Biography
Asma Mhalla is a political theorist and essayist. Her work bears on power in the twenty-first century : political theory and international relations, democratic regimes and liberties, the geopolitics of Big Tech and of artificial intelligence. Technology is not an object in itself here, but the way into a wider political transformation.
Her method : a political theory “in real time”, thinking the world at the moment it is being made and accepting the risk of doing so, rather than analysing it from a distance.
Author ofTechnopolitique(Seuil, 2024) and ofCyberpunk(Seuil, 2025), translated in several countries.
Distinctions— Prix de la Contre-Allée 2026 forCyberpunk. Named one of the 100 Femmes de Culture 2025, in the Digital Innovation & Cultures category (Palais de Tokyo, 13 October 2025).
In the summer of 2023 she produced and presentedCyberPouvoirson France Inter, in eight episodes. In February 2024 she publishedTechnopolitique. Comment la technologie fait de nous des soldats(Seuil), reissued in paperback by Points in September 2025, then in September 2025Cyberpunk. Le nouveau système totalitaire(Seuil).
Her books are translated in several countries : in Italy byadd editore (Tecnopolitica) and byEinaudi (Resistere ai tempi oscuri), in Germany byC.H. Beck (Cyberpunk. Das neue totalitäre System), in Catalan byAkal (Ciberpunk). The English edition ofCyberpunkis announced bySeven Stories Pressfor March 2027.
She speaks regularly before governments, international institutions and executive committees, and takes part in public debate in the French and international press.
Research— PhD in Political Science (EHESS, 2024), supervised by Pierre-Antoine Chardel :New forms of power between Big Tech and states. Associate researcher at the Laboratory of Political Anthropology (EHESS/CNRS) and Research Fellow at New York University (2026).