Tag: military industrial complex

Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years: CBO

President Donald Trump’s proposed missile defense system dubbed the “Golden Dome” is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over two decades, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. 

The nonpartisan office described the analysis as one that provides “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific administration proposal,” according to the Associated Press. 

Trump had ordered the system in an executive order during his first week of his second presidency, In a series of posts on X, the Department of War described it as a “layered, integrated shield” that will defend the U.S. against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, advanced cruise missiles and next-generation aerial attacks.

“From a NORAD and NORTHCOM perspective, the requirement is clear. To defend North America and win tomorrow’s fight, we must maintain our war-fighting advantages and operate beyond stove-piped systems operating at human speed. Golden Dome is forging the integrated, automated battle management network needed to see every threat, make decisions in milliseconds, and keep America safe,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Piper, deputy director of operations at NORAD.

The CBO report notes that its estimate lacks many details from the Department of War about what and how many systems would be deployed. This makes it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the Golden Dome system, the report explains. 

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A $1.5 Trillion Military Budget Is a Gift to the Grifters

Last week “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth insulted Americans by claiming that a 50 percent increase in the US military budget – from an incomprehensible one trillion dollars to an impossible one and a half trillion – was a “fiscally responsible investment.”

“Thanks to President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget, this War Department has moved from bureaucracy to business,” he said last Thursday.

In a way he was right, though. The huge increase is much more about “business” than what is needed to protect the United States from potential invasion.

But it isn’t the kind of “business” that most supporters of free markets would applaud. On the contrary, this is the business of transferring massive amounts of wealth from the struggling middle and working classes to the well-connected Beltway elite based on lies and scare tactics.

The US mainstream media is crucial in manufacturing the fairy tale that if we don’t mortgage our children’s and grandchildren’s future to finance this obscene military budget, we will be attacked or invaded by some evil foreign power.

It’s not difficult to do a little research and see why the mainstream – and even some “independent” – media outlets push these scare tactics: they are owned or funded by giant corporations with close ties to military contractors.

This unhealthy relationship is known as “corporatism” – the intermingling of pseudo-private companies with the government. It is the precursor to actual fascism, where the government takes a stake in such companies.

We’re getting there faster than most Americans understand.

The whole scam is not about protecting the citizens of the United States. It’s about protecting the US empire overseas, which actually harms the citizens of the United States.

Yes, they rob us to fund their empire and lie to us that it keeps us safe. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our constant military interventions on virtually every continent of the globe only build resentment among the rest of the world’s population. Anyone who thinks people overseas welcome US bombs has been watching too much Fox News or reading too much Washington Post.

And what do we get for the most expensive military on earth – larger than the combined militaries of the next dozen or so countries? Not much. Iran’s military budget is less than one percent of ours, yet Iran destroyed or disabled every US military base in the Middle East.

It turns out that Iran has destroyed dozens of multi-million dollar US spy drones – and several near-billion dollar spy radar stations – with their own drones costing mere thousands of dollars each.

The US surprise attack was supposed to make Iran cower and beg for mercy, but it did the opposite: it showed that despite the trillions extorted from Americans for the most expensive military on earth, the US military can no longer win the wars that US presidents illegally force them into fighting.

The US military continues to fight World War II – with massively expensive aircraft carriers that do not dare get close to combat – while warfighting has evolved into something entirely different.

The only good thing about the Iran war is that it demonstrates how much the special interests have lied to us about the need to continue our suicidal military spending increases.

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Wall Street Is Pairing Up With the Army to Build Data Centers

Two trends, seemingly separate, have been accelerating over the past few years. First, Wall Street has been plowing billions of dollars into financing data centers. Second, the U.S. military has been ramping up its use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Now, these two trends are directly merging. In late March 2026, the U.S. Army announced its selection of companies to build and operate two hyperscaled data centers on two different military installations. Both data centers — one at Fort Bliss, Texas, the other at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah — will be backed by some of the world’s top Wall Street firms.

An Army spokesperson told Truthout that the Army has entered into “an exclusive negotiation period” with the companies to negotiate “specific lease economics” on what will be “long term, 50-year” leases.

The spokesperson also said that “[i]nstead of receiving cash for the lease, the Army will be compensated through ‘in-kind consideration,’” meaning that “the Army accepts services or improvements of equal or greater value in lieu of cash rent — specifically, a key portion of the dedicated data computation capabilities to directly support our warfighting needs.”

The data centers will be “100 percent privately financed, built, and operated by the developers,” said the Army spokesperson, and confirmed that they “are indeed commercial data centers” that will be allowed to sell off excess computing capacity commercially.

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Two feds nicknamed the ‘Alien Girls’ attempting to interview UFO witnesses at military bases around country

They are the Women in Black.

A pair of Government Accountability Office workers nicknamed the “Alien Girls” are touring military bases in an attempt to interview purported UFO witnesses, The Post has learned.

The non-partisan legislative-branch agency launched its probe of UFO disclosures and claims it is reviewing the practices of previous executive-branch alien investigators.

The two unidentified female investigators quickly move from formalities in the interviews to directly asking if their subject has witnessed unexplained craft, sources with direct knowledge of the interviews said.

They also offer their interviewees a classified setting where they can share their out-of-this-world tales, sources said.

Some of those interviewed questioned whether the GAO alien girls had high enough clearance to hear the classified information that some UFO witnesses would be able to share from their personal experiences. 

The agency claimed that their investigation is focused on previous government investigations into UFOs — and that the results will be keep under lock and key.

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US greenlights bomb deal for Ukraine

The administration of US President Donald Trump has approved the potential sale of precision-guided bomb kits worth $373.6 million to Ukraine, following congressional pressure over stalled arms deliveries.

The move was announced by the State Department on Tuesday, greenlighting a possible Foreign Military Sale of 1,532 JDAM-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) tail kits and related support equipment to Kiev. The equipment could be used to convert heavy bombs into GPS-guided munitions that can hit targets dozens of kilometers away. Boeing, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is listed as the primary contractor.

The deal does not guarantee that the weapons will be delivered, while the figures represent the maximum quantity and value of the purchase, with details subject to further negotiations and congressional review.

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‘You’ve Got to be Freaking Kidding Me’: U.S. Military Spends Over $700 Million for Ozempic and Other GLP-1 Weight Loss Meds

Military personnel criticize the hundreds of millions spent on weight loss medications as a misguided approach to addressing the obesity crisis in the U.S. Armed Forces.

A report from the American Security Project in 2025 revealed that approximately 68 percent—two out of three—of the military’s Reserve and National Guard forces are classified as overweight.

Subsequent to this report, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth expressed his concern on X, stating, “Completely unacceptable. This is what happens when standards are IGNORED – and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here. We will be FIT, not FAT.”

Was the solution found in raising the bar for “REAL fitness & weight standards?” Perhaps they were. However, some startling revelations concerning weight loss have emerged, with RealClearInvestigations dubbing this disclosure the “Waste of the Day.”

Since 2021, the military has allocated nearly $726 million for Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight loss medications, with $274.6 million spent in fiscal year 2025, as revealed by spending records acquired by Open the Books.

This expenditure encompasses 102,597 individual purchases, all made through the Defense Logistics Agency for “troop support.” The majority of the funds were directed to the wholesale pharmaceutical company Cencora. Over a dozen varieties of GLP-1 medications were acquired, including Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Trulicity.

Many individuals—and taxpayers alike—who have served in the military are infuriated.

Lt. Ted Macie, a retired Navy Medical Service Corps officer, was appalled. He informed The Gateway Pundit that data obtained from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) indicate that obesity rates have surged in the military over the last decade.

From 2016 to 2019, an average of 13,863 cases of overweight and obesity were documented across all branches of service. This average rose to 21,969 between 2020 and 2023. Remarkably, there was a 190 percent increase during this period, with cases soaring from 12,249 to 35,531.

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Chinese engineer stole US military and NASA software for years

International espionage isn’t always about sophisticated malware and zero-day bugs. Sometimes it’s as simple as pretending to be someone else asking for a favor.

For four years, a Chinese aerospace engineer did just that. Dozens of researchers at NASA, the US military, and major universities handed him exactly what he asked for, and possibly violated US laws in the process.

His name is Song Wu. He’s been on the FBI’s wanted list since September 2024, charged with 14 counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft, and he’s still at large.

Wu’s day job was as an engineer at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a Beijing-headquartered state-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate with over 400,000 employees. The US has AVIC and several subsidiaries on a sanctions list.

His side hustle was simpler. From January 2017 through December 2021, Wu set up email accounts impersonating real US researchers and engineers, then emailed their colleagues asking for source code and proprietary software. He targeted employees at NASA, the Air Force, Navy, Army, and FAA, and faculty at universities across the US.

When software is a weapon

The applications Wu was after handle aerospace engineering and computational fluid dynamics. It’s the kind of intellectual property that helps develop advanced tactical missiles and evaluate weapons performance, and it sits squarely inside US export controls, according to NASA’s Office of the Inspector General. Sharing it with the wrong person, even by accident, is a federal problem.

Some victims did transmit the requested code. They were, in the OIG’s careful phrasing, “unwittingly” violating export control law.

How a four-year campaign finally broke

It wasn’t a firewall that caught Wu. It was a tip.

NASA’s Cyber Crimes Division got a report that someone had set up a Gmail account claiming to be an established aerospace professor who frequently collaborated with NASA. From that single thread, investigators unwound a campaign that had quietly targeted dozens of researchers across the federal government and academia.

The OIG also noted the giveaways: Wu asked for the same software multiple times and never explained why he needed it. Those are tells that anyone could have spotted on a slow afternoon if they’d been looking.

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Britain Lacks Money to Buy New Weapons Until 2030, Senior UK Official Admits

Gen. Richard Barrons, former head of the British Joint Forces Command and co-author of the UK government’s Strategic Defense Review, told media that the country lacked the funds to purchase new weapons until at least 2030.

In June 2025, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that London would be moving to “war preparedness” as part of its new defense strategy. The media reported on April 6 of this year that legislation to increase defense readiness would be delayed until at least mid-2027.

Barrons warned that the British armed forces can only “think about” preparing for war because they lack the money to buy new weapons until 2030 due to funding shortages, according to the publication.

The lack of investment is “depleting” the industrial base and forcing defense companies to move production overseas.

The newspaper clarified that the army barely has enough money for tanks, helicopters, and artillery, but not for loitering munitions, kamikaze drones, or artificial intelligence-based systems.

The new Strategic Defense Review (SDR) was published in June 2025 amid the UK’s plans to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. Specifically, the document includes a recommendation to create a nuclear warhead modernization program, to which the British leadership plans to allocate 15 billion pounds ($20 billion).

In recent years, Russia has noted unprecedented NATO activity along its western borders. The alliance is expanding its initiatives and calling it “deterring Russian aggression.” Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern about the bloc’s buildup of forces in Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously emphasized that Western politicians regularly frighten their populations with an imaginary Russian threat to distract from domestic problems, but “smart people understand perfectly well that this is a fake.”

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As the War in Iran Drains Stockpiles, US Warns European Allies of Long Delays in Weapons Deliveries

There’s never going to be enough missiles for the number of military conflicts going on.

US officials have informed some European ‘allies’ – including the UK, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Norway – that some contracted weapons deliveries will be ​delayed ⁠as the Iran war continues to deplete weapons ​stocks.

The Pentagon has warned the countries to expect serious delays for several missile systems.

Financial Times reported:

“The delays are partly driven by acute concerns about US inventory levels given the high volume of weapons used in the past two months in Iran. The American military has already been forced to move weapons from other regions, including the Indo-Pacific, to make up for the shortfalls.

But the Iran war has also deepened concerns about whether the US has a sufficient stockpile of weapons to deter Beijing or defeat China in any future conflict over Taiwan.”

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Trump Says Not Worried About Depletion of US Arms Stocks Amid Iran Conflict

US President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed concerns about depleting US weapons stocks due to the armed conflict with Iran.

On April 21, Trump said that the ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran was positive as it allowed the US military to replenish its ammunition stocks.

“We have more than double what we had when this started. I am not worried,” Trump told reporters when asked about reports that White House officials are worried about a significant reduction is the US inventory.

On Monday, The Atlantic reported, citing two senior Trump administration officials, that Vice President JD Vance has on several occasions raised questions, behind closed doors, regarding the Department of War’s depiction of the conflict with Iran, and whether the Pentagon has been objective in its assessments of US missile stockpiles.

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