Have you ever heard of a whisky called Rattlesnake Rosie’s?
Its apple pie flavoured. That’s right – apple pie whisky. Whatever will they think of next?
Its American made, of course. I came across it at a bar in New York, and while I was drinking it I had a revelation. If I am correct, this will inevitably have a direct influence on your wealth, and your very freedom as time marches on. It starts with data – and it ends with hellfire missiles.
Infernal formulae
It was my brother who suggested I try Rosie’s. He was working behind the bar at the time, and I was making the most of his hospitality.
The bar had a Scottish theme, which came with advantages and disadvantages. The good news was that it had the largest range of whisky on the US East Coast. The bad news was that the staff uniform included a degenerate mockery of a kilt you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing back in Scotland.
As I drank the apple pie, we discussed another American phenomenon – “signature strikes”. This is where American government agencies use drones to source, target and kill people, in countries that the US is not actually at war with – and without actually knowing who they are!
Thanks to round-the-clock surveillance provided by drones, the US government believes it can acquire enough data to justify killing somebody it hasn’t actually seen break any law. Their behavior must merely match a certain profile.
As an example of how this can go awry, a while ago one man was marked for death after visiting the sites of previous drone strikes. After being obliterated with a hellfire missile, it was revealed he had been a journalist writing about drone strikes. But his behavior marked him as a terrorist.
The round-the-clock surveillance of the drones provided vast amounts of data. It was inevitable that somebody would try to use this data as a justification to take action.
If you want to know what such infernal formulae look like applied to a more domestic environment, take a look at the “social credit scores” being established in China. The huge state surveillance apparatus hoovers up everybody’s data as they go about their day, and an algorithm gives each person a social credit score for their behavior. Your score goes up for doing things like buying Chinese-made goods, and goes down for things like social media posts critical of the government. When it goes down, the ability to purchase property or board a plane is revoked. Not quite a hellfire missile, but the results can be devastating.
Considering the UK has some of the most surveillance cameras per head in developed countries, a similar system, no doubt implemented “for the good of society”, is something to look out for. The infrastructure, and your data, is already out there. All that’s required is the formula, and the will to act.
Caged capital
Sir John Cowperthwaite, who was the financial secretary for Hong Kong in the 1960s, famously refused to collect economic data in Hong Kong on the basis that public servants would needlessly intervene on the grounds that a metric was too low, or another too high. His strategy was a resounding success, and Hong Kong became hugely prosperous.
As he put it, “All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it.”
The level of financial intervention at play in markets today would have seemed unbelievable in Cowperthwaite’s time. And yet we continue to move further in this direction.
An argument made for the abolition of cash is the rich data that a purely electronic money system would produce. Central bankers would be able to take the pulse of the economy more accurately if they could shove every single transaction anyone makes into their models. And the actions they would take after using that data would be all encompassing.
If you trust the actions of the data collectors, then you needn’t worry about a thing. But if you’re sceptical, you may want to move some of your capital out of their reach, out of the cage that is the financial system. Especially if you consider what lies on the horizon.
I wrote a report recently on how to unplug your wealth and invest outside of the financial system, for this very reason. Not only can you cloak your wealth, away from prying eyes, but you can immunise your wealth against the financial folly that lies in the future. More on that here.
Data begets analysis. Analysis inevitably leads to action. Those actions have consequences, and – depending on the context – they can be incredible destructive. If data is being collected about you, or your assets, you may well be affected by the actions of the data collector. Hopefully those actions do not include a hellfire missile.
That was my revelation. Or was it just the apple pie whisky talking?
All the best,
Boaz Shoshan
Editor, Southbank Investment Research
Category: Geopolitics