We are rapidly approaching what might be called a democratic point of no return. If anti-democratic forces succeed in dismantling constitutional safeguards now, if they gain the power to deploy AI systems without meaningful oversight, they won’t need to maintain power through traditional repression. The systems they’re building could make effective opposition technically impossible, not through violence but through precise behavioral and social control that eliminates the possibility of organized resistance before it can form.
If we fail to stop this reactionary coup, if we allow them to dismantle democratic institutions while simultaneously deploying increasingly sophisticated AI systems, we may be surrendering not just our own freedom but the very possibility of freedom for all future generations.
We already have started to see this with the way social media companies bend their algorithms to match the whims of their political benefactors, both in the West and East. The process of manufacturing consent Chomsky wrote about has only become more refined over time as social media companies developed more and more ways to manipulate people and abandoned any pretext of impartiality.