The world is moving so fast right now that it is honestly hard to keep up. We have an administration in the U.S. that is pushing systemic changes faster than Bitcoin’s volatility on a highly-leveraged Monday morning. Between starting new geopolitical conflicts, upending our historically broken healthcare system (which directly affected my wife and me during our absolute nightmare hunt for a decent plan) and slapping names and faces on everything in sight, it feels like our entire foundation is shifting. They are literally demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build a massive ballroom without a public vote, and painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue, only to accidentally trigger massive algae blooms, or as the administration is saying “criminal radical left vandals” caused the Algae. Whichever might be true the fact is, things are being done without the say of the people in a country that is supposed to be run by the people. 

To me, it seems like there might be a lot more going on beneath the surface than the average person can truly understand. Maybe it is just me, but I can feel something brewing. I am not entirely sure if it is just my old man stomach acting up on me again or if something massive is coming down the road, but I have this gut feeling that things here in the U.S. are about to change in some major, irreversible ways.

The U.S. is Either About to Fall or Change in a Major Way

The first thing we really need to talk about is freedom. We hear endless chatter about being free here in America. The uncomfortable truth is that none of us are completely free. We just happen to have a few more privileges than citizens of other countries, but the word freedom gets thrown around way too casually these days.

Take a look around your neighborhood, and you will likely notice those new Flock Safety automated license plate readers popping up on every corner. They act as a massive dragnet, logging the movements of everyday citizens under the guise of public safety. When you combine omnipresent surveillance with the aggressive push to integrate artificial intelligence into every facet of our lives, and serious political talks about Universal Basic Income becoming a reality to offset job losses, I tend to wonder what all of this actually means. Has this been the master plan all along? People keep wondering if the 2020 lockdown was the great reset everyone talks about, or if a reset is coming soon. But what if it already happened while we were distracted?

The Greatest Tool (or Weapon) the World Has Ever Seen

Do not get me wrong, I am a massive tech nerd and AI is an undeniably amazing tool. You can retrieve complex information in seconds and research a dense topic in about one minute, compared to the hours it used to take before generative AI hit the mainstream. What I really want to focus on, however, is what is happening in the background when you use and connect these powerful models to your personal accounts and the devices you carry every single day.

These major AI companies operate using entirely closed-source code. That means no one outside their corporate walls can truly audit what is happening in the background when you type a prompt or link your private email. AI is simultaneously the greatest tool and potentially the most powerful weapon the world has ever seen. What is legally or technically stopping these mega-corporations from engaging in stealth data exfiltration? What guarantees do we have that they will not eventually use this incredible new technology and our own aggregated behavioral data against us? If you look at the track record of Big Tech, the answer is a resounding nothing.

The Future of We The People (and Big Tech's Track Record)

Let us get real for a second and look at history. We have blindly trusted these major tech monopolies for a very long time. Google has been around for nearly 28 years, and they have had multiple massive privacy cases brought against them for harvesting our data. It happens so often that when I was researching this piece, I could not even find an exact number of total cases. So, naturally, I turned to an AI assistant, and it literally told me that there is no single official number because it happens so frequently across different international jurisdictions.  

We can look at some of the heavy hitters, though. Back in 2012, Google’s Street View cars were caught secretly collecting payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, grabbing passwords, emails, and browsing history as they drove through neighborhoods. Then came the Safari cookie tracking scandal in 2013, followed by massive GDPR consent violations in 2019. More recently, they ended up settling a landmark $5 billion lawsuit for tracking the internet activities of users who specifically used Chrome's Incognito mode in 2024 and 2025.

There are plenty more examples to choose from. Just do a quick search and you will see a list that will turn your stomach if you are passionate about digital privacy and personal sovereignty. When these massive corporations get caught stealing your data, they get slapped with a fine that amounts to a tiny fraction of the revenue they earned from selling or leveraging that exact same data collection. The financial incentive to keep doing it vastly outweighs the legal repercussions.

So, What Can We Actually Do?

Well, this is the hard part that no one really wants to talk about. I know everyone in the privacy community says we should exclusively use open-source software, stop using AI entirely, and go live off the land like the Amish. Okay, I might have added that last one in there myself, but it would actually be pretty cool to live off the land, right? To learn how to garden and harvest your own food, make your own clothes, and just be one with the real world again.

I am getting slightly off-topic, but it ties into a bigger realization. For the longest time, I was writing and creating content purely to make more money. I have recently realized that this exact mindset is exactly why our society is in the predicament we are in now. Unchecked greed has taken over the world, and the pursuit of power has deeply fogged some otherwise great minds. Life is incredibly short, and over the past couple of months, I have been desperately searching for actual meaning rather than just the next paycheck.

We need to start taking our privacy back, supporting transparent tech, and slowing down. Most importantly, make sure the information you share with others is actually true. Make sure to double-check your sources so we do not contribute to the endless sea of bad information out there.

Final Thoughts

The world is undeniably shifting under our feet, from physical monuments being bulldozed to our digital footprints being scraped and sold by the highest bidder. Whether the U.S. is facing a massive fall or just a chaotic transformation, we are the ones who have to live through it. We might not be able to stop a multi-billion dollar corporation from building closed-source AI, or prevent politicians from tearing down history without our input, but we can control where we put our trust, how we protect our personal data, and what kind of meaning we seek in our own lives. Stay curious, stay skeptical, and maybe start planting that garden.

Thanks for reading everyone! Visit my site to learn more about me and explore what I’m building at Learn With Hatty. I hope everyone has a great day and as I always say, stay curious and keep learning.