THOUGHTS ON NEO-VOC INDUSTRIAL DOMINATION IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
If we apply the horse hypothesis to how autonomous drone warfare is being waged in the Ukraine-Russian war, with 60% of total casualties from drone warfare, it is not going to make us more war-averse and reduce war deaths. It is going to gamify real-life warfare, where you don't even have to look into the eyes of a soldier you are shooting to death, unlike World War 2.
The VOC was founded in 1602 in the Dutch Republic as a merger of rival Dutch trading ventures, with a capital of over 6.4 million guilders—huge by contemporary standards. The VOC built a dense network of trading posts from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan, including factories in Coromandel, Bengal, Gujarat, Iran, Taiwan (Formosa), and a unique European trading post in Japan (Deshima).
The VOC’s real “domination” came from its hybrid role as a corporate‑sovereign: it could wage war, sign treaties, coin money, and govern territories such as Batavia and much of the Indonesian archipelago.
Big Tech's supermassive investments in artificial intelligence are a civilisational reset that will reduce the world to neo-serfdom in a post-technological age.
A growing group of economists and political theorists argue that platform monopolies (cloud, search, social, app stores) function like feudal lords owning “digital land” (infrastructure, data, attention), on which everyone else must operate as dependent tenants.
In this view, AI supercharges that model: those who own the models, data, and compute can monitor, nudge, and discipline both workers and consumers at scale, creating “cloud serfs” whose unpaid data and tightly managed labour further entrench a tiny elite.
On the risk side, large‑scale AI deployment could: centralise economic power, enable pervasive surveillance, hard‑code discrimination, and accelerate ecological damage through massive energy and resource use.
In the future, we will have very powerful city-states defended by drone armies after robotics and AI automate a lot of paid work.
In the 20th century, we observed the rise of the nation-states. The 21st century will be about their disintegration.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards,
Harshit.
January 29, 2026 11:13 PM (GMT+5:30)
In 2020, I was leaving a FinTech startup and I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life. I asked one of the cofounders, who became one of my mentors, how do I know what should I build for my country. He said that I should go outside and in the field. Travel and meet people. If your potential customers are in the factory, sleep on the factory floor.
I felt this was an adventure that will help me groom myself into a budding entrepreneur. Next 4 years, I didn't go to Dalat in Vietnam (Kashi of Vietnam) or NYC (Birthplace of Hip Hop).
I travelled solo to different parts of the country to get to know my country. I think I still haven't. I travelled to Jharia, Dhanbad to witness coal mining villages and I had good chats with kind miners. (They work hard and breathe coal dust, so that, your kids can sleep in an air-conditioned room.) I travelled to Kutch, Gujarat, talked with local farmers and tribesmen. I visited places that got electricity a few years back and a water pipe two years ago (yes, water pipe is a privilege).
A part of my soul died when I saw how much they distrusted mobile apps because they had been cheated by a scammer or someone in their family died due to being harassed by a loan shark company.
A part of my soul died when a kind cab driver was dropping me to office in Noida when there was a cab drivers strike and cars were being burnt if you broke the rules. I remember that he got a panic call from his wife due to a whatsapp fake news.
A part of my soul died when I saw the way we develop software in Gurgaon, is so detached from the ground reality.
I remembered the pride I used to get in my work when software helped people, made their lives easy, added value to their lives, relative security to their travel. I was downtrodden but I decided to take initiative.
हौंसला रखना हैं कारवां बनता चला जाएगा |
I have sacrificed a comfortable life in Gurgaon, a marriage and my time with my family, so that I can properly dedicate the next 10 years solving the hearing impairment market. We have an audacious goal. We aim to reduce the cost of hearing care by 10x in 5 years. Slowly but eventually.
So, dear kind people, if you have a family member - an older person, a father, a grandfather or a specially abled child, please drop a line on this email. I'd love to have a chat.
Remember, we at **Dhvana** are sleeping 2 hours a day to try to make their lives a bit better. Help me understand my customers.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards,
Harshit.
January 29, 2026 11:12 PM (GMT+5:30)
"Peace is an illusion no matter how tranquil the world seems peace doesn't last. Long peace is a struggle against our very nature, skin we stretch over the bone muscle and, senu of our own innate savagery what are you doing we can't. The instinct of violence curls inside us like a parasite waiting for a chance to feed on our rage and multiply until it bursts out on us. War is the only thing we really understand. Humanity has spread to the stars. We set out like ancient seafarers to explore the limitless ocean of space, but no matter how far we venture into the unknown, the worst monsters are those we bring with us. When everyone lies,s telling the truth isn't just rebellion. It's an act of revolution, so think carefully when you speak it because the truth is a weapon. The danger of living too many times you forget to fear death. We dismiss the Grim Reaper as a quaint metaphor, fearing death, it's good for you, and what we believe shapes who we are. Belief can bring us salvation or destruction,n listen to it, but when you believe a lie for too long, the truth doesn't set you free, no, it tears you apart."
Altered Carbon: Takeshi's Intro Monologues, Season 1
January 24, 2026 6:40 PM (GMT+5:30)
Why Gamification Is the Right Word (Not a Rhetorical One)
In World War II:
Soldiers still advanced into fire. They still faced exhaustion, terror, and eye-level consequences. Even industrial killing demanded bodily commitment. There was distance—but not disembodiment. Drone warfare completes that break.
Today:
Targets appear as icons. Engagement is mediated by screens, latency, and optimisation loops. Success is measured in efficiency, uptime, and precision. These are not battlefield values. They are game mechanics.
Gamification doesn’t trivialise killing emotionally—it proceduralises it.
Death becomes an output, not an encounter.
January 24, 2026 6:40 PM (GMT+5:30)
The Horse Changed Human Psychology
This is the subtle part people miss.
Riding a horse:
Elevated the human physically. Detached the rider emotionally. Turns terrain into abstraction. From horseback, the world looked manageable.
This birthed:
Imperial thinking. Hierarchies of worth. The idea that some humans exist to be “passed through”. The horse didn’t just make empires possible. It made empires feel natural.
If we apply the horse hypothesis to how autonomous drone warfare is being waged in the Ukraine-Russian war, with 60% of total casualties from drone warfare, it is not going to make us more war-averse and reduce war deaths. It is going to gamify real-life warfare, where you don't even have to look into the eyes of a soldier you are shooting to death, unlike World War 2.
Already, there are underground military theories about using AI and robotics to reinforce power in the developed countries that no longer have a very good fertility rate.
The Core Argument (Tightened and Clarified)
Applying the horse hypothesis to autonomous drone warfare—especially as seen in the Ukraine–Russia war—suggests that this technology will not make humanity more war-averse or reduce deaths. It will do the opposite.
Just as the horse did not civilise violence but abstracted and accelerated it, autonomous drones detach killing from the human nervous system itself.
When a significant share of casualties comes from drone warfare, something fundamental shifts:
Killing no longer requires physical courage. Fear becomes one-sided. Violence loses reciprocity.
This is not moral progress. It is friction removal.
Cheaper. Deployable. Forgettable.
January 24, 2026 6:39 PM (GMT+5:30)