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> some sorta coordination between state actors There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glass
by LeifCarrotson 4y ago
> some sorta coordination between state actors
There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glasses of whisky scheming about how to counter each threat to their power (with their super-secret puppeteers present only as a grim silhouette in the shadows, or maybe as an unexpected call at a climactic moment).
The only coordination that exists at the level of these superpowers is systemic, caused and communicated purely by a commonality of incentives and threats, not by words.
Every government wants power. One obvious means to achieve that is to retain an ability to surveil their populace. They grew accustomed to growth of this ability as communication shifted from whispered conversations to physical letters to telegrams to analog telephones to unencrypted Internet communication; now the ability of ordinary citizens to trivially encrypt their communication is a major setback to that expectation.
The timing of it is merely coincidental, or at most coordinated by the cross-border technological developments.
- junofan 4y agoWhat do you think Joe Biden talks about with Macron, Sunak, and Scholz when he calls them up on the phone?
- slavboj 4y agoNo, you have your lower-level guys coordinate transnational policy. That is the entire point of organizations like the Atlantic Council!
- tekknik 4y ago> There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glasses of whisky scheming about how to counter each threat to their power Why whenever anybody says anything that can be construed as conspiratorial do we automatically assume it is? World leaders can meet without the conspiracy, they do it all the time.
- stametseater 4y agoWhy do we automatically assume that people conspiring is a farcical premise? Common criminals conspire with each other all the time. Business leaders conspire with each other when they form illegal cartels. Why can't politicians or even heads of state conspire? Why is that considered so outlandish? For instance, the leaders of prominent American tech companies conspired with each other to suppress wages. Should this be laughed at? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_non-recruiting_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_n... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...