Welcome to Hacking State
A search for exploits.
In my previous post, I announced the end of Agora Politics as such. As promised, here is an introduction to Hacking State.
What is it?
Every company is now a media company. - Balaji Srinivasan
Hacking State is a media technology company. It is not a social media company. It is not merely a newsletter, podcast, Youtube channel, research outlet, or publisher. At root, Hacking State is a technology company that does media, a media company that does technology, and a mission-based enterprise in search of exploits.
In End of an Agora, I gave a description of Hacking State thusly:
Hacking State is a search for exploits. “Hacking State” is a quadruple entendre divided into two pairs corresponding to alternating definitions of hacking and state. To hack as in to cut away, as well as to exploit. State as in the condition of a body or mind, as well as that of a polity or regime.
This might seem at once both overly formal and open-ended, so I’ve given four directions to guide the content of this multimedia enterprise:
Cutting away at a condition of body or mind
Cutting away the State
Exploiting a state of body or mind
Exploiting the State
These are not exhaustive. What’s more, I’ve also asserted the need for “a set of axiomatic principles and proper theoretical frames with which to guide our exploration.” Directionality gives broad themes to animate inquiries. Theory and principle give grounding. It is not enough to wantonly hack away at whatever exists without good reason and effective tools for doing so. The point of Hacking State isn’t to tear down or plunder, but to turn systemic vulnerabilities to useful advantage. The core theoretical frames I’ll be using on approach are computation, evolution, psychology, and of course, political philosophy. I believe that this stack gives almost anything needed to break into, analyze, reconstruct and recalibrate human and society’s OS. Taken altogether, these four frames constitute a vast array of powerful tools for understanding our present situation and unlocking unrealized or underutilized potentials.
Why should I care?
Good question, Anon. As a reader/listener/watcher of Hacking State you’ll have a front-row seat to the unfolding intellectual project to illuminate once-forgotten or neglected areas of inquiry that have the potential to break through this post-post-modern epistemic malaise we have been mired in.
Progress has stalled. Innovation seems broken. It is increasingly hard to imagine futures, even highly technological ones, that are not deeply dystopian. The contention of Hacking State is that there are ways out. Hidden paths and secret keys. Our predicament is not that the Faustian gamble of the West has run out of steam, and that all that’s left is to pay the piper, but that our striving ever-upward was so successful that we reached levels of acceleration that began tearing off components of the substrates on which our technological, scientific, and philosophical progress had been made, because they were not fastened securely enough, or understood thoroughly enough, to avoid being lost or forgotten. What’s needed is a kind of recovery and rediscovery, in conjunction with forward motion. Any project of recovery must be a forward-thinking project, and that is what Hacking State is. If this strikes you as needful and true, then follow along.
What’s next?
In the coming weeks I’ll begin laying out the core problems and investigative routes we will take to head off our search for a way out. Given the tools listed and directions enumerated, there are some general topics to be explored here and elsewhere as part of the Hacking State project, including but not limited to:
Psy-ops, neurowarfare, and mind control.
Transhumanism, Posthumanism, and cybernetics.
Crypto, digital sovereignty, DAOs, and decentralized governance.
Acceleration, Counter-Enlightenment, and Post-Liberalism.
Disinformation, propaganda, sensemaking, and networks.
As above, this list is not exhaustive. I am not the only writer/podcaster/thinker presenting on these topics. There are specialists who no doubt can go further in depth on a given one than I. However, there is no one doing so in concert with the direction and frameworks I’ve described, a toolkit which is the most powerful and incisive set I can think of. If you find better ones, let me know.
Forward, the search for exploits.