Amitav Ghosh calls out Silicon Valley's 'extermination' mindset amid global crises

New Delhi: Celebrated author Amitav Ghosh warned on Tuesday that the top brass in Silicon Valley are preparing for "The Event" -- a potential collapse of the global systems -- as various interconnected worldwide crises, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and the spread of new pathogens pose a growing threat to the world.

Delivering the annual Dr CD Deshmukh Memorial Lecture here at the India International Centre (IIC), the award-winning writer offered a stark view of the interwoven disasters threatening the planet and said it would be "a mistake to think that we are living in a period of just one axis of disaster." "There are various interlinked axes of disasters. That's why I don't even talk about climate change. I think one has to speak of the planetary crisis.

"Because there's biodiversity loss, which is perhaps an even greater threat than climate change... the species extinctions and there are the new pathogens that are sort of whirling around the world so we can see that there are all these kinds of threads that are arising," Ghosh said in the lecture titled "Time of Monsters, Time of Possibilities: Reflections on an Interstitial Era".

The renowned climate crusader, who has been weaving the urgent issue of climate change into his literary work, including bestsellers like "The Great Derangement" and "The Hungry Tide", pointed out the growing unease within Silicon Valley and among global elites and how many of these powerful individuals are preparing for a global catastrophe they refer to as 'The Event'.

'The Event', a vague yet ominous term, refers to a potential collapse of the global systems.

"That is why they've created these getaway bunkers on little islands here and there. They are completely agnostic as to the cause of The Event, which they visualize as a complete collapse. So they think of runaway artificial intelligence being one vector of this, but they also think of many other things like runaway Nanobots, that's one thing they are really scared of," said the 68-year-old Jnanpith awardee.

According to Ghosh, it is not that the elites of Silicon Valley lack a plan. In fact, they do have one— a plan centered around "catastrophe", he said.

He pointed out the disturbing aspect of this elite mindset -- a belief that the global South would bear the brunt of this catastrophe.

"The reason that they think in this way is that they think when 'The Event' happens the great majority of the people who will die will be people in the global South, the poor, black and brown people. In fact, they are really thinking of 'The Event' as an exterminatory event," Ghosh explained.

Criticizing the dystopian nature of this perspective, Ghosh described it as both dangerous and a naive view of the world.

"What fascinates me is the sheer childishness of this idea. In the event of a global collapse, who is likely to survive? It certainly won't be those who spend their days staring at screens. The ones who will endure are those who have managed to live outside the systems of the developmental state and preserved their resilience," he stated.

This apocalyptic view is, according to Ghosh, rooted in the troubling history of Western "extermination" thinking, a mindset that views the poor, especially the Black and Brown populations as disposable in times of crisis.

"So they really believe that they are going to wipe out half of the world while they are lurking in their bunkers. Then, after what they call 'Malthusian Correction', they come out and take the world over again," he added.

When the moderator IIC Chairman and former diplomat Shyam Saran asked Ghosh if artificial intelligence was a source of concern for him amidst the global threats, the 2024 Erasmus Prize winner replied that he is personally the least worried about it.

He humorously added, "I’m not afraid of AI, I just wish it could get my name right — half of the time it doesn’t." The event, which also saw the release of Ghosh's new book "Wild Fictions", was attended by the likes of former West Bengal governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, former Jammu and Kashmir governor NN Vohra, former foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon and former BBC journalist and famous non-fiction author Mark Tully.