# mhalla-what-if-the-future-does-not-need-you-2026-09-20

## Veille

Essay by **Asma Mhalla**, political scientist, published on **September 20, 2026** on her Substack newsletter *Dangerous Ideas* (~2,300 words, five parts titled in English), written on returning from a European tour — Madrid, Milan, Brussels — where within the same hour she was discussing AI, Meloni, the AfD, and sovereignty. She argues that September's AI sequence and the rise of nationalist parties are **two faces of the same anxiety**: the fear of becoming superfluous. **(A)** The cross-cutting observation: the viral resignation of **Jacob Coxon** (ex-OpenAI/Anthropic) on September 9, **Hinton** estimating that there is *"maybe a year"* left to put guardrails in place, divided executives (Amodei, Altman, Huang) — and, at the ballot box, **AfD at 43.8%** in Saxony-Anhalt, Vannacci's **Futuro Nazionale** around **7.5%**, Le Pen at **34-36%** in the first round. She withholds judgment on the probability of extinction and defers to the rapport international de sécurité de l'IA. **(B)** The mechanism: the word *replacement*, which first denotes a sensation — *"something could carry on without me"* —, and **retrofuturism**, read through **Jeffrey Herf**'s *Reactionary Modernism* (1984): the authoritarian right never fought technology, it detached it from the market and handed it to the nation. *"Technology is never the enemy. It is spoils."* When AI's producers say they no longer know how to govern it, they supply the vocabulary (control, frontier, sovereignty) to those who promise restoration. The thesis is not an electoral causality but a **narrative compatibility**. On the European side, extends [[wallace-wells-nyt-magazine-ai-populism-altman-backlash-no-one-ready-2026-05-08]].

## Titre Article

WHAT IF THE FUTURE DOES NOT NEED YOU ?

## Date

2026-09-20

## URL

https://asmamhalla.substack.com/p/what-if-the-future-does-not-need

## Keywords

fear of becoming superfluous, replacement, narrative compatibility, tech doom, retrofuturism, Reactionary Modernism, Jeffrey Herf, steel romanticism, technology as spoils, national restoration, Futuro Nazionale, AfD, MAGA, Jacob Coxon, Geoffrey Hinton, rapport international de sécurité de l'IA, loss of control, volatile doctrine of sovereignty, Palantir, DGSI, Trust Barometer Edelman, educated classes, Bill Joy, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, fear is cheap, cognitive economy, independent audits, reproducible evaluations

## Authors

Asma Mhalla, politiste, autrice de *Technopolitique* ; newsletter *Dangerous Ideas* (Substack).

## Ton

**Profile**: a politically engaged essay of scholarly popularization, written in the first person for a French-speaking newsletter readership, with part titles in English (*THE WORD*, *RETROFUTURE*, *THE VOLATILE DOCTRINE*, *FEAR IS CHEAP*) and a subtitle that raises the question of method right from the start.

**Style**: oral, clipped, in paragraphs of one to three lines, often a single nominal sentence — *"Radioactive word. Caution."*, *"There's the link."* — punctuated with anaphora (the six "Your X is slipping away from you," the four "Who...?"). The argument advances through images rather than demonstration: *"a Tesla on the road in 1955,"* *"a rocket to go back to Rome,"* the *"magnificent geopolitical hamster in its pretty wheel."* A deliberately colloquial register and irony directed first at the author herself (*"what a pain I am"*), all of it backed by dated and sourced figures — the official provisional result in Saxony-Anhalt, an Ipsos bva-CESI poll for *Le Parisien*, the Ministry of the Interior's response to the Senate in May 2026, the Edelman *Trust Barometer*.

**Epistemic stance**: declared and bounded. The author explicitly separates what she does not know (the probability of extinction: *"I honestly have no idea,"* deferring to the international report rather than to percentage-based prophecies) from what she claims as expertise (what fear does to institutions). She also bounds her thesis — *"not some cheap electoral causality"* — and herself opposes it with a counter-example, the Sweden Democrats' decline. The limit is one of format: the pairing of the AI sequence with the electoral sequence remains a reading of narrative affinity, with no apparatus that would allow it to be tested.

## Pense-betes

- **The thesis, in its exact form.** Not "AI makes people vote AfD," but a **narrative compatibility**: the two sequences of September 2026 draw on the same implicit question — *"Will I still have a place in the world that is coming?"*. The distinction is stated twice in the text, and it is what makes the reading usable.
- **Why the same word circulates.** Mhalla does not conflate "the great replacement" (a demographic and ethnic theory) with the replacement of an employee by software (an observable economic transformation). She notes the **lexical proximity** and explains it: before being a theory, replacement is a **sensation**.
- **The class shift, and the three scales.** Globalization had familiarized blue-collar workers with offshoring; AI arrives in what educated classes considered their preserve — writing, coding, translating, analyzing. *"And suddenly the people who had spent thirty years explaining to workers that they had to adapt discover the concept of adaptation."* The fear of being superfluous then shifts scale: the individual (my job), the state (my means of action), Europe (building the future or buying someone else's). Compare with [[sun-nyt-silicon-valley-permanent-underclass-2026-04-30]].
- **The figure that serves as a barometer**: **6%** of French people think the next generation will live better (Edelman *Trust Barometer* 2026), **the lowest of the 28 markets studied**. To be set alongside the 32% of declared trust in AI in France (2025) and the 52% rejection rate.
- **Herf, and the operation he describes.** *Reactionary Modernism* (1984): Spengler, Jünger, Schmitt, Heidegger, and the interwar engineers did not fight the machine, they **detached** it from the market, from commerce and from cosmopolitanism to make it German — Goebbels's "steel romanticism." Consequence for today: *"technology is never the enemy. It is spoils, and the only question that has ever mattered has always been: who does it belong to?"*
- **The gift of doom.** The order that produced the machine itself explains that it no longer knows how to govern it; at that moment, the vocabulary of control, frontier, authority, sovereignty, nation — already claimed — returns. The exact mirror of the call to pace in [[amodei-we-must-pace-the-frontier-2026-09]], read not for its content but for its discursive effect.
- **The volatile doctrine of sovereignty** — *"volatile in the chemical sense: it changes state on contact with urgency."* The loop: autonomy is proclaimed → competition accelerates → capabilities are needed right away → what already exists is bought → dependency is discovered → sovereignty is relaunched. And the paradox of the week: Americans say they are slowing down, Europe replies that it must accelerate so as not to entrench the American lead.
- **The Palantir case, dated.** Response from the Ministry of the Interior to the Senate, May 2026: American solution in service since **2015**, designed from the outset as **transitional**, contracts renewed while awaiting a French tool; sovereign interministerial project launched in **November 2021**, first batch acquired by the DGSI in **December 2024**, second still being finalized as of May 2026. *"Eleven years of transitional."*
- **The counter-example, supplied by the author.** On September 13, 2026, the Sweden Democrats fall back to **17.5%** (versus 20.5% four years earlier), their first decline since entering Parliament; Reform UK runs into budget constraints in the local authorities it controls. Restoration works as a promise; power imposes the test that fear allowed one to avoid — governing.
- **The precedent from 2000**: Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, published in *Wired* "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" — twenty-six years ago, same words, same prophecies: *"we did not discover it this year; we simply plugged it back in."*
- **What fear costs, and what it spares.** It warns, but it anesthetizes: it gives the sensation of understanding before the work, finds the culprit before the inquiry. It excuses one from holding together model capabilities, probabilities, economic interests, unemployment, productivity, industrial dependencies, energy, infrastructure. *"The intensity of an emotion then begins to stand in for the quality of a thought."*
- **The "boring" list offered at the end**, worth keeping as is for a risk committee or a public brief: mandatorily documented incidents, independent audits, reproducible evaluations, clear legal liabilities, public investment, European capabilities, labor policy, training, energy infrastructure, governance of critical systems.

## RésuméDe400mots

Asma Mhalla, political scientist, publishes on September 20, 2026 on her newsletter *Dangerous Ideas* an essay written on returning from a European tour, during which she moved within the same hour from artificial intelligence to the AfD and to sovereignty. Her hypothesis: September 2026 tells a single story whose pieces have not been connected.

On one side, the AI sequence. On September 9, Jacob Coxon, a young researcher who passed through OpenAI then Anthropic, resigns and publishes a viral warning: advanced AI could kill humanity before the decade is out. A week later, Geoffrey Hinton comes out of a briefing to Congress and estimates that there may be only a year left to put guardrails in place. Industry leaders diverge publicly: Amodei calls for slowing down, Altman demands more oversight, Huang refuses any coordinated slowdown. On the other side, the ballot box: the AfD obtains 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, Roberto Vannacci's Futuro Nazionale settles around 7.5% in Italy, Marine Le Pen gathers 34 to 36% of voting intentions in the first round.

Mhalla refuses to take a position on the probability of extinction and refers to the rapport international de sécurité de l'IA: current capabilities insufficient for a loss-of-control scenario, rapid progress, divided experts. Her real subject lies elsewhere: what fear manufactures. A word circulates everywhere — replacement — because before being a theory, it denotes a sensation: something could carry on without me. AI is reaching the professions that educated classes believed protected, and the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer measures French disenchantment: 6% think the next generation will live better.

Then comes retrofuturism. Futuro Nazionale, MAGA's "again": the desirable future is a restoration. Drawing on Jeffrey Herf's Reactionary Modernism, she recalls that the authoritarian right never fought technology; it tore it away from the market to hand it to the nation. Technology is spoils, and the only question is who it belongs to. When its producers declare they no longer know how to govern it, they hand the forces of restoration their favorite vocabulary. Not an electoral causality: a narrative compatibility.

France illustrates the paradox through a volatile doctrine of sovereignty, of which Palantir at the DGSI, "transitional" since 2015, is the example. Conclusion: fear is cheap, it excuses one from the work. Serious AI risk calls for documented incidents, independent audits, reproducible evaluations, public investment. "I understand this fear. I refuse to grant it the status of thought."

## GrapheDeConnaissance

- Asma Mhalla —publie→ article What if the future does not need you (DOCUMENT, 0.98)
- Asma Mhalla —affirme_que→ la panique autour de l'IA et la montée des forces de restauration nationale sont deux faces d'une même angoisse, la peur de devenir superflu (AFFIRMATION, 0.96)
- Asma Mhalla —s_oppose_à→ thèse d'une causalité électorale directe entre IA et vote nationaliste (AFFIRMATION, 0.95)
- Compatibilité narrative —s_applique_à→ rencontre entre le discours du doom technologique et celui de la restauration nationale (AFFIRMATION, 0.93)
- Peur de devenir superflu —s_applique_à→ trois échelles — l'individu (mon métier), l'État (mes moyens d'agir), l'Europe (fabriquer ou acheter le futur) (AFFIRMATION, 0.93)
- Asma Mhalla —affirme_que→ "Avant de devenir une théorie, le remplacement est une sensation" (CITATION, 0.94)
- Rétrofuturisme —est_basé_sur→ Reactionary Modernism (DOCUMENT, 0.92)
- Jeffrey Herf —publie→ Reactionary Modernism (DOCUMENT, 0.95)
- Reactionary Modernism —affirme_que→ les modernistes réactionnaires n'ont pas combattu la machine, ils l'ont détachée du marché et du libéralisme pour la confier à la nation et à l'État fort (AFFIRMATION, 0.93)
- Asma Mhalla —affirme_que→ "La technologie n'est jamais l'ennemie. Elle est un butin et la seule question qui compte a toujours été : à qui appartient-elle ?" (CITATION, 0.95)
- Doom technologique —permet→ aux forces de restauration le vocabulaire du contrôle, de la frontière, de l'autorité et de la souveraineté (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Jacob Coxon —prédit→ l'IA avancée pourrait tuer l'humanité avant la fin de la décennie (AFFIRMATION, 0.92)
- Geoffrey Hinton —prédit→ il reste "peut-être un an" pour mettre en place des garde-fous (AFFIRMATION, 0.92)
- Rapport international sur la sécurité de l'IA —affirme_que→ les systèmes actuels n'ont pas toutes les capacités nécessaires à un scénario de perte de contrôle, certaines progressent vite, les experts restent divisés (AFFIRMATION, 0.94)
- Asma Mhalla —est_basé_sur→ Rapport international sur la sécurité de l'IA (DOCUMENT, 0.9)
- AfD —mesure→ 43,8 % des voix en Saxe-Anhalt le 6 septembre 2026 (MESURE, 0.95)
- Futuro Nazionale —mesure→ 7,5-7,7 % en Italie, parmi les principales forces politiques (MESURE, 0.92)
- Roberto Vannacci —dirige→ Futuro Nazionale (ORGANISATION, 0.94)
- Trust Barometer Edelman —mesure→ 6 % des Français pensent que la prochaine génération vivra mieux — le plus bas des 28 marchés étudiés (MESURE, 0.95)
- Doctrine volatile de souveraineté —observé_dans→ la réponse européenne à l'appel américain au ralentissement — accélérer pour ne pas sanctuariser l'avance américaine (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Palantir —observé_dans→ renseignement intérieur français depuis 2015, solution présentée dès l'origine comme transitoire (AFFIRMATION, 0.94)
- Doctrine volatile de souveraineté —observé_dans→ onze ans de Palantir « transitoire » à la DGSI, l'outil souverain restant inachevé en mai 2026 (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Bill Joy —publie→ Why the Future Doesn't Need Us (DOCUMENT, 0.95)
- Why the Future Doesn't Need Us —s_applique_à→ antécédent de 2000 aux prophéties d'extinction de 2026 — mêmes mots, mêmes angoisses (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Asma Mhalla —affirme_que→ "L'intensité d'une émotion commence alors à tenir lieu de qualité d'une pensée" (CITATION, 0.94)
- Asma Mhalla —recommande→ incidents obligatoirement documentés, audits indépendants, évaluations reproductibles, responsabilités juridiques claires, investissements publics, politique du travail, infrastructures (AFFIRMATION, 0.95)
- Démocrates de Suède —mesure→ 17,5 % le 13 septembre 2026 contre 20,5 % quatre ans plus tôt, premier recul depuis leur entrée au Parlement (MESURE, 0.92)
- Reform UK —observé_dans→ contraintes financières des collectivités qu'il dirige au Royaume-Uni (AFFIRMATION, 0.88)

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Canonical: https://www.thekb.eu/en/fiches/mhalla-what-if-the-future-does-not-need-you-2026-09-20/