Robert Kaplan, one of America's most influential geopolitical thinkers, has cast doubt on whether the United States can sustain its democratic system through the technological transformation now reshaping public life. "America was a great mass democracy during the print and typewriter age," Kaplan said. "In a digital video social media era, I am not convinced that the US has a bright future as a mass democracy."
As "Hvylya" reports, the warning came during Kaplan's conversation with Ryan Murdock about his new book "Waste Land," which argues that the modern world has entered a state of permanent crisis resembling Weimar Germany.
The core problem, Kaplan argued, is that digital media has destroyed the conditions that made American democracy work. The present moment now dominates everything. "We lose our sense of the past and we are oblivious to the future," he said. "The only thing that matters is the present news cycle." Analysis - seeing beyond the immediate - becomes nearly impossible.
The media itself has lost its moderating function. Kaplan recalled the New York Times' former executive editor Abe Rosenthal, who said reporters wrote "a little bit to the left" and editors edited "a little bit to the right," producing a balanced paper. "That world is gone, it is dead," Kaplan said. "Technology has completely undermined moderation." The shift toward hardheaded pragmatism is already reshaping alliances - as one analyst recently argued, Ukraine must now sell its "utility" to a US that has abandoned value-based foreign policy.
Social media has amplified the problem. Influencers "with extreme views, really extreme horrific views" now reach millions - something unthinkable in the print era, when influence required expertise and fact-checking. Kaplan acknowledged the US has survived technological transitions before, but was blunt about the current one: "I am not so sure if it will have successful transitions in the future."
He found one source of cautious hope in American federalism. Fifty states at different stages of development, with real identities and genuine policy autonomy, create a system where experiments in one state can be copied by others. But even this, Kaplan suggested, may not be enough to offset the deeper forces at work. As the Munich Security Conference recently warned, the crisis of confidence in transatlantic relations is not just a diplomatic problem - it reflects a deeper erosion of the democratic institutions that once held the Western alliance together.