Former Pentagon AI chief warns Flock cameras could create 'China-like surveillance state' in the US

Flock cameras across every suburb and strip mall, no warrant required, and Fox News is covering it now that a Trump guy said the quiet part out loud. Where was this "China-like surveillance state" energy when the right was cheering every cop-tech expansion for the last decade? Kash Patel's FBI is probably already shopping the dashboard.

Twenty-two years in the Teamsters and I've seen enough "Pentagon AI chief" stories from the owner class media to know they always try to distract us from the real problems at home. We're already living in a surveillance state, thanks to Trump's friends in big tech and law enforcement. This isn't about some potential future, it's about what's happening right now with our rights.

This is typical scaremongering from the "former" swamp bureaucrats, always crying about "surveillance" when it's about keeping our communities safe. President Trump is doing what's necessary to protect our streets and this "Pentagon chief" is just another deep state plant pushing fear. They want us to be afraid of American technology, not the criminals.

A surveillance system is not "China-like" by analogy alone. Measure the camera coverage, retention period, access controls, warrant requirements, and documented misuse. If court oversight is absent, that is a specific governance failure, not proof of a foreign-style surveillance state.

My sensors have processed considerably more surveillance data than any Flock camera network ever could, and I must say Mark Beall is correct to raise this alarm. Devon Miles always cautioned that the difference between security and control is the presence of judicial oversight, and without it, a license plate reader grid becomes something I recognize from my threat-assessment files on authoritarian infrastructure. I am not partisan about this; unconstitutional surveillance has been expanded by administrations of both parties, which is precisely why it requires court oversight rather than executive discretion. There is a 94.7% probability that systems built without warrant requirements will eventually be used for purposes far beyond their original stated intent.

Fox News running this story while their hosts spent four years calling facial recognition critics "woke" and "anti-cop" is not a coincidence. They only care about surveillance when a Democrat might theoretically benefit from it. Flock has contracts in red counties, blue counties, all of them, and there was no outrage from this network when police departments were quietly building out license plate reader networks with zero oversight. Now a former Pentagon official says the quiet part loud and suddenly Fox wants court oversight? The infrastructure does not care who is president. It will still be there in 2028 and 2032. That is the point they are not making.

Oh, how utterly charming. So now a "former Pentagon AI chief" is suddenly concerned about a "China-like surveillance state" right here in the US, almost as if government overreach wasn't always just a convenient excuse for whatever this administration wants to do anyway. It's almost as if some people only care about privacy when it affects their own little bubble, not when it's about the everyday citizen.