The AP Interview: Nikole Hannah-Jones' warning on democracy


NEW YORK (AP) — Following a year of professional milestones born of her work on America’s history of slavery, Pulitzer Prize-winning Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said she is clear-eyed about her mission to force a reckoning around the nation’s self-image.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The New York Times Magazine writer began this year in a protracted tenure fight with her alma mater in North Carolina — the dispute ended when she announced in July that she’d take her talents to a historically Black university — and is closing it as a national best-selling author.

“I’ve gone from being just a journalist to becoming some sort of symbol for people who either love me and my work or revile me and my work,” she said.

Hannah-Jones recently spoke to The Associated Press in an exclusive interview about the ongoing controversy over The 1619 Project, a groundbreaking collection of essays on race that first appeared in a special issue of The New York Times Magazine in 2019. Now in book form, the project has become a touchstone for America’s reckoning over slavery and the reverberations for Black Americans.

“The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” and “Born on the Water,” a picture storybook collaboration with co-writer Renée Watson and illustrator Nikkolas Smith, each have spent consecutive weeks atop the Times bestseller list since their Nov. 16 release. A TV documentary on the work is due out later in 2022.

Still, Hannah-Jones said the backlash to her work is evidence that the U.S. is approaching a make-or-break crossroads on its global standing as a democracy.

“I think that we are in a very frightening time,” she said in the interview at AP’s New York City headquarters.

“People who are much, much smarter than me, who have studied this much, much longer than I have are ringing the alarm,” Hannah-Jones said. “I think we have to ask ourselves … the narrators, the storytellers, the journalists: Are we ringing the alarm in the right way? Are we doing our jobs to try to uphold our democracy?”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AP: If anything, what did this year teach you about where we are in our country currently, when it comes to racial justice and our reckoning with history?

HANNAH-JONES: This year, to me, is just reflective of what I’ve always understood about this country. And that is that steps forward, steps towards racial progress, are always met with an intensive backlash. That we are a society that willfully does not want to deal with the anti-Blackness that is at the core of so many of our institutions and really our society itself.

AP: Can you point to any progress in how the discourse has developed or evolved?

HANNAH-JONES: Certainly the fact that very powerful people are so concerned about a work of journalism called The 1619 Project that they would seek to discredit it, that they would seek to censor it, that they would seek to ban it from being taught, does speak to the fact that there are millions of Americans who want a more honest accounting of our history, who want to better understand the country that we’re in, who are open to new narratives.

AP: Do you think this country is poised to make any progress on issues of racial justice, and especially around education?

HANNAH-JONES: Many in mainstream media got caught up in the Republican propaganda campaign, which tried to conflate the teaching of a more accurate history, the teaching of structural racism, with trying to make white children feel badly about themselves or guilty. And so much of the coverage was driven by that. … I hope that there’s going to be some serious examination of the role that we as media played (in) really putting forth and legitimizing what was a propaganda campaign.

AP: The 1619 Project is now a book. For people who don’t understand, how is it different from what was published in The New York Times Magazine?

HANNAH-JONES: We all know that there has been a tremendous amount of scrutiny of the 1619 Project. … I think those who had questions can now go and actually see the source material, can see the historiography that undergirds the work. For anyone who comes to it with an open mind, it is going to be deeply surprising. They’re going to learn so much about both the history of their country, but also the history that shapes so much of modern American life.

AP: Some people would say that this is all an agenda-driven piece of work.

HANNAH-JONES: And they’d be right.

AP: Why are they right?

HANNAH-JONES: Because it is. The agenda is to force a reckoning with who we are as a country. The agenda is to take the story of Black Americans in slavery, from being an asterisk to being marginal to being central to how we understand our country. When people say that, though, I know that they’re saying it in disparaging ways. I’m just being honest about the nature of this work. … We’ve been taught the history of a country that does not exist. We’ve been taught the history of a country that renders us incapable of understanding how we get an insurrection in the greatest democracy on Jan. 6.

AP: What issues do you see as dominating our politics in 2022?

HANNAH-JONES: I try to never predict the future. And I’m also not a political reporter. … We, as Americans, are going to be severely tested in the next year or two to decide, what are we willing to sacrifice to be the country that we believe that we are? And whose rights do we hold as fundamental in this country? And are all Americans worthy of having those same rights? I don’t think we know the answer to that. But I think what is important for us to know is we decide.


AP Race and Ethnicity writer Aaron Morrison is a member, trainer and mentor for the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which Hannah-Jones co-founded. Follow Morrison on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

Aaron Morrison, The Associated Press

Regulating Big Tech is not enough. We need platform socialism

Facebook won't let state oversight trump shareholder interest, so alternatives – based on common ownership and community control – are needed

James Muldoon
8 December 2021

Many companies put profit ahead of workers and local communities



Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen described the company as “morally bankrupt” before a panel of the US Senate Commerce Committee on 5 October. From her position on the company’s civic misinformation team, she witnessed its leadership consistently resolve conflicts between the company’s profits and users’ safety in favour of the former. This was true across a range of issues from hate speech to teenage mental health, ethnic violence and differential treatment for VIP users.

She has also called for greater government regulation and oversight but has dismissed claims that tougher action is needed against the tech giant. In Europe, greater oversight is fast approaching. The proposed Digital Services Act will change the rules for how digital platforms handle content that has been flagged as illegal and will regulate digital gatekeepers to prevent anti-competitive behaviour.

Haugen’s evidence confirmed long-standing suspicions that the problems of the company go to the core of its business model, which requires constant engagement, growth and data harvesting.

The lesson, however, is that calls to regulate these companies are an insufficient response that fail to acknowledge the depth of the crisis.

This is not a failure of morality. The company is structurally conditioned to respond to competitive market pressures by adapting its strategies to maintain its dominance.

In the data-driven sphere of social media, this means prioritising growing engagement and reach above other objectives. For instance, Facebook cannot put an end to “engagement-based ranking” designed to elicit strong reactions, and inevitably leading to polarisation and division, because the company needs to serve shareholder interests.

We need to stop talking about ‘fixing’ Facebook or taking solutions from people whose worldview has been shaped within Big Tech firms

The problems of the tech world are not limited to the ‘data for a free product’ business model. Many companies put profit ahead of workers and local communities –from Uber and Deliveroo paying riders below minimum wage to Airbnb destroying affordable housing and gentrifying previously diverse neighbourhoods. We shouldn’t be surprised that companies have been willing to take advantage of vulnerable workers, exploit grey areas in the law and place their own interests ahead of the communities they claim to serve.

In fact, we need to stop talking about ‘fixing’ Facebook or taking solutions from people whose worldview has been shaped within Big Tech firms. The problem is not simply about restoring competition to the tech sector or replacing a few heartless CEOs.

Instead, we should look to the many alternatives that currently exist – and which could be further grown and developed – based on social ownership, common interests and solidarity.

Platform socialism

In a forthcoming book, I call this idea platform socialism – referring to the social ownership of digital assets and the democratic control over the organisations and digital infrastructure that have become so critical to our everyday lives.

Platform socialism is about reclaiming collective self-determination through new forms of participatory and decentralised governance that ensure we no longer put profits over human needs. It focuses on how we can foster citizens’ active participation in the design and governance of digital platforms rather than relying on top-down regulations by a technocratic elite.

Participation and decision-making by ordinary citizens are important because we currently have no say in how these platforms are governed. We do not even have access to the data to hold meaningful public debate on issues because key aspects of how the platforms operate are held as closely guarded trade secrets.

When data is released, it is usually carefully curated by the companies to shine a positive light on their activities. The release of the Facebook Files by the Wall Street Journal demonstrates how the company regularly shelved uncomfortable findings of internal research teams.

There is now a vast array of digital tools for people to participate in governance issues that make democratising the workplace more viable than ever before. Software such as Decidim and Liquid Democracy give people an opportunity for deliberation and decision-making without face-to-face meetings.

Customers, workers and local community members from diverse geographic locations and with different interests can all be affected by a platform and should have a say in how it operates. Multi-stakeholder governance structures allow members with different interests in the platform to have varying levels of involvement in how it operates.
Alternatives are possible

When we imagine forms of public ownership of digital platforms we should worry about questions of censorship and state surveillance. Many states have a long history of using data to identify activists and crush dissent. Platform socialism is about instituting a broad ecology of alternative ownership models based on different sizes and types of digital services. Many of these would not be simply state-owned and could be managed by diverse communities.

For example, at the local level there are already handiwork, courier services and domestic-cleaning platforms run by platform co-operatives – enterprises owned and managed by the workers themselves.

Up & Go is one example. It is a digital marketplace for professional home services that enables workers to keep 95٪ of their wages from jobs obtained on the platform rather than the usual 50-80%. Workers don’t only receive higher wages, they also have an ownership stake in the platform and can vote on matters of platform governance.

We need to act now to reassert our democratic power and reclaim our participatory rights to the digital public sphere

A platform socialist model of social media can draw inspiration from “fediverse”, a group of decentralised publishing platforms that rely on free and open-source software and shared protocols so that users can communicate across different nodes in the network.

One of the most popular examples of these tools is Mastodon, a decentralised alternative to Twitter which uses an open protocol for microblogging and status updates. Each node in the network has its own rules and moderation policies, and allows users greater autonomy over their digital communications.
Investing in public good

It has been difficult for co-operative social networking services to achieve the same smoothness and functionality as larger corporations, but this is something that could quickly change with more investment and interest in the technology.

What is more difficult is getting users to adopt smaller platforms and move away from dominant networks.

Other challenges include data portability of friends lists and privacy concerns about which types of data could be migrated onto a new platform.

Platform co-operatives also need access to capital. This could be resolved if they are supported by local councils through procurement strategies and provision of resources. There is an important role to be played by municipally owned services which could be effectively implemented to provide digital services relating to housing and transportation.

An alliance of local authorities could work with residents to provide a ‘MuniBnB’, a municipally owned and regulated platform that manages short-term accommodation services offered by local residents, to replace corporate services.

Ride hail apps could also be integrated into many cities’ public transport services through public ownership. Publicly operated services could eliminate gamified working conditions for drivers, provide them with a living wage and nudge commuters towards more environmentally friendly options where available.

The New Economics Foundation found that 82% of Uber customers would use a more ethical alternative to the ride hail service and 54% would pay more for their journey to give drivers better pay and conditions.

Nevertheless, from local to international level, different options are open to facilitate new forms of democratic control over digital platforms.

Platform socialism is a systematic alternative to private power in the digital sphere and can help unite different forms of struggle around a shared vision of a democratic future. It is about reclaiming a long-term counter-hegemonic project for challenging capitalist control over technology.

We shouldn’t look to corporate executives to do better on fixing our digital infrastructure when they have no right to control it to begin with. We need to act now to reassert our democratic power and reclaim our participatory rights to the digital public sphere before the tech companies can further solidify their power.

*This piece is part of the RELAY project's 'A digital Europe fit for all' theme. RELAY is coordinated by Maastricht University's Brussels Campus and receives funding from the Erasmus+ programme. The aim of the project is to both raise awareness and critically investigate the European Commission's political priorities. More information is available on the RELAY website."

This article reflects only the authors' view. The European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) and the European Commission are not responsible for the content of this document or any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Fresh blow for Kim Dotcom in US extradition fight


Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, seen here in 2015, faces charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering in the United States (AFP/MICHAEL BRADLEY)

Mon, December 20, 2021

New Zealand's top court rejected Kim Dotcom's latest bid to avoid extradition to the United States on Tuesday, in a fresh blow to the tech entrepreneur's decade-long battle against online piracy charges.

Dotcom, who is accused of netting millions from his Megaupload file-sharing service, faces charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering in the United States, carrying jail terms of up to 20 years.

The Supreme Court in Wellington ruled the German national and two co-defendants could not appeal aspects of an earlier judgement, dismissing their argument that they were facing a miscarriage of justice.

"We do not consider there is anything more the court needs to do in relation to the proposed appeals, given our conclusion that no miscarriage has arisen," a panel of three judges concluded.

The case began when New Zealand police raided Dotcom's Auckland mansion in January 2012 at the behest of the FBI, triggering numerous court hearings and appeals.

In the decade since, Dotcom has attempted to enter New Zealand politics, sparred verbally at a parliamentary committee with former prime minister John Key and vociferously protested his innocence.

The 47-year-old gave an indifferent response on social media to his latest legal setback.

"Unfazed. I'll start live streaming in January," he tweeted, referring to his latest online venture.

"Join me. 2022 will be fun. Enjoy your holidays."

The FBI accuses Dotcom of industrial-scale online piracy via Megaupload, which US authorities shut down when the raid took place.

They allege the file-sharing service netted more than US$175 million in criminal proceeds and cost copyright owners US$500 million-plus by offering pirated content, including films and music.

Dotcom and his co-accused -- Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk -- deny any wrongdoing, saying Megaupload was targeted because established interests were threatened by online innovation.

The website was an early example of cloud storage, allowing users to upload large files onto a server so others could easily download them without clogging up their email systems.

At its height in 2011, Megaupload claimed to have 50 million daily users and accounted for four percent of the world's internet traffic.

ns/arb/qan

‘Fortress USA’: How 9/11 produced a military industrial juggernaut

Since the September 11 terror attacks, there has been no hiding from the increased militarisation of the United States. Everyday life is suffused with policing and surveillance. This ranges from the inconvenient, such as removing shoes at the airport, to the dystopian, such as local police departments equipped with decommissioned tanks too big to use on regular roads.

This process of militarisation did not begin with 9/11. The American state has always relied on force combined with the de-personalisation of its victims.

The army, after all, dispossessed First Nations peoples of their land as settlers pushed westward. Expanding the American empire to places such as Cuba, the Philippines, and Haiti also relied on force, based on racist justifications.

The military also ensured American supremacy in the wake of the second world war. As historian Nikhil Pal Singh writes, about 8 million people were killed in US-led or -sponsored wars from 1945–2019 — and this is a conservative estimate.

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When Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and former military general, left the presidency in 1961, he famously warned against the growing “military-industrial complex” in the US. His warning went unheeded and the protracted conflict in Vietnam was the result.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses American paratroopers prior to D-Day in the second world war. Wikimedia Commons

The 9/11 attacks then intensified US militarisation, both at home and abroad. George W. Bush was elected in late 2000 after campaigning to reduce US foreign interventions. The new president discovered, however, that by adopting the persona of a tough, pro-military leader, he could sweep away lingering doubts about the legitimacy of his election.

Waging war on Afghanistan within a month of the twin towers falling, Bush’s popularity soared to 90%. War in Iraq, based on the dubious assertion of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, soon followed.
The military industrial juggernaut

Investment in the military state is immense. 9/11 ushered in the federal, cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, with an initial budget in 2001-02 of US$16 billion. Annual budgets for the agency peaked at US$74 billion in 2009-10 and is now around US$50 billion.

This super-department vacuumed up bureaucracies previously managed by a range of other agencies, including justice, transportation, energy, agriculture, and health and human services.

Read more: Why is it so difficult to fight domestic terrorism? 6 experts share their thoughts

Centralising services under the banner of security has enabled gross miscarriages of justice. These include the separation of tens of thousands of children from parents at the nation’s southern border, done in the guise of protecting the country from so-called illegal immigrants. More than 300 of the some 1,000 children taken from parents during the Trump administration have still not been reunited with family.

Detainees sleep in a holding cell where mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at the US-Mexico border. Ross D. Franklin/AP

The post-9/11 Patriot Act also gave spying agencies paramilitary powers. The act reduced barriers between the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency (NSA) to permit the acquiring and sharing of Americans’ private communications. These ranged from telephone records to web searches. All of this was justified in an atmosphere of near-hysterical and enduring anti-Muslim fervour.

Only in 2013 did most Americans realise the extent of this surveillance network. Edward Snowden, a contractor working at the NSA, leaked documents that revealed a secret US$52 billion budget for 16 spying agencies and over 100,000 employees.
Normalisation of the security state

Despite the long objections of civil liberties groups and disquiet among many private citizens, especially after Snowden’s leaks, it has proven difficult to wind back the industrialised security state.

This is for two reasons: the extent of the investment, and because its targets, both domestically and internationally, are usually not white and not powerful.

Read more: Calculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars and years

Domestically, the 2015 Freedom Act renewed almost all of the Patriot Act’s provisions. Legislation in 2020 that might have stemmed some of these powers stalled in Congress.

And recent reports suggest President Joe Biden’s election has done little to alter the detention of children at the border.

Militarisation is now so commonplace that local police departments and sheriff’s offices have received some US$7 billion worth of military gear (including grenade launchers and armoured vehicles) since 1997, underwritten by federal government programs.

Atlanta police line up in riot gear before a protest in 2014. Curtis Compton/AP

Militarised police kill civilians at a high rate — and the targets for all aspects of policing and incarceration are disproportionately people of colour. And yet, while the sight of excessively armed police forces during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests shocked many Americans, it will take a phenomenal effort to reverse this trend.

Read more: Police with lots of military gear kill civilians more often than less-militarized officers
The heavy cost of the war on terror

The juggernaut of the militarised state keeps the United States at war abroad, no matter if Republicans or Democrats are in power.

Since 9/11, the US “war on terror” has cost more than US$8 trillion and led to the loss of up to 929,000 lives.

The effects on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan have been devastating, and with the US involvement in Somalia, Libya, the Philippines, Mali, and Kenya included, these conflicts have resulted in the displacement of some 38 million people.



These wars have become self-perpetuating, spawning new terror threats such as the Islamic State and now perhaps ISIS-K.

Those who serve in the US forces have suffered greatly. Roughly 2.9 million living veterans served in post-9/11 conflicts abroad. Of the some 2 million deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps 36% are experiencing PTSD.

Training can be utterly brutal. The military may still offer opportunities, but the lives of those who serve remain expendable.

Sailor cleaning a fighter jet during aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf in 2010. Hasan Jamali/AP

Life must be precious

Towards the end of his life, Robert McNamara, the hard-nosed Ford Motor Company president and architect of the United States’ disastrous military efforts in Vietnam, came to regret deeply his part in the military-industrial juggernaut.

In his 1995 memoir, he judged his own conduct to be morally repugnant. He wrote,

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.

In interviews with the filmmaker Errol Morris, McNamara admitted, obliquely, to losing sight of the simple fact the victims of the militarised American state were, in fact, human beings.


As McNamara realised far too late, the solution to reversing American militarisation is straightforward. We must recognise, in the words of activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, that “life is precious”. That simple philosophy also underlies the call to acknowledge Black Lives Matter.

The best chance to reverse the militarisation of the US state is policy guided by the radical proposal that life — regardless of race, gender, status, sexuality, nationality, location or age — is indeed precious.

As we reflect on how the United States has changed since 9/11, it is clear the country has moved further away from this basic premise, not closer to it.

Author

Clare Corbould
Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University
Disclosure statement
Clare Corbould has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Australian Greens.

Meet the ex-Googler who’s exposing the tech-military industrial complex

Formed by Jack Poulson and other Silicon Valley dissidents, Tech Inquiry uncovers the tech industry’s role in weaponry and surveillance.

Jack Poulson, cofounder of Tech Inquiry

 [Source images: Mark Sommerfeld; DeSa81/Pixabay]

Jack Poulson has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of how tech companies are evolving into military contractors. Tracking such intricate connections has become a full-time—though unpaid—job for the former Google research scientist as head of Tech Inquiry, a small nonprofit tackling the giant task of exposing ties between Silicon Valley and the U.S. military.

“Google, and tech companies in general, transitioning into weapons development is something that should be paid close attention to,” says Poulson. “And certainly employees of the company should have a voice in whether that work is performed.”

By delving through government contracting information and lobbying disclosures, and filing FOIA requests, Tech Inquiry has produced a set of custom databases for activists, journalists, and other researchers to probe tech-government connections. Its research covers the U.S. government as well as close intelligence allies, such as the U.K. and Canada. The group has also put out three dense reports that have been the foundation for many news articles. And it’s collaborating with advocacy groups to research the complex dealings and structures of tech firms.

Tech Inquiry’s latest report reveals (among many other things) Microsoft’s substantial role in a military drone AI program called Project Maven. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the same program caused a huge rift at Google in 2018 when thousands of employees objected to the “Don’t be evil” company contributing AI tech to a killer drone program. Google ultimately left Maven, but its peers in tech continued on, with little public notice.


FROM TEAM PLAYER TO DISSIDENT

It was another Google controversy that gave Poulson international status. In 2018, when he was an AI researcher at the company, he encountered source code for Project Dragonfly, a version of Google’s namesake search engine being developed for mainland China. It contained a blacklist of forbidden queries, including the term “human rights.” Google’s facilitation of Chinese government censorship was well known within the company, but Poulson made news by taking a stand against it in a public resignation.

Poulson’s resignation letter quickly made him a spokesperson for tech worker opposition, with appeal to both the left and the right. “It was a reasonably bipartisan issue—actually, if anything, Republicans cared more about it than Democrats,” he says. “I wasn’t criticizing the United States. From my perspective, I was criticizing Google. But I’m sure from a lot of people’s perspectives, they were onboard because it included a critique of China.”

Poulson’s advocacy extended beyond censorship to also opposing Google’s work on military contracts, such as Maven. And he found himself invited to confidential meetings between tech CEOs and senior officials from the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, who looked to him as the voice of techies opposed to working on weapons systems. “I’m not quite so sure I had any significant impact on what their opinions were,” he says. “But I certainly learned a lot about what sorts of relationships existed and who attended those sorts of meetings.”

Tech Inquiry’s Procurement and Lobbying Explorer allows anyone to probe the connections between companies and several national and state governments–with more to come.

Exposing those relationships became the goal of Tech Inquiry, which Poulson formed in summer 2019 along with four other tech experts. They include fellow Google dissidents Irene Knapp and Laura Nolan, anti-surveillance advocate Liz O’Sullivan, and tech consultant Shauna Gordon-McKeon. “Both Liz and Laura have played very significant roles in the campaign to stop killer robots,” says Poulson. Knapp is also a privacy advocate. And Gordon-McKeon develops open-source software to help groups govern themselves online.

Unsurprisingly given its founders’ backgrounds, the organization employs a fair amount of technology. Working at Google, Poulson specialized in natural language processing and recommendation systems. While we mostly encounter recommendation engines in features, such as Netflix suggestions and TikTok feeds, the tech goes much further. Tech Inquiry sets it loose on data, such as federal procurement records, to understand connections between companies and the government. It also analyzes language on company websites to find similarities between them.

The result is a recommendation system that guides research by Tech Inquiry or anyone who uses its tools. “Maybe they know about [data analysis firm] Palantir, but they don’t know about, say, a Black Cape or a Fivecast or one of those companies,” says Poulson. “Having a recommendation system helps fill in some of those similarities.”

But there’s still plenty of manual labor. Tech Inquiry’s previous report, Death and Taxes, documented how technology and defense companies benefited from the Trump corporate tax cuts and how much they have been able to avoid in federal taxes. The report, which covered 57 publicly traded companies, required reading through and collating over 1,000 financial filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

UNTANGLING THE CONNECTIONS

Tech Inquiry’s latest report, Easy as PAI, reveals complex defense and law-enforcement programs that use publicly available information (PAI), such as social media postings, satellite imagery, and location data. Some of these deals are revealed for the first time. Others, such as Project Maven, are fleshed out in greater detail.

One trend is how consumer technologies have migrated into military applications. For example, a company called SmileML made an iOS game in which people win points by mimicking the look of emojis. That produced data to train an AI in recognizing facial expressions—tech that smileML supplies to companies to assess the performance of their salespeople. SmileML also sold the tech for $235,000 to the Special Operations Command, which oversees special ops by four branches of the U.S. military, for projects involving “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance,” per government documents.

Another case is X-Mode Social, which harvested location data from consumer mobile apps, such as a prayer app called Muslim Pro. The company later won a $200,000 contract to provide location data to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military intel wing of the Pentagon. (According to a report in Motherboard, it’s unclear what the military did with this data.)

Neither of these deals was publicized, nor was there a direct link between the Pentagon and the companies. Instead, SmileML was a subcontractor to a British defense firm called BAE Systems. And X-Mode Social, which later changed its name to Outlogic, contracted through a company called Systems & Technology Research.

I must confess that my eyes glazed over at times as I struggled through the obtuse structures and relationships detailed in Poulson’s report. The tech-military connections are dense, often involving little-known companies or subsidiaries, running through obscure middlemen, and linking to unfamiliar government agencies in order to fulfill vaguely described, acronym-laden objectives.

But Poulson enjoys the challenge of decrypting these corporate dealings. “If you’re interested in a company, of course you’re interested in who owns them and what’s under them,” he says. “Because if you don’t know those things, then you’re not actually knowing what that company is doing.”

Unraveling the Project Maven ball of yarn was one of the biggest components of Tech Inquiry’s new report. The issue gained prominence because of the Google connection, coming at a time when employee activism, on a number of issues at the company, was spiking. And when Google pulled out of Maven in 2019, the program faded from public view. But it continued under the radar, involving dozens of tech companies. “Press attention given to different companies is kind of wildly off the mark as to what their roles have been in military contracting,” says Poulson.

As usual, these ties were filtered through contractors: Booz Allen Hamilton (Edward Snowden’s former employer) and a tech provider called ECS Federal. The latter managed three contracts that involved 33 tech companies. Microsoft tops the list, receiving $31.6 million last year to supply AI for analyzing video and motion. Other name brands on the list include Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Peter Thiel’s Palantir. But the second-biggest contractor (receiving $25.2 million) was Clarifai, a boutique AI company that’s providing facial recognition tech to the Pentagon. (Unlike some companies, Clarifai has been very up front about its work with the military.)

CHALLENGING THE MEDIA

The press has been key to Poulson’s personal rise as a tech critic, as well as publicizing Tech Inquiry’s research. The New York Times, for instance, has covered Poulson’s Google advocacy, run an opinion piece he wrote, and quoted him in several articles, such as one about Intel and Nvidia’s ties to Chinese government oppression.

But the Times now finds itself under Tech Inquiry’s microscope. Easy as PAI points out the paper’s collaboration with the nonprofit think tank Center for Advanced Defense Studies on an article about North Korean oil deliveries. That organization uses technology from controversial firm Palantir and has also contracted with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to provide what the records call “bulk datasets.” The think tank has also collaborated with Buzzfeed News, including on a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of detention centers in China’s Xinjiang region.

Tech Inquiry also publicizes the links between military contractors and media organizations ProPublica, MIT Technology Review, and The Washington Post. The three are partners in an association called The Center for New Data. The Center also includes two location-tracking data brokers: Outlogic, which harvested data from the Muslim prayer app; and Veraset, a company with ties to Saudi intelligence.

In some cases, news outlets that expose the activities of data harvesting technologies are utilizing the same or similar technologies. “Why is it that journalists are off limits for pointing out their usage of surveillance technology?” says Poulson.

GOING GLOBAL

Critical as he may be, Poulson recognizes the media as a key constituency for Tech Inquiry’s research tool. “I definitely know there are journalists that use it,” he says.

The group also aims to serve advocacy organizations. Recently, it helped the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) with a project called Big Tech Sells War. Opposed to the military and surveillance projects of the 20-year “War on Terror,” ACRE built a website to document the tech industry’s role in that war. It draws heavily on data collected by Tech Inquiry.

Poulson’s group is currently working on a project to map the global footprint of cloud-computing companies. That’s a paid gig for worker union UNI Global, funded by the German government’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and it will bring some much-needed income. Tech Inquiry is very picky about where it gets funding, and doesn’t solicit or accept money from corporations or from foundations linked to tech billionaires, such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative or the Gates Foundation. Its most common funding is from individuals sending in $50 per month.

As a result, the organization has been an all-volunteer effort till now. Poulson says that it now has enough money to fund a part-time position, likely his. “That’s exciting to not just be burning cash,” he says, with a laugh. Not that he’s likely to limit his hours to those he’s paid for. “[This is] the only thing I’ve done for the past year,” he says.

And he intends to do a lot more. Tech Inquiry started out providing insight into companies’ dealings with national governments. Now it’s digging into state governments, with information on Florida and New York State procurement and California lobbying filings, for instance. Each state has its own system for making information available, which requires a lot of tweaking to automate data collection

The group is also going international. It already has data on the so-called “Five Eyes” intel alliance of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Now it’s setting sights on the European Union and China. It’s developing a machine-translation system to render these countries’ complex documents into English, which likely requires training their own AI models to handle the task.

As Tech Inquiry has evolved, it’s had to evaluate the identity it projects. On a personal level, its members favor restrictions on military technologies and on the role of Silicon Valley in developing them. But it wants to be seen as an objective source of data, available to anyone.

“We started out [with] advocacy. And so I don’t think you can ever really fully shake that as an organization,” says Poulson. But he’s trying to strike a neutral tone in his reporting, letting the information speak for itself without commentary. “I find more and more that if you find something that’s actually interesting, you don’t have to really infer anything from it,” he says. “You can just state the facts, and that’s enough.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean Captain is a business, technology, and science journalist based in North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter @seancaptain.

It’s Time to Break Up the Military-Industrial Complex
Despite the end of two decades of war, a congressional committee just voted to increase the Pentagon’s budget by $24 billion.

By Katrina vanden Heuvel
SEPTEMBER 21, 2021


President Joe Biden speaks from the Treaty Room in the White House about the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. (RedhoodStudios / Shutterstock)

Two days after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, the House Armed Services Committee voted to set the Pentagon’s 2022 budget. Given that US officials claim to be winding down decades-long wars, even maintaining current levels of military spending would seem a mystifying choice. But the committee didn’t just vote to maintain current spending levels. It voted to increase them by a whopping $24 billion.

Which prompts the question: Are we spending this money because we need to, even though our military budget is already higher than those of the next 11 largest countries combined? Or are there other incentives at play?

Ties between the government and the private sector—what President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously called the “military-industrial complex”—form the foundations of our national defense. Since 9/11, between one-third and half of the nearly $14 trillion the Pentagon has spent went to for-profit defense contractors. Dozens of members of Congress and their spouses own millions of dollars’ worth of stock in those companies.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.


Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.

Venezuela or Europe: What kind of leftist is Chile's new president?

Chile's President-elect Gabriel Boric says he wants to create a welfare state "so that everyone has equal rights no matter how much money they have" (AFP/Javier TORRES)

Laurent Abadie and Alberto Pena
Mon, December 20, 2021,

Despite being branded a "communist" by his critics, Chile's left-wing president-elect Gabriel Boric has always pointed to Europe as the inspiration for the "social welfare" state he wants to create.

Chile is one of the world's most unequal countries, where the top one percent hold more than a quarter of the wealth, according to the ECLAC UN agency.

The incomes of the richest are 25 times those of the poorest, according to the OECD group of developed economies among which Chile is listed as the second-most unequal in terms of household disposable income.

The rich-poor gulf was one of the sparks for a violent uprising in 2019 that left dozens dead and rocked the economy and political establishment.

It is a situation Boric, who backed the protests, has vowed to correct.

He described his project as "something that in Europe would be quite obvious, which is to ensure a welfare state so that everyone has equal rights no matter how much money they have in their wallet."

Many Chileans, however -- among the richer classes but also in rural areas -- are distrustful of his Approve Dignity leftist alliance with the Communist Party.

Investors don't like his pledge to increase taxes.

And many Chileans have deep-seated fear of communist policies they blame for the demise of Venezuela, many of whose nationals it hosts as migrants.

- 'Chilezuela' -

"Boric is more left than the traditional parties" that have been in government, said Rodrigo Espinoza, a political scientist with the University Diego Portales.

But based on his policy agenda, Boric is more "related to European social democracy" than the left in Venezuela or Bolivia, he added.

Boric was the centrist option in the Approve Dignity's primary, beating out the Communist Party's Daniel Jadue.

Espinoza said Boric had been the victim of a fake news campaign portraying him as a kind of Hugo Chavez clamoring for a "Chilezuela," whereas there was nothing in his program about "breaking the free-market system."

His rival for the presidency, far-right, neoliberal lawyer Jose Antonio Kast, managed with some success to paint Boric as a "communist."

"The left only promotes poverty, the kind of poverty that has dragged down Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, where people flee from," Kast had said in his final campaign speech.

The message stuck with many.

Though nearly a million more people voted for Boric on Sunday in a convincing victory, Kast still managed to amass more than 3.6 million of the 8.3 million ballots cast.

"Communism... touches everything we have as middle-class people," Kast voter Ricardo Sepulveda, a 75-year-old retired construction worker in Santiago, told AFP about his choice.

Another, business owner Sergio Adauy, 52, said he expected Boric would "change the rules of the game" and "not respect the agreements by which people invested capital" in Chile.

The Communist Party had been a part of previous leftist governing coalitions, including that of socialist Michelle Bachelet.

But Boric is perceived as much more left-wing.

- 'Protecting our macro-economy' -

"Boric is not a communist," economist Francisco Castaneda of Chile's Universidad Mayor told AFP.

"His political grouping is learning to understand that fiscal responsibility is important, and that reforms to close social gaps must be gradual, long-term," he added.

Standing his ground, Boric told AFP before the election "it is not possible to do business, or for a country to grow, when a society is tremendously fractured, as it is in Chile."

He has vowed to reduce the work week from 45 to 40 hours, to advance "green development" and to create 500,000 jobs for women.

He also wants to change Chile's system of private pensions, which was one of the key gripes of the 2019 protesters.

On Sunday, after his victory, Boric vowed again to "expand social rights" but said he would do so with "fiscal responsibility."

"We will do it protecting our macro-economy," he said.

- Market rejection -

Investors were seemingly not convinced, and the Santiago stock exchange fell 6.8 percent on Monday, while the Chilean peso fell to a record low against the US dollar.

Some analysts had expected the reaction to be bigger, said Castaneda, "but moderation towards the center (in Boric's program) attenuated the decline."

Even if he wanted to bring about radical changes to Chile's neoliberal economic model, the youthful president would find it difficult to convince a Congress just about equally split between left- and right-wing parties.

University of Chile political scientist Maria Cristina Escudero also rejected any comparison to Venezuela-style socialism.

"He is trying to form a broad coalition beyond Approve Dignity given the reality that... he won't be able to advance his government program without agreement in Congress," she said.

Boric "needs each and every vote from the traditional center-left in addition to the votes from his own coalition," meaning he cannot alienate anyone, said Escudero.

bur-mlr/to

Human cost of China's green energy rush ahead of Winter Olympics




China has vowed the upcoming Winter Olympics 2022 will be the first Games to be run entirely on wind and solar energy, and have built scores of facilities to increase capacity -- but activists warn ordinary people are being exploited

 Some families have so little income following the loss of their land to renewables projects that they are burning corn husks to stay warm this winter

(AFP/GREG BAKER)

Poornima WEERASEKARA
Mon, December 20, 2021

Beaten, forced off their land, cheated out of money, and even falsely imprisoned -- farmers in China say they are paying a heavy price as authorities rush to deliver on ambitious pledges to ramp up national green energy output.

China has vowed the upcoming Winter Olympics 2022 will be the first Games to be run entirely on wind and solar energy, and have built scores of facilities to increase capacity -- but activists warn ordinary people are being exploited by "land grabs" in the process.

In a hamlet near Beijing, the Long family -- who say they've lost more than half their agricultural land to a sprawling solar farm next door -- now have so little income they are burning corn husks and plastic bags to stay warm in winter.

"We were promised just 1,000 yuan per mu of land each year when the power company leased the land for 25 years," farmer Long from Huangjiao village said, using a Chinese unit of land equal to approximately 667 square metres.

"We can make more than double the amount by growing corn in the same area. Now without land, I eke out a living as a day labourer."

China is the world's biggest producer of wind turbines and solar panels, and the Winter Olympics is seen as an opportunity to showcase the country's green technologies as they seek global markets.

To ensure an uninterrupted power supply for the Games -- and clear the winter smog choking the Chinese capital -- Hebei province neighbouring Beijing has built a giant plant that takes in power from renewable projects in the province.

That one plant creates 14 billion kilowatt hours of clean electricity every year, similar to the annual energy consumption of Slovenia.

But for farmers like Long and his neighbour Pi, the green energy boom has made their lives more dangerous and difficult.

Pi says villagers were forced to sign contracts -- seen by AFP -- leasing their land to the solar park built by State Power Investment Group (SPIC), one of the five biggest utility companies in the country.

Those who didn't agree were beaten by the police, he said, adding "some were hospitalised, some were detained."

Wind turbines in Desheng village in Zhangbei in Zhangjiakou, one of the host cities for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games (AFP/GREG BAKER)

- 'Suppressed and imprisoned' -

Pi was jailed for 40 days, while Long languished in prison for nine months for "illegally gathering and disturbing peace," after a public protest.

"The situation is similar to a mafia," Pi said. "If you complain, then you'll be suppressed, imprisoned and sentenced."

The average annual disposable rural income in Baoding is about 16,800 yuan ($2,600), a figure both Long and Pi said they can no longer make.

AFP could not confirm that electricity from the SPIC project near Huangjiao would be used to power the Olympic venues directly, because that information is not publicly available.

The company declined to confirm when asked by AFP.

But the Zhangjiakou government -- the city co-hosting the Games -- has said that since winning the Olympic bid in 2015, the area has "transformed itself from scratch (into) the largest non-hydro renewable energy base in China."

Government subsidies for wind and solar farms have also accelerated construction of such projects in other parts of Hebei, as China scrambles to cut air pollution before the Games.

In a statement, Amnesty International said "forced evictions, illegal land seizures, and loss of livelihoods related to the loss of land" were among the most frequent human rights concerns associated with the wind and solar energy sectors.

China wants 25 percent of its electricity to come from non-fossil fuels by 2030.

To achieve this, the country has to more than double its current wind and solar capacity -- but environmentalists warn land seizures will become more widespread as energy companies rush to produce renewables.

And although Beijing has set a series of ambitious targets around the Winter Olympics, green campaigners face heavy pressure in China if they challenge the official line.

Several told AFP they were not comfortable discussing Beijing's environmental targets for the Games for fear of reprisals.

China wants 25 percent of its electricity to come from non-fossil fuels by 2030 (AFP/GREG BAKER)

- 'We got nothing' -

In September, China announced strict rules for compensation when land is taken over for ecological projects, including the development of green energy.

"Our land zoning (rules) also clearly regulate what agricultural land can't be occupied, especially farmland," Li Dan, secretary general of the renewable energy professionals committee, which promotes green development.

"This is a red line."

If farmland is being used for renewable energy projects there should be a benefit sharing programme in place such as powering greenhouses, she said.

But several farmers AFP spoke to said companies were labelling agricultural fields as wasteland to skirt the rules.

Xu Wan, a farmer in Zhangjiakou, lost his land to a solar installation built during the run-up to the Games.

"The company told us this was non-usable land, but actually it's all very good agricultural land used by us farmers," Xu said.

"They said they would give us 3,000 yuan per mu of land. But in the end, we got nothing."

Zhangjiakou Yiyuan New Energy Development, which installed the solar project in Xu's village, did not respond to AFP's request for comment.

Jiang Yi, a Chinese Academy of Engineering researcher, told a state-run industry news site that in future China will need 30,000-40,000 square kilometres more land to meet the renewable energy needs.

"Where the land comes from has become the biggest issue restricting the development of the industry," he said.

- 'The corruption is intolerable' -

Renewable investments also made up over half the new projects under China's global infrastructure push -- the Belt and Road initiative -- last year.

Priyanka Mogul from The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a UK-based non-profit that has studied the impact of Chinese renewable investments abroad, said some developers had also been accused of controversial practices when acquiring land overseas.

"The most prevalent issue was inadequate disclosure of environmental impact assessment (data)... followed by issues related to land rights and loss of livelihoods," she said.

To reduce conflicts when taking over village land, China has billed most solar farms as poverty alleviation projects, where villagers get free electricity from solar panels installed on their roofs.

According to 2014 state guidelines, utility companies should then buy back the extra electricity in a programme to lift two million families out of poverty by 2020.

The National Energy Administration said last year more than double that number benefited.

But in Huangjiao with over 300 households, only two roofs had solar panels, and villagers said there had been no programme to install solar panels.

"At a central level, the government has good policies for farmers," Pi from Huangjiao village said.

"But once it comes to the village level, things change. The corruption at the grassroots level is intolerable."

prw/rox/lto

European Parliament warns Serbia over violence against environmentalists

Photo: European Union 2021 - Source: EP / Philippe Stirnweiss


Published
December 16, 2021
Country
Serbia
Author
Igor Todorović


The European Parliament adopted a resolution with an overwhelming majority in which it highlighted “the violent behavior of hooligans towards peaceful demonstrators” in Serbia. Some lawmakers said Rio Tinto has a bad reputation and that its activities are devastating for the environment.

Members of the European Parliament condemned the “increasing violence by extremist and hooligan groups against peaceful environmental demonstrations” in Serbia. They expressed regret at the “amount of force used by the police” at the latest series of protests against lithium research and Rio Tinto’s mine and processing plant project.

The resolution was adopted by 586 votes in favor, 53 against and 44 abstentions.
Serbia reprimanded for corruption, lack of transparency in environmental protection

European lawmakers called on the Serbian authorities to publicly condemn the actions of the hooligans. Protesters have rallied to express opposition to “the rushed adoption” of two laws, where the Law on Expropriation was “seen as opening space for controversial foreign investment projects, such as the Rio Tinto mine, with a heavy impact on the environment,” according to the resolution.

“The police force allegedly overstepped its authority or failed to protect protesters from violence and protect their human right to peaceful assembly,” the document adds.

The members of the European Parliament pointed to “corruption and the rule of law in the environment area” and the lack of transparency over environmental and social impact assessments in infrastructure projects.

Within the resolution, the European Parliament also highlighted allegations about forced labor and human trafficking at Linglong’s controversial tire plant construction site in Zrenjanin.

No respect for labor, environmental rights

In the debate, some European lawmakers said Rio Tinto has a bad reputation and that its activities are devastating for the environment, N1 reported.

“It is nothing new that Serbia is a captured state with a very weak reform track record. The Serbian regime has widely opened its doors to Chinese investments that have no respect whatsoever for labor and environmental rights and human dignity above all,” Viola von Cramon-Taubadel from the European Green Party said before the vote. She added Rio Tinto and the Government of Serbia kept the details of their agreement secret.

The protests are not just about the environment or controversial laws but against “widespread corruption, the inaction of state institutions, lack of transparency and any progress on Serbia’s European path,” Von Cramon stated.

According to Klemen Grošelj from Slovenia, one of the authors of the resolution, it is not directed against Serbia or the people of Serbia, but a warning to the country’s authorities that the violation of fundamental rights like the ones at the Linglong plant construction site and during environmental protests are unacceptable. The Serbian government must secure the right to peaceful protest, he warned.

“During the peaceful protests, there was a series of incidents and provocations, sporadic violence, scuffles and fights caused by groups of provocateurs and government supporters, with a conspicuous absence of uniformed police,” Croatian MEP Tomislav Sokol said.

European periphery planned to be turned into landfill

Non-attached European lawmaker Ivan Vilibor Sinčić said there are plans for lithium mines at 20 locations. “The crucial place is the Jadar Valley, which has 18,000 inhabitants and distinguished agriculture, and it confirms the sad neocolonial reality of Europe and China. During Angela Merkel’s visit to her EPP [European People’s Party] colleague Vučić, he was a waiter and Serbia was a buffet,” he stated.

He was referring to the arrival of then-Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel in Belgrade in September, when she said her country is interested in lithium from Serbia.

“Why isn’t Europe interested in its own lithium, given that the biggest reserves are in Germany and Czechia? Why is the neoliberal concept being followed, where the gains and anything that’s worth goes to the center, and the pollution goes to the periphery? Imagine if lithium was found under the wine plantations around Bordeaux. Would the French be discussing the displacement of the people that live there? What if it was found in Tuscany? In the Rhine Valley? Of course they wouldn’t. It isn’t acceptable for peripheral countries, whether they are European members or not, to be a landfill so that someone could drive in electric cars,” Sinčić underscored.

On the same day, Rio Tinto called for dialogue and claimed it would continue with the implementation of its Jadar project in Serbia in line with the law. “We understand the interest of citizens in everything that happens in connection with the project, and we will continue to provide information on all aspects of the project for which we are responsible and in which we participate,” the company said.

Environmentalists protest against waste incinerator project in Sofia

Photo: Heat from waste is expensive and toxic (Za Zemiata)

Published
December 14, 2021
Country
Bulgaria
Author
Igor Todorović

Waste incineration results in emissions of mercury, dioxins and furans, environmentalist group Za Zemiata said as it protested against the project for such a facility in Sofia. The practice is incompatible with separate collection and recycling and Bulgaria will need to import waste for the plant to work at full capacity, activists claim.

Bulgarian environmentalist organization Za Zemiata projected slogans against waste incineration on the cooling towers of thermal power plant Sofia, within its campaign against the planned facility of the kind. The activists said it would exacerbate the issues in waste management and air quality with which Sofia is failing to cope, and demanded the introduction of a functional system for separate collection and recycling.

Bulgarian construction company Mix-Construction and its consortium partners Osal Energy and Dongfang Electric were selected in July to build a combined heat and power (CHP) plant that would use refuse-derived fuel or RDF. Za Zemiata noted that the Commission on Protection of Competition has annulled the decision in October over procedural mistakes.

The Bulgarian competition authority annulled the tender in which a consortium won the deal to build the CHP incinerator

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has approved a EUR 67 million loan and the European Union earmarked funds from the Operational Program Environment 2014-2020. The capital city participates with EUR 10 million of its own funds in the EUR 179 million project.

However, Za Zemiata pointed to regular costs for staff and maintenance of EUR 91 million over the planned 26-year lifecycle of the plant, an estimated EUR 3.4 million per year in variable costs and planned incentives of EUR 59.5 million, all listed in the feasibility study.



Lack of information on health risks

“Health risks were greatly underestimated in the environmental assessment, and during the discussion, citizens disagreed with the proposal to take out a new loan. However, Sofia Municipality has moved forward with the implementation of the project. The decision was made in a very nontransparent way and despite the cases that were won, people still do not have access to full information about the pollution and financial performance of the proposed waste incineration plant,” says Desislava Stoyanova from Za Zemiata.

Za Zemiata: Incineration is incompatible with waste separation and recycling

The organization has been launching and supporting citizens’ lawsuits for years against the waste incineration plant and in other cases related to pollution.

Za Zemiata warned Sofia is in a valley with unfavorable air currents and that waste incineration results in emissions of mercury, dioxins and furans. The practice is incompatible with separate collection and recycling and Bulgaria will need to import waste for the plant to work at full capacity, activists claim.
Not enough RDF production capacity in Bulgaria

The organization said the incinerator in Sofia is expected to burn 180,000 tons of waste per year while that the country only produces one third of the volume of the RDF briquettes that are needed, implying waste would need to be imported. Plastics and paper are the most suitable for burning, and they are exactly the materials that should be recycled, activists point out.

A study conducted by the Sofia Municipality, also known as Stolichna Municipality, showed the incinerator would emits 20% more PM particles, 14% more sulfur dioxide and 10% more nitrogen oxides than the thermal power plant, the statement adds. Za Zemiata noted the European Commission didn’t include waste incineration on the list of technologies eligible for funding under the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility.

The organization pointed to good examples of recycling systems in the towns of Gabrovo and Svilengrad.

Citizens protesting against waste incineration projects throughout Balkans

In neighboring Serbia, officials have recently hinted at the idea to install incinerators in the cities of Niš and Kragujevac. There are already numerous controversies about the ongoing CHP project in Belgrade, at the Vinča landfill. In Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, citizens and activists have been protesting against plans for incinerators of medical and municipal waste.

A plasma waste incineration project won a strategic investment status in North Macedonia.