What does “national security” mean? This is a vague term, yet used quite a bit, mostly by governmental officials. Usually it’s a fig leaf to hide crimes and dirty dealings by these people.
But what would actually make this nation more secure? Not hiding the corruption and lawbreaking of current or former politicians or their appointees. Not starting wars or instigating regime change campaigns against other countries. Not harassment of journalists, whistleblowers and dissidents. I’d say all those things make us less safe.
What would make you feel safe and secure, that could be done as a matter of national policy? I can think of a whole lot of moves that could help.
If we at last instituted a national healthcare system like most countries have, which covered everyone and eliminated both the profit motive and the red tape and paperwork associated with billing, we’d save quite a lot of money, have better health outcomes, and have the relief of not having to worry about what happens if a family member develops a serious illness. It would also feel better to live in a country that prioritized the wellbeing of all its citizens, rather than one that deemed some of us unworthy of basic needs being met, that assumes we are all competing with each other at all times.
If we told the military industrial complex and its lobbyists to pack up and go home, if we cut the military budget way down, stopped trying to instigate regime change in countries that refuse orders from Washington and restored the primacy of diplomacy over warmongering, we’d suddenly have all kinds of resources to address our very real problems, from billions of dollars to millions of personnel; if we closed our foreign bases we could hand them over to the locals for productive use. If we went back to working cooperatively with other countries on arms control, environmental problems, and human rights, the world would resume a movement toward progress, and suddenly we’d have no enemies. Imagine the sigh of relief, the tension leaving your body in a world like that.
What if the solution to the threat of climate change was a concerted, if very tardy, effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions, making changes to reduce other environmental harms at the same time, instead of the Republicans’ solution of pretending it isn’t a problem or the Democrats’ solution of greenwashing? What if we addressed the problems caused by proliferation of plastics, PFAS and agricultural chemicals by phasing out these destructive substances, instead of acknowledging the problems but doing nothing real to solve them? Suddenly young people wouldn’t be so hesitant to have children.
The prospect of nuclear war frightens most of us, even if we don’t think about it much. What if we addressed this with myriad new (or restored) treaties and international cooperation to safely dispose of these horribly dangerous weapons…instead of investing a trillion dollars in a new round of them? We could create a world in which having a child makes sense. Especially if we also got rid of germ warfare labs and AI warfare and space warfare work—none of those things make us safer. This safer, more cooperative world requires that we dispose of the illusion that humans come in a hundred different types, based on which nation we happened to be born in, taking way too seriously the imaginary lines we impose on our continents.
“National security” is often the justification for the government’s attempt to surveil every one of us, all the time, six ways from Sunday. They now can put together all the data scraped by Musk’s DOGE team from the IRS, Social Security and other federal databases, with our driver’s license, credit and criminal and health histories, and everything we’ve ever posted or liked on social media. Add the location data they can take from your cellphone (along with who you talk to) and from the Flock license plate readers that are everywhere now. This is presumably one reason for all those data centers—to have the computing power to put it all together to make elaborate profiles of us all.
At the same time the government is granting itself the right to spy on citizens, it is becoming ever more secretive about its own doings. This is the opposite of how it should be—ordinary citizens should have the right to expect privacy, while public officials should be open to inspection. They’re working for us, paid by our tax dollars—they should be able to hide their work only in a few special cases.
Now add the fact that the government is building concentration camps all over the country, supposedly to hold “illegal aliens,” usually in appalling conditions—but likely to be used for political opponents someday. Who are these political opponents? That’s what the AI all those data centers power will be used to determine: who are the potential leaders when an uprising finally comes. Do you feel more secure, contemplating these things?
One thing is clear—when politicians invoke the phrase “national security,” they are never talking about security for the people who live in this country.
