Write once, read never

Gmail in the Cabinet Microsoft products & Digital Sovereignty in the FSM (Part 2)

By Richard Clark

An educational report, an agriculture census, and a vaccine dissemination plan have little security risk from using Microsoft 365 compared to the benefits of continuity in governance.

Between 2013 and 2018, the Pohnpei Department of Education developed three separate health curricula with JICA, World Teach, and Peace Corps, none of which have been widely used in the classroom. I am told they can only be retrieved by photocopying the printed versions available in the central office.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our society could maintain its inventions?

Another example: Former President David Panuelo did not approve the publication of a press release on outward migration during the Covid-19 pandemic because it looked bad, and current President Wesley Simina delayed the publication of the FSM Census because he didn’t like that the country had lost tens of thousands of people.

There is generally very little risk if citizens, corporations and other governments know key facts about the FSM population. For example, about a third of Micronesians have high blood pressure or diabetes, the bulk of Micronesians living in Iowa work in the meat-packing industry and Micronesians emigrate because it is literally better to slave yourself at an Ohio warehouse than to subsist on $1.75 an hour in the FSM. At least in Ohio you have clean running water and consistent electricity in addition to your despair. (However, as my cousin recently learned, Ohio also has both varieties of ICE— both referring to meth and the modern-day Gestapo.)

If our concern is that, e.g., Americans might think too hard about Micronesians, I posit that the U.S. has historically shown no interest in Micronesians’ daily affairs and abject ignorance of the country and the Pacific island region. I remember Alex Gray, who fell asleep at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu, and at the Operation Hailstone commemoration pointed at breadfruit and asked, “What’s that?”

To be clearer: American officials don’t even care about American citizens, never mind Micronesians. In January 2025, Demetri Sevastopulo interviewed Jake Sullivan, who went out of his way to avoid confirming that the Chinese balloons in 2023 were controlled by the People’s Liberation Army. He could have told Americans the truth, but chose not to.

We’re living in a time where the Americans will put someone in a Texas prison for 30 years for sharing socialist zines, while empowering a 34-time felon and rapist to abduct heads of state, bomb schoolgirls and grift through cryptocurrency, among other crimes.

The American government almost certainly doesn’t think about Micronesians’ interests beyond what is necessary to secure its own. To that end, the Americans want to deny the Chinese and other “bad guys” the Pacific islands so that only they, the “good guys,” can nuke innocent Marshallese families and then offer up a formal apology as part and parcel of the compact negotiations.

We notice how the U.S. pushes into deep-sea mining and the Chinese test ballistic missiles. (That Palau and the Marshall Islands are loud about, but the FSM is noticeably silent on.)

Am I saying that most FSM data is benign and so it is uninteresting to the FSM’s competitors? That’s equally preposterous. When Wesley Simina was recorded in the Mortlocks in October 2021, giving speeches while inebriated, the takeaway is that he’s suffering from alcoholism. That’s good intelligence.

What may seem benign to you might be strategic to me. External powers use this. For example, the Taiwanese offered Marcus Samo and others their famous whiskies. (I gave mine to my father-in-law, RIP).

So, even if Microsoft 365 is dangerous and presents a constitutional issue in the FSM, I think it is a pragmatic solution until we find an alternative.

What might those solutions look like? You could host FSM data in the European Union, perhaps, so that the FSM benefits from the protections of the GDPR, though this still runs into the sovereignty issue. This could potentially build some goodwill, and the European Union is undoubtedly safer than either America or China, both of whom have a strategic interest in Micronesia.

The Europeans don’t have a strategic reason to hurt or leverage the FSM the way the Americans and Chinese do, though European history is rather bleak.

Magyarization is why I have American heritage, not Slovakian.

Perhaps the Ukrainians could help the FSM, remembering the famous severance of diplomatic relations with Russia?

Another idea: you could use customer-managed encryption keys. However, I would question how the FSM would store them. Don’t we remember the time when FSM Immigration couldn’t print passports because the guy who had access to the system didn’t want to give up the key or password? Kaselehlie Press had an article about that.

To repeat myself: Peter Christian set fire to the FSM Public Information Office’s files, so are we sure that another FSM administration might not mismanage cryptographic keys, either on purpose or due to incompetence, or even due to environmental disrepair?

Heck, even in my own context, my former staffer received passwords for the FSM’s social media the day I left the government. He forgot the password for social platform X tied to his email. That’s why you still see updates to the FSM Facebook page but not its X account. Last I checked, that staffer doesn’t even work for the government anymore because of demoralization, brought about by governmental opacity.

We must know our own environment. It is one where rats fell from the ceiling tiles in the Office of the President onto my shoulders.

I’d consider discussing the viability of legal avenues here, such as the formerly proposed FSM Freedom of Information Act. However, considering that Peter Christian and Wesley Simina killed the legislation within minutes of its introduction, it would be difficult to convince them that “Write Once, Read Many” storage solutions or funding the National Archives are helpful for FSM democracy.

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Because our leaders hate democracy, you understand. What Wesley Simina, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have in common is that they love their powers, but hate their countries. As Peter Christian said during a November 2018 meeting with the Japanese: “I—am Micronesia.” For citizens to prosper, they must all be six feet beneath the ground.

To be clearer: some say the point of free speech is to keep leaders on their toes, but I would much rather see them hanging by their feet.

So, I’ll say this to you, Minoru Stephen: I sincerely appreciate your service to the FSM Cybersecurity & Intelligence Bureau. You come across to me as a fellow who cares about the FSM’s sovereignty. I recognize your passion and devotion, and your heartache.

But the good news is that we both maintain our actual lives.

Heroes like Livingston Taulung gave theirs when facing thematically similar types of issues. He died from the stress imposed upon him to save us all from Covid-19, which he succeeded in doing to boot. The FSM never suffered thousands of deaths or temporary social collapse. And all Taulung had to show for it was being forgotten by our society. He died in my Peace Corps house’s shower.

But you, Stephen, and I are still alive.

I see you, Minoru Stephen. Best of luck to you in what comes next.

 Richard Clark is allegedly a human person whose politics fall somewhere between libertarian socialism and authoritarian anarchism. Call him peristeronic (adj: suggestive of pigeons) at richardandrewclark@gmail.com

(The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the editorial position of Pacific Islands Times.)

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