The A.I. War: Inside the Techno-Fascist Plan for the US

By Rob C.

Art by Rivers

TL;DR: While you’re using AI to draft polite emails to HR, the “Techno-Fascists” are using it to draft the obituary of American democracy.

Good morning. While you were sleeping (or perhaps just teaching your AI assistant how to make a slightly better sourdough), the digital monsters have officially escaped the lab. AI is no longer just that “benign tool” helping you summarize meetings you didn’t attend; it’s the new frontline of a techno-feudalist land grab. President Trump, in a move that surprises exactly no one who follows the money, has already barred states from regulating these platforms. His logic? “Regulation is for losers.” The reality? His donors in Silicon Valley want a clear path to turn the United States into a series of privately governed city-states where the “Terms of Service” replace the Constitution.

Artificial Intelligence is creeping into our everyday lives like a particularly ambitious mold—quietly at first, then suddenly everywhere you look.

It writes our emails. It recommends what we watch. It decides whether we get loans. It filters our job applications. It determines what news we see. It’s becoming the invisible infrastructure of modern life, and most of us barely notice until we’re arguing with a chatbot about our credit card bill or discovering that an algorithm rejected our resume before a human ever saw it.

While AI might seem like a benign tool that helps draft your work correspondence or generate mediocre art, maybe—just maybe—we should be a little more cautious about handing over decision-making power to machines built by people who openly hate democracy.

Trump has already weighed in, barring states from regulating these platforms. Because why would we want pesky democratic oversight of technology that’s replacing human judgment in everything from hiring to killing?

We’ve been warned by the very people creating these digital monsters. Tech leaders keep saying “this could be dangerous” and “we need regulation” while simultaneously lobbying against any actual regulation and racing to deploy their products as fast as possible. It’s like watching someone build a nuclear reactor in their garage while shouting “Someone should really stop me!”

But the real danger isn’t whether a middle manager or website creator loses their job to an algorithm. The real danger is whether the techno-fascists building these systems will let us keep our democracy—or whether they’re using AI as the infrastructure for a corporate dictatorship that makes voting obsolete.

The Dark Lord of Data:

Let me introduce you to Peter Thiel - The Evil Lovechild of Bill Gates and Satan, if you haven’t had the displeasure already. Imagine if Bill Gates and Satan had a baby, and that baby was raised on Ayn Rand novels and a pathological hatred of democracy. That’s Peter Thiel.

Thiel is the intellectual godfather of techno-fascism—or as some call it, “techno-feudalism”—a political ideology that believes democracy is outdated and should be replaced by corporate rule. Not metaphorically. Literally replaced.

He started with the “PayPal Mafia”—a group of tech bros who went on to build the digital infrastructure that now controls significant portions of our economy and increasingly, our government.

Let’s meet the gang: a rogue’s gallery of tech-titans who believe that democratic controls are just pesky “bugs” in the system of innovation. A quick reminder of who we’re dealing with: Peter Thiel: Co-founder of Palantir (mass surveillance), Founders Fund (venture capital for dystopia), and early investor in Facebook (psychological manipulation at scale). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, OpenAI, and Twitter/X (now a right-wing propaganda machine). Briefly served as Trump’s unofficial co-president while running DOGE to gut federal agencies. Max Levchin: Co-founder of Affirm and Yelp. Less evil than the others, but still part of the club. David Sacks: Former PayPal COO, now Trump mega-donor and AI czar pushing to eliminate AI regulation. Reid Hoffman: Co-founder of LinkedIn. Technically more aligned with Democrats, but still a billionaire who thinks he should run the world. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim: Founders of YouTube, now owned by Google, now a radicalization pipeline turning lonely teenage boys into fascists.

This isn’t just a group of successful tech entrepreneurs. This is a network of ideologically aligned billionaires, with ties to the South African Apartheid system, who believe democracy is the problem and they are the solution.

“Freedom and Democracy Are No Longer Compatible”

Thiel famously stated that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible,” arguing that democratic controls are obstacles to innovation.

Let’s unpack that for a second. When Thiel says “freedom,” he doesn’t mean your freedom. He means his freedom—the freedom of billionaires to do whatever they want without democratic accountability. The freedom to exploit workers. The freedom to pollute. The freedom to monopolize. The freedom to surveil. The freedom to rule.

When he says democracy is an “obstacle to innovation,” he means democracy stops him from doing things that would be profitable but harmful. Environmental regulations? Obstacle. Labor laws? Obstacle. Privacy protections? Obstacle. The entire concept of “the will of the people”? Major obstacle.

What “innovation” is Thiel talking about? Not technology that improves lives. He’s talking about innovations in control. Innovations in exploitation. Innovations in replacing messy, unpredictable democracy with clean, efficient corporate rule.

This is the ideology behind “Techno-Fascism” and “Corporate Sovereignty”—initiatives that aim to replace traditional governance with privately governed city-states or corporations. No more need for that pesky voting. No more politicians you can vote out of office. Just a “National CEO” who runs the country like a business, accountable to shareholders (billionaires), not citizens.

Thiel and his acolytes are serious about this. They’re not just talking about it in think tanks. They’re building the infrastructure. They’re funding the politicians. They’re writing the algorithms that will end democratic governance.

Palantir: The Black Box That Replaces Human Judgment

Thiel co-founded Palantir, a company that has become deeply integrated into government and surveillance systems—including ICE, the CIA, and the military. Critics accurately describe it as a “black box” that replaces human judgment with predictive surveillance.

Palantir doesn’t just analyze data. It makes decisions. Or rather, it makes recommendations that humans rubber-stamp because they trust the algorithm more than their own judgment.

The company has been working with the Israeli government and Mossad to provide AI targeting information. How successful has this been? Well, it’s led to nearly 70,000 dead civilians in Gaza and counting. Turns out AI is really efficient at identifying “targets” and really bad at distinguishing between a Hamas fighter and a nine-year-old schoolgirl.

Now Palantir is targeting Iran. The US recently admitted to killing 175 people in a girls’ school in Iran. That “intelligence” was brought to you by Palantir and the use of AI agents.

Think about that. An algorithm—designed by a company run by a man who hates democracy—provided targeting data that resulted in the massacre of schoolgirls. And this is considered “innovation.”

They’re accelerating “kill decisions” that used to be handled by actual human beings, presumably with consciences, who might hesitate before bombing a school. Now? The algorithm says “target,” the button gets pushed, children die, and no one is responsible because “the AI made the recommendation.”

This is what happens when you let techno-fascists build the infrastructure of state violence. This is what “replacing human judgment with predictive surveillance” looks like in practice. The result is a pile of small coffins that the corporate media treats as a footnote.

The Fight Over AI Surveillance: Anthropic vs. The Pentagon

While Palantir’s body count is deeply worrying, what may be more telling is the fight between Anthropic—the AI company that makes Claude, and the Pentagon over the use of their product for mass surveillance.

Anthropic’s founders have principles. Weird, I know. They’ve publicly opposed using their AI for military applications, especially mass surveillance. They broke ties with the Pentagon and refused contracts because they don’t want their technology used to build the surveillance state or accelerate kill decisions.

The Pentagon, run by drunk Pete Hegseth and staffed by people who think civilian casualties are a PR problem rather than a moral catastrophe, was not happy about this.

But don’t worry! OpenAI’s Sam Altman swooped in to save the day. He had no such qualms about selling his soul—and your location data, your communications, your entire digital life—to the surveillance state.

OpenAI, the company that supposedly exists to ensure AI benefits humanity, is now partnering with the military-industrial complex to build the panopticon. Altman talks a good game about AI safety and ethics, but when the Pentagon came calling with contracts, he couldn’t sign fast enough.

This is the choice we’re facing. Guess which one is winning?

Kingmaker of the Fascist Right:

Peter Thiel isn’t just building surveillance infrastructure. He’s building political infrastructure to ensure techno-fascism becomes government policy.

He’s a key kingmaker in the Republican Party. He bankrolled JD Vance’s Senate campaign—yes, that JD Vance, Trump’s VP, the man who sold out every principle he claimed to have for power and Thiel’s money.

Vance and others in Thiel’s network are heavily influenced by neo-reactionary and neo-monarchist bloggers like Curtis Yarvin, who has openly advocated for replacing democracy with a “national CEO” or dictator. Not as hyperbole. As actual policy prescription.

Yarvin argues that democracy is inefficient, that voting is a mistake, that what America needs is a monarch or CEO with absolute power who can “reboot” the government by firing everyone and running the country like a startup. This is not fringe. This is mainstream among the tech elite that Thiel has cultivated. These people have billions of dollars. They have political power. They have the ear of the president. And they genuinely believe democracy should be replaced with corporate dictatorship.

Their intent, as critics have noted, is to create a “far-right tech elite” that “masks itself in the language of freedom” to instead “defend the privileges of the few.” They talk about liberty while building tyranny. They invoke innovation while consolidating power. They promise efficiency while destroying accountability.

The Foundation Is Already Laid

Here’s the terrifying part: they’re not planning this for some distant future. They’re implementing it right now.

The algorithms have been written. The surveillance infrastructure is deployed. Palantir is integrated into ICE, the CIA, the military. Your data is being harvested. Your movements are being tracked. Your communications are being monitored.

AI is making decisions about your credit, your employment, your freedom. Algorithms decide who gets deported. Who gets targeted. Who lives and who dies.

Trump is plotting to cancel elections or rig them so thoroughly he can’t lose. He’s already instructing officials to “find” ways to keep him in power indefinitely. He’s surrounded by Thiel acolytes who want to replace democracy with corporate sovereignty.

The only question is whether we’re going to stop them or let them complete the coup in the name of “innovation.”

It’s Time to Act Up

The foundation is laid. The algorithms are written. We’re all being tracked. And Trump, backed by Thiel’s billions and ideology, is preparing to end democracy as we know it.

This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t paranoia. This is stated ideology. Thiel has said democracy and freedom are incompatible. His proteges have openly called for a national CEO dictator. They’re building the technological infrastructure to make voting irrelevant.

It’s time to act up. If we don’t stop the techno-fascists now, the only thing “Democratic” about this country will be the name of the folder they delete on their way to the Coronation.

The A.I. war isn’t coming. It’s here. And we’re losing.

Time to fight back!

F*CK ICE. RELEASE ALL THE FILES!

Please like, share, and subscribe—because the techno-fascists are already building your cage, and they’re using AI to make sure you can’t escape.

— Robert Cain, author of “Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet”

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