Tag: defense contractors

Selling War: How Raytheon and Boeing Fund the Push for NATO’s Nuclear Expansion

To “counter Russia’s nuclear blackmail,” the Atlantic Council confidently asserted, “NATO must adapt its nuclear sharing program.” This includes moving B-61 atomic bombs to Eastern Europe and building a network of medium-range missile bases across the continent. The think tank praised Washington’s recent decision to send Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles to Germany as a “good start” but insisted that it “does not impose a high enough price” on Russia.

What the Atlantic Council does not divulge at any time is that not only would this drastically increase the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear war, but that the weapons they specifically recommend come directly from manufacturers that fund them in the first place.

The B-61 bombs are assembled by Boeing, who, according to its most recent financial reports, gave tens of thousands of dollars to the organization. And the Tomahawk and SM-6 are produced by Raytheon, who recently supplied the Atlantic Council with a six-figure sum.

Thus, their recommendations not only put the world at risk but also directly benefit their funders.

Unfortunately, this gigantic conflict of interest that affects us all is par for the course among foreign policy think tanks. A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks has found that they are sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars every year by weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks, who, in turn, pump out reports demanding more war and higher military spending, which significantly increase their sponsors’ profits. The only losers in this closed, circular system are the American public, saddled with higher taxes, and the tens of millions of people around the world who are victims of the U.S. war machine.

The think tanks receiving the most tainted cash were, in order, the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations, while the weapons manufacturers most active on K-Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics.

These think tanks directly affect conflicts around the world. CSIS, for example, are among the loudest advocates for arming Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, even as the latter carries out a genocide in Palestine. A recent report lays out a shopping list of U.S. weapons that would help the Israeli military, including Excalibur artillery projectiles, JDAM bomb guidance systems, and Javelin missiles. Those weapons are manufactured by Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, respectively, all of whom are among CSIS’ top funders.

U.S. arms are being used daily to carry out illegal and deadly attacks against civilian populations in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, making arms manufacturers directly complicit in war crimes.

One example of this is the recent Israeli bombing of the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone in Gaza. Israel dropped three one-ton MK-84 bombs on the camp, killing at least 19 people. Dozens more are still missing.

According to the UN, MK-84 bomb blasts rupture lungs, tear limbs and heads from bodies, and burst sinus cavities up to hundreds of meters away.

The MK-84 bombs were produced in the U.S. by General Dynamics and sent to Israel with Washington’s blessing. General Dynamics has made huge profits from the slaughter; the D.C.-based arms manufacturer’s stock price has jumped by 42% since October 7.

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Arms Manufacturers Catching Up With World’s Insatiable Need For 155mm Rounds

 It’s the shell everybody seems to want.

Since the war began in Ukraine the demand for the relatively low-tech 155mm ammunition has skyrocketed, with the nation firing as many as 8,000 rounds per day, according to some published estimates.

From Asia to Europe to the United States, arms manufacturers are building new facilities to boost the capacity to produce the shell, not only to supply Ukraine but also to replenish domestic stocks.

But the captains of the defense industry wonder how long the demand will last and if they risk overbuilding production capacity.

In the United States, the Army is looking to significantly ramp up 155mm production, with a stated goal of producing 100,000 rounds per month by 2025. As of February, the Army was “manufacturing 30,000 155mm rounds per month, doubling its previous output of 14,000 rounds prior to the conflict,” according to a service release.

Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said the Army is now “on a path” to producing 70,000 to 80,000 rounds per month by the end of 2024 or early 2025.

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Lockheed Martin Develops System to Identify and Counter Online “Disinformation,” Prototyped by DARPA

Various military units around the world (notably in the UK during the pandemic) have been getting involved in what are ultimately, due to the goal (censorship) and participants (military) destined to become controversial, if not unlawful efforts.

But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of desire to learn from others’ mistakes. The temptation to bring the defense system into the political “war on disinformation” arena seems to be too strong to resist.

Right now in the US, Lockheed Martin is close to completing a prototype that will analyze media to “detect and defeat disinformation.”

And by media, those commissioning the tool – called the Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) program – mean everything: news, the internet, and even entertainment media. Text, audio, images, and video that are part of what’s considered “large-scale automated disinformation attacks” are supposed to be detected and labeled as false by the tool.

The development process is almost over, and the prototype is used by the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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“Hyperscale” Weapons Factory Vision Outlined By Anduril

Defense technology contractor Anduril has announced plans to build a novel “hyperscale” production facility that will be able to churn out huge numbers of different military products, including uncrewed combat aircraft and autonomous underwater vehicles. The project closely aligns with the Pentagon’s aim of securing the ability to manufacture at scale, to meet future demands, especially for uncrewed systems that are increasingly seen as being critical in potential peer-state conflicts.

The California-based company announced today that it will build the first so-called “Arsenal facility” in the United States, using funding from a recent $1.5-billion Series F investment round. In a document titled Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy, Anduril lays out plans for the manufacturing facility, which will measure more than five million square feet and, once up and running, will be able to “produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies.”

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Boeing, Money Printing, & The Military-Industrial Complex

Boeing’s commercial jets struggle, but its military machines thrive, all fueled by endless fiat money…

Not-so-mysteriously, none of the problems now associated with Boeing passenger planes seem to be affecting the weapons of annihilation they produce for the Military-Industrial Complex’s borderless global war machine, which is fueled by infinite fiat money.

Myriad problems with Boeing passenger jets have put the company into the news just about every day for months, but the company makes much more than just planes for commercial passenger airlines. Boeing is also a major aerospace contractor that produces fighter jets, attack helicopters, predator drones, missiles, and even the president’s airplane, Air Force One. 

To be fair, Boeing’s record as of late beyond commercial jets is far from perfect — its Starliner, a crewed craft designed to bring astronauts to the ISS, was plagued with issues on the way to the space station that are now being investigated by its astronauts. And Boeing’s main rival in the space industry, SpaceX, has had its own problems with similar craft.

But when was the last time you heard about an Apache helicopter breaking down on its way to deliver a payload of highly-combustible “democracy” to a country unfortunate enough to be on the ever-expanding list of nation-states roped into unnecessary wars waged by the US or one of its global proxies?

Somehow, the systemic quality control issues at Boeing appear much more likely to get a handful of hapless air travelers injured than to cause problems with a military operation that has the “righteous” cause of protecting the petrodollar hegemon. The printing of fiat money fuels both phenomena in different ways.

Boeing’s corner-cutting and quality control issues are just one symptom of living in a fiat money system. As the dollar is debased, the incentive and ability to create solid, long-lasting products is degraded in kind. Manufacturing costs rocket upward as supplies, materials, logistics, storage, maintenance, insurance, wage demands, and every other production factor all increase, leading to a degradation in quality across the process as the irresistible temptation intensifies to prioritize minimizing costs over producing reliable, well-made, quality goods such as safe airplanes. 

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U.S. ‘Defense’ Firms Control the U.S. Government.

The United States is safer from a foreign invasion than any other country, not because it spends half of all of the world’s military expenditures, but because it is separated by over 3,000 miles of ocean away from Europe and from Asia, and because its only two bordering countries are entirely friendly nations, Mexico and Canada — so, there’s no way, short of an invasion from thousands of miles away, that America can be militarily attacked. 

The thing that nations are especially concerned about in national-defense matters is avoiding a blitz attack, which is an attack from a location so near to the nation’s central command — near to its Government — so as to be able to behead the Government too fast for the Government to be able to identify that attack and release its retaliatory forces against its enemy. 

This is what the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was all about: JFK needed to prevent placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba only 1,131 miles away from DC, which would have enabled the Soviet Union to blitz-attack America within less than 30 minutes. That’s why JFK threatened to Khrushchev that if they tried that, then America would invade and take over Cuba.

Nowadays the situation is in the reverse direction: Russia’s central command (The Kremlin in Moscow) is only 317 miles away from Ukraine, and on 17 December 2021 Russia formally demanded both America and its NATO to promise that Ukraine won’t be added to NATO and will never host U.S. military; and — entirely unlike what Khrushchev did in 1962 — the U.S. and its NATO responded on 7 January 2022 with a resounding and contemptuous no. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

What is this actually all about? Empirical studies have shown unequivocally that the U.S. Government is controlled by and represents not its public but only its thousand billionaires plus the politically most active of its centi-millionaires. Each of these individuals is catastrophically wealthy and so can buy enough politicians so that even just the billionaires alone actually do donate more than half of all of the money that funds U.S. political campaigns — the ads, the ‘news’-stories in their ‘news’-media, their think tanks and universities, etc. — in order to drown-out whatever few politicians who simply refuse to be controlled by them.

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Largest European Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers – Report 

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel.

A new report published by a group of 19 civil society organizations and trade unions has exposed the largest European financial institutions investing billions of euros in international arms producers that sell weapons to Israel.

Titled The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers, the report “reveals European financial institutions have provided 36.1 billion EUR in loans and underwritings, and hold 26 billion EUR in shares and bonds in companies selling weapons to Israel,” the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said in a statement on Thursday. The FIDH is one of the organizations involved in the exposé.

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel, the statement said.

It mentioned that French bank BNP Paribas is by far the largest finance provider to companies that have sold weapons to Israel, having provided 5.7 billion EUR in loans and underwritings since 2021.

Other large investors identified by the report include the banks Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS, as well as the Norwegian government pension fund GFPG and the insurance company Allianz. It also mentioned banks such as the UK’s HSBC and Standard Chartered.

“According to international standards on business and human rights, financial institutions have a clear responsibility to ensure that they do not invest in companies that contribute to human rights violations”, said Gaëlle Dusepulchre, Deputy Director of FIDH’s Business, Human Rights & Environment Desk.

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Ukrainians dying in their hundreds of thousands so US weapon manufacturers can profit

Washington has spent $1.8 trillion over the 20-year failed military campaign in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, whilst aid to Ukraine in just a little more than two years has already reached $175 billion dollars, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report published on May 9. The American military-industrial complex is rejoicing at the rate of weapons being given to Ukraine as contracts for military orders to replace outdated weapons with new ones are being secured for many years to come. However, the profiteering of American weapon manufacturers is coming at an immense human cost in Ukraine.

The huge expenses in Afghanistan were attributed to the fact that tens of thousands of American troops were stationed in the landlocked country and fought there directly. However, in the current conflict, Ukrainian soldiers continue to die in a futile war with Russian forces and are merely being used as cannon fodder in Washington’s indirect war with Russia so American troops do not have to die like they did in Afghanistan.

Although the situation is desperate on the battlefront for Ukraine, the US military industrial complex will continue profiting after the Biden administration on June 20 allowed for air defences to be swiftly delivered to Ukraine by delaying certain weapons shipments to other countries, which White House spokesman John F. Kirby admitted was a “difficult but necessary decision” given Russian rapid advances.

Kirby explained that Ukraine had a critical need for Patriot interceptor missiles as Russia has accelerated attacks, adding that the “decision demonstrates our commitment to supporting our partners when they’re in existential danger.”

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Retired Navy Admiral Charged in Bribery Scandal

Federal prosecutors have announced the arrest of former Naval Officer Robert P. Burke, 62, on serious bribery charges.

Burke, a retired four-star Navy Admiral, was arrested on Friday.  According to the Justice Department, he accepted bribes in exchange for steering government contracts to a company that promised him a lucrative job after his retirement from the Navy.

The indictment reveals that from 2020 to 2022, Burke, who oversaw Naval operations in Europe, Russia, and most of Africa and commanded thousands of civilian and military personnel, conspired with CEOs Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger of “Company A”) that provided a workforce training pilot program to a small component of the Navy from August 2018 through July 2019.

The Navy terminated a contract with Company A in late 2019 and directed Company A not to contact Burke.

Despite the Navy’s instructions, Kim and Messenger allegedly still met with Burke in Washington, D.C., in July 2021, in an effort to reestablish Company A’s business relationship with the Navy.

It is alleged that at the July 2021 meeting, the charged defendants agreed that Burke would use his position as a Navy Admiral to steer a sole-source contract to Company A in exchange for future employment at the company.

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Pro-Palestinian Group Claims To Cut Fiber Cables At UK Defense Factory Making F-35 Targeting Systems

“It’s only a matter of when – not the if – when you are going to see a nation-state, group, or actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure in the United States,” Michael Rogers, the former second commander of the US Cyber Command (2014-18), warned during a 2016 speech.

Back then, Rogers should’ve expanded his geographical threat horizon across the West, not just the US. This is because there are mounting risks that some terrorist organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the guise of pro-Palestinian demonstrations – are attempting to dismantle the Western world. Sounds outrageous, right? 

Well, not really. According to the Director of National Intelligence, PFLP is a terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It unites Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. It promotes the destruction of “Israel as integral to the struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East and ultimately establish a Communist Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” 

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between some Palestinian activist groups and global Marxist networks, like Black Lives Matter, are cut from the same radical cloth, with the end goal of destroying the West.

The quiet part is said out loud. 

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