Not these kind of figures. Only a quarter of countries have annual GDPs larger than what’s been spent so far this year. This is on a scale not seen before.
What makes it worse is that it’s being spent on something which consumes huge resources and has no purpose except giving a few people more power as they would control what these systems would say is true.
Transatlantic telegraph, I think, was very expensive, or Panama channel projects. Before they were finished to any useful degree.
In this particular case - I don’t think it’s more expensive than Soviet attempts at turning Kazakh steppe into agricultural land, let alone all the space and defense projects.
It’s an ideology-driven effort all right - an idea that you can create an inherently totalitarian technology. Probably caused by the popular (in the 90s and early 00s) belief that the Internet is inherently anti-totalitarian, so there’s a need to compensate. Both are wrong.
Not these kind of figures. Only a quarter of countries have annual GDPs larger than what’s been spent so far this year. This is on a scale not seen before.
What makes it worse is that it’s being spent on something which consumes huge resources and has no purpose except giving a few people more power as they would control what these systems would say is true.
Transatlantic telegraph, I think, was very expensive, or Panama channel projects. Before they were finished to any useful degree.
In this particular case - I don’t think it’s more expensive than Soviet attempts at turning Kazakh steppe into agricultural land, let alone all the space and defense projects.
It’s an ideology-driven effort all right - an idea that you can create an inherently totalitarian technology. Probably caused by the popular (in the 90s and early 00s) belief that the Internet is inherently anti-totalitarian, so there’s a need to compensate. Both are wrong.