Fujitsup-ing UK ‘s Post Office IT system, – and now its Nuclear Lab?
The UK government’s National Nuclear Laboratory has given Fujitsu a £155k contract for ‘software support’ IT – for nuclear science and experimental programmes in nuclear power and weapons.
Fujitsu? The Japanese software company that supplied, and apparently is still supplying, the British Post office with software – its bodgy Horizon IT programme being at the root of one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in UK history.. Yes, that one!
It doesn’t fill you with confidence about the safety of the UK’s nuclear lab activities, does it?
The Post Office’s contract with Fujitsu was, (is) extremely complex, with the Post Office lacking the expertise to understand how the IT system works. Does the nuclear lab have the same problem?
These types of contracts deliberately lock the buyer in, with the supplier having control of all upgrades, fixing of any technical problems. The Post Office contract also limited the amount of information they could get from the system.
This created a dependance by the Post Office on the company Fujitsu. Is the British military and nuclear system also locked into dependance on Fujitsu? A source told the i newspaper that the Japanese firm has been managing a secretive computer system facilitating the “strategic command and control of UK Armed Forces” for decades.
The contract for the National Nuclear Laboratory is the first government contract with Fujitsu in 2024, – to the anger and frustration of many, as the inquiry into the Post Office software scandal is still underway, with more litigation likely to come.
Modular Reactors. Peter Dutton hasn’t done his nuclear homework
by Rex Patrick | Apr 16, 2024 , https://michaelwest.com.au/nuclear-reactors-peter-dutton-has-not-done-his-homework/—
Has Peter Dutton’s proposed ‘rollout’ of modular nuclear reactors real policy or just politics? What research has he done to develop the policy? Not much, it seems. Rex Patrick reports.
In September 2020, the Morrison Government released a Low Emissions Technology Statement that placed Small Modular Reactors (SMR) on a list of watching brief technologies. SMR developments were to be monitored to see if they might play a part in Australia’s energy future.
Consistent with that listing, the Government directed the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to join an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Coordinated Research Project focused on the Economic Appraisal of SMRs to provide information to assist in evaluating the technology’s economic viability.ANSTO assembled a team to prepare, among other things, a case study on Australia’s potential to adopt SMR technologies in the future and analyse financing options for the technology. As part of that project, ANSTO even supported a University of Queensland PhD thesis on SMRs.
Flip flop politics
Peter Dutton, a minister in the Government that commissioned the ANSTO work, came out mid-way through 2023 with a proclamation of the Coalition’s plans for Australian to adopt SMRs as a preferred tool in our movement towards net zero carbon emissions.
In doing so Dutton opened himself up to a political battering because of the nascent state of SMR development around the world and huge questions around costs.
Undeterred, in early March Dutton doubled down on nuclear power, switching his thinking to large nuclear power plants scattered about the country. As public controversy raged about the new plans, Dutton has started reinjecting SMRs into the total mix.
There are now to be a mix of economic and taxation incentives for the local communities targeted by the Coalition to host a nuclear reactor.
Missing homework
In response to their hip flip to a larger nuclear power plant and his small flop back to SMRs, I thought MWM set out to see if Dutton has visited ANSTO or taken a brief from them in relation to his plans.
After all, there’s no shortage of precedent for parliamentary oppositions to seek factual briefings from government agencies, especially on complex and specialised subjects.In a recent nuclear estimates brief prepared for the CEO of ANSTO, the first two paragraphs stated:
“ANSTO has significant insight into what other countries and jurisdictions are doing around the world in terms of nuclear power.”
As mentioned above, ANSTO was specifically engaged by the former Coalition Government to take a look at SMRs.So, I was left gobsmacked when a Freedom of Information request I made to ANSTO to find out what Dutton’s interactions with ANSTO had been over the past five years returned nil information.
ANSTO FOI response (on original)
Dutton has not visited Australia’s only nuclear reactor and has not received a brief from our country’s expert agency on the policy area he was developing.
In some measure, it explains the flip-flopping and limited detail in many of his announcements.
For completeness, I also asked the Government’s nuclear safety regulator, ARPANSA, if Dutton had visited them or sought advice from them. FOI came up with the same answer from them. (on original) Nothing at all..
Politics, not policy
You can’t develop policy just by chin-wagging at party room meetings and with briefs from vested business interests. That’s not how it works. You have to get independent and expert advice, and in the case of nuclear matters, a vital place to get that advice in Australia is ANSTO and ARPANSA.
So, just what policy work has Dutton done? In large part, he appears completely dependent on the Google skills of his little-known Climate Change and Energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien.
With a background in marketing, O’Brien has no ministerial experience, so the practicalities of major project implementation may be quite novel for him. He did once chair a parliamentary committee inquiry into nuclear energy, but as so often is the case, the research there was largely done by the committee secretariat, with O’Brien just adding a thin layer of pro-nuclear evangelism on the top.
It’s pretty safe to say that, in the absence of comprehensive briefs from and engagement with Australia’s leading experts, Dutton is not engaging in serious policy development. Rather it’s a manoeuvre to achieve political differentiation and keep the anti-renewals, climate-change-denying core of his Coalition happy. Dutton’s approach to policy development, in this instance, says just as much about him as it does about his nuclear plans.
“It’s all politics”
Bombs and viruses: The shadowy history of Israel’s attacks on Iranian soil
From cyberattacks and assassinations to drone strikes, Israel-linked plots have targeted Iran and its nuclear programme for years.
Israel’s leaders have signalled that they are weighing their options on how to respond to Iran’s attack early Sunday morning, when Tehran targeted its archenemy with more than 300 missiles and drones.
Iran’s attack, which followed an Israeli strike last week on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, that killed 13 people was historic: It was the first time Tehran had directly targeted Israeli soil, despite decades of hostility. Until Sunday, many of Iran’s allies in the so-called axis of resistance — especially the Palestinian group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq and Syria — were the ones who launched missiles and drones at Israel.
But if Israel were to hit back militarily inside Iran, it wouldn’t be the first time. Far from it.
For years, Israel has focused on one target within Iran in particular: the country’s nuclear programme. Israel has long accused Iran of clandestinely building a nuclear bomb that could threaten its existence — and has publicly, and frequently, spoken of its diplomatic and intelligence-driven efforts to derail those alleged efforts. Iran denies that it has had a military nuclear programme, while arguing that it has the right to access civil nuclear energy.
As Israel prepares its response, here’s a look at the range of attacks in Iran — from drone strikes and cyberattacks to assassinations of scientists and the theft of secrets — that Israel has either accepted it was behind or is accused of having orchestrated.
Assassinations of Iranian scientists
- January 2010: A physics professor at Tehran University, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, was killed through a remote-controlled bomb planted in his motorcycle. Iranian state media claimed that the US and Israel were behind the attack. The Iranian government described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear scientist.
- November 2010: A professor at the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Majid Shahriari, was killed in a car explosion on his way to work. His wife was also wounded. The president of Iran at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the United States and Israel for the attacks.
- January 2012: Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemical engineering graduate, was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel and the US for the attack and said Ahmadi Roshan was a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at Iran’s primary uranium enrichment facility, in the city of Natanz.
- November 2020:Prominent nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in a roadside attack outside Tehran. Western and Israeli intelligence had long suspected that Fakhrizadeh was the father of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. He was sanctioned by the United Nations in 2007 and the US in 2008.
- May 2022: Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was shot five times outside of his home in Tehran. Majid Mirahmadi, a member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged the assassination was “definitely the work of Israel”.
Israel’s cyberattacks on Iran
- June 2010:The Stuxnet virus was found in computers at the nuclear plant in Iran’s Bushehr city, and it spread from there to other facilities. As many as 30,000 computers across at least 14 facilities were impacted by September 2010. At least 1,000 out of 9,000 centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility were destroyed, according to an estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security. Upon investigation, Iran blamed Israel and the US for the virus attack.
- April 2011: A virus called Stars was discovered by the Iranian cyberdefence agency which said the malware was designed to infiltrate and damage Iran’s nuclear facilities. The virus mimicked official government files and inflicted “minor damage” on computer systems, according to Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization. Iran blamed Israel and the US.
November 2011: Iran said it discovered a new virus called Duqu, based on Stuxnet. Experts said Duqu was intended to gather data for future cyberattacks. The Iranian government announced it was checking computers at main nuclear sites. The Duqu spyware was widely believed by experts to have been linked to Israel.- April 2012: Iran blamed the US and Israel for malware called Wiper, which erased the hard drives of computers owned by the Ministry of Petroleum and the National Iranian Oil Company.
- May 2012: Iran announced that a virus called Flame had tried to steal government data from government computers. The Washington Post reported that Israel and the US had used it to collect intelligence. Then-Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not confirm the nation’s involvement but acknowledged that Israel would use all means to “harm the Iranian nuclear system”.
- October 2018: The Iranian government said that it had blocked an invasion by a new generation of Stuxnet, blaming Israel for the attack.
- October 2021: A cyberattack hit the system that allows Iranians to use government-issued cards to purchase fuel at a subsidised rate, affecting all 4,300 petrol stations in Iran. Consumers had to either pay the regular price, more than double the subsidised one, or wait for stations to reconnect to the central
- distribution system. Iran blamed Israel and the US.
- May 2020: A cyberattack impacted computers that control maritime traffic at Shahid Rajaee port on Iran’s southern coast in the Gulf, creating a hold-up of ships that waited to dock. The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that Israel was behind the attack, though Israel did not claim responsibility.
Israel’s drone strikes and raids on Iran
- January 2018: Mossad agents raided a secure Tehran facility, stealing classified nuclear archives. In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel discovered 100,000 “secret files that prove” Iran lied about never having a nuclear weapons programme.
- February 2022: Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett admitted in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal in December 2023, that Israel carried out an attack on an unmanned aerial vehicle, and assassinated a senior IRGC commander in February of the previous year.
- May 2022: Explosives-laden quadcopter suicide drones hit the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, killing an engineer and damaging a building where drones had been developed by the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami pledged retaliation against unspecified “enemies”.
- February 2024: A natural gas pipeline in Iran was attacked. Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji alleged that the “explosion of the gas pipeline was an Israeli plot”.
- January 2023: Several suicide drones struck a military facility in central Isfahan, but they were thwarted and caused no damage. While Iran did not immediately place blame for the attacks, Iran’s UN envoy, Amir Saeid Iravani, wrote a letter to the UN chief saying that “primary investigation suggested Israel was responsible”.
You will not BELIEVE what the Tories just gave Fujitsu ANOTHER government contract for
The ‘fallout’ could be disastrous.
by Steve Topple, 11 April 2024, https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2024/04/11/fujitsu-nuclear-uk-contract/
Disgraced Fujitsu – the company behind the Horizon software that helped the Post Office wrongly convict hundreds of subpostmasters – has just been given ANOTHER government contract by the Tories. However, that’s not the worst part – because unbelievably, the deal is for software to support UK nuclear experiments.
Yes. The fallout could be disastrous.
As LBC reported:
The National Nuclear Laboratory, which is owned and operated by the government, has awarded the firm a £155k contract for ‘software support’ until 2025…
The contract, published by procurement data provider Tussell, is for “software support” and is due to run until 31 March 2025.
Hairbrained Tories: we’ve got a great idea… why not give Fujitsu a nuclear contract?
The National Nuclear Laboratory does all sorts of stuff with nuclear energy. As it says on its website, this includes:
four strategic areas: Clean Energy, Environmental Restoration, Health and Nuclear Medicine and Security and Non-Proliferation.
That is, the laboratory dabbles in nuclear science and experiments – including nuclear power and weapons; note its ironic oxymoron that it deals with ‘security’ and ‘non-proliferation’. So, you’d think that the government would want to make sure that the National Nuclear Laboratory was a safe and secure environment.
Clearly fucking not, though – as they’ve now given Fujitsu a contract.
People on X were rightly outraged: (several quotes here)
Christopher Head was the youngest victim of the Horizon Post Office scandal. He told LBC:
When there is a pledge not to bid for contracts you kind of expect them to adhere to that. But the problem is these companies have shareholders, and these shareholders demand profitability. It is frustrating.
Fujitsu made this pledge that they wouldn’t voluntarily bid for contracts within the government while the inquiry is going on – but we all know the size of these companies makes it difficult.
Post Office scandal: you must have been in a nuclear bunker if you missed it
Unless you’ve been in a nuclear bunker for the past 12 months, then you can’t have missed the Post Office scandal.
As the Canary previously reported, Mr Bates vs the Post Office has brought the ongoing scandal over the Horizon IT system, and Post Office and politicians conduct at the time, back into the public eye.
More than 700 people running small local post offices received criminal convictions between 1999 and 2005 after faulty accounting software made it appear that money had gone missing from their branches.
The scandal has been described at an ongoing public inquiry as “the worst miscarriage of justice in recent British legal history”.
Fujitsu: giving the UK its very own Hulk moment?
Yet here we are, with the Tories STILL giving Fujitsu another contract. Worse still, they’ve given it to them on the basis of providing tech support for nuclear technology. So, unless the government fancies itself as creating a league of superhumans, then it needs to revoke the contract.
Fujitsu cannot be trusted to run a piss up in a brewery – let alone software support for a nuclear experiments lab. It could barely handle the tech for provincial Post Offices. The Canary can see an Incredible Hulk moment coming on if this goes ahead – and we hope everyone has their nuclear bunkers ready.
Sign the petition against the contract here.
Biden Tells Netanyahu US Won’t Support Attack on Iran
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.
The US is portraying the Iranian attack as an Israeli victory
by Dave DeCamp April 14, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/14/biden-tells-netanyahu-us-wont-support-attack-on-iran/
President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.
US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.
“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.
In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”
Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.
Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.
But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.
While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.
Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.
Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 