THE BIG PICTURE: How rising China, digital US money, ESG social credit schemes, and creeping totalitarianism in the West all fit together

Ok here we go.

China has been ramping up tech specifically in the areas of survalience, seamless integration of people's social lives with tech through stuff like street-camera-phone connectivity, "social credit", AI monitoring of people's phonecalls and web-surfing habits, big data crunching, predictive programs to monitor those perceived as "antisocial" and so on. It is making these moves so it can solidify it's draconian assault on human dignity by becoming even more authoritarian.

Until quite recently, it was a bedrock assumption of the West that authoritarian societies stifiled "creativity", and that "freedom" was necessary to create an environment in which technology could advance through such creativity. But here is the kicker: China's Orwellian social system gives it an advantage when it comes to certain types of tech, particularly the application of big data, AI, and connectivity to social systems and a seamless integration of online life with daily life. Because of its ability to manipulate its citizens so cruelly, it an deploy technology in a way that it can't be deployed in the west, with classical western core values of freedom, individual autonomy, and privacy. For the first time, an authoritarian society seems to be in the process of outclassing the free world in certain key tech areas.

There has been a deep and palpable terror at the dawning realization of this fact growing among two key Western power nodes: Silicon Valley and Social Media Big Tech, and pentagon strategists. This is pushing these two power nodes closer together, as their shared fear of "falling behind" China motivates closer collaboration.

This new fear-driven military-tech business alliance is alarming for several reasons. On the one hand, I will give them credit for identifying a new problem and working to seek solutions. I don't want Chinese hegemony, and I'm glad our military strategists and tech gurus are on the ball about it. But the danger is that in seeking to beat China, we could find ourselves becoming a mirror image of China. Surrendering freedom, liberty, privacy, and autonomy as a dual corporate-military vice squeezes us towards "competitive authoritarianism."

Thus I see an accelerating apeing of Chinese tech-based totalitarianism. China introduces digital yuan; a few weeks later it's in the news the US may be rushing to do the same. China has a social credit system; we are inching ever closer to similar schemes, with vaccination internal tracking passports and a new idea floated to reward and punish companies based on proposed "sustainability and social justice scores". And all this is happening at warp speed under the thumb of democrats. Gives me the willies, frankly.

Last Edited by Ordovician on 04/07/2021 06:49 AM