Augmented technofeudalism
Second of the four scenarios: cognitive power concentrates among a few laboratories, platforms, and states, and AI remains a tool whose use shapes a de facto nobility. The most likely scenario in light of current events.
Augmented technofeudalism extends to the cognitive layer what Varoufakis and Durand theorized about the digital layer: rent, not competitive profit, becomes the dominant mode of extraction; the territory of platforms, not the market, becomes the space of value. With generative AI, this logic shifts one notch further: the fiefs are no longer only data platforms, but the cognitive infrastructures themselves — frontier models, compute farms, retraining capacity.
Why it is the most likely scenario
It is the east pole of the trajectory radar: it maximizes the concentration of power without handing decision over to the AIs themselves. Humans remain at the controls — but only a small number of humans, who negotiate among themselves and with states at the summit, as Beijing illustrated in May 2026. This scenario is the natural slope of present forces: concentrated capital, massive economies of scale, technical lock-in, locked vertical ecosystems.
Difference from “classical” technofeudalism
Three augmentations specific to the AI moment:
- The cognitive serf: the user supplies their data and their attention, but also their prompts, which in time train the system that will replace them in their trade. The extraction loop closes on itself.
- Transnational entanglement: Cook cannot disentangle Apple from Foxconn, Musk cannot afford to lose Shanghai, Nvidia cannot sell without TSMC. The oligopolistic system holds because each oligarch needs the others.
- Cognitive rent: it is no longer only the extraction of surplus value but the capture of operations of thought themselves (writing, code, consulting, diagnosis).
In If No One Builds It
The scenario is treated in two distinct chapters:
- Scénario 2 — Technoféodalité augmentée — main formulation and mechanics of cognitive concentration.
- Scénario 2 face au climat — articulation with the climate crisis and the energy cost of infrastructures.
Observable signals
On the observatory radar, pushing toward this scenario: (a) any market consolidation in AI cloud, (b) any loosening of export controls that maintains global entanglement, (c) any corporate restructuring involving a massive transfer of human jobs into AI-capital rent, (d) any “scaling up” of proprietary models paired with locked APIs.