What's Left of Responsible Innovation After Gaza? Ecocide, Epistemicide, and Genocide in Occupied Palestine

For years, I identified with the Responsible Innovation community. Emerging STS, the RI movement has advocated for the democratization of technological change and for putting science at the service of the common good. In recent years, it even gained traction at the European level, offering a potential alternative to the technocratic tendencies that dominate the European Commission.

Yet, for the past two and a half years, I have waited in vain for a collective condemnation from this community regarding the role of technology in enabling Israel's intensification of genocide in Gaza and the West Bank-a process that did not begin in 2023, but in 1948. I assume many within the RI community are horrified by what is happening. Some may be indifferent. Others-including prominent RI scholars-are openly Zionist. A former close collaborator and co-author even went so far as to accuse me of antisemitism for my anti-genocide positions. I was not particularly bothered by the accusation itself. What disturbed me more was the subtle suggestion that taking a stand against genocide could jeopardise my academic career.

For a community that claims to center justice, democracy, and participation, this silence in the face of how Israel is using AI and high-tech weaponry to massacre civilians is unbearable hypocrisy. It is easy, it seems, to criticize abstract, undemocratic technological systems. But when those systems are embedded in white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism, the field succumbs to collective amnesia.

What is most disheartening is the silence of self-proclaimed critical and progressive scholars in the face of extreme, televised violence against innocent people. Suddenly, a clear situation of injustice becomes "complicated"-a matter that supposedly demands "both sides," "all voices," and endless nuance. I am sincerely disgusted.

We are witnessing a resurgence of fascism across the West-from Trump's attacks on migrants and pro-Palestinian academics to Germany's bans on Palestinian flags. History reminds us that fascism thrives not only on violence, but on the silence of progressive intellectuals.

This short discussion paper (external link) is my attempt to denounce both the systematic use of advanced technology to annihilate the Palestinian people and the profound uselessness of a field that dares to call itself "Responsible Innovation."

...from the river to the sea

Mario Pansera