As we entered 2026, we began seeing skyrocketing prices for storage, RAM, and GPUs. This resembles a mafia-style collusion by big tech on a scale we have never experienced in our lifetimes. This year is a make-or-break moment for how AI will shape humanity for the next millennium. We are witnessing, in real time, major technology companies that produce both software and hardware acting in clear coordination against humanity as a whole. Many would argue that this is “only” a strategic and systematic choking campaign aimed at consumers and prosumers—the middle class—designed to control access to AI computing and force all AI-based workloads into the cloud. This effectively turns every human user into a fully controlled, closely studied beta tester and an unpaid AI trainer, often without direct consent or even awareness. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. AI is here to stay. Nearly all human interactions and actions across devices will soon occur in partnership with AI systems, giant technology platforms, and pervasive surveillance algorithms. We have already seen how little large tech corporations respected copyrights, creative licensing, patents, intellectual property, and other legal frameworks that once allowed individuals to grow, develop, and rise through the social hierarchy—when they vacuumed up vast amounts of human creativity, intelligence, and expression to train their models. The middle class is now little more than a shell, and what remains is being extracted through forced AI integration. Your actions, thoughts, opinions, and clicks are computed in real time, approaching near-total predictability. This means you are increasingly understood, mapped, and rendered predictable in your behavior, potential, and capabilities. In other words, we have crossed from a “store and analyze later” surveillance era into one where data is stored, analyzed instantly, and used to construct a continuous profile of each individual’s past, present, and future self. If you do not demand access to sufficiently powerful local computing—and instead accept being forced into cloud-based AI systems—you must recognize the consequences. You are effectively surrendering what may be your last fundamental human right: autonomy, also known as the right to self-determination.