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      in Elections

      Facebook announces plan to stop political ads after 3 November

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      Facebook has announced significant changes to its advertising and misinformation policies, saying it will stop running political ads in the United States after polls close on 3 November for an undetermined period of time.The changes, announced on Wednesday, come in an effort to “protect the integrity” of the upcoming election “by fighting foreign interference, misinformation and voter suppression”, the company said in a blogpost.Facebook’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, had previously defended the controversial decision not to factcheck political advertising on the platform, but in recent weeks Facebook has begun to remove political ads that feature dangerous and misleading claims.In early September, the company pledged to stop running new political ads one week before 3 November, the day of the United States elections, to prevent last-minute misinformation. Now it will also disallow political advertising entirely following election day “to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse”.In other words, Facebook will not allow new advertisements starting one week before 3 November, and immediately after polls close it will stop running all political advertisements indefinitely. The company did not give a timeline for if or when political advertising would return.The new policies mark important progress toward protecting elections, said Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of dozens of nonprofits and human rights groups advocating for democracy.“We are seeing unprecedented attacks on legitimate, reliable and secure voting methods designed to delegitimize the election,” Gupta said. “These are important steps for Facebook to take to combat disinformation and the premature calling of election results before every vote is counted.”Others said the change is too little, too late. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the changes “performative”. The internet freedom group Fight for the Future said in a tweet the change “isn’t going to fix the problem at all”. The group noted that Facebook’s recent decision to allow content from private groups to appear in newsfeeds will increase misinformation and negate any positive changes that come from an advertising ban.“Facebook is banning political ads but at the same time they’re tweaking their algorithm to go into overdrive recruiting people into groups where they’ll be spoon-fed manipulation and misinformation,” Fight For the Future said.Facebook is again making performative changes to try to avoid blame for misinformation on its platform. The problem isn’t the ads themselves. The problem is Facebook’s refusal to regulate its ads, change its broken algorithm, or take responsibility for the power it’s amassed. https://t.co/OkkyM1PtML— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 7, 2020
      Facebook is seeking to avoid another political disaster after it was found that Facebook was used by Russian operatives in 2016 to manipulate the United States elections.Since then, Facebook has hired thousands of people working on safety and security surrounding elections and has worked on more than 200 elections around the globe, “learning from each” and making “substantial progress”, the company said.Executives at Facebook, including Zuckerberg, reportedly became increasingly alarmed at language from Donald Trump suggesting the president would not participate in a peaceful transfer of power. Trump has also been accused of encouraging violence when he told white supremacists to “stand back and stand by” and encouraged supporters to “go to the polls” and “watch very carefully” at the first presidential debate.The company also said it will be removing calls for people to engage in poll watching that use “militarized language” or suggest the goal is to intimidate voters or election officials.Zuckerberg has previously expressed concern about challenges posed by the surge in mail-in ballots this year due to the pandemic.“I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” he said.Facebook said it would respond to candidates or parties making premature claims of victory, before races were called by major media outlets, by adding labels and notifications about the state of the race. More

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      in World Politics

      Will China’s Digital Currency Revolutionize Global Payments?

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      China is well on its way to becoming a cashless society. More than 600 million Chinese already use Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to pay for much of what they purchase. Between them, the two companies control approximately 90% of China’s mobile payments market, which totaled some $17 trillion in 2019. A wide variety of sectors throughout China have since adopted Blockchain to pay bills, settle disputes in court and track shipments. The Chinese government understands that, via Blockchain, the issuance of its own cryptocurrency is an excellent way to track and record the movement of payments, goods and people.

      Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Global Rulebook

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      The unsexily named Digital Currency/Electronic Payments (DCEP) is intended to be used by anyone around the world to purchase anything. It has the potential to revolutionize the global payments system. Assuming it succeeds, many other countries will want to emulate it. Some other governments have already launched similar initiatives, but not on the scope or scale of the DCEP, which promises to be the first global digital currency.

      Digital Wallets

      What appears to have spurred the Chinese government to actively pursue the DCEP in 2019 was the birth of an organization that also has the potential to revolutionize the global payments system, the Libra Association. Libra is a grouping of more than two dozen organizations creating the world’s first Blockchain-derived global payment system, specifically founded on best practices in regulation and governance. Its stated objective is to transparently bring access to financial services to billions of people who either have limited or no access to the existing global banking system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Given that it is an American-led initiative that will use the US dollar to determine its benchmark value, Beijing viewed Libra as an attempt to establish US dominance over the global cryptocurrency marketplace. It previously viewed other cryptocurrencies as a threat to its own hegemony over capital controls in China.

      Although its motivations to counter the US are clear enough, much remains unknown about the DCEP. One has to wonder just how much focus it will have on transparency, governance or best practices. It will not be available on cryptocurrency exchanges, nor will it be available for speculative purposes. Embracing Blockchain and creating a DCEP ecosystem will give the Chinese Central Bank unprecedented power over capital movements — certainly in China, but also around the world.

      Like Alipay and WeChat, the DCEP will require a digital wallet, but it will not require a bank account. Commercial banks will issue the digital wallets, but no internet connection will be required to conduct transactions via the DCEP. All that will be required is that a phone has battery power. While a certain degree of anonymity will be present with the DCEP, the Chinese Central Bank will still be able to track who spent or received funds, when, where and from whom. The Chinese government calls the concept “controllable anonymity” and will rely on Big Data to identify behavioral characteristics of the individuals and businesses using DCEP. Doing so will help the government identify money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing. It will, of course, also permit a higher degree and quality of state surveillance of Chinese citizens and citizens of any other country that may use it.

      Since the Chinese government will be the first to launch a global digital currency, it will gain a considerable lead over the world’s nations and provide it with the ability to perfect its surveillance capabilities in China and around the world for any country that chooses to adopt the DCEP. It will also help to internationalize the yuan and simultaneously create less dependence on the US dollar. So, the Chinese government intends to stay a step ahead of the competition, enhance its ability to monitor its citizens, broaden its soft power and increase China’s appeal to other countries while countering the supremacy of the US dollar in the process.

      Alternative System

      By issuing the DCEP, the Chinese government hopes that demand for yuan reserves will follow, facilitating a digital version of the yuan as a global alternative to dollar reserves, especially in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) member nations seeking to modernize their financial sectors. It could also help internationalize China’s e-payment systems, which are not used outside of China. In the absence of an American cryptocurrency, which seems to be a long way off, doing so could in theory make the DCEP the cryptocurrency of choice among BRI (and other) countries.

      Such an alternative system may be particularly appealing for countries under US sanctions, which may wish to avoid using the US dollar entirely, or for countries or businesses engaged in trading, investment or lending with Chinese companies. But the yuan remains not fully convertible, with just 1% of international payments using it. That could have a significant impact on the government’s implementation strategy. In addition, the Chinese government is attempting to centralize what is a decentralized technology by requiring that all “nodes” using the Blockchain register with the government and provide information about their users.

      While the Chinese people are accustomed to having their government pry into, and try to control, their private lives, most of the world’s population wants nothing of the sort. It remains to be seen just how broadly the DCEP will be adopted, or whether it will turn out to be a net positive for the nations that choose to use it, but having the first-mover advantage will surely serve Beijing well. Despite its apparent flaws, if it also helps to bring some of the world’s poorest nations with the least access to basic and global financial services on par with the world’s developed nations in that regard, Beijing will have done much of the world’s population a great service in the process.

      *[Daniel Wagner is the author of “The Chinese Vortex: The Belt and Road Initiative and its Impact on the World.”]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Revealed: Trump-linked consultant tied to Facebook pages warning election will cause civil war

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      A militia-promoting father and son duo of fake news publishers and a Trump-connected social media consultant are linked to pages which promote the idea of an American civil war with material presented in a way that appears to be an effort to sidestep Facebook’s fact-checking system.Comments on their Facebook pages and other materials obtained by the Guardian show that some rank and file Donald Trump supporters are enthusiastically receiving the message that they should prepare for violence against their perceived political enemies in November.The network is comprised of websites owned and operated by Dino Porrazzo Sr and Dino Porrazzo Jr, whose company, AFF Media, is headquartered in Pinon Hills in California. The pair have been running rightwing websites since at latest 2013, according to DNS website records.The Porrazzos now run a network of websites that enthusiastically promote Trump, and far right anti-government militias like the Three Percenters, and offer distorted versions of current events. One of their Facebook pages, “Prepare to Take America Back” (PTTAB) at the time of reporting had 794,876 followers. Analysis with social media metrics tool Crowdtangle shows that over the last three months PTTAB posts have been shared over 141,000 times, and on average 9,600 times a week.At that time, the page’s header featured the logo of the Three Percenters, a decentralized group that the ADL calls a “wing of the militia movement”; a group of armed men in tactical gear; and a modified copy of the US presidential seal.In general, the page promotes conspiracy theories and criminal allegations about Democratic party politicians, liberal celebrities and leftist protesters, some of which – like persistent claims that Hillary Clinton will be imminently arrested – overlap with aspects of the so-called “QAnon” conspiracy theory movement.The page makes free use of political memes, but many posts link to a small cluster of rightwing websites designed to appear like news outlets. Increasingly, over the course of 2020, the page has been warning of a stolen election, and suggesting this will lead to civil war.Repeatedly in September, the page linked to a story on the website Right Wing Tribune, headlined “Radical Left Prepares For ‘Mass Public Unrest,’ ‘Political Apocalypse’ And Possible Civil War Should Be Expected If Biden Loses [Opinion]”, with Facebook captions including “the left wants war”.The story had a limited basis in fact, in that a number of progressive groups had met in early September to discuss the prospect of civil unrest and political violence after the election with a belief that the violence they were anticipating would be coming from Trump supporters and the far right.Nevertheless, the Right Wing Tribune piece concluded with a conspiracy theory: “These groups are heavily focused on removing President Trump from office as well as different scenarios which all lead to a second revolution in which they control our nation as a “New America”.”Similarly distorted stories warning of a “siege of the white house”, peppered the page throughout September and warnings of a post-election civil war were posted over the last year.Last November, the page linked to a site called Flag and Cross, and a story which it described as an “excellent opinion piece”, entitled “Winning the New Civil War (OPINION)”.The piece claimed on the basis of antifascist protests and comments by Democratic politicians that, “We have many strong indications that this is a hot war”.The transparency page for PTTAB discloses that PTTAB is managed by Southern California-based AFF Media Inc, and that the Vici Media Group “partners with this page”.According to California records, AFF Media was incorporated on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, 20 January 2017; in other documents, Dino Porrazzo Jr is listed as CEO and CFO, and Dino Porrazzo Sr as secretary. But the Guardian has discovered that the Porrazzos are further involved in running a dizzying array of interconnected sites and social media pages. The Annenberg Public Policy initiative lists two of their websites on its “Misinformation Directory” of “websites that have posted deceptive content”.One of the listed sites is Right Wing Tribune. But all of the other sites linked to by the PTTAB Facebook page also appear to belong to AFF, with similar design, shared bylines and shared source code.This is not some dark corner of the Internet, this is not a fringe thing, it’s mainstream Republicans.Becca Lewis, Stanford UniversityThe Porrazzos have been previously reported as having links to the Three Percenters, a decentralized, national militia movement that the Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes as anti-government extremists.Their online empire is large. Another Parazzo site, Flag and Cross is listed as the administrator of another Facebook page, United States Constitution, which has 1.2 million followers.A Guardian review of that site’s content shows a similar pattern of linking to Porrazzo-connected websites, and warnings of civil war stretching back to the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections.Becca Lewis researches online extremism and disinformation at Stanford University. In a telephone conversation, she said that the page and the associated websites represented a sophisticated effort to skirt Facebook’s fact-checking efforts.“It seems as though they are being very strategic in their messaging so as to not be shut down,” Lewis said, adding that viewing the ostentatious labeling of opinion as an effort to sidestep fact-checking is “absolutely a reasonable assumption”.In June, Heated reported that climate change deniers were exploiting the same loophole to “make any climate disinformation ineligible for fact-checking by deeming it “opinion”. In August, NBC reported that Facebook had systematically relaxed its fact-checking rules for conservative outlets and personalities.In a telephone conversation, Dino Porrazzo Jr asserted that PTTAB had had “zero fact-check violations”, characterizing his websites as “opinion websites based on fact”. Asked if they were fact-checked at all, Porrazzo said “no”, but added: “I don’t work at Facebook”. Asked if he thought that there really was a civil war coming, Porrazzo accused the Guardian of “writing a hit piece to get me thrown off Facebook”, and then ended the conversation.Facebook Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Porrazzos also have links to Republican officials.The registered agent for the company is an elected official in California, Ensen Mason, who was elected as San Bernardino county auditor-controller in California as a nonpartisan candidate, but who is listed as a member of the San Bernardino Republican party.In an email, however, Ensen Mason said that in relation to the Porrazzos, his accounting firm’s role “is strictly limited to accounting services and registered agent”.The Vici Media Group, meanwhile, is run by Patrick Mauldin, who is a social media consultant for the Trump campaign and other Republican politicians, and his brother, Ryan.The company was hired in 2016 by one-time Trump campaign manager and recently-resigned campaign consultant, Brad Parscale, to be part of the team that was widely credited with winning Trump the election. In June, Patrick Mauldin was identified as the creator of a fake Joe Biden site that was compared in New York Times reporting to “disinformation spread by Russian trolls”.In an email, Ryan Mauldin disavowed the Porrazzos’ publishing output, writing, “Vici Media Group was engaged for a small, non-content-related project by the managers of the page.”Mauldin added, “We have no input on the content published by the various sites or the comments made on that content. We are not working for the Trump campaign.”Mauldin did not immediately respond to attempts to further clarify the nature of their work for the Porrazzos, and to clarify New York Times reporting as recent as June 2020 that said Patrick Mauldin was on a retainer for the Trump campaign, and considered a “rising star”.Porrazzo refused to specify the nature of AFF’s relationship with Vici Media Group.Meanwhile, the content of the Porrazzo pages does appear to trigger extreme responses among users. Hundreds of user comments on the page’s posts suggest the use of violence against perceived political enemies. On a 5 September post linking to a Right Wing Tribune article suggesting that Democrats will foment civil war if Biden loses, one user commented, “a short civil war with the democrats and those who support socialist policies will go a long way to help Make America Great Again”.Another connects civil war to their belief that a Trump loss is impossible, writing “If [Biden] wins, it’ll be from fraud on an industrial scale, and the lesson that’ll have to be taught for that will necessarily be no less industrial.”Many welcome the prospect of armed conflict – one writes “That’s fine with me open season on democrats!”. Another deployed accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse as a positive example, writing “I think it will be more whining, crying, rioting, looting and a lot of Kyles protecting their cities, towns and neighborhoods.”Asked to comment on the site’s apparent reach, and the nature of its community, Lewis, the extremism researcher, said: “This is not some dark corner of the internet, this is not a fringe thing, it’s mainstream Republicans that are stoking this.”On links to the Trump campaign, she said that the distorted content and the violent user comments formed a kind of “feedback loop”, and that “Trump and his campaign staff have been masters at exploiting these feedback loops”.On Tuesday night, meanwhile, following the Guardian’s outreach to the Porrazzos and Facebook that day, Dino Porrazzo announced on Twitter that he “HAD TO DELETE A FEW ARTICLES I WROTE TODAY BECAUSE THEY WERE DEMED FALSE BY BASEMENT DWELLING LIBERAL FACT CHECKERS”. More

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      in US Politics

      Case to extradite Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to US resumes

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      The legal battle between Washington and Huawei resumes this week when a Canada-based senior executive at the Chinese state-backed telecommunications firm reappears in a Vancouver court on Monday claiming the effort to extradite her to the US should be thrown out.Huawei will claim an abuse of process, arguing the US government has provided Canadian authorities with partial and misleading evidence in an effort to show finance officer Meng Wanzhou tried to circumvent US sanctions on Iran 10 years ago.Meng, the daughter of the company’s founder, will appear in court on Monday for the first time in months after the Canadian government ordered her to remain in Vancouver until her extradition is settled.The Chinese government has condemned the US extradition drive as nakedly political. Huawei’s drawn out legal fight aims to show the US government it has no hope of securing Weng’s extradition for many years, and increase political pressure on the Canadian government to acknowledge its justice system is being used as part of Donald Trump’s trade battle with Beijing. The US government allege Meng breached US sanctions by covertly trading with Iran using a Huawei front company Skycom.Two Canadian citizens – Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur – have been arrested in China in what is seen as a tit for tat reprisal. It is unlikely the pair will be released unless Canada takes the unusual step of intervening in the extradition.Lovring’s wife has called for Meng’s release. Chinese diplomats in Canada have also warned relations between the two countries are worsening due to the episode.In the new court papers, Meng’s defence team will argue that the US government committed a fraud by providing Canada with a misleading record of the case against her when they sought her arrest on fraud and conspiracy charges in Vancouver in December 2018.The US government claims the 48-year-old finance officer misled an HSBC executive in August 2013 about Huawei’s relationship with a Skycom subsidiary accused of violating American economic sanctions against Iran.According to prosecutors, HSBC rested on her false assurances to continue financing Huawei, using dollar transaction, placing the bank at risk of prosecution and fines by the US.Court papers submitted by Meng’s lawyers claim the US government only provided Canadian authorities with 4 of the 16 slides used by her at a powerpoint presentation to reassure HSBC. The full set of slides, her lawyers claim, show she told HSBC bankers about Huawei controlling the Skycom bank account in Iran.As a result HSBC had the information it needed to assess the risk of financing Huawei.The allegation is one of three lines of attack the Huawei chief financial officer’s lawyers plan to pursue in the coming months to convince the British Columbia Supreme Court justice overseeing the case that Meng’s rights have been violated.Meng was detained in December 2018 after flying to Vancouver from Hong Kong en route to a business conference in Latin America. She will also claim after she was arrested at Vancouver airport she was subject to a three-hour interrogation without lawyers.The preliminary hearings today come ahead of a fuller hearing in February next year and will determine the legal defences that Meng’s lawyers will be entitled to mount to resist her extradition. More

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      in Elections

      Facebook's long-awaited oversight board to launch before US election

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      The long-awaited Facebook Oversight Board, empowered to overrule some of the platform’s content moderation decisions, plans to launch in October, just in time for the US election.The board will be ready to hear appeals from Facebook users as well as cases referred by the company itself “as soon as mid- or late-October at the very latest, unless there are some major technical issues that come up”, said Julie Owono, one of the 20 initial members of the committee who were named in May, in an interview on Wednesday.“The board is paying attention, and is, of course, aware of the worries around this election and the role that social media will play,” said Owono, who is also the executive director of the digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières. “When we launch, we will be ready to take requests, wherever they come from, and from whoever they come from, as long as it’s within our mandate.”The launch will come at a time of intense scrutiny and pressure for the company that has lurched from controversy to controversy since it was used by Russia to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election. The consequences of Facebook’s failures in addressing hate speech and incitement, which have for years been linked to violence in several countries and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, have become increasingly apparent in its home country in recent months. During a summer of civil unrest in the US, Facebook was linked to the growth of the violent Boogaloo movement and a militia’s “call to arms” on the night two Black Lives Matter protesters were shot and killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin.The limits of the oversight board’s mandate have been a key point of controversy since the independent institution was proposed by Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2018. The board’s initial bylaws only allowed it to consider appeals from users who believe that individual pieces of content were unfairly removed, prompting criticism from experts, including Evelyn Douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School who studies online speech regulation.“We were told this was going to be the supreme court of Facebook, but then it came out more like a local district court, and now it’s more of a traffic court,” Douek told the Guardian. “It’s just been steadily narrowed over time.”Crucial areas where Facebook exercises editorial control include the algorithms that shape what content receives the most distribution; decisions to take down or leave up Facebook groups, pages and events; and decisions to leave certain pieces of content up.The board would be considering “leave up” decisions as soon as it launched, Owono said, but only if Facebook referred a case to it. She said technical and privacy challenges had delayed the launch of a system for Facebook users to appeal “leave up” decisions, but that one would be available “as soon as possible”.Facebook’s decisions to leave certain content up, such as its decision not to remove a post by Donald Trump threatening Black Lives Matter protesters that “when the looting starts the shooting starts”, have become as controversial, if not more so, than its decisions to take certain content down.Owono said “checks and balances are needed everywhere”, including across the aspects of Facebook not included in the oversight board’s mandate, and she expressed some optimism that the institution was “agile” enough to change and adapt. Her own concern over Facebook’s “inaction” on hate speech and incitement was a major factor in her decision to join the board, she said.“The unwillingness to deal with these problems is leading increasingly to governments around the world, particularly in Africa, saying that to curb incitement to violence, they need to cut off the internet entirely,” she said. “For me it was important to be part of an institution that would be able not only to say whether or not Facebook’s decisions are in line with their community standards and international law, but also whether Facebook’s inaction is, because we will be able to look at content takedown but also content left up.”Asked whether she agreed with Facebook’s decision to leave the Trump “looting-shooting” post up, Owono demurred, noting that the board at the time had been in its earliest stages. When Owono was asked for her personal opinion, a PR representative interjected to refer to a statement the board issued at the time, which noted that the board had significant work to do before it could begin considering cases.That work has included making sure all board members are fully versed in Facebook’s community standards and international human rights law and getting technical training on the case management tool that will allow board members to receive and consider the appeals, Owono said.The tool was built by Facebook engineers with considerable input from oversight board members, according to a person familiar with the matter. One detail requested by the board members was to format user-submitted appeal statements with line numbers, so they will look similar to legal filings. At launch, it will be available in 18 languages, though that number includes both US and UK English and two types of Spanish.Owono said she wanted to ensure that the board’s work and decisions reflected both the diversity of Facebook’s users and the “diversity of the impact and where those impacts are occurring”, noting that a large majority of Facebook’s users are outside of the US.“There will be many other elections at the end of 2020 in which the role of platforms will also be scrutinized and should be scrutinized as well,” Owono said, including a general election in Myanmar on 8 November. “If we receive requests related to these elections, we’ll also pay the same attention and make the decisions that are being asked from us thoroughly and in accordance with international law principles.” More

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      in World Politics

      Is Switzerland’s Air2030 Program the Right Choice for the Country?

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      Various international media have reported on Switzerland’s current defense procurement, the largest in its history. Switzerland’s goal is to redefine the defense of its national airspace in a program called Air2030. They will determine what aircraft the Swiss air force will fly for the foreseeable future (the next 40 years) and what ground-based air defense system will protect the country. Although international reports have discussed aspects of the Swiss procurement process, particularly about the fighter aircraft being considered, the political debate has been overlooked. A closer look will clearly show the importance of security and defense issues for an international audience.

      Switzerland is a unique country in a unique geostrategic and political situation. It is famous for its strict adherence to neutrality and its citizens-in-arms as part of an army that would make it difficult for any invader to conquer. This concept of armed neutrality has been a considerable factor in establishing Switzerland’s notable wealth and political stability. According to its constitution, it is not allowed to be involved in armed or political conflict between other states. Switzerland has the world’s oldest policy of military neutrality and has never participated in a foreign war since its neutrality was officially established in 1815.

      It is worth noting that there are ongoing debates as to whether this neutrality is real or an oft-stated but realistically inaccurate description. This will not be discussed in this article. The focus is on the political and operational discussion surrounding the procurement process of Air2030.

      Switzerland Confronts Its Role in the Slave Trade

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      Geographically, Switzerland is situated in one of the world’s most stable regions, between France, Italy, Germany and Austria. All of its neighbors are EU members and, with the exception of neutral Austria, also NATO members. Anyone contemplating a military incursion by land or air into this land-locked nation would have to pass through NATO territory or NATO airspace. Politically, Switzerland developed a democratic system in which its citizens have the right to participate directly in government decisions and sometimes even in defense-related decisions.

      Many in the world envy and admire the Swiss for such direct democracy, and while the success of Switzerland’s political framework is clear, its effectiveness is based upon access to accurate information. In the current national debate about Air2030 however, this access is highly questionable.

      Procedural Adjustments

      Switzerland’s Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sports (DDPS) oversees the country’s defense issues. Its previous plan for the procurement of fighter aircraft was rejected by a majority of the Swiss people. In 2014, the Gripen fighter jet, manufactured by Saab in Sweden, was turned down by 53% of the Swiss. The Gripen rejection was a major blow for the DDPS and has certainly influenced their current procurement effort. During the previous procurement attempt, the Gripen did not pass all internal Swiss evaluation tests and compared less favorably against the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Dassault Rafale.

      Still, the Swiss government decided to promote the purchasing process in 2011 for a little more than $3 billion. Saab’s competitors, of course, disagreed vehemently with this decision and protested. Coincidently, internal Swiss test results of the aircraft evaluation were anonymously leaked and the Swiss media started to call the Gripen a “paper plane.” Petitions against the Gripen began. In 2014, an unlikely coalition of military critics, pacifists, political skeptics and those who preferred a more capable aircraft stopped the Swiss procurement plans through a referendum.

      In 2020, the DDPS is again trying to convince the Swiss electorate of the need for a new aircraft. This time, it’s the Air2030 defense plan, which entails the acquisition of new fighter jets at a price tag of around $6 billion and ground-based air defense systems at a further $2 billion. Learning from the Gripen rejection, direct involvement of the Swiss voters has been adjusted accordingly: The people will not have the chance to vote for or against ground-based air defense or what system will be purchased. However, they will still have the opportunity to influence the procurement of fighter jets, but not around a particular aircraft type.

      The DDPS will evaluate and choose among four aircraft: the European (Germany, UK, Italy, Spain) coproduction Eurofighter Typhoon; the French Dassault Rafale; or the American Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet or Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II. On September 27, the Swiss referendum will determine whether the DDPS has the mandate to choose one of these aircraft or not. The referendum cannot influence which aircraft Switzerland will ultimately purchase. Many Swiss citizens are frustrated at their inability to influence this procurement decision.

      The aircraft type is of operational and military importance, but also of political relevance. The purchasing decision will wed the Swiss military to the country producing the aircraft they select for many years to come. In a country dominated by a mindset of neutrality, this is not a decision to be made lightly.

      So far, the Air2030 discussion in Switzerland has been emotional and politically motivated, with many facts frequently discarded from the conversation. The DDPS has framed the upcoming referendum as an essential question about Switzerland’s defense capability. According to the DDPS, a no to Air2030 would be a vote against the Swiss military and would leave Switzerland defenseless after 2030, due to its supposed eight-to-10-year procurement process. DDPS argues that if this opportunity is missed now, Switzerland will not be able to field new fighter jets by 2030. Without fighter jets, it claims the Swiss military cannot fulfill its basic defense functions.

      The commander of the Swiss air force further warned that there was no “plan B” and that Switzerland without Air2030 will not have a functioning air force after 2030. Needless to say, not having a plan B does not speak well for Swiss military planning functions. It is also important to note that the Swiss air force commander implied that Switzerland would start fielding the first new fighter aircraft as early as 2025 if Air2030 was approved by the Swiss people. Contrary to the DDPS statements, it should be absolutely possible to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new viable defense plan if the people vote against Air2030 and still have a solution fielded by 2030.

      The Hornet

      The DDPS justifies the need for new fighter jets by 2030 due to the aging fleet of the current F/A-18 Hornets. According to the DDPS, the F/A-18 Hornet is outdated and obsolete. In the Swiss press, the aircraft has been called an “old-timer plane.” Swiss defense minister, Viola Amherd, stated in parliament and in numerous interviews that Switzerland would be the world’s last country to fly the F/A-18 Hornet by 2030. Put simply, this is not true. Canada will operate its F/A-18 Hornets, which are much older than the Swiss ones, until 2032. The Canadian Air Force was one of the first to acquire the Hornet in 1982, while Switzerland was one of the last countries to do so between 1997 and 1999.

      The Canadian F/A-18 Hornets were used during Operation Desert Storm over Kuwait and Iraq, during NATO operations over Yugoslavia and Libya, and during the military air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. They are currently actively engaged with the US Air Force under the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in protecting the North American continental airspace and are part of NATO’s air policing missions in the Baltic states, Romania and Iceland.

      These real-world missions will continue to be carried out by Canadian F/A-18 Hornets into the 2030s. Canada, together with the US Marine Corps, is currently upgrading its Hornets. Just like Canada, the Marine Corps will continue to operate the F/A-18 Hornet in the future. It is therefore difficult to believe the Swiss argument that its Hornets are no longer adequate for the mission of the Swiss air force. In 2016 already, the Canadian Air Force declared that some of its Hornets had up to 8,000 flight hours, many of them under combat conditions. Switzerland is currently modifying its Hornet fleet from 5,000 to 6,000 flight hours and is claiming that the planes have reached their ultimate limit.

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      Malaysia is also prolonging the life of its Hornets. In this process, Malaysia is acquiring used F/A-18 Hornets from Kuwait that will be delivered by 2021 and then be operated by Malaysia for an additional 10 to 15 years. Especially interesting is the fact that the Swiss DDPS is aware of this. The maintenance of the Malaysian F/A-18 Hornets is done by RUAG, a Swiss company specializing in defense and aerospace engineering. RUAG emerged in 2003 from the Swiss Federal Office of Topography of the Armament Group, which was divided into the commercial RUAG and the federal agency Armasuisse (Federal Office for Defense Procurement), which falls under the DDPS. The Swiss voters, however, will likely not be aware of any of this when they vote on the replacement of the F/A-18 Hornet. Mainstream Swiss media has almost unanimously repeated the notion that the F/A-18 Hornet is obsolete, outdated and inadequate for continuous service. No one in the media questioned the defense minister’s false statements about Switzerland being the last country to continue to operate the F/A-18 Hornet.

      Air Policing

      The main task of the new Swiss fighter jets will be so-called air policing in order to maintain air sovereignty and security. As part of air policing activities, the air force checks with its live missions that the flight routes of aircraft correspond with the clearance they have been given. Air policing missions carried out to assist civilian aircraft or in response to serious violations of air sovereignty or air traffic rules are called hot missions. The Swiss government declared that the Swiss air force conducted an average of 270 live and 20 hot missions per year over the last decade. The Air2030 critics argue that, in the rare cases of a more robust scenario, Switzerland could still use the F/A-18 Hornet.

      According to the critics, all 270 live missions, and even the majority of hot missions, could be carried out by less sophisticated and less expensive military aircraft than those the DDPS is proposing. Such alternatives are light fighters and combat variants of training aircraft. The DDPS and the defense minister responded that training planes do not have the technical ability nor are they equipped to carry out air policing missions. This is repeated in almost every discussion and open hearing in Switzerland. The defense minister even stated that such training aircraft couldn’t be armed at all and that they are a “total waste.”

      Further, according to the DDPS, no air force in the world is using training aircraft for such missions. The mainstream Swiss media was quick to again parrot these comments and helped shape the opinion that the critics were providing unrealistic, ill-informed and absurd ideas. Again, this is not true. Contrary to the statements by Viola Amherd, it must be understood that the alternative aircraft options are not exclusive training jets. They are light fighters based on airframes that are also used for aircraft dedicated to training.

      Uniquely, Switzerland should not be unfamiliar with this concept. The F-5 Tiger, operated by the Swiss air force for decades in air policing missions is this type of plane. The F-5 Tiger is the fighter version of the T-38, which has been a training aircraft for many air forces, including the US Air Force. Interestingly enough, seasoned and combat-proven US Air Force fighter pilots have openly advocated for new and more economic light fighters derived from training platforms to fill a role to maintain air sovereignty alert in the United States. In their eyes, these aircraft could be used to respond to airspace incursions, external threats, wayward aircraft and terrorist operations. Such planes could execute this essential mission at a much lower cost, avoiding the need to allocate expensive F-35s for a task they are less than optimal for.

      In 2019, US Congress mandated the Air Force to explore its future inventory. As a result, the renowned MITRE Corporation and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments recommended that the US Air Force arm its new trainer jets to fly homeland defense missions. Further, those fighter versions of training aircraft could be exported overseas to countries for whom complex fifth-generation fighter jets would make little sense. Despite overwhelming examples supporting the critics’ viewpoint, the Swiss public has not been informed. Not one mainstream Swiss media outlet has reported on such plans for training platforms in the US Air Force.

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      The new US jet trainer, the T-7 Red Hawk, a co-production between Boeing and Saab, will be marketed in a light fighter version as an alternative for air forces (such as Switzerland’s) operating the F-5 Tiger. A combat variant of its T-7 jet trainer is viewed as a replacement of the world’s aging fleets of F-5 Tigers. Serbia has recently voiced interest in buying the T-7 Red Hawk to complement and support its current MIG-29 Fulcrum fleet to counter and intercept airspace incursions. When taking a look at examples from around the world, it is clear that not every air force is using only strictly dedicated multirole fighters to defend airspace. Armed trainers have been successfully employed by many air forces, including many top tier ones. Nevertheless, the Swiss are kept in the dark about this. Repeatedly, it has been stated by official Swiss channels and the media that such a thing cannot and does not exist.

      There is reason to believe that this misinformation is deliberate. How is it that the DPPS is not aware of armed training aircraft serving to control airspace? Especially, since the Swiss RUAG is actively engaged with air forces that use said aircraft types in such a function. Armed trainers like the BAE Hawk are in service with the royal Malaysian air force to supplement its fighter fleet and directly contribute to the country’s air defense.

      Problematic Threat Analysis

      A question that has been asked in Switzerland is about the plans of how to protect the expensive and complex aircraft on the ground as well as their facilities. If airbases and runways are not adequately protected, the most sophisticated combat aircraft could become useless. In this respect, the RAND Corporation recently published an extensive study on airbase defense in Europe for the US Air Force and concluded that cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones pose major threats. Enemy aircraft, on the other hand, are only considered a moderate risk, given NATO capabilities to counter combat aircraft and the low probability that any single threat aircraft (let alone a large force) could reach an airbase in the rear.

      This should be important for Switzerland and its defense planning. Surrounded by NATO countries, this means that it would be highly unlikely that the Swiss air force will encounter enemy aircraft in an open conflict, but instead it needs to consider missiles and drones. However, Air2030 identifies combat aircraft as its main threat and does not believe that ballistic missiles pose any threat at all. According to the Air2030 planners, ballistic missiles aren’t accurate and, therefore, are not used as effective military means.

      Justifiably, international military experts vehemently disagree. Ever since the precise Iranian ballistic missile attacks on US airbases in Iraq, it is clear that the Swiss defense planners were absolutely wrong in their assessment. In this context it is critical to know that only certain ground-based air defenses could combat ballistic missiles; fighter jets do not have that capability. When the DPPS was confronted with criticism about its unrealistic position on ballistic missiles and its neglect of defense considerations, its initial reaction was to personally attack the critics. The DPPS continually maintained that its new ground-based air defense only needs to be capable of intercepting aircraft and that ballistic missiles are not a threat.

      Then, suddenly, in January this year, this position changed. Now, the DPPS claims that defense options against ballistic missiles must be discussed within the evaluation of new ground-based air defense systems for Switzerland. This change of opinion was not well communicated to the media or the Swiss people but arose in a seemingly minor alteration of the text to the requirements for the procurement of ground-based air defenses. The significance of this was lost on the Swiss press. This abrupt change is essentially an admission by the DPPS that its threat assessment was wrong.

      Threat analysis is the most foundational aspect of any defense plan. If the threat assessment was flawed, it means the entire defense plan must be critically reevaluated. As the defense plan’s main operational asset and financial focus is a new Swiss fighter jet that cannot protect against ballistic missiles, this reevaluation is imperative.

      Interconnectedness

      From the beginning of the debate around Air2030, critics have tried to point out the dependence that Switzerland would be under with the purchase of new aircraft. The F-35 especially was criticized as a means for the United States to have access to sensitive Swiss data and have the ability to control the performance of the Swiss air force. These claims are not unjustified. The F-35 is the world’s most sophisticated and highly capable aircraft. However, international avionics experts have questioned if this fifth-generation multirole fighter is not “overkill” for a country like Switzerland.

      Very early into the program, the foreign partners of the F-35 were already worried about the data the aircraft is collecting, storing and sending back to the United States. Further concerns entailed links to the aircraft collection system that could get cut, especially in the middle of a crisis. The F-35’s interconnectedness gives the US government or its manufacturer Lockheed Martin unprecedented access and level of export control of software updates to foreign operators. The only foreign operator that is not dependent on the US upgrades is Israel, which was able to negotiate for itself the right to install a different software system.

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      It is interesting that just at the same time as the debate in the United States and Israel about the features and dependencies of the F-35 in regard of a possible sale to UAE is ongoing, the head of security policy in the DPPS and the defense minister assured the Swiss that no foreign power could have any influence on the performance of any of the potential Swiss aircraft and could neither ground them. According to the head of security policy for the DPPS, there are absolutely no grounds for such rumors. Externally influencing aircraft, according to her, is impossible, and any such notions are “complete nonsense.” The Swiss mainstream media accepted these assurances and let them stand without questioning them.

      One has to wonder how this is possible when at the same time international experts are contemplating in public that the US could very well go ahead and sell the F-35 to the UAE without endangering Israel’s qualitative military edge since the United States could interfere with its performance at any time. It is internationally widely reported that the US government has enhanced safeguards to curtail F-35s in the hands of potential Arab buyers should the geopolitical situation change. The US would have little trouble grounding the Emirati fleet should Abu Dhabi ever “go rogue.” Without US support, the F-35 fleet would be effectively useless.

      The Swiss people now have to decide if Air2030 will be the right concept for the defense of Switzerland or not. In order to do so, they need to have access to a broad spectrum of information and different perspectives. Given an honest and factual approach, they may very well vote for Air2030 in support of the DPPS. But, undeniably, the question of new fighter jets for the Swiss air force appears to be preordained for certain outcomes based on previous negative procurement experience. To this date, the Air2030 program has been characterized by disingenuous political maneuvering, an inaccurate capability discussion and a flawed defense design. With the exception of a few journalists, the Swiss mainstream media has hardly produced factual content or critical analysis of the biggest defense procurement in the nation’s history.

      For September 27, the Swiss media has predicted an overwhelming victory for Air2030 and the first female Swiss defense minister, who appears to have political ambition for more than just her current position. A win in the referendum will catapult her popularity, increase her weight in Swiss politics and may facilitate her rise to even more prestigious positions. However, if Air2030 will be approved, it certainly will become clear relatively soon that this project was a bad investment with dubious defense value under a false pretense.

      *[The expressed opinions are the author’s own and do not represent those of the US Air Force or any other military branch, the US Department of Defense or the US government.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More