It’s a tune we’re hearing more and more often. With the technological advances of recent years, death could be conquered and immortality now within reach. A fantasy as old as civilisation itself, which is now finding a new echo at the crossroads between bio and neuro technologies. It is a dream of immortality that has been appropriated by the powerful, who see it as the ultimate dividing line between themselves and ordinary mortals.
Since the dawn of time, the powerful have sought a way to defeat death
Since the dawn of civilisation, ruling elites have sought to defy death. The pharaohs built pyramids as promises of eternity. Alexander the Great, at the end of his conquest, asked his wise men about the possibility of living forever. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, died after drinking an elixir that was supposed to grant him immortality.
In Renaissance Europe, princes financed alchemists and doctors to find the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of youth. Even Louis XIV, obsessed with his health, turned Versailles into a medicalised court where the slightest breath or discomfort became a matter of state. History shows how closely power and the fear of death are linked.
This obsession was not only spiritual, but also political. Building tombs, financing monumental works or surrounding oneself with myths of eternity served to engrave the names of the powerful in the collective memory. Symbolic immortality – through art, religion or architecture – was already a way of prolonging power beyond biological death.
The major religions also played this role by promising their followers life after death, but often reserving special treatment for leaders. Sumptuous funeral rites, sacred relics and imperial cults were not just spiritual practices: they were the concrete expression of a privilege of eternity reserved for an elite.
From Elon Musk to Vladimir Putin: the quest for a new Holy Grail
Today, this dream is changing in form but not in nature. In Silicon Valley, some billionaires are conceiving of immortality as an industrial project. Google has launched Calico, a start-up whose stated ambition is to ‘kill death’. Elon Musk imagines downloading the human mind into a machine. Peter Thiel is investing in cell therapies. What was once a myth is now a business plan: buying back time, prolonging life, pushing back the biological horizon.
But politics is not standing on the sidelines. Vladimir Putin has turned biotechnology and artificial intelligence into weapons of sovereignty. In China, billions are being invested in regenerative medicine and genetics. In these visions, immortality is no longer just an individual quest: it is becoming an instrument of national power, a strategy for long-term domination.
These initiatives are based on a double gamble: on the one hand, the conviction that science will eventually defeat ageing, just as certain deadly diseases have been defeated in the past; on the other, the idea that the accumulation of capital and power will hasten this victory. In this game, billionaires and states do not just want to gain years, they want to be the first to conquer this frontier.
This race is also giving rise to a cultural competition. The West associates immortality with technology and artificial intelligence, while China favours genetics and regenerative medicine. Behind these scientific choices lie different visions of what it means to ‘prolong life’: digitising the mind or healing the body, transcending the human or perfecting it.
Immortality to raise a new aristocracy
Behind these dreams lies a symbolic battle: pushing back death also means pushing back the end of power. For some leaders, going down in history is no longer enough; they must outlive biology itself. It does not matter that scientific advances remain limited: the idea alone is enough to shape the collective imagination and fuel geopolitical competition.
One question remains. If tomorrow a privileged few really manage to extend their lives far beyond the norm, what will become of the balance of our societies? Defeating death would then not be a universal victory but the most radical form of segregation: that between those who can afford eternity and those who will have no choice but to continue dying.
Immortality, if it becomes a reality, will not eliminate inequalities, but will amplify them. Access to extended life could cost fortunes, reserving this privilege for an elite already endowed with all other advantages. A ‘biological aristocracy’ would form, breaking the social contract and fuelling unprecedented resentment between social classes.
Ultimately, this would raise a political and moral question: what legitimacy would democracy still have if some of its leaders could remain in power for several centuries, without being subject to the human finitude that underpins political change? Immortality, far from being a mere technological dream, could then transform the very nature of power and our societies.
By Nicolas Ruscher
