Tag: military industrial complex

Ecuadorians reject return of US bases

Voters in Ecuador have rejected a proposal to bring US military bases back to the country, in a national referendum held on Sunday.

With around 95% of ballots counted, the official tally shows that 60.58% voted against President Daniel Noboa’s initiative to allow foreign troops to operate in Ecuador as part of efforts to fight organized crime and drug trafficking.

Noboa said he accepts the results. “We consulted with the Ecuadorians, and they have spoken. We fulfilled our promise to ask them directly. We respect the will of the Ecuadorian people,” he wrote on X.

US troops were stationed at an airbase in the port city of Manta until 2009, when then-President Rafael Correa refused to renew the lease and banned foreign bases in Ecuador.

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CCP Linked Entities Hold Properties Adjacent to Military Bases Across the US

Over the past few years, several sensitive properties near U.S. military bases have been purchased by Chinese entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party. In 2022, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government panel that reviews foreign purchases of American land or companies for national security risks, received a tip that a company called MineOne had bought land within a mile of an air base.

The report triggered a national security review. MineOne, which is majority owned by nationals of the People’s Republic of China, purchased 12 acres within one mile of Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and began converting the property into a cryptocurrency-mining facility.

Also in 2022, Chinese billionaire Zhong Shanshan purchased 23 acres of industrial land in Nashua, New Hampshire, for $67 million. The site is close to L3Harris Technologies, near BAE Systems’ electronic systems division, and within 30 minutes of New Boston Space Force Station. The sale bypassed CFIUS review despite its proximity to these defense facilities.

In 2023, Fufeng Group bought 370 acres about 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base. The company’s chairman, Li Xuechun, served as a deputy to the Shandong Province People’s Congress and was honored as a provincial Model Laborer. Grand Forks Air Force Base was being expanded at the time to lead future intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations. Fufeng leadership has repeatedly emphasized the Party’s role in guiding the company’s development. The project was halted after Pentagon objections.

That same year, Chinese real estate tycoon Sun Guangxin spent tens of millions to buy more than 140,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base, where U.S. military pilots train. Sun is a former captain in the People’s Liberation Army with close links to the CCP. His senior advisers are former PLA generals, and he operates dozens of CCP grassroots branches. The land includes a private runway and sits between Laughlin Air Force Base and the U.S.-Mexico border. Sun is the wealthiest businessman in Xinjiang Province and a long-time CCP member.

Some of these problematic purchases are harder to trace back to the Chinese Communist Party because they are carried out through layers of shell companies and intermediary entities, sometimes using U.S. or Canadian residents to further obscure CCP involvement. One example is the network of companies connected to Esther Mei and her husband, Cheng Hu, which corporate and property records show has acquired land beside several sensitive U.S. military installations.

One of these properties, the Knob Noster Trailer Park in Missouri, sits directly outside Whiteman Air Force Base, home of the B-2 Spirit nuclear-capable stealth bomber fleet.

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US approves new $330m arms deal for Taiwan

Washington has cleared a $330-million package of aircraft parts and maintenance support for Taiwan on 13 November, marking the first US arms sale since President Donald Trump returned to office. 

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the approval and thanked Washington for continuing what it described as a policy of regularized arms sales.

The State Department decision includes equipment, spare parts, and repair services for Taiwan’s fleet of US-made F-16 and C-130 aircraft, as well as components for its domestically produced Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF). 

The Pentagon said the proposed sale “will improve the recipient’s capability to meet current and future threats by maintaining the operational readiness of the recipient’s fleet of F-16, C-130,” and other aircraft.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the package will help maintain fighter readiness, bolster air defenses, and strengthen the island’s ability to respond to China’s “gray-zone” incursions. 

President Lai Ching-te’s government has vowed to ramp up defense spending amid China’s continued military pressure around the island. 

Taiwan’s presidential office called the deepening security partnership with Washington “an important cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Beijing expressed anger at the sale, repeating its claim that Taiwan is part of its territory. 

China’s Foreign Ministry said “the Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in China–US relations,” and warned that China will do what is necessary to defend its “sovereignty, territorial integrity and security.”

Taiwan requested the package earlier this year, seeking “non-standard components, spare and repair parts, consumables and accessories, and repair and return support for F-16, C-130, and Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF) aircraft,” according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Trump has said Chinese President Xi Jinping told him he would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office, a remark made after the two leaders met in South Korea as trade discussions continued. 

Reuters reported there had been “fear in Taipei that there could have been some sort of ‘selling out’ of Taiwan’s interests,” which did not materialize as Washington proceeded with the sale.

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American B-2 Stealth Bomber Fleet and a CCP-Linked Trailer Park, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

A trailer park, a billionaire linked to Chinese Communist Party intelligence services, and a U.S. nuclear bomber facility. It would be rejected by Hollywood as too far-fetched for a movie plot, but the story is frighteningly real.

A foreign-owned trailer park in rural Missouri sits directly beside Whiteman Air Force Base, the home of America’s nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber fleet. The Knob Noster Trailer Park lies less than a mile from the runway, separated from the base by only a fence. Business records show the property was acquired in 2017 through a maze of shell companies ultimately controlled by a Canadian couple, Esther Mei and Cheng Hu.

The couple has documented ties to Chinese tycoon Miles Guo, also known as Guo Wengui or Ho Wan Kwok, who has described himself as a former intelligence “affiliate” of the Chinese Communist Party. Guo was convicted in July 2024 on nine federal counts, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering in a billion-dollar fraud scheme.

Guo Wengui rose from a poor village in Shandong to become a flamboyant Beijing real estate tycoon operating in the gray zone between business and the Chinese security state. He functioned as a “white glove,” facilitating deals and protection for powerful officials while amassing wealth through politically connected construction projects. A key relationship was with Ma Jian, the powerful head of Chinese counterintelligence in the Ministry of State Security, with whom Guo later admitted having a long-running partnership as an “affiliate” of the security services.

Ma Jian allegedly used his position to shield Guo’s businesses and crush rivals, including an episode where a vice mayor who blocked one of Guo’s projects was brought down using compromising surveillance footage, clearing the way for Guo’s development. Guo cultivated access to senior Chinese and foreign elites, hosted lavish dinners, maintained a garage full of supercars, and even acted as a cutout to meet the Dalai Lama on behalf of Chinese intelligence.

In 2015, after a high-stakes business dispute and the arrest of Ma Jian, Guo fled China, reportedly leaving just ahead of his own likely detention. He settled first in the UK and then in New York, where he purchased a $67.5 million penthouse in the Sherry-Netherland and quickly became a person of interest to U.S. authorities.

He met repeatedly with the FBI, providing detailed information on the finances and personal lives of Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping’s family, effectively trading intelligence for protection. At the same time, he began reinventing himself as an anti-CCP dissident and built a media and political ecosystem in the United States.

In 2017, Steve Bannon needed new financial backers and found in Guo a wealthy partner who shared an aggressive stance against the Chinese Communist Party. Together they launched ventures such as GTV Media Group and promoted the “New Federal State of China,” a self-styled anti-CCP “government in exile” announced in a choreographed event on a boat in New York Harbor.

Guo’s media outlets promoted conservative content, targeting mainly Chinese expatriates and right-wing circles. He simultaneously pushed branded products, cryptocurrencies, and investment schemes that raised hundreds of millions of dollars until the SEC ruled several offerings illegal and forced large restitution, leading to GTV’s shutdown.

Despite presenting himself as a champion of Chinese freedom, Guo waged aggressive campaigns against long-established Chinese dissidents in the West, mobilizing followers to harass them at their homes and accusing them of being CCP spies using classic Communist rhetoric. At one point he publicly offered to “atone” to Beijing, asking the Chinese leadership to assign him a “clear, targeted task” to prove his patriotism and support for Xi Jinping.

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Hegseth Orders Pentagon to “Wartime Footing,” Tightens Ties With Industry

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), recently rebranded as the Department of War (DOW), is shifting its focus to a “wartime footing.” In a speech to a group of defense-industry executives and DOD officials on Friday, Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined a broad plan to overhaul the Pentagon’s acquisition system and speed up weapons production:

Our objective is simple: Transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing, to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results…. American industry and spirit are begging to be unleashed to solve our most complex and dangerous war-fighting problems. We need to get out of our own way, out of your way, and enter into real partnership with you rather than overprescribe and decelerate your natural progress.

He later underscored:

We’re not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing. Building for victory should our adversaries FAFO [f*** around and find out].

The “transformation” was urgent, he said:

This is a 1939 moment, or hopefully a 1981 moment, a moment of mounting urgency. Enemies gather, threats grow. You feel it. I feel it. If we are going to prevent and avoid war, which is what we all want, we must prepare now.

Bureaucracy and Rumsfeld’s Shadow

Hegseth began his address by naming his “adversary” as being not on a battlefield, but inside the Pentagon. “The foe I’m talking about is much closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said. “Not the people, but the process; not the civilians, but the system.” He called it “one of the last bastions of central planning” that “with brutal consistency stifles free thought and crushes new ideas.”

“The modernization of the Department of War is a matter of life and death ultimately of every American,” declared the secretary.

Then came an unexpected admission. “The speech so far is not my own,” Hegseth said. “Those words are practically verbatim from a speech given by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 10, 2001.” He ended by again invoking Rumsfeld, urging the audience to build on “Rumsfeld’s vision.” That vision — outlined one day before 9/11 — was meant to “liberate” the Pentagon from bureaucracy. Instead, it ushered in two decades of war, privatization, and unchecked spending.

Rumsfeld’s name now carries a toxic legacy. His call to streamline defense spending became the justification for expanding it. He presided over the Iraq invasion, privatized logistics on an unprecedented scale, and normalized permanent war as policy.

By reviving that speech, Hegseth aligned himself not with meaningful reform to shrink the war machine, but with the model that made reform nearly impossible — one that equated efficiency with removing oversight and security with continuous mobilization.

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US To Build Base On Gaza Border – Thousands Troops To Support Ceasefire

This story is developing…

The Hebrew news outlet YNET is reporting the United States will spend $500 million to establish a base on the Gaza border in order to ensure implementation of the Gaza peace deal negotiated by The White House. The location is reported to host ‘thousands’ of American troops.

In related news, YNET is reporting Hamas is regaining control over the Gaza population as residents move to camps in Gaza due to the inability of residents to live amongst the rubble.

The next stage of the Trump plan envisions a further IDF withdrawal beyond the yellow line, creation of a transitional governing authority, deployment of a multinational force to replace Israeli troops, Hamas’s disarmament, and the start of reconstruction. But no timelines or enforcement mechanisms have been agreed upon. Hamas refuses to disarm, Israel opposes any Palestinian Authority involvement, and uncertainty persists over the multinational force.

“We’re still working out ideas,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said this month at a security conference in Manama. “Everybody wants this conflict over, all of us want the same endgame here. Question is, how do we make it work?”

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US Army Prepares Million Drone Acquisition To Secure Domain Dominance On Modern Battlefield

Nearly four months after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced sweeping reforms aimed at achieving “drone domain dominance” by 2027, including a Pentagon-wide procurement overhaul led by the DOGE, Reuters reports that the U.S. Army is preparing to acquire at least one million drones over the next few years, marking one of the largest drone procurement cycles in the military service’s history. 

Learning from the modern battlefield in Ukraine, the Army plans a massive ramp-up in drones: purchasing at least a million drones over the next 2-3 years, with potential purchases of half a million or more per year thereafter.

This is a significant jump from today’s 50,000 drones per year procurement cycle, and comes as Russia and China have ramped up production of their own. 

U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told Reuters that this new drone acquisition plan is a “big lift. But it is a lift we’re very capable of doing.” 

Here’s more from the report:

He spoke by phone during a visit to Picatinny Arsenal, where he described learning about experimentation with “net rounds,” defenses that capture a drone in nets, as well as new explosives and electromagnetic tools synched into weapon systems.

Driscoll and Picatinny’s top commander, Major General John Reim, spoke to Reuters about how the United States was taking lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has been characterized by drone deployments on an unprecedented scale.

Tiny, inexpensive drones have proven to be one of the most potent weapons in the Russia-Ukraine war, where conventional warplanes are relatively rare because of a dense concentration of anti-aircraft systems near front lines.

Ukraine and Russia each produce roughly 4 million drones a year, but China is probably able to produce more than double that number, Driscoll said.

Driscoll said his priority is getting the United States into a position where it can produce enough drones for any future war, stimulating domestic production of everything from brushless motors and sensors to batteries and circuit boards.

. . . 

“We expect to purchase at least a million drones within the next two to three years,” Driscoll said.

President Trump’s June executive order to “unleash American drone dominance” calls for scaling up domestic production. However, the challenge lies in the fact that supply chains for critical components, such as brushless motors, sensors, batteries, and chips, remain concentrated in China and other Southeast Asian countries.

“Drones are the future of warfare and America will come from behind to lead the way,” Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire stated over the summer on X. 

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Dutch court upholds arms exports to Israel despite acknowledging ‘grave risk’ of genocide

A Dutch appeals court on 6 November confirmed the dismissal of a case filed by pro-Palestinian organizations demanding that the Netherlands end arms exports to Israel and cease trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In its written judgment, the court said it was not within the judiciary’s authority to dictate such measures, stating that the decision lies with the government.

The plaintiffs argued that as a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Dutch state is obliged to take all available steps to prevent genocide, citing Israel’s ongoing mass killing of civilians in Gaza. 

The court agreed that the Netherlands holds that legal obligation and acknowledged “a grave risk” that Israel is committing genocide.

However, the judges maintained that the government already evaluates the risk of human rights abuses before approving military exports and noted that some applications have been denied.

The court also upheld an earlier ruling from December last year that sided with the Dutch state, which claimed it had taken sufficient precautions and halted certain shipments.

The pro-Palestine groups had alleged that Dutch companies supplied Israel with radar systems, F-16 components, warship equipment, police dogs, surveillance cameras, and software. 

The government countered that it has stopped most arms exports to Israel and now only authorizes deliveries of parts used in defensive systems such as the Iron Dome.

Israel has rejected all accusations of genocide, despite a UN inquiry officially announcing it in mid-September, insisting its Gaza campaign targets Hamas.

The appeals court concluded that the pro-Palestine organizations failed to demonstrate that the state systematically neglects its obligations when assessing export risks and therefore could not justify a blanket ban on arms or dual-use items.

Despite their public condemnations of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, European nations remain the largest buyers of Israeli-made weapons, purchasing over $8 billion worth last year, according to Bloomberg. 

Demand is projected to grow further as NATO members prepare to raise defense spending to five percent of GDP by 2035.

The move is heavily dependent on Israel’s deeply integrated defense industries, including Elbit Systems, Rafael, and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

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US To Establish Military Base In Syria’s Damascus

The US is planning to establish a military base in Damascus, Syria, Reuters has reported, as the Trump administration continues to strongly back the new Syrian government that’s led by former al-Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The report said that the US will establish a military presence at an airbase on the outskirts of the Syrian capital for the purpose of enabling a security pact that Washington is attempting to broker between Israel and Syria.

The idea would be for the US military to monitor a potential deal that would include the demilitarization of areas to the south of Damascus. Officials compared it to the US monitoring of the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, which Israel has constantly violated, and the ceasefire deal in Gaza, which Israel has also been in breach of.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry official later told Syria’s state news agency SANA that the Reuters report was “untrue” but did not specifically deny that the US would establish a military presence in Damascus.

“The current stage marks a transformation in the US position towards direct engagement with the Syrian central government in Damascus, and towards supporting the country’s unity while rejecting any calls for partition,” the official said.

A Syrian defense official told Reuters that the US had flown to the base in military C-130 transport aircraft to ensure the runway was usable, and a security guard at one of the base’s entrances said that American aircraft were landing there as part of “tests”.

Previous reports have said that the Trump administration may sign an agreement with the new Syrian government to formalize its military presence in Syria.

The US has been closing bases in northeast Syria but is expected to maintain its presence at the al-Tanf Garrison in the south, which is situated where the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan converge.

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