Political technology is Foucault's idea that institutions like militaries are technologies for formatting people into docile components. I apply it to AI stacks, which I think produce docile polities on top of docile bodies.
How the word moved
In Apr and May 2026, writing on the AI Polyconflict and cognitive sovereignty, I used it to say that militaries have always been artificial intelligences. AI just makes that obvious.
In my words
"It produces docile bodies within docile polities."
from Cognitive Sovereignty, 7 May 2026
Related
- Inherited from Michel Foucault - what I take from Foucault is Discipline and Punish and its docile bodies.
- Related Distributed Cognition - distributed cognition is the other half of the frame.
- Related Prediction Stack - the prediction stack is a political technology at civilizational scale.
- Related Planetary Cyborg - the cybernetic complex was a political technology.