Chapter 9 of the book Silent Wars, Smart Weapons: The Evolution and Geopolitics of Generational Warfare in the Age of AI by Saeed Ahmed makes the case that American hegemony is now based primarily on dominance of the algorithms that shape public awareness and perception as well as the technical infrastructure that enables them. The author points to how algorithms by their very nature privilege some narratives while marginalizing others, and how more and more political and economic systems rely on algorithms that determine what people know about the world around them and how they know it (Ahmed, 2026). It’s a look at governance that accounts for how public and private actors can use their control of communications platforms to shape which narratives gain prominence by determining who is allowed to create and discuss those narratives, and by doing so influence public opinion and politics. Algorithmic dominance “redefines sovereignty, deterrence, and diplomacy through the management of digital infrastructures and the modulation of collective cognition” (Ahmed, 2026).
While this chapter is primarily concerned with geopolitics and international conflicts, the assertions it makes about the outsize power platforms wield in shaping public perception are directly related to the concerns I want to address in my project. As I’ve started to build out the future history of my setting and play with how exactly the world arrived at the state it did by the time my piece is set, one of the main considerations is how the media ecosystem collapsed and then was rebuilt in the intervening years to reflect a heightened level of control. This isn’t a secret: the Department of Hyperreality directly acknowledges the role they play in promoting some narratives and marginalizing others, though they present it more through the lens of public service than manipulation. They refer to the state they’re trying to achieve as “managed hyperreality”, in contrast to the chaotic mess that allowed disinformation and misinformation to proliferate to such a degree that it drastically exacerbated all the other crises of the 2030s and ‘40s. This article provides very real examples for how such a state could be achieved by consolidating control of the algorithms and technical infrastructure that enable mass communication, providing both conceptual justifications for why governments would do this as well as practical examples from Iraq, Ukraine, and Venezuela as conflicts where the US was just as concerned with controlling the narrative and orchestrating a spectacle as they were with controlling the actual battlespace (Ahmed, 2026).
This past week I’ve managed to secure confirmation from three of my committee members that they’re interested in serving on my committee, and I’m still waiting on the fourth person I approached to see if they’re available to be on the committee. This puts me in the position of having to decide if I want three or four people giving feedback on my project as well as determining who would be best suited to serve as chair, which is ultimately a good problem to have. I’ve also started on my project pitch which is helping to clarify the scope of what I want to accomplish and on the side I’ve started building out the timeline of events in the fictional setting, which is helping to clarify what information I’ll communicate to the audience and establish a chain of events which will make my setting feel plausible enough for the audience to suspend their disbelief.