In an August 2019 article titled “Silicon Valley Censorship and the Coming Global Police State,” I wrote the following: “If you love freedom and liberty, recent actions from high tech companies should have you worried. In pursuit of profit, the mega-companies of Silicon Valley have created products that invade user privacy. And they easily cave to the demands of totalitarian governments.” Unfortunately, recent events reveal the United States is now among those totalitarian governments.

On July 15, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced White House officials were “meeting with social media platforms” and had “increased disinformation research and tracking.” She said the administration is “flagging problematic posts from Facebook that spread disinformation” and working to “connect doctors and medical professionals who are popular with their audiences with accurate information” so as to “boost trusted content.” If you don’t believe me, watch her press conference here.

This is a blatant violation of every American’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Who determines what is or isn’t “disinformation”? In her words, the government does. And who determines what is or isn’t “accurate information” or “trusted content”? Again, in the eyes of the Biden Administration, it’s government. They are the arbiters of “correct” speech. It’s their job to “protect” you from the evils of errant thoughts.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the U.S. Surgeon General followed up with his own lecture on the dangers of free thought and how the biggest threat to our health and safety is our stubborn unwillingness to agree with him. According to Dr. Vivek Murthy, “We live in a world where misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health. Health misinformation is false, inaccurate, or misleading information about health according to the best evidence of the time. And while it often appears innocuous on social media apps, on retail sites or search engines, the truth is that misinformation takes away our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and the health of our loved ones.”

Stop right there, and read that again. According to the Surgeon General, “misinformation takes away our freedom.” No, sir. That’s not true. Government suppression of free speech takes away our freedom – the exact government censorship of speech you’re advocating.

He goes on, “Modern technology companies have enabled misinformation to poison our information environment with little accountability to their users. They’ve allowed people who intentionally spread misinformation – what we call disinformation – to have extraordinary reach. They’ve designed product features such as like buttons that reward us for sharing emotionally charged content, not accurate content, and their algorithms tend to give us more of what we click on, pulling us deeper and deeper into a well of misinformation.”

Any freedom-loving individual should find these statements both chilling and frightening. If the Surgeon General thinks disinformation has invaded the public discourse, he’s free to combat that disinformation with facts and persuasive arguments. The government has no right to censor its critics. Again, if you find all this hard to believe, watch the Surgeon General’s comments for yourself by clicking here.

According to the White House and the Surgeon General, freedom of speech is such a dire threat, social media platforms should collude with government to delete any posts or content the Biden White House deems “disinformation.” Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media platforms are more than happy to comply, and their crackdown on the evils of free speech doesn’t end with public postings.

According to Politico, “Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.” This means government authorities might “fact-check” future private text messages between you and your friends. Imagine being in the middle of a phone call with a friend, and the government cuts off your call because the two of you are discussing “disinformation.” Most people would be outraged. Yet, that’s exactly what the government is doing with this social media disinformation censorship campaign.

Free Speech is Under Assault

People have warned about this assault on free speech for years. For instance, in July 2020, over 100 writers, academics, and political and cultural activists published an open letter in Harper’s Magazine on the topic of justice and open debate. The signatories were a diverse list of well-known celebrities, including J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Salman Rushdie, Malcolm Gladwell, and Gloria Steinem. In their letter, the authors pointed out that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” They wrote the letter because the current cancel culture narrows “the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.”

College campuses used to be open forums for free speech and radical ideas. Today, they’re ground zero for the assault on free speech – a place where totalitarians silence all dissent. This dictatorial impulse is spreading from the college campus to the public discourse, leading to censorship both online and offline – from social media platforms to local school board meetings. The willingness of so many people to suppress free speech foreshadows the rise of a dictatorial state. Widespread support for cancel culture and the demonization of opposing points of view set the stage for an oppressive government willing to use violence to enforce its edicts. Ironically, many of the people who claim to be anti-fascist are the exact same people who support social media censorship of any ideas they don’t like.

Canceling People

All this is a threat to the very foundations of human freedom and liberty. In an age when social media dominates public discourse, access to these platforms is vital to get a message out. Don’t believe me? Try getting your message out to a large audience without using Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, or Netflix. It’s nearly impossible. If they can de-platform the sitting President of the United States (which they did to Donald Trump), then they can de-platform you as well.

We’re living in a world where the largest technology firms have more power than most totalitarian governments had in bygone eras. Since the police power of government rules over these Big Tech companies, that means governments around the world are now more powerful than they’ve ever been. The power and reach of Big Tech is global in nature, and they’ve shown their willingness to use this power to silence you.

In recent months, Big Tech has canceled people and organizations deemed as dangerous or not sufficiently “woke.” YouTube channels have been demonetized or shut down. Twitter and Facebook accounts have been suspended. Websites have been dropped by their hosting companies, and businesses have been frozen out of using PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard. If large corporations “cancel” you and refuse to provide you with basic services, how can you operate in the modern world? You can’t. At least, not as effectively. They have the power to cancel people.

What the Bible Says

So, what does the Bible say about all of this?

The Bible says a time is coming when a global dictator will rule the world (Revelation 13:7). He will succeed in everything he does (Daniel 8:24). His power will be so great, no one will be able to oppose him (Revelation 13:4). His control over the earth will be so complete, he’ll regulate the purchase and sale of everything (Revelation 13:17). For most of human history, this was impossible. As this is written, it’s probably still impossible. But that window of impossibility is closing fast. As technology continues to advance, every aspect of human life becomes reliant on and intertwined with digital payments and the Internet. If access to those utilities is cut off, an individual’s ability to participate in modern-day society is also cut off.

This sets the stage for the Antichrist to control all buy/sell transactions on the planet (Revelation 13:17) and to determine at his whim who can or cannot participate in modern society. This is precisely the type of power Big Tech firms are consolidating today. The Surgeon General claims this is bad because “Modern technology companies have enabled misinformation to poison our information environment with little accountability to their users.” He’s wrong. What Big Tech is doing is enabling governments to limit, censor, and trample the rights and liberties of their citizens with little accountability to the ones they aim to rule. This is the road to dictatorship, and I have no doubt Big Tech will be a willing participant in the establishment of the ultimate dictatorship – the Antichrist’s global police state.

All this is yet another indication of the times in which we live. Jesus said when you see all these events take place, look up (Luke 21:28). So use what little time is left to spread the Gospel, because Jesus is coming soon!

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Britt Gillette is author of the free ebook Coming to Jesus as well as the books Signs of the Second Coming, Racing Toward Armageddon, and The End Times. Receive his book 7 Signs of the End Times for free when you sign up for his monthly newsletter.

In a May blog post, Google unveiled its new Quantum AI Campus and announced its intent to build a million qubit, error-corrected quantum computer by 2029. A month later, IBM partnered with the United Kingdom on a $300 million quantum computing research initiative. Corporations all over the globe are investing resources in quantum computing and quantum computing applications. The reason is simple. Quantum computing promises to advance almost every field of human endeavor – from traditional industries such as banking and energy to new emerging industries such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

What is a Quantum Computer?

Classical computers encode information in bits, represented as ones and zeroes. Quantum computers encode information in qubits, represented by the directional spin of an electron or the polarization of a photon. Unlike classic computer bits, quantum mechanics allow qubits to exist in both states simultaneously. So instead of representing either a one or a zero, a qubit can represent both simultaneously. Linking qubits together via quantum entanglement, this means quantum computers have the potential to exponentially exceed the computing power of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers. A few hundred qubits can represent more states than there are atoms in the universe.

Why Is This Important?

So why should you care? Such a computer would be so powerful it could instantly break the most sophisticated encryption methods of the classical computer era. Imagine the military advantage a nation-state would hold over its competitors if it developed quantum computing ahead of all others. It would have an overwhelming advantage. If corporations are openly discussing the arrival of quantum computing breakthroughs, what do you think governments are doing? The United States, China, the EU, Russia, and others have far more resources than Google or IBM. Think they’ll be willing to spend a few hundred billion on a crash program to speed up the development timeline? I think so. And a quantum computing arms race creates uncertainty, distrust, and instability.

Welcome to the Era of Cyber Warfare

Think about the problems and inconveniences created from short-lived disruptions in Internet service or utility operations. How long can you go without Internet, electricity, or water before a minor annoyance turns into a major crisis? Consider the impact of two recent ransomware attacks – one on the Colonial pipeline and the other on meat processor JBS. The Colonial pipeline attack took place on a Friday. By Tuesday, thousands of gas stations all over the East Coast of the United States were completely out of gasoline. JBS fixed its problems before any widespread meat shortages impacted consumers. But what if it hadn’t? JBS accounts for more than 20% of U.S. beef and pork production. A prolonged shutdown of its operations would have resulted in shortages all across America.

In both events, it’s believed criminal hackers were the culprits. No nation-states had a role in the attack. Regardless, the Colonial pipeline and JBS ransomware attacks demonstrate just how vulnerable our systems are. Imagine what would happen in a full-blown cyber war. What would happen if your community lost electricity, water, and sewer service all at once? What if grocery stores went bare for weeks on end? The end result of a cyber war between major powers could be absolutely devastating.

A New World Order

When it comes to World War III or a serious military conflict between major world powers, many people live under a false sense of security. Conventional wisdom says World War III is certain to bring global nuclear destruction. And because of this, every leader on the planet is determined to avoid it at any cost. But is this true? Unfortunately, it’s not. The current world order is based on MAD. MAD is the fear of total destruction and the idea no one can win a war between two nuclear powers. For 70 years, it’s all that’s kept us from World War III. But MAD won’t keep the peace forever. It’s based on technology. And that technology is on the verge of becoming obsolete. Like all previous military eras, the era of MAD will soon come to an end.

To work, MAD relies on certainty. A nation must be certain it can launch a nuclear attack if threatened. Otherwise, an enemy nation could prevail in a first strike scenario. Likewise, the enemy nation must be certain it faces total annihilation if it launches a first strike. This certainty of “mutual assured destruction” is what’s kept the world from destroying itself for over seven decades.

Unfortunately, new technologies will soon eliminate this uncertainty. For example, nuclear-armed submarines are the backbone of a nation’s nuclear deterrent. A single nuclear-armed sub can carry dozens of nuclear warheads several times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such submarines patrol the planet’s vast oceans where they’re more than able to evade detection from enemy nations. At the very least, they create uncertainty in the eyes of the enemy, who can never be sure about their ability to disarm every such threat.

But quantum computing will change that. It will accelerate the development of new technologies, such as quantum sensors. With powerful quantum sensors, a nation could detect every submarine on the planet. Once detected, those submarines could be disabled using other new technologies. For instance, quantum computing will also enable advanced modeling of chemical reactions. This will prove critical in the development of molecular manufacturing. With molecular manufacturing, even a small nation could quickly develop legions of tiny swarming drones capable of disarming and destroying any conventional weapon of today.

The first nation to develop advanced quantum computers will have the inside edge in the development of these next-generation technologies. And if corporations are openly discussing viable roadmaps to these technologies, nation-states are even closer to developing them as military applications.

Where We’re Headed

The rise of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, drone swarms, and other emerging technologies is a destabilizing event. Together, these new technologies will overturn the post-war stability of MAD. They make World War III inevitable. When the war ends, one nation will control all of humanity. That nation will be the leader in the development of these new military technologies.

Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. The Bible says another world war is certain (Revelation 6:4). It also tells us one nation will control the earth in the aftermath (Revelation 13:7). Is this just a coincidence? No. It’s just one of many signs pointing to the soon return of Jesus Christ. Jesus said when you see all the signs converge, His arrival is near (Luke 21:28). Those signs are converging for our generation. So take advantage of what little time we have left. Spread the Good News and tell others about Jesus.

The time is short. Jesus is coming soon!

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Britt Gillette is author of the free ebook Coming to Jesus as well as the books Signs of the Second Coming, Racing Toward Armageddon, and The End Times. Receive his book 7 Signs of the End Times for free when you sign up for his monthly newsletter.