Author's Note on Mission and Financial Independence

Before you read a single word of this book's argument, I want to address something directly: who is funding this work, and what do I personally gain from it? The answer is: nothing. I gain nothing financially from any of it. This book, my previous book Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof, and my documentary film Forever Peace Now have all been produced out of my own personal funds. No corporate sponsors. No government grants. No nonprofit foundation backing. No publisher advance. No advertising model. No speaking fee waiting at the end of the road. Every dollar spent on research, production, web hosting, legal filings, and platform maintenance has come from a single source: my own pocket. I have done this work at a personal financial loss, deliberately, over a period of years. I say this not to invite admiration but to draw a clear line. The organizations and platforms built alongside this book share the same model. ConflictTour is currently at the idea and planning stage. It is not incorporated, has no revenue, has no investors, and has no commercial model in operation. If it one day generates sufficient income to pay the people doing the work a living wage, that will be its measure of success — not profit, but sustainability. It will never be a cash cow. ParentsPlea.com is a free website. It carries no advertising. It takes no affiliate revenue. It does not sell, trade, or monetize the data of the families who trust it with the stories of their dead. It is built and maintained for a reason that has nothing to do with money: because just peace requires us to inspect the deaths that have taken place. Who is doing the killing. Who is suffering. And because if there is ever going to be judgment in a court of law, if there is ever going to be reparations for people harmed by these wars, if there is ever going to be a memorial worthy of the name — we need more than a wall of names. We need biographies. We need family testimony. We need the complete record of who was lost and what the surviving family wants the world to know. That is what ParentsPlea is building. One profile at a time. My work does not receive corporate sponsors, as our politicians and many NGOs and government-affiliated organizations often do. There is no billionaire patron. There is no foundation underwriting. That independence is not a limitation. It is the point. The same men I am calling to account in these pages are the men who would be asked to fund this kind of work — which is precisely why this work cannot be funded by them, and is not. I am not here to defend the indefensible technology sector. They have enough PR agencies and executives paid handsomely to defend their inhumanity. They can write and publish their own books. I have no interest in their approval, their support, or their response. The real struggle humanity is facing — beneath all the politics and the weapons and the corporate structures and the algorithms — is between two competing ideas: I am one. And we are one. Silicon Valley has built a monument to the first. This book is an argument for the second. That is why I am writing it. That is the only reason.