Why the U.S. is very unlikely to become Russia-style authoritarian any time soon

[Hardkill]

I asked ChatGPT many questions on whether or not it thinks that the US will fall into a dictatorship like in Russia because of Trumpism. 

It said that that is very unlikely to happen for the following reasons:

 

Structural guardrails

Federalism & fragmentation: 50 states + thousands of counties/towns run elections, police, courts, and schools. There’s no single switch to flip.

Independent judiciary by design: Life-tenured federal judges with protected pay; removal only by impeachment. State courts use mixed selection systems—no one pipeline to capture.

Two-key appointment system: Presidents nominate, but the Senate confirms; turnover is staggered over decades, preventing personalist control.

Decentralized elections with paper trails: Nearly universal paper ballots / verifiable records, routine audits, and bipartisan local administration.

Reformed electoral certification: Post-2020 reforms (e.g., clarifying the VP’s ceremonial role, raising objection thresholds) closed a major loophole for national subversion.

 

Legal and constitutional brakes

First Amendment: Robust protections for press, speech, assembly—any blanket crackdown on critics/journalists gets enjoined fast.

Due process & jury trials: Independent courts and juries, plus state/federal dual sovereignty, make retaliatory prosecutions hard to sustain.

Military limits at home: Posse Comitatus and a narrow Insurrection Act; the armed forces are trained to refuse unlawful domestic orders.

 

Plural power centers

Free press & civil society: Investigative media, NGOs, universities, bar associations, watchdogs, and opposition parties operate freely and sue effectively.

Elected and independent officials: Governors, state AGs, secretaries of state, DAs, and local clerks can—and do—resist federal overreach.

Markets and investors: Heavy-handed illiberal moves trigger immediate political, legal, and economic blowback.

 

Culture, norms, and incentives

Public opinion: Americans are frustrated with performance, but majorities still prefer democratic rules; “strongman” support remains a minority view.

Professional ethics: Judges, prosecutors, military, and career civil servants have strong norms and legal duties that resist politicization.

Transparency & detection: FOIA/public-records laws, disclosures, audits, inspectors general, whistleblower protections, and an adversarial press raise the cost of corruption or covert schemes.

 

What makes the U.S. different from Russia’s path

No captured national media system: Government cannot lawfully nationalize or centrally script news; independent outlets proliferate.

No centralized judicial discipline machine: The executive cannot hire/fire/discipline judges for outcomes; career leverage is limited.

Competition remains real: Opposition candidates, parties, and courts operate nationwide; alternation of power happens regularly.

 

Realistic risks to watch (not Russia-level, but worth vigilance)

Soft illiberalism: extreme gerrymanders, partisan election-law “hardball,” chilling effects on protest/activism, or selective investigations.

Concentrated influence that’s legal: big money in politics, media concentration, targeted funding of state/local offices.

Disinformation & intimidation: threats to election workers, deepfakes, and harassment that strain administration capacity.

 

Early-warning lights

Proposals to let the executive discipline or remove judges.

Laws that criminalize routine journalism or ban opposition on vague grounds.

Moves to bar independent election observers, centralize election control, or curtail paper audits.

Attempts to nationalize/censor major media or systematically block civil society.

 

U.S. institutions are messy by design, with many veto points, strong constitutional rights, and a vibrant ecosystem of watchdogs. That architecture—plus public culture that still leans pro-democracy—makes a Russia-style authoritarian turn extraordinarily hard to execute or sustain. Continuous attention to the “soft” risks keeps it that way.

[Infinity16]

Outside of Chat GPT, the Democracy Index by The Economist ranks countries by electoral process, government health, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties, scoring countries from 0 to 10. The index dates back to 2006 and goes up to 2024. The US started with a score of 8.22 in 2006 and got a score of 7.85 in 2024. While the US has experienced a decline in democracy, it's not a sharp one.

[Daniel Balan]

I will never ask any AI anything ever. AI is the most filthy thing mankind invented. I asked it if communism was bad from my phone and it gave me a lot of arguments for why it was bad. Then I asked the same thing from the phone of one of my far right acquaintances, and it said that communism was great and a strong man dictator is the only thing ensuring that the globalist foreigners don't steal our country. 

TL:DR AI is very bad for one's epistemology. All it does is to further deepen yourself in your pre existing worldview and it does so without shame. If it senses that you are a liberal, it feeds you liberal confirmation bias. 

From now on I will never ever use AI to make sense of the world.

Edited October 22 by Daniel Balan

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Can't you think for yourselves, or read a book? LOL

[BlueOak]

On 22/10/2025 at 6:58 AM, Daniel Balan said:

I will never ask any AI anything ever. AI is the most filthy thing mankind invented. I asked it if communism was bad from my phone and it gave me a lot of arguments for why it was bad. Then I asked the same thing from the phone of one of my far right acquaintances, and it said that communism was great and a strong man dictator is the only thing ensuring that the globalist foreigners don't steal our country. 

TL:DR AI is very bad for one's epistemology. All it does is to further deepen yourself in your pre existing worldview and it does so without shame. If it senses that you are a liberal, it feeds you liberal confirmation bias. 

From now on I will never ever use AI to make sense of the world.

Anything is 'good' or 'bad' from different perspectives.

It's the limitations of a stage green approach. One day someone will tell me the limitations of yellow more often :), but I think AI sits in the yellow space, at least when I interact with it. When I interact with it, I get long modeled and objective information or data sets. Because i've asked for that.
 

On 22/10/2025 at 7:01 AM, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Can't you think for yourselves, or read a book? LOL

I can formulate questions from the AI with guardrails that increase my capacity to understand something; why would I not use it?
It takes my initial thought and/or modelling or framing; it then takes me checking it for consistency, which by the way, its relatively bad at. Maybe 90%-95% of the time it's consistent if you ask for multiple outputs of specific data sets, which is actually relatively poor and way below what most would achieve on the same task. Though this will improve, I feel.

I would say the limiting thing for me is, I will never be shown a stage turquoise approach and thus never elevate anything I post unless I directly ask for it. BTW you can too, ask for a stage yellow, turquoise or green spiral dynamics approach and framing to your question. You could ask for something beyond this too, but that would be more ill defined.
 

Edited October 23 by BlueOak

[Hardkill]

 

@Daniel Balan @NewKidOnTheBlock I get what you're saying and there is some truth to what you're saying about how using ChatGPT in the wrong way can lead to too much groupthink and atrophy of critical thinking skills and original thought. 

However, I constantly push back against AI whenever I find something it says that I don't agree with or doesn't add up. I also, try the best that I can to have it respond to me with little to no bias towards my views.

Edited October 22 by Hardkill

[Daniel Balan]

11 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

 

@Daniel Balan @NewKidOnTheBlock I get what you're saying and there is some truth to what you're saying about how using ChatGPT in the wrong way can lead to too much group think and atrophy of critical thinking skills and original thought. 

However, I constantly push back against AI whenever I find something it says that I don't agree with or doesn't add up.

I do that too when I use AI, but for some reasons it always echoes back to me my pre existing worldview. I can't be already right on everything I already believe so it must be the case that AI is the same as Facebook, it only presents you in the feed your favorite conspiracy theories and your pre existing political agenda. Also when I push back against AI in the end it always reconfirms my pre existing bias. 

Also I asked a far right nationalist acquaintance for his phone, I know that he also uses chatgpt to get information and I was shocked that it basically gave him the exact opposite information with the same conviction on the same questions or promts that I ask chatgpt on my account and device.

This far right friend is nostalgic for the communist dictatorship from the cold war era and chatgpt confirmed, validated and further strengthened his self bias for dictatorship and totalitarianism saying that people in deed lived a more prosperous life under communism and now people have it worse and they don't have a stable job etc. Basically chatgpt was spewing communist propaganda that was displayed on tv during that era.

That was the moment I decided I will never ask AI to give me information that could potentially shape my political worldview. 

As of now I only ask it stuff about geography or facts from society such as who was Michael Jackson or other petty stuff like this.

Edited October 22 by Daniel Balan

[Hardkill]

4 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

I do that too when I use AI, but for some reasons it always echoes back to me my pre existing worldview. I can't be already right on everything I already believe so it must be the case that AI is the same as Facebook, it only presents you in the feed your favorite conspiracy theories and your pre existing political agenda. Also when I push back against AI in the end it always reconfirms my pre existing bias. 

Also I asked a far right nationalist acquaintance for his phone, I know that he also uses chatgpt to get information and I was shocked that it basically gave him the exact opposite information with the same conviction on the same questions or promts that I ask chatgpt on my account and device.

This far right friend is nostalgic for the communist dictatorship from the cold war era and chatgpt confirmed, validated and further strengthened his self bias for dictatorship and totalitarianism saying that people in deed lived a more prosperous life under communism and now people have it worse and they don't have a stable job etc. Basically chatgpt was spewing communist propaganda that was displayed on tv during that era.

That was the moment I decided I will never ask AI to give me information that could potentially shape my political worldview. 

As of now I only ask it stuff about geography or facts from society such as who was Michael Jackson or other petty stuff like this.

What AI chat do you use and did you buy any paid versions?

[Daniel Balan]

7 hours ago, Hardkill said:

What AI chat do you use and did you buy any paid versions?

Chatgpt, grok, deepseek. Those I used the most. I haven't paid any subscription to them thus far.

[BlueOak]

I am not so sure as the OP.

Its a pretty good strategy. Disrupt the urban vote, flip the democratic areas come election time.