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AM Wake Up.

The Department of Justice’s and Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s recent announcement of its $4.3 billion settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Binance has jolted the digital finance world and sparked rumors that the massive exchange could soon face collapse roughly one year after the implosion of another massive exchange, FTX. Those criminal cases, which charged Binance with money laundering and failing to report suspicious transactions tied to terror groups and entities under U.S. sanctions, placed considerable blame on Binance’s former Chief Compliance Officer, Samuel Lim. Lim, who left the company in 2022, was subsequently replaced with Noah Perlman.

In that role, Perlman has clearly been a crucial part of Binance’s attempts to navigate the US government investigations targeting the exchange, including its recent settlement with the DOJ and CFTC as well as the exchange’s ongoing litigation with the SEC. Now, with Binance’s long-time head Changpeng Zhao, or “CZ,” stepping down as part of the DOJ settlement, Perlman is one of the few executives who has chosen to stay on to steer the world’s largest crypto exchange into the post-CZ era.

In his current role, Perlman will have even more power to decide to whom to withhold or offer access to Binance’s services and if, like other exchanges and major players in the crypto market, Binance will collaborate even more closely with the DOJ in requiring KYC protocols as well as helping law enforcement to seize bitcoin and other digital currencies it deems connected to “illicit” financing (something Perlman has been doing since he joined Binance). Perlman is also poised to work closely, perhaps more than any other Binance executive, with the government compliance monitor to be appointed to oversee Binance as part of its settlement with the DOJ.

Despite his more critical-than-ever role at the world’s largest crypto exchange, there has been surprisingly little interest among the media in looking deeper into Perlman, who boasts connections to some of the more mysterious aspects of the FTX collapse, controversies at the Winklevoss-owned exchange Gemini, and even notorious sex trafficker and financial criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

A Lawyer with a Famous Father Noah Perlman with his mother Toby Perlman, Source

Noah Perlman is the son of the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman and attended Harvard University, graduating in 1991. He went on to attend Columbia Law School and after graduating in 1997, joined the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, a white-shoe law firm in New York deeply tied to political and financial power in the U.S. (e.g., Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is one of its many influential alumni). After working there and then as a law clerk in the Eastern District of New York, Perlman became a federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice, where he held posts such as Special Coordinator for Crimes against Children during his five-year stint with the DOJ.

Perlman’s role as Special Coordinator for Crimes against Children is notable given his father’s apparently close relationship with a notorious sex trafficker of minors, Jeffrey Epstein. Itzhak Perlman flew on Epstein’s plane at least twice, in 1992 and 1993, where he accompanied Epstein to Michigan’s Interlochen Center for the Arts. Epstein, who once attended the school on a scholarship at age 14, began donating heavily to the school in 1990 and continued to donate through 2003. At least one of those two known flights involved Epstein bringing Perlman to Interlochen for a performance. From 1989 through the mid-1990s, Perlman performed annually at Interlochen’s Arts Camp, according to the school’s website.

According to Tim Ambrose, former Vice president of Institutional Advancement at Interlochen, Epstein initially built his now infamous lodge at Interlochen, sometimes referred to in media reports as a “lair to target girls,” in order to facilitate Perlman’s stays at the school:

We did not have a suitable facility for Mr Perlman to stay at that was handicap-accessible [Perlman lost the normal use of his legs after contracting polio as a child]. Epstein said he was interested in helping build a place for people to stay when they are on campus.

I got an architect and had them draw some plans, but I got a call from Jeffrey and he said: ‘I don’t want that’. He said: ‘I want to build a log cabin and I want it all handicap accessible so when Mr Perlman comes he is comfortable. I want a walk-in tub, I want countertops that are handicap accessible’. So, I got an architect and we came up with something.

Epstein approved of the new design and sent a cheque for up to £313,000 (between US$300,000 and US$400,000 at the time) for it to be built.

Around the same time Perlman had traveled on his plane with him to Interlochen and construction on the cabin began, Epstein was already using his privileged status as a donor to gain access to, recruit and abuse young girls attending the school. Perlman’s address and three phone numbers are also listed in Epstein’s infamous black book.

The lodge Epstein built at Interlochen allegedly for Itzhak Perlman’s benefit and use, Source

Itzhak’s son Noah Perlman left his role as a federal prosecutor focused on crimes targeting children in 2004 and then became general counsel for the New York division of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). After two years there, he joined Morgan Stanley, first as Global Head of Special Investigations and then as Global Head of Financial Crimes. There he focused on issues related to “money laundering and sanctions” and spoke publicly in 2018 about the need for better data “to track financial compliance” due to the spread of “populism and authoritarianism” and, in 2017, spoke of how much of his work at the time stood at the intersection of financial services and national security.

Joining the Crypto Industry

After years of straddling national security and Wall Street interests at Morgan Stanley, Perlman joined Gemini, the exchange co-founded by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, in September 2019. He served first as the company’s Chief Compliance Officer. According to Perlman, his actions at the exchange were guided by the Winklevoss’ “vision that compliance really could be a competitive advantage” and that the company has long been focused “on security, regulation, compliance.” In August 2020 and until his departure this January, Perlman was Gemini’s Chief Operating Officer.

Despite its somewhat cozy relationship with New York regulators, a lawsuit filed last month by New York Attorney General charged Gemini with engaging in a $1.1 billion fraud. The focus of that fraud, the Gemini Earn program, a partnership between Gemini and crypto lender Genesis, had involved Perlman considerably, per past reports. However, Perlman had departed Gemini several months before the recent lawsuit was filed and the Winklevoss twins had sued Genesis’ parent company DCG back in July, claiming that Genesis had misled them in the lead-up to the collapse of Gemini Earn. Gemini then sued Genesis itself in late October, shortly after the NYAG’s lawsuit was filed. Genesis has recently sued Gemini in an effort to claw back withdrawals related to Gemini Earn’s implosion last November, which subsequently resulted in Genesis filing for bankruptcy in January.

The Winklevoss Twins, Source

The Gemini Earn program ran into major problems with the collapse of FTX last year, with the program temporarily halting withdrawals due to fallout from FTX’s bankruptcy and later imploding entirely. It was later revealed that nearly 60% of Genesis’ loans were at one point tied to the FTX-linked hedge fund Alameda Research. However, well before FTX collapsed, Gemini knew internally that there were issues with Genesis and had downgraded “its own estimate of Genesis’ credit rating to a junk trade in February 2022,” even though it continued to promote Gemini Earn as “low-risk” until its collapse roughly nine months later. Genesis has also notably been investigated for its apparent role in the collapse of the Terra/Luna fraud in early 2022, a collapse in which Binance also played an interesting role. Binance would go on to play a similarly interesting role in the collapse of FTX several months later, likely part of what Sam Bankman-Fried had once referred to as the “second great stablecoin war” going on behind the scenes in the crypto industry.

The NY Attorney General’s lawsuit against Gemini notes that key Gemini risk management personnel knew that Genesis was financially unstable and pulled their personal money out of the Earn program well before its collapse. It specifically mentions that Gemini’s Chief Operating Officer “allegedly withdrew his entire investment of more than $100,000 from Earn on June 16 and 17 of last year.” Though the suit declined to name Gemini’s Chief Operating Officer, Perlman held that role at the time of the events detailed in the lawsuit.

Perlman’s exact role in Gemini Earn and in Gemini’s decision to partner with Genesis remains murky. Like Genesis, Perlman has his own unusual connections to aspects of the FTX scandal, including one of the most mysterious components of the FTX network – Farmington State Bank in rural Washington. In 2019, the same year that Perlman joined Gemini, Perlman was listed as a director of FBH Corp. in SEC filings alongside Jean Chalopin, the executive chairman of Deltec, the Bahamian bank that had been deeply tied to FTX and continues to be deeply tied to the controversial stablecoin Tether. FTX and Tether were also deeply connected before the exchange collapsed.

Farmington State Bank’s only branch, as shown on Google Maps, Source

FBH Corp., soon after its incorporation, took over the miniscule and extremely rural Farmington State Bank, which soon adopted the name Moonstone Bank. Just days after the name change, Alameda Research bought a $11.5 million stake in the bank and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly poured $50 million into the bank in the months that followed under an account labeled “FTX Digital Markets.” Bankman-Fried’s deposits accounted for the vast majority of the $71 million in funds that were deposited into Farmington/Moonstone after the name change and up until the collapse of FTX in November 2022, which brought Farmington under heavy scrutiny.

Media reports published during and after the collapse of FTX noted that Farmington’s relationship with regulators in Washington State and the Federal Reserve system was both highly unusual and suspect, as the ties of Chalopin and Alameda to the bank should have raised numerous red flags for fiscal authorities. The Federal Reserve still refuses to comment “about the process that federal regulators undertook to approve Chalopin’s purchase of the charter of Farmington State Bank in 2020,” but filed an enforcement action against Farmington in August, just days after Farmington announced its plan to sell its deposits and assets to the Bank of Eastern Oregon and close down.

Perlman, who was also on Moonstone’s board in addition to being a director of FBH Corp., has yet to publicly comment on his connection to the small, rural bank that has emerged as a key component of the massive fraud tied to FTX. Perlman also never publicly listed or commented on his affiliation with Moonstone or FBH Corp.

FTX and the Curious History of Farmington State Bank Since FTX’s collapse, a tiny bank in rural Washington has come under heavy scrutiny for the role it may have played in the crypto exchange’s fraudulent activities. Ed Berger and Whitney Webb investigate the history of the bank and unearth some troubling connections.

As Unlimited Hangout reported last year, Moonstone, prior to the FTX scandal, was working with a very suspect stablecoin company called Fluent Finance to “accelerate adoption” of Fluent’s stablecoin US+. Fluent frames US+ as a regulation compliant dollar-backed stablecoin, a “trustworthy” Tether competitor. Its relationship with Farmington as well as Tether-connected entities like Deltec and FTX suggests that Moonstone/Farmington was poised to be a vehicle for Sam Bankman-Fried in the “great stablecoin war,” had FTX not collapsed in such spectacular fashion.

The Compliance Crackdown Cometh

Not long after the FTX scandal and also after his role at Moonstone/Farmington was publicly (though quietly) disclosed, Perlman became head of Binance’s compliance team in January. Around that same time, Binance brought on Kristen Hecht to become its Global Head of Corporate Compliance. Hecht formerly worked for the US Treasury Department in financial crime compliance and then for HSBC China and a Facebook/Meta-owned digital asset wallet company. Perlman, in his role at Binance, has spent the past year overseeing Binance’s relationship with global law enforcement and its Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols. He also oversaw Binance’s decision to cease operations in Russia, a decision most likely motivated by US government lawsuits against the exchange, including those which were recently settled, as they targeted Binance chiefly for failing to block transactions in countries or with companies/entities/people under US sanctions.

Now, in the wake of the Binance-DOJ settlement, Perlman is poised to do more of the same and steer the world’s largest crypto exchange into an era of unprecedented compliance. While this obviously has clear implications for Binance moving forward, it also has important implications for Binance’s troves of customer data from past transactions. As Perlman had stated while at Morgan Stanley, better data leads to increased financial compliance, and now the US Treasury Department will have access to all of Binance’s current, future and past records going forward. This will invariably be used to track past “suspicious” transactions to spur a new round of retroactive DOJ crypto seizures and civil asset forfeitures in the months leading up to the next bitcoin halving and an anticipated major crypto bull run in 2024. Perlman, a DOJ veteran, will most likely be more than happy to help his former employer in this endeavor.

While all attention has recently been focused on the Binance-DOJ settlement, few are seeing the big picture of what that settlement and a post-CZ Binance means, not just for the crypto space, but the future of financial privacy. Just as the settlement was announced, USDT stablecoin issuer Tether announced that it had “recently onboarded” the Secret Service to its platform and are working with the FBI to do the same. With other major players in the crypto space looking to bend over backward for the US government (if they weren’t already) in the name of compliance, the DOJ-FBI have an even greater ability to seize crypto holdings deemed to be “uncompliant” whenever they see fit. DOJ seizures of bitcoin prior to the settlement with Binance are estimated at 205,515 bitcoin (nearly $7.6 billion at the time of this article’s publication) which makes the DOJ one of the largest holders of bitcoin in the world.

This is significant as the DOJ, FBI and Secret Service are all major, active members of the World Economic Forum Partnership Against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC), a public-private partnership of law enforcement, commercial banks and intelligence-linked tech companies that are openly planning to erode both financial and online privacy in the name of greater centralized control over the online flow of money and information. As previously reported, WEF-PAC, which is led by a career intelligence agent, anticipates a major cyberattack on the financial system before 2025 and has spent years developing systems and architecture for an internet and a financial system completely devoid of anonymity or privacy – “solutions” that would conveniently be in high demand should the anticipated cyberattack unfold. WEF-PAC also sees bitcoin, including the value of bitcoin and the use of privacy-enhancing tools in bitcoin transactions, as a threat to its policy plans and has floated the idea that manipulating the price of bitcoin could help it and its members achieve their policy goals related to financial privacy. Thus, the DOJ’s significant bitcoin holdings take on new meaning in this context.

Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy With many focusing on tomorrow’s Cyber Polygon exercise, less attention has been paid to the World Economic Forum’s real ambitions in cybersecurity – to create a global organization aimed at gutting even the possibility of anonymity online. With the governments of the US, UK and Israel on board, along with some of the world’s most powerful corporations, it is important to pay attention to their endgame, not just the simulations.

While framed as necessary to stop a litany of crimes – from child abuse to money laundering – the obvious problem, with members like the DOJ and FBI, is that many of WEF-PAC’s members have committed those same crimes and routinely protect powerful people who also commit those same crimes on scales much, much larger than those they do prosecute. Jeffrey Epstein is one obvious and well-known example of what amounts to a mafia protection racket masquerading as law enforcement.

Noah Perlman is a symptom of this larger problem. He is not in charge of compliance with the law as written, as his past associations/behavior with Gemini Earn and Farmington show that he is very willing to not comply with the law if it benefits him. Instead, he is in charge of compliance with the financial mafia that runs commercial and central banks. While the Binance settlement has been heralded as “bullish” for crypto, it is hardly a thing to celebrate. Binance most certainly engaged in money laundering and illicit financial activity, but those crimes are dwarfed by those overseen or protected by the DOJ, FBI and American intelligence agencies. By giving the biggest criminals in the game greater control over the digital currency space, we inch closer and closer to the end of financial privacy and surveillable, programmable money – an end-game that gravely threatens not just financial freedom, but human freedom.

Binance’s Noah Perlman: Ties to FTX, Epstein and Gemini Earn.

The internet is about to change. In many countries, there’s currently a coordinated legislative push to effectively outlaw encryption of user uploaded content under the guise of protecting children. This means websites or internet services (messaging apps, email, etc.) could be held criminally or civilly liable if someone used it to upload abusive material. If these bills become law, people like myself who help supply private communication services could be penalized or put into prison for simply protecting the privacy of our users. In fact, anyone who runs a website with user-uploaded content could be punished the same way. In today’s article, I’ll show you why these bills not only fail at protecting children, but also put the internet as we know it in jeopardy, as well as why we should question the organizations behind the push.

Let’s quickly recap some of the legislation.

European Union

– Chat Control: would require internet services (Email, chat, storage) to scan all messages and content and report flagged content to the EU. This would require that every internet based service scans everything uploaded to it, even if it’s end-to-end encrypted. Content would be analyzed using machine learning (i.e. AI) and matches would automatically be reported to the police. This is awaiting a vote from the EU LIBE committee.

Chat Control is overwhelmingly opposed by EU citizens, but is advancing regardless. Source

United Kingdom

–The Online Safety Act 2023: would require user service providers to enforce age limits and checks, remove legal but harmful content for children, and require scanning photos for materials related to child sexual abuse & exploitation, as well as terrorism. It would require providers to be able to identify these types of materials in private communications and to take down that content. This means providers would need visibility into messaging, even those messages are end-to-end encrypted. End to end encrypted messaging providers such as WhatsApp, Viber, Signal, and Element have indicated in an open letter that surveillance on of this type simply isn’t possible without breaking end to end encryption entirely, and have threatened to leave the UK if the bill was passed & enforced without the offending Clause 122. This bill was recently passed by parliament unchanged and will become enforceable in 2024.

United States
– The EARN IT Act 2023: would allow US states to hold websites criminally liable for not scanning user uploaded content for CSAM (child sexual abuse material). This would effectively ban end to end encryption. This bill has 22 cosponsors and is awaiting an order to report to the Senate.

– The STOP CSAM Act 2023 (Full Text): would allow victims who suffered abuse or exploitation as children to sue any website that hosted pictures of the exploitation or abuse “recklessly”, e.g. if your website was not automatically scanning uploads. Websites are already required by law to remove CSAM if made aware of it, but this would require providers to scan all files uploaded. This bill has 4 cosponsors, and is awaiting an order to report to the Senate.

– Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA): would require platforms to verify the ages of its visitors and filter content promoting self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, and sexual exploitation. This would inherently require an age verification system for all users and transparency into content algorithms, including data sharing with third parties. This bill has 47 bi-partisan cosponsors and is awaiting an order to report to the Senate.

Its important to note that the language in these bills and the definition for “service providers” extends to any website or online property that has user-uploaded content. This could be as simple as a blog that allows comments, or a site that allows file uploads. It could be a message board or chatroom, literally anything on the internet that has two-way communication. Most websites are operated by everyday people – not huge tech companies. They have neither the resources or ability to implement scanning on their websites under threat of fine or imprisonment. They would risk operating in violation or be forced to shut down their website. This means your favorite independent media site, hobbyist forum, or random message board could disappear. These bills would crumble the internet as we know it and centralize it further for the benefit of Big Tech who are rapidly expanding the surveillance agenda.

We must pause and ask ourselves, is this effort to ramp up surveillance really about protecting children?

How do companies currently deal with CSAM?

In the United States, tracking CSAM is recognized as a joint effort between ESPs (Electronic Service Providers) like Google, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) a private non-profit established by Congress in 1984 and primarily funded by the United States Department of Justice. Unlimited Hangout has previously reported on the NCMEC and its ties to figures such as Hillary Clinton and intelligence-funded NGOs such as Thorn. They also receive corporate contributions from big names such as Adobe, Disney, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Palantir, Ring Doorbell, Verizon, and Zoom.

Ashton Kutcher’s NGO Supplies Police with ‘Free’ CIA-linked Surveillance Tool to ‘Protect Kids’ A suspect NGO claiming to combat child trafficking by providing surveillance tech to US police has allowed Amazon to continue supplying U.S. law enforcement with facial recognition software despite the tech giant’s moratorium on its sale to police.

Electronic service providers in the United States are already required to report to the CyberTipline (Federal statute 18 USC 2258A) if they become aware of CSAM, otherwise they may face fines or prison time. These CyberTipline reports combine offending content with additional information such as identifying the potential perpetrator, the victim, and other context that is combined and sent off to law enforcement.

Photo & content scanning measures are not required. However, several prominent companies have voluntarily implemented scanning of communications and media, such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, Facebook, Instagram Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, iCloud email, and Microsoft’s Xbox. If you use these services, then your messages and media may automatically be scanned for abusive material.

Ironically and not surprisingly, its these very platforms that have the most malicious activity, including drug & guns sales, child abuse material, and cyberbullying/harassment.

Does voluntary content scanning actually help protect children?

Google began publishing a CSAM transparency report in 2021 which gives numbers on how much CSAM was identified and reported on across Google & Youtube. It includes data since 2020, with counts for how many reports were made to the NCMEC, how many different Google accounts were disabled, and how many “hashes” (photo fingerprints) were contributed to the NCMEC hash database.

It is unclear exactly when Google started creating “hashes” of its users photos, but they have contributed 2.5 million new hashes to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Hash Database to date. Reports are published every 6 months, and we’ve seen staggering growth in all types of reports since 2020. For example, Google’s CyberTipline reports have grown from ~547,000 in 2020, ~870,000 in 2021, to more than 2.1 million reports in 2022. The first half of 2023 has shown a decline, totaling ~750,000 reports from January to June.

As seen on NCMEC’s CyberTipline Data page, Google’s reports represent a mere fraction of the total number of reports submitted to the NCMEC, which works with over 1,500 ESPs – mostly US companies. 5 electronic service providers (Facebook, Instagram, Google, WhatsApp, and Omegle) accounted for more than 90% of the 32 million reports in 2022. Around half (49%) of these reports in 2022 are “actionable”, meaning there is sufficient information for law enforcement to proceed with an investigation. Additionally, 89.9% of reports involved content uploaded by users outside of the US.

The NCMEC also reports the numbers of CyberTipline reports made to different law enforcement organizations such as Internet Crimes Against Children, Local LE, Federal LE, and International LE.

Law enforcement is not required to give any feedback on what happens with these reports and, as a result, they hardly provide feedback. Using the NCMEC’s own numbers, we can see there is little visibility on how the reports are used.

In 2022, we saw the following rates of feedback from law enforcement and other groups who received reports.

• International Crimes Against Children Groups – 491,655 actionable reports resulted in 41.59% Feedback
• Local Law Enforcement – 1,462 actionable reports resulted in 3.48% Feedback
• Federal Law Enforcement – 1,356,988 reports resulted in 0.03% Feedback
• International Law Enforcement – 13,995,567 reports resulted in 0.4% Feedback

Keep in mind, a feedback response doesn’t necessarily mean an arrest or conviction. Feedback responses could may indicate the report was closed or incomplete feedback. Also, these results are not open to the public, although a FOIA request could change that. However, these numbers make it clear that whether companies are voluntarily scanning their content or creating reports after becoming aware of CSAM – there’s no visibility on what actually happens with the reports.

Given the huge volume of reports not acted upon, forcing technology providers to automatically scan content & generate reports is not going to magically change things. It will require law enforcement to act on reports to put child predators behind bars and save children. That is, after all, what legislators say they want.

That’s not to say nothing is being done. A 2022 report of CyberTipline success stories in the United States stated that close to 714 different cases used CyberTipline reports. Only 16 of these cases explicitly reported the assistance of a service provider.

Again, out of 1.35 million actionable CyberTipline reports in the United States in 2022, there have been 714 arrests so far. Its possible there are ongoing investigations that will bring this number higher, but we can only guess without transparency. I was unable to find success stories for any prior years.

I commend these efforts to protect children from dangerous predators; however, these efforts do not necessitate automatic scanning of everyone’s messages or the gutting of encryption. Generating more reports from service providers obviously does not lead to more arrests being made. Lastly, the majority of CSAM material comes from big tech providers, many of whom are voluntarily scanning content anyways. Why enforce this requirement on every website on the internet?

If legislators around the world want to make a genuine impact on child abuse, then they should push for transparency and accountability practices for law enforcement and work to ensure that law enforcement properly investigates the millions upon millions of reports they already receive every year, and make the data available to the public.

We the people need to know that the groups responsible for investigating child abuse are doing their jobs with the processes and data already available, rather than further sacrifice our individual privacy and security for more of the same. The bills/laws in question also lack an understanding of encryption, are not technically feasible to implement, put unnecessary legal liability on technology companies, and lack evidence that the policies will improve outcomes for children.

How can the online child abuse laws across Western countries be so consistent with their practices? How did they all reach the same strategies of age verification, content filtering, and client side scanning?

The framework for this legislation has been in the works for years. One key architect of this push has been the WePROTECT Global Alliance, a merger of initiatives between the European Commission, the US Department of Justice, and the UK Government. Their first summit was hosted in 2014 and is now comprised of 97 governments, 25 technology companies, and 30 civil society organizations.

UNICEF, a member of WePROTECT, released a “model national response” which outlines many of the elements we see in these different child safety bills today. UNICEF and organizations like the US Department of Justice state that sexual exploitation of children cannot be addressed by one country, company, or organization working in isolation. Troublingly, both of those groups have a history of turning a blind eye to child abuse in their respective organizations and/or jurisdictions (see here, here, here and here for examples).

Working groups like the “Five Country” government counterparts (Five Eyes) – USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand– have met with the corporate executives of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Roblox, Snap, and Twitter to collaborate on guidelines such as the “Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” (justice.gov link). These groups are all working together, via public-private partnerships like the Global Cyber Alliance, among others, to change the face of the internet.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice outlined the “risky” aspects of technology in a 2023 National Strategy Report on Child Exploitation:

– an uneven response to online child safety by the tech sector;
– a CyberTipline system that is overwhelmed;
– anonymization of offenders;
– encryption of data storage and communications;
– online environments where children and adults interact without supervision or controls;
– globalized, often sovereignless, platforms;
– remote, often extraterritorial, storage; and
– a compounding lack of public awareness of these risks.

While the issue of child exploitation online is grave and child abusers need to be held accountable – this shouldn’t come of our individual privacy and freedom. From the publicly stated perspectives of these groups, anonymization, encryption, and not allowing governments or tech companies to track all content is equivalent to contributing to child exploitation.

Ignoring the child abuse right in front of their noses

As noted earlier, many of these groups have a track record of responding very poorly to serious child abuse issues when these crimes involve their own organization or persons with political value. For instance, there have been nearly 2,000 allegations of child sexual abuse and exploitations made against U.N “Peacekeepers” worldwide between 2004 and 2016, as reported by the Associated Press. This includes the child sex ring in Haiti from 2004 to 2007 where Sri Lankan UN “Peacekeepers” traded food in exchange for sex with children as young as nine years old.

The names of the offenders are kept confidential by the UN, and the UN puts the responsibility on member states to investigate & prosecute. UN records on these allegations are also incomplete and hundreds of cases have been closed without explanation. The United Nations even continues to send Sri Lankan peacekeepers to Haiti, despite the scandals. In the United States, we can see a similar level of accountability with the Department of Justice still withholding the client list for Jeffrey Epstein’s child prostitution ring, among many, many other examples.

The very organizations that try to convince us to give up our individual liberties for the sake of the children will completely ignore crimes against children when it suits them. Can we really trust these organizations to protect children?

The real-time monitoring of messages and outlawing of privacy will not protect children. On the contrary, it would put their communications into the hands of more third parties. The wiser choice would be to encourage parental awareness and conscious use of technology, e.g. not giving children unlimited access to mobile phones or devices and avoiding use of popular social media platforms and messengers.

If these actors truly cared about protecting children, then they would call an end to the genocide & war crimes occurring in Gaza. Instead, the US is rushing to provide aid to Israel in the form of munitions. In the UK, only 80 out of 650 MP’s have called for a ceasefire. Instead, there is more interest in clamping down on and controlling the internet, a crucial resource for all people in a time of great need.

Inter-governmental organizations are pushing towards an internet where our identities are verified and our messages are tracked. With such legislation coming our way all over the world, how can we retain any privacy?

The answer is simple – do not comply. Do not follow along with big tech companies that voluntarily follow legislative guidelines. Find ways to decentralize your use of software. Invest your time into divesting from big tech and learning alternative solutions for communications, storage, and encryption. Given the stakes, there has never been a more important time to divest from these companies and their software.

Thankfully, there are still many ways that individuals can limit their dependence on centralized software services that perform content or AI scanning. We can boycott those Big Tech companies that scan our content including Microsoft, Google, Apple and countless others. It’s just a matter of learning how to take back our technology.

At this point you might be asking:

• How do we continue to find information on the internet without Google’s search engine?
• Or use our computers without Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s macOS?
• Or use our phones without Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS?
• Or use our browser without Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Edge, or Apple’s Safari? (the oligopoly of these behemoths extends everywhere.)

Solving these problems with alternative software has been the mission of my initiative Take Back Our Tech, and today I am honored to share 5 Ways To Protect Yourself from Incoming Internet Surveillance Bills with the Unlimited Hangout community.

1. Use a “free” operating system for your computer.

Traditional operating systems (“OSs”) like Windows and macOS are proprietary software, which is distinct from free software. It’s important to understand the difference between the two, as the topic will come up again. So let’s define proprietary and free software.

Proprietary software, or “non-free software,” is not available for users to study, observe, or change. As the user, you are given no rights.

For example, only the developers of Microsoft Windows can get a clear look at the code of the operating system and understand what it does. Users have no way to view the code, and verify what the program does.

In contrast, free software (also known as Free & Open Source Software FOSS) gives users rights. The Free Software Foundation, one of the leading organizations behind the Free Software movement, provides an extended definition:

“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.

You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got them, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.

Alternative operating systems based on GNU/Linux are free software. They offer many intended benefits:

• Visibility into changes: Any user or developer can take a look at code updates and ensure that the operating system is not acting unexpectedly or maliciously. For instance, users of the Ubuntu OS fought back against changes that sent search results to Amazon and got the changes overturned.
• More choices: Because others can modify and distribute free software at will, far more software choices exist in the free software ecosystem — choices that often outcompete and provide more value than proprietary software.
• Costs: All Linux distributions are FREE as in cost. Compare this to paying for Windows activation keys.
• Freedom: Your computer will not automatically track every program that you run, as does macOS, or force updates on you, as Windows does (and to which you agree in their terms of service, a document very few take the time to read).

So what are you waiting for? Throw your proprietary software in the trash and enjoy an operating system that respects your freedom and your data.

• If you’re still not convinced and want to see all the ways traditional operating systems take advantage of you, read our Leap to Linux article.
• If you’re interested in learning how to install a Linux-based OS, please follow #TBOT’s guide.
• If you’re interested in other Linux learning articles, here is #TBOT’s content series on Linux.

Here are some recommendations for free operating systems based on Linux. You can download the .iso file (in which the OS is contained) for each operating system from the following links as well as feature walkthroughs.

Once you’ve made your decision of OS you can follow the guide linked above to get it installed on your machine.

• (Features) Linux Mint: https://linuxmint.com/
• (Features) KDE Neon: https://neon.kde.org/
• (Features) MX Linux: https://mxlinux.org/

2. Use open-source software on your phone.

The two main choices for traditional mobile operating systems today is Google’s Android, and Apple’s iOS. These two options make up 99%+ of the global market share of mobile operating systems. With over 6.6 billion phones on earth, the data pipeline to these two companies is incomprehensibly large – they’ve got real-time data for almost every person on the planet.

Observational studies of both Android and iOS-based phones found that these devices connect back to their parent companies every 5 minutes. In addition, they collect unique device identifiers, phone numbers, locations, and other surprising info.

Although it would be too lengthy to discuss these issues in-depth in this article, if you’d like to see exactly what tracking and data collection occurs on these mobile operating systems, you can read #TBOT’s analysis here.

A few alternative operating systems have popped up in recent years that can compete with the likes of Google and Apple. These operating systems are referred to as “de-googled” operating systems, and are typically built on top of Android’s Open Source Platform (AOSP). This code is maintained by Google, but other developers have been able to build new features on top of it, and more importantly, to remove any behind-the-scenes tracking or data collection.

You can use one of these alternative operating systems today to configure your own “privacy phone.”

I recommend these three operating systems (note that each is compatible with only certain phones):

• GrapheneOS (leading standard for security): https://grapheneos.org/
• DivestOS (device compatibility with 0 Google Services): https://divestos.org/
• LibreMobileOS (a newer OS with great features): https://libremobileos.com/

You can get more information on supported phones and the install instructions on each website.

Alternatively, if you are pressed for time or don’t want to do the research and make the tech decisions yourself, you can get a phone out of the box that comes complete with GrapheneOS and useful free software apps and communication services, through my project Above Phone.

De-googled phones use alternative app stores like F-Droid (where all apps are free software) and Aurora Store (which will allow you to download apps anonymously from the Google Play Store).

Normal Android phones also have access to these apps, but will still suffer from centralized tracking through Google Services. If you have an Android-based phone you can get started with these alternative app stores right away. Get more details on the links below:

F-Droid FOSS App Catalogue: https://f-droid.org/
Aurora Store: https://auroraoss.com/

You may be surprised at how easily you can transition to a de-googled phone — there are user friendly, private, and functional options for almost all of your app needs. You can also use apps like Uber & AirBnb, which don’t work without Google services, but there is usually a workaround, like using those services from within a web browser, or by using advanced features like GrapheneOS’s sandboxing to isolate Google Services from the rest of your phone.

3. Own your data.

If a major cyber event caused the internet to go down, how would you recover the photos/files/information you stored on cloud services? How would you get the information you needed to prepare for a survival situation?

It would be best to have this information on hand when you need it – not desperately trying to recover it in the event of a cyber disaster.

At a minimum, you should back up all of the following on your local computer instead of on the cloud service you use currently: passwords, legal documents, books, photos, reference material, and maps.

Here are some suggestions to be “cyber-pandemic” ready.

1. Knowledge is power. Download all the books you need in PDF format. A great site to start is PDFDrive
2. Need to navigate offline? Organic Maps (available on F-Droid and for Android phones) lets you download maps of most of the regions on the planet — and you can route to different locations using GPS only (which means you don’t need a SIM card in your phone).
3. If you use Google Drive or iCloud, now is the time to export all of your photos, videos, and documents to a local hard drive. Here’s a tutorial on how to export Google Drive files. Here’s an tutorial on how to export files on iCloud.
4. Are you managing your passwords in the cloud? Know that cloud password managers are not immune to hacking attempts. The best place for your passwords is in an encrypted password vault on your computer. An attacker would need not only the password vault file on your computer, but also the master password used to encrypt the vault. A collection of software called Keepass offers a cohesive way to manage and sync passwords locally on your computer and on your phone.

4. Support alternatives.

A wide range of software can serve as alternatives in the open-source software ecosystem. I’ve categorized and listed several great ones below, all of which are programs for Linux computers!

You can also find an important set of core software for Linux with details on how to use it on #TBOT’s Open-Source Survival Toolkit. A larger list of programs is available on #TBOT’s Open Source Survival Library.

Password Managers

KeepassXC: Offline password manager.
Bitwarden: Cloud-based password manager

Privacy / Security

I2P: Private peer-to-peer networking layer.
VeraCrypt: Open-source cross-platform disk encryption

Browsers

Ungoogled Chromium: A (fork) copy of Google’s Chromium engine with tracking removed
LibreWolf: Firefox fork with improved privacy
Falkon: KDE Project’s web browser

Email

Evolution: A mail client, calendar, address book, and task manager in one
Thunderbird: Mozilla Foundation’s email, chat, and calendaring client
Mailspring: Easy-to-use, modern mail client with integrations to major email providers
KMail: KDE’s email client that supports many mail protocols

Communication

Kotatogram: Alternate Telegram client with improved offline features
AnyDesk: Remote desktop / support software
Jitsi: Free video conferencing
Jami: Free and open-source peer-to-peer video conferencing.

Social Media

Nostr: a decentralized social media protocol
PeerTube: Decentralized video broadcasting
Nitter: Alternative twitter front end
Invidious: Alternative YouTube front end
Libreddit: Alternative Reddit front end
Owncast: Self-hosted live video and web chat server

Graphics

Krita: Free and open source digital illustration program
Inkscape: Professional vector-based graphics editor
GIMP: One of the oldest and best- known image editors
Pinta: Bitmap editor similar to Paint.NET
Gravit Designer: Vector-based design app
Blender: End-to-end 3D creation suite

Photography

DarkTable: Virtual light table and darkroom for photography
DigiKam: Personal photo management

Video Editors

Kdenlive: The KDE project’s video editor
Davinci Resolve: High-end professional video editor
OpenShot: Easy-to-use, powerful video editor

Video Utilities

OBS Studio: Video recording and live streaming
Kazam: Record videos of your screen
Peek: Record videos and gifs of your screen
Spectacle: KDE’s screenshot tool

Technical Tools

Remmina: A remote desktop client
VirtualBox: Create virtual machines

Writing

CherryTree: Hierarchical note-taking application that stores multimedia notes in an encrypted database (not markdown)
Trillium Notes: Build knowledge bases & graphs with this extensible note-taking application (not markdown)
Joplin Notes: Create simple notes and to do lists using markdown

Reading

Foxit PDF: Feature-rich PDF reader.
Sioyek: PDF reader for academic papers.

Office

LibreOffice: Most popular open-source office suite for Linux
OnlyOffice: Collaborative online document editor
CryptPad: Browser-based encrypted document editor
HomeBank: Personal money management

5. Own your communications.

Although social messengers like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger can be useful, many of them are not open source. Even the ones that claim to be open source often only make the front end of the application visible for inspection (that part you interact with directly), not the server-side code that is responsible for delivering messages.

Chat protocols like XMPP and Nostr are fully open source, meaning the code is available for the client and server. This is especially important because it means that you can run the server-side software yourself on a computer under your control. This is called self-hosting, and it’s crucial to censorship resistance and verifying that a software does what it says.

XMPP is over 20 years old and can support tens of thousands of users on a single server. It offers end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice calls, and video calls (as well as files and audio messages). It can be used on computers, phones, and in a web browser, and it’s also completely free to join (you can join any public server). It can even be bridged to the phone network (anonymous phone numbers without needing a SIM card anyone?).

It’s a wonder why XMPP isn’t more well known, but part of the reason could be that it’s hard to monetize (make money) on XMPP. The protocol has been used under the hood for major chat services run by big tech companies scaling to millions of users, unfortunately these big companies hid the underlying technology.

Above Phone is attempting to change this. The Above Privacy Suite offers a professional XMPP service with enhanced privacy. It comes in a bundle with 5 other privacy services.

• If you want more information about XMPP, you can read #TBOT’s most popular article to date, which gives a comprehensive overview.
• If you want video lessons on how to use XMPP for chats, calls, and video calls, you can check out Above Phone’s webinar.

Conclusion

The internet is changing and battle lines are being drawn. On one side, government organizations have become obsessed with invading our personal communications and drastically advancing the ever encroaching surveillance state, supposedly “for the sake of the children.” Together with enthusiastic help from Big Tech, they threaten to monitor even single thought, idea, or creation you share on the internet.

On the other side are people who are not going to let that happen. We’re the underdogs, a small but growing number of people who are demanding privacy and freedom over convenience. It doesn’t have to be their way or the highway when it comes to technology, we can carve our own path, experimenting with software that is friendly and in alignment with our values. Hopefully, this guide can give you a starting point to understand your technology and places to find alternatives.

I encourage you to not only explore and use the software listed in this guide, but to support the developers with financial donations. Their projects may be the key to both surviving and thriving in the growing surveillance state.

5 Ways To Prepare for the Online Privacy Crackdown.

Whitney joined Marty to discuss the conflict in the Levant and how the bankers intend to use AI to control your life.

Clips on Podverse.

TFTC.

“A reluctance to grapple with the often grim reality of an ongoing geopolitical struggle for power poses its own danger. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

This is an arms race of a different kind, and it has begun.”

– Alex Karp, Palantir CEO

These were the recent words of Palantir CEO Alex Karp, proclaiming in the New York Times that the world has entered a new era of warfare with the rapid acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Playing on the recent release of the “Oppenheimer” movie by comparing the dawn of AI with the development of the atomic bomb, Karp argued that the growing role of AI in weapons systems has become “our Oppenheimer moment.”

In his op-ed, Karp states bluntly that this era is a new kind of arms race where inaction equals defeat, positing that a “more intimate collaboration between the state and the technology sector, and a closer alignment of vision between the two” is required if the West is to maintain a long-term edge over its adversaries. 

Karp’s words are timely within the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which – from the beginning – has been a tech-fueled war, as well as a catalyst for further blurring the lines between nation states and the companies that own and operate such technologies. From Microsoft “literally mov[ing] the government and much of the country of Ukraine from on-premises servers to [its] cloud,” to Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, Spot, sweeping mines on the battlefield, as I recently reported for Unlimited Hangout, “much of Ukraine’s war effort, save for the actual dying, has been usurped by the private sector.”

But, as Karp’s words suggest, the longer the conflict goes on, the more technologically advanced the weapons, and weapons operating systems and software behind them, will become. Indeed, the US Military is testing Large-Language Models’ (LLMs) capacity to perform military tasks and exercises, including completing once days-long information requests in minutes as well as  extensive crisis response planning. Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, who commands Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” program in a made-for-film collaboration with Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, even recently proclaimed that the proliferation of fully autonomous, lethal drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in warfare and weapons development. 

Indeed, AI tech and other major technologies are coming to the forefront of the war’s front lines. For instance, “kamikaze” naval drones equipped with explosives dealt heavy damage to the Crimean bridge in July, with the Washington Post also reporting that over 200 Ukrainian companies involved in drone production are working with Ukrainian military units to “tweak and augment drones to improve their ability to kill and spy on the enemy.”

As the conflict continues, corporations and controversial defense contractors, like data firm and effective CIA-front Palantir, defense contractor Anduril, and facial recognition service Clearview AI are taking advantage of the conflict to develop controversial AI-driven weapons systems and facial recognition technologies, perhaps transforming both warfare and AI forever.  

Critically, these organizations all receive support from PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, a prominent, yet controversial venture capitalist intimately involved in the start-up and expansion of a bevy of today’s prominent tech corporations and adjacent organizations whose work, often co-developed or otherwise advanced by governments and the intelligence community, includes bolstering the State’s mass surveillance and data-collection and -synthesis capacities despite his professed libertarian political beliefs.

As such, these Thiel-backed groups’ involvement in war serves to develop not only problematic and unpredictable weapons technologies and systems, but also apparently to advance and further interconnect a larger surveillance apparatus formed by Thiel and his elite allies’ collective efforts across the public and private sectors, which arguably amount to the entrenchment of a growing technocratic panopticon aimed at capturing public and private life. Within the context of Thiel’s growing domination over large swaths of the tech industry, apparent efforts to influence, bypass or otherwise undermine modern policymaking processes, and anti-democratic sentiments, Thiel-linked organizations’ activities in Ukraine can only signal a willingness to shape the course of current events and the affairs of sovereign nations alike. It also heralds the unsettling possibility that this tech, currently being honed in Ukraine’s battlefields, will later be implemented domestically.

In other words, a high-stakes conflict, where victory comes before ethical considerations, facilitates the perfect opportunity for Silicon Valley and the larger US military industrial complex to publicly deepen their relationship and strive towards shared goals in wartime and beyond.

The Thiel Connection

Importantly, what links Anduril, Palantir, and Clearview AI — the corporations spotlit in this piece— together is their common support from Peter Thiel. Indeed, Thiel has had long-term relationships with the companies that are the focus of this article, and with the tech start-up industry in general. Thiel, a Palantir co-founder, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp, for example, attended law school together at Stanford University before co-founding Palantir in 2004. Further, Thiel invested $200,000 in Clearview AI, then Smartcheckr, in 2017, making him Clearview AI’s first major financial backer.  And Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says he was “19 years old, maybe 20” when he met Peter Thiel, one of the first investors in Luckey’s Oculus Virtual Reality headsets, which Luckey later sold to Facebook for almost $3 billion in 2014. Luckey then founded Anduril in 2017, which Thiel also supports through his venture capital firm Founders Fund. The fund has participated in several funding rounds that have all together helped boost Anduril’s valuation to around $8.5 billion as of late 2022. 

Frequent investments made by Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund, which describes itself as a “venture capital firm investing in companies building revolutionary technologies,” and even the Thiel Fellowship, which gives $100,000 to elite university students to drop out of school and create tech start-ups, elucidate Thiel’s affinity for fiscal dominance of, and functional influence over, the tech start-up space now and in the future. Notably, Thiel has funded or otherwise facilitated the rise of many of today’s most prominent corporations through Founders Fund, including LinkedIn, Yelp, Airbnb, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

What’s more, Thiel’s funding efforts signal interest in developing expansive surveillance technologies, especially in the name of combatting “pre-crime” through “predictive policing” style surveillance. As an example, Thiel’s provided significant funds to Israeli intelligence-linked startup Carbyne911 (as did Jeffrey Epstein), which develops call-handling and call-identification capacities for emergency services, and has been specifically marketed as a way to detect and stop prospective mass shooters in the US. As UH contributor Jeremy Loffredo and UH founder Whitney Webb reported in late 2020, Carbyne911’s prospects for mass surveillance are commendable: the service has a “predictive-policing component that is eerily similar [to] Palantir’s,” even obtaining “complete surveillance” over New Orleans’ emergency-services system and its users in a deal with the city. In fact, as Loffredo and Webb note, as Palantir’s predictive-policing programs have come under public scrutiny in the US, its services have simply been “baton-passed” to other Thiel-backed groups, with Carbyne911’s 911 and even COVID-response services effectively carrying out what Palantir had been doing previously in New Orleans and beyond. The incident showcases the “networked” nature of Thiel-linked groups, apparently able to seamlessly take over one another’s initiatives. 

As I will expand upon later, Thiel also assisted in the development and subsequent privatized spinoffs of the US Government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Total Information Awareness project, which had aimed to create an “all-seeing” military surveillance apparatus in the wake of 9/11.

Altogether, Thiel’s massive investments in Silicon Valley, the defense industry, and other intelligence- and government-adjacent projects showcase a chronic interest in influencing the future of tech innovation, especially in the areas of data collection and surveillance, and bolstering intelligence capacities and presence in and across daily life. 

And now, as we shall see, the extensive and high-tech wartime activities of Thiel-linked Clearview AI, Palantir, and Anduril are now striving towards Thiel’s long-term goals — on Ukraine’s battlefields.

Clearview AI’s Redemption on the Battlefield

Controversial facial recognition service Clearview AI has been banned from corporate use in much of the US due to widespread privacy concerns. Now, the Thiel-backed organization is providing its services to Ukraine’s war effort, free of charge.

At the time of writing, Clearview AI’s capacity to recognize human faces is quickly approaching an unsettling new milestone. A 2020 New York Times article elucidated that Clearview AI’s “tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew.” According to the Washington Post, Clearview AI told investors in 2022 that “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable” through its system in 2023, with about 14 photos collected per person on earth.

Since the start of the conflict, Clearview AI has been used to identify Russian spies and military personnel in Ukraine, combat “misinformation,” and identify the deceased. As Clearview AI’s website explains, the company “has amassed over 2 billion images from public images on the Russian social media site, Vkontate, and [has been] immediately useful in identifying potential Russian soldiers and infiltrators at checkpoints.” 

Naturally, the Ukraine war has also provided perfect PR for Clearview AI, which in fact wrote to Ukraine directly to offer its services in March 2022, not long after the onset of Russia’s Special Military Operation. Clearview AI’s subsequent operations in the country have scored the company high-level news segments on NBC and CNN. In one such segment, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, boasted on CNN about Clearview AI’s facial recognition services and, more gruesomely, about how Russian families would be sent photos of their deceased relatives’ bodies after Clearview AI’s tech identified those killed.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, discusses how facial recognition service Clearview AI is used during the war in Ukraine.

The CNN report on Clearview AI’s wartime efforts elucidates its use of social media to obtain information about individuals or faces in question, reporting that “they upload a picture of a face [to Clearview AI]; the technology scrubs all the social networks really fast,” quickly revealing social media’s infrastructure as a boon for law enforcement, intelligence, and adjacent powers looking for information about members of the general public.

When asked in an NBC interview about Clearview AI’s possible negative ramifications for society, the company’s CEO, Hoan Ton-That, said “[a] lot of peoples’ minds on facial recognition technology were changed around Jan. 6th, when the insurrection happened [at the United States Capitol Building]. It was very instrumental in being able to make identifications quickly.”

Fedorov and Clearview AI CEO. Source

Indeed, Clearview AI saw a 26 percent uptake of its services from law enforcement after January 6th, 2021. As per December 2022 tweet by Mykhailo Fedorov, “over 900 people from 7 Ukrainian government agencies used Clearview AI conducting over 125,000 searches. The newest global tech & our bravery — the win[ning] strategy for Ukraine.”

In short, while surveillance and privacy concerns have seemed to dampen Clearview AI’s success in the private sector, it has made the most of wartime to ensure both its long-term success and the further normalization of the use of facial recognition technologies, risking the larger populations’ privacy in the process.

Palantir’s Software Gives Ukraine a War-Time Boost

Secretive data mining firm Palantir, which Bloomberg declared in 2018 as “know[ing] everything about you,” has collaborated with the national security state on controversial projects since its inception, serving supporting roles in the US military operations of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Operation Warp Speed. In the case of the latter, as covered by Unlimited Hangout contributor Jeremy Loffredo and founder Whitney Webb in late 2020, Palantir helped facilitate COVID-19 vaccination development and roll-out in the United States. 

Ultimately, there are sound reasons to suspect that the Thiel co-founded Palantir is a CIA front. As Loffredo and Webb explain: “Palantir was created to be the privatized panopticon of the national-security state, the newest rebranding of the big data approach of intelligence agencies to quash dissent and instill obedience in the population.” As noted elsewhere in that report, Palantir was created by Thiel and Karp with CIA-linked funds and with the clear intention to resurrect the military’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) project after TIA was scuttled due to public pushback over its goal to essentially eliminate constitutional guarantees of privacy for all American citizens.

Palantir’s Tiberius, Race, and the Public Health Panopticon The controversial data mining firm, whose history and rise has long been inextricably linked with the CIA and the national security state, will now use its software to identify and prioritize the same minority groups that it has long oppressed on behalf of the US military and US intelligence.

In recent years, Palantir has continued to secure a number of defense contracts. As noted in previous UH reports, these included an $800 million contract with the US Army for an AI-powered “battlefield intelligence system,” a $91 million contract to develop the US Army Research Laboratory’s AI and machine learning capabilities, and Project Maven, a US Department of Defense AI-powered imagery project for improving drone footage and striking capabilities.

The bevy of US military contracts suggests Palantir’s apparent hyper-involvement in the war in Ukraine is par for the course. After all, a quick look at the company’s wartime actions quickly shows a heavy involvement in a range of Ukrainian civil affairs. Like BlackRock and other elite groups, Palantir is slated to assist with Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts, where it appears likely to contribute to the political class’s efforts to remold the war-torn country to its own ends. 

According to its LinkedIn, Palantir has also signed the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Ukraine Business Compact. Palantir has “documented war crimes” and its Foundry platform, which Palantir describes as an “Ontology-Powered Operating System for the Modern Enterprise,” has helped find homes for about 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in the UK. Collaborating with the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (OPG), Palantir is slated to assist the prosecution of Russian war crimes through the use of its software, satellite imagery, open source intelligence and other data collection processes to build a “map” of relevant evidence, and even establish attribution for crimes and other relevant activities, which investigators then can utilize as needed. 

And on the battlefield, Palantir looks to do some heavy lifting with its programming, data collection and synthesis capacities. For starters, the company admitted in early 2023 that it was assisting Ukraine with military targeting efforts (i.e., selecting battlefield targets to neutralize or otherwise alter) on the battlefield. Namely, MetaConstellation, a satellite-powered tool that can extract and synthesize commercial data available about any given space, has given Ukraine “targeting [capabilities] with like a factor of 20 better” than its prior capacities, according to CEO Alex Karp. An Asahi Shimbun article further details Palantir’s data-related involvement in the Ukraine war, explaining that its software can “schedule image collection from hundreds of satellites orbiting the Earth to deliver critical information to decision makers,” enabling Palantir’s clients to track military movements for time-sensitive analysis and decision-making purposes alike.

Palantir is forthcoming about its efforts towards its Artificial Intelligence Platform for Defense (AIP), an AI platform that can utilize Large-Language Models (LLMs) like Open AI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4, or GPT-4 — to fight wars, picking targets and suggesting and executing actions based on the AI platform’s data-based calculations and proposals and the human “operator’s” permissions.

Certainly, AIP’s capacity for danger is clear from the start. VICE contributor Matthew Gault’s comments on the platform, where he writes that “Palantir’s [AIP for Defense] pitch is, of course, incredibly dangerous and weird,” are perhaps the most succinct. Gault also notes that the LLMs that would help plan and execute an operators’ desired actions, at least at the time of writing, are prone to “hallucinating” (i.e., presenting false information as if it’s real), which could be especially dangerous in conflict-related scenarios. Furthermore, “[w]hile there is a ‘human in the loop’ in the AIP demo, they seem to do little more than ask the chatbot what to do and then approve its actions.” He notes that “[d]rone warfare has already abstracted warfare, making it easier for people to kill [at] vast distances with the push of a button,” a dangerous state of affairs considering that, “[i]n Palantir’s vision of the military’s future, more systems would be automated and abstracted.”

In short, Palantir’s involvement in Ukraine spans both local and international politics and is using the front lines of NATO’s latest proxy war to develop and expand its AI technologies’ lethal and surveillance capabilities. And if such conflict were to evolve from a proxy war into a broader regional or World War, it appears Palantir is at the ready with a variety of lethal AI-backed operating platforms and tools.

Anduril’s New Operating System — For War

Like fellow Thiel-linked counterparts Clearview AI and Palantir, another secretive defense contractor called Anduril is also utilizing the Ukraine war to roll out new technologies. Founded by serial Hawaiian shirt wearer and Oculus Virtual Reality founder Palmer Luckey, Anduril claims its competitive advantage as a defense contractor is that, instead of receiving clienteles’ funding to research and develop new technologies upfront, it develops its products at its own financial risk before selling new tech. The company came under fire soon after its establishment due to its government contracts to develop and build surveillance systems at the US-Mexico border, where Anduril’s autonomous towers “can detect a human from 2.8km away.”

Palmer Luckey works on Anduril tech in an undated photo. Source

In recent months, Ukraine has been given Altius-600 drones from Anduril’s recent Altius series, which boast an extended loitering time and can carry heavy munitions. Anduril posits that the series, and especially the Altius-600 model, allows for a new dimension of drone warfare, where drones have demonstrated an ability to carry out extended surveillance, “autonomous coordinated strike[s], target recognition and collaborative teaming.”

Notably, Anduril and Palantir are currently collaborating on a new product — an AI-powered ground station — designed for the US Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) prototype effort. TITAN, a “tactical ground station that finds and tracks threats to support long-range precision targeting” can, according to FedScoop, “integrate various types of data from numerous platforms to help commanders make sense of an increasingly dynamic and complex battlefield.” In 2022, Palantir received $36 million for TITAN system prototypes from the US Army, as did Raytheon Technologies, to develop competing candidate systems; Anduril is to assist Palantir’s second phase of prototype developments. The US Army plans to allocate $1.5 billion towards TITAN systems over the next five years in a larger bid to revamp their military capacities and technologies.

A 2023 demo of Anduril’s Altius-600 drone, which shows a mission resulting in a drone striking and immolating its target, a small field house. The YouTube caption explains that the Altius-600 “delivers twice the loitering time and range of current market offerings and leverages autonomy to enable a single operator to control multiple assets simultaneously.”

In early May, Anduril also unveiled its “Lattice for Mission Autonomy” technology, which it describes as “a hardware-agnostic, end-to-end software platform that enables teams of diverse robotic assets to work together under human supervision to dynamically perform complex missions in any domain.” 

In a Twitter announcement, Anduril described the AI-powered Lattice as a “fundamental paradigm shift in how we conduct military operations.” According to Anduril Industries Co-Founder and Chairman Trae Stephens, Lattice, the operating system present in everything Anduril now builds, “does all of the taking [of data], the sensors, fusing that data and then helping the system make decisions about that data with a human kind of guiding that interaction over time.” 

Anduril’s claims of a “paradigm shift” with Lattice cannot be dismissed: the software can allegedly help human operators command hundreds of autonomous drones for a variety of missions and needs, which Anduril says will help clientele bypass previous financial barriers towards commanding such sizable forces.

Announcing Lattice for Mission Autonomy, a fundamental shift in military operations. Plan, simulate, optimize, and execute missions using vast teams of lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Not just Anduril systems, either – Lattice is now for everything.https://t.co/PYuZpp89yX

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 6, 2023

While Luckey is emphatic that Anduril’s products will always have a “human in the loop” as a safeguard, researcher Julia Scott-Stevenson notes in The Conversation that Luckey’s own depictions of the future do not match such promises. Luckey stated at a 2022 talk in Australia that “You’re going to see much larger numbers of systems [in future conflicts] … you can’t have, let’s say, billions of robots that are all acting together, if they all have to be individually piloted directly by a person, it’s just not going to work, so autonomy is going to be critical for that.” 

In other words, Luckey is proposing the development of lethal, autonomous weapons systems that could eventually operate at a scale (“billions of robots”) where human attempts to interact, direct, or intervene will become increasingly meaningless.

Silicon Valley Deepens its Military Industrial Complex Ties

In the midst of a harrowing war in Ukraine, a new war unfolding in the Middle East and even signs of a possible war between the US and China emerging, defense industry leaders, especially those backed by Thiel, are taking to the press to reinforce the Silicon Valley-Pentagon relationship. While the relationship never actually dissolved, rank-and-file tech workers have contested Big Tech’s previous defense industry collaborations, including Google employees’ 2018 uproar against the company’s signing onto Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program to improve AI-powered drone warfare, which Google punted after bad press (and Palantir subsequently picked up). A year later, in 2019, Microsoft faced internal opposition towards accepting a defense contract with the U.S. Army, with staff writing in an open letter that “[w]e did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used.”

Bucking the wishes of some in the tech workforce, defense contractors’ leadership has increasingly appealed to Silicon Valley and to the public for support of their operations, collaborations, and larger worldview, which is in perfect alignment with the goals of the political class. Palantir CEO Alex Karp, for example, has repeatedly advocated for Big Tech to re-embrace its ties to the defense industries and effectively to Western hegemony over international affairs, calling for closer collaboration and alignment of “vision” between the state and tech sectors in a late July NYT op-ed, and saying in early 2023 that “[w]e want [employees] who want to be on the side of the West… you may not agree with that and, bless you, don’t work here.”

Similarly, Anduril co-founders Palmer Luckey and Trae Stephens co-wrote a Washington Post opinion piece entitled “Silicon Valley Should Stop Ostracizing the Military” back in 2018, where they wrote that “[i]f tech companies want to promote peace, they should stand with, not against, the United States’ defense community.” Anduril’s Luckey expressed an explicit pro-Western opinion in an April 2023 Maritime Executive Op-Ed entitled “It’s Time to Accelerate Defense Tech to Deter War,” writing that today’s “dangerous world is why Anduril exists: because the West must have critical tools to preserve our way of life, uphold the values of free and fair societies and deter powerful adversaries from dominating weaker nations.”

To these defense industry leaders, in other words, the tech industry must pick a “side”: picking a side means supporting it with all assistance, including even and especially military assistance, possible. Such executive perspectives may sound novel within the context of industry worker infighting over Big Tech’s collective relationship with the military industrial complex. In fact, the tech corporations now expanding their involvement in the Ukraine conflict are merely deepening their defense industry roots, which exist because the military industrial complex created and shaped much of today’s Silicon Valley in its service. 

Unlimited Hangout has covered this relationship extensively, with Unlimited Hangout founder Whitney Webb writing in her 2021 article, “The Military Origins of Facebook,” that “most of the large Silicon Valley companies of today have been closely linked to the US national-security state establishment since their inception.” She explains that, today, “these companies are [now] more openly collaborating with the military-intelligence agencies that guided their development and/or provided early funding.”

In 2020 and 2021 reporting, further, Unlimited Hangout has highlighted the significance of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) former Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, a project designed as an “all-seeing” military surveillance apparatus which jump-started analogous private-sector companies now playing critical roles in today’s Big Tech ecosystem and the larger private sector. While TIA apparently went defunct in 2003, it never fully dissolved. Instead, it manifested as a series of private sector entities such as Palantir, while companies like Facebook resurrected other shuttered DARPA programs of the period. TIA’s “Bio-Surveillance” program has apparently been re-tooled into the AI-powered US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Protect system, which surveilled waste waters and used advanced data modeling to predict COVID outbreaks up to 11 days in advance during the coronavirus crisis. Notably, all of the HHS’ COVID data, including that generated by its Protect System, has been managed by Palantir. Ultimately, all the mentioned are entities that became more palatable to the public due to their apparent, yet false separation from the defense sector. (As of 2022, the management of HHS Protect has moved to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).)

Secretive HHS AI Platform to Predict US Covid-19 Outbreaks Weeks in Advance A new AI-powered module known as HHS Vision has been added to the controversial and secretive HHS Protect system for amassing data related to Covid-19. By year’s end, this opaque, yet increasingly influential, system is set to predict Covid-19 outbreaks without traditional testing.

Naturally, this larger surveillance-intelligence apparatus, apparently spanning much of society, and the corporations, governmental and non-governmental bodies and individuals shaping it, are connected to ongoing developments in wartime Ukraine. As previously stated, Anduril, Palantir, and Clearview AI, all corporations perfecting the art of mass surveillance through means including mass data collection and synthesis, have all been financially supported, and in Palantir’s case, co-founded, by Peter Thiel, who was, as an early Facebook investor and former Meta board member, involved in the creation of privatized TIA-spinoffs.

And the hyper-networked nature of these relationships becomes all too clear upon scrutiny. For example, Anduril Co-Founder Trae Stephens is part of the management team for Carbyne911, which, as previously mentioned, is a Thiel-backed and Israeli intelligence-linked start-up that provides heavily-surveilled emergency response services to the public sector. Further, Stephens is also a Partner of Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund, where Stephens’ bio highlights his role as an early Palantir employee who “led teams focused on growth in the intelligence/defense space.” 

Meanwhile, current “X” owner Elon Musk’s Thiel-linked SpaceX Starlink satellite system has donated about 40,000 satellite terminals (which receive a signal from Starlink) to Ukraine in an effort to provide Ukrainians with an internet connection. Musk characterizes Starlink as a “civilian system,” and says Starlink’s terms of service prohibit its use in “offensive military action”; in practice, Ukraine’s spy chief says that Starlink is used “on all front lines,”though Musk has at times partially rescinded or limited internet coverage to prevent Starlink’s use in a major act of war or conflict escalation. Ultimately, through such efforts, SpaceX is winning what UnHerd writer Thomas Fazi describes as a brewing satellite “arms race,” where SpaceX now operates over 4,500 of the estimated 7,500 satellites orbiting earth.

Similarly, the former CEO of Google (which also has major intelligence ties), US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) Chair, and World Economic Forum Agenda Contributor Eric Schmidt has invested heavily into the Dare to Defend Democracy (D3) Military Tech Accelerator, an accelerator for Ukrainian-based defense start-ups that describes itself as helping “Ukraine defende [sic] democracy and win through tech, turn the winning solutions into global success stories.” Despite his proximity to AI lawmaking processes as per his NSCAI post, Schmidt is also a serial investor in AI technology, thus holding significant, simultaneous power over both the companies driving AI and military tech and their respective regulation.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt meets with Ukrainian officials in September 2022. Source

Altogether, these serial and simultaneous elite investments in such corporations and Ukrainian war and data collection technologies alike do not simply suggest people like Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel hope Ukraine’s war efforts are successful. Rather, these investments suggest further efforts towards influencing and controlling technologies that can facilitate, among other things, the advancement of a new class of questionable AI war technology that is unaccountable to the public and the furthering of a society-wide surveillance panopticon all but impossible for the average person to escape.

After all, the industries’ close-knit relationship means that Silicon Valley’s product developments and technological breakthroughs ultimately advance the defense industry’s aims, and vice-versa. For example, precise surveillance and mass data collection is key to drones’ success as a military tool that can reliably help human beings plan and execute military missions. Thus, it follows that the data collection and processing and surveillance advancements made to better AI warfare could also be used to better surveil or even control the public in times of “peace.” 

These amped-up, forever-advancing surveillance, data collection and processing capacities are occurring within the context of a growing war on “domestic terrorism,” where, in the US for example, civilians are increasingly being probed for “pre-crime” tendencies. As Webb has noted in previous Unlimited Hangout reporting, the tech industries’ mass data collection and algorithm-building are critical for military-intelligence agencies’ efforts to surveil and scrutinize the general public for “problematic” behaviors.

In addition to cracking down on “problematic” civilians and constant efforts to influence or create surveillance-, data-collection-, and AI-powered technologies in Ukraine and beyond, Thiel and friends’ cynical views towards democracy perhaps suggest intentions to influence and even undermine traditional policymaking processes, especially in favor of unaccountable public-private partnerships and governance structures that Thiel himself either invests or participates in directly. Framing his donations to Senate Republicans as relationships of “convenience,” Max Read posits in Intelligencer that “Thiel has wed himself to state power not in an effort to participate in the political process but as an end run around it.” Certainly, Thiel’s own actions and statements signal this “run around” of political processes is ongoing. For example, in his 2014 book Zero to One, as journalist and Thiel biographer Max Chafkin puts it, Thiel “talks about how companies are better run than governments because they have a single decision maker — a dictator, basically. He is hostile to the idea of democracy.” Notably, Chafkin supposes that Thiel may be the most powerful person, not just in tech, but on earth. According to the New York Times, moreover, Thiel has “argued that democracy and economic freedom are incompatible and suggested that giving women the vote had undermined the latter.” And Palantir’s slated efforts to assist Ukraine’s prospective post-war reconstruction, as previously mentioned, do not simply signal a desire to “help” Ukraine; rather, they instead reflect Thiel’s, and the intelligence community’s, interest in influencing the affairs of (theoretically) sovereign nations and geopolitics in general. In the event that Thiel is indeed working to subvert or even undermine traditional political processes in the US, Ukraine, and elsewhere, the various technology and organizations he has invested in over the years appear perfectly positioned to assist.

Thiel’s exact worldview and end-goals remain opaque. What is clear, however, is that Big Tech and the defense industry’s inextricable relationship means that Silicon Valley’s decades of tech advances, propelled by people like Thiel, are easily adapted to the needs of the battlefield, if not made primarily with war in mind. Considered altogether, this larger intelligence-funded and -supported apparatus and its ever-growing appendages’ collective ability to establish and expand a technocratic panopticon appears infinite. Wartime only expands its reach.

An AI Race to Oblivion

As the war in Ukraine drags om, controversial Thiel-linked companies and organizations are going all-out in efforts to revamp AI-driven weapons systems, facial recognition technologies , and other high-tech instruments that may radically transform warfare, as well as peacetime, forever. In the process, Thiel’s influence over not only the tech and defense industries, but also increasingly the course of outcomes of current events, only deepens.

Critically, these companies repeatedly emphasize the war’s “pressure-cooker” effect on the need to develop the most advanced defense technologies possible, or risk getting beaten out by an enemy during another high-stakes conflict, such as that currently unfolding in the Middle East. Such fears are being leveraged to obtain government funding, with the leadership of 13 prominent tech companies and adjacent investors, including Palantir, Anduril and Thiel-funded venture capital firm Founders Fund signing an open letter in late June requesting that the US government reform its defense procurement processes so as to make money from its defense budget, likely to total in at a whopping $886 billion in 2024, more accessible to defense start-ups. . The letter warns that, if its funding recommendations are “neglected,” the US’ “competitors will continue to gain ground on the technological battlefield, and we will squander the advantages that accrue from the freest and most innovative marketplace on earth.”

Ultimately, the technologies I’ve described in this piece are controversial at best, and are created or supported by, or otherwise connected to, unsavory characters and organizations at the heart of the power elites’, and especially Peter Thiel’s, larger strides towards a technocratic nightmare. The poor and one-sided quality of Ukraine conflict coverage within mainstream press, however, ensures the public hears little of defense contractors’ and adjacent groups’ never-ending field day in Ukraine, as it appears that no efforts, nor Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, will be spared in NATO’s proxy war.

But as war settles into an apparent, yet unpredictable, stalemate, it’s clear Ukrainians are the ones worst off as conscriptions for much of the country’s male population take effect, and the Ukrainian government, which has long-since banned political opposition and even put off elections until after the war, actively boasts about opportunities for the world’s wealthiest to privatize its economy for their benefit, not Ukraine’s. Here, the war is one that only the power elite can win.

How Peter Thiel-Linked Tech is Fueling the Ukraine War.

In Part 1 of our investigation into the United Nations’ (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) we revealed how the UN proclaims itself a “global governance regime.” We investigated the UN’s exploitation of so-called “human rights” as an authoritarian system of behavioural control permits, as opposed to any form of recognisable “rights.”

We examined how the UN uses what is calls the “policy tool” of human rights to place citizens (us) at the centre of international crises. This enables the UN and its “stakeholder partners” to seize crises as “opportunities” to limit and control our behaviour. The global public-private partnership (G3P), with the UN at its heart, redefines and even discards our supposed “human rights” entirely, claiming “crisis” as justification.

The overall objective of SDG16 is to strengthen the UN regime. The UN acknowledges that SDG16.9 is the most crucial of all its goals. It is, the regime claims, essential for the attainment of numerous other SDGs. 

At first, SDG16.9 seems relatively innocuous:

By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration

But, as ever, when it comes to UN sustainable development, all is not as it initially appears.

SDG16.9 is designed to introduce a centrally controlled, global system of digital identification (digital ID). In combination with other global systems, such as interoperable Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), this can then be used to monitor our whereabouts, limit our freedom of movement and control our access to money, goods and services.

Universal adoption of SDG16.9 digital ID will enable the G3P global governance regime’s to establish a worldwide system of reward and punishment. If we accept the planned model of digital ID, it will ultimately enslave us in the name of sustainable development.

Digital ID As A Human Right

As we previously discussed, The UN underwent a “quiet revolution” in the 1990s. In 1998, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that “the business of the United Nations involves the businesses of the world.”

Government’s reduced role was to create the regulatory “enabling environment” for private investors, alongside taxpayers, to finance what would become SDGs. Using the highly questionable “climate crisis” as an alleged justification, in 2015, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals gave way to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

On the 25th September 2015, UN General Assembly Resolution 70.1 (A/Res/70.1) formally established the SDGs by adopting the binding resolution to work towards “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

As soon as the ink was dry on the resolution, the UN set about creating the enabling environment to encourage public-private partnerships to develop a system of global, digital ID. In May 2016, in response to SDG16.9, the United Nations Office for Partnerships convened the “ID2020 Summit – Harnessing Digital Identity for the Global Community.” This established the ID2020 Alliance.

The ID2020 Alliance is a global public-private partnership that has been setting the future course of digital identity since its founding. The global accountancy and corporate branding giant PwC was selected by the UN as the “lead sponsor” of the inaugural ID2020 summit in 2016. Excited about the opportunities digital ID would present, PwC described the ID2020 sustainable development objective:

[. . . .] to create technology-driven public-private partnerships to achieve the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of providing legal identity for everyone on the planet. [. . .] Specifically, ID2020’s mission aligns with development target 16.9, “Legal identity for all, including birth registration”. Thirty percent of the world’s population, approximately 1.5 billion people, lack a legal identity, leaving them vulnerable to legal, political, social and economic exclusion.

Offering us digital ID to address so-called “economic exclusion,”—more on this shortly—the ID2020 Alliance duly launched in 2017 and set its Agenda2030 goal:

Enabling access to digital identity for every person on the planet.

You will note that the UN’s SDG16.9 makes no mention of global “digital ID.” Sustainable development, as it is presented to us, is nothing if not deceptive.

The ID2020 Alliance announced a “strategic, global initiative” for digital ID that presented humanity with a quite astonishing idea. The regime stated that the lack of “legal identity”—digital ID—prevented people from accessing “healthcare, schools, shelter, justice, and other government services,” thereby allegedly creating what it called “the identity gap.”

Empowered by the “global governance regime,” the ID2020 Alliance expanded on the idea that we are only permitted to live in “its” society if we can prove who we are, using its digital ID, to the satisfaction of the G3P regime.

The ID2020 manifesto states:

The ability to prove one’s identity is a fundamental and universal human right. [. . .] We live in a digital era. Individuals need a trusted, verifiable way to prove who they are, both in the physical world and online. [. . .] ID2020 Alliance partners jointly define functional requirements, influencing the course of technical innovation and providing a route to technical interoperability, and therefore trust and recognition.

SDG16.9 “sustainable development” means we must use digital ID that meets the functional requirements of the ID2020 Alliance partnership. Otherwise we will not be protected in law, service access will be denied, our right to transact in the modern economy will be removed, we will be barred from participating as “citizens” and excluded from so-called “democracy.”

This past August, ID2020 joined with the Digital Impact Alliance (DIA) to “push for digital transformation.” That said, ID2020 “joining” DIA is a bit of a misnomer, considering that both of these public-private partnerships are essentially run by the same organisations.

Speaking about the launch of its “partnership” with DIA, ID2020 founder John Edge, said: 

[W]e established ID2020 to be a time-bound exploration of alternative systems for individuals to prove they exist.

In accordance with SDG16.9 “transformation,” if you don’t have the properly authorised digital ID then, as far as the regime is concerned, you don’t exist. As DIA explains, everyone must have “the trusted digital tools they need to fully participate in society.” If you don’t submit, you are literally nobody and thereby excluded from “society.” 

The DIA calls its methodology “do[ing] digital right.” Its backers, such as the UN, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID (widely believed to be a front for the CIA) and the UK and Norwegian governments, are all behind the DIA mission: 

We use our expertise to influence the influential, encouraging the world’s largest investors and most effective policymakers to “do digital right”, emphasizing the importance of design, implementation, and governance. 

Establishing global governance “with teeth” is the primary objective of the G3P regime, and “sustainable development” is its chosen mechanism to achieve its ambitions. As a regime partner, the DIA has been entrusted as the steward of the regime’s associated Principles for Digital Development. 

Among these “principles” is the commitment to harvest as much human data as possible and to provide “the right people” with access to that data:

When an initiative is data driven, quality information is available to the right people when they need it, and they are using those data to take action.

The “world’s largest investors” are particularly encouraged to use their money tackle the alleged “identity gap” in least developed countries (LDCs) first. This will be achieved by prioritising investment in “cross-sectoral digital public goods and architecture.” 

Very graciously, the G3P will “allow LDCs to be the stewards of their national digital agendas”—providing, of course, that they fully comply with the right “agenda.”  

Given the cross-cutting nature of digital and its role in reaching all of the SDG targets, we believe that the current moment in time is ideally suited for such a “push” in LDCs.

The objective is to marshal “the necessary resources to fund and achieve national and global targets.” That is to say, LDC national governments are “allowed” to adopt “digital transformation” policies aligned to “global targets.”  

There is no doubt that the ID2020 Alliance fully appreciates the implications of what it is doing. In a now quite infamous 2018 article, one of the founding partners of ID2020, Microsoft, published the following:

As more and more transactions become digital in nature and are built around a single global identification standard, supported by Microsoft, the question of who will govern this evolving global community and economy becomes relevant. Especially since non-participants in this system would be unable to buy or sell goods or services.

While the regime talks about “inclusion,” it is building a global digital ID system that is inherently exclusionary and can punish regime critics or silence dissident voices by cutting them off from its “society.” Being forced to use digital ID against your will is not a “right,” but it can be called a “human right” because, as defined by the UN, those are not rights, they are policy tools.

A global system of biometric digital ID can only become “essential” for all if it is made “essential.” There is no current necessity for it. The need has to be manufactured first. Hence the proclaimed “identity gap.”

Interoperability Is The Key

Biometric data records our “unique biological characteristics.” Fingerprints, iris-scans, DNA, facial recognition and voice-identification are all forms of biometric identifiers that can be stored digitally. Thales, the European defence and security contractor, explains how biometric data can be used for “biometric authentication”:

Biometric authentication compares data for the person’s characteristics to that person’s biometric “template” to determine resemblance. The reference model is first stored. The data stored is then compared to the person’s biometric data to be authenticated. [. . .] [I]ncreased public acceptance, massive accuracy gains, a rich offer, and falling prices of sensors, I.P. cameras, and software make installing biometric systems easier. Today, many applications make use of this technology.

Biometric digital ID is “mapped” to your physical ID. Thus, once we are coerced, forced or deceived into using it, we will always be identifiable on the planned surveillance grid. 

Biometric ID is already commonly used around the world. In the UK for example, all driving licenses require machine readable photo ID; the Chinese government requires photo ID to purchase a SIM card or use the internet and has more recently moved toward issuing a national biometric digital ID card. So you may wonder why the G3P regime is developing new forms of biometric digital ID to meet SDG16.9.

Hitherto, all these disparate biometric ID systems have been managed by various national governments, their agencies and corporate partners, etc. Different forms of biometric digital ID are required for everything from license application and welfare claims, to accessing service or opening a bank account.

There is currently no unified, coherent international system of digital ID. This is a problem if you want to use it to exert centralised global governance control over “every person on the planet.”

The ID2020 Alliance was established to rectify the regime’s centralised authority problem. SDG16.9 enables ID2020 to claim legitimacy. For the people who think sustainable development has something to do with “saving the planet” or tackling the “climate emergency,” SDG16.9 is another untouchable “goal” and, therefore, must be implemented for the good of humanity.

ID2020 does not intend to stipulate the precise form of each national, regional or corporate ID card, nor every biometric data solution. Instead, by defining the “functional requirements” of all, the intention is to make every single one of these various digital ID products and services “interoperable.”

While each digital ID “solution” may have different design specifications, the biometric data they harvest will be machine readable in accordance with ID2020 technical standards. Thus, regardless of where or when the data is gathered, or by whom, it will be possible to create and maintain a single global biometric digital ID database.

As ID2020 states in its manifesto:

[. . .] widespread agreement on principles, technical design patterns, and interoperability standards is needed for decentralized digital identities to be trusted and recognized. [. . .] As such, ID2020 Alliance-supported pilots are designed around a common monitoring and evaluation framework.

Digital ID won’t necessarily be offered to all as a single “ID card”—or even as anything that appears to resemble a regime-controlled digital ID. Our SDG16.9 digital ID will instead be a composition of the data we share every day.

Private “vendors” of digital ID-based “solutions” will offer a “decentralised” range of products and services that people may adopt, perhaps without even realizing they are effectively committing to enter the regime’s digital ID network. 

It will all depend upon the national government’s assessment of what their respective populations are willing to accept or are likely to reject. For example, people in China, familiar with concepts like “datong,” may be more amenable to accepting an official, government-issued digital ID compared to Westerners schooled in more libertarian traditions. 

It should be noted that there is nothing “libertarian” about SDG16.9 digital ID. For populations that are stiffly opposed to government control, deception appears to be the preferred SDG16.9 “solution.” We will discuss that subject shortly.

ID2020 certification encourages the interoperability of the various digital ID products and services. It enables the “vendors” of digital IDs to “share a commitment to key principles for digital ID, but remain technology- and vendor-agnostic.”

The ID2020 Alliance recounts:

In January 2019, the Alliance launched the ID2020 Certification Mark at the World Economic Forum in Davos. ID2020’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), made up of leading experts on digital ID and its underlying technologies, established a set of functional, outcomes-based technical requirements for user-managed, privacy-protecting and portable digital ID.

With the net effect:

Through our Certification Mark, we shape the technical landscape to ensure that the digital ID solutions which are developed and adopted are user-managed, privacy-protecting and interoperable.

Interoperability is achieved through a digital ID platform’s compliance with the ID2020 Technical Requirements. Key Requirement 6.2 demands that all digital ID products and services:

Must support open APIs [application programming interfaces] for access to data and integration with components / vendors.

6.4 adds that digital ID systems:

Must be able to export the data in a machine-readable form. Data when exported, [. . .] should itself be provided in an open standard machine-readable format enabling ease of import into a new system/component.

The Founding “partners” of the ID2020 “Alliance” are Accenture, GAVI, IDEO, Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation. Their role is to establish the technical requirements for all digital ID “solutions” to enable the supposedly necessary, global “interoperability.”

Digital ID is not being implemented by “civil authorities” as the UN’s SDG indicator 16.9.1 deceptively suggests. Governments are merely the enabling and enforcement “partners” in the ID2020 – G3P. The design and functionality of global digital ID system is, and always was, led by the private sector.

The UN Digital Solutions Centre (UN DSC) has already established the digital ID framework for UN personnel. The regime has constructed “a suite of digital solutions that can be shared among UN Agencies.” This interoperability between all components of the “suite” enables the “personal, Human Resources, medical, travel, security, payroll and pension data” of UN workers to be centralised.

A modular “suite” of digital solutions that are “interoperable” is an important concept to grasp, as it effectively creates a single system of digital identity while giving the public the impression that there are instead many “decentralised” systems of digital identity. The ID2020 aim is not to create a single global digital ID system, but rather to construct a global network of interoperable digital ID “solutions” to feed the so-called “decentralised” data into a centralised global database.

The regime can then collate, analyse and exploit the harvested biometric data from a centralised, global command point. This will facilitate the global governance regime’s intention to surveil the Earth’s population. As yet, the universal biometric database hasn’t been officially announced, but the World Bank’s ID4D has emerged as a strong potential candidate.

The Global Interoperable Digital ID Database?

As a founding “partner” of GAVI, the World Bank has been a key ID2020 partner from the outset. The ID2020 Alliance is among the endorsing organisations behind the World Bank’s ID4D “dataset” project.

In turn, the World Bank has produced the Catalogue of Technical Standards for Digital Identification Systems. This outlines the ID4D mission:

The mission of ID4D is to enable all people to access services and exercise their rights, by increasing the number of people who have an official form of identification. [. . .] Trusted and inclusive identification (ID) systems are crucial for development, as enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 16.9.

Recognising that many “vendors” are already developing digital ID “solutions,” the World Bank explains why it considers interoperability to be crucial:

Novel approaches, including decentralized and federated ID systems, are emerging rapidly along with new types of virtual and digital credentials. [. . .] The need for trusted and interoperable identification system has also intensified. Adherence to technical standards – henceforth “standards” – is one of the core building blocks of optimizing a system’s operations. [. . .] Standards are critical for identification systems to be trusted, interoperable and sustainable. The objective of this report is to identify the existing international technical standards and frameworks applicable across the identity lifecycle for technical interoperability.

The world “sustainable” is strewn throughout the regime’s written statements. By association, the intention appears to be to signal moral justification. In reality, “sustainable” here simply means “durable.” 

The World Bank specifies the “standards” that it and its ID2020 partners expect digital ID products and services to comply with. It has divided these into five related categories.

Major standards to facilitate the technical quality and interoperability of the ID system related to: (1) biometrics, (2) cards, (3) 2D barcodes, (4) digital signatures, and (5) federation protocols.

Providing that developers comply with the stipulated standards, their digital ID solutions will be interoperable. For example India’s Aadhaar unique digital ID number uses “the ISO/IEC 19794 Series and ISO/IEC 19785 for biometric data interchange formats.” These are approved World Bank ID4D standards. In this case, Indian people’s biometric data can be exported in a “machine-readable format enabling ease of import into” the SDG16.9 compliant ID4D database.

Like ID2020, ID4D has formulated 10 principles for addressing the newly manufactured issue of the “identification gap,” a digital ID “gap” which ID4D claims to be an “obstacle for full participation in formal economic, social, and political life.”

The ID4D group states:

Growing awareness of the need for more inclusive, robust identification systems has led to a global call to action, embodied in Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [. . . ] [T]here is no universally applicable ‘model’ for the provision and management of identity. [. . .] With this objective in mind, more than 15 global organizations have jointly developed a set of shared Principles that are fundamental to maximizing the benefits of identification systems for sustainable development[.] [. . .] These organizations have taken an important step towards developing a broad consensus on the appropriate design of identification systems and how they should—and should not—be used to support development and the achievement of multiple SDGs.

The ID4D and ID2020 organisations are supposedly distinct. Nonetheless, not only are their broad objectives practically identical, they are both supported by many of the same organisations:

ID4D is guided by the 10 Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development. [. . .] The work of ID4D is made possible through support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Government, The French Government, The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and the Omidyar Network.

The ID4D Global Dataset produces “a global estimate of the ID gap.” The dataset currently incorporates “self-reported data from ID-issuing authorities.” For example, it gathers data from “UNICEF birth registration and voter registration rates.” Covering 151 countries so far, the intended scope of the dataset, at the “global level,” is to eventually “include all people aged 0 and above.”

In July 2022, the ID2020 Alliance appointed Clive Smith as its new executive director. Clive was the former Director of Global Operations at the United Nations Foundation Mobile Health Alliance. Speaking about his new role, Clive said:

ID2020 can play a pivotal role, helping ensure that the appropriately interoperable solutions – and related financial, legal, and regulatory guardrails – are in place, and become the foundation of digital ID in the decades ahead.

While significant SDG16.9 progress has been made in developing and emerging economies, digital ID interoperability needs to be firmly established before enforcing digital ID upon the rest of the world’s population.

To aid developers to achieve interoperability, the ID4D partnership has launched the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP). MOSIP is a modular software development environment based upon ID2020/ID4D “standards.” It was developed by  the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) in Karnataka, India.

MOSIP enables other protocols to be converted into interoperable standards for data sharing. For example it uses OpenCRVS as a “global solution for civil registration.” This transcribes HL7 FHIR compliant birth registration records into a MOSIP compatible “registration.”

MOSIP-based digital ID products can thereby be assured that they are interoperable:

A fully interoperable digital civil registration system is key to enabling inclusive and equitable government service delivery.

Both public and private “vendors” can use MOSIP software modules to construct their own digital ID system while ensuring compatibility with ID2020 and ID4D “Key Requirements.” This will facilitate the “interoperability” which is crucial for ID2020 to provide digital ID to “every person on the planet” and for ID4D to “include all people aged 0 and above” in its database. 

Thus, seemingly “decentralised” digital ID data can be centralised and SDG16.9 can succeed as intended.

The ID4D global dataset. Source: – https://id4d.worldbank.org/about-us SDG16.9: Key To “Sustainable” Stewardship Global Digital Goods

In 2021, the UN announced an initiative deceptively named “Our Common Agenda.” The planned future of humanity, as laid out by this initiative, includes a new “social contract anchored in human rights” and the regime’s claim that it has somehow managed to acquire the authority to better manage “global public goods.” From where they obtained such authority, no one knows.

The UN contends that “global public goods” are “those issues that benefit humanity as a whole and that cannot be managed by any one State or actor alone.” In ‘Our Common Agenda’ the UN asserts: 

One of the strongest calls emanating from the consultations on the seventy-fifth anniversary and Our Common Agenda was to strengthen the governance of our [. . .] global public goods. 

OpenG2P, which provides “government-to-person (G2P) solutions,” enables governments to provide digital “onboarding into schemes, identity verification, and cash transfers to their [the public’s] bank accounts.” According to the UN, OpenG2P is a digital public good. 

Any organisation that professes to have the alleged right to exercise “stewardship” over something is claiming to define “the way in which they control or take care of it.” 

Needless to say OpenG2P is World Bank ID4D and ID2020 standard compliant. This is just one “global public good” over which the regime intends to “strengthen” its global governance.

The WEF and the Rockefeller Foundation have partnered on the Commons Project. The claimed objective is:

Unlocking the full potential of technology and data for the common good.

Their stated mission is to “improve lives by empowering people to access, manage and share their data” by “supporting open data standards that promote interoperability”, “developing global ecosystems to convene public and private partners”; and “building technology platforms and services that empower individuals with their own data.” The Commons Project was notably behind CommonPass, a WEF-backed vaccine passport framework, as well as the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI), which sought to create the standards for interoperability among vaccine passports globally.

As reported by Unlimited Hangout in 2021:

[The Commons Project co-founders] Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins, have long-standing ties to the RAND Corporation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the International Rescue Committee, as noted in this article published last year by MintPress News. The IRC, currently run by Tony Blair protégé David Milliband, is developing a biometric ID and vaccination-record system for refugees in Myanmar in cooperation with the ID2020 Alliance, which is partnered with CommonPass backer, the Rockefeller Foundation. In addition, the ID2020 Alliance funds the Commons Project Foundation and is also backed by Microsoft, one of the key companies behind the VCI.

Having established the concept of exercising its governance over “global public goods,” the regime has moved on to flesh out the necessary policy platforms to convert its claimed authority into national government policy, regulation and legislation.

Everything related to global health care, including all of our health data, all information [on any subject] both online and off, all global economic activity, all trade and finance; the internet and all digital infrastructure, digital services, all data and “more.” The regime and its G3P regime claims both the authority and the ability to govern it all.

The regime states that 41 of the 92 SDG indicators cannot be met unless a system of “interoperable data and standardised reporting” is introduced. Therefore, they must fabricate the alleged geopolitical demand for said interoperable data and digital ID to meet the also fabricated “Identity gap.” Interoperable data solutions, especially digital ID, are essential if the regime is going to successfully exploit sustainable development to seize all global public goods and cement its claimed authority over it all.

As reported by Dr Jacob Nordangård, the commitment to “Our Common Agenda” gave rise to a number of policy briefs which governments around the world will “enable” and translate into hard national policy that controls all of us. Among the policy briefs sits the regime’s Policy brief No 5: A Global Digital Compact.

This blankly states, without any apparent justification or even identifiable rationale:

Digital technologies today are similar to natural resources such as air and water. Our well-being and development depend on their global availability.

Highlighting global inequality in the distribution and relative access costs of digital technology, the Digital Compact’s stated objective is “to overcome digital, data and innovation divides and to achieve the governance required for a sustainable digital future.” The deceptive moral “sustainable” case is made, ensuring most accept the proffered justification. The associated policy implications portend something far less edifying.

In A Global Digital Compact, the UN claims:

Urgent investments are needed in “data commons”, which pool data and digital infrastructure across borders, build flagship data sets and standards for interoperability and bring together data and AI expertise from public and private institutions to build insights and applications for the Sustainable Development Goals.

The regime and its partners have created the commensurate “mutlistakeholder” initiatives, the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) “where all recognised digital public goods can be discovered.” The DPGA brings together the usual foundations, such as the BMGF, the Rockefellers and the Omidyar Network, and other public and private “stakeholders.”

The DPGA has already registered a number of digital products which are, it says, essential for sustainable development. Apparently, 73 such products are necessary for SDG3 to transform global public health and health care; 25 digital public goods are needed in order for SDG2 to eradicate global hunger, 37 interoperable digital applications are allegedly essential for SDG4 to transform education and so on.

SDG Digital Public Goods. Source: https://digitalpublicgoods.net/registry/

The DPGA claims that all registered Digital Public Goods (DPGs) must adhere to the DPG standards it decrees, along with its own set of “indicators.”  This supposedly means that digital products that “store and distribute personally identifiable data, must demonstrate how they ensure the privacy, security and integrity of this data.”

The vendor must show, to the DPGA’s satisfaction, how it removes PII (personally identifiable information). How the DPGA can make this claim is a mystery as the global governance regime clearly intends to collect PII as outlined in A Global Digital Compact:

Personal data should only be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes, and their processing must be relevant and limited to what is necessary for those purposes.

The regime will specify the “legitimate purposes” for the “collected” PII. We already know that some of those purposes include ensuring our health data is “bound to an individual identity.” ID2020 founders Accenture are among the digital ID vendors whose blockchains and biometrics will support their corporate clients to “map physical IDs to digital IDs.” Presumably, this too is “legitimate.”

Other legitimate purposes include the surveillance of every transaction we make. It is clear that the intention is to link our digital IDs to our finances. The Global Digital Compact adds:

Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. [. . .] Digital public goods and applications such as mobile money are enabling access to financial and other services for all members of societies.

The regime maintains that this is “legitimate” because it establishes the framework for another of its deceptively named ideas: financial inclusion.

Digital ID and “Financial Inclusion“

The regime’s concept of “financial inclusion,” as highlighted in its Global Digital Compact, will see our digital IDs linked to our “bank or mobile money accounts.”

This will not only enable the regime to take our money whenever it likes, for whatever purpose it wishes, but also to surveil and control all of our transactions and effectively operate a global system of economic punishment and reward. SDG16.9 is thus the keystone for a global dictatorship.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), in partnership with the G20, has identified fixing the lack of financial inclusion as “imperative” for meeting SDGs:

G20 leaders recognized financial inclusion as a cross-cutting issue for development and economic system stability and included it in work plans. Additionally, financial inclusion is referenced in the targets of eight of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [. . .] An important step on the global level was to convene financial standard-setting bodies (SSBs) at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel to include financial inclusion in their work.

UNSGSA is led by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands who, as a former economist for Deutsche Bank and institutional sales director for HSBC—among her numerous roles with other global financial institutions—is working with the WEF, the World Bank and the BIS to unlock the estimated $2 trillion in investment required to achieve said “financial inclusion.”

India—and China—are of particular interest in this regard. In its most recent (financial inclusion index) Findex Report, speaking about the need to create the $2 trillion “enabling environment,” the President of the World Bank, David Malpas, said:

The lack of verifiable identity is one of the main reasons why adults remain excluded from financial services. India has pioneered a successful model for universal identity[.] [. . .] The interoperability of systems and the availability of a low-cost switch for financial transactions are equally important.

The UN offers an explanation, suggesting why its focus upon “financial inclusion” supposedly matters:

According to the 2021 World Bank Global Findex. [. . .] Financial inclusion [. . .] has a critical role in the efforts to help people prepare for, respond to and recover from crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, or economic and climate shocks. [. . .] An inclusive financial system is essential infrastructure in every country.

Once again we see that crises provide opportunities. As stated here, a variety of crises, new and old, will be used to push for “financial inclusion.”

The UN Task Force for the digital financing of SDGs explored how to “catalyse and recommend ways to harness digital financing to accelerate the financing of the Sustainable Development Goals.” It published a “call to action” with the objective of exploiting “digitalization in creating a citizen-centric financial system aligned to the SDGs.”

The UN Task Force’s “action agenda” recommended “a new generation of global digital financing platforms with significant cross-border, spillover impacts.” According to the regime, this would, of course, require the strengthening of “inclusive international governance.”

Cross-border spillovers, or “externalities,” are the actions and events occurring in one country that have intended or unintended consequences in others. An article published by the private World Privacy Forum, the BMGF and the Rockefeller-backed Centre for Global Development, after noting that COVID-19 accelerated the path towards digitalisation, claimed that governments are “still in the early stages of deciding how they want to govern digital spaces.” Apparently, the only possible solution is, as the UN Task Force claims, tighter global governance. 

It is claimed that cross-border spillover could be managed by including “digital ID and data markets” in a system of “SDG-aligned digital financing.” Supposedly, this will enable people to exercise their [human] “rights” while protecting national economies and data markets from spillover impacts.  

Such [human] “rights” include the “right” to have a digital ID attached to an individual from birth in order to ensure that any “money” allocated to any individual can be used by the G3P to finance whatever it wants to finance.

The Task Force concluded that the “catalytic opportunities” to finance SDGs would necessitate “accelerating the use of domestic savings” and controlling “SDG-aligned consumer spending.” The proposed “citizen-centric financial system” provides the G3P regime access to domestic savings and the power to supervise consumer spending.

To this end, in 2020, the UN Task Force published a document it deceptively titled “Peoples’ Money – Harnessing Digitilisation to Finance A Sustainable Future. The most striking thing about “Peoples’ Money” is that the global governance regime assumes that all of the peoples’ money belongs to it:

The aggregate global pool of domestic savings has grown over the last 20 years from US$7.5 trillion to US$23.3 trillion. Domestic savings in least developed countries alone has grown from US$13 to US$218 billion over the same period. Digitalization allows micro-savings from the informal sector to become part of the formal financial system and gives those already using the financial system more options. This raises the possibility of increasing the proportion of long-term development financing needs being met from domestic resources.

The Financial Times offers a reasonable definition of “domestic savings”:

Gross Domestic Saving consists of savings of household sector, private corporate sector and public sector.

As we will discuss in a moment, none of us have the right to not to be included in this digital ID based financial system. It is assumed that all of us agree that “our” money should be used to finance the UN regime’s SDGs.

The long-term development of financing for SDGs can come directly from “our” bank accounts in the digitalized “ecosystem.” This is another notable aspect of the UN regime’s “citizen-centric financial system.”

“Peoples’ Money” recommended that the UN and its partners should use “the forces of digitalization” to accelerate SDG-aligned, citizen-centric financing:

Digital identity systems are particularly important for people to be able to operate in this world. [. . .] Robust, accessible, affordable and secure digital foundations are a pre-requisite to citizen-centric, SDG-aligned finance. This includes the core digital connectivity and payments infrastructure, digital IDs, and data markets that enable financial innovation and low-cost service delivery. [. . .] Universally-available, reliable, secure, private, unique digital IDs are critical to enabling people to access digital finance.

“Financial inclusion” renders our access to money and finance subject to conditions set at the global governance level. It converts us all into “cash cows” on a global financial farm.

While we may still be able to access funds—if we have an approved digital ID—we won’t control our own money. The money we can “access” can be expropriated for SDG investment and keeping our money elsewhere will become more difficult as “the informal sector” becomes “part of the formal financial system” through the imposition of these systems globally. Digital ID “linked with bank or mobile money accounts” is the key to unlock the “informal sector” vault.

SDG16.9 digital ID is essential for the new SDG-aligned financial system to thrive. Imposing a global system of of digital identity for all eight billion of us is a mammoth task. The Task Force reiterated the only practical, technological solution:

Open source projects and shared standards allow interoperability and open innovation rather than tying companies into proprietary technology and locking data into incompatible formats.

UN Task Force action plan to create a citizen-centric, SDG-aligned financial system. Source Controlling All Business Through Digital ID 

Financial inclusion extends beyond the individual to all of our businesses. The regime claims the “right” to “steward” all of those assets too. 

In 2021, Manjeet Kripalani, the Executive Director of Gateway House (Indian Council on Global Relations), the Indian policy think-tank arm of the US Council on Foreign Relations, wrote:

Digitalisation will power the developing world out of economic crisis with MSMEs [Micro-, Small and Medium Enterprises] as a necessary enabler.

The regime considers MSMEs—i.e. our businesses—to be crucial to achieving a number of SDGs. Consequently, the regime claims the authority to govern our businesses. This will enable it to lead the “structural transformation that provide[s] a regulatory framework conducive to their [MSMEs] growth.”

Three hundred of the world’s largest financial institutions agree and have recognised how digital ID could help MSMEs unlock “trade finance.” Trade financing is a credit product that global corporations offer to “help traders manage their international payments and associated risks.” 

This is all supposedly necessary because a series of crises have stifled MSMEs’ access to financing, they claim. The irresponsible lending policies of the financial institutions had nothing to do with it apparently. 

In order to help MSMEs, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) suggests that “improved automation of corporate digital identity (DID), combined with technologies to digitise trade documents and to process alternative credit data, offer promising solutions.”

The BIS adds:

In the context of trade finance, DIDs [Decentralised Identifiers] also need to be harmonised across borders, highlighting the need for common standards. Once achieved, corporate DIDs can integrate with other trade tech solutions [. . .]. For example, combining faster and more well rounded credit assessments with the use of alternative data and trade document digitisation can speed up and enhance credit extension to SMEs [small to medium size enterprises].

DIDs are “Decentralised Identifiers.” They can be assigned to corporations, small businesses and individuals. We’ll cover this in more detail shortly.

While it is heartening to know that the largest and most powerful financial institutions on Earth are eager to help our small businesses, obviously we’ll only get that “help” if our businesses have the right digital ID [DIDs]. We might also wonder if a single, global system controlling all business investment and finance is likely to benefit our cafés, small industrial contractors, craft workshops, hair salons and other MSMEs.

Digital ID for MSMEs is part of the regime’s “citizen-centric financial system.” Although it appears to be far more multinational financial corporation “centric” than “citizen-centric.”

In the Digital Compact, the UN states that it wants to established a “global commission” to oversee the transition to interoperable, digital ID-based digitalisation. It also notes:

Digital technologies are accelerating the concentration of economic power in an ever smaller group of elites and companies: the combined wealth of technology billionaires, $2.1 trillion in 2022, is greater than the annual gross domestic product of more than half of the Group of 20 economies. [. . .] The present policy brief builds upon the foundation laid by the report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation.

Crises, such as the pseudopandemic, always tend to significantly increase the wealth of the so-called “elite.” The most recent wealth transfer to tech billionaires transpired as a result of the digitalisation that blossomed during the pseudopandemic.

As pointed out by independent journalist and documentary filmmaker James Corbett, it is therefore preposterous that the “Digital Compact” is based upon the work of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation which is led by ultra-wealthy figures like Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the BMGF, and Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group.

James Corbett observed:

Digitisation [digitalisation] has meant the creation of this incredible billionaire super-class that is now having more and more power over greater and greater sections of our lives as everything becomes digitised. So what is the UN’s answer to this? [. . .] Who are they entrusting to solve the problem they have created? It’s the people who created the problem. It is absolute insanity.

It certainly appears insane, but only if you think sustainable development has anything to do with prioritising “the essential needs of the world’s poor.” If you understand, as James Corbett does and has been reporting for many years, that sustainable development is about enhancing and centralising global power, then, the fact that people like Gates and Ma are guiding policy development makes perfect sense.

Digital ID Whether You Want It Or Not

In Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather, the character Don Vito Corleone says “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” SD16.9 digital ID is being “offered” to every person on the planet using the same, fabled gangster’s ploy of a “choice” between agreement or dire consequences. Or, at least, that is the apparent nature of the coercion.

The regime reports that 2023 is likely to be the year that India overtakes China as the world’s most populous country. The global governance regime and its partners made significant strides towards coercing all Indian people to use its ID2020 compliant, interoperable digital ID by supporting the development of the Aadhaar system in India.

The regime’s ID2020 founding partners, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, have been deeply involved with development of the Aadhaar program in India:

With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, ID2020 partnered with IDinsight to identify metrics which would capture feasible, actionable and generalizable data on digital identity programs. [. . .] The State of Aadhaar initiative, hosted by IDinsight, aims to catalyze data-driven discourse and decision-making in the Aadhaar ecosystem.

The objective was to ensure that the Aadhaar “ecosystem” met ID2020 and ID4D standards and interoperable “functional requirements.”

The Aadhaar 12 digit ID registration number has been adopted by an estimated 90% of India’s 1.4 billion people. This is managed under the statutory authority of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) by virtue of the Aadhar Act of 2016.

The UIDAI founding chairman is the Indian multi-billionaire Nandan Nilekani. He is both a close friend of Bill Gates and a member of ID4D High Level Advisory Council which provides “strategic guidance to the ID4D Initiative.”

The BMGF, an ID2020 co-founder, has been equally supportive of Aadhaar. The BMGF—also a leading UN partner—is ostensibly very concerned about “financial inclusion.” Consequently, the BMGF, has established its Financial Services for the Poor project:

Our team is actively exploring ways to accelerate use of digital financial services. [. . .] We also are working to promote the development of effective identification systems in priority geographies. ID platforms such as the Aadhaar system in India are promising models for providing safe, efficient, and widely beneficial identification services that support financial inclusion across a country.

According to the UN and the BMGF, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aadhaar Digital biometric ID system, once linked to an “inclusive financial system,” will be “essential” for all Indian people.

The mAadhaar app. Source

The UIDAI explains the Aadhaar registration process:

The process for Aadhaar enrolment of resident of the country involves use of certain basic demographic information combined with ten finger prints, both irises and photograph to uniquely identify a resident.

The biometric data, mapped to “a person’s physical ID,” will be available to vendors who have “approved” access to the data. The plan is to “decentralise” access to the inevitable global database, through MOSIP or similar “trust frameworks,” thus supposedly improving data protection.

Nearly 1.3 billion people in India have every aspect of their identity, from name and address to identifying biometric data, stored on a single, centralised database: the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR).

The UIDAI claims that applying for an Aadhaar card or using the mAadhaar app is voluntary. This is only true in Don Corleone sense.

The Aadhaar card enables Indians to access much needed subsidies, benefits and services. This was always the intention of the UIDAI, pursuant to the 2016 Act.

Other forms of ID are available, but the UIDAI has now stated that either an active or proof of a pending Aadhaar Enrolment Identification (EID) number will be needed to claim state benefits.

The Permanent Account Number (PAN) card is what enables Indians to pay their taxes. They face an automatic fine of Rs. 1000—additional fines levied on-top as deemed necessary—if they fail to do so. The PAN also facilitates the purchase and sale of vehicles, the opening of all but the most basic bank accounts, credit card applications, bank payments and transfers of Rs. 50,000 ($600 USD) or more, etc.

The Indian Government decreed that all PAN cards were to be linked to an Aadhaar system buy June 30th 2023. PAN cards have now been phased out. Those who missed the deadline can pay a penalty to link their EID retrospectively but, if they can’t afford the penalty or don’t know what to do, according to Microsoft, that’s just too bad.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is trialling the linking of Aadhaar digital ID to voter registration. This will not become “mandatory” it claims.

It is, therefore, no wonder that Aadhaar uptake is so high. Providing you don’t need and will never need any state benefits or subsidies, and as long as you don’t run a business or are required by Indian law to pay tax; if you don’t have or ever want any credit and don’t wish or need to access a bank account; if you never buy or sell a car and don’t ever spend more than the equivalent of $600 USD and, in all probability, never wish to vote, then your Indian biometric digital ID is entirely “voluntary,” in theory.

India is a vast country. In reality, Aadhaar is not and has never been “voluntary” for the majority of Indians.

A family displaying their physical Aadhaar ID cards. Source

In Kerela, the voluntary Aadhaar link to voter registration operates on an opt-out basis, but residents are not routinely made aware of this. The Tamil Nadu state government, legislating nearly 84 million people, has issued a series of orders mandating Aadhaar for access to state benefits and subsidies.

Notably, Aadhaar has been plagued with technical errors and data breeches. In its 2019 Global Risks Report, the WEF reported:

The government ID database, Aadhaar [CIDR], reportedly suffered multiple breaches that potentially compromised the records of all 1.1 billion registered citizens. It was reported in January that criminals were selling access to the database at a rate of 500 rupees for 10 minutes, while in March [2018] a leak at a state-owned utility company allowed anyone to download names and ID numbers.

In 2018 and in response to persistent allegations of CIDR vulnerabilities, R.S. Sharma, Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in an effort to demonstrate that these were all “conspiracy theories,” published his Aadhaar number on Twitter to prove the system was secure. Within hours, interested parties had released his mobile number(s), Gmail and Yahoo addresses, physical address, date of birth, frequent flyer number, personal photographs and bank account details to which, for comedic effect, they sent some small payments.

Older people, whose fingerprints have degenerated, have been excluded from accessing vital food subsidies due to the flaws in Aadhaar’s biometric component. In 2015, a study revealed that of 85,589 ration card holders—accessed via Aadhaar—50,151 people in Andhra Pradesh could not access the grain subsides provided through 125 fair price shops across the state.

Eight years later, there is little evidence that the problem of “exclusion” has been resolved by this system. Indian states operate various “vetting” procedures as a prerequisite to issuing Aadhaar ID. Vetting has been used to discriminate against disadvantaged populations. For example, Adivasi people, who often do not possess birth certificates, have been excluded from financial benefits and food relief, as they have been blocked via the vetting procedures and can’t obtain an Aadhaar EIN.

The Aadhaar system has also frequently encouraged, rather than deterred, widespread corruption. In Jharkhand, grain dealers used Aadhaar to record the allocation of grain quotas but halved the amount supplied to aid recipients, selling the remainder for illegal profit.

The SDG16.9.1 indicator aims to measure the “proportion of children under 5 years” who have digital ID. It is no coincidence that the Nilekani’s UIDAI seeks to capture “biometric identity for minor children below five years.”

It is the poor who are worst affected by alleged registration and vetting “errors.” Tens of millions of impoverished Indian children are at risk of exclusion from school and essential food subsidies.

Once again, we are confronted with the stark contrast between the stated aim of sustainable development—-to give priority to “the essential needs of the world’s poor”—and the reality. So frequent is this disconnect that it is reasonable to conclude that empowering the world’s poor is not the intention at all.

The regime is so impressed with its Aadhaar system that its ID4D agent, the World Bank, is working with the UIDAI to export the Aadhaar model globally to create a “Universal Global Identity System.” While this appears to be extremely bad news for the world’s poor, Saurabh Garg, chief executive of UIDAI, said:

The Universal Global Identity System is something we are very actively working upon. [. . .] [S]ome countries have already adopted the kind of architecture that we have used and others are keen to do that.

By July 2022, the IIIT-B MOSIP development platform had been used by digital ID vendors to supply interoperable Aadhaar-like ID products and services in Sri Lanka, Morocco, the Philippines, Guinea, Ethiopia and the Togolese Republic. By April 2023, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso had also adopted MOSIP interoperable digital ID.

We can only hope that this will do something to tackle the disastrous impact that SDG16.9 has already wrought on countries like Uganda. Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that it will.

Known in Uganda as “Ndaga Muntu,” and widely recognised as a national security “weapon,” the Ugandan National ID Card (NIC) is needed for everything from accessing healthcare, food aid and financial support, to applying for licences and opening bank accounts.

In 2021, the Ugandan human rights watchdog “Unwanted Witness” published its report on digital “exclusion” entitled “Chased Away and Left To Die.” Unwanted Witness academics recorded a litany of abuses and cruel exclusions that had been facilitated by Ugandan digital ID.

Ugandans had to bribe officials to gain the necessary “sanctioned” signatures for their digital ID applications. Non-indigenous Ugandans, such as the Maragoli people, were routinely excluded from accessing digital ID. Older and disabled people with difficulty accessing remote registration centres and often with degraded biometric features, such as irises and fingerprints, were also systematically “excluded.”

With an estimated 23% -33% of Ugandan adults excluded from digital ID registration, many resorted to unorthodox means to access vital services. Forgery, submitting false names, posing as others already registered and bribing officials were common tactics.

Much of this was “illegal,” running the risk of punishment and arrest, but unavoidable for millions of Ugandans. A woman in the Ugandan district of Amudat told the researchers:

Without an ID or clinic card for women who have been receiving antenatal care, [you will receive] no treatment. Many people fall sick and stay home and die.

These problems were compounded by high error rates in the registration and data handling processes. 50,000 of 197,000 Ugandans over the age of 80 could not collect their Senior Citizens Grants [UK and Irish-supported state pensions] as a result.

The Ugandans that were able to register for digital ID were also placed at risk. Following anti-government protests in 2020, the Ugandan police used registered biometric facial recognition from the NIC database to identify protesters and arrested more than 830 of them.

The offer no one can refuse has already been made to billions of people in developing and emerging economies and is beginning to be rolled-out in developed economies, such as Russia, the UK, US, the EU and elsewhere.

The World Bank’s most recent Findex Report noted:

Global efforts to increase inclusive access to trusted identification systems and mobile phones could be leveraged to increase account ownership for hard-to-reach populations.

This “leveraging” is particularly important to coerce the people who neither want a bank account nor the digital ID that goes with it: the so-called “unbanked.”

The World Bank’s report adds:

Distrust of the financial system is a greater barrier in some regions, and globally it was cited by 23 percent of unbanked adults. In Europe and Central Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, about a third of unbanked adults said they do not have an account because they distrust the banking system. In Ukraine, 54 percent of unbanked adults listed distrust in the financial system as one of the reasons for their lack of an account. More than one in three unbanked adults cited the same barrier in Argentina, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Jamaica, and Russia, among others.

It seems these “unbanked” people do not have the “human right” to decline a bank account or reject the imposition of digital ID. Yet, they are all currently surviving without either. The fact that so many people currently live without them, shows us that this “offer” is essentially a confidence trick.

While the “choice” to refuse digital ID won’t be easy, it can still be done, including in developed nations. It is certainly time for us all to start considering our options very carefully, because SDG16.9 digital ID is taking us all to a very dark place.

Digital ID-Based Central Bank Digital Currencies & Financial Inclusion

The SDG-aligned, “citizen-centric” financial system will almost certainly be based upon interoperable Central Bank Digital Currency. CBDC, linked to digital ID, enables the necessary allocation and control of our “money.” If the plan succeeds, all money will be a direct liability of the central banks. Such “money” will always “belong” to central banks, never to us.

This explains why the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)—the central bank of central banks—claims that CBDC could be an effective tool for financial inclusion.

A digital platform that enables a public-private partnership of “vendors” to integrate their products and services to a centrally controlled “portal,” has emerged as the foremost model for the “global digital transformation.” The “platform model” is preferred by governments around the world for a range of digital ID-based “services.” 

According to the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker, “130 countries, representing over 95 percent of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC.” Of these, 11 have launched a full national CBDC. Of the 11, Nigeria, with a population of more than 220 million people, is by far the largest.

The nations leading development of the multipolar world are leading the CBDC race. Source

Access to Nigeria’s e-Naira is dependent upon possession of a National Identification Number (NIN) authorised by the National Identity Management System (NIMS) programme. The most significant national CBDC launched to date requires Nigerians to use digital ID. Their “human rights” do not extend to maintaining anonymous financial transactions.

The Bank for International Settlements states:

Universal access to eNaira is a key goal of the CBN [Central Bank of Nigeria], and new forms of digital identification are being issued to the unbanked to help with access. [. . .] When it comes to anonymity, the CBN has opted to not allow anonymity even for lower-tier wallets. At present, a bank verification number is required to open a retail customer wallet. 

Nigerian’s NINs compel them to share all their biometric data with the government and its commercial partners. By linking this to the e-Naira, Nigerians’ transactions can be surveilled and tracked and, more importantly from the global governance regime’s perspective, controlled.

The CBN launched the e-Naira in November 2021. In December 2021, the ID4D partnership began its Nigeria Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) project. Similarly, in China, digital ID is required to use the e-CNY—China’s CBDC.

CBDC and digital ID are synonymous. This was always the intention. In its 2021 Annual Economic Report, the BIS wrote:

[T]he most promising design is an account-based CBDC, rooted in an efficient digital identity scheme for users. In this way, CBDCs can meet the challenges raised by the huge volume of personal data collected as an input into business activity. [. . .] CBDCs are best designed as part of a two-tier system where the central bank and the private sector focus on what they do best: the central bank on operating the core of the system by ensuring sound money, liquidity and overall security; the private sector by innovating and using its creativity and ingenuity to serve customers better.

As will be detailed shortly, the “two-tier” system is designed with deception in mind. It means that we can be tricked into using both CBDC and the prerequisite digital ID without our knowledge. Not only will we have been ensnared in the regime’s “citizen-centric financial system,” we will also be registered on the “Universal Global Identity System” without ever consciously giving our consent.  

In addition, CBDC is “programmable money.” This means that digital “smart contracts” can be linked to individual transactions, thus enabling policy enforcement.

Bo Li, the former Deputy Governor of the PBC, and the current Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), speaking at the Central Bank Digital Currencies for Financial Inclusion: Risks and Rewards symposium, explained the power that programmable CBDC “financial inclusion” affords the G3P regime:

CBDC can improve financial inclusion through, what we call, programmability. That is, CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program [CBDC] to create smart-contracts, to allow targeted policy functions. For example[,] welfare payments [. . .], consumptions coupons, [. . .] food stamps. By programming, CBDC money can be precisely targeted [to] what kind of [things] people can own, and what kind of use [for which] this money can be utilised. For example, [. . .] for food.

Policies will be enforced by a global public-private partnership. These policies can be implemented at the point of sale, removing the need for legislation or any democratic process. Access to food, water, energy, or money can be controlled by the G3P regime.

15 minute cities can be established and enforced by disabling a user’s CBDC beyond a 15 minute radius from their homes. The use of Electric Vehicles (EVs) can be compelled by disabling the CBDC purchase of any petrol or diesel vehicle or by denying the buying of tickets for non-EV public transport. All business activity, investment and financial services can be controlled. Interoperable CBDCs, supposedly designed to meet the SDG16.9 financial inclusion, is feudalism at best but can also be considered global slavery.

The UK government is one of the leading financial backers of the World Bank’s ID4D global digital ID “data set.” It is also a keen advocate of CBDC. So it is not at all surprising to see the UK state broadcaster, the BBC, provide the appropriate e-Naira guidance in Pidgin.

The Nigerian state is trying to force its population to use its digital ID-based CBDC. The CBN has strangled the supply of cash, leaving Nigerian bank customers unable to acquire the physical money they need. This has resulted in numerous protests, as Nigerians resist the imposition of CBDC.

The Nigerian people are not falling for the coercive tactics of the central bank and the government. They are turning instead to other forms of payment and are demanding renewed access to cash. So far, the roll-out of the e-Naira has been a total flop.

The unpopularity of CBDC has coincided with a significant increase in the use of cryptocurrency in Nigeria. The Nigerian Government response is as expected. It continues to try to regulate cryptocurrency, but with little success. It seems Nigerians don’t want “financial inclusion.”

The Indian government has been far more aggressive in preparation for the imposition of CBDC in the form of the e-rupee. In 2016, it began the process of “demonetisation,” removing 86% of Indian cash overnight. This forced Indians to use electronic banking, priming them for their impending CBDC.

Nonetheless, the e-rupee is not popular in India either. Just as in Nigeria and China, the people wisely view CBDC with immense suspicion. Unfortunately, the global public-private partnership (G3P) regime isn’t interested in our opinions or wishes.

Apparently demonstrating unbelievable naivéte, when Cornell University researchers investigated why the e-Naira had failed, they noted: 

Unfortunately, the anti-laundering measures [ALM] built into the eNaira can be seen by users as a breach of privacy, with the government able to monitor all your money and potentially use that information for control. [. . .] The eNaira seems to have been created to preserve as much government power as possible. Nodes are run in private, and no transaction details are shared with the public, so usage statistics remain visible to the CBN only. The strict authentication measures make government tracking incredibly viable, while not really giving any real accountability to the government.

The scholars seemingly thought this was a design flaw. However, it was not a mistake. As the BIS pointed out, that is how CBDC is intended to function. It is the CBDC “model.”

Pedro Magalhães, a Brazilian software engineer and blockchain developer, reverse-engineered the published code for the Brazilian CBDC. He discovered that it could adjust account balances, make payments and generate or eliminate “digital tokens” without user permission.

In addition to “financial inclusion,” another alleged benefit of CBDC is “financial stability.” The threat of another global financial crisis has been sign-posted by the regime on innumerable occasions. CBDC may well be offered to all as the “global solution” to the next “global financial crisis.”

If the central banks that seek to promulgate CBDC continue with their apparently reckless and groundless monetary policies, a global financial crisis is all but inevitable. Once again, policy, not random events, will be the driver. Perhaps central bank monetary policy is not as “reckless and groundless” as some imagine.

CBDC is the ultimate “tool” to control the citizen-centric financial system. Digital ID will be required for anyone to access CBDC. Digital ID is clearly the “pre-requisite to citizen-centric, SDG-aligned finance.”

Biometric Digital ID Via Two-Tiered Platforms 

Digital ID is perhaps the most crucial technological component of the regime’s sustainable development agenda. Nearly all nation-states have committed to fulfilling SDG ambitions, including the widespread adoption of biometric digital ID. 

Simultaneously, “financial inclusion,” the fluffy-sounding regime term for financial control, is a core component of SDG financing. Ubiquitous use of biometric digital ID is synonymous with our planned future access to “money.” What better way to get everyone to “onboard” onto the new system than to exclude them from the essential financial and banking services if they do not participate.  

The problem the G3P regime faces is that the availability of potential alternatives—whatever maintains the possibility for anonymous transactions, such as cash, local exchange trading systems (LETS) and some cryptocurrencies—can be used by people who decline the offered tyranny. This point is exemplified by the Nigerian peoples’ reaction to the eNaira.  

The rollout of CBDCs and the prerequisite digital ID has so far been a disaster for the regime. Regardless of the culture, people in India, China and elsewhere have shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for embracing their planned digital future. In fact, they are actively resisting in many instances.  

It now seems clear that, absent some destructive financial event—a financial Pearl Harbour that would potentially enable the G3P to offer CBDC as the only possible “solution”—the G3P regime can’t impose its digital ID products and services nor achieve digital “financial inclusion” purely by coercion or force. 

Consequently, the G3P is evidently willing to use subterfuge. The adoption of the “two-tiered” model of CBDC facilitates their deception. 

There are many different technical models proposed for central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Broadly speaking, though, CBDC is either “wholesale” or “retail.” 

Wholesale CBDC acts like central bank reserves. It is available for use only by commercial banks, financial institutions and central banks. They use wholesale CBDC to settle payments between each other, but it is not accessible to the general public. 

Retail CBDC, on the other hand, is offered to the public. It is promoted as an “alternative” to both cash and the electronic payment systems we commonly use, which can also be considered fiat currency—“cash”—transactions. 

With the launch of the e-CNY, the eNaira, the e-Rupee, the digital pound and the digital ruble, the “hybrid” or “two-tiered” model has emerged as the preferred CBDC “platform.” This model of CBDC is issued by the central bank via an application programming interface (API). Private financial institutions and firms can then access the API and use CBDC for wholesale settlements. 

The two-tier model also allows private commercial banks and payment “solution” providers—Mastercard, Meta, PayPal or WeChat Pay, for example—to “innovate” and construct financial products and services on the API “layer.” All of these banks and providers are effectively offering the public “retail” CBDC transactions on a single “two-tiered” infrastructure that also enables “wholesale” settlements. 

The BoE’s digital pound technical specification explains how the two-tiered CBDC model will function. Private financial institutions and payment providers, which the BoE calls PIPs and ESIPs respectively, will be given the power to program the digital pound via, for instance, the smart contracts favoured by Bo Li and others.

The BoE states: 

The [two-tier] platform model is currently the preferred model for offering a UK CBDC. [. . .] The Bank hosts the core ledger and an application programming interface (API) layer. The API layer would allow private sector firms, known as Payment Interface Providers (PIPs) and External Service Interface Providers (ESIPs), access to the core ledger functionality in order to provide user services. Access to the core ledger would be subject to approval by the Bank [. . .] and subject to PIPs and ESIPs having appropriate regulatory status.

The two-tiered CBDC model incorporates all the functionality of other CBDC systems, such as instant cross-border settlement and programmability, but provides the possibility that the public could be lulled into using a CBDC without necessarily knowing that it is one as they would not directly interact with the CBDC’s API. The same can be said for the accompanying biometric digital ID.

Bank of England. Source

The underlying currency will be CBDC but, as the BoE points out, the products and services that use CBDC could take many different forms, anything from stablecoins to non-fungible tokens (NFTs):

[The] ledger records updates to the state and ownership of tokens or the destruction and creation of unique tokens. [. . .] Technologies for a CBDC are also relevant to privately issued digital money, like stablecoins. [. . .] PIPs could implement some [. . .] features, such as automated payments and programmable wallets, by hosting the programmable logic, and updating the core ledger with the result via the API. But other features, such as payment-versus-payment (PvP) [. . .] and smart contracts, might require additional design considerations. In those instances, the Bank [BoE] would only provide the necessary infrastructure to support PIPs and ESIPs to provide these functionalities. [. . .] PvP functionality might be used to enable interoperability and exchange between a CBDC and other forms of money, such as stablecoins. 

It is worth reiterating that while the two-tier model allows commercial banks and others to develop all manner of digital payment products and services, the underlying currency for the settlement of all payments, both wholesale and retail, is CBDC. While the BoE claims that it doesn’t “currently” intend to program CBDC directly, preferring to leave this to PIPs and ESIPs for the time being, it stressed that the base “CBDC must deliver the government and Bank’s [BoE] policy objectives.” 

For private financial corporations to maintain access to the CBDC “infrastructure,” they “must deliver” G3P policy objectives, such as SDG “financial inclusion.” The BoE will control the “core ledger” and the PIP and ESIP license approval process. While the “two-tier” model appears to be “decentralised,” or “vendor agnostic,” it is actually a stringent, programmable, “centralised” financial control system. 

The BoE acknowledges that it is wary of public resistance to its authoritarian control. With regard to the programmability—business logic—of CBDC, it states that “hosting business logic also creates a number of reputational risks and potential conflicts.” Consequently, central banks claim that their private vendor partners will manage “business logic.” 

Regardless of what platform compliant coins or tokens the public chooses, we will not be able to access them “anonymously.” Consequently, the BoE, in this instance, claims it has farmed out issuance of the necessary, corresponding digital ID to the private sector: 

Users would need to be authenticated to carry out CBDC transactions. PIPs would be responsible for authenticating users. This is the Bank’s preferred approach to user authentication as it allocates the responsibility for onboarding [getting you to use CBDC], AML [anti-money laundering] and KYC [know your customer] checks to PIPs, and does not require the Bank [BoE] to store personal data. PIPs would likely need to comply with strong customer authentication (SCA) requirements. This means that users might have to authenticate two or more elements categorised as: knowledge (something you know) — a personal identification number (PIN) or password validated either locally on the device or online; possession (something you have) — in most cases, this would be either the smart device or the smart card; and inherence (something you are) — biometric authentication, such as facial or fingerprint recognition.

But the BoE then contradicts itself: 

The Bank may need to collect operational metadata for analysis of system status and performance. This would allow the Bank to maintain the core ledger and the API layer. The Bank could also collect aggregate data, subject to effective anonymisation and privacy protections, in order to undertake economic and policy analysis.

The BoE is intent on harvesting all transaction data, including users’ biometric digital IDs from its “private” partners, while also claiming that it isn’t. This same deception is common to all two-tier models. 

The public will only have access to their CBDC-related products and services, i.e., “money”—via PIPs and the ESIPs in the UK—in exchange for their “biometric authentication.” Where the alleged “anonymisation and privacy protections” fit in to the UK’s proposed two-tier model is impossible to determine. 

The BoE says that “any information accessed by the Bank [BoE] would have to be effectively anonymised off-ledger.” This is because the “on-ledger” CBDC system it has designed doesn’t leave room for any “anonymisation.”

The BoE claims the “off-ledger” privacy protection will supposedly follow data privacy guidelines stipulated by the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO). However, the only ICO document it cites merely describes basic data protection principles. The referenced document says nothing about how these principles will be applied to the BoE’s two-tier system. Nor, crucially, does the BoE specify “who” will supposedly “anonymise” the raw biometric digital ID data. 

There are potential privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that the BoE could utilise, but it has seemingly rejected these in its technical specifications: 

PETs are likely to introduce system complexity to varying degrees. This could create a tension with security, performance, resilience, interoperability and extensibility requirements, as well as with system build and operation costs. The Bank does not intend to receive or use personal data. [. . .] Further work is needed to assess the technology implications of such an arrangement.

Contrary to its claims, there is no firm BoE commitment to any “anonymisation and privacy protections.” All the BoE offers are vague promises that some sort of privacy will be maintained by an as-yet-unknown “off-ledger” actor. 

The BoE clearly wants to hoover up users’ biometric digital ID and transaction data from the private PIPs and ESIPs. It also clearly intends to use this data for “economic and policy analysis” in order to ensure that the system delivers government and BoE “policy objectives.” 

Those objectives are decided neither by the UK government nor the BoE. The policy agenda is set by the G3P regime at the global governance level. 

SDG16.9: Vendor Agnostic Digital ID?

Given the international trials and pilots, the regime undoubtedly recognises the public’s apprehension and reluctance to accept government digital ID and to hand over their personal data to central banks. The trick, then, is to construct interoperable monetary and ID systems that gather everyone’s data without alerting “users” to the fact that they have subscribed to the regime’s centralised system. 

Key to this two-tiered global financial system, supposedly strengthening the “financial inclusion” we all allegedly need, is the use of “permissioned DLTs” [Distributed Ledger Technologies] to form the base infrastructure. In addition, by maintaining settlement on “the central bank balance sheet,” once traditional central bank reserves are eventually replaced with “wholesale” CBDC, the two-tier, interoperable CBDC networks will extend central bank control into the global “retail” economy automatically. 

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, operate on blockchains and are examples of “permissionless” DLTs. Anonymous “nodes” [computers on the network] use checksums—or hashes—to verify transactions and authenticate the issuance of currency. These currency exchange systems can be considered—although with caveats—to be decentralised and anonymous. Some caveats are particularly important, such as the fact that these “permissionless” blockchains are very open and anonymous if one does not make use of advanced privacy technologies. Notably, in the United States, those very privacy technologies that afford any significant degree of anonymity on permissonless blockchains, as well as those who develop them, are currently under attack by the Department of Justice and, more broadly speaking, the World Economic Forum Partnership against Cybercrime, of which the DOJ is a member.

“Permissioned” DLTs, perhaps using a similar kind of blockchain, introduce access control. Anonymous nodes can become carefully selected network “validators” that could—and will, in our imminent monetary system—require users to adopt approved biometric digital ID in order to “onboard” to the network. 

While permissioned “blockchains” may be touted as decentralised, as highlighted by journalist Benjamin Vitares, “permissioned” DLTs, on the contrary, empower centralised authority: 

Permissioned blockchains feature only a small number of validators[, . . .] which allows them to fulfil compliance requirements more efficiently. [. . .] Since validators — and also standard users in some cases — have to go through KYC [Know Your Customer], permissioned blockchains feature limited privacy, making it nearly impossible for most participants to use the network pseudonymously. [. . .] As the network is managed by an organization that has to comply with regulations, permissioned blockchains could be subject to censorship [. . .]. Due to the small number of validators, a malicious party has an easier time infiltrating a permissioned blockchain than a permissionless ledger.

It is notable that, despite regime claims of enhanced privacy, transparency and data security, the permissioned DLTs they prefer are inherently less secure, reduce transparency and frequently rule out “privacy.” The only “decentralised” aspect of “financial inclusion” via a “two-tier” compliant, permissioned DLT is that it allows the regime to claim that the financial products and services built upon it, as well as the accompanying biometric digital ID “onboarding solutions,” are “vendor agnostic.” 

In reality, the “vendors” are approved “partners” and must comply with the regime’s “policy objectives.” As long as they do, then they will be “licensed” to use the permissioned DLT. 

Recently, JPMorgan published a paper on the potential for commercial banks to offer customers tokenised deposits, which it called “deposit tokens”: 

Deposit tokens refer to transferable tokens issued on a blockchain by a licensed depository institution which evidence a deposit claim against the issuer. [. . .] The token form enables new functionality, such as programmability. [. . .] Deposit tokens also operate as a realistic alternative to stablecoins, on both public and permissioned blockchain environments.

The JPMorgan researchers added:

The ability for banks to settle their deposit token exposure to other banks in central bank money [. . .] alongside a clear path to interoperability with existing payment infrastructures when redeeming these deposit tokens, should support the singleness of the currency. Such a two-tiered system has the added benefit of preserving the important role that central banks play in wholesale settlement today. Real time methods to settle central bank funds, such as by using a blockchain based CBDC, may actually strengthen the current system.

Citigroup, which has a shared history with JPMorgan through its CEO Jamie Dimon, announced the roll-out of deposit tokens for its institutional clients on September 18. According to reports, the new service will “enable [the] issuance of digital money representing customers’ own funds before settling through central bank reserves on [a] distributed ledger.” 

Given Citi’s promise that their new service will provide “cross-border payments, liquidity, and automated trade finance solutions on a 24/7 basis,” it seems obvious that it will eventually make use of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s FedNow service when dealing with central bank reserves. Launched in July, FedNow facilitates “the instant transfers of money between accounts at different institutions that choose to join the network” and has been labeled by critics as early infrastructure for an eventual CBDC system in the United States.

The two-tiered CBDC system, as exemplified above and now in use at some major American banks, will enable “the singleness of currency” irrespective of the coin or token people choose to use. KYC authentication and onboarding can be managed by the private coin and token vendors, such as PIPs and ESIPs in the UK. 

Just like CBDC, JPMorgan’s deposit tokens are programmable. From a token user’s perspective, they are a form of “cash equivalent” offered by a private bank and can be used as a liquid asset to pay for goods and services. 

Yet they can be—and almost certainly will be—reliant upon the two-tiered CBDC network controlled by the central bank. If that is the case, as seems extremely likely, they will effectively be retail CBDC in all but name.  

As people are already accustomed to disclosing all of their private data to private commercial banks for a range of credit and other financial services, simply signing up to use a commercial bank’s digital tokens is unlikely to raise any new concerns. “Users” will have unwittingly submitted their biometric data to the universal identity system. 

In short, it is entirely feasible that the public could be enticed into using retail CBDC without their knowledge, thus averting their objections. Similarly, the biometric digital ID they will need in order to avail themselves of digital “money” will feel “vendor agnostic” even though it will actually be forming part of the “Universal Global Identity System.” 

Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs)

Once you are in the digital ID system, it may be framed as “convenient” to wrap all your biometric digital ID data into something like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as the Soulbound Token (SBT). According to the SBT’s concept creator, Ethereum blockchain developer Vitalik Buterin, your SBTs will store every aspect of your identity: 

Imagine a world where most participants have Souls that store SBTs corresponding to a series of affiliations, memberships, and credentials. [. . .] SBTs that represent education credentials, work history, and rental contracts could serve as a persistent record of credit-relevant history. [. . .] Loans and credit lines could be represented as non-transferable but revocable SBTs, so they are nested amongst a Soul’s other SBTs—a kind of non-seizable reputational collateral—until they are repaid and subsequently burned, or better yet, replaced with proof of repayment. 

Indeed: just “imagine a world” where your life is valued based upon your interoperable ID2020 certified digital ID token! Why not, while you’re at it, add your COVID-19 vaccination status to your SBT wallet?

To be fair to Buterin and his development team, they aren’t suggesting centralised control of your digital identity in an all-pervasive social credit system. On the contrary, they see SBTs as a possible solution to that pressing problem:

An ecosystem of SBTs could unlock a censorship-resistant, bottom-up alternative to top-down commercial and “social” credit systems.

There are notable drawbacks to SBTs. Each SBT corresponds to a verified credential (VC), such as an exam pass certificate. These are held in an encrypted wallet. But that wallet’s address is visible on the blockchain. That very visibility has already resulted in scammers sending “Asshole SBTs” to wallets and demanding payment in order to “burn” (remove) the unwanted “credential.” 

That said, for those of you who do seek centralised global governance control of your life, SBTs decentralised “bottom-up” approach isn’t welcome. The SBT concept is unlikely to be embraced by the G3P regime. 

CoinDesk, which runs the annual “Consensus” global seminar, claims it is “the most trusted media, events, indices and data company for the global crypto economy.” According to Wikipedia, CoinDesk is frequently cited by the MSM outlets, so it must be trusted. Thus, it’s no surprise that, at the 2023 Consensus gathering, Tyrone Lobban, head of blockchain development at JPMorgan’s Onyx Digital Assets platform, was among the panel of industry experts who eschewed the SBT model. 

The regime is heading toward so-called “self-sovereign identities” or (SSIs), which are frequently referred to as “Decentralised Identifiers” (DIDs). As previously discussed, these are also popular with the BIS as a way of providing interoperable digital ID to our businesses.  

The EU has begun to test the European Digital Identity wallet (EUDI). The EUDI is SSI-based (or DID-based). 

The EU claims its digital ID wallet will be more convenient for EU citizens: 

It will include digital travel credentials, and will simplify the processes of opening a bank account, registering for a SIM card, proving educational and professional qualifications, and claiming social benefits through the European Health Insurance Card.

EUDI is compliant with the EU’s “electronic identification, authentication and trust services” (eIDAS) regulations. The eIDAS 2.0 framework assumes that Europeans will use SSI-based (that is, DIDs-based) biometric digital IDs.  

DIDs offer the potential that our biometric digital IDs could be secured by cryptographic proofs without the need for any centralised registry. We could each have quite firm control of our “verified credentials” (VCs), only disclosing the information on a need-to-know basis, such as when we open a bank account. 

Need-to-know disclosure is a strong selling point for DIDs’ digital ID “solutions,” such as Microsoft’s ION digital ID network. It uses the existing Bitcoin blockchain “to create digital IDs for authenticating identity online.” 

Microsoft’s Daniel Buchner, who, like Lobban, is dead-set against the SBT “bottom-up” approach, claimed that “ION does not rely on centralized entities, trusted validators or special protocol tokens. ION answers to no one but you.” 

Such a claim sounds fantastic. If it’s true, then SDG16.9 digital ID would be safe and secure from “exploitation.” But “would” doesn’t mean “will.” 

While it appears that the Unlimited Hangout article you are currently reading is moot, closer inspection of DIDs reveals that Buchner’s claims are baseless. Sure enough, DIDs are ID2020-compliant digital ID “products.”  

According to Coinbase: 

Decentralized ID removes the need to outsource identity management to centralized authorities like governments or big tech. Instead, user data is distributed and stored on the blockchain and in users’ own digital wallets. With DiD, trusted third-party “issuers” verify key identifiers and credentials. 

So, if not the government or “big tech,” who will be the “trusted third-party issuers”? Coinbase goes on to say: 

DiD works by relying on trusted third parties, called “issuers,” to verify key identifiers. These issuers could include government agencies, universities, employers, and banks.

How can we avoid outsourcing data management to “governments or big tech” if “governments or big tech” require our biometric digital IDs to issue the necessary VCs? In reality, we won’t avoid it at all. 

The Coinbase narrative, like much else written in the DIDs space, appears to be designed to entice web 3.0 acolytes to “onboard.” In truth, it is mostly nonsensical word salad. 

“Trust” is certainly pertinent, precisely because our biometric digital ID won’t be hidden from the so-called “trusted third parties.” Once again, it is necessary to consider the use of misleading language, even if there is no intention to mislead. 

In a 2016 white paper, written for the ID2020 design workshop, the dichotomy between the concept of “decentralisation,” as most of us understand its meaning, and its use when discussing digital products and services was laid bare. 

In the white paper “ID2020,” researcher Kiara Robles noted: 

Identity in the physical world has typically been asserted via decentralized mechanisms, mainly paper; i.e., identity is managed individually with claims and attributes that are verified by third parties. Modern computing techniques have centralized this process with various registries and databases that have become repositories for unintentional exploitation.

Robles noted that DLTs, like blockchains, “may be suited for implementing some aspects of classic information security principles [but are] not well-suited for other[s].” The problem is that storing our most personal data on a permanent blockchain presents a number of security vulnerabilities. The alleged DIDs solution is to “store a signed statement from a seriously credible source [. . .] but without tons of personal information on it.”

The statement from the “seriously credible source” then acts as proof of the relevant VC [verified credential]. The problem is, in order to provide the statement, the “seriously credible source” will not only have access to all your biometric data but is unlikely to be anything other than a regime-approved “seriously credible source.” 

Our current system of numerous forms of ID, including biometric digital ID, such as UK driving licenses, are all verified and/or issued by various “third parties.” Modern DLTs, even permissionless DLTs, centralise all “trusted third party” issuers, which greatly increases the risk of exploitation, whether “unintentional” or not. 

Presently, our somewhat ad hoc identification systems are genuinely “decentralised”—or at least are far more so than any computer network. A DLT-based system, by its nature, is not. In reference to DLTs, the term “decentralised” is comparative. 

Permissionless DLTs, such as permissionless blockchains, are more “decentralised” than permissioned networks. If permissioned biometric digital ID blockchains are also “interoperable,” global centralisation of all biometric digital ID data is eminently achievable. All that would be required is some sort of global DID standardisation.

Referencing the Worldwide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) “Credentials Community Group,” Robles continued:

The goal of this Group is to forge a path for a secure, decentralized system of credentials that would empower both individual people and organizations on the Web to store, transmit, and receive digitally verifiable proof of qualifications and achievements [VCs]. 

The W3C was founded in 1994 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the European Commission (the EU), and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It seeks industry agreement to establish web standards. Consortium members include ID2020 founding partner Microsoft and ID2020 general partners Meta (formerly Facebook) and Mastercard.

In July 2022, the W3C announced Decentralised Identifiers v1.0 as a global standard “to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible and interoperable.” These were accompanied by the W3C Verified Credential data model v1.1 standards.    

Kalia Young, co-founder of the Internet Identity Workshop—funded by Microsoft, Google and others—and a W3C expert contributor recounted how the DIDs v1.0 standards came into being: 

I still remember that first whiteboard session for what would become Decentralized Identifiers (DID) v1.0 that I helped facilitate following the ID2020 conference in 2016. Since then, as a community steward and contributor, I have had the pleasure to watch the DID specification progress through workshopping at the Internet Identity Workshop. [. . .] I look forward to helping organizations understand and implement this standard.

In January 2018, Peggy Johnson, then-executive vice president of business development at Microsoft and now CEO of the “augmented reality” company Magic Leap, wrote about Microsoft’s and ID2020’s enthusiasm for DIDs:

[F]undamental rights and services like voting, healthcare, housing and education are tethered to legal proof of identification — you can’t participate if you don’t have it. [. . .] As discussions begin this week at the World Economic Forum, creating universal access to identity is an issue at the top of Microsoft’s agenda. [. . .] Last summer that Microsoft took a first step, collaborating [. . .] on a blockchain-based identity prototype [. . .] we pursued this work in support of the ID2020 Alliance — a global public-private partnership[.] [. . .] Microsoft, our partners in the ID2020 Alliance, and developers around the globe will collaborate on an open source, self-sovereign, blockchain-based identity system that allows people, products, apps and services to interoperate across blockchains, cloud providers and organizations. [. . .] We will also help establish standards that ensure this work is impactful and scalable. Our shared ambition with ID2020 is to start piloting this solution in the coming year to bring it to those who need it most, beginning with refugee populations.

In 2017, ID2020 founding partner Accenture worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to develop the Biometric Identity Management system (BIMS). 

Accenture reported the objectives of the BIMS project: 

To better manage its global refugee population, UNHCR recognized that it needed a standardized, integrated solution with a centralized data base for identity management. [. . .] Collaborating closely with UNHCR, in just six weeks Accenture configured a pilot Biometric Identity Management System. [. . .] The technology captures and stores fingerprints, iris data and facial images of individuals [. . .]. Accenture and UNHCR put an early version BIMS to the test during a four-week pilot at the agency’s Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. The Camp’s nearly 17,000 refugees were rapidly registered and verified during the pilot. [. . .] We have now initiated a global roll-out of the system commencing in Thailand and Chad. For refugees, the system gives them a permanent identity record. “I can be someone now,” explained one Chadian refugee. “I am registered globally with the UN and you’ll always know who I am.” 

Microsoft soon joined the BIMS project to develop it into a DIDs system, using a permissioned DLT blockchain. The BBC reported: 

The digital ID network was unveiled at the ID2020 summit in New York on Monday. ID2020 is an alliance of governments, public sector organisations and technology companies working together to help the UN realise its [SDG16.9] goal.  

Yet again, the impact of ID2020-compliant DIDs-based digital ID in countries like Malawi has been repressive and exclusionary. The claimed benefits of sustainable development are, as usual, entirely absent.  

It is all very well for probably well-meaning people like Kiara Robles to talk about “unintentional exploitation,” but, the fact is, there are plenty of people in positions of power and authority with nefarious agendas who are intent upon exploiting others. An SDG16.9 global system of digital ID is the perfect tool to “realise” their goals. Are we supposed to amble about like little lambs, led by irretrievably naïve “shepherds,” into a planned, realised dystopia?  

A recent report from the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) highlights how the G3P regime’s DIDs-based digital ID system has been used in Malawi: 

Recent instances of the use of state surveillance apparatus for repressive purposes and prosecutions, compounded by a lack of data and online privacy protections [. . .] have heightened fears that the country is regressing in terms of safeguarding online rights. The environment is impacting both ordinary citizens and online journalists. [. . .] Since its implementation in 2018, the national ID has become the only form of identification for all public transactions, including voter registration, mandatory SIM Card registration, banking, MRA, farming subsidies, cash transfers, and Covid-19 vaccinations. Implementing the national ID means people’s data is centralised through the ID system.

Digital ID, linked to SIM card registration, has been used to track Malawian journalists, leading to arrests on charges of, for example, “insulting the President.” Further misgivings have been raised with the UN Human Right Council by NGOs concerned about the Malawi government’s use of digital ID to exclude targetted communities:

In 2017 there were concerns surrounding the exclusion of citizens in Malawi, including outstanding “registration of refugees, asylum-seekers and Malawians of Indian origin. [. . .] The collection of large amounts of personal information pertaining to identities — including biometrics — often form tempting targets for criminals and other actors for malicious hacking and cyber intrusion. [. . .] We note grave concern over the use and collection of biometric data in the new digital identification cards. The aggregation and use of biometric data should be sharply limited, even if such processing is aimed at increasing convenience or justified as a way to enhance security. 

SDG16.9 Belies Sustainable Development

The UN produces annual SDG progress reports. Yet, the 2022 Goals Report says absolutely nothing about its stunning success with SDG16.9. Despite it significant achievements in India, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi and elsewhere, this is not something the regime seemingly wishes to publicly celebrate.

The reason for this reticence is obvious. To this point, SDG16.9 digital ID has been rolled out using coercion, deception and enforcement. It has already caused immense harm to the most vulnerable and looks set to continue doing so. The roll-out of digital ID exposes “sustainable development” for what it really is.

SDG16.9 belies the fluffy rhetoric the regime uses to sell its oppressive “sustainable” agenda. People do not want to be forced to use its digital ID or be subject to “financial inclusion.” Resistance is evident everywhere.

This resistance and public opinion does not deter the regime. It is proceeding at pace, regardless of our wishes. Our consent is not required. The global-governance regime is inherently anti-democratic and opposes “freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

Believing that “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” is a justifiable response to an alleged “global climate emergency” is to accept a future which targets the most vulnerable for exclusion and controls everyone through the use of deception, coercion and force.

It means accepting a future where all life is monitored and controlled by a “global governance regime,” all justified by the belief that only the regime can “develop sustainably” and manage our lives. The only viable means of resistance is to build systems at the local level that will allow us to resist “inclusion” in the regime’s control grid. If we acquiesce, then the system of digital ID planned by the stewards of SDG 16.9 is inevitable.

SDG16: Part 2 — Enforcing Digital Identity.

In this episode, Whitney and Ryan discuss how the epidemic of narcissism feeds the ambitions of the powers that be and leads many to invest in a false, virtual self.

Originally published 09/19/23.

Podcast available early for Unlimited Hangout members and Rokfin subscribers. After a few days, all episodes are free and available on all platforms.

Links discussed:

• The Narcissistic Cycle of Abuse | Psychology Today
• Understanding the Mind of a Narcissist | Psychology Today
• 10 Signs Of A Narcissistic Relationship Pattern & How To End It | mindbodygreen
• Red Flags of Narcissism > Ultimate Guide to Identifying and Diagnosing
• Why young brains are especially vulnerable to social media
• Social Media Use Is Linked to Brain Changes in Teens, Research Finds – The New York Times
• Social media use linked to depression in adults
• Narcissism and Social Media: Should We Be Afraid? | Psychology Today
• The Narcissism Epidemic and What We Can Do About It | Psychology Today

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The False Self with Ryan Cristian.

Whitney joins Charlie to discuss her latest article on the covert moves that are being made by one of the most polarizing figures in recent American history, Erik Prince. Interview recorded 06/07/23. Podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all other podcast apps. Video version available on Rokfin and Odysee.

Macroaggressions.

Whitney joined Redacted to discuss the new revelations about Peter Thiel’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the state of blackmail operations in the digital age and the AP’s release of documents detailing Epstein’s final hours. Watch on Rumble.

Redacted.

During our investigation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the disingenuous use of language to sell SDGs to an unsuspecting public has emerged as a common theme.

The United Nations (UN) claims the purpose of SDG16 is to:

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

If we accept the supposition that “sustainable development” is global development that meets the needs of the world’s poor, then a reasonable person is unlikely to disagree with this stated objective.

But helping the poor is not the purpose of SDG16.

The real purpose of SDG16 is threefold: (1) empower a global governance regime, (2) exploit threats, both real and imagined, to advance regime objectives; and (3) force an unwarranted, unwelcome, centrally controlled global system of digital identity (digital ID) upon humanity.

We find the UN’s digital ID objective tucked away in its SDG Target 16.9:

By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.

While SDG16 doesn’t allude specifically to “digital” ID, that is what it means.

As we shall see, the SDG16 target indicators don’t reveal the truth, either. For example, the only “indicator” to measure SDG16.9 progress (16.9.1) is:

[The] proportion of children under 5 years of age whose births have been registered with a civil authority, by age.

You might therefore think the task of “providing legal identity” would primarily fall to said “civil authorities.” That is not the case.

Within the UN system, all governments (whether local, county, provincial, state, federal) are “stakeholder partners” in a global network comprised of a wide-ranging gamut of public and private organisations. Many of these are explicitly backed by or housed at the UN, and all of them are pushing digital ID as the key mechanism to achieve SDG16.

This aspect of SDG16 will be more fully explored in Part 2.

There is a term that this worldwide amalgam of organisations often uses to describe itself: it is a global public-private partnership—G3P, for short.

The G3P is toiling tirelessly to create the conditions necessary to justify the imposition of both global governance “with teeth” and its prerequisite digital ID system. In doing so, the G3P is inverting the nature of our rights. It manufactures and exploits crises in order to claim legitimacy for its offered “solutions.”

The G3P comprises virtually all of the world’s intergovernmental organisations, governments, global corporations, major philanthropic foundations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups. Collectively, these form the “stakeholders” implementing sustainable development, including SDG16.

The Global Public-Private Partnership – Source

Digital ID will determine our access to public services, to our Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) wallets, to our “vaccine” certificates—to everything, even the food and beverages we’re allowed to buy and consume.

Wary citizens are watchful for potential abuse of digital ID by their authorities. In countries where a national digital ID card is not welcome, such as in the UK, the G3P solution is to construct an “interoperable” system that links various digital ID systems together. This “modular platform” approach is designed to avoid the political problems that the official issuance of a national digital ID card would otherwise elicit.

Establishing SDG16.9 global digital ID is crucial for eight of the seventeen UN SDGs. It is the linchpin at the centre of a global digital panopticon that is being devised under the auspices of the UN’s global public-private partnership “regime.”

Human Rights versus Inalienable Rights

For reasons that will become apparent, it is important that we fully understand the UN’s concept of “human rights.”

Human rights are mentioned nine times in the United Nations Charter.

A key document referenced by the UN Charter is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was first accepted by all members of the United Nations on December 10, 1948.

The preamble of the Declaration recognises that the “equal and inalienable rights” of all human beings are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” After that, “inalienable rights” are never again mentioned in the entire Declaration.

“Human rights” are nothing like “inalienable rights.”

Inalienable rights, unlike human rights, are not bestowed upon us by any governing authority. Rather, they are innate to each of us. They are immutable. They are ours in equal measure. The only source of inalienable rights is Natural Law, or God’s Law.

No one—no government, no intergovernmental organisation, no human institution or human ruler—can ever legitimately claim the right to grant or deny our inalienable rights. Humanity can claim no collectiveauthority to grant or deny the inalienable rights of any individual human being.

Beyond the preamble, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) concerns itself exclusively with “human rights.” But asserting, as it does, that human rights are some sort of expression of inalienable rights is a fabrication—a lie.

Human rights, according to the UDHR, are created by certain human beings and are bestowed by those human beings upon other human beings. They are not inalienable rights or anything close to inalienable rights.

Article 6 of the UDHR and Article 16 of the UN’s 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (where, again, inalienable rights are mentioned just once in the preamble), both decree:

Everyone has the [human] right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Note: We put “[human]” in brackets in the above quote (and in other UN quotes below) to alert readers that these documents are not referring to inalienable rights.

While the respective Articles 6 and 16 sound appealing, the underlying implications are not. Both articles mean that “without legal existence those rights may not be asserted by a person within the domestic legal order.”

As we shall see, the ability to prove one’s identity will become a prerequisite for “legal existence.” Thus, in a post-SDG16 world, persons without UN-approved identification will be unable to assert their “human rights.”

Under the UN’s system of “human rights,” human beings are not considered to have any inalienable rights. For, as the UN would have it, our alleged “human rights” can be observed only if we comply with the current “legal order.” That “order” is conditional. And it is subject to constant change.

Article 29.2 of the UDHR states:

In the exercise of his [human] rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the [human] rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

Article 29.3 of the UDHR states:

These [human] rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

In plain English: We are only allowed to exercise our alleged human “rights” subject to the diktats of governments, intergovernmental organisations and other UN “stakeholders.”

The bottom line, then, is that what the UN calls “human rights” are not “rights” of any kind at all. They are government and intergovernmental permits by which our behaviour is controlled. Thus, by the UN’s definition, “human rights” are the antithesis of “inalienable rights.”

But remember, we have been informed—in the preamble of that same Declaration—that “inalienable rights” are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Please bear this point in mind as we continue to unravel the UN’s SDG16 plot against humanity.

Human Rights as Policy Tools

It is common practice among the UN and its partners, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), to view crises as opportunities. The WEF admitted, for instance, that the COVID-19 “pandemic” was “a unique window of opportunity.”

The UN said the same thing. After one of its “specialist agencies,” the World Health Organisation (WHO), declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, the UN published COVID-19 and Human Rights, in which it said:

How we respond today, therefore, presents a unique opportunity to course-correct and begin to tackle long-standing public policies and practices that have been harmful for people and their human rights.

That both the UN and the WEF perceived COVID-19 as a unique opportunity to “reset” or “course-correct” should surprise no one. The WEF is a strategic partner of the UN, and both are equally committed to “accelerat[ing] the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

It is within this frame of reference that the UN’s perception of what it calls “human rights” takes on a peculiar dimension:

The United Nations has available a powerful set of tools, in the form of human rights, that equip States and whole societies to respond to threats and crises in a way that puts people at the centre.

Here, the UN and its partners are assuming the authority to define “human rights” and to treat them as mere policy tools. Note how it says that “States” (capital “S”) can use these tools to put people at the centre of a crisis or threat response. The UN is insinuating that, if respected, “human rights” should shape a humanitarian policy response to a threat or crisis.

However, the UN contradicts itself in the same document. Later on, it suggests that a policy response to a crisis or threat can justify discounting human rights:

Human rights law recognizes that national emergencies may require limits to be placed on the exercise of certain human rights. The scale and severity of COVID-19 reaches a level where restrictions are justified on public health grounds.

This statement about restrictions to human rights is far-and-away removed from the concept of inalienable, or “natural,” rights, which are inviolable and immutable. Thus, by placing “human rights” at the centre of a policy response to a threat or a crisis, the UN and its partners are exploiting the unique opportunity to not only redefine “human rights” but to ignore those supposed rights whenever they deem it necessary.

It gets worse. Instead of respecting our actual rights and defining them accurately, the UN proceeds to outline how these new “policy tool rights” can be used by legislators. It adds components to its alleged “human rights” structure that otherwise have nothing to do with rights:

People are being asked to comply with extraordinary measures, many severely restricting their human rights. [. . .] Securing compliance depends on building trust, and trust depends on transparency and participation.

Translation: We are going to take away your human rights. We know you will readily comply as long as we justify our restrictions on public health grounds and persuade you that this is our sole goal. Just trust us.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the verb “to trust” as “to hope and expect that something is true.” When you take something on trust, it says, you “believe that something is true although you have no proof.” It also says that “to trust” is “to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable. . . .”

In its COVID-19 and Human Rights document, the UN declares that our compliance can be secured through our unquestioning acceptance of whatever we are told by the “authorities.”

Consequently, anything that erodes “trust” in the UN—in its ideas, policy agendas, agencies and “stakeholder partners”—the document calls “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

According to that document, the UN welcomes censorship of speech:

The crisis raises the question how best to counter harmful speech while protecting freedom of expression. Sweeping efforts to eliminate misinformation or disinformation can result in purposeful or unintentional censorship, which undermines trust. [. . .] While flags and takedowns of misinformation are welcome, giving greater prominence to reliable information needs to be the first line of defence.

The dichotomy the UN faces is clear. On the one hand, the organisation is keen for its government partners to flag and take down supposedly wrong information by applying new derivative labels like “harmful” and to decree by fiat what constitutes “disinformation”—all of this evidence of its desire to promote censorship to curtail free speech. On the other hand, it is paradoxically claiming that it values “freedom of expression.” This hypocritical nonsense is a bald-faced attempt to avoid eroding the public “trust” it desperately seeks.

But criticism of the UN, which of course the UN labels “disinformation,” is often justified. For example, in COVID-19 and Human Rights the UN wrote:

COVID-19 is showing that universal health coverage (UHC) must become an imperative. [. . .] UHC promotes strong and resilient health systems, reaching those who are vulnerable and promoting pandemic preparedness and prevention. SDG 3 includes a target of achieving UHC.

As previously discussed at Unlimited Hangout, what the UN is saying here is patently false. The UN’s SDG3 pursuit of Universal Health Coverage during COVID-19 destroyed relatively strong and resilient health systems. It propelled many developing and emerging economies into ever-greater debt. It degraded health outcomes. There was no “imperative” to establish UHC in order to tackle COVID-19. Doing so delivered results that were contrary to the UN’s claimed objective: the “sustainable development” of healthcare in the Global South.

However, as we have noted elsewhere, shackling emerging economies with debt is seen by the UN as a means of securing those countries’ compliance with the policy goals tucked inside its Agenda 2030 SDGs. Some of those goals seek to financialize the natural resources of targeted nations while eroding their national sovereignty.

UHC2030: The United Nations’ Global Public-Private Partnership For Healthcare In our continuing series exploring sustainable development and the associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we turn our attention to SDG 3 which promises to “ensure healthy lives.” Once again, when we scrutinise this promise it is empty. Through the 2030 Agenda for Universal Health Coverage (UHC2030) it seems that debt-based neocolonialism and oppressive global governance by a global public-private partnership are the real goals.

We also know that the WHO, as a key stakeholder of the UN’s SDG3 (aka UHC) policy agenda, is currently leading the development of the proposed Pandemic Preparedness Treaty. (Its full name is the International Treaty on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response. Its short name is the Pandemic Accord.) Numerous investigators and commentators have already shown that this treaty portends the erosion of national sovereignty and the loss of both our so-called “human” and our alleged political rights.

Furthermore, the UN is itself often the purveyor of disinformation. For example, its current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, made the following Tweet:

Human rights are the foundation of human dignity. As we mark 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and help to promote a world of dignity, freedom and justice.

This is a blatantly false assertion. The Declaration clearly states that “inalienable rights”—not “human rights”—are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Thus, the Secretary-General of the United Nations was spreading disinformation. He was deceiving the public about the implications of one of the UN’s own seminal documents.

The WHO is also amending the International Health Regulations (IHR). The process of amending the IHR “runs in parallel” with the WHO’s work on the aforementioned Pandemic Accord. Both the IHR and the Pandemic Accord will be binding on all 193 UN signatory member states.

The current proposed amendments to the IHR illustrate how “crises” provide unique opportunities for the UN and its partners to control populations—through purported “human rights”—by exploiting those “rights” as “a powerful set of tools.”

Here is one example of the proposals being put forth: The WHO wishes to remove the following language from IHR Article 3.1:

The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.

It intends to replace that regulatory principle with:

The implementation of these Regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with the common but differentiated responsibilities of their States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development.

This proposed amendment signifies that the UN and its partners wish to completely ignore the UN’s own Universal Declaration of Human Rights whenever any of these agencies declares a new “crisis” or identifies a new “international threat.” This exemplifies the “course-correction” the UN envisioned would arise from the “unique opportunity” presented by the COVID-19 crisis.

The widely accepted concept of alleged “human rights” – Source

Make no mistake, the UN wants us to accept that the eradication of our ostensible human rights is a way of protecting those same human rights whenever we face potential “harm.”

Ironically, this effort to completely discard the UDHR is entirely consistent with Article 29.2 and Article 29.3 of that very document. This illustrates the complete farce that the UN’s “human rights” actually are.

As we shall discuss in Part 2, there is no end to the list of crises the UN and the overarching G3P might choose to pronounce. Unique opportunities to control our behaviour through a system of “human rights” permits abound.

Access to Information?

The censorship of claimed “misinformation” and “disinformation” is a key part of SDG16. For example, SDG16.10 claims to guarantee “public access to information” and to “protect fundamental freedoms.” Yet, perversely, this same SDG is being used by the UN and other groups to justify online censorship under the guise of addressing “information issues.” The “issue” is any information that challenges or discredits the institutions that the UN’s remaining SDG16 targets aim to strengthen.

For instance, this kind of censorship has been promoted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential, US-based think tank whose board is chaired by Thomas Pritzker, head honcho of Hyatt Hotels. Pritzker also happens to be named as a central figure in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking operations; Epstein himself nicknamed Pritzker “Numero Uno.” The President and CEO of the CSIS is John J. Hamre, a former US Deputy Secretary of Defense.

In 2021, the CSIS published an article titled “It’s Time for the United States to Reengage with the SDGs, Starting with SDG16.”

Of SDG16.10 in particular the article says:

A second example of practical alignment would be efforts to bring transparency to instances of misinformation and disinformation, especially around elections and governance. Covid-19 has increased the proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and censorship in the name of national security and the discrediting of state institutions. SDG16 target 16.10 calls for “ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.” This means SDG16 is uniquely poised to address information issues in relation to both rising authoritarianism led by states and weakening democracy led by malign actors.

In other words, per CSIS, SDG16.10 calls for ensuring public access notto all information but only to approved information that does not “discredit” certain institutions or “weaken” democracy. As we shall see, the UN agrees.

The UN “custodian agency” for SDG16.10—specifically for its “access to information” component—is UNESCO. Sure enough, when we read the 2021 UNESCO report about SDG16.10, we see that “public access to information” means “the presence of an effective system to meet citizens’ rights to seek and receive information, particularly that held by or on behalf of public authorities.”

Other UN documents similarly reveal that the “information” referred to here is information produced by public institutions. Thus, per the UN, “public access to information” refers to a system wherein information produced by governance institutions at the local, national and international levels can be sought and received by the public. It does not guarantee, nor is it meant to guarantee, the free flow of information. Instead, it is meant to ensure a free flow of the information that governments willingly produce for public consumption.

The information that is guaranteed to be publicly accessible by SDG16.10 is the very information that, according to UNESCO and other UN bodies, is meant to foster “trust” in the governance institutions that are to be “strengthened” by other SDG16 targets. This information is also meant to be the “foundation” of building the public perception that these institutions are “transparent” and “accountable.”

The types of information to which SDG16.10 guarantees public access, says UNESCO, include “the way [citizen] data is handled” by governments, federal “budget disclosures” and “health and COVID-19 related information.”

There are many examples of “public authorities” providing “information” that is neither accurate nor verifiable. Indeed, many governments that freely publish such information provide flawed data that is not meant to inform the public but rather to protect “trust” in institutions by obscuring government malfeasance and/or incompetence.

For instance, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress about how citizens’ data was being utilized by the national security community. But he got away with committing perjury.

Similarly, much of the COVID-19 data “freely” published by governments—the US, the UK and Australia among them—was intentionally manipulated to justify ineffective or counterproductive policies like lockdowns and the global vaccination programme. But those governments, like Clapper, got away with it. There is nothing in SDG16.10 or its target indicators that addresses dishonesty from the institutions that SDG16 seeks to strengthen.

As previously noted, the public’s “trust” in the SDGs is crucial to the UN’s global governance regime (a “regime” we will define shortly). Were the information produced by SDG-implementing institutions (i.e., national governments, the UN, and other UN stakeholder partners) to be outed as faulty and dishonest, the fallout would reduce “trust” in these same institutions. Such a dip, the UN fears, could potentially result in a reduction of citizen “compliance” with UN-approved, SDG-related mandates and edicts.

Thus, with regard to SDG16.10—or any part of any SDG, for that matter—we may conclude that, instead of ensuring that the information to which it guarantees access is accurate, the UN and its stakeholder partners aim to create a regime whereby those who might be able to show that state-produced information is inaccurate are silenced for the sin of reducing “trust” and “weakening democracy.” The silencing enables the UN to claim these people threaten “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.”

One UN SDG-focused blog noted that “misleading or false information undermines social trust and jeopardises access to reliable information.”

This particular post was referring to COVID-19 vaccinations. It characterized “misleading or false information” as doubts about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy, despite the fact that the data clearly show—then and now—that the vaccines were neither effective nor safe.

The UN’s idea of “reliable information” is UN-approved information that reinforces the preferred narratives of the UN and its strategic “stakeholder partners,” from the WEF to aligned national governments.

Another example that highlights the UN’s views on “reliable information” is the UN’s “Verified” campaign. When it was launched in 2020, UN Secretary-General Guterres had this to say about “misinformation”:

Misinformation spreads online, in messaging apps and person to person. Its creators use savvy production and distribution methods. To counter it, scientists and institutions like the United Nations need to reach people with accurate information they can trust.

Per the UN, the “Verified“ campaign saw the UN Department of Global Communications “partner with United Nations agencies and country teams, influencers, civil society, business and media organizations to distribute trusted, accurate content and work with social media platforms to root out hate and harmful assertions about COVID-19.”

Yet, despite the UN’s claim that the information it was distributing was “accurate,” it was provably inaccurate.

For instance, the Verified website insists that COVID-19 vaccines “are saving lives”—a statement solely based on UK government data on COVID deaths before and after the country’s vaccine rollout. It fails to note that UK government data on COVID deaths was intentionally misleading.

In addition, the Verified site continues to claim that the COVID-19 vaccine stops disease transmission, which it does not.

Also, Verified falsely characterizes mass vaccination as the only way to “end the pandemic.” Again, verifiably false.

These falsehoods are set within the UN’s claim that it “owns the science.” Speaking at the WEF’s anti-disinformation panel, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming outlined how the UN had partnered with Google and TikTok to rig their respective search results.

Fleming said:

We own the science, and we think that the world should know it.

Nothing could be more “anti-scientific” than this statement. Yet the UN continually accuses others of spreading “anti-scientific” disinformation.

The UN insists that, under SDG16.10, the public should be guaranteed access only to the “reliable,” “accurate” information that only it and its stakeholder partners provide. Yet this world body routinely provides inaccurate information when claiming to be doing the opposite.

The UN promotes the need to counter misinformation and disinformation, which it defines, respectively, as the “accidental spread of inaccurate information” and the “intentional spread of inaccurate information.” But, as shown above, this world body is not interested in providing “accurate” information or pointing out “inaccurate” information. Instead, in the context of SDG16.10, it seeks to become a global arbiter of “truth.”

The UN Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has pushed for increased social media regulation and for the UN and its allies to work directly with Big Tech. All of the world’s “Big Tech” corporations, like the UN itself, are G3P members.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet – Source

Also, Bachelet uses language that “disses” any information contrary to the UN narrative. She has framed dis- and misinformation as symptoms of “global diseases” that undermine “public trust.”

Yet, stunningly, in the same breath, she (along with other UN officials) asserts that censorship efforts to counter disinformation should not infringe on the freedom of expression and other important “human rights.”

In a preposterous attempt to get around this irreconcilable dichotomy, Bachelet and her UN cronies return to the second part of SDG16.10: “protect fundamental freedoms.” They characterize disinformation and misinformation as being whatever negatively impacts “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.” Such “harmful” content, they insist, needs to be actively stifled.

Here is one specific example: The UN Secretary-General’s report on countering dis- and misinformation, published last year, was explicitly titled “Countering disinformation for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It asserted that “countering disinformation” must somehow “promote” and “protect” both “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.”

In another example, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution which inveighed against “the increasing and far-reaching negative impact on the enjoyment and realization of human rights of the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or manipulated information intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either to cause harm or for personal, political or financial gain.”

This resolution was sponsored by the US and the UK governments, both of which are notorious for spreading propaganda and for pushing for excessive censorship of independent media. The resolution explicitly frames “false information” as information that negatively impacts the “enjoyment and realization of human rights.”

Clearly, the “enjoyment” of “human rights” does not extend to enjoying the alleged human rights of free speech or freedom of expression. Both of these are inalienable rights which cannot be removed or infringed by anyone or any institutions. But, as “human rights,” they can easily be swept aside or redefined.

A third example is the UN’s promotion of what it calls the “ABC” approach to countering inaccurate information. ABC stands for “actors,” “behaviour” and “content,” as this UN document on combating disinformation explains:

Experts have pointed to the need to address the “actors” (those responsible for the content) and the “behaviour” (the manner in which information is disseminated), rather than the “content” as such, in order to effectively counter information operations while protecting free expression.

Thus, the UN intends to target the individuals who produce the alleged “disinformation” or “misinformation” and stop them from disseminating it.

As we shall see, Interpol has been chosen by the UN to implement much of SDG16. Interpol is intimately involved with the UN’s strategic partner, the WEF, in a plan to label those who produce misinformation and disinformation as “cybercriminals.”

Strengthening the Regime

In its 2013 exploration of the Post-2015 Development Agenda (Agenda 2030), the UN said:

Partnership can promote a more effective, coherent, representative and accountable global governance regime, which should ultimately translate into better national and regional governance [and] the realization of human rights and sustainable development[.] [. . .] In a more interdependent world, a more coherent, transparent and representative global governance regime will be critical to achieve sustainable development in all its dimensions. [. . .] A global governance regime, under the auspices of the UN, will have to ensure that the global commons will be preserved for future generations.

The UN calls itself a “global governance regime.” It is arbitrarily assuming the authority to seize control of everything (“the global commons”), including humans, both by enforcing its Charter—citing its misnamed “Human Rights” declaration—and by fulfilling its “Sustainable Development” agenda.

Note that the “global governance regime” will ultimately “translate into better national and regional governance.” This means that the role of each national government is merely to “translate” global governance into national policy. Electing one political party or another to undertake the translation makes no material difference. The policy is not set by the governments we elect.

As nation-states one by one implement SDG-based policies, the regime further consolidates its global governance. And since the “global governance regime will be critical to achieve sustainable development,” the two mechanisms—global governance and sustainable development—are symbiotic.

Again, by the UN’s own admission, inalienable rights are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Yet the UN’s entire Charter-based human rights framework comprehensively rejects the principle of inalienable and immutable rights.

The UN Charter is, therefore, an international treaty that establishes a global governance regime which stands firmly against “freedom, justice and peace in the world.” All of the UN’s “sustainable development” projects should be understood in this context.

Unsurprising for a “global governance regime,” the UN has created several targets of SDG16 that deal with creating “strong institutions,” mainly at the level of global governance. For example, SDG16.8 calls for the broadening and strengthening of “the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance.”

The SDG16.8 targets are vague. Progress toward them will supposedly be measured by monitoring the “proportion of members and voting rights of developing countries in international organizations.” This is hardly a commitment to afford those developing nations any greater say in decision-making, however.

The definition of “the institutions of global governance” is equally ambiguous. For Harvard scholars, it means a set of global organisations, such the International Criminal Court (ICC), the World Trade Organization (WTO), regional human rights courts, and the United Nations, etc. For students of “global governance” at Bremen University, the “institutions” fit within a decentralised network of different “actors” that provide regulations based upon international norms and rules.

What all these globe-wide organisations have in common is that they exercise supranational authority to some degree.

The WTO influences, coordinates and often sets national governments’ trade policies.

The ICC supposedly has “global” jurisdiction to try the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and, since 2018, the crime of “international aggression.”

The UN considers itself chief among all supranational organisations. Member nation-states agree to cede their sovereignty to the fifteen-member Security Council and, in particular, to the five permanent members of that Council.

Under its aforementioned Charter, the UN places nearly all executive power in the hands of those five permanent members: the US, the UK, France, Russia and China. Regardless of SDG16.8, the UN is not proposing to amend its own Charter and has shown little interest in living up to the promise of its own SDG targets and indicators.

On the contrary, as we head toward the new multipolar world order, the UN’s permanent Security Council partners—most notably the Russian and Chinese governments—are calling for a “world order” based upon the “purposes and principles” of the UN Charter. In other words, they are avid promoters of a firmer “global governance regime.”

UN Security Council Meeting in New York – Source

UN General Assembly (GA) delegates, meanwhile, have been requesting reform of the UN Security Council for decades. Namely, they want the Security Council to more broadly represent the nation-states by having more than fifteen members.

The official Russian government position agrees with the GA delegates. Russia seeks to promote “inclusion” by admitting to the Security Council more nations from Africa, South America and Asia.

The Russian Permanent Mission to the UN explained its stance this way:

A just and democratic world order cannot be achieved without a strict observance of the principles of the supremacy of international law, mainly of the UN Charter and the prerogatives of the UN Security Council. [. . .] All the decisions taken and mandates given by the UN Security Council are binding on all Member States. [. . .] The purpose of the reform of the UN Security Council is to achieve broader representation without damaging the effectiveness and efficiency of its work.

Upon closer scrutiny, though, we observe that “broader representation” that does not undermine the “effectiveness” of the Security Council is impossible. Any change intended to empower “developing countries in the institutions of global governance” is instead likely to maintain and consolidate Security Council dominance. The UN Charter is unambiguous on this point.

Under the Charter, the GA is supposedly a decision-making forum of “equal” member states. The Charter then outlines all the reasons why it isn’t.

Article 11 decrees that the GA’s powers are limited to discussing “the general principles of co-operation.” Its decision-making ability is extremely limited.

Article 12 decrees that the GA can deliberate upon any dispute between member states only if the Security Council allows it.

Article 24 ensures, in any practical sense, that the Security Council has sole responsibility for “the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Article 25 compels all other GA member states to follow the orders issued by the Security Council.

Article 27 decrees that at least nine of the fifteen Security Council member states must be in agreement for a Security Council resolution to be enforced. Five of those nine in concurrence must be the permanent members. Each of the five has the power of veto. Thus, simply adding more members to the Security Council won’t change the supremacy of the permanent members in any meaningful sense.

Articles 29 and 30 establish the Security Council as an autonomous decision-making body within the UN power structure. It goes without saying that the GA is allowed to “elect” only the non-permanent members of the Security Council following the recommendations of the Security Council.

Articles 39 through 50 (Chapter VII of the Charter) further empower the Security Council. The Council is charged with investigating and defining all alleged security threats and with recommending procedures and adjustments for the supposed remedy to those threats. The Security Council dictates what further action, such as sanctions or the use of military force, shall be taken against any nation-state it considers to be a problem.

Article 44 notes that, “when the Security Council has decided to use force,” the only consultative obligation it has to the wider GA is to discuss the use of another member state’s armed forces once the Security Council has ordered that nation to fight. For a country that is a GA-“elected” member of the Security Council, practically unlimited use of its armed forces by the Security Council’s Military Staff Committee is a prerequisite for Council membership.

The UN Secretary-General, identified as the “chief administrative officer” in the Charter, oversees the UN Secretariat. The Secretariat runs the UN. It commissions, investigates and produces the reports that allegedly inform UN decision-making.

The Secretariat staff members are appointed by the Secretary-General. Article 97 of the UN Charter determines that the Secretary-General is “appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”

Under the UN Charter, the Security Council is made king. This arrangement affords the governments of its permanent members—again, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—considerable additional authority. There is nothing egalitarian about the UN Charter. The UN Charter is the embodiment and essence of centralised global power and authority.

In the highly charged political arena created by the UN Charter, the geopolitical power struggle often seems futile. Here, in no special order, are a few illustrations of that futility—evidence of the permanent members’ clout.

Speaking in January 2023, Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Russian Federation strongly supports expanding the composition of the Security Council. He made no mention of curtailing the permanent members’ additional powers.

Last fall, when ten members of the Security Council attempted to pass a resolution describing the referendums in the former Ukrainian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya as “a threat to international peace and security,” the Russian Federation, as a permanent member of the Security Council, vetoed the resolution. The Russian government is among the permanent members apparently eager to retain its power.

When the Russian government discovered a network of US-funded biological research labs in Ukraine, it and the Chinese government requested a UN commission to investigate the labs. The Western-aligned members of the Security Council blocked the investigation.

In a joint February 2022 statement, the Russian and Chinese governments—referring to themselves as “the sides”—stated:

The sides underline that Russia and China, as world powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, [. . .] strongly advocate the international system with the central coordinating role of the United Nations in international affairs, defend the world order based on international law, including the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

As permanent UN Security Council members, neither the Russian nor the Chinese government, despite their apparent unwavering commitment to “sustainable development,” seem to actually wish to see “developing countries” have greater “voting rights” at the UN. Instead, their apparent objective is to consolidate their own elevated positions within the hierarchy established by the UN Charter.

The other three permanent members of the Security Council, equally eager to retain their dominance, take the same stance on the Charter.

US President Joe Biden, for instance, called the Charter the “foundation of a stable international rules-based order.”

France’s President Emanuel Macron said the Charter promises “a modern international order.”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK government would work to “uphold international law and the United Nations Charter.”

Despite current geopolitical tensions, these countries unanimously agree not only on the role of the UN Charter but also on every facet of the UN’s touted “sustainable development.”

— SDG16.8 promises to strengthen the “institutions of global governance.” It does not promise a form of global governance that will benefit humanity.

— Even though the UN remains a blatantly political organisation riven with internecine conflicts, the supposed hostility between East and West does not extend to re-imagining the “global governance regime.” There is, instead, unanimous agreement to strengthen it.

— In terms of G3P-forwarded sustainable development, national governments are enabling public partners to advance their own interests by implementing the UN’s politically motivated SDG policies and by exploiting the politically driven UN Charter. There is no evidence, from any quarter, that any national government values the humanitarian principles that either the SDGs or the UN Charter purportedly embody.

Presidents Xi and Putin courtesy of Xinhua & AFP – Source From Global Governance to a Global Police State: Interpol’s Global Policing Goals

Placed after SDG16.10, SDG16.a calls for strengthening “relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels” with the goal of preventing “violence” and for combating “terrorism and crime.”

In 2018, the UN identified Interpol as the law enforcement organisation that was “uniquely positioned to be the implementing partner of a number of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

This designation as “implementing partner” of the SDGs led Interpol to develop its Seven Global Policing Goals, which, it says, are “aligned with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. [. . .] This applies especially to Goal 16 [SDG16].”

Interpol outlines what it hopes to achieve with its “sustainable” law enforcement:

As the only police organization that works at the global level, Interpol plays a unique role in supporting international policing efforts. To do this in a consistent manner across the world, it is important that all actors in the global security architecture share an understanding of the threats and work towards the same outcomes. [. . .] Global Policing Goals focus the collective efforts of the international law enforcement community to create a safer and more sustainable world for future generations.

Many of Interpol’s Global Policing Goals necessitate the type of surveillance that can most easily be enabled by introducing digital IDs and CBDCs (a topic that will be discussed in detail in Part 2). For instance, most of the seven goals share a sub-goal that refers to the need to “trace and disrupt financial streams” and, elsewhere, the need to “identify and disrupt illicit financial streams” of “criminals” and “terrorists.”

Interpol’s Global Policing Goals – Source

Global Policing Goal 6, for example, focuses on curbing “illicit markets” and contains these sub-goals: “build mechanisms to detect emerging illicit markets” and “strengthen capacity to investigate and prevent illicit trade.”

This kind of work obviously calls for tools that can conduct mass financial surveillance. In order to preside over such operations, Interpol must first obtain the authority to access a system of mass financial surveillance.

Conveniently, the required global surveillance of commercial activity and money flows—to be explored Part 2—can be achieved through the realization of SDG16.9’s digital ID paradigm, whereby biometric digital ID is a prerequisite for participation in the economy. This idea is explicitly promoted by the UN paper “The People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future.”

However, it is not just mass financial surveillance that Interpol seeks. A sub-goal of its Global Policing Goal 2 (“promote border integrity worldwide”) is to “identify criminal and victim movements and travel.”

To fulfil that goal, tools for mass geolocation surveillance of the world’s population would be needed. How handy that Interpol’s I-Checkit programme is designed to both achieve this ambition and centralise control of and access to the global population surveillance system.

Specifically, the I-Checkit programme pushes for countries to “heighten” their “identity management measures.” It also urges airlines, the maritime industry and banks to collaborate in real-time with law enforcement to decide whether or not a person should be allowed to travel.

Interpol’s I-Checkit system – Source

Though Interpol’s Goal 2 is being billed as a means of stopping “organized crime,” it is more likely meant to further the UN’s ambitious digital ID agenda. As we witnessed when digital vaccine passports were introduced during the faux pandemic, the rollout and enforcement of biometric digital ID presents a tangible threat to everyone’s freedom of movement and civil liberties.

Unsurprisingly, Interpol has already teamed up with a variety of biometric digital ID companies, two of which (Idemia and Onfido, to be precise) played a major role in facilitating vaccine passports during COVID-19 and more recently have been creating “digital driver’s licenses” (that is, biometric digital IDs) for several US states.

Goal 4 of Interpol’s SDG-related Global Policing Goals is to “secure cyberspace.” One of its related sub-goals is to “establish partnerships to secure cyberspace.” The chief partnership that Interpol has joined in service of fulfilling this goal is the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC).

A few facts about WEF-PAC:

(1) Its members, like Interpol, aim to “secure cyberspace.” They are mainly law enforcement agencies from the US, UK and Israel, but they also include some of the world’s largest commercial banks and fintech companies.

(2) It has been advocating the creation of a global fin-cyber entity to regulate the internet, with the ultimate goals of ending financial privacy and preventing anonymity under the guise of combating “cybercrime.”

(3) It is run by Tal Goldstein, a career Israeli intelligence operative who designed an intelligence policy that transformed Israel’s private cybersecurity industry into a cut-out for that country’s intelligence operations.

WEF-PAC argues for its purpose by pointing out:

[I]n order to reduce the global impact of cybercrime and to systematically restrain cybercriminals, cybercrime must be confronted at its source by raising the cost of conducting cybercrimes, cutting the activities’ profitability and deterring criminals by increasing the direct risk they face.

To achieve these goals, WEF-PAC envisions “harnessing the private sector to work side by side with law enforcement officials.” This is a typical G3P move—and one that sounds similar to the model Interpol follows with its I-Checkit programme.

Shockingly, WEF-PAC calls for public-private “cooperation” even if it’s “not always aligned with existing legislative and operational frameworks.” In other words, cooperation should be permitted even if it is illegal.

Granted, most of WEF-PAC’s materials refer to cybercriminals as those who engage in hacks or ransomware attacks and other truly criminal activities. Yet in one place it broadens the definition of “cybercriminals” to include those who use technology to “uphold terrorism” and “spread disinformation to destabilize governments and democracies.”

Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy With many focusing on tomorrow’s Cyber Polygon exercise, less attention has been paid to the World Economic Forum’s real ambitions in cybersecurity – to create a global organization aimed at gutting even the possibility of anonymity online. With the governments of the US, UK and Israel on board, along with some of the world’s most powerful corporations, it is important to pay attention to their endgame, not just the simulations.

Thus, we see a several-pronged attack on the so-called spreaders of “disinformation”: They will not only be made out as criminals by the implementation of SDG16.10 and by the ABC crackdown, they will also be subject to Interpol’s SDG16-linked Global Policing Goal of “securing cyberspace” and to WEF-PAC’s pursuit of government-destabilizers.

From multiple angles, then, SDG16 and its implementing partners are seeking to construct a surveillance paradigm where dissenters’ speech and financial transactions are closely monitored, criminalized, and targeted. The “strong institutions,” strengthened even further by SDG16, will be used to keep societies “peaceful”—i.e., free of the “crime” of resisting tyranny—through mass surveillance of the internet and of all commercial activity as well as the mandatory use of digital IDs.

“Pay-to-Play” Justice Systems

The current president of Interpol is the General Inspector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Interior Ministry, Maj Gen Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi. Worryingly, he has been accused of overseeing the torture of citizens from the UK, Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, and elsewhere.

Despite the UK government’s close political and commercial relationship with the UAE, prior to Al-Raisi’s “election” as Interpol President, former Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales Sir David Calvert-Smith published a report concerning Al-Raisi and the UAE’s influence upon Interpol’s opaque internal election processes.

The report noted:

The President [of Interpol] sits at the top of the entire Interpol structure and commands considerable power and authority. [. . .] [T]he mechanism for the election of the President is far from transparent. Interpol has declined repeated requests by rights organisations to demystify the presidential election process. [. . .] Interpol is not a transparent organisation.

Aside: Interpol’s lack of transparency is, of course, at odds with the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda’s declared commitment to foster a “transparent and representative global governance regime.”

Turning its attention to Al-Raisi, the report added:

Since Al-Raisi’s appointment as General Inspector of the Ministry of Interior of the UAE in 2015, there have been [. . .] numerous allegations of torture and abuse in Emirati jails, both in Abu Dhabi as well as in Dubai’s prisons and jails. [. . .] Major General Al-Raisi is unsuitable for the role. [. . .] He has overseen an increased crackdown on dissent, continued torture, and abuses in its criminal justice system. [. . .] He is a far from ideal candidate for leadership of one of the world’s most important policing organisations.

Whether the allegations cited in Calvert-Smith’s report had been proven or not, given the controversy, it seems remarkable that Interpol proceeded to appoint Al-Raisi.

General Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi – Source

But perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked. After all, this isn’t the first time that Interpol, the UN regime’s “implementing partner” for sustainable, global law enforcement, has been headed by questionable characters.

In 2008, Interpol’s then-President Jack Selebi resigned after he was charged with bribery. Selebi was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in a South African prison for taking bribes from international drug traffickers in return for protecting them from investigation.

In 2018, China’s Vice Minister of Public Security, Meng Hongwei, vanished from his post as Interpol President and resigned soon thereafter. In 2020, he was sentenced in China to more than 13 years’ imprisonment for accepting an estimated $2 million (USD) in bribes.

Digging deeper, we find that Interpol’s alleged history of being led by criminals and torturers is only the most visible part of its corruption.

Interpol has been given the authority to issue international arrest warrants, often referred to as “Red Notices.” Similar to international extradition requests, they notify national law enforcement agencies that one of Interpol’s 194 member states has issued a warrant and is seeking the named person(s). Red Notice recipient states apply different jurisdictional interpretations. Some consider them active warrants, others merely advisory or alert notices.

The Calvert-Smith report found that abuse of Red Notices by authoritarian regimes seeking to detain political dissidents or opponents was commonplace:

In blunt terms, there is strong evidence that despotic states issue Interpol Red Notices in order to arrest and extradite political opponents and business-people whose interests do not align with the regime. [. . .] The UAE is notorious for its abuse of Interpol — many of their requests have been removed. [. . .] The UAE has a poor human rights record[,] meaning that extradition to the UAE exposes individuals to the risk of torture and mistreatment[,] and political changes have meant that a person can become an “enemy of the state” overnight.

Why has abuse of Red Notices seemingly passed through the Interpol system “undetected”? Looking at the financial “support” UAE gave to Interpol prior to Al-Raisi’s eyebrow-raising elevation to President, the Calvert-Smith report observed:

The Interpol Foundation for a Safer World was set up in 2013 and is a not-for-profit organisation[.] [. . .] Its sole purpose is to [financially] support Interpol. [. . .] It seems that the foundation is in fact totally reliant on the UAE. [. . .] It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Interpol Foundation for a Safer World’s sole purpose is to be a channel by which to funnel cash from the UAE government into Interpol.

Interpol also happily accepts money from NGOs, philanthropic foundations, governments and private corporations—all the while insisting it is apolitical and incorruptible.

Following a 2015 investigation of Interpol, journalist Jake Wallace Simons reported:

Interpol has signed deals with a large number of private “partners,” including tobacco giants, pharmaceutical firms and tech companies — such as Philip Morris International, Sanofi, and Kaspersky Lab — the proceeds of which have swollen its operational budget by almost a third.

In other words, Interpol’s “international policing efforts” can be bought, if you can afford them. Its deal with Philip Morris International (PMI), for example, effectively compelled Interpol to promote PMI’s “Codentify” tobacco package marker system to its member states. The alleged purpose of Codentify was to tackle the international counterfeit and illicit tobacco trade.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), adopted in 2003, established a protocol for tobacco track and trace systems. It viewed its work as central to efforts to tackle the illicit and counterfeit tobacco trade. However, only 7% of that total trade consisted of counterfeit products. The vast bulk of tobacco smuggling was comprised of the illegal distribution and sale of authentic tobacco industry products.

Therefore, the idea that a global tobacco corporation (PMI) should use its own track and trace system (Codentify) in partnership with a global law enforcement agency (Interpol) to “seize” illicit tobacco looked more like an attempt to control the illegal tobacco trade rather than end it.

The head of the FCTC Secretariat, Vera da Costa e Silva, observed:

Both the FCTC and its Protocol are crystal clear that the tobacco industry is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Yet, despite Interpol’s suspect track record, the UN would have us believe that Interpol is the ideal “implementing partner” for a number of SDGs, most specifically SDG16.

Hardly. Considering how Interpol defines the threats that will be policed by the “global security architecture” under the auspices of the “global governance regime,” there is no reason to be confident that it will help prevent “violence” or reduce “terrorism and crime.”

There are no grounds to believe that Interpol is capable of delivering its 5th Global Policing Goal to “promote global integrity” by proclaiming “good governance and the rule of law” and “a culture of integrity where corruption is not acceptable.”

Nor do we have much cause to hope that SDG16 related “laws” will be equitably enforced by the UN’s affiliate, the International Criminal Court (ICC).

First, some history:

In 1993, the UN created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY eventually convicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić in 2016 and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić in 2017 for genocide and crimes against humanity.

In 1994, the UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. And in 2002, in cooperation with the government of Sierra Leone, it established the Special Court for Sierra Leone to investigate the atrocities inflicted during the country’s civil war (1991–2002).

Combined, these initiatives provided impetus for the UN to create the world’s first permanent international centre of justice: the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The original motivation for the creation of the ICC, however, is said to have come from the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). (More on the ICJ later.) The ICJ took credit as one of the main stakeholders driving the 1998 ratification of the Rome Statute, which laid the legal foundations for the subsequent ICC.

The ICC is purportedly independent, although it functions within the parameters set by its “mutually beneficial” Relationship Agreement with the UN.

Article 3 of the ICC-UN agreement states:

The United Nations and the Court agree that, [. . .] they shall cooperate closely, whenever appropriate, with each other and consult each other on matters of mutual interest pursuant to the provisions of the present Agreement and in conformity with the respective provisions of the Charter and the Statute.

Considering that the UN is overtly political organisation, the ICC’s close cooperation with that intergovernmental body suggests that the ICC, too, could be politically biased.

The evidence provides good reason to suspect that’s the case:

— The US, Russian and Chinese government are not signatories to the Rome Statute and don’t recognise its jurisdiction, but, by virtue of Article 13(b) of the Statute, their status as permanent members of the Security Council allows them to make referrals to the ICC prosecutor. Consequently, the ICC could be used by them for politically motivated prosecutions.

— In March 2023 the ICC issued an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The charges: the war crimes of unlawful deportation of population (children) and of unlawful transfer of populations (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

The Western mainstream media (MSM) alleges that up to 16,000 children were “illegally deported.” Roman Kashayev, a member of the Russian Permanent Mission to the UN, reported that approximately 730,000 children were relocated deeper within Russian borders from, what are now, the Russian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya. The relocation would seem a sensible precaution in light of the Ukrainian military’s continual shelling of civilian areas in the targeted oblasts.

The Russian Federation government admits that some of these children travelled without their parents, whose whereabouts, it claims, are unknown. It is of course possible that some illegal activity has taken place amidst the evacuation. But there are also reasons to suspect that the ICC warrants were issued as a result of political pressure.

The ICC Chief Prosecutor who submitted the warrant request is UK lawyer and King’s Council Karim Khan KC, who works out of the prestigious Temple Chambers in London. He submitted the warrant application on the 22nd February 2023. The ICC formally issued the warrant on the 17th March 2023.

On the 3rd March 2023, two weeks after he submitted the application, Khan delivered a speech to the United4Justice conference in Lviv, Ukraine, during which he said:

I’ve been with the Prosecutor General [of Ukraine.] [. . .] The men and women of my office have been to so many locations [with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office.] [. . .] Unfortunately, Ukraine is a crime scene. [. . .] We’ve received [allegations] that children how been deported outside Ukraine, into the territory of the Russian Federation. [. . .] Our yardstick is evidence. It is to look at and investigate affirmatively incriminating and exculpatory evidence equally. But we have this commitment.

Khan’s remarks suggest that he submitted the warrant request based upon “received” allegations alone. While the commitment to “look” for evidence is quite normal, it is perhaps unusual to accuse a major world leader and his staff of effective child trafficking and war crimes without any apparent evidence. Again, political motivation seems likely.

The United4Justice campaign is a Western-backed political operation working in Ukraine. It claims its intention is to construct a “web of accountability for international crimes.” A look at the United4Justice initiatives, however, reveals some questionable sponsors—among them, USAID, a known CIA front organisation; Pravo-Justice, an EU-backed programme focused on aligning Ukrainian law with the EU legal system; and the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), a Soros-funded Ukrainian NGO that, like Pravo-Justice, seeks legal reform in Ukraine. In short, the political agenda of these organisations and of the United4Justice campaign they support is resoundingly anti-Russian.

Moreover, the United4Justice conference that Khan addressed was organised by Ukrainian authorities and the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust). They are keen to see the Russian Federation prosecuted for the new international crime of “aggression.”

Karim Khan – Source

To this end, Eurojust has established the International Centre for Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA). According to Eurojust, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (Khan’s office) “may take part in the cooperation via the ICPA when certain conditions are met.”

On 20 March 2023, three days after the ICC issued the warrant, the UK government convened an international meeting—hosted by the UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab—at which it announced a boost in UK funding for the ICC, doubling its previous contribution. The purpose of the funding, said the UK government, was to ensure that “more UK experts,” like Karim Khan, worked for the ICC. Khan delivered one of the opening speeches.

There is no discernible difference between the UK government funding the ICC and the UAE government funding Interpol. The objective in each case is to garner influence.

The only logical conclusion one can reach is that, far from being “unbiased” international institutions suitable for delivering the UN’s SDGs, both Interpol and the ICC appear to adopt the biases of the highest bidder by engaging in “pay-to-play” schemes.

We aren’t the only ones to draw this conclusion.

Earlier this year, for instance, academic researchers from the University of Arkansas and the London School of Economics published their findings on the influence of funding upon the ICC. They noted:

The patterns of funding seen at the ICC support the claim that the Court remains, to a significant extent, a tool of powerful states.

Serbian lawyer Goran Petronijevic, a legal adviser to the ICTY, agrees with this assessment. Recently he called Khan’s ICC warrant “a political act. It is not a legal act. It is a provocation against Russia.”

Indeed, the ICC has been mired in controversy since its inception. When the investigative journalists of the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network looked into the activities of Khan’s predecessor, ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, they determined that his actions had “tainted and discredited” the ICC.

Ocampo had served as Chief Prosecutor of the ICC for nearly a decade. It is evident that he held numerous offshore accounts during his tenure. His involvement in the murky business dealings of Libyan tycoon Hassan Tatanaki, not to mention ICC officials’ continuing assistance to Tatanaki after Ocampo’s departure, raise further concerns about ICC integrity.

In sum, to believe that the ICC and Interpol are suitable organisations to promote “the rule of law” requires considerable credulity. Yet, in pursuit of SDG16, suitability is precisely what the UN regime and its partners assert.

SDG16.2: Dangerous UN Hypocrisy

SDG16 promises to eradicate many of the worst crimes in today’s world, including crimes committed against children. For instance, the aim of SDG16.2 is:

End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.

Yet, contrary to all evidence, ethics, common sense and criminal law, it seems that several important UN partners and “stakeholders” don’t consider paedophilia to be a form of child abuse.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which was instrumental in the formation of the ICC, is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has long been a close “partner” of the UN. The UN and the ICJ have collaborated on numerous joint projects, such as spreading SDG messaging among academic institutions.

The ICJ is an influential UN stakeholder. In 1993, the UN gave the ICJ its Human Rights award for the following reasons:

The International Commission of Jurists was established to uphold the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights throughout the world. It has actively contributed to the elaboration of international and regional standards and has helped to secure their adoption and implementation by governments. The Commission has closely collaborated with the United Nations and actively works at the regional level to strengthen human rights institutions.

The ICJ convened in 1952 as an overtly geopolitical organisation. Its stated purpose was to denounce “human rights abuses,” but only in the Soviet Union. It subsequently broadened its remit and started looking at abuses elsewhere.

In March of this year, The ICJ published its “8 March Principles.” Its alleged objective was “to offer a clear, accessible and workable legal framework — as well as practical legal guidance — on applying the criminal law to conduct.”

In “8 March Principles,” the ICJ advocates:

With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage. Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.

This language opens up the distinct possibility that predatory paedophiles, should they ever be charged, may be able to offer mitigation if they or their lawyers can convince their child targets to testify that they gave their consent.

As we know, coercion is a common paedophile practice. Many child protection organisations—the UK-based National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) among them—recognise that coercion is part of the grooming process:

Grooming is a process that involves the offender building a relationship with a child, and sometimes with their wider family, gaining their trust and a position of power over the child, in preparation for abuse.

Following publication of “8 March Principles,” the ICJ responded to criticism by presenting some straw man arguments.

First, the ICJ said it did not “call for the decriminalization of sex with children.”

Second, the ICJ said it did not suggest “the abolition of a domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex.”

Third, the ICJ explained that it was simply offering clear legal guidance to “parliamentarians, judges, prosecutors and advocates.”

True, quite clearly the ICJ did not advocate decriminalising paedophilia.

True, quite clearly the ICJ did not advocate the abolition of the age of consent.

But . . . the ICJ did, quite clearly, introduce the notion, in law, that a child has the “human right” to consent to being raped by an adult.

It is far from clear how lawmakers should interpret this “legal framework and practical legal guidance.”

It is abundantly clear, however, that the ICJ has introduced legal ambiguity where there should be absolutely no legal ambiguity at all.

The ICJ’s 8 March Principles – Source

Sad to say, we should not be surprised by the “8 March Principles.” The UN regime and its multistakeholder partners have an appalling track record of not protecting children.

The WHO regional office for Europe—a UN specialist agency—and the German Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA) jointly published in 2010 (and updated in 2016) guidelines for schools, titled “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe.” The authors call their guidance “a framework for policy makers, educational and health authorities and specialists.”

The WHO agreed with Bzga that educators should provide, to infants aged 0-to-4, information about “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body” as well as information about “early childhood masturbation.”

The WHO says this information should be set within the context that “enjoyment of physical closeness” is “normal.” Even infants, the WHO says, should be taught that “physical closeness as an expression of love and affection.”

According to the WHO, children aged 4-to-6 years should learn to identify potential abusers. It then outlines the advice educators should provide to children in this age range—advice that, the WHO claims, will potentially enable 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds to identify possible risks:

There are some people who are not good; they pretend to be kind, but might be violent.

Of course, all sexual abuse of children is an appalling act of violence, but children may not immediately perceive it as such until well after the act has been committed. Survivors of abuse don’t tend to come to terms with the horrendous psychological and often physical damage inflicted upon them until later in life.

Thus, teaching infants about “sexual pleasure” and telling them that “physical closeness is normal” and “an expression of love,” while simultaneously teaching them that sexual abuse only manifests as “violence,” would appear to place young children at even greater risk of grooming and paedophilia. Such “education” disarms, rather than forewarns, the child.

As for 9-to-12-year-old children, the WHO and the BzgA recommend that they develop the skills to “take responsibility in relation to safe and pleasant sexual experiences for oneself and others.” The WHO believes these children should be able to “make a conscious decision to have sexual experiences or not.”

The WHO is a UN agency and the ICJ is an influential UN “partner.” Contrary to their humanitarian pretensions, the WHO-led “educational guidance,” combined with the ICJ’s legal framework, serves the interests of paedophiles and endangers the lives of children.

Something Is Very Wrong

We will examine SDG 16.9 and expand our exploration of the “interoperable” digital ID network established by the ID2020 Alliance (global public-private partnership) in Part 2. For now, let’s just consider the publicly stated ambition of ID2020:

By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.

In its pursuit of SDG16.9, ID2020 set up a partnership between the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and iRespond. The purpose of the partnership was to roll out biometric ID for newborns in the Karen refugee population along the Myanmar-Thailand border.

Heavily promoted by the West’s MSM, the project tied the Karen refugees’ access to food aid and other vital services to their participation in this digital ID system.

Importantly, partners IRC and iRespond said participation in the project was voluntary. But in the same breath, they made it clear that the refugees’ “vaccine status” would be incorporated into their digital IDs.

For the Karen people, access to food and health care hinged upon them presenting approved biometric ID. Registering for the ID was dependent upon their vaccine “status.” Thus, the Karen people were forced to accept vaccination and use digital ID or face starvation and disease without access to medical treatment.

Suffice it to say, there was no IRC or iRespond commitment to freedom, justice and peace. Instead, this UN partner-led project comprehensively ignored the rights of the Karen people.

The ID2020 Alliance’s decision to allow the IRC anywhere near refugee families—the most vulnerable population of all—was injudicious, to say the least. The IRC was one of fifteen “international aid organisations” embroiled in the sex–for–food scandal.

When the scandal came to light in 2000, the UN commissioned an investigation into the activities of its affiliated private aid “partners” and its own aid agencies. The subsequent report found evidence that workers from 40 local and international charities—the latter included the IRC—were in “sexually exploitative relationships with children.” Bluntly put, UN “stakeholder partner” organisations, including the IRC, were infested with child rapists.

The report clearly identified the widespread practice of providing food in exchange for sex—including paedophilia—in refugee camps. Yet the UN suppressed the report for more than sixteen years.

The UN has been equally slow to investigate the wealth of evidence implicating its own peacekeepers in child rape and trafficking operations in 23 countries, notably Haiti and Sri Lanka, as revealed in an April 2017 Associated Press exposé and follow-up.

As if the Haitian children hadn’t already been tortured enough by the UN “peacekeepers,” their victimization wasn’t over. After the January 2010 earthquake, known child trafficker Laura Silsby was caught for the second time attempting to traffic Haitian children. The children she snatched were supposed to be under the protection of the UN. Silsby claimed they were destined for an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, but there was no record of her making any of the required transit applications to Dominican authorities.

In May 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had appointed Bill Clinton special envoy to Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Post-earthquake, Clinton was the obvious choice to be the UN’s international coordinator for Haitian relief efforts. He was thus perfectly positioned to pressure Haitian authorities on Silsby’s behalf, after which she walked free. The evidence strongly suggests that Silsby (now Laura Gayler) was part of larger child trafficking operation involving her originally retained lawyer, Jorge Puello, and his wife.

Interesting that the ICC, which saw fit to issue an arrest warrant to President Putin for child trafficking in Ukraine, has not charged former US President Clinton in connection with child trafficking in Haiti.

Perhaps that “oversight” is due to the Clinton Foundation being so deeply embedded in the global governance regime’s public-private structure?

In 2016, the Clinton Global Initiative, which has been credited with directing philanthropy toward sustainable development, hosted an event to garner support for the UN Trust Fund (UNTF), whose stated mission is to end violence against women and girls. Unbelievably, that same year, it was first reported that defence lawyers for paedophile sex trafficker and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein had written that their client was a key part of the small group that had “conceived the Clinton Global Initiative.”

According to the UN, the purpose of the UNTF gathering was to “announce a series of Commitments to Action aiming to advance the gender equality targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” Apparently, this aim is to be achieved through “partnership” with known facilitators of child trafficking.

We might wonder why anyone would “trust” the UN “global governance regime” to “[e]nd abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children”—when its specialist agencies and stakeholders and special envoy, plus its peacekeepers and partners, have been caught on innumerable occasions either committing or sanctioning these very crimes.

It is not unreasonable to say that the UN and its agencies and “partners” present a significant risk to children. Clearly—clearly—there is something very wrong at the heart of this dangerous regime.

SDG16 – Source Peace and Justice for Whom?

The UN is a corrupt “global governance regime.” It continues to deceive the global population about the acres of separation between so-called “human rights” and our real “inalienable rights,” which it studiously ignores and wilfully subverts.

Nation-states compete for influence within the orbit of the UN regime. The governments of those nation-states are part of the vast network, formed by the regime and its various public and private “partners,” that is attempting to implement SDG16.

Most of the SDG16 targets are intended to “reform” sovereign systems of justice and law enforcement and decision-making processes for the benefit of the regime.

SDG16 represents an obvious attempt to consolidate power in the hands of the regime at the expense of national sovereignty and human freedom. This is a matter of extreme concern for many reasons, perhaps most notably because our children must be safeguarded. As things stand, the regime appears to present a clear threat to children across the world.

Natural Law determines that “an unjust law is no law at all”: lex iniusta non est lex. Since there is no evidence that the system of alleged “international law” operating within the aegis of the UN and its Charter is, or has ever been, applied fairly and since it does not meet the standard of “just law,” it is, therefore, “no law at all.”

Within the deliberative bodies that constitute the UN regime, “might” continues to be viewed as “right.” Institutions that the UN advocates and partners with—the ICJ, Interpol, and the ICC, to name but three—are deeply flawed. These institutions are unfit to play any role, let alone a leading one, in the administration of justice.

There is no reason to believe that the SDG16’s pretensions to promote peace and justice and inclusivity will do anything for the world as a whole, much less anything to resolve the fundamental failings inherent in the UN’s scurrilous and disreputable system of alleged “global governance.”

You may wonder what Sustainable Development Goal 16—or this article about it—has to do with protecting the planet and its inhabitants from the predicted “climate disaster.” The answer is: nothing at all. But then, “climate change” is merely the proffered rationale that purportedly legitimises and lends urgency to sustainable development.

Establishing firm global governance—in effect, a world dictatorship—through the implementation of SDGs is the United Nations’ real objective. “Climate change” is just the excuse. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than SDG16.9. And this is why we will exclusively focus on 16.9 in Part 2 of our exploration of SDG16.

SDG16: Part 1 — Building the Global Police State.

Iain Davis and Whitney Webb explore how the UN’s “sustainable development” policies, the SDGs, do not promote “sustainability” as most conceive of it, and instead utilise the same debt imperialism long used by the Anglo-American Empire to entrap nations in a new, equally predatory system of global financial governance. Today on ‘Good Morning CHD’ Whitney and Iain focus on SDG 16 and its implications for Digital ID.

Watch on CHD.TV.

Good Morning CHD – Sustainable Slavery.

Whitney is joined by Bitcoin Magazine’s Mark Goodwin to discuss how bitcoin is being used by some to dollarize the world and entrench the very same financial power structures, particularly in the developing world, that bitcoin was ostensibly created to challenge. Also discussed are suspect stablecoins and the roles of some in crypto in building out the global digital surveillance panopticon and testing those technologies on vulnerable populationrfis.

Originally published 06/02/23.

Podcast available early for Unlimited Hangout members and Rokfin subscribers. After a few days, all episodes are free and available on all platforms.

Links discussed:

• Blockchain humanitarianism and crypto-colonialism – ScienceDirect
• Crypto-Colonialists Use the Most Vulnerable People in the World as Guinea Pigs
• Why the Crypto World Should Embrace the Feds’ Crackdown | Institutional Investor
• The Birth Of The Bitcoin-Dollar – Bitcoin Magazine – Bitcoin News, Articles and Expert Insights
• Castles Made of Sand Dollars: SBF, FTX, and other Three Letter Agents – Bitcoin Magazine – Bitcoin News, Articles and Expert Insights
• FTX and the Curious History of Farmington State Bank
• Stablecoin Monster CBDC Red Herring – Bitcoin Magazine – Bitcoin News, Articles and Expert Insights
• FASAB Statement 56: Understanding New Government Financial Accounting Loopholes – Solari Report
• Ethiopia’s blockchain deal is a watershed moment — for the technology, and for Africa
• Why a little-known blockchain-based identity project in Ethiopia should concern us all – Ethiopia | ReliefWeb
• Why the Crypto World Should Embrace the Feds’ Crackdown | Institutional Investor

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Articles by Mark Goodwin – Bitcoin Magazine
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The Bitcoin Dollar and Crypto-Colonialism with Mark Goodwin.

Whitney delivered a Keynote at the Bitcoin 2023 conference about how the World Economic Forum Partnership Against Cybercrime is seeking to paint privacy enhancing technology and Bitcoin as national security threats in pursuit of their ultimate ambitions to eliminate financial privacy.

The speech was republished here.

Bitcoin and the Plot to Destroy Financial Privacy.

BTC Conference 2023 Panel – “Journalism on a Bitcoin Standard”.

Whitney joined PBD Podcast for an in-studio interview to discuss the recent revelations from Jeffrey Epstein’s private calendar, Epstein’s connection to the Clinton White House in the 1990s, and Elon Musk’s connections to Epstein.

Clips from full interview:

• Horrifying Details About Woody Allen Abusing His Kids – YouTube
• Why The Deep State Hates Trump And Kennedy Family – YouTube
• Shocking Revelation About Bill Clinton and China’s Past Revealed! – YouTube
• “He’s Not Being Honest!” – What’s Elon Musk’s Connection To Jeffrey Epstein? – YouTube

PBD Podcast.

Originally published at The Last American Vagabond.

For years, Erik Prince – the founder of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Academi) – has been a major source of controversy. Ever since he left Blackwater over a decade ago, Prince has appeared in the news for pushing to privatize several wars, his ties to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his violation of international arms embargoes and his unusually close ties with Project Veritas, among other notable events and connections.

However, some of Prince’s antics in recent years have not yet made it into the news – namely his decision to team up with an Israeli spy to build a very secretive company that has – until now – evaded scrutiny. That company, Comframe Solutions, appears to operate as an intelligence front and explicitly targets parts of the American military involved in highly sensitive combat operations. As this investigation will show, Prince’s partner in Comframe – Lital Leshem – has been tied to a series of apparent, and admitted, Israeli intelligence front companies, several of which have a focus on technology. Yet Prince and his close associate Chris Burgess – Comframe’s supposed president – have done everything they can to hide their association with the incredibly secretive company. Why might that be and what exactly is Comframe up to?

From “Army Brat” to Cyber Spy

Lital Leshem was raised as an “army brat” in Reut, Israel and Pennsylvania, USA. She later enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as she was “truly devoted to safeguarding the State of Israel.” She quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Operations Officer in the IDF of the besieged Gaza Strip and later becoming a Major, a position she continues to hold to this date through her “reserve duty activities.” According to her LinkedIn, she served in Israeli military intelligence from 2005 to 2011 and, more specifically, served in its signals intelligence unit – Unit 8200. She later attended IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university deeply tied to its military and intelligence apparatus. There, she met Amir Elichai and the two would co-create the company Reporty, which later became Carbyne911 – today known only as Carbyne.

Carbyne was originally founded as Reporty in 2014 by Leshem, Elichai and Alex Dizengof. Leshem and Elichai are Unit 8200 veterans, while Dizengof previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office. Before it was revealed that Jeffrey Epstein had poured at least 1 million dollars into the company at the behest of his close associate Ehud Barak, Cabryne’s board of directors – which Barak chaired – included the former commander of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris, as well as Epstein associate turned venture capitalist Nicole Junkermann. In the wake of the Epstein scandal, Buchris, Barak and Junkerman, among others, were removed from the board and were largely replaced with veterans and former heads of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Leshem had left the company in 2017, but has continued to own shares in the company.

Ehud Barak, center, poses with Carbyne co-founders Alex Dizengof, Amir Elichai and Lital Leshem; Source: Yossi Seliger

Carbyne is a Next-Generation 9-11 (NG911) platform and the explicit goal of NG911 is for all 911 systems nationwide to become interconnected. It is currently active throughout the United States, its main target market. Its software has been criticized due to “serious privacy concerns” about the amount of information it harvests from smartphones that call a 911 call center running Carbyne’s software. For instance, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the following information from the phones on which it is installed:

“Device location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the call center, text messages in a two-way chat window, any data from a user’s phone if they have the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any information that comes over a data link, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice link drops out.”

The potential for Carbyne as a tool for mass surveillance has been extensively reported by Narativ, MintPress News and other outlets. In addition, Carbyne stores all data on past calls and events in order to “enabl[e] decision makers to accurately analyze the past and present behavior of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns.” As a result, Carbyne – along with other Israeli intelligence-connected companies seeking to dominate the American “public safety” market – has the potential to facilitate controversial “predictive policing”, i.e. pre-crime, policies.

Screengrab from Carbyne’s website describing its c-Records feature, which has since been deleted; Source: Carbyne (archived)

In addition to Carbyne, Leshem also worked for Black Cube, which has since been removed from her LinkedIn. There, she had been the firms Director of Marketing. Black Cube was specifically outed as an Israeli intelligence front organization in a 2019 article published by Calcalist Tech. That same article also contains the stunning revelation that many Israeli companies, including Black Cube, have been founded as fronts for intelligence operations since 2012. It states that “since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that in some cases were built for this exact purpose.” The article also adds that:

“In some cases, managers of development projects in the Israeli military and intelligence arms were encouraged to form their own companies which then took over the [military and/or intelligence] project.”

With Leshem having worked for one company already known to be a product of this deliberate policy, it is worth scrutinizing Carbyne as being one such front, especially considering the common tie of Ehud Barak to both companies. In addition, Leshem has also worked for another company tied to Barak that has been described as worse than the NSO Group, which produced the notorious Pegasus software. Called Toka, its top executives – like Carbyne – are largely veterans of Israeli’s Unit 8200, where Leshem also served, or former commanders of Israeli military cyber operations.

Toka, which Ehud Barak founded in 2018, is very, very likely to be one of the front organizations produced as a result of the aforementioned 2012 Israeli intelligence policy. The company is directly partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and other Israeli intelligence and security agencies since its founding and the company only sells its products to countries that are considered allies of Israel. It purports to be able to hack, not just smartphones, but any device with internet connectivity, such as doorbell cameras and other “smart” devices. As will be noted later in this article, Leshem herself has noted that Toka has a relationship with the CIA.

After being involved with a series of Israeli intelligence fronts and her enduring ties to Israeli military intelligence through her “reserve duty activities”, Leshem was courted by a surprising figure – Erik Prince, war profiteer and founder of the controversial mercenary outfit Blackwater.

Partnering with Prince

Leshem says that she met Prince after she “randomly stumbled across his path and joined his team.” There, per her website, she “managed his business portfolio and his global investments.” Her LinkedIn lists her as serving as the executive director of global business development of Frontier Resource Group (FRG) from 2018 to 2021. Frontier Resource Group was founded by Prince and is “an Africa-dedicated investment firm partnered with major Chinese enterprises, including at least one state-owned resource giant that is keen to pour money into the resource-rich continent,” according to the South China Post. It not only operates in Africa, but also other countries due to its contracts to support China’s One Belt One Road initiative, which were signed in 2019.

Erik Prince and Lital Leshem in an undated photo; Source: Ynet

FRG is a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group (FSG), which Prince also founded. In 2013, he sold a majority share of FSG to the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned Chinese investment company that is among the largest of the country’s state-run conglomerates. CITIC, during the mid-1990s, was chaired by Wang Jun, who doubled as China’s chief arms dealer and was a key figure in the “Chinagate” scandal of the Clinton White House. As detailed in One Nation Under Blackmail, that scandal involved the illicit transfer of American military technology to China and the illicit transfer of Chinese weapons, whose sale in the US was banned during this time, into the United States. Mark Middleton, a White House aide, and Jeffrey Epstein are some of the names apparently involved with those activities. “Chinagate” appears to have been a joint venture between factions of the CIA and Israeli intelligence and has never been properly investigated by federal authorities. It seems that Prince, who was (and may still be) a CIA asset, and Leshem have engaged in similar activities via FRG/FSG. For example, TRTWorld reported that Leshem is “speculated” to have transferred Carbyne’s technology to China via her role at FRG and her connection to Prince. China launched an app that was nearly analogous to Carbyne, but more explicitly focused on surveillance, at the same time that Carbyne launched its first 911 call system in the United States.

Erik Prince, left, chairman of Frontier Services Group, looks at a map of Africa with Deputy Chairman Johnson Ko. FSG, which is backed by Chinese state-owned entities, is based in Hong Kong; Source: HKEG

In addition, TRTWorld notes, the company DarkMatter, a UAE surveillance and intelligence group that employs former US intelligence operatives, attracted the attention of Chinese officials at a smart cities conference in 2015. DarkMatter, which was launched to modernize Emirati intelligence and military operations, signed a Global Strategic Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. The middle man in this sale was none other than Erik Prince. Leshem and another Prince associate, Dorian Barak, also have business ties to the UAE via their prominent roles at the UAE-Israel Business Council.

As TRTWorld concluded:

“With similar technology being used, and the same mercenary middle-man between Carbyne and China who brought together UAE’s DarkMatter surveillance technology with China, indications point to a likely transfer of surveillance technology from Epstein’s Israeli company [Carbyne] to China.”

Comframe – Secretive Company or Intelligence Front?

Prince’s and Leshem’s joint activities after Leshem left FRG suggest that this pattern of behavior has not only continued, but deepened. According to Leshem’s website, a year and a half after she started working for Prince, she and Prince “joined forces to found Comframe, a company that takes the best of Israeli defense technology providers, and helps them penetrate the American market by bridging prevalent gaps.” Leshem also says Comframe was assisted by her “premier integrator and business development platform for deploying advanced military, special operations, public safety and HLS solutions in the United States, and a wide network of partnership, both government and civilian.”

In discussing Comframe elsewhere, Leshem writes that the company she co-founded with Prince “is led and staffed by Special Operations and defense procurement veterans with billions of dollars of successful sales to USG and foreign government to their names.” She says that Comframe has a “track-record of success implementing complex procurement and integrations programs from intelligence gathering & analysis, to contracting, program sales and personnel deployment, is exceptional.”

What Leshem says of the company clashes with Comframe’s threadbare public presence. For instance, its website, which is notably short on content, lists the following companies as partners – TomCar, BlueBird Aero Systems, General Robotics, SafeStrike, Ops-Core (now part of Gentex Corp) and Axon. On its partners page, Comframe says that this is “a small sampling of our current partners we have chosen to work with.” Most of these companies were created by Israeli military/military intelligence veterans.

Comframe Solutions’ homepage; Source: https://comframesolutions.com/

Aside from the partners page, there is little other information available on the Comframe site. It describes its mission as “to source cutting-edge, innovative technologies that safely and securely solve articulated U.S. government problems” and touts its “get it done” commitment and how its employees “wake up every morning wanting to find solutions that keep the U.S. government safe and more lethal.” It lists the company’s president as Chris Burgess. Burgess, a former NAVY Seal who trained with Erik Prince, does not list Comframe on his LinkedIn or in any other site discussing his work history. He is currently the CEO of military contractor Regulus Global. Burgess previously ran a mercenary firm he founded, Greystone Ltd., that was previously affiliated with Prince’s Blackwater and was originally intended to be Blackwater’s “sister company.”

Both Blackwater (now Academi) and Greystone have been accused of sending mercenaries to fight in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Both companies deny this. The accusations came after Prince had planned to create a “private army” in Ukraine, something he has attempted to do (and sometimes succeeded) in various conflict zones, such as Afghanistan. Prince has also attempted to offer “lethal services” to Russia’s Wagner group.

Chris Burgess; Source

Aside from Burgess’ apparent unwillingness to associate himself publicly with Comframe, there is also the fact that the only employee publicly associated with Comframe at all is Lital Leshem. Indeed, even Erik Prince has declined to publicly affiliate himself with the company. Another oddity is the fact that Comframe’s website has an “Industry News” page that contains several blog posts with titles discussing oil markets and geopolitics. However, the content of the posts themselves are all filler generated by WordPress. Was Comframe also intended to work in commodities markets? The odd and sparse nature of the website seems to clash with Leshem’s characterization of the company.

So, what is Comframe exactly and what is it intended to do? Why are the only people associated with the company two professional mercenaries, one of whom is a known CIA asset, and an Israeli spy? A 2020 article published in the Jerusalem Post seems to highlight Comframe’s mysterious inner workings and likely purpose.

That article notes that Comframe acted as a middleman in forging an agreement to create an assembly line in El Paso, TX in order for the Israeli company Tomcar to “offer its latest models to the US Armed Forces.” The agreement was made between Tomcar and Prince Manufacturing, a major contract manufacturing company that works with Ford, General Motors and Tesla, among others. Prince Manufacturing was notably founded and run for many years by Edgar Prince, Erik Prince’s father. Notably Tomcar, its founder – Yoram Zarchi – and his son (works for Tomcar) – Ram Zarchi – appear in the Panama Papers as does the former holding company that owned Tomcar from 2004 to 2011.

The article notes that Comframe “is focused on recognizing needs in the US defense industry and matching them to possible solutions, usually involving innovative Israeli companies.” However, the article notes, “to meet the demands of American security needs, one must have an American entity.” Leshem is then quoted as saying, “Ram [Zarchi of Tomcar] had been living in Phoenix for 15 years, but he can’t do that [sell to the American military because he is not a US citizen]. We can.”

In other words, per Leshem, Comframe utilizes Prince and presumably Burgess to sell Israeli defense technology and products to the American military that would otherwise not happen due to national security concerns around buying foreign-made products for sensitive defense and military operations. Leshem goes on to state Comframe sells “to the US Special Forces and other branches of the service [i.e. US military],” noting that Comframe is specifically targeting Special Ops. She also suggests that, aside from the US military, another intended market for the company is NATO – she told the Jerusalem Post that the US “controls 70% of NATO’s defense industry.”

The article ends by stating that, for Comframe, when sales are related to national security, one still has to have “boots on the ground,” suggesting why Comframe has such a minimal web and online presence. This is similar to another company Leshem has been working for while at Comframe, Ehud Barak’s Toka. Notably, at the end of this very article, Leshem uses Toka as an example regarding Comframe’s “boots on the ground” sales approach. She states:

“Hi-tech companies like Toka with clients like the CIA, can’t discuss what they do using Zoom.”

A New Pattern for Prince

Comframe is a very suspect company – it is highly, highly secretive, targets sensitive American military agencies with foreign technology, and its known employees are apparent spooks and intelligence-linked mercenaries. Not only that, but the history of Israeli espionage in the United States – from Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS to Comverse and beyond – shows a concerted effort to target the American military and security agencies, often with bugged or “backdoored” technology.

In addition to the above, Prince has also recently engaged in efforts to market a very suspect smartphone to MAGA Republicans as being “unhackable” and “unsurveillable.” That phone was “designed in Israel” and the company that produces it is called Unplugged. According to reports, Unplugged’s “day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee of CommuniTake, the Israeli start-up that gave rise to the now infamous hacker-for-hire firm NSO Group.” Karpen, like Leshem, is also a veteran of Unit 8200.

Notably, DarkMatter, the UAE private intelligence company that was mentioned earlier due to its association with Prince, once marketed an “ultrasecure” phone called Katim, only to be later outed for hacking dissidents and journalists. In addition, Prince debuted Unplugged’s phone on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program. Both Prince and Bannon have controversial relationships with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo.

That Prince would help market this phone specifically to MAGA Republicans is disturbing given that his associate Leshem and other Israeli intelligence veterans and operatives have played a major role in developing the infrastructure for the US’ “War on Domestic Terror,” which is mainly targeted at the political right and has already utilized mass surveillance through smartphones and other technologies to justify arrests, including “pre-crime” arrests. Given the content of this investigation, Prince’s ties to foreign governments and intelligence agencies should be heavily scrutinized, especially Comframe – whose secretive activities may be drastically undermining American national security.

The Prince And The Spy.

Whitney joined Redacted to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and Southern Trust. Interview segment starts at around 1:36:00 timestamp. Available on Rumble.

Redacted.

In this episode, Whitney talks to Stavroula Pabst about the reconstruction efforts in Ukraine and how much of Ukraine’s government and infrastructure has been outsourced or sold off to Western corporations that are using the country as a testbed for 4IR technologies.

Originally published 05/11/23.

Podcast available early for Unlimited Hangout members and Rokfin subscribers. After a few days, all episodes are free and available on all platforms.

Links Discussed:

• Ukraine’s Future Lies in the Great Reset
• Mykhailo Fedorov on Twitter: “Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building. https://t.co/XWs4E1pPGJ” / Twitter
• THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development
• Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development | Department of Economic and Social Affairs
• Andrew and Nicola Forrest commit US$500m to launch US$25bn Ukraine Green Growth Initiative supported by President Zelenskyy
• Green reconstruction Ukraine – Presearch

Follow Stavroula – @stavroulapabst) – Twitter and Substack

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Find previous episodes on all podcast platforms.
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The New Ukraine with Stavroula Pabst.

Available on Rumble or YouTube.

Russell Brand.

“Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building.” 

– Mykhailo Fedorov

These were the words of Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, who posted a glossy video showcasing Ukraine’s sci-fi-esque future to Twitter. The video boasts of Ukraine’s plans (after its victory over Russia, of course!) to become the “freest and most convenient country in the next 10 years.” 

In this theoretical scenario, Ukraine is “the first country to abandon paper money,” tele-health and tele-education programs abound, courts’ decisions are guided by artificial intelligence, and cities can even defend themselves with an “ultra-modern iron dome.”

Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building. pic.twitter.com/XWs4E1pPGJ

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) July 14, 2022 Mykhailo Federov – Twitter

But the juxtaposition between the video’s boasts and Ukraine’s dire reality on the ground grows more uncanny by the day.November 2022 reports quietly admitted that roughly 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in action, and apparently leaked documents from April 2023 exposed Ukraine’s especially weak wartime positioning, where Ukrainian casualties outnumber those of the Russians four to one. Meanwhile, complaints of low ammunition — with Ukraine running through ammo faster than the US and NATO can replace it — run amok, and in Bakhmut’s “meat-grinder,” the estimated lifespan of Ukrainian soldiers in battle was reported as being a grim four hours in late February. Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians have fled home as sky-high inflation rates and energy prices have slashed living standards in Europe and internationally. 

But as the war drudges on, Ukrainian officials have zeroed in on the conflict’s alleged “silver linings,” bragging about the new technological developments and investment possibilities that have surfaced during the conflict, such as Ukraine’s “state in a smartphone” Diia app, the e-hryvnia, mounting technological capabilities spurred by corporate war-time involvement in Ukraine, a further crystallization of the public-private partnership as a civil society instrument, and Ukraine’s budding “green” revolution, which is slated to blossom during its prospective elite-backed reconstruction.

While these and other initiatives taking place as part of Ukraine’s war-time and reconstruction efforts are being done in the name of modernization, convenience, and democracy, these efforts instead contribute to a technological and political terrain that is conducive to depriving the civilians of Ukraine, and all nations, of their sovereignty, privacy, and dignity. 

As I illustrate in this investigative piece, such efforts are part of the larger drive towards the related phenomena of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, today’s technological revolution that blurs the physical, digital, and biological spheres, and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, an elite-driven initiative to establish Klaus Schwab’s vision of stakeholder capitalism, where corporations are positioned as “trustees of society” to address the world’s economic and social woes.

At present, the two phenomena facilitate a new societal era where opaque and corporatized governance structures undermine longstanding governmental bodies and decision-making processes through the widespread implementation of top-down, transformative policy initiatives; public-private partnerships that consolidate power while diffusing avenues for public accountability; and crises that have expanded the elite’s hold over society.

If executed successfully, the end result of such efforts may well be a technocratic nightmare, where the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s digital advancements have been capitalized upon by the power elite to ensure and exert their dominance through global governance structures that have extracted themselves from the public’s reach.

Effectively stripped of its sovereignty after the 2014 US-backed Euromaidan, burdened by gargantuan debts, and pummeled around by a western “rules-based order” that actually craves war within its borders, Ukraine’s desperation and cannon-fodder status before and during NATO’s ongoing proxy war make it the ideal Great Reset testing ground, where various Fourth Industrial Revolution roll-outs are ongoing — and are soon to be foisted upon the rest of us.

The DIIA App: the “State in a Smartphone”

To jumpstart its technological revolution, Ukraine’s established a Ministry of Digital Transformation. Preceded by the State Agency for E-governance in Ukraine, the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s chief mission, as of 2019, is to establish a “state in a smartphone” apparatus — the Diia (Дія) app — and transfer all public services online. The Ministry’s other key goals include increasing Ukrainians’ digital literacy, internet access, and IT’s share of Ukraine’s GDP by 2024.

A perfect marriage of the latest in tech with the state, the Ministry’s flagship Diia app is perhaps the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s most obvious manifestation in Ukraine. Unveiled in late 2019 as the Ministry for Digital Transformation’s “state in a smartphone” project, the Diia app is now a “one-stop-shop” for 120 digital government services such as business registrations, applying for government benefits, paying taxes, and obtaining documents like digital ID, digital driver’s licenses, and digital biometric passports which, as of 2021, are all recognized in the same legal capacity as their paper equivalents. “Diia” means “action” in English. 

Within two days of Diia’s 2020 official launch, 360,000 Ukrainians had downloaded digital driver’s licenses using the app, which the Atlantic Council posited as reflecting the “huge appetite for digitalization within Ukrainian society, especially among younger Ukrainians.” About 18.5 million people, approximately half of Ukraine’s pre-war population, now use the app as of early 2023.

Diia may be state of the art, but its hyper-centralized, “one-stop-shop” model concocts a bevy of ethical concerns. Such widespread use of Digital ID and other digital legal documents through Diia, for example, should raise alarm bells. For instance, a 2018 WEF report on Digital ID even admits the tool’s propensity for exclusion, positing that “[f]or individuals, [verifiable IDs] open up (or close off) the digital world, with its jobs, political activities, education, financial services, healthcare and more.” Despite this consequential acknowledgement, the report’s writers and other advocates ultimately insist that Digital ID is a key tool for “financial and social inclusion” in an increasingly digital world (of course, on the precondition that a Digital ID would be given to everyone.)

Critically, Diia’s normalization of the Digital ID and the online availability of other government and social services has only sped up the process of mass digital identification, and thus the multitude of privacy- and freedom-related issues this is likely to pose to the populace, both in Ukraine and internationally. Despite ongoing concerns that digital ID could facilitate a “papers, please”-style checkpoint society (a la 2021-2022’s vaccine passport phenomenon, which was largely conducted through QR-code based passports and smartphone applications) or otherwise used or weaponized to discriminate against marginalized populations. Juniper Research estimates that governments will have issued about 5 billion digital ID credentials by 2024, and a 2019 Goode Intelligence report suggested digital identity and verification will be a $15 billion market by 2024.

Diia’s Digital ID feature thus means Diia is used to verify users of other apps, such as banking apps for institutions like monobank and the Bank of Ukraine, private mail-carrier Nova Poshta, and even eVorog, a chatbot where Ukrainian citizens, whose identities first are verified through Diia, can send the Ukrainian government tips about Russian military efforts in real time. Diia has  also provided wartime subsidies of 6,500 hryvnia (worth about $176 USD in April 2023) to citizens most affected by the conflict, and also accepts military donations, suggesting Ukraine has decided that Diia might as well directly assist its war-time efforts. 

The Diia app – Source

Of course, crisis is a major catalyst for Diia’s roaring success. In an Atlantic Council blog post, Fedorov noted that the Coronavirus pandemic accelerated Diia’s use in Ukraine, where the restriction-burdened populace could often only access the digital versions of public services they had previously used in person.

In fact, the Diia app helped enforce COVID restrictions, producing COVID-certificates that are valid across the European Union. According to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, “[a]doption [of the Diia app] was partly driven by its use as a Covid certificate platform and the introduction of ePidtrimka (“eSupport”) — a one-off payment of 1,000 UAH [about $27 USD in April 2023] for fully vaccinated Ukrainians linked to a digital bank card.” In Ukraine, restrictive COVID vaccination passports, which functionally banned unvaccinated people from public life, were also instated via Diia despite low injection uptake amongst Ukrainians, implying Diia’s technology and widespread use further amplified social coercion to take the shot. At the time of writing, Ukrainians have downloaded or accessed over 10 million COVID certificates.

An app at the fingertips of tens of millions, Diia has also been capitalized upon as a media hub, allowing users to watch prominent programming including Eurovision, CNN, and the FIFA World Cup Final. While this aspect of Diia was subsequently shelved, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation also had plans with Apple to conduct the 2023 census over Diia.

Such developments posit Diia’s use not only as a government service, but as a hyper-centralized hub for much of daily life. As such a critical service, however, it’s hard to overstate the government-facilitated app’s potential for surveillance or even the manipulation of app-based public services for political gain. After Diia’s release was announced, at least, the issue did not go unnoticed in larger Ukrainian society: according to Rest Of World, the Ukrainian media initially ridiculed the app as “big brother in a smartphone.” 

Data breaches on Diia, furthermore, could and already have jeopardized people’s sensitive information. As the NYT reported, hackers in January 2022 were able to cripple “much of the government’s public-facing digital infrastructure”, including Diia and a number of government ministries and websites.

Unsurprisingly, US hands are behind Diia’s development. After providing years of legal, financial and technical assistance to Diia, USAID Administrator and former US UN Ambassador Samantha Power voiced intentions at Davos 2023 to expand the app’s use to other parts of the world, especially in the global south. A January 2023 USAID press statement, further, highlighted the organization’s $650,000 allotment towards “jumpstart[ing] the adoption of Diia-like systems and the digital technology services that underpin them” elsewhere. As USAID is widely suspected to be a CIA front, the organization’s funding of and interest in spreading Diia internationally posits another dimension of surveillance potential through the app — data gathering for the intelligence community.

Diia is a groundbreaking app that allows Ukrainians to access over 100 government services. Ukraine is also using the tech to connect people to critical support during the war. Now, @USAID is excited to work with @FedorovMykhailo to help other countries build platforms like Diia. pic.twitter.com/Y40ujXfzcY

— Samantha Power (@PowerUSAID) January 19, 2023 Samantha Power and Mykhailo Fedorov discuss intentions to spread Diia worldwide at Davos 2023.

And despite pressing security- and ethics-related issues, Diia’s already inspired the creation of government smartphone apps elsewhere, such as Estonia’s mRIIK. In an interview with US-backed Radio Svoboda, Mykhailo Fedorov explained that numerous other countries were in negotiations about the possibility of introducing equivalent applications. 

In other words, Diia and its counterparts, bolstered by COVID and the war alike, are poised to take the world by storm.

The e-hryvnia

While the Diia app blossoms, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is also advancing through major changes being made to the financial system, especially with regards to the imminent roll-out of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). A country’s fiat currency in digital form, advocates of state-facilitated CBDCs frequently gloss over the e-currency’s potential for surveillance and control with promises of convenience, transparency, and modernity.

With respect to CBDCs, Ukraine’s version is advancing quickly, despite the war. Ukrainian officials hope to launch Ukraine’s CBDC, the e-hryvnia, in 2024. A creation of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Ukraine’s central bank, the e-hryvnia aims to “effectively perform all functions of money and supplement cash and noncash forms of hryvnia.” According to the National Bank of Ukraine, the e-hryvnia’s implementation will further digitize the economy, boost both transparency and confidence in the currency, and promote non-cash payment methods in Ukraine. To encourage its use, Mykhailo Fedorov proposed to accept his salary in the new CBDC.

The e-hryvnia is likely to operate on the Stellar blockchain network, which Ukrainian commercial bank Tascombank partnered with for an e-hryvnia pilot project. An open-source decentralized blockchain network “designed with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in mind,” Stellar is a public network facilitated by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). According to SDF CEO and World Economic Forum Agenda Contributor Denelle Dixon, SDF’s mission is to strive towards “global financial inclusion” a buzzword elite groups like the World Economic Forum and the International Monetary Fund have used to garner support for and participation in the CBDC paradigm. As it strives to become a “global payment standard,” Stellar is poised to do much more than facilitate the roll-out of the e-hryvnia. The German bank Bankhaus von der Heydt’s selected Stellar to help develop a prospective European Stablecoin, and Stellar is also partnering with Mercado Bitcoin to develop a Brazilian CBDC.

SDF’s CEO Denelle Dixon – Source

A cornerstone of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for its exceptional capacity to securely store data, the distributed digital ledger technology system known as blockchain would also be  institutionalized in Ukraine if the e-hryvnia is launched in collaboration with Stellar. Tascombank’s 2023 CBDC e-hryvnia pilot report emphasized the alleged benefits of issuing the digital currency via blockchain, such as “greater transparency and accountability,” “improved security and confidentiality of client data,” and the functionality and low costs involved using the system. Generally, proponents of CBDCs boast its convenience, potential as an anti-corruption tool, and as an inclusive way to bank the “unbanked,” i.e. those who do not use or cannot access traditional financial services.

Yet, critics note that CBDC is not a unique solution to the financial system’s current problems. As Martin C.W. Walker posits in the London School of Economics (LSE) Business Review , “it is not even obvious why CBDC is the best alternative.” Meanwhile, surveillance- and control-related concerns proliferate because government promotion of CBDCs suggests that authorities could easily obtain direct access to transaction histories. In the event that CBDCs become programmable, governments could theoretically program or otherwise direct how or when given users could use— or be blocked from using — their money, creating the potential for abuse. Researchers at Duke University concur in their FinReg blog, writing bluntly that “sovereign states might misuse CBDCs to serve their agendas for anti-money laundering, crime investigation and prevention, or social control reasons.” And European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde inadvertently disclosed CBDC’s capacity for social control in a prank phone call, admitting “there will be control” after an individual posing as Zelensky stated that “the problem [with CBDCs] is [people] don’t want to be controlled.”

Worsening the matter is the fact that CBDCs will likely be tied to Digital IDs. According to the Financial Times in 2021, the state of CBDC research and experimentation suggested that a creation of a digital currency outside some kind of universal digital identity or tracking system was “nigh on impossible,” and that “CBDCs will likely be tied to personal accounts that include personal data, credit history and other forms of relevant information.” In Ukraine’s case, an earlier e-hryvnia pilot used anonymous e-wallets while noting that the e-hryvnia can be either implemented anonymously or with user identification; for instance, the more recent Tascombank pilot followed standard Know Your Client (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures to identify users. 

McKinsey posits that Digital ID can streamline such KYC and AML procedures, and Kyiv already has a functional Digital ID through Diia that can be used in a legal capacity. Thus, it seems plausible or likely that a prospective e-hryvnia would be connected to a Digital ID in the future, thus binding Ukrainians to whatever terms the Ukrainian government decides to utilize when launching and programming the CBDC.

While its e-hryvnia has yet to launch, Ukraine appears poised to develop and launch the currency on schedule as part of the larger digital transformation it considers vital to its success and future. If successfully rolled out, the e-hryvnia appears ready to saddle Ukrainians with the same prospects for mass surveillance, monitoring, and control – problems that the larger CBDC phenomenon poses elsewhere in the dizzying global drive towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Corporations, Public-Private Partnerships Fuel Ukraine’s War Machine and Reconstruction Efforts

Ukraine’s war-time destruction means that major reconstruction efforts will be necessary post-conflict. The elite propose to address such needs through private investments, solutions, and partnerships that are set to fashion a new Ukraine in accordance with the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Great Reset, while undermining whatever democratic processes still exist within previous power structures.

While institutions like the US State Department emphasize that public-private cooperation is key to Ukraine’s future, corporations like BlackRock, Google, Microsoft, and Palantir are also gaining control over Ukraine’s wartime and reconstruction processes through various forms of assistance, Memorandums of Understandings, and adjacent efforts to maintain Ukraine’s infrastructure and war-effort alike. While such arrangements give these groups significant leverage over Ukraine and its future, they have no electoral mandate and need not answer to the public.

Aware of the country’s abject desperation, massive debts, and ratcheting reconstruction needs alike, Ukrainian Officials appear eager to sell off Ukraine’s future to the highest bidders.”Ukraine is the story of a future victory and a chance for you to invest now in projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars to share the victory with us,” Zelensky said at the virtual opening of a September 2022 New York Stock Exchange trading session. Zelensky, Fedorov, and a number of other Ukrainian public officials have appeared frequently at high-level events internationally to beg for such investments, assistance, and partnership, such as at Davos 2023, the 2022 Web Summit, and last year’s Viva Technology Conference, where Zelensky even appeared as a hologram to ask for assistance from the entrepreneurs and investors in attendance.

Volodymyr Zelensky appears as a hologram at the 2022 Viva Technology Conference. His speech focused on how “Ukraine was offering technology firms a unique chance to rebuild the country as a fully digital democracy.” – Source

But Ukraine’s search for elite and corporate assistance is the end of the little sovereignty it has left. After all, a common denominator in these wartime and reconstruction efforts is the emphasis on public-private collaboration, especially through anti-democratic public-private partnerships, where public accountability mechanisms are diffused or disarmed through an obfuscation of long-standing power structures as private entities, which are largely unanswerable to the public, usurp responsibilities, resources, and roles that once belonged to governments. As of late 2022, Ukraine was even reforming its legal framework in order to better facilitate and encourage such relationships.

Indeed, Ukraine’s war effort is infested with public-private partnerships and corporate relationships that the besieged country ultimately has little agency over. In response to the war, investors and benefactors of questionable stripes are lining up through Ukrainian fundraising and assistance programs like the USAID-backed Advantage Ukraine and United24. 

Furthermore, corporate giants including multi-national investment company BlackRock and mega-bank JP Morgan are all but buying Ukraine’s future. Zelensky and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink agreed in December 2022 to focus “on coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction [of Ukraine], channeling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy.” A Memorandum of Understanding between BlackRock Financial Markets Advisory (BlackRock FMA) and Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy formalized these agreements with “a goal of creating opportunities for both public and private investors to participate in the future reconstruction and recovery of the Ukrainian economy.” 

Emphasizing the scale of BlackRock’s prospective involvement, Fink reportedly told Zelensky that “if you hire us…we’re not going to be creating new oligarchs, but we’re creating a new Ukraine.” But as the creators of a “new Ukraine,” BlackRock already manages tens of trillions of dollars in assets, thus “tower[ing] over the finance, insurance and real estate sectors” internationally, and is heavily involved in a number of major corporations and media organizations, perhaps making BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, as Joyce Nelson writes in CounterPunch, the world’s most powerful person. BlackRock’s interest in “creating a new Ukraine,” therefore, is likely par for the company’s predatory course.

Volodymyr Zelensky meets with Larry Fink via video conference in late December 2022 – Source

Meanwhile, other mega-corporate assistance appears poised to capture much of Ukraine’s critical government infrastructure, at least temporarily. In addition to providing Ukraine hundreds of millions of USD in assistance in 2022 and 2023, Microsoft is storing the entire Ukrainian government on its servers, with Microsoft president Brad Smith explaining to GeekWire that $107 million USD went towards “literally mov[ing] the government and much of the country of Ukraine from on-premises servers to the cloud.” Online tech and sales giant Amazon has also transferred much of Ukraine’s national data, including the population registry, land ownership records, and tax related information, onto its “snowball” hard-drives. 

Meanwhile, investment management giants and major agribusiness corporations including Vanguard, Kopernik, Kernel, and MHP are rapidly buying up Ukrainian farmland and now hold over 28 percent of Ukraine’s arable land, according to the Oakland Institute. Such oligarchs and agribusinesses, the Oakland Institute notes, are “substantially indebted” to western institutions like the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which means such groups have both significant stakes in and leverage over what happens to Ukraine’s farmland. The report also suggests that Ukraine’s massive debts likely mean Ukraine’s creditors, bondholders, and major international financial institutions have influence over Ukraine’s prospective reconstruction efforts.

Noting that policy efforts surrounding Ukraine’s reconstruction, like the Ukraine Recovery Conference, center privatizing “non-critical enterprises,” the report concludes that “[e]verything is thus in place for further concentration of land in the hands of oligarchs, foreign interests, and large agribusinesses” in Ukraine.

In other words, Ukraine’s war-time sell-out has functionally become a rat race amongst the elite.

As its future is divided and sold off to unaccountable oligarchs, much of Ukraine’s war effort, save for the actual dying, has been usurped by the private sector. Google, for example, has assisted Ukraine on multiple fronts, creating an air raid alerts app to protect Ukraine’s citizens against Russian bombardment, while also expanding access to its free anti-distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) software, Project Shield, to protect Ukraine’s internet networks against cyber-attacks. Google is one of several tech companies defending Ukraine from cyberattacks. 

In addition to providing 50,000 Google workspace licenses for the Ukrainian government, Google also boasts about its censorship of Ukraine war materials, with a blog post highlighting efforts to disrupt “coordinated influence operations from Russian threat actors.” Google has removed over 80,000 YouTube videos and channels about the war in Ukraine, and blocked over 750 channels and 4 million videos “associated with Russian state-funded news channels.” 

Many other big-tech companies such as TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Apple, and Microsoft have followed suit, either restricting access or to blocking “Kremlin-affiliated news outlets,” while Google and Apple have pulled Russian news apps from their app stores. While Meta created a special operations center specifically focused on curbing “disinformation” especially from Russian state affiliated outlets, Meta’s Facebook platform temporarily permitted calls for violence against Russians and Vladimir Putin on its website, though the policy has since been rescinded. 

Although Elon Musk’s Starlink has provided internet to many Ukrainians affected by conflict, its coverage has been partially rescinded to prevent Starlink’s use “for offensive purposes.” But other corporations, like data firm and effective CIA-front Palantir, defense contractor Anduril, and facial recognition service Clearview AI — companies funded, or in Palantir’s case, co-founded, by early Facebook investor and “predictive policing” style surveillance enthusiast Peter Thiel —  are bringing the Fourth Industrial Revolution to war. While Palantir helps Ukraine with its military targeting of war assets including tanks and artillery, new weapons and technologies, like defense contractor Anduril’s autonomous Altius 600M drones, are being rolled-out on the battlefield. Further, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is using Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology to “uncover Russian assailants, combat misinformation and identify the dead.” Widely considered an invasive service, Clearview AI has been prevented from selling its services to most corporations and organizations in the US (save for the US police). However, the ethical concerns it has raised elsewhere are of little concern on Ukrainian battlefields. In other words, the fog of war has allowed companies to test and advance controversial, deadly and invasive technologies with little scrutiny.

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel – Source

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s public-private partnership craze also dominates its tech-development efforts, including Diia and its CBDC roll-outs. In 2019, Fedorov explained that Diia’s development would rely “on an effective team and international technical assistance, public-private partnerships, volunteering.” And assuming current arrangements proceed, the e-hryvnia will also be established through a public-private partnership, where the Stellar Development Foundation’s Stellar Blockchain will facilitate the CBDC. 

European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) researchers acknowledged the uncomfortable terrain that the Ukrainian government and private-sector war participants share, writing that “[t]ech corporations have become owners and rulers of the critical assets that a sovereign state requires to function.” Rather than question whether such a development, where Ukraine and other nation states have effectively lost their sovereignty to a myriad of elite power structures and corporations, is a positive one, the ECFR analysts wrote that governmental bodies “need to work more closely with the private sector: that is, to (successfully) fight hybrid wars, states need to become hybrid themselves” to “confront a deteriorating world order.” In other words, they recommend a world where the public and private sectors fuse their efforts even more closely, just like whose who push for the Great Reset’s stakeholder capitalism model.

US meddling in Ukraine’s Euromaidan and the West’s non-stop push for war already mean that Ukraine today has little sovereignty. But private stakeholders appear eager to consume what remains of Ukraine’s sovereignty through their creeping domination over Ukraine’s war-efforts, digital and technological advances, and prospective reconstruction to create a new Ukraine that satisfies the elite’s technocratic vision.

In short, the Great Reset is advancing rapidly in Ukraine, a country that becomes more pliable to its demands and initiatives with each new day of conflict.

Sustainability Efforts and a “Green” Post-War Ukraine

As the efforts to modernize wartime Ukraine have proliferated, so have the efforts to ensure Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction is “green,” especially according to elite protocols already established within policy frameworks such as the European Green Deal and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Much like COVID-19 jumpstarted green efforts, elite figures like BlackRock’s Larry Fink speculate the same will occur during the current war: Fink even posited that in the long term, “recent events will actually accelerate the shift toward greener sources of energy in many parts of the world,” even noting that “[d]uring the pandemic, we saw how a crisis can act as a catalyst for innovation.”

Fink’s comments on, and apparently intense interest in, the matter suggest that, like much of today’s environmental movement (as documented by journalists like Cory Morningstar), the “green” initiatives vying for Ukraine’s future have been co-opted by the billionaire class and are ultimately crafted to benefit the needs of the wealthiest. Even the Washington Post acknowledged in a late 2022 piece that the hyper-elite had usurped the reins of climate-related policymaking work, noting governments increasingly rely on oligarchs like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mike Bloomberg, to get the job done.

Indeed, ongoing “green” and “green finance” initiatives proposed for wartime and post-war Ukraine occur within the context of the Green movement’s co-optation by the elite and its proven capacity for predatory economic and political tactics, whereby top-down environmental dictates are used as cover to transform or undermine political and financial systems internationally. While I cannot elaborate on this context in full here, Unlimited Hangout has reported on critical examples, including the UN Sustainable Development Goal’s use of debt as a compliance instrument, especially against developing nations, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero’s (GFANZ) moves “to recreate the entire global financial system for [its] benefit under the guise of promoting sustainability” by using decarbonization and other climate-related dictates as a bludgeon to force developing countries to create economic environments conducive to elite goals, undermining national sovereignty in the process.

UN-Backed Banker Alliance Announces “Green” Plan to Transform the Global Financial System The most powerful private financial interests in the world, under the cover of COP26, have developed a plan to transform the global financial system by fusing with institutions like the World Bank and using them to further erode national sovereignty in the developing world.

Considering the ambitious nature of Green Ukraine wartime initiatives, one is forced to speculate whether climate dictates are once again being used as “bludgeons” to facilitate the political class’s desired financial system transformations in Ukraine, whose chronic indebtedness to groups like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) already make it vulnerable to foreign interference. After all, the environmental policy brief from the 2022 elite-facilitated Ukrainian Recovery Conference emphasizes the need for Ukraine’s “green transition to [a] new green economy.” And a flurry of initiatives like the Ukraine World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s Green Restoration of Ukraine, the Nordic Green Bank’s EU-funded “green recovery efforts,” and a heavily-publicized Marshall Plan for Ukraine, which dozens of high level politicians insist must be “green,” all suggest that transformative green reconstruction and green economic plans for Ukraine are of the utmost importance to the political class.

In any case, Ukraine is certainly looking to conduct its own green transition: much like Ukraine has bent over backwards to both encourage and accommodate the elite-backed public-private-partnership- and tech- domination of its society, it also appears eager to hit every “green target” possible to maintain relevance. Even as war rages on, Ukraine is building wind turbines en masse, and Ukrainian energy group DTEK is “aggressively promoting” a plan for Ukraine to “build 30 gigawatts of clean power by 2030.” Further, Ukraine’s “green” dreams made a big splash at COP27, where several exhibits at the Ukrainian Pavilion detailed the country’s plans to become a “green” leader. There, a printed message from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky read: “Ukraine can, and I am certain will, become a green energy hub for Europe.” 

Meanwhile, the EU appears quite happy to loop Ukraine in with its own ambitious green targets, already agreeing to help rebuild Ukraine in the EU’s New European Bauhaus architectural style, a “major catalyst” for the European Green Deal, a policy framework that, in the EU Commission’s own words, “proposes [the] transformation of [the] EU economy and society to meet climate ambitions.” In a new initiative, Associating Ukrainian cities to the Climate-neutral and smart cities Mission, several Ukrainian cities will be selected by and collaborate with the European Union to commit to climate neutrality in their rebuilding efforts according to the European Green Deal’s city-related climate objectives.

And not unlike BlackRock’s Memorandum of Understanding with the Ukrainian Government elucidating future major investment agreements for Ukraine’s reconstruction, many elite-backed green efforts in Ukraine center around finance, investment and banking prospects, and are often put forth by those with predatory financial histories. One suspect example is the Ukraine Green Growth Initiative investment fund, launched by Australian mining magnates Andrew and Nicola Forrest, who have poured in 500 million USD (approx 740 million AUD) into the project. As language from a press release suggests, the investment fund will facilitate major “green” changes for much of Ukraine’s economy and primary infrastructure, focusing on infrastructure basics like “energy and communications to build a digital green grid, so Ukraine can become a model for the world as a leading digital green economy.” Complementing the release’s language regarding Ukraine’s prospective “green” economic transformation, the release also highlights Zelensky’s belief that the new fund will “facilitate the world’s first green digital economy and the fastest growing economy in Europe.”

Notably, a press release from Cision PR Newswire reveals major politicians and powerful business executives are driving the Ukraine Green Growth Initiative: 

“A period of consultation for the investment fund [Ukraine Green Growth Initiative] has been ongoing since early March [of 2022] and has included Dr Forrest briefing US President Joe Biden, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, and the international business community including UN Special Envoy Michael Bloomberg, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink and their teams.”

An advocate of “green-hydrogen,” Andrew Forrest also has a history of assisting green elite initiatives. For instance, he invested in Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) in 2021 alongside Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg. But such elites have track records as people looking to maximize investment returns, not as altruists or environmentalists. That these are the people facilitating a “green economy” in Ukraine should spur speculation as to whether they are using mass investments, under the guise of a green transition, to transform Ukraine’s economy for their benefit.

Volodymyr Zelensky (L) shakes hands with Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest (R) in November 2022 – Source

Despite Ukraine’s dire circumstances, the western elite appear almost as hellbent on making Ukraine’s future “green” as they are on continuing the war, launching continuous and ambitious initiatives towards ensuring sustainability and a post-war green economy in the war-torn country. While these green reconstruction plans are bringing major changes to Ukraine’s economic system and society, they are being rammed through by a conglomerate of NGOs, elite groups, and wealthy investors with little input from the Ukrainian public.

Within the context of Ukraine’s hyper-use as a testing ground for digital transformation, war technology, and ever-more powerful public-private partnerships, this multitude of overarching “green” initiatives drawn up for Ukraine’s future, which bear potential for the erosion of society’s existing policymaking processes, are part and parcel of the Great Reset.

War: The Great Reset’s Accelerator

Ultimately, the conglomeration of elite-backed services, partnerships, and initiatives I describe in this investigation claim to provide critical innovation or assistance to Ukraine during a time of crisis; however, they are instead collectively facilitating prospects for surveillance and control over everyday life while eroding possibilities for governmental and individual independence. Such technological developments I also discuss, in tandem with political arrangements centering a wartime merger of the public and private sectors, are prime for the political class, who want to use such developments to forge governance infrastructures conducive to their dictations. 

Such chaotic ongoings in Ukraine are a microcosm of the larger geopolitical moment, where the world’s elite are moving to advance anti-democratic public-private partnerships’ prevalence and status in civil society. While advocates frame such public-private initiatives and cooperations as holistic and innovative, they undermine (what’s left of) today’s system of Westphalian national sovereignty by doling out critical infrastructure to unaccountable institutions, NGOs, and corporations that prioritize the interests of the power elite. As a result, previous democratic processes in sovereign nations are eroded in favor of global governance, which Unlimited Hangout contributor Iain Davis describes as a system where a global public private partnership “creates policy initiatives at the global level, which then cascade down to people in every nation.” 

Ultimately, these efforts are steamrolling ahead with little room for accountability or public debate: even if Ukrainians want to continue fighting an increasingly gruesome conflict, they have no real say over the myriad of wartime initiatives, largely sprung by international elite groups,  that are being rammed through as the conflict deepens. Indeed, although many elite organizations “assisting” Ukraine insist that they’re fighting for democracy, Zelensky has consolidated Ukraine’s TV outlets and dissolved rival political parties in efforts towards a “unified information policy,” uprooting possible challenges to power. In other words, the current moment leaves Ukrainian society vulnerable and perfectly pliable to be molded to suit elite agendas, including those of the Great Reset.

Importantly, the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s roll-out in Ukraine forces speculation as to whether ongoing hostilities are about geopolitical struggles as we traditionally have understood them, facilitating initiatives crucial to the Great Reset, or a combination of the two. While genuine animosities between the world’s nation-states exist, track records ultimately show that countries are in general agreement, or have otherwise been bound into agreement, on the implementation of many of the measures I’ve highlighted in this piece. This remains true despite the measures’ potential to supersede the world’s current power structures in critical ways, threatening to create a world dominated by top-down public-private initiatives that limit national and individual sovereignty and dignity alike. The elites center “equity” and even “justness” in their initiatives, but their “just” world is one where those governed have equally little say over the state of world events and little room for escape.

The exact state of today’s geopolitical fault lines remains up to debate, but one thing is certain: Ukraine will not be the only country impacted by the policies and initiatives I’ve described. Rather, what is rolled out in Ukraine is likely coming for everyone. With respect to CBDCs, for example, Ukraine’ is certainly not alone in its efforts: according to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, 114 countries — which represent over 95 percent of the world’s GDP — are currently exploring CBDC prospects, whereas only 35 countries were doing so in 2020. Adding to the chaos, recent bank meltdowns, including the dubious shuttering of Silicon Valley Bank, suggest that long-term financial system instabilities may well provide a perfect moment (or, perhaps more accurately, an excuse) for widespread CBDC roll-outs.

For now, war continues with no end in sight, leaving Ukrainian civilians as cannon fodder while worsening living standards elsewhere, creating a general state of desperation amongst the world’s population as prices for basic goods continue to spike and peace remains a non-starter. The moment provides a perfect opportunity for those behind the Great Reset to experiment with their desired initiatives, technologies, and governmental structures and spread them around the globe.

Ukraine’s Future Lies in the Great Reset.