opinion

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the move toward a green transition built on renewable energy are fundamentally restructuring the global economy. While unleashing unprecedented opportunities, these developments also provide new geopolitical weapons due to the unequal distribution of critical minerals, in particular rare earths, the advanced technology and expertise involved in manufacturing, and the omniscient and inexorable role of the resulting products like semiconductors and batteries for the operation of today’s technologised societies. Thus, countries like China and the United States (US) increasingly seek to safeguard national access to these crucial components and products. This weaponization has implications for global business interests, supply chains, technological development and existing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and between the US and China.

Semiconductors—the new oil?

Semiconductors, or advanced chips, have been likened to the oil of the 21st century. Just as in the 20th century, oil formed the basis for global economic activity, semiconductors form crucial parts of everything from critical infrastructure like 5G data networks, military technology like missiles and AI data centers, to smartphones, fridges and electric vehicles. Indeed, the semiconductor market, growing rapidly since the launch of large language AI models in 2022, is projected to hold a value of $1 trillion by 2030. Hence, whoever controls the supply of semiconductors holds the power to bring rivaling economies to a standstill. This capability is reinforced by the fact that advanced microchips, and the rare earths contained in them, lack ready substitutes.

Assuredly, oil still offers geopolitical leverage—brought to the fore by the current energy crisis resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yet, semiconductors offer a more potent geopolitical weapon. For example, European sanctions on Russian oil and natural gas following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been largely ineffective in crippling the oil-reliant Russian economy, as Russia has been able to find alternative supply routes like the Caspian Sea and alternative buyers such as India, Türkiye and China. By contrast, semiconductor supply chains are more concentrated due to differential geography, and economic, technological and intellectual capital. For example, Taiwan produces over 90% of the world’s advanced chips, while China controls 60% of global rare-earth production, and 90% of mineral refinement. Similarly, the US enjoys supremacy in semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) and expertise, while the Netherlands is the world’s sole producer of extreme ultraviolet lithography required to imprint circuits on semiconductors. Hence, the highly concentrated supply chains of semiconductors gives a handful of countries significant strategic leverage as countries are willing to go far to secure access to these crucial components.

Capitalising on critical mineral supply

This power is reinforced by the fact that the majority of the planet’s critical minerals—such as copper, cobalt and lithium—used in semiconductors and batteries are concentrated in developing countries in Africa and Latin America like Brazil, Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Thus, the capital-intensity of mineral extraction has allowed major powers like the US and China to expand their influence over supply chains through massive investment in the mining industries of these regions. Hence, supply chains are further concentrated in the hands of a few states, enhancing the weaponisability of these resources. This is bolstered by the rarity and geographic disparity of these elements, meaning that countries cannot easily find substitutes or alternative suppliers for these critical resources, should the aforementioned mineral ‘gatekeepers’ choose to wield their strategic leverage and restrict supply.

Global business caught in the crossfire

This development subjects international business activity, especially within emerging technologies like AI, to geopolitical tensions. For example, the US introduced export controls in 2022, banning US semiconductor company Nvidia from exporting its advanced H2000 chips to China to protect US technological dominance. And Nvidia is not an isolated case—in the last few years, the amount of US companies on the Commerce Department’s Entity List restricting exports has quadrupled. In effect, US companies are losing global competitiveness and access to China—one of the biggest markets in the world. This effect might be hard to reverse. Although the Trump administration relaxed export restrictions in early 2026, no Nvidia chips had arrived in China by mid-May. Part of the reason is that China in response to US restrictions has built up its domestic production, and legally favored domestic chips producers like Huawei to reduce its strategic vulnerability to foreign powers. For similar reasons, China prevented US-based Meta in 2025 from buying up Manus, a Chinese-founded AI company. Thus, business interests are highly susceptible to the weaponisation of concentrated critical supply chains in the geopolitical rivalry between US and China.

Semiconductors—beyond oil

Hence, semiconductors and related products may not simply be the economic and strategic, 21st-century equivalent of 20th-century oil, but may indeed hold greater geopolitical leverage than oil ever did. While the US dominates global oil production, China does not have to import oil from its geopolitical rival at the expense of Chinese strategic power—despite China relying on imports for over 70% of its oil—as diversified global energy markets allow for alternative energy sources like coal and natural gas, and alternative suppliers like the UAE, Iran and Qatar. By contrast, China’s ability to manufacture the most advanced semiconductors without the currently unique US SME is highly limited, with Chinese semiconductor development 3 years behind the US. Consequently, China accounts for over half of the semiconductor exports of US-allied Taiwan.

Taiwan in the crossfire

This in turn increases the strategic importance of the Taiwan dispute. While China has long claimed Taiwan to be part of China, the US endorses Taiwanese independence. The importance of semiconductors has cemented this conflict, with China desiring reunification to gain control over global semiconductor manufacturing, while the US for the same reason favors Taiwanese independence from China to maintain US access to its semiconductor supply, in extension of current efforts to induce TSCM to offshore its production to the US, and reduce semiconductor exports to China. Similarly, China has leveraged its global dominance of refined rare earths and battery production by introducing export restrictions on batteries, refined critical minerals, and rare earths in response to US SME restrictions, exploiting the fact that the US has limited ability to employ its SME to manufacture semiconductors without these Chinese inputs. In response, the US and its allies are scrambling for alternative access to critical minerals by expanding trade partnerships with mining countries like the DRC, investment in battery-production, and by launching Project Vault, a $12-billion investment to create a national critical minerals reserve.

The weaponisation capacity of semiconductors has only begun. As countries are approaching the deadlines of net-zero emissions goals outlined in the Paris Agreement, increased dependency on renewable energy will increase susceptibility to global supply chains for batteries, rare earths and semiconductors for products like EVs, solar panels and energy storage.

Strategic ambiguity, the US policy of neither explicitly supporting nor opposing Taiwanese independence, has been considered effective for decades in maintaining stability in the Taiwan Strait. However, the summit between Trump and Xi Jinping on May 14-15, 2026, in Beijing revealed signs that this formula’s effectiveness is beginning to be limited. China pushed the US not merely to “not support” but to actively “oppose” Taiwanese independence. The US responded by displaying an inconsistent position. Taiwan openly asserted its sovereignty. All three responses emerged within less than 24 hours, and no international forum was able to manage the contradictions.

AT His strategic ambiguity is not simply a matter of US foreign policy. It reflects deeper limitations in the global governance system in addressing unresolved sovereignty issues. At the same time, China is actively promoting an alternative world order through its Belt and Road Initiative, non-interventionist principles, and multipolarity agenda, which indirectly influence how the Taiwan issue is positioned on the international stage. Without a concrete framework for joint governance, the potential for miscalculations across the Taiwan Strait will continue to increase.

On May 16, 2026, the day after Trump left Beijing, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official statement. Taiwan is a sovereign and independent nation. It is not under Chinese rule. This statement was not new rhetoric.

What makes this significant is the context. Trump had just called a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan a bargaining chip in negotiations with Xi Jinping. China had just successfully pushed the US to soften its tone on Taiwan. In less than 24 hours, three main actors make statements that cannot all be true at the same time. And there is no one international institution that has the authority to decide which is more valid.

This isn’t a sudden diplomatic failure. It’s the result of a policy of strategic ambiguity that has been in place for more than five decades and is now beginning to show its limitations.

Strategic ambiguity was once effective because all parties had an incentive not to test its limits. That situation is changing. China is becoming increasingly assertive. militarily and increasingly actively shaping an alternative global order. Taiwan is becoming more assertive in claiming its political identity. The US under Trump is increasingly unpredictable. In these conditions, the ambiguity that once served as a buffer for stability has now become a source of uncertainty. The global governance system lacks adequate instruments to fill the gaps left by this increasingly outdated formula.

Starting from the background, a US strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan was born of deliberate compromise. In the Shanghai Communique (1972), Washington used the word “recognizes” China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, not “accepts.” The difference in vocabulary was no accident. It opened diplomatic normalization with Beijing without formally abandoning Taipei.

This formula was then codified through the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and three joint US-China communiques. During the Cold War era and the two decades that followed, this formula remained relatively stable because China was not yet strong enough to challenge it militarily and Taiwan was not yet confident enough to challenge it politically. As noted by T.Y. Wang in the journal Politics and Policy, strategic ambiguity is designed not only to deter China from attacking Taiwan but also to restrain Taiwan from taking steps that Beijing might deem provocative.

But the conditions that made that formula effective have changed structurally. Taiwan’s democratization since the 1990s has produced a political identity increasingly independent of the “One China” narrative. The PLA’s military modernization has changed the cost calculations of conflict. And Trump’s return to the White House has brought a transactional approach that, as noted by the Global Taiwan Institute, exacerbates existing ambiguities with conflicting signals that are record arms sales accompanied by a striking rhetorical silence on US security commitments to Taiwan.

On the ground, this uncertainty has already resulted in a measured escalation. Military exercises: Justice Mission 2025 In December 2025, a full-scale blockade of Taiwan was simulated, with over 90 aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait in a single day. These median line violations were not an anomaly. Since 2022, they have become increasingly routine and have rarely elicited an organized response from the international community.

The most important part to understand next is about the One China Policy. The One China Policy affirms that a single label includes three irreconcilable positions. Beijing maintains that Taiwan is an unreturned province and that reunification is a non-negotiable goal. Taipei maintains that the Republic of China (ROC) is a sovereign state that predates the People’s Republic of China and that the two have never ruled each other. Washington maintains its own version, based on the Taiwan Relations Act, that recognizes Beijing’s position without explicitly endorsing it.

These three positions exist simultaneously because they have never been tested in an international forum that has the authority to decide which is more valid. Brookings Institution; he noted that this policy was originally designed for a period when China was not yet acting like a revisionist power. Now, conditions have changed, and the old formula requires a recalibration that has yet to materialize.

There’s a compelling argument here. Strategic ambiguity has also served as a deterrent to war. It prevents China from attacking because it’s unsure whether the US will intervene. It also prevents Taiwan from declaring formal independence because it’s unsure whether the US would defend it. In this logic, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.

However, analyst Brandon K. Yoder in the European Journal of International Relations, The effectiveness of deterrence hinges on credibility, which is currently eroding. When Trump called weapons for Taiwan a “negotiating chip,” he indirectly communicated to Beijing that the US commitment was conditional. When commitments are conditional, their deterrent effect is significantly weakened.

What results is not new stability, but rather an increasingly unpredictable gray area. Each party operates based on its own assumptions about the limits that can be tested. Without governance mechanisms that explicitly clarify these limits, the risk of miscalculation continues to grow.

The Taiwan issue cannot be read in isolation from China’s broader agenda of reshaping the global order. Over the past two decades, Beijing has not only protested the existing international system but also actively developed an alternative.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which now encompasses more than 140 countries, is more than just an infrastructure project. As analyzed in China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies, BRI serves as both a governance and economic mechanism, linking infrastructure development with new standards of connectivity and cooperation that reflect the Chinese model of development without political conditions.

Beyond the BRI, China is actively pushing three major initiatives: the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Governance Initiative. They share a common thread that is strengthening the norm of sovereignty, rejecting intervention based on Western values, and promoting multipolarity as a substitute for single-party hegemony. Bruegel noted that the concept of “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind” popularized by Xi at Davos 2017 has even been included in several UN General Assembly resolutions, demonstrating how far China has succeeded in pushing its global narrative into multilateral institutions.

The relevance to the Taiwan issue is that the more countries accept China’s sovereignty-based, non-interference-based governance framework, the more limited the space for international mechanisms to challenge Beijing’s claims to Taiwan. China’s global governance agenda and its claims to Taiwan are not separate issues. They are part of the same project: redefining who has the right to set the rules of the game in what have traditionally been called “internal affairs.”

This also makes Trump’s and Xi’s bilateral approach a more suitable instrument for China’s interests. When the Taiwan issue is managed through negotiations between the two great powers, broader norms, such as the right to self-determination and representation of sovereign entities, are not discussed. Observer Research Foundation noted that BRI cooperation with the UN from 2015 to 2019 was more about mutual legitimacy than structural integration, and a similar pattern is seen in the way China uses multilateral forums to validate its diplomatic positions without actually committing to the process.

Trump’s and Xi’s meeting in May 2026 shows a pattern that deserves serious attention. That is, the Taiwan issue is now managed almost entirely outside the multilateral framework. There are no regional forums, no UN mechanisms, no activated joint protocols. There are just two leaders, two delegations, and an agenda far broader than just Taiwan.

Observation: Both sides reveal a glaring asymmetry. In China’s version, Taiwan is referred to as the “most important issue,” and Xi warned of potential conflict if handled incorrectly. In the US version, Taiwan is not mentioned at all. CSIS noted that the meeting resulted in a commitment to “strategic stability” without concrete instruments to realize it. The lack of crisis communication protocol. Limited incident management framework. There isn’t any commitment to refrain from provocative military exercises.

This is not simply a shortcoming of the meeting. It reflects a more systemic limitation. namely the limitations There is no sufficiently authoritative multilateral platform to address this issue. The UN Security Council is hampered by Beijing’s veto power. ASEAN adheres to the principle of non-intervention, which actually benefits China’s narrative. The G20 has no mandate to address sovereignty disputes.

The result is what could be called a governance deficit. This doesn’t mean there are no institutions, but rather that the existing ones are insufficiently effective for the situation. And it’s in this deficit that military escalation moves in to fill the space that structured diplomacy should be filling. Modern Diplomacy noted that the US approved an $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan by 2025 while simultaneously sending ambiguous rhetorical signals, a combination that makes it difficult for both China and Taiwan to read exactly where the real line is.

The following three recommendations are not intended to resolve the Taiwan status question. Their purpose is more limited and more immediate. namely for reducing the risk of miscalculation before a minor incident escalates into an uncontrollable crisis. All three rely on existing political conditions and momentum.

First, the momentum of the Trump-Xi meeting should be used to establish a permanent, dedicated military crisis communication channel for incidents in the Taiwan Strait. The most relevant precedent is the Washington-Moscow hotline, established after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, precisely because the world had nearly come to war due to miscommunication, not intention. CNBC noted the May 2026 meeting resulted in a relatively constructive atmosphere between the two leaders. This is a rare window of opportunity and should be used for something concrete.

Second, Indonesia, as a BRICS member and ASEAN dialogue partner with a relatively balanced working relationship with Washington and Beijing, could propose a regional consultation forum focused on managing incidents in the Taiwan Strait. This would not be a forum to decide Taiwan’s status, but rather a technical mechanism for de-escalation procedures and crisis communication. ASEAN has the foundation for this through the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and Indonesia’s current position within BRICS provides added legitimacy in Beijing’s eyes.

Third, the US, China, Japan, and South Korea need to negotiate a joint commitment that no party will change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through force. This is inspired by the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, which successfully committed European countries not to change their borders by force, despite many of their mutual distrust. The agreement did not resolve existing disputes, but it did raise the costs of escalation measurably. With Xi seeking economic stability before 2027 and Trump seeking to avoid military engagement far from the US mainland, both sides’ calculations are now more open to this type of commitment than in previous periods.

It can be concluded that strategic ambiguity is one of the most ingenious products of Cold War diplomacy. It maintained stability in the Taiwan Strait for decades, not by solving the problem, but by making all parties unsure whether testing its limits was a good idea.

The conditions that make that formula work are changing simultaneously. China is stronger and more assertive. Taiwan is more assertive in its political identity. And the US under Trump is sending signals that are more easily read as conditional than committed. These three changes are not occurring one after the other, but simultaneously, and the global governance system has not yet responded accordingly.

The Trump-Xi meeting in May 2026 is neither a turning point in the war nor a step toward a resolution. It is a reflection of the current situation: three actors with three different interpretations, no referee, and increasingly little room for error.

What’s needed isn’t a final solution on Taiwan’s status, as that won’t come anytime soon. What’s needed are concrete steps that reduce the risk of miscalculation while keeping all options open. Crisis channels, regional consultative forums, and non-escalation commitments are small steps but have clear historical precedent. The question is whether the political will for these small steps can still be found amidst the escalating rivalry.

There are moments in history when civilizations continue to advance materially while progressively losing confidence in the values  and structures that once gave direction and coherence to collective life. Institutions continue to function, markets continue to expand, and technological progress accelerates uninterruptedly, yet beneath this movement emerges a quieter uncertainty.

As Simone Weil observed, “to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized

need of the human soul.”[1] Yet contemporary societies often struggle to sustain those forms of

belonging and shared meaning that once anchored human communities. The crisis is

therefore not simply political or economic. It concerns meaning itself.

Artificial intelligence has appeared precisely within such a historical juncture. Most contemporary discussions approach AI primarily as a technological revolution, or as an element of economic and geopolitical competition between great powers. Governments now frame it as a strategic race, corporations present it as the next engine of productivity, and Silicon Valley often speaks of AI in the language of inevitability and destiny, recalling Aldous Huxley’s fear that technological progress might ultimately weaken rather than deepen human civilization.[2]

 But such interpretations may ignore something deeper still. AI may be less the cause of a civilizational transformation than one of its clearest symptoms. It reflects a broader historical transition in which inherited moral and symbolic frameworks are dissolving faster than new forms of collective meaning can emerge.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem[3]

This condition closely resembles what Antonio Gramsci described as an interregnum: a period in which the old world is dying while the new world struggles to be born. [4] Such periods produce not only political instability, but also moral exhaustion, the erosion of shared narratives, and declining confidence in beliefs once considered self-evident. Civilizations have passed through similar moments before.

The enduring fascination of Edward Gibbon’s monumental The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire lies not merely in its account of imperial decline, but in its portrayal of the slow weakening of the moral and symbolic foundations that once sustained an entire civilization.[5] Rome did not collapse overnight. Its institutions remained impressive long after few still believed in the civilization they were meant to serve. Administrative power survived even as collective meaning and aspirations deteriorated.

That pattern feels strangely familiar.

Never before have technological capacities appeared so extensive while social distrust, political fragmentation, and loneliness have become so pervasive. Hyperconnectivity was supposed to bring societies closer together. In many cases, it has done the reverse.

AI in the Anthropocene

AI emerges from within this historical condition . It appears perfectly suited to societies organized around abstraction, speed, quantification, and technological mediation. In this sense, AI is profoundly historical. It results from a long civilizational development in which rationalization, efficiency, and technical calculation have come to replace older moral, religious, and symbolic frameworks as primary sources of legitimacy and meaning. What distinguishes AI from previous technologies is that it extends these same principles into domains traditionally considered irreducibly human. Activities once understood as distinctly human, such as reasoning, creativity, interpretation, and even emotional interaction, are now becoming technologically mediated.

The deeper unease therefore concerns anthropology as much as technology. What remains distinctively human when machines become capable of imitating reasoning, generating art, and mediating human relationships?

Such moments of civilizational disorientation are not entirely unprecedented.

The Renaissance confronted a similar rupture. Medieval Europe had long possessed a relatively coherent worldview capable of organizing religion, politics, morality, and human identity within a common order. By the late fifteenth century, however, this equilibrium was beginning to fracture under the pressure of new scientific discoveries, religious wars, and the weakening of older political and spiritual authorities. Thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola sought, in radically different ways, to redefine humanity’s place within a rapidly changing world.[6] Pico celebrated human beings as creatures capable of shaping themselves through freedom and intellect, while Machiavelli recognized more soberly that periods of transition dissolve inherited certainties and force societies to confront instability and power directly.

Both understood that historical transformation is ultimately existential before being institutional. Our own transition may prove even more radical because technology no longer transforms only economic or political life, but cognition itself.

AI now mediates everyday experience itself: how people search for information, communicate, work, and make sense of the world around them.

Algorithms no longer merely distribute information. They shape attention, influence perception, and affect how individuals relate emotionally to public life and to one another. Under such conditions, the distinction between human judgment and technological mediation becomes far less clear.

The Price of Nostalgia

One striking feature of the contemporary digital environment is the degree to which individuals now participate voluntarily in their own data extraction. Recent Instagram trends such as the viral “What Were You Like in the ’90s?” challenge encourage users and celebrities alike to upload curated archives of personal photographs spanning decades of their lives. Presented as nostalgia and entertainment, these trends also generate immense quantities of highly valuable visual and behavioural data: faces across time, emotional reactions, aesthetic preferences, social interactions, and patterns of self-presentation. Whether or not such material is directly incorporated into future AI systems, the broader objective remains significant. Human memory, identity, and even nostalgia itself increasingly becomes raw material for computational analysis and commercial platforms.

Reactions to AI therefore oscillate easily between fascination and anxiety. Beneath both lies a deeper uncertainty about whether modern societies still possess a coherent understanding of what human beings are for, beyond economic productivity and consumption.

Friedrich Nietzsche anticipated aspects of this crisis more than a century ago. His declaration that “God is dead” did not merely constitute a theological provocation but signalled the emergence of a civilization in which traditional moral structures would lose authority long before new ones could replace them.[7] Nietzsche feared not nihilism alone, but the possibility that societies might become incapable of generating new forms of transcendence once older ones had collapsed. We saw how his worldview provided an intellectual base for Fascism.

I Read, therefore I Am

In increasingly mediated environments, the act of sustained reading itself begins to take on a countercultural character. To read is, in some sense, to resist. We have access to more information than any previous generation, yet physical books can still provide a sense of orientation. The books people return to, annotate, or simply keep close over time often reveal something enduring about the way they think and who they are.

The central issue, therefore, is not simply whether artificial intelligence will become more powerful. The deeper question is whether societies organized around AI can still sustain stable forms of responsibility and belonging strong enough to preserve coherent collective life. This is ultimately a political and civilizational problem before it is a purely technical one.

Much contemporary discourse still assumes that technological advancement naturally produces historical progress. History offers little evidence for such confidence.

Civilizations do not endure simply because they innovate technologically. They endure because they preserve, or reinvent, systems of meaning capable of holding societies together over time.

The Roman Empire mastered engineering yet gradually lost the moral cohesion that had once sustained it. Renaissance Europe produced extraordinary creativity precisely because it confronted existential instability directly rather than attempting to ignore it.

Contemporary Western societies appear caught between immense technological sophistication and growing uncertainty about their own civilizational narrative.

AI therefore represents more than innovation. It reflects a transformation in how human beings understand themselves, authority, knowledge, and reality itself. The danger is not simply that machines become too powerful. It is that societies now outsource judgment, imagination, and responsibility while slowly losing the cultural and moral resources required to govern these technologies wisely. Yet periods of interregnum are not necessarily periods of decline alone. They are also moments in which civilizations redefine themselves.

AI For Good ?

Historical transitions create possibilities as well as dangers. The Renaissance emerged from the crisis of medieval Europe. Modern democracy emerged from the upheavals of industrial society. Today’s uncertainty may likewise force Western societies to confront questions long obscured by economic growth and technological optimism:

What constitutes a good society? What forms of belonging remain possible in a hyper-mediated world? What aspects of human life should never be reduced to data, prediction, or optimization?

AI cannot answer these questions. But its emergence makes avoiding them increasingly difficult.

[1] Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (1949/1952).

[2] See Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) and his later essays such as Brave New World Revisited (1958), where he warns that technological efficiency and social conditioning could erode authentic human experience.

[3] The phrase alludes to the final lines of W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” (1919): “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

[4] Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (written 1929–1935, published posthumously). The “interregnum” concept appears in Notebook 3: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

[5] Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 volumes, 1776–1789). Gibbon famously attributed part of the decline to the rise of Christianity and the erosion of civic virtue.

[6] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) — often called the “Manifesto of the Renaissance”; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532) and Discourses on Livy.

[7] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, §125 – “The Madman”) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The full phrase is usually rendered “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”