Disaster Capitalism Makes Landfall in Puerto Rico

Summary

Lawless Planet – "Disaster Capitalism Makes Landfall in Puerto Rico"
Podcast Summary by Audible | Host: Zach Goldbaum | Date: March 30, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This gripping episode of Lawless Planet investigates the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, revealing how disaster capitalism—where private interests exploit crises for profit—struck the island at its most vulnerable. Host Zach Goldbaum, journalist Carla Minette, and other experts trace the devastation of the storm, the corruption that followed, and the subsequent influx of crypto entrepreneurs, all against the backdrop of Puerto Rico’s ongoing economic and environmental crises. The episode explores how policies intended to aid recovery instead enabled opportunists to profit at the expense of everyday Puerto Ricans, raising fundamental questions about who truly benefits when disaster strikes.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Catastrophe of Hurricane Maria (00:12–03:10)

• First-Hand Accounts of Destruction

  • Carla Minette, a Puerto Rican investigative journalist, recalls the terror and devastation as Hurricane Maria made landfall, with unprecedented winds destroying her new home and her grandparents’ house in rural Sidra.
    • “We were all night taking water out of the house.” – Carla Minette [02:01]
  • The episode emphasizes the total blackout and isolation of the island after the storm.

• Maria’s Unprecedented Impact

  • Hurricane Maria, one of the most destructive in Atlantic history, left virtually the entire island without power, clean water, or communication.
  • Carla’s journey from personal disaster to professional investigation foregrounds the story.

The Pre-Existing Economic Crisis & PROMESA (05:29–09:34)

• Background: Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis

  • Years of debt accumulation ($73 billion) and mismanagement culminated in the US-imposed PROMESA law, placing a federally appointed Control Board (the "Fiscal Oversight Board") in charge of restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt.
  • The board consisted mostly of outsiders from the banking sector, igniting criticisms of colonial-style governance.
    • “It was a way to exert the colonial power over Puerto Rico.” – Carla Minette [08:43]

• Privatization & Vulture Funds

  • Discovery that “vulture” hedge funds were maneuvering to profit from Puerto Rico’s weakened position.
  • Transparency battles: CPI (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo) had to take the government to court to reveal the names and interests of those involved.

Disaster Capitalism Follows the Storm (10:50–26:27)

• Cover-ups and the Underreported Death Toll

  • Initial government reports of the death toll (16, then 34) were vastly underestimated. Carla’s team revealed at least 985 excess deaths in the first 40 days, confirmed later by studies putting the figure as high as 4,645.
    • “Our sources were saying otherwise.” – Carla Minette on official death toll [13:32]

• Political Distraction & PR Stunts

  • The episode critiques both Governor Rossello and President Trump’s misleading optimism, referencing Trump’s paper towel-throwing visit and praise for the “successful” disaster response.
    • “16 people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud.” – Donald Trump [15:47]

• Enter the ‘Crypto Bros’: New Tax Havens

  • The Rossello administration courted cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and tech investors with promises of ultra-low taxes, zero capital gains, and regulatory loopholes.
    • Entrepreneurs like Brock Pierce arrived, aiming to build “Cryptoland”—a city for crypto elites.
    • “They were coming like hawks with an idea that they were saviors.” – Carla Minette [20:14]
  • Many saw through this as opportunism, especially since their energy-intensive crypto mining strained the already fragile grid.

• Environmental Double Whammy

  • Bitcoin mining’s demand on electricity worsened the power crisis, contributing to greenhouse emissions while locals languished in the dark.
  • Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine” is invoked to describe how disaster disorients and enables predatory policies:
    • “The shock Doctrine is a democracy avoidance tactic… a theory of power that uses states of shock and crisis.” – Naomi Klein [24:37]

Corruption & the Unraveling of the Rossello Administration (26:27–34:43)

• Misappropriation of Recovery Funds

  • Billions earmarked for recovery largely flowed to US disaster-chasing firms connected to the governor’s associates, not to local efforts.
    • “People who were related to the governor were being the connectors of these companies to the recovery process and the recovery money.” – Carla Minette [27:11]

• The Telegram Chat Scandal

  • CPI uncovered an 889-page group chat between the governor and aides, containing evidence of corruption, sexist and homophobic comments, and discussions of manipulating the press.
    • “Initially, they wanted to give us pieces of it, and we said no… unless they gave us the whole chat.” – Carla Minette [29:21]
    • Discussions included dehumanizing jokes about disaster victims, death threats, and sharing confidential government info for private gain.

• Public Outrage & Political Consequences

  • The chat’s publication sparked massive protests and ultimately forced Governor Rossello’s resignation.
    • “Puerto Ricans were pissed.” – Zach Goldbaum [32:22]
  • Carla reflects on feeling both responsible for exposing the truth and fearful for her fellow citizens during the unrest.

Aftermath: Privatization, Resilience, and Unfinished Business (34:43–39:31)

• Governor’s Exit and Lingering Corruption

  • Rossello faced no criminal charges, and many implicated officials escaped accountability.
    • “The governor… was never questioned by the Department of Justice or the FBI or anyone that we know of.” – Carla Minette [34:43]

• Persistent Infrastructure Failure

  • Privatization of the electric grid (LUMA) has led to increased costs, worse outages, and ongoing pollution from generators. The government now seeks to break this contract.

• Rejecting "Resilience" Narratives

  • Carla argues that the “resilience” label trivializes Puerto Ricans' suffering and ongoing struggle.
    • “I try not to use the word resilience. That word brings a lot of anger… everyone was expecting us to be positive about the future and to recover from this disaster. I frankly rejected that concept.” – Carla Minette [36:40]

• Grassroots Empowerment

  • Real recovery efforts and reforms came from grassroots organizations and civil society—not government or foreign investors.
    • “Not from the government and not because of the recovery money, but because of the will of the people and because of how Puerto Ricans are.” – Carla Minette [37:32]

• A Warning for Others

  • Puerto Rico’s experience is a cautionary tale about the intersection of disaster capitalism, climate crisis, and colonial exploitation.
    • “Puerto Rico is a cautionary tale about all the things that can go wrong after climate disasters… The reality of climate these days is criminal. Frankly.” – Carla Minette [39:31]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the reality of disaster capitalism:
  “Man made climate change is making storms like Maria more common and more powerful. And whenever they happen, corporations and financial sharks swoop in to take advantage…” – Zach Goldbaum [05:29]

• On the official versus actual death count:
  “Technically, they said that 16 people died in the storm, but Carla’s health reporters were hearing otherwise. Morgues and hospitals reported that they were filling up with bodies.” – Zach Goldbaum [12:41]

• On predatory opportunism:
  “These guys wanted to remake Puerto Rico the way they wanted it to be, regardless of what the island’s people might think.” – Zach Goldbaum, on the crypto entrepreneurs [21:49]

• On the fruits of real activism:
  “Environmental, women's rights, and civic and human rights organizations all worked to make the recovery process as fair and just as possible for the people of Puerto Rico.” – Zach Goldbaum [37:12]

• On why Puerto Rico’s crisis should matter to all:
  “We are at a point that we cannot go back to the way things were… the reality of climate these days is criminal.” – Carla Minette [39:31]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:12–03:10: Hurricane Maria’s devastation; Carla’s account
• 05:29–09:34: Economic roots: PROMESA, debt crisis, vulture funds
• 10:50–13:32: Initial aftermath, suppression of true death toll
• 15:47: Trump’s infamous “16 deaths” statement [audio]
• 18:25: Hollywood stars and post-storm economic shticks
• 20:14–21:49: Introduction of Crypto Bros/Disaster Capitalists
• 23:36: Effects of crypto mining on the power grid
• 24:37: Naomi Klein explains the "shock doctrine"
• 27:11–31:37: Discovery and impact of the Telegram chat; CPI’s leak strategy
• 32:22–33:59: Protests erupt, eventual resignation of the governor
• 34:43–36:40: Unfulfilled justice, privatization woes, pollution
• 37:32–39:31: Grassroots efforts, ongoing struggles, cautionary tale

---

Concluding Thoughts

Disaster Capitalism Makes Landfall in Puerto Rico is a revealing exposé detailing how, in the wake of catastrophic climate events, systems of corruption and opportunism can prolong suffering, undermine democracy, and exploit the most vulnerable. It’s a powerful narrative of investigative journalism’s role in holding power to account and the enduring strength of community activism in the face of environmental, economic, and political adversity. The episode ends by reframing the crisis, less as a tale of forced “resilience,” and more as an urgent lesson for a climate-challenged future: Who profits from disaster, and how can justice be restored?

---

Transcript

[Zach Goldbaum]

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

[Narrator/Reporter]

We are back here on the northern side of San Juan here. I can only imagine what went down when this thing made landfall in the southeast corner of this island. Obviously, the eye getting closer and closer to us. That eye wall now scraping the northern beaches here.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It's September 20, 2017, and Hurricane Maria has made landfall in Puerto Rico. With winds of 155 mph. It is just shy of being a Category 5 hurricane, the worst of the worst. The storm is larger than the size of the entire island. So as the eye moves across Puerto Rico, everything everywhere gets hammered.

[Carla Minette]

We had never seen something as strong as that.

[Zach Goldbaum]

That's Carla Minette, a Puerto Rican journalist who works in San Juan. Like so many in Puerto Rico, she can't believe this is happening again. Just weeks earlier, the island had braced for a different hurricane. Hurricane Irma. The idea of a second hurricane in as many weeks is almost unfathomable. But Carla knew she needed to prepare. She had already left her offices in the capital and returned to her home about 30 miles away in Sidra, a rural, mountainous town in Puerto Rico.

[Carla Minette]

I had just recently moved back to my hometown in the center of the island. I was starting to build a new home for me and my partner in Sidra.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The winds howl through the trees, ripping them up from their roots and throwing them in the air like something out of a disaster movie. Carla's house, the one she and her partner were building together, starts to flood. They have to take turns holding the front door shut because the wind threatens to tear it right off. And when they're not manning the door, they're frantically scooping water into buckets.

[Carla Minette]

We were all night taking water out of the house.

[Zach Goldbaum]

They keep at it for 10 hours while the storm rages, until finally the winds die down and everything goes quiet.

[Carla Minette]

Even though we were, the hurricane took everything.

[Zach Goldbaum]

When she finally ventures outside, so many trees have fallen over the road leading to Carla's house that she's blocked in with no way out. Someone's going to need to come and rescue them, but they have no power, which means no phone, no Internet, no tv, no way of contacting anyone or knowing what's going on across the rest of the island. Carla doesn't know it yet, but it's not just her town that's in the dark. It's almost the entire island of Puerto Rico.

[Carla Minette]

When Hurricane Maria came, it blew everything around us. It took most of our new home. It took the house of my grandparents who lived next to me. It was a huge devastation.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Maria was one of the most destructive Atlantic hurricanes on record. But what wasn't clear at the time is how many people had lost their lives from the storm. Eventually, Carla and her team of investigative reporters would set out to answer that question. And in the process, they'd uncover a corrupt system that threatened Puerto Rico's recovery, its power grid, and the environment. From audible originals I'm zach goldbaum and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.

[Carla Minette]

We are at a point that we cannot go back to the way things were. The reality of climate these days is criminal. Frank.

[TurboTax Advertiser]

April 15th is coming up fast. And if you haven't filed your taxes yet, you know the stress hits differently this close to the deadline. But here's the thing. You can hand off your taxes to a TurboTax Expert today with Intuit TurboTax Expert full service, you're matched with a dedicated expert who understands your specific tax situation and can do your taxes for you from start to finish, online or in person at one of their new tech enabled store locations. Have your tax forms directly imported into the app and hand it all off to your expert and they'll work tirelessly to get you every dollar you deserve. Meanwhile, you can go back to your normal routine, giving you time back to catch up on your shows, hit the gym, or get ahead of prepping for your spring plan. No more squeezing into someone else's schedule or chasing updates. Don't wait. Visit TurboTax.com and hand off your taxes to a TurboTax expert today.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Man made climate change is making storms like Maria more common and more powerful. And whenever they happen, corporations and financial sharks swoop in to take advantage of the crisis. Journalist Naomi Klein coined the phenomenon disaster capitalism, and it's a rapidly growing industry. Puerto Rico is not the only example. It is just an incredibly glaring one. In the aftermath of Maria, the local government tried to find ways to recover and reinvigorate the economy. At the same time, banks looked to profit off of shady bonds and cryptocurrency. Entrepreneurs swarmed the island seeking a tax haven without having to give up their U.S. citizenship. Amid all of that, the people of Puerto Rico were mostly left behind. For some, their power would remain out for several months. Money that should have gone to the island to rebuild instead went to outsiders with their own agendas. It's a story that raises A question that'll be asked again and again in a future where extreme weather is the new normal. When disaster strikes, who wins and who loses? Let's back up to 2016. Trump was campaigning for President. Hamilton was winning all the awards, and a grocery bagger in Puerto Rico was about to record his first hit song under the name Bad Bunny. Meanwhile, Carla Minnett was working in San Juan at the Centro de Pariadismo Investigativo, or the center for Investigative Reporting in Puerto Rico, otherwise known as CPI. In 2016, she and her colleagues were investigating something called PROMESA. In Spanish, it means promise, but in this case, it also stands for the puert RICO Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act.

[Carla Minette]

When PROMESA was approved and when everyone learned about the entities that were most indebted, that's when we started knowing about how big it was. The problem of the electricity company.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Karla is talking about the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, which had been underfunded and and poorly maintained for decades by this point. Even without hurricanes, its electricity infrastructure struggled to keep up with demand. Now, it's important to note that Puerto Rico is a part of the US but it's a territory, not a state, which means it answers to the US Federal government, but doesn't have certain rights, like voting in the presidential election. There are also financial limitations imposed on the island by Congress, which can make things tricky. In 2016, the issue was that Puerto Rico was $73 billion in debt and had no way of restructuring that debt. But not to worry, the US Government had a solution. With bipartisan support, the Obama administration signed PROMESA into law and with it, created a control board to oversee and manage it.

[Expert on PROMESA]

We finally have legislation that at least is going to give Puerto Rico the capacity, the opportunity to get out from under this lingering uncertainty with respect to their debt.

[Zach Goldbaum]

This control board was made up mostly of members appointed by the President, who were now in charge of Puerto Rico's debt restructure plan.

[Carla Minette]

This was a group of people that came mostly from banking industry and finances. Most of them were not from Puerto Rico. They knew very little about our culture, our reality, our history. It was a way to exert the colonial power over Puerto Rico.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The way PROMESA works, there is still a governor and legislature of Puerto Rico, but they can't make any budget or spending decisions without the approval of the board. The PROMESA board, on the other hand, basically had carte blanche to do whatever they thought was best. That included ordering the island's electrical grid to be privatized and negotiating with Puerto Rico's Creditors. But Carla and the CPI had some questions about those creditors.

[Carla Minette]

This was like a huge question mark. Nobody knew about them. We had to go to court to get the names of these companies.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Eventually, CPI would learn the names of more than 30 financial organizations and hedge funds that had been competing for Puerto Rico's debt. Of those 30, Karla's reporting revealed that at least 24 of them were what she called vulture firms. Funds that catered to millionaire and billionaire investors who were just circling, waiting to pick over the remains of a weak economy. Then at the end of 2016, a new governor was elected. A young progressive named Ricardo Rossello. He was 37 years old, a scientist with a biomedical engineering doctorate, and the son of a former popular governor. The fact that he didn't have a ton of political experience didn't seem to matter. The people of Puerto Rico wanted change, although Carla suspected people voted for him for another reason.

[Carla Minette]

You know, he was a good looking guy.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The people of Puerto Rico were optimistic that change was on the horizon. Then a year later, Hurricane Maria made landfall.

[Event Host/Announcer]

Officials saying many areas will be uninhabitable for weeks, maybe even months. They're urging people to shelter in place. They've issued a curfew and the governor now saying he is launching search and rescue teams as we speak.

[Zach Goldbaum]

For two days after Hurricane Maria, Karla was essentially trapped in Sidra with no way to contact the outside world. The power had been out the whole time and the roads were too damaged for her to go anywhere. But finally some of her neighbors showed up with tools and helped her cut and clear away the trees so she could get past her driveway. She walked down the road to see what was left of the neighborhood. What she saw broke her heart. Her grandparents house, the house she grew up in, was completely gone.

[Carla Minette]

It was devastating in a way that we couldn't have even imagined, frankly.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Carla had to get more information. So she set off for San Juan hoping that everyone else had fared better than her. But as she drove, it began to dawn on her.

[Carla Minette]

It was not only sea that, it was the whole country and all trees. Because of the intensity of the winds, they were completely without leaves.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Carla made it to San Juan and managed to meet her team at cpi. At first there was a lot of silence. Everyone was still trying to process what had happened. At that point, most Puerto Ricans were stranded with no power and about half didn't have safe drinking water. Nearly 2,000 people had to be rescued from flash flooding. But soon the journalists all shifted into action.

[Carla Minette]

So the first story that we discussed was related to the death toll of the hurricane because immediately they were saying that there were no people dead.

[Zach Goldbaum]

When Carla says they, she means the Puerto Rican government. Technically, they said that 16 people died in the storm, but Carla's health reporters were hearing otherwise. Morgues and hospitals reported that they were filling up with bodies. There were suggestions that the death toll could be at least 10 times higher.

[Carla Minette]

So, yes, immediately that day, we decided that was the most important story.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The death toll number depended on what you considered a death caused by the hurricane. Did it have to occur on September 20th in the immediate storm, or could it happen in the aftermath due to lack of medicine or electricity or other resources? Governor Rossello certainly didn't want that number any higher. He assured everyone that the worst was behind them now and the recovery process was going great.

[Carla Minette]

They were trying to project that they were being proactive, that everything was going to be fine. I think like most politicians would do in a similar scenario, you know, trying to bring optimism and trying to show that they were in control. But our sources were saying otherwise.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In the initial aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the White House claimed they didn't realize the full extent of the damage and presumably didn't think a presidential visit was warranted. By September 25, images of the devastation began surfacing in news reports. One photo showed the lot of a home in early October where giant letters mowed into the grass spelled out help. First responders who arrived there by helicopter found people without food or water. On October 3, 13 days after Maria Donald Trump touched down in Puerto Rico. This was the infamous visit where he casually tossed paper towels to the crowd like he was shooting hoops. And he and Melania visited with Puerto Ricans walking through the streets.

[Nicolas Cage]

Well, what I see is an incredible. An incredible job done by fema, done by the Coast Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. I think that the job of the first responders has been something like I've never seen before.

[Zach Goldbaum]

During Trump's visit, Governor Rossello announced that 63 of the 69 hospitals in Puerto Rico were operational, a super feat considering the hurricane had been just two weeks earlier. But once again, Carla was skeptical. On the same day the governor made this announcement, Carla's news organization, cpi, visited some of the hospitals and discovered that operational was a very generous term. Most of the sites couldn't admit any critical patients, just people with fevers and small cuts. The governor also doubled down on his claims that There were only 16 deaths associated with the hurricane. That led Trump to boast during his final press conference of the day about how superb a job the Puerto Rican government had done with the disaster.

[Nicolas Cage]

Every death is a horror. But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering. Nobody has ever seen anything like this. 16 people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud.

[Zach Goldbaum]

But by the time Trump left, Governor Rossello announced that the death toll was now almost double that at 34. Carla and her team still thought that was preposterously low. So Carla dug deeper. She and her fellow CPI reporters called hospitals, morgues, funeral homes, trying to track down all of the dead.

[Carla Minette]

Some of our reporters were also looking into people who had disappeared, and nobody knew where they were or had any contact with them for two, three, four days.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The numbers grew before Carla's eyes. Eventually, by December, the CPI collected enough evidence to publish their own findings. They reported that 985 more people died in the 40 days after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico than during the same period the previous year. The highest increase in death was seen among the elderly, which indicated that the deaths were likely coming from lack of medical care or hospital access. Post Maria. Eventually, Carla and her team would be proven correct. In May of 2018, eight months after the hurricane, Harvard published a study concluding that there were 4,645 excess deaths between September 20 and December 31, 2017, meaning deaths that would not have occurred if not for the devastation of Hurricane Maria. That number was more than 72 times larger than Puerto Rico's official count of 64. Other reports from CNN, the New York Times, and Penn State University all came up with significantly higher numbers as well. Finally, the facts were out there. The death toll was far beyond anything the government had been willing to admit. But that begged the question, if they tried to keep that buried, what else were they hiding?

[Nicolas Cage]

It is stunning. I am. Everywhere I look, I am just mesmerized by the beauty of the land that

[Zach Goldbaum]

was actor Nicolas Cage at a press conference in the spring of 2018, talking about how great it was to be filming his latest movie, Primal, in Puerto Rico. And he wasn't the only famous Hollywood actor to make the trip. In the aftermath of Maria, Anne Hathaway would soon join to film her new movie. A few months later, Governor Rossello had supported the creation of a $70 million film studio and was trying to convert tax credits into cash rebates. It was just one of many ways the governor hoped to boost Puerto Rico's economy. Now, the governor had another plan up his sleeve, and it was maybe his most controversial. He wanted to convince a bunch of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to come and live on the island, and he was going to win them over by promoting Puerto Rico's favorable tax laws. Rossello pitched Puerto Rico as cryptocurrency's new paradise. If wealthy entrepreneurs relocated their businesses to Puerto Rico and personally lived there for half of the year, they would only pay Puerto Rico's taxes. We're talking a 4% corporate tax rate, zero federal income tax on any income generated in Puerto rico, zero capital gains tax, and zero tax on interest and dividends. Of course, it's slightly more complicated than that. I'm no cpa. Don't take my tax advice, but that's the basic pitch. The idea was that the cryptocurrency guys would start businesses in Puerto Rico that would help revitalize the economy in a trickle down way. As one of them said, they wanted to spend the money they saved in a, quote, Robin hood fashion. The governor had high hopes for this plan, but Karla Minette definitely wasn't buying what the crypto bros were selling.

[Carla Minette]

They were coming like hawks with an idea that they were like saviors, that they came to rescue Puerto Rico.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It's March 2018. While the lights are still out for many Puerto Ricans, that's certainly not the case. At the Condado Vanderbilt hotel in San Juan, nearly 800 people have gathered over the weekend for a conference called blockchain unbound. The official slogan paradise performs. The weekend is wrapping up with one of its final keynotes, but this one is a little different than the others. At the front of the room, there's a flat screen TV playing John Oliver's last week. Tonight, Oliver is reacting to a clip of a guy in a fedora and a hoodie who's extolling the virtues of crypto. That guy is former child actor Brock Pierce.

[Event Host/Announcer]

He began his career appearing in the mighty ducks and in a gush's commercial as a child who turns into a banana. Well, that banana then got involved with some very unsung slavery figures.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Brock Pierce himself stands next to the screen in the hotel ballroom laughing at the clip and himself. He looks like an influencer at coachella with his fedoras and leather vests and jewelry. He even had a unicorn themed wedding at burning man. And he goes around saying things like this.

[Brock Pierce]

I measure my success in life not by what I have, but by what I give. I measure my success by impact as I like to say a billionaire to me is not someone with a billion dollars, but someone who's positively impacted, impacting the lives of a billion people.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Okay, buddy. But to his credit, Pierce is also insanely successful. Just a month earlier, in February 2018, Forbes released a list of the 20 wealthiest people in crypto. Pearce was number nine, with an estimated fortune of somewhere between 700 million and $1 billion. Now at blockchain Unbound, Pierce takes this moment during his keynote speech to transition into announcing a new crypto company he's involved in and how all of this is going to benefit Puerto Rico's recovery. He says, quote, in the times that are the most challenging is when we have our greatest quantum leaps. These guys wanted to remake Puerto Rico the way they wanted it to be, regardless of what the island's people might think. In fact, Pierce was leading the charge on building their own city on the island called Cryptoland. So original, we're talking about a city with its own airport, yacht port, naturally, and passports. All run on virtual currencies. Just what Puerto Ricans needed. And yet, eventually, about 2,600 high earning individuals would follow in Pierce's footsteps, all buying into the idea and moving to the island. For journalist Carla Minette, their arrival was mostly eye roll inducing.

[Carla Minette]

Some of them did some successful businesses and even profited from Puerto Rico climate, but others were just losers. From a business standpoint, I would mean.

[Zach Goldbaum]

But more than anything, they were a distraction from the real problem at hand. The lack of a true recovery process. At the same time that Pierce and the Crypto Bros were holding the Blockchain Unbound conference, things were still incredibly bleak for Puerto Rico.

[Nicolas Cage]

As many as 200,000 people remain without

[Zach Goldbaum]

power in what's considered the longest blackout in U.S. history. And you know what wasn't helping? The grid. All the bitcoin mining going on. Cryptocurrencies are one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. And in Puerto Rico, the annual electricity consumption for mining bitcoin was two and a half times higher than the island's total electrical consumption. That's a hell of a lot of extra energy expenditure on an electrical grid that was stretched far too thin before Hurricane Maria and even worse in the aftermath. So how was any of this being allowed to happen? The long and short of it was that Puerto Ricans were in shock from the effects of the climate disasters. Pro corporate laws and policies that would have otherwise been unacceptable were able to slip through, all under the guise of recovery. Whatever it took, right? This idea is what journalist Naomi Klein coined back in 2007 as the shock Doctrine.

[Naomi Klein]

So basically, the shock Doctrine is a democracy avoidance tactic. And it is a theory of power that uses states of shock and crisis and the disorientation and dislocation that occurs when people experience an event that they don't yet have a story to explain.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Whether it's private military contractors getting massive no bid contracts for reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina or Trump building luxury resorts in the rubble of Gaza. Disaster capitalism flourishes when people and places suffer. And that's exactly what happened in Puerto Rico. Even before Maria. The island is particularly vulnerable due to its economic crisis. So when the hurricane hit, conditions got exponentially worse. After Hurricane Maria, Governor Rossello pushed for policies like privatizing public utilities and closing public schools in exchange for charters. Some Puerto Ricans, both on the island and abroad, protested, but at the same time, many were too preoccupied just trying to get themselves and their families through the disaster to think about politics. And when Rosseau welcomed cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to the island, it was cast as doing what was best for Puerto Rico, even though in reality, their presence on the island was doing the opposite. Here's Naomi Klein again speaking on Democracy Now, a month after the crypto conference about the bitcoin industry's effects on Puerto Rico.

[Naomi Klein]

It is an incredibly wasteful way to create money. And here you have Puerto Rico battered by climate change and also unable to provide power to its own people. Pitching itself as a hub for the cryptocurrency market.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In early 2019, Carla Minette was looking into how the governor and his administration were handling the recovery efforts post Maria. She had already shown that the government had tried to bury the lead about the death toll. Now she was looking into whether the recovery funds were being used correctly or if there was a culture of corruption. The federal government had provided somewhere between 63 and $69 billion to relief and recovery efforts. And ideally, Puerto Rican companies would have gotten the majority of that money to rebuild. Instead, disaster chasing companies from the US Started coming down to the island, and they were the ones getting awarded with contracts. For Carla, that was an immediate red flag.

[Carla Minette]

During that process, we started seeing that people who were related to the governor were being the connectors of these companies to the recovery process and the recovery money.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The more Carla dug, the more obvious the trend appeared. Some of the governor's closest advisors and associates were tied to the companies benefiting the most from the recovery process. She needed to uncover what was really happening behind closed doors in the governor's mansion.

[Carla Minette]

We were writing the story early in 2019, and that's when we heard that there was a chat of Rosello with his closest aides.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In mid July 2019, two former government officials and four others were arrested by the FBI on fraud charges involving more than $15 million in federal funding. It was proof of the corruption that Carla and the CPI suspected. And it was only the beginning. Carla Minet and the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo were on the cusp of publishing their story about corruption in the governor's administration. They'd been working on it for months, but the discovery of a secret group chat made them pause. If they could get their hands on actual internal conversations, it might blow the lid off the whole thing. So they went to their sources, and one of them confirmed that there was a telegram chat between the governor and 11 other officials. It was hundreds of pages long and full of potentially incriminating messages. And even better, the source might be able to give CPI access to it. At that point, about 10 pages of the chat had already been leaked and were circulating through the media. The leaked messages so far were upsetting. They were filled with profane and sexist comments.

[Carla Minette]

Initially, they wanted to give us pieces of it, and we said no. We said, unless they gave us the whole chat, we were not interested in having it.

[Zach Goldbaum]

So they kept working their source, and finally the source agreed to give CPI the whole chat on a USB thumb drive.

[Carla Minette]

So we went by the house and took the USB, and we went directly to a parking lot to open our laptops and open that document.

[Zach Goldbaum]

As they read through the 889 pages, they were stunned. The chat showed the governor and his officials talking about setting up troll networks to go after politicians and reporters who they didn't like. It revealed that what the government had been saying in public and what they really thought behind closed doors were two very different things. In one exchange, the former chief financial officer was asked about the budget for forensic pathologists. He responded with a joke about the growing piles of dead bodies at the morgue. Post Maria, he wrote, quote, now that we are on the subject, don't we have some cadavers to feed our crows? Clearly, they need attention. By crows, he meant their government critics. In another instance, there were messages containing homophobic slurs about singer Ricky Martin. And then the governor appeared to make a death threat against the mayor of San Juan who was running against him in the upcoming election. And so it went on and on like that. Carla and the CPI verified that the document in front of them was, in fact, real. They double checked dates in the chat, cross referencing them with their own timelines of what was happening in the administration.

[Carla Minette]

Finally, when we were pretty sure that this was authentic, we put a call for La Fortaleza to the governor's press team and we asked for a reaction.

[Zach Goldbaum]

That was at about 11 o' clock at night. They let the governor's team know that they were publishing in the next few hours, so if they wanted to comment, they needed to get back to them asap.

[Carla Minette]

We started writing like crazy, mostly looking for illegal things and wrongdoings that were clearly in the chat. So that was our focus that night.

[Zach Goldbaum]

They found evidence that friends of the governor who were not public officials were getting access to government information and documents. They were literally sharing them in the chat. Then those friends would take that information and use it to benefit themselves and their clients in the private sphere. And there were conversations about government officials paying media people to do PR interviews or to bribe them for better coverage. There was just so much to sort through and so little time. But they uploaded the whole chat securely to their website so anyone could read it and see for themselves.

[Carla Minette]

And everyone was working like crazy for that. Writing the story in our cars, using the car battery for our laptop.

[Zach Goldbaum]

By 1am they had the story ready. They hadn't heard back from the governor, but they couldn't wait any longer. An hour later, they hit publish. Puerto Ricans were pissed. For the past two years, they'd been lied to and forgotten about. Instead of helping the people who needed it most, post hurricane, government officials had enriched themselves. They'd lied about the death toll. The electrical grid was hanging on by a thread, and blackouts were still constantly happening. Even while crypto bros were welcomed to the island and putting unnecessary strain on that same grid, all of it had come to a crescendo, and these chats were the final straw.

[Carla Minette]

There was problems related to the governor, but corruption was not the main thing. Until the chat was published, you might

[Zach Goldbaum]

think that Carla and her fellow reporters felt some satisfaction at what they'd accomplished. But in reality, at least for Carla, the fear of what might happen next was all she could think about.

[Carla Minette]

We were seeing the protest in tv, and the police was there. They were banging the protesters. We were scared of what could have happened to people in the streets because we felt responsible for that, in a way.

[Zach Goldbaum]

For two weeks, the protests continued. Then, the night of July 24, 2019, Governor Rossello posted a message to Facebook announcing that he would resign, effective August 2nd. Cheers erupted outside the governor's mansion in Old San Juan. The people of Puerto Rico, waving flags, dancing and breaking out in song. After Governor Ricardo Rossello announced he is stepping down, more than a dozen other officials from Rocio's administration had resigned by that point, and the FBI was pursuing the corruption charges against the top officials they had arrested. So there was some action happening as a result of the chats. But according to Carla, it wasn't enough.

[Carla Minette]

The governor went to the states. He was never questioned by the Department of Justice or the FBI or anyone that we know of. They said that the phones that were used for the chat had erased the shots, so they couldn't use them as any evidence to prosecute any crimes here. So I think that was a really frustrating outcome.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Rossello would never be charged with any crimes or face any consequences beyond having to resign. If you watched Bad Bunny perform at the super bowl halftime show, you might remember the part where dancing linemen swung from electrical poles, sending sparks flying. It was a pointed reference to the still hobbled power grid back in its native Puerto Rico. In the past year, the U.S. department of Energy canceled $815 million that was earmarked to storm proof that grid. The electrical grid is now managed by a private company, luma. That decision came after the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority was accused of bribery, extortion, and corruption. But Luma hasn't fixed anything. In fact, the privatization has only made things worse. The outages have lasted longer and been more frequent. And in the years since the storm, power bills have nearly doubled. The government is now trying to get out of their contract with Luma. But then, what's the solution after that? Currently, much of Puerto Rico still runs on generators. Those generators are causing air and noise pollution that can sometimes be unbearable. And yet many people praise Puerto Ricans for their resiliency through the disaster. But that description doesn't sit well with Carla.

[Carla Minette]

I try not to use the word resilience. I think in Puerto Rico, that word, it brings a lot of anger thinking about all the things that we went through and how everyone was expecting us to be positive about the future and to recover from this disaster. I frankly rejected that concept of resilience.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Despite that, Carla does see some good news that came out of the recovery process, and that was the collective action of grassroots efforts. Environmental, women's rights, and civic and human rights organizations all worked to make the recovery process as fair and just as possible for the people of Puerto Rico.

[Carla Minette]

Not from the government and not because of the recovery money, but because of the will of the people and because of how Puerto Ricans are.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Carla and CPI's reporting have also changed in the years since Hurricane Maria. Before the disaster, they barely used the phrases climate change or climate crisis. Since then, they've started to cover stories to help the people of Puerto Rico prepare for the future, not just for hurricanes, but flooding, heat wave, drought.

[Carla Minette]

The ferocity of this climate change events for Puerto Rico has been such that we understood that this was a permanent

[Zach Goldbaum]

beat for us, and they realized that the climate beat actually affected all of

[Carla Minette]

their beats, especially those that are related to the economy. How all these millionaires have been coming down here and trying to project that they are doing something for Puerto Rico and they are our saviors. While they are benefiting basically from our tax scheme

[Zach Goldbaum]

Today, there is no clear evidence that the arrival of tech entrepreneurs like the Crypto Bros. Led by Brock Pierce have helped the local economy in any meaningful way. Cryptoland never came to be, and Brock Pierce himself is tied up in multiple lawsuits with investors. And yet Puerto Rico remains a tax haven for people like him. Last August, President Trump fired five of the seven board members who served on promesa, though some were reinstated after suing for wrongful termination. Today, the board only has four active members, a fact that will likely only slow down Puerto Rico's continued efforts to restructure their debt and get out from under it.

[Carla Minette]

I think that Puerto Rico is a cautionary tale about all the things that can go wrong after climate disasters. We are at a point that we cannot go back to the way things were not working around the reality of climate these days is criminal. Frankly,

[Zach Goldbaum]

for Carla, we're far past the conversation about whether these disasters are going to happen. Now for Puerto Rico, it's about how they're going to prepare for the next one. Foreign. Lawless Planet. On the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free by joining Audible. On the next episode of Lawless Planet, the long fight to hold a chemical giant accountable for poisoning our land, our water, and our loved ones.

[Unknown Interviewee]

I wish I had never knew that the word beaupont even existed. You can go buy a new cow, but you can't buy your family. When they're gone, they're gone.

[Zach Goldbaum]

For today's episode, we relied heavily on the investigative journalism of Carla Minette and her team at cpi, as well as well as the Battle for Paradise Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein and her article for the Intercept. There's nothing natural about Puerto Rico's disaster. Additionally, Bloomberg's Can Crypto, Cannabis and Nicolas Cage boost Puerto Rico's Economy by Alixa Rivera and Jonathan Levin the New York Times the Unraveling of a Crypto Dream by David Yaffe Bellany and Laura N. Perez Sanchez and the article how an Investigative Journalism Center Helped Oust Puerto Rican Governor Rossello by Fernando Tormo Saponte for In these Times. Lawless Planet is produced by Audible. This episode was produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. It was written by Alex Burns. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Audible is Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Lata Pandya. Our managing producer is Jake Kleinberg. Our producer is Lexi Piri. Sound designed by Kyle Randall music by Kenny Kuziak. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frison Sync Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our legal counsel is Shepard Mullen, Executive producer for Audible Jenny Lauer Beckman, Head of Audible Originals North America Marshall Louie Chief Content Officer Rachel Gyazza Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates LLC thanks for listening. We'll see you time next next week.