For 25 years since 9/11, the U.S. government has shifted from targeted surveillance to mass surveillance techniques, initially justified as counterterrorism but now routinely used by law enforcement, ICE, and private security systems. Mass surveillance data flows through a pipeline from private companies—which collect it for commercial purposes—to government agencies, including the FBI purchasing data from brokers, with little evidence that these programs actually prevent attacks or improve public safety.
Bruce Schneier argues that despite recent AI breakthroughs in mathematics—including disproving the unit distance conjecture and finding counterexamples to major conjectures—AI systems remain limited compared to human mathematicians. Current AI excels at searching and recombining existing ideas but lacks the ability to develop substantial new theoretical frameworks, suggesting that mathematics as a profession is not yet threatened by AI.