Tag: military industrial complex

Google removes pledge to not use AI for weapons from website

Google removed a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance from its website this week. The change was first spotted by Bloomberg. The company appears to have updated its public AI principles page, erasing a section titled “applications we will not pursue,” which was still included as recently as last week.

Asked for comment, the company pointed TechCrunch to a new blog post on “responsible AI.” It notes, in part, “we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.”

Google’s newly updated AI principles note the company will work to “mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias,” as well as align the company with “widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

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Shifting Sands At Diego Garcia

The military base at Diego Garcia, the so-called ”Footprint of Freedom,” is  a seventeen-square mile atoll of the Chagos Island chain in the Indian Ocean. It is one of the most important and secretive overseas installations operated by the United States. The fact that the legal status of that island may now be in transition from the United Kingdom to Mauritius is a matter of deep concern.

In the words of Robert Kaplan,” The Indian Ocean will be “Center Stage for the Twenty-First Century.” “Like a microcosm of the world at large, the greater Indian Ocean region is developing into an area of both ferociously guarded sovereignty (with fast-growing economies and militaries) and astonishing interdependence (with its pipelines and land and sea routes).”

Due to its location in the very center of the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia functions as a critical logistics hub for both the United States as well as the United Kingdom which currently holds the island as an overseas territory. Its central location  allows for rapid deployment of military forces  to project power outward across the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia, as well as providing a key refueling and supply station for naval and air operations. Bombers flown from Diego Garcia participated in the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

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US Readies New $1BN Arms Sale To Israel As Netanyahu Arrives In Washington

While the name of the game for Trump has been cut, cut, cut and put a halt to all wasteful and corrupt US foreign aid siphoned abroad, funds sent to Israel have remained untouched.

And now the Trump administration is readying a new $1 billion arms sale to Israel, including 4,700 1,000-pound bombs and armored bulldozers. Trump is requesting fresh Congressional approval for the potential sale.

The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story Monday, wrote “The planned weapons sales include 4,700 1,000-pound bombs, worth more than $700 million, as well as armored bulldozers built by Caterpillar, worth more than $300 million, the officials said.”

“The new arms requests, which would be paid for from the billions of dollars in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington and set to meet President Trump on Tuesday to discuss the cease-fire in Gaza, a separate truce in Lebanon and tensions in the wider Middle East,” the report continued.

This comes amid the backdrop of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arriving in Washington D.C. on Monday, ahead of his scheduled White House visit with Trump Tuesday.

Crucially, Netanyahu will be the first world leader to meet with Trump since the Jan.20 inauguration. Israel remains America’s closest official Mideast ally, and a meeting between a new president and Israel’s head of state is typical spanning back multiple administrations.

But these are sensitive times, given the fragile Gaza ceasefire and hostage/prisoner swap deal is still ongoing. Some hardliners close to Netanyahu oppose it, even while families of the hostages have pressed for it to go all the way until all hostages alive and deceased are returned.

The Tuesday meeting in the Oval Office is expected to be dominated by these several issues:

  • Preserving the Gaza ceasefire
  • A potential deal to finally achieve Israel-Saudi relations
  • Moving forward with a total $8 billion in arms transfers

These issues are somewhat interlocking. Trump has stood with Netanyahu on the stance of wanting to see the final military eradication of Hamas, but Trump has also hailed the ceasefire as ultimately the product of his administration entering office.

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California’s ‘Gay As F**k’ Top Military Commander

Many have professed to find “two Americas” in the nation’s economic and racial divisions, but nowhere is there more of an estrangement between Americans than in the political and cultural realms. A fresh indication of that comes from the center of the loony left, the California S.S.R. itself, where a top National Guard commander proudly displayed a gay flag in his office and promptly got a promotion from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Make Me President). Well, of course he did. The meteoric rise of Major Gen. Matt Beevers is an indication of how spectacularly insane the left has become.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that Beevers “featured a flag that read ‘gay as f**k’ in his office at the California National Guard’s headquarters in Sacramento, the July 2022 photo taken inside his office shows.” Imagine how Patton or Marshall would have reacted to the sight of a senior officer displaying such a flag. But they lived a long, long time ago, and instead of removing Beevers from command or even reprimanding him, Newsom promoted him to head of the National Guard in California. Apparently being “gay as f**k,” or thinking that being “gay as f**k” is terrific, is a prerequisite for advancement in Gavin Newsom’s military.

Beevers is married to a woman, which suggests that either he has a decidedly unconventional marriage, or that his support for the left’s efforts to destroy the traditional family and normalize all manner of delusions and perversions does not emanate from his personal proclivities, but from his deeply held convictions. Even if Beevers rejects the trans madness and everything that goes along with it, which is extraordinarily unlikely, his display of the flag still represents a common but nevertheless unacceptable lack of attention to what the National Guard is supposed to be spending its time doing. As President Trump has emphasized, the military should be concerned with protecting Americans, not with advancing social agendas. Gavin Newsom obviously has different ideas. 

The Free Beacon notes that this was no perfunctory or pro forma bow to the prevailing winds. On the contrary, “the flag was displayed in Beevers’s office for several months before a servicemember of the California National Guard took the photo.” And now that Beevers is in charge, “former California National Guard officers who served under Beevers said the vulgar display—and his other actions in office—raise serious questions about whether his focus on ‘woke DEI priorities’ over operational excellence has hampered the Guard’s ability to properly respond to natural disasters including the deadly Los Angeles fires earlier this month.” Excellent questions. Will Gavin Newsom answer them? Come on, man! 

Newsom will ignore Beevers’ “gay as f**k” flag despite the fact that the woke general’s “decision to dismantle a highly trained volunteer firefighting force under his command just months before the outbreak of the Los Angeles fires” turned out to be “a move that rendered the Guard incapable of sending a complete firefighting force to the city until 10 days after the fires broke out.” Was Beevers too distracted with his duties advancing the gay agenda to pay attention to such mundane matters? After all, didn’t he have some illegal migrants on hand to do the jobs he didn’t want to do?

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Military Whistleblowers Are Warning that the Inspector General of the Military’s Health Agency is ‘Falsely’ Claiming Non-Disclosure Agreements are Required to Start Investigations

Military whistleblowers are revealing that the Defense Health Agency (DHA) Office of the Inspector General (IG) is falsely claiming Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) are necessary to begin investigating the complaints of service members. What could the IG be attempting to hide from the public about their investigative processes and more? Where is the transparency?

Ted Macie, a retired Navy Medical Service Corps officer and military whistleblower reached out to The Gateway Pundit, revealing that prior to his retirement last year, he submitted a complaint to the Department of Defense (DOD) IG for whistleblower retaliation after being investigated for a viral post on X concerning heart issues among active-duty military pilots. Interestingly, he said, the information was already disclosed to the proper channels.

After being deprived of computer access by his command for the 10 months leading up to his retirement, the investigation found no evidence of any wrongdoing. For this reason, Macie submitted a complaint to the DHA IG on May 31, 2024.

In emails reviewed by this author and shared on X, it was confirmed that beginning on June 3, 2024, Macie shared a series of back-and-forth emails with Deidre Tracy, an investigator for DHA IG.

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Sports and Militarism Shouldn’t Mix

I’m a sports fan. And last weekend I caught the epic clash between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, once again won by the Chiefs and the magical Patrick Mahomes. Yet seemingly no big NFL game is complete without a military flyover, in this instance by a B-2 nuclear stealth bomber. There’s nothing like mixing potential nuclear Armageddon with football — it’s uniquely American.

It put me to mind of this article that I wrote in 2018 for TomDispatch. We just can’t seem to be able to play ball nowadays without the event turning into a celebration of the U.S. military and its most deadly weaponry. There’s a place for everything, and the place for combat jets, military camouflage and the like is not at sporting events. Sports is supposed to bring us together in a thrilling celebration of competition that isn’t deadly. When the game ends, after all, opponents shake hands, even hug; they walk away together, knowing there’ll always be another game. Another chance at victory. Life, even in defeat, goes on.

War, to state the obvious, isn’t like that — at all. Make sports not war, America.

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Weird! Lockheed Martin Boasted Of Remote Blackhawk Helicopter Technology Three Months Before Tragic DC Aerial Disaster

The internet is buzzing with rumors and speculation following the tragic airplane and helicopter crash in Washington D.C. Wednesday.

An American Airlines passenger jet and Army Black Hawk helicopter collided around 9 p.m. Eastern near Reagan National Airport, causing both aircraft to fall into the Potomac River where 67 people died according to officials.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a video went viral showing top U.S. military contractor Lockheed Martin advertising technology that allows Black Hawk helicopters to be flown autonomously.

During the October 2024 Association of the United States Army National Convention, the “Black Hawk of the future” was advertised by Sikorsky Vice President Richard Benton.

Stephanie Hill, the president of Rotary and Mission Systems boasted the technology would allow the military to “fly this optimally piloted autonomous Black Hawk in Connecticut from three hundred miles away right here in Washington D.C.”

With the push of a button on an iPad, Hill commanded the helicopter to take off and simulate “tested logistic operations.”

The Lockheed video said its “MATRIX flight autonomy system” will deliver the future of flight.

According to the U.S. Army, the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the American Airlines flight was engaged in a training flight carrying three soldiers from “Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, out of Davison Army Airfield, Fort Belvoir.”

Is it possible the new autonomous tech was being tested during the flight or that the aircraft was somehow hacked?

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Thermonuclear Crack: The Death Wish of the ‘Elites’

Isn’t it high time we “augment” our nuclear force “posture”? Shouldn’t we fight to achieve peace through nuclear “strength” and “deterrence”? Isn’t it smart to “refurbish, rebuild, and modernize” the nuclear triad? What a great “investment” that is! And a “job-creator” too!

These are some of the buzz words thrown about by the nuclear “elites” in America. They want to sell us on new ICBMs (the Sentinel), a new stealth bomber (the B-21 Raider), and new nuclear SLBMs (on Columbia-class submarines). All this thermonuclear stupidity is projected to cost roughly $2 trillion over the next 30 years. Quite the “investment,” right?

What the “experts” don’t talk about is the genocidal and exterminatory nature of these thermonuclear bombs and missiles. They don’t talk about the destruction of most life forms on our planet due to thermonuclear winter. They don’t talk about the enormous and rapidly mushrooming cost of these weapons. (For example, the B-21 has already climbed from $550 million per plane to $750 million; much like a missile, Sentinel costs have rocketed upward even more rapidly.) And they sure as hell don’t talk about the immorality of mass murder.

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Trump To Sign Order Creating A New ‘Iron Dome’ U.S. Missile Defense System

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order today to create an ‘Iron Dome’ style defense system in the United States, DailyMail.com has learned.

It would be an American version of the famed Israeli missile defense system. 

Incoming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hinted the order was coming when he walked into the Pentagon on Monday, his first day on the new job. 

‘Today, there are more executive orders coming that we fully support, on removing DEI inside the Pentagon, reinstating troops who were pushed out because of COVID mandates, Iron Dome for America,’ he told reporters. ‘This is happening quickly.’

Trump had vowed to build such a system upon his return to the White House.

‘We will replenish our military and build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that no enemy can strike our homeland,’ he said this summer at the Republican National Convention.

‘Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system,’ he noted. ‘Why should other countries have this, and we don’t?’

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US Army’s Next-Gen Hybrid Tactical Vehicle To Replace Humvee Tested In Germany

The US Army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, recently tested General Motors Defense’s Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), built on the chassis of a Chevrolet Colorado truck, in the snowy Bavarian mountains of Germany. 

GM Defense’s mobility solutions team designed the ISV with commercial off-the-shelf parts. ISV is based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck platform, using a 2.8L Duramax turbo-diesel engine with an advanced 12-module battery pack. 

“The testing occurred during the annual Combined Resolve 25-1 exercise, where the Army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, maneuvered the vehicle across various operational scenarios, demonstrating its adaptability and effectiveness in challenging terrains,” Interesting Engineering wrote in a note, adding, “The trial emphasized ISV’s capabilities in advanced reconnaissance missions, which are crucial for troops to collect and transmit vital battlefield intelligence, especially in adverse conditions.” 

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