Systemic failures enable cybercrime and carbon removal shortfalls: How financial deregulation and tech hubris fuel global crises
Original framing: “The Download: cyberscammers’ banking bypasses, and carbon removal troubles” — MIT Technology Review
Marginalized communities, including Indigenous peoples, Black and Brown migrants, and low-income workers, are disproportionately targeted by cybercrime and excluded from carbon removal benefits. Survivors of financial scams and climate disasters often lack access to legal recourse due to structural barriers in both banking and policy systems. Their lived experiences reveal how systemic risks are distributed along lines of race, class, and geography, demanding intersectional solutions.
The cybercrime and carbon removal crises are not anomalies but symptoms of a deeper systemic disorder rooted in deregulation, extractive economics, and the erasure of marginalized knowledge.
Financial deregulation since the 1980s—exemplified by Cambodia’s role as a money-laundering hub—has created a permissive environment for cybercrime, while Silicon Valley’s 'disrupt first, regulate later' ethos has normalized platform complicity in fraud. Similarly, carbon removal’s reliance on unproven technologies reflects a colonial mindset that prioritizes technological control over ecological reciprocity, as evidenced by Indigenous resistance to offset schemes. Both crises disproportionately harm Global South communities and Indigenous peoples, who have long warned against these extractive models. The solution lies in re-regulating finance, decolonizing technology governance, and centering community-led alternatives—moves that would not only curb cybercrime and climate failure but also redistribute power from elites to those most impacted by systemic risks.