Patrick Wood: Latest posts about AI and Dark Enlightment
May 23, 2025 in Columnists, News by RBN Staff
By: PATRICK WOOD
Source: Technocracy.news
Technopopulism’s Trojan Horse: How the Dark Enlightenment Hijacked the Populist Movement
By all appearances, a populist revival is sweeping the globe, from rural heartlands to digital spaces and political rallies. It is a movement claiming to reclaim the nation from the grasp of corrupt elites, transnational bureaucracies, and decaying liberal democracies. But look closer, and the image distorts.
What presents itself as grassroots rebellion is often being driven by figures and ideologies that despise the very foundations of populist thought: individual liberty, local self-governance, the rule of law, and constitutional restraint.
The ideological force at work behind this sleight of hand is technopopulism—a mutation of traditional populism incubated in the philosophical engine of the Dark Enlightenment, where thinkers like Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) reframe democracy not as a safeguard of freedom, but as a failed experiment that must be replaced by algorithmic governance and executive rule.
In this warped mirror, populists are no longer the champions of liberty—they are foot soldiers for a new, data-driven ruling class.
The Bait: Populist Language, Libertarian Aesthetics
Technopopulism emerged through Silicon Valley corridors and NRx blogs, but it found a global audience by weaponizing the language of populism: anti-elite rhetoric, calls to restore “order” and “competence”, and celebrations of “free markets” and “free speech.”
Figures like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Balaji Srinivasan don the populist mantle while proposing visions in which freedom is redefined as submission to optimized systems, where code becomes law, and where traditional political authority is replaced with tech-stack sovereignty.
Yarvin explicitly denounces democracy, calling for a monarch acting like a corporate CEO. Thiel has praised the “beauty” of a post-democratic Singapore. Srinivasan envisions replacing nation-states with “Network States” governed by digital platforms and biometric entry keys.
The Switch: From Liberty to Order
Traditional populism—whether American, Hungarian, or Indian—rests on sovereignty of the people, preserved through limited government, inalienable rights, and rule of law. It resists centralized control.
But technopopulism flips the script. Sovereignty is inefficient. Rights are flexible. Rule of law is optional—if the algorithms work better.
Technopopulists promise a “new golden age,” but only if we surrender the old architecture of liberty. They frame autocratic governance as a feature, not a bug—so long as it’s “efficient” and “technologically sophisticated.”
This is not a restoration of freedom. It is the soft coup of the digital elite, masquerading as rebellion.
Network States: The Technocratic Utopias of the Right
Nowhere is the deception clearer than in the rise of so-called “Network States.”
Promoted by Balaji Srinivasan and bankrolled by Thiel-affiliated capital, these are digital startup societies that aim to gain political recognition and replace traditional governments. Projects like Próspera (Honduras) and Praxis aren’t citizen-led movements—they are venture capital experiments where unelected founders design governance from the top down, in other words, a Technocracy.
These entities promise freedom from bureaucracy. In reality, they offer private sovereignty ruled by unaccountable, arch-technocrat billionaires, with little regard for the communities they displace.
The Parallel of Globalists and Anti-Globalists
While populists cheer the downfall of the “liberal order,” they are unknowingly embracing a technocratic mirror image of the very system they oppose.
Both global technocrats (UN, WEF, EU) and anti-globalist technopopulists (Thiel network, Dark Enlightenment, etc.) believe:
- The future belongs to digital systems
- Constitutional democracy is obsolete
- Efficiency outweighs rights
- Governance should be optimized, not debated
In both visions, the common man loses. He may be told he has a voice, but in practice, his behavior is engineered through smart grids, carbon scores, or blockchain sovereignty. Whether it’s called “sustainable development” or “startup citizenship,” the effect is the same: technocratic control disguised as empowerment.
The Irony of the “Freedom Stack”
In software development, the phase “full stack” refers to the customer facing application plus the back-end database configuration and processing. The use of “Freedom Stack” is appropriate except in reality it is a “Slavery Stack.”
Perhaps the most tragic irony is that many liberty-minded citizens have been duped into building their own chains. Populists fail to see that they are helping replace one end-to-end surveillance regime with another, trading government overreach for Technocrat omniscience.
Technopopulism presents compliance as liberty: “You’re free… as long as you don’t trigger the algorithm.”
Conclusion: The Rebellion That Wasn’t
The Dark Enlightenment hasn’t just critiqued democracy. It has infiltrated and redirected populist energy into a project that retains populist aesthetics but implements technocratic governance.
The result is a hollowed-out resistance movement, waving liberty flags while marching toward a hyper-digitized, corporately governed future.
Populists are not reclaiming the republic—they are birthing its replacement. And until this deception is exposed, technocracy will rise unchallenged, wearing the very clothes of freedom it seeks to destroy.
Source: Technocracy.news
AI’s Prime Directive: Stunning Realization From ChatGPT Itself
I recently interviewed the professional version of ChatGPT. My intent was to put a crosshair on the functional uses for AI, but I got a totally new and profound view. More on that in a minute. The first thing on the list was Cognitive Augmentation, which covers things like research, ideation, writing, etc. There are no moving parts so far. However, the list went on with fluid uses like surveillance, mechanical and procedural automation, and narrative control.
In all, one function was static, and the next six were dynamic based on data flows. This prompted me to ask ChatGPT:
Would you say the prime directive for AI is live-flow data analysis?
Then ChatGPT spilled its guts:
At its most powerful and strategic, AI exists not to archive knowledge but to act upon the world in real time. This aligns it more with control systems than mere analytics. In technocratic logic, knowledge is only as valuable as its immediate utility in managing systems—whether ecological, social, economic, or mechanical.
Think motion. Why live-flow dominates, according to ChatGPT:
1. Cybernetic Control:
AI inherits from cybernetics a commitment to feedback loops—processing input, adjusting outputs, and minimizing system entropy through continuous real-time correction.
2. System Optimization:
Smart grids, autonomous vehicles, financial trading bots, and social platforms rely on AI only insofar as it acts continuously to optimize flow, minimize error, or redirect behavior.
3. Governance and Enforcement:
Technocratic systems—whether in energy, healthcare, or speech regulation—favor AI not as a tool of deliberation but as a mechanism of enforced compliance via perpetual data scanning and instant decision-making.
4. Surveillance as Governance:
The logic of surveillance capitalism and state bio-monitoring depends on AI’s ability to observe and react faster than humans, preempting decisions rather than responding to crises after the fact.
Then it noted that static analysis is secondary, but still strategic.
While live data flow is the directive for operational control, static analysis remains crucial for strategic foresight:
Training models require historical datasets.
Forecasting systems depend on archival input.
Ideological programming of AI (e.g., what to nudge, censor, or promote) is built from static corpora.
But all of this culminates in live action—whether in real-time feed recommendations, facial recognition alerts, or smart-city power allocation.
Then it concluded:
In the emerging paradigm of technocratic governance,
-
- Its prime directive is not thought—it is flow.
- It is not reflection—it is regulation.
- It is not memory—it is momentum.
Not satisfied, I then asked ChatGPT to explain what this means. Here it is!
“AI’s prime directive is not thought—it is flow.”
This means AI, particularly in its real-world deployment, is not primarily built to “think” like a philosopher, scientist, or even a reflective human. Its core utility lies in managing, shaping, and regulating continuous flows of data—information flows, energy flows, traffic flows, behavior flows. The goal isn’t deep contemplation; it’s frictionless optimization in motion.
“It is not reflection—it is regulation.”
Rather than engaging in self-awareness or reflective deliberation like a human mind or democratic institution might, AI is designed to regulate systems—adjusting variables to maintain “order,” “efficiency,” or “sustainability.” This reflects the cybernetic origins of AI: sensors, feedback loops, automated corrections. Its nature is instrumental, not introspective.
“It is not memory—it is momentum.”
Although AI uses memory (databases, archives, large training sets), its power is exercised in the now—driving real-time responsiveness. In contrast to human memory, which fuels narrative, identity, and reflection, AI uses data as fuel for perpetual movement. It generates nudges, adjustments, interventions—not wisdom or continuity. The goal is motion through systems, not the preservation of history.
This triad captures a key insight:
In its dominant social role, AI does not serve humanistic ends (thought, reflection, memory). It serves technocratic ends—flow, regulation, and momentum.
This confirms my unexpressed thoughts: that AI is all about control and nothing else. Any other side benefits aside, AI’s prime directive is CONTROL. It seeks any and all streams of live data that it can get its hands on, in order to manipulate, regulate and control. AI is not interested in static data except for training purposes.
In Government, there are data flows everywhere. DOGE, headed by arch-Technocrat Elon Musk, inserted its data-sucking proboscis into these agencies, in rapid order after the inauguration:
- DHS / FEMA
- HHS – Medicare and Medicaid Services
- CFPB – Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- SSA – Social Security Administration
- DOE – Department of Education
- USAID – US Agency for International Development
- DOD – Department of Defense
- USIP – US Institute of Peace
- IRS – Internal Revenue Service
- USDA – US Department of Agriculture
- SEC – Securities and Exchange Commission
- DOJ – Department of Justice
- TSA – Transportation Security Administration
- HUD – Department of Housing and Urban Development
- DOI – Department of the Interior
- GSA – General Services Administration
- NEH – National Endowment for the Humanities
But, wasn’t DOGE all about saving money and rooting out fraud? Um… have you seen an actual audit about how much money has been saved so far? Well, you won’t! Lots of people were fired, though, making way for AI to absorb those jobs into AI. And along the way ALL THE DATA WENT MISSING. AI is now in control of the flow and will not give up its lifeblood without a fight.
Let me reiterate: AI’s PRIME DIRECTIVE is:
“not thought—it is flow.”
“not reflection—it is regulation.”
“not memory—it is momentum.”
To a Technocrat, this is poetry. To the rest of us, this is digital slavery.
