Why the UN’s deal with Palantir is a privacy threat

Human stories from a world in conflict. No Images? [Click here]( Feb. 8, 2019 Editor’s note: We are trying some new features this week in our global security newsletter and would like to know what you think. Please [take our survey](. Introducing Critical State (Beta), a partnership between The World and Inkstick Media. If you read just one thing ... The UN is [getting into business]( with defense technology giant Palantir and, like teens who just noticed Palantir chairman Peter Thiel [chasing after them with a syringe](, humanitarian aid and digital privacy advocates are alarmed. The UN’s World Food Program announced Tuesday that it had signed a $45 million contract with Palantir to help manage the aid agency’s beneficiary data. WFP insists that “all data… would rest under WFP’s control,” but the nongovernmental organization Privacy International points out that the UN currently has no protocols for making sure data doesn’t end up in Palantir’s hands. As humanitarian technology researcher Daniel Scarnecchia [argued]( on Twitter, the implications of a data transfer are potentially dire: “If this trend continues, aid will become a vehicle for private sector organizations to capture market share in the developing world.” ## ... if you read more than one thing Gender integration in the Green Berets In 2012, Army veteran Jackie Munn passed a strict evaluation process qualifying her to lead a Cultural Support Team in Afghanistan’s Paktia province that worked alongside an all-male Special Forces unit. The partnership worked well until halfway through her tour, the Special Forces team she had been working with was replaced by another, more sexist team. She was just as qualified as before, but her team’s effectiveness plummeted because, as she writes, “we were excluded and felt marginalized.” - The debate over women in combat roles tends to revolve around women’s fitness for the demands of combat, but Munn’s story reflects the experience of many women veterans who served in combat: the real limiting factor for women’s combat effectiveness is the lack of professionalism from men. - Munn’s story is especially timely because an unnamed soldier recently [became]( the first woman to pass the Army’s Special Forces Assessment and Selection process. She will go on to attend the Special Forces Qualification Course, a nearly year-long course that is a prerequisite for earning a Green Beret. Al-Qaeda’s American armory A CNN [investigation]( found that Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners are actively transferring American arms to al-Qaeda-linked militias and other allies as part of its ongoing war in Yemen. In addition to small arms, journalists confirmed that the Saudis had airdropped American-made anti-tank missiles to Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate. - This is hardly the first time we’ve heard of American weapons in the Middle East ending up in the hands of unsavory figures, but usually the narrative is something closer to “the guns fell off a truck” than “Saudi Arabia bought TOW missiles from the US, airdropped them to al-Qaeda, and then lit the end-user agreement on fire while staring directly into America’s eyes.” - The article also notes that Houthi rebels are capturing a fair amount of American-made equipment, allowing their Iranian allies a chance to do one of their favorite things: reverse-engineer American weapons and make [cheap knock-offs](. Clearing space Stanford and the European Space Agency are [hosting]( a competition they hope will produce an algorithm that can tell space trash from space treasure from Elon Musk’s [Tesla in space](, the only celestial object that is both. The competition is the first step in a process that scientists hope will result in a reliable method of cleaning up increasingly cluttered orbital paths around Earth. - The competition grows out of a civilian project, but its security implications are clear. Major militaries (and especially the American military) rely on satellites for secure communications, reconnaissance, and, crucially, GPS navigation. If an old, junk satellite or one of its parts were to run into a key satellite at the wrong moment, it could be very bad news. Ultimately, the algorithm will help the [Impulse One]( — a “space tow truck” — to identify decommissioned satellites, allowing the craft to put that space junk inside its space trunk. ## Midnight oil Our first Midnight Oil guest is [Meredith Loken](, assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Dr. Loken studies gender and conflict, and her most recent [article]( (with Milli Lake and Kate Cronin-Furman) examines why governments condemn sexual violence in war in some instances and not others. What is the hardest problem you spend your time trying to solve? The hardest problem I spend my time trying to solve ... is how to conceptualize and measure gender dynamics in international relations, especially how gender affects who has power, how power is exerted, how gender shapes actors interests, interactions, and access. For example, if we want to explain the scope and scale of gender-based violence during conflict, do we include civilian domestic violence in our definition of conflict violence? We know that conflict can drive increases in domestic violence, but we also know there would likely be some level of domestic violence if the conflict hadn’t happened. …[F]eminist international relations work ...requires working through these hard questions of picking and choosing which experiences to consider ... But it is work worth doing ...the stakes are high, and we should be held accountable to high standards. How do you go about trying solving these measurement problems? I’m still working on it! I credit feminist and other security scholars for expanding my thinking about conceptualization and methodology, people like [Laura Shepherd](, [Milli Lake](, [Marie Berry](, [Roxani Krystalli](, and [Laura Sjoberg](. I’m writing about how women’s participation in rebel organizations affect rebel engagement with civilians and tangible conflict outcomes. … [B]eing armed and in close proximity to violence [are] good indicators of being in a combat role, but I quickly realized how complicated and contextual those seemingly obvious indicators actually were. For instance, many women in the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) worked as nurses, which we generally consider a non-combat role, [but they were armed](! WSLF women working as communication experts, also a non-combat role, were also armed! So what does it mean to be “on the front-line,” what does it really mean to be in close proximity to violence? Often it comes down to if you have a weapon to turn in, but the reality is much more complicated and women’s contributions are uniquely misunderstood. Show me the receipts [For the first time in a decade, Netanyahu has a serious challenger]( Rebecca Collard set the table for [upcoming Israeli elections](, which are shaping up to be closer than any current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced in his current decade-long stint in power. His main opponent, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz, is directly challenging Netanyahu’s reputation as Israel’s "Mr. Security,” [boasting]( of the destruction wrought by the IDF in Gaza under Gantz’s command in 2014. Learn more >]( [A]([xis of Confusion: Trump and the State of the Union]( William Hartung took one for the team, watching the State of the Union and summarizing President Trump’s message on security issues. Hartung captured the [tension at the heart of Trump’s foreign policy]( — an instinct for restraint in Syria and Afghanistan, in contrast with extremely bellicose rhetoric against regimes in Iran and Venezuela. [Learn more >]( [The World reporter Tania Karas interviewing Waris, a teen Afghan refugee, in Athens, Greece in 2015. They keep in touch via Facebook.] [W](hy I can't quit Facebook: I want to click 'love' when I see refugees' big milestones Tania Karas told the story of her relationship with Facebook and, to use Zuck’s famous nomenclature, it’s complicated. Karas covers migration for The World, and [Facebook is how she keeps track of the refugees]( she has met as they post triumphs, setbacks and milestones. On the other hand, she writes, “The same platform that connects us fueled one of the largest and most horrific human displacements in recent history in Myanmar,” where the military used Facebook to foment genocide. [Learn more >]( Is authoritarianism bad for the economy? Nisha Bellinger and Byunghwan Son delved into their research on why national economies tend to suffer when [democracies become autocracies](. Because such shifts often cause social unrest and displacement among democratic institutions, they tend to reduce a regime’s ability to exert responsible control over the economy even as the regime’s political power increases. Bellinger and Son did find, however, that maintaining an independent, multiparty legislature can calm foreign investors and limit the economic damage of democratic backsliding. [Learn more >]( [This scientist used imaging techniques to rescue sound from the Nuremberg trials]( Chris Harland-Dunaway took us on an archival journey, following the International Court of Justice’s attempts to [digitize forgotten audio recordings of the Nuremberg trials]( of Nazi war criminals after World War II. The recordings, stored in 1,942 gramophone records, are sharp and clear and will be released to the public in digital form in 2020. [Learn more >]( [As Venezuela's crisis worsens, thousands more flee to neighboring Colombia seeking relief]( Luke Taylor traveled to the Colombian town of Cúcuta, near the Venezuelan border, to report on the [40,000 Venezuelans crossing into Cúcuta]( each day, fleeing the ongoing crisis in their home country. The Colombian government is scrambling to accommodate the refugees, but a lack of resources on the ground means that, as a relief worker told Taylor, “I see it getting worse before it gets better.” [Learn more >]( Well played If you’re reading Rebecca Collard’s [piece]( on Benny Gantz and you want to get a sense of how the tenor of Israeli politics has changed in recent years, compare Gantz’s [ad]( from this year bragging that “parts of Gaza were returned to the Stone Age” to Netanyahu’s 2015 “[Bibi-sitter](” ad, which has a similar message to Gantz’s ad, but a whole different energy. Foreign Policy released its list of 2019’s top “global thinkers” this week, and Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman [made the cut](. For added cognitive dissonance, Khashoggi is also on the list. It’s been a tough couple weeks for global security reporters, with major job cuts at Buzzfeed and Vice, among others. The talented Emily Tamkin, a Buzzfeed foreign affairs reporter caught in this round of layoffs, wrote a delightful, bittersweet [diary]( of the life of a newly-minted unwilling freelancer. Read it, then go support whatever outlets employ the reporters whose work you rely on. The 2020 presidential primaries are just getting started, but competition for the crucial post-colonial studies scholar vote is already [heating up](! Air Force General Joseph Lengyel wore his ribbons upside down to the State of the Union address, and the (non-general officer) veterans on Twitter [had]( [some]( [takes](. Thanks for reading. 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