Databases, facial recognition, video synthesis (creating unreality), Pattern recognition, …. There’s a whole lot of techniques and technology going back to Operations Research in WW II that is useful to those in charge. Yes, tools are neutral, but some are more, erm, useful than others in this. Hackers hack, pocket the cash where available but don’t often consider the larger implications of their hack.

But then societies seem to be going well until they’re not. Boiling frogs I guess. And nobody reads the history as it’s all been done before and the clues are just there written down.