Crosspost: “AI and Transhumanism: Hackable Animals”
Link to article by Aaron Kheriaty
Summary: “AI and Transhumanism: Hackable Animals” by Aaron Kheriaty
Aaron Kheriaty’s essay presents a comprehensive and critical assessment of the transhumanist vision advanced by Yuval Noah Harari and other thinkers affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The central theme is a warning: emerging technologies—particularly biometric surveillance, artificial intelligence, and digital identity systems—are being promoted as tools for human enhancement and social progress, but in reality, they may serve as mechanisms of control, dehumanization, and social stratification. Kheriaty argues that these developments rest on a dangerously reductionist view of human nature and, if unchecked, could usher in an authoritarian future cloaked in the language of innovation and well-being.
1. COVID-19 as Catalyst for Biometric Surveillance
Kheriaty opens by highlighting public statements made by Yuval Noah Harari during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harari argued that the crisis provided a unique opportunity to normalize total biometric surveillance. Unlike traditional surveillance, which focuses on external behaviors—where individuals go, who they meet, what they consume—biometric surveillance seeks to penetrate beneath the skin to monitor physiological states: heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and emotional reactions.
Harari's remarks appear in interviews with major media outlets and global conferences. He consistently emphasized that the next phase of surveillance involves moving from “above the skin” to “under the skin.” This includes not just tracking movements or communications, but collecting continuous biometric data that reveals internal states and intentions, a development he views as a milestone in human history.
Kheriaty interprets this as a foundational shift, framing COVID-era policy changes as the thin end of the wedge in a broader agenda to transform societies into high-resolution feedback systems where governments and corporations can monitor and potentially manipulate individual behavior in real time.
2. Humans as Hackable, Algorithmic Entities
A recurring motif in Harari’s discourse is the claim that “humans are hackable animals.” By this, he means that human beings can now be understood as biological algorithms—systems whose behavior can be predicted, influenced, and reprogrammed once sufficient data and computational power are available. The traditional belief in free will, individual soul, or moral autonomy, he argues, is obsolete.
According to Harari, the capacity to hack humans depends on two breakthroughs: (1) an abundance of biometric data, and (2) powerful machine learning algorithms capable of analyzing that data. These technologies allow institutions to predict preferences, sway decisions, and potentially override conscious choice. For instance, continuous emotional monitoring could enable unseen observers to determine how a person feels about a political candidate or commercial product—without that person ever expressing a view aloud.
Kheriaty presents this not as a speculative or fringe opinion, but as a concrete worldview now being advanced by influential intellectuals with access to global policy platforms.
3. Data as the Central Asset of Power
In Harari’s framework, the most important asset of the 21st-century economy is not land (as in agrarian societies) or machines (as in industrial societies), but data—especially data about human beings. Those who control vast stores of data will control the political, economic, and social order.
The WEF’s Klaus Schwab supports this outlook, describing the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution as a period in which technological innovation—particularly gene editing, AI, and biotechnology—will not merely change what we do, but will fundamentally change who we are. In Schwab’s formulation, the boundary between humans and machines will increasingly dissolve, as digital technologies merge with biological processes.
Harari’s 2018 WEF lecture emphasized that the core products of the future economy would be “bodies and brains and minds,” manufactured and optimized through engineering rather than natural development.
4. Mechanisms of Technocratic Control
Kheriaty argues that these developments are not just speculative but are already being implemented. He points to the rise of digital identity systems linked to biometric data, which could soon become mandatory for accessing healthcare, education, travel, and financial services. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) may enable unprecedented financial surveillance, allowing governments to track—and potentially restrict—every transaction a person makes.
Such technologies, Kheriaty warns, can form the foundation for a control apparatus with few historical parallels. In a world where digital IDs are required for basic participation in society, dissent becomes not just dangerous, but practically impossible. Refusing to comply could mean being locked out of markets altogether.
The use of biometrics for seemingly benign tasks—such as lunch lines in schools or phone logins—accustoms the population, particularly children, to continuous bodily monitoring. This normalization is described as a kind of “instrumentalization of the body,” where human physiology becomes another data point in a transactional economy.
5. Transhumanism as Secular Eschatology
The essay connects these developments to the ideology of transhumanism, a movement that seeks to enhance or “upgrade” the human condition using biotechnology, AI, and genetic modification. Harari, along with figures like Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, and George Church, is portrayed as a leading voice in this space.
Transhumanists view biological limitations—aging, disease, emotional instability, and even death—as technical problems to be solved. The dream is to re-engineer human nature itself, potentially uploading consciousness to digital systems and eliminating the need for a physical body altogether.
Kheriaty critiques this vision as both metaphysically incoherent and ethically disastrous. The notion that a person can be reduced to data and transferred to the cloud is described as a modern form of Gnosticism—a belief that salvation lies in shedding the material world. He asserts that this dream of immortality through technology is not science, but religion: a “pseudo-religion for a secular age,” which falsely promises salvation without grappling with the realities of embodiment and moral limitation.
6. Cultural and Political Naivety
Though Harari occasionally warns of the dangers of totalitarianism and data concentration, Kheriaty finds his proposed solutions—such as “surveilling the government” in return—deeply naïve. Surveillance, once established, flows asymmetrically: institutions with power do not easily relinquish it. Mutual surveillance is not a safeguard but a fantasy.
Similarly, the WEF’s slogans (such as “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”) suggest a future organized around subscription-based economies where ownership disappears. In such a world, autonomy is minimal, and dependency on centralized systems becomes total.
7. A Fictional Parallel: C.S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength”
To underscore his concerns, Kheriaty draws an extended parallel with C.S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, which imagines a technocratic elite attempting to refashion the world into a sterile, artificial utopia. One character, Filostrato, envisions a world without organic life—no trees, birds, or decay—only lifeless perfection controlled by switches and algorithms.
Kheriaty argues that this fictional dystopia resembles Harari’s vision: a hygienic, mechanized world cleansed of the unpredictability, messiness, and contingency of natural life. He suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, society took several steps toward this dream—eliminating physical contact, moving interactions online, and accepting pervasive surveillance—all in the name of safety.
8. The Transhumanist Project as a Philosophy of Death
Kheriaty concludes that despite its claims to pursue life, intelligence, and human flourishing, the transhumanist agenda is ultimately a philosophy of death. It seeks to abolish not only disease and suffering but the organic processes of life itself. By rejecting embodiment, contingency, and death as intrinsic parts of human experience, transhumanism erodes the very foundations of human dignity.
Quoting the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce, he notes that ideologies founded on false premises often achieve the opposite of what they intend. In this case, a philosophy that seeks immortality and control may lead instead to social stagnation, loss of meaning, and systemic oppression.
Final Judgment
Aaron Kheriaty presents a wide-ranging and deeply skeptical analysis of the AI-transhumanism complex, with a focus on Yuval Harari’s philosophical claims and the institutional ambitions of the World Economic Forum. The piece asserts that the convergence of big data, biometric monitoring, and ideological zeal for “human enhancement” forms not just a technological agenda, but a civilizational threat. Kheriaty warns that unless these trajectories are openly debated and resisted, society may find itself locked into a system that is fundamentally antihuman—technologically advanced, but spiritually and morally bankrupt.