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A review by mkesten
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
5.0
Where others have summarized this marvellous book detailing the genocide perpetrated on Ukraine by Stalin and his henchmen, I will take a sidebar into things as they stand today.
The Soviet Union is no more. Its apologists are no more, we think.
But an equally diabolical regime in China has decided that millions of Muslims within its borders require “reeducation” and this same regime has:
1) Among the most sophisticated systems of electronic surveillance imaginable;
2) Access to personal information unimaginable even a few years ago such that it is poised to leapfrog other industrialized nations in a race to develop machine learning and artificial intelligence.
3) Scientists who are apparently applying gene editing to humans without agreement on the moral limits to applying this technology.
We live on a hungry planet. The race for resources will accelerate as the poorest among us become richer, as our population goes apace, and as we have no consensus to reverse the devastation of pollution or to deal with the hundred or so million climate refugees likely to result.
China may soon have the power to put us out of business. And China is not transparent, or the least bit concerned with the future of its neighbours or, for that matters, with us.
What is to stop China from redirecting the resources of the planet toward its aggrandizement and away from the welfare of the five or so other billion people on the planet.
Its belt and road program is one step in that direction. It may not even need the cadres that Stalin used to terrorize the Soviet Union’s neighbours.
Information and the incompetence of its regime stopped the Soviet clown show in its tracks. But once the machines have been programmed, who will stop them?
The Soviet Union is no more. Its apologists are no more, we think.
But an equally diabolical regime in China has decided that millions of Muslims within its borders require “reeducation” and this same regime has:
1) Among the most sophisticated systems of electronic surveillance imaginable;
2) Access to personal information unimaginable even a few years ago such that it is poised to leapfrog other industrialized nations in a race to develop machine learning and artificial intelligence.
3) Scientists who are apparently applying gene editing to humans without agreement on the moral limits to applying this technology.
We live on a hungry planet. The race for resources will accelerate as the poorest among us become richer, as our population goes apace, and as we have no consensus to reverse the devastation of pollution or to deal with the hundred or so million climate refugees likely to result.
China may soon have the power to put us out of business. And China is not transparent, or the least bit concerned with the future of its neighbours or, for that matters, with us.
What is to stop China from redirecting the resources of the planet toward its aggrandizement and away from the welfare of the five or so other billion people on the planet.
Its belt and road program is one step in that direction. It may not even need the cadres that Stalin used to terrorize the Soviet Union’s neighbours.
Information and the incompetence of its regime stopped the Soviet clown show in its tracks. But once the machines have been programmed, who will stop them?