How to Resist Techno-Imperialism: Free Software, Controlled Locally |
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Previously, the control of information inside any given nation-state was determined by contracts with private companies with governments, as well as with individuals.
Using proprietary software and storing data in the “cloud”, these Silicon Valley companies such as Microsoft and Google managed to seize control of the collective intelligence of entire swathes of the world, creating a form of cybercolonialism by the United States.
This cybercolonialism was practised in the realm of surveillance by other states outside of the United States such as Russia, China, and Israel: For any state, their ruling class would typically have to chose some software to commit mass surveillance of their own population, and so rulers that sided with the United States would chose surveillance software from Amazon, while a China-aligned state would chose the software of Geedge Networks.
However, with the rise of Palantir and Trump, the “soft power” of cybercolonialism has become the “hard power” of technoimperialism, where the very data infrastructure of a state will be used in its overthrow by the United States.
The goal is nothing less than the destruction of democracy and its replacement by an authoritarian technocracy. The original movement of the movement for technocracy, led in part by Elon Musk’s grandfather, imagined a united Technate of America that would united all of Central America with the United States and include Venezuela and Colombia.
It is this Technate of America that Hegseth speaks of when he calls for “North-South relations” as the “immediate security perimeter” of a Greater North America. Palantir, who has moved its headquarters to Miami, has now started contracts with Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador.
In a world where software and data are the fuel of war, Palantir and its kind are merely setting the stage for the overthrow of whatever democratic aspirations and autonomy remain in the Global South. Free software that is controlled locally with strong privacy is the only way to resist this new form of imperialism.
1. Programmers working on the Internet have a moral responsibility to the entire world, not a single country. The Internet has been designed since its inception as a universal system for the sharing of knowledge without censorship. The Internet is not the property of any one government or nation.
2. The Internet enables mass surveillance at a scale unimaginable to the Gestapo and the Cheka. Far too many programmers have wasted their lives building surveillance systems under the guise of Web advertising. Today, these web tracking systems are being used to monitor, control, and even kill humans by companies like Palantir that seek to combine state violence with corporate efficiency, and thus create a new form of........