It's already normalized in much of the world and has been for decades since Malaysia began the MyKad program in 2001 [0].
For developing countries, digital and biometric IDs make it easier to disburse public services as well as gain a more realistic understanding of demographics.
Digital activism and (somewhat valid) paranoia around privacy is a luxury belief when vast swathes of the population in LDCs are unbanked and relegated to the informal economy.
They also make it easier for nation states to cut off access to public and private services when they don't like what a citizen is doing. It's wasn't normalized by choice - it was forced upon people. I'm sure NGOs and governments love it but that certainly doesn't mean that citizens do, which governments are supposed to serve. The paranoia is very valid. [1]
My in-laws in rural Gia Lai love having a biometric ID as does my extended family in rural Northwest India.
Before there was significant friction when setting up physical IDs and bank and government services simply couldn't scale down to the village level, which would make routine paperwork a multi-day affair.
Being able to do almost all government-related and banking paperwork over the Internet has legimately made it easier for my extended family in both VN and India to become banked, access public welfare without dealing with corrupt local apparatchiks, and accessing capital to think about making MSMEs.
As I mentioned above, this kind of performative activism is a luxury belief.
It's already possible to do government-related and banking paperwork over the Internet without digital identities linked to your biometrics. We do it every day in the United States.
You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that the system in Ethiopia is being used for far more than banking or government services - their website lists obtaining internet access, sim cards, transportation etc... These digital identities are being used to surveil the activity of citizens and lock anyone the government doesn't like out of commerce.
In the US most households have already had records and identities associated with themselves for decades. In most of the developing world, most people didn't even have a drivers license 20 years ago.
> their website lists obtaining internet access, sim cards, transportation etc... These digital identities are being used to surveil the activity of citizens and lock anyone the government doesn't like out of commerce.
So what?
Ethiopia is also a country with active insurgencies and security risks. The benefits of security and stability outweigh the alternative.
Look at China - it's progress in building digital public infrastructure is what helped it expand dramatically in the 2010s [0].
This is the same thing India is doing [1] (who implemented this project in Ethiopia btw), as is Brazil [2], and other Global South members. Even the EU is looking at adopting similar tenets as well [3].
Is expansion all that matters to you? What about human rights and personal sovereignty? Do you think China is a bastion of democracy and freedom? The benefits of security and stability do not outweigh the alternative when authoritarian governments decide to curb stomp the natural rights of people that don't want to comply with their agendas. You sound like an individual who would gladly take the mark of the beast if it was offered to you. Count me out (of this back and forth as well).
I care about expanding public service delivery capacity. In developing countries, the only cheap and efficient manner to do so is via DPI.
The only countries that escaped the middle income trap have either been subsidized by EU development grants, oil exports, or US largess.
For countries where none of those are the option, you need to make do with what you have.
> The benefits of security and stability do not outweigh the alternative when authoritarian governments decide to curb stomp the natural rights of people that don't want to comply with their agendas
When the decision is between luxury beliefs or survival, and in a country like Ethiopia whose developmental indicators are comparable to Afghanistan, the latter will always win.
I wonder why their developmental indicators are so poor? Perhaps it's because of NGOs like the IMF and World Bank and the loans they issue to these nations and the structural adjustments that keep these nations in cycles of poverty. Amazingly it's the same NGOs that are handing out money to implement digital identities. I'm noticing a pattern here...
> IMF and World Bank and the loans they issue to these nations and the structural adjustments that keep these nations in cycles of poverty
IMF led reforms in the 1990s are what allowed PRC, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh to start breaking out of the cycle of poverty that trapped their then developmental peers like Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan.
Also, the IMF and WB are not NGOs. Heck, countries like China and India are some of the largest shareholders in both.
> I wonder why their developmental indicators are so poor
Limited institutional capacity because most countries in the world were either in the midst of or recently ended major civil wars or conventional wars in the 1980s-90s.
China began reforming its economy in 1976. India began reforming its economy in 1991. As such, China had a 10-15 year head start [0], especially thanks to American support in the 1980s as a bulwark against the USSR (sounds familiar?).
When you compare the Indian metrics with Chinese metrics from 10-15 years ago, the difference becomes marginal. For example, India's 2023 HDI (0.685) versus China's 2008 HDI (0.672) or India's 2025 GDP PPP per Capita (~$12K) and China's 2010 GDP PPP per Capita (~$12K).
Even the way NYT writes news articles about Apple's manufacturing in India [1] in 2025 use the same tone as NYT articles about Apple manufacturing in China [2] in 2012.
It's an Indian government project though - the entire MOSIP project was developed in an Indian public university [0] and is directly tied with India's "global south" strategy [1]. Plus the majority of it's governance board is associated with the Indian government or Tata Group.
Digital Public Infrastructure in the "Global South" is India's attempt at building a digital version of OBOR [2].
Since I had to look it up, OBOR = One Belt One Road = Belt and Road Initiative, which is China's project for building infrastructure in developing countries to promote tighter economic integration with China.
It's a more literal translation of the Chinese name "一带一路".
MOSIP is Indian [0][1][2]. India is exporting multiple different stacks for Digital Public Infrastructure.
This project in Ethiopia is itself being pushed by the Indian government [3][4] and is part of India's larger "Global South" strategy [5].
I guess the question you should be asking is why the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has becoming intertwined with Indian geopolitical power projection.
The issue is the onus is on the contractor to prove that Anthropic technology has not tainted US government contracted projects - this is a herculean task verging on impossible. Additionally, most contracts will mandate SLAs around removing BOM risks.
FedRAMP and FedRAMP adjacent revenue is non-negotiable for vast swathes of businesses. The designation of "supply chain risk" is viral in nature because no GRC team will dare take such a risk within their supply chain because most customers add BOM requirements in contracts so this will end up falling under those already.
There's a lot of backchanneling going on between Emil and Dario because everyone's in the same circles but it's all for naught.
I've found the newer generation of founders understand that. The issue is they don't use HN anymore.
I've noticed a significant tone and demographic shift on the site over the past 2-3 years with more Western Europeans and Midwesterners and fewer Bay Area+NYC users, and fewer decisionmakers or decisionmaking adjacent people using the site.
And the deeply technical types who used HN largely shifted to lobste.rs.
Karrot_Kream (another longtime HN user) identified this shift as well [0]
The Bay Area/NYC and founder adjacent folks I know are mostly on group chats and messaging apps. Fundamentally the signal on this site is too low to be of use in those conversations. It's difficult to discuss decisionmaking in a forum full of random Fortune 100 employee deep in a torrid company hierarchy complaining about what their management hierarchy wants them to do.
There's also a tension between the increasing "community building" happening on HN and the Bay Area/NYC crowd. A lot of them have an extant community largely based on in-person relationships. The more HN builds its own community, the more you alienate this set of people. In other words, Slashdotification is happening more and more to HN where a set of very online tech people who don't really make decisions generate most of the chatter on this site.
The younger generation of founders meets in-person and uses iMessage and Instagram. The older generation meets in-person and uses iMessage, Signal, or WhatsApp.
The reality is, most people are in-person now and conversations that were happening on HN because of the pandemic are now being done offline.
Blind is toxic, but at least the users are cynically realistic.
Potentially. The issue is how do you manage solvency.
State Medicaid and Workers Compensation funds were already insolvent before the 2024 election, and as such most states lack the fiscal overhead needed to fully support a fully funded single payer program today.
It would end up the same way the NHS has in the UK.
Vast swathes of the US are deeply fiscally troubled due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, and if that is not solved then we cannot even start to contemplate single payer.
This should not be used to justify austerity which is not the answer and does more harm than good, but points out that a reckoning is needed. From my personal experience dealing with the current crop of state and local politicos, it's looking dicey in portions of the US.
Edit: can't reply
> Gong single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever
Yes. But you need capital to build an insurance fund. And a large portion of that is going to service existing liabilities.
Going single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever.
The core issue is it suddenly destroys a large number of companies and removes millions of unnecessary jobs from the economy. That’s a great deal of wealth and a great number of voters who don’t want you to save hundreds per month by making them redundant.
This underestimates the SUI premium hikes following the COVID layoffs. Most states charge businesses a risk premium when employees are terminated, and given that most states UI and Workers Compensation funds are now insolvent [0] they fight tooth and nail to increase premiums.
> They could have striken a deal, e.g. let the U.S. company digitize the records on premise and make them public
They won't - it's a US-EU competition.
The US+UAE is backing the DRC and the EU is backing Rwanda [0][1][2] in order to access critical minerals in Central Africa, most of which are in M23 controlled or adjacent territory [3] whose control is contested between the DRC and Rwanda.
The US under Biden and Trump has backed the DRC but the EU is backing Rwanda and M23.
We're in the midst of a new Scramble for Africa and all countries and blocs are acting unilaterally.
For developing countries, digital and biometric IDs make it easier to disburse public services as well as gain a more realistic understanding of demographics.
Digital activism and (somewhat valid) paranoia around privacy is a luxury belief when vast swathes of the population in LDCs are unbanked and relegated to the informal economy.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_identity_card
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