It’s hard not to be concerned about the future, when one watches the news.
The world is in an uproar, citizens are rioting, democratic elections are being compromised, autocratic leaders, corruption and ethic cleansing are on the rise.
There are lots of scary men to blame, but I would argue the two most powerful kingpins in the demise of a stable world are China’s eternal Premier, Xi Jinping, and Facebook’s founder and president, Mark Zuckerberg.
Jinping has the power to directly control the minds of 1.43 billion people (18.4 per cent of the world’s population) and Zuckerberg has personal power over an unregulated platform that controls the minds of 2.5 billion people (19.1 per cent of the world’s population).
In China, Jinping controls all media and uses the military to control any dissidents. He has brutalized millions of Muslims by forcing them into massive concentration camps, ironically named, re-education centres, to beat their religion out of them.
With the Americans withdrawing into themselves, Jinping’s agenda for world dominance is moving forward quickly. Communist China has and continues to directly invest billions into infrastructure projects in developing nations and rouge states, specifically in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe.
Chinese state-owned companies have bought strategic industries in all of the G-7 nations and through Huawei are offering the cheapest and best G5 network on the market today, making it an obvious choice for Canada’s three Telecom giants.
As our governments pulls funding from post secondary institutions, the Chinese have stepped into the void making significant investments at our major universities.
Lest we forget, money equals influence.
Then there’s Facebook, a wonderful tool for keeping up with families and friends. It is little wonder that people sign up in the millions annually.
Roger McNamee in his must-read book, ‘Zucked’ argues that Zuckerberg, in his relentless pursuit of growth has forgone any moral obligations to user’s privacy or mental health.
McNamee was a consultant and friend to Zuckerberg and once a strong advocate of Facebook. Now he is arguing for a breakup of Facebook and more regulatory control.
Zuck’s business model is to exploit personal data to anyone willing to pay and as such his platform has enabled anonymous bad actors to undermine governments and increase civil rights violations worldwide.
Zuck calls Facebook, free speech.
McNamee says anonymous free speech is no free speech at all.
In 2018, Science Magazine published a study that revealed disinformation and fake news are shared 70 per cent more often than factual stories and spread roughly six times faster.
A free-for-all on Facebook clearly benefits bad actors. The algorithms prey on behaviour modification techniques that create addictions.
Its algorithms are designed to move people into filter bubbles—creating tribal behaviours.
Zuck’s largest revenue streams come from sites with the most hate, fear, anger and conspiracy theories. Jinping’s overall goal is to be the supreme economic and military leader of the world.
Zuck’s singular focus is to pursue global influence and massive personal profits.
In so doing, Zuck has abdicated his platform to bad actors and fake news.
Today these two men, each with suspect morals, are not accountable to anyone but themselves.
They have Godlike status and directly or indirectly control the minds of 40 per cent of the world’s population.
That should cause all of us to ponder McNamee’s most profound observation,
“You see the effect today among people whose embrace of Donald Trump has required them to abandon personal beliefs held deeply only a few years earlier.”
B. Schimke
ECA Review
