Abstract
Among the technological systems, there are certain that can be labelled as disruptive. A majority of theories assign ontologically flat meaning to those systems, avoiding problematic political dispositions.
This paper bridges a gap in academic literature regarding the inherently political understanding of disruptive technology by providing mid- level theorization of technological permeation of state apparatuses. IR theory has borrowed definitions of disruptive technology from other disciplines.
Be it economy, philosophy, or STEM, all the theories would end up in a mono-methodological dogmatic slumber. If we are to sum up the essence, disruptive technology has been instrumentalized, deprived of constitutive function.
This paper adds a missing layer by revitalizing the concept of the Political (Schmitt, 1932). Namely, Schmitt wrote that the domain of the political is marked by the virtue to comprehend friend-enemy antithesis independently from other distinctions.
Consequently, this paper argues that contrary to the postulates of strategy making under the cloud of benevolent technological advancements, disruptive technology must be looked at as a source of strategic threat. In other words, the mutual constitution of state apparatuses and disruptive technology brings about a permanent adversarial cycle in IR, thereby preserving Cold War logic, albeit with different surface phenomena, deterritorialized and ambiguous.