Event Date: April 2, 2025 - 11:30am to 1:00pm
Location: FSS 5028, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the International Theory Network (ITN)

Big Tech has landed in Washington. It arrives not sporting the garb of “woke capitalism”, but popping red pills and throwing Roman salutes.

Today it is fairly standard to draw a broad contrast between two dominant camps of the political right: between a waning neoliberal and an ascendant “new” or “alt-right” movement, as perhaps embodied by the official Remain and Leave campaigns in the Brexit referendum. But a distinctive third movement has been incubating in the Silicon Valley ecosystem for well over a decade. One might argue that to this point, its vanguard in Washington, led by Elon Musk and David Sacks, is disrupting the political order much more quickly and profoundly than the Bannon-Miller or Heritage-Claremont wings have managed.

This movement certainly borrows liberally from neoliberalism and the alt-right, but a case can be made that it draws on different sources of inspiration, has distinctive aspirations and strategies, and harbours an altogether more ambitious, bizarre and radical vision of politics (and anti-politics). This talk will try to sketch in broad outline elements of the political imaginary of the Big Tech Right.

Speaker:

Kevin McMillan is a professor of international relations at the School of Political Studies, and since 2012 has co-coordinated the CIPS International Theory Network. His book, The Constitution of Social Practices, makes a case for a systematically historical and relational approach to the study of political practices.

Chair:

Srdjan Vucetic is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests involve American and Canadian foreign and defence policy and international security. Prior to joining the GSPIA, Srdjan was the Randall Dillard Research Fellow in International Studies at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Srdjan has co-coordinated the CIPS International Theory Network since 2012.