AI as a Control System: How States, Intelligence Agencies and Scammers Manipulate Consciousness Through Data and Personalization

Specialized AI models today achieve phenomenal accuracy within their niches. Machine learning is applied in marketing, banking, infobusiness, law enforcement, modeling, research and many other fields. Models can not only recommend items but also persuade a person toward a specific purchase, detect an intention to switch to competitors weeks before the user becomes aware of it, predict reactions and construct detailed personality profiles.

Few people realize that AI can find the perfect key to an individual’s psyche and reach it through favorite services and content, implant the desired fears and desires, and even compel a person to defend someone else’s interests at the cost of their own life.

Telemetry and Behavioral Fingerprints

Every major corporation today collects data in one form or another. They analyze clicks, movements of input devices, retinal reactions, spoken words and typing rhythms. All of this constitutes not only useful statistics but also a unique behavioral signature, as distinctive as an ear shape or fingerprints.

Yet few users grasp what these data truly mean or the power they grant. When confronted with warnings about surveillance, people often dismiss them and repeat familiar justifications for continuing to use their favorite services. The article argues that constant repetition of the same warnings dulls their impact, which is why a fresh examination of the issue is necessary.

The Story of Data: From 2010s Hardware to Psychological Portraits

Imagine it is the 2010s and your company manufactures devices. Competitors are gaining market share despite offering no clear advantage in quality or marketing. Analysis reveals that every successful rival possesses or partners with a rich source of user data. Your company therefore acquires a small internet service and builds a platform around it. Customers can now register products, receive updates, contact support and participate in development.

This move reveals far more than failure rates or demand levels. It exposes how button placement affects usage frequency and how colored lighting increases desire. People are drawn not only to functionality but to how a product is presented and who uses it. Certain devices spawn subcultures or become status symbols within communities. The question of necessity recedes when culture demands ownership and ostracizes those without the “correct” item. A product becomes a marker of belonging, status, values and lifestyle, functioning as social glue alongside language, traditions and rituals.

By purchasing additional datasets—insurance records, credit histories, medical files, diary applications, maps, gaming services and more—companies can build individual portraits richer than users’ own self-knowledge. Even fragmented data suffice because similar demographic groups share common patterns. A company does not need your exact medical record; a record belonging to someone statistically similar is often enough for effective targeting.

With such profiles, firms can assess whether a customer with heart failure and no insurance will be able to afford a coffee-beer machine or will default on installments. Suitable products can then be promoted on the homepage. The more customers interact with the service, the richer the collective dataset becomes. Diverse data improve a model’s generalization ability, while generalized insights enable increasingly individualized approaches. At a certain point, the information itself becomes the product.