The Hobbesian Regression: Zero-Trust Architecture and the Dissolution of the Epistemic Covenant

The "zero-trust" model, a cybersecurity architecture mandating perpetual verification ("never trust, always verify"), is rapidly migrating from a technical protocol to the de facto social contract for the 21st century. This paper argues that this shift is not a mere "strain" on or "cost" to the existing social contract, but a fundamental and de-civilising regression. We argue that the institutionalisation of "zero-trust", catalysed by widespread social engineering, systematically dissolves the epistemic covenant: the foundational, pre-political agreement to default to trust (Baier, Coady) that makes civil society possible. This regression transports society out of the cooperative Lockean/Rousseauian world and back into a Hobbesian "epistemic state of nature." This is not a physical war of "all against all," but an epistemic one, where the burden of verifying reality is privatised, atomising the individual. The "zero-trust" world is not a new contract but the philosophical admission of the contract's dissolution, forcing a life that is "nasty, brutish, and short-circuited" by perpetual suspicion. Analyzing this regression through the lenses of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, the paper demonstrates how this new paradigm (1) realizes the Hobbesian state of epistemic anarchy; (2) creates a Lockean breach by rendering "identity" as the first property indefensible; and (3) generates a Rousseauian alienation, shattering the sensus communis required for a "General Will." The paper concludes that this "inverted bargain", where we trade our capacity to trust for individual security, replaces the social covenant with sterile technical protocols. The ultimate cultural cost is the impossibility of a collective "We" and the loss of eudaimonia, trading a life of human flourishing for one of "solitary, anxious, and online" survival.