Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Sep 27 18 tweets 8 min read Read on X
And after the government combines your personal, banking, and voting data under a single digital ID, it will add social media and vaccine information. Same with Real ID in the US. The Censorship Industrial Complex was dress rehearsal for digital ID.
Stop your creepy totalitarianism @sundarpichai @Google Image
@sundarpichai @Google UK opposition vs support of digital IDs is 45 to 42.

Opponents should be able to drive that opposition number up significantly.

It is absolutely essential that the UK kill two-tier @Keir_Starmer plan for digital IDs before they metastasize across the West. Image
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer If you are UK citizen please sign the petition. They are closing to getting 2 million signatures 🔥🔥🔥

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/7301…
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Who is pulling the strings of Tony Blair and WEF?

@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer That politicians are willing to torch their careers and reputations for digital IDs is telling

@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Who is behind Tony Blair

@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Tony Blair Institute did a survey supposedly finding high support for digital IDs. How? By priming people to think about how inconvenienced they've felt without a digital ID. This is the first question. Totally manipulative and grosss

yonderconsulting.com/wp-content/upl…Image
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Second question: "Some are suggesting the government should introduce a new app, allowing instant access to a range of public services."

A new app!!! Wow. So they already knew the words "digital ID" were contaminated. Amazing Image
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Third question: " Do you think there is digital technology that could help tackle these issues... Processing asylum seekers and managing the UK's borders"

They knew migration was the key since it scrambles Left and Right. So clever! Image
Fourth question: "Advocates of a Digital ID argue it would enable you to prove your identity, store key facts about yourself in a way that is convenient and secure, and help you more easily access a broad range of public and private digital services."

Good lord. It was basically a push poll:Image
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Well, this is all very good news for digital ID opponents. The public already hates the words "digital ID." More people oppose it than support it. And the more the public hears about it the less they will like about it. This could help bring down @Keir_Starmer government.
Oracle's Larry Ellison is funding Tony Blair Institute. Oracle is in the business of digital IDs. This is bad.

"Ellison invested $130 million in the TBI between 2021 and 2023, with a further $218 million pledged since then. The scale of funding took the TBI from a headcount of 200 to approaching 1,000. Blair himself takes no salary from TBI but over this time the institute has been able to recruit from bluechip firms like McKinsey and Silicon Valley giants Meta. In 2018 before the Oracle founder’s funding surge, TBI’s best-paid director earned $400,000. In 2023, the last year where accounts are available, the top earner took home $1.26 million."Image
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer I interviewed a British researcher about digital IDs and the person literally told me he thought that Tony Blair was genuinely just interested in making government more efficient 😂
This is truly bonkers:

"Less than two months after Starmer’s win, the TBI health policy director Charlotte Refsum was invited into the Department of Health to meet its digital policy chief, Felix Greaves, documents obtained under FoI show. Greaves asked for her help in designing a giant public consultation on GP data and digital health ID. He was briefed to tell Refsum his department needed to “learn lessons” from previous health data scandals which had hardened public opinion against data-sharing with private firms."

"The investigative newsrooms Lighthouse Reports and Democracy for Sale interviewed 29 current and former TBI staff, most on condition of anonymity. Supported by public documents and those obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, the testimony describes an organisation unusually close to the British government, able to lobby ministers directly, and which holds joint retreats with Oracle and is willing to engage in “tech sales” with governments in the rest of the world. While there is no suggestion of illegality, there are growing concerns about the extent to which the interests of a US tech billionaire are being represented by the former prime minister.

“When it comes to tech policy,” said one former senior adviser at TBI, “Oracle and TBI are inseparable.”

"The TBI, however, was welcomed by Keir Starmer’s Downing Street operation, which includes many figures with close connections to the former prime minister. Peter Kyle, an adviser in Blair’s second term, was appointed technology secretary and called on governments to show “a sense of humility” towards Big Tech companies."

"TBI had been laying the groundwork before Labour won power. Institute staff advised the party in opposition. In May 2024, TBI wrote a report that called for “two radical actions” to fix Britain’s “data-access problem”: create a “single front door” providing “seamless access” to NHS data; and host all of this data outside the NHS, while retaining government control of the programme."

"In a later paper, TBI recommended linking up data from the NHS, the Department for Work and Pensions, and HMRC. All three bodies are Oracle clients."

"Elsewhere, TBI staff were brought directly into government, while still on the institute’s payroll. Tom Westgarth was part of the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation, joining the small team working on the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan. His salary was paid by TBI."

"Oracle and TBI’s connections are not just rhetorical. By 2023, they were holding joint retreats. At the institute’s headquarters at One Bartholomew Close in central London, the teams would convene with executives from Oracle, Blair’s key adviser Macon-Cooney and Awo Ablo – who came to sit on the board of both TBI and Oracle – sometimes present. Senior TBI employees have been hosted at Oracle’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, coordinated by a TBI employee whose role is “scaling and managing” the partnership with Oracle. Former staff recall that there were other earlier “hush-hush” joint retreats at Ellison properties in the US."

newstatesman.com/politics/2025/…
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer This is disinformation. TBI never asked about digital IDs! They asked about an "app" LOL Image
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer Larry Ellison is not only the person behind digital IDs in the UK, which his company Oracle would manage, he is also the owner of CBS News, Paramount, CNN, and likely TikTok. That's way, way too much power.

@realDonaldTrump @SecScottBessent @AGPamBondi
@sundarpichai @Google @Keir_Starmer @realDonaldTrump @SecScottBessent @AGPamBondi This is insane:

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More from @shellenberger

Sep 28
Good god. The Swiss people just approved digital IDs. Australia implemented them in Dec. UK last week. In all 3 nations, deep state-allied politicians are behind them. This is a digital ID/censorship emergency. Please share and reply below with info about other nations. Image
The deep state swamp creatures know that digital IDs are unpopular and so they are trying to rush them through before anyone realizes what they are doing. The good news is that the more people learn about them the more alarmed they become.

Polling in Switzerland showed 60% backed digital IDs which both houses in parliament had already approved. The final vote was just 50.4%. It almost lost. I hope the Swiss people are carefully scrutinizing the vote count.

Same dynamic in UK. Opposition to digital IDs is low and will rise. Digital IDs can and must be killed.

x.com/shellenberger/…
From a Swiss source: "Palantir and Mercator sponsored the Yes Campaign. Palantir is a member of Digital Switzerland, alongside other tech companies. Digital Switzerland lobbied for the E-ID/digital ID in Switzerland in this vote.Image
Read 10 tweets
Sep 27
The man behind the digital ID push is Larry Ellison, owner of Oracle, CBS, CNN, and, soon, TikTok. He wants data centralization and total surveillance. "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly watching & recording everything that's going on." Terrifying.
This article in the left-wing UK magazine @NewStatesman details how Ellison bankrolled Starmer's Digital ID push.

This is not a partisan issue. Freedom lovers on the Left and Right should both aggressivley oppose digital totalitarianism.

Ellison: We need to unify all of the national data. Put it into a database where it's easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like.

Blair: So you're really through the use of this, you're revolutionizing the way government works, right? The services it provides, the way that it operates.

Why bother having democracy at all? Why not just let Ellison and WEF and AI run things? What could possibly go wrong?
Read 7 tweets
Sep 24
The idea that our rights are natural is Christian Nationalist misinformation, say the media and Democrats. But it's not. It's right there in the Declaration of Independence. Behind the Left's dehumanization of conservatives is an ignorant denial of America's spiritual foundation.
To his credit, Senator @timkaine reversed his position on natural rights a few days after the hearing. “Of course, I embrace the view, expressed so clearly in the Declaration of Independence authored by Virginian Thomas Jefferson, that all people are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I accept the Senator Kaine's change of mind, but he misrepresents the hearing by saying "Of course..."

Nobody who watches Kaine pedantically lecture State Department official Riley Barnes and walk away thinking Kaine agrees with the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

Notably, Kaine placed his oped describing his change of mind on natural rights at Fox where no MSNBC viewer is at any risk of reading it.

foxnews.com/opinion/sen-ti…
@timkaine According to the New Atheists the New Atheists failed like all scientism fails. They couldn't explain reality or deliver a positive vision or affirmative program. Their entire project rests on really dumb assumptions about reality and nature.

Read 4 tweets
Sep 23
Finally! Google admits 1) that the Biden White House demanded censorship of legal content, and 2) that the European censorship law (DSA) could require it and other tech companies "to remove lawful content" both "within and outside of" the EU. The US must stand up to EU censors!
Had the above letter from Google, and the below letter from Meta, been sent before the Supreme Court received filings on Missouri v. Biden, the ruling may have gone the other way, as they demonstrate direct White House bullying of tech firms to censor legal content. Image
Image
We need @realDonaldTrump to stand strong against EU censorship.

No trade deal is worth undermining the First Amendment.

The EU's @vonderleyen @EmmanuelMacron @_FriedrichMerz are eager to not only censor their own citizens but Americans and the world.

Read 5 tweets
Sep 10
The media said the case against Brazil's former President Bolsonaro for supposedly plotting a coup was a slam dunk. It wasn't. A Supreme Court Justice appointed by the ruling Left-wing Workers Party just annihilated the prosecution as fraudulent. Incredible to watch. Image
It was a kangaroo court. Bolsonaro wasn't allowed to properly defend himself. Here's Justice Fux (translated)

"And I say, Mr. President, because it is important, and only for this historical reason, that the guarantee of adversarial proceedings and a full defense, incorporated into Western law long ago, was already emphasized in the work of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who stated that, 'Whoever decides anything... without hearing the other side, even if they decide fairly, is not truly just.'

"This has been reiterated over the years in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly. Article 11: Everyone charged with a criminal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a public trial at which they have had all the guarantees necessary for their defense."Image
This is Pravda-style propaganda not journalism:

"How to Try, and Fail, to Carry Out a Coup... Evidence suggests this is how he tried to do it."

Pathetic and shameful.

nytimes.com/2025/09/02/wor…Image
Read 6 tweets
Sep 9
For decades, Democrats & @ACLU have opposed mandatory psychiatric care for the violently mentally ill. Charlotte shows it’s cruel *not* to mandate care. President Trump & Congress should require states to mandate care for the dangerously psychotic. Me @NewsNation w/ @EVargasTV
ACLU is to blame for preventing mandatory care of the violently insane. Image
Hollywood and Foucault deserve blame Image
Read 8 tweets

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