Far-right political writer Curtis Yarvin has triggered backlash online after pulling India’s Aadhaar biometric identity system into a debate about the weaknesses of the US Social Security Number (SSN). Yarvin quote-posted a thread praising Aadhaar’s fingerprint-and-iris-based verification model as a stronger way to link identity to a real person, but his comment drew condemnation for using an anti-India slur and mocking language. The exchange quickly became a flashpoint in a growing conversation about how outdated identity systems leave economies exposed to fraud, even as modern biometric tools become more widely discussed.
What Yarvin posted and why it sparked outrage
Yarvin was responding to a post that argued the US should move beyond SSNs as the default identity backbone. The message he quote-posted read:“It’s strange that SSN is not linked to physical person with a biometric. It should be like your own physical key that works only for you and for no one else.India built iris+fingerprint system for national ID. Good foundational service for many things.”The point of the post was to praise Aadhaar as a scalable identity layer, and to suggest the US could modernise its own system by adopting a stronger “proof-of-person” model. Yarvin’s reply, however, became the headline for the wrong reason. Instead of sticking to a policy critique, he used racist meme-style wording aimed at Indians, which many saw as a cheap insult dressed up as commentary. Curtis Yarvin is a polarising American writer and software developer, best known for his earlier blogging under the pseudonym “Mencius Moldbug”. He is widely associated with neo-reactionary politics and has built a following by attacking democratic institutions, what he calls entrenched bureaucratic power, and the wider liberal political order in the US. He has also been repeatedly criticised for flirting with racist and extremist-adjacent ideas, and for promoting a worldview that rejects egalitarianism.Yarvin does not believe modern democracy is a legitimate or functional system. Instead, he argues in favour of a more centralised, authoritarian-style model of governance, where power is concentrated under a single executive who can “run the state” more like a company and override what he views as bureaucratic paralysis. His online style is deliberately provocative, mixing internet slang with arguments about state capacity and institutional collapse.
Why Aadhaar lands in US identity debates
Aadhaar is India’s biometric identity programme built around fingerprints and iris scans, designed to verify identity at a national scale. Supporters describe it as a foundational digital infrastructure system because it allows identity verification to work more reliably across services.In the context of the US debate, Aadhaar is often referenced as proof that a large country can implement a modern identity layer tied to a real person, rather than relying on a number that can be stolen or misused.
What’s wrong with SSNs and why it matters now
SSNs were created as an administrative identifier, not as a secure authentication tool for the internet era. Over time, they evolved into a de facto identity key used across financial services, credit, and verification systems, despite not being designed for that role.That mismatch has long fuelled concerns about identity theft and fraud, particularly as personal data breaches and synthetic identity scams become more common. Critics argue the US needs a stronger identity framework that can prove a person is real and present, not just in possession of a leaked number. Go to Source
