This reminds me of a previous crisis involving the intersection of far-left politics and technology after the Russian revolution. What to do about the problem

This reminds me of a previous crisis involving the intersection of far-left politics and technology after the Russian revolution. What to do about the problem of all scientific progress up to that point being the product of ideologically impure bourgeois capitalism? Stalin, being, for all his notorious faults, a technological pragmatist, had to actually get in the middle of it and straighten things out: "At one time there were 'Marxists' in our country who asserted that the railways left to us after the October Revolution were bourgeois railways, that it would be unseemly for us Marxists to use them, that they should be torn up and new, 'proletarian' railways built. For this they were nicknamed 'troglodytes'. It goes without saying that such a primitive-anarchist view of society, of classes, of language has nothing in common with Marxism. But it undoubtedly exists and continues to prevail in the minds of certain of our muddled comrades." - Stalin, Marxism and the Problem of Linguistics.[1] You could easily redo this for the 21st century: "At one time there were 'Social Justice Warriors' in our country who asserted that the data and algorithms left to us after the Critical Race Theory Revolution were systematically racist data and algorithms, that it would be unseemly for us Social Justice Warriors to use those data and algorithms, that those data and algorithms should be destroyed and new, 'anti-racist' data and algorithms be built. For this they were nicknamed the 'cancel mob'. It goes without saying that such a primitive-woke view of computing, of races, of machine learning has nothing in common with 'Social Justice Warrior Ideology'. But it undoubtedly exists and continues to prevail in the minds of certain of our muddled comrades." The Soviets almost failed to implement the atomic bomb because they had an ideological problem with relativity: "According to a story related by Mr. Holloway, Beria had asked Kurchatov shortly before the conference whether it was true that quantum mechanics and relativity theory were idealist and antimaterialist. Kurchatov reportedly replied that if relativity theory and quantum mechanics had to be rejected by Russian science, the atomic bomb would have to be rejected, too. According to another story in the book, Stalin phrased his decision to cancel this way: "Leave them [ the physicists ] in peace. We can always shoot them later." He could afford a charlatan like Lysenko in biology, but physics was another matter. Stalin relied on his physicists for the bomb -- and for Soviet status as a superpower. When his first atomic bomb was tested in August 1949, five months after the aborted conference, those scientists who would have been shot in the event of failure received the highest awards: Hero of Socialist Labor and so on, down the line."[2] The 21st century version: "Leave them [the data scientists] in peace. We can always cancel them later." I love my downvotes. Thank you :). [1] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950/jun/20.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950... [2] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/holloway-stalin.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/s...