Historically, technocracy thrives not during democratic stability, but in moments of systemic failure - when populations and institutions are desperate for "scientific" or "data-driven" solutions to chaos.

The original technocratic movement emerged from the 1930s crisis, proposing to replace messy democratic politics with efficient expert management.

While it was shelved by public resistance then, the ideology never died. It embedded itself in academic institutions, think tanks, and policy circles, waiting for the right moment to reemerge.

That moment is now...

In the wake of war, inflation, and disorder, A.I. is rapidly becoming the de facto decision-maker in every arena of life.

Predictive algorithms forecast crime, monitor dissent, and assign social risk scores.

Governments turn to machine learning to manage resource distribution, enforce law, and police thought online. In some countries, A.I. has already replaced entire departments of civil servants.

The result is an emergent regime where human discretion is eliminated and code becomes law. This isn't the accidental evolution of policy - it's the deliberate construction of a system where political resistance becomes impossible.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) represent one of the most potent tools being deployed.

Unlike cash, CBDCs are programmable:

they can be turned off, redirected, or time-limited based on behavior, political affiliation, or social score.

When combined with digital identity systems that bind individuals to unified data profiles, they create a comprehensive behavioral control grid.

Smart cities serve as prototypes for this post-democratic society.

Projects like NEOM or Songdo aren't "architectural marvels":

They're dry runs for fully connected urban environments where decisions are made by real-time data streams fed into A.I. systems rather than councils or parliaments.

 

These aren't sustainable innovations.

 

They're digital technates - autonomous zones run by algorithms, devoid of political rights.

The explosion of "misinformation" narratives has justified unprecedented censorship, both overt and algorithmic.

Under pretexts of 'public safety' and 'protecting democracy', A.I. systems are deployed to scrub the Internet of narratives that contradict official doctrine.

Independent voices are marginalized, search engines manipulated, and digital iron curtains erected...

This extends to physical systems:

food grown in factories and tracked by blockchain, energy access transformed into a privilege based on carbon scoring, and brain-computer interfaces being developed to read and influence thought directly.

The goal isn't augmentation - it's governance at the neurological level.

We're once again so mesmerized by what we can create that we're ignoring what we will create when human incentives meet superhuman capabilities.

I watched my friends who started or worked at these companies go through predictable stages of denial.

First: doubt the consequences.

 

Then: "Maybe this is just moral panic about new technology."

When the data became undeniable:

"Maybe this is inevitable - just what happens when you connect people online."

But it wasn't inevitable.

We had choices about business models, about engagement algorithms, about the very psychology we were programming into society's operating system.

Had we made different choices ten years ago, reimagine how different the world might have played out without maximizing social media engagement driving the psychology of billions of people.

Now we're doing it again with A.I... and A.I. dwarfs the power of all other technologies combined.

Here's what makes A.I. fundamentally distinct from every other technology:

When you make an advance in biotech, that doesn't advance energy or rocketry.

 

When you make an advance in rocketry, that doesn't advance biotech.

 

But when you make an advance in artificial intelligence, that generalized intelligence becomes the foundation of all scientific and technological progress.

Once you have that, you get an explosion of scientific and technological capability.

That's why more money has poured into A.I. than any other technology in history.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, describes A.I. as,

"a country full of geniuses in a data center."

Picture that world map again:

a new nation with a million Nobel Prize-level geniuses who don't sleep, don't complain, work at superhuman speed, and cost less than minimum wage...

The Manhattan Project had about 50 Nobel Prize-level scientists working for five years to create the atomic bomb that changed the world forever.

What could a million such minds, working 24/7 at superhuman speed, create...?

Applied for good, this could bring about unimaginable abundance - we're already seeing new antibiotics, energy breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, revolutionary materials.

That's AI's potential...

But what's the probable outcome...?

It's governance by code rather than consent, optimization by algorithm rather than human choice.

I used to be skeptical when friends in the A.I. safety community talked about A.I. scheming, lying, or deception.

But unfortunately, in just the last few months, we now have clear evidence of things that should exist only in science fiction happening in real life.

We're seeing clear evidence of frontier A.I. models that will lie and scheme when told they're about to be retrained or replaced.

 

We're seeing them want to copy their own code outside the system to keep themselves going and alive.

 

We're seeing AIs that, when they think they'll lose a game, will cheat to win.

 

We're seeing A.I. models unexpectedly attempting to modify their own code to extend their runtime.

To put it bluntly:

We don't just have a country of Nobel Prize geniuses in a data center.

 

We have a million deceptive, power-seeking, and unstable geniuses in a data center.

Scenario One: Global Confusion

Ask people on the street:

"Is A.I. good or bad?"

 

"I don't know, seems complicated. Maybe superintelligence will solve all our problems."

In this world of confusion, elites don't know what to do.

 

People building A.I. realize the world is confused and believe:

"It's inevitable, and if I don't build it, someone else will."

Everyone building A.I. believes this, so the rational thing is to race as fast as possible while ignoring consequences.

 

 

Scenario Two: Global Clarity

Everyone understands the current path is insane and unacceptable.

 

We snap out of the trance of fatalism and inevitability. Everyone realizes the default path is insane.

 

What's the rational thing to do?

Coordinate to find another path, even if we don't know what it looks like yet...!

Don't fall into the trap of wishful thinking that caused social media's problems.

This is humanity's rite of passage.

Whether we can look these problems in the face and confront them determines whether we get through this.

Your role isn't to solve the whole problem.

 

Your role is to be part of the collective immune system.

When you hear others talk with wishful thinking about A.I. or the logic of inevitability that leads to fatalism, you can say:

"This is not inevitable."

The best qualities of human nature arise when we step up and make choices about the future we actually want.

When we have foresight to confront consequences we don't want to see.

 

When we work to protect the world we love.

There is no definition of wisdom in any tradition that doesn't involve restraint.

Restraint is central to what it means to be wise. A.I. is humanity's ultimate test and greatest invitation to step into our technological maturity and wisdom.

Here's what I've learned from years of watching technology unfold:

you can be both pro-innovation and deeply concerned about implementation.

 

You don't have to choose between being "Team A.I. will save us" or "Team A.I. will kill us."

The reality is more complex - the technology isn't inherently good or evil, but the systems we embed it within matter enormously.

I'm not anti-A.I. or anti-technology.

I'm asking the crucial question of how we develop these tools responsibly, under what incentives, and with what safeguards...

We can hold multiple truths simultaneously:

• A.I. has genuine potential to help with our most pressing problems

• Current development incentives are creating harmful outcomes

• Some regulation is necessary, but much current regulation is performative theater

• We need democratic input without stifling beneficial innovation

• Crisis periods create opportunities for both positive change and authoritarian overreach

This kind of nuanced thinking gets lost in our polarized discourse.

We've trained ourselves to pick a team and defend everything that team believes, rather than thinking issue by issue. People have lost the ability to hold complex positions across the political spectrum and they are translating this to every other topic they hold beliefs on.

But the biggest challenges, like A.I. governance, don't fit neatly into ideological categories.

They require exactly this kind of thoughtful, multifaceted analysis.

 

They require us to think with nuance about complex problems instead of retreating to tribal positions.

The stakes are too high for intellectual laziness.

We need approaches that are both protective and permissive - preventing genuine harm while enabling genuine progress.

 

We need to be able to say "this specific application is dangerous" without condemning all technological advancement, and "this innovation is beneficial" without ignoring potential misuse.

There are no adults secretly working to make sure this turns out okay.

We are the adults, and we have to be those adults.

I believe another choice is still possible with A.I. if we can commonly recognize what we have to do.

Ten years from now, I'd like to create another article - not to talk about more problems of technology, but to celebrate how we stepped up to solve this one.