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Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#61
So there are 3 ways the government could influence Big Tech:

1. Infiltration. An agent or asset could be in a position of power to enact desired policies and changes, provide a backdoor or whatever;

2. Jurisdiction. The platform falls under US jurisdiction so is subject to various forms of law enforcement, secret or otherwise. National Security Letters, FISA warrants, pen registers, that sort of thing; and

3. Propaganda. US companies reflect the cultural and political values of their founders, board and management as will as the will of stockholders. For some issues there is a political divide but for many issues there isn't, most notably when it comes to US foreign policy where Democrats and Republicans are basically indistinguishable.

The prevailing foreign policy view is that the US is good and a benign hegemony and a civilizing and democratizing force. The current foreign policy bent also favours interventionism and has since World War Two.

You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible for an unjustifiable invasion.

It's a real lesson in the power of US propaganda and how ingrained the benign hegemony meme (and it is a meme) is.

My theory is the first 2 points I listed above don't matter. They're of almost no importance. What really matters is the ability of the US media (and I include social media companies in this umbrella) to project US propaganda and to normalize the US-centric view of the world.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing. Not that much difference than any other media influencer or substack author. It's ultimately a free speech issue. You can't demand people to self-censor because their previous employment places unjustified credibility their nonsensical views.…

>Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing. You're right but is this one a goofy take? Or is there a real something here?

I don't think so, but to indulge my own cranky theories: Perhaps Elon Musk's takeover attempt was done at the behest of the US government to take control of the platform under the cover of "censorship". Musk himself indicated he wanted to make the platform more miserable for the "extremes" on both the left and right (both perceived as being anti-government) - leaving you with the establishment consensus unharmed in the middle.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#63
Frances Haugen, the supposed Facebook whistleblower, slipped up in her 60 minutes interview and revealed that she works for US intelligence. The effort she was employed to advance is acceptance of more censorship of Meta and the like. Conspicuously absent from the publicly promoted discussion was any mention of the free alternatives such as the fediverse. 'The Social Dilemma' movie had similar objectives and narrative framing.

I anticipate that self-hosters, linux users, and people who are not Facebooked will be further castigated as radicals and worse in the future.

Also note the irony that Substack contains Google and Amazon trackers.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#64

I think Greenwald's characterization of the letter's contents is a bit disingenuous. The letter makes the claim that recently proposed legislation that would enforce non-discriminatory access would do so in a way that would include foreign adversaries. Greenwald takes that and elevates the claim to, "Any attempts to restrict Big Tech's monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow." The l…

It's been Greenwald's MO for a long time now. Take completely uncontroversial statement -> twist it using just the right amount of slippery slope or change/omit one key detail -> make it seem inflammatory and controversial. There's nothing wrong with criticizing the negatives of Big Tech, but Glenn's turned his "anti-establishment" beat into an obsession with being anti-{whatever the current thing is}.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#65

It's such a financially convenient line of thinking. It's absolute nonsense. Both at face value and once you dig into it. Mainstream media is feeding us constant lies which work against our interests, destroy our ability to trust institutions and the government. Big Tech is clearly the biggest threat to our democracy. Before Big Tech, we did not have such problems. This new narrative is pure self-serving propaganda,…

> Mainstream media is feeding us constant lies... No one reporting that apparently. I agree with some of your points but accusations like that without any room for nuance do not resonate with me. > The problem with the US and the west is not freedom of speech or the free market, it's our debt-based monetary system which is now based on soft money. And I've seen convincing arguments claiming the exact opposite: that d…

> No one reporting that apparently.

Just some things that the mainstream media lied about:

- The NIH having funded gain of function research in Wuhan Labs.

- The mortality rate of COVID19 (they ignored obvious issues with data collection and flawed incentives which over-counted deaths and under-counted cases).

- The effectiveness of COVID19 vaccines (several outlets initially said that 1 dose would be enough to get 90% protection, now they're saying we need 4).

- Covering up the 2008 and 2020 bailouts of the stock market - These are considered crimes in the eyes of many people but mainstream media has been silent on the subject.

- The existence of Hunter Biden's laptop containing compromising data.

You can look up all of these things. It's only a tiny fraction of all the lies they told.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#66

On april 17th I made the prediction that the US government was in control of twitter for probably this reason. I got flagged for this. A day later a bunch of former intelligence people basically said this is a good idea. That's funny to me.

Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing. Not that much difference than any other media influencer or substack author. It's ultimately a free speech issue. You can't demand people to self-censor because their previous employment places unjustified credibility their nonsensical views.…

Former Intel people are a necessary tool of the current Intel community. I forget which project veritas recording caught this- but a journalist was caught stating that they get their information from former Intel people that talk to current Intel officials to get around rules preventing current Intel officials from leaking information to journalists, we have a problem. And we've had a serious problem as this behavior is not just the activity of rogue officials that only leak true information. I would argue that it's also likely that Intel officials are doing this with the blessing of their organizations in order to shape public opinion. And they aren't always leaking the truth. Remember when 50 Intel officials signed a weasely letter stating that the laptop from hell was simply Russian Disinformation? Or in the case of the Durham investigation, we are seeing an increasingly obvious pattern that Intel agencies were involved in creating fake controversy over Russia and Trump in order to remove him from power?

You call it brand building, I call it destroying democracy.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before big tech, there wasn't a race to the bottom for eyeballs and journalism was well funded enough to provide quality reporting.

Yes there was. That trend started long before big tech. In the aughts there was a lot of constrination around news rooms being gutted, with less and less investigative journalism — replaced with “soft news”. Those criticizing this and were called snobs and elitists; the market - the people - wanted soft news stories! Interestingly the same ideological coterie that cheered news room gutting (because of a perceived ide…

But these points completely undermine the original OP - how can you blame media companies for pushing things that are "against our interests" when market forces overwhelmingly demonstrate that it's what we want?

If the media is showing these "alarmist" or "biased" stories, it's because it's what people want. People don't want honest journalism, otherwise C-SPAN would be the most popular outlet in America.

If you don't want media showing you clickbait and garbage, don't click on it. Simple as that.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#69
The hilarious thing about this is that China is at the same time cracking down hard on its own tech sector for reasons of domestic competition and concentration of power.

So on the one hand you have the country of freedom that must preserve its monopolistic structures and accept the lesser evil to fight the enemies abroad but the communist security state is busy... reigning their giants in?

Probably a good time to quote Sheldon Wolin who thought of the American system as 'inverted totalitarian'

"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

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