From geopolitics to geotechnics: global futures in the shadow of automation, cunning machines, and human speciation. (September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Grove, Jairus
• Other Names: Efstathopoulos Charalampos guest-editor.; Kurki Milja guest-editor.; Shepherd Alistair guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: International relations. Volume 34:Number 3(2020)
• Page Start: 432
• Page End: 455
• Publication Date: 2020-09
• Subjects: automation -- fourth industrial revolution -- geopolitics -- machines -- planetary relations -- third offset; International relations -- Periodicals; World politics -- Periodicals; 303.482
• DOI: 10.1177/0047117820948582
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0047-1178

Abstract

This exploration provides an alternative future to that offered in the discussions surrounding what is often referred to by the 'fourth industrial revolution' or the 'third offset'. I argue that even modest projections of existing trends have the capability of altering the grammar or ecology of geopolitics as well as the drivers for competition and catastrophe. Such changes are more significant than questions of how this or that actor might be different or which great powers may shape the international order in a hundred years. The essay seeks to understand what disruptive changes in non-human capability might mean for the shape of a potential geopolitics to come. In a more general sense, I want to think about how violence will be distributed differently. Will there be new sources and even kinds of competition unique to a global system populated and in some cases, structured by cunning machines – some mechanical, others digital – and what are the implications for how we imagine international relations?