Introduction

This text continues an inquiry into Empire as a transhistorical system of domination that exceeds the confines of individual empires. It exposes a global logic of hierarchy, extraction, and exploitation that adapts across historical epochs. While earlier analyses traced Empire’s trajectory—from the Genoese-Iberian crucible through Dutch innovation, British industrialization, and American-led globalization—this work shifts focus. Using the metaphor of systems biology, it reconceives Empire as a parasitic force that preys upon the “organs” of the social body, restructuring its defense, metabolic, circulatory, sensory, and reproductive systems to sustain its dominance.

Empire operates across interwoven scales. At the molecular level—the domain of institutional and relational bonds—it forges polarizing alliances between financiers, empires, and colonies, cementing asymmetrical relationships of power and dependency. At the sub-molecular level—the material and ecological domain—it fragments and repurposes vital systems for extraction and control, severing them from their regenerative capacities. At the molar scale—the overarching systemic level—it consolidates these dynamics into architectures of domination, embedding extraction within governance, finance, and production.

The phases of Empire’s evolution highlight its adaptive strategies:

1. Genoese-Iberian Phase: Conquest serves as Empire’s foundational mechanism, parasitically draining the defense systems of subjugated societies. Genoese financiers orchestrated this system, turning Iberian territorial expansion into a calculated engine of extraction.

2. Dutch Phase: Empire shifts to a trade-centric logic, militarizing protection and optimizing capital flows. The Dutch refine financial and logistical systems, embedding extraction within global commerce.

3. British Phase: Metabolic systems are reconfigured, transforming colonies into raw material suppliers and waste sinks. Industrial growth consumes and pollutes the same regions it exploits—a cycle of simultaneous nourishment and defilement.

4. American Phase: Circulatory systems are internalized and globalized, consolidating privilege within the imperial core. Optimized information and transport networks ensure the seamless flow of capital, goods, and labor.

5. Sensory Capitalism (Present): Empire seizes control of the social body’s nervous systems, commodifying perception, attention, and emotional experience. Surveillance and media intensify extraction by capturing relational and sensory life itself.

6. Biocapitalism (Future): Empire threatens to colonize life’s generative capacities entirely, subordinating reproduction to its extractive and commodifying logic—a dystopian horizon where life itself is harnessed as capital.

This framework deepens the critique of Empire, exposing its capacity to adapt, intensify, and expand its mechanisms of domination. By hijacking vital functions and fracturing relational bonds, Empire transforms the social body into a fragmented apparatus of extraction, perpetuating racialized exploitation, patriarchal hierarchies, and ecological devastation.

While this narrative might seem linear, Empire’s evolution is far more intricate. Its strategies of domination often unfold along multiple axes simultaneously, exploring diverse and overlapping methods to entrench its logic. For example, the early internalization of reproductive costs during the transatlantic slave trade—through the calculated breeding of enslaved people—foreshadowed later biocapitalist dynamics. Specific empires that successfully adapt and master these strategies under favorable conditions ascend to hegemonic dominance within the general framework of totalizing Empire. This opportunistic adaptability ensures Empire’s persistence, even as it erodes the very systems and societies it depends upon for survival.

The Genoese-Iberian Phase 

Conquistador Capitalism

The Genoese-Iberian phase initiates the foundational dynamics of Empire’s parasitic logic, where conquest becomes the primary mechanism for sustaining polarizing alliances between financiers and imperial powers. This period marks the emergence of a structured relationship that not only enabled unprecedented systems of exploitation but also laid the groundwork for the global dominance of capitalism. Through the integration of financial innovation and military conquest, Empire transformed the world into a resource to be consumed, fractured, and redirected toward the imperial core.

The Molecular Scale:

Genoese Financiers and Iberian Empires

At the molecular level—where institutional and relational bonds take shape—the Genoese-Iberian axis exemplified the parasitic symbiosis foundational to Empire. Genoese financiers, operating as detached parasitic entity, constructed financial architectures—credit systems, loans, and investment networks—that enabled and amplified Iberian imperial expansion. This scaffolding transformed conquest into a calculated system of extraction, insulating the financiers from the violence their enterprise sustained.

The relationship was starkly asymmetrical: Genoese financiers dictated terms, reaping immense profits with minimal risk, while the Iberians shouldered the logistical and human costs—armies, naval fleets, and colonial administration—taking perverse libidinal pleasure in their acts of conquest. This imbalance embodies Empire’s enduring logic of polarizing bonds, where the spoils of extraction flow disproportionately to those most removed from its destructive impacts. Together, these actors engineered a parasitic dynamic that would define Empire’s evolving machinery of exploitation.

Colonized Bodies as Fragmented Flesh

The colonized, however, were excluded from this alliance and instead reduced to the raw material that sustained it. Indigenous communities and enslaved Africans were fragmented into what Empire renders as “flesh”—bodies stripped of autonomy, relationality, and resistance. This process of fragmentation severed individuals from their kinship networks, ecological systems, and cultural lifeways, reorganizing them as instruments of extraction.

The Iberians deployed systemic violence to ensure this transformation. Communities were shattered through forced relocations, massacres, and the imposition of colonial hierarchies. Laboring bodies were conscripted, enslaved, and commodified, their vitality drained to fuel the machinery of conquest. The profits extracted from this fragmented flesh reinforced the Genoese-Iberian bond, ensuring the consolidation of wealth and power at the imperial core.

The Sub-Molecular Scale:

Defense Mechanisms Appropriated

Empire’s parasitism extended further at the sub-molecular level, where it hijacked the defense mechanisms of colonized societies. Indigenous systems of kinship, alliance, and warfare—once vital for collective survival—were appropriated and turned inward. Pre-existing rivalries were exploited, and divisions within communities were exacerbated, leaving colonized populations vulnerable and fragmented.

Resistance was not simply suppressed but redirected. Leaders who sought to protect their communities were often co-opted, forced to act as intermediaries in the colonial apparatus. This conversion of resistance into complicity weakened collective opposition and embedded exploitation into the social fabric of the colonized. Empire’s parasitic logic, at this scale, involved not only the destruction of defense systems but their reconfiguration into tools of self-fragmentation.

The Molar Scale:

Empire as Conquest System

At the molar scale—the level of overarching systems—Empire synthesized the Genoese-Iberian bond into a systemic apparatus of conquest. This was not mere chaos but a calculated framework designed to perpetuate extraction over time. Contracts, treaties, and maps became tools for formalizing domination, transforming the violent appropriation of land and labor into abstractions that could be quantified, monetized, and administered.

This phase marked the emergence of a worldview where the Earth itself, along with its inhabitants, became a ledger of resources. Colonized bodies, ecosystems, and territories were reimagined as metrics—land parcels, enslaved persons, and agricultural yields—that could be mapped, controlled, and traded. Conquest was no longer episodic but systemic, embedding Empire’s parasitic logic into the global structures of finance and governance.

Empire’s Parasitic Dynamics

The Genoese-Iberian phase established the template for Empire’s transhistorical evolution. It was here that Empire first demonstrated its capacity to fragment social bodies and reconstitute them into extractive systems that sustain the polarizing bonds between financiers and imperial powers. Colonized bodies became fragmented flesh, their vitality redirected to serve the imperial core, while the social and ecological systems that once sustained them were shattered.

This foundational phase reveals the core dynamics that would persist and intensify through subsequent stages of Empire: the financiers who dictate terms and accumulate wealth, the conquerors who enforce extraction through violence and administration, and the colonized whose dispossession sustains the machinery of domination. By embedding these dynamics into the structures of global capitalism, the Genoese-Iberian phase ensured that Empire’s parasitic logic would endure, adapting to new forms while perpetuating the same fundamental hierarchies of exploitation.

The Dutch Phase

Trade Company Capitalism

The Dutch phase of Empire marks a critical evolution in its parasitic logic, transitioning from the chaotic violence of conquest to the calculated precision of trade administration. This transformation is epitomized by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), a corporate entity that seamlessly integrated financial and military power into a unified apparatus. The VOC not only intensified the exploitation of colonized peoples and lands but also pioneered a model that embedded extraction into global trade systems, reshaping Empire’s mechanisms of domination. This phase demonstrates Empire’s adaptability, shifting its parasitism from conquest-driven fragmentation to the systemic management of global flows of labor, resources, and wealth.

The Molecular Scale:

Dutch Corporations and Colonies

At the molecular level, the VOC exemplified Empire’s ability to forge polarizing bonds between corporate power and European states. Unlike the feudal alliances of the Genoese-Iberian phase, the VOC internalized protection, governance, and administration. Its armies, navies, and bureaucracies enabled it to operate autonomously, dictating the terms of exchange while maintaining control over the extraction of resources and labor. This autonomy allowed the VOC to position itself as both an economic and political backbone of the Dutch Republic, blurring the lines between corporate interests and state governance.

The VOC’s wealth funded the Dutch Republic’s infrastructure, military campaigns, and cultural projects, cementing the bond between state and company. However, this relationship was asymmetrical. The VOC wielded disproportionate power, retaining operational independence while directing the flows of capital and resources that sustained the Republic’s prosperity. This dynamic established a template for Empire’s reliance on corporate entities as both instruments of extraction and arbiters of global trade.

Fragmenting Colonized Bodies for Corporate Gain

The VOC’s relationship with colonized societies was defined by the extraction of life and labor through systemic fragmentation. Entire communities were reorganized into coerced labor forces, stripped of autonomy and relational networks, and transformed into nodes of production for global markets. This phase refined the logic of flesh—the reduction of colonized bodies to fragmented, commodified resources whose vitality was appropriated to sustain Empire’s operations.

Land was seized and converted into plantation systems, displacing Indigenous populations and severing ties to ancestral territories. Labor was extracted through enslavement, indenture, and forced cultivation, producing commodities such as spices and sugar for European consumption. The brutal efficiency of the VOC’s methods—dehumanizing and commodifying colonized bodies—ensured the continuous flow of resources to the imperial core while further entrenching the parasitic dynamic of Empire.

The Sub-Molecular Scale:

Defense Mechanisms Militarized

At the sub-molecular level, the VOC deepened its parasitic logic by militarizing the defense systems of colonized societies. Traditional governance structures, communal alliances, and local militias were either dismantled or subsumed into the VOC’s private military apparatus. The company manipulated Indigenous rivalries, pitting factions against one another to fragment resistance and secure compliance.

Resistance was met with overwhelming force, as the VOC’s armies crushed uprisings and reinforced the fragmentation of colonized communities. By weaponizing the defensive capacities of these societies, the VOC not only suppressed opposition but also ensured the smooth operation of its trade networks. This militarization exemplifies Empire’s ability to appropriate and repurpose existing systems to serve its extractive agenda.

The Molar Scale:

Empire as Trade System

At the molar scale, Empire consolidated itself into a global trade system underpinned by the VOC’s corporate innovations. The VOC transformed the chaotic violence of conquest into a structured framework of extraction, integrating finance, governance, and force into a unified apparatus. Tools of abstraction—shipping ledgers, contracts, and stock markets—allowed the VOC to regulate the flow of goods, labor, and capital with unprecedented precision, embedding exploitation into the fabric of global trade.

The creation of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and the development of the joint-stock company formalized capitalist mechanisms that diffused financial risk while concentrating profits in the hands of the VOC’s elite. These innovations institutionalized Empire’s parasitic logic, transforming colonized economies into appendages of a global capitalist system designed to sustain the imperial core.

Embedding Exploitation in Trade

The Dutch phase did not diminish the violence of Empire; it rendered it systematic and less visible, embedding it within the mechanisms of trade. The VOC’s integration of financial dominance and military power exemplified Empire’s adaptability, reshaping local economies and societies into appendages of a global capitalist system. Colonized bodies, fragmented into flesh, became the raw material for this transformation, their autonomy and vitality appropriated to sustain the polarizing bond between the VOC and European states.

This shift from conquest to trade administration marked a turning point in Empire’s parasitic evolution. The violence of extraction became embedded in the calculated efficiencies of corporate structures, normalizing exploitation through the abstractions of contracts, markets, and profit margins. The VOC’s legacy lies in its transformation of Empire into a global trade system—a model that would define the trajectory of capitalist domination for centuries to come. By institutionalizing exploitation within trade, the Dutch phase refined Empire’s parasitic logic, ensuring its survival and expansion across historical epochs.

The British Phase

Industrial Capitalism

The British phase of Empire signals a profound transformation in its parasitic logic, evolving into the age of industrial capitalism. This stage shifts Empire’s focus from trade-centric extraction to the systemic reorganization of labor, land, and resources to fuel industrial production. Colonized societies were further fragmented into “flesh,” their vitality appropriated to sustain the polarizing bonds between industrialists, the working class, and the imperial state. Industrial Britain emerged as the productive social body of the global system, consolidating its dominance by intensifying exploitation at home and abroad. Colonies were reconfigured as extractive appendages, supplying raw materials and absorbing waste, while Britain’s domestic hierarchies reflected and reinforced the inequities of Empire.

The Molecular Scale:

British Industry and Colonies

At the molecular scale, Empire’s industrial machinery deepened its parasitic dynamics through a dual polarization.

The first polarization occurred between Britain’s industrialists and its working class. Industrialists, wielding control over the means of production, amassed extraordinary wealth through the exploitation of factory labor. Workers were alienated from their labor, subjected to grueling conditions, and stripped of autonomy as they produced goods that enriched industrial elites. This internal polarization within Britain mirrored the broader logic of Empire: domestic labor, like colonized labor, was subordinated to the relentless demands of capital accumulation.

The second and more foundational polarization was between industrial Britain and its colonies. Colonized societies were forcibly restructured into extractive economies, producing commodities such as cotton, sugar, and rubber for British factories. Local industries were dismantled, leaving colonies dependent on British-manufactured goods. This dependency eroded the autonomy of colonized economies, transforming their lands and labor into fragmented components of Britain’s industrial machinery. The appropriation of colonized resources and labor became the raw material for Britain’s industrial growth, ensuring that the productive core was sustained at the expense of peripheral vitality.

The Sub-Molecular Scale:

Digestive Systems Reorganized

At the sub-molecular scale, Empire recalibrated the metabolic systems of colonized societies to serve industrial capitalism. Traditional agricultural practices, which had long sustained local populations and ecological balance, were displaced by export-oriented monocultures. Essential crops were replaced with commodities like sugarcane, tea, and cotton, leaving colonized populations malnourished and increasingly dependent on imported food.

This metabolic reengineering imposed severe ecological consequences. Fertile lands were depleted by intensive monoculture farming, forests were razed to make way for plantations, and water systems were rerouted to irrigate industrial agriculture. The metabolic flows of entire regions were forcibly redirected, channeling sustenance into Britain’s factories and markets. This parasitic transformation drained the vitality of both human and ecological systems, embedding extraction into the rhythms of daily life in the colonies.

The Molar Scale:

Empire as Industrial System

At the molar scale, Empire matured into an integrated industrial system, coordinating global flows of extraction, production, and distribution. British factories served as the engines of this system, transforming raw materials from colonies into manufactured goods that were then exported back to colonial markets. This circular flow entrenched economic dependency, draining colonies of their resources while simultaneously dismantling their local industries.

Empire institutionalized these extractive flows through tariffs, monopolies, and colonial governance. Innovations in transportation, such as railroads, canals, and steamships, facilitated the rapid movement of goods and labor across vast distances. Financial institutions and trade policies ensured that wealth flowed inexorably from the periphery to the imperial core, embedding exploitation into the architecture of global capitalism.

The partnership between industrialists and the state was central to this phase. The state provided infrastructure, legal frameworks, and military enforcement to protect industrial interests, ensuring the uninterrupted extraction of resources and labor. This alliance not only reinforced domestic hierarchies within Britain but also perpetuated the global inequalities that defined industrial capitalism.

Fragmenting the Colonized to Sustain Industrial Growth

The industrial phase deepened Empire’s reliance on fragmentation. Colonized bodies were reduced to flesh, their labor and lands appropriated to sustain the polarizing bonds that defined industrial capitalism. The exploitation of colonized labor facilitated Britain’s capital accumulation, while the metabolic flows of colonized societies were redirected to nourish the industrial core. This fragmentation severed the relational and ecological ties that sustained colonized communities, binding them more tightly to the imperial core.

Domestically, the bond between industrialists and the working class replicated these dynamics. Exploitation at home mirrored the subjugation of colonized populations abroad, with both groups reduced to instruments of production. These internal and external fragmentations reinforced one another, consolidating Empire’s dominance as an integrated industrial system.

The Logic of Metabolic Extraction

The British phase institutionalized a logic of metabolic extraction that reshaped the global social body. Colonized societies were not only exploited for their resources but also systematically reengineered to serve the metabolic needs of the industrial core. The displacement of traditional agricultural practices, the destruction of local economies, and the ecological devastation wrought by monoculture farming epitomized Empire’s parasitic nature.

This transformation entrenched the hierarchies of industrial capitalism, embedding exploitation into the rhythms of global production and consumption. Colonized labor and resources were appropriated to sustain the polarizing bond between industrialists, the working class, and the state, ensuring the continued dominance of the imperial core.

Sustaining Empire’s Industrial Apparatus

Through these mechanisms, the British phase exemplifies Empire’s adaptability. By refining its parasitic logic, Empire intensified its capacity to extract value while deepening the fragmentation and subjugation of colonized bodies. Colonies became essential appendages of the industrial system, providing raw materials and absorbing waste, while Britain’s factories and domestic hierarchies flourished at their expense.

This phase reveals how Empire consolidated its dominance not through the overt violence of conquest but through the systemic reengineering of global metabolic flows. By embedding exploitation into the daily lives of colonized and domestic populations alike, Empire ensured its survival and expansion, entrenching the structures of global inequality that continue to shape the world today.

The American Phase

Logistical Capitalism

The American phase of Empire marks a crucial evolution, centering on the appropriation and orchestration of global circulatory systems. The United States emerged as the circulatory social body of global capitalism, leveraging networks of financial markets, supply chains, and communication infrastructures to channel the flows of capital, goods, labor, and information. This phase shifted Empire’s focus from the metabolic exploitation of the industrial age to the systemic optimization of global circulation, consolidating the privileges of the imperial core while fragmenting and commodifying labor and resources at its peripheries.

The Molecular Scale:

American Capital and Global Peripheries

At the molecular level, Empire forged polarizing bonds that structured the global flows of logistical capitalism. In the Global North, elites dominated financial and economic systems, dictating the terms of trade, investment, and governance. These elites secured their privileges through the exploitation of Global South workers, who mediated the extraction of resources and labor in their own regions to sustain imperial economies. The elites of the Global South, though subordinate, were co-opted into facilitating this extraction, while the masses were fragmented into expendable labor.

Within the Global North, corporations shaped consumer behavior through marketing, financialization, and planned obsolescence, ensuring a relentless demand for goods produced in the Global South. The flesh of impoverished migrants—often displaced by the same extractive systems that sustained the imperial core—became an integral part of this logic. Migrants were relegated to labor-intensive, menial work in agriculture, meatpacking, sweatshops, and other exploitative industries. Their precarious status mirrored the conditions of workers in the Global South, highlighting Empire’s reliance on fragmentation and commodification across geographies.

The Sub-Molecular Scale:

Circulatory Systems Appropriated

At the sub-molecular scale, Empire appropriated and restructured circulatory systems to sustain its logistical apparatus. In the Global South, ports, railways, pipelines, and other infrastructures were designed to extract resources while bypassing the needs of local communities. These circulatory pathways became the veins and arteries of Empire, channeling commodities and capital toward the imperial core and leaving ecological devastation in their wake.

In the Global North, the bodies of impoverished migrants functioned as the hidden machinery of logistical capitalism. Labor-intensive sectors, from agriculture to garment manufacturing, depended on the hyper-exploitation of these workers. Often fleeing economic dislocation caused by imperial policies, migrants arrived only to be fragmented into flesh—reduced to invisible and undervalued components of the logistical system.

This appropriation extended beyond human labor to include ecological circulatory systems. Rivers were dammed, forests logged, and energy grids redirected to serve the industrial and consumer economies of the Global North. The environmental costs of this reorganization were borne disproportionately by the Global South, compounding the social and ecological dislocation of its communities. These systemic displacements sustained the seamless operations of Empire, embedding extraction into the flows of logistical capitalism.

The Molar Scale:

Empire as Circulatory System

At the molar scale, Empire consolidated itself as an integrated circulatory system under U.S. hegemony. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO) enforced structural adjustment programs and trade liberalization, subordinating the economies of the Global South to the demands of the imperial core. The U.S. dollar’s role as the global reserve currency entrenched this system, allowing the U.S. to extract surplus value from global transactions.

Technological advancements in logistics, such as containerized shipping, just-in-time supply chains, and telecommunications, optimized the flow of goods and information. Yet, these efficiencies came at the cost of profound inequalities. The flesh of migrant laborers in the Global North and fragmented workers in the Global South served as the invisible engines of this system, maintaining the abundance enjoyed by the imperial core while bearing the brunt of its dehumanizing demands.

Even within the Global North, the circulatory logic of Empire created stark hierarchies. Affluent consumers reaped the benefits of global extraction, while migrant workers performed the arduous and degrading labor that upheld the system. Their bodies were rendered expendable, their labor invisible, and their humanity ignored—all to ensure the uninterrupted flows of capital and commodities.

Fragmenting Workers Across Borders

Empire sustained its circulatory logic through the systematic fragmentation of workers into flesh, regardless of geography. In the Global South, workers were commodified as laborers in mines, plantations, and factories that fed global supply chains. In the Global North, migrants were similarly fragmented, performing the unacknowledged labor that sustained agriculture, manufacturing, and service industries. This fragmentation was not incidental but intrinsic to the operation of logistical capitalism.

Empire’s appropriation of circulatory systems also extended to ecosystems. Rivers, forests, and farmlands were reconfigured to align with industrial and logistical demands. These ecological disruptions mirrored the social dislocation of workers, creating a feedback loop of dislocation and exploitation that sustained the imperial core at the expense of its peripheries.

The Circulatory Logic of Logistical Capitalism

The American phase of Empire institutionalized a circulatory logic that redefined the global social body. By fragmenting workers and ecosystems into commodified flesh, Empire sustained the polarizing bonds between the Global North and South. These bonds ensured the continuous extraction of labor and resources from the peripheries, while the imperial core fueled an insatiable demand for consumption.

Yet, this phase also revealed the contradictions of logistical capitalism. Rising inequalities, ecological destruction, and the invisibility of essential labor exposed the fragility of Empire’s circulatory logic. The same mechanisms that optimized flows of goods and capital also created deep fractures in the social and ecological fabric, foreshadowing the ruptures that could challenge the coherence of Empire.

Even as it sought to perfect its circulatory apparatus, Empire left in its wake the seeds of its own unraveling. By reducing workers and ecosystems to expendable components of a logistical machine, Empire sustained its dominance but also deepened the vulnerabilities that threaten its survival.

The Present

Surveillance Capitalism

In the present phase of Empire, surveillance capitalism represents a transformative evolution in its parasitic logic, colonizing the sensory nervous systems of the global social body. This phase coincides with intensifying U.S.-China competition, as both nations vie for dominance in global surveillance architectures. Their rivalry extends beyond economic or geopolitical struggles into governance, technology, and sensory capture. While the U.S. promotes an illusion of freedom of choice through a privatized, corporate-driven model reminiscent of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), China advances an illusion of benevolent paternal authority, framing its centralized surveillance systems as instruments of stability and collective progress.

This duality underscores distinct strategies for embedding Empire’s parasitic logic into the social body. The U.S. leverages the veneer of individual autonomy and consumer choice, masking the exploitative foundations of its system, while China fosters a narrative of benevolent governance, where state-aligned digital infrastructures are positioned as guardians of societal well-being. Both approaches contribute to the fragmentation and commodification of human experience, albeit through different ideological pathways.

The Molecular Scale

Platforms, Workers, and Users

At the molecular level, the U.S. and China dominate global digital platforms, which function as the sensory organs of surveillance capitalism. In the U.S., corporations like Google, Facebook, and Amazon dictate the terms of engagement, presenting their operations as empowering users with customizable options and personalized experiences. This illusion of choice obscures the concentrated power of a few tech conglomerates, which monetize user behavior, commodify preferences, and shape global consumption patterns. The appearance of consumer autonomy masks a deeper reality: systemic control over perception and interaction is firmly in the hands of profit-driven corporations, whose interests often override individual freedoms.

In contrast, China’s platforms, such as WeChat and Alibaba, operate within a state-supervised framework. These platforms align with national goals, integrating surveillance and data collection into governance systems. The Chinese government positions itself as a paternal authority offering wise guidance through digital oversight, promising stability, efficiency, and collective well-being. Platforms like the Social Credit System are portrayed not as coercive mechanisms but as tools for fostering trust and accountability. This illusion of benevolence conceals the ways in which these systems discipline and control behavior, embedding surveillance capitalism within the fabric of everyday life.

Both models depend on the labor and resources of workers fragmented into flesh. In the U.S., gig workers, like Amazon’s Mechanical Turks, perform hidden tasks such as annotating datasets, moderating content, and maintaining digital systems, their efforts obscured by the seamless façade of user-friendly platforms. In China, similar workers uphold platforms that serve dual purposes: driving economic growth and reinforcing social management. At the heart of both systems lies the often invisible labor of individuals—most notably, miners in the Global South who extract the critical minerals essential for electronics. This hidden exploitation sustains the global digital economy while remaining out of sight, enabling the illusion of frictionless technological progress.

The Sub-Molecular Scale:

Sensory Nervous Systems Hijacked

At the sub-molecular scale, both nations exploit the sensory and emotional experiences of individuals, albeit in distinct ways. In the U.S., platforms manipulate attention and emotion through interfaces engineered to exploit cognitive biases. Notifications, curated feeds, and algorithmic recommendations create addictive feedback loops, reinforcing dependency on digital systems. The illusion of freedom—manifested in the myriad of “choices” offered to users—disguises the reality of systemic constraints, where every decision is shaped and steered by profit-driven algorithms.

China’s approach colonizes the sensory nervous system within a narrative of wise governance. Interfaces and platforms are designed not only to capture attention but also to reinforce the state’s role as a custodian of societal order. Algorithmic recommendations and behavioral nudges are framed as acts of paternal care, aligning user behavior with collective goals defined by the state. This illusion of paternal wisdom legitimizes surveillance systems as necessary tools for maintaining harmony and progress, even as they discipline and constrain individual autonomy.

In both models, the labor required to sustain these sensory systems is fragmented into flesh. U.S.-based platforms rely on gig workers and content moderators to perform hidden, grueling tasks that keep their systems operational. Similarly, China’s platforms depend on logistical workers and moderators who uphold the dual imperatives of economic production and political control. Whether presented as freedom or paternal care, both systems are built on the exploitation of invisible labor, particularly that of those who extract the minerals essential to these technologies from the earth.

The Molar Scale:

Empire as Surveillance System

At the molar scale, the U.S. and China’s competition unfolds as a contest to establish rival architectures for global surveillance capitalism. The U.S. advances a privatized model rooted in corporate governance, presenting a façade of decentralized innovation and individual empowerment. Like the VOC, U.S.-based corporations operate autonomously, embedding their systems into global markets while avoiding accountability for their exploitative foundations. The illusion of choice—reinforced through personalized services and customizable interfaces—obscures the centralization of power within a few profit-driven conglomerates that dictate the parameters of engagement.

China’s model, by contrast, emphasizes centralized, state-oriented governance that resembles the British industrial system’s reconfiguration of metabolic flows. Through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China exports a package of infrastructure development and surveillance technology, framing its approach as a pathway to stability and collective progress. Digital platforms are extensions of state power, designed to integrate surveillance into governance systems while addressing economic and social challenges. The illusion of benevolent authority positions the state as a benevolent guide, masking the coercive underpinnings of its surveillance apparatus.

These competing architectures reflect divergent visions of Empire’s sensory logic. The U.S. promotes a consumer-centric illusion that emphasizes personal freedom while concealing systemic control. China advances a narrative of governance-as-care, where digital surveillance is portrayed as a necessary extension of state responsibility. Despite these differences, both systems embed exploitation into their structures, fragmenting workers, users, and ecosystems to sustain their respective logics.

Empire’s Sensory Capture

The U.S.-China rivalry reveals Empire’s adaptability, embedding its parasitic logic into distinct political and economic systems. The U.S. cultivates the illusion of individual autonomy, presenting its privatized platforms as enablers of personal freedom while obscuring the centralized corporate power shaping these systems. China, in contrast, fosters an illusion of benevolent oversight, positioning its platforms as tools of wise paternal governance that protect societal well-being.

Despite their differences, both systems rely on the fragmentation and exploitation of labor and resources, particularly in the Global South. Workers mine the materials that sustain both models, while gig laborers and moderators endure precarious conditions to maintain platform operations. Migrants in the Global North and rural laborers in China are similarly fragmented into flesh, performing the unseen work that props up surveillance capitalism.

The competition also shapes global norms around privacy, governance, and technological ethics. The U.S. promotes innovation and consumer choice while avoiding accountability for its exploitative foundations. China emphasizes stability and efficiency but raises concerns about authoritarian control. Together, these models reinforce Empire’s sensory domination, embedding extraction into the patterns of perception, interaction, and governance.

Surveillance Capitalism as Sensory Parasitism

This phase of Empire reveals its capacity to parasitize perception itself. By embedding its logic into the sensory and emotional worlds of billions, surveillance capitalism transforms the global social body into an engine of extraction. The U.S. and China, through their competing models, deepen this parasitism, embedding exploitation into the intimate processes of human experience.

Yet their rivalry also exposes contradictions and vulnerabilities. The reliance on hidden labor, ecological extraction, and sensory commodification creates fractures within and between their systems. Migrants, miners, and moderators—whether in the U.S., China, or the Global South—bear the burdens of a system that erodes their autonomy while amplifying the privileges of the imperial core.

By competing to dominate the sensory nervous systems of the global social body, the U.S. and China intensify the entanglements of Empire’s current phase. Yet, in their rivalry, they also expose opportunities for resistance. The cracks in this apparatus, from exploited labor to ecological devastation, offer spaces where the fragmented may reclaim their autonomy, challenging the machinery of domination and reshaping the sensory world.

The Dystopian Future

Biocapitalism

Having parasitized the defense, metabolic, circulatory, and sensory systems of the global social body, Empire in the dystopian future colonizes the most intimate frontier: life’s generative systems. Biocapitalism, this ultimate stage of Empire, fully subordinates reproduction—human, ecological, and non-human—to the imperatives of extraction and commodification. The processes of creation, birth, and renewal are no longer sustained through relational cycles of connection and continuity; instead, they are fractured, mechanized, and optimized to serve Empire’s parasitic logic.

Reproduction, once central to the flourishing of communities and ecosystems, becomes a machinery of extraction. The generative capacities of life itself—encoded in genomes, soil, and laboring bodies—are transformed into programmable commodities, each calibrated to sustain the imperial core.

The Molecular Scale:

Biocapital and Reproductive Bodies

At the molecular scale, Empire forges polarizing bonds between biocapital and global elites, extracting reproductive potential from marginalized communities, particularly in the Global South. These bonds ensure that the autonomy of the periphery is stripped to sustain the reproductive machinery of the core.

Human reproductive labor is industrialized. Impoverished women are coerced into surrogacy or egg donation, their bodies reduced to vessels for biotechnological reproduction tailored to elite desires. Genetic editing technologies and artificial wombs displace natural reproductive processes, creating a market for bespoke offspring. Women of color bear the brunt of this system, their labor and genetic material appropriated to reinforce racialized and patriarchal hierarchies.

Non-human and ecological generativity is similarly commandeered. Agricultural biodiversity, once nurtured by Indigenous knowledge, is encoded into patented genomes owned by multinational corporations. Forests are engineered for carbon sequestration, ecosystems reduced to units of extractive efficiency. Animal breeding prioritizes productivity over ecological balance, and soil fertility is reconstituted into chemically dependent substrates.

Generativity, no longer relational, is fragmented into isolated components, each optimized for maximum output. Life itself is fractured into discrete commodities, its vitality harvested for profit.

The Sub-Molecular Scale:

Reproductive Systems Hijacked

At the sub-molecular scale, Empire directly appropriates life’s reproductive rhythms, displacing natural processes with controlled, market-driven alternatives. Artificial wombs, bioengineered embryos, and fertility technologies sever reproduction from relational and ecological contexts, reconfiguring it as a mechanized system of extraction.

Ecosystems are similarly colonized. Seeds are genetically re-engineered and enclosed within intellectual property regimes, rendering biodiversity a proprietary asset. Natural pollinators are replaced by robotic surrogates, and regenerative soil cycles are supplanted by monocultures reliant on synthetic inputs. Even the temporal rhythms of ecological reproduction are fragmented and repurposed into artificial cycles that optimize extraction.

This hijacking extends to the labor of reproductive care. Impoverished migrants and workers are conscripted into maintaining these systems—cleaning hospital rooms, tending to surrogates, and assembling biotechnology—while their own reproductive rights and humanity are systematically erased.

Through these interventions, Empire transforms generative systems into programmable appendages of its machinery, deepening the fragmentation of the social body and ecosystems alike.

The Molar Scale:

Empire as Reproductive System

At the molar scale, Empire consolidates itself as a global reproductive apparatus, orchestrating the generative capacities of individuals, communities, and ecosystems into a singular system of control. Biotechnological industries, corporate monopolies, and state governance converge to extract and regulate reproductive labor, aligning every aspect of life’s renewal with the imperatives of accumulation.

Genomic data, fertility metrics, and reproductive technologies are abstracted into quantifiable systems, redefining generativity as output. Life’s cycles are erased and replaced by mechanized flows of biocapital, feeding Empire’s insatiable demands. The social body itself becomes a factory for reproduction, its relational ties severed and its generative potential repurposed into commodities for global markets.

In this system, the Global South is indispensable yet marginalized. Workers mine the cobalt and lithium required for artificial wombs, gene-editing tools, and the servers that sustain Empire’s reproductive apparatus. Meanwhile, impoverished laborers sustain the material flows that uphold these systems, performing the care work and assembly that remain invisible yet essential.

Polarizing Bonds in Reproductive Capitalism

Biocapitalism entrenches polarizing bonds between the elites of the imperial core and the fragmented reproductive agents whose capacities they exploit. The wealthy wield technologies that promise control, customization, and efficiency over their reproductive futures. Meanwhile, the generative capacities of marginalized communities are fragmented and commodified, ensuring the privileges of the imperial core are sustained.

Impoverished women in the Global South are forced into reproductive servitude, while ecosystems are re-engineered to function as extractive reproductive systems. These bonds reinforce existing hierarchies of race, gender, and class, consolidating the power of the elite while intensifying the dispossession of the periphery.

The Subjugation of the Generative

This dystopian vision represents the ultimate betrayal of life’s generative essence. Reproduction, once a process of renewal and connection, is transformed into a system of extraction and commodification. The relational rhythms of birth, creation, and ecological renewal are erased, subordinated entirely to Empire’s imperatives of profit and control.

Ecosystems are mechanized into reproductive apparatuses. Fertility becomes a programmable resource, biodiversity a proprietary database, and natural cycles programmable systems. The biosphere itself is harvested to sustain Empire’s parasitic demands.

Workers in the Global South and migrants remain fragmented into flesh, their labor and generative capacities extracted to maintain the imperial machinery. From the mines of Congo to surrogacy clinics, from ecological care systems to artificial reproduction industries, these fragmented bodies sustain Empire’s reproductive apparatus while their own futures are systematically erased.

Completing the Cycle of Domination

By colonizing reproduction, Empire completes its transformation of the global social body into a fragmented, extractive machine. The generative capacities of individuals, communities, and ecosystems are appropriated and reorganized into mechanisms that perpetuate Empire’s parasitic existence.

Yet even within this vision of total domination, the fractures created by Empire’s relentless fragmentation of life harbor the seeds of resistance. As life’s relational and generative systems are severed, the discontent and dislocation they create offer opportunities for rebellion.

The dystopian future reveals the logical endpoint of Empire’s parasitic trajectory: a world where every generative rhythm of life is subordinated to capital. However, it also hints at the fragility of this system, as the very forces it fragments may coalesce to confront and disrupt its machinery.

To be continued…