This book will haunt you if you are already perplexed about the pain and suffering in the world. It is an honest realisation of a hopeful young person learning about capitalism, which he ultimately coins “extracted capitalism” and speaks of ‘growth by negation’.
Here is a short piece from his book:
What sticks with me most from those years covering the business world is a kind of shared delusion, this sense that all of this wasn’t just going to carry on forever, but continually improve. It is, of course, the delusion at the heart of capitalism, the existence of some essential, infinite wellspring of innovation and efficiency such as to make the prospect of equally infinite growth possible. But it’s one thing to contend with this sort of thing in the abstract, another to sit opposite the cofounder of what was one of the biggest technology companies on the planet and hear him tell you, with a conviction I have never once mustered for any issue or argument, that this new tablet is going to be an absolute sensation because, you see, it has a very slightly raised rubber edge that makes it possible to place it on the table upside down without damaging the screen. I came to see how cults take shape. Regardless of what the active component of economic growth may be—innovation, efficiency, a slightly raised rubber edge—so often on these assignments I was faced with the likelihood that what fueled the engine now was a kind of negation.
Interviewing one of Uber’s earliest executives, who demonstrated the company’s route-finding algorithms with the unbridled enthusiasm of a small child at Christmas, I couldn’t help but think what this company had really innovated was not some brilliant new solution to the traveling salesman problem, but the establishment of a new, lower norm of employee treatment. Success, growth, profit came from taking what might at one time have been decent, stable jobs and rebranding them as side hustles. The brilliant business idea was persuading people to expect less.
I recall the same sensation the day a business magazine I used to freelance for named its CEO of the year: an airline executive whose hallmark achievement was figuring out a way to offload his workers’ pension and health benefits, thereby doing something truly spectacular to the company’s financial fortunes. Whatever late capitalism is, it seems to be careening into this embrace of growth by negation. Through that prism, it’s hard not to see the advances in something like artificial intelligence less driven by technological breakthroughs as by a society that has, over years, over decades, become normalized to a greater and greater magnitude of both loneliness and theft, such that a sputtering algorithm badly trained on the stolen work of real human beings might be celebrated with a straight face as something approximating humanness. Under this ordering, it is not some corporation’s increasing capacity for better that drives the extractive world, but everyone else’s increasing tolerance for worse. Unconfronted, this kind of negation will not remain confined to widgets or labor or even the economic world. When the bigger wildfires come—as they already have—the industries whose callous disregard helped bring this about will depend on our ever-growing tolerance for calamity.
When climate change upends the lives of billions, our governments will depend on our ever-growing tolerance for violence against the hordes of nameless others to enact its cruelest, most violent fortressing. In time, negation becomes all there is. To walk away from this system is to speak the only language the system will ever understand. Otherwise, there will be nothing left under this way of living. In the end we will be asked to normalize not just unlimited extraction and unlimited suffering but total absence, a hollow that will look an awful lot like the one we were asked to overlay onto the minimum-wage workers and the climate refugees and the victims of endless colonial wars and, yes, even those dead Palestinian children who, had they been allowed to live, might have done something terrible. Just for a moment, cease to believe that this particular group of people are human.
It is hard not to weep as I turn the pages. For this young person ‘had seen through the glass darkly, but now, face to face.’
His work is almost prose. His pain and anguish pulsing through the veins of many disillusioned young people around the world.
We all wanted the best for our young people. We should have left them more humanity, not less. More healthy environments, not less. More love, not less.
A number of commenters have pointed out that my analysis so far has not included the issue Tripp Lite (Eaton) UPS issues, which has been identified by This Will Hold, Smart Elections, and others as a key vulnerability in the 2024 (and potentially future) elections. I’ve done a deep dive into this. Following is my report.
At issue is a device called Tripp Lite (Eaton) UPS, with UPS referring to Uninterrupted Power Sourse. In simple terms, a UPS is like a safety net for electronics, providing emergency power and surge protection so devices don’t crash or get fried by power spikes. In election settings, UPS units are used to keep voting equipment running smoothly even if the power goes out. For example, ballot scanners (tabulators) often connect to UPS devices so they won’t shut down mid-count or lose memory if there’s a power flicker. Electronic poll books (the tablets or laptops that check voters in) and central vote tally servers may also rely on UPS backups or built-in batteries to ensure voting can continue uninterrupted. These backup systems are a part of election infrastructure.
Lately, these battery boxes are drawing scrutiny because a UPS isn’t just a battery; modern units can also be “smart” devices that connect to networks. That’s great for IT managers who want to monitor battery health or get an alert if power fails. However, in a voting context it raises a big question: Could a “smart” UPS inadvertently connect voting machines to outside networks or actors? In other words, could the very device that’s meant to protectelection equipment also introduce a hidden way to access it?
Tripp Lite, Eaton, and the Hidden Player in Election Infrastructure
Tripp Lite is a Chicago-based manufacturer of power strips, surge protectors, and UPS units. Tripp Lite’s hardware has quietly become embedded in our voting systems. Certification documents from major election vendors show that for years Tripp Lite devices were recommended components: election machine manuals list specific models of Tripp Lite surge protectors and UPS units as preferred or required accessories. Starting around 2018, ES&S (which serves roughly 60% of U.S. voters) began advising counties to plug certain high-speed ballot scanners (the DS450 and DS850 models) into Tripp Lite’s “SpikeCube” surge protector. Dominion Voting Systems, in its 2019 and 2020 documentation, actually named a particular Tripp Lite UPS as the primary backup power unit for its election management server (with a few pricier brands as alternatives). By 2024, Dominion’s updated guidelines still listed the Tripp Lite UPS first among five options for any critical equipment. Election officials don’t always have to buy the first-listed brand, but many likely do – it’s a safe choice to match what the certification tested. The result: in hundreds of counties, the voting machines counting mail-in ballots, the servers aggregating results, and perhaps other devices were all plugged into Tripp Lite power units.
Why is this drawing attention? Because of who owned Tripp Lite. For over 50 years, Tripp Lite was a private company led by a single individual – Barre Seid, a secretive Chicago electronics magnate. In 2021, Seid made headlines for an unprecedented act: he donated 100% of Tripp Lite’s stock (worth around $1.6 billion) to a nonprofit controlled by Leonard Leo, a powerful conservative activist. Leo’s nonprofit quickly sold Tripp Lite to the Irish-American conglomerate Eaton Corporation for about $1.65 billion. Effectively, the proceeds of this sale became a massive political war chest for conservative causes (the largest single donation of its kind in U.S. history. In short, the UPS boxes guarding our election machines were until recently owned by a man who poured the windfall into an organization dedicated to reshaping courts and elections to conservative ends. That alone is a striking intersection of money, politics, and critical infrastructure.
Eaton, the new owner, is a Fortune-500 power management company not typically associated with election controversy. They now market Tripp Lite’s products under the name “Tripp Lite by Eaton.” Yet observers note that since acquiring Tripp Lite, Eaton has formed alliances with figures and companies tied to the 2024 election narrative. In May 2024, Eaton announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies – the data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel – to integrate advanced AI into Eaton’s operations. Palantir’s software is used for everything from military intelligence to supply-chain management, and Thiel, a prominent tech billionaire, is known for his support of former President Trump. The Eaton-Palantir collaboration was about enterprise AI and resource planning on paper but it raised eyebrows among election integrity researchers. Why would a power equipment company need Palantir’s cutting-edge (and sometimes Orwellian) data technology? Some critics saw a red flag: a Thiel-linked company now had its foot inside a corporation whose hardware touches many voting systems. Eaton also struck a partnership with Elon Musk’s Tesla in late 2024 (focused on home energy storage and “smart” electrical panels). On its face, that was about solar power integration, not elections. But when Musk and Thiel – two billionaires often aligned politically – both turn up in the orbit of a company that, through Tripp Lite, quietly underpins parts of our election infrastructure, it’s hard not to ask what’s going on.
To be clear, none of this proves any wrongdoing. It could be coincidence or the natural consequence of Eaton trying to innovate via partnerships. What it does show is that the power management layer of our voting process, once an afterthought, is now entangled with partisan billionaires and high-tech firms. And that’s why the next part of this story – about potential digital vulnerabilities – has gained traction. The people and money behind these “dumb” power boxes warrant scrutiny, but so does the technology inside them.
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Theory of the Case: Did “Smart” UPS Units Bridge the Air Gap?
One of the principles of election security is the “air gap” – keeping voting machines physically and digitally isolated from the internet or any external networks. Officials reassure the public that ballot scanners and tabulators are not online, cannot be hacked remotely, and therefore the count can’t be tampered with from afar. In the 2024 election, as claims of Starlink satellites and wi-fi hacks flew around social media, state and federal authorities repeatedly emphasized that voting machines simply weren’t connected to any network during voting. But what if an interloper found an indirect way in – not by plugging into the voting machine, but into something that’s plugged intothe voting machine?
This is where the Tripp Lite UPS devices come under the microscope. Many of these UPS models are not just batteries; they’re network-capable computers in their own right. Tripp Lite (now Eaton) sells optional add-in cards – essentially small circuit boards with a network port – that turn a UPS into a smart node on your network. For instance, the SNMPWEBCARD accessory allows administrators to connect a UPS to an Ethernet network and monitor or control it via web browser or SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). With a network card installed, a UPS can send alerts, log power events, perform self-tests, and even execute remote shutdowns or reboots of connected equipment. In an ordinary office, that’s a feature – you can ensure servers shut down safely or remotely restart a crashed device by power-cycling its outlet.
In a polling place or election office, however, a “smart” UPS could inadvertently act as a bridge between the supposedly isolated voting equipment and an outside network. How? Consider a typical setup: a ballot tabulator is connected to a UPS for power backup, often via a simple power cord and sometimes a USB cable (for power-status signaling). If that UPS also has an active network cable (for instance, to report its status to a central console or simply because it was left plugged into an IT network from testing), you now have a chain linking the voting machine to an external network. The voting machine trusts the UPS (it’s just supplying power, after all), and the UPS is talking to the wider world – that is the essence of an unintentional digital bridge across the air gap.
Such a bridge could be exploited in several ways. The most straightforward is through the network: a hacker who can reach the UPS’s network interface might manipulate it to affect the connected machine. For example, security researchers have shown it’s possible to hack power management devices – as far back as 2012, one team created a malicious power strip that covertly served as a network backdoor. UPS units themselves have had vulnerabilities (e.g., weak default SNMP credentials or outdated firmware) that attackers could use to gain a foothold. If an adversary took over a UPS, they might shut it off at a strategic moment, cutting power to a voting machine (causing chaos or data loss). More deviously, a compromised UPS with a data link to the machine (via a USB management cable) might attempt to alter data or install malware on that machine. This scenario is highly complex – it would likely require a tailor-made attack to jump from the UPS’s microcontroller to the voting machine’s system. But researchers note it’s not impossible, especially if insiders were involved in designing or tampering with the hardware in advance.
There’s also the realm of side-channel attacks – ways to send or receive data through unconventional means (like power signals). Astonishingly, studies have demonstrated that it’s possible to extract data from an “air-gapped” computer by analyzing minute fluctuations in its power consumption or grounding. In 2018, Israeli researchers showed they could exfiltrate data from a laptop through the power lines by injecting signals into the ground connection – essentially turning the power cable into a low-bandwidth data transmitter. In theory, a smart UPS or even a modified surge protector could facilitate such powerline communication. This is far from a plug-and-play hack – it borders on spycraft – but it’s publicly known to be feasible. And if it’s feasible, one has to consider whether a well-resourced adversary (say, hypothetically, an alliance of powerful interests with access to engineering talent) could have built a capability to siphon off vote data or inject false data using the very power infrastructure of the voting machines.
The core of this theory is admittedly complex and so far unproven. The idea that a UPS could serve as an election Trojan horse sounds like something out of a technothriller. However, it’s precisely the kind of multi-layered covert approach one might use to compromise a system that everyone assumes is offline and secure. It wouldn’t matter if the voting machines weren’t on the internet if someone found a different route in.
How Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell Satellites Could Widen the Backdoor
So where do Elon Musk’s satellites come into play? In Part II of this series, we explored how a new network of low-Earth-orbit satellites might have quietly set the stage for unprecedented connectivity in 2024. These aren’t the regular Starlink internet dishes that rural homes use, but rather Starlink’s “Direct to Cell” system – satellites that communicate directly with everyday mobile phones. Musk’s SpaceX began launching these specialized satellites (essentially “cell towers in space”) in 2023 and by the end of 2024 had deployed the first full shell of them.The goal is to eliminate mobile dead zones by allowing 4G phones to connect from anywhere via satellite. By late 2024, the Direct-to-Cell service was active (in beta) for simple text messaging in parts of the U.S., with hundreds of satellites able to relay signals where terrestrial cell service didn’t reach.
For our scenario, Starlink Direct-to-Cell could act as the ultimate getaway car for data – or the entry point for a remote attacker – bypassing traditional network infrastructure entirely. Suppose an attacker managed to compromise a UPS or surreptitiously install a tiny device alongside it (imagine a cellular modem no bigger than a flash drive, tucked inside a power strip or UPS casing). Normally, that cellular device might struggle to get signal out of a sealed voting center, or there might be no cell tower nearby. But with satellites overhead acting as cell towers, that device could beam out data from inside the building directly to the sky. It’s Bond-movie stuff, but the technology exists now, not in some distant future. In practical terms, this means that even if election officials did everything right – no Wi-Fi, no internet cables, strong physical security – a cleverly placed cellular-based exploit could still punch a hole in the air gap. Starlink’s system would just grease the wheels, ensuring that any such malicious device had connectivity anywhere on the planet, without relying on local telecom networks.
Consider an example: a compromised UPS unit could be quietly transmitting a trickle of information over its power connection or USB port, and an implanted module in it or attached to it could aggregate that data and send it via a satellite link. That could provide live updates of vote tallies before they’re officially reported, a potential boon to someone trying to get ahead of election results or even manipulate betting markets. (In fact, one theory has pointed to unusually prescient betting market movements on election night, suggesting that someone might have had early knowledge of precinct results – a tantalizing but unproven hint that data was leaking out.) Alternatively, the satellite link could allow an attacker to send commands into the UPS or connected system at just the right time – for instance, triggering those UPS units to reboot or alter power flow during the vote count, potentially causing errors.
It’s important to stress that Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell service was brand new in 2024 and limited in bandwidth. Early on it could handle texts and maybe low-speed data, not streaming video or massive files. But for something like transmitting vote totals (which are just numbers) or small packets of instructions, that bandwidth would be more than enough. Also, while SpaceX’s public aim was benevolent (texting from remote mountains, emergency response connectivity, etc.), any technology can be dual-use. If indeed an election manipulation operation was afoot, the convergence of Musk’s satellite network and Thiel-linked power devices in polling places is conspicuous. Starlink provided a possible covert communication channel that no county IT department would likely detect, since it operates outside the traditional internet and cell grid.
Again, we have to keep one foot on the ground: this is a hypothetical layering of vulnerabilities – if someone rigged some UPS units and managed to use Starlink to communicate, it could bridge an air gap that was assumed impenetrable. It’s a lot of “ifs.” But it’s also the kind of outside-the-box thinking that election security folks are paid to consider. And here we have the pieces on the chessboard: UPS devices in key positions, network-enabled and possibly overlooked, and a new satellite network blanket that can whisper to devices anywhere, courtesy of a billionaire who was openly rooting for a particular election outcome.
Thiel, Palantir, and Why Critics Are Concerned
Let’s circle back to Peter Thiel and Palantir’s connection to all this, because it speaks to motive and opportunity – the classic questions of any investigation. Peter Thiel is not just a tech investor; he’s a political actor. He supported Donald Trump in 2016 and has funded candidates and causes aligned with Trump’s agenda. Palantir, the firm Thiel co-founded, built its reputation on crunching big data for intelligence and defense – finding needles in haystacks of information. So when Eaton (the owner of Tripp Lite) deepened its partnership with Palantir in 2024, some observers did a double take. The partnership’s official purpose was to use Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) to streamline Eaton’s operations and data management. But skeptics wonder if there could be more to the story. Was Palantir’s software (and by extension Thiel) getting access to data about where Tripp Lite devices were deployed or how they were performing? Could Palantir’s vaunted analytics conceivably be turned toward analyzing election-related data flows if one were so inclined? These are speculative questions, and to be fair, there’s no public evidence Palantir had anything to do with elections in 2024. Eaton’s announcement didn’t mention voting at all, and Palantir’s work with them by all accounts stayed in the lane of logistics and enterprise AI.
Critics view Thiel’s proximity here as a possible red flag simply because of his track record. It might be guilt by association, but it’s an association worth noting. In the narrative laid out so far: Barre Seid (Tripp Lite’s owner) wanted to advance conservative causes, Leonard Leo (to whom Seid gave the company) is an architect of conservative power-building, Peter Thiel is a key funder of the new right wing, and Elon Musk was an increasingly vocal supporter of the Trump comeback effort. All of them, improbably, have connective tissue to this corner of technology that touches our election systems. From a purely factual standpoint: Seid’s donation is known. Leo’s sale to Eaton is known, Eaton-Palantir collaboration is known, and Musk’s Starlink D2C network went live in 2024. What’s speculative is the notion that these facts were coordinated parts of an election subversion plan. That remains unproven. Yet, given the stakes, critics argue we can’t afford to dismiss the overlap as mere coincidence without investigating further. The concern is less “smoking gun” and more “smoke in the room” – enough to justify a careful look.
Thiel’s Palantir, in particular, raises philosophical alarms for some because of what Palantir does best: integrate disparate data streams and uncover patterns. If one were trying to surreptitiously influence an election via tech means, having a Palantir-like capability to monitor networks, sift logs, or coordinate devices would be extremely powerful. There’s noevidence Palantir software was deployed in election systems in 2024, but the fact that Palantir was effectively on call with Eaton suggests a theoretical vector: maybe not direct manipulation, but perhaps assistance in covering tracks or optimizing an operation. Again – this is conjecture. We mention it to clarify why some analysts are uncomfortable seeing Thiel’s shadow near the election infrastructure space. The flipside is also true: if nothing nefarious happened, these connections could be entirely innocent business deals being misinterpreted by outsiders. Keeping an even hand, we must distinguish what we know from what we fear: we know a Tripp Lite sale funded Leo’s networkr; we knowEaton works with Palantir and Tesla; we know Musk and Thiel had clear preferences in 2024. We do not knowif any of them leveraged Tripp Lite devices or Starlink for illicit purposes.
Where the Investigation Stands
As of today, all of this – the UPS bridges, the satellite links, the Thiel connection – remains a theory of vulnerabilityrather than evidence of an actual attack. No conclusive proof has emerged that any Tripp Lite (Eaton) UPS units were exploited to tamper with votes in 2024. In fact, election officials and cybersecurity agencies have flatly denied that any such interference occurred. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) stated after the election, “we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”. Officials in key states went on record specifically to debunk the idea that Starlink or other outside networks could have altered vote totals.. In short, the known facts of the 2024 election outcome remain that Trump won through the certified vote counts, and no official body has found those counts were fraudulently changed.
The UPS theory, then, is essentially a set of unanswered questions and anomalies. We know these devices were widely used (by design) in the election. We know the people behind them had motives to favor one side. We know technical pathways could exist to exploit them. But we do not have an example of “here is a county where a UPS was hacked and votes were changed.” There is some circumstantial smoke – for instance, statistical oddities in vote reporting or the betting market clues mentioned earlier – but nothing that rises to the level of proof. If a sophisticated attack happened via this route, it was subtle enough to evade detection so far. It’s also possible that the vulnerability was real but wasn’t actually used – perhaps plans were made or access was prepared (the pieces put in place) but ultimately not deployed on Election Day.
Investigators (both official and independent) are in the early stages of looking at this. Some journalists and researchers have begun filing public records requests to counties, asking for inventories of their UPS devices, maintenance logs, or network configurations. A few counties have disclosed that they did use Starlink kits for emergency connectivity, but only for transmitting unofficial results after polls closed, and not connected to voting machines. Those disclosures align with normal contingency planning, not a hidden conspiracy. So far, nothing public has directly implicated Tripp Lite UPS units in any wrongdoing. The theory remains just that – a theory – albeit one built on plausible concerns.
It’s also worth noting that this entire line of inquiry sits at the intersection of cybersecurity and partisan intrigue, which means it’s very easy to get out over our skis. The goal here isn’t to declare that “the election was definitely hacked through the power supply” – it’s to examine whether we’ve overlooked a potential weak link. Experts generally agree that U.S. election systems have become more resilient since 2016, with paper ballot backups and rigorous audits. Any would-be attacker would have to navigate a gauntlet of safeguards. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible – just difficult. If an operation targeting UPS devices did occur, it would rank among the most complex cyber-physical feats in election history. At this point, the most responsible conclusion is that it’s an intriguing hypothesis that warrants further investigation, not an established fact. The burden of proof is high, as it should be when questioning the result of a democratic election.
What Can Be Done: Next Steps for Transparency and Security
Even as we await more evidence, there are concrete steps that can be taken to address the worries raised by this theory. In the spirit of ensuring our elections are secure (and feel secure to the electorate), here are some paths forward:
1. Full Inventory and Audit of Power Devices: Election jurisdictions should conduct and publish audits of all auxiliary equipment used in elections – not just the voting machines and software, but things like UPS units, surge protectors, networking gear, and routers. Knowing exactly which models were used where, and whether they had network capabilities enabled, is fundamental. For example, if a county used Tripp Lite Model XYZ UPS with an SNMP card on their central tally server, that should be documented. Investigators (or independent experts) can then examine those specific models for vulnerabilities. If any UPS firmware updates were applied around the election, that’s a potential red flag to scrutinize (was there a software patch that could have introduced a backdoor?). This kind of audit doesn’t imply guilt; it’s basic cyber hygiene. Some states already have robust asset tracking, but making that information public (or at least available to oversight bodies) would build confidence.
2. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Inquiries: Journalists and citizens can file FOIA or state public records requests for communications between election officials and vendors about UPS devices or Starlink. If, say, a county elections director had an email exchange with a vendor about installing a network card in a UPS, or troubleshooting a Starlink unit at a vote center, those communications could shed light on how these technologies were used. FOIA requests could also target any incident reports – for instance, did any precincts report strange errors with their UPS during voting? Was there any unexplained power event that almost went unnoticed? Such leads could be valuable. While FOIA can be slow, it’s a legal avenue to get answers and create an archive of facts.
3. Independent Forensic Reviews: In extreme cases, one might literally forensically examine a few of these UPS units – especially any that behaved oddly. This would involve pulling the device’s internal logs, checking the firmware for tampering, and maybe even performing a circuit analysis to ensure no extra components are present. It’s somewhat analogous to a voting machine forensic exam (which has been done in past controversies). Because a UPS is not typically considered sensitive election equipment, there may be less resistance to letting an independent technical team inspect one. If nothing else, it could either rule out certain attack vectors or, conversely, discover something like a covert cellular module in a device (however unlikely that may sound). Even just verifying that all network cards were properly configured (or ideally, absent) in election UPS units would be reassuring.
4. Vendor Transparency and Patches: Eaton (Tripp Lite’s parent) should be invited to participate in this conversation. If their equipment is being questioned, they have an interest in clearing the air. The company could proactively disclose any known vulnerabilities in their UPS firmware or SNMP cards and detail what security measures they have in place. They might, for example, clarify whether the UPS network cards can operate over cellular or if they strictly use wired ethernet. They could also assist counties in updating firmware or disabling any remote access features during elections. Ideally, vendors of all election-related tech (even indirectly related, like power systems) should adhere to higher transparency standards when their products are used in the voting process. This doesn’t mean giving away intellectual property – it means recognizing that democracy is a unique customer that requires unique assurances.
5. Policy and Procedural Changes: On the governmental side, this saga highlights that “air-gapped” needs a stricter definition in election regs. Officials might consider rules that any device connected to a voting machine (even if it’s “just a power supply”) must itself be free of network connectivity during the election. That could mean requiring UPS units with no network cards installed, or physically sealing those ports on Election Day. Procedures could be updated so that, for instance, if a UPS or power device fails, it’s reported and examined, not just swapped out. Another policy idea is mandating post-election audits not only of ballots but of equipment logs – checking if, say, any unexpected IP addresses contacted a piece of equipment. These steps can harden an already secure system by shoring up an obscure corner of it.
6. Ongoing Investigation and Open Minds: Finally, we as investigators (in the broad sense, including the concerned public) should follow the evidence wherever it leads – even if it debunks our worst fears. That means if forensic audits and FOIAs come back showing nothing but mundane explanations, we have to be ready to accept that. Conversely, if they uncover irregularities, we must pursue those rigorously but responsibly. The tone of this series has been to question, not to accuse. That must continue. The worst outcome would be to jump to conclusions or let partisans hijack these findings to spread baseless allegations. The best outcome is we either confirm a vulnerability and fix it or confidently rule it out and reassure the public.
In conclusion, the story of Tripp Lite UPS devices and Starlink satellites in the 2024 election is a reminder that election security is a constantly evolving challenge. Threats that sounded far-fetched yesterday can become very real tomorrow. Who would have thought a decade ago that satellites talking to voting machines would be a serious topic? Or that we’d be analyzing the politics of an unassuming power supply company? Yet here we are. The good news is that awareness is the first step toward resilience. By shining light on these shadowy corners – the backup batteries, the network cards, the satellite links – we empower election officials and the public to ask the right questions and demand solid answers. Our democracy’s strength lies not just in robust systems, but in the transparency and trust that come from scrutinizing those systems. If something did happen in 2024, it’s important to uncover the truth and deal with it. If it didn’t happen but could have happened, then it’s important to learn from that and apply the knowledge going forward, to restore voter trust going into 2026 and 2028. That’ a tall order, under the circumstances, but it’s essential to work toward that objective.
DEEPER LOOK with Michael Sellers is a reader-supported publication. This is a lot of work! 😉 Please support that work if you can!
Dot – Com began 1995. PSI-net went public. It was one of the first internet providers. Bill Schrader was co founder of PSI-net. By July of that year, he was worth $105 million. By 2001, PSINet had declared bankruptcy.
The entrepreneurs were many, their investors were throwing money at them, some were swallowed by bigger tech companies, many became history of the emerging technological age.
End of dot-com. Companies failed or were absorbed eg. 2002 Cogent Communications absorbed PSI-net
During the dot-com bubble, the technology-dominated Nasdaq Composite index (a representation of the total value of the outstanding shares of companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange) rose nearly sevenfold from 743 to 5,048, reflecting the early enthusiasm of investors in dot-com enterprises and the willingness of venture capitalists to finance the initial public offerings (IPOs) of Internet start-ups, many of whose share prices then skyrocketed.
This was an era of investor overconfidence. The cost of borrowing had to be increased to cool the enthusiasm.
Between March 2000 and October 2002, the Nasdaq fell from 5,048 to 1,139, erasing nearly all of its gains during the dot-com bubble. By the time the index bottomed out in October 2002, most publicly traded dot-com companies had failed.
Nowadays, investors seem to have succumbed to the hype of companies offering Artificial Intelligence applications, being the latest ‘transformational innovation’.
they account for as much as 35.4 per cent of the S&P 500’s market capitalisation, almost triple what they were ten years ago.
However, they are by no means immune from the whims of the market.
In January, the launch of China’s Deepseek AI – developed supposed for just $6million compared to the many hundreds of millions required for the development of Western large language models – proved just how fragile the foundations of the Magnificent Seven are.
Nvidia, the world’s second largest company, which is worth more than the GDP of most countries, saw some $600billion fall off its market value
Today, Amazon announced it will soon be introducing AI to replace, and thus reduce, its entry level white collar jobs.
(Note: Amazon once boasted we would all be getting our Amazon deliveries via drones, not couriers).
See the link below, this presentation suggests that hopes for companies revolutionising and profiting from integrating AI into their operations may be naive:
I never knew, until I read Kara Swisher’s ‘Burn Book’, that Al Gore, when senator of Tennessee, played a key role which birthed the Internet.
As a senator from Tennessee, Gore crafted and pushed through the “High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991,” aka the “Gore Bill.” This legislation funded initiatives like the game-changing Mosaic browser and was critical to the commercialization of the now indispensable medium.
I was working at a university 1992 – 1995 and was lucky enough to use the university’s JANET system, then the early Internet. As an information specialist, this inspired me. Of course, it was, like all innovations the beginning of huge leaps in technological achievements to the present day. We now have a vast wealth of knowledge being acquired at a rapid rate. We could save this dying planet with what we know; but sadly, that opportunity seems to be overtaken by a desperate death spiral motivated by human envy and greed.
Kara met Gore in 1989, and he must have picked up on the British Antarctic Scientists discovery:
A mere decade later, in 1985, the British Antarctic Survey confirmed a hole in the ozone layer and suggested a link to CFCs – vindicating the work of Molina and Rowland, who were eventually awarded the 1995 Noble Prize in chemistry. Even worse, the depletion was happening much quicker than had been anticipated. “It was really quite shocking,” says Shanklin, now an emeritus fellow at the British Antarctic Survey.
As she relates:
I met Gore in 1989 while reporting a story about his efforts to limit the use of chlorofluorocarbons that were depleting the ozone levels. He was right about climate change, too. Really, even though he sounded like an idiot when he said he invented the Internet, we should probably thank the guy for all he’s done and for being one of the few in D.C. who took an interest in the tech at all.
I wrote a blog some years ago about the gradual realisation that a gas used to cool fridges, in aerosols and other common products, used extensively since its invention, was causing a depletion in the ozone layer which protected us from direct rays of the sun.
It was a global emergency and required a global response:
During the 1990s and early-2000s, the production and consumption of CFCs was brought to a halt. By 2009, 98% of the chemicals agreed to in the treaty had been phased out. Six amendments — which the treaty allows when scientific evidence shows further action is needed — have led to ever-tightening restrictions on substances introduced to replace CFCs, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). While good for the ozone layer, these replacements turned out to be bad for the climate. The global warming potential of the most commonly used HCFC, for example, is almost 2,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
“You could argue [the Montreal Protocol] is a much more successful bit of climate protection legislation than any of the other [climate] agreements we’ve had to date,” says Revell.
Since its adoption, the Montreal Protocol has been signed by every country on Earth – to date the only treaty to be universally ratified. It’s widely considered a triumph of international environmental cooperation. According to some models, the Montreal Protocol and its amendments have helped prevent up to two million cases of skin cancer yearly and avoided millions of cataract cases worldwide.
And as we tried to find replacements – HCFCs, we made matters worse.
Technological advances are often full of good intentions – the splitting of the atom was about studying how life on earth began, but the legacy is the development of a weapon which can destroy all life.
Albert Einstein famously said, after the advent of the nuclear weapons that his genius helped make possible, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking. And we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
If you are fortunate to have been born with a neurotypical brain, you will have developed empathy, an important component for interacting with other life forms, sensing what they might be thinking, using an amazing set of tools provided by the human brain. You are able to show genuine caring, compassion, sensitivity if required. You are able to assess threat more accurately and act accordingly. You are not inclined to inflict pain as you would ‘feel it’ too. You recognise cruelty, you will protect the vulnerable, you will speak out on behalf of those who need support.
In Kara Swisher’s book, ‘Burn Book’, she tells the reader that she lost her father when she was five from his sudden and unexpected death. She tries to get us to understand how that must have felt,
When I was five, my beloved father died. To say my life changed in the moment he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage without warning would be an understatement. “Just imagine right now if half of your friends died,” I said to an interviewer decades later, referring to a book called The Loss That Is Forever, about children whose parents die at a young age. “Your parents, when you’re five, are really pretty much your entire world. If one-half of your friends just suddenly died, it would be shocking and devastating, and so I think it also gives you a sense of the capriciousness of life; that life can change on a dime, that bad things happen, and that you survive them just fine. You just keep going.”
Our media often show us the traumatised faces of children all over the world who have suffered such loss of not just a single parent, but a loss of siblings, cousins and generations in one bomb strike. But human survival is an amazing thing and mental scars may not mend but can inform that survivor how to “keep going”.
Human empathy may be simulated through conversations with a machine which is trained with voice and phrases conveying responses to a person saying they feel sad and lonely. Mark Zuckerberg has said that many people are lonely and believes an AI friend can help with that without seeking therapy.
Zuckerberg Says in Response to Loneliness Epidemic, He Will Create Most of Your Friends Using Artificial Intelligence
Kara Swisher evolved her love of journalism during the emergence of what we now often call the Silicon Valley ‘bros’.
At a young age she was a stringer for the Washington Post, and was keen on learning about the importance of ‘the medium is the message’ (Marshall McLuhan’s phrase “the medium is the message” suggests that the medium of communication itself, rather than the content it carries, significantly influences how messages are perceived and understood. This concept emphasizes that different media shape human experiences and societal interactions in unique ways. Wikipedia)
She observed:
Working for the Post was much more fun than school, except for my history courses. My focus was on propaganda and how groups like the Nazis used media and communications tools to twist facts, radicalize their populace, and demonize the targeted populations. Obviously, Hitler and his henchmen had conducted a master class in evil. But what struck me was how easily people could be manipulated by fear and rage and how facts could be destroyed without repercussions.
Obviously we are now living through an intensely profound test of our ability for ‘straight or crooked thinking’ (Straight and Crooked Thinking, first published in 1930 and revised in 1953, is a book by Robert H. Thouless which describes, assesses and critically analyses flaws in reasoning and argument . Wikipedia)
As we struggle to comprehend the Kafkaesque global implosion taking place, a recent piece by Chris Hedges reminds us of the dying of empires and their characteristics:
The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff…and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.
Frank Herbert also observed:
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quicklyaddicted.”
Kara Swisher wanted to join the military as her father had done, but knew the discrimination against gay people would make that impossible. Attempts in recent history have tried to ensure the military reflected all of Americas rich and diverse society, current trends are reversing that direction.
Harvey Milk
American politician and activistActions
Also known as: Harvey Bernard Milk
Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jun 4, 2025 • Article HistoryContentsAsk the Chatbot a Question
Harvey Milk Gay rights activist Harvey Milk in front of his camera shop in San Francisco, 1977.
And Brittanica updates the entry:
In November 2021 the U.S. Navy launched the USNS Harvey Milk, a John Lewis-class fleet oiler. It was the first U.S. Navy vessel to be named for an openly gay person, and at the ship’s christening Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said, “For far too long, sailors like Lieutenant Junior Grade Milk were forced into the shadows or, worse yet, forced out of our beloved Navy.” However, in June 2025, during Pride Month, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the ship to be renamed. In a statement explaining the move, the Pentagon referenced Hegseth’s goal of restoring “the warrior culture” in the U.S. military.
The swirling war of semantics and meaning throughout social media leaves people exhausted. Fear is being spread and we have seen it all before. We are preconditioned. We know we cannot stay silent in response to cruelty. We did that to the Jews and now the Israeli government is using that fear model to defend their right to the land of the Palestinians. Global Far Right groups are using it to turn citizens against vulnerable and frightened immigrants who are fleeing their homeland for good reason.
Silence makes us complicit in crimes against our fellow beings. It cannot be the response of those of us who possess empathy as human beings, with a strong sense of responsibility toward all living things on this beautiful planet.
An assessment of the state of American politics in 1998:
A batch of DJI Matrice 300 RTK drones, part of Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” project Evgen Kotenko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Drones are ubiquitous now, but a relevant military use timeline can be found, which is relevant to the previous technology blogs:
What we do know is that modern drone warfare began in earnest in 1982, when Israel coordinated the use of battlefield UAVs alongside manned aircraft to wipe out the Syrian fleet with very minimal losses. The Israeli Air Force used military drones to recon the enemy’s position, to jam communications, and to act as decoys that would prevent the loss of pilot life.
The technology was nothing new, but the IAF figured out how to use drone technology in a way that would make operations more successful, and international interest in drone hardware picked up significantly. The US, for example, spent tens of millions of dollars on new drone contracts in 1984
By 1992, Ronen Bergman, in his book ‘Rise and Kill First” relates:
At about 9,500 feet above the streets of Jibchit, a camera in the nose of a small, quiet aircraft panned the length of the procession. There was no pilot, but rather an operator controlling the plane from a trailer on the northern border in Israel. The images from the camera, in high resolution and real time, were beamed to a screen in the small AMAN war room overlooking a rose garden outside the Defense Ministry, in Tel Aviv.
It was, in 1992, a marvel of intelligence technology: a drone that put Israeli eyes on a surveillance target without risking any Israeli personnel. The drone’s camera continued the length of the procession. At the end, four vehicles were clearly visible—two Range Rovers and two Mercedes sedans. In Tel Aviv, intelligence officials watched as those four slipped away from the crowd, passed the hussainia, and stopped in a parking lot behind the building. “We’ve got him,” one of the analysts watching the video feed said. Two hundred miles away, intelligence operatives had a clear view of a target. “Suddenly,” an internal review of that morning later reported, “the scent of a hunt was in the air.”
EVER SINCE THE OPENING offensive of the Yom Kippur War, which had taken the Israelis completely by surprise, Major General Benjamin “Benny” Peled, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, had been haunted by failure. At the beginning of the war, in 1973, the air force had received more than half of the defense budget, and yet it completely collapsed during the initial Egyptian and Syrian attack. Peled believed that one of the main reasons for the failure was that important intelligence had reached him too late. If he’d known Egyptian forces were launching—if he could have seen, in real time, the preparations—his own forces would have been better able to respond. In the aftermath of that assault, Peled decided to develop a network of secret communications and real-time intelligence-gathering systems. It would be designed to serve the air force independent of the “Greens” (as the “Blues” of the IAF somewhat condescendingly called the ground forces, because of their olive drab uniforms). Using aircraft for that end would have been the obvious plan, but that was complicated by another trauma of the Yom Kippur War: The IAF had lost more than a quarter of its warplanes, and many of the rest were damaged and unfit for action. Furthermore, many of the IAF’s airmen, who until then had enjoyed an aura of invincibility, had been shot down and taken prisoner or killed.
But what if airplanes didn’t need pilots? Or the multi-million-dollar munitions systems? What if, Peled wondered, the IAF could remotely pilot smaller, cheaper aircraft equipped with only cameras and communications links? A decade earlier, when he ran the weapons department, Peled was the first to introduce drones into the air force, although at the time it seemed a fantastical idea. He was worried about the Arab forces’ acquisition of Soviet-made surface-to-air antiaircraft missiles, and, as a result, he “wanted to fill the air with decoys that would be very cheap, and with similar profiles as fighter planes on their radar screens.” These UAVs, an Israeli improvement on an American invention, were launched by rockets, and in order to return to the ground they would eject a parachute, which a helicopter with long poles fixed to its fuselage would then sweep up.
Later, the drones were also equipped with cameras. But after the 1973 war, Peled reached the conclusion that this was not enough. The launch and recovery systems were costly, clumsy, and very dangerous. Processing the photographed material took a long time, too. Hours elapsed between taking the pictures, developing the film, and finally transferring the photos to the intelligence analysts. And so, in the wake of the 1973 defeat, a new type of drone was developed. This drone could take off and land independently, it was controlled from a command caravan, and it had cameras that transmitted video footage in real time.
By 1982, drones were a key element in providing real-time intelligence for the top air force brass sitting in Canary, the command post deep underground in central Tel Aviv. They also played a key role in knocking out Syrian antiaircraft missile batteries in Lebanon. The drone that targeted Syrian defenses was the first model of the Scout (known in Israel as the Zahavan), made by Israel Aerospace Industries. The Israeli Air Force, hoping to convince the United States to cooperate in drone development, wanted to demonstrate to the Americans how effective its miniature, pilotless planes could be. When U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger visited the Middle East—first Beirut and then Tel Aviv—he met with the top IDF and Defense Ministry officials. He was then shown a video taken by an Israeli drone of his arrival in Beirut, and the movements of his motorcade in the Lebanese capital. Weinberger didn’t much appreciate the surveillance, but the members of his entourage were very impressed with the technology. Weinberger’s visit to Israel paved the way for a huge deal between Israel Aerospace Industries and the Pentagon for the sale of 175 upgraded Scout UAVs, which were given the name Pioneer in the United States. They were used by the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Army until 2007.
Improvements to the drones were made over the years to allow them to carry more fuel, and to update the cameras.
In 1990, Israel equipped its drone fleet with lasers so that they could emit a beam and designate a static target for warplanes. The upgrades to the drones were part of a larger technological push in the IDF, which in the late 1980s invested significant resources to acquire and develop precision ordnance—“smart bombs” that could hit their targets more accurately, making them more effective and less likely to inflict collateral damage. This process was accelerated when technology buff Ehud Barak, who wanted to build “a small, smart army,” became chief of staff in 1991, in effect shaping the Israeli war machine for the coming decades. Under his direction, the IAF’s Apache attack helicopters were equipped with laser-guided Hellfire missiles. At the same time, a meeting between the heads of the IAF operations department and Arieh Weisbrot, commander of the first IAF drone unit, Squadron 200, came up with the revolutionary idea of combining all of these technological advances into a single five-step process, to create a new and particularly deadly method of targeted killing. First, a drone would track a moving target, either a person or a vehicle. Second, the drone would transmit an image of the target directly to the operational command, providing a real-time connection with the decision-makers, right up until the order to fire. Third, the drone would designate the target with a laser beam that could be picked up by an Apache helicopter’s laser detector—a stage known as “passing the baton,” from the intelligence-gathering cycle to the operational cycle. Fourth, the Apache’s own laser would mark the target, which a Hellfire missile could then lock on to. Fifth, the Apache pilot would fire the missile and destroy the target. Combining and synchronizing both systems—intelligence and operations—was a major breakthrough.
Drones already had proven themselves invaluable in gathering information. But now they’d evolved from a support role into a direct combat tool. Squadron 200 began training with the Apache pilots of Squadron 113, the “Wasp” squadron, in late 1991. There were skeptics in the IAF, especially among pilots who’d been trained in, and had long practiced, specific combat tactics. The idea that flying robots could be effective in war seemed, to some, preposterous. But in December 1991, they tried a number of “dry runs,” using vehicles on Israel’s roads as targets. Three or four drones were launched, and a vehicle selected at random for them to track with their cameras, transmitting everything to the control caravan. Then the vehicle was “lit up” with a laser beam, and after a few miles the chase was joined by two Apaches, and the whole team would practice “passing the baton” as the Apaches’ sensors would lock on to the drone’s laser beam. At the moment the Apache indicated that the target was locked, the exercise ended. But simulating missile fire onto cars on a friendly road was one thing. Killing a live target in hostile territory was something else altogether.
20 years later, there is a timeline of CIA targeted drone killings, here is the first and the latest in the list:
November 3, 2002, US drone strike on a vehicle in Marib province, Yemen.
Target: Qa’id Salim Sinan al-Harithi
The first drone targeted killing saw a CIA Predator drone operating out of Djibouti launch two missiles at a vehicle travelling through the desert in Marib province, Yemen.
………….
July 31, 2022, US drone strike on a compound in Kabul, Afghanistan
The proliferation of drones in present day wars has made some people believe they should be banned as their use seems to be ushering in an era of permanent war:
Drone Wars UK works towards a long-term goal of an international ban on the use of armed drones. While drone warfare is often presented as a precise and risk-free solution to international security threats, there are significant dangers to global peace and security arising from their use. These include
lowering the threshold for the use of armed force,
expanding the use of targeted killing
transferring the cost of armed conflict from soldiers to civilians
ushering permanent war
Remote ‘risk free’ intervention through using armed drones is in danger of becoming not the last option, but the first. Besides the direct consequences on the ground, the normalisation of this type of response means that underlying political and social causes of conflicts go unaddressed. This in turn drastically reduces the chances of achieving just and sustainable peace and security.
Drones have emerged as pivotal instruments in international conflicts, reshaping the landscape of modern warfare. Their capabilities for surveillance, targeted strikes, and real-time intelligence gathering have made them indispensable to contemporary military strategies.
As nations increasingly rely on drones for tactical advantages, the implications of their use—both strategic and ethical—demand comprehensive analysis. This article examines the multifaceted role of drones in international conflicts, highlighting historical trends and current case studies.
Why are data centres and data transmission networks important?
Demand for digital services is growing rapidly. Since 2010, the number of internet users worldwide has more than doubled, while global internet traffic has expanded 20-fold. The data centres and data transmission networks that underpin digitalisation have led to rising energy use…………….Significant advances in data centre performance have been made in recent years, but additional government and industry efforts on energy efficiency, RD&D, and decarbonisation of electricity supply and supply chains are necessary to curb energy demand and rapidly reduce emissions over the coming decade to get on track with the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) Scenario.
Hyperscalers, such as AWS, don’t declare their energy use.
As AI drives unprecedented growth in data center energy consumption, utilities and hyperscalers are locked in an uneasy, sometimes adversarial partnership to expand capacity.
Data Center Knowledge spoke with technology infrastructure experts about the challenges, opportunities, and unanswered questions facing the industry, as well as the “complex mix” of strategies and technologies required to ensure the grid can meet escalating demand.
Location, Location, Location
As of March this year, half of the 11,000 data centers worldwide were located in the US, according to David Porter, vice president of electrification and sustainable energy strategy at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). But Porter, whose research organization advises countries interested in developing new data centers, said the central challenge facing data centers and utilities was the same in the US as in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East: “[That is], whether the location the developer is using has the capacity to serve it in a short time,” he told Data Center Knowledge………….
In Ireland, where Echelon Data Centres received permits for a new data center just this month for the first time in three years, there has been a “quasi-moratorium” on new construction, Echelon’s head of energy systems Cormac Nevins told Data Center Knowledge.
Calling the growth in power demand “extreme,” Nevins sounded optimistic that policy in Ireland was beginning to move at a speed commensurate with how quickly the industry is changing.
“From 2022 through 2032, we’re looking at doubling data center capacity in Dublin,” he said, describing ambitious government targets. “In the same period, we have to bring in 8 GW of solar, 4.5 GW of onshore wind, and 5 GW of offshore wind. And a bonus of another 2 GW of offshore wind to reach hydrogen targets. These are ambitious targets for renewables.”………………..
Discussing a suit filed this month by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta against an Ohio utility company, AEP Ohio, for its plan to charge hyperscalers increased upfront energy costs for their data centers, Porter said it was not unusual for utilities and large customers to be at odds about who should bear the cost of upgrades.
“The utility regulators for each state have something they think is fair and prudent for all of the customers that utility serves,” he said.
Margarita Patria from Charles River Associates (CRA), a consulting firm that helps utilities such as NIPSCO and FirstEnergy plan for regulation and additional capacity, told Data Center Knowledge: “Whatever entity gets the benefit of the upgrade is the entity that has to pay for it. That’s just and fair to my mind. It becomes a question: who is benefiting?”
In many countries, such as the UK, the building of data centres are thought of as essential to national infrastructure:
Plans to build a huge data centre next to the M25 in Hertsmere have been green lit by councillors. Developer DC01UK say it will be Europe’s largest data centre when it is built and council officers said it could be used by companies such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft.
Data centres are deemed ‘national critical infrastructure’ by the government, and ministers have supported plans for the centre in Hertsmere. It will be located next to South Mimms services, on green belt land that is now seen as ‘grey belt’ by planning officers.
While it is currently agricultural land and is not previously built on, officers judged that it does not “contribute strongly to any of the green belt purposes”. Councillors on Hertsmere Borough Council’s planning committee voted the proposals through by eleven votes to one at their meeting on Thursday (January 23).
Servers require extraordinary amounts of electrical power and must be kept at specific temperatures at all times. A site must have access to a power grid that can keep the servers running and the cooling systems working around the clock.
Size
Data centres are huge and, with the increased demand, are only getting larger. New and reconstructed sites must be able to meet the demands for data centre capacity, which is usually measured in three ways:
Racks: The number of racks indicates the amount of space available for servers
Square footage: Many new facilities are now larger than 250,000 square feet
Power capacity in megawatts: Many new facilities have a power capacity between 80 and several hundred megawatts
Reliability
Like the internet itself, data centres need to be on at all times, with no exceptions. Beyond having enough power, most data centres have extensive backup systems that can keep servers and cooling systems functioning, even when local power goes out. This often includes power generators or uninterruptible power supplies, which provide automated backup when the main power source goes down.
Data centres require continual clean water circulating for cooling:
Data centers are significant consumers of natural resources, and while carbon emissions and electricity consumption often capture most attention, water usage is also gaining increased recognition. Water is essential in data center cooling systems to control the heat produced by these massive facilities, ensuring their internal servers run uninterrupted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Data centers use large amounts of water for their cooling systems, which include cooling towers, chillers, pumps, pipes, heat exchangers, condensers, and computer room air handler (CRAH) units. Additionally, data centers need water for their humidification systems and facility maintenance.
Globally, data centers are located in all different types of countries and climates, including many data center facilities in water-stressed regions prone to droughts. According to the United Nations, by 2025, 50% of the world’s population is projected to live in water-stressed areas, making data center water usage a key environmental area to prioritize change.
But if we are to see more building of data centres, the experts say they have devised techniques to ensure the water supply system is carefully designed to maximise what is available:
Consequences of increased emissions through energy consuming data centres (and, sadly, now Bitcoin mining centres) have added another fossil fueled human activity to the warming planet. Recently the Blatten glacier collapse was yet another catastrophic symbol of the harm we humans have done to the Planet Earth.
At the end of the 1990s, Israel found its methods of surveillance outdated and not suited to the craft of their enemies.
Their enemies were everywhere, more determined, innovative and increasingly menacing from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, Libya, to Hamas in Gaza and Amman.
Consequently, Ami Ayalon established more modern techniques.
THE SHIN BET WAS the first of the intelligence agencies to regain its footing. Its chief, Ami Ayalon, and the inquiry panels he set up to find out what had gone wrong reached the conclusion that the Shin Bet had become weak and ineffective in two of its main areas of activity. The first was the acquisition of information. For decades, the Shin Bet had relied upon intelligence obtained from human sources, but this reservoir had almost dried up. No substitute had yet been found for the hundreds of Palestinian agents that it had lost when Israel withdrew from Palestinian territory after the Oslo Accords. The Shin Bet failed to develop alternative methods and was unable to recruit agents inside Hamas, an ideological-religious movement whose members were less likely to be tempted by bribes. One of the Shin Bet inquiry panels put it succinctly—and damningly: “The organization is not attuned to the environment it works in.” The second inadequacy was what the Shin Bet did with information once it was obtained. Ayalon visited the organization’s archives and stared incredulously at the huge containers stuffed with hundreds of thousands of cardboard binders. “We are behaving like a medieval organization,” he told the senior command forum of the Shin Bet. “An archive like this does not make it possible to construct a real-time intelligence picture. Even if all the information were to be found in the files, it wouldn’t help us at all.” Ayalon declared that “the Shin Bet is not an intelligence body, but rather a preventive body.” In other words, the agency’s purpose was not merely to gather information for the sake of collection, but rather to thwart the enemy’s intentions in real time. In order to do so, the Shin Bet had to collect intelligence and analyze it in the briefest of time spans. Ayalon argued that the solution was to be found in advanced technologies. Tech-based sources would replace human sources, producing a multi-dimensional, real-time intelligence picture.
In 1996, these were revolutionary thoughts that generated a crisis of confidence in the Shin Bet, drew harsh criticism of Ayalon, and even led many to quit the agency. But Ayalon stuck to his guns. He created a number of new teams and departments that developed cutting-edge techniques for collecting information: penetrating various data systems and intercepting emails, phone calls, and, later on, social media communications. They also developed new ways to use the information: state-of-the-art techniques for analyzing vast amounts of data and extracting the most important bits of intel. Ayalon and his tech teams shifted the focus of the Shin Bet so that more emphasis was placed on the connections between people—more emphasis on the network, rather than on each separate individual.
The Shin Bet was the first to grasp the huge potential of tracking mobile phones, first through the phone calls themselves and later through geolocation, texting, video transmissions, and online surfing. Under Ayalon, the agency’s entire operational structure changed. It no longer relied on regional case officers, deployed geographically, who ran agents and functioned more or less independently, but instead concentrated activities around a “desk,” whose personnel sat at computer monitors, gathering information, piecing it together, and ordering operatives to gather missing pieces of the puzzle. The makeup of Shin Bet’s personnel was also changing rapidly. Many of the agency’s old case officers left, while young men and women from the IDF’s tech units were being recruited at a quick pace. Soon, 23 percent of the agency’s personnel were operatives trained extensively in the development of innovative technologies. “We set up an entire division of Q’s,” said Diskin, referring to the tech wizard of James Bond movies. “In it, dozens of amazing startups are under way simultaneously.”
………….Diskin, in the Shin Bet, and Yaalon, in the military, had to shatter quite a few entrenched bureaucratic procedures and navigate various interpersonal difficulties to get everyone into the second-floor space of the Jerusalem Shin Bet headquarters, which would now be called, appropriately, the Joint War Room (JWR). Especially tough was the resistance of 8200, the glamorous SIGINT unit of AMAN, who tried to insist that Shin Bet come to them instead. On December 11, 1999, everything was ready for action……………In September 2000, two months after Diskin had been appointed deputy director of the Shin Bet and Yaalon had been named deputy chief of the IDF General Staff, the two recommended that the model they had developed for the Central Command region be replicated for the entire country—that a permanent war room be set up for implementing major operations and targeted killings. The proposal was accepted, and space was set aside inside a building under construction at the Shin Bet HQ, in north Tel Aviv. The timing was fortuitous. “If we had not implemented the technological revolution and hadn’t set up the special war room,” Diskin said, “it’s doubtful whether and how we would have coped with the huge challenge that was posed for us by the Second Intifada.”
From Ronen Bergman’s book, “Rise and Kill First”
Let us consider the state of the art of PC business computing (software dominated by Microsoft) since the 1990s by looking at this link:
The rise of terrorism grew as the rejection of the support for a sovereign state of Israel was placed in the Middle East region.
There are clear signs that state sponsorship of terrorism is declining. During the 1980s and the early 1990s, Iran and terrorist groups it sponsors were responsible for the most politically significant acts of Middle Eastern terrorism. Although Iran continues to actively sponsor terrorist groups, since 1997 some major factions within Iran have sought to change Iran’s image to that of a more constructive force in the region. Pressured by international sanctions and isolation, Sudan and Libya appear to have sharply reduced their support for international terrorist groups. Syria, according to the Administration, has made a strategic choice for peace, implying that Syria may be ready to expel terrorist groups in areas under its control if there is a peace agreement with Israel.
The major state sponsors are, to some extent, becoming eclipsed by the radical Islamic terrorist network of exiled Saudi dissident Usama bin Ladin, who is independently financed and enjoys safe haven in Afghanistan. The goals of bin Ladin and his cohorts are to oust pro-U.S. regimes in the Middle East and gain removal of U.S. troops from the region. Within the past year, there have been growing signs that bin Ladin might be seeking to disrupt the Arab-Israeli peace process; bin Ladin cells have been discovered and their members arrested by authorities in Jordan and Lebanon, although no attacks linked to bin Ladin were actually carried out in these countries.
The Arab-Israeli peace process is a longstanding major U.S. foreign policy initiative, and the Administration and Congress are concerned about terrorist groups and state sponsors that oppose the process. Since the 1980s, Islamist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have largely displaced secular, nationalist groups as the most active anti-Israel organizations. However, possible because of greater anti-terrorism vigilance by the Palestinian Authority (PA), these groups have been less active against the peace process over the past year. Some Hamas leaders are moving toward cooperation with PA Chairman Yasir Arafat in shaping a final peace settlement with Israel.
U.S. counterterrorism policy has generally been directed against state sponsors, which are readily identifiable targets. A problem for U.S. policy has been how to coordinate U.S. counterterrorism policies with those of U.S. allies. Most allied governments believe that engaging these countries diplomatically might sometimes be more effective than trying to isolate or punish them. The Administration and Congress have tended to rely more on economic and political pressure against state sponsors in an effort to make them more cautious. In 1998, the Administration has, to some degree, attempted to reward gestures by state sponsors to distance themselves from international terrorism. At the same time, the Administration and Congress have stepped up efforts to directly pressure terrorists and terrorist groups. U.S. missile strikes on bin Ladin s network on August 20, 1998, in retaliation for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two weeks earlier, suggests that military action is still considered a viable component of U.S. efforts to combat individual terrorist groups.
Palantir was founded in 2003 with a mission to help intelligence agencies make better use of their data securely and responsibly. Today, governments around the world use Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry to understand and defend against evolving threats to national security, from cyberattacks, to disinformation, to insurgencies.
Two weeks ago, Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO of software company Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR), landed in Israel. Palantir was borne aloft by the growing trend of Big Data, years before OpenAI and similar companies arrived on the scene.
Karp, a Jewish resident of Silicon Valley, came to a public event at Tel Aviv University, and in a hall packed with students, journalists, and tech workers, mainly spoke about entrepreneurship and technology, but also showered praise on Israel.
In recent years, Palantir has become one of the most intriguing contractors of Israel’s security forces. The fact of such cooperation is no secret: immediately after his appearance at the university, Karp travelled to military headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he signed an upgraded agreement with the Ministry of Defense, and was even photographed with Danny Gold, head of the Israeli Directorate of Defense Research & Development (DDR&D), who became well known as the manager of the development of the Iron Dome missile defense system.
And Palantir will flourish under the Trump administration;
Data-mining company Palantir is poised to turbocharge its sales to the U.S. military under President Donald Trump, amid signs that his administration plans to loosen the hold of traditional defense contractors and tap Palantir executives for key government positions.
But Palantir has also been laying the groundwork for a much deeper infiltration of Washington, building a sprawling influence network designed to secure government business for years to come, a new Tech Transparency Project (TTP) investigation has found.
TTP found that Palantir’s hiring of government officials is more extensive than previously reported, with the company stocking up on veterans of the White House, Defense Department, CIA, and Congress. The investigation also identified a robust revolving door between Palantir and the Pentagon office tasked with integrating commercial technology into military operations—a unit critical to Palantir’s government sales.
Over the past several years, Palantir has dramatically increased its lobbying budget, in one quarter even surpassing the spending of longtime “Beltway bandit” defense contractor Northrop Grumman, the investigation found. At the same time, Palantir is investing in soft influence efforts, establishing a non-profit foundation that seeks to shape D.C. policy discussions in the company’s favor through academic papers, conferences, and public commentary
Oracle founder,Larry Ellison, funds Tony Blair’s Foundation in the UK which has focused on assisting the UK in digitising health records and other major data sources in the UK.
According to The New York Times, Palantir corporation’s software will be used to combine data gleaned from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the administration wants access to citizens’ and others’ bank account numbers and medical claims.
The billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros gets attacked by authoritarian leaders such as Prime Minister Victor Orbàn of Hungary.
……..2017 parliamentary election, Orbán promoted anti-Semitic imagery of powerful Jewish financiers scheming to control the world. Thousands of posters of a grinning Soros with the slogan “Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh!” were posted around the country on billboards, on the metro, and on the floors of Budapest’s trams. Just this year, a new media campaign featured Soros and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker with the caption: “You also have the right to know what Brussels is preparing for!
………..After Orbán came to power in 2010, he appointed András Levente Gál to direct the Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Center in Budapest. According to Paul Shapiro of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Gal’s first proposal was to eliminate mention of [wartime Hungarian leader] Miklós Horthy’s alliance with Adolf Hitler and participation in the dismemberment of three neighboring states — Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia — as ‘irrelevant’ to the Holocaust.”
…………Orbán has persisted in rewriting history. He has praised Horthy for reconquering lost territories. Several towns have erected statues or placed plaques on buildings in the wartime leader’s honor. Busts of Horthy still stand across the country, despite his record of virulent anti-Semitism. According to Shapiro, Horthy wrote “with pride to his Prime Minister in 1940, ‘I have been an anti-Semite my whole life.’
………….
Hungary has a large Jewish population of around 100,000 and is home to some of the most beautiful Jewish sites in Europe, including the Continent’s largest synagogue. Yet since 2014, with the exception of the relatively small but compliant Orthodox Chabad movement, the country’s Jewish community has had strained relations with the national authorities.
The government has stripped two progressive Jewish congregations (Bét Orim and Sim Shalom) of their official status. Despite the successful appeals to and favorable decisions of the Constitutional Court of Hungary and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Orbán has restricted their rights to access tax rebates and financial assistance.
………..
Orbán rejected the appeal and suggested that Hungarian Jews do more to oppose Muslim immigration to Europe. Israel’s ambassador to Hungary initially denounced the anti-Soros campaign, saying it “sows hatred and fear,” but then Israel’s foreign ministry issued its own statement critical of Soros.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu overlooks his friend Orbán’s peccadillos because of the Hungarian leader’s strong support for his hard-line policy toward the Palestinians.
Through misinformation Orbàn’s population have been encouraged to accept a rewritten history that Hungary’s role in “saving” the Jews of Budapest was greater than it actually was and minimized their part played in deporting and killing Jews. The Orbàn government has appointed “historians” who even suggest Jewish-supported communism led to the suffering of their population.
The truth is hard to obtain under Orbàn’s reshaping of universities, libraries and Internet access.
Hungary, one of the oldest states in Central and Eastern Europe, had its first communist experience in 1919 when attempts to impose a communist regime spread chaos and brought the country to the verge of disaster.
The following two decades of peaceful development ended when the Soviet Union occupied Hungary in World War II and used military threats to set up a communist government. Any resistance to communist authorities was met with violence. In 1945–46, some 35,000 people were arrested on political grounds and 1,000 of them executed or tortured to death. Another 55,000 were detained in concentration camps.
Rewriting history and reducing access to truth is an authoritarian mechanism of control. We see it in practice in Israel’s far right government. They aim to project a heroic stance against Muslims who, they say, would spread terror and want to take control of democracies.
Here is an extract from ‘Friends of Israel’, published in April, 2023:
As scholars Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail Bakan point out, apartheid Israel has long enjoyed solidarity from the governments of other settler-colonial states like the US, Canada and Australia, as well as former imperial states like Britain and France. All these countries retain huge power in the world and support Israel’s apartheid system in numerous ways.10 Since 1977, Israeli politics has fairly consistently moved to the right, and its current coalition government is the most far right in history. In the post-9/11 era, the opportunistic positioning of Israel as the ‘front line’ of the ‘War on Terror’ by many Israeli politicians and significant elements of the Zionist movement has accelerated. This plays into a ‘clash of civilisations’ narrative preoccupied with a confrontation between ‘the West’ and ‘radical Islam’ which greatly appeals to the far right.11 Perversely, despite the anti-Semitic affinities of far-right authoritarian leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán……… India’s Narendra Modi…….. US president Donald Trump, these men are among those who came to be counted, by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as Israel’s closest allies.12
Simultaneously, the Israeli government and Zionist movement have sought to move away from the broad and long-standing consensus that anti-Semitism is ‘hostility to Jews as Jews’.13 Instead, they have promoted the idea that some types of criticism of Israel or Zionism constitute a ‘new anti-Semitism’. As British sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris notes, the term ‘new anti-Semitism’ is not itself particularly novel, having appeared at least as early as 1967.14 It gained prominence, however, from around the turn of the millennium – a point at which Zionism, as we will see, entered a period of systemic crisis – as part of an ideological offensive apparently stimulated by that crisis. Scholar Brian Klug explains that the ‘new anti-Semitism’ thesis cast leftists (alongside Muslims), rather than the far right, as the main perpetrators of this novel form of racism. Meanwhile, its victim – rather than Jewish people – is the state of Israel, understood as ‘the collective Jew’. Klug notes the lack of clarity pervading the voluminous literature on ‘new anti-Semitism’ but discerns that ‘on one point there is a virtual consensus: anti-Zionism as such is beyond the pale’.15……….
Bakan and Abu-Laban note, the Zionist movement ‘lays claim to anti-racist ideological space as a response to anti-Semitism’ even while it simultaneously advances ‘colonial expansion in the Middle East’.18 The deep tensions here were perhaps most vividly illustrated at the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, when Israel and its allies sought to condemn the conference itself and withdrew, citing anti-Semitism, while other delegates conversely sought to condemn Israel for practising apartheid against Palestinians.19
Despite its deep flaws, the ‘new anti-Semitism’ thesis has been promulgated widely by its advocates and gained considerable institutional acceptance. This process began in 2005, when the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency – then called the European Union Monitoring Centre (EUMC) on Racism and Xenophobia – produced a ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism. Author Kenneth Stern, whose works include a 2004 ‘Proposal for a Redefinition of Antisemitism’ and the book Anti-Zionism: The Sophisticated Anti-Semitism, was a key influence.20
While the EUMC working definition gained limited traction, it soon resurfaced in a strikingly similar document produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental institution established in Berlin in 1998.21 The latter has been endorsed by numerous actors – including, as we will see, the British government.
The authoritarians point the finger at Muslims and have conflated them with Leftists, of which they stir up a fervent popular anger to both.
This belief system has grown through hate rhetoric spread globally. It defies logic and brings fear and instability, plus distrust within previous well integrated communities. They become more ripe for exploitation.
It is important to disassemble the rhetoric and return to historic evidence, lived by survivors and told to us all.
Extract from the above book:
More important than people’s ignorance, however, was the sense of discomfort that such stories inevitably provoked. According to Frank Keizer, people in Holland reacted to his story of incarceration at Theresienstadt by saying, ‘I don’t want to know. That’s all over now; be glad you survived.’16 Jews who returned to other countries reported similar reactions. In France too, according to Auschwitz survivor Alexandre Kohn, ‘there was a general indifference’, and Jews were urged to draw a line under their experiences.17 In Hungary returning Jews were beaten if they dared to suggest that they had suffered more than their Christian neighbours.18 Even in America, Jewish survivors who immigrated were often treated with impatience: ‘the war was over: “enough already!”’19
One must remember that ordinary Europeans had also suffered terribly during the war, particularly in the final year – but there was at least some comfort in the thought that they had all been through it together. After the liberation the whole continent began constructing myths of unity in adversity. These myths suited pretty much everybody, from former collaborators who wanted a chance to be brought back into the fold, to an exhausted public that was eager to put the war behind them, to the politicians who wanted to rebuild a sense of national pride. Even at an international level, the idea that all the different peoples of Europe had suffered together under Nazism was a convenient way to rebuild a common sense of brotherhood between battered nations. But the presence of the Jews made a mockery of such myths. Not only had they suffered much, much more than everyone else, but none of the other groups had come to their aid: the comfortable thought that Europeans had been ‘all in it together’ was demonstrably untrue.
When Lord Russell of Liverpool, who had been a serving soldier in WWI, and attended the Nuremburg trials after WWII, wrote his bestseller book, detailing the war crimes of the Nazis against the Jews, the then British government chose to ban the book, preferring this subject was not aired:
The tragedy for the Jews remains and cannot be shrugged off. Israel became a convenient way of moving ‘the Jewish problem’ away from countries who had not gone to their aid and should have prevented the horror which befell them. Now they are, justifiably, fighting with that truth which none can deny and which countries, such as Germany, have sworn to support Israel despite the apartheid of Palestinians.
But the plan to build Israel in the Middle East was symbolic of imposition of a European Jewish State within a region redrawn continually since 1915. The concept of Israel was used for perpetuating colonialism for the countries who supported it, creating a narrative of Jews returning to a homeland after thousands of years, repeating a story and planting the idea of a right to the land and subjugation of the Palestinians under an apartheid system.
26th May 2025: collective punishment of Palestinians through starvation as a weapon of war. They are the victims of history when the colonialist British and French drew borders which suited them, not the inhabitants. Now we have fervent Zionism hitting the innocents again and again.
A depiction of the British and French mandate areas in 1925. Brown represents British mandated territories while Syria and Lebanon are under French mandate. The map of this area of the world has changed constantly since the Sykes-Picot agreement was first signed in 1915, and may be in the process of changing again today (Gabriel / Flickr Creative Commons, 2007).
Nazeem Ahmed presents the history of Eugenics because this debunked concept has arisen as a weaponized tool to threaten the majority of the world’s population.
Even before the emergence of Nazism as a dominant political force in Germany, the United States and Britain were pioneers of eugenics ideology. Eugenics, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute, is the ‘scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations’. It is based on the assumption that human capabilities, including intelligence and social behaviours, are largely the outcome of genetic inheritance. In the early twentieth century, the eugenics-based ideas of ‘racial improvement’ and ‘planned breeding’ were commonplace. Eugenicists believed human beings could be perfected through social exclusion, segregation and involuntary sterilisation to eliminate unfit individuals and the social ills associated with them.2
Today, most of us assume that the ideologies underlying eugenics are obsolete. As scientific research has progressed, a robust scientific consensus has emerged concluding that eugenics and the ideas associated with it have no solid foundation. But the ideologies that exploded during the Second World War are far from dead. In fact, they remain astonishingly influential in ways that would have shocked those who fought to defeat the Nazis some 85 years ago. In recent years, they have experienced such a remarkable resurgence they now threaten the very fabric of our democracies. But to truly understand this, we need to go back to the beginning.
From book, ‘Alt Reich’
I have created a timeline of the roots of eugenics ‘research’ and propaganda, using the ‘Alt Reich’ book:
1910 Charles Davenport, a renowned Harvard eugenicist, founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO)
1914 An appointee by Davenport to the ERO, Hamilton Laughlin, published the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law designed ‘to prevent the procreation of … degenerate persons … with inferior hereditary potentialities’.
1920, the US Congress appointed Laughlin as its ‘expert eugenics agent’, in which capacity he testified about his research on ‘dysgenesis’ – or patterns of bad heredity – afflicting immigrants in jails and prisons.
1920, for instance, Laughlin corresponded with German eugenicist Erwin Baur, the lead author of Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene, a leading German text on genetics and eugenics that was read by Adolf Hitler during his 1924 incarceration. Later, Baur’s work would become a primary reference source for the authors of the Nazi racial laws.
Baur wrote to the ERO requesting information on American sterilisation practices that he could distribute to ‘his committee of eugenic advisers for the German Government’. Baur’s co-authors were also avid Nazis. Fritz Lenz, who held the first German University chair in race-hygiene at the University of Munich, corresponded regularly with Laughlin, as did the third co-author, Eugen Fischer, who created the ideological foundation for the Nuremberg racial laws prohibiting ‘Aryans’ from marrying Jews.5
1924 Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act in 1924 to block Jewish and Italian immigrants from entering the US.
Also 1924 Laughlin provided expert testimony leading to the US Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell decision endorsing compulsory sterilisation throughout the US of the ‘unfit’, including the ‘intellectually disabled … for the protection and health of the state’.4
1925 Hitler, impressed with the above, wrote Mein Kampf.
he condemned the automatic grant of citizenship to ‘every Jewish or Polish, African or Asiatic child’ born in Germany as ‘thoughtless’ and ‘hare-brained’. In contrast, he praised America for ‘simply excluding certain races from naturalisation’.
Later
1932, Laughlin corresponded with fellow eugenicist Madison Grant in discussions about the American ‘race’, which they defined as being of ‘Nordic’ origin. He wrote: ‘Whether we like it or not, a Jew must be assimilated or deported. The deportation of four million Jews would be many times more difficult than the repatriation of three times as many Negroes. The Jew is doubtless here to stay and the Nordics’ job is to prevent more of them from coming.’ Grant’s work on eugenics would be made use of extensively by policymakers in Nazi Germany.6 As American historian Edwin Black documented in his book War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, after the First World War American and German eugenicists were in close contact, often working together in international organisations.
The Germans borrowed much of their 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Defective Offspring from Laughlin’s model sterilisation law. In turn, leading American eugenicists took great inspiration from Nazi eugenics laws after 1933.
Today, these ideas seem fringe and bizarre. But in the 1930s, they were a respected lens through which many in Western societies viewed the world. That lens, however, far from being rejected, remains massively influential in surprising ways. One of its key promoters is an obscure American foundation with direct links to the Nazis.
In August 1935, New York textiles magnate Wickliffe Draper, an ardent eugenicist and one-time funder of the American Eugenics Society, travelled to Berlin to attend the International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems, chaired by Wilhelm Frick, Hitler’s Reich Minister of the Interior. Frick played a major role in the Nazis’ antisemitic measures, including the notorious Nuremberg Laws designed to protect German ‘purity of blood’ from Jewish ‘degeneracy’, and the euthanasia of institutionalised people, for which killing techniques were developed that were eventually used in the death camps. Frick would later become a convicted war criminal.
2 years later
In 1937, he established the Pioneer Fund in New York, primarily to support research into ‘race betterment’ through eugenics. He appointed Harry Laughlin as its president. Laughlin’s first project at the Pioneer Fund was to distribute two eugenicist Nazi propaganda films in the US. The Pioneer Fund’s antisemitism dovetailed with anti-black racism. That year, Draper secretly funded the publication of White America, a book by white supremacist and racial segregation advocate Earnest Sevier Cox. He arranged for a personal copy to be delivered to Nazi Cabinet minister Wilhelm Frick the following year. Cox’s book claimed that the ‘superior’ white race had been undermined by interbreeding with the ‘inferior’ race of the blacks. The only solution to the problems arising from people of different races living together was to deport blacks to Africa. At the time, American and German eugenicists firmly believed that their racist views of biology and humanity were about to become dominant. They were wrong. The military defeat of the Nazis decapitated the main supporter of eugenics within Europe. In the US, eugenics increasingly lost credibility in light of both new scientific research and widespread revulsion at Nazi atrocities. Yet this was not the end. On the contrary, it represented a twisted new beginning.
1939 Davenport contributed to the Festriche for Otto Reche, a Nazi party member who later would openly advocate for the genocide of ethnic Poles.
Update from a July 18th, 2025 piece from The Intercept which concerned opposition mischief meant to discredit Mamdani with Black voters:
The story was more remarkable for how it came to be: a hack of Columbia’s records, intended to show that the school was still pursuing race-based affirmative action admissions. The information was then fed to the Times reporters through Jordan Lasker, who has supported eugenics, to whom the Times granted anonymity and described merely as “an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race.”
borderslynn 
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