According to India’s digital ID architect, mobile phones, bank accounts, and digital IDs are the “tools of the New World” of digital public infrastructure.
‘Everybody should have digital ID, bank account & smartphone; tools of the New World’: IMF Spring Meetings
India’s digital ID architect tells an IMF panel that everybody should have a digital ID, a bank account, and a smartphone as they are the “tools of the New World” for digital public infrastructure.
Speaking on a panel about Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) during the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Spring Meetings on April 14, Infosys co-founder and ex-chair of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Nandan Nilekani, said that in order for nations to build out their DPI, they will need three things.
“If you think, ‘what are the tools of the New World?‘ — Everybody should have a digital ID; everybody should have a bank account; everybody should have a smartphone,” said Nilekani.
“Then, anything can be done. Everything else is built on that.”
Moderator and CNN International anchor Julia Chatterley concurred with Nilekani, saying:
“The three basic things: a smartphone, a bank account, and a digital ID — that’s where every nation has to begin.”
“Everybody should have a digital ID; everybody should have a bank account; everybody should have a smartphone” — Nandan Nilekani, IMF Spring Meetings, 2023
A digital identity encompasses just about everything that makes you unique in the digital realm, including your behavior.
It is a system that can consolidate all of your most personal intimate data, such as which websites you visit, your online purchases, health records, and what you post on social media.
Digital identity schemes can also be used by public and private entities to determine what products, services, and information are available to you, and they can certainly be used by those same entities to deny you that access.
According to a World Economic Forum (WEF) digital identity insight report from 2018, “This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us.”
Source: World Economic Forum
Digital identity is also key to Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) rollouts.
According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Annual Economic Report 2021, “Identification at some level is hence central in the design of CBDCs. This calls for a CBDC that is account-based and ultimately tied to a digital identity.”
Additionally, “The most promising way of providing central bank money in the digital age is an account-based CBDC built on digital ID with official sector involvement.”
This means that CBDCs, by design, do not allow for anonymous transactions as they require a digital ID to operate.
Today: "CBDC can allow gov agencies & private sector players to program/allow targeted policy functions (i.e. consumption coupons) By programming #CBDC the money can be precisely targeted for what kind of people can own & what kind of use this money can be utilized" Bo Li, #IMFpic.twitter.com/kcROTxXZau
In addition to the absence of complete transactional anonymity, programmability is a key feature that separates physical cash from CBDC.
Speaking at a high-level roundtable on CBDC in Washington, DC in October 2022, IMF deputy managing director and former People’s Bank of China (PBoC) deputy governor Bo Li said:
“CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program — to create smart contracts — to allow targeted policy functions. For example, welfare payment; for example, consumption coupons; for example, food stamps,” said Li.
“By programming CBDC, those [sic] money can be precisely targeted for what kind of people can own and what kind of use this money can be utilized,” he added.
Ultimately, a CBDC linked with digital ID could allow governments and corporations to put permissions on what you can buy with your own money, including expiration dates on when you can spend it.
Bank of RussiadeputygovernorAlexeyZabotkin gave a real world example of what CBDC programmability could look like when he spoke at the annual cybersecurity training exercise Cyber Polygon back in 2021.
There, Zabotkin explained:
“This [digital ruble] will permit better traceability of payments and money flow, and also explore the possibility of setting conditions on permitted terms of use of a given unit of currency.
“Just imagine that you are able to give your kids some money in digital rubles and then restrict their use for purchase of junk food, for example.
“That would be a useful functionality for a customer, and of course you can come up with hundreds of other similar use cases.”
“In the coming years,starting with financial services, and later on in other areas, individuals will be able to use their own data to get a loan, to get better financial services, to get better healthcare, to get better jobs” — Nandan Nilekani, G20 Development Working Group, 2022
Last year, Nilekani — the man credited with building India’s vast Aadhaar digital ID scheme — told the Group of Twenty (G20) Development Working Group that it should look at different ways of harnessing data on social and economic activities to advance the UN’s Agenda 2030 sustainable development goals.
“Today we live in a society which is increasingly digitized, and every aspect of our life has digital technology in it,” said Nilekani in December 2022.
“We find that this is generating vast amounts of data about our social and economic activities, and we should look at different ways to harness this data for development goals,” he added.
The godfather of India’s digital ID scheme would go on to say that “In the coming years, starting with financial services, and later on in other areas, individuals will be able to use their own data to get a loan, to get better financial services, to get better healthcare, to get better jobs.”
In addition to spearheading India’s digital ID scheme during his tenure as chair of the UIDAI from 2009-2014 and being a co-founder of tech giant Infosys, Nilekani has held high-level positions at Reuters, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank Group’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative.
Your digital identity can be used against you in the event of a Great Reset
When a sweeping solution to a hyper-generalized problem oversteps the boundaries of personal privacy and liberty, the solution poses a greater threat to the people than the problem it proposes to solve.
As part of its “great reset” agenda to reshape the global economy, the World Economic Forum (WEF) wants everyone on the planet to be linked with a digital identity.
“This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us” — WEF report
And while digital identities show great promise towards improving the livelihoods of millions, they are also used by authoritarian governments to profile and police citizen behavior under a social credit system.
The idea behind digital identities is simple enough. All the data collected from every online interaction you make with the private and public sectors goes into forming your digital identity.
This data can include your personal:
Search history
Social media interactions
Online profiles
Device location
Medical records
Financial ledgers
Legal documents
And more
As far as personal convenience goes, having a digital identity that consolidates everything into one place can be a godsend in that you can use your digital identity for a variety of goods and services wherever you go, and all of your data can be secured on the blockchain.
But, like with any technology, trust comes from knowing how it’s used, and knowing who benefits the most from the people who use it.
“With a few tweaks of code, blockchain can be corrupted by authoritarians to build social credit enslavement systems,” Trent Lipinski recently warned in the Coin Telegraph.
“If world governments legislate encryption technology for their own purposes and pervert consensus mechanisms for their own centralized enslavement systems, we will end up with digital currencies that can be used against the people of the world,” he added.
“What the Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological identities” — Klaus Schwab, WEF
On the flip side, there are many ways of applying this technology for the good of humanity.
For example, last week, the WEF highlighted an app developed by Irish blockchain company AID:Tech, which helps people without official documents create personal legal identities.
However, there’s a big difference between identity and identification.
Providing a piece of identification to someone who didn’t have official documents to begin with is one thing; it’s an entirely different matter when the concept is expanded to including connecting every person on the planet with a digital identity that keeps a tamper-proof record of their behavior.
Identity encompasses everything that makes you unique, and your identity is what the WEF is really interested in.
Step out of line, and every social media interaction in which you partake, every penny you trade, and every move you make — can be used against you
According to a WEF report from 2018, “Our identity is, literally, who we are, and as the digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution advance, our identity is increasingly digital.”
Similarly, WEF Founder Klaus Schwab predicted that the Fourth Industrial Revolution would bring about the “fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological identities.”
Image Source: World Economic Forum
By connecting your every online/offline interaction, the WEF envisions your digital identity being linked to:
Every click, comment, and share you make on social media
Every financial transaction you record
Your location and where you travel
What you buy and sell
Your personal health data and medical records
The websites that you visit
Your participation in civic functions (i.e. voting, taxes, benefits, etc.)
How much energy you consume
And more
Thus, your digital identity becomes an account of your social behavior, which can be policed.
Thus, your digital identity becomes an account of your social behavior, which can be policed.
“This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us,” according to the same WEF report from 2018.
In other words, there will be a class system where people are given access to privileged information, products, and/or services based on the data recorded in their digital identities.
The Internet of Bodies “might trigger breakthroughs in medical knowledge […] Or it might enable a surveillance state of unprecedented intrusion and consequence” — RAND Corporation report
But what problem could possibly be so severe that its solution warrants cataloguing every individual on the face of the earth in such a sweeping way?
According to the WEF, the problem to be solved is “capitalism” as it relates to societal structures and the global economy.
The all-encompassing great reset is their proposed solution — a means to an end where everyone’s behavior is time-stamped and recorded on their digital identity.
But if you thought that your digital identity was just an app on a smartphone, wait until you hear how the WEF wants your digital identity to be connected to your physical body through the Internet of Bodies (IoB).
The IoB is an ecosystem consisting of “an unprecedented number of sensors attached to, implanted within, or ingested into human bodies to monitor, analyze, and even modify human bodies and behavior,” according to the WEF’s 2020 briefing on the IoB.
Internet of Bodies Examples, RAND Corporation
With the proposed Internet of Bodies, not only would your every societal behavior be recorded, but also everything you did in private.
Sensors that detect when you go to the toilet, where you sleep, your temperature, and even how fertile you are, will all be connected to the internet within the IoB ecosystem.
Examples of Internet of Bodies (IoB) Technologies, WEF
Now, who could possibly benefit from the massive consolidation of every intimate detail of your life?
According to a recent RAND corporation report, the IoB “might trigger breakthroughs in medical knowledge […] Or it might enable a surveillance state of unprecedented intrusion and consequence.”
“Widespread IoB use might increase the risk of physical harm, espionage, and exploitation of data by adversaries” — RAND Corporation report
Internet of Bodies Risks, RAND Corporation
The RAND report also warned that “widespread IoB use might increase the risk of physical harm, espionage, and exploitation of data by adversaries.”
“You no longer need to be MI6 and issued a Walther PPK in order to assassinate someone; you just need to gain access to their medical devices” — Richard Staynings, Cylera
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken the notion of the IoB to create an Orwellian surveillance state that pegs the digital identities of its “netizens” to a social crediting system.
From “deadbeat debtor” contact tracing apps that alert citizens with a warning whenever they come with 500 meters of someone who is in debt to the DNA phenotyping of over 1 million Uyghurs sent to “re-education” camps — the CCP is a living example of some of the horrible ways in which digital identities can be exploited.
Now, take a look at the strict lockdown procedures taking place across the world.
In some areas, you aren’t allowed to be out past curfew, you’re not allowed to buy or sell certain products, you’re not allowed to open your business, and you’re being told to wear a mask in your own home.
If you had a digital identity like the WEF proposes, the authorities would know the moment you broke curfew, went somewhere they told you not to, opened your business after they said shut it down, or let your mask slip down when they told you to keep it up.
The great reset is not a mandate from the people — It is a manufactured ideology concocted by a group of un-elected globalists trying to sway “stakeholders” into creating a new economy and social structure out of the destruction of the old
As far as a social engineering experiment goes, when people know that their every move is being recorded, they will police themselves into conformity.
Just knowing that they’re being watched will cause people to change their behavior, and this makes the job of the technocrat even easier.
When digital solutions are presented on a case-by-case basis for real-world problems that need immediate attention, companies like Aid:Tech have stepped up in a big way.
But when an all-encompassing solution to a vague, generalized problem like “the global economy” oversteps the boundaries of personal privacy and liberty, the solution constitutes a greater threat to the people than the problem it proposes to solve.
“Our identity is, literally, who we are, and as the digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution advance, our identity is increasingly digital” — WEF report
Digital identities can help better the lives of everyone on the planet.
But should society’s fate be mandated from the Davos elite?
After all, the World Economic Forum has been pushing for a great reset of the global economy and society for years.
