Non paywalled version https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e
(Thanks to @AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world )
Non paywalled version https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e
(Thanks to @AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world )
Let’s appreciate what this means for the global order.
Russia has proactively attacked Ukraine. Now the US has attacked Venezuela. If China ever needed a permissive international environment to attack Taiwan, this attack was a major step in this direction.
We are quickly sliding back to a world of great powers, where might makes right and hence smaller countries will be bullied into submission without any concerted opposition by what remains of the ‘international community’.
If the US gets away with this, the same is going to happen to Panama in the not too distant futute and to Greenland soon after.
Unless Russia is burned out after the Uktain war, they might try their hand at the Baltics.
Should Russia collapse, China might integrate some of the Siberian regions.
And so on.
I wonder how this all will end.
It will end like it always does. Like the Roman and Byzantine empires ended, like the USSR ended, like Alexander the great’s empire ended, like England’s empire ended.
At some point great powers become too great to be stable, so they fracture into provinces that become separate countries and the cycle starts over.
Only this time there are nuclear weapons involved, so we’ll see how that goes
Personally, I’m quite ready for an independent New England. We only get back 80% of what we contribute in taxes and manufacturing.
ah yes, the famous opening line of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I wonder if AI and it’s possibilities for mass surveillance and mass manipulation will make a difference and allow empires to sustain themselves and control it’s people.
Maybe wait for anyone to develop something even remotely AI before wondering about that?
Mass surveillance is happening right now, by companies and goverments. The data this generates can be analyzed using AI tools to find anything out of the ordinary, anyone trying to resist the empire. LLMs can be used to generate content to manipulate people, en masse or by microtargeting based on the surveillance data. This is not distant future, this is the near future, if not present.
You have identified what I also see as the only “use” for LLMs. Still doesn’t make it “AI” though, which is what my jab was directed at. However, maybe I should have pointed out that I do not dispute it can be used to mass-manipulate people :/ Sadly, that is entirely realistic.
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Westerners don’t have a clear perception of this since they have lived in either the great power (US) or one of its vassal states (NATO) for the last 30 years.
They’re not used to a world of multiple great powers / poles, even though that has been the case for most of human history.
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Most adult voters are too young to remember it firsthand, hence the perception. Basically anyone under the age of 50 likely won’t have a clear picture. For a better understanding:
If you were born in 1980, you would’ve witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall when you were 9 years old.
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Countries with nukes and power will eat all other countries, up to the point that one of the countries with nukes is confident that they can attack another country with nukes while preventing a retaliatory strike to happen. Shit will probably slide sideways when that decision happens.
Might make right has always and will always be the de facto. It takes those with. Might choosing to not have it make right for anything else to exist.
That’s the reality of history and anyone who has even a grade school understanding of the history of humanity knows it.
We can all want better, and we all know the cost of the fall out of might makes right. But that doesn’t change reality, it only makes it more painful to watch history repeat.
Yes and no.
As a last resort, the threat of violence (or enforced consequences more generally) is ultimately behind the authority of any institution.
But legal and institutional frameworks can persist if power to inflict consequences is distributed and governed by rules, the incompliance with which is again sanctioned, and so on. The system is then kept stable by preventing consolidation of power with few actors and not tolerating arbitrariness in how it is welded. The fact that any authority is ultimately rooted in the threat of violence does not mean that we as social and reasonable animals cannot find reasonable and stable arrangement that should prevent us from actually having to resort to violence all too often.
And we have absolutely slipped up in this regard. Relying on one party (the USA) as the primary locus is power in NATO and the world to keep peace. Allowing big social media platforms to consolidate and grow beyond any reason. Turning a blind eye to violations of international law
This is what Putin wants. Putin’s puppet is doing exactly what it’s master commands. A world where great powers disregard everyone’s sovereignty.
Which is really weird give how decentralized and hard to control the world is right now. This empire strategy is a failing one for everyone involved.