READ: Dress rehearsal for a police state?

The White House takeover of D.C. could be worse than you think.

Patrick Tucker at Defense One has a great essay out this week about what could happen as Trump takes over Washington with U.S. troops: the federalization of the D.C. police, full integration with the National Guard and federal law enforcement, and the quiet arrival of surveillance technology most Americans have only seen in spy thrillers.

Having served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, I can tell you that his forecast isn’t theoretical. I’ve seen firsthand how these powers can be used and how quickly they become normalized. What’s more, there’s a grave risk that — as the White House takes over Washington — they’ll turn it into a test lab for crackdowns in other cities.

First, as D.C.’s police are federalized, local safeguards and oversight will evaporate. Decisions about surveillance won’t be made by city officials anymore; they’ll be made by Trump’s loyal aides — political appointees with agendas far beyond public safety. That means technology developed for the battlefield (such as aerial cell phone intercepts and facial recognition) could start to be deployed in the streets of the nation’s capital without the usual safeguards.

We’ve seen hints of this before. In 2020 during racial justice protests, DHS reportedly deployed military aircraft over D.C. to vacuum up phone data from thousands of unsuspecting residents, while federal agents set up “Stingray” devices to mimic cell towers and intercept communications. Facial recognition networks — some of them poorly tested and prone to error — were also allegedly used to identify and track protesters.

Second, Trump’s emergency declaration will create the perfect opportunity to combine those tools with new ones. Officials have already been searching for opportunities to deploy sophisticated AI systems in the name of public safety, e.g. tech that can scan live video for faces, behaviors, and even emotional cues; apps that let officers identify you on the spot from a single photo; and algorithms that map your social network from your phone records and online activity.

These tools may be justified as a way to fight gangs or drug networks. But they can just as easily be pointed at political opponents, journalists, or ordinary citizens exercising their rights. I watched inside government as intelligence-gathering efforts strayed into monitoring dissent, and I do not believe the civil-liberties safeguards are adequate against a chief executive hellbent on breaking the law.

So to put it another way, Washington is about to become a testbed. Trump’s long-held fantasies about domestic repression will be given a sandbox at the foot of the White House. And if the playbook works here, it will be rolled out to other cities, especially those whose politics clash with the President’s. The lesson from my time working under Trump was simple: once extraordinary powers are used, they’re rarely rolled back.

Why should you care? Because D.C. residents will be the first subjects, and you might be next. I would normally re-read the above and think it sounded outlandish, yet Trump himself is already boasting about his plans to federalize security across the land.

The question now is this: will Americans accept a permanent fusion of military, federal police, and advanced surveillance in our daily lives — a police state — or will they resist?

(P.S. Please forward this to others as you see fit. Folks need to realize how serious the situation is becoming — and how it could spiral.)