Frederick Gregory, Wesley Winkler
Last month, Jack Dorsey, as CEO of Block, announced layoffs of nearly 40% of the workforce, citing AI as the reason. IBM, UPS, and Klarna had already done the same. Last week, President Trump ordered federal agencies to cease business with Anthropic after a dispute with the Pentagon, where the AI company insisted on restrictions preventing their products’ use in mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapon systems. Corporate leaders made unilateral decisions about AI deployment. A president used an executive directive to punish an AI company for insisting on restrictions. Neither decision was governed by law, regulation, or democratic process. They exposed a deeper problem: the institutions that might constrain such decisions are absent or unwilling to act.
When power over AI deployment is exercised without institutional guardrails, and millions face economic displacement from decisions they cannot appeal, the breeding ground for radicalization forms. Not violent extremism necessarily, but despondency and hopelessness transforming into the conviction that the system is rigged. That conviction becomes the justification for justice taken into one’s own hands. It manifests as withdrawal from civic participation, deepening distrust of institutions, and a generation disengaging from the very mechanisms that might address their grievance.
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