Introduction

It was 14 May 2019, Berlin, Germany. The U-Bahn stop at Görlitzer Bahnhof was only a few minutes from the anarchist social space I was headed to in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. A few days earlier, I came across a leaflet about a meeting there. The topic of discussion was 'Fall of AI: A Call to Fight "Artificial Intelligence" as Part of the Technological Dominion'.1 A year earlier, Google had planned to build one of its Google Campus start-up hubs in the same neighbourhood. Kreuzberg's response was strong - and unsurprising. After months of protests and demonstrations, Google backed down, renouncing its plans.2

In 2019, I was a first-year PhD student at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, specializing in political violence and terrorism.3 I had followed the campaign against Google Campus and knew that anarchist groups had been at its forefront. More importantly, I knew that, in May 2019, Berlin would host the 2019 Rise of AI Conference.4 The leaflet, with its headline mirroring the conference's title, naturally piqued my curiosity. I decided to attend the meeting. Of course, I never anticipated that it would end up motivating me to write this book!

The meeting wasn't exceptionally crowded - around a dozen people. And the first hour was, in all honesty, quite tedious. A few speakers went on about artificial intelligence, explaining what it is and how it works, and then discussed its potential moral and ethical issues. Halfway through, they switched from German to English following the request of a comrade whose German wasn't good enough to follow the discussion. I was relieved; I am fluent in German but more comfortable with English - especially when the discussion is quite technical, bordering on a computer science talk. But after this first endless hour, the topic changed. Echoing Lenin, the meeting moved to discuss what is to be done about AI. A few people asked to intervene. The first proposed a stable presence at the AI conference, distributing leaflets and trying to raise awareness about the potential risks of artificial intelligence. The second opted for the opposite approach: retreat to the countryside, form a commune, and renounce modern technology - a sort of anarchist Amish. The third, who had been quite vocal throughout the first session, clicked his tongue, pointing out how these paths had already been tried and had failed; there was no reason to believe they'd succeed now. The argument went like this: 'People won't change their mind because of a leaflet' and 'The consequences of AI and other emerging technologies will be too far-reaching to escape.' Encouraged to offer a solution, this third speaker admitted he had none but added that he couldn't exclude a near future when he'd punch someone in the face for wearing Google Glass. I couldn't tell how serious that comment was. But those words stuck with me for weeks, eventually prompting me to begin researching anti-technology politics as a side interest.

As a student of political violence and terrorism, I was already familiar with the story of Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who conducted a one-man war against technology in the United States from 1978 to 1995. But as I started reading more about this topic, it brought back snippets of related incidents I'd come across online or in the news but hadn't paid much attention to. I remembered sitting in my living room in Italy in 2012, reading about the CEO of a nuclear engineering group who had just been kneecapped by two insurrectionary anarchists from the Informal Anarchist Federation. What was the motive for such a heinous act? The two anarchists wanted to punish the CEO for pursuing and spreading nuclear technology around the world.5 Additionally, I recalled hearing about another insurrectionary anarchist action against technology: an arson attack against the Italian Technology Institute on Christmas Eve in 2018.6 These incidents no longer seemed like isolated events but rather part of a larger and more significant trend. However, despite sensing a bigger underlying phenomenon, I couldn't find any readings that fully satisfied my curiosity. Apart from books and articles on the Unabomber, most of what I found on the topic of political violence, terrorism, and technology focused on how violent extremists could adopt and exploit emerging technologies.7 So I seized the nettle and took it upon myself to begin exploring this disturbing yet fascinating topic.

I will be honest: I did not find what I expected; I found much more. I embarked on this journey expecting to discover anti-technology extremism primarily directed against specific technologies, primarily emerging technology. After all, we live in an era of rapid technological advancement. The Fifth Industrial Revolution is on the horizon. It will see the convergence and integration of various technologies - such as artificial intelligence and machine learning - with humans, whereby the former will be given tasks and decision-making capabilities. The potential to bring about a paradigm shift in many sectors of society, from industry to public services, is enormous.8 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) - the public body of the UK government that directs research and innovation funding - published a report in December 2023 that compiled a list of the fifty emerging technologies that 'could change everything'.9 From the Internet of Things, additive manufacturing, drones, biotechnology, neurotechnology, blockchain, and robotics to virtual and augmented reality, the world as we know it is changing. Yet for all the miracles and wonders these technologies herald, they also elicit anxiety, scepticism, and fear. I suspected anti-technology extremism would sit at the intersection of these feelings, motivated primarily by concerns such as exacerbating social and economic inequalities or privacy. Beyond this material realm, I also expected the unease about emerging technologies to stem from the emotional and psychological responses they provoke. For example, watching videos of humanoid robots performing complex tasks can evoke an 'uncanny valley' effect where the familiar and unfamiliar seem to merge. This discomfort can escalate into anxiety when people ponder the yet-unknown consequences of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. What exactly can AI do? What is machine learning? How far will they go? Will they surpass human intelligence? Such questions are loaded with uncertainty and can lead to broader apprehension about the direction in which our society is headed and the unknown ramifications that technology can bring. A recent poll, for example, found that 61% of Americans consider AI poses an existential risk to humanity's future, threatening civilization.10 While the proportion of people who hold a similar belief is remarkably lower in the United Kingdom (18%), there is a generally pessimistic attitude towards artificial intelligence, with Britons lamenting a lack of confidence that AI can be developed or regulated responsibly.11 Other recent technologies have similarly caused concern among the general public. For instance, 5G technologies have been associated with a series of harmful effects on human health.12

However, as I delved deeper, I soon realized there was much more to anti-technology extremism than this. Its roots run deeper and are far more complex than mere apprehension towards specific technological innovations. In other words, the resistance and unease I encountered were not just reactions to the latest gadgets or groundbreaking advancements. Sure, those do play a role in all this. The recent protests against 5G technology or mRNA vaccines can be seen as reactions to the above-mentioned concerns and to the disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracies that often come with them. But, beyond this, I found that anti-technology extremism constitutes a deep-seated response to the very essence of our modern existence - a reaction against our technological civilization. It is a multifaceted phenomenon; anti-technology extremism emerges as a cross-cutting ideological current found in different ideological milieus - defined as dynamic clusters of social actors that share some ideological traits, presenting both sub-currents and common beliefs. Indeed, while my first encounter with anti-technology extremism was within the anarchist realm, I soon discovered variations of these feelings within other ideologies. Ranging from radical environmentalism to the far right, I focused on the most extreme fringes of such movements to identify and explore the positions that advanced the most uncompromising and violent critique of technology. This exploration led me to different ideological milieus, namely insurrectionary anarchism, eco-extremism, and eco-fascism, which currently display the most marked forms of anti-technology extremism. Despite the many differences that set these milieus apart, they are united in their opposition to technology. This opposition is not, however, associated with one or more specific technologies but with technology as a whole - perceived as an entity that goes beyond the individual machines and takes on the characteristics of an all-encompassing mega-machine that enslaves both humans and nature. As such, this is not merely about a fear of the unknown or a reactionary resistance to change. To these extremists, the issue isn't just the dangers of artificial intelligence, the ethical dilemmas of biotechnology, or...