I too am worried about threats of totalitarianism rising all over the world. At times I find myself wondering "which way is up, if any way is up?", to a paralyzing degree. I know that pessimism and paralysis are bad, but so is crazy misguided action. But as I try to sort it out, I start to go back to the view that a NEW DIRECTION IN IT is the best hope of saving our skin (though I really wish some other essential endangered advanced technologies could be at least archived enough that we don't lose them).
Anyone seriously worried about threats to democracy or threats of human species extinction should take a few hours to watch the entire video of the recent Senate Intelligence Committee:
I was very disappointed when CNN reporters seemed to notice about one sentence from this complex event. "Yes we are right that Trump is a Russian spy and we should get rid of him." Life is far more complex and difficult than that. One of the pieces I found VERY jarring was a strong echo of an appearance of Mike Rogers on CNN ... just a few months?... ago, asking for authority to shut down all the electric power in a Russian city. (I forget whether he named St. Petersburg... but it felt like that.) CNN's recent call to give him full authority to all he wants in "taking the offense against Russia," I am reminded a bit of MacArthur and Truman.
It is really important that this is just one manifestation of the way in which changes in IT (especially moving towards IOT) change balances of power and human environments in ways which seriously threaten both democracy and species survival. About a year ago, I presented some ideas about a new approach to certain IT platforms (seee www.werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.
Human-centered internet is a great concept in principle, but no one should imagine that good intentions are enough. I am reminded of the killer AI, or "Terminator" threat, which basically involves an area of research which I ran for many years which the policy types do not yet understand. (At the Senate hearing, though, I was entertained by the wry smile of an intelligence agency head who said "It's not really AI, more like machine learning." I suspect he knows more than Bill Gates does about that subject... an interesting hearing.) In that area, which I know VERY well, I have an image of friendly AI people funded by happy Musk doing research on how to paint happy faces on the hard metal hulls of autonomous killer drones who decide on their own whom to kill. Human-centered internet could be just as.. unsuccessful... in the end unless the hard technical design issues are faced up to, AND unless society consents to deployment of something better than what Rogers would have allowed. Let us pray that Rogers' replacement understands how certain key elements of defense and integrity outweigh all those dreams of imperial conquest which still lurk in minds of folks who don't really understand the lessons of history or of complex systems dynamics. (Like better protect the US power grid, for openers.)
But again, it is not a matter of identifying bad guys and getting rid of them. With the wrong kind of systems, bad guys will appear, and certainly not just in the US.
There is always the tension between providing tools that limit the power of bad guys like the Third Caliphate movement and drug empires, while avoiding creating tools which foster tyranny (most likely independent "private sector tyranny", just like government but less inhibited by issues like human rights) right at home. So far as I can tell, open source software transparency and hard unbreakability are unavoidable key requirements. One could even think about issues like IEEE standards, needed to foster open, effective and honest competition in many more mundane, smaller parts of the world economy.
If Rogers' replacement supports such things, maybe there will be a little hope for human freedom and survival.
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