Laura Ingram Digital ID: – Independent journalist Michael Schellenberger has been digging into the digital ID issue. He just released a lengthy piece on this on a substat called Public. He joins us now with his thoughts.
Michael, look, the argument is it’s like still helps help thwart illegal immigration, ID fraud, streamline health care services. Sounds fantastic. What the heck’s the problem?
Michael Schellenberger Digital ID: Hey, great to be with you, Laura. Yeah, I mean, another conspiracy theory that has started coming true. I mean, we saw this announcement in September, took everybody by surprise. The World Economic Forum had been pushing digital IDs, the United Nations, the European Union, Britain.
Of course, the the really terrifying example is China, which uses digital IDs and a social credit score to control speech and to control what people think and say online. I mean, it could come in a lot of different ways.
They’ll start voluntary. Then they’ll make it mandatory. They’ll have rewards and then they’ll have punishments. It’s quite terrifying.
And when you just listen to what the advocates for digital ID say, it’s terrifying. And, you know, Laura, one thing I learned from this last round of investigations is that this is a huge cybersecurity threat. The idea that I mean, imagine if you get hacked in one of the many websites that you log into, imagine everything suddenly being hacked because it’s all centralized in a single place.
That cybersecurity threat alone ought to be enough to kill the digital ID. But again, this is potentially digital totalitarianism.
