Dewy McGill

As a commercial lawyer, I use AI every day. Unlike much of the commentary around it, it doesn’t save me much time. If anything, it makes me slower and more careful. If I am lazy and ask it for an answer I have to check almost every legal principle it gives me, because it confidently makes things up. What I find it useful for is thinking. Where I might once have bounced an issue off a colleague and then made the call, I now use AI in that role and still make the call. If you’re using it to do the bulk of your drafting or to give advice without verification, you’re not a modern lawyer. You’re outsourcing judgment, and that will almost certainly end in an avoidable mistake. Judgment is what clients actually pay lawyers for. And it’s the one thing you can’t responsibly delegate.

Anon, you're analysing what they're doing (digital IDs, censorship, surveillance, social control), but you’re not fully stepping back to question why they need this now. You see through the “protecting kids” rhetoric as a façade, but you haven’t fully confronted the structural collapse and loss of control that governments and legacy institutions are panicking about. It’s not about control in a generic sense. It's that their entire method of governance is becoming obsolete. Centralised systems (financial, media, political) are losing grip because of decentralised tech, alternative economies, and a cultural shift away from institutional trust. Digital ID, censorship, and "protect the children" are not moves of confidence; they’re moves of desperation to keep relevance.