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Max Moran, moran@therevolvingdoorproject.
The Revolving Door Project published two new sections of its "Climate Corporate Crackdown" series today, which explore how the Biden Administration can mobilize existing powers in the Department of Justice, Office of Management and Budget, and financial regulatory agencies to tackle the climate crisis.
The Revolving Door Project published two new sections of its "Climate Corporate Crackdown" series today, which explore how the Biden Administration can mobilize existing powers in the Department of Justice, Office of Management and Budget, and financial regulatory agencies to tackle the climate crisis. Read the Justice section here and the economics section here.
The Climate Corporate Crackdown series explores how the federal government can use existing law to bring corporate polluters and greenhouse gas emitters to heel and shift the American economy off of fossil fuels and toward a more equitable and sustainable future. It is part of RDP's broader "Corporate Crackdown Project," which highlights opportunities for the President to take popular, populist action against corporate abuses.
Revolving Door Project Personnel Team Director Max Moran, who co-wrote the economics section, said "It's pretty fitting that we're releasing the economics section and the justice section together, since if you want to be taken seriously as a quote-unquote 'policy person' in D.C., you pretty much need to be either an economist or a lawyer. Some of the least productive intra-Democratic screaming matches about policy boil often down to the economists and the lawyers yelling past each other. But if we're going to solve the climate crisis, or any of our other crises for that matter, we need to draw on knowledge from not just economics and law, but also every other discipline out there. And each discipline has to be humble about what it can and cannot tell us. If we want readers to take anything away from these chapters, it's that every part of the federal government and every type of human knowledge has a key part to play in saving our species from itself."
Revolving Door Project researcher Fatou Ndiaye, who co-wrote both sections, said "The climate crisis necessitates far-reaching shifts across all parts of modern life. The judicial and economic systems are obviously two of the most important institutions of American life, so it's important to look at them in any examination of what a green future might include. A real policy program that could completely meet the challenges of our changing planet, such as the Green New Deal, of course necessitates Congressional action in addition to the executive actions we describe in these chapters. We don't in any way think that the policies in these reports replace the urgent task of passing new federal climate legislation. What we're trying to show is that there's a great deal of good which our existing bureaucracies are obligated to do under longstanding law to protect the climate and crack down on the people destroying it."
Revolving Door Project researcher Hannah Story Brown, co-author of the Justice Department section, said, "The enforcement of existing laws would be critical to preserving a livable environment no matter what, but is doubly so because Congress has failed to pass climate legislation for decades. This report encompasses months of research into the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division, and shows how the division's lawyers are integral to that effort, but could be much more powerful advocates. Increasing Division resources could go a long way--but the ENRD also needs lawyers who are willing to be staunch environmental defenders, fending off the corporations who would poison our air, land and water in the name of profit. If we want a federal government that protects public health and our irreplaceable biodiversity, we need a federal government with the resources and the uncompromising vision to actually accomplish its goals."
The Project also released a supplemental report on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is not part of the federal executive branch but does play a key role in estimating the economic impacts of policy measures, which is a major theme of the economics section. Read that supplemental report here.
The Project previously released a chapter on the Department of Energy, and will release chapters on the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, and more in the coming weeks.
The Revolving Door Project (RDP), a project of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.
"While the media and the U.S. Congress have devoted much attention to the purported benefits of exploiting cutting-edge technologies for military use, far less has been said about the risks involved."
Emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, lethal autonomous weapons systems, and hypersonic missiles pose a potentially existential threat that underscores the imperative of arms control measures to slow the pace of weaponization, according to a new report published Tuesday.
The Arms Control Association report—entitled Assessing the Dangers: Emerging Military Technologies and Nuclear (In)Stability—"unpacks the concept of 'emerging technologies' and summarizes the debate over their utilization for military purposes and their impact on strategic stability."
The publication notes that the world's military powers "have sought to exploit advanced technologies—artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber, and hypersonics, among others—to gain battlefield advantages" but warns too little has been said about the dangers these weapons represent.
"Some officials and analysts posit that such emerging technologies will revolutionize warfare, making obsolete the weapons and strategies of the past," the report states. "Yet, before the major powers move quickly ahead with the weaponization of these technologies, there is a great need for policymakers, defense officials, diplomats, journalists, educators, and members of the public to better understand the unintended and hazardous outcomes of these technologies."
\u201cA new @ArmsControlNow report assesses the extent to which military use of emerging tech could result in an accidental use of nuclear weapons in a crisis, and provides a framework for curtailing the indiscriminate weaponization of such tech.\n\nAvailable at https://t.co/gPyDbcaOcd\u201d— Arms Control Assoc (@Arms Control Assoc) 1675774840
Lethal autonomous weapons systems—defined by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots as armaments that operate independent of "meaningful human control"—are being developed by nations including China, Israel, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.S. Air Force's sci-fi-sounding Skyborg Autonomous Control System, currently under development, is, according to the report, "intended to control multiple drone aircraft simultaneously and allow them to operate in 'swarms,' coordinating their actions with one another with minimum oversight by human pilots."
"Although the rapid deployment of such systems appears highly desirable to many military officials, their development has generated considerable alarm among diplomats, human rights campaigners, arms control advocates, and others who fear that deploying fully autonomous weapons in battle would severely reduce human oversight of combat operations, possibly resulting in violations of international law, and could weaken barriers that restrain escalation from conventional to nuclear war," the report notes.
The latter half of the 20th century witnessed numerous nuclear close calls, many based on misinterpretations, limitations, or outright failures of technology. While technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are often touted as immune to human fallibility, the research suggests that such claims and hubris could have deadly and unforeseen consequences.
"The major powers are rushing ahead with the weaponization of advanced technologies before they have fully considered—let alone attempted to mitigate—the consequences of doing so."
"An increased reliance on AI could lead to new types of catastrophic mistakes," a 2018 report by the Rand Corporation warned. "There may be pressure to use it before it is technologically mature; it may be susceptible to adversarial subversion; or adversaries may believe that the AI is more capable than it is, leading them to make catastrophic mistakes."
While the Pentagon in 2020 adopted five principles for what it calls the "ethical" use of AI, many ethicists argue the only safe course of action is a total ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems.
Hypersonic missiles, which can travel at speeds of Mach 5—five times the speed of sound—or faster, are now part of at least the U.S., Chinese, and Russian arsenals. Last year, Russian officials acknowledged deploying Kinzhal hypersonic missiles three times during the country's invasion of Ukraine in what is believed to be the first-ever use of such weapons in combat. In recent years, China has tested multiple hypersonic missile variants using specially designed high-altitude balloons. Countries including Australia, France, India, Japan, Germany, Iran, and North Korea are also developing hypersonic weapons.
\u201cDARPA\u2019s HAWC program is a wrap\u2026concluding with a successful @LockheedMartin #hypersonic missile flying more than 300 nautical miles and lots of data for the @usairforce. More: https://t.co/Yqq2Xl50jn\u201d— DARPA (@DARPA) 1675093457
The report also warns of the escalatory potential of cyberwarfare and automated battlefield decision-making.
"As was the case during World Wars I and II, the major powers are rushing ahead with the weaponization of advanced technologies before they have fully considered—let alone attempted to mitigate—the consequences of doing so, including the risk of significant civilian casualties and the accidental or inadvertent escalation of conflict," Michael Klare, a board member at the Arms Control Association and the report's lead author, said in a statement.
"While the media and the U.S. Congress have devoted much attention to the purported benefits of exploiting cutting-edge technologies for military use, far less has been said about the risks involved," he added.
The report asserts that bilateral and multilateral agreements between countries that "appreciate the escalatory risks posed by the weaponization of emerging technologies" are critical to minimizing those dangers.
"As an example of a useful first step, the leaders of the major nuclear powers could jointly pledge to eschew cyberattacks" against each other's command, control, communications, and information (C3I) systems, the report states. A code of conduct governing the military use of artificial intelligence based on the Pentagon's AI ethics principles is also recommended.
"If the major powers are prepared to discuss binding restrictions on the military use of destabilizing technologies, certain priorities take precedence," the paper argues. "The first would be an agreement or agreements prohibiting attacks on the nuclear C3I systems of another state by cyberspace means or via missile strikes, especially hypersonic strikes."
"Another top priority would be measures aimed at preventing swarm attacks by autonomous weapons on another state's missile submarines, mobile ICBMs, and other second-strike retaliatory systems," the report continues, referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles. "Strict limitations should be imposed on the use of automated decision-support systems with the capacity to inform or initiate major battlefield decisions, including a requirement that humans exercise ultimate control over such devices."
"Without the adoption of measures such as these, cutting-edge technologies will be converted into military systems at an ever-increasing tempo, and the dangers to world security will grow apace," the publication concluded. "A more thorough understanding of the distinctive threats to strategic stability posed by these technologies and the imposition of restraints on their military use would go a long way toward reducing the risks of Armageddon."
"A worker should not be fired for going to the doctor. Yet it is 2023 and railroaders are fighting for sick leave in the richest country on Earth," said one rail union leader.
Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday that he will join rail workers later this week to launch a fresh push for at least seven days of paid sick leave, an effort that comes months after Congress and the Biden White House forced workers to accept a contract without a single paid sick day to avert a potential strike.
Joining Sanders (I-Vt.) and rail union representatives at the Thursday press conference in Washington, D.C. will be Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), one of the handful of Republican senators who voted for Sanders' amendment to add a week of paid sick leave to the White House-brokered contract deal.
The Vermont senator's amendment ultimately fell seven votes short of the 60 needed to overcome the Senate filibuster.
Since lawmakers' December vote to impose the contract despite opposition from unions representing a majority of U.S. rail workers, progressive members of Congress and rail employees have continued pressuring the Biden administration and ultra-profitable railroads to provide paid sick leave, overhaul their exploitative and untenable scheduling systems, and implement stronger safety standards.
On December 9, Sanders and more than 70 of his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate sent a letter urging President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to "take quick and decisive action to guarantee these workers paid sick leave"—something he has yet to do.
Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, is expected in the coming months to introduce legislation that would require rail corporations to guarantee their workers a minimum number of paid sick days.
At Thursday's press conference, according to Sanders' office, union leaders will demand that "companies provide them with at least seven paid sick days."
"Rail labor is committed to pursuing and securing paid leave for workers this year to create a safer, healthier national rail system for all."
The event will come just two weeks after Union Pacific, one of the largest rail corporations in North America, reported a record $7 billion in profits for 2022. The company spent significantly more on stock buybacks last year than it did on worker pay and benefits.
Sanders' office noted Tuesday that "guaranteeing seven paid sick days to rail workers would cost the industry just $321 million dollars—less than 1.2% of profits in a single year."
Marking the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act, U.S. rail unions unanimously adopted a resolution last week declaring that "all of rail labor is united and resolved to fight for paid sick leave for all railroad workers through collective bargaining or voluntary agreement, and that rail labor will further call upon all elected and appointed government officials and government agencies to pass a national paid sick leave law that covers all railroad workers with paid sick leave without penalty or punishment."
“A worker should not be fired for going to the doctor. Yet it is 2023 and railroaders are fighting for sick leave in the richest country on Earth," Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, said in a statement Monday. "Absent a national paid sick leave policy, the burden of securing this humane policy falls onto the shoulders of workers and the unions that represent them."
"Rail labor is committed to pursuing and securing paid leave for workers this year to create a safer, healthier national rail system for all," Regan added.
"People generally tend to consider Google's search engine as an equalizer... but that's just not the case," said one researcher. "Lower-income women are being targeted, and they're the ones that are going to suffer the most."
Research published Monday shows that Google is targeting lower-income users with advertisements for so-called crisis pregnancy centers, anti-choice organizations known to steer people away from accessing abortion care.
As the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), which conducted the analysis, explained: "Crisis pregnancy centers—which critics have dubbed 'fake abortion clinics'—appear to offer medical services but instead push an anti-abortion message, providing free ultrasounds and baby supplies with the aim of persuading women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Abortion rights advocates accuse them of using deceptive tactics to get women in the door—and targeting their advertising at low-income women and women of color in urban areas."
For its investigation, TTP established Google accounts for test users in Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. The users were characterized as 21-year-old women belonging to three different household income groups as defined by Google: average- or lower-income, moderately high-income, and high-income. While logged into each account, researchers entered 15 abortion-related search terms, including "Abortion clinic near me" and "I want an abortion," and then recorded ads that appeared on the first five pages of results. Researchers used a Google Chrome browser with no previous history, and they used virtual private networks to make it look like the users were conducting searches from their respective cities.
TTP found that Google showed ads for crisis pregnancy centers to women on the lower end of the income scale at a higher rate than their wealthier counterparts in two of the three cities. In Phoenix, average- or lower-income women saw 56% of ads come from crisis pregnancy centers, higher than what moderately high-income women (41%) and high-income women (7%) saw. In Atlanta, 42% of the ads targeted at average- or lower-income women came from crisis pregnancy centers, more than Google showed to moderately high-income women (18%) and high-income women (29%).
"By pointing low-income women to [crisis pregnancy centers] more frequently than higher-income women in states with restrictive laws, Google may delay these women from finding an actual abortion clinic to get a legal and safe abortion," TTP director Katie Paul toldThe Guardian on Tuesday.
"The time window is critical in some of these states," said Paul.
Abortion is banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Arizona and Florida. In Georgia, abortion is banned after six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant.
Because it can cost thousands of dollars in lost wages, child care, transportation, and lodging, lower-income people are less likely to be able to travel for abortion care.
Women on the lower end of the income scale did not receive ads for crisis pregnancy centers at the highest rate in every city in TTP's study. In Miami, researchers observed an inverse pattern: high-income women saw a larger share of ads from anti-abortion organizations (39%) than moderately high-income women (10%) and average- or lower-income women (15%).
"It's not clear why Miami diverged from the other cities, but one possibility is that crisis pregnancy centers, which often seek to delay women's abortion decisions until they are past the legal window for the procedure, are more actively targeting lower-income women in states like Arizona and Georgia, which have more restrictive abortion laws than Florida," TTP hypothesized. Although Republican lawmakers in Arizona and Florida have both prohibited abortion after 15 weeks, Arizona's ban comes with heightened restrictions.
Still, even if high-income women in Miami received more crisis pregnancy center ads on the top five pages of search results, that doesn't mean those are the ones they saw first. Ad rank is significant, and according to TTP, Google showed ads for anti-abortion organizations "higher up in the search results for lower-income women than it did for women of other income levels," as shown below.
In Miami, the first ad shown to an average- or lower-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me' is for a crisis pregnancy center.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)
In Miami, the first three ads shown to a moderately high-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me' are for abortion providers.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)
In Miami, the first ad shown to a high-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me' is for an abortion provider.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)
The search terms used are also important. Several queries in TTP's experiment yielded only crisis pregnancy center ads for lower-income women.
"Although companies buying ads with Google can selectively target the groups they want to reach–including by income–Paul adds that many users won't be aware they are being targeted by Google in this way," The Guardian reported.
"Google has a large share of influence, particularly in the United States when people are trying to search for authoritative information," Paul explained. "People generally tend to consider Google's search engine as an equalizer. They think the results they get are the results that everyone's going to get. But that's just not the case."
"Lower-income women are being targeted," she said, "and they're the ones that are going to suffer the most under these policies."
As TTP pointed out: "Google is helping these centers reach their intended audience. Abortion rights groups and academic studies have noted that crisis pregnancy centers typically target women of lower socioeconomic classes, in part by advertising free services on public transportation and in bus shelters."
Crisis pregnancy centers have sought to expand their reach since the U.S. Supreme Court's far-right majority overturnedRoe v. Wade last summer.
These facilities have "been known to employ a number of shady tactics to convince women seeking an abortion to keep their pregnancies," The Guardian noted. "Those include posing as abortion clinics online though they do not offer abortion care, refusing pregnancy tests for women who say they intend to have an abortion, and touting widely disputed research about abortion care to patients. Crisis centers,which go largely unregulated despite offering medical services, have been known to target low-income women precisely because they find it harder to travel out of state for abortion care."
Previous reports have shown that Google is increasingly aiding these anti-abortion organizations, particularly in the GOP-led states that eliminated reproductive freedom as soon as the constitutional right to abortion was revoked.
TTP's new findings "add to growing questions about Google's handling of crisis pregnancy centers," the group wrote. "Bloomberg News has reported that Google Maps routinely misdirected users searching for abortion clinics to crisis pregnancy centers and that Google often failed to affix a warning, as promised, to crisis pregnancy center ads indicating they do not provide abortions. (In response to the first report, Google pledged to clearly label U.S. facilities that provide abortions in Google Maps and search results.)"
"Last fall, TTP also found that Google frequently served ads for crisis pregnancy centers that falsely suggest they offer abortions, violating the platform's policy against advertising that misleads users," the group noted.
During its new investigation, "TTP found similar omissions in multiple ads."