Beneath public debates about everything from TikTok to autonomous weapons lay concerns about the future of democratic values in a fractious and high-tech world. The idea that democracy is symbiotic with scientific and technological progress has long been integral to the civic imagination of the West. During the Cold War, American scientists, engineers, and officials tried to realize that vision with computers meant to predict and manage global affairs better than human experts. Yet they also worried that their efforts threatened key features of liberal democracy that they wanted to protect: individual autonomy, agency, and freedom. This lecture explores how American efforts to defend the “free world” with autonomous technologies has repeatedly led to troubling questions about the relationship between democracy and technology globally.
