The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
 BlogviewWhitney Webb Archive
Techno-Tyranny: How the US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus to Fulfill an Orwellian Vision

Bookmark Toggle AllToCAdd to LibraryRemove from Library • B
Show CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter
Search Text Case Sensitive  Exact Words  Include Comments
List of Bookmarks

LAST YEAR, A GOVERNMENT COMMISSION CALLED FOR THE US TO ADOPT AN AI-DRIVEN MASS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM FAR BEYOND THAT USED IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN ORDER TO ENSURE AMERICAN HEGEMONY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. NOW, MANY OF THE “OBSTACLES” THEY HAD CITED AS PREVENTING ITS IMPLEMENTATION ARE RAPIDLY BEING REMOVED UNDER THE GUISE OF COMBATING THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS.

Last year, a U.S. government body dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence can “address the national security and defense needs of the United States” discussed in detail the “structural” changes that the American economy and society must undergo in order to ensure a technological advantage over China, according to a recent document acquired through a FOIA request. This document suggests that the U.S. follow China’s lead and even surpass them in many aspects related to AI-driven technologies, particularly their use of mass surveillance. This perspective clearly clashes with the public rhetoric of prominent U.S. government officials and politicians on China, who have labeled the Chinese government’s technology investments and export of its surveillance systems and other technologies as a major “threat” to Americans’ “way of life.”

In addition, many of the steps for the implementation of such a program in the U.S., as laid out in this newly available document, are currently being promoted and implemented as part of the government’s response to the current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. This likely due to the fact that many members of this same body have considerable overlap with the taskforces and advisors currently guiding the government’s plans to “re-open the economy” and efforts to use technology to respond to the current crisis.

The FOIA document, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), was produced by a little-known U.S. government organization called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). It was created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its official purpose is “to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”

The NSCAI is a key part of the government’s response to what is often referred to as the coming “fourth industrial revolution,” which has been described as “a revolution characterized by discontinuous technological development in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, fifth-generation telecommunications networking (5G), nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing.”

However, their main focus is ensuring that “the United States … maintain a technological advantage in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other associated technologies related to national security and defense.” The vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Work – former Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS), described the commission’s purpose as determining “how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with China’s ‘civil-military fusion’ concept.”

The recently released NSCAI document is a May 2019 presentation entitled “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview.” Throughout the presentation, the NSCAI promotes the overhaul of the U.S. economy and way of life as necessary for allowing the U.S. to ensure it holds a considerable technological advantage over China, as losing this advantage is currently deemed a major “national security” issue by the U.S. national security apparatus. This concern about maintaining a technological advantage can be seen in several other U.S. military documents and think tank reports, several of which have warned that the U.S.’ technological advantage is quickly eroding.

The U.S. government and establishment media outlets often blame alleged Chinese espionage or the Chinese government’s more explicit partnerships with private technology companies in support of their claim that the U.S. is losing this advantage over China. For instance, Chris Darby, the current CEO of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, who is also on the NSCAI, told CBS News last year that China is the U.S.’ main competitor in terms of technology and that U.S. privacy laws were hampering the U.S.’ capacity to counter China in this regard, stating that:

“[D]ata is the new oil. And China is just awash with data. And they don’t have the same restraints that we do around collecting it and using it, because of the privacy difference between our countries. This notion that they have the largest labeled data set in the world is going to be a huge strength for them.”

In another example, Michael Dempsey – former acting Director of National Intelligence and currently a government-funded fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – argued in The Hill that:

“It’s quite clear, though, that China is determined to erase our technological advantage, and is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to this effort. In particular, China is determined to be a world leader in such areas as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and synthetic biology. These are the industries that will shape life on the planet and the military balance of power for the next several decades.”

In fact, the national security apparatus of the United States is so concerned about losing a technological edge over China that the Pentagon recently decided to join forces directly with the U.S. intelligence community in order “to get in front of Chinese advances in artificial intelligence.” This union resulted in the creation of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which ties together “the military’s efforts with those of the Intelligence Community, allowing them to combine efforts in a breakneck push to move government’s AI initiatives forward.” It also coordinates with other government agencies, industry, academics, and U.S. allies. Robert Work, who subsequently became the NSCAI vice-chair, said at the time that JAIC’s creation was a “welcome first step in response to Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian, plans to dominate these technologies.”

Similar concerns about “losing” technological advantage to China have also been voiced by the NSCAI chairman, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet – Google’s parent company, who argued in February in the New York Times that Silicon Valley could soon lose “the technology wars” to China if the U.S. government doesn’t take action. Thus, the three main groups represented within the NSCAI – the intelligence community, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley – all view China’s advancements in AI as a major national security threat (and in Silicon Valley’s case, threat to their bottom lines and market shares) that must be tackled quickly.

TARGETING CHINA’S “ADOPTION ADVANTAGE”

In the May 2019 “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview” presentation, the NSCAI discusses that, while the U.S. still leads in the “creation” stage of AI and related technologies, it lags behind China in the “adoption” stage due to “structural factors.” It says that “creation”, followed by “adoption” and “iteration” are the three phases of the “life cycle of new tech” and asserts that failing to dominate in the “adoption” stage will allow China to “leapfrog” the U.S. and dominate AI for the foreseeable future.

The presentation also argues that, in order to “leapfrog” competitors in emerging markets, what is needed is not “individual brilliance” but instead specific “structural conditions that exist within certain markets.” It cites several case studies where China is considered to be “leapfrogging” the U.S. due to major differences in these “structural factors.” Thus, the insinuation of the document (though not directly stated) is that the U.S. must alter the “structural factors” that are currently responsible for its lagging behind China in the “adoption” phase of AI-driven technologies.

Chief among the troublesome “structural factors” highlighted in this presentation are so-called “legacy systems” that are common in the U.S. but much less so in China. The NSCAI document states that examples of “legacy systems” include a financial system that still utilizes cash and card payments, individual car ownership and even receiving medical attention from a human doctor. It states that, while these “legacy systems” in the US are “good enough,” too many “good enough” systems “hinder the adoption of new things,” specifically AI-driven systems.

Another structural factor deemed by the NSCAI to be an obstacle to the U.S.’ ability to maintain a technological advantage over China is the “scale of the consumer market,” arguing that “extreme urban density = on-demand service adoption.” In other words, extreme urbanization results in more people using online or mobile-based “on-demand” services, ranging from ride-sharing to online shopping. It also cites the use of mass surveillance on China’s “huge population base” is an example of how China’s “scale of consumer market” advantage allowing “China to leap ahead” in the fields of related technologies, like facial recognition.

In addition to the alleged shortcomings of the U.S.’ “legacy systems” and lack of “extreme urban density,” the NSCAI also calls for more “explicit government support and involvement” as a means to speed up the adoption of these systems in the U.S. This includes the government lending its stores of data on civilians to train AI, specifically citing facial recognition databases, and mandating that cities be “re-architected around AVs [autonomous vehicles],” among others. Other examples given include the government investing large amounts of money in AI start-ups and adding tech behemoths to a national, public-private AI taskforce focused on smart city-implementation (among other things).

With regards to the latter, the document says “this level of public-private cooperation” in China is “outwardly embraced” by the parties involved, with this “serving as a stark contrast to the controversy around Silicon Valley selling to the U.S. government.” Examples of such controversy, from the NSCAI’s perspective, likely include Google employees petitioning to end the Google-Pentagon “Project Maven,” which uses Google’s AI software to analyze footage captured by drones. Google eventually chose not to renew its Maven contract as a result of the controversy, even though top Google executives viewed the project as a “golden opportunity” to collaborate more closely with the military and intelligence communities.

The document also defines another aspect of government support as the “clearing of regulatory barriers.” This term is used in the document specifically with respect to U.S. privacy laws, despite the fact that the U.S. national security state has long violated these laws with near complete impunity. However, the document seems to suggest that privacy laws in the U.S. should be altered so that what the U.S. government has done “in secret” with private citizen data can be done more openly and more extensively. The NSCAI document also discusses the removal of “regulatory barriers” in order to speed up the adoption of self-driving cars, even though autonomous driving technology has resulted in several deadly and horrific car accidents and presents other safety concerns.

Also discussed is how China’s “adoption advantage” will “allow it to leapfrog the U.S.” in several new fields, including “AI medical diagnosis” and “smart cities.” It then asserts that “the future will be decided at the intersection of private enterprise and policy leaders between China and the U.S.” If this coordination over the global AI market does not occur, the document warns that “we [the U.S.] risk being left out of the discussions where norms around AI are set for the rest of our lifetimes.”

The presentation also dwells considerably on how “the main battleground [in technology] are not the domestic Chinese and US markets,” but what it refers to as the NBU (next billion users) markets, where it states that “Chinese players will aggressively challenge Silicon Valley.” In order to challenge them more successfully, the presentation argues that, “just like we [view] the market of teenagers as a harbinger for new trends, we should look at China.”

The document also expresses concerns about China exporting AI more extensively and intensively than the U.S., saying that China is “already crossing borders” by helping to build facial databases in Zimbabwe and selling image recognition and smart city systems to Malaysia. If allowed to become “the unambiguous leader in AI,” it says that “China could end up writing much of the rulebook of international norms around the deployment of AI” and that it would “broaden China’s sphere of influence amongst an international community that increasingly looks to the pragmatic authoritarianism of China and Singapore as an alternative to Western liberal democracy.”

WHAT WILL REPLACE THE US’ “LEGACY SYSTEMS”?

Given that the document makes it quite clear that “legacy systems” in the U.S. are impeding its ability to prevent China from “leapfrogging” ahead in AI and then dominating it for the foreseeable future, it is also important to examine what the document suggests should replace these “legacy systems” in the U.S.

As previously mentioned, one “legacy system” cited early on in the presentation is the main means of payment for most Americans, cash and credit/debit cards. The presentation asserts, in contrast to these “legacy systems” that the best and most advanced system is moving entirely to smartphone-based digital wallets.

It notes specifically the main mobile wallet provider in India, PayTM, is majority owned by Chinese companies. It quotes an article, which states that “a big break came [in 2016] when India canceled 86% of currency in circulation in an effort to cut corruption and bring more people into the tax net by forcing them to use less cash.” At the time, claims that India’s 2016 “currency reform” would be used as a stepping stone towards a cashless society were dismissed by some as “conspiracy theory.” However, last year, a committee convened by India’s central bank (and led by an Indian tech oligarch who also created India’s massive civilian biometric database) resulted in the Indian government’s “Cashless India” program.

Regarding India’s 2016 “currency reform,” the NSCAI document then asserts that “this would be unfathomable in the West. And unsurprisingly, when 86% of the cash got cancelled and nobody had a credit card, mobile wallets in India exploded, laying the groundwork for a far more advanced payments ecosystem in India than the US.” However, it has become increasingly less unfathomable in light of the current coronavirus crisis, which has seen efforts to reduce the amount of cash used because paper bills may carry the virus as well as efforts to introduce a Federal Reserve-backed “digital dollar.”

In addition, the NSCAI document from last May calls for the end of in-person shopping and promotes moving towards all shopping being performed online. It argues that “American companies have a lot to gain by adopting ideas from Chinese companies” by shifting towards exclusive e-commerce purchasing options. It states that only shopping online provides a “great experience” and also adds that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”

Another “legacy system” that the NSCAI seeks to overhaul is car ownership, as it promotes autonomous, or self-driving vehicles and further asserts that “fleet ownership > individual ownership.” It specifically points to a need for “a centralized ride-sharing network,” which it says “is needed to coordinate cars to achieve near 100% utilization rates.” However, it warns against ride-sharing networks that “need a human operator paired with each vehicle” and also asserts that “fleet ownership makes more sense” than individual car ownership. It also specifically calls for these fleets to not only be composed of self-driving cars, but electric cars and cites reports that China “has the world’s most aggressive electric vehicle goals….and seek[s] the lead in an emerging industry.”

The document states that China leads in ride-sharing today even though ride-sharing was pioneered first in the U.S. It asserts once again that the U.S. “legacy system” of individual car ownership and lack of “extreme urban density” are responsible for China’s dominance in this area. It also predicts that China will “achieve mass autonomous [vehicle] adoption before the U.S.,” largely because “the lack of mass car ownership [in China] leads to far more consumer receptiveness to AVs [autonomous vehicles].” It then notes that “earlier mass adoption leads to a virtuous cycle that allows Chinese core self-driving tech to accelerate beyond [its] Western counterparts.”

In addition to their vision for a future financial system and future self-driving transport system, the NSCAI has a similarly dystopian vision for surveillance. The document calls mass surveillance “one of the ‘first-and-best customers’ for AI” and “a killer application for deep learning.” It also states that “having streets carpeted with cameras is good infrastructure.”

It then discusses how “an entire generation of AI unicorn” companies are “collecting the bulk of their early revenue from government security contracts” and praises the use of AI in facilitating policing activities. For instance, it lauds reports that “police are making convictions based on phone calls monitored with iFlyTek’s voice-recognition technology” and that “police departments are using [AI] facial recognition tech to assist in everything from catching traffic law violators to resolving murder cases.”

On the point of facial recognition technology specifically, the NSCAI document asserts that China has “leapt ahead” of the US on facial recognition, even though “breakthroughs in using machine learning for image recognition initially occurred in the US.” It claims that China’s advantage in this instance is because they have government-implemented mass surveillance (“clearing of regulatory barriers”), enormous government-provided stores of data (“explicit government support”) combined with private sector databases on a huge population base (“scale of consumer market”). As a consequence of this, the NSCAI argues, China is also set to leap ahead of the U.S. in both image/facial recognition and biometrics.

The document also points to another glaring difference between the U.S. and its rival, stating that: “In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”

The NSCAI document also touches on the area of healthcare, calling for the implementation of a system that seems to be becoming reality thanks to the current coronavirus crisis. In discussing the use of AI in healthcare (almost a year before the current crisis began), it states that “China could lead the world in this sector” and “this could lead to them exporting their tech and setting international norms.” One reason for this is also that China has “far too few doctors for the population” and calls having enough doctors for in-person visits a “legacy system.” It also cited U.S. regulatory measures such as “HIPPA compliance and FDA approval” as obstacles that don’t constrain Chinese authorities.

More troubling, it argues that “the potential impact of government supplied data is even more significant in biology and healthcare,” and says it is likely that “the Chinese government [will] require every single citizen to have their DNA sequenced and stored in government databases, something nearly impossible to imagine in places as privacy conscious as the U.S. and Europe.” It continues by saying that “the Chinese apparatus is well-equipped to take advantage” and calls these civilian DNA databases a “logical next step.”

WHO ARE THE NSCAI?

Given the sweeping changes to the U.S. that the NSCAI promoted in this presentation last May, it becomes important to examine who makes up the commission and to consider their influence over U.S. policy on these matters, particularly during the current crisis. As previously mentioned, the chairman of the NSCAI is Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) who has also invested heavily in Israeli intelligence-linked tech companies including the controversial start-up “incubator” Team8. In addition, the committee’s vice-chair is Robert Work, is not only a former top Pentagon official, but is currently working with the think tank CNAS, which is run by John McCain’s long-time foreign policy adviser and Joe Biden’s former national security adviser.

Other members of the NSCAI are as follows:

  • Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, with close ties to Trump’s top donor Sheldon Adelson
  • Steve Chien, supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab
  • Mignon Clyburn, Open Society Foundation fellow and former FCC commissioner
  • Chris Darby, CEO of In-Q-Tel (CIA’s venture capital arm)
  • Ken Ford, CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
  • Jose-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University and former National Science Board member
  • Eric Horvitz, director of Microsoft Research Labs
  • Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services (CIA contractor)
  • Gilman Louie, partner at Alsop Louie Partners and former CEO of In-Q-Tel
  • William Mark, director of SRI International and former Lockheed Martin director
  • Jason Matheny, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, former Assistant director of National Intelligence and former director of IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency)
  • Katharina McFarland, consultant at Cypress International and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition
  • Andrew Moore, head of Google Cloud AI

As can be seen in the list above, there is a considerable amount of overlap between the NSCAI and the companies currently advising the White House on “re-opening” the economy (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, Oracle) and one NSCAI member, Oracle’s Safra Katz, is on the White House’s “economic revival” taskforce. Also, there is also overlap between the NSCAI and the companies that are intimately involved in the implementation of the “contact tracing” “coronavirus surveillance system,” a mass surveillance system promoted by the Jared Kushner-led, private-sector coronavirus task force. That surveillance system is set to be constructed by companies with deep ties to Google and the U.S. national security state, and both Google and Apple, who create the operating systems for the vast majority of smartphones used in the U.S., have said they will now build that surveillance system directly into their smartphone operating systems.

Also notable is the fact that In-Q-Tel and the U.S. intelligence community has considerable representation on the NSCAI and that they also boast close ties with Google, Palantir and other Silicon Valley giants, having been early investors in those companies. Both Google and Palantir, as well as Amazon (also on the NSCAI) are also major contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies. In-Q-Tel’s involvement on the NSCAI is also significant because they have been heavily promoting mass surveillance of consumer electronic devices for use in pandemics for the past several years. Much of that push has come from In-Q-Tel’s current Executive Vice President Tara O’Toole, who was previously the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and also co-authored several controversial biowarfare/pandemic simulations, such as Dark Winter.

In addition, since at least January, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon have been at the forefront of developing the U.S. government’s still-classified “9/11-style” response plans for the coronavirus crisis, alongside the National Security Council. Few news organizations have noted that these classified response plans, which are set to be triggered if and when the U.S. reaches a certain number of coronavirus cases, has been created largely by elements of the national security state (i.e. the NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those focused on public health issues.

Furthermore, it has been reported that the U.S. intelligence community as well as U.S. military intelligence knew by at least January (though recent reports have said as early as last November) that the coronavirus crisis would reach “pandemic proportions” by March. The American public were not warned, but elite members of the business and political classes were apparently informed, given the record numbers of CEO resignations in January and several high-profile insider trading allegations that preceded the current crisis by a matter of weeks.

Perhaps even more disconcerting is the added fact that the U.S. government not only participated in the eerily prescient pandemic simulation last October known as Event 201, it also led a series of pandemic response simulations last year. Crimson Contagion was a series of four simulations that involved 19 U.S. federal agencies, including intelligence and the military, as well as 12 different states and a host of private sector companies that simulated a devastating pandemic influenza outbreak that had originated in China. It was led by the current HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Robert Kadlec, who is a former lobbyist for military and intelligence contractors and a Bush-era homeland security “bioterrorism” advisor.

In addition, both Kadlec and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which was intimately involved in Event 201, have direct ties to the controversial June 2001 biowarfare exercise “Dark Winter,” which predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks that transpired just months later in disturbing ways. Though efforts by media and government were made to blame the anthrax attacks on a foreign source, the anthrax was later found to have originated at a U.S. bioweapons lab and the FBI investigation into the case has been widely regarded as a cover-up, including by the FBI’s once-lead investigator on that case.

Given the above, it is worth asking if those who share the NSCAI’s vision saw the coronavirus pandemic early on as an opportunity to make the “structural changes” it had deemed essential to countering China’s lead in the mass adoption of AI-driven technologies, especially considering that many of the changes in the May 2019 document are now quickly taking place under the guise of combatting the coronavirus crisis.

THE NSCAI’S VISION TAKES SHAPE

Though the May 2019 NSCAI document was authored nearly a year ago, the coronavirus crisis has resulted in the implementation of many of the changes and the removal of many of the “structural” obstacles that the commission argued needed to be drastically altered in order to ensure a technological advantage over China in the field of AI. The aforementioned move away from cash, which is taking place not just in the U.S. but internationally, is just one example of many.

For instance, earlier this week CNN reported that grocery stores are now considering banning in-person shopping and that the U.S. Department of Labor has recommended that retailers nationwide start “‘using a drive-through window or offering curbside pick-up’ to protect workers for exposure to coronavirus.” In addition, last week, the state of Florida approved an online-purchase plan for low income families using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Other reports have argued that social distancing inside grocery stores is ineffective and endangering people’s lives. As previously mentioned, the May 2019 NSCAI document argues that moving away from in-person shopping is necessary to mitigate China’s “adoption advantage” and also argued that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”

Reports have also argued that these changes in shopping will last far beyond coronavirus, such as an article by Business Insider entitled “The coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people online and will forever change how Americans shop for groceries, experts say.” Those cited in the piece argue that this shift away from in-person shopping will be “permanent” and also states that “More people are trying these services than otherwise would have without this catalyst and gives online players a greater chance to acquire and keep a new customer base.” A similar article in Yahoo! News argues that, thanks to the current crisis, “our dependence on online shopping will only rise because no one wants to catch a virus at a shop.”

In addition, the push towards the mass use of self-driving cars has also gotten a boost thanks to coronavirus, with driverless cars now making on-demand deliveries in California. Two companies, one Chinese-owned and the other backed by Japan’s SoftBank, have since been approved to have their self-driving cars used on California roads and that approval was expedited due to the coronavirus crisis. The CPO of Nuro Inc., the SoftBank-backed company, was quoted in Bloomberg as saying that “The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited the public need for contactless delivery services. Our R2 fleet is custom-designed to change the very nature of driving and the movement of goods by allowing people to remain safely at home while their groceries, medicines, and packages are brought to them.” Notably, the May 2019 NSCAI document references the inter-connected web of SoftBank-backed companies, particularly those backed by its largely Saudi-funded “Vision Fund,” as forming “the connective tissue for a global federation of tech companies” set to dominate AI.

California isn’t the only state to start using self-driving cars, as the Mayo Clinic of Florida is now also using them. “Using artificial intelligence enables us to protect staff from exposure to this contagious virus by using cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology and frees up staff time that can be dedicated to direct treatment and care for patients,” Kent Thielen, M.D., CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida stated in a recent press release cited by Mic.

Like the changes to in-person shopping in the age of coronavirus, other reports assert that self-driving vehicles are here to stay. One report published by Mashable is entitled “It took a coronavirus outbreak for self-driving cars to become more appealing,” and opens by stating “Suddenly, a future full of self-driving cars isn’t just a sci-fi pipe dream. What used to be considered a scary, uncertain technology for many Americans looks more like an effective tool to protect ourselves from a fast-spreading, infectious disease.” It further argues that this is hardly a “fleeting shift” in driving habits and one tech CEO cited in the piece, Anuja Sonalker of Steer Tech, claims that “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology. Humans are biohazards, machines are not.”

Another focus of the NSCAI presentation, AI medicine, has also seen its star rise in recent weeks. For instance, several reports have touted how AI-driven drug discovery platforms have been able to identify potential treatments for coronavirus. Microsoft, whose research lab director is on the NSCAI, recently put $20 million into its “AI for health” program to speed up the use of AI in analyzing coronavirus data. In addition, “telemedicine”– a form of remote medical care – has also become widely adopted due to the coronavirus crisis.

Several other AI-driven technologies have similarly become more widely adopted thanks to coronavirus, including the use of mass surveillance for “contact tracing” as well as facial recognition technology and biometrics. A recent Wall Street Journal report stated that the government is seriously considering both contact tracing via phone geolocation data and facial recognition technology in order to track those who might have coronavirus. In addition, private businesses – like grocery stores and restaurants – are using sensors and facial recognition to see how many people and which people are entering their stores.

As far as biometrics go, university researchers are now working to determine if “smartphones and biometric wearables already contain the data we need to know if we have become infected with the novel coronavirus.” Those efforts seek to detect coronavirus infections early by analyzing “sleep schedules, oxygen levels, activity levels and heart rate” based on smartphone apps like FitBit and smartwatches. In countries outside the U.S., biometric IDs are being touted as a way to track those who have and lack immunity to coronavirus.

In addition, one report in The Edge argued that the current crisis is changing what types of biometrics should be used, asserting that a shift towards thermal scanning and facial recognition is necessary:

“At this critical juncture of the crisis, any integrated facial recognition and thermal scanning solution must be implemented easily, rapidly and in a cost-effective manner. Workers returning to offices or factories must not have to scramble to learn a new process or fumble with declaration forms. They must feel safe and healthy for them to work productively. They just have to look at the camera and smile. Cameras and thermal scanners, supported by a cloud-based solution and the appropriate software protocols, will do the rest.”

Also benefiting from the coronavirus crisis is the concept of “smart cities,” with Forbes recently writing that “Smart cities can help us combat the coronavirus pandemic.” That article states that “Governments and local authorities are using smart city technology, sensors and data to trace the contacts of people infected with the coronavirus. At the same time, smart cities are also helping in efforts to determine whether social distancing rules are being followed.”

That article in Forbes also contains the following passage:

“…[T]he use of masses of connected sensors makes it clear that the coronavirus pandemic is–intentionally or not–being used as a testbed for new surveillance technologies that may threaten privacy and civil liberties. So aside from being a global health crisis, the coronavirus has effectively become an experiment in how to monitor and control people at scale.”

Another report in The Guardian states that “If one of the government takeaways from coronavirus is that ‘smart cities’ including Songdo or Shenzhen are safer cities from a public health perspective, then we can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behaviour in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.” There have also been reports that assert that typical cities are “woefully unprepared” to face pandemics compared to “smart cities.”

Yet, beyond many of the NSCAI’s specific concerns regarding mass AI adoption being conveniently resolved by the current crisis, there has also been a concerted effort to change the public’s perception of AI in general. As previously mentioned, the NSCAI had pointed out last year that:

“In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”

Now, less than a year later, the coronavirus crisis has helped spawn a slew of headlines in just the last few weeks that paint AI very differently, including “How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Fight Coronavirus,” “How AI May Prevent the Next Coronavirus Outbreak,” “AI Becomes an Ally in the Fight Against COVID-19,” “Coronavirus: AI steps up in battle against COVID-19,” and “Here’s How AI Can Help Africa Fight the Coronavirus,” among numerous others.

It is indeed striking how the coronavirus crisis has seemingly fulfilled the NSCAI’s entire wishlist and removed many of the obstacles to the mass adoption of AI technologies in the United States. Like major crises of the past, the national security state appears to be using the chaos and fear to promote and implement initiatives that would be normally rejected by Americans and, if history is any indicator, these new changes will remain long after the coronavirus crisis fades from the news cycle. It is essential that these so-called “solutions” be recognized for what they are and that we consider what type of world they will end up creating – an authoritarian technocracy. We ignore the rapid advance of these NSCAI-promoted initiatives and the phasing out of so-called “legacy systems” (and with them, many long-cherished freedoms) at our own peril.

(Republished from The Last American Vagabond by permission of author or representative)
 
Hide 93 CommentsLeave a Comment
Commenters to Ignore ...to Follow Endorsed Only
Trim Comments?
    []
  1. jbwilson24 says:

    “Last year, a U.S. government body dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence can “address the national security and defense needs of the United States” discussed in detail the “structural” changes that the American economy and society must undergo in order to ensure a technological advantage over China”

    Bwahahaha, what a batch of idiots.

    I bet that government ‘body’ didn’t consider the fact that Chinese make up > 50% of all STEM PhD students in the USA, including in Machine Learning. True, most of them are about as creative as a bucket of baked potatoes, but the fact is that the US tech labor force is largely staffed by foreigners.

    Apparently ‘magic dirt theory’ applies, where a Chinese person born in China comes over, gets a PhD, and magically becomes an American patriot who would never transfer technology to China. Thus it is perfectly fine for them to take over positions at national laboratories, tech companies, and (when they finally naturalize) military contractors. Nothing to see here, no risk whatsoever.

    No, instead of getting rid of most foreign students at US universities, the solution is to implement a surveillance state.

    The rootless cosmopolitans in charge of the USA must think that we are complete and utter idiots.

  2. Big Daddy says:

    Governments are ALWAYS evil psychopaths. The greatest historic quote ever: POWER TENDS TO CORRUPT. ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY.

    • Agree: Omegabooks
  3. I do NOT want:

    — self-driving cars

    — artificial intelligence (hell, real intelligence is rare enough — let alone the artificial stuff)

    — IoT — my refrigerator and I do well enough with my being able to figure out when to shop … and the refrigerator keeps my food the way I want it to

    — cashless society — one of the ways to constantly monitor — i.e., control — a population is to get rid of its ability to use cash

    — online shopping — I like to look at stuff before I buy it — when necessary, to talk with someone who knows something about the need I have and can propose a solution

    — a Brave New World — Huxley’s and Orwell’s writings were NOT instruction books — they were warnings

    — to be inspected/analyzed/treated/handled by any machine — I want a living, breathing, in-person human with a functioning intellect who knows what he or she is doing

    I’ll be 73 years old this summer — and I’m hoping that my reincarnating is finally at an end so that I do not have to come back into this Creation again … folks look to be inclined to fuck it up way worse than it is even now …

    We are human beings — not machines — and we need to interact with others of our own kind … otherwise we (as individuals and as societies) fall apart and/or get into all sorts of pathologies — including ones we likely haven’t experienced yet.

  4. @Big Daddy

    It’s true that some individuals are psychopaths … too bad they tend to seek out each other’s company — too bad folks tend to elect them to positions of power — they ruin it for the rest of US.

  5. Tucker says:

    I must say that I appreciate the dedication and hard work that Whitney Webb puts into her investigative research.

    However, I would like to offer her one very polite bit of c0nstructive criticism.

    Your articles are always too incredibly long and time consuming to read. I spotted this one, and clicked on it – knowing full well that it would fit the same pattern, and sure enough – its 6,100 words long.

    I am avid news hound and I spend at least 2 hours every day, bouncing between a dozen or more news websites and reading articles that interest me. I do not feel motivated to increase that 2 hours per day to 3 or 4 hours per day, which would certainly happen if I started reading 6,000 plus word long articles like those that Whitney Webb consistently writes.

    Other writers who are covering a topic that has a great deal of content will often break them up into shorter, easier and quicker to read parts and then post those parts over a span of several days.

    Perhaps Whitney might consider this approach?

    • Agree: follyofwar
    • Disagree: Al Liguori, Tor597
  6. Robert Dolan says:

    I can summarize this, although I love Whitney.

    It comes down to jews controlling the goyim.

    Has nothing to do with “competition with China.” What a nice jewy way to frame the police state.

    ALL of it is JEWING. Just more and bigger JEWING.

    They kill off small business to consolidate control of all necessities. They impose the social credit system so that you can’t even buy a fucking loaf of bread if you are labeled a “dissident.”

    It’s obvious what they are doing. I could sense it from the start….the overreach was like a nasty smell lingering in the air.

    All goes back to jewish psychopathology, paranoia, insanity, and megalomania.

    The nose thinks they have to climb up our asses and monitor us 24/7 to be sure we don’t organize to bring about the 110th jewish eviction.

    The spying and police state apparatus is surely for the benefit of the very frightened small hat crew.

    I call it “holocaust-proofing.” They call it their “never again program.”

    “Never again” is jew talk that actually translates into the soft genocide of white Christian people.

    If you doubt my thesis, ask yourself, “Who benefits?”

    Who has the deep psychological need that drives them to demand total control over the rest of humanity? What group has such massive fear of others? What group promotes anti-white hatred? What group believes its’ chosen by God?

    Blacks are not organizing the police state. Blacks can’t even organize a barbecue without taking casualties. Hispanics don’t want a police state. Asians have little influence in the west.

    It’s jewing. Just more jewing on top of the jewing we were already dealing with.

    One wonders why the jews don’t get tired of jewing, because God knows the rest of us have had enough.

    • Agree: Tool Book and Rifle
    • Troll: Corvinus
    • Replies: @Sick of Orcs
    , @Really No Shit
  7. follyofwar says:
    @Anthony Aaron

    Regarding online grocery shopping, how would they keep your ice cream from melting? And, would the harried grocery pickers, who would be carrying viruses of their own, look for the freshest milk and bread, and the best looking freshest produce? What if they give us stale bread and milk with only two days before expiration? Would the store take those items back?

    The more I read of it, the more I don’t wish to live in this brave new dystopian world. The AI Oligarchs will be happy to see us old tech-challenged useless eaters off ourselves anyway.

  8. @Anthony Aaron

    • Agree: Achmed E. Newman
    • LOL: Digital Samizdat
    • Replies: @Bill Jones
    , @onebornfree
  9. Pft says:

    So to defeat China we must become like China?

    That makes merging us with China becomes that much easier. China is the model government of the elites. Thats why the CCP was allowed to defeat KMT (our WWII ally). Thats why we recognized China PRC over Taiwan in the 2970’s and provided Mao and then Deng MFN. No sanctions for china unlike Cuba, FSU, Venezuela, Iran. Tarrifs are paid by US consumers.

    It seems to me Communist (now neoliberal) China was Made in USA by the global elites. All that technology transfer was and is happening via the 1000 talents program and western multinational companies and academias joint ventures in China. Thats not an accident.

    Whats really going down is another step toward One World Government and population reduction. AI and robotics are necessary to replace those who will be culled. COVID-19 taking out the old folks while sparing the kids. Next one will take out the working class and replace them with smart robots.

    Keep up the good work Whitney. About one of the few with functioning neurons and the courage to speak out.

    • Replies: @Priss Factor
  10. eD says:

    There is a chance the cashless society may be avoided. Hookers like to be paid in cash, and that will be a problem for the rulers when they try to move to a cashless society. It will also be a problem for the illegal drug trade from where these intelligence agencies get a lot of their funding.

    • Replies: @Digital Samizdat
  11. Al Liguori says: • Website

    I hope this young lady has some serious people protecting her from the (((assassins))) because she has been relentless in attacking the Synagogue of Satan’s control grid. http://judaism.is/jew-flu.html

    • Replies: @Republic
  12. Al Liguori says: • Website
    @Tucker

    Let Whitney cite chapter and verse in great detail. Let lesser writers and lesser minds produce the derivative sound bites and memes.

    It is her meticulous, verifiable, and unassailable detail that makes her so effective against Zionist agitprop.

  13. Tor597 says:
    @Al Liguori

    Exactly, writers should stick to their style. And Whitney is a legit investigative journalist.

    Maybe Tucker should get his news from comic books.

    • Replies: @Antares
  14. This whole being superior thing – sounds eerily familiar to ‘some other’ doctrines. The US does not need to be superior in anything militarily, it just needs to have enough military power to fight off any aggressor, as Putin states Russia needs. Frankly, the 300m guns is probably enough to make most nations weary.

    But of course, superiority is not about defence, but about conquest.

  15. Cranberries says:

    I like the detailed reporting, and its good to get a picture of how TPTB are exploiting the crisis to drive forward an agenda. But Webb comes off as a bit of a Luddite in this piece. Legacy systems can be real problems. Driverless cars, remote work, and buying groceries online can be good things.

    AI and greater digitization are the way the world is going (barring collapse due to scarce energy). Anyone who wants a regime change in the West needs to figure out how to make these technologies work against TPTB. Scare-quoting technology jargon and fatalistically pronouncing that deployment of AI and driverless cars must necessarily lead to “authoritarian technocracy” is lazy, unproductive, and just wrong.

    • Replies: @Ilya G Poimandres
  16. Bill Jones says:
    @Anthony Aaron

    You’ll be gone, as will I but our children and certainly grandchildren will be the renters not owners of their lives.
    And the lease will be cancellable at the whim of the State.

  17. Bill Jones says:
    @schnellandine

    What do we do in the 160’s?

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
  18. Craig Nelsen says:

    This outfit is headed by Eric Schmidt, Google co-founder? Bad news. Here he is in the Podesta wikileaks dump telling the Clinton campaign how he could make her president (and he was right–thank God the campaign staff was more concerned about turf than winning).

    https://craignelsen.com/library/actual_collusion.php

  19. Herald says:
    @Tucker

    If you are really finding these big reads too much of a struggle, you might want to limit yourself to spending your valuable time with Fox News. That should do the trick, quite nicely and you’ll have much more time to get on with real work, like ordering your online groceries.

  20. onebornfree says: • Website
    @Big Daddy

    “Governments are ALWAYS evil psychopaths.”

    “Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt  criminal scams which cannot be “reformed”or “improved”,simply because of their innate criminal nature.”   onebornfree

    “Government  is a disease masquerading as its own cure”  Robert LeFevere

    “Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”      Albert J. Nock

    Regards, onebornfree

  21. Sick of Orcs says:
    @Robert Dolan

    Too many shabbos goyim are on board with techno-tyranny even without coercion, and the nightmare is tech-driven regardless of who’s in charge.

    In lieu of Orwells’s telescreen imagine a “smart wall” made of millions of nanocameras and sensors recording heartbeats, heat signatures and sound. Rather than just Alexa the whole house or building is a spy for the state.

    Physical expulsion via #110 can’t solve this, and if by a miracle any states were to successfully secede from the Jewnion the new bosses would use the same monstrous new monitoring.

  22. Svevlad says:

    Dumbasses. They don’t see the reason why they can’t compete with the Chinese is the fact that the Chinese civil-military-construction complex is, well, constructive in nature, while the American one is destructive (because of their debt-driven economy they can reverse the natural order for a time, this is falling apart currently)

    • Agree: dogbumbreath
  23. Svevlad says:
    @Al Liguori

    Exactly. Those who are impatient/busy will get a quick rundown soon enough, from the likes of Steve Sailer or Anatoly Karlin who are skilled in making, well, quick rundowns

  24. Kati says:
    @Tucker

    Be happy we have such amazing journalists.

    If you have no time to read this just go to “The Last American Vagabond” YT channel and listen to the latest wrapup where she gives a 45min interview with all important things from this article.

    Shes now publishing her articles on Ryans/TLAV website
    https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/

  25. Americans who don’t want to live in an even-more-Orwellian future should keep resisting this Mark-o-the-Beast business. Cash is King! Peak Stupidity has a 3-part series from a couple of years back on the virtues of untraceable currency, i.e., cash – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

    The way computer technology is advancing, I’m starting to think that the dude who wrote The book of Revelation didn’t know the half of it! Maybe I’m just not the best at interpreting what those multi-faced beasts are about. We’ve defeated the Hildabeast for the time being, and I’m anxiously awaiting the revelation of the other 3 horsepersons of the Apocaplypse. Perhaps in this long article, Miss Webb has touched on some of these people.

    Now, a bit about the whole smart cities/dumb people thing: Smart cities, dumb cities, who cares? If you’re like most real Americans, you’d really rather have your own spread, maybe a nice workshop, prepper-storage area, and room for a few chickens and goats. We still have a lot of room here, but the Globalist elites don’t like that, explaining why they want to flood this beautiful land with a billion more people. (Americans might want to read some VDare or other good anti-invasion web sites to get some numbers. The US would have had a stable population still in the high 200-millions today, were the 1965 bill never signed and the illegal invasion taken care of 30 years back.)

    Lastly, one very small quibble, and not with your writing, Miss Webb, but the one blurb touting the benefits of smart cities. There are ways now for ambulance drivers, OMG, excuse me, “first responders”, to switch traffic lights to green. This is not a big damn deal. What is the real problem is, noted humorously in 1st Slow Pokes Responders, is that ambulances are driven by Millennials who drive like 80 y/o grandmas! They dick around just inside the intersection for 10 seconds, when it takes 1 second to clear the intersection with your eyes, and freakin’ gun it! In the meantime, the poor indigent black guy who felt some possible chest pains is awaiting his taxpayer funded ride to the hospital, and I’m gonna be late to meet my friends at the coffee shop. Come on, dammit!

    • Thanks: Johnny Rico
    • Replies: @Johnny Rico
  26. @Cranberries

    We need quantum communications, then all this tech can’t be hacked or spied on due to the no-cloning theorem. Until then, we are open to digital piracy, and I’m not big on driverless cars that can be driven remotely by a nerdy 9 year old!

  27. gotmituns says:

    forget orwell, we’re well on our way to huxley’s “brave new world”…

  28. bjondo says:

    U.S. government organization called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). It was created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

    NSCAI AND NDAA, Patriot Act, and the listed psychos (and their not listed ilk) are the
    threat to American health and safety.

    How does a country create so many paranoid, diseased minds and allow them out of their cells?

    Their psycho minds need to be tarred and rolled in depleted Uranium powder then
    put on display in one of NYCs museums of modern trash.

    5 dancing shlomos

  29. Anonymous[395] • Disclaimer says:
    @jbwilson24

    Foreign Policy has an article coyishly boasting that Israel has been secretly negotiating with China to replace the United States for years.

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/03/can-china-replace-the-united-states-in-israel/

    Israel’s and China’s technological miracle is quite miraculous considering—to your point about being less creative than a bucket of baked potatoes—that in both cases it comes from 99% pure espionage against the United States, and it’s doubly miraculous in view of the stand down by FBI-Justice/CIA/State and Congress that cannot be explained by other than treason.

    The article mentions Israeli operative Safra Catz’s appointment to the commission, who, as Whitney Webb points out in her previous, linked article, had at one point been DJT’s top pick for Director of National Security, probably on orders from Sheldon Adelson or directly from Israel via Kushner—a virtual entailment of usurpation of our security apparatus let alone piecemeal espionage. Philip Giraldi wrote about Lani Kass, another Israeli who was given access to all America’s nuclear codes (for starters) by AF Chief of Staff Norton Schwarz.

    I was completely caught off guard reading DJT had considered Catz for DNI because it would have amounted to treason of the sort we expect from Israel’s quislings in Congress, causing me to reconsider the President’s purpose in his just announced and dishonestly named immigration ban inasmuch as it allows unlimited guest tech workers into the US from Israel, China, and India, who are known to be less creative than a bucket of potatoes, except when it comes to espionage. It makes me almost sick to say it, but if this isn’t treason, what is?

    • Replies: @annamaria
  30. Antares says:
    @Tor597

    Exactly, writers should stick to their style. And Whitney is a legit investigative journalist.

    Maybe Tucker should get his news from comic books.

    There is more beyond that. The article bored me because it does not address the root cause. As someone already pointed out: where is the competition with China? And indeed, what can the US loose when China is better at watching its citizens? I appreciate the article (and especially the work behind it) but before I was at the half of the article I started thinking by myself again.

    • Replies: @lloyd
  31. Johnny Rico says:
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Hilarious. Great amberlamps and nurse pics. Are you breaking curfew to go to the coffee shop?

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
  32. Jon Baptist says:

    It is indeed striking how the coronavirus crisis has seemingly fulfilled the NSCAI’s entire wishlist and removed many of the obstacles to the mass adoption of AI technologies in the United States. Like major crises of the past, the national security state appears to be using the chaos and fear to promote and implement initiatives that would be normally rejected by Americans

    Great article by Whitney Webb. Fearless journalism at its finest!

  33. onebornfree says: • Website
    @schnellandine

    “140 is where you realize Ted Kaczynski was right.”

    Do you realize that Kaczynski was CIA MK-Ultra trained, right? In other words, he was working for /controlled by the CIA.

    Look it up, I can’t be bothered to find the links for you, you probably wouldn’t believe my links, in any case [yawn].

    p.s. If I were a highly trained assassin [Kaczynski was not an example of that], I’d definitely be starting to “take out” people on my long list of persons who need to be “disappeared” right now, because those persons are all enemies of my freedom, and aim to kill me at some point, and its now gone way,way, way beyond the point of a joke now, this whole situation is very , very serious. There is no time left to debate “costitutional rights” with these murderous commie/fascist mo’ fo’s . Among the assholes on my personal “disappear”list: Gates, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Cook, Fauci, Soros, Kissinger, the Clintons, Bush, Schumer, Schiff, Brennan, Pompeo, Comey, and many, many more besides. But unfortunately for me I’m not a highly trained assassin. I can only hope that somebody out there is, and plans to eliminate the same murderous assholes- not that doing that would do any good in the long term, the only satisfaction would be short term, as far as I can see.

    Regards, onebornfree

    • Replies: @Corvinus
  34. sally says:
    @jbwilson24

    The USA has continuously pushed Americans out of access to the high technology knowledge areas.
    The universities belong to the Chinese, Indian, Russian, Israelis, but not to Americans.
    It is not just knowledge, the EPA was established to shut down American industry and to force it out of America.. since 1949 it has been Americans vs the global interest that control the USA.. ..if there were no USA the global interest would not be able to stop America from competing.

    A second highly anti American issue is involves monopoly power of patents, copyrights and the other created from thin air rights to privatize an invention of the mind (Patents and copyrights) . . Mr. J, in his job at big monopoly inc. is asked to work on project X, while working on X, Mr. J, discovers how to manipulate a particular process to make the process work better, Mr. X patents the process his job paid him to discover and BMI becomes the owner, then takes the process to China denying America that right to use that process.

    A third highly anti American issue is privatization.. Foreigners come to America, go to city XYZ, talk city xyz into putting the water and sewer services up for sale so a private company can perform service the city had been doing, these rights to provide a government service by a private contractor is called privatization, and so the rights to provide the sewer and water services is called a franchise. But that franchise results in higher often predatory pricing which the city can do little about.

    It is becoming obvious, Americans can do better without the USA than they can with it.. No part of the USA is today American.. I don’t know what exactly it is, but American it is not.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
  35. @jbwilson24

    “The rootless cosmopolitans in charge of the USA must think that we are complete and utter idiots.”

    Depends on your definition of “we”. If by “we” you mean a majority or a significant plurality of the 325 million knuckleheads in the US, then the RCs are correct in their assessments.

  36. onebornfree says: • Website

    “How the US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus to Fulfill an Orwellian Vision”

    But of course it is. The agenda is, [and always has been] THE agenda because:

    “Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt  criminal scams which cannot be “reformed”or “improved”,simply because of their innate criminal nature.”   onebornfree

    Those who remain in denial of the fundamental core nature of every government [i.e. slaves] are forever doomed to continue to fantasize over political solutions involving the election of “the right” people who are either ignorant of this fact, [Trump?] in denial of it [Trump?], or are fully aware of it and pretend to want to do something about it but will never attempt to enact the only political solution that can reverse the ever expanding Orwellian state , which is: the immediate, drastic downsizing of the Federal government , across the board, “in one fell swoop”, back to its original constitutional size, power and functions, at the very least, if not entirely eliminating this particular, wholly criminal, entity.

    Regards, onebornfree

  37. Agent76 says:

    Apr 21, 2020 Speaking Truth to Power in Covid-1984 – Kit Knightly on The Corbett Report

    From experts questioning the panic to death figure over-estimates to pushback against the new normal, today we highlight the work of those who are speaking truth to power on the defining event of our age.

    April 19, 2020 After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…

    First published on March 17, 2020, following the first tests of a vaccine conducted with human volunteers in Seattle on March 16.

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/after-the-lockdown-a-global-coronavirus-vaccination-program/5706547

  38. The backlash against these developments will be the “Butlerian Jihad” of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe, only IRL.

  39. Republic says:
    @Al Liguori

    She lives in a remote part of the world,in a small city,south of Santiago, Temuco, a university town, the former home of Gabriel Mistral and Pablo Neruda.

  40. schrub says:

    At least we can depend on Rand Paul to be continuing his truly courageous battle to protect our values while all this is going on. (wink,wink)

    What happened to ole Rand? His silence through all this is deafening. He seems to be hiding in a closet somewhere shaking in terror while all this is going on.

    Did Rand’s own case of “Potomac fever” clearly trump 🙂 any remaining scruples he might have about our current Orwellian situation (disguised as a mere flu).

    Maybe he is afraid that if he were to take a more courageous stand, he might end up having to leave Washington after losing his re-election campaign and then have to resume his previous career as full time ophthalmologist making a poverty level $500K+ a year back in the Kentucky, admittedly a very boring (and very fundamentalist) backwater, far away from the bright lights of Washington, DC.

    At least Rand’s present timidity is making Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell very happy. Happy enough to lose any previous misgivings he might have had about funding Rand’s upcoming senatorial campaign.

    Like father, definitely no like son. Tucker Carlson he ain’t.

  41. @Johnny Rico

    Are you breaking curfew to go to the coffee shop?

    Just came back, Johnny. If there is one, nobody around my neighborhood has seemed to give a rat’s hootie. Since you like the posts on Peak Stupidity, here’s one about my thoughts on a Kung Flu curfew. We got posts on every kinda stupidity you can think of. Thanks for reading there, and I’m glad you enjoyed it.

  42. Anonymous[395] • Disclaimer says:
    @sally

    A small point but it’s more like no part of the federal government can be considered American. Judging by TV news and commercials and by the kosher determinants of pop culture, the (so far unopposed) plan is to relegate whites to the lower class status of blacks, with both beneath Hispanics in America, ruled over by Chinese/Indian/Jewish technocratic and financial elites. Revolution from the right, that is, on behalf of family and community, is our Lockean right, yet the entirely captive Republican Party functions to neutralize natural leadership from arising. Rather obviously, it’d be difficult to find weaker specimens of men than the leadership of the Republican Party.

    I catch a few minutes of Fox News midday, and beyond the absurdity of having MDs speak for “science,” the assembled “experts” are almost entirely from that ethnic trio of typically white-hating Asians, and preferably female to double the insult to displaced white males. I also caught a segment of Tucker Carlson last night praising truckers for keeping goods on the shelves. But, if Fox News is true to form, as it has been as Israel’s chief fifth column propaganda platform for recruiting Americans to die and be maimed fighting in the ME so Jews need not, it’d be foolish not to assume there’s an agenda afoot for setting truckers up to take unnecessary risks by similarly manipulating them with praise that they’re “America”s newest and bravest heroes. I hope truckers realize that in the eyes of Israeli fifth column propaganda like Fox News, they’re about as valuable as the poor souls who gave their lives or lost limbs based on a lie.

    • Replies: @Corvinus
  43. Omegabooks says:

    When these techie psychos decide to (or better yet, are forced to) live in the real world, let me know.

    Round them up, put them on trial against humanity, and send them to Antarctica. Good luck building AI systems surrounded by penguins….oh wait, and having to build your own structures…you know, buildings…to keep out of the minus 50 degree temps, because no robot is gonna keep you warm… Dinner? Eat each other, since many of you are cannibals anyway… Bwahahahahahahahahah!

  44. Corvinus says:
    @Anonymous

    “A small point but it’s more like no part of the federal government can be considered American.”

    There is a point here–you’re dead wrong in your assessment.

    “Judging by TV news and commercials and by the kosher determinants of pop culture, the (so far unopposed) plan is to relegate whites to the lower class status of blacks, with both beneath Hispanics in America, ruled over by Chinese/Indian/Jewish technocratic and financial elites.”

    That’s not even remotely accurate.

    “Rather obviously, it’d be difficult to find weaker specimens of men than the leadership of the Republican Party.”

    What makes you apparently other than a “weaker specimen of man”?

    “I catch a few minutes of Fox News midday, and beyond the absurdity of having MDs speak for “science,” the assembled “experts” are almost entirely from that ethnic trio of typically white-hating Asians, and preferably female to double the insult to displaced white males.”

    The MD’s do speak about science, probably in terms you generally do not understand, hence the bitter gamma male approach on your part.

    “But, if Fox News is true to form, as it has been as Israel’s chief fifth column propaganda platform for recruiting Americans to die and be maimed fighting in the ME so Jews need not…”

    That would be Fake News on your part.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    , @The Eye
  45. Corvinus says:
    @onebornfree

    “Do you realize that Kaczynski was CIA MK-Ultra trained, right? In other words, he was working for /controlled by the CIA.”

    That is not the case at all.

    “Among the assholes on my personal “disappear”list: Gates, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Cook, Fauci, Soros, Kissinger, the Clintons, Bush, Schumer, Schiff, Brennan, Pompeo, Comey, and many, many more besides. But unfortunately for me I’m not a highly trained assassin. I can only hope that somebody out there is”

    LOL. Another Internet armchair warrior speaks. Let someone else do the dirty work. Praytell, are there Jews in your closet or under your bed?

  46. Irish Savant says: • Website

    The blame for China’s rapid advancement is down not to the Chinese but to the American traitors who sold out America’s industry and technology to them.

    • Agree: Republic
    • Replies: @Davee
  47. Irish Savant says: • Website
    @jbwilson24

    Yes, and at least two of that Council to combat the Chinese are themselves Chinese. More magical thinking.

  48. Jay Johnson says:

    Whenever I see “Orwellian” now that I am Jew-wise, I have to chuckle. That’s because many do not understand that Orwell was not warning us of some tyranny to come, but of the Jew tyranny descending upon us.

    Orwell’s choice of name for the “Inner Party” defector and the numerical limit of same the most obvious giveaway. 1984 is a fictionalized version of the Jews’ Protocols*. That’s why 1984 rings truer and truer every year–1984 is based on a plan, not imagination.

    Not hate. Just unacceptable.

    * The entire world was exposed to the Jews’ Protocols in the 20s, but especially in Orwell’s UK. Orwell was also exposed, during Spain’s “Civil War,” to the hordes of Jew terrorist groups roaming Spain’s countryside trying to force “revolution,” Jew subjugation, upon the Spanish people. Orwell knew the Jew monster first hand.

  49. lloyd says: • Website
    @Antares

    Whitney Webb’s articles however fascinating read like press releases. You would think she would take criticism on board and also reply to her readers. Yet out they come like a rabbit from a hat. Her name, her obscure origins, her turgid prose, her anonymity, her reticence with Israel, each in itself can be overlooked. But combined they form a picture.

    • Replies: @Hirflawdd
  50. Anonymous[395] • Disclaimer says:
    @Corvinus

    Based on the tone of your comments, you’re an angry, overweight, middle-aged woman with and odor problem, right?

    • Agree: Robert Dolan
    • Replies: @Corvinus
  51. Truth3 says:

    Another reason for honest money… coined metal of value…

    Coins can be easily disinfected at the household level.

    Paper bills cannot.

    Honest Money… no more fictions = no more frauds.

  52. Another excellent report by Whitney Webb.
    I wish there were more like her and in the MSM but I know it’s not possible.

    • Replies: @AJSpencer
  53. @Robert Dolan

    You write …

    “Blacks are not organizing the police state. Blacks can’t even organize a barbecue without taking casualties.”

    That is some funny shit!

  54. @Anthony Aaron

    Huxley’s and Orwell’s writings were NOT instruction books

    Highly suspect. Orwell may have been blundering in earnest over the course of his writing career, but Huxley was without doubt one of the NWO progenitors of the multifarious complex outlined in the article above. Brave New World was almost certainly a playbook or a personal fantasy of Huxley himself.

  55. 1) To those worried about oligarchs taking over the country, here is a question: what are the hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of Americans for?

    2) To those worried about China taking over the world, here is another question: what are the nuclear weapons in the hands of the other six nuclear powers for?

    So, the real dilemma is, to be or not to be … slave that is!

    • Replies: @Patagonia Man
  56. aandrews says:

    “…have said they will now build that surveillance system directly into their smartphone operating systems.”

    In their defense, it’s difficult and tricky managing a huge herd of cattle.

  57. annamaria says:

    Fauci the Fraud or Pharma Profiteers, Unite!
    “NIH Panel Recommends Against Drug Combination Promoted By Trump For COVID-19”
    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/04/what-do-you-have-to-lose-ttg.html#comments

    Fauci’s “National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities.

    Comment:

    I am surprised that “cloroquine phosphate”, the name under which I know the drug, is now suddenly supposed to have serious side effects. When I was stationed in Egypt for one year with my family back in 1978, we all took cloroquine, as I remember it, once a week.
    In my country, Denmark, drug regulation is pretty strict, so we assumed cloroquine was safe. Still, I went to ask my doctor when I had another one-year stationing to the Middle East coming up five years later. After looking at the guidelines, my doctor told me that cloroquine had been used for years without any side effects, and that the only side effects found after long trials on rabbits were some sort of residue settling in their eyes, though with no adverse effect on their eyesight.
    Lars Moeller-Rasmussen

    • Replies: @Pft
  58. Hirflawdd says:
    @lloyd

    Her name and origins aren’t obscure, its just that you are too dumb to do some basic googling.

  59. @eD

    Why do you assume prostitution and drugs will still be illegal?

  60. Corvinus says:
    @Anonymous

    “Based on the tone of your comments, you’re an angry, overweight, middle-aged woman with and odor problem, right?”

    Wrong. I’m a white American married man with children who makes his own decisions about race and politics. I bear witness to you pressing vigorously the ad hominem button. That is a sign of intellectual impotence on your part.

    • Replies: @MarylinM
  61. Davee says:
    @Irish Savant

    The blame for China’s rapid advancement is down not to the Chinese but to the American traitors who sold out America’s industry and technology to them.

    Don’t forget about the Israelis who run the US Patent and Trademark office who love to hustle a few shekels for any Patent Application that looks promising. And the middlemen in Israel who launder the trail straight to China – and make sure the trail can’t be traced.

  62. The problem with China is jot a US weakness in tech. It’s simply demographics. Once China opted for engaging the global community, they could empl0y several hundred million people in tech development . . .

    by the numbers alone — that is a considerable advantage. Say that in the US population, we have 200,000,000 tech companies. That would be just .6% of the population. .6% of China’s population that is 6 million people laboring away at tech development in the name of the people’s republic.

    Add to that reality as the article makes clear is that our tech developers are in it for a penny and a pound and those loyalties are divided if they exist at all. Current tech money history suggests that national identity comes next to zero in the tech world.

    A problem with US leadership and national priorities.

  63. Priss Factor says: • Website
    @Pft

    So to defeat China we must become like China?

    Why this thinking in terms of winners and losers? This is typical American imperial mentality that sees the world as one big superbowl.

    US can mind its sphere, China can mind its sphere, and all the world can trade. That seems the best way, but the American mentality is there must be ONE king of the hill in the entire world. Worse, US projects this pathology on OTHER nations that don’t have such hubris.

    Even when Chinese thought their civilization was the Middle Kingdom, they just wanted to be left alone. Today, China doesn’t want to export Chinese values around the world, no more than Russians want to turn everyone ‘Russian’. It is America that is trying to turn the world into an empire of globo-homo and Zio-centrism. And yet, the US, the main interventionist and imperialist power, whines endlessly about Russia, Russia, Russia and China, China, China.

    A sane world is not about one nation beating another nation. The Age of Empire can be over for good. Now, great powers will have spheres of influence. But US isn’t content to control its borders and peripheries. It has to surround OTHER nations.
    In a way, the Monroe Doctrine was poisonous. Not because it was about America insisting on independence from European powers but because it signaled US hegemony over all the Americas, north and south. Thus began US hypocrisy. Opposing foreign hegemony while doing everything to expand its own hegemony.

  64. Pft says:
    @annamaria

    Professor Didier Raoult “The HCQ-AZ combination, when started immediately after diagnosis, is a safe and efficient treatment for COVID-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5%, in elderly patients. It avoids worsening and clears virus persistence and contagiosity in most cases.” Dr Zelenko, a US GP, had success with HCQ+AZ+zinc in treating his COVID-19 patients so that they did not need to be admitted to hospital .

    Fauci’s conclusions were based on studies where only the most serious patients were treated. At that point the lung is severely damage and the immune response to the inflammation caused along with hypoxia is the killer, not the virus which is pretty much depleted at that point. They knew this of course because Raoult told them (France did the same thing), but in order to push vaccines on us you cant have a cheap generic drug thats effective. Maybe thats why France banned its OTC sale in January.

    Fauci needs a reservation at GITMO along with many others.

  65. Patagonia Man [AKA "PTG Mann"] says:
    @Big Daddy

    The greatest political quote ever: “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

  66. Priss Factor says: • Website

    Biggest game of ‘you got the cooties’ in human history.

  67. MarylinM says:
    @Corvinus

    Your stamina for petty argumentation is quite revealing – thank you. If it talks, walks and quacks, it’s gotta be a quack.

  68. annamaria says:
    @Anonymous

    “it comes from 99% pure espionage against the United States, and it’s doubly miraculous in view of the stand down by FBI-Justice/CIA/State and Congress that cannot be explained by other than treason.”

    — Treason has become institutionalized in the US. Exhibit One is Mr. Cheney (see 9/11 and the Wars for Israel).

    The financialization of the US economy is a highly visible sign of total elimination of any vestiges of patriotism in the US government and among American CEO bandits.

    The country has been hollowed out. There is no culture (including family traditions) to defend and fight for. Hence the greatly increased role of mercenaries in running the racket of war for the benefits of corporate bosses, banksters, rabid supremacists of dual-loyalty kind, and dishonorable brass.

    https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1
    Major General Smedley Butler:

    WAR is a racket. It always has been.

    It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

    A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

  69. BPVegas says:

    Another excellent, informative treatise by Whitney Webb, who is one of today’s best investigative journalists.

    Soon, we Americans, like citizens in China and elsewhere, will be like the beasts at the wildlife sanctuaries, where all our physical needs will be met by the zookeepers but, we will live our lives in captivity inside enclosures. Big brother will eliminate crime, disease, famine and war but there will exist no room for free thought, creativity or truth. When the official narrative says 2+2=5, you’d better believe it or you will find your job and on-linebank account gone. Heck, you might even be imprisoned! Nobody will remember that 2+2=4 anyway! A movie that presaged where we are heading is “Rollerball” (1975).

    “Jonathan E…Jonathan E…. Jonathan E.”

  70. AJSpencer says:
    @AriusArmenian

    She is too good for them.

  71. Che Guava says:
    @Tucker

    You have a point. As a fast reader, though, I see the proalem as Whitney’s apparent unwillingness (or inability) to eliminate repetition, of which there is always an overdose. .

    The name is as likely to be a pen-name as my own u-name here, alliteration plus ‘Webb’, WWW. AFAIK, Whitney can also be a man’s name in the U.S.A.

    So, not necessarily a woman.

    Still, I appreciate the info.

    It would be much better if she (or he) was editing the articles to minimise repetition, or had a friend do so.

  72. @Bill Jones

    At that level, you’re supposed to know the answer, Bill. Why are you asking people in the 70’s?

  73. China: “We need AI to support our healthcare, because we have a fundamental lack of doctors.”
    USA: “We need AI to overtake our healthcare, because we need to compete with China. Doctors are obsolete.”

    ^ That tells you all about the difference in attitude/mentality the two governments have regarding the application of technology within society.

  74. Tony Ryals says:

    Isn’t-it-funny,(peculiar),that-Johns-Hopkins’-young-and-reknowned-computational-biology-professor-,James-Taylor,-who-had-a-longtime-interest-in-coronaviruses,(particularly-SARS),died-about-a-month-ago-and-Johns-Hopkins,(famous-for-its-medical-expertise)-nor-any-of-his-friends-or-colleagues-have-even-mentioned-any-possible-cause-of-death.It-must-certainly-not-have-been-from-the-evil-coronavirus-or-the-Johns-Hopkins-Event-201-planners-and-Bill-Gates-would-most-certainly-have–used-his-dead-body-to-further-their-viral-fear-campaign.
    He-does-see-like-an-ethical-and-socially-concerned-individual-so-he-muist-have-felt-a-bit-out-of-place-at-Johns-Hop0kins.

    https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/computational-biologist-james-taylor-dies-67391

    James Taylor, a computational biologist at Johns Hopkins University who developed a popular open-source bioinformatics platform, died April 2 at the age of 40.

    Taylor is known for his work with the Galaxy Project, an open-source tool originally designed to help process data for genomicists.

    Taylor earned a computer science degree in 2000 from the University of Vermont, and afterward received his PhD in the field from Penn State University in 2006, during which he helped develop the Galaxy Project. He worked as an associate professor at Emory University for five years, according to a memoriam from Johns Hopkins University. During this time, he continued his work with Galaxy, broadening it to a global scale and writing many papers about the platform that have been cited thousands of times. He left Emory and joined the staff at Johns Hopkins, where he became known for his collaborative spirit.

    “He came in 2014, and it was transformational,” Vince Hilser, the chair of the biology department, says in the statement. “He was this catalyst for change, with a huge positive impact.”

    Taylor was one of the founders and developers of the Galaxy Project in 2005. The platform allowed scientists to better understand genomic and epigenomic activity across individuals and species without every researcher needing to learn computer programming. Galaxy is now used to analyze bioinformatics data with increased accuracy and reproducibility in many fields, ranging from drug discovery to ecology, and has been used in nearly 9,000 scientific publications, according to its website.

    Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Taylor used his Twitter account to speak out on the need for shared genomic data and criticize the lack of proper supplies for those working on the front lines……….

    • Replies: @aandrews
  75. aandrews says:
    @Tony Ryals

    I have to ask, what’s with the hyphens?

    • Replies: @Tony Ryals
  76. Techspect says:
    @Tucker

    Ms. Webb, please do continue to provide these information-dense and voluminous works. Perhaps to address the complaints of those, such this fellow, if it is necessary to consider that, the Unz format will permitt you to employ emboldened summary titles for subsections throughout the text that will permit hurried readers to jump and dive through the text. To all readers, we are entering an age when mastering increasing flows of information will be a demand (and an opportunity). Rise to the challenge.

  77. Tony Ryals says:
    @aandrews

    My-computer-spacing-mechanism-is-broke-and-I’m-in-lockdown-because-of-my-thought-crimes.I-also-can’t-type-the-letter-”m-and-so-I-have-to-cut-and-paste-them-in-as-well.Does-that-bother-you-
    more-than-the-unexplained-death-of-John-Hopkins’-professor-of-virology-James-Taylor-?!

    • Replies: @aandrews
  78. aandrews says:
    @Tony Ryals

    Geez. That reminds me of a Stephen King novel I read way back when. A guy was forced to write a novel on an old manual typewriter and the keys started failing, starting with the “e”, if I remember correctly, the most common letter in english. And the story had to be a good story so he had to adapt and overcome. Well, my condolences. I hope you don’t end up like he did.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
  79. aandrews says:
    @aandrews

    Whitney brings up a couple of good points concerning possible ulterior motivations with social distancing and lock-down/quarantine orders:
    1) People are forced to interact more with machines, which is where the mass adoption of AI comes in.
    2) Orders are given before there are any coronavirus infections, to shutdown popular protests.
    It’s an interesting little segment, starting at 39:00.

    Has anyone seen an old documentary called They Live??

  80. Patagonia Man [AKA "PTG Mann"] says:

    This is the Cabal’s next step to total and irreversible dystopia – don’t say you weren’t warned!

    “Now we can see a New World coming into view …” George HW Bush New World Order Quotes

    https://youtu.be/MADYzQstpsU

    Here Bill Gates is speaking to the Financial Times:

    “You don’t have a choice. Normalcy only returns when we’ve vaccinated the entire global population.”

    Coronavirus vaccines were patented in 2018 and 2019 by the Gates-funded Pirbright Institute*. Most Americans won’t even look at them. The charade of a “race for a vaccine” is simply a MSM subterfuge to reinforce the program.

    * https://operation-nation.com/coronavirus-patent-documents-vaccine-race-and-countdown-to-war/

    The Gates Foundation is now the top funder of the WHO after US Pres. Trump cut the US’s funding✝ which gives him inordinate influence over its vaccine programs.

    Gates Ups Pandemic Funds to $250 Million, Says Trump WHO Move Makes ‘No Sense’ https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/15/world/europe/15reuters-health-coronavirus-gates.html

  81. Patagonia Man [AKA "PTG Mann"] says:

    This is the Cabal’s next step to total and irreversible dystopia – now don’t say you weren’t warned!

    “Now we can see a New World coming into view …”

    – George H.W. Bush New World Order Quotes https://youtu.be/MADYzQstpsU

    “You don’t have a choice. Normalcy only returns when we’ve vaccinated the entire global population.”

    – Bill Gates speaking to the Financial Times https://youtu.be/xUChdrL6Cd8

    Coronavirus vaccines were patented in 2018 and 2019 by the Gates-funded Pirbright Institute°. Most Americans won’t even look at them. The charade of a “race for a vaccine” is simply a MSM subterfuge to reinforce the program.

    The Gates Foundation is now the top funder of the WHO after US Pres.Trump cut the US’s funding✝ which gives him inordinate influence with its vaccine programs.

    Notes:
    ° https://operation-nation.com/coronavirus-patent-documents-vaccine-race-and-countdown-to-war/
    ✝ Gates Ups Pandemic Funds to $250 Million, Says Trump WHO Move Makes ‘No Sense’ https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/15/world/europe/15reuters-health-coronavirus-gates.html

  82. Patagonia Man [AKA "PTG Mann"] says:
    @Really No Shit

    There is in fact 8 nuclear powers, 9 incl. the zionist entity.

    Under the terms of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT), 5 are considered to be nuclear-weapon states (NWS), viz. US, Russia, the UK, France and China.

    Since 1970 when the NPT came into force, 3 states that weren’t parties to the NPT have conducted nuclear tests, viz. India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

    As a rogue state and state sponsor of terrorism, the zionist entity is known to have nuclear weapons, but maintaining its policy of deliberate ambiguity won’t acknowledge it.

    But your larger point stands.

    Peace.

  83. @aandrews

    Haha, Mr. Andrews! That was a funny exchange all round.

    Hey Tony, I got your spaces right heah!

    | |

    Highlight the whole line from the left “pipe” character (vertical line) to the right one. That’s about 50 spaces that you can use at your leisure. If you need more than that, I’m gonna have to start charging.

    .

    EDIT: Unz software stripped out the spaces. I’m sorry. You’re fucked.

  84. The Eye says:
    @Corvinus

    You Corvinas, are nothing but an ass clown shitshow. FU in hell.

  85. Kratoklastes says:

    Pfft.

    Any surveillance state put in place by a government will be the Windows Phone of a surveillance state – for the simple reason that they can’t attract or retain talent. Hint: Microsoft’s inability to retain talent is why Windows Phone was so shit; it’s also why the latest Windows Fuckup (‘update’ 1903) broke sandboxing on every browser on a machine running Windows.

    The government runs Windows server; has poorly-secured web-facing AWS repositories with actual, literal, Top Secret shit in them (including personnel lists for agencies); can’t run a fucking website (a $100m budget will result in a website that breaks if more than a few people access it at once).

    These people scare you?

    That’s not to say that they won’t do brutal things to people they identify as enemies: just that it will be trivial to prevent yourself from being thus identified.

    Kinda like Prohibition: they outlawed liquor, but anyone who wanted liquor could get it without being detected, so long as they took rudimentary precautions. They outlawed weed, and ditto.

    There will always be half-clever tech-charlatans who will line up to grift money out of the public sector: they will promise perfection, charge a squillion dollars, and deliver a half-baked shitshow… and everyone will pretend that the product was to spec, so that nobody gets embarrassed. (Hell – that happened to Amazon and ebay with their ‘AI recommenders’).

    Smart coders – genuinely smart coders – don’t want to work for government. There is something about the way their brains are wired, that makes them different from, say, aeronautical engineers (who are probably as smart, but seem to have no qualms about doing their thing for government).

    Why do you think Google had such a hard time getting their coders to work on that Chink project? The objections weren’t coming from the rounded-corner presentation-layer fuckwits (they’re a dime a dozen – they’re always hungry); it was ‘core’ people, where if you go outside the top decile, the project is fucked.

    Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple haven’t been able to attract genuine top-tier talent for over a decade – which is why their systems are fragile and they drop the ball once the problem gets past ‘HelloWorld‘ levels. Baidu, WeChat etc… same (Chinkie coders are generally not as good as you might think, because key documentation requires high-level English skills).

    Government has to make do with five or six talent levels below that – especially since being a coder for .gov requires that you pass their ‘social credit’ system. You need to have never said anything controversial in your life: completely-uncontroversial people are usually dull as dishwater.

    • Troll: Corvinus
  86. Derer says:
    @Big Daddy

    “evil Psychopaths”

    No. The name calling does not help. Actually we are all psychopaths for tolerating this corrupt system. Look at us, we are voting these insects to “represent” us in Washington don’t we. Some of them for 30 years (Biden). We like only Democrats or Republicans…others, perhaps more honest, have no chance because we are gullible herd of sheep easily influenced by the minuscule sect.

  87. Malla says:

    Makes me wonder if this, COVID 19 virus was released by the psychopathic elites to further push their NWO agenda. And I had always doubted if USA/West Vs PR China + Russian Federation + N.Korea etc… was one big scam sham like the sham Cold War. I am more and more convinced that International Politics & “rivalries” are a stage show like WWE fake “rivalries”. It is all Opera & Kabuki.

  88. Too bad written literacy is so low that few will be able to get through this most illustrative and informative article.

  89. Facebook will not allow me to “share” this article. Reason: complaints that it contains “abusive” material.

  90. MrTea says:

    5G is really about Total Surveillance in real time. But don’t you want that driverless car?

    Here are a few well-chosen words from a thoughtful smart guy. Hopefully a few locals in Red States will give this a try. The others are Long Gone. Did you see there is a Harvard Law professor (Vermuele I think) already demanding the end of free speech and property rights to make everything more orderly?

    https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2020/04/27/covid-19-testing-an-urgent-open-letter-to-governors-of-the-united-states/

  91. leveymg says: • Website

    In all likelihood, China will fail and fall with the U.S.

    Joseph Tainter, a cultural anthropologist with a specialization in statistics diagnosed their shared problem correctly, I believe. The U.S. and China are interdependent techno-surveillance states experiencing declining marginal returns on increasingly costly complexity. Declining returns on complexity is the core cause of the collapse of all complex societies throughout history Prof. Tainter has examined.

    The U.S. has resorted to increasingly desperate, counterproductive measures to maintain its Post-World War Two hegemony, and as a result we are seeing the visibly accelerating breakup of that dominance. Meanwhile, China is pursuing it own competing parallel hegemony, which because it is so similar to the American, alienates the rest of the world for similar reasons. Neither the U.S. nor China present an attractive model for the future, and both will drag each other down to the collective relief of the rest of the planet. The Soviet Empire fell apart first, thirty years ago, under the same circumstances.

    Interdependence and dominance truly are global, and that implies that any system of technological and political control must be both broadly attractive — even if the merits are largely illusory — as well as economically efficient. Neither variation of the same system of mass exploitation and tyranny is sustainable.

Current Commenter
says:

Leave a Reply - Comments on articles more than two weeks old will be judged much more strictly on quality and tone


 Remember My InformationWhy?
 Email Replies to my Comment
$
Submitted comments have been licensed to The Unz Review and may be republished elsewhere at the sole discretion of the latter
Commenting Disabled While in Translation Mode
Subscribe to This Comment Thread via RSS Subscribe to All Whitney Webb Comments via RSS
PastClassics
The evidence is clear — but often ignored
Analyzing the History of a Controversial Movement
The Surprising Elements of Talmudic Judaism