🔮 The prediction business sells obedience as foresight

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:00:00 +1100

Surveillance got cheaper than East Germany

East Germany’s Stasi was expensive and human-heavy: it could only watch roughly a third of the population. Today’s stack is different. Phones, browsers, and platforms collect thousands of signals per person, cheaply, across whole populations.

“Nothing to hide” protects you from power, not guilt

Véliz flips the comfortable line (if you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide). Privacy limits what powerful actors can infer and do to you and to people connected to you.

SpeechActs on behaviorengineering.ai

🔮 The prediction business sells obedience as foresight

Surveillance got cheaper than East Germany

“Nothing to hide” protects you from power, not guilt