It started quietly. Governments didn’t outlaw cryptography or decentralized protocols outright. Instead they pressured Apple, Microsoft, Google, Intel, AMD, and every other major vendor of chips, operating systems, and browsers to "comply with national security".

Phase 1, the AI backdoor: Every new device shipped with a mandatory Trusted AI Module (TAM). Officially it was marketed as anti-fraud and child protection. In reality, TAM was a resident AI agent with kernel-level hooks. It intercepted every program running on the machine, scanned for "dangerous math", and reported "anomalous behavior" upstream. People were told it was like antivirus. Few realized it was more powerful than any rootkit ever devised.

Phase 2, obsolescence of the old machines: At first people clung to their older laptops, Raspberry Pis, and off-grid servers. But updates for software and browsers stopped. ISPs began blocking traffic from “non-compliant devices” under new cybercrime laws. Slowly, the ability to transact online with older hardware dwindled, and people were forced onto the new stack.

Phase 3, The ban on certain math: With TAM installed everywhere, governments drew the line. Generating ECDSA or Ed25519 keypairs outside a licensed wallet became a felony. Running algorithms that resembled zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, or lattice-based crypto flagged you instantly. Even trying to code a prime sieve in Python could raise a “suspicious math” alert.

The AI didn’t need to understand your code. It had been trained on millions of cryptographic patterns. Anything too close to “forbidden math” was shut down in milliseconds.

Phase 4, The controlled economy: Self-custody vanished. All wallets were issued by state-approved custodians. Stablecoins like USDC became the backbone of commerce, but every transaction was pre-cleared through TAM. "Black math" like Monero-style ring signatures was criminalized as digital terrorism. Developers who published open-source privacy code were charged the same as arms traffickers.

Most citizens adjusted. Many never knew the difference. They tapped their phones, paid with their faces, and believed the world was more secure.

The underground: Well, math never dies. Some researchers smuggled offline devices into Faraday cages, building communities around "free math" computing. Others designed analog cryptography using dice, cards, and physical randomness to create keys beyond the reach of TAM. A global underground grew, passing secrets on optical disks, QR tattoos, and even memorized seed phrases.

They were labeled extremists, but they thought of themselves as preservationists, keeping alive the idea that numbers could still be free.

The sad part is, this isn't that far off from what is being contemplated with Chat Control in EU, etc. In the 1990s, strong encryption itself in the US was considered "munitions" and prevented from export. Here is a global map of the war on end-to-end encryption: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-encryption/214