Code Red: The False Promise of Wildfire Tech
An ounce of prevention? Try a pound of industry greenwash.
On June 26, the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Lands hosted a hearing titled “Advancing Innovative Technologies to Improve Forest Management and Prevent Wildfires.” But in reality, it was a blaze of slick marketing and false panaceas dressed up as innovation.
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), chair of the Subcommittee on Federal Lands, presided over the hearing, with Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) also in attendance applauding the Trump executive order to centralize fire agencies. Westerman’s presence made clear this was not just a routine subcommittee hearing–it was a sales pitch disguised as oversight.
Maybe Congress just wanted one more infomercial. Or maybe, having passed a bill largely built on industry-backed science designed to justify logging under the guise of wildfire prevention, they’re now trying to retrofit it with legitimacy by hauling in flashy tech firms to make it sound like something more than just logging with a new interface.
Still Trying to Prove a Lie with Software
Front and center was Vibrant Planet, the well-funded firetech startup from California whose CEO made perhaps the wildest claim of the day: that $9 million in “treatments” could have prevented $40 billion in damage in Altadena, California.
They even brought visual aids–an interactive map suggesting that $9 million in vague “treatments” on the hillsides near Altadena could have spared the entire town. But the fire didn’t burn through remote forests. It ignited at the edge of development and moved immediately into homes. The destruction wasn’t caused by lack of treatment. It was caused by flammable buildings in a fire-prone landscape.
Maybe $9 million in home retrofits–class A roofs, ember-resistant vents, defensible space–could have made a difference. But clearing vegetation on remote slopes doesn’t prevent embers from landing on someone’s roof. And no model, however sleek or GIS-friendly, can change that.
Contrast that with the actual science from FEMA, which found that every dollar invested in home hardening and defensible space saves three to four dollars in post-fire recovery costs. That’s real mitigation. Not speculative treatment zones drawn on a map. Not logging dressed up in a risk model. If Congress were serious about protecting communities, they’d invest in the things that demonstrably work–not fantasy projections from companies looking for federal contracts.
Rep. Westerman loves to say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of care. But when that “prevention” looks like roadbuilding, thinning projects, and digitized logging plans, the cure becomes the crisis. The real ounce–the one that actually works–is home hardening, defensible space, and supporting communities where they already exist. That’s what spares lives and homes. Not fantasy maps or industrial shortcuts.
This Isn’t Innovation–It’s the Same Old Industry, Repackaged
Let’s call this what it is: old-school logging and fuel-break ideology in a tech costume. The hearing pushed the fantasy that if we just had better data, better coordination, better fire “intelligence,” we could stop wildfires from being wild. But none of it is actually about protecting communities. It’s about attempting to control the landscape, treating fire as the enemy instead of understanding its natural role. Wildfire itself is inevitable. Always has been. Especially in fire-adapted landscapes like California’s foothills where wind, slope, and drought create conditions for fast-moving flames.
“Treatments” focused on thinning and fuel breaks do not stop homes from burning. In fact, decades of evidence show these practices often make fires burn hotter and faster, increasing community risk. Yet the industry keeps selling them as solutions, now with a digital glow-up.
There was barely a nod to ecology. Fire, to these folks, is just a problem to suppress, a glitch in the landscape. The idea that it could be regenerative, that forests need it, or that high-severity fire has always been part of these ecosystems? Not even mentioned. Rep. Tiffany put it bluntly in another hearing, saying, “We don’t need any more ‘-ologists’; what we need are more foresters’–a statement that sums up this hearing’s narrow, outdated mindset.
Instead, the hearing showcased a parade of tech startups eager to insert themselves into the federal wildfire response pipeline–running simulations, drone surveys, and AI-fueled risk maps. All of it hinged on the same flawed premise: that the wilderness itself is the problem, not the reckless development and policies that put people in harm’s way. Real solutions would focus on communities, on resilient homes and landscapes shaped by fire’s natural role. Instead, this hearing repackaged the same old industry talking points with a digital gloss, leaving the real issues untouched.
The federal wildfire workforce on the ground would be safer–and more effective–if policies prioritized working from the community out. That means investing in home hardening, defensible space, smoke centers and local preparedness while allowing fires to burn naturally in the backcountry, where they belong.
A Forest Is Not a Dashboard
The promise of firetech is seductive. There’s comfort in the illusion that we can model our way out of fire. That if we just collect enough data, track enough fuel, build enough dashboards, the flames will politely stay in the simulation. But nature doesn’t play by software rules.
Fires are not algorithmic malfunctions. They are ecological processes. The kind of fires we’re now frantically trying to prevent are the same ones that create critical habitat, stimulate regeneration, and sustain biodiversity.
The real risk isn’t in the backcountry. It’s in the homes at the edge. And it’s in the policies that keep pushing us deeper into fire zones while telling us that lidar and remote sensing will save us.
This Is Carbon Extraction, Not Prevention
And let’s not ignore the emissions. These so-called treatments—mechanical thinning, “restoration” logging, broadcast burning without ecological context—release carbon. Not just from heavy equipment or pile burns, but from the forests themselves when they’re cleared, cut, and hauled away.
Everyone’s obsessed with protecting mature and old-growth trees, yet no one’s talking about the landscapes recovering from fire—the very forests that would become mature and old growth if we left them alone. These post-fire habitats aren’t carbon disasters; in fact, fire consumes only a small fraction of total forest carbon. The real carbon loss comes when we go in after the flames and start logging what’s left.
So not only does this model fail to protect communities—it actively erases the next generation of forests. While tech companies pitch “treatments” and “optimization,” the policy on the ground is one of erasure, not resilience. Forests aren’t being fixed. They’re being interrupted.
How Policy Is Fueling the Fire
It doesn’t help that the Forest Service still sits within the USDA, treated more like a crop manager than a land steward. That outdated placement shows in its priorities—timber targets, “treatments,” and road construction—rather than genuine ecosystem resilience. Just last week, the current administration rescinded the Roadless Rule, removing a critical protective barrier and opening the door to development and fragmentation on millions of acres of public forest. While this rollback doesn’t instantly clear the way for logging or roadbuilding—especially amid ongoing legal challenges—it lowers the hurdles for such projects, putting fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitats at greater risk.
At the hearing, one witness pointed to fires in roadless areas, as if more roads were the answer. But roads are among the leading causes of human-ignited fires—not to mention habitat fragmentation, erosion, and invasive species. This isn’t fire prevention. It’s policy arson.
Work from the Community Out, Not the Wild In
This is the bottom line. The forest doesn’t need fixing. It needs freedom. Communities, on the other hand, need support. Real support. Firewise planning. Home hardening. Strategic evacuations. Local capacity. A culture of coexistence, not conquest.
The Fix Our Forests Act passed the House, and now they’re still trying to justify it. But no number of hearings or heatmaps can change the fact that they’ve chosen the wrong starting point. If we want safety, we have to stop trying to “treat” nature into submission and start building human systems that respect it.
Until then, Congress isn’t fixing forests. It’s just feeding them to the grid.
In resistance,
Jenn