AI Authoritarianism is Here

Trump, Congress, and Peter Thiel's shadowy tech firm are forming one big cabal to automate America—at the sacrifice of the working class.

While much of the media bandwidth has been rightfully focused on looming cuts to Medicaid and Medicare in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill," a short provision buried in Trump’s budgetary behemoth could fundamentally tilt the scales of power in America over to our new AI overlords.

The provision, titled “Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization,” bans states from regulating AI for the next 10 years; it also hands $500 million (quite a large sum for a government notoriously reluctant to update outdated tech) to the Department of Commerce for the purpose of replacing ancient systems with “state-of-the-art commercial artificial intelligence.” Any unspent funds will remain available into 2034.

Translated: the federal government is preparing a massive AI rollout and states and localities have been stripped of their authority to do anything about it.

So much for the Republicans’ great love for state’s rights!

The implications are grave and go far beyond tech upgrades. In tandem with a new federal “data-sharing” initiative — led by billionaire Trump/Vance donor Peter Thiel’s surveillance empire Palantir — this bill signals a sweeping consolidation of digital power into the hands of the federal government with zero accountability.

No Oversight

As first reported by 404 Media on May 12, the vague language in the provision, introduced by Representative Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, may invalidate existing AI protections and preempt future ones altogether. California’s recent law requiring health care providers to disclose AI usage? Potentially unenforceable. The same goes for New York City’s 2023 law requiring companies to ensure their AI-hiring software isn’t making decisions based on its own racial or gender bias (though, we know that AI is inherently racist). Even California’s 2026 transparency rule, which requires AI developers to publicly disclose whether they used copyrighted material, or things like social media posts to train their AI, could be wiped out before ever taking effect.

With AI already gutting jobs—and no signs of the automation assault slowing down—this bill would turn a bad situation dire. If states, alarmed as they watch their unemployment numbers climb, wanted to craft legislation to prevent working people in their state from being massacred by AI-induced job losses, this buried provision would handcuff them from protecting their citizens.

This isn't just about the U.S. retaining a competitive edge in the development of new AI or regulatory consistency. It’s about consolidating power at the expense of working people. The federal ban prevents states from enacting even basic protections, leaving the door wide open to more AI-powered discrimination, predatory surveillance, and privatized decision-making systems — all outside the democratic reach of local legislatures.

These are the same systems also playing a role in deciding who receives health care and who doesn’t. United Healthcare, who’s been under siege from the public in the wake of the murder of its CEO Brian Thompson and a DOJ fraud investigation, used AI to mass-deny claims, resulting in an error rate of 90%.

And we saw how well that worked out for them.

On this one, even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting the machine; the arch MAGA conservative claims she wouldn’t have voted for the bill if she’d had enough time to read it — convenient now that it has passed through the House. In an interview with News Nation, Greene said:

“I find it so problematic that I’m willing to come forward and admit that those are two pages that I didn’t read because I never want to see a situation where state rights are stripped away, and that’s exactly what it– that’s what it says in that bill text, that it would take away states’ rights to regulate or make laws against AI for 10 years.”

Adding, “And I think that’s pretty terrifying. We don’t know what AI is going to be capable of within one year, we don’t know what it will be capable of in five years, let alone 10 years.”

It is indeed terrifying. But Greene and her colleagues voted for it anyway (and not having time to read the bill isn’t an acceptable excuse for a lawmaker).

It appears that William Saunders, a former employee of OpenAI turned whistleblower, agrees with Greene. Saunders recently told a Senate hearing on AI Oversight that he resigned because he “lost faith” in the industry’s ability to responsibly regulate itself.

“No one knows how to ensure that AGI systems will be safe and controlled,” he said.

Given those concerns, the federal government — having a vested interest in rolling out the fullest expression of the police state — is now trying to seize full control of any regulatory measures that could potentially rein in the monster its creating.

An Unholy Alliance: Big Tech Billionaires and the Security State

Which brings us to Trump’s new mega-database, as reported by The New York Times, which will collect information on American citizens on a staggering scale. The administration has said they’re looking to “eliminate information silos and streamline data collection across all agencies to increase government efficiency and save hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”

If you buy that, I have a golden AI bridge to sell you.

The effort to link databases from agencies across the government began under Elon Musk’s DOGE, now Palantir is expanding that effort. And if you’re not yet familiar with Palantir, you’re about to be.

Palantir, the shadowy data analytics tech firm founded by right-wing billionaire and Trump/Vance mega-donor, Peter Thiel, was the obvious choice for this surveillance expansion. The company’s name is no coincidence. Palantir was named after the “palantíri,” the all-seeing orbs of surveillance in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”

Under Trump, Palantir may become just that.

Its four core products — Gotham (for defense and intelligence), Foundry (for data integration), Apollo (for software deployment), and AIP (for AI operations) — are already embedded in both government and corporate ecosystems. Notable clients include Morgan Stanley, Merck, Airbus, PG&E, and the Department of Defense.

Since Trump’s return to office, Palantir has received over $113 million in government contracts, including a new $795 million deal with the Department of Defense (DOD). Its Foundry software, which integrates and analyzes massive datasets, is now used by agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Human Health Services (HHS), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Naturally, what can go wrong?!?!

The company is also currently working with ICE, recently signing a $30 million contract with the agency to build a platform to track immigrant movements in real time; they also work with local police departments on predictive policing; and with the Israeli military as it carries out its ongoing genocide on Palestinians.

In a Vox piece about the “secretive company coming for all your data,” they explain:

“One of Palantir’s product demonstrations, as described in Bloomberg Business Week’s 2011 article, presents a fictional example of the software’s capabilities: A terrorist leaves a trail of data across Florida, including one-way plane tickets, condo rentals, bank withdrawals, phone calls to Syria, and security camera footage from Walt Disney World. Taken separately, these details don’t add up to much, but Palantir’s software ties together thousands of databases across various agencies and helps clients see connections across them. In this case, actions that are innocuous on their own are much more suspicious when combined, and the CIA could identify and stop a terrorist’s plan to attack a theme park.”

As though American citizens are all potential terrorists, the Trump administration is essentially trying to weaponize all of our information. They want your bank account numbers, medical history, student debt, social security information, tax information, immigration status, and more in one, easily searchable, central location.

If you’ve been to a Pro-Palestine protest, or bought a shirt that says “fossil fuckers,” or liked a post condemning Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people on social media, they want to know it. If you’re an activist, or a journalist with an immigration status a bit more complicated than “my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents were born here,” they definitely want to keep tabs on that too.

Even former Palantir employees are more than a little concerned. In a public letter, 13 former staff urged the company to cut ties with Trump’s administration. “Data collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses,” said former engineer, Linda Xia. “Combining all that data, even with the noblest of intentions, significantly increases the risk of misuse.” And multiple employees have resigned in protest of its contracts.

A lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mario Trujillo, put it more bluntly: “If people can’t trust that the data they give the government won’t be abused, it will lead to a crisis of trust.”

What AI Means for Working People

This isn’t merely an extremely concerning privacy issue — it’s a power grab. The state-level ban on AI regulation creates the perfect environment for the rapid expansion of Palantir-run surveillance systems. It’s nothing less than tech-driven authoritarianism run by billionaires masquerading as “efficiency” and “modernization.”

By preempting state action, and outsourcing AI infrastructure to unaccountable firms like Palantir, the Trump administration is building a top-down system where power consolidates, accountability vanishes, and dissent is quietly mined, tracked, and flagged.

Palantir’s growing federal contracts are turning surveillance tools into instruments of governance. If this bill is any indication, the state’s priority isn’t to protect us, it’s to manage us.

And it reveals quite a lot about how they see the future for working people while they let AI take our jobs, cut social services, deregulate everything, and let the climate inferno lead us into a dystopian hellscape.

There’s nothing big, or beautiful, about that.

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