We are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. All areas of our lives have been permeated by technological interference. Agriculture, an inherently slow practice governed by nature’s cycles, has been particularly susceptible to technofixes – the use of technological solutions to address real or perceived problems. The most sought after technologies are those that promise to speed up those biological cycles and eliminate genetic variation for productivity and profit.

Here we look at technofixes specifically in the context of the UK dairy industry. The decline of this industry over the past 50 years has added to the pressure on farmers to incorporate dystopian technologies – that is, products which impose extreme levels of surveillance and control on living beings.

In this report, we set out the technological changes taking place in the industry and the corporate interests driving them, including:

• the intensification of livestock-rearing;
• the growth in the genetic uniformity of livestock, and moves towards gene edited plants and animals;
• total systems of tagging and tracking;
• the full automation of the milking process; and
• the use of technofixes to reduce the carbon footprint of the industry.

Despite some efforts to portray these technologies as beneficial to the animals, many in fact have severe implications for their welfare and freedom – as well as for our relationship with our food.

Dairy’s decline

The UK dairy industry is in trouble. People in the UK drink half the milk they did 50 years ago, and the image of the milkman delivering glass bottles to people’s houses is now largely a throwback to the past. Individuals are consuming smaller quantities of the white stuff, and growing numbers are abandoning it altogether.

Why? Changing tastes, the growth in alternatives, and rising disposable income are all to varying degrees likely to have influenced this shift.

However, the rise in veganism on environmental, animal rights or human health grounds has certainly been a factor in recent years. Besides concerns over significant land and water use, the meat and dairy industries continue to draw heavy criticism for their role in climate change – mainly through deforestation for animal feed crops and methane emissions from burping cows. Some scientists argue that avoiding meat and dairy is the “single biggest way” to reduce our impact on the planet.

Animal rights concerns range from the repeated impregnation of cows to produce milk, and the toll this takes on their bodies; the distress caused by the forced separation of mothers from their calves; the treatment of male calves, many of whom are shot at birth for economic reasons; and cows generally being treated as machines rather than sentient beings with their own desires. Finally, health concerns include the relationship between high levels of milk consumption and diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Meanwhile, the huge growth in alternatives has inevitably made ditching dairy more thinkable; a third of the UK population is now drinking plant-based milks – either alongside or instead of cow’s milk.

Another major blow has been Brexit, which has significantly worsened the outlook of the industry. Milk and cream sales to the EU were down a whopping 96% in the year 2020-21 – over twice that of the 40% overall decline in food and drink exports. Sales to the EU represented nearly 80% of the UK’s total pre-Brexit dairy export, and things are so bad that the government is planning a lump sum payment scheme of up to £100,000 for farmers wanting to exit the business.

In the context of this slow-burning crisis in reputation, demand and sales, many farmers have been turning to technological solutions.

The Rise of the Megadairies

Photo by Sebastien on Unsplash

Despite the declining market, there are still some 8,000 dairy producers in the UK. While the actual dairy cow population across the country has dropped by at least 28% since 1996, there has been a corresponding population concentration and an intensification in farming practices. The number of UK dairy farms with large herds has grown, while the number with small ones has shrunk. This is a pattern that is echoed across different livestock and cereals sectors. There has also been a “stealth rise” in the number of so-called megadairies – farms whose dairy herds number over 700 cows.

Yield has grown too: despite the fall in the overall number of cattle, farms have become more extractive, with quantities of milk produced per UK cow increasing 100% since 1975. This has been achieved through numerous technologies, the main being selective breeding and automation. Yet in an unending quest for productivity, these technologies are themselves undergoing major change.

Technofixes

From selective breeding to gene-edited animals?

Selective breeding has been one of the biggest factors behind this increase in milk production over the past few decades. Like all livestock today, the modern dairy cow is a very distant beast from her wild ancestors. Generations of human control over reproduction, particularly since the Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century, has ensured that cattle are produced with the most desirable traits for milk production – such as docile personalities and a high yield.

Selective breeding for particular traits using a very limited gene pool has resulted in extreme inbreeding. Virtually all the world’s Holsteins, a top dairy breed, descend from just two bulls bred in the 1960s. Due to the degree of inbreeding, although there are 9 million Holsteins in the US, their “effective population” stands at just 43. In the wild, animals with an effective population of less than 50 are classed as being at immediate risk of extinction. But this won’t happen to Holsteins, since the industry’s total control over their reproduction forces them to continually give birth.

In the UK, the rate of inbreeding has risen significantly since 1990. A 2004 study in the Journal of Dairy Science identified that between 96-98% of UK Holsteins were inbred to some degree, compared with around 50% in 1990. Yet there are clear limits to what this technofix can achieve: extreme selective breeding based on “productive” characteristics can in fact lead to lower productivity due to disorders and health problems.

Photo by Amber Kipp on Unsplash

If there wasn’t already enough interference in cows’ reproduction, a new and more disturbing development is on the horizon: gene editing (“GE”). This is a form of genetic modification which enables breeders to achieve traits not possible by simple artificial selection, for example, cattle that are faster growing, hornless, or disease resistant.

The use of Genetically Modified (“GM”) plants is tightly controlled in the UK and GM crops are not grown here commercially, though there have been trials. But that is largely a legacy of EU membership, and Brexit has shifted the goal posts. A European Court of Justice ruling had kept gene editing at bay on the continent by refusing to recognise a distinction between GE and genetic modification. Yet in the wake of Brexit, the government wasted absolutely no time in overturning existing protections, and in January 2021 it ran a “consultation” on whether gene editing should be treated more leniently.

Despite 88% of individual respondents supporting the continued regulation of gene editing as GM, the government announced regulatory changes on the practice just a few months later. It said it would “cut red tape and make research and development easier”. A “Precision Breeding” Bill is now going through parliament to provide a minimal regulatory framework for the research and commercial production of GE plants and animals. For the time being, this will allow scientists to carry out research on gene-edited crops in England with less red tape and expense. The government has also made it clear that in the longer term, there would be a “review of England’s approach to GMO regulation more broadly”.

According to Gideon Henderson, the chief scientific officer at DEFRA, engineered livestock will be next. Genetics companies such as Genus have been developing GE livestock for years, and powerful lobbyists such as the National Farmers’ Union are predictably pushing for its use. It doesn’t help that George Eustice – former UKIPer, best friend of the dairy industry, and current Agriculture and Environment Minister – is a strong advocate of the technology. The spin is already being spewed, with the government claiming that “gene editing has a vital role to play in helping address animal welfare concerns and reducing the carbon footprint of livestock production”.

Environmental groups emphasise the distinctive set of risks that gene editing carries to both the individual organism and the environment. For one, claims that it is a precise art have been strongly disputed. It can bring about unexpected mutations, and new or increased levels of toxins or allergens in plants. When US biotech start up Recombinetics used gene editing to produce hornless dairy calves, they also accidentally introduced genes from another species (bacteria which had been used to carry out the process), that conferred resistance to three antibiotics. It is feasible that these genes could transfer to disease-causing bacteria, rendering them resistant to antibiotics and potentially posing a risk to humans. The error was only picked up in checks by the US Food and Drug Administration, oversight which Recombinetics had vociferously resisted. And by that point the genetic trait is thought to have been passed down to the animals’ offspring, at least some of whom were subsequently culled. The project, initially heralded as a breakthrough for animal welfare with “no unwanted effects”, turned into a disaster.

Livestock genetics companies have catalogues featuring grotesquely oversized, specially-bred animals, such as the ones in these Semex magazines

Gene-edited hornless cattle are a clear example of how technofixes can be a means to profit from a “problem” that is itself manufactured by industry. In industrial agriculture, calves routinely have their horns removed with searing hot irons in a process known as “disbudding”. It’s an extremely painful and distressing procedure for the calf that can result in the animal losing consciousness. The rationale is to prevent cattle from injuring each other – and people – either during transportation or through their otherwise cramped and stressful conditions. GE hornless cattle are promoted as a solution to the hassle and pain of disbudding. But that “need” is entirely the product of a certain farming culture, and in many parts of the world farmers do not remove the animals’ horns at all.

Gene editing takes selective breeding to another level by allowing scientists to increasingly pick and choose specific genetic traits desired for mass reproduction. But as we’ve seen, artificial selection has resulted in dangerous levels of inbreeding. To paraphrase Friends of the Earth, whereas ecological resilience lies in species’ diversity, GMO science relies on predictability. Gene editing will only take us further down the disastrous path of uniformity with the added risks involved in manipulating DNA itself.

‘Robot-ready cows’

Over the course of the 20th century, hand milking was replaced by a combination of automated and manual processes. The total robotisation of the milking process has been growing since the 1990s, with 10% of UK dairy farms using fully-automated systems in 2019. In other Northern European countries, home to the leading suppliers of robotised milkers, the figure is double that.

It works like this: cows wear RFID chips, which allow them to be identified. Incentivised by the lure of food, they pass through checkpoints and either enter a single machine, or a stand in a large rotary unit. Robotic arms locate, sterilise, hose down and attach themselves to the cow’s udders. Sensors monitor the cow’s output, how much milk each teat gives, and whether there are any changes to the milk. After milking, the gate opens and the cow leaves.

Robotisation is claimed to increase yield and significantly decrease labour requirements. It is also presented as beneficial to animal welfare, since many systems rely on the cow entering the milking system ‘voluntarily’ to access food.

A rotary milking parlour. Image: dolgachov

Yet automation of the process is clearly not enough: the animals too must “evolve” along with the machines. Enter the “robot-ready cows”. These are cows specially bred by livestock genetics companies like Semex for traits best suited to being milked by a robot. Such traits include the “correct” udder shape and length to ensure a good fit with the machines, higher milking speeds, and pliable personalities. Animals who do not adapt well to this new conveyor belt regime are likely to be culled.

Why stop at extreme selective breeding and genetic modification? In the eyes of some agritech companies, hormonal cycles are fair game too. While injecting hormones to stimulate milk production is banned in the UK and EU on animal health grounds, some companies are using light to manipulate the animals’ natural cycles. The lighting reportedly influences their circadian rhythms to stimulate hormones and increase milk yield, as “the cows’ reproductive cycle must be tricked into resuming it earlier than is natural”. Kew LED and Dairy Light are two such companies in the UK marketing LED lighting in cattle sheds which can deliver “summer-light conditions all year-round”.

Sensors and shocks

Automated milking relies heavily on the use of sensors, truly the biggest fad today in animal agritech. Sensors are in the cowsheds, on the milking robots, in the fields, attached to the animals, and even in their guts. There’s now a plethora of startups competing to sell various forms of livestock surveillance gadgets, often promoted under the guise of animal welfare. From “facial recognition for cows” to bluetooth ear tags, these sensors monitor the animals’ movements, hormonal cycles, health and behaviour. Again, most of these factors are essential to achieving one key objective: a higher pregnancy rate. A sick cow is an unproductive cow.

Some startups have gone yet a step further: shock collars to control the movements of “free range” cattle. These are inevitably not marketed as such; instead they’re presented as a way of allowing livestock to graze in the fields and save on fencing costs. As the animal approaches the invisible boundaries determined by the farmer, the collar emits a sound. And if the cow doesn’t turn around, they receive an electric shock.

“Draw your virtual fence anywhere on your property, and your cattle are trained to remain within the virtual barrier”, says one supplier. The idea is that the area can easily be moved to cover fresh terrain by simply redrawing the map boundaries. Yet we can only guess at how much confusion this will cause the cows, as they tentatively navigate the edges of an entire perimeter in search of untouched pasture. This is to say nothing of the impact on their ability to run around as they would naturally. The lack of the usual visual clues could be disorientating for the animals, and as the RSPCA point out, some cows learn how to avoid the shocks far more quickly than others. A number never quite get to grips with how the system works, to their detriment and suffering.

Another danger of these technologies is that they’re invisible to people as well. The public will be unaware that free-range cattle in the fields may in fact be bombarded with sounds or electric shocks, and may object less to this practice than seeing farm hands with electric cattle prods.

A few taps on a farmers’ phone and automated feedlots can release more pellets, cows can be corralled, and udders can be hosed down from the comfort of the farmers’ living room. In many cases these things can happen entirely automatically, and the modern farmer need have very little real contact with the animals at all.

Will these gadgets have any beneficial impact on animal welfare as claimed? Automation will reduce contact with farmers, which can be stressful for the animals. But equally, being corralled and controlled by unseen machine systems such as virtual fence shock collars, is likely to be confusing and potentially even more distressing.

While some of the sensors also pick up on health problems, most issues detected will require human intervention. Given the severe impact of alienation on our relationship with nature (and each other), we have to wonder whether farmers who have less contact with their animals will have the same degree of care. Meanwhile, sensors will not be the magic bullet in disease detection. They can be unreliable and malfunction, while the growth in dependency on machines can potentially degrade the knowledge of farmers long-term.

Photo by MRC Témiscamingue on Unsplash

Low-emission cows?

Double-speak is rife on Dystopian Farm: from shock collars sold as necklaces of freedom and sensors merely monitoring the animals’ health, to ‘low-emission’ cows. Indeed, the environmental impact of the dairy industry is one more issue that technofixes claim to be able to reckon with.

Of all livestock, cattle produce the highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions by far (62% of the total emissions from livestock farming). Methane is over than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. While some people are opting to cut dairy and beef altogether, many scientists are developing technofixes to prop-up the industry. Zelp (Zero Emissions Livestock Project), a startup launched at the Royal College of Art, has developed cattle masks which convert methane to CO2. Cargill, agribusiness giant and animal feed provider linked to massive Amazon deforestation, will be the exclusive distributor of this “green” technology in Europe. Other solutions being explored in the UK include breeding cows or gene editing their food crops so that they burp less; while technologies currently being developed abroad include using gene editing to remove the predisposition towards certain gut bacteria, and even developing vaccines against their natural gut microbes.

Yet as Friends of the Earth point out, gut flora is essential to animals’ immune systems, and interference may have serious health implications. Rather than invest in education to influence food production systems and more ethical dietary choices, many researchers are choosing to put their money into the continued manipulation and exploitation of animals’ bodies. For some, the devasting impact of animal agriculture is merely another business opportunity. They know full well that despite the growth in veganism, meat and dairy consumers are still in the distinct majority, and it’s more profitable to sustain these industries – even through extreme technologies – than it is to invest in education and alternatives.

Conclusion

By monitoring and controlling their movement, their environment, their production and reproduction, their physical traits and even their personalities, corporations have attained truly totalitarian control over livestock.

Many of these technologies are no doubt effective in achieving their narrow, short-term objectives of increasing yield and profit. There is after all no shortage of eager entrepreuneurs – nor for that matter, venture capitalists willing to throw money at them.

But whether we actually want this dystopian picture is an altogether different question. Dominating nature begets problems, both for animal and human health. Milk production, circadian rhythms and genetic variation all exist for very important reasons, none of which relate to corporate profit. The full dangers of interference with these natural processes are still unknown to us, but the documented impact of extreme selective breeding on animal health and the tale of the gene-edited cattle should spell alarm.

Ditching meat and dairy, consuming local produce, working with nature’s cycles, supporting small-scale farming; many solutions to meet our food demand such as permaculture are slower, low tech, and won’t produce big bucks for start ups and their investors. But they’re often healthier, lower impact, and far more ethical. And crucially, they’re also within people’s reach, offering possibilities for autonomy from multinationals and their machines.

What can we do?

If you’re disturbed by many of the developments discussed in the article, there are things you can do. Go vegan, subscribe to a locally-grown veg box scheme, and participate in seed swaps to preserve genetic diversity. Get active in campaigns against animal abuse and GM. And participate in this year’s Earth First! summer gathering to learn more about active campaigns for environmental justice and animal rights, skill up, and get involved.

Corn in Mexico, where small-scale farmers are keeping the genetic diversity of the crop alive. Photo by ALAN DE LA CRUZ on Unsplash

The post Dystopian Farm: the UK dairy industry & its technofixes appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Tech: A guide to the politics and philosophy of technology by Corporate Watch
– book review by John de Plume

In ways that are not always immediately obvious, technology has come to be a defining feature of life today and indeed has begun to define the possible forms our future may or may not take. Corporate Watch’s Tech is an essential introduction to the topic, exploring a range of critiques and debates around technology, its dangers, and, nonetheless, its emancipatory potential.

2021’s proposed ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill’ has been met across the county with mass mobilisations committed to ‘kill the bill’ and its draconian capacities. Anger towards the bill concerns its authoritarian character, which reveals the authoritarian tendency lurking inherent within Tory governmental ideology and neoliberal statecraft generally. But this authoritarian drift could never be realised through the police baton or the judge’s hammer alone; it is necessarily a high-tech issue too. Be it through the cameras everywhere in our streets or those that are worn on the jackets of the police, or through the data we willingly sign away to the algorithms and AI of Facebook, Google, et al, the so-called UK is already among the most technologically surveilled places on the planet. Today, a drift towards a real authoritarianism is made possible by and remains contingent on the development of technological apparatuses by big-tech corporations. These corporations, in turn, have themselves, famously, concentrated more wealth than has ever before been achieved in human history.

When today the forces of production are so well developed and the microelectronics revolution might offer so much in terms of automation of labour, how, we still ask, can it be that there exists a global crisis of wealth distribution with human need remaining so often unmet? As we are seeing so often, it is tech created in the interests of the market that has facilitated simultaneously the corporate concentration of hyper-wealth and, equally, the state toolkit necessary to defend that wealth from an ever-increasing mass of dispossessed surplus populations. As we move closer towards environmental catastrophe, moreover, the irrational impasse of this situation becomes evermore urgent. Addressing the issues around technology in view of real struggle today, then, is what makes the guidance and overview found in Corporate Watch’s Tech so useful.

The question of who it is that creates tech – in whose interests and for what purpose – is central throughout the analysis in Tech. Quite blatantly, technology does not exist in the world without application and, under the logic of the market, it is the pursuit of profit that governs its creation. However, ‘The dominant view presented in society’, as Corporate Watch note, ‘is that technology is apolitical and inevitable, that it represents human progress and makes our lives easier, more fulfilling, or just ‘better” (page 12). Tech represents an intervention into this dominant view, addressing the dynamics between technological production and its socio-political applications and consequence. Of particular concern is the environmental cost of tech production and its unsustainability; as is examining currently existing and future potential, alternative approaches to tech that might redeploy technological advancement in the direct interests of human need. Possibilities for open source and DIY design and utilisation of tech are explored, as are questions of how an environmentalist engagement with tech might supercede the individualist and anthropocentric world-views inherent to tech creation under the logic of the market.

Accordingly, the book collates varied analyses and critiques from such sources as Bookchin and Marx on the social dominance and application of tech; Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto and her feminist cybernetics; Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory; postcapitalist formations of tech from communisation journal Endnotes, and speculative thinkers exploring the future imaginary of technology such as sc-fi writers Ursula le Guin or Philip K Dick. In laying out such ideas and discussions and in mapping the reality of the situation today, Corporate Watch address the immediate necessity for us to respond to these questions now and to take concrete action. They observe, ‘if the digital world is regarded as another terrain of struggle and effective strategies adopted, it could shift the balance of power towards those who seek liberatory change rather than those seeking to control and exploit’ (page 100). Deliberately avoiding obfuscating language and presentation, Corporate Watch’s publications are always clear and concise, working to illuminate the problematics of contemporary life in such a way as to make participation in the debate accessible and to provide resource for action and radical change.

Participation in struggle has never been more urgent. Today, from the ways in which we conduct our social lives online, to the ways in which we are surveilled and policed, from the methods by which high-tech capitalist extractivism ravages the environment and which automated capitalist exploitation diminishes our working conditions, technology has become fundamental to neoliberal hegemony, and to its emerging authoritarian drift. ‘We are’, as Corporate Watch observe, ‘at a unique moment in human history – an ecological precipice, perhaps a social tipping point’ (page 12). We ignore this and the expanding corporate, state and technological nexus at our peril.

Tech: A guide to the politics and philosophy of technology is available now from Corporate Watch. Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism. Alongside Tech, there is an extensive back catalogue of Corporate Watch’s previous publications available here.

The post Tech Book Review appeared first on Corporate Watch.

But how does it function?

How does it affect us?

Who does it serve?

Can it support radical social change towards free and equal societies living in harmony with nature?

Are humans fated to wind up as pets for hyper-intelligent robot hamsters?

These are -mainly- important questions. However, the dominant view is that technology is apolitical and inevitable, that it represents human progress, making our lives easier, more fulfilling, or just ‘better’. Let’s dig a little deeper.

We are at a unique moment in human history – an ecological precipice, perhaps a social tipping point. Whatever path we take, unravelling technology and the dilemmas it presents will give us a clearer view of the horizon ahead of us.

This book is a brief introduction to the politics and philosophy of technology – a simple guide to how interacts with society and the world around us. We hope you find it useful.

“Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade.” Donna J. Haraway

Click here to download a copy for free

Click here to read it online

Click here to buy a hard copy

The post Out Now: TECH, our new book on technology appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Corporate Watch will soon publish a new book: ‘TECH: A Guide to the Politics and Philosophy of Technology’, continuing our long standing focus on technology.

For as long as Corporate Watch has been around we have worked on technology related issues. Back in the ’90s we supported the anti-Genetic Modification movement which had huge successes in opposing corporate controlled genetically modified organisms (GMOs) being forced on an uninformed and unwilling public.

Since then we have continued to report on, and investigate, corporate controlled technologies and their social and environmental impacts. To give just a few examples:

In 2007, we produced investigations into nanotechnologies and nuclear energy.

We published a groundbreaking report in 2008, ‘Technofixes: a critical guide to climate change technologies‘, assessing various proposed technological ‘solutions’ to climate change, as well as critiquing the ‘technofix’ mentality.

In 2013, we documented how Israeli drone technologies used in on attacks on Gaza had affected the people that live there.

We compiled a critical summary of fracking and the technologies used to extract other unconventional fossil fuel such as tar sands in 2014.

In all of this work a common theme of destructive corporate controlled technology rears its ugly head.

But looking a little deeper, what is behind the dominant attitudes towards technology and the role it plays in society? How does it reflect understandings of, and relationships with, the natural world? How does all of this relate to capitalism and the state?

Our soon to be published book ‘TECH’ tackles these questions head on, tying together the technological threads that run across the various campaigns and struggles we have supported over our history. Avoiding the academic style common to writing on the subject, it presents an accessible summary of critical thinking on technology. It looks at the relationships between technology, nature and society, and considers how technological relationships might be shaped in future.

We are at a unique moment in human history – an ecological precipice, perhaps a social tipping point. Whatever path we take, unravelling technology and the dilemmas it presents will give us a clearer view of the horizon ahead of us.

To find out when ‘TECH’ is available and keep informed of what Corporate Watch is working on, click here to sign up to our newsletter.

To receive a copy of the book as soon as it is published, click here to become a ‘Friend of Corporate Watch’ by making a regular donation.

The post Coming Soon: Corporate Watch Guide to Technology appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Check Point Software Technologies sells internet security products across the world, including to public institutions such as the UK’s National Health Service. Israel’s fourth largest company, it is closely intertwined with the Israeli military and security services. Several of Check Point’s directors worked in cyber-intelligence for the Israeli military before starting careers in the private sector. The company works in partnership with some of Israel’s biggest arms companies, including drone manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

Like other parts of Israel’s hi-tech sector, such as the companies making a profit out of Israel’s drone industry, Check Point profits from the incubator provided by the Israeli state’s repression of Palestinians. The security forces that trained its directors are complicit in the mass imprisonment and assassination of those resisting colonisation.

This profile is written in solidarity with the Palestinian movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israeli companies. The BDS movement calls for a boycott of Israeli companies, goods and products, and for international companies, funds and institutions to divest from and stop partnering with Israeli companies.

Company overview

Check Point is a massive Israeli IT security company with global reach. Established in Israel in 1993, the company provides “cyber security solutions” to both corporations and governments, describing itself as a “worldwide leader in securing the internet.” Check Point is known around the world for its firewall and VPN products.

Its global headquarters is located in Tel Aviv, with a US headquarters is in San Carlos, California. According to the Forbes business website, it is the fourth largest company in Israel (calculated in terms of revenue, net profits, total assets and market capitalisation). Its shares are traded publicly on the NASDAQ stock exchange in the US.

Check Point was one of many Israeli companies – including weapons manufacturing giant Elbit Systems – which saw its shares soar when Donald Trump came into power, as the company is expected to benefit from lucrative high-tech contracts connected to Trump’s militarist and pro-Israel policies

Check Point’s revenue reached $1.9 billion in 2018, and the company continues to grow: in recent years, it has completed a number of acquisitions of smaller businesses. In 2018, Check Point employed 2231 people in Israel, 1206 in the US, and 1633 in the rest of the world, making a total of 5070 employees.

Check Point paid $1.5 million in taxes on income to the Israeli government in 2018. At least some of that tax revenue will go towards propping up Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The company is regularly in the news as a result of its press releases reporting various cyber attacks and for flagging up the vulnerabilities of popular apps, such as WhatsApp. It is not often reported that this security advice is being given by an Israeli company that has gained its experience through its closeness to Israel’s cyber intelligence agencies.

Who are its customers?

Most of Check Point’s customers are big corporations and governments, including a US state agency. In 2013, US business website Fast Company reported that:

“Check Point boasts that 100% of Fortune 100 firms and 98% of the Fortune 500 use their product. Government tenders are also a massive source of lucre for Check Point. This past month, Bloomberg’s Leslie Picker reported that up to 10% of Check Point’s North American profits come from the public sector. Ongoing federal government cybersecurity initiatives require federal agencies to obtain large-scale security contracts–and Check Point reportedly gets many of these.”

While the US is a major market for Check Point, the company is also active across Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Contracts with the public sector

Check Point markets its products to the public sector in the UK and other countries. Organisations using the company include at least one local council, a museum, as well as several universities and hospitals. For example, Denbighshire County Council in Wales chooses to use Check Point for its IT security. In recent years the company has been selling its security products to smaller businesses.

Britain’s National Health Service has provided 6,800 members of staff with Check Point SandBlast mobile phones. According to Check Point, “this technology safeguards mobile workers’ devices for NHS England.”

Check Point’s Directors

Gil Shwed is the co-founder and CEO of Check Point. He is Israel’s eighth richest billionaire, reportedly worth $4.7 billion. In 2018, Shwed won the Israel Prize, an award given out by the State of Israel. Education Minister Naftali Bennett announced Shwed as the winner, saying: “He paved the way and was an inspiration for me and thousands of Israeli high-tech entrepreneurs.”

Shwed and other top Check Point directors have strong ties to Israel’s military – the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). In particular, several have backgrounds in elite military intelligence units.

During his military service, Shwed served in the Israeli military’s Intelligence Unit 8200, which has similar functions to the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. Both Intelligence Unit 8200 and the NSA are involved in cyber intelligence, in spying on on the population through the mass-collection of electronic data.

Dorit Dor is the Vice-President of Products at Check Point. She is listed as one of Forbes Israel’s most powerful women of 2019. Not just an enlisted soldier, Dor was a career cyber-spy spending eight years in the IDF. Like Shwed, Dor served in its Intelligence Unit 8200. She won the Israel Defense Prize in 1993. The award is presented by the President of Israel to those who, in the state’s eyes, make significant contributions to the defence of the state of Israel.

Marius Nacht also co-founded the company, and is currently Chairman of the Board. He has a net worth of $1.5 billion. He spent eight years in the Israeli Air Force, and was a graduate of the ‘Talpiot Program’, supposedly the IDF’s “most elite unit”. Talpiot accepts a small number of cadets every year, who are required to enlist for ten years and are taught advanced physics, mathematics and computer science, in order to develop technology and counter-intelligence programmes.

The Times of Israel describes Talpiot soldiers as having had “an impact on every weapon and communications system used by the IDF and every tool used by Israel’s intelligence community.” According to a book about the unit, Talpiots have “developed battle-ready weapons that only Israel’s top military officers and political leaders know about. They have also dramatically improved much of the weapons already in Israel’s arsenal.”

The cyber industry & its relationship with the Israeli government

The Israeli state’s regulatory system ensures that there is much collaboration between the government and private cyber companies like Check Point. In 1974, the Israeli government’s Ministry of Defense introduced encryption-control licensing legislation. Journalists Matthew Waxman and Doron Hindin explain what this means in practice:

“Israeli authorities are apprised of the latest encryption and cyber developments and position the government to engage effectively with the private sector when national security risks are identified.”

The Prime Minister’s department, the Israel National Cyber Directorate, also has the goal of “investing dedicated resources” in the cyber industry. The department “enhances the cooperation and synergy between the private sector, the government and international partners.” Check Point’s Gil Shwed regularly speaks at events which also host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, as well as the Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate.

On top of this, most business people in Israel’s lucrative cyber industry have been trained in certain IDF units. As outlined above, Check Point’s Shwed and Dor served in Unit 8200, while Nacht served in the most elite unit of all. Waxman and Hindin say:

“Many high-tech innovators began their careers in Israeli military intelligence, and they continue to support former units as reservists. Israel’s small population and mandatory conscription policy further supports the reciprocal relationship between Israeli civilian business and its defense establishment. The Israel Defense Forces are also known to actively support their veterans’ economic success following discharge.”

Check Point and the Israeli arms industry

In 2016, Check Point teamed up with Israeli arms company, Israel Aerospace Industries, to form a consortium called IC3. Israeli Aerospace Industries is one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers, and its Heron drones have been used to terrorise people in Gaza. The company boasts that its weapons are “combat proven.” To read our report on IAI, click here.

The consortium, IC3, was established by the Israeli government’s Ministry of Economy, and was set up to “address technological-cyber needs at a national and governmental level.” The IC3 “offers end-to-end solutions for national cyber systems.” One key job that the IC3 has is to work with the government of Japan, preparing for the 2020 Olympics.

In November 2018, Check Point launched another consortium, IAC3, along with the Israeli government’s Economy Ministry, IAI and other companies. IAC3’s statement said that the consortium had been set up “to offer comprehensive, end-to-end cybersecurity solutions for the commercial aviation industry: airports, airlines and aircraft.”

Check Point’s close relationship with Tel Aviv University

Through the Checkpoint Institute for Information Security (CIIS), the company supports research into cyber security. It gives stipends to graduate students, provides post doctoral research fellowships, organises workshops and funds research projects.

CIIS is based at Tel Aviv University School of Computer Science, and Check Point has even provided a brand new building for the faculty.

The Palestinian BDS Movement has called for a boycott of Tel Aviv University. The BDS National Committee states that:

“For decades, Israeli universities have played a key role in planning, implementing and justifying Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies, while maintaining a uniquely close relationship with the Israeli military.

Tel Aviv University has developed tens of weapon systems. The university’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), boasts of having developed the “Dahiya doctrine” which advocates the use of disproportionate force by the Israeli military against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Check Point’s Gil Shwed is a Tel Aviv University governor, and founded the CIIS. He is also on the board of trustees of the Tel Aviv University’s youth university.

UK universities investing in Check Point

A number of UK universities invest in Check Point, according to information obtained through Freedom of Information requests[1] these include:

• University of Aberdeen
• University of Bradford
• Imperial College London
• London School of Economics
• Royal Academy of Music
• Buckinghamshire New University

By investing in Israeli companies, these universities are supporting Israel’s continuing violations of human rights. Students across the UK are continually taking action at their universities to try to force the institutions to divest from the Israeli occupation.

The threat of BDS

Check Point admits in its 2018 annual report that the BDS movement is a threat to its business. The company states that:

“There have been increased efforts by activists to cause companies and consumers to boycott Israeli goods based on Israeli government policies. Such actions, particularly if they become more widespread, may adversely impact our ability to sell our products.”

Check Point is particularly vulnerable to boycott because its products are widely used by businesses and public service providers in the UK and other countries. For example, in the UK, BDS campaigns could:

• Call on the NHS not to sign any contracts or buy any products from Check Point in the future.
• Call on universities, local councils, hospitals and public institutions using Check Point’s technology not to renew any contracts or buy any products from Check Point in the future. (See here for a number of organisations which use Check Point technology.)
• Call on universities to end their investments in Check Point.
• Check Point gives cyber security training courses in authorised training centres all over the world. Campaigners could pressure the company’s training centre partners and urge them to stop providing Check Point courses. (For a list of training centres, see here.)

Subsidiaries

ZoneAlarm, SofaWare

Partners

Check Point has a number of partners, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. To see the full list, click here.

Addresses

Check Point’s headquarters can be found at:

5 Shlomo Kaplan Street, Tel Aviv, 6789159, Israel;

959 Skyway Road Suite 300, San Carlos, CA 94070, United States

In North America, Check Point has offices in 19 US states and in Ontario, Canada.

It has an international presence in almost 40 other countries across Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand.

Check Point’s London office can be found at:

Check Point Software Technologies (UK) Ltd
9th Floor, Moor Place
1 Fore Street
London EC2Y 5EJ

ukinfo@checkpoint.com
Tel: +44 (0) 203 608 7492

Check Point’s UK website, Check Point Direct, is delivered by its UK-based partner, NetThreat Limited. NetThreat can be found at Minerva Mill, Station Road, Alcester, B49 5ET.

Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson are part of Shoal Collective, and co-edit the Corporate Occupation website

Footnotes

[1] This data is based on responses to a series of Freedom of Information requests to UK universities made by Palestine Solidarity campaigners

The post Check Point Software: Ex-Israeli military spooks profiting from the cyber-security industry appeared first on Corporate Watch.

The idea of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has a lot of support, particularly from those in the fossil fuel industry and governments seeking a quick fix for decarbonising their economies. The Paris Agreement, the latest attempt to tackle climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, relies on it heavily. However, there are problems. CCS has proven extremely difficult to implement at any scale. And more fundamentally, the promise of using a technological solution – a ‘technofix’ – to solve the environment’s problems, serves to postpone the radical societal and economic changes necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet like a zombie, the idea of CCS refuses to die.

CCS in the UK

Carbon Capture and Storage is the process of capturing carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels in power stations, and other industrial processes, and burying it underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. It is proposed as a technological solution to climate change, allowing the continued use of fossil fuels while preventing the waste emissions from warming the planet. CCS is also, less commonly, used to describe technologies which remove (or ‘scrub’) carbon dioxide directly from ambient air.

There have been several attempts to establish CCS projects in the UK. The latest involves Drax power station in Yorkshire, which currently burns coal and biomass (in the form of wood pellets), and is planning to replace coal with gas.

The previous CCS competition for a £1 billion contract was scrapped in 2015 after the Treasury pulled its pledged funding, with the then-chancellor George Osborne saying it was too costly. It was the second attempt by government to launch CCS in UK. A first competition to kick-start CCS was cancelled in 2011 when Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and National Grid, withdrew from the project at Longanet power station in Scotland, saying £1billion wasn’t sufficient subsidy to make it viable. The government had already spent £68m on the scheme.

At the time it was cancelled, the second competition had two preferred bidders: the White Rose consortium in North Yorkshire, which planned to build a new coal plant with the technology (see our previous article), and Shell’s scheme in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, to fit CCS to an existing gas plant operated by SSE. Estimated costs to consumers rocketed to £8.9bn and, after £100 million of government spending, the project was deemed to no longer be cost effective.

Despite no existing demonstrations of the technology actually working at scale, the government and industry remain hopeful that a new CCS project could be viable. So the zombie lives on, and in October last year the government announced its approach to newly-named carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) in the Clean Growth Strategy. The name itself should set off alarm bells, another example of the continuing inability of governments to accept the fundamental contradiction between economic growth and environmental sustainability.

As part of the strategy, in May 2018 it was revealed that Drax would lead a £400k trial to remove CO2 from one of its four biomass burning units, in partnership with University of Leeds spin-off company C-Capture. Ostensibly, the trial is intended to demonstrate the viability of so called BECCS technology (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage), which is supposed to act as a Negative Emission Technology (NET – a generic name for technologies designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere). In November 2018, the government also announced a new £20m dedicated fund to help build carbon capture equipment at industrial sites, such as chemicals plants and oil refineries, on top of an existing £100m pot.

A more sceptical, but realistic, interpretation of the Drax trial is that is allows the power station to go on burning highly unsustainable wood pellets, partially sourced from clearcut biodiverse forests in the southern US, while giving the impression that it is going ‘green’. The original move to biomass itself was simply an attempt to stay in business. Forced to accept the non-viability of coal burning (coal power generation is set to be phased out in the UK by 2025 to meet air quality standards), the company moved to biomass, the most lucrative alternative. Drax currently enjoys almost £2m a day in subsidies to burn biomass, paid for by surcharges to energy bills.

Large scale energy generation from biomass is, however, utterly unsustainable and adding CCS to it will do little to change that. In a previous article for Corporate Watch, Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch explained why, due to a fundamental error in it’s representation of the carbon cycle, BECCS could never work, but also why such ‘sci fi’ climate solutions are so prevalent and so dangerous. Even if these kind of solutions have no realistic possibility of being viable, they allow politicians and businesses to give the impression that they are committed to reducing emissions and have strategies to do so. Thus, like the walking dead, new publicly subsidised demonstration projects continue to pop up as others die off.

Technology, Capitalism and Nature

New technologies may be important parts of the process of decarbonisation. But they must complement rather than replace the fundamental changes required to our economies and societies. The enthusiasm for CCS from the governments and institutions around the world is indicative of a much wider problem around technological narratives.

We live in a capitalist world, and technology’s role in our societies is heavily influenced by the thinking and values that come from that. Nature is viewed as something to be controlled and dominated, with technology providing the tools to do this. And while capitalism continues to define the world’s economies, technofixes such as CCS will continue to be supported by those in power.

Corporate Watch’s technofix report, produced in 2008, explains the enduring appeal of technical solutions to social and politically driven ecological problems. It describes how fixating on technologies as solutions ignores the underlying causes of climate change and other ecological crises, treating each of them as separate unrelated issues. It also has a tendency to concentrate power or exacerbate existing inequalities. In order to evaluate the usefulness and appropriateness of technologies we need to ask vital questions such as: Who owns the technology? Who gains from the technology? Who loses? How sustainable is the technology? How likely is the technology to be developed, and when?

If we are to avoid the worst, catastrophic, impacts of climate change and ecological collapse we need to view human societies as being part our wider natural environment, not above of separate from it. Until this existential relationship is resolved technofixes such as CCS and BECCS will only deepen the ecological hole we are digging ourselves. Our relationship with nature may sound like an abstract philosophical issue, but it is precisely these kinds of questions that we must collectively answer.

And it’s not as if we are starting from scratch. While they are diverse and not to be idealised, many indigenous cultures have a radically different view of nature from that currently dominating western thought.

The relationship between nature and capitalism was explored further in our A-Z of green capitalism, published in 2016. It provides an introduction to the ideas surrounding green capitalism, as well as the alternatives to it, and explains why, despite its impossibility, the ‘greening’ of capitalism continues to be promoted as a solution to environmental problems.

Of course bringing about a fundamental change in our relationship with nature requires a radical transformation in how our societies are structured and in our attitudes and behaviours. But it also represents an unique opportunity to shift the direction we are moving in, to make a fairer, freer world where humans live in a more harmonious relationship with the rest of life on our planet. The depth and scale of change required is huge, but we have no other option. When it comes to these issues, radicalism is pragmatism. Climate change is only one of a host of interlinked global ecological crises: biodiversity loss, soil degradation, deforestation, and chemical pollutants all also pose grave threats. Relying on unproven technologies such as CCS to address only one of these problems in isolation is a dangerous distraction from the more profound changes required.

We need systemic change, not an endless horde of zombie technofixes.

Corporate Watch is currently working on a project on technology, if you’d like to know more or want to get involved please email contact[at]corporatewatch.org

The post The Zombie Technofix appeared first on Corporate Watch.

As part of Not the Anarchist Bookfair in London, Corporate Watch along with Uneven Earth and Plan C London organised a discussion on technology, ecology and future worlds. The event, named Techno Fantasies and Eco Realities, was attended by about 20 people and included some wide ranging and at times lively discussion around the role of technology and ecology in future worlds. In particular it focused on how we can free our imaginations from the grip of capitalist realism (the idea that capitalism is the only option for organising society), picturing possible future worlds and the role that technology will play in them, while keeping our imagined worlds grounded in social and ecological realities. For example, not forgetting that we are living on a planet with limited natural resources or that we have to consider how to make these imagined futures real.

Participants were invited to read three short pieces ahead of the discussion:

“Fully Automated Green Communism” by Aaron Bastani, “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows” by Aaron Vansintjan and “Pulling the Magic Lever”, by Rut Elliot Blomqvist.

Although initially a tongue in cheek provocation, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) has morphed into a serious proposition of how technology and automation could be used to provide for everyone’s needs and free people from the drudgery of wage labour. Bastani’s piece attempts to counter some of the ecological critiques of the idea, arguing that FALC can be green. Instead of trying to halt the progress of technological development, and reduce energy consumption, Aaron argues that we should ride the technological horse to move beyond scarcity, proposing a kind of accelerationism where technology is rapidly advanced in order to bring about radical social change.

In “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows”, Aaron Vansintjan looks at accelerationist ideas like FALC and compares them to ‘degrowth’, evaluating the similarities and differences between the two frameworks. Degrowth is a movement that has emerged from environmentalism and alternative economics and is focused on theorising and creating non-growth based economies and societies.

Although accelerationism and degrowth are apparently opposed, Vansinjtan finds some shared ideas, including their recognition of the need for deep, systemic change, their calls for democratisation of technology and their rejection of ‘work’ (or at least the idea that work is inherently good). The key differences centre around accelerationism’s focus on reappropriating technology to achieve a resource-unlimited society, versus degrowth’s aim of limiting the development of certain forms of technology and staying within resource constraints. Degrowth also seeks to slow the metabolism of society, whereas accelerationism aims to increase the pace of social change. Ultimately, while supportive of accelerationism’s inspiring vision, Vansinjtan finds it seriously lacking in dealing with ecological critiques.

Rut Elliot Blomqvist examines three different visions of possible future worlds and the role that technology plays in them. ‘Pulling the Magic Lever’ is a reference to how technology is used to answer social or ecological problems without explaining how it will do so: you simply ‘pull the magic lever’ of technology and hey presto, it’s all solved. It’s a running theme in all three of the imagined futures Blomqvist chooses to analyse. The first is in The World We Made, a novel by environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, then The Venus Project, a technology based political proposition, and finally Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In their analysis, Blomqvist uses a World Systems Theory approach to evaluate the ideas, critiquing the story of modernisation by framing it around colonialism.

The World We Made is based on Design Fiction, where fiction inspires possibilities of new designs. It sees the human species in general as the villain responsible for destroying the environment. In the novel’s fantasy scenario, however, humans manage to turn things around and start to use technology and various existing world institutions for the common good. As Elliot points out, this book flags up an important discussion around the idea of the ‘anthropocene’ (a proposed name for a new human-affected geological epoch), which may support the view that the human species in general is the problem, rather than certain humans or, say, a capitalist growth-based economy. They also describe the book’s tendency towards technological optimism: it presents technology as providing the answers, without explaining how, and ignores the socio-cultural-political reasons for current ecological destruction.

The Venus Project is found to be even further along the techno-optimist spectrum and again ignores how its proposed technological utopia might be brought into existence. As well as highlighting its fetishisation of the scientific process, Elliot explains how The Venus Project often engenders conspiracy theories, a number of which are dangerously close to anti-Semitism.

Continuing the trend, FALC is found to involve similar techno-utopianism, where the working classes seize the means of production and use automation to create a world of plenty. Elliot points to a blind spot, as FALC doesn’t consider the limits of post-industrialism beyond the western world. Elliot describes how all three rely heavily on ‘pulling the magic lever’. While they show imagination, they are limited by the fossil-fuelled mentality they seek to criticise.

In our discussion at Not the Anarchist Bookfair, we asked participants to discuss two questions:

• What role does technology play in our ecologically sustainable future, and how do we get there?

and

• How can we move beyond the techno-optimist versus primitivist dichotomy? (I.e. beyond  viewing technology as either the solution to or source of all our problems).

The questions were discussed in pairs, in small groups and then with everyone participating, and led to a broad discussion of the various themes raised. Some key points that came out included:

• The importance of considering the social power necessary to make futures, and how human agency is often missing in visions of techno utopias.
• The need to change who makes technology, how it is produced and the inherent politics of technologies.
• The need to highlight and develop technology’s potential within the ecological movement, including within degrowth discussions.
• The need to positively promote ecological future visions, and how to counter environmentalism’s ‘hair shirt’ image.
• Considering whether we should assume that technologies will inevitably be developed, and so ride the tech bandwagon, or try to intervene and prevent or hinder certain developments.
• Thinking about if/how we can change the basis on which automation takes places and is implemented. E.g. is non-capitalist automation possible, and if so, how could it be made non-capitalist?
• Thinking about ways of bringing ecological and technologically based visions of the future back together.

A number of participants were keen to continue discussions and we are considering further forums to hold related future discussions. Corporate Watch is currently working on a technology project, if you are interested in knowing more or collaborating on future work, please email contact@corporatewatch.org. To get involved with discussions as part of the Plan C Climate cluster contact london@weareplanc.org

(this article was also published on the Plan C blog, here, and Uneven Earth, here)

The post Techno-Fantasies and Eco-Realities appeared first on Corporate Watch.

It’s usually impossible to pin responsibility for the actions of a multinational on a single individual. CEOs come and go, shareholders rarely own a majority stake, and so on. But Zuckerburg is Facebook founder, CEO and he holds all the shares that matter. So if you’ve got a problem with Facebook – or Instagram and Whatsapp – you know who to blame.

The post Zuckerburg tightens his grip appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Now, we don’t need to get too excited by that trillion figure. That’s what stock market punters reckon it’s worth, and they’re prone to make mistakes.

But whichever way you look at it, Amazon is massive, with over half a million employees and revenues close to $200 billion. It dominates online shopping. Its various and increasingly creepy devices now sit in many of our homes, listening to, and possibly recording, our lives. It has bought businesses such as Wholefoods and Kiva Systems, whose robots have displaced humans doing some of the picking and packing of goods in Amazon warehouses. Even more lucrative is Amazon Web Services, which provides cloud computing to a host of corporations including Kellogg’s, Vodafone and even Amazon Prime-rival Netflix.

Also in the news this week was yet another story about how badly Amazon treats its workers. A Staffordshire warehouse employee told the BBC the company doesn’t give enough time for her and her colleagues to take toilet breaks – so they don’t drink as much water as they need.

There is a long, long list of such stories: exploitation is at the core of the business model. Over the last summer the company’s attitudes have provoked workers to go on strike in Poland, Germany, Italy and Spain (where they were met with riot police).

Blame for the company’s actions usually starts and ends with Jeff Bezos. Bernie Sanders’ current campaign against the company in the US is very much focused on him, for example.

It’s easy to see why. He founded Amazon. He is the CEO and chairman. The company’s history is intertwined with his own. As such their relationship is usually seen as comparable with those of Mark Zuckerburg with Facebook, or Sergei Brin and Larry Page with Google.

But Facebook and Google are controlled by their founders to a far greater degree than Amazon. Zuckerburg, Brin and Page have final say over the direction their companies through the amount of shares they own.*

Bezos doesn’t. He owns just 16% of Amazon. That still makes him the richest person in the world, so it’s not exactly negligible. But shareholders have the power to dictate the direction a company takes, and he doesn’t have close to a majority of shares.

A list of the company’s major shareholders after Bezos reveals the same massive investment funds – Blackrock, Fidelity and so on – that own chunks of most other big corporations. None hold more than 5% of Amazon shares. But if they teamed up they could outvote Bezos, and even sack him from his job running the company. So far they have been happy to take a back seat, to the extent that they’ve stuck with Amazon even though it has never paid them a dividend. But this may change in future – and perhaps not at a time of Bezos’ own choosing.

The truth is Bezos is by no means the only person responsible for Amazon’s long list of abuses. The company serves, and is steered by, a far greater variety of interests than just one man’s personal wealth and power. In the highly unlikely event Bezos had some kind of moral epiphany, those investment funds would still need Amazon to grow, and Bezos would be out. For all that Amazon is associated with the personal vision of its founder, it’s already become just another way for big capital to get bigger.

The post Amazon: it’s more than Bezos appeared first on Corporate Watch.