State secretly invested in company promoting robotic vehicles for mining, construction
One of the secret investments, the amount unknown, made on behalf of Alaskans by a contractor hired by the Alaska Permanent Fund is in a California company called SafeAI.
The description released to the public by McKinley Capital says SafeAI is “focused on retrofitting heavy equipment with AI technology to prevent accidents.”
But that language does not fully convey the corporate mission of SafeAI‚—the promotion of robotic vehicles for mining and construction, a goal that goes far beyond safety.
The company says its plan is to accelerate the transition to autonomous mining and construction vehicles, a change that will eliminate jobs for drivers and operators. It may be inevitable. It may be a plus to society and to industry.
“Enabled by autonomy, each vehicle can add approximately 1,000 additional hours of productivity per year,” SafeAI says. “It’s the difference between capital projects being completed in four years instead of five, and significantly under or over budget.”
“SafeAI enables equipment owners to transform existing machines into self-operating robotic assets with aftermarket hardware, advanced, proprietary autonomous technology and a scalable framework for deployment,” SafeAI says.
Is this venture a great investment for the Alaska Permanent Fund?
I have no idea. I don’t pretend to know about these things.
What I do know is that we shouldn’t have to depend upon the owners of McKinley Capital to decide whether Alaskans should be informed that the investment was made with public money.
And we shouldn’t be in the position of allowing McKinley Capital to withhold the details of how much money it has invested with SafeAI.
But that’s where we are. The Alaska Permanent Fund says that McKinley Capital, which was given $100 million to invest in Alaska-related enterprises, is able to withhold all information about these investments from the public, including the names of the recipients.
In addition, the state won’t say how much McKinley Capital and Barings are paid to invest this money for Alaskans.
The Permanent Fund corporation says the information is private because of a 43-year-old law that says: "Information in the possession of the corporation is a public record, except that information that discloses the particulars of the business or affairs of a private enterprise or investor is confidential and is not a public record."
But hiring companies to invest for you and getting state money from the Permanent Fund does not disclose “the particulars of the business or affairs of a private enterprise or investor. . . “
Under the fund’s interpretation of the law, if billions are eventually invested in private companies doing business in Alaska by private equity funds, Alaskans will never know who is getting the money and how much and how much the private equity funds are being paid, unless the recipients of the money agree to disclose the details.
It is obvious that if the state takes public money and invests it in a private company, the amount of the investment and the recipient of the investment should be public information.
This problem with the in-state investment program has been clear since the start. The Permanent Fund corporation, as I wrote here in 2019, is twisting the definition of public records beyond all recognition.