♪♪ ♪♪♪ [protesters shouting] naomi cook: if you are not currently working to stop 5g, this means you don't understand it. nothing else matters anymore. protesters: stop 5g! stop 5g! sean nicholls: around the world, a new protest movement is stoking fear and anger.

their fight is against the next generation of wireless technology, 5g, that's predicted to change our lives. iain collings: this is gonna allow a whole revolution in the way we live and organize ourselves. channa seviratne: it's gonna really change the world, because 5g can do things that 4g could never do. it really is gonna be a game-changer. sean: despite its extraordinary promise, the opposition to 5g has in some places turned violent. it's fueled wild conspiracy theories that have quickly spilled from online into the real world. and there are much bigger forces at play. paul fletcher: i think we'd be naive if we did not recognize the possibility that some of these claims are being generated by hostile governments. sean: while protesters rail against 5g spread,

a greater threat is looming: a global technology war. donald trump: the race to 5g is a race america must win. it's a race that we will win. sean: tonight on "four corners," wenvestigate what's behind the growing backlash against 5g, and why the world's superpowers are vying for 5g dominance. [electric zap] ♪♪♪ sean: it's a crisp winter's morning in the town of mullumbimby. with its vibrant mix of locals, backpackers, and transient hippies, it's known as the counterculture capital of the new south wales north coast. michael lyon: mullumbimby is a very diverse community. there's a very alternative vibe here, and a lot of people that have a very deep mistrust of government. very health-oriented, and so, a lot of organic health foods

here, anti-gmo, big anti-fracking movement. it's probably the anti-vax capital of australia, if not the western world. sean: today, they're gathering for a protest. there's a grab bag of complaints, but most of the people are here to protest against 5g. male: first thing i wanted to say was stop 5g! stop 5g! let's walk. [protesters chanting] sean: they're heading for mullumbimby's lone telecommunications tower. protesters: stop 5g! stop 5g! sean: for months, protesters have targeted this tower over telstra's plans to upgrade it to the 5g network. ♪ we don't need more radiation, ♪ ♪ we don't need more radiation, ♪

♪ we don't need more radiation. ♪ sean: the protesters here are worried that radio signals from 5g towers could be damaging to their health. female: i don't wanna be a human lab rat, you know? because that's what's happening, they're just using us to see if it's gonna be okay. and if we die, well, we've got so many of us. female: yeah, because i'm worried about our kids, the future. the--it's not proved yet that 5g is safe enough. sean: to prevent telstra's upgrade, activists have been maintaining around-the-clock vigil at the tower for more than three months. guarding the tower tonight is sherrie yeomans and her dog, bundy. sherrie yeomans: well, basically, we're here protecting the tower to stop telstra moving in with the cherry-picker. we know they need the cherry-picker to upgrade to 5g,

so there's quite a team of us, tag-teaming. a couple of hours, four hours, or overnight to protect the tower from any works occurring. sean: activists claimed a victory in march when the local council passed a resolution calling for a halt to the upgrade. for now, telstra has stopped work on the tower. michael: i think for telstra to roll out the installation of 5g during a pandemic in mullumbimby, you know, it was a--i'm sure they thought they were very clever, doing that, but i think it was a really bad move. and i think it really played into people's paranoia around this and, you know, to the conspiracy theory and the, you know, this is all a move to, you know, to institute a technology that is potentially harmful. ♪♪♪ sean: telstra's tower at mullumbimby is just one

of thousands of sites being upgraded to 5g across the country. australia's telecommunications companies are spending billions of dollars building networks that they say will transform how we live and work with no risk to our health. here on the gold coast, telstra has built an innovation centre to show off what 5g can do. channa: what we're looking at here is a 5g device. so, with the 4g device, we're talking about downloading an hd movie in minutes. but this is 5g technology, and we're using-- sean: channa seneviratne is driving telstra's 5g rollout. channa: what we can do is download an hd movie in seconds. so, minutes versus seconds. that's kind of the difference between the two technologies. sean: and is that absolutely how fast this is gonna ever get? channa: this is only the beginning. it's gonna be twice, three times faster than this in the next few years.

sean: 5g promises a future where everything is high-speed and interconnected, from autonomous vehicles to fight bushfires to hyper-efficient agriculture and remote surgery. channa: just imagine a paramedic with the 5g technology. you could, for example, have the paramedic using a pair of, you ow, augmented reality glasses, so what that paramedic sees, you could transmit back to a specialist back in hospital. that person can then look at the patient as if they were there. they can provide advice, they could even send an instruction, which, you--could be dilayed on a heads-up screen. and that's theind of thing which you can do in real time on 5g which you can't today do on 4g. iain: 5g's not just about phone calls and ever-increasing resolution of videos.

it's gonna unlock the internet of things. and this is where machines start talking to machines, and this is gonna allow a whole revolution in the way we live and organize oselves. for example, the smart city: we can start coordinating traffic flow, which is gonna have safety benefits, it's gonna have emission benefits. and beyond traffic, it's gonna be coordinating air conditioning in buildings, coordinating the lighting in buildings, all sorts of things when machines start sensing the environment and actions can be taken. sean: to deliver the fastest speeds, phone companies need to use higher-frequency signals known as millimeter waves. but millimeter wave signals can't travel as far as existing signals, so for it to work, there's a need for many more antennas installed much closer together. channa: we would deploy millimeter wave in a cbd, for example, where there's a lot of traffic.

what it would probably look like, you see--you would probably see a cell site in most street corners. but because it is at that high frequency, the antennas themselves are very small and almost invisible. sean: at the heart of the health concerns expressed by 5g activists is what's called radio frequency radiation, emitted by everything from radios, tvs, and microwave ovens to wi-fi networks and mobile phones. activists fear that more antennas mean more of this radiation and that it will cause problems ranging from anxiety to epilepsy and brain cancer. kim sporton: do we want this? do we want these towers blighting our landscape? do we need more radiation? do who's asked for this?rs? there's been no consultation. we are gonna be in a radiation soup that we cannot opt out of.

so at the moment, we have choices. once 5g is implemented, we no longer have any choice. we are in a soup of radiation that we cannot escape. male: the voice current, or the audio frequency current, as it cos from the transformer, is amplified by vacuum tubes such as these. sean: concerns about radiation have been around for more than 100 years. male: in such a which travel through the air. raophobia as early as 1903 toabd describe people who were afraid of radio speakers. male announcer: yet anxieties about power lines-- sean: in the '80s, it was the radiation emitted by power lines. female: they're invisible and just about everywhere. female: do we play russian roulette with people's children? male: should you be taking steps to keep your kids away from electromagnetic fields? male announcer: microwave cooking units, like those in the nasa lunar receiving laboratory--

rodney croft: there was a very big community concern when microwave ovens came out. announcer: keep your eye on the chocolate cupcake, it rises faster than you can eat it. rodney croft: there s concern that food being cooked in it would be poisonous. announcer: this is cooking bymi. concern that food being cooked rodney cft: when mobile phones came out, there was concern in the public. as we moved from first generation to second generation, or 2g phones, from 2g to 3g, 3g to 4g, and now 4g to 5g--we tend to get another wave of concern from the public, and that's not linked to important changes to what the actual technology is doing. so the actual physical agent, the radiation that's being emitted by these devices, is essentially the same as it's always been, and essentially the same as we've had around with radio, for instance--am and fm radio for many years. rodney: if i could just get you to hold on to the

front of the cap while i get the rest of it-- sean: rodney croft is chairman of the key international body that recommends safe exposure limits for radio frequency radiation. rodney: this is one of the most-researched physical agents in the world. there are just thousands and thousands of papers out there that have gone into everything from epidemiology of cancer to simple, "does it make you feel bad, agitated, cause you symptoms of any form?" perfect, okay, now, what i'm gonna do is get you to do the memory task thate were doing before. i'm going to leave the room. sean: at his lab at wollongong university, rodney croft runs tests on the effects of radio frequency radiation on humans. this test is simulating the radiation emitted by mobile phones. rodney: what we're really doing is setting people up, putting electrodes on their head,

looking at the brain activity, the electrical activity caused by the brain, and whether it's being influenced by the mobile phones. when we started, we were looking for large changes in the brain, thinking it could be a real problem, but we just don't find those. we don't see any changes in brain cancer, which is something that we often hear activists complain about. and, well, there's probably thousands of claims out there, and none of them have actually bore any fruit in terms of being able to demonstrate that there is an adverse heal effect due to mobile phone usage. sean: some people also say that, particularly with 5g millimeter wave technology, there is concern because it will mean more antennas all over the place, and therefore more radiation out in the atmosphere that we will be exposed to. what do you think about that claim? rodney: so far, the research suggests that it's just

not the case. generay, what you do is you have more antennas so that you can reduce the actual exposure. the further you are from an antenna, the more the antenna has to work, the more energy it has to pump into the environment. so tests comparing, for instance, the latest rollout of 5g against 4g finds very similar levels. and i must say, the levels are generally about a hundred to a thousand times lower than are permitteby the guidelines. they're exceedingly small. shabbir ahmed: sean, this is one of our labs, and we're the only company here in australia that can do mobile phone testing, radiation testing, for manufacturers. sean: this lab in melbourne tests how much radio frequency radiation is emitted by devices like mobile phones using highly

specialized equipment that mimics a human body. shabbir: this setup here represents, or is simulating, a human head. we've put down a mobile phone at the bottom of the table here that represents the ear, if the phone's touching the ear, and we've got this liquid that simulates the body mass and tissue within our head. and this probe is going in at different parts of our head and measuring radio frequency energy coming out of the mobile phone and how much of that is being absorbed by our body tissue. sean: why do you need to do this test? shabbir: this is the test that mobile phone manufacturer need to do to make sure that radio frequency energy coming out of the phone is meeting the australian government rules and regulations and limits set for those sort of energies. sean: so, in other words, to make sure the phones are safe. shabbir: absolutely, to make sure that the phones are safe to be used by general population.

sean: humans are commonly exposed to two types of radiation: ionizing radiation, which includes x-rays, and non-ionizing radiation, which includes the radio frequency emissions from mobile phones or the 5g network. malcolm sim: we know that ionizing radiation causes a lot of health effects, not just cancer but other effects as well, so, you know, that's clearly something that people would be concerned about. now, radio frequency is in what's called the non-ionizing wavelengths of radiation, so it doesn't cause, you know, dna damage to genetic material and so on, so--but i think people hear "radiation" and they think that, you know, it's something that's gonna--it could potentially be harmful. sean: the science of radio frequency radiation is highly contentious.

much of the concern stems from a landmark 2011 review by the world health organization looking at previous studies of the effects of mobile phone radiation. malcolm sim was one of the authors. malcolm sim: we were invited from all different parts of the world to come together to review all ofhe scientific evidence. so, in our particular area of expertise and my area was primarily the human studies that have been performed. sean: the who routinely evaluates and classifies substances that can cause cancer. a group 1 classification means. it includes alcohol and tobacco. group 2a means probably carcinogenic, and includes red meat and very hot drinks. group 2b is possibly carcinogenic, and includes things like car exhaust,

but also some contraceptive pills and pickled vegetables. the expert panel decided to classify radio frequency radiation in group 2b. malcolm sim: that group concluded that, taking the human evidence and the animal evidence together, there was limited evidence of radio frequency causing cancer in humans. i mean, you've got a whole lot of scientists from around the world, each with their own perspective on the data, i anoften they'll havehole lot oftheir own interpretation,he and so the was not universal agreement about it being classified as group 2b. there was some members of the group who were--thought it should be a lower classification than that, but the majority view was that they should be a group 2b carnogen. so it was picked up by a lot of media outlets at the time and there was a strong sense that, yes, this meeting had shown that, yes, it was a cause of cancer in humans.

sean: but that sn't justified? malcolm sim: well, i think that you need to understand the way that these things are classified. so, this is--from our point of view, of the people reviewing the evidence, it was very limited evidce. there--we've looked at other compounds wherthe evidce is incredibly strong and consistent and, you know, ere you're very worried about them as a cause ocancer. sean: the who later issued information about managing the potential risk of mobile phone radiation. malcolm sim: and so the approach at that time was for who to recommend a precautionary approach to take steps to reduce exposure. the main exposure is when it's very close to your head, so use a hands-free device, use speakerphone, that sort of thing, when using the phone. rodney: i don't think the classification was very significant. it's certainly been significant in terms of people's concern.

to obtain that classification, they don't require any research to demonstrate that mobile phones actually cause cancer. what's required is that there is an association identified between cancer and mobile phone usage, epidemiologically. that could mean one of two things. it could mean that there is an association related to mobile phone use, or it could just mean that there is a spurious association, and the subsequent research just hasn't shown that there is any relationship. [protesters shouting] sean: the covid-19 pandemic has supercharged the activism around the 5g rollout.

in the center of sydney, anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdown activists, far-right conspiracy theorists, and anti-5g campaigners have all united under the catch-cry of "freedom of choice." naomi: covid-19 has caused an explosion in public awareness. rather than meekly hunkering down under house arrest, men and women have taken to their computers and begun to ask questions, many of them for the first time. sean: a registered nurse, naomi cook, helps run australia's largest anti-5g facebook group called "australians for safe technology." naomi: if you are not currently working to stop 5g, this means you don't understand it. nothing else matters anymore. [protesters cheering] protesters: stop 5g! stop 5g! stop 5g! naomi: we know there is a much bigger and darker picture at play here.

well, we saw in the first two weeks of lockdown an explosion in group members, and i guess the most obvious reason for that is that people were at home and they had time to think and they had time to ask questions that perhaps they didn't have the headspace to do before that. and then through asking their own questions and doing their own research, perhrhaps some of them had the same concerns that we have about 5g, and so they joined our groups. sean: and what sort of numbers did you see? naomi: we went up from probably around 8,000 members to 40,000 in the first couple of weeks of lockdown. sean: naomcook's group is one of about 80 across australia. it now has more than 48,000 members and is one of the world's largest anti-5g facebook groups. naomi: you know, it's amazing. it's all been completely spontaneous, self-organized, and grassroots, and so there's nkind of rule book that we go by, but it--what we do works. we all respect each other.

there is no one single leader of this movement, we'rall leaders, you know, everyone is. and, yeah, so, you know, quite often, someone will share something in one group, then it gets reshared in another group, and, yeah, awareness spreads. sean: recent posts include a strategy kit f how to loy your doctor and local council over 5g. but members of the group also regularly share some of the most extreme conspiracy theories about 5g on the internet. fele: this technology cooked your eyes like eggs in world war ii. we alleed to understand these are litary weapons, these are assault frequencies. sean: naomi cook was invited to speak about 5g at the sydney

rally, which was organized by an anti-vaccination group. so was the joint rally a deliberate strategy to make it look like far more people were interested in each of the issues than was actually the case? omi: no, that's so sad! no, these were separate groups, each with very important issues that they were passionate about, uniting in one day. yeah, no, i don't think so. i mean, certainly, you know, in our groups, for example, we never said this was a 5g rally, you know. no, i don't think so. you'd have to be pretty dishonest to do something like that. sean: so you don't think it was a strategy? naomi: no, i don't think there was any strategy. i've--didn't sniff out anything like that. sean: naomi cook is now on the committee of a political party opposed to mandatory vaccination, and she's backing plans for a new anti-5g party. naomi: our movement is growing all the time,

so, as our movement grows, having a political party almost creates, you know, a platform that may be conducive to bringing about change. so, from that perspective, i think it's a very valid way to tackle the 5g problem. [protesters chanting] axel bruns: i think for the anti-5g groups, but also many other conspiracy theorists, a pandemic like this, a crisis like this, is very useful to draw attention to their causes because they can link the pandemic, in this case, with whatever their cause is, whether it's 5g, whether it's anti-vaccination, whether it's other typical conspiracy stories. so they can connect this crisis with whatever it is that they're focusing on, and say, "aha, we knew it all along something was coming, here it is now, and so, now, you must listen to us because we've been correct all along."

sean: the coincidental arrival of covid-19 and the rollout of 5g networks sparked one of the wildest conspiracy theories of all: the coronavirus was caused by 5g. "four corners" has tracked how the theory went viral around the world. the first known appearance of the conspiracy theory online was on january 19, when this was posted on twitter. male: disease in wuhan city of 8.5 million people. wuhan has 5,000+ 5g base stations now and 50,000 by 2021--is it a disease, or is it 5g? sean: when it was picked up just over a week later by the notorious far-right conspiracy website infowars, it made the jump to a larger audience. male: 5g causes flu-like symptoms--interesting?

sean: by february, the torrent of misinformation about coronavirus was so great, the united nations branded it an "infodemic." tedros adhanom ghebreyesus: fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus and is just as dangerous. sean: within weeks, the 5g conspiracy theory gathered more steam when it was raised by controversial u.s. doctor thomas cowan at an anti-vaccination conferee. thomas cowan: there has been a dramatic and quantum leap in the last six months with the electrification of the earth, and i'm sure a lot of you know what that is. it's called 5g. sean: cowan was on probation after being found guilty in 2017 of unprofessional conduct by the californian medical board. thomas: and i'll finh with--anybody wanna make one guess as to wherthe first completely blanketed 5g city

audience: wuhan. inhe world was? thomas: exactly, so, when you start thinking about this, are in an existential crisis here, folks sean: days later, this video of the lecture was promoted by u.s. pop singer keri hilson to her 4.2 million followers on twitter. then rapper wiz khalifa fueled the conspiracy theory with a tweet to his 36 million followers. other celebrities shared the theory too, including woody harrelson, john cusack, and m.i.a. axel: celebrities really become super-spreaders in all of this. they have millions if not tens of millions of followers via their various social media accounts, and so, once they start posting about these conspiracy theories, even critically, that makes them much more visible and reaches a much larger and more diverse audience. female: hi guys, do you work for the nhs?

male: uh, no. sean: soon, the conspiracy theory made the leap from online to the real world. female: you don't know the symptoms of it? it's a kill switch. sean: 5g technicians in the u.k. began reporting being abused and threatened with violence. female: but do you know what you're doing now? you're laying 5g, you realize that, don't you? yeah? so, what--you know that kills people? male: gonna fall down. that's gonna fall down. sean: next, anti-5g activists began burning phone towers. male: 5g burning. ♪♪♪ sean: by early may, more than 70 mobile phone towers had been attacked in the u.k. and more than a dozen more across europe, north america, new zealand, and australia. male: [bleep] 5g, [bleep] you, government, [bleep] you, new world order.

male: counterterrorism police have been brought in following international attacks on phone towers linked to conspiracy theories that the 5g network spreads coronavirus. female: another fire has caused extensive damage to a phone tower equipment in adelaide south. sean: at an anti-lockdown rally in melbourne, 5g was again linked to coronavirus. brendan murphy: hello everyone-- sean: it prompted a sharp response from australia's then chief medical officer, brendan murphy. brendan murphy: there's unfortunately a lot of very silly misinformation out there. there is absolutely no evidence about 5g doing anything in the coronavirus space. i am not--unfortunately received a lot of communication from these conspiracy theorists myself. it is complete nonsense. 5g has got nothing at all do to with coronavirus. ♪♪♪