Nah, that ship has sailed. They'll never cut diplomatic ties, because why would they?
They've already decided they need to come together to live in a world without the US... They're already making trade deals and new defense pacts, they're already planning around us
Okay... But how much of that is realized?
Before, you told a doctor where to call to get your past records... Now, you tell your doctor where to request your past records. If your doctor works in the same healthcare system campus, they might get them automatically, past that it might happen behind the scenes if you get a referral
Backups are true... Except everyone has their own proprietary formats that require specific software to access the data, and if one of those companies go under, then what?
Access controls and tracking are true, but what's digital can be hacked or leaked. Paper is far more secure - maybe they can phish one person's records more easily without it, but the wrong IT person (who is multiple steps removed) can leak the whole database
I'm not saying paper is better - I'm saying electronic medical records are such a garbage fire in implementation that they bog down the healthcare part of healthcare. They eliminate jobs by automating processeses, but they end up getting rid of support staff in exchange for making the healthcare workers do more work
And I'm not saying it couldn't be better - I'm saying that it's just such a mess of proprietary software and regulation that it became one more layer of wealth extraction that bogs down actual healthcare
Yeah, but like... Are they really? No two systems communicate, every hospital configures even the same systems to be essentially incompatible, and the system is built as if it's all seamless
It's so bad. Paper records in a secure central database would be an improvement - 20 years of this and bending over harder for insurance companies is the only change
True, but the second you can't buy enough food at the grocery store it all goes poof
If we stop, even for a couple weeks, the system collapses. If a third of people stop showing up for work, if a third of people steal their food rather than pay for it, if a third of people stop paying rent... It all just melts away like a snow flurry
Money means the value assigned to it - if it can't feed you, it means nothing. If it stops moving, so does 'the economy'. It's so much more fragile than it seems
That's wasteful and dangerous
Harvest the beast for batteries and GPUs
I mean, yes and no. They just capture device info for a location, which can often be tied back to a person, but they just grab the info the phone sends to the tower. These days with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi you can even do something similar with just your phone
I don't love that it exists for obvious reasons, but it's a far cry from looking through your phone
I mean, the cell providers already sell your location info to anyone (including LEO, which is unconstitutional without a warrant as far as I'm concerned), as can Google, apple, and all sorts of apps - so this is a niche thing
FWIW, you can defeat that pretty simply... Just leave your phone behind and/or in a faraday pouch. No signal, no signature, no location data (from your phone at least). It won't necessarily stop the NSA, but it'll protect you in a protest where your just another face in the crowd
Rather than locked down, they're basically a black box - I think they have their own firmware and hook into the OS and hardware in weird ways (part of the reason why Linux phones are so difficult to make work)
If the NSA wants to ping your phone location or even turn on the microphone, they can, supposedly even when the phone is "off". If they want to side channel load in a rootkit, they probably can
But NSA surveillance comes in two main flavors - broad and focused. If they think you're a terrorist or of strategic interest, there's a lot they can do... But that means actual humans are interested in you, personally.
But for everyone else, they're not going to sift through ten million phone storages - that's way too much data to be useful, and they already have long collected way more than they could make use of. The broad stuff is about flagging people - the most effective is to look at networks of people. If you have connections to a terrorist, you're a potential part of the network, and so you'll be flagged as more interesting. I've heard rumors that certain keywords might be flagged on calls too, who knows. Too many flags and they might devote some man hours to looking into you personally
But generally, they're very protective of their tech. They don't use the good stuff widely, because it's not useful, and it increases the chance for discovery and countermeasures. My understanding is they won't share their surveillance systems either - they might put notes or flags on shared LEO systems or tip someone off, but they really, really, like to play it close to the vest. Even with other 3 letter agencies
So yes, this possibility exists - especially with llms to help filter through this information ocean - but there's no shot they're sharing capabilities with border control agents
The NSA doesn't generally give access to agencies on the ground like that - at most they flag individuals in the interdepartmental system, they don't hand over what they have easily
But, if you have physical access to a device, there's always a way in. Border control or a police department can buy tools to do it or hire contractors
Anonymous released a video saying that musk has no idea what he's doing and he's crippling security, and that they will "strike when they're weakest, so be ready"
That could mean a lot of things, but in my daydreams they get into the banking system and just really just fuck it all up. Just make a total mess of it
Because now you don't have to run wires from the existing network to the new WiFi, you just plop them both in the new location!
But then if you want the access points to act like one WiFi network so walking around doesn't reset all your connections, all you have to do is run cables to the new WiFi access points from the original signal, unplug them from Star Link, then wire starlink into the main uplink as a fail over or something! Easy!
It was more they're worried it would, because of the sheer scale of metallic satellites that would be burning up in the upper atmosphere
You buy a thing, you end up being able to get $30k back
If I wanted that stupid looking car, I'd be overjoyed too. Especially if I think I can return it again and get it even cheaper