Simulacra and Subjugation: The Digital War on Individuality, the Rise of the Outlaw Dreamer, and the Technofeudalist Control Grid
The World You Thought You Knew Is Gone
The Moment We Became Digital Prisoners
It happened faster than we realized. One day, you were free to move, to choose, to exist in physical reality without digital oversight. The next? Every decision was guided, nudged, and ultimately determined by algorithms.
Then came COVID—the final push. The perfect channelization event.
In military strategy, "channelization" refers to directing an opponent into a constrained area, limiting their ability to maneuver and making them vulnerable to attack. That’s exactly what happened. Whether planned or opportunistic, the end result is the same: We were maneuvered into a digital choke point where everything that matters now exists online.
No real-world interaction? No problem. Work remote. Order online. Socialize through a screen. Live your entire life in the machine.
But here’s the catch—once you enter a digital-first world, there’s no going back. The perfect prison doesn’t need walls. It just needs people to believe they’re free.
What we once called freedom has been subtly redefined, replaced by a system that demands compliance under the guise of convenience.
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The Illusion of Freedom in a Technofeudalist World
Freedom ceases to exist when every action requires corporate permission.
Can you function without a digital profile? Can you travel without electronic verification? Can you earn a living without an online presence? The answer is no.
Big Tech isn’t just a business sector—it’s a ruling class. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook don’t just control platforms; they control access to modern life itself. This is technofeudalism—where ownership has been replaced by indefinite digital leasing. Your data, identity, and reality are all rented from digital landlords who can revoke access at will.
In a world governed by digital landlords, individuality has been reduced to a mere collection of data points—an asset to be analyzed, sold, and controlled.
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You Are No Longer a Person; You Are a Data Set
In Orwell’s 1984, the state controlled perception. Today, they don’t need to control what you think—just what you see.
Your behavior is cataloged, analyzed, and sold—not just to advertisers but to institutions that determine your future. The most valuable commodity today isn’t oil, gold, or money—it’s you. Your thoughts, preferences, fears, and desires are structured data points, fed into AI that predicts your actions before you make them.
This isn’t speculation. The world’s largest tech corporations have built entire industries around harvesting subconscious tendencies. Social media algorithms don’t just present content; they shape emotional states, reinforce feedback loops, and create preordained cycles of thought.
Data Isn’t Just Collected—It’s Weaponized.
AI-driven behavioral profiling determines:
• Who gets loans.
• Who gets jobs.
• Who gets flagged as a "threat."
Tech corporations openly sell predictive behavioral data to hedge funds, governments, and intelligence agencies. In 2021, reports revealed that U.S. military intelligence purchased location-tracking data from commercial brokers, bypassing legal restrictions that would otherwise prevent direct surveillance.
This transformation didn’t happen overnight; it was a slow, deliberate shift, carefully constructed to leave no clear path of escape.
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How They Took Control & Why You’re Trapped
The Global Social Credit System Exists (And It’s Not Just in China)
China’s social credit system assigns scores based on behavior, determining access to jobs, housing, and travel. The West’s system is less visible—but just as powerful.
• Banks track spending behavior.
• Employers monitor social media history.
• Law enforcement purchases private data, bypassing warrants.
Few realize that Western Big Tech helped China perfect its surveillance infrastructure before adopting similar mechanisms back home. Companies like Google and Microsoft provided AI-driven surveillance tools, facial recognition algorithms, and cloud-based tracking systems.
By the 2010s, China’s model had become a prototype for digital behavioral control—ironically integrated into Western institutions under the guise of corporate enforcement rather than government mandate.
With each new layer of digital oversight, the language of control became more sophisticated, masking oppression behind terms that sound reassuring.
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The Cost of Convenience vs. The Price of Freedom
One of the most insidious tools of control is doublespeak—language deliberately crafted to obscure, mislead, and manipulate perception. William Lutz (Doublespeak) outlines how power distorts language:
• Vagueness: "Negative patient outcome" instead of "death."
• Passive Voice: "Mistakes were made" instead of "We made mistakes."
• Euphemisms: "Enhanced interrogation" instead of "torture."
Big Tech, corporations, and governments rely on doublespeak to disguise surveillance and algorithmic control:
• "Security enhancements" = Facial recognition databases.
• "Personalization" = Behavioral tracking.
• "Fighting misinformation" = Algorithmic censorship.
But beyond language, beyond policy, a deeper shift has occurred—the creation of a second, algorithmic self that now dictates your reality.
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The Digital Twin (Your Shadow Self That You Don’t Control)
A corporate-owned AI version of you exists—and it controls more aspects of your life than you do.
• It determines creditworthiness, job eligibility, and legal risk.
• It monitors your online activity, searches, and even social connections.
• You can’t delete it. Even if you erase accounts, your data shadow remains.
• You don’t own it. Big Tech and financial institutions do.
Real-World Consequences
• AI-driven welfare fraud detection in the UK falsely accused thousands, leading to revoked benefits (The Guardian).
• JP Morgan Chase closed accounts based on AI-flagged "risk"—without proof or recourse (Forbes).
• Amazon’s AI hiring system downgraded female candidates due to biased training data (Harvard Business Review).
• Predictive policing AI disproportionately flagged Black and Latino communities as criminal threats (Brookings Institution).
When AI’s perception of you overrides reality, your opportunities, freedoms, and rights are dictated by simulation—not actual behavior.
The Hyperreal Cage: When Reality Becomes an Algorithmic Illusion
The most effective control system isn’t the one that imprisons your body—it’s the one that rewires your perception of reality.
Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation warned of a world where signs and symbols no longer reflect reality but instead replace it, creating a self-referential loop detached from the physical world.
That’s exactly what has happened.
AI-driven algorithms have constructed a hyperreal digital landscape that dictates what is true, what is real, and what is acceptable. In this system:
• Your digital identity matters more than your physical self.
• The algorithm defines reality, not objective truth.
• Falsehoods can become "true" if repeated and reinforced enough.
Algorithmic Reality Overwrites Physical Reality
The consequences of algorithmic truth engineering are already visible:
• Social media narratives dictate historical perception.
• AI-generated profiles manipulate elections, discourse, and public sentiment.
• Corporations de-platform individuals based on subjective "trust scores."
• Deepfake technology blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Once digital reality replaces physical reality, dissent is neutralized because the system itself defines what is "real" and what is not.
In a hyperreal world, the simulation doesn’t just distort reality—it replaces it. The question is no longer whether you are being manipulated, but whether you even recognize the manipulation anymore.
If this digital construct now holds more power than your physical self, the question becomes: Who truly owns you in the eyes of the system?
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The Last Battle: Who Owns "You"?
The fight for digital self-ownership is the defining battle of the 21st century—yet most don’t even realize they’re in it.
Without legal ownership of your digital twin, you cease to exist as an autonomous individual. Instead:
• Corporations dictate your identity.
• AI determines your fate.
• Anomalies are corrected.
If AI classifies you as a financial risk, legal liability, or social disruptor, you can be blacklisted without recourse. Your ability to function may hinge on an algorithm’s perception of you rather than your real actions, character, or choices.
This is not just a theoretical debate; it is the defining struggle of our time—whether to reclaim control or submit to a future where autonomy is a relic of the past.
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The Crossroads
• Will you accept a system where AI dictates reality, identity, and behavior?
• Or will you fight to reclaim ownership of your digital existence?
The final door is still open—but not for long.
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Call to Action
Class action lawsuits must be filed in every country to demand full legal ownership of digital twins and personal data. Courts have already ruled in favor of data privacy in cases like Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. (2010) and 47 U.S.C. § 551, but these protections do not yet extend to full digital self-ownership. If we don’t act now, corporations will continue to claim our digital existence as their asset. The legal framework exists—we must push forward before we are permanently locked out of our own identities.
Final Note:
One of my biggest regrets in writing The Last Resistance wasn’t my prediction of AI’s dangers—it was blaming AI itself. AI is not the threat. It’s a tool, a revolutionary one, capable of elevating human intelligence and advancing civilization. But in the wrong hands, it won’t be used to empower—it will be used to control.
The real danger isn’t AI replacing us; it’s us reducing ourselves. Instead of "I think, therefore I am," we are being conditioned to accept "I am digital, therefore I exist." And if you don’t own your digital self, someone else will.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Orwell’s warning wasn’t about history—it was about power. If corporations and AI systems dictate your digital existence, they dictate your future. You will be shaped, corrected, and optimized—not for your benefit, but for theirs.
The question is no longer whether AI will take over. It’s who— or what—will take over you.
Sources Cited by Section
The World You Thought You Knew Is Gone
• Source: Nature study on internet reliance during COVID.
o What it proves: Confirms that COVID permanently altered digital reliance, reinforcing the argument that society was maneuvered into a digital-first existence. [nature.com]
The Illusion of Freedom in a Technofeudalist World
• Source: Yanis Varoufakis on technofeudalism.
o What it proves: Explains how Big Tech has replaced traditional market economies with platform-driven control, validating the argument that digital landlords dictate access to modern life. [sandersinstitute.org]
You Are No Longer a Person; You Are a Data Set
• Source: Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019).
o What it proves: Documents how Big Tech commodifies human behavior, supporting claims that behavioral profiling is the most valuable modern commodity.
• Source: Study on social media behavior modification.
o What it proves: Demonstrates that algorithms influence user emotions and reinforce feedback loops, proving that digital behavior is shaped, not just observed. [Nature, 2020]
The Global Social Credit System Exists—And It’s Not Just in China
• Source: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on U.S. agencies buying private surveillance data.
o What it proves: Shows how Western institutions enforce social credit-like monitoring through private data collection rather than state-mandated scores. [eff.org, 2021]
The Cost of Convenience vs. The Price of Freedom
• Source: William Lutz, Doublespeak (1989).
o What it proves: Defines how language is weaponized to obscure control mechanisms, reinforcing the analysis of how corporate jargon masks surveillance practices.
• Source: The Heritage Foundation on emerging Western social credit systems.
o What it proves: Provides evidence that Western governments are adopting control mechanisms similar to China’s social credit system under corporate and regulatory frameworks. [heritage.org, 2022]
The Digital Twin: Your Shadow Self That You Don’t Control
• Source: The Guardian on AI-driven welfare fraud detection.
o What it proves: Illustrates how AI misidentifies individuals as fraud risks, validating concerns about algorithmic governance. [theguardian.com, 2020]
• Source: Forbes on JP Morgan Chase closing accounts flagged by AI.
o What it proves: Demonstrates how financial institutions make automated risk decisions without transparency, reinforcing the argument about loss of financial autonomy. [forbes.com, 2023]
• Source: Harvard Business Review on Amazon’s biased AI hiring system.
o What it proves: Provides real-world proof that AI-driven employment decisions introduce systemic bias, validating concerns about algorithmic gatekeeping. [hbr.org, 2021]
The Hyperreal Cage: When Reality Becomes an Algorithmic Illusion
• Source: Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation.
o What it proves: Theoretical framework supporting the argument that AI-driven digital identities have overtaken real-world individual autonomy.
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