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  • Published: 30 March 2027
  • ISBN: 9781644216033
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $39.99

Cyberpunk

The New Totalitarianism




An urgent and in-depth examination of the rapid transformation of the state, Cyberpunk maps the mounting threats to our democracies, the defining conflicts we’re likely to be facing in the century ahead, and how to reclaim our minds.

In Cyberpunk, Mhalla argues that Big Tech does not merely influence politics but is becoming the very architecture of how information flows. The control of civil society no longer operates primarily through censorship or repression, but through infrastructure—digital platforms, AI systems, cloud monopolies, and attention capture. They determine the boundaries of the thinkable. To Mhalla, Western democracies are transitioning toward a new, technologically-mediated regime, where our minds are the new political battlefields.

“A dazzling book, where urgency and intelligence permeate every page.”—John Jefferson Selve in Zone Critique

“[Defends] what we have left: our freedom.”—Slate

  • Published: 30 March 2027
  • ISBN: 9781644216033
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $39.99

About the authors

Asma Mhalla

ASMA MHALLA is a French-Tunisian political scientist and researcher at the Political Anthropology Laboratory (LAP) at EHESS/CNRS, currently a Research Fellow at New York University. Her work focuses on the geopolitical role of Big Tech, the strategic implications of artificial intelligence, and their impact on state sovereignty and democratic systems. An expert in Tech Politics and Big-Tech Geopolitics, she lectures at Sciences Po Paris and École Polytechnique. She writes about the economic and political issues of the upcoming digital age in the Huffington Post, Le Monde, and Medium. Mhalla is the author of two bestselling books in France, Technopolitique (Seuil, 2024) and Cyberpunk (Seuil, 2025), where she develops the concept of the “Big State.” Cyberpunk is her first book available in English, translated from the French by Simon Pare (Seven Stories Press, 2027).

Simon Pare

Translator SIMON PARE studied French and German at the University of Cambridge. His translations include The Panama Papers by Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer and Cyberpunk by Asma Mhalla. He lives in Switzerland.

Praise for Cyberpunk

“A dazzling book, where urgency and intelligence permeate every page.”—John Jefferson Selve Critical Zone
“A dazzling essay that warns of the advent of a new form of totalitarian power through enraged, sometimes poetic prose.”—Le Figaro
“A hard-hitting essay to name the new arena of power. And to defend what we have left: our freedom.”—Slate