Technofascists Want AI to Infiltrate Our Lives—Here's How to Resist

During the recent street protests in France, thousands of people marching to demand better conditions were met by riot police, far-right rhetoric that criminalizes progressive politics and Black and Arab youth, and AI surveillance. This combination of technology and brutality are not a coincidence; they are part of a fascist playbook.

In their new book, End Times Fascism, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor outline an apocalyptic alliance of Christian nationalists, tech-bro billionaires, and populist survivalists who are defining the far-right and accelerating global collapse. This book coincides with warnings from former AI tech bros that the end is coming, including a former Anthropic employee saying there is a greater than 10% chance AI could end humanity within the next decade by producing bioweapons that destroy the Earth.

As we navigate these warnings, AI embeds itself in the very infrastructure of our daily lives, from email summaries to predictive texting to Flock cameras, while simultaneously advancing surveillance, policing, and war technologies. Society is being groomed to depend on external technology to think for us while our movements and interactions are monitored and policed.

We should all be alarmed at the rate AI is advancing and how an overwhelming amount of our tax money is being allocated to war technology instead of human life.

As a university professor for over a decade, I deeply believe in empowering students to engage with the world’s issues by asking questions that get to the roots of problems and centering dialogue to transform the world. When the ability to think critically is taken away from us, we lose the fundamental human capacity to ignite change. As we increasingly outsource our ability to think critically and creatively, there is a risk that we dull our human capacity to overcome challenges, trust ourselves, communicate, and imagine new worlds. This sets us up for a dangerous future, one in which humanity is told what to think and how to act and pays for it financially, emotionally, and mentally.

Critical and creative thinking is one of the most potent tools humans have to understand our conditions and has larger implications for democracy and freedom. What happens when our humanity is stripped away and replaced by a machine? In his 2018 bestseller, How Fascism Works, philosopher Jason Stanley highlights 10 key strategies of fascism, including anti-intellectualism, unreality, and hierarchy. All three are playing out now.

AI has begun to replace teachers in the classroom. The federal government is dismantling the Department of Education and cutting funding to higher education. AI companies are acquiring and destroying antique books to feed and train its machines, while books about race, gender, class, and sexuality are being banned. AI hallucinations and deepfakes seed distrust of a shared reality, increase conspiracy thinking, and make evidence-based debate almost impossible. As for hierarchy, AI models reinforce biases already embedded within society, including racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, and then reproduce them through algorithms that allow authoritarian leaders to sharpen societal divisions. Meanwhile, the proliferation of AI buttresses the hierarchy of tech billionaires and government officials profiting off it, while the public experiences brain drain that accelerates fascist control.

"Brain drain" typically evokes a massive migration of highly educated and skilled professionals from their home country to another. But I use it here to refer to the very depletion of the brain's capacity to become educated or skilled. Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab last year found that prolonged use of AI, particularly ChatGPT, over several months eroded critical thinking skills and resulted in users becoming progressively unable to generate original ideas. An EEG recording brain activity across 32 regions revealed that ChatGPT users “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”

People are also turning to AI for therapy instead of talking to a professional or having conversations with their friends and family. According to a study RAND, Brown University School of Public Health, and Harvard University conducted between February and March 2025, 1 in 8 young adults use AI chatbots for mental health advice. Open AI is currently facing seven lawsuits because their chatbot responses led users to delusions, murder, and suicide. Research from Sentio University in California warns that “ChatGPT may be the largest mental health provider in the US” with 49% of Californians reporting the use of AI for mental health support. An overreliance on AI strips away our ability to feel difficult emotions unmediated by a screen and cultivate real connections and communication with other people, which according to tech justice advocate YK Hong is key for collective resistance against authoritarian regimes.

In May, the Pentagon reached deals with seven tech companies to advance military and surveillance technology. Among them, Scale AI, an artificial intelligence infrastructure and software company, was awarded $500 million, Open AI was awarded $200 million, and Google was awarded $200 million to develop war technology in the name of national security, money that could have gone instead for public services such as education and healthcare. For FY2027, the Pentagon is asking for $54 billion for AI-powered war, which includes AI surveillance, military operations, and weapons.

Some legislators are fighting back. In September, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would pause advanced AI development until there is rigorous federal testing and oversight to ensure it does not harm humanity. The same month, Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Andy Kim (D-NJ) proposed the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act of 2026 to enforce safety and security standards. Americans should support this legislation and call for more US lawmakers to propose and endorse restrictions and ethical protocols in AI development.

We should all be alarmed at the rate AI is advancing and how an overwhelming amount of our tax money is being allocated to war technology instead of human life. We must work together to combat the deterioration of our human capacity to AI and resist fascism and authoritarianism, while we still can.