The following letter, signed “A. Lincoln” but without a return address or subject line, appeared in my email this morning. No sooner had I made a copy of the letter than it disappeared from my inbox. Despite its strange and unexplained origin, the signature demands that attention be given to the letter; and, for this reason, it is being made available to readers of the WSWS.

[Hope everyone will read the whole letter about conditions today form our today from the 16th US president]

"The thing itself is this. In my time, one man was permitted to own the body of another and to take, by the lash, the whole fruit of his labor. We abolished that ownership, and rightly, and I went to my death believing the work substantially done. I see now that I saw only the crudest form of an older thing. For there grew up beside the chattel, and outliving him, a system in which a few need not own the laborer’s body because they own the field, the forge, the rail, the mine, the roof above him and the tools in his hands—so that he must sell his days to them or not eat, and they keep the difference between what his labor makes and what they are pleased to return to him, and call the keeping by the name of profit, and the arrangement by the name of liberty. The whip is retired; the wage does the work of the whip, and is thought gentle because it draws no blood the eye can see. This is the cause of the present crisis, as slavery was the cause of mine: a form of exploitation, lawful, respectable, defended from every pulpit of wealth, and for that respectability the harder to name.

"From this root the rest grows as the branch from the trunk. Wealth so gathered cannot rest; it must seek to own the government framed to bridle it, for a government it does not own is a danger it will not abide. Beyond its borders, wealth so gathered must seek markets and matter beyond the sea, and so it sends the nation’s sons to make the world safe for its increase, and dresses the errand in the flag, and calls conquest by the name of defense. And the citizen, told each evening by instruments the wealthy own that he is free and that his unease is his own fault, grows used to it, and christens his custom peace. The plutocrat, the disreputable client in my house, the armies abroad, the people taught to mistrust their own discontent—these are not four troubles. They are one trunk and its branches."

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Dear Exhausted Citizenry,

Let us begin plainly: science is not the enemy. Invention is not the enemy. Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is not the enemy.

A free republic should welcome discovery. It should encourage knowledge. It should build tools that improve medicine, education, farming, transportation, energy, public safety, and human life.

But there is a difference between technology that serves the people and technology that consumes the people’s inheritance.

That is the question before us now.

AI data centers are often described as if they belong to some weightless digital world. We are told they are part of “the cloud,” as though the cloud floats above us, clean and harmless.

But the cloud is not weightless.

The cloud has walls.
The cloud has pipes.
The cloud has substations.
The cloud has backup generators.
The cloud needs water.
The cloud needs roads.
The cloud needs land.
The cloud needs public permission.
The cloud needs the citizen’s infrastructure.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported that data center load growth has tripled over the past decade and is projected to double or triple again by 2028. Data centers used about 4.4% of all U.S. electricity in 2023, and could use 6.7% to 12% by 2028. In plain language, that means these buildings are not just another business moving into town. They are becoming a new class of industrial power user.

Reuters recently reported that U.S. electricity use is expected to hit new record highs in 2026 and 2027, driven in large part by AI data centers and crypto operations. Residential electricity prices are expected to rise as well. So when a citizen asks whether these projects will affect their bill, that is not childish. That is prudence.

And prudence requires foresight.

If we have Prudence, then we should imagine what comes next. These data centers are not being built only for today’s chatbots. They are being built for tomorrow’s drones, robots, automated factories, surveillance tools, predictive policing systems, military contracts, logistics networks, and machine labor systems. The infrastructure being laid now may become the nervous system of a society where machines watch, calculate, move, deliver, patrol, replace, and decide.

So the citizen has the right to ask:

Who owns this infrastructure?

Who pays for it?

Who benefits from it?

Who carries the environmental cost?

Who gets the jobs?

Who loses the jobs later?

Who signed the agreement?

Why were citizens not told sooner?

In Wisconsin, these are not imaginary questions. Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant data centers are projected to use up to 8.4 million gallons of water each year, with later phases reaching a peak of 702,000 gallons per day. Those numbers were released only after a lawsuit over public records.

Wisconsin Watch found that at least four Wisconsin communities used nondisclosure agreements around major data center projects, and that seven major Wisconsin data center projects together were worth more than $57 billion. One of those projects, in Beaver Dam, was kept quiet for more than a year while officials negotiated around a proposal from one of the richest corporations on Earth.

That is the heart of the matter.

If a corporation needs our roads, our water, our grid, our public education system, our police and fire services, our zoning boards, our courts, our tax incentives, and our elected officials, then the citizen deserves full daylight.

No NDA should be allowed to hide the public’s business from the public.

No representative should sign away the future of a community and then scold the citizens for asking what was signed.

No official should call constituents childish for asking adult questions about water, electricity, land, taxes, pollution, and public cost.

The Founders taught that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed. Marx taught us to ask who owns the machinery, who profits from it, who is made dependent upon it, and who is left paying the cost. The Progressives taught that when private power grows too large for ordinary citizens to confront alone, democratic government must act on behalf of the citizen.

Put those together and the question becomes unavoidable:

Did the people consent to having their public infrastructure converted into private machine capacity?

The Progressive Era did not oppose industry. It opposed the rule of the people by industry. It understood that railroads, monopolies, trusts, utilities, and industrial barons could become so powerful that the ordinary citizen no longer bargained as an equal. Government neutrality became a lie. If government did nothing, it had chosen the side of concentrated power.

That lesson has returned.

Only now the new trusts are not just steel, oil, railroads, and banks. They are cloud platforms, AI companies, surveillance contractors, data brokers, utility-scale server farms, and corporations powerful enough to ask local governments for secrecy before the citizen even knows what is being negotiated.

The issue is not whether AI should exist.

The issue is whether AI will serve the republic, or whether the republic will be reorganized to serve AI.

Water is not merely an input. It is life.

Electricity is not merely an expense. It is the nervous system of modern civilization.

Roads are not merely pavement. They are public arteries.

Schools are not merely workforce pipelines. They are the seedbeds of citizenship.

Public utilities were not built so corporations could privatize the benefit and socialize the cost.

And this problem is not limited to water. Researchers studying data center water demand warn that U.S. data centers could require 697 to 1,451 million gallons per day of new water capacity by 2030 if current water-use patterns continue. That is comparable to New York City’s average daily water supply.

So when a citizen asks, “How much water will this use?” that is not ignorance.

When a citizen asks, “Will my electric bill go up?” that is not fearmongering.

When a citizen asks, “How many permanent jobs will actually remain after construction?” that is not anti-growth.

When a citizen asks, “Will robots and drones eventually reduce even those jobs?” that is not paranoia. That is foresight.

When a citizen asks, “Why did my representatives sign an NDA?” that is not childish. That is republican citizenship.

The citizen is not a nuisance to be managed.

The citizen is the source of legitimate power.

If these projects are truly good for the public, then prove it in public.

Show the water demand.

Show the electric demand.

Show the grid upgrades.

Show who pays.

Show the tax incentives.

Show the road costs.

Show the sewer costs.

Show the emergency-service costs.

Show the environmental review.

Show the backup power plan.

Show the air emissions.

Show the permanent jobs, not just the construction jobs.

Show the automation plan.

Show the clawbacks if promises are broken.

Show the agreement.

Show the citizen the public business done in the citizen’s name.

A republic cannot survive if its people are told to trust deals they are forbidden to read.

This is where the Progressive duty of government returns. Government must not act merely as the concierge of capital. It must act as the guardian of the public welfare. It must make private power answerable to public right.

That does not mean stopping science.

It means democratizing its consequences.

It means saying that if AI is built on public infrastructure, then it owes the public more than slogans.

It owes transparency.

It owes accountability.

It owes enforceable public benefit.

It owes clean air, protected water, fair utility rates, honest job numbers, open records, and respect for the citizens who must live with the consequences.

The machine may be intelligent.

But it is not sovereign.

The corporation may be wealthy.

But it is not the republic.

The representative may sign the paper.

But the citizen has the right to read it.

And if this new age of artificial intelligence is to be worthy of a free people, then it must not become an artificial aristocracy: a new ruling class feeding private machines with public resources while telling the people to be quiet, grateful, and uninformed.

No.

The cloud is not above the republic.

The machine is not above the citizen.

And progress that requires secrecy from the governed is not progress fit for a free people.

Forty-Two Cameras and the Flock That Ate the Fourth Amendment

Dear Silent Citizenry,

When a government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, it owes the people not secrecy dressed as safety, but transparency rooted in law. A decent respect for the rights of the people requires that the City of Green Bay explain, justify, limit, and make fully accountable any system that can record, search, and trace the lawful movements of the public.

We therefore submit these grievances.

>They have refused to assent to laws most wholesome and necessary for the public good, by allowing a system of public surveillance to stand without first establishing clear and binding protections for the people, including strict limits of use, public audits, data-retention rules, access logs, search categories, agency-sharing disclosures, and remedies for abuse.

>They have forbidden the passage of measures of immediate and pressing importance, by permitting the growth of license-plate-reading cameras, private vendor databases, and drone first responder technology while leaving the people without sufficient safeguards against the abuse of such power.

>They have called public bodies to decide matters of lasting consequence without the full knowledge and understanding of the governed, placing surveillance contracts, police policies, audits, and vendor agreements beyond the plain sight of the citizens whose movements may be recorded.

>They have failed in the representative duty to oppose with firmness invasions upon the rights of the people, by allowing technology to enlarge the reach of government power while treating constitutional concern as an inconvenience rather than a warning.

>They have erected among us a multitude of watchful instruments, and by contract with private power have placed upon the public ways devices capable of recording, searching, and tracing the movements of the people.

>They have kept among us, in times of peace, a permanent system of surveillance, without first securing the full knowledge, consent, and continuing oversight of the governed.

>They have affected to render the instruments of police power independent of and superior to civil restraint, placing their operation within private systems, internal policies, unseen audits, and agreements not plainly submitted to the people.

>They have placed the ordinary citizen under suspicion without charge, by permitting the movements of the many to be gathered and searched in order to investigate the suspected few.

>They have deprived the people, in practice, of the ancient security against general searches, by allowing government to collect first, search later, and justify afterward.

>They have altered fundamentally the relationship between citizen and government, changing the public street from a place of free movement into a field of recorded passage, where one’s lawful travel may be stored, searched, shared, and examined by authorities unknown to the citizen.

>They have made public safety the language by which public liberty may be narrowed, claiming gun violence as the cause while failing to show, by public record, whether this system is used narrowly for shootings and violent crimes or broadly for warrants, traffic enforcement, suspicious activity, civil enforcement, immigration enforcement, or other purposes.

>They have permitted private power to stand between the people and their own government, by allowing a vendor to operate systems touching the liberty of citizens while the public remains uncertain who owns the data, who may access it, how long it is kept, how it is shared, and whether it may be analyzed beyond its stated purpose.

>They have turned promises into safeguards and assurances into law, though a promise hidden from public inspection is not accountability, an audit unseen by the people is not transparency, and a policy that cannot be examined is not consent.

The City of Green Bay, having entered into a five-year agreement for Flock license-plate-reading cameras and a drone first responder program, now possesses a system capable of recording, searching, and tracing the movements of the public. It asks citizens to accept assurances where visible constitutional safeguards ought to stand.

The police chief has said these cameras were installed as part of a broader effort to reduce gun violence. He has said they help officers identify a suspect’s vehicle, know who they are, and sometimes be waiting for them before they return home. Let it be plainly understood: no free people should be indifferent to gun violence. No citizen should desire that violent offenders escape justice. But the presence of violence does not dissolve the Fourth Amendment, and fear does not grant government a blank warrant over the movements of the people.

A police officer observing one car on one street is ordinary law enforcement. A network of cameras, operated with the aid of a private company, creating a searchable record of vehicle movement across the city, is something far greater. It is not mere observation. It is surveillance. It is not simply seeing what happens in public. It is building a database that allows government to look backward through the lawful movements of ordinary citizens.

The Fourth Amendment was written to forbid general searches. It was written to prevent government from gathering first and justifying later. It was written to protect the innocent as much as the accused. If Green Bay claims this system is for gun violence, then the burden is on the city to prove it.

Let the city produce the contract, the five-year agreement, the drone agreement, the data-retention policy, the camera locations, the audit logs, the access records, the case-number requirements, the search categories, the outside-agency sharing agreements, and the rules governing who may search this system and why.

Let the city show how many searches were tied to shootings, homicides, armed robberies, stolen vehicles, traffic enforcement, warrants, suspicious activity, or any other purpose. Let the city show whether Brown County, De Pere, state agencies, federal agencies, or out-of-state agencies may access Green Bay’s data. Let the city show whether this information can be used for immigration enforcement, civil enforcement, warrant sweeps, political monitoring, or any purpose beyond the stated reason of gun violence.

Let the city show who owns the data, how long it is kept, whether Flock may analyze it, whether it may be shared, and whether the public has any meaningful protection from misuse.

For a safeguard hidden from the people is not a safeguard. An audit unseen by the public is not accountability. A policy no citizen may inspect is not transparency. And a promise from government is not the same as a constitutional limit.

We therefore hold that the people of Green Bay have the right to demand records, demand answers, and demand that any surveillance power be narrow, lawful, auditable, and accountable to the citizens it claims to protect.

This is not a complaint against public safety. It is a complaint against unexamined power. This is not opposition to solving gun crimes. It is opposition to building permanent surveillance infrastructure without the full knowledge and consent of the governed.

If the city is correct, the records will prove it. If the system is narrow, the records will show narrow use. If the system is truly for gun violence, the evidence will bear that out.

But if the records show broad tracking of everyday citizens, then the people must know before silence becomes surrender.

The Constitution does not enforce itself.

It waits for citizens to speak.

Concluding Lines:

A ship of state does not sail itself. Not everyone is in the captain’s cabin or steering the vessel. Many citizens have been deceived, many voted based on promises that were never intended to be fulfilled, and many have little direct influence over the actual course being set.

The deeper question may therefore be less whether a nation can commit “suicide,” and more how political and economic systems evolve in ways that reward short-term advantage while undermining the long-term survival and stability of the society as a whole.

In such systems, those benefiting most from a voyage may still help sink the ship itself, while having their own lifeboats carefully prepared for private use.

In such a case, a ship is not committing suicide. Rather, the captain and parts of the crew are sinking the vessel, along with many still aboard, while arranging their own escape with much of the treasure.