From the royal courts of 14th-century Majapahit to the spice-laden ports of Makassar, power in the Indonesian archipelago moved through two hands: the merchant and the king. Merchants brought spice and gold; kings offered protection and prophecy. But what truly bounded them, and ruled the people, wasn’t law or trade. It was myth.

Now, before you smack me with a copy of MADILOG, hear me out. I’m not here to glorify ‘logika mistika’, but myths don’t just hang around in bedtime stories. They shape power. Feudal kings claimed divine right. Dictators clad themselves in revolutionary folklore. Indonesia’s elites do the same, weaponizing nationalist myths to tighten control. A little Javanese mysticism won’t kill us. If anything, it reveals that myth isn’t merely a justification for power. It’s also a sedative.

Myth pacifies by turning complex, oppressive realities into comforting narratives. It doesn’t need to convince people that power is divine; it only needs to make them believe the system is inevitable — a fixed order that numbs any desire to challenge the status quo. Myth doesn’t just justify power — it keeps people disengaged.

As Orwell puts it: ‘Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.’

Myth is older than politics. But it performs the same trick: masking violence with virtue.

Bung Hatta warned against this strategic use of myth, calling it “new feudalism.” Unlike the European model — where feudalism hinged on land and economic control — Indonesia’s version blends culture, institution, and story. Power isn’t just held through lineage or patronage. It’s kept alive through myth, family prestige, historical narrative, and political inheritance.

This fusion of myth and legacy sustains Indonesia’s political dynasties — from the Sultanate of Yogyakarta to the Sukarno and Suharto families, to the military elites ruling through patronage. Even Jokowi, for all his populism, rose within this framework. Bung Hatta’s fear was later crystallized in the term KKN — Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme — shorthand for the oligarchic rot of Suharto’s New Order.

But here’s the real problem: feudalism doesn’t die. It mutates.

The year 2025 marks a pivotal moment in Indonesia’s power dynamics. While feudalism once thrived through family prestige and historical narrative, it has now evolved through technology, data, and digital monopolies. Power is no longer inherited through bloodlines alone but embedded within the digital systems and platforms that govern our interactions, economy, and information.

This shift signifies the rise of ‘techno-feudalism,’ where the logic of ancient dynasties persists, now channeled through technological control. Power today is really not just political — it is psychological, economic, and technological.

At the heart of this transformation is the Satrio Piningit complex — a prophetic myth reincarnated in today’s techno-political regime.

This essay explores how Indonesia’s crisis runs deeper than bad leadership: it’s a structural feedback loop, where myth, technology, and power co-produce a system that resists democratic change.

The Satrio Piningit Complex

The myth of Satrio Piningit — the “Hidden Knight” foretold to save Indonesia in times of crisis — continues to serve as a potent symbol of justice and redemption. This concept is not unique to Indonesia; similar myths have existed across cultures, such as the Mandate of Heaven in China and the benevolent despot in Western monarchies. However, Indonesia’s version of this myth has not vanished; instead, it has evolved in form.

We see this in the way political discontent manifests today. When a government fails, the response is rarely to question the system that allowed it to happen. Instead, the public fixates on who should have been in power, as if a different figure alone could have prevented the collapse.

Opposition to the status quo is not necessarily opposition to the cycle itself. The same instinct that once placed faith in a leader’s ability to singlehandedly uplift the nation now fuels a reactionary demand for a different leader to do the same.

This is the illusion of political choice in a system that remains fundamentally unchallenged. The frustration is real, but it is absorbed into a framework that reduces governance to personality rather than structure. Power, in this sense, is not merely exercised through those in office but through the very way people are conditioned to think about politics.

The danger of this political fatalism is that it obscures the actual machinery of power — a deeply entrenched system that does not change with administrations, but rather, produces them. Leaders do not emerge in a vacuum; they are shaped by and serve a larger configuration of interests that remain intact regardless of electoral outcomes.

So each cycle of disappointment doesn’t end in reform, but in another desperate search for a new Satrio Piningit — a single savior to fix what the last one broke. Unless political consciousness breaks from this leader-centric mindset, the cycle will continue.

The troubling part? This centralized power model has transcended politics, now deeply embedded in the digital economy. Here, the Satrio Piningit figure evolves from a political savior to the architect of a digital “kingdom,” governed not by legacy, but by data, algorithms, and monopolistic control over information.

The Rise of Technofeudalism

In recent years, economists like Yanis Varoufakis have declared that capitalism — as we knew it — is dead. In its place, a new regime has emerged: technofeudalism. Unlike classical capitalism, where wealth was mediated through competitive markets, technofeudalism is marked by centralized control over digital infrastructure, platforms, and data. As Varoufakis explains:

“In technofeudalism, the market is no longer the main mechanism for wealth accumulation. It’s the platform. We no longer buy and sell. We get permitted to access.”

In this model, capital accumulation derives not from production or market exchange, but on control over access. The new ruling class doesn’t own land or factories — they own the digital roads: platforms, clouds, logistics chains, and surveillance architectures.

Platform-aristocracies like Google, Amazon, and Alibaba — and their Indonesian counterparts — don’t generate value through production but by extracting rent from infrastructure ownership and data capture. Power now lies in permission systems, where businesses and users must pay to access essential infrastructure.

In Indonesia, this pattern is echoed in platforms like Gojek, Tokopedia (now GoTo), and Bukalapak. These firms do more than facilitate markets — they structure them. Their business models hinge on ecosystem control: payments, logistics, data, and merchant access. Rather than producing value in the classical sense, they extract it by governing the gateways of the digital economy.

But technofeudalism in Indonesia isn’t just the product of private platforms. Increasingly, it’s being institutionalized by the state itself — under the banner of national sovereignty.

The Danantara Ecosystem

The establishment of the Daya Anagata Nusantara Investment Management Agency (Danantara) signifies a turning point for Indonesia’s economic trajectory. Launched in February 2025 with an initial capital of 1,000 trillion rupiah (approximately $61 billion), Danantara aims to consolidate the management of major state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to improve efficiency, investment returns, and enhance national fiscal sovereignty. On paper, this appears to be a strategic move toward economic efficiency and state-led modernization. Yet beneath this framework lies a revival of feudal logics, now reframed through the language of digital infrastructure and platform governance.

Danantara’s role extends beyond streamlining governance; it consolidates control over critical assets. The sovereign wealth fund oversees significant stakes in Indonesia’s largest SOEs — Bank Mandiri, BRI, BNI, Pertamina, PLN, and Telkom Indonesia — with a combined asset value nearing $600 billion. These entities span key sectors such as banking, energy, and crucially, digital infrastructure, where the emergence of a darker undercurrent becomes apparent.

Sitting at the core of Danantara’s portfolio is Telkom Indonesia, the nation’s foremost telecommunications provider and a central pillar of its digital infrastructure. Through Telkom, Danantara commands a vast and strategically critical network: nationwide broadband infrastructure, expansive cloud computing systems, and 29 regional data centers operated by its subsidiary, NeutraDC. These are not merely technological assets; they constitute the foundational architecture of Indonesia’s digital economy.

Telkom’s infrastructure supports key sectors — including financial technology, healthcare platforms, and e-commerce ecosystems — making its cloud and connectivity services indispensable. In this configuration, Danantara assumes the role of a sovereign gatekeeper: an entity that does not merely regulate access to digital infrastructure but owns and governs the means through which digital activity flows.

This model mirrors the technofeudalist structure described by Yanis Varoufakis, where value is no longer primarily generated through production, but through control — of platforms, of access, and of the infrastructures upon which economic life depends. In this emerging regime, the state — through Danantara — no longer stands apart from the market as a neutral arbiter. Instead, it becomes a stakeholder in the digital commons, setting the terms of participation within an increasingly permission-based ecosystem.

So when Telkom announced its plan in 2024 to sell stakes in NeutraDC to strategic investors, it wasn’t just a monetization move. It was a fiefdom play. Investors weren’t buying capacity — they were buying power. They were purchasing the right to charge rent on the digital commons.

All of this is framed, of course, as a step toward digital sovereignty. And there is truth to that. In a world dominated by American and Chinese tech monopolies, Danantara positions Indonesia as a self-determining node in the global digital order. But sovereignty has two sides. While Indonesia might gain leverage over foreign actors, domestic actors may find themselves locked inside a walled garden — one where access to essential infrastructure is determined not by open competition, but by state-corporate discretion.

This creates a governance paradox. The centralization of economic and digital assets might appear modern, even necessary — but it also risks reproducing precisely the kinds of extractive hierarchies that technofeudalism warns against. The risk is that innovation becomes permissioned, dissent becomes infrastructurally expensive, and citizens become tenants in a system they supposedly own.

Telkom’s recent collaboration with Microsoft to “accelerate Indonesia’s digital sovereignty” illustrates the contradictions vividly. What does sovereignty mean when it is brokered between a national platform and a foreign tech giant? What independence is left when the government becomes both regulator and landlord?

Even Danantara’s integration of the Indonesia Investment Authority (INA) has hit pause due to concerns from global partners over transparency and governance. The international community senses what the domestic public may not yet fully grasp: this fund isn’t just a tool — it’s a reordering of the state’s relationship to capital, infrastructure, and citizenship.

In Technofeudalism, Everything Is Geopolitical

Indonesia’s recent economic maneuvers — especially the launch of its $900 billion sovereign wealth fund, Danantara — are not merely domestic policies but strategic adaptations to a world where globalization’s old rules are collapsing. As the global economy shifts toward technofeudal logics, nations like Indonesia are repositioning, navigating an emerging order where infrastructure is power and capital moves by allegiance, not efficiency.

The weakening rupiah, Stritex’s collapse, and market turbulence signal more than internal instability. They reflect a global transition: the fading of post-Cold War globalization and the rise of a fractured, loyalty-based economic system.

Danantara as a Sovereign Gambit in a Post-Market World

In response to the seismic shifts in the global landscape, Danantara is Indonesia’s strategic move to restructure state-owned enterprises and diversify assets in mineral wealth, digital infrastructure, and renewables. It’s presented as pragmatic governance: a way to shield the country from external vulnerabilities while attracting foreign investment.

However, the reality is more complex. While Danantara aims to protect Indonesia from a volatile world, it risks embodying the very logic of technofeudalism it seeks to avoid: centralizing control over critical resources in the name of national security. This centralization may not just protect the country but could also entrench monopolies, empowering political elites at the expense of broader national interests.

Trump’s 32% tariff on Indonesian exports underscored this shift: the collapse of the post-Cold War economic order, where efficiency was king, and the rise of a new world where markets are increasingly driven by geopolitical loyalties. In this context, Danantara’s consolidation of power over key assets might seem like a shield, but it also mirrors the fragmented dynamics of a world where allegiances replace market logic.

The question remains: will Danantara enable Indonesia to navigate the shifting terrain of technofeudal geopolitics — or entrench it further within systems of extraction, elite consolidation, and infrastructural dependency?

The Verdict

Indonesia’s crisis is not solely the result of poor leadership — though much of it is corrupt and incompetent — but is fundamentally structural. At its core lies an evolved feudal logic, now manifesting as technofeudalism. In this system, data replaces land, and platforms replace lords, shaping both our infrastructure and collective psyche. This logic sustains the myth of the Satrio Piningit — the belief in a singular savior to redeem the nation.

Danantara, disguised as a sovereign and efficient force, mirrors the Satrio Piningit myth: a centralizing entity promising redemption through technocratic control while preserving existing political structures. Rather than fostering democratic participation or reform, it perpetuates a savior complex, sidelining collective agency and stalling structural progress. It keeps the nation locked in cycles of dependency, instead of enabling the democratic transformation it needs.

While Danantara aims to streamline assets and reduce corruption, it risks deepening monopolies and eroding accountability. With leadership closely tied to political elites and direct presidential control, its lack of transparency concentrates power. Public infrastructure becomes privatized and abstracted, accessible only through systems citizens cannot control.

Danantara exemplifies technofeudalism, where power is concentrated in the hands of a few, even in a system that claims to be democratic and transparent. While Indonesia’s economic framework is built on democratic ideals, Danantara undermines these by centralizing state control over critical infrastructure, without meaningful checks.

As Mariana Mazzucato argues, the state must actively shape markets toward public missions, not just correct failures. Yet, Danantara reinforces monopolistic structures, hindering true democratic participation. To democratize infrastructure, Indonesia must move beyond the false dichotomy of state control versus private monopoly, avoiding the unchecked centralization that Danantara embodies.

A sustainable future for Indonesia hinges not on charismatic leadership or centralized power, but on empowering collective agency through institutional reform. Elinor Ostrom argues that infrastructure should be a public utility, co-governed by civil society, local governments, and labor unions, ensuring democratized value creation and safeguarding sovereignty. Similarly, Thomas Piketty emphasizes that inequality arises not only from the distribution of wealth but also from control over critical assets like data and infrastructure.

Indonesia’s true challenge is not finding a savior, but reforming the structural systems that sustain inequality. Without transparency, oversight, and political neutrality in initiatives like Danantara, Indonesia risks replacing one form of extraction with another, merely leasing its sovereignty rather than reclaiming it.