Surveillance

Fun fact, the US has a land area of 9.8 million km^2. That means a $1000 drone could be put over every square kilometer for $9.8B, which is like 1/100 of the United States defense budget. Yes I know there'd be extra costs but it's in the ballpark of being practical now. Think about a drone being every square kilometer in the sky, that means you could probably see multiple of them literally no matter where you went in the country.

Other fun fact, there are millions of microbes in every gram of soil. Imagine if we could spread nanobots across the Earth in even 1/1000 of the concentration which would provide real time data.

Within this century it could become possible to tag any and every manufactured object with a tracking chip. Now imagine the growth of virtual worlds and the implications for surveillance there, which if anything are even greater. I feel like the possibility and even ease of crazy levels of surveillance and data collection is a fundamental shift in technology and society that's been happening for a long time but will go into hyperdrive with new technologies and AI analysis. I think this is one of the most fundamental issues that society will have to grapple with. What do you think about this?