Tag: dod

Former Israeli spies now overseeing US government cybersecurity

A company with deep ties to Israeli intelligence oversees cyber security across more than seventy US government agencies, including the Department of Defense and Homeland Security.

Axonius was founded by former spies in Israel’s Unit 8200 and its software, which allows an operator ‘visibility and control over all types and number of devices,’ collects and analyses the digital data of millions of US federal employees.

The stated aim of the Axonius platform is to centralize IT tools to identity and fix security breaches. As a product of Israeli intelligence, however, the scale of Axonius’s use across the US government raises serious questions.

Axonius was founded and is currently run by Israelis Dean Sysman, Ofri Shur and Avidor Bartov, who met in the 2010s while working on the same team within Israel’s Unit 8200 spy service. On his LinkedIn profile, Sysman offers few details of their work for the IDF, describing it simply as having ‘far-reaching implications.’

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Trump’s Pentagon name change could cost up to $2 billion

President Donald Trump’s directive to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as $2 billion, according to six people with knowledge of the potential cost.

The name change, which must be approved by Congress, would require replacing thousands of signs, placards, letterheads and badges, as well as any other items at U.S. military sites around the world that feature the Department of Defense name, according to two senior Republican congressional staffers, two senior Democratic congressional staffers and two other people briefed on the potential cost.

New department letterhead and signage alone could cost about $1 billion, according to the four senior congressional staffers and one of the people briefed on the potential cost.

One of the biggest contributors to the cost of changing the name would be rewriting digital code for all of the department’s internal and external facing websites, as well as other computer software on classified and unclassified systems, the four senior congressional staffers said.

The government could decide not to make every change to the Department of Defense branding, which could bring down the cost.

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The Department of Defense Cannot Claim Ignorance Regarding Their Legal Violations During the COVID Era

Laws were clearly broken through the oppressive enforcement and administration of the military’s COVID-19 shot, yet to this day, no one is willing to acknowledge which specific laws were transgressed.

Last month, The Gateway Pundit brought attention to the fact that the Department of War continues to ignore multiple inquiries and FOIA requests.

They refuse to acknowledge that 10 U.S. Code § 1107a acts as a legal basis showing that the implementation of the COVID-19 shot mandate was illegal, even in light of the War Secretary’s public declaration deeming it “unlawful.” If something is considered unlawful, then a law or laws must have been violated? So, why do they refuse to name the law(s) that were broken?

10 U.S. Code § 1107a “[codifies] that individuals are informed of an option to accept or refuse administration of a product.” Regarding the administration of a product authorized for emergency use, such as the previously required COVID-19 shot, only the President has the authority to waive this federal code. Former President Joe Biden did not to waive it.

So, who violated the law? And, perhaps more crucially, who in this world is allowed to break the law and escape without consequences? Where is the accountability? That’s the question on the minds of service members and veterans.

The author conducted a survey involving more than five dozen members of the military who are currently serving, representing all branches of the military. They were asked about their references to 10 U.S. Code § 1107a in their objections to receiving the 2021 COVID-19 shot.

Both their original requests for accommodation or exemption, as well as their subsequent appeals, were blanketly denied. For many, their careers were ultimately preserved only due to a federal injunction or the later rescission of the mandate on January 10, 2023.

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War Department Pushes To Double or Quadruple Missile Production To Prepare for Potential War With China

The US War Department is pushing US weapons makers to double or even quadruple the production of missiles to help the US military prepare for a potential future war with China, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The report said that senior Pentagon officials expressed a desire for a significant increase in production during a series of meetings with representatives from several US missile manufacturers. Steve Feinberg, the deputy US Secretary of War, has taken a leading role in the effort, which has been dubbed the Munitions Acceleration Council, and regularly speaks with some executives.

The US military has been openly preparing for a war with China for years despite the obvious risk of nuclear war. The preparations have involved expanding the US military footprint in the Asia Pacific, building alliances in the region, and increasing weapons shipments to Taiwan.

The Journal report said that the effort at expanding missile production is focused on weapons the Pentagon believes it needs for a conflict with China, including Patriot interceptors, Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, the Standard Missile-6, Precision Strike Missiles, and Joint Air-Surface Standoff Missiles.

Since 2022, the Pentagon has formally considered China the top “threat” facing the US, although that may soon change as reports say the War Department’s forthcoming National Defense Strategy (NDS) may prioritize missions in the homeland and the Western Hemisphere over countering Beijing.

In a statement back in May, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said he was directing the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, to begin work on the new NDS, which he said will “prioritize defense of the US homeland, including America’s skies and borders, and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.”

Colby is a well-known China hawk who has long pushed for the US to prioritize China and prepare for a war over Taiwan, though there are signs that he has started to doubt the US’s ability to defend the island. Either way, the US is expected to continue its military buildup in the region.

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US Department of Defence played a key role in coordinating the global “covid crisis”

How To Pull Off A ‘Pandemic’: “Military-Military Coordination”… of a “Crisis”

In 2025, the strategic set-up behind the covid operation is much easier to see in retrospect.

The “manufactured covid crisis” in March 2020 was deployed after the fact – in order to justify the fast-tracked “medical countermeasures” which had been in the pipeline since the sharing of the “sequence” (if not before).

Read more: First came the “vaccine solution”…, Democracy Manifest, 22 January 2025

Terrorising the public with stories of supposedly catastrophic “spread” (that could be “slowed”) was the surest way to justify this rapid “vaccine solution.”

Part of the sales pitch (aka psyop) was the need for “non-pharmaceutical interventions” in the interim.

The origins of this whole-of-Washington-led “pandemic” plan – including lockdowns – had been in plain sight since the Pentagon’s ‘Dark Winter’simulation in June 2001, and repeatedly rehearsed in the lead up to ‘The Big One’.

In June 2019, a 3-minute video by the US Department of Defence – featuring images of a novel coronavirus! – presaged the main event.

Read more: Preview: Coming Soon…, Democracy Manifest, 5 January 2024

[We have embedded the video to begin at timestamp 27 seconds, watch the critical 15 seconds that follow. “Don’t miss the pandemic-preventing hazmat suit in the DoD biolab,” Democracy Manifest said.]

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DoD Redacts Nearly All Records Explaining AARO’s Use of Law Enforcement Exemption for UAP Files

The Department of Defense (DoD) has released a set of heavily redacted emails in response to a FOIA request seeking records that would explain why AARO and UAP materials are now being largely withheld under FOIA Exemption (b)(7). This exemption is intended for “law enforcement” records, raising questions about how it applies to AARO, which is not a law enforcement body.

The release was supposed to show the internal decision-making behind this new practice. Instead, nearly all substance was withheld, and more than 95%+ of the content is either blacked out or withheld in full. The result is another chapter in a growing saga of secrecy surrounding AARO, FOIA, and UAP records.

This issue has now persisted for more than two years. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs office, through spokesperson Susan Gough, continues to refuse to answer The Black Vault’s roughly four dozen inquiries and follow-ups over the course of 27 months sent to her about how this exemption can be legally justified.

The September 18, 2025, release (case 24-F-0154) consisted of 23 pages. Three pages were withheld in their entirety under Exemption (b)(5), while the rest were redacted under (b)(5) and (b)(6).

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Defense Department plagued by financial reporting issues that must be fixed to pass full audit: GAO

The Defense Department has been plagued by serious financial reporting issues that must be fixed for the agency to pass a full audit for the first time, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.

“For the seventh consecutive year since the Department of Defense (DOD) was required to undergo full-scope audits, DOD received a disclaimer of opinion on its financial statement audit in fiscal year 2024, meaning DOD could not provide auditors with sufficient, appropriate evidence needed to support information in its financial statements due to ineffective systems and processes,” the GAO reported this month.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2024 requires the agency to “receive an unmodified (clean) audit opinion by December 31, 2028.”

Despite the agency’s failure to pass a full audit, Congress again raised defense spending in fiscal 2025 to nearly $900 billion. 

The defense budget could reach $1 trillion after an additional increase for fiscal 2026, based on President Donald Trump’s budget request.

The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General identified 28 agency-wide “material weaknesses” in fiscal 2024 that have hindered “sustainable business processes and a functioning internal control environment” for its financial management operations.

GAO’s latest review found that “several identified DOD-wide material weaknesses directly affected $2.1 trillion (50.3 percent) of DOD’s reported assets and $146.9 billion (3.4 percent) of its reported liabilities, indicating that there is an increased risk that these amounts are materially misstated.”

The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) defines a material weakness as a “deficiency (or combination of deficiencies) in internal control, such that there is reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of an entity’s financial statements could occur that would not be prevented, or detected and corrected on a timely basis.”

The federal watchdog noted that the Pentagon reported more than $4.1 trillion in assets on its balance sheet as of September 30, 2024. 

“DOD’s assets represent a significant portion of the federal government’s reported total assets. The ability to properly account for and report these assets would improve DOD’s ability to successfully carry out its mission and is critical to achieve an unmodified (clean) audit opinion,” the GAO report reads.

The Defense Department is the only major federal agency that hasn’t received a clean audit opinion on its financial statements. 

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Department of War?

Last week President Trump took steps to re-name the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” The President explained his rationale for the name change: “It used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound. We want defense, but we want offense too… As Department of War we won everything… and I think we… have to go back to that.”

At first it sounds like a terrible idea. A “Department of War” may well make war more likely – the “stronger sound” may embolden the US government to take us into even more wars. There would no longer be any need for the pretext that we take the nation to war to defend this country and its interests – and only as a last resort.

As Clinton Administration official Madeleine Albright famously asked of Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell when she was pushing for US war in the Balkans, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

So yes, that is a real danger. But at the same time, the US has been at war nearly constantly since the end of World War II, so it’s not like the “Defense Department” has been in any way a defensive department.

With that in mind, returning the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is how it started, may not be such a bad idea after all – as long as we can be honest about the rest of the terms around our warmaking.

If we return to a “War Department,” then we should also return to the Constitutional requirement that any military activity engaged in by that department short of defending against an imminent attack on the US requires a Congressional declaration of war. That was the practice followed when it was called the War Department and we should return to it.

Dropping the notion that we have a “Defense Department” would free us from the charade that our massive military spending budget was anything but a war budget. No more “defense appropriations” bills in Congress. Let’s call them “war appropriations” bills. Let the American people understand what so much of their hard-earned money is being taken to support. It’s not “defense.” It’s “war.” And none of it has benefited the American people.

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Military To Start Testing Service Members For The Psychedelic Psilocin, Memo Shows

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is expanding the list of drugs that military service members will be tested for to include the psychedelic compound psilocin, one of the two main components of psilocybin mushrooms.

In a memo obtained by Marijuana Moment, a DOD employee performing the duties of the deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness advised military leadership that psilocin will be added to the department’s Drug Demand Reduction Program drug testing panel effective October 1.

The memo, dated August 18, states that the policy change being made due to “the risk of impairment and subsequent deterioration of security, military fitness, readiness, good order and discipline.”

“Drug abuse by Service members is a safety and readiness issue, and the Department must adapt our detection and deterrence program to address new and emerging drug threats,” Dr. Merlynn Carson wrote.

The DOD official said that attachments to the memo lay out “cutoff concentrations” for a positive psilocin test and other drugs in the testing panel.

Marijuana Moment reached out to DOD for copies of those attachments, but representatives were not able to immediately provide the documents.

“The Department of Defense maintains a zero-tolerance policy prohibiting drug use, and we remain committed to continually expanding drug testing capabilities and enhancing our education and prevention efforts by providing effective information on drug misuse, including the use of Psilocin,” an official told Marijuana Moment in an email.

The memo says that the “first priority” for psilocin testing under the revised drug panel “will be given to specimens collected under the auspices of probable cause, consent, or command.”

“In proportion to laboratory capabilities and capacity, second priority will be given to special testing requests for other collection modes, such as routine inspection-based collections, and specimens may also be randomly tested for psilocin,” it says.

At the same time that DOD has moved to test for psilocin, it’s also carrying out a congressional mandated psychedelic therapy pilot program for active duty service members and veterans. A more recent spending bill covering DOD would require a “progress report” on that initiative.

This latest memo also comes about two months after a DOD contractor sued the federal government, alleging that questions about his past marijuana use during a security clearance process violated his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

While the latest DOD policy update concerned a psychedelic compound, questions about federal workers testing positive for marijuana have also ballooned in recent years, as more individual states have legalized the drug.

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Microsoft Failed To Disclose Key Details About Use Of China-Based Engineers In U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows

Microsoft, as a provider of cloud services to the U.S. government, is required to regularly submit security plans to officials describing how the company will protect federal computer systems.

Yet in a 2025 submission to the Defense Department, the tech giant left out key details, including its use of employees based in China, the top cyber adversary of the U.S., to work on highly sensitive department systems, according to a copy obtained by ProPublica. In fact, the Microsoft plan viewed by ProPublica makes no reference to the company’s China-based operations or foreign engineers at all.

The document belies Microsoft’s repeated assertions that it disclosed the arrangement to the federal government, showing exactly what was left out as it sold its security plan to the Defense Department. The Pentagon has been investigating the use of foreign personnel by IT contractors in the wake of reporting by ProPublica last month that exposed Microsoft’s practice.

Our work detailed how Microsoft relies on “digital escorts” — U.S. personnel with security clearances — to supervise the foreign engineers who maintain the Defense Department’s cloud systems. The department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Microsoft’s security plan, dated Feb. 28 and submitted to the department’s IT agency, distinguishes between personnel who have undergone and passed background screenings to access its Azure Government cloud platform and those who have not. But it omits the fact that workers who have not been screened include non-U.S. citizens based in foreign countries. “Whenever non-screened personnel request access to Azure Government, an operator who has been screened and has access to Azure Government provides escorted access,” the company said in its plan.

The document also fails to disclose that the screened digital escorts can be contractors hired by a staffing company, not Microsoft employees. ProPublica found that escorts, in many cases former military personnel selected because they possess active security clearances, often lack the expertise needed to supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. Microsoft has told ProPublica that escorts “are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data” and preventing harm.

Microsoft’s reference to the escort model comes two-thirds of the way into the 125-page document, known as a “System Security Plan,” in several paragraphs under the heading “Escorted Access.” Government officials are supposed to evaluate these plans to determine whether the security measures disclosed in them are acceptable.

In interviews with ProPublica, Microsoft has maintained that it disclosed the digital escorting arrangement in the plan, and that the government approved it. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other government officials have expressed shock and outrage over the model, raising questions about what, exactly, the company disclosed as it sought to win and keep government cloud computing contracts.

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