Free transfer of technology could snuff out a relatively new concept: freedom

Lev Navrozov

I call countries that are not free “slave countries,” though Soviet propaganda proclaimed that “Soviet Russia” was the only first “free” country in the world even after it conquered some countries to the west of it, after which those countries became “free” countries in the Soviet propaganda, in contrast to “the rest of the world of hungry slaves,” as the Internationale, the state hymn of Soviet Russia put it.

The question arises as to whether the free countries will be able to survive if they remain so credulous and superficial even today in their approach to totalitarian countries.

Some of those totalitarian countries such as the country which in 1949 was named the “People’s Republic of China” (PRC) by a communist Mao was reported to have killed 70 million Chinese to reach the absolute totalitarian unity in the country.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, right, looks at what Iranian officials claim is the U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel high-altitude reconnaissance drone that went down in Iran on Dec. 4. /AFP

Fortunately, countries like the United States have been technologically and scientifically ahead of the authoritarian countries like the PRC in the invention and construction of new weapons, though the time in which the PRC, for example, will be able to jump ahead and catch up with the free countries is becoming shorter, especially when a totalitarian country throws all its human and natural resources into the development and growth of its military potential, as did Stalin’s Russia until his death in 1953.

And not only that. Espionage and stealing American latest technology and military secrets have always been employed by the unfree countries, the latest example being Iran’s capture of the American pilot-less airplane, a closely guarded, unique American technological achievement.

The theories as to how it could have happened are numerous and varied. But one thing is clear. While American talent and ingenuity created this unique sophisticated technology, as much talent and ingenuity should have gone into predicting and preventing such disastrous mishaps.

Nowadays, when hackers can inflict damage virtually to any computer and steal U.S. secret intelligence computer data, it shouldn’t have been impossible for those responsible for the creation of this unique project to predict and outsmart those hypothetical and now ubiquitous hackers who make it their business to spy and steal American latest and innovative technology.

In the hands of totalitarian rulers, if they indeed managed to acquire the data from the allegedly intact drone, which landed on their soil, as was openly reported and shown on TV by Iranian propaganda, the stolen technology may be aggressively used against the free countries, which consider themselves responsible for the preservation of freedom in our world.

There is a grave danger in that if a dictatorial country such as Iran or a slave country such as the “People’s Republic of China” actually does get hold of this unique American technology or if, say, Iranian hackers presumably already have the means to manipulate and reprogram the GPS on any existing computer, then American best minds should be one step ahead of the hackers — they should immediately start working on something that will render that “catch” useless.

Remember Hitler’s Germany, in which the German scientists were secretly developing the atom bomb. If that were accomplished, Hitler would have been the owner of the world, which would not exist now as we know it. Albert Einstein, who managed to escape from Hitler’s Germany and moved with his family to the United States, prevented that disaster by communicating the news to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who initiated the Manhattan Project and got the atom bomb ahead of Germany. The rest is well known.

The recent mishap with the American drone should be taken seriously. It doesn’t matter what had actually happened: whether the Iranians have gotten hold of American technology that went into the creation of the drone or whether their propaganda presented it as their own achievement of being able to manipulate and reprogram the GPS of the drone.

Yes, freedom has a tremendous advantage. It is in freedom that a born genius, a man or a woman, in particular in the field of science and technology, has unlimited possibilities to express itself, and such an advantage may be decisive, as, for example, getting the atom bomb ahead of Germany was decisive for the United States and its allies in winning WWII.

The free world may be endangered suddenly and irretrievably. The danger of slavery is still real. It never went away in millennia of its existence. Freedom is a new phenomenon in the history of mankind, and it may disappear and never come back.

Freedom is a sophisticated product of social development, while slavery is raw, primitive, and was nearly universal not so long ago.

The best minds in the free West should attend to the problem of saving freedom, for “freedom versus slavery” may become not just the American problem but their problem as well.

Lev Navrozov can be reached by e-mail at levnavrozov@gmail.com.