Marshall McLuhan famously observed that the electric age triggered an implosion of the world, giving rise to what he called the global village. Since then, this vision of a hyperconnected world has been repeatedly revisited, revised, and scrutinized. Some contend that there isn't just one internet; there are multiple, a phenomenon often referred to as ‘the Splinternet’. Over the course of decades, multiple ‘Stacks’ of digital technology have arisen, revealing and constituting a new political order in the 21st century, where digital technology now plays a pivotal role in fragmenting the global village.
Today, this battle is intensifying, as seen in the geopolitical conflicts over social media platforms, the arms race in artificial intelligence, and the competition surrounding telecommunications networks and computer chips. Superpowers are developing their own vision of the digital world and attempt to elevate them to a global standard. This is not merely a battle for economic and international power, but also a battle of ideas about the way we organize our society and the role we assign technology in this. At FreedomLab, we call this phenomenon the Battle of Stacks.
Several authors have recently tried to make sense of this development. Benjamin Bratton is the most notable figure, as we have adopted the term The Stack from his work. This notion refers to a framework for understanding the nature of planetary and interconnected digital systems, which is further explained here. Bratton’s The Stack (2015) carries the subtitle On Software and Sovereignty, highlighting the profound impact of this emerging framework on the concept of sovereign power. This is evident in the unprecedented political influence of Big Tech platforms, which now play a central role in setting the rules and standards for communication and economic exchange—for example, on social media apps or through listing products on e-commerce platforms.
On a more practical yet philosophically grounded level, FreedomLab fellow Haroon Sheikh addresses similar issues in his recent book, Atlas van de digitale wereld (2024), where he outlines the (lack of a) European Stack in connection to the continent's renewed focus on sovereignty in the digital space. Likewise, at FreedomLab, we address the more strategic and practical questions stemming from the model of The Stack. In this article, I will introduce the concept of the Battle of Stacks and provide a broad overview of its origins. In a follow-up article, I will outline the current landscape of digital superpowers and their ongoing conflicts.
To properly understand the Battle of Stacks and apply the framework of the Stack in a more practical and empirical manner, it is crucial to have a clear grasp of the philosophical foundations of the ‘relationship’ between ‘software and sovereignty’. Therefore, I will start with a brief philosophical introduction of the fundamental ideas underpinning Bratton and approach.
First of all, we can ask: what does the concept of sovereignty, so closely tied to our understanding of the nation-state, still offer to us in the 21st century? Let’s start with answering this question without any mention of technology. After the Second World War, in response to the horrors wrought by nation-states, a wave of post-nationalism emerged in the West. This gave rise to supranational entities and intergovernmental institutions like the UN, NATO and the EU, along with The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, marking a new era for the wealthy Western world and the slow birth of a new liberal or cosmopolitan individual.
In this context, the nation-state increasingly became a constitutional state, embedded and integrated into inter-national structures as an important post-war counterforce to the threat of nationalism. Sovereignty of the nation became fragmented and intertwined with the new interconnected, global dynamics, with the US as the dominant hegemon and warden of an international rule-based order. This post-national shift was further complicated by the emergence of multiple superpowers, or so-called 'civilizational states’ and global challenges such as climate change, making the development of new governance structures seemingly inevitable. A civilization state is a political entity that defines itself as the guardian of a distinct cultural tradition, prioritizing cultural unity over political structures, as exemplified by countries like China and India, but, according to Bruno Maçaes, also the “European Union is in the process of being reconfigured as a civilization state, a political entity aggregating all those who live by a specific value system and using political tools to protect European civilization from the attacks of its enemies.”
Thus, we have seen the rise of intergovernmental institutions and civilization states as counterforces to the nation-state. Yet, in many domains the nation-state has remained the sole sovereign entity such as fiscal policy and jurisprudence. Any legal entity above the level of the nation is ultimately a treaty based on voluntary agreement. Moreover, since the Second World War, a wave of decolonization in many third-world countries gave rise to numerous new nation-states, often supported by the same multinational institutions that disperse their power. Finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union sparked a final wave of new nation-states toward the close of the century. Consequently, while the 21st century is frequently viewed as a time of crisis for the nation-state, it is notable to remember that their number has nearly doubled since 1950, growing from around 100 to nearly 200.
This entire historical shift of the concept of sovereignty, as we observe, can easily be described without direct reference to technology, as most scholars typically do. When technology is mentioned, the relevance of it is often framed indirectly—for instance, as an important variable for economic or military domination or as the backdrop for events like the space race during the Cold War. However, we can also take a broader perspective by interpreting these historical developments through the framework of successive technological epochs. This is the perspective Bratton elaborates in dialogue with Carl Schmitt's concept of nomos.
In Schmitt’s political philosophy, nomos refers not only to ‘law’ (the regular translation of the Greek word) but to the fundamental ordering or coherence of customs and traditions, space, law, and power. It is a concept deeply tied to the cultural, technological and material conditions of any given (legal) era. Each technological epoch reshapes the nomos of the earth, redefining the spatial and political configurations of sovereignty. For example, the agrarian nomos was shaped by the division and cultivation of land, while the rise of imperial states in the modern age was tied to the mastery of the seas and naval technology. Similarly, the dominance of the air became central to US hegemony, reflecting a shift in the spatial logic of power. From a slightly different perspective, Bratton argues that the industrial nomos of the 19th century was closely aligned with the emergence of territorial nation-states, characterized by rigid borders and grounded in the infrastructure of industrialization—a process originating from the 'Westphalian system' established in 1648.
Today, in the era of planetary-scale computation, Bratton hypothesizes that we are witnessing the emergence of a new nomos, one defined not primarily or solely by physical borders but by the digital infrastructures of The Stack. This shift prompts a critical question: after the dominance of land, sea, air, and even space, does the epoch of the cloud imply the end of the sovereign nation-state? And what does the nomos of digital superpowers look like?
But how can we better address such questions? The simplest approach is to start with clearly distinguishing it from conventional reflections on digital technology. This means the reflection must not begin by speculating on the future impact of the Stack on areas traditionally labeled as Constitution, Culture, Politics, or Economics—fields often discussed in terms of technology as either a threat or an opportunity. Philosophers of technology typically refer to this as the instrumental or utilitarian approach, where technology is seen as a tool that can either harm or benefit pre-existing structures such as the Constitution, Culture, or Politics, etc. Often, the cliché here is to harness the benefits of digital technology and minimize the risks.
This view hinges on how we (Society, Politicians, Policy makers, etc.) choose to use or regulate technology and is frequently encapsulated in phrases like 'make technology work for humans, not the other way around.’ It is vital to move beyond this approach. The relationship between The Stack and sovereignty cannot be reduced to a one-way inquiry about how planetary-scale computation or digital technology ‘impacts’ sovereignty. This perspective mirrors the oversimplified questions we often ask today, such as the ‘impact’ of AI on society or the ‘impact’ of social media on teenagers' mental health. Instead, we must consider a more nuanced interplay or co-constitution between these elements, between what we normally label as Culture and Technics.
For Bratton, planetary-scale computation points to the emergence of a fundamentally new form, perhaps even a new era, of governance. In Bratton’s words: “The model does not put technology “inside” a “society”, but sees a technological totality as the armature of the social itself. It does not focus on computation in the service of governance, or in resistance to governance, but rather on computation as governance (p. xviii, The Stack).” He further explains this by emphasizing: “we observe that “computation” does not just denote machinery; it is a planetary scale infrastructure that is changing not only how governments govern, but also what governance even is in the first place (p. xvii, The Stack).”
The rise of the Stack requires us to reflect on how the nation-state, and later the constitutional state shaped by the post-nationalism that emerged after the Second World War, has always already been fundamentally transformed by the rise of the Stack. Planetary-scale computation has not only disrupted these structures but, in a sense, has cannibalized them—think about Marc Andreessen’s famous assertion that ‘software is eating the world’. Today, it is partly rebuilding sovereignty in its own image, forcing us to rethink the concept entirely, as a new nomos.
At the same time, Bratton also stresses we should not equate computation with governance: “to say that the future of geopolitics is a function of the future of computation is to risk saying nothing at all (p. 14, The Stack)”. This is often framed today in terms like ‘code is law,’ which represents the other extreme of the debate. This expression refers to the idea that software code, through its design and execution, determines rules and behaviors in digital environments, effectively functioning as a form of governance that shapes user actions and interactions. While the notion of technological ‘impact’ suggests a problematic dichotomy between Technics on one side and Culture, Society, or Politics on the other, equating them outright (code is law) would fail to acknowledge the distinctiveness of these domains. And they are distinctive, as Maxim Februari explains in Doe Zelf Normaal (2023), where he elucidates the distinction between code and law by highlighting that code enforces behavior automatically, leaving no room for interpretation or discretion. In contrast, laws are designed to be interpreted, challenged, and even violated when moral or situational imperatives demand it.
The philosophical challenge, then, is to develop a language, a framework, and even an ontology, that navigates this in-between space: not in terms of opposition or equivalence but in terms of the composition of man and machine. This can be done in multiple ways and Bratton’s concept of the Stack offers such a philosophical elaboration on the composition of technics and politics. Here on our platform, although less philosophically intricate, we aim to address this need pragmatically, providing a language and strategic tools to assist policymakers in assessing the rising nomos of the cloud.
To further comprehend the Battle of Stacks, an accessible way to enter the discussion is through the concept of borders in the digital era, which Bratton refers to as a process of de- and reterritorialization brought about by planetary-scale computing. Global information networks have forged a connected world where societies are governed by capital, rules, and treaties rather than by war, linking friend and foe in unprecedented and peculiarly intimate ways. In some ways, borders seem to have lost their significance, yet in other contexts, new types of borders have emerged, such as the Great firewall in China or media outlet paywalls.
In this context, it is interesting to restate the opening paradigm of John Perry Barlow famous Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace (1996): “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”
The rise of global digital platforms has undeniably disrupted traditional borders, giving rise to a host of new structures, from anarchistic movements and cypherpunk ideologies to the development of cosmopolitan elites, digital nomads, anonymous communication networks, and mass platforms with user bases exceeding a billion. The nation-state, rooted in the Westphalian order, finds itself in constant negotiation with these emerging social and political dynamics. Just in the past year, we have witnessed incidents like Brazil banning—very shortly—the use of the social media platform X and France arresting Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. This prompts a range of questions. For instance, how do we even define the individuals or ‘people’ who inhabit these platforms like Telegram and Twitter from a constitutional perspective? Are they simply global consumers of equally global communication services? Should we still refer to them as national civilians? Or are they better understood as users of supra-national platforms? Perhaps it is this peculiar hybrid of consumer-civilian-user in national, supranational and global structures that forces us to rethink traditional categories and challenges our understanding.
However, simply understanding The Stack as a digital and therefore borderless omnipresent informational and virtual space would be a huge misunderstanding. On one hand, as Bratton also explains, the rise of the Stack and the new idea of what he calls platform sovereignty has threatened the sovereignty of nation-states and superpowers. The emergence of global networks and the internet have played a significant dual role in this context, as they have contributed to the dismantling of borders, and potentially superpowers, but on the other hand, they have also served as a new weapon in the battle between digital superpowers. The interests of Big Tech corporations often align with those of their local governments and vice versa. For instance, Trump's re-election seems to spark a new triangle of influence involving Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Donald Trump.
Moreover, and perhaps most important, also the State or the Constitution partly became a Stack according to Benjamin Bratton, and hence a platform sovereign. The European Union's regulatory frameworks, such as the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, go beyond mere rulemaking: they aim to shape and cultivate a digital space grounded in European norms, values, and rights. Similarly, China's centralized data localization policies and its social credit system exemplify Benjamin Bratton's concept of the state becoming integrated into the form of ‘The Stack,’ while ‘The Stack’ simultaneously evolves into a form of state, asserting sovereignty through platform-based governance.
Accordingly, instead of referring to them as (a union of) Nation-States, we might more aptly describe them as a Stack-States. In this sense, while traditional states have consciously or inadvertently deconstructed the old battlefields of geopolitics, they have simultaneously illuminated the emergence of new ones. These new battlegrounds now revolve around the quest for strategic autonomy and self-sufficiency in critical domains such as artificial intelligence, communication networks, social media platforms, cloud infrastructure, supercomputers, and beyond.
This evolution reflects the enduring logic of Carl Schmitt's intimate connection between technology and nomos, encapsulated in Vladimir Putin's infamous assertion: "Whoever rules AI will rule the world." Yet, not so much because it is a powerful means in the hands of a Sovereign as we understand by now. Instead, it signals a shift toward a new era of governance defined by Stack-States. While Putin may overstate the significance of AI as a standalone technology, he correctly highlights the critical importance of this new frontier of sovereignty: the Battle of Stacks. In the context of the multipolar world and the resurgence of civilizational-states, these Stack-entities transcend and redefine traditional territorial boundaries, echoing Schmitt’s concept of the Grossraum—a geopolitical sphere of influence defined by shared technological, economic, and cultural logics.
In this context, these ‘Civilizational-Stack-States’ or, as we might better term them, Stack-Superpowers, represent an all-encompassing reconfiguration of sovereignty and governance, restructured around the infrastructures of the planetary-scale computation. This dynamic marks the rise of new hegemonies, not only vying for control over technologies but also shaping the political and legal orders that emerge alongside them. This concept of Stack-Superpowers and their relation to Schmitt's Grossraum will be examined in greater depth in an upcoming article, where we analyze the key players on this emerging battlefield.
