Tag: military industrial complex

CCP Bans Sale Of Retired Military Equipment, Citing Security Risks

The Chinese regime’s military and public security authorities have jointly issued an order banning the sale, assembly, and marketing of retired military equipment, citing “security risks to military secrets.”

The Notice on Prohibiting Sales Activities Involving Retired or Scrapped Military Equipment was issued on July 28 by the Chinese regime’s six central governmental departments, including the top defense command and decision-making body of the Chinese military – Central Military Commission’s Logistics Support Department, Equipment Development Department, and Political and Legal Affairs Commission, along with the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The notice acknowledges that, in recent years, some vendors have openly sold – both online and offline – retired or scrapped military equipment containing sensitive information, resulting in “adverse effects” and creating “security risks.” It also said one of the purposes of the ban is “to uphold the positive image of the people’s military.”

The notice stipulates that no entity or individual may sell retired or scrapped military equipment. Such equipment – as defined by the military – encompasses various types of hardware, ammunition, devices, related components, and materials that have been officially retired from service and designated for disposal as scrap.

The notice also prohibits any unit or individual from using dismantled parts of decommissioned equipment to produce, modify, and re-assemble them, and then sell them as imitations of military equipment that the public might believe was real. Commercial marketing and promotion of decommissioned and scrapped equipment and related imitations are also prohibited.

The official notice did not disclose the types, quantities, or sources of decommissioned equipment currently on the market, nor did it state whether any military information had been leaked.

Li Yuansong, a Chinese military equipment and memorabilia collector, told The Epoch Times that Chinese military-issued gear has long been collected by enthusiasts.

“Much of the Chinese weaponry is derived from technology dating back to the former Soviet era [1922-91]. While a small number of firearms produced after the ‘Reform and Opening-up’ incorporated Western technology, the majority remain updated versions of Soviet-based hardware,” he said. “The craftsmanship is crude and hardly advanced. If Western weapons experts were to dismantle and analyze them, they would likely laugh about them.

“The real fear isn’t so much about leaking secrets, but rather that foreigners might discover just how backward China’s conventional weaponry actually is,” Li said of the new ban.

Li Xiangyang, a Chinese military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that in recent years, individuals have been reselling military equipment online.

“Some components bear serial numbers, model designations, and signs of use. In the eyes of the authorities, these could reveal information regarding production batches, maintenance standards, and quality,” Li said.

“Regulations dictate that many decommissioned items must be destroyed, with metal materials collected and melted down. This notice is primarily aimed at enforcing the Anti-Espionage Law, as the authorities do not want foreign entities to gain insight into the Chinese regime’s military-industrial technology.”

Su Pei, a China-based military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that the mention of upholding “the positive image of the people’s military” in the ban notice shows that the Chinese regime is concerned about more than just so-called secret leaks, but also about hiding the backwardness of the Chinese weaponry.

“It also worries that individuals within the military might sell used military equipment through underground channels – goods that could ultimately be resold to foreign adversaries. Such incidents have already occurred in coastal regions,” he said.

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Section 219: More Than a Defense Provision – The Battle Over the Future of US-Israel Relations

Somewhere in the thousand-plus pages of America’s annual National Defense Authorization Act sits a provision that started out as Section 224 and later became Section 219 in the House version. On paper it looks straightforward: expand technological and defense cooperation between the United States and Israel. In practice it has turned into one of the more revealing fights in current U.S. politics. The reactions on both sides make clear that this is not really about joint research projects or sharing a few more technical papers. It has become a proxy for bigger arguments about how far American security commitments should go, what role Israel should play in Washington’s strategy, and where the Republican Party is headed on foreign policy.

The House kept the language when it passed its version of the bill. Representative Thomas Massie, a consistent America First voice, tried to strip it out. His effort never even made it to a full floor vote. That alone told you something: for now, the coalition that wants deeper strategic ties with Israel still has the numbers in the House.

What the section actually does is instruct the Defense Department to expand work with Israel in areas like artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, quantum technology, cybersecurity, electronic warfare, drones, and joint research programs. Supporters say this is common sense. Facing serious competition from China and Russia, they argue, the United States cannot afford to go it alone on the technologies that will shape the next generation of military power. Israel has real strengths in these fields. Formalizing and deepening cooperation, they insist, does not create new combat commitments. It simply builds on relationships that have existed for years.

Opponents see a different trajectory. They worry the language is less about discrete projects and more about gradually knitting the two countries’ defense industries and military structures closer together. Once those ties become denser, they argue, American decision-makers may find their options more constrained when the next Middle East crisis arrives. Massie’s objection sits squarely in this camp. He believes the United States should stop creating new mechanisms that pull it deeper into security obligations connected to Israel

The fight is not really about one paragraph in a defense bill. It reflects deeper shifts already underway. The war in Gaza, the scale of civilian deaths, and the protests that spread across American campuses have made traditional support for Israel less automatic, especially among younger people. Inside the Republican Party a visible split has opened. Traditional conservatives still treat a wide network of allies as essential to American leadership. The America First wing wants fewer overseas commitments, fewer expensive wars, and more focus on problems at home.

So Section 219 is not just about Israel. It is about how America defines its own interests. Should Washington keep deepening alliances as the price of remaining the dominant global power, or should it start redirecting more energy and money toward rebuilding at home and competing economically with China?

The fact that opponents could not remove the section shows the old consensus still has real weight in Congress. But the intensity of the pushback shows that consensus is no longer automatic. What used to be a quiet assumption has become one of the sharper dividing lines in American foreign-policy debates.

Nothing is final yet. The bill still has to move through the Senate. If the two chambers produce different texts, a conference committee will have to work out the differences. House passage was a clear win for the provision’s backers, but the ultimate language depends on what happens next.

What is already obvious is that Section 219 has stopped being just another clause in a giant spending bill. It has become a rough test of the direction American foreign policy is likely to take. Will the United States continue leaning on ever-closer strategic partnerships, or will it gradually pull back toward a more limited, domestically focused approach?

For decades the relationship rested on a familiar mix of shared values, intelligence cooperation, technological overlap, and common adversaries. That foundation has not vanished. Israel remains a capable partner in missile defense, cyber operations, and advanced research. Supporters of the section keep returning to these practical advantages and argue that tighter cooperation is a logical response to a more competitive world.

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China To Arm Iran With Hundreds Of MANPADS Despite Trump Warnings: Report

President Trump has repeatedly said that China’s President Xi Jinping has directly assured him that Beijing will not supply Iran with weaponry or military support.

But this week these ‘assurances’ have been called into question by an Reuters investigation. “Iran is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers, three sources familiar with the deal told ​Reuters, as it rebuilds its defenses amid war with the United States,” the fresh report says.

“The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air ‌defences since the outbreak of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure,” it adds.

The fresh report cites three anonymous sources and did not receive comment from the Iranian side. Some of the assertions of the Reuters report are surprisingly specific, such as in the following:

The contract covers the purchase of between 300 and 400 man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), including Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles, the sources said.

The deal was signed with Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, a Hong Kong-based company that the sources said was acting as an intermediary between the Iranian ​side and the Chinese supplier.

The reporting even explores options being considered for delivery of the weapons, at a moment Iran is urgently seeking to replenish its air defense supplies after months of grinding tit-for-tat conflict with the US military.

“Two Western intelligence sources and an Iranian official said Tehran had also explored the use of overland routes to move Chinese military supplies and dual-use components ⁠more discreetly and ​reduce the risk of disruption,” Reuters continues.

MANPADS could prove especially dangerous for US helicopters and other low flying aircraft, and for Iran can serve as layer of short-range protection.

The opening days of Operation Epic Fury saw much of Iran’s anti-air units get taken out, especially across the Western part of the country, giving US-Israeli jets air superiority. However, at times the Iranians have claimed to shoot down some aircraft, and since then the US has seemed to operate from further afar.

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Rearmament: UK Govt Pushes For New Generation of Explosives Factories to Fix Post-Cold War Deindustrialisation

The British government is seeking to build “at least six new munitions and energetics factories” after the Ukraine War experience showed how fast ammunition is used in a near-peer conflict, and how long it takes to make more when the industrial base no longer exists.

The Ministry of Defence has announced a funding package to support 22 unnamed companies to underwrite their costs in building “at least six” new factories to produce what the industry calls energetics, which might better be known as explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics. The selected businesses will receive up to £300,000 each to “develop proposals for the creation of new factories producing energetic materials used in munitions”, and the winners in the competition will receive contracts “worth up to £5 million each” to get the ground broken on building the new facilities.

According to the government’s statement, the project is intended to move — at least by Whitehall standards — at a very brisk pace. The proposals are due to be made by the end of the summer, and construction of new munitions factories should begin before the end of 2026. The rush to build is part of a century-long story of corporate amnesia in which London has repeatedly destroyed its own armaments factories to save money in peacetime, only to be surprised, yet again, when war returns.

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Trump Responds to Netanyahu Opposing Sale of F-35 Jets to Turkey: “Nobody Tells Me What We Should Be Selling or Not”

President Trump on Monday responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for criticizing his plan to sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, saying, “Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not.”

Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Trump on Tuesday at the White House during a visit to the United States, where he will also attend the wake for late Senator Lindsey Graham. Trump told reporters that he and Netanyahu are “pretty close” to the same page. “We have a little difference, but pretty close,” Trump said.

But he made it clear that they’re not on the same page regarding Turkey.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu appeared on CNN with Dana Bash hours after Trump said he would sell F-35s to Turkey during the NATO Summit in Ankara, overturning a ban from his first term.

“He’s not exactly a model ally of the United States,” Netanyahu said, asserting that the move “doesn’t make Turkey a friendly state to the United States.”

“It would destroy the power balance in the Middle East,” he continued. “This is not a force for peace and stability… When you give them that power, you’re going to see aggression in its wake.”

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The ‘Projects’ That Could Ignite The Next World War

The Military, Industrial and Strategic Programs Reshaping the World in 2026

The most dangerous geopolitical developments of 2026 are not necessarily the weapons that have already been fired, but the systems being constructed in anticipation of the next crisis. Across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, governments are committing extraordinary resources to military production, strategic infrastructure, weapons procurement and long-term defence planning, creating a global security environment in which preparation for war has itself become one of the defining features of international politics. The official justification is almost always deterrence: stronger armies are supposed to prevent aggression, larger stockpiles are supposed to make adversaries think twice and new military infrastructure is supposed to close the gaps that might otherwise invite attack. Yet deterrence has an inherent paradox. Every military capability built by one state is examined by another as a potential threat, and every response can then be used to justify another round of preparation. What emerges is not necessarily an organized march toward a single global conflict, but something more unstable: a collection of increasingly sophisticated military projects operating simultaneously across several regions, each designed to prevent war while potentially making the consequences of miscalculation far more severe.

The scale of this transformation is no longer a matter of speculation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditure reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive year of growth. European military spending increased by 14% to approximately $864 billion, while military expenditure in Asia and Oceania rose by 8.1% to around $681 billion. The United States remained the world’s largest military spender at approximately $954 billion, followed by China at $336 billion and Russia at $190 billion. Together, those three countries accounted for roughly 51% of global military expenditure. SIPRI also reported that European NATO members increased spending sharply, while China’s military expenditure continued a decades-long upward trajectory and Taiwan increased its own military spending by approximately 14% in 2025. These figures do not prove that a world war is approaching, but they reveal an international system in which the largest military powers are simultaneously expanding or restructuring their strategic capabilities.

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Humanoid War Robot Gets Advanced AMD-Powered AI Brain

At the start of February, we began tracking startup Foundation Robotics after publicly available news reports and X posts suggested it could become one of the first US companies to deploy humanoid robots on the modern battlefield.

TIME later reported that the company’s robots had been sent to Ukraine for testing and evaluation, raising the prospect that these war bots could soon reach the front lines in Eastern Europe.

Our February 2 report, “Watch: Russian Soldiers Surrender To Gun-Wielding Robot; Humanoid Warfare Nears,” and our February 3 report, “AI’s Next Frontier Is Physical As Humanoid Robots Begin March On Assembly Lines And Beyond,” both preceded TIME’s coverage of Foundation by a full month and showed how these robots were being positioned for testing in Ukraine.

In another signal that Foundation is preparing its war bots for battlefield deployment, Reuters reported that the startup partnered with Advanced Micro Devices to supply high-end AI processors for its second-generation Phantom MK-2 robot.

Foundation plans to open a factory in October capable of producing 5,000 robots per year, followed by a second facility with capacity for 50,000 units. Industrial robots will be leased for about $100,000 annually, while defense models designed for logistics and reconnaissance will be sold for $300,000 per unit.

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Getting Away with Murder: Under Trump, the Buck Stops Nowhere

Having burned through billions of dollars and depleted critical munitions stockpiles, the Pentagon is running out of money.

Our money.

According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is facing an urgent budget shortfall caused largely by the Iran war, with some critical funding accounts expected to run dry within weeks. Training, maintenance and other military priorities are reportedly being squeezed as the government struggles to sustain Trump’s escalating conflict.

Once again, the government is looking to the American people for a taxpayer-funded bailout—this time to the tune of $67 billion.

Nor is the $67 billion emergency infusion the end of it.

Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget calls for an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in national-defense spending—a staggering increase that would pour still more money into a military apparatus that cannot account honestly for the costs of its current war, maintain its existing priorities, or keep from returning to taxpayers for another bailout.

The problem is not simply how much the war machine consumes. It is how little accountability accompanies that spending.

The government can launch a war, exhaust military resources, conceal its full costs, and return to Congress for billions more without anyone responsible being required to admit error, change course, or answer for the lives lost.

That is becoming a familiar pattern under Donald Trump.

He makes the decisions—others absorb the consequences.

He launches the war—the troops make the sacrifices, and taxpayers inherit the bill.

The Iran war is not merely another example of government waste, although the cost is already staggering. The war has already cost an estimated $80 to $100 billion, not counting its long-term economic impact, future veteran expenses, or the cost of repairing damaged military bases. Analysts estimate that the broader toll on American households could eventually reach as much as $1,000 per household.

Yet the true cost cannot be measured in dollars alone.

American service members are dying in a war Trump started without meaningful congressional authorization, without a credible plan for ending it, and without an honest accounting of what it will cost.

The Pentagon is draining resources from training, maintenance and weapons programs to keep the conflict going. Congress is being asked to supply billions more. And the American people—already struggling under the weight of debt, inflation and economic uncertainty—are expected to pay without question.

This is government without accountability.

When Trump’s decisions cost American lives, deplete military stockpiles and burn through billions of taxpayer dollars, the bill never finds its way to him. It finds its way to us, while Trump remains conspicuously insulated from the human and financial consequences of his own decisions.

That insulation from consequence is matched by a swaggering display of bluster and bravado that passes for leadership within the Trump administration.

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ANOTHER ONE: Indian Illegal Alien Trucker with Valid California CDL Busted Hauling Nearly $3 Million in Stolen Military-Grade Powder – Now in ICE Custody

Here we go again.

An illegal alien from India who possessed a valid California commercial driver’s license is now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after authorities caught him transporting nearly $3 million worth of stolen tungsten oxide powder.

The suspect, identified as 31-year-old Deepak Kumar, was arrested in Greenfield, Indiana, after police tracked his tractor-trailer traveling westbound on Interstate 70.

The truck was wanted in connection with a massive cargo theft reported in Pennsylvania on June 25.

According to the Greenfield Police Department, Kumar is suspected of using fraudulent documents to obtain nearly 40,000 pounds of tungsten oxide powder valued at a staggering $2,857,500.

The powder was being shipped to Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in Japan.

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US-Israel Defense Integration on Horizon as House Keeps Section 219 in NDAA

The House is preparing to vote on the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with Section 219 (formerly section 224) still embedded in the roughly $1.1 trillion bill.

The House approved the rule governing debate on H.R. 8800 by a 214-211 vote Tuesday, July 21. The vote allowed the chamber to proceed with the NDAA but excluded the amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would have removed Section 219.

Lawmakers will not receive a separate vote on the bipartisan amendment that sought to remove the section, a proposal to expand U.S.-Israel defense technology cooperation that has garnered strong rebukes in certain political and defense circles.

The House expects to hold a recorded vote on the complete NDAA on Wednesday.

What Section 219 Would Do

Section 219 would direct the defense secretary to designate a Pentagon “executive agent” to oversee the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. That official would coordinate bilateral defense research, development, testing, evaluation and industrial cooperation.

The proposal originated as the bipartisan, bicameral United States-Israel FUTURES Act, introduced in the House by Reps. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) and Don Davis (D-N.C.) with companion legislation from Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

Jackson framed the proposal as a way to preserve America’s technological advantage and deliver new battlefield capabilities to service members. Davis emphasized its potential to prepare troops for evolving threats, particularly unmanned systems and electronic warfare.

Sens. Budd and Gillibrand have similarly presented the initiative as an expansion of existing work on missile defense, drones, and underground threats as a means to strengthen American military and technological capabilities.

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