Would you be surprised to find out that the censorial, moral panic bill based on hype and nonsense, but very likely to pass in California and potentially change how the internet functions… was actually written by a British noble with a savior complex?
Dozens of social media accounts operating for years in an attempt to influence people in the Middle East and Asia have been shut down. Now a major new study believes the US is likely behind it
The data analyzed came from 146 Twitter accounts (which tweeted 299,566 times), 39 Facebook profiles, and 26 Instagram accounts, along with 16 Facebook pages and two Facebook groups. Some of the accounts were meant to appear like real people and used AI-generated profile pictures. Meta and Twitter didn’t specifically name any organizations or people behind the campaigns but said their analysis led them to believe they originated in the US and Great Britain.
For anyone who’s ever been within 15 feet of a history book, the news that the US is using covert action to push its interests in other countries won’t come as a surprise. It is, however, interesting that these operations were uncovered just as social media companies are gearing up to deal with a wave of foreign interference and misinformation in our own elections.
The report also comes right on the heels of a bombshell whistleblower report from Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Twitter’s former head of security, which accused the company of lax security practices and misrepresenting the number of bots on its platform (something the US government is investigating and that Twitter has strongly denied).
It’s not just a matter of enticing new immigrants but of retaining bright minds already in the country. In 2009, a Turkish graduate of the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Erdal Arikan, published a paper that solved a fundamental problem in information theory, allowing for much faster and more accurate data transfers. Unable to get an academic appointment or funding to work on this seemingly esoteric problem in the United States, he returned to his home country. As a foreign citizen, he would have had to find a U.S. employer interested in his project to be able to stay.
Back in Turkey, Arikan turned to China. It turned out that Arikan’s insight was the breakthrough needed to leap from 4G telecommunications networks to much faster 5G mobile internet services. Four years later, China’s national telecommunications champion, Huawei, was using Arikan’s discovery to invent some of the first 5G technologies. Today, Huawei holds over two-thirds of the patents related to Arikan’s solution—10 times more than its nearest competitor. And while Huawei has produced one-third of the 5G infrastructure now operating around the world, the United States does not have a single major company competing in this race. Had the United States been able to retain Arikan—simply by allowing him to stay in the country instead of making his visa contingent on immediately finding a sponsor for his work—this history might well have been different.
“Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”
As I type this, I’m sitting in a (fairly uncomfortable) chair in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, having read through nearly 300 pages of legal filings of sniping between Elon Musk (165 pages) and Twitter (127 pages) trying to figure out how to best explain what’s in the filings in a meaningful and accurate way. Because the media coverage of this case continues to suck. For example, you may have heard that Elon Musk “countersued” Twitter. Headlines blasted that left and right and Musk’s fans lapped it up. I saw multiple tweets claiming that Musk was going to cost Twitter “so much” money by suing them back.
Online censorship is becoming increasingly normalized as growing restrictions, deplatforming and its other manifestations have become so pervasive that many have simply come to accept it.
The United States and Israel affirm that they will continue to work together to combat all efforts to boycott or de-legitimize Israel, to deny its right to self-defense, or to unfairly single it out in any forum, including at the United Nations or the International Criminal Court. While fully respecting the right to freedom of expression, they firmly reject the BDS campaign. The two countries will use the tools at their disposal to fight every scourge and source of antisemitism and to respond whenever legitimate criticism crosses over into bigotry and hatred or attempts to undermine Israel’s rightful and legitimate place among the family of nations. In this context, they express their deep concern over the global surge in antisemitism and reassert their commitment to counter this ancient hatred in all of its manifestations. The United States is proud to stand with the Jewish and democratic State of Israel, and with its people, whose uncommon courage, resilience, and spirit of innovation are an inspiration to so many worldwide.
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