What Bernie can teach Burnham (and others) about AI...and what we also need to know, now, in regard to AI for society today.

This is a genuinely important strategic question. Sanders' concerns form a useful backdrop — particularly his warnings about robotic soldiers, mass surveillance, and the concentration of extraordinary control in the hands of a small number of people. Those are precisely the tools a rogue authoritarian state would weaponise. Here's a concise strategic summary:

AI as an Offensive Tool for a Rogue State

Surveillance & Social Control at Home The foundation of any such regime would be total internal control — AI-driven facial recognition, communication monitoring, social credit systems, and predictive policing to crush dissent before it organises. Sanders specifically warned that we may already be at the point where a small number of people have access to every email, every phone call, and really every aspect of life — giving those on top extraordinary control.

Economic & Information Warfare AI enables highly targeted disinformation campaigns, deepfake propaganda, AI-generated cyberattacks on critical infrastructure (power grids, financial systems, supply chains), and algorithmic manipulation of foreign populations' social media feeds — all with plausible deniability and at near-zero marginal cost.

Autonomous Military Capability Sanders warned that robotic soldiers are not far away, and raised the chilling implication: if leaders don't have to worry about loss of life, only loss of robots, what does that mean for decisions about war and peace? A rogue state could deploy drone swarms, autonomous naval vessels, and AI-guided missile systems with faster decision loops than any human-commanded force could counter conventionally.

Strategic Intelligence Dominance AI can process satellite imagery, signals intelligence, and open-source data at a scale impossible for human analysts — giving a rogue state real-time battlefield awareness and the ability to anticipate adversary moves.

Defensive AI and Autonomous Counter-Measures

AI vs. AI Cyber Defence The most immediate defensive layer is AI-driven cyber defence — systems that detect intrusions, patch vulnerabilities, and counter disinformation in real time. Human analysts simply cannot match the speed of AI-generated attacks without AI assistance.

Autonomous Early Warning & C2 Defensive autonomous systems — surveillance satellites, sensor networks, drone pickets — can provide continuous monitoring of a rogue state's military movements, reducing the risk of surprise attack. AI can compress the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) for defenders.

Counter-Drone and Anti-Swarm Systems Autonomous drone swarms are arguably the most immediate near-term threat. Directed-energy weapons (lasers, microwave systems) guided by AI targeting are the most credible counter, since conventional missiles are far too expensive per kill to be sustainable against cheap swarm tactics.

Democratic Resilience Tools On the information warfare front, AI provenance tools, deepfake detection, and algorithmic content authentication are defensive layers that protect open societies from destabilisation campaigns.

The Central Dilemma

The uncomfortable truth — and the heart of Sanders' broader concern — is that the same capabilities needed for defence can be turned to the offensive uses described above. There is no clean technological separation. The rogue state scenario is not merely hypothetical; it is essentially a description of trajectories already visible in several existing states. The question is whether democratic societies can build sufficient AI governance frameworks to keep the technology from being monopolised by any hierarchy — foreign or domestic — before those frameworks become irrelevant. As Sanders put it, "we're building a runaway train here, moving down the track at rapidly expanding acceleration, and we don't know where it ends up." (See also my article on Mythos). 19th May 2026.