3 ms·

This reminds me of when I was in China in early 2020 and I felt like there were still places in many cities you could go without being seen with cameras. Howeve

by winrid 3y ago

This reminds me of when I was in China in early 2020 and I felt like there were still places in many cities you could go without being seen with cameras. However in and around cities in Xinjiang, it was fairly impossible. Even on highways in the desert there's a camera every km or so, that I recall. I had my passport checked just to go into some buildings, like for example if the building was within a block of an elementary school...

alephnerd 3y ago
Well Xinjiang is basically governed by the PLA, and institutional memory of the insurgency is strong.
- winrid 3y ago
  Yep! They even had large barricades in front of schools to prevent vehicles/vehicle bomb attacks, as well as barbed wire around the schools, and officers on shifts with what appeared to be MP5s... Anyway, somewhat more related, I recently learned about the Church of Scientology's Operation Snow White with over 5,000 covert agents in various branches of the US government. That's just a religious group! Imagine what other governments are trying to do, and the potential scale of covert actions we take.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    The US's biggest strength is it's decentralization. It creates multiple redundancies from the local level all the way to the federal level. For 70-80% of QoL, most of that is impacted by your City Council, County Board, and School Board. There are so many of those that it's logistically impossible to influence.
    - defrost 3y ago
      The US is riddled with "optimised" just in time supply chains that are bottlenecks; eg: meat supply during COVID https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.660736/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.6607... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9478983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9478983/ From an outside PoV there are a number of places that can be attacked to cause nationwide upsets from small investments of time and effort.
    - winrid 3y ago
      "There are so many of those that it's logistically impossible to influence." This confuses me - you mean like how corporations and even NIMBY-ists do all the time?

by winrid 3y ago

alephnerd 3y ago

Well Xinjiang is basically governed by the PLA, and institutional memory of the insurgency is strong.

winrid 3y ago
Yep! They even had large barricades in front of schools to prevent vehicles/vehicle bomb attacks, as well as barbed wire around the schools, and officers on shifts with what appeared to be MP5s... Anyway, somewhat more related, I recently learned about the Church of Scientology's Operation Snow White with over 5,000 covert agents in various branches of the US government. That's just a religious group! Imagine what other governments are trying to do, and the potential scale of covert actions we take.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  The US's biggest strength is it's decentralization. It creates multiple redundancies from the local level all the way to the federal level. For 70-80% of QoL, most of that is impacted by your City Council, County Board, and School Board. There are so many of those that it's logistically impossible to influence.
  - defrost 3y ago
    The US is riddled with "optimised" just in time supply chains that are bottlenecks; eg: meat supply during COVID https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.660736/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.6607... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9478983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9478983/ From an outside PoV there are a number of places that can be attacked to cause nationwide upsets from small investments of time and effort.
  - winrid 3y ago
    "There are so many of those that it's logistically impossible to influence." This confuses me - you mean like how corporations and even NIMBY-ists do all the time?