On Subterfuge

Nations are loosely collected, if not rather diffuse, groupings of corporations that don’t necessarily have a common geopolitical objective. Corporations can be bought out quite easily in their interests, as can politicians, as can grassroots movements. The Chinese have grown quite adept at this practice—I know this, after all, I am a Canadian.

Algorithms can be trained quite easily using large-scale meme generation and automated bots to like certain memes and certain kinds of content. The Russians have gotten quite effective warping entire populations in less than a decade into something unrecognizable using these means—I should know, I am also an American.

You would be surprised at the number of agents on the ground today. You would be amazed at how many are in positions of government and corporate control. You would be amazed at the kinds of technology being employed and being erected in the infrastructure of supposedly free nations. You would be quite unsurprised, though, had you known all this, to learn that China runs Canada and Russia runs the United States of America at this point. But if we cannot use money and we cannot use cyberspace, what objective can we pursue now that our governments have failed us?

I would like to propose a new method—or rather, a very old method. Our only remaining option is to take to the streets, to make pamphlets, to protest, to build a movement so large it cannot be denied, to create a media so simple that the medium cannot be disrupted. For the algorithm runs on a Russian watch, and the news corporations have been bought by the Chinese yen. So this revolution will have to be won by things that we can make with our own two hands and even a child can make a printing press.

So why am I putting this up on cyberspace, knowing that the algorithm will suppress this message? Old habits die hard, I guess. But very soon, I’ll make my own press, and then we’ll see just how far this message can get. Because it makes a lot of sense if you think about it—that the bigger and shinier technologies will be easily corrupted because they’re harder to understand and control, which will inevitably leave us with only the simplest and most common technologies, which are easiest to keep track of and hardest to corrupt.

I imagine armies of ink-pressed and soul-conflagrating preachers marching on Washington and Ottawa. I imagine ledgers of Chinese foreign investments printed and posted on coffee shop windows, on gas stations and grocery stores, spread through bus station terminals, airports, and train stations, from one hand to the next. I imagine catalogs of Russian memes with target audiences attached, the deconstruction of social media by popular demand.

I imagine organizations forming—citizens watching for foreign interference, educating each other on epistemology and journalistic practices, tuning into the reality hidden beneath layers of propaganda. I imagine a revolution like we haven’t seen for decades—nay, centuries. Is any of this possible? Can we protect our frail minds from the onslaught of enemy bribes, memes, and counterintelligence where our governments have failed?

I doubt it. But it is worth a try. And if I always do one thing, it’s try.