The Coming Storm

S2: 7. Wonderland

In the 1990s a group of futurist thinkers meet on one of the world’s first email lists. The Extropians imagine a world of augmented human bodies, nanotechnology, cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. Now, some of the thinkers on that email list are turning that AI future into a reality. But others are now worried - what if the AI ends up in charge of us all?As we head into an epochal shift for humanity, questions about democracy and tyranny run through the debates about how fast or slow to move forward. Because we don’t want to end up living in the Matrix…Producer: Lucy Proctor
Sound design and mix: James Beard
Editor: Richard Vadon
Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray
Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke
Original music: Pete CunninghamCREDITS:
Timothy Leary 1992 half-hour appearance with cable TV host Skip E Lowe, copyright unknown, Alan Eichler, YouTubeAfter all, the body is an extension of fashion, Natasha Vita More, YouTube

America through the looking glass - enter a world where nothing is as it seems.As America heads into a presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse dives back into the labyrinthine rabbit warren of American conspiracy culture. Whilst liberals across the world worry about a possible return of Donald Trump, millions of Americans are convinced that their democracy has already been highjacked - by a sinister Deep State cabal. How did this happen? And who is behind it? That's the story that Gabriel Gatehouse is investigating in this series of The Coming Storm.The search for the origins of this story takes Gabriel inside a paranoid political group that tried to build its own Deep State during the Cold War, now back in fashion in the conservative backwaters of western mountain states. Gabriel meets the January 6 rioters running for office who see their detention as political imprisonment in gulags, and the militia men convinced the CIA and FBI are working against the American people. In the background lurk the tech utopian ideologues, using their vast wealth and power to fund conspiracy flavoured content as they work to create sovereign states free of all government control. And online, amateur finance bros foment distrust of government, central banks and giant financial institutions to millions of followers.What were once fringe ideas have burst into the mainstream. Conspiracy theories have become central planks of Trump's Republican Party, while Democrats run on dark warnings about the end of democracy. With both sides convinced the other is an existential threat, what are the prospects for the survival of the American political system?