The Cognitive Empire

and the Search for Symbolic Sovereignty

French political scientist Asma Mhalla describes in her newly published book [Cyberpunk – Le nouveau système totalitaire (Seuil)] what she calls a “cognitive empire”, a new form of power emerging at the intersection of politics and technology.

Untitled, 1972, Howardena Pindell (b. 1943). Private Collection.

It does not resemble the dictatorships of the twentieth century. There is no one-party state, no total ban on expression. Instead, it governs through saturation. Donald Trump floods the public sphere with spectacle and outrage. Silicon Valley coders and visionaries, Elon Musk foremost among them, design the infrastructures through which we interpret the world. Together they create an environment where citizens are not silenced but overstimulated. And in the noise, democracies are hollowed out.

Mhalla’s insight is that the danger is not censorship but distraction. We are not forbidden to think; we are kept so busy, so flooded with competing signals, that the space for reflection collapses. In such a regime, truth requires no decree to be stamped into place. It dissolves into endless streams, impossible to anchor.

This diagnosis matters to us in the rest of Europe as much as in France or the US. A society where attention is fragmented is one where strategic coherence, in leadership, in public life, even in personal decision-making, becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

Here is where RIZOM finds resonance. Take just one aspect: Mhalla speaks of cognitive fatigue created by saturation. In our work, we call this the collapse of the Basho Loop™: the inner space where presence, mood, and meaning come together. When that loop is interrupted, people may be productive yet absent, busy yet disconnected. Leaders may take decisions, but without coherence or depth.

RIZOM’s method is to restore that loop. By capturing mood through metaphor and reflecting it back symbolically, we create a threshold where saturation can be paused and coherence re-entered. This is a symbolic fix: a way of reclaiming presence against the empire of noise.

Mhalla reminds us that “reality itself” is our last line of defence. In our terms, this means cultivating practices and infrastructures that reconnect us to lived experience, so that distraction does not dissolve it, and noise does not overwrite it.

The cognitive empire thrives on fragmentation. Our task is to rebuild coherence, at individual and collective levels.

Untitled (detail), 1972, Howardena Pindell

This artwork (Untitled, 1972) by Howardena Pindell was chosen precisely for its visual paradox: the surface is saturated with points of colour, exploding everywhere at once. The eye is pulled in multiple directions, unable to rest, compelled to wander in search of a centre that never appears. It mirrors the condition of cognitive saturation: when every signal demands attention, focus dissolves, and meaning is drowned in the flood.

👉 If you want to explore how RIZOM can help leaders and organisations restore presence and coherence in an age of saturation, let’s open the conversation.

Contact Us

Subscribe to RIZOM PULSE