Alexander Dugin argues that the mass terror involving technological explosions in Lebanon, orchestrated by Israel, highlights the dangers of unchecked digitalization and artificial intelligence, warning that Russia could face similar threats as technology increasingly poses risks to humanity.

The situation with the explosions of pagers, radios, phones, and even home appliances in Lebanon has many dimensions. I will focus on the three most important ones.

First of all, what happened is simply a case of mass terrorism carried out by the State of Israel. One might think that after what it has been doing in Gaza, nothing would surprise us anymore. But no, we were surprised. This act of mass terror was not directed against Hezbollah but against the Lebanese people in general: the thousands of exploding pagers, radios, and phones were also in the hands of children.

Now, it is hard to speak of Israel as anything other than a terrorist state. The same goes for the United States and the Democrats in power there, who fully support Israel’s terrorist actions. This is a clear signal to anyone who still does not understand that we live in an era of dictatorship, ruled by murderers and maniacs who have seized global power. These people bear an anti-human ideology. As a side note, one of the creators of this ideology, Israeli philosopher Yuval Harari, openly declares that power should be transferred to artificial intelligence, technology should rule the world, and humanity, accordingly, should be destroyed.

It is no coincidence that Israel and Ukraine, two terrorist states, are supported and covered by the primary terrorist state, the United States of America.

The second very important aspect is technology. When we rejoice in technological development and digitalization, we do not think about the other side of the coin: that technology can be a tool of murder, can enslave us, and make us practically addicted to it. Technology can be used to spy on us, to control us, and if the lords of technology do not like something, it can be used to destroy us.

It is still being investigated how such a large number of devices distributed in Lebanon could have exploded. One hypothesis suggests that no explosives were used — the devices themselves were detonated remotely through certain signals.

Technology kills. This is a crucial point. We uncritically dive into digitalization, naively trusting artificial intelligence, while even simple electronic devices can serve as instruments of murder. We are completely defenseless against this.

But if we have not yet dealt with the dark side of simple technology, what can we say about artificial intelligence, which we are uncritically incorporating into our lives? When someone mentions the dark side of technology, no one listens to them. Yet now, this dark side has revealed itself. And this is just the beginning. The more advanced the technology becomes — including artificial intelligence and neural networks — the greater the dangers and mortal threats it poses to humanity.

Finally, the third point is also technical. After the raid by enemy drones and the explosions at a military depot in Toropets, many Telegram channels published Google Maps showing this depot with all its coordinates clearly visible. This is not classified information; it is just a Google map.

We ourselves allowed Google in, thinking, “Let them map us, so hipsters can more easily find a cozy café nearby.” And Google tracked all our military sites and handed them over to Kiev terrorists. We ourselves entrusted the creation of our search engine, Yandex, to Zionists Nosik and Volozh. The latter fled Russia at a critical moment along with a large number of IT specialists and likely handed over the keys and codes of our system to our enemies.

In other words, we are letting the fox into the henhouse, allowing the Trojan horse into our city. Have we not learned anything from the Iliad? As it says, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Every Russian schoolchild once knew this formula. Now, many of us do not even know who Homer is or what the Trojan horse — that “Greek gift” — really was.

Now, facing the threat of the Trojan horse, this Greek gift, we are absolutely powerless because we have lost the most basic cultural instincts: suspicion toward those who come from the outside. Like aborigines, like savages, we gape in awe when they bring us new technical gadgets, without even considering that this signifies the degradation of our society.

Thank God that the pagers, radios, and phones exploded in Lebanon and not in Russia. But that is just for now, not tomorrow. We continue to boast about copying and catching up with technologies, fully dependent on suppliers of these high-tech devices, which we cannot produce ourselves. As a result, we do not even know what is inside them or what their components are.

What happened in Lebanon is a “final warning.” It is necessary to stop the naive optimism of the digitalization advocates who hypnotize the minds of our leaders with bright, optimistic presentations, irresponsibly claiming that this is all about technological progress.

After what happened in Lebanon, we need to approach all of this with extreme caution and adopt any technical innovations only after a thorough safety review, including in terms of our Russian sovereignty.

(Translated from the Russian)