“The brain war is raging, but we are looking elsewhere”
INTERVIEW – Authoritarian regimes like China have understood that the success of countries today depends…
“The brain war is raging, but we are looking elsewhere”
INTERVIEW – Authoritarian regimes like China have understood that the success of countries today depends on the performance of brains, analyzes the essayist and president of the Sapiens Institute.
Olivier Babeau is an essayist and president of the Institut Sapiens (think-tank). He just published The Tyranny of Entertainment (Editions Buchet-Chastel).
LE FIGARO. – Has TikTok become a spy instrument for china ? Beyond security issues, is it also an instrument of soft power?
Olivier Babel. – In 2021, for the first time in several years, Google was dethroned from its rank as the most visited site in the world. TikTok took the place from him. Sign of the times: it’s the end of the era of the search engine, and the beginning of that of choreographic vibrionism. Like other platforms, the incredible power of TikTok is that of the algorithm, the opaque machinery that decides what is seen and what is not. What the Chinese platform has in addition is an infinitely more effective concept that has perfectly grasped the era of time: extremely short videos that follow one another ad infinitum. TikTok is certainly not the only network…
