theintercept--2020-05-08--Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia

F fleeting moments during New York Gov .
Andrew Cuomo ’ s daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday , the somber grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile .
“ We are ready , we ’ re all-in , ” the governor gushed .
“ We are New Yorkers , so we ’ re aggressive about it , we ’ re ambitious about it .
… We realize that change is not only imminent , but it can actually be a friend if done the right way.
” The inspiration for these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt , who joined the governor ’ s briefing to announce that he will be heading up a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York state ’ s post-Covid reality , with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life .
“ The first priorities of what we ’ re trying to do , ” Schmidt said , “ are focused on telehealth , remote learning , and broadband .
… We need to look for solutions that can be presented now , and accelerated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better.
” Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair ’ s goals were purely benevolent , his video background featured a framed pair of golden angel wings .
Just one day earlier , Cuomo had announced a similar partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop “ a smarter education system.
” Calling Gates a “ visionary , ” Cuomo said the pandemic has created “ a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [ Gates ’ s ] ideas … all these buildings , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the technology you have ?
” he asked , apparently rhetorically .
It has taken some time to gel , but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge .
Call it the “ Screen New Deal.
” Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters , the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives , but as a living laboratory for a permanent — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Anuja Sonalker , CEO of Steer Tech , a Maryland-based company selling self-parking technology , recently summed up the new virus-personalized pitch .
“ There has been a distinct warming up to human-less , contactless technology , ” she said .
“ Humans are biohazards , machines are not.
” It ’ s a future in which our homes are never again exclusively personal spaces but are also , via high-speed digital connectivity , our schools , our doctor ’ s offices , our gyms , and , if determined by the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for many of us , those same homes were already turning into our never-off workplaces and our primary entertainment venues before the pandemic , and surveillance incarceration “ in the community ” was already booming .
But in the future under hasty construction , all of these trends are poised for a warp-speed acceleration .
This is a future in which , for the privileged , almost everything is home delivered , either virtually via streaming and cloud technology , or physically via driverless vehicle or drone , then screen “ shared ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s a future that employs far fewer teachers , doctors , and drivers .
It accepts no cash or credit cards ( under guise of virus control ) and has skeletal mass transit and far less live art .
It ’ s a future that claims to be run on “ artificial intelligence ” but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away in warehouses , data centers , content moderation mills , electronic sweatshops , lithium mines , industrial farms , meat-processing plants , and prisons , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and hyperexploition .
It ’ s a future in which our every move , our every word , our every relationship is trackable , traceable , and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants .
If all of this sounds familiar it ’ s because , pre-Covid , this precise app-driven , gig-fueled future was being sold to us in the name of convenience , frictionlessness , and personalization .
But many of us had concerns .
About the security , quality , and inequity of telehealth and online classrooms .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ drones smashing packages ( and people ) .
About location tracking and cash-free commerce obliterating our privacy and entrenching racial and gender discrimination .
About unscrupulous social media platforms poisoning our information ecology and our kids ’ mental health .
About “ smart cities ” filled with sensors supplanting local government .
About the good jobs these technologies wiped out .
About the bad jobs they mass produced .
And most of all , we had concerns about the democracy-threatening wealth and power accumulated by a handful of tech companies that are masters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wreckage left behind in the fields they now dominate , whether media , retail , or transportation .
That was the ancient past known as February .
Today , a great many of those well-founded concerns are being swept away by a tidal wave of panic , and this warmed-over dystopia is going through a rush-job rebranding .
Now , against a harrowing backdrop of mass death , it is being sold to us on the dubious promise that these technologies are the only possible way to pandemic-proof our lives , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loved ones safe .
Thanks to Cuomo and his various billionaire partnerships ( including one with Michael Bloomberg for testing and tracing ) , New York state is being positioned as the gleaming showroom for this grim future — but the ambitions reach far beyond the borders of any one state or country .
And at the dead center of it all is Eric Schmidt .
Well before Americans understood the threat of Covid-19 , Schmidt had been on an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign pushing precisely the “ Black Mirror ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ empowered him to build .
At the heart of this vision is seamless integration of government with a handful of Silicon Valley giants — with public schools , hospitals , doctor ’ s offices , police , and military all outsourcing ( at a high cost ) many of their core functions to private tech companies .
It ’ s a vision Schmidt has been advancing in his roles as chair of the Defense Innovation Board , which advises the Department of Defense on increased use of artificial intelligence in the military , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence , or NSCAI , which advises Congress on “ advances in artificial intelligence , related machine learning developments , and associated technologies , ” with the goal of addressing “ the national and economic security needs of the United States , including economic risk.
” Both boards are crowded with powerful Silicon Valley CEOS and top executives from companies including Oracle , Amazon , Microsoft , Facebook , and of course , Schmidt ’ s colleagues at Google .
This is notable because Google ’ s parent company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through its Sidewalk Labs division , choosing a large portion of Toronto ’ s waterfront as its “ smart city ” prototype .
But the Toronto project was just shut down after two years of ceaseless controversy relating to the enormous amounts of personal data that Alphabet would collect , a lack of privacy protections , and questionable benefits for the city as a whole .
Five months after this presentation , in November , NSCAI issued an interim report to Congress further raising the alarm about the need for the U.S. to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ controversial technologies .
“ We are in a strategic competition , ” states the report , obtained via FOIA by the Electronic Privacy Information Center .
“ AI will be at the center .
The future of our national security and economy are at stake.
” By late February , Schmidt was taking his campaign to the public , perhaps understanding that the budget increases his board was calling for could not be approved without a great deal more buy-in .
In a New York Times op-ed headlined “ I used to Run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China , ” Schmidt called for “ unprecedented partnerships between government and industry ” and , once again , sounding the yellow peril alarm : A.I .
will open new frontiers in everything from biotechnology to banking , and it is also a Defense Department priority .
… If current trends continue , China ’ s overall investments in research and development are expected to surpass those of the United States within 10 years , around the same time its economy is projected to become larger than ours .
Unless these trends change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competing with a country that has a bigger economy , more research and development investments , better research , wider deployment of new technologies and stronger computing infrastructure .
… Ultimately , the Chinese are competing to become the world ’ s leading innovators , and the United States is not playing to win .
The only solution , for Schmidt , was a gusher of public money .
Praising the White House for requesting a doubling of research funding in AI and quantum information science , he wrote : “ We should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ again as we build institutional capacity in labs and research centers .
… At the same time , Congress should meet the president ’ s request for the highest level of defense R & D funding in over 70 years , and the Defense Department should capitalize on that resource surge to build breakthrough capabilities in A.I.
, quantum , hypersonics and other priority technology areas.
” That was exactly two weeks before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic , and there was no mention that a goal of this vast , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Only that it was necessary to avoid being outcompeted by China .
But , of course , that would soon change .
In the two months since , Schmidt has put these preexisting demands — for massive public expenditures on high-tech research and infrastructure , for a slew of “ public-private partnerships ” in AI , and for the loosening of myriad privacy and safety protections — through an aggressive rebranding exercise .
Now all of these measures ( and more ) are being sold to the public as our only possible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus that will be with us for years to come .
And the tech companies to which Schmidt has deep ties , and which populate the influential advisory boards he chairs , have all repositioned themselves as benevolent protectors of public health and munificent champions of “ everyday hero ” essential workers ( many of whom , like delivery drivers , would lose their jobs if these companies get their way ) .
Less than two weeks into New York state ’ s lockdown , Schmidt wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and made clear that Silicon Valley had every intention of leveraging the crisis for a permanent transformation .
Like other Americans , technologists are trying to do their part to support the front-line pandemic response .
… But every American should be asking where we want the nation to be when the Covid-19 pandemic is over .
How could the emerging technologies being deployed in the current crisis propel us into a better future ?
… Companies like Amazon know how to supply and distribute efficiently .
They will need to provide services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the computing systems and expertise .
We should also accelerate the trend toward remote learning , which is being tested today as never before .
Online , there is no requirement of proximity , which allows students to get instruction from the best teachers , no matter what school district they reside in .
… The need for fast , large-scale experimentation will also accelerate the biotech revolution .
… Finally , the country is long overdue for a real digital infrastructure… .
If we are to build a future economy and education @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fully connected population and ultrafast infrastructure .
The government must make a massive investment—perhaps as part of a stimulus package—to convert the nation ’ s digital infrastructure to cloud-based platforms and link them with a 5G network .
Indeed Schmidt has been relentless in pursuing this vision .
Two weeks after that op-ed appeared , he described the ad-hoc homeschooling programing that teachers and families across the country had been forced to cobble together during this public health emergency as “ a massive experiment in remote learning.
” The goal of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to find out : How do kids learn remotely ?
And with that data we should be able to build better remote and distance learning tools which , when combined with the teacher … will help kids learn better.
” During this same video call , hosted by the Economic Club of New York , Schmidt also called for more telehealth , more 5G , more digital commerce , and the rest of the preexisting wish list .
All in the name of fighting the virus .
His most telling comment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benefit of these corporations , which we love to malign , in terms of the ability to communicate , the ability to deal with health , the ability to get information , is profound .
Think about what your life would be like in America without Amazon.
” He added that people should “ be a little bit grateful that these companies got the capital , did the investment , built the tools that we ’ re using now , and have really helped us out.
” I that , until very recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surging .
Presidential candidates were openly discussing breaking up big tech .
Amazon was forced to pull its plans for a New York headquarters because of fierce local opposition .
Google ’ s Sidewalk Labs project was in perennial crisis , and Google ’ s own workers were refusing to build surveillance tech with military applications .
In short , democracy — inconvenient public engagement in the designing of critical institutions and public spaces — was turning out to be the single greatest obstacle to the vision Schmidt was advancing , first from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Alphabet and then as chair of two powerful boards advising Congress and Department of Defense .
As the NSCAI documents reveal , this inconvenient exercise of power by members of the public and by tech workers inside these mega-firms , has , from the perspective of men like Schmidt and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos , maddeningly slowed down the AI arms race , keeping fleets of potentially deadly driverless cars and trucks off the roads , protecting private health records from becoming a weapon used by employers against workers , preventing urban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ software , and much more .
Now , in the midst of the carnage of this ongoing pandemic , and the fear and uncertainty about the future it has brought , these companies clearly see their moment to sweep out all that democratic engagement .
To have the same kind of power as their Chinese competitors , who have the luxury of functioning without being hampered by intrusions of either labor or civil rights .
All of this is moving very fast .
The Australian government has contracted with Amazon to store the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Canadian government has contracted with Amazon to deliver medical equipment , raising questions about why it bypassed the public postal service .
And in just a few short days in early May , Alphabet has spun up a new Sidewalk Labs initiative to remake urban infrastructure with $ 400 million in seed capital .
Josh Marcuse , executive director of the Defense Innovation Board that Schmidt chairs , announced that he was leaving that job to work full-time at Google as head of strategy and innovation for global public sector , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cash in on some of the many opportunities he and Schmidt have been busily creating with their lobbying .
To be clear , technology is most certainly a key part of how we must protect public health in the coming months and years .
The question is : Will that technology be subject to the disciplines of democracy and public oversight , or will it be rolled out in state-of-exception frenzy , without asking critical questions that will shape our lives for decades to come ?
Questions like , for instance : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ digital connectivity is in times of crisis , should these networks , and our data , really be in the hands of private players like Google , Amazon , and Apple ?
If public funds are paying for so much of it , should the public also own and control it ?
If the internet is essential for so much in our lives , as it clearly is , should it be treated as a nonprofit public utility ?
And while there is no doubt that the ability to teleconference has been a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are serious debates to be had about whether our more lasting protections are distinctly more human .
Take education .
Schmidt is right that overcrowded classrooms present a health risk , at least until we have a vaccine .
So how about hiring double the number of teachers and cutting class size in half ?
How about making sure that every school has a nurse ?
That would create much-needed jobs in a depression-level unemployment crisis and give everyone in the learning environment more elbow room .
If buildings are too crowded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shifts , and having more outdoor education , drawing on the plentiful research that shows that time in nature enhances children ’ s capacity to learn ?
Introducing those kinds of changes would be hard , to be sure .
But they are not nearly as risky as giving up on the tried-and-true technology of trained humans teaching younger humans face-to-face , in groups where they learn to socialize with one another to boot .
Upon learning of New York state ’ s new partnership with the Gates Foundation , Andy Pallotta , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was quick to react : “ If we want to reimagine education , let ’ s start with addressing the need for social workers , mental health counselors , school nurses , enriching arts courses , advanced courses and smaller class sizes in school districts across the state , ” he said .
A coalition of parents ’ groups also pointed out that if they had indeed been living an “ experiment in remote learning ” ( as Schmidt put it ) , then the results were deeply worrying : “ Since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , our understanding of the profound deficiencies of screen-based instruction has only grown.
” The same questions need to be asked about health .
Avoiding doctor ’ s offices and hospitals during a pandemic makes good sense .
But telehealth misses a huge amount .
So we need to have an evidence-based debate about the pros and cons of spending scarce public resources on telehealth — versus on more trained nurses , equipped with all the necessary protective equipment , who are able to make house calls to diagnose and treat patients in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we need to get the balance right between virus tracking apps , which with the proper privacy protections have a role to play , and the calls for a Community Health Corps that would put millions of Americans to work not only doing contact tracing but making sure that everyone has the material resources and support they need to quarantine safely .
In each case , we face real and hard choices between investing in humans and investing in technology .
Because the brutal truth is that , as it stands , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The refusal to transfer anything like the needed resources to states and cities in successive federal bailouts means that the coronavirus health crisis is now slamming headlong into a manufactured austerity crisis .
Public schools , universities , hospitals , and transit are facing existential questions about their futures .
If tech companies win their ferocious lobbying campaign for remote learning , telehealth , 5G , and driverless vehicles — their Screen New Deal — there simply won ’ t be any money left over for urgent public priorities , never mind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ urgently needs .
On the contrary : The price tag for all the shiny gadgets will be mass teacher layoffs and hospital closures .
Tech provides us with powerful tools , but not every solution is technological .
And the trouble with outsourcing key decisions about how to “ reimagine ” our states and cities to men like Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt is that they have spent their lives demonstrating the belief that there is no problem that technology can not fix .
For them , and many others in Silicon Valley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to receive not just the gratitude , but the deference and power that they feel has been unjustly denied .
And Andrew Cuomo , by putting the former Google chair in charge of the body that will shape the state ’ s reopening , appears to have just given him something close to free reign .
This is the first installment in an ongoing series about the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism in the age of Covid-19 .

F or a few fleeting moments during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, the somber grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile.
“We are ready, we’re all-in,” the governor gushed. “We are New Yorkers, so we’re aggressive about it, we’re ambitious about it. … We realize that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend if done the right way.”
The inspiration for these uncharacteristically good vibes was a video visit from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who joined the governor’s briefing to announce that he will be heading up a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York state’s post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.
“The first priorities of what we’re trying to do,” Schmidt said, “are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband. … We need to look for solutions that can be presented now, and accelerated, and use technology to make things better.” Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair’s goals were purely benevolent, his video background featured a framed pair of golden angel wings.
Just one day earlier, Cuomo had announced a similar partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop “a smarter education system.” Calling Gates a “visionary,” Cuomo said the pandemic has created “a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates’s] ideas … all these buildings, all these physical classrooms — why with all the technology you have?” he asked, apparently rhetorically.
It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the “Screen New Deal.” Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent — and highly profitable — no-touch future.
Anuja Sonalker, CEO of Steer Tech, a Maryland-based company selling self-parking technology, recently summed up the new virus-personalized pitch. “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology,” she said. “Humans are biohazards, machines are not.”
It’s a future in which our homes are never again exclusively personal spaces but are also, via high-speed digital connectivity, our schools, our doctor’s offices, our gyms, and, if determined by the state, our jails. Of course, for many of us, those same homes were already turning into our never-off workplaces and our primary entertainment venues before the pandemic, and surveillance incarceration “in the community” was already booming. But in the future under hasty construction, all of these trends are poised for a warp-speed acceleration.
This is a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physically via driverless vehicle or drone, then screen “shared” on a mediated platform. It’s a future that employs far fewer teachers, doctors, and drivers. It accepts no cash or credit cards (under guise of virus control) and has skeletal mass transit and far less live art. It’s a future that claims to be run on “artificial intelligence” but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away in warehouses, data centers, content moderation mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants, and prisons, where they are left unprotected from disease and hyperexploitation. It’s a future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants.
If all of this sounds familiar it’s because, pre-Covid, this precise app-driven, gig-fueled future was being sold to us in the name of convenience, frictionlessness, and personalization. But many of us had concerns. About the security, quality, and inequity of telehealth and online classrooms. About driverless cars mowing down pedestrians and drones smashing packages (and people). About location tracking and cash-free commerce obliterating our privacy and entrenching racial and gender discrimination. About unscrupulous social media platforms poisoning our information ecology and our kids’ mental health. About “smart cities” filled with sensors supplanting local government. About the good jobs these technologies wiped out. About the bad jobs they mass produced.
And most of all, we had concerns about the democracy-threatening wealth and power accumulated by a handful of tech companies that are masters of abdication — eschewing all responsibility for the wreckage left behind in the fields they now dominate, whether media, retail, or transportation.
That was the ancient past known as February. Today, a great many of those well-founded concerns are being swept away by a tidal wave of panic, and this warmed-over dystopia is going through a rush-job rebranding. Now, against a harrowing backdrop of mass death, it is being sold to us on the dubious promise that these technologies are the only possible way to pandemic-proof our lives, the indispensable keys to keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe.
It’s a future in which our homes are never again exclusively personal spaces but are also, via high-speed digital connectivity, our schools, our doctor’s offices, our gyms, and, if determined by the state, our jails.
Thanks to Cuomo and his various billionaire partnerships (including one with Michael Bloomberg for testing and tracing), New York state is being positioned as the gleaming showroom for this grim future — but the ambitions reach far beyond the borders of any one state or country.
And at the dead center of it all is Eric Schmidt. Well before Americans understood the threat of Covid-19, Schmidt had been on an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign pushing precisely the “Black Mirror” vision of society that Cuomo has just empowered him to build. At the heart of this vision is seamless integration of government with a handful of Silicon Valley giants — with public schools, hospitals, doctor’s offices, police, and military all outsourcing (at a high cost) many of their core functions to private tech companies.
It’s a vision Schmidt has been advancing in his roles as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, which advises the Department of Defense on increased use of artificial intelligence in the military, and as chair of the powerful National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, or NSCAI, which advises Congress on “advances in artificial intelligence, related machine learning developments, and associated technologies,” with the goal of addressing “the national and economic security needs of the United States, including economic risk.” Both boards are crowded with powerful Silicon Valley CEOS and top executives from companies including Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and of course, Schmidt’s colleagues at Google.
Eric Schmidt, executive chair of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, speaks during a National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence conference on Nov. 5, 2019 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
A s chair, Schmidt , who still holds more than $5.3 billion in shares of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), as well as large investments in other tech firms, has essentially been running a Washington-based shakedown on behalf of Silicon Valley. The main purpose of the two boards is to call for exponential increases in government spending on research into artificial intelligence and on tech-enabling infrastructure like 5G — investments that would directly benefit the companies in which Schmidt and other members of these boards have extensive holdings.
First in closed-door presentations to lawmakers and later in public-facing op-eds and interviews, the thrust of Schmidt’s argument has been that since the Chinese government is willing to spend limitless public money building the infrastructure of high-tech surveillance, while allowing Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Huawei to pocket the profits from commercial applications, the U.S.’s dominant position in the global economy is on the precipice of collapsing.
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The Electronic Privacy Information Center recently got access through a Freedom of Information Act request to a presentation made by Schmidt’s NSCAI one year ago, in May 2019. Its slides make a series of alarmist claims about how China’s relatively lax regulatory infrastructure and its bottomless appetite for surveillance are causing it to pull ahead of the U.S. in a number of fields, including “AI for medical diagnosis,” autonomous vehicles, digital infrastructure, “smart cities,” ride-sharing, and cashless commerce.
The reasons given for China’s competitive edge are myriad, ranging from the sheer volume of consumers who shop online; “the lack of legacy banking systems in China,” which has allowed it to leapfrog over cash and credit cards and unleash “a huge e-commerce and digital services market” using “digital payments”; and a severe doctor shortage, which has led the government to work closely with tech companies like Tencent to use AI for “predictive” medicine. The slides note that in China, tech companies “have the authority to quickly clear regulatory barriers while American initiatives are mired in HIPPA compliance and FDA approval.”
Image: NSCAI
More than any other factor, however, the NSCAI points to China’s willingness to embrace public-private partnerships in mass surveillance and data collection as a reason for its competitive edge. The presentation touts China’s “Explicit government support and involvement e.g. facial recognition deployment.” It argues that “surveillance is one of the ‘first-and-best customers’ for Al” and further, that “mass surveillance is a killer application for deep learning.”
A slide titled “State Datasets: Surveillance = Smart Cities” notes that China, along with Google’s main Chinese competitor, Alibaba, are racing ahead.
Image: NSCAI
This is notable because Google’s parent company Alphabet has been pushing this precise vision through its Sidewalk Labs division, choosing a large portion of Toronto’s waterfront as its “smart city” prototype. But the Toronto project was just shut down after two years of ceaseless controversy relating to the enormous amounts of personal data that Alphabet would collect, a lack of privacy protections, and questionable benefits for the city as a whole.
Five months after this presentation, in November, NSCAI issued an interim report to Congress further raising the alarm about the need for the U.S. to match China’s adaptation of these controversial technologies. “We are in a strategic competition,” states the report, obtained via FOIA by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “AI will be at the center. The future of our national security and economy are at stake.”
By late February, Schmidt was taking his campaign to the public, perhaps understanding that the budget increases his board was calling for could not be approved without a great deal more buy-in. In a New York Times op-ed headlined “I used to Run Google. Silicon Valley Could Lose to China,” Schmidt called for “unprecedented partnerships between government and industry” and, once again, sounding the yellow peril alarm:
A.I. will open new frontiers in everything from biotechnology to banking, and it is also a Defense Department priority. … If current trends continue, China’s overall investments in research and development are expected to surpass those of the United States within 10 years, around the same time its economy is projected to become larger than ours. Unless these trends change, in the 2030s we will be competing with a country that has a bigger economy, more research and development investments, better research, wider deployment of new technologies and stronger computing infrastructure. … Ultimately, the Chinese are competing to become the world’s leading innovators, and the United States is not playing to win.
The only solution, for Schmidt, was a gusher of public money. Praising the White House for requesting a doubling of research funding in AI and quantum information science, he wrote: “We should plan to double funding in those fields again as we build institutional capacity in labs and research centers. … At the same time, Congress should meet the president’s request for the highest level of defense R & D funding in over 70 years, and the Defense Department should capitalize on that resource surge to build breakthrough capabilities in A.I., quantum, hypersonics and other priority technology areas.”
That was exactly two weeks before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, and there was no mention that a goal of this vast, high-tech expansion was to protect American health. Only that it was necessary to avoid being outcompeted by China. But, of course, that would soon change.
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In the two months since, Schmidt has put these preexisting demands — for massive public expenditures on high-tech research and infrastructure, for a slew of “public-private partnerships” in AI, and for the loosening of myriad privacy and safety protections — through an aggressive rebranding exercise. Now all of these measures (and more) are being sold to the public as our only possible hope of protecting ourselves from a novel virus that will be with us for years to come.
And the tech companies to which Schmidt has deep ties, and which populate the influential advisory boards he chairs, have all repositioned themselves as benevolent protectors of public health and munificent champions of “everyday hero” essential workers (many of whom, like delivery drivers, would lose their jobs if these companies get their way). Less than two weeks into New York state’s lockdown, Schmidt wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that both set the new tone and made clear that Silicon Valley had every intention of leveraging the crisis for a permanent transformation.
Like other Americans, technologists are trying to do their part to support the front-line pandemic response. … But every American should be asking where we want the nation to be when the Covid-19 pandemic is over. How could the emerging technologies being deployed in the current crisis propel us into a better future? … Companies like Amazon know how to supply and distribute efficiently. They will need to provide services and advice to government officials who lack the computing systems and expertise. We should also accelerate the trend toward remote learning, which is being tested today as never before. Online, there is no requirement of proximity, which allows students to get instruction from the best teachers, no matter what school district they reside in. … The need for fast, large-scale experimentation will also accelerate the biotech revolution. … Finally, the country is long overdue for a real digital infrastructure…. If we are to build a future economy and education system based on tele-everything, we need a fully connected population and ultrafast infrastructure. The government must make a massive investment—perhaps as part of a stimulus package—to convert the nation’s digital infrastructure to cloud-based platforms and link them with a 5G network.
Indeed Schmidt has been relentless in pursuing this vision. Two weeks after that op-ed appeared, he described the ad-hoc homeschooling programing that teachers and families across the country had been forced to cobble together during this public health emergency as “a massive experiment in remote learning.” The goal of this experiment, he said, was “trying to find out: How do kids learn remotely? And with that data we should be able to build better remote and distance learning tools which, when combined with the teacher … will help kids learn better.” During this same video call, hosted by the Economic Club of New York, Schmidt also called for more telehealth, more 5G, more digital commerce, and the rest of the preexisting wish list. All in the name of fighting the virus.
His most telling comment, however, was this: “The benefit of these corporations, which we love to malign, in terms of the ability to communicate, the ability to deal with health, the ability to get information, is profound. Think about what your life would be like in America without Amazon.” He added that people should “be a little bit grateful that these companies got the capital, did the investment, built the tools that we’re using now, and have really helped us out.”
Associate professor Carol Dysinger, right, of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts conducts her weekly remote-learning class for the graduate school filmmaking students on April 9, 2020 at her apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y. Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
I t’s a reminder that, until very recently, public pushback against these companies was surging. Presidential candidates were openly discussing breaking up big tech. Amazon was forced to pull its plans for a New York headquarters because of fierce local opposition. Google’s Sidewalk Labs project was in perennial crisis, and Google’s own workers were refusing to build surveillance tech with military applications.
In short, democracy — inconvenient public engagement in the designing of critical institutions and public spaces — was turning out to be the single greatest obstacle to the vision Schmidt was advancing, first from his perch at the top of Google and Alphabet and then as chair of two powerful boards advising Congress and Department of Defense. As the NSCAI documents reveal, this inconvenient exercise of power by members of the public and by tech workers inside these mega-firms, has, from the perspective of men like Schmidt and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, maddeningly slowed down the AI arms race, keeping fleets of potentially deadly driverless cars and trucks off the roads, protecting private health records from becoming a weapon used by employers against workers, preventing urban spaces from being blanketing with facial recognition software, and much more.
Now, in the midst of the carnage of this ongoing pandemic, and the fear and uncertainty about the future it has brought, these companies clearly see their moment to sweep out all that democratic engagement. To have the same kind of power as their Chinese competitors, who have the luxury of functioning without being hampered by intrusions of either labor or civil rights.
All of this is moving very fast. The Australian government has contracted with Amazon to store the data for its controversial coronavirus tracking app. The Canadian government has contracted with Amazon to deliver medical equipment, raising questions about why it bypassed the public postal service. And in just a few short days in early May, Alphabet has spun up a new Sidewalk Labs initiative to remake urban infrastructure with $400 million in seed capital. Josh Marcuse, executive director of the Defense Innovation Board that Schmidt chairs, announced that he was leaving that job to work full-time at Google as head of strategy and innovation for global public sector, meaning that he will be helping Google to cash in on some of the many opportunities he and Schmidt have been busily creating with their lobbying.
Democracy — inconvenient public engagement in the designing of critical institutions and public spaces — has been the single greatest obstacle to the vision Schmidt has been advancing.
To be clear, technology is most certainly a key part of how we must protect public health in the coming months and years. The question is: Will that technology be subject to the disciplines of democracy and public oversight, or will it be rolled out in state-of-exception frenzy, without asking critical questions that will shape our lives for decades to come? Questions like, for instance: If we are indeed seeing how critical digital connectivity is in times of crisis, should these networks, and our data, really be in the hands of private players like Google, Amazon, and Apple? If public funds are paying for so much of it, should the public also own and control it? If the internet is essential for so much in our lives, as it clearly is, should it be treated as a nonprofit public utility?
And while there is no doubt that the ability to teleconference has been a lifeline in this period of lockdown, there are serious debates to be had about whether our more lasting protections are distinctly more human. Take education. Schmidt is right that overcrowded classrooms present a health risk, at least until we have a vaccine. So how about hiring double the number of teachers and cutting class size in half? How about making sure that every school has a nurse?
That would create much-needed jobs in a depression-level unemployment crisis and give everyone in the learning environment more elbow room. If buildings are too crowded, how about dividing the day into shifts, and having more outdoor education, drawing on the plentiful research that shows that time in nature enhances children’s capacity to learn?
Introducing those kinds of changes would be hard, to be sure. But they are not nearly as risky as giving up on the tried-and-true technology of trained humans teaching younger humans face-to-face, in groups where they learn to socialize with one another to boot.
Upon learning of New York state’s new partnership with the Gates Foundation, Andy Pallotta, president of New York State United Teachers, was quick to react: “If we want to reimagine education, let’s start with addressing the need for social workers, mental health counselors, school nurses, enriching arts courses, advanced courses and smaller class sizes in school districts across the state,” he said. A coalition of parents’ groups also pointed out that if they had indeed been living an “experiment in remote learning” (as Schmidt put it), then the results were deeply worrying: “Since the schools were shut down in mid-March, our understanding of the profound deficiencies of screen-based instruction has only grown.”
Staff members at Woodlin Elementary School distribute computers to parents of Montgomery County students on March 26, 2020 in Silver Spring, Md. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
I n addition to the obvious class and race biases against children who lack internet access and home computers (problems that tech companies are eager to be paid to solve with massive tech buys), there are big questions about whether remote teaching can serve many kids with disabilities, as required by law. And there is no technological solution to the problem of learning in a home environment that is overcrowded and/or abusive.
The issue is not whether schools must change in the face of a highly contagious virus for which we have neither cure nor inoculation. Like every institution where humans gather in groups, they will change. The trouble, as always in these moments of collective shock, is the absence of public debate about what those changes should look like and whom they should benefit. Private tech companies or students?
We face real and hard choices between investing in humans and investing in technology. Because the brutal truth is that, as it stands, we are very unlikely to do both.
The same questions need to be asked about health. Avoiding doctor’s offices and hospitals during a pandemic makes good sense. But telehealth misses a huge amount. So we need to have an evidence-based debate about the pros and cons of spending scarce public resources on telehealth — versus on more trained nurses, equipped with all the necessary protective equipment, who are able to make house calls to diagnose and treat patients in their homes. And perhaps most urgently, we need to get the balance right between virus tracking apps, which with the proper privacy protections have a role to play, and the calls for a Community Health Corps that would put millions of Americans to work not only doing contact tracing but making sure that everyone has the material resources and support they need to quarantine safely.
In each case, we face real and hard choices between investing in humans and investing in technology. Because the brutal truth is that, as it stands, we are very unlikely to do both. The refusal to transfer anything like the needed resources to states and cities in successive federal bailouts means that the coronavirus health crisis is now slamming headlong into a manufactured austerity crisis. Public schools, universities, hospitals, and transit are facing existential questions about their futures. If tech companies win their ferocious lobbying campaign for remote learning, telehealth, 5G, and driverless vehicles — their Screen New Deal — there simply won’t be any money left over for urgent public priorities, never mind the Green New Deal that our planet urgently needs.
On the contrary: The price tag for all the shiny gadgets will be mass teacher layoffs and hospital closures.
Tech provides us with powerful tools, but not every solution is technological. And the trouble with outsourcing key decisions about how to “reimagine” our states and cities to men like Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt is that they have spent their lives demonstrating the belief that there is no problem that technology cannot fix.
For them, and many others in Silicon Valley, the pandemic is a golden opportunity to receive not just the gratitude, but the deference and power that they feel has been unjustly denied. And Andrew Cuomo, by putting the former Google chair in charge of the body that will shape the state’s reopening, appears to have just given him something close to free reign.
This is the first installment in an ongoing series about the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism in the age of Covid-19.


theintercept--2020-05-08--With a Distracted Public, the Pentagon Tries to Get Away With Killing Innocent Civilians

continue to rage in the Middle East and Africa against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic .
Even in normal times , these conflicts got little public scrutiny .
But with attention more occupied than usual , some U.S. military operations have been escalating even further .
In recent years , these conflicts have become even deadlier for innocent people .
The Trump administration has shown itself to be not just indifferent , but positively encouraging of the killing of civilians in foreign wars .
If there is a time to get away with killing people with no fear of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yesterday , the Pentagon released its annual report on civilian casualties in its wars for the year 2019 .
According to the report , 132 civilians were killed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan , Iraq , Somalia , and Syria .
In Yemen and Libya , countries where the U.S. also carries out airstrikes , the report simply claimed that no civilians were killed last year .
“ All DoD ” — Department of Defense — “ operations in 2019 were conducted in accordance with law of war requirements , ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of war protections for civilians.
” We already know from independent reports that Pentagon official figures on civilian casualties are , in general , woefully underreported .
A 2017 investigation published by the New York Times found that , during a U.S. air campaign in Iraq , potentially thousands more civilians were killed than reported in official figures .
In some cases , the military used video footage showing strikes on Islamic State positions as propaganda material , when in reality the footage showed airstrikes hitting homes full of civilians .
Independent monitoring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of civilian deaths from U.S. aerial campaigns that have gone unacknowledged in official figures .
The report issued to Congress this year was in line with new reporting requirements intended to provide more oversight about the impact of U.S. military operations on civilians .
But the utility of these reported figures seems questionable : The military conducts almost no on-the-ground investigations of the impact of its strikes and is evidently willing to report figures that are absurdly low — literally incredible — for the sake of political expediency .
In the past , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the resources to conduct on-the-ground investigations in cases in which civilians are alleged to have been killed .
Recently , reports surfaced that the military has begun requesting more funds to help track civilian deaths .
But independent researchers and nongovernmental organizations have already been carrying out such investigations for years , with far few resources than the Pentagon — with its vast budget — has at its disposal .
All this raises the question of who exactly the military has been killing over nearly two decades of war .
“ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , if they ’ re going to carry out a strike , to have some way of knowing who they ’ re killing or injuring and what the impact is , ” said Daphne Eviatar , director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International .
“ In this congressional report , the Pentagon stated that all their operations were in line with the laws of war .
But if they don ’ t even have a basic understanding of the impact of their strikes , it is difficult to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carried out by U.S. forces has declined over the last two years , as military campaigns in Iraq and Syria wound down .
American forces still carry out periodic operations in those countries , however , as well as undertaking strikes in Yemen and Somalia ostensibly aimed at terrorist groups .
In Somalia in particular , U.S. operations have been ramping up heavily in recent months .
While the military maintains that these strikes are not killing any civilians , reports published by The Intercept and elsewhere suggest a deadlier impact on innocent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is acknowledging .
In some cases , the military has dismissed credible reports that its operations have killed Somali civilians .
With loosened targeting rules under President Donald Trump and a public that is even more distracted than usual , the conditions are ripe for negligent behavior that will result in the deaths of innocents .
Nongovernmental organizations that devote resources to investigating the impact of U.S. airstrikes have noted with frustration that , despite tighter reporting requirements from Congress , a gigantic budget , and a sprawling organizational footprint , the military @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the impact of its actions .
The obviously underreported figures provided in this report will do little to change the perception that the ugly truth is still being hidden .
“ We do lots of research on the impact of airstrikes , visiting places they ’ ve taken place , interviewing survivors , analyzing satellite imagery , and working with weapons experts , ” said Eviatar , noting that even limited investigations have turned up far more civilian casualties than the military acknowledges .
“ The military often says that they don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this type of investigation .
If that ’ s truly the case , they shouldn ’ t be bombing places if they don ’ t even have the ability to know who they ’ re killing .
”

The United States’s wars continue to rage in the Middle East and Africa against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even in normal times, these conflicts got little public scrutiny. But with attention more occupied than usual, some U.S. military operations have been escalating even further. In recent years, these conflicts have become even deadlier for innocent people. The Trump administration has shown itself to be not just indifferent, but positively encouraging of the killing of civilians in foreign wars.
If there is a time to get away with killing people with no fear of accountability, it’s now. Yesterday, the Pentagon released its annual report on civilian casualties in its wars for the year 2019. According to the report, 132 civilians were killed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria. In Yemen and Libya, countries where the U.S. also carries out airstrikes, the report simply claimed that no civilians were killed last year. “All DoD” — Department of Defense — “operations in 2019 were conducted in accordance with law of war requirements,” the report flatly stated, “including law of war protections for civilians.”
We already know from independent reports that Pentagon official figures on civilian casualties are, in general, woefully underreported. A 2017 investigation published by the New York Times found that, during a U.S. air campaign in Iraq, potentially thousands more civilians were killed than reported in official figures. In some cases, the military used video footage showing strikes on Islamic State positions as propaganda material, when in reality the footage showed airstrikes hitting homes full of civilians. Independent monitoring groups like Airwars have also documented thousands of civilian deaths from U.S. aerial campaigns that have gone unacknowledged in official figures.
The report issued to Congress this year was in line with new reporting requirements intended to provide more oversight about the impact of U.S. military operations on civilians. But the utility of these reported figures seems questionable: The military conducts almost no on-the-ground investigations of the impact of its strikes and is evidently willing to report figures that are absurdly low — literally incredible — for the sake of political expediency.
“The military often says that they don’t have the capacity to do this type of investigation. If that’s truly the case, they shouldn’t be bombing.”
In the past, the Pentagon suggested that it does not have the resources to conduct on-the-ground investigations in cases in which civilians are alleged to have been killed. Recently, reports surfaced that the military has begun requesting more funds to help track civilian deaths. But independent researchers and nongovernmental organizations have already been carrying out such investigations for years, with far few resources than the Pentagon — with its vast budget — has at its disposal. All this raises the question of who exactly the military has been killing over nearly two decades of war.
“It’s the military’s responsibility, if they’re going to carry out a strike, to have some way of knowing who they’re killing or injuring and what the impact is,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International. “In this congressional report, the Pentagon stated that all their operations were in line with the laws of war. But if they don’t even have a basic understanding of the impact of their strikes, it is difficult to see how they can conclude that.”
The number of airstrikes carried out by U.S. forces has declined over the last two years, as military campaigns in Iraq and Syria wound down. American forces still carry out periodic operations in those countries, however, as well as undertaking strikes in Yemen and Somalia ostensibly aimed at terrorist groups. In Somalia in particular, U.S. operations have been ramping up heavily in recent months. While the military maintains that these strikes are not killing any civilians, reports published by The Intercept and elsewhere suggest a deadlier impact on innocent people in the country than the Pentagon is acknowledging. In some cases, the military has dismissed credible reports that its operations have killed Somali civilians.
With loosened targeting rules under President Donald Trump and a public that is even more distracted than usual, the conditions are ripe for negligent behavior that will result in the deaths of innocents. Nongovernmental organizations that devote resources to investigating the impact of U.S. airstrikes have noted with frustration that, despite tighter reporting requirements from Congress, a gigantic budget, and a sprawling organizational footprint, the military is still not giving an honest account of the impact of its actions. The obviously underreported figures provided in this report will do little to change the perception that the ugly truth is still being hidden.
“We do lots of research on the impact of airstrikes, visiting places they’ve taken place, interviewing survivors, analyzing satellite imagery, and working with weapons experts,” said Eviatar, noting that even limited investigations have turned up far more civilian casualties than the military acknowledges. “The military often says that they don’t have the capacity to do this type of investigation. If that’s truly the case, they shouldn’t be bombing places if they don’t even have the ability to know who they’re killing.”


theintercept--2020-05-08--Four Die-Hard Loyalists Are Enabling Trump's Apocalyptic Coronavirus Response

The Four Horsemen of the Pandemic are rampaging through Washington .
Their names are Kushner , Miller , Pompeo , and Barr .
They are fulfilling Donald Trump ’ s darkest desires to twist the Covid-19 pandemic into a culture war , while also looking for ways to exploit the nation ’ s greatest public health crisis in a century to foment hoaxes and conspiracy theories and punish Trump ’ s enemies .
Meanwhile , they are ignoring the actual pandemic .
Trump and his lackeys have decided to let America burn .
They have wasted the time the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Covid-19 .
It was precious time granted by people who , in overwhelming numbers , complied with state-level stay-at-home orders for two months so the government could come up with a serious national strategy to address the health crisis and its economic fallout .
But Trump has betrayed that sacrifice by failing to develop any coherent plan at all .
He has surrendered to the virus , even as the American death toll heads rapidly toward 100,000 .
He has instead spent his time sitting in the White House watching cable news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and summarily firing anyone in the federal government who tries to actually take action to prevent the pandemic from becoming even worse .
The latest victim is Dr. Rick Bright , who filed a whistleblower complaint on Tuesday after he was ousted from his position as director of the government ’ s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority .
Bright ’ s sin ?
He refused to get on board with the Trump administration ’ s incoherent response to the virus , notably its dangerous and ill-informed efforts to push hydroxychloroquine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treatment just because Trump had called it a miracle cure .
While professionals like Bright are pushed aside , Trump has turned to the usual suspects to do his bidding .
Jared Kushner , his pale , thin-lipped son-in-law , has gone from creating havoc in the Middle East , where he was supposedly in charge of developing Trump ’ s “ policy ” for the region , to creating havoc in the federal response to Covid-19 , thanks to his role running a backdoor coronavirus task force rife with incompetence and political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a front-door ad-hoc task force , run by Vice President Mike Pence , but Trump shut down the professional pandemic team at the National Security Council in 2018 . )
Kushner ’ s most consequential and deadliest contribution to the government ’ s response came early in the crisis , when he convinced Trump that the press was overhyping the threat .
That appealed to Trump ’ s natural inclination to call Covid-19 a media-invented hoax , especially as he started facing criticism for failing to address shortages of tests and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gear for nurses and doctors .
Trump ’ s failure to take any action during the pandemic ’ s critical early days allowed the virus to become embedded in the United States .
Naturally , Kushner has now declared victory , even as Covid-19 expands its fatal reach across the nation .
“ We ’ re on the other side of the medical aspect of this , ” Kushner told Fox News last week .
“ We ’ ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed .
The federal government rose to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great success story.
” Stephen Miller , a young man with an endless forehead who serves as Trump ’ s master of the dark arts of xenophobia and nationalism , has inserted himself into the Covid-19 crisis as well , convincing the president to sign an executive order severely restricting immigration during the pandemic .
Of course , Miller wants the temporary order to lead to the permanent , draconian crackdown on immigration he has long wished for .
Miller has pushed through dozens of smaller changes in immigration policies and procedures during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to permanent changes .
Miller ’ s long-term anti-immigrant obsession has already had a devastating impact on the nation ’ s ability to deal with the pandemic .
Trump has gutted the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency , which is supposed to coordinate America ’ s disaster response , while a growing share of funding for its parent organization , the Department of Homeland Security , has been shifted to immigration and border control .
Mike Pompeo , the secretary of state with a body like a neighborhood bowling league champion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the origins of Covid-19 .
Pompeo has been pushing the notion that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory .
By contrast , the consensus among most scientists , public health officials , and intelligence analysts throughout the world is that the virus reached humans naturally through contact in a Chinese wet market .
While the exact origins of the virus don ’ t matter to most Americans now struggling to deal with Covid-19 , Pompeo ’ s goal in pushing this so-called Wuhan lab theory is to make Trump feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crisis .
It also can be weaponized to convince Trump ’ s die-hard base that the government ’ s botched handling of the pandemic is not Trump ’ s fault .
Over the last few days , Pompeo has offered a series of confused statements about the issue , probably because Dr. Anthony Fauci , the nation ’ s top infectious disease professional , has repeatedly and publicly pushed back , saying that the scientific evidence shows that the virus is not man-made .
Over the weekend , Pompeo claimed there was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Chinese lab .
On Wednesday , he said he wasn ’ t certain , but added that there is “ significant evidence ” that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory .
His jumbled statements show that Pompeo is trying to walk a tightrope between the experts and Trump , who has a long-standing addiction to conspiracy theories .
In the process , Pompeo has managed to pointlessly anger China — just one aspect of a broader Trump-Pompeo renunciation of international cooperation on Covid-19 .
Earlier this week , the Trump administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world leaders who pledged to join forces to develop vaccines and treatments .
Attorney General William Barr , Trump ’ s Tom Hagen , has also joined the president ’ s Covid-19 show .
Barr is now threatening to turn the Justice Department against the state governors who , in the absence of national leadership , have done the most to grapple with the pandemic .
In the process , Barr is aligning himself with the ugliest strain of an emerging American culture war .
Trump has repeatedly tweeted his opposition to state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests by armed right-wingers at several state capitols , who have demanded that the stay-at-home orders be lifted .
In another demonstration of Barr ’ s political fealty to Trump , the attorney general is now threatening lawsuits against states with strict stay-at-home orders , complaining that they infringe of people ’ s civil liberties .
But Barr ’ s claim to be a champion of civil liberties was undermined by his actions just weeks earlier , when the administration tried to empower the attorney general to ask federal judges to freeze court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic-controlled House will almost certainly not vote for the administration proposal , if it did become law it could mean that anyone arrested could be held without charge until the crisis ends .
For Trump and his flunkies , Covid-19 has been everything but a public health crisis .
As if to underline that point , Trump said earlier this week that Pence ’ s coronavirus task force would soon be winding down .
He quickly changed course on that , saying that the task force will remain active but will focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words , it will be an adjunct to Trump ’ s reelection campaign .

Photo illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept, Getty Images
The Four Horsemen of the Pandemic are rampaging through Washington. Their names are Kushner, Miller, Pompeo, and Barr.
They are fulfilling Donald Trump’s darkest desires to twist the Covid-19 pandemic into a culture war, while also looking for ways to exploit the nation’s greatest public health crisis in a century to foment hoaxes and conspiracy theories and punish Trump’s enemies.
Meanwhile, they are ignoring the actual pandemic. Trump and his lackeys have decided to let America burn.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
They have wasted the time the American people gave them to come to grips with Covid-19. It was precious time granted by people who, in overwhelming numbers, complied with state-level stay-at-home orders for two months so the government could come up with a serious national strategy to address the health crisis and its economic fallout.
But Trump has betrayed that sacrifice by failing to develop any coherent plan at all. He has surrendered to the virus, even as the American death toll heads rapidly toward 100,000.
He has instead spent his time sitting in the White House watching cable news, braying at his critics on Twitter, and summarily firing anyone in the federal government who tries to actually take action to prevent the pandemic from becoming even worse. The latest victim is Dr. Rick Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint on Tuesday after he was ousted from his position as director of the government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright’s sin? He refused to get on board with the Trump administration’s incoherent response to the virus, notably its dangerous and ill-informed efforts to push hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, as a Covid-19 treatment just because Trump had called it a miracle cure.
While professionals like Bright are pushed aside, Trump has turned to the usual suspects to do his bidding.
Jared Kushner, his pale, thin-lipped son-in-law, has gone from creating havoc in the Middle East, where he was supposedly in charge of developing Trump’s “policy” for the region, to creating havoc in the federal response to Covid-19, thanks to his role running a backdoor coronavirus task force rife with incompetence and political favoritism. (The Trump White House has a front-door ad-hoc task force, run by Vice President Mike Pence, but Trump shut down the professional pandemic team at the National Security Council in 2018.)
Kushner’s most consequential and deadliest contribution to the government’s response came early in the crisis, when he convinced Trump that the press was overhyping the threat. That appealed to Trump’s natural inclination to call Covid-19 a media-invented hoax, especially as he started facing criticism for failing to address shortages of tests and other urgently needed medical equipment, including protective gear for nurses and doctors. Trump’s failure to take any action during the pandemic’s critical early days allowed the virus to become embedded in the United States.
Naturally, Kushner has now declared victory, even as Covid-19 expands its fatal reach across the nation. “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this,” Kushner told Fox News last week. “We’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story.”
Stephen Miller, a young man with an endless forehead who serves as Trump’s master of the dark arts of xenophobia and nationalism, has inserted himself into the Covid-19 crisis as well, convincing the president to sign an executive order severely restricting immigration during the pandemic. Of course, Miller wants the temporary order to lead to the permanent, draconian crackdown on immigration he has long wished for. Miller has pushed through dozens of smaller changes in immigration policies and procedures during the pandemic, which may also lead to permanent changes.
Miller’s long-term anti-immigrant obsession has already had a devastating impact on the nation’s ability to deal with the pandemic. Trump has gutted the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is supposed to coordinate America’s disaster response, while a growing share of funding for its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, has been shifted to immigration and border control.
Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state with a body like a neighborhood bowling league champion, is helping Trump foment conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19. Pompeo has been pushing the notion that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory. By contrast, the consensus among most scientists, public health officials, and intelligence analysts throughout the world is that the virus reached humans naturally, possibly through contact in a Chinese wet market.
While the exact origins of the virus don’t matter to most Americans now struggling to deal with Covid-19, Pompeo’s goal in pushing this so-called Wuhan lab theory is to make Trump feel better about his own failed handling of the crisis. It also can be weaponized to convince Trump’s die-hard base that the government’s botched handling of the pandemic is not Trump’s fault.
Over the last few days, Pompeo has offered a series of confused statements about the issue, probably because Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease professional, has repeatedly and publicly pushed back, saying that the scientific evidence shows that the virus is not man-made.
Over the weekend, Pompeo claimed there was strong evidence that the virus originated in a Chinese lab. On Wednesday, he said he wasn’t certain, but added that there is “significant evidence” that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory.
His jumbled statements show that Pompeo is trying to walk a tightrope between the experts and Trump, who has a long-standing addiction to conspiracy theories.
In the process, Pompeo has managed to pointlessly anger China — just one aspect of a broader Trump-Pompeo renunciation of international cooperation on Covid-19. Earlier this week, the Trump administration refused to join a virtual summit of world leaders who pledged to join forces to develop vaccines and treatments.
Share Your Coronavirus Story Click here to learn about contacting a reporter securely, or email us at coronavirus@theintercept.com
Attorney General William Barr, Trump’s Tom Hagen, has also joined the president’s Covid-19 show. Barr is now threatening to turn the Justice Department against the state governors who, in the absence of national leadership, have done the most to grapple with the pandemic. In the process, Barr is aligning himself with the ugliest strain of an emerging American culture war. Trump has repeatedly tweeted his opposition to state stay-at-home orders, while showing support for protests by armed right-wingers at several state capitols, who have demanded that the stay-at-home orders be lifted. In another demonstration of Barr’s political fealty to Trump, the attorney general is now threatening lawsuits against states with strict stay-at-home orders, complaining that they infringe of people’s civil liberties.
But Barr’s claim to be a champion of civil liberties was undermined by his actions just weeks earlier, when the administration tried to empower the attorney general to ask federal judges to freeze court proceedings during a national emergency. While the Democratic-controlled House will almost certainly not vote for the administration proposal, if it did become law it could mean that anyone arrested could be held without charge until the crisis ends.
For Trump and his flunkies, Covid-19 has been everything but a public health crisis. As if to underline that point, Trump said earlier this week that Pence’s coronavirus task force would soon be winding down. He quickly changed course on that, saying that the task force will remain active but will focus on reopening the economy. In other words, it will be an adjunct to Trump’s reelection campaign.


theintercept--2020-05-09--A New York City Hospital Is Investigating a Nurse for Sharing Video Footage With The Intercept

“ If we had the government behind us , to provide us the resources that we need , I think Ms. Ocran would probably still be alive , ” one nurse says in the video , followed by footage from a CBS segment on Ocran .
Like many New York City hospitals , Lincoln faced ventilator shortages as the coronavirus pandemic peaked , and health care workers were asked to reuse protective equipment like masks .
On April 21 , The Intercept published a video that featured footage provided by Lillian Udell , who works at Lincoln Hospital in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York City , even before the coronavirus pandemic .
Two of Udell ’ s colleagues spoke about Freda Ocran , a 50-year-old former head nurse at Jacobi Medical Center ’ s psychiatric unit , who died of coronavirus at Lincoln on March 28 .
A New York City emergency room nurse is being investigated by her hospital for sharing footage with The Intercept of her and her colleagues describing their work caring for patients dying from coronavirus while facing shortages of protective equipment and lifesaving supplies .
She could face discipline and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal law .
Stephanie M. Guzmán , a spokesperson for the hospital system , declined to answer questions about Udell ’ s case .
“ At NYC Health + Hospitals , patient privacy and confidentiality is a top priority and we have zero tolerance for any member of our workforce who violates that trust , ” Guzmán wrote in a statement .
“ We can not comment further on this individual case.
” In addition to allegedly violating HIPAA , hospital administrators have sent Udell notices about violating policies pertaining to speaking with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Udell does not have any social media accounts . )
Ocran ’ s death by that point had become national news , with her family speaking to CBS News and the New York Post soon after she died .
The Washington Post profiled her this week .
But hospital administrators are pointing to the references to Ocran as grounds to investigate whether Udell violated federal health information privacy laws , also known as HIPAA .
The investigation into Udell highlights a number of contradictions within the hospital , which has made internal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with reporters .
Hospital President Dr. Mitchell Katz was quoted in a companywide email sent on April 13 applauding Nurse Kelley Cabrera , a close friend of Udell ’ s , who spoke to CBS ’ s “ 60 Minutes ” for an April 12 segment .
The same day , Katz shared a link to the segment on Twitter , writing , “ We applaud the bravery of frontline providers like Dr. Sheldon Teperman and Nurse Kelley Cabrera from @ NYCHealthSystem Jacobi who spoke to @ 60Minutes .
We support their advocacy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in NYC and across the U.S. ” Asked about Udell ’ s situation , Katz said he could not comment on a specific employee , but he confirmed to The Intercept that employees in the public hospital system he oversees are free to speak to the press .
“ We do not discipline people for speaking to the press .
We feel strongly that our employees retain their first amendment rights .
I have read numerous comments from my staff of all kinds—some positive and some negative—sometimes they told us and sometimes they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Our employees of course can not disclose any patient information or images without signed consent of patient.
” Udell said the difference between Katz ’ s rhetoric and the hospital ’ s investigation into her is “ kind of like getting a ticket for jaywalking when you ’ re around 50 other people jaywalking that aren ’ t getting a ticket.
” In a statement , Pat Kane , the executive director of the New York State Nurses Association , of which Udell is a member , defended her right to speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the rights of our nurses to speak publicly on matters important to the public ’ s health .
What ’ s more , by the terms of their licensure and the very calling that brought them to the profession , nurses are patient advocates , ” Kane wrote .
“ Given the public health crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic presents , the need of our [ registered nurse ] members to speak out for the protection of public health could not be greater.
” of the potential press policy violation on Tuesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media and HIPAA policies in late April .
She has not yet been officially charged with a policy violation , though she had a call with hospital administrators regarding the investigation on Monday .
The hospital has 18 months to investigate the supposed policy violations , but Udell believes she ’ ll hear within two weeks what , if any , charges she will face , based on conversations she ’ s had with her union representative .
“ I think they are definitely going ahead with everything , ” Udell told The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ representative .
“ She said they tend to … it ’ s like a moving train .
Like once they start moving it , they don ’ t stop.
” The hospital ’ s HIPAA privacy policy prohibits employees from capturing patient information “ via the use of photography , video or audio recording.
” On April 10 , the hospital sent staff an email on HIPAA policy and guidelines regarding patient photography and recording .
The policy prohibits taking or sharing videos or pictures of patients or patient information , regardless of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ footage that Udell provided and that The Intercept published did not include any videos or pictures of patients .
“ Every time the phrase ‘ photography and recording ’ is mentioned , it ’ s defined as indicating the capturing of patients or PHI , not recording staff speaking , ” she said , referring to the hospital policy .
On April 22 , the day after The Intercept published the video , the hospital sent staff another email with policy details on frequently asked questions regarding media access to patient information , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the hospital system supports staff ’ s right to speak openly about experiences without sharing patient information , and that they don ’ t need permission to document stories for news organizations .
Hospital administrators have asked Udell detailed questions about the footage she shared with The Intercept , including whether she provided raw footage to The Intercept , or if she edited it first ; how she recorded the footage ; whether or not she was compensated for it ; and if she would take it down , or ask The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administrators that she shared raw footage with The Intercept , but that she did not edit or produce it herself .
The hospital also asked Udell to turn over the footage she shared with The Intercept , stating she was obligated to comply under company policy .
She has not done so .
Administrators have also asked Udell whether she was aware that Ocran was a patient at Lincoln , and whether she got permission from Ocran ’ s family to mention her in the video .
Udell knew about Ocran from prior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of her colleagues .
One administrator told Udell that the hospital was concerned about emotional distress to Ocran ’ s family , and whether or not the family could sue them .

A New York City emergency room nurse is being investigated by her hospital for sharing footage with The Intercept of her and her colleagues describing their work caring for patients dying from coronavirus while facing shortages of protective equipment and lifesaving supplies. She could face discipline and temporary suspension over an alleged violation of federal law.
On April 21, The Intercept published a video that featured footage provided by Lillian Udell, who works at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, the busiest emergency department in New York City, even before the coronavirus pandemic. Two of Udell’s colleagues spoke about Freda Ocran, a 50-year-old former head nurse at Jacobi Medical Center’s psychiatric unit, who died of coronavirus at Lincoln on March 28.
“If we had the government behind us, to provide us the resources that we need, I think Ms. Ocran would probably still be alive,” one nurse says in the video, followed by footage from a CBS segment on Ocran. Like many New York City hospitals, Lincoln faced ventilator shortages as the coronavirus pandemic peaked, and health care workers were asked to reuse protective equipment like masks.
Ocran’s death by that point had become national news, with her family speaking to CBS News and the New York Post soon after she died. The Washington Post profiled her this week. But hospital administrators are pointing to the references to Ocran as grounds to investigate whether Udell violated federal health information privacy laws, also known as HIPAA.
In addition to allegedly violating HIPAA, hospital administrators have sent Udell notices about violating policies pertaining to speaking with the press and using social media. (Udell does not have any social media accounts.)
Stephanie M. Guzmán, a spokesperson for the hospital system, declined to answer questions about Udell’s case. “At NYC Health + Hospitals, patient privacy and confidentiality is a top priority and we have zero tolerance for any member of our workforce who violates that trust,” Guzmán wrote in a statement. “We cannot comment further on this individual case.”
The investigation into Udell highlights a number of contradictions within the hospital, which has made internal and public statements encouraging staff who spoke with reporters. Hospital President Dr. Mitchell Katz was quoted in a companywide email sent on April 13 applauding Nurse Kelley Cabrera, a close friend of Udell’s, who spoke to CBS’s “60 Minutes” for an April 12 segment. The same day, Katz shared a link to the segment on Twitter, writing, “We applaud the bravery of frontline providers like Dr. Sheldon Teperman and Nurse Kelley Cabrera from @NYCHealthSystem Jacobi who spoke to @60Minutes. We support their advocacy for more supplies to protect #HealthCareHeroes in NYC and across the U.S.”
Asked about Udell’s situation, Katz said he could not comment on a specific employee, but he confirmed to The Intercept that employees in the public hospital system he oversees are free to speak to the press. “We do not discipline people for speaking to the press. We feel strongly that our employees retain their first amendment rights. I have read numerous comments from my staff of all kinds—some positive and some negative—sometimes they told us and sometimes they did not,” he wrote. “Our employees of course cannot disclose any patient information or images without signed consent of patient.”
Udell said the difference between Katz’s rhetoric and the hospital’s investigation into her is “kind of like getting a ticket for jaywalking when you’re around 50 other people jaywalking that aren’t getting a ticket.”
In a statement, Pat Kane, the executive director of the New York State Nurses Association, of which Udell is a member, defended her right to speak out. “We are fundamentally committed to the rights of our nurses to speak publicly on matters important to the public’s health. What’s more, by the terms of their licensure and the very calling that brought them to the profession, nurses are patient advocates,” Kane wrote. “Given the public health crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic presents, the need of our [registered nurse] members to speak out for the protection of public health could not be greater.”
Udell was informed of the potential press policy violation on Tuesday, after receiving notices regarding the social media and HIPAA policies in late April. She has not yet been officially charged with a policy violation, though she had a call with hospital administrators regarding the investigation on Monday. The hospital has 18 months to investigate the supposed policy violations, but Udell believes she’ll hear within two weeks what, if any, charges she will face, based on conversations she’s had with her union representative.
“I think they are definitely going ahead with everything,” Udell told The Intercept, citing conversations with her union representative. “She said they tend to … it’s like a moving train. Like once they start moving it, they don’t stop.”
The hospital’s HIPAA privacy policy prohibits employees from capturing patient information “via the use of photography, video or audio recording.” On April 10, the hospital sent staff an email on HIPAA policy and guidelines regarding patient photography and recording. The policy prohibits taking or sharing videos or pictures of patients or patient information, regardless of whether they can be identified.
The footage that Udell provided and that The Intercept published did not include any videos or pictures of patients. “Every time the phrase ‘photography and recording’ is mentioned, it’s defined as indicating the capturing of patients or PHI, not recording staff speaking,” she said, referring to the hospital policy.
On April 22, the day after The Intercept published the video, the hospital sent staff another email with policy details on frequently asked questions regarding media access to patient information, and social media. The email notes that the hospital system supports staff’s right to speak openly about experiences without sharing patient information, and that they don’t need permission to document stories for news organizations.
Hospital administrators have asked Udell detailed questions about the footage she shared with The Intercept, including whether she provided raw footage to The Intercept, or if she edited it first; how she recorded the footage; whether or not she was compensated for it; and if she would take it down, or ask The Intercept to do so. Udell told administrators that she shared raw footage with The Intercept, but that she did not edit or produce it herself.
The hospital also asked Udell to turn over the footage she shared with The Intercept, stating she was obligated to comply under company policy. She has not done so.
Administrators have also asked Udell whether she was aware that Ocran was a patient at Lincoln, and whether she got permission from Ocran’s family to mention her in the video. Udell knew about Ocran from prior reporting, and as a colleague of some of her colleagues.
One administrator told Udell that the hospital was concerned about emotional distress to Ocran’s family, and whether or not the family could sue them.
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Udell’s colleagues say it would be a step too far for the hospital to charge her with a HIPAA violation. “I can see if the family had already shared their story publicly, to reshare it,” said Calvin Sun, an emergency room doctor who works in the same hospital system, including at Lincoln. “It is a stretch.”
Sun himself has been praised by hospital administrators for speaking publicly about his experience dealing with the coronavirus. “Nobody really gets in trouble. And every administrator is like, ‘This is great, we’re getting support from this public. We’re getting donations.’”
Cabrera, the nurse who appeared in the CBS News segment, said hospitals are weaponizing HIPAA to avoid bad press, as health care workers in New York City and elsewhere face overwhelmingly difficult work conditions. “I feel like a lot of hospitals are using HIPAA almost under the guise of patient protection and safety, and privacy safety. But really it becomes more apparent to me, at least, that HIPAA is kind of being used to gag people,” Cabrera said on Thursday, as she was driving with Udell to a protest at the infamous Rikers Island jail. “We’re all experiencing the most difficult working conditions we’ve ever faced. And everybody who is speaking out is doing so to advocate for patients, ultimately. It looks like hospital administrations tend to run to HIPAA for their protection, not so much patient protection.”