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“Sustainably” Surveilling and Tokenizing Nature: The Case of O.N.E. Amazon

The architect of BlackRock’s ETFs has teamed up with a group of companies tied to US intelligence and US government debt trading to tokenize the Amazon rainforest and borgify it with a large-scale sensor network in order to create a new form of “digital gold.”

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/08/investigative-reports/sustainably-surveilling-and-tokenizing-nature-the-case-of-o-n-e-amazon/

Excerpt:

A satellite surveillance company with links to U.S. intelligence, former Trump administration officials, U.S. government debt barons and the stablecoin Tether (USDT) announced plans earlier this year to build the “Internet for Forests” in the Amazon rainforest. The satellite company, called Satellogic, plans to join an initiative to rig up one of the world’s oldest and most important forests with sensors and “machine intelligence infrastructure” led by a group called O.N.E. Amazon. O.N.E. Amazon, in turn, seeks to turn the Amazon rainforest into a digital asset security to be chopped up, tokenized and sold off to investors around the world as a novel form of digital credit. O.N.E. Amazon’s partners in this endeavor, such as Aecom, also have important U.S. intelligence connections.

O.N.E. Amazon is chaired by Peter Knez, who oversaw the creation of ETFs (exchange traded funds) and iShares, which is now owned by BlackRock. Knez, who also served for many years as BlackRock’s Global Chief Investment Officer, also chairs the Venom Foundation, which is developing a proprietary blockchain and token to facilitate the “development and implementation of central bank digital currency (CBDC) and traditional finance products by governments and businesses” around the world. Given that O.N.E. Amazon describes its rainforest tokenization initiative as “crypto with a purpose” and that it is also chaired by Knez, it seems likely that the Amazon-focused initiative may involve Venom in some capacity. Given Satellogic’s ties to past efforts to impose a Bitcoin blockchain-powered carbon market on Latin America, it is also possible that Bitcoin or another prominent blockchain will be used, especially considering the involvement of Jalak Jobanputra, a major investor in the digital currency space and particularly in important Bitcoin-related companies, in allegedly co-founding O.N.E. Amazon.

As we previously reported earlier this year in a piece entitled Tokenized Inc., BlackRock and other titans of finance are attempting to tokenize and financialize the natural world. Considering that the architect of iShares now stands at the helm of O.N.E. Amazon, it is important to reflect on BlackRock’s Larry Fink’s words shortly after the approval of the iShares Bitcoin ETF earlier this year. Fink stated that “We believe ETFs are a technology no different than Bitcoin was a technology for asset storage.” In other words, blockchain and ETFs, per Fink, merely serve as a technological means to store centralized indexes, funds and tokenized assets, in direct contrast to the founding aspirations of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer digital currency. Now, the very man who developed BlackRock’s ETF machine is seeking to tokenize the Amazon rainforest and transform it into a digital asset of finite supply – essentially turning a major and crucial ecosystem into a “digital gold” or bitcoin analogue.

For years, titans of Wall Street like BlackRock have helped saddle South American countries with unprecedented debt levels, robbing them of their economic sovereignty through dollarization or institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Now, they are seeking to turn the continent’s most crucial resources into a form of “digital gold” that will be enforced by a satellite-sensor system tied to individuals deeply invested in efforts to globalize dollar-denominated debt and also to American intelligence. While the goal is framed as “conservation” of the Amazon, the Satellogic-O.N.E. Amazon proposal seeks instead to enable the exploitation of a protected resource like never before while also building a cybernetic surveillance grid into one of nature’s greatest monuments – not to ensure the forest’s “health” – but to ensure the “integrity” of the digital asset security it is now poised to uphold.

What is O.N.E. Amazon?

O.N.E. Amazon aims to create “sustainable impact for the environment and investors by using next-generation technology to bring innovation to conservation.” It was formally launched at COP28 in December 2023 but appears to have begun operations sometime around 2021, if not earlier. The “innovation” O.N.E. Amazon offers is related to its issuance of an upcoming,“regulated O.N.E. Amazon Digital Asset Security.” Per O.N.E. Amazon’s chairman Peter Knez, “each security will represent the perceived value of one hectare of biome in the Amazon rainforest, backed by a 30-year preservation agreement over that land.” The amount of securities to be issued will be capped at 750 million, “corresponding to the hectarage of the rainforest.” In other words, each security issued represents one hectare of the Amazon. Knez stated in an interview with TradeArabia that the group has already secured “an impressive long-term land preservation agreement for 50 million hectares of rainforest, an area larger than Spain.” The company asserts that “investors will benefit from the potential capital appreciation of the security” in large part due to “the finite size” of the rainforest it is tokenizing.

.....In order to help underwrite their digital asset security linked to each hectare of the Amazon rainforest, O.N.E. Amazon plans to build the “world’s first Internet of Forest (IoF)” in partnership with MIT Media Lab and the aforementioned satellite surveillance company, Satellogic. A percentage of the OAIF will go toward building out the IoF and other investments in Amazon “data enablement.” MIT Media Lab is specifically helping O.N.E. Amazon create “a framework to monitor every hectare that is tokenized against a Digital Asset Security” that will also “provide a data-driven, real-time understanding of what’s happening the Amazon biome.” On its website, O.N.E. Amazon states that the IoF will “monitor and analyze the health” of the rainforest while also “digitally connect[ing] every hectare of land.” According to O.N.E. Amazon co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Veloso, a former board member of Trump Media & Technology Group:

“The Internet of Forests is intended to ensure reliable measurements of key environmental and social metrics; serve as world – class data collection and storage infrastructure for scientific analysis of forest environments; and enable local communities to better understand how their behavior and the behavior of institutions impact the natural environment within the rainforest.”

Chris Lang, contributing editor of the REDD-Monitor substack, revealed in a 2023 report that O.N.E. Amazon has sought to trademark the “Internet of Forests” concept since 2021 and that the trademark is intended to cover the following:

“Software as a service; electronic data storage; database development; data analysis and processing; information / data processing; research on agroforestry and agroecological systems; research activities, including the use of apparatus and instruments for activities related to the operation of monitoring and measuring forestry and lands; scanning; advice and consultancy in carrying out tests and measurements for quality control; measurement and verification of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases; aero photogrammetry; photogrammetry; land surveying; topographic surveys; geological surveys; environmental control of air and noise pollution; research in the field of environmental protection; geological research; biological research; providing scientific information, advice and consultancy relating to carbon offsetting; development of technical projects on agroforestry and agroecological systems.”

Given the mentions of carbon dioxide emissions and carbon offsetting, it seems clear that the O.N.E. Amazon security and the “Internet of Forests” underwriting it intends to integrate into the broader efforts to impose carbon markets globally. As noted in previous reporting, Latin America has been a major focus for “green” bankers and financiers in this regard and O.N.E. Amazon, like groups like GREEN+, are using deeply inequitable contractual agreements made at the local level to implement their plans......

In addition, in a research paper published earlier this year in April, O.N.E. Amazon co-founders Peter Knez and Rodrigo Veloso joined O.N.E. Amazon partner Veea and Mysten Labs to develop an approach where blockchain technology could be integrated into “biodiversity conservation, offering a novel perspective on how digital resilience can be built within ecological contexts.” The paper, entitled “Preserving Nature’s Ledger: Blockchains in Biodiversity Conservation,” promotes a framework that focuses on “tokenization strategies for biodiversity species and for IoT solutions, such as sensors, drones, and satellites to monitor and record data related to species and ecosystems.”

.....The paper fails to establish how these “innovations” will actually promote and protect biodiversity. The paper merely says in its conclusion that “the results of leveraging [biodiversity] data will hopefully help in biodiversity preservation via sustainable digital technology investments” (emphasis added). It seems likely that these technology investments allude to the expansion of the sensor network and the Internet of Forests, which appears to be much more about surveilling the natural world and turning it into a financial asset than actually promoting biodiversity, as well as the the aforementioned use of “swarm intelligence drones” to “manage” biodiversity.

Notably, Mysten Labs, which co-authored the paper with O.N.E. Amazon’s co-founders, is deeply tied to the Peter Thiel and DARPA-linked social media network Facebook and its efforts to make its own digital currency. Mysten Labs was founded in September 2021 by four former members of Meta/Facebook’s stablecoin project Libra, also known as Diem and Novi Financial......

O.N.E. Amazon’s Partners

Though past efforts of O.N.E. Amazon have involved collaborations with groups like the aforementioned Mysten Labs, the only “official” partners it lists on its website include MIT Media Lab, Satellogic, Aecom and Veea. The latter three have significant connections to the U.S. government, namely the U.S. military and intelligence community.

MIT Media Lab was previously the force behind the creation of the Digital Currency Initiative, which partnered with the U.S. Federal Reserve on assessing the feasibility of a U.S. dollar CBDC (that effort is known as Project Hamilton). It is also known for its prior yet very deep financial relationship with sex trafficker of minors, currency speculator and financial criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who not only funded MIT Media Lab and cultivated a close relationship with its former head Joi Ito, but also brought in other major donors like Bill Gates and Leon Black......

he other partner of O.N.E. Amazon in its IoF project is Satellogic. Satellogic was recently the recipient of $30 million investment from Tether (USDT) and Howard Lutnick, the long-time CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald – the custodian of much of Tether’s U.S. Treasuries, sits on the board. Lutnick and Cantor both hold 23.9% each of Satellogic shares, for a combined 47.8%. Lutnick was recently named co-chair of Donald Trump’s transition team, where he will help Trump choose cabinet and other executive appointments if Trump’s 2024 election bid is successful. Satellogic’s board is also chaired by Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s former Treasury Secretary who helped implement BlackRock’s “Going Direct” plan months before and throughout the Covid-19 crisis. “Going Direct” put the bulk of money printed for economic relief intended to mitigate the effects of lockdown policies on regular Americans into the hands of Wall Street giants like BlackRock. BlackRock, whose head Larry Fink was tapped by Trump to develop the government’s fiscal response to the crisis, used much of that money to buy shares in their own ETFs. The former Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military under Trump, Joseph Dunford, is also on the board of Satellogic.

.....Satellogic isn’t the only concerning firm partnered with O.N.E. Amazon. Another partner, Aecom, is the successor to the CIA-linked Ashland Oil and currently contracts extensively with USAID, widely believed to be a CIA front organization. In the 1970s, Ashland Oil pled guilty to multiple counts of making illegal domestic campaign contributions, which later became part of the Watergate scandal, and of bribing government officials in several countries. During this same period, Ashland was revealed to be a recipient of large amounts of CIA funds for “undisclosed purposes,” roughly half of which were paid in cash. Ashland, the CIA and the SEC all refused to comment on the nature of these payments......
Veea is a major developer of “smart city” technology that is pioneering the creep of those technologies into rural areas and farms. They are also a major provider of 5G technology. They have a deep relationship with U.S. military contractor Qualcomm, which describes itself as “the driving force behind the development, launch and expansion of 5G.” Veea is one of Qualcomm’s main partners in that endeavor......

.....Veea frames the IoF project as ultimately leading toward an “AI-driven neural network for our planet.” The effort to develop that neural network, framed as being founded on the “principle that all species and ecosystems on this planet are part of a single system,” are already underway. Called “Enterprise Neurosystem,” the goal is to “link all the relevant climate networks and data sources” for “climate projects” around the world into “a single open AI framework” and “conduct a higher order analysis across all points of reference in real time.” This “AI neurosystem” would span the entire planet and its partners include not only Veea, but Microsoft, Google, Meta/Facebook, IBM, Intel and Yahoo!, among others. In other words, the IoF of O.N.E. Amazon is intended to eventually span every forest, everywhere, with major implications for nature and society.

.....O.N.E. Amazons’s sole known funder is Starlight Ventures, which funds companies that produce “transformative technologies to fix the world.” Its other investments focus mainly on biotechnology, lab-grown meat, carbon market infrastructure, autonomous mining vehicles and space-related technologies, especially satellite surveillance firms.

.....Starlight Ventures also has ties to the Endeavor Network, which is deeply embedded in Latin America – particularly its cryptocurrency infrastructure – and is heavily funded by the controversial Bronfman family and Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay and owner of PayPal from 2002 to 2015......

.....“Once you tokenize it, you can trade it. Once you can trade, it you can index it. Once you index, it you can write synthetics on it. That’s transformative in a way that’s never been transformed ever…The reason you see guys like Larry Fink pushing tokenization now is, for one, that Aladdin’s about to have the functionality he wants for his clients. [And] number two, there’s not a lot of alternatives to go scale the business. This is a way for the large institutions, whether it’s Morgan Stanley or BlackRock or the other asset managers, this is a way for them to scale their business. And so that’s why I think it’s inevitable.”

In line with these beliefs, Knez participated in the launch of a new layer one blockchain, Venom, and alongside it founded the Venom Foundation in 2020. Other Venom Foundation members include Mustafa Kheriba, the Executive Chairman of Iceberg Capital; Dr. Kai-Uwe Steck, manager of Pontinova Circle Investment Group; Osman Sultan, the former CEO of DU Telecom and Founder of Fikratech; and Shahal M. Khan, Founder of Burkhan World, Trinity Hospitality Holdings and the CEO of Burtech. In August 2023, the Venom Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United Arab Emirates Government to “develop and implement the National Carbon Credit System” in preparation of the country hosting COP28 that November.

.....But it is perhaps within the planet itself that a new method for retaining U.S. dollar hegemony has emerged – the dollar-denominated, limited supply carbon market proposed by O.N.E. Amazon. Far from an unsubstantiated theory, Knez himself states precisely that the Amazon rainforest “should be valued in the trillions” and that his company is “enabling the market to value it as such” by “turning it into an advanced digital asset security.” In a discussion with Gulf News, Knez took this one step further in explaining why the tangible parameters of the Amazon’s size led to the creation of a limited supply of securities, providing the necessary mechanism to create a dollar-denominated debt sink out of the rainforest upon the security’s appreciation:

“At O.N.E. Amazon, we are harnessing the power of the market – the same force that has driven exploitation – to transform it into a tool for conservation. We aim to prove that the Amazon is more valuable alive than dead.

We’re not just environmentalists; we’re innovators, economists, technologists, and community leaders. Together, we’re developing a digital security asset – that represents the intrinsic value of the world’s largest rainforest’s biome. This isn’t just a financial instrument; it’s a statement, a commitment to the belief that the Amazon is valuable and ought to be priced. In terms of financial returns, investors will benefit from the potential capital appreciation of the digital security as the market values the positive environmental and social benefits of the rainforest’s biome.

Given the finite size of the Amazon rainforest, the total number of securities will be restricted to 750 million, corresponding to the hectarage of the rainforest. This creates a limited supply of digital securities.” [emphasis added]

Due to the limited supply of digital securities, O.N.E. Amazon has created an axiom for vast capital appreciation of the asset itself, allowing a further expansion of dollar-denominated liabilities and thus further eventual demand for the dollar’s underlying asset: U.S. Treasuries. Knez implies the Amazon should be valued in the trillions, and, much like he did in his role spearheading the iShares ETF brand, has created yet another growth market for the U.S. capital markets to “quantitively ease” into. Interestingly, this type of government debt expansion was theorized by RFK Jr.’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, in a project she led at Stanford titled “An Analysis of Carbon Credit Markets as Validation for Climate Supportive Quantitative Easing Using the Blockchain” described below:

“This project will provide a white paper for a carbon coin that works in tandem with the existing carbon credit (offset) markets. As an active venture investor in carbon credit markets such as Pachama and Joro Technologies, and a major customer of these offsets with my husband Sergey Brin, I will be leveraging the current entrepreneurial ecosystem to identify the economic, policy, and technological requirements to scale a carbon credit coin…While authors and futurists such as Kim Stanley Robinson (author of Ministry of the Future), have focused on the feasibility of governments issuing carbon coins in exchange for carbon sequestration, my argument is that a private market can first be situated to verify the accuracy of the carbon sequestration projects funded by the coin. The government can in turn, have evidence based results by which to sell government treasuries into the carbon coin network.”

These “evidence based results” of which Shanahan theorized, as it relates to the O.N.E. Amazon scheme, would presumably be the data provided by their satellite partner, Satellogic. Due to Satellogic’s board being Chaired by former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Cantor Fitzgerald’s Lutnick large stake of shares and board position, and their funding by leading dollar-denominated stablecoin issuer Tether, the personnel and wherewithal to create such a debt sink at a time of dire need has been assembled.

Datafication & Debt – The New “Conservation”

O.N.E. Amazon’s stated reasons for its business model – ostensibly “preserving” and “conserving” the Amazon – reflect a broader effort to frame efforts to centralize control over the global commons and build out a surveillance grid for both people and the planet as the only “feasible” means of rescuing the planet from catastrophe. However, as this article has endeavored to show, O.N.E. Amazon’s interest is not in helping locals or indigenous groups or even in helping actually conserve the rainforest in the way most would imagine. Instead, the goal is to turn the Amazon rainforest into an exploitative farm – a farm for data that itself can be monetized and tokenized, just like the hectarage of the Amazon itself.

.....O.N.E. Amazon is more than a company, it represents a model that others are following which seeks to borgify the natural world, and us along with it, claiming to “harness the market” to save us all from a vague yet impending doom. However, we and the forests are not being saved, we are being put in chains – forced into a prison without walls where the sensors to be placed on and in the trees and on and in our bodies will connect us to the bankers’ blockchain of choice and allow us to be traded or sold, our biological signals and processes monetized for their benefit, and the masses of people, plants and animals on this planet to be “managed” by AI-powered machines that they program and control.
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And before one asks the SEC is up to the same:

RED ALERT – SEC Proposes to List “Natural Asset Companies” on Wall Street.

https://americanstewards.us/red-alert-sec-proposes-to-list-natural-asset-companies-on-wall-street/

Excerpt:

SEC Issues Proposed Rule Creating “Natural Asset Companies on Wall Street.”

On Wednesday, October 4, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed notice of a proposed rule to create Natural Asset Companies (NACs) allowing just 21 days to comment.

Normally, there is a 45 to 90-day comment period, but this was done quietly and quickly making it appear as though they wanted no one to notice. But we did!

If this rule is approved, it will allow investors such as Blackrock, Bill Gates, and possibly even China to hold the ecosystem rights to the land, water, air, and natural processes of the properties enrolled in NACs — including our National Parks! It also conveys “management authority” to the NAC for all the assets enrolled.

Use of these resources for economically beneficial purposes are strictly prohibited. This includes mining, oil and gas development, or any other activity that can be arbitrarily defined as “unsustainable.”

NACs are the way elite investors plan to profit from the protected lands created by Biden’s 30×30 agenda. If the SEC finalizes this rule, NACs will harm America’s national security while destabilizing our economy.

Here are the Key Points You Need to Know:

1. SEC Proposed Rule Authorizes Federal Lands, Including National Parks, to be Enrolled into NACs.

2. Proposed Rule Gives “Management Authority” to the NAC.

3. The Biden Administration is Preparing to Enroll the Federal Lands into NACs.

4. Proposed Rule Invites Foreign Interests to Invest in an NAC.

5. Land Trusts can Enroll Conservation Easements without Landowner’s Permission.

6. Exclusive Rights to Natural Processes will be Arbitrarily Monetized and Assigned to NACs Creating Market Distortions.

7. Protection of the Resources is Prioritized over Human Flourishing.

What Lands Can Be Enrolled in a NAC?

National Parks

National Wildlife Refuges

Wilderness Areas

Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs)

Conservation Areas Engulfing Private Lands

Conservation Leases on Federal Lands

Conservation Easements on Private Lands

Private Lands Enrolled by Landowner

Examples of Other Lands That Meet the Definition and May Qualify:

Endangered Species Critical Habitat
Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)