LOCK STEP – A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback
During the pandemic,
national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.
Even after the pandemic faded,
this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified.
In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems—from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty—leaders around the world
took a firmer grip on power…
Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty—and their privacy—to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability.
Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit.
In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms:
biometric IDs for all citizens,
for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests.
In many developed countries, enforced cooperation with a suite of new regulations and agreements slowly but steadily restored both order and, importantly, economic growth.
But more authoritarian leadership worked less well—and in some cases tragically—in countries run by irresponsible elites who used their increased power to pursue their own interests at the expense of their citizens.
Russia and India imposed stringent domestic standards for supervising and certifying encryption-related products and their suppliers—a category that in reality meant all IT innovations.
Sporadic pushback became increasingly organized and coordinated, as disaffected youth and people who had seen their status and opportunities slip away—largely in developing countries—incited civil unrest. In 2026, protestors in Nigeria brought down the government, fed up with the entrenched cronyism and corruption.
Technological innovation in “Lock Step” is largely driven by government and is focused on issues of national security and health and safety. Most technological improvements are created by and for developed countries, shaped by governments’ dual desire to control and to monitor their citizens
But no one was prepared for a world in which large-scale catastrophes would occur with such breathtaking frequency. The years 2010 to 2020 were dubbed the “doom decade” for good reason: the 2012 Olympic bombing, which killed 13,000, was followed closely by an earthquake in Indonesia killing 40,000, a tsunami that almost wiped out Nicaragua, and the onset of the West China Famine, caused by a once-in-a-millennium drought linked to climate change
Not surprisingly, this opening series of deadly asynchronous catastrophes
(there were more)
put enormous pressure on an already overstressed global economy that had entered the decade still in recession. Massive humanitarian relief efforts cost vast sums of money, but the primary sources—from aid agencies to developed-world governments—had run out of funds to offer. Most nation-states could no longer afford their locked-in costs, let alone respond to increased citizen demands for more security, more healthcare coverage, more social programs and services, and more infrastructure repair.
In 2014, when mudslides in Lima buried thousands, only minimal help trickled in, prompting the Economist headline:
“Is the Planet Finally Bankrupt?”
In 2015, the U.S. reallocated a large share of its defense spending to domestic concerns, pulling out of Afghanistan—where the resurgent Taliban seized power once again.
Resource scarcities and trade disputes, together with severe economic and climate stresses, pushed many alliances and partnerships to the breaking point; they also sparked proxy wars and low-level conflict in resource-rich parts of the developing world. Nations raised trade barriers in order to protect their domestic sectors against imports and—in the face of global food and resource shortages—to reduce exports of agricultural produce and other commodities. By 2016, the global coordination and interconnectedness that had marked the post-Berlin Wall world was tenuous at best.
With government power weakened, order rapidly disintegrating, and safety nets evaporating, violence and crime grew more rampant. Countries with ethnic, religious, or class divisions saw especially sharp spikes in hostility: Naxalite separatists dramatically expanded their guerrilla campaign in East India; IsraeliPalestinian bloodshed escalated; and across Africa, fights over resources erupted along ethnic or tribal lines. Meanwhile, overtaxed militaries and police forces could do little to stop growing communities of criminals and terrorists from gaining power. Technology-enabled gangs and networked criminal enterprises exploited both the weakness of states and the desperation of individuals. With increasing ease, these “global guerillas” moved illicit products through underground channels from poor producer countries to markets in the developed world. Using retired 727s and other rogue aircraft, they crisscrossed the Atlantic, from South America to Africa, transporting cocaine, weapons, and operatives. Drug and gun money became a common recruiting tool for the desperately poor.
In the context of weak health systems, corruption, and inattention to standards—either within countries or from global bodies like the World Health Organization—
tainted vaccines entered the public health systems
of several African countries.
In 2021, 600 children in Cote d’Ivoire died from a bogus Hepatitis B vaccine, which paled in comparison to the scandal sparked by mass deaths from a tainted anti-malarial drug years later.
The deaths and resulting scandals sharply affected public confidence in vaccine delivery;
parents not just in Africa but elsewhere began to avoid vaccinating their children
Meanwhile, more sophisticated hackers attempted to take down corporations, government systems, and banks via phishing scams and database information heists, and their many successes generated billions of dollars in losses…
It seems to me that the ONLY SOLUTION was to implement CBDC with a cryptographic “vaccine” so toxic that billions were injured and millions died. However, this was all done for the greater good, whatever that means and whose “good” we are talking about
In some places, the collapse of state capacity led to a resurgence of feudalism. In other areas, people managed to create more resilient communities operating as isolated micro versions of formerly large-scale systems. The weakening of national governments also enabled grassroots movements to form and grow, creating rays of hope amid the bleakness.
Food is our future. Enslavement is theirs.
I must have missed the part in the Rockef---er Report where it is acknowledged that an unexpectedly large portion of humanity uses free will, common sense and intelligence to overpower tyranny. Surely, we cannot allow these psychos to watch their twisted scenarios become reality. You are with me, right? What are we waiting for? Soon we will lose our ability to fight back. Give 'em hell and don't stop.