161 Comments

Somehow Christoper Lasch gets all the attention, but the great Economist Joseph Schumpeter (best known for his theory of entrepreneurial "creative destruction") gets no love.

Schumpeter argued that the class struggle that would come to define Western Civilization would not be between capitalists and the proletariat, but rather between two factions of the bourgeoisie. There was the old middle class, who were involved with buying, selling and manufacturing physical things, and the "new class," who earned their living by manipulating "symbolic knowledge."

This is exactly what we see playing out now in the Anglosphere. I try not to hate, but when I fall into hatred, it's not directed so much at the lumpenproletariat of bandits and sexual degenerates who make life increasingly dangerous and disgusting in American cities, but the smug "elites" who deploy them as their foot soldiers to keep the old bourgeoisie fearful and demoralized under the current regime of anarcho-tyranny. Which means - by the way - that the state will not protect you, but will deploy all the force at its command to keep you from protecting yourself.

The "new class" outdo their French compatriots during the end of the Ancien Regime in 1790 in hatred and contempt for the 90% of their countryman who do not enjoy aristocratic privilege, which in 1790 France literally meant different treatment under the law. If you want to see a summary of how that worked, read the first 50 pages of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities."

The only thing that has really held back the backlash in this country is that we are so wealthy. When the next recession comes, the counter movement is going to be fearsome. At this point, I can't imagine myself getting too upset at the excesses that will occur as society moves back toward some semblance of peace and justice. The COVID tyrants, the journalistic lickspittles of The Regime, the members of our Coastal Aristocracy, the Deep State vermin that congregate around Washington DC, the partisan lawyers and judges who have created the American Gulag, I don't care what happens to them. The worse the better.

It's been decades since I've seen any real justice occur in this country or in my personal life, and anything that cannot continue forever will not continue forever.

Expand full comment

As I’ve said study the French Revolution to understand what occurs when the elite get out of hand.

Expand full comment

I agree. Same in the UK, except the money is older.

I do sense the elites have bitten off more than they can chew. Mass immigration especially. They are no more bulletproof than anyone else.

Expand full comment

Especially King Chaz. He wants us eliminated whilst he has organic meat and produce.

Castles, Private Jets, Yachts etc.

Chaz is a WEF psychopath

Expand full comment

Many of them may be psychopaths. I personally believe they are a self-appointed aristocracy keen to maintain their position. They are also prone to social engineering schemes as they promise much in the way of social control, which helps them imagine they can stay on top.

But social engineering has a very poor track record. People are people. So I doubt any of it will work.

What ordinary people are not understanding is just how captured everything is, including politics and media. Even after Covid they still plod on. That is what worries me more than WEF ideas.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Dec 2, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

I agree. But there are natural limits to all of this. They are poor students of human nature. People are tired of their tinkering and I think this era is coming to an end. Bill Gates is openly mocked now. Only the media and political types admire him.

The takeaway is their position is weaker than we think. Exposure sinks them. Overexposure leads to ridicule. That is not a sign of strength. So there is considerable hope. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Dec 2, 2023Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

The Venetian judge gives you a 10 for a perfectly executed Produnova segueing into the Chusovitina variant of the Tsukahara. Nailed the landing as well.

Expand full comment

I did not understand your comment at all until I googled each of those three words...Produnova, Chusovitina and Tsukahara. All related to gymnastics. 👍😀

Expand full comment

So far, our would-be feudal overlords have succeeded by being somewhat invisible. Until recently discussion of this distinct class of globalist elites would be dismissed as conspiracy. But they are now increasingly visible to everyone.

Ireland is just small, so the degeneration of their elites is happening more quickly than bigger countries. Flooding the country with immigrants who are unsuited to the culture is one example of their contempt. We are all peasants to them.

But the Irish situation is a microcosm of all Western states. The UK, Canada, the USA. The same globalist elites run them all. But as we now see in Ireland they are in fact incompetent. Their days are numbered.

Expand full comment

The question is: How many will they drag down into the abyss with them, as they fall from their perch? We are dealing with monstrously evil people, unmoored from traditional morality or reality (transgenderism). I fear that they would rather destroy the whole project than surrender their positions of authority to lesser, inferior beings.

Expand full comment

I think it is worse than this. They don't care if they are kings presiding over rubble. I think they are that crazy. We are witnessing mental illness now.

The pronouncements from the Irish government since last week are getting increasingly crazy. They just don't care. I believe they are detached from reality.

Expand full comment

Exactly.

Expand full comment

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Expand full comment

I prefer Schwarzkopf in this situation:

“I believe that forgiving them is God's function; Our job is to arrange the meeting.”

Expand full comment

Many of the "doers" in Ireland (and most of Europe) have already emigrated to the US or other nations. The ones that are left in country are outrageously outnumbered.

Expand full comment

Ireland has plenty of capable people. So this is not a skills thing or intelligence.

Alas as we have learned in recent years many of the middle classes need to experience things firsthand before they act.

For Ireland and all of us time is running out. People need to recognize what is going on.

Expand full comment

Absolutely, being drugged, entertained, fat and comfortable has been a globalist move from the get go.

Trauma Bombs keep us apathetic

Expand full comment

Learned helplessness is real. Being out of shape and eating food that makes you sick doesn't help. It takes effort to escape, and that is hard to conjure up when depressed or demoralized.

Expand full comment

The only good commie is a dead commie. Same goes for these folks. They will gladly kill you to keep their status quo, make no mistake about it. Bloodshed, unfortunately, will be the cure. You can’t

un-wire a set of values such as theirs.

Expand full comment

“They will gladly kill you to keep their status quo…”

The same is true of most people. But the “status quo” is not the issue. The Illuminati have decided they want it all. “In 10 years, you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” (That was 7 yrs ago, BTW.) Essentially, they want to rent our very lives to us.

Expand full comment

The question I keep pondering is this -- are they revealing themselves because they're stupid / arrogant or because they think they can't be beaten?

Expand full comment

Arrogance plays a part. But I suspect ignorance and incompetence are the main factors.

The middle classes are insulated from the worst of it. Mass immigration to them means great restaurants, cheap nannies and international students.

The political class are very cut off. The same things happens in London. They don't yet feel the pain. Although I think some of the pro Palestine demonstrations rattled some.

Expand full comment

Sophistry is used to destroy critical thinking skills by design

Expand full comment

I agree. It is reality people need to wake up. Mugged by real life. That is coming.

Expand full comment

This is the worrying question. Do they know something we only suspect?

Expand full comment

They are Dunning-Krueger at the Industrial Smoothing level. Hillary Clinton is the prime example, someone who actually believes that not enough people hated her to prevent her coronation as President. Twice.

Expand full comment

The Irish situation particularly grates on me, even though I'm not Irish. Their society was entirely White. They had a thriving economy. They had NO need for immigrants. They finally had a settlement of the Northern Ireland mess, and they KNEW that minorities of any kind were problematic. They could see the racial conflict in the US and everywhere else in the world. And yet they deliberately imported racial, religious, ethnic minorities, and put themselves under the yoke of the EU. Why, in the name of God, why?

Expand full comment

They didn't. Their elites did. The initial disguise was things like nurses and other healthcare workers. Like the rest of us the media is almost exclusively left wing. The political class and the major institutions are absolutely onboard with the brave new vision of the WEF and others.

It is the midwits and the laptop class who are bringing down our nations. The Irish are no different. The people pushing back are the working class, those most hit by immigration. Competition for jobs and especially government housing. They feel it first.

What I don't get is how the middle classes can't see the threat. Islam, different social mores and ultimately tribalism is coming for the laptop class. How can people be so blind?

Expand full comment

The laptop class still think they’re above it all.

Expand full comment

And to some extent they are. But we are seeing more minority groups become more strident. First and second gen immigrants hammering us for being too white etc. That ought to be the first warning that many people do not think as we do. The ingratitude is of course played down by the media.

Reality does exist though. And it always wins.

Expand full comment

Ireland has literally thousands of NGOs that are well funded (by whom would be an interesting thing to know) with a vested interest in transforming Irish society into something more to their liking. They interact closely with transnational corporations and the political class. They are the people who did this, not the ordinary Irish. They control the opinion forming institutions like the media and education so they have been able to put this over on Ireland, but evidence suggests this is no longer working as well as it used to and they have to resort to open oppression to maintain control..That's why this is going on.

Expand full comment

We know who's funding the NGOs....the Government, then Gates and Soros under various guises. All the newspapers are openly partly funded by Bill and Melinda. Day and night we are bombarded with proof of how racist we are, right wing, eating the incorrect food, and sexist (transgender). Our Irishmen suffer from toxic masculinity and are a raging threat to the safety of women . We pollute too much, drive too fast, buy the wrong cars, drink too much. Our Taoiseach accuses us of supporting a 'backward looking sovereignty' and so on and so on and so on! It is absolutely never ending🤷‍♀️.

Expand full comment

The human trafficking NGOs are a key element here. Their activities may well already be illegal under existing law. Alas, good luck finding a judge who will enforce it.

Expand full comment

Spaceman Spiff - From your pen to God’s ears.

Expand full comment

Please. Oh. Please be right.

Expand full comment

Be it Ireland, the United States, and many parts of Western Europe, and here in Canada, the story is the same regarding this elite class who hate their own citizens. Our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a perfect case in point. His treatment of the Freedom Convoy made is abudantly clear that not only does he hate his own citizens, he fears them. Fears them so much that he invoked the equivilant of Marshal Law on the entire country because he feared and hated them so much. In the aftermath we have two of the Convoy's leaders on trial -- a trial that has gone on far to long -- for their role in organizing a peaceful protest on government overreach on COVID mandates. There are also four men in Alberta who have been in custody -- without trial for coming up on two years -- for protesting the government in support of the Convoy. They are called the Coutts Four and considered Canada's political prisoners. Of course another members of this elite class are our very own mainstream media -- who trashed the Convoy and have not given this miscarriage of justice in Albeta not a single line in a newspaper or a single second of airtime.

Expand full comment

I wasn't even aware of the "Coutts Four". They sound like the Jan 6ers. Funny how Canada seems to often be the trial balloon of bad ideas that eventually find their way here in America.

Expand full comment

They are very much like the January 6ers. They have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police -- our national police the RCMP. It is a long story which I have written about extensively in my substack, the Intrepid Viking. The Trudeau government claimed it was the arrest of these four that sparked the need for the government to invoke the Emergencies Act. Which is a crock of shite. https://roxannehalverson.substack.com/p/possible-prosecutorial-misconducthttps://roxannehalverson.substack.com/p/new-documents-reveal-more-governmenthttps://roxannehalverson.substack.com/p/is-the-poec-freedom-convoy-rulinghttps://roxannehalverson.substack.com/p/tirade-on-trials-tribulations-troublinghttps://roxannehalverson.substack.com/p/more-questions-on-coutts-four-as

Expand full comment

Bad ideas flow both ways across the border. If the U.S. has not mandated the vaccine, quite a few nations would have thought much harder b4 taking that step.

Expand full comment

Check out Trish Wood is Critical podcast she did a show about them earlier this month.

Expand full comment

Incidentally Chris, it was Trish put me on to your writing. Hope you get to record another conversation with her soon...

Expand full comment

Jan 6ers were first unfortunately.

Expand full comment

Indeed. And every single Western country has a version of this story to tell. This is a concerted effort by the Professional Managerial Class to protect themselves using the tools of authoritarianism. So far, they're winning. But it cannot hold.

Expand full comment

Tommy Robinson's 2015 book ENEMY OF THE STATE lists just a few of the times the fascists have harassed, arrested, and jailed him for believing in Christianity.

Expand full comment

But it’s gone far beyond just self-protection. Trump’s election was the Bat Signal, and closeted totalitarians exploded onto the scene en masse with COVID. But the excesses outside the U.S. are not explained by Trump. Commonwealth countries went insane – verging on Gestapo like.

Expand full comment

I take your point about this not being a strictly US problem or related to Trump, but, with respect, I didn't intend to make that point. I meant to say that ALL Western governments are applying authoritarian tactics now - through censorship, outlawing, de-banking, etc.

But the masters of this madness lie above heads of state. Heads of state are just the enforcers following orders, which they do to protect themselves and their actions from scrutiny and accountability, in my opinion.

Expand full comment

I think we’re in “heated agreement.” The point I was trying (badly) to get to is that nothing except Trump’s election occurred that would make the Masters of the Universe worry about their positions & power. Their actions make me think of Macbeth: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Expand full comment

Tell me about it. Canada was almost as insane as Australia. And in Ontario, where a Conservative government was in power, outside of Quebec, we were the most locked down province in the entire country. The premier Doug Ford tried to get police to enforce a curfew, but someone still had their full brain and said no to that.

Expand full comment

I have a conservative friend in Calgary, and we’ve communicated regularly as the debacle unfolded. We’re both 100% on board with Mattias Desmet & “Mass Formation Psychosis.”

Expand full comment

WEF treasonous traitor just like Trudeau of the South, Gavin Newsom.

Bringing back the charges of treason would be an excellent start…..

Expand full comment

Reading Mathew Crawford's latest stack "What did Mike Adams know" he references a 2019 Economist cover showing - amongst other predictive imagery - a British Bulldog sittting on Canada. Weird how CA OZ NZ have succumbed so completely to "Covid" tyranny; perhaps The Crown really does still have an iron grip on some of its former colonies.

Expand full comment

I think there is some truth in that. American's freed themselves of the 'Crown' through revolution. Canadians did it through what we were taught in school as 'responsible government'. Negotiations between the crown and the colonies. Much more civilized, the way it was posed to us in school. And perhap much more obedient. There is something in americans that says I am not going to take this bullshit, and Canadians well, we just don't want the fight. Yet, during both world wars we produced some of the toughest and best soldiers in the field, and still do. Go figure.

Expand full comment

that's "martial" law, as in related to war.

Expand full comment

“We are increasingly governed like occupied countries” perfectly sums up the moment.

I don’t recognize my own country anymore.

We are Ireland; most just don’t realize it yet.

Expand full comment

Most Western countries are in this position. Ireland is small, so their decline is just more sudden. This is perhaps no bad thing.

Expand full comment

The elite do hate their fellow citizens, but it’s even worse than that. They take pleasure in hurting people. Part of the elite support for the massive illegal migration is that it upsets ordinary citizens as well as putting their physical and financial security at risk. It is also why the elites haughtily support transgenderism. It hurts families. As Chris notes, they project their hatred and sadism for ordinary Americans onto ordinary Americans. That’s why Michael Hayden sees no difference between an Islamist terrorist and a “deplorable.” However, how are the J6 prosecutors and judges, terrorizing citizens (pre-trial detention for nonviolent offenses, terrible conditions, Re-education, 100% conviction rate) for their support for Trump any different from Hamas terrorists showing a young child video of his parents being murdered? In each case, it serves no purpose other than to cause pain.

Expand full comment

Great points. And what of law enforcement personnel who eagerly hunt down and ruin the lives of J6 trespassers because their sweet, sweet government pensions depend on it. Back the blue? Nah...

Expand full comment

Karma will find the Stassi traitors.

Expand full comment

Great piece, Chris. You should check out a recent interview with Marc Andreesen where he discusses the historical cycle in political systems: monarchy, tyranny, democracy, oligarchy, anarchy. America, and most of the world, is now ruled by an oligarchical, self-appointed, self-replicating elite class. Andreesen observed that the ruling oligarchic elite recruits high-capacity and high-achieving members with the aim of preventing the formation of a new elite that can displace them. So the behavior of our ruling elite, and the absolute disgust they have for the people under them, is no surprise and nothing new. It’s a self-preservation mechanism. We are living under the boot of a minority of disconnected people who associate with each other and live in a world where they are not subject to the consequences of their ideas. Andreesen observed that the elites have the power, the ability to perpetuate their status and prestige, and to set the narrative that legitimizes their rule. If (when) people rise up, the result is anarchy, and society collapses. What is happening in Ireland is just the amuse-bouche. Andreesen believes the antidote is a counter-elite that unifies people around a fundamental principle of liberty (spiritual, intellectual, etc). Which is exactly what terrifies people like Leo Varadkar, Justin Trudeau and their American counterparts, because it delegitimizes them and strips them of power. Andreesen’s vision of a noble counter-elite might be the “happy ending,” but that requires freedom of speech, freedom to disassociate from controlling institutions and form new ones, etc. The Michael Haydens of the world hate that idea, so unfortunately we will continue along the historical pattern. The next step in the cycle isn’t good for anyone.

Expand full comment

Amazing comment. Very interesting take and yet another reason for the "Orange Man Bad" narrative/obsession.

Expand full comment

The Founders had another option that included all opposed to tyranny.

Forming a Team Reality elite class will take two generations.

We're already two generations "behind".

The pen is mightier than the sword until "pinned" down by plutocrats.

Expand full comment

Can you provide more detail on the location of this interview?

Expand full comment

I think it was either a podcast with Erik Torenberg or Joe Rogan. Within the last year or two.

Expand full comment

Chris, you are fast becoming my favorite pundit. I just like the way you outline an issue, dissect it, and wrap it up in a way that even those of us who are not rocket scientists can understand. And you do it in less than 5 minutes. Thanks for consistently making sense out of nonsense.

Expand full comment

How many of the elites are smart enough to run a farm? Would you hire one to fix your car? Of the four boxes of the bill of rights; the ballot box, the jury box, the soap box and the cartridge box, the first three can be just swept away over night. The last is real and physical. The late Angelo Codevilla wrote an excellent article on the ruling class in 2010.

https://spectator.org/americas-ruling-class/

Expand full comment

Fantastic article. Thank you for sharing.

Expand full comment

Thx

For the article

Expand full comment

Intolerable, indeed. Their one-way hatred and contempt metastasizes with the support of the State, while our revulsion for their evil will soon be made illegal.

Expand full comment

The very act of criminalizing these things is the death knell for the elites. No one knows that more than them. That is a fear response that won't help them in the end.

Expand full comment

One would hope so.

Expand full comment

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Expand full comment

Yeah, Chuck Schumer better look in the mirror.

Expand full comment

No difference at all? On the left, a handgun, for defense. On the right, war weapon, for warring. The "General" needs to go back to his plebe year at Annapolis.

Expand full comment

The general commands many that carry a weapon similar to that on the right, his ilk have shown willingness to imprison people opposed to mandatory experimental medicine, and have shown willingness to start ethnic riots that destroy whole cities.

Respectfully, please re-consider what is and isn't fit for defense.

Expand full comment

Seems like a treasonous comment from the General

Expand full comment

Agree with your sentiment but do not besmirch Annapolis with Hayden’s presence. He was Air Force ROTC, not a Navy ring knocker. (He graduated from Duquesne in Pittsburgh.)

Expand full comment

Excellent observation, but he wasn't a product of Annapolis.

Expand full comment

Yeah, I know. But I figured that before becoming a general, he was actually Ensign Pulver, from the movie ...

Expand full comment

See, that's a strong explanation right there.

Expand full comment

I hate Social Justice....is that hate speech? (I remember getting a laugh a few years back from a comment by one of my favourite journos at a time when enviro-virtue-signalling was at its zenith. 'I hate The Environment' she said.)

Expand full comment

My dream bumper sticker:

“If you want justice, go to hell.”

Expand full comment

A very insightful comment. Hell is what we all deserve. Only through the atoning death of Jesus can we obtain what we don’t deserve.

Expand full comment

Agreed!

Expand full comment

lol

Expand full comment

What happens when we are all speakers of hate? Is it a Spartacus moment? They can't arrest us all.

Expand full comment

Not so fast. You’re forgetting the warning from our esteemed commander-in-chief: “You need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.” Now pipe down and eat your bugs, peasant.

Expand full comment

It's silly, but a lot of brain dead shitlibs believe Biden when he suggests the US could rapidly win a civil war using F-15s and drones.

Little things like the fallout from some dead kids, the prospect of taking AWFLs hostage to prevent a bomb strike, total loss of order and infrastructure, or political assassinations don't factor in.

I've spoken with some of these people. It's really amazing how naïve they are. No clue how nasty it would get, or how fast.

Expand full comment

You think the old-money coastal Libs would hesitate on sacrificing a few nouveau riche AWFLs to smokify a group of organized & motivated citizens? This is about control, and they will do absolutely anything.

Expand full comment

No, I don't. But I do think they, too, have names, addresses, and are made out of meat like the rest of us.

Expand full comment

Useful idiots can always be found.

Soros funds the BLM/ Antifa/ Palestine rioters.

Expand full comment

Honestly, I think words (written, spoken, etc) are the thing our overlords fear the most. The more sunlight, the greater chance they are neutralized. Which is exactly why they’re going after speech and information.

Expand full comment

I agree 100%. A lot of people have been converted over the past few years, which is a net loss of two for our opposition - the loss of one, the gain of one on the outside.

Just pointing out how the glib, sanitized, delusional, bumper-sticker nonsense doesn't just go for the vax or equality of outcome, it goes for violence too. Violence frightens me because I have a little experience with it. These people know absolutely nothing about anything.

Expand full comment

Two differences and one fact – (1) the Taliban et al had unending assistance from & thru Pakistan, and to a lesser extent from Iran. I do not see such aid coming from Canada or Mexico.

(2) The Taliban had ZERO emotional attachment to the U.S. military or to their Afghan opposition, where as conservative rebels would still retain enormous affection for police & military.

(3) The “braking effect” of a nonpolitical U.S. military leadership is largely gone. The Obama purge of non-DEI enthusiasts from the military has decreased the likelihood of disobedience of illegal orders.

Expand full comment

The purging of military leadership starting with Obama is terrible for the country

Expand full comment

I see you are given to understatement…

Expand full comment

Threatening to nuke the part of the nation that feeds them, that is exactly the amount of intelligence I have come to expect from the government at this point.

Expand full comment

It’s all sophistry.

It’s destroyed many great societies that don’t say no to it.

Or as Elon so brilliantly stated.

F off.

The Two words all globalists fear.

Expand full comment

The lady with the Bible would have to show her passport to be allowed into the EU, and on her own dime.

The creature with the words of Mahomet in hand could stroll across any border without any papers, and would be given free housing, and be allowed to bring her entire extended family here eventually, free of charge, and would be handed a free apartment, free money and free everything.

The Kalergi-Coudenhove plan in action.

Expand full comment

Without looking it up, I would assume the Kalergi-Coudenhove plan must have commonality with the Coward, Plivin plan.

Expand full comment

Not exactly. The goal of the Kalergi-plan is in short white genocide.

The Kalergi-plan as it is most often called is about creating a future utopian Europe, peaceful and prosperous by way of enforced migration of africans and mid-easterners, mixing these with the indigenous populations and thereby destroying any and all culture not approved of by the supra-state administration, more or less.

A new race, a top-down artificially created "culture", and totally planned society. It is part of the foundational idea behind the EU, and the Union hands out an award every year to a politician or other such person who has advanced the cause. The prize/award is however called something else nowadays, since the Kalergi-plan is something of a hot topic to such an extent they are trying to label it a "conspiracy theory" despite his book "Practical Idealism" being available online.

Search-engines are making it increasingly difficult to find the real translation though, from its french original.

Though Count Coudenhove-Kalergi used much prettier words, of course.

A selected snippet:

"The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, outwardly similar to the ancient Egyptian, will replace the diversity of peoples with a variety of personalities."

The full text can be read here:

https://archive.org/details/practical-idealism-by-richard-coudenhove-kalergi-z-lib.org/mode/2up

Expand full comment

They are occupiers! And we are all occupied. The occupiers are: fascist socialist globalists and their globalist agendas.

Expand full comment

He's not entirely wrong, both women are displaying good trigger discipline.

Honestly, I'm slighty more concerned about the "Administration" sign and the company culture.

Expand full comment

Indeed. An army of HR Karens is real terror. Women with bomb belts are one thing, but an HR queen armed with a diversity agenda she actually believes will bring down a nation.

Expand full comment

Zoom in on the sign...

Expand full comment

Lol. I missed that.

Expand full comment

You know those old white Christian ladies are committing at least 0.01% of the murders in this country, so you should be terrified that they're walking among us.

Expand full comment

Well I AM terrified of the middle-aged white “commie mommies.” If pushed too far they actually might commit murder.

Expand full comment

They would hire someone, like a plumber but for murder.

Expand full comment

The NSA data center in Utah is huge. Most likely they are storing a whole lot more than just metadata. I would think that there is another data center just like it somewhere else because you don't build just one of these and put all your eggs in one basket.

Expand full comment

Yes, they collect everything, not just metadata. But no one looks at it unless they want to go after some regime opponent, because there is too much data. But now AI is here, so expect them to go fishing.

Expand full comment

AI is about to become their main tool for mass censorship. People think AI will change everything. More likely it will be used to ensure things stay just as they are.

Expand full comment

Probably just the index. There’s an entire island somewhere where they are running a simulation which can tell them who is the next citizen most likely to turn up at a government building dressed like a shaman. So he can be neutralised well in advance. ((I do not actually believe this.) Yet.)

Expand full comment

Where's an emp when you need one

Expand full comment