Not yet [1]. Total symbiosis of corporations and government—to the point of making Mussolini blush—is the ultimate goal. Sure, that sounds paranoid, but look at how far we've come on that spectrum in the last 30 years. Proliferation of technology (due to its enabling of surveillance and weakening of the state) all but guarantees that future.
When you make statements like ‘Total symbiosis of corporations and government … is the ultimate goal’ without attributing that goal to anyone, you come off as sounding a little bit tinfoil hat.
Boston Dynamics is no more (and honestly in many ways far less) enmeshed in the security state than any number of military suppliers. Seems like a poor argument that things are specifically bad now or getting worse on this front.
If you’d pointed at Palantir perhaps you’d have had a point.
Not that you'll view it as valid but I'm using abductive logic. I shared the Boston Dynamics thing in jest, but I'd love to hear valid reasons for the existence of a bipedal robot that can run and scale over objects. Are these things being used to down dissidents a reality today? No, but it's a perfectly logical conclusion for what's down the pike.
FWIW, too, the "tinfoil hat" thing doesn't work on me. I will smugly tighten mine as I look down upon the naive proletariat being manhandled as "Do You Love Me" [1] is played over the crowd control loudspeakers.
I think "to the point of making Mussolini blush" gives enough background to take the comment seriously without demanding piles of documents.
Few Americans are aware even now of the role of IBM in mechanizing and tabulating the murder of Jews for the Nazis, and basically no Americans were aware of it then[0]. "They" who desire "symbiosis" between corporate power and government power - a better word would be fusion - are the same corporations who promoted fascism in the US and abroad throughout the 20th Century, whose continued efforts we can see daily through virtually all channels in our society.
Name one sphere of society in which corporate power has not merged with or overrun democratic governmental oversight. Name one environmental, social or economic battle that grassroots democratic movements or western governments have won against the corrosive force of corporate profiteering in the last 30 years.
No matter how evil and corrupt a given corporation is, it could never be as bad as a government.