This is essentially what they want. A return to some sort of agricultural or neo-agrarian age for the plebs where they simultaneously secret away and hoard singularity level technology, all the while using their advanced AI and nano-tech to keep humanity under strict surveillance. Have fun shoveling horse shit, though.
No, megacities are the thing they push
The megacity angle is meant to get a reaction. The want to de-industrialize the West and send you back to the agriculture age, and a lot of traditionalists actually like that idea. China will emerge as a managerial class of super drones.
I mean sort of, they have deindustrialized the west to a large extent. But in terms of living in rural communities, doing your own food production etc, how does that benefit them? And how is that not a good thing for us? It is way better to be dependent only on your family and neighbors rather than monsanto, perdue, dow, walmart, and probably 5 other mega corporations that act as intermediates on that supply chain. We don't need to go back to the stone age, but the green revolution caused nothing but problems. The kicker is, with proper techniques actually tailored to your climate (not homogenous techniques across the world), you can get higher yields with no pesticides, no GMOs, no herbicides, no hormones and so on. So we just need to invest more manpower, we can still produce as much or more. I'd rather spend 1/3-1/2 of my time homesteading than be dependent on corporations and governments, and to not have poison in the food I feed my children.
It's going to be both. Megacities for innovation, and homesteading communities for people pissed off by megacities. I don't see why somebody could not switch from one to the other from time to time.
It is good for overall global resilience, to have all kind of lifestyle diversity.
Megacities for a transhuman intellectual slave class (no free will because they will be fused with AI). Homesteading communities as a source for biologically viable human slaves, sacrifices (food for the elite), and guinea pigs.
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