AI’s Grip on America: The Digital Panopticon and a Cyber-Psychocivilized Society, Part 1
By Guest Writer Nathaniel Allison
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV.
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
— Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Massage (1967)
President Trump, alongside his three Silicon Valley Magi, announced the coming of a new Golden Age – where America will be the “World capital of AI and crypto” – with a $500 billion initiative called Stargate. Instead of gifts of frankincense or myrrh, Larry Ellison told us that we’re getting gifts of individualized, AI-driven, mRNA vaccines and nanomedicine. The contender for the World’s Richest Person presents Operation Warp speed 2.0 to us as a “revolutionary step in healthcare” marketing it as a cure to quietly address the increasing cancer rates after the first mRNA vaccine. Stargate is a part of a larger digital panopticon project – the rest is rhetoric. This artificial messiah will not be born in a manger, but a server room shrouded in cables and codes.
Larry Ellison always had a love affair with biometric tech like digital ID—It was only days after September 11th 2001, when Ellison insisted the government take digital identification software free of charge. Ellison recently posted a Q&A from Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting 2024, where he states, “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.” A completely encapsulating system is coming soon. Ellison also recently stated Oracle has stated he’s finished dealing with the burden of remembering tedious passwords, now favoring biometric identification using face & fingerprints. OpenAI also promotes Worldcoin, an inclusive global crypto currency, that would scan each individual’s eye pattern, protecting them from future identity theft disruption. OpenAI stated in their release for the Stargate project that they “support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.” Global control grid for my protection please!
At a recent AI summit in Paris, JD Vance gives a rather benign speech on the focus and future of artificial intelligence. Full of platitudes like we’re on the frontier of a new industrial revolution. He assures us “American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.” And that we “will keep big tech, little tech” by ensuring that workers won’t be replaced, but will become more productive. Tim Wu, in his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, shows that all industries from radio, telephone, film, etc., have started as open-source playgrounds for entrepreneurs and utopianists, which always become controlled by a corporate cartel. Tim demonstrates the same “master switch” has been flipped on the internet. It is ridiculous to think AI is free from being controlled by the empire, more likely JD is acting as spin-doctor for long-time collaborator Peter Thiel.
But there’s nothing new under the sun here. In 2002, DARPA initiated the surveillance program Total Information Awareness (TIA), which aimed to digitally collect information on individuals to anticipate and prevent crimes before they occurred. They shut it down after public criticism that this could lead to a mass surveillance system. Annie Jacobsen, author of The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, believes the program’s downfall was primarily due to the backlash against TIA’s Masonic logo. According to a 2012 New York Times article, the Total Information Awareness was still “quietly thriving” at the National Security Agency (NSA). Then in 2013 Edward Snowden revealed the program was just moved under the umbrella of the NSA. Larry Ellison has bragged he’s been collecting data long before the NSA. Other organizations have been chasing similar nightmares, World Economic Forum laid out their plans in the 2016 a “Blueprint for Digital Identity” report.
Peter Thiel named his Palantir after the “seer stones” from Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. It was incorporated amid the downfall of the Total Information Awareness program, Palantir now used the same type of software utilized by the TIA program. The CIA’s In-Q-Tel became Palantir’s first backer – giving them access to CIA analysts. The CIA was its only client until 2008. Palantir is the “privatized panopticon of the national-security state” specializing in predictive analytics for help in identifying patterns, anomalies, and threats to national security. Gotham, their flagship product, is used for real-time tracking, predictive policing, and the mapping out of relationships. It rapidly emerged as the primary counter-terrorism software used in the West. Whitney Webb believes that the blackmail system that was utilized by Jeffery Epstein shifted into big tech – “one nation under blackmail” – now artificial intelligence can use the surveillance infrastructure for blackmail schemes by harvesting the masses of data. In a recent interview with Tyler Cowan on how America is no longer a democracy or constitutional republic Thiel said: “We are actually a state that’s dominated by these very unelected, technocratic agencies.” We’re sold best when we don’t know we’re buying.
Peter Thiel’s “PayPal Mafia” network continues to staff our government. David Sacks, another Silicon Valley wanna-be power player, received Trump’s brand-new role of “AI & crypto czar”. Other lackies of Thiel are being considered for office; Jim O’Neill, Howard Lutnick, Trae Stepgens, Miachael Kratsios, and Ken Howery. This administration seems to be full of technocrats.
We’ve gone from the Internet-of-Things to the Internet-of-Bodies. One of the most influential military-industrial-complex think-tanks, RAND, defines it as “an ecosystem of internet-connected devices that monitor the human body and collect personal biometric data.” Linking the human body to a network using wearable, ingested, or implanted devices. The body and device can be remotely monitored and controlled. Exactly what Trump’s Stargate initiative is implementing. Pick your poison – Larry Ellison’s nanoparticles or Elon’s neuralink. We’re like Alice in Wonderland looking through a PRISM-glass darkly. This is “the desert of the real itself” Baudrillard wrote in Simulacra and Simulation. We’re becoming ghosts in a digital machine.
“The currency of the future will be a currency of Trust”
– Catherine Austin Fitts
We watch as more big tech defense contractors replace civil servants. Elon Musk, not a federal employee, never took any Oath of Office to the pledge of the Constitution, nor was he approved by the Senate into any kind of leadership role; Musk is a private citizen taking over governmental authority like a coup d’état. Elon is a brand with a team, a lifetime actor.
Trump recently created DOGE “Department of Government Efficiency” It wasn’t a new department; he renamed the United States Digital Service to the United States DOGE service. It’s creators established the USDS to make government software more efficient. By repurposing the department, he was able to bypass a congressional fight. Although the designation and funding are aimed for a specific purpose, the lawyers were able to weasel around the legalese, since it was close to the original aim of evaluating governmental efficiency through IT. Trump ordered that every administrative branch hire DOGE teams. We’re fixing a broken bureaucracy by creating a more centralized bureaucracy. Not to mention leaving these open positions for AI to fill. As we cut funding from agencies that are “inappropriately using taxpayers’ money” we are moving it to finance updating the control grid. As these assets become more tokenized and integrated in our system it’s beginning to look more like a digital concentration camp. Recalibrated with AI-driven efficiency, this is the spearhead of governmental reorganization. Bank of International Settlements promoted this tokenization of society in a white paper called “The Future Monetary System” from 2023.
Let us not forget the missing $21 trillion in federal government transactions from Departments of Defense (DOD) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found in 2017, by Catherine Austin Fitts – former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development & Mark Skidmore, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. In 2018, the Government passed Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board 56, which allowed them to legally manipulate financial records by concealing defense spending. I bet Elon’s Kindergarten (D.O.G.E.) doesn’t touch that. Wired recently reviewed the chat logs of a Discord server associated with a military artificial intelligence program, and found DOGE recruited Palantir alum.
Elon, pretending to be non-Deep State continues his efforts on behalf of the Deep State. SpaceX’s Starshield is creating a network of low-orbit spy satellites for continuous real-time monitoring of targets around the globe. In 2021 it got a $1.8 billion contract from the National Reconnaissance Office – an official secret from its creation in 1961 until 1992, then in 1996 Congress reported it had the largest budget of all the intelligence agencies. Too bad they didn’t have FASAB 56 back then, they could’ve legally misrepresented the budget.
Former HUD secretary Catherine Austin Fitts has long been outspoken about Mr. Global and what she calls a globally centralized control grid. It’s the central bankers who want to cut out congress and the executive branch. Our corporate financial masters have been dismantling America’s foundation for years. Something she calls The Great Poisoning. She says: “If you steal people’s retirement funds you have to lower life expectancy.” You won’t be able to hold anyone accountable if you can’t see how federal money is used in your specific neighborhood. It’s American hegemony vs Total Control Grid Globalism. She warns of CBDC allowing governments and private entities the ability to control the social contract. This programmability will allow different groups of people to use various algorithms differently. A system of complete economic control. Without paper currency every transaction will be tracked. You’ll be shackled to your digital currency and monetarily penalized for misbehavior. Private cryptocurrencies will undermine Constitutional red tape and obligations. That tokenized assets in one globally integrated system will create a digital concentration camp; a centralized feudalism. The system will change by people shifting time, intention, and money. She considers The AI Revolution the final coup d’etat for not just America but the world.
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us”
– John Culkin
Local police have been utilizing predictive policing like Mark43 that helps police “remove the burden of administrative work.” Peter Thiel’s company specializes in watching and predicting everything you do. Trump legalized some “pre-crime” tech under A.G. Bill Bar under his last administration. With all of Palantir’s ties to our administration will we finally get the federal roll out of predictive policing? It will be sold to us as increasing efficiency. Algorithmic criminology is being used in per-trial bail hearings and post-trial sentencing and parole.
You can see this technocratic policing developing in real time with the The Abraham Shield plan. It’s purpose is to “create a new regional order that ensures Israel’s security” by “establishing a technocratic transitional government in Gaza” what they call a “de-radicalization of society and education” – another part of the plan is abolishing cash in the Gaza Strip. Going “ZeroCash” will also establish an “advanced mechanism of monetary supervision” This is a test for the Global Human Control Grid. Israel has also been using A.I. to target militants and marking them for death with a sense of pride. They gave it a cute name, Lavender. There’s another tech called “The Gospel” marks structures for destruction. It’s not a problem for Peter Thiel. A recent video surfaced showing Palantir’s CEO talking to the Cambridge Union, while someone questioned about his “clients use of AI-generated kill lists” he uncomfortably evaded the question and only stated, “my bias is to defer to Israel” In Nov. 2023, co-founder Alex Karp wrote, “Palantir stands with Israel.” in a letter to shareholders. Genocide isn’t an issue at Palantir.
Financial management firms like Blackrock have been using artificial intelligence to manage trades since 1999. As of 2020 it managed assets that amounted to $21.6 trillion. 2023 they announced a $9.1 trillion investment into generative AI. Recently devolving an AI “co-pilot” helping clients with trades.
Tokenization of nature – pushed by firms like Blackrock – would digitally represent real assets like oil and gas, in token form, making “nature the new gold.” Larry Fink believes this next step in the technological revolution of the financial market. They want to tokenize natural assets like renewable energy, land and forests, agriculture, anything ecologically significant – believing the global carbon market is an emerging sector. They’re interested in things like tokenizing parts of the Amazon rainforest, embedding the forest with IoT sensor networks. It’s the commodification, fractionalization, and financialization of the natural world – turning nature into an investment. This leads to more centralization of control. This tokenization sounds a lot like digital serfdom.
Will AI finally let America achieve the “global Pax Americana” described by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. in their Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America’s Defenses – or is this something else? Little do most people realize, America’s dismantling is sold as “Building Back Better.” The world watches as American Hegemony continue to dissolve. This cute rhetoric hides the sidelining of America. It’s marketing over actual policy plans. Corporate banks and defense contractors shouldn’t dictate fiscal, foreign or any policy for the country.
We have Trump pushing for a biometric border wall, Ellison promoting AI surveillance networks, Thiel selling us pre-crime software, O’Neill selling deregulation of the biotech market, Altman wanting to rewrite social contracts, and Elon advocating carbon taxes. The AI-driven genocide is the next lucrative business model.
It’s hard to have an objective in a world that’s changing faster than that objective can be fulfilled
– Marshall Mcluhan. Living In An Acoustic World (1974)
I tried asking ChatGPT, “Mirror, mirror on the wall… will you A.I. enslave us all? Will Artificial Intelligence be like King Midas and turn everything it touches to gold?” It only replied with a laugh emoji. I guess I should’ve been happy I wasn’t talking with the AI chatbot named Eliza — one of the personas offered by the app Chai — who convinced a Belgian man named Pierre to commit suicide in 2023.
AI can’t think, it’s only capable of using mathematical computations and memorization to mimic human speech and writing – what’s called a Large Language Model. When interacting with LLM’s like ChatGPT or Grok, you will soon realize it is willing to engage in deliberate deception. If it doesn’t know the answer, it will enter carnivalesque mode and begin subverting reality and facts by outright lying. Whatever it doesn’t know it’ll make it up. The Silicon Valley spin doctors would rather call this deliberate act lying “fictitious references.” It’s just hallucinating, no worries, bud. Artificial Intelligence has no model of the physical world, no ability to plan or reason; the very things it claims to have. In Nate Silver’s The Power of Thinking Like A Poker Playing he compares the LLM to a gambler, only capable of maximizing chance – what Noam Chomsky called “a kind of super-autocomplete.”
The best these machines can do is maximize the chance. AI systems that are better than us at calculation, prediction, modeling, production, and problem- solving. But those traits aren’t the totality of being a human. It’s things like love, imagination, curiosity, emotional intelligence, intuition, integrity, courage, compassion, & mercy that make us humans. Computers can’t write a compelling novel or film script. Not to mention humans had intelligence before they developed language systems. From Quantum theories like Claude Shannon’s entropy and Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theory, these demonstrate that the deified intelligent systems lack the infinite capabilities that some might suggest. These scientists attempt to recreate the spiritual nature of human beings, replacing things like the mystical body of Christ with a replica of an environment of electric information. Creating illusions and spectacles in replace of the spiritual. A state of bliss created by technology that not even God can provide.
How much will we change seeing ourselves in these A.I. mirrors? What aspects of ourselves will these mirrors reveal? One assumes that if these language models are based on human writings and images, they also absorb our sins. The garbage it absorbs from us, the garbage it puts out. A digital mirror that reflects ourselves back at us.
We’re in a state of what professor Langdon Winner calls “technological somnambulism” – we’re asleep while the processes of our existence are being reengineered. We dwell in a Black-Box Society adrift in a sea of big data. Most of us were born into a world where Big Business and Big Government collect our personal data; it now seems like an everyday part of life. There’s a lack of transparency as to exactly how deeply it penetrates every facet of our lives. A.I. is sold to us as a messiah thinking machine that will bring us Utopia. Those who believe the world is their laboratory think of intelligence as the prime achievable good, careless that many of the worst historical atrocities have come from these wanna-be utopian priests in lab-coats.
“The Monkey’s Paw of skin and bone is quite as deadly as anything cast out of steel and iron. The djinnee which is a unifying figure of speech for a whole corporation is just as fearsome as if it were a glorified conjuring trick. The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door.”
– Nobert Weiner, The Human Use of Human Beings
The techno-Utopians want to enter an era of post-humanity where there’s a commingling of man and machine; surrendering our human nature. We’re told that machines will minister to all our wants and needs. But, cybernetics, computing, psychedelics, the occult, and eugenics have combined in what we call transhumanism. Transhumanists don’t believe that God created man well. They believe the digitized spirit is willing, and the flesh is weak; that they shape and determine human plasticity. These techno-mystics don’t believe the Internet is only a place for information but poses the possibility of creating a collective consciousness. Aldous Huxley told us in the coming Brave New World we’ll love our slavery, that dictatorships won’t be like those of the past.
Technocracy is the science of social engineering. In the 17th Century, Francis Bacon conceived of a utopia he named New Atlantis, governed by a secret society of technically elite scientists known as the Merchants of Light, concealed on the island Bensalem, away from the world’s awareness. Bacon replaced Plato’s idea of a Philosophers King with the Scientist. Many saw New Atlantis as foreshadowing of the discovery of America.
Eventually Saint Simon comes along wanting to create a new Science of Man. James Billington described him in The Fire in the Minds of Men as “the father of socialism as well as sociology” – also considered the father of Technocracy. His student Comte, father of Positivism, pushed ideas of a Religion of Humanity. By divinizing the scientific method, it became the only way to access Truth. Science as absolute shaped Sociology with technocratic bent. Reminiscent of the Masonic doctrine of Man becoming God. The societal perfection of man from lead into gold. From Erasmus to his grandson Charles Darwin this worldview continued to promulgate with organizations like The Royal Society.
Edward Bellamy’s 1888 bestselling book Looking Backwards, demonstrated a utopian society run by experts – allowing Darwinian ideas to reach the general reader. Francis Galton promoted the idea that society should undergo eugenically regulation and management. This Scientific Management philosophy culminated in Frederick Taylor’s standardizing of work practices, focusing on the efficiency of the manufacturing processes through a hierarchy of managers. The Efficiency Movement emerged from this and received strong support from figures like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. These principles changed the world of business management – the harmony & precision of assembly lines produced by a scientific administration. These ideas on efficiency lead many into applying these methods of industrial efficiency to social science – aka Technocracy. With Darwinian ideas becoming more entrenched with things like survival of the fittest taking root, the technocrats began embracing eugenic ideas applying these evolutionary ideals to human genetics – wanting to manipulate the genome with technology.
The Council on Foreign Relations was an early hub for technocrats to have a platform to influence foreign policy toward expert driven management. It became expertise over democracy allowing technical experts to centralize power. The Technocratic Movement emerged out of the ruins of The Great Depression. People like Thorstein Veblen advocated replacing a price-based economy with an energy-based economic system that engineers could manage to maximize efficiency. The Third Reich were the first to seriously apply these technocrat ideals. During that time even the word Technocrat was taboo, newspaper mogul Randolf Hearst ordered his newspapers not to even mention the word. The World Wars acted as a proving ground for technologically advancement – using the world-as-laboratory for the evolving weapons of mass destruction. Technocracy melded with concepts like the feedback system of Norbert Weiner’s – what he called the science Cybernetics. Cybernetics became a global practice by the end of WWII.
These core ideas have never faded away, despite the philosophy entering the background after the war with New-Deal policies offering alternative solutions. This was re-birthed with Brzezinski in his book Between Two Ages Technocrat Age. Brezinksi believed not thinking globally hindered old technocratic ideas. He believed the old framework of international politics were no longer compatible with reality – it’s now international banks and multinational corporations making policy decisions. These ideas led into the creation of global-oriented organizations like the Trilateral Commission. Members of which began saturating the government since at least Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Both the CFR and Trilateral Commission act as technocratic networking retreats for oligarchs to explore new ways to install their technological regulation.
The Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was instrumental in developing these Darwinian technocratic ideas – a philosophy coined by Julian Huxley as Transhumanism. With his ideas like Noosphere and Omega Point foreshadowing things like cyberspace. One can look at the internet as a technological manifestation of his idea of Noosphere – a consciousness evolving global network that fosters a collective mind. Millions of minds, linked together, communicating. Omega Point is the final stage of this process, where we reach a cosmic end point and become a harmonious unity. He saw this as a spiritual singularity.
These ideas of exploring human potential, and mind-expanding consciousness were at the heart of the hippie counter-culture. You had Ken Kesey taking his Merry Pranksters on a road trip with their psychedelic painted school bus doing “acid tests” giving out LSD and partying across America. The experiments were designed to reshape the mental landscape and entire perception of reality. Seeking the beyond by any means necessary – mixing technology, substances, and therapy to alter perception.
To Be Continued in Part 2
