Russian parliamentarian: let's ban personal computers and the Internet

Anatoly Kubanov, a senior member of the parliament of a Russian oblast (state), and a member of one of the four major political parties allowed in Russia, proposed to ban personal computers and the public access to the Internet.

Below is a partial translation of his article. I’ve highlighted some especially interesting parts.

I think it’s a curious illustration of how totalitarian dictatorships can react to the AI threat.

I wish it was some kind of a parody. But major Russia media confirms its authenticity, and the presented arguments don’t sound too insane in comparison with the typical Kremlin-approved discourse within Russia. There is also a historical precedent: in 1941, Kremlin has ordered all residents of the country to hand in their radios within five days, under threat of criminal prosecution.

The translation of the Kubanov’s article:

The ruling transnational elites are building a global digital anthill. The enemy is consolidating its dominance, imposing the digital world as some kind of inevitable technological revolution. A virtuoso bluff!… They don’t need scientific progress, the world’s monopolies need to consolidate their dominance.

To control the imagination is to dominate. A single world system—the Internet—has been created. A single information space inevitably forms a single political space. A mesmerizing anti-world. Social networks where murderers and murdered are present at the same time. Preachers’ accounts neighbor with escort blogs, Nazi and Communist sites are mixed with literature lectures and tic-toc-toc videos. Poisonous omnibus, destroying all styles and forms of social structures—national, cultural, religious. So much for post-society, so much for post-humanity! It is not an abstract idea of the vicious globalist inventors, but an anti-life that is being put into practice.

...Russia is fighting for sovereignty. That’s great! And immediately our state pursues ideas and practices of digitalization. But the World Wide Web is fundamentally anti-national. Native governments that drive their peoples into the Internet lose power...

The Internet is a weapon of mass information and psychological destruction. The colossal volume and speed of information transmission, to which the state cannot react in time, strikes a crushing blow. A vivid example is the recent military mutiny. A little-known businessman in a matter of months is pumped into a popular character on a national scale. What happens next is a leap from rebellious social media to actual rebellion. The country nearly collapses straight into civil war. A trial run. Next, the West will launch more devastating blitz attacks.

It is necessary to decisively remove computing power from public circulation. A lot of technology is not in the public domain. You can’t buy a nuclear minireactor at a home appliance store or an anti-aircraft missile system at a hunting store. In the same way, computers should be used for their intended purpose—in science, industrial production, transportation systems, military headquarters, etc.

The rejection of digitalization of social relations is not an end in itself. Instead of a boring information society, we need an exciting idea of a creative society. The people, freed from the meaningless, stultifying, hours-long oblivion of scrolling through Internet feeds, acquire a colossal resource… In two or three years of such an avant-garde policy, Russia will be beyond the reach of the synthetic, dumbed-down Western posthuman.

Russian parliamentarian: let’s ban personal computers and the Internet