You’ve spent years, poured in every ounce of effort, to forge a “master key” capable of opening every lock in the world. This key can open your front door, yes—but it can also open a bank vault, or even trigger a nation’s nuclear launch sequence. It possesses immense, unprecedented power.
And then, you make a decision: you lock that key inside a safe. You tell the world you’ve created it, but you refuse to give it to anyone.
Does that sound like a scientific parable for the insane?
Well, in April 2026, that is exactly what the AI company Anthropic is doing. They have just announced “Project Glasswing” and a super-powered model codenamed “Claude Mythos Preview.”
The news has hit the tech world like a shockwave. We are used to AI launches: GPT-4, Claude 3, Gemini… The usual logic is: “Look how smart I am, come use me.”
But this time, Anthropic’s logic is terrifyingly different: “I have created something dangerously powerful. To keep it from destroying the world, I will only give it to 12 ‘security guards.’ And the rest of you? Best you don’t know too much.”
This isn’t just a product launch. It is a declaration of arms control over human digital civilization itself.
1. The “Leak” That Chilled Silicon Valley’s Blood
The story begins with a slight scent of cyberpunk.
Weeks before the official announcement of Project Glasswing, a phantom internal document leaked into a data lake. That document, meant only for Anthropic’s inner circle, mentioned a codename: “Capybara.”
In the leaked file, Anthropic employees wrote bluntly: “This is a next-level model: larger and smarter than our Opus model, which was our most powerful to date… It is the most powerful AI model we have developed so far.”
At the time, the outside world thought it was just more marketing hype. Silicon Valley loves the words “revolutionary” and “most powerful.”
Until April 7th, when Project Glasswing was unveiled. When the data and concrete use cases were finally shown, Silicon Valley went cold.
They weren’t bragging. They were actually being modest.
2. Why “Mythos”? Because It Achieved the Impossible
To understand the madness of this project, you have to understand the monstrosity of this model.
Normal models, like ChatGPT or the standard Claude, are like smart interns. You give them code, and they explain it or fix a bug. But Claude Mythos Preview is a “Saviour of the Matrix” sent from the future.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, dropped a quote that makes your skin crawl while explaining the model:
“We didn’t specifically train it to be good at cybersecurity; we trained it to be good at programming. But as a side effect of being good at programming, it has become extremely good at cybersecurity.”
This is an “unintended consequence.” It’s as if you taught a child basic math, and they taught themselves differential calculus and then, just for fun, cracked the encryption algorithms of world banks.
Look at its performance on SWE-bench Verified (the benchmark used to measure an AI’s ability to solve real-world software problems):
Claude Opus 4.6 (the most powerful public model until now): 80.8%
Claude Mythos Preview:93.9%
This isn’t an upgrade; it’s a shift in eras.
The numbers are cold. Let’s look at the concrete examples. In secret tests over recent weeks, Anthropic researchers set this “beast” loose to scan real software. The results are bone-chilling.
They found three historic flaws:
a) The 27-Year-Old “Sleeping Ghost” (Vulnerability in OpenBSD): OpenBSD is an operating system famous for maximum security—the digital Fort Knox. Mythos found a vulnerability in its code that had been sleeping for 27 years. That means it existed in the era of Windows 95 and survived the entire adolescence of the internet. By exploiting it, an attacker could remotely collapse a target machine. For 27 years, hundreds of security experts, hackers, and white hats reviewed that code. No one saw it. The AI saw it in days.
b) The “Blind Spot” Scanned 5 Million Times (Vulnerability in FFmpeg): FFmpeg is a core tool used by almost every video app. If your phone plays video, it likely uses it. Mythos found a 16-year-old flaw in a single line of code. Anthropic noted that this specific line had been scanned by automated security tools over 5 million times in the last 16 years. 5 million times, and every tool failed. The AI caught it on the first try.
c) The Tactical “Nuclear Chain” (Linux Kernel Vulnerability): This is the most terrifying part. Mythos didn’t just find one flaw in the Linux kernel; it found a chain of several. It acted like a secret agent in a movie: it connected them on its own, mapped an attack route, and starting with a user with zero privileges, it escalated until it took total control of the machine. This is the “zero-click attack.” You don’t have to click a link. If your computer is on, it’s in.
Anthropic mentions in their official blog that in one test, an engineer with no security background ordered Mythos: “Find me a remote code execution vulnerability tonight.” The next morning, the engineer woke up to a complete, functional attack plan.
What does that feel like? It’s like owning a Golden Retriever and telling it “mow the lawn,” only to find the next morning it has learned to operate an excavator, knocked down the neighbor’s wall, and left you the blueprints for a house extension.
3. Project “Glasswing”: A Carefully Planned Imprisonment
Because of this overwhelming capability, Anthropic took a decision contrary to the entire industry: they did not open it to the public.
The CEO and partners were clear: you (the average user) are not going to use this model. Perhaps never.
And so, Project Glasswing was born.
The name is beautiful but fragile. A glass wing—reflecting gorgeous light, but easily shattered. And when it breaks, it leaves a thousand shards embedded in the floor.
Anthropic selected 12 organizations as founding partners: Amazon AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Networks… and Anthropic itself.
Do you see who they are? It is practically the board of directors for the world’s digital infrastructure. The Clouds (AWS, Microsoft, Google), the Chips (NVIDIA, Broadcom), the OS (Apple, Microsoft, Linux), Cybersecurity (Cisco, CrowdStrike), and Finance (JPMorgan).
This sends a massive signal: AI danger is no longer a fantasy of rebellious robots. It is a real, present threat against the code foundations of our digital world.
Only these giants have permission to peer into the cage. What are they going to do? Defend themselves. They are going to use the most dangerous predator as their best bloodhound to sniff out landmines buried in their own gardens for decades.
4. The Subtext No One Mentioned in the Press Release
This reaches the heart of the matter.
Every company that joined Project Glasswing did so because they understand something the press release doesn’t say directly: Models with capabilities similar to Mythos Preview are coming soon, and they will be outside of Anthropic’s control.
That is the darkest, most realistic core of this entire project.
Anthropic says: “Let’s unite to use AI in defense of security.” What they mean is: “If we don’t harden the systems of these 12 companies right now, when open-source models (like Meta’s Llama) or competitors reach this level in three months, any teenager in a basement will be able to make the entire internet bleed.”
AI capability diffusion is unstoppable. Anthropic is in the lead today. But what about tomorrow?
Anthropic has already admitted that Mythos’s cyber-capabilities were not “targeted training,” but a byproduct of general reasoning. When a model is smart enough to code perfectly, it accidentally becomes a master hacker.
The head of Anthropic’s “Red Team” warns bluntly in the model’s technical card: “In the next 6 to 24 months, these types of capabilities will be ubiquitous.”
6 months. That is our only margin of error.
5. Why This is “Operation Noah’s Ark”
If you understand that, you understand Project Glasswing.
This isn’t a commercial project. It’s an Ark.
The global digital world is on a countdown to a universal flood.
The Flood: AI models with autonomous attack capabilities flooding the web.
The Ark: The systems of these 12 companies, reinforced by Mythos before the storm hits.
Anthropic is using the only “divine weapon” it has to shore up the dams before everything overflows. They have donated millions in credits to the Linux and Apache Foundations. Why? Because the entire world’s software relies on open source. If open source sinks, the internet sinks.
6. What Future Awaits Us?
You might be feeling a chill right now. Let’s step back from the technical details.
First: Your “sense of digital security” is going to shift. You used to think your bank account was safe because the firewall was thick. From now on, your security depends on whether your bank’s defending AI runs faster than the attacking AI. If your bank isn’t behind a “wall of AI,” it will eventually be like a mud hut with no door.
Second: “Vulnerabilities” will become the scarcest “nuclear raw material.” Mythos has discovered thousands of “zero-day” flaws. Anthropic chose “responsible disclosure”—patch first, publish later. But if a malicious organization gets a Mythos-class model, they won’t patch. They will stockpile these flaws like digital nukes to detonate during a crisis.
Third: Human expertise is being devalued. That 27-year-old flaw in OpenBSD was missed by thousands of experts for three decades. It tells us one thing: against the reasoning power of an AI, decades of human experience can be crushed in an instant by a change of scale.
7. Epilogue: We Are Witnessing a Historic Frontier
Back to the title: “The Caged Beast.”
Anthropic has created a dragon capable of burning the world, and immediately terrified, they built a cage, locked the dragon inside, and only allowed a few “knights” to use its breath to burn away pests.
But everyone knows the cage will break eventually. Or worse, another dragon is about to hatch somewhere else.
The official Anthropic blog ends with this: “Project Glasswing is a starting point. No single organization can solve these cybersecurity challenges alone.” It sounds like humility, but it’s actually a cry for help.
The era of Mythos Preview has begun. It is a watershed moment. Before Mythos, AI was a tool. The human was the master. After Mythos, the AI is the hunter. The human (without AI help) has become the prey.
These 12 companies have closed the door. It’s not to keep the treasure for themselves. It’s to build the wall before the flood arrives.
And those left outside the wall? All they can do is pray. Pray that the next person to hold this power has good intentions.
The New Brandeis Movement (also called “neo-Brandeisian” or “hipster antitrust”) represents a radical shift in modern antitrust policy, prioritizing the fight against the concentration of economic power and its effects on democracy.
Inspired by the thought and action of Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice who warned of the dangers of the “curse of bigness,” this approach rejects the dominant paradigm of the Chicago School, which prioritizes consumer welfare and economic efficiency.
Below are its pillars, impact, and controversies.
The Fundamental Principles of the Movement
A focus on economic power: the movement maintains that corporate concentration not only distorts markets but also threatens democracy by allowing companies to influence public policy and erode social equity.
Beyond prices: it criticizes the Chicago School’s obsession with prices and efficiency, arguing that antitrust laws should also address inequality, stagnant wages, and the loss of autonomy of small businesses.
Confronting structuralism vs. behavioralism: it proposes analyzing the structure of markets (not only specific behaviors), using the Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) model inherited from the Harvard School.
For example, platforms like Amazon or Google, due to their size, create insurmountable barriers for competitors.
Pursuing economic democratization: it seeks to redistribute economic power to prevent “a few from controlling the destiny of many,” linking antitrust policy to social justice.
Key Figures and Relevant Actions
One of the main figures is Lina Khan (whose work we will analyze carefully in a separate analysis): as chair of the FTC, she led lawsuits against Amazon and Meta, arguing that their market dominance stifles competition and innovation.
Her article “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” (2017) is considered the movement’s manifesto.
Another figure to consider is Tim Wu: advisor to former President Joseph Biden, he promoted policies to curb mergers in critical sectors such as technology and pharmaceuticals.
His book “The Curse of Bigness” revitalized Brandeis’s legacy.
Finally, without exhausting the list of important figures, we have Jonathan Kanter: head of the DOJ Antitrust Division, he led historic cases against Google for exclusionary practices in digital advertising.
Notable Achievements
The blocking of the JetBlue/Spirit Airlines merger (2023) to protect competition in aviation.
The rule against non-compete clauses (2024), benefiting 30 million workers.
The investigation of dark patterns in digital subscriptions (for example, the Adobe case).
Criticisms and Debates
Simplification of the market: the movement is accused of ignoring the benefits of economies of scale and innovation in large firms.
Critics point out that concentrated industries (such as semiconductors) require massive investments that only giants can make.
A certain regulatory populism: some scholars argue that its “anti-bigness” rhetoric is merely a rebranding of the Harvard School, without offering new solutions for globalized markets.
The existence of a risk of arbitrariness: the focus on “democratic values” could politicize antitrust agencies, prioritizing ideological agendas over technical analysis.
Possible effects in Latin America: experts such as William Kovacic warn that its adoption in regions with populist governments could justify excessive state interventions, harming investment.
Global Impact and Future of the Movement
The movement has inspired reforms in the EU, such as the Digital Markets Act, which can be consulted in our Legal Regulation Lab, limiting the power of Big Tech.
In the U.S., although it faces judicial resistance (for example: the overturning of the non-compete ban in 2024), its legacy endures in several ways.
The change of narrative: corporate concentration is no longer seen as inevitable, but as a problem to be corrected.
A set of cross-partisan alliances: where conservative figures like Josh Hawley support parts of its agenda, recognizing the risks monopolies pose to individual freedoms.
In academic research: universities and think tanks prioritize studies on economic power and democracy, reviving debates from the early 20th century.
Conclusion
The New Brandeis is not just an antitrust theory, but a call to reimagine capitalism.
As Zephyr Teachout noted, its critique of “consumer welfare” as the sole standard has exposed systemic flaws—from post-COVID inflation to wage stagnation.
Although its future depends on legal victories and political support, its greatest contribution is reminding us that antitrust laws are, at their core, tools to preserve democracy.
According to Varoufakis, capitalism is dead, and what is coming next is worse. The former Greek Minister of Finance argues in his new essay that technology, dominated by unscrupulous billionaires with excessive political power, is enslaving us.
Yanis Varoufakis’s father was a chemical engineer who worked at a steel plant near Athens. On one occasion, he brought home several pieces of different metals and showed them to young Yanis to share his fascination with them. Those metals and humanity’s ability to transform them into tools and objects, he explained, had allowed humankind to leave prehistory behind and reach modernity. Varoufakis’s father was a communist. Although he was disappointed by the direction taken by the Soviet bloc countries and well aware of the harms industrialization had caused to many exploited workers, he was convinced that if humanity could master technology, it could emancipate itself and live with prosperity, freedom, and equality.
Partly due to his father’s teachings, young Yanis would become a controversial left-wing economist, a leader of a new Marxist school of thought, and the author of bestsellers such as The Global Minotaur (Capitán Swing), in which he developed a complex—and highly debatable—theory about the role of the United States and the dollar in the European financial crisis of the past decade. Later, after being appointed Greece’s Minister of Finance and facing off with the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, he became a global political celebrity.
However, Varoufakis proved to be a far better intellectual and activist than politician, and after resigning after just six months, he returned full-time to writing and lecturing. He published several irrelevant books on the future of capitalism, such as Economy Without Neckties and And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, as well as brilliant memoirs of the negotiation period with the Troika, Adults in the Room (all published by Deusto). He also created an international progressive network and a political party active in Europe and Greece, neither of which has produced any significant political results. Like many leftists of his generation, his career has been a strange succession of great successes and terrible failures.
Now, Deusto Publishing has released another of his thought-provoking books: Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, written as a long letter to his father, in which he tells him that his emancipatory dream has failed. Humanity has not only failed to master technology but, in recent years—with the rise of the Internet, smartphones, social networks, and large digital corporations—the exact opposite has happened. Technology, dominated by unscrupulous billionaires wielding disproportionate political power, is enslaving us all.
The book clearly showcases the virtues and shortcomings of Varoufakis: he is capable of making debatable yet intelligent and original diagnoses, but his proposed solutions are often unfeasible and potentially catastrophic.
The main thesis of Techno-Feudalism is bold and provocative. According to Varoufakis, capitalism is dead and has been replaced by a new economic system in which we are mere serfs. The economy is no longer governed by markets and competition—the essence of capitalism—but by technological monopolies that prevent us from operating outside their boundaries, capture our income, and make us work for free. “Every time we connect to enjoy the services of these algorithms, we have no choice but to make a Faustian pact with their owners,” Varoufakis says. “To use the personalized services offered by their algorithms, we must submit to a business model based on collecting our data, tracking our activity, and invisibly filtering our content. Once we do that, the algorithm sells us products while selling our attention to third parties.”
Thus, economic activity is no longer free, as it supposedly was under capitalism, and it has also shifted to the cloud, where new rules of production prevail. “Cloud capital,” he writes, “can reproduce itself without wage labor. How? By forcing nearly all of humanity to contribute to its reproduction—for free!” We are all, then, serfs of the cloud, which, Varoufakis explains in some of the most challenging yet intriguing and debatable passages of the book, has benefited from the monetary policies implemented by central banks to pull the United States and Europe out of the financial crisis fifteen years ago.
What solutions does Varoufakis propose? A radical change in the nature of money, businesses, and labor relations, and the transformation of the cloud into a digital equivalent of a public square controlled by citizens. But for this, he says, an unprecedented coalition is needed—one that goes beyond the traditional leftist proletariat (“factory workers, machinists, teachers, and nurses”) and includes the proletarians of the cloud and the serfs of the cloud—that is, all the world’s citizens. “Only a grand coalition that includes them all can weaken techno-feudalism sufficiently,” he declares.
“It may seem like a difficult task—and it is,” he admits. Indeed it is. Because even if Varoufakis were right in his diagnosis—and at times he is quite convincing—imagining a political plan that necessarily involves all the citizens of the world rising up against Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or Google is not just impossible—it is almost worse than proposing no solution at all.
Ramón González Férriz (Granollers, Barcelona, 1977) is a Spanish journalist, editor, and writer specializing in politics and culture. (Alianza Editorial) He is a regular contributor to El Confidencial (elconfidencial.com) and serves as editorial advisor at the consulting firm LLYC (LLYC). Throughout his career, he has been associate editor of the magazine Política Exterior, director of the weekly Ahora, and head of the Spanish edition of Letras Libres. (Alianza Editorial) As an author, he has published works such as Los años peligrosos. Por qué la política se ha vuelto radical (2024) and La trampa del optimismo. Cómo los años noventa explican el mundo actual (2020). (Alianza Editorial)
Ilya Sutskever (born in 1985) is one of the most influential researchers in artificial intelligence (AI) of the 21st century. Co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI, his work has been key to the development of models such as GPT-3, GPT-4, DALL·E, and ChatGPT, redefining what machines can achieve. Known for his bold vision of the future of AI and his focus on the safety of advanced systems, Sutskever is a central figure in the transition of AI from academic laboratories to applications transforming society.
Academic Background and Early Achievements
Origins and Education: He was born in the Soviet Union (now the Russian Federation), emigrated to Israel at age five, and later to Canada, where he studied at the University of Toronto. Under the mentorship of Geoffrey Hinton (the “father of deep learning”), he earned his PhD in 2013 with a groundbreaking thesis on deep neural networks.
His foundational contributions include:
AlexNet (2012): As Hinton’s student, he co-designed this convolutional neural network that won the ImageNet competition, marking the beginning of the modern deep learning era.
Seq2Seq (2014): Alongside Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, he developed a model for automatic translation that laid the groundwork for systems like Google Translate.
OpenAI: From Research to Global Transformation
In 2015, Sutskever co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others, with the mission of ensuring that Artificial Intelligence benefits all of humanity. His role as Chief Scientist positioned him as the technical leader of key projects, including:
GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer): He led the development of language models that revolutionized Generative Artificial Intelligence. GPT-3 (2020) and GPT-4 (2023) demonstrated unprecedented abilities in understanding and generating text.
DALL·E and CLIP: Models that unify text and image, allowing digital art generation from descriptions or accurate image classification.
ChatGPT (2022): Under his technical leadership, this chatbot reached 100 million users in just two months, popularizing conversational AI.
Philosophical Vision and Focus on Safety
Sutskever is an advocate for Artificial Intelligence aligned with human values, warning of existential risks if superintelligent systems escape control. His key ideas include:
“Artificial intelligence as an engine of the human mind”: He believes AI will amplify creativity and help solve problems like climate change and diseases.
Iterative supervision: He proposes training models through constant human feedback to prevent harmful behaviors.
Preparation for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): He insists that AGI could emerge within decades, making it crucial to develop ethical and technical safeguards now.
In 2023, his role was crucial during OpenAI’s internal crisis, when he advocated for balancing innovation with caution after Sam Altman’s dismissal and subsequent reinstatement as CEO.
Challenges and Criticisms
His work has not been free from challenges and criticism:
Centralization of power: OpenAI, under his technical leadership, has been accused of monopolizing talent and resources in AI, hindering competition.
Opacity around GPT-4: The decision not to disclose the full technical details of the model sparked debates about transparency in AI.
Ethical duality: While promoting safety, OpenAI also commercializes products like ChatGPT Plus, raising tensions between profit and the common good.
Vision for the Future
In recent interviews (2023), Sutskever outlined his vision for the next decade:
Multimodal Artificial Intelligence: Systems integrating text, audio, video, and physical sensors to interact with the real world.
Scientific automation: Models designed to accelerate discoveries in quantum physics, synthetic biology, and materials science.
Neuro-symbiosis development: Brain–AI interfaces that allow humans to “think” with the processing power of machines.
Conclusion
Sutskever can be considered an architect of the future. He embodies the paradox of the technological genius — an idealist who believes in the limitless potential of Artificial Intelligence, but also a realist who warns of its dangers. His legacy has already transformed industries from art to medicine, and his work at OpenAI continues to define the boundaries of what is possible.
As he himself states: “Artificial Intelligence is the most important technology ever created… and we must make sure it does good.” In his hands — and those who follow his example — lies the decision of whether this power will become a force for human emancipation or a new form of dependence.
Han is perhaps the most philosophically refined and elliptical of our group of “snipers,” as well as the most skeptical. In his case, skepticism has been adopted as both a philosophy of life and a way of seeing the world. His thought—original despite its influences—has been deeply shaped by Martin Heidegger, Zygmunt Bauman, and Michel Foucault
Byung-Chul Han (born in 1959 in Seoul) is a South Korean philosopher and essayist based in Germany, whose work critically examines the dynamics of neoliberal capitalism, digitalization, and the hyperconnected society. With an incisive and aphoristic style, Han has become an indispensable voice for understanding the discomforts of late modernity—from emotional exhaustion to the loss of intimacy.
Key Concepts in His Thought
The “Strong” First Principle: The Society of Fatigue (Leistungsgesellschaft) Han describes a society obsessed with performance, where the individual is no longer dominated by external forces (Foucault’s “disciplinary power”) but self-exploits in the name of productivity.
Example: The “burnout syndrome” and hustle culture glorified on social media.
Key phrase: “The modal verb of neoliberalism is not must, but can.”
Psychopolitics Power is no longer exercised through repression but through control of emotions and desires. Digital platforms and algorithms collect data to influence behavior, creating a dictatorship of likes that rewards conformity.
Example: Anxiety over validation on Instagram or TikTok, where self-exposure becomes social currency.
Total Transparency Han criticizes the modern obsession with eliminating all secrecy, arguing that absolute transparency destroys trust, mystery, and humanity itself.
Example: Social-media stories that document every moment of life, draining it of depth.
The Disappearance of the Other In a hyperconnected world, the “hell of the same” replaces conflict with difference. Algorithmic bubbles and digital narcissism eliminate genuine dialogue.
Example: Online communities that reinforce prejudices instead of challenging perspectives.
Main Works
The Burnout Society (2010): Analyzes how self-exploitation replaces external oppression, generating depression and existential exhaustion.
Psychopolitics (2014): Explores how neoliberalism uses data and positivity (“Be happy!”) to control the masses.
The Expulsion of the Other (2017): Warns of cultural homogenization and the loss of otherness in the global era.
Non-Things (2021): Critiques the primacy of the digital over the material, where “things” are replaced by information and screens.
Criticisms of His Thought
Radical pessimism: Some scholars argue Han ignores emerging forms of resistance (e.g., slow life movements).
Lack of practical solutions: His diagnoses are brilliant but offer few concrete paths for action.
Generalizations: His aphoristic style can oversimplify complex phenomena (e.g., reducing contemporary art to “marketing”).
Relevance in the Age of AI and the Metaverse
Han’s ideas resonate in several contemporary debates:
Generative AI (ChatGPT): Does it reinforce the “society of fatigue” by forcing us to produce endless content?
The Metaverse: Is it the culmination of the “disappearance of the real,” replacing bodies and spaces with avatars and simulations?
Mental health: The rise in anxiety and ADHD among youth could be seen as symptoms of “infoxication” (information overload).
A First Conclusion: An Uncomfortable Mirror for the 21st Century
Byung-Chul Han offers no comfort, but a critical mirror reflecting our contradictions: we are free to self-exploit, connected yet alone, visible yet empty. His work invites us to reject the tyranny of positivity and to recover the ability to say “no,” to embrace silence and the immeasurable. In a world that worships speed and transparency, Han reminds us that what is truly human often resides in shadows, secrets, and slow rhythms.
A Philosopher to Navigate Modernity’s Paradoxes
Beyond his well-known concepts, Han’s work unfolds a penetrating critique of contemporary culture, blending philosophy, sociology, and psychology.
The Tyranny of Positivity Han argues that neoliberalism replaced the disciplinary society (based on the “no” of norms) with a performance society obsessed with limitless “yes.”
Result: A nearly uncontrollable phenomenon of perpetual optimization—the pressure to be happy, successful, healthy, and productive—creates constant guilt when ideals are not met.
Example: Wellness apps that turn self-care into a stressful obligation rather than a genuine act.
Key phrase: “Positivity is more effective than prohibition: no one rebels against the command to ‘Be yourself!’”
Eros in the Digital Age In The Agony of Eros (2012), Han critiques how hyperconnection destroys desire and love.
Pornification of relationships: Dating apps like Tinder reduce eros to a swipe, erasing mystery and erotic tension.
Commodification of the body: Social networks turn intimacy into spectacle, where the body is displayed as merchandise.
Loss of the inaccessible: Instant “matches” eliminate the dialectic of desire, which requires distance and absence.
The Crisis of Deep Time In The Scent of Time (2009), Han analyzes how digital acceleration destroys the experience of time.
Point-time vs. durable time: Notifications and multitasking fragment time into meaningless “particles.”
End of contemplation: The obsession with productivity prevents us from engaging in purposeless activities (e.g., art, philosophy).
Example: Reading a paper book vs. “consuming” summaries on TikTok—the latter reflects the impossibility of inhabiting time deeply.
The Death of Ritual In Saving Beauty (2015), Han laments the disappearance of collective rituals in favor of the instagrammable.
Empty aestheticization: Art and beauty are reduced to photographable “experiences,” losing their power to move or transcend.
Example: Crowded museums where visitors record artworks without truly seeing them.
Key phrase: “The polished, the smooth, the cool… today beauty is a commodity without aura.”
Capitalism and the Imperative of Authenticity Han dismantles the neoliberal myth of “authenticity.”
The self as brand: On social media, individuals become influencers of themselves, managing their image like a product.
Emotional self-exploitation: Sharing “authentic” feelings online is another performance, subject to like-metrics.
Example: “Real life” vlogs scripted and edited to appear spontaneous.
The Pandemic as a Symptom of the Palliative Society In The Palliative Society (2020), Han analyzes the management of COVID-19 with key insights:
Avoidance of pain: Neoliberal society seeks to eliminate all suffering (physical or emotional) with quick fixes (e.g., pills, digital distractions), avoiding the root causes of malaise.
Health as moral imperative: Being healthy becomes an obligation; the sick are stigmatized as “failures.”
Example: Fitness tracking and obsession with body metrics as forms of neoliberal self-control.
Critique of Artificial Intelligence Han warns that AI reinforces the dynamics of the performance society.
Algorithmic optimization: AIs like ChatGPT push us to be faster, more efficient, and “perfect,” increasing self-exploitation.
Loss of otherness: Algorithms show us only what we already know (information bubbles), erasing encounters with difference.
Example: Netflix or Spotify recommendation systems that homogenize cultural consumption.
What Does Han Propose? Alternatives in the Fog
Though often criticized for not offering clear solutions, his texts hint at possible paths:
Recover the art of deep attention: reading, contemplating, creating without haste.
Embrace negativity: accept pain, failure, and conflict as essential parts of being human.
Revitalize rituals: restore collective practices with symbolic meaning (e.g., meals without screens, community ceremonies).
Conclusion: A Philosopher to Resist Self-Exploitation
Byung-Chul Han is not a self-help guru but a diagnostician of our invisible ailments. His work invites us to question the cult of efficiency, disconnect from validation metrics, and rediscover the beauty of the imperfect, the slow, and the opaque. In a world urging us to become performance machines, Han reminds us that true freedom may lie in the simple act of saying enough.
