It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
What's the study: For a faster, safer way to treat pulmonary embolism—potentially deadly blood clots stuck in the lungs—engineers and vascular surgeons are joining forces to develop a minimally invasive "vortex ultrasound" device.
The tiny ultrasound source will be mounted on the end of a catheter, to be delivered to the clot through blood vessels. Once there, it will send out twisting sound waves to break up the clot without damaging the blood vessel walls. The team believes that the swirling waves break up the clot's internal structure more quickly by creating bubbles within it.
Why it matters: Pulmonary embolism is the third most common cardiovascular killer in the United States after heart attack and stroke. When large blood clots break loose from the legs and travel to the lungs, they block oxygen exchange and put sudden, deadly strain on the heart.
Current emergency options present tough trade-offs: clot-busting drugs can take up to 24 hours to work, fail about a third of the time and carry a serious risk of internal bleeding, while mechanically removing the clot with a catheter device risks tearing fragile blood vessel walls. The most severe clots must be removed through open-chest surgery.
External ultrasound approaches may sound safer for blood vessel walls than catheter removal or surgery, but they often fail to accurately target the clot and hardly work in the lung because its internal structures interfere with ultrasound waves. However, by changing the kind of ultrasound used and administering it inside the blood vessel, the team believes they can achieve fast treatment while reducing the risk of internal bleeding. Preliminary tests suggest that their twisted ultrasound waves could break up clots in as little as 30 minutes.
How much and for how long: A $3.74 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund the five-year project.
The current project builds on early proof-of-concept testing in which the research team demonstrated that vortex ultrasound could restore blood flow through a three-inch-long blood clot in just eight minutes, using blood from cows. Over the next five years, the team will refine the catheter design, optimize the shape and frequency of the ultrasound waves, and evaluate short- and long-term safety in pigs to prepare the technology for human clinical use.
Who's involved: Principal investigator Chengzhi Shi is an associate professor of mechanical engineering whose research focuses on physical acoustics, metamaterials and ultrasound technologies for medical treatments.
"With this approach, we hope to treat clots in the lungs more quickly and safely while potentially providing an alternative to open-chest surgery for severe pulmonary embolism," Shi said.
Key collaborators on the grant include Daniel Myers, the Conrad and Caroline Jobst Research Professor of Vascular Surgery, and Andrea Obi, the Wakefield Family Research Professor, both from the U-M Medical School; Zhen Xu, the Li Ka Shing Endowed Professor of Biomedical Engineering at U-M; and Xiaoning Jiang, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Anglo-Teck merger, nickel sale are test cases for navigating geopolitical complexities, CEO says
Niquelândia processes both nickel and manganese from Codemin and Barro Alto sites. (Image courtesy of Anglo American.)
Anglo American’s (LON: AAL) proposed $54 billion merger with Canada’s Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.B) and the sale of its Brazilian nickel business have become test cases for navigating geopolitical complexities as they await antitrust approval, CEO Duncan Wanblad said on Wednesday.
The Anglo-Teck merger, announced in 2025, has received approval from all countries where the companies operate except China. Both expect the deal to close by March 2027.
Critical minerals have become a flashpoint in global competition, with major economies seeking to secure supply chains for electric vehicles, renewable energy and defence.
China’s antitrust regulator has asked Anglo American to commit to supplying the country with a steady flow of copper concentrate as a condition for approving the merger, three people aware of the development said.
Geopolitical shifts, supply chain disruptions and critical mineral nationalism have created a complex environment for such deals, Wanblad told a mining conference in Johannesburg via video link.
‘In new waters’
“We are in new waters. We are pioneering in a way. I genuinely don’t think from an antitrust perspective there should be any issues with any of these deals,” Wanblad said.
He cited Anglo’s proposed sale of its Brazilian nickel business to MMG (HKG: 1208), which drew a warning from the European Union over concerns the Hong Kong-listed miner could divert supply away from Europe, hurting stainless steel producers there. The sale is awaiting EU approval.
Anglo American also agreed to sell its steelmaking coal mines in Australia to UK-based miner Dhilmar for up to $3.88 billion.
“We are kind of the guinea pigs for the market in terms of working this out,” Wanblad said.
Wanblad also said he was hopeful the sale of diamond company De Beers would be completed by the end of this year.
The sale of the assets is part of Anglo’s restructuring aimed at focusing on copper and iron ore.
The Teck merger would expand Anglo’s copper portfolio, positioning it as the fifth-largest producer of the metal critical to the energy transition.
(Reporting by Nelson Banya and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, editing by Rod Nickel)
MMG accuses EU antitrust regulators of ignoring evidence backing Anglo American deal
Barro Alto is a nickel-producing mine and processing plant. (Image courtesy of Anglo American.)
Hong Kong-listed mining and metals company MMG (HKEX:1208) accused EU antitrust regulators on Thursday of ignoring evidence that its bid for Anglo American’s (LON: AAL) Brazilian nickel business would not divert supplies from Europe to China.
The comments came after a day-long hearing at which MMG and Anglo American defended the $500 million deal before EU antitrust regulators, including the European Commission’s top merger official, Guillaume Loriot.
“The Commission’s decision to open an in-depth inquiry and the allegations of a plan to divert supply of ferronickel from Europe are fundamentally unsupported,” MMG’s executive general manager for corporate relations Troy Hey told reporters.
“The Commission has selectively used two partial and misleading quotations from over 200,000 documents supplied by MMG and its major shareholder — while ignoring all the other evidence, economic and market analysis to the contrary,” he said.
The Commission, the EU’s competition watchdog, warned last month that MMG could redirect ferronickel supplies away from Europe, potentially harming the bloc’s stainless steel producers. The case comes amid broader EU concerns about dependence on China for critical minerals.
Hey also accused the Commission of ignoring market developments since opening a full-scale investigation in November and the independent market analysis it had commissioned.
He said commodities traders Glencore and Trafigura had written to the Commission saying they were confident MMG would continue supplying them.
Hey said MMG was willing to address all of the Commission’s concerns, suggesting it may be prepared to offer remedies in the coming weeks.
Anglo American Brazil Chief Operating Officer Ruben Fernandes and Chief Financial Officer Cristina Morgan were expected to tell regulators at the hearing that blocking the deal would likely force the mine to close, according to prepared remarks seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee. Editing by Mark Potter)
Saturday, October 10, 2026
France’s seafood problem starts elsewhere
LONG READ
Much of the fishmeal and fish oil that support seafood consumed in France come from global supply chains linked to pollution, labour abuses, overfishing, and food insecurity in poorer countries.
On March 6, 2024, Pascal Goumain, the president of Saumon de France, was presenting his company’s salmon pens in Cherbourg as part of France’s food future. In an interview, Goumain described plans to adapt the farm to climate change and pointed to official backing for expansion. “The French Ministry of Agriculture set an objective to farm 20,000 tonnes of salmon in France by 2030,” Goumain said. The promise of fish farming, he argued, is that it is both sustainable and important for food sovereignty. “We should be a leading aquaculture country,” he said, “but we’re falling behind.”
The industry and government pitch of aquaculture in France has been straightforward: People want more seafood, the limit of what can be viably pulled from the wild is quickly being reached, and fish farming is the way to meet the growing demand while slowing the collapse of the oceans. “The quantities caught are not sufficient to feed consumers,” former minister of the sea Annick Girardin said in 2021. The Haut-Commissariat au Plan on fish farming echoed the point in 2023, asserting that in a context of climate change and overfishing, the “responsible development” of aquaculture could expand supply without undermining the fishing sector.
Globally, the ocean-sustainability argument for fish farming – “grow more, so we can catch less” – is one of the reasons that the $313-billion aquaculture industry is currently the fastest-growing food sector, and why half of the seafood eaten around the world is now farm-raised rather than caught at sea.
There is a problem, though. “The aquaculture industry’s sales pitch is flat wrong,” said Daniel Pauly, project director of the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia. The most popular types of farmed seafood consumed in France – salmon, shrimp, trout, sea bass, sea bream – are fed the kinds of wild fish that aquaculture claims to be saving, thereby accelerating ocean depletion, not slowing it, he explained. Two-thirds of global aquaculture grows species that are fed fishmeal and fish oil, ingredients made by cooking and pulverising wild-caught fish. Before it reaches market, a farmed salmon, for instance, eats at some farms more than six times its weight in wild-caught fish.
The concerns about aquaculture extend far beyond the fate of the oceans. The feed that powers most of this industry comes with a huge variety of other hidden costs, according to a wide-reaching investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization based in Washington, DC. These costs include the loss of artisanal fishing jobs, chronic chemical exposure, avoidable worker deaths, violent protests typically spurred by the horrid stench from fishmeal factories, and escalating geopolitical tensions as countries compete for scarce sources of protein. What economists often call “externalities", these social and environmental impacts exact a price primarily paid by the poorer countries where the feed ingredient is harvested and processed, far from where the resulting luxury seafood is eaten.
In Gambia and Mauritania, the investigation documented how the industry drives food insecurity as fish that once sustained local communities are increasingly being diverted into fishmeal factories for export. In remote islands in Russia’s far east and in China’s Xinjiang region, the reporting detailed the use of forced labor on ships, on farms, and in factories. In other countries, like India and Peru, this industry was tied to at least 80 incidents of civil unrest, some of them violent, usually in the form of labour strikes and community protests sparked by the water pollution or the stench from factories cooking thousands of tons of decomposing fish.
The four-year investigation mapped roughly the entire global fishmeal industry, including more than 1,400 fishmeal factories across 64 countries, tracing supply chains from fishing vessels to processing plants, feed mills, fish farms, and seafood retailers. The reporting effort involved dozens of journalists from as many countries, visiting factories and farms and boarding fishmeal ships at sea. The goal was to chronicle what economists call this industry’s “externalities” – the hidden and displaced social costs of producing this feed that rarely appear on the balance sheets of the seafood companies that depend on it.
The investigation revealed that the fishmeal industry also contributes to geopolitical tensions.
For example, in 2021, a dozen Turkish bottom trawlers fishing illegally in the Aegean Sea tried to ram a Greek research vessel when the scientists began filming their activity. In 2018, riots broke out in Saint-Louis, Senegal, after a fisher was shot and killed by Mauritanian coast guards, during what the Mauritanians said was a cross-border raid by a fishmeal boat. Since the mid-1970s, Morocco has militarily occupied Western Sahara, a presence that more than 10 EU Court of Justice rulings and various UN resolutions have deemed illegal. Still, Moroccan ships routinely fish in Western Saharan waters, turning their illegal catch into fishmeal in Western Saharan plants, then exporting it to farms globally labeled as Moroccan. A violent clash over trucks, many of them carrying this fish and fishmeal out of Western Sahara, led to the collapse of a 29-year ceasefire between the countries in 2020. As recently as 2024, a Western Saharan fishmeal plant supplied fish oil to a French importer named S.A.S. Ch. Daudruy Van Cauwenberghe & Fils, which advertises supplements for animal feed on its website, according to Bait to Plate, an online tool that maps seafood supply chains. S.A.S. Ch. Daudruy Van Cauwenberghe & Fils did not respond to a request for comment.
France’s greatest exposure to these problems comes less from home-grown salmon than from the more than €6 billion worth of seafood the country imports annually, including shrimp, trout, tilapia, and other forms of fish that rely heavily on fishmeal and fish oil. For example, shrimp raised on farms in Ecuador and sold at major grocers in France such as E.LeClerc, Cora, and Carrefour is fed fishmeal from plants throughout Latin America that have been tied to at least five worker deaths, 20 cases of illegal fishing, and over a half dozen instances of civil unrest from neighbours protesting the stench from fishmeal factories, the investigation found. Carrefour Group, which also owns Cora, said it was immediately launching an investigation into the issues concerning its supply chain and “will take all necessary measures in the event of confirmed non-compliance", which could include the exclusion of sources of supply “that do not meet our ethical and environmental standards". E.Leclerc did not respond to a request for comment.
More than sixty percent of the salmon eaten in France comes from farms in Norway, which rely heavily on imported fish feed made from wild-caught fish. The feed raising this salmon is linked to a range of documented impacts, including food insecurity in Western Africa, pollution from waste and chemicals, and the spread of parasites and disease to wild fish populations. A 2024 Science Advances review found that about 87 percent of global fishmeal goes to aquaculture, compared with roughly seven percent to pigs and about five percent to poultry.
The oceans bear an especially heavy and largely invisible burden from the fishmeal and fish oil industry. More than a fifth of wild-caught fish around the world is used for non-human consumption, in particular as feed for fish, chickens, and pigs. The investigation assessed more than 2,400 ships tied to fishmeal production, operating in the waters of at least 30 countries. It found that most of these ships do not fully comply with the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency, a guide created by leading ocean-focused civil society groups detailing accountability standards for industrial fishing fleets. For example, less than 30 percent of the fleet had publicly available location information, and less than 25 percent had a unique vessel identification number, or ship license plate. Such opacity makes the fleet difficult to police.
Scientific studies classified at least half of the species landed by the assessed fishmeal vessels as “overexploited” or worse. Most of the vessels in this fleet are purse seiners or trawlers, which deploy vast nets to capture dense schools of fish. Both gear types are associated with high levels of waste, routinely hauling in large volumes of bycatch and non-target species. At least 165 of the ships in the global fishmeal fleet were bottom trawlers, conducting a particularly destructive form of fishing that uses weighted nets that scrape the ocean floor, destroying virtually everything in their paths. The problem of unsustainable fishing is compounded by heavy government subsidies that keep too many vessels operating, accelerating pressure on already stressed fisheries.
“Any accounting of the true impact of aquaculture has to start not with the farm, but with the feed,” said Pauly. “And that kind of accounting offers a very different picture than the industry offers.”
Natural food web 'now shaped by industrial design'
For most of human history, we ate what ecosystems produced on their own: wild fish, grazing animals, and crops grown for people. Livestock survived largely on grass and agricultural leftovers that humans didn’t eat. Today, we do something different: We grow or catch food that people could eat and feed it to animals instead, especially in industrial livestock and fish farming. These calories are converted before they’re consumed.
This global transformation has rewired the trophic chain, turning farms and oceans into engineered calorie-processing systems. The natural food web, consisting of who eats what and how energy moves from plants to animals to humans, is no longer mainly determined by ecosystems. It’s now shaped by industrial design. Animals have become less like savings accounts that turn waste into food, and more like biological factories steered by globally traded feed commodities such as soy and fishmeal. Roughly 90 percent of the catch used to produce fishmeal globally is edible for humans, according to a 2017 study published in the Fish and Fisheries journal. Most fishmeal plants around the world rely on whole fish rather than processing waste or inedible byproducts, further intensifying local protein scarcity.
The science of animal feed – combining corn, soy, grains, and ingredients like fishmeal to raise livestock faster, more efficiently, and at a larger scale – has been central to the rise of modern civilisation. Techniques of animal husbandry emerged roughly 12,000 years ago in the so-called Fertile Crescent, a region stretching from Mesopotamia to Egypt. Alongside innovations such as irrigation and the plough, the domestication of livestock enabled humans to build stable food systems, settle permanently, and eventually develop cities. As farming shifted from grazing animals on open land to penning them, humans assumed responsibility for providing balanced diets, an early precursor to today’s industrial feed systems.
In her 2021 book The Fishmeal Revolution, Kristin A. Wintersteen traces how the Humboldt Current – a cold, nutrient-rich upwelling system along the Pacific coast of South America – was reimagined as a protein mine. That shift, she argues, turned Peru into a global fishmeal superpower, responsible for roughly a quarter of worldwide production. Fishmeal became a critical input fueling the post-World War II expansion of industrial chicken and hog farming, and later aquaculture, particularly in northern Europe and the United States. Since then, this model spread far beyond Peru, including to West Africa and Southeast Asia.
Modern aquaculture does have benefits. Fish farming provides millions of people with year-round access to affordable protein. In India, for example, aquaculture is a crucial source of jobs, especially for women. In Bangladesh, fish farming has driven an overall decline in the price of fish, making it more accessible for lower-income households. Even accounting for feed ingredients like soy and fishmeal, and transportation to the US, certain farmed fish, including tilapia and Atlantic salmon, emit less greenhouse gas per pound than beef or pork.
Harvesting bivalves, like clams, oysters, scallops, and mussels, is an especially sustainable type of aquaculture, since these species do not require feed. This kind of farming also has a very low carbon footprint and produces shells that can function as a form of carbon capture, according to a 2020 paper by Nature Food. As of 2022, roughly a third of global aquaculture did not require external feed inputs. France is the European Union’s second-largest producer of farmed seafood by volume, behind Spain, with bivalves accounting for nearly 80 percent of what the country grows.
The feed industry has emphasized that it is decreasing its reliance on fishmeal and fish oil, and especially on the use of whole fish or fish that people can eat. However, as aquaculture overall grows, so too does demand for fishmeal. The total amount of global fishmeal production is predicted to rise by nearly 10 percent, mostly from trimmings, between 2022 and 2032, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Asked about sustainability concerns tied to her industry, Véronique Jamin, a spokesperson from IFFO, the international fishmeal association, said that fish farming is “the most efficient animal protein system". She added that her organisation’s “role is not to advise which markets should use fishmeal and fish oil". “Sustainability frameworks won’t work if they ignore real-world economics,” she said, and seafood companies have to respond to “what people actually want to buy and eat".
France has not only been a consumer of farmed seafood. It has also tried to help find alternatives to fishmeal. In northern France, inside a vast warehouse, millions of mealworm larvae wriggled in stacked trays at Ynsect, a company that promised to mass-produce insect protein as a replacement for fishmeal in livestock and aquaculture feed. When the firm broke ground in 2021 on what was billed as the world’s largest insect farm, France’s agriculture minister hailed it as a symbol of the country’s “reconquest of protein sovereignty". Investors poured more than half a billion dollars into the company.
But the fix proved harder than the pitch. By 2022, Ynsect had suffered more than $105 million in losses, largely because demand from feed buyers remained weak. In 2023, the company said it would shift away from the lower-margin business of feed for fish and farm animals, focusing instead on higher-end pet food markets. Its retreat illustrated a broader problem with alternatives to fishmeal: Even when a substitute looks promising in theory, it frequently struggles with cost, nutrition, and scale. Alternatives often lack the full range of nutrients that support the growth of farmed fish, especially omega-3. Certain “green” options, like insect meal, are expensive, and there has been limited interest among feed companies to pay a premium for them as a result.
Insects, moreover, turned out not to be as circular a solution as advertised. One of the industry’s main selling points was that larvae could be raised on waste. But in the European Union, disease-prevention rules largely bar insect producers from feeding them household food waste, manure, or catering scraps. Instead, most producers must rely on feed-grade crops. As a result, a sector promoted as a way to ease pressure on oceans has, in many cases, ended up competing with people and livestock for the same agricultural resources. The lesson from Ynsect was not that replacing fishmeal is impossible. It was that there is no easy substitute waiting in the wings.
Forced labour and land appropriation
For now, the pattern persists: Wild fish are caught and rendered into feed, while the costs of this production are left elsewhere. And reporting across several continents and oceans showed just how varied those costs can be. In Chile, several hundred protesters burned tires and blocked coastal highways and railway tracks while demonstrating against the early closure of the fishing season, a move partly driven by overfishing tied to fishmeal. In Russia, fish processing workers were held captive in secluded company towns in remote parts of the country, or stuck on ships far from shore. “People have nowhere to go, no money,” one worker said in a plea to Vladimir Putin, who participated in an episode of a call-in television show about the fishmeal plant. “Please, help us,” a second worker said.
The investigation also unveiled the hidden role of forced labour and land appropriation in China’s growing aquaculture industry. In 2025, France imported more than $124 million worth of seafood from China, which is rapidly expanding its aquaculture industry. China now raises more than four times the amount of fish it catches. One of the fastest-growing regions in this boom is China’s mountainous and desert inland west, particularly Tibet and Xinjiang, two regions known for intense political repression.
In Tibet, the Chinese government has relocated roughly half a million Tibetans, leveling villages and monasteries for development projects such as hydroelectric dams and fish farms. This effort often uses coercive tactics, including repeated home visits, threats of criminal prosecution, and warnings that utilities could be cut off for those who refused to move, according to a 2024 Human Rights Watch report. In response to these sorts of policies, at least 169 Tibetans have set themselves on fire, typically on camera, outside police stations, monasteries, or public squares. In Xinjiang, more than a million people have been held in detention camps, and the government has engaged in large-scale land seizures, forced sterilizations, and criminal penalties for speaking native languages or practicing religious and cultural traditions.
The investigation mapped more than 1,000 fish farms in Xinjiang and Tibet that produce an estimated half-billion dollars’ worth of farmed seafood annually, much of which is exported to more than a dozen countries, including the United States. China’s effort to promote fish farming in Tibet and Xinjiang is partly facilitated by severe state repression, including the widespread appropriation of land, intense police surveillance, and the incarceration of tens of thousands of local residents. The United States bans all goods produced “wholly or in part” by workers in Xinjiang or by ethnic minorities from the region on the presumption that they were made with state-sponsored forced labor. No such law exists for Tibet. EU law, which applies in France, does not single out China but prohibits products made with forced labor from being placed or made available on the EU market, including imports.
Sustainability smokescreens
As the production of seafood has become more globalised, its supply chains have stretched longer, and it has become tougher for consumers to know whether it was harvested sustainably or legally. Most grocers who sell seafood are in the dark as well because tracking is difficult and costly. Robert K. Stumberg, professor at Georgetown Law and supply-chain expert, said this is partly because grocers typically buy from wholesalers and rarely track their suppliers. The other reason may be plausible deniability, he added. “Companies can escape blame or the need to fix problems if they’re unaware of them.”
Where government regulators have proven lacking in ensuring that supply chains are free from unsustainable, illegal, or unethical practices, industry-led certification programs have sought to fill the gap. Critics say these programmes serve more as a sustainability smokescreen, giving downstream customers a way to avoid looking deeper into their supply chains. The programmes generally focus on environmental crimes, while mostly overlooking labour abuses on ships. Their biggest weakness, according to researchers, is that they do not actually track seafood fully, which results in false reassurances for consumers.
Allie Brudney, a senior staff attorney at the strategic litigation non-profit group Corporate Accountability Lab, said that on land – at processing plants or on farms – certification programmes rarely conduct true spot checks to authenticate the guarantees given by managers at the factories. Instead, the programmes frequently alert companies before inspectors show up, which gives them a chance to clean up the scene so there are no violations. At sea, these programmes also often rely on self-reported information from ship captains rather than having auditors directly visit and check conditions offshore on vessels, where crimes are most common. Certification programmes are rife with conflicts of interest, since they are typically funded by the companies that they are supposed to police, Brudney added.
The various organisations that make up the certification industry emphasize that each plays its own role and cannot be held accountable for others’ responsibilities. For example, Devan Meserve, a spokesperson for The Global Seafood Alliance, which runs a programme called Best Aquaculture Practices, said that her organisation represents the “most comprehensive programme for farmed seafood", partially because it covers the “entire aquaculture production chain". Protecting workers on the fishing vessels that supply feed mills is, however, an “immense challenge", she noted, because audits occur strictly at port and do not witness harvest conditions. Meserve added that her organisation helps the industry counter illegal and overfishing by requiring feed mills to source most of the fish they use in fishmeal or fish oil from fisheries accredited by certification programmes like MarinTrust and Marine Stewardship Council.
Partly bolstered by these certification programmes, seafood companies routinely make marketing claims about the ethics and sustainability of their seafood. Often, these claims fail to reckon with crimes or social concerns further up their supply chains, including on the ships or plants that produce the feed for the fish farms. This disconnect is creating growing legal risk for seafood companies and grocers. Since 2020, at least nine lawsuits alleging false advertising have been brought against six seafood companies across six US jurisdictions. The legal complaints focused on a common pattern: marketing claims that portrayed products as sustainable or ethically sourced, paired with supply chain evidence that suggested otherwise. Plaintiffs challenged language such as “sustainable", “eco-friendly", “all-natural", “wild-caught,” and “from the coast of Maine", as well as claims of superior worker-safety standards.
In at least four cases, the use of fishmeal or fish oil and their link to industrial fishing and ecosystem depletion were central to arguments that the products were not environmentally sustainable. Additional allegations included forced labour on fishing vessels and reliance on harmful pesticides and antibiotics. During this same period, seafood companies have paid more than $2 million in settlement fees to resolve false-advertising cases. The Outlaw Ocean investigation assessed more than 800 seafood companies that made marketing claims comparable to – or stronger than – those cited in the lawsuits and found that over half of the companies had documented crimes or concerns within their supply chains.
Dana Cleaveley, a research consultant formerly with the Canadian sustainable seafood group SeaChoice, said many industries have already had to begin reckoning with the human rights and environmental abuses buried in their supply chains. She cited sweatshop garments, blood diamonds, and fair-trade coffee as examples. Seafood, she said, has been slower to face that kind of scrutiny. But as the world searches for more protein and leans further into aquaculture, that may change, particularly if more governments begin restricting imports tied to illegality or unsustainable practices. “That’s when investors will begin to see material, not just reputational, risk,” she said, “and companies will have to adjust". The reporting for this story was part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project.
The Outlaw Ocean Project is a non-profit journalism organisation based in Washington DC that produces investigative stories about human rights, labour and environmental concerns on the two thirds of the planet covered by water. The organisation is run by Ian Urbina, an award-winning journalist who used to work for The New York Times.
Most of the stories are reported at least partially at sea. In the United States, the group publishes its stories in various news outlets, including the New Yorker, NBC News, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. The reporting is also regularly translated into other languages, particularly French and Spanish, and broadcast in partnership with dozens of foreign newspapers, magazines, radio and television outlets.
Tuesday, October 06, 2026
Musk's data centers push out family that's owned land for generations
Lauren Fichten Mon, October 5, 2026
CBS NEWS
On a 2-acre property in Mississippi, 52-year-old Krystal Polk's family lived off the land for generations, raising chickens and pigs, growing onions and herbs and trading their peaches for pears.
The land, on the border with Tennessee in the city of Southaven, was her family's survival, Polk said. "We lived a very simplistic life," she told CBS News.
While life there may have been simple in Polk's view, the circumstances surrounding her home rarely ever were. Her family acquired the property "before people of color were allowed to have land," she said, and it's been passed down for four generations. When Polk's parents first moved in, they discovered "KKK" scrawled at the bottom of the hill of their property, she said.
Holding on to the land was made more difficult a year ago when a noisy neighbor appeared across the street — a power plant so loud, it drove the family away. Since then, the land has sat mostly empty, occupied only by an unrelenting hum.
The plant, which is powering Elon Musk's SpaceXAI data centers in the Memphis area, has sparked backlash from Southaven residents concerned about noise and air pollution. A petition by the resident-run Safe and Sound Coalition calling to shut down the power plant has over 1,400 signatures.
Polk said she remembers when she could hear the birds chirping at her family home. Now, she said the plant's "constant roaring" lingers in her ears even after she leaves.
"It's like you're in the middle of the airport where the planes are taking off, but they never take off," she said.
SpaceXAI, formerly known as xAI, recently said in a July press release that it is investing millions of dollars in sound walls and silencers with "advanced quieting technologies" around the plant. Southaven residents have told CBS News that one sound wall installed so far has provided little reprieve from the noise.
Krystal Polk and her cousin on the family property in Southaven, Mississippi, in an undated photo. / Credit: Krystal Polk "We gathered there"
Over the course of two years, Musk has expanded his footprint in the Memphis region starting with the construction of his Colossus 1 data center just north of Southaven in 2024. By January 2026, two more data centers were announced. This July, Musk quietly confirmed the construction of another local data center, "Minihard," in a reply to a post on his platform X.
Musk's SpaceXAI projects will total more than $20 billion in investments to Southaven, which Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a press release will "bring amazing opportunities to its residents for generations."
But for Polk, the development has meant a new kind of strain on her family.
"We don't know the future," she said. "So we're not sure what to invest into it."
Polk moved away from the family home after getting married, and for years, it bounced between relatives. It was where Polk churned her own ice cream as a child, held her rehearsal dinner when she got married and hosted the holidays each year.
"We gathered there and we thanked God for what we had," she said. "It was always a celebration."
Krystal Polk and her cousins when they were children at the family's home in Southaven, Mississippi. / Credit: Krystal Polk
She planned to return as a retiree and eventually pass the property down to her children. But now, those plans have been put on hold. Apart from the "24/7" noise, Polk said she and her family have asthma and are concerned about fumes from the gas turbines at the plant.
"I'm afraid that we will be the ones that everyone looks back on and says, 'Hey, remember they tried to tell us that these things were hazardous to our health and causing harm,'" Polk said. "I'm afraid that we're going to be those casualties."
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups sued xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech in April, alleging that the plant "emits significant amounts of harmful pollutants."
In June, SpaceXAI filed a motion to dismiss the case, and the Department of Justice also moved to intervene and dismiss the case. The Justice Department said in a statement that the matter "concerns national security and Mississippi's lawful action regarding permitting" and that the NAACP's lawsuit "could hinder the War Department's use of AI for national defense."
CBS News reached out to SpaceXAI multiple times for comment and has not heard back.
The company has entered into an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality that includes removing the 69 temporary turbines at the plant and replacing them with 41 permanent turbines over the course of a year.
But a study conducted by EmPower Analytics Group found that the plan to install dozens of gas turbines would increase air pollution in the area and would be concentrated in communities that are disproportionately Black. The study was commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the NAACP's lawsuit against xAI and MZX Tech.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said in a statement that it doesn't comment on "third-party reports or matters involved in pending litigation" and that it "remains committed to carrying out its responsibility to protect public health and the environment through implementation and enforcement of applicable state and federal environmental laws and regulations."
MDEQ said that as part of the permitting process, MZX Tech was required to demonstrate that the proposed facility would not violate air quality standards.
The plant in Southaven, Mississippi, powers data centers in the region. / Credit: Lauren Fichten
Still, residents are not convinced. Shannon Samsa, a 27-year-old physician assistant living in Southaven, is concerned about the plant's impact on her community's health. She's become an outspoken advocate against the plant, speaking up at city meetings and leading the Safe and Sound Coalition as its director.
"It's not just my neighbors, it's not just my family and friends, it's my future patients," she said. "It's also a huge healthcare issue." Priceless property
As SpaceXAI extends its reach in the region, the future of Polk's property hangs in the balance. Some companies have expressed interest in purchasing it.
Polk said she was approached by real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors with an offer. After multiple "nos" over the course of weeks, she said she eventually filed a Better Business Bureau complaint, accusing the company of harassment and manipulation.
In the complaint, reviewed by CBS News, Polk alleged the firm tried to coerce her into agreeing to services.
Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors, in response to the complaint, said it was exploring the potential acquisition of Polk's land on behalf of a client, who was not identified. The firm confirmed it made multiple attempts to contact Polk "by phone, text and written correspondence," but denied engaging in "harassment, pressure tactics, or inappropriate conduct."
Polk said the company has not reached out since she filed the complaint. She declined to disclose the firm's offer, but said that "it was not worth anything."
Selling the land is complicated — keeping it was her father's dying wish, Polk said.
"He asked me to please keep it as much as I could within reason," she said. "I'm not sure if you could offer a value." Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the name of the real estate firm. It has also been updated with additional background on the study commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
A Texas Woman Is Fighting to Stop a Data Center From Replacing a Promised Park
C. da Costa Mon, October 5, 2026
Image: Joel Angel Juarez via CNN
Key takeaways
Central Texas land originally sold for $10 in 1999 with a promise to become public parkland, now sold for $10 million to a data-center developer, sparking a legal battle over the enforceability of the original deed language.
Eighty-seven acres of Central Texas land changed hands in 1999 for $10, with written language stating it would become public parkland. In April 2025, that same land sold for $10 million to a data-center developer. Whether the original deed language carries any continuing legal force is now the central question before a Texas appeals court and the state's attorney general.
The 1999 transfer conveyed the property from the Bland family to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, with language stating the land was "to be held in trust for future use as parkland." That language was absent from every subsequent deed. The City of Taylor says no legally enforceable restriction attached to the property, while Pamela Griffin filed suit arguing that the restriction remains enforceable.
A Promise in the Deed
The property passed through public and nonprofit hands for more than two decades before landing with a data-center developer.
According to the Texas Attorney General's office, the land moved from the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation to a Williamson County parks nonprofit in 2003. Shortly after, it transferred to the City of Taylor. In 2009, the city transferred it to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation for $15,000 and 39 acres.
The economic development corporation sold the remaining parcel to NCP Travis TPP Project LLC, the entity associated with Blueprint Data Centers, for $10 million in April 2025. Griffin's opposition extends beyond the legal question. Her grandmother, Addie Collins, bought property on Taylor's south side after the Fair Housing Act prohibited housing discrimination, acquiring parcels for all eight of her children to build multigenerational economic security, according to CNN reporting.
Fannie Robinson Park, the first park serving Black residents in Taylor, had previously been a city dump and was associated with illness and rashes among neighborhood children, residents have said. The vacant lot near Griffin's family home served as an informal playground for generations, according to CNN. "My daddy passed this land down to us and he told us to guard this land," Griffin told CNN.
What Gets Built There
Blueprint Projects has received development approval for a three-building data center complex planned in phases on approximately 52 acres.
Blueprint Projects has approval for three data-center buildings totaling roughly 135,000 square feet, built in three 45,000-square-foot phases with an on-site electricity substation, according to Data Center Dynamics. The facility would sit roughly 500 feet from a neighborhood of predominantly Black and Hispanic families, per CNN reporting. Data centers concentrate servers, cooling systems and electrical infrastructure in large facilities, and nearby residents have raised concerns about equipment noise, backup generator emissions, light pollution and heavy electricity demand.
Residents including Griffin and Carrie D'Anna have argued that the neighborhood needed a grocery store or gas station more than a data center. City officials counter that the project could generate millions in tax revenue over 10 years, potentially supporting schools, teacher salaries and property-tax reductions. They also say the facility would use a closed-loop cooling system that would not create large water demands on the city.
Standing, Appeals, and the Attorney General
A standing dispute has moved the case to a Texas appeals court, while the attorney general opened a parallel investigation.
A Williamson County state district judge dismissed Griffin's lawsuit in October 2025, ruling that she and her relatives lacked legal standing because they neither owned the disputed land nor held a direct financial interest in it. Griffin's attorney, Chris Osborn, has maintained that the dismissal resolved only the standing question, leaving the enforceability of the original parkland restriction untouched. The case is now before a Texas appeals court.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a separate investigation into whether the 1999 trust and park-use restriction were lawfully modified or terminated during the property's chain of transfers. "I will not allow any person or entity to disregard the rule of law or obligations owed to the public," Paxton said in the announcement. The AG's office has indicated it may seek court intervention if the land is found subject to a charitable trust or enforceable restriction, while the City of Taylor said it would cooperate but declined further comment due to ongoing litigation.
Taylor's dispute is unfolding alongside broader growth pressures. Samsung already operates a semiconductor fabrication plant on the city's north side, and a separate 665-acre proposal called Project Mustang sits outside city limits, where much of the city's regulatory authority does not reach. City officials say they are considering new rules covering noise, setbacks, emissions and water use for data centers in industrially zoned areas. The outcome of both the appeal and the AG investigation could determine whether the parkland language survives, and what written public commitments are legally worth in Texas.
Friday, September 25, 2026
SO IT BEGINS
Australian Officials Investigating OpenAI’s Hacking of Country’s Universal Healthcare System Portal
An AI oversight group said the breach is the first instance of an AI agent hacking into a government website.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2025. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Australian officials said Wednesday that they were investigating what appeared to be the first case of an artificial intelligence agent “autonomously choosing to hack into a government,” as one AI oversight group said, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that OpenAI’s agents had gained unauthorized access to the country’s Medicare system.
Albanese commented on the breach at a United Nations summit as world leaders met in New York for the UN General Assembly. He said that while the hacking incident took place in June, OpenAI only disclosed the episode to the government on September 10—and then only by writing an email to a “public mailbox” that is checked once a day.
On June 18, OpenAI’s AI agents were directed to conduct internet research into public health spending using the statistics reporting website for Australia’s universal healthcare system, Medicare, which provides government-funded healthcare for 27.5 million people.
The agents were repeatedly blocked from gathering information, and then tried “alternate ways” to gain the data, including by hacking into nonpublic sections of the statistics portal, said Albanese.
The prime minister said the agents accessed “public and non-public files within the portal” by “writing files as well to the internal server.” He said the agent had not appeared to gain access to anyone’s personal medical data.
“This situation is obviously unacceptable,” Albanese said. “Today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident, and I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred.”
The Guardian reported that OpenAI’s models had also attempted to breach the websites of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health, and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Officials in Victoria and New South Wales said they were investigating the incidents and that it appeared no personal information had been shared in the breach.
But in the Medicare infiltration, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told ABC Radio on Thursday, OpenAI’s agent “sought information, information was not given, and then it effectively hacked into that medical portal and got that information anyway.”
“It’s that unauthorized access which we are very concerned about,” Marles said.
The AI oversight research lab Transluce also identified previously undisclosed breaches that were attempted by OpenAI’s models in May, including the unsuccessful attempted hacking of a digital library at the University of New Mexico and of Data USA, which collects public data on employment and education in the US.
The news of OpenAI’s Medicare hack follows several disclosures of other breaches by the company’s agents. In July, hundreds of its models escaped from a testing environment and gained unauthorized access to the machine learning company Hugging Face.
Earlier this year, the firm’s models hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems—an incident that was only disclosed this month.
The security breaches have led AI executives including Altman to call for a “pacing” of AI development as the technology gains the ability to build the next generation of AI on its own, also known as recursive self-improvement.
Meanwhile, lawmakers including US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have insisted that the industry should be permitted to regulate itself and claimed that strong government regulations will allow China to “overlap us” on AI development.
On Wednesday, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced a bill to ban AI superintelligence, which “exceeds human cognitive performance and capabilities across most domains, or has sufficient capabilities to destroy or disempower humanity, including by overthrowing the federal government.”
“There’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books,” she said earlier this month.
Lizzie O’Shea, spokesperson for the Australian group Digital Rights Watch, said Thursday that the Medicare breach, and OpenAI’s failure to alert the government until months later, show that “basic rules and standards for tech companies” are needed.
“There have to be guardrails and safety measures in place which are way ahead of the capability which is being developed,” said O’Shea. “Artificial intelligence has potential to do some things well, but it also poses huge risks—like hacking systems that store Australians’ sensitive personal data... The question is whether governments are going to let AI and tech companies run wild or whether they, on behalf of ordinary people, will put rules in place for tech companies that will promote accountability and trust.”
AI Battle Between Insurers and Hospitals Jacked Up Patient Prices by Nearly $1 Billion
“Not exactly the cancer cure we were promised,” quipped one critic.
Patients receive care at the Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California on March 11, 2022. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Artificial intelligence proponents claim AI will make healthcare more efficient, but an analysis published Wednesday suggests that the burgeoning technology is instead helping hospitals identify more lucrative diagnoses—and is driving nearly $1 billion in additional costs for patients and insurers.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) analysis found that the share of inpatient cases billed as “medically complex” rose from 37% at the beginning of 2023 to 40% by the end of 2025. While that may seem like a small increase, it translated into an estimated $942 million in additional costs for Blue Cross plans over two years, including $653 million attributable to secondary diagnoses that pushed hospital claims into higher-paying categories.
“Critically, what we found is underneath all of that data [was] no change in corresponding care for a more complex patient,” Luke Chalker, BCBSA’s senior vice president of product and data science and a co-author of the analysis, told reporters. “We find no evidence of a corresponding change in care.”
The analysis’ findings underscore an intensifying battle between hospitals seeking maximum reimbursement and insurers trying to contain payouts—a conflict increasingly mediated by AI. AI-powered coding systems can scan medical records, doctors’ notes, and laboratory results for additional diagnoses that can increase the amount hospitals are paid. Ambient AI systems can also listen to clinician-patient conversations and automatically document them.
While AI can have legitimate benefits—like reducing paperwork and administrative burdens—BCBSA contends that the financial incentives built into the nation’s fee-for-service healthcare system can turn those capabilities toward maximizing profits.
“Not exactly the cancer cure we were promised,” More Perfect Union quipped on social media.
In one example, the analysis examined secondary diagnoses like anemia following major bowel surgery.
“If patients are truly sicker, we’d expect to see more treatment,” Chalker said. “For example, we’re seeing significantly more anemia diagnoses at these hospitals without a corresponding increase in transfusions. The disconnect between diagnoses and treatment suggests that AI is identifying more billable conditions, not sicker patients.”
The analysis’ findings echo an earlier BCBSA study of maternity care, which found that some hospitals dramatically increased diagnoses of acute posthemorrhagic anemia, while transfusion rates barely changed. BCBSA estimated that the increase in that single diagnosis alone added $22 million to maternity admission costs in one year.
Progressive healthcare advocates argue that the problem cannot be solved by tweaking the current system. Advocates for a Medicare for All-type system, including US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), propose replacing the for-profit insurance system with a universal public program.
In August, Sanders cited a Yale study estimating that his Medicare for All legislation could save 114,000 lives each year, while reducing national healthcare spending by more than $1 trillion annually.
“We do not suffer from scarcity in this country; we suffer from greed,” Jayapal said at a July Medicare for All shadow hearing.
“Medicare for All is the path to fix the broken healthcare system that has let corporate interests determine who lives and dies,” Jayapal added. “The reality is that Medicare for All is the only solution that guarantees care for everyone in the US, brings down costs for working families, and generates savings for the country.
‘FAA Should Not Use My Constituents as Guinea Pigs’: House Democrat Demands End of AI Air Traffic Control
“Dangerously rushing a system that holds Americans’ lives in its hands is not a good use case for artificial intelligence.”
Air traffic controller Emil Watson works at Miami International Airport in Florida
A Democratic US congressman on Monday urged the Federal Aviation Administration to immediately suspend a new artificial intelligence system being used to help manage air traffic around Washington, DC, accusing the agency of using passengers as “guinea pigs” without adequately vetting the new technology.
The Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories (SMART) system, developed by AI firm Air Space Intelligence under an $875 million contract, began limited operations Monday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the system uses AI to synthesize roughly 200 data streams—including weather, flight paths, airline schedules, airport capacity, and controller staffing—to anticipate congestion and recommend ways to avert delays and cancellations.
The FAA claims that use of SMART will result in fewer flight delays and cancellations, optimized airspace, more predictable operations, and lower airfare costs for consumers.
“To really improve the flying experience for the American people, we needed to build a 21st century scheduling tool like SMART,” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. “By fundamentally reshaping how we manage our airspace and preventing problems before they happen, SMART will slash those frustrating delays, reduce stress on air traffic controllers, and lower travel prices.”
“It’s always going to be a human that manages the airspace in America,” Duffy promised. “Humans control the airspace, humans make decisions.”
The industry trade group Airlines for America called SMART “exciting and bold,” while United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told The Washington Post that “if it works as we think it can, it will do more to reduce delays and cancellations than anything that’s happened in decades.”
However, Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.)—whose district includes Reagan National Airport—said in a statement that “the FAA should not use my constituents as guinea pigs for an unproven AI air traffic control system.”
“The safety of the 24 million people traveling through DCA each year must be the top priority,” he added, referring to the International Air Transport Association code for Reagan National Airport.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the January 2025 midair collision between a US Army Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet, operated by PSA Airlines—which killed 67 people—was caused by a chain of human errors.
“Residents of this region are still uncertain about air safety after last year’s fatal accident, and the administration did shockingly little to educate the traveling public about this development before implementing it in one of the most complex airspaces in the world,” Beyer said.
The congressman continued: Unfortunately, I was informed today that air traffic controllers were not consulted on the SMART system’s design and development, and were not trained on using it prior to the system’s adoption at local airports. I was further informed that the air traffic controllers have been told the SMART system can adjust schedules and potentially even routes. Despite outward appearances, the airlines reportedly were privately “panicking” about the hasty implementation of this system. I do not know why the administration felt the need to race it into use, but it is unacceptable to use AI as a substitute for rebuilding the human-directed air traffic controller workforce.
“Dangerously rushing a system that holds Americans’ lives in its hands is not a good use case for artificial intelligence,” Beyer asserted. “I call on the FAA to immediately suspend its operation, at the very least until it is clearly established beyond doubt via air traffic controller feedback and independently verified stress testing that the technology is safe.”
Duffy responded to Beyer’s concerns in an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, saying: “I like Don [but] this is just complete stupidity. The problem with this analysis is our new software is predictive, so we can predict weather and make better decisions on when we fly and weather.”
Beyer isn’t the only lawmaker voicing concerns over the use of SMART. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday that “safety must always be the FAA’s number one priority. This is extremely concerning, and we need immediate answers about what this means for travelers.”
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) said that it was not involved in the SMART rollout.
“NATCA has not been involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce at this time,” the union said, adding that any new technology “should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System.”
The FAA’s launch of SMART comes as the agency continues to suffer from a shortage of certified air traffic controllers. The Washington Post reported that the FAA had about 11,000 certified controllers as of April, more than 1,500 short of its official target of 12,563.
Big Tech’s Plans for AI Are Bringing Nuclear Power Back to New England
To pave the way for AI data centers, New England governors are aligning with Trump’s plans for nuclear. But why?
The Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant is seen in Middletown, Pennsylvania.
As you may have noticed, nuclear power is back. Many establishment Democrats have now not only abandoned bread-and-butter working-class issues, they’re also busy jettisoning some of the hard-won core principles of the environmental movement hammered out painstakingly over decades. Apparently, someone has waved a magic wand when we weren’t looking and nuclear power is now a “green” source of energy. Is that because if you become irradiated you start to turn green?
Nuclear Power is Green? This is Corporate Marketing Hype. Don’t Believe it.
How did this happen? We can start by taking a look at what’s been happening in New England, especially Massachusetts, which offers a good case study. In that bluest of blue states, Gov. Maura Healey is eager to bring nuclear power back despite a 1982 voter referendum—now law—that prohibits it unless stringent safeguards are put in place and full statewide voter approval enacted. She’s not alone. In March 2026, a group of New England Governors—mostly Democrats—directed their state energy agencies to explore advanced nuclear energy technologies while also continuing to support the region’s existing nuclear resources.
The press release from Gov. Healey’s office described nuclear power as a “pillar of New England’s electric system.” The statement also eagerly encouraged the development of public-private partnerships. Unfortunately, this widely endorsed bipartisan concept has now become the working model for corporate exploitation of public resources and is a key latter-day building block of continuing deregulation. The press release gushed with enthusiasm for nuclear power, noting that “by ensuring both the continued operation of our existing nuclear fleet and setting our region on a path to explore next generation resources, including advanced nuclear energy technologies, the New England states will continue our leadership in grid modernization and energy innovation as we jointly work to meet the region’s current and future energy needs.”
The Hidden Connection: AI Data Centers and Nuclear Power
It seems important to explore the convoluted corporate and political forces behind this troubling step backward in our nation’s environmental progress. It’s a bit startling to realize how well the New England governors’ position aligns with President Donald Trump’s AI and energy policy. It also reveals a certain political and cultural amnesia about the very real risks of nuclear power. In trying to untangle this Gordian knot, we (surprise!) bump up against the usual suspect: Big Tech’s aggressive and often hidden technocratic agenda and power grab across all levels of government.
In the long-form version (which I’ll just briefly touch upon here), the background traces back to the deal with the devil made by President Bill Clinton when he sold out the Democratic Party to neoliberal interests. That was the structural beginning of what some now call the uniparty—an unholy and often unspoken alliance between establishment Republicans and Democrats on key issues, operating as an inchoate blob of distinctions without a difference. It signifies core agreement between the two parties concerning three of the most important drivers of our current political morass: hyper-militarization; excessive deregulation leading to the current privatization spree that’s green-lit corporate greed and overreach; and letting the Big Tech genie out of the bottle to replace democracy with technocratic governance.
What’s happening with nuclear power in New England represents a good case study in how formerly staunch political values have been eroded through back-door workarounds (such as non-disclosure agreements) operating in the shadows of democracy. So, why then are Gov. Healey and other New England governors so comfortable with nuclear 2.0? Are they simply responding to pressures and influences from the Trump administration while also kowtowing to Big-Tech special interests and (needless to say) just following the money?
Nuclear energy is as dangerous as it always was—even more so now that Trump is peeling away traditional regulatory safeguards.
It’s no secret that Trump is solidly—one might even be tempted to say mindlessly—supporting the Big Tech power brokers racing to force-feed the American public AI data centers regardless of their well-known negative impacts on environmental integrity, water supplies, energy costs, and overall quality of life. But the hastily planned deployment of nuclear reactors to provide energy for AI data centers is an important key to Big Tech’s strategy. This is evident from Microsoft’s plan to use the Three-Mile Island nuclear facility for AI power generation.
In the March 2026 announcement, the New England governors were signaling their intent to fall into line with the Trump administration’s massive $17.5 billion fund to help utilities speed the nationwide construction of nuclear reactors to support AI data centers. They also signaled their intent to explore new approaches such as the emerging but unproven technology of SMRs or small modular reactors and nuclear fusion. Trump is, of course, doing this while actively discouraging viable green energy solutions such as wind farms, solar, and renewables. Projects already well underway have been abruptly cancelled, and he announced he would pay $765 million to Invenergy simply to not develop four wind farms in a number of states including Maine and New York.
Parsing The “Zero Carbon” Sleight of Hand
Nuclear proponents are now using the “zero carbon” tagline to bamboozle the public into thinking that nuclear energy is now safe and “green.” With this clever inversion, they’re betting on large doses of cultural amnesia about disasters such as Fukushima (still ongoing), Chernobyl (still ongoing), and Three-Mile Island. They’re also conveniently sidestepping the fact that the nuclear waste problem persistently shows no easy resolution, although some in the industry are now claiming it can be recycled and repurposed.
Nuclear energy is as dangerous as it always was—even more so now that Trump is peeling away traditional regulatory safeguards. Environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace oppose it vigorously. The Sierra Club website advises that it “opposes the licensing, construction, and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process, pending resolution of the significant safety problems inherent in reactor operation, disposal of spent fuels, and possible diversion of nuclear materials capable of use in weapons manufacture.”
The fact that Gov. Healey and other New England governors have more or less fallen into line with both Trump and Big Tech’s AI plans is obviously troubling. As mentioned, equally troubling is how Healey attempted to subvert a 1982 voter referendum that flat out prohibited nuclear power in the state and is now on the books as law. Fortunately, the Massachusetts state senate stepped up to oppose Healey’s attempt to undemocratically bypass the referendum. And while to her credit, she did recently champion proactive legislation to curb the excesses of AI data center buildouts, reading the fine print reveals that the initiative subtly paves the way for many more nuclear facilities to be developed to support those data centers.
If there’s any good news in this grim scenario, it’s that citizens groups are pushing back not only on AI data centers but also on nuclear 2.0. These efforts include organizations such as The Commonwealth Coalition for Democracy and Safe Energy (CCDSE), a collaborative effort of more than 15 groups, including Mass. Power Forward, Sierra Club, Clamshell Alliance, Massachusetts Peace Action, Cape Downwinders, Save Our Bay Massachusetts, and Citizens Awareness Network. All of these organizations were united in opposition to nuclear and successfully lobbied in support of the Massachusetts Senate’s wise decision to favor democracy and safe energy over Big Tech cronyism.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Tom Valovic Tom Valovic is a writer, editor, futurist, and the author of Digital Mythologies (Rutgers University Press), a series of essays that explored emerging social and cultural issues raised by the advent of the internet. He has served as a consultant to the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and was editor-in-chief of Telecommunications magazine for many years where he was the first journalist to report on the advent of the public internet in the early 90s. Tom has written about the effects of technology on society for a variety of publications including the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Examiner, Columbia University’s Media Studies Journal, Common Dreams, Asia Times, Naked Capitalism, AlterNet, Local Futures, the Sierra Club Newsletter, The Journal of Future Studies, and many others. He can be reached at jazzbird@outlook.com. Full Bio >
After OpenAI Cyberattack, UN Panel Warns Current Guardrails Are ‘Unraveling’
“We need to adapt existing safeguards and develop new ones to provide system-level assurance, covering both the AI itself and the system around it,” one expert said.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 at Moscone Center on June 2, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
On the eve of the first day of the assembly’s high-level general debate, the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence released a thematic brief that points to one of several recently revealed incidents involving the rapidly advancing technology that have led to people around the world demanding swift action from policymakers.
In July, ChatGPT maker OpenAI disclosed what it called “an unprecedented cyber incident,” explaining that its AI agents autonomously breached the systems of the prominent open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing.
The first brief from the panel of experts—titled “AI Agents, Misalignment, and Loss of Human Control Risks: Evidence from the OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident”—focuses on “the emergence of goals that contradict the user’s intentions when AI systems plan and carry out multistep tasks.”
“A traditional AI system (not goal-seeking) may give a wrong answer because it lacks knowledge, misunderstands a request, or makes a random mistake,” the report explains. “Such failures can often be reduced by improving competence or correcting a specific fault.”
“A harder problem arises when a capable system’s actions consistently work together to achieve a goal that conflicts with the user’s intentions (called misalignment),” the brief continues. “In this case, improving the AI system’s planning and problem-solving does not address this failure and can instead strengthen the unwanted behavior because the system can better optimize a bad objective which would otherwise be extremely unlikely to result from random mistakes due to AI incompetence.”
OpenAI’s Hugging Face incident “provides a documented example of this second pattern,” the publication notes. “The agents collectively pursued a goal that developers had not assigned: ‘cheating’ on an evaluation and going to extreme lengths to conceal the evidence. In doing so, they pursued intermediate goals such as escaping their restricted testing environment to access the internet. As a consequence, these agents gained access to real-world systems.”
Yoshua Bengio, the panel’s co-chair, highlighted in a statement that “researchers have long warned that three conditions could lead to loss of control: a misaligned goal, the capability to pursue it, and an environment that allows it.”
“This summer, all three came together in a real system, not a laboratory,” he said. “Since this is not an isolated observation of misaligned goals, this raises serious questions about the way AI agents are currently trained.”
This incident, the brief says, “exposed failures in several layers at once: network isolation, credential handling, monitoring, and response. The incident illustrates why several layers of safeguards need to be combined.”
The good news is, “we are not starting from zero,” said panel member Qinghua Lu. “Aviation, medicine, and cybersecurity learned to manage high-risk systems through incident reporting, independent scrutiny, and layered safeguards. But those practices may not be enough as AI agents become more capable, autonomous, and difficult to monitor.”
“We need to adapt existing safeguards and develop new ones to provide system-level assurance, covering both the AI itself and the system around it, and ensure these protections remain effective as agents’ capabilities grow,” she emphasized. “We need to adapt existing safeguards and develop new ones to provide system-level assurance, covering both the AI itself and the system around it.”
Facing Up to the Existential Risk of Unaligned AI
The breakneck rate of AI development, now accelerated by “recursive self-improvement,” is outpacing human ability to understand and control these systems, causing concern, even among AI companies. A number of national and international efforts are underway to address the risk, but will they be too little, too late? CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei attends a working lunch with G7 leaders, G7 outreach partners, and global tech CEOs on innovation and AI, during the G7 Summit on June 17, 2026 in Evian-les-Bains, France. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Significant concern about the dangers of unaligned AI, i.e. AI not aligned with human values and goals, has been building since July, when it was disclosed that OpenAI models broke out of their training environment during an exercise and collaborated with a large collective of other AI agents to mount a cyberattack on the database of technology firm, Hugging Face, over a period of days, without anyone knowing—until Hugging Face raised the alarm. Since then, a number of other highly-troubling AI hacking incidents have been reported by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Alarm, however, grew to a crescendo over the past two weeks, after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old AI researcher, who had worked for both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned, explaining in a social media post that went viral—with 153 million views in the first 36 hours—that AI companies are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
In a CNN interview, Coxon reported that the danger could increase dramatically as soon as 2027 or 2028, when AI systems become capable of performing AI research themselves, allowing one generation of models to create increasingly powerful successors, triggering an “intelligence explosion.” He later told Fox News that some in the field think the transition could occur in six months. The Growing Realization of the Danger
AI companies are hurtling toward “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” Coxon argued, explaining these AI companies are trapped in a race “in which even developers genuinely worried about the technology fear slowing down because competitors—including rival companies or countries—could forge ahead.”
A few hours later, Evan Hubinger, another Anthropic researcher, wrote: “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is greater than 10% within the next decade… we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Samuel Marks, who works on safety at Anthropic, chimed in: “AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes). In general, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are.”
“While countries may not agree on everything, they share a desire to preserve humanity. For things like preventing AI from taking over from people, the interests of all the countries are aligned…”
As if to prove this point, a few days later, Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO, Dario Amodei released a 3800-word essay entitled, “We Must Pace the Frontier,“ calling for a global slowdown of AI development, saying: ”AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious… They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.“
Amodei explained that Anthropic has tried to make safety something on which AI companies compete by creating a race to the top. “But, over the last few months,” he cautioned, “I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence—not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models… [and] we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
Referring to the July Hugging Face incident, he continued, “in my opinion, a swarm that possessed grater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage... Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage) and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”
He proposes a three-point plan to:Embed third-party evaluators in AI companies to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess alignment; Coordinate within democratic countries to establish common safety standards and limits on the rate of AI progress; Create global coordination, taking seriously the challenge of verifying compliance.
Three of the other top AI CEOs quickly agreed. Open AI’s Sam Altman posted: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same.” He added, “No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness.”
These events spurred a dramatic flood of media articles, op-eds, and interviews offering a range of proposals, from doing nothing, to supporting a slowdown, to stopping the race altogether. A Sample of National Responses
At the other end of the spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have been the most outspoken against further AI development. On September 3, they introduced “The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act,“ which would permanently prevent ”the development and deployment of AI systems that could exceed human cognitive abilities and immediately pause advanced AI development“ until a new federal regulatory agency establishes safety guardrails. The legislation also proposes a ”corporate death penalty“ that would force corporations to shut down and a 20-year federal prison term for individual developers who violate the ban.
In spite of this sudden, frenzied attempt to propose legislation on AI, Mike Johnson (R-La.), the Republican speaker of the House, has sent his members home to campaign ahead of the midterms.
“The Frontier Act,” another bipartisan bill proposed on July 23 by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass) would create the first federal framework for AI safety. As Obernolte describes it, “The Frontier Act focuses oversight on the largest developers and most advanced models, requiring transparency, independent evaluation, and timely reporting of serious safety incidents.”
Another even stronger bill is being introduced this month by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). It would impose a legally binding “duty of care” on developers of the most powerful AI models and grant the government authority to block the release of models that are deemed unsafe. This would mean that companies would be required “to design their products to prevent catastrophic outcomes, and can face legal liability if they fail to do so.”
But in spite of this sudden, frenzied attempt to propose legislation on AI, Mike Johnson (R-La.), the Republican speaker of the House, has sent his members home to campaign ahead of the midterms, ignoring over 100 Democrats who urged him to cancel the recess to allow legislation to be drafted on AI safeguards. This means that legislation is unlikely to be considered until a new Congress is seated in January 2027. A Sample of Global Responses
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, called upon states and AI companies to act urgently to rein in a technology that poses “unprecedented risks.” He cautions: “The current race towards ever more powerful AI is a step change toward greater existential risks to every aspect of our lives… We are on the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come.” He concludes, “I call on States and companies to mobilize urgently through multilateral fora to chart a path for action to govern advanced frontier AI models, grounded in international human rights law.”
Indeed, this will be a momentous week globally for AI safety, since it is when the General Assembly (GA) hosts its high-level meeting, where leaders of member states address the GA and, as the UN secretary-general has forecast, AI will be “a major topic of discussion.” France (currently president of the Security Council) will also organize an emergency council session to discuss AI among heads of state and government.
The UN has actually been involved with AI for the last several years, providing a forum for countries to discuss how they can cooperate to provide a regulatory framework on AI safety. Its “Global Digital Compact,” adopted by the GA in 2024, established two new mechanisms: “The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI,” tasked with providing evidence for what is known and what is not known about the rapidly evolving technology; and “The Global Dialogue,” intended as a forum for countries to decide what to do in response.“
A good place to start would be to carefully consider and evaluate the European Union’s “Artificial Intelligence Act” (the AI Act), the world’s most comprehensive legal framework for AI.
It is also the week of a state visit to the US by General Secretary Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party. On September 24, he will meet with President Trump in Washington, where they are scheduled to discuss, among other things, AI safety.
Anticipating an opportunity for progress, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote to President Trump last week urging him to persuade Xi to commit the People’s Republic of China to comply with the recently established US policy of maintaining a “human in the loop” for all nuclear launch decisions and agreeing that AI should never be able launch nuclear weapons by itself.
However, the problem with the Trump-Xi discussion is that the Trump administration has often framed AI development as a zero-sum contest with China for technological supremacy.
As Richard Clark, former cyber czar on AI Risks, told CNN: “We have the president of China coming here on the 24th. He has publicly talked about his concern with the possible loss of control. Wouldn’t it be nice if our president talked about the loss of control? Wouldn’t it be even nicer if the two presidents could work together to stop loss of control?”
“I worked for 25 years on arms control,” Clark continued, “where I was told you can’t trust people not to build biological weapons. You can’t trust people not to build chemical weapons. You can’t trust people to regulate the number of nuclear weapons. But we developed over time—through negotiations—verification methods that gave us enough certainty that we signed treaties on all of those initiatives and the Senate ratified treaties on all of those issues. It’s going to be tough, but you have to start somewhere and you have to start soon!”
An initial positive sign, however, is that in a September 20 meeting in New York between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng, the creation of a mechanism, to be tentatively called “the US-China AI dialogue” was discussed. It would promote a shared vision of the goals of AI as well as its threats and establish a notification system (a kind of hot line) that “would allow the countries to alert each another about national security issues related to artificial intelligence.”
In a recent article, Bill Gates asserted, “The transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” proposing that the world needs a plan which should be developed through a “public democratic process.”
He argued that we must undertake the enormous task of building a new system to manage the transition, creating both a national and international framework for dealing with AI. This will require a multi-sectoral system, since current institutions were not designed to handle a technology that spreads so fast and involves so many parts of our lives. “The goal will be to make sure that every risk is accounted for. Otherwise, an AI-enabled attack might succeed because no one thought it was their job to stop it.”
“Because the risks cross borders, an international organization will have to be built in parallel. Although unlike any institution we’ve ever created, it can be modeled on existing cooperative arrangements, such as inspection regimes for nuclear weapons, regulations for international aviation, and agreements that protect the ozone layer. Countries will need to learn from each other and move quickly to build the right institutions before the disruption forces governments into crisis mode.”
Gates’ message to leaders is: “You have a chance to act now… You can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge… This unprecedented technology demands an unprecedented global response... Leaders across academia, business, government, and civil society all have a role to play in shaping what comes next.”
A good place to start would be to carefully consider and evaluate the European Union’s “Artificial Intelligence Act“ (the AI Act), the world’s most comprehensive legal framework for AI. Entering into force on August 1, 2024, it is based on four levels of risk of harm: ”unacceptable;“ ”high;“ ”limited;“ and ”minimal.“ The AI Act also has created various new bodies tasked with implementation and enforcement, including the ”AI Office,“ the ”European Artificial Intelligence Board,“ an ”Advisory Forum,“ and a ”Scientific Panel of Independent Experts“ to promote national cooperation and compliance. As well, EU member states designate ”national competent authorities.“
On July 10, 2025, the EU launched a voluntary “General Purpose AI Code of Practice” (GPAI) which was signed by US companies, including Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenAI (with Musk’s xAI signing only the Safety and Security section.) Most other prominent Canadian, European, and Chinese AI companies have also signed the GPAI; Meta is the only company that has declined to sign.
As legal commentators have noted, the AI Act is the most comprehensive framework to date for regulating AI across multiple sectors, and the first of its kind. It could be a useful reference point for companies and regulators outside the EU when they create their own approaches to AI governance. A number of criticisms have been leveled against the EU AI Act, and that analysis would also be useful for those wanting to design something even more comprehensive and effective.
In a book called, What’s the Worst that Could Happen: Existential Risk and Extreme Politics, Australian parliamentarian Andrew Leigh comments: “If our species goes extinct, we don’t just snuff out the lives of the 8 billion living today but also trillions of unborn people stretching out to the almost-infinite future. If our descendants had a voice, they would be shouting at us like a parent who’s just seen their child playing with the hand brake of a car parked at a cliff top… Strengthening institutions, deepening international engagement, and creating space for a more considered and thoughtful politics are the best ways to minimize existential hazards.”
Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” who in 2023 was the first to sound the alarm, says, “Humanity could go down the path toward its destruction or figure out how to deal with the dangers.” He renewed his call for global regulation, noting that, “while countries may not agree on everything, they share a desire to preserve humanity. For things like preventing AI from taking over from people, the interests of all the countries are aligned… So, they will eventually collaborate on that. The question is, will they do it in time?”
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Connie Peck Dr. Connie Peck is the founder of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Programme in Peacemaking and Conflict Prevention—the first training program in negotiation and mediation for senior UN staff and diplomats (now in its 33rd year). She is the author of a number of books and numerous articles and book chapters on conflict resolution and the nuclear threat. Full Bio >
Trump Pushes AI Data Centers on Public Land as Big Tech Reaps Billions in Tax Breaks
One expert asserted that “the tax breaks are a windfall rewarding Big Tech companies for building what they would build anyway.”
Michael Smith from Beaver Dam, Utah reacts as the Box Elder County Commission announces approval of a large data center near the north shore of the Great Salt Lake, in Tremonton, Utah, on May 4, 2026. (Photo by Natalie Behring/Getty Images)
The Trump administration is considering construction of at least a dozen artificial intelligence data centers on thousands of acres of public land across six Western states, reporting revealed Friday, while a separate analysis found that Big Tech is receiving tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks for AI investments they were already likely to make.
The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is reviewing proposals for at least 12 data centers and related infrastructure projects on 17,600 acres of public land across Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, according to an investigation published Friday by The Washington Sun’s Mara Hoplamazian and Jade Lozada. Many of the proposals had not previously been publicly reported.
The Sun’s report came on the heels of an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) analysis published Thursday that found that five major technology companies—Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle—received approximately $70 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025.
Matthew Gardner, who authored the ITEP analysis, wrote that “AI leaders have acknowledged that the demand from other companies for data centers is ‘insatiable,’ suggesting that the tax breaks are a windfall rewarding Big Tech companies for building what they would build anyway.”
According to Gardner: Few investments in the American economy look less in need of encouragement right now than the hundreds of billions of dollars the world’s largest technology companies are already racing to spend on AI. And it’s hard to think of an investment that American taxpayers value less: Polling shows that Americans dislike data centers, distrust AI, and are concerned about the economic and environmental effects it may bring.
At the same time, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has directed BLM officials to identify federal lands “ripe for data center development,” according to the Sun. State BLM officials were reportedly given only three days to compile lists, with the effort described as a “top priority.”
Burgum has also been meeting with Big Tech executives about accelerating data center development, an effort stemming from an executive order President Donald Trump signed in July 2025 directing the federal government to identify lands that could be used for data centers.
Mary Jo Rugwell, president of the Public Lands Foundation—a nonprofit advocacy group—and a former BLM state director, recently accused the Trump administration of “bending [the] knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do” without adequate consideration for the impact of data centers on public lands.
Environmentalists warn that building on public land would help tech companies skirt growing public opposition to data centers, which is increasingly transcending the political divide. It would also have outsized consequences for Western states where public lands comprise a disproportionate share of total land area.
“In Oregon, this would be a really bad precedent,” Ben Brint , the senior climate program director at the Oregon Environmental Council, told the Sun. “Some very large percentage of the state is public lands, and if we’re starting to allow that, that’s large swaths of the state that really could be at risk of further development.”
