A new ally for the Right approaches. Though Silicon Valley CEOs donated almost entirely to Democratic candidates in 2016, attacks from legacy left-wing institutions on Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, among others, have had an effect—but not one those institutions intended. Tech CEOs, it turns out, are moving sharply to the Right. Musk openly campaigned for Donald Trump, and Zuckerberg is supposedly penitent for his submission to the Biden Administration’s demands during COVID. Venture capital, the engine behind the tech industry’s dynamism, is moving rightward as a whole as well.

The Right must partner with sympathetic tech elites. One does not turn down allies in the middle of a fight. Indeed, both sides have more in common than they might have expected a decade ago. Both value talent and work ethic. Both believe in American excellence and human greatness. And these new allies bring needed resources with them: talent, money, and influence.

There are, of course, differences between the two sides. Some conservatives have pushed back on Elon’s emphasis on efficiency. Others spurn his promises of building space colonies and robots. Social conservatives are unlikely to be comfortable with new eugenics technology. Republicans argue over whether Zuckerberg’s repentance is in fact real.

These critiques all point toward one central problem: technology is an agent of revolutionary change. It is the engine behind the most radical alterations in American society. Tech elites are committed to the project of constant, radical revolutions. Strange bedfellows for Republicans. Many have anticipated these questions, including Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Marshall McLuhan, and Neil Postman. The conservative coming to these questions for the first time might instead consider starting with Ernst Jünger’s The Glass Bees.

Originally published in 1957, Jünger’s work is a short meditation on the nature of technology and its relationship to mankind. The story centers around a job interview. The protagonist, Captain Richard, is a destitute former military officer who was originally trained as a cavalry officer. But, as technology overtook the battlefield, he ended up in tanks. His potential employer, Zapparoni, is a tech mogul who builds exquisite robots that can do everything from firefighting, to housework, to sifting the pollen out of the air.

Introducing the New York Review of Books edition of the book, Bruce Sterling writes that it “beggars belief” that Jünger wrote this work when he did. Indeed, it resembles modernity so closely as to suggest time travel. His depiction of Zapparoni is, for example, an uncanny mix of Steve Jobs and Walt Disney. Zapparoni is a brilliant man who gathers a host of “eccentric” men who “[indulge] in the strangest whims” to build robots which become irreplaceable “not only to industry and science but also to the housewife.” So too, Jünger’s description of forcing “dead matter to think” draws to mind the current developments in AI.

Perhaps most importantly, Jünger focuses closely on the intentions of those who build technology. “Zapparoni really could pass for the showpiece of that elated technical optimism which dominates our leading minds…the age-old magicians’ dream of being able to change the world by thought alone seemed almost to have come true.” This ought to sound familiar to us.

Marc Andreessen’s well-known article “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” promises mankind liberation through technologically-driven material abundance. And AI leaders predict radical alterations to the human condition through hyper-intelligent thought. “Everything devised, constructed, and mass-produced at Zapparoni’s made life much easier,” writes Jünger. But “all his lilliputian robots and luxury automatons could contribute not only to the improvement of life but the shortening of life.”

In a new world of one’s own creation, with the power to extend and shorten life at will, Captain Richard asks the only question that matters: “Above all—what was his attitude toward man, without whom all his work was meaningless?” “Did he want to dominate man, to paralyze him, or to lead him into fabulous realms?”

Unhorsed, Unmanned

The Glass Bee’s account of industrialization, which precedes Zapparoni’s automation, imbues Richard’s question with desperation. Richard recounts how calvary became obsolete as war became technological. Unseen snipers “unhorsed” them, and “a web of wires” prevented the calvary from reaching their abusers even if discovered. Soldiers moved quickly to tanks. But Richard was “repulsed by the thought that the spirit should in this manner submit itself to the power of flame—a deep-seated and natural feeling.”

Jünger repeats this motif only a few pages later in Richard’s account of Wittgrewe, “one of my favorite instructors.” Wittgrewe taught Richard how to ride horseback. He was a man of noble spirit who only needed an hour to tame “even the most difficult horse…. Whenever Wittgrewe appeared, whenever he crossed the farmyard with relaxed, sauntering steps, his coat unbuttoned, the girls soon came from all sides…in short, Wittgrewe was an all-round man.” But back in civilian life, Wittgrewe falls under the power of the flame as a train conductor. Now his clothes are “stiff” and his actions rote. Richard says, “the sight upset me; I felt distressed, as if a free-roaming animal had been imprisoned in a cage and taught a few pitiful tricks.”

But if mechanization was inevitable for the soldier, Jünger thinks, automation and intelligentization are inevitable for the civilian.

Zapparoni’s automatons take over nearly every role in society including, crucially, culture and entertainment. They are not simply street sweepers and firemen, but actors and singers and bonafide stars. And once part of society, there is no getting rid of them. As Richard watches the titular glass bees that pollinate Zapparoni’s garden, the intricate technology bewitches him, causing him to lose sight of reality: “I had to make an effort to distinguish between dream and reality in order to not succumb to visions which spun out Zapporini’s theme.” Eventually, after closer observation, Richard finds himself completely unable to tell the difference between the natural and the artificial. The same holds good of a society unable or unwilling to differentiate between the real and the unreal: the unreal becomes real. The world is transformed by thought alone.

This is exceptionally dangerous for two reasons. First, Jünger believes technology intensifies the disparity between the few who wield it and those who use it. Snipers and machine gunners forced calvary into the tanks. Wittgrewe, once a free-roaming man, is now beholden to his locomotive and the man who owns it. Indeed, Zapparoni seems to wield control over a helpless atomized society through his technology, managing not just how society functions and fights but how it thinks of him. Richard is surprised when he meets Zapparoni for the first time. He looks nothing like his public depictions. Jünger’s depiction sounds remarkably like Tocqueville’s democratic tyrant in this regard: “an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate.” 

Jünger bemoans this inequality, saying that it makes him sick: “The opponent has to be armed or he is no longer an opponent.” One wonders what he would think of warfare today. The unseen Predator drone flying over the Middle East, hunting the unarmed soldier. There is no honor in wielding technology over a helpless man.

Technological control leads to Jünger’s second, and more serious, fear: physical and moral dehumanization. He fundamentally rejects the techno-optimist’s claim that uncontrolled technological progress is necessarily to humanity’s good. “Human perfection and technological perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other.” Why? “Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable.” Human mutilation, for example, is the inevitable outgrowth of technical advance. “I can’t remember,” Richard says, “a single example in the entire Iliad where the loss of an arm or a leg is reported. Mythology reserved dismemberment for the subhuman.” Now, there is nothing more normal than a young man who returns home from war without a leg or an arm. One may well consider our transgender youth—and what, in particular, is taken from them.

Physical dismemberment is, however, only a precursor to technology’s “greatest danger”: the destruction of human judgment and morality. Richard, while watching the glass bees work, notices severed ears lying on top of the water plants in a nearby pond. Unable to distinguish between the real and the artificial, Richard cannot tell if the ears belong to former employees who tried to quit or are from discarded models of humanoid robots. “Who in the garden would swear on oath that this was natural, that artificial?” From then on, a moral struggle commences. Would Richard report Zapporini to the police, “accusing Pontius to Pilate” for a crime he may well not be guilty for? Or would he “leave well enough alone,” betraying his Christian duty to his “neighbor” and coming within an inch of “inhumanity?”

The crux of Jünger’s warning is that to subject one’s judgment to the artificial, to trust in the unreal, is to crush conscience itself. But Richard, like us, struggles to sift the truth out of what surrounds him. Zapparoni intends to “negate the image of a free and intact man,” making Richard unable to judge the world. Knowing now what the tech baron intends, Richard must decide against Zapporini to prevent himself from being “destroyed as the horse had already been destroyed.” Ultimately, despite a small rebellion, Richard succumbs—persuaded by Zapporini that the ears are not real—and accepts a job in the factory.

Jünger’s stark prediction of how humanity would accept this could have been written today, as a post-hoc diagnosis. It should not be ignored:

How can one explain this trend toward a more colorless and shallow life? Well, the work was easier, if less healthy, and it brought more money, more leisure, and perhaps more entertainment. A day in the country is long and hard. And yet the fruits of their present life were worthless compared to a single coin of their former life: a rest in the evening and rural festivity. That they no longer knew the old kind of happiness was obvious from the discontent which spread over their features. Soon dissatisfaction, prevailing over all other moods, became their religion.

Is there, then, an escape from this diagnosis? Jünger does give one, very subtly—return to Richard’s original question about Zapporini. There are “fabulous realms” into which the tech baron might lead humanity. One cannot help but think of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, where technology is closely governed, sculpted for the good of the people. Men of “strength and good will who draw [their] nourishment from the past” should not “[strive] for the impossible,” the cessation of technological progress. They ought to, instead, “find firm ground,” themselves contributing to technology and shaping it for the good of the nation.

Jünger doubts the possibility of such men. We need not. Righteous men still walk the earth. Conservatives, rightly, may be wary of technological dangers. Reality and unreality blend together even as we speak. There is, however, no choice but to embrace the possibilities in creation and direct them toward human ends, by either design or governance. If we do not participate in the expansion of man’s dominion over creation, we will see dominion spread over man himself. Simply put, technology must be governed—and governed by virtuous men.