Congratulations on the 65th independence day of Malaya and the formation of the 59th Federation of Malaysia. Over six decades we have been independent from the constraints of the Queen, and the British resident who was later replaced by the iron chains of the English Premier League and London Almond. The age of our country Malaysia which has increased to 59 years still qualifies us as one of the youngest countries in the world.
Every year there will be an article about the meaning of independence quoted by the writer who is forced by the editor to fulfill the theme that only appears once a year. The turn to write an article on the theme of independence fell to me this year because, as Thanos said, "I'll do it myself".
We are still not totally independent but at least the fear of Covid-19 is now reduced by several thousand percent. The fear of dying no longer haunts us every day thanks to vaccines and the use of face masks which is still high compared to the West.
Back to the original topic of independence. Looking at what happened to China and Ukraine in the last four years made me think about the meaning of freedom in the age of digital cyber technology.
In less than six months, the Russian economy began to falter after trade restrictions were imposed by Western countries. Major technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Dell and Samsung began to withdraw from the Russian market and close their businesses.
Dell, which has a large holding of server hardware in Russia, stopped supporting the products used by customers since last February. Intel also no longer offers their chips to Russia with access to US proprietary chip fabrication technology also withdrawn. These two examples alone have succeeded in paralyzing IT technology in Russia until there are predictions that the situation will return to the status before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia is the country with the largest land area in the world. Despite being categorized as one of the world's great powers, they are powerless to fight the trade restrictions that have been imposed on them. Their reliance on Chinese-made technology now in place of Bart's technology is seen as quite an embarrassing incident. Still not at the level of embarrassment after the defeat in Tsushima Strait but it shows how China managed to overtake them in terms of technological advancement in just three generations.
Speaking of China, they are now in the sights of the United States and their allies. Starting with the ban on Huawei three years ago, various new restrictions were imposed on DJI, ZTE and many other companies from China.
Access to higher-tech fabrication technology is already restricted and the sale of chips also requires prior approval from the Department of Commerce. Joe Biden then added to the woes on China that Trump started by curbing the sale of artificial intelligence chips a few weeks ago.
The Soviet Union had no problem helping China to develop their industries more than 70 years ago on the basis of the shared Marx-Lenin understanding of solidarity. China, which was initially called a "copy-ori" wise country, has succeeded in doing its own innovation as can be seen with the success of the Tiangong space station and the Fujian aircraft carrier with CATOBAR.
The irony here is that the two basic technologies of these two systems were given by Russia to China but now Russia has neither. Russia's ISS modules require modules from other countries and the problematic Russian carrier only has one left (China has three) and it is not equipped with a CATOBAR.
The United States likes to say that they are the ones who return free and independent even if they fall down when the goods that need to be imported from China stop their supply chain due to Covid for days. If tomorrow Malaysia is subjected to economic sanctions by the United States, how long can we survive after technological infrastructure such as 5G supported by foreign technology stops operating?
What I am trying to convey here is that the country with the largest land area and the second largest economy in the world has not yet been able to be fully independent because the fact is that in the 21st century, no country is completely independent. Happy independence month and Happy Malaysia Day.