> Songbun is a three-tier class system divided into 51 categories that was created by the Kim regime to isolate and control perceived internal political threats. It is very difficult to move up even from one category to the next-higher category, but it is very easy to move downward. Even an elite person living in Pyongyang can commit an infraction and be exiled to the country with a much lower songbun. Every person above the age of 17 in North Korea has a file maintained by the government that contains the individual’s songbun.
Sad: This type of social credit score system seems pervasive and will no doubt be here soon.
Doubly sad: many of the FAANGers here on HN will bring it about.
> Even if a couple in the camp is allowed to marry and has children, the children will live their entire lives in the gulag unless they escape.
Not sure what your professional experience or knowledge of politics or technology is, but as a person working at a FAANG company living in the US, I would bet any amount of money that nothing like this will ever come out of any FAANG company in the next 30 years.
> "The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project."
At least the project was leaked by a MAMAA employee (it's no longer FAANG), but there might be a kind of 'internal social credit score program' being applied in the Big Tech world to get rid of those with pesky moral standards...
Incidentally this is a major reason why democratization of corporations is important - I tend to believe the regular rank-and-file would be less willing to implement something like this than the top shareholders would.
Yeah maybe, but this is absolutely nothing like what I was responding to. Maybe Google will build tools for authoritarian regimes, maybe they'll sell them to US gov, who knows. None of that is anything like what I was responding to, a system of forced labor camps and heritable servitude. That's just not the world we live in.
It's not that a company like Google is going to release a Google Gulag product after years of working on it in secret.
What people are worried about is that the various pieces of technology that Google is developing can be used to make a horrible dystopian future and that one day, even if Google as a corporation, or the individuals who make up Google as employees decide to fight against it, they will be unable to stop a fascist government from using that technology to do exactly as is described by OP, or even worse.
There are unintended consequences to everything, and you may think that America is the freest nation on Earth, and that Google is the greatest company ever, but that could quickly change.
It could happen here, and we must be eternally vigilant.
Sure, and internal combustion engines were critical in allowing the Nazis to overwhelm their European neighbors. But like ads and product recommendations, internal combustion engines are overwhelmingly used for good so we accept that bad actors can sometimes misuse them.
The prolific use of internal combustion engines is a large part of why our planet is warming which is causing the impending collapse of food chains and societies across the world.
I don't accept the premise that advertisements and product recommendations are even comparable to either themselves, or the internal combustion engine, nor that what Google produces is even comparable to traditional advertisements.
I only accept begrudgingly what bad actors like Google do with technology, and only because I don't really have any other choice, do I?
> But like ads and product recommendations, internal combustion engines are overwhelmingly used for good
Without internal combustion engines (at least until electric replaces them), billions will starve as tractors can't plow fields, and trucks can't deliver food.
See you have to insert the word "spying" to make your case, because by itself there's clearly just nothing wrong with personalized ads. Online ads are good because they make tons of business and economic activity possible and connect people to products that they want. People are better on the whole with online ads.
There are ways to misuse ads, but it's hard to make the case that they are inherently bad without inserting weasel words like "surveillance" and "spying".
Hint: They won't say "develop software to oppress the people". It will say "develop software to track child abuse and criminal activity" and "develop software to track people's preferences to be better able to help them find the products they need" and very slowly devolve from there, one incident at a time.
> None of that is anything like what I was responding to, a system of forced labor camps
I saw stories from the US about debtor prisons and about for-pay prisons with very questionable tactics used to fill them, people who cannot fight back because they have no money, often don't ever get an actual date in court but are forced to submit to accepting a sentence because the prosecutor threatens them with trying to get an outrageous sentence should they actually want a real judgement.
This is a slippery slope argument, and by itself is just a restatement of your belief that ads are bad. I don't think there's any plausible path from building ads and product recommendations to gulags. Maybe if we go another 20 years without anything like that happening anywhere in the world you'll be convinced?
“When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” - attributed to Lenin, probably apocryphal, but accurate.
Sure I believe that, but I think because of the way these companies operate internally and because of the extraordinary amount of transparency and voice given to employees employees (particularly at Google and Facebook where I have worked), these companies would be amongst the most difficult for a hypothetical fascist US gov to use for nefarious purposes. I've worked at 3 other large US tech companies (Qualcomm, Intel, APC) besides these, and they are radically more ethically malleable and able to conceal bad things from their employees.
All of them have done and are doing ethically questionable things already, and they really haven't had much trouble keeping people working there. Google and Facebook would be the first two I'd expect to go along with whatever awfulness, if they're not driving it themselves.
Perhaps this is cultural difference at play here, before you downvote this comment to oblivion I'd like you to hear me out.
In India, we were expected to create value for our stakeholders, and bringing personal political views into office is deemed highly unprofessional. This doesn't stop the junior talents that are highly influenced by foreign media to have a go at it, but they're often silenced with righteous resolve.
Tldr: Employees that openly engages in activism are often seen as problematic elements, which severely degrade the cohesion and unity of a company, therefore they're often the first on the chopping block. Are things different in the states?
> This doesn't stop the junior talents that are highly influenced by foreign media
I don't understand. They are not influenced by the local media, somehow? Only "foreign" one? What is the magical mechanism behind that?
And of course, it's only "activism" when it does against the accepted order. The activism supporting current powers flows much more smoothly and does not cause any such ripples, so you conclude it does not exist?
This isnt cultural. This "deemed unprofessional" and "silenced with righteous resolve" is just reflective of the relative power differential between employee and employer. It's an artefact of capitalism.
It also doesnt happen when the employee has more power.
> Not sure what your professional experience or knowledge of politics or technology is
I’m not sure how far back in time your experience or knowledge of politics or technology goes, but there are plenty of examples of the US government using technology of all levels to target and control individuals deemed “troublesome”.
That's not really true either. The US credit score is a type of social credit score.
Case in point: You generally cannot be a responsible adult, living within your means, and expect to have a credit score. Most utilities won't report on-time payments (and usually won't report until you are a few months late, sometimes only if you have a late final bill). Most landlords don't report. Saving for a used car doesn't earn you credit, and credit generally doesn't care if you have enough money in the bank or if you earn enough, at least if you aren't rich, anyway.
Basically, you need to have the right sort of credit history and borrow in the correct fashion: For most folks, this means getting a credit card or paying too much for a used car just to prove that one day, they might be reliable enough for a new car loan or a house loan. In the meantime: Don't go into medical debt. Don't avoid most debt and simply live within your means. Don't check your credit too much (This is around 10% of your score).
And not doing things correctly affects where you'll be allowed to live, where you can work, how much you pay for car insurance, and things like that.
Just because it isn't just like another countries doesn't mean it isn't a social score with a different name.
None of the behaviors you describe are social behaviors, they are financial behaviors. Social factors are why they have to add the word "social" to the term "credit score".
Framing zero-debt as being a "responsible adult" and "living within your means" doesn't make sense as a counter-argument. It's not social as it doesn't involve other people. For eg, your credit score isn't affected by the social associations you have with other people (with maybe the exception of marriage because that combines non-social assets). Your credit score isn't affected by your social interactions with other people. For eg, sharing your anarchist views with other people or maybe a bank teller doesn't affect your score.
It's also just untrue, leveraging zero-interest loans and loan perks like purchase protection can be very responsible and still living within your means.
It was explained to me like this: the credit score is not a credit score in the sense you might imagine. It doesn't track your likelihood to repay. It's a score indicating your likely aggregate profitability to banks as a borrower.
That does make sense, though it makes it that much more of a horror that places are using it to determine whether or not you'll make a good employee or a good renter. "You won't make money for the bank, so pay more for insurance and don't rent here". Those places definitely use it differently than the folks providing the scores.
It isn't credit score. That isn't easy to peddle in because it requires authorization to access. Data brokers have their own scoring system based on all the other unregulated data they have on every person.
I wonder if workers at IBM prior to World War II would say the same about the holocaust. Something as simple as period tracking apps can be turned against people. Sure it starts off as a marketing department, then it moves on to a domestic surveillance program for terrorism, and then you are rounding up people who get abortions and miscarry. After that, who knows? Gays? Atheists?
Agreed, and it doesn't just go one direction politically. Totalitarian governments hunted and killed Christians and capitalists with tremendous zeal throughout the 20th century.
This isn't really about left/right, it's about power. Governments simply can't be trusted with the power to track and target dissidents at scale.
We nerds are to a great extent the modern gatekeepers of that power. If people ask you to track and suppress free speech don't do it. It starts there.
I mean, hell, how many facebook groups are out there that feed on persecuting outgroups? You dont need a central state to do this stuff. A state can provide the NKVD/Stasi but its peoples neighbours who use it to screw one another. Deliver them Facebook and they'll do most of a social credit system for you
FICO gets pulled into these discussions all the time, and yet it makes no sense.
That only impact what rates your lenders will use(or if they will lend you money at all). That's no different from using your driving history and demographic data to set insurance rates. It's maintained by private companies. You can still use cash if you want.
No fly lists are an ok example. Still, they are not tied to how much brown nosing you do towards the people in charge.
FICO impacts a lot more than just how much borrowing money cost including insurance rates (except for CA, HI, MA) and a lot of rentals (both to deny, increase costs, and having to pay for your credit report to be run).
That's not true. FICO rates affect where you're allowed to live, what kind of modes of transportation you're allowed to have (many insurers take it into account to decide whether or not to provide coverage), even some health procedures (many dental practices now check credit score), etc...
That doesn't seem unreasonable to me that people who are entering some sort of financial contract with you have the ability to easy see your credit history.
But again, just don't use credit (or use it minimally) and you're good.
>That doesn't seem unreasonable to me that people who are entering some sort of financial contract with you have the ability to easy see your credit history.
...Do keep in mind that the progenitors of Equifax and the other Credit Bureaus were private investigators most frequently hired by the well heeled in order to "gauge trustworthyness", which takes many forms... Including Union busting, and building blacklists.
>A large number of stores around me, including some grocery stores, no longer take cash.
That's illegal where I live (New York City).
I have no interest in outing/doxxing you, but if you'd care to share where you live, I'd love to know where that is -- so I can make sure never to go there.
Technically the grocery store I am thinking off takes "cash" but only at registers that are perpetually closed. Maybe if someone made a huge fuss they would possibly open that register up.
Local barber shop, also only accepts credit cards.
At other stores, I've seen plenty of those self checkout terminals with the cash slot taped shut and a sign saying "card only", and of course no one is working the traditional checkout lanes.
Interesting. I've visited there a bunch of times and never had an issue using cash. I have a bunch of family there and will ask them if they see the same thing (Seattle is a pretty big town).
Do you care that stores make it hard to use cash?
I'd expect that many folks in Seattle are "unbanked" and are often inconvenienced and/or excluded by such practices.
Perhaps it's time for Seattle to move into the late 20th century[0] and require businesses to accept cash:
"New York City Council member Ritchie Torres last week proposed legislation that would require all local businesses to accept cash in addition to credit cards and contactless payment methods. Massachusetts has required since 1978 that no retailer "shall discriminate against a cash buyer by requiring the use of credit." New Jersey lawmakers on Monday advanced a bill to ban cashless stores. Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. have also introduced bills that would require businesses to accept cash."
The NYC legislation[1] mentioned above as a proposal was passed by the city council in 2020.
It isn't a majority of stores or anything, however there are enough places that I've started to notice.
I wonder if the move away from cash is an attempt to reduce the risk of theft, but I have no direct knowledge of the situation.
Even the local (large, very large) Chinese supermarket is mostly cash-less. I presume technically they take cash, but every checkout line that is staffed says "card only".
"Consumers in the Netherlands can choose their preferred method of payment at most retailers. Although the use of cash at points of sale is declining, broad acceptance by retailers is also important – for example as a fall-back option in the event of POS terminal disruptions. The study, in which over 1,000 retailers participated, shows that cash is still the most widely accepted means of payment for point-of-sale transactions, at 97% (see Figure 1). Debit card payments are the next most popular payment method, with acceptance standing at 87%. There are substantial differences between individual sectors, however. Acceptance of cash and debit cards is the highest at petrol stations, large and small retailers, at >=98% and >=92%, respectively. It is the lowest in the entertainment sector, at 93% for cash and 80% for debit cards. A mere 3% of all retailers said they used a debit card-only policy, mostly for efficiency and security reasons."
I'd also note that it was the non-acceptance of cash to which I was objecting, not the ability to use non-cash payment methods. Perhaps that's a difference that's too subtle, but I don't think so.
I visited TU Delft a few years ago, having unfortunately lost my debit card a few days prior. It was only a single overnight stay, so I just took a few hundred Euros cash with me and hoped for the best.
It was a nightmare. Cash was wildly impractical to use. The first hurdle was the inability to buy a bus pass from the machine at the airport with cash. Hell, you couldn't even buy a coffee from a vending machine. With every restaurant I had to check beforehand to see if they would accept cash - and the vast majority didn't. I survived, but I'm glad it was only a day.
I don't care if the stats say only 3% of retailers are cashless - in Delft, at least, if all you have in your pocket is a wad of cash, you are a second class citizen and barely able to function in society. If you don't agree, I suggest you try the experiment yourself :)
FAANGers will not bring this about,they will simply better enable society to get to where it is going.
With the much needed reorganization of our society based on our ancestry (who our parents are, where they came from, what they did) and who we choose to be (the genders and politics we identify with), we can better apply the ancestry/gender/political matrix to decide what goods/books/movies/blogs get produced, who produces them, who gets to run companies, who gets to be president or on the supreme court, what gets taught in schools, how money is distributed, who gets what type of health care, who gets to live where, etc.
Technology will be used to help us get to this better and more equitable future more quickly, more efficiently, and most importantly, will make sure economic and political equity is transparently tracked and apportioned appropriately based on each individuals relative needs.
I really do not think that the FAANGers here will create this future, they will simply provide the tools for what is currently happening.
Unfortunately, each songbun contains a parasitic cyberworm that latches onto your intestine walls and monitors your drug and alcohol intake to ensure you're not ingesting anything illicit (or too much booze).
I would sooner put it down to the 500 no-name data collection companies that come up when you look at a website's GDPR/cookie disclosures. The ones with ever-so-subtle descriptions like "Matches online activity with offline accounts."
While interesting, this is surprisingly poorly written.
It contains a lot of the sort of overly verbose and pointlessly technical language that is far too common in the corporate world.
One might say that the apparently excessive overuse of nominalization and the remarkably high prevalence of redundant, duplicative, or otherwise unnecessary adjectives and adverbs serve as needless, pointless hindrances to the all-important readability of this critical document.
At the same time, a huge amount of the verbosity is defining terms within a document itself.
When you're dealing with things with consequences (multi-party construction projects, high tolerance manufacturing, killing humans), it behooves one to be precise.
Or, as the allegory goes: The offense was not stopped, for want of proper defensive deployment. The defense was not properly deployed, for want of spacing. The spacing was not correctly measured, for want of a standardized length. The length was not standardized, for want of someone writing a standard down and distributing the documentation.
The Songbun caste system is the weakness that renders the North Korean society inherently unstable. The most able members of the society are discriminated against the most. And the more powerful and resource consuming "Core" members are not selected on the basis of merit. I think that there is historical precedent for the political principle that Aristocracy will eventually be replaced by meritocracy, but there may be revolutionary instability first.
It may appear that way to an outsider. North Korean defector, Yeonmi Park probably said it best. "In survival mode, there is no time to think about freedom."
It's so unstable that the existing government has been firmly in power for over 70 years, passed down from one generation of leaders to the next from just a single family with no present signs of slackening practical authority. If this is hoped-for instability, i'd hate to see a stable regime at work.
All the actions and effects you describe actually seem to make North Korean society more stable, at the cost of productivity, flexibility, and agility.
Section 1-21 is interesting to me right now as I'm currently listening to season 3 of the Blowback podcast and this season is all about the Korean War. Their history of events is very different than how it is presented here.
Note for those reading this: I'm pretty sure the diagrams in the first part of Chapter 6 are all mislabeled. The diagram labeled as an encirclement maneuver is really a penetration maneuver, the penetration maneuver diagram is really of a thrust maneuver, etc.
"Due to the United States’ ability to overwhelm almost any opponent with technology and firepower..."
with the exception of Iraq, afghanistan, korea, cuba, and vietnam at no real point in these battles was our technological sophistication or "firepower" a decisive capability that led to a victory. in fact in afghanistan during the last six days of conflict our exodus led to perhaps the largest single transfer of sixth generation advanced western warfighting technologies to an enemy in the history of armed conflict. the Taliban had a blackhawk helicopter over the city as a command presence in less than a day.
the entire book also neglects to highlight a real point of contention: the US never formally declared any end of hostility to North Korea.
again in 1-16
"To deter any foe from attacking, the country has threatened the use of nuclear weapons against South Korea, Japan, or any reachable U.S. military facility
in Asia"
the 2020 document neglects to mention North Koreas ICBM system can now successfully reach most targets in the United States, so any real effort toward regime change is completely off the table. https://www.popsci.com/north-koreas-new-icbms-can-reach-most...
The sentence you are criticizing is, itself, a direct acknowledgement of the fact that simply "overwhelming" an adversary with technology and firepower is not sufficient for victory. The full sentence reads "Due to the United States’ ability to overwhelm almost any opponent with technology and firepower, the KPA emphasizes asymmetric warfare in conjunction with large numbers of SOF units"--much like the tactics employed by the U.S.'s adversaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam
> Due to the United States’ ability to overwhelm almost any opponent with technology and firepower, the KPA emphasizes asymmetric warfare in conjunction with large numbers of SOF units. [emphasis mine]
Which seems to imply that NK is, indeed, preparing for something more like Vietnam, Afghanistan, or the second Iraq war, or at least whoever prepared this believes they are.
> with the exception of Iraq, afghanistan, korea, cuba, and vietnam at no real point in these battles was our technological sophistication or "firepower" a decisive capability that led to a victory.
So? In Iraq, at least, it led to the rapid collapse of the Iraqi government and military and execution of its leaders. North Korea doesn't care if the US ultimately succeeds in meeting its goals, it cares if the North Korean state is defeated.
> the Taliban had a blackhawk helicopter over the city as a command presence in less than a day.
So? The real question is: is it still flying?
IIRC, the US backed government of Afghanistan had trouble keeping its own aircraft flying without support from Western maintenance contractors. I highly doubt the Taliban will do better, especially since it's cut off from a supply of spare parts.
> the US never formally declared any end of hostility to North Korea.
There’s no reason they should. The US never declared any hostilities with North Korea, and North Korea never declared any hostilities formally with anyone either. US forces were the major participant in a United Nations mandated intervention, in response to North Korean forces crossing the border, so the US as a nation was technically never directly a participant in the conflict.
If anyone was going to declare anything in that regard, it would be the United Nations. The armistice agreement was signed by two US generals, true, but they did so on behalf of the United Nations Command, not the United States.
>with the exception of Iraq, afghanistan, korea, cuba, and vietnam at no real point in these battles was our technological sophistication or "firepower" a decisive capability that led to a victory.
It led to plenty of victories. The NSA straight up hacked into a European telco Gemalto (the world’s largest sim card manufacturer) to steal their encryption keys in order to spy on people in the middle east and the entire world in real time. They most certainly used this data to drone strike people and for espionage.
NK has some decent hacking groups but is certainly no match for US and EU nation-state backed hackers. In fact, I would not be surprised if the US and other world governments have 24/7 satellite surveillance on NK and the few devices/computers that are there are infected with their malware in supplychain intercept attacks.
with the exception of Iraq, afghanistan, korea, cuba, and vietnam at no real point in these battles was our technological sophistication or "firepower" a decisive capability that led to a victory.
I'd say this makes a strong case that the US is exceptional at state to state warfare but struggles with prolonged counter-insurgencies, "nation building" and covert ops. All but Cuba had their acting governments' conventional forces beat down fairly effectively with little ability to inflict major damage on US forces.
If the criteria for success is "a stable state with high security for all citizens" then any conventional military is a necessary but insufficient tool for the job.
Communist doctrine said it best: military-political aims can only be solved by a fusion of military and political effort.
Failure to allocate equally prioritized effort, by ensuring all leaders of both efforts appreciate the duality, results in an inability to achieve desired outcomes.
And based on historical outcomes of multiple alternatives... I'm not convinced that forcefully-catalyzed political regime change and state rebuilding can be successfully accomplished without (distastefully severe) political indoctrination.
You have to change a lot of minds to do so, including some that don't want to be changed, in less than a generation.
Those are all examples of the US military’s ability to overwhelm virtually any enemy in a traditional sense. Air superiority, battlefield control, logistics, etc.
There seem to be a few misconceptions or oversights here:
The US military can essentially break almost any government instantly, insurgency is a different beast. That's no mystery.
North Korean ICBMs can theoretically reach America in the same way that I can theoretically walk into the Kremlin and choke Putin to death with my bare hands.
In practice, it's unlikely. There are preventive measures in place.
As for the Taliban getting ahold of an ancient helicopter, I don't think it's a major concern. You may have seen that anything of real value was first destroyed, as is standard practice.
The US is not going to declare an end to hostility with North Korea and has no reason to and many reasons not to.
> The US military can essentially break almost any government instantly, insurgency is a different beast. That's no mystery.
I'd like to add that I have strong doubts that a North Korean insurgency is a likely outcome of a war, unless occupation and reintegration is botched on an utterly comical scale - an order of magnitude more than it was botched in Iraq. [1]
Claiming that the threat of a NK insurgency is real, on the other hand, is a great way to secure more funding for the DoD.
[1] Which may well had coalesced into a stable state, if it weren't for the occupation purging every Ba'ath-adjacent political and security functionary they could get their hands on. Instead of being included in the post-Saddam state, all those people who lost their jobs went into the hills and started building IEDs and firing mortars at US Army bases.
Agreed. I think it's underappreciated just how inefficient and undercapitalized the North Korean state is, and by extension how low their people's expectations are.
Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, South Korea would be logistically and economically able to flood the North with what would seem to be impossibly plentiful consumer goods and staples.
And politics have a way of dissolving in the face of consumption...
The US had the military might to extract total submission from the populations of those countries. Anytime someone attacks your troops, kill them and their family and raze their neighborhood/town. But that would obviously be at odds with long term and broader goals.
The method of harsh reprisals and collective punishment, besides being morally bankrupt, actually has a pretty bad track record. The Nazi's in occupied Yugoslavia, among other places, had a policy of executing 100 random civilians for every German soldier killed. But this had the exact opposite impact on the resistance movement, actually increasing resistance sentiment.
Would be interesting to compare the nazi methodology with the Russian way of war in chechnya. Russia seemed to get submission through not very nice means.
They both tended to use locals to do their dirty work. For example in Chechnya they didn’t use many “Slavic” Russians but mostly Allies from Chechnya or ex-republics of the CCCP. The nazis also recruited locals.
>At most, North Korea has fuel for only 2 months before it
must get resupplied from external sources or used captured stores. If North Korea cannot end the conflict
quickly, it will likely take steps to slow the tempo and prolong the conflict.
Officers, warrant officers, and noncommissioned officers (NCO) study these in depth on the job depending on their U.S. Army Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) and rank.
I worked with people from logistics specialists up to special forces commanders, and the only manual that anyone took seriously was the ranger handbook.
Sad: This type of social credit score system seems pervasive and will no doubt be here soon.
Doubly sad: many of the FAANGers here on HN will bring it about.