Most of the alarm about AI and democracy is aimed at the wrong target. The deepfake before the vote is the surface. The cost of persuasion collapsing toward zero is the deeper shift, and the systems built to channel it favor whoever already has scale.

A long read on what AI does to the conditions self-government needs, and what has historically worked to defend them.

https://10billion.substack.com/p/the-last-believable-election