The Countdown to Venezuela’s Digital-AI Authoritarian Future: Two Clocks in a Strategic Race

This article is available in Spanish here. 

Venezuela is in a strategic race against time. Nicolás Maduro’s regime—with direct Chinese and Cuban support—is building a predictive authoritarian control system that fuses biometric surveillance, AI-driven analytics, and foreign advisory support to eliminate dissent before it emerges. Accelerated after the contested 2024 election, this “digital jail” aims to ensure that no fraud claims or protests disrupt the 2030 election, securing total control by 10 January 2031—the next presidential inauguration. In irregular warfare terms, it is a contest between a maturing counter-resistance architecture and a fragmented opposition with a narrowing window to act.

Two Clocks

Two clocks are ticking in Venezuela. One belongs to Nicolás Maduro, racing to complete a digital control system by the 2030 presidential election to prevent a repeat of the 2024 election’s fraud allegations, protests, and unrest.[1] This could happen earlier if rapid technological advances, substantial new funding, or some other unexpected surge of external support allows the regime to accelerate deployment, further narrowing the window for the opposition to act.

The other belongs to the Venezuelan people, who have until the day before to stop the final lock from snapping shut. In irregular warfare terms, this is a race between a maturing counter-resistance architecture and a fragmented opposition struggling to adapt. Which clock reaches zero first will determine whether Venezuela becomes the hemisphere’s first fully realized digital authoritarian state—or whether its people reclaim the possibility of democratic governance.

This contest is not hypothetical, and the timelines are not symbolic. Maduro’s side is working methodically toward a fixed operational goal: building a layered system that fuses biometric surveillance, AI-enabled analytics, and foreign advisory support to control the population’s physical and cognitive space. The 2024 election—marked by documented fraud, protests, and communication crackdowns—exposed vulnerabilities the regime is now racing to eliminate.[2]

The opposition’s side, by contrast, is constrained by time, resources, and fragmentation—yet still holds a narrowing opportunity to disrupt the regime’s plans.

The humanitarian crisis—empty shelves, hollow faces, and mass migration—remains the visible surface. Beneath it lies the strategic reality: the regime is moving to close Venezuela’s last open spaces for dissent. The outcome will not be decided in international courtrooms or exile conferences, but in the barrios, streets, and clandestine networks inside the country. And the clock is running.

The Regime’s Clock: Doomsday on Maduro’s Desk 

On Maduro’s desk sits a figurative Doomsday Clock ticking down to January 2031. The regime doesn’t want a repeat of the public outcry from 2024 presidential election.

That completion point could come sooner if breakthroughs in technology, or some unexpected surge of external support allows faster system integration. When the alarm rings, billions of dollars in Chinese technology and Cuban intelligence expertise will have fused into an unbreakable chain around the Venezuelan population.

The regime is building more than a surveillance system—it is constructing a predictive authoritarianism model designed to anticipate, isolate, and neutralize dissent before it can organize. The emerging “digital jail” is already visible in its component parts:

• The Fatherland Card (Carnet de la Patria)—built with assistance from Chinese telecom giant ZTE—serves as a biometric ID tied to subsidies, pensions, healthcare, and food programs. Data collected includes medical history, voting behavior, and party [3] Human Rights Watchhas documented multiple cases of citizens denied Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP) food boxes or other benefits after criticizing officials.[4]
• Telecommunications control—all ISPs in Venezuela operate under the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL). The state internet service provider (ISP), CANTV, has throttled or blocked access to independent media, Wikipedia, livestreams, and messaging platforms, particularly during elections or protests.[5][6] Access Now and VE Sin Filtro have traced these outages to targeted, not accidental, disruptions.[7] The regime has also moved against social media platforms like X and WhatsApp to repress opposition communication.[8]
• Foreign advisory integration—Cuban intelligence officers are embedded within Venezuela’s security services, while Chinese technical advisors maintain ZTE’s data infrastructure.[9] These inputs are used to flag “disloyal” citizens in near-real time.
• AI-assisted monitoring—procurement records and Ministry of Science & Technology announcements indicate active investment in machine learning systems to detect and predict “social instability,” integrating Fatherland Card data, telecom metadata, and electoral databases.[10][11][12]

These are not isolated measures—they are converging into a layered control architecture: biometric access to services, mass metadata collection, content filtering, and algorithmic risk scoring. By 2031, if unopposed, the system will be fully operational—a “Cuba with oil,” fortified by data instead of just guns.

The People’s Clock: Resistance or Ruin

The opposition’s clock is running out. The 2024 election exposed the regime’s vulnerabilities but also its resolve to close communication and mobilization channels. Each year of regime progress—expanding biometric tracking, throttling platforms like X and WhatsApp, and refining AI analytics—tightens the digital noose. The opposition must disrupt this system before the 2030 election locks it in place. Over the past decade, Venezuela’s opposition has faced devastating setbacks:

• 2014 Protests– Sparked by high crime rates, inflation, and shortages, nationwide demonstrations drew hundreds of thousands. Security forces and pro-regime colectivos killed at least 43 people and arrested over 3,000. Lacking unified leadership and strategy, the movement dissipated under repression.[13]
• 2017 Protests– Triggered by the Supreme Court’s attempted dissolution of the National Assembly, protests lasted over four months. More than 120 were killed, thousands wounded, and hundreds imprisoned as security forces escalated force and intelligence penetration.[14]
• 2019 Interim Government Crisis– National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó was recognized by over 50 countries as interim president. Initial defections were limited, the military remained loyal to Maduro, and the “Operation Liberty” push collapsed. By 2021, the interim government had lost momentum and credibility.[15]
• 2024 Election Fraud– The presidential election saw systematic manipulation: disqualification of leading opposition figures, state media control, targeted internet outages, and ballot-stuffing documented by domestic and international observers. Maduro’s contested victory further demoralized the electorate and deepened opposition fragmentation.[16]

Symbolic politics are insufficient. The opposition must become a resistance movement in the irregular warfare sense—decentralized, adaptive, and committed to sustained disruption of the regime’s control systems.

Doctrinal and Theoretical Context

In US joint doctrine, irregular warfare (IW) is defined as a “violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations.”[17][18] The Venezuelan regime’s evolving control system is a textbook case of counter-resistance—the systematic reorganization of a society to deny adversaries freedom of maneuver in the human domain.

This fusion operates on three mutually reinforcing levels:

1. Physical coercion– The traditional security apparatus: armed forces, intelligence units, and regime-loyal militias used to intimidate and punish selectively. This mirrors the “coercive apparatus” concept in authoritarian durability theory.[19]
2. Cognitive domain dominance– Control over perception and decision-making through information manipulation, predictive analytics, and targeted punishment to discourage resistance formation. Joint Publication 3-13 emphasizes this as central to shaping the battlespace in the information environment.[20]
3. Targeted deprivation of services – Precision use of state resources as both carrot and stick. Unlike the blunt resource control measures of historical COIN campaigns, Venezuela’s system uses biometric tracking to ensure punishment is surgical, minimizing blowback while reinforcing loyalty.

From a resistance perspective, the operational environment matches the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC): a repressive state, eroding opposition legitimacy, and a shrinking space for organization.[21] ROC warns that once a regime controls access to resources, communications, and mobility at scale, resistance viability collapses. That is the path toward January 2031.

For US practitioners, Venezuela’s model also reflects the threat convergence described in the 2020 Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy: authoritarian regimes are integrating advanced technology, foreign advisory networks, and domestic coercive structures into resilient, sanctions-proof systems.[22] This marks a shift from traditional kinetic counterinsurgency toward data-enabled authoritarianism, requiring new resistance support frameworks.

This trajectory also resonates with the literature on surveillance capitalism. Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism describes how data extraction and predictive analytics—originally developed for commercial profit—create new asymmetries of knowledge and power between institutions and individuals. In Venezuela, these techniques are being adapted not for markets but to oppress the population, where predictive data represses rather than helps commercial decision-making. Framing the problem through this lens highlights that the Venezuelan model is not a dystopian fantasy, but part of an emerging global shift in which authoritarian regimes fuse state power with surveillance capitalism’s logics to preempt resistance.[23]

A Strategic Shift: From Opposition to Resistance

In irregular warfare, time favors the side that adapts faster. The opposition cannot match the regime’s firepower, but it can exploit vulnerabilities in three areas:

1. Information and Communication– Build secure, redundant underground networks for mobilization and intelligence-sharing, modeled on Poland’s Solidarity or Myanmar’s post-2021 resistance.[24][25]
2. Legitimacy and Exposure– Document repression systematically for international leverage, imposing sustained reputational costs on regime enablers.
3. Economic Disruption– Target key regime revenue streams through coordinated acts of civil resistance, labor action, and disruption of logistics.

These actions must be small, sustained, and locally led, avoiding the high-risk, one-off confrontations that have repeatedly failed.

Conclusion

No foreign military is coming. No court in The Hague will dismantle Venezuela’s security apparatus. The fight will be decided inside the country, in barrios, streets, and clandestine networks—not in exile.

If the opposition fails to adapt, the outcome is clear: an oil-rich, digitally fortified dictatorship capable of preemptively crushing dissent while projecting instability abroad. One that is allied to other increasingly belligerent authoritarian regimes—in China, Cuba, Russia, and Iran (and its proxy Hezbollah)—which are undermining democracies in Latin America, actively cooperating with criminal and designated terrorist entities, and seeking to facilitate narcotics trafficking into our nation.

The race between these two clocks will determine whether Venezuela becomes the hemisphere’s first fully realized digital authoritarian state or whether its people reclaim the possibility of democratic governance.

The time for hesitation is over. The people must act now—before the alarm sounds on 10 January 2031.

Endnotes

[1] “Carter Center Statement on Venezuela Election.” The Carter Center. 30 July 2024, https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2024/venezuela-073024.html.

[2] “Carter Center Finds Democracy Thwarted in Venezuela.” The Carter Center. 18 February 2025, https://www.cartercenter.org/news/features/p/democracy/center-finds-democracy-thwarted-in-venezuela.html.

[3] Angus Berwick, “How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style Social Control.” Reuters. 14 November 2018, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-zte/. Also see Alma Keshavarz and Robert J. Bunker, “Venezuela Imports Chinese Social Control System.” Operational Environment Watch. Vol. 8., Iss. 12., December 2018: 67.

[4] “Venezuela.” World Report 2021: Events of 2020. New York: Human Rights Watch. 2021, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/venezuela.

[5] “The Many Means of Surveillance and Control in Venezuela.” Access Now. 25 January 2021, https://www.accessnow.org/the-many-means-of-surveillance-and-control-in-venezuela/.

[6] “Venezuela: Freedom on the Net 2021 Country Report.” Freedom House. 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/country/venezuela/freedom-net/2021.

[7] “Sin Derchos en #Internetve Reporte 2021 [English Version: “#2021Report: Digital rights, censorship and connectivity in Venezuela].” VE Sin Filtro. 6 April 2022, https://vesinfiltro.org/noticias/2021_annual_report/.

[8] Targeted blocking of social media platforms in Venezuela documented at “2024 Elections and Internet Shutdowns Watch.” Access Now. 2024, https://www.accessnow.org/campaign/2024-elections-and-internet-shutdowns-watch/. See also, “Emboldened Offenders, Endangered Communities: Internet Shutdowns in 2024.” Access Now and #KeepItOn. February 2025, https://www.accessnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/KeepItOn-2024-Internet-Shutdowns-Annual-Report.pdf.

[9] Angus Berwick, “Imported Repression: How Cuba Taught Venezuela to Quash Military Dissent.” Reuters. 22 August 2019, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-cuba-military/.   See also, Angus Berwick, “How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style Social Control.” Reuters. 14 November 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/special-report-how-zte-helps-venezuela-create-china-style-social-control-idUSKCN1NJ1ZV/.

[10] Marianne Diaz Hernández, “Venezuela: Digital ID as a Tool of Oppression.” Tech Policy Press. 10 September 2024, https://techpolicy.press/venezuela-digital-id-as-a-tool-of-oppression/.

[11] Association for Progressive Communications (APC), “Artificial Intelligence and Social Development in Venezuela.” Global Information Society Watch. 2019, https://www.giswatch.org/sites/default/files/gisw2019_web_venezuela.pdf.

[12] Werner Kristjanpoller and Carlos Caceres, “Forecasting Social Unrest: A Machine Learning Approach.” IMF Working Paper. Vol. 2021, no. 263, November 2021: 1–29, https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2021/263/article-A001-en.xml.

[13] “What lies behind the protests in Venezuela?” BBC News. 27 March 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-26335287.  

[14] Girish Gupta and Anggy Polanco, “All eyes on Venezuela military after protests, vote.” Reuters. 1 August 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/all-eyes-on-venezuela-military-after-protests-vote-idUSKBN1AH5GK/.

[15] Jeff Wallenfeldt, “Juan Guaidó.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 24 July 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Juan-Guaido.

[16] “Carter Center Statement on Venezuela Election.” The Carter Center. 30 July 2024, https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2024/venezuela-073024.html.

[17] US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept (JOC), Version 1.0. Washington, DC: US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 11 September 2007,  https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/concepts/joc_iw_v1.pdf.

[18] Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency. Washington, DC: US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 2022, https://irp.fas.org/doddir/dod/jp3_24.pdf.

[19] Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Politics. Vol. 36, no. 2, 2004: 139–157, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4150140?origin=crossref.

[20] Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model.” RAND. 11 July 2016, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html.

[21] Otto C. Fiala, Ed., Resistance Operating Concept (ROC). US Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR). MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2020.

[22] Summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy. Washington, DC: US Department of Defense. January 2020, https://media.defense.gov/2020/Oct/02/2002510472/-1/-1/0/Irregular-Warfare-Annex-to-the-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.PDF.

[23] Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs, 2019.

[24] Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, 3rd Ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. See also Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

[25] “Responding to the Myanmar Coup.” Asia Briefing No. 166. International Crisis Group. 16 February 2021, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/b166-responding-myanmar-coup. See also, “Myanmar: Internet Restrictions Severely Impact Fundamental Freedoms.” Human Rights Watch. 4 February 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/02/04/myanmar-internet-restrictions-severely-impact-fundamental-freedoms.