The Threats of AI Come from the State

The Threats of AI Come from the State

By Finn Andreen

Post o August 16, 2025

There have been many comments in the last year about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, from such AI luminaries as Elon Musk, Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Gary Marcus and others. But they might not be the right people to listen to in this regard, because the threats of AI are fundamentally political. Most scientists and technical experts, however intelligent, do not have training in politics. They generally do not have the mindset to think about politics, with the exception of the regulatory impact to their sector. Nobody expects an inventor to grasp the political and social implications of his invention.

The Blind Spot of AI Threats

This explains why these AI experts usually make rather naïve and unimaginative comments regarding the threats of AI; such as “we need to urge companies to pause AI,” “the government definitely needs to involved,” “humans can hurt others with AI,” we don’t want “AI to fall into the wrong hands,” because “bad actors” could use AI, etc. Also, sometimes the potential threats of AI seem to be minimized and sometimes exaggerated. What all these AI threat assessments have in common is that they never recognize the “bad actor” with the worst record of all: the state.

This is clearly a blind spot. For these AI scientists the fundamental distinction between state and society is non-existent; it’s always a collective “we” that needs to manage the potential threats of AI. This is precisely the warning that Murray Rothbard expressed so clearly in Anatomy of the State (1974): “With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled… The useful collective term “we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life.”

Though it is difficult to distinguish the state from society in this age of statist interventionism and crony capitalism, it is essential to do so. The state, according to the standard Weberian definition, is “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” The state is, thus, by its very nature radically different from the rest of society. As Ludwig von Mises warned in Liberty and Property: “Government is essentially the negation of liberty.” In other words, freedom suffers when state coercion increases. Though crony corporate power can influence government in order to get preferential treatment when the rule of law can be bent (as if often can), it is clear who holds the reins. It is necessary to abandon the myth of the “benevolent state.”

Seen in this light, for all new technology it is necessary to ask to what extent the state controls this technology and its development. In this respect, the record of AI is poor, since most major AI players (like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, etc.), their founders, and their core technologies have been supported since their inception in important ways by US government funding, research grants, and infrastructure. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the NSF (National Science Foundation) funded the early research that made neural networks viable (i.e., the core technology for all major AI labs today).

This evolution is not in the least surprising, since the state naturally tries to use all possible means in order to maintain and expand its power. Rothbard again: “What the State fears above all, of course, is any fundamental threat to its own power and its own existence.” Thus, the threats of AI should be seen from two sides. On the one hand, the state can actively use AI to enhance its power and its control over society (as per above), but on the other hand, AI could also represent a challenge for the state, in empowering society both economically and politically.

Will AI Tilt the Balance of Power? 

The threat of AI should be assessed, therefore, in terms of the potential impact it can have on the uncertain balance of power between state and society, or to express it more sociologically, between the ruling minority and the ruled majority. This relationship depends on who benefits most from new instruments of power, such as the printing press, modern banking, television, internet, social media, and artificial intelligence. In some cases, the state used these tools to enhance its control, but some of them may empower society. For instance, television was a medium that arguably strengthened the position of the ruling minority, while social media is currently enhancing the majority’s political influence at the expense of the ruling minority. The same question, therefore, concerns AI: will AI empower the state at the expense of society, or vice versa?

As seen above, the state got involved in AI long ago, already at the theoretical and inception stage. Today, fake libertarian Peter Thiel’s Palantir is providing AI analytics software to US government agencies to enhance their power of surveillance and control of the population by building a centralized, national citizen database (including the nightmarish possibility of “predictive policing”). Anthropic is also teaming up with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to provide US intelligence and defense agencies access to its AI models. And Meta will make its generative AI models available to the US government. It is true that such initiatives might, in theory, make state bureaucracy more efficient, but this might only increase the threat to individual freedom. Worryingly, this development is considered “normal” and not raising any eyebrows among AI industry journalists and experts.

From the point of view of society, AI will eventually lead to radical corporate changes and productivity increases, far beyond the internet’s information revolution. The political consequences could be significant, since AI can give each individual a personal research assistant and provide a simpler access to knowledge even in fields with gatekeepers. Routine tasks can be taken over by AI, freeing up time for higher-value tasks including political engagement. For instance, AI can make it easier to understand and check government activity, such as summarizing legislation in plain language, analyzing budgets and spending data, fact-checking claims in real time; thereby reducing the knowledge gap between governments and ordinary citizens.

Of course, this increased political empowerment of society could be stymied if access to AI is conditioned. If the state keeps the upper hand in AI, it could weaken dissidents and discredit independent journalists who use AI by surveillance, manipulation, or worse, in particular where the state feels only loosely bound by its constitutional limitations. This is unfortunately the case not only in the US but also with most states and supranational organizations.

The future of AI—such as AGI, agentic AI and physical AI—is only going to make this discussion of AI threats more important. These evolutions will enhance the possibility for rights violations by the state, but also increase the opportunities and possible countermeasures at individual and community level. A lot could depend on whether the numerous AI functions of the future will be mostly open, decentralized, and encrypted. This future is still uncertain, but the political framework presented here arguably remains valid.

The political stakes involved with AI are far more consequential than those data scientists developing AI seem to recognize. The threats of AI are consistent with the threats that all new technologies represent if they are used nefariously by the state. It is essential, therefore, for the public not only to learn about AI and embrace its potential, but also to see it in the larger context of the political struggle for freedom.

Finn Andreen

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Smashing the Western Illusion of Democracy

Smashing the Western Illusion of Democracy

By Finn Andreen

Posted on September 17, 2024

 

 

In these politically turbulent times, the “illusion of democracy is fading worldwide” as one pundit wrote recently. There is a growing sense in the West that “democracy” is not working well, but there is not yet a full and clear recognition of that fact. Michel Maffesoli, honorary professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, has been saying already for several years, that “the end of the democratic ideal is manifesting itself.” Signs of this can be seen in the problematic elections that have taken place in his native France and other Western countries.

The “ideal” or “illusion” of democracy comes from widespread misconceptions about this political system, despite clear misgivings from the most illustrious political thinkers of the past. The most important misconceptions about democracy are that elected representatives are generally loyal and disinterested, and that the electorate is generally informed and rational with regard to politics.

David Hume wrote in his famous Essays (1777) that democracy cannot be “representative” because all societies are “governed by the few.” Sociologist Robert Michels then defined, in his ground-breaking work on political parties (1911), what he called the “iron law of oligarchy,” methodically showing that all mature organizations, without exception, become oligarchic (i.e., ruled by minorities).

For the early democratic movements of the 19th century, representative democracy was generally not perceived as truly democratic; the Athenian model was the ideal. As Robert Michels noted, it was only when the practical impossibilities of direct democracy on a large scale became evident, that the concept of political representation gained legitimacy. Over time, this concept became synonymous with “democracy.”

Montesquieu considered in The Spirit of the Laws (1739) that the main justification for the representative system is not only that the average person does not have the time or the interest to engage in political life, but that he is incompetent to do so. Tocqueville warned in Democracy in America (1835) that one of the potential threats to democracy is that people can become so absorbed by the pursuit of economic opportunities that they lose interest in politics.

Indeed, the majority has neither the interest nor the motivation to get deeply involved in politics. Voters implicitly understand that their vote is just a small drop in an ocean of ballots and will, by itself, make no difference in the election outcome. It has also been argued by some that not only do voters lack the interest and motivation, they also lack the time and the capability of thinking rationally about politics, as political theorist James Burnham summarized in his essential work, The Machiavellians (1943):

The inability of the masses to function scientifically in politics rests primarily on the following factors: the huge size of the mass group, which makes it too unwieldy for the use of scientific techniques; the ignorance, on the part of the masses, of the methods of administration and rule; the necessity, for the masses, of spending most of their energies on the bare making of a living, which leaves little energy or time for gaining more knowledge about politics or carrying out practical political tasks; the lack, in most people, of a sufficient degree of those psychological qualities—ambition, ruthlessness, and so on—that are prerequisites for active political life.

Though these insights about political representation have long been known, they have been suppressed in order to maintain the illusion of majority rule. “Democracy” has such a positive connotation in the Western value system that it is understandably difficult for most people to accept that they do not “rule” in any meaningful sense. This reality is all the more difficult to grasp since some policies from the ruling minority do, and even must, consider majority public opinion to some extent. If pressed, most people would nevertheless admit that though they have elected “representatives,” they actually have no real say over several areas (e.g., foreign, monetary, and trade policy), even though these areas impact their lives greatly.

The Inherent Instability of All Political Systems

Though the illusion of democracy is slowly fading in the West, it is not so much because of a realization of the truths presented above. Rather, it is because representative democracy, like all political systems, is inherently unstable. It has long been known that conditions constantly change, to paraphrase Heraclitus, but it is not widely understood that political systems are ill-suited for this basic reality. Though democracy might sometimes seem to work well, the never-ending economic, social, demographic, and technical changes to society make such impressions short-lived.

Regardless of the political system, the power balance at any given time between state and society, and between the ruling minority and the ruled majority, is constantly disrupted by such changing conditions. The seemingly inexorable increase in state interventionism has a negative impact on wealth-creation and private property, forcing socialization, and leading to a rise in political tensions. When the state becomes more bureaucratic, it fails to keep up with a changing society, and thereby destabilizes the power balance. Further, political tensions also arise if the ruling minority pushes a political agenda that disregards or even antagonizes the majority.

Democracy, in particular, is subject to constant swings of political tensions due to its inherent lack of fairness: the losing side of an election (more than half in plurality systems) is not represented. As Gustave de Molinari wrote, democracy “insist[s] that the decisions of the majority must become law, and that the minority is obliged to submit to it, even if it is contrary to its most deeply rooted convictions and injures its most precious interests.” Voting phenomena like Duverger’s Law and Arrow’s paradox tend to soften Molinari’s stark description but, by distorting election results, they hardly make them more representative or more fair.

When the state’s size and power is limited (i.e., statist interventionism in society is weak), the state’s record as defender of property rights would naturally be considered more important than whether or not the majority is democratically represented. Conversely, when the state’s power is extensive (i.e., the state is strongly interventionist), whether at a national or supranational level, the majority surely has high expectations from democracy since the direction of society hangs, grotesquely, on the decisions of its executive and legislative branches.

A Necessary Reduction of State Power

It is possible then to conclude that a limitation of state power is necessary in order to reduce political tensions in society and to introduce much-needed stability, regardless of whether or not the political system is considered “democratic.” This requires a decentralization of decision-making and a reduction of the role of the state, by strengthening the free market and individual rights. The result would be a freer society, able to adapt more naturally and harmoniously to the changing conditions. Thus, what is needed is “more freedom” rather than “more democracy.”

Unfortunately, the illusion of democracy has led the majorities in the West to conflate democracy with freedom. This is a significant mistake because democracy is no guarantee for freedom, even if majority rule were possible. On the contrary, when concessions to the majority have been made, such as welfare spending through fiscal redistribution, these have had deleterious effects on society and reduced economic freedom. As Tocqueville said, “I dearly love liberty and respect for rights, but not democracy.”

Considering the misconceptions about political representation that have been presented here, it is high time to fully smash the illusion of democracy in the West and substitute freedom for democracy as the highest political goal to attain and to protect.

Finn Andreen

• https://mises.org/mises-wire/smashing-western-illusion-democracy