The Water Defenders
Plus: Cap the Crypto Crap!
Dear Citizens,
We’ve just come across the terrific and subversive artist Darren Cullen, who recently started placing these anti-chatbot ads on the London transport network. So much of Darren’s work is terrific, but you can download, print and place your own versions of these posters here.
Here’s what else to read, watch and know this week.
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👨✈️ ONE READ: Authoritarian Rules 👨✈️
We read a really interesting piece in The Conversation from Clemson professor Michael Gregory on how authoritarian governments are twisting AI safety to get tech companies to fall in line.
Gregory looks at tech regulation, and argues that regulation has shifted from protecting the public toward making systems controllable for the state:
As a philosopher studying the rule of law and democracy, I’ve found that authoritarian governance of technology often does not involve direct censorship. Instead it delegitimizes the intended protections, poisoning any external regulation and even voluntary self-regulation that deviates from the regime’s goals or values.
The Trump administration, which follows the authoritarian playbook, has argued that AI safety standards and user restrictions are ideological impositions rather than sound engineering decisions. The “Preventing Woke AI” executive order of July 23, 2025, didn’t change what companies are allowed to do with their products. By attaching the “woke” label to basic ethics protections, the administration made those protections politically costly to maintain.
👉 Read the whole piece here.
✊ ONE WATCH: The Water Defenders ✊
Can data centers be stopped? In this conversation from Lucid, the newsletter about threats to democracy from Ruth Ben-Ghiat, she looks to El Salvador, which took on a gold mining giant and won.
Here’s part of her conversation with Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, co-authors of the new graphic version of the award-winning book “The Water Defenders, How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed”.
💷 ONE ACTION: Cap the Crap from Crypto Brats! 💷
In the UK? Here’s the latest on the Representation of the People Bill currently before parliament, which “introduces a sweeping package of measures aimed at shielding our democracy from foreign interference and the inflows of illicit finance”.
👉 Here’s how to advocate for it.
In the US? No Kings June edition, June 14th. Details here.
Anywhere in the world? Our upcoming talk, Big Tech’s hostile takeover of democracy: Europe at a crossroads with Carole Cadwalladr, Roger McNamee, Sophie in 't Veld and Reinier van Lanschot is now June 30th.
👉 Register here!
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! 350+ people share practical advice on protecting your data, organising against Big Tech and staying ahead of what you need to know.
