Monthly Archives: November 2025

Shut Up and Give Up: How to Deal with Environmental Disasters

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The worst day of Bathsheba Musole’s life was February 18, 2025. It started with a deafening crash when the 30-foot wall around a toxic-waste pool collapsed at the Chinese copper mine above her village. A poisonous river of a stinking yellow liquid rushed downhill, inundating homes and fields, including the one where she grew corn to feed her eight children. The floodwater, laden with cyanide and arsenic, rose chest-high. “I thought I would drown,” said Musole, 48 years old, in a recent interview.

In August 2025, months after the Feb. 18, 2025 disaster, officials from Sino Metals, a unit of the state-owned China Nonferrous Mining Corp., showed up at Musole’s half-acre farm, which the Zambian government says is too toxic to sustain crops for at least three years. They were there to make things right, she recalled them saying. Their offer was $150, but it came with a catch. To get the money, she would have to agree never to talk about the spill, take legal action against Sino Metals or even reveal the contents of the nondisclosure agreement itself…

Zambia’s government and economy.. have grown reliant on China. Zambia collects about $2 billion a year in mining taxes, mostly from Chinese mining companies. Half of the copper mined in Zambia, much of it by Chinese companies, is exported to China. In 2024, the Zambian government announced that Chinese miners would invest $5 billion in the country by 2031…

After months of investigation, Drizit Environmental, a South African firm contracted by Sino Metals, concluded that 1.5 million tons of toxic waste had overflowed into the Kafue valley, 30 times what the company had said. Sino Metals terminated the firm’s contract a day before the final report was due…

Excerpt from Nicholas Bariyo, China Pushes to Silence Victims of African Mining Disaster, WSJ, Oct. 27, 2025

Next Wild West: Monetizing Mental Data

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Some  brain–computer interfaces (BCI) are capable not only to record conscious thoughts but also the impulses of the preconscious. Most BCIs are connected the brain’s motor cortex, the part of the brain that initiates and controls voluntary movements by sending signals to the body’s muscles. But some people have volunteered to have an extra interface implanted in their posterior parietal cortex, a brain region associated with reasoning, attention and planning…The ability of these devices to access aspects of a person’s innermost life, including preconscious thought, raises the stakes on concerns about how to keep neural data private. It also poses ethical questions about how neurotechnologies might shape people’s thoughts and actions — especially when paired with artificial intelligence…

Consumer neurotech products capture less-sophisticated data than implanted BCIs do. Unlike implanted BCIs, which rely on the firings of specific collections of neurons, most consumer products rely on electroencephalography (EEG). This measures ripples of electrical activity that arise from the averaged firing of huge neuronal populations and are detectable on the scalp. Rather than being created to capture the best recording possible, consumer devices are designed to be stylish (such as in sleek headbands) or unobtrusive (with electrodes hidden inside headphones or headsets for augmented or virtual reality).

Still, EEG can reveal overall brain states, such as alertness, focus, tiredness and anxiety levels. Companies already offer headsets and software that give customers real-time scores relating to these states, with the intention of helping them to improve their sports performance, meditate more effectively or become more productive, for example. AI has helped to turn noisy signals from suboptimal recording systems into reliable data, explains Ramses Alcaide, chief executive of Neurable, a neurotech company in Boston, Massachusetts, that specializes in EEG signal processing and sells a headphone-based headset for this purpose…

With regard to EEG, “There’s a wild west when it comes to the regulatory standards”… A 2024 analysis of the data policies of 30 consumer neurotech companies by the Neurorights Foundation, a non-profit organization in New York City, showed that nearly all had complete control over the data users provided. That means most firms can use the information as they please, including selling it.

The government of Chile and the legislators of four US states have passed laws that give direct recordings of any form of nerve activity protected status. But ethicists fear that such laws are insufficient because they focus on the raw data and not on the inferences that companies can make by combining neural information with parallel streams of digital data. Inferences about a person’s mental health, say, or their political allegiances could still be sold to third parties and used to discriminate against or manipulate a person.

“The data economy, in my view, is already quite privacy-violating and cognitive- liberty-violating,” Ienca says. Adding neural data, he says, “is like giving steroids to the existing data economy”.

Excerpt from Liam Drew, Mind-reading devices can now predict preconscious thoughts: is it time to worry?, Nature, Nov. 19, 2025

Who is Afraid of China? the United States Army

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China plans to ease the flow of rare earths and other restricted materials to the U.S. by designing a system that will exclude companies with ties to the U.S. military while fast-tracking export approvals for other firms…The “validated end-user” system, or VEU, would enable Chinese leader Xi Jinping to follow through on a pledge to President Trump to facilitate the export of such materials while ensuring that they don’t end up with U.S. military suppliers, a core concern for China…  The VEU mechanism that Beijing is considering is modeled on U.S. laws and procedures, as is much of Beijing’s export-control architecture.

Under the American version of the VEU system, which has been active since 2007, certain Chinese companies are cleared to buy sensitive goods under a general authorization—essentially a simplified export-approval mechanism—instead of needing individual licenses for each purchase. This makes it easier to import controlled goods such as chemicals or chip-making equipment, but requires companies to put up with U.S. government inspections of their facilities, among other steps, to verify compliance with the program…

Companies in the U.S. and Europe have complained of reduced access to rare-earth magnets from China. Though China has periodically agreed to relax magnet restrictions, Chinese rare-earth magnet exports to the U.S. declined 29% in September 2025 from the month before

Excerpt from Jon Emont et al, China Hatches Plan to Keep U.S. Military From Getting Its Rare-Earth Magnets, WSJ, Nov. 10, 20215

Let them Eat Data! Decolonizing Artificial Intelligence

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Tap water isn’t drinkable. Power outages are common. The national average annual wage is $2,200. Yet rising on Jakarta’s outskirts are giant, windowless buildings packed inside with Nvidia’s latest artificial-intelligence chips. They mark Indonesia’s surprising rise as an AI hot spot, a market estimated to grow 30% annually over the next five years to $2.4 billion.

The multitrillion-dollar spending spree on AI has spread to the developing world. It is driven in part by a philosophy known in some academic circles as AI decolonization. The idea is simple. Foreign powers once extracted resources such as oil from colonies, offering minimal benefits to the locals. Today, developing nations aim to ensure that the AI boom enriches more than just Silicon Valley.  Regulations effectively require tech companies such as Google and Meta to process local data domestically. That pushes companies to build or rent data facilities onshore instead of relying on global infrastructure. These investments add up to billions of dollars and create jobs that foster national talent, or so developing nations hope.

AI decolonization is a twist on data sovereignty, a concept that gained traction after Edward Snowden revealed that American tech companies cooperated with U.S. government surveillance of foreign leaders. The European Union in 2018 pioneered data-protection laws that other nations have since mimicked.

Regulations vary by country and industry, but the principle is this: If a developing-nation bank wants an American tech giant to store customer data and analyze it with AI, the bank must hire a company with domestically located servers… Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang championed “sovereign AI” during a visit to Jakarta in 2024

“No country can afford to have its natural resource—the data of its people—be extracted, transformed into intelligence and then imported back into the country,” Huang said…

Excerpt from Stu Woo, It’s Not Just Rich Countries. Tech’s Trillion-Dollar Bet on AI Is Everywhere, WSJ, Oct. 26, 2025

Can the United States Drown in Disease? China has the Answer

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While drugs sold in U.S. pharmacies or over the counter typically don’t say “made in China,” the country often supplies active pharmaceutical ingredients in the drugs or precursor chemicals used to make those active ingredients. Most of the acetaminophen and ibuprofen imported into the U.S. comes from China. Those are the active ingredients in Tylenol and Advil, respectively. China is also a significant producer of antibiotic ingredients. The U.S. imports many branded drugs from Europe, while for generics, it relies heavily on India. Still, a significant amount of the active ingredients used in India-made generics originates in China.

Perhaps aware of the sensitivity of turning medicine into a political tool, China hasn’t often threatened to cut off drug supplies to the U.S. Still, it signaled awareness of its leverage early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when the world faced shortages of masks and personal protection equipment owing to supply disruptions from China. In March 2020, the official Xinhua News Agency said that if China were to restrict exports of medical goods, the “U.S. will be plunged into the vast ocean of coronavirus.”

Excerpt from Yoko Kubota, How China’s Chokehold on Drugs, Chips and More Threatens the U.S., WSJ, Nov.  4, 2025

The Right to Mental Privacy: How AI Can Read You Like a Book

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A technique called ‘mind captioning’ described in a scientific paper published on November 5, 2025 generates descriptive sentences of what a person is seeing or picturing in their mind using scans of their brain activity. It is based 1) on artificial intelligence models trained on the text captions of thousands of videos,0 and 2) brain scans of people watching them. The technique could help those with language difficulties to communicate better… But it raises concerns of mental privacy…

Excerpt from Max Kozlov, Mind-captioning’ AI decodes brain activity to turn thoughts into text, Nature, Nov. 5, 2025

First Pollute: Then, Fire the Clouds to Make Rain

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Authorities in Indian capital Delhi unsuccessfully carried out in October 2025 a cloud seeding trial, which is the technique of altering clouds to make rain, to tackle the city’s worsening air pollution.

[What is Cloud Seeding?] Cloud seeding is done by firing small particles – usually silver iodide – into clouds to produce rain. The technique is used around the world, but experts doubt its efficacy as a long-term air pollution control measure. A team of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and the Delhi government carried out the trial over several neighbourhoods, as thick smog enveloped the city. But the attempt – the first in 53 years – was “not completely successful” due to the lack of moisture in the air. As a result, Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) – which measures the level of PM 2.5 or fine particulate matter in the air that can clog lungs – is still hovering between 300 and 400, which is nearly 20 times the acceptable limit…

Delhi’s first cloud-seeding experiment was carried out in 1957, followed by another attempt in 1972, according to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. While those experiments were aimed at drought management, this was the first indigenous effort at cloud seeding to control pollution.

China has boasted about its success to manage rains before hosting the Olympics, with Beijing using rockets, cannons and drones to do cloud seeding. However, in the United Arab Emirates, questions over the technique were raised, following floods in Dubai in 2024.

Excerpt from Abhishek Dey, Why Delhi’s experiment to fix toxic smog with artificial rain failed, BBC, Oct. 29, 2025

First French Village to Relocate due to Climate Change

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[T]he village of Miquelon sits only 2 meters above sea level on the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Situated off the Canadian coast to the south of Newfoundland, it is an “overseas collectivity” of France, and the country’s last foothold in North America…’

But it was not until 2022 that the local government started thinking in earnest about relocating after the village narrowly missed being hit by Hurricane Fiona, one of the most expensive weather events ever in Canada. The move, when it is complete, will give Miquelon the unenviable title of the first French village to relocate because of the climate emergency. ..For now, relocation is voluntary, and nearly 50 people have signed up to move…At the same time, workers started to extend Miquelon’s water and electricity supplies to the new site. The goal is to keep the two sites connected as people move across the bridge between them.

Even though the signs of the climate crisis are obvious on the island – the ocean is slowly eating away at the isthmus that connects the parts of the island – many believe they have more time…

Excerpt from Sara Hashemi, How do you move a village? Residents of France’s last outpost in North America try to outrun the sea, Guardian, Oct. 28, 2025

Transparency against Free Speech? Exxon v. California, the Climate Risks

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Exxon Mobil says rules requiring it to disclose climate risks infringe on the company’s right to free speech. The oil-and-gas giant made the argument in a suit filed October 24, 2025 (pdf) against the state of California, which is rolling out requirements for businesses to report ton their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks. Exxon Mobil asked the court to halt the rules, arguing that they would violate free speech protections by forcing the business to use frameworks that put “disproportionate blame on large companies” such as the energy producer itself. The rules would require Exxon Mobil “to serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees,” the company said in the complaint, which was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

The California regulations were set up by state laws SB 253 and SB 261: the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act and the Climate-Related Financial Act. The first requires companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, while the second mandates disclosures of climate-related financial risks.

The rules are specific to California but their oversight reaches businesses across the globe. Under SB 253, companies doing business in the state with an annual total revenue exceeding $1 billion, be they public or private, will have to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions—the ones from their immediate operations, such as electricity intake, and those from their… supply chain. Even if they are based elsewhere in the U.S. or overseas, the rules will apply.

The climate risk reporting rule, SB 261, will affect more companies. It requires public and private firms doing business in California with annual revenue of more than $500 million to disclose climate-related financial risks, along with the measures they are taking to mitigate and adapt to such risks, starting Jan. 1, 2026

Companies are also preparing for coming climate reporting rules in Europe known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

Excerpt from Clara Hudson, Exxon Mobil Sues California Over Looming Climate Disclosure Rules, WSJ, Oct. 27, 2025

Why and How Dubai Conquered Sudan

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U.S. intelligence agencies say the United Arab Emirates sent increasing supplies of weapons including sophisticated Chinese drones to a major Sudanese militia in 2025 bolstering a group that has been accused of genocide and pouring fuel on a conflict that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises…It is the latest example of how the wealthy Gulf state is quietly projecting power to influence the course of conflicts and assert its interests in a region dominated by much larger power brokers, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey and Iran.

A key U.S. partner, the U.A.E. has shipped arms into Sudan to shore up the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Sudan after a string of setbacks that culminated with the militia losing control of the capital, Khartoum, in March 2025. Rearmed, the militia survived that potential turning point in the war and launched a renewed offensive against the government that triggered some of the worst destruction of the two-year war. The RSF’s campaign included an expanded assault on North Darfur state, where the militia tightened an 18-month siege of the regional capital of El Fasher, cutting off tens of thousands of people from adequate food and medicine…“The war would be over if not for the U.A.E.,” said Cameron Hudson, a former chief of staff to successive U.S. presidential special envoys for Sudan. “The only thing that is keeping them in this war is the overwhelming amount of military support that they’re receiving from the U.A.E.,” he said of the RSF…The U.A.E. is betting on the RSF to help protect Emirati interests in Sudan. The country is strategically located on the Red Sea, where the Sudanese government canceled a $6 billion Emirati port deal in 2024, and has vast resources of gold, much of which has historically been exported to Dubai. The U.A.E. has invested billions of dollars in the country.

Excerpt from Jared Malsin at al., How U.A.E. Arms Bolstered a Sudanese Militia Accused of Genocide, WSJ, Oct. 28, 2025

Why Arab Men Rape Black Women in Darfur

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Sudan’s civil war is taking a jarring turn in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region’s Black population. Rights researchers already are warning that the killings have the potential to surpass the genocide that played out in Rwanda just over 30 years ago. The group behind the violence, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously been accused by the U.S. of pursuing a genocide of Darfur’s Black population. Two decades ago, its predecessor was involved in the killing of more than 200,000 people in Darfur.

This time, the killings are the work of a closely-drilled and well-armed rebel force that already has established a parallel government to run Darfur, an expanse of western Sudan roughly the size of Spain. RSF fighters are armed with bomb-carrying Wing Loong II and FeiHong-95 drones, made in China, and supplied by the United Arab Emirates to help expand its own interests in the region.

The RSF have been conducting door-to-door searches, picking out non-Arab men and boys before executing them… Witnesses and residents say militia members swept through the city, raping Black women, detaining aid workers and forcing the last remaining residents to leave… Black women with long hair are systematically separated and raped, according to interviews with multiple aid workers and victims.

According to Eric Reeves, a fellow with the Nairobi-based Rift Valley Institute: “The fierce ethnic animus of the RSF toward non-Arab civilians is equal to that of the Hutus toward the Tutsis in Rwanda. The obscene violence is clearly comparable.”

Excerpt from Nicholas Bariyo, Sudan Militia, Armed With Drones, Hunts Down Black Population of Darfur, WSJ, Oct. 31, 2025

Emit all the Carbon You Want; But Please! Don’t Greenwash

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A French court, October 23, 2025 ruled oil and gas giant TotalEnergies had engaged in “misleading commercial practices” by overstating its climate pledges—the first such ruling worldwide against a major oil company for climate misinformation. The ruling is the first conviction in the world against an oil company, and a great win against greenwashing the act of claiming to be more environmentally responsible than in reality.

Find here a machine-translated pdf of ruling.