If the Internet goes down, how will we communicate?

 

I'm by no means a conspiracy theorist.  Nevertheless, the increasing frequency of "Big Brother" forecasts or analyses, followed closely by action that uncannily resembles those forecasts or analyses, is very troubling.  The most obvious example is the Event 201 "global pandemic exercise", held about a year before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The similarities between the exercise's simulated events and responses to a pandemic, and the actual responses of world organizations and governments to COVID-19, have not been lost on many observers.  Some have speculated that Event 201 was a deliberate prequel to a man-made pandemic, planning measures to control the populace that could be implemented within a foreseeable timeframe.  "Fact-checkers" have declared that to be nonsense.  Conspiracy theory, or real conspiracy?  You be the judge.

Similar warnings are being bruited about concerning an annual cybersecurity exercise, Cyber Polygon.  The event is sponsored by the World Economic Forum (WEF) (the same organization that promotes the so-called "Great Reset" of world economies, imposing central control and diminishing national autonomy), its focus on internet security and control worries many - including yours truly.  When the head of the WEF publicly demands that we "immunize the internet", I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling about what he means.

The one thing one notices about totalitarian regimes throughout the world - China, Iran, Russia, North Korea and many others - is that they try to control what their citizens can access on the internet.  They don't want the free flow of information;  rather, they want to restrict it, so that their citizens get only the officially approved version of everything, and can't use the internet to organize themselves and exchange independent, uncensored information.  You'll note that when the current unrest broke out in Cuba, one of the first things the government of that country did was to shut down the internet.  Without that ease of communication, it became much more difficult for anti-government forces to organize and coordinate their efforts, and to spread news of the regime's crackdown on demonstrators.

When an organization like the WEF, already on the record as encouraging centralized control of the economy and actively campaigning against national independence, is actively engaged with so-called "internet security" issues, I have to ask . . . why?  Are they actually trying to develop and "war-game" scenarios whereby the internet can be controlled if necessary, preventing the free flow of information between those opposed to such centralized, inherently anti-democratic control?

Let's use our situation in the USA as an example.  Right now, the mainstream media is in the pocket of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration.  News favorable to or promoted by those sources is actively promoted;  news potentially harmful to them, or that doesn't accord with the "party line", is suppressed.  Instapundit has often commented, "Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense".  It certainly does.

Alternative media are usually restricted to the internet to spread their news.  They don't have their own printing presses or television transmitters.  What if the internet were shut down, or censored in some way?  What if they were prevented from publishing news that the powers that be don't want published?  How would the rest of us learn about it?  A good example is the current investigations into electoral fraud in several states.  The mainstream media are universally panning them as unnecessary or fraudulent, while the Biden administration is weaponizing the Justice Department against them.  How would we know what they're uncovering (which is, to say the least, incriminating) without the efforts of alternative news media to publicize it?

There's also the issue of how any "resistance" will communicate if a central government decides to crack down on politically incorrect opposition.  How can opposition be coordinated, planned, and communicated if the easiest and fastest method to do so - the internet - is shut down or restricted?  We have to expect this as a very likely consequence, if the current "woke" revolutionaries decide to stamp out opposition to their insane "Big Brother knows best" propaganda.

There's also the factor that "Big Tech" is almost uniformly in the pocket of the Biden administration - or is it the other way around?  Either way, they are already restricting and censoring communication that isn't politically correct, when it comes to COVID-19, masks, vaccination, etc.  They actively campaigned against President Trump, and are still censoring his public communications and those of his most active supporters.  Even Google Translate, a service used by millions, has been accused of misinterpreting source material to produce a more politically correct translation.  We can't trust Big Tech not to manipulate the internet if asked to do so, or if they decide to do so on their own initiative.

There are, of course, more secure ways for those serious about privacy and security to communicate.  Some use the internet, some don't.  Many of us have used such methods for years to discuss sensitive matters.  However, they tend to be slower and more laborious than taking the easy route of using the internet.  I suspect many won't bother to go to that much effort.  They'd rather trust that the internet will always be available, and not bother to think further than that.

All I can say is, plan for the internet to go down in a crisis, or be taken down by the enemies of freedom and democracy.  That's already the case for millions of people in totalitarian societies.  As the left becomes more and more dictatorial, totalitarian and Big Brother-ish in America, there's no reason it can't happen here, too.

(If Google starts censoring Blogger, or this blog is removed for any reason, you'll find an alternate version on the Web if you look for it.  I've taken steps to preserve it, and get it up and running on an alternate site.  Look for the URL "bayou renaissance man dot com" [removing the spaces], or check with other blogs that may have links to it.  I'll hopefully be able to post links to their alternate sites as well.)

Peter