Certainly the Chief of Staff designation is an odd thing. If I worked there I can’t imagine I wouldn’t at least roll my eyes at that. Alternatively it may be a deliberate effort to devalue the position – the guy is not a COO per se, … uh, never mind, I’ll just stick with it being odd.
On the broader thing – the matrix, privacy, quasi-governmental etc., you may well be correct, this being an area where in a broad sense I am rather uncomfortable. The notion of a cashless, digital credentialed, cloud-based, back-doored, erasable human dystopia strikes me as a very real possibility – almost likely (eeks). Probably gist for a mill elsewhere, I may have slipped off the reservation a bit here.
The above content is my opinion.