International
WEF 2025: AI CEO Says Facial Recognition Will Replace Digital IDs in Smart Cities
“…you won’t need a digital identity” because “you have the facial recognition and other things built into your smart cities.”
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One of the panels during last week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting – “Empowering People with Digital Public Infrastructure” – saw the participation of Avathon CEO Pervinder Johar, who provided a vision of a gloomy future of “optimized” and omnipresent surveillance.
Johar, of course, would not put it quite that way. Avathon, which produces AI tech, including the surveillance kind – believes that in the next five to ten years there will be no need for digital ID since facial recognition “and other things” will be built into “smart cities.” The panel was dedicated to digital public infrastructure (DPI) – a buzzword used by digital ID proponents like the UN, the EU, the WEF, and Bill Gates – and Johar said the financial and identity portions of digital ID will “converge” to produce the result he predicted. This suggests that the population will be under constant surveillance and identified at all times. Johar had more “good news” – Avathon makes what it calls an industrial AI platform, a surveillance system that the CEO shared has been deployed in Round Rock High School in Texas – “for children’s safety.” It “utilizes a school’s existing camera infrastructure to proactively detect everything from a weapon to an open door, unauthorized access, or even a fire.” Another panelist, Hoda Al Khzaimi, Associate Vice Provost for Research Translation and Entrepreneurship at New York University Abu Dhabi Hoda Al Khzaimi, also spoke about the connection between the DPI and “smart cities.” “Digital public infrastructures came into manifestation because governments want to make sure that they provide seamless services in the rise of smart cities,” said Al Khzaimi, at the same time effectively suggesting that “the optimal application of DPI” is pushing digital ID on citizens. Al Khzaimi also addressed the issue of DPI data. “What’s positive is that if this data provided by the DPI infrastructure are open and in many kinds of scenarios, you have open marketplaces for these data, users themselves can nudge governments and can nudge providers of these services and to tell them what do you want, and what do you not want and control the trends of how to deploy and build for solutions,” she said. Al Khzaimi also praised the public-private partnership on the DPI. And while acknowledging the potential for abuse (“you don’t want to subject the citizens to mass analytics if they don’t want to have this mass analytics infrastructure”) she quickly contradicted herself by saying there are cases when this should be done – such as to “analyze population data for health pandemic outbreaks.” Kapital Co-Founder and CEO Rene Saul spoke about Mexico’s digital passport (which utilizes biometric ID verification at the borders – something Saul did not mention), which he is a holder of, as a positive example of digital ID. After all, it saved him 35 minutes. “I arrived to Europe for the first time, and I saw the sign with other three countries that had electronic passport. So, I saved 35 minutes just to enter Europe when it took me one hour. So, that’s one of good examples, and that, and another good example of this technology is, it opened our borders,” said Saul. Know Your Customer (KYC) was also mentioned as helpful in developing digital services such as those used by banks. KYC itself is an invasive form of digital ID verification that incorporates document scans and biometric ID verification. |
Daily Caller
Trump Gives Zelenskyy Until Thanksgiving To Agree On Peace Deal, With U.S. Weapons And Intel On The Line
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
President Donald Trump is turning up the heat on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept a peace deal to end his war with Russia, and has set a deadline with potential consequences.
The U.S. is warning that certain weapons shipments and intelligence sharing could be at risk if Zelenskyy does not play ball with Trump’s peace proposal, Reuters reported on Friday. The president set a Thanksgiving deadline for Zelenskyy to sign off on the details. Speaking with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio, Trump confirmed that date, saying that while deadlines can be extended, “Thursday is it.”
Speaking with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio, Trump confirmed that, though deadlines can be extended, “Thursday is it.”
Zelenskyy signaled his willingness to discuss concessions outlined in the proposed peace deal despite objections from other European leaders over the terms, and said in a post on X that his whole government is at work on the individual points. However, the Ukrainian leader also said in a Friday video statement that the U.S. has put Ukraine in a position of “either losing its dignity or the risk of losing a key partner.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, said Friday Trump’s plan could “form the basis” for a final peace agreement.
A U.S. official told the Daily Caller News Foundation they “will not comment on sensitive peace discussions that may or may not have happened.”
“President Trump is working with both sides to end the war as quickly as possible, which has gone on for far too long, with too many senseless deaths,” the official said. “This would have never happened if he was President.”
Zelenskyy most recently has been embroiled in a corruption scandal, as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine launched a probe into Zelenskyy’s business partner, who allegedly laundered $100 million from Ukraine’s nuclear energy company.
“It was strongly implied to the Ukrainians that the United States expects them to agree to a peace deal,” another U.S. official told the DCNF. “Any changes will be decided upon by the President himself.”
The Ukrainian leader has been working to shore up support in Europe as well, most recently signing a deal with France to obtain 100 Rafale jets for its air force. The deal also included anti-air equipment, drones and other munitions.
The Trump administration has worked to offload direct military support for Ukraine to partners in Europe, with NATO agreeing to purchase U.S. weapons to then ship to Ukraine, instead of the American government delivering directly.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Friday that she will step down from Congress.
Greene took to social media to announce her final day in office. Greene released the lengthy statement on X telling supporters, “I will be resigning from office with my last day being January 5, 2026.”
My message to Georgia’s 14th district and America.
Thank you. pic.twitter.com/tSoHCeAjn1— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 22, 2025
Greene released a statement outlining her frustrations with both parties, portraying her decision as the culmination of years of disillusionment with Washington’s political culture. Greene said she has always tried to speak for “the common American man and woman,” arguing that her outsider posture made her an unwelcome presence in the capital.
“Americans are used by the Political Industrial Complex of both Political Parties, election cycle after election cycle, in order to elect whichever side can convince Americans to hate the other side more. And the results are always the same. No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman,” Greene wrote.
In her statement, Greene framed her five years in Congress as a fight to advance the “America First” agenda she embraced in 2020.
“I ran for Congress in 2020 and have fought every single day believing that Make America Great Again meant America First. I have one of the most conservative voting records in Congress defending the 1st amendment, 2nd amendment, unborn babies because I believe God creates life 1 at conception, strong safe borders, I’ve fought against Covid tyrannical insanity and mandated mass vaccinations, and I’ve never voted to fund foreign wars,” Greene added.
President Donald Trump cut support for Greene and called her a “traitor” after she criticized his foreign policy decisions and refused to withdraw her name from a petition demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Greene fired back, calling herself a “patriot” for siding with Epstein’s victims and defending the America First agenda.
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