followed.
• 15:24
  You had a project to be managed, your own entrepreneur.
• 15:28
  And the result of that is burnout.
• 15:29
  Depression and burnout, Han says, are the signature ailments
• 15:32
  of this new era. They are not bacterial
• 15:35
  infections. They are what happens when the
• 15:37
  project of the self collapses under the the immense weight of
• 15:39
  this self exploitation. So here's the crucial question
• 15:42
  for international relations, for diplomacy.
• 15:46
  If your citizens are a collection of burnt out
• 15:49
  narcissists obsessed with their own data and performance, how do
• 15:54
  you run a sovereign nation? That is the $1,000,000 question.
• 15:58
  I mean, what does a nation state even mean in that context?
• 16:01
  If we are all just exhausted self exploiters, what happens to
• 16:05
  the people as a coherent political force?
• 16:07
  Which leads us directly to another of Hans Key concepts,
• 16:10
  the Swarm. This is absolutely vital for
• 16:13
  understanding why modern politics feel so chaotic and yet
• 16:16
  somehow so stagnant at the same time.
• 16:18
  We used to talk about the masses or the crowd.
• 16:21
  In the 19th and 20th centuries, the mass was a physical thing.
• 16:25
  People gathering in a square, workers marching out of a
• 16:27
  factory. Had a shared identity.
• 16:29
  They had a soul, a voice, a we. Exactly a we that could take
• 16:33
  coherent directed action. They could storm the Bastille,
• 16:35
  they could go on general strike. They had a common direction and
• 16:38
  a shared narrative. Han argues that the digital
• 16:41
  swarm is fundamentally different.
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  How so? It is a collection of isolated
• 16:45
  individuals. Alone.
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  Together. Yes, that's the perfect phrase.
• 16:49
  They are all sitting alone in front of their screens.
• 16:52
  They are connected by hyperlinks and hashtags, but they have no
• 16:55
  soul. They cannot form a we.
• 16:57
  They can't March together in any meaningful.
• 16:59
  Way. So what can they do?
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  All they can do is swarm, and the primary output of the swarm
• 17:03
  is what Han bluntly calls the shitstorm.
• 17:06
  A technical term I'm assuming in his work.
• 17:09
  In this context, yes, absolutely.
• 17:10
  It describes a very specific hydrodynamic of information and
• 17:14
  emotion online. A shootstorm is not political
• 17:18
  discourse. It is not a debate.
• 17:19
  It's a discharge of effect. Pure effect.
• 17:22
  Your emotion, Anger, outrage, mockery, indignation.
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  It flares up instantly with no warning, makes an incredible
• 17:29
  amount of noise, can destroy a persons reputation in hours.
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  And then it just vanishes as quickly as it came.
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  And Hans point is that this leaves the underlying power
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  structures completely unchanged. Precisely.
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  It's a huge release of energy, but it has no structure, no
• 17:43
  strategy, no staying power, just blows over like a digital squaw.
• 17:46
  The system that produced the outrage remains untouched.
• 17:50
  And this is where we really have to look at the implications for
• 17:52
  diplomacy and international relations, specifically for a
• 17:56
  country like Denmark. Yes, because what is diplomacy
• 18:00
  at its core? It's structure, it's rules, it's
• 18:02
  process. It's structure, representation
• 18:05
  and mediation. It is, by design, slow.
• 18:09
  It relies on representatives, diplomats, foreign ministers
• 18:13
  speaking on behalf of the people.
• 18:15
  But the digital swarm hates representation.
• 18:17
  It wants directness. It wants immediacy.
• 18:19
  Why isn't the Prime Minister answering my tweet right now?
• 18:22
  Exactly. It wants to tear down any
• 18:24
  intermediary. This destroys what Han and
• 18:27
  Nietzsche before him called the pathos of distance, the distance
• 18:31
  required for respect. Respect.
• 18:33
  How do you mean? The word respect comes from the
• 18:35
  Latin respasaire, which means to look back at, to look at from a
• 18:38
  distance. You need a certain distance to
• 18:40
  see things clearly, to have respect for an office or for
• 18:44
  another person. When everything is immediate,
• 18:46
  when you can tweet abuse at a foreign leader or your own Prime
• 18:49
  Minister instantly while sitting on the toilet, that distance
• 18:52
  collapses. So we are facing what you could
• 18:54
  call a crisis of representation. We absolutely are.
• 18:57
  The digital medium itself suggests that we don't need
• 19:00
  intermediaries anymore. We don't need political parties
• 19:02
  or diplomats. We can just have instant
• 19:04
  referendums on everything online.
• 19:07
  But Han says this is a dangerous illusion.
• 19:09
  It's an illusion because what replaces the diplomat isn't
• 19:12
  direct democracy. It's just noise.
• 19:15
  It's the disorganized emotional chaos of the swarm.
• 19:18
  It renders the professional diplomat superfluous in the eyes
• 19:21
  of the public, but it offers no workable alternative.
• 19:26
  If we're a small state like Denmark, which relies so heavily
• 19:28
  on soft power, on its reputation, on careful,
• 19:32
  consistent diplomacy, this kind of volatility is incredibly
• 19:36
  dangerous. It's a huge threat.
• 19:38
  If your foreign policy is suddenly being driven by the
• 19:40
  latest domestic shitstorm, the latest viral outrage, it becomes
• 19:44
  impossible to have a coherent long term national strategy.
• 19:47
  This date becomes purely reactive.
• 19:49
  You're just constantly putting out fires that were started by
• 19:51
  the swarm. Instead of building the future
• 19:53
  you want, you are in essence dancing to the algorithms Tune,
• 19:56
  not your nation's. This brings us to the actual
• 19:59
  structure that owns the swarm. We've talked a lot about the
• 20:02
  psychology of the user, the dynamics of the crowd, but what
• 20:05
  about the power of the platforms themselves?
• 20:08
  The outline calls this data feudalism.
• 20:10
  This is the geopolitical reality that I think we're still
• 20:13
  struggling to grasp. We are used to thinking of
• 20:16
  international relations as being about states, Denmark, Germany,
• 20:20
  the US, China, But now we have new actors on the world stage.
• 20:24
  The big tech companies. UFA, as they're often called,
• 20:27
  Google, Apple, Facebook which is now Meta and Amazon.
• 20:31
  And the argument, a very compelling 1, is that they are
• 20:34
  acting like the new feudal Lords.
• 20:36
  OK, unpack that analogy for. Me.
• 20:38
  Well, think about classical feudalism.
• 20:40
  The Lord owned the crucial resource, which was the land.
• 20:44
  The serfs lived on the land and worked the land.
• 20:46
  They got to keep some of the crop to survive.
• 20:48
  But the surplus value, the prophet went straight to the
• 20:51
  Lord. Right now, what's the most
• 20:53
  valuable resource today? It's not land, it's data.
• 20:57
  In data feudalism, the platforms are the new land.
• 21:00
  We, the users are the serfs. And here is the brilliant
• 21:03
  diabolical twist. What's that?
• 21:05
  We work the land for free. Every time you post, every time
• 21:08
  you search, every time you like a photo, you are creating data.
• 21:12
  That data is the new crop. The Lords Google Meta, harvest
• 21:16
  it, refine it and sell it for immense profit.
• 21:19
  And we don't even get to keep a portion of the crop, we just get
• 21:22
  the privilege of staying on the land.
• 21:24
  We get access, we get connection, we get dopamine
• 21:27
  hits, but we have no ownership, no rights to the value we
• 21:31
  create, and this creates a digital penopticon.
• 21:33
  But it's different from Bentham's present.
• 21:35
  Very different. In Bentham's Penopticon, the
• 21:38
  prisoners are isolated and forced to be there.
• 21:41
  In the digital Penopticon, we help build the walls ourselves.
• 21:43
  We want to be seen. We tag our friends and photos.
• 21:47
  We check in at locations. We are participatory inmates.
• 21:50
  So let's apply this directly to the idea of Danish sovereignty.
• 21:53
  If these digital fiefdoms, these American tech companies, control
• 21:57
  the flow of information, and if they control the psychopolitics
• 22:00
  of the Danish population, then where is the Danish state in all
• 22:04
  of this? That is the crisis of
• 22:06
  sovereignty in the 21st century. If the public sphere, the place
• 22:11
  where Danish citizens are supposed to talk to each other
• 22:14
  about their shared future, is owned and operated by a private
• 22:17
  American corporation with its own commercial interests, does
• 22:20
  the Danish state truly have sovereignty over its own
• 22:24
  national dialogue? It becomes a question of Danish
• 22:26
  law versus Silicon Valley algorithms.
• 22:29
  Exactly. And the algorithms will always
• 22:31
  win because they move faster. Diplomacy is no longer just
• 22:34
  between Copenhagen and Washington or Copenhagen and
• 22:37
  Brussels. It is now, crucially between the
• 22:40
  state and the platform. This is why Denmark actually
• 22:43
  became the first country in the world to appoint a tech
• 22:45
  ambassador. It was a groundbreaking move.
• 22:47
  I remember when it happened. It was a formal acknowledgement
• 22:50
  that these Companies Act like nations, that Google requires
• 22:53
  diplomatic representation just as much as Germany or France
• 22:57
  does. It was a necessary, if slightly
• 22:59
  desperate, move because the traditional nation state is
• 23:02
  losing its ability to regulate the perpetua mobile of digital
• 23:06
  capitalism. The algorithms change faster
• 23:09
  than Danish law can be written. They move faster than EU
• 23:12
  regulations can be implemented. And a small tweak to an
• 23:15
  algorithm. A small, unseen tweak to the
• 23:18
  News Feed algorithm by a handful of engineers in California can
• 23:22
  shift the the political sentiment of an entire
• 23:24
  population overnight, perhaps without even intending to.
• 23:27
  That is genuinely terrifying. It's not just about spying
• 23:30
  anymore. It's about nudging and shaping
• 23:32
  behavior on a national, even global scale.
• 23:35
  It is, and for a small nation like Denmark, that poses an
• 23:38
  existential threat. A massive nation like the US or
• 23:42
  China can at least try to build their own firewalls or regulate
• 23:44
  these companies because they are based there.
• 23:46
  But for Denmark, for much of Europe, we are essentially
• 23:50
  digital colonies of Silicon Valley.
• 23:52
  So the new diplomatic mission becomes how do we assert our
• 23:55
  sovereignty when the very ground beneath our feet, the digital
• 23:59
  ground, is owned by someone else?
• 24:01
  Precisely. And this brings us right back
• 24:03
  from the geopolitical to the personal How does living in this
• 24:07
  environment, this digital fiefdom, shape the very identity
• 24:11
  of the people trying to navigate it?
• 24:13
  The diplomat, the politician, the citizen.
• 24:16
  And the source of material we looked at presents 2 tropes for
• 24:20
  this two ways our identity is being shaped, the digital
• 24:22
  neurotic and the digital psychotic.
• 24:25
  Yes, these are strong terms, obviously, but they're used
• 24:28
  metaphorically to describe 2 dominant coping mechanisms.
• 24:31
  The digital neurotic is the anxious curator.
• 24:35
  This is the person. And you see this in public
• 24:37
  figures, diplomats, journalists, who is constantly anxiously
• 24:40
  stitching together their online brand.
• 24:42
  They are terrified of being misunderstood, of saying the
• 24:45
  wrong thing. They're constantly engaged in
• 24:47
  what's called audience design. Yes, exactly.
• 24:49
  Is this tweet professional enough?
• 24:51
  Will this photo offend the left? Will that statement offend the
• 24:54
  right? Does this post look authentic
• 24:56
  but not too authentic? It is an exhausting, never
• 24:59
  ending labor of constantly checking yourself against.
• 25:01
  That's the perceived judgment of the swarm.
• 25:03
  And the second type, the digital psychotic.
• 25:05
  This is the next step. This is the instrumentalized
• 25:08
  self. This is when you stop checking
• 25:10
  yourself against your own internal values and you start
• 25:13
  tuning yourself entirely and exclusively to the algorithm.
• 25:16
  You simply become whatever gets engagement.
• 25:19
  The algorithmic autobiography. Exactly.
• 25:22
  Your life story is written not by you, but by the feedback loop
• 25:25
  of likes, shares and comments. You see this in politicians who
• 25:29
  become absurd caricatures of themselves because they discover
• 25:33
  that outrage and extremism go viral.
• 25:35
  So the self ceases to be a source of values and just
• 25:38
  becomes a project for consumption.
• 25:40
  You are no longer a person with beliefs, you are a content
• 25:43
  creator optimizing for clicks. This connects directly to Jean
• 25:46
  Paul Sartre's idea of bad faith, doesn't it?
• 25:49
  It's a perfect modern example. Sartre talked about the waiter
• 25:52
  who plays the role of a waiter a little too perfectly.
• 25:55
  He's so absorbed in the performance that he isn't being
• 25:57
  himself, he's just being what the customers expect him to be.
• 26:01
  He has become an object. And in the digital age, we trade
• 26:05
  our substantive self, our actual private complex values and
• 26:09
  beliefs, for a situational self. We become whatever the metrics
• 26:14
  say we should be in that moment. And for a diplomat, for a
• 26:16
  national leader, that is fatal. Diplomacy requires a substantive
• 26:21
  self. It requires standing for
• 26:23
  something, for a set of national interests and values, even when
• 26:26
  it's unpopular. But if our leaders are trapped
• 26:29
  in this constant validation seeking loop, then policy
• 26:33
  becomes performative. It becomes about the viral
• 26:36
  moment, the sick burn in the UN General Assembly, the perfectly
• 26:39
  crafted tweet, the flawless photo op.
• 26:42
  It's not about the slow, boring, difficult work of long term
• 26:46
  strategy. You cannot negotiate a complex
• 26:48
  peace treaty if you're subconsciously worried about
• 26:50
  your Twitter engagement. So we have painted a fairly
• 26:53
  bleak picture here. We have a phantom public, a
• 26:56
  burnt out citizenry, a digital swarm instead of a people,
• 26:59
  feudal tech Lords running the platforms, and our leaders
• 27:03
  trapped in algorithmic bad faith.
• 27:04
  It's yeah, it's not a rosy picture.
• 27:06
  Is there a way out? I mean, how do we even begin to
• 27:08
  reclaim political and personal autonomy in this environment?
• 27:12
  There are thinkers who are proposing paths forward.
• 27:15
  One of the most practical is the idea of digital minimalism,
• 27:18
  which has been popularized by Cal Newport.
• 27:21
  But it has deeply philosophical roots.
• 27:23
  And this isn't just about, you know, deleting your Facebook app
• 27:25
  for a week, is it? No, it's not a temporary detox.
• 27:29
  It is a coherent philosophy of less It's about using technology
• 27:33
  deliberately and intentionally to support your deeply held
• 27:36
  values, rather than letting technology use you as a slot
• 27:39
  machine for validation and engagement.
• 27:41
  Newport talks a lot about the importance of solitude, and I
• 27:44
  think his definition here is absolutely key.
• 27:46
  It is. It's not the common definition.
• 27:48
  He defines solitude not as being physically alone, but as freedom
• 27:53
  from the inputs of other minds. That is such a powerful way of
• 27:56
  putting it. So you could be alone in your
• 27:58
  room, but if you were scrolling through TikTok or listening to a
• 28:01
  podcast, ironically enough, you are not in solitude.
• 28:04
  Not at all. You are flooded with the inputs
• 28:07
  of other minds. And Newport's argument, which
• 28:10
  echoes centuries of philosophy, is that without periods of true
• 28:14
  solitude, you cannot develop moral courage, you cannot
• 28:18
  develop original critical thinking.
• 28:20
  You are just processing this warm's noise.
• 28:22
  So for a diplomat, or for any citizen of a democracy, solitude
• 28:27
  is an essential resource. It's a precondition for clear
• 28:30
  thought. You need to disconnect in order
• 28:32
  to. Think And Bianchu Han proposes
• 28:34
  an even more radical solution, which I absolutely love.
• 28:36
  Yeah, he calls for the return of the idiot.
• 28:38
  Chuckles. Yes, but we have to be really
• 28:41
  careful with that word. Of course, of course he doesn't
• 28:43
  mean a stupid person. He is going back to the original
• 28:47
  Greek root itishes. Which meant.
• 28:50
  It meant a private person, someone who was not part of
• 28:52
  public life, not part of the polas, not part of the constant
• 28:55
  political noise. The idiot was the one who was in
• 28:58
  their own world. And he also connects it to the
• 29:01
  Dostoevsky incense from the novel The Idiot.
• 29:03
  Yes, Prince Mishkin, the character who is totally open,
• 29:07
  totally sincere and totally distinct from the scheming,
• 29:10
  cynical society around him. Han argues that the idiot, in
• 29:14
  this philosophical sense, is the only one who has access to the
• 29:18
  other, to the truly new thought, the idea that doesn't just come
• 29:21
  from the network. Why?
• 29:23
  Why does being an idiot in this sense help you think new
• 29:26
  thoughts? Because the swarm, the network,
• 29:29
  is fundamentally a space of sameness.
• 29:31
  It's an echo chamber. It reinforces what everyone
• 29:34
  already thinks. Han points out that the word
• 29:36
  intelligence comes from the Latin interledger, which means
• 29:40
  to choose between. So Intelligence is just picking
• 29:42
  from the existing options on the menu.
• 29:44
  Exactly. But idiocy in this philosophical
• 29:47
  sense is the ability to step outside the network entirely, to
• 29:50
  disconnect from the menu, to create a completely new path.
• 29:53
  It's about not communicating. So to bring it back to Denmark,
• 29:56
  for a small state to have true sovereignty in this hyper
• 29:59
  connected world, maybe it needs to be a bit of an idiot.
• 30:01
  In the best possible way, yes. It needs to have the courage to
• 30:05
  disconnect from the immediate global hysteria, to step back
• 30:09
  from the latest international shitstorm, and to think
• 30:11
  strategically and for the long term based on its own values.
• 30:15
  This sounds a lot like what Nietzsche would call the pathos
• 30:17
  of distance. It's the same idea stepping back
• 30:20
  to game perspective. True diplomacy, true statecraft,
• 30:24
  requires that distance. You simply cannot navigate a
• 30:27
  complex geopolitical crisis if you are reacting emotionally to
• 30:31
  every notification on your phone.
• 30:33
  You need the silence to see the underlying structure of the
• 30:36
  problem. That is a profound take away for
• 30:38
  our listeners, that in an age that worships hyper
• 30:41
  connectivity, perhaps the most powerful political act is to
• 30:44
  strategically disconnect, to reclaim the time and the
• 30:48
  silence, to actually think. It is the only way to transition
• 30:51
  from being a project that exhausted self optimizing data
• 30:54
  generating object back to being a subject a true human being who
• 30:58
  is capable of genuine political action.
• 31:01
  We need to cultivate what has been called high quality
• 31:03
  leisure. We need to stop seeing our
• 31:06
  downtime as just another opportunity to generate data for
• 31:09
  Google and start seeing it as the essential time we need to
• 31:12
  build and understand our own selves.
• 31:14
  To save democracy, we might just need to allow ourselves to be
• 31:17
  bored for a while. To sit in a room alone, without
• 31:21
  a phone and just think that is the beginning of real autonomy.
• 31:26
  So let's just briefly summarize the journey we've been on in
• 31:29
  this discussion we started with Sir and Kierkegaard's 19th
• 31:32
  century fear of the Phantom public.
• 31:34
  We moved through Bing Chilhan's analysis of the digital
• 31:37
  Penopticon and the violence of positivity.
• 31:40
  We looked at how the digital shitstorm has replaced
• 31:43
  diplomatic discourse, and we considered how our diplomats and
• 31:46
  leaders might be acting in algorithmic bad faith.
• 31:48
  It's a journey really, from the loss of the self in the network
• 31:52
  to the potential for reclaiming that self through disconnection.
• 31:55
  And it leaves us with a massive and maybe uncomfortable final
• 32:00
  question for you, the listener. If algorithms are increasingly
• 32:04
  writing our autobiographies for us, if they are directing our
• 32:08
  political outrage, and if our so-called public square is
• 32:12
  actually a private feudal estate, are we citizens of a
• 32:16
  country anymore? Or are we just becoming
• 32:19
  livestock in a digital fiefdom? It is a question that I think
• 32:23
  every free person needs to sit with and answer for themselves.
• 32:26
  On that very provocative note, we are going to wrap things up.
• 32:29
  Thank you so much for joining us for this exploration on
• 32:32
  diplomacy and international relations by Bastian Freibork.
• 32:35
  Thank you, it was a pleasure. If you enjoyed this discussion,
• 32:38
  if it gave you something to think about, please, please take
• 32:41
  just a moment to rate the podcast 5 stars.
• 32:43
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• 32:46
  reach even more people who need to hear these kinds of
• 32:48
  conversations. It makes a huge difference.
• 32:51
  And don't forget to follow the podcasts so you stay updated on
• 32:53
  all our future discussions. Until next time, stay curious
• 32:57
  and maybe, yeah, maybe put the phone down for a little.
• 32:59
  Bit indeed. Goodbye.