At War with Technology

The government spokesperson speaks vaguely of lifting filters on Telegram and YouTube, while carefully avoiding any concrete timeline to avoid "breaking promises." Meanwhile, across both the East and the West—and throughout our immediate Middle Eastern neighborhood—nations are locked in fierce competition, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence, sovereign computing, and next-generation digital infrastructure.

At Donald Trump's recent presidential inauguration, tech titans and leading venture capitalists occupied prominent positions alongside traditional political figures, underscoring the deep integration between state power and the tech sector. With figures like Elon Musk assuming influential policy roles, governance has entered an era where technological supremacy directly drives geopolitical hegemony.

Previously, technology was valued primarily for its economic efficiency; with the advent of frontier AI, it has become an indispensable instrument of statecraft and grand strategy. In Paris, over 50 nations convened to address the widening AI gap between themselves and the United States and China, securing over €200 billion in European AI investments. Global defense doctrines are rapidly pivoting toward autonomous drone swarms and algorithmic warfare.

In an era where international influence is defined by soft power—the capacity to shape preferences through cultural appeal, political values, and technological vibrancy—technological leadership is an invaluable currency of national stature.

In stark contrast, Iran is pursuing an entirely diametric course. Instead of facilitating technological innovation, state policy is characterized by escalating restrictions, throttled bandwidth, and arbitrary censorship against IT professionals and startups. Rather than nurturing a dynamic digital economy, regulatory bodies like SATRA are established to stifle independent digital media platforms under archaic vetting frameworks.

Most tragically, Iran’s technological priorities are fundamentally distorted. Instead of deploying engineering talent toward national development, scientific computing, or economic productivity, state resources are diverted into automated facial recognition systems designed to penalize women over dress codes. This misallocation of human and financial capital represents not merely a squandering of national resources, but a dangerous derailment of Iran’s developmental trajectory.

While neighboring states leverage digital ecosystems to elevate their stature in the global economy, Iran isolates its digital workforce. This lag damages not only economic competitiveness, but national security, diplomatic leverage, and cultural influence.

Let us be candid: as long as policymakers believe that national power resides solely in Kalashnikovs and identify the primary threat in the attire of tech employees, progress will remain an illusion. True statecraft recognizes that both adversaries and partners wield technology as an instrument of national power; Iran alone appears to be waging war against technology itself.