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China has criticised Israel’s decision to recognise Somaliland, a move that prompted strong criticism from neighbouring countries. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that no country should “incite or support separatist forces” for “selfish interests”, characterising the territory as an “inseparable part” of Somalia. “China firmly supports Somalia’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and opposes any act of splitting Somali territory,” the ministry’s spokesman Lin Jian told a...

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Chinese household appliances maker Dreame Technology will present gifts of gold and a trip to Antarctica to employees, on top of their year-end bonuses, as the company boosted its position as one of the world’s leading vendors of robot vacuum cleaners. The additional largesse was revealed over the weekend by Dreame founder and CEO Yu Hao in his WeChat Moments post. Yu said every employee will receive a one-gram gold bonus in addition to their standard year-end payout. The company also planned to...

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A Chinese government report into the ecosystem of the contested Scarborough Shoal has concluded the reef was in a good overall condition, but suggested that “illegal fishing and frequent intrusive activities” by the Philippines were putting it at risk. The report, released on Monday, said the overall condition of the shoal’s coral reef was “good” with 135 different species of reef-building coral present. Scarborough Shoal, known as Huangyan Island in China and Panatag Shoal in the Philippines,...

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1. Trump signs executive orders imposing steep tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico US President Donald Trump made good on his threat to impose 10 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports and 25 per cent on goods coming from Canada and Mexico, launching a potential trade war less than two weeks into his administration.
2. China to impose tariffs on US products,...

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In the Gobi Desert outside Golmud, Qinghai, a row of white tanks stands tall in the open wilderness. Inside, air is compressed and cooled to -194 degrees Celsius (-317 degrees Fahrenheit), and then it becomes liquid. When released, it expands over 750 times, drives turbines and generates electricity. This is the world’s largest liquid-air energy storage plant. Also known as the Super Air Power Bank, it is built by China Green Development Investment Group and developed with the Technical...

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China’s central bank has set the yuan’s daily reference rate at its strongest level in 15 months, as the currency strengthened in offshore trading and briefly broke through the closely watched seven-per-US-dollar threshold. The People’s Bank of China set the yuan’s midpoint, or daily fixing rate, at 7.0331 to the US dollar on Monday – its strongest showing since early October 2024. The move followed a recent rally in the Chinese currency, with the offshore yuan briefly breaching the benchmark...

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China is tapping the brakes on some subway expansions, including in certain affluent cities, a decision analysts said reflects a shift from the debt-fuelled infrastructure boom of the past to a new era of fiscal discipline and investment efficiency. Rich eastern hubs such as Ningbo and Suzhou are among those facing regulatory roadblocks in securing Beijing’s approval for new lines as policymakers scrutinise loss-making projects. In an online response to public inquiries, the Ningbo Municipal...

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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army said it had kicked off a drill near Taiwan on Monday. Shi Yi, a spokesman for the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, said the exercise was a warning to “independence forces” and against external interference. More to follow...

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Ivan Krastev is a Bulgarian political scientist best known for his work on Europe’s democratic crisis, the psychology of post-communist societies and the political legacy of 1989. He is chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the author of several influential books on European politics. In this Open Questions interview, Krastev reflects on Europe’s loss of bearings in a faster, harsher world, the fading of the...

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Bullets:

US Private Equity firms are targeting volunteer fire departments, and the software these first responders rely on.

A handful of PE companies are snapping up affordable software providers in the emergency response space, consolidating them, then aggressively raising prices.

Most fire departments in the United States are made up of volunteers, and are budget-constrained. But Wall Street investors are enjoying huge profits, by tripling annual fees on departments, and buying and shutting down more affordable providers.

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The YouTube video for this report may be found here:

Report:

Good morning.

Some of the viewers and readers write to me, and know that I have a low boiling point. This one comes from John O’Keefe, again, who also gave us the heads-up on the fire truck story earlier in the year. It’s the same story, and it’s the same playbook, and it’s another example of something that would be a major crime in any other country in the world. That’s no exaggeration—if this were a front-page story anywhere in Asia, people would be placed under arrest on the first day, heading to trial during the first week, and on to prison soon after.

Private Equity firms in the United States are running the same strategy in software, that made them rich building fire trucks. The reason that Wall Street can charge five times for an emergency vehicle, and take five years to build one instead of five months, is that foreign competition is not allowed. Financial firms first lobby Congress to write laws that forbid the imports of equipment from other countries—without that, building these monopolies is impossible. So the same people who write the laws that protect American companies from Chinese or European equipment, are now the same people writing laws to protect American software companies from foreign competition. Then, just like in the case of the fire trucks, Wall Street buys up the handful of companies that provide the service, then raise prices on the people who depend on it.

In this instance, it’s volunteer fire departments, who primarily serve small and rural communities across the United States. These are volunteers. They train, they cover shifts at the fire department, they go on calls to rescue people, and they’re not paid. The Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department has a budget of $132,000, which barely covers maintenance and repairs on its old equipment, which again is a problem only because lower-cost gear is not allowed to be imported into the United States. Norfolk uses a software system that costs $795 per year. But then a PE firm, ESO Solutions, bought that software company, then announced they would shut it down, and their new system would cost over $5,000 per year.

The department went shopping, and found a less expensive system. But then ESO bought that one too. Norfolk FD doesn’t “have a big tax base”, and they “have to watch their pennies.“

And that’s the difference: On the one side we have volunteer firemen. Their budgets are tiny. And on the other side, are Wall Street firms, backed by unlimited cash and zero-cost money. Eighty five percent of the fire departments in the United States are volunteers, and ESO is just one of many companies buying up public safety systems, and building monopolies for the equipment and now the software that our first responders use.

The CEO of ESO, Eric Beck, used to be a volunteer fireman himself, according to this, and is trying here to justify the big price increases he’s demanding now. The company buys software businesses, puts in some investment, and then adjusts the pricing. After a few years of acquisition and consolidation, ESO now serves two thirds of the fire departments across the country. The other two biggest suppliers are also Private Equity companies, and they’re also raising prices. That’s the model. These three companies run scheduling, inventory, management of fire hydrants and inspections, and even the medical data for accident victims who are treated by the first responders.

ESO is twenty years old, and in 2016 got a huge cash infusion from KKR to finance buyouts of the software companies. Vista Equity Partners is a $100 billion Private Equity firm, and Vista made another big investment into ESO in 2021. ESO snapped up even more software companies, including Emergency Reporting. Emergency Reporting served 7,500 fire and first responder departments, including the Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department. Adrian Mintz was a co-founder of Emergency Reporting, and says that he set up his software firm with a vision of keeping costs down for firefighters and first responders. At some point he changed his mind about that, and they sold a majority stake to a VC firm, which later sold to ESO. After buying Emergency Reporting, ESO shut the company down.

The Mesilla Fire Department in New Mexico is also mostly volunteer, and was a customer of Emergency Reporting. Their fire chief was told that ESO would NOT shut down Emergency Reporting software, but then they did it anyway. The federal government changed the reporting standards, and PE companies could simply say that the old, less expensive versions are not compatible with the new federal laws. We’ll come back to that. So Mesilla’s costs tripled, from $4,000 to $12,000 a year. Mesilla changed vendors, to another system, also backed by PE, but for Mr. Whited, the fire chief, this was person personal. The relationship with ESO was “abusive”, and unless ESO is the last company on earth, he’s never giving them business again.

In Goshen, New York. Fire chief there was trying to move the historical data from Emergency Reporting to the new system, but ESO only agreed to help with some of it. The county spent over $100,000 on equipment called ROVER to track emergency response, but then ESO bought ROVER and announced they would shut that down, too.

Besides the higher costs for the ESO software, the company charged the Norfolk fire department to access their own records. These are volunteer firemen. They are the best people a small town has to offer, and an entire industry is devoted to taking what little money they have, and stripping them of tools they need to do their job, which they do for free. A fire truck in Norfolk needed a new set of tires. Fire truck tires from Chinese suppliers cost $166 each, in the United States they’re $5,000 for a set of six. Not allowed to buy the tires from China, so the department had to do karaoke fund raisers.

Private Equity firms spend a lot of money on lobbying, and the industry is clever to support both Republicans and Democrats in roughly equal shares. In 2024, PE spent a record $231 million. Next, lawmakers get busy drafting legislation that benefits the PE firms that gave them the cash. The One Big Beautiful Bill radically changed federal tax law in favor of Wall Street and venture capital. Bigger companies, with $75 million in assets, get preferential tax treatment. That is a boon to PE companies that are in the growth stage, like ESO. There were big changes in the holding periods, to be excluded from taxes.

And this is another gimmick. Lawmakers write these changes into the sections of the tax law that apply to small businesses. A $75 million company is not a small business. It’s a big business. But by tucking the language away in that part of the tax code, politicians can pretend they’re helping small businesses, while doing the opposite. They will say to voters that they are cutting taxes for small businesses, but in reality they’re slashing the tax bills for these investors in the PE firms, and the founders of software companies that once pretended they wanted to help volunteer firemen with affordable tools.

This is all a rigged system, then. It starts with giant campaign contributions to lawmakers, who first ensure that foreign companies are not allowed to bid for contracts in the American market. Then come the preferential tax policies that allow Wall Street firms to create monopolies, in this case, for the software systems used by rural and volunteer fire departments.

Sometimes a report from the New York Times, or this brilliant series on Substack, snowballs--goes viral--and enough people pay attention that lawmakers have no choice but pretend they want to do something about the problem they created.

That’s part of the game too: Private Equity and Wall Street executives get called to Congress, answer a handful of tough questions they knew about in advance, so lawmakers can be on camera pretending to be public servants, then it’s back to business as usual, collecting big checks, and writing laws so that guys on Wall Street can steal from guys who risk their lives to put out fires. Guys who do it for free.

In 150 countries across the world, this story would lead immediately to people being arrested. These are the guys who stay in shape and train, and carefully maintain their trucks and equipment, so they’re ready at any time to go out and rescue their neighbors, and they are not paid to do it. The only people in this report who are making money are the guys who are stealing from volunteer fire departments, and the lobbyists and congressmen in Washington who are helping them.

Be good.

Resources and links:

Key Insights for Private Equity on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
https://www.eisneramper.com/insights/tax/private-equity-insights-obbba-0725/

New York Times, Private Equity Finds a New Source of Profit: Volunteer Fire Departments
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/us/fire-department-software-private-equity.html

Wall Street Journal, Private Equity Spends Heavily in 2024 Election
https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-equity-spends-heavily-in-2024-election-3b254038

https://www.eso.com/

How the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Impacts Private Equity
https://warrenaverett.com/insights/one-big-beautiful-bill-private-equity/

Chinese factories build fire trucks for $400,000 in six weeks. In the US it's $2 million in 4 years

What they’re saying: Senators, IAFF press apparatus manufacturers over delays and costs
https://www.iaff.org/news/what-theyre-saying-senators-iaff-press-apparatus-manufacturers-over-delays-and-costs/

Sounding the Alarm: America’s Fire Apparatus Crisis
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/dmdcc/hearings/sounding-the-alarm-americas-fire-apparatus-crisis/

Substack, Did a Private Equity Fire Truck Roll-Up Worsen the L.A. Fires?

[BIG by Matt Stoller

Did a Private Equity Fire Truck Roll-Up Worsen the L.A. Fires?

Today’s piece is written by antitrust lawyer Basel Musharbash…

Read more

a year ago · 706 likes · 27 comments · Basel Musharbash](https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private-equity-fire-truck-roll)

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Of all the warplanes in China’s rapidly growing air arsenal, it was an older model that sent shock waves across the region earlier this month. A rare stand-off between Chinese and Japanese fighter jets took place near the Miyako Strait northeast of Taiwan. The incident brought the Shenyang J-15 carrier-based fighter jet, which has been in service for more than a decade, back into the spotlight. Japan said J-15 fighter jets, launched from the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, twice engaged their...

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Saudi Arabia has pledged to boost investments in America to nearly US$1 trillion, but according to analysts Riyadh could struggle to meet that target. Rather, they said the pledge – announced when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington last month – was more about the “political display” than a binding commitment. It was an increase to the US$600 billion that was promised in May, when US President Donald Trump visited Riyadh. The latest pledge comes as the rivalry intensifies between...

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Three more top-ranking Chinese officers have been expelled from the national legislature, becoming the latest to fall foul of an anti-corruption campaign sweeping through the military. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress said on Saturday that it had expelled Wang Renhua, head of the Central Military Commission’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee; Zhang Hongbing, political commissar of the People’s Armed Police (PAP); and Wang Peng, director of the CMC’s training...

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In the heart of Algeria’s Sahara Desert, Chinese state-owned giant China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) has completed laying track on the PK330 Bridge, a final and critical link in a new railway designed to unlock the nation’s mineral wealth. The 6km (3.7-mile) bridge is part of the 950km railway linking the Gara Djebilet iron ore deposit in southwestern Tindouf province to the industrial hub of Bechar in the northeast. It was the “most technically demanding railway engineering feat...

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China’s ultra-wealthy are quietly parking their private jets offshore to sidestep tougher compliance rules at home, while corporate executives are downgrading to commercial flights, analysts say, as economic headwinds hit the country’s business aircraft fleet. Aircraft owned by affluent Chinese nationals are said to be increasingly resurfacing in hubs such as Singapore and Japan, while more billionaires and corporate executives are turning to first-class commercial cabins or timeshare jet...

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China’s top diplomat Wang Yi is set to host the foreign ministers of Cambodia and Thailand to “consolidate” the new ceasefire deal between the Southeast Asian countries. The trilateral gathering, to be held Sunday and Monday, marks Beijing’s latest effort to cement its role as an international mediator and secure a lasting peace deal in the deadly border clash between the two neighbours. At Wang’s invitation, his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhonn and Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow...

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On August 6 last year, atomic bomb survivors held their annual commemorative lantern-floating ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan. Two months later, their group, Nihon Hidankyo, won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of campaigning against nuclear weapons. Fifteen years earlier, in Chongshan village in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, Wang Jinti took his last breath. Wang died in near-total obscurity, never having received an apology or compensation for the suffering he...

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With the first wave of commercial Chinese real estate investment trusts (REITs) set to launch in the next two years, Greater Bay Area assets are likely to be in strong demand, according to Deloitte China. “GBA assets will likely be oversubscribed,” according to Ryan Wu, deputy managing partner for Hong Kong Chinese enterprises services with Deloitte China. He was speaking at the recent APREA GBA Conference on the fast-growing C-Reits market, which has recently expanded to include commercial...

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Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te’s plan to push through a NT$1.2 trillion (US$37 billion) special military spending package has been thrown into limbo as political clashes escalate over fiscal reform and a controversial court ruling. Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature has blocked the cabinet-proposed “Special Act on Strengthening Defence Resilience and Asymmetric Warfare Capabilities” from committee review four times since Lai unveiled the plan in late November. The procedural...

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Chinese scientists have developed a smart surface that could transform electromagnetic waves into usable electricity. The innovation, born from the fusion of communications technology and advanced electromagnetic engineering, could be used to develop intelligent stealth systems and next-generation 6G wireless communication, according to the team from Xidian University. They said this included investigating “electromagnetic cooperative stealth”, where multiple entities work together to reduce...

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Chile’s state-owned Codelco, the world’s leading copper producer, and private miner SQM, which features Chinese capital, announced on Saturday the creation of a giant company to exploit lithium, a lightweight metal used in batteries for electric vehicles. The South American country is the world’s second-largest producer of lithium, a key component of EVs (electric vehicles) and other clean technologies, and has about 40 per cent of the world’s lithium reserves. The partnership between the firms...

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Pakistan is selling warplanes it jointly developed with China to the Libyan National Army (LNA), a move analysts said could serve as a gateway for Beijing to expand its influence into North Africa. In one of Pakistan’s largest-ever arms deals, 16 of the JF-17 “Thunder” fighters were listed among the over US$4 billion worth of military equipment sold to the force led by Khalifa Hifter, which controls the east of the country. The deal included other land, sea and air equipment, such as 12 Super...

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One of Henry Kissinger’s final and most sobering predictions before his death was that Japan would eventually pursue nuclear weapons. In a 2023 interview with The Economist, Kissinger warned that Japan was “heading towards becoming a nuclear power in five years”. Chinese nuclear experts estimate that Japan has the political motivation but also the technical capacity to develop nuclear weapons in less than three years, echoing Kissinger’s warning that Japan harbours ambitions to revive its...

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Beijing adopted sweeping revisions to its decades-old Civil Aviation Law on Saturday, formally bringing uncrewed aircraft such as drones under the national legal framework for the first time and signaling state support for the country’s rapidly growing low-altitude economy. The revisions, which will come into effect on July 1, were approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee and are a critical step in closing long-standing gaps in safety regulation. They will also guide...

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China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) on Friday announced a major milestone in the construction of one of the world’s largest underground laboratories for nuclear waste as it completed a first-of-its-kind spiral ramp. Located deep in the Gobi Desert northwest of Jiuquan in Gansu province, the Beishan Underground Research Laboratory aims to address a fundamental challenge of nuclear energy development: the safe disposal of radioactive waste. “While nuclear energy is a clean and efficient...

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