A family member with no inherent moral compass or empathy, whose eyes, ears, thoughts and agency belong to teams of trained profit-seekers in a different country.

I disapprove of this humanization of software.

It got more legal a few years ago, I think. Not explicitly “made legal”, but the legal foundations have been eroded. I.e. if you can expect to get away with something it is legal in a very real sense.

It’s always been practically legal for empires like the US, Russia, China to commit any atrocities in weak countries, More and more countries are seeing how much they can get away with.

Netanyahu tested the limits over and over and saw there were really quite few legal limits. With Gaza, he saw the limits didn’t actually exist at all.

During the invasion of Berlin in 1945, the overwhelmed German command trying to map out the Russian advance had to resort to just calling businesses or homes of people living in areas they were uncertain about.

If most people in a district did not pick up the phone, or someone did pick up and swore in Russian, they marked it on the map as invaded.

Different worlds of course, but the point is that civilian phones have intelligence value.

It could make sense as a super creepy tactical choice by Iran to deny intelligence gathering from abroad.

I feel that this article is based on beliefs that are optimism rather than empiricism or rational extrapolation, and trains of thought driven way into highly simplified territory.

Basically like the Lesswrong, self-proclaimed “longtermists” and Zizians crowds.

Illustrative example: Categorizing nannies under “human touch strongly preferred - perhaps as a luxury”. This assumes automation is not only possible to a degree way beyond what we see signs of, but that the service itself isn’t inherently human.