Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism
C/O Futures Book Review
Pamela Ligouri Bunker
16 September 2026
Released in 2025, Stop the Machines by Mauro Lubrano is a fascinating look at an understudied area of extremism in which actors emphasize the negative effects of technological advancement, in some cases culminating in violent acts. Lubrano, who earned his doctorate from the University of St. Andrews in political violence and terrorism, is now a lecturer in International Relations & Politics at the University of Bath. He encountered the present-day phenomenon of anti-technology extremism in serendipitous fashion as a graduate student when, on a whim, he attended a 2019 gathering in Berlin on the “Fall of AI: A Call to Fight.” There he was introduced to the spectrum of what individuals believed should be done to counter that particular technological threat, including violence against those even tangentially promoting AI. Intrigued, his subsequent research found a breadth of historical and present-day anti-technology sentiment, some of which advocated violent means to those ends. Thus, while Lubrano’s book is particularly prescient given the current alarm bells being set off by the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it also offers insights across a wider swath of technological arenas (e.g. water resources or the electric power grid) potentially threatened by violent extremists.
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