One of the keys to prosecuting a political argument is knowing how and when to weaponise information. In New York, Anthony Albanese demonstrated this is a lesson he has not forgotten.

The Prime Minister’s dramatic revelation that an artificial intelligence program operated by OpenAI had gone rogue searching for Medicare information in Services Australia’s computers quickly became a global story.

With warnings of the technology’s threat to humankind multiplying almost as fast as AI chatbots, even a modest penetration of file names and generic health data was seen as a dangerous breach of sensitive information.

Some cyber experts asked the obvious question: why doesn’t the department responsible for issuing billions in Medicare refunds have better security?

But the practical effect of the news is likely to be as Mr Albanese intended: a distraction from what has been a bumpy overseas trip and greater support regulation of the internet. (Ministers were told last week before Mr Albanese went to the US.)

The hack story provides perfect political theatre for a leader whose popularity is in serious decline.

An evil protagonist in the form of a tech giant sneaks into Australians’ medical-records system and doesn’t immediately fess up. Finally told, the dynamic Prime Minister springs into action, berating a young tech CEO on the phone and deploying the quasi-military Australian Signals Directorate and other agencies to determine what went wrong.

“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network,” Mr Albanese said. “Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable.”

The new evil

Big tech is now perceived to be so powerful and dangerous that a community consensus is emerging essentially treating the largest tech companies as evil — a word that used to be reserved for arms manufacturers and tobacco suppliers.

Even Liberal leader Angus Taylor, who launched his own dot-com start-up in the first internet boom, agreed with the Prime Minister about the dangers of what Donald Trump has renamed super intelligence.

“It’s a serious warning about security of systems, government systems, in an age of AI, and of course, a lot of our personal information is on those systems,” Mr Taylor said.

Neither of them reminded anyone of one of the main conclusions of Monday’s Intergenerational Report, that AI is Australia’s best chance of improving living standards over the next 40 years.

Lost in the drama was Mr Albanese’s startling statement hours earlier that appeared to indicate he wants to regulate internet content that influences political views.

“With misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we’re seeing as well in the political system, people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right,” he said at an event at the United Nations. “And that is why we think that this is a very positive move that we are (putting) forward.”

Influencing politics

Mr Albanese was presumably referring to the proposed “digital duty-of-care” law that would give Communications Minister Anika Wells the power to ban videos, photos, posts and other material she decides could cause “serious harm”.

Pretty much every Australian news organisation would be caught by the law, according to Free TV Australia, although protections have been promised for news.

The government promotes the law as protecting teenagers from bullying so serious it can lead to suicide — not to foster a more centrist political culture.

This week students from Mr Albanese’s old university are running in student elections on a platform of “Globalise the Intifada”, a slogan many Jews regard as a call for violence against them.

Given his history, stretching from Sydney University to The Lodge, it is hard to believe that the Prime Minister’s primary concern is the internet’s influence over campus socialists who oppose Israel.

He is more likely to feel threatened by the passionate, detailed and thoughtful online discussions about the future of a country many Australians feel has lost its way, conversations that have driven many voters to One Nation.