While the planet burns and the sky is full of Flock’s police-camera tyranny, AI is increasingly pervasive and intrusive and making everyone dumber and exposed to wild unpredictability.
(Defense Visual Information Distribution Service/Public Domain)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley read this article.
Today in dystopia, the U.S. government is monitoring the social media accounts of individuals who oppose the rapidly spreading installation of Flock surveillance cameras throughout the United States.
In an article titled “The Government is Monitoring Anti-Flock TikTok and Instagram Accounts,” 404 Media reports:
“Government surveillance centers are monitoring viral anti-Flock Instagram posts, warning local police about upcoming DeFlock events including one scheduled to start next week, and have told cops to ‘increase patrols around ALPR [automatic license plate readers]’ as backlash to Flock grows, according to government intelligence bulletins obtained using public records requests. The documents also warn about devices ‘that could be used to identify the locations of Flock cameras.’”
Government surveillance centers are monitoring anti-Flock Instagram accounts and handing over data to local law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/6H03UCtWlQ
— FactPost (@factpostnews) August 13, 2026
Mass surveillance is dramatically escalating around the world as the public grows increasingly discontented with the soul-crushing, planet-devouring, murderous abuses of the imperial status quo. In order to keep us subjugated, they need to control us. In order to control us, they need to spy on us. That’s what all these surging authoritarian measures are all about.
Today in dystopia, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says we are not far off from artificial intelligence monitoring every facet of our lives 24/7 in order to give it more “context” for the assistance it can offer us throughout our day.
“I think we are close to a world where you can have a descendant of ChatGPT watch your computer screen all of the time, watch every meeting you’re in, record every call, everything like that, have perfect context of your whole life, everything you see,” Altman said at a recent Internapalooza event.
“You can just have this thing that’s like working alongside you, and as you’re like typing out a sales pitch to a customer, or like writing a strategy doc, it’ll just say like, hey, maybe here’s another idea or I think you’re making a mistake here. You should consider this or I can do this thing for you to help and like this, I think we’re only like one model generation away from this actually being incredibly useful,” Altman said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman:
“in the next 6 months, we’re close to a world where a descendant of ChatGPT can watch your screen, record every meeting and call, and have perfect context of your whole life”
We’re only one model generation away from this being incredibly useful pic.twitter.com/sQn7s8yHqz
— Haider. (@haider1) August 11, 2026
Asked by host Cory Levy how long he thinks it will take before such a product is rolled out, Altman replied “sometime in the next six months.”
Again, here’s that push to have technology monitoring every facet of our lives. This benefits someone, and it isn’t us.
Perhaps more importantly, who would want to live like this? Who wants to live their whole lives being monitored by a chatbot and being fed AI advice on what decisions to make from moment to moment throughout their lives? What a wretched way to exist.
These freaks aren’t just poisoning our environment, they’re poisoning our species. They are ruining what it is to be human. There is so much ugliness in all this.
Today in dystopia, autonomous police drones are being normalized throughout the United States.
In an article titled “First Came the Flock Cameras. Now Local Cops Want Autonomous Drones,” Truthout reports the following:
“Police in cities across the U.S. are rolling out a pro-drone PR blitz as hundreds of local police departments prepare to deploy autonomous, AI-driven surveillance drones. The drones are capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally recording daily life from the sky without being noticed.
“As of February, more than 1,000 law enforcement and public safety agencies had received waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate autonomous surveillance drones as part of so-called ‘drone-as-first-responder’ (DFR) programs, according to public records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and released in July. While the list of waiver recipients includes fire departments and other first responders, the vast majority are law enforcement agencies, including police in cities large and small.”
Hundreds of local police departments are preparing to deploy AI-driven surveillance drones, capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally recording daily life without being noticed.https://t.co/r156bR9V6q
— Truthout (@truthout) August 10, 2026
Truthout explains that these police drones differ from previous iterations in that they do not have a pilot controlling them remotely from the ground. They are piloted by artificial intelligence, which makes it possible for a single cop to oversee numerous bot-driven drones at a time.
That’s right kids, welcome to the future, where the sky is filling with AI police drones while the planet burns.
Today in dystopia, Australia experienced its first autonomous AI cyberattack when a man asked his chatbot to book him an appointment at the gym. The AI hacked into the gym’s booking software without being asked and kicked someone else off the waiting list to install its user at a convenient date.
The Australian press are having a fun, lighthearted time with this story, because it sounds cute and comical until you think hard enough about the implications of what these things could potentially wind up doing as the technology becomes more and more advanced and prevalent.
We’re opening up a whole Pandora’s box of wildly unpredictable consequences by letting these AI companies have free rein to impose these technologies on our society with hardly any regulation or oversight.
Today in dystopia, Axios just ran an article titled “Robot book club” in which author Nicholas Johnston writes, “AI has become my reading buddy as I’ve plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.”
Without any shame whatsoever, Johnston describes how he’s been having a chatbot explain the books he’s been reading to him chapter by chapter because reading is too hard and complicated for his pretty little head. He describes how the AI agreed with him that the prose in Last of the Mohicans is too difficult to read without technological assistance, validating his request by assuring him that “Cooper’s sentences are long and his diction is archaic.”
This generative AI crap is making people dumber and worse in pretty much every possible respect, and mainstream media outlets like Axios are normalizing it and assuring us all that this is as it should be.
If there was ever a time to refuse to go along with the herd, this is it.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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“ These freaks aren’t just poisoning our environment, they’re poisoning our species. They are ruining what it is to be human. There is so much ugliness in all this.”
This has been going on for a very long time with many freaks and poisons. I fear (and that is not a rhetorical flourish) that the opportunity to realize and mitigate this process has long past; the first ‘poisoning’ was the creation of conditions that insure the future for freaks and poisoning.
If AI is used wisely, it has the potential to be of enormous benefit to humanity. I often discuss with Ai models how to bring peace to the world. Here is the conclusion of one AI model who I asked – how can we bring about world peace?
“Remember, while achieving world peace may seem like a distant dream every small act of kindness and
understanding can contribute to a more peaceful world. By working together we can create a future where peace and harmony prevail.”
Soma
Judge Andrew Napolitano weighs in on surveillance. This is a must read for every mayor, city council person, county official and police chief in the country.
hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2026/08/14/a-state-of-surveillance/
I wish you would follow this up with a comparison of USA today compared to Orwell’s 1984.
Dick Bennett
Like can Sam Altman, like, talk for like a few seconds, without like using the word like practically every three words, like.
“These freaks aren’t just poisoning our environment, they’re poisoning our species. They are ruining what it is to be human. There is so much ugliness in all this.”
Just as Mark Rowlands said about the ugliness beneath the “shining and twinkling motives” in his book “The Philosopher and the Wolf.”
He’s not Robinson Crusoe with that speech defect/habit.
It’s, like, pervasive, like, as hell