That is the story of Rocket Lab, "Sir" Peter Beck, and the people of Mahia Peninsula.
When Rocket Lab first arrived on the East Coast of the North Island and sought the consent of local Iwi and hapu to launch rockets from their whenua, Beck was unambiguous about what his company would and would not do.
In an early interview, he stated plainly: "Certainly if it involves something that's going to harm people then we're not really interested at all... certainly we don't want to be involved with any kind of missile programmes or anything to do with armaments."
He added, simply: "No. No weapons."
Sonya Smith of Ngati Rakaipaaka hapu, whose people were among those assured of Rocket Lab's peaceful intentions, has been equally plain about how that promise has played out. "We were sold a bit of a story," she told RNZ. "It talked about satellite launches that supported environmental outcomes and safety outcomes and that's not really how it's played out."
Billboards went up around Mahia: "No military payloads. Haere Atu, Rocket Lab." The company did not respond when RNZ asked whether it had broken its promise to the community. That silence speaks volumes.
It should now be abundantly clear to any New Zealander paying attention that Peter Beck looked concerned Maori in the eye and told them what they needed to hear. A third of all payloads launched by Rocket Lab have since been for the United States military or affiliated agencies. The company now holds over US$1.3 billion in contracts with the US Space Development Agency alone, building missile tracking satellites explicitly designed, in the Pentagon's own words, to "significantly increase the coverage and accuracy needed to close kill chains."
Kill chains. That is the clinical euphemism the American military uses for finding people and killing them.
Which brings us to the present moment. The United States and Israel are conducting military operations against Iran. One of those attacks involved a US strike which destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, killing between 175 and 180 people, most of them children. Investigations by The New York Times, BBC Verify, and the NPR and CBC concluded the United States was most likely responsible. Amnesty International has called for accountability. The United States has offered none.
Last week, The Guardian reported:
US responsible for deadly missile strike on Iran school, preliminary inquiry says
Strike that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, reportedly due to targeting mistake by US military planners
A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children.
According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.
Iranian officials had put put death toll from the attack as at least 175 people, the majority of them children, in one of the worst and most shocking American strikes producing civilian fatalities in recent memory.
Rocket Lab is building the targeting and communications architecture of the same military that just bombed a school full of young girls.
When asked directly whether any payloads it had launched were being used in the Iran conflict, Rocket Lab's Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Morgan Connaughton, said responsibility for how satellites are used rests with the satellite owner. This is the statement of a corporation that has laundered its conscience.
New Zealand has no strategic interest in this illegal war. The United States and Israel have struck Iranian oil and gas infrastructure, strikes that will send petrol prices upward here at home, that threaten regional stability, and that put this country in an invidious position as a close intelligence partner of the United States through the Five Eyes arrangement. The United States and Israel's unlawful attacks are putting New Zealanders and our offshore investments at risk.
Rocket Lab's deep integration with the American military-industrial complex isn't a matter of abstract ethics. It is a concrete conflict of interest for this country's foreign policy and our standing in the Pacific.
Peter Beck cannot be trusted. He told Maori communities one thing and did the exact opposite. He built a company on a promise of peaceful science and turned it into a weapons contractor that helps rogue states indiscriminately target innocent civilians. He accepted a knighthood and a Nasdaq listing while the infrastructure he is building helps guide the most powerful military on earth, the same military that bombed a primary school, murdering hundreds of school girls.
The people of Māhia Peninsula deserved better. New Zealand deserves better. And the schoolchildren of Minab deserved to grow up.
