Comment by koalaman
22 days ago
Iran and North Korea are evidence that with modern technology, and a ruthless enough autocracy, there is possibly no way out from under it. Technological progress only makes this problem worse. It should highlight the urgency for anybody who loves freedom, human rights, and democracy, to fight the swing towards authoritarianism in the 'free world', before there is no way back.
> with modern technology, and a ruthless enough autocracy, there is possibly no way out from under it. Technological progress only makes this problem worse.
US may not have autocrats, but it does have ruthless enforcers of "law and order" with access to advanced weapons. Its probably safe to say thst whatever the stated reason is for the 2nd amendment, it is going to be difficult or impossible to meet its objective if needed.
All the second amendment fans I have met voted for the current regime. The vibes I get from many of them is they would absolutely love to cosplay military or police officers. The current regime loves painting their opponents as their enemy. I can easily imagine a future where gun toting regime supporters can be deputized to fight the "enemy within." They'll line up with enthusiasm to appease their ruler.
So go meet more of them? Support for the second amendment definitely has fans of that nature, but not all of them.
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Yes, there are advanced weapons. 2nd amendment folks are "outgunned," but it's still an important deterrent, because it makes these kinds of massacres more costly. If the government is hunting these people down, and they have nothing left to lose, they might just take a few with them if they're armed.
One could ask, who is giving Iran and North Korea this technology? Most of it they aren't developing themselves.
Why do you say that? Iranian engineers are incredibly talented.
It's not meant as a slight against Iranian engineers, I believe Iranian engineers can be as talented as any engineers in the world. I just imagine they may be resource constrained. So the question is more about geo-politics, who stands to gain by transferring technology to the Iranian government that allows them to surveil the Iranian population and maintain absolute control?
Guess who? https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/international-relations/1...
My cynical take is that this is the reason we're selling so many GPUs to certain foreign governments. Sure, AI is great for vibe coding and making cat videos but it's also amazing for tracking individual sentiment, influencing opinion on social media, creating fake news, and detecting threat networks. "Smart cities" are also Panopticons.