The threat of AI

Thom Hartmann -  Pope Leo XIV just labeled AI one of the main threats facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to “human dignity, justice and labor.” He’s right, but it’s even worse than that: it represents, unless it’s rigorously regulated, a threat to democracy itself...

Make no mistake: AI is not just another technology. It is power, scaled. And in the hands of the far right, it becomes the most effective tool for dismantling democracy ever invented.

Authoritarians — whether MAGA-aligned in the United States or part of the global movement that includes Putin, Orbán, Modi, Netanyahu, and others — are not blind to the potential of AI. They understand it instinctively: its ability to simulate, to deceive, to surveil, and to dominate. While progressives and democratic institutions have scrambled to comprehend its implications, the authoritarians have already started weaponizing it with devastating efficiency.

Let’s look at the mechanisms.

AI can now generate millions of personalized political messages in seconds, each calibrated to manipulate a voter’s specific fears or biases. It can create entire fake news outlets, populate them with AI-generated journalists, and flood your social feed with content that looks real, sounds real, and feels familiar, all without a single human behind it. Imagine the power of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, but with superintelligence behind the wheel and zero friction. That’s where we’re heading.

And that’s just the beginning.

Authoritarian regimes can — and already are — using AI to surveil and intimidate their citizens. What China has perfected with facial recognition and loyalty scoring, MAGA-aligned figures in the U.S. are watching closely, eager to adopt and adapt. Right-wing sheriffs and local governments could soon use AI to track protestors, compile digital dossiers, and “predict” criminal behavior in communities deemed politically undesirable.

If the government knows not just where you are, but what you’re thinking, organizing, or reading — and it can fabricate “evidence” to match — freedom of thought becomes a quaint memory.

This isn’t theoretical. In 2024, we saw AI-generated robocalls impersonating Joe Biden telling voters to stay home (and millions did). In the next cycle, we may see entire election campaigns waged by AI bots masquerading as voters, influencers, and even public officials.

Trump, during the 2024 election campaign, reposted a fake AI image of Taylor Swift endorsing him, over her objection; many believed she’d become a Trump supporter. As the Carnegie Endowment for Peace noted:

“Meanwhile, deepfake audio clips of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Slovakia’s opposition head, Michal Šimečka, ignited social media controversies when they spread rapidly before fact-checkers exposed them as fabrications. The destructive power of deepfakes also hit home in Türkiye when a presidential candidate withdrew from the May 2023 election after explicit AI-generated videos went viral. In Argentina’s October 2023 presidential election, both leading candidates deployed deepfakes by creating campaign posters and materials that mocked their opponents—tactics that escalated into full-blown AI memetic warfare to sway voters.”

The goal often isn’t just to win; it’s to delegitimize the democratic process itself. Because once trust is broken — once people believe that “both sides lie” or that “you can’t believe anything anymore” — then strongmen step into the void with promises of order, purity, and salvation. More