> building out a similar technological and political infrastructure, using similar the justifications of countering terrorism, misinformation, sedition, and subjective “social harms.”
FWIW, this seems to be a common thread in many countries apart from China and the US. “Sedition”, for example, has become the stick to use for any kind of dissent uttered in India over the last few years (a lot more so compared to before).
> rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a toxic obsession with “national security”—a euphemism for state supremacy—are drawing the US and China to meet in the middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions they’ve begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual and national political differences until little distance remains.
Again, please add India to this list. It would take a lot to detail out how things are in the country. So let me share one recent set of incidents in a major city (where Google has its largest offices). Police, without the backing of any law or specific authorization, were stopping people on the streets and asking them to unlock their phones and show their WhatsApp chats so that the police could read and see if the person was involved in transacting ganja (marijuana/weed).
But such things go on without the courts batting an eye or punishing the abuse of power with serious consequences.
I’ve kinda lost faith in democracies and the claims of checks and balances with the executive, legislature and judiciary. Power corrupts all of them equally, and they all side with each other rather than with the people who they took an oath to serve.