Automation and artificial intelligence expose the structural obsolescence of the modern State
– Automation as a structural rupture of the State model.
– Corruption as systemic inefficiency rather than isolated deviation.
– The transition toward algorithmic governance.
Sterile Battles
State corruption against technology
By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano
The ports of Qidong and the Yangshan cargo terminal in Shanghai —the largest in the world— are the ultimate exponents of “ghost ports.”
In these spaces, human labor has disappeared: there are no dockworkers or drivers.
There is only a silent, choreographed movement of cranes and automated vehicles guided by algorithms that move thousands of containers with millimetric precision.
Each container and crane functions as a sensor within the Internet of Things (IoT). The port is a data extraction network that not only moves cargo but collects, every second, the information necessary to predict problems, analyze consumption, and find solutions autonomously.
Artificial intelligence is only the tip of the iceberg of a revolution that includes IoT, robotics, and 4D printing, among others.
It is astonishing that this issue is not the core of fundamental discussions such as labor reform, public budget costs, and their financing.
A tsunami with forty-meter waves is approaching, while most politicians continue playing at sustaining an unviable system through deception.
Forty years ago, Ray Kurzweil (founder of Singularity University) and other authors anticipated the arrival of the Singularity, the moment when our species will undergo a definitive transformation.
At the same time, studies from Oxford and MIT indicated that the speed of knowledge growth is accelerating exponentially, warning that within a horizon of 10 to 15 years, up to 70% of current jobs could disappear.
Historically, major technological changes created more jobs than they destroyed.
In this Fourth Revolution, the transformation of human knowledge is such that most current occupations could disappear.
There is also the cost of corruption within the political system, which is not only collusion but an unsustainable inefficiency cost that is transferred to every productive actor.
It is urgent to adopt measures so that this transformation —the deepest since the origin of our species— aligns with our development instead of destroying us.
Last February, a report from the Citrini Research Center and a text by Matt Schumer circulated, both agreeing in predicting a collapse of qualified employment by 2028.
The announcement generated such volatility that the Dow Jones dropped more than 800 points in a single session.
The most disruptive aspect is that AI is being used to write the code of its own future versions, thus learning to program itself.
The Citrini Report proposes a “breaking point” for 2028, when automation will dismantle white-collar jobs such as financial analysts, investment bankers, account executives, and high-level software developers.
Although this was expected to occur over decades, the horizon has been reduced to a margin of one to three years, because all technological knowledge of humanity is currently doubling every 12 days —and will do so in even less time.
While TEMU penetrates middle- and lower-income markets through this colossal cost reduction, some governments impose VAT (a hidden additional tax) that increasingly distances consumption from this exponential multiplication of production.
The technological revolution is not merely an improvement of tools; it is a force that is altering the very structure of how value is created.
For the political system, this means that the 20th-century State model (based on physical bureaucracy and mass employment) is becoming financially unsustainable and operationally obsolete.
If Isaac Asimov were to analyze this transition —with his characteristic blend of technological optimism and suspicion of fragile human institutions— he would frame it as an inevitable psychohistorical evolution.
We are not facing a political crisis, but a thermodynamic efficiency crisis of the social system.
The State is an organism that consumes too much energy (taxes/resources) to produce very little order (services/progress).
The End of “Carbon Bureaucracy”
Asimov would argue that the human being is a biological data processor, slow and prone to error (and to temptation).
The political system can no longer sustain a structure based on “atoms” (buildings, stamps, physical bureaucrats).
Consequently: the size of the State will shrink. Algorithmic administration does not require salaries, has no political ambitions, and does not accept bribes.
Public spending will shift from sustaining people to sustaining data infrastructure.
Sterile battles, when laws collide with reality.
For Asimov, corruption is a “programming failure” in the social contract.
By integrating Blockchain (an immutable database), the political system loses the ability to interpret spending.
The budget becomes self-executing code.
Unable to divert funds for their “campaigns,” politicians will be forced to become mere technical supervisors —or to disappear.
Public works cease to be favors and become mathematical outcomes.
Asimov predicted that global communications would render borders obsolete.
Technology creates a layer of reality superior to physical territory.
If a State is inefficient or corrupt, the citizen “digitally emigrates” toward platforms or jurisdictions that are more logical.
The Nation-State must compete with technological corporations.
Sovereignty is no longer control over land, but control over user trust.
A corrupt State is simply software that no one wants to download.
Toward a Data Dictatorship or Direct Democracy?
Asimov always feared that technological complexity would surpass the understanding of ordinary citizens, delegating power to a “technical caste” (the new politicians).
The shift is determining that public security, education, and healthcare will cease to be tools of social control and become services personalized by AI.
As a consequence, public spending becomes so efficient that wealth increases, but purpose becomes scarce.
The risk is not that the State is large, but that it becomes a closed system where citizens lose autonomy to algorithms.
Asimov’s Conclusion
“Corruption is the first sign of a system that becomes too complex for its own controls.
Technology does not come to save politicians; it comes to replace faith in human honesty with the certainty of mathematical verification.”
The final summary: the size of the State will shrink until it becomes almost invisible (pure code), and public spending will become as traceable as a banking transaction.
The traditional politician will not be defeated by a revolution, but by their own technical irrelevance.
We will witness the inevitable changes that technology will impose on the size and spending of the State.