In the previous essay, we discussed the first two pillars of the new system of control: digital money and global identity. Once these two elements are connected, they create the foundation for managing individual behavior without legal complications and without the visible use of force. But those two pillars cannot function on their own without a third: the hardware of global surveillance. We are talking about networked cameras, satellites, sensors, cell towers, data centers, and algorithms that bind all of it together into a single all-seeing infrastructure.
THE WATCH, REPORT, AND WARNING SERVICE
If digital money and identity are the internal mechanism of control, then surveillance hardware is its body: the eyes, ears, and nervous system of the new order. The camera at the intersection, the phone in your pocket, the satellite above the city, the cell tower on the roof, the sensor in your car, and the data center on the edge of some forgotten town are no longer separate pieces of everyday life. They are becoming a single network for monitoring the population.
For years, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has been removing some local barriers to the installation of small wireless facilities, justifying it as necessary for the faster development of 5G networks. Official documents speak of networks that require a far denser layout of antenna sites than anything that existed before. Such infrastructure, by itself, does not mean that every movement of every citizen will automatically be abused. But it does create the physical conditions for a world in which a phone, a vehicle, a bank account, an identity, and a location can be linked with far greater precision than ever before.
The same applies to motor vehicles, since today every new car sold in the United States is required to have a built-in remote shutoff device, a so-called kill switch, allowing the car to legally monitor your driving. If the car decides you have not paid your installment or that you are not driving properly, it can disable itself. The dashboard thus becomes your judge, jury, and executioner.
For all of this to work as planned, a powerful computing infrastructure is required, and it is being built all around us at a speed and scale rarely seen in modern history. One of the central roles in the storage and analysis of data belongs to Palantir, a company founded back in 2003, though until recently it conducted much of its work in the shadows. Its mission is to provide software that integrates enormous quantities of data into a single central platform, where that data can then be securely analyzed and interpreted. Palantir’s task is to connect information from multiple sources into one story about our lives. Initially created for the military and intelligence agencies, it is now being integrated into health and financial systems, as well as government infrastructure around the world.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, MY FRIEND?
In such an imagined order, the ordinary world will become fully transparent under the watchful eye of a mysterious one-percent minority. Countries and individuals that try to resist this general subjugation of digital space and financial markets will eventually be brought into line by force. The question is when this plan will move from theory into practice. Because once everything is connected, a trigger will be needed to activate the system. Some event after which global financial and spatial control will become part of daily life.
Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb has said that when the next pandemic comes — and sooner or later, it will — the experience will be far more “digital” than it was during Covid. For those who refuse to comply with strict rules, whether involving vaccines, quarantine, or something else entirely, this infrastructure could be used to deny access to basic human rights. Remember what happened during the last pandemic. Within a matter of weeks, governments around the world introduced contact-tracing apps, Covid passports, emergency powers, and digital health certificates. Measures that would normally have taken decades to pass through ordinary legislative procedures were adopted immediately, without serious debate, because citizens were afraid of the unknown. And frightened people agree to things they would never otherwise accept. That was the test. The question now is: what will be the pretext for “Big Brother” to force his way back into our lives without warning? A shortage of fuel, food, war, or some new virus?
This is the point at which the “intellectuals,” those faithful consumers of official versions, will angrily put down the newspaper. And if someone more educated whispers a scientific rebuttal to what has been said here, the author of this essay may find himself recommended for an emergency psychiatric evaluation. What this “I believe science, not morons” elite forgets is that the abuse of science is precisely what brought us to this point.
So how does the labeling of people as conspiracy theorists actually work? How does the mockery of so-called conspiracy theories function?
THE THREE “HORSEMEN” OF DECEPTION
One of the most successful tricks of modern propaganda is to throw everything into the same basket. Into that basket go reptilians, secret basements, “elixirs made from children’s blood,” satanic networks — and then, under the same lid, go digital identity, central-bank digital currencies, health certificates, algorithmic decision-making, and the growing dependence of human beings on systems they cannot see, understand, or stop.
That is how the perfect trap is created. Whoever asks a stupid question discredits himself. Whoever introduces a serious issue into the discussion is discredited by someone else’s stupidity. The first basket is the basket of absurdities. It contains stories that do not require evidence, only believers. Reptilians who rule the world. Underground chains straight out of horror movies. Billionaires drinking blood to rejuvenate their bodies. Secret societies running the planet from the basement of a pizzeria. Such stories often look like rebellion against the system, but in reality they serve it. They create noise. They divert attention. They turn every suspicion into a caricature. After that, all someone has to say is “conspiracy theory,” and the conversation ends before it begins.
The second basket is the basket of real projects. There are no reptilians here and no fantasy scenarios. Here we find documents, regulations, plans, deadlines, and platforms. The European digital identity is not a rumor. Digital wallets and electronic identification were not invented in a tavern. Electronic health records are not the product of someone’s imagination. Central banks and international financial institutions really are discussing digital currencies and programmable platforms. Artificial intelligence really is being introduced into administration, banking, health care, security, hiring, and education.
For verifiable examples, it is enough to look at official sources. The European Commission states that the framework for the European digital identity entered into force in May 2024 and that every EU member state is expected to offer at least one digital wallet by the end of 2026. The World Health Organization describes its Global Digital Health Certification Network as a digital public-health infrastructure for the verification of health documentation. The European Central Bank claims that the digital euro “would not be programmable money,” while the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, at the same time writes about central-bank money and financial claims on programmable platforms. The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, the EU AI Act, entered into force on August 1, 2024, precisely because algorithmic systems are already moving into areas of high social risk.
The third basket is the most important one, but also the most carefully hidden. It contains legitimate questions. Who will control digital identity? Can a citizen live normally if he refuses a digital wallet? Will cash remain a real alternative, or merely a museum exhibit? Who has the right to connect health status, a bank account, travel, education, and access to services? Can an algorithm deny a person a job, a loan, insurance, or medical treatment without a clear explanation? Who decides what counts as disinformation — and who watches the watchers?
Manipulation begins when the second and third baskets are deliberately moved into the first. When a person who asks about digital ID is portrayed as a cousin of someone who believes in reptilians. When concern about the centralization of data is equated with tales of secret cults. When every worry about an algorithmic society is dismissed as panic from ignorant people who “do not understand scientific progress.” Social progress is not the problem in itself. The problem is when it becomes nothing more than a phrase used to shut our mouths.
Technology can make life easier, but it can also turn it into a dark corridor lined with electronic locks. Digital identity can reduce bureaucracy, but it can also become a locked gate through which a person must pass in order to exist before the state at all. Digital money can make payments faster, but we do not know who may one day have the power to see, restrict, freeze, or redirect financial flows. An algorithm can help a doctor, a judge, a banker, or a clerk. But if responsibility hides behind it, the individual is no longer dealing with an institution. He is talking to a wall.
That is why the question — where are we going? — begins precisely where facts are replaced by fantasy. Propaganda begins where a legitimate question is equated with nonsense.
Technology is necessary. But those who use it have the right to ask who controls it. Does the citizen remain a user of the system, or does he become its hostage? And in the end, does digitalization expand freedom, or does it merely move the chains from the visible world into the invisible one?
The greatest success of modern propaganda is not that it has hidden reality. On the contrary, reality is often right in front of us, in regulations, strategies, conferences, and official statements. Propaganda succeeds by surrounding reality with so much madness that a person becomes ashamed to even look at it. That is why we must refuse to be thrown into any of these baskets. One thing is the kind of fantasy that poisons reason. Another is the set of real projects reshaping society. And the third is the set of questions without which a free human being ceases to be a citizen and becomes merely a user account that can always be suspended.
STORY TELLER 
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