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AI, Surveillance, and the Fight for Digital Sovereignty | Near's Illia Polosukhin

Dienstag, 23. Juni 2026 · 57 min

MP3

Shownotes

What happens when powerful AI requires an ID, governments can restrict access by country, and your most private data flows through centralized systems? NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain why AI export controls could fracture the internet, how nationalized AI could become a surveillance layer, and why decentralized, user-owned AI may be the only real alternative. They also unpack Ironclaw, confidential inference, private agents, and NEAR’s push to make AI and assets fully sovereign.

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TIMESTAMPS

Intro
Pandora’s Box Opens
AI Meets Government
Decentralizing the Stack
Why Ban Fable?
Internet Balkanization
KYC for AI?
Nationalized Models
Building Private AI
Agent Marketplace
User-Owned Alignment
Winning Against Giants
Regulation Fuels Crypto
Global AI Adoption
Compute Is the Bottleneck
Enterprise Use Cases
Confidential TVL Explained
Full Sovereign Mode

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RESOURCES

Illia Polosukhin
x.com/ilblackdragon

Near Protocol
near.org

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
bankless.com/disclosures

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