Musk Just Made Big Brother A Reality
The age of totalitarian AI is coming.
Did you know George Orwell was a self-described democratic socialist? You might not, considering some of his most seminal works are twisted and touted by the likes of Jordan Peterson. But Orwell’s works beautifully depict how communism and capitalism are slippery slopes to totalitarianism and tyranny, yet we are often only shown one side of this coin. Sure, most of his works mainly pointed towards Communism, but he saw the exact same totalitarian mechanisms in capitalism. Don’t forget that in 1984, he wrote, “The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave… If anyone disobeyed them, they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death.” Why does this matter? Because arguably the most influential capitalist in the world, Mr “free-speech absolutist” Musk, has just made Orwell’s most demonic and dystopian prediction, 1984’s Big Brother and thoughtcrime, a reality. So, welcome to the age of AI totalitarianism; it’s all downhill from here.
Sounds like I’m exaggerating, right?
Well, multiple reports have come out that DOGE has deployed its AI tools across multiple federal agencies to automate firings of employees by identifying anti-Trump or Musk sentiment in their communications. There is zero evidence that these tools even look at these people’s efficiency or competency. In fact, many reports detail how the AI identifies “perceived” disloyalty and then fires them under the pretext of efficiency. So this AI isn’t searching for blanant messages like “F**k Musk”, instead it is finding patterns in communication it thinks are related to disloyalty, and then automatically firing that person.
Let me remind you that in 1984, Big Brother is this ever-present surveillance, and if you even show the slightest hint of disloyalty to the tyrannical leader, you are carted away for committing “thoughtcrime” without a day in court.
This is a staple of totalitarian rule, optimising systems for loyalty, not competency, as any form of dissent, criticism, or accountability is lethal to them.
Oh, and just a heads up to anyone who wasn’t paying attention, this is the kind of stuff DEI was set up to prevent. So, no points for guessing why Trump stamped it out as soon as his fat arse tounched his imaginary throne.
But, this is just limited to federal agencies. Right?
Well, yes, for now. However, the cogs have been set in motion to unleash this on the entire US.
For months now, DOGE has been scraping personal data of US residents from a ton of government agencies, such as the National Labour Board, Social Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service, and is merging them into a master database at the Department of Homeland Security. DOGE is also in the process of gaining access to the infamous communications-tapping National Security Agency and its data.
Why do you think Musk and Trump would do such an open, illegal and egregious violation of data privacy?
There is only one way such a database can be useful to them. This database, with possibly every bit of available data of any US resident on it, would enable Musk to roll out his DOGE AI to the entire population, letting the administration identify anyone who displays any anti-Musk or Trump sentiment.
This isn’t as big of an assumption as you might think, as it already has precedent. Palantir, which is owned by Musk’s democracy hating, Trump backing, white supremacist best friend Peter Thiel, is already illegally combing through IRS documents to identify immigrants and reporting them to ICE for constitution-violating deportation. So, it’s not a stretch to imagine that Musk is actively planning on unleashing his Big Brother AI on an even more comprehensive database.
What will they do to the people this AI identifies? Well, Trump has openly said he wants to brandish Tesla protestors and domestic terrorists, said he wants to fill El Salvadoran prisons (which are basically concentration camps) with “home-growns”, and is actively deporting US citizens, many of whom are children, without due process. The Trump administration is also trying to remove habeas corpus, which enables people to challenge their detention in court, a law specifically designed to stop tyrants. So, it’s not hard to add two and two together here, right?
The fact that it is even possible that Musk is about to unleash an automated AI overlord that can identify and cruelly punish dissent is not only deeply terrifying, but it also shows the abject failure of the US government’s ability to protect democracy. We have let the Nazi saluting techno-oligarch build possibly the perfect tool for tyranny.
Why is it the perfect tool? Well, as IBM’s 1979 training manual said, “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” This is why Trump and Musk aren’t setting up and overseeing a Gestapo. It puts their head on the chopping block, and it creates a point of accountability. But, installing automated AIs that identify and punish dissent under the guise of “efficiency”, or accusing innocent people of heinous crimes, is perfect. They aren’t at the scene of the crime, they can’t be held accountable for the computer’s actions, and most of all, removing such a system once it is in place would be incredibly hard. They can just sit back and let their tyrannical, plutocratic wet dreams come to life.
I do not want to be alarmist, but sometimes, the alarm needs to be rung, and this is one of those occasions. There is no apolitical stance here. You either fight for your freedom, or you will lose it. So, for god sake, be Americans, fight for democracy, freedom and cast out the tyrant. Push Congress to defund DOGE. Push for tighter data privacy laws. Dissent against such despotic machinations. It doesn’t have to be this way.
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Sources: NEH, Reuters, NY Times, NPR, IBM, Reuters, Good Reads, ABC, BBC