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I think this really illustrates one of the biggest concerns with concentrating software power in the executive: what if a totalitarian seizes control? How much damage can they accomplish?

Last time, less than 100 years ago, 2/3rds of the Jewish race was eliminated. How much damage could be done to a targeted minority in the information age? Governments by my account, have killed (6 million) an order of magnitude more innocents than terrorists ever have, and short of nukes, ever will.

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When Snowden's NSA leak had just started, there was a podium discussion about it on German TV. Well, a few, but in one specifically one of the guests was a lesser german TV celebrity, known for science shows if I remember correct. If I had to guess, I would say he was probably born in Germany, but his family immigrated. And that background is plainly visible. And that is important because of one sentence he said that practically no german with a german heritage of 80 years or more would have dared to say -- "If Nazi Germany had the NSA's surveillance capabilities, the Holocaust would have been over in a month."

And this is not a theoretical worry, in an interview with Gen.Alexander there was a question whether he is worried about building this technological infrastructure and its abuse potential by future potential successor entities. His reply was along the lines of "Nothing will come after us." Which to a German, strikes a lot of similar chords to Nazi Germany's eternal Reich rhetoric.

If you're referring to the Holocaust, the state-orchestrated mass-murder part of it was actually ten million dead, not six.

And there is no something as a 'jewish race'.

You should probably take another look at some discussions around the definition of race in modern times. It certainly can be used to refer to a grouping of people by common culture, such as the "Jewish" race.

As a side note, I've seen some pretty heated arguments about this. It's a bit strange to me why this is such a contentious subject. Is this coming from people who still think we have cleanly delineated "races" like Caucasoid, Mongoloid & Negroid?

"How much damage can they accomplish?"

instantly made me think about Donald Trump... :/