Digital ID: Gift, or Key to Control?
- Thomas Neuburger
- Sep 30
- 2 min read
By Thomas Neuburger
“In our countries, no one can walk the streets with a mask on their face … and yet we allow people to roam freely on the Internet without linking their profiles to a real identity.” —Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, speaking at WEF 2025
“We’re going to have supervision. … Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” —Larry Ellison, the second richest person in the U.S.
Digital ID Is Coming
A quick hit: According to the World Economic Forum, home of Davos Man, Digital ID will become our mandated future. The chart above, for example, is from the WEF document Advancing Digital Agency: The Power of Data Intermediaries, published in 2022.
Digital ID is envisioned as your gateway to everything but a kiss good night. Every financial transaction, from health care to food to energy, social media, e-commerce purchases — even for citizens to file taxes, vote, collect benefits — will require, under this proposal, a Digital ID. Couple that with a cashless world and everything essential to life must be digitally controlled.
Like any new product, Digital ID is rolling out faster to some places and slower in others. The Starmer government is pushing hard for it. Many in the U.S. are doing the same as well.
What’s Wrong with Digital ID?
While Digital ID is being sold to Republicans as protection from immigrants and their abuses, and to Democrats as safety and access to services, it actually, if taken to its end, is the worst of your dystopian dark-future sci-fi dreams.
Consider this taste of what Digital ID could become — the door to everything, a door you don’t control, a door that ensures your compliance.
They justify this total surveillance under the guise of closing the “identity gap,” claiming the world’s poor need digital IDs to access essential services like banking and healthcare. The reality? This is the ultimate onboarding mechanism into a system of programmable control, where your access to society and your own money is permissioned and revocable based on your compliance. This is the bedrock of the new global financial system. It is not about convenience. It is about control. [emphasis mine]
Imagine if you piss off the government, not being able to buy food?
Is the Nightmare Scenario Likely?
Is that future here now? No; it’s still a dystopian dream. Is it likely? That depends.
Do you think the masters want a locked-down controllable world? Larry Ellison does (see quote above). Does he speak for all billionaires? Is Palantir building a government-wide database because it wants your life good, or it wants you to be afraid? I’ll let you decide.
How do you feel about a social security number that controls your right to work or open a bank account? While I seem to remember some cases of social security number screw-ups putting a handful of individuals through a bureaucratic nightmare, I don't recall it being used by the government as a weapon against the people. But I'm open to corrections, I haven't done any research. On the other hand, the "de-monitization" by private companies, at times at the request of the government, and at times on their own initiative, has been a much more common scenario. Do we need a digital ID to bring about the dystopia? I don't think so. The levers are in place now. Back in the day…