Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
greenwald.substack.com
greenwald.substack.com
What these guys are talking about is something else. They are talking about the security of the security services, their own self interests and the status quo of enmeshed relations between three letter agencies and a few captured tech giants.
On the contrary, the exact opposite is true. National security is best served by a diverse, pluralistic, open, heterogeneous tech industry. There is no reason intelligence needs cannot function properly with such an ecosystem, but it would have to do so through the Rule of Law, and systems of warrants that the incumbents have sought to bypass this last 20 years.
Yes, people and institutions, and technologies.
What gives security is something like "hybrid vigour" obtained by the whole system because it has evolutionary resilience (it's survivable, at least in part, to the greatest range of possible threats)
Parts of a resilient system can even be in moderate tension as they keep a check on each other.
For examples; it would be stronger to have both centralised and distributed philosophies represented; it would be good to have a mixture of public and private funding models in operation; small and large entities capable of agile innovation, and reliable scale.
That makes it hard for a malevolent or erroneous force to infiltrate and take out the whole barrel of apples.
Of course, diversity of gender, religion, race, age, political leaning and wealth tend to make a more interesting and vibrant workplace, but that's not primarily what I am saying.
Different viewpoints does not imply different backgrounds.
But not the wisdom.
Large companies have massive resources which are a competitive advantage. Having these titanic companies headquartered in the US, beholden to American laws, employing Americans, being a symbol of American prowess abroad and listed on American stock exchanges is in American interests on multiple tangible & intangible levels; including allowing American engineers to command ridiculous salaries and granting the government a lot of soft-power.
The recent sanctions on Russia (and previously Huawei/ZTE) shows howuch that soft-power is worth
Also, all the botnet-, APT-, ransomware and CSAM investigation & disruption ops would be hampered when the #1 desktop operating system, #1 & #2 phone OS authors, #1 network equipment manufacturer,#1 social network and top 3 cloud providers are no longer under your legal jurisdiction
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.
Its much more interesting i think because in the end, its a game of who remains in power, the public domain (government, theoretically) or the private domain (large Corp). The Chinese CP decived to crack down on to-big-to-fail, where as we in the west ...
Fundamentally, russia had no interest in allowing ukraine to be an independent country. US aid forestalled an invasion, and made the ultimate invasion a fairer fight, but it wasn't the cause of it.
But somehow you're excusing the lion.
No, it doesn't. This war has highlighted just how simplistic people are in that someone has to be the bad guy and someone has to be the good guy (hint: the US is always the good guy). Any suggestion that more than one party can bear responsibility or blame invites histrionics about victim-blaming.
The US friend zoned Ukraine, basically. The US knew it was never going to happen. Sure, Ukraine should figure that out (which they didn't seem to) but there's enough blame to go around.
Mistakes were made, but none of them justify the genocide in Ukraine. Nothing even justified an invasion at all.
If you can't see true evil and who the bad guy is, you're definitely part of the problem. I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.
The sovereignty of an individual, especially over one’s own body, and the sovereignty of a nation are not even near equivalents.
And yes, I know that at this time the sovereignty of individual Ukrainians, men and women, is being horribly violated. But this did not need to happen even if the sovereignty of the nation itself was violated. It’s a separate matter for which Russians, especially individual soldiers and their commanders, bear direct blame for. They could have chosen another, less disgusting, far less inhumane means to gain control of Ukraine.
As well, despite the clear propaganda behind it, Russia can at least claim that they felt threatened by Ukraine’s chummy relationship with the narcissistic and occasionally-aggressive Uncle Sam. This entirely breaks your analogy as rape is never a defensive maneuver no matter how one might twist it.
I'm an "actions, not words" type of guy. Putin claims many things in this world, they're threatened etc. We all know it's a lie. You must watch Russia's actions, not their words. How many times have we learned this? Watch what they've done, not what they say.
You're right, rape is never defensive. Instead what happened here is that Russia has raped Ukraine, and claimed she was going to attack him. That's the reality of it, and it's the only twisted logic on display.
She was also supposedly a Nazi. I'd bet good coin there's more actual Neo-Nazis in Russia than Ukraine though, just based on sheer population alone.
Not that Nazism actually gives Putin any pause.[0]
[0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/08/russia-sen...
This is just wrong. Sovereignty is a term for having ultimate authority. This can be had by any kind of government as long as it is the ultimate authority over what it claims to govern. This can include a dictatorship even if it might not recognize the authority of the individual over their own body.
Whether or not other countries recognize another country’s sovereignty is another matter. As in the case at hand, Russia clearly does not recognize Ukraine’s and so it violates it. This qualifies as rape according to one of many definitions for the term. And that’s an accurate and appropriate labeling.
But, and this is my point, it doesn’t make your particular analogy accurate or fair. You are equating the rape of a nation with that of an individual. In particular, you are using the typical cliched scenario of the attacker being drawn in by the victim’s dress, which is usually used to suggest the perpetrator could not control themselves due to the supposed unspoken solicitation and temptation of the victim’s dress. This is not at all like Russia and Ukraine. This is not defensive, or even attempting to claim so. It’s just claiming powerlessness, a lack of agency. And Russia is doing nothing of that sort. It’s doing quite the opposite.
You even end your comment with:
> I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.
You are suggesting that the two situations are so similar that the target of your comment wouldn’t be able to differentiate between them either.
Strange. A rape victim has a traumatic personal experience that the abstract entity we call a nation could never have, being that it doesn’t have a personal experience at all. The difference would undoubtably be quite apparent to loved ones.
And while the citizens of the nation would likely be wildly upset, unless their own individual sovereignty was also violated they would surely not have the same experience as that of a rape victim. This would be self evident just by asking any person whether they’d rather their own nation or their own sovereignty be violated. But we don’t need to ask, because we already know what the answer would be.
I’m going to bow out of the rest of this discussion though since I don’t even like talking about it. Fortunately I have never gone through either experience. And because of that, it doesn’t feel right for me to discuss the differences like I truly know the differences. Hopefully the same is true for you as well.
Edit, to preempt any misreading: I am not in anyway defending Russia. Their actions are despicable and Ukraine does not deserve any of it. Russia _is_ raping Ukraine, but that reality is very different from an individual’s despite the use of the same term.
And this is the same kind of twisted logic that drives the Russian invasion.
Everyone who has ever said this has gone on to say that the US is the bad guy. And you're always arguing against people who say "Yes, the US is a bully, but that's not important right now."
I don't say this flippantly. Look at the governments the US has overthrown, rebels supported, natural resources stolen, corrupt leaders supported and arms supplied to those committing genocide (eg Saudi Arabia in Yemen).
Here's the thing, the people who keep saying that US bears responsibility for Ukraine's predicament are wrong. I'm Russian so I follow various sources (both Russian and Ukrainian) in the original languages. Putin has had his eyes on Ukraine at least since he came into power 20 years ago. In 2014 Igor Girkin (among others) was sent clandestinely to take over Crimea and start the war in the Donbas. Girkin is a monarchist and believes in "the Greater Russia". He believes that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people (an opinion Putin shares and has publicly proclaimed before the war).
The FSB has a whole department (the 5th service) devoted to subversion of Ukraine, including payment/bribes of billions of dollars to various gov't and media officials (one of whom, Viktor Medvedchuk, was captured by the SBU recently while attempting to flee house arrest).
Blaming this conflict on NATO and the US is part of Kremlin propaganda, including their "de-nazification" claims. If anything, this conflict has shown just how important NATO is in keeping people like Putin in check, as he would've gladly continued to the Baltic states and maybe others if his Ukrainian campaign succeeded (in fact, some Russian politicians have publicly stated this on national Russian TV recently).
As for Putin having eyes on Ukraine, let me argue it this way: NATO was never going to allow Ukraine to join. Germany, in particular, was always going to veto it. So even if you think that Putin had his eyes on Ukraine, NATO was never going to be a solution.
So what do you do? You get Ukraine to adopt a policy of neutrality similar to Finland, Sweden or Switzerland. You build your entire military around being a defensive army to make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from trying. To be fair, Ukraine's military has exceeded all expectations here but the invasion was (IMHO) always doomed (at least for the entire country). It's simply too big and too populated. Russia simply can't maintain control of it.
Russia may well have invaded anyway but then we're in exactly the same situation we are now so what have we lost?
This is all dandy, but how can you do that when Putin breaks previous obligations by invading Crimea and the Donbas?
See https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-neutrali...
Putin wants Ukraine either to be part of Russia, or as a vassal/subservient state. You don't even realize how compromised Ukraine was by the FSB. Politicians, media figures, etc... all on the bankroll of the FSB to the tune of billions of dollars. In a way, this war has allowed these rats to be exposed and has unified the Ukrainians even more so as a people. Neutrality would've just prolonged the suffering and allowed Putin to destabilize Ukraine even further.
There's also some interesting discussion here: https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/nato-or-bust-why-do-u...
> However, the motives behind Russia’s actions toward Ukraine could extend far beyond traditional security interests. Unlike Ukraine, neither Austria nor Finland was viewed by Moscow as part of “the same historical and spiritual place” as Russia, as part of “a single whole.” Hence, it was easier for the Kremlin to accept their statehood, including their right to integrate with Europe politically and economically. It is unlikely that Moscow would ever acquiesce to the same latitude in Ukraine’s foreign policy. As Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed, “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Without a common understanding of what neutrality means, Russia would then be even more likely to interfere in Ukraine as long as it interprets any of its foreign policy actions as hostile. Furthermore, in the absence of outside security guarantees or military cooperation with the West, Ukraine could be perceived as sufficiently weak to be coerced to Russia’s liking.
Only 1 country is killing Ukrainians: Russia. There's no US troops massacring and raping Ukrainians... The only thing the US is responsible for is that they could have maybe threatened Russia enough to not invade.
Anyhow, I've been sceptical of US hegemony at times however one thing is clear: the world is far better with the US as the dominant power than it would be if Russia or China were dominant. At least the US allows its citizens and those of its 'protectorates' (or whatever you want to call US allies/countries it protects) a large degree of personal freedom.
> The only thing the US is responsible for is that they could have maybe threatened Russia enough to not invade.
as if that wasnt a factor (by proxy via NATO) initiating Russian aggression.
This is basically the "she wore a short dress" defense...
The only country that initiated Russian aggression is Russia.
I'm not sure why you characterize the assertion as a "defense". It's a reason.
People do things for reasons. Everyone makes choices based on how they perceive the world and predict the future from there. To flatly ignore circumstance is not constructive.
Just like wearing a short dress is a "reason" rapists claim to rape.
Russia is raping and killing for reasons. But those reasons are shit and Ukraine doesn't deserve what's happening to them.
People have a choice. Choose the US/Europe/Japan/South Korea/Taiwan, or, the mideast/Russia/China. Many people voted with their feet, migrating to the former nations. Those people have no room to speak as they already voted.
I'm missing some players of course, but generally speaking we in the Free World are definitely at a disadvantage and outnumbered by the hordes of people who desire strongmen and dictators. Most of the world actually does not want or trust themselves with self-determination through representative government. Russia is one of the few examples in Europe where the people want freedom, but don't really know what it is and are scared of the idea that they'll have to become active players in a non-farcical representative democracy.
The middle east similarly never asked for democracy. They largely see no use for it. Most of Asia is the same. The typical Chinese person prefers the greatness of China as a nationalistic power, rather than the greatness of their institutions progressing the freedom of mankind. Which is how most of us in Europe and North America view our true strengths as.
Of course, overt nationalism will lead to servitude, especially for Russia. They'll be losing Chechnya soon, and become a vassal state to China. Far lower than their previous state in the world. This is a nation that once slammed their foreheads on the ground in honor of their Turkish masters, now they are taking off their shoes for the Chinese. Their alternative choice was to ditch Putin, and join with the American, European and Asian democracies. Contrary to popular belief, we welcomed them. But Putin looks at old maps of the Russian Empire and honestly thought it was possible again. Being a farce democracy, there was no institutional resistance to stop him. He's only destroying Russia.
The Russian people are also ultimately responsible here. They chose to cower to Putin. I'm sympathetic to them to a degree, these are a people that haven't and don't dare to speak their views outside of their kitchen table. Yet inaction is an action. They can still stop this. But they have to storm the Kremlin and take him out ASAP. It won't happen. We have a newly confirmed genocidal state in the world to contend with.
Dunno if I agree with this particular line (but I do agree with most of your post). India is a democracy, there's many quite populous democracies and many who live under dictatorships do desire personal freedom on several levels even if there's not necessarily democratic institutions in their countries at present.
We can't help them. They're a nuclear power. External help with Russian liberation is not possible. It's on them, and I understand how difficult it is. Freedom fighting is not in most Russian's DNA. But they're human, and even after 70 years of Soviet repression, it's still there. I want to have faith.
India is worth keeping an eye on. They are a member of the Pacific equivalent of NATO, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, but it will be interesting to see how devoted they are to a transparent and healthy democracy as opposed to just looking to counter China as a rival.
Oh boy... a blanket statement if ever I saw one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
Full quote helps.. I realize the Iranian people are far more into neoliberalism than their leaders are, and that not everyone in that part of the world desires Sharia Law over neoliberalism. I certainly did not intend to insult those that do desire freedom / representative government in the region. But I do believe they're in the minority.
I would be interested to learn about what steps you've taken to curb the abuses of your government. Surely your own government is not without fault, and through your logic you are responsible for all their transgressions.
I'm happy to put myself on the defensive though. Self-examination is a path to enlightenment. I am guilty of many things in life. Some of which I have been punished and others which I never will be. In the portions of the Americas, Asia, and Europe that are healthy democracies, simple political engagement can suffice. Many things others would characterize as "abuses" were actually proxy wars against totalitarian regimes. If the entire world were healthy democracies, it would be a far more peaceful place due to having checks and balances on power. As opposed to dictators.
But that has no relevance here, when there's an active genocide occurring in Ukraine. I'm not part or parcel to that. Others are though.
No, that's just how it's sold to the public. E.g. I guarantee nobody had civilizing and democratizing in mind when the US occupying force in Iraq issued order 81:
the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving newly designed seeds (not the traditional ones) and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders
A day later a bunch of former intelligence people basically said this is a good idea. That's funny to me.
Vast amounts of ground, fortunately. How about the fact that we can have these conversations fully uncensored? That little thing known as freedom of speech, which is still overwhelmingly alive and well. I enjoy its use, aggressively, on a daily basis without persecution and have for decades uninterrupted.
[1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-urteil-faceboo...
He certainly wouldn't be supportive of censoring racist commentary that didn't incite immediate physical violence.
For example, if your main form of communication online is through companies owned by Meta, it’s very easy to effectively censor a point of view or group of people through deplatforming, but if there are dozens of platforms that becomes more difficult.
While more authoritarian countries rely on direct censorship, the US instead promotes the viewpoints they want people to subscribe to: positive reinforcement. You can see this with the government’s involvement with the entertainment industry, or with the military paying sports leagues to promote patriotic displays.
Tech companies being private entities means that they can censor or at least stop the viral effects of social media on ideas that don’t fit the mold.
There’s a lot you can do to shape public opinion without violating the first amendment.
It’s kind of similar to the way local news stations will run “stories” that amount to advertisements for various products or local businesses. Or you might see a funny meme on Reddit where the joke mostly has to do with a company.
Not to say that there aren’t valid reasons to do stuff like this…there’s plenty of harmful speech out there that makes the world a worse place. Hateful, violent, or misleading speech is a legitimate problem. For example, there’s a report that claims most anti-vaccination online content comes from just 12 sources. [1]
It seems a little bit alarming that such a small group can amplify speech in a way that has cost perhaps thousands of lives.
[1] [PDF] https://f4d9b9d3-3d32-4f3a-afa6-49f8bf05279a.usrfiles.com/ug...
The bigger point to discuss. If twitter is under control of the US government. I have no idea if it is or not, it just seems to be the case.
You dont get to make the comment 'twitter is private, free speech only applies to government' because twitter == government.
The other consideration I had. What if the us government doesnt explicitly own twitter. They simply dont realize the us government has hacked access to moderate and censor things in a clandestine way? Now it's an even more complicated subject but wouldn't justify the stock market situation that brings me to the point.
it's true, twitter == government but not twitter === government. Meaning that the conversion happens in the underlying JIT engine where government hacks twitter to do what it wants.
So the idea is that you could make a first amendment complaint against the government for hacking twitter if it infringed your free speech with that hack, but you could not say twitter cannot just turn off my account because while twitter == government it does not === government.
I ask because I'm pretty sure real (non-US government) people post to Twitter and get real retweets. How is the US government controlling it?
I imagine this would have blown wide open a long time ago if true. (Also Occam's Razor?)
I feel like Twitter had an outsized representation along social media giants. It’s one of the smallest by MAU; and has a history of management problems. Isn’t occans razor here that is just a poorly run company?
I don't use twitter. Because of Elon I wanted to test and do have an account right now. I connected to my canadian political folks and chess people. I liked lots of things, but I never commented or retweeted. I then commented on a chess person with a positive tweet and I was quietly censored. Absolutely no way should have my account been treated this way.
>I feel like Twitter had an outsized representation along social media giants. It’s one of the smallest by MAU; and has a history of management problems. Isn’t occans razor here that is just a poorly run company?
If you're listed on the S&P500, you can't say that's poorly run. Poorly run would never have gotten there.
This is no different than HN's shadowbans but I don't see people complain about free speech on HN to the same frequency on Twitter. Further still, the fact that you are only just now creating an account further reinforces to me that most people don't actually use Twitter and their entire perception of the platform comes from news headlines. Twitter has the least amount of moderation of all the social media giants. Try posting porn on Facebook and seeing how long that lasts.
When you say your tweet was censored, you mean it's no longer on your timeline? If your tweet was deleted Twitter would have sent you an email about it. If you are complaining that that you can't see it in the user's replies, well any large twitter user is going to have many replies, and a message from a new account will likely not make the top of the fold.
>If you're listed on the S&P500, you can't say that's poorly run. Poorly run would never have gotten there.
Enron??? The many dot coms?? Lehman Brothers?? There hasn't been a major stock market correction in nearly 15 years; there are plenty of companies out there that are swimming naked. Twitter management is no stranger to public executive issues with it's board + CEO.
I retract my comment that US gov owns Twitter. It's not that, it's way way worse. I had an incorrect assumption.
My mistake. Maybe I can't think of the one I'm trying to think of. I don't need a name or rule really.
Philosophically speaking, if you have a few competing ideas and no way to come to a conclusion. The simplest explanation is the best one to go with.
> Positing a connection between Twitter and the US government, without supporting evidence but just because it "makes sense" - is anything but parsimonious. That remains true even if such a connection does eventually turn out to exist. "Do not attribute to malice that which is explained by incompetence" is likely to be the more applicable principle here.
I did provide evidence in my original post. Perhaps you dont accept my evidences for some reason?
I believe I should consider a rebuttal to my evidences. Are the other S&P500 companies so tremendously undefended from takeover?
WBD recently joined S&P and they are pretty undefended, not as bad as twitter.
CPT is worse than WBD.
MOH is worse than CPT.
NDSN is about WBD.
CEG is worse than all of them.
Woah. I kind of disproved myself? I haven't considered this. Tesla is like the only defended stock I can find? I haven't checked them all.
https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio
Haven't checked on this in awhile. It's high but is trending down post covid recession.
The S&P500 is full of zombies? Is this seriously happening? wow. I haven't seen anyone talking about this. What the hell happened?
Just checked TSX60 for Canada. AEM, AQN, ATD, BCE, BMO, BNS, ABX, and they are all good. BHC is the first one that looks maybe questionable but nowhere near problematic.
Just checked a random selection of FTSE 100. BP, BATS, BLND. All healthy.
I feel like disproving myself wasn't a good thing though. I need to go spend some time on questrade.
People have been talking about it[1]; it's just that Elon hasn't so it doesn't end up in the media hype cycle. The S&P 500 is really just the 5 big megacap stocks.
That's what makes this Twitter so weird, as a company it's relatively unremarkable; it's not larger than Snapchat both in terms of marketcap and MAU, but in the media you would think it's the primary competitor to Meta.
Twitter gets a lot of flack about censorship and free speech; but it's by far the most libertarian platform - it still has a chronological timeline! If you had followed Donald Trump on Twitter, you would see all his tweets whenever he tweeted them. If you followed him on Facebook, Facebook would hide most of his posts on your feed! And yet Twitter is the boogeyman, the enemy of free speech.
Twitter the company, and Twitter the boogeyman are two seperate entities. If you read about Twitter from NYT headlines, maybe it makes sense they are government controlled. If you actually spend time on the platform you will find a platform that largely hasn't changed in the past 10 years, but still trying to wrangle it's political influence since the Arab spring days.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/10/investing/sp-500-tech-stocks/...
This isn't it. I follow financial news, primarily financial post and economist, I havent seen anyone talk about this at all. It's crazy that I even thought to check on this. Obviously twitter being undefended was quite unusual, why would they all be this way?
In fact when I look at Microsoft and Apple... holy shit I haven't seen the problem that bad.
Meta isn't bad, but then again 500 billion market cap and pe ratio of 13? wtf? different problem altogether. People are clearly predicting huge crash on meta. No idea if that's coming.
Amazon isn't bad at all. Bezos is defending just as Musk is defending Tesla. I probably should go through all the S&p. I wonder if other stock markets are seeing this. UK and Canada obviously arent.
>Twitter the company, and Twitter the boogeyman are two seperate entities. If you read about Twitter from NYT headlines, maybe it makes sense they are government controlled. If you actually spend time on the platform you will find a platform that largely hasn't changed in the past 10 years, but still trying to wrangle it's political influence since the Arab spring days.
No that's not the problem. I dont think that the us gov is controlling anymore. When I checked tsx60 and ftse1000 there's no examples for at least the ones I checked. I admittedly didnt check them all.
I have never seen this before, it's not natural. I don't know what the terminology would be. Zombie is the wrong word. Of all my positions, Tyson is the only 1 that is bad like this; though I'm not exposed to the USA that much.
Arab spring days? Yes.
I expect it may even start the same way. Will it be a Nicholas McCrary?
Will it be food scarcity? Biden publicly said this will be the case.
Elon is way ahead of me in understanding the situation.
Let's not start coding political documents in JavaScript now. (Insert additional joke about the interpreter engine running on 9 robed meat processors).
Thanks, vouched even though I'm not sure your claim about "every major player" being out is correct (https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...). Still, easier to have that conversation elsewhere now that there's a general public conversation about it, so it's harder to hand-wave it away as conspiratorial.
Institutions like Blackrock or Vanguard don't get to vote, they may at most provide a proxy vote at cost.
The typical 'conspiracy' around those 2 is that their management can threaten entities like twitter with delisting. Twitter is then removed from their holdings at tremendous cost. So they have kind of a little threat and they get some say to do stuff like climate change and diversity stuff. Ultimately the orgs still take this upon themselves. It's an easy thing to bluff against.
Yes maybe some of these institutions have some players involved but I dont see it.
Twitter looks tremendously undefended.
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. The way to combat this is through better civic and media literacy.
You're right but is this one a goofy take? Or is there a real something here?
He was on Babylon Bee's show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGnw1sHh9M 2.4 million views in last 3 months. In this video they in detail discuss the problem with political banning.
2 months later, Babylon Bee got banned off twitter for a joke. Clear political banning and violation of section 230.
The idea is you won't get banned for making jokes about trans stuff, but you'll instead get banned for saying something bad about US global hegemony. It's not a culture war issue so nobody is going to care that you got censored.
This has been posted a bunch of times, and it's wrong. Section 230 doesn't prohibit political bannings. It doesn't actually prohibit any banning at all.
This is the relevant section (from https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230).
> (2) Civil liability > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— > (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or > availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, > lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise > objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;
Even banning for constitutionally protected speech is explicitly allowed.
Whether that's a good thing or not is a separate conversation, but nothing presently in section 230 would prevent Twitter/Facebook/etc from banning an entire political party.
Technology based mesh networks are not going anywhere. Unless the public itself revolts against the state it will always stick its fingers in them.
One planet, one reality on the ground. If people don’t want big government they need to replace it.
You call it brand building, I call it destroying democracy.
Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes because they're paid to, and after those goofy takes have been blasted by every corporate media outlet 24 hours a day for a month or two, they transform from goofy takes into orthodoxies that you could be fired for denying.
That hasn't been true for months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_att...
Wiki used to call it insurrection but it's not that. I understand the criticism that perhaps it's because it's political, but that's the because the whole subject is political.
>It was certainly a dangerous mob driven by Trump and cronies intending to interfere with the US election proceedings without justifiable cause beyond pseudo-creedal feelings that somewhere, somehow, the election was stolen.
Dangerous seems an over reach.
Contemporary comparison you have mostly peaceful riots and actual insurrections like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
It's really important to see what's happening here. It's ultra important to be able to talk about these things.
Republicans need to address the police brutality and objectively proven racism.
Democrats need to address some things as well.
These conversations have to happen and they are going to hurt.
They don't call it insurrection only because "seditious conspiracy" is the more legally accurate term, and the charge on which convictions have already been obtained. But ask a layperson to describe the difference and you'll get nothing. Even the US house and senate voted on impeachment for "incitement of insurrection" despite the legal distinction. Saying that it's "not insurrection[legal]" might be true, but HN is not a court and saying "not insurrection[common]" here is false.
\o layperson here. My observation of January 6 was the people being punished were part of a hapless, mindless mob who believed the lies of kakistocrats playing on their economic insecurities and political loyalties.
>They don't call it insurrection only because "seditious conspiracy" is the more legally accurate term, and the charge on which convictions have already been obtained.
I think I saw this on twitter. I'm not going to argue over this one. Even the wikipage extensively uses the word insurrection still.
This is a super non-issue. In fact, the differing reactions and hard line take on these contemporary political protests is all that matters.
I could also point out, but it won't help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...
Elon isn't too late. Seemingly he's ahead of me on this one. I didn't realize how bad it is.
I just hope Canada and Mexico stay out of this.
Trump lost, can nobody see that continuing to talk about him is counterproductive? On both sides!
If you read my prior comment, you'll note a distinct lack of discussion regarding this unrelated topic.
> But another "protest" gets a little out of hand and it's an attempt to overthrow the government.
Correct. The mob that actually performed the violent protest may not have come to the Capitol that day to overthrow the government, but the people spurring them on had other designs. Calling for the murder of the government official performing their duty is a key tell for that; to my understanding there is further evidence beyond incendiary and violent rhetoric.
But please, let's stay on topic instead of deflecting to the ills of Antifa and her counter-agitators. That conversation just reinforces the backfire effect since the trivial triggering conversation challenges deeply held worldviews.[0]
Don't confuse tools with crafters.
Don't let the tiny vocal minority of fools chanting election fraud trick you into thinking regular folks would go along with some half-baked coup attempt - they'd be met with laughter and scorn. I've discussed this at length with friends and family, some of whom have pretty strong political views.
But if they're in nominal control of the military, and have 40% of the country expressing a modicum of sympathy, then you let loose a pretty dangerous situation.
how many people from Jan 6 have been charged with insurrection?
Here is a quick Google result for your perusal: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.insider.com/all-the-us-capi...
Luckily, these people don't get a say in what congress does. I will continue to vote for legislators who advocate busting tech monopolies.
The set of people who vote on tech issues is dwarfed by the set of people who vote based on what "team" the candidate is on. That's simple reality, and it's not changing anytime soon.
If we want real change, we'll have to start paying the large "campaign contributions" that the organizations on the other side pay. It's a horrible thing to say, but that's how the system works.
I forgot how it was called. Something like "Safe Internet"?
The man who perjured himself in front of congress?
I think not.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/19/james-clap...
Stop saying this about journalists who you used to agree with, but now disagree with.
And I never said I agreed with him in the past. Just commenting on how he changed over time.
--
"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
~ Emiliano Zapata
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"Live Free or Die"
~ U.S. state of New Hampshire
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"Give me liberty or give me death!"
~ Patrick Henry
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“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
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"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."
~ Clarence Darrow
Let's hope the government maintains it's historical position of not resorting to tyranny and the country grows stronger as a result.
The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – made up of 17,000 veterans of the United States in World War I, together with their families and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates.
On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and 2 veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
We already have a sizeable portion of the population that wants people that don't agree with them to be silenced. And as long as they can all still buy their cattle feed at Wal-Mart, nothing is going to change for the better.
~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. writing for a unanimous Supreme Court about why antiwar pamphleteers should be jailed.
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"We think ... that [black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them."
~ Chief justice Roger Taney, for the Supreme Court majority in Dred Scott vs. Sandford
The decision for the first quote you used was overturned afterward, over 50 years ago now. It's misrepresentative of the current state of the law and you shouldn't use it as an example.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
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.
Previous? But just moments ago you said...
>... she works for US intelligence.
And even still, the comment you reference is pretty innocuous if you have actual context. She has publicly stated that she worked alongside intelligence assets at a "threat intelligence unit" at Facebook[1].
[1]https://twitter.com/Rasha_Abdul/status/1496788958084280320
Unfortunately, I've seen it cut the user more than the situation in my lifetime.
that is except if the US want's to become a fascist authoritarian state then yes it could be vital for that.
Imagine how different the world would be if China beat us to the internet and the Great Firewall was the world standard, but with AGI it will probably be able to rapidly become more advanced and prevent others from coming close to it.
If the US were to get serious in AI investment I wouldn't care about breaking up big tech but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward a certain type of bien-pensant ideology. That does mean that, overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.
Before Big Tech, we did not have such problems. This new narrative is pure self-serving propaganda, a figment of the imagination of corporate-funded lobbyists.
Free-market capitalism with freedom of speech is the recipe for economic prosperity. Has been for hundreds of years.
Some people will point to China as an attempt to show a counter-example ("Look at China, they're totalitarian and their economy has been booming.") but they conveniently forget the fact that China's growth has been happening during a time of general loosening of policies. The past 20 years in China have overall been characterized by an increasing tolerance for free-market capitalism and more freedom of speech compared to what it was before.
China came out of an extreme form of communism. Of course, any loosening would yield huge improvements! Also, they have over 1 billion people, of course any small improvement to even a small fraction of their population would have an impact globally.
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. The decline started in 1971 when USD became detached from the gold standard. It's no longer backed by anything; also, the growth in the currency supply has become unconstrained and the distribution mechanisms for all newly issued currency have been partially hijacked to serve corporate interests. The effects of this were not felt immediately. It's only in recent years that the negative effects of our soft-money system have become difficult to ignore.
The important thing to note is that no fiat system has ever survived more than a few hundred years. A monetary system which is founded on the endless debasement of its own currency is doomed to fail sooner or later. There has been hundreds of such monetary systems over thousands of years; not one which remains to this day. It has never worked and will never work in the long run. They're just pyramid schemes.
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 ideological slant) and welcomed the soft news trend is now complaining about click-bait internet journalism.
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.
All companies just produce as many goods and services as they can using all the financing which is available to them. The biggest challenge in a supply side economy is finding customers to buy the goods which the company produced or plans to produce. It increases competition on the customer-acquisition side and reduces competition on the production side (I.e. quality goes down). It makes it almost impossible for small companies to compete.
The money printing acts as a kind of subsidy for big corporations (and regular citizens end up paying via inflation). Companies which are not subsidized cannot compete no matter how good their products are or how efficient they are at producing them. They can never get the same profit margins as big corporations due to the lack of subsidies. Subsidies from the money printer can come in the form of government grants, overly generous government contracts or from banks in the form of very low interest loans. It's an asymmetric playing field.
I'm not trying to be snarky, I have a genuine interest in your perspective.
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 debt has allowed large enterprises, investments that have gone on to create untold capital. I'm still on the fence.
> The decline started in 1971…
I have seen the "WTF Happened in 1971?" web site.
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.
It's this populist rhetoric of people being mad at shit they don't know anything about.
It's interesting to me that you ignored the rest of the lies that were pointed out and focused only on one bullet to make your point. You seem to think people are mad when they shouldn't be? Is constantly being gaslit by cable news (just to give one example) acceptable to you?
If you need more proof that the financial system is destroying the economy, don't worry, there will be plenty more coming! Some people simply won't get it until they see mass starvation, mass protests and nukes blowing everything up... Heck they still won't get it, they'll blame the Bitcoin people, they'll blame some new virus, they'll blame some foreign politician... They'll blame everything except the fiat monetary system; the root of all incentives.
You have it backwards. We didn't end Bretton Woods because the government wanted to print money. The government was printing money, so they had to end Bretton Woods or else hyperinflation would occur. Right after WWII, Europe and Japan were desperate for capital to rebuild, so they were willing to exchange physical gold with made up paper, so it was free money while it lasted. If there were any real interest in maintaining a fiscal responsibility, they would have allowed investors to buy gold at the same price.
When Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the fiat currencies of all countries around the world were still pegged to the USD. This aspect of the Bretton Woods agreement remained in place... The USD started losing value but this did not cause the USD to hyperinflate relative to other currencies because all countries were still trying to maintain a stable exchange rate relative to the USD. It became currency manipulation on a global scale. Economies became increasingly detached from real value.
You should watch 'Hidden Secrets of Money' - One of the episodes does a really good job at explaining how this occurred.
Sure, we still have the IMF, but I'm specifically referring to part referring to the "gold standard". Again, it wasn't really a gold standard because the deal only extended to governments that happened to be desperate for capital. Regular people couldn't even own significant quantities of gold at the time.
>the fiat currencies of all countries around the world were still pegged to the USD.
This isn't true. Otherwise, exchange rates wouldn't be changing every second. Countries were allowed to choose how their currency was exchanged, and most of the major players allowed their currency to float freely.
>USD to hyperinflate relative to other currencies because all countries were still trying to maintain a stable exchange rate relative to the USD.
The USD never hyperinflated at all. I think the gist of what you're saying is true, like how Japan started to devalue its currency after the Yen started increasing in value. However, this precisely shows the problem with deflation. If your money grows just by sitting on it, there is little reason to invest in businesses, and it may be profitable to even downsize your business.
>You should watch 'Hidden Secrets of Money'
That was produced by the founder of goldsilver.com, so it's hardly an unbiased source. His business gains from sowing distrust in the financial system. I didn't watch this particular series, but I'm familiar with their arguments after I started investing in precious metals. I don't think their history is wrong, but IMO, they miss the entire point of money. Money isn't meant to be stored because it doesn't do any work. Money is something made up to facilitate trade as easily as possible. That's why it never makes any sense to artificially place constraints on it (e.g. pegging it to gold). This doesn't mean that we should abuse this freedom to print money on a whim either, but that's a completely separate problem.
Prices fluctuate because people trade currencies on forex markets but those traders are not a significant force in the long run... Government reserve banks are the ones which keep exchange rates relatively stable by printing money. Traders just respond to and anticipate changes in the money supply caused by central banks.
If US Fed prints a lot of money (which puts downward pressure on the value of USD), all other central banks in the world will also start printing money to also devalue their currencies so that the exchange rate for their currency remains stable relative to USD (and therefore relative to all other currencies).
There is no major country in the world right now which has a free floating currency. Reserve banks are manipulating the global currency supply and enslaving the working population due to Cantillon effects.
The leader of any country which has tried to move out of this global monetary scheme has been overthrown and murdered by US military action (under some false pretext). For example, the real reason for the war in Libya is said to be that Gaddafi was trying to push Africa towards a gold based currency. Research the 'Libyan Gold Dinar'.
Economic prosperity for a handful of wealthy Brits you mean? Regulated capitalism created the middle class, free market capitalism is doing its damnedest to undo that outcome.
Why do corporations pay lobbyists? They wouldn't pay them if they weren't delivering returns for those corporations.
If for example you make a post that says "Vaccines cause autism". They dont have enough humans to moderate this. They write an algorithm that generally sees that and you get shadowbanned or equivalent.
What are all the subjects in which you may not talk about on twitter? Its not public knowledge. Open sourcing it means people can see the true bias.
It's been legally and scientifically established as outright misinformation. The genesis of that theory was a disgraced researcher who pushed fraudulent claims with misrepresented data. The paper was retracted for "scientific misconduct".
And yet now moderating false claims that have a detrimental effect on public health outcomes is seen as a "leftist government conspiracy".
It is biased. As is any and all moderation, inherently.
Biased toward science. A bias toward the rational is a positive, healthy bias.
Rather than cowering about bias, Twitter should very openly and very aggressively stake out a clear and biased position; ie, this is our ground: we're pro science, pro vaccines, and we're going to hold that ground, period (whether anyone else likes it or not, and our algorithms will bias this way accordingly).
E.g. not all issues are as cut and dry as your example.
I surrender. I agree, we absolutely should be doing something. The point elon is planning with the open sourcing is to simply make it public. I figure most political folks wont really argue over the autism thing.
>It's been legally and scientifically established as outright misinformation. The genesis of that theory was a disgraced researcher who pushed fraudulent claims with misrepresented data. The paper was retracted for "scientific misconduct".
Here is the interesting thing. Do we fix the conversation by banning people from talking about it?
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. -George R. R. Martin
Or would it be better to allow people to talk about it and just post a warning that it's discredited and link?
>And yet now moderating false claims that have a detrimental effect on public health outcomes is seen as a "leftist government conspiracy".
I chose vaccines cause autism because it's a great example of something that is harmful to society. Something that might be worth censoring but when you block or even secretly shadowban this subject. It even makes me want to know more. Sure looks like conspiracy to me.
But I also kind of point to NYTimes and incoming CNN ceo who are telling their journalists to break out of their twitter echo chambers.
twitter censors far more than this subject. The anticonservative bias that twitter creates also ends up forming echo chambers for the left. Who then dont see criticism of their work. The consequence that NYTimes for example sees is that they stop reporting properly, they report on their echo chamber. They then fundamentally break journalism ethics rules.
"But that will make them to stop that part of their business entirely, or make it way more expensive and force them to take an actual editorial stance! And their viral-ness will suffer a ton!"
Yes, exactly, that's the point.
They've created this medium, then they decide what to push with it. They should be responsible for that, or else back away from how they're currently operating.
Would you support this sort of unbiased moderation being expanded to telephone calls?
Not the same reach. Telephone calls are ostensibly private exchanges between two willing parties. Twitter is much more akin to a "crowded theater" than a telephone call.
This seems suspicious.
I could write an entire article about Tucker Carlson saying something and title it "Multi-millionaire frozen food heir says <something I don't like>"
I think the aggressiveness that the EU attacks big tech with is proof enough that the national security point is true.
> The cynical exploitation could hardly be more overt: if you hate Putin the way any loyal and patriotic American should, then you must devote yourself to full preservation of the power of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
Which golden goose has died or is going to? Tech profits are through the roof and have never been better, while growth continues unabated. The only thing big tech is facing are speeding fines and regional constraints on growth, which it can trivially afford (it has been a decade of the same talk while big tech has gotten massively bigger).
Operating income: Apple $117 billion, Microsoft $78b, Google $78b, Facebook $46b, Amazon $25b, Intel $22b, Cisco $14b, Oracle $11b, Qualcomm $11b, Nvidia $10b, Micron $10b, Broadcom $10b, Texas Instruments $9b, Applied Materials $8b, Adobe $6b, Netflix $6b
For reference ASML is at $7b and SAP is at $5b.
The US tech golden goose is going to get bigger and richer yet. It should only take you a few moments to estimate reasonably where eg Microsoft is going this decade (~$140+ billion in operating income, probably the size of all of Europe's tech companies op income combined in one company).
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 letter makes no such claim. This amounts to a straw man.
Greenwald goes on to rail at the signees for the letter claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop had the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, but while the NYT recently apparently confirmed the genuine nature of Biden's laptop, that letter was still well-founded at the time. A thing can be genuine and have the hallmarks of developed disinformation.
I think Greenwald is being intellectually dishonest.
They had zero proof it was Russian disinformation.
They just made that up despite indications the laptop was in fact authentic.
And they did that right before a Presidential election.
That doesn’t concern you? You feel that the letter was “well founded”? Founded on what? A politically convenient guess?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/hunter-biden-la...
Perhaps the most concerning thing is that a group of such blatantly unscrupulous people has actual political support in the US.
I feel the need to draw a parallel to Trump's refusal of military aid to Ukraine contingent upon them manufacturing an investigation of Hunter Biden, over which he was impeached.
If I were a betting man, I'd happily bet that they're reporting accurately, and that Bannon and Wengui were, as usual, being unscrupulous. It's not hard to see that claims of serial bullshit-peddlers that contain all the same bullshit as they always contain is bullshit. How much pattern recognition do you need?
Not only that, but the laptop turns out to be verifiable, and it goes to the FBI, which investigates. As normal. I fail to see the outrageous part.
The laptop was authentic yet the intelligence community and mass media closed ranks and called it Russian disinformation without any proof. Just a suspicion (as your link claims) that “something was up”.
That is a pitiful excuse for journalism. Sure, call the content “alleged”, publish rebuttals from the Biden team, whatever.
But they didn’t do that. They said “its likely Russian disinformation so not worth discussing at all”. That not journalism that’s actively shaping the story.
You should be explaining this claim rather than speculating about "hallmarks."
I don't think it would be unreasonable to speculate that they knew then what a portion of the general population knows now, namely that a vast disinformation network was disseminating information on behalf of Steve Bannon. This has been analyzed and reported on by social media analysis firm Graphika.
So combine an outlandish story of an abandoned laptop making its way to Rudy Giuliani with the outlandish and serially repeated claims of child pornography and push it out with a known disinformation network, and it has all the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.
But that's just what I see that leads me to conclude that it's reasonable. Don't expect me to actually explain the intelligence community's behavior.
I suppose I'll also speak to the fact that someone from among the intelligence community vs. Trump's ilk deserves more of the benefit of the doubt. Given Trump and his ilk's long and trivially verifiable history of being brazen liars, I find it exceedingly easy to give the benefit of the doubt to the intelligence community.
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"
Somehow, I think that the CPC knows that the Chinese internet companies won't run without Alibaba, but I also think they know a lot of the Chinese engineers who work for Alibaba don't really have too many other places to go. So important players like Alibaba will probably stand regardless of the level of crackdowns they have taken. For the sake of competitiveness – and to keep Jack Ma erstwhiles in line – some random flogging may be in order. I think China is also concerned about the brain drain caused by having a tech sector that's too economically prosperous compared to the rest of the economy. (How they acted on that is another thing).
The U.S., meanwhile, evidently doesn't care very much about the long-term health of its tech economy.
I'm really uncomfortable about the situation that this presents. In the U.S., Apple has usually pushed against the establishment making it easier to crack their phones. And there are worse social networks than FB and Twitter. There are better ones too, but if I find myself wanting to defend Apple against the government (even though I'm sure they're taking their stance out of selfish reasons), then the overall situation seems like it is inherently balanced against U.S. competitiveness in tech.