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Independent journalist Michael
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Shelonburgger has been digging into the
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digital ID issue. He just released a
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lengthy piece on this on his Substack
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called public. He joins us now with his
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thoughts. Michael, look, the argument is
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it's like it'll help help thwart illegal
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immigration, ID fraud, streamline health
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care services. Sounds fantastic. What
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the heck's the problem?
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Right. Hey, great to be with you, Laura.
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Yeah, I mean another conspiracy theory
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that has started coming true. I mean we
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saw this announcement in September. It
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took everybody by surprise. The World
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Economic Forum had been pushing digital
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IDs. The United Nations, the European
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Union, Britain. Of course, the the
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really terrifying example is China,
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which uses digital IDs and a social
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credit score to control speech and to
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control what people think and say
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online. I mean, it could come in a lot
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of different ways. They'll start
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voluntary, then they'll make it
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mandatory. They'll have rewards and then
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they'll have punishments. It's quite
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terrifying. And when you just listen to
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what the advocates for digital ID say,
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it's terrifying. And you know, Laura,
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one thing I learned from this last round
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of investigations is that this is a huge
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cyber security threat. The idea that I
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imagine if you get hacked in one of the
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many websites that you log into, imagine
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everything suddenly being hacked because
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it's all centralized in a single place.
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That cyber security threat alone ought
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to be enough to kill the digital ID.
