The pandemic has acted as a catalyst and accelerator for the enforcement and prevalence of a series of practices, restrictions, and behaviors that were not unknown in technologically advanced societies of late modernity. The 4th Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence and the digital transformation of the economy, the Internet and its culture, teleworking and flexible forms of employment, surveillance societies, biomedical experiments, transformations of public space, digital inequalities, the erosion of individual rights, and environmental risks have occupied public discourse since the late 20th century. So, who is this "brave new world" that has emerged with the pandemic?

The new biopolitical paradigm that emerges is constructed from pre-existing materials. The biopolitical discipline of the precautionary state, the spread of surveillance technologies, the deregulation of employment conditions, the technocratic turn of post-democracy, the dismantling of the welfare state, the rise of right-wing populism, and the visual world of online manipulation were already here. With the pandemic, the face of the new Leviathan is revealed and the invisible becomes visible.