Ok. I admit the headline is perhaps a little dramatic. But not much.
First, the story, as told at "The Unlimited Hangout."
Here is where it is creepy.
Last Wednesday, President Biden was widely praised in mainstream and health-care–focused media for his call to create a “new biomedical research agency” modeled after the US military’s “high-risk, high-reward” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. As touted by the president, the agency would seek to develop “innovative” and “breakthrough” treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes, with a call to “end cancer as we know it.”
Far from “ending cancer” in the way most Americans might envision it, the proposed agency would merge “national security” with “health security” in such as way as to use both physical and mental health “warning signs” to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur. Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic “pre-crime” organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as “wrongthink.”
Do you remember when Ronald Reagan spoke out against socialized medicine?
He spoke of the dangers of socialism and how socialized medicine was "the camel's nose under the tent" to bringing it into the country. From the wikipedia article:
Reagan warns that if his listeners do not stop the proposed medical program, "behind it will come other government programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Norman Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism." Under this scenario, Reagan says, "We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."
Again, from the article at "The Unlimited Hangout..."
While nominally focused on “bioterrorist attacks,” TIA’s Bio-Surveillance project also sought to acquire early detection capabilities for “normal” disease outbreaks. Bio-Surveillance and related DARPA projects at the time, such as LifeLog, sought to harvest data through the mass use of some sort of wearable or handheld technology. These DARPA programs were ultimately shut down due to the controversy over claims they would be used to profile domestic dissidents and eliminate privacy for all Americans in the US.
That DARPA’s past total surveillance dragnet is coming back to life under a supposedly separate health-focused agency, and one that emulates its organizational model no less, confirms that many TIA-related programs were merely distanced from the Department of Defense when officially shut down. By separating the military from the public image of such technologies and programs, it made them more palatable to the masses, despite the military remaining heavily involved behind the scenes. As Unlimited Hangout has recently reported, major aspects of TIA were merely privatized, giving rise to companies such as Facebook and Palantir, which resulted in such DARPA projects being widely used and accepted. Now, under the guise of the proposed ARPA-H, DARPA’s original TIA would essentially be making a comeback for all intents and purposes as its own spin-off.
There is pushback against this movement. And you see it in Europe and Asia, too.
From an article at "Access Now," you can see how people are trying to raise awareness.
The use of technology to repress democratic dissent is nothing new. Countries such as China and Russia are widely documented repeat offenders when it comes to deploying authoritarian tactics in digital spaces. Our latest report, Digital dictatorship: authoritarian tactics and resistance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, explains how a digital dictatorship can emerge and how pro-democracy activists are fighting back.
Check out Access Now, and their work to raise awareness and push back against government tyranny.
We call on governments to advance norms to regulate the digital space which fulfill human rights obligations, while dismantling frameworks which allow digital authoritarianism to flourish. We demand that tech companies cease selling surveillance tools or services to EECA regimes with a track record of violating human rights, and that they conduct human rights impact assessments before undertaking any business activities in the region — while ensuring that civil society actors fighting for democracy retain access to vital communications and digital safety tools.
Also, if you are interested, you can check out the original article that was the basis for this post.
Note from Cogny:
The reason I say the title might be a little dramatic is because with Jesus, there is always hope. Tyrannies come and God. Man makes his plans and God laughs.
Pray. Seek to enter His rest. It is, in the end, your only hope anyway.