The US Director of National Intelligence wants to move away from proprietary tech- I wholeheartedly disagree
The notion that government does things ineffectively compared to the private sector is not new. This adage has remained relevant through time, often used as an argument against the nationalization of companies or industries, disproving that the goals of socialism or communism can easily or fairly be realized.
It is a notion I tend to agree with in nearly all circumstances, but this is not one of them. The reason why is complex and challenging to foresee, but with the right amount of advocacy our country can avoid the moral dilemma we will surely face if the US Government does things as the current Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard advocates: She recently stated she would like the US to rely less on in-house produced technological solutions and “lean harder on industry.” This means, for instance- that services like email exchange or server hosting could be provided by private companies like Microsoft or Google rather than government-innovated and managed solutions.
In argument for…
Willful participation in the marriage of these two institutions could potentially provide security advantages for our private corporations by way of partnership… and I do tend to align with right-wing conservatives on the notion that government has historically failed to produce superior solutions to problems that the private sector is able to,
notwithstanding…
I want to advocate against a movement that will foreseeably misalign our government’s interests with that of the people- particularly in technology sectors where data handling can have significant and broad effects.
The ability to make data- profitable is both powerful and financially rewarding for these institutions. Yet, we also know that the more profit extracted from our data, the less freedom we have because we are more vulnerable to manipulation. Data is collected these days by way of the technology around us and continues to grow in functionality and purpose each and every year. It has even affected the way we war with one another:
In the Ukrainian conflict, According to the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the role digital engagement has played has been significant:
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a wave of information politics to sway public opinion through the digital space. While Ukraine may have the footage of an ongoing invasion to prove its moral high ground, Russian Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation (MDM) efforts across social media, as well as its continued reliance on compassion fatigue, cannot be discounted.
Even now, believe it or not, the world is at war at a scale greater than the Ukrainian conflict alone. A war of the information which forms our values and our passions. From transgender rights domestically and abroad, to racism near and far which facilitates emigration biases, and at the center- are the tools we use each and every day: the internet, social media, services like Better Help or Snap Fitness, beneath the surface are massively powerful and growing technological advancements that the world is actually engulfed in an arms race of human exploitation capabilities.
I believe it is vital we do not permit a marriage of the technology our government uses to stay ahead of our adversaries, and the financial health of private corporations who turn profit, largely by exploiting data and thereby, people.
We must continue to institute our own standards for data handling and behavioral modeling abroad, evolve Western Democracy to increase the happiness of and freedoms privileged to the people, and share the good news of a free and competitive market if we want to see a Greater America tomorrow.
XoXo
