Agent of the Revolution

Change happens slowly at first, then all at once. 

I got drafted into the US Digital Service on the same day that Facebook and Twitter announced emergency referendums, and another domestic terror attack took out a power plant in Kentucky. 

The email started like a marketing pitch, and went downhill from there. 

These are challenging times. Your country needs your help. As part of the New America Deal, the US government is recruiting talented individuals from diverse fields. Your accomplishments stand out. You have been selected to join the US Digital Service for a minimum of two years, through the Citizen Conscription Act [1]. Upon acceptance and successful completion of this assignment, your history of federal computer crimes [2] will be expunged from your record...

I didn’t even read the rest of it. This was clearly my “join the Feds or go to jail” notice. I sprang into action, grabbing my bug out bag and burner devices from the closet.  

I slipped out onto the street with my mask and sunglasses on and hoodie up. Good thing the pandemic had made this a common look. I made it past the first checkpoint by showing a forged medical certificate that said my mother was in the hospital and I was on my way to take her supplies. At the second checkpoint, two men not in uniform stepped out of a car while the guards patted me down. 

“Hi Adrian, we’d like to have a word with you. Would you sit down with us for a bit?”

“I’m on my way to see my mother at the hospital, I need to take her some medicine,” I said. They were probably on to me but it was worth a shot.

“Your mother is in Des Moines. Don’t bother coming up with excuses. There’s a big opportunity waiting for you, and we’d like a chance to discuss it.” 

I was cornered, so I shrugged and followed the men into a closed deli. 

They offered me a beverage out of a cooler, which I declined. “What do you want from me?” I asked.

The man sitting across from me launched into a speech. 

“Well Adrian, your service is requested in the US Digital Service, as part of a draft for civilians to rebuild critical infrastructure. I’m going to be blunt with you. The government is taking a new approach to activities that you’ve participated in. Hacking and the distribution of disruptive software will no longer be tolerated. At the same time, talented people like you are being sought out across the board. You’re a talented person, and we believe you’re value-driven and want a chance to make a difference. We want people like you helping to fix things. You’ll have a unique chance to make an impact as systems get rebuilt from the ground up. All your needs will be met, and you’ll essentially get to participate in the re-founding of the country. Only a few people are being offered this kind of opportunity right now. Will you be brave enough to take it?” 

He was appealing to my ego, and despite my better instincts it was working. “What would I be doing?” 

“You’re being recruited based on talent, not to fit a job description. But your team would be reporting directly to Mr. Zuckerberg, and you’d be responsible for rolling out services that will help get people’s lives back on track.” 

“Sounds interesting, but it isn’t exactly motivating when a job offer includes a threat of federal prosecution at the same time.” 

“We need everyone who wants to make change working to rebuild the country, not to further destabilize it. The system has already fallen apart. You helped take it down, good job. But we can’t have further destabilization while the country is so fragile. Do you want to see through the revolution you helped make happen or not?” 

The revolution was not complete. Power had shifted almost seamlessly from the corrupt DC political establishment to the tech oligarchs, backed by the majority of a modernized military when the country came to a tipping point. I didn’t have much of a choice though. Perhaps I could infiltrate the system from within and make a move when the time came to act.

“Alright, I’ll do it.” 

“Good! Here’s your orientation package, you start next week.” The man pulled a thick envelope out of nowhere and slid it across the table towards me. “Alexa, your onboarding guide, will be in touch to help you move. You’ll be housed in a more secure location for the duration of this assignment.” 

And with that, my old life was over. My new life in New America had begun. 

----

The man didn’t lie. Our team got to meet with the Zuck himself, although there were a few layers of command between me and him. 

The initial work was surprisingly meaningful. I had dreaded joining an authoritarian bureaucracy, but the revamped USDS operated like a startup. We took ideas and ran with them, and were rewarded based on performance. The new government was efficient. I worked on a system to streamline requests from citizens for financial aid. It felt good to be able to materially help people.

After months of riots, the military had started firing on civilians, and for a brief moment we had tipped into a civil war driven by revolutionary factions fighting for power. A lot of infrastructure had been destroyed, and the pandemic on top of an economic depression meant people’s lives were in shambles. They were immensely grateful to get the help they needed, when they needed it. I worried about the implications of expanding the surveillance state, but the need seemed to outweigh the risk. Legitimate need could be distinguished from people trying to game the system. People could request resources, vote, and give input on policy directly from their phones. 

The digital referendum had elected a new president, but it was clear to me where the real power was. We had a prime minister as well as a president now, and the position Jeff Bezos held as PM seemed to eclipse the presidency. Bezos controlled the logistics network that had kept the country running during the revolution, and had a strong alliance with the military generals. Zuckerberg ran the USDS which was overhauling every aspect of life with new digital infrastructure. And Thiel was running the former US protectorate islands as city states. They moved so fast, they must’ve already had a plan in place and a candidate picked out before all of this happened. 

A revolution is a breach in the existing order. People with latent power under the old regime who never fully flexed their muscle get a chance to act. In the years before the revolution, tech had quietly upended the world, consolidating information and supply chains, making itself the center of the new society even before the old one fell apart. It had made revolution possible by allowing networked guerillas to do an end run around the decrepit institutions of the industrial state, and then it had smoothly superseded the operations of that state. 

All the effort we put into making revolution happen never prepared us for what to do once it did. The people who stepped into power had not been the People, had not been us. When everything fell apart, it was the institutions that stayed organized and could mobilize their resources that remained effective. The People were warring tribes that could not communicate, could not organize, could not agree. We were idealists armed with keyboards, agile enough to stay out of reach while waging a guerilla war against the old industrial state, but without a plan to govern once it fell. After a few months of chaos and violence that Americans thought could never happen here, the majority of people were terrified and grateful for the restoration of any semblance of order.

I saw all of this now. My younger self had been naive and idealistic, agitating for change yet blind to the mechanisms of power. Power goes to whoever is capable of exercising it. The new elites understood the information age, and I was one of them now. 

A few people from my former collective had also joined the USDS. Sometimes we talked about how we used to dream of revolution. Just take down the US government - then what? The warring tribes of people in America who hate each other suddenly work together to achieve a people’s direct democracy? Ironically, the online referendums and surveys that we now rolled out en masse over social media to inform every decision of the technocracy was far closer to direct democracy than our anarchist dreams had ever come.

We had accidentally put the tech oligarchs in charge, and there was nothing to be done about it. Looking at history, the French and American revolutions kicked out the royals to put the merchant bourgeoisie in power. One elite is always replaced by another. At least Zuck and most of the people in the USDS shared our values. People like us were in charge, and that couldn’t be a bad thing. Even though it hadn’t turned out the way I expected, and power was even more concentrated now, sometimes I felt that our revolution had succeeded.

Other times, laying in bed alone at night, I wondered, isn't it the point of effective brainwashing that it works even if you recognize it as brainwashing? 

----

Two years turned into five years, turned into ten. Four decades later, I still haven’t left the USDS. 

Society changed fast once all the old barriers to progress were removed. Neural implants enhance cognition. Reality is augmented. Race is no longer an issue as skin color can be adjusted to match your outfit, and people appear in their sims through the metaverse overlay most of the time anyways. Space is accessible. The US has a high-speed railway system. Planes are electric. Dogs, cats, and people have 2x lifespans. Genetic engineering makes every child a work of art. Pregnancy lasts three months. Every house has an automated greenhouse. Mosquito bites don’t itch. The future is everything science fiction writers ever wanted, and still there are people who hate it. Every utopia is someone else’s dystopia. 

A bunch of kids started posting primitivist memes in the metaverse. “Ditch your sims, pull your implants, live in the woods.” Some philosophers took it way too seriously. Traditionalists glommed on, and labor activists made it a rallying cry. Before we knew it there were technophobic terrorists bombing research labs and fertility clinics. They were mostly young, and disenfranchised by the decision their parents had made to have them the traditional way, with a roll of the cosmic dice determining their genes. 

I took on some classified assignments now. There was a kid famous for doing a Thoreau act in the woods, denouncing all augmentations and genetic modifications while streaming his primitivist lifestyle for the world. He wouldn’t be a problem if he weren’t encouraging the terrorists. I figured I could talk some sense into him, as someone had done for me a long time ago.

I met him in his wooden shack. There was a SWAT team for backup, but I went in there alone. He wore no sims or overlays, and had no modifications. We sat across from each other at a table. He looked at me with distrust and suspicion. He sees me as a cop, I thought. I am the cop now.

I made him an offer to join the Bioethics Commission, and expressed my sympathies. “I was an anarchist once, like you,” I said. “People need order. You’re too young to remember the old America. Things were much worse back then. And when the old order broke down, people suffered. Things aren’t perfect now, but we’ve stabilized the country and are constantly working on making things better. We’ve made unimaginable progress in the last forty years.” 

He held his head high as he spoke. Self-righteousness dripped out of every word. “Your desire for order squeezes all life and vitality from the world. People are shells of what they could be. Your order depends on the suppression of all that challenges it, including natural human instincts. You medicate aggression and sterilize love.”

I looked him over. Poor, grungy, wearing threadbare cargo pants. His face was pockmarked with angry acne pustules that he wore like battle scars, testifying to the uncontrolled hormonal storm that he allowed to rage within him. Disfiguring himself to stick it to the system. Looking like that, he probably hadn’t been with a girl in months, if not years. We need to rethink economic policy for the dice gene kids, I thought. He needs a stake in the system to believe in it. If people do not have a stake, they will not care.

“Well, you can’t change things from here,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Join the Bioethics Commission, they’re always looking for people with a critical perspective to give feedback and guide policy. It’d be a rare opportunity for you to use your platform to make a difference.” 

“Don’t try to co-opt me,” he sneered. “Every regime justifies its own rule. You made your choice to stand with the rulers. And I’ve made mine - to stand with the rebels who have resisted injustice throughout history.”

I had gotten tired of this virtuous act. “Your rebellion is meaningless. You’re throwing away your life for nothing. You’ll go to prison for a long time, and have nothing to show for it.”

His eyes burned with passion. “There would never be a resistance if people caved every time rulers threatened force.”

He was enamored with the act of defiance itself, as if a virtuous stance somehow transcended time and space to take on a life of its own. This was not going to get anywhere.

“Alright, suit yourself. I hope you spend some time in prison reflecting on how unrealistic your worldview is.” I rose to leave.

He raised his voice. “Your whole worldview is a justification of your decision to sell out. Don’t call your complicity ‘realism’. Those who give up on their ideals to accommodate power always want to frame their choice as inevitable. I’m here to tell you it’s not. Society only changes when individuals reject the inevitable.”

His last words made me unreasonably angry. I snapped at him.

“People like you only know how to tear things down. I hope they lock you up and throw away the key, you ungrateful little shit.”

---

That little shit starved himself to death in prison on a hunger strike and became a hero. I guess sometimes, if taken at the right time, a rebellious act can echo through history. His death was followed by days of rioting. We triangulated all the instigators and quelled the unrest, but the ideology lived on, finding new adherents. He’s famous now, remembered for the Primitivist movement he spawned. You probably know his name. Nobody knows mine. I do not have an article on Wikipedia. Nobody wears sim-shirts with my name on it. Just another public servant who kept the lights on for civilization. 

I don’t regret my choices. I helped build a new order that keeps the majority of people fed, happy, and able to pursue progress. Nobody knows how difficult it is to keep a country as big and diverse as the United States running until they are in a position with that kind of responsibility. Every system has its opponents. Add the Primitivists to the list of fundamentalist ideologues like Marxists and Christians that rebel and keep on rebelling until they eventually take power somewhere and find out how easy it is to wage revolution with a vision of utopia before them, compared to how hard it is to govern when they win.