The Blacklist Declassified

“Tim Berners-Lee [creator of the World Wide Web] accessed the first Web page, on the first Web server, using the first Web browser on Christmas Day 1990.” – SciAm http://bit.ly/1yDRsyh Christmas Day – the day after Red Reddington disappeared. Earlier in the year, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) had ended its ARPAnet project, the Internet’s precursor. The technology was free. The Internet, “the killer app of all time,” was in the public sphere.

My guess is the “valuable information” Red has is a plan for world domination, a new world order based not on nation-states, democracy, free markets and open access to information, but on centralized, government-sponsored corporate power with a public molified by governmentally controlled media – requiring the end of the Internet.

If the writers/producers want to be true to life, they’ll have the top Blacklisters be the heads of giant media conglomerates, organizers of a shadow version of World Economic Forum, and the chairs of multinational corporations:

I. Red: “People think it matters who occupies that house [the White House]. It doesn’t. Multinational corporations and criminals run the world.” (1:6 Gina Zanetakos)

II. From WSJ Speakeasy Facebook Q&A with Jon Bokenkamp:
Q: Wendy Davies: Do you already have an endgame for The Blacklist?
A: Yes. Not sure if Sony or NBC will let me do it, but yes. – Jon

I did screen captures of the members of Fitch’s “Alliance” and lightened them up. They came out pretty well: http://bit.ly/1GgABXT. Fitch gave three names, Mitchum, Hobbs & Jasper. Jasper is aligned with “the Chinese,” who are playing a major role.

 

The Chinese are interesting because their form of government has evolved into “State Capitalism” – defined in The Economist as:

STATE CAPITALISM ➔ “A system in which political elites control economic activity for political gain. The standard bearers of state capitalism are autocracies—most importantly China but also Russia and various Arab countries…. State capitalists cannot tolerate the two things that make for dynamic economies:

1. the free flow of information [e.g. the Internet] that empowers entrepreneurs and consumers, and

2. the creative destruction that allows vigorous new firms to replace tired old ones.” [from several sources cited in The Economist (2012) http://econ.st/11lUfBY%5D

The Blacklist’s producers/writers are likely still working out what they want The Fulcrum* to be, but if they want to keep the series grounded in reality – vs spinning off into science fiction or elaborate conspiracy theories – they might do worse than link their framework to the real and important battle between State Capitalism and the Internet.

* Maybe The FULCRUM is an acronym, something bureaucratic like, say, “Final Ultimatum: Leadership Consensus Recommendations & Universal Masterplan.” Nothing The Blacklist needs like another acronym… ♡ ૂི•̮͡• ૂ ྀ♡

 

See Part 2: State Capitalism vs the Internet (2)

 

[Cross-posted to WSJ Speakeasy]

⇊ omitted from WSJ ⇊

A number of dates are bandied about as the 25th Aniversary date. This SciAm article http://bit.ly/1xC88Hi argues that Dec 25, 1990 – the date of the actual launch – makes the most sense. But if you’re trying to get people to attend anniversary conferences, Christmas Day is a non-starter.