Rise of AI Constructing the Beast’s Infrastructure
While fear-based narratives prepare people psychologically to join a global cult, technology – especially artificial intelligence (AI) and digital surveillance – provides the mechanism to enforce conformity. In the past, totalitarian regimes relied on human informants, secret police, and brute force to control populations. The emerging AI-driven, algorithmic control systems promise to be far more efficient and pervasive – a digital net over humanity that could fulfill the vision of Revelation 13’s Beast system like nothing before.
Algorithmic Control and AI Dependency
We live in an age where algorithms quietly influence our thoughts, choices, and behaviors every day. Social media feeds are curated by AI algorithms designed to maximize engagement – often by promoting emotionally charged content that keeps us hooked. This has led to well-documented phenomena of echo chambers and radicalization online; people are fed more of what they “like” or what provokes them, creating parallel realities of information. In effect, AI algorithms manipulate public opinion at scale, though subtly. As one report aptly put it, “Some of our most popular technologies are becoming a means of mass coercion that open societies cannot survive.” By serving up a tailored diet of content, AI can amplify certain narratives and suppress others, influencing what entire segments of society accept as true.
Furthermore, the rise of Generative AI (like advanced chatbots) introduces a new frontier of information control. On one hand, these AIs can flood the internet with content – potentially even convincing deepfake news or propaganda, making it hard to discern truth. On the other, and perhaps more insidiously, the major AI systems come with built-in “guardrails” that filter what information or answers they will provide. Ostensibly meant to prevent “harm,” these guardrails can end up hiding information, enforcing conformity, and inserting bias in a way that users cannot see.
A Time magazine analysis warned that the fear of AI being misused is leading to preemptive censorship by AI itself – where the system’s controllers decide what is harmful or disallowed content, and the AI simply refuses to output it. The authors note this could create an internet where AI invisibly shapes the knowledge ecosystem, nudging people only toward approved views. In their words, “guardrails erected to keep [AI] from generating harm [could] turn them into instruments of hiding information, enforcing conformity, and… bias.”
We already see how this might play out: if one asks certain AI systems to explain a controversial issue from an angle that contradicts mainstream narratives, the AI often demurs, citing “harm” or “safety” policies. Thus, AI could become the perfect tool for censorship, far beyond what human moderators could achieve. AI doesn’t get tired, it can monitor billions of posts and communications, and it can be tuned to filter out dissent automatically. In short, the future of censorship is AI-driven. Time magazine bluntly titled an article: “The Future of Censorship Is AI-Generated,” noting that governments and Big Tech are eager to determine what information is “safe” for consumption, and AI will vastly enhance their ability to do so.
The enforcement of social orthodoxy via algorithms is already familiar to anyone who has been temporarily banned on social platforms for speaking against prevailing views on health, politics, or other sensitive topics. As AI gets more integrated into all software (search engines, word processors, etc.), one can imagine a scenario described in the Time piece: “Imagine a world where your word processor prevents you from analyzing or reporting on a topic deemed ‘harmful’ by an AI programmed to only process ideas that are ‘respectful and appropriate for all.’” It sounds Orwellian – because it is. The tools we rely on could quietly nudge or even coerce us into line with approved opinions. This is a powerful conditioning: over time, people simply stop attempting to express or even think contrary thoughts because the system has trained them that such thoughts are not allowed.
Another component is the dependency on AI and digital systems for daily life. As we integrate AI assistants, smart devices, and algorithms into every facet (from navigation to healthcare to banking), our capacity to function independently erodes. Should those systems be weaponized or centrally controlled, resistance becomes difficult. For example, if a future regime decides to deplatform someone entirely from digital services (as has happened on a smaller scale to controversial figures losing social media, PayPal, etc.), that person is effectively silenced and crippled economically. Widespread AI usage can make such personalized control seamless.
Surveillance and the Social Credit Blueprint
Surveillance technology – facial recognition cameras, GPS tracking, data mining – has matured to the point that nearly everything about our lives can be monitored. When combined with AI analytics, this data can be used to micromanage a population. The most concrete prototype of this is China’s Social Credit System. In China, the government (and tech platforms working with it) gathers data on citizens’ financial, social, and legal behavior. Based on this, each citizen can be given a “social credit” score. Those with low scores – whether due to actual crimes or simply behaviors deemed undesirable (like criticizing the government, or even trivial infractions like jaywalking or not sorting recycling) – face restrictions in everyday life.
China has already banned millions of “discredited” people from buying train or plane tickets due to low social credit. A government slogan summarizing it was: “Once discredited, limited everywhere.” This is startlingly close to the Revelation wording of the Beast’s mark: “no one may buy or sell except one who” has the mark (Rev 13:17). In China’s system, if you’re on a blacklist, you literally cannot purchase travel tickets, are barred from certain jobs, denied loans, etc.
By 2018, in one year alone, would-be travelers were blocked 17.5 million times from flights and 5.5 million times from trains due to social credit offenses. Offenses can range from unpaid taxes to spreading “false information” (which could be any narrative the state doesn’t like). The Chinese government openly says the aim is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” It uses big data and technology to create an Orwellian state of mass surveillance and control.
This is not a distant dystopian future; this is present reality for over a billion people. And Western nations have analogous tools ready (if not already quietly in use). The difference is mostly in degree and coordination. Consider the financial surveillance aspect: In 2022, during the trucker convoy protests in Canada, the Canadian government took the extraordinary step of freezing bank accounts of protesters and even some who donated to them. Without due process, people were debanked overnight for being associated with a politically disliked protest. A Canadian official touted that banks could now freeze accounts “without a court order” as part of emergency rulescato.org.
In analysis, civil liberty experts warned this was a “cautionary tale” of how easily Western governments could employ such tactics, especially with digital banking and possibly central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in the future. The Cato Institute noted that freezing bank accounts – a strategy once limited to authoritarian regimes – had now been used in a free democracy, “bringing targets to their knees through economic incapacitation without trial.” It was a wake-up call: governments, even in the West, can amass sweeping powers quickly and stop people in their tracks by leveraging digital finance.
Now, imagine when most transactions are digital and cash is phased out. Many countries are exploring CBDCs, which would give central banks direct control over individuals’ spending (each “wallet” can be tracked, and potentially restrictions coded: e.g., money that can only be spent on certain items, or that expires if not used). If a social-credit-like system were layered on a CBDC, dissenters could be instantly cut off from buying and selling with a keystroke.
Revelation 13:16-17 looms: “He causes all… to receive a mark… that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark…” It is remarkably feasible in the near future. The “mark” could well be some form of digital ID or credential that is linked to your financial access. Without it, your digital wallet simply won’t function for transactions. We see precursors: during COVID, some places required digital vaccine passes to enter stores or workplaces – a concept of health passport that can easily extend to a broader digital ID controlling access to society.
Artificial Intelligence supercharges this control. With AI monitoring vast data streams – from CCTV cameras (China has hundreds of millions of facial-recognition cameras), to online behavior, to financial records – a regime can get an accurate “profile” of each person’s loyalty and compliance. AI can flag “suspicious” behavior (perhaps someone reading forbidden material, or meeting with dissidents) in real time. In Xinjiang, China reportedly uses AI to flag certain phrases or religious expressions in phone communications of the Uyghur population, aiding their oppressive surveillance. These capabilities will only grow.
For the first time in history, the infrastructure exists to track virtually every human being and to control their participation in commerce. This was not technologically possible when John received the Revelation vision 2,000 years ago. Many wondered if the “mark of the beast” was purely symbolic. But now we see how frighteningly literal it could be. We need not speculate too far – it’s happening in pieces around us. The key is integration: linking one’s digital identity, finances, health, and social reputation into a unified system. Various international initiatives (ID2020, certain United Nations programs) are working on digital identification for all people. It will be sold as a convenient, even humanitarian solution (giving banking to the unbanked, etc.). But in the wrong hands, it becomes the ultimate apparatus of tyranny.
It is also notable that AI itself could take on an almost worshipful significance in a future regime. Some futurists speak of AI in god-like terms – an all-knowing intelligence that guides humanity. Revelation 13:15 speaks of an “image of the beast” that the false prophet brings to life, and which can speak and issue commands, even ordering those who refuse to worship it to be killed. Some have speculated this could be an AI-powered entity, a kind of supercomputer or robot imbued with authority.
While we cannot be certain, the symbolism of an animated image demanding worship is eerily consonant with the idea of a future AI that embodies the will of the Antichrist and surveils who is worshiping or not. Already, algorithms decide what voices are heard (imagine if a future AI labels sermons about Christ as “hate speech” and blocks them universally). The ground is being laid for a world in which a central brain (AI) could manage the allegiance of the masses.
To sum up, technology and AI are the nervous system and eyes of the emerging Beast system. They provide unprecedented power to monitor, deceive, and coerce. People are being conditioned to accept this: we trade privacy for convenience, we tolerate surveillance for the promise of security, we embrace digital currencies for their efficiency. The more we rely on these systems, the more we become entrapped – unless we have discernment to see the endgame. As Christians, we recognize that none of this surprises God’s Word. The pieces align with prophecy. But what about the Church itself? One would hope the Church would be a bulwark of resistance to deception – yet Scripture and current events suggest a great compromise is afoot there as well.
Part 4 will cover today’s church.