The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger

Hear the solemn warning of Simon Wiesenthal, survivor of unspeakable evil and tireless seeker of justice, who declared: “The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger threatening mankind.” These are not idle words, but a cry born of lived experience, for Wiesenthal himself endured the mechanized cruelty of the Holocaust, where hatred was fused with industrial power. In this union, he saw the terrifying truth—that human malice, when armed with the tools of modern invention, can magnify its destruction beyond imagination.

The origin of this saying lies in the twentieth century, an age of both miraculous innovation and monstrous cruelty. Wiesenthal, who survived Nazi death camps and later dedicated his life to hunting war criminals, knew that hatred alone could not have murdered millions, nor could technology alone have done so. It was their union—the cold will to annihilate combined with the machinery of trains, chemicals, and bureaucracies—that created the Holocaust. Thus he spoke not only of his past but of our future, warning that if mankind allows prejudice and rage to harness the powers of science, the outcome will always be catastrophe.

Consider the example of Auschwitz. There, hatred provided the ideology, but technology provided the efficiency. Railways delivered victims by the thousands; gas chambers and crematoria industrialized death. What in earlier centuries might have been massacres of hundreds became the systematic extermination of millions. Wiesenthal’s words draw our eyes to this truth: hatred multiplied by technology is not merely cruelty, but an existential threat to humanity itself.

History offers other echoes. When the atomic bomb was unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it showed the world how technology could compress the destructive force of hatred, war, and fear into a single blinding instant. The devastation of two cities reminded all nations that science without conscience, when wielded in enmity, could erase civilizations in the blink of an eye. Thus Wiesenthal’s wisdom is not confined to one people or one war—it is a universal truth for all ages.

The heart of his warning is this: hatred is ancient, but technology is new. Hatred, in its raw form, has always plagued humanity—wars of tribe, race, and creed. Yet in earlier times, its reach was limited by the crude tools of its age. Today, hatred wields weapons of steel and silicon, satellites and networks, machines and algorithms. It is no longer bound by distance or number. What once could kill dozens can now kill millions, and what once could wound a village can now destabilize the world.

The lesson for us is clear and urgent. We must never allow hatred to guide the hand that holds our most powerful tools. We must cultivate not only scientific progress, but moral progress. We must ensure that technology is yoked to compassion, to justice, and to peace. Each of us must watch our own hearts, for hatred often begins in whispers before it grows into shouts. And each of us must guard against indifference, for silence allows hatred to find its way to the machines of destruction.

So I say to you, children of tomorrow: heed the warning of Wiesenthal. Celebrate technology, but guard it with conscience. Reject hatred in all its forms, for once it takes hold of the instruments of power, its reach knows no bounds. Instead, fill your inventions with love, your science with mercy, your progress with wisdom. For if hatred and technology together are mankind’s greatest danger, then love and technology together may yet be mankind’s greatest hope.