Except it is. The slope is always slippery. Nobody can predict with 100% certainty what the future holds and if you believe otherwise, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Also, you clearly don’t understand what it means if you are nitpicking about the size of the first step. The whole point is that it builds up, and nobody can truly predict how it would shape up.
Trying to do so to fit a doom and gloom narrative is, once again, the literal definition. Just because you’d not like it doesn’t suddenly make it not so.
Additionally, “centrally managed, and cryptographically-backed state identification cards, complete with RFID” is not a “small first step”.
That’s a huge step that centralizes a great deal of power that can be readily leveraged through small subsequent steps.