See you all in Grenoble, on the 28th, 29th and 30th of March 2025!
STopMicro and Les Soulèvements de la Terre invite you to a large demonstration in Grenoble to denounce resources appropriation by the digital sector and broadly the ‘smart life’. The chips manufacturers Soitec and STMicroelectronics are planning to destroy agricultural lands and to corner even more drinkable water to extend their plants. To prevent these extensions and reinforce the struggle against the technological blind rush and industrial hazards, you are invited to two days of lectures and debates (28th and 29th of March) and to a large demonstration in Bernin (near Grenoble), on the 30th of March. NO PUÇARAN!
Microelectronics Is Drying and Poisoning Our Environment
Grenoble specialises in micro and nanotechnology, and likes to present itself as the ‘French Silicon Valley’. Most of its companies were partly created by the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA, French atomic energy agency), which supports resolutely any microelectronics initiative. STMicroelectronics (ST) and Soitec are major stakeholders in this ‘ecosystem’. Together they corner 185 litres of drinkable water every second, that is to say one Sainte-Soline mega basin in 40 days. During summer droughts, when residents are prohibited from watering their garden, ST and Soitec keep on gobbling the drinking water of the public network without any restriction. Electronics is one of the thirstiest industries, as they use pure water to manufacture chips. ST and Soitec pollute the Isère River with their chemicals, with the help of special authorisations from the local public authorities. The polluted water these companies throw in the river contains many toxic chemicals: ammonia, chlorine, hexafluoride, phosphorus, PFAS (forever chemicals)… As for the mega-basin in agriculture, the question is how resources are distributed and which society are we building with such extension projects?
Invasion of Smart Objects
Chips produced in the Grenoble area will mostly end up in electrical vehicles, smart objects and mobile phones. We find them in Tesla cars, in Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, in AI video surveillance, food processors, 5G and even in smart swimsuits and smart flasks! Microelectronics is digitalising our world: big money and powerful policing tools for the capitalist system, with a previously unseen influence on our ways of life.
Digitalisation Is Killing Agroecological Farming
These chips are also used in digital agriculture. For example, ST chips are found in remote control systems for cattle or ‘smart’ irrigation systems. These technologies force farmers into overcapitalisation, dependence on agribusiness and prevent autonomy. Chips companies are actively contributing to ending agroecological farming and any hope of autonomy in food production.
Chips at War With the World
Chips are used for civil and military purposes, which are the two sides of the same coin. The Observatoire des armements (weaponry observatory collective) showed that ST chips are found in Russian missiles and drones. The CGT-ST union denounces STMicroelectronics’s active participation to the Israeli military-industrial complex. Soitec specialises in ‘critical’ chips for nuclear deterrence and Rafale fighter jets. ST and Soitec are accomplices of wars and nuclear threat. Even worse, they make profits out of these crimes, thus voluntarily contributing to the death trade.
Digital ‘Dematerialisation’ Doesn’t Exist
According to its advocates, digitalising the world is the solution to stop using oil and building a ‘low carbon’ economy. In fact, fossil fuels spared with electrification are offset by the proliferation of uses and by the extraction of necessary metals, both of which increase the fossil fuel consumption. Far from being ‘dematerialised’, the digital industry’s impact on the environment is huge: enormous water and electricity consumption here, mines destroying forests and rivers in the global south… pollution and waste everywhere. Such havoc occurs on behalf of a so-called ecological transition (no source of energy ever replaced another source of energy, they only add to one another). This simple fact should be enough to demonstrate its supporters’ cynicism. Digitalising does not dematerialise activities, each smart object depends on an enormous, material, technological infrastructure. Local hazards produced by the digital sector are only the tip of the iceberg: mines in Congo, landfill sites of electronic wastes in Ghana, sweatshops in Asia… the whole digital industry rests on colonial exploitation.
Conflict and Solidarity to Recover Our Autonomy
We do not protest against these companies’ employees. While these companies raise the threat of unemployment, their objective is and has always been profit, not employment. When they do not need employees anymore, they put an end to their contract.
We know that it is not possible to live ‘out’ of the technological system, here and in many places of the world. ST’s slogan ‘life.augmented’, 6G and the digital world are a political choice that can be defeated only by collective opposition. We target structures and big companies that are putting at risk our current and future living conditions by taking part to the technological blind rush.
This proliferation of technological devices is leading us all to a world submitted to a very wealthy and powerful elite freed from any counterweight. Tech bros are not hiding their taste for authoritarian power, racism, sexism and transphobia anymore. Opposing to the society they are making, the values they share, our fight is based on solidarity and mutual assistance.
Fighting eventually pays off! For two years, STopMicro’s protest is gaining momentum and the almighty industrialists are put in an awkward position. Soitec announced its project was suspended, while ST’s building works are stopped since one of its partners quit. The companies are waiting and bearing, but the Grésivaudan public authorities still want to extend these plants and intend to expropriate various farmers to cover 11 hectares of agricultural lands with concrete.
Come and join us! Let’s stop these extension projects forever!
28th and 29th of March, in Grenoble: international meeting on the impossible reshoring of chips (‘semi-conducteurs : l’impossible relocalisation’). With hosts from the Americas, Africa and the rest of Europe.
Chips are an emblematic, unsustainable product of capitalist globalisation and continue the colonial system.
30th of March in Bernin (close to Grenoble): festive demonstration ‘Lands, water, not chips!’
Let’s demand the withdrawal of these extension projects in Bernin and Crolles!
Collectif STopMicro and Les Soulèvements de la terre
More information on stopmicro38.noblogs.org and lessoulevementsdelaterre.org websites.
