Would a Harris/Walz Administration be Economically Progressive?

By Chris Green

August 27, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by Chsdrummajor07, Creative Commons 4.0

My answer to the question posed in this article’s headline is: probably not to a significant extent. I will explain further below.

As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris has been forced to contend with the conflicting interests of different factions of the Democratic Party. On the one hand much of the Democratic base–and the American population in general–supports such social democratic policies as Medicare for All and a guarantee by the federal government of a job for every American. On the other hand, Harris and the Democratic Party in general are funded by big business. Democrat Party business donors want to see economic policies that will enhance their control over the American economy; they want the government to minimize, if not entirely eliminate any policy that might redistribute wealth toward the working class or regulate business in the public interest.

The contradictions inherent in attempting to appeal to both business interests and poor, working class and environmentally conscious voters is the most likely explanation for the oft-repeated criticism that Harris has been vague, silent or incoherent in her public policy stances. During her time in the US Senate (which coincided with her first run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019), she supported Medicare for All, a federal job guarantee and a ban on fracking. In the face of pushback from powerful business interests and concerns about potentially alienating certain sections of “moderate” voters, she has reversed herself on all three issues.

For her presidential platform, there have been indications of support for building upon the Keynesian measures implemented by the Biden administration to stabilize the American economy after the Covid pandemic. Often many aspects of her platform have lacked specific details. Harris’s supporters have framed her policy positions as aiming to create a “care economy”: the spurring of federal government investment in securing greater housing, educational, child care, elder care and health care access for ordinary Americans. She has called for raising the national minimum wage–but has not suggested by how much. She has called for federal government subsidies for new homebuyers; an expansion of the earned income and child tax credits; and called for action to fight price gouging on groceries. She has said she supports passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions.

One barrier in passing Harris’s proposals remains the US Senate’s filibuster. Since the Obama era the Republicans have repeatedly abused the filibuster, making it necessary for a 60 vote supermajority to pass many Democrat backed bills. One way to avoid the filibuster is the budget reconciliation process whereby legislation related to the federal budget can pass the US Senate with a simple 50 vote majority. The budget reconciliation process was used in early 2021 to pass the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act. To the latter, Democrats attempted to attach a measure instituting a national $15/hr minimum wage (the federal government raised it to its current rate of $7.25/hr in 2009). However, the Senate parliamentarian advised that a minimum wage measure did not belong in a budgetary bill–contradicting the argument of other experts that minimum wage legislation did affect the federal budget and thus was not improper to include in a spending bill. Harris, acting as president of the Senate in her position as Biden’s vice-president, agreed to drop the minimum wage provision based on the parliamentarian’s recommendation.

The Senate parliamentarian has no legal authority. US Senators have no obligation to comply with the parliamentarian’s recommendations. When the Senate parliamentarian objected to tax related legislation early in the administration of George W. Bush, Senate Republicans simply fired him. But as representatives of the “left” party in the American political system, Harris and her Democratic colleagues are in a special predicament. They are in a forever struggle to show the business community that American capitalism is safe in their hands. In trying to pass even the most mildly redistributive measures like the aborted minimum wage hike, it has been common for Democrats to try to demonstrate to the business community that they are proceeding with the utmost caution, that they are not moving “too far to the left.” For Democrats, demonstrating that caution includes respecting the conservative guardrails of American politics like the Senate parliamentarian and the filibuster.

When American Prospect executive editor David Dayen brought up the possibility of eliminating the filibuster with multiple Democratic US Senators at the recent Democratic National Convention(DNC), almost all seemed reluctant to talk about the subject. Democrats have indicated that if they retain their 50 seat Senate majority in November’s election, they will enact rules to eliminate the filibuster for two areas of legislation: to expand voting protections and to encode abortion rights. Apart from those exceptions, Democrats will continue to refrain from exercising their ability as the majority party to completely eliminate the filibuster, thus allowing Republicans to continue to derail Democrat backed legislation. By doing so, Democrats are attempting to show the business community that as they advocate for mildly redistributive measures like an expanded child tax credit, they are fully respectful of all the conservative guardrails of American politics.

Should Democrats retain their simple 50 seat Senate majority in November’s election, the Republican abuse of the filibuster will provide them with a convenient excuse to shelve legislation which they formally support but for which they hold little real enthusiasm: for example the PRO Act.

Democrats and Corporate Power

As Michelle Goldberg recently observed in a New York Times piece cheerleading calls by Harris and speakers at the DNC to fight price gouging and other abuses by corporate monopolies, a perfect ally in that fight would be Lina Khan, the Biden appointed chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Khan has used her position to pursue vigorous antitrust enforcement against corporate monopolies. Khan has faced strong opposition from many Republicans but has also gained notable support among them as well. Republicans who view themselves as representing medium sized and small business against corporate behemoths like Google–such as Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance–have expressed support for Khan.

However in July, two billionaire Harris donors–the media mogul Barry Diller and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman–publicly called for Khan to be fired. One of Harris’s spokespeople, Maryland governor Wes Moore, indicated in a CNBC interview that the Harris camp was ambivalent if not in outright disagreement with Khan’s antitrust approach. Moore suggested that a Harris administration would have friendlier antitrust policies for “large industries.”

The broad outlines of Harris’s economic policy have been formulated by figures from the corporate world. Two such leading figures are Brian Deese and Mike Pyle, both former Biden White House officials and top executives at Blackrock, the global asset management giant. Another leading advisor is Deanne Millison, until 2023 Vice-President Harris’s chief economic advisor and currently a lobbyist for the Ford Motor Company. Harris has particularly strong links to figures from Silicon Valley. Her brother-in-law Tony West, recently took unpaid leave from his position as Uber’s chief legal officer to serve as an advisor to her presidential campaign. Prominent Google lawyer Karen Dunn has also been advising Harris in her presidential run–after the Biden/Harris administration successfully sued Google for having an illegal search engine monopoly and is potentially weighing the option of breaking Google up into smaller companies.

Tim Walz

For many in the Democrats’ left-liberal base, Kamala Harris’s strong corporate connections have been more than offset by the appointment of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. As Minnesota governor, Walz signed into law a bevy of progressive reforms: enhanced abortion rights protections; 12 weeks of paid medical and family leave for Minnesota workers; universal, free breakfast and lunch provision for the state’s public school students; a program to assist low income Minnesotans to obtain insulin; crackdowns on safety violations at Amazon warehouses in the state; a 20 percent wage boost for Uber and Lyft drivers in the state.

Left-liberal commentators gushed over Walz. Robert Borosage, in The Nation, declared that the Walz nomination was yet another sign that Democrats were moving back towards Keynesian policies since Joe Biden assumed the presidency: “waving goodbye to the neoliberal consensus”–deregulation, job killing free trade deals and fiscal austerity–that constituted the Party’s priorities under Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. In Jacobin, Branko Marcetic celebrated the nomination of the “unabashedly progressive” Walz as evidence of the growing influence of Bernie Sander supporters on the Democratic Party. The Democratic Socialists of America took credit for exerting its influence to have Walz picked as Harris’s running mate over the arch-zionist neoliberal Pennsylvania Democratic governor Josh Shapiro. Meanwhile labor sociologist Barry Eidlin told Jacobin’s Alex N. Press that “Walz is a clear example of a middle-of-the-road politician who is open to listening to movements.” According to Eidlin, with Walz as vice-president and his track record of dialoguing with social movements, such movements would be able to influence the Democratic Party.

Tim Walz: A Darker Side

Some progressive Minnesotans have views of Tim Walz different from those held by the likes of Marcetic and Borosage. Minneapolis/St. Paul African American American community organizer Rod Adams told Sarah Jaffe of In These Times that Walz as governor was “super beholden to corporations.” In 2023, Mary Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, accused Walz of “siding with the profits and power of corporate executives over the rights and needs of patients and workers.” She added that “Governor Walz has made clear to Minnesotans that their democratic process does not work for them, but for the wealthy and powerful few.”

Turner’s denunciations were inspired by Walz’s succumbing to pressure from the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals and derailing legislation requiring hospitals in Minnesota to form committees (with nurses given a leading voice) to determine appropriate nursing staffing levels at their respective worksites. Mayo had threatened to withdraw billions in planned new investments from Minnesota if the legislation went into effect.

Then there are the views of indigenous and environmental activists who see Walz as a tool of fossil fuel industries with his backing of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota. After running for governor in 2018 as an opponent of the pipeline, once assuming office he gradually transitioned into supporting the project, appointing oil industry friendly persons to key state regulatory agencies and deploying law enforcement to violently repress activists peacefully protesting the pipeline.

The Minnesota Model: A Blueprint for National Action?

The suite of progressive reforms signed into law by Walz has been lauded by progressives as the “Minnesota Model,” providing a potential blueprint for Kamala Harris to implement her vision of the “care economy”at the national level. What gets lost in celebration of this model is that in passing progressive reforms, Walz was responding to pressure from numerous social justice movements in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. These movements have been built up over the course of years through patient and arduous effort by working class activists. The movements–focusing on labor issues, police brutality, immigrant rights, housing, education and health care–are the real embodiment of the Minnesota model, not Tim Walz himself (as some progressives seem to think). Walz has been described as a progressive firebrand; however he doesn’t have a long track record of being so. Representing a Republican leaning rural district in Congress for 12 years (2007-19), he mainly showed himself to be a relatively cautious centrist.

Walz has benefited as governor from a relatively strong Minnesota economy and a large state budget surplus: in the neoliberal era, under such conditions, political and business elites have often been willing to tolerate greater social spending and other modest concessions to ordinary people.

It will be considerably harder to implement any parallel to the Minnesota Model at the national level. For one, the US president and Congress are particularly vulnerable to pressure from Wall Street to rein in fiscal deficits; thus any increases in social spending by a potential Harris/Walz administration will probably be modest, at best.

The administration of Bill Clinton provides an instructive example as to how a Harris/Walz administration might evolve if elected. Clinton campaigned for the presidency in 1992 on a proposal for federal government spending on infrastructure as a way to stimulate the economy and provide jobs. According to Bob Woodward’s 1994 book The Agenda, after winning the presidency Clinton was subjected to a series of lectures from US Federal Reserve Bank officials about the need to discard his infrastructure spending proposal and instead concentrate his entire presidential agenda on implementing Wall Street friendly budget deficit slashing policies. Clinton reacted with dismay according to Woodward: “You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Subsequently, Clinton’s infrastructure plan was forgotten; he significantly expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for America’s low income population but otherwise spent nearly his entire presidency cooperating with Republicans to significantly slash budget deficits (in the interests of Wall Street).

Woodward portrayed Clinton entering the presidency as a starry eyed progressive idealist, looking to harness the power of the federal government to benefit ordinary people. According to this portrait, it was only after becoming president that Clinton realized he would be forced to orient his entire presidency around bowing down to Wall Street’s power. Alexander Cockburn, writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1994, argued that Clinton was probably nowhere near as naive as Woodward portrayed him. Clinton’s campaign in 1992 showed plenty of signs that he was aligned with Wall Street. His proposal for infrastructure spending during the campaign was paired with caveats about such new spending being contingent on cutting spending elsewhere in the federal budget. Like many of the noises today emanating from the Harris/Walz campaign in support of the “care economy,” Clinton’s infrastructure proposal was substantially vague–it was probably offered not with the intention of seriously trying to implement it but only as rhetorical fluff during the campaign to mobilize progressive voters. The Clinton team’s probable intention all along–from the 1992 campaign to the assumption of the presidency–was to serve Wall Street. As Christopher Hitchens wrote in his 1999 book No One Left to Lie To: “the essence of American politics” is “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” Rhetorically–especially during election campaigns–politicians present themselves as populists operating on behalf of ordinary people; meanwhile, behind the scenes, their actual policies are molded to enhance the power of economic elites.

But then again Harris/Walz face somewhat different conditions in 2024 than those faced by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. In current times (as during the 1990’s) one hears frequent warnings from Wall Street elites, politicians and media commentators about the urgent need to rein in federal budget deficits. However, at the same time, the Covid pandemic and the evolving geopolitical and economic rivalry with China has encouraged sections of elite policymakers and business leaders to support considerably greater federal government spending and economic intervention in order to strengthen the domestic American economy. Both the Biden and Trump administrations significantly expanded tariffs to protect American manufacturers against Chinese competition. A visible portion of congressional Republicans supported the Biden administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021 as well as Biden’s $280 billion CHIPS Act of 2022; Republican governor Gregg Abbott of Texas indicated support for the CHIPS Act’s underlying principle by signing into law Texas’s own $1.4 billion investment into semiconductors. Also recent Democratic legislation to expand the Child Tax Credit passed the US House with a strong majority of the body’s Republicans supporting it.; however the measure failed in the Senate with heavy Republican opposition.

Many Republican politicians and media commentators have denounced the increased spending policies of the Biden administration as evidence of the latter being communist. However, beneath the surface of such stupid demagoguery, it is clear that there is a modicum of symmetry between both parties about the need for an industrial policy to strengthen domestic American business (especially in the context of rivalry with China). It is within that context that one expects the greatest chance for elements of Minnesota Model type policies to be passed at the national level: greater government investments in health care, education, child care, expanded child tax credits, a higher minimum wage and similar measures justified to make American workers more productive in economic competition with China.

Robert Borsage was wrong to write that the nomination of Tim Walz represents the Democratic Party “waving goodbye” to neoliberalism. Democrats are still fundamentally neoliberal even if they have taken a slightly Keynesian turn in recent years. It will be up to social movements of the type which successfully pressured Governor Tim Walz to sign Minnesota model policies into law to keep up the pressure on Democrats if there is any chance of them moving further away from neoliberalism.

Why Do So Many (WHITE) Workers Love Trump?

Racism and xenophobia are a part of why so many ordinary workers were won over to Donald Trump, but that's far from the whole story. A careful study breaks down how Trump spoke to economic grievances and personal experiences.

By Jared Abbott

August 25, 2024

Source: Jacobin

In the wake of Teamsters chief Sean O’Brien’s remarks at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July, liberal commentators were aghast at the very idea of a labor leader validating Donald Trump’s popularity with American workers.

Writing in the Atlantic, for instance, David Graham describes Trump’s working-class appeals as the “Fakest Populism You Ever Saw,” while Rolling Stone summed up July’s RNC as an attempt to court “the working class with hollow, populist rhetoric.”

On one level, there is obvious truth to these assessments. While Trump can point to a few examples where he helped save jobs and project American workers as president — such as his partial success in saving jobs at an Indiana Carrier plant and his renegotiation of NAFTA to include stronger labor protections — overall his record on labor hardly inspires confidence.

To take just a few examples: Trump stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union corporate lawyers and failed to deliver on his promise to bring back significant manufacturing jobs to rust belt states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. He threatened to veto the union-friendly PRO Act (which, by the way, none of the MAGA Republicans in the senate, including J. D. Vance, voted for), and he pushed through regressive tax cuts that were massively skewed toward the rich and failed to deliver broader economic benefits for ordinary Americans.

While Trump did increase import tariffs with the goal of bringing back American manufacturing jobs, there is no evidence that this policy had a net-positive effect on American jobs.

Given Trump’s less than stellar record on jobs, is his strong support among working-class voters (especially, but far from exclusively, white workers) simply a reflection of his shrewd capacity to get these voters to forget their own economic self-interest by doubling down on appeals to their worst xenophobic, sexist, and racist tendencies? Many liberal commentators are absolutely certain that the answer is yes. Writing in Vox shortly after Trump’s surprise 2016 victory, German Lopez boldly asserts “Trump won because of racial resentment,” while NPR’s Rich Barlow asserted that “Racial Resentment, Not Economics, Elected Trump.”

While there is little doubt that cynical, fear-based appeals to the worst impulses of working-class whites are an important part of the story, if we look at the content of Trump’s appeals to working-class voters, we see that a narrow focus on the darkest aspects of Trump’s rhetoric belies consistent and often quite powerful appeals that tap directly into decades of economic dislocation experienced by millions of American workers.
A Careful Study of Trump’s Rhetoric

My analysis of Trump’s 2016 campaign speeches and statements reveals that, however disingenuously these messages may have been deployed, he talked a lot about bread-and-butter issues many working-class Americans care deeply about and feel that Democratic and Republican politicians alike have been ignoring for decades.

Let’s start with a 30,000-foot view of Trump’s rhetoric on the 2016 campaign trail. To get a basic sense of how much Trump focused on different kinds of rhetorical appeals during the 2016 campaign, I collected all available Trump campaign statements and speeches from 2015 until election day on November 8, 2016. I then identified the number of times Trump mentioned key words and phrases to capture different policy bundles and rhetorical styles.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was jobs and trade — and not immigration or any other divisive social or cultural issue — that had top billing in Trump’s 2016 rhetoric. On average, Trump invoked jobs and trade (“jobs,” “manufacturing,” “unfair trade deals,” etc.) 10.3 times per statement or speech, compared to the 8.3 times he invoked immigration (21 percent fewer average mentions) and the less than one time per statement or speech he referenced controversial social issues (excluding immigration), from abortion to trans rights and Black Lives Matter. Indeed, Trump used pro-worker rhetoric nearly three times as often — and anti–economic elite rhetoric more than twice as often — as he brought up controversial social issues.

There were certainly speeches where candidate Trump focused more on immigration than anything else, and predictably these speeches were littered with hateful vitriol against immigrants. Among many other blatant falsehoods, he lied about immigrants and their children being convicted of terrorist activities in the United States; he falsely claimed Hillary Clinton wanted to spend hundreds of billions resettling Middle Eastern refugees in US cities; and he erroneously claimed that Clinton would implement an “open borders” immigration policy.

But even in these speeches, Trump spent as much time connecting immigration to the economic well-being of American workers as he did demonizing undocumented workers per se, as in a June 2016 speech when he claimed that “Hillary’s Wall Street immigration agenda will keep immigrant communities poor and unemployed Americans out of work. She can’t claim to care about African American and Hispanic workers when she wants to bring in millions of new low-wage workers to compete against them.” Regardless of whether Trump’s controversial claims were empirically true or false, the point is that his remarks framed immigration in terms of protecting American workers, not in overtly bigoted terms based on the condemnation of an entire class of people.

Trump’s discussion of jobs and trade focused on three key themes: mass job loss due to bad trade policies, life getter harder and harder for American workers, and blaming elites for doing nothing to stop the decline of the working class.

First, Trump regularly invoked the harm free trade policies have had on American workers. In a series of speeches the month prior to election day in 2016, Trump repeatedly argued that “we are living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world.” In an October 16 speech in New Hampshire, for instance, he explained that “the state of New Hampshire has lost nearly one in three manufacturing jobs since NAFTA. . . . Since China entered the World Trade Organization . . . 70,000 factories have shut down or left the United States. That’s fifteen factories closing a day, on average. . . . If I win, day one, we are going to announce our plans to renegotiate NAFTA. If we don’t get the deal we want, we’ll leave NAFTA and start over to get a much better deal.” These remarks could just as easily have come from Bernie Sanders or AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka and are consistent with legitimate research on the negative impacts of trade policies on American manufacturing jobs in the 1990s and 2000s.

Next, Trump focused his remarks time and again on how it’s become harder for working Americans to keep their heads above water economically than in the past. In an October 18, 2016, speech in Colorado, he again sounded indistinguishable from Bernie Sanders, exhorting that “many workers are earning less today than they were eighteen years ago, they are working harder and longer, but making less. Some of them are working two, three jobs but still taking home less money.” This, again, reflects the actual experiences of millions of working-class Americans since the 1970s who have seen their wages stagnate or fall, their share of America’s wealth drop precipitously, and their chances of achieving a higher standard of living than their parents crater.

After identifying and empathizing with the economic struggles facing working Americans, Trump consistently put the blame for “a wave of globalization that wipes out our middle class and our jobs” squarely on the shoulders of large corporations and “elites in Washington”:


The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs. . . . Just look at what this corrupt establishment has done to our cities like Detroit and Flint, Michigan — and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and across our country. They have stripped these towns bare and raided the wealth for themselves and taken away their jobs.

Finally, Trump not only invoked classic economic populist messages to call out elites for their role in shattering the American dream for so many, but he also raised up the inherent dignity of working Americans and stressed that they needed more voice in Washington. In a speech in Michigan that August, for instance, he told listeners that his campaign was “going to be a victory for the people, a victory for the wage earner, the factory worker. Remember this, a big, big victory for the factory worker. They haven’t had those victories for a long time. A victory for every citizen and for all of the people whose voices have not been heard for many, many years. They’re going to be heard again.”

And even though it may sound absurd in the abstract given his superelite class background, Trump managed to identify with workers on a personal level, as in a speech in Eerie, Pennsylvania, on August 12:


I grew up, you know they say, “You know you’re really rich. How come you sort of relate to these [working-class] people?” Well, my father built houses, and I used to work in these houses and I got to know the electricians. I got to know all these people. I got to know the plumbers, the steamfitters — I got to know them all. And I liked them better than the rich people that I know.

He reprised this theme a month later in Asheville, North Carolina:

While my opponent slanders you as deplorable and irredeemable, I call you hardworking American patriots who love your country and want a better future for all of our people. You are mothers and fathers, soldiers and sailors, carpenters and welders.

Taken together, these appeals make it pretty clear why so many disaffected working- and middle-class voters — who either experienced these economic crises directly or, in the case of many comparatively more affluent Trump voters, saw it all playing out in their communities — would find Trump appealing. Unlike virtually any politician they had ever heard before, Trump not only spoke over and over again to the economic pain felt by so many working-class Americans but also called out the elite culprits by name, something that traditional politicians typically shy away from.
Know Your Enemy

Nearly a decade later, progressives once again ignore the economic foundations of Trump’s working-class support at their own peril. Yes, of course, it’s too late to reach most Trump voters, whose loyalty to the former president has become a core feature of their identities. And yes, of course, shameful appeals meant to activate latent racial and xenophobic proclivities were a key tool in Trump’s electoral playbook.

However, many past and likely future Trump voters saw something unique in his brash economic populist message and rewarded him for it. Progressives can and must compete for these voters by making the same kinds of economic appeals. But in sharp contrast to President Trump, they must deliver on that rhetoric by implementing policies that will actually help workers rather than the 1 percent.

It’s been eight years since Trump first won the presidency. If progressives want to keep him out of office, they should start by taking his working-class appeal seriously — right now — before it’s too late.

 

Mike Lynch, Probability and the Cyber Industrial Complex

by Binoy Kampmark / August 26th, 2024

It began as a devastating, confined storm off the coast of Sicily, striking the luxury yacht Bayesian in the form of a devastating water column resembling a tornado.  Probability was inherent in the name (Thomas Bayes, mathematician and nonconformist theologian of the 18^th century, had been the first to use probability inductively) and improbability the nature of the accident.

It also led to rich speculation about the fate of those on the doomed vessel.  While most on the sunk yacht were saved (the eventual number totalled fifteen), a number of prominent figures initially went missing before being found.  They included British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, along with Morgan Stanley International Bank chairman, Jonathan Bloomer, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo.

Lynch, co-founder of the British data analytics firm Autonomy and co-founder and investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace, had been recently acquitted by a US federal jury of fifteen counts of fraud and conspiracy, along with his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, regarding Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Autonomy in 2011.  While the firm’s acquisition had cost a mighty US$11 billion, HP wrote off a stunning US$8.8 billion within 12 months, demanding an investigation into what it regarded as “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy.”  Clifford Chance was instructed by Lynch to act for him following the write down of Autonomy’s value in November 2012, hence Morvillo’s presence.

Lynch had his fair share of unwanted excitement.  The US Department of Justice successfully secured his extradition, though failed to get a conviction.  The investor proved less fortunate in a 2022 civil suit in the UK, one he lost.

For all his legal travails, Lynch stayed busy. He founded Invoke Capital, which became the largest investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace.  Other companies featured in terms of funding targets for the company, among them Sophia Genetics, Featurespace and Luminance.

Darktrace, founded in 2013, has thrived in the thick soup of security establishment interests.  British prime ministers have fallen within its orbit of influence, so much so that David Cameron accompanied its CEO Nicole Egan on an official visit to Washington DC in January 2015 ahead of the opening of the company’s US headquarters.

Members of the UK signals intelligence agency GCHQ are said to have approached Lynch, who proceeded to broker a meeting that proved most profitable in packing Darktrace with former members of the UK and, eventually, US intelligence community.  The company boasts a veritable closet of former operatives on the books: MI5, MI6, CIA, the NSA, and FBI.  Co-founder Stephen Huxter, a notable official in MI5’s cyber defence team, became Darktrace’s managing director.

Other connections are also of interest in sketching the extensive reach of the cyber industrial complex.  This need not lend itself to a conspiratorial reading of power so much as the influence companies such as Darktrace wield in the field.  Take Alexander Arbuthnot, yet another cut and dried establishment figure whose private equity firm Vitruvian Partners found Darktrace worthy of receiving a multi-million-pound investment as part of a push into cybersecurity.

Fascinating as this is, such matters gather steam and huff on looking at Arbuthnot’s family ties.  Take Arbuthnot’s mother and Westminster chief magistrate, one Lady Emma Arbuthnot.  The magistrate presided over part of the lengthily cruel and prolonged extradition proceedings of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks and hounded for alleged breaches of the US Espionage Act.  (Assange recently pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917.)  Any conflict of interest, actual or perceived, including her husband’s own links to the UK military community as former UK defence minister, were not declared during the legal circus.  Establishment members tend to regard themselves as above reproach.

With such a tight tangle of links, it took another coincidence to send the amateur sleuths on a feverish digital trawl for sauce and conspiracy.  On August 17, a few days prior to Lynch’s drowning, his co-defendant was struck while running in Cambridgeshire.  Chamberlain died in hospital from his injuries, with the driver, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, assisting at the scene with inquiries.

Reddit and the platform X duly caught fire with theories on the alleged role of hidden corporate actors, disgruntled US justice officials robbed of their quarry, and links to the intelligence community.  Chay Bowes, a blustery Irish businessman with an addiction to internet soapbox pontification, found himself obsessed with probabilities, wondering, “How could two of the statistically most charmed men alive meet tragic ends within two days of each other in the most improbable ways?”

A better line of reflection is considering the influence and power such corporations exercise in the cyber military-industrial complex.  In the realm of cyber policy, the line between public sector notions of security and defence, and the entrepreneurial pursuit of profit, have ceased to be meaningful.  In a fundamental sense, Lynch was vital to that blurring, the innovator as semi-divine.

Darktrace became an apotheosis of that phenomenon, retaining influence in the market despite a scandal spotted record.  It has, for instance, survived claims and investigations of sexual harassment.  (One of those accused at the company was the most appropriately named Randy Cheek, a sales chief based in the San Francisco office.)

In 2023, its chief executive Poppy Gustafsson fended off a stinging report by the US-hedge fund Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) alleging questionable sales and accounting practices intended to drive up the value of the company before it was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2021.  This sounded rather typical and seemed eerily reminiscent of the Autonomy affair.  “After a careful analysis,” QCM reported, “we are deeply sceptical about the validity of Darktrace’s financial statements and fear that sales, margins and growth rates may be overstated and close to sharp correction.”

QCM’s efforts did no lasting damage.  In April this year, it was revealed that Darktrace would be purchased by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo for the punchy sum of US$5.32 billion.  The Darktrace board was bullish about the deal, telling investors that its “operating and financial achievements have not been reflected commensurately in its valuation, with shares trading at a significant discount to its global peer group”.  If things sour on this one, Thoma Bravo will only have itself to blame, given the collapse of takeover talks it had with the company in 2022.  Irrespective of any anticipated sketchiness, Lynch’s troubled legacy regarding data-driven technology and its relation to the state will remain.RedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM

Taliban promise to enforce morality law ‘gently’

AFP 

Published August 27, 2024

KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities said on Monday a recently ratified morality law would be enforced “gently”, after the international community and Afghans voiced concern over new restrictions.

Women must cover completely and not raise their voices in public, according to a 35-article law announced on Wednesday by the justice ministry.

It imposes wide-ranging stipulations from behaviour to dress and social interactions, including rules on men’s clothing and beard length as well as bans on homosexuality, animal fighting, playing music in public and non-Muslim holidays.

The United Nations, rights groups and Afghans have expressed concern that the law could lead to increased enforcement of rules on behaviour and lifestyle, many already informally in place since the Taliban authorities took power in 2021 and implemented a strict interpretation of Islamic law — or sharia.

EU says it can’t tolerate undermining of rights of Afghan women and girls

“I must make it clear that force and oppression won’t be used while implementing these rules,” said deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat in a voice message shared with AFP.

The rules “would be implemented very gently, informing people’s understanding, and guiding them”, he said.

The European Union added its voice to the chorus on Monday, saying it was “appalled” by a decree that “confirms and extends severe restrictions on the life of Afghans”.

“This latest decision is another serious blow undermining the rights of Afghan women and girls, which we cannot tolerate,” said a statement from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

Borrell urged the Taliban to put an end to such “systematic and systemic abuses against Afghan women and girls,” warning they may amount to gender persecution — a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Taliban government has consistently dismissed international criticism of their policies, including condemnation of restrictions on women the UN has labelled “gender apartheid”.

The law sets out graduated punishments for non-compliance — from verbal warnings to threats, fines and detentions of varying lengths — enforced by the morality police under the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, has called the law a “distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions”.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2024

THE WOMEN AND GIRLS OF AFGHANISTAN NEED THEIR OWN WOMENS FIGHTING BRIGADES LIKE THE KURDS

REAL LIFE REPUBLIC OF GILEAD

Afghanistan Taliban govt rejects criticism of morality law as ‘arrogance’

By AFP
August 26, 2024

Afghan burqa-clad women walk through a market in Kandahar - Copyright AFP Juan Pablo FLORES

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities responded on Monday to criticism of recently codified morality rules, saying rejecting the legislation without understanding Islamic law showed “arrogance”.

Women must cover completely and not raise their voices in public, among other rules restricting women’s movements and behaviour, according to a 35-article law announced Wednesday by the justice ministry.

It imposes wide-ranging stipulations, including rules on men’s clothing and attending prayers as well as bans on keeping photos of living beings, homosexuality, animal fighting, playing music in public and non-Muslim holidays.

The United Nations, rights groups and Afghans have expressed concern that the law would lead to increased enforcement of the rules on lifestyle and behaviour, many already informally in place since the Taliban authorities took power in 2021 and implemented a strict interpretation of Islamic law — or sharia.

The law is “firmly rooted in Islamic teachings” that should be respected and understood, said chief government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement Monday night.

“To reject these laws without such understanding is, in our view, an expression of arrogance,” he said, adding that for a Muslim to criticise the law “may even lead to the decline of their faith”.



– ‘Serious blow’ –



The European Union on Monday said it was “appalled” by the decree that “confirms and extends severe restrictions on the life of Afghans”.

“This latest decision is another serious blow undermining the rights of Afghan women and girls, which we cannot tolerate,” said a statement from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

Borrell urged the Taliban to put an end to such “systematic and systemic abuses against Afghan women and girls”, warning they may amount to gender persecution — a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Taliban government has consistently dismissed international criticism of their policies, including condemnation of restrictions on women the UN has labelled “gender apartheid”.

The law sets out graduated punishments for non-compliance — from verbal warnings to threats, fines and detentions of varying lengths — enforced by the morality police under the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Mujahid dismissed concerns over the enforcement of the law, saying, “No rights will be violated, and no individual will be subjected to injustice”.

Earlier Monday, deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said the law would be implemented “gently”, through advice and guidance.

The Taliban government recently said the morality police would play an increasing role in enforcing religious law, according to a July UN report, which accused them of creating a “climate of fear”.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, has called the law a “distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions”.

The UNAMA and EU statements warned the law could damage prospects for engagement with the international community.

The Taliban government is unrecognised by any state but has made diplomatic inroads recently, including attending UN-hosted talks on Afghanistan in Qatar.

Mujahid stressed “the concerns raised by various parties will not sway the Islamic Emirate from its commitment to upholding and enforcing Islamic Sharia law”.

ENVIRONMENT: DOLPHINS, DAMS AND CERTAIN DEATH

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto 

Published August 25, 2024 

The low water level at the island shrine of Sadhu Bela on the Indus in January 2023 | All photos courtesy the writer

“The Indus in Sindh contains the combined waters of all the Punjab Rivers.”

These words were written in the 1902 India Commission Report. Today, the Indus River — South Asia’s longest — is barely a trickle once it leaves Punjab, and in its final 300-kilometre descent towards the sea, it is bone dry. Researchers predict that by 2040, Pakistan will be the most water-stressed country in the world, with water seepage and wastage from our outdated canal irrigation system largely to blame.

River dolphins are what scientists call indicator species, and their health and survival in freshwater ecosystems are indicators of water quality, and that in turn signals to humans whether all is well or not.

The indicator species for the Indus is the Indus River Dolphin — an animal that was almost declared extinct in 1969 but — with the help of indigenous river folk, the Sindh Wildlife Department and many others — it made a miraculous recovery from a mere 100 individuals in 1972 to around 2,000 in 2017, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Sixty percent of all river dolphins in Pakistan are in Sindh, the survey found.

However, the last survey conducted in 2022, unlike other surveys before it, did not show signs of significant growth in the Punjab region since 2017. Moreover, northern Sindh, which is the heartland of dolphin territory, is yet to be studied, as dacoits now dominate the flood plain.

Pakistan’s outdated water management and irrigation systems reduces the mighty Indus to a trickle once it enters Sindh. This has not only threatened the ecosystem of the Indus basin, but also species that thrive in its water, including the endangered Indus River dolphins…

With erratic weather patterns and plans to siphon water out of the Indus in Punjab, as well as new dams being built in the north, the fate of the Indus River dolphin once again hangs in the balance.

AN ECOSYSTEM IN PERIL

Indus River dolphin surfacing for air | Usama Maqsood

Canals have been a part of our landscape since the Indus Valley Civilisation, but were expanded by the British, the Pakistan Army and the World Bank. These canals bring much needed water to crops, but they ironically have led to a dramatic decrease in arable land.

Irrigation has caused salt deposits to form where the water is unable to evaporate fast enough; these have turned farmland into snow white salt pans, where nothing can grow.

According to one 2008 research paper, Salinity and Water-logging in the Indus Basin of Pakistan: Economic Loss to Agricultural Economy, 43 percent of farmland in the Indus Basin Irrigation System is classified as waterlogged, with the water table at a depth of less than three metres, affecting around 7.1 million hectares.

Meanwhile, decades of research into how to fix this issue has not resulted in effective recommendations. One suggested solution included installing tube wells to pump excess groundwater out of the ground in the 1970s, specifically to save Mohenjo Daro from the eroding effects of salinity. As of yet, this has not shown the desired results.

Other methods of healing saline and water-logged land is to plant indigenous flora, such as tamarisk and salt bushes, that are common along the riverine forests. However, such a process may take decades to heal the earth.

The Indus at Layyah during the 2022 Indus River Dolphin National Survey

Climate change has added more stress on this strained river ecosystem. In 2010, a glacial flood inundated one fifth of Pakistan; in 2011, another flood caused extensive damage in Sindh; and in 2022, Pakistan saw its largest flood ever, inundating one third of the nation’s land mass.

As the global temperature continues to rise, droughts become a looming threat, and heatwaves have been getting worse every year. In June, a prolonged heat wave claimed at least 49 lives in Karachi, with relief workers saying that the figure was much higher.

Last year, Brazil woke up to an alarming reality. On October 2, 2023, 120 Amazon River dolphins were found dead in Lake Tefé. The cause of death: drought and extreme heat, with water temperatures in the shallow lake reaching 43 degrees Celsius. Such an event in a river system that is much healthier than our own should deeply concern all of us.

Unlike the Amazon River basin, which contains thousands of uninterrupted rivers, streams, natural canals and channels — in which their river dolphins can roam free without hindrance — the habitable range for the Indus River dolphin in Pakistan has sadly been constrained to one single channel, interrupted by six barrages and one dam, with more on the way.

Last year, Brazil woke up to an alarming reality. On October 2, 2023, 120 Amazon River dolphins were found dead in Lake Tefé. The cause of death: drought and extreme heat, with water temperatures in the shallow lake reaching 43 degrees Celsius.

As mentioned earlier, 60 percent of our river dolphins — known locally as bulhan — live in Sindh, where they remain extremely vulnerable to actions upstream. A slight change in water levels can signal certain death to much of river life, alongside affecting a significant population of Sindh.

THE STATE OF THE INDUS

Flock of flamingos fly over the Indus near Layyah in Punjab | Usama Maqsood

A visit to the Indus south of the Sukkur Barrage in Sindh in the dry season would make anyone shudder. Punjab’s Indus is truly Asia’s ‘Lion River’: here, it is 35 kms in width with thousands of islands.

But a series of 15 barrages and 150 large and small dams brings this giant to its knees. In Sindh, at some points, it is barely 200 metres across, with an average depth of three feet and, in its final descent, it is bone dry.

On a trip to Sukkur in January of 2023, I paid a visit to mother Indus, expecting to dock a boat to journey to the famous island temple of Sadhu Bela. Where the river once lapped the shore, there was a 20-foot drop down.

At Sadhu Bela, the steps of the temple’s famous ghat were barely visible — covered with grey Indus silt. Such high levels of silt deposition have accelerated in recent years, caused by deforestation along the Indus, as well as barrages and embankments that prevent this silt from freely depositing downstream at the delta, where it would act as a defence against intruding seawater.

“Silt was never an issue when we were children,” remarks Mahesh Kumar, a devotee of Sadhu Bela and on the temple’s committee. “As kids we used to walk up these steps in the dry season,” he tells Eos while pointing to the now mound of sand.

Here, at Sukkur, is one of Pakistan’s highest concentrations of Indus River dolphins. I have been actively and passively involved in the WWF and the Sindh Wildlife Department’s dolphin conservation efforts since 2005. In 2022, I had the honour of being part of the Indus Dolphin Survey, and I have now seen dolphins in three out of four of Pakistan’s provinces.

The contrast between the river in Punjab and Sindh is jarring, a giant river is buckled to its knees and reduced to a trickle, in certain parts in the winter season, one can walk all the way across.

THE CLIMATE PRECIPICE

The writer (centre) participating in his first dolphin rescue in Khairpur in 2006

The West may be partly to blame for climate change — but this phenomenon is as much local as it is global. The Indus Water Treaty of 1960, which Pakistan signed with India, would sound the death knell of the Indus River basin. The World Bank, under whose auspices the Treaty was signed, paid for new barrages. One of them is the Kotri barrage, the last of the barrages on the Indus, holding up water upstream that is fed into perennial canals. In the dry months, there is no water past Kotri in the Indus River’s 300-km descent into the sea.

Kotri has caused a mass exodus from Thatta and Badin into other districts of Sindh. Sea intrusion has eaten up nearly one thousand acres of land, forever lost to the sea, and this has its effects upstream as well.

Some applaud the dams and barrages — water to the sea is water wasted, they claim. But it is about time we ask: wasted on who?

When a river is cut off from the sea, the hydrological cycle is disturbed. The hydrological cycle applies to all river systems — rain is formed in the ocean and becomes clouds, which then follow a river’s delta to its source, where they condense and it rains, refilling the river, its aquifers and freezing to replenish glaciers. The glaciers melt, the rivers are full, the water reaches the sea, it evaporates to form clouds, and the cycle repeats.

Pakistan once received two monsoons: one from the Arabian Sea followed the path of the Indus and the other from the Bay of Bengal followed the Ganges. At present, we now only receive the tail end of the Bengal monsoon.

Our glaciers are, therefore, melting at a much faster rate than they can replenish, causing a reduction in water in Pakistan’s two largest dams: Tarbela and Mangla. When the glaciers do melt, they create angry torrents of water that bring with them silt, mud and rock, no longer held together by forests. This has caused silt to deposit behind dams and barrages: there is not only less water to store, but there is also less capacity to store water.

What happened in Lake Tefé in Brazil is tame compared to what could be on the horizon for us.

‘ON DEATH’S DOOR’

The Indus depends on a fast-disappearing series of glaciers in Kashmir and Tibet. This water is halted and diverted at many points, worsening any water shortage issue downstream. Other sources of freshwater further south, such as the Koh-i-Suleman, the Kirthar Hills, Aror Hills and Kathore, are all being levelled and mined or turned into real estate developments. We ourselves are systematically eliminating local sources of water.

Sindh was once considered water-rich, with natural distributaries branching off from the Indus and meandering their way towards the Arabian Sea and the Rann of Kutch. In the summer, a giant marshland — the sweet ocean — connected Sehwan with Multan and another connected Gujarat with Thatta. In the winter, the water slowed and Sindh’s thick forests would grow and host thousands of birds from all over the world.

In the mid-19th century, British general Henry Pottinger remarked: “The jungles and immense tracts now usurped by tamarisk bushes and rank vegetation, might yet however be reclaimed to the plough.” This statement would mark forever our state’s relationship to this river and its people. Sindh was once 40 percent forest, down to 25 percent in 1974. Today, it is estimated to be 2.5 percent forested.

It is time that we understood the Indus River as not only a living connected ecosystem, but also a suffering one that is on death’s door. We now believe that inequality is normal — the north has water and Sindh does not. History turns this idea on its head — Sindh was once an oasis.

Today, there is still no unified desire in our country to save this ecosystem in its entirety — what exists instead is a tired, old, dangerous narrative of ‘water storage’, which creates extreme inequality between our provinces and gives us no lasting solutions to life-threatening problems.

The science is clear: a river must meet the sea to thrive. Humans are not separate from this system; we are very much a part of it, and we can save it.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is an environmentalist and founder of Bulhan Bachao, which works on wildlife conservation through community engagement.
X: @BhuttoZulfikar

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 25th, 2024

SPACE

Japan calls off Moon lander mission

AFP 

Published August 27, 2024

TOKYO: Japan’s space agency said on Monday it had ended its Moon lander operation after losing communication with the uncrewed spaceship last week.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), dubbed the “Moon Sniper” for its landing precision, touched down eight months ago — making Japan only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) there was no response from the SLIM after trying to communicate last week following three frigid lunar nights or six cold weeks.

“We judged that there was no prospect of restoring communication with SLIM, and at around 22:40 (1340 GMT) on August 23, we sent a command to stop the SLIM activity,” JAXA said, nearly a year after launching the operation.

“SLIM continued to transmit information on its status and the surrounding environment for a much longer period than expected. At the time of launch, no one imagined that the operation would continue this long,” it said.

The touchdown of the unmanned lander in January was a success, but it landed at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.

As the sun’s angle shifted, it came back to life for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera.

The SLIM was not designed for the freezing, two-week-long lunar nights, when the temperature plunges to minus 133 degrees, but it works up for a third time in April.

The spacecraft carried two probes one with a transmitter and a mini-rover that moves like a turtle around the lunar surface beaming images back to Earth.

The SLIM’s mission aims to examine a part of the Moon’s mantle — the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust — believed to be accessible at the crater where it landed.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2024

Crewed SpaceX mission delayed after leak in ground equipment

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is prepared for launch of Polaris Dawn at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Reuters

The launch of SpaceX's four-person Polaris Dawn mission will be delayed by at least a day because of a helium leak in ground equipment at Kennedy Space Center, the company said on Tuesday, hours before the scheduled liftoff of its Crew Dragon capsule.

The highlight of the five-day mission is expected to come two days after launch, when the crew embarks on a 20-minute spacewalk 434 miles (700 km) from earth, in history's first such private spacewalk.

The company now aims to launch the spacecraft, carried by a Falcon 9 booster, at 3:38am (0738 GMT) on Wednesday, it said in a posting on X.

"Teams are taking a closer look at a ground-side helium leak," it added in Tuesday's post. "Falcon and Dragon remain healthy and the crew continues to be ready for their multi-day mission to low-Earth orbit."

Only government astronauts have performed spacewalks to date, most recently by occupants of the International Space Station, who regularly don spacesuits to perform maintenance and other checks of their orbital home.

Jared Isaacman (left), Scott Poteet (right), Sarah Gillis (second left) and Anna Menon pose for a photograph.

The first US spacewalk was in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, and used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurised, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.

Polaris Dawn's crew will be testing SpaceX's new, slimline spacesuits during the spacewalk.

Only two of the four — billionaire Jared Isaacman, mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both senior engineers at the company — will leave the spacecraft.

Isaacman, the founder of electronic payment company Shift4, bankrolled the mission; he has declined to say how much he has spent, but it is estimated to be more than $100 million.

Earlier, riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the SpaceX Dragon capsule is set to reach a peak altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometres) – higher than any crewed mission in over half a century, since the Apollo era.

Mission commander Isaacman will guide his four-member team through the mission's centrepiece: the first-ever commercial spacewalk, equipped with sleek, newly developed SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) suits.

"This will be a super cool mission," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk promised on X.

Joining Isaacman are mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel; mission specialist Sarah Gillis, a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX; and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon, also a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX.

High radiation zone

The quartet underwent more than two years of training in preparation for the landmark mission, logging hundreds of hours on simulators apart from skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving, and summiting an Ecuadorean volcano.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule sits on Launch Complex 39A. AFP

Polaris Dawn is set to be the first of three missions under the Polaris programme, a collaboration between Isaacman, the founder of tech company Shift4 Payments, and SpaceX.

"The idea is to develop (and) test new technology and operations in furtherance of SpaceX's bold vision to enable humankind to journey among the stars," Isaacman said during a recent press conference.

Isaacman declined to reveal his total investment in the project, though reports suggest he paid around $200 million for the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, the first all-civilian orbital mission.

Polaris Dawn will reach its highest altitude on its first day, venturing briefly into the Van Allen radiation belt, a region teeming with high-energy charged particles that can pose health risks to humans over extended periods.

The crew will orbit nearly three times higher than the International Space Station, yet will remain far short of the record-breaking distance of over 248,000 miles set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.

Apollo 13's astronauts journeyed that far to slingshot around the far side of the Moon after an explosion crippled their spacecraft, aborting their planned lunar landing and necessitating a return to Earth without major propulsive manoeuvres.

New spacesuits

On day three, the crew will don their state-of-the-art EVA spacesuits – outfitted with heads-up displays, helmet cameras, and advanced joint mobility systems – and take turns to venture outside their spacecraft in twos. Each will spend 15 to 20 minutes in space, 435 miles above Earth's surface.

Notably, however, even the pair strapped into their seats will be exposed to the vacuum of space as the Dragon capsule doesn't have an airlock.

The following day will be dedicated to testing laser-based satellite communication between the spacecraft and Starlink, SpaceX's more than 6,000-strong constellation of internet satellites, in a bid to boost space communication speeds.

The crew is also set to conduct nearly 40 experiments aimed at advancing our understanding of human health during long-duration spaceflights. Among these are tests with contact lenses embedded with microelectronics to continuously monitor changes in eye pressure and shape.

After six days in space, the mission will conclude with a splashdown off the coast of Florida, where a SpaceX recovery ship will await.

The second Polaris mission will also utilise a Dragon capsule, while the third and final mission is slated to be the maiden crewed flight of Starship, SpaceX's prototype next-generation rocket that is key to Musk's vision of one day colonising Mars.

Agence France-Presse

What’s happening with the internet in Pakistan?

Amid a smokescreen of explanations, authorities have acknowledged updating a web management system for "increased cyber security".

Ramsha Jahangir 

Published August 22, 2024

Pakistan’s internet has once again found itself under the digital microscope. In recent months, users have experienced sluggish speeds, difficulty downloading media on WhatsApp, and intermittent connectivity issues.

Instead of addressing the root cause behind widespread outcry and economic concerns, government obfuscation on “firewall” rumours continues — the latest excuse for persisting crawling speeds being too much VPN use or “faulty submarine cables”.

While there is no transparency from the government or the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) about the scale and scope of the country’s internet infrastructure plans, there is ample precedent that suggests what might be at play and why the authorities must come clean.

What are Pakistan’s existing capabilities to filter content on the internet?

Amidst a smokescreen of explanations, the government has acknowledged updating a web management system (WMS) for “increased cyber security”. According to the PTA, deployment of the WMS has been underway since December 2023. Meanwhile, industry sources said the government plans to complete the testing and installation of the system by the end of this month.

So, what is the WMS? Acquired in 2018 from the controversial company Sandvine, which is known for its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology — that can identify traffic coming from VPNs and then block or hinder VPN traffic using techniques like packet dropping, rate limiting, or redirection — and surveillance capabilities, the system would allow the telecom watchdog to monitor all internet traffic going in and out of Pakistan.

As per the Sandvine contract, which expired in 2023, the system allowed URL filtering, IP blocking, including complete blocking of websites, and VPN whitelisting.

Industry sources told Dawn that the new system was more advanced and could throttle and limit content on an application basis. “Previously you would be able to block YouTube as a whole but now they can throttle specific apps and block individual pieces of content,” they claimed.

What type of content filtering can allow disruptions to specific apps, and sites in addition to throttling the Internet?

Governments employ different types of content filtering techniques with the potential to not only disrupt specific targeted services but also negatively impact overall internet performance. In practice, “national firewalls” and similar internet censorship technologies are just one tool in the box of mass surveillance systems. These techniques range from URL and IP filtering to application-based filtering and traffic shaping/throttling.

For instance, traffic throttling controls the bandwidth available to specific types of traffic, websites or applications. This can slow down or limit access to these services without blocking them. “We witnessed this issue in Pakistan late last year (2023) when many users complained about throttling of Twitter services,” said Aftab Siddiqui of Internet Society.

“It is common knowledge that PTA has been doing URL, IP, DNS level filtering for many years,” he added.

Companies like Sandvine have provided internet-blocking capabilities to repressive regimes such as Azerbaijan, Jordan, Turkiye and Egypt. In particular, DPI technology has allowed authoritarian governments like Russia to throttle X (erstwhile Twitter) and restrict access to VPNs.

According to US-based internet observatory Censored Planet’s analysis, in Russia, DPI technology targeted X traffic, filtering messages to and from its domains (twitter.com, t.co, twimg.com) and throttling speeds below 150kbps, rendering it unusable. In 2022, Rest of World also documented how governments were increasingly throttling services instead of completely blocking platforms to disguise censorship as a technical error or localised outage.

Experts have warned that these disruptions can extend beyond the intended scope, inadvertently affecting other applications, websites, or online services. While such tools cannot allow intercepting encrypted content, traffic records and devices such as mobile phones and laptops may contain personal and metadata. With few existing safeguards for data privacy, the collection and storage of the information could reduce users’ ability to control how this information is used and shared by whom and for how long, potentially impacting people’s freedom of expression.

How does content filtering at the national gateway level work? Is it via a combination of technologies? Or is it one “firewall” system?

Content filtering at the national gateway level typically involves a combination of technologies rather than relying on a single “firewall” system, Internet Society explained.

National-level content or application filtering usually employs a multi-layered approach. This can include firewalls doing DPI, DNS filtering, URL filtering and IP filtering, among other techniques. Each layer serves a specific purpose, such as blocking specific URLs, preventing DNS resolution of certain domains, or inspecting the content of data packets to identify and filter out undesired content. “It is not known what Pakistan is implementing but most likely a combination of all as mentioned above,” said Siddiqui.

Hajira Maryam, an Amnesty Tech spokesperson, told Dawn that these systems take different forms, but typically involve telecom operators in a country installing internet and telephone monitoring technology, as requested by communication regulators or security agencies.

Some governments, she continued, use national firewalls and censorship technology to block certain websites and online content to control what people can see and say on the internet. For example, countries like Algeria, China, Iran, Russia and Vietnam have blocked websites of human rights organisations including Amnesty International, to limit access to information about rights violations.

As highlighted by Amnesty Tech, the use of such national firewalls and censorship technology can stop people from freely sharing their opinions, accessing accurate information, and participating in open discussions. “Unless these restrictions are fair, legal, and necessary, they can violate fundamental human rights like freedom of expression and access to information,” said Maryam.

Some experts think Pakistan wants to follow the UAE’s example. How does content filtering in the UAE work?

Content filtering in the United Arab Emirates is known to be one of the most stringent in the world apart from mainland China. The process is very much centralised and managed primarily by the state through its main ISPs, Etisalat and du.

“They use a combination of URL and DNS filtering and DPI processes to block access to a wide range of content along with voice/VoIP services. This system is designed to enforce strict controls on what residents can access online, ensuring that the Internet is in line with the UAE’s cultural, religious, political, and commercial standards,” Siddiqui elaborated.

“The scale of implementing a content filtering system in Pakistan would be vastly different from that in the UAE, given the larger and more diverse internet user base in Pakistan. Therefore, while there may be some structural similarities, the complexity and scale of the task would be much greater in Pakistan,” he added.

What will be the impact of placing such controls on Pakistan’s internet infrastructure?

Unlike other countries, Pakistan’s international connectivity lacks path diversity as it is highly concentrated at both the physical and logical layers.

According to French researcher Nowmay Opalinski, who has published a study titled ‘The Quest for a Resilient Internet Access in a Constrained Geopolitical Environment’, the shape of the internet in Pakistan is helping authorities to have some control over it.

“Since the structure of Pakistan’s network is concentrated, it is easier to apply firewall tools as you don’t need to apply tech to a large number of routes. Yet such a concentrated structure brings resilience vulnerabilities,” he said.

“Because only a few ISPs, mainly two (PTCL and Transworld), concentrate the bulk of Pakistan’s Internet traffic which constantly goes out of the country’s border because of the lack of local hosting (which stands at 11 per cent according to ISOC), whenever a fault on the infrastructure of these two providers happen, the quality of the connection in the whole country gets downgraded.”

“This is what happens in case of a physical fault (submarine cable cut, or even cut on the domestic backbone during the summer 2022 floods), or a logical disruption at these two networks (for instance traffic monitoring, or BGP hijack),” Opalinski told Dawn.

On the other hand, Doug Madory, who is dubbed as the man who can see the Internet, said, “Pakistan is a country that has, over the years, struggled with Internet connectivity for a variety of reasons.”

“The country has only two international gateways (PTCL and Transworld) and is dependent on a handful of submarine cables. These cables occasionally suffer faults, and when they do, Pakistan has always seemed to be impacted especially hard. Adding a new national censorship system is likely to compound the connectivity problems faced by Pakistanis,” he said.

Madory further noted that Pakistan appeared to still be dealing with the impacts of the SMW4 cut on June 17, when PTCL completely lost three international transit providers which reduced the company’s international bandwidth and potentially increased latency to certain services.

With international connectivity concentrated along a few physical and logical routes, implementing content filtering at the gateway while considered an easy task for authorities could exacerbate the risk of single points of failure, emphasises the Internet Society. “Any disruption, whether due to filtering misconfigurations, equipment failure, or targeted attacks, could lead to widespread internet outages, affecting large portions of the country,” said Siddiqui.

Another issue is the lack of locally hosted popular content. Globally, a large portion of content is delivered through local caches and CDN (Content Delivery Network) nodes within the country. However, the Pulse Country Report highlighted that only 13pc of the popular content accessed by users in Pakistan comes from these local sources. For the remaining content, every request must leave the country, passing through these content filters or national gateways.

Additionally, the lack of local peering means that even local traffic often must be routed through external networks, which further exacerbates these issues, shared Siddiqui.

Industry sources confirmed to Dawn that recently most peering with international servers was either depicting high utilisation or choking in some instances. They hinted that gateway-level deployment at the two largest CDN providers would be enough to control and monitor internet traffic in Pakistan but also significantly increase costs and latency.

“Certain countries such as Iran and China have managed to balance both control and resilience through a more complex network architecture, but this needs a high level of planification and major investments, which currently is not in sight in anyways in Pakistan,” warned Opalinski.

Internet Society, based on technical analyses, maintained that Internet blocking to address illegal content or activities is generally inefficient, often ineffective and generally causes unintended damages to Internet users.

“We recommend that policymakers think twice when considering the use of Internet blocking tools to solve public policy issues. If they do and choose to pursue alternative approaches, this will be an important win for a global, open, interoperable and trusted Internet,” Siddiqui added.


Ramsha is a journalist and policy expert, specialising in technology and human rights. Her work is focused on internet rights, mis/disinformation, online regulation & censorship, and digital society.