Techno-Juche

By Zhenyi Tan

Propaganda poster featuring Kim Il-Sung with a glowing halo around his head, surrounded by people holding books and a soldier with a rifle. Flags with various emblems are in the background. Korean text is at the bottom.

In the year 1954, our dearest leader Kim Il-Sung locked himself in a hut atop the sacred Paektu Mountain. For 7 days and 7 nights, he meditated on the future of our nation. When he emerged from his solitude, he proclaimed that every nation should be self-reliant, thus creating the Juche ideology.

70 years later, I am very happy to see our great nation doing better than ever, thanks to the Juche idea. What’s even more astonishing is that the big tech companies of the western capitalist regime are now embracing the Juche philosophy too.

More and more tech companies are realizing that the “I make the phone, you make the service” approach from the iPhone 1.0 era is obsolete. You have to own everything, from the device to the operating system to the cloud service to the AI. The era of interoperability is over.

Sure, you can still partner. Sure, you can still make deals. But those are more like alliances of convenience, easily broken. Today they are your partner, tomorrow they might be your competitor.

So we see Google making their own phones. Apple making their own chips. We see Microsoft getting more and more uneasy about their partnership with OpenAI. And speaking of OpenAI, they are making their own search engine. I heard they are now even making their own web browser.

Running a platform is like running a country. Running a closed platform is like running a dictatorship. It’s no surprise that big tech learns from the best. The more you own, the more control you have over your people. It allows you to do whatever you want, and they will be too locked in to leave.

All of this was foretold by our supreme leader 70 years ago! Praise be to the eternal wisdom of the glorious leader!