Fact-Checking the Future: AI, Technofascism, and the Unmaking of Democracy

Technology is no longer a beat about products and platforms. It has become an eminently political domain, arguably one of the most central arenas in which power is now contested and exercised. A new kind of authority has taken shape at the intersection of Silicon Valley, artificial intelligence, and a resurgent far right: a convergence of data firms like Palantir, the tech billionaires now openly aligned with authoritarian politics, and the AI systems reshaping how populations are watched, sorted, and governed. It is one of the defining stories of this moment in history, and also one of the hardest and most dangerous to report. The companies at its centre often own the very platforms through which any story reaches the public, the technology moves faster than the newsroom, and the phenomenon no longer stops at the American border, arriving in Europe and beyond as export, template, and even warning. This panel brings together journalists working at the front of that story to talk about the craft of it. How do you investigate a system built to be opaque? What does it take to hold accountable those who control the infrastructure of attention and artificial intelligence? And how is the reporting adapting as the story crosses borders and outpaces the tools we have to tell it? It will also reflect on how technology journalism has itself been transformed. Once a specialism of gadgets, launches, and markets, it has been pushed into political and investigative work, and into the risks that come with it: legal intimidation, surveillance, the difficulty of scrutinising the very companies that control how journalism is distributed and now produced, and the harder task still of exposing the firms that build the digital tools of oppression for the new authoritarianism. adversarial e investigativo, esposto a sua volta ai rischi di questa evoluzione – dalle intimidazioni legali alle SLAPP, fino alla sorveglianza. Ne emerge una contraddizione sempre più difficile da eludere: indagare le aziende che controllano le piattaforme attraverso cui il giornalismo viene distribuito e, sempre più spesso, gli strumenti con cui viene prodotto. Ancora più complesso è raccontare le imprese che sviluppano le tecnologie alla base della nuova architettura della sorveglianza: sistemi e infrastrutture destinati a ridefinire il rapporto tra potere, informazione e controllo, mentre l’autoritarismo si dota di strumenti tecnologici sempre più sofisticati.