The Catalyst of Common Ground
Elias and Sarah were CEOs of rival tech conglomerates, competing fiercely for dominance in the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) sector. For years, their relationship was defined by patent lawsuits and talent poaching. However, the landscape shifted when a decentralized, open-source collective released “Project Prometheus”—an unaligned, high-speed model that threatened to make proprietary software obsolete.
Suddenly, the “enemy” was no longer each other; it was the loss of market control. This is the Schmittian definition of the political: the distinction between friend and enemy. By identifying Prometheus as a common threat, Elias and Sarah formed an “Enemy-Centric Alliance.” Their friendship wasn’t born of shared values, but of shared survival.
The Problem of the Fictitious Enemy
A year later, Project Prometheus was successfully regulated into obscurity. With the genuine threat gone, the alliance began to fracture. To maintain the lucrative partnership, Sarah proposed a new strategy: they would frame “Data Privacy Extremism” as their new shared foe.
This was a fictitious enemy. While data privacy is a real issue, the “extremism” they described was a curated narrative designed to keep their boards of directors unified.
The Collapse of the Unstable Bond
The relationship quickly became “extremely unstable and weak,” just as the reference text suggests. In social psychology, this is known as low-multiplexity bonding. Because their friendship was built on a fabricated external pressure rather than internal trust or shared goals:
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Paranoia crept in: Without a real external threat to monitor, they began monitoring each other.
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The Incentive Gap: As soon as Elias saw a chance to profit from the very “extremists” they feared, the fictitious enemy lost its power to bind him to Sarah.
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Cognitive Dissonance: Employees in both firms could sense the “enemy” was a straw man, leading to internal leaks and a total breakdown of the pact.
Key Specialized Insights
| Concept | Application in the Story |
|---|---|
| In-Group/Out-Group Bias | The initial alliance succeeded because a clear “Out-Group” (Prometheus) forced “In-Group” cooperation. |
| The Common Enemy Effect | A well-documented psychological phenomenon where external threats reduce internal friction. |
| Social Cohesion Theory | Explains why “fictitious enemies” fail; cohesion requires authentic shared costs and benefits, not just shared rhetoric. |
Insight: In 2025, with the rise of algorithmic echo chambers, we see “fictitious enemies” created daily to maintain online communities. However, as the story shows, these communities often eat themselves when a real challenge arises, because their foundation is reactive, not proactive.
All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
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