Science likes to imagine itself as the immune system of democracy: the last place where reason still matters, where evidence continues to anchor public life, where dissent is understood as a creative force. But the institutions that once held authoritarianism at bay: peer review, open debate, collective inquiry, are bending under new pressures.
A consequence of an accelerated society where we are expected to respond faster. To bypass normal procedures in the name of urgency. And each time, the boundaries between scientific authority and political authority blur a little more.
Science is not only being captured by authoritarianism, scientists are learning to find authoritarianism useful. The drift happens quietly, framed as necessity or efficiency, yet each compromise redraws the relationship between knowledge and power in ways we barely recognize.
Security frameworks, crisis governance, and technocratic thinking have quietly reshaped scientific authority. The transformation presents itself as modernization, but it’s actually a shift toward a more hierarchical, less accountable, and more power-aligned form of knowledge-making.
There is nothing historically unusual about this. Science has long aligned itself with empires, militaries, industrial captains, and surveillance states. The dream of frictionless inquiry—ample funding, captive datasets, national prestige, and insulation from democratic oversight—has repeatedly proven more seductive than the demanding, participatory commitments of democratic culture. Authoritarian systems know this. They understand that scientific legitimacy is valuable, that researchers crave stability and resources, and that expertise can be flattered into obedience. The gravitational pull between scientific ambition and centralized power is structural, not accidental.
Part of the appeal is practical. Scientists want to work without interference. Authoritarian systems promise precisely that: research without boards or committees, budgets without elections, datasets without privacy protections, laboratories without public scrutiny. Democracies insist on deliberation, accountability, justification, and the right of ordinary people to ask difficult questions. Authoritarian regimes offer none of these burdens. They offer clarity and direction, framed as rational governance. And for people who believe in the neutrality of their judgment, who see themselves as stewards of reason, this can feel like a natural partnership.
Once the seduction begins, the practice of science shifts. Knowledge becomes strategic rather than exploratory. Dissent turns from constructive criticism into reputational hazard, then into institutional risk. Uncertainty—once the engine of scientific progress—starts to look like weakness, or worse, disloyalty. Administrators adopt the language of security and control. Reproducibility yields to secrecy. Research agendas contort around national priorities, competitive pressures, or corporate interests. Transparency is reframed as exposure. And slowly, the culture of inquiry transforms into a culture of obedience.
The most effective disguise for this shift is technocratic rhetoric. Efficiency. Evidence-based governance. Coordination at scale. National competitiveness. Crisis response. These terms carry the aesthetic of science but conceal the logic of power. The more chaotic and polarized society becomes, the more scientists are told that democracy cannot function without their steadying hand. Experts are elevated from advisors to rational caretakers. And once expertise is used to justify consolidating authority, authoritarianism stops appearing authoritarian. It looks like responsible governance. It looks like necessary modernization. It looks like the future.
The newest tools of science intensify this drift. Artificial intelligence is built on optimization, and optimization aligns naturally with systems that seek prediction and control. Data-heavy research requires infrastructures inseparable from surveillance. Biotech is inherently dual-use, tying scientific autonomy to national security goals. Global competition in AI, genomics, and materials science frames research as geopolitical leverage rather than public good. The more advanced the tools, the stronger the structural alignment between scientific institutions and authoritarian appetites.
Below the institutional level, culture shifts as well. Scientists, especially in elite environments, increasingly experience democracy as constraint: noisy, contradictory, undisciplined, unskilled. Meritocratic self-image reinforces the belief that expertise should govern because expertise understands the stakes. Genius culture returns with hierarchical force. Many researchers feel misunderstood by publics, undervalued by politicians, and obstructed by oversight. In this environment, authoritarianism doesn’t arrive as ideology. It begins as frustration. As resentment. As the psychological desire for a world that behaves.
Institutional feedback loops amplify the drift. Universities adopt centralized managerial governance. Funding bodies reward projects aligned with military, security, or corporate priorities. International collaboration narrows to geopolitical blocs. Professional incentives favour compliance over critique. Research secrecy becomes patriotic duty. In the aggregate, scientific institutions begin to resemble the authoritarian systems they once critiqued—rigid, hierarchical, brittle, opaque.
The consequences are already unfolding, though we rarely connect them to the authoritarianization of scientific culture. Scientific institutions are losing public trust precisely when society needs them most. Authoritarian states exert disproportionate influence on global research agendas. Independent, community-driven, or dissident science becomes harder to practice or fund. Knowledge becomes less transparent, less reproducible, more error-prone, more politically aligned, and less democratically accountable. We see these symptoms, but we do not connect them. We treat them as isolated crises rather than manifestations of a deeper shift in the relationship between science and power.
The antidote is not to isolate science from politics, but to remember that science depends on democratic principles. Openness is not optional; it is a political stance. Reproducibility is not a technical procedure; it is a check on power. Dissent is not inefficiency; it is a generative force. Citizen science is democratization. Decentralized research infrastructures are not redundant; they are resilient. Epistemic humility is not weakness; it is the safeguard against authoritarian certainty. Science cannot retreat into neutrality because neutrality is the vacuum in which authoritarianism thrives.
This is why the gradual seduction is so effective. Scientists are not trained to see power as a variable in their own work. Yet every method in science rests on a political foundation, and authoritarianism quietly dismantles those foundations the moment it gains leverage. The question now is not whether science will be captured by authoritarianism, but whether scientific institutions will recognize that authoritarian power is the very force that corrupts the conditions necessary for inquiry.
Authoritarianism offers power that is fast, orderly, efficient, and intoxicating.
Democracy offers power that is slow, unruly, uncertain, and emancipatory.
Science must decide which kind of power it intends to serve. If it does not choose democracy deliberately, authoritarianism will choose it.
