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I don't operate from the same axiom of complete pwnership by the NSA
It's not exactly black magic, perhaps a rabbithole you should explore if you can stomach realizing how obvious it was in hindsight
people -- mostly -- are stupid
Individuals are indeed stupid which is why we build systems of knowledge. Individuals being stupid project that onto everything to cope, "The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people" - Hawking.
That's why it's a consensus view to think the government is incompetent and has no vision, because the masses are incompetent and have no vision.
Institutions of course are as subject to the chaos of entropy as anyone... the state particularly so because it's a battlefield rather than a monolith. But, scale comes with inertia, which attracts the resourceful. That's how large companies survive centuries beyond their founders and governments beyond "great man" type leaders.
You wouldn't say that people at the top of the most powerful corporations are stupid and yielding to chaos. Plans are executed over years and decades routinely in the corporate world, and done so through compartmentalization rather than concentration. Like modules in software, cells in an organism, shell corps in an enterprise, etc.
There's no firewall between the most capable people in business and the power of the state, business and state are just tools wielded as leverage over society in general. People tend to either think that businesses run the government, or that the government interferes with business, when in reality they are levers on the same machine. Cisco, Broadcom, Verizon, ATT, Apple, Google, MSFT, Intel... all compartments of the same train. All one needs to surveil the internet.
Who are those companies largest consistent customer? This will be relevant below. Do you believe any of these companies would meaningful resist cooperation under classified pretenses with the state?
If you're smart enough to recognize people are stupid, there's people even smarter than you that can leverage that mass of stupidity. I used the term useful idiots intentionally. KYC Facebook is a distraction from the larger structure that already exists.
state tends not to exert this sort of control
But they have that control still, don't they?
There has to be a good reason to open pandora's box. Stupidity would be to exert that control for no good reason.
Not having an uprising or declines in industrial production due to water is in the state's interest, so the water flows. SIGINT and industrial production over the internet is in the state's interest, so the packets flow.
It's Zuck's fear of lawsuits bringing up KYC, not a lack of control by the apex force.
our government is that they are not actually competent enough to "splinterize" the internet
China and Iran have done it with a fraction of the capabilities, stuff only got out of Iran because they don't have space dominance. China allows what it allows for purposes of commerce.
technologies inevitably destabilize entrenched systems.
Never once outside of inter-state rivalry.
Specific companies or industries get disrupted, but the replacements are still subordinate to the apex force.
Militaries always lead in technology through bounties and the "State-Customer" relationship. This another 1:1 parallel from Hamilton's Report on Manufactures that is as relevant today as it was throughout history leading up to that writing. Even those that would invoke Adam Smith in defense of their free-market fantasies clearly never read him.
Technology is physical, subject to physical supply-chains, created and operated by people with necks that fit under a boot.
power structures always assume they are more capable than they actually are
Leaders fall, structures don't, they simply change hands.
well, first, I don't operate from the same axiom of complete pwnership by the NSA as you do. I simply do not buy that the intelligence community is as competent as you claim. My experience is that people -- mostly -- are stupid. I know this from my own self-awareness, but also from the great mass of stupidity I frequently see in the world. Highly concentrated power is highly unstable.
counterargument: how is it that Xi has been able to maintain power for as long as he has?
This could also be said for most of the things in our lives: how does the water system work? with pipes. Pipes that can be centrally shut off. Yet, to my knowledge, the state tends not to exert this sort of control over people. Not because they think it's a bad idea, but rather because they can't actually use such blunt instruments. Sure the internet is an assemblage of known wires crossing borders, but everything I've seen of our government is that they are not actually competent enough to "splinterize" the internet.
counterargumnet: they managed to pull off some pretty crazy blunt-force trauma to civil rights during covid didn't they?
I will likely continue to chicken-little away on this topic. I am not a historian, but I've spent a bit of time reading about the past, and the trend I see is that power structures always assume they are more capable than they actually are, and technologies inevitably destabilize entrenched systems.