Ai Deepfakes Are Driving the Internet Toward Biometric Control
You’ve probably seen them in your social media feed by now. Someone smiling beside a movie star, an athlete, or a long-dead celebrity–arms around shoulders, lighting perfect, expressions natural. At first glance, it looks like a once-in-a-lifetime photo.
Only later do you realize it’s entirely fake. Generated. Synthetic. A year ago, you might have noticed the telltale signs: strange hands, warped faces, off timing. Today, those tells are gone. If you didn’t know the celebrity had aged–or died–you would swear the photo was taken in that very moment.
That’s the quiet danger of where we are now. Deepfakes didn’t arrive with a bang. They slipped in smiling, convincing, and eerily ordinary. And the question is no longer whether people can be fooled. It’s how long before one of these fabrications is so real, and spreads so fast through the darker instincts of outrage and fear, that it collapses a stock market–or worse, ignites a war.
We are entering a phase of the internet where reality itself is contestable.
Deepfakes have moved from novelty to norm, quietly dismantling the most basic assumption of the digital age: that the person on your screen is real. Generative AI has made synthetic faces, voices, and entire identities cheap, scalable, and disposable.
Fraud has been industrialized. CEOs are impersonated in video calls ordering wire transfers. Job interviews are hijacked by fake applicants who pass every test. Voice clones of family members beg for ransom money. Political figures are made to say things they never said, at precisely the moment such statements would do maximum damage.
The problem is no longer visual trickery. It is identity collapse.
Most online systems still rely on static signals: passwords, IDs, selfies, knowledge-based questions. But those signals can now be convincingly faked. And once a fake identity is successfully enrolled–once it passes the gate–it doesn’t just bypass security. It becomes the protected entity. Every downstream control ends up shielding the attacker.
Security firms have been warning about this for years, but the tone has shifted. This is no longer framed as a gradual risk to be managed. It’s a countdown. Many now openly say it will take just one major incident–one deepfake that crashes markets, triggers mass panic, or escalates a geopolitical crisis–before governments and platforms move decisively.
And when they do, the solution will not be subtle.
The word you will hear over and over again is authentication.
Not usernames. Not passwords. Not “are you a robot” checkboxes. Proof that you are a real human being, tied to a persistent identity, verified continuously. Biometrics–face scans, voice prints, behavioral signatures, and possibly even biological markers–are rapidly becoming the only signals AI cannot easily fake at scale. And even those will likely be paired with liveness checks, hardware attestation, and ongoing monitoring to ensure the person who logged in is still the same person moments later.
In other words: the anonymous internet cannot survive deepfakes.
Industry leaders are already preparing for a world where posting, transacting, or even speaking online requires proof of personhood. Platforms that once prized frictionless access are quietly building identity layers. Financial institutions are tightening verification to the point where participation without biometric enrollment will be impossible. Governments are watching closely, not because they love regulation, but because unverified digital reality is becoming a national security threat.
This is where the conversation turns uncomfortable.
Because while biometric enforcement promises security, it also accelerates the normalization of constant surveillance. Continuous identity validation means continuous observation. Deepfakes “break human judgment,” and when human judgment fails, institutions respond by replacing trust with control. Recognition gives way to verification. Freedom gives way to permission.
This convergence–deception at scale paired with demands for stricter identity systems–should sound familiar.
Scripture warns of an age defined by powerful delusion. “For this reason God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-11). In a world where seeing is no longer believing, the danger is not only that lies will spread, but that the systems built to counter those lies will reshape how humanity functions.
To be clear: something must be done. A digital environment where no image, voice, or message can be trusted is not sustainable. Commerce, diplomacy, and civil order all depend on shared reality. Biometric identity may be the only practical response left on the table.
But the speed at which this transition happens matters. Who controls these systems matters. Whether they remain narrowly focused on security–or expand into social scoring, content control, and behavioral enforcement–matters immensely.
We are standing at a hinge moment.
Deepfakes didn’t just break photography or video. They broke the social contract of the internet. And once that contract is gone, it will not be restored by goodwill or better media literacy. It will be replaced by infrastructure–hard, permanent systems that decide who is real, who is allowed to speak, and under what conditions.
The age of “trust me, it’s real” is ending.
The age of “prove you are human” is about to begin.
The only remaining question is whether we enter that age with wisdom–or after catastrophe forces our hand
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
A Very Woke Christmas: Progressive Churches Celebrate With Drag Performances
Will we proclaim a Gospel that transforms the world, or reshape the Gospel so the world will applaud us? Progressive churches hosting drag-themed Christmas celebrations have made their choice clear.
GOG AND MAGOG UPDATE
Back To Square One: Hamas, Hezbollah, And Iran Rebuild For The Next War
History has a cruel way of repeating itself when its lessons are ignored. Barely months after the world exhaled in relief at the prospect of de-escalation in the Middle East, the region appears to be drifting back toward the very dangers leaders claimed they had contained.
Hamas is rearming and refusing to surrender its weapons. Hezbollah, under growing internal pressure inside Lebanon, continues to resist disarmament. And Iran, the gravitational force behind both groups, is steadily rebuilding its ballistic missile stockpiles.
Now comes the political signal that suggests the current moment may be only an intermission, not an ending: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely expected to approach President Trump later this month with a renewed, comprehensive plan to confront all three actors. If that happens, it will mark a recognition of an uncomfortable truth–piecemeal solutions have failed, and the region is, once again, back to square one.
Hamas: Defeat Without Surrender
Hamas’s refusal to disarm is not surprising; it is foundational to the group’s identity. Armed resistance is not merely a tactic–it is the ideology. Even after catastrophic losses in Gaza, Hamas has demonstrated a familiar pattern seen across insurgent movements for decades: absorb punishment, retreat underground, regroup, and rearm.
This is the strategic flaw of inconclusive warfare. Without a decisive end to a group’s military capability and its governing legitimacy, defeat becomes temporary. Hamas understands time is its ally. Each pause allows it to recruit, reconstitute command structures, and restock weapons through smuggling networks that have proven resilient for years. In that sense, the war may have severely damaged Hamas–but it did not end it.
Hezbollah: Armed State Within a State
Hezbollah presents an even more dangerous dilemma. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah is deeply embedded within a sovereign country. It operates as both a political party and a heavily armed militia, fielding an arsenal that rivals many national armies.
Pressure within Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah has intensified as the country collapses economically and politically. Yet Hezbollah has refused every call to lay down its weapons, insisting that its arms are necessary to “defend Lebanon”–even as many Lebanese quietly acknowledge that those same weapons make Lebanon a permanent battlefield-in-waiting.
This stalemate is unsustainable. History shows that militias that outgun the state eventually become the state–or destroy it. Hezbollah’s continued rearmament is not just a threat to Israel; it is a slow suffocation of Lebanon itself.
Iran: The Strategic Engine
Behind both groups stands Iran, rebuilding what sanctions, sabotage, and strikes have delayed but never eliminated. Tehran’s ballistic missile program is the backbone of its regional power projection. While diplomacy has bought time, it has not changed Iran’s strategic ambition: to encircle Israel, deter Western intervention, and dominate the Middle East through proxies rather than direct war–until it no longer has to.
Iran has learned its own lessons from history. Delay negotiations, compartmentalize crises, and rebuild quietly while the world focuses elsewhere. The result is the same cycle repeating, only with higher stakes and deadlier weapons.
The Lesson We Refuse to Learn
The central lesson of history is brutally simple: if your enemy survives intact, they will try again. From post-World War I Europe to modern insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, incomplete victories invite future wars. Ceasefires without disarmament. Negotiations without enforcement. Warnings without consequences.
This is how conflicts are not resolved–but postponed.
What Happens Next?
If Netanyahu does bring a comprehensive plan to Trump, it may reflect a shift away from managing threats separately toward confronting them as a unified axis. That could mean intensified pressure on Iran, firmer red lines for Hezbollah, and a refusal to allow Hamas any path back to military relevance.
But such an approach carries enormous risk. Regional war would no longer be hypothetical. Iran could respond directly. Hezbollah could unleash its full arsenal. The global economy–already fragile–would feel the shockwaves immediately.
Yet the alternative may be worse: allowing these forces to regroup until the next war is larger, bloodier, and unavoidable.
Despite the world’s desire for peace, history suggests peace without decisive outcomes is an illusion. As 2026 approaches, the signs are troublingly clear. The players are rearming. The grievances remain. And the lesson–that unresolved wars always return–has once again gone unheeded.