First published June 3, 2025
There’s something quietly astonishing about watching a £40 billion company forfeit control of its public narrative. Even more astonishing when that silence is deliberate.
Cummins, once a name synonymous with engineering credibility and diesel reliability, now carries a different distinction: a multinational that stood idle while a former employee built a movement, one that now shapes public perception far more powerfully than any press release or investor call they’ve mustered in the past year.
This isn’t hyperbole. The Cummins Accountability Project began with a few questions, a few posts, and a long list of documents. It grew because the company refused to answer any of them. Instead of engaging, they fell silent. Instead of addressing, they ignored. And in that void, the narrative took on its own shape – defined not by PR departments or investor relations teams, but by a worker they once paid £14 an hour.
If you’re an institutional investor or a potential clean energy partner – perhaps even one from Silicon Valley or nearby with ambitions in hydrogen – this should concern you. Because silence isn’t neutrality. It’s a choice. And it’s one that reveals how unprepared Cummins is for modern scrutiny.
Let’s talk about risk. On June 2, Cummins quietly refinanced $4 billion in credit lines through JPMorgan. The language was clinical: two new unsecured revolving facilities replacing the old. One matures in 2028, the other in 2030. No drama. Nothing to see here. Spark analysts still labelled the stock “Outperform.” But anyone with basic financial literacy knows what this really signals.
This isn’t a cash-rich company shuffling lines for fun. This is a capital-intensive firm tightening its belt, adjusting to softening margins, and trying to stay liquid in a tightening macro environment. The interest rates float based on their rating, the covenants are boilerplate, and the story is simple: growth is stalling, and they need the buffer.
That by itself isn’t unusual. What’s unusual is how out of sync the messaging is from reality. For months, Cummins has leaned heavily on its hydrogen future. Future partnerships. Future earnings. Future scale. But those bets require confidence – not just in the technology, but in the team running the shop.
And right now, the team looks absent.
For almost a year, TCAP has published detailed reports, timelines, campaign material, and direct allegations concerning the company’s treatment of disabled workers, culture of legal intimidation, and tolerance for ethical breaches. First on X, (@tcumminsap), then on tcap.blog since April 2025. Instead of addressing any of this, Cummins has remained silent. Legal representatives have gone quiet. Procedural aggression ceased. Even basic investor comms have steered clear of the reputational elephant in the room.
Why?
Because the strategy, such as it is, appears to be attrition. A bet that I would lose steam. That the campaign would lose momentum. That silence would be interpreted as maturity, not weakness.
It hasn’t worked.
We now pass 4,000 followers on X. A growing archive of long-form analysis is live at TCAP.blog. Content is being archived and monitored by legal, media, indexed on search engines and compliance teams worldwide. Whistleblowers are talking. Partners are watching. And the longer the silence drags on, the more it begins to look like incapacity.
Now imagine you’re Apple. Or Tesla. Or any serious player looking to deploy billions into the clean tech space. You’re evaluating Cummins as a possible partner – supply chain, IP sharing, co-development, the usual portfolio of modern alignments. And you notice that one of their biggest recent headlines isn’t a product launch or breakthrough – it’s a lone former worker dominating search results, commanding media coverage, and challenging their credibility with documented receipts.
Is that a company you want to partner with?
Would you bet on a firm that hasn’t issued a single substantive rebuttal to a six-month campaign? One whose legal team allowed this to snowball? One whose silence now looks more like consent than strategy?
The accountability vacuum at Cummins is not abstract. It has consequences. In market confidence. In investor clarity. In risk pricing. In partner trust. And above all, in the ability of a global company to respond when it finds itself in reputational crisis.
This isn’t about winning a war of words. It’s about a system that failed to engage with the most basic expectations of transparency and leadership. And it raises a serious question for anyone with capital on the table:
Would you bet on a £40 billion company whose biggest liability isn’t external risk, but its refusal to answer the most basic public challenge it has ever faced?
I wouldn’t.
By Lee Thompson, Founder – The Cummins Accountability Project