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âȘ With the advent of Silicon Valley ideologyâs ubiquitous âreachâ, the diktat can be achieved through weaponizing âTruthâ via AI, to achieve a âmachine learning fairnessâ that reflects only the values of the coming revolution…Â
What is a âDigital Iron Curtainâ?
It is when Big Digital, as Professor Michael Rectenwald terms these western Tech Goliaths, become âgovernmentalitiesâ, using a word originally coined by Michel Foucault to refer to the means by which the âgovernedâ (i.e. âwe the peopleâ) assimilate, and reflect outwardly, a mental attitude desired by the Ă©lites: âOne might point to masking and social distancing as instances of what Foucault meant by his notion of governmentalityâ, Rectenwald suggests.
And What Is That Desired âMentalityâ?
It is to embrace the transfiguration of American and European identity and way-of-life. The presumptive U.S. President Elect, the European Elites, and top âwokeâ Elites moreover, are publicly committed to such âtransformationâ: âNow we take Georgia, then we change the world,â (Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, declared, celebrating Joe Bidenâs âvictoryâ); âTrumpâs defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms also in Europeâ, claimed Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council.
In short, the âIron Curtainâ descends when supposedly private enterprises (Big Digital) mutually inter-penetrate with â and then claim â the State: No longer the non-believer facing this coming metamorphosis is to be persuaded â he can be compelled. Regressive values held on identity, race and gender quickly slipped into a âheresyâ labelling. And as the BLM activists endlessly repeat: âSilence is no option: Silence is complicityâ.
With the advent of Silicon Valley ideologyâs ubiquitous âreachâ, the diktat can be achieved through weaponizing âTruthâ via AI, to achieve a âmachine learning fairnessâ that reflects only the values of the coming revolution â and through AI âlearningâ mounting that version of binary âtruthâ, up and against an adversarial ânon-truthâ (its polar opposite). How this inter-penetration came about is through a mix of early CIA start-up funding; connections and contracts with state agencies, particularly relating to defense; and in support for propaganda campaigns in service to âgovernmentalistâ narratives.
These U.S. Tech platforms have, for some time, become effectively fused into the âBlue Stateâ â particularly in the realms of intelligence and defense â to the extent that these CEOs no longer see themselves as state âpartnersâ or contractors, but rather, as some higher Ă©lite leadership, precisely shaping and directing the future of the U.S. Their objective however, is to advance beyond the American âsphereâ, to a notion that such an Ă©lite oligarchy eventually would be directing a future âplanetary governanceâ. One, in which their tech tools of AI, analytics, robotics and machine-learning, would become the mathematical and digital scaffold around whose structure, the globe in all its dimensions is administered. There would be no polity â only analytics.
The blatant attempt by Big Tech platforms and MSM to write the narrative of the 2020 Facebook and Twitter U.S. Election â coupled with their campaign to insist that dissent is either the intrusion of enemy disinformation, âliesâ coming from the U.S. President, or plain bullsh*t â is but the first step to re-defining âdissentersâ as security risks and enemies of the good.
The mention of âheresy and disinformationâ additionally plays the role of pushing attention away from the gulf of inequality between smug Elites and skeptical swathes of ordinary citizenry. Party Elites might be notoriously well-known for unfairly enriching themselves, but as fearless knights leading the faithful to battle, Elites can become again objects of public and media veneration â heroes who can call believers âonce more unto the breach!â.
The next step is already being prepared â as Whitney Webb notes:
A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UKâs signal intelligence agency, GCHQ, which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be âpropagandaâ, [and that] raise concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development â and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.
Similar efforts are underway in the U.S., with the military recently funding a CIA-backed firm ⊠to develop an AI algorithm aimed specifically at new websites promoting âsuspectedâ disinformation related to the Covid-19 crisis, and the U.S. militaryâled Covid-19 vaccination effort known as Operation Warp Speed âŠ
The Times reported that GCHQ âhas begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile statesâ and âis using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic Stateâ to do so ⊠The GCHQ cyber war will not only take down âanti-vaccine propagandaâ, but will also seek to âdisrupt the operations of the cyber actors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other.â
The Times stated that âthe government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer,â suggesting that efforts will continue to ramp up as a vaccine candidate gets closer to approval.
This larger pivot toward treating alleged âanti-vaxxersâ as ânational security threatsâ has been ongoing for much of this year, spearheaded in part by Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a member of the UK governmentâs Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force, which is part of the UK governmentâs Commission for Countering Extremism.
Ahmed told the UK newspaper The Independent in July that âI would go beyond calling anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists to say they are an extremist group that pose a national security risk.â He then stated that âonce someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy itâs easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism ⊠Similarly, a think tank tied to U.S. intelligence argued in a research paper published just months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis that âthe U.S. âanti-vaxxerâ movement would pose a threat to national security in the event of a âpandemic with a novel organism.ââ
Just to be clear, it is not just the âFive Eyesâ Intelligence Community at work â YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided this week to remove a Ludwig von Mises Institute video, with more than 1.5 million views, for challenging aspects of U.S. policy on the Coronavirus.
What on earth is going on? The Mises Institute as âextremistâ, or purveyor of enemy disinformation? (Of course, there are countless other examples.)
Well, in a word, it is âChinaâ. Maybe it is about fears that China will surpass the U.S. economically and in Tech quite shortly. It is no secret that the U.S., the UK and Europe, more generally, have botched their handling of Covid, and may stand at the brink of recession and financial crisis.
China, and Asia more generally, has Covid under much better control. Indeed, China may prove to be the one state likely to grow economically over the year ahead.
Hereâs The Rub: The Pandemic Persists.Â
Western governments largely have eschewed full lockdowns, whilst hoping to toggle between partial social-distancing, and keeping the economy open â oscillating between turning the dials up or down on both. But they are achieving neither the one (pandemic under control), nor the other (saving themselves from looming economic breakdown). The only exit from this conundrum that the Elites can see is to vaccinate everyone as soon as possible, so that they can go full-steam on the economy â and thus stop China stealing a march on the West.
But 40%-50% of Americans say they would refuse vaccination. They are concerned about the long term safety for humans of the new mRNA technique â concerns, it seems, that are destined to be rigorously de-platformed to make way for the ârequiredâ saturation of pro-vaccine messaging across the English-speaking media landscape.
There is no evidence, yet, that either the Moderna or the Pfizer experimental vaccine prevented any hospitalizations or any deaths. If there were, the public has not been told. There is no information about how long any protective benefit from the vaccine would persist. There is no information about safety. Not surprisingly there is public caution, which GCHQ and Big Digital intend to squash.
The Digital Iron Curtain Is Not Just About America.Â
U.S. algorithms, and social media, saturate Europe too. And Europe has its âpopulistsâ and state âdeplorablesâ (currently Hungary and Poland), on which Brussels would like to see the digital âCurtainâ of denigration and political ostracism descend.
This month, Hungary and Poland vetoed the EU blocâs âŹ1.8 trillion budget and recovery package in retaliation for Brusselâs plan effectively to fine them for violating the EUâs ârule of lawâ principles. As the Telegraph notes, âMany European businesses are depending on the cash and, given the âsecond waveâ of coronavirus hitting the continent, Brussels fears that the VisegrĂĄd Group alliesâ could hold a recovery hostage to their objections to the EU ârule-of-lawâ âfinesâ).
Whatâs this all about? Well, OrbĂĄnâs justice minister has introduced a series of constitutional changes. Each of them triggering ârule-of-lawâ disputes with the EU. The most contentious amendment is an anti-LGBT one, stating explicitly that the mother is a woman, the father is a man. It will add further restrictions for singles and gay couples adopting children, and it will confine gender transition to adults.
OrbĂĄnâs veto is yet more evidence of a new Iron Curtain descending down the spine of â this time â Europe. The âCurtainâ again is cultural, and has nothing to do with âlawâ. Brussels makes no secret of its displeasure that many Central and Eastern European member-states will not sign up to âprogressiveâ (i.e. woke) values. At its root lies the tension that âwhilst Western Europe is de-Christianizing, Europeâs central and eastern states are re-Christianizing â the faith having been earlier a rallying point against communismâ, and now serving as the well-spring to these statesâ post-Cold War emerging identity. (It is not so dissimilar to some âRedâ American conservative constituencies that also are reaching back to their Christian roots, in the face of Americaâs political polarization.) âȘ






