Schneier on Security

Dictators increasingly use AI to monitor officials, automate censorship, and replace unreliable human subordinates with surveillance systems and propaganda bots, as seen in China, Russia, and the UAE. Yet this creates a new dependency: a small, hard-to-replace cadre of engineers who maintain these systems gains outsized leverage, echoing how Rome's Praetorian Guard eventually turned against the emperors they served. Examples include China's Zero Trust AI system catching embezzlement, Russia's Oculus censorship tool and Meliorator troll operation, and Russian IT workers receiving draft exemptions to prevent brain drain.

Source: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/10/how-technology-empowers-and-imperils-dictators.html. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.