weapons of mass decentralization–
There’s a lot of discussion presently about the end of the Bronze Age and what that might tell us about what feels to many like the end of an age or even civilization itself in our time. Patrick Fitzsimmons, a postdoctoral fellow at Penn, is interested in how some technological advancements can be a centripetal force among humans, pulling people together into larger groups ruled by a strong center, while other technologies exert a centrifugal force, dissolving large empires and leaving smaller groupings in their place.
Transporting tin [to make bronze] required a trader willing to assume the cost and risks of a journey, but the average Iron Age smith could find sources much closer to home. One analysis of Iron Age artifacts in Denmark found that the iron was derived from ‘bog iron’ ores that were abundant in local wetlands, smelted with charcoal from local forests.
This new technology had momentous political implications. Since iron could be smelted locally, previously peripheral communities could arm themselves with weapons that were, for practical purposes, comparable to the weapons of the elite in the empire’s core. In contrast to bronze, iron democratized violence.
Fitzsimmons’s thesis meshes nicely with Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse. Kemp sees “civilization” as a creation of armed gangs who seize power and commandeer natural resources and labor to aggrandize and enrich themselves:
As the post-Ice Age climate warmed, Kemp writes, societies began to see a “shift towards social relations built on dominance hierarchies,” driven largely by the growing availability of “lootable resources,” such as grain, which allowed “individuals and groups to become not just rich but also powerful.” The other two “sources” of Goliath fuel were “monopolizable weapons” enabling plunder and hoarding, and “caged land,” by which he means resources or people that could not move to escape domination. Groups would often simply flee a rising Gorilla, if they could.
Michael Hudson’s work on debt in the Ancient Near East also comes into play here:
This story is also told by Michael Hudson in Killing the Host (2015). Hudson focused on the role of debt in enabling the rich to acquire wealth, for instance, by taking the land of farmers unable to repay loans for seed grain purchases, or taking them as slaves. Before long, the king finds he has a depleted workforce, tax base, and army. Hudson explained how debt has thereby destroyed whole empires. Often this led rulers to periodically cancel all debts.
At the end of the Links article, Fitzsimmons muses about current emerging technologies and whether the are centripetal or centrifugal in their effects:
A clear modern-day parallel is drones, which have been transformative in the Russia–Ukraine war and are reportedly responsible for up to 80 percent of recent casualties in that conflict as of 2026. A drone costing just a few hundred dollars can threaten a tank, artillery gun, or command post worth many times more. Drone combat has lowered war’s cost of entry and could make it easier for small guerrilla groups to challenge dominant powers.
Another parallel can perhaps be seen in AI. Access to AI is decentralized in that many individuals can use it, to potentially destructive effect. However, AI providers have the capacity to concentrate power. Access can be cut off, centralizing the use of AI in the hands of the companies that own it and whomever they choose to allow access, similar to the advantage enjoyed by Bronze Age kings who controlled stores of tin.
While Fitzsimmons is right that AI can be used by non- or even anti-state individuals to wreak havoc by hacking or bioterrorism, that is true only as long as the owners of the agents allow it. AI requires enormous amounts of capital to acquire the necessary energy, water and “compute.” It’s not a laptop that an individual can run on a rechargeable battery. AI is clearly a centripetal force in human society, enabling previously impossible levels of surveillance and repression.
Also relevant inall this is Joseph Tainter’s work on how civilizations get caught inevitably in a complexity spiral that increases the energy required just to keep things going to the point that the civilization collapses when it can no longer meet this increased energy demand.
