... Make no mistake: AI is not just another technology. It is power, scaled. And in the hands of the far right, it becomes the most effective tool for dismantling democracy ever invented.
We’re not just fighting bad actors anymore: We’re fighting machines trained to think like them.
Authoritarians—whether MAGA-aligned in the United States or part of the global movement that includes Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and others—are not blind to the potential of AI. They understand it instinctively: its ability to simulate, to deceive, to surveil, and to dominate. While progressives and democratic institutions have scrambled to comprehend its implications, the authoritarians have already started weaponizing it with devastating efficiency.
Let’s look at the mechanisms.
AI can now generate millions of personalized political messages in seconds, each calibrated to manipulate a voter’s specific fears or biases. It can create entire fake news outlets, populate them with AI-generated journalists, and flood your social feed with content that looks real, sounds real, and feels familiar, all without a single human behind it. Imagine the power of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, but with superintelligence behind the wheel and zero friction. That’s where we’re heading.
And that’s just the beginning.
Authoritarian regimes can—and already are—using AI to surveil and intimidate their citizens. What China has perfected with facial recognition and loyalty scoring, MAGA-aligned figures in the U.S. are watching closely, eager to adopt and adapt. Right-wing sheriffs and local governments could soon use AI to track protestors, compile digital dossiers, and “predict” criminal behavior in communities deemed politically undesirable.
If the government knows not just where you are, but what you’re thinking, organizing, or reading—and it can fabricate “evidence” to match—freedom of thought becomes a quaint memory...
Imagine a future where police departments outsource their decision-making to “neutral” algorithms, algorithms coded with the biases of their creators like Elon Musk is doing by training Grok on Xitter. Where AI-driven systems deny permits, benefits, or even due process based on behavioral profiles. Where loyalty to the regime is rewarded with access, and dissent is flagged by invisible systems you can’t appeal.
That’s not democracy. That’s techno-feudalism, wrapped in a red-white-and-blue flag...
I hope most kinds will reject this in the way my generation did with advertisements. I recall growing up with the internet and cable - I got a taste of it when it was good. Popups hadn't been invented yet. Paying for cable meant you didn't get advertisements.
And then over the course of ten years, both mediums became a hybrid of pay-to-access and subsidize-by-advertisements. Most people my age now go out of their way to avoid advertisements. They use adblock, and pay for advertisement free tiers of streaming, or pirate. And when forced to watch an ad they fucking cringe and actively avoid buying said product.
Kids will hopefully rebel in the same way. They will see the endless fake conversations and fake interactions as a source of noise and tune it out.