In terms of suppressing freedom, AI can quietly get away with a lot that governments would find difficult to implement. From Mark Keenan at lewrockwell.com:
Artificial intelligence is marketed as neutral, objective, and inevitable. We are told it will improve efficiency, manage complexity, and assist decision-making across society. However, a central question is not just what AI can or can’t do, but who controls it — and to what end.
AI is not an autonomous force. It is built, funded, trained, filtered, and deployed by governments, corporations, military agencies, and financial institutions. Like any administrative technology, it reflects the priorities of those who design and own it. What makes AI historically dangerous is not intelligence, but scale and centralization.
AI is rapidly becoming the operating system of a new form of power.
From Governance to Administration
Classical totalitarian systems relied on visible authority: laws, police, censorship offices, and coercion that could be identified and resisted. Digital totalitarianism—more accurately, an advanced form of the administrative state in which state and corporate power converge and are operationalized through technical systems—functions differently.
Rather than demanding belief or public loyalty, it operates through systems of automated compliance, procedural dependency, and algorithmic decision-making.
It replaces overt force with administration.
Administration does not argue. It configures.
Rather than banning ideas outright, it filters visibility. Rather than issuing commands, it sets conditions. Rather than punishing dissent openly, it quietly restricts access. Compliance is produced not through fear, but through dependence on systems that cannot be negotiated with.
