It's strangely unpopular because it's wrong in the one place techies care about: the details.
In broad strokes, it's true to say that the Internet was created as a surveillance and control tool. But this was not a big design up front with those goals as built-in capabilities. There's nothing in TCP/IP you can point to and say, "yes, this is the surveillance bit", or "yes, this is the government control bit". "Down to the chip level" is just plain wrong. Yes, you could argue that the Internet was enabling those things, but that's true of all communications technology, if not just the basic concept of human socialization[0].
And, in practice, if the US had actually intended for the Internet to be a surveillance and control tool, it was sure as shit really fucking bad at making use of it. The only country that actually realized it needed to censor the Internet to maintain cultural/social hegemony was China, which is why they got into network censorship early. By the time America realized it wanted that level of control it had to outsource the wetwork to creative industry and advertising companies.
[0] Most neurotypical people fail to recognize this.
> it's true to say that the Internet was created as a surveillance and control tool
I'd even argue against that, unless you got some strong evidence supporting such a claim. The mere presence of potentially traceable (IP) addresses is a technical necessity of point-to-point data transfer as contrasted to broadcast.
In broad strokes, it's true to say that the Internet was created as a surveillance and control tool. But this was not a big design up front with those goals as built-in capabilities. There's nothing in TCP/IP you can point to and say, "yes, this is the surveillance bit", or "yes, this is the government control bit". "Down to the chip level" is just plain wrong. Yes, you could argue that the Internet was enabling those things, but that's true of all communications technology, if not just the basic concept of human socialization[0].
And, in practice, if the US had actually intended for the Internet to be a surveillance and control tool, it was sure as shit really fucking bad at making use of it. The only country that actually realized it needed to censor the Internet to maintain cultural/social hegemony was China, which is why they got into network censorship early. By the time America realized it wanted that level of control it had to outsource the wetwork to creative industry and advertising companies.
[0] Most neurotypical people fail to recognize this.