The Dawn of the AI Algorithm Age

Understand what is happening with AI here and why it has more to do with amassing political power than it does computing power.

If you look back at the last 100 years in America, we have moved through 4 distinct eras of communication which each defined the types of politicians… https://t.co/6evm78Y4TB

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 14, 2026

…we elected.

The early 1900’s were still dominated by print, followed by radio, then broadcast television, followed by 24/7 cable news, and then the Internet and social media.

FDR was the quintessential radio president via his fireside chats. It is no accident that JFK was elected at the dawn of the broadcast television age. Desert Storm introduced us to the age of 24/7 cable news, which brought us Clinton and then Bush. Obama and Trump capitalized on the new world of the Internet and social media, which was also the only media vector which could have spread the COVID panic which elected Joe Biden.

So where are we right now? I would argue that the confluence of mass global censorship erected at the height of the COVID panic and the rise of AI have a created a new era of mass media: we have now entered the Algorithm era.

The print era gave us leaders who wrote well. The radio era gave us leaders who sounded strong. The TV era gave us leaders who looked good. The Internet and social media era gave us leaders who went viral.

The Algorithm era will give us something quite different: politicians who cater to the whims of the oligarchs who own the computing power and control the algorithm. This is why they freaked out when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X.

Elon broke the social media cartel and rendered it obsolete. Google’s censorship of search results and Facebook’s censorship of political commentary weren’t nearly as powerful in a world where you could say what you want and get paid for it on X.

Countries will now be ruled by whoever controls the Algorithm, because the person who controls the Algorithm controls everything you see. And with the rise of AI, control of the Algorithm will soon hinge on control of computing power and capacity.

Dario and his AI buddies want to be the only ones in control. They hate open source, because that is a threat to their control. The solution? Cook up doomsday AI scenarios, demand regulation, and watch as the government enforces an AI cartel run entirely by Dario and his friends. That is exactly what we are witnessing right now. Except it’s not just about control of AI. It’s about using AI to control the world. That is what’s at stake right now.

Another fascinating aspect of the various mass media eras is how much more compressed each new one is.

The world started with person to person oral communication. That lasted for thousands of years. The printing press and mass written media reigned for 400+ years. Radio dominated for 40 years. Broadcast TV and cable news controlled the conversation for 30 years. Then the Internet and social media were on top for maybe 20 years. And here we are now at the dawn of the AI Algorithm age.

How long will it last? And what will come next?