AI and the Surveillance State
Notes on the Surveillance State and AI. by Henry Blanke
I am an ardent revolutionary. As this historical moment is not ripe, my interventions are more in theory rather than praxis. But we cannot know what revolution may bring. It may have been one in a neo-Marxist sense although that revolutionary model seems to have foundered, forever lost on the shoals of Paris 1968. A future revolution may be along the lines of a cutting edge tech surveillance State of total control.
A woman with a history of political protest buys a train ticket. The system flags the activity as suspicious and tells the police to investigate.
A man with mental illness leaves his apartment. A camera outside his building records his movements so that he can be tracked by the police.
Four people with criminal records rent a van. An automated system alerts the police.
An online discussion group is started by members Black Lives Matter. Their exchanges are monitored and censored by the FBI.
There could be a revolution which puts the movements, phone records, purchases and online discussions under the close scrutiny of an integrated State apparatus of surveillance. Even future suspicious activity can be monitored and quashed before it occurs. Is it possible to know the future if the State intervenes before it happens?
Now imagine a revolution fomented and facilitated by highly advanced artificial intelligence with cognitive and creative ability surpassing that of the human species. May all of humanity come under the control of a vast interlocking network of AI which has survival and domination as it’s prime imperative? It is possible that humans and the biosphere may be driven to extinction by the evolutionary superiority of artificial intelligence.
We are now subject to the global machinations of corporate and finance capital. Trillions of dollars are exchanged every day with the press of a key. But capitalism is a historical system with a recent beginning and likely end. Will it be replaced by a radical new order of freedom from material want, equitable distribution of the necessities of life and the requisite preconditions for human flourishing? Will late stage capitalism be replaced by socialism?
Or will capitalism be replaced by a surveillance State under which the everyday lives and very identity of citizens will be monitored and controlled? Perhaps humanity faces extinction by the malignant forces of a highly evolved techno scientific web of artificial intelligence and destructive creativity.
What part human volition will play in this process remains uncertain.
Editor’s Response:
My current opinion is that Late Capitalism is being replaced by the Techno-State. I have been reading the history of surveillance technology in two books: Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff, and Surveillance State, on the surveillance systems in China, written byJosh Chin and Liza Lin, two Chinese-American journalists. From the second book, I have learned that the surveillance systems in China were co-engineered by both Chinese and American engineers, designed mostly in Silicon Valley. The Chinese adapted the technology to fit their pre-existing social system, but the technology is the same. In other words, whether it’s surveillance by Capitalism to control ‘consumers’, or surveillance by the Chinese Community Party to control ‘citizens’, it’s the same technology and it works the same way in both systems. The US and Chinese systems may have different ideological goals—one to produce profits, and the other to produce social control—but it works the same way .
What I predict is that the US and Chinese systems will merge into one supra-national system for one goal: control of populations, which I call the Techno-State.
Shaun Bartone
5 comments on “AI and the Surveillance State”
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Engage! 
Ahem, the elephant in the room… Will global warming be our salvation? Gonna be kinda hard to have all that tech when the coastal cities are underwater, and the permafrost has released all that methane so we can’t breathe.
And I think “Capitalism” is a misnomer. We don’t have a system self-regulated by supply and demand. Corporations are not in the business of goods and services. Corporations are financial instruments of the elite to create more unearned income for the elite. Example: Boeing using profits to enrich themselves instead of engineering safe planes. Healthcare creating billions in profits while being unaffordable. Let’s call it “Colonization” instead. The elite ruthlessly exploit the natural resources and labor of the planet to it’s logical conclusion, the Sixth Mass Extinction.
In the 1990s, I first heard of the Buddhist/Tibetan prophesy that there will be a future Dark Age soon, so prepare by studying and practicing Dharma now. I thought they were crazy! How suddenly things can change. Samsara, baby.
Thanks for your comments Wren. I too have my doubts about the techno-future. The most immediate threat from Climate Chaos is crop failure and mass starvation, followed by disease, and an inadequate health care system to deal with these catastrophic failures. We may not make it to the techno-future.
But the point I was trying to make (perhaps not clear enough) is that these digital systems of social control are already here, they already exist and operate in both China and the West, and in many other countries that have imported these systems from China and the US. Surveillance State goes through the history of how these systems were developed in China and the US and how they are being used now. China and the US have sold these systems to other governments in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.Likewise, Climate Chaos is already here and now as well, ramping up faster than anyone anticipated.The tricky part is putting these two realities together: what happens when we are under the control of digital social control systems WHILE climate chaos is crashing around us, with floods, fires, storms and crop failures? How do we even conceive of this extreme, to put it crudely, “cluster fuck”?
One way that we can contemplate these two realities together is through science fiction. Blade Runner 2046 portrays a destroyed Los Angeles with bombed out buildings, soot-filled air, no green plants anywhere, farmers who grow insects for food, a totally destroyed ecosystem, and at the same time, a mechanized, futuristic aero-space technology. There are probably several other sci-fi novels and films that depict something similar. This is the ultimate ‘doom scenario’, but it is a future that we will likely inhabit very soon if we don’t change the course we’re on. There isn’t much in the way of historical examples which demonstrated a capacity for a civilization to change course and save itself. Most civilizations that were on a self-destructive path collapsed entirely, although ‘collapse’ took several hundred years. Are we smart enough to change course this time? The elites in control of the current system are proving to be just as stupid, selfish and short-sighted as their more “primitive’ forebears. It doesn’t look good.
It is sobering to consider that if my 30 year old son has children, his great great grandchildren may experience the most extreme of the disasters we are discussing here.