15 December 21
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We look at the historic workers’ victory at the Elmwood Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York, where workers successfully voted to unionize last week, making them the first to do so among the coffee chain’s 9,000 locations in the United States, and sparking new efforts at stores across the country. We speak to one of the 19 employees who voted in favor of forming a union about confronting the company and overcoming the challenges. Starbucks hired “the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country and literally ran not even a textbook anti-union campaign but an almost unprecedented anti-union campaign,” says Jaz Brisack, a barista at the Starbucks located in Buffalo.
WORKERS: [cheering]
AMY GOODMAN: Workers cheered as the results of their vote were announced. Nineteen workers voted in favor, eight against, forming the union. A union vote failed at a second Buffalo Starbucks location, and a third election at the Buffalo airport Starbucks has not yet been confirmed after nearly half the “yes” votes were challenged. The National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, will now review those votes. The victory in Buffalo came despite Starbucks’ union-busting efforts and could trigger similar drives at more of its stores across the country. Already, on Monday, workers at two Massachusetts Starbucks, in Boston and Brookline, filed paperwork with the NLRB petitioning to unionize.
For more, we’re joined by one of the Starbucks workers you just heard cheering in Buffalo. Jaz Brisack is a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks store there. She is now the first — this is now the first location of Starbucks to unionize. She’s with Starbucks Workers United.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Jaz. Why don’t you explain the significance of your victory, and also what Starbucks did, bringing in management from all over, the highest levels, to try to pressure workers?
JAZ BRISACK: Thanks so much for having me. And I think, like you’re saying, it’s important we won our union, thank goodness. And the Genesee store, which was actually packed with people who don’t even vote at that store, to try to inflate the voter list, we’re confident that they’re going to also be the other of the first unionized Starbucks. But it shouldn’t have had — we shouldn’t have had to go through all of the union busting that we’ve gone through in the past four months.
Starbucks sent in a SWAT team, they called it, of upper managers, over a hundred of them, led by the president of Starbucks North America, Rossann Williams. And these managers came into our stores. They were there in every shift, every day part, pulling people off the floor, working on the floor so that they could prevent us from being able to have honest conversations with our partners. And we went from having, you know, 85% at my store — 100% of voters signed up on union cards at Genesee — to fighting for our lives to even win one of these first Starbucks unions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk, Jaz, about some of the conditions that prompted the employees to believe that they needed to unionize?
JAZ BRISACK: I mean, honestly, we were unionizing because we wanted a voice in the workplace. We didn’t think that Starbucks was by any means the worst employer. There’s things that could always be better. I had a co-worker — when we started the union campaign, she had been there 11 years. She was making 16 cents more than a new hire. And certainly, like, healthcare and mental health and certain things could be better. But we really just want a voice on the job. And we want — we don’t believe that any job should not have a union, because we think that everything should have more democracy.
And I think the real crisis or tragedy here is, we would have won so many more stores already if we had actually had a fair process for these votes. But instead, Starbucks took advantage of every delay tactic possible, most of which were loopholes created by the Trump labor board, to delay us getting to our votes and actually being able to unionize, and to give them more time to have anti-union meetings and threaten us with losing benefits, losing the right to pick up shifts or transfer, and trying to pit us against our fellow partners, against our managers, and blame the union for all of the stress and tensionn that we were feeling.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about the company tactics? Starbucks portrays itself as an enlightened, socially conscious company. Were you surprised by the vehemence with which they marshaled their forces to prevent this union drive?
JAZ BRISACK: One hundred percent. In the beginning, we actually asked them to sign the fair election principles, which is a set of guidelines that sets a higher standard than U.S. labor law for how companies act during union elections. And, you know, it seems naive that we expected them to sign it, but, instead, this company, that says that they’re a social justice company — they say they’re a different kind of company — hired Littler Mendelson, which is the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country, and literally ran not even a textbook anti-union campaign but an almost unprecedented anti-union campaign of bringing in literally the COO, the president of Starbucks North America and all of their other corporate underlings to try to disrupt Buffalo and turn our stores upside down.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what happened at the other two Starbucks where the workers were attempting to unionize? The results, not completely in — is that right? — are being challenged on both sides.
JAZ BRISACK: So, at Camp, they were totally disrupted. And there were some ballots that weren’t actually counted, so we’re still figuring out what all happened there. And then, at Genesee, they had stacked the voter list with partners from other stores that were remodeling. Not every worker who worked at that store got a ballot. They selectively picked who they wanted to receive ballots and put on that voter list. One of our partners told Bernie Sanders during the town hall that he hosted that it was like if you had partners — sorry, if you had tourists from Texas visit Vermont and then vote in Senator Sanders’ Senate election. So, I think once those ballots are cleared up, it’s going to be a clear victory at the Genesee store.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, your response to hearing that Brookline and a Boston store are already attempting to unionize there? And go beyond just Starbucks, your message?
JAZ BRISACK: I think our movement is growing. I’m incredibly proud of the Boston partners, the Arizona partners and the partners in the other stores in Buffalo. I do want to note that there’s three more stores that are going to union elections. And Starbucks is terrified that Elmwood will be the first domino, so they’re already cracking down much harder. We have an organizing committee leader, Angel, in one of these stores who’s being written up and retaliated against for the most minor of things. They’re finding ways to target her, because they realize that what they were doing earlier wasn’t enough to stop us and break us apart, so they’re trying to go even harder. So we need even more community pressure on Starbucks to stop union busting and actually come to the bargaining table and work with our union instead of busting it.
AMY GOODMAN: Jaz Brisack, I want to thank you for being with us, barista at the Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York, which has become the first location in the United States to unionize, the first Starbucks location. She’s with Starbucks Workers United.
Mark Meadows in Washington, D.C., in July 2020. (photo: Erin Scott/Reuters)
Three of the network’s presenters urged Meadows to push Trump to act while Trump Jr said ‘He has to lead now’
The sense of panic that enveloped the former president’s inner circle during the attack on the US Capitol was revealed on Monday when Congresswoman Liz Cheney, vice-chair of a House select committee investigating the riot, read aloud texts sent to Meadows.
“We need an Oval address,” Trump Jr wrote as his father’s supporters were storming the Capitol, sending members of Congress running for their lives and delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. “He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
Trump Jr added: “He’s got to condemn this shit asap.”
In response, Meadows texted: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”
Cheney also made public frantic messages from three Fox News presenters who became notorious as cheerleaders for the Trump administration and for fanning the flames of his lies about voter fraud. Crossing a line from journalists to informal advisers, they urged Meadows to push Trump to act quickly to stop the siege by his supporters.
Laura Ingraham, the host of The Ingraham Angle, wrote: “Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Yet later that night Ingraham went on air baselessly shifting blame from Trump’s supporters to the anti-fascist movement antifa. She told viewers: “From a chaotic Washington tonight, earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the Maga [Make America Great Again] movement. Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathisers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.”
Brian Kilmeade, co-host of the morning show Fox & Friends, on which Trump appeared regularly, wrote to the chief of staff on 6 January: “Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”
And Sean Hannity, a prime time host who once appeared onstage with Trump at a campaign rally, texted Meadows: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”
But later, on his broadcast, Hannity said: “Our election, frankly, was a train wreck. Eighty-three per cent, according to Gallup, of Republicans, and millions of others, do not have faith in these election results. You can’t just snap your finger and hope that goes away.”
Trump has been widely condemned for his casual response to insurrection, which had been raging for three hours before he finally released a video urging the mob: “Go home. We love you. You’re very special.” A few hours later he tweeted: “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Since then the ex-president, Trump Jr and rightwing media have spent months seeking to minimise the events of 6 January, which resulted in five deaths and more than 500 arrests. Trump has claimed that rioters were “hugging and kissing” police.
Last month another Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, produced a three-part documentary, Patriot Purge, for the Fox Nation streaming platform that pushed the lie that the insurrection was a “false flag” operation designed to hurt Trump’s supporters. “January 6 is being used as a pretext to strip millions of Americans – disfavoured Americans – of their core constitutional rights,” he insisted.
But Monday’s fresh insight into the symbiotic relationship between the Trump White House and Fox News show that those close to the president realised the gravity of what was unfolding and how damaging it could be.
Cheney said the texts show Trump’s “supreme dereliction” as he refused to strongly condemn the violence of his supporters. “These texts leave no doubt,” Cheney said. “The White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol.”
Amanda Carpenter, a former communications director to Senator Ted Cruz, wrote on the Bulwark website: “These texts prove something essential. No matter what they say now, Trump’s loyalists knew at the time that what was happening at the Capitol was not a peaceful protest.
“They knew that it was a dangerous attack on American democracy. And they knew that Trump was responsible for it. That’s why they sent the texts pleading with him, through his staff, to make it stop.”
The texts were among almost 9,000 documents that Meadows turned over to the committee before he ceased cooperation. Cheney disclosed only a tiny fraction, raising the prospect of further embarrassments to come for Trump’s allies.
The committee voted 9-0 to recommend that Meadows, himself a former members of the House, be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena. The full House is set to vote on Tuesday to refer the charges to the justice department.
The hearing was not broadcast on Fox News but Meadows appeared on the network soon after the vote. There was no mention of the revelatory texts. He told Hannity: “This is about Donald Trump and about actually going after him once again.”
Two longtime Fox News contributors, Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, resigned last month in protest at Carlson’s Patriot Purge programme. Chris Wallace, host of the network’s flagship Sunday politics programme, resigned on Sunday after 18 years to join CNN’s new streaming platform.
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming is serving on the Jan. 6 committee in defiance of Republican leaders, and she faces a primary challenge from a Trump-backed candidate. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/NYT)
ALSO SEE: Text Messages to Meadows
Renew Focus on Trump's Inaction During Jan. 6 Attack
The resolution was approved on a 222-to-208 vote, with just two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — joining Democrats in voting “yes.”
The matter now goes to the Justice Department, which will decide whether to pursue the contempt referral. Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor criminal offense that can result in up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
Members of the Jan. 6 panel have long said the information they seek from Meadows, a onetime North Carolina congressman, is not protected under any kind of executive privilege as the bipartisan panel investigates the insurrection, what former president Donald Trump did that fateful day and the actions leading up to the riot.
Sweeping claims of executive privilege by Meadows and Trump to shield their activities on and before Jan. 6 from congressional scrutiny have been challenged in the court and by constitutional experts.
Last week, Meadows backed away from cooperating with the panel just days after saying he would. He argued that the panel was pressuring him to discuss issues that the former president said are protected by executive privilege. However, Meadows had already produced thousands of documents for the panel, including text messages and emails related to the events of the day.
“If you’re making excuses to avoid cooperating with our investigation, you’re making excuses to hide the truth from the American people about what happened on January 6th,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the select committee chairman, during House debate. “You’re making excuses as part of a coverup.”
Cheney, vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel, lamented having to urge members to vote yes on a criminal contempt for Meadows, their former colleague. She noted that Tuesday’s vote related principally to Meadows’s refusal to testify about messages and other communications that he turned in as evidence.
“January 6th was without precedent,” Cheney said. “There has been no stronger case in our nation’s history for a congressional investigation into the actions of a former president. This body must investigate the facts in detail, and we are entitled to ask Mr. Meadows about the non-privileged materials he has produced to us.”
Cheney and Kinzinger, who voted for the resolution, are the two Republicans on the select committee.
The pro-Trump rioters were intent on stopping the affirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win and the counting of the votes. The attack resulted in five deaths and injuries to about 140 members of law enforcement.
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), a member of the Jan. 6 panel, told her colleagues that Meadows’s cooperation is needed so that Americans can understand what happened.
“It’s increasingly clear that for 187 minutes, the commander in chief was derelict of his duty,” Luria said. “We know this because Mr. Meadows provided the evidence to the committee without any assertions of privilege. And while the record handed over is helpful, there are many questions that we need to ask.”
Republicans accused Democrats of partisanship and said the Jan. 6 panel is an attempt at “burying their political opponents.” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) decried its pursuit of individuals connected to a “First Amendment-protected political rally” before the assault on the Capitol.
“All we know for sure about this partisan investigation is that it’s massive, it’s happening without accountability, and it’s happening in secret,” Banks said. “The select committee should serve as a warning to all Americans.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opposed the creation of an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the attack.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also accused Democrats of treating Meadows as a criminal.
“Mark Meadows is our former colleague,” Jordan said on the House floor. “He is a good man, and he is my friend. And this, this is as wrong as it gets.”
Cheney, in response to Jordan and Banks, accused her Republican colleagues of changing their position on the events of Jan. 6.
“I would say that we all on this side of the aisle used to be in agreement about what had happened on January 6th,” Cheney said. “There was a brief period of time, days perhaps when we were in agreement. . . . Unfortunately, Mr. McCarthy’s position changed on this issue.”
Ahead of the full House vote, Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) urged fellow House Republicans to vote “no” on the resolution, saying Meadows has “made good-faith efforts to cooperate” with the committee.
Not so, said Democrats, who argued that Meadows changed his mind about collaborating with the Jan. 6 panel after his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” came out. In his book, Meadows shared previously unknown details about Trump, prompting the former president to pan the book.
“After ex-President Trump exploded and called the book ‘fake news,’ Meadows performed a U-turn and suddenly refused to appear at the December 8th deposition that he had previously agreed to,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.). “He called his own book ‘fake news,’ which is a pretty devastating review to render on your own book.”
Democrats displayed various texts to Meadows, part of a larger collection of evidence turned in by the former chief of staff that the Jan. 6 panel presented late Monday. Among the thousands of documents were texts from allies of Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. urging Meadows to get the president to stop the rioters as the insurrection unfolded.
Cheney had stunned the committee proceedings Monday night by reading several of the texts. She read several more on Tuesday before the House Rules Committee. These, she said, were from Republican members of Congress to Meadows.
“It is really bad up here,” one said. Another one texted, “The president needs to stop this ASAP.”
“Fix this now,” another lawmaker urged Meadows.
“As we saw last night, dozens of texts — including from Trump administration officials, from members of the press, from Donald Trump Jr. — urged immediate action by the president,” Cheney said. “But we know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes.”
In a statement Tuesday, Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger III, said Meadows “never stopped cooperating” with the committee.
“Rather, he has maintained consistently that as a former Chief of Staff he cannot be compelled to appear for questioning and that he as a witness is not licensed to waive Executive Privilege claimed by the former president,” Terwilliger said.
On Tuesday, McConnell said, “We are all watching what’s unfolding on the House side.”
“It will be interesting to reveal all of the participants that were involved,” he said.
Asked about Meadows, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a news conference Tuesday that any final decision rests with the Justice Department.
Border Patrol agents hold a news conference prior to a media tour of a new U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary facility near the Donna International Bridge in Donna, Texas, May 2, 2019. (photo: Eric Gay/AP)
In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, AP Executive Editor Julie Pace urged the agency to explain why the name of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Martha Mendoza was run through the databases and identified as a potential confidential informant during the Trump administration, as detailed in a report by Homeland Security's inspector general.
“This is a flagrant example of a federal agency using its power to examine the contacts of journalists,” Pace wrote. “While the actions detailed in the inspector general’s report occurred under a previous administration, the practices were described as routine.”
The DHS investigation of U.S. journalists, as well as congressional staff and perhaps members of Congress, which was reported by Yahoo News and AP on Saturday. It represents the latest apparent example of an agency created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks using its vast capabilities to target American citizens.
DHS prompted criticism from Congress and elsewhere in July 2020 w hen it deployed poorly or unidentified agents in military-style uniforms to sweep people off the streets of Portland, Oregon, and hustle them into unmarked cars during protests outside the federal courthouse in the city.
This latest revelation prompted Sen. Ron Wyden to call on DHS to immediately turn over the inspector general report to Congress.
“If multiple government agencies were aware of this conduct and took no action to stop it, there needs to be serious consequences for every official involved, and DHS and the Justice Department must explain what actions they are taking to prevent this unacceptable conduct in the future,” said Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has long sought more oversight of government surveillance.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said, “If true, this abuse of government surveillance powers to target journalists, elected officials and their staff is deeply disturbing."
CBP said in a statement over the weekend that its vetting and investigative practices are “strictly governed” and that the agency doesn't investigate without a legitimate and legal basis to do so.
A DHS spokeswoman, Marsha Espinosa, said Monday that Mayorkas is “deeply committed to ensuring the protection of First Amendment rights" and has developed policies that “reflect this priority,” thought she did not provide details.
“We do not condone the investigation of reporters in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights,” she said. “CBP and every component agency and office in the Department will ensure their practices are consistent with our values and our highest standards.”
In the AP's letter, Pace called for “assurances that these improper practices and apparent abuse of power will not continue going forward.”
That would be in line with recent order from Attorney General Merrick Garland prohibiting the seizing of records of journalists in leak investigations. That followed an outcry over revelations that the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump had obtained records belonging to journalists, as well as Democratic members of Congress and their aide s and a former White House counsel, Don McGahn.
During the Obama administration, federal investigators secretly seized phone records for some reporters and editors at the AP. Those seizures involved office and home lines as well as cellphones.
The DHS inspector general report that revealed the most recent disclosure of investigations of journalists also stemmed from a Trump-era leak investigation.
The IG was looking into the actions of Jeffrey Rambo, a Border Patrol agent who was on temporary duty with a Customs and Border Protection unit in the Washington D.C. area in 2017 when he accessed government travel records as part of a leak investigation involving reporter Ali Watkins, who was with Politico at the time and now writes for The New York Times.
The inspector general opened its investigation after media reports exposed Rambo and his investigation of Watkins.
In the course of its investigation, the IG learned from Rambo that he had routinely run checks on journalists and others, including congressional staff, while working at the CBP unit, the Counter Network Division.
Rambo told investigators that he queried its databases about Mendoza before trying to establish a relationship with her because of her expertise in writing about forced labor, an area of concern for CBP because it enforces import restrictions. The AP reporter is a known expert on the subject who won her second Pulitzer Prize in 2016 as part of a team that reported on slave labor in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia.
The AP, in a separate statement from the Pace letter, also sought an explanation for the use of the databases to investigate Mendoza and other journalists.
“We are deeply concerned about this apparent abuse of power,” the AP said. “This appears to be an example of journalists being targeted for simply doing their jobs, which is a violation of the First Amendment.”
The inspector general referred its findings to a federal prosecutor for possible charges of misusing government databases and lying to investigators, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute Rambo and two other Homeland Security employees.
An actor depicting a migrant on the U.S.-Mexico border is struck with a stun gun, demonstrating the capabilities of Brinc's 'Wall of Drones' system. (photo: The Intercept)
Well-funded Brinc positions its use of robots as nonviolent, but an early promo video undercuts this message.
The company’s ascendant founder and CEO, Blake Resnick, recently appeared on Fox Business News to celebrate a venture capital coup: $25 million from Silicon Valley A-listers like Sam Altman, ex-LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s Next Play Ventures, and former acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. The 21-year-old Resnick, a Thiel fellow and a new inductee to the prestigious Forbes “30 Under 30” list in the category of social impact, told Fox Business’s Stuart Varney that Brinc’s quadcopter drones are helping police defuse dangerous hostage situations on a near-daily basis. Resnick repeated his longtime claim that the company had been founded “in large part” as a lifesaving response to the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, an inspirational story that’s made its way into press coverage of the startup. With increased scrutiny paid to the moral and bodily harms posed by autonomous militarized robots, Brinc’s “Values & Ethics” webpage offers a salve, asserting a “duty to bring these technologies into the world responsibly” and a commitment to “never build technologies designed to hurt or kill.”
But a 2018 promotional video for an unreleased border security product shows that the startup’s original technological goals did involve hurting people. In the video, Resnick, standing at an unnamed stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, demonstrates how his company’s flying bots could be used to detect, track, interrogate, and ultimately physically attack would-be migrants. “This is one of the most desolate parts of our southern border,” a blazer-clad Resnick says in the video, standing beside a large metallic box adorned with solar panels. “Every year, over $100 billion of narcotics and half a million people flow through areas just like this one.” When the video was made, the Trump administration had begun investing in so-called virtual wall surveillance technologies to obviate the need for the physical wall that Donald Trump had promised during his presidential campaign, inking contracts with Brinc competitors like Anduril Industries (also linked to Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder behind the Thiel Fellowship). “There’s no wall here,” notes Resnick, “and it probably wouldn’t work anyway because of the rough terrain and eminent domain issues.” Luckily, “there is a solution,” says Resnick, gesturing to the metal chest.
Resnick would have been about 18 at the time the video was made.
In the video, Resnick calls that solution the “Wall of Drones,” in which the glinting boxes would be deployed across the border, each harboring a small robotic quadcopter with high-definition and thermal sensors, self-piloting abilities, human-detection software, and, crucially, a stun gun. Once Brinc’s border drone detected a “suspicious” person, it was to connect its sensors and built-in speaker with a Border Patrol agent, who would then remotely “interrogate” the “perpetrator.” In the video demonstration, a Latino actor referred to as “José” is walking in the middle of the desert when he is approached by the Brinc drone. José then refuses to show identification to the drone, points a gun at it, and walks away, whereupon the drone is depicted firing a Taser into his back and shooting an electrical current through him. José crumples into the dirt.
Fully realized, the Wall of Drones would have entailed hundreds or thousands of these armed robots constantly searching for targets along the border, adding more weapons to an already highly militarized stretch of the Earth.
The artificial intelligence-powered hunting and tasing of a wandering migrant isn’t a scene that’s immediately easy to reconcile with Brinc’s corporate vow: “Be mindful of the implications of our work — we won’t build a dystopia.” Today the company is still engineering sophisticated security-oriented drones with an eye toward police, the Department of Homeland Security, and defense customers but without the weaponized variant shown off in the desert. Brinc’s current main offering to police and other first responders is the LEMUR S drone, which closely resembles the Wall of Drones unit but does not have a weapon installed. It’s described by the company as a “tactical tool that can help to de-escalate, reduce risk, and save lives.” The company also sells the BRINC BALL, a spherical cellphone-like device that can be tossed into dangerous situations by police to listen and communicate remotely.
The Blake Resnick of today, three years removed from his borderland demonstration, is contrite over having worked on the border system. He told The Intercept over email that the “video is immature, deeply regrettable and not at all representative of the direction I have taken the company in since.” He described the Wall of Drones system as a “prototype” that was “never fully developed, sold, or used operationally” and was discontinued in 2018 because it is “prone to disastrous misuse. … I agree that the technology as depicted is unethical and that is one of the reasons we created a set of Values and Ethics to guide our work,” he added, referring to the website section.
Resnick also said that “the video was faked” — the company “never built a drone with a functional taser.” The video, he said, used compressed gas to fire a Taser dart at the actor but “without actually putting high voltage through the wires.”
Still, the company did try to sell the system: Resnick noted that “BRINC had initial discussions with a very limited number of parties” about purchasing the Wall of Drones system, explaining that the idea was to build something cheaper than a border wall that would reduce “the risk of gunfights between law enforcement and armed traffickers attempting to cross into the United States.” But “nothing ever progressed” with the project, and Resnick repeated his claim that he was inspired by the Las Vegas shooting “to pivot away from these uses” to serving emergency responders, though work continued on the Wall of Drones into the year following the massacre. That pivot and the company values statement predated the startup’s first employee, revenue, product delivery, and fundraising, he said. Brinc, he said, is committed to not selling weaponized drones.
Despite Resnick’s change of heart and the company’s current unarmed tack, some who spoke to The Intercept say the fact that the technology was ever on the table raises serious concerns about the values, ambitions, and judgment of Brinc and its young CEO. And though Brinc’s founder says that he’s pivoted away from drones built to intercept and incapacitate migrants, the company’s original mission — selling flying robots to aid in state security — remains in place, situating the company in an ethically fraught new frontier of business. The company recently hired a “federal capture and strategy director,” previously employed by a defense contractor selling drones to U.S. Special Operations Command, suggesting an interest in military applications.
“He’s got this whole narrative about the shooting in Vegas, but the original idea was 100 percent to use drones to tase migrants,” a source with direct knowledge of Brinc told The Intercept. The source, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their livelihood, said that Resnick at the time showed little interest in drone “applications in the non-tasing immigrants business” even though there are “a million things you can use drones for that don’t involve electrocuting people.”
Referring to Brinc’s current emphasis on nonviolence and de-escalation, this person said, “They only made that up when they raised funds from real investors like Sam Altman. The company puts out a good front about rescuing people and doing no harm, but imagine what is said to cops behind closed doors?”
“Startups pivot all the time to where the money is,” this source added. “Google once said ‘don’t be evil.’ When the rubber hits the road, you’ve got paying customers, and those customers want things.”
A patent in Resnick’s name protecting an expanded version of the system from the video raises further questions about both his stated motivation for pivoting away from weaponized drones and about the potential for the company to use such technology in the future. Brinc provisionally applied for the patent in 2017 but formally applied in June 2018 — seven months after the Vegas shooting that Resnick said convinced him to switch to helping emergency responders. The patent was awarded to Brinc last year. The patent application, for “Drone Implemented Border Patrol,” states: “If a person is detected, an onboard facial recognition algorithm will attempt to identify the person. … In one embodiment, the facial recognition algorithm works by comparing captured facial features with the U.S. Department of State’s facial recognition database.”
The patent specifies that the onboard stun gun is a Taser X26, a powerful, discontinued electroshock weapon associated with “higher cardiac risk than other models,” according to a 2017 Reuters investigation. But a stun gun was only one of many possible options. Other potential anti-migrant armaments described in the patent include pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, rubber buckshot, plastic bullets, beanbag rounds, sponge grenades, an “electromagnetic weapon, laser weapon, microwave weapon, particle beam weapon, sonic weapon and/or plasma weapon,” along with “a sonic approach to incapacitate a target.”
Migrant and civil liberties advocates decried the technology demonstrated in the video.
“The Biden administration and Congress must not contract with companies like Brinc,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, after reviewing the video. “Doing so promotes profits over people and does nothing to further human safety or security.” Ebadolah added that the Wall of Drones system is “particularly horrifying when one considers potential targets: unaccompanied children, pregnant people, and asylum-seekers searching for safety.”
She echoed the source’s concerns about a pivot back to weaponized drones, stating: “In an unregulated market, tech executives follow the money, and they engineer their products for buyers that promise large profits and little scrutiny. The most attractive government contracts are with our most over-funded and under-scrutinized agencies: law enforcement.”
Jacinta Gonzalez of Mijente, a Latino advocacy and migrant rights group, described the Wall of Drones video as “absolutely horrifying” in an interview with The Intercept. “It’s terrifying to think that this is not just an awful idea that someone brings up in a brainstorming session, but [Brinc has] gone so far as to make the video,” which she says is illustrative of “how blurry the line has become between war zones and a militarized border. You can tell very clearly that these companies are getting their inspiration from the killer drones that are used in other parts of the world.”
Gonzalez said that she was disturbed by the scenario depicted in the video, which she described as a “racist fantasy” and not representative of the true humanitarian problems along the border. “If there was a drone flying over, they would most likely be finding families and people who are going through a very difficult health crisis. … They would be confronting folks that might not be speaking English.” Forcing the average southern border migrant into an interrogation with a robot designed to electrocute them “just makes a dangerous journey all the more violent, all the more likely to result in death or harm.”
Gonzalez shared skepticism over how Brinc’s current pledge to not help build a robotic police dystopia might fare in the longer term: “You cannot trust a company that is even putting ideas like this out into the world.” Avoiding a future in which the southern border is patrolled by armed flying robots “not only requires commitments from this company to say that they won’t produce this type of drone, but it also requires local police departments, and ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and Border Patrol to all proactively say, ‘This is not the type of technology that we want to invest in, we would absolutely never implement something like this.’”
The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. (photo: NASA/Reuters)
The findings were based on new satellite imagery of the Thwaites Glacier, which has been nicknamed the “doomsday glacier,” showing a proliferation of cracks across its surface.
“The eastern ice shelf is likely to shatter into hundreds of icebergs,” Oregon State University glaciologist Erin Pettit said at a video news conference Monday. “Suddenly the whole thing would collapse.”
Scientists have been monitoring the glacier, the current melting of which contributes to roughly 4 percent of annual sea level rise, for years. Its eastern portion abuts an underwater mountain, and was thought to be more stable, but new satellite images revealed that fractures have developed that are allowing warming ocean waters to speed its disintegration.
If the eastern portion of the glacier were to give way, it would hasten the collapse of its other portions, Pettit said, adding that the collapse of the eastern section could occur in the next three to five years, “like the shattering of your car’s window.”
“As it’s structured right now, this ice shelf acts like a dam. But it’s not going to for very long,” Pettit said.
The chain reaction following the collapse of the eastern section of the glacier could threaten coastal residents around the world, many of whom may be unprepared for a sudden spike in sea level, which has risen slowly due to climate change since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Since 1880, rising global temperatures have resulted in 8 to 9 inches of sea level rise, though the rate of rise has seen a sharp uptick in recent decades. By 2100, NASA predicts, climate change will cause seas to rise by 2 to 6 feet, largely because of the melting of ice in Antarctica and Greenland.
The Thwaites Glacier has been melting due to a combination of warm air and water temperatures, caused at least partly by climate change, making it more unstable. Between the 1980s and 2017, it lost 600 billion tons of ice. As the oceans continue to warm, the glacier is expected to become more unmoored to land, increasing its risk of collapse.
“Things are evolving really rapidly here,” Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said during Monday's news conference. “It’s daunting.”
While it could take centuries for the full impact of a total collapse of the Thwaites Glacier to play out, the latest data from Antarctica is not giving scientists any reason for optimism.
”Each new satellite image we get, we see deeper and longer fractures,” Pettit said, adding, “What we’re seeing already is enough to be worried about. Thwaites is kind of a monster.”
This photo taken Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, shows solar panels on rooftops of a housing development in Folsom, California. State regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission are expected to propose reforms that would lower the financial incentives for homeowners who install solar panels. (photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
California’s successful program to get more people to put solar panels on their homes has been at the center of a fierce debate between the state’s major utilities and the solar industry, and the California Public Utilities Commission’s proposed reforms have been highly anticipated.
The state's three major utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison — say the savings solar customers get now are so great that those customers no longer pay their fair share for the operation of the overall energy grid.
The CPUC's proposal would reduce the incentives for going solar and roughly double, to 10 years, how long it takes Californians to make back what they paid to install the systems. Buying rooftop solar panels and a system to store extra power costs about $40,000, according to the solar industry.
The CPUC said the reforms are designed to make the program, known as “net energy metering,” more cost effective and to ensure energy grid operation costs are shared fairly. But the solar industry and its allies warned the changes will make it harder for the state to achieve its clean energy targets, including generating 100% of retail electricity from renewable or zero-carbon sources by 2045.
“The proposal will move us backward on clean energy and block many Californians’ ability to help make our grid more resilient to climate change,” Susannah Churchill, western senior regional director for Vote Solar, a political advocacy group that pushes for clean energy adoption.
California launched the program in 1995 with the goal of encouraging more homes to go solar. It worked. California now has 1.3 million solar systems on homes, far more than any other state, according to the solar industry. That number will only grow because since 2020 all newly constructed homes in California must have solar panels.
But as solar panels proliferated, and the cost of installing them went down, criticism of the program grew. The three major utilities say the current setup allows solar customers to sell their energy back into the grid for more than it’s worth. They say more needs to be done to make sure solar customers — most of whom still rely on power from utilities once the sun goes down — are paying for all the parts of the energy grid they use.
Power rates include many costs unrelated to energy generation, like transmission, distribution and even wildfire prevention work. When solar households pay significantly lower electricity bills — or no bills at all — they’re contributing less to those things. That means more of the cost is shouldered by other customers, often households and renters without the financial means to install solar.
The utilities and the state peg that cost at $3 billion. The solar industry disputes that number, saying it doesn't take into effect the savings for everyone when the utilities need to build fewer power plants and transmission lines due to more residential solar.
The CPUC’s proposal would still allow residential solar customers to sell their excess energy back to the power companies, but at a significantly lower rate. Solar customers would also have to pay a grid charge based on how many kilowatts of energy they produce; it would cost $40 to $50 for most homes.
The charges aren’t as great as what the utilities wanted. Pacific Gas & Electric spokeswoman Ari Vanrenen called the proposal a “step in the right direction to modernize California's outdated rooftop solar program.” But she indicated the utility — the state’s largest — would like to see regulators put higher charges on rooftop solar customers, but she declined to give specifics.
Southern California Edison said the proposal would reduce the burden on non-solar customers. San Diego Gas & Electric declined to comment, with spokesman Anthony Wagner saying the utility needed more time to review the proposal.
CPUC Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves said the reforms are aimed at creating fairness while ensuring the financial benefits are still strong enough to encourage people to go solar. Regulators also proposed creating a $600 million fund to help low income households afford solar and storage.
The changes would apply to new solar customers, but the new charges would be phased in over four years. People who already have panels on their homes wouldn’t operate under the new system until they’ve had their panels for 15 years. If they take advantage of a roughly $3,200 subsidy to build storage systems, they would move onto the new rate structure right away.
Residential rooftop solar reduces the demand on the electric grid up to 25% during the day, according to the CPUC. But California's peak household energy demand is from 6 to 9 p.m., when the state is mostly relying on fossil fuels to power the energy grid.
The CPUC's proposal encourages people who already have solar panels to switch to storage by raising the power rates during those peak evening hours. And it would allow anyone with rooftop solar to install panels that provide up to 150% of the power they typically need. That would encourage people to switch to electrical appliances or buy electric cars they can charge at home, CPUC Commissioner Guzman Aceves said.
“How do we transform a program that’s about distributed solar — capturing the sun — to a program that has to do with a period when the sun is down?” Guzman Aceves said. “That’s what this reform is about.”
But the solar industry warned the higher costs will discourage people from going solar in the first place, said Bernadette Del Chiaro of the California Solar and Storage Association, which represents 700 businesses in the industry.
“If you make solar more expensive, you make the battery more expensive. It is that simple,” she said.
The CPUC commissioners could change the proposal before voting on it early next year.
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