Transcript

Digital Sovereignty

The system has a peculiar way of entrenching people into the system such that they are completely reliant on it. The latest method is vibe coding where people just ask AI to write code for them and these developers never look at the code the AI produced. It's more than just a poison of your skill atrophy, but also for your independence from the 'system'. If AI datacenters were to all get bombed, these people will not be able to code the same way they could before AI. This is a loss of digital sovereignty.

A lot of people question why this is even important because AI makes them go faster and lets them do things they normally can't. There is an important presupposition that they are making which everyone should ask themselves:
Are AIs meant to help you or to help the system?

A bit about systems first:

We participate in things I call systems to help us or our group. For example, Meritocracy is a system where you put in lots of hard work and you are supposed to get rewards in forms of money and status. Another example is Society, you listen to everything they tell you and your reward is that you don't lose your status in society, and the leaders of the society (elected or not) get what they want which may or may not coincide with what's best for the general public.

Society

In the case of AI and vibecoding, the system is actually society. They push you to use AI in the job market and all over social media. You will meet people in real life who are obsessed with vibing, even in personal projects.
The reward: If you just use AI, you will 10x your development speed, dude!! or it's just easier, I don't have to think anymore! I just scroll on my phone while Claude does everything!

In this video, I will make a case against vibing and show why the tradeoff between development speed and digital sovereignty is actually very misunderstood.

Meritocracy

In our society, we use Meritocracy to decide who to hire. Theoretically, if you are best person for the job (this also includes soft skills like communication and culture fit), you should be the person they hire. This system attempts to treat everyone as having an equal opportunity of getting this job, but it also comes as a corollary that everyone is just a cog that can be replaced by someone better.

Therefore, if the system wants AI, then you better use AI or be replaced by someone who is willing to give up their technical sovereignty to use AI. This is bad because without technical sovereignty, you must rely more on the system and keep doing whatever they ask for no matter how embarrassing.

If you can't see why that's a problem, maybe you haven't realized that you have already given up so much to the system like your bodily autonomy, Free speech, privacy, etc. They have a way of encroaching on more of your freedoms and independence because they like to control us, this can be NOTICED over the last 100 years as we consistently become more and more dependent on the system. (What will I do without my social media feed)

I think the shadow government's end goal with AI is to make every software developer entirely reliant on AI so that we wouldn't be able to code anything by ourselves. The consequence of this is that no one will be able to create software that they don't like. For example end-to-end encrypted messaging software, or operating systems that don't use spyware to send everything to 3 letter agencies. They will force AI companies to not comply with requests to build such software and no one will have the skills to make those anymore. Its the ultimate way to curb the threat to the government's power which technology poses. Imagine you ask the AI to build you something and it says NO. What will you do?

This shows the only way to stop this kind of future is to possess digital sovereignty to OWN, manage, write and maintain our own hardware and software.

Another important note:

Why is shipping fast always seen as the thing we should be striving for? I would like to challenge this assumption. The reason we ship fast is so that we can meet business needs fast for customers. But why do customers want things fast or RIGHT NOW? Customers want things right now because they have been trained to only see things in the short term by the system.

It's built into how the world works that if you spend more time to prepare and delay gratification, you will receive a larger reward in the future. For example stocking more food for the winter or architecting a good design before spending months to create any project without one. However, we have been conditioned to want things immediately with no work because that's easier. We don't even think about how hard something will be to maintain in the future.

We can observe the systems that the System has set up for us:

• Our currencies will become worth less if you save it due to them printing money;
• scrolling shorts is far more entertaining than getting real knowledge from a book;
• Getting Uber Eats is far more convenient than eating healthy food cooked at home.

If the system cared about our wellbeing, they would BAN this stuff since it makes use impulsive, dumb and fat. These tactics are pushed by the system the same way as AI to make us less independent.

How can I reclaim my digital sovereignty

I've got a more in-depth video coming soon, but here's some quick tips:

• Don't Vibe code. If you don't know why each line is there without looking at the version AI made, then then you don't understand it. Simple as. I think there's a good way to use AI as a tool like as a search engine or Stack Overflow replacement. However, this should only be used AFTER you're blocked on your implementation and the docs don't help. There's an important balance to strike between total independence and relying on the system for small things that you could easily replace if actually needed. You get what you put into it, if you think the system is actively harming you (it is), then make sure your life decisions let you break free.
• Read the docs. Documentation tells you how to use the tool or library effectively.
• Choose simpler and more minimal technology that you can have a mental model how it works. This usually means picking Free Software because they are free for anyone to learn and understand.

Conclusion

If you're fine being a replaceable cog in the system, then this video probably hasn't convinced you of anything. However, for those people who think that you are negatively affected by the system and AI, you may feel a bit lost. If broader society is against you in such a way, then surely the solution must be to start homesteading in rural cabin isolated from everyone? For most people this is not the answer. I would recommend joining 'systems' that are actually looking out for your interests and digital sovereignty and making your life more independent from the system. For tech, I recommend joining small forums or imageboards focused on specific minimalist technologies like Artix, OpenBSD, or other Free Softwares. I like the lobste.rs forum because there are lots people on there who use Free software and are against vibecoding. Some more actionable advice is to make decisions to use a BSD or Linux instead of Windows, use the command line rather than GUIs, use Free software, take your stuff off of the cloud, learn about homelabbing, and learn a low level language.