Why is the author sharing concern for the US’ defensive capabilities “to threaten nuclear obliteration” (or something along these lines)?

I mean first of all they have a quantity of hundreds these, of which only a few of will essentially destroy our world as we know it.

But then also how is this even something to be seen negatively, in what way are capabilities of nuclear war something to be seen this desireable.

I like the idea of not letting stupid people spread misinformation on the internet (unless it’s myself), but this is just gatekeeping the right to speak out in public about certain topics which I find deeply problematic.

I think it just goes against the fundamental concepts of democracy.

The ruling class will have it in their interest to have people wanting and complying with their ideals and plans. Survaillance achieves a certain kind of control and spreads fear of “misconduct” and going against ideals of the government. This can be seen in the US currently, as well as many more authoratorian countries now, and also in the past, e.g. Russia, Nazi and East Germany (in it’s earlier years).

However democracy stands on that ability to voice and form your own opinion. The fundamental grounds of democracy is that people of various views express and evolve these, to have a healthy discussion and also critizise the government actions via the opposition.

This drastic taking of control and surpression is fundamentally not compatible with the democratic system.

While a single accepting of tracking cookies on a website might not seem like much. This slowly but surely leads to gigantic networks of your activities being created through the vast parts of our likes that we live online these days. And national actors such as the CIA, NSA, etc. are known so buy such data from data brokers to spy on people.

Ignorance of such problems is the worst thing that can happen. We have already been proven that so many times. We’ve seen how fast an authoratorian regime can rise to power, and we cannot stay silent until it affects us, because then it is probably too late. I think Martin Niemöllers “First They Came” is very fitting here.

So never ignore such movements, however insignificant they seem.