Asma Mhalla

Asma Mhalla is a political theorist and author. Her work explores how power and sovereignty are being transformed in the 21st century. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) and was a Research Fellow at New York University (NYU) in 2026.

Working at the intersection of political theory and geopolitics, her research examines the hybridization of power between states and what she calls “hybrid megacorporations,” the geostrategic rivalries driving these transformations, and their implications for contemporary democracies.

She is the author of Technopolitique (Seuil, 2024) and Cyberpunk (Seuil, 2025), both bestsellers in France and translated into several languages. In these works, she challenges traditional understandings of nation state and sovereignty, introduces the notion of “cognitive power,” and frames her foundational concept of “BigState,” a theory of emerging structures and new configurations of power in the 21st century.

Asma Mhalla has also developed an innovative approach to writing, which she describes in Cyberpunk as a “cognitive self-defense manual.” Her concepts are conceived as “intellectual weapons” in the defense of cognitive freedom, deliberately drawing on the language of warfare. Intentionally hybrid in form, written in the first person, and blending political philosophy with personal experience, her writings build, in real time, a framework for the new century and the future.