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.
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.