We Are the Borg, Resistance Is Futile: Part I
Today’s comment is from Mark Nestmann, LL.M., a widely published author on privacy and wealth preservation, and author of The Lifeboat Strategy.
Dear A-Letter Reader:
If you’re a fan of the Star Trek spin-off television series, The Next Generation, starring Patrick Stewart, you know about the Borg.
Existing thousands of years in the future, the Borg is a highly advanced and aggressive network of humanoid drones that is part organic, part artificial life. At birth, a Borg infant is implanted with chips that give it improved mental and physical abilities. The chips link the baby’s brain to a collective consciousness which gives it seamless access to all knowledge assimilated by the Borg over thousands of years. The resulting drone is collectively aware, but not aware of itself as a separate individual.
The Borg travel in giant cube-shaped spaceships that seek out and assimilate technology. When a Borg ship encounters humans, it captures them and makes them Borg using the same implants that babies receive. It informs them, “We are the Borg…resistance is futile.” Humans who refuse assimilation are killed.
Returning to the present, are we becoming the Borg? We are…and we’re embracing the transition.
Consider “VeriChip,” a microchip implant from Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) recently approved for human use by the Federal Drug Administration. The VeriChip is implanted under your skin, and scanned with a reading device to reveal medical data. The chip is linked to a database that provides additional information about your medical conditions.
VeriChips are currently being implanted in Alzheimer’s patients and other persons deemed incapable of caring for themselves, although thousands of perfectly healthy people are now getting chipped, “just in case.” In Mexico, the attorney general and his top aides were chipped for security purposes. ADS has proposed replacing military “dog tags” with the VeriChips. The technology is also used in animals.
Of course, the chips don’t have to just carry medical information-they can contain information about anything. For instance, with an e-commerce application called “VeriPay,” rather than swipe a card or pay cash, you can buy anything with a mere wave of your hand. At the Baja Beach Club in Spain, patrons with a VeriPay microchip implant can pay for cocktails with a swipe of the arm. If a swipe of the wrist requires too much effort, there are already prototypes that can scan your purchases of products containing a compatible RFID (radio frequency identity) chip, and deduct the balance from your bank account, as you walk through the door.
This is possible using technology developed and patented by IBM. The patent application describes a process under which every manufactured product contains an RFID tag with a unique identification number. Each number is registered to the person who buys it. IBM also proposes that the government track people through their RFID tags using a “person tracking unit.” This device can zero in on RFID tags and track people in any public place.
The method of paying for RFID-numbered products isn’t particularly important to IBM, so long as the purchaser can be positively identified. And what could be more convenient-or secure-means of identifying someone than an implantable microchip? When these technologies converge, we will have developed something that looks surprisingly similar to a Borg technology prototype…
MARK NESTMANN, Wealth Preservation and Tax Consultant
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