I broadly agree that all gov's are power crazed organisations and truly capable of the most dangerous of actions.
However, if the USA were to close the internet backbones, it would leave them without the ability to snoop and spy on the rest of the planet and thus be isolated. They are then, in effect, in a similar same catch 22 situation as those they would seek to control.
Astute point. I agree the powers-that-be will prefer compliance, but in the absence of compliance they can use war. By definition, non-compliance means they also lose their ability to snoop.
Agreed! In fact,
Zbigniew Brzezinski has said "Populist Awakening" is possibly derailing the move towards a new world order controlled by the technocrats and elite.
However, you would be very naive to think that the global elite didn't anticipate this and didn't already have a plan of action. Brzezinski has
hinted at their plan (which is obvious to me). Key on this phrase,
"it is easier to kill a million".
Another option is blocking non-compliant traffic on the backbones. Thus they can force compliance domestically because the mainstream economy doesn't want to be impacted by the rogue cowboys and will agree to weed them out.
One of the impetus for making a better Tor now is to make is popular asap, so that it is more difficult to filter it without impacting the mainstream. But we may already be too late.
Generally speaking the masses are against the political corruption, not against an identification card and showing it when asked. So the powers-that-be only need to vilify some figure heads and get the masses focused on that, while getting them to join Bitcoin via Paypal or some other compliant service provider.
Again the rogue cowboys will be shut off from the mainstream as usual. For those nations that decide to go rogue en mass, the powers-that-be can turn their country into a chaotic shit hole with war. And they can even in some cases get that country to fight itself, e.g. Ukraine. There are deep divisions in the USA so it won't be difficult to get the USA to fight itself as the economy turns down hard.
The HUGE burden of finding resources to carry out all this monitoring and enforcement shouldn't be underestimated as they'd be confronting people by the millions (billions?).
The black budget of stolen funds is on the order of $5+ trillion, which Donald Rumsfeld admitting on TV the day before 9/11 (then all the records were destroyed at the Pentagon the next day). The DEEP STATE is already in possession of this money.
Besides they will charge the costs to public, by confiscating (ahem taxing) wealth, including Bitcoins. And they earn money by selling weapons and giving loans to both sides of any conflict.