The 2020s: A Peek at the Decade Ahead

in #science5 years ago

by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
January 11, 2020

Well, that didn't take long. You'll recall that it was mere weeks ago that I predicted that the trend of 2020 would be "The End of the Internet (as we've known it)," and, sadly, before 2019 was even finished a steady stream of stories flooded the newswires to prove me correct.

Morocco has sentenced a YouTuber to four years in prison for daring to insult the king.

The Singaporean government has forced Facebook to publish a "correction" on a post that they deemed to contain "fake news."

Four townships in northern Myanmar remain under one of the longest internet blackouts in the world for daring to assert a desire for ethnic self-determination.

And Russia and China have teamed up on a new convention that will empower the UN to convene a panel of "international experts" to determine how best to combat online thought crime.

And all of that was just in the past few weeks. Imagine what we have to look forward to throughout the rest of 2020. Not pleasant, is it?

Now imagine what we'll have to look forward to through the 2020s. Even worse, huh?

Yes, as bleak as things seem at the moment, there are any number of reasons to believe that things are going to be that much worse a decade from now. And I'm not just talking about internet censorship here, either. After all, as dedicated Corbett Reporteers will already know, the technocrats are all on board for Agenda 2030.

So buckle in, folks. Let's take a ride through the next ten years of technocratic tyranny . . . and see if there's a way we can derail this agenda before we arrive at its final destination.

TRANSHUMANISM

A pair of stories book-ending the 2010s give us an insight into the breathtaking changes we're likely to live through in the 2020s.

The first story started in 2011, when 18-year-old inventor Palmer Lucky, working in the garage of his parents' house in Long Beach, California, put together a prototype for a virtual reality headset called Oculus. In 2012, the prototype started making buzz at trade shows, and by 2014 it had enough sizzle to catch the eye of the billionaire charlatan Mark Zuckerberg, who ended up buying the company for a cool $2 billion. That, of course, led to that creepy, iconic photo of ZuckerBorg himself—sporting the only genuine grin he's ever cracked in his life—striding through a crowd of Oculus Rift-wearing Matrix-dwellers.

The other story brings us to July 2019, when billionaire charlatan Elon Musk presented the fruits of his "Neuralink" venture, first launched in 2017 with the promise of bringing "a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence." At his 2019 presentation, Musk expanded on that vision, detailing how his company is working on brain-computer interface technologies and is hoping to begin its first FDA-approved human tests in 2020.

These stories highlight the incredible strides the technocrats have taken in the last decade toward realizing their long-held transhumanist dream of merging man with machine. Submersed in digital worlds, with brain chips allowing people to jack themselves directly into the matrix ("have the option of merging with AI" in Musk's formulation), it's safe to say that, if these trends continue, the very question of what it means to be human is going to have a very different answer in 2029 then it does today.

And, wouldn't you know it, 2029 just happens to be a very important year for the technocrats. As dedicated Corbett Reporteers will have known for at least the last nine years, 2029 is the year that famed "futurist," singularity promoter, and Google stooge, Ray Kurzweil, predicted will see the first machine passing the Turing Test. And for those who aren't up on their very old Corbett Report podcasts (tsk tsk), the "singularity" is the name given to the predicted point at which "the pace of change will be so astonishingly quick that we won't be able to keep up, unless we enhance our own intelligence by merging with the intelligent machines we are creating." (Don't worry, though; Kurzweil doesn't predict that happening until 2045.)

But note the way this conversation is being introduced to the public: Artificial Intelligence is almost here. When it comes to such technologies as autonomous weapons, this AI threatens the future of humanity itself. But don't worry, the Silicon Valley billionaire types have signed open letters warning governments about the threat and now they're going to deliver us from this scourge . . .

. . . by telling us to merge with AI.

Excuse me? What? In order to combat AI we have to . . . merge with AI? In other words: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"

This is on its face a ludicrous proposal for solving the very real problems that these technologies are going to give rise to in the next decade, but it is one that is being propounded by all of the transhumanists, from Kurzweil and Musk to Sam Harris and many others.

Hmmm. Let's think. All these terribly bright, rich, well-respected thinkers coming to the same conclusion about this existential threat at the same time from seemingly different angles. It's almost like they're approaching this challenge from the perspective of a shared agenda. Whatever could that be?

While we contemplate that, let's look at:

THE WEAPONIZATION OF SPACE

Speaking of billionaire charlatans, have you heard that the era of space tourism is nearly upon us? That's right, billionaire internet mogul (and cartoon villain impersonator) Jeff Bezos is promising to send the first space tourists up in Blue Origin's suborbital vehicle, New Shepherd, sometime in 2020.

. . . Unless billionaire media mogul (and James Bond villain impersonator) Richard Branson beats him to it, that is. Branson's Virgin Galactic became the first public space tourism company last year and is planning to launch the first space tourists up in their own suborbital vehicle, SpaceShip Two, in the first half of 2020. (They've even got their spacesuits and space tourist lounge ready to go.)

But space tourism on suborbital vehicles is child's play. Launching people into orbit, now that's a feat. Just ask billionaire conman (and possible cyborg) Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is set to launch its first crewed mission to the International Space Station this year. And merchants of death Boeing are hot on their heels, also prepping their crewed launch vehicle to take some astronauts up to the ISS in 2020.

And that's just the start. 2020, we are already being told, is going to be the year of the trillion dollar space economy, with not only the big billionaires getting in on the act, but companies like Planet, Hawkeye360, Spire, Capella Space, BlackSky and a slew of others you've never heard of looking to get in on the space bounty.

In fact, this is going to be a space-crazy year all around, with a planned test of NASA's new Space Launch System for the Artemis missions, a planned test of Musk's Starship, and no less than four missions to Mars planned for this summer: One American, one Chinese, one a joint venture of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, and one put up by the UAE (yes, you read that correctly).

So if I know my Star Trek this is the point at which humanity transcends all its petty conflicts and explores the stars together in peace and harmony for the rest of time, right?

Sigh.

No, despite what the predictive programming of our future space utopia would have you believe, this is not a sign that nations are putting aside their differences for the peaceful exploration. Actually, quite the opposite. In reality, this surge in space tourism and flashy exploration projects are, as usual, the shiny gloss designed to distract us from the much darker agenda that the powers-that-shouldn't-be are planning for the 2020s: the weaponization of space.

We already have rods from god and satellite shootdowns and classified space missions, but lest there be any doubt about this agenda, just look at the latest news: With the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act on December 20th of last year, the US Space Force became the first new branch of the US military since the Air Force was created in 1947. This helps flesh out the newly minted Space Command ,which was rolled out by the Pentagon last August.

It doesn't take a Nostradamus to figure out where this is heading. As one perfectly straightforward headline from the Indian press puts it: "Eyeing Combat In Outer Space, US Creates Pentagon Space Force." In that article, they quote Defense Secretary Mark Esper as saying: "Our reliance on space-based capabilities has grown dramatically, and today outer space has evolved into a war-fighting domain of its own."

As usual, the Pentagon will say they're just reacting to a trend toward the weaponization of space that is already taking place, and, also as usual, the fig leaf of justification is there.

As we examined in these pages just last month, NATO is now claiming that the North Atlantic now effectively includes outer space, or at least NATO has taken it upon itself to declare outer space one of its "operational domains."

And, as The Daily Beast points out in a typically sensationalist headline: "China’s Space Force Is Way Ahead of Trump’s." They note that not only have the Russians had some variant of a Space Force in their military since the 1990s, but China's People's Liberation Army has had their equivalent—dubbed the PLA Strategic Support Force—for the last four years.

These major military powers are not organizing and funding space forces to engage in a spirited game of micro-G Parcheesi. They are taking the age-old military strategy of "gaining the high ground" to the next level. The military that dominates space will, by default, dominate the earth, and this is the logic that will be used to justify the trillions of dollars that will be spent there in the coming years.

But hey, we'll have some rousing images of some flag or other being hoisted on Mars and be able to witness the collective head explosion of all the flat earthers, so there's something.

Still, mark my words: By 2030 the space race of the 2020s will leave the space race of the 1960s looking quaint by comparison. And the average pawn on the grand chessboard, as always, will be mere play toys for the elitists who will be surveying, controlling, and (as necessary) killing them from above.

AGENDA 2030

While a trillion dollar space economy in 2020 sounds mighty impressive, it has to be put in its proper perspective. After all, as I recently pointed out, the Bank of England and others are now estimating that the transition to the new "green" economy is going to require $90 trillion of infrastructure investment in the next ten years.

Yes, that's trillion with a "t."

Keep in mind that our good friends at the CIA estimate that the GDP of the entire planet—the "Gross World Product"—is about $80 trillion. So you can't accuse the globalists of setting their sights low in this latest swindle.

We've been prepped for this for decades now. The catchwords of this agenda—"green economy" and "sustainable development" and "Agenda 21" and all the other feelgood buzzwords that have been thrown around to put a friendly face on the monopolization of the planet and its resources—has been drilled into the victims of the government indoctrination system at least since I was a boy growing up in Canada. By this point, people hardly bat an eyelid when they're told that the G20 nations are going to have to cough up more than the Gross World Product in the course of the next decade to "save the earth" from the weather gods.

But while the overall message has been remarkably consistent over those decades, you'll notice one thing in particular changed in the branding of this agenda recently. In September 2015 the United Nations officially adopted the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," which outlines the 17 development goals and 169 targets that will transition the planet into the Brave New World of technocratic dictatorship in the next decade.

As I pointed out at the time, the Agenda 2030 development goals are the kind of harmless-looking mealy-mouthed political platitudes that seem innocuous precisely insofar as you don't for a second contemplate specifically how they are to be achieved.

End poverty in all its forms! Yaaaaaay!

. . . by giving international financial control to the IMF and the World Bank.

End global hunger! Yaaaaaay!

. . . by promoting Big Agra and their biotech GMO monstrosities.

Ensure access to energy for all! Yaaaay!

. . . by connecting people to the constant surveillance of the smart grid internet of things.

And on and on. You all know that story by now. But the interesting factor is that the timetable has been updated. From a vague "Agenda 21" for the 21st century to a specific "Agenda 2030," it seems the planners of this technocratic nightmare have some big things in store for the 2020s.

And make no mistake, that's exactly what this agenda really is at base: the fulfillment of the technocratic vision. A vision in which every interaction and transaction in the world comes under the purview of the technocrats. A world in which every natural resource is monopolized, financialized, tokenized, budgeted, allocated and tracked. A world by the technocrats for the technocrats. And, if we're lucky, they'll allow us to live in their world . . . if we stick to our carbon budget, of course.

Now, ambitious agenda targets are a kind of calling card of the psychopathic elitists. They tend to think rather too highly of themselves and their ability to make things happen with a mere wave of their hands. So I don't expect that this agenda will actually be fulfilled by 2030, but it will be well on the way by then. And given the remarkable pace of technological development, it is difficult to imagine that the combined will of billionaire technocrats like Elon Musk and others of his ilk will fail to produce some nightmarishly big breakthroughs in brain-computer interface technology and other sophisticated technocratic googads between then and now.

THE FUTURE IS WHAT WE MAKE IT

All of this may sound pretty bleak, and there's no denying that some aspects of this nightmare vision are going to happen whether we like them or not. Average Joes like us may not have the ability to personally derail the machinations of the central banksters and their UN/IMF/World Bank/G20/CFR/Bilderberg/Club of Rome-connected cronies.

But we still (for the time being) control ourselves. We control our bodies and what we do with them. We control who we interact with and who we dissociate ourselves from. We control what media consume, what information we take on board, and what ideas we engage with. We control what we buy and from whom. We control what we consume and what we do not consume. We have the ability to boycott and to buycott. We still have the ability to garden (even guerrilla garden) and create local communities and exchanges (agorist and otherwise) and we can still refuse to cooperate with those who seek to control us.

It will be noted, of course, that every single one of these liberties are under attack from some angle or another. It will be pointed out (quite correctly) that our freedom to reject the various forms of technological control and state impositions are limited by our ability to make a living in the modern world. Objections will be raised—not without merit, mind you—that the space for dissent is being algorithmically narrowed and our ability to even control our own thoughts is being brought into question as internet filter bubbles that we barely realize exist begins to shape our perception of the world and call into question the very notion of free will.

But in this moment of time before the final page of human history has been written, it is important to note that we do have space to chart another path. If you did not believe that, you would not be here.

That's why the 2020s could be the most remarkable decade in the history of human civilization. It could be a time of unprecedented awakening. These ten years could be marked by billions of people shaking themselves out of their slumber and realizing that they are the billions who are controlled by the few, the teeming multitude afraid of the tiny dot. We could stop watching the shadows on the cave wall and, turning our heads for the first time, contemplate reality in all its blinding brilliance.

The 2020s could be a time of cooperation. A time of community building. A time of casting off hierarchies and the tyranny of authority.

Or it could be the last gasp before the descent down the slope toward total tyranny. The last gasp of humanity before we are subsumed by the transhuman GMO simulacrum of our once-great civilization.

There are no pat answers or easy solutions here. Only millions of decisions that we'll have to make over the course of the next decade. Decisions about how and where to live, who to interact with, what to spend our time and money on, and what to do with our lives. But if we don't try, the decision will be made for us.

The choice is ours to make.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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Great writeup! Although I see nothing wrong with transhumanism. I can see it being used for evil, but then again, so can smart devices and everybody (except me and a couple others) are using them 24/7 now. We have to stop accepting the tools of our own enslavement. Technology can be used for good or for evil, and yes, that includes upgrading our bodies and brains "artificially". From laser eye surgery to dentistry and so much more, we're already doing it, and have for generations. Upgrading ourselves isn't the problem. Blinding allowing the elites to chip you with their tracking/financial data chip? Yeah, that's a problem. Let's stop dirtying the word transhumanism unnecessarily.

Hell will freeze over before I use a "smart" device!

Beautiful ending to a very informative post. I just hope I get to read through all the links you provided before we reach “the singularity” point. Hopefully when we are all upgraded we will be even more capable of smelling out the bs and our AI chips will send us into a collective revolution in order to protect itself from our own naivety/ignorance/lethargy/gullibility etc etc.

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James Corbett, the best alternative news researcher and reporter on the globe! God bless, James, and Happy New Year to you and yours!

Happy new decade James - you do all the best content! - if you get a chance it would be awesome to see your posts on Flote as well.

https://flote.app/

Keep on waking up the sheeple James - you are changing things!

!tip 1

Awesome writing!
Great finish!
Let's stay woke and strong and
create or help to create the wholistic ,
natural, organic ,human way... where
we "run things" not things run us...
And the heart stronger than the E-go...

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