Shutting down the heart of the megamachine – Fire of microchip production
Last night, we set fire to fuse boxes, supply cables and a ventilation system belonging to Micro Resist Technology on the grounds of the Wuhlheide Innovation Park. While Germany is once again unrestrainedly mobilizing for military strength and war capability with a turnaround, special funds and compulsory military service, we are targeting the heart of the technological mega-machine with our sabotage and, with microchip production, are also hitting one of the most sensitive points of civil-military cooperation. This attack is intended as a contribution to the protests against National Veterans Day next Sunday – fire and flame instead of glory and honor for militarism, soldiering and fatherland!
Tiny giants at the intersection of technology and war
The web of capitalist domination is tightening ever tighter around us. Technological progress is the engine that drives the destructive mega-machine and allows it to penetrate ever further into the most intimate areas of our existence. Inanimate objects made of plastic and metal, which, equipped with sensors, microphones, lenses, microchips etc., are increasingly becoming prostheses for social interaction, replacing genuine, empathetic relationships and causing our cognitive abilities to atrophy. At the same time, we are being tracked at every turn by social media, voice assistants, artificial intelligence, “smart” devices, facial recognition and many other surveillance tools, whereby everything we do is being increasingly incorporated into the capitalist value chain. Big data becomes big money. The implementation of such technologies in our everyday lives shapes our existence and the algorithmic calculations derived from them increasingly decide and determine our future. Once we have become accustomed to them, these mechanisms have such an all-encompassing effect that it is almost inconceivable for most people today to escape their digital grasp. For many, even the thought of it triggers anxiety. What remains is an army of slaves to the machine, dependent, controlled, externally determined and not even aware of this relationship.
However, this is only one side of the technological attack. Technology can and should not only manipulate our thoughts and actions, it should also kill. Almost all relevant technologies can be traced back to military research and development in order to gain advantages on the battlefield. Not only against hostile nations, but also in the social war against the exploited, superfluous and precarious of the population. From nuclear power to the internet, from cybernetics to artificial intelligence – our everyday lives are permeated by things that have a military logic at their core. In extreme cases, this can mean that apps that playfully accompany us through the day today feed and train the same machines on the basis of which an AI-controlled drone will determine and destroy its target tomorrow. A practice that is sometimes used by the Israeli military in particular through AI programs such as “Lavender” in their unleashed campaign of destruction against the Palestinian population of Gaza and with the friendly support of their Western accomplices. What seems like an episode from a dystopian science fiction movie is the gruesome reality of technological “achievements”, which are summarized under the term “dual-use” and are inherent in most technologies. Companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Telekom and Tesla are just some of the best-known players operating at the interface between civil and military applications. Companies that produce highly specialized key technologies such as microchips/semiconductors, without which none of the modern technical devices would work, are far less well known. Smartphones, computers or cars just as little as tanks, guided missiles or war drones.
More or less unnoticed for a long time, this production sector is increasingly coming to the attention of the global public as geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan increase. More than half of all microchips are manufactured in Taiwan and in some areas of the complex production of high-performance chips, the Taiwanese company TSMC has a share of over 90%. The EU and the USA want to change this as quickly as possible, as access to high-quality microchips is crucial in the event of war and the global economy is directly dependent on it. In addition, the high degree of specialization and fragile global supply chains make production extremely susceptible to disruptions and interruptions, which already led to supply bottlenecks during coronavirus, bringing hundreds of factories to a standstill worldwide, especially those of car manufacturers. As a result, several microchip factories are currently being built in the EU and the USA. However, dependencies exist in all directions and the industry is characterized by mutual sanctions and protectionist policies, which is why there is talk of a “chip war”. Exposure systems for high-performance chips, for example, can currently only be manufactured by the Dutch company ASML, which has located a considerable part of its production in Berlin, making the city an important location for the chip industry. ASML, like all other producers in the semiconductor industry, is in turn dependent on a large number of specialized suppliers. One of these suppliers is Micro Resist Technology, a research and high-tech company from Köpenick, which manufactures and controls specialty chemicals for chip production, on the basis of which these are then manufactured. Since this technology is essential for reasons of economic potency and military clout, and since war capability seems to be the maxim of our time anyway, the microchip industry is currently experiencing a veritable boom in Europe. The company we are attacking is therefore considered a “hidden champion”, which says it all.
However, chip production is also an ecological disaster in many respects. For the regions where the factories are located, as well as wherever the rare raw materials are plundered for their production. If, as planned by the EU, 20 percent of the world’s microchips are to be produced in Europe in the future, the industry’s emissions could even exceed those of the European chemical and steel industries. In addition, the current AI hype is expected to lead to exponential growth in the demand for microchips, which will inevitably increase the extent of the destruction of nature to the same extent.
But many other products that make the technological monster ever more powerful and whose application has far-reaching consequences for all our lives also come from Micro Resist. These are used in all kinds of key technologies such as microsystems technology, microelectronics, optoelectronics, micro- and nanophotonics, micro- and nanotechnology and the life sciences. In addition, Micro Resist is currently researching and developing a new version of virtual glasses in cooperation with Google, which will deliver data and information into your field of vision. This is another technology that has its origins in the military sector to turn soldiers into infallible cyborgs and combat robots by means of human-machine interactions. It remains to be seen whether a new field trial to normalize such surveillance and control instruments in the civilian sector will fail again due to the solid arguments of its opponents in the face of the tech yuppies. Even if we feel little hope overall in these times, it remains to be hoped.
For everything else, we still consider sabotage, with its centuries-old tradition, to be a contemporary response to warfare, technological attack and the destruction of the planet.
Switch off the mega-machine!
Fire and flame instead of glory and honor for militarism, soldiering and fatherland!
Attack war profiteers – sabotage Veterans Day!
Happiness and strength underground and in prison – freedom for all!
Anarchist Haufen M.R.M.D (micro resist – mega damage)
Source: Kontrapolis
Via: La Nemesi