When Data Becomes a Weapon: Why Democracy Needs DEI Safeguards

Photo by rishi on Unsplash

By Effenus Henderson

The current administration’s push to consolidate information and data across federal agencies is framed as efficiency. Centralized data, we are told, will streamline government and reduce redundancy. But history and experience warn us that when information is concentrated without accountability, it becomes less a tool of service and more a weapon of control.

As Yuval Noah Harari argues in Nexus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, information networks are never neutral. They can unite societies, but they can also amplify manipulation, enforce conformity, and erase dissent. When political leaders claim that “they alone truly represent the people,” and when oligarchs with outsized influence align with that claim, consolidated data becomes a dangerous accelerant for authoritarian power.

The risk is particularly grave for people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ communities, religious minorities, and other historically marginalized groups. What begins as data for coordination can quickly morph into surveillance at scale. Biometric records, personal histories, and community patterns can be weaponized to monitor, categorize, and even criminalize.

We have seen this before. In Nazi Germany, census data was used to identify Jews. In East Germany, the…