The First Truly Untrackable Existential Threat
AI Has No Borders, No Oversight, and No Off Switch
AI isn’t just a tool. It’s more like a megaphone for human intentions, amplifying our capabilities and desires. And history tells us exactly how this will play out.
We’ve seen this story before — not with AI, but with every other powerful technology governments have tried and failed to contain, such as nuclear weapons, biological warfare, and cyber attacks.
Will politicians head Our Voice and take the brave steps that are urgently needed?
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Think about the Playbooks of Bad Actors. We don’t see fentanyl production — we only see overdoses skyrocket. We don’t see a hacking lab in North Korea — we only see the banking system crash. We don’t see rogue biological labs — we only see outbreaks. These threats remain invisible until they unleash their full impact; at this point, containment is no longer an option.
But AI is different, untrackable. It doesn’t need a factory, a lab, or physical infrastructure. It requires computing power — local or distributed — and expertise, both available to anyone willing to pay.
Fentanyl still needs to be smuggled across borders. Hacking requires human coordination and infiltration. AI will bypass these limitations entirely. When weaponised, it will be silent, invisible, and capable of inflicting mass-scale disruption before the world even realises an attack has begun.
The AI Black Market Has Already Begun, with underground networks selling AI models for deception, cyber warfare, and large-scale manipulation to the highest bidder.
History portends terrible news for those still clinging to the idea that responsible hands will control AI. There is no global AI non-proliferation treaty. No enforcement body exists with the power to stop rogue actors from developing their models. AI is already in the hands of those who seek to use it for influence, power, and destruction. Governments are racing to integrate AI into military strategy.
Cybercriminal networks are experimenting with AI-driven fraud, identity theft, and autonomous hacking. Black-market developers are fine-tuning open-source models for deception, cyber warfare, and large-scale manipulation and offering the models to the highest bidder.
Unlike nuclear weapons, AI does not require uranium enrichment or missile silos. Unlike cyberwarfare, it does not need highly specialised human coordination. Once an AI model is trained for a malicious purpose, it can be copied, modified, and sold without restriction. Suppose a hostile nation, an extremist group, or a criminal syndicate wants to develop an AI-driven attack system. In that case, they won’t need a vast industrial complex. A single rogue AI lab, hidden in plain sight, will be enough. And once that model exists, there is no taking it back.
The Illusion of Control: Why AI Cannot Be Contained
Some argue that nations can contain AI through regulation, oversight, or digital firewalls like China’s Great Firewall. But these efforts are doomed to fail. Even if a country were to impose strict controls on AI within its borders, it would only prevent law-abiding entities from advancing while bad actors continue unimpeded. A nation might block external AI models but cannot prevent those within its borders from secretly developing AI. A government might restrict AI exports, but once a model has been copied and distributed through underground networks, there is no way to erase it.
There is no satellite surveillance equivalent for AI. We can detect nuclear enrichment facilities, but we cannot detect a clandestine AI training program running in an unmarked data centre. We can monitor missile tests, but we cannot see an AI model being fine-tuned for financial sabotage or deepfake-driven election interference. AI does not require smuggling across borders — it moves freely as encrypted code hidden in the vast sprawl of the Internet. The reality is inescapable: AI development cannot be contained.
And this leads to an even more horrifying realisation.
In the AI Quagmire: No Country, No Corporation, No Person Can Be Trusted
For centuries, trust has been the foundation of civilisation. Nations signed treaties based on mutual assurance. Businesses relied on contracts and verified transactions. Individuals depended on institutions, credentials, and personal relationships to navigate life.
But what happens when trust is no longer possible?
AI is dismantling the very concept of verification. We are entering a world where it is no longer possible to distinguish truth from deception and honesty from betrayal. Deepfake technology has already blurred the lines of reality; synthetic voices and AI-generated media can fabricate perfect forgeries, and large-scale disinformation campaigns can rewrite history in real-time. It’s effortless to create an artificial identity, forge an entire corporate history, or fabricate AI-generated “evidence” to support any narrative.
Once society loses its ability to verify what is real, trust collapses.
And when trust collapses, what replaces it?
The only defence will be to assume deception at all times. Governments, corporations, and individuals will be forced to operate in a state of permanent suspicion — never fully believing the information they receive, never knowing whether an interaction is genuine or manipulated. Every alliance, every transaction, and every piece of media will carry the possibility of fabrication.
This is not speculation. AI-generated deepfakes have already been used to manipulate elections. AI-powered fraud schemes have stolen millions through synthetic voice cloning. Geopolitical conflicts are being inflamed by AI-driven propaganda. These are only the early warning signs. As AI capabilities grow, these fractures will turn into ruptures.
A World Where Everyone Assumes Betrayal
The absolute horror is that the only defence is to assume betrayal.
If honesty and deception are indistinguishable, trust — genuine, unguarded — becomes a liability. Governments will assume their allies are lying. Companies will assume competitors are engaging in AI-driven fraud. Individuals will assume every digital interaction carries a hidden agenda.
This creates a chilling paradox. Without trust, nothing functions — but trust itself becomes reckless delusion.
In a world where deception is effortless and undetectable, paranoia is the only survival strategy.
The Vital Playbook: Preparing for Inevitable AI Warfare Now
If AI cannot be controlled, it must be countered. The only rational path forward is to assume that AI will be weaponised and prepare accordingly. The world is past the point of containment. The only way to fight AI threats is to develop AI defences capable of neutralising them in real-time.
Proactive Measures are Needed Urgently
There is no time for debate — only action. Automated deception detection must evolve alongside AI-generated disinformation. AI-driven cybersecurity must anticipate and neutralise autonomous cyberattacks before they cause catastrophic damage. AI-powered fraud detection must outpace the synthetic identities and deepfake manipulations designed to collapse economies and institutions.
Nations must build AI-specific emergency protocols to prepare for cyberattacks, biosecurity threats, and military escalations. Just as nuclear deterrence strategies were developed to prevent global catastrophe, AI escalation protocols must exist to ensure AI-driven conflicts do not spiral beyond control. Defensive AI must be as advanced as offensive AI. The race to develop AI countermeasures must move faster than the race to weaponise it.
The biggest mistake humanity can make is pretending that AI is just another technology that committees and regulations can govern. AI is a force multiplier. It will be used for good and evil, creation and destruction. But once it is turned against us, it won’t simply stop.
The fantasy of AI control is already obsolete.
The only question left is whether we are prepared for what comes next.
The AI Destabilization Playbook: How a Bad Actor Would Collapse a Nation
Steve Bannon’s strategy was “Flood the zone with shit.” But AI-powered destabilisation goes beyond misinformation. It floods the zone with doubt, making it impossible for people to discern truth from fiction. Bad Actors would recognise that trust is the only real opposition. Society is no longer governable if people no longer trust their leaders, institutions, news sources, or others. And that is the entire objective.
How to Collapse a Country Without Firing a Shot
A Bad Actor seeking to destabilise an entire country wouldn’t need an army, a coup, or even human operatives on the ground. AI changes everything. It enables asymmetric warfare at an unprecedented scale — disrupting economies, eroding social cohesion, and dismantling trust so thoroughly that a nation begins to implode from within. The playbook could unfold in four overlapping phases:
Phase 1: Eradicate Trust in Information
A nation without shared reality ceases to function. If no one can agree on what is true, decision-making becomes impossible. This is where the attack begins. AI-generated mass disinformation would flood every channel: deepfake politicians contradicting themselves in viral videos, AI-generated “leaks” of fake government documents creating scandals that never happened, mass-scale AI-powered comment armies amplifying extreme viewpoints and drowning out reasoned debate, and contradictory conspiracy theories seeded at once, making reality impossible to piece together. As people grow overwhelmed, they react not to resist but to disengage. Society fractures into isolated belief bubbles, each convinced that every other group is either brainwashed or complicit in deception.
Outcome: The population no longer believes in a single version of events. The government struggles to communicate. No leader, journalist, or institution remains credible.
Phase 2: Weaponise AI-Powered Economic Warfare
Once trust in information is broken, the next target is economic stability. AI-powered financial attacks would flood markets with deepfake financial reports, false bankruptcy announcements, and fabricated CEO resignations. Synthetic voice scams could hijack high-level communications, directing financial institutions into chaos. AI-assisted insider trading would manipulate stock prices in real-time. Automated financial panic campaigns would drive bank runs, inflation spikes, and investment collapses.
Outcome: Economic uncertainty spreads faster than policymakers can react. Trust in banks, businesses, and national stability erodes. Fear overtakes logic. Capital flight weakens the nation from within.
Phase 3: Break Social Cohesion Through AI-Driven Psychological Warfare
Once the economy begins spiralling, the Bad Actor escalates division and paranoia. Deepfake atrocities are attributed to one political faction or another, inflaming anger. Fake evidence of betrayal is planted inside activist groups, turning allies against each other. AI-generated mass harassment campaigns are launched against prominent journalists, academics, and thought leaders, forcing them into silence. Synthetic racial and cultural outrage campaigns ignite violence between communities. The Gestapo-era fear you referenced? AI scales that up exponentially. In Germany during WWII, people feared their neighbours because any of them could be informants. In an Ai-destabilised nation, people fear their neighbours and reality.
If an AI-powered attack can forge any document, video, or news story, then every citizen becomes a potential traitor. Nobody can be sure what is real.
Outcome: Mass protests escalate into riots. Communities fracture. Law enforcement is overwhelmed and uncertain whether reported crimes are real or synthetic. Political factions splinter into irreconcilable war zones.
Phase 4: Collapse the Government by Exploiting Digital Infrastructure
Once the nation is drowning in economic turmoil, social distrust, and violent unrest, the final move is to cripple its digital and governmental infrastructure. AI-generated cyberattacks target water, power, and transportation systems. Synthetic identity waves overwhelm government services, making basic administration impossible. AI-assisted election fraud accusations ensure that no election result is accepted by all sides. Deepfake world leaders issue conflicting messages, triggering diplomatic crises. With every system either under attack or untrustworthy, governance becomes impossible. A nation-state that cannot provide essential services or maintain legitimacy ceases to function.
Once governance collapses, power vacuums open up — opportunistic factions step in, foreign adversaries exploit the chaos, and international diplomacy crumbles. At this stage, no external intervention is viable — no international coalition can ‘restore order’ to a nation where AI-generated anarchy has severed all bonds of legitimacy. The Bad Actor doesn’t need to control the country; they only need to ensure nobody else can.
Outcome: The government collapses through loss of legitimacy, mass defections, or inability to govern.
The Aftermath: A Nation Reduced to Chaos
A Bad Actor would never need to invade or fire a weapon. AI would do all the work. When the dust settles: The economy is in free fall. Nobody believes official sources. Society is too divided to rebuild. Foreign powers swoop in to take control. At that point, the Bad Actor has options. Step in as a “stabilising force,” install puppet leadership, carve up resources, or simply let the country disintegrate into failed-state status. A nation’s destruction would be costless, deniable, and irreversible.
The Nightmare: AI Destabilization Is Already in Motion
This isn’t some hypothetical scenario — we already see early versions of these tactics. Russia’s AI-driven disinformation campaigns in Western elections. China’s AI surveillance and influence operations targeting dissidents. Autonomous hacking tools infiltrating banks, corporations, and government networks. As AI becomes more advanced, the tools for nation-scale destabilisation become exponentially more powerful and accessible. The cost of launching an AI-driven total information warfare campaign will soon be within reach not just of nations but of small groups, corporations, and rogue individuals. And once trust is gone, it is never coming back.
The Only Playbook That Matters: Defend Against AI Warfare Now
The world is still acting as if AI is a tool that can be managed. That illusion must be shattered immediately. Regulation is meaningless. Treaties are unenforceable. Global agreements are built on trust — but AI is engineered to destroy trust. The only possible response is to assume AI will be weaponised at every level and to build countermeasures before it’s too late. That means AI-driven threat detection that identifies synthetic attacks before they spread, AI-powered cybersecurity that neutralises autonomous hacking attempts in real-time, crisis-response AI teams capable of detecting and shutting down mass-scale disinformation campaigns before they cause societal rupture, and rapid AI fact-checking infrastructure to prevent deepfake-driven diplomatic crises.
This is the only way forward. We are past the point of debate. The AI war is already underway — an invisible, unquantifiable war that will determine the fate of nations before most people even realise it has begun. The only question left is whether we are ready for it.
Does the Only Playbook That Matters Require Governments to Seize Control of the Internet?
The harsh reality is that defending against AI warfare may require governments to take drastic measures — potentially even seizing Internet control within their borders. This is a dystopian proposition, but it may be the only way to counteract AI-driven destabilisation before it reaches an irreversible tipping point.
Right now, nations are utterly unprepared for the scale and speed at which AI-driven threats can collapse societies. The fundamental problem is that AI operates beyond human speed, national borders, and traditional forms of control. A government cannot regulate a threat it cannot see, measure, or contain. AI-based attacks happen in milliseconds, crossing jurisdictions before humans register them as threats.
The shift toward government-controlled Internet is not hypothetical — it is already happening. Russia, China, and India have all taken steps toward restricting digital infrastructure under the guise of national security.
• Russia’s “Sovereign Internet” Law (2019): Russia already built a controlled, firewall-enabled domestic internet precisely to prevent external manipulation and filter AI-generated foreign influence.
• India’s Internet Shutdown Playbook: India is the global leader in government-ordered internet blackouts — they shut down entire regions when protests, riots, or cyber threats escalate.
• China’s AI Surveillance State: China isn’t just controlling information; it’s actively scoring its citizens’ behaviour through AI-driven monitoring.
Whether democratic nations like the US, UK, and EU follow suit is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when the threat becomes impossible to ignore. If governments wish to retain any control over national security in the AI era, they will have to do something once unthinkable: treat the Internet as critical national infrastructure and take active control of it to prevent AI-driven anarchy.
The Case for Government Control of the Internet in the Age of AI Warfare
The Internet was designed as an open system built on trust. That model no longer works where AI is dismantling trust itself at scale. AI-powered destabilisation is a cybersecurity issue and a full-spectrum threat to national security, economic stability, and social order. If left unchecked, AI-driven cyberattacks, deepfake disinformation, and synthetic identity warfare will outpace the ability of governments to respond.
What does this mean? It means that governments must assume a permanent state of AI defence — not just reacting to threats but preemptively neutralising them in real-time. And the only way to do that effectively may be to exert direct control over the digital infrastructure.
What Would Government-Controlled Internet Look Like?
If a government were to take control of the Internet within its borders, it would likely involve:
1. AI-Driven National Firewalls — Governments would need nationwide AI-monitoring firewalls capable of scanning and detecting AI-driven attacks, synthetic content, and foreign AI influence operations in real-time. This would be similar to China’s Great Firewall but optimised for censorship and AI-specific threat detection and mitigation.
2. Mandatory AI Content Authentication — Every digital transaction — news, social media posts, financial communications — would require AI-based authenticity verification to detect synthetic fakes before they spread. Deepfake detection systems would automatically flag or remove content proven to be AI-generated misinformation.
3. National AI Cyber Defense Forces — Governments would create AI counterintelligence units that can preemptively shut down AI-driven cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and synthetic identity fraud before they cause widespread damage. This would blur the line between cybersecurity and active digital policing.
4. Controlled Internet Access Points — Governments might restrict access to external AI models deemed a national security threat. Critical industries — finance, healthcare, military — could be required to operate on government-protected, AI-secured networks isolated from global cyber threats.
5. AI Escalation Protocols for Global Coordination — Just as nuclear weapons require strict escalation protocols between world powers, AI-driven cyber warfare requires real-time international coordination. Countries might require AI Rules of Engagement treaties to prevent AI-triggered conflicts from spiralling out of control.
The Downside: A Slippery Slope into Digital Authoritarianism
The moment a government seizes control of digital infrastructure, the question becomes: Can that power ever be relinquished? Would governments use “AI defence” as an excuse for mass censorship? Would dissent be silenced under the guise of stopping AI-driven misinformation? Would a controlled internet lead to full-scale surveillance states?
History shows that emergency powers, once granted, are rarely given up. A government controlling its Internet for national security could easily slide into an authoritarian model where digital freedom is permanently restricted. Once a country has a national AI firewall, AI content verification, and internet access restrictions, how long before those tools are used to silence political opposition, suppress unfavourable news, or control economic flows?
A nation that controls the Internet within its borders becomes something entirely new — a digital state where information is no longer free-flowing but centrally managed. The implications of that are as terrifying as they are inevitable.
Is This the Only Option? Can Democracies Survive Without Digital Control?
If governments do not take control of their internet infrastructure, they must find a way to defend against AI-driven destabilisation while maintaining open networks. That would require AI-powered, decentralised verification systems to detect synthetic disinformation in real time, strong digital identity verification to prevent AI-driven identity fraud, and a global treaty on AI cyber warfare and disinformation countermeasures.
The problem? These solutions are fragmented, slow, and reactive. AI attacks happen at machine speed. Governments operate on human time. Without direct control over digital infrastructure, nations may always be one step behind. In an era where AI-driven destabilisation can collapse nations, governments must act now to decide whether they can protect themselves without fundamentally reshaping digital freedom.
They may not have a choice if they fail to act in time.
The Cold Reality: AI Will Force Governments to Choose Between Security and Freedom
This is the AI dilemma: open digital societies may not survive AI warfare. The world is entering a permanent era of digital conflict, where AI is weaponised against economies, governments, and social cohesion. If AI-driven destabilisation cannot be stopped within open networks, nations will be forced to lock down their digital borders and control their essential services networks.
This means we are heading toward one of two futures:
1. A world where every nation controls its Internet for national security, creating a fragmented, authoritarian-leaning digital landscape.
2. A world where AI-powered destabilisation outpaces the government’s ability to respond, leading to societal collapse before democratic nations can mount an effective defence.
Neither future is appealing. Governments must act now to make that choice — or it will be made for them.
The AI war is not looming — it’s already here. And nations that hesitate to act will not get a second chance because they’ll be priority targets.
About the author:
📌 Greg Twemlow, Founder of XperientialAI & Designer of the Fusion Bridge
XperientialAI: AI-powered learning for leaders, educators, and organisations.
Fusion Bridge: My latest work — building AI-enabled frameworks for innovation & leadership.
🌎 Read more of my 300+ articles → https://gregtwemlow.medium.com/
📧 Contact: greg@xperiential.ai or greg@fusionbridge.org
