Technical complexity doubled as a secrecy strategy protecting surveillance operations

Evidence

As Schmidt told the New York Times, “You need to win, but you are better off winning softly.” The scientific and material complexity that supported the capture and analysis of behavioral surplus also enabled the hiding strategy, an invisibility cloak over the whole operation. “Managing search at our scale is a very serious barrier to entry,” Schmidt warned would-be competitors. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 281

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘winning softly’ approach parallels ideas about camouflage of extraction through technical opacity; could connect to military ‘stealth’ discourse. — connects to: Secrecy and distance structurally prevent principals from monitoring agents. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 50; Bureaucratic practices hinder effective management of information secrecy.

Broader Connections

• Secrecy and distance structurally prevent principals from monitoring agents. #corroborates (0.75) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 50
• Bureaucratic practices hinder effective management of information secrecy. #corroborates (0.75)