Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise.
dinsdag, 14 mei 2019 - Categorie: Berichten Internationaal
Bron: www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-safety-health-russia.html
12 mei 2019
RT America, a network known for sowing disinformation, has a new alarm: the coming ‘5G Apocalypse.’
By William J. Broad
The cellphones known as 5G, or fifth generation, represent the vanguard of a wireless era rich in interconnected cars, factories and cities. Whichever nation dominates the new technology will gain a competitive edge for much of this century, according to many analysts. But a television network a few blocks from the White House has been stirring concerns about a hidden flaw.
“Just a small one,” a TV reporter told her viewers recently. “It might kill you.”
The Russian network RT America aired the segment, titled “A Dangerous ‘Experiment on Humanity,’” in covering what its guest experts call 5G’s dire health threats. U.S. intelligence agencies identified the network as a principal meddler in the 2016 presidential election. Now, it is linking 5G signals to brain cancer, infertility, autism, heart tumors and Alzheimer’s disease — claims that lack scientific support.
Yet even as RT America, the cat’s paw of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has been doing its best to stoke the fears of American viewers, Mr. Putin, on Feb. 20, ordered the launch of Russian 5G networks in a tone evoking optimism rather than doom.
“We need to look forward,” he said, according to Tass, the Russian news agency. “The challenge for the upcoming years is to organize universal access to high-speed internet, to start operation of the fifth-generation communication systems.”
Analysts see RT’s attack on 5G as geopolitically bold: It targets a new world of interconnected, futuristic technologies that would reach into consumers’ homes, aid national security and spark innovative industries. Already, medical firms are linking up devices wirelessly to create new kinds of health treatments.
“It’s economic warfare,” Ryan Fox, chief operating officer of New Knowledge, a technology firm that tracks disinformation, said in an interview. “Russia doesn’t have a good 5G play, so it tries to undermine and discredit ours.”
5G is also a growing point of friction between Washington and Beijing, with each side lining up allies in what has become a major technology race. Moscow and Beijing are seen as possibly forming a 5G political bloc.
The Kremlin “would really enjoy getting democratic governments tied up in fights over 5G’s environmental and health hazards,” said Molly McKew, head of Fianna Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that seeks to counter Russian disinformation.
RT’s assaults on 5G technology are rising in number and stridency as the American wireless industry begins to erect 5G systems. In March, Verizon said its service will soon reach 30 cities.
RT America aired its first program assailing 5G’s health impacts last May, its only one in 2018. Already this year, it has run seven. The most recent, on April 14, reported that children exposed to signals from 5G cellphone towers would suffer cancer, nosebleeds and learning disabilities.
The network distributes its programming by cable, satellite and online streaming. It also posts individual stories on Facebook and YouTube. A declassified U.S. intelligence report, released early in 2017, said that RT videos on YouTube have averaged 1 million views per day, “the highest among news outlets.”
Hundreds of blogs and websites appear to be picking up the network’s 5G alarms, seldom if ever noting the Russian origins. Analysts call it a treacherous fog.
Anna Belkina, RT’s head of communications in Moscow, defended the network’s coverage of 5G. “Unlike many other media, we show the breadth of debate,” she said in an email exchange.
Asked if Mr. Putin’s promotion of 5G technology in Russia conflicted with the health alarms raised by RT America, she said the U.S. network focused on local 5G issues, not “the roll-out in Russia.”
“Our American audience expects us to bring American concerns to the front, first and foremost,” Ms. Belkina said.
The 5G Playbook
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in the 2017 report, described the network as “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.” The report noted that RT’s most popular video on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign stated that 100 percent of the Clintons’ charity “Went to … Themselves.” The video was viewed more than 9 million times.
Later that year, the national security division of the Justice Department forced RT America, formerly Russia Today, to register as a foreign agent.
Moscow’s goal, experts say, is to destabilize the West by undermining trust in democratic leaders, institutions and political life. To that end, the RT network amplifies voices of dissent, to sow discord and widen social divides. It gives the marginal a megaphone and traffics in false equivalence. Earlier campaigns took aim at fracking, vaccination and genetically modified organisms. One show called designer tomatoes “good-looking poison.”
The network is now applying its playbook against 5G by selectively reporting the most sensational claims, and by giving a few marginal opponents of wireless technology a conspicuous new forum.
All cellphones use radio waves. RT America tends to refer to the signals as “radiations,” seemingly associating them with the very strong rays at the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as X-rays and ultraviolet rays, which in high doses can damage DNA and cause cancer.
5G’s Place in the Spectrum
The newest generation of cellphones, 5G, will operate near the highest frequencies of the radio wave spectrum. Its range overlaps with other devices — including a novel class of health therapies used in Russia and China.
The frequencies employed in 5G are higher than those of past cellphones, allowing more information to be relayed more rapidly. Many other devices are expected to follow, including robots, drones and cars that send traffic information to one another.
Wireless high-speed communication could transform the news industry, sports, shopping, entertainment, transportation, health care, city management and many levels of government. In January, The Times announced a joint venture with Verizon to build a 5G journalism lab.
Over the years, plenty of careful science has scrutinized wireless technology for potential health risks. Virtually all the data contradict the dire alarms, according to public officials, including those at the World Health Organization.
Opponents of 5G claim the technology’s high frequencies will make the new phones and cell towers extraordinarily harmful. “The higher the frequency, the more dangerous it is to living organisms,” a RT reporter told viewers recently.
The truth is exactly the opposite, scientists say. The higher the radio frequency, the less it penetrates human skin, lowering exposure of the body’s internal organs, including the brain.
“5G emissions, if anything, should be safer than previous generations,” said Dr. Marvin C. Ziskin, a medical doctor and emeritus professor of radiology and medical physics at the Temple University School of Medicine.
Health concerns were raised last year when a large federal study showed that 2G signals could produce brain cancer in male rats. But officials discounted a direct link to humans, saying people received smaller doses.
Commentaar van Dafna Tachover
ANOTHER SHAMEFUL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES - it continues its MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN on wireless in the service of wireless companies -
NOT SURPRISING AS THE MAJORITY stockholder of the NYT is billionaire Carlos Slim who made his money mostly in a combination of telcom and real estate.
This story is history repeating itself - When the Russian in 50's understood that Microwaves are harmful and said so to the Americans, the American government thought that the Russians are trying to trick the US so the US won't develop Microwave based technologies. This article sounds like the same idiotism....History repeat itself.
SADLY - it is RT & the RUSSIANS that are reporting the TRUTH while the US is HARMING ITS OWN CHILDREN. A REAL ABSURDITY. The US media is a sham and bankrupt.
WAKE UP AMERICA. Next time you read an article in the NY Times - remember how ridiculous its coverage of the wireless issue is and know you CANNOT BELIEVE anything it reports.
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