The End of Protest? How AI is Preemptively Criminalizing Resistance
How the fuck did we get here? The battlefield has changed. If we don’t find new ways to fight back, we’ll wake up too late to ask the question.
I told my husband I wanted to go to a protest.
I expected a conversation. Logistics. Safety. What to do with the kids. But the way his entire body shifted told me this was more than just a discussion.
His jaw tightened. His shoulders squared. His hands flexed, like he was bracing for impact.
“We need to talk about this.”
His voice was measured, but I caught the sharp edge of concern beneath it.
My stomach tightened. Talk about what?
“What could be the harm in showing up?” I asked, sharper than I intended. “People are just trying to be heard. Trying to make a difference. Being brave in the face of real hate.”
He let out a slow breath.
“Have you really thought about this?” he asked. “Is it worth it?”
The air between us changed.
I opened my mouth to push back, to argue, but something in his face stopped me. Because deep down, I already knew what he meant.
I wanted to go because I believe in activism—not as an abstract principle, but as a force capable of shaping the world. I’ve spent my life fighting for systems to be better, whether as a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) in the military, watching survivors retraumatized by leadership that protected predators, or as a veteran, seeing the VA and federal programs dismantled, leaving the most vulnerable behind.
I wanted to go because I am a mother raising daughters in a country where their rights are slipping away. Where I’m not asking for them to have more than I did—I just want them to have the same. The same control over their bodies. The same opportunities I fought for. The same freedom to shape their own futures.
I wanted to go because the only way to fix what’s broken is to confront it head-on—by showing up, by speaking truth, by refusing to look away.
But now, for the first time, I was asking myself a different question:
What if just being there was enough to put a target on my back?
Would that be worth it?
The Wargame That Changed Everything
As military pilots, my husband and I don’t just prepare for worst-case scenarios—we live by them. We’ve spent our careers anticipating threats, analyzing risks, and making life-or-death decisions before they ever materialize. That kind of thinking doesn’t fade when you step out of the cockpit.
We wargame for fun. Some couples watch reality TV. We spend hours talking through every possible way things could go wrong, from making decisions about our daughters’ homeschool curriculum to whether I should attend a protest.
That night, we weren’t just talking about logistics.
"Should I really be worried about my face being recognized at a protest at my state’s capitol?" I asked, frustrated that I even needed to justify myself. I’m a veteran. I’ve spent my life in public service. I just want to stand up and say that we need to bridge the gaps in this country before it fractures beyond repair.
We wargamed the possibilities, breaking down risks and threats like we had in every flight briefing.
AI facial recognition would quietly log my face, flagging me as a potential dissenter in an unseen government database. AI-generated deepfakes could manipulate footage, turning peaceful protests into violent spectacles. Lawmakers, backed by corporate interests, could ensure mass arrests of protestors—just like they’ve ensured mass layoffs of federal workers and mass deportations of immigrants.
By the time we stopped talking, I wasn’t just thinking about what could happen to me.
I was thinking about what happens when an entire generation of protestors is preemptively criminalized before they even take to the streets.
The AI That Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself
At first, it felt like we were wargaming a dystopian novel—some futuristic nightmare where AI doesn’t just track dissent, it eliminates the possibility of resistance entirely.
And yet, it wasn’t even the most dangerous course.
Have you ever stopped to think about how much AI already knows about you?
I have.
I’ve journaled for most of my life, and when I started using AI to analyze my own writing—transcribing and processing years of thoughts, emotions, and experiences—it uncovered patterns I had never recognized. It highlighted themes in my triggers. It exposed cycles of behavior I hadn’t noticed. It surfaced subconscious fears I hadn’t put into words.
At first, I laughed. AI understood me better than any therapist ever could. But then, the realization hit me like a gut punch—if AI could see this much of me, what could it see in all of us? And more importantly, who else was watching?
What happens when power-hungry leaders or billion-dollar corporations understand us better than we understand ourselves? When they can map our thoughts before we even express them? Predict our emotions before we feel them? Manipulate our decisions before we make them?
And what happens when it’s not just about knowing what you believe—it’s about controlling how you act?
The AI War Game: Total Control Over Society
Governments armed with AI don’t need spies in the crowd when it can map out entire protest networks from location pings and facial recognition scans. It doesn’t need to infiltrate activist groups when it can analyze years of online activity and predict which users will engage in resistance before they ever take to the streets. It doesn’t need to ban books when it can simply flag the people reading them.
Imagine waking up to find that the teacher down the street, the one who taught your child to read, has been fired because AI flagged her as having attended a “high-risk” gathering. Imagine your doctor losing his medical license because his online history suggests he has “anti-government sentiments.” Imagine losing access to your mortgage, your job, your healthcare—because AI decided that your presence at one protest was enough to classify you as a threat.
And then, imagine what happens when AI doesn’t just identify “threats” but creates them.
What happens when predictive AI models suggest which communities are most likely to resist? What happens when, instead of waiting for dissent, they decide to preemptively neutralize it? What happens when these models aren’t just tracking the population, but managing it?
I don’t fear them using it against me.
I fear them using it to burn everything down from the inside out.
The Protest That Can’t Be Erased
I didn’t go to the protest.
Maybe I should have. Maybe I’ll regret it someday. Maybe there will come a time when I look back and wonder if that was the moment to stand, to resist, to say: I see what you’re doing. And I will not be afraid.
Because that’s the real war, isn’t it? The fight to keep speaking when everything is being engineered to make us disappear. The fight to remind ourselves that resistance isn’t just about marching in the streets, it’s about finding every possible way to make ripple impacts in our own communities.
My husband and I never finished the wargame that night. Maybe we never will. Maybe, instead of one decision, it’s a thousand small choices that will shape the future. And maybe, just maybe, finding the courage to speak—even in the quietest ways—is its own kind of protest.
Because if we don’t, one day we’ll wake up in isolation, looking back at the moments we let pass, asking the only question left to ask: How the fuck did we get here?
About the Author
I’m Alisa Sieber—a writer, veteran, and relentless question-asker, exposing the patterns of power, control, and resistance that shape our world. My work blends personal reckoning with systemic critique, challenging the narratives we’ve been told and demanding we ask harder questions.
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