The provided text is an excerpt from a 2025 Medium article titled "The Fourth American Act: Machine Republic" by Greg Twemlow, which warns that democracy faces a crisis through a phenomenon called “The Convergence.” This Convergence describes the fusion of authoritarian ambition, oligarchic power, and computational infrastructure, where governance is quietly replaced by algorithms and dependence on technology, leading to "infrastructural capture." Twemlow argues that this “Machine Economy”—fuelled by massive investments in AI hardware, likened to a bubble—threatens the middle and working classes by eroding wages and agency, a situation he terms “dark democracy.” To counter this silent coup, the author proposes the "Sovereign Compact for Education™" as the necessary “counter-architecture,” focusing on teaching ethical discernment and system-level comprehension to restore civic authorship. Read the article.