Techno-Fascism Comes to America
American techno-fascism is no longer a philosophical abstraction for Silicon Valley to tinker with, in the vein of intermittent fasting or therapeutic ketamine doses. It is a policy program whose constitutional limits are being tested right now as DOGE, staffed with inexperienced engineers linked to Musk’s own companies, rampages through the federal government.
Silicon Valley is premised on the idea that its founders and engineers know better than anyone else: they can do better at disseminating information, at designing an office, at developing satellites and advancing space travel. By the same logic, they must be able to govern better than politicians and federal employees.
The historic parallels that help explain Elon Musk’s rampage on the federal government.
New Yorker By Kyle Chayka, February 26, 2025
When a phalanx of the top Silicon Valley executives—Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai—aligned behind President Trump during the Inauguration in January, many observers saw an allegiance based on corporate interests. The ultra-wealthy C.E.O.s were turning out to support a fellow-magnate, hoping perhaps for an era of deregulation, tax breaks, and anti-“woke” cultural shifts. The historian Janis Mimura saw something more ominous: a new, proactive union of industry and governmental power, wherein the state would drive aggressive industrial policy at the expense of liberal norms. In the second Trump Administration, a class of Silicon Valley leaders was insinuating itself into politics in a way that recalled one of Mimura’s primary subjects of study: the élite bureaucrats who seized political power and drove Japan into the Second World War. “These are experts with a technological mind-set and background, often engineers, who now have a special role in the government,” Mimura told me. The result is what, in her book “Planning for Empire” (2011), she labelled “techno-fascism”: authoritarianism driven by technocrats. Technology “is considered the driving force” of such a regime, Mimura said. “There’s a sort of technicization of all aspects of government and society.”
In the nineteen-thirties, Japan colonized Manchuria, in northeastern China, and the region became a test ground for techno-fascism. Nobusuke Kishi, a Japanese commerce-ministry bureaucrat, was appointed to head the industrial program in Manchuria, in 1936, and, with the collaboration of a new crop of the Japanese conglomerates known as zaibatsu, he instituted a policy of forced industrial development based on the exploitation of the local population. When Kishi returned to national politics in Japan, in 1939, along with a clique of other Japanese technocrats who had worked in Manchuria, he pursued similar strategies of state-dictated industrialization, at the expense of private interests and labor rights. This fascistic regime would not be structured the same way as Mussolini’s or Hitler’s, with power concentrated in the hands of a single charismatic leader, although Kishi had travelled to Germany in the nineteen-twenties, as the Nazi movement expanded, and drew inspiration from German industrialization for his Manchurian project. Instead, Mimura said, Japan “kind of slid into fascism” as bureaucrats exercised their authority behind the scenes, under the aegis of the Japanese emperor. As she explained, techno-fascist officials “acquire power by creating these supra-ministerial organs and agencies, subgroups within the bureaucracy that are unaccountable.” Today, Elon Musk’s DOGE is the Trumpian equivalent.
American corporations of the twentieth century flirted with a merging of state and industrial power. The entrepreneur Henry Ford promoted a system of industrial organization that came to be known as “Fordism,” whereby the state would intervene in the economy to guarantee mass production and consumption. In the nineteen-thirties, I.B.M. did business with the Nazi government through a German subsidiary, lending its technology to projects like the 1933 census, which helped identify Jews in the country. As a recent feature in the Guardian by Becca Lewis laid out, Silicon Valley itself has exhibited right-wing tendencies for decades, embracing misogynist and hierarchical attitudes about achievement. The journalist Michael S. Malone was issuing warnings about emerging “technofascism” way back in the late nineties, when he warned about “IQ bigotry” in the tech industry and the willingness of people to push forward digital revolution while “tossing out the weak and wounded along the way.” But our current moment marks a new conjunction of Internet entrepreneurs and day-to-day government operations.
American techno-fascism is no longer a philosophical abstraction for Silicon Valley to tinker with, in the vein of intermittent fasting or therapeutic ketamine doses. It is a policy program whose constitutional limits are being tested right now as DOGE, staffed with inexperienced engineers linked to Musk’s own companies, rampages through the federal government.
Musk has slashed the ranks of federal employees, shut down agencies whose authority challenges his own, and leveraged artificial intelligence to decide where to cut, promising a government executed by chatbots such as Grok, from Musk’s own A.I. company. DOGE has gained access to Americans’ private data and developed tools to e-mail the entire federal government at once, a digital megaphone that Musk recently used to demand that employees send in a list of their weekly accomplishments. As Mimura put it, “You try to apply technical concepts and rationality to human beings and human society, and then you’re getting into something almost totalitarian.”
The techno-fascist opportunism goes beyond Musk; one can sense other tech entrepreneurs and investors slavering to exploit the alliance between Trumpism and Silicon Valley capitalism, building infrastructure on a national scale. Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, has arranged his own deals with Trump’s government, including Stargate, a heavily hyped data-center project worth a potential five hundred billion dollars. Apple recently announced its own five-hundred-billion-dollar investment campaign in the U.S. over the next four years, including a plan to begin building A.I. servers in Texas.
However nebulous, these extravagant plans signal a spirit of collaboration. On Truth Social, Trump posted approvingly that Apple’s plans demonstrated “FAITH IN WHAT WE ARE DOING.”
Erin McElroy, a geographer at the University of Washington who studies Silicon Valley, has used the term “siliconization” to describe the way that places such as San Francisco or Cluj-Napoca, Romania, to which many western tech companies have outsourced I.T. services, have been remade in the image and ideology of Silicon Valley.
According to McElroy, the first signs of Washington’s current siliconization can be traced back, in part, to the Administration of Barack Obama, who embraced social-media platforms such as Facebook as a vector of government communication. For a time, digital platforms seemed to support democratic government as a kind of communal megaphone; but now, a decade later, technology seems to be supplanting the established authority of the government. “There is a crisis of the state,” McElroy said, and Silicon Valley may be “trying to corrode state power” in order to more quickly replace it.
Silicon Valley is premised on the idea that its founders and engineers know better than anyone else: they can do better at disseminating information, at designing an office, at developing satellites and advancing space travel. By the same logic, they must be able to govern better than politicians and federal employees. Voguish concepts in Silicon Valley such as seasteading and “network states” feature independent, self-contained societies running on tech principles. Efforts to create such entities have either failed or remained confined to the realm of brand-building, as in the startup Praxis, a hypothetical plan for a new tech-driven city on the Mediterranean.
Under the new Trump White House, though, the U.S. government is being offered up as a guinea pig, McElroy said. “Now that we’ve got Musk running the state, I don’t know if they need their little offshore bubbles as much as they thought they did before.”
Such visions of a technologized society represent a break from the Make America Great Again populism that drove the first Trump Administration. MAGA reactionaries such as Steve Bannon tend to be skeptical of technological progress; ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/techno-fascism-comes-to-america-elon-musk?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Science_030125&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d23d24c17c6adf3bf435&cndid=30183386&hasha=432fc0d0ad6543e820e2dfcd39f76c35&hashb=e1c24f6a6459c7d1d625eb2ea55d9dfbbb4633bf&hashc=ac5a1f5526e7292c73f49dfa8fb6d5d0cb87d8773cec3b9b03d38a4ce482d7c8&esrc=subscribe-page&mbid=CRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_Science_Tech
Donald Trump was rude to Zelensky, but he did tell him the hard truths.
Much of what President Trump told Ukraine President Zelensky in their contentious public meeting Friday was valid…and needed to be said to achieve peace. A sampling of the truths Trump told Zelensky:
1. Ukraine must seek immediate ceasefire not more war
2. Why? The war is lost with Zelensky having “no more cards to play” to achieve his unrealistic, indeed delusional war objectives.
3. Only the US can achieve war’s end thru a negotiated peace with Russia. What Trump omitted is that this has always been America’s war simply using Ukraine proxies to fight it.
4. Ukraine is running out of soldiers, relying on old men and conscripts snatched off the street to fight a lost cause.
5. Zelensky could start WWIII with his efforts to keep war going by attacking deep into Russia.
Trump’s comments signaled a near complete break with predecessor Biden’s embrace of the weak, compliant Zelensky to fight the war to weaken Russia and keep it out of the European political economy.
Trump knows the war has nothing to do with Europe or America’s national security interests and must be ended.
If the Oval Office dustup offends people who want this war to continue indefinitely, possibly going nuclear, then by all means be outraged. But if you want to end this lost war utterly destroying Ukraine so US can weaken Russia, then join the peace community in supporting Trump’s peace initiative.
This war has put peoplekind at risk of nuclear annihilation for all 1,100 days since it began. That must end.
As Freed Palestinians Describe Torture, Trump OKs $3 Billion Arms Package for Israel
Like the Biden administration, Trump is claiming an “emergency” in order to bypass Congress.
Common Dreams, Brett Wilkins, 28 Feb 25
As Palestinians released from Israeli imprisonment recount torture and other abuse suffered at the hands of their former captors, the Trump administration on Friday approved a new $3 billion weapons package for Israel.
The new package, reported by Zeteo‘s Prem Thakker, includes nearly $2.716 billion worth of bombs and weapons guidance kits, as well as $295 million in bulldozers. The Trump administration said that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale,” allowing it to bypass Congress, as the Biden administration did on multiple occasions. However, the weapons won’t be delivered until 2026 or 2027.
From October 2023 to October 2024, Israel received a record $17.9 billion worth of U.S. arms as it waged a war of annihilation against the Gaza Strip that left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more displaced, starved, or sickened. Israel is facing genocide allegations in an International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Reporting on the new package came after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday announced an effort to block four other arms sales totaling $8.56 billion in offensive American weaponry to Israel.
Meanwhile, some of the approximately 1,000 Palestinians released by Israel as part of a prisoner swap described grim stories of abuse by Israeli forces. The former detainees, who were arrested but never charged with any crimes, “have returned visibly malnourished and scarred by the physical and psychological torture they say they faced in Israeli prisons,” according toThe Washington Post. Some returned to what were once their homes to find them destroyed and their relatives killed or wounded by Israeli forces.
Eyas al-Bursh, a doctor volunteering at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City when he was captured by Israeli troops, was held in Sde Teiman and the Ofer military prison in the illegally occupied West Bank for 11 months.
“The places where we were held were harsh, sleep was impossible, and we remained handcuffed and blindfolded,” al-Bursh told the Post……………………………………………………………………
Rahdi also said that Mohammed al-Akka, a 44-year-old detainee held with him, died last December. Al-Akka is one of dozens of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody, some from suspected torture and, in at least one case, rape with an electric baton. A number of Israeli reservists are being investigated for the alleged gang-rape of a Sde Teiman prisoner. https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-arms-to-israel
Beyond Nuclear files two relicensing legal actions
February 27, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/beyond-nuclear-files-two-legal-relicensing-actions/
In February 2025, Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club (“petitioners”) filed two legal actions challenging extreme relicensing decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to qualify and extend US reactor operating licenses beyond 60 years to 80 years. The petitioners have argued that these license renewals are based on faulty analyses of the environmental impacts for extreme reactor operations that are irrational, unreasonable, incomplete, unsupported, arbitrary and capricious. Beyond Nuclear contends that the NRC has failed to satisfy requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for both its generic and site-specific relicensing applications.
On February 20, 2025, Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club (“petitioners”) filed a 76-page legal brief in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in response to the NRC issuance of its new rule and Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal (GEIS). The lawsuit draws attention to the federal agency ignoring the petitioners’ comments submitted earlier in 2024 on the Draft GEIS compiled. The petitioners’ substantial comments are supported by expert witness testimony of a retired NRC senior risk analyst and nuclear engineer focused on the materials facts that the new rule and rewrite of the GEIS, effective September 15, 2024, does not meet the legal standard for “adequate protection” of the public health and safety during the extended reactor operations from the destructive impacts of age-related degradation of critical reactor safety systems, structures and components (SSC). These SSCs include the large and irreplaceable steel reactor pressure vessels, reactor internal components, the massive concrete containment buildings and foundations. Other critical safety systems also include the miles and miles of the by and large inaccessible, uninspected buried control, instrumentation and power electrical cables and similarly extensive and inaccessible safety-related buried pipe systems.
The petitioners further challenge that the new rule and final GEIS do not meet the legal standard of “adequate protection” from the projected impacts of climate change on the increase of severe reactor accident risk and frequency as well as radiological accident consequences during the projected license renewal period.
In both the cases of age-related degradation of safety-related SSC operations and climate change impacts of severe accident risk and consequences, the NRC GEIS further fails to acknowledge an extensive list of identified “knowledge gaps” and even broader uncertainties that erode the reliability of projecting operational risk, accident frequency and consequences into the license renewal period.
The petitioners are specifically challenging the NRC GEIS finding that the environmental impacts of a nuclear reactor accident “during the initial (40 to 60 years) and subsequent (60 to 80 years) license renewal term” would be insignificant or “SMALL” and, as a result, the NRC does not need to evaluate less impactful alternatives to extended reactor operations.
The petitioners are asking the federal court to vacate the NRC rule and Final GEIS. They further request that the Court order the NRC to more thoroughly investigate the adverse impacts, gaps and uncertainties of operational aging degradation of reactor safety margins. Furthermore, given that the NRC GEIS further claims that the adverse impact of climate change on reactor operations is “out of scope” of the agency’s environmental reviews for license extension, the petitioners assert that the court should require the NRC to take a “hard look” at the impact of climate change (sea level rise, increasingly severe storms, hurricanes, flooding, wild fires, etc) on severe nuclear accident risk and environmental consequences.
On February 24, 2025, petitioners Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club additionally filed an appeal to the NRC Office of the Commissioners regarding an Atomic Safety Licensing Board order on a 60 to 80 year license renewal application of Duke Energy’s Oconee Units 1, 2 & 3 nuclear power station in Seneca, South Carolina for operations out to 2053 and 2054. The licensing board order now under appeal to the NRC Commissioners denies their request for a hearing, dismisses all of the petitioners’ contentions and terminates the relicensing proceeding.
Oconee nuclear station operates beneath and downstream of two large hydroelectric dams; the Jocassee Dam, a 385 feet high earthen rock-filled dam, ten miles upstream of the Oconee reactors roughly 300 feet below the top of the Lake Jocassee water level of more than 1 million acre feet of water and; the Keowee Dam, a 175 feet earthen dam that immediately abuts the nuclear power station that is sited roughly five feet below the top level of Lake Keowee and an additional 990,000 acre feet of water.
The three reactors were originally designed, constructed as a “dry site” where dam failure was considered an “incredible” event. Only precipitation directly onto the reactor site was analyzed for its flooding impact risk and dismissed. The only dam failure evaluated was for a “sunny day failure” or a structural failure unrelated to severe flooding. The “initial” 40 to 60 years license renewal application was approved without any challenge or consideration of a flood induced dam failure resulting in severe nuclear accident consequences that were analyzed in an environmental review or the NRC Environmental Impact Statement.
The NRC site-specific Environmental Impact Statement for Oconee has concluded that determining the projected impact of climate change on the reliable operation of Oconee safety systems including climate change induced extreme flooding events is “out of scope” of an environmental review.
Both of the petitioners’ legal actions as filed February 20 and 25, 2025 stem from previous Commission Orders issued three years ago on February 24, 2022. These NRC orders were won on appeal in the first round of Subsequent License Renewal Applications filed by the intervenors that resulted in the NRC rescinding the original subsequent license renewals for the Turkey Point Units 3 & 4 and Peach Bottom 2 & 3 nuclear power plants, as well as suspend other active subsequent license renewal proceedings pending a rewrite of the GEIS as reported by the Associated Press . These same NRC Orders required the NRC staff to rewrite a new rule and Generic Environmental Impact Statement because the previous 2013 GEIS as written only applied to the license renewal period for the “initial” 20 year license extension of 40 to 60 years, not the “subsequent” license renewal of 60 to 80 years.
Nuclear reactors killing Americans at accelerating rate
John LaForge Guest columnist, Feb 27, 2025 https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/nuclear-reactors-killing-americans-at-accelerating-rate/article_7cb060d2-eef6-11ef-836b-8349ae8997a8.html
A new analysis of public health data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals alarming evidence that cancer deaths are rising in communities surrounding America’s oldest nuclear power plants.
Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, executive director for the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, has conducted a study showing a disturbing correlation between prolonged exposure to nuclear radiation and increased cancer mortality in affected counties.
According to Mangano’s research, which examines county-by-county cancer mortality data over three distinct time periods, radiation routinely released from nuclear reactors is directly impacting public health.
His findings indicate that cancer deaths in counties hosting 15 of the nation’s 16 oldest nuclear facilities have significantly increased over time, reinforcing longstanding concerns about the safety of prolonged nuclear plant operations.
“There is no safe dose of radiation,” Mangano states, citing the National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR VII report, which confirms that every exposure to ionizing radiation has the potential to trigger cancer.
As nuclear reactors age and continue to release radioactive gases such as helium, xenon and krypton into the atmosphere, residents in nearby communities are at increasing risk of developing cancer due to prolonged exposure.
The data further illustrates the impact of these radiation releases varies based on geographical factors, including wind patterns and local topography.
For example, in Wisconsin, excess cancer deaths were significantly lower near the Point Beach nuclear facility than in counties downwind of the Palisades and DC Cook plants on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore.
These findings suggest that radiation exposure is not uniform and that some communities bear a greater burden than others.
The implications of Mangano’s research are particularly concerning for residents of Wright and Sherburne counties in Minnesota, home to the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant.
Since the plant began operating in 1971, the once-lower-than-average cancer mortality rate in these counties has risen sharply. Projections estimate that between 2031 and 2050, as many as 1,662 excess cancer deaths could occur if Monticello’s operating license is extended through 2051.
“These findings should serve as a wake-up call,” said Kelly Lundeen, a staff member at the Wisconsin-based environmental and nuclear watchdog Nukewatch. “We are urging local, state, and federal officials to take immediate action to phase out commercial nuclear power before more lives are lost.”
Despite growing concerns, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has already approved license extensions for several aging reactors, allowing some to operate for up to 80 years.
Given the demonstrated public health risks, advocates are calling for an immediate halt to these extensions and a transition toward safer, renewable energy sources.
The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River was planning to rally outside of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearing earlier this month to maintain the current shutdown date of the Monticello reactor.
The Radiation and Public Health Project, the organization behind Mangano’s analysis, is pushing for greater transparency in radiation monitoring, stricter regulations on radioactive emissions, and a comprehensive plan to phase out aging nuclear plants.
John LaForge serves as the co-director of Nukewatch, a Wisconsin-based environmental and peace action watchdog group.
How the Warfare State Paved the Way for a Trumpist Autocracy
Biden said nothing about how almost 20 years of nonstop war funding and war making had already altered the character of the nation.
Biden’s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, displayed a traditional militaristic reflex while campaigning against Trump ……… she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
In 2024, as in 2016, Trump notably benefitted from the unwavering militarism of his Democratic opponent.
While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.
SCHEERPOST, February 28, 2025 , By Norman Solomon / TomDispatch
Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.
Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid the world of evil.”
Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the “national security” state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.
Donald Trump, however, did notice.
Status-Quo Militarism
President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.
Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he affirmed at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”
…………………………………………….President Bush’s messianic calls to rid the world of “evil-doers” had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.
Six weeks before the election, Forbes published an article under the headline “Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn’t Want Other Americans to Fight.”
Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton’s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.
……………………………….. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising.
On the War Train with Donald Trump……………………………………………………………….
While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.
The Military-Industrial-Tech Complex
While President Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power, many other tech moguls have rushed to ingratiate themselves. The pandering became shameless within hours of his election victory last November.
“Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Washington Post, tweeted: “wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”
Amazon Web Services alone has numerous government contracts, including one with the National Security Agency worth $10 billion and deals with the Pentagon pegged at $9.7 billion. Such commerce is nothing new. For many years, thousands of contracts have tied the tech giants to the military-industrial complex.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and smaller rivals are at the helm of corporations eager for government megadeals, tax breaks, and much more. For them, the governmental terrain of the new Trump era is the latest territory to navigate for maximizing their profits. With annual military outlays at 54% of all federal discretionary spending, the incentives are astronomical for all kinds of companies to make nice with the war machine and the man now running it.
While Democrats in Congress have long denounced Trump as an enemy of democracy, they haven’t put any sort of brake on American militarism. Certainly, there are many reasons for Trump’s second triumph, including his exploitation of racism, misogyny, nativism, and other assorted bigotries. Yet his election victories owe much to the Democratic Party’s failure to serve the working class, a failure intermeshed with its insistence on serving the industries of war. Meanwhile, spending more on the military than the next nine countries combined, U.S. government leaders tacitly lay claim to a kind of divine overpowering virtue.
As history attests, militarism can continue for many decades while basic democratic structures, however flawed, remain in place. But as time goes on, militarism is apt to be a major risk factor for developing some modern version of fascism. The more war and preparations for war persist, with all their economic and social impacts, the more core traits of militarism — including reliance on unquestioning obedience to authority and sufficient violence to achieve one’s goals — will permeate the society at large.
During the last 10 years, Donald Trump has become ever more autocratic, striving not just to be the nation’s commander-in-chief but also the commandant of a social movement increasingly fascistic in its approach to laws and civic life. He has succeeded in taking on the role of top general for the MAGA forces. The frenzies that energize Trump’s base and propel his strategists have come to resemble the mentalities of warfare. The enemy is whoever dares to get in his way.
A warfare state is well suited for such developments. Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it. The time has certainly come to stop pretending.
ELON AND THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX
Bruce Gagnon, Feb 28, 2025, Pentagon and StarLink
“…………………………………………………………………………………………….Until he entered the Trump White House, many still perceived Musk as a radical tech industry outsider. Yet this was never the case. From virtually the beginning of his career, Musk’s path has been shaped by his exceptionally close relationship with the U.S. national security state, particularly with Mike Griffin of the CIA.
From 2002 to 2005, Griffin led In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist wing. In-Q-Tel is an organization dedicated to identifying, nurturing, and working with tech companies that can provide Washington with cutting-edge technologies, keeping it one step ahead of its competition.
Griffin was an early believer in Musk. In February 2002, he accompanied Musk to Russia, where the pair attempted to purchase cut-price intercontinental ballistic missiles to start SpaceX. Griffin spoke up for Musk in government meetings, backing him as a potential “Henry Ford” of the tech and military-industrial complex.
After In-Q-Tel, Griffin became the chief administrator of NASA. In 2018, President Trump appointed him the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. While at NASA, Griffin brought Musk in for meetings and secured SpaceX’s big break. In 2006, NASA awarded the company a $396 million rocket development contract – a remarkable “gamble,” in Griffin’s words, especially as it had never launched a rocket. National Geographic wrote that SpaceX “never would have gotten to where it is today without NASA.” And Griffin was essential to this development. Still, by 2008, both SpaceX and Tesla Motors were in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and assuming both businesses would go bankrupt. It was at that point that SpaceX was savedby an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract for commercial cargo services.
Today, the pair remain extremely close, with Griffin serving as an official advisor to Castelion. A sign of just how strong this relationship is that, in 2004, Musk named his son “Griffin” after his CIA handler.
Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse, with yearly revenues in the tens of billions and a valuation of $350 billion. But that wealth comes largely from orders from Washington. Indeed, there are few customers for rockets other than the military or the various three-letter spying agencies.
In 2018, SpaceX won a contract to blast a $500 million Lockheed Martin GPS into orbit. While military spokespersons played up the civilian benefits of the launch, the primary reason for the project was to improve America’s surveillance and targeting capabilities. SpaceX has also won contracts with the Air Force to deliver its command satellite into orbit, with the Space Development Agency to send tracking devices into space, and with the National Reconnaissance Office to launch its spy satellites. All the “big five” surveillance agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, use these satellites.
Therefore, in today’s world, where so much intelligence gathering and target acquisition is done via satellite technology, SpaceX has become every bit as important to the American empire as Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Simply put, without Musk and SpaceX, the U.S. would not be able to carry out such an invasive program of spying or drone warfare around the world.
The repugnantly infantile libertarian extremist Elon Musk
An example of how crucial Musk and his tech empire are to the continuation of U.S. global ambitions can be found in Ukraine. Today, around 47,000 Starlinks operate inside the country. These portable satellite dishes, manufactured by SpaceX, have kept both Ukraine’s civilian and military online. Many of these were directly purchased by the U.S. government via USAID or the Pentagon and shipped to Kiev.
In its hi-tech war against Russia, Starlink has become the keystone of the Ukrainian military. It allows for satellite-based target acquisition and drone attacks on Russian forces. Indeed, on today’s battlefield, many weapons require an internet connection. One Ukrainian official told The Times of London that he “must” use Starlink to target enemy forces via thermal imaging.
The controversial mogul has also involved himself in South American politics. In 2019, he supported the U.S.-backed overthrow of socialist president Evo Morales. Morales suggested that Musk financed the insurrection, which he dubbed a “lithium coup.” When directly charged with his involvement, Musk infamously replied, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!” Bolivia is home to the world’s largest lithium reserves, a metal crucial in producing batteries for electric vehicles such as the ones in Musk’s Tesla cars.
In Venezuela last year, Musk went even further, supporting the U.S.-backed far-right candidate against socialist president Nicolás Maduro. He even went so far as to suggest he was working on a plan to kidnap the sitting president. “I’m coming for you Maduro. I will carry you to Gitmo on a donkey,” he said, referencing the notorious U.S. torture center.
More recently, Musk has thrown himself into American politics, funding and campaigning for President Trump, and will now lead Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE’s stated mission is to cut unnecessary and wasteful government spending. However, with Musk at the helm, it seems unlikely that the billions of dollars in military contracts and tax incentives his companies have received will be on the chopping block.
At Trump’s inauguration, Musk garnered international headlines after he gave two Sieg Heil salutes – gestures that his daughter felt were unambiguously Nazi. Musk – who comes from a historically Nazi-supporting family – took time out from criticizing the reaction to his salute to appear at a rally for the Alternative für Deutschland Party. There, he said that Germans place “too much focus on past guilt” (i.e., the Holocaust) and that “we need to move beyond that.” “Children should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents – their great-grandparents even,” he added to raucous applause.
The tech tycoon’s recent actions have provoked outrage among many Americans, claiming that fascists and Nazis do not belong anywhere near the U.S. space and defense programs. In reality, however, these projects, from the very beginning, were overseen by top German scientists brought over after the fall of Nazi Germany. Operation Paperclip transported more than 1,600 German scientists to America, including the father of the American lunar project, Wernher von Braun. Von Braun was a member of both the Nazi Party and the infamous elite SS paramilitary, whose members oversaw Hitler’s extermination camps.
Thus, Nazism and the American empire have, for a long time, gone hand in hand. Far more disturbing than a man with fascist sympathies being in a position of power in the U.S. military or space industry, however, is the ability the United States is seeking for itself to be impervious to intercontinental missile attacks from its competitors.
On the surface, Washington’s Iron Dome plan may sound defensive in nature. But in reality, it would give it a free hand to attack any country or entity around the world in any way it wishes – including with nuclear weapons. This would upend the fragile nuclear peace that has reigned since the early days of the Cold War. Elon Musk’s help in this endeavor is much more worrying and dangerous than any salutes or comments he could ever make. https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/the-pentagon-and-starlink-satellites?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=158057576&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The Supreme Court faces the absurdly difficult problem of where to put nuclear waste
And so it now falls to the Supreme Court to decide whether this latest attempt to find a place to store some of the most undesirable trash on the planet must falter on the shores of NIMBYism.
America’s worst NIMBY problem comes to the Supreme Court.
by Ian Millhiser, Vox , 26th Feb 2025,
https://www.vox.com/scotus/399304/supreme-court-nuclear-waste-texas-nrc-nimby
On March 5, the Supreme Court will hear a case that may involve one of the most toxic examples of NIMBYism in American history. The issue at the heart of Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas arises out of a predictable problem: Absolutely no one wants radioactive waste anywhere near where they live or work, but that waste has to go somewhere.
Texas, as the case name suggests, involves an effort by the federal government to store nuclear waste in Texas, and at the same time, solve a problem it’s struggled with for nearly 40 years.
To fully understand what’s before the Supreme Court in Texas, we need to go back to 1982, when Congress passed a law that was supposed to establish a permanent repository for all of the radioactive waste produced by America’s nuclear power plants. This waste remains dangerous for thousands or even tens of thousands of years after it is produced, so it made sense to find a spot far from human civilization where it can be buried.
But then NIMBY — that’s “not in my backyard” — politics set in.
The US Department of Energy identified several possible sites for the waste, and eventually culled those sites down to three — one in Texas, one in Washington state, and Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But, in 1987, before these officials could complete the selection process, Congress stepped in and chose the Nevada site for them.
According to a Slate article on the eventual collapse of the Yucca Mountain plan, this choice is easy to explain when you look at who ran Congress at the time. The House speaker was Jim Wright, a representative from Texas. The House majority leader was Tom Foley, from Washington. So Nevada, which had the weakest congressional delegation at the time, lost out.
Indeed, according to Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, “the 1987 Amendment is now commonly referred to as the ‘screw Nevada’ bill.”
By the time President Barack Obama took office, however, the balance of power in Congress had changed. Sen. Harry Reid, of Nevada, was the majority leader. He set out, with the Obama administration’s support, to kill the Yucca Mountain project. Congress, at Obama’s urging, zeroed out funding for Yucca Mountain. Then, just in case the project wasn’t already dead enough, a 2013 court decision ordered the government to stop collecting taxes that would have funded the permanent storage facility until it could figure out where that facility would be located.
And that brings us to the present date, and to the issue before the Supreme Court in the Texas case. Without a permanent storage facility on the horizon, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission turned to an older statute which has been understood to allow it to authorize temporary storage facilities for nuclear waste since the 1970s, licensing a private facility to handle storage in Andrews County, Texas.
Texas eventually sued to block this facility, as did a nearby landowner. Their case wound up before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Two of these judges are from Texas. It’s not hard to guess what happened next.
And so it now falls to the Supreme Court to decide whether this latest attempt to find a place to store some of the most undesirable trash on the planet must falter on the shores of NIMBYism.
Indeed, the 1954 law’s language allowing the NRC to license possession of these three kinds of material is quite broad. The NRC may license possession of special nuclear material for reasons that it “determines to be appropriate to carry out the purposes” of the law. It may license possession of source material for any “use approved by the Commission as an aid to science or industry.” And it may license possession of byproduct material for “industrial uses” or for “such other useful applications as may be developed.”
Though both Texas and the landowner claim that this language should not be read to permit the kind of license at issue in the Texas case, they are swimming against at least a half-century of precedent. The landowner’s brief concedes that the NRC first claimed the authority to license facilities under the 1954 law in 1975 (it claims that this fact cuts against the government’s case, because the NRC waited two decades to claim this power, but the fact remains that this question has been settled for 50 years). The landowner’s brief also concedes that the NRC finalized regulations governing licenses for such facilities in 1980.
That said, the landowner’s brief does make a plausible — if not, exactly, airtight — argument that the 1982 law overrides the 1954 law’s provisions concerning private storage facilities. (Texas’s brief, by contrast, is heavy on overwrought rhetoric claiming that nuclear waste must be stored at Yucca Mountain, and light on the kind of statutory analysis that a responsible judge would rely upon in deciding this case.)
Among other things, the landowner’s legal team points to three provisions of the 1982 law which say that the NRC shall “encourage” storage of nuclear waste “at the site of each civilian nuclear power reactor,” and take other steps to promote such onsite storage. They also point to a provision calling for a federal storage facility. And, they highlight a provision stating that the 1982 law should not be read to “encourage” or “authorize” private storage facilities away from a reactor.
As the landowner’s legal team writes, allowing the Texas facility to exist would “discourage” creating new storage capacity at reactor sites, the opposite of what the 1982 law was supposed to accomplish.
It’s safe to say that, when Congress wrote the 1982 law, they imagined a world where nuclear waste would be stored either at reactor sites or at a federal facility, and not at a private facility like the one at issue in Texas. But the 1982 law also does not explicitly repeal the 1954 law’s provisions governing the three kinds of nuclear material. So the government has a very strong argument that it can still rely on those provisions to license the facility in Texas.
There is a possibility that the Supreme Court will simply make this case go away
There’s a real possibility that the Supreme Court will get rid of this case on procedural grounds, effectively handing a victory to the government.
Briefly, the federal law that both Texas and the landowner relied upon to bring their case to the Fifth Circuit permits “any party aggrieved by the final order” of the NRC to challenge that decision in a federal appeals court. The government argues that, to qualify as a “party,” Texas or the landowner must have participated “as a litigant” in the NRC’s internal proceeding governing the Andrews County license.
While both the state and the landowner took some steps to make their views known to the NRC during that proceeding, neither ever officially became litigants. Thus, the government argues, they do not count as a “party” to that proceeding which can appeal the NRC’s decision, and the Court should toss the case out. The key thing to know about this legal argument is that it may be enough to prevent the justices from reaching the merits of this particular case.
If the Court does reach the merits, however, it faces a difficult decision. Allowing the Andrews County project to move forward will undoubtedly trigger the same kind of political backlash that has accompanied every other attempt to pick a site to store nuclear waste. But, if this project is not allowed, it’s far from clear where the waste would go.
The Pentagon and Starlink Satellites
it is only the existence of a credible deterrent that tempers Washington’s actions around the world. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has only attacked relatively defenseless countries. The reason the North Korean government remains in place, but those of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and others do not, is the existence of the former’s large-scale conventional and nuclear forces. Developing an American Iron Dome could upset this delicate balance and usher in a new age of U.S. military dominance.
The stakes are high. If successful, the US could again intimidate the world through nuclear blackmail
Bruce Gagnon, Feb 28, 2025
Donald Trump has announced his intention to build a gigantic anti-ballistic missile system to counter Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons, and he is recruiting Elon Musk to help him. The Pentagon has long dreamed of constructing an American “Iron Dome.” The technology is couched in the defense language – i.e., to make America safe again. But like its Israeli counterpart, it would function as an offensive weapon, giving the United States the ability to launch nuclear attacks anywhere in the world without having to worry about the consequences of a similar response. This power could upend the fragile peace maintained by decades of mutually assured destruction, a doctrine that has underpinned global stability since the 1940s.
A NEW GLOBAL ARMS RACE
Washington’s war planners have long salivated at the thought of winning a nuclear confrontation and have sought the ability to do so for decades. Some believe that they have found a solution and a savior in the South African-born billionaire and his technology.
Neoconservative think tank the Heritage Foundation published a video last year stating that Musk might have “solved the nuclear threat coming from China.” It claimed that Starlink satellites from his SpaceX company could be easily modified to carry weapons that could shoot down incoming rockets. As they explain:
Elon Musk has proven that you can put microsatellites into orbit, for $1 million apiece. Using that same technology, we can put 1,000 microsatellites in continuous orbit around the Earth, that can track, engage and shoot down, using tungsten slugs, missiles that are launched from North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.”
Although the Heritage Foundation advises using tungsten slugs (i.e., bullets) as interceptors, hypersonic missiles have been opted for instead. To this end, a new organization, the Castelion Company, was established in 2023.
Castelion is a SpaceX cutout; six of the seven members of its leadership team and two of its four senior advisorsare ex-senior SpaceX employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, including Mike Griffin, Musk’s longtime friend, mentor, and partner.
Castelion’s advisors and leadership team are extensively connected to SpaceX and the CIA
Castelion’s mission, in its own words, is to be at the cutting edge of a new global arms race. As the company explains:
Despite the U.S. annual defense budget exceeding those of the next ten biggest spenders combined, there’s irrefutable evidence that authoritarian regimes are taking the lead in key military technologies like hypersonic weapons. Simply put – this cannot be allowed to happen.”
The company has already secured gigantic contracts with the U.S. military, and reports suggest that it has made significant strides toward its hypersonic missile goals.
WAR AND PEACE
Castelion’s slogan is “Peace Through Deterrence.” But in reality, the U.S. achieving a breakthrough in hypersonic missile technology would rupture the fragile nuclear peace that has existed for over 70 years and usher in a new era where Washington would have the ability to use whatever weapons it wished, anywhere in the world at any time, safe in the knowledge that it would be impervious to a nuclear response from any other nation.
In short, the fear of a nuclear retaliation from Russia or China has been one of the few forces moderating U.S. aggression throughout the world. If this is lost, the United States would have free rein to turn entire countries – or even regions of the planet – into vapor. This would, in turn, hand it the power to terrorize the world and impose whatever economic and political system anywhere it wishes.
If this sounds fanciful, this “Nuclear Blackmail” was a more-or-less official policy of successive American administrations in the 1940s and 1950s. The United States remains the only country ever to drop an atomic bomb in anger, doing so twice in 1945 against a Japanese foe that was already defeated and was attempting to surrender.
President Truman ordered the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a show of force, primarily to the Soviet Union. Many in the U.S. government wished to use the atomic bomb on the U.S.S.R. President Truman immediately, however, reasoned that if America nuked Moscow, the Red Army would invade Europe as a response…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In the end, the Soviet Union was able to successfully develop a nuclear weapon before the U.S. was able to produce hundreds. Thus, the idea of wiping the U.S.S.R. from the face of the Earth was shelved. Incidentally, it is now understood that the effects of dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons simultaneously would likely have sparked vast firestorms across Russia, resulting in the emission of enough smoke to choke the Earth’s atmosphere, block out the sun’s rays for a decade, and end organized human life on the planet.
With the Russian nuclear window closing by 1949, the U.S. turned its nuclear arsenal on the nascent People’s Republic of China.
The U.S. invaded China in 1945, occupying parts of it for four years until Communist forces under Mao Zedong forced both them and their Nationalist KMT allies from the country. During the Korean War, some of the most powerful voices in Washington advocated dropping nuclear weapons on the 12 largest Chinese cities in response to China entering the fray. Indeed, both Truman and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, publicly used the threat of the atomic bomb as a negotiating tactic.
Routed on the mainland, the U.S.-backed KMT fled to Taiwan, establishing a one-party state. In 1958, the U.S. also came close to dropping the bomb on China to protect its ally’s new regime over control of the disputed island – an episode of history that resonates with the present-day conflict over Taiwan.
However, by 1964, China had developed its own nuclear warhead, effectively ending U.S. pretensions and helping to usher in the détente era of good relations between the two powers—an epoch that lasted well into the 21st century.
In short, then, it is only the existence of a credible deterrent that tempers Washington’s actions around the world. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has only attacked relatively defenseless countries. The reason the North Korean government remains in place, but those of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and others do not, is the existence of the former’s large-scale conventional and nuclear forces. Developing an American Iron Dome could upset this delicate balance and usher in a new age of U.S. military dominance.
NUKING JAPAN? OK. NUKING MARS? EVEN BETTER!
Musk, however, has downplayed both the probability and the consequences of nuclear war. On The Lex Friedman Podcast, he described the likelihood of a terminal confrontation as “quite low.” And while speaking with Trump last year, he claimed that nuclear holocaust is “not as scary as people think,” noting that “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they are full cities again.” President Trump agreed.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, there are over 12,000 warheads in the world, the vast majority of them owned by Russia and the United States. While many consider them a blight on humanity and favor their complete eradication, Musk advocates building thousands more, sending them into space, and firing them at Mars.
Musk’s quixotic plan is to terraform the Red Planet by firing at least 10,000 nuclear missiles at it. The heat generated by the bombs would melt its polar ice caps, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rapid greenhouse effect triggered, the theory goes, would raise Mars’ temperatures (and air pressure) to the point of supporting human life.
Few scientists have endorsed this idea. Indeed, Dmitry Rogozin, then-head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, labeled the theory completely absurd and nothing more than a cover for filling space with American nuclear weapons aimed at Russia, China, and other nations, drawing Washington’s ire.
“We understand that one thing is hidden behind this demagogy: This is a cover for the launch of nuclear weapons into space,” he said. “We see such attempts, we consider them unacceptable, and we will hinder this to the greatest extent possible,” he added.
The first Trump administration’s actions, including withdrawing from multiple international anti-ballistic missile treaties, have made this process more difficult.
ELON AND THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX……………………………………………………………. more https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/the-pentagon-and-starlink-satellites?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=158057576&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
US correct to vote against UN resolution solely condemning Russia for Ukraine war
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 26 Feb 25
Less than half of the UN’s 193 member states voted for the Ukrainian resolution in the General Assembly solely condemning Russia for invading Ukraine on the third anniversary of the war.
The vote on the non-binding resolution was 93 to 18 with 65 members abstaining.
In an astonishing reversal of previous US policy at the UN on Ukraine, the US joined Russia and 16 other states in opposing the resolution.
Why?
US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea argued that the Ukrainian resolution ignored that the war actually started 11 years earlier with the Russian Ukraine war that ignited after the 2014 coup that toppled democratically elected Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych.
Shea didn’t mention that the US was heavily involved in supporting the coup in order to prevent Ukraine from partnering economically with Russia. Nor did she mention that after the coup the US heavily armed Ukraine to complete the destruction of the Ukrainian separatist movement seeking freedom from Kyiv’s policy of destroying Ukrainian Russian culture in the Donbas. Shea also omitted that 14 years of US efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO crossed a red line for Russia that would inevitably provoke a Russian invasion.
But all of these critical omissions were implicit in the Trump administration’s refusal to continue the Biden administration’s fantasy that President Putin woke up one day in February, 2022 and decided to attack Ukraine unproved.
This was a welcome dose of reality sorely missing from the Biden administration for all two years, eleven months of their proxy war to weaken Russia using Ukrainian proxies to do all the dying.
President Trump is telling the world that this war must end with a settlement based on reality. Ukraine will not join NATO. Ukraine will not get back the oblasts containing Russian cultured Ukrainians seeking relief from endless destruction by their own government. Ukraine will refrain from being a US/NATO Trojan Horse to keep Russia out of the Western Europe political economy. Most importantly, the US and Russia can normalize diplomatic relations and end three years of risking nuclear annihilation from America’s zero sum game approach to the war.
Based on the vote of Ukraine’s one sided resolution putting all the blame on Russia, a majority of UN members agree with the Trump path to peace.
SCOTUS goes nuclear: Justices’ decision could seal spent fuel storage options for decades.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court will not be hearing technical, economic, or social arguments in this case; the matters of interest are purely legal. These legal interpretations, however, will have profound implications for how commercial spent nuclear fuel is handled until plans for permanent repositories are developed.
Bulleting of Atomic Scientists, By Riley Fisher, Muhammad Abdussami, Aditi Verma | February 20, 2025
US nuclear waste policy is at a critical turning point. Mired in decades of disappointments and shortcomings, the monkey on nuclear power’s back is just weeks away from being freed—or being strapped in place. The issue at hand: whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had the legal authority to grant a permit for the construction and operation of a privately-owned temporary spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Texas.
On March 5, 2025, representatives from the NRC and the state of Texas will convene in Washington, D.C., to argue this issue in front of the United States Supreme Court. The NRC v. Texas case will end a battle of nearly three and a half years over the legality of privately-owned interim nuclear waste storage in the United States. However, while the Supreme Court’s ruling will settle the battle, it will resolve only one aspect of the US nuclear waste management problem.
A ruling favoring the NRC would help the nuclear waste problem in the short term but might harm the long-term management situation, allowing the consolidation of spent nuclear fuel at interim storage facilities—a state of affairs that could place new constraints on the permanent solution of geological disposal. Conversely, a ruling against the NRC would hurt the waste problem short-term by halting interim storage plans—including those of Interim Storage Partners in Texas and Holtec International in New Mexico—but it would leave future permanent storage options unconstrained.
Temporary storage. For more than 40 years, temporary, consolidated nuclear waste storage has been a hot-button issue. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 tasked the president and the Energy Department with identifying, constructing, and operating nuclear waste storage facilities in underground repositories. With this act, Congress intended to create a program that permanently stowed away the hazardous waste produced by nuclear power operations.
The original provisions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the president four years to start the construction of a geologic repository site following congressional approval. During this process, nuclear power plants were still operating and producing spent nuclear fuel, and Congress clarified that plant operators were primarily responsible for waste management while the executive branch did their repository siting and construction work. Under exceptional circumstances, however, the federal government was allowed to provide a limited amount of “interim” storage before the waste was transferred to a permanent facility. The federal interim storage program would temporarily consolidate spent fuel away from reactor sites that have limited capacity.
But when efforts for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada stalled, the role of consolidated interim storage was put in a precarious position. Spent fuel continued to accumulate at nuclear power plants across the country, the federal government could not provide more temporary storage because it would violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and the NRC did not have explicit authority to license an external body to create temporary storage. This tension is the impetus for NRC v. Texas case now at the Supreme Court.
There are a variety of arguments both for and against temporary storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel in the United States. Proponents cite that reactor host communities should not be subjected to living near radioactive waste for more time than they initially consented; interim storage, they say, would increase safety and economic efficiency through consolidation. Critics, in contrast, argue that a community near an interim facility risks the same fate of non-consent in the event of further delay in creating a permanent waste repository and that the safety risks from additional transportation and shuffling outweigh the benefits of consolidation.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court will not be hearing technical, economic, or social arguments in this case; the matters of interest are purely legal. These legal interpretations, however, will have profound implications for how commercial spent nuclear fuel is handled until plans for permanent repositories are developed.
Lower court’s contradictory ruling. Two main questions will be argued in NRC v. Texas. The first is a matter of administrative process and pertains to whether Texas had the legal right to challenge the NRC in the first place. Texas first challenged the commission under the 1950 Hobbs Act (which is not the Hobbs Act used in criminal prosecutions of organized crime), an administrative law statute that gives “aggrieved parties” the right to challenge federal agency actions. The NRC claims Texas did not follow proper procedure to be considered an aggrieved party and, therefore, did not have authority to challenge the license.
The second question is a matter of the function and authority of the NRC and is rooted in the language of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Texas argues that the NRC only has authority to grant temporary spent nuclear fuel storage licenses on the site of the reactor from which the waste originated. Therefore, Texas claims, the commission had no right to grant the license for a temporary storage facility in the state. The NRC, however, cites multiple previous court decisions that uphold this authorization. These federal-state disputes make a case like this ripe for Supreme Court intervention.
Like most other Supreme Court cases, NRC v. Texas is an appeal of a previously decided case in a lower court: Texas v. NRC. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
NRC’s appeal. The Supreme Court may decide in a variety of ways concerning Texas’ authority under the Hobbs Act and the NRC’s authority under the Atomic Energy Act and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. While clarification as to whether Texas was a proper “party aggrieved” is certainly important, it is likely the Supreme Court will take the opportunity to define the scope of the NRC’s abilities regardless of the interpretation of the Hobbs Act. Even if the Supreme Court finds that Texas was not a proper “party aggrieved,” the Court will still have the ability to hold the issued license void despite improper administrative procedures taken by Texas.
………………………………………………………. Because there is no explicit authorization in either act, the Supreme Court will likely rule that the NRC lacks clear congressional approval. If this is the case, then the Supreme Court will have to decide whether private, off-reactor spent fuel storage is a matter of major national significance— also known as a “major question.” While the Supreme Court has yet to hear arguments on this specific issue, there are reasonable explanations for either ruling.
……………………………………Some legal experts argue that private off-reactor waste is not a major question. Because on-site storage is exorbitantly expensive, a consolidated interim facility operated by a private entity will likely alleviate taxpayers’ burden. The West Virginia case was decided partially on its nationwide economic implications, but such implications are not present in this case. Another argument is that the NRC issued its regulations for private off-reactor storage two years before the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed. The fact that Congress did not revoke this authority from the NRC when passing the act could be interpreted as implicit approval. If the Supreme Court agrees with this perspective, it will likely allow Interim Storage Partners’ license to stand, even if the NRC did not have the explicit authority to issue that license.
Other arguments exist for this issue being a major question……………………………………
No perfect ruling. Either ruling will no doubt have vast consequences on the US nuclear waste management problem. A ruling in favor of the NRC would provide support for the nuclear industry’s ability to manage spent fuel, particularly during the continuous delays in permanent repository development. This result could also encourage private investment in nuclear energy by providing clearer pathways for managing waste, potentially revitalizing confidence in the industry’s long-term viability. However, a decision in NRC’s favor would not resolve all concerns with nuclear waste management. Many communities oppose the siting of temporary storage facilities, citing safety risks and the lack of a permanent solution. Resistance will continue to grow at local and state levels if these broader concerns go unaddressed. Congress will need to continue developing directives that strengthen and complement private solutions to waste management. A ruling in favor of the NRC would undoubtedly be a win for the nuclear industry, the federal government, and reactor host communities, as short-term pressures caused by on-site waste storage can finally be addressed. In the long term, this ruling will do little to permanently solve the waste problem and may place the nuclear industry into a false sense of security amidst concerns of interim facilities becoming de facto repositories.
If the Supreme Court rules against the NRC, it will create substantial uncertainty for the nuclear industry by rejecting the NRC’s authority to license private off-site storage facilities. Other corporations that currently plan to construct such facilities, such as Holtec International in New Mexico, will risk the revocation of their licenses. Decommissioned reactors with on-site storage may face danger to their storage license renewals, which will force active reactor sites to take in external waste while still generating their own. Situations like these can heighten safety and security risks, as many sites lack the infrastructure or oversight necessary for long-term storage and management.
However, a ruling against the NRC may bring increased attention to the issue and compel Congress to act decisively. ……………………………………… . A ruling against the NRC will likely be to the immediate detriment of the nuclear industry, the federal government, and reactor host communities. These pressures, however, may urge lawmakers to develop a new, permanent solution once and for all.
In the context of the nuclear waste problem, a ruling in favor of the NRC will be a short-term benefit but bring long-term risks. A ruling against the NRC will be a short-term detriment but may spur renewed action for long-term solutions. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, Congress must dictate a permanent solution, which will be less likely to occur if short-term pressures are alleviated by ruling in favor of the NRC. In the absence of immediate Congressional intervention, the nuclear industry and the Energy Department must still work closely and in good faith with host communities. Anything else will result in complete failure of fair and democratic planning—as has been observed time and time again.
Editor’s note: Arguments on the NRC v. Texas case will be held before the Supreme Court on March 5, 2025. Summaries, audio files, and opinions will be accessible here after the hearing. The Supreme Court will issue its opinion before recess in late June 2025. Proceedings and orders will be made available as they come here. https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/scotus-goes-nuclear-justices-decision-could-seal-spent-fuel-storage-options-for-decades/
A Lawsuit Against Greenpeace Is Meant to Bankrupt It and Deter Public Protests, Environmental Groups Warn
.“This case and its outcome should be
the concern of every American,” a legal expert says as the Dakota Access
Pipeline trial is set to begin. Next week, not far from where thousands of
Indigenous and environmental activists gathered in North Dakota nine years
ago in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, one of the most
consequential trials to emerge from that conflict is set to begin. The
case, filed by pipeline developer Energy Transfer, accuses Greenpeace of
defaming the company while funding and supporting some protesters who
damaged its property. On its face, the trial is an attempt to seek millions
of dollars in damages from an environmental group for campaigning against a
pipeline project. At its heart, however, many activists, legal experts and
even the company’s chief executive say the case is about much more.
“It’s about really the silencing of the Greenpeace entities,” said
Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, during a press
call Thursday, referring to how both the organization’s U.S. arm and its
international parent are named. “It’s about trying to bankrupt some of
the entities, and more importantly it’s silencing and sending a message
to broader civil society.”
Inside Climate News 21st Feb 2025, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022025/greenpeace-lawsuit-meant-to-deter-public-protests/
United States: White House Threatens Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Independence
Energy Intelligence Group, Jessica Sondgeroth, Washington, 21 Feb 25,
The Trump administration’s expansive assertion of presidential power now threatens the independence of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after the White House this week issued an executive order (EO) claiming control over federal agencies that were established to be independent of politics. The Feb. 18 EO tasks the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with the authority to manage independent agencies’ obligations and spending to ensure they align with “the President’s policies and priorities.” These agencies will also have to submit for review to an OMB office “all proposed and final significant regulatory actions.” The extent to which this erodes the NRC’s independence may vary depending on how NRC responds and on OMB actions taken, but nuclear energy sector veterans, critics and advocates are nonetheless waving red flags.
The White House decision “to meddle in safety regulation” is “devastating,” former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane, now a policy professor at the University of British Columbia, told Energy Intelligence. “The US NRC used to be referred to as the ‘gold standard’ for nuclear regulators. No longer. Now other countries can take that mantle.” Macfarlane said that as NRC chair, she spent years championing regulatory independence “to ensure national security and economic security. A nuclear accident, as happened in Japan, can devastate a country’s economy, not to mention its nuclear industry. I guess the folks at the White House have never learned this lesson?”
The EO, titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies”, is only the latest White House challenge to the independence of various executive agencies and to Congressional lawmaking, from science and health research to environmental oversight to public education. This particular EO seeks to broaden the White House’s authority over independent regulatory agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission. The EO does make some exceptions, but the NRC is not among them.
……………………………………………Given “the blatant and unmitigated conflicts of interest in the White House, and the newfound love among Trump and Elon [Musk]’s tech bro friends for nuclear power,” Ed Lyman, a nuclear regulatory watchdog at the Union of Concerned Scientists, warned in an email that the agency “could be turned into a mere rubber stamp for whatever projects are favored by the President at the moment.” This could override the NRC’s “public health and safety mandate in the name of ‘consistency with the President’s policies and priorities.'”
The NRC was established as an independent agency by Congress in the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. That law took the NRC’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, and split its regulatory and promotional roles into the NRC and what is today the US Department of Energy (DOE), respectively. “The NRC was explicitly created to be independent of energy system policy goals under the Atomic Energy Commission that Congress perceived as too political and influenced by the industry,” Adam Stein, nuclear energy innovation director, noted. “Shifting from an independent agency to an agency under direct control of one party under the President creates the same problem from a different influence.”
……………………The nuclear industry lobbies Congress for favorable policies but also communicates directly with the NRC through filings and public meetings to advocate for its interpretation of Congressionally-mandated regulatory reforms.
…………………….For agencies as specialized as the NRC, mass layoffs or buyouts threaten to undermine core competencies and training activities — particularly given the recent hiring of 600 staff, a growing workload of new reactor licensing activities and concerns over the aging workforce.
https://www.energyintel.com/00000195-25b1-ddbd-a9dd-3ff520010000
Technogarchy Goes to Washington
The “Muskification” of Meta and the Free Speech, Fact-Checking Charade
Billionaire tech owners who align themselves with whatever administration occupies the White House undermine democracy by threatening a dangerous consolidation of private and public power.
Project Censured, By Mischa Geracoulis and Mickey Huff, February 20, 2025
On January 7, 2025, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on “Fox & Friends” that the recent US elections point toward the need to prioritize free speech, proclaiming that Meta’s fact-checkers have been too politically biased.
Meta’s new global policy chief, former deputy chief-of-staff in the George W. Bush White House and energy lobbyist, Joel Kaplan, lauded Meta for returning to its free expression roots. No stranger to Meta, during Trump’s first reign, the GOP operative oversaw changes to Facebook’s algorithm to promote right-wing content and advocated against restricting racially incendiary and conservative content.
The Biden Administration also had influence over Meta’s algorithms, as Zuckerberg revealed to Joe Rogan and the House Judiciary Committee. According to Zuckerberg, under the guise of fact-checking, Facebook was pressured to “moderate” (ie. censor) certain information, too, especially around issues like the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 origin, and pandemic policies (including satire and humorous posts). In a recent letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg lamented, “I believe the government was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.” He also noted that tech companies should not cave to political pressures in either direction.
Zuckerberg’s statements and revelations to Rogan, however, contradict that Meta—and other social media platforms, as documented by the Twitter Files—actually do fall in line with the reigning political party. This is deeply problematic in both aforementioned examples as it acts to further erode public trust. Time will tell, but if past is prologue, it appears the opposite has been the trend with Big Tech kowtowing to the political establishment.
Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network and former PolitiFact editor-in-chief, who also served on Facebook’s original fact-checking team, told Poynter that Meta’s 180-degree turn on fact-checking appears as though Zuckerberg is seeking to please Trump and, once again, to conform with the goals of the right………………………………..
Following in the footsteps of Elon Musk, slated to co-chair the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Zuckerberg and other Big Tech CEOs made pre-inauguration pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, seeking to curry favor with the Trump administration. Taking a cue from the Silicon Valley CEOs, even New York City mayor Eric Adams turned up at Mar-a-Lago just days before the inauguration, presumably hoping to dodge 2024 corruption charges for accepting bribes from and conspiring with the Turkish government.
The Billionaire Row Big Tech CEOs who attended Trump’s inauguration, including Musk, Zuckerberg, Amazon/Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, had “better seats than most of the cabinet members.” The opulent optics of that inaugural spectacle did not come about by accident. They were crafted to convey a clear message about who was lining up to support the new Trump administration, with Big Tech’s oligarchs and the digital information interests they represent positioned at the forefront. The role these entities play moving forward should be carefully scrutinized, especially around issues of narrative control, agenda setting, and censorship in service of Trump and the MAGA GOP……………………………………………………………………………………….
The end of DEI could lead to real-life harms
Meta joins the growing list of companies—including Target, McDonald’s, Walmart, Boeing, Molson Coors, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Amazon—that are ending or scaling back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that the corporate world is “culturally neutered” and could do with more masculine energy and aggression. Statistics show, nevertheless, that women comprise just 25 to 35 percent of tech jobs in the US, and only 11 percent hold executive positions. Juliet A. Williams, gender studies professor and Social Science Interdepartmental Program chair at UCLA, asserts that the term “neutered” is gendered dog whistling that promotes gender traditionalism and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
St. John’s University law professor Kate Klonick told The Intercept, “To pretend these new rules are any more ‘neutral’ than the old rules is a farce and a lie.”
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Director General Thibaut Bruttin has stated the “‘Muskification’ of the Meta group’s platforms obeys a political strategy that allows private sector interests to prevail over the need for a public conversation based on facts.” Signaling hostility toward journalism, Meta is accentuating its disengagement from the universal right to access reliable news and information, “reinforcing a model based on virality, at the risk of amplifying hate speech, manipulation and false information,” Bruttin wrote.
……………………………………………………………..The Technogarchy displaces democracy and journalism
The new changes will also permit users to post more acerbic criticism of ethnicity and nationality, which has been at issue in places such as the Philippines and Myanmar and that RSF finds troubling. At present, Meta’s changes only apply to its users in the United States, but RSF warned that new US policies might foreshadow “a global strategy of marginalizing journalism and its actors in the name of a freedom of expression perverted to serve ideological interests.”
Amnesty International reported that in 2017, Facebook’s algorithms “substantially contributed to the atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya people.” How to Stand Up to a Dictator, Philippine journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa’s 2022 book, documents Facebook’s role in disseminating dangerous disinformation during Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential campaign and election, which was “accomplished with a loyal ‘troll army’ that boosted pro-Duterte narratives on social media, while smashing down opposition.”
Ressa warns that Meta’s end to fact-checking and DEI policies come down to safety issues. A “world without facts” becomes “a world that’s right for a dictator.” Ressa is right to be concerned. However, there is an elitist assumption at play here, based on tacit faith in those fact-checkers as infallible, unbiased judges of complex, charged issues such as DEI policy or Russiagate. Ascribing to any individual or group a monopoly on the truth stifles legitimate debate about such controversial issues. Despite its best intentions, a protectionist approach to fact-checking may inadvertently undermine public trust when members of the public discover that fact-checking organizations have stifled fact-based perspectives deemed to be unpalatable. More broadly, as suggested previously, this furthers the erosion of public trust especially in government institutions and the Fourth Estate, both of which are near or at record-low approval ratings, according to the Pew Research Center.
Marc Owen Jones, associate professor of media analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar and author of Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East (2022), views Zuckerberg’s changes as indicative of the U.S’s move toward authoritarianism, which thrives in an environment of disinformation and a manufactured “war against reality.” Getting rid of fact-checkers, Jones told Democracy Now!, signals acquiesce to Trump’s demands, perpetuates the right-wing notion that the United States suffers from a crisis of censorship, and promotes what Jones has elsewhere called “institutionalized violence by algorithm.”
Vaidhyanathan sees it differently because, according to him, in the United States, the government worships corporations. Zuckerberg is not bowing to Trump, but the other way around, Vaidhyanathan told Democracy Now!. “Zuckerberg always gets what he wants out of the United States government,” Vaidhyanathan asserted, adding that, now, Zuckerberg “sees an opportunity to get even more of what he wants out of the Trump administration.”…………………………………………………….
The evergreen need for independent journalism and critical media literacy
Meta’s changes ultimately point to a more productive solution—the evergreen necessity of independent media and critical media literacy. Crowdsourced content, pundit-driven infotainment, and AI can never replace research, investigative journalism founded on ethical reporting practices, and critical thinking skills. It’s only been since 2016 that fact-checking, under the purview of Big Tech, became an entity separate from the job of journalism, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi has noted. That’s a problem best addressed by educators and journalists, not outsourced to Big Tech.
Social media, even in the presence of fact-checkers, was never, and can never, serve as a replacement for the work of an independent free press— one that not only checks facts, but checks the power of Big Tech, government, and the corporate media, holding them accountable to the public. https://www.projectcensored.org/technogarchy-washington-muskification-meta/
Hating Trump no reason to oppose Trump Ukraine peace initiative.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 23 Feb 25
Some of my progressive comrades are bombarding social media in opposition to Trump’s peace plan to end the Russo Ukraine war. For the first 2 years, 11 months of America’s proxy war against Russia using Ukrainian cannon fodder, they were largely silent. They were loath to criticize President Biden and Vice President Harris, particularly during a presidential campaign. Their focus was laser like on domestic issues to prevent a return of the despised Trump to the presidency.
Trump not only won, he immediately pivoted to peace in Ukraine. He totally overturned the Biden war playbook. He announced Ukraine (really the US) had lost, must never join NATO, and not get back the Russian leaning Eastern Ukraine Russia annexed.
More. Trump announced a complete reset of the US Russia relationship to include diplomatic engagement and friendly relations with Russia that Biden had jettisoned during his entire term.
More again. Ending the war and reestablishing diplomatic relations will reduce the risk of nuclear war present for every one of the 1,095 days of this senseless war. It makes possible renewing the three nuclear treaties the US abandoned this century, two of them by Trump.
But instead of supporting this astonishing breakthrough, progressives have gone ballistic. They charge dictator wannabe Trump is selling out Ukrainian sovereignty, like Chamberlain did to Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938. They claim this will allow Russia to recreate the Soviet Union, then march into Western Europe. Preposterous.
In doing so they ignore this war was provoked by Biden to weaken Russia. It would never have resulted in war had Biden honored Russia’s security concerns regarding no Ukraine NATO on Russia’s border.
Worse yet, progressives are blind to the fact that the war was lost on Day One when Biden announced the US would not participate with US military. Why? He wisely advised that would result in WWIII.
The result? Ukraine is on the brink of defeat, having upwards of a million dead or wounded. Over ten million have fled Ukraine for safer climes. Potential draftees are deserting en mass. The economy is on life support. President Zelensky cancelled elections, banned free press, outlawed the Russian Orthodox Church on his march to becoming dictator for the war’s duration. Once it’s over…so is Zelensky.
None of this made a dent in progressives till Trump demanded this madness end and followed thru arranging lightning fast negotiations with Russian leaders to end it. Then progressives surfaced to demonize Trump and his peace initiative. They have joined the most virulent pro war advocates in the Republican Party, the military, the media determined to sabotage the most hopeful development to end further destruction of Ukraine and depletion of US treasure.
Every progressive opposing Trump’s peace initiative enables another 500,000 dead Ukrainians, another $175 billion in squandered US treasure, and no end to Biden’s catastrophic and failed proxy war to weaken Russia.
Ponder that progressives.
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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