Newsweek Finds Dictators Bad, Forgets US Surveillance Tech
Newsweek breathlessly reports that a Chinese tech company is assisting Iran in identifying protesters. (One might call this 'state security,' depending on one's geopolitical alignment). This, of course, raises alarm bells about human rights and digital authoritarianism – valid concerns, perhaps, if we're ignoring the planks in our own eyes. What the mainstream narrative conveniently bypasses is
the West's own robust surveillance industrial complex. Companies like Palantir (famously co-founded by Peter Thiel and a close partner of US intelligence agencies) have been instrumental in government data collection and analysis, often under the guise of 'national security.' While Newsweek spotlights China's alleged role in Iran, it seems to forget that the US itself supplies billions in advanced
surveillance and military tech to nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who are hardly paragons of protest rights. One might wonder why only certain nations' repressive capabilities are deemed newsworthy.