April 1980, Toulouse. Because the workplaces of multinational expertise corporations Philips Information Techniques and CII-Honeywell-Bull sit burning, French authorities frantically seek for the culprits of the suspected arson and bombing assaults.
Whereas there was some confusion within the quick wake of the destruction over who was accountable, with militant left wing group Motion Directe initially claiming duty, a communique issued by a clandestine group of IT employees cleared up the matter by detailing the precise contents of the Philips Information Techniques director’s workplace desk.
Referred to as the Committee for Liquidation or Subversion of Computer systems (or Clodo, a play on French slang for homeless), the identical communique additionally outlined the group’s motivations for finishing up the assault.
“As you should have suspected, we’re IT employees, and are subsequently well-placed to grasp the present and future risks of IT and telematics. The pc is the popular instrument of the dominant. It’s used to take advantage of, to file, to manage, to repress,” they wrote.
“That is what we’re attacking, and can proceed to assault. Our sabotage is barely a extra spectacular model of these assaults carried out every day by us or by others … We don’t wish to be locked within the ghetto of programmes and organisational platforms. Preventing in opposition to all dominations is our solely aim.”
Whereas Clodo shouldn’t be extensively remembered in the identical manner as different radical teams from the time – which tended to be way more violent and fewer targeted on IT as a instrument of oppression – a 2022 documentary titled Machine in Flames has prompted vital curiosity within the group, in addition to their ways and motivations.
Talking with Laptop Weekly, Machine in Flames co-director Thomas Dekeyser – who can be the writer of an upcoming ebook on the politics of ‘techno-refusal’ – mentioned he turned all in favour of Clodo as a result of they represented a markedly completely different strategy to the stifling paperwork of at the moment’s digital politics.
“We consider technological politics as maybe pushing for particular authorized rules of significantly dangerous components of sure applied sciences. We might consider union organising inside giant tech corporations, we consider prosecuting Zuckerberg for privateness violations, and so forth,” he says.
“For the longest time, I’ve felt like these issues are vital components of any political or social battle, however on the identical time enterprise does proceed as standard, regardless of these set of actions by well-meaning people, collectives and establishments, we nonetheless find yourself with completely different variations of the identical issues.”
Dekeyser’s curiosity in Clodo, subsequently, stems from not seeing their actions as the last word answer to society’s issues, or one thing to be significantly glorified, however from their “a lot stronger sense of refusal” round expertise as a place to begin for political motion.
He provides that given the present social and political local weather, there’s something “alluring” concerning the immediacy and anonymity of Clodo’s actions, which prompted him to “discover types of digital politics that don’t come again each single time to the standard political topic that we consider – whether or not it’s the employee, whether or not it’s the legislation, no matter it could be”.
Utilizing Clodo as an preliminary leaping off level, Dekeyser says his upcoming ebook is subsequently an try to traditionally hint the wealthy vary of varieties resistance to expertise has taken.
“Generally it does come again to the state, typically it goes again to the employee, however the intention is to return into historical past and determine what different modes of resistance to expertise there have been previously. I’m all in favour of asking: how would possibly these resonate with the current in ways in which broaden how we presently consider treating probably the most dangerous components of one thing like AI?”
Techno-refusal and being human
Dekeyser says {that a} main motivation for writing his ebook is that individuals refusing expertise – whether or not that be the Luddites, Clodo or every other radical formation – are “all too typically lowered to the determine of the primitivist, the romantic, or the one that desires to return in time, and it’s seen as a form of anti-modernist place to take”.
On the most simple stage, he argues that the historical past of techno-refusal is heterogeneous and numerous, with completely different historic actors having fully completely different motivations for opposing explicit applied sciences at sure deadlines.
“The topics that resist are so numerous, and so are their motivations for refusal,” he says, including that ‘technophobe’ or ‘Luddite’ have lengthy been used as pejorative insults for individuals who oppose the use and management of expertise by slender capitalist pursuits. “I wish to push in opposition to these phrases and what they suggest.”
Regardless of the manifold motivations behind techno-refusal, Dekeyser says {that a} frequent characteristic binding the completely different types of resistance is philosophical: “The refusal of expertise and technological developments are tied up with a battle for what it means to be human.
The topics that resist [tech] are so numerous, and so are their motivations for refusal Thomas Dekeyser
“Know-how can reinforce and undermine your concepts of the ‘best human’. The shared theme that pulls collectively the assorted circumstances within the ebook is the concept expertise all the time does one thing to how we perceive what we imply by ‘the human’. My argument is that this partially explains why expertise has drawn, and continues to attract, such unbelievable quantities and intensities of consideration and debate, with folks keen to combat for or in opposition to it with typically extremely robust conviction.”
For Dekeyser then, the historical past of expertise is essentially the historical past of its refusal. From the Historical Greek inventor Archimedes – who Dekeyser says could be described as the primary ‘machine breaker’ as a result of his tendency to destroy his personal innovations – to the early mercantilist states of Europe backing their guild members’ acts of sabotage in opposition to new labour units, the social-technical nature of expertise implies that it has all the time been a terrain of political battle.
“Mercantilist economics is way more protectionist than what we now consider as capitalism, in order that implies that they have been very protecting of the guilds and crafts,” he says, including that early mercantilist assist for such actions evaporated with the emergence of Western capitalism within the early 19th century, as states, expertise and economics turn into way more tightly intertwined than ever earlier than.
As this paradigm shift was underway, a systemic and organised strategy to machine breaking additionally started in 1811 with the Luddites; a collective of weavers and textile employees who carried out their office sabotage in response to the unilateral imposition of recent applied sciences (mechanised looms and knitting frames) by a brand new and rising class of industrialists.
Modifications in ruling class composition on account of burgeoning industrialisation subsequently “meant that states have been now not supportive of employees breaking machines, however have been in reality prosecuting now these machine breakers, which is what you see with the Luddites who confronted mass hangings”.
Dekeyser provides that there was one other tightening of the connection between expertise, capital and the state with the emergence of cybernetics in the course of the Second World Battle, which was described by its founder Norbert Wiener as a science of communication and management.
“The fundamental concept is that one can management completely different sorts of techniques – social techniques, pure techniques, financial techniques and so forth – by heightening the extent of data that’s shared between components,” he says. “There was lots of writing within the 70s and 80s round how society might be managed and managed, together with how revolutions could be stopped, by simply ensuring you’ve gotten sufficient data. Info gathering and knowledge sharing is on the coronary heart of the cybernetic logic.”
Cancelling the longer term
Dekeyser says that whereas using the time period cybernetic has fallen out of vogue, the diffusion of knowledge gathering applied sciences, sensors and mechanisms into on a regular basis life implies that general strategy is now baked into trendy types of governance and expertise, significantly AI.
“[The emergence of the cybernetic logic is] a vital historic second. That’s why within the ebook I deal with Clodo as an try at countering that cybernetic best of the human and society,” he says, including that this logic is especially dangerous due to the way it destroys the longer term, “within the sense that it goals to anticipate and predict every part by means of information gathering”.
With the proliferation of AI and different automated algorithmic applied sciences by means of the worldwide financial system, Dekeyser sees it as a pure extension within the logic of cybernetic computation, in that it’s diminishing our very potential to conceive of and create radically completely different futures.
“As a result of AI can solely ever generate outputs based mostly on present information, it has a robust tendency to repeat present methods of enthusiastic about and representing issues, making it a lot tougher to check completely new futures,” he says.
As a result of AI can solely ever generate outputs based mostly on present information, it has a robust tendency to repeat present methods of considering Thomas Dekeyser
“AI is the right instance of one thing that displaces our concept of the human, as a result of AI greater than every other expertise or set of applied sciences we’ve encountered may be very a lot an issue of many individuals feeling like they’re shedding company within the face of infrastructures able to doing issues beforehand taken to be uniquely human.”
Additional highlighting the deterministic nature of AI applied sciences – which take information from the previous, with all its biases and assumptions, and venture them into the longer term – Dekeyser says the aim of AI’s “ultra-cybernetic” logic is to neutralise and stabilise unpredictable outcomes or occasions for the good thing about capital and the state.
“That, for instance, completely depletes risk of large protests or a correct risk to the state. The factor with policing is even when it’s not a right away outspoken goal, it’s the gathering of knowledge that makes certain that at any time when issues begin getting out of hand, will probably be recognized, prevented and policed,” he says.
“I do consider these applied sciences as a cancellation of the longer term as a result of it’s set as much as predict and predetermine what the longer term will appear like, even when this will not all the time work.”
Direct motion and Clodo’s politics of techno-refusal
All through their numerous communications, Clodo highlighted the harmful nature of the post-war cybernetic logic, particularly rallying in opposition to the position of computing within the prosecution of imperialist wars (primarily Vietnam); conducting police surveillance; and sustaining the ideological and financial domination of the capitalist class, explaining in a single communique that “the progress of expertise shouldn’t be the identical because the progress of humanity”.
Additionally they took goal on the dehumaninsing position IT can play within the office, which they argued massively contributed to the growing drudgery of 9 to five work.
Dekeyser says that Clodo’s actions are vital as a result of they challenged the cybernetic view of the human as a system to be managed or managed whereas additionally highlighting the bodily materiality of pc expertise, and thus its vulnerability – removed from being some ethereal factor past a human’s bodily grasp, it’s made up of actual objects akin to servers, fibre optic cables and microchips.
“What’s distinctive about sure types of direct motion is that it’s main by instance, but in addition signifying its concepts by means of motion,” he says. “It particularly reveals that these digital applied sciences, which appear so omnipresent and but unable to be grasped, are actually cables within the floor and have addresses.”
Whereas Clodo would go quiet for 2 years after the April 1980 arsons, they carried out a collection of additional assaults on multinational pc corporations and authorities information processing websites all through 1983. This included setting hearth to the workplaces US pc producer Sperry for its complicity in then-president Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, and bombing a knowledge processing plant within the Toulouse suburb of Colomiers.
In one other communique issued within the wake of the Colomiers assault, the group celebrated the destruction of information and databases belonging to the native authority and police: “The mind drain continues! Final evening, at greater than 6,000 meters/second, a fraction of the state’s recollections dissipated into air at Colomiers.”
Whereas French authorities denounced Clodo on the time for endangering human life, the group’s acts of sabotage by no means harmed one other human being – one thing they made clear they have been avoiding in numerous public statements.
Additionally they highlighted the interaction between expertise, capital and the state in these statements, which defined their perspective on IT and computer systems as a instrument of oppression.
In a 1983, for instance, one nameless Clodo member “interviewed” themselves to defend their actions: “The reality about computerisation ought to be revealed now and again. It ought to be mentioned that a pc is only a bunch of metallic that serves solely to do what one desires it to do, that in our world it’s only one extra instrument – a very highly effective one – that’s on the service of the dominators.
“We’re basically attacking what these instruments result in: information, surveillance by way of badges and playing cards, instrument of revenue maximisation for the bosses and of accelerated pauperisation for individuals who are rejected.”
In that very same “interview”, the Clodo member famous that when “confronted with the instruments of these in energy, dominated folks have all the time used sabotage or subversion”.
Dekeyser provides that a part of the political enchantment of direct motion is the immediacy of the exercise and the empowerment it offers to these finishing up the actions, whereas consciousness-raising politics are typically constructed across the rational alternate of concepts.
“In the event you’re simply doing one thing out of a dedication to the rational alternate of concepts, it may be actually arduous. Petitioning, for instance, could be probably the most soul-destroying factor you can probably do. Once more, it has its worth in sure instances and in sure areas however, my god, it’s the right path to burn out – there’s no pleasure to it,” he says.
“You’re similar to, ‘Okay, that is me is strolling round within the rain, simply attempting to persuade folks of those set of concepts’.”
He additional notes that, to today, no Clodo members have ever been recognized or damaged ranks to unmask themselves, which is a part of the group’s attract: “They weren’t all in favour of private acquire, or getting voted in as MEPs. It was not concerning the self, purely concerning the politics.”
‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’
Nonetheless, Dekeyser notes that on the time Clodo was energetic, computer systems tended to be the protect of large firms and state authorities such because the navy or police, which made attacking them way more easy.
“In case you are to assault computer systems now, let’s say you go and lower fibre optic cables as folks have achieved previously few years in France and Germany, you’re probably ruining hundreds of atypical folks’s days,” he says. “There’s been a saturation of those applied sciences to the purpose that the article of critique and object of assault is far tougher to outline. Subsequently, it’s a lot tougher to get common assist for it.
“Computation at the moment feels extra benign as a result of we’re all utilizing it on a day-to-day foundation, which was not the case in early 80s once you didn’t have private computer systems but. At that time, it was very easy for Clodo to go, ‘Computer systems equals authorities authority, company management, policing counter revolution, and that’s it’. And so militancy turns into a lot, a lot tougher [today] as a result of folks go, ‘Sure, it’s horrible, nevertheless it’s additionally actually vital to how I dwell my life, how I work and every part’.”
Regardless of the abundance and interconnectedness of expertise in trendy life making it a lot tougher to outline the article of assault and critique, Dekeyser notes that at our present historic juncture, most expertise is managed by only a handful of firms, that means individuals are nonetheless discovering the potential for various sorts of directed militancy.
“You see it with folks organising, particularly in opposition to Amazon, significantly in opposition to Google. In Berlin, you had the marketing campaign referred to as ‘f*ck off Google’, which was nearly stopping a Google campus from being constructed there,” he says. “It’s a form of militant motion, it entails occupation, it entails blocking buses from going into the campus. So, these varieties are undoubtedly rising.”
Even with these adjustments, Dekeyser provides that practices of technological sabotage much like Clodo’s are persevering with into the current day, which additionally work to spotlight the materiality of pc applied sciences.
One instance is the so-called Vulkangruppe (or Volcano Group), which has focused fibre optic cables, electrical energy pylons and tech company-owned automobiles, primarily round Berlin. In March 2024, for instance, the group claimed duty for an extra assault on electrical energy pylons that shutdown the Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide, explaining their motivations in an announcement revealed on-line.
Nonetheless, to Dekeyser’s level concerning the diffusion of recent expertise, the ensuing energy outage additionally affected 6,500 properties; elevating the query of whether or not teams like these will ever have the ability to obtain a sure stage of standard assist, which in flip raises additional questions concerning the political goals being strived for.
“Ought to your goal be mass consciousness elevating, or ought to it’s one thing completely different?” he says. “Clodo, for instance, was not all in favour of reaching an enormous viewers, they have been similar to, ‘This sucks, we’ll burn it down’ … gaining standard assist to result in change is a good technique, nevertheless it’s clearly not the one one. That’s what these teams are displaying us.”
Prefigurative expertise
Regardless of the qualms many would have with the actions of collectives akin to Clodo or the Volcano Group, and the clear inconvenience technological sabotage causes in at the moment’s ultra-interconnected world, Dekeyser says they’re nonetheless making a vital political level concerning the prefigurative nature of expertise.
Whereas “prefigurative politics” refers to the concept means can’t be separated from ends, and that any motion taken to impact change ought to subsequently be according to the envisioned targets, and never reproduce present social constructions or issues, Dekeyser says this additionally extends to applied sciences, that are sure and prefigured by the logics underpinning their growth and use.
The concept that simply placing dangerous applied sciences within the fingers of employees or a ‘good state’ is prone to be inadequate in resolving the issue Thomas Dekeyser
“The concept that simply placing dangerous applied sciences within the fingers of employees or a ‘good state’ is prone to be inadequate in resolving the issue. These [capitalist and military] logics sit on the coronary heart of the expertise, you possibly can’t simply carve that out,” he says, noting how the French Communist Occasion on the time was dismissive of Clodo for “combating in opposition to the instruments of labour” on the idea these pc applied sciences held emancipatory potential for employees.
Clodo, nevertheless, took the view that merely adopting present applied sciences for various functions would solely replicate the identical issues.
“I feel that is what’s so essential about teams like Clodo – they argue, for instance, that simply nationalising a expertise or bringing it into public possession, whereas an enchancment, nonetheless leaves questions on what you will do with the surveillance mechanisms or navy impulses that sit on the very coronary heart of their functioning,” he says.
“So, to the query of different applied sciences, we want one thing that doesn’t simply put one thing that already exists to a special use, however really tries to begin from scratch.”
Giving the instance of social media platforms, Dekeyser provides that whereas it could be the case that information gathering is inherently baked into the expertise, and that it could by no means be attainable to have significant social interplay within the digital sphere with out leaving some form of traces, the start line of another could be to start with a rejection of the data-gathering impulse.
He provides that whereas it’s not about discovering the purest place – “as a result of that can by no means be attainable” – it’s about guaranteeing applied sciences are usually not produced by the identical influences: “It’s the basic factor about prefigurative politics, the place you’re attempting to undo one thing concurrently you’re attempting to construct one thing else.”
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