The most depressing things about conspiracy theories is they tend to rely on governments being incredibly competent, technically advanced, and astonishingly well run. This is rarely the case.

This is especially dissonant to me, as I get to work at the border of advanced technology (e.g, @OpenAI ) and government(s). Across the West, most governments have been on a multi-decade outsourcing binge that has reduced their ability to execute in most facets of life.

I think the 1997 film 'Armageddon' was probably the last time it was feasible to do a mass culture movie where you hint that NASA has secret ultra-advanced spaceships - and the moviegoers believe it! People wouldn't believe it, these days.

This thread brought to you by a conversation with a family member who explained to me that governments are developing AI technology to embed onto tiny chips that will get injected into us as part of COVID vaccine response. Honestly, I'd almost rather this was true!

But the sad fact is COVID has shown that a lot of older, Western governments have lost their ability to take coordinated, thoughtful actions, both at an administrative level and a technical level. It should trouble us more advanced responses are being fielded elsewhere.