Yuval Noah Harari, a notable contributor to the World Economic Forum agenda, recently highlighted the critical role of COVID-19 in pushing the acceptance of total biometric surveillance. Harari cautioned that this shift could empower “the Stalins of the 21st century” to continuously monitor and analyze the brains of the entire population through sensors and AI, potentially leading to unprecedented totalitarian regimes.
As nations deploy advanced technologies to combat the pandemic, Harari’s warning underscores the importance of balancing public health measures with privacy and civil liberties to prevent the emergence of oppressive surveillance states.
Yuval Noah Harari highlighted that Covid is critical because this is what convinces people to accept total biometric surveillance”, enabling “the Stalins of the 21st century” to analyse and monitor “the brains of all the population, all the time”. “You don’t need human agents. You don’t need human analysers. You just have a lot of sensors, and an AI which analyses it, and that’s it, you have the worst totalitarian regime in history.”
