Surveillance makes every existential threat inevitable.

Th ese are, of course, no less than the enabling technologies for a global surveillance state—though nobody is admitting as much. While it is logical that a complex society of ten billion people requires more laws, regulations and enforcement that a nineteenth century world of half a billion humans, the advent of quantum surveillance will over-ride and eliminate most aspects of individual freedom. Without strict safeguards, transparency and public oversight, it could potentially render everyone, in effect, state property. On present trends, this will probably be accomplished with the co-operation of the private sector, via internet companies and banks, and with the gullible consent of voters reassured by government claims that spying on everyone is ‘essential to national security’. With many transnational corporations now larger, wealthier and more powerful than individual countries or governments, one of the chief and most intrusive objectives of universal surveillance will be marketing—to precisely target every individual with an avalanche of products and services to anticipate their every whim, before they even know they have it. And fi nally, political parties and religious bodies may exploit the technology not only to spy on their opponents but to ensure the loyalty of supporters, who may then be coerced by threats to expose aspects of the private lives. This is the dawn of the nanocracy, the rule of the Dwarf Lords (see Pamlin et al. 2015 ).

Like all advanced technologies—and despite all the self-serving hype by the scientists working on it—there is no guarantee such omnipotence will be used wisely, benignly, ethically or well, be regulated, publicly supervised or even its details widely known. Indeed, the odds are it will fi rst be employed by political, economic and religious elites to spy on and control those they deem a threat to their power, beliefs, wealth or freedom of action—or else an opportunity to spot customers, recruits or agents of infl uence. Edward Snowden, who witnessed the birth of the secretive age of universal espionage and blew the whistle on it, told Australia’s ABC in May 2015 that the power to search both our content and metadata is “incredibly empowering for governments, incredibly disempowering for civil society”. It could lead to what he termed a ‘turnkey tyranny’ in which governments claim to follow due process but secretly ratchet-up their level of intrusion into private lives without disclosing it. “Th ey are collecting information about everyone, in every place, regardless of whether they have done anything wrong,” he warned (Snowden 2015).

While most people will regard such electronic intrusion mainly as threats to individual liberty or privacy, there is in fact a far more dangerous aspect to them, which affects the fate of our species. One of the most striking lessons from communism, Nazism, McCarthyism, Jacobinism or the religious fanaticism of the past two centuries is the way they enforced surveillance on their societies, compelling citizens to inform on one another, and driving individuals to self-censor even to the point of suppressing private thoughts contrary to the prevailing doctrine.

Th e risk such a development on a universal scale poses to the human future in the twenty-fi rst century is its potential to chill or prevent the very debate and change which are vital to our survival. Evidence that surveillance can discourage public discussion or the expression of opinion has already appeared in a study by Wayne State University’s Elizabeth Stoycheff which found “the ability to surreptitiously monitor the online activities of … citizens may make online opinion climates especially chilly”, adding “While proponents of (mass surveillance) programs argue surveillance is essential for maintaining national security, more vetting and transparency is needed as this study shows it can contribute to the silencing of minority views that provide the bedrock of democratic discourse” (Stoycheff 2016 ).

Many people are by nature explorers of new ideas, adventurers, challengers of accepted opinion, reformers, liberals, researchers, conservationists, pioneers, creators and innovators. Th ese gifted individuals have led every major social and technological transformation since civilization began. They are the foil to our natural conservatism and apathy, the navigators and sources of inspiration in the human ascendancy. Progressive, prosperous and dynamic societies rely on such individuals to inspire and lead us to greater, bolder, wiser futures.

However, under the nanocracy such people will be easily picked out and ‘discouraged’, especially if the changes they propose threaten those who most profi t from the status quo . Even if they are not directly censored, most people will self-censor rather than invite scrutiny. Historically, reformers, visionaries and dissidents from Socrates and Jesus to Galileo, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela often pay a high personal price. Under the nanocracy such people won’t even have the opportunity. Th ey will be quietly identifi ed by AI and hushed long before they have a chance to cause trouble.

A human race deprived of its radicals, visionaries, liberals, evangelists, innovators and adventurers will be a lobotomized species, more like a termite mound than a society. It may be stable, organised and industrious—but it will also be less progressive, less creative and less resilient, because it would tend to suppress warning voices and views that contest social norms or which argue for reform. It will be a species less able to avoid the main existential threats because—as with climate change and pandemic poisoning—to do so may threaten the self-interest of ruling elites.

The advent of quantum computers and universal surveillance may thus herald a profound fork in the path of human evolution, creating a species less wise, less fit for survival at the precise moment in history when that survival is most in play (Cribb 2016 ).