[salawat]

From my point of view it's a theoretical gamble. Canada, the U.S.'s neighbor to the north, already abised their OFAC equivalent against people protesting the actions of their Federal Government. Whether you agreed with why the people were protesting, think about that really, really, hard*. Your access to every asset cut off for what amounts to a political issue. At no other time in history, has such an action been possible in so short a time. At no point in time has one sitting in a chair on the other side of the country can completely change your life situation with a tap of the enter key.

We only have these systems implemented currently in places like finance or immigration, or National Civil Service, but by and large, most people are relatively ignorant of the increasingly broad reach of these systems, while at the same time, these systems grow to become more and more attractive targets for both hostile subversion, or just those seeking a means to power.

Historically, we had in built safeties to these sorts of systems because they consisted largely of individual human beings. Each component weighing in in such a way where even the most extreme individual at the top setting off the action potential would on average be damped. Either by non-cooperation of constituent parts (conscientious objection), dropping of signal (not enough people or resources to execute).

With computerization, we're removing more and more of that damping; we're entering a phase of civilization where we're increasingly in danger of our technological capability outstripping our civilizational capability to introspect all the links in the chain for one, and to restore things. It ain't a case of "a man can't do much damage in 4 years" anymore.