This commentary examines how Brazil's smart city agenda enables techno-authoritarianism, drawing on eight years of fieldwork and policy and legal analysis. It focuses on the use of surveillance technologies and the influence of foreign and local tech companies in shaping urban governance through opaque, corporate-led policymaking. It discusses how smart infrastructures are deployed under the guise of innovation, often bypassing democratic processes and civic participation. These developments reflect a broader global trend of “technosolutionist urbanism,” where digital infrastructure is used to monitor, control, and commodify residents. The Brazilian case underscores the urgent need for a justice-based, transparent, and participatory framework for smart infrastructure governance, centering human rights and democratic accountability in the face of rising techno-authoritarianism.
The Brazilianization of the World - American Affairs Journal
The West’s involution finds its mirror image in the original country of the future, the nation doomed forever to remain the country of the future, the one that never reaches its destination: Brazil. The Brazilianization of the world is our encounter with a future denied, and in which this frustration has become constitutive of our social reality. While the closing of historical horizons has often been a leftist, indeed Marxist, concern, the sense that things don’t work as they should is now widely shared across the political spectrum. Welcome to Brazil. Here the only people satisfied with their situation are financial elites and venal politicians. Everyone complains, but everyone shrugs their shoulders. This slow degradation of society is not so much a runaway train, but more of a jittery rollercoaster, occasionally holding out promise of ascent, yet never breaking free from the tracks. We always come back to where we started, shaken and disoriented, haunted by what might have been...
Interoperable Sovereignty: The Democratic Alternative to Digital Authoritarianism
A Democratic Architecture for the Digital Age Digital sovereignty has become a central concern for governments worldwide, yet its meaning remains contested. Too often it is framed as...
(PDF) Authoritarian Neoliberalism from Below: Subjectivity and Platform Capitalism in Argentina and Brazil
PDF | We are witnessing a worldwide resurgence of reactionary ideologies and movements, combined with an escalating assault on democratic institutions... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
The Authoritarian Stack: Mapping Big Tech’s Capture of State Power - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
A new project exposes the infrastructure of techno-oligarchic control — and why Europe must act
Meta lucra com anúncios irregulares promovidos por redes coordenadas para influenciar as eleições no Brasil
Neste relatório, desenvolvido no âmbito do Observatório das Big Tech, que se propõe a verificar se as grandes plataformas digitais estão cumprindo seus deveres e obrigações durante as eleições gerais de 2026, o NetLab UFRJ identificou 1.613 anúncios político-eleitorais impulsionados nas plataformas da Meta a partir do exterior e por atores sem autorização para realizar propaganda eleitoral no Brasil.As páginas responsáveis por esses anúncios estavam localizadas predominantemente nos Estados Unid
JamiiAfrica
Deploying Africa’s Civic OS—a decentralized, secure, and AI-driven digital infrastructure that enables citizens to hold authorities accountable while giving institutions credible, data-backed incentives to respond
Palantir's social media manifesto is a blueprint for technofascism
The surveillance firm’s viral X post calls for hard power, conscription and the end of pluralism. AI expert and academic Mark Coeckelbergh on what happens when technology becomes the gateway to authoritarianism
Governo prepara migração de dados estratégicos para infraestrutura sob controle brasileiro
Parte das bases públicas deverá usar a futura nuvem brasileira; Serpro e Dataprev ampliam capacidade para receber novos sistemas
Decent Infrastructure in an Authoritarian World
What would it take to build economic infrastructure that doesn’t reproduce the value capture we’ve all been trying to escape? A concept paper from Holo Ventures.
Watch the Watchers: Surveillance technologies for political control in Venezuela
Despite changes in leadership, Venezuela's extensive surveillance infrastructure remains fully operational.
To Repress or to Co‐opt? Authoritarian Control in the Age of Digital Surveillance
This article studies the consequences of digital surveillance in dictatorships. I first develop an informational theory of repression and co-optation. I argue that digital surveillance resolves dicta...
TransparencIA — Inteligencia artificial para la democracia
Plataforma ciudadana de transparencia y análisis del poder público en México, potenciada por inteligencia artificial.
people and governance
researching power and contestation in transnational media infrastructures
From Democracies to Autocracies: How AI Systems Enable Authoritarianism by Design
AI-enabled authoritarianism is not confined to autocracies. In this paper, we provide greater transparency by investigating and mapping the lifecycles of six AI systems deployed in different political regimes, ranging from the US to China. By drawing on an extensive range of sources (academic publications, investigative research reports, third-party evaluations, media interviews, government procurement notices), we conduct a systematic, qualitative comparison across systems to identify the critical technical and operational features that enable authoritarianism within their respective political contexts. We find that enabling features include the centralization and co-optation of administrative data for law enforcement and political punishment, regulatory gaps that fail to deter misuse, weak user compliance that nullifies human oversight mechanisms, and the encoding of protected group traits that identify members of vulnerable populations. We find that these features are present across systems deployed in autocratic and democratic regimes, albeit in varying configurations. We also find that both centralized and fragmented AI systems can contribute to authoritarianism by exploiting governance gaps: centralized systems directed by executive authorities, particularly within security and military institutions, are often not subjected to formal oversight mechanisms, while fragmented systems diffuse accountability between stakeholders, paving the way for entrenchment. These findings reveal that AI-enabled authoritarianism is distributed, resulting from design and operational choices made by developers, administrators, and users alike. We conclude with recommendations for developers and policymakers to mitigate these risks.
From Democracies to Autocracies: How AI Systems Enable Authoritarianism by Design
AI-enabled authoritarianism is not confined to autocracies. In this paper, we provide greater transparency by investigating and mapping the lifecycles of six AI systems deployed in different political regimes, ranging from the US to China. By drawing on an extensive range of sources (academic publications, investigative research reports, third-party evaluations, media interviews, government procurement notices), we conduct a systematic, qualitative comparison across systems to identify the critical technical and operational features that enable authoritarianism within their respective political contexts. We find that enabling features include the centralization and co-optation of administrative data for law enforcement and political punishment, regulatory gaps that fail to deter misuse, weak user compliance that nullifies human oversight mechanisms, and the encoding of protected group traits that identify members of vulnerable populations. We find that these features are present across systems deployed in autocratic and democratic regimes, albeit in varying configurations. We also find that both centralized and fragmented AI systems can contribute to authoritarianism by exploiting governance gaps: centralized systems directed by executive authorities, particularly within security and military institutions, are often not subjected to formal oversight mechanisms, while fragmented systems diffuse accountability between stakeholders, paving the way for entrenchment. These findings reveal that AI-enabled authoritarianism is distributed, resulting from design and operational choices made by developers, administrators, and users alike. We conclude with recommendations for developers and policymakers to mitigate these risks.
Las denuncias de sesgo contra plataformas digitales se multiplican en las elecciones de Brasil
Las denuncias contra Meta, Google y X por presuntos sesgos y contenidos engañosos trasladan la batalla entre Lula y Flávio Bolsonaro al terreno tecnológico.
