Digital Borders, Critical Chokepoints, and the Fog of War
May 12, 2026
State actors in Canada and the US are repackaging digital surveillance as border security while critical supply chains for minerals and food reveal processing chokepoints that undermine sovereignty. This material fragility is compounded by AI-driven memetic warfare and conspiracy proliferation, which weaponize epistemic uncertainty to obscure infrastructure failures and justify authoritarian enclosure.
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Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare
Last year, the Canadian government pushed Bill C-2, which would erode Canadian digital rights in the name of “border security.” The bill was so bad it didn’t even make it to committee because of the backlash from the privacy community. Now, the spring’s worst sequel, Bill C-22, aka The Lawful Access…
- AI governance
- structural power
- media and technology
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Trolling, memes, and deepfakes: How AI is thickening the fog of war
War has never been fought only on the ground. Clausewitz’s concept of the “fog of war” once described the uncertainty and confusion that cloud battlefield decision-making. Errol Morris’ 2003 documentary made the phrase a shorthand for the moral and informational ambiguities of modern conflict. But i…
- media and technology
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The missing link in America’s critical minerals push isn’t mining – it’s processing expertise
MP Materials’ Mountain Pass mine and processing facility in California was for years the only U.S. rare earth elements mine. Tmy350/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The United States is spending billions of dollars to secure access to critical minerals – minerals and metals that are essential to modern t…
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EFF to Fourth Circuit: Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant
EFF, along with the national ACLU, the ACLU affiliates in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit urging the court to require a warrant for borde…
- AI governance
- structural power
- media and technology
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Conspiracy theories: do 300,000 Kiwis really believe Canada is building an army of mutant super-raccoons?
Enn Li Photography/Getty Images Four percent of Americans – roughly 12 million people – believe that “lizard people” secretly control the Earth. At least, that was the finding of an infamous 2013 public opinion survey. Do so many people really believe such outlandish claims? Or do results like these…
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There’s No Such Thing as Climate Policy
It’s time to rethink top-down attempts at environmental progress.
- geopolitics
- structural power
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How Nigerians are coping with heat waves amid crippling power outages
Due to epileptic nature of the power supply, it is difficult to cope with the heat, especially during nighttime when the heat is intense.
- geopolitics
- media and technology
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Is Russia the Main Beneficiary of Trump’s Iran Mistake?
The Kremlin is gaining billions in additional oil revenue.
- geopolitics
- structural power
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Local food systems key as food prices rise and tensions grow
The tools are there: IPES-Food experts urge governments to stabilise food prices amid rising geopolitical tensions The post Local food systems key as food prices rise and tensions grow appeared first on IPES-Food.
- food sovereignty
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Nudge theory was all about taking responsibility – but it allowed big business to look the other way
Piyaset/Shutterstock Feelings of despair at the state of the world can be overwhelming. Social and environmental problems persist, but political discourse is polarised, divisive and often ineffective. A couple of decades ago, some behavioural scientists – ourselves included – began to think there mi…
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