The digital iron curtain descends

The digital iron curtain descends

The French government is turning the screws on Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, alleging that he is responsible for illegal content shared on his platform. Given the quantity of Russian military and civilian traffic on Telegram, they’re probably trying to squeeze him for intelligence relevant to the Ukraine War, sanctions enforcement, etc.

Meanwhile, Brazil has banned X, levying fines of $8,000/day for anyone caught using the app. The Brazilian government has no method of enforcing this directive on ordinary citizens using a VPN, but presumably the order will be used to target high-profile dissidents who continue to use the app in defiance of the ruling.

Meanwhile, the UK has successfully put down anti-immigration demonstrations by prosecuting anyone who reports on them.

As the machinery of manufacturing consent continues to fail, Western liberal democracies have increasingly signaled their willingness to do things the hard way. If it’s a choice between holding power and maintaining democratic optics, they’re going to hold on to power.

The advantage that faceless bureaucratic institutions have over human beings is that you can’t shame an institution, or imprison it, or execute it for treason — so they’ll press the attack in that domain, targeting individuals who refuse to relinquish any competitive nodes of power.

If there’s good news here, it’s that Chinese censorship led to mainstream adoption of VPNs (nearly one-third of Chinese internet users regularly use a VPN). Getting ordinary civilians to defy the government in routine and petty ways creates psychological and logistical space for more serious opposition.

Urbit has been going through hard times in recent years, but something like that — a truly decentralized and unmediated mode of communication — seems like the only solution for lawfare against tech founders.

With AI tools rapidly increasing the practical scope of government monitoring and enforcement, we’re running out of time to figure this out.

It’s easy to get hypnotized by the spectacle of these clashes of billionaires and trillionaires, because they make the future so volatile and hard to plan for. When you feel like anything you build might be knocked over at any moment by a conflict totally outside your control, it’s hard to find the will to build at all.

But organizing people is meta-adaptive — you’ll be glad you did it no matter what happens. Get to work with us at exitgroup.us.

EXIT News

• On last week’s full group call, we heard from Auron MacIntyre on his book The Total State. Recording available for subscribers here.

• On today’s full-group call, we will discuss the situation in South Africa with Conscious Caracal. Will post the recording for subscribers within the week.

  • What we can learn from Orania

  • Hazards and opportunities from declining state capacity

  • Theories to explain rising fertility among Afrikaners

• File Leader Planning Meeting this week. If you’re a file leader and haven’t seen the invite, please reach out to me or DB.

• I’ll be at Network State Conference on September 22 in Singapore, and checking out Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School thereafter. If you’re planning to be there too, hit me up!

• Cocktail hour invites for Houston (9/13), Washington, DC (10/11), and San Francisco (11/8) meetups available below the paywall. EXIT cocktail hours are a great opportunity to meet your local guys, and see if the full group is right for you.