Moral Panics Are the Preferred Tool to Gain Control of Society

Yes, I stole that from AI. Rational people recognize moral panics when we see them because they all have the same basic contours. 

The United States has been leaping from one moral panic to the next: Black Lives Matter, MeToo, George Floyd, and now data centers plus the specter of AI-driven human extinction. In every case a genuine problem exists, but the threat is inflated out of all proportion and the…

— Timur Kuran (@timurkuran) September 20, 2026

The United States has been leaping  from one moral panic to the next: Black Lives Matter, MeToo, George Floyd, and now data centers plus the specter of AI-driven human extinction. In every case a genuine problem exists, but the threat is inflated out of all proportion and the costs of overreaction are overlooked. The resulting hysteria blocks clear thinking and closes off rational discussion. Consequently, individuals never notice that self-appointed experts are distorting the facts for their own gain. 

Companies with billions in AI stakes are perfectly capable of staging “rogue LLM” incidents to stampede politicians into regulation that keeps out competitors or simply reduces their own liability. 

Previous panics have already damaged trust in institutions and among ourselves. They have also intensified the political polarization that now endangers American democracy. We should resist the current panic rather than feed it. The costs of getting this one wrong dwarf those of the last several.

The current panic centers on AI, and I have discussed why it is irrational several times already, but it is just one of many we have suffered through since the Obama years, and it is similar in type to those that have plagued societies since time immemorial. And, of course, moral panics are just a variation on a theme: mass manias in general. 

There is nothing new about moral panics as a phenomenon; what is new is their frequency and amplification in the mass media and by groups of people who benefit from them for any number of reasons. 

Moral panics may originate in imaginary fears, such as the "Satanic panic" that swept the nation in the 80s and died off in the 90s. But as often as not, they originate from the appearance of some real but manageable problem that gets blown way out of proportion. Some problem or potential problem becomes an "existential threat," and because it is one, all the ordinary ways in which we solve problems get tossed out the window. 

Politics, democratic decision-making, analyses of costs and benefits of potential solutions, fiscal constraints, the necessity of debate and rational examination all go out the window, replaced by the centralization of power in the hands of "experts," censorship of alternative views, the identification of saints and sinners, harsh punishments for perceived violations of social norms, and a willingness to pay any cost to "solve" the problem. 

Consider how many moral panics we have suffered over the past 15 years: climate change, which goes back farther, #MeToo, abolish the police, COVID, the rise of alphabet ideology, Israeli "genocide," "decolonization," "white supremacy," and now the predicted apocalypse of AI terminators roaming the land. I'm sure I missed some, particularly if the attempt to generate one misfired. 

They are all tied together by common themes, and generally have been aimed at destroying or silencing conservatives and all skeptics. 

Many of these have some kernel of truth in them, and none of them presents a real existential threat. Some of the problems are big, like COVID, and some are almost completely made up, such as a rising tide of white supremacy or trans kids killing themselves off. None of them is remotely the scale of a problem that requires a massive, whole-of-society, no-holds-barred instant response without weighing costs and benefits. 

And in none of them has it been permitted by the elites to enter into debates. If you try, you might get "Kirked," or at least threatened and canceled. 

So what are the common threads? 

• Apocalypse Now
• Transfer power and resources to a new priesthood of experts who have identified the problem and have ready solutions. 
• No consideration of the costs or actual benefits of proposed solutions
• Massive social pressure put on dissenters 
• Use of the media to create a boiling point
• Social status increases or decreases based on acceptance of the socially approved position

COVID is the archetype because it includes all these characteristics at the maximum level, and Climate Change and the AI panic have aspired to that same level with a bit less success. 

Moral panics always produce winners and losers, but in recent years the winners have pretty much always been the left and/or the people who already have money and power and ready access to and influence with the media. 

With climate change, the motives are obvious, once you abstract out the people who have adopted the panic as a substitute religion. Trillions of dollars have been transferred from ordinary people/taxpayers to interested parties who get regulations and subsidies; politicians and bureaucrats gain power over the economy and social behavior; the media gains access and influence and becomes the sole source of truth; social status becomes tied to repeating the right opinions; and your political opponents are easy to demonize because they are willing to kill everybody off because of self-interest. 

The AI moral panic has similar benefits to all concerned. Economic control, centralized information, censorship of dissenters on all issues, transfer of power to government and favored corporations, elimination of liability for the people "solving" the problem, control over one of the most powerful technologies ever invented, and the creation of an oligopoly that will harvest lots and lots of money. 

Rahm Emmanuel popularized the maxim "Never let a good crisis go to waste," and, as much as anything, that reflects the thinking of those who seek to benefit from the steady stream of moral crises we have been fed. Ordinarily rational people are willing to sacrifice their own money and power and short-circuit democratic decision-making as the only solution to an existential threat, and that is just too darn useful to the people pushing the crisis to ignore. 

Of course, not everyone caught up in the crisis mentality is a shill for the elite; in fact, most people are unwitting victims of those trying to benefit. 

Our role is to help people become less susceptible to the crises, and the most frustrating thing is how hard it is to do so. Look at the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, and it's dispiriting to see how many people who got caught up in the frenzy are now trying to memory-hole it. 

We can't let them.