The latest tech glitch, this time at the processor level, is interesting. Most of us really aren't able to understand how complex these silicon masterpieces are. Those who do understand the complexity are busy making more chips even more complex.
The intelligence community (IC), as the deep state likes to refer to itself, has launched several attempts to have a "back door" built into computer and communications hardware. Such a back door would preclude them having to coerce and pay the tech giants for providing access to American citizens' personal data.
They have so far been unsuccessful in their pleas to Congress. A big reason is that the government is prohibited from invading our homes and searching through our papers and communications in search of a crime. They must first get a court-issued warrant, which requires evidence be presented to a different branch of government that a crime has been committed.
This prohibition is ignored by the Patriot Act, which lets the IC pay the tech companies for access to our communications. From a policing standpoint, knowing what everyone is up to all the time is an excellent way to crack down on lawbreakers.
The communists did their spying the old fashioned way, through cultivating informers. It was a lot of work, which was then targeted at foreigners thought to pose a risk to the then-Soviet Union, or in our case, America.
Hillary, Obama, Comey and company's collusion to use these communication intercepts to retain power in the last presidential election is where such efforts always go. They probably felt entirely justified to preserve the gains they had made over the past eight years and to protect their plans for the next eight. The fact that it netted the Clinton Foundation millions upon millions of dollars was just a bonus.
The IC, however, made it all possible. Without the capability of spying on everyone, all the time, they would never have been able to persuade individual judges to grant warrants for spying on the opposition political candidate. Well, most judges; enough to make success very unlikely. The genius of our founders at work.
But all that is so 2016. The chip-level back door seems to have emerged around 2004. That puts it approaching the end of George W. Bush's first presidency and before his re-election to a second term.
Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, was widely credited with saving the Central Intelligence Agency when he headed that organization. Bush the elder went on to become president after Ronald Reagan's second term. Bill Clinton followed Bush's single-term with two terms, 1993-2001.
The Berlin Wall (Iron Curtain) came down in 1989, a mighty boost to freedom in the world. Then the Twin Towers came down on 9/11. The war on terror was launched, and the IC got pretty much what it asked for, including better integration with law enforcement.
With 9/11 still in the rearview mirror, the 2004 date would have found most tech companies willing to help the IC in its fight against terror. A back door coupled with specialized tools could have given the IC the edge against terrorists it was looking for. The chip-level access tools for exploitation would have been complex to build and the vulnerability unlikely to be widely disclosed.
It's impossible to say if the IC has saved us from terrorist disaster, or is itself a disaster. What is possible to say with great certainty, however, is that such tools placed in the hands of fallen humanity are incompatible with a free and open society. This is the gold-plated path to tyranny.
Besides, the collection efforts of big tech have made the IC's work much easier. The end-game is artificial intelligence. You are the test data to make AI a reality. Sale of your data to whomever, and almost certainly the IC, is simply a cash bonus for big tech.
Within the IC, however, a back door is only closed and locked once it becomes a liability. The data dumps of IC tools must have taken their toll. Now those tools have passed from the IC's hands on to hackers and will fund the bitcoin lottery.
Absolution: The Singularity, introduces the end-game of big tech and artificial intelligence.