|
(Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International
Speculator)
L: Doug, that article you emailed about – the one on California cops being able to apply advanced facial
recognition technology to everyone in public – is pretty
scary. They're planning the same in Iowa. Shades of Orwell's 1984. But you've said you're
a techno-optimist – are you still?
Doug: Well, I'm
an optimist on the future of technology. But the way a lot of it is going to
be applied by people in government is a different question. The current
developments are quite disturbing, especially the emerging capability of
police to use cameras and computers to scan millions and millions of people
and identify individuals in seconds. They say it's to track sex offenders or
catch terrorists, but what's clearly at stake here is the universal
monitoring of everyone all the time – just like in 1984. The bad
news is that it's here now, and spreading around the world.
L: Is there
good news?
Doug: The good news
is that simply using dark glasses, wearing a hat, growing a beard – or
cutting one off – may throw the software running these systems off. At
least for now, the countermeasures look cheaper than the dangerous
technology.
But it could easily get worse. For decades now, they've
been implanting RFID chips in animals to help their owners track them. There
are people who have volunteered to have such chips implanted in themselves or
their children, ostensibly to help in case of a kidnapping or similar life-threatening
issue. I think it's just a matter of time, however, before governments get
the idea that every citizen should have such a chip implanted – and has
to use it for almost everything.
L: It would
just be to fight crime, of course. "Honest people should have nothing to
hide." I'm sure there are people in Washington now who would say it's
everyone's patriotic duty to submit to the government's brand, like cattle in
a rancher's herd.
Doug: Yes, our
patriotic duty. Patriotism is one of the lowest forms of groupthink, and the
first refuge of a scoundrel. If someone says it's for patriotism, then no one
dares argue, for fear of being branded a traitor.
Privacy no longer exists – certainly not in North
America or Europe. Mobile phones track location. Every time you fly, you show
up on government radars. There are cameras everywhere in all major cities. In
places like London, there are many thousands of them, watching and recording
everything – if a car goes in one side of the city and out the other
side faster than it should have been able to, there can be consequences. And
that's not to mention the swarms of drones
governments plan to release to watch us from above…
L: Or kill
– the military has armed drones, too. It's as though those in power
were actually trying to assemble the component pieces of Skynet – maybe Terminator
robots are next.
Doug: That's
true. There's not much question that, applying Moore's Law, we'll have
something approaching the Terminator in another 10 years. Unfortunately. Just
for instance, look at the BigDog and the Cheetah.
These things are going to advance much faster than did aircraft.
But you know I like to look at the bright side of
things, and fortunately, the world seems to be headed for a major financial collapse.
This may limit the ability – even while it may compound the desire
– of bankrupt governments to deploy expensive, high-tech systems, and
may well lead to social upheaval of the sort that could overturn states that
go the totalitarian route. Maybe a "V" will arise and sabotage and subvert the
systems of Orwellian people control.
L: You are
an optimist!
Doug: I am, but
not in the near term; as I've said many times, I see no way our civilization
can avoid going through the wringer it's already caught in. The current trend
downhill is not just in motion – it's rapidly accelerating. These
things take on lives of their own and get completely out of control.
The Internet is the best thing that's happened to
communication since Gutenberg. But there's a complete lack of privacy on the
Internet – I've heard that every Skype conversation is recorded…
L: I thought
Skype encrypted everything?
Doug: I
understand that it does, but it's not military-grade encryption, and if the
busybodies record everything, they can concentrate on cracking your privacy
later, if they decide you are of interest. They are planning to record
everything, and save it permanently – every email, every Facebook post,
every tweet. I understand that the giant facility the government is building
in Utah is intended to collect all data available on all people everywhere,
decipher it, organize and catalog it, and store it permanently for perpetual
use by state snoops.
It really is becoming an Orwellian nightmare. There's
no financial privacy, no personal privacy, no privacy of any kind, really.
L: Some
authors have argued that the end of privacy is a good thing. Only criminals
need darkness in which to hide while they formulate and implement their
plans. If we all lived in glass houses, no one would throw stones. If all our
quirks and kinks were open to public scrutiny, everyone would be more
tolerant of other people's oddities, because we all have oddities. It's a
sort of "mutually assured destruction" policy vision applied to all
individuals in society.
Doug: An
interesting possibility. If that happens, the hi-tech future would closely
resemble life in a Neolithic tribe, where everyone knew absolutely everything
about everyone else. Perhaps it will encourage people to live in enclaves
with trusted, like-minded people, so that they can avoid electronic
communications to a degree. Perhaps it will provide traction for the Radical Honesty
movement put forward by my friend Brad Blanton. After all, if everybody knows
everything about you, perhaps you might as well be radically honest. The
social implications of total surveillance are huge.
I'll even agree that the technology would be useful for
its stated purposes: more purse-snatchers, murderers, and burglars would
probably get caught.
But it's naïve in the extreme to imagine that the
people running things would allow the same standards of transparency to apply
to themselves. The Soviet Union was supposed to end the power of the tyrants
and free the masses, but it just tossed out the tsars and enthroned a new
class of overlords who gave Marxist egalitarian excuses for their
depredations. Those in power would use universal surveillance to control the
masses, and the masses would be utterly powerless to oppose them. I think
Orwell's vision is more accurate than David Brin's on this question.
But the average Joe doesn't seem to know or care about
the disappearance of privacy. He thinks that because he casts a meaningless vote, he controls the government.
L: Maybe we're
just being paranoid?
Doug: [Chuckles]
Well, just because you're paranoid, that doesn't prove they aren't after you.
We hear these rumors, like the one about the US Department of Homeland
Security having a stockpile of more than two billion rounds of ammunition – that's about six
bullets for every man, woman, and child in the country. Very disturbing, to
say the least. And I speak as someone who is a big fan of firearms.
Other than hoping V arrives and turns the tables on the
tyrants, I'm not sure that there's anything that can be done to stop –
let alone reverse – this tide in the developed world. Even if V
appears, I'm not too optimistic that the average guy or gal will have enough spine to follow him. This is one of the main reasons why I
like living in beautiful, peaceful, backward parts of the world, where they
don't have the ability to implement such police-state technology, nor the
money to pay for it. I can access the technology I want, but the state is too
poor and too disorganized to use it to my disadvantage.
I'm partial to Argentina, as you know, and I'm building
a world-class resort and community of freedom-minded people
there. In fact, I'm throwing a party there in March, and I invite everyone down
to come check it out. The new spa is absolutely five-star.
But it doesn't have to be Argentina; pick wherever you
enjoy living that offers you the most freedom to live as you wish.
L: I love Cafayate too, Doug, but if the strategy is to seek
technologically backward countries, will not those countries themselves be
unable to resist the will of the richer countries that embrace the power of
the latest technologies – and are unafraid to use it aggressively?
History shows that when a more technologically advanced civilization meets a
less technologically advanced one, it's very bad
news for the more backward one.
Doug: That's
true. Joe Lewis was right when he said, "You can run, but you can't
hide." On the other hand, staying in the ghetto as ordered until it's
time to get on the cattle cars is an even worse idea. And you'd best not
confront them directly. You don't stand a chance as an individual, if you try
to meet government violence with violence of your own.
It's simply not true that atrocities can't happen in
the US, which is no longer America. The fact that you're an American
living in the US is no advantage, either. Remember that men in uniform are
primarily loyal to each other, then to their employers, and scarcely at all
to the people they are supposed to serve and protect. They will follow their
orders, no matter how despicable those might become. Men who join the
military and police often have issues to start with, often including an extra
Y chromosome. They're not your friends or allies, notwithstanding the
presence of some stand-up individuals in their ranks.
However, if I'm right about the global crisis coming,
the techno-tyrannies of the world will have their hands full at home. Even if
they eventually do turn toward subjugation of other countries – in the
name of fighting terrorism, or drugs, or some other politically correct
excuse, of course – that will take time. At the very least,
international living gives people some insulation from the coming turmoil in
the developed world and a buffer of time before any spreading waves of
violence reach them – time they can use to formulate new strategies.
L: Why don't
more people see this threat? I mean, how much more obvious can it be that
there is reason for serious concern?
Doug: I think
it's the high standard of living most still enjoy in the West. I tell people
we're living in an incipient police state and they look at me funny. Where are
the military parades with masses of soldiers goose-stepping? Where are the
dawn raids by storm troopers? Where are the cattle cars taking the usual
suspects off to camps?
We don't have the massed parades yet, but there are
thousands of SWAT raids by both federal agencies and local police every year.
No longer does a cop politely knock on your door if there's a perceived
problem. The US has something like 2.3 million people in prisons and jails,
and many millions more "in the system." But the average guy is
propagandized into believing whatever the authorities and the media tell him.
It reminds me of the movie The Running Man.
As long as people can still go to the mall and get
their super-sized fast food, as long as there are lots of stores selling lots
of consumer goods on credit, as long as there are sports and sitcoms to
watch, life seems good. Far from a police state, people believe they're
protected by all these aggressive and heavily armed minions of the state.
Everything seems normal and fine – just as it did to the average
German, Russian, and Chinese in recent years.
Plus, there's the Martin Niemöller thing
– "First they came for the communists…"
L: On the
other hand, any technology can be hacked. Teenagers around the world have
cracked security codes and changed the music industry forever. It's hard to
imagine government bureaucrats keeping up with millions of teenage hackers
around the globe. Maybe the more those in power think they know everything
about everyone, the easier it will be to fool them into leaving you alone,
with data camouflage.
Doug: There's
some hope in that. I suspect – or at least fantasize – that all
these giant government computer systems around the world have secret back
doors, cheat codes, and maybe even self-destruct routines built into them.
Computer programmers, on average, tend to be the most libertarian-leaning of
all professionals. It defies belief that among all the thousands of
programmers governments have hired, they didn't let in any who didn't do what
I would have. Sadly for impatient people like me, there's no evidence of this
yet.
But I am an optimist, and hope such folks are
just laying low and waiting for the right time to
come. Because, as soon as anything like WikiLeaks
– which we've talked about – or any group that fights state
power shows up, the stage brings all of its power to bear on crushing it.
They devoted huge force toward activists like Anonymous and whistleblowers
like Bradley Manning. Better to be long gone before taking any action. We're
dealing with a huge dinosaur in its early death throes; it's extremely
dangerous as it thrashes around. It's best not to confront it. Instead, hide
in the undergrowth until it collapses and its corpse rots.
Until then, or in case it doesn't happen, it's best to
internationalize, keep your head down, and do whatever you can to avoid the
gaze of the eye of Mordor – until the coming
financial collapse shuts it down. That's one of the good things about the
collapse; perhaps it will make it economically impractical for the state to
keep adding to its surveillance and enforcement abilities. But although
that's possible – and a fond hope – I'm afraid it's most
unlikely. Instead, the state will redouble its expenditures in that area. The
prime directive of any organism, including governments, is to survive. With
that at stake, we can count on the US government to redouble its focus on
surveillance, enforcement, and the like.
L: Grim.
Okay… Investment implications?
Doug: As part of
this dark tech war against privacy, governments are starting to move toward eliminating
cash. I think the natural backlash will be for people to quietly start
transacting everyday business in gold and silver coins. All the more reason
to buy precious metals, as we've advocated many times – but again,
that's for prudence. To speculate on this trend, you can't
beat the explosive upside in the right mining stocks.
L: Until
governments make gold bullion illegal to own again and seize it, as FDR did in the 1930s.
Doug: Yes, but
given how many US coins from that era and before are still in circulation as
collector's items, I'd have to guess that many Americans of the day had the
spine to ignore FDR's executive order. Today, this possibility makes it
imperative that people buying gold internationalize their holdings and secure
a meaningful amount of physical gold with cash and no paper trail –
this is still perfectly legal today.
L: Very well
– words to the wise. Thanks, Doug.
Doug: My
pleasure.
|
