At the 2025 World Government Summit in Dubai, a stage shared by Oracle and CTO founder Larry Ellison and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, became the unlikely scenario for an astonishing ambition proposal.
Digital Goverment
Ellison, an oligarch of the technology industry, outlined a future where national governments cease to be custodians of fragmented citizen data and become unified operators of a single centralized database.
This digital repository, accessible to advanced AI models, was presented not as a mere technological update, but as the "missing link" and the "big step" needed to unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence in the remodeling of society.
The vision, as described by Ellison, is one of unprecedented efficiency and foresight. Which we can translate into a totalitarian system of digital oppression
He argued that the real power of AI in governance, health, agriculture and national planning is currently affected by databases. To streamline it, governments must consolidate each piece of relevant information into a single, coherent platform.
This includes, but is not limited to, individual health records, sensitive genomic information, real-time satellite imagery, detailed infrastructure schemes, comprehensive economic data, and thorough land use records.
AI-managed databases
Within this unified data ecosystem, Ellison poses, AI could finally answer the most complex questions facing a nation, uncovering new ideas and recommending actions with a speed and precision that human-led committees could never hope to achieve.
Ellison also stressed the critical importance of data sovereignty. The huge data centers needed to house this national treasure must be physically located within a nation's borders.
This, he explained, is a non-negotiable prerequisite for protecting against external threats, such as state-sponsored espionage and crippling ransomware attacks. A sovereign and physically secured infrastructure presents itself as the digital strength needed to safeguard the lifeblood of the modern state.
The architecture of control: biometrics
According to Ellison, a system of such immense power requires equally strong "security." To this end, Ellison advocated a fundamental change in digital identity, stating that the last year Oracle systems will use passwords is 2025.
Instead, he advocated biometric authentication - facial recognition, voice and fingerprints - as the only viable method to ensure a database of such national importance.
Using the fallacious argument always used when biometrics are imposed: they promote it as inherently safer and more convenient, eliminating human error and vulnerabilities associated with traditional passwords.
All this is an absolute lie, and highlights the deep ignorance in software and technology of this individual. Biometric data is easier to manipulate and falsify, not to mention inevitably producing false results due to an inescapable collision factor, which is referred to as Crossover Error Rate (CER). Factor of which of course there is no biometric data lobbyist to explain this to the public.
Biometric data wants to impose them under any argument, because with this vague system, but believed by the population as insurance, they can legitimize a system more draconian than the current one where privacy and freedom will be scarce goods.
The dismantling of privacy
The proposal, on its surface, offers the repeated fantasy of a more intelligent, secure and sensitive world. However, concern arises, casting a long shadow. The plan for hyper-efficient governance is against the founding principles of individual privacy and freedom.
The proposed vision and justification raised in some critics the following concerns and counterarguments:
Solving unprecedented problems: AI can analyze unified data to optimize national planning, predict and manage health crises, and boost agricultural production.
- Privacy erosion: Consolidating deeply personal data (health, genomics, location) into a single database creates an unparalleled goal for misuse and surveillance.
- Biometric surveillance: the replacement of passwords by biometrics and the establishment of sovereign data centres will enhance the ubiquitous nature of systems.
- Creation of a Surveillance State: A centralized database provides a government with a terribly efficient tool to monitor its citizens, cool dissent and enforce social control.
- Creation of a Surveillance State: A centralized database provides a government with a terribly efficient tool to monitor its citizens, cool dissent and enforce social control.
- Creation of a Surveillance State: A centralized database provides a government with a terribly efficient tool to monitor its citizens, cool dissent and enforce social control.
- Streamlined government services: Proactive AI models could streamline citizen services, reduce bureaucracy, and provide personalized support with remarkable speed.
- Risk of catastrophic failure - A single, centralized database is a single point of failure. A successful breach could expose the confidential data of the entire population at once.
- Data as a National Asset: Unifying data allows a nation to leverage its collective information for the greater good, turning fragmented records into a strategic asset.
- Without consent: Data collected for a purpose (e.g., medical care) could inevitably be used for others without consent (e.g., law enforcement, social credit rating).
- Economic and social progress: Data-based knowledge can lead to advances in medicine, more efficient infrastructure and a more resilient economy.
- Conflict of interest and cronyism: The financial benefits for private corporations, which would build and manage these systems, create a dangerous incentive to drive implementation without sufficient public debate.
Conflicts of interest
Tony Blair's presence as moderator did more than lend a layer of statesmanship to the proposal; ignited a firestorm of controversy. Blair strongly praised Ellison's plan as a revolutionary advance for the government.
However, this praise is not exempt from a major conflict of interest. Documents have revealed that Blair's own institute actively pressured the UK government to consult with Larry Ellison, a relationship that has sparked a row of cronies.
This controversy is based on a clear business relationship: Oracle, Ellison's company, has already secured a lucrative £700 million IT deal with multiple UK government departments.
In addition, Oracle is the primary beneficiary of future contracts related to digital identity and centralized data systems that Ellison is promoting.
Fundamental compensation: efficiency versus freedom
Critics argue that Blair's enthusiastic support blurs the line between genuine government innovation and a veiled sales tone, raising serious ethical questions about the privatization of basic state functions and the influence of tech billionaires on public policies.
The tools needed to create an AI-responsive care system are the same tools needed to create a generalized social credit system.
The proposal challenges citizens to decide what kind of society they want to live in. Is it worth renouncing anonymity and privacy thanks to a unified digital data system?
History has shown that the powers vested in governments in times of crisis or in the name of efficiency are rarely voluntarily renounced.
The creation of a centralized citizen database overseen by the AI would represent one of the most significant expansions of state power in modern history, a point of no return for the relationship between the individual and the state.
The path to a brighter and AI-assisted future, if it exists, cannot be paved by unilateral statements by technological oligarchs and their political allies.
The question is no longer whether we can build such a system, but whether we should, and if so, under what inviolable conditions. The answer will define the form of society for generations to come.
The panopticon of technocrats: they benefit when you lose your freedom
