The post Vitalik Buterin Says Surveillance Is Not “Dystopian”: It Is a Real Shift in Political Power appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

TLDR: Buterin says calling surveillance “dystopian” without context fails to persuade those outside the privacy debate.  Iran’s model shows how dictatorship plus surveillance lets regimes survive with almost no public coalition support.  Western surveillance differs by projecting medium control globally, reaching individuals far beyond its own borders.  Buterin calls for basic internet access of 1 Mbps to be treated as a right outside nation-state control.   Surveillance and its role in shifting political power have drawn attention from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In a recent X post, Buterin argued that mass surveillance is not merely “dystopian” in an aesthetic sense. Rather, it produces a measurable change in the balance of power between citizens and the state. He pointed to Iran as a central example of how surveillance enables a regime to maintain control with minimal public support. When Surveillance Becomes a Tool of Political Control Buterin shared a blog post examining Iran’s digital surveillance infrastructure in detail. He noted that freedom advocates often label such systems “dystopian” without explaining the concrete harm involved. This framing, he wrote, acts as a “semantic stop sign.” It signals disapproval but does little to persuade those outside the same political sphere. The actual harm, Buterin argued, is a clear and measurable shift in political power. Surveillance gives governments the means to detect and punish challenges to the status quo before they grow. Citizens, as a result, lose any real opportunity to push for political change. This dynamic allows a regime to remain in power for an indefinite period. He drew on The Dictator’s Handbook to explain the broader historical pattern at work. The book separates governments into large-coalition and small-coalition types. Large-coalition governments must satisfy a broader base of people and tend to govern more humanely. Small-coalition ones have far less incentive to serve…

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Filed under: News - @ February 18, 2026 8:25 pm