The National Conservatism Conference earlier this month highlighted many current trends on the American right. One of the primary concerns was “transhumanism.” At least two of its major speakers delivered warnings about the dire threat this ideology allegedly poses. These speeches conveyed the impression that transhumanism is the primary enemy of conservatism—which is a silly idea.
Conservatives have long struggled to find an ideological enemy to replace communism. It’s easier to define yourself when you know what you’re up against. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and others want transhumanism to be that defining foe. But transhumanism is a fringe notion that looms larger in the minds of conservatives than it does in reality. It is not the great threat that faces the country. It simply makes for a good enemy to advance a “respectable” form of right-wing populism.
Conservative Partnership Institute program director Rachel Bovard defined transhumanism in her NatCon speech as “the belief that technology can enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities beyond current human limitations.” She then claimed that the ideology is “not cool,” “not interesting,” “stale,” and “boring”—all while insisting it’s “an existential threat to human dignity straight from the mephitic boardrooms of hell.” If transhumanism is an existential threat from the princes of hell, it’s at least interesting. If it were boring, it wouldn’t be the centerpiece of so many NatCon speeches.
Hawley expanded on the topic in his NatCon speech, connecting transhumanism to eugenics and declaring it a threat to the working man. In his opinion, the ideology is fundamentally anti-democratic and un-American.
America is a nation founded on the idea of the common man. The American republic is premised on his worth and his liberty. But the transhumanist ideal rejects the common man’s worth. And artificial intelligence threatens the common man’s liberty.
To state it in the clearest terms, then: Americanism and the transhumanist revolution cannot coexist. And it is our job to see that Americanism wins.
Hawley here offered some thoughtful reflections, but he then offered solutions to the transhumanist problem that should raise eyebrows. To be sure, he expressed some decent ideas about more data security and more child protections when dealing with AI products. No sensible American would be upset at these proposals. However, Hawley wasn’t content with these measures. He also called for far-ranging regulations that would stifle innovation, cripple the economy, maintain big business’s dependence on cheap foreign labor, and benefit left-wing unions.
One of his proposals essentially calls for America to limit automation. This idea is idiotic.
Automation is a gift that could free America of its dependence on migrant labor. Just imagine a world where robots picked the fruit, AI programs did much of the coding assigned to H-1B visa holders, and new technology reduced the number of laborers to build a home. All of this would reduce migration while spurring on the economy.
The entire West is experiencing a population decline, leading some short-sighted politicians and business leaders to demand more immigration to solve labor shortages. That’s unnecessary when a technological revolution could solve this problem more effectively without the downsides of mass migration. Any curb to automation would help the interest groups that want more cheap foreign labor.
The expansive AI regulations Hawley supports may sound nice on paper, but they will accomplish little of what he wants, like outcompeting China. We could severely hamper the industry, but Beijing won’t. The Han power will continue to develop AI free of any guardrails beyond those designed to enforce government-sanctioned ideology. The Chinese will leap ahead of us technologically and we’ll likely be unable to block their advances from the internet. We’d have all the problems of AI and technological progress with none of the advantages.
More fundamentally, there’s an issue of what exactly transhumanism is. It’s a broad term that encompasses both the bizarre longevity obsessions of tech bros like Bryan Johnson and that of technological growth. The antics of Johnson and others like him are a meme that people laugh at. It’s bizarre what these guys do, but it’s mostly harmless. The average American should not feel threatened by such absurdities. Concern over this is not what drove MAGA in the first place.
MAGA was primarily concerned with globalism and wokeness that opened our borders, imposed anti-white racism in our schools, mandated affirmative action in the workplace, censored free speech, tore down our heritage, and made America not so great. Trumpism was identity politics for Middle America. It’s that simple.
But there have been many attempts to imagine MAGA as a kind of faux-socialism for the “multiracial working class.” Hawley has been one of the leaders in that effort. These types are desperate to win over labor unions and other progressive elements to demonstrate their populist bona fides. They routinely ignore how organized labor acts as one of the lynchpins of the left and how its structures back many of the woke policies MAGA opposes. Trump has won over some of the traditional blue-collar workers who belong to unions. But that element is no longer the majority of organized labor. The biggest unions represent teachers and government workers.
Unions strongly oppose automation despite America’s growing blue collar labor shortage. It may be to their benefit to stop innovation, but it isn’t in the national interest. These same unions back mass immigration and made sure to champion amnesty when Congress took up the idea. They see foreigners as potential new union members, not as job stealers. Organized labor is content with the crooked status quo so long as its own interests are secured.
Hawley needs a terrifying enemy to sell his version of populism. Transhumanism makes for a useful foil. If America is threatened by evil, tech-bro eugenicists who want to replace mankind with automatons, then what better way to counter it than with measures to back unions and cripple tech? Fears over communism helped conservatives sell their ideas to the American public during the Cold War. Hawley and his allies hope to do the same with transhumanism.
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But this fixation deviates strongly from what the MAGA base cares about and ends up encouraging left-wing policies that harm America.
There are reasonable suspicions that robots will replace humans. This forms the basis of many popular works, such as Terminator and The Matrix. We can have some basic regulations to prevent something like Skynet from taking over the world. But we shouldn’t become obsessed with transhumanism. Transhumanism didn’t flood America with millions of illegal migrants, declare the Constitution “white supremacist,” generate racial quotas, or tear down statues of Thomas Jefferson. Leftism provided that support.
As the right seeks to adjust to the future, it’s necessary to keep the real enemy in sight. MAGA still wants to “own the libs” and do mass deportations. The movement is not going to be swayed by overblown rhetoric about the supposed transhumanist menace.
