In the shadow of war: Ukraine as the Great Reset laboratory of the global tech elite
While a very real conflict is raging in Ukraine, naturally no spotlight falls on the digital distribution battles. The advocates of radical world restructuring and total surveillance have long recognized the potential of the Eastern European country. With the strong participation of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine would not only be a Mecca for US bio-weapons laboratories, but also pave the way for digital networking, the Metaverse and the transparent citizen. The lynchpin is the digital ID app “DiiA”, an abbreviation for “The State and I”.
Zelensky’s social credit system
The journey takes us back to 2019. Zelensky had only been a few months in office, and founded a “Ministry for Digital Transformation”. Its most important task was to create a platform for the “state on a smartphone”, the DiiA app finally rolled out in February of 2020. Since then everything has been going fast: more than 50 applications, proofs and official channels are now running via the app: driver’s license, Covid vaccination pass, student card, starting a business, insurance, social benefits. A French tech portal writes: “A model that we only knew from China with its social credit system.” By the way: “ID Austria” is supposed to go in this direction in the final phase.
The social credit system is also to be taken quite literally: last year Zelensky promised every citizen who could provide proof of a full vaccination certificate in DiiA a reward of 1,000 hryvnia (roughly €30) — about a tenth of a typical monthly wage. Authorities may no longer insist on the paper form of documents — and observers assume that the dual variant is only an interim solution. The timing is hardly a coincidence: Two weeks before the release, Zelensky was the guest of honor at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit led by the “Great Reset” architect Klaus Schwab.
“Investment Mecca” for tech companies
In Zelensky’s WEF speech, the catchphrase of a “new normal” was already mentioned. The current global institutions did not work efficiently; one needed to rethink international security. His vision at the time: Ukraine should take a leading position in Central and Eastern Europe. He openly presented his country’s investment opportunity and recalled that some “big tech” companies started in garages. His stated dream was to open a kind of East European Silicon Valley and transform his country into an “investment Mecca”. Or as Zelensky put it: “Ukraine is the place where miracles are made a reality […] there is a significant opportunity to expand new industries.”
Schwab was impressed and happy with the “reforms” in the country. The WEF itself initiated some of these with its subordinate think tanks for Ukraine.
It’s not that there hadn’t been considerations like this in the past. The globalist “Atlantic Council” recognized the potential for “innovation” shortly after Zelensky’s inauguration. It mentioned an app in which you can operate your door intercom via your cell phone. The blockchain company Bitfury also mentioned it positively, as well as a number of other IT companies in Ukraine. At a networking meeting, Schwab’s “young world leaders” discussed Justin Trudeau and Zelensky, how such “innovations” could be deepened further. Davos also has its own “Ukraine House”, which is regularly available for “networking work” as part of WEF meetings.
Deals with Apple; Microsoft: Digital Census
After the WEF appeal, things proceeded rapidly. A deal was quickly struck with Apple to conduct a digital census jointly in 2023. This would also run on the DiiA app again, and the US company would help to improve it. In particular, it is to “identify priority projects that promote Ukraine’s transition to paperless mode.” Cooperation is once again underway with the “Ministry for Digital Transformation” — and it is not an isolated case. Because also in 2020, the department closed a similar deal with Microsoft, which was expected to add a value of US$500 million. The cooperation is said to be far-reaching: it is about creating a “highly secure cloud platform ecosystem”. These would affect “various industries and promote energy transition, the digital transformation of agriculture and sustainability.” In addition, the workplaces of the Ukrainian government and authorities are to be given a fully networked environment.
By the way: Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, who works on the Metaverse, a kind of virtual reality that is connecting more and more areas of life, has already had his picture taken with Zelensky. The activist Naomi Klein already feared during Corona that “Silicon Valley” was working on the digital substructure for a global dictatorship. It is quite conceivable that the Ukraine war would also be another springboard for such goals.
Ukrainians are bought for virtual life: five times the salary
In order to attract further investments, the so-called “DiiA City” was also announced in 2020. This is a digital model for an economic zone with tax breaks for tech companies. Among the few taxes in “DiiA City” is a military levy to support the Ukrainian military. There would also be high wages there — about five times the average salary. This should create 450,000 relevant jobs. It would be an “economic model for simplified economic rules” which “will be the basis for the economic transformation of the entire country”. Zelensky fully supported the project. He repeated what he said in Davos: “We want to make Ukraine a global IT hub, a leading country in innovation and technology.”
Ukrainian and international IT companies, high-tech companies, investment funds, startups and educational groups would be attracted. The fields that one wanted to till ranged from agricultural technology to artificial intelligence, drone construction, aircraft and space technology, financial technology, medical neural networks and biotechnology, the advertising industry, trading platforms, the Internet of Things, publishing, blockchain companies, digital outsourcing, the graphics industry, and e-sports companies. In other words: A huge tax-privileged technology park for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, in which man and machine merge. At the end of this, of course, there is the “Internet of Bodies”, in which, according to the WEF plan, we collect “body data via a series of devices that can be implanted, swallowed or worn.”
Beginning of the end of China-style cash?
The plans are quite obvious: Ukraine is to become the test run for the fully connected Great Reset World. The renowned Forbes magazine also attested to the country’s being a leader of the “digital currency revolution”. It’s a double-edged sword: What starts as a decentralized attempt to regain financial freedom can quickly turn into a cashless nightmare. Think of China, for example, where free cryptocurrencies are banned — but at the same time the country has started work on the digital yuan. Chinese civil servants are currently receiving part of their salary as state digital money. In China now even begging for alms will be done with QR codes. Similar plans have long been in place in Europe — as Wochenblick reported.
Ukraine as a hub for the digital market: This is also nothing new. The so-called “Non-Fungible Tokens” are a lever for this. These are digital goods that, as unique items, have a certain equivalent value. Examples so far are digital art, music or unique items in PC games. In theory, however, NFTs can take any popular form as long as it is represented on the blockchain. So in a particularly dystopian future, people could theoretically have to speculate with cryptocurrency for a loaf of bread. In any case, just recently an NFT of a Ukraine flag was sold for US$6.75 million to pump this sum into the country.
From the digital nightclub to the real virtual Hell
Digital applications in the Metaverse can take any form — and again Ukraine is a playground of these ideas. The Kyiv-based startup MultiNFT released its own token-based cryptocurrency a few days ago. So far, the company has operated digital nightclubs in the Metaverse. Of course, such venues and events could also be used to support the country in the current conflict and beyond.
What currently sounds like an environment of solidarity could in the future become a illusory horror world of metaverses that exist side by side but are networked with one another. The WEF is already hoping to correct the “system error” of the uncontrolled Internet.
If we all have to go into virtual reality as cyborgs or holograms for all the important paths, it is all the easier to eliminate any dissidents — and that can then be taken quite literally. Under such circumstances, the WEF’s praise for the “Climate Goals of the Central Bank of Ukraine” sounds almost like the more harmless part of the radical restructuring…
Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Austrian weekly Der Wochenblick:
Afterword from the translator:
I don’t know about you, but reading this article (and translating it) was like being in a horror movie with no way out, except through a lot of bloodshed. I don’t think that in ALL of human history there has been as much evil in this world as we have now.
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