"Understanding & Acting" conference

Lecture by Asma Mhalla, Senior Lecturer at SciencesPo Paris. Asma teaches the ethical and political stakes of the new economic models of platforms. Through the prism of new mass surveillance technologies, her work focuses on the emergence of new forms of political power and ideological systems, the challenges of functional and territorial sovereignty now shared between Meta-Platforms and Nation-States, and the shift from the rule of law to a hybrid form of security democracy.
In the practical field, Asma founded the NGO The Sapient Society in charge of developing "critical thinking" programs around cognitive ecology and the awakening to the challenges of the data economy. It also assists major companies and public institutions in the creation of new ethical models.

Abstract: The advent of the data economy is shaking up all economic and political paradigms. New forms of systemic power appear, crystallized around the Big Tech (in particular the GAFAM). These come to clash with state functions in terms of sovereignty, management of public space and democratic exercise. In order to legitimize themselves, states reposition themselves around their security prerogatives in the unprecedented form of massive techno-surveillance. How to decipher these new forms of power? What should the concept of "state" mean in the era of meta-platforms? What perspectives can be drawn in terms of ethical governance for the 21st century? Faced with the growing excesses of this system, it is becoming urgent to think about a strategy of counter-power around a new State ethic.