The real and potential impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on society are causing growing concern and alarm. Various studies indicate that, for example, due to the current design of AI systems, their operation undermines fundamental civic institutions (such as universities, law, journalism, and democracy) by eroding experience, short-circuiting decision-making, and isolating people from one another. It even risks causing their destruction.
Other studies show how the dominant cultural narrative in AI undermines diversity and otherness, in a kind of “cognitive hacking” of identities, values, and cultural and social beliefs. It has also been shown that the difficulty of distinguishing between true and false content leads to a general distrust of institutions and democracy.
Responses to mitigate these impacts tend to focus on establishing codes of ethics and legislative standards to regulate their development. These measures are undoubtedly necessary, but clearly insufficient to change the current course. It is clear that these impacts are not simply due to oversights or accidents resulting from technological development, which could be corrected with appropriate measures, but are part of the business model itself.
Historically, every advance in science and technology has generated multiple possibilities, but their development, distribution, and uses are predominantly determined by the patterns imposed by the centers of power. Today, at least in the West, this development is concentrated in the hands of US digital mega-corporations (the “big tech” companies), which for some three decades have been consolidating—with the support of financial capital—not only their business model, but also the geopolitical framework and the corresponding institutional scaffolding that sustains it, thanks to close collaboration of the state. This is what Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism.” This framework encompasses public policies that favor them, governance regarding the free flow of data, trade agreements, policies of international institutions, and military surveillance infrastructure, among others.
Captive attention
The key condition for big tech to profit and consolidate its power is the constant extraction of data. While initially intended to improve their services, it soon enabled them to generate profiles and behavioral forecasts that are sold to advertisers, security services, etc., and subsequently to incorporate mechanisms aimed at influencing such behaviors. In addition, they are the input for feeding AI learning models, so they need to capture the attention of users so that they are constantly interacting with their systems and providing an increasingly wide range of data (on tastes, habits, purchases, relationships, even intimate life), while exposing themselves to advertising. To refine these techniques, considerable resources are invested in research on the functioning of the human brain (such as neuroscience and neurotechnology), with the aim, among others, of being able to manipulate people more effectively.
As summarized by the organization Friends of Attention: “A.I. systems are currently using all their smarts (and all our data) to figure out how to needle and cajole, seduce and suborn, to maximize human “engagement” — i.e., quantified attention. And they are winning. […] Because these largely unregulated systems, at work on children and adults alike, constantly aim to manipulate what we see and want, they constitute nothing less than a bio-hack at the scale of the Earth’s population.”
In this regard, studies show that the dispersion of human attention resulting from constant presence in the virtual world is affecting cognitive ability, especially in young people, with the risk that generations with reduced critical thinking skills are being formed.
AI and hybrid warfare
However, there is evidence that this system is now moving into a new phase, where the abuse of our data for profit is taking a back seat, and what is taking precedence is rather the pursuit of strategic social control of political structures, social realities, and people’s minds through a cultural and cognitive war that uses persuasion or intimidation to eliminate any resistance or obstacle to this big tech project. This offensive combines ideology with military techniques, turning artificial intelligence itself into a weapon.
It is not that cultural warfare is new. In fact, every power project seeks to impose its worldview as the dominant culture and make it the norm, whether by fair means or foul, or by a combination of both. Thus, for several decades, we have seen how neoliberalism, an ideological project of domination incapable of legitimizing itself, has sought to project itself as inevitable with falsehoods in the symbolic world, without ruling out coercion, to promote individualism, the free market, the shrinking of the state, etc., in total symbiosis with the “cultural industry.”
In this regard, it is worth remembering that, at the end of the 1980s, the Council for Inter-American Security adopted the Santa Fe II Report entitled: “A Strategy for Latin America in the Nineties,” which, with a view to counteracting what it called “statism,” established the need to combat those groups and initiatives that promote awareness, with a sense of solidarity and criticism of the established powers (referring to Gramsci-communism, Liberation Theology, and even popular education and communication). To this end, it proposes a policy of low-intensity conflict (LIC), the basic component of which is a military strategy that—beyond physical annihilation—seeks to subdue the enemy by winning over the “hearts and minds” of the population; and when that is not possible, by breaking the last thing they may have left: hope. This formula aims to combine force and consensus to dominate, with the disastrous consequences we have experienced.
Lately, this project of domination has taken on more subtle characteristics, entering the daily lives of the population through digital technologies, now enhanced by AI and directly supported by big tech. Gaza is a striking example, but it applies in other countries when power requires it.
Among the most critical voices on these events are numerous former employees of the same big tech companies who resigned—or were fired—because of their nonconformity. One of them, Juan Sebastián Pinto, who worked at Palantir (a big data company linked to espionage operations), points out: “When armies rely so much on data and automation, establishing all-encompassing surveillance dragnets soon becomes the utmost priority. The effort to map the world through satellites, drones, and information—in order to find targets and predict outcomes—eventually leads to the surveillance and mapping of what the military calls the ‘cognitive domain.’” This involves mapping public opinion, social media, influence, and reputation as a battlefield in itself. And for the same reason: “The internet has become a place where real wars with deadly consequences are carried out,” where “a tweet can determine a drone strike target, and kill civilians, halfway around the world,” and “success largely depends on one’s ability to wield the power of information to mislead, misinform, or scare one’s enemies.”
Military experts refer to this phenomenon as 5th-generation warfare (5GW) or hybrid warfare. It is a form of warfare that relies heavily on surveillance using artificial intelligence, narrative control and deception, exploitation of social media, and even the design of increasingly unusual and cruel methods of punishment and murder. It generally aims to reverse the political order or bring about cultural change, often using covert methods so that the population does not understand what is happening. Pinto adds that “the worse after effect of 5GW is that it turns everyone, at home and abroad, into a subject of war.”
And if there is any doubt about the intentions of companies like Palantir, just look at what the company’s CEO, Alex Karp, said in an interview: “The primary way to create peace in this world is to scare our adversaries when they wake up, when they go to bed, while they’re seeing their mistress (…) The most effective way for social change is: humiliate your enemy and make them poor.”
Building alternative narratives
So how can we respond to these cultural warfare and hybrid warfare offensives? While there is no easy or uniform answer, there are certainly some essential conditions. The first would be to investigate and understand what is happening in each context and share this knowledge widely. A second is to build solidarity and a narrative that counters the dominant narrative: one that demonstrates, for example, that the current model of digital technology and AI development is not the only one, and that we can reorient it to serve the public good. To this end, it will also be important to seek alliances with governments and political sectors that share these concerns. Alliances, for example, to develop digital sovereignty, defend fundamental rights, or submit proposals to those international bodies that still function. Finally, whenever possible, we can choose to use free technologies that do not hand over our data to corporations or contribute to their enrichment.
Sally Burch is a British-Ecuadorian journalist and member of the Latin American Information Agency (ALAI). This text was originally published in the magazine Latin America on the Move No. 559, in February 2026.
