'social network' attacking pesticide critics shuts down after investigation
9 comments
·February 11, 2025dougb5
somenameforme
The problem you run into is that this is done intentionally. For instance Hanlon's Razor, Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity., is simply completely invalid when it comes to large organizations, because they always consciously ensure some degree of plausible deniability to actions that are intentionally and maliciously done.
USAID has funded a lot of awful things that the government has no business being involved in, but they do it through various sub organizations in order to effectively 'launder' the funding. Jay Byrne is the guy who founded v-Fluence. He's not only a former Monsanto director but also worked at "various high-level legislative and public affairs positions at USAID". [1] And then USAID goes on to fund his little doxing site against Monsanto critics.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/26/government-f...
dougb5
My complaint is with the article. They haven't done the reporting needed to tell me how much US taxpayers actually spent on this. They are happy to leave readers with the impression that we funded all of it. This is how we get distortions like "USAID funds Politico!" spread by bad-faith actors.
The other questions they could have answered: How much did USAID spend on IFPRI? Was the grant from USAID to IFPRI expressly designated for v-Fluence, or was it for other programs as well?
gnabgib
Related The US government-funded 'private social network' attacking pesticide critics (46 points, 4 months ago, 5 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41715728
openrisk
Remarkable story and a glimpse at how nasty vested interests can become as the world starts to second guess the sustainability of an entire century's worth of "growth" at all costs.
Its not black and white, without pesticides we'll probably all perish from malnutrition within a year or two, but the pressure to contain the collateral damage to environment and people will not go away.
jemmyw
> without pesticides we'll probably all perish from malnutrition within a year or two
I'm unsure if that is true or not. Certainly it would reduce yields initially but some high yield farming in the US has already moved away from pesticides. It seems that we could probably engineer out of pesticide use if we wanted to by combination of more gmo crops and changing the crops grown somewhat.
goda90
Robotics might hold promise for ditching pesticides too. There's already laser weed killing machines. Could we target specific insects with smaller robots that can move under and between plants?
There's also just trying to use nature to help use. Beneficial fungus can be fostered to out compete harmful ones. Chickens can be unleashed in the fields at the right times to reduce the insect load. Maybe we could genetically modify sterile predator insects to hunt down the pests and then die off since they can't reproduce themselves.
leoh
Worth watching “Michael Clayton”
ekianjo
As usual the Guardian reporting is sub-par:
> One client of more than 20 years is Syngenta, a Chinese government enterprise-owned company currently being sued by thousands of people in the US and Canada who allege they developed the incurable brain disease Parkinson’s from using Syngenta’s paraquat weed killers
Syngenta exists since 2000 and has NOT been owned by a Chinese organization from 2000 to 2017. So making it sound like China has been sponsoring them for more than 20 years is not good journalism. Syngenta HQ is based in Switzerland, too.
> part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars
The "in part" here is doing a lot of work. I can't tell how big the part is from the detail provided in the article:
> v-Fluence, which also had the former agrochemical firm Monsanto as a client, secured some funding from the US government as part of a contract with a third party. Public spending records show the US Agency for International Development (USAid) contracted with a separate non-governmental organization that manages a government initiative to promote GM crops in African and Asian countries.
> That organization, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), then paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of “modern agriculture approaches” in Africa and Asia.
If we count second-degree links like this, I bet we'd find that most organizations (including for-profit companies) are "funded in part by US tax dollars."