This commentary identifies a key dilemma in immediate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: the persistent foregrounding of digital technologies as “silver-bullet” solutions to overcoming tensions between surveillance and privacy. It illustrates the pandemic techno-solutionist dilemma by pointing to global efforts to harness blockchain technologies for “squaring the circle” between privacy and surveillance. It then concludes that further investigating the persistence and possible inevitability of this dilemma requires overcoming solitudes both within international political economy and between international political economy and interdisciplines such as surveillance studies.

The article is written in the form of an essay (for Dahrendorf Symposium), speculative in essence, yet based on the new selected evidence concerning peoples’ opinions and attitudes disclosed during the pandemic. It starts with remarks about predictions in social sciences and the complex problems in studying the shocks created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second part is devoted to major challenges and trade-offs states, governments and citizens have to face currently, focusing on one particular which is crucial for the future quality of liberal democracies, that is a trade-off between democratic norms and values and surveillance practices. The article concludes with a discussion of several issues, which have become more salient during the pandemic, challenging our previous knowledge about them.