When Big Government Gets Into Bed with Big Tech
By James Fitzgerald There can be no doubt any more that there exists a four-headed hydra that reaches into every facet of our digital lives — and which has been given our tacit permission to give or take our freedoms of expression as it sees fit. The Google-YouTube-Twitter-FaceBook axiom has risen to unprecedented power across the globe by providing the means to both disseminate and view content. There is an expression — power corrupts — but were these individuated cyber sentinels bad seeds to begin with, or did they gradually become drunk on the largesse of monopolized money? If the recent purge of Conservative “patriot” platforms, in many cases without notice or justification, is a gauge of the hydra’s character, then we might liken it to a sociopathic dictator. SGT Report, and 14 of the other casualties, wasted no time in pursuing a federal lawsuit against Google and YouTube. On…
US Space Force Must Trip The Light Fantastic
By James Fitzgerald Social and political affairs on Earth may currently be heated and divisive, but spare a thought for the US Space Force cadets who will soon be venturing into a place where “no one can hear you scream”. President Trump signed an Executive Order early last year that created a sixth branch of the US Armed Forces, to “marshal its space resources to deter and counter threats in space”. It seems America’s historic technological advantage may be under threat from China or Russia, or other private commercial interests. The global space industry already generates annual revenues of $350 billion, according to Morgan Stanley, with those figures set to reach $1.1 trillion by 2040. The first crewed space launch from US soil in a decade was hosted by SpaceX in May this year. Elon Musk has already posited 60 500-pound satellites in orbit, creating the controversial Starlink array for…
