Technoauthoritarianism Is Here To Stay: China And The Deep State Have Joined Forces

By John and Nisha Whitehead

"If this government ever becomes a dictatorship, if a dictator takes over this country, the technological capabilities that the intelligence community has given the government could impose absolute tyranny on them and there would be no way to fight back."

Voting has started.

No matter who is smart, no matter who controls the White House, the Senate or the House now or in the future, we have already lost "The People".

We have lost the future of this nation because it is shaped by techno-authoritarian forces outside our laws, elections and borders without individuality, privacy or freedom.

America's fortunes are being copied in China, which is our dystopian model.

Owing its economic and political power to the United States more than any other country and buying up a whole host of American companies, China is a brutal totalitarian regime that regularly uses brutal censorship, surveillance, and police state tactics. Intimidate its population, maintain and maintain power. Spreading the fame of its corporate elite.

Where China goes, the United States eventually follows. This path is completely subject to torture.

Censorship China's censorship machine has been straight out of Orwell's 1984 , with government agencies and corporations working together to limit people's free speech. A few years ago, in fact, like George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 , China banned the use of the word "opposition". State authorities habitually harass and intimidate those who do not comply. Activists are often punished for gathering in public places, and face criminal charges of "inciting war and disorder". China has also gone to great lengths to crack down on journalists who report on corruption or human rights abuses.

intelligence COVID-19 has brought China's Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and given China the perfect excuse to unleash its vast and sophisticated capacity to monitor and collect data on its own citizens and the rest of the world. Thermal scanners using artificial intelligence (AI) have been installed at railway stations in major cities to detect body temperature and identify people with fever. Facial recognition cameras and cell phone tracking constantly track people's movements, revealing data centers available to government officials and employers in real time. and color-coded alerts (red, yellow and green) classified people into health categories corresponding to their level of freedom of movement; "Code green, travel free. Red or yellow, report immediately.

Social media credit rating. Before the outbreak of the coronavirus, China's surveillance state was already working to track its citizens, using 200 million security cameras across the country. Cameras equipped with facial recognition technology allow authorities to track so-called criminal activities that affect a person's social achievements, such as jaywalking. Social media credit scores given to people and businesses in China classify them as "good" citizens or not. The "Citizen Rating" determines their place in society based on their loyalty to the government. a real name system that forces people to use government-issued IDs to buy cell phone cards, access social media accounts, board trains, board planes, and even buy groceries; The "can'ts" are blacklisted, banned from entering the financial markets, buying real estate or traveling by plane or train. Activities that may mark you as ineligible include reserving a seat on a train or causing trouble at a hospital.

A safe and smart city. China, a pioneer in the development of so-called "safe" smart cities, is exporting high-tech communities to the world where residents are watched 24 hours a day, their every move under constant surveillance and every device connected to a central brain. including artificial intelligence. . Privacy expert Vincent Moscow concludes: "The benefits of smart cities clearly flow to authorities who are able to harness the promise of modern high-tech cities to expand and deepen surveillance. They also build smart city infrastructure first and then profit by commoditizing the entire smart city space." it also goes to the big tech companies that do it. Citizens gain operational efficiency, but at the cost of freedom."

digital currency China has already adopted a government-issued digital currency that can not only monitor and record people's financial transactions, but also work alongside a social debt system to punish individuals for moral wrongdoing and social infractions (and rewards governments for complying with . . .-approved behavior). China expert Akram Keram wrote for The Washington Post : “Through the digital yuan, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] will gain direct control and access to people's financial lives without resorting to powerful intermediary financial institutions. In the Yuan-driven digital society, governments can easily freeze the digital wallets of dissidents and human rights activists. »

Digital authoritarianism will redefine what it means to be free in almost every aspect of our lives. Once again, we have to look to China to understand what's out there. Human Rights Watch analyst Maya Wang explained, "Chinese authorities are using technology to control people across the country in a more subtle but powerful way. The central bank is adopting a digital currency that will allow Beijing to monitor and control people's financial transactions. China's security -is building so-called cities that incorporate data from intrusive surveillance systems to predict and prevent fires, natural disasters, and political dissent. The government believes that these interventions, along with administrative measures such as denying blacklisted people access to services, will encourage people to "behave positively "that they will be encouraged to adopt, among other things, the implementation of healthy habits such as government policies and physical exercise.

AI tracking As Chinese products have entered almost every market in the world and changed consumer dynamics, China is exporting "authoritarian technology" to governments around the world in an effort to expand its global dominance. the whole world Indeed, China and the US have led the way in offering AI surveillance to the rest of the world, sometimes at subsidized rates. In the hands of benevolent tyrants and dictators, AI surveillance is the ultimate tool of repression and control, including smart city/safe city platforms, facial recognition systems, and predictive policing. These technologies are used for nefarious purposes by violent extremist groups and traffickers of sex, children, drugs and weapons.

As research from the Carnegie Endowment makes clear, while authoritarian regimes are eager to adopt AI surveillance, liberal democracies are also "offensively using AI tools to control borders, apprehend potential criminals, monitor citizen misconduct, and identify suspected terrorists." "The crowd." Moreover, it is easy to see how China's pattern of internet regulation ties in with the US police state's efforts to root out so-called domestic anti-government extremism. This is how totalitarianism has conquered the world.

The government's espionage department. According to recent reports, China has deployed more than 54 secret police forces in 25 cities around the world, including the United States, as part of efforts to track down dissidents and threaten and prosecute them. The campaign to control, intimidate and punish immigrants living abroad who participate in dissent is called Operation Foxhunt. As stated by one of the human rights organizations. "The message from the [Chinese] Foreign Ministry that you are not safe anywhere, that we can find you and contact you is very effective."

Police brutality. China's brutal crackdown on protesters has changed little since the Tiananmen Square massacre. China's police are brutal, overbearing and inflexible, now backed by a sophisticated state surveillance force.

fear tactics China has mastered the tactics of intimidation, threatening workers, their families and their livelihoods if they don't comply with government orders. As one employee explained. "There were phone calls in the middle of the night saying that relatives wouldn't get a job if you didn't cooperate with the government, or that they would post your parents' phone numbers online and trick you. Or the rest. Your family would be put in camps with the Uyghurs.

Disappearance, brainwashing and torture. Those who obeyed Chinese orders were often forced to disappear, arrested in the middle of the night, and imprisoned in Orwellian re-education camps. China has built more than 400 such prison camps in recent years to detain people for crimes ranging from resisting the government to so-called religious crimes, such as possessing a Koran or not eating pork. The Guardian reports that "abuses include detailed arbitrary detention, torture and medical neglect in detention centers, as well as forced birth control."

China's global influence, technological reach, pursuit of global hegemony and strong compliance demands are pushing us into a chained world.

With its growing crackdown on surveillance technology, China has created the world's first digital totalitarian state, setting itself as a model for future dictators around the world.

However, many do not realize that China and the US have joined the deep state.

As I explained in " Battlefield America. The War on the American People and its fictional counterpart The Eric Blair Diaries ", fascism hides behind open government and populist elections.

For all intents and purposes, we have become the embodiment of what Philip Dick feared when he wrote The Man in the High Castle , a vision of an alternate universe where the Axis powers defeated the Allies in World War II and had no "fascism; "they just owned America. It was woven into the American DNA with remarkable ease.

However, while Dick's vision of a world ruled by totalitarianism is chilling, the growing reality of a world where not only the Deep State is entrenched, but globalized is absolutely terrifying.

Our national flags may not be the red and white stripes with the swastika on the blue background seen in The Man from the High Castle , but watch out. We are no less busy.

Constitutional lawyer and author John Whitehead is the founder and president of the Rutherford Institute. Among his recent books, Battlefield America is a bestseller. War on the American People," award-winning "Wolf Government. The Emerging American Police State" and dystopian debut fiction "The Eric Blair Diaries". Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected] . Nisha Whitehead is the executive director of the Rutherford Institute. Information about the Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.