Tag: infrastructure

NSC advisors urged ‘ISIS’-style drone attacks on Russian rail, leaked files show

A coterie of British and American academics advising the US National Security Council explicitly urged Ukraine adopt the tactics of ISIS in a detailed proposal for “anti-rail drone operations,” according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone.

The aggressive war plans recommended in the files eerily foreshadowed Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, which consisted of a series of brazen drone attacks waged inside Russia between May 24 and June 1 – the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. A pair of Ukrainian bombings of Russian trains in Bryansk on May 31 and Kursk and the following day left seven dead, and injured more than 30 people, including two children.

The attacks on Russian rail infrastructure have continued since the launch of Operation Spiderweb, suggesting the British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.

The leaked plans reviewed by The Grayzone explore the use of “inexpensive drones” as “a low-cost means for disrupting Russian logistics,”  but also include blueprints for terror attacks composed by three “drone experts” before being passed to the Biden administration’s then-Director for Russia at the National Council, Col. Tim Wright.

Those experts belonged to a secret academic-intelligence cell called Project Alchemy, whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone, and which was founded with a mission to “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

As previously reported here, Project Alchemy researchers called “to take a page from ISIS’ playbook,” presenting the jihadist group’s psychological operations as a model for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. The Grayzone can now reveal that Alchemy’s team also urged US war planners to look to the Islamic State for inspiration in using commercial drones for attacks on Russian civilian targets.

One academic advising the Alchemy cell, Zachary Kallenborn of George Mason University, recommended Ukraine carry out “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian-held railways, suggesting that Kiev first “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.” In other words: double tap kamikaze drone strikes.

“Drones also could provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] in finding and tracking trains to support larger actions,” with satellite imagery exploited for targeting purposes, Kallenborn added.

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The Real National Emergency: Endless Wars, Failing Infrastructure, and a Dying Republic

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”—President Dwight D. Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

Seventy years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the cost of a military-industrial complex, America is still stealing from its own people to fund a global empire.

In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launched airstrikes in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and radar installations (killing scores of civilians), deployed greater numbers of troops and multiple aircraft carriers to the Middle East, and edged closer to direct war with Iran in support of Israel’s escalating conflict.

Each of these “new” fronts has been sold to the public as national defense. In truth, they are the latest outposts in a decades-long campaign of empire maintenance—one that lines the pockets of defense contractors while schools crumble, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep on the streets at home.

This isn’t about national defense. This is empire maintenance.

It’s about preserving a military-industrial complex that profits from endless war, global policing, and foreign occupations—while the nation’s infrastructure rots and its people are neglected.

The United States has spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military-industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

America’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has already cost taxpayers more than $112 billion.

And now, the price of empire is rising again.

Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Incredibly, America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

America’s military empire spans nearly 800 bases in 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

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Trump blocked Biden-era plan to remove Snake River dams, and he may have prevented an eco-disaster

President Donald Trump issued a memorandum last week blocking an effort that was underway during the Biden-Harris administration to remove four hydroelectric dams in the Snake River. 

Trump’s memorandum revokes a directive from the previous administration, which Trump described as an effort by “radical environmentalism” to raise the “equitable treatment for fish” above that of human flourishing. 

“The negative impacts from these reckless acts, if completed, would be devastating for the region, and there would be no viable approach to replace the low-cost, baseload energy supplied,” Trump stated in the memo. 

If the experiences of those in northern California living along the Klamath River are any indication, Trump is right that a dam-removal project on the Snake River would cause serious and lasting impacts. 

Bad outcomes of dam removal in the past

Last year, four dams near the Klamath River near the Oregon-California border were removed, and people living in communities along the river tell Just the News that the sediment that flooded the river has turned the Klamath into a muddy waterway. While proponents of dam removal say it helps salmon populations, the Klamath River dam removal has decimated fish populations, ruined fishing tourism, and may impact agriculture. 

The worst part, they say, is that all the problems were known long before the removals were carried out. Opponents of the project fought for years to stop it, but the environmentalists who supported the project had more resources and ultimately succeeded in getting what they wanted. 

“We’re a rural community, and we had to have bake sales and auctions to raise money to fight this. And we just didn’t have the funding to be able to fight people coming from all over the globe, essentially, to make this happen,” Richard Marshall, a resident of Fort Jones, California, told Just the News. 

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Tehran Starts Drowning in Sewage After Israeli Missiles Strike Key Water Infrastructure

Shock video circulating online appears to show parts of Tehran drowning in waste after Israeli missiles struck water and sewage pipelines.

Footage shared on social media shows a street in the Iranian capital overflowing with water and waste product, creating a disgusting brown flow through the city.

The outbreak means that emergency services in Tehran are grappling with simultaneous challenges.

These include the impact of missile strikes, crumbling nuclear infrastructure, and now a public health nightmare as sewage seeps into streets.

The breakdown of potable water and sewage systems also risks triggering disease outbreaks and major social rest in an already volatile capital.

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“Another Reason To Leave”: Top Maryland Power Official Warns Of Regular Rolling Blackouts

Democratic lawmakers in Annapolis—more focused on Marxist reparations schemes to fleece taxpayers, taxing the hell out of Marylanders, having margaritas with migrants, diverting public funds to illegal aliens, pushing radical woke agendas, attempting to install condom machines in elementary schools, and focusing on de-growth policies to neuter the state’s power grid—have finally done it.

Their chronic mismanagement, with far-left Governor Wes Moore at the helm, has steered Maryland straight into a power crisis, like the Titanic blindly drifting through an iceberg minefield. The state’s fragile grid is now teetering on the edge of crisis, paving the way for ‘net-zero‘ blackouts that could soon rival those seen in Spain or California.

A top official at Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), a local utility with 1.3 million electric customers and 700,000 natural gas customers, warned that rolling power blackouts could soon become a regular feature in the state due to a rapidly alarming mismatch between total power capacity on the grid and soaring demand.

As per The Baltimore Sun:

Regular rolling blackouts could become reality for Baltimore-area residents if a lack of energy supplied to the power grid remains unaddressed, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company Vice President Electric Operations Steven Singh warned.

BGE has worked during the last two decades to lessen the number of short-term loads shed events, Singh said, but rolling blackouts — during which power is disconnected from some segments of the community when the grid remains viable — could be implemented if power demand continues to exceed supply.

“It’s a huge concern,” Singh said. “It’s a clear and present issue.”

At a recent round table at the University of Maryland … We have a supply and demand issue.”

Singh also shared larger concerns with energy shortages that may result as the energy transition away from coal-fired power plants continues, and electric vehicle ownership grows. He said one factor that impacts the region is an increase in data centers — reliant on huge, power-hungry server infrastructure.

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‘How does this happen?’ Power outages plunge major U.S. city into darkness after months of warnings

New Orleans was plunged into darkness on Sunday afternoon when the region’s grid operator cut off power to reduce usage, a “last resort” measure to prevent a large-scale blackout, according to Nola.com, a local news outlet.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a major electrical grid operator, directed the energy company Entergy to reduce power with only three minutes’ notice to prevent a blackout, affecting nearly 100,000 customers, according to Nola.com. Power was fully restored after several hours, though concerns about the power grid’s reliability remain as President Donald Trump’s administration, energy policy experts and multiple North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) reports have signaled that MISO is at an elevated risk for blackouts due in part to phasing out coal-fired power plants.

“The forced outages were directed by MISO as a last resort, and done in order to prevent a more extensive, prolonged power outage that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid,” Entergy said in a Sunday statement.

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Eco-experiment that ‘blacked out entire country’: Spanish scientists ‘were experimenting with how far they could push renewable energy’ before country-wide chaos

Spanish authorities were experimenting with how far they could push their reliance on renewable energy before the Iberian Peninsula was hit with a massive power outage last month, it has been suggested. 

As people wait for more answers on what caused the power cut that disrupted tens of millions of lives across Spain and Portugal, several have questioned Spain’s heavy reliance on renewable energy sources as it plans to phase out nuclear reactors. 

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has rejected such criticism, asking for patience while the government investigates the causes of the historic blackout. 

Spain’s electric grid operator Red Eléctrica de España pinned it on a significant and unprecedented drop in power generation. 

Now, it has been suggested that the Spanish government was carrying out an experiment before the country’s grid system crashed, The Telegraph reports. 

Under said test, authorities had been trialling how far they could push their reliance on renewables as they prepared for Spain’s phase-out of nuclear reactors from 2027. 

The Spanish Association of Electrical Energy Companies (Aelec), which has criticised the inquiry into the blackout’s cause, has now said it was not the country’s generators that failed to deliver power to the grid, but rather it was the grid that failed to manage it and then shut down automatically. 

The head of Spain’s photovoltaic association, Jose Donoso, had made a similar suggestion earlier this month, telling newsoutlet 20Minutos: ‘It’s a matter of logic; the fact that the entire system goes down because of a photovoltaic plant makes no sense.

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As crisis grows at U.S. airports, feds are buying replacement parts on eBay or 3D printing them

America’s air traffic control system is blinking red with warning after a midair collision, several harrowing outages, and a staffing shortage. Now Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is adding to the worries by revealing the Federal Aviation Administration is resorting to using eBay and 3D printers to replace parts for antiquated computer systems. 

The secretary told the the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday that the technology holding together American airports is so outdated, the federal government does not have reliable suppliers that can replace vital components.

“We do try to buy replacement parts on eBay for this really old equipment,” Duffy told the senators. “Sometimes, we can’t even buy it on eBay, so we’re trying to use 3D printing to craft replacement parts for the system that we use.”

Duffy first drew attention to this ongoing issue last week in an interview with CBS News. He noted the FAA turned to eBay because “we can’t buy parts for new” for the aging equipment. 

Because of the worrying state of the nation’s airports, Duffy announced earlier this month an ambitious three-year plan to revamp air traffic control systems with a focus on modernizing communications technology, surveillance systems, and digitization. To do this, the administration will seek “upfront appropriations” from Congress to fund the much-needed updates. 

You can read the Transportation Department’s three-year plan below: 

Brand New Air Traffic Control System Plan.pdf

The plan emphasizes fast-paced modernization was necessary because risks increased the longer the U.S. remained reliant on the aging systems, especially at a time when air traffic is increasing and spaceflight is making a comeback. 

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Biden administration unleashed billions to update electric grid without proper controls, probe finds

The Biden Energy Department blasted out billions of dollars to bolster the U.S. energy grid shortly before last fall’s election without adequate financial controls and staffing to properly protect taxpayers, an internal investigation has found. 

In October 2024, the Department of Energy awarded $7.6 billion in funding to 105 projects across the United States, in support of various grid resilience initiatives. The Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program (GRIP) had a total of $10.5 billion allocated to it from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

The DOE Office of Inspector General initiated an investigation to determine if the department’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO), which administered the funding for the GRIP program under the Biden administration, had adequate internal controls and resources to implement the program. 

According to the OIG’s report released Wednesday, the GDO lacked an effective internal controls system to manage risk, nor did it have staffing resources to implement the program.

“Without a robust internal controls system, GDO may not identify risks that could negatively impact the GRIP program’s outcomes,” the report said. “These impacts could include improperly reimbursed costs, fraud, waste, and undisclosed conflicts of interest.”

DOE-OIG-25-19.pdf

The lack of adequate accounting practices for taxpayer funding may extend beyond the GDO. 

Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright said during a House Appropriations hearing earlier this month the Loans Program Office at the DOE had issued about $40 billion in loans for energy projects over the last 15 years. But in the last 76 days of the Biden administration, that number jumped to $100 billion. Wright said that the rushed loan agreements lacked clauses traditionally required by the DOE. 

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Trump Energy Chief Invokes Emergency Powers To Boost Fossil Fuel Use in Blackout-Plagued Puerto Rico

Energy Secretary Chris Wright is invoking emergency powers to empower Puerto Rico to boost fossil fuel power generation in the wake of a recent island-wide blackout and ahead of the summer, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Wright issued two orders Friday afternoon: The first directs the government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to increase electric power production on the island to maintain grid reliability while the second orders the agency to immediately clear overgrown vegetation that presents risk of shortages and fire. Both orders invoked emergency powers conferred on the energy secretary under the Federal Power Act.

In addition, as part of the announcement, the Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office will conduct a review of $365 million in funding the Biden administration granted to third party organizations and companies in December to develop new solar power installations across the island.

Wright’s actions Friday represent an abrupt recalibration of how the federal government will address Puerto Rico’s ongoing power generation crisis, shifting from a focus on boosting green energy like solar power to expanding existing fossil fuel infrastructure. And it comes just a month after after Puerto Rico suffered a devastating blackout that impacted 1.4 million residents and left hundreds of thousands without water, the Associated Press reported.

That blackout was the second of its kind in less than four months on the island and underscored the power supply issues Puerto Rico has faced for the better part of a decade. Both blackouts are particularly alarming considering they occurred outside of the peak summer demand season.

“Access to energy is essential for all modern life, yet the current energy emergency jeopardizes Puerto Ricans’ access to basic necessities,” Wright said in a statement. “This system is unsustainable, and our fellow citizens should not be forced to suffer the constant instability and dangerous consequences of an unreliable power grid.”

“With President Trump’s leadership, we are prioritizing immediate and comprehensive actions that will mitigate the greatest threats to the grid and benefit a vastly larger portion of the population, including critical facilities like hospitals and community centers,” he continued.

The Department of Energy said Wright’s actions were taken in coordination with the Puerto Rican energy industry and power experts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The actions received support from Puerto Rico’s governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon (R.) and energy czar Josue Colon-Ortiz.

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