Who would have thought that the 21st century would turn out to be the age of sorcery? “JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban leader banned fiber optic internet in an Afghan province to “prevent immorality.” But banning the Internet will do more than prevent immorality. It will also block off any chance of the Afghans keeping up with modern technology. Cutting yourself off from the Internet, especially when technology develops at an increasingly rapid rate, will mean that for the Afghans, everything will soon be witchcraft.
Even with Internet access, the global public is also losing the race to stay in control of humanity’s creation. As technology advances beyond popular comprehension, our relationship to the world increasingly resembles that of medieval peasants in the preliterate age. Already, we live in a time where technology lets people wield immense capabilities with little understanding of how it all works —much like magic in folklore. Few know that their cellphones employ quantum tunnelling; almost no one realizes that Einstein’s time dilation is taken into account by their GPS.
This is not completely new. Complex technologies from electricity to computers have often seemed like sorcery to the uninitiated. Arthur C. Clarke memorably observed that: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” With AI, users can command powerful outcomes— generating art, solving equations, or fixing their position to an accuracy of 30 feet anywhere on the earth’s surface —via simple interfaces, no expertise required. All they need to do is conjure from the Book of Spells, type the right formula after the AI prompt, and suddenly, shazam!!! Magic — with no idea how it was being done.
This mirrors how medieval peasants might’ve viewed sorcery: mysterious stuff that just happens. The democratization of AI tools, like no-code platforms or voice-activated agents, has brought this power to the most distant corners of the earth, will make everyone a peasant, relatively speaking, from the New York sophisticate to the Afghan tribesman, all prostrate before the great and fearsome magi.
Of course, not everyone will be peasants; there will still be sorcerers, both the human developers who can read the code and, recursively, the code itself. But we will rarely see them. Some will deny they even exist, and they will not be in day-to-day charge of events. Already, AI-generated code has become a significant portion of software development workflows. GitHub estimates that 92% of U.S.-based developers use AI coding tools. In a very literal sense, the spells have spawned other spells, being both the author and the book, a ghost that whirls through our world in unpredictable gusts.
When it descends upon the earth, this magic is staggering. News reports say a mosque in South Sudan has been blown up by a drone believed launched by Sudanese ex-Janjaweed. "At least 84 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage. … A missile hit the Al Jamia mosque during early morning prayers, when it was packed with worshipers, the doctor said. Videos circulating on social media of the aftermath, showing bloodied bodies trapped under rubble and steel girders, were accurate, he said." Almost certainly, the attackers were following a consumer product-like interface.
The modern world has armed primitives with magic. People without the slightest interest in education and even literacy can now use missiles, drones, and other high-tech implements of destruction without having a clue how they work. Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of the Malala Fund, complained, “the Taliban have taken away our right to education, jobs, and freedom, and now they want to cut off our access to the internet. This means plunging the people of Afghanistan into total darkness.” But what do you need literacy for if you can just buy magic?
Western idealists imagine the first thing poor militants will buy once given funds is food. But what they really want is the magic. As the record of Haitian gangs illustrates, the first thing they will actually buy is weapons (in North Korea’s Kim's case, nuclear weapons), followed by viagra and a retinue of exotic dancers. But weapons above all. They will barter their souls for the spells. According to KCNA, the North Korean leader emphasised “rapidly developing the newly-introduced artificial intelligence technology” as a “top priority” in order to increase his military’s unmanned weapons systems.
However, there’s a flip side to this brave new world. Ignorance of the “magic” mechanics, biases, or limits could breed overreliance or misuse, much like mishandling a spellbook. It could lead to ignorant users unleashing consequences they do not understand, or assuming that the true human experts can be dispensed with, as exemplified in the parable of Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice runaway broomstick. But surely the danger of enthrallment only applies to backward Third World countries? Unfortunately, the disparity between political decision makers and the technological marvels at their disposal grows even larger among world powers. Europe is not immune to the powers of the spellbook.
In the worst-case scenario, the “broomstick” will be an AI-powered combat system like NATO’s proposed CAPSTONE, which would potentially control all domains of the alliance’s response to hostile magic that must be nearly instantaneous. “In an interview for the Daily Mail, General Sir Richard Shirreff, who used to be NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has written out a minute-by-minute breakdown of how the West could be dragged into a global war in hours. This is how he thinks it would play out.”
So picture this: One night, Lithuania suddenly goes dark. No lights, no WiFi, no TikTok scroll before bed. Hospitals are scrambling on backup generators, banks shut down, and within hours, the capital city of Vilnius is in absolute chaos. … Experts are already pointing out the warning signs. Russia has been running weird military drills, quietly shifting troops, jamming GPS signals and even messing with undersea cables. Basically, they’re testing how much disruption they can cause without actually declaring war.
War, if it actually comes, will arrive faster than politicians can meet in New York. Putting a person in the loop would slow down response time. “The future battlefield will be defined by the rapid tempo of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven operations, demanding a fundamental shift …The increasing volume and velocity of data generated in modern warfare and the need for rapid decision-making strain the capacity of traditional, analog planning processes.” There will be pressure to hold time-consuming human intervention to a minimum, meaning we need to be able to trust the magic, but can we?
Recently, there have been cyberattacks that crippled major European airports. Russian aircraft and drones have been conducting tests in Polish and Estonian airspace. In response, “the UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss Russian incursions over Estonia’s airspace.” But maybe Putin doesn’t care for the UN anymore. Perhaps Russia is "training" the NATO combat system's algorithm to move back its red lines through feints, rewarding it for doing nothing. For it is the magic they fear, not the dullards in their suits. If “their spellbook” can outconjure or subvert “our spellbook,” it's game over.
If the belief in materialism dominated the 20th century, the 21st is proving to be the age of information. Against all the expectations of the last century, we have entered the era of sword and sorcery. The powers stir in the vasty deep. How it will end is still unknown.
