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We keep defeating the nouns while institutional power keeps rebuilding the verbs.
CBDC without a CBDC: programmable payment rails, digital wallets, mandatory identity/KYC, transaction surveillance, platform-controlled payments. You don't necessarily need one official "central bank digital currency" to build much of the functional infrastructure.
TIA without TIA: DARPA's Total Information Awareness program was politically killed, but large-scale data integration, pattern analysis, identity resolution, predictive analytics, and public-private intelligence systems continued developing elsewhere.
LifeLog without LifeLog: the government research project disappeared, while smartphones, social media, location histories, wearables, cloud storage, photos, purchases, vehicles, and biometrics collectively created something far more comprehensive than the original concept.
Fascism without declaring fascism: concentrated executive power, fusion of state and corporate capabilities, surveillance, militarized policing, suppression of organized opposition, and increasingly conditional access to economic life.