by Gabe Ignetti 05/20/2026
Whither AI. Where is it taking us? That is the burning question of our times. While we have seen increasing resistance to the growth of data centers, based on local communities’ concerns, there is a dimension to this that is too often overlooked: the inordinate and literally godlike power over people and the omnipresence that high- tech surveillance gives to an increasingly dictatorial government. Unchecked mass surveillance inherently concentrates power within the hands of Trump and his acolytes, increasingly undermining the essential democratic system of checks and balances that is necessary for popular governance.
The surveillance power over out citizens, that advancing AI data centers will give to the Trump regime and or to any future president or military dictators is quite alarming. The power of surveillance makes it possible for the government to know what we think, where we are and even how and where we spend our money. Privacy experts at the Center for Democracy & Technology warn that AI enables the automatic tracking of citizens’ daily lives, leaving almost no room for privacy. Such high levels of surveillance make it much easier to quickly round up political enemies in the event of a full-out fascist coup. In short, the road to fascism becomes far easier in proportion to how much power is removed from human agency and given to machines.
It starts with mind control. Machine learning algorithms automate the sorting of entire populations, making digital repression cheaper, highly scalable, and structurally inescapable. People avoid searching for controversial topics, unconventional literature or new political ideas online out of fear of being flagged. Individuals suppress minority viewpoints or tone down public criticisms of ruling administrations, leading to a synthetic, artificially conformist public discourse. Conversely, the ability to cripple the Left becomes vastly enhanced by automation through the use of bots to artificially create discord and destructive infighting within the progressive community and to sow division between progressives and the wider population. This does not have to be confined to Right wing bots but to real and artificial agent provocateurs as well.
Mass surveillance heavily discourages political assembly. Federal agencies have already used FISA Section 702 databases to search the data of peaceful domestic protesters, deterring future civic engagement. As it is right now unchecked, surveillance power can be weaponized against political rivals, journalists, and activists. This unregulated pipeline allows agencies to profile specific voter groups or political organizations without judicial oversight.
State monitoring of communications exposes anonymous whistleblowers, rendering investigative journalism dangerous and shutting down routes to expose government corruption. Advanced AI pre-empts the state needing probable cause to investigate a citizen, as the state preemptively logs data on all citizens to identify potential threats. Incumbent administrations can exploit intelligence data to track political opposition movements, spy on campaign strategies, or leak damaging private information to manipulate election outcomes. Such high levels of surveillance makes it much easier to quickly round up political enemies.
The unrestricted expansion of AI data centers will not only strip us of our rights but strip far too many of us of our jobs as well, leading to even greater inequality, exploitation, and suffering. In the absence of popular resistance, the Terminator scenario moves more and more from science fiction into a dystopian reality. It is not so much the danger of the machines themselves taking over from their own accord so much as their use by anti-popular forces to enable a godlike control over humans with an omnipresence enhanced by mass surveillance and enforced by robotic superpowers. Control of technology boils down to the question of who is in control of those superpowers: them or us. If we fail to resist now resistance will become futile.
