Individual and Collective Security

Individual and Collective Security in an Era of Transformative Technology

The same technologies that make a transhumanist future possible — artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, advanced computing — also concentrate unprecedented power in ever-smaller groups of actors. A handful of people with the right tools can today threaten what once required entire states. This is the central security challenge of the 21st century, and it requires answers neither traditional conservatism nor traditional progressivism are equipped to provide.

We approach security on two complementary levels. Individual security means protecting people from violence, crime, and unjustified state coercion, while preserving the privacy and freedoms that make a free society worth defending. Collective security means safeguarding humanity itself against catastrophic and existential risks — pandemics (natural or engineered), nuclear conflict, accidents in advanced AI development, misuse of biotechnology, and the systemic fragility of our interconnected infrastructures.

Our position rejects two false choices. We reject the security-versus-freedom trade-off: David Brin’s notion of a transparent society — where citizens watch the watchers as much as they are watched (a practice known as sousveillance) — shows that accountability can flow in both directions. And we reject the prosperity-versus-survival trade-off: investing seriously in pandemic preparedness, AI safety, biosecurity, and resilient infrastructure is not a brake on progress but its precondition. A civilisation that does not survive cannot flourish.

The reading list below covers the foundational works on global catastrophic and existential risks, the leading research organisations in the field, and resources on the surveillance, privacy and transparency debates that define individual security in the digital age.