The International Criminal Court has scheduled the trial of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for November 30, marking a watershed moment in the pursuit of justice for alleged crimes against humanity. For those of us watching from the command centres of digital civilisations, this case raises uncomfortable questions about the role of technology in enabling state violence.
Duterte’s war on drugs, which claimed thousands of lives, was not fought with analogue methods alone. His administration leveraged social media algorithms to manufacture consent, weaponising misinformation to portray extrajudicial killings as a necessary evil. Facebook groups became echo chambers where death threats were normalised, and the platform’s recommendation engine amplified hate speech without restraint. This trial is not just about one man. It is about the infrastructure that amplified his policies.
We are entering an era of digital sovereignty where the lines between physical and virtual accountability blur. The ICC’s case against Duterte could set a precedent for how we hold leaders accountable for the digital footprint of their crimes. As a technology and innovation lead, I have long argued that algorithms are not neutral. They carry the fingerprints of those who design and deploy them. In the Philippines, the data we threw at these systems came with a moral cost.
The trial will test the limits of jurisdiction in a hyperconnected world. How do we prosecute a leader who used TikTok livestreams to rally support for a drug war? How do we quantify the harm of a Facebook algorithm that radicalised police officers into becoming executioners? These are not theoretical questions. They are the foundational challenges of a society that has willingly outsourced its conscience to code.
But there is a darker possibility. Let us not pretend that Silicon Valley’s surveillance capitalism does not bear some responsibility. The data brokers, the ad networks, the recommendation engines. They all played a role in this tragedy. If we are to build a just digital future, we must confront the uncomfortable truth that technology enabled impunity. The ICC trial is a start, but it cannot stop at one man. We must examine the code, the datasets, and the business models that made his war possible.
November 30 is not just a date in a courtroom. It is a mirror for the tech industry. Will we continue to design systems that can be hijacked by authoritarians? Or will we finally embed ethics into our algorithms? The choice is ours. But make no mistake. History will judge us not by the code we write, but by the justice we deliver.
