Disclaimer: Safe Tech International is comprised of a diverse group of people from various countries who have come together to advocate for safer digital technologies. We do not have a uniform stance on all global political issues, nor do we feel this is necessary in advocacy for safer internet and telecommunications technologies. We support diversity of thought, and feel that well-researched blogs and outreach materials that both awaken and inspire others to seek the greater good are essential in our times. In light of that, please note that all members of Safe Tech International do not necessarily agree with every political statement made in the following excellent and well-researched blog.

The world would be a different place without smart technology, which is personified by the ubiquitous smart phone. However, more than that, the world would be a different place if smart technology didn’t come first – in every political decision.

These technologies have helped to create the police state of today. It is nurtured by the political climate in which Digital ID is being sold to us. Governments are digitally dividing society into an “us and them” equation – through AI-driven smart technology. In that world, the smart phone – a data-mining surveillance tool for the police state – is made conveniently mandatory.

Digital surveillance and Digital ID

The potential of the smart phone to disempower society, piece by piece, is no secret – phones are being tracked and personal information is leaking via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It may shock people to realise that Wi-Fi “sensing” enables AI to see us through walls and monitor our movements in real time with 5G.

Our data, in a multiplicity of forms commonly derived from routine smart phone activity, is the prized possession of government agencies and, the corporations and organisations that profit from it, who are lobbying for Digital ID, which enables more intrusive data-mining. There are numerous consequences of this vast “data-mining”, proving that the smart phone is anything but an “empowering” device.

Some social groups more than others received a taste of this reality during the “pandemic” – notably activists, journalists and other campaigning professionals using social media and smart phones to raise political awareness when human rights were under assault. Reliance on smart phones exposed their data to increased scrutiny, left them open to international government, military and police efforts to target social media, control information, monitor persons of interest and deter protests. Society witnessed a hike in intrusive data-driven surveillance and algorithmic censorship, as well as calls for Digital ID in the form of digital “Vaccine Passports”, all of which could now be empowered by AI and 5G wireless infrastructure.

Climate of social and racial manipulation

Among the targets in the climate of social unrest was the “Woke” organisation Black Lives Matter (BLM), protesting in 2020, and invested in “smart phone activism”. However, soon BLM discovered that their smart phones were an “Achilles Heel”. Big Tech had been aiding the police, with social media surveillance and facial recognition technologies (FRTs), targeting protesters.

BLM had known social media surveillance for many years (targeted by police through the social media intelligence platform Geofeedia). However, they had never highlighted this technological side of “colonialism” in their midst.

In September 2020 – according to the BBC – officers at a [Black Lives Matter] protest in Washington’s Lafayette Square “…requested a “heat ray” weapon for possible use against protesters in a park next to the White House…The heat ray weapon [Active Denial System] uses a microwave beam [millimeter wave energy] to make human skin feel like it is burning.” That same month, Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) had also been deployed against the protesters.

BLM supporters toppling colonialist statues in recent times, have liberally targeted the past. However, they didn’t target the Big Tech companies, Big Tech figureheads or smart phones/smart surveillance technology, or microwave weapons of the present. An opportunity to highlight digital/electronic colonialism as the threat of contemporary Imperialism – exemplified by the symbiosis of Big Tech and the police to target and ID protesters with data-driven technologies – was ominously missed when unprecedented global attention was on the organisation in 2020.

BLM, it can be argued, avoided the technological “elephants in the room” and thus seemed to change very little for civil rights, because policing is inseparable from microwave and smart technologies.

A technological, data-gathering warzone

Predatory, data-driven policing is today at the heart of recent anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, as are identity politics. The surveillance of and confrontations with protesters are portrayed as a crackdown on those in the US who may not have the necessary Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents that prove their identity.

Police brutality (with military tactics and manpower) aligned to “technological supremacism” characterises the “sweeps” on the streets of LA, which are fuelled by data from smart surveillance infrastructure and tools.

Biometric Update author Anthony Kimery, in the article “Police, federal video surveillance of anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles raise alarms”, observes that, “In the wake of escalating protests in Los Angeles over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and broader immigration enforcement policies, civil liberties advocates and technologists are sounding the alarm over the scale and scope of surveillance that’s been deployed against demonstrators…While aerial footage and law enforcement presence dominate the visible landscape of the protests, a quieter form of monitoring is unfolding in the digital realm where facial recognition tools, [Amazon] Ring camera footage, and social media surveillance intersect to create a sprawling matrix of protester identification.”

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has made significant investments in wireless Internet of Things (IoT) technologies – as admitted by Deputy Chief John McMahon who believes, “Virtual reality and technologies like the [wearable] Apple Vision Pro goggles, which double as a computer, offer endless possibilities for enhancing law enforcement operations.”

(The same has been said about smart glasses, wearables that are currently being used by law enforcement in China and the Middle East, and will be coming to a town near you, with facial recognition technology built in. According to Greenbot, “facial recognition in wearables may soon become common despite ethical concerns.” As Harvard Technology Review observes, “…while European regulations have restricted the use of real-time facial recognition, no such protections exist in the United States.”)

Smart technology automates much of policing, and supports the militarisation of the police, which has continued since 9/11 when “surplus combat equipment [was] procured and assigned to local police departments”. Source. The trend has seen units that “mimic Special Forces”. According to stopspying.org, in the US amidst anti-ICE demonstrations, “federal immigration enforcement have flown Predator drones, Black Hawk helicopters, and other military aircraft typically deployed in warzones overseas above the protests.”

Reports of “masked, unmarked agents” assigned to work with ICE that are targeting demonstrators and others reinforce the “Special Forces” dimension to the technologically assisted ICE policing. Arguably this is a terrorising tactic, and one that is challenging legal frameworks, undermining transparency and creating fear.

In a discussion in bylinetimes.com concerning the “militarisation of police departments, and the domestic deployments of armed units trained and staffed by Special Forces soldiers to our cities”, Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale – author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century – is quoted as saying, “This is a classic way that violence happens in authoritarian regimes… The people who are getting used to committing violence on the border are then brought in to commit violence against people in the interior.” Source.

MSN reported that, “Some city and Police Commission leaders have called on the LAPD to do more to identify masked individuals who are taking part in immigration sweeps.” The streets are becoming a technological, data-gathering warzone.

Smart technology for health, or authenticating ID?

As this “militarised” climate of fear over “proving identity” is raised to fever pitch, I’m sure it won’t be long before the subject of Digital ID becomes centre stage issue the US – targeting Americans with smart phones. Digital ID in the US is sold as “more convenient, secure, privacy-protective, and usable than a physical ID”.

A centralised database built by Big Tech data-mining firm Palantir is already proving more than attractive to the Trump government – which would support a Digital ID framework, and, ICE deportations. As Vice observes, “In a CNBC interview at Davos, Palantir CEO Alex Karp admitted that his company “[finds] people in our country who are undocumented.” Source.

For Digital ID to be a success, biometrics are a key dataset. Currently, “Palantir gathers biometric and behavioral data for removal operations“. The function-creep of smart phones has ensured this dataset can be obtained with ease, “conveniently”, for biometrics capture is hardwired into the technology – as it is in fashionable smart “wearables”.

In the US, health secretary RFK Junior recommends that all citizens own wearables, “envisioning that every American will use them within four years“. Like smart phones, wearable devices are a desirable “data-mine” for the police, and governments – and such data would greatly assist Palantir. Wearables offer many opportunities for “tapping” rich sets of data.

The safety of sensitive, personal health data remains in question, however, when Big Tech is greedy for it and is prepared to breech data guidelines. Fines seem inconsequential. For example, facial recognition company Clearview AI “was fined just over €30M (close to $32M) by the Netherlands’ data protection authority in September 2024. In 2022 it was also fined the maximum possible (€20M or around $22M, based on its revenue at that time) a full three times by DPAs in Italy, Greece and France.” Source.

AI-driven smart technology: who wants your data?

Influencers who are outspoken on social issues, like RFKJnr and Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac (formerly of BLM), must see that smart technologies are invasive surveillance tools. However, RFKJnr believes that wearables are vital for health, which is questionable. Meanwhile, former Black Lives Matter (BLM) leader Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac helped empower a movement against colonialism in the 21st century yet the movement hasn’t spoken out against targeted smart phone surveillance, Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) Digital ID, or AI algorithms that can be inherently racist or disciminatory, (proven in study after study).

Failing to politically highlight the invasive data-driven surveillance underway courtesy of smart technology has consequences. A centralised database of Americans is now on the cards whether US citizens of any colour agree or not. Murals of 2020 supporting BLM are torn up and military installations are renamed in support of the Ku Klux Klan, as the Whitehouse makes deals with Big Tech and data-mining company, Palantir. Meanwhile, wearables for every American is promoted as a mantra.

There is a deep political desire to control the public’s data, and to keep mining it, intrusively though smart technologies – something the police are relying on more and more. The “terrorising” policing tactics and data-driven technologies being rolled out at demonstrations today take on a different dimension when we realise that the US and UK police alike are being trained in Israel, a country that reinforces apartheid through surveillance technologies, and is engaged in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

According to Amnesty International, “Public or private funds spent to train our domestic police in Israel should concern all of us.” Yet how many of us know that the police are adopting Israeli tactics? Consider also, that Israeli technologies like those made by Israeli spytech company Cellebrite – a digital forensics company that sells tools to access and extract data from smartphones – which has “contracts with the British police” may access “police and security surveillance data”, because they are part of the “The 2030 roadmap for UK-Israel bilateral relations” signed off by the British Government.

Concerningly, Cellebrite has a “disastrous human rights record” and assists repressive regimes. For example, in 2021, as the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre reported, “Evidence of surveillance technology being used by the Myanmar state [formerly Burma]…was revealed when it surfaced that the military used phone-hacking technology from Israeli spyware firm Cellebrite to arrest two Reuters journalists for investigating a military massacre of ten Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State in 2017.”

Cellebrite is interested in more than access to and data from smart phones, however. According to Cellebrite, “Digital wearables, such as Fitbit, record seemingly mundane activities — the number of steps we take in a day, our heartbeats, sleep schedules, locations, and distance traveled. To the trained eyes of criminal investigators, the data from wearables can be used to document our daily lives, right down to the last footstep and heartbeat. This data can prove invaluable when investigating crimes….extraction of data from wearable devices [has] led to arrests and prosecutions.”

Techno-anarchy in the UK

Clearly smart phones and wearables enable a society governed by Digital ID, underpinned by AI. It’s the direction the US, and UK, is headed, with the tragedy of racial unrest continuing, driven by technology that promotes over-policing and racially biased targeting.

In the UK as in the US, Palantir are at the centre of data-mining activities. According to Liberty, the “…controversial US spy tech firm [Palantir] has landed a contract with UK police to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information.”

In the UK, Digital ID is increasingly in the news. As the political dimensions around it are comparable with those of the US in so many ways, they deserve our attention.

The UK government launched “Gov.uk Wallet, a digital identity system that will consolidate government-issued credentials into a centralized mobile application. The initiative marks a significant advancement in the UK’s broader digitization strategy, following the country’s recent engagement with private sector stakeholders on digital identity solutions…The technical implementation will use facial recognition capabilities available on most contemporary smartphones for identity verification.” This offers clues as to how the UK’s vision of Digital ID will look.

The Digital ID initiative progresses as racial unrest in the form of Gaza protests and continuing immigration-related “troubles” spark police controntations where facial recognition technologies (FRTs) and smart phone surveillance are hastily rushed out (without ethical regulations) and serve to deter public demonstrations and “dissent”.

Regarding the Gaza demonstrations, these events are democratic rights that communicate to us all how unpopular Israel’s “genocidal” war is, and also show us that predominantly in the media, protesting against the killing of Palestinians and waving their flags in demonstrations is being sold as “anti-Israel” as if that type of protesting were “antisemitic”. UK Foreign Office “staff officials [questioning] the UK’s continued arms sales and what they called a “stark… disregard for international law” by Israel,” have been warned that they should consider resigning if they “disagree” over Gaza.

Citizens opposing Israel’s “genocide” can be labelled antisemitic for expressing alarm, or demonstrating – though when 100,000 Israelis take to the streets to oppose the war, the popular media either has no name for it, or avoids highlighting it. “Antisemitism” describes “bigotry, prejudice or discrimination against Jews“. “Bigotry, prejudice or discrimination against Palestinians” who are also “semitic” people is defended by the British State. In Israel the oppression of Palestinians has been progressed over decades of the authorities collecting biometric data on Palestinians (and even Jews) to control both populations, helped by growing smart phone use, and the rise of facial recognition technologies being developed in Israel.

Britcard: for silencing voices?

In the UK a Digital ID could equally be employed to silence criticism to the government line. “Government officials have suggested that digital IDs could be linked to facial recognition technology and biometric data, creating a system that closely monitors every citizen’s movements and interactions.”

In the context of this “autocratic” UK government stance, where political divides arise over Israel/Gaza and immigration-fuelled controversies, we’re seeing a biometric Digital ID emerge with the proposition of “Britcard”.

It is a proposition progressing from a speculative and “voluntary” status towards being pushed as mandatory – on the back of Britain’s infamous “Immigration” and protesting problems.

Immigration problems in the UK have fuelled protests and dissatisifaction for some time – but only after protests against wars (that have been causing the refugee crisis) failed, falling on the deaf ears of governments determined to support or wage them. Deterring protest with AI’s assistance has since become a priority of governments and the police. Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch (BBW), believes “…AI surveillance turns members of the public into walking ID cards, is dangerously inaccurate and has no explicit legal basis in the UK.” BBW found that “Over 60% of UK residents are concerned about the use of facial recognition in public spaces.”

Britcard should be viewed as an extension of this desire to control, for who would protest if their data could instantly be assigned to a “watch list” courtesy of an AI driven app and deprive one of essential services? It is an existential threat, along with the growing arsenal of FRTs and Drones to support the program.

“Britcard”, is presented as a proposition for a national Digital ID, and is being advertised a solution for “immigration out of control” though deserves closer scrutiny. As CCN reports, Britcard is touted as a way to “help Britain control illegal migration and secure its borders.”

“What else could Britcard be used for?” is a question everyone should be asking. What about backing a national conscription program? National ID cards introduced in 1939 assisted in conscription – the last time a mandatory ID system was introduced in the UK. Could that happen with Digital IDs? Its happening in Europe which seeks to conscript 300,000 troops as a deterrent to Russia.

Beyond the obvious and advertised

Talk of resuming UK conscription was in the air recently, concerning Vladimir Putin who is seen as a threat because “Britain sees its number of soldiers dwindling“. Europe also appears to be preparing populations for conflict aimed at Putin.

However, according to inews.co.uk, “Downing Street has dismissed a warning from the head of the British Army that members of the public could be called up to fight in the event of a war with Russia.” Governments have been known to U-turn. The UK government seems desperate to implement national Digital ID. Any war might help achieve that, from the “immigation war” to the world war three scenario suggested by the spectre of Putin.

War is spoken of a lot today, though some seek to create it casually through their influence. Big Tech attempted to fan the flames of immigration discontent in the guise of Elon Musk, partner in the techno-eugenecist rebrand of politics under President Donald Trump who is deliberately engineering a racially tense atmosphere in the US, in every way possible (while Elon promotes the idea of “Smart-people” enhanced by smart technology). “Sir Keir Starmer [became] embroiled in a war of words with Elon Musk, after the tech billionaire suggested that “civil war is inevitable” following violent unrest in the UK”, as the BBC reported in 2024.

Britcard remains a politically divisive “us and them” type of proposition. CITIZENS vs IMMIGRATION is currently the main narrative to convince people to accept a life where digital proof of ID permits access to private and public sector services digitally. Fear and “othering” are the UK government’s usual tried and tested ways of introducing more surveillance on the population, and biased AI algorithms ensure that will continue be the case.

No doubt “othering” comes into play in conscription as well, as it did in the UK in 1939 when ID Cards were forced on the population, and resisting conscription was frowned upon. In a similar way, Digital ID could be used as a coercive tool for purposes beyond the obvious and advertised, empowering governments in gaining the compliance of citizens for a multiplicity of political goals.

The UK and US governments are funding energy guzzling data centres and utilise Real Time Crime Centres (RTCC) (spearheaded by Fusus “the most widely used and trusted real-time crime center platform in US public safety”). Here police use all the latest bells and whistles of surveillance technology and data analytics, so we are seeing the foundations of a Digital ID being built.

The RTCC system brings together the smart technology platforms of Big Tech to policing to carry out the State’s divide and rule political and strategic tactics on society. Digital ID will be a critical data-driven tool linking to these systems. According to breechmedia, “While creating the centres, police forces have sought out advice and technology from major corporations like Motorola, IBM, and Palantir, many with controversial ties to military and spy agencies.”

The UK’s future – who is allowed to join it?

We’re at the threshold of the QR code society, which is a surveillance economy – where you are the product, giving your profitable data through every digital transaction with a smart phone Digital ID app. Like a product on a shelf, a human acquires an ID number and barcode (QR code), to be tracked anywhere like a pet or a prisoner with a GPS bracelet. Wearables can only assist in the “progressive” Digital ID world.

A think tank closely aligned with the government called Labour Together believes that “For a progressive society to work, it needs to be able to collectively agree who is allowed to join it. Because it will exclude those who cannot join it, it needs to give its members proof that they belong.” This is the logic behind the UK’s Digital ID scheme “Britcard”.

According to The Week, “Number 10 appears to be…rolling out [the] voluntary scheme that could become mandatory at a future date. Labour Together has estimated the BritCard system would cost up to £400 million to build and around £10 million a year to administer as a free-to-use app.”

State in a Smart Phone

A Digital ID is already being used in the UK-backed Ukraine as the country endeavours to achieve a state of technological supremacy, and guard against Russia. A Digital ID backed by a government app drives the Ukraine into deeper autocracy, and an “us and them” world. The “State in a Smartphone” project handled by the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation passed a Digital ID law and now all authorities and private business are equipped “to be able to scan the relevant QR-code of the New Digital IDs” to verify identities.

Ukraine, by adopting Digital ID places itself on a par with other repressive regimes that have imposed the same with the aid of profit hungry Big Tech companies like Palantir. “Currently, Diia, the national government’s app which is used by over 20 million people.

Today, nearly all of Kyiv’s adult population relies on the apps”. This ensures complete digital dependency, meaning that with immediacy, access to healthcare, resources, and vital services can be refused and withheld, on the basis of the political control of a person’s data. Victoria Itskovych, Chief Information Officer of Kyiv City (CIO) said: “For any emergency – be it floods, earthquakes, or pandemics –…cities need a trusted channel of communication that cannot be hijacked to spread fear and panic.” Clearly only the voice of the State matters, when State-driven apps come into town.

Digital ID, for the Ukraine, establishes a questionable form of technology for a questionable “democracy” that has faced massive protests over government corruption, and brought “draconian” anti-protest laws that curb protest rights, free speech and NGO involvement in these processes. Deterring protest is also an agenda in the UK and US, today, with governments employing Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) and social media surveillance to build watch lists and target protesters or “dissidents” – a police state gaining power.

Can a Digital ID promote “Humanness”?

This interpenetrating Digital ID surveillance system, wherever it is implemented, UK or Ukraine, requires sustaining fast wireless networks (5G for example) and massively expanding data-centres, a drain on earth’s resources – fundamentally in the name of mass surveillance – and, it means sacrificing our freedom and “humanness” to “belong”, when our existence is digitally organised by AI algorithms.

Firmin DeBrabander, the Cambridge University Press author of Life after Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society, believes that, “In the digital net that envelops our everyday lives, it will become increasingly more difficult and rare to perform any task without revealing ourselves, and opening our lives to spying eyes. And our spies are not content to watch us from without; they will install sentinels in our very bodies, and monitor us from within.” Source.

This is the future being constructed. Digital ID is a political choice, and it advertises that a fascist surveillance state is the preferred existence, above all other possibilities. Where is that future going to lead us?

Moonshot R&D calls the intensely surveilled future we’re heading towards a new world of inspiration “where people, robots, and biological cyborgs collaborate and co-evolve”. It’s the so-called “fifth stage of human evolution”, a prospect Japan is embracing, where a “Super-smart” Society 5.0 (an agenda evolved since the advent of 5G in 2016) represents “a visionary roadmap for the future of human civilization”, as described by innovaromorir.com.

Sounds like the endgame of the “Great Reset” which advances the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and, dictates technological evolution. How does that work? Sociable.co asserts that, “…the unelected globalists at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are envisioning an “augmented society” ruled by digital identity and transhumanism via the Internet of Bodies….They want digital identity…embedded into every aspect of our lives — even under our skin…” where sensors on or inside the body “monitor, analyze, and even modify human bodies and behavior.”

Such views and observations no longer seem outlandish. Smart technology, and in particular wearables and implants, are posing many ethical questions, though Big Tech companies are banking on what Klaus Schwab calls “a fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological identities” while no ethical oversight can prevent any movement in that direction.

Put in this light, we can see how an acceptance of Digital ID is like throwing “humanness” onto the trash heap in favour of inhabiting a “post-human society” (discussed by the Global Posthuman Network) where people are, through new markets like smart dust and implants, technologically augemented (which in today’s parlance means people are being “progressive”).

People accepting of a Digital ID are trading any other alternative life for a digitally “remastered” and reinforced “self” (as populations under repressive regimes have discovered) consenting to centralised surveillance, and technologically targeted control over individuals, using health data (digital health), and mental health status or any other data of strategic value that can set limits and reinforce Big Tech monopolies and government policies.

Digital ID is not about setting anyone free, but nudging the population to a place where AI comes to dominate life more. Government has a revolving door with Big Tech companies which accelerates the pace of digital surveillance transformations, which are about implementing AI for profit and control.

AI and the lens of repression

Keir Starmer of the UK Labour government said, with AI “…there are huge opportunities and risks, and we need to marry the two…We need to push it through”. Today, the UK like everywhere we know, is a surveillance economy, being pushed through, which can be measured in the sheer density of data-collecting CCTV cameras alone which are, to be clear, a technology invented by the Nazi regime.

CCTV cameras are now enhanced by AI, and are the eyes of the AI-data-driven State today, using facial recognition and other algorithmic surveilance tools – biased towards destroying dissent and activism, while proving inherently “racist”.

Speaking out on the issue of AI’s racist interpretations and language models, Timnit Gebru was fired by Google in 2020. She had been “supporting rigorous research on AI ethics and algorithmic auditing” while the company romanced Black Lives Matter (BLM), Diversity politics, and Civil Rights to bask in “political correctness”, to promote products to a wider audience. This is a road that Big Tech in general has walked profitably, though now distances itself from as the political climate changes towards one of technologically assisted intolerance, a climate which Big Tech arguably now exploits, and assists.

Google’s credibility to “Do No Evil” has waned immensely with the development of Project Nimbus, which is enabling data-driven AI surveillance for Israel. As Middle East Monitor explains, “Beyond the sphere of social media, Google and Amazon’s collaboration with the Israeli military under Project Nimbus casts an even darker shadow over the tech industry’s role in this conflict [the war in Gaza]. The $1.2 billion cloud computing contract…provides critical infrastructure to power Israel’s AI-driven Lavender and Gospel targeting systems – systems that are directly linked to the mass civilian casualties in Gaza [and use facial recognition].” It’s a lesson for us all, especially when it is clear that Israel has a grip on our police and governments, and seeks to influence strategies and technologies.

Israel’s grip on Western police forces

In April 2025, aoav.org.uk reported that “In a delayed response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV)”, Essex Police in the UK “…refused to confirm or deny whether any of their officers have met with representatives from Corsight AI, a controversial Israeli facial recognition technology company whose software has reportedly been used in IDF military operations in Gaza….a practice that human rights organisations have condemned as constituting “automated apartheid”.

This lack of transparency is similar to the US government refusing to be open about its facial recognition agenda, a policy of secrecy that raises concerns. The UK appears reliant on intrusive surveillance tactics and tools from Israel. It is worth asking, to what extent?

What power do Israeli tech firms have over police in the UK?

According to Inside Telecom, “Over 500 Israeli tech and non-tech companies operate in the United Kingdom (UK), and the UK Israel Tech Hub is located within the British Embassy in Israel…This raises multiple questions about the relationship between the UK and Israel. The main aim of the organization is to secure private and public sector contracts for Israeli technology companies in the UK. Earlier reports from Palestine have also suggested that several Israeli tech firms act as fronts for Zionist intelligence agencies.”

Further, “…NICE Systems, [is] another Israeli company with a contract with the British police to handle parts of their investigations. NICE Systems also holds a contract in Scotland for facial recognition in CCTV.”

A freedom of information request asking “Has the Met Police run training or exchange programmes with Israel’s police or military from 2020 to present?” received the following reply from the government:

“Confirming or denying that…information is held relating to the types of training, meetings and exchange programmes provided to other countries between The Metropolitan Police Service and the Israeli Police, Israeli Civil Administration or Israeli Defence Forces between 2014-present, would provide terrorists with a greater understanding of where specific training and exchange programmes are provided…In a partial answer to your first and third answer, On Wednesday 18 May 2022, the Met’s Central East Command Unit hosted an Israeli police delegation.”

Further information reveals that “The purpose of the visit from the Israeli Police delegation was so they could learn from the MPS about how we work with communities…Policing authorities rely on international co-operation when combatting crime, particularly that which is cross-border in scope.” A meeting was held at Stoke Newington Police Station. An official redacted PDF disclosed an agenda concerning the policing of “Faith and Hate Crime” and “Policing COVID” and centred on “Community Key stakeholders and partners”. Stoke Newington (an area in the northwest part of the London Borough of Hackney) has a high white demographic with black and other ethnic minorities, and a history of police brutality against minorities, suspicious deaths, and alleged police cover-ups. “Stoke Newington Police Station in Hackney, east London, was infamous in the 1980s and 1990s for police corruption and racism,..” according to Socialist Worker in a very revealing article where the behaviour London police forces echoes violent law enforcement tactics of Israel that for years has brutalised Jews and Palestinians.

Further involvements with Israel have been disclosed by aoav.org.uk. “The UK government has confirmed it is actively training Israeli soldiers on British soil…[casting] fresh light on Britain’s ongoing military relationship with Israel amid continued conflict in Gaza and military escalation in southern Lebanon….Dr Iain Overton, Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), said: “The UK’s training of Israeli forces during a period of alleged war crimes raises serious questions of moral complicity. The British public deserves transparency when our armed forces are directly engaged with a military accused of violations that have left thousands of civilians dead.”

Other links to Israel influencing UK police are reflected in a report by Global Research, concerning the policing of 7/7 bombings in London, which can be read here.

What power do Israeli tech firms have over police in the US?

According to Forbes, “If you’re in New York City today, there’s a very good chance your face will be captured by surveillance cameras and run through facial recognition software. If you’re in a predominantly Black, Asian or Hispanic community in New York City, that chance is even greater.” Forbes also highlights “…the NYPD’s purchase of more than $277 million in secret surveillance equipment that had previously been hidden from the public.” According to incarcernation.com, since 2012, the NYPD has a “strategic partnership” with Israel, “…focused on counterterrorism, urban warfare, and crowd control.”

truthlytics.com goes further, “The NYPD, one of the largest and most well-funded police departments in the world, has long faced criticism for its use of excessive force and discriminatory policing, particularly in communities of color. These patterns of behavior, critics argue, echo the tactics used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the occupied West Bank and Gaza—ranging from mass surveillance to brutal crowd control techniques.”

NYPD: employing Israeli technologies and approaches

In the US, policing approaches are influenced by Israel. We may recall that Israel’s NICE Systems has a contract with the British police to handle parts of their investigations and holds a contract in Scotland for facial recognition in CCTV. Supply Chain Market in 2007 reported that “NICE Systems Ltd., the global provider of advanced solutions that enable organizations to extract Insight from Interactions to drive performance, recently announced that it has won a $9M contract from the City of New York (NYC), on behalf of the New York Police Department (NYPD) for NICE Inform, multimedia incident information management solution for its next generation 9-1-1 emergency call centers…NICE Inform will enable the City to capture, manage, analyze and reconstruct multimedia incidents.”

According to haaretz.com, in 2023, “New York City Mayor Eric Adams lauded security technology developed by Israel Police…vowing to bring Israeli tech to the New York Police Department.” moguldom.com reported in 2022 that, “Crime has increased by 23.5 percent in New York City during New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ first year in office, and the former cop-turned-mayor — a fan of facial recognition technology — is promising to implement new policing technology that he said more accurately identifies common criminal patterns and develops profiles of perpetrators….Adams has promoted the use of cameras and championed facial recognition devices…“

Adams said in an interview with Politico. “…Big Brother is protecting you.” Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said, “The NYPD has a decade-long history of abusing its surveillance operations to target Black New Yorkers, Muslim New Yorkers, political protests and every aspect of dissent,” Cahn said. “These are technologies that would be chilling in anyone’s hands. But to give an agency with such a horrifying record of surveillance abuse even more power, at a time when they face dwindling oversight, is a recipe for disaster.” Source.

Howard syndrome and rejection of technological tyranny

It is interesting to hear a Jewish perspective concerning the brutality of Israel’s regime (now influencing our governments and police). In Israel as any society, there are those who are authoritarian and corrupt, and those who want peace and to denounce tyranny. The Israeli historian Shlomo Sand asks, “Is not the very fact of defining oneself as a Jew within the State of Israel an act of affiliation to a privileged caste which creates intolerable injustices around itself?” Source.

Sand’s observation of a “priveleged caste” that “creates intolerable injustices around itself” evokes the actions of our governments too, which are always employing deeper surveillance and eroding human rights, which can lead to brutality and racism.

In the UK, we are experiencing technological authoritarianism through the new Labour Party. It is almost a replay of the authoritarian zeal exhibited by the UK’s Home Office under Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard, an authoritarian figure who imposed expensive CCTV installations all over the UK, pursued a National ID card scheme, and established controversial DNA databases in the 1990’s.

Britain, under successive Labour governments, interestingly, has inherited that “vision”, which takes on a notable complexion through Starmer’s “vision” of “Putting AI into the veins of Britain“. What did Howard do that Starmer continues to ardently pursue? He pursues a CCTV, ID-based police state.

Howard believed in cutting edge CCTV surveillance technology, operating with racial biases, at the expense of eroding privacy and human rights for society at large, reinforcing the vulnerabilities of minorities in the process. He used technology as a solution, without tackling first the underlying problems influencing crime, like rising unemployment. Technology seemed to be the priority, as now.

Howard established, while neglectful of privacy concerns and consequences for human rights, an intrusive police state in the midst of soaring unemployment and social unrest, which spied on people and held as much information on guilty and innocent alike. Howard, like many progressive politicians and futurists felt human rights policies, an obstacle to his ideals.

Howard felt that the Human Rights Act (which passed in UK law in 1998) and the the Regulations of Investigating Power Act (RIPA) of 2000, (affecting powers of surveillance and communications interception) placed “inhibitions on the ability of the police to tackle crime effectively” and thought adjustments should be made.

The Home Secretary didn’t entirely get his own way, and some of his policies were successfully legally challenged by the public. An ID card was passionately advocated by Howard, though despite his campaigning, became voluntary, not mandatory.

National ID had faced immense public resistance (a wartime card was abolished in 1952). CCN reports that “In the past, when the government tried to centralize the U.K.’s national identity system, it was met with stiff opposition.” From 2006 to 2010 as more mandatory ID card schemes were being planned, thankfully, public resistance stopped them.

Resurfacing, over and over

The ID card idea constantly resurfaces. The government has been keen to calm fears concerning the Digital ID agenda. According to www.gov.uk, “No, there are no plans to introduce national digital ID cards…Using a digital identity will be voluntary. People will be in control of their data and who it is shared with…People will still be able to prove their identity using physical documents if they choose.”

However, according to enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk, “On 19 June [2025], the Data (Use and Access) Act received Royal Assent. As well as putting the National Underground Asset Register on a statutory footing and supporting the future of smart data schemes…The new UK legislation formalises the system that is currently operating as a pilot. This will pave the way for trusted digital identities to be used in more places.” According to thinkdigitalpartners.com, “and has set digital ID as a key focus area for 2024. It will be a critical part of the UK’s national infrastructure.”

Labour Together have stated, Britcard “could lay the foundations for a fully-functioning digital identity system…building on the existing One Login and Gov.UK Wallet. Our polling suggests it would be immensely popular; around 80% of the public support use of digital identity for a range of use cases.” The aim is to “…rebrand the Gov.UK App and Gov.UK Wallet as the “BritCard app””. That is, to make Britcard from an existing placeholder entity, the Gov.UK App and Gov.UK Wallet being the “Trojan Horse” that was always meant to bring in a mandatory Digital ID.

Criticism

“Britcard”, was criticised by David Frost (who served as a Minister of State at the Cabinet Office between March and December 2021) who believes, “A normal ID card, bad as it is, is proof of your identity and status. A digital ID is also an instrument of control – because it can shape-shift according to the government’s wishes. That’s why introducing digital ID is to cross a Rubicon. It changes forever the relationship between government and citizen….Think back.

Have we forgotten the lessons of the pandemic, when we all had to have proof of our Covid test status on our phone before we could go certain places or access certain buildings? Briefly, at the end of 2021 – the issue that finally forced me to resign from the Cabinet – we introduced a “vaccine passport” system, which actually denied you access to certain environments unless you had a full vaccination record. This was all done via an app – in effect a digital ID. The government could change the conditions at will and you had no choice but to comply.”

Frost has a point, and as the World Health Organisation and other “Stakeholders” in the smart future relish achieving more gains with more powers, from mining our data, including the police and governments dismissive of concerns over AI ethics and the insecurity of our data.

A stake in the heart of freedom and privacy

People must not forget how controlling governments can be, obsessively, ideologically. With xenophobic overtones, Britcard has been sold in the UK on the basis of an “us and them” proposition, reinforcing “discrimination” to help “sort out” a persistent problem, namely the UK’s problematic Immigration crisis, that feasibly could have been prevented or managed in other ways beyond the scope of a “Digital ID solution”. Certainly, all the CCTV money could buy wasn’t enough.

“Today, police surveillance cameras disproportionately installed in Black and Brown neighborhoods [in the US] keep a constant watch” just as do they in the UK. According to National News, the “United Kingdom has the dubious honour of having the most CCTV cameras per head of any country in the world; the British Security Industry Authority has claimed that there is one camera for every 11-14 people.”

According to Liberty, the UK is “most intrusive mass surveillance regime of any democratic country.” With smart phones requiring mandatory status to make a national, mandatory Digital ID function, one smart phone to every person linking them to their digital self, would spell a definitive blow against freedom.

Big Tech and countless other corporate entities want your data, more of it than you can imagine, and Digital ID would serve it up without any problems through every QR code scanned to prove you exist. This enhanced data grab will not solve immigration and will more likely exclude large swathes of the population who rightfully live here, as happens in repressive regimes where any individual, or minority, suspected of dissent or any not acting as the government demands can be digitally disempowered, or, disappeared.

As salzburgglobal.org observes, “…the developing world has seen the rise of….national digital identity systems, promoted by the World Bank…not enough is done to shield privacy, embed protection safeguards…The implementation of Digital ID is a high risk territory for human rights.” This article lists some excellent cases that describe why. It covers developing countries and Digital ID issues, but could the same “issues” happen in the UK? Or US?

Most likely, they will. Because, “Digital IDs, especially those that integrate biometric data, can be used to track individuals’ movements, purchases, and online activities without their knowledge or consent. Governments may also unduly target specific individuals, using Digital ID blockage or other methods as a weapon against political opponents or vulnerable groups such as migrants.” We know this is happening already.

Collecting information without limits

As the UK government becomes increasingly autocratic and presents technology as the solution for everything, UK citizens should thoroughly question the motivations behind any Digital ID proposition, especially as the government goes to great lengths to erode data privacy, and becomes more repressive.

The UK now has the “Snooper’s Charter” to assist in massive datamining. As Liberty asserts, the Snooper’s Charter allows “State authorities to collect information about everything we do and say online and order private companies to store it…[with] wide-ranging powers to scoop up and store all of our emails, texts, calls, location data and internet history. They can also hack into our phones and computers and create large ‘personal datasets’ on us – all without needing to suspect us of any criminal wrongdoing.” It has many implications for UK citizens, leaving nothing private.

A Digital ID system can only add to this concerted effort for government and corporate stakeholders to control and own data on the population. Clearly this goes well beyond any Immigration policies and drives a stake into the heart of freedom and privacy for all.

That our governments and police enlist the tactical help of Israel (viewed by many as an ideological, repressive regime) has been revealed and can’t be left out of the current political technological situation in which we find ourselves.

The Jewish historian Schlomo Sand is critical of that regime. Of it, he says Zionism, “…was an ideology deeply rooted in a European vision of the nation-state, one which had a racial dimension, required a demographic majority and was permeated by European colonialism and orientalist thinking.”

Arguably, Israel is marred by exlusionist politics, with colonialist baggage. Exclusionist politics reinforce the “digital colonialism” at work in Israel and across the world, which includes campaigns involving smart technologies and biometrics databases, moving towards achieving Digital ID. Politicians and the media so often highlighting border control and other immigration issues seek to drive support of Digital ID, often in divisive language. Keir Starmer, for instance, in relation to immigration issues warned of an “island of strangers“.

Digital ID is being implemented at scale in the EU “mandating compliance from Big Tech and member countries in supporting the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet”) Source. “Many countries have already announced wallet project and pilots, and some have even rolled out production digital ID wallets at population scale.” Source.

Digital IDs can bring many risks worth noting. According to Reclaim the Net, “…these IDs are susceptible to hacking and identity theft, placing individuals at risk of financial and reputation damage. Often, citizens are coerced into participating without genuine consent, and the lack of transparency and oversight in these systems increases the risk of misuse.”

Digital colonialism

Michael Kwet, observing the strategies of domination waged through digital technologies, states, “…just as they did in 20th-century South Africa, today’s largest U.S.-based technology corporations see an opportunity to profit from Israeli apartheid—a by-product of U.S.-driven digital colonialism.”

Author Renata Avila, also recognises that we are living in times of “digital colonialism” “referring to the deployment of imperial power over a vast number of people, which takes the form of rules, designs, languages, cultures and belief systems serving the interests of dominant powers. In the past, empires expanded their power through the control of critical assets, from trade routes to precious metals.”

Big Tech has long been under scrutiny over its “conflict minerals” supply chains from oppressed, developing colonies in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and Angola. Big Tech companies have regularly been accused of complicity in slavery and abuse of ethnic labour forces, as well as fuelling conflict, and assisting repressive regimes. This represents racial abuse in order to achieve infrastructure targets, and technological supremacy in global geopolitics.

Author Renata Avila, asserts that, “Today, it is not states but technology empires that dominate the world through the control of critical digital infrastructures, data and the ownership of computational power. By collecting the personal data of citizens on a scale unprecedented in human history, companies can serve as conduits of misinformation campaigns that can alter the flow of global geopolitics and even change the outcome of elections.”

According to www.europeandatajournalism.eu, “Far from the free and open platforms they were upon their inception, Big Tech companies and social networks have risen to an unprecedented level of power from which they play an active role in politics through vested financial and political motives, exerting influence through algorithmic alterations, subjective censorship and calls to action on their platforms.”

For control of everyone’s data

The “….emerging trend of data colonialism (Couldry & Mejias, 2019) is of critical importance given the fundamental reliance of AI technologies on data, and because organizations gain access to, control data, and develop algorithms in ways which not only emphasize the digital divide but increase data inequality (Zheng & Walsham, 2021). Source.

“Data colonialism” according to Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry in their book Data Grab is “the continuation of colonialism’s inherited inequalities and colonialism’s acquisition of new tools that potentially affects human life in radically new ways…” This “toolset” which exploits data-driven surveillance enables the companies to “explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate.” As lawfaremedia.org highlights from Mejias and Couldry’s research, data colonialism facilitates “the [harmful] classification of people into disadvantageous categories”.

Today, the UK government is arguably advancing data colonialism’s harms by pushing ahead with a Digital ID “with major financial and tech companies, government agencies and regulators and the likes of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, among the prominent forces behind the push…”, according to Reclaim The Net.

The UK government sees digital identity as “one of the cornerstones of a modern digital economy [a surveillance economy]” and seeks to promote adoption of “these secure and trusted [data-mining] technologies.” Digital ID remains a controversial idea, for many reasons. As Rebecca Vincent of Big Brother Watch points out, “The debate about digital ID isn’t really about immigration; it’s about access to, and control of everyone’s data.” Source.

Case of digitally-assisted genocide

We know now that the UK’s ID initiative is called “Britcard”. Marketing an ID system to the public has always been a challenge of governments, and in recent times the public has become divided over immigration which relates to UK government inolvement in more overseas war efforts (colonialism) whicle the public reaps the refugee crisis (fuelling data-driven suerveillance at home).

With datamining becoming so expansive and intrusive, and, with governments and other agencies like the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Big Tech pushing for Digital IDs in the UK (which can link together numerous datasets including biometric data), are any of these corporate political actors really acting in our best interests, and, if not, are they able to be held legally accountable if found aiding and abetting genocide, through abuse of our data, for example? Is a Big Tech company able to be held accountable if discovered complicit in the killing of citizens?

You might be shocked to know the answer…

Michael J. Kelly, Professor of Law at Creighton University School of Law states in “Prosecuting Corporations for Genocide”, that, “While corporations can realize enormous profits from such complicity [in genocide], they are immune from international prosecution in The Hague…As key participants in the world economy, corporations have been accorded tremendous latitude and granted extensive rights…If a state or a person commits genocide, they are punished. International law demands such. But corporate actors have successfully avoided this through an array of legal arguments…”



Kelly makes it clear that, “while multinational corporations have been complicit in genocides over many years, none have been prosecuted.” Source.

Today Big Tech companies, assisted by US and UK support, together are an asset to Israel supplying high-tech data driven systems and weapons. International condemnation grows over what is clearly a case of AI fuelled, biometrical oriented techno-genocide against the Palestinian people – demonstrating that this could, and most likely will, happen again.

There is plenty of historical precedence for utmost caution regarding National ID programs, and especially regarding trusting Big Tech with any data on the population.

Blast from the past

According to the British Medical Journal, “Eugenics is too frequently overlooked in histories of both the United States and Europe, even though the story is a fascinating and important one.” Social changes brought about by Eugenics and “Big Tech” in the US fascinated the Nazi regime which aquired IBM’s Hollerith Machines, (punch card computer systems) being used in America (which gave the US government important population data and assisted in evolving “the quantified self” (a being defined by computers and collected data)).

Collecting population data with Hollerith Machines, the US of the 1930s was steeped in eugenics (a “racist” pseudo-science). At this time Americans performed the “Bellamy salute” that inspired the Nazi salute, and sought to oppress black communities, (leading to discrimination and sterilisation programs inflicted on Blacks and minorities which ultimately gave rise to pushback and the civil rights movement years after the Second World War).

With IBM’s assistance, the fascist government of Nazi Germany exploited stratified datasets on the public sorting people into groups. According to historian Edwin Black, “IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.”

In Nazi Germany, segments of the populace simply had no right to live and were considered by the eugenicist technocracy as “life unworthy of life”. Nazism fuelled social divides, fanned flames of hate, and facilitated euthanasia programs like Aktion T4, organised round-ups of targeted populations, and “discretely” sterilising selected groups. All was the result of enforced structural racism by “supremacists” using eugenics and technology hand in hand to re-organise society along technocratic lines – with much of it financed by US corporations. Nothing has changed, today Big Tech still assists and profits from apartheid regimes and exploiting data in ways that create harmful discrimination, which conforms with a technocratic, eugenicist outlook.

Dehumanisation into data points

We may remember the Rwandan genocide, characterised by the use of data to eliminate people. As KTPress reports, Rwanda saw genocide facilitated by National ID data. Despite the “hard lesson”, today, as reported by Biometric Update, “The government of Rwanda is investing 12.2 billion Rwandan francs (approximately US$8.5 million) in the upcoming 2025-2026 fiscal year to advance the rollout of the nation’s digital identity program, including fingerprint and iris biometrics enrollment.” KTPress reports that, “At the World Economic Forum, Minister Ingabire announced that Rwanda expects AI to contribute up to 6% of GDP in the near future.” Turning people into data points is the future, in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), a system connecting everyone to an infrastructure of smart technology.

Anasuya Sengupta, Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy and co-director and co-founder of “Whose Knowledge?” addressing issues of power, privilege, and accessibility, states that, “…the Internet not only helps to promote solidarity and connect people in different places, but also reinforces existing injustice, discrimination, and violence. Technology and algorithms are not neutral, they are political. Technology follows a certain architecture, which is why it reinforces discrimination and prejudice – depending on who designs it…the majority of the world is not represented on the Internet…People have turned from consumers into data points – and therefore into products.”

Ulises A. Mejias and Professor Nick Couldry from the State University of New York in their book “Data Grab” show that little has really changed since the Nazis or Rwandan governments exploited machine data, as technological empires utlising the IoT “…explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate”. In an interview with the London School of Economics (LSE) Couldry explained that, “human experience, potentially every layer and aspect of it, is becoming the target of profitable extraction.”

Demand the end of Digital ID

From the UK to Ukraine, and from the past to the present, we can see what is becoming of our world. Through intrusive forms of smart surveillance allied to military-style policing, the streets of some cities are becoming technological, data-gathering warzones.

In this authoritarian atmosphere, of technological “supremacism” smart phones – as demanded by industry and governments, for Digital ID-based digital transformations – are gravitating towards becoming mandatory devices. This is to guarantee one’s very existence, and, extract the profitability of one’s identity, with AI algorithms that contain uncomfortable biases and are known to be highly discriminatory.

This trajectory, devoid of any ethical oversight, promotes the predatory data-mining environment of the Big Tech companies and other corporate “stakeholders” exploiting the unfettered digital monitoring of everyone’s lives. This is life in a “surveillance economy” powered by “Digital Colonialism” – which operates to the benefit of dominant powers while limiting individual autonomy.

This AI-driven digital colonialism amounts to unprecedented surveillance of the population, or “datafication” driven by profit, where corporations and governments claim ownership of data generated by individuals. Nobody owns their data, or knows for sure how it may ultimately affect their lives.

As I said at the start, the prospect of a national Digital ID should amplify myriad questions, highlighting, in addition to any notions of convenience, the inescapable darker sides, that we dismiss at our peril.

With wireless radiation still posing a threat to black and white communities alike – in terms of posing a health risk – as well as being the means by which data is conveyed to empower the AI-surveillance society we never wanted, we have every reason to challenge the erosion of our rights and demand the end of Digital ID which, if made mandatory, brings huge potential to disempower more of our freedoms, choices, and human rights, including activism and protest itself, which will push us further into darkness.

For a two part Persian translation of this blog see, Part 1 and Part 2, courtesy of Farhad Khelghati from Iran,

In a thought-provoking essay, The Simple Story of Civilization, author Tom Murphy condenses the approximately 2.5 million years we humans have been here on Earth into an average life span of 75 years. In this model, the first 70 years represent the period during which different species of humans evolved. The last five years correlate to the age of Homo Sapiens (starting c. 200,000 years ago) where we lived and evolved in a kind of ecological homeostasis with the rest of the natural world. 

The last 15 weeks (beginning c.10,000 years ago real time) represents the beginnings of agriculture where we set ourselves apart from, and above the rest of the natural world, and when we began to view Earth as a mere repository of resources for human endeavors. With the advent of agriculture came cities, property, surplus, storage, enslavement of both animals and humans­, armies, and hierarchy. 

In the last 36 hours, a mere blip in time, we dialed things up with the discovery of fossil fuels imagining we now had unlimited powers and could manifest all manner of creature comforts. 

The remaining 12 hours (representing the last 50 years in real time) bring us to the present day of “global ecological devastation” in Murphy’s own words.

Most recently, with the exponential proliferation of technology and AI, our hubristic notions of super-power have been amplified adding fuel to the already expansionary fires of unchecked growth and resource extraction. 

Implications of the technological Tsunami for 21^st century warfighting

War too has morphed over time from person-to-person combat, perhaps atop horses or on war elephants, to the current battlefield of AI-controlled systems that weave together Earth, sea, air, space, and cyber space. Invisible electromagnetic battles now take place through the airwaves, with cyber warfare a click away. Remote-controlled nuclear warheads boast speeds up to 20 times that of sound, and nuclear Armageddon is precariously locked in a global stalemate of mutually assured destruction – which, according to the Doomsday Clock, is currently 90 seconds before midnight.

The world’s military is a major contributor to our global ecological devastation. In 2022 it accounted for an estimated 5.5% of global CO2 emissions, although likely that figure is higher as militaries are quite secretive and not required to report emissions. The US military alone is the world’s largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons “…belching out more emissions than industrialised nations like Portugal and Denmark” in the words of Lorraine Mallinder from Aljazeera. 

Mallinder goes on to say that military expansion has also impacted air quality, ecosystems, biodiversity, and the health of people living near bases. 

Outer space has become pivotal for warfighting and is now being decked out with thousands of satellites to weave together, coordinate, and manage the deluge of data flowing in from all branches of the military as well as from civilian sources. 

Transmitters include cell towers, satellites, underwater sensors, surveillance cameras, cell phones, smart cities, facial recognition technology and other biometric markers, robots, the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) consisting of networked helmets, combat gear and other wearables, etc. 

AI algorithms sort through and make sense of these vast streams of data and provide actionable items to militaries. 

In addition, electromagnetic radiation has significantly upped the ante in three new domains of warfighting: 

• Cyber Warfare – attacks on computer systems and connected infrastructure 
• Electronic Warfare – battles in the electromagnetic spectrum; electromagnetic pulse attacks potentially downing a nations entire electrical grid; or directed energy weapons used to fry components. 
• Cognitive Warfare – manipulation of how people think, feel, and act. 

Other means of expansion being used to recklessly hurtle us all from 5G to 6G, FutureG, and beyond include: 

• Dual use technology where militaries join forces with industry to speed innovation.
• Proliferation – whereby satellites and other systems scale to thousands or tens of thousands, so the loss of a few won’t affect the overall viability of the system. 
• Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) where warfighting is increasingly handed over to AI-controlled weapons and systems that make decisions at blistering speeds, while relegating humans to mere bystanders attempting to stay in the loop if at all possible. 

With the US and China vying for first mover advantage, over seventy countries sporting government space agencies, and many satellite programs springing up from the private sector as well, we are fast depleting Earth’s “resources,” turbo-charging warfighting, while clogging up the Heavens with ever more debris

Reflections

If the notion of digital technology as a testament to human ingenuity seems a bit grim, and techno-optimism – technology’s power to “save mankind” – is beginning to sound lame…. well, you’re not alone. Many of us are grieving deeply as we bear witness to the harms being inflicted on all Life.  

Personally, I find some solace and inspiration in the following phrase from the Hebrew blessing recited after a meal: V’achalta, v’savata, ou v’rachta – And you shall eat, and be satiated, and you shall bless. 

And you shall eat – in Hebrew v-achalta – refers to more than just consuming food. It means taking in or experiencing something from “outside” of ourselves and allowing it to inform or transform us as it is “digested” into our mind, heart, and body – e.g., smelling a flower, listening to a song, or navigating a life challenge.

And you shall be satiated – v’savata – refers to the sweet point of satiation where we have just enough but not one drop too much. When we ingest food deplete of nutrients or partake of experiences devoid of meaning, we are left feeling unsatisfied and prone to over consume. But when we partake of the substance of real life – not the illusory and frivolous distractions of for-sale and for-profit substitutes – then enough is truly and generously enough.

Ou’verachta — and you shall bless. We lend our unique signature to what we “consume” as we send it back out into the world via our thoughts, intentions, words, and deeds – hopefully, in the form of blessings to all living beings and to Earth herself. 

If we can find our eco-niche – our unique place in the web of life – we will interrelate with one another with respect, restraint, and love…  and our actions – both individual and collective – will bring blessing, not war.    

During this vanishingly small moment in evolutionary time brought about by the confluence of 

• separating ourselves from the web of life
• the desire for dominion
• the discovery of fossil fuels
•  and more recently supercharged by digital technology and AI, 

… we humans seem to have lost our way and have become a threat to all living beings. 

But there’s an undertow growing stronger by the day beneath the tidal waves of consumerism and war: A powerful movement of people dedicating every fiber of their being to help shift our global consciousness to one of inter-being, and to rekindle greater reverence and care for all Life. The movement isn’t new but thankfully is growing by leaps and bounds, fueled by our collective grief and our inherent reverence for Life. 

Many wonderful authors, visionaries, speakers etc. are contributing to the movement, each with their own unique flavor. Following is a small sampling of a few I have found particularly inspiring. 

Bill Plotkin from the Animas Institute has developed a program for guiding soul initiation and assisting people in becoming Visionary Artisans of Cultural Evolution. Author and visionary Jeremy Lent invites people to join Deep Transformation Network, a growing group of people feeling their way into a more eco-conscious future. In the podcast series, The Great Simplification, Nate Hagen interviews an extraordinary array of people from diverse fields each addressing the Metacrisis in their own way. Author and translator, David Hinten recalls past civilizations that were able to sustain and nurture the land they were on for thousands of years due to a profound understanding of their niche in the web of Life. And finally, Iain McGilchrist who explains how, in our 21^st century civilization, the more strategic goal-oriented left hemisphere of the brain has gained dominance over the right hemisphere that sees more holistically, and that intuits our interconnectedness with all Life. 

At this pivotal and critical moment in time the powerful forces driving expansion and war coupled with exponential technology and AI are a Cosmic Invitation – indeed a plea and a prayer – for us to find and savor our individual and collective ecological niche here on Earth where enough is truly and generously enough. 

Exit humans, enter robots?

Drones and humanoid robotic machines equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI) are on the rise. At the same time a significant population crisis is on the horizon. This investigation recognises how the penetration of “intelligent” technologies, role of population planning, and post-pandemic policy implementations – serving the rapid development of data-driven “smart” societies based on sustainability politics – are all contributing to an unfolding population crisis and health impacts that favours the rise of robots.

According to demographers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) this population crisis could “completely reconfigure the global economy and international balance of power – and will necessitate the reorganising of societies”. It has been suggested that, as this is a population replacement crisis, technology will be a part of the replacement crisis “solution.” It is anticipated that “AI and automation will…pick up the slack”, as the Financial Times puts it.

5G networks integrating cloud and AI digitalisation are already creating the foundations for artificial life to bloom and assert its influence on our populations – but at what cost? Is all of the “blue sky” thinking concerning implementations of robots and artificial intelligence really for solving society’s problems, or to sustain mega-profits and questionable political gains that ultimately fragment the populace and, quite possibly, dismantle democracies? Significant issues deserve our attention, as our future’s trajectory becomes massively influenced by the politics of AI and robotics.

Robots and the workplace

Replacing humans with robots is becoming a norm. Artificial Intelligence (AI) fuels forms of robotics that are displacing humans across the spectrum of employment. MIT researcher and economist Daron Acemoglu’s finding that adding a robot to the workforce can replace around 6 people represents a concerning prospect. The increasing abilities of robots, is also driving the replacement factor.

Goldman Sachs Research “…points out that there’s been significant progress in end-to-end AI, through which models can train themselves, removing the need for a human engineer to code everything by hand. That’s speeding up robot development, allowing these devices to do more tasks and adapt to new situations (such as working outside of factories) more quickly.” You can see the 2024 Goldman Sachs report on Global Automation, here.

Supporters in favour boosting robot numbers and responsibilities in the workplace often spin the developments as a “good thing” for society. For instance, the World Economic Forum reports that many “…robots are managing jobs that have high-accident rates or long-term health consequences for humans.” While it is recognised there may be positives to robots handling dangerous tasks, the comprehensive deployment of robots and automation in other areas of employment accelerates the process of replacing people with technology.

According to The Conversation, “…surveys show AI researchers overwhelmingly agree AI will achieve human-level “thinking” within this century.” It becomes ever more apparent that the replacement of humans in various roles will be continually reinforced.

Robots and AI automation may help many manufacturers streamline production, and save a fortune in insurance and benefits and other relative “human” costs. However, from factory workers, to teachers, to drivers and surgeons, to the fields of agriculture, medicine, and environmental management, for example, the reality is that automation will not only exponentially increase unemployment, but threaten a range of skills (including the emotional and social skills that make us human). Beyond the seductive scenarios advanced by industry, robotic automation spells trouble for society with humans gradually left unable to compete with this technology in many sectors.

According to Future Learn, the business network PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited (PwC) predicts that up to 30% of jobs could be automated by robots by the mid-2030s. Recently, entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that he wants 1 billion humanoid robots in the workforce by 2040. If actualised, that would mean that around 6 billion jobs would disappear, based on what is suggested by the research finding of MIT’s economist, Acemoglu.

As AI increasingly impacts the workplace and is poised to “pick up the slack” for a declining population, wouldn’t that feasibly sustain lower populations – indefinitely in developed countries? And, possibly even sustain further population decline? After all, a robot doesn’t have human costs, needs or limits, and are considered assets that defy illnesses and mortality as they replace human labour. Generally, in the political climate of “sustainability” governments in progressive Western technological societies aren’t encouraging larger native human populations, with the “demographic shifts” happening, trends are towards artificial population replacement (elevating the influx of migrants, refugees, and strategic deployments of AI / robots, for example).

Challenges of depopulation, social transformation, and the rise of robots

The UN, which deeply guides policies of its member states to pursue technological goals, believes, “…high population densities accelerate disease spread and strain already overburdened health services” – according to populationmatters.org. The UN encourages lower populations, which has been more successfully achieved in developed countries. It’s the bitter “logic” of the UN’s sustainability drive that populations are now creating more robots than people to facilitate increased automation.

The United Nations (UN) now guides developed societies with shrinking populations to transition into robotised smart cities monitored and automated by AI. According to earth.org, “Since the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) establishment in 2015, numerous engineers have developed robots to help nations accomplish their sustainability goals.”

The alignment of technology to sustainability goals gives a green light to industry to help the UN and its specialised agency for information and communication technologies, the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) realise a digital future dominated by robots that assist in managing the population.

Automation may eventually destroy the social fabric of our society over time. As Monash University (MU) states, “After liberating us from “uncreative”, routine work and rote repetition, digital automation promises to relieve us of creativity and sociality itself – of the decisions that embody and reproduce our social and political commitments.“

MU also observes that, as society embraces increased AI automation, decision-making processes are becoming centralised and controlled. As “the decision-making process itself is being automated, we should be wary of the concentration of power in the hands of those who control the databases and write the algorithms. They’ll be deciding not just how products get built, but how society runs.“

The UN is deciding how society “runs” through the policy-building 2030 Agenda that sustains this politically motivated trajectory towards digital automation, bringing “together experts, policy-makers and business leaders”.

It is interesting how the UN’s Population Division has influenced population reduction in developed member states (which are rapidly developing digital technologies and AI powered robots – with some robots becoming almost “human-like” in their “biomimicry”) yet in underdeveloped countries, like Africa, the populations are above replacement levels with a population enjoying improved mortality rates.

“The [UN’s] Population Division has created and maintains a comprehensive World Population Policies Database , going back to the mid-1970s….Monitoring of government views and policies on population issues is important for tracking progress in the implementation of the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, and other internationally agreed development goals that are related to population, including the Sustainable Development Goals.”

The Hoover Institute posits that Africa will “be the source of virtually all labor force growth in the world, and by far the youngest region, in the 21^st century.” The population may “reach 2.5 billion by 2050….growing to 4.5 billion by 2100.”

A significant population decline by comparison is expected to impact developing countries where supplementing native populations with “displaced peoples” and “replacement migration” – as well as synthetic appropriations – to help manage society, is on the cards.

It is also expected that the UK’s natural population is expected to start declining by 2025 according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), where “deaths will surpass births two decades earlier than expected….” as reported in the Financial Times in 2022. In this climate of population decline it is worth noting that robotisation in society brings further social and demographic repercussions.

A study published by The Journal of Human Resources has found that, in “regions that were more exposed to robots…marital fertility declined” for there was a decrease in the number of marriages. It was highlighted that this occurred because robots reduce gender wage gaps and so diminish the value of men in the marriage market by increasing the relative economic status of women. A study published by Elsevier titled Robots, gender economic opportunities and household adjustment: Evidence from China clarifies that, “These technologies [robots, AI, Automation] primarily replace low-skilled, physically demanding jobs traditionally held by men, thereby improving employment opportunities for women….[which] correspondingly diminishes their satisfaction with the economic and domestic contributions of men within the household, thereby shifting their priorities toward career advancement rather than marriage and childbirth.”

Such studies show that populations exposed to robots experience a significant lowering the fertility rate (which drives population reduction). The role of robot technology in global depopulation, and also fertility enhancement, cannot be underestimated.

Researchers at the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences at IFW Dresden has developed a technology called “Spermbots” which they want to replicate inside the human body to propel sperm using “tiny robot suits that can help sperm become more mobile”. The technology is classified as “assisted reproduction” and targets couples struggling to conceive. According to ScienceAlert “These ‘spermbots’ are miniature metal helixes just large enough to completely wrap around the tail of a single sperm and help it along its way towards the egg. The bots are powered with the assistance of a magnetic field controlled by the scientists.”

Such innovations, which also pave the way for the development of “robotic micro-systems”, are sold as helping solve population issues. However, introducing nanotechnology into the reproduction process attached to cells in the reproduction cycle represents increasing steps towards the infiltration of electromagnetically powered nano-robots into the human body that sets disquieting precedents, and are not without risks.

The hazards of nanobots in the body are being studied. Man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from wireless infrastructure and devices are known to negatively affect sperm motility, and fertility. Ironically, motility, and fertility are the problems “being addressed” by these “wireless” nanobots. Introducing artificial electromagnetic fields for propulsion and monitoring of the bots clearly represents a health risk.

Other risks have been highlighted in a study titled Environmental and health risks of nanorobots: an early review, including “…(i) the use of hazardous materials and UV light in nanorobots, and (ii) the loss of propulsion/targeting control.” The long term health impacts of nanorobots and robotic micro-systems on human populations are unknown, yet the impacts could be significant, and push humanity towards a transhuman existence with AI and nanobots being used to constantly monitor human bodies.

Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering believes, “One application of these medical nanorobots will be to extend our immune systems. These robots will also go into the brain and provide virtual and augmented reality from within the nervous system rather than from devices attached to the outside of our bodies.” Source.

A race to robotise society: The dawn of humanoid robots and Society 5.0

According to McKinsey & Company, “The AI revolution is not in its infancy, but most of its economic impact is yet to come.” Some societies are more economically predisposed to welcome the rise of robots (or even biosynthetic life), like Japan for example which has suffered economic decline since the 1990s, and more recently this has been exacerbated owing to natural disasters, political problems and a worsening demographic situation.

As population prospects worsen, the concept for a “better” future has been developed, focusing on the Japan’s alignment with the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transition the country to a digitalised “Society 5.0”.

The “sustainability” pathway believed essential for Japan’s economic “recovery” is also a road to a post-human future which buys into technological augmentation and the data-driven “smart” society promoted by the UN, a symbol of humanity’s closer alignment with technology, blurring the lines between cyberspace and physical existence.

With robot penetration into society heralding problems for marriage (already a problem in Japan, with the value and identity of men in crisis) and sustaining demographic problems (with increasing numbers of Japanese men migrating as a result), Society 5.0 could lead Japan into deeper social and economic upheavals. However, the “blue sky” message of “sustainability” has been effective in drawing Japanese society into the UN’s vision of the globalist, robotised future.

Society 5.0, according to UNESCO is the “super-smart society…as it envisions a complete transformation of our way of life….Society 5.0 will help to overcome chronic social challenges such as an ageing population, social polarization, depopulation and constraints related to energy and the environment….autonomous vehicles and drones will bring goods and services to people in depopulated areas.” That is a very polite way of saying that “cyber-physical” systems and other technologies will replace face-to-face human interactions, while replacing vast numbers of human beings and human labour. Cyber-physical systems refers to robots and automation, both controlled by wireless networks and real-time data processing.

With technology expected to drive economies in need of “post-pandemic” recovery, Japan won’t be the only society embracing accelerated technological transformations. The ultimate consequences of societal transformation could push humans closer to a “transhuman” existence, the ultimate biosynthetic merging of society with the machine “nervous system”. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) already posits that humans are heading for a “hive mind” resulting from a merging of all minds and data, which has been called a “singularity.” As The Conversation notes, “Hypothetically, if a hive mind were to emerge, one could imagine it would mark the end of individuality and the institutions that rely on it, including democracy.”

All of this is possible, and societies following the UN’s lead (through accepting the stipulations of the “sustainability” goals and “climate change” narrative) are on track to that future.

Humanoid robots for the world

What is a robot is in today’s terms, and, what developments are under way to “sustain” them in the “smart city” society?

According to Future Learn, today’s “Robotic systems can be defined as interconnected, interactive, cognitive and physical tools that are able to perceive the environment using sensors, reason about events, make plans using algorithms implemented in computer programs, and perform actions enabled by actuators.’ 

The “humanising” of robots matters in tomorrow’s world. Developments in China have resulted in “human-like” robots with nuanced facial expressions becoming almost indistinguishable from human citizens in the near future.

Already, “Companies across the world are in a tight race to develop the best suitable robot that can give us human-like feel” according to Interesting Engineering. It’s the perfect camouflage for robots to bend into society, but will humanoid biomimicry bring more acceptance of robots in our midst?

As populations are set to decline, and as robots are politically elevated for an increasing role in our world, so-called “bio-inspired” robots (with some developments now incorporating human skin) seem likely to proliferate and are likely candidates to supplement the original human population seamlessly. Their convincing human appearance may overcome the intimidating appearance of the rigid metallic humanoids that resemble something like “Terminator”.

5G and emerging 6G wireless infrastructure (sensors and networks – the nervous system of AI) promises to give robots (including devices and appliances) a shared electronic consciousness (hive mind) courtesy of the internet and the cloud, making real-time analyses of data possible, where robots and devices make independent decisions.

Data-driven “smart” societies like Communist China politically operate like a “hive mind” as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards individuality as a threat. This “threat” is largely neutralised by China’s utilisation of AI technology and automation to manage society. China intends to lead the current technological race towards a robotised society. Can we expect anything other than the domination of robots?

Prospects of this seem likely in technological societies where fertility rates have been lowered and a population crisis is playing out. China has an “irreversible” fertility decline, one that could more than halve the population. As ABC reports “the population is aging mainly because the birth rate is falling.” China’s economy is set to weaken, and “this weakness will present challenges to the world’s economic recovery”. China’s answer to the potential challenges? Robots.

China is aggressively pursuing labour automation to raise productivity despite a shrinking population, and is set to supply the world with “humanoid” robots and the components for building them. Source.

Fortune Business Insights has its eye on the global market and says “the market for humanoid robots is projected to grow from USD 3.28 billion in 2024 to USD 66.0 billion by 2032.” These robots are “entering into the real world for various applications such as research, space exploration, personal assistance caregiving, education and entertainment, among others.”

According to the centre for International Governance Innovation, “… robots are now increasingly capable of…complex human tasks. Unlike specialized industrial robots, humanoid robots can be designed for general purpose application across a range of working environments. This includes agriculture, manufacturing, mining, health care, education, entertainment and even defence…Chinese planners hope to control the global supply of core components for the robotics industry by 2025 and achieve global dominance in the manufacture of humanoid robots by 2027.”

A world made for robots, or of robots?

We are witnessing the emergence of forms of artificial life relying on “data.” Known generically as robots they are also referred to as “cyber-physical” systems (CPS). Martin Rees (Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge) states, when asked if robots will take over the world, “…we are increasingly dependent on computer networks…” and “…these could behave like a single ‘brain’ with a mind of its own, and with goals that may be contrary to human welfare.”

Katherine Richardson PhD, an anthropologist of robots believes, “…as a culture we tend to imagine they [autonomous machines, robots] are greater and more powerful than they really are and subsequently they become so.” Source.

It is always being suggested to us, especially by the media, that digitalisation, AI, and robots empower society for a “sustainable future”, or “economic growth”, for example – but it is also reasonable to assume that they may also disempower society. AI experts have warned us of the non-negligible chance that human extinction could be caused by AI.

This existential risk hasn’t discouraged the appetite for “robotic ecosystems” that are changing our world, driven by entrepreneurship, wealth and investment. As Built In reports, “In light of recent investments, the dawn of complex humanoid robots may come sooner than later. AI robotics company Figure and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI formed a partnership that’s backed by investors like Jeff Bezos. Under the deal, OpenAI will likely adapt its GPT language models to suit the needs of Figure’s robots. And microchip manufacturer Nvidia revealed plans for Project GR00T, the goal of which is to develop a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots. These announcements come in the wake of Elon Musk and Tesla introducing the humanoid robot Optimus in 2022, although the robot is still being trained.” Musk anticipates selling the “Tesla Optimus Robots” for an estimated $20,000 per unit – according to Fox Business. 

If it seems that our world is made for robots. Another factor drives the appetite for robotic ecosystems. The International Federation for Robotics (IFR) highlights that “…the integration of robots and robotics technologies is emerging as a powerful tool in contributing to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

This situation was being prepared for, politically, decades ago. The UN’s Brundtland Report of 1987 (a.k.a. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development) urged a “global agenda for change.” This document gave birth to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of UN Agenda 2030. It described various crises that would afflict society and how technology would be aspirational, yet also prove to be a double-edged sword for humanity.

A section of the report titled “The Interlocking Crises” expounds the familiar idea that technology is here to save the planet. The report also acknowledges that technology is also a gamble with our planet’s future. It stated that, “A mainspring of economic growth is new technology, and while this technology offers the potential for slowing the dangerously rapid consumption of finite resources, it also entails high risks, including new forms of pollution and the introduction to the planet of new variations of life forms that could change evolutionary pathways.”

Changing evolutionary pathways

Technology advancements since the Brundtland Report of 1987 have connected half of the global population to a wireless-powered artificial ecosystem of telecommunications networks and data servers referred to as “the cloud”. Some have called it a “nervous system for the earth.” This evolving synthetic organism (of multiple networks of automation and cyber-physical systems) may eventually eclipse the native spectrum of life on our planet.

Today, the earth, oceans and skies are being drawn into the data-gathering “nervous system.” The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) and the Internet of Flying Things (IoFT) and Internet of Space Things (IoST) are in progress as component projects within the “mother” datafication project, the Internet of Things (IoT). Space X is launching 250 5G satellites to assist in the transformation of our world into a wireless taxonomy of trackable objects and lifeforms.

The earth’s atmosphere is under artificial transformation. Its native electromagnetic fields are infringed upon by artificial industrialised ones (like 5G) which are powering the wireless digitalised surveillance economy dependent on the IoT for Big Data and Machine Learning. ALAN (Artificial Light At Night) is a global disruptor causing significant ecological impacts. These significant, widespread artificial adjustments caused by digital technology are registered by the earth’s native life forms, playing havoc with their biological sensitivities as the world caters increasingly to the prospect of introducing more and more digital devices and intelligent machines – predominantly in countries facing the prospect of sharp population declines.

Collectively we might call these artificial biological and ecological impacts an act of concerted modification, the effect of which has been to reduce and weaken native species (including humans) with unprecedented exposures to radiofrequency transmitting devices, CO2-reducing geoengineering projects, and LED radiation pollution – all of which are scientifically known to change the longevity, behaviour and fertility of ecosystems, and populations, yet persist in the public imagination as “sustainable” technologies.

The unfolding side-effects, such as the declination of species and a plethora of other negatives, continue to be widely neglected, remaining at the periphery of societal consciousness. Light pollution, exacerbated by the excessive light spill and glare from LED street lights, car headlamps and electronic screens, affects us in very specific ways. It targets hormone levels, ultimately destroying sleep, and fertility, by hampering reproduction. Source. Similar effects take their toll in the natural world’s ecosystems. In insect ecosystems, for example, light pollution is a recognised driver of species decline.

“Sustainable Development” goals drive not the emancipation of societies, but dependency on technologies that will modify and take-over societies, even reduce their populations. Yet, society believes all of these technological changes are the product of eco-wisdom guiding us to a sustainable utopia. However, society is in danger, and 5G and LED lighting is only the tip of the iceberg.

No-one knows this more than Gro Harlem Brundtland who chaired the Brundtland Report. She helped introduce society to the concept of “sustainable development” in 1987, paving the way for our current digital paradigm and its acceleration. However, she has discovered that the EMF radiation from technology brings unexpected consequences, and has come to accept that the wireless radiation powering the “sustainable” technological paradigm is a significant threat to her health.

Brundtland is a medical doctor and Master of Public Health (MPH), who faired as Prime Minister of Norway (1981–1996), as well as becoming director-general of the World Health Organization. She is convinced “of the link between health and the environment.” She has openly challenged WHO’s conclusions about harm from wireless radiation.

According to Physicians for Safe Technology, while still heading the WHO “…she went public with her self-diagnosis of EHS [electromagnetic hypersensitivity]…while the agency was refusing to acknowledge that EHS symptoms were directly caused by EMF exposure.”

In her 2012 speech at the opening of a new School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo in Ontario she responded to questions by Dr. Magda Havas PhD. where she “…cautioned about the overuse of cell phones and went on to explain how she became allergic to microwave radiation.” Brundtland also stated that “…the environment needs to be modified to reduce electrosmog exposure in order to protect health.”

EHS, also referred to by researchers as “Microwave Syndrome”, is aggravated by electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from cell phones and other artificial EMFs in the environment and is affecting over 5% of the population. Evidence points to this number increasing with the roll out of 5G, a new modulation of the electromagnetic spectrum utilising barely researched millimetre waves for the advancement of a “sustainable” robotised digital paradigm that necessitates a latency free bandwidth for real-time data processing for the IoT.

The novel deployment of “robot pollinators”, automated animal surveillance, and impacts of 5G on fertility and food security

A health report compiled for the European Parliament (EP) called the “Health Impact of 5G” suggests there is more than meets the eye concerning fertility issues in the population. There is “sufficient evidence of adverse effects on fertility in men and limited evidence of adverse effects on fertility in women” from wireless radiation in the range of 450MHz to 6GHz, which covers the history of DECT phones and mobile phones up to more recent models using 5G infrastructure.

It’s an arresting finding, especially when it is becoming clear that many countries won’t sustain the human populations they’ll need for growth and security in the years ahead. Demographers anticipate fertility rates dropping below replacement levels earlier than expected – possibly by 2030.

Predictably demographers attribute the population’s precarious status to “factors such as higher education levels among people who give birth, rising incomes, and expanded access to contraceptives.” However, on the road to digitalisation, other factors come into play and wireless radiation continues to be one of them as “The Health Impact of 5G” strongly suggests.

Some countries are beginning to act, realising that wireless radiation poses a threat to populations. According to a report by Environmental Health trust, “India dropped their RF limits by 1/10th after a research review documented the majority of research studies found adverse effects to wildlife, birds and bees.” This is the precautionary principle (PP) in action, mostly ignored by the rest of the world in pursuit of digitalisation.

The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) “Living Planet Report” illustrates severe population decline in the natural world. In the report, the WWF issues a “climate change” alert urging action in the language of the UN’s sustainability goals, suggesting that wildlife is being decimated because of human populations causing global warming. At the same time, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) promotes AI, and automated wireless devices, for the surveillance of animal populations. Projects called “Eyes on Recovery” and “Wildlife Insights” supported by Google, rely on motion sensor activated camera traps. These operate continuously with powerful LED flashes taking millions of images to collect species data. This activity could be disrupting ecosystems with ALAN (Artificial Light At Night which is recognised as a significant impact on ecology). These projects are executed in the name of protecting animals, so that “scientists, land managers and other stakeholders can better anticipate threats“. Technological ecological disruption is arguably a threat.

WWF’s Living Planet Report highlights threats to ecology, yet not all. It neglects the influences of technologies on wildlife, including the wireless expansionism in recent decades (which creates ecologically impacting electrosmog emissions), and, the modalities of extraction that serve the appetites of the semiconductor and lithium battery industries. It emphasises a UN-friendly conception of how the world should quantifiably change without acknowledging how digital wireless technologies represent a threat to wildlife populations.

The UN advocates wireless technology to solve problems, and advocates smaller populations – and demands a radically different society, one where wireless technology and robots will systematically monitor populations, and be used to replace wildlife species, just as humans are being “replaced”. This is playing out to extraordinary degrees across the world.

While bees and other pollinators are dying from EMF exposure causing colony collapse disorder (CCD) – very commonly blamed on “climate change” – action to support ecosystems today includes deploying wireless robots to make a difference. According to howtorobot.com robotic pollinators are being despatched to replace pollinators (population replacement), which as we know, are averse to exposure from the wireless transmitters powering wireless robots systems like these.

It is believed that, “these robots, designed to mimic the actions of bees, can help maintain plant populations and genetic diversity within ecosystems…[though] there are concerns about its effectiveness and potential impacts on natural pollinator populations.”

In a similar vein, as the BBC reports, “…new Biotracks technology tracks the harmonic radar tags attached to bees with a receiver carried on a drone in a bid to improve understanding of what is happening to pollinators” in research led by a team at The University of Oxford in the UK.

Despite research that suggests bees are not at all benefiting from man-made EMFs, such novel “science” projects gain publicity and support while they promote IoT technologies like drones and wireless devices.

According the the website beeing.it, a “study conducted at the Beekeeping Application Centre of the University of Bayburt offers valuable insights into the disturbing effect of electromagnetic radiation on bee behaviour….Implications of these findings go beyond bees’ welfare. As crucial beings for pollination, bees play a vital role in agriculture, contributing to the fertilization of numerous crops, including fruits, vegetables and nuts. The loss of their ability to navigate accurately could lead to a decrease in crop yields, affecting food production and threatening global food security.” New Scientist has also acknowledged the negative influences of EMFs on the bee populations asserting that “Electromagnetic fields…are messing with honeybees…Transmission towers emit electromagnetic fields that can disrupt honeybees’ ability to pollinate nearby plants, which could reduce biodiversity in these areas”.

Sadly, the vulnerability of earth’s species to EMFs – which are decimating pollinators and adding to growing food insecurity – may drive increased demand for “solutions” such as the aforementioned robotic pollinators. We live in a politicised technological climate, which is biased towards implementing wireless technology in mainstream research and in solving environmental problems – even to replace pollinators. Concerns about EMF radiation impacts on wildlife (or human populations) are hastily being dismissed, and this is not in the best interests of the environment or declining populations.

Mass die-offs: another decline of populations, amidst the rise of wireless robots

The global technological “arms race” that now depletes our world of life was known by the original architects of the UN’s sustainability project as entailing “high risks, including new forms of pollution and the introduction to the planet of new variations of life forms that could change evolutionary pathways.”

Society’s technology consumption now heralds populations pushed to the limits, and declining across the spectrum of life on earth, presenting security issues and widening global disparities. Within this unfolding scenario AI-powered robots are guaranteed a starring role in managing the fall-out as the natural order of things is increasingly infiltrated by synthetic life forms, on queue for population replacement and other duties.

As wireless robot ecosystems expand, we are also facing the daunting reality of “mass die-offs” in the natural world which “…can reshape the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of life on Earth” as discussed in National Geographic, where “…Researchers reviewed historical records of 727 mass die-offs from 1940 to 2012 and found that over that time, these events have become more common for birds, marine invertebrates, and fish.”

Scientists researching the publicised die-offs cannot say for certain why this is happening, and when offering hypotheses, commonly assume it must be “climate change” related. That’s a predominant theory with a broad sweep, but it does not put the problem in the context of the rapid technological developments that are taking their toll on earth’s ecosystems.

The die-offs continue. In 2020 in Mexico “hundreds of dead birds were discovered in numerous spots across the New Mexican landscape. With each new, grim find, researchers began to realise these clumps of carcasses were not isolated incidents.” Martha Desmond from New Mexico State University (NMSU) told Las Cruces Sun News “We’re losing probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of migratory birds.” According to the researchers “the birds seemed “to act strangely before their deaths, spending more time on the ground than perched in trees, and generally appearing dazed, sleepy, and lethargic…the affected birds also look different.”

According to The Independent, the “dead birds were found in states including New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska.” Scientists could only speculate as to the cause. This is only an example of a widespread (and sudden) “die-off”. Another bird population event in Mexico was filmed by a security camera, as blackbirds fell dead from the sky in mid flight. Watch here.

Another infamous case in the Netherlands offered the same theory as for the birds grounding in Mexico, that a hunting bird may have frightened them. The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (which encourages cooperation between research institutes and businesses to invest in a powerful, sustainable country) were quick to point out that it “wasn’t 5G”.

However, it is fully acknowledged that EMFs disrupt bird navigation though it is never offered even a possibility in relation these events when it most likely should. Scientists believe the effect of EMFs on birds “…is greatest when birds fly over urban areas”, as reported by the BBC in 2014. As we know, in recent times the sources of EMF have multiplied dramatically to accommodate global wireless expansion, and cell towers with a high-density population produce high EMF radiation emissions affecting birds. The position of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, allied with the wireless industry was most likely political rather than scientifically defensible.

Amidst the mushrooming of uncharacteristic syndromes and mortality rates in the earth’s ecosystems, notably, the military is developing an arsenal of autonomous robotic weapons (specifically drones) and is studying the swarming behaviours of birds, as well as fish and marine creatures so that wireless drones have the “ability to act in concert, combined with the inherent adaptability and versatility of individual drones, results in a force that can swiftly respond to changing conditions on the battlefield….enhanced by AI and space technology.” Source.

5G infrastructure has been rolled out on earth, in the seas and in the skies to make way for drones and other synthetic life forms at are now infiltrating the habitats of native life forms in a big way. As a side effect of the 5G technological agenda, ecosystem levels of ambient electromagnetic radiation are affected, with man-made electromagnetic radiation (electrosmog) becoming an increasing burden on wildlife around the world – including swarming birds, fish and marine animals.

According to a scientific report in Nature, it is recognised that “Anthropogenic EMFs, represent a poorly understood, yet potentially important and increasing emission into the marine environment, which may disrupt or mask vital environmental cues to EM-sensitive species….Ubiquitous anthropogenic sources of marine EMFs include ships, bridges and subsea cables^1,14.” As the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUWT) develops to drive the monitoring and robotisation of the oceans, this problem will become severely exacerbated. You can become acquainted with the implications in an MDPI report called “Recent Advances, Future Trends, Applications and Challenges of Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT): A Comprehensive Review” which states that “The key enabler technology for the IoUT is the underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN).”

There is no question that the comprehensive wireless sensor networks advancing the Internet of Things (IoT) present a danger to the sensitive species of our planet. A landmark “150 page study of over 1,200 peer reviewed studies finds that birds, insects and animals are uniquely sensitive to wireless radiation. It identifies low-level wireless as a pollutant and warns against escalating radiation levels with 5G technologies.”

Man-made radiofrequency modulations experienced by birds and fish can interfere with their navigational behaviours, and health, which are tied to the native electromagnetic resonances of the earth. Radiofrequency radiation is scientifically acknowledged to be causing species decline, so plausibly could be influencing mass die offs. Our skies and seas will be subject to more radiation pollution in the years ahead, from the political and economic drive to accommodate robots while displacing populations of native species as the “wireless nervous system” of 5G networks and sensors grows.

The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) is advancing research in biomimetics (also known as biomimicry) where robotic weapon systems imitate animals. According to Drone XL, “Northrop Grumman has built the Manta Ray, a mysterious 
Underwater drone for…DARPA”. It’s described as an “…innovative craft, reportedly four years in the making, [that] could revolutionize long-range military missions by hiding in plain sight and harvesting energy from the seas.”

Meanwhile DARPA’s “…OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) programme is another “biomimicry” project aimed at enabling small-unit infantry forces to use swarms of small weaponised drones – 250 robots or more – to complete complex missions.” Source. Swarms of wireless drones resemble shape-shifting bird formations and murmurations but are used to remotely kill. In imitation of nature, autonomous weapons systems are being created that defy the principles of international humanitarian law – representing a “paradigm shift in warfare.” Another imminent threat to populations.

From here to Africa – A world to be dominated by robots?

All of these developments pave the way for a world dominated by robots – especially as earth’s native populations are being politically manipulated into accommodating them, and accepting them. In doing so society gives the green light to become further dominated by technologies that may not, after all, serve their best interests.

Unprecedented animal population reductions and mass “die offs” that coincide with our rapidly accelerating digital era of cyber-physical transformations leave our population ever more vulnerable to industrial-political manipulations and troubling prospects for our species if we don’t alter our path. We find ourselves in a situation eerily predicted by the Brundtland Report’s architects of “sustainability” – for we are on the road that politically prioritises the technological economy, which “entails high risks, including new forms of pollution and the introduction to the planet of new variations of life forms that could change evolutionary pathways.”

The UN’s Agenda 2030 is an influential political tool for supporting industry goals, and securing society’s support in advancing technology to support questionable globalist projects. With the developed world suffering population decline and accelerated technological output, Africa by contrast is still developing and has averted a population crisis. Africa is proving fertile ground to continue the “globalist project” – and to roll out 5G. Much development in this direction is being done in the name of “philanthropy” and under the guise of “sustainability goals” but ultimately is an agenda and an investment.

The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, is branding infrastructure projects in Africa as “sustainable development” with an initiative called Mission 300, which anticipates a case for 5G in Sub-Saharan Africa where electricity is an issue. According to intelligentcio.com, “Africa’s lack of infrastructure, expensive hardware, and limited technological background are all issues impacting IoT deployment.” Mission 300 is an “ambitious initiative to connect 300 million people to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030” while opening the door to 5G wireless developments that will assist the robot revolution in Africa.

According to, 5G in Africa: realising the potential “Operators and tower companies operating in the region have pointed to the following as the main barriers to using more solar: high upfront cost for solar panels and batteries; theft and vandalism, especially in remote locations; and space limitation on cell sites to assemble the solar components.”

The Rockefeller Foundation is actively invested in resolving these solar energy supply issues, a process that fits with the “green communications and networking paradigm” where solar/renewables assist the 5G infrastructure roll out. The Rockefeller Foundation is laying the groundwork for 5G networks and the IoT as part of “doubling down on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” prompted by the “pandemic”.

This ultimately opens the door to “…a broad set of industry stakeholders, including Google Cloud, EdgeQ, Gigabyte, Marvell, Nvidia, NXP, Qualcomm Technologies, Dish Network, Vodafone, Accelleran, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, Radisys, Saankhya Labs and Tech Mahindra.” Source: 5G in Africa: realising the potential, PDF.

Africa Center Senior Fellow Aleksandra Gadzala acknowledges in “Coming to Life: Artificial Intelligence in Africa” that “many African nations still lack the statistical capacity, infrastructure, and good governance necessary to see AI take off. However, in a select handful of countries, AI solutions are already being successfully deployed at scale….what African governments need to do to strengthen the ecosystem necessary to see these technologies flourish…to advance sustainable development and inclusive growth.” It is only a matter of time before the robot ecosystem emerges in Africa in the name of “sustainability”, of course.

The social, political, and economic “terraforming” of earth for a robotised future dominated by AI continues at remarkable pace. What this all really means for the diversity, distribution and longevity of earth’s native species remains a big, and urgent, question as our world continues to be transformed by a political-industrial imperative that artificially alters our atmosphere – and existence – to accommodate a burgeoning ecosystem of synthetic life on our planet.

Leading illustration by Sean Alexander Carney.

Screenshots have been used in this article for non-commercial educational purposes. The sources are credited, and links are supplied. The Copyright Act of 1976 outlines the statutory framework for determining and identifying Fair Use and when one can use copyrighted material without permission. Teaching, criticism, reporting, commenting, and researching are all activities that often qualify as fair use.

Introduction:

Sensing the Zeitgeist of the times, our team at Safe Tech International felt perhaps a renewed and internationally coordinated initiative focusing on local communities might be timely.

The idea was to invite people around the world to simultaneously send a letter to their local officials communicating strong dissent to the proliferation of EMFs in their community or city.  

We considered two possibilities: A Notice of Liability (NOL), or perhaps a more cordial but firm awareness raising letter. 

What emerged, while still a “letter” so to speak, could more aptly be called an ode to a simpler and saner way of life, with a special emphasis on the role of technology in our lives. A kind of invitation for ourselves, elected reps, and others to hold in our mind’s eye and heart the innate desire we humans share:

A desire for a life of health, well-being, wholesome relationships, a humble place to call home, a modest livelihood, and a way to contribute to the local and global family of life…and of course, all to the backdrop of world peace.   

The letter, or ode, has a very different style from how we usually communicate with our elected reps. This was intentional as for our civilization to open to the changes that life seems to be thirsting for, we must be authentic. No pretenses, role playing, or hierarchy. Just honest and open connections. 

The letter offers specific suggestions, many about technology, but also about education, the commons, healthy food, the skies, the ocean, and peace. Suggestions that emanate from common sense and a life centric perspective. 

If the letter resonates with you, please consider sending it as is, or edited, to your local officials or to anyone else you think may be interested. A link to both a PDF and Word version of the letter are provided at the end. An audio and video reading of the letter are provided as well.

I would like to acknowledge some of the many authors, podcasters, and speakers who have deeply informed my thinking: These include Nate Hagens, Vanessa Andreotti, Iain McGilchrist, Daniel Christian Wahl, Jeremy Lent, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Daniel Schmachtenberger, and Charles Eisenstein, among many others.  

And now…the letter. (To read, click on Page 2 directly below.)

Audio only – (Recommended as it’s far less energy and data consumptive than video) 
Video – 12:58 

Last week, mainstream news outlets carried headlines about two new studies investigating Havana Syndrome.

The Washington Post headline stated, “NIH probe of ‘Havana syndrome’ finds no sign of brain injuries”

The New York Times reported, “New Studies Find No Evidence of Brain Injury in Havana Syndrome Cases  (Please use the headline to find the link as it does not copy)

National Public Radio NPR’s headline read, “In Havana syndrome patients, NIH scientists find no physical trace of harm’’

The Guardian noted, “Medical studies find no trace of physical harm in Havana syndrome patients

ABC News reported, “New study finds no brain injuries among ‘Havana syndrome’ patients

CNN’S headline reported, “Despite symptoms, NIH research finds no evidence of ‘Havana syndrome’ in brain scans.”  

Breitbart News declared, “Studies find no brain injury in ‘Havana syndrome’ patients.”

What Did the Articles (not the headlines) Say?

There are a number of implications to be drawn from the contrast between the different headlines and a deeper dive into the content.

 One is that it is important to read the articles, and not just the headlines.

Another is that especially in an election year, priorities regarding issues including national defense can skew “news reporting.”  

1. The studies did not find “no harm.”  As reported by ABC, An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U_S_ diplomats who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed “Havana syndrome” “While that couldn’t rule out some transient injury when symptoms began, researchers said it’s good news that they couldn’t spot long-term markers on brain scans that are typical after trauma or stroke.” “A subset, about 28%, of Havana syndrome cases were diagnosed with a balance problem called persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, or PPPD. Linked to inner-ear problems as well as severe stress, it results when certain brain networks show no injury but don’t communicate properly. French called it a “maladaptive response,” much like how people who’ve slouched to alleviate back pain can have posture trouble even after the pain is gone. The Havana syndrome participants reported more fatigue, posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression. The findings are the latest in an effort to unravel a mystery that began when personnel at the U.S. embassy in Cuba began seeking medical care for hearing loss and ear-ringing after reporting sudden weird noises.

CNN noted: “The study concluded that whatever caused Havana syndrome seems to create symptoms “without persistent or detectable physiologic changes. A lack of evidence for a brain injury does not necessarily mean that no injury is present or that it did not occur at the time of the AHI.”

2. One of the most important commentaries about the studies was provided in the CNN article.  “These findings suggest that the origin of the symptoms of participants with AHIs may not be linked to an MRI-identifiable injury to the brain,” the study concluded. This means that harm may not be able to be identified via an MRI. It does not mean that no harm is present. (Most of the symptoms identified by the U.S. military back in 1971 that were associated with microwave exposure would not show up on an MRI, including but not limited to headaches, tinnitus, infertility and cataracts.)

3. The NIH MRI-based research provides no evidence to substantiate a claim that the health damages were not caused by a foreign adversary using directed, pulsed radio frequency energy.  Linking the NIH study to claims from the intelligence community is misleading.

4. Ethics concerns have been raised about the way in which participants were enrolled in the study.

The Back-Story

2020, The National Academies: Directed, Pulsed Radio Frequency Energy

 In December of 2020, the press release “New Report Assesses Illnesses Among U.S. Government Personnel and Their Families at Overseas Embassies” was issued by the National Academies, stating, in part,  “WASHINGTON — Government personnel and their families at the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba, in late 2016, and later at the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China, began suffering from a range of unusual — and in some cases suddenly occurring — symptoms such as a perceived loud noise, ear pain, intense head pressure or vibration, dizziness, visual problems, and cognitive difficulties, and many still continue to experience these or other health problems.  As part of its effort to ascertain potential causes of the illnesses, inform government employees more effectively about health risks at posts abroad, and determine best medical practices for screening, prevention, and treatment for both short- and long-term health problems, the U.S. Department of State asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide advice.  After undergoing a security review, the National Academies’ report is now available.

In examining plausible causes of these illnesses, the committee that conducted the study and wrote the report considered the possibilities of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy, chemical exposures, infectious diseases such as Zika, and psychological issues.  An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies says that among the mechanisms the committee considered, directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases, especially in individuals with the distinct early symptoms.  Persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) — a functional (not psychiatric) vestibular disorder that may be triggered by vestibular, neurologic, or other medical and psychological conditions — is a secondary reinforcing mechanism, as well as the possible additive effects of psychological conditions. 

The committee could not rule out other possible mechanisms and found it is likely that a multiplicity of factors explains some cases and the differences between others.  In particular, it could not be certain that the individuals with only the chronic set of signs and symptoms suffered from the same causes and mechanisms as those who reported the initial, sudden onset set of signs and symptoms.  The committee noted that it faced several challenges in its assessment, related to the extreme variability in the clinical cases as well as lack of access to specific health or personal information on the affected individuals.

“The committee found these cases quite concerning, in part because of the plausible role of directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy as a mechanism, but also because of the significant suffering and debility that has occurred in some of these individuals,” said committee chair David Relman, Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in Medicine, professor of microbiology and immunology, and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.  “We as a nation need to address these specific cases as well as the possibility of future cases with a concerted, coordinated, and comprehensive approach.”

2021 JASON and the U.S. State Department: Crickets

On March 18, Scientific American reported, “In 2017, when word of Havana syndrome first broke, news reports widely suggested that “sonic weapons” had played a role. A year later news outlets replaced this claimed potential cause with “microwave” weapons. Then, by 2019, they suggested that “pulsed” microwaves explained the injuries, and the NASEM report later judged that idea as the most plausible cause late that year. Unknown to that report’s writers, a 2018 U.S. Department of State–sponsored technical report conducted by a highly regarded technical group called JASON, which was only declassified later, had already cast doubt on the theory that the injuries were caused by any kind of electromagnetic effect. (Crickets likely explained incident noises, it suggested.) Those doubts also appeared in a 2022 follow-on report from the same experts.

In September of 2021, BuzzFeed News reported “Noises linked to mysterious injuries among US diplomats in Cuba were most likely caused by crickets — not microwave weapons — according to a declassified scientific review commissioned by the US State Department and obtained by BuzzFeed News” “It concluded that the sounds accompanying at least eight of the original 21 Havana syndrome incidents were “most likely” caused by insects. That same scientific review also judged it “highly unlikely” that microwaves or ultrasound beams — now widely proposed by US government officials to explain the injuries — were involved in the incidents. And though the report didn’t definitively conclude what caused the injuries themselves, it found that “psychogenic” mass psychology effects may have played a role.”

The JASON report is here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21068770-jason-report-2018-havana-syndrome

BuzzFeedNews reported, “The team was given eight recordings of incidents linked to injuries and performed an extensive analysis of two cellphone video recordings from one patient. After extensive comparison with recordings of various insect species, they concluded with “high confidence” that the sounds in that case came from a particularly loud species of cricket, Anurogryllis celerinictus.”

“A mainstay of the national security arena for decades, JASON contains the nation’s brightest technical minds. “This is a high-powered group of expert scientists examining this question,” said former Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist Cheryl Rofer. “This appears to be a very thorough scientific analysis, the kind which wasn’t done in the National Academies of Sciences report.” [] “What is available in the report is pretty dubious about directed energy weapons,” she said, “and pretty positive about crickets.”

This is despite the fact that the ‘sound’ of crickets has never been causally linked to brain damage and other documented injuries, and the fact that Injuries to diplomatic personnel were reported in locales and during seasons where no indies short tail crickets were attempting to mate.

“James Lin, a University of Illinois biomedical engineer who has argued that the microwave explanation for the injuries is very likely, told BuzzFeed News “A typical sound recorder would not be able to record the ‘microwave sound’, period,” [] by email, after reviewing the JASON report’s findings.” – Buzzfeed News

A recording of the cricket (dominant frequency 6.9 kHz) can be heard here. (Listening to the sound recording has not been associated with reports of physical harm).

2023: National Intelligence Council: “It Is “Very Unlikely” A Foreign Adversary Is Responsible For The Reported AHIs”

In March of 2023, the National Intelligence Council issued its “Updated Assessment of Anomalous Health Incidents” stating, ”The IC pursued three separate lines of inquiry: the first encompassed work determining whether available data points to the involvement of a foreign adversary in the incidents; the second focused on the feasibility and existence of deliberate mechanisms that an adversary might use against US personnel to cause AHIs; and the third evaluated whether medical analysis can help determine if an outside actor is involved in the broad range of phenomena and symptoms associated with AHIs. Based on the results of these three lines of inquiry, most IC agencies have concluded that it is “very unlikely” a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs.” SOURCE

The 4-page report explains confidence ratios and provides the opinion of several unnamed intelligence agencies but provides no explanation for its conclusions.

March 2024: Headlines About the NIH Studies Widely Promote the Claim of No-Harm, (even as the articles themselves may contain conflicting information) – Why?

New York Times:  Casting Doubt on Earlier University of PA Research

“The findings from the National Institutes of Health are at odds with previous research that looked into the mysterious health incidents experienced by U.S. diplomats and spies.” “The lead scientist on one of the two new studies said that while the study was not designed to find a cause, the findings were consistent with those determinations.

The authors said the studies are at odds with findings from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who found differences in brain scans of people with Havana syndrome symptoms and a control group.”

Studies by the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 and 2019 suggested that people affected by the syndrome had possible brain injuries that were different from typical concussion injuries or other traumatic brain injuries. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania said the two studies were “apples to oranges” comparisons because they looked at different groups of patients, and the N.I.H. study was not designed to replicate theirs. The N.I.H. scientists said they did not diagnose the patients with traumatic brain injuries or concussions. The diagnoses they offered instead, all so-called “functional neurologic disorders,” are often caused by stress. The N.I.H. diagnosis angered several people with Havana syndrome symptoms who said it was insulting and misguided because it was tantamount to calling their symptoms psychosomatic or the result of mass hysteria. Dr. Relman, who was among the leaders of an experts panel established by the intelligence agencies and another by the National Academy of Sciences, said the work of those groups had found that the symptoms of some of the affected government workers could not have been caused by stress or psychosocial factors alone.

But Mr. Zaid said he feared that the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies would improperly use the study to bolster their findings that they could not determine an external cause for Havana syndrome cases. “The concern is that intelligence community is going to weaponize this study to show that the absence of evidence is evidence,” Mr. Zaid said. “And it is not.” (Please use the headline to find the link as it does not copy)

NPR: Don’t Worry Be Happy

“Two new government studies found no medical explanation for the cluster of symptoms known as Havana syndrome.” “Brain scans also found no significant differences between people who’d experienced an anomalous health incident and similar people with no symptoms. Chan says the results are reassuring, even though they don’t address the potential existence of a mystery weapon. CHAN: I can’t say for sure that there’s not something out there that could do something like this, but your average person walking down the street probably shouldn’t be worried about this.” – https://www.npr.org/2024/03/19/1239388560/nih-scientists-studying-havana-syndrome-patients-find-no-physical-trace-of-harm

And “The results should be “reassuring” to affected government workers and their families, Pierpaolo says. If there had been any progressive disease in the brains, he says, “we would have been able to measure it.” https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/18/1239087164/nih-studies-no-pattern-harm-havana-syndrome-patients-brains

ABC NEWS:  “An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U_S_ diplomats who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed “Havana syndrome”

“While that couldn’t rule out some transient injury when symptoms began, researchers said it’s good news that they couldn’t spot long-term markers on brain scans that are typical after trauma or stroke.” “A subset, about 28%, of Havana syndrome cases were diagnosed with a balance problem called persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, or PPPD. Linked to inner-ear problems as well as severe stress, it results when certain brain networks show no injury but don’t communicate properly. French called it a “maladaptive response,” much like how people who’ve slouched to alleviate back pain can have posture trouble even after the pain is gone. The Havana syndrome participants reported more fatigue, posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression. The findings are the latest in an effort to unravel a mystery that began when personnel at the U.S. embassy in Cuba began seeking medical care for hearing loss and ear-ringing after reporting sudden weird noises.

And in an editorial in JAMA on Monday, one scientist called for more research to prepare for the next such health mystery, cautioning that NIH’s study design plus the limits of existing medical technology could have missed some clues. “One might suspect that nothing or nothing serious happened with these cases. This would be ill-advised,” wrote Dr. David Relman of Stanford University. In 2022, he was part of a government-appointed panel that couldn’t rule out that a pulsed form of energy could explain a subset of cases.

The NIH study, which began in 2018 and included more than 80 Havana syndrome patients, wasn’t designed to examine the likelihood of some weapon or other trigger for Havana syndrome symptoms. Chan said the findings don’t contradict the intelligence agencies’ conclusions. If some “external phenomenon” was behind the symptoms, “it did not result in persistent or detectable pathophysiologic change,” he said.” https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/new-study-finds-brain-injuries-havana-syndrome-patients-108242289

Scientific American: It Was Hysteria

Scientific American reported ,“People with ‘Havana Syndrome’ Show No Brain Damage or Medical Illness” The abrupt onset of these symptoms led to years of debate among scientists and those affected about possible causes, which ranged from pesticides to group psychology to noise from crickets. Now two medical studies that were conducted by the National Institutes of Health and released on Monday morning might finally have an answer. The researchers compared more than 80 of these affected individuals with similar healthy people. The results, detailed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show no clinical signs or brain image indications to explain those widely varied symptoms. The JAMA findings follow the 2023 release of an intelligence community assessment that found that the injuries were not the result of foreign attacks. More likely, the assessment suggested, they were tied to previous injuries, stress, environmental concerns and “social factors” such as group psychology, in which illness symptoms reported by one individual in a community can spread serially among its members. Such outbreaks have been seen everywhere from hiccupping in high schools to “repetition strain” cases among Australian typists in the 1980s.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-with-havana-syndrome-show-no-brain-damage-or-medical-illness/

(Scientific American has published a number of articles reflecting skepticism towards reported harm. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-havana-syndrome-investigation-in-congress-rests-on-politics-not-science/ and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-anomalous-health-incidents-in-cuba-sidelined-science/

Breitbart News: “No evidence of having caused brain injury or biological abnormalities”

“March 18 (UPI) — Severe symptoms from the mysterious “Havana syndrome,” suffered by U.S. diplomats and military personnel overseas, show no evidence of having caused brain injury or biological abnormalities, the National Institutes of Health announced Monday. The NIH conducted two studies over nearly five years, which were published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.” Researchers used advanced imaging techniques, including MRIs, to examine federal employees stationed in Havana and other parts of the world, who had complained of anomalous health incidents — or AHIs — involving odd sounds and head pressure followed by dizziness, headache and cognitive dysfunction. “We didn’t see differences in the structure of the brain or even in the functional connectivity of the brain, said Dr. Leighton Chan, leading author and acting chief scientific officer at NIH Clinical Center. “Our goal was to conduct thorough, objective and reproducible evaluations to see if we could identify structural brain or biological differences in people who reported AHIs.” “While we did not identify significant differences in participants with AHIs, it’s important to acknowledge that these symptoms are very real, cause significant disruption in the lives of those affected and can be quite prolonged, disabling and difficult to treat,” Chan added.

 In one study, NIH researchers examined the brains of those believed to have Havana syndrome and those of a healthy comparison group. Participants underwent a battery of clinical, auditory, balance, visual, neuropsychological and blood biomarkers testing. They also received several MRI scans to look at the volume, structure and function of the brain. The test results show no significant differences and no evidence of brain injury, according to researchers. In a second study, researchers tested 86 federal workers, and adult family members who had reported Havana syndrome, and 30 people with similar jobs who had experienced no symptoms. Again, the two groups were the same. While it is still undetermined what caused the symptoms, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last year that the health incidents were “very unlikely” to have been caused by a foreign adversary. Instead, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines blamed “pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses and environmental factors.” https://www.breitbart.com/news/studies-find-no-brain-injury-in-havana-syndrome-patients/

1970’s Irradiation of the Moscow Embassy and Ambassadors, and the Govt. Response

Sixty years ago, another episode involving injuries to diplomats unfolded, and various ‘expert studies’ were also involved. A portion of the American public remembers all too well the sordid chapter of how the government handled (or mishandled) injuries to diplomatic personnel dating back to the 1970’s.

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training published diplomat James Schumaker’s account in the article “Microwaving Embassy Moscow — Another Perspective.”

“The existence of the microwave problem had been kept under wraps for years, first because no one knew that there might be health consequences, and later, according to unconfirmed reports, because Henry Kissinger wanted to avoid damaging chances for détente.  When Ambassador Stoessel learned about the problem, he threatened to resign unless the Embassy community was told.  As a result, the microwave story was finally made public in a press conference called by the Ambassador.”

In “War of the Waves: Combating Espionage in Embassy Moscow,” the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training reports, “One of the strangest episodes was revealed in the 1970s, when the U.S. confirmed that the USSR had been beaming microwaves at the embassy for the past 15 years. One concern was that the Soviets were trying to inflict physical harm on the Americans working there. Famed columnist Jack Anderson wrote that a CIA file named “Operation Pandora” described the Soviets’ attempt to “brainwash” Americans.

The level of microwaves was actually lower than what was considered safe in the U.S. at the time; another explanation is that the USSR was apparently trying to jam electronic monitoring devices located at the embassy.

William Andreas Brown discussed the widespread concern among Americans working at the embassy at the time, and their anger at the State Department for its lack of transparency on the issue:

“I have to tell you what a shock it was in about 1972 or 1973 to wake up to the great, microwave scandal and to find that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his associates had kept from us the fact that for years we had been bombarded by microwave apparatuses, directed straight at the embassy in Moscow. We learned only years later that this had happened and that information on it had been kept from us. Foreign Service physical examinations routinely include a blood test.” “Unbeknownst to us, the Department of State was testing our blood to see what, if anything had happened to us as a result of the microwave radiation. This was a pretty jolting realization.”

“[] the studies of our blood samples over the years of people who had served in Moscow showed that something like six months after a person arrived in Moscow, his or her white blood counts rose significantly. Some people speculated that this had to do with the water supply. A team led by a doctor was sent out from Washington to look into the matter. [] he had earlier pooh-poohed the notion that the radiation the American staff was receiving was deleterious.”

“[] the point is that microwave emissions were being beamed at us. [] a visiting technician from the State Department came with equipment and said, “Do you mind if I set this up in your office?” I said, “Okay, but why here? Why in my office?” He said, “Because actually there are at least two beams being directed at the embassy. One comes in from the front of the embassy building, and one comes in from that great, white building over there, which is called the ‘White House.’  You know, where the Russian Parliament meets. One beam comes this way, and the two beams intersect right here at your desk.” – William Andreas Brow “

At the same time, journalists like Paul Brodeur were pointing out that the health effects of low-intensity microwaves were not well understood, nor were the possible synergistic interactions of outside microwaves with similar microwave sources within the Embassy itself.

“All in all, many people in Moscow were agitated and offended by what appeared to be efforts to sweep the whole controversy under the rug. The clincher for many Moscow staffers was the unusual incidence of illness on the part of American Ambassadors stationed in Moscow.  An article by Paul Brodeur in the December 20, 1976 issue of New Yorker and an earlier article in Time Magazine reported that not only had two recent American Ambassadors to Moscow died of cancer (Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson and Charles Chip” Bohlen), then-Ambassador Walter Stoessel was suffering from a severe blood disorder (Ambassador Stoessel, who was universally admired, eventually died of leukemia in 1986).  To most Moscow staffers, it just seemed like too much of a coincidence.” – James Schumaker

See more at: https://safetechinternational.org/in-defense-of-crickets-part-1-of-3-havana-syndrome-and-irradiation-of-diplomats-1953-and-2018/

Paul Brodeur

New York Times journalist Paul Brodeur passed away in 2023.

Louis Slesin of the highly respected Microwave News wrote a must-read chronicle of the history of Brodeur’s work.  “While Mr. Brodeur was widely hailed for his reporting on asbestos and the ozone layer, some scientists said he was unnecessarily alarmist, even conspiratorial, in raising concern about potential health effects caused by power lines, cellphones and other household devices.” As Louis Slesin explains, “How could someone who everyone agreed got it so right on asbestos, now be vilified for getting it so wrong on microwaves and power lines? It’s a long story. The short version is that Brodeur got it right:

• Microwave radiation and power-frequency electromagnetic fields can lead to profound biological changes. The microwave-cancer connection, far from being fanciful, seems more than likely today.

• Beyond any reasonable doubt, there was, and continues to be, a cover-up. Powerful forces —initially the military-industrial complex, and now society as a whole— have insisted that the radiation cannot harm us except through heating. Further research has been consistently delayed and suppressed.”

Questioning the Ethics of Enrollment for the NIH study?

“Carlo Pierpaoli, lead author on the neuroimaging study, said while there is no evidence of brain injury on the MRIs, it is still possible that those reporting AHIs “may be experiencing the results of an event that led to their symptoms, but the injury did not produce the long-term neuroimaging changes that are typically observed after severe trauma or stroke.”

“A lack of evidence for an MRI-detectable difference between individuals with AHIs and controls does not exclude that an adverse event impacting the brain occurred at the time of the AHI,” said Pierpaoli, senior investigator and chief of the NIH’s Laboratory on Quantitative Medical Imaging at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

“Mark Zaid — an attorney representing “AHIs victims from CIA, State, DIA, Commerce, USAID, FBI and NSA, as well as whistleblowers from within the USG” — echoed some of Pierpaoli’s sentiment, writing in a statement, “Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence.”

Zaid added, however, that “these studies therefore do nothing to undermine the theory that a foreign adversary is harming US personnel and their families with a form of directed energy.”

Zaid stressed his concern that these studies provide fodder to detractors undermining the experiences reported by those with AHIs. He also raised “substantive and ethical concerns” with the way subjects were allegedly approached about participating in the study.

“The problem, however, is that the absence of conclusive proof is disingenuously relied upon by the Intelligence Community and naysayers to support their public assertion that AHI does not exist,” Zaid wrote. “The government is knowingly weaponizing the lack of science that exists in this area and intentionally hiding behind.” – https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/nih-researchers-find-no-evidence-of-havana-syndrome-in-brain-scans/ar-BB1k6Kzq

See also: “Individuals experiencing Havana syndrome symptoms expressed frustration and disbelief at the NIH diagnosis, viewing it as dismissive and misguided. Dr. Relman underscored that certain cases could not be explained solely by stress or psychosocial factors and suggested that concealable directed energy devices might be responsible in specific instances. Concerns were also raised about the ethical implications of the study, with some patients reportedly feeling pressured to participate to receive treatment. Nonetheless, Dr. Chan maintained that participation was voluntary, and individuals could withdraw at any time.” – https://thenationalera.com/new-nih-studies-cast-doubt-on-havana-syndrome-brain-injury-claims/

Cuba as State Sponsor of Terrorism: The Unfolding Story of the Injuries to Diplomats Has Profound Implications

This week, the Intercept published “Havana Syndrome: How The Biden Administration Is Driving Cubans Into Misery which is not about the diplomat’s injuries, but about Cuba.  “Protesters have taken to the street on the island, decrying power blackouts and food shortages. “CHANTING “POWER AND FOOD,” demonstrators have filled Cuba’s streets in recent days. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim delves into the complexities of Cuba’s current economic crisis with Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean. They discuss the various factors deepening the crisis and driving people to the streets, from the half-century-long U.S. embargo on the island, its own economic policies, pandemic-related destabilization, and sanctions the Trump administration imposed and the Biden administration kept in place.“

See also In a Major Snub to Obama, Biden Is Sticking With Trump When It Comes to Cuba Policy (Dec. 2023) “As one of his final foreign policy acts as president, in January 2021 Donald Trump added Cuba to the list of “State Sponsors of Terror,” []

With an intelligence community that has increasingly turned inward on its own nation, employing the indiscriminate use of microwaves, and with reported harm from both acute and chronic exposures to radio frequencies, and with frenzied election year political interests seeking to exploit safety and security issues, the stakes are higher than defending crickets.

Regarding the recent news, “Critics, including attorney Mark Zaid, cautioned against the misuse of the NIH study by intelligence agencies to support their assertions of an absence of evidence as evidence itself. This, they argued, could undermine efforts to investigate potential external causes of Havana syndrome cases.” – SOURCE

“The concern is that the intelligence community is going to weaponize this study to show that the absence of evidence is evidence,”

– No kidding.

Suggested Reading: Neurological Illness and National Security Lessons to Be Learned

“After considering a wide variety of possible mechanisms, both studies concluded that some of the cases with abrupt-onset, location-dependent sensory phenomena could be plausibly explained by exposure to directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy, despite important uncertainties. Others have also pointed to pulsed radiofrequency energy as a plausible mechanism.^10,11 The US Intelligence Community has discounted this possibility and concluded that reported symptoms were probably the result of “preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors,” influenced by their assessment that no foreign adversary played a role in these cases.¹² [] At least 3 basic issues have undermined efforts to understand and explain AHIs. Neurological Illness and National Security: Lessons to Be Learned | Neurology | JAMA | JAMA Network

“Climate” and Changes in Land Use vs. Trees

Trees and forests have been likened to the lungs of the planet. The UK’s Woodland Trust notes, trees “prevent flooding, reduce city temperature, reduce pollution, and keep soil nutrient-rich.” “Protecting old, established woods and trees is essential.”

In November of 2023, the World Economic Forum addressed the question What role do trees really play in fighting climate change? An expert explains Zurich’s Tomas Crowther was quoted, “It’s important to remember that a forest is not just a load of sticks of trees. They’re not just sticks of carbon. These are diverse, thriving ecosystems and it’s the biodiversity within them that allows them to capture and store all that carbon in the long term as a wonderful byproduct.” [ ] from the scientific perspective, a trillion trees means millions of local communities being economically empowered by the biodiversity they depend on. []

“Most of our planet’s forests have only reached 30% of their full maturity – allowing them to grow and fully mature could make a huge contribution to the climate fight.” – Source

Narratives about climate and carbon are laden with controversy.

But simple observation and discernment can be applied to assess whether or not a certain environmental exposure either nurtures – or kills – plants and trees.

Far-Away Rainforests – Someone Else’s Policy Problem?

The Rainforest Alliance explains, “Agribusinesses clear vast stretches of pristine, untouched forest to make room for cattle pasture (in Brazil) and cropland (soy in Brazil, palm oil in Indonesia). The cheapest and quickest way to do this in such humid conditions is to cut down the trees and underbrush with chainsaws, let them dry out for a month, and get rid of the debris by burning it. Large-scale clearing disrupts the very processes that give the rainforest its name—the ability to absorb, store, and recycle water as rainfall. As the soil dries out and tree cover is lost, the forest shifts from being fire-resistant to fire-prone. “This is one of the most traumatic things you can do to an ecosystem,” explained Nigel Sizer, the Rainforest Alliance’s chief program officer. The thin-barked trees of the rainforest have no natural resilience to fire, so the flames simply consume everything in their path.”

New Unprecedented Wounding Pattern – to Trees Everywhere

What about damage closer to home? The mainstream narrative about “changes in land use” and focus on the distant rainforest has continued to dominate discussions about trees and land, without addressing manmade “changes in atmosphere/air/electromagnetic environment use.”

The all-in-one-bucket of attributing damage to trees, forests, and sensitive habitats to “climate” fails to note that for decades, researchers and laypersons have been quantifying very specific visible pattern of damage to individual local trees.

The harm inflicted by this stressor follows a unique, unprecedented pattern not associated with other stressors.  

One-Sided and Crown Damage as an Indicator of Harm Caused by Radio Frequency Exposures and Electrosmog

In her report Tree Damage Caused by Radiofrequency Radiation Exemplary Observations from 2005 to 2021 in Germany,  (104 pages) Cornelia Waldmann-Selsam explains, 

“After the publication of the Bamberg Appeal 2004, in which 130 medical doctors warned against the continued expansion of mobile phone networks, numerous residents who were affected by the radiation from nearby mobile phone base stations asked the physician-led initiative for advice and help. As a result, we visited affected people in their homes, recorded their symptoms and performed RF radiation measurements. While visiting these patients, we have noticed since about 2005 that symptoms in our patients frequently started at around the same time when nearby trees also started to change and develop damage. Deciduous and coniferous trees as well as shrubs were affected. We became very concerned when we observed crown damage on just one side of a tree, which was the side facing a mobile phone station, as well as the contrast between damaged trees in front of a house – with line of sight to a base station – and healthy trees in the back of a house – without line of sight to an RF transmitter.

Tree health is affected by a wide range of factors: heat, drought, frost, soil composition, soil sealing, road salt, air and soil pollutants as well as pests. However, these factors cannot explain crown damage starting on one side only and damaged trees in the vicinity of water bodies.”

We asked various tree experts for advice: “Which type of causes would have to be considered for crown damage starting on one side?” Experts replied that root damage on one side due to underground engineering work could be a cause. Other causes were not known to them. Only in the vicinity of industrial facilities, a possible impact by industrial emissions should be considered.

2006 Tree Damage Investigation “We Were Overwhelmed by the Knowledge Already Available”

The head of an urban landscape department said in a conversation in May 2006: “For 2 to 3 years we have observed vitality disorders for which I have no explanation.” This statement encouraged us to further investigate this suspicious tree damage.

Dr. H. Eger, Dipl.-Ing. F. Maierhofer, Dr. V. Schorpp, expert meteorologist W. Sönning (Dipl.-Met.) and I compiled references regarding the effects of electromagnetic fields on plants. We were overwhelmed by the knowledge already available to date.

About 1920 electrical engineers discovered that trees act as receiving antennas of radio waves. A tall poplar tree made it possible to receive radio signals from the Eiffel Tower, which was located 300 km (185 mi) away. []

From 2004 different research groups have published effects on germination, growth and cellular metabolism in laboratory experiments. Research findings and observations that have been emergingsince the 1930s as well as our own on-site visits to damaged trees provided the impetus to our tree documentations over many years, including RF measurements, and our study. In the vicinity of all mobile phone base stations we visited, we found RF radiation-related tree damage.” –Source

Do You See Affected Trees in Your Area That Look Like This? “Two Years Later the Red Oak Was Cut Down”

Fruit Trees – Wanted Dead or Wanted Alive?

Crown Damage Starting on One Side on Individual Trees

“We found crown damage on all four sides of trees: north, south, east and west. On the side facing RF transmitters, leaves turned prematurely yellow or brown and fell off as early as June. In subsequent years crowns became more and more transparent on the side facing an RF transmitter. Outer branches died off. The damage progressed from the outside to the inside. The opposite side, facing away from an RF transmitter, has often remained intact for many years, while the incident radiation is attenuated by leaves or needles. RF radiation is absorbed and scattered. Depending on the distance and height of a given RF transmitter, initially only parts of a tree crown or entire sides are damaged.”

“Besides crown damage starting on one side, there were also differences between the upper and lower parts of these tree crowns. In the radio shadow of buildings, trees were healthy.”

“In the garden surrounding the Asklepios Klinik, several beech trees showed signs of damage at their crowns or trunks. When we touched the trees with the antenna of the RF meter, we could listen to radio. The radio and TV broadcasting tower Brotjacklriegel is located 12 km (7.5 mi) away. The tree trunk measurement cannot be used quantitatively because the RF meter is calibrated for measurements in air. However, the significant increase of the measurement result shows that beech trees are receiving antennas for electromagnetic fields. Electrical engineers already knew this 100 years ago. In areas with low ambient RF radiation levels, we observed no measurement differences between non-contact (in air) and contact-based (tree trunk) measurements.”

“From 2003 the residents of Burgheim have been concerned about an increased incidence of cardiovascular and tumor diseases as well as cases of death in the vicinity of the mobile phone base station. Despite requests for an official investigation by medical professionals, no such investigation was carried out. On the contrary, the mobile phone base station has gradually been upgraded.”

Three Quarter Illness

“Focused beams, reflection, diffraction, scattering, interferences as well as attenuations by buildings and trees all lead to a non-uniform distribution of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. This may explain why trees in the vicinity of mobile phone base stations are damaged at varying degrees. From 2003 when the third generation (3G) or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) mobile network started operating, within a very short period of time, a new type of tree damage emerged across all of Europe – even at very low RF radiation levels. This goes to show that field strength alone is not the only relevant factor that affects plants. In laboratory experiments, it has been found that plant responses can be differentiated with respect to frequency, bandwidth, pulse sequence, modulation, polarization, field strength and exposure duration. Since every molecule has charges, they can be influenced by electromagnetic fields and their function can become altered. Life on earth has evolved under the influence of naturally occurring electromagnetic fields and waves. Technically generated electromagnetic fields interfere with genetic, biochemical and physiological processes in humans, animals and plants.” – Tree Damage Caused by Radiofrequency Radiation Exemplary Observations from 2005 to 2021 in Germany Cornelia Waldmann-Selsam

Now 5G?

The new technologies employed by 5G enable antennas to behave dynamically in time and space, depending on the distribution of users and the applications targeted. This new behavior, together with larger antenna arrays, makes the RF-EMF exposures more complex, and so is likely to create new patterns of exposure damage.

As reported by Scitech Daily. the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is measuring trees’ effect on millimeter waves. “For 5G networks, the obstructing wall can be no more than an oak leaf. For that reason, NIST scientists embarked on a somewhat unusual task in September 2019: They set up measurement equipment near trees and shrubs of different sizes around the agency’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus.” “For one type of leafy tree, the European nettle, the average attenuation in summer was 27.1 dB, but it relaxed to 22.2 dB in winter when the tree was bare. Evergreens blocked more of the signal. Their average attenuation was 35.3 dB, a number that did not change with the season,”

Juxtaposed Harm in Humans and Trees – But My Trees Look Health and My Health Is Fine?

While NIST studied the effect of trees on millimeter waves, there is no independent agency monitoring the impact of millimeter waves on trees, pollinators, or human health.

Over a decade ago, German researchers began noticing tree harm when they visited the homes of individuals who were reporting heath damage associated with radio frequency exposures. The first take-away message from the German narrative, which is mirrored world-wide, is lack of investigation of reported harm to human health from increasing juxtapositions of wireless exposures. (In the U.S., the FCC has failed to address the 2021 court ruling questioning the adequacy of its radio frequency exposure guideline for humans.)

The exposures in your house and your yard may be different from that of your neighbors. (For example, some homes receive high levels of transmissions when utilities install medusa-collector meters on or near them. Banks of meters in multi-family homes are also an issue.) This can impact both human health and nature.

Listening to Plants and Trees Instead of Industry Scientists

Human Health

It is crucial to understand that the wireless industry is repeating the cognitive errors of the chemical and drug industries, in not evaluating chronic, cumulative, juxtaposed exposures, and vulnerable populations, as was noted by the National Academies in 2008.

For example, does your child or family elder have braces or metal eyeglasses or a deep brain stimulator? International regulator ICNIRP has stated that children do not need any additional protection, while admitting that its guidelines are not protective of all individuals in all circumstances.  Paolo Vecchia, chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (2004-2012), presented at the EM Radiation Research Trust conference in September 2008. He stated, “The ICNIPR guidelines are neither mandatory prescriptions for safety, the last word on the issue, nor or they defensive walls for industry or others.” This statement makes it clear that the decision to adopt these guidelines into national legislation as “sufficient to protect public health” is political. – Eileen O’Connor Director, EM Radiation Research Trust – Source

In addition to politics, the decision not to investigate EMF/RF harm is also influenced by economic and by military objectives, as clearly shown in an agreement made in 1976 to ignore the implications of Russian research, signed by the United States.

(Note that Russia has recently banned cellphones in schools, as has China. ” [ ] authorities are concerned about how internet use is affecting the health of the nation’s youth. There have been rising levels of nearsightedness among children in China and in 2018, the authorities announced plans to regulate the gaming industry which was partially blamed for the problem. They also cited concerns that gaming addiction was damaging mental health.”

Current Guidelines Do not Protect Nature

As evidence of harm to other species; to trees, foliage and fauna: and human health mounts, environmental stewards are alarmed to realize that guidelines for radio frequency exposures never even recognized the Rights of Nature and the ecosystem. The FCC has not addressed the Court’s remand, which included questioning the agency’s lack of protection for nature.

Citizen Science: Document Before and/or After Damage to Your Tree Environment

Even without access to a professional-grade RF meter, or arborist training, it is possible to identify and document possible RF-damage to trees with the naked eye.

If desired, please send tree damage images and narratives to team@safetechinternational.org. If possible, please provide the location, time, date, name of tree if known, approximate distance to the mast/antenna if known, and when erected and activated, if known. (See AntennaSearch – Search for Cell Towers & Antennas and Ookla’s New 5G Map Tracks 5G Rollouts across the Globe and/or file a FOIA request in your community)

Even without identifying tags, if you begin tracking vulnerable trees over time, you can contribute to the conversation and course correction, first by becoming aware, and then by documenting the damage in your area.

“Technically generated electromagnetic fields interfere with genetic, biochemical and physiological processes in humans, animals and plants.”

Should we place our faith in technological innovation (Dead Bird Drones may get AI and 5G, Research with robotized bird cadavers could benefit the aviation industry and Rise Of The Robot Bees: Tiny Drones Turned Into Artificial Pollinators)?

Or on our ability to pivot away from outdated, irrelevant science and a regulatory stranglehold that expressly prohibits protecting human health and the nature environment?

The Earth, the Air, the Fire, the Water, Return, Return, Return, Return 

This is part 1 of a series. Additional resources to follow, contributions welcomed.

Top image: 25 JUL 19: Darmstadt, St. Paul’s Church (view from W), Locust tree, The mobile phone base station in the church steeple radiates in all directions: north, east, south and west. We observed damaged trees in all directions. Measurement in front of the administrative building of the Protestant Church of Hesse and Nassau: 3370 µW/m². – Source

“We’ve arranged a global civilization, which… profoundly depend(s) on science and technology. We’ve also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a recipe for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” – Carl Sagan

On November 6, Americans heard optimistic news reports that “SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Could Fly Again in the Coming Weeks.” Gizmodo reported, “SpaceX is preparing to launch its Starship rocket for the second time, aiming for mid-November for another flight test of its launch vehicle after the first one didn’t go so well. It’s been over six months since Starship lifted off for the very first time, a problematic debut that has kept the rocket grounded since then. But now SpaceX claims that the second test flight of its megarocket could launch as early as mid-November, “pending regulatory approval.”

SpaceX Pending Approval:  “If you’re able to build a rocket faster than the government can regulate it, that’s upside down, and that needs to be addressed. So we think some regulatory reforms are needed.”

Reporting on the upcoming launch, a Washington Post article noted, “Before the world’s largest rocket blew up its launchpad on lift off, scattering debris and shrapnel into the Texas shoreline, before it started tumbling and exploded in midair, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk had a prediction on how the first test flight of his Starship rocket would go: ‘excitement guaranteed‘.“ Now, more than six months later — after the first Starship flight spawned an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, a lawsuit by environmentalists and hope by NASA officials that Musk’s towering, stainless-steel creation will be reliable enough to one day carry the next astronauts to the surface of the moon — SpaceX is getting ready to launch Starship again.

The FAA still has to issue a launch license, but SpaceX recently said in a statement that Starship “could launch as soon as mid-November, pending regulatory approval.” NASA officials have said they are eager for SpaceX to renew testing.

The company has added a water suppression system to its launchpad, which should help dampen the thunderous vibrations caused by the rocket’s staggering 33 first-stage engines. It has also added a new way for the stages of the rocket to separate, and it’s run multiple engine tests to continue to understand how they will perform in flight.“

(Not noted, how much water is required? Hopefully not on the same scale as the water required to suppress Tesla vehicle fires? See: Firefighters have to blast 40 times more water at burning Tesla than other cars)

“The significance of the test flight goes well beyond the combustible violence of rocketry as performance art. It is a key milestone for SpaceX as it tries to, once again, upend the space industry, and for NASA as well. The space agency is investing $4 billion into the development of the rocket and spacecraft, and it has placed the vehicle at the center of its campaign to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.

While future moon-bound astronauts will launch on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and fly to the moon in the Orion capsule, Starship is the spacecraft that is supposed ferry them to and from the lunar surface. Officially, NASA’s plan is to land astronauts there by 2025. But that timeline is likely to slip, perhaps significantly. One of the concerns is that Starship requires its propellant tank to be refilled while in Earth’s orbit by a fleet of Starship tankers in an immensely complicated choreography. None of those tankers have been launched — or built. And before NASA allows its astronauts to board Starship, SpaceX will have had to have flown the vehicle many times to prove its reliability.

SpaceX has been grounded since the first test flight in April. That flight sent chunks of the launchpad into nearby wetlands and along the shoreline, though no one was injured. The FAA said in a recent statement that it closed the safety portion of its investigation focusing “on issues that affect public health and safety of property.” The environmental portion, done in consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, is not yet complete, the FAA said. “We have not made a final license determination. We will let you know when that day comes,” Steve Kulm, an FAA spokesman, said in a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday.

The delays have frustrated SpaceX. “We’ve been ready to fly for a few weeks now,” Tim Hughes, SpaceX’s senior vice president, recently told The Post. “And we’d very much like the government to be able to move as quickly as we are. If you’re able to build a rocket faster than the government can regulate it, that’s upside down, and that needs to be addressed. So we think some regulatory reforms are needed.” – SpaceX is gearing up for the second flight of Starship | The Spokesman-Review

The NASA video of the earlier explosion in July of 2022 is here.

Not everyone is excited by the news of the pending launch, or by SpaceX’s demand for faster regulatory approval, particularly due to the company’s recently revealed culture regarding workplace safety. Less airplay and news coverage has been devoted to the alarming Reuters investigation At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars, published Nov. 10th, than announcements of the upcoming launch.

The Other SpaceX News Story: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars. “Leading an urgent quest to create a refuge in space from a dying Earth, while harming workers and destroying nature”

 “SpaceX employees say they’re paying the price for the billionaire’s push to colonize space at breakneck speed.”

“Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death. SpaceX employees say they’re paying the price for the billionaire’s push to colonize space at breakneck speed.”

“The facility had a worker-injury rate six times the space-industry average in 2022.”

“”…workers are just disposable to them.”

“Through interviews and government records, the news organization documented at least 600 injuries of SpaceX workers since 2014. Many were serious or disabling. The records included reports of more than 100 workers suffering cuts or lacerations, 29 with broken bones or dislocations, 17 whose hands or fingers were “crushed,” and nine with head injuries, including one skull fracture, four concussions and one traumatic brain injury. The cases also included five burns, five electrocutions, eight accidents that led to amputations, 12 injuries involving multiple unspecified body parts, and seven workers with eye injuries. Others were relatively minor, including more than 170 reports of strains or sprains.”

“Current and former employees said such injuries reflect a chaotic workplace where often under-trained and overtired staff routinely skipped basic safety procedures as they raced to meet Musk’s aggressive deadlines for space missions.”

“Musk himself at times appeared cavalier about safety on visits to SpaceX sites: Four employees said he sometimes played with a novelty flamethrower and discouraged workers from wearing safety yellow because he dislikes bright colors.”

“Some SpaceX engineers say they relish collaborating with creative coworkers in an environment with little bureaucracy. “There’s a certain amount of red tape that SpaceX avoids, which allows it to move faster” than NASA or private competitors, said Chris Cunnington, a former engineer in McGregor, Texas. He said he believed SpaceX struck a good balance between speed and safety.”

“Carson worked at the Brownsville site as a welder in 2019 and 2020 and returned as a production supervisor in 2021 and 2022. He said some employees took Adderall, the stimulant typically used to treat attention-deficit disorder, without a prescription. Others fell asleep in bathrooms, said Carson and three other current or former Brownsville workers.” “To speed work and cut costs, SpaceX started manufacturing rockets in tents next to an undeveloped Gulf of Mexico beach. Workers welded rocket parts up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, often in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the SpaceX workers said. When overcome by heat, they were given IV fluids and sent back to work. When high winds disrupted the work, supervisors shut the tents, closing off ventilation that is essential for safe welding, according to the six current and former workers. OSHA warns that welding stainless steel can generate a highly toxic, cancer-causing dust.”

“SpaceX shouldn’t be exempt from protecting workers from being injured or killed,” Barab said, “just because they’re doing innovative work.”

“Other current and former employees at the company’s Brownsville site, which had the highest 2022 injury rate, said the company’s disdain for structured processes came at a high cost to workers.”

“Current and former employees said such injuries reflect a chaotic workplace where often under-trained and overtired staff routinely skipped basic safety procedures as they raced to meet Musk’s aggressive deadlines for space missions.”

“SpaceX, founded by Musk more than two decades ago, takes the stance that workers are responsible for protecting themselves, according to more than a dozen current and former employees, including a former senior executive.”

“The lax safety culture, more than a dozen current and former employees said, stems in part from Musk’s disdain for perceived bureaucracy and a belief inside SpaceX that it’s leading an urgent quest to create a refuge in space from a dying Earth.” – Source

(Note that the employee union advocacy movement in the United States developed due to abuses in the workplace. CNN reported in Sept. 2023, “Workers have attempted to organize at Tesla at least three different times. But the company, led by Elon Musk, has been difficult for unions to break into because of weak protections for labor organizing in the United States; Tesla’s aggressive tactics; and Tesla’s strategy of granting factory workers stock options, a rarity in the auto industry.” “Tesla will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent unions,” Logan said.)

Boca Raton Shoreline: “‘Elon Always Said This was the Place to Launch Rockets Because There’s Nothing Here, That it’s Just a Big Wasteland’“

In June 2021, Texas Monthly reported, Elon Musk Is Turning Boca Chica Into a Space-Travel Hub. Not Everyone Is Starstruck.“‘Elon always said this was the place to launch rockets because there’s nothing here, that it’s just a big wasteland,’ she says. ‘But that’s just not true. It’s an amazing place for shorebirds. It’s got to be one of the best places for shorebirds in the country.’

“Much of the land here is part of the 10,680-acre Boca Chica tract of the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. Kemp’s ridley turtles, the most endangered sea turtles in the world, nest on the beaches; dolphins swim in the nearby Laguna Madre. The only remaining breeding population of ocelots in the United States lives here. The last confirmed sighting of a jaguarundi in the U.S. happened nearby, in 1986, and there are rumors some may remain.“

“It is the birds, though, that set Boca Chica apart: egrets, falcons, pelicans, plovers, sandpipers, sparrows, and warblers, among others. There are many species of birds in the Rio Grande Valley that can’t be found anywhere else in the U.S. But it’s a hard time for shorebirds up and down the Gulf Coast. Too much development, too many vehicles, a changing climate. The Boca Chica portion of the wildlife refuge is intended to provide a sanctuary.”  – Texas Monthly

As Texas Monthly explains, the July explosion was not the first experimental launch failure. “Perhaps in the distant future historians in far-flung corners of the solar system will note that the twenty-first-century Texas space program did not get off to a particularly strong start. The first proper test of the Starship, the (aspirationally) reusable rocket offered by the SpaceX corporation and launched from the southern tip of the Lone Star State, took place on December 9, 2020. The rocket climbed some 41,000 feet, halted as it was supposed to, and returned to its landing pad—much too rapidly. Crunch. The second test, in February, crunched too. The next, on March 3, appeared to land mostly intact but exploded eight minutes later. On March 30, the fourth test didn’t even make it back to the pad: near the apogee of its flight, it blew up with a calamitous boom, spreading shrapnel more than five miles afield. “Looks like we’ve had another exciting test,” announced the sheepish narrator on SpaceX’s official livestream. “Flying debris and pieces of Starship; there’s stuff smoking on the ground in front of the camera!” said the host of a privately run livestream, one of many catering to the company’s fans, its lens pointed at the landing pad in the town of Boca Chica as steel chunks rained down with frightening velocity.” – Texas Monthly

Debris Raining Down

In September 2016, Spaceflight 101 reported, SpaceX Rocket Parts Rain Down over Indonesia. “Large rocket parts rained down over a pair of small Indonesian islands on Monday when the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket launched earlier this year fell from orbit and, at least to some extent, survived its fiery re-entry over the island of Java. At least two sizeable tanks were reported falling from the sky around 10 Western Indonesian Time in the Sumenep Regency on the eastern end of Madura Island located north-east of Java. The tanks landed on the small islands of Giliraja and Giligenting, causing damage to an animal enclosure but luckily leaving the animals and all locals in the area unharmed. The timing and location of the debris sighting is consistent with the uncontrolled re-entry of the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket launched in August of this year.“

“Given the extremely high speed of the object at Entry Interface, air in front of the vehicle is compressed, creating a shock wave layer in which molecules are separated into ions and temperatures rise to the extreme. The shock wave layer forming just in front of the spacecraft and any separated components leads to considerable heating that causes the incineration of the majority of its structure – especially for rocket bodies that consist to a large part of hollow tank assemblies. The mechanical deceleration experienced during re-entry can be up to 20Gs, further crushing the structural components and causing the break-up of the spacecraft. Temperatures reached during re-entry can melt most metal types and the majority of fragments created on entry fully burn up, leaving a cloud of dust in the upper atmosphere. However, dense components such as pressurant tanks and engine components can survive re-entry and reach the ground. Similar objects were found in Brazil after the re-entry of a Falcon 9 rocket stage.

According to reports by locals, at least four objects related to the Falcon 9 stage were discovered, two of them in shallow waters near the coast. Photos shared by Indonesian media outlets show charred objects of different shapes and sizes, and reports also indicate that a sonic boom associated with the re-entry was heard. Monday’s incident was a rare re-entry event over a populated area, showcasing the danger space debris can pose to human life and property and illustrating the importance of mitigation techniques such as deorbiting spent rocket stages or bringing sizeable objects to a controlled re-entry over remote areas.” –SpaceX Rocket Parts Rain Down over Indonesia – Falcon 9 – JCSat-16 | Spaceflight101

The 2021 SpaceX Protest: Satellites, Rockets, and 5G on Earth and in Sky; What is the Cost to Health and the Environment?

Safe Tech International and other advocacy groups delivered an open letter and held a protest at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA in March of 2021. The video promoting the event is still relevant except for the increase in the number of satellites quoted.

Video Production and Editing: Amber Yang; Event Sponsored by Safe Tech International, Americans for Responsible Technology, Children’s Health Defense, Environmental Health Trust, Moms Across America, Stop 5G on Earth and in Space International Appeal, Stop 5G International, 5G Free California,

Arthur Firstenburg of the Cellular Phone Task Force tracks satellite applications. The most recent tally, published Nov. 1, 2023: One Million Satellites Planned. As noted by Safe Tech International, “Dangers posed by satellites include space debris, collisions, depletion of the ozone layer; risk of devastating cyber attacks, pollution from rocket launches and from “dead” satellites burning up in the atmosphere; plutonium and uranium spills from nuclear-powered satellites and space vehicles; increase in already harmful levels of EMF radiation, permanent compromise of the night sky, interference with astronomical research and weather forecasting; effects on wildlife, yet more tracking, surveillance and erosion of privacy; vastly more energy consumption, and the “promise” of increasing the lethality of war.” – Safe Tech International

Unpacking a Few Concepts

“The lax safety culture, more than a dozen current and former employees said, stems in part from Musk’s disdain for perceived bureaucracy and a belief inside SpaceX that it’s leading an urgent quest to create a refuge in space from a dying Earth.”

Regarding SpaceX’s demand for regulatory reform and faster approvals, a growing portion of the awakened public sees the tech industry’s sense of entitlement to speed and lax regulation as unrealistic, ungrounded, and unsafe.

Humanity, and every species, have co-evolved for eons to live on the Earth. To imply that a refuge can be successfully created on the Moon or Mars by SpaceX, when it cannot operate in harmony with the Laws of Nature, and with its institutionalized lack of respect for human rights, community rights, employee safety, and the Rights of Nature, is wildly illogical.

Rather than assuming that the Earth is dying, disjointed tech industries are ignoring the damage that they themselves are inflicting. This includes the alteration of the Earth’s electromagnetic environment, as noted here in January 2022 by Arthur Firstenberg:

“The pure Yang forms the heaven, and the turbid Yin forms the earth. The Qi of the
earth ascends and turns into clouds, while the Qi of the heaven descends and turns
into rain.” So the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine described the global
electric circuit 2,400 years ago — the circuit that is generated by the ionosphere and
that flows perpetually between the Yang (positive) heaven and the Yin (negative)
earth. The circuit that connects us to earth and sky and that flows through our
meridians giving us life and health. A circuit that must not be polluted with
frequencies emitted by a hundred thousand satellites, some of whose beams will
have an effective power of up to ten million watts. That is sheer insanity, and so far
no one is paying attention. No one is even asking whether the satellites have
anything to do with the profound and simultaneous decline, planetwide, in the
number of insects and birds, and with the pandemic of sleep disorders and fatigue
that so many are experiencing. [] no one is paying attention to the holocaust descending from space.” – 441449-Low-Earth-Orbit-Satellites.pdf (cellphonetaskforce.org)

Kate Kheel of Safe Tech International and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space observed, “SpaceX policy toward workers is a microcosm of how the entire industry sees the public and indeed all life. Their mission to “go to Mars as fast as possible and ‘save humanity’ permeates every part of the company” and all life on Earth. The Reuter’s article quotes an employee saying, “The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety.” …and we might add: …including the safety and well-being of all life.”

Reuters reported, “SpaceX shouldn’t be exempt from protecting workers from being injured or killed,” Barab said, “just because they’re doing innovative work.” Unfortunately, electric vehicle and so-called green energy advocates often dismiss criticism of Tesla and Musk based on the assumption that he is unfairly targeted due to his success challenging the fossil fuel industries with electric vehicles. Ignoring mining, disposal, and other exploitation issues, the green energy movement has fallen prey to the belief that the ends justify the means. Along with Musk.

Many informed activists recognize that the “light regulatory touch” towards Elon Musk is derived from his work for the military and the war industry.

Dig Deeper

Paris Marx has been responsibly and accurately investigating Elon Musk on the platforms “Tech Won’t Save Us” and “Disconnect.”

In 2021, Paris interviewed Eric Roesch in SpaceX’s Regulatory Evasion Has Consequences. “Eric Roesch is an expert in environmental compliance and risk assessment who writes about intersection of capitalism, markets and greenwashing. Eric wrote about the damage the Starship launch was going to have, SpaceX’s violation of the Clean Water Act, and Elon Musk’s general regulatory evasion. He also shared [] photos of the aftermath of the Starship launch.” – Source

See: Elon Musk Unmasked: Origins of an Oligarch (Part 1) 40 minutes

Elon Musk Unmasked: Creating the Genius Myth (Part 2) – Episodes – Tech Won’t Save Us (techwontsave.us) 45 minutes

Elon Musk Unmasked: Building An Empire (Part 3) 53 minutes

Elon Musk Unmasked: Shaping the Future (Part 4) 65 minutes “We can learn more through the Hubble horoscope. We don’t have to colonize these other places.”

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Join the conversation.

The ends do not justify the means. We are not a multi-planetary species. We have the ability and responsibility to seek the deeper truth and invite Light to prevail, here, on the abundant and beautiful Earth, where we can and do live, now.

Action: The Appeal — 5G Space Appeal

On July 26, in their “weekly guide to the latest on FOIA, transparency and accountability battles, threats and wins” MuckRock reported, “ Commander troubles: President Joe Biden’s German shepherd Commander bit seven people in a four-month period after former first dog Major was ousted from the White House over similar aggressive behavior, according to internal Secret Service communications obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and reviewed by The New York Post.”

A NY Post article is here.

Many theories have emerged about the dogs and their undesirable behaviors.

 Some have followed political party lines.

I Have a Few Theories

They do not involve aliens or UFOs or assassinations or questions about pandemics.

I don’t think that the dogs were “sent away to the farm” for awhile in an attempt to hide an embarrassing pregnancy.

Yes, it’s clear to me, Major and Commander were peddling cocaine in the White House, and the Secret Service is covering.

No, actually I have another theory.

Downward Dog

Many years ago, I asked a student if we could use a picture of her dog doing the yoga pose “downward dog” for a promotion.

We had a very sweet, engaging postcard with actual photographs of a yoga teacher, a toddler, and a golden retriever each doing the pose.  

Later, the dog owner came to me and said that is was ironic that we had used the photo of her dog, because she had recently learned that her golden retriever was quite ill, with skyrocketing levels of inflammatory markers.

Centuries ago, the ancients recognized both the Meridian electromagnetic pathways of the body that are choreographed by the sun, and the Radiant Circuits, also known as Strange Flows.

They performed “down dog” in order to activate, energize, and balance some of those pathways, in this case, including the Heart Meridian.

Dogs and cats are also comprised of electromagnetic fields which sustain their energy body, for example, the Gall Bladder Meridian shown here, from the book “Four Paws Five Directions” by Cheryl Schwartz.

Four Paws Five Directions – Cheryl Schwartz (drcherylschwartz.com)

In recent history, especially in the last 150 years of mass consumerism, most of modern society has lost the maps, and has become increasingly illiterate in the Laws of Energy.

And unlike previous ages, when wisdom was accumulated by directly observing and interacting with Nature, individuals are increasingly distracted by devices, and not learning, and not learning how to learn through observation, interaction, relationship, or cultivation of the intuitional body.

To Assume Makes an Ass Out of You and Me?

As a result of energetic illiteracy, we see ridiculous and dangerous assumptions driving the technological revolution, for example the implication that the skin is the boundary between the internal and external environment, and 5G “only penetrates the skin” – therefore “5G is safe” – all based in inanimate tissue modeling.

Or, for example, the implication that because bananas emit radiation, that it’s ok to place an industrial-scale tower laden with antennas in a residential neighborhood, as discussed in greater detail here.

Dogs Know Better

Dogs realize that the human consciousness field does not start at the skin, as they sniff the air around their human companions.

Bees also know better.

In his book “Bees,” Rudolf Steiner explains, “The bees feel, if I may use this expression, a person’s effluvia, exhalations, vapors, or perspiration. They know what makes up a specific human being.”(See Bees, Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, 1923, Translations copyright 1998. Anthroposophic Press, Great Barrington, MA, page 60.) 

The measurable field that surrounds the body, and not the skin, is the first line of defense against external influences.

Rather than looking (only) at shallow penetration of the skin on a model as an assurance of 5G safety, research could and should be conducted to determine if the action of the intelligent, energetic, protective field that surrounds living beings is being compromised by artificial man-made exposures. Further, is the skin’s function itself being adversely impacted by artificial frequencies and lighting, for example, melatonin or Vit. D production?

Because if that energetic field in a human or another living being is being altered unnaturally, what or who is now remotely controlling, altering, and hijacking the harmonious balance that should be choreographed by the Earth’s Cosmic Current?

For example… the exquisite way that the Liver is doing so much interior detoxification to support health and well-being between the hours of 1 and 3 am, then yielding to the Lungs at 3 am, unless of course the individual is being unnaturally activated by microwave hearing and/or data transmissions disturbing the necessary, natural sleep cycle, as occurred when smart meters were installed on homes across the country.

Which has been widely reported.

Which brings me back to the question of the President’s dogs.

There are a number of things that we could be doing to determine how to sustain a healthy environment, and one of those things is to look at the RF/EMF exposures pummeling the dogs, bees, all flora and fauna, and the human species itself. And the Presidential pooches.

Thus far, studies such as the Morris Foundation Golden Retriever Lifetime Study have not considered, monitored, or evaluated the possibility that radio frequency exposures may be contributing to increasing canine cancer rates, despite the findings of the National Toxicology Study.

The NIEHS National Toxicology Program Study on Cell Phone Radiation and Cancer: 2018 Update/Resources – Environmental Health Trust (ehtrust.org)

Dogs in the White House

The heavily-protected White house itself is filled with security and communications infrastructure.

If the dogs are hearing anything like what I (and others) hear turning off and on over the course of day and night, -a multi-layered very high-pitched hum creating a thermo-elastic wave of pressure in my head, preventing healthy rest and sleep, – I don’t blame them for biting – because it is irritating, aggravating, frustrating, and it involuntarily activates the Fight or Flight or Freeze response when brain waves are altered by an artificial external force.

Have the dog’s inflammatory marker’s been measured?

Have dogs been measured for stress responses with and without EMF/RF exposures?

Incredulously, there are similarities between domestic abuse and the conditions being imposed on consumers for access to the essential service of electricity, in the case of smart meters. The demand to accept a surveilling wireless smart meter has been accompanied by minimization and blame, ridicule, domination, threats, and punitive fees. This is bullying, and abuse.

As pet owners look for the assurance of a signal on their cell phone to track their pets, or watch the animals remotely via Wi-Fi enabled video stream, are they sentencing them to illness and early death?

Where is the science that supports safety assumptions? Is it anything like the incredible naivety and misplaced blind trust that has enabled industry-sourced SAM-enabled dummy human safety ‘tests’? (See WeAreNotSAM)

WeAreNotSAM

Yes, We Have Been Keeping Plastic Heads Safe Since 1996

“Humanity is Suffering a Great Separation Sickness”

I have another theory about Commander and Major as well.

In the full-length documentary film “The Animal Communicator – Anna Breytenbach (Full documentary), in addition to other examples of Anna’s extraordinary work, the story is told about the rescue of a remarkable black jaguar.

He did not like the name imposed on him by his initial human captors, and was renamed “Spirit” by the respectful humans eventually entrusted with his care.

(“Spirit” crossed over as the 2023 summer solstice neared, marking the balance between darkness and light, as reported below.

Animal Communicator Update on Spirit

19th June 2023: Spirit left his body peacefully today, assisted by kind curators and vets who accurately determined that his cancer was uncomfortable and untreatable. He lived to an amazing 21 years of age – almost unprecedented for a leopard.)

Instead of building better bombs, what if we were learning how to access the intelligence and presence demonstrated by Anna and others like her?

The White House Dog’s Names Serve as Military Propaganda

Reflecting the war-mongering ways of both Democratic and Republican administrations, the White House dogs’ names serve as military propaganda. But it’s not working so well anymore.

In March of 2021, Military Times reported that ‘Trust in the military is dropping significantly, new survey suggests.”

On July 31, 2023, News Nation reported, Americans’ confidence in US military continues to decline: Gallup.

Politico reported, “Americans’ confidence in the U.S. military lowest in 2 decades, poll finds.”

“Public confidence in the U.S. military continues to decline, reaching its lowest point in over two decades, according to a new poll.

Only 60 percent of Americans expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military in a recent Gallup poll conducted from June 1 to 22. That’s down from 64 percent who said the same last year.

Over the past 48 years, Republicans have consistently shown the highest levels of confidence in the military. But in just the past three years, Republican confidence plunged from 91 percent to 68 percent. Independents — who historically held moderate levels of confidence — now have the lowest trust, with public confidence dropping by 13 percentage points to 55 percent. Though confidence among Democrats rose after President Joe Biden took office, that gain has dissipated over the past year.

The results mark the lowest level since 1997 and the steepest decline in the past five years — mirroring a crisis of trust in several other public institutions.” – Politico

“US Aims to be “Master of Space”

As the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space has cautioned, “US aims to be “Master of Space,” Militarizing and Profiteering in the Sky.”

“The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space is involved in a legal action against the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to pressure them to create rules/guidelines for the launching of satellites in space. Lower Earth orbit (LEO) is becoming dangerously crowded and NASA scientists are concerned about growing space debris and likely cascading collisions in orbit (Kessler Syndrome). The US is moving quickly to grab as many of the remaining orbital parking spaces as possible in order to deny Russia, China, India and other nations from deploying satellites in LEO.

The Space Force today contends that it will ‘control and dominate space’ and use space tech to win wars on the Earth below.”

Read the report here:  https://space4peace.org/legal-action-against-fcc/

In addition, “A rocket launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX last week from California may have punched a hole in the Earth’s ionosphere, a new analysis suggests. The assessment points out that the Falcon 9 rocket launched on 19 July from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, likely punched a hole in the ionosphere – a layer around Earth consisting of the fourth state of matter plasma, with a sea of electrically charged particles floating at about 80-650km (50-400 miles) above the surface. – Source

Like countless citizens worldwide, maybe Commander and Major are sick of exploitation of the solar system’s resources, (now propelled by the demand for tech, including wireless) and sick of war.

Postscript: to Spirit the Jaguar, we honor your power and grace which endured above and beyond human violence and hubris. Thank you for your Infinite Light.

The FDA and the FCC and political partners from both parties, along with the military, have been having quite a party while counting their riches and thinking of ways not to recognize the harm that new technologies are causing.

Many wireless consumers are too young to remember scientists and industry executives working for the tobacco companies, lying to congress.

In this example, companies were denying, under oath, that cigarettes are addictive,

Regarding health, B and W whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand asked, “Have you done any biological studies?” “pharmacology?” “effects on central nervous system?” 

The companies had studies indicating harm, but they suppressed the findings.

Even as the public began to learn about the risks associated with cigarettes, including cancer, many smokers were unable to pivot because they were addicted.

The industry threw everything they had at consumers to foster a presumption of safety, including claiming that women preferred small birth weight babies, and creating a “tobaccommeter” to measure tar and nicotine while ignoring evidence that cigarettes (not tobacco itself) caused harm to many systems throughout the body.  

The public was brain-washed to focus only on lung cancer in smokers, with a long gestation period and a smokescreen that could implicate other factors.

Why does this sound so familiar?

Former Attorney General Mark Butterworth of Florida stated, “The issue has been deceit.  The [ ] companies made a decision that they would withhold valuable information from the American public, information that the consumer would need to make an intelligent decision…”

Many of the companies involved, including Brown and Williamson and R.J. Reynolds, are no longer in business – because the party boat eventually sank.

It was not until evidence of damage from second-hand exposures was clear (lung cancer in the non-smoking widows of smokers) that the legitimate, necessary course correction began.

But more importantly, most of the victims and their families were never compensated. The legal fights continue decades later, with smokers still being denied participation in class action lawsuits.

Informed Consumers are the Industry’s Worst Customers

Where are “second hand” exposures to non-benefitting, non-consenting parties now rampant??

A growing portion of the consumer population is questioning claims being made by the wireless industry, for example, the article published by SDxCentral implying that because bananas emit radiation, that cell towers and 5G are of no concern.

“Human skin, it was found, deflects nearly half of all power emitted by high-frequency waves that 5G uses. Radio frequency, including that in the 5G range, doesn’t contain enough energy to break down human DNA molecules. While cell towers and cell phones do emit a small amount of radiation, so do bananas. This is an unnecessary concern for the environmental impact of 5G.”

SdXCentral is not a fringe publication. SDxCentral’s partners include Aruba Networks, Cisco, Ericsson, Fortinet, GSMA, Juniper Networks, Kyocera, NEC, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, and Replify. 

For some educated consumers, rejecting the ridiculous banana claim is theoretical, for others, living and/or working next to proximal infrastructure has destroyed their lives.

While the banana claim is not universal, what is not unique is the wide-spread wireless industry claim that 5G is safe because “it only penetrates the skin and not the deeper organs.”

Like the Titanic, and countless other industrial paradigms such as asbestos, we need to circle back and question the safety.

To Serve Unmet Market Demand?

I have a friend who started his own company while in college producing keyboards for left-handed computer users. He saw an unmet need and served a niche market.

There is an enormous untapped potential for small and not-so-small companies to cater to customers who are receding from the wireless marketplace, including

• cars (Toyota – please bring back the 2005 Corolla) for drivers seeking safer vehicles that do not irradiate them
• simple sonic toothbrushes that do not have an app or wireless signals
• analogue hearing aids
• unsmart appliances
• hard-wired homes, offices, medical centers, and schools (including communal and higher density housing) that are truly accessible and future-proof
• protected environments

Wireless, Telecom, Surveillance, Control, and Warfare

In earlier iterations, fire alarms only sent a signal when fire was detected. Society drunk on wireless has been led by an industry drunk on power and profits to accept technology such as smart meters that send and receive signals thousands of times per day in a mesh, simply to maintain the integrity of the network, creating a massive planetary footprint collecting, transmitting, and storing useless data. Surveillance and control are the unacknowledged downsides. Silicon Valley and others have devised technology that consumes as much wireless as possible, with no cognition of sustainability or conservation, because they are growing the economy and fostering increased demand and consumption.

Whereas nations historically were at war with one another, the Chinese wireless control grid demonstrates the risks of a nation in the throes of an auto-immune disease, turning on its own citizens.

It’s not just China.

Every seemingly innocuous decision that consumers make regarding wireless and the dual functions for control and surveillance enables top-down control and overshoot.

Why are societies not testing and monitoring wireless devices and infrastructure for safety?

Because the paradigm is not designed for simple telecommunications.  If it was, the lack of safety and resource and energy consumption issues would already have been confronted and addressed.

if you could have played a part in stopping lead in paint, or asbestos in schools, or mercury in water would you have done it?

If it’s time to question the Titanic Gigantic wireless paradigm, why can’t or won’t so many consumers join the call?

Food for Thought:

 The Testing Behind Your Wireless Devices. Decoding the Telecom Industry’s Silence

When We Are Not SAM founder Rinat Strahlhofer was immersed in the telecommunications industry for many years, she became aware of the measures the industry took to hide the lack of rigorous testing. While rolling out the 3G network, Rinat noticed that the valid and legitimate concerns over the potential health risks from the new network were largely ignored. Deeply disillusioned by the lack of industry regulation and safety science, she stepped away from her role and the industry. On returning to Australia in 2019 after a period of time in Europe, Rinat was dismayed to find that little had changed, despite the additional implementation of 4G and the planned 5G networks. This enormously profitable industry was, and still is, seeing profits trump the truth and safety. She decided to speak up and take a stand. https://www.activistpost.com/2023/07/the-testing-behind-your-wireless-devices-decoding-the-telecom-industrys-silence.html

What If Wifi Was Visible?

From Katie Singer’s Substack: Why I don’t consider climate change our root problem— and I’d welcome economies that recognize limits to growth

“A few days ago, my car’s thermometer registered 108 degrees. My landscaper-husband and I have lived in New Mexico Fe for more than three decades and have never known high temperatures like these. He can’t work outside in such heat; I can only last for short spurts. Our (rented) house has no air conditioning. To get through this unprecedented month, we hang out in cafes or the library or sleep through the afternoons. Mainly, we wait for cooler weather. I see climate change at work here; and—I do not consider it our root problem. At the root, we’ve got overshoot: unlimited manufacturing and consumption of goods on a planet with finite raw materials. Like wildlife habitat loss, increased population and income disparities, climate change is a consequence of overshoot.”

(((Surrounded))) A Memoir with a Message for the Modern World Watch free this week only July 26-30 online https://surroundedfilm.com/trailer  sponsored by the Building Biology Institute.

“Environmental Procedures at the FCC: A Case Study in Corporate Capture” by a former FCC official In licensing and authorizing facilities associated with telecommunications, broadband, and broadcasting technologies, the FCC intentionally and routinely fails to meet its environmental obligations and epitomizes “regulatory capture.” It treats environmental laws as obstacles to be circumvented or ignored, first by promulgating rules that fall short of what NEPA requires and then by failing to properly implement and enforce its own substandard rules. The chronic failure has cumulative, incalculable, and largely unknown environmental impacts. “Environmental Procedures at the FCC: A Case Study in Corporate Capture”

Legislative Bills Making Their Way Through the U.S. and Europe:

U.S. HR 3557 “To streamline Federal, State, and local permitting and regulatory reviews to expedite the deployment of communications facilities, and for other purposes.”

TEXT – https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3557/text

List of organizations thus far opposing HR 3557, courtesy of CA for Safe Technology https://cal4safetech.org/opposition-to-hr-3557

The bill is opposed in a joint letter by the National League of Cities (NLC), the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), the National Association of Counties (NACo), the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors’ (NATOA) –– as well as the Alliance for Community Media (ACM), the Maryland Association of Counties (MACo), and the Jersey Access Group (JAG).

See this explanatory link at Wire America  https://wireamerica.org/hr3557/#compare

Take Action to Prevent the Next Wireless Invasion – Stop the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023 from Being Enacted

If H.R. 3557 passes, it will result in a truly unrestricted proliferation of cell towers and small cell installations near schools, playgrounds, and homes without any local or community input. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/community-forum/take-action-to-prevent-the-next-wireless-invasion/

Similar legislation to HR 3557 and its companion bills unfortunately, is also ravaging Europe. See: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/gigabit-infrastructure-act-proposal-and-impact-assessment.

The party boat is sinking. Be on the right side of history.

Have a listen to the rap with drum accompaniment: Tech’s juggernaut: Ocean, skies, war and more

TEXT:

Electrify and tech-tify, come on let’s go,
Electrify and tech-tify, the world a-glow. 
It’s green, and clean, and for the most part, unseen,
Come on, let’s go, let’s build, let’s grow, and join in the show.  

Electrify and tech-tify don’t mind if we spy?
And if you do, don’t worry, we’re just playing peek-a-boo. 
With biotech and agri-tech, smart cities and AI, 
We’re all assured we’ll have enough fake food to get us by.  

Solar panels, wind turbines, though made with coal it’s time to roll.
Electric cars, electric heat, electric stoves and Wall Street grows.  

Mary’s brand new smartphone, followed her to school,
It tracked her and hacked her which was not against the rule. 
And everywhere that Mary went her phone was sure to go, 
So everyone could see and watch, Mary’s own peep-show.  

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, will your garden grow?
No silver bells just 5G cells and land that lies fallow. 

They do the Hokey Pokey and they turn us all around,
So we No longer know, which way’s up and which way’s down.  

Don’t think too much, stay out of touch, no need to fret or fuss,
We’ve got your back, don’t be a quack, there’s nothing to discuss.
They shut our lips with censorship, hope we won’t think to ask
And won’t trust ourself, we just don’t know, the censors tell us so.   

Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a Cake, Baker’s Man,
Hack it and track it as fast as you can. 
Autocrat it, copycat it, mark it with no bees,
They stuck that tower by my home, it’s radiating me!  

Simple engineering fixes could reduce the harms
If they’d cut down on transmissions they’d abolish some emissions. 

Facial recognition cameras lining all the streets,
Our faces become barcodes and there’s nowhere to retreat.
You may hate-a that the data from our faces feed the state-a,
But there’s nothing you can do when walking down that avenue. 

They say 5G will end the digital divide,
The rich will get fiber while the poor will get fried.  
Rich man, poor man, beggar man thief, 
We’ll spy on one and all in the name of equity.  

Tower, tower burning bright in the city through the night.
What immortal A-I, will use our data by and by.  

Rock-a-bye baby in your cradle as you sway,
I can see you from my smart phone, never touch you once all day.  

Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water, 
Poor Jack fell down and broke his crown with only Jill who faltered.
If Jack had had a cell phone, instead of his friend Jill, (just saying)
He could have called 911 to help him off the hill.  

No more itsy bitsy spiders climbing up the spout,
With 5G satellites and more there may just be a drought.  

3G, 4G, 5G, 6G,
For what are all the Gs you ask, masks for cows? I’m flabbergast! 
To send your Miss a remote kiss and power AI wombs? 
Absurd, I say, I will not pay a cent for all this stuff.
Go away, it cannot stay, for sure I’ve had enough! 

Smart wombs, smart dust, smart cities, smart us! 
Aren’t we humans bright, we can light up the night. 

Starlight starbright first star I see tonight,
Wish I may, wish I might see the stars not satellites. 

Twinkle twinkle satellite, what a blunder what a blight.
Up above the world so high, so weapons of war will fly,
Twinkle Twinkle satellite, what a blunder what a blight.   

Internet of underwater things in the sea,
Robots, drones, and torpedoes bringing noise and debris.
Warfare in the ocean, just ain’t very wise. 
Does anybody want this crap, certainly not I.   

A war is being waged in the underwater world. 
Using sonar and laser, we’re a Menace of the Sea. 

Techno ecocide, mining the deep, 
Enough, to make… all feeling hearts weep. 

Warfare in the ocean, on the land, and in the skies 
Does anybody want this crap, certainly not I.  
Does anybody want this crap, certainly not I.

Please also read Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design.