To expand on this point, which is correct:
- Collusion of the oligarchs: Data centers buy up all the hardware on the planet, companies stop manufacturing components for PCs, since “it’s no longer profitable”. Micron already killed Crucial, for example.
- all hardware now sold is locked down, walled garden tablets with minimal RAM and storage - you must stream everything from the cloud. They control the software choices and the encryption keys.
- AI agents review vast amounts of text, files, and communications, and surface any interesting anomalies. Dissident is silenced. News is censored.
- Your data is held hostage. If you step out of line, if you run into financial troubles, your personal affects and memories are deleted.
It’s a prison. We let them get rich enough to imprison us with the tech we developed for them.