At the end of August, the Greek government signed the “Achilles Shield” agreement – a €3 billion “defense” deal with Israel. Under the terms, Israeli companies including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will develop and build anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic systems for Greece.

“This is the largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history of the State of Israel,” the occupation’s Ministry of Defense stated. “Greece’s choice of Israeli technology as the backbone of its most ambitious air defense buildup program in the past decade reflects the depth of trust built between the two countries.”

“Under the deal, Israel will build Greece a comprehensive, multi-layered air defense array, drawing entirely on Israeli-made systems and on the extensive operational experience Israel’s defense establishment has gained during the war.”

The “war” in the statement being the genocide Israeli forces have been conducting in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

An influx of Israeli investments in Greece

According to journalist Vangelis Ilias, the new deal should be contextualized within broader trends of Greek capital and subsequent governments deepening ties with the occupation power.  While the current Mitsotakis administration did not initiate this trend, he says, it deepened it both before and since the genocide in Gaza began. “Over the past 6-7 years, we have witnessed an influx of Israeli investment funds into Greece, both in the real estate sector and through the acquisition of former public – but not exclusively public – companies in various sectors of the economy, one of which is defense.”

Israeli real estate investments in Greece have already had a notable impact on people’s everyday lives, driving up rents and making housing more unaccessible. Endeavors in the defense sector might have been more lowkey, Ilias adds, but they are widespread and expanding under the sight of NATO and European institutions. “In the south of the country, in Kalamata, there is a large Greek Air Force base that also falls under the NATO umbrella as an International Pilot Training Center,” he says, emphasizing the presence of Elbit Systems in the area.

Israeli companies have also purchased local military enterprises, including Intracom Defense, operating in electronic warfare and drone production. “Through this acquisition, the Israeli state-owned company IAI gained access to the European Defense Fund (EDF), an EU mechanism intended exclusively for financing European defense procurement programs – something that was made possible only thanks to the active support of the Greek government,” Ilias adds.

“[Achilles Shield] has been promoted by the domestic media and the elite as an agreement that shields Greece,” he adds. “[Under the claim] that the money being spent, while not going to healthcare and education, or toward supporting the incomes of citizens who are still trying to recover from the years of economic crisis, protects us from those who seek to harm the country, with Turkey always implied in this context,” he explains. 

“In this era of crises, military buildup, and preparations for a full-scale war, they are trying to present this not only as something reasonable but also as something necessary, where strategic agreements between states take precedence over the needs of the people and international law, overlooking genocides or the ethnic cleansing of an entire people.”

The deal’s Achilles’ heel: reliance on Israeli arms

While Greek officials described the deal as a breakthrough for Greek sovereignty, critics have warned of dangers on several fronts. To begin with, in the announced distribution of funds, local industry expects only €750 million of the total €3 billion. The rest goes to Israeli arms companies making the genocide in Gaza technically feasible.

And despite the amount of money being spent, parts of the agreement have been presented inconsistently to the public. “We’re talking about a complex system of sophisticated weapons utilizing artificial intelligence, with a central control unit that operates based on computer code, Ilias emphasizes. “There has been extensive debate over whether this code will belong to Israel or be controlled by Greece. So far, the government’s responses to a barrage of questions from the opposition have been neither reassuring nor consistent. This remains to be clarified.”

The expenditure has been heavily criticized by left movements, including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in the context of EU armament taking place at the expense of labor rights and social services. “Costing more than €3 billion, this agreement forms part of the broader ‘2030 Agenda’ arms program serving NATO’s needs, for which our people are paying dearly – tens of billions of euros – at the expense of their rights and needs,” the KKE pointed out.

Like most other EU governments, the Mitsotakis administration has announced harmful labor and social reforms just as it committed billions for Israeli arms producers. This new-old austerity agenda has met widespread resistance. Recently, tens of thousands demonstrated in Thessaloniki demanding dignified wages and pensions, efficient public healthcare, and investments in education. “Not one euro for imperialist wars,” they insisted.

The “Achilles Shield” deal also adds to the case made by academics and activists worldwide that Israel is using the Gaza genocide to market its weapons. This is apparent not only from the purchase list, but from official statements as well. The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced similar deals are part of a broader strategy “to expand defense exports as a central tool for strengthening the IDF’s force buildup, influencing Israel’s foreign policy standing worldwide, and bolstering the Israeli defense industry and economy.”

Critics have argued that Greece’s arms deal risks making the country captive to Israel’s defense industry and alienating it from other countries in the region. “In practice, strategic relations with the murderous state of Israel, together with joint military preparations, are adding fuel to the fire of imperialist rivalries in the region, as well as the conflicts between the bourgeois classes of Turkey and Israel, and of Greece and Turkey, in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, with the peoples being the victims,” the KKE emphasized.

Read more: Amid mass protests in the West, Israel’s military footprint expands in Eastern Europe

“Greece’s ruling class has made a strategic choice to align itself closely with the Western alliance,” Ilias says, referencing events since the Greek Civil War. “It is particularly worth noting that, as a result, the Greek people have borne the brunt of the bloodshed.”

And while the post-Civil War regime attempted to crush “the popular and anti-imperialist movement that existed in the country,” he concludes, they did not succeed. 

“This is partially why we still see today such a stark contrast between the ruling class and the organized, collective reactions of significant segments of the Greek people throughout the country against the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. These reactions are multifaceted, with segments of the working class – beyond just the youth – actively participating.

Abelardo de la Espriella has now been in office for one month. The far-right president won the election by a narrow margin over leftist Iván Cepeda (less than 1% of valid votes), despite allegations of irregularities made by then-President Gustavo Petro.

However, De la Espriella dismissed the allegations of irregularities and began his administration by attempting to demonstrate military strength, an overt religious faith (for which he had to issue a public apology), and a clear alignment with Washington’s political doctrine.

The earthquake and the return to a state policy of war

However, just three days after he took office, a powerful earthquake struck the western part of the country, leaving more than 300 dead and nearly 5,000 injured. The government’s actions drew controversy. His supporters applauded the government’s response, while critics accused the administration of exploiting the tragedy to boost his public image and giving certain countries – such as Israel – priority in search-and-rescue efforts, while denying entry to rescue teams from other countries.

Added to this is the rhetoric of a return to all-out war against subversive armed groups and criminal organizations that De la Espriella already put forward during his election campaign. But this has not been merely a matter of rhetoric. Since taking office, the executive branch has ordered a series of attacks against positions held by these groups, some of which were engaged in peace talks aimed at their demobilization.

In fact, De la Espriella canceled the peace negotiations, which had been resumed by the Petro administration as part of his “total peace” policy.

Read more: President De la Espriella cancels peace talks in Colombia

In addition, the government’s death-defying political communication strategy has caused quite a stir. In some videos, the president can be seen walking among the bodies of alleged “bandits and terrorists” (as the government calls them), which, according to the Executive Branch, number 40, in addition to the capture of nine people allegedly linked to illegal organizations.

But the bombings have also drawn significant domestic criticism. In the Guaviare Department, three minors were reported killed following the bombings ordered by the president, which were part of a series of attacks that left a total of about ten people dead. And while De la Espriella said that armed groups are responsible for the deaths of the minors, he has not been able to escape criticism from human rights organizations that view indiscriminate bombing as a dangerous threat to innocent people and the civilian population.

A return to neoliberalism

Ultimately, the contrast between Petro’s and De la Espriella’s administrations seems so evident that many wonder whether it is precisely this political distancing that serves as the compass guiding the new government – or whether Colombia is, in fact, attempting to establish a new form of state.

To understand this transformation, BreakThrough News spoke with Danilo Urrea, philosopher at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, who sees in this first month a clear shift toward a return to a state policy of war – one that had previously been implemented with negative results: “In Colombia, this was historically known as the era called ‘La Violencia,’ which was one of the worst periods the country has ever experienced in terms of the barbarity it generated.”

“The president presents the killing of people to the country as a success,” he added. “But he also does so with an aesthetic and a semiotics that portray death, murder, and the like as a possibility for the country. And in a context like Colombia’s – where we have the highest death toll on the entire continent, surpassing even the combined death tolls of all the region’s dictatorships – this shows us that it is a step backward in terms of the possibility of building a country based on dialogue and reconciliation.”

Urrea also says the current government is trying to push the idea that the country it has inherited is in a disastrous financial situation, which is why it must promote a radical neoliberal policy: “We’ve identified efforts to promote a supposed economic turnaround for the country through old formulas that have already been tried and proved disastrous for social cohesion, for the territories, and for the relationship between humans and nature – with negative impacts on the communities living in the very places where this return to an extractive economy is once again being proposed.”

Furthermore, he warns that in the short time De la Espriella has been in office, there has been a setback in environmental and labor matters: “He has also come under attack during this first month, as he has begun to dismantle the gains made in terms of wages, recovery, overtime pay, and certain labor protections … which had been restored under President Petro’s administration through reforms and which this administration is now once again rapidly undoing with the stroke of a pen, supposedly to improve economic conditions. That, in very general terms, is what we’re seeing and what’s projected: the deregulation of all social benefits, of all the hard-won gains; the complete dismantling of all reforms; and the surrender of the country – in the areas of health, education, food, and all fundamental rights – to privatization processes primarily for the profit of transnational corporations.”

A new (old) geopolitical doctrine

Following the Petro administration’s attempts to defend the Palestinian people against Israel’s onslaught, as well as its various clashes with Washington’s hemispheric geopolitical agenda, Urrea asserts that Colombia has joined a regional strategy of control orchestrated by Washington: “The rise of the far right, which is well known … Through this administration, Colombia has become yet another outpost of U.S. imperialism’s advance across the region. And obviously, this has far-reaching consequences for the geopolitics of Latin America and the Caribbean in particular.”

WATCH: Colombia’s new president declares ‘colonial allegiance’ to US & Israel

Furthermore, Urrea highlights the historical importance Colombia – a country with access to both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea – has held in the United States’ geopolitical strategy to control natural resources: “From a geopolitical standpoint, conditions are being created for Colombia to once again become one of the countries that facilitates U.S. military control – but above all, control over the natural resources and assets that are so coveted in this era of challenges for the United States in terms of its economic capacity, its dispute with China, and everything related to critical minerals.”

What is the opposition doing?

Urrea notes that, for now, the opposition parties have not managed to formulate a clear response to De la Espriella’s project. First, he points to a certain caution regarding a state policy that promotes violence and war: “There is obviously a great deal of fear regarding the actions I mentioned earlier – this language of violence, death, and murder. And obviously, in a country like Colombia, this has repercussions for the ability of those opposed to the current regime to act. Furthermore, because there has been an increase in the targeted killings of social leaders in various parts of the country, especially in areas most affected by geopolitical disputes as well as conflicts over economic and commercial control, illegal economies, and so on.”

However, Urrea notes that a coordinated opposition to the popular sectors could emerge, and the people might offer a peaceful and better-coordinated response: “We should consider an opposition that stems more from the popular sector, and there, I believe, there is also fear about how to react in the face of a violent scenario, a dangerous scenario, and manipulation. But I believe that organizations are now focusing on analyzing what the main peaceful and strategic causes might be to address the current situation. It seems to me that one of these fundamental aspects will undoubtedly be, and is already taking shape in the country through popular organization and mobilization, the defense of the environment, the defense of territories that are already being targeted for the control and exploitation of natural resources by transnational corporations, and the issue of fracking.”

Meta wants to build one of the largest data centers in the world in rural Louisiana. 

The facility, known as Hyperion, is being built to train and operate the artificial intelligence systems behind Meta’s products. What began as a $10 billion proposal has since ballooned into a more than $50 billion development spanning nearly 10 million square feet and roughly 3,650 acres. At full scale, Hyperion is expected to require 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, making it the largest data center in Meta’s global fleet and one of the largest ever built. According to Meta, the project is expected to employ around 7,500 workers during peak construction and support 1,000 permanent jobs once operational.

For residents of Richland Parish, the arrival of Meta has brought both desperately needed jobs and profound uncertainty about what the project will mean for the community. The enormous facility is being constructed on former farmland and will require an equally immense network of infrastructure to support it. In nearby Rayville, many residents view Meta as an economic lifeline after decades of limited employment opportunities, with local families securing jobs that pay far more than the parish’s median income. But the influx of highly paid, out-of-town workers has also driven up rent and the cost of living as landlords and businesses increasingly orient themselves toward Meta employees. Landlords routinely raise the rent of low-income housing in order to price out local tenants in favor of contractors, forcing residents to move out of the area to afford housing.

Bringing Meta to Richland Parish

Richland Parish is a rural stretch of northeast Louisiana dominated by flat, fertile land rich with cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice. The parish’s economy has historically revolved around large-scale, row-crop farming, but declining farm incomes and population loss has strained the region in recent generations. Richland’s employment rate sits at 49.9%, 9.4% below the already dismal state average, with a median income of $53,544. A total of 36% of the 20,000 person population is Black. Rayville, the parish seat, is 80% Black. For decades, Richland has been far removed from the state’s economic centers of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, receiving little of the investment that has flowed into Louisiana’s larger cities.

That changed in January 2024, when Entergy Louisiana, the state’s monopoly power company, began a year-long courting ritual to bring Meta’s largest data center to the impoverished parish. Following months of backdoor deals and nondisclosure agreements, Meta announced plans to build a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot data center on a 2,250-acre flood plain. In July 2026, Meta expanded the project, committing more than $50 billion and nearly 10 million square feet to what may become the largest data center in the company’s fleet and home to its massive Hyperion AI training cluster.

Both Meta and Entergy have been quick to dismiss community concerns, with state officials claiming that “whatever comes out of it will be better than the mostly fallow farmland that was there.” Meta likewise touts a laundry list of benefits it promises to bring to the area, most notably permanent jobs and increased tax revenue. The company now claims that the expanded Hyperion AI center will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs, alongside thousands of temporary construction jobs.

But Meta has refused to provide the evidence behind those projections. On August 12, the Louisiana Public Service Commission voted 3–1 to overturn the recommendation of an administrative law judge that Meta turn over information substantiating its projected job creation, economic impact, and electricity demand, effectively shielding the company’s claims from public scrutiny.

Meta’s empty promises of economic growth

The public’s skepticism is warranted. Data centers routinely generate thousands of temporary construction jobs while creating only a fraction as many permanent positions once construction ends. Meta’s projects in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, are expected to leave only around 100 operational jobs each after thousands of construction workers leave. QTS similarly estimates that a data center campus in York County, North Carolina will produce roughly 1,000 construction jobs but only about 100 permanent onsite positions. Even Hyperion’s original proposal called for roughly 5,000 construction workers but only 500 permanent operational employees. None of these figures guarantee that the permanent positions will go to Richland Parish residents. Meta has offered assurances about local hiring, but there is no binding commitment requiring the company to employ local workers.

Meta also claims the data center will bring tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue to Richland Parish, an argument it bolsters by pointing to the 2,000% increase in sales-tax totals since construction began – $50,000 of which has funded bonuses for some local schoolteachers. But that windfall is largely a product of the construction boom itself, not a sustainable source of revenue generated by the completed data center. The teacher bonuses are distributed through Richland Parish’s longstanding one-cent sales-tax program, which provides annual “13th checks” to eligible school employees. As those construction workers spend money in the parish, that pool has temporarily grown; once construction ends, so will much of the revenue feeding it. The result is a temporary infusion of money that can obscure the longer-term fiscal consequences of the project. When the construction boom ends, Richland Parish will be left with the costs of a massive industrial project, and fewer public resources to pay for them.

Cementing Louisiana’s dependence on fossil fuels amid environmental devastation

The environmental impact of the Meta data center could also be deadly for residents of Richland Parish and Louisiana as a whole. The Hyperion AI data center is expected to consume roughly half of the state’s electrical capacity – approximately seven times the energy consumed by the entire city of New Orleans – placing enormous new demands on Entergy’s already overburdened power grid. Louisiana residents know what a fragile electrical system can mean in a disaster. After Hurricane Katrina, Entergy’s restoration efforts took 42 days to complete across its service territory. In 2021, Hurricane Ida left nearly 950,000 customers without power after an Entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River, a disaster that required 15 days of restoration work just to bring more than 90% of affected customers back online.

Rather than address these vulnerabilities, Entergy’s proposed solution to Hyperion’s unprecedented energy demands is to build an entirely new fossil-fuel energy infrastructure around the data center. The company plans to construct ten natural-gas power plants, including seven new facilities capable of generating roughly 5.2 gigawatts of electricity, alongside new transmission lines and a massive 500-kilovolt substation. Meta, Entergy, and the Louisiana state government are working to present these projects as investments that will strengthen Louisiana’s electrical grid and improve reliability for ordinary customers.

Louisiana is being asked to construct an enormous new fossil-fuel-based energy system so that a single private corporation can consume an unprecedented share of its electricity. More generation may increase capacity, but it does not eliminate the physical vulnerabilities that have repeatedly left Louisiana residents without power after hurricanes. Instead, the state is doubling down on a centralized, fossil-fuel-dependent grid whose infrastructure will remain vulnerable to the same storms that have already decimated Louisiana’s communities.

Entergy’s catastrophic deal with Meta has arrived as Louisiana is already on the front lines of an environmental crisis. The state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of coastal land since 1932 and continues to lose more than 16 square miles each year. The state has experienced 31 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters since 2018, leaving communities to repeatedly rebuild from hurricanes, flooding, and extreme weather. Meanwhile, along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the area known as “Cancer Alley” contains a dense concentration of petrochemical and chemical facilities, exposing surrounding communities to significant air pollution and toxic emissions which have resulted in a cancer rate fifty times higher than the national average.

People of Louisiana reject corporate profiteering

These environmental pressures are only compounded by an affordability crisis. In 2024, 49% of Louisiana households – nearly 900,000 – were either living in poverty or earning too little to afford basic necessities. A basic survival budget costs an estimated $30,708 a year for a single adult and $81,912 for a family of four, before accounting for savings or emergencies such as climate disaster. All the while, the state is being asked to absorb another enormous industrial project while nearly half of its households are already struggling financially and its communities confront environmental catastrophe.

Read more: A massive AI data center transforms rural Utah into a national flashpoint

Community opposition to the Hyperion project reflects a growing recognition that the promised benefits of corporate development cannot be separated from the costs that residents will be asked to bear. The fight is not simply over one data center, but over who gets to determine what Louisiana’s resources are used for and whose interests development is meant to serve. For generations, Louisiana communities have been told that jobs and investment require accepting pollution, environmental destruction, and the transformation of local resources into private profit.

Hyperion offers another version of the same bargain: enormous amounts of Louisiana’s land, electricity, water, and public infrastructure would be redirected toward the interests of one of the world’s largest technology companies. And the resistance to that bargain extends far beyond Richland Parish. Hundreds of Louisianans have mobilized around Public Service Commission meetings, traveling to the capital to demand that regulators prioritize the people who will bear the costs of Meta and Entergy’s expansion. Their concerns have repeatedly been dismissed or overridden by a majority of commissioners, even as the commission has approved billions of dollars in new generation and transmission infrastructure for the project. A 2024 investigation by the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight found that nearly 43% of campaign contributions to Louisiana utility commissioners over the previous decade came from utilities, energy-related businesses, and their attorneys and lobbyists, with Entergy Louisiana and its executives and family members contributing roughly $350,000.

The resistance emerging across Louisiana is more than a battle over a single data center. It is a decisive stand for the right of Louisianians to determine their own future, rather than surrender it to corporate interests. This is a battle for the future of working people everywhere, and the people have vowed to keep fighting. 

Kieran Spencer is a New Orleans-based historian and organizer.