adminWhitney Webb’s blunt refusal to use so-called artificial intelligence should be a wake-up call to every American who still values independence and common sense. Webb told listeners she personally avoids AI for her research and writing, arguing that the convenience it promises is already being weaponized against the public.
Her warning is not techno-paranoia — it’s a sober look at how data-hungry systems are being built into the backbone of our lives. Webb lays out how queries, browsing habits, and even private drafts can be harvested and funneled into centralized systems that enable predictive policing, surveillance, and behavioral engineering. Those are not abstract risks; they are the logical outcomes of letting unelected Big Tech platforms become the arbiters of what we see, think, and do.
Importantly, Webb emphasizes the centralization problem: when the infrastructure of the internet and the models that run on it are controlled by a narrow set of players, the power to shape society accrues to them. She points to Palantir-style architectures and the way elite actors set objective functions for automated systems — a structure that risks creating a permanent class of rulers and a much larger class who are acted upon by opaque algorithms. That’s neo-feudalism in silicon form, and it’s happening while most Americans are still distracted by convenience.
Conservatives have been sounding the alarm about concentrated, unaccountable power for years, and now commentators and tech dissidents are joining calls for serious limits on runaway AI. Even mainstream debates show leaders on the right pushing for moratoria or strict oversight to prevent a technocratic grab for control — a sensible precaution when the stakes are liberty itself. This isn’t Luddism; it’s patriotism: defending the conditions that make self-government possible.
Webb also offers practical commonsense: keep red lines, use physical books, maintain offline archives, and prefer local or privacy-respecting tools over cloud-fed, corporate black boxes. These steps sound old-fashioned because they are rooted in an older, healthier idea of freedom — one where you are the master of your tools, not their servant. If Americans want to remain literate, self-reliant, and capable of independent thought, we should treat those habits as civic virtues.
Now is not the time for complacency or technocratic surrender. We need policies that protect privacy, break the chokehold of centralized infrastructures, and make sure any deployment of automation is transparent, accountable, and subordinate to the rule of law. Politicians who pledge to defend liberty should listen to these warnings and act, not bow to the Silicon Valley gospel of inevitability.
This debate is ultimately about who governs us — the people and their representatives, or opaque algorithms tuned by distant corporations and deep-state contractors. Stand with those who choose freedom over the ease of digital chains: keep your libraries, teach your kids to think for themselves, and demand leaders who will protect your rights against the slow creep of a digital prison.
