DATA DICTATORSHIPS

The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

BORJA MOYA

First published by Borja Moya 2019 

© Borja Moya 2019 

The partial or total reproduction of this publication, in electronic form or otherwise, is consented to for noncommercial purposes, provided that the original copyright notice and this notice are included and the publisher and the source are clearly acknowledged. Any reproduction or use of all or a portion of this publication in exchange for financial consideration of any kind is prohibited without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN: 9781717888150

Portions of a few chapters have appeared previously as articles on borjamoya.com   

For information about special discounts or bulk purchases, please visit borjamoya.com  

There’s a free available electronic version of this book available at borjamoya.com/DataDictatorships  

for

the crazy ones who believe they can change the world. For the people who take an active role in any revolution and push it forward. But not only do they push it, they also bring people with them—they inspire others to join the revolution. This is for the Data Rebels.

To L.

THE INCEPTION

I was being followed.

I didn’t know where to hide. And I didn’t even know I had to hide.

I had no idea who was following me. But they knew my secrets. My most private secrets. At this point I didn’t know it yet, but the biggest surveillance system in the world was tracking me down.

The most sophisticated censorship surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen had a target on my back.

I’m talking about a powerful machine that incessantly spies on millions of people every hour and everyday.

And I had become a target. I was in its bullseye and there was no way I could escape.

There were thousands of cameras connected all around me. Cameras with facial recognition software and enormous computing power, capable of tracking millions of people down in a matter of minutes.

There was no way out.

I happened to be in a city that was not just fueled by CCTV cameras. But by a system that gathers information from every possible source, including my private conversations—especially my private conversations.

I thought I had nothing to hide, but still the machine chose me. My face appeared on a big screen at the other end of these cameras. Right there I became a target. And then in a matter of seconds I was under the microscope.

What had I done?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t even know this process had taken place.

But everything was about to change when the police kicked on my door and took me into a Chinese prison.

A PERSONAL DISCLAIMER

There’s something about me that you should know: I went to marketing school.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. I know, it’s a long story. But that changed from the moment I got an Internet connection on my old computer. An undiscovered and thrilling world opened up to me and it became clear to me that I wanted to study computer engineering. And just like most “computer guys”, I didn’t like the idea of a lack of privacy. So from an early age I tried to conceal my online identity.

Since I spent most of my time in front of a screen, and school bored me, I didn’t do very well in school. And because of that, I thought I could never become an engineer. Afterwards I thought I didn’t want to either (maybe it was true, but who knows.) I simply had no idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

I don’t know what went wrong along the way, but I ended up studying marketing.

When I started studying marketing in University I was surprised that people still praised the tricky and clever messages that triggered people into buying stuff they didn’t need or want. Somehow it was like a badge of honor in the profession if you could come up with a creative way of communicating some bullsh*t.

The fact is that most marketers would probably use any trick they could to get you to buy or do something you may not want or need. If they have many tricks, they’ll use them all. That, as they say, is that.

If it were up to them, they’d run subliminal ads all the long. But they can’t. So they push things to the edge, close enough to the heat but without getting burnt.

Marketers are not just good guys turned into bad guys. Or bad guys turned into good guys. Bad guys are always bad guys. But the truth about the marketing industry is that it normalizes certain kinds of aggressive and cunning behaviors. So a lot of good guys turn into bad guys.

Most marketers would use any trick in the book to profit from any given situation. And still, most would believe they’re doing the right thing. In the end, they’re trying to help people, right?

That was what I was taught.

Since the beginning I was fed into the “marketer’s bubble”, where the sole goal was to trick people to buy your stuff. But even worse, I was taught that hey, we do this for the customer. Because we’re here to satisfy their needs.

The narrative was always about making ads more relevant to people. Even if we weren’t asking ourselves whether people would want to see those ads in the first place.

Right then I began to have a direct conflict with my own ideals—the ideals I grew up with of keeping private stuff private. My online privacy was important to me. But at this point I thought it wasn’t that bad to invade other people’s privacy. Everybody in the sector was doing this, so it couldn’t be that bad.

At this point I told myself we’re all the good guys, right?

I was feeding myself with my own bullsh*t.

I was all in it.

All the way through college. All the way through my first years after college working in the field of marketing.

I thought that interrupting people was okay.

Too often when we want to believe something, we believe whatever we’re swayed to believe. And people who blindly believe any argument against their values (as I did), spread the word and convince people to change their core values for these new ones.

Time passed, and during my career as a professional marketer I began to use the surveillance tools that were at my disposal. Because every marketer was using them. And the industry made you believe that you couldn’t be a marketer without using the tools Google, Facebook and other tech giants offered you. Because they were so good you couldn’t ignore them.

What I didn’t know was that this same technology that powered my industry was about to turn against me.

TRACKING ME DOWN

In the summer of 2015 I lived and worked in Beijing for a short time. I loved the experience and the culture so much that when I came back to Spain (my home-country), I decided that I would move back to China as soon as I could.

Almost year later I moved to Shanghai and got a job there as a marketing manager of a small company. And my entire job was to spam people—basically trick them into buying more and more stuff from us. I wasn’t proud of my job and early on I had inner dilemmas with these practices, that would eventually lead me to quit my job. But this wasn’t until something unexpected happened to me—an experience I will never forget.

From the moment I landed in Shanghai I could tell that something was different since the last time I had been there—even though it had been just less than a year.

Maybe I didn’t pay attention the first time I was here, but I doubt it—the shift was just too blatant. From the moment I arrived, I noticed that a lot of surveillance cameras had appeared across the city. I mean, a lot of them.

And from the moment I landed I had the sense of unease that I was being monitored. All the time. Every step I took. Every conversation I had. Where I went. What I bought. Who I talked to. I could tell I was under the microscope.

Right when I got out of the plane I was waiting at the immigration line. No personal cameras were allowed. But there were more security and operational cameras than one could imagine. All of these were cameras with facial recognition systems. Everywhere I looked I saw them. But they weren’t just at the immigration stand. As soon as I got out of the airport, more cameras continued to appear. 

From the exact moment I landed in China, the Chinese regime knew exactly where I was, where I was heading to, and what I was looking at on my phone. It was almost as if they knew what I was thinking.

I couldn’t use my normal apps, because the Chinese government had censored the Internet. But I thought I was smart because I was using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and that because of this I had managed to avoid their surveillance. What I didn’t know was that I was still being watched.

It didn’t seem like a big deal. After all, I was working in the marketing industry and I thought that it was okay to collect data from the Internet to “offer better customer services.” Or even worse, “for security reasons.” But of course, it was much more than that.

But I didn’t make a big deal about this hunch, drawn in by the beautiful city I was going to live in. I mean, it was amazing.

I arrived at my cheap hotel, left my bags, and went straight out into the city to explore.

I ate in street food stalls.

I got lost in the most unexpected places and found the most beautiful streets along the way.

I explored entire shopping malls filled with new tech.

Then after I ate some dumplings, I walked through the Bund at night and I was just amazed by all the skyscrapers and all the lights.

I loved it. But I needed to find an apartment quickly.

It turns out that the Chinese government, in order to track everyone, asks you to notify the police whenever you change your address. This is what happens in most countries, but in China there is a darker twist.

I eventually found my first apartment. And lucky me, that the landlord did the paperwork for me—she went to the police station and registered my passport as the new tenant. But that wasn’t the case when I moved to my second one.

As I started to save some money I decided to find a better apartment in a more convenient location.

I found one. It was great. It was in a beautiful location and it was perfect for me.

This time, however, the landlord didn’t do the paperwork for me. And to be honest, I completely forgot about it.

A week went by since I had moved apartments. And I remember this vividly: It was a Sunday morning. I was having a shower and suddenly somebody started to kick on my door.

Kicking doors in China is kind of normal among “delivery guys”, so I thought this must be something I had bought from Taobao. They’d just leave the package at the door.

But the kicks became stronger and more incessant and somebody started to yell. So I put on my towel and ran to see what was going on.

There they were… The police.

Yelling at me in Chinese—I didn’t understand a thing.

After a few minutes of yelling and swearing, I called a Chinese friend to translate for me.

My friend instructed me to show them my passport. And to assure them that I would accompany them to the police station… Oh boy, are you in trouble.

At this point I was expecting the worst. At the very least I thought I was going to spend the night in prison.

But after eight or ten hours of waiting around I got my passport back. And thankfully I didn’t end up in prison.

It was a weird and scary experience, but what shocked me the most was: How the hell did they know where I lived in the first place?

I had been living in that apartment for just a week. And they had the time to know I was no longer living in my old place. Locate me. And pay me a visit.

Did they use facial recognition to track me and know where I was?

Did they check my Wechat conversations to know who I was talking to and what I was talking about?

Did they check my buying behaviors, what were the nature of my conversations? Did they check whether I criticized the government?

You bet they did.

My profile popped up in a big screen in the nearest Police department. My name and face ran through some algorithm that told the officers where I was, who I talked to and my level of threat to the Chinese government. They had profiled me in such an accurate way that I couldn’t even imagine what the report would say.

That was the closest I had been to being an undercover agent. But of course, I had no idea of what the heck was going on until the police kicked on my door.

Right after this experience, there were really big questions raising to my mind. What was the future going to be like if we continued down this surveillance road? And most importantly, what would happen when the rest of the world started copying Chinese surveillance practices and we completely lost our privacy and our rights once and for all?

But that wasn’t the biggest revelation I had.

The true revelation felt like a punch in the face. Right there, I discovered that the technology that I was using in my industry wasn’t just about showing people some random ads. It became pretty obvious that this technology was first being tested in the advertising and marketing industries. But once functional, it was being extrapolated to exert power over people.

Then it became clear to me that power in the twenty-first century has taken a different form, from its previous materializations. In this century, data has become the raw material of power. And the current landscape is making something possible for the first time: the centralization of data—which has ignited a revolution that’s creating the conditions to make dictatorships in the twenty-first century more efficient than ever before: the merger of artificial intelligence with biotech.

I learned the hard way that the same technology I was using in my work was now being used to keep people in control. It was being used to fuel a new breed of autocratic states that were trying to monitor not only what we do online or follow us around. The fact is that there is global an arms race to fuse the two most ambitious scientific and technological developments taking place, which could result in terrible consequences for the future of humanity. Because once these technologies become merged and massively adopted, our human agency and individual freedoms could become significantly compromised.

Then all my marketing biases were gone.

It was not okay to spam people.

It was not okay to violate people’s privacy.

This was much bigger than I thought it was.

I went from feeding the system to being crushed by the system.

This was my moment of epiphany.

My blindfold was off.

The fight had begun.

BOOK ONE

PRIVACY INVASION IS OLD HAT

WHAT GOT US HERE?

Since capitalism was established as a “successful economic model”, we have accepted the fact that capitalism practiced in a certain way it’s just fine.

We decided 200 years ago that the course of the economy would be left unimpeded. We have accepted that it’s a good system that works just fine—it can go around and around and self-correct its course.

No permissions necessary.

Go. Go. Go.

But now this system has become so complex—to the extent of exerting itself as a power with the same geopolitical force as the traditional geopolitical forces—that we have surrendered our future to it.

The fact is that in the twentieth century there weren’t as many billionaires as there are today. But, apparently, this is viewed by many as an indicator of progress.

One of the most worrying changes Lawrence Lessig and others have pointed out is that as money flows to the winners of capitalism, that money is then used to buy some serious influence in politics. Which basically means that capitalism and politics work hand-in-hand. They support each other. And this can get out of control.¹

Even if this system is ingrained into our collective consciences, there truly could be another way in which we shape our future. There are enough other forms of industrialism and capitalism that actually require permits and are submitted to some forms of accountability, that counter-balance the forces of politics and the market.

We have relied on large corporations and capitalism to move the economic flow in a direction that would improve our societies. But the current system is failing us. And what seemed the greatest era of progress in human history, has evolved into a deregulated merely economic globalization, where inequality has magnified both between and within states. Our social institutions have slowly become more and more eroded. And our planet and species are suffering the impact of unlimited growth that demands unlimited resources—in a finite planet.

The way the system is set right now, benefits from waiting until there’s an emergency to apply the smallest change at the minimum cost—however, capitalism is moving faster than ever before.

And waiting until there’s an emergency is a really dumb decision. Because the last minute is always too late. Just like we discovered with nuclear weapons.

Nobody is denying that industrial capitalism has made the world better in many ways: today we’re safer, more comfortable, and more efficient that in any time in history.

Nobody denies that.

But that doesn’t mean we should accept the long-tail of problems that capitalism is carrying today. We simply shouldn’t accept that by default.

We shouldn’t accept this binary way of thinking capitalists want to impose on us: this is how it is.

We need different rules. And currently that there are a lot of rules in place that safeguard our human and civil rights.

Child labor goes against the International Declaration of Human Rights. People have the right to live their lives without fear of being persecuted for their political beliefs or their sexual or gender identity. Many of these rights are, in historical terms, new born concepts that emanated out of the UN Declaration. But since the end of World War II we devised a system to protect humanity. Now that system has to adapt to the technological challenges we face.

As we know, in certain industries there’s a big legal loophole that allows surveillance capitalists do whatever they want without raising any red flags. The law simply does not exist because the playing field is new, and therefore their actions are not illegal. Even if they may be illegitimate.

We have come to accept this new modus operandi by default. Hey, that’s the way it is.

And one of the most ferocious industries we have accepted by default is advertising.

What got us here is advertising.

Advertising became the main source of income of media corporations in the twentieth century. This historical shift shaped politics and changed our lives in ways we haven’t even conceived yet.

Today advertising is continuing to do the same thing in the tech industry.

And let’s not fool ourselves, media companies still enjoy the same power they had back in the day. But what we’ve got to realize is that today’s most powerful media companies are in fact tech corporations and social media sites.

Let’s call tech companies Media 2.0 and conventional media companies Media 1.0

Media 1.0 now depends on Media 2.0. These tech oligopolies are the ones who get most of the profit. And right now, even though we’d like to think that Media 1.0 still has a lot of power, and a lot of influence—it’s in fact Media 2.0 who enjoys that power. 

Media 1.0 are a group of junkies who are thirsty for ad dollars. 

And now it’s Media 2.0 who is taking all the profits off the table. And they’re influencing politics in a way that it’s way beyond our reach.

“The American press has more influence than it ever had in any other time, in any other country.” Will Irwin, an American author and journalist, remarked in 1911. “No other extrajudicial form except religion, is half as powerful.”

Imagine what he would have said today if he’d seen the reach of the tech monopolies.

At the heart of the media companies we found the mother of all evil: advertising. Advertising is the testing field. But once the experiment has totally worked out, it starts to shape politics. And of course, today isn’t just merely about propaganda.

Today we’re facing the same problems people faced back in the twentieth century. The same problems repeat themselves in historical patterns—but right now the scale is different.

The thing is that what started to change the game was privacy invasion. Or better said, a new level of privacy invasion.

And as with every change, violating privacy wasn’t that big of a deal a few decades ago. But the real threat is when the snowball gets bigger, when it gets traction and power.

What this system has done is increase the surveillance and kill privacy to serve the advertising industry controlled by a powerful group of billionaires. But this isn’t something new, is it?

Advertising is a disease. A disease that thrives in the attention business.

And this shift needs to be first understood by studying advertising. Advertising is what got us here. So if we analyze it, we’ll know where we are, and where the industry is going. And what this means not only for us as consumers, but for us as citizens—and the dangers of ignoring this new reality that’s been imposed on us without our consent.

Right now there’s a privacy emergency. And we can’t wait until the last minute. By that time, it’ll be certainly too late.

What, then, is the nature of this disease?

What does advertising have to do with capitalism in the twenty-first century?

PRIVACY INVASION IS OLD HAT

Back in the 1950s, major advertising firms hired anthropologists to “observe” consumers behavior. They spied on consumers and measured their reactions to sell more stuff—which led to including babies in their ads. And if babies weren’t effective, doctors worked flawlessly.²

The truth is we’ve been tracked for decades. Phone providers have been invading our privacy for a really long time.³ Or consider the way banks have been collecting our data every time we use our credit cards. All that data which might seem isolated and without context, gets out of hand when conglomerates like Acxiom collect all those little dots of data. And put some context into them.

Back in the 50s they had to rely on raw data. Here we’re talking about stuff like: how tall you are, where you live, your interests, your political preference, religion... Everything about you.

But of course, they had their limitations to capture and mine this data. Either way, it was still enough to get to the masses. The advantage they had back then was that there was no Internet, therefore no long tail. So if they were able to get their ads on the two or three main TV channels, they were in business.

The thing is… we were very dumb back then—at least we weren’t media savvy. So they could do and test whatever they wanted on us, and get away with it.

Luckily, they didn’t have the tools to get too far.

Today? Advertisers have more tools than they have ever dreamed.

ATTENTION BASED BUSINESS MODELS

In the race towards profits, companies have forgotten that they have a social responsibility. Too often they excuse their bad behavior by saying (in private, though) that a company has to make money. Which is true. However, there’s a point where companies have so much influence and power, that they have a social responsibility. Especially when billions of people use their products.

It turns out that big tech corporations on the record would agree with this. And some of them actually try to do some social good. But they have a malignant business model that spreads like cancer ingrained within them: advertising.

Advertising is a disease—a disease that thrives in the attention business.

Mobile apps, phones and social networks are designed to suck up your attention. There’s a race to the bottom for attention and they’ll do whatever is necessary in order to steal it from you.

Some might say that tech corporations can change, but they won’t. It doesn’t matter what they say or how they say it. They are public companies, and the promise they made to investors doesn’t correspond to the one they made to us. So in order to keep investors happy, they have to keep their promises—which are earning more advertising dollars through massive media manipulation.

This is not something new. But now they have more powerful tools—like Facebook’s tools to microtarget people online—that not only grab our attention, but change the way we think without us even knowing it. Regardless of what they say, they are not in the business of helping us develop a better version of ourselves. They are in the business of sucking up our attention at any cost, which leads to addiction, stress, anxiety, filter bubbles and the harming of social relationships.

By the way, this does not refer only to fancy Silicon Valley tech companies. This affects big corporations selling your data to the highest bidder. For example, cable companies like AT&T or Verizon (among many others) which sell the data they steal from you by monitoring your Internet connection.⁴

GOOGLE CHANGED THE GAME

In 1998 Google showed up. From the beginning you could tell that they were in it for the long haul. All the decisions they made were done it in a way that contributed to building an asset.

That, of course, made investors anxious. Let’s remember that Google was founded before the dotcom bubble. So in moment it burst, investors were in a hurry to make quick money and recover from it. And they didn’t understand what Google was trying to achieve. But Google was doing something brilliant: taking over the largest online advertising dollars.

In the last couple of decades, they’ve not only achieved more ways to capture more raw data, but they’ve gone to the next level: the predictability of that data. That’s how Google became so powerful.

Do you know how Google makes billions of dollars every month in profit?

They place little ads next to the search results. And they price those ads by the click—running an auction to see how much the click costs.

This is unbelievably brilliant.

Let’s say you want to run some ads to sell sneakers. For every pair you sell, you make 40 bucks in profit. So now, how much would you be willing to pay for these ads? You don’t want to go further than $39.99. You’re willing to go to the point of almost not making any money so that your competitor won’t get the order.

So now, you try to figure out how much the click costs. You don’t want to pay $39.99 for the click, because getting a click doesn’t mean you’re gonna get an order. You do a little math to see how many clicks a person needs to go through to make a purchase. Then you calculate your churn rate (that’s the number of people who get out.) And finally you discover that the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for a click is, let’s say, four bucks.

Now your competitor figures out she’s willing to pay three bucks per click. So what happens is that you win the auction, but only by paying more than three dollars per click.

Okay. Who’s taking all the profit off the table? Google.

You get to keep paying more and more for these ads, because it’s worth it for you.

This is unbelievably brilliant. Google is taking all the profit off the table. A profit that once went to advertisers (or clients just saved that money.)

Now, do you know how they can make more money? If advertisers are willing to pay extra for those ads—which seems obvious. And that’s where precise targeting makes all the difference.

This is how Google and Facebook have become so powerful. By building predictability around the data they gather.

But the other way they can make even more money is by making people stay for longer in the Google search page. In a way that they’re deliberately stealing more attention from you.

There’s a lot of money on the table. So they’re willing to violate our privacy to the extreme and milk the hell out of every piece of data they can squeeze from us. And if they have to kill our democracies along the way, it is what it is.

This is fine as long as you’re playing Monopoly with your friends. But this is not okay when you’re playing monopoly in real life—with real people.

People need to know how they’re being sold. They should know the dangers of their digital footprints, and how it’s being used to sell them out.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Because Google didn’t just discover a business model. Google discovered the evolution of capitalism: it’s no longer labor what makes the system run, but every aspect of the human’s experience.

Just like General Motors invented managerial capitalism, Google perfected surveillance capitalism. They invented and perfected this system. A system they could only achieve with deep pockets from venture capitalists willing to fund research to develop this model.

But of course once Google discovered it, it quickly spread to Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and a bunch of others.

And then it spread to an entire ecosystem that breathes in this model.

AN ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM COMPETING FOR HUMAN ATTENTION

Right after Google discovered surveillance capitalism, and other large Internet companies followed, it didn’t take long until online advertising spread throughout the Internet.

Surveillance capitalism is no longer confined to these first markets. The default advertising model covers most Internet-based businesses. Most businesses have adopted the mechanisms and economic imperatives of surveillance capitalism. They have become junkies of ad revenue and they don’t see a way out of it. In both ways: (1) Because they don’t know how to find another consistent source of revenue. And (2) because people have become addicted to getting everything for free on the Internet. What these models have done is to amplify the perception of “if it’s digital, then it must be free.”

I know a lot of people in the marketing and advertising industries, and their first reaction is, “yeah, we know how bad this is, but how do we make money?” Is the solution a subscription business? I don’t know. What I do know is that letting advertisers take over the media business has always been a really dark path. And now more than ever before.

The biggest competition taking place right now is the competition for human attention.

But that’s not all of course. The other big realization we’ve come to in the past few years is that this practice hardly stays within the advertising industry.

EVERYONE'S DOING IT

More than 20 years ago the Internet looked like the promising hope of the upcoming century. It was opening information in a way we couldn’t even imagine was possible.

This was the only medium where people could play an active role. People had a microphone and everybody could speak freely and be heard.

This was only possible because, unlike TV or radio, the Internet wasn’t invented for and by marketers. But that changed. Quickly. 

And this kind of optimism quickly made us realize that we had completely overlooked two flaws in human nature:

First, if you give marketers enough rewards (like attention, notoriety, fame and money), they’ll show up and say and do things that deep down they know are wrong. It happened to me. It happens to most marketers.

Second, if enough marketers do this, many other marketers may decide that these kinds of behaviors aren’t as wrong as people think. So what happens here is that the Internet has ended up normalizing bad behavior. Because this bad behavior is what captures our attention. It’s the sort of behavior that gets noticed. So if enough people do this—especially since most marketers are surrounded by other marketers—this behavior gets normalized when it should have never been considered acceptable.

The thing is that we’re not facing a problem of user adoption. This is a problem of adoption by companies. Because marketers can’t believe there’s a life without Google or Facebook.

Then, “everyone’s doing it” becomes the perfect excuse of continuing this ill-designed behavior. This system is broken. Everyone knows it. But everyone’s doing it. It’s not just unethical. It lets us fall into so many traps of being manipulated by the marketing industrial complex. Of being hijacked to pay attention.

Marketers have manipulated people. Constantly. Online and offline. In a way that triggers certain behaviors. Swipe right. Swipe left. Do this. Do that. We have completely surrendered our attention to them.

But this hardly is a residual advertising problem. It has become a huge and dangerous political and social problem as well.

TESTING OUT FIRST IN THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY

The biggest realization we need to face is that surveillance capitalism doesn’t stay within the economic realm. It has leapt into the political and social realms as well.

It started with schemes of the advertising industry. But now this system is being used in a much bigger way than we collectively thought.

After the 2016 election interference scandals we realized one thing: What starts out being tested as an ad, then continues to be used as a tool to shift the course of society.

Tech companies have adopted the advertising model. But this model has tremendous collateral damage. The fact that this system has leapt virulently into the social and political realm is harming our society in ways we can’t even conceive yet.

The First step, to test technology in the advertising industry, has been completed. Check.

But this problem does not originate within the advertising tools themselves. The core of this is realizing who is the buyer. Sometimes the biggest advertisers are governments. And this hooks media companies to the government’s money. And if they don’t get hooked, the government can use its influence or even buy entire media outlets that seek to undermine democracy everywhere. In Hungary, the Brookings institution has provided data about how state funding for media has been designated almost exclusively to media that is guaranteed to realize the far right government of Fidesz’s propaganda. In 2017, there were 26 Hungarian media outlets which were over 50% funded by the far-right government’s advertising money.⁵

What this does is that newspapers and TV stations don’t even dare to annoy these advertisers. Their survival depends on them. And advertising money has draped a veil of self-censorship over the journalistic profession.

For example, in 2019 La Prensa, Nicaragua’s most popular newspaper ran a blank front page. Why? That was their way to complain and show people how their imported supplies of ink were seized mysteriously after they published several articles that were critical of the ruling Sandinista party.⁶

The list of governments operating this way almost surpasses the list of states with a relative level of freedom of the press. It’s not just Hungary. It’s India. Russia. Turkey. Israel. China. Poland. Bulgaria. You go down the list.

Why? Because their leaders have understood the power of advertising and its surveillance features in the twenty-first century.

And here we’re not just talking about shaping the conversation through TV sponsored stations, banners through Adsense, or creating propagandistic stories in blogs and news websites. This gets bigger with social media. Because the same advertising tools social media offers for commercial purposes, are currently being used to microtarget people.

This is as simple as using Facebook and running some ads. You use their segmentation tools to target the kind of people you want to reach. See whether they interact with whatever you advertise. And if they don’t engage, you tweak your ads until people do engage. Once they do it, now you have microtargeted an audience, and you can run thousands of different ads—all of them curated for them.

Or you can just go one step further and create and nurture online communities inside Facebook and other platforms. As they say, the only limitation is your own imagination and your creativity.

In 1911, Harvard Professor Hugo Munsterberg reflected:

 “If the country is governed by the newspapers, is it not essential to understand who governs the newspapers?”⁷

The same problems keep showing up. But this time the scope is greater.

If the country is governed by social media platforms, is it not essential to understand who governs social media platforms?

We’d like to think that since age of the Internet, information has become democratized so we’re less vulnerable than we were when we relied on a couple of TV channels. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

THE DIRTY SECRET OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Most of us have thought at some point that some of the tech giants actually had good intentions. They fooled me. They fooled a lot of people. Maybe it was a confirmation bias or just we deeply wanted to believe that social media had opened up communications. But instead these companies have just mined our data for economic purposes, without taking into account the consequences of their actions.

Social media has opened up not just communications, but our data to advertisers. And what happens here is that advertisers can easily microtarget consumers based on their interests and home in on them just make them buy their products or services. But the key question here is that, what’s to stop authoritarian rulers from doing the same?

Tech giants promised us freedom and a highway to knowledge. But instead they offered us quite the opposite.

The truth is that social media has spearheaded populist leaders like Bolsonaro or Salvini to power. It has provided a platform to gain and maintain power. Because no other medium offers them such a tailored message.

Thanks to this, populism is on the raise. Their leaders are getting leverage by demonizing unpopular minorities—gays, migrants, particular religions, you name it.

This demonization is their key to power. And then once they get there, they systematically check how they can crack the code of their position. And go after the elements of democracy that ensure their accountability to the people: the judiciary, the media, civil society…

And this is the essence of populism: the rise of authoritarian leaders. And right now there are a lot of them: Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and even Donald Trump in the United States.

Now, this wouldn’t have been possible without social media.

In fact, in the past they wouldn’t have had the media coverage. Before social media, whoever wanted to get to power would have to speak through gate-keeping institutions like the New York Times or the BBC. And these gate-keepers would have filtered their message from an objective perspective (technically.)

Today? Social media has broken down these counter-balances.

Today everyone has a microphone. Anyone can get on social media and directly communicate with people—it’s no longer necessary to achieve the backing of a political party or media institution. There’s a direct channel.

This is a new form of influence.

And this channel amplifies whatever content gets the more attention: rage, anger, pride, alienation… Exactly the sort of feelings authoritarians use to dynamite their messages.

What social media’s algorithms are doing is prioritizing engagement. And since we engage more with the extremes—the provocative stuff—authoritarians are seeing a green light to get slither into power.

This isn’t a feature of social media. Facebook and Twitter and others could choose to prioritize something other than engagement. But they’d make way less money. So they just surface the provocative stuff so earn more money, while on the way they fuel the kind of voices that are illiberal and anti-democratic around the world.

HOW TO MANIPULATE THE MASSES

Social media platforms are the best way to manipulate the masses. And if you think about it, there are three points that make this possible:

First, there’s a mass consolidation of audiences on just a few platforms. So, if you want to manipulate a campaign or something radical, you just need to control a few platforms and you’re good to go.

Second, the targeting precision of these platforms is mind-blowing. These platforms make money because people spend time on them. They’re attention brokers. So they gather information on users for two purposes: (1) They know what to show them in order to keep them on the platform. And (2) this information helps advertisers target them.

Third, their algorithms can be played easily. First of all, algorithms can’t (yet) tell the difference between right and wrong. They just can’t. What they can tell you is engagement—which content gets clicks. Algorithms know that if they show this content to that person, they’re gonna spend more time on the platform. And you know what kind of content gets more clicks? Outrage. Ask TV channels… Algorithms can’t tell when they’re causing harm. They don’t care, because they weren’t designed for that purpose. So in turn, it’s not that complicated to game these algorithms by giving them what they want: Content to keep people on the platform.

The thing here is that all these social media platforms present a real challenge as recommendation engines. They’re really media companies that have shielded themselves from the requirements of culpability and responsibility. They’re curators. They surface things, and sometimes the things they surface are not in our best interest.

When you connect the dots here, you realize that these three points lead us to a debate about the “gap” in our understanding of how these platforms are shifting our culture. And when you take these three points and push them to the extremes, you find out that it was a matter of time until external organizations take advantage of the situation for non-commercial purposes.

2016

I remember this vividly. It was 2016 and I happened to be living in Shanghai, China. I worked with an international team, and I met people from all around the world. Americans, British, Spanish, French, you name it. And I remember these arguments of what if Trump wins…? Definitely none of my buddies expected that.

Trump won. Everybody was surprised, especially my American colleagues. And then Brexit happened. It made no sense. My British friends couldn’t believe that either. And then I started to notice how in my country (Spain), the tension with the Catalan independence had increased with a force we hadn’t seen in years.

Back in 2016 you couldn’t help but notice that something was going on. You could feel it. Was it coincidence?

I hadn’t connected the dots at that point. But then in 2017, I happened to be in Myanmar. You could feel the hatred and pride and alienation in the streets. In 2018, the virulence of the Rohingya genocide outraged the international community. But what really separates this act of depravation of other acts of a similar violence, was that, contrary to scenarios like Rwanda or Yugoslavia, the violence was ignited not on the streets but in the realms of social media.⁸

Why did all of this happen? Is there any connection between all of these events? Definitely yes.

Today we no longer have problems understanding what’s going on here. In some cases we have clear data. In others we don’t.

We all have heard about Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ’s involvement in regarding the 2016 US election and Brexit. There has been a lot of coverage about it. But I think it’s worth laying down what this event meant for the world—because there’s a lot of confusion around these topics. I believe we seriously need to understand the turning point that the US 2016 meant for the world. How it changed the way we think about social media and the role of tech companies in political and social issues.

2016, PART TWO

There’s enough information out there about what happened in 2016. It already happened. Maybe it was a historical accident. It doesn’t matter. But what does matter though was what this moment in time meant for the world. Because it provided great evidence about the type of future towards which we’re heading. 

What the hell happened in 2016 that everybody has been crazily talking about? 

While most people think they understand what happened, the reality is that there has been a lot of noise and the attention has focused on the wrong things. 

Most people just name this historical event as Trump. They’re just waiting for the next four or eight years to make it go away. But we can’t wait for the next four years to see what happens. This problem won’t go away.

Before we go any further, though, let’s recap for a second and analyze what happened.

It all started with Cambridge Analytica, the famous firm that provided the Trump 2016 campaign with ad-targeting data during the election. What this company did was that they scraped Facebook quizzes’ data to construct millions of psychographic user profiles⁹, that were later used to hyper-target voters with custom campaign ads. 

This was, as Christopher Wylie (Cambridge Analytica’s whistleblower), put it: a “full-service propaganda machine.”¹⁰

In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked classified government information about the massive global surveillance the US has going on. And the big revelation in these documents wasn’t the fact that the US government spied on people (American or not), but the nature of this mass collection of data that put focus on the debate about privacy.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal in the 2016 US Presidential Elections and the Brexit referendum with AggregateIQ highlighted an inevitable shift: The new nature of business models in the digital age.

When Cambridge Analytica story exploded, most of us thought that it would mean the start of a conversation about the forces that drive the tech industry—especially in Silicon Valley. And in some ways it did. It had certainly ignited a conversation. However, we have let the media take over the reigns over this story and mislead the attention from where it should be. 

For example, consider the Netflix documentary The Great Hack. 

When I saw that there was a documentary about the impact of Cambridge Analytica this I was excited. I wholeheartedly believe that documentaries and movies are the best way to spread ideas and start conversations on a mass scale. Books are better, but first you need a lead towards the book. I believe movies and documentaries—or videos for that matter—are great attention-driving forces.

But once I saw the documentary of The Great Hack I was disappointed. To this date, The Great Hack is one of the most widespread documentaries about what happened in 2016.

Yes, this documentary has been a good starting point for people to ignite the conversation—that’s better than nothing, I guess. But it lost a huge opportunity to explain the real deal behind what they call “the great hack.” 

This documentary just focuses on the symptoms: how Cambridge Analytica was able to sway elections, and how Facebook failed to stop it from happening. 

The film looks like it tries to make Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, as the clear villain in the plot. But it miserably fails when it assumes some amount of good faith in the tech industry—particularly in Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.

But more than that, I have serious doubts about this film, especially since it provides massive coverage and glorifies one of Cambridge Analytica’s “whistleblowers”. 

Whistleblowers are brave people who decide to step forward and unveil the truth. However, sometimes I’m doubtful of their intentions, even though I’d like to think otherwise. There are some whistleblowers who seem opportunistic and just want to use the coverage for their own benefit—not giving a damn about the problem at hand. And that’s entirely the case with Brittany Kaiser.

Brittany Kaiser is a former Cambridge Analytica executive and one of the main characters in The Great Hack. She explains how the company’s propaganda machinery worked and how they targeted people based on their level of persuadability—as she recalls in the documentary, “persuadables.” That basically meant the kind of targeting based on psychographic information, to find people that were more open to changing their mind.

 “We bombarded them with ads,” Kaiser says in a voice-over, “until they saw the world the way we wanted them to. Until they voted for our candidate.”

This is great. But again, let’s not fool ourselves here. There’s been a big misleading effort to shift this conversation and focus it on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. And I don’t know whether it has been intentional or not.

The most widespread documentary about the 2016 events fails to show the world the bigger issue: and that’s that the new economic logic behind his doesn’t just drive economic forces, but political and social forces too.

Again, yes, it is great that at least this documentary has started the conversation. What I’m not sure though is whether that’s good or bad. Because once people make up their minds about a topic, it’s very difficult to change that—and that’s especially important since we are talking about the public perception regarding one of the most important issues currently affecting society.

The real truth behind the 2016 events, and the ones to come, is the economic logic behind these tools that made this event take place: surveillance capitalism.

Here’s what 2016 actually meant for us:

Industrial capitalism provided the culture of our modern society. It changed us in fundamental ways we can’t even conceive.

Right now surveillance capitalism is the dominant force. And it’s changing our culture just like industrial capitalism did.

It’s changing the culture and nature of the twenty-first century’s society at a vertiginously fast pace.

This is leading an increasingly unequal society.

And the shift we’re witnessing is going from labor as the key force that organizes us, to knowledge as the organizational force. This means that we’re facing serious dilemmas that are defining our culture based on knowledge, authority and power.

Today there’s an asymmetry of knowledge we have never seen in history. And surveillance capitalists are the ones who sit on this knowledge.

What does this mean? It means this vast contrast of knowledge gives surveillance capitalists the ability to shape and modify our behavior to suit their commercial outcomes.

But this isn’t just knowledge inequality. This is inequality of human agency.

This is antithetical to democracy.

Our autonomy is compromised. And you can’t have a well-functional democracy with this inequality.

These things are happening beyond our awareness.

What this means for us is that an erosion of our moral autonomy is taking place. And individual sovereignty and moral autonomy are key components of the strength of a democratic society.

This is precisely what the historical event of the Cambridge Analytica scandal meant for the world. It wasn’t about a villain who put an operation in place. It wasn’t about a CEO who didn’t stop this operation. The 2016 event was the erosion of moral autonomy and individual sovereignty.

It was a big revelation that it is possible to use the tools of surveillance capitalism and slightly pivot them toward political outcomes instead of commercial outcomes.

Tools to change people’s behavior at a massive scale. Tools to control and manipulate us.

THE BIGGEST COMPETITION IS THE COMPETITION FOR HUMAN ATTENTION

If you pay attention to the media (I’m not sure how much I would recommend that), you’ll notice that is in our human nature to put a face to our problems. 

Facebook is not the problem, it’s Mark Zuckerberg. 

Twitter is not the problem, it’s Jack Dorsey.

And the same goes with the other tech giants.

This isn’t hardly about one person/CEO. This is a problem about a system. 

An unstoppable system with its own needs and priorities by design. 

It doesn’t matter what vision a CEO is trying to sell us. 

It doesn’t matter whether that vision is true or false. Because it will not be realized. The system, the machine, will not allow this to happen.

Right now the biggest competition is the competition for human attention.

Everybody is competing for this limited resource. And these platforms know by design (their algorithms know) that the easiest way to grab people’s attention is by pulling the fear lever. Or the hate lever. Or the anger lever.

These platforms know that because the entire business model of the social media giants is based on hijacking people’s attention—and that’s the only way to make the system work.

It’s the only way to make the numbers go up. 

And it’s clear that without being forced to change, these media giants will remain the same. Because everybody’s happy.

But these tech giants have created a tremendous global machine that billions of people are using, with trillions of dollars at stake. 

And now these companies are trapped by the machines they have created. Because they’re based in a business model that’s designed to capture and hijack human attention. Manipulate human attention.

Tech giants, even if they wanted to change, can’t. They can’t suddenly stop continuing to hijack human attention.

What would their shareholders think?

What would Wall Street think about that?

And not only Wall Street. What would their employees think about changing this?

We’re talking about systems that have been designed by engineers without taking into account any social or political or historical input. Because these platforms are designed to do one thing: make the numbers go up. 

And again, it’s not about CEOs. You’ve got thousands of senior employees who are are actually controlling what goes on. Thousands of senior employees with stock options in the company. And every decision they make will have a direct impact on their stock. Their own money is at stake. So what will they do? Make the numbers go up. Which means increasing the time we spend in front of screens. That way they can sell more ads. And their stock will up.

This scenario is way different than that of the visions tech entrepreneurs had in the 1990s. They envisioned an Internet that would just spread freedom and knowledge throughout the world. But nobody in Silicon Valley saw what was actually coming.

Tech giants aren’t the only ones competing for our attention. Governments and intelligence agencies around the world are competing for our attention too.

But, even though we might think they’re competing with one another. In reality their true competition is with us.

One of the problems we face when it comes to understanding the scope of the current situation, is mistakenly downsizing the problem to fake news, Russian propaganda, election interference and ads on the Internet. This is way bigger than we think.

The truth is that there are a bunch of countries exercising information warfare through propaganda, with the goal of disrupting societies and shaping the geopolitical global order in their interest.

China is heavily involved in a propaganda war for the political control of Hong Kong. Its platform for influencing public opinion is Twitter.

We’ve got Russia deliberating trying to disrupt democratic societies around the world and consolidate itself as the hegemonic power in the illiberal geopolitical order.

One of the interesting things people thought when New Knowledge released the Russian report on the Russian interference in the US 2016 election was: How did they know the Russian’s tactics? Because the US was practicing them too.¹¹

Yes, they received some insightful data from Twitter and YouTube, but the way they knew how this happened was because they had already done this.¹²

The United States does this as well.

They have a long track-record of interfering in elections. The C.I.A. helped overthrow democratically elected and leaders backed military coups in Latin America and the Middle East during the Cold War. From Chile, to Cuba, to Iran. And if that wasn’t enough, they also backed anti-communist death-squads and militias in the civil conflicts that followed these destabilizations.¹³

In fact, the US is quite more active than Russia. Dov H. Levin, a Cargegie Mellon scholar scoured the historical records of the United States and Russia, finding out that the Soviet Union or Russia had orchestrated 36 election interference operations, but the United States had orchestrated 81.¹⁴

The 2016 events and other types of election interferences are not unusual from the perspective of an intelligence agency. But, if you just focus on election interference, disinformation and fake news, you’re really missing the point.

This is not about how Cambridge Analytica influenced the 2016 election or hijacked the Brexit discussion with the linked firm AggregateIQ.¹⁵

This is not about the US elections and how some players have gamed their democracies—this is way bigger than that. This is about the rise of Data Dictatorships.

BOOK TWO

DATA DICTATORSHIPS

LET'S NAME THE PROBLEM

Semantics are more important than people realize. Naming concepts and ideas is the most important thing. If we can name them, we can recognize them. And if we can recognize them, we can beat them. 

If we can’t name something, that means it’s not in our lives. Naming something is the closest thing to inventing it. And this is extremely important because it gives us the possibility of exposing things to people who wouldn’t be exposed to these words and concepts otherwise. Once you know the name, a world opens up. And in this world we are trying to define, is the reality where modern dictatorships operate. Until now, they have remained in the shadows.

Naming things is a really hard task. When you try to aim for simplicity, you find yourself spending more time and neurons than you would on something that is not as simple. 

Some people try to confine the problem and call the power seekers surveillance capitalists. Others world leaders. Other tech CEOs. But I believe we need to find a name more suitable and in the line of the scope.

The truth is that we lack of a proper word to name these players. Are they social media companies? Are they governments? Are they intelligence agencies? Who the hell are they?

Before we name names, we need to take into account that with our current understanding and view of the world, we might fall into the trap of using current categories to conceive this new paradigm. But reality is much more complex, chaotic and intertwined than the categories society has organized for us.

But however bad, chaotic and complex this new world is, we need to start designating things as what they are: Data Dictatorships.

In the following chapters I’m going to attempt to create a new category for you. I might not name names, but you’re going to construct this new reality in your own head. And I promise you, everything will become clearer.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS

The term Data Dictatorship is very loaded. It implies a lot of things. But it is intentional. And it deserves its weight because we’re dealing with a new breed of powerful people who don’t screw around.

A powerful enemy needs a strong name.

So let’s take a minute before we dive deep into this book to clarify the thinking behind this term.

Throughout this book I’m going to use several terminologies, but the ones that are going to keep showing up are Data Dictatorships and Data Autocrats. (Yes, in capital letters.)

Before understanding the scope of the problem and how Data Dictatorships operate, most people would go out on a limb and classify this type of modern regime as some sort of authoritarian government. But I believe the term authoritarian isn’t strong enough. It doesn't do justice to the situation we’re leading towards—this leads to confusion and doesn’t reflect the scope of the problem.

So why dictatorships?

But, what’s a dictatorship anyway?

If we’d have to come up with a definition of dictatorship, we could say that it’s an authoritarian form of government, whose leader (or group of leaders) have no tolerance for political pluralism, the unobstructed work of the judiciary, independent media, a pluralistic public sphere where civil society can operate, and a recognition and protection of human rights and other core fundamental freedoms.

And as we’re going to see in a second, the way Data Dictatorships operate clearly goes with the erosion of this system of checks and balances. Here we’re talking about a powerful group of people who are secretly running the world. They have no toleration for political pluralism. They control the media. They’re dictating what people can or can’t say by manipulating our minds. And they’re aiming to hack human humankind to take grasp of control to a whole new level.

They act in the shadows. They’re predators waiting impatiently to swoop in for the kill.

Now, when it comes to identify to the hegemonic powers within the surge of Data Dictatorships, some of these are dictators. Some of them are fascists. Some of them are authoritarian… In the end all of them fall into the same category. But I’m primarily concerned with actions, not labels. In my mind a Data Dictatorship is a new form of dictatorship that’s being leveraged thanks to the centralization of data, and the merger of the infotech and biotech revolutions.

Now, regarding the second terminology of Data Autocrats. Why autocrats and not dictators? Should we call them dictators? Autocrats? Fascists?

The key here is to understand the hierarchy of this emerging autocratic system. Just like in the current international world order, there are global hegemonic powers that set the rules and standards and states that depend upon these powers (commercially and politically.) In the emerging autocratic international world order we can distinguish between Data Dictatorships, which are the global hegemons with the economic, political and surveillance capital, and Data Autocracies. These Autocracies are dependent on the investment of the Dictatorships for the construction of their own surveillance network—making them thereby, colonies operating under the same model, but lacking in autonomy. There are currently two global Main Hubs controlling and investing in colonies across the world.

The entire existence of the colonies is to serve the Main Hubs. As long as their actions don’t conflict with the main hub’s purposes, they’ll be alright. And they will acquire unprecedented economic and technological process in return—as well as a means of control over their own population.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to both of these players as Data Autocrats, regardless of the notorious hierarchical differences.

Okay, where are these Data Autocrats?

So far, we’re clearly seeing one hegemonic power in China and another one in the United States. These are the two Data Dictatorships influencing the international world order, just like the US and the USSR did during the Cold War.

But we shouldn’t think about the United States and China as merely two players. They should be conceived as two territories—two competing geopolitical spheres of influence—with several players within them. And only as we’ll see in Book Three, a lot of players are serving one of these Data Dictatorships in what has emerged as a new form of colonialism.

In the case of China, even though nobody says this openly, we are fully aware that Xi Jinping is a dictator. He imposes his views of the world onto his population through the swift and subtle force of propaganda and the hard line force of the political jaw of the law and internalized state oppression. He is massively incarcerating Muslims by the millions. Regardless of the fact that China pledges to be a reformed communist state, they’re a clear dictatorship. Xi Jinping is a dictator.

China has openly stated that they want more control. And their control and power over Chinese corporations has become an open secret.

But what about the US? The case of China is much more clear. But regardless of the efforts of the US to stay out of this spotlight, deep down they’re two sides of the same coin.

We can’t know what really happens in the White House. With President Trump or without him, we can’t jump into conclusions. But we don’t have to. 

In the end it doesn’t matter that much who is in power there when you have government agencies acting in the shadows and with completely leeway.

The US was once a country that prided itself in its neo-imperialistic mission of being the leader of the free world. In the last few years it has been deliberately changing its geopolitical strategy and its foreign policy from a hegemonic force to a protectionist and nationalistic one. And today it is ruled by a man who we can describe as a fascist. 

It’s important to notice the difference between China and the US when it comes to defining their own structures.

The two main Data Dictatorships operate under, seemingly, different rules. China has more leeway because they’re openly stating that they want more control. They’re a communist party (arguably), so it is internalized within the collective-conscience of the population that certain authoritarian tendencies are to be accepted in the name of efficiency. A history of Cold War communist rule, and the reminder from the Tiananmen massacre of the price of opposing the regime, have normalized a political culture rooted in authoritarianism. A culture that is seemingly blooming in economic development and a technological revolution.

On the other hand, the US is not as open with their intentions. On the surface, it is supposed to be a consolidated democracy—in fact, one of democracy’s founders. But the very foundations of democracy, its rights were conferred to male white citizens, while legitimizing the trade and exploitation of 472,381 slaves.¹ During the era of its commitment of the construction of a peaceful international world order following the horrors of World War I and World War II, it ignited military coups, financed death squads and murdered political activists deemed communist threats—from Chile, to El Salvador, to Nicaragua, to Egypt, to Iran—throughout the Cold War. All this, while systematically preventing the creation of a Criminal Court that would have to power to judge international war crimes and crimes against humanity, to elude the persecution of their own crimes (this Court would eventually be created after the end of the Cold War in 1998, but its power is non-retroactive.) And if the Cold War seems like a forgotten bloody conflict in which every power exploited and ignited any crisis in the developing world, let us remember Bush’s War on Terror. Let us remember the torture and inhumane acts of degradation the International Criminal Court is trying to investigate the US of Committing during this war. Let us focus on how Donald Trump is violating International Human Rights Law in the Mexican border.

So regardless whether someone new comes into power in the US, its foreign policy remains committed to geopolitical power. In the twenty-first century this geopolitical power is manifested in the technological arms race taking place in the world. An arms race that is making the US veer towards an increasingly autocratic state.

And this isn’t a crazy idea, just take a look at what Dick Cheney did under the Bush’s Administration. During his tenure as Vice President, Cheney played a leading behind-the-scenes role in the response to the 9/11 attacks and the Global War on Terrorism. Early on he proposed the invasion of Iraq, and spearheaded the expansion of NSA’s surveillance practices—leading to the illegal spying of millions of US citizens and torture of potential enemies in US facilities.²

Furthermore, if this global arms leads to the establishment of global Data Dictatorships, it won’t matter who is in power in the US. This isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats. Once the US’ Data Dictatorship gets established, the system will erode every remaining democratic counter-balance, from its Courts to its legislature.

Now, of course this reality is much more complex than this. And that’s why it’s important to clarify the difference between governments and corporations. Straight out.

And the truth is that there’s not much of a difference anymore. And I know this is difficult to grasp.

One of the biggest realizations of the twenty-first century is to acknowledge that there isn’t a big difference between governments, corporations and organizations.³ Because in today’s world, whoever controls data has the power to shape not just the world, but life itself. In today’s world, both multinational stake-holding corporations such as Facebook and Google have an enormous surveillance capital. But so does the state apparatus in the US—through legislation which has largely increased the power of agencies such as the CIA or the NSA to collect and citizens’ data in the name of national security -perpetrating acts that NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have denounced as invasions of privacy and human rights violations. In the twenty-first century whoever controls the flows of data will have the power to govern us.

After Edward Snowden blew the whistle in 2013 about the government’s practices on surveillance, the US government was under a lot of scrutiny. So they had to find a different way to collect their data.

To avoid the public scrutiny but to keep on realizing the same invasive practices, the US government has outsourced the storage of data to tech giants and telecom companies. 

Today, in order to conserve their democratic cover, they rely on private corporations to do the collecting and storing. So whenever the US government needs to access to any data, they just have to go to these companies and they’ll hand it over. The US government under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) can go to any American company and extract the data they want. They can even force these companies to cooperate in the name of national security.⁴

So willingly or unwillingly, corporations have become the US government’s intel service. 

Tech companies do own the tech, but they offer their services to the US government. This fact transforms tech corporations into Data Autocrats. They are not mere surveillance capitalists.

The Data Dictatorship is the system; Data Autocrats are the players.

And this is a system that automatically transforms surveillance capitalists into Data Autocrats.

Tech corporations by themselves are pure surveillance capitalists that act in their own interest. But when they’re organized by a Data Dictatorship, they’re no longer mere surveillance capitalists acting on their own.

Individually they’re surveillance capitalists. That’s when they’re disorganized. But when they’re organized they transform themselves into Data Autocrats. 

They key here to understand is that the interests of surveillance capitalists and data dictatorships overlap.

Surveillance capitalists want to sell a predictive future—the more accurate the better. 

Data Autocrats want to control their population—which happens to be through the same technology and analysis that surveillance capitalists use.

Their modus operandi is the same.

Of, course some surveillance capitalists wouldn’t need this governmental nudge, they’d go rogue anyways. Especially since they don’t have to answer directly to the public.

The public hasn’t chosen Jeff Bezos to be their ruler. And even though Bezos hands over anything that the US government demands, he’s got more leeway since he’s not “leaving office” in four or eight years.

Right now Silicon Valley is in the spotlight. But let’s remember that this isn’t just about tech giants. Again, the telecom lobby has a long history of privacy violations. In fact, AT&T now secretly run NSA’s spy hubs in eight US cities.⁵

Either way, do we know when tech CEOs go rogue? Absolutely not. 

But we could say the same thing about the Intelligence Community. Tech companies and intelligence agencies are unelected powers that are able to exert their full influence in the shadows, secretly running the world.

But deep down, rogue or not, they’re working for a Data Dictatorship. It doesn’t matter who the ruler is—they all have the same agenda. These are pure surveillance capitalists with their own incentives.

The biggest challenge for tech corporations is not getting involved with Data Dictatorships. In the end it doesn’t matter what their initial visions were, because they’re trapped by the machines they created. Because, again, there’s an overlap of interests. On the one hand, you’ve got corporations competing for humans’ attention. But on the other hand, you’ve got Data Dictatorships fighting for that attention too. So it was only a matter of time until the border line between the corporations and governments would become blurred.

Today it has become increasingly unclear what the difference between corporations and state power really is.

Interestingly, a few years ago these companies presented themselves as global corporations. Today Facebook, Amazon, Google and the rest of them have publicly become American companies. (In the case of China we already knew its players were Chinese companies.)

Whether they want it or not, tech companies are now trapped in this geopolitical arms race.

The open secret—and again, Snowden’s revelations back this up—is that corporations and government agencies are organized. Yes, corporations have lots of leeway even if the government “persecutes them”. As hegemonic players in the global market, they have the economic—which in turn is political—power to resist this usurpation of their data by shifting their headquarters or by lobbying against these practices. But so far resistance has been met with complacence.

We really don’t know what these corporations and intelligences agencies are doing. They keep their secrets from us. Or even worse, they cover themselves under privacy policies that are humanly impossible to read and understand.

We have clear data on this collaboration between tech corporations and intelligence agencies.⁶ And still, we can’t conceive that these kinds of things could ever happen in the west. But the hard truth is that we’re completely exposed to Data Dictatorships. And we’re more vulnerable than ever.

Forget about governments. Forget about corporations. Forget about intelligence agencies. Let’s start thinking about this with new terminology.

Let’s call them Data Dictatorships.

Now: how do Data Autocrats operate? What are the characteristics of these players?

How do Data Autocrats see themselves and the world? What qualities characterize Data Dictatorships?

DATA DICTATORSHIPS IN THE NEW POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

When it comes to politics, the key question has always been: Who has the power? But if we translate this question to today’s standard, the right question to ask is: Who controls data?

Centuries ago land was the most important asset in the world. Therefore, politics was a struggle for the control of land and resources. And, of course, the concentration of land in too few hands would separate aristocrats (even more) from the common people.

Later on in modern times, land was no longer the most important asset. The machines and the factories took over land’s position. So politics was no longer about controlling land. This time it was about controlling these means of production. And again, if there was a massive concentration of machines in capitalists’ hands, the breach with the common people would widen—and inequality would kick in.

Today data has become the most valuable asset in the world. And politics is about controlling its flows.

If too much of the data concentrates in too few hands, Data Dictatorships will flourish and the inequality gap will intensify more acutely than we can ever imagine.

DATA AUTOCRATS TAKE DECISIONS IN YOUR BEHALF

At the same time surveillance practices have become more mainstream, we are increasingly becoming more aware of these issues. But since the pile of benefits of the products we consume is greater (apparently) than the pile of benefits of products with a strong privacy policy, people find themselves in a position where it’s really hard to resist this process.

We do this on a daily basis. 

Reality is a bitter pill to swallow. People just don’t care about their privacy. They just give away, constantly, their most valuable asset for free: their personal data. And this eventually will lead to a colonization process.

Right now we’re giving all of our data away for cheap in exchange for social networks, free email services, search engines—you go down the list. Or worse, sometimes it is being stolen from us through pure surveillance machinery.

Data is flowing to the Data Dictatorships, to the data imperialists. Maybe we’ll get to a point when we realize this is happening. But by that point we will find out that cutting the flows of data—once the gate has been flowing for so long—would be basically impossible. Not because people won’t be able to leave the Data Dictatorship, but because they won’t want to. 

By that point we would be outsourcing all of our decision making processes to algorithms. And we left the network that brings us so much joy, we might fear for our own physical survival.

This will eventually lead to a modern form of colonialism.

Well, it’s already taken place. Especially since they know what we think, but most importantly, what we’re going to think or feel.

Decisions not just like who we should date. But also related with our own body: health care. Of course more and more decisions are being outsourced to algorithms, because, hey, the algorithm knows what’s best for you.

What should you study?

Where should you travel?

Who should you date?

What should you eat today?

Who should you vote for?

What should you say next to sound smart?

What should you think next?

Data Dictatorships will know you better than you know yourself. Hell, they might even know you already.

DATA AUTOCRATS WANT TO UNDERSTAND YOU BETTER THAN YOU UNDERSTAND YOURSELF

In this new geopolitical world order, liberal democracy is a losing force to the increasing influence and unprecedented power of the technological revolution. Its philosophical foundations are simply unable to address the challenges presented by this revolution—leaving a legal loophole for the extraction of our data and the violation of our rights. And this process is creating a vicious circle which is eroding democracy’s counterweights—its parliaments, its civil society, its independent media. Because more and more so we are outsourcing political and economic agency to the technological revolution.

While there will increasingly be more flow of data from our entire bodies reaching servers where corporations, governments and agencies store and mine data, there will be more manipulation and less free will. Nothing will be left to chance.

All that’s necessary is an algorithm that understands you better than you understand yourself. And that’s easy. Because most people don’t know themselves very well. 

And it’s not that people are stupid. It’s that we work through emotions—we’re not rational machines. And emotions work in the subconscious level. Yes, some emotions arise to the conscious mind, but they do it in a different form. That means that we don’t know why we feel what we feel. We only know we’re feeling something, but deep down we’ve got no clue why we feel the way we feel.

If there’s an algorithm out there that knows why you’re feeling something, and knows how to make you feel something entirely different, where’s the freedom in that?

What will happen when corporations and government agencies can tweak your feelings in a way that serves them?

We’re seeing how this is happening right now with social media. And that’s just with a few of our digital footprints—we’re not even talking about biometric information yet. 

And that’s why it’s not complicated to understand people better than they understand themselves. All you’ve got to do is to understand people a little bit better than they do themselves. 

The key question here is: What would happen if there’s a direct connection to the brain with some sort of brain-computer interface, and Data Autocrats have access to our raw thoughts?

And what if they have a way to get your raw unfiltered biometric data? And you DNA?

DATA AUTOCRATS WANT TO OWN YOUR THOUGHTS

When I studied marketing there was a field that started to arise: Neuromarketing. I loved the idea of studying the brain in order to create products that better satisfy our needs and wants. But as always, there’s a fine line between marketing and manipulation. Even though neuromarketing is still in its infant days, most marketers sell it as the “buying button of the brain.” And that’s BS, for now. But that’s going to change when we upload our thoughts to the cloud. I don’t know about you, but given the record history of marketers exploiting every single medium, I don’t trust most of them—especially when we are the most vulnerable. That means when they can read our thoughts.

As we’ll see later in this book, there are a few companies working on brain-computer interfaces. It's only a matter of time before we replace our phones and start using something completely different that connects our thoughts to the cloud.

So, what would happen when our thoughts are in the cloud, a cloud that governments and big companies have access to, and AI algorithms are so advanced that they can control our emotional reactions through the information we provide from a fancy brain interface?

The common pattern that keeps arising is that the less privacy we have and more openness there is towards data, the better Data Autocrats do. It’s not a coincidence that the two most powerful countries in the world want to kill privacy: China and USA.

This is way bigger than the loss of millions of jobs due artificial intelligence and automation. This disruption is just the short-term consequence. But the breakdown of the economic order from this disruption and, more importantly, the loss of meaning and purpose in the millions of people whose jobs will be replaced will create an acute global social crisis. But this is only the social dimension.

On a technological scale, the exponential and unregulated growth of these disruptions will erode the foundations of democracy, individual sovereignty and fundamental freedoms like speech and thought.

Data that fuels the algorithms that make Data Dictatorships so powerful. Because the more data the algorithm has, the better and the faster it improves itself. That’s why there’s a race to collect as much data as possible.

The way to extract more data? Selling the idea of “openness” and giving up our privacy in order to get “free” and “customized” products.

DATA AUTOCRATS AND THE 21st CENTURY'S MATERIALIZATION OF POWER

One of the main challenges (not just political or economic) we’re going to face this century is answering this question: Who controls the data?

Notice how I have phrased that question. I’m talking about control, not ownership. Who owns the data? is an important question, but we may find that the control is more critical than the ownership.

In the twenty-first century data is the raw materialization of power.

Because data holds the key to prevent a small elite from monopolizing the world or the universe, creating two castes of people. 

Shoshana Zuboff in her fantastic book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, explains how the new market dynamics of the twenty-first century work.

 “At its core, surveillance capitalism is parasitic and self-referential.” Zuboff writes in her book. “It revives Karl Marx’s old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labor, but with an unexpected turn. Instead of labor, surveillance capitalism feeds on every aspect of every human’s experience.”

This is critical in order to understand the current market dynamics.

Zuboff explains that surveillance capitalism departs in many ways from the history of market capitalism. But it continues with that history.

As we already know, capitalism has evolved by taking things from outside the market and integrating them into the market dynamics. And then transforming them into commodities that get sold and purchased.

But then industrial capitalism takes that one step further. It not only sells and purchases land. But also labor.

Surveillance capitalism continues with this tradition but with a “dark twist”, Zuboff states.

What surveillance capitalism puts in the mix is “private human experience for the market dynamic as a free source of raw material that is translated into behavioral data.”

This data is then the input that goes into computational capabilities that generate an output of predictions. Predictions of what we’ll do now, tomorrow, in a year—you name it.

And this is what gets sold to businesses in a marketplace that trades these behavioral outputs. Data is not what gets sold. Businesses buy human futures.

As we just saw this logic was first invented by Google back in the .com bust. But now this logic has spread throughout not just online businesses, but it has impregnated every economic sector.

 “Forget the cliché that if it’s free, “You are the product.” Zuboff says. “You are not the product; you are the abandoned carcass. The “product” derives from the surplus that is ripped from your life.”

Even though, of course some data is needed for these products surveillance capitalists offer us to work, the rest of the data is declared as a “proprietary behavioral surplus.” Surplus that is used for advanced manufacturing processes known as machine learning. These are AI algorithms that learn to predict what you’re going to do in the future. Then these outputs are sold in a marketplace.

The actual customers are enterprises that trade in human behavioral predictions (and governments and their agencies too.)

Just to make an unfair comparison (because today’s situation is way worse.) In the nineteenth and twentieth century oil corporations got so powerful because oil was the raw material of power. So there was a race to get as much oil as possible. Oligopolies were formed. 

They controlled the prices. If there was too much competition, they unified so they could get more and more power. That’s what John D. Rockefeller did when he founded Standard Oil.

Now the same applies, but the scale and stakes are way bigger. 

In the twenty-first century data is the raw material of power. And monopolizing the control of data isn’t just profitable, but it gives the hoarder greater capabilities: The more data you control, the better algorithms you are going to get. 

Today it’s extremely dangerous if too much power and too much data are concentrated in just a couple of places. Wealth will flow to the US and China (if the situation doesn’t change.) But if you look at other countries, they will become even more submitted to political control and extraction of their resources—which naturally, are in the form of the raw human data of their population.

Surveillance capitalism is the system. The Data dictatorship is the new model that will become established in the twenty-first century. Data Autocrats are the players who run the system.

It was only a matter of time until this system would not only breach the economic sector, but the political and social sectors too.

Soon enough Data Autocrats found this out: we’re just their free raw material. We’re their free mining source.

And they clearly know that Data Dictatorships thrive with this free source of raw material.

Data is the current raw material of power. We’re that raw material. Flesh and blood.

We’re the sources of Data Dictatorships’ essential surplus: the objects of their inescapable hacking-humankind-operation-data-extraction.

This is more focused on the pure market and the consequences of this way of thinking.

I’m aligned with Zuboff’s way of thinking, but I just believe this goes further. This isn’t just about capitalism. I believe this comes down to the nature of power. 

The problem of thinking about this situation as driving forces that thrive with surveillance is not convenient. 

Naming things is super important and I believe naming these players as data dictatorships is more to the point. 

When you talk about surveillance capitalism you fall into the trap of just assigning this role to corporations.

DATA AUTOCRATS DON'T WANT TO CLOSE THE FLOW OF DATA

The importance of data is that you need to keep the flow going. Once it’s open, this flow can’t be closed—otherwise it would ruin their way to power.

Right now companies are hoarding data because nobody knows how valuable it will be in the future.

This is the same reason why YouTube (one of Google's subsidiaries) and Amazon—and a bunch of others—lose a ton of money. Because it’s more efficient from a financial point of view to hoard that data rather than to cash in on that data today.

They’ll do whatever they have to in order to keep the flow of data going.

That’s at least for the moment. This is Phase One. In this first stage Data Autocrats have to gather and hoard as much data as possible.

That’s until they train the algorithms. 

Once the algorithms are trained enough that they can keep on going by themselves without any data, we’ll enter Phase Two. That’s when we would become completely irrelevant (more on this later.)

The first phase: capturing all the data. Phase One peaks when the two revolutions (infotech and biotech) merge. Then the second phase begins.

This is the key to power. Having the data and the ability to mine it, will mean who has the power in the twenty-first century. That’s why corporations and governments (and their agencies) are pushing the envelope. 

Because it’s worth it for them.

DATA AUTOCRATS BELIEVE EVERYTHING HAS A PRICE

This isn’t just about market economics being at stake. Data is not just taking over our economies but our democracies too. 

This is about a full unleashed power. A power without constraints.

In 2019 Facebook received the biggest fine in history imposed by the US government.⁷ When that happened, their stock went up. And that was because that day Facebook proved something not just to Wall Street but to the world:

Democracies have a price. They’re allowed to break the rules and keep the system running.

It’s cheaper for tech corporations to pay whatever fine they get than to submit themselves to the rule of law—tyranny is still profitable as hell. In Facebook’s case, the $5 billion of the fine was covered with the profits of two weeks.

We’re seeing again and again how tech companies get away with things. Sometimes, when they come under scrutiny, they don’t even wait until the case is resolved. They prefer to pay a smaller fine and close the investigation. Just like Google paid $200M to settle the FTC YouTube investigation over alleged violations of a children’s privacy law.⁸

Facebook has disrupted elections around the world. The political disinformation campaigns with the 2016 US and UK elections are a well-known problem. And that same problem has spread through elections in Indonesia, the Philippines, Columbia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Chad, Uganda, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Estonia, and Ukraine. Scholars and political analysts have raised the alarm for years about the pandemic of online disinformation, yet nothing is done.⁹

They get away with anything

Early in 2019 it was revealed that Facebook was globally lobbying against data privacy laws. They targeted politicians around the world, pressuring them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation. We’re talking about lobbying in the UK, the US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all members of the EU.¹⁰

Of course in all these companies there are departments in charge of lobbying to change and bend the rules. That way they can increase their short-term profits and keep investors happy while they get a green light on their privacy violations.

We’re seeing how powerful and relentless Data Autocrats can be. We’re talking about a powerful group of people who are openly killing democracies around the world. People who don’t care if they destroy our democracy and freedom. Because for them this is just a game. A finite game where there can only be one winner.

Really they’re just playing the rules of the capitalist game. But it turns out that we’ve discovered that when we take this game to this level, it’s actually killing the other game we’ve fought for with tears and blood: the democratic game.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND THE SOURCE OF POWER OF THE 21st CENTURY

Today very few people understand what’s really going on. And for the majority of people, the terms fascism and dictatorship don’t appear to have a practical correlation with most societies (there are some exceptions, unfortunately.) But if we follow down the rabbit hole, we find ourselves again facing our most powerful enemy: Human stupidity. We may be able to have found, again, a way to come back to these nightmares.

If you connect the dots and understand where power lies, you’ll easily become aware that whoever that controls artificial intelligence and collects massive amounts of biometric data will rule the world in this century. And the key here is that artificial intelligence by itself can’t do much unless is connected to the human component: biotechnology.

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind,” Vladimir Putin has said. “It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”¹¹

In the twentieth century, democracy and capitalism worked hand-by-hand, and defeated fascism and communism. Back then it was basically inefficient to concentrate too much data and power in one place. So it was “easy” to defeat these forces of darkness, because decentralization was the way to go—due to technological limitations.

However, with the rise of artificial intelligence and the fact that data is the most precious asset of the twenty-first century, the landscape is shifting—dramatically. Today centralization is the key to power.

Centralized data processing (everything in one place) is more efficient than distributed data processing.

And if you think about it, authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century wanted to concentrate information in one place. That was their nature. But it was inefficient. Today? That’s their greatest advantage.

These problems are going to be heightened when information technology merges with biotechnology. That’ll be when the puppet show will truly enter the scene. Because that’s what you get when an algorithm is able to you know you better than you know yourself. An algorithm that can pull the right emotional chords and change your thoughts without you even being aware of it.

Dictatorships are coming back. But not as we’ve known them. They’ll mute into a new form. A form that’s suitable in today’s technological scenario.

Today there isn’t a battle between democracy and Data Dictatorships. The battle is between a Data Dictatorship and another Data Dictatorship. And they’re fighting to establish a global Data Dictatorship as the predominant model for the twenty-first century—just like the US and the USSR fought to establish the reigning geopolitical narrative during the Cold War.

The illustrated thought and the legal and philosophical foundations that established and made our democracies work throughout the past centuries, is outdated in today’s hyper-globalized scenario. Deep down, our western political systems are based on rules and ideas that are more than 100 years old (!)

It’s natural evolution.

And this is simple: Either liberal democracy evolves into a new form suited for today’s requirements… or it dies.

At the pace technology is evolving we’re being left behind by exponential growth of Data Autocrats’ tools, and our systems are lacking the philosophical foundations and the legal means to significantly address these complex new challenges.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND THE PARADOX OF KNOWLEDGE

When we think about the future, we can’t envision most of what will happen. We just can’t. Our ability to predict stops working when our imagination can’t go any further. So whenever we try to look into the future, it’s likely that we’ll get most of it wrong. What the heck, I might even get this book wrong. But if one thing is true it is this: more information doesn’t lead to more knowledge. 

It sounds counterintuitive, but it couldn’t be more right. 

We like to believe that we’re rational machines. We like to believe that we’re analytical creatures. And if we have more information, we can’t help ourselves but make better and better decisions. 

Except that this is wrong. 

We’re emotional machines. We’re hackable animals. You just have to tweak and pull the right emotional levers in order to get a desired action from someone.

“The most important mistake I see smart people making is assuming that they’re smart. They’re not.” — Elon Musk

This is making us focus on the wrong topics to discuss about our future. Data Autocrats know this.

In 2019 Mark Zuckerberg and Yuval Noah Harari talked for an hour about the challenges of humanity. If you see the video, early on you can notice that Harari tries to point out the threats we’re facing with our technological advancements. But Zuckerberg tries to be “more optimistic” and portrait the world as a beautiful new place — which he happens to rule, of course.

Throughout the conversation, Harari tries to engage Zuckerberg in a discussion about the complex challenges and threats to humanity of the uncontrolled development of these technologies. But Zuckerberg increasingly tries to frame the conversation around topics like data, privacy, encryption and GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe.) These are the topics he keeps coming back to, because that’s what people have been making Facebook accountable for.

Of course he says that community building is Facebook’s focus. And states that “we’re social animals”, that’s why social communication is so important.

The thing you can see from a mile away while watching this video is that Zuckerberg wants to throw gasoline into the fire in his own benefit. Facebook’s own benefit. And even though that seems counter-intuitive, it’s his best bet.

Now, as a former marketer I see from a mile away when people are trying to shift the conversation in their own benefit. But in this case, Zuckerberg was trying to focus the conversation on privacy and data. The two biggest concepts Facebook has been slogging in court for.

What he is trying to do in this case is to give the media another reason to write about data and privacy, while we avoid the bigger conversation. What he wants (and when I mention Zuckerberg I’m referring to Facebook) is to consume our energy by creating content and keeping the conversation revolving around the same topics, so we don't know about the real issues.

The same thing has happened with encryption. We asked for encryption in the past. Now we’ve got it. But not in the way we thought. Because Facebook and other tech companies have taken encryption to the next level. But what’s the point of pushing for encryption if in the end Facebook is the one with the keys to decipher that encryption? Still, they’ve sold it to us as a solution.

I’m afraid that with data and privacy the exact same thing is happening. And if that’s not enough, they’re pushing a different definition of privacy that doesn’t suit our best interests. And the thing I believe is that semantics matter a lot.

Remember this: we’ll soon get to a point where privacy, the only mechanism that is slowing down the strength of Data Autocrats, will be stolen from us like we’ve never seen. And we won’t see it coming.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND THE AUTHORITY SHIFT

One thing is not being able to make good decisions. To some extent we can always try to work something around and make good use of the information we have. And to some people that workaround would be to delegate our decision making process to algorithms. In the end, algorithms can analyze a ton of data and transform it into useful and actionable information. But the problem with this is that since these decisions are so good, more and more of our decisions will be outsourced to algorithms.

When people make a decision, it’s usually based on a few data points. After all, our processing capacity is limited. We will never be able to analyze more than a handful of data points, and we will never have all the information. That’s not the case with algorithms, though.

Although algorithms don’t have all the information in the world. They do have way more information that we would ever have, or could imaging having. They’re able to make decisions based on thousands and thousands of data points. Points that would look completely irrelevant to us.

For instance, today an algorithm can take into account when you charge your phone and analyze this data point as relevant to whether you should receive a loan or not. It checks for things that might seem irrelevant to us, but it finds patterns along the way that determine whether you’re likely to pay back the loan or not. Things like the day of the week you apply, the hour, a bunch of things we’re not even aware of.

So even if we’d had this data we wouldn’t know what to do with it. And here we’re not even talking about biometric data. Because algorithms will certainly take this data into account. We aren’t just completely unaware of what actually happens inside our bodies and brains. (Or worse, we believe mythology or theology explain this.)

Currently we’re witnessing a shift of authority from humans to algorithms. At some point we won’t be able to even understand what’s happening in the world, because more and more decisions are outsourced to these algorithms. When this happens, won’t have as much human agency as we thought.

Just notice the next time you check Google Maps.

Unless you know a city from top to bottom you go to Google to check for the faster routes to get from one point to the other. You just do whatever Google tells you to do.

Pick this train. Get this bus. Walk five minutes. You’ll be there faster.

And it doesn’t matter whether it’s faster or not. The thing is that more and more of you decision-making process (big decisions, or small decisions) are being outsourced to Google or other tech giants.

This isn’t just true for ordinary people, though. But top executives, politicians and heads of states as well. 

The key question here will be: Who is designing these algorithms? What purpose do these algorithms have?

These questions are extremely crucial. Because these algorithms are getting becoming in charge of the way we think and of the way we react to reality. 

The problem? Data Dictatorships are behind these algorithms. And they’re making the benefits so tempting for us that we just have to use them.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND TEMPTATIONS

Theodore Levitt, the author of the famous paper Marketing Myopia published in 1960, stated in the Harvard Business Review: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”¹²

Over the years this has become a marketing mantra. In the end, selling the benefit is way more effective than selling the actual product. It’s a given.

This is exactly what Data Autocrats do. They sell us the benefits, the hole, but they don’t talk about the drill—which in this case comes with a lot of dangers.

One of the biggest challenges we’re going to face with privacy is the boost the health care industry can get with open data.

Imagine this. Patients with cancer, before they know they have it, go to the doctor having the feeling that something is wrong with their bodies. So doctors run some experiments on them, until they definitely know the patient has cancer. By that time, it’s quite late in the process. It’s going to be problematic, painful and expensive. And if you’re lucky, you survive it.

Now, imagine there’s an algorithm that monitors your health 24/7. An algorithm that thanks to millions of data points from other patients, is able to recognize cancer patterns and tell you precisely when the cancer is forming at the very early stages. So you don’t have to wait and rely on your feelings.

If there’s something wrong with your body, you want the algorithm to find that out, through biometric sensors and detect the smallest anomaly in your cells when it’s easy, cheap and painless to solve.

Would you sign up for this? I would. Who wouldn’t?!

If this algorithm needs tons of data from a vast variety of patients, so be it.

If this is the enormous benefit you’ll, and they don’t tell you anything about the data that’s being collected, I bet you’d sign up for this. No one really wants to know about the data. No one wants to buy a quarter-inch drill. What people do want to buy is the hole. They want the security this end product gives them about their own health…

At this point, unless you’re a radical defender of privacy, you will automatically think: “okay, this is worth it—we shouldn’t let our desire for privacy get in the way of our own health.”

And this is exactly where they’d own us with this argument. Because they would appeal to our most basic common sense reactions with a shallow argument (but a worthwhile benefit.) Right here they’d have an excuse to use our data for malicious purposes. You’d just think they’re doing this for us, but they’d be doing it with another purpose in mind: gathering as much biometric data as possible—not just for selling us health insurances at higher prices or denying us bank loans, but to fuel Data Dictatorships’ AI and biotech arms races. They wouldn’t tell us at all, and still, we’d be okay with it.

This is just an example about health care. But notice how you could use that same argument, and just change the word “health care” for “security.”

This is about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You can use the basic need of security, and appeal to people by giving them a shallow argument that covers their most basic needs. If you think about it, it makes total sense. Let’s take a look at Maslow’s pyramid for a second.

Abraham Maslow, in 1943 published a paper in Psychological Review called “A Theory of Human Motivation”, where he proposed the theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s a system that describes the stages human motivations go through. These motivations are (in order of importance):

Physiological

Safety

Belonging and love

Esteem

Self-actualization

This means that ascending to each level requires having the prior level “secured”. For example, you can’t have belonging needs until you fulfill your physiological and safety needs.

In the case of physiological needs, these are the ones you can’t literally live without. These are what makes your body work and procreate. Once you have your physiological needs covered, you can focus on your safety.

If you think about it, politicians focus a lot on safety arguments. Sometimes it’s what they should do, but more often than not they do it so they can grab your attention by talking to your reptilian brain.

Or consider insurance companies. They appeal to these basic needs so you can feel secure. That’s what they sell. And this is exactly what we’re going to hear about when they ask for our medical data. They’ll sell us the quarter-inch hole: Safety.

But this isn’t just about health care. It’s becoming the norm in every industry.

I’m going to put the marketer’s hat on here. Pick any car manufacturer. This is what they’re already saying:

 “Share your data with us: we’ll use it to make the roads safer. Cars will communicate with one another, so you will feel safe.”

But this is what’s up: The car industry is in decline. They’re not going to sell as many cars in the future as they’ve done in the past. So, as car manufacturers, they’ll try new businesses—like selling electric scooters. But they’ve gotten into the data economy. That’s how they’re going to make money. And as it always happens, advertisers will enter the scene and show you pop-ups, pop-unders and all annoying kinds of tricks.

Most car companies are doing this. Ford is doing it, and has publicly said in the Freakonomics podcast that they know a lot of things about Ford owners:¹³

“The issue in the vehicle, see, is: we already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us. We know what people make. How do we know that? It’s because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work; we know if they’re married. We know how long they’ve lived in their house, because these are all on the credit applications. We’ve never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that’s the leverage we’ve got here with the data.”

The upside is clear, and we should seek it. More than a million people die on the roads every year¹⁴, and I believe that autonomous cars will be able to help us improve that number dramatically. However, there’s a caveat here. We can actually have both realities at the same time: Safer roads and better privacy.

But we know how this is going to end up. Car manufacturers are in big trouble. So they better find a way to substitute the loss of sales with new incomes—and selling data, selling future behavior has been proven to be a great candidate of income.

This is just one industry, but this thinking is spreading faster than we think.

The most dangerous case is the future of our health care. Let’s pick again at the health care example I talked about at the beginning of this chapter, where we trade our data for immediate knowledge of potential illnesses we are suffering. Being honest, almost everybody would sign up for something like that.

But as Yuval Noah Harari pointed out in an interview, here we’d be dealing with a big temptation that comes with a “long tail of dangers”:¹⁵

“One of the biggest battles in the twenty-first century is likely to be between privacy and health. And I guess that health is going to win.

“Most people will be willing to give up a very significant amount of privacy in exchange for far better health care. Now, we do need to try and enjoy both worlds to create a system that gives us a very good health care, but without compromising our privacy. Yes you can use the data to tell me that there is a problem and then we should do this order to solve it, but I don’t want this data to be used for other purposes without my knowing it.

“Whether we can reach such a balance and have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too, that that’s a big political question.”

A couple of months ago Joe Rogan interviewed Elon Musk. They talked about a lot of things, but here’s what Musk said about privacy:¹⁶

“I think there’s not that much that’s kept private that’s actually relevant, that other people actually care about. We think other people care about but they don’t really care about. And certainly governments don’t.

“National spy agencies do not give a rat ass what porn you watch—they do not care”

It is true that most people don’t care about privacy. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the right to have privacy. In the same way, most people don’t care about politics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to get trustworthy people in power.

I really like Elon Musk, and I believe in the change he’s trying to make. But I don’t agree with his views on privacy.

Here we enter into an interesting debate. Talking about individual privacy is a whole different debate we should have. But that’s not the only place the conversation should go, because we’re missing the point of the implications of a lack of privacy on a mass scale.

“Privacy is the right to a free mind. Without privacy, you can’t have anything for yourself.” — Edward Snowden

Again and again, we’re focusing our attention on the wrong arguments. We’re so easily influenced that we agree on whatever the leading tech gurus say. We blindly ignore all the long tail of dangers.

This isn’t about our whim to preserve our privacy (a legitimate whim.) It’s about defending our own right to have thoughts by ourselves.

But here’s the thing: if there were no positive potential, it wouldn’t be tempting.

And this is exactly Data Autocrats’ master move.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND COMMON SENSE

I remember that I once read that common sense is the mother of all f*ck-ups.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Common sense is our weakness, and data autocrats know this by heart.

And once they play with our common sense’s “logic”, they can be very persuasive.

They can easily push people to adopt beliefs that go against peoples’ best interest—but since they sound “legit” they’re soaked easily.

Common sense says that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. 

Common sense says that we’re rational machines and the authors of our own thoughts. 

Common sense says that we’re smarter than we actually are.

Common sense says that if everybody does it, it must be okay.

Common sense believes in the wisdom of crowds. But once everybody believes a story, it can turn out pretty badly. And this is when you get the madness of crowds.

Common sense is the mother of all f*ck-ups.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND FREE WILL

Before the idea of hacking humans was even conceived, terms such as free will didn’t matter as much—we didn’t pay attention to them. Because throughout the course of history humanity advanced by defining and deciding what this actually meant for us. (Just consider how philosophers have been debating this topic for thousands of years.)

But at a time in history when it’s possible to understand the body and mind of people better than they understand themselves, free will becomes more important than ever. Especially since it opens up a painful truth:

We’ve reached a point where we need to realize that we have never been as free as we thought we are.

There’s an astonishing amount of evidence that if by being free you mean having free will, then this has always been an illusion.

This hasn’t been a problem at all until now. Free will and the way people think are a combination of biological and cultural factors. Your brain processes information differently than mine. And my body responds differently than yours. And of course your culture and environment is a huge influencer in the way you think. 

But up until recently these psychological and sociological inputs weren’t considered an illusion—you could still believe in free will because nobody actually understood the way you think. Or could truly manipulate you. It was just too complicated to figure out the black box of our minds. 

Today, though, the illusion of free will is the most dangerous illusion in the world. 

Why? Because the easiest people to manipulate are the ones who believe in free will.

People who believe in free will say that their thoughts are a reflection of their freedom. But that’s a dangerous spot to be at. That’s game over for them. Period. Because once you do that you lose the curiosity and all skepticism about where your thoughts and desires come from.

This shouldn’t be difficult to grasp. Just consider the next thought or desire that pops up in your mind. Where does it come from?

If you look under the hood, you’ll realize that your thoughts and desires are a combination of biological and cultural factors you don’t control. But the thing is that once Data Autocrats know you better than you know yourself, they’ll be able to control the biological factors and societal values that make you desire or think one thing or another. Your thoughts will be under the control of Data Dictatorships.

The illusion of free will hasn’t been a problem until recently—because it has never left the philosophical realm. But today it’s entering into politics and engineering. The situation has shifted, because more and more Data Autocrats are gaining the technology to do this manipulation on a mass scale.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND TECHNOLOGY

I was interested in tech startups a while ago. One of the things I heard the most in the field was: if you want innovation you have to give up privacy. There’s a clear conflict between innovation and human rights. The excuse for privacy violations I heard all the time was that you can’t keep on innovating without opening the flows of data. 

And this idea is feeding into the tech culture and Silicon Valley culture, and it is spreading throughout the companies that have the claim over our privacy in their hands.

And this is exactly an arms race mentality: we have to violate people’s privacy, otherwise we’re gonna be left behind.

Even though there are really high economic costs of violating privacy, Data Autocrats have thrown themselves into an arms race mentality. In this race, as history has show, they can’t let the other side reach an advantage.

The problem is that these players want to infest us with this binary thinking where we have to choose between privacy and human rights. But technology can have really different usages. Just like in the twentieth century the same technology that the Industrial Revolution brought to the world (trains, electricity, TV, radio…) was used by Hitler and Mussolini to create fascist regimes, Stalin, and Mao used to erect communist dictatorships. And other people used this machinery to create liberal democracies. We’re talking about the same technology.

In the twenty-first century we can use the revolution in computer science and biotechnology to create a much more prosperous world. Or we can use it to build Data Dictatorships. Same technology.

But Data Autocrats want us to believe that there isn’t one thing without the other. Now, they’re boosting their strength by making sure they can stay in power and keep us in check while they push the technological changes they need in order to fulfill their dreams.

They want us to adopt their binary thinking where we have to choose between progress and freedom.

Data Autocrats want us to believe the inevitability of the technology they use. But this binary way of thinking does not exist. It’s not inevitable. Technology is a means, not an end in itself. But today technology is the dictator’s greatest tool.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND TRANSITIONS

Every time a new technology or product comes along, sometimes it’s not smart to immediately push it into the market. Sometimes it needs a transition period—especially if it’s intrusive and people might find it threatening to their rights. 

Data Autocrats know this by heart. So in order to make people adopt things, first they need to give them a quick taste of what the technology is going to do. And once the public perception has been “trained”, then they can push the whole thing forward. 

This is the case with facial recognition. By the time you read this maybe its use has become normalized. And if that’s the case they’ve been successful. 

What Data Autocrats want is to train you into progressively giving away more biometric information. They’re doing this by giving you products you can interact with through your body. Things like unlocking your phone with your fingerprint or with your face. Or even taking cash out from an ATM with a facial or an iris scan. 

But the goal here is to make things smooth when it comes to adopting biometric products—so that it doesn’t seem like a privacy violation but a cool new innovation.

This is the case with the increasing presence of facial recognition. Also with AI assistants (smart speakers.) But also with apps that use biometric sensors—through devices such as smartwatches measuring your heartbeat—that make you share things that you wouldn’t share otherwise.

If the transition is smooth enough, people will adopt anything.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND PRIVACY

In 2009 Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the BBC and the conversation went like this:¹⁷

BBC: “Who owns the Facebook content? The person who puts it there, or you?”

Zuckerberg: “This is their information. They own it”

BBC: “And you won’t sell it?”

Zuckerberg: “No! Of course not.”

A year later in 2010, Zuckerberg basically challenged the idea of privacy as being old-fashioned. The privacy age is over, and Facebook just wants to redefined its “new social norms.”¹⁸

If you keep track of not only Facebook’s movements, but other tech corporations’ steps, you’ll notice that they have been killing privacy little by little.¹⁹

But again, this isn’t just about tech corporations. Governments around the world have been killing privacy over the years. 

They know that killing privacy is the way to gain power and control. Privacy is the key that unlocks the twenty-first century.

The reason data matters so much today is because it fuels AI. But going one step further in the logical process, what provides massive data extraction is the idea of “openness”—which kills privacy along the way. 

Privacy is the only thing standing between us and Data Autocrats sucking every piece of information from us, relentlessly. And they know this by heart.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND THE ARMS RACE TO HACK HUMANKIND

Privacy won’t be as important as it is today when the true revolution comes. 

Right now there’s a fork in the road. On one road, we have a bright future with strong privacy standards and a new version of liberal democracy adapted to today’s requirements. However, on the other road we’ve got unleashed Data Dictatorships with all their arsenal holstered. 

There’s a small window of opportunity until we get to the fork. But the time will come when the two revolutions that are taking place right now merge. 

You’ve probably heard of the AI revolution. We’ll get to that in a minute. But there’s another one going on that deserves our attention. And that’s the revolution in biotechnology.

The biotech revolution means two things: (1) It’s providing another kind of data, biometric data. And (2) we’re starting to understand the human body and mind. For the first time it will be possible to truly hack the human body. For real this time.

But the real revolution (when these two simultaneous revolutions merge) will take place when there’s a mass adoption of biometric products. That means when we have an abundance of cheap biometric sensors. Then we’ll get to the fork.

These two processes together will mean fireworks.

This will radically change the world and shift the human experience.

 “The two processes together – bioengineering coupled with the rise of AI” Yuval Noah Harari points out in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. “might therefore result in the separation of humankind into a small class of superhumans and a massive underclass of useless Homo sapiens. Once common people lose their economic value, inequality might skyrocket.”

But the second realization about this revolution is that the race isn’t just about hacking the human body. There’s also increasing evidence of an arms race to hack the human brain. Because Data Autocrats want to have a direct line to your thoughts.

This is has all been conceived because in the last decades the biggest discovery of all times has taken place. Data Autocrats have discovered the true nature of organisms:

Organisms are algorithms. 

This means that all living creatures can be hacked. 

It’s a realization that you cannot just read code, but write it too. 

It’s not just about writing code for the brain, it means that the entire organism can be hacked. 

In other words, if you can understand the code, you can hack it.

The thing is, that computer scientists have been able to create better and better algorithms. So it’s a only a matter of time before they’re able to write better algorithms for our organisms. The problem is that these algorithms might serve Data Autocrats in their pursuit to power.

This could come into reality when the two revolutions—the one coming from biology and the one coming from computer science—truly merge.

What this means is that the wall that separates machines and humans will become erased. And the future of life itself will be changed by these algorithms.

As you’re going to discover throughout this book, this dystopian future is not as far away as we think. And you can’t stop the force of technology—even if you wanted to, it won’t. Because the most illuminating scientific discovery is based on the realization that organisms are algorithms. Which means that every development will be based on that premise.

And this is a really dangerous spot to be.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND THE ARMS RACE TO HACK HUMANKIND, PART TWO

We may be able to rebel against Data Dictatorships in the future, but this time is going to be tricky. Both in the French Revolution and the Glorious Revolution in Britain in 1688, the people took the streets against the tyranny of absolutist monarchs. They had become aware of a new array of philosophical ideas that questioned absolutist rule and individual freedoms. In the Russian Revolution, class conscience fueled the rebellion against former tsarism and capitalist oppression. In all of these historical instances, the public was aware of a right that is being denied. But that won’t be the case anymore. Because once Data Autocrats get to your emotional level, and are able to hack your emotions—not hack your email or social media accounts, but you—you won’t even notice it. Once that happens, there’s no chance the masses will decide to go against the system.

Consider body language and how to spot a liar. You can get away with lying for a little bit. But at some point you’re going to make a mistake. Because your body is going to show something different than the stuff you say. You can fake it for a little bit, but once you have external pressure or just stop being conscious about it, then your body will unveil what’s really going on in your head. That’s because the expressions your body shows work at an emotional level—at a subconscious level.

Today tech companies just rely on predictability with our digital footprints. But, what if in the future they have 100% accuracy on our behavior? You can’t lie with your body. Whether you want to or not, at some point your body is going to say something you don’t want it to say. And, by the way, when I say body I mean the mind, too. You might say things you don’t believe, just because someone else has put the thought there.

This is happening today. No new technology is needed.

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company founded by Elon Musk, has published a post on their blog introducing one of their latest achievements:²⁰

“We’ve trained a large-scale unsupervised language model which generates coherent paragraphs of text, achieves state-of-the-art performance on many language modeling benchmarks, and performs rudimentary reading comprehension, machine translation, question answering, and summarization — all without task-specific training.”

OpenAI, a non-profit that makes AI technology accessible to the public, became so afraid when they realized the scope of what they’d discovered, that they don’t want to make it available to the public. Because a system like this in the wrong hands would be the ultimate tool to spread really effective propaganda.

We’re talking about machine learning algorithms that can hack people’s minds. They can release a message, see people’s reactions, improve the message and then, tweak it again until the algorithm is able to achieve whatever mission it has.

So, if OpenAI’s has come up with this language model, who else has been able to develop something similar? Or the key question: Are governments and organizations using systems like this already?

And if there’s a system like this out there, operating under someone else’s agenda, what’s going to happen to liberal democracy?

That’s precisely the conversation we need to have right now.

DATA DICTATORSHIPS AND THE ARMS RACE TO HACK HUMANKIND, PART THREE

We’re living in the first time in history where people in search of power will have enough biological knowledge, enough data and computational capabilities to hack billions of people.

Even though we have enough proof that this is the direction we’re heading towards, we can’t help ourselves but think that there’s no such thing as hacking humans.

Before we go any further we need to get over our reluctance to accept this fact, and understand what it actually means to hack a human being. And this is quite simple:

It’s the ability to understand humans better than they understand themselves. And that understanding involves being able to predict what they’re going to do next before they become aware of it. Being able to manipulate their emotions. Being able to make decisions for them.

Now, it’s important to clarify that we’re not talking about knowing humans perfectly. Today that’s impossible and it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

What is possible though is understanding humans just a little bit better than they understand themselves. And the thing is… Most people don’t know themselves very well. Which makes this an easy task.

And this war doesn’t just give you total control over the population. It’s a market that’s worth not billions, but trillions of dollars. So you’ve got the interests of surveillance capitalists and Data Autocrats aligned.

There’s an arms race to hack the eight billion people on this planet. Data Autocrats aim to hack humankind.

And while this happens we’re just busy talking about “minor issues” such as election interference, Russian propaganda and fake news. This is much bigger than any of that. And this problem is not just going to get solved by owning your data—for many reasons we’ll get into throughout this book. But the other big reason is that data won’t be worth much soon. And privacy won’t be a thing anymore either. Because once Data Autocrats acquire enough data to train their algorithms—once AI is trained and humanity is hacked—the value of the data of individual people is going to go bust. Because by that time they will have already figured out how to hack this animal.

And I can’t stress this enough: AI by itself can’t do that much harm unless is linked to biology. Because the moment you put humans in the equation, understanding biotechnology becomes a must.

We’re not there yet. But we’re heading towards this moment faster than we think. And the reason we haven’t gotten there yet is not a lack of technology. This technology already exists. The only thing missing in the mix is a massive adoption of biotech products. Once Data Autocrats come up with a way to create really cheap biometric sensors, then the true fusion of both revolutions will become a reality.

THE FIGHT AGAINST DATA DICTATORSHIPS

Writing these paragraphs I found myself trying to write that I’m not saying this is all just doom and gloom. But it’s hard to write that.

There’s increasing evidence that the world is going to end up in a pretty f*cked up situation. That is the current pattern. And the rate of change in technology is so fast that it’s overpassing our ability to understand it. Is there hope? For now, yes.

Right now, we still have human agency, but the window of opportunity is small. It’s closing.

But we’re seeing more and more that the only possible outcome with Data Dictatorships is to fight. We shouldn’t take this lightly, because our own freedom is at stake. And that’s always worth fighting for it.

This situation requires a revolution.

But first, in order to ignite a revolution, we need to understand the problem. We have named the enemy: Data Dictatorships. But now the following few hundred pages we’re going to understand the whole picture, and try to find a way to hack their system. Once we do that, the fight will come. But we’ll be ready. The system is not inevitable. But we must act. Fast.

BOOK THREE

THE DIGITAL COLD WAR

IT’S THE ALGORITHM, STUPID

First of all, before we talk about AI we need to define what AI actually is. Because right now AI is a moving target. Over the years we’ve been talking about AI, but every time it has meant something different. 

In simple words, what people usually refer to when they talk about AI, is the ability to analyze vast amounts of data and create some sort of output—it can be a product or prediction or something.

Today, at least at the time of this is being written, when we talk about AI we usually refer to machine learning and algorithms. Maybe in the future it will mean something else—but that’s it for now.

Now let’s get these two out of the way so we’re all on the same page.

What’s an algorithm?

An algorithm is any step-by-step mechanism that tries to solve a problem or just produce something. They can be super simple or extremely complicated. It can be a robot following some steps to cook rice and beans. Basically a robot that follows a recipe. Or you can have much more complicated recipes, such as predicting people’s purchases or political choices.

Machine learning though is when an AI is able to learn things by itself. Basically it’s a system that can teach itself by looking at some patterns.

Consider chess. We’ve got an algorithm that’s trying to predict the next best moves. And what next move could bring it closer to winning the game. That’s the algorithm by itself.

Machine learning in this case just needs an input (the rules of the game—the step-by-step mechanism), and then through it’s interaction with chess in this case, it will learn by itself to play and it will get better as it plays more and more. Or consider robots with some sort of limbs. The robot has never moved or has had information about how to move. But through machine learning algorithms, it can figure out how to move by itself. No input needed.

Now, the thing to understand here is that AI by itself can’t do much. Unless it has two things: (1) A lot of data to input. And (2) a lot of computing power to process that data.

But this isn’t just as simple as a rice and beans recipe. The situation has gotten worse. Because right now, the AI machines of Data Autocrats have been trained and retrained all day long thanks to all the data they’ve gathered (and keep gathering.) And the other important thing to keep in mind is that they’re starting to include human biology in their inputs. And when you do that you put the missing ingredient in the equation.

AI AND PROPAGANDA

If we had to come up with the easiest example of how AI is threatening society, the most obvious is automation and the loss of jobs. But if you look at recent events, it’s becoming more and more clear that artificial intelligence will be used—or is being used already—to create “incredibly effective propaganda.”

Right now the way propaganda mostly works is that there are some people manually spamming social media sites. But at some point in the near future, there won’t be a need for people to manually craft these messages. An AI agent will do that for them. And unless governments catch up and do something about it, we’ll be left alone.

Elon Musk explained this in an interview in Axios (HBO):¹

“Probably a bigger risk than being hunted down by a drone is that AI would be used to make incredibly effective propaganda that we’re not seeing like propaganda.

“Influence the direction of society. Influence elections. Artificial Intelligence just hones the message, hones the message, checks, looks at the feedback, makes this message slightly better… within milliseconds it could adapt its message and shift and react to news. And there’s so many social media accounts out there that are not people — like how do you know it’s person or not a person.”

“The way in which a regulation is put in place is slow and linear. And we are facing an exponential threat. If you have a linear response to an exponential threat, it’s quite likely the exponential threat will win. That in a nutshell is the issue.”

The funny thing is that this technology already exists. Data Autocrats are using exponential technology—technology that gets better every day. But regulations are linear.

You can’t help but notice how unprepared we are to deal with these challenges. Or better said, how unprepared we are to cope with AI propaganda and other issues. But Data Autocrats are prepared. Because they play with advantage and have entered into an arms race.

THE REAL DANGERS OF AI

I’ve been talking with a lot of people about the rise of Data Dictatorships, and the dangers we’re facing. The interesting thing is that whenever there’s someone that’s into the tech-startup world in the room, that person thinks that the debate around AI is bullsh*t and that I’m being alarmist. And that’s because in the last five to ten years, there’s been an increasing preoccupation about the implications of AI—not because of the points you’re seeing in this book, but because experts are pointing out the existential problem we’ll face when we achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI.)

The kind of people that call me alarmist say that we shouldn’t worry about any of this because we’re not gonna get there any time soon.

Now, if you’re not aware of these debates I recommend you to do some reading.² But in simple words, basically the way AI works today is considered to be in the form of artificial narrow intelligence. This is because the algorithm can only do one thing. It has one task, and its goal is to get that task done. For example, autonomous vehicles use algorithms with one purpose: driving the vehicle around. Or the goal of an algorithm could be just spreading propaganda.

But artificial general intelligence, on the other hand, will be capable of crossing fields without a problem. We’re not there yet, but when we do this, the intelligence will be equivalent to the human brain. And artificial superintelligence will be equivalent to all the human brains in the world combined.

Now, there’s a lot of debate about whether we’ll get there or not. And a lot of people say that a computer won’t be able to achieve consciousness. But Data Autocrats don’t need AGI to get to where they want. And certainly don’t need for AI to have consciousness.

So coming back to the tech-startup guys that diminish the dangers of the rise of Data Dictatorships just because we’re not quite there yet. The problem with that is that these people are feeding into their own worldview. And these are the people who are (unconsciously) developing the technology Data Autocrats are using. So whether they’re doing this willingly or have secret interests behind, their actions are becoming increasingly dangerous.

But let’s say that somehow what they’re saying is true. Let’s say that we’ll never get to AGI.

The thing is, you don’t need AI to be conscious for it to be dangerous. It just needs to be smarter than us—just slightly smarter. That’s just what you need to hack a human being.

I’d love to get into the benefits of AI (without the long-tail of dangers.) But the fact that most people defending this technology just live in California or Beijing, or just have interests behind it—that raises a huge red flag.

The real danger isn’t about going as far as achieving AGI. Or ASI. The real dangers are right here. Because no new technology is needed.

And this is only about to get worse because we’re in an artificial intelligence and biotechnological arms race.

THE LOGIC OF THE ARMS RACE

Since Donald Trump came into the White House, we have started witnessing a real arms race between the US and China.

We don’t know what actually happened in the United States in 2016. We know how it happened but deep down we can’t really tell. It could be a historical anomaly. But it doesn’t matter. Because that was the year when Americans resigned their position as “leaders of the free world”—even if that was just figuratively speaking. They made it very clear that they just cared about themselves. And the arms race we’re seeing is a product of that.

I don’t use the term arms race slightly. But right now we’re witnessing a full-blown arms race in AI and biotechnology (and other technologies) between the US and China. They’re heavily and openly investing on AI, biotech and especially on brain technologies.

And if this doesn’t stop and change its course, I believe there’s no way to avoid the worst possible outcome. Why?

Because in an arms race, both bands know the dangers and implications of the technologies they’re developing. But they’re doing it anyways. And that’s the danger of the mentality of an arms race:

If you do it, we’ll do it too just in case—but hey, we’re the good guys here.

This is a really dangerous place to be at. Especially since it ties our hands when it comes to regulating these dangerous technologies.

And you can’t warn them, right? 

If you warn the US they’d say they don’t really want to develop these technologies. They would recognize the dangers attached to them—but hey, the Chinese are doing it, so they have to do it too to preserve the global order.

And it goes the same for the Chinese: the Americans are doing it too, so we must get ahead.

This mentality is well fueled up.

We have entered into an arms race.

THE CHINESE ARE DOING IT

Mark Zuckerberg:

“Do we want American companies to be exporting across the world? We grew up here, I think we share a lot of values that I think people hold very dear here, and I think it’s generally very good that we’re doing this—both for security reasons and from a values perspective. Because I think that the alternative, frankly, is going to be the Chinese companies.”

Kara Swisher:

“Specifically the Chinese companies.”

Mark Zuckerberg:

“Yeah. And they do not share the values that we have. I think you can bet that if the government hears word that it’s election interference or terrorism, I don’t think Chinese companies are going to wanna cooperate as much and try to aid the national interest there.”

Kara Swisher:

“What is your situation in China now?”

Mark Zuckerberg:

“I mean, we’re blocked.”³

THE DIGITAL COLD WAR

In simple words, the Cold War was a battle between capitalism and communism. It was an ideological and economic battle for the hegemony of the post World War II geopolitical order. In the aftermath of the decolonization process ignited by the UN, the United States and the USSR engaged in a new form of ideological colonialism. This entailed politically and militarily baking regimes that suited their capitalist or communist interest in the power vacuum created by the emergence of new states, and fueling a series of proxy wars and coups where their ideological disputes were fought with foreign blood.

Today we’re seeing the emergence of a new Cold War. And just like every war, this one is about control. It’s about using whatever means necessary to obtain that control. Being above others and ruling the world. But this new war is going one step further, because it’s taking advantage of the flaws of the system (maybe it’s not a bug, but a feature) and making it work for them. This war is, once again, about a new form of colonialism in the twenty-first century: data colonialism.

China and the US are ahead in this battle. They’re leading the pack. But let’s not fool ourselves thinking that this is just about two countries. Because we’re all in this war—whether we want it or not. And this war, just like the Cold War, will have global consequences. Consequences that will last for generations.

We might be under the illusion that today’s war is a fight between liberal democracy and data dictatorships. But the difference today is that this battle is not between these two models—this is a battle between a data dictatorship (China) versus another data dictatorship (USA)—liberal democracy’s players like the European Union or the United Nations are not even in this battle, because they don’t have the right tools. They’re just not investing in them. And yes, I’m referring to the AI arms race.

After the first Cold War ended in 1989, liberal democracy seemed to have established itself as the only legitimate narrative for the twenty-first century. Both fascism and communism had been defeated and there had never in history been a higher amount of democratic states in the world. But, as it turns out, this was too good to be true. And the first Cold War has overlapped with its digital aftermath.

The interesting thing to notice here is how the use of technology in the Cold War was different than it is in the Digital Cold War. In the Cold War, countries developed nukes but never used them. In the Digital Cold War, though, AI will be used all the time.

Welcome to the Digital Cold War.

THIS IS NOT A TRADE WAR

The concept of a new Cold War has slowly arisen during the second decade of the twenty-first century. But some people are afraid of naming the current situation between the US and China as a new Cold War. However, we need to get serious here and lay out, for real this time, what’s at stake here and analyze the situation properly.

One of the things I can’t stand is the lack of proper terminology in the media. They just talk about minor issues, such as how the US government is banning Huawei and forcing American companies to stop working with Chinese brands. 

I’m not saying that these aren’t important issues. What I’m saying is that this is just a distraction from a bigger picture.

Let’s be clear here: this is not a trade war.

This is the Digital Cold War.

It’s an arms race to see who is first to fully implement these dangerous new technologies.

And we’ve seen how dangerous an arms race can be.

We saw an arms race between the UK and Germany up to 1914 that ignited the First World War. We saw another arms race in World War Two with the rearmament of nazi Germany and the expansionist nature of the USSR. And we saw a nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR in the Cold War.

In the Cold War the goal was getting to the moon. In the Digital Cold War the goal is to get under your skin—meaning, the merger of infotech and biotech.

Right now, the Digital Cold War has its hands dirty in blood. No arms race comes without its consequences and its sequels.

When we enter the terrain of an arms race (and we have) we deal with the unexpected.

THE COLD WAR AND ITS SEQUELS

When we think about the Cold War we do it by picturing the USSR fighting against the US—or vice versa. But the truth is that it was a war with a global impact—it wasn’t a game of two. Yes, there were just two main characters in this plot, but there were a lot of secondary characters that took part in this story.

The truth is bitter. It was a period where there were a lot of vile acts of depravity, illegal proxy wars and human rights violations that, somehow, just vanished over time. Crimes that haven’t been prosecuted. And what worries me is that today these atrocities could take place again, but on a whole different scale.

When the Soviet Union fell, and the end of the Cold War gave way to a globalized (capitalist) world, everyone predicted we were entering a new era of peace. An era where all of the conflicts and wars of the past had been replaced by global peace and economic integration. However, today we’re seeing the birth of another Cold War: the Digital Cold War. But today isn’t about Russia against the US. It’s about China and the US fighting each other to see who rules the world in the twenty-first century. They’re the puppet masters in a world where whoever has more control over society, wins.

They’re playing a game where the rest of the world are their puppets. While we, the puppets, think that we’re getting huge benefits in return for the products and services they offer us.

If we analyze the fabrics of this war and compare it with the Cold War, we can easily spot some similarities. Without getting into too many details, decades after the Cold War “ended”, today we’re living the consequences. We’re in the sequels—and these sequels last decades. So the question that immediately pops up is that considering that the scope of the battle between the US and China is way bigger than it was in the Cold War, what kind of wars are going to emerge out of this war?

In Afghanistan, the 1978 civil war was really a war between US and USSR forces. Everything began with a military coup spearheaded by the USSR, which aimed to establish a socialist Arabic republic. The US saw Afghanistan as an important geostrategic point in the middle east—and as a wall of contention against the spread of communism. So they financed a nationalist Islamic movement of warriors, the Mujahedeen, who fought against soviet domination. These fighters financed and trained by the US would then evolve to be the US’s biggest enemy: Al Qaeda.

The point I’m trying to make is that the Cold War ended, officially, in 1989 and we still keep living the sequels. So if today the scope of the Digital Cold War is way bigger, for how many decades are we going to suffer its sequels?

Let’s remember that there’s no good side on this battle—just like it wasn’t in the Cold War. The US and the USSR committed heinous crimes and fought illegal wars they shouldn’t have fought—while systematically preventing the creation of an International Court (which would later come into force as the International Criminal Court) to persecute the type of crimes they were committing to further their geopolitical interests. And still, in Washington people praise what the US did in Vietnam.

Investing in the right tools is critical in order to have a shot at winning this war. Most nations are not even in this battle, because they don’t have the right tools. They’re just not investing in them. And today very few countries are investing, properly, in AI and biotechnology.

During the Cold War, the USSR didn’t win because they didn’t invest in the right technology and research. Their industry was highly focused on steel and their research and innovation lagged behind. Actually, the Soviets had a chance at keeping on playing the Cold War game, because they had the opportunity of a lifetime when some American spies leaked them some secret documents containing the American formulas for developing the atomic bomb.

However, nuclear technology is just the tip of the iceberg. In order to understand why the Soviets lost the Cold War. We need to understand how they failed at their core. And this was because they didn’t have the right technology to build an efficient system to centralize the flows of data—centralized power. The Soviets were using a system where all the information had to go to one place (Moscow.) And individuals on their own couldn’t make any decision—they had to report everything to Moscow. That, of course, made it impossible to have an efficient centralized system. The US, on the other hand, had a distributed system that was efficient for the technology at the time—you didn’t have to wait from someone in Washington to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. The market told you.

The Soviet model didn’t work because it was extremely hard to process so much information quickly. Today centralized data processing is far more efficient than distributed data processing. Because the more data you have in one place, the better the algorithms are going to get. Today, the Soviet model could have worked. In fact, right now totalitarianism has the best chance to succeed, which leaves democracies hanging by a thread.

So, as players of liberal democracies, are we going to lose this battle because we’re not investing in the right tools? Or are we doomed right off the bat just because we’re not playing on our own terrain?

Today both the US or China are pursuing an economic and foreign policy agenda that is illegitimately and irresponsibly condemning the liberal world order. We just don’t see it yet, but we’re going to be the ones paying for these actions. They’re forcing us to adopt a model that’s basically two sides of the same coin. We might end up living in an eternal state of totalitarianism just because these countries want to rule the entire world.

THE MAIN HUBS

Once we’ve gotten to this point, it’s important to remark that there’s a big difference between the Cold War and the Digital Cold War.

Leaving aside all the virulent wars and terrible crimes, the big difference is that the in the first Cold War, countries developed nukes but never used them. On the other hand, AI will be used all the time. In fact, AI is being used all the time.

I’m well aware of all the benefits of AI technology. But whenever we talk about its dangers, AI experts try to close the debate by pointing out all the benefits of this amazing technology, while ignoring the long tail of problems that come with it.

AI experts say that the information is out there, so everybody’s got a chance to work on AI… Seriously? Information is not out there. Do you really believe that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu or Tencent will share their knowledge in the open? And yes, I know there are some initiatives like OpenAI, but that’s not nearly enough if we’re comparing apples with apples.⁴

In the Cold War, do you really believe that countries shared their discoveries in the open?

Let’s not be naïve about that.

What I’m saying is that because most of the discussion around AI follows the excuse of “the information is out there, everybody’s got a shot at this,” we’re totally missing the point. But let’s say that somehow that’s true. Let’s say that the information is out there. Even if that happens, you would still need the data and infrastructure to make it work.

You would need billions of data points in order to make it work. Because volume matters when it comes to AI—and right now there are only two countries (the US, and China which is way ahead) that are collecting the necessary amount of data.

And here’s where we need to talk about imperialism and the main hubs.

This is why, if countries decide (or are forced) to join a main hub, they will feed that system by renting them their services. It’s going to be like a third country producing something in Vietnam and then selling the final product to the Vietnamese. This will make entire economies and political systems collapse.

What we’re seeing is a new form of colonialism. And the thing is that even though this battle is between the US and China, it might not be in the pure sense of one country against the other—it could be a battle between corporations.

This is a battle about control. And the way to obtain more control in the twenty-first century is through massive data extraction (of all sorts)—gathering data is the key. And again, I just don’t mean digital data, but also biometric data and stuff from the offline world.

This is a technological battle. But of course most countries can’t develop the necessary technology, so they’re left with two choices: (1) Joining one of the main hubs (China or the US or whoever that takes the lead); or (2) regulating. Any third option would end up in a pretty f*cked up scenario—even our second choice is a complicated one.

So you can join them or regulate them. There’s no middle ground. There isn’t any utopian future ahead. We’re starting to see early examples of this battle right now.

THE FACIAL RECOGNITION EPIDEMIC

In 2019 the UK police ran a facial recognition pilot in London. 

People were walking by without noticing what was going on. There was a sign on the streets that said that a facial recognition test was taking place, but not a lot of people noticed it. During this test, the police scanned and registered passers by without their knowledge. Some protesters from the organization Big Brother Watch were trying to concern people about this on the streets. But it was what happened to one man that made it clear what this was all about.

One man was walking by and noticed that they were running this test. So he covered himself up. Immediately, the police saw him and asked him to show his face. When he protested, they forcefully took a picture of him and then fined him for disorderly conduct.⁵

That event changed the nature of these tests. We already knew what this technology was about. But it’s when they force you to accept and adopt its usage that you see the real deal. 

There are several surveillance states around the world, and the UK is one of them. And just like their fellow surveillance states, they’re taking facial recognition to the next level. And they’re not being shy about it.

Right now I’m writing this book in London. I recently moved here and it’s been six years since the last time I visited the city. And the first thing I noticed is how surveillance has significantly increased. And this has just gotten started. It’s about to get worse under the Boris Johnson administration.

Privacy campaigners from Big Brother Watch (BBW) are warning of a facial recognition “epidemic” taking place across privately owned sites in the UK—often without warning visitors. Properties such as shopping centers, museums, conference centers and casinos across the UK are putting this into practice.⁶

In their investigation, BBW uncovered the use of live facial recognition systems in Sheffield’s Meadowhall—probably one of the biggest shopping centers in the North England. In 2018, there were secret police trials where they could have scanned over 2 million faces from their visitors.

But that’s not all. In 2018, the Trafford Center (a large indoor shopping mall) in Manchester was publicly pressured to stop using live facial recognition systems. But by that point they had scanned over 15 million people.

That’s not just in Manchester though. But across many cities in the UK, including Birmingham and Liverpool, where they scanned Chinese school children during a Chinese exhibition.

Again, they’re not shy about this because in all centers’ privacy policy it says “facial recognition may be in use.”

 “There is an epidemic of facial recognition in the UK”, says Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch. “The collusion between police and private companies in building these surveillance nets around popular spaces is deeply disturbing. Facial recognition is the perfect tool of oppression and the widespread use we’ve found indicates we’re facing a privacy emergency.”

SURVEILLANCE NETWORKS

Right now we’re witnessing some of the first evidence of countries joining the Main Hubs: through their access to facial recognition databases and 5G infrastructures.

Basically, the Chinese are doing what the Americans did in the Cold War: selling very cheap and good technology. But this time, apparently, the roles have shifted. The Chinese are way ahead of the world, technologically speaking, so countries are starting to adopt Chinese technology—not American technology. This is particularly the case of 5G infrastructures and surveillance networks.

There are a lot of countries outsourcing their surveillance networks to Chinese companies. But the important thing to highlight here is that we’re not just talking about CCTV cameras. We’re talking about a powerful centralized database of faces. That’s what Huawei, Hikvision and many other companies are selling. In fact, if you go through Hikvision’s marketing materials, you’ll see how they’re offering software to “enhance safety.” These are companies where the Chinese regime is a powerful shareholder—owning 40% the shares in the case of Hikvision (as of June 2018.)⁷ That rings a bell.

In fact, Hikvision has helped the authoritarian regime of China develop their own surveillance network called Skynet (just like in The Terminator movie.)

They’ve focused heavily on the Xinjiang region where the Chinese government is violently persecuting the Uighr ethnicity, a Muslim minority, under the excuse of “countering terrorism.”⁸

But this isn’t just about a database of faces. It goes further. Xinjiang authorities regularly conduct mass collections of biometric data so they can profile and track everyone in the Chinese region.

As Human Rights Watch has alerted in a 2018 report:⁹

“Perhaps the most innovative — and disturbing — of the repressive measures in Xinjiang is the government’s use of high-tech mass surveillance systems. Xinjiang authorities conduct compulsory mass collection of biometric data, such as voice samples and DNA, and use artificial intelligence and big data to identify, profile, and track everyone in Xinjiang. The authorities have envisioned these systems as a series of “filters,” picking out people with certain behavior or characteristics that they believe indicate a threat to the Communist Party’s rule in Xinjiang. These systems have also enabled authorities to implement fine-grained control, subjecting people to differentiated restrictions depending on their perceived levels of ‘trustworthiness.’”

I believe China is going to win the AI arms race. They’re just way ahead of the US and way way ahead of everyone else. As a matter of fact, with each deal they close they’re able to gather more data—and data is the fuel that feeds their system.

The US is, of course, envious of China because they want to operate in the same way. But they can’t, because they can’t violate our privacy at the same pace China is leading—even though they’re pushing the envelope too far as well. So what are they doing? They’re threatening European countries to reject adopting Chinese technology.

It’s not a coincidence that the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, went to the 2019 Munich Security Conference in with the aim of coercing European countries into to not buying Chinese technology—particularly Huawei.

But let’s not think of the US as a lesser opponent. Let’s not forget the fact that the US owns all the pipes.

The truth is that the Internet is essentially American. While it is true that the World Wide Web was technically invented in Switzerland, the way we access it it’s fully American. The cables, servers, satellites, towers… Everything that makes the Internet work is American infrastructure. That gives the US’s Main Hub the advantage of playing in its own terrain. Over 90 percent of the Internet’s traffic goes through American business and the American government. It goes through technologies that the US’s Main Hub has developed, owns and controls, and are in American territory.

It’s clear that this monopoly over the Internet has always worried countries like China and Russia. These countries have tried to create alternatives such as the Great Firewall or their state-sponsored censored search engines. But the fact is that the US remains as the default gate-keeper that can turn the lights on and off.

And the thing is that this isn’t just about American infrastructure. The software that runs the world is mostly American—that’s why the US was able to significantly hurt China when they imposed the “Huawei ban” in 2019, denying Americans from providing their services to Chinese companies. And since Google basically owns Android and the Play Store, it was bad news for Huawei.¹⁰

The computer software is American: Microsoft, Google, Oracle…

And even hardware. I’m not just talking about Apple or Dell, but also chip manufacturers like Intel or Qualcomm. Or routers and modems (Cisco, Juniper.) Or just consider all the Web services and platforms that offer things like email, social media, cloud storage. Google and Facebook get a big chunk of the pie, but consider Amazon. Amazon provides cloud services to the US government and hosts half of the Internet.

Half of the Internet in the hands of one single company!

“Given the American nature of the planet’s communications infrastructure,” says Edward Snowden in his book Permanent Record, “it should have been obvious that the US government would engage in this type of mass surveillance. It should have been especially obvious to me.”

Either way, the thing is that all the countries who decide to join a Main Hub will feed their system, and that will make Data Dictatorships stronger.

And what happens if a country can’t afford to buy Chinese (or US) technology? The main hub will finance it. It’s in their best interest to do so. Just consider how China is financing Ecuador’s surveillance state.¹¹

Today Ecuador has around 4,000 national security cameras throughout the entire country. Cameras that the government says it uses to fight crime. This is for safety, they say. And as you can imagine this system was not just made in China, but it was installed by Chinese companies and workers.

What the Chinese Main Hub has done here is to train Ecuadorians to use this surveillance system. But they haven’t just exported their surveillance. They have colonized Ecuador. They have exported their Data Dictatorship model to the South American country.

And it’s interesting to analyze the Chinese modus operandi. Because as we’re seeing, Chinese surveillance systems aren’t just showing up around the world. But their money is also going to their colonies. It turns out that some countries that are adopting Chinese surveillance networks actually have strong governments institutions to regulate these kind of activities. But why are these technologies being administered by China rather than their own national governments? Because all these countries need the money. And the Chinese can help them with that too.

It all started at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While the games were taking place, in the dark China was selling their surveillance setup to visiting delegations. Right then, Ecuador saw the power of this surveillance network and made a deal with China.

All this happened under the former President Rafael Correa, who is seen as an autocrat. He basically rewrote Ecuador’s Constitution, erasing its limits to take full control of the country. And of course, he silenced the press and took over the Courts.

What many Ecuadorians didn’t know was that China was backing him. Correa needed the money, and China offered it to him. Suddenly Ecuador got things like new roads and hospitals. But also a fully operational surveillance system. What did China get in return? Ecuador’s oil and a new colony.

The key element to understand here is that once a country becomes colonized, it’s basically impossible to escape from the Main Hub. China’s geostrategic interest in the region will be superposed above national interest. It doesn’t matter what the colony’s goals are. In the end, they have already surrendered themselves to the Main Hub. And whether the colony wants it or not, they have now become Data Autocrats.

Rafael Correa has been out of office since 2017, but still the surveillance state runs smoothly—even though Lenín Moreno, Ecuador’s current President, is trying to steer the country towards the democratic road. But once the Main Hub had gotten their hands inside the country, they buried them in debt—meaning China can do whatever they want. And just to make sure nothing unexpected happens, they’re tracking political dissidents like Colonel Pazmino, who was a vocal critic of Rafael Correa. They’re going as far as installing cameras outside of dissidents’ homes.

But this is hardly just about one country. There are a lot of them.

According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, Huawei has helped African governments spy on political opponents—particularly in Uganda, Zambia and Algeria.¹²

In the last few years Huawei has obtained some pretty good government contracts in Uganda, where they supply most of their 3G and 4G cell towers. But it’s much more than that of course. China hasn’t just been financing a few cell phone towers. They are building roads, but in all these roads they’re building, they’re putting a bunch of cameras as well.

Here we see the same operation as in Ecuador at play.

Huawei has built giant surveillance networks across the country that’s worth millions of dollars. Surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology, installed in places where most of the homes don’t even have electricity. We’re talking about a network of 5,000 cameras as part of a program Huawei calls Safe City System. It’s basically a system catered for police departments, for them to use cameras with facial recognition and artificial intelligence technology to help them catch criminals even before they commit a crime.

But of course, the Ugandan police hasn’t just been using this system to catch criminals. They’re using this system as a tool of oppression by the regime of Yoweri Museveni—the autocrat who has been in power for more than 30 years.

Museveni has been accused of manipulating elections and assaulting opponents—sometimes even killing them just to stay in power.

In the last few years, the opposition has become louder. And Museveni sees this as a clear threat—especially since his opposition is gaining popularity.

Bobi Wine, a popular singer in Uganda turned politician, is openly stating that he wants to run for President. He’s famous among Ugandans and organizes “unauthorized” protests. But every time he tries to do that, the police show up and block them—one time even his driver got killed. The WSJ managed to film a last-minute protest with the Ugandan singer. The police showed up. Shot tears gas. And detained Bobi Wine.

Despite the fact that these protests are organized in the last-minute, the Ugandan police know exactly that this is going to happen. They know when and where it’s going to happen because they’re constantly monitoring not just cameras, but phones too.

“I’ve been put under 24-hour surveillance.” Bobi Wine said to the WSJ. “All our phones are hacked. I cannot talk to you about sensitive stuff or about private stuff on my phone because our conversation is being listened to.”

Ugandan government officials told the WSJ that Huawei employees “are playing an essential role in the government’s effort to spy on opposition politicians, including Bobi Wine.”

It turns out that Huawei hasn’t just been helping with surveillance cameras. They also offer their help tapping phones and cracking password protected devices. So they tap phones and listen to the conversations of not just Bobi Wine, but other activists.

The fact is that more and more leaders like Rafael Correa and Yoweri Museveni are becoming stronger thanks to the back up of a Main Hub. Authoritarian leaders who dreamed of this surveillance muscle and are now realizing that they can get this power by supporting one of the Main Hubs. They’ve realized that technology can make their lives much easier. And joining one of the Main Hubs just comes in handy.

Here’s the punchline: Want a surveillance network? Want 5G? Want [fill-in-the-blank]? Join the Main Hub or GTFO.

FULL SURVEILLANCE MUSCLE

Sometimes they aren’t able to control a population directly. So what do they do if they can’t fully control the population of the colony? They put someone in charge. And that person becomes a Data Autocrat serving that Main Hub.

You can put people in charge who serve the interests of the Main Hub by radicalizing their population, so they vote for whoever you want them to vote.

And if the Main Hub can’t find a natural Data Autocrat, they’ll force someone in power to become one. This is what China is doing when they pay for all sorts of infrastructures throughout their Belt and Road initiative. Infrastructures that can’t possibly be paid. That’s when the Chinese bury these countries in debt and take over the political control.

That’s the best way to keep a colony in check. Once they support someone and put them in charge, then they own that autocrat. 

These Data Autocrats are there because of them, and keep their grip control thanks to the surveillance muscle the Main Hub offers them. Or they just have a debt to pay, and because of that debt the Main Hub owns them.

On the surface, it may look that these Data Autocrats are acting independently. But they’ve got the full support from one of the most fearful forces in the world. A force that acts in the shadows. A force that allows Data Autocrats around the world extend and exert their control.

Data colonialism isn’t just about conquering one terrain. It’s about conquering more data points. It’s about having access to regions where they don’t have strong data privacy laws in place, so they can test things without raising any red flags. Especially when it comes to testing biotechnology.

As we’ll see when we get to Book Six, you don’t need to target people individually—deep down, at the molecular level, we all work the same way. So if they’re able to hack the human body, let’s say in Ecuador, they’ll have enough knowledge to hack humans in any other region of the world.

THE GAME WE'RE ALL PLAYING

We’re seeing the truth on a platter, yet we can’t help ourselves but do nothing about it.

We’re still seeing the consequences of the Cold War. Because that’s what happens once you establish a model—you get what you asked for. And no model is perfect. Every model has flaws. Sometimes those flaws go against our best interests.

Right now we’re kind-of living the capitalist utopia. And when you follow that utopia to its extreme, then you get a company like Boeing which just wanted to increase their profits at all costs. And when you go to that extreme a plane crashes and people die. But hey, this is just about numbers, right?¹³

They were just following the rules of the game.

Let’s not forget, not even for a second, that we’re all part of this game. It doesn’t matter whether we avoid the seductive tools of Data Dictatorships. Yes, we can cut the strings from the puppet master, but still, we’ll still suffer the consequences.

You don’t need to be on Facebook to suffer its consequences. You just needed to be a Muslim on Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15th of 2019.¹⁴ Or belong to the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.¹⁵ The sequels are real. This is not a game.

At this point I ask myself, what are the rules of this new game we’re playing?

So, coming back to the sequels of the Cold War: If we’re still suffering the terrible consequences from the Cold War, like Al Qaeda, ISIS and a string of failed states across the world that are the symptoms of US and USSR coups and interventionism—what will be the consequences we’ll live in the future with the Digital Cold War? Are these consequences going to be greater in scope because of their precision?

WILL THERE BE A FOURTH DEMOCRATIC WAVE?

Samuel P. Huntington, an American professor at Harvard, wrote an article for the Journal of Democracy published in 1991 called Democracy’s Third Wave. He said that democracies have been formed through waves—that means, every time there’s been a liberal revolution that established a democracy, other countries tend to follow the pioneer and adopt a democratic process as well.

The first wave happened with all the liberal revolutions across Europe and North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—where countries dethroned absolutist monarchies. The second wave happened right after World War II, starting a decolonization process where colonies gained independence. And the third wave took place in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union, which could be the most important democratic wave of all. Most countries that were in the USSR initiated (mostly peaceful) civil revolutions demanding the instauration of democratic regimes in the Soviet-occupied states. And democracy was spearheaded by a wave of social movements in the former Soviet sphere of influence. Following the social force of the emancipated Soviet block, these democratic ideals spread widely through other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Now, Huntington has also said that every time there’s a democratic wave, there’s another counter-wave that follows. A “reverse wave”. That’s the wave that creates a setback in the world. And those setbacks have terrible consequences. Just consider how after World War II and the decolonization process—military dictatorships spread throughout Latin America.

And the thing is, when a country adopts a democratic system, other countries tend to follow. There’s a snowball effect. But it works both ways. When a country shows autocratic tendencies, others follow too.

And today it seems that the snowball is getting so big and powerful that maybe there won’t be a fourth democratic wave.

So, we know there’s a third reverse wave going on we’re witnessing now. But we need to ask ourselves two questions: (1) How far and how long is this reverse wave going to last? And (2) will there be a fourth democratic wave, or is it today’s landscape so handy for Data Dictatorships that we won’t be able to move forward ever again?

At what stage are we within the third reverse wave? At the early stages of a long wave, or at the end of a short one? And if this third reverse wave doesn’t come to a halt, how far is it gonna go? Will it eliminate most democracies—which aren’t that many—around the world? Will it force other countries, even if they don’t want to, to join a Main Hub just to keep up?

We’re clearly seeing the reverse snowballing occurring with the US today, along with other countries—like Poland, or Hungary. In fact, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said: “the new State that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal State, a non-liberal State.”¹⁶

Are they igniting an inevitable shift in the world?

Now, Data Dictatorships are not fully established yet. But if they want to be fully operational, they need to make sure that they can have a good position in this arms race. And a good place to be is to have more and more data mining points from all over the world.

The truth is that Data Autocrats need ways to capture more data to make sure they win the AI arms race and have a shot at establishing their Data Dictatorship.

They don’t know how long their golden hour is going to last, so they need to find ways to make the transition smooth and get the public’s approval on the change. They need to kill privacy once and for all.

Today democracies die because Data Autocrats kill privacy.

So where does the third reverse wave end? Will there be a fourth democratic wave? Are Data Dictatorships going to become so powerful that we won’t have a chance of having a fourth wave?

WHY DEMOCRACIES DIE

In the book How Democracies Die, Harvard Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt analyze the numerous historical instances where authoritarian regimes have emerged by democratically elected leaders eroding these systems once they have acquired power. The authors analyze the strategies these leaders used to subvert democracies—which draw parallelisms with Donald Trump’s trajectory. As Levitsky and Ziblatt warn: “Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”

But instead of talking about How Democracies Die, I’d like to show you Why Democracies Die. Because once we understand this, we can really see what’s going on. And then, it gets easier to see how democracies are going to die today.

Understanding the why it’s critical.

And there are two answers for this question. The first one is the pure and logical one: because Data Autocrats want total control and power. That’s a given. The second answer to this question depends on where the battle takes place. And here we find ourselves again at the core of the matter: the artificial intelligence race. That’s why democracies die today. Because democracies as we know them are not suited to win this race—they’re not efficient. They’re not efficient just because they don’t allow massive data processing. And having access to lots of data points is the key to win this race—specifically the access to biometric points.

Maybe we’re struggling to see how this third reverse wave is taking place. In the first and second reverse waves, transitions from democracy happened through a mixed executive-military coups. Today that’s not the case. As the authors of How Democracies Die say, Data Autocrats are not conspicuous. They’re Trojan horses. They start with a democratic form, but as soon as they become elected, they slowly erode the pillars of democracy until they have fused into authoritarian system. In today’s world? Those are the colonies of the Main Hub. Or the Main Hub itself.

THE KEY THAT UNLOCKS THE 21ST CENTURY

I’ll repeat this as many times as I have to: today politics is the struggle of controlling the flows of data.

Today data matters so much because it fuels AI. And when you enter the human input into the equation, biotechnology becomes a critical component in this race. Because feeding AI with biological data takes this race to a whole different level. But they can’t do this unless Data Autocrats kill privacy. Today democracies die because Data Autocrats kill privacy. Then, and only then, they’re able to control massive amounts of data.

Privacy → Data → AI → Control and Power

It’s clear that privacy is the key to win this race. That’s why countries that are ahead in the AI race—like the US or China—are killing privacy.

Countries with an AI advantage will quickly become extreme global powers—extreme global dictatorships.

And when Data Autocrats are able to hack humans—we saw how Cambridge Analytica did hack American voters with just a few data points—then it becomes really easy to make people vote for things that are not in their best interest. Like allowing the extraction of data, or sharing biometric information.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a two-horse race, we’re all in it to the end. As Yuval Noah Harari pointed out in his article Who Will Win the Race for AI?, “China and the United States are leading the pack—and the laggards face grave dangers.”¹⁷

Every single country will feel the impacts of this race—it doesn’t matter whether a country is a tech superpower or not, it will suffer the consequences.

“But there’s an added challenge for those left behind in the race.” Harari says. “To hack humans, governments and corporations need access to enormous amounts of information about real-life human behavior, which makes data perhaps the most important resource in the world. But most of the world’s data is mined by the United States, China, and companies based there.”

This race is global.

You’re in it whether you want it or not. This third reverse wave is taking place on a global scale. We’re witnessing the golden age of global Data Dictatorships—we can’t just picture it because we can’t imagine a new kind of colonialism taking place in the digital world.

Whoever wins this war will become the main imperial hub. A hub that rules them all. And that Main Hub will become the Data Dictatorship that is the new economic, social and political model of the twenty-first century.

Harari continues in his article:

“Those who control the data could eventually reshape not only the world’s economic and political future but also the future of life itself. The combination of AI and biotechnology will be critical for any future attempts to redesign bodies, brains, and minds. Elites in the United States and China who have access to those technologies could determine the course of evolution for everyone, according to their particular values and interests. Abilities they deem useful, such as discipline and rote intelligence, might be enhanced at the cost of attributes believed to be superfluous, such as spirituality.”

This is the reverse snowball effect Samuel P. Huntington describes in his article. Most countries won’t be able to escape this global impulse—maybe not even through regulations. So they’ll have to join a Data Dictatorships and serve that Main Hub. 

How does privacy relate to this? What do Data Autocrats need to establish a Data Dictatorship? Kill privacy so they can gather more data?

That’s the key:

Whoever controls data has the power.

They key is to protect privacy.

But just like the climate crisis, no country can solve this problem on its own.

This is a privacy problem. Privacy is a global problem.

In a developed country, experiments that violate privacy will raise red flags, because that country probably has some solid regulations in place. But what about developing countries? They don’t have regulations in place. Data Dictatorships could be testing new technologies and doing whatever they want to. If you’re a mad scientist and start to genetically edit babies in China, that’ll get some attention.¹⁸ But if you do this in any developing country, nobody will notice.

Here’s the punchline: the privacy problem isn’t just about individuals in particular, it’s about individuals collectively. Because information is the end result of data plus context. So in order to get information you need tons of data. Quantity matters.

Privacy is the key to this battle.

Killing privacy is the only thing that enables a Main Hub to have a shot at ruling AI. It’s not a coincidence that the two most powerful countries in the world want to kill privacy. China’s got no problems with that. We know it. But the US is doing everything they can to keep up with the Chinese. So, one way or another, they’re going to make that happen.

Okay, now we know why democracies die in the twenty-first century. Now, how can they make it happen?

Killing privacy is a way to speed up the process. But if you kill it too soon, you’ll get a huge backlash. You need to make the transition smooth. And best short-term option is censoring speech.

In order to make the transition smooth you need some serious surveillance muscle—not just for the Main Hub itself, but for the colonies too. You need to be able to have absolute control over the colonies. That's where you need to filter what's being said.

The tricky thing is that if the change is forced the wrong way, the Main Hubs could get a dangerous backlash. So, in order to sway the public into complacency, the only thing they need is to silently kill dissident speech—even if it means plugging out the Internet.

BLACKING OUT THE INTERNET

On June 22nd 2019 Ethiopia went offline. During that period there was an attempted coup. The President of Amhara (one of the country’s nine regions) and the Army Chief of Staff were murdered. Ethiopians didn’t know what was going on, and to keep it that way the Ethiopian government shut down the Internet. Because in the dark, the government can shape the story in any way they want.¹⁹

Freedom of speech is one of the most important things that safeguard democracy. But it gets in the way of Data Dictatorships. Data Autocrats find themselves in a position where it is crucial for them to control the narrative. Otherwise something unexpected could happen that would jeopardize their plans.

There are several ways to kill speech, but one of them is making sure people can’t access the Internet. Interestingly, Internet shutdowns have become so common that they’ve made a lot of headlines recently. They’re especially common in Africa and Asia.²⁰ According to Access Now, Internet shutdowns more than doubled between 2016 and 2018.²¹

Following this line, Freedom House reported that free speech has declined globally over the past decade. It’s not only that most repressive regimes have become increasingly more repressive, but also a lot of “partly free” countries have gotten worse.²²

Well, we know why this happens, but how? Obviously, technology is making the life of Data Autocrats much easier. But the main reason is that neither the US or China, the two Main Hubs, are standing up for freedom of speech. China ruthlessly censors dissents at home and exports the technology to do the same thing abroad. The United States, a country that was perceived as a historical fighter for free expression, now is refusing to stand up for it. Americans made it clear in 2016. 

The Main Hubs are silently supporting speech suppression. Facilitating the technology. Funding Data Autocrats around the world. Leveraging them.

And the fact that freedom of speech has decreased dramatically isn’t a coincidence. We’re seeing the sequels all around the world.

Let’s be clear—and I believe it’s worth mentioning again: This isn’t just about China censoring speech. The US is clearly the other side of the coin. So let’s state it and accept it: 

The US no longer stands for freedom.

It doesn’t anymore. It never did. And it never will.

The truth is that China is way ahead of the US. Maybe that’s why the US doesn’t want to publicly be the leader of the free world anymore—because this time it isn’t convenient.

The hard truth is that the US has re-entered into the arms race mentality that ruled their foreign policy during the Cold War—at the expense of the rest of the world. And whether a new President enters into the White House, that new president might figure out that they don’t have the power they think they have. Because, in the end, whoever controls the flows of data will have the power. 

And let’s not even talk about independent government agencies. Even if it’s too crazy to think that tech companies could become our governors (regardless of the fact that we wouldn’t notice if that happened), there are still government agencies that are famous for operating in the dark, just like Snowden revealed in the 2013 leaks.

Consider how Amazon Web Services (an Amazon company) is cutting Internet access to Iran’s liberal opposition. They’re not required by US law to do this, but this is a clear attempt to please one of Amazon’s biggest customers: The US government.

Actually, the Pentagon is preparing to award a 10-year contract ($10 billion) to move its information technology systems to the cloud. And Amazon is clearly the favorite candidate.

AWS is in fact the biggest cloud provider in the US (arguably in the world.) It powers companies from as Netflix to the CIA. In fact, it’s Amazon’s biggest source of income, accounting for 58.7% of Amazon’s operating income in 2018.²³ So whether you realize it or not, you’re likely contributing to Amazon’s profits just by searching the web or watching a movie on Netflix.

This contract is known as JEDI, for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. It has been subject of accusations of favoritism, which led Oracle to file and lose a lawsuit against the US government. But what is happening at the Pentagon is much bigger than the JEDI contract, because the clear winner is Silicon Valley. Over the years some of the biggest tech billionaires have been lobbying to get into the Pentagon.

The thing is that it could be Amazon. But it also could be Google. In 2017 Google won a subcontract project called Maven to help the US military use image recognition software to identify drone targets. Something that led to some internal backlash within the company.²⁴

In the last decade, Silicon Valley has tightened their relationships with the Pentagon. It doesn’t matter whether Amazon or Google gets a contract or not. The fact is that all these operations are going to stay in the Valley.

It’s clear that the US is looking for the means to black out the Internet. It’s not a coincidence that Google has been deepening its involvement with Egypt’s repressive government.²⁵

Google has been opening offices in Egypt—which means the Egyptian government there will be able to access Google’s servers to obtain data from Egypcians. And this is alarming, just like Katitza Rodriguez, the International Rights Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: “Re-opening an office in Egypt when the government is aggressively asking other Internet companies to provide disproportionate access to their data sounds alarming.”

Amnesty International has said in a report that Egypt’s crackdown on expression has veered the country into “open-air prison for critics,” leading to many arrests of journalists, activists and even social media users.²⁶

Egypt clearly has interests in obtaining power from a surveillance muscle. So if we analyze these events, there seems to be a trail leading towards the US’ Main Hub’s interest in taking advantage of illiberal Egypt’s needs and thereby securing Egypt as a data colony.

We’re clearly seeing how the two Main Hubs are using the world as their strategy board game. They’re trying to conquer the world by any means necessary. And we’re slowly starting to see their technological reach. While China has a clear advantage in infrastructures and surveillance networks, the US has the advantage that most of the digital products we use in the western world are from their Main Hub.

And furthermore, the US government is legally entitled to be given access to the information on the severs of every US-based company, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA.) Which means they can access information from all around the world. And this is not just access to information, but access to power. Of course, tech billionaires have aligned interests. If they didn’t have them in the past, now they do because they can get these contracts and deepen their relationships with the Pentagon.

We’re already seeing the sequels of the Digital Cold War. Maybe these sequels are not as pure as the coups we saw during the Cold War. But they’re clearly a more subtle form of coups. The kind of coups you don’t see coming. Because if we look at the surface we see that the people of these countries are supporting these new governments. But if we peel the layers we’d see that people are being played and influenced by technologies. And even though it may appear to be insignificant, these new players have some serious back-up that leverages their power.

One of the most significant sequels we’re seeing to this arms race, is the is global suppression of free speech as we haven’t seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And if that isn’t enough, another way to silence speech is to murder the speaker. Just in 2018 alone at least 53 journalists were killed on the job.²⁷

GLOBAL CENSORSHIP

Suppressing speech on a global level sounds so crazy that it seems extracted from a SciFi novel. How could it be possible to have such control? Well, that’s where we’re heading into.

First of all, tech platforms have global influence and they just come from two parts of the world: California and Eastern China. From one part of the world they’re imposing the rules and norms that are spread throughout the entire world. 

They’re controlling speech, not by blocking access to their platforms or devices—which they can do and surely do—but by controlling the narrative. It’s about disrupting societies, or by just keeping them busy by feeding their own filter bubbles.

It’s about colonizing the world in a modern way. 

We can have a conversation about whether tech companies are pushing for a particular political preference or viewer engagement and the revenue it generates. But it doesn’t matter. In the end they’re behaving in a certain way, and that’s creating a certain scenario. We shouldn’t judge their words, nor their intentions, but their actions.

Social media platforms are dictating what you can or can’t say. Dictating what you can or can’t think.

In 2011, Eli Pariser released a fantastic book called The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think, where he stated: “The rise of the filter bubble doesn’t just affect how we process news. It can also affect how we think.”

This is no longer about what you can or can’t say, but about what you can or can’t think. Tech companies are able to shape your thoughts by redirecting your attention to where they want it to go—by feeding your own bubble: Algorithms personalizing your search results and newsfeeds, selectively guessing what you’d like to see based on “your preferences.” Basically you’ve got two screens showing two different things to two different people. And this is a state of intellectual isolation.

This is entirely possible because the Main Hubs control and own all the pipes. 

They program the algorithms that show you what to watch next, or relevant news for you with a specific goal in mind: to compete for your attention. And redirect it to where it’s more suitable for them.

The more attention you give them the better they do. We have to come back again and again to this: right now the biggest competition is the competition for human attention. 

And what do they say when the discussion arises around free speech?

It’s the algorithm.

No, it’s not the algorithm. They programmed the algorithm. They are responsible for it. And they hide its source, so we can’t see what the actual goal of the algorithm is.

There’s a lot of pollution when it comes to the conversation on suppression of speech. The real deal, though, is the actual governmental overreach throughout the tech monopolies. The monopolies that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and some others have over the Internet is the core of the conversation.

GLOBAL CENSORSHIP, PART TWO

The Main Hubs have created unelected counsels around the world serving the uber-elite of billionaires and Data Autocrats who are dictating what people can or can’t think on the most important platforms in the world. Data Autocrats who are dictating the course of our societies are killing democracies around the world.

If you’re there you need to behave however they want you to. And if you’re not there, you’re left behind.

They say: “you can say whatever you want as long as you meet our guidelines.” 

What if in the future they just don’t dictate what you say, but ban you from the platform where everything happens? A platform where people vote?

What if they don’t just have the power to ban you from their platforms or the Internet? What if they could ban you access to money?

What if they can have total control over money?

Could you imagine if the Bank of America could ban you from owning dollars?

Could you imagine if there was just one currency in the world and you were banned from using it?

But hold on, what is money anyway? 

Right now Data Autocrats are controlling people through massive surveillance, but this is just a temporary patch. They want to step up and make sure they have full control over the population. They want a full-stack surveillance package where they don’t have to predict what people are going to do next, but to have total control over their behavior.

What you didn’t know was that they’ve been doing this for a while. But the system is outdated. It needs to run an update. 

You probably know this system. It’s a system that keeps track of debt. It’s a system that most people call money.

BOOK FOUR

SOCIAL DEBT SYSTEMS

THE AMERICAN DREAM

In the twentieth century, democracy and capitalism worked hand-by-hand and defeated fascism and communism. And it was considered a successful model. A model that just kept growing and growing, because its growth was based in consumerism. 

It was a system that couldn’t help itself but grow. It was fueled up through marketing and advertising that encouraged and persuaded (to say the least) people to consume more and more. So new consumers were added to the base of the consumption pyramid and were “lifted out of poverty.”

This is also known as The American Dream.

Now, capitalism has evolved into many different forms over time. That’s why it has survived. Because of its plasticity. Even though at its core capitalism remains intact, it survives and thrives by deliberately renewing its roots. Finding new ways to generate wealth and re-generate the illusion of new needs and desires.

But up until now it has been some sort of a Ponzi scheme. Capitalism is a system that maintains the illusion of growth as long as new people come in and don’t see what’s behind the curtain.

Wealth continuously flows to the top. And if you wanna make it to the top, you have to engage in the survival of the fittest: by always selfishly extracting wealth and value from the model.

This system of consumption worked fine for as long as Earth’s resources were plentiful. And this is the reason capitalism has been able to piggy-back on top of democracy. But just like in any Ponzi scheme, things start to fall apart when the fuel of its nuclear core (unbridled consumerism) began to falter.

And today, after almost a century of unlimited growth at the expense of unlimited pollution, we’re realizing that Earth’s resources are finite and we’re facing the first symptoms of a deficiency means for the capitalist machine’s motor. We’re waking up and facing the hard truth: the system is about to collapse. 

But just like in any Ponzi scheme, those at the very top are trying to get a good deal out of it. And what better deal that finding another Ponzi scheme that takes over the current one. But the winners of the game are doing everything in their hands to keep the system running until they’re able to establish the next model: the Data Dictatorship.

DATA AUTOCRATS’ BIGGEST NIGHTMARE

Capitalism has evolved into something more nasty and predatory: Surveillance capitalism. 

Surveillance capitalism is Capitalism 2.0 that meets the needs and wants of the Data Dictatorship’s model. It’s a system that allows Data Autocrats to keep in check the masses.

The difference today is that surveillance capitalism can no longer afford to piggy-back on democracy. Democracy has become a threat to those at the top who can no longer maintain their status quo and abide by democracy’s counterweights of power and rule-based system at the same time.

Democracy has become an enemy of surveillance capitalism because in a free democratic system, people will choose to solve the problems humanity face. People will demand regulations and practices that would go against the most basic values of capitalism. People would vote to get someone in the government who would make these demands a reality.

But if we peel the layers of this model, on the outside it seems like our western democracies are erected upon the humanist values that conceived them. But layer after layer the model has become radically different and corrupted by hyper-globalization. But this isn’t something new. 

The hard truth is that in the United States and in plenty of other seemingly democratic countries most people aren’t living under a democratic system in—at least in the liberal sense of the term. Across the world, illiberal democracies have been flourishing in the last decade. And the population has been increasingly supporting nationalistic and authoritarian measures—from Hungary, to Poland, to Turkey, illiberalism is flourishing in a time of intensified social unrest. And this political unraveling coupled with the technological disruption is creating the perfect conditions for aspiring Data Dictatorships to thrive in their transition.

Data Autocrats need to keep total control until the transition towards a Data Dictatorship is fully accomplished. And once they achieve what they want, the economic model of surveillance capitalism will offer total control and keep the masses in check at all times. There won’t be any chances to rebel against the system once they deploy their full power. 

But during the transition, Data Dictatorships will need to keep us in check for real—for a couple of reasons: (1) To make sure the masses don’t rebel and disrupt the status quo. And (2) Because we’re the fuel that makes the system run. We’re the free source of the raw materialization of power: Data.

In the meantime, they just want us to be busy debating about the wrong things. The left vs. right divide. Nationalism. Immigration. Foreign propaganda. All of these topics that were created to keep people from seeing what’s actually going on.

Each Main Hub is busy with their own transition. They’re just battling against the other Main Hub. The masses? The masses are irrelevant. Because they don’t get to choose. They just need to be kept in check. From time to time, the Main Hubs just releases something new for us to discuss and cover our media diet so we don’t rise up and take over control.

The capitalist model has hit its peak.

Now surveillance capitalism has been set. But democracy is still the largest threat to surveillance capitalism.

The system needs an update. It’s surveillance capitalism what helps Data Autocrats keep the masses in check. But there’s a missing ingredient that Data Dictatorships need in order to make the full transition. Surveillance capitalism by itself can’t go too far unless it has a way to rank and control people.

That system used to be money. But now money is outdated for the challenges of the twenty-first century. 

Data Dictatorships know the music looks like it is about to stop.

So they’re rushing to establish a Data Dictatorship in this vacuum of power created by the socioeconomic struggles we are facing in the aftermath of the 2007 crisis. This new model they are struggling to impose needs new rules.

New forms.

New practices.

And they need them quick. 

They need a substitute of money.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEMS

We all know what social credit systems are about. But in order to understand why these systems are on the rise—and as we’ll see in a second, it's not just China doing this—we need to get to the root of everything and understand the origins of money. 

That’s the real deal here. 

Money, just like social credit systems, doesn’t have the origins we think it has in our collective memory. Most people think the concept of social credit systems are something dystopian they saw in a Black Mirror episode. Or just they might make a connection with this system and how the Chinese government is increasingly controlling their population. And this is all partially true. It is about control. But there are a couple of things that are wrong with that way of thinking: (1) It’s not just about a Netflix show nor is it just about China. And (2) this is not something new. Yes, the technology and infrastructure of this system is new. But it’s just an evolution of something that’s been around for thousands of years: Debt.

This is about debt and its derived product: Money.

But where does money come from?

It looks like a simple question and you probably have an answer that explains where money comes from—it’s common sense, right? But sometimes common sense is not as pure as we think. And the universal truths we hold in our collective memories are conditioned by the world views of the hegemonic elite that had the historical power to shape these narratives.

David Graeber, an American anthropologist and activist, is known for his book Debt: The First 5000 Years and his involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this book published in 2011 he deconstructs the myth of barter and the fact that money was invented to keep track of debt.

If you go through most economic textbooks, you can notice that when it comes to explaining the origin of money, economists say that at some point people got tired of the logistics of bartering. It wasn’t easy to carry goats and trade them for wheat. The other challenge people faced, of course, was that comparing two products was difficult. The proportions rarely matched. 

These economic textbooks all state that at some point someone said: “This isn’t working out, let’s have money instead.”

Well, it turns out that there’s no single evidence that this event ever happened in history. And there’s a huge amount of evidence suggesting that it did not happen.

But this myth of barter can’t go away because it’s the core of economics. That’s what Adam Smith tried to convey when he publish The Wealth of Nations, establishing the discipline of economics as a science. And the following economic textbooks just repeated Smith’s ideas on barter as the origin of money. These economists never talk about debt as the origin. Debt is always a secondary factor. For liberal economists, barter comes first, then money, and only afterwards credit and debt. But in the end what they’re describing is coinage’s history, not the history of money.

The hard truth is that money was invented to keep track of debt.

Debts that lead to slavery. Prostitution. Marriage debt. Debt that enriches unelected dictators who place their stolen money in their Swiss bank accounts, and force their citizens to repay this by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. Leaving people without hope of repaying the debt.

It’s all about debt. 

In fact, there’s no history of money because it’s a variation of debt and credit.

Debt and credit appeared way before money.

I highly recommend you to read Graeber’s book Debt to get an in-depth perspective of the real origins of money. But I’m going to give a quick perspective of what got us here in terms of debt. And try to bring a new perspective on how debt is evolving to meet the twenty-first century’s standards.

One of the most surprising things that struck me the most when studying debt as the origin of money, is its close relationship with religion. In lots of religions around the world, there’s something that suggests that in order to be a good believer, debts have to be repaid. And, if you think about it, this narrative is so powerful. It’s powerful because it’s not an economic statement. It is a moral statement. And there’s a big difference. Here’s how Graeber puts it in his book:

“What is the difference between a mere obligation, a sense that one ought to behave in a certain way, or even that one owes something to someone, and a debt, properly speaking? The answer is simple: money. The difference between a debt and an obligation is that a debt can be precisely quantified. This requires money.”

What this does is that it allows debt to become something cold, impersonal and transferable.

If one owns eighty thousands dollars at a nine-percent interest, it doesn’t matter who the creditor is. And there’s no discussion about what each party needs or wants or is capable of doing. All that matters is the debt. That puts the human costs out of the equation and gives a green line to committing atrocities to claim what is rightly owed to one. Because all that matters is getting that debt paid. If you lose your home that’s your problem. As they say, money talks, bullsh*t walks. A deal is a deal.

And that’s what makes debt as a moral obligation so dangerous: the fact that the creditor can specify exactly what’s the amount of the debt.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEMS, PART TWO

In 1694 a bunch of banks in England made a loan of £1,200,000 to King William III. What did they get in return? A royal monopoly permission that gave them the right to print banknotes.

What this meant basically is that this group of banks gained the right to advance IOUs—also known as I owe you, which is basically an informal document acknowledging debt—for a portion of the money the King now owed to these banks, to anyone in the kingdom willing to borrow from them or willing to put their money into these banks. In other words, the had created royal debt.

This was a pretty good deal for the bankers—not just because they got to charge the King eight percent of annual interest for the loan, which increased the amount they were owed. But they had the ability to create money.

The logic here on which the Bank of England—the first successful modern central bank—was originally funded was that this debt can operate as money only as long as the loan is not paid back. And guess what. Today this loan has never been paid back. In fact, it can’t be. Otherwise the entire monetary system of Great Britain would be destroyed.

This way of thinking opens up a lot of doors now to start rethinking the obvious mysteries of the fiscal policy of many early kingdoms. Yet, this leads us to asking why would governments make people pay taxes if they’re the ones printing the money in a sense?

Well, at this point this is self-explanatory: Because governments want to get their hands on people’s money. This makes evident the connection of markets and governments. You can’t have one without the other. And getting people’s money is the most efficient way to create markets.

Let’s consider the hypothetical example Graeber shows in Debt to understand how these markets come into being:

“Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem. Such a force would likely consume anything edible within ten miles of their camp in as many days; unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and animals just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions.18 On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to the soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you, one would, in one blow, turn one’s entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with things they want. Markets are brought into existence as a side effect”

The fact is that most ancient rulers thought a lot about the relation between soldiers, mines, taxes and food. Because creating markets wouldn’t just feed soldiers, but it would make people produce whatever these rulers needed.

The fact is that markets cannot exist without governments. Governments create markets, not the other way around. But neither could continue without the other. Not at least as we understand them today.

Now, an interesting way to analyze how this works is to analyze the colonial world. Sadly, throughout history there have been too many examples of this from of subjugation, but let’s pick Madagascar as an example.

In 1895 France invaded Madagascar and declared the African island a French colony. One of the first things the French did once there were some peace in place, was to impose heavy taxes on the Malagasy population. That was a way to cover some of the costs of the colonization process, and cover the expenses of building railroads, bridges and so on and so forth. But they did this in a brilliant way.

The French not only marked this tax quite high, they made it only payable in newly issued Malagasy francs. Joseph Gallieni, the French commander and administrator of the colony, printed and then demanded that everyone in Madagascar give them some of that money back.

But it’s interesting the way they pulled this off. Especially when it comes to the language they used to describe this tax. It was referred as some sort of “educational” or “moralizing tax.”¹

This was a way to adjudicate value the Malagasy the value of work, because it was not a coincidence that this tax came right after harvest time. And it made merchants sell a portion of their rice crops—forcefully, when the market price for the rice was at its lowest. Merchants had to sell it all, but then they didn’t have enough food to feed their families. So they had to get it back when the price went up.

They had to ask for a credit.

Suddenly farmers were buried in debt.

They started to sell their crops. But if they didn’t have enough, they had to send their kids to work on the crops of French colonists.

But the French Colonists didn’t bury the population so much that they couldn’t breathe. Because the colonists wanted their colonized to develop spending habits. Small luxuries such as parasols or lipsticks available at the Chinese shops.

This development of new tastes was a crucial step, because the French laid out the structure of a consumer demand that world persist after the conquerors left. That’s how you keep a country tied forever.

The thing is that from the beginning Malagasy people were told they owed France money.

Malagasy people aren’t the only ones living the sequels of the colonialism in the twentieth century. There are a bunch of examples. And since these debts are perceived as “moral issues”, the rest of the world just accepts the injustice of this arrangement.

Now this lead to ask ourselves: Why do we pay taxes?

We’re told that we pay taxes so we can cover the expenses of the services our governments offer us.

But that’s far from the truth.

Governments use taxes to create money.

They’re able to do this because they’re the gate-keepers of the debt we all have with one another.

“This debt is the essence of society itself.” Graeber says in his book “It exists long before money and markets, and money and markets themselves are simply ways of chopping pieces of it up.”

We would love to believe that we don’t owe anything to one another. But we don’t start out as debt-free individuals. We all have a debt we can never truly pay back.

The hard truth is that modern money is based on government debt. And this debt is used to finance wars. Today this is as true as it was hundreds of years ago.

It’s all about quantifying debt. And that’s what social credit systems do: they quantify your social behavior—your debt.

And now social behavior can be quantified too. It’s a way, just like with money, to make debt it impersonal, relevant and scalable.

As we’ll see in a minute this is the very essence of social credit systems. Both the US and China are in a rush to establish a social model to become the guardians of the debt all citizens have towards one another. A debt that can never be repaid.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty details, we need to fully understand the current situation.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEMS, PART THREE

In 1971 Richard Nixon, former President of the United States, was running out of options. The costs of the Vietnam War were going through the roof. A war, like all capitalist wars, that was financed by deficit spending. And he needed a new injection of cash. Fast.

In the past, US dollars were convertible into gold—that was because there was an international gold standard. So it turns out that if you had dollars, you could trade them back for gold. But that was no longer the case since 1931—at least for United States citizens. They weren’t allowed to cash in their dollars for gold anymore. But the US couldn’t apply those restrictions in to foreign countries, so it was established that all US currency held outside the country could be exchangeable at the rate of $35 an ounce.

In 1971 the US had the largest gold reserve in the world. In contrast, most poorer countries kept their reserves in dollars—a standard global currency that the US controls. Which meant that, if Nixon somehow was able to unpeg the dollar from the price of gold he could create, let’s say, a new system of global debt. Therefore, boosting the value of dollars again to finance the US’ wars. And he did it.

On August 15, 1971 Nixon did exactly that—but more significantly, his actions opened up a new financial age. That decision established the regime of free-floating currencies that continues to this day.

And the effects were immediate. The price of gold skyrocketed. It hit a peak of $600 an ounce in 1980. This was very convenient for the United States, since their gold reserves increased their value astonishingly. And, in consequence, dollars weren’t worth as much when comparing them with the new value of gold.

And here is the tricky part: Since most poor countries lacked and needed gold reserves, they had to buy them from the US. At the new price, of course. The result? A massive transfer of wealth from poor countries to rich countries like the United States and Great Britain.

We’ve been told that markets are a simple expression of democratic equality. But with all this evidence, the idea that the United States is dominated by some sort of market populism—this means that the free market is more democratic than any democracy—contradicts itself.

We’ve been asked to accept that the market is a self-regulatory system. But since Nixon’s floating of the dollar, it has become even more evident that markets rise and fall depending on the decision of the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

And what Nixon did had global consequences, just like the subprime crisis of 2007—does that ring the bell?

Nixon injected the dollars with steroids and paid for the cost of a proxy war. A war where between 1970 and 1972 he ordered more than four million tons of explosives and incendiaries to be dropped across Indochina. In fact, Senator Fullbright nicknamed him “the greatest bomber of all time.”

And all of this lead to the 2007 financial debt crisis. What Nixon basically did was convert the US currency into worthless pieces of paper—in other words, he created another variation of credit money. And what, then, was backing the currency? The US’s military power.²

Today the US debt remains as a war debt. And it has been since 1790, when dollars could be exchanged for treasury bonds.³ It’s not hard to understand why the United States spends nearly more on its military than all the other nations in the world. Combined. Military expenditure is what is what is backing up the dollar. The US by itself spends half of the global military budget. But almost the other half is entirely composed by its allies—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, known as NATO or OTAN.

As the American proverb goes: “If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.”

The United States indeed owns the bank. They own the debt. They have the control.

This graphic speaks loudly to the modus operandi of the US: fear. The fact is that the US can drop bombs within a few hours at any point in the world.

The rest of the world knows about their strategic access to vast military assets. And this does not just give the US political influence. This fear is what creates a political environment that suits them the most.

Now, how does it all of this work out economically?

Since the United States trades in deficits, there’s a huge amount of dollars circulating worldwide. But one of the main effects of Nixon’s policies was that foreign central banks can only do one thing with these dollars: buy US treasury bond. This is what makes the dollar the “world’s reserve currency.”

These are bonds are supposedly loans that will be repaid at some point. But just like the economist Michael Hudson observed in the 1970s, they never really do:

“To the extent that these Treasury IOUs are being built into the world’s monetary base they will not have to be repaid, but are to be rolled over indefinitely. This feature is the essence of America’s free financial ride, a tax imposed at the entire globe’s expense.”⁴

But Hudson notes another thing: over time, these bonds decrease in their value due the low interest payments and the inflation. This is what economists call “seigniorage.”

This means that the entire American imperial power is based on debt that will never be repaid—it just can’t. And the entirely world knows this.

The fact is that since Nixon’s time, the biggest buyers of US treasury bonds have been countries under US military occupation. In particular, Asian countries. The central banks of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. All of these are US military protectorates.

The thing is that the US is always trying to strengthen the value of the dollar at all costs. For example, since 1971 the only currency used to buy and sell petroleum is the dollar. And any attempt to change the currency has been heavily resisted by OPEC members Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Again, US military protectorates. And the lone wolves who switched to the euro around this time were targeted by Bush as his “Axis of Evil”: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. It’s not a coincidence that when Saddam Hussein switched from the dollar to the euro in 2000—followed by Iran in 2001—the US started to drop bombs and militarily occupy the Gulf State. Such a coincidence, isn’t it?

Even if the US’ beneficiaries won’t admit it, these imperial arrangements are based on terror.

Hudson classifies Nixon’s move to separate the value of the dollar from that of gold as “debt imperialism”. But this idea is perpetuated by our very own global financial institutions, who have the power to craft the economic policies that are imposed on the developing world. You’ve got institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) insisting that “debts must be repaid”, giving all the protection to the creditors, but none to the debtors.

We’re seeing again and again that money really has very little essence. It’s a social construct. And the 2007 crisis showed us the near-total collapse of the US financial industry. Money is nothing. Its nature is totally categorized as a matter of political contention.

And the reality is that the US has realized a big military effort throughout the years to force its stability. The United States has monopolized money for more than 200 years. By spreading fear. But there’s a new player in town who has been slowly flourishing. And not only that. There’s a shift going on. And the stakes are high. It’s about who gets to monopolized “money” for the next centuries.

That new player in town is China. And the new system is no longer money, but social credit systems.

SOCIAL DEBT SYSTEMS

Money, as we know it, is peaking. After 1971, the US’s economic strength began to decline. Yet China has been slowly introducing an entirely new element: social behavior.

There’s a profound shift going on here. For the first time in 5,000 years, the assumption that “one must pay their debts” is being challenged by China and its nation wide experimental social credit index. It’s still about debt, but the means are different. Today we’re seeing a new way to keep track of debt: the emergence of social debt.

What we’re seeing with China is that they’re transforming the notion of “one must pay their debts” into “a citizen of the communist party must behave well”.

This is the big shift.

Capitalism is a system of power and exclusion that has been able to get back on its feet every time it has reached a breaking point—like the oil crisis in 1973. However, after the 2007 financial crisis the world realized that the current course is unsustainable. And capitalism can’t operate in a world that can’t be around forever.

The truth is that capitalism won’t be around for long. In a few generations it won’t exist anymore—it’s just impossible to keep up unlimited growth with a finite planet.

And since we can’t imagine an alternative better than capitalism, the fact that capitalism is ending is terrifying for a lot of people. There’s an increasing interest and attempts to colonize other planets. And there are incredibly fast developments in the field. But we’re not just talking about the Moon, there’s an increasing race to get to Mars. Right now with the information we have, SpaceX (the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk) seems to have the proper technology to get there, and they even have scheduled their first Mars landing in 2022. And they’re putting the first human on Mars by 2024. But, of course, we’ll have to wait and see if these end up being the real deadlines.

The problem here is that even though there are plans to colonize other planets and, to potentially use these planets as the new source of materials to keep capitalism going, it seems that the pace of developments is too slow for capitalism’s survival needs. The clock is ticking and capitalism needs one or two things in order to survive: (1) A new planet with new resources. Or (2) a fundamental change in the structure of debt.

In this case an evolution of capitalism is more likely. And the thing is that what most people don’t know is that when we say capitalism is going to die, it is the militarization of American capitalism itself that is going to die.

We have already seen an evolution of capitalism into its new form of surveillance capitalism. But inevitably, surveillance capitalism leads to Data Dictatorships. And while people just mention surveillance capitalism, they haven’t noticed that they were talking about the left and right flanks of the same animal.

Now, these two models need an anchor in order to survive. A transition point. And this is where social credit systems enter the scene. They’re the anchor. They’re what will make Data Dictatorships cross this new frontier of power.

The US knows this shift is happening. The new player in town (China) is trying to accomplish what the US did in the past: the establishment of a new global economic standard.

And just like with gold, there’s an unspoken of “deal” to shift towards social behavior.

The Main Hubs are noticing that the way to win the Digital Cold War and establish their Data Dictatorships as global superpowers, is not going to be simply by violating people’s privacy and gathering data to fuel AI. But they must keep control of their population by shaping the way they behave and think. One of these ways will be creating a new gate-keeper for a new form of “money.” These gate-keepers will be the gate-keepers of information.

This is a totally new way to control people.

Data Dictatorships need this new way of keeping track of to be able to have a shot at ruling the twenty-first century. 

Keeping track of social debt is their roadmap to having all the control they seek. And making Surveillance Capitalism work 100%.

Right now there’s a race not only to establish a Main Hub as a global Data Dictatorship, but also to establish a new global currency. 

Countries around the world won’t just adopt the technology from one of the Main Hubs. They’ll also adapt the currency of that main hub. They’ll be forced to adopt it—just like the US has been doing with the Dollar up until now.

Data Autocrats are forcing countries to adopt these new measures. If you adopt their form of currency, you’re with them. And if you don’t, you’re against them. There’s no middle ground. Maybe this time if a country refuses to adopt the global currency just like Iraq and Iran did, a military intervention to secure the goods won’t be necessary. Because if the Main Hub becomes the gate-keeper of information and therefore can block this new currency in by limiting access to that information, this could become an unprecedented way to punish those who challenge its geopolitical hegemony.

So if debt is evolving, so is money. And it turns out that social credit is the new money.

This “new money” operates in a pervasive climate of fear. Fear that leads people to behave within social and culturally normative guidelines. For example, as we’ll see in a minute “If I have the fear that I might get denied to travel on the bullet train, then I’ll behave ‘well’.” This is social obligation (the evolution of moral obligation) and it is fueled by fear.

If people don’t follow the rules Data Autocrats will punish them. 

But it’s a new way of punishment—a way that at first glance doesn’t seem like a punishment at all. It’s not a physical punishment. But banning people from participating in society isolates them from the world. Punishment has evolved since the dark ages of corporeal denigrations. And psychological punishment is equally a form that denies human beings of their agency and their dignity—both core concepts in the foundations of human rights.

Right now we’re seeing two systems emerging: The Chinese-state is experimenting with a fully functional embryo of a social credit system. It is operated and run by the authoritarian communist party regime of China. And systems run in the west are silently emerging, operated not by governments but by private entities.

In the western world we don’t know what system is going to be the one by default. There are attempts to create a cryptocurrency, which is trying to make a hybrid between money as we know it and a social credit system. There are different options in the west, but none of them are yet massively adopted.

One of the most significant geopolitical patterns of the Digital Cold War will be the establishment a new global currency that substitutes the dollar and revokes the currency advantage the US has.

Money is not going away—neither is its concept of debt. But it is true that we’re seeing an evolution. There’s a new way to keep track of debt.

Debt is evolving into a new form, but its essence still remains the same: control over society. That’s what debt is about. 

What, then, are social debt systems about?

What are the consequences of this debt?

How are they different from the debt we are familiar with?

And most importantly: Why is China winning?

Again, semantics matter a lot. So first, let’s call these systems as what they are and then dive deep into it. But first, let's stop calling them social credit systems. It’s about time we start talking about Social Debt Systems.

CHINA 2020: THE SOCIAL CREDIT INDEX

China’s social credit index is scheduled to be fully operational some time in 2020.⁵ But this isn’t a utopia for the future, and we don’t have to wait until 2020 to see what these social debt systems are going to be like. If you want to have a notion of what this future dystopia is going to look like, you just have to look at China today.

Since Xi Jinping took power, a lot of cameras started to appear across China. And surveilling Chinese citizens became a top priority. 

China has since then become an unrestrained surveillance state. And that’s because its government doesn’t face any constraints whatsoever. And since China is a dictatorship, it’s able to silence public opinion and avoid any internal backlash.

China is the dictator’s biggest dream. It’s Silicon Valley’s dream. And, of course, most intelligence agencies wish they were able to operate the way China does.

If you want to have a sense of what Social Debt Systems are going to look like, you have to take a look at Xinjiang, the Northwestern Chinese region. 

Xinjiang is the main region where Uighurs live—a Muslim minority in China. And the Chinese government sees these weaker groups (as well as other Turkic Muslims in China Mainland) as a security threat. Which in political terms translates to, an ethnic threat against the ethnic and national homogeneity of the state.

Using this security threat as an excuse, they’ve imposed the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world in Xinjiang. 

A system that doesn’t just track Chinese citizens in the region through a bunch of cameras. The government is treating the region as a war zone.

They have police running around with handheld devices.⁶

Human Rights Watch managed to gain access to one of these devices and had the opportunity to reverse engineer the app police officers use.

This app doesn’t just contain demographic data, but a lot of psychographic data as well—and even biometric data. Every police officer can gain access to several pages of data about every single individual in Xinjiang.

These are pages that contain a vast variety of information. Going from who is hanging out with whom, to their blood type, to their political inclinations, to how much electricity every individual consumes.

They can even track the moments where an individual’s phone has gone dark. And decide whether they should detain that person or be interrogated for suspicious activities.

Since 2016, the Chinese government has submitted the 13 million ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang to random mass detentions. Religious oppression. All sorts of restrictions… Basically they’re teaching them “good manners.”⁷

It turns out that this system engineered by the government has put one million Uyghur Muslims in detention for “re-education”. 

One million out of a population of 11 million in Xinjiang. We’re talking about almost 10% of the Xinjiang population. And obviously a larger percentage if you exclude children.

In 2019, Olsi Jazexhi, a journalist who was skeptical about China’s mass detentions accepted a tour show. He was “stunned by ‘concentration camps’ where Muslims were banned from praying, forced to speak Mandarin and held for a year or more of Communist indoctrination.”

Why is this happening? Because the Chinese communist regime party and their intense surveillance system indicates that this group is considered as a threat to territorial and ethnic power.

This is only the beginning, though. What they’re doing in Xinjiang is a simple test. But they’re deploying this system nationwide as what they call: the Social Credit System.

This is the “core” of China’s Internet agenda, states Rogier Creemers, a postdoctoral scholar in the Law and Governance of China.⁸

The goal of the Social Credit System Creemers says, is “to leverage the explosion of personal data… in order to improve citizens’ behavior… Individuals and enterprises are to be scored on various aspects of their conduct—where you go, what you buy and who you know—and these scores will be integrated within a comprehensive database that not only links into government information, but also to data collected by private businesses.”

China is already running pilot programs of this system. And these are clear proof of how powerful they are in terms of behavior modification. It’s a window into a version of the future defined by extreme surveillance and exacerbated state power.

What China is proving to the world is not only the effectiveness of Social Debt Systems, but the methodology of what the new era of tracking citizen debt is going to look like.

What these type of systems accomplish is the automation of society through tuning and conditioning people to produce a variety of preselected behaviors the that the Chinese regime considers comply with their homogeneous vision of national culture and normative social interactions. They are aiming to “pre-empt instability,” as some experts put it.⁹

We’ve got to admit that from a dictator’s point of view, this is a brilliant method of social control. A system that only in the extreme cases requires imprisonment. Because the system just controls people through their data.

What this system will do once is operational is to score every citizen in China, in terms of social behavior:

Are you a good neighbor?

Do you keep your backyard clean?

Do you take the garbage out?

Do you smoke in non-smoking areas?

Do you walk your dog without a leash?

Do you criticize the government?

Do you hang out with people who do criticize the government?

Do you search for something on the Internet that doesn’t suit the government’s interests?

Do you read this book?!

Do you have a good score?

This system will track citizens’ behavior and then score their performance based on their behavioral data. So for example, if you cross a pathway in red, they might ban you from buying a train ticket. If you have a good score, your application to travel abroad will be approved quickly. Or in the extreme case, they will be able to put you in detention if you criticize the government.

Then, of course, it’s not just about punishing people. The Chinese government offers a wide array of social benefits for following what they have established to be a good behavior with a good score. But all of these rewards will depend on how you behave:

Do you get to travel on the bullet train?

Do you get your visa applications approved?

Do you get a passport?

Do you get to live in a decent city? Because there is a finite amount of developed and prosperous cities in China, you know.

Do you get to send your kids to a good school?

Do you get a senior management job?

Do you get a job in the government?

Do you get to see the latest movie?

The fulfillment of all these social benefits that people want will depend on their score. And since people do want these things, they’re going to start adjusting their behavior to meet spec.

The Chinese government wants a nationwide system by 2020, but we have already started to witness how this system will work. 

In 2015 the Chinese Central Bank announced a pilot program with top e-commerce companies. What these companies would do was to take care of data integration and software development for personal credit scoring. And what better company to do this than Alibaba. 

Alibaba launched a pilot project called “Sesame Credit.” This is Alibaba’s “personal credit scoring” operation, which produces a comprehensive social rating with algorithmic learning that goes further that it seems at a first glance.

Algorithms analyze all the purchases people make: Do you buy a video game over a children’s book?Do you spend too much money on imported products? And they also keeps into account the quantity and “quality” of their friends. 

One reporter’s account of her Sesame Credit experience alerts that “the algorithm veers into voodoo”, taking into account many inputs such as the kind of car she drives, her job, the school she studied in, whether she had repaid her loans, the credit of her social contacts, whether she donated to charity through Alipay, and a bunch of behaviors that purportedly “correlate with good credit.”¹⁰

Just like Google’s search algorithm, the algorithm behind Sesame Credit remains concealed. It’s a corporate secret. And people have to take a guess about how to improve their social scores. And if their score is too low, maybe they have to delete some friends with a lower score. Or why not add as a friend an individual with good ratings to boost one’s own rank?

A lot is happening with these simple pilot programs. Even though we haven’t yet seen a fully operational nationwide system, in 2018 alone the Chinese Social Debt System has blocked people from buying plane tickets 17.5 million times.¹¹

According to the National Public Credit Information Center, in its 2018 annual report, this system also led to block people from buying train tickets 5.5 million times. And the report says that some people were blocked from leaving China due to unpaid taxes.

It looks like this system is kind of operational after all. In fact, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China said “it had refused loans worth more than 6.97 billion yuan ($1.01 billion) to debtors on the list.”¹²

Suddenly, a lot of people have started to pay their debts.¹³

But this also affects companies. If some companies have a bad rating they can lose government contracts or even get banned from importing goods.

The thing is that since we’re talking about China, some people just don’t get surprised. It’s clear that they don’t have privacy. In fact, it is a culture that places less value on privacy than western cultures do, observes Syracuse University researcher Yang Wang.¹⁴ As a matter of fact, most Chinese people are aware of the government’s surveillance and censorship. It’s not new for them. 

China openly has censored the Internet since its early days. They even have extensive online surveillance systems like the “Golden Shield”, that can suspend social media accounts or even access to Internet if their users are searching for sensitive terms such as “Tibetan independence” or “Tiananmen Square incident.”¹⁵

They just don’t have a sense for privacy. In fact, the most similar word for privacy, yinsi, didn’t appear until the mid-1990s.¹⁶ The reality is not that the Chinese regime forces people to adopt these technologies—that’s the extreme case. People accept these invasive technologies because Chinese citizens have been saturated with surveillance for decades.

I’ve spent some time in China. And all I can say is that once you’re there for a while, you realize two things: (1) If they say they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it. And (2) they’re gonna do it fast.

And they’re moving pretty fast towards a fully operational Social Debt System.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO OWN YOUR DATA?

For the last couple of years there’s been an increasing conversation on data ownership and data taxes. And while I think we should own our data, the framing of the debate is completely wrong. 

What does data mean? What does ownership mean? These are two different concepts that need a separate analysis. And while for the medium consumer of tech products it might seem like an ideal scenario—especially the idea of selling our data—this way of thinking is driving our few remaining rights into the ground. 

Later in this book we’ll see (and you’ve probably figured this out by yourself already) that data collection and extraction is far more important than data ownership. But for now let’s focus on the dangers of adopting this data ownership position as something beneficial for ordinary people

First: What does data mean?

There are a few misconceptions with this question. 

Mainly because it’s unclear to the human mind the what scope of this data is unless you have the computational capabilities to analyze this data. That’s when you can figure out that all data is biometric data in a way (more on this later.) But the key here is to understand the nature of information.

It’s critical to realize that data without the proper context is just a spreadsheet. It means nothing. Nada.

Data is only valuable when applied in the right context. And that’s when you obtain information. 

But the most important factor is experience. Because once you apply tons of experience on information, you obtain knowledge.

Again, let’s make this clear:

The first problem we encounter then with the data ownership debate—in particular with regards to selling data—is that you can own and sell data, but you’ve got no clue how valuable the asset is. The scope of that data is totally inconceivable to us. Because we lack the context and the experience to analyze it.

The second question we need to ask ourselves is the following: What does ownership mean?

This is very hard to conceptualize because we don’t have any experience dealing with the digital ownership of things. 

It’s very easy to conceptualize land ownership. 

You own a house. That house is delimited by a fence. You control the doors—therefore you can come in and out. There’s just one copy of the field. You can’t move it. You own it.

Your data, on the other hand, is not delimited by a fence. You don’t control the doors. You don’t control who comes in and out. You can’t own it.

Data ownership is very hard to conceptualize. 

For example, what does it mean to own your DNA cord’s data?

You can have a print of your DNA, but you can create millions of copies of that data.

There can be millions of copies in clouds, computers, anywhere. And these copies can be used in so many ways you that our basic human minds couldn’t even conceive.

So does it matter who owns the data? Not really. What matters is the access to it and its collection.

We’re far from conceptualizing ownership of data. We haven’t achieved any model that would help us allow certain usages of our data. For instance, imagine that you’d like your doctor to access that data, but you can’t differentiate your doctor’s access from invasive usages you don’t want.

We just don’t have the proper understanding to make a system like this work.

In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari states the following:

“We had better call upon our lawyers, politicians, philosophers and even poets to turn their attention to this conundrum: how do you regulate the ownership of data? This may well be the most important political question of our era. If we cannot answer this question soon, our sociopolitical system might collapse. People are already sensing the coming cataclysm. Perhaps this is why citizens all over the world are losing faith in the liberal story, which just a decade ago seemed irresistible.”

The other danger, though, is that data today is very valuable. But once humanity is hacked, we won’t need the data of the next billion. Because their data won’t be worth as much.

We could move towards an economy of data transactions that are valuable today. It could seem like a good deal. But it won’t stay like that for long. And of course it comes with a really long tail of dangers.

And it is tremendously dangerous to even consider selling our data.

SELLING YOUR DATA IS A TERRIBLE IDEA

Right now this is the way data is collected from us: We’re giving away a valuable asset, but at the same time we’re generating debt on ourselves. The problem will come when selling data is legalized, then this debt will get bigger and it will have become legalized.

The more data you give away, the bigger your debt is. It’s a permanent record on yourself. Debt that doesn’t go away.

It’s a permanent debt.

When we talk about data we’re not talking about your browser’s cookies. We’re talking about your behavior online. Biometric data: blood pressure, heartbeats, go down the list. 

But also your most private data: your DNA.

And soon enough, your most intimate data: your own thoughts.

This is why it’s so important to clarify all the noise around the selling your data debate. 

Yes, data ownership is important and we need to figure it out. But we should focus our attention on data collection and usage, not ownership.

Some people might think: oh, if Facebook is a $55 billion revenue corporation. And that revenue comes from 3.4 billion people who use their products. Then Facebook is roughly making 23$ per person. So we should get paid a chunk of it. 

But it’s not that simple. 

Even if governments and law makers pressure tech companies to be more transparent and give people a data account—like a bank account, but instead of having dollars you have data in it—to benefit from this data, that’s not going to give people more control.

But that’s another conversation. 

The real stakes here are higher. Because if you start trading your data for a few bucks, you set a precedent for the establishment of Social Debt Systems. You make them seem like an acceptable transaction. And once you trade your data, you not only lose control of it—even though they want you to believe you own it and control it. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle once you legalize data trading. 

This is exactly the danger of selling your data.

And maybe Data Autocrats will give us exactly what we ask for. 

The problem of asking for things, is that we might not know what the future implications those actions could have. But since it makes sense in the present, who cares about the future?

Data Autocrats do care about the future. About their future in power.

We might get to the point of, do you wanna get paid for your data? Here, take these few dollars for a copy of your DNA.

We could trade data. But without the computational capabilities we don’t have the resources nor the understanding to know what we’re handing over. Data Autocrats use information, not data. Data is the input. Information is the output—big difference.

You will just make it easier for Data Autocrats to fulfill their dreams. 

It will give corporations and governments the permission to pay for your data. And keep doing their own thing without the headache of facing public pressure.

Right now they don’t want to do such a thing, of course. But if the time comes, and if we really push for regulations and claim our rights, that option will be on the table. And as we already know by experience with all the products tech companies offer us, whenever something is appealing—even if it goes against our best interests—we fall into the trap.

This is a terrible option.

Selling your data sends the signal that it is okay to just give away your data for today’s price. But what about tomorrow? What about 10 years down the road? Would you sell your data today for a couple of bucks? Some people would. But what if I tell you that that data is going to be worth $50,000 in the future? You would think about it, right? And if I tell you that same data might be used against you in the future in a totalitarian state?

I don’t think selling our data solves our problems. Yeah, it might help for short-term consequences like automation and the loss of jobs, but it definitely won’t help us with our fundamental democratic problem.

Either way, there’s no single scenario where everyone ends up happy. We do want to maintain our privacy and rights, therefore, we shouldn’t sell our data that way. On the other hand, we’re losing money, or potential money, if we don’t sell our data. Which means that the pressure when massive loss of jobs hit us, will intensify.

But some people are actually happy. And I don’t mean the people who would receive a few bucks. But the predators. The predators who want to become the new intermediary by “owning the pipes”.

These new blockchain startups are publicly claiming ownership of data. 

Now, I don’t know if it’s their lack of knowledge on the conversation or their actual understanding of it. But one thing is clear: they don’t care that much about privacy. They just want to be the next tech monopoly controlling and owning the pipes. 

And drip by drip, they’re trying to convince the public that this is the future. 

We’ve got PatientSphere, a platform to sell and buy health care data, “so consumers can control and monetize their medical data.”

But this isn’t the only company that is trying to be a health care data broker. PatientTruth brands itself as a health record system where patients can own and make money off their health data.

We’ve also got SUPA, a company who declares itself to be “tokenizing the body”. And this one is targeting young generations to start making some money by just sharing some minor information about your body.

You just have to take a quick look at their websites to start being worried about legalizing data trading.

They claim that the fact that these startups blockchain technology (the same decentralized system that was first used with Bitcoin) makes these transactions and its storage secure and private. But this isn’t about keeping data secure—there are other alternatives. This system does offer a unique advantage: a data-sharing platform which is a database and cryptocurrency. If you put these two in the mix you can create a platform where data pays for itself. The thing is that right now there are no legal ways to claim compensation for data usage. That’s what these startups are trying to do: Legalize data trading and get rid of the current system of data brokerage. They want to become a new kind of data brokerage system.

One of the messages these startups try to drive home is that right now pharmaceutical companies are already buying health data. They buy it from software service providers—software doctors use— that sell it to them.

You should get a commission of those sales. 

That’s what they say.

And this is a really populist message. 

It’s the sort of argument Data Autocrats would use in order to persuade the masses.

Now, one could argue that why shouldn’t we actually profit from it if others are going to do it anyway?

The truth is that right now there’s a huge legal loophole when it comes to data rights. And in this loophole, parties are collecting massive amounts of data without any repercussions. 

Today we haven’t established data trading to be illegal yet. We haven’t legally recognized the value of data either, and it’s in this legal loophole where the conversation needs to take place.

The thing is that we need regulations that make it illegal to collect data without proper consent. But data trading becomes legalized in the meantime, then you kill our only shot to regulate this practice.

That’s why there’s a rush to get the proper legislation in place and legalize data trading.

In February of 2019, California’s governor Gavin Newsom called for the creation of a “data dividend”, so that Californians could make a few bucks for selling their personal information.¹⁷

But this hasn’t been the only attempt. Senator John Kennedy also introduced a bill called “Own Your Data Act”, along with senators Mark Warner and Josh Hawley to start putting a dollar value on users’ data.¹⁸

Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union denounced the bill as a Trojan horse and the bill went nowhere.¹⁹

But this has been the first attempt of many to begin legalizing data trading. 

Whenever there’s a shift in the market, a lot of hungry startups appear. They want a piece of the cake. 

They’ve understood that there’s a shift in the economy. And they want their piece.

THE REAL DATA ECONOMY

The rise of these new types of data brokers is based on the premise that every single person in the world is a source of value—even if they don’t have any money, their data is still valuable. And furthermore, even if these people don’t have any spending habits, their biometric data is valuable. 

Data brokers’ value proposition is: Why don’t we figure out a way to put a value on that data and give back to people the opportunity of economic growth?

At first glance it seems like the obvious choice to avoid a useless class after the culmination of automatization. But there’s something deeper going on here.

This is not about data ownership or about ensuring that people profit from their data being used.

The issue here is that there’s a shift in the economy. 

Right now we’re used to living in an economy in which currencies are being exchanged all the time. Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Yuans, you name it. But the shift we’re seeing in the economy—and it’s becoming pretty clear by now—is that we’re walking towards an economy in which the main thing that’s going to be exchanged is only information.

Thinking in terms of attributing a currency like the dollar to our data is terribly wrong. That misses the point completely. And the new breed of data brokers knows this by heart. 

The economy we’re moving towards won’t allow you to put a dollar value on the information being transmitted. This time it requires its own value in information. It requires putting an informational value in data. 

The real data economy requires payments in information. Not attributing values on information. Big difference. 

This new economy is based on debt, just like the one that we’re leaving behind. But the difference is that data is at the core of that debt. 

Now that we have a proper understanding of the nature of information and the root of the current debate—even though we still don’t have the conceptual framework to deal with this economy—we can start to imagine what the future is going to look like. We can easily see that Data Dictatorships are rushing to establish their own framework.

As you can guess Social Debt Systems are not only about China. In the west we’re moving pretty fast towards a Social Debt System as well.

But we have, apparently, a different taste.

SOCIAL DEBT SYSTEMS ARE COMING TO THE WEST TOO

Let’s face it: Social Debt Systems are coming to the west too. It might seem that I’m being too harsh by comparing the situation in the west with the one in China. But if you look around, Social Debt Systems are springing up around us. They all look a lot like China.

We’re seeing more and more American companies and the US government itself adopting practices that belong to a Social Debt System. And even though this is (arguably) just beginning to spread throughout the United States, it’s worth remembering that these technological companies and the US government operate on a global level. And they control the infrastructure that make the Internet work around the globe.

In China, users are rendered, classified and scored up with every data breadcrumb. Just like we are. We’re ranked everywhere. Uber, Google, Facebook, Amazon, you name it. In May of 2019 Uber said it would start banning passengers with low ratings.²⁰ That same day, Susie Cagle profiled PatronScan, a company that builds up lists of people who have been banned from bars and then “share that information with other establishments.”²¹

But again, the same day these two reports came out, a school in New York made public their plans to deploy a facial recognition system to track students and faculty.²² With the same excuse as always: security. Luckily the implementation was put on hold after a public outcry. And since then it’s been going downhill. Facial recognition is an epidemic and lots of schools want to implement it.

But it doesn’t stop there, of course. In June of 2019, the United States started to require visa applicants to submit their social media profiles alongside their application.²³ But this one isn’t new since the Department of Homeland Security has already been surveilling the social media usage of all immigrants.²⁴ And this includes the accelerated use of facial recognition technology at airports. 

Airlines are building entire “biometric terminals” to check in passengers faster.²⁵ (One database of traveler photos has already been hacked, by the way.)²⁶

But as you can imagine, Social Debt Systems are coming to the workspace as well. Dartmouth researchers announced in 2019 their intentions to combine smartphones and fitness bracelets to measure employee performance.²⁷

We’re constantly being scored. And these are only the rankings that we see. Of course there are obvious differences between what we’re seeing happening in China. But if you pay attention to the pace these practices are evolving, I wonder how long it’s going to take in the west to have fully operational Social Debt Systems.

However, it must be noted that there’s a slight difference in the kind of score being established in the west and East. Shoshana Zuboff argues in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “Chinese users are assigned a ‘character’ score,” Shoshana says, “whereas the US government urges the tech companies to train their algorithms for a ‘radicalism’ score. Indeed, the work of the shadow text is to evaluate, categorize, and predict our behavior in millions of ways that we can neither know nor combat—these are our digital dossiers.” 

Rogier Creemers, Oxford University China scholar, observes that the “trend towards social engineering and ‘nudging’ individuals towards ‘better’ behavior is also part of the Silicon Valley approach that holds that human problems can be solved once and for all through the disruptive power of technology…. In that sense, perhaps the most shocking element of the story is not the Chinese government's agenda, but how similar it is to the path technology is taking elsewhere.”²⁸

This change is being led by Silicon Valley. But this isn’t just being used in the Valley’s realm, of course. Banks, among others, are using this system too. Banks in the US and UK (including financial services firms) have developed their business models around mining and analyzing social media data for the adjudication of credit scores.

Now, the scores being used among the Main Hubs might be measured in different ways. Measuring a “character” score or “radicalization” score might seem different to the public eye. But deep down these are two sides of the same coin. 

What connects the dots here is that in China and the United States there’s a merger between surveillance capitalism and state power. And with this partnership, Data Dictatorships are able to obtain the necessary capabilities to access the unleashed power they seek. Power to automate their control over their territories.

This future might not be as far as we think. Maybe we don’t notice it, but we’re likely walking towards that system. But they don’t call it a social credit system. They call them cryptocurrencies.

CENTRALIZED CRYPTOCURRENCIES

In 2019 Facebook announced their intentions of launching their very own cryptocurrency: Libra. Now, even though there’s a lot of debate around this cryptocurrency, it’s worth taking a second to lay out Facebook’s intentions. Because whether Facebook pulls this off or not, this is a window into the kind of future we’re heading to.

Facebook says Libra is a “global currency and financial infrastructure”. But it is a critical asset built by Facebook which is encrypted with some sort of new version of blockchain.

It’s supposed to be operational in 2020, so it should allow billions of people to instantly make financial transactions online—and this is especially critical for the 1.7 billion people around the world who do not have access to a bank account.

Now, what’s interesting about this is that the currency will be “controlled” by a collective of companies called the “Libra Association”. And what this group will do it to stabilize the coin by pegging it to existing assets like the dollar or euro, so it’ll be less subject to the volatility that most cryptocurrencies experience.

And who’s in this association?

PayPal, Ebay, Spotify, Uber, Lift… But also venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Visa and Mastercard.

It’s not a coincidence that Facebook is teaming up with this group. 

And it’s interesting to pay attention to the fact that PayPal and MasterCard are in this association. Two players who have implemented their own social score in the shadows and have banned people users on their social behavior. And even though they have ceased from doing this since recently, it’s clear that this is the path we’re heading towards. Maybe it’s not going to be in 2020, but it will happen sooner than we think.

Leaving aside all of the possible consequences of this new cryptocurrency creation—such as disturbing the stability of the financial system, or creating as a result countries with a fragile balance of payments—the main threat is that Facebook has become much too powerful. 

Facebook could become a fully fledged bank. They say they don’t have those intentions, but we’ll have to pay close attention once Libra takes off.

Just to compare apples with apples, JPMorgan has 50 million digital clients. Libra could easily have 10 or 20 times that (let’s remember that more than 2 billion people use Facebook’s products.) Which means that they could have a huge reserve fund making it a big force in bond markets.

And let’s not fool ourselves thinking that Libra will be an independent coin. Facebook says that it will back off once the coin takes over and just mind their business with Calibra (their digital wallet.) But I don’t have to tell you that it’s not going to happen. 

We saw what happened in the subprime crisis of 2007. That happened considering that no bank had the power Facebook could potentially have. What could Facebook do to the global financial stability with such a power?

Let’s be honest, so far this doesn’t change anything. I trust Wall Street just as much as I trust Facebook: nothing.

The devil’s deal here is that Facebook won’t just have the financial muscle, but it will have the extremely precise social knowledge no bank has. That makes Facebook one of the biggest global threats. Even considering the scope of the control of China has over its citizens, Facebook is everywhere. Internet.org, which is Facebook's plan to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to developing countries—which later evolved into something they call “free basics”—showed us their true intentions: controlling the access to information in developing countries. Facebook could become a new sort of entity of trust creation. That trust would be based on your social behavior. 

But maybe it’s true that they don’t want to become a bank. Maybe that idea is outdated. Because why become a bank when you can be much more than that?

CENTRALIZED CRYPTOCURRENCIES, PART TWO

This isn’t about Facebook. This is about the evolution of the economic system.

And so far this transition needs a token. Similar enough to money so that we can understand it, but different enough to become the tool of Social Debt Systems.

That’s why China has also announced their own cryptocurrency. 

In 2019 the People's Bank of China stated that their cryptocurrency “can now said to be ready” after five years of work.²⁹

The Chinese Social Debt System requires a currency that serves as a value. But of course, it couldn’t be any cryptocurrency nor could it be the Yuan. The Chinese regime needs a stable coin with a controlled value. 

And again, if you think about putting a value in dollars on this cryptocurrency, you’re missing the point. This coin will have its own value. This coin is just something handy for people to understand and cross this transition towards the economy Data Dictatorships want to impose. 

Don’t let the noise miss the signal. These are just currencies without any value by themselves. This is about a new sort of value in information attributed to a digital coin. It’s not about the old model. This is something brand new. 

And the Main Hubs are fighting to become the ones controlling the source of debt in the centuries to come.

These new cryptocurrencies are just that: our way to attribute a value to information. But based in the information.

Beyond that, we’ve got the real credit. And that’s social behavior. 

But at the core we find that data is the real measure of debt.

Cryptocurrencies are the currency.
Social behavior is the credit.
Data is the debt.

The United States and China are two sides of the same coin, regardless of what it may look from the outside.

Even though China is looking way ahead into the future (and getting there faster than anyone), they're showing us a more advanced currency that I believe it's going to be the norm in the future: a currency within their social credit system.

China is much more bold with its movements. That’s what happens when a government is determined to surveil with no inhibition whatsoever.

On the other hand, the west (the Facebooks and the ones to come) is showing us the same thing, but covered with a thin veil that makes the transition smooth enough so we willingly adopt that change. So far they’re hiding the Social Debt System—they’re acting in the shadows, but the currency the Main Hubs want us to adopt, is within their Social Debt System. 

Deep down, all Social Debt Systems work the same way.

Both main hubs are launching their own cryptocurrency. The crypto part doesn’t matter, because they’re basing the trust of the coin on a few entities.

Being honest, today we lack the knowledge or the experience to conceptualize the framework this system could take. This framework is unclear. What’s clear, though, is that we’re walking towards economic value that’s based “in information.” Not “on information.” And these cryptocurrencies will be the coins that will be used inside the Social Debt Systems.

Do you have a good behavior? You get to earn coins. 

Do you have a bad behavior? Maybe your credit is frozen for a few days. 

And in the west the same thing is happening.

Maybe there’s no explicit Social Credit System, but it works the same way. 

Do you act within their guidelines? If you don’t, you get banned from the service. Or you get a temporal suspension. Or you get your account frozen.

Cryptocurrencies such as Libra or the Chinese one would be the actual credit inside the social system.

THE CORE OF THIS NEW ECONOMIC MODEL

You might be confused right now about Social Debt Systems. Cryptocurrencies. Data transactions. The whole thing.

But let’s try to deconstruct the thinking here. 

So, what’s at the core of this system?

Even though social behavior might seem to be the core of this new economic model, I believe social behavior comes later. Data is the key.

Data is what creates what Edward Snowden calls a permanent record. Data is what allows Data Dictatorships to gain access to this raw materialization of power. Social behavior, on the other hand, is what allows the Main Hubs to keep track of debt.

It’s not money as we know it. It’s not a cryptocurrency. It’s not social behavior.

These are just mere tools that help to run the system. But the core relies on data as its raw asset.

And this is why legalizing data trading is extremely dangerous. Once you start selling data you unlock this economic framework. And it gives leeway for Data Dictatorships to operate globally under no restrictions whatsoever. 

Data Autocrats are trying to get ahead and establish their own framework across their colonies.

Over and over, just like we saw with Nixon’s actions by detaching the dollar from gold, the same story repeats itself: whenever there’s a big shift in the economy, what ends up happening is that wealth is taken from the developing world and flows to the nation leading the economic change.

Today we’re seeing this same effect in the Digital Cold War. This change will drive all the wealth to California and Eastern China where data is collected, analyzed and exploited.

SOCIAL DEBT SYSTEMS AND THE ARMS RACE MENTALITY

What we’re seeing in China is extremely dangerous—especially the Chinese surveillance capabilities in Xinjiang and other regions. 

It is extremely dangerous because witnessing what the Chinese are doing openly is fueling up the arms race mentality in the US and other nations in the world. Which is: this is going to spread and amplify around the world.

But it has already spread around.

While China is surveilling in the open, in the west this is done in secret. And if we need more proof about this mentality that has spread around, a few years ago you could say that at least in the US they didn’t imprison people in camps—but now you just have to take a look at how the US is treating people at their borders. They’re forcefully separating undocumented children from their parents and placing them in tent camps in the desert. Or consider the blacklists of whistleblowers the US has. Or the atrocities the CIA has done over the years, consistently staining the developing world with blood.

Now they’re creating another blacklist. A new kind of list: their own version of a Social Debt System.

In fact, if the Chinese pull this off (and they’re very close to doing it) and establish the right framework to make their Social Debt System work, it will be perceived as a threat to the US. It will fuel the binary thinking of if we don’t do it, they will get ahead. And that’s terribly dangerous.

Alas, in China people can’t fight the government—at least in theory. But in liberal democracies you’re supposed to be able to fight. And that’s why the US government and other surveillance states camouflaged under a liberal democracy keep this in the dark. Because they know that people wouldn’t let them get away with it. And they’re able to get away with it because their actions are outsourced to corporations—the ones who don’t have to answer to anyone. The ones who can act in secrecy.

The problem we’re facing though is that it’s not only the Main Hub’s global reach that’s going to spread this system. Countries who could be considered as neutral could end up adopting Social Debt Systems.

Maybe some countries don’t want to implement this technology, but are caught in the middle of this escalating arms race mentality. It’s us or them.

This could lead to a massive adoption of Social Debt Systems. And it doesn’t have to be about the Main Hubs or Data Autocrats clashing one against the other. It could be economies around the world demanding Social Debt Systems.

Imagine that if Chinese companies are using the social index system to hire people—and they’re doing way better than European companies—this might raise some concerns within European companies. 

Maybe some studies would start proving that companies hiring through social index systems are doing way better and increase their performance by a lot. Then we would start seeing European companies pressuring governments to adopt a Social Debt system.

Because if we don’t adopt this system, the Chinese will take over. End of the discussion. They’d say.

This is why the arms race mentality is so dangerous.

Now, let’s be clear. The way money works is not set up to work for the people. It works for those controlling the debt. For those who generate the debt. It supports the creditors, not the debtors.

It’s a system that doesn’t look after our best interests, but for those whole rule the system.

But the fact that the old model is not good for us, doesn’t mean that we should embrace this one instead. Because this one actually looks a lot worse. 

Maybe what we need is a whole new system. A system that works for us—not for those who want to control us.

The difference with money was that back then nobody knew anything about this, so it was basically easy to force people to adopt something when they couldn’t even understand how it works.

But let’s not fool ourselves, because we don’t know sh*t either.

We’re soon likely to start seeing countries demanding better returns on the crucial data they provide to the Main Hubs.

As we start coping with the sequels of this technological disruption, more and more countries will want to start getting paid for the data they’re exporting. That way these countries would satisfy their short-term needs when robots replace workers—the kind of thing that would make a politician look good to get re-elected.

This, of course, will make the sequels more dramatic that one can imagine.

As we adopt Social Debt Systems around the world, our debt will become even bigger. And we’ll see new inequalities more brutal than the ones we have seen to this day.

Today, you and I are on the list. The question is no longer whether we’re on the list or not. The question is what our rank is on that list.

Social Debt Systems are the greatest Data Autocrat’s dream: Controlling people without imprisonment.

And the reality is that we’re heading towards these systems really fast. Social Debt Systems aren’t gonna go away. They’re here to stay.

BOOK FIVE

THE SEQUELS

IS SOCIAL MEDIA MAKING PEOPLE DEPRESSED?

I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve lived in several countries in Asia, South America and Europe, and what I loved the most was meeting new people. I’ve stayed in hostels, hotels, sh*tholes, I’ve been everywhere. I’ve traveled alone, which made it great to meet new people and immerse myself into every culture. But with that I discovered a terrifying truth that’s changing our society without us noticing:

We’re outsourcing our identity to social media platforms.

I was surprised that a lot of people were traveling alone. But what was more surprising was that a lot of the people who were traveling alone showed symptoms of depression. But, was it really depression?

Here I have to be honest with you and tell you that at the beginning of my trip through Southeast Asia, I used social media much more often than usual. I even started to share more pictures than I’ve ever shared. But then I started to look around and saw people doing the same thing—but you could tell that the way they excessively shared stuff on social media was making these people feel depressed and alone (actually some people I met told me that.) They were in the most beautiful places in the world, but still, they couldn’t face this reality.

Somehow, I could myself relate with them to some degree. And I didn’t like that. So, immediately, I stopped using social media, and limited the amount of time I spent using messaging platforms to just a few minutes per day. That was when I started to see “the real world.”

Something interesting happens when you disconnect from your phone and focus on the real world. You start to observe. By that time I had read some articles about the relationship between the use of social media and depression.¹ But this wasn’t just about people who were traveling alone. People who traveled in groups were also showing symptoms of depression. Which leads us to the following question:

Is social media making people depressed?

Maybe these people have never traveled alone before. I don’t know. It could be that I happened to meet depressed people. Or it could be a bunch of things. But something was very wrong.

Is social media leading people towards depression?

Is there something deeper here?

I believe depression is just the tip of the iceberg. Right here there’s something more problematic than that: We’re outsourcing the perception of our own reality to platforms like Facebook. And as insignificant that might seem, it’s making us delusional and leading us towards really bad outcomes.

I consider myself pretty lucky, because I was able to get out of this nonsense. Maybe if I hadn’t gone on this trip I wouldn’t have noticed what was going on. But by traveling alone and observing people for long periods of time, it hit me pretty clearly:

Social media is transforming our identities and making us delusional about the way we perceive reality.

WORLDVIEWS AND STORIES

For the last few years there’s been (still is) this conversation around whether people should go to college or not. I’m not sure what’s my opinion on this. But for me deciding to go to college and studying marketing was a great choice. It gave me something I believe to be critical in order to understand what’s going on in today’s world: Being able to observe and analyze human motivations.

Part of my training was to understand why people behave the way they do, with big emphasis on the following question:

Why do people buy stuff?

And that’s very powerful. Once you know that, it doesn’t take long to realize that everybody’s got their own worldview, their own story and, deep down—once basic needs are met—people seek status when they buy or use a product or a service.

YOUR OWN HOLLYWOOD STORY

Hollywood can teach us a lot of things about human motivations. If you go back—decades back or almost a century back—you’ll find out that movies couldn’t be more different from one another. Yes, they all followed a structure, because we’ve got thousands of years of experience telling stories, but not that much experience shooting video. So each story tried to find the path in what was a new medium back then—because when you don’t know the path, you have to create the path.

Over time, Hollywood understood human motivations. And I could go even further to say that they educated us. They taught us what to expect. And when to expect it. They let us know, by subtle clues, who was the bad guy, who was the good guy, and when something bad was about to happen. (Every horror scene kicks in with violin music, and as far as I know, violins have never killed anyone.)

Long story short, Joseph Campbell shows up with the Hero’s Journey template, and suddenly we get this magical recipe: Movies that “match” the audience’s story with the hero’s one, have better chances of becoming a blockbuster.

Why do you think we love the typical movies so much? Because they follow a structure. And that structure happens to involve us in it—we could be the hero of the movie. That structure adds up to our inner narrative. It builds up our story and matches our vision about ourselves.

That’s why, even though we know how the movie is going to end, we enjoy it so much. I do. And you do, too. Because we’re able to engage with the story and match it with our own inner story. This is especially relevant with superhero movies: Superhero movies work better in depressing times or economical busts.²

Believe it or not, reality works the same way.

Our worldviews are filtered through our own stories. The way we see the world is based on our story’s structure.

We work through stories.

YOUR STORY, YOUR IDENTITY

The human mind is constantly creating stories. The one with the bigger emphasis? The story of self. That’s the most important story for everybody: my story. We’re storytelling machines.

Storytelling has a wide variety of structures, concepts, themes, genres, you go down the list. And it’s the same with our own stories. People go through life with different filters. Some people specialize in comedy, others in drama. It all builds up with the story you tell yourself, about yourself. In the end, our identity is just a story. It’s the way we see ourselves. It’s the way we interpret who we are.

But, all of these stories are fictional. They might be true in a sense that they somehow happened, but our interpretation of particular events is totally up to us. It’s subjective. It’s just not a real thing. Because the way you see yourself and the world might be totally different than the way your neighbor does.

Up until now this has been a process that’s just happened in your mind. Your own inner abilities have contributed, actively, in constructing your story. But when technology kicks in—especially social media platforms—our role in this process turns passive. We’re outsourcing this process to social platforms like Facebook.

These platforms are giving us better ways to construct our stories, our identities. They’re giving us a stage. But while all this process used to place in our minds, under our own criteria, (biased criteria, but inside our heads, nonetheless), now it takes place on social media. It’s when you set up your Instagram account that you start building your story, showing it to everybody and becoming extremely attached to it.

Imagine you go to your social media’s profile and start looking at pictures you posted four or five years ago. There’s one picture where you’re with your friends at a party, smiling, yelling, having a blast. You look at the picture and just remember how great that night was, and that your friends are awesome.

So far so good. But what you don’t remember is that that night you had a terrible time. You were at a terrible party you didn’t want to be at. And your friend was complaining about his or her partner the whole night.

Well, that’s a reality for a lot of people. You had a terrible night. But when you look at that picture, where you smiled for five seconds, you think it was a fantastic night. How’s that even possible?

You start believing that’s the real you. In one way or another you’re modifying your perceptions of past events. And that’s where it gets tricky.

Moran Cerf, Doctor in neuroscience, explains in an interview pretty accurately what happens with your memories:³

“Your brain goes with you and carries all of the history in the form of memories. All you have from what happened before you, stored in the form of memories. They’re not accurate. They’re compressed. That’s only about the past. You have no idea in the future, even though your brain tries to predict it all the time. This is what dreams are for. This is what decisions are for. You try to simulate the future and make predictions.

“You don’t know what’s going on. All you have is this sliver of reality which is the present. All you have. You control everything that happens there.

“The nice thing about the present is that it interacts with everything in your brain, and you can change things. What we learned in the last five years is that memories are different in how they work. If I have to summarize it to one sentence, they change every time you use them.

“If you have a memory stored here or what you had for lunch yesterday, and I ask you what did you have for lunch, you basically open them. Right now, you tell me a story, but whatever happens now goes into the story and you say it differently.

“If I ask you tomorrow what you had for lunch, you’ll open the modified version. So, every time I ask you the same question, you open a different version, which means you can actually change the past. You can change the experience of things.”

If you think about it, this is why therapy works. With each session the therapist helps you to change the memories of the event that caused you pain. Every time the therapist asks you the same question, you come up with a modified memory of the event. So you visit the therapist, until you get to a point where you change your narrative about what actually happened.

This is exactly what social media does to you. It keeps bringing you all these “happy” memories and with each session (every time you check your profile) it changes your perception of your reality. It pushes your fictional story into your mind, and you start believing your own bullsh*t.

Have you ever reviewed pictures from your childhood or any vacation and have this great nostalgia feeling? Do you ever stop and think about what happened that day? Maybe it was a horrible day, but somehow you manage to suppress those memories, and just remember the smile you used for a couple of seconds when the picture was taken.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing good memories and trying to be happy. In fact, we tend to remember positive memories.⁴ The problem comes when the only things you remember about the past are the few happy events and you lose control over your own narrative.

If you just put on a mask when you take a picture and smile for just a couple of seconds, but the rest of the day you feel and look miserable… Then something’s very wrong.

In the end, you’d end up living in your own bubble. The bubble that builds up your fictional story and rules your life.

While this has happened for a long time, this process only used to take place in your own head. But now? You’ve got your own stage on social media.

HERE IT IS, YOUR OWN STAGE

Simply put, social media is a game where the only outcome we worry about is how we look to others. And this isn’t something new, it’s been happening way before social media platforms showed up. The problem is that while your status didn’t have to be higher than anyone else in the world’s—just higher than the people in your circle—now that circle is the whole world.

What social media networks are giving you is a show where you prove that you’re better than the people around you. It doesn’t matter if you’re feeling depressed. What matters is how you look like to others. There’s also another side of this that leads to depression and anxiety. That’s when you see that the people in your circle—an amplified circle—are doing way better than you are.

Social media is a show. A show about status. It’s about who’s up and who’s down. These platforms give you a stage where you can play their game.

It’s not a coincidence that most casino strategies and game theories are embedded very deeply into these platforms. Because from the very first day, they knew what was this all about: Status roles.

Even though it’s true that social media platforms allow us to efficiently construct our stories, it’s also true that the process of creating our stories—which has always been an active and internal process—is now being outsourced to sites like Facebook. And people are spending hours and hours per day building a ridiculous story fueled by status. A story to which, in the end, you become very attached to. And you just end up believing.

But let me tell you, that’s not the real you. Most profiles do not reflect reality. They do not reflect the outer reality, nor the inner one.

Social media platforms are making people delusional. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and the rest of them are tweaking your perception of reality and shaping your identity without you even being aware of it.

So, why is this happening? Sure, social media platforms are giving us a stage to play status games—a stage to prove we’re just a little above everyone else. But I believe there’s something else here.

The hard truth is that sticking with reality is painful.

In fact, facing one’s reality can be one of the toughest challenges anyone can face. And this is why these platforms come in handy. Deep down, people don’t want to acknowledge things about themselves. They just don’t. It’s easier to play the status game and feel great in the short-term.

So, it wouldn’t be surprising if people leading their lives in a way to keep building up this stage, would it? And the worst of all is that they might not even be aware of it.

Maybe I’m not making myself clear yet. But this is way, way bigger than we think it is. It’s not only shaping our individual realities, but our society as a whole. And this could lead us to terrible outcomes.

REALITY IS A B*TCH

After I came back from my adventure through Southeast Asia, I deeply thought about all of these issues, and I felt compelled to find a deeper truth. It was a hard task, so I forced myself and wrote Defeating Mr. Mole, a book about my journey of discovering this truth. Which is kind of funny, because I only got answer these questions in the active process of writing the book—it wasn’t that I discovered that truth and then wrote the book.

And I haven’t told this to anyone yet, but the process of finding out that truth was very painful.

You know those situations when you’re aware that you have to do something (send that email, make that call or just check in with your doctor) and you avoid doing it because you might not like what you’ll find out? That was exactly the feeling I was trying to avoid. Nevertheless, I had no choice but to find out.

Reality was tougher than I expected. I discovered that most of the problems I was facing happened because I had built a different story, a different identity. And it was only by getting to the root of these problems that, to some degree, I was able to get to build my story—on my own terms, not the ones you get by outsourcing the process to Facebook.

In the end, everything ends up making sense. There’s a reason you don’t want to unveil the truth in the first place. But maybe we all should go through that process and become aware of our own selves. Otherwise this situation might take us to places we don’t want to be.

Deep down, everybody cares about his or her own story. But, collectively, we all suffer from the stories social media pushes us to believe.

They do matter to all of us, because these stories are what shape our society and dictate our future. If you mess up with these stories, then Brexit happens, Trump happens, but also Wars happen. It shifts the situation from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds.

We have to be very careful about how we craft these stories. In the end, social media is shaping our culture and society in ways we’re not seeing coming. These platforms are steering our society to places where these fictional stories that shape our identities will make us pay a very high price.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE LOSS OF JOBS

When people talk about the loss of jobs, I can’t stop thinking about what Friedrich Nietzsche famously said: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

And this automatically leads to the following questions: What if the massive loss of jobs we are going to experience (or we already have experienced) could make people lose their why?

What if millions and millions of people won’t be able to bear any how? This is exactly what we encounter with the massive loss of jobs due to automatization.

One of the main challenges we’re going to face with this process isn’t monetary. Somehow we’ll be able to figure out how to restructure the economy. But I believe one of the greatest challenges are going to be psychological.

People will have a lot of time for themselves. That could be great. But we’ve got a long history that makes our individual selves irrelevant and people’s identities are usually tied to their work.

Some people might decide to develop their own identity by being a freelancer or entrepreneur. Or just a creative person, a creator, a doer. Or some people might just detach their identities from their work. But that won’t be the rule. In fact, that’s going to be the exception.

Millions of people develop their identities by working for other people. Employees who can lose their jobs, and with that their identities.

WHO WILL PAY FOR THERAPY?

The loss of jobs won’t just bring inequality, it will also trigger one of the biggest challenges society will face. Because, what will people do with so much free time? And, of course, how will people make ends meet? Let’s forget for a second about monetary problems and focus on the psychological challenges of not having a job in today’s world.

The hard truth is that today if you don’t have a job and don’t work on something, you’re in big trouble.

If you don’t have a job you face two big problems. First of all, it comes down to your biological rhythms. People who don’t work in any form, don’t have a reason to go to bed at a particular time and there’s no reason to get up at the same time. And not following up the functioning of their circadian rhythms is likely to make these people depressed.⁵ The second part of this is that usually people without a job in any form don’t have a purpose. That purpose doesn’t have to mean changing the world, it can mean to take care of their families.

And while it is true that a lot of people don’t see their job as a purpose, at least they see it as part of themselves and it keeps them on a schedule. This is also problematic and we could write an entire book on this. But if you remove this job from these people, they would have a very hard time.

Of course, this isn’t the same for everyone. If you give certain people free time, it would allow them to create things, read, think about the future and, of course, enjoy life. But for most people that’s not what they want or need.

Because if you ask people who are not happy at work, what they want the most, they’ll say vacations and free time. On the other hand, if you ask any unemployed person what he or she wants, most people would say they want to work.

Surprisingly, when people retire and have nothing to do, few of them decide to make a good use of their time. It’s the other way around: time makes them. When people stop working and retire they lose part of their identity, and in many chases that leads to depression and lack of purpose.

Losing that identity is part of retiring, but what we don’t notice is that depression comes along with that too.

The thing is that our societies have already experienced these changes with retired people. And some of them are happy retired people. But too often, this is it, right? You retire and you go to some beach. And do nothing. Or you become slowly more isolated from the community you once found in the kinship of your profession as you lead a life where your social interactions can be very scarce. And increased loneliness is one of the most prominent triggers of depression.

But, have you ever thought about what this would look like if younger generations went through this very process? Have you ever thought what would it take people to reinvent themselves professionally every decade when automatization makes their job obsolete and they must quickly train for a new profession?

Because, since technology is exponential, we’re not gonna just see this disruption in automation. This disruption will release the next one. And the next one. It’s a never ending process.

Today people have to reinvent themselves for automation. But in a few years they’ll have to do it again for another disruption. A lot of people say that these jobs that are taken will be replaced by new ones (interesting aside here: it’s funny that most people who say this have some sort of interest behind this happening.) But this time won’t be the same.

I think this is an important issue we need to start talking about, and bring it to politicians. Most politicians don’t talk about this. Yes, they talk about job creations but these are merely bandages.

Hey, we might not have to work in the future after all. A lot of people will be fine with it. In fact, jobs as we know them haven’t been around for too long. Yes, we’ve worked in farms before, but this concept of “jobs” started with the industrial revolution— it isn’t more than 150 years old. But let’s say we manage to get things right and find a way to sustain people and solve the complex monetary issues. There are still problems that won’t go away.

THE UBI FALLACY

With the rise of artificial intelligence, we’re heading towards a scenario that might not need us as workers. Which in some cases is great, as long as we figure out a universal basic income (UBI) or something that would take care of all of the people displaced by algorithms.

The debate on this topic is becoming more and more urgent, and there are a lot of people talking about this. Elon Musk said we urgently need to work on some sort of UBI. Bill Gates suggested that we should collect taxes from robots if they displace humans. There are several suggestions, but none of them are attacking the root of the problem.

There are two opposites in the argument on the future of work. A positive one and a negative one. The latter is easy to guess: artificial intelligence is going to take over our jobs—which will happen eventually. And the positive one is new job opportunities will come up—true as well. That’s a no-brainer. The question to ask is: What’s going to be the immediate impact? How will it affect this change in people’s lives?

Yuval Noah Harari said in a TED interview:⁶

“If you look at the trajectory of the new industrial revolution, when machines replaced humans in one type of work, the solution usually came from low-skill work in new lines of business. So you didn’t need any more agricultural workers—people moved to working in low-skill industrial jobs. And when this was taken away by more and more machines people moved to low-skill service jobs.

“Now, when people say there will be new jobs in the future, that humans can do better than AI, that humans can do better than robots, they usually think about high-skill jobs. Like software engineers designing virtual worlds. I don’t see how an unemployed cashier from Walmart reinvents herself at 50 as a designer of virtual worlds. And certainly I don’t see how the millions of unemployed Bangladeshi textile workers will be able to do that.

“If they are going to do it we need to start teaching the Bangladeshis today how to be software designers. And we’re not doing it. So what will they do in 20 years?”

That doesn’t make developing a UBI an easy task. We are immersed in a global economy, therefore universal income can’t be a national solution. Because technology won’t just take over American jobs, or European ones. It will take over jobs from every part of the world. So how do you craft a UBI system?

Let me put this another way:

How can we make a UBI system global while most governments are worried about short-term results on a national scale? Focusing on a long-term global scale doesn’t make a politician look good. And even if this politician wants to prepare his or her country for what’s coming, maybe its citizens won’t approve of any long-term measures while they’re struggling on a day-to-day basis.

Consider Macron when in 2018 made public his bold vision of an “ecological transition”, where by 2035 14 nuclear reactors would be closed as well as promising to reduce the use of fossil fuels. But it turns out that France is the most nuclear-dependent country in the world. And this idea wasn’t well received among French citizens. So when Macron made this big promise, there was chaos in Paris and people took the streets to protest that they can’t even make ends meet, and here was Macron making this long-term decision.⁷

So the thing is, short-term needs will beat long-term worries every single time, regardless of the intentions of politicians.

The other problem of UBI that Yuval Noah Harari points out in his book 21 lessons for the 21st century, is what does basic mean?:

“Universal basic support is meant to take care of basic human needs, but there is no accepted definition for that. From a purely biological perspective, a Sapiens needs just 1,500–2,500 calories per day in order to survive. Anything more is a luxury. Yet over and above this biological poverty line, every culture in history defined additional needs as ‘basic’. In medieval Europe, access to church services was seen as even more important than food, because it took care of your eternal soul rather than of your ephemeral body. In today’s Europe, decent education and health care services are considered basic human needs, and some argue that even access to the Internet is now essential for every man, woman and child. If in 2050 the United World government agrees to tax Google, Amazon, Baidu and Tencent in order to provide basic support for every human being on earth – in Dhaka as well as in Detroit – how will they define ‘basic’?

“For example, what does basic education include: just reading and writing, or also composing computer code and playing the violin? Just six years of elementary school, or everything up to a PhD? And what about health care? If by 2050 medical advances make it possible to slow down ageing processes and significantly extend human lifespans, will the new treatments be available to all 10 billion humans on the planet, or just to a few billionaires? If biotechnology enables parents to upgrade their children, would this be considered a basic human need, or would we see humankind splitting into different biological castes, with rich superhumans enjoying abilities that far surpass those of poor Homo sapiens?”

Even though there are some politicians that are focusing on UBI systems—especially with the upcoming US 2020 election—they’re all getting it wrong. 

I have nothing against these politicians. I believe that the world is probably better off with these politicians than other ones. But here we’ve got two answers for this: Either (1) These politicians are aware that UBI is a national patch that doesn’t do any good for the rest of the world—it contributes to create a worse problem. Or (2) they are unaware of the consequences of this way of thinking.

Now, I don’t know which one is worse.

Maybe we should call these measures National Subjective Income.

ARE WE WILLING TO ADOPT A NEW ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MODEL?

There are a lot of challenges when it comes to UBIs. A big one could be if people are actually willing to redefine jobs. And by that I mean creating jobs that serve more as a social service than a job itself. Or staying at home so people can raise their kids and receive a salary for that. Currently, family care is defined by many scholars as the informal economy. But this care—which is currently primarily undertaken by women—provides services that in many cases covers for deficiencies in actual health care systems in many countries.

Women’s movements have denounced the injustice of the lack of recognition as this work as something that actively contributes to the social and economic capital of a country (as in many countries they are expected to perform these tasks and are not allowed to enter the formal economy.) Redefining what work really means and justly paying not only women, but men for a task that contributes to the wealth of the nation, would be an important precedent for redefining the economy.

If we can do that we’d be in good shape. Training people for the new—highly skilled jobs in sectors like engineering and computer science—will cost a lot of money, and success is not guaranteed. So we could use that money and redistribute it to these new jobs.

But that presents a social challenge. And that’s whether people are willing to adopt a new economic and social model.

That’s a beast in itself.

There are many challenges with the loss of jobs, but the biggest one is a global one. The truth is that there will be a lot of jobs. But where? Most of these jobs will be in the AI industry in California or Eastern China. 

Somehow governments will find a way to get to a greater tax distribution—that’s their traditional role after all. Whenever the market isn’t efficient enough, it’s the job of governments to redistribute wealth properly.

But the question here is which governments will have something to redistribute?

The thing, is the Americans and the Chinese will be okay. They “own all the pipes”, so they will have something to redistribute to their citizens. But what about the rest of the world? Because right, now more and more wealth is flowing to the US and China. Wealth that’s being taken away from other countries and flowing into the main hubs.

That’s why talking about national redistribution of this wealth is futile and pointless in the big picture.

This is a new form of colonization. It is global data colonization. It’s a similar to what happened in the industrial revolution, with a little tweak. But let’s consider an example from the industrial revolution, because it will get us up to speed.

In the nineteenth century one of the most profitable businesses was producing textiles. Britain, the leader of the industrial revolution, grew cotton in Egypt—one of its colonies. They sent home the raw cotton from Egypt. Then they produced clothes in Manchester. And finally they sent back to Egypt the final product. And all the profits stayed in Manchester, of course. And this is exactly what we’re seeing with the data economy.

So if you think about Brazil, Vietnam or Mexico the same thing is happening right now—but the raw materials are different. All the “products” being assembled in California of Eastern China are made from the raw materials of these three countries and many, many more. Then these products are globally used. And where does the wealth go? To the United States and China.

So it’s easy to imagine a future in which the US government taxes the tech giants in California and redistributes this wealth in the other US states. But I’m having problems imagining a future in which we tax the tech giants in California and Beijing and send the money to Brazil or Vietnam.

When truck drivers or textile workers in these countries lose their jobs—because in the future it’s cheaper to outsource this work to the tech giants—what will people there do?

What will happen to the people in the developing world, when their jobs are replaced by automatization?

This is plain and blunt data colonization. And it’s going to lead to one of the most brutal forms of inequality we’ve ever seen.

Let’s not fool ourselves by thinking that new jobs will be created. Yes, that’s true. But where? Most of these jobs will be in the AI industry in California or Beijing.⁸ Highly skilled jobs that will require a high level of training and education. And these countries simply do not have the infrastructure or the capital to provide the transition for their workers in the supply chain system to become computer engineers. And the Main Hub clearly will be willing to invest in its own unemployed citizens, above providing these resources to the global South.

This is why this is not a relevant solution. Not at all.

But let’s not forget that data colonization will get to a point where that data is no longer needed. Once we get to Phase Two, these countries will have become totally colonized. Right now tech giants and governments still need the data points to train the AI—that’s for now though.

NEW JOBS WON'T MATTER. IT'S NOT ABOUT LABOR ANYMORE

The debate around the loss of jobs is a pretty basic one. It’s even taking place out of context. 

We’re seeing a rising interest in this topic in the public conversation. Alas, it’s only the loss of jobs that gets people’s interest. The hard truth is that this is used as an excuse to grab people’s attention, but we fail to cover the big picture. 

We’re worried about automatization, but it’s not just that. If we just focus on automatization we wouldn’t be much different than a Luddite movement. There’s something bigger going on here.

In 2019 Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, and Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, SpaceX and a bunch of other companies, met in Shanghai to have a debate on the future of AI, Space exploration, the future of jobs and a bunch of other things.⁹

Elon Musk raised a few concerns about the future of jobs, but Jack Ma was optimistic about it. The Chinese billionaire challenged the concept of jobs, and stated that we shouldn’t work as much in the future as we do now. 

“Jobs? Don’t worry about it” — Jack Ma

It would be fantastic if, somehow, we figure out a way to work less hours and have more meaningful experiences. And automatically, our System 1, the brain that basically reacts, would accept that premise and vote for it. But underneath, if we use our System 2 a little bit, we’d discover something darker behind the scenes.

It’s funny that people who say that we shouldn’t worry about jobs and that new jobs will be created, usually have secret interests behind this.

The reason we shouldn’t worry about the future of jobs is because labor is no longer what feeds the capitalist model. Today what feeds surveillance capitalism is every aspect of every human’s experience.

In the twentieth century, labor was required in order to make the capitalist system work. In the twenty-first century, labor won’t matter that much. Because what makes the system run are humans. Humans as the raw materialization of power: data. As Shoshana Zuboff states in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, we’re the fuel that makes the system work. We’re not even the product.

I don’t have to tell you the consequences of this system. As you can tell the loss of jobs and the loss of existential purpose is a big one. Sociologist Emile Durkheim conceived this loss of meaning as the anomic suicide of civilization—a concrete period in time where such a systematic disruption causes a widespread loss of values, existential purpose and a collective will to live.¹⁰ But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Again, we can’t predict the future. But with all the facts on the table, it’s easy to see a trail that leads towards a really dark and dystopian future. A future with two castes of people clearly separated: people who can afford to hide their human experience from Data Dictatorships, and people who can’t.

That will give birth to really big inequalities. And these two castes of people won’t just come from the UBI gap, but from the lack of privacy itself. I call this privacy inequality.

These are people who won’t be able to escape from their social debt. A debt that will get bigger and bigger. 

This will be a gap among citizens that will be measured by whether they can avoid their social behavior being tracked, or they can't. It's not just people who are going to suffer from ads and will be persuaded to behave in a certain way. Or people being charged from crimes they haven’t committed yet. That's the basic thinking from Minority Report, a movie that represents this kind of future. But the breadcrumbs lead to something bigger. These are people whose life will be completely conditioned by their social behavior—because there will permanent record on them that will dictate their freedom.

PRIVACY INEQUALITY

Inevitably, killing privacy has its side effects. One of them is the birth of privacy inequality.

I define privacy inequality as the difference among individuals in a society where privacy is the amplifier of existent inequalities, but unlike any other inequality, this form of difference pushes society to the extremes.

It is likely that privacy inequality will be the most brutal form of inequality humans will be exposed to in the upcoming decades. And even though we’re unaware of the magnitude of this new form of exclusion, this new phenomena’s relevance is increasing too fast.

What makes privacy inequality terrifying is that it’s an intensifier. It makes the other inequalities appear to be more insignificant, propelling them to a whole different level. It is acute and yet almost unperceivable. It works in the shadows.

But it’s an essential tool in Data Autocrats’ arsenal. It’s a tool to dehumanize and rule the masses. 

And what’s happening is that the rate of change is outpacing our ability to understand it. And when you can’t understand what is happening in front of you, there are side effects like new forms of inequality bridging the social divide further.

There are a lot of things to consider when we analyze this new breed of inequality. And of course, there are a lot of things we can’t imagine because they haven’t happened yet. However, one of the things we need to understand about this new phenomena, is that it flourishes because of the basic nature of data—which is that its value increases exponentially over time.

I have a two-year-old niece. And since she was born, I have started to notice what people do when they have babies: Share lots of pictures and videos. And I don’t just mean on social media, but through messaging platforms like Whatsapp. And that data is stored in someone else’s server.

My niece doesn’t live nearby, so when I can’t go and visit her and her parents, my family and I like to see pictures and videos of her. But, what happens with that data that’s sent through a messaging platform? Could that data ever turn against my niece in the future?

Right now I think a lot about that, of course. It seems incredible that an app that allows you to keep in touch with your loved ones and share your most precious moments, would ever become dangerous for you. But in the end, this is a business that will exploit every little vulnerability it can in order to extract all of your value.

This is the danger of dealing with data over time. Especially with AI getting better every single day.

If you pick a recording from a conversation and analyze it yourself, you could actually make a very accurate identification of the speaker’s profile: age, gender, language, probably education, and a bunch of other things. A few years ago, that same recording analyzed by an AI algorithm probably wouldn’t have turned out many data points. But today algorithms can tell from a the way our faces look and the sound of our voices whether we have depression or not.¹¹

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but we’re about to see the unleash of a new way to widen the inequality gap among classes.

I don’t have to tell you about the repercussions of our digital footprints and all that surveillance networks capture from us. You can already imagine the sort of inequalities that will stem from this. But let’s pick a not-so-well-known example to give you a quick taste.

It’s not a coincidence that voice is going to be huge in the near future. In the end, voices are highly personal and hard to fake. And as we’re seeing more and more, they contains more information about our mental health and behavior than we think.

There are a few companies working on voice algorithms. One of them is Voicesense, an Israeli company using voice analysis which teaches and directs companies how to use this asset. They’re do real-time analysis during calls to predict whether someone is likely to default on a bank loan. But also whether the person speaking is willing to spend more money on a product. Or even whether the person speaking is the best candidate for a job.

The truth is that our voices contain a lot of personal insights—which are out of our grasp, but in which algorithms seem to have found valuable information. And this is extremely concerning with the rise of home assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home.

This is dangerous because people aren’t paying attention to these devices and don’t see them as the threat they are. It’s not just that contractors might be listening to personal conversations that happen at home¹²—but even more importantly, the raw data our speech contains. And tech giants are making the transition toward home assistants super smooth.

It’s not just about what you say. It’s how you say it: the tone, the speed, the pauses, the emphases. All sorts of things that machine learning takes into account to learn more about you.

According to a report by the business analytics firm IdTechEx, the voice technology market is expected to grow up to $15.5 billion by 2029.¹³

But this technology isn’t just penetrating our homes. It is also increasingly used as a device at hospitals.

Voice assistants began to be used at hospitals to allow patients to order lunch, check their meds, and get medical advice. Voice assistants manufactured by Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others.

We’ve had smart speakers (or smart microphones, however you want to call them) for a while. And that have opened up a new app market. And with that came the medical apps.

Consider CompanionMx, a mental health-monitoring system. What this system does is it makes patients record audio diaries through their app. Then the system runs these audios through other metadata (call logs, location…) to score the patient on four factors and track the changes over time on: depressive mood, diminished interest, avoidance and fatigue.

This company is hardly the only one working on this—there are other startups working on similar projects, like Sonde Health and Ellipsis Health. But companies such as Cogito have even received funding from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States) and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Some results have proven that the technology they use can predict symptoms of depression and PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.)¹⁴ But this is hardly staying in the health care industry. Companies like Voicesense, CallMiner or RankMiner are using this data in the business world.

This alone will take privacy inequality through the roof. Imagine applying for a loan, but the bank discovers through your own voice that you’re about to suffer a heart attack. Then they deny you the loan.

Or consider a woman applying for a job and it turns out that the company has some biases against women. She wouldn’t even know why she hasn’t been accepted, and the HR department can just say: it’s the algorithm.¹⁵

Or even worse. Imagine that Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant discover that you’re suffering from chronic depression. They don’t tell you, because they don’t have to. But they can sell you placebo medicines, or target you with ads to start gambling online.

Of course, this goes much further than the voice. And further than what surveillance capitalists intend.

Data Autocrats are using their own surveillance tools to exploit the most vulnerable sectors of society.

There are so many things you can do with data. Today. But, what could be done tomorrow with that same data? If today we can predict the mental health of an individual through a voice recording, what will we be able to do with that same data five years from now? Or 10 years? And what will happen when we normalize the use of biometric products?

This is not science fiction. Want to take a look into the future of privacy inequality? Just look at India.

PRIVACY INEQUALITY IS ALGORITHMIC POVERTY

If we want to understand the scope of privacy inequality we need to look at India, where it’s hitting the poorest people. Horrifying stories are reaching the light and showing to the world the dangers of Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric experiment.

Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number that the Indian government uses to link Indians’ biometric and demographic data. And even though this was just introduced in 2009, now it covers more than 1.2 billion people, making it the largest biometric identification system in the world in 2019.

And the devastating impacts we’re seeing from this kind of experiment are very concrete. They don’t reach the scope of privacy inequality yet, but they reflect one of the most dramatic faces of this inequality.

It turns out that in the past low income Indians just needed to do some minor paperwork in order to pick up subsidized grains. That allowed them to eat. But that changed with Aadhaar.

Aadhaar was introduced by the Indian government as a system that would stop fraudsters, allowing subsidies reach the people who need them the most. But due to the flaws and glitches of the system—or to Indian government’s efforts to cut costs, or corruption—people are dying. Poor people in India are being targeted, surveilled and punished by this system.

In an article written by The Guardian, the journal has provided data of how many people who were denied food from the government—due to unknown reasons, it’s the algorithm—have died from starvation:

 “Activists have tracked 13 cases in Jharkhand [an Indian region] where people who were refused support due to Aadhaar glitches have allegedly died of starvation. One was an 11-year-old girl.”¹⁶

Indian’s biometric system is going way beyond administering subsidies. Nowadays even parents are being asked for their Aadhaar numbers to be able enroll their children in school.

This is extremely dangerous. Imagine any dictator from the twentieth century who wanted to purify a race from others—like Hitler. What could have he done with a system like this? He wouldn’t have had to shoot anybody. He could have just denied them food or any other means applied on a mass scale

And this could happen with pensions too.

But this is hardly the only part of the story. Because right now India is taking this to the next level by creating a national facial recognition system that they intend to deploy across the country. From airports, to cities and, of course, it is monitored in police departments.

This is a concrete example in India. But these systems are reaching other countries too. Just consider how France is rolling out their own nationwide facial recognition ID program.¹⁷

The truth is that we’re heading towards the most unequal society we can imagine. We’re all being targeted. And this is magnifying and wielding the intersecting social discriminations in extreme directions. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. But this goes beyond economic wealth. Just consider the intersecting forms of discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, caste, sexuality, minority status, disability—and how these can and will be targeted.

And the root of all these inequalities will be intensified by a lack of privacy.

This privacy inequality is being used by Data Autocrats to control people on levels we can’t imagine.

This goes beyond welfare systems and the economic logic of surveillance capitalists. This brutal form of segregation serves the Data Dictatorship logic.

At some point this situation will create two castes of people: The Protected and The Predictables.

Well, there are almost already two castes of people, but the difference can be spotted only at the edges—there are many subgroups within these. But what privacy inequality will do is it will push these groups to the edges. The ones who have lots of opportunities and resources will be given more. And the ones with few opportunities and resources will have these away, even more.

Again, we’re unable to predict the future, but with this information in place, it’s easy to see how this inequality is going to hit us:

Overpriced insurance

Bank loans denials (or high interests)

Unaffordable health care

Highly targeted advertising

Political manipulation

Simple opportunity cost of opportunity.

But that’s just on the surface. If we scratch it we’ll find out that people won’t even have food to eat. And the biggest one: people are dying for either flaws in the systems or features of the systems.

In the future these two castes of people that would emerge will be: The Protected and The Predictables.The Protected will be the ones who can afford to pay for privacy. This group understands that privacy is their very human right and want to protect it. However, The Predictables will be the ones who can’t pay for privacy. These are the ones who will live in a Matrix style algorithm. Maybe they know privacy should be a human right, but probably will fail to understand its value and the impact it has on them. Or simply cannot afford to defend a human right when they are struggling to cover their most basic needs for survival.

Privacy inequality is the most brutal form of inequality because it’s like a global filter that intensifies the pre-existing economic and socially constructed inequalities. It dehumanizes people and takes the instability of society to a whole new level, abusing the people who most suffer from it. Ultimately, privacy inequality will become the inequality of human agency.

Knowledge inequality.

Autonomy and self-determination inequalities.

The inequality of moral autonomy and individual sovereignty.

THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

Humans have always been very good at inventing new things and manipulating their environment—something that, as we’re being witnesses of right now, is being taken to the extreme. 

But even though we’re good at that, we’ve always had trouble trying to foresee the consequences of these new inventions and environmental manipulation. 

Consider for example the Agricultural Revolution. 

Most people welcomed it. Most people thought it was a great thing for humanity. But the reality was that for most people in the nineteenth century, life after the Agricultural Revolution was harder. For the kings, priests, emperors… For this small elite life it was in fact much better. But if you weren’t in this small group, life was harder for you. There was more production to be take care of, which meant working longer hours. Harder hours. And right now with the technological revolutions, the same thing is happening.

When the Agricultural Revolution was taking off, it was extremely hard to predict the consequences of this incredible change. Nobody could imagine the full consequences. And today we can’t either.

Nobody knows the consequences the technological revolution will have our society. And much less on our minds and bodies in the next decades.

Nobody knows the consequences of violating people’s privacy or of the surge of attention economy.

Nobody knows the full consequences of data colonialism.

Nobody knows the consequences of genetically modifying people’s DNA. 

And nobody can conceive how dehumanizing privacy inequality will be.

The last time we approached something of such magnitude was in the nineteenth century with the Industrial Revolution. Widespread inequality magnified. And today the gap between the small elite and the rest of society has significantly increased.¹⁸ It propelled the extremes to the extremes. And this happened worldwide. You had a small number of countries (Western Europe and North America) that lead the Industrial Revolution, but everybody else fell behind. The countries leading the revolution made sure they took full advantage of these “lesser” countries, and milked the heck out of them.

Right now, as they say, history repeats itself. We’ve got different players, but the same kind of inequality. Well, it’s even worse.

Within a couple of decades, we’re going to see the creation of the most unequal societies we have ever imagined.

This technological revolution is also distributing power unequally throughout the world. And this is more extreme than what we saw in the Industrial Revolution. Power is flowing to the Main Hubs in a way we didn’t see with European imperialism in the nineteenth century or the bipolar international world order during the Cold War.

Data Dictatorships are wielding enormous power. And this is only getting worse.

The window of opportunity is closing. Sooner than people can imagine, human agency will be a thing of the past.

BOOK SIX

MAKING THE UNHACKABLE HACKABLE

GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984

In the last two years there’s been an increasing interest in data privacy and surveillance. Events such as the 2016 US elections were the big ahá! for a lot of people. With that event, classic dystopian novels such as 1984 by George Orwell started to gain popularity again. 

And with good reason. 1984 in particular looks very similar to the current scenario we’re living today. But as the cliché goes, reality outdoes fiction.

There’s a big difference between George Orwell’s 1984 and the future where we’re heading into. In Orwell’s novel, there was still a notion of a private world inside the individual. Today this world is about to disappear. Because data autocrats want to kill privacy on its ultimate level: our own thoughts.

When we talk about these issues we might look at them with awe and surprise, but the reality is that nothing is completely new. 

When we think about genetic engineering we tend to think about something too far away in the future. But the truth is that we’ve been selectively breeding cows and chickens for decades. Of course we didn’t pay much attention to that.

There’s something new though: we’re crossing a line we haven’t crossed before, and that’s the human skin. That’s the borderline.

The borderline is the skin.

So far we have talked about the collection of information on you—from beyond your skin. Where you go. Who you talk to. What you press on your keyboard. All that kind of stuff. And even though there has been a lot of predictability built around this data, this is basically the kind of information that has been flowing.

However, the future is about going underneath your skin. It’s about looking directly at what happens in your brain and body, without dealing with the inconvenience of predicting data. It’s about seeing how you blood pressure increases in a particular moment. Or which part of the brain activates now.

And this can be accomplished with invasive technologies like electro implants inside your body. Every minute there are more and more devices that capture what happens inside your body from the outside. This doesn’t mean that the technology necessarily goes physically under the skin. In some cases it might do, but you don’t have to do that in order to gather information of what takes place inside your body.

You can measure biometric points of information from a ring or bracelet on your arm.

You can measure the blood pressure and heart rate of a person with just a camera.¹

There are more and more ways to understand people’s emotional states through external devices. Devices that we happen to have in our pockets all the time. And the upcoming brain computer interfaces will take this to a whole new level.

This is exactly the kind of technology that can be used in really wrong ways and be subverted by full blown Data Dictatorships.

Just picture this: 10 years down the road North Korea forcing its citizens to wear biometric gadgets. Monitoring not just where people go and say, but monitoring what happens in their hearts and brains. On the record people could support Kim Jong-un, but deep down they could hate him. And their biometric data would reveal their emotional state of anger towards the regime.

In this example it is obvious to see the consequences of this technology. This technology would put a target (and a bullet) on the minds of anyone who dared to oppose or question autocratic regimes.

However, when it comes to other countries—including China—this openly oppressive use of the technology wouldn’t seem that obvious. Data Autocrats would say: wear this bracelet or smartwatch so we can help you keep track of your health 24/7.

And yes, we’d have better health care, but Data Autocrats would just gain access to our deepest thoughts and emotional states. And not only that—they’d know how to pull the levers that cause us to develop certain desires and realize certain actions. They would constantly monitor what happens in our bodies.

If we’re already full of sh*t, what will happen when our reality becomes completely exposed?

TRUST THE ALGORITHM

It’s just a matter of time before Data Autocrats get completely under our skin. In the end, these technologies are becoming more appealing to us.

Just imagine how health care could improve our lives. Or the fact that the number of accidents on the roads will drop dramatically—which today is above one million deaths on the road per year.²

More and more people are becoming aware of the dangers these advancements represent. But awareness doesn’t lead to change. Because the pile of benefits of these technologies is greater than the dangers they represent—or at least that’s what it looks to most people.

We don’t have to get dramatic to imagine the kind of disruption we’re facing. Or the ways Data Autocrats will use this power to manipulate and control people in terrible ways.

This system could give access to billions of people to the best health care in the world. For free! “Just wear one of these devices and trust the algorithm. Do what it says.”

So far so good.

But there’s something that’s making this change smooth and we need to pay close attention: What if this system that monitors your body and brain at all times is not just used to provide you with better health care, but with constant guidance in life with your daily decision-making struggles?

So let’s say that an 18-year-old girl doesn’t know what to study at college. She wants to study something with good employment opportunities, so she can have a job at the end of those 4 or 5 years of hard work. 

Now, the algorithm has a lot of information about her. But it also takes into account the current job market situation and it also predicts pretty accurately how the job market is going to evolve over time.

The algorithm recommends the girl to study biology, because there will be a lot of jobs in the future in that field.

She, of course, considers it. She finds it really interesting, but she also likes history and art. 

On the other hand, her parents say, hey, we know you like that, but this is what the algorithm is saying, and you know that they’re usually right. We believe you should trust the algorithm.

She goes for it. She decides to study biology. And you know what? She likes it and she sees a bright future ahead of her.

Five years later, college is over. Then the girl finds out that the algorithm was damn right, and she gets a job in the field of the career right after college.

And that's the key: She learns to trust the algorithm. She probably thinks that without the algorithm she would have chosen a terrible career without any market opportunities. But as she trusted the algorithm, her life is better.

Since then, she’s been outsourcing more and more of her decision power to the algorithm.

Where should she invest her money?

Where should she travel? 

But even deeper decisions:

Who should she date?

Who should she marry?

Who should she vote for?

Because she knows that she can be irrational sometimes, so she just prefers to be sure she’s making the right decision.

Again, she learns by experience to trust the algorithm in all of her decisions.

FREE WILL AND GOALS

There are a lot of variables to take into account when defining the goal of a decision. But how do you really define this?

It’s pretty simple. If you are considering a financial goal, the output is: just make more money. But with the career example of the previous chapter, it gets a little bit more complicated. Sometimes people just want to take into account the employment opportunities. Or sometimes people want something that brings meaning to their lives regardless of employment opportunities.

The thing is that if you frame a decision under such simple goals, the algorithm will know what to do. But when you consider more complex decisions, it’s not so easy to define a goal, is it?

How do you define a political goal when voting for the next candidate for the presidency?

Or even worse, how do you define a romantic goal?

Sometimes things in life don’t have goals. But algorithms need a metric to know how to operate. 

But leaving these issues aside, most people won’t be defining the goal—it’ll be a chore.

In the case of the career example, the girl would just want to know what to study. She takes for granted that the algorithm is going to recommend something with employment opportunities. Or she might just think the algorithm is going to recommend something she would enjoy in the future. And the same goes for voting. People would trust that the algorithm would suggest a candidate that represents their best interests. 

So the key question here is: Who defines the goals? Who decides who defines these goals? Who decides who decides? And how do they do it? What kind of metrics do they take into account?

Pretty quickly the situation gets more complicated than we thought. And if we go down the rabbit hole, we’ll inevitable have to ask ourselves the following question:

Will we be in control of our own decisions if we outsource them to algorithms?

Before we get to a hypothetical scenario—even though is not that hypothetical after all—we don’t have to go that far to start figuring things out. The answers are closer than they appear.

WHERE DOES YOUR ATTENTION GO?

Have you ever tried meditation?

If you have you’ll feel related to what I’m about to share. And if you haven’t—if you can, put down this book right now, try to do 10 minutes of meditation, and then come back.

I gotta be honest. I’m not a big practitioner of meditation. I don’t meditate regularly. And my meditation is sketchy. But I discovered that you don’t need that much practice to receive its benefits. What you can find out about yourself in 10 minutes of meditation is astonishing.

Most people think that their first meditation attempt is a complete disaster. And that’s exactly what I thought at first.

My goal with my first attempt to meditate was to try to relax a little bit, and empty my mind so I could experience some mental peace. 

The first time I try to meditate I tried to focus on my breath.

It was supposed to be simple. Notice how the breath comes in. And notice how the breath goes out. Nothing else. 

Well, I couldn’t focus on my breath for more than 10 seconds without a thought popping up. And when I say 10 seconds I’m being generous here.

Suddenly I started to think about someone who said that my video work sucks. I know that I don’t care about the sucker who said that, but I lost control. Suddenly I became anxious and angry. And that thought just came back again and again. No inner peace. No relaxation. Nothing.

After a few minutes of this, I thought that this is how it works. You’re terrible at the beginning but you get better over time. But the first few times are going to be stressful. 

I missed the point.

It took me a few times to get it. 

The real deal with meditation is to get to know yourself. It’s about observing what happens inside of you. And the little control you have—especially for observing how outside forces can pull your emotional chords and direct your attention.

I started noticing that I had mostly no control over my attention. I had no idea what was actually happening in my mind. And that was just the beginning. 

There are a lot of things that give us unitary entity as an individual—among them: religion, ideology and even language. Then you can identify yourself. This is me.

But social construction usually deceives us and makes us identify ourselves with our own thoughts. To let that identity, religion, ideology and language tell us to identify ourselves with whatever thought or emotion that pops up in our minds. 

If I thought this, then I chose to think this thought.

If I felt this, then I chose to feel this emotion. 

If I bought this, then I chose to buy this product.

This is my free will.

No, it is not.

With a simple breathing exercise while meditating, you realize that what actually happens in your mind is not what you thought happens. You realize this is a complete illusion. And that you have very little control over what happens inside your body.

Of course it’s not just a breath exercise. Or a meditation exercise. It’s an attention exercise.

And by the way, this is critical in order to understand the attention economy today. First you have to understand what happens to your own attention. Because if you don’t do these exercises, you won’t understand where your attention is going in real life. And you’ll be the easiest person to manipulate.

WE’RE NOT RATIONAL MACHINES. WE'RE NOT EVEN CLOSE

Being human is painfully tough. We’re just emotional machines, doing irrational things all the time. The truth is we don’t have an actual control over our the decision making process, but we believe we do.

In 2011, Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman published the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, where he shares his central thesis about the division of two modes of thought: System 1 and System 2.

System 1 is the automatic response of the brain. It’s our instinctive reaction to things. It’s fast and emotional.

System 2 is the rational one. It’s slow (because it uses the neocortex—the rational brain), but we’re aware of this one. System 2 is the voice in our heads.

In the end, we believe System 2 is the one in control, but it’s System 1 who is behind the steering wheel.

FREE WILL

Most people don’t like the idea that there’s no such thing as free will. They like to think of themselves as free thinking agents.

But the reason they don’t like this idea is because it’s painful. And most people don’t want to identify themselves with anything outside of the rational because it means losing the illusion of control. In the end, if you keep asking questions and pay attention to yourself, you might find out things about yourself you don’t like. 

These are things that deep down people know are there inside them, but they would rather ignore so they don’t have to confront the truth.

The challenge here is that today there is a high price for not knowing yourself.

We’re living at historical a time where if we want to try to be as free as possible, we’ll have to go through the painful process of getting to know ourselves. And this is hard. 

Self-reflection and self-exploration isn’t something you can achieve in a couple of breathing exercises, though. It’s much more difficult than people imagine.

People believe that many of the deepest questions that haunt are questions that only philosophers struggled with in Athens thousands of years ago. Questions like: What does it mean to live a good life? What is love? What is a good relationship? But we’re seeing that these philosophical questions are now turning into engineering questions.

And the key to understand here is that, if you don’t try to understand yourself, there are people engineering their way around to know you. If you don’t make the effort, you’re vulnerable.

And for people who decide to not know themselves, it’ll be game over for them. Because you’re not in competition with yourself, you’re in competition with the corporations and governments who are racing to know you better than you know yourself.

Now, it’s time to talk about the illusion of free will before we get any further.

What exactly is the illusion of free will? The following three chapters from Defeating Mr. Mole (my previous book) will bring us up to speed:

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE WILL

Imagine that you and I go to a restaurant for lunch. There’s only one menu at the table, and I grab it before you do. I go through the options and I give you two choices: “What do you want, a salad or pasta?” You think about it for a second and when you’re about to say the salad I say, “oops, they don’t have salad.” So you choose the pasta. It would be weird that I could know what you’re about to choose before you even say it, right?

What if I told you that I could have known your decision before you were even aware of it? What if I could have known your decision, before we even walked through that restaurant?

It turns out that your brain knows things, but it doesn’t tell them to you right away—sometimes not at all.

There’s a delay between the moment when your brain makes a decision, and the moment when you become aware of it. This ultimately leads us to ask ourselves: Okay, this means there’s a delay from the time we decide to do something, and the time we’re aware of it. Then, if we don’t control our thoughts, do we actually have freedom? What would happen if someone changes something, before the time we become aware of it, and that changes our perception of reality?

Moran Cerf in a talk at Google³, shared one of his experiments where he and his colleagues, asked some patients to play a game about making simple choices. They gave them a wooden box with two buttons, and for 20 minutes they asked them to press the button on the left or right in random order.

They also told the participants that they wanted to save each choice. So when they were saving each decision, a red light would turn on while the machinery was processing it. And the patients wouldn’t be able to touch any button while the light was on. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work. (It was fake by the way.)

After a few trials, they had already decoded the patients thoughts way before they were about to execute them. It took four seconds from the time the decision was made, to the time the patient became aware of the thought. Here’s where it gets funny. They would wait 3.9 seconds and turn on the red light. Every time the patient reached out the box to push the button, it was already red. So imagine the patient’s experience when they wanted something to happen, that had already happened.

This is what we call the illusion of free will.

It’s the gap between the moment you would perceive something has happened, and when it actually happened.

We believe we’re in control of things, but we’ve got no idea how or when a decision has taken place in our brain. And in this part of the experiment, all the patients were thinking that they were making the decision of pushing one of the two buttons.

Now instead of waiting 3.9 seconds, they turned on the light as soon as they knew the decision. At this point there was no conscious activity of any type, but the subconscious didn’t stop working on making decisions. The subconscious was choosing left or right over and over, but the patient wasn’t aware of it.

Are we in control of our decisions?

Are we living in an inner dictatorship where our subconscious rules our thoughts?

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE WILL, PART TWO

Sam Harris, neuroscientist and American author, writes in his book Free Will, that free will is an illusion: “Free will doesn’t correspond to any subjective fact about us. It doesn’t come from a conscious point in our minds.”

As we’ve just seen, just a little bit before you’re aware of what you are going to do next, your brain has already decided. Those are thoughts that emerge from the back of your mind. Thoughts you don’t control.

“I cannot decide what I will next think or intend”, Harris says, “until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?”

Whether we like it or not, we don’t have the freedom we think we have.

The free will illusion I’m more interested in, though, is the one that would be able to predict what you are going to do in much advance—in some cases even years. These are the beliefs ingrained in your system, probably since childhood, that can determine your next decisions in the far future.

This is simple: If you, consciously, don’t know what you’re going to do next, you’re not in control. In the end, you can decide whatever you want to do, but you can’t decide what you’ll decide to do.

What people don’t like about this illusion is that it puts their identity on the hook—and when your identity is at stake, a lot of things can happen. But at the same time, even though it takes away part of our identities, it also gives us meaning. Because the choices we make throughout life are a reflection of who we are.

Sam Harris has been criticized for his book Free Will. Some people have said that the way he arrived at conclusions was wrong⁴, and some of them might be right. But if one thing is clear here, is that most of our decisions don’t come from a conscious part of our minds.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE WILL, PART THREE

There are lots of ways to influence our decision making process. It goes from the smell from a bakery in the supermarket that makes us buy more bread, to modifying the temperature of a room, to including the aroma of coffee in the pages of a book… There are lots of things that can change our behavior, in ways we can’t even imagine.⁵ Yet, even though we’re aware of the existence of these external agents that modify our decision making process, we still believe we’re in control of our own thoughts.

The hard truth is that our subconscious rules our lives, and we’re not even close to controlling our own thoughts. We’d like to believe that we’re living our lives as if they were entirely under our own control. So we deny that cognitive biases or persuasion tricks could ever work on us. But that doesn’t leave us in a good position.

Just like Sam Harris says in his book: “A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.”

What happens here is that, regardless of all the evidence, we still believe we’re the controlling characters in our minds. We deny reality. It’s hard for us to admit we’re just another voice in the system that hasn’t got any weight, when it comes to making decisions.

To admit this is to realize we’re not the authors of our own thoughts, as we’re supposed to be. And that’s painful.

PURE MANIPULATION

The illusion of free will has now become one of the most dangerous illusions in the world. Because we’re living the first time in the history of the world, where governments, corporations and intelligence agencies will have the three things that will allow them to systematically hack billions of people:

Enough data

Enough biological knowledge

Enough computing power.

So it’s becoming crucial to realize that we’re not as free as we think we are. But most importantly, how we were never as free as we thought we were. 

Freedom isn’t something that is given to you. It’s not something you have. Freedom is something you struggle for.

Assuming that you have free will, on the premise that your thoughts reflect your desires, automatically makes you a slave. Not just a slave of your biological mechanisms, but also of the agents that know how to hack that mechanism. You’re a potential slave of somebody who knows how to hack you. 

And let’s remember that hacking a human being isn’t something too complicated. We’re heading towards some hardcore hacking.

And again, we need to realize that hacking a human being is not understanding people in all their complexity—that’s practically impossible. Hacking human beings means simply understanding humans better than they understand themselves. A perfect understanding is not required. That would imply that humans know themselves perfectly, and that couldn’t be further from reality. Humans are doing a terrible job at understanding themselves, so it’s not far-fetched to realize that an external agent can hack can hack human beings by predicting their choices, manipulating their desires and making decisions for them.

This is not that hard to imagine, because people don’t know themselves very well—and in a way this is already possible just like the 2016 events revealed. There is enough information out there that already provides us with the right clues that Data Autocrats to know people better than they know themselves. 

Furthermore, considering how far Data Autocrats have come with just a few data points, what could they do if they manage to get under your skin?

Whenever I’m alone with my thoughts or simply meditating through a breathing exercise, the ideas that circle my mind are private. And I want to keep them that way. 

I don’t want anybody to access those crazy thoughts and emotions that happen in the privacy of my mind—not even my loved ones. Because the moment that that door is opened and someone gains access to these thoughts, I could be manipulated. The moment that happens, I become extremely vulnerable. Because I have little power—to say the least—over this world inside of me.

Now imagine that Data Autocrats could somehow access this private world of yours… That has never been possible in any time in history. But this is where we’re towards at the current patterns of technological growth, coupled with political and corporate agendas.

And this is exactly the danger of the upcoming brain computer interfaces.

Understanding the illusion of free will is going to be crucial for the future of humanity. Not because we can overcome it, but because we urgently need to acknowledge that we’re not free agents. 

If Data Autocrats get to manipulate your emotions, then it’s over for you. The thoughts and feelings that pop up in your mind are a reflection of your experience as a person.

If they get under your skin, it’s game over for you.

We’re increasingly opening the frontier of the brain. And right now this is being kept secret from you. Data Autocrats want to kill privacy on its ultimate level: your own thoughts. Your thoughts in a raw format, unprocessed by your conscious mind. 

But before that is done, they first need to decode human intentions.

YOUR DEEPEST THOUGHTS IN THE OPEN

Imagine that you could connect your brain to the Internet. Find everything that you need instantaneously and download the knowledge directly into your mind. You wouldn’t even need to type anything, just think it and get it.

Want to learn a new language? Piano? Kung Fu? You got it.

Brain computer interfaces (BCI) would enable this. This would be the biggest hardware upgrade we’ve ever had—in fact we haven’t had an upgrade for 50 million years. This revolutionary technology could enhance the abilities of the entire human race and propel us towards the same pace technology has evolved.

I know that this sounds crazy. But the day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. I love the idea of having a BCI. However, everything has a downside.

For decades, governments and companies have tried to understand how the mind works, so they can control the masses. This isn’t new. What we’ve failed to see is how technology is allowing them to achieve their highest ambitions faster and further than ever before.

What will happen when Data Autocrats gain the power to manipulate us on such a level that we can’t tell—or even worse, we think we’re the creators of the thoughts they have put into our minds?

What will happen when they have access to your mind, when they can read your deepest thoughts?

Let's first analyze how this works in marketing and advertising field. Because as we’ve discovered throughout the book, new technologies first start with surveillance capitalists and then they are claimed by Data Autocrats.

THE SURVEILLANCE CAPITALIST'S DREAM

For years, marketers have been trying to decode what happens inside our brains. So they could figure out how to make us buy stuff. 

It’s not a coincidence that most of my subjects at college when I studied marketing were about persuasion and how to understand human motivations. Because if you know what makes people buy stuff, then you are in business.

It was all about persuasion.

One of the fields that caught my attention right away was consumer neuroscience. Also known as neuromarketing.

I’ve always been interested in the brain and in understanding how we work deep down. What motivates us and how we can use neuroscience to increase the value of the products we use.

Neuromarketing techniques aren’t just about the study of the brain directly, but they make a big emphasis on behavioral economics as well. Certain fields of neuromarketing even use brain devices such as electroencephalogram headsets (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) systems.

Back in 2015, I was conducting a study with eye-tracking technology to analyze how people used websites. 

I remember that I started to think: Okay, if I present this information this way, people will likely do this. So, if I’m dictating the way people behave on this site, are they doing it freely? Or am I tricking them?

I didn’t pay much attention at first, because the technology wasn’t as accurate as I thought. And the results were still too subjective, because somehow you had to make your own interpretations of what the data meant in the context of the tests. So it was quite complicated to get precise conclusions. But still, I felt like there was something going on there.

Later in that year 2015, I was working in Barcelona, and there happened to be a neuromarketing conference in that city. Experts from around the world went there to share their expertise in the field. And I vividly remember that they were selling this technology as “the buy button for the brain.”

It was about discovering what was going on in the brains of consumers, so marketers could predict what people would ultimately buy.

What I saw in that conference was greed in its purest form. 

What everyone was seeking was power and control over people in way one way or another.

At that point I had big ethical inner battles. But once I popped out of the marketing bubble I was living in, I saw that this wasn’t about persuasion and understanding the brain. This was manipulation to get people to buy more stuff. And as always, technology ends up being used for malicious purposes.

I wrote extensively about this experience in my previous book Defeating Mr. Mole, where I talk about how I struggled a lot with ethics and marketing. I couldn’t find a solid answer. Yes, in theory marketing can be used for good, and I still believe it can do great things. But in practice most marketers are infantile narcissists who are greedy bastards.

Neuromarketing looked a lot like subliminal advertising but revisited and more powerful.

In the end, they say that power corrupts—and when marketing shifts from reading and appealing to our emotions to shaping them, advertisers must not be trusted.

Consumer neuroscience is still in diapers—but there are a lot of new discoveries taking place every day and it is a field that is growing exponentially.

Yes, I know, marketers have been doing this for decades—that’s what advertising is for. But when technologies reach deeper levels and marketers understand us better than we do, that’s when I start to worry about things. And if BCIs open up the brain’s frontier and surveillance capitalists pull this off—then you can be certain that Data Autocrats will get their hands in our neural data.

THE SURVEILLANCE CAPITALIST'S DREAM, PART TWO

If you want to see where the future is heading towards, it’s worth paying attention to the marketing and advertising industries. Because in the twenty-first century they are the pioneers that are developing the tools that will become the Data Autocrats’ tools.

Marketers have been trying to decipher the human black box for years. Up until now they have had to rely on predictions. But e since the last decade, there has been a rush to merge neuroscience with marketing.

Lots of companies now have neuromarketing departments, but few dare to reveal that information. Surveillance capitalists, as well as Data Autocrats, act in the shadows. So the less the public knowledge about how they operate, the better.

Of course tech companies are developing their own strategies but it all started out with FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) and automotive manufacturers. Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Volvo, and many, many more brands use neuroscience techniques on a regular basis.⁶ However, you don’t hear companies talking about this in the open—maybe it’s because of the fact that with public awareness comes regulation.

What happens in the neuromarketing department, stays in the neuromarketing department.

In the twenty-first century, we’ve seen how marketers have turned into surveillance capitalists. Maybe not pure surveillance capitalists, but they are serving surveillance capitalists—mostly the tech giants.

Again, surveillance capitalists gather human experiences and sell future behaviors. This is why the study of the brain is so important: because it opens up a new world. It’s no longer future prediction—it’s future certainty.

Surveillance capitalists, the marketers of the twenty-first century, are starting to gain access to the brain and study it.

But it’s worth remarking again that there’s a shift from the actions and intentions of surveillance capitalists to those of Data Autocrats. We saw that shift with social media platforms and search engines. They started out as advertising tools and now they’re being used by Data Dictatorships to project their power.

In the same way, neuromarketing techniques have been implemented over the last decade with one purpose. They say it’s to “satisfy our needs in a better way”. But I say it’s to make us buy stuff we don’t want or need.

Marketing and advertising, again, are just the testing fields. If we think this mechanism is just going to be used by marketers and advertisers, we couldn’t be more wrong. There’s something much bigger going on here.

WHERE DO BRAIN INTERFACES ENTER THE SCENE?

In the summer of 2019, Elon Musk gave a presentation where he presented the advances of Neuralink, his neurotechnology company. 

He and Neuralink’s president, Max Hodak, showed off some of the technology they had developed. They made this technology public for the first time, with the goal of at some point start implanting devices in paralyzed humans, to give them the ability to control their phones or computers.

This technology represented a revolutionary advancement, where flexible threads are implanted into the brain by drilling a small hole in the skull through a precise robotic arm. (In the future they want to use a laser beam rather than drilling holes.)

It was quite impressive. They had developed “a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute [automatically],” according to the white paper. This would allow to record the activity of many neurons simultaneously.⁷

But not only that. The company also developed a custom chip that’s capable of reading, cleaning up, and amplifying signals from the brain. Even though it transmits data via a wired connection (using USB-C) and the wireless version is still to come, this is already a game changer.

Neuralink’s goal is to create a wireless system embodied with what they call the “N1 sensor”. This will be a system that’s inside the human skull, transmitting data wirelessly to an external device mounted behind the ear. This device will be controlled by users with an iPhone app.

This is actually a high bandwidth brain connection. And even though this is the first time most people have heard about this, the truth is that brain connections have existed for a while already.

In 2006, Matthew Nagle was the first person with spinal cord paralysis to receive a brain implant which allowed him to control a computer cursor using only his mind. Something that just took him four days to master.⁸

“A monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain.” Musk said during the Q&A of the presentation. So this is not as far as we think it is. Brain-computer interfaces seem futuristic and out of touch. But so did smartphones 20 years ago.

“We are already a cyborg. Because we are so well integrated with our phones and our computers.”— Elon Musk

In a conversation with Jack Ma, Alibaba co-founder and former executive chairman, Elon Musk said that we’re already cyborgs in a sense:

“People don’t realize we are already a cyborg. Because we are so well integrated with our phones and our computers. The phone is almost like an extension of yourself. If you forget your phone, it's like a missing limb. But the bandwidth, the communication bandwidth to the phone is very low, especially input. So in fact, input bandwidth to computers has actually gone down, because typing with two thumbs, as opposed to 10 fingers, is a big reduction in bandwidth.

“Input bandwidth has gone up because of video and imagery. So input bandwidth is many orders of magnitude greater than output bandwidth. But at a certain point, if we're just—assuming a benign scenario with AI, we will just be too slow. So you know, I always think like human speech, to a computer, will sound like very slow tonal wheezing. It’s kind of like whale sounds…”

Brain interfaces and the ability to control devices with our minds is just the beginning. What Neuralink wants is something much more ambitious. “It’s not going to be suddenly Neuralink will have this neural lace and start taking over people’s brains.” Musk has said. “Ultimately” he wants “to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”

Elon Musk has loudly spoken about the dangers of AI and the potential threat of making humans irrelevant. He has said that in order to fight that scenario, we need to create technology that allows us to “merge with AI.”

For Musk, the main problem right now of the merging humans with AI is a problem of bandwidth. We can connect ourselves to a machine. But relying on our voice or our thumbs would make that machine operate too slowly. The only way to achieve a successful merger is through a system that makes communication much faster. A system that quickly communicates with the machine directly from our brains.

I can see a lot of benefits of doing this, but at this point these developments scare the heck out of me. 

Even if we just try to believe in the good intentions of Neuralink—and that’s a big if—what do other companies want to do with this technology?

YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE CLOUD

Neuralink is the only company who has made a presentation so far (at the time of this writing.) on the development of brain-computer interfaces. But you can bet other companies are working on this as well.

Baidu (the Chinese tech giant) is also working on brain-inspired neural chips under China’s state-run umbrella. They’re even using helmets for workers with a brain scanner that reads the activity of their brain.⁹ And you can bet that the other tech giants won’t allow themselves to be left behind. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft—go down the list. All of them are working on neural interfaces.

But also governments—mainly the United States, but you can bet Israel, Russia and a bunch of others are involved in the arms race too.

And who is also openly working on a brain-computer interface? Facebook. 

On July 30th 2019, Facebook revealed they are working on a new interface. They already made it public in 2017, but now they have revealed that they’re funding neural experiments to create some sort of interface that reads your mind.¹⁰

Of course, they didn’t put it in those exact words. They have just said they are “Imagining a new interface: Hands-free communication without saying a word”. What they’re trying to enhance is quite different. So much so, that it shifts the attention from the real issue.

In 2017, Facebook stated that they wanted to create a headband that would allow people to type at least 100 words per minute with just their thoughts. A couple of years later in 2019, they have made public their heavy financing of university research on human volunteers.¹¹

Facebook says this project is ongoing, but we can imagine where this is heading into. What they “eventually want” is to create a wearable headset that can interact in virtual reality with just the thoughts.

The fact is that the development of brain-computer interfaces has accelerated in a race among tech corporations to have a fully operational prototype. And this is happening faster than we imagine. On Neuralink’s presentation, Elon Musk said that he hoped to start implanting electrodes into the brains of paralyzed volunteers within two years.

The key question here is: What will happen with the neural data?

I believe we’re way passed the debate over the data ownership of these thoughts but, who will control this neural data?

BCIs are coming faster than we imagine. Yet, we won’t see them coming. Because just like smart watches or bracelets, they will be used as a medical device. BCIs will start out as devices to offer people with disabilities the opportunity to type and communicate with others. Then they will move into virtual reality, videogames and augmented reality. And then, there will a mass adoption.

You might think, why would people ever want these surveillance devices? But sometimes it’s not a matter of “want”. It’s a “need”. (Or perceived need.)

While it is true that automation and AI will take over many jobs, it is also true that more and more jobs will require some sort of integration with AI.

I can think of a bunch of examples of why people would adopt BCIs before they even hit the mass market.

Doctors (especially surgeons) getting real-time—and possibly life-saving—results on their patients.

Traders making rational decisions in real time thanks to an algorithm—faster than they would be able to do with a computer.

Plane pilots using this technology to prevent human errors. Or just to record the thoughts of the pilot that are required by law.

Applicants for a job interview to recording their skills and see whether they’re suitable for the job.

Military operations.

And this is just a tiny list of the things we can come up with off the top of our heads. As we can see, this kind of technology is so tempting and convenient that people will fall the for the “upgrade” and will demand others to upgrade too. And what will happen if people don’t upgrade themselves? They’ll be left behind. Simply put, just in the job market employers might start to select upgraded candidates because they’re much more efficient. And before you notice, this hits mass adoption.

This is precisely what makes these advancements so seductive. When the pile of benefits of the product is seemingly greater than its privacy cost, the decision is straight-forward.

This, of course, presents a lot of implications. 

The same surveillance practices we have seen manifesting through the world will be applied to the brain technology—as we’ve seen with other technologies that gather and feed off our digital footprints. 

BCIs are just another way to capture data inputs. But this time the stakes are much higher, because those data inputs are your own thoughts. The data collected is neural data. Raw neural inputs.

These devices are not just about typing with your mind—regardless of what the tech giants promoting these technologies are trying to ingrain in the public opinion. What this gadget will do is that it will collect every thought you have—anything that flashes across your mind—so it is stored and analyzed. This will help to profile you at an even deeper level. Because when you’re alone with your thoughts, you don’t have any social filter: that’s the real you.

Those thoughts will be stored somewhere.

This is not just about helping ill or disabled people. That’s how it starts, but it follows by uploading your thoughts into some surveillance capitalist’s servers.

So, the question that immediately arises is:

What will happen if we continue with our current privacy standards and our thoughts are out there in the open?

Surveillance capitalists are killing privacy on its ultimate level. 

The brain is the only safe place we have left, and Data Autocrats want to make sure they’ve stripped your thoughts bare. This is the place where we have freedom of thought without being judged. 

We’re crossing the final frontier of privacy, and we have no protection at all. 

Here’s what happens: We’ve got a long track record of making humans irrelevant. And this little historical track shows us the real intentions behind Data Autocrats: control and power.

So, the real question arising here is: If you have a brain interface that reads your thoughts and uploads them to the cloud, who owns that neural data? And more importantly, who can access and control that data?

This is the million-dollar question.

Bryan Johnson, founder of Kernel a startup that aims to implant a device in the brain, wrote in his newsletter:¹²

“Imagine you had a brain interface that could read all of your thoughts, conscious and subconscious. Who would own that data? Who would you give access to? Who could make money on it?

“Given that we’re building brain interfacing technology at Kernel, and others are also building this technology, this is an important thought exercise that has been weighing heavily on my mind.

“Our lives are captured digitally; search history, what we read/write, where we go, what we do, how fast we walk, what we buy, where we live, habits, preferences, religion, politics, and thousands more intimate details. Facebook, Google and others have been mining, monetizing, and profiting from this information. It’s unsettling to think that our raw brain data could be treated the same way.

“Today, your thoughts are your private domain. You are the only person with access to your brain. This is the only data that you still control. But unless we make some big changes, that will soon no longer be the case.

“The implications are more serious than I hear anyone talking about.”

The fact that somebody who happens to be building a brain interface says that, it’s scary.

Today we’re seeing all the Data Autocrats entering the BCI game. And as you’ve already guessed, this software won’t just be used by surveillance capitalists. 

This isn’t just about the marketer’s dream having come true and their whim to read your thoughts. As we’ve seen with all these other technologies, they will be used to exert power over citizens. 

They will be used to exploit people and serve Data Dictatorship’s interests.

It’s not a coincidence that all the Main Hubs have brain initiatives.

And this is the logic of the arms race: if we don’t do it, they’ll do it. So we must do it first.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is the agency responsible for the development of new technologies for the US military. Back in 2016 they created the Neuro Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology (Neuro-FAST) program.¹³ A program to use neurotechnology in order to help soldiers “perform better” under circumstances of extraordinary stress. That’s what they say at least.

Also remember that Barack Obama introduced the BRAIN Initiative in 2013. “There’s this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked” Obama said, “and the brain initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember.”

The BRAIN Initiative is a six billion dollar fund, whose goal is to learn how to map the activity of an entire brain, and build methods to read and write the neural activity. So, eventually, it could help patients with neurodegenerative diseases—and understandably so, lots of doors will unlock it.

There’s a lot of interest in getting to understand the human brain. But how far are we? For decades we’ve been trying to decipher how the brain works, but we’ve never gotten any close to a decent result.

That’s about to change though.

HOW FAR ARE WE?

In 2017, Professor Rafael Yuste and his team recorded the activity from every neuron of a jellyfish called Hydra.¹⁴ It might seem like it’s not a big deal, and of course the human brain is way more complex than the Hydra. But this is a huge step forward. Because, once you know how to read neural code, you can write it too.

 “In a way you could argue that we’re trying to read the hydra’s mind because we can measure the activity of every neuron in Hydra while the Hydra is behaving.” Rafael Yuste said in an interview with The Economist. “Can we input thoughts into a Hydra? Can we write a patterns of activity and change the behavior of the animal? We’re trying to do this in Hydra and we’re trying to do this in mice. We can imagine that you could do this with humans in the future.”¹⁵

It is just a matter of time until we get there. And we’ll get there. History has shown us that if we put enough money into a problem, we can find a way. 

The Apollo program is proof of that. The US government spent billions of dollars to prove they could get to the moon before the Russians—and they did it.

Whether we want it or not, this is a timely issue. It’s coming much faster than we think. And we’re already half-way through the frontier: on hardware and software.

On one hand, the technology is here. There are ways to read and analyze the brain’s activity. The challenge here is not whether we’ll come up with the right technology. The challenge is how to come up with an interface that’s user friendly. But as we’ve just seen with Neuralink, we’re almost there.

One of the biggest discoveries we’ve come to in this century is that everything is an algorithm.

We’re the result of an algorithm. Actually, there are several companies working on how to hack the human code. But also there are many companies storing digital data on DNA. They say that 1kg of DNA could store all the world’s data.¹⁶

And this is the biggest breakthrough: Organisms are algorithms. And algorithms can be hacked.

So coming up with an interface is the hard part. Reading and writing code for the brain? That’ll get done.

THE STAGE IS SET

Brain interfaces are coming. But are we ready?

If we unlock this door, we’ll arrive at an uncharted world. And the privacy problems we know today will seem lesser in comparison to what will come next. What proceeds will be much worse. Because in the end, what’s at stake are the deepest thoughts of our minds. Pure unconscious raw material that dictates our behavior.

Peering into this dark hole could be the best thing that happens to us, or the worst by far. There’s no middle ground here. So it’s critical that we consolidate the foundation of privacy as a human right—which, actually already appears in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—so we can advance while safeguarding or fundamental freedoms.

There’s no version of the future worth living in where we don’t own and control our data.

That’s the first step. It doesn’t matter if corporations and governments have good intentions—our current track record says otherwise though. In order to avoid our path towards irrelevance, we have to be able to control our data. And make sure no data is extracted from us without our consent.

For decades, corporations and governments have tried to understand how the mind works. Because that way, they would be able to control us however they wanted. What happens is that every time it gets more complicated to leave their puppet show. And if we follow this path, eventually we won’t be able to tell the difference between reality and what isn’t.

This is an essential and timely issue. And we have to make sure we get this right. We have to stop the intrusion of privacy and the consequences that come with it. Because in the end, the future of the human race is at stake.

IMPATIENCE

Surveillance capitalists are leading BCI technologies. We can have a conversation about whether Neuralink or Facebook have good intentions or not. But it doesn’t matter. The core of the matter is that there is a race to develop BCIs and achieve their mass adoption. Investors are eager to cross the chasm—the chasm that separates a product from cool innovation to mass adoption.

We know by experience that engineers and investors are impatient people. And right now they’re becoming more and more impatient. They’re impatient because the main challenge tech companies are facing is figuring out consciousness. 

That’s their main focus.

And that’s not going to be an easy task. It will take time for them to get there. But they’ll get there. But the most pressing issue is how are they going to get there?

Right now we don’t understand consciousness. And we don’t understand sentience. We don’t understand it in humans, nor in animals. We don’t understand these concepts in pigs, rats, monkeys—you name them. 

We’ve got no clue... Yet.

This is the trillion-dollar question (literally) engineers and investors are trying to figure out right now. And what’s on the table is not just money. Power is at stake too.

Engineers and investors are impatient people. They’re in a rush. They can’t wait until they are able to poke the box of consciousness.

How do engineers at Silicon Valley and Eastern China try to solve these kinds of problems? Simple. By putting a proxy on the problem. Let’s say that they want to increase the attention people give to social media platform. Let’s say with YouTube or any other social network. 

What’s the proxy here?

Time in front of the screen.

The more time people spend on the platform, the better these platforms do. 

The more attention you give them, the more money they make by showing you ads.

But this is an extremely poor ethical and philosophical foundation. The tech is great, but that’s about it. They don’t care about the political and philosophical consequences of their economic process. 

We now know by experience that they don’t care how to get there, as long as they get there. They won’t stop until they figure out this thing of consciousness. They won’t stop until they get into our thoughts. Until they get under our skin.

At whatever cost.

It’s shoot first and ask questions later. It’s about doing things and dealing with the consequences later—if they deal with them after all. 

Right now we’re seeing how some decisions about the attention economy are causing great harm to society. 

The fact is that since 2011, depression and suicide rates among youth have skyrocketed. Teenagers are having the worst mental-health crisis in decades. And if you follow the breadcrumbs, this can be traced back to their phones.¹⁷ All because of the impatience of some investors and corporations that wanted to hook people to their phones. Because they were in a hurry.

We don’t have any idea of what impact our addiction to phones is going to cause us in the future. 

We don’t know the impact it will cause on our brains 20 years down the road. 

What we do know is that the impatience of engineers and investors is causing us a lot of harm. Unquantifiable harm. 

They don’t know what long term social impact—or may we better say, social disruption—there will be because of this business logic. The corporations just operate around the premise that if they don’t do it themselves, somebody else will. So they better get there first. Fast.

What will be the implications of genetically editing babies?¹⁸ Or making monkey-human hybrids?¹⁹

What will happen with BCIs?

What will happen with gene editing?

How will humanity be disrupted because of the impatience of investors and engineers?

It goes without saying that Data Autocrats are impatient to get their hands on this technology. They’re impatient to wield the power BCIs will provide. The neural data is the data we still control. But they want to change that. Permanently. And they have a new proxy now: the decoding of human intentions. That's the key.

THE BIG HACK

The first step to making BCIs work is decoding human intentions. 

And by the way, these technologies won’t start with the kind of BCI we have in mind. That’s way down the line. What’s on the table right now are technologies for medical uses such as giving paraplegic people the ability to walk. Or moving robotic arms. That kind of stuff.

Let’s remember that researchers have the best intentions—I don’t doubt that. We shouldn’t stop them. And they won’t stop anyway.

I seriously believe that this form of human-machine integration will bring us so much joy and happiness. What I am worried about, though, is that the medical research behind the development of these products inevitably will have to pass through decoding the intentions of the brain. This is exactly the issue of hacking human beings.

When researchers are in the laboratory, they just see the particular project they’re working on. They focus on the technical problem and they get the project done. But with these kinds of projects it’s not as simple as that. 

The other not so technical problems are the ethical implications of these discoveries. Not for the particular problem researchers try to solve—such as making people use a computer with their mind—but on a greater scale.

What will this technology mean for society? And for politics?

How will this affect the lives of people? And their rights?

And if you go deep enough, the question that comes back again and again is this:

What do you do when an external system is able to hack the intentions of the human brain?

Think about Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini—or just name the autocratic politician you most dislike today. If they had their hands on this kind of technology, what would they do? 

What would that person would they could decode human intentionality in a reliable way on a mass scale from the outside?

This is why this is more important than ever. It’s crucial that we completely understand the immense political disruption that these developments involve. 

Researchers have to communicate that to the public. 

Scientists who are working on these developments should do that. It’s their responsibility to educate—especially themselves—about the social, political and philosophical implications of their work. 

But of course, Data Autocrats don’t want to do that. What they want is to break the gap between the human mind and the human experience. This will lead to the biggest revolution the world has ever seen. And that is when the revolution in infotech and the revolution in biotech fully combine.

That’ll change the world.

THE BIG HACK, PART TWO

BCIs will get all the attention soon enough, but change is catching up to us even faster. 

It’s not just enough to just be able to read thoughts right away. Sometimes in order to do that you need to understand what happens under the skin. Build up that knowledge. And then study the brain. 

There’s a conspiracy going on that’s much bigger than all of us. And that conspiracy is that Data Autocrats are aiming to hack the 8 billion people on the planet.

How are they going accomplish this?

They need lots and lots of data points. That’s Phase One: Gathering data, biometric data. And once they do this they’ll be able to decode human intentions completely. 

Then that road will lead to the ability to decode human thoughts. 

But in order for this revolution to reach its maximum potential, it needs something else. It needs data on steroids. And that’s exactly what they’re aiming for.

There’s a gap between the human mind and the human experience.

When we talk about the mind, we talk about some sort of BCI connected to your brain that can extract and analyze your thoughts—your raw neural data. This is what’s needed to understand consciousness right now.

Of course, there are more ways to understand the human mind and its intentions with external biometric devices that read what happens under you skin. But raw neural data is only accessible through some sort of brain interface.

Still, Data Autocrats need yet another element in to be able decode the human intention: the understanding of human experience. 

When we talk about human experience this includes the human mind, of course. But here we’re referring to what happens inside your body.

And it turns out that the human experience can be hacked.

Right now while you’re reading these paragraphs, there’s a powerful group of people working on hacking DNA. Because if you can hack DNA—and not only hack it, but write it too—then figuring out the human intention is an easy task.

This of course is the Data Autocrat’s dream: being able to manually type the desired outcomes into our bodies. Being able to read our source code.

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” — Bill Gates in 1995

Today we’re witnessing the rise of a scientific discipline focused on reading, writing, and editing DNA which is aiming to program living cells: synthetic biology.

In fact, 98 synthetic biology startups have collectively raised more than $3.8 billion in 2018 alone. And this is a big leap considering that 10 years ago this industry was basically nonexistent.²⁰

This industry has caught a lot of eyes—especially among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Founders Fund, where Peter Thiel is a partner, has been investing in leading synthetic biology startups, with a big focus on cloud-based platforms to execute experiments remotely. The idea is to allow people to log on to a website from anywhere in the world, type the specifications of the experiment they’d like to perform and a robot from a San Francisco warehouse will perform it.

And this is exactly the Internet-based solution the Valley loves.

Other startups such as Benchling, enable storing, editing and analyzing DNA sequences online. But not only that, they also offer the tools to plan and test experiments without picking up a pipette. This seems like a game-changer. Maybe that’s why Marc Andreessen is backing this startup with his fund Andreesen Horowitz.

Another of the ways investors are analyzing DNA is using it to store information. Catalog is one of the few startups that are diving deep into this arena. According to The Economist, the Boston-based startup can store 600 billion gigabytes in one cubic meter, while standard hard drives can just store 30 million gigabytes in one cubic meter.²¹

But synthetic biology hardly stays in the software and storage realms. It’s also being used to revolutionize the food industry. Bill Gates is heavily backing Impossible Foods and Memphis Meats. Impossible Foods makes burgers from plant-based ingredients, while Memphis Meats is trying a whole different thing. The last one is trying to grow meat from living cells using biotechnology.

The truth is that we’re entering into the golden age in the engineering and programming biology.

Even though sustainable food might not be directly related with the conversation we’re having right now, it totally is. It holds the key. 

It starts with synthetic meat. But what happens next? Will this knowledge be used for different purposes than growing meat?

Should people go against synthetic meats just to protect human rights? For ecological reasons it make sense to eat this “meat”—but is this harming our human rights? For climate reasons it makes sense to creating this product. But if it’s leading to human rights violations, does it make sense?

I have nothing against modified meat. I think it might be one of the keys to solve the ecological crisis we’re suffering. However, it starts by genetically modifying meat. But it leads to genetically modifying humans.

Now, analyzing and studying DNA is great, but there’s still something else that’s needed.

THE BIG HACK, PART THREE

Let’s remember again what it means to hack a human being:

Hacking a human being just means the ability to understand people better than they understand themselves.

There’s no need to know humans perfectly. Data Autocrats just need to know people just a little bit better than they know themselves. And that means predicting their choices better than they can themselves. Knowing how to tweak their emotions. Making decisions for them. You go down the list.

But Data Autocrats are getting so close to knowing people, that from the outside it may seem that they know them perfectly—even though they’d never be able to get to know them in every single way.

What we’re realizing now more and more is that to hack a human being you don’t need to literally get under the skin. Because there is a lot of knowledge to be obtained for figuring out human intention that’s on the surface. Or it can be extracted from the surface. 

We’re seeing this more and more and we just think it’s a minor issue, but it holds the key to building the knowledge to figure out consciousness and human emotion.

And the key is our interaction with the world.

ALL YOUR DATA IS BIOMETRIC DATA

This is key to understand the scope of what’s going on in the world.

The data we’ve been giving away for free for the last two decades isn’t just about our digital footprints. Because in that data there are clues to help Data Autocrats figure out how to hack us. 

And yes, the data that we gave away 20 years ago can hold a lot of information—even if back then there was no capable machine to get information out of it. But today that same data can be analyzed and it will produce some really interesting outputs. 

The footprints we leave—not only on our web browsers, but the ones we leave in the world both offline and online—are a reflection of our experience as human beings. 

And when I refer to experience, I mean the manifestation of our consciousness and the reaction of our bodies to the reality we’re exposed to.

Now, you can know a lot of things just by looking at the surface of a human if you’re able to decipher little clues that show his or her emotional and mental state.

These are predictions of this thing called human intentionality. 

Analyzing these clues builds up the knowledge of how humans work underneath. And this knowledge will help Data Autocrats speed up their developments in researching cutting-edge new technologies. Technologies such as brain-computer interfaces.

We’re seeing increasingly seeing how the technologies that first appeared to be simple surveillance mechanisms, are now being used to decipher emotional states. 

We can easily conclude that there’s something big built up around the predictability of our digital footprints. But there are different uses for the uprising technologies.

The first step in order to push a change into a market is to make it so smooth that people don’t notice it.

And the fact is that right now, facial recognition no longer looks creepy to the common citizen, right? We’ve opened the Pandora’s box of facial recognition. The technology isn’t new, it’s been there for a while. But what’s new and surprising is how we’ve adopted it on a mass scale. Its mass adoption basically started out when Apple pushed, better said forced, iPhone users to unlock their phones with their face. And from there it has spread like cancer.

Today it’s all over the place—even 7-Eleven has this technology in its stores.²² Singapore is adding facial recognition surveillance to 110,000 lamp posts.²³ France is rolling out a nationwide facial recognition ID program.²⁴ And China goes further, as always, and police officers wear facial recognition-enabled sunglasses.²⁵

But it gets deeper. Right now Amazon offers a facial recognition service that’s called Rekognition. Lots of companies and organizations use it—even police departments.²⁶

Rekognition recognizes the gender of faces. It can recognize celebrities. It can perform facial analysis. It can do a bunch of things.

But what it can do as well is to recognize the emotions in faces. 

Currently Amazon is offering eight categories:

Happy

Sad

Angry

Surprised

Disgusted

Calm

Confused

Fear

It’s funny that in their documentation Amazon says that their service “is not a determination of the person’s internal emotional state and should not be used in such a way.” On the other hand, on their website Amazon says that stores can benefit from this feature by feeding live images of shoppers and using Amazon’s facial-analysis tools t track emotional trends over time.

Amazon isn’t the only one offering these services. Microsoft has had similar offers since 2015. And Google since 2016. 

But even if all of these tech giants can try to predict feelings from a face, psychologists are warning that trying to read emotions from facial expression is “fundamentally misguided.”²⁷

And here we encounter another poorly designed proxy. Again.

Over time, we’ll see the consequences this proxy has on people.

Right now Data Autocrats are not only able to know your emotional state, but your bodily reactions too. Just by analyzing an image, it is possible to know the levels of your blood pressure. The algorithm takes into account the color of your skin and pretty accurately knows your blood pressure.²⁸

And this explains why sending photos over WhatsApp or uploading them to a cloud (Google Photos, Amazon, iCloud, you name it) is a sensitive topic.

These photos are being analyzed from top to bottom to extract emotional states.

But these are just a couple of examples. The key here is to have as many mining points as possible. And it goes as far as predicting heart diseases just by looking into your eyes.²⁹

Buy hey, why not analyze biometric information directly?

There’s an interesting case for how this is happening when you try to understand how smartwatches and fitness trackers operate. But it is even more interesting to analyze the disruption of the health care system by tech companies.

“One of the biggest battles in the twenty-first century is likely to be between privacy and health. And I guess that health is going to win.” — Yuval Noah Harari

Steve Blank, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, wrote an article about the Apple Watch and the tipping point for health care. He analyzed Apple’s strategy and how they’re getting ahead of their competitors. And that’s where the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration) clearance enters into scene.³⁰

“Sooner than people think,” Blank says, “virtually all home and outpatient diagnostics will be performed by consumer devices such as the Apple Watch, mobile phones, fitness trackers, etc. that have either become FDA cleared as medical devices or have apps that have received FDA clearance.”

What this means is that the health care industry is going to suffer a big disruption led by the tech giants. Right now it seems that Apple is leading that disruption. It has been using the Apple Watch as a medical device since it became approved by the FDA.

What tech companies have discovered here is a trillion-dollar market right here. And they want to disrupt it. Every company is trying to get their claws into this change: Google is heavily investing in health care, Amazon is investing in pharmacy distribution and, of course, Apple is using the Apple as a health screening and diagnostic device.

One of the interesting changes we’re seeing is that Apple already sells around 15 millions watches a year, which will allow them to test some interesting features at a mass scale. But what’s most interesting about this, and the reason Apple might take over the health care industry is that so far they’re one of the few companies that know how to get through the FDA clearance process.

This is huge.

The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, is the federal agency in the US that determines whether the Apple Watch and its apps are valid as a health care device. If that happens—or when that happens—these devices will be used as a diagnostic tool. Which means that insurance companies will mandate the use of an Apple Watch on every patient. As a matter of fact, they’re already doing it with activity trackers... like the Apple Watch.³¹

Steve Blank, in that same article, went through Apple’s patents and created a list of eight key features:

Sleep Tracking and Sleep Apnea Detection

Pulse oximetry

Respiration rate

Blood Pressure

Sunburn/UV Detector

Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosis and Monitoring

Glucose Monitoring

Sensor and Data Challenges

It’s worth noticing that the Apple Watch already has sensors that are capable of detecting everything from this list. So, as soon as this isn’t another Theranos case, this is getting serious.³²

Let me put it this way:

Let’s say you own a smartwatch. And you go to a shopping mall to look for stuff.

The watch it’s already communicating through its GPS that you’re spending your time in a shopping mall.

As a matter of fact, with 5G technology that same watch could already communicate on what floor you’re on. And precisely in which shop.

Let’s remember that the algorithm behind that watch (not the watch itself of course, but the software and apps that make the watch work) take into account all the data that profiles you as a target.

You get to any of the shops. And you hesitate whether to buy something. 

Now, we do know that in the moment of purchasing something our heart rate goes up. And that information is recorded, sent and analyzed so it can profile you even better.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is how you start to analyze human emotions and intentionality on the most visceral level.

And this information about purchasing won’t be just used to help advertisers spend more money to get their crap out there. 

This is the first proxy that Data Autocrats need in order to figure out the human intention. Again, the same thing always happens: what starts with surveillance capitalists continues with Data Autocrats.

Right there you have information that builds up intentionality.

These are little proxies that could help engineers and investors put a target on intentionality.

Let’s leave aside the benefits of owning a smartwatch. I get it, this will be revolutionary and it will save millions of lives—nobody is denying that. But what will this mean?

This won’t just magnify privacy inequality. If people refuse to use these devices, insurance companies will charge them more, or just refuse to offer them their services. And if someone with a bad health situation uses it, and insure companies figure out their poor health through the biometric data provided by this device, they might that charge more or just deny them the service.

But we’re short-term thinking if we just stop at that. Using these sort of devices will allow for the massive extraction of data from patients and people who regularly use these devices.

This is especially important since it can match all your biometric data, with location data, with consumption data—with all sorts of data. And when Data Autocrats put all of that in the mix, they’ll start to understand the human experience and get closer to their goal of hacking humanity.

THE BIG HACK, PART FOUR

Let’s remember that surveillance capitalists use and sell future behaviors. This is why decoding human intentions is the core of the conversation. It’s the core of their business. 

And it’s the key to controlling the masses. Because once you have access to such a deep private secret (raw and pure human thoughts), then it’s no longer a prediction of future behavior. It’s a certainty of a future behavior. A behavior that will also be used by Data Autocrats to dictate to people how to behave in the way that serves the system most.

And here it is critical to highlight again the chain of power in this global arms race. And I can’t stress this enough:

Privacy is the key that unlocks the twenty-first century.

Because killing privacy it’s what allows Data Dictatorships to extract data on a massive scale. 

And that data is what fuels AI. 

It fuels AI because this data is what feeds their algorithms. Algorithms that need to learn how to function. And this data helps them to learn and then the machine can learn by itself—this is what is called machine learning. 

And when it comes to BCIs, it is critical to understand that yes, thoughts by themselves are powerful. But if you combine them with biometric information (the kind of reactions your body experiences), then we’re getting serious. The body doesn’t lie.

The days are numbered for privacy. And if we don’t regulate it properly, by the time these new tech products start being widely used it will be too late. Reading and writing DNA and thoughts is totally new for privacy. And if you put it this way is it’s hard not to see a future world as dystopian.

If in the future there’s a chance that it will be possible to feed information into the brain via electricity—then it’ll game over for us. Because our brains won’t even know that this is taking place. And we won’t be able to rebel against something like this, because everybody would think that everything is fine.

That’s why Data Autocrats want the whole package:

Biometric data + Neural data

That’s how they can literally change the world. 

No more predictions. No more wasting time figuring out what we’re going to do next. 

This is the time to create the future they want.

This revelation is the key.

In 2019 there’s still human agency. The last privacy frontier is still protected. But maybe it won’t be for too long.

Let’s remember that this situation won’t last long. It will only last until the algorithms have learned how to hack the human body. 

Once they get there, Data Dictatorships won’t need more data because the algorithm will have already been trained.

We’re seeing how Data Autocrats are figuring out human intentionally little by little. 

They have started with our most basic digital footprints by using external devices to understand what happens inside the body. But soon enough we’ll see how more and more tools are going to analyze our bodies and minds directly.

We’re seeing the surge of all these new experiments with incredibly cutting-edge technology. But the key is not the technology itself, but the ability of this technology to interact with humans so it can modify the human experience.

So for example, in virtual reality we’re seeing the appearance of more and more robotic limbs that are changing the experience of that virtual world. It’s about feeling through a robotic arm what happens in that world.

Or consider the creation of origami robots that are supposed to be sent to other planets. These robots can transform into any shape and have the ability to transmit all the information back to Earth, where someone is interacting and experiencing let’s say Mars through that robot.

We’re standing on the bridge between human mind and human experience. We’re piercing between the subjectivity of the individual and the objectivity of the outside world. This is about breaching the borderline: the human skin. And once Data Autocrats bridge this gap, this is when the biggest revolution will happen: the merger of infotech and biotech. This will unravel a new era in the future of humanity. A new age of enlightenment where science flourishes like it did in the era of the scientific revolution in the sixteenth century—where we lifted the veil of the mysticism, the witchcraft and the religious superstition that had governed us during the dark middle ages. And in a historical comparison, the advances of this new scientific revolution will be so major that what we leave behind will be a new form of middle age.

Data Autocrats aim to hijack this historical shift and change the whole human experience. 

Do this on a massive scale and fireworks will ensue.

This has just gotten started. 

This is Phase One.

Phase Two will be completely different and imminent.

In that phase data will be no longer needed, because algorithms will already be trained. 

Once the revolution truly happens, there’ll be enough information—biological information—to hack human beings and figure out this Pandora’s box we call consciousness.

PHASE ONE: COLLECTING DATA

This is a two-step operation.

The first and most dangerous step with BCIs (or without them) is that Data Dictatorships need to have access to data. Lots of data.

And this is critical:

Data Dictatorships need uninterrupted flows of data.

Now, let’s recap what this Phase One is about.

Data Dictatorships are trying to get to your mind and to your own experience as a human being—they want to understand your DNA. And to write it too.

Even though BCIs haven’t fully arrived yet, Data Autocrats don’t need to get under people’s skin in order to hack them. They just need to understand people better than they understand themselves—which is easy.

What they’re currently doing is collecting all sorts of data. Because, in the end, all data is biometric data.

Instead of waiting for technologies such as BCIs to be well tested and adopted massively, they’re just speeding up the process by creating predictions from the data they already have. Data that’s going to be even more valuable in the future.

What Data Dictatorships want is to modify the human experience.

Data Dictatorships want to understand and change consciousness and our perception of the world. In the end, human consciousness is a product resulting of the experiences our bodies have and an interpretation of the mind with this reality—that’s why the way someone experiences reality it an intersubjective process. 

You might be asking yourself: Why do Data Autocrats want to understand the human body when they can have just access to the brain?

First of all, it’s because the route to the brain is going to take much longer—and they really don’t need to dive that deep. Understanding the human body is a critical component of their conspiracy to hack humankind. Because if Data Autocrats want to hack the intentions of the human mind, they have to understand the human body. That’s how you can trick the brain into deeply believing that there’s a change of experience.

That’s how placebos work. They’re basically a way to trick you into believing something, to generate a certain change.

For Data Autocrats to modify the human experience completely, they first have to change the bodily experience. And then, they have to make the mind believe in those changes the body is sending as signals. Just like placebos, but on a greater scale. 

The process of hacking the intentions of the human being is a part of Phase One, but hacking them it’s not enough.

Hacking the intentions of the human mind is still part of Phase One, because it will still require data to fuel its progress. But once the hacking has been fully tested and has been done massively, then Data Dictatorships will have enough data to know people way better than they know themselves.

By that point two things will be true: (1) Data will no longer be necessary because they’ve already hack people, so no more knowledge is needed—the algorithm will improve itself. And (2) the shift from Phase One to Phase Two will happen when the hacking is done to the mass population. Once they’re in the system, they won’t have to hack be hacked anymore. They’re part of it. 

This is a critical step. And it can’t be stopped. The flow must keep going.

Currently they’re gathering data at all costs.

And they’re doing it in relentless ways. Because they know the finish line is close. So they’ll do whatever they have to do in order to keep the flow of data going.

And if they can’t get this data for free by stealing it as they’ve done up until now, they’ll try to pay you for it.

That’s why selling your data is a terribly dangerous idea. It doesn’t solve any problem. You just give Data Dictatorships a green light to collect and mine your data. Legalizing data sales is one of the worst things we can do. Data ownership isn’t important if you can’t lock the extraction of that data.

Data collection is the key. This builds up the knowledge to figure out intentionality.

Of course, this massive extraction of data will have lots of collateral damages we haven’t seen yet.

And this will affect the most vulnerable ones in the most acute ways. 

Who are the most vulnerable people to violate their privacy? The developing world.

The developing world is the Data Dictatorship’s data mine field.

The tricky thing about biometric data is that it is human biometric data. That means it doesn’t depend on an ethnicity or region or culture. Because underneath we all work exactly the same way.

Data Autocrats are running faster and faster to develop algorithms so they can speed up Phase Two: the true revolution.

And they know that the key to their success is how able they are able to violate privacy.

And we’re coming back to this again and again:

Privacy is the only thing standing between us and Data Dictatorships sucking every value they can from us.

And right now there’s a privacy emergency. There’s a privacy emergency because we’re in the middle of Phase One, and when it’s over and we enter into Phase Two, privacy won’t be a thing anymore. Maybe we won’t even be able to get it back.

PHASE TWO: THE TRUE REVOLUTION

I’ve described the abyss we’re heading towards. This is happening already on a smaller scale, but there will soon be a revolution that will give this the proper dimensions.

We’re not there yet, but we will be. So we gotta get ready to fight.

But the key question to ask here is when and how?

When?

When there’s the democratization of biotech chips for a few cents.

How?

With this mass adoption of biotech inputs Data Autocrats will have enough data points to take their plans to the next level.

The key for Data Autocrats is to make the transition as smooth as possible. And that transition is about completely making authority shift from humans to algorithms. 

Of course, it would be foolish for us to try to compete with AI. It’s naturally impossible. We can barely handle three or four inputs when making decisions, while algorithms can take millions of data inputs and analyze them in a way that would make no sense to us. And secondly, we can’t just compete because we don’t understand what happens inside our bodies and brains. This is exactly why AI can’t go far unless it is linked to biology and biotechnology. Because the moment that humans enter the equation, AI needs that input.

Most people haven’t realized this yet, but right now most of the things AI is working on need biotechnology in order to work.

Figuring out the human intention is built into most AI. It’s not just about robotic limbs. It’s also built into self-driving cars. Because in order to get an autonomous car on the road, its AI must know the intentionality of humans on the road. A self-driving car must be able to understand human emotions. Otherwise it’s useless. 

As you can see, AI is not as powerful without putting in the mix the human ingredient: emotions. Understanding consciousness will come later, but consciousness is a product derived from human emotions. In the end we’re emotional machines.

But there’s one last ingredient that is needed for the true revolution take place.

OPENING PANDORA’S BOX

Again, in 2019 there’s still human agency. But the gate is closing.

Even if Data Autocrats are able to combine AI with biotech, they can’t get too far unless there’s a mass adoption of these biotech products. Because you can’t hack eight billion people unless most of them have access to technological products that in some way analyze their body and mind.

But we’re very close. We’re about to open the Pandora’s box. And the invention that will bring these two revolutions together are biometric sensors that can translate biological data into digital data.

Once we have really cheap, ubiquitous biometric sensors—just like we do today with cameras, microphones and chips for a few cents—then the real revolution will take place. 

This will literally change the world as we know it.

The pace technology grows is so exponential, we can’t keep up. We don’t understand it unless we dive deep into researching it. Otherwise it goes unnoticed. 

But we’ve already gone through many smooth transitions and we’ve adopting these changes each time without we even noticing them. 

Check for yourself. Look at the people around you. Are they going to notice these changes?

They’re just glued to their phones. Awed by how incredible their Google Home, Alexa or Siri are. 

This happened despite the fact that some of us started to notice how our digital footprints were being used against us. Data Dictatorships continued to extract biometric data from fitness trackers or smartwatches, all the way down to facial recognition technologies. These technologies are starting to become normalized. And they’ve done it in such a smooth way we didn’t notice it. And if we noticed, we didn’t do enough to regulate this.

And again and again, they sell us the same argument: it’s for your own safety.

But we know by history that whenever they’re selling us something for safety, there’s a long tail of problems that come with it. Just consider how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 gave a green light to expand executive authority and significantly increase state surveillance.

As political theorist Iris Marion Young reflects, right after the attacks, “Congress passed a resolution effectively waiving its constitutionally mandated power to deliberate and decide on whether the state shall go to war.”

Furthermore, Young has also highlighted how “the USA PATRIOT Act, signed on October 26, 2001, severely reduces the power of courts to review and limit executive actions to keep organizations under surveillance, limit their activities, and search and seize or detain individuals. Under its provisions, individuals and organizations have had their records investigated, their assets seized, and their activities and correspondence monitored.”³³

In other words, the NSA was enabled to run a massive surveillance operate to spy people all around the world under no supervision at all.

Right now, I’m writing these paragraphs in the lobby of the London School of Economics. And before I got here this morning, I tried to notice all the cameras that were in my way. I lost count.

I can’t go around and keep my life private. There are cameras everywhere. And everything is built in a way so that it’s more convenient to use technology that leaves digital breadcrumbs everywhere. Just like buying a bus ticket using your phone or debit cards as a payment method. Everything is done so they can capture more and more of your movements. 

But this is not just happening in London. More and more places are becoming surveillance states.

In my hometown, Spain, there’s a recent initiative pushing to install these cameras in schools. They say it’s for deterring bullying and assaults. They want to prevent that.

The key here is that the argument is seductive. It’s tempting. But little by little, data autocrats around the world are pushing for this technology. 

And as soon as they have cheap and ubiquitous biometric sensors, they’ll use them relentlessly so they can have the volume they need to get to Phase Two as soon as possible. 

That, combined with 5G technology will change everything. Because the real deal with 5G is that it makes the Internet of things a reality connecting all sorts of things. From facial recognition cameras to intelligent roads to 3D GPS signals.

The Main Hubs are trying to get this done. And the rest? They’ll have two options: to join the revolution or to regulate it.

Unfortunately, the mentality of the arms race is forcing those who are not considered Data Autocrats to play by the same rules. Because if we don’t do it somebody else is going to go ahead.

This is why we’re in a really bad spot.

We’re getting there, folks. Today data is valuable. But once it’s collected and Data Autocrats manage to hack human beings, data will have no value at all. And we’ll become totally useless. 

That is why this is a turning point. This is why we need a revolution. Because once we open Pandora’s box, we can’t close it anymore. 

If you pay close attention you’ll see how China is already getting there. The US wishes they could operate this way, but China being a dictatorship can implement this already without having to be accountable to its democratic counter-weights at all.

In fact, this is the result of having a form of government with no restrictions whatsoever. The difference here is that China does not need a smooth transition. They can just push for a change and its population will adopt it. And here we come back again to the dictatorships and delusions we talked about at the beginning of this book:

When people are living in a full-operational dictatorship, they just beauty when they look themselves in the mirror.

And this is exactly what’s happening in China.

In an investigation created by The Wall Street Journal, you can see how far the Chinese are going by taking a look at some schools.³⁴

China is using their schools as a testing field. In some schools in China, the classrooms have robots that analyze students' health and engagement levels. Students have to wear uniforms with chips in them that track their locations. And there are even surveillance cameras that analyze how often students check their phones. But there’s something else the Chinese are testing, something that reveals their intentions with AI: BCIs.

In these classrooms, students wear a headband.

We’re talking about a device with three electrodes—two right behind the ears and one on the forehead. Three electrodes that pick up the electrical signals the brain sends, and then send that neural data to the teacher’s computer—where he or she can see exactly when someone isn’t paying attention.

Every 10 minutes the teacher’s computer generates a detailed report of each student showing the concentration levels. And this is what the device technically does: it measures each student’s level of concentration. And then, of course, the parents can get to see this data.

It’s hard to believe that parents would accept this sort of experiment on their kids. But the schools say that it’s not hard to get parental consent to enroll their kids in what seems to be a massive surveillance experiment for the Chinese Main Hub.

Why wouldn’t parents sign their kids up, when this technology is supposed to boost students’ grades and help their country?

The Wall Street Journal had exclusive access to a school near Shanghai. They tried out this technology and asked parents and school teachers about this technology.

One parent said: “If it’s for our country’s research and development, I don’t think it’s a problem.”

The Chinese Main Hub is getting serious with BCIs. And it’s astonishing the way they’re forcing this technology in schools without getting a huge pushback. At the end of the day, the public narrative is that it’s helping millions of students raise their grades.

This is just an example, but there are many more. And more and more are coming.

This is happening. And we won’t stop it if we continue trying the conventional road.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that the only way to prevent this future dystopia is to occupy the streets.

We have to get ready for the fight.

THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

Freedom isn’t something we should take for granted. You have to work hard to get it. But you have to work twice as hard to maintain it. The actual way to obtain freedom is realizing that you’re a potential slave of whoever knows how to pull the emotional strings that make you feel something or desire one thing over the other. It starts by acknowledging what’s really happening, and then getting to know yourself. And this takes time.

But we’ve got no time.

Let’s be honest, most people aren’t even curious to get to know themselves. And that would be okay if it’s just them. But we’ve got two big problems here: (1) We’re talking about the majority of the population. And (2) even if we were talking about a small group of people, it still threatens democracies around the world and jeopardizes our rights.

Right now we’re facing a variety of global threats. And we can’t solve them on a national scale. These threats require global coordination. We’ve got not only technological disruptions, but also the ecological crisis and the threat of nuclear war—and yes, this isn’t just something that happened during the Cold War. There are still a lot of nukes around.³⁵

And of course, we’ve got the rise of Data Dictatorships disrupting everything that’s in their way in their search for power.

These are timely issues. Even if people decided to get to know themselves now, we’ve got no time. We don’t have that luxury anymore. 

These are issues that require global cooperation. Otherwise we won’t be able to prevent the worst outcomes.

And right now, there’s not single sign that we’re heading towards any form of global cooperation. In fact, we’re walking in the opposite direction.

I’m a big believer in hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. I don’t want you to believe that this is all gloom and doom. But we shouldn’t take Data Dictatorships lightly. Everything indicates that there’s a big fight ahead of us. This time we can’t just wait and see. This time we have to grab life by the balls, get our sh*t together and earn our rights.

But before we mentally prepare for this fight, we need to know how we could technically solve the problem. Because this will be what we should demand.

BOOK SEVEN

THE REVOLUTION

WHAT’S NEXT?

Alright. Now we know how Data Dictatorships operate—we’ve got to the core of their modus operandi. We have more than one reason to start challenging the status quo. And we can’t hope for regulators to rescue us.

Data Autocrats get to operate within big legal loopholes. And we know by experience that regulations are slow and linear, while Data Autocrats are thriving in a technological scenario that—if it’s not exponential—is clearly propelling Data Autocrats at a bigger speed and on a bigger scope than we can conceive.

So they key here is: what is the way forward as humanity considering this disadvantage?

Just like in every revolution in history, change have come from the people. The philosophical foundations lay down the ideas behind the French and American revolutions, and postcolonialism ignited the ideas behind the decolonizing process. But it was the collective action of the population that has overthrown oppressive regimes and practices throughout history.

People who stood up and said enough.

That’s precisely what we need to do. Right now is the moment to stand up, because this window of opportunity we have now—while there is still human agency left—is not going remain for long. We’re increasingly losing our only power to rebel against Data Dictatorships.

During the Industrial Revolution, the workers had an increased bargaining power to rebel against the capitalists. Nineteenth century capitalism couldn’t work without workers—labor was what gave power to the people. But that’s not the case in the revolution we’re living in the twenty-first century.

Today the only thing we have left is our data. But once humanity is hacked, we’ll lose all our power because the system will work with or without us.

We’ll lose our opportunity to rebel against Data Dictatorships. And this space of opportunity is becoming smaller and smaller by the day.

The most important thing we need to seek now is privacy.

PRIVACY WON'T MATTER UNLESS WE MAKE IT MATTER

Privacy is our most critical counterweight right now to being ripped bare. But it won’t stay like this for long if Data Dictatorships succeed in becoming the dominant forces in the international world order. And if Data Autocrats end up hacking human beings. If we reach that point, privacy won’t matter that much. Once Data Autocrats have enough data to decipher the human black box, we’ll become irrelevant. 

Yes, in Phase Two they’ll still have to keep us in check and collect some data. But privacy won’t matter anymore. 

If they have all the information they need—and that means they have gathered all the data they needed to train their algorithms—then they’ll know exactly how to hack us. They will know what to do to prevent us from rebelling against the system.

And so far it looks like we’re heading into Phase Two without any friction. 

The problem with Privacy is a semantics problem—just like with many other problems.

I was very tempted to use the word privacy in the title of my book. But why didn’t I do that?

Because people already have a strong idea of what privacy is. They have already filled that category in their minds. This category constrains the conversation to the digital realm—or even worse, it implies this issue applies just to the deep web.

But privacy matters more today than ever before.

We can’t wait for regulators to catch up. We can’t trust them. And even if we could trust them, there are a lot of things that we don’t comprehend. Lobbies we don’t see. And interests of all sorts.

The truth is that there’s a global privacy emergency.

And we don’t have a privacy standard—global or national—that legally protects us from Data Dictatorships trying to hack us.

A TIMELY GLOBAL PROBLEM

Consider the climate crisis. Do you think this is a problem you can solve on a national scale?

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol looked like it was going to be a powerful mechanism because lots of countries committed to its adoption. However, as soon as China refused to join the protocol, the whole thing was doomed. The same thing happened when the United States pulled out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. How can you collectively fight global issues when some countries don’t agree or are blatantly conducting policies against your commitments?

The climate crisis isn’t something that can be solve with the collaboration of a few countries. It’s a global effort.

And the same thing happens with technological disruption.

Yuval Noah Harari has highlighted that a country can’t develop nuclear weapons in secrecy. At some point people would become aware of this—due to the massive infrastructure required for its development and testing. However, any country can work on AI weapons in secret—and nobody would ever notice it.¹

Even if countries decide that technological disruption is a threat for humanity and decide to regulate it… Even if the US agrees with China that both of them won’t work on AI, how can you know that they won’t actually develop AI? During the hardest decades of Cold War, there were numerous treaties—like the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the SALT I and SALT II talks—attempting to limit both conventional and nuclear weapons production. Still, the arms race between the US and the USSR escalated to the point of collapsing the Soviet Economy under Gorbachev. What’s to say that today would be any different and that any commitments between the US and China to limit the development of AI would be kept?

Should we trust in the good faith of governments, corporations and organizations, when they don’t even trust themselves? Should we trust Data Dictatorships?

This change has to happen on the streets. Maybe the European Union can work something out within its sphere, but this is a global problem and we need to tackle it globally.

This is a global and timely problem.

PHILOSOPHICAL BANKRUPTCY

In theory, in a democratic society, if we collectively organized and demanded these changes, they would have to be implemented. 

But reality is messy. Ideal conditions never apply. And we live in a time when those in power will soon be able to hack humankind unless we stop them. 

The challenge we find ourselves facing is the immense influence the Main Hubs have.

Since the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was launched in Europe, there has been an increasing interest in regulations. So far, it’s fantastic that we’re having the public conversation at least.

The thing is that the Main Hubs know this.

The Main Hubs know that sometimes giving people what they want is the way to go. (Unless you’re China and you do it anyways.)

Consider the 2020 landmark privacy law in California. Over decades we’ve seen how California has pioneered innovation. And right now it’s the heart of one of the Main Hubs. 

But interestingly, a new privacy regulation is coming out there.

And this doesn’t smell good. Because when even Facebook defends this law, something’s very wrong. This is what Facebook said about it: “We believe people should be in control of their information and companies should be held to high standards in explaining what data they have and how they use it, especially when they sell data.”²

Do regulators have bad intentions or are they just ignorant? I don’t know which is worse. The thing is that we can’t trust a few law makers to do the right thing. And this problem is above their paychecks, as they say.

In the end what this law will do is to punish smaller players, but it will allow the biggest ones to keep operating the same way in the shadows.

And they will be allowed to do this because the US Main Hub is backing these tech platforms.

But even if people become aware of the privacy problem and demanded for companies and governments to be held accountable, how would you still know they wouldn’t keep collecting massive amounts of data while violating people’s privacy?

You can’t.

This happens behind the curtains. You can’t see what’s beneath.

The NSA and other intelligence agencies are working with the tech giants. Tech giants are the data storage and management facilities that work for the Main Hubs.

In the case of China everything is clear. But in the west, we somehow just trust these entities. And even though they say “we don’t spy on American citizens”, what about the rest of us motherfuckers?

And even if the public pressure is high, they can just grant these privacy privileges to American citizens to appease the public. Well, in theory—even though with Edward Snowden’s revelations we saw this wasn’t true—they do state that “we don’t spy on American citizens.”

What right do they have to spy on me, a non-American citizen?

And yet, most Americans would approve this. Because it’s a matter of national security. Isn’t it?

The challenge here is that even if we come up with strong regulations in Europe and other developed countries, what about the developing world?

The developing world is the Data Dictatorship’s data mine field. 

If collecting massive amounts of data in developed countries might raise any red flag, they’ll go directly to the developing world where they can collect, test and implement whatever the Main Hubs want.

As I have highlighted before, all data is biometric data. It doesn’t matter how many cultural differences we have with any country in the developing world. In the end we all operate in the same way underneath the skin.

The biometric data that is collected in the developing world will still help the Main Hubs to get to Phase Two: the phase where new data coming in is not that necessary.

Alas, we’re used to these kinds of injustices, aren’t we?

The promises of globalization have destroyed lots of pillars of social justice. We were promised a whole new world. But so far what we have seen is pure economic globalization—where social globalization, global cooperation and development have been left to choke.

The truth this that we haven’t improved in the social and political level. In fact, it seems like we’re going backwards. 

Yes, life probably was worse before globalization. But there hasn’t been the kind of revolutionary improvement you would expect when you open up the world’s information to everyone.

Little by little, we’re destroying the safeguards of our human rights. Of our planet. Of our democracies.

Of course, we face more challenges than just the surveillance dimension. But all of these challenges are already inter-connected.

If you look at the world, you can find some clues about our true human nature. 

For most of the organisms in this planet, we have erected ourselves as Gods. The destiny of these organisms is completely in our hands—even the bodies of animals.

Do you wanna peer into the future of humanity?

A good place to start is to observe the present state of other animals beneath us in the socially constructed chain. 

And what we need to realize is that we too are animals. So it’s not far-fetched to think that what we do to the other organisms on this planet couldn’t be done to us. Genocide is the testament of the extent of human depravation—and history has shown us some vile forms of the extent of our own cruelty.

In the last few years individual rights have been losing power in our society’s priorities. The individual was conceived the primary focus of liberal societies. The equal individual who was equal and whose individual rights were innate and inalienable. Whenever history has placed the group over the individual, we have seen autocracy, war and illiberalism.

And this is why the regime of surveillance we’re living in right now is the greatest danger to the individual. Because we’re talking about a system that would be able to manipulate our desires and choices. And it could also make decisions on our behalf.

Surveillance regimes aren’t just particular to humans. Animals live under extreme surveillance. And it is not far-fetched to believe that the same forms of oppression and control to which we have submitted animals couldn’t be done to humans as well. And I know it sounds harsh, but it’s not impossible.

This is extremely dangerous. We’re living in a time where the logic of the market competition and a geopolitical arms race—much more violent than the arms races that lead us to two World Wars and the Cold War—is getting us there.

Again, it’s us or them.

Nobody wants to do it, but someone is going to do it anyway.

And the worst of all? We know surveillance is happening and will increasingly happen on a massive scale. We have a really clear vision to what the future is going to look like if we go down this path. Yet, we feel hopeless—or bury ourselves in our own ignorance and the illusions this digital world has fed us—and do nothing about it.

We live in a hypocritical society. 

We live in a society that only looks for economic improvements. Where everything has a price—even our democracies. 

We live in a world in which companies pretend to join the “ecological wave” by selling one line of recycled t-shirts, while the rest of their clothes are produced in extremely toxic ways and their supply chains exploit workers in the developing world. But hey, in their marketing departments they think is a good idea to clean up their brand.

We live in a world in which CEOs of car manufacturer’s say “I hope you don't buy [this car].” Because Chrysler loses $500 every time they sell an electric Chrysler 500e. But hey, they meet all federal regulations, right?³

We live in a society in which we believe that governments and corporations will look after us. We like to think that some tech companies will lead the privacy revolution. Like Apple, for example. Which, despite being a trillion-dollar global company, still operate under the clasp of US law. And if Trump of whichever the President in the White House needs to crush these initiatives to respect people’s rights and people’s privacy in the name of a fabricated national security crisis, they’ll do it. Or if they don’t want to lose the Chinese market—that represents 17% of their annual income—if the Chinese regime asks them to give them the data of all iCloud accounts in China, they’ll do it.⁴ Apple will hide the Taiwanese flag from the iOS emoji keyboard in Hong Kong⁵, or remove any apps that help Hong Kong protesters to track the locations of police during democratic demonstration⁶, if the Chinese Main Hub asks them to.

But the most exasperating challenge here is, how do you prove this?

I mean, right now after a few hundred pages of me banging your head with these ideas, you can be pretty sure that extreme surveillance and massive data collection is taking place. Yet, we can’t prove it.

And if we can’t prove something and this allows Data Autocrats to keep on pushing our rights and human agency further away, democracy dies.

And we don’t have time.

We do know that we need global cooperation to solve these extreme problems. Because there’s absolutely no way to regulate such complex international issues on a national basis. There has to be an international regime for regulation. But we can’t agree on global regime of regulations in a world full of hostile fortresses.

And even worse, we’re truthfully facing a problem that we don’t know how to solve.

“Sometimes I have a suspicion that we are running on the last gas in the gas tank in our philosophical gap.” Yuval Noah Harari said in a conversation with Steven Pinker.⁷ He continued:

“We are facing philosophical bankruptcy. Because the new challenges—especially from the new technologies: climate change and nuclear war, in a way are kind of easy problems. Because we know what to do about it. We need to prevent them. That's very easy. Maybe not everybody agrees that it's a real threat. Maybe not everybody agrees how to stop it. But in principle nobody says ‘hey, climate change, that's great—let's have more of that.’ ‘Nuclear war? Yes, I'm in favor.’ Nobody says that. But with technological disruption what to do is AI and bioengineering, there is absolutely no agreed goal. The dreams of some people are the nightmares of other people.”

I believe this is by far the most challenging problems we’re facing in the twenty-first century. And I’m not trying to compare nuclear weapons with Data Dictatorships in terms of human cost. But the thing is, we do have the knowledge of what we need to do in order to stop the ecological crisis. And we do have the knowledge of what we need to do to prevent nuclear war. Regardless of the fact that some people are trying to make these political problems—not scientific problems—these problems do have solutions. But more and more people want more technological disruption. They want more AI. They want more biotech.

This is the worst problem because we’re facing a philosophical void. These problems are becoming increasingly philosophical problems. And we need a new era of philosophy that provide us with the means to face the existential, economic and political challenges of the next century. We can’t run on the philosophical ideas from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were so important in constituting our democracies and our rights, despite the fact that they pioneered the greatest progress in human history. Because back then there was a completely different understanding of human nature. The advances in biotechnology and brain sciences have led us to a point where we face a huge gap in our ethical and philosophical foundations.

So what can we do?

Even if somehow we can come up with global regulations, Data Autocrats will still have the developing world to play with. Just like in the era of illustrated thought and the foundation of western democracy, imperialists used the undiscovered world as their ground of exploitation.

And even if Data Autocrats have to act against their own people, they’ll do it without blinking. They can just act in the shadows and excuse themselves by saying: this is for security reasons.

Pick any revolution in history. No revolutionary change was achieved without a fight. None.

Right now we’re living in the longest period of peace in the history of the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall brought us the greatest era of progress, democratization and development, which in turn spearheaded the tech revolution. And we’re living with more comfort and more acquisitive power than we ever have before. Maybe we’re just too comfortable. And maybe we’re going to lose everything for being lazy and screwing around with our freedom—something that took our ancestors real blood to gain. We shouldn’t forget where we come from, and what it takes to fight tyranny and oppression and alienation.

Yes, global cooperation and education and awareness are what we need. But this is a timely issue. And the stakes are greater than ever. 

We can’t take a passive role and wait to be educated. 

We have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

It’s not going to happen, unless we make it happen.

This is a call to the revolutionaries. For those who want to take an active role in this revolution and make history. Otherwise history will be over for us—sooner than we can imagine.

A revolution is inevitable.

COLONIZATION OR COLONIZATION BY EXILE

Right now, as you read these lines, there’s a competition between the algorithms that are working to hack you.

Data Dictatorships today are in competition to hack the eight billion people in the planet. But this is hardly the only competition that is taking place. Each one of us is also in competition with the governments, corporations and intelligence agencies that constitute the sphere of relations of Data Dictatorships—because they’re all trying get to know us better than we know ourselves.

The stakes are our own individual autonomy. And the only way preserving our own individual autonomy is getting to know ourselves better than Google or Baidu or the government do.

And knowing yourself today is more important than it has ever been in history. Because if Data Autocrats get to know you… It’s game over for you. You won’t even know you’re being hacked, you’d just be pleasantly living an automatized version of your life. But Data Autocrats would be manipulating you—controlling your desires and making choices for you without you even being aware of it. Once you get hacked, there’s no way out. And, please, don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m going too far with this, or even worse: don’t think that nobody can manipulate you. The easiest people to manipulate are the people who believe in free will. Nobody can manipulate them. Well, they’re the easiest ones.

The truth is that if Data Dictatorships hack you, it's not only game over for you. We all lose more opportunities to preserve our agency. Humanity gets closer to a total game over. We get closer to checkmate.

Some people think that this problem doesn’t affect them because they don’t share stuff on social media—and try to keep their things private. But this issue affects the whole of humanity.

Once biotechnology fully enters the scene, the knowledge that is gathered from people on an individual level will help Data Dictatorships to decipher the rest of us. Because, deep down, we’re all hardwired in the same way. 

We all work the same way on an emotional level—an unconscious level. So if they’re able to tweak and improve algorithms that influence you and shape your thoughts on an emotional level, then it doesn’t matter where the data to improve that algorithm comes from, does it?

There’s an opportunity cost on giving up on privacy. There’s an individual cost and a collective cost.

Every choice has a price.

And the problem is that our time is finite. We only get the next hour once. And once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. So how we choose to spend our time comes with critical opportunity costs. And time is running out.

The reality is that we’re not hardwired to think about opportunity costs. We get paralyzed by infinity. But we’ve got no time to fool around. The stakes are high. And the opportunity cost of not fighting for our privacy and freedom comes with a very high price. Hong Kong knows this very well.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

In the article The idea of emergency: Humanitarian action and global (dis) order, American sociologist Craig Calhoun explains that the word Emergency “has become a basic unit of global affairs, like the nation.”⁸

The word emergency is widely used for referring to conflicts, crises, and situations of human suffering. However, Calhoun says: “Emergencies are understood to be sudden, unpredictable, brief, or at least very urgent, and exceptions to some sort of normal order.”

But as later on Calhoun argues, emergencies usually have early warnings. If you observe them properly, there are long-term patterns that reveal emergencies in advance.

The point is, though, that around the world the nature of emergencies is changing—not because they’re indeed changing, but because governments and organizations want to see emergencies as something sudden that takes the world by surprise.

This is of course all fueled up by the media, because they ignore all the warnings that make the emergency evident. And by the time the emergency explodes, it seems like it comes out of nowhere.

And this is precisely what has changed the nature of emergencies. Right now governments around the world are using states of emergency to make citizens adopt a change under, apparently, sudden surprises. Calhoun continues in his article:

“Of course, the opposition between a more or less predictable system of state relationships and flows and the putatively unpredictable eruptions of emergencies in the conception of global order is deeply ideological. It clearly reflects interests favored by the existing order and the specific power relations constitutive of that order. Carl Schmitt famously incorporated the capacity to declare a state of exception into his concept of sovereignty — and the lineage of this idea stretches back at least to Machiavelli.”

We’re constantly living in a state of emergency. Not because there’s an actual emergency, but because there’s a politically motivated situation that demands action.

Emergencies have been used, especially since the last couple of decades as excuses to force a change. It’s a national emergency has been repeated so long enough that it could be considered as a line from a movie.

There are tons of examples, but I guess the most relevant one here is what happened after 9/11. That horrifying event that took place in New York City was used as an excuse to increase the NSA’s mass surveillance programs.⁹ Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt analyze this in their book How Democracies Die:

“Citizens are also more likely to tolerate — and even support — authoritarian measures during security crises, especially when they fear for their own safety. In the aftermath of 9/11, 55 percent of surveyed Americans said they believed it was necessary to give up some civil liberties to curb terrorism, up from 29 percent in 1997.”¹⁰

It’s clear that, given the option, people choose safety over freedom every single time. It doesn’t matter whether authoritarian measures actually end up making people safer or not. Safety is a basic human motivation that works at a subconscious level. So citizens are more likely to tolerate and support authoritarian measures whenever they feel that a basic human need might be threatened. It’s an emergency, after all.

This led to the US building one of the biggest surveillance programs the world had ever seen. A program that was revealed to the world in 2013 when Edward Snowden unveiled this system to the public.

Right after the 9/11 attacks, the NSA started a “special collection program” to allegedly track the communications of Al Qaeda leaders.¹¹ That opened up the “Patriot Act” in 2006, a domestic warrantless wiretapping program.¹² All the way to the PRISM program—the program in which US tech corporations were made to collaborate and share their user data with the NSA surveillance program apparatus.¹³

A crisis, or emergency for that matter, is the perfect leverage to make people support authoritarian measures. Sometimes you can ignite these crises. Sometimes you can influence them on a geopolitical scale. Sometimes you can reap their benefits. But emergencies are in the arsenal of Data Autocrats and they’re a great way for them to impose a change.

And this is exactly the early warnings we’re witnessing today—long before this is considered as an emergency.

Data Autocrats might use a state of emergency to fully establish Data Dictatorships. They just need a crisis—a security threat. An emergency. That’s all they need.

In the worst case, this is what they will be able to do. And they’ll do it if they have to. There is a lot of power at stake, and the window of opportunity is small. Data Autocrats don’t know how long the golden hour is gonna last. And this is where a crisis comes in handy. Because as we’ve seen again and again throughout history, crises used as an excuse to violate our rights and make a change inevitable—while people blindly approve it, due the circumstances.

A crisis is the best route to accelerate the transition toward Data Dictatorships and kill democracies.

Let’s take a step back and analyze what’s happening right now. Because it seems that a crisis is looming over us. I’m not trying to be dramatic here. As you can notice the world is increasingly polarized. There are strong political divisions everywhere. And I don’t mean the classic divisions we’ve always seen. I mean extreme oppositions.

We’re noticing a strong bipolarity in politics. This isn’t just about America’s strong opposition between democrats and republicans. But we’re seeing how the world is becoming a race against two ideologies. And while duopolies have always been there, today they’re turning into an extremely warped version of themselves.

In Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die, there’s an entire section in the book about this which highlights how: “When oppositions fight dirty, it provides the government with justification for cracking down.”

This is exactly what happened in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. Interestingly, Chávez’s presidency started out as a democracy. However, opponents considered that his quasi-authoritarian populist discourse could take the nation down a terrifying path. So they tried, by all means, to remove him from his position through parliamentary means.

They didn’t succeed in removing Chávez. And by that point the situation became even worse, because the opposition had destroyed their image as democrats. And when that happened, they gave Chávez the perfect excuse to deploy his regime and subvert the courts and counter-balances, turning what seemed democratic at the beginning to an authoritarian system.

The key question is: Where’s the next crisis? Because it’s not if an emergency comes—it’s when.

Unless something unexpected happens, this strong political polarization could be used as an excuse—especially for the US Main Hub—to force radical measures, and establish a Data Dictatorship once and for all. In the west we need to be very careful of how we fight this battle. We’ve got a lot to lose and they’ve got a lot to gain. Because if we fight for our rights the wrong way, we might lose them forever. We need to be very strategic about this.

We need to constantly ask ourselves: What kind of crisis are we going through, or will we go through, that’s going to allow them to kill democracy and replace it with a Data Dictatorship?

This is what we need to answer now.

What if the Trump administration succeeds in pulling something like this off?

But what about China?

China is transitioning towards a Data Dictatorship faster than the world can comprehend what is occurring. And right now there’s an emergency in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong crisis is of course a political threat to China, but it may also be the opportunity of a lifetime to conquer the independent territory once and for all.

2019 HONG KONG PROTESTS

June 9, 2019. That was the day when more than a million people took the streets of Hong Kong to fight for democracy. One out of seven people in Hong Kong occupied the streets to protest against a new that would allow extraditions of their citizens to mainland China.

Thousands of people surrounded Hong Kong’s Legislative Council that day, where pro-Beijing lawmakers were debating the bill—and achieved a majority.

Then everything spiraled out of control.

Police were there to stop protesters. Bricks started to fly. Bottles. Umbrellas. Then the police came in hard. They started to excessively use pepper sprays, batons and tear gas—but shooting the tear gas cans directly at protesters. From that day the situation has just gotten worse.

“Those who play with fire will perish by it.” That was the message from Beijing to Hong Kong.¹⁴

“I want to warn all the criminals to not wrongly judge the situation and take restraint for weakness,” said Yang Guang, a spokesman for the Chinese government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office. He threatened the protesters with China’s “firm resolve and strength to safeguard the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.”¹⁵

Mr. Yang continued: “The central government will never allow any violent attempt to push Hong Kong into a dangerous situation.”

That was after two months of protests. And the day before this statement was released, 148 arrests and 800 canisters of tear gas shot were shot at democratic protesters.

This is a lot to process. But how did this situation become ignited?

The starting point was when the Hong Kong government proposed the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill, which would allow local authorities to detain and extradite criminal fugitives to countries in which Hong Kong don’t have extradition agreements—like Taiwan and mainland China.

Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of Hong Kong—who has close ties to Beijing—has argued that the amendment bill would serve as a way to cover legal loopholes to prevent the country becoming a refuge for criminals.

This bill was proposed in response to an event 2018, when a nineteen-year-old Hong Kong citizen murdered his girlfriend while they were on holiday in Taiwan. This murderer returned to Hong Kong and he couldn’t be extradited because there’s no extradition agreement with Taiwan. Therefore, the local authorities of Hong Kong could only charge him for using the bank account of the victim when she was already dead.

With this terrible incident, Lam saw an opportunity to push this new amendment quickly. But she was suddenly confronted by the Parliament’s block. And then with the protesters.

The fact is that Hong Kong already has extradition agreements with other countries, but China is not on the list.

China can do anything within their territory, because the Communist party rules the judicial power. And they can get away with anything. Thus, the Hong Kong people feel like accepting this bill would mean to surrender their sovereignty to a non-democratic regime. And protesters know this. In fact, they assure that this bill would be used as a means to extradite political dissidents, activists, journalists, and send them to “re-education camps.”

But it’s not only about this or about the fact that Hong Kong would have to surrender their economy to Chinese oligarchs. The real deal, though, is that the Chinese meddling in Hong Kong’s justice system would mark the immediate end of their independence—which is supposed to occur in 2047.

It’s been more than a hundred days since the protests started (at the time of this writing.) Violence has scaled. More people have taken to the streets. And even though the extradition bill was withdrawn on September 4, 2019¹⁶, the protests aren’t slowing down. Because this is way bigger than it seems. The very future of Hong Kong is on Hong Kong protesters now.

HONG KONG IS THE NEW BERLIN IN THE DIGITAL COLD WAR

Right now one of the first battles to avoid being colonized by the Main Hubs is taking place in Hong Kong. And we need to start thinking about this revolution in two terms. First of all, we’re likely to see the Chinese Main Hub forcing Hong Kong under their control by using the excuse of the emergency imaginary. And secondly, we need to start thinking about this in terms of the Digital Cold War. Because I believe Hong Kong is the Berlin of the twenty-first century.

But, firstly, in order to understand what’s happening in Hong Kong, we need to understand where all of this unrest historically originated.

China lost the territory of Hong Kong in the First Opium War in 1842, and it became British colony. It wasn’t until in 1997, that the United Kingdom decided to give Hong Kong back to China as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR.) And as a special administrative region, Hong Kong is able to maintain a separate government and economic system from mainland China—this is known as “one country, two systems.” This system was invented by Deng Xiaoping as a way to recover the region, but to maintain the financial heart of Hong Kong. That was their goose of the golden eggs.

This meant that the people of Hong Kong got to keep their own judicial system, legislation, and their capitalist economy. But more than that, their even got their own flag and currency. On the other hand, China got to keep defense, foreign policy and the right to pick the President of the Executive Council of Hong Kong—which is currently Carrie Lam.

This deal was designed to last for 50 years, becoming obsolete in 2047, when Hong Kong is supposed to join mainland China—losing their independence. That’s why the Hong Kong protest has evolved into a civil movement for the sovereignty of the region. And this is clearly a threat to China.

But China is dealing with something new here. Because Hong Kong has the right to demonstrate. The right to freedom of speech. The right to gather in the streets. In other words, they have the rights of a democratic society. And that’s something new to Xi Jinping.

A demonstrator holding an umbrella during the 2019 Hong Kong Protests. A demonstrator holding an umbrella during the 2019 Hong Kong Protests.

Hong Kong’s current wave of protests are considered to be the biggest protest since Hong Kong acquired its “independence” in 1997.

So how are the China and Hong Kong authorities reacting to this? With violence. They know the stakes, and they are using excessive force to try to contain the protesters.¹⁷ And if that force is not enough, the have coordinated themselves with local mafias who are perpetrating violence in a guerrilla-style.¹⁸

Inevitably, this approach only put gasoline in the fire. On June 16 2019, there were two million people on the streets. That’s almost a third of Hong Kong’s population. And this situation has only escalated more and more in tension.

The Hong Kong 1 July protests were impending. July 1st is a day of celebration for the Hong Kong people, because it’s the anniversary their independence from the British empire. But it’s also the day they have vindicated their independence from the Communist regime since 2003. In 2019, hundreds of masked youths stormed the Parliament. It took the police hours to remove them. This action was so powerful that Lam declared the amendment dead. But it was too late.

By this point, the Hong Kong protest had turned into a civil rights movement for the sovereignty of the region. And from that point on this protest has been hurting Beijing even more. Because it has led to the stagnation of Hong Kong’s financial system. And China had been using Hong Kong as a way to circumvent the trade war with the US, thanks to the Hong Kong Policy Act—an act that allows the US to treat Hong Kong separately from Mainland China. So China is in a very tight spot. Because either way, it loses, apparently. This financial agreement is the only thing stopping Xi Jinping from taking over Hong Kong through massive state violence.

So China is only left with one choice: to use their surveillance muscle to tear the protesters apart.

It’s interesting to notice that when Carrie Lam withdrew the extradition bill, on the side she created the Mask Ban. And this was just the start.

We’re seeing how this is working out: Their strategy is about targeting people individually. As they say, divide and conquer. And once China is able to target people individually, they can find protestors’ vulnerabilities.

Hongkongers know this. They knew right from the beginning that they were about to fight a new kind of war. A war where if you became identifiable, it would be game over for you.

So protesters needed to upgrade the way they fought by not leaving any digital footprints and avoiding surveillance at all levels.

HONG KONG IS THE NEW BERLIN IN THE DIGITAL COLD WAR, PART TWO

Hong Kong knows the value of privacy. Right now, keeping their identity private is the only thing standing between them and jail time.

What we have seen from the beginning of the Hong Kong protests is a coordinated effort to leave no trace for authorities and their surveillance systems.

Wechat? Gone.

Alipay? Gone.

Taobao? Gone.

Mobile payments? Gone.

Hongkongers can’t use the technology they regularly used in their day-to-day lives. These technologies have become a threat to their freedom. Instead what they have done is use virtual private networks (VPNs), get new SIM cards without their name on them, and start using secure messaging apps that can’t give data to the communist regime.

They are also wearing masks to hide their faces from CCTV cameras with facial recognition software. And if that’s not enough, they are using laser pointers to blind these cameras.

Another interesting thing they’re doing is paying for everything with cash. They’re so aware of the digital footprints they leave with money, that people have been leaving money near the metro machines so people without cash on them can buy a ticket without being identified.

They’re tearing down facial recognition towers. And clearly seeing the proof that these cameras are connected to mainland China.

In other words, what we’re seeing with the Hong Kong protests is a new way of fighting to keep their identities private and avoid being targeted.

We’re still waiting to see Xi Jinping’s final response to the Hong Kong protests. Either he can wait too long and lose the territory, or crash Hong Kong just like Putin did with Crimea in 2014.

Whatever happens, Hong Kong has a lot to teach us when it comes to surveillance and privacy. And it has become evident that privacy is the key to the twenty-first century.

Privacy is so important because it is the key that opens up the raw materialization of power: data. It is a key that opens ourselves up.

It strips us bare and steals our ability to think for ourselves. It steals our society’s ability to think. Or our ability to rebel against anti-democratic leaders. It steals our ability to progress as humanity.

What we’re witnessing with Hong Kong should make us rethink the adoption of these new technologies—and especially the data economy and social behavior as the new way to measure debt.

In Hong Kong they know this very well. And even though some people may think it’s excessive to compare the situation in Hong Kong’s with the one we live in, in most western countries, they’re missing the point. Very dangerously missing it.

Hong Kong is the new Berlin in the Digital Cold War.

And we all are part of this war. Hong Kong is just the beginning—the spark. Maybe if we’re lucky in the west we will start thinking these issues in revolutionary terms.

Hong Kong demonstrators in Hong Kong airport (2019)

You might think, well, that’s just China. But it’s not. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is just about China’s affairs in the East. We’re all part of this. Maybe the Chinese Main Hub has seemingly different tactics. But deep down we’re all trying to be conquered. We’re all being targeted.

Hong Kong is an extreme example of what’s coming to the west and the rest of the world sooner than we can imagine. It is the manifestation of early signs that show that an emergency is looming. This situation might give the precedent for Data Dictatorships establish a state of emergency, forcing the world to accept them as their new authoritarian rulers. 

So far what we’ve witnessed is a form of emergency that has been operating in the shadows—like the NSA’s surveillance programs. However, emergencies can take a more visceral form if we allow let Data Autocrats a leeway into our rights and our minds without resistance. Our apathy will be their most direct route to power.

Furthermore, if one of the colonies decides to rebel against the Main Hub, or if the opponent's colonies rebel against the other Main Hub, this situation will inevitably be used to declare a state of emergency and establish a full authoritarian model.

Right now as I write these paragraphs, the Hong Kong revolution is still ongoing. And I don’t know the outcomes we’re going to face—in Hong Kong and the rest of the world. I do not know if we’ll have to face them at all—and I wholeheartedly hope to be wrong with this book, so that Data Dictatorships never rise to their unleashed power.

But truthfully we need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

We should take Hong Kong as an example. An example of the admiration we should have towards its people for being so bold and so brave to fight against the domination of the Chinese Main Hub.

This disruption is what’s coming to the rest of the world.

If we’re lucky, we might have the chance to ignite this revolution on a global scale. If we’re not, maybe we won’t even know we need a revolution in the first place. But we do need to fight. 

The fight is coming. Whether we welcome it or not.

The truth is that we’re deep into this abyss.

This is happening. We need to deal with it now.

If we don’t do this for ourselves, let’s at least do it for future generations. This will be our legacy. We can’t sacrifice short-term gains for long-term importance.

It is up to us, the people, to make change happen. It’s always been that way.

We’re seeing the truth on a platter. Hong Kong was predictable despite the fact that the news frames it as a sudden revolution—the situation had been escalating slowly for a long time. The rise of Data Dictatorships is predictable too. The Data Rebellion movement is inevitable.

This is not only coming to the west, it’s plunging throughout the world at blistering rate—a rate we can’t even conceive. We’re left with only one choice. It’s always been this way. There’s no regulating tech. There’s no waiting for Congress to stop Data Dictatorships from forming. There’s no waiting for people to stop giving away their privacy and data. And if that was an option, by now it’s clear that’s not on the table.

All of these illusions are distractions from the only true way to resist losing our rights and our democracies.

It has become evident that the only intercourse possible between us and Data Dictatorships is battle.

DATA REBELS

Throughout history, whenever a revolution was igniting nobody noticed it until it exploded. It’s only in hindsight when it’s easy to spot the moment when it ignited.

Right now we’re living in the moment of ignition. This is a revolution. Maybe we don’t see it that way, but it is.

In the ancient world, like the classicist Moses Finley often said, all revolutionary movements had the following agenda: To cancel all the debts and redistribute the land.¹⁹

Today our demand is no different, it just needs a small tweak:

Cancel all the debts and stop surveillance on us.

We are all in debt. We’re in social debt to Data Dictatorships. Because everything we have done online or offline has been recorded. Everything we do right now is being recorded and processed to keep us in check. Everything will be recorded and used against us. It will last forever. We’re not allow to forget.

Our ledger is dripping red. And this debt can’t be erased. But that has to change.

The Data Rebellion movement has started.

This is a revolution. And what revolutions do is destroy the perfect and enable the impossible.

Perfect as the system Data Autocrats gave us to play in. And impossible as the freedom and liberties people didn’t think were theirs in the first place.

We’re living in a thoughtful, well designed system that has sucked us in. And what we have done throughout this book is to decode that system. And once we’ve done that, we have decoded how Data Dictatorships operate and this has given us the ability to uncover the vulnerabilities in their system that will allow us to resist.

While we’re what makes the system run, we’re also the only thing that could tear Data Dictatorships to the ground. If we stand up, their system will crash.

This is critical to understand. We can all agree on the threats we’re facing, but believing is not enough. We’ve got to stand up against the system if we want to change it. It’s crucial that we take this revolution to the streets. It’s critical for the survival of our democracies. For the survival of our freedom.

Freedom of choice.

Freedom of speech.

Freedom of thinking by oneself.

Freedom to forget.

Freedom of debt.

Now more than ever is when we have to protect our principles. Principles that we put on hold during difficult times aren’t principles. Principles really count when they’re difficult to maintain.

And this is a tough one. If it were easy, we would have found a solution already. But this is why we’re here.

We’re here because we stand for something.

We’re Data Rebels. They’ll call revolutionaries, anarchists, crazy, rebels, troublemakers. But we’re change makers.

This is a call to the Data Rebels.

Let’s do this right. Spread the word. Try to get people to watch out for their privacy. Share this book, or write one yourself, but spread the word.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

Change is coming.

Let the fight begin.

FIND THE OTHERS

Books change people. Articles, podcasts, videos, are great, but don’t have the impact of a physical book. Books give you the opportunity to start a conversation and dive deep into it. And that’s precisely what we need right now.

Please share this book with people you care about.

You can get it for free here, share this link: BorjaMoya.com/DataDictatorships

BORJA MOYA is a privacy activist and filmmaker. He’s the founder of BM Studios, a production agency that creates narratives to educate people about the challenges we face in the twenty-first century.

Visit BorjaMoya.com for more information.

¹ In 2018 $3.45 billion was spent on lobbying in the US. Above every other sector, pharmaceuticals companies (of course) spent $281.47 million: CRP, & opensecrets.org. (March 19, 2019). Total lobbying expenses in the United States in 2018, by sector (in million U.S. dollars) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved from from https://www.statista.com/statistics/257368/total-lobbying-expenses-in-the-us-by-sector/

² If you check the ads from the early days of advertising, you’ll see how they used doctors to say that smoking was good for your health: http://gogd.tjs-labs.com/pictures/camel-life-11-25-1946-999-M5.jpg.

³ In 2009, green party politician Malte Spitz sued Deutsche Telekom for collecting metadata. It turned out that over a long fight, Spitz was able to obtain a spreadsheet with all the metadata the telecom giant had on him. It turned out to be geolocalization data. Find out more here: https://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention

⁴ And that’s why the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality and allowed big cable companies control the Internet.

⁵ Polyák, G. (2019). Media in Hungary: Three Pillars of an Illiberal Democracy. In Public Service Broadcasting and Media Systems in Troubled European Democracies (pp. 279-303). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

⁶ The Tico Times. (2019). La Prensa publishes blank front page to protest Nicaraguan government. Retrieved from https://
net/2019/01/20/la-prensa-publishes-blank-front-page-to-protest-nicaraguan-government/

⁷ Münsterberg, H. (1915). Psychology, general and applied. Appleton.

⁸ Mozur, P. (2018). A genocide incited on Facebook, with posts from Myanmar’s military. New York Times, 15. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

⁹ In fact, in a presentation Alexander Nix explained how Cambridge Analytica profiled people. [Concordia]. (2016, Sept 27). Cambridge Analytica - The Power of Big Data and Psychographics. [Video File]. Retrived from https://youtu.be/n8Dd5aVXLCc

¹⁰ [Guardian News]. (2018, May 16). Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie testifies before Congress - watch live. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/PCpDi57x4uc

¹¹ Jones, O. (2017). Americans Can Spot Election Meddling Because They’ve Been Doing It for Years. The Guardian, 5. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017
/jan/05/americans-spot-election-meddling-doing-years-vladimir-putin-donald-trump

¹² Just consider how New Knowledge’s CEO’s was caught trying to hack an election in Alabama: Shane, S., & Blinder, A. (2018). Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics. The New York Times, 19. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html

¹³ Shane, S. (2018). Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in Elections. We Do It, Too. The New York Times, 17. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html

¹⁴ Levin, D. H. (2019). Partisan electoral interventions by the great powers: Introducing the PEIG Dataset. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 36(1), 88-106.

¹⁵ Cadwalladr, C. (2018). AggregateIQ: the obscure Canadian tech firm and the Brexit data riddle. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/31/aggregateiq-canadian-tech-brexit-data-riddle-cambridge-analytica

¹ Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Assessing the Slave Trade: Estimates. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Retrieved from https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates

² Shane, S., & Lichtblau, E. (2006). Cheney Pushed US to Widen Eavesdropping. New York Times.; CNN. (2005). Cheney offended by Amnesty criticism Rights group accuses U.S. of violations at Guantanamo Bay. Retrieved October 20, 2019, from http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.amnestyintl/

³ When I mention organization, I’m referring to intelligence agencies and third parties that don’t fall into the corporation or government categories.

⁴ Gellman, B., & Soltani, A. (2013). NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say. The Washington Post, 30, 2013.

⁵ Gallagher, R., & Moltke, H. (2018). The Wiretap Rooms: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight US Cities. The Intercept. Retrieved from https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/

⁶ In 2013, Edward Snowden, an American whistleblower, copied and leaked highly classified information from the NSA. He revealed several global surveillance programs run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with cooperation of companies: The Guardian. (2013). NSA files decoded: Edward Snowden's surveillance revelations explained. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1

⁷ Some people believe the biggest fine was the Volkswagen one, but they just agreed to pay $4.3 billion instead of $18 billion. The maximum “could be” $18 billion, but it never gets that high: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-ag-agrees-plead-guilty-and-pay-43-billion-criminal-and-civil-penalties-six/

⁸ McGill, M. (2019). Google to pay up to $200M to settle FTC YouTube investigation. Retrieved from https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/30/google-ftc-investigation-youtube-1479044/

⁹ Del Vicario, M., Bessi, A., Zollo, F., Petroni, F., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., ... & Quattrociocchi, W. (2016). The spreading of misinformation online. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(3), 554-559; Messing, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2012). How social media introduces biases in selecting and processing news content. ResearchGate. https://www. researchgate.net/profile/Solomon_ Messing/publication/265673993_ How_ Social_ Media_ Introduces_ Biases_ in_ Selecting_and_Processing_ News_ Content/links/54d8e9620cf2970e4e7a399b/How-Social-Media-Introduces-Biases-in-Selecting-and-Processing-News-Conte/

¹⁰ Cadwalladr, C. (2019). Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/02/facebook-global-lobbying-campaign-against-data-privacy-laws-investment/

¹¹ RT International. (2017). 'Whoever leads in AI will rule the world’: Putin to Russian children on Knowledge Day. Retrieved from https://www.rt.com/news/401731-ai-rule-world-putin/

¹² Levitt, T. (1960). Marketing myopia (pp. 45-56). Boston.

¹³ Stephen Dubner (2018). Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357). [podcast] Freakonomics Radio. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/

¹⁴ World Health Organization. (2018). Global status report on road safety 2018. World Health Organization.

¹⁵ Bilyeu, T. (2018). The 2 most important skills for the rest of your life | Yuval Noah Harari on Impact Theory. [podcast] Retrived from https://impacttheory.com/episode/yuval-noah-harari/

¹⁶ Rogan, J. (2018). Joe Rogan Experience #1169 – Elon Musk. [podcast] Retrieved from https://joeroganexperience.io/elon-musk/

¹⁷ BBC News. (2009). Watch Zuckerberg's 2009 Facebook defence. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-43481019/zuckerberg-in-2009-facebook-privacy-is-central/

¹⁸ Kirkpatrick, M. (2010). Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy Is Over. [online] The New York Times. Retrieved from https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/10/10readwriteweb-facebooks-zuckerberg-says-the-age-of-privac-82963.html

¹⁹ You can go ahead and check this timeline of Facebook’s privacy issues: NBC News. (2018). A timeline of Facebook’s privacy issues — and its responses. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/timeline-facebook-s-privacy-issues-its-responses-n859651/

²⁰ (2019). Better Language Models and Their Implications. Retrieved from https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/

¹ O’Neill, M. (Director), & Peltz, P. (Director). (2018). Episode #1.4. Axios. HBO.

² Wait But Why is a great place to start: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

³ Swisher, K. (2018). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Recode Decode. [podcast] Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17575158/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-full-transcript-kara-swisher/

⁴ Fei-Fei Li, the Co-Director of Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute and the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab, used the argument of “the information is out there” in this talk: Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. (2019). The Historian and The Technologist: Yuval Harari and Fei-Fei Li in Discussion. Retrieved from https://hai.stanford.edu/news/historian-and-technologist-yuval-harari-and-fei-fei-li-discussion/

⁵ BBC Click. (2019). Facial Recognition. [video]. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000501f/click-facial-recognition/

⁶ Big Brother Watch. (2019). Facial Recognition ‘Epidemic’ in the UK. Retrieved from https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/all-media/facial-recognition-epidemic-in-the-uk/

⁷ (2018). Chinese Government Praises Hikvision For Following Xi Jinping. Retrieved from https://ipvm.com/reports/sasac-hik-xi

⁸ Judge for yourself. This is how the Skynet system works—they can locate anyone in under seven minutes(!): https://youtu.be/pNf4-d6fDoY

⁹ Wang, M. (2018). “Eradicating Ideological Viruses”: China's Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang's Muslims. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/09/eradicating-ideological-viruses/chinas-campaign-repression-against-xinjiangs/

¹⁰ Yes, I know Android is open source. But when they have that much control, and even worse they play monopolistic practices such as not allowing users to delete default Google apps, they have control over an open source operating system.

¹¹ Mozur, P., Kessel, J. M., & Chan, M. (2019). Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/
2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html

¹² Parkinson, J., Bariyo, N. and Chin, J. (2019). Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-technicians-helped-african-governments-spy-on-political-opponents-11565793017/

¹³ The New York Times. (2019). Ethiopian Airlines Plane Is the 2nd Boeing Max 8 to Crash in Months. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/africa/ethiopian-airlines-plane-crash.html

¹⁴ Wakefield, J. (2019). Anger as shooter video spreads around world. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47583393/

¹⁵ Mozur, P. (2018). A genocide incited on Facebook, with posts from Myanmar’s military. New York Times, 15. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

¹⁶ Free Republic. (2014). [Hungarian] Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Speech. Available at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3224745/posts/

¹⁷ Harari, Y. N. (2019). Who Will Win the Race for AI? Foreign Policy. Available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/gt-essay/who-will-win-the-race-for-ai-united-states-china-data/

¹⁸ Kolata, G., Wee, S. L., & Belluck, P. (2018). Chinese scientist claims to use CRISPR to make first genetically edited babies. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/health/gene-editing-babies-china.html

¹⁹ The Economist. (2019). The global gag on free speech is tightening. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/international/2019/08/17/the-global-gag-on-free-speech-is-tightening/

²⁰ Financial Times. (2019). Mobile groups comply with African rulers’ orders to block internet. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/9695dbc8-70a6-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5/

²¹ Access Now. (2019). Internet shutdowns in context. Retrieved from https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/

²² Freedom House. (2019). Freedom and the Media 2019: A Downward Spiral. Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-media/freedom-media-2019/

²³ Bandler, J., Tsui, A. and Burke, D. (2019). How Amazon and Silicon Valley seduced the Pentagon. Mother Jones. Available at: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/how-amazon-and-silicon-valley-seduced-the-pentagon/

²⁴ Wakabayashi, D., & Shane, S. (2018). Google will not renew Pentagon contract that upset employees. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

²⁵ Ryan, V. (2019). Google Is Deepening Its Involvement With Egypt’s Repressive Government. The Intercept. Available at: https://theintercept.com/2019/08/18/google-egypt-office-sisi/

²⁶ Amnesty International. (2018). Egypt is an open air prison for critics. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/09/egypt-freedom-of-expression/

²⁷ (2018). Number of journalists murdered in reprisal for reporting nearly doubles. Retrieved from https://cpj.org/2018/12/number-of-journalists-murdered-in-reprisal-for-rep.php

¹ It was called the “impôt moralisateur,” which means the “educational” or “moralizing tax.”

² (April 29, 2019). Military spending by world region in 2018 (in billion U.S. dollars). [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/272490/military-spending-by-region/

³ Newman, E. P. (1997). The Early Paper Money of America: An Illustrated, Historical, and Descriptive Compilation of Data Relating to American Paper Currency from Its Inception in 1686 to the Year 1800... Krause Publications.

⁴ Hudson, M. (1972). Super imperialism: The economic strategy of American empire. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

⁵ Business Insider. (2018). China has started ranking citizens with a creepy 'social credit' system — here's what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4/

⁶ Human Rights Watch. (2019). China: How Mass Surveillance Works in Xinjiang. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2019/05/02/china-how-mass-surveillance-works-xinjiang/

⁷ Edmonton Journal. (2019). Canadian went to China to debunk reports of anti-Muslim repression, but was 'shocked' by treatment of Uyghurs. Retrieved from https://edmontonjournal.com/news/canadian-went-to-china-to-debunk-reports-of-anti-muslim-repression-but-was-shocked-by-treatment-of-uyghurs/wcm/ebbd7ed1-7add-471d-b5c5-0df7d424729e/

⁸ Creemers, R. (2015). China's plans to use ratings to keep eye on citizens. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/opinions/china-social-credit-score-creemers/html

⁹ Nast, C. (2017). In China, a Three-Digit Score Could Dictate Your Place in Society. Wired. Retrieved from https://wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/

¹⁰ Hvistendahl, M. (2017). In China, a Three-Digit Score Could Dictate Your Place in Society. December, 14, 2017.

¹¹ AP NEWS. (2019). China bars millions from travel for 'social credit' offenses. Retrieved from https://www.apnews.com/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8/

¹² Xiaofeng, S. and Yin, C. (2017). Court blacklist prevents millions from flying, taking high-speed trains. China Daily. Retrieved from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-02/14/htm

¹³ Global Times. (2017). China moving toward fully developed credit systems. Retrieved from http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1052634.shtml

¹⁴ Yao, Y., Lo Re, D., & Wang, Y. (2017, February). Folk models of online behavioral advertising. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 1957-1969). ACM.

¹⁵ The Economist. (2016). China invents the digital totalitarian state. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/12/17/china-invents-the-digital-totalitarian-state/

¹⁶ Yao, Y., Lo Re, D., & Wang, Y. (2017, February).

¹⁷ Cowan, J. (2019). How much is your data worth?. New York Times. Retrived from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/us/newsom-hertzberg-data-dividend.html

¹⁸ Hart, K. (2019). Exclusive: Warner wants Google, Facebook to put a price on your data. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/mark-warner-josh-hawley-dashboard-tech-data-4ee575b4-1706-4d05-83ce-d62621e28ee1.html

¹⁹ American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.). Beware the Tech Industry’s Latest Privacy Trojan Horse. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/medical-and-genetic-privacy/beware-tech-industrys-latest-privacy-trojan/

²⁰ The Verge. (2019). Uber will now deactivate riders with below average ratings. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644143/uber-deactivate-rider-below-average-rating/

²¹ Cagle, S. (2019). This ID Scanner Company is Collecting Sensitive Data on Millions of Bargoers. [blog] Retrieved from https://onezero.medium.com/id-at-the-door-meet-the-security-company-building-an-international-database-of-banned-bar-patrons-7c6d4b236fc3/

²² (2019). The first public schools in the us will start using facial recognition next week. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/lockport-schools-facial-recognition-pilot-aegis/

²³ García, S. E. (2019). S. Requiring Social Media Information From Visa Applicants. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/us/us-visa-application-social-media.html

²⁴ Homeland Security Department. (2017). Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records. (Document citation: 82 FR 43556). Retrieved from https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19365/privacy-act-of-1974-system-of-records

²⁵ The Washington Post. (2019). Your face is now your boarding pass. And that’s a problem. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/your-face-is-now-your-boarding-pass-thats-problem/

²⁶ The Washington Post. (2019). S. Customs and Border Protection says photos of travelers into and out of the country were recently taken in a data breach. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/us-customs-border-protection-says-photos-travelers-into-out-country-were-recently-taken-data-breach/

²⁷ (2019). Phones and wearables combine to assess worker performance. Retrieved from https://techxplore.com/news/2019-06-wearables-combine-worker.html; Hymas, C. (2019). AI used for first time in job interviews in UK to find best applicants. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/27/ai-facial-recognition-used-first-time-job-interviews-uk-find/

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⁸ Of course there’s a problem of lack of knowledge, but the other challenge of course is the location. Most of the times when companies decide to outsource their activities, they do it for a variety of reasons. Despite a few exceptions, the most common reasons are: (1) saving money on office buildings and expenses, (2) cheaper labor, and (3) getting access to the smartest people in the field.

This won’t work in the short term. Especially when most of the tasks might involve physical presence (for example maintaining and replacing servers and computers).

And even if you somehow can work remotely, these jobs are really highly skilled. And let’s not even talk about the cultural barriers (and language) this might imply. Even though there might be translators, sometimes the biggest language barriers are the cultural understanding of the world—that's a hell of a lot more complicated than using just Google translator.

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¹⁵ Dastin, J. (2018). Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G

¹⁶ Ratcliffe, R. (2019). How a glitch in India's biometric welfare system can be lethal. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/16/glitch-india-biometric-welfare-system-starvation/

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¹ Luo, H., Yang, D., Barszczyk, A., Vempala, N., Wei, J., Wu, S. J., ... & Feng, Z. P. (2019). Smartphone-based blood pressure measurement using transdermal optical imaging technology. Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, 12(8), e008857.

² World Health Organization. (2018). Global status report on road safety 2018. World Health Organization.

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²⁴ (2019). France set to roll out nationwide facial recognition ID program. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-03/french-liberte-tested-by-nationwide-facial-recognition-id-plan/

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³² Theranos was initially seen as a breakthrough tech company, but then it was revealed that they didn't have the technology they claimed to have developed to realize blood tests. Their results were being forged, putting lives in danger. A reporter from the WSJ uncovered the plot: Carreyrou, J. (2018). Blood-Testing Firm Theranos to Dissolve. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/blood-testing-firm-theranos-to-dissolve-1536115130/

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³⁵ In fact, there are more than 15,000 nukes in the world: Routley, N. (2017). The World’s 15,000 Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What? Visual Capitalist. Retrieved from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-nuclear-weapons

¹ Harari, Y. N. (2018). 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Random House.

² Kingson, J. and Kokalitcheva, K. (2019). The future of privacy starts in California. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/california-privacy-law-national-impact-8e86bffe-af22-4966-92ff-f44e12aae9d6.html

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