The state desires what the voters demand. Apathy will be the death of liberty.

It is a simple matter to make voters demand central control of all computing resources. All they have to do is mention the fact that terrorists, drug dealers and child molesters also happen to be computer users. Can't even offer a counter-argument against that without being marked as a pedophile sympathizer.

Put enough fear into the population and they'll accept anything any authority presents as a solution. That's the danger of relying on democracy. You depend on the public to do the right thing and the public is easily manipulated.

This is exactly the apathy that threatens democracy.

What do you suggest? Give up? You have condemned democracy itself.

That's right!

This sounds entirely plausible but I wouldn't be surprised if it's utter incompetence of government workers (most of them are old and have no idea how the internet works) and fear mongering on behalf of tech companies that if we regulate, we'll lose the tech race to boogeyman competitor country of the decade.

Regulating big tech and keeping all tech under government's thumb are not at odds, so it makes me lean towards incompetence as the more likely culprit.

I predict there will be some government intervention but it'll be clumsy and counter-productive for at least another decade or two.