Tag: military industrial complex

The Fight for Economic Freedom and the Lessons of Roger Ver

The system thrives on coercion, fear, and the risk of choice. At its core, this structure relies on convincing you that compliance is your only option. This is why I refuse to pay income taxes—not just because they are theft and robbery, but because allowing the state to take what is rightfully mine means actively participating in their destruction. Income taxes are the lifeblood of war, systemic violence, and the machinery that suppresses individual freedom. Every dollar taken from you funds the gears of oppression, ensuring the system thrives while your autonomy withers.

When you truly understand what your income tax dollars fund—bombs dropped on innocent civilians, campaigns of violence masquerading as diplomacy, and the erosion of basic liberties—it becomes impossible to remain moral and complicit. You cannot claim to value freedom while funding its destruction. The state counts on your obedience, not just through physical coercion but through psychological manipulation. By paying taxes, you’re not just a victim; you’re an enabler.

People like to argue that they have no choice. But there is always a choice, even if it comes with risks. This is where the state’s true coercion lies—not in the absence of options, but in the consequences of defiance. Fear of punishment keeps people compliant, locked in a cycle of obedience that prioritizes survival over ethics. Choosing to opt out means accepting those risks and reclaiming your autonomy. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. The alternative is to remain shackled, perpetuating the system that thrives on violence, control, and exploitation.

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#1 Weakness Of US Defense Is Its Own General Officers

Decades from now, historians and academics will analyze our current US military. Likely, the analysis will not be kind. Facts:

1. The US has the largest military budget of any country in the world. Currently, the US spends over $831B on defense. This is how this financial outlay compares to other countries in the world as of 2024:

  US   $831 Billion

  China   $227 Billion

  Russia   $109 Billion

  India   $74 Billion

  Saudi Arabia  $71 Billion

  United Kingdom $62 Billion

  Germany  $55 Billion

  Japan   $53 Billion

  Australia  $52 Billion

  France   $49 Billion1

2. The US enjoys the most technologically advanced military in the world. Systems like the F-35 fighter, Ford Class aircraft carrier, UAVs, and cyberwarfare equipment have no equal currently in the world.

 Historians of the future will then ask the obvious question – “Why can’t the US of the early 2000s win long wars?” Many variables need to be considered when explaining success or victory on the battlefield. Technology, quantities of equipment/vehicles, numbers of troops, training of troops, leadership, geography, and weather are among the factors involved. Even luck/misfortune is a variable when the ‘fog of war’ is considered. Wars that last years require immense resources. Long wars also usually exclude luck as an isolated variable because a single ‘lucky’ attack outcome is unlikely to substantially change the outcome of a long, larger war. The obvious conclusion is that the military leadership failed.

 Generals neither start wars nor resource them. These actions belong to politicians and elected civilian officials. However, once the decision to go to war is made, the outcome in the “sandbox” that is the battlefield is dependent on the military leadership in charge of the troops, resources, tactics, and strategy employed.

 Our military looks pretty in videos with its modern equipment and sleek aircraft, ships, and vehicles. Our troops look crisp and smart in their uniforms. US generals brief often their optimistic appraisals they do of the military to describe its state of readiness. This is no different than any other field of endeavor – sports, business, etc. Sports teams can have beautiful stadiums and muscular athletes in smart uniforms, but still have losing records. Businesses can have gorgeous, modern buildings and very stylistic logos but still lose money.

 The critical and tragic difference is that in almost all other professions, failure results in analysis of leadership and likely turnover of leaders that fail to perform to satisfaction. In 2023, 8 of the 32 teams in the NFL fired their head coaches for failing to perform. In the American corporate world, 2024 saw the most CEOs ousted since analyst firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas began tracking the date in 2002 – over 1,800!2

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Elon Musk & SpaceX Are Helping US Intelligence Build The World’s Largest Spy Satellite Network

On Monday, former Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul told his audience on Twitter/X that due to an “internet outage in our area” he would not broadcast his daily live broadcast, The Ron Paul Liberty Report.

Elon Musk, the executive chairman and chief technology officer of Twitter, responded to Paul, stating, “You should get Starlink”. Finally, Paul asked, “That sounds like a great idea! How much does it cost?”

Starlink is what is known as a satellite internet constellation which is operated by Starlink Services, an international telecommunications company that is wholly owned by Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX. Starlink satellites were first launched by SpaceX in 2019, and now reportedly provide internet access to people in more than 100 countries. They have become increasingly popular because of their ease of setup and relatively low cost.

The most recent numbers on Starlink satellites say the satellite constellation consists of more than 7,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit. SpaceX has plans for 12,000 satellites over the coming years. Starlink is said to have more than 4 million worldwide subscribers.

Ron Paul obviously knew what Starlink was, and he might even be aware that Starlink has been a vital part of SpaceX’s success. However, what Ron Paul and most of the general public might not know is that SpaceX has become a key partner of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, and is helping them build a massive surveillance grid.

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The War Whores of the Military-Industrial Complex are Lighting the World on Fire

The Biden administration has triggered another proxy war for Donald Trump to deal with when he becomes president next month. The U.S. deep state is fighting a proxy war in Syria, which appears to be waged with the intention of further destabilizing the Middle East and stirring up another front in World War III.

Syria is collapsing under the weight of another U.S.-sponsored proxy Civil War, with the US, Israel and Sunni jihadists on one side and Russia, Iran, Assad, and Shiite jihadists on the other.

Al Nusra (which is comprised of Al-Qaida and ISIS affiliates) is taking over the country with the help of Turkey, a U.S. ally and key member of the NATO military alliance. These rebels have seized the city of Aleppo and many smaller towns and villages.

M. Dowling at The Independent Sentinel notes that “Jake Sullivan has said Al-Qaida is on our side in Syria.”

Jake Sullivan is Biden’s national security adviser and a key enabler, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, of the anti-Russia obsessed deep-state club that shares one thing in common. They all belong to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dowling notes that Syria’s civil war started in 2011 after an uprising against President Bashar Assad’s rule. The U.S., Russia, Israel and Iran all have a military presence in Syria. Forces opposed to Assad, along with U.S.-backed rebels, control more than a third of the country and now Russia and Iran have launched a counter-offensive. Russia is very upset with Turkey for instigating the coup against Assad, likely with the direct assistance of the CIA.

The false narrative being proffered by the US mockingbird media is that a rag-tag coalition of so-called “noble rebels” has somehow organically emerged to save Syria from the dictator Assad. No, what we have here are Sunni jihadists backed by the U.S. and NATO fighting Shia jihadists backed by Russia.

As Dowling points out, “All jihadists are bad guys.” They are bad because as soon as they get in power one of the first things they do is start raping the Christian women and executing the Christian men. It happened in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was overthrown and it’s happening now in Syria.

Congress funded jihadist rebels in Syria for years. The chief war whores of the military-industrial complex, Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, led the way.

Graham is now turning on Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, because he’s afraid the Fox News host might not be fully on board with the U.S. forever wars.

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F-35A’s 25mm Gun Still Needs Tests To Verify It Works

The Pentagon says more testing is required to demonstrate that the 25mm automatic cannon mounted internally on the F-35A variant of the Joint Strike Fighter is indeed now an effective weapon. Various software and hardware issues had long left the stealthy jets unable to shoot straight, but fixes intended to resolve them have been implemented.

New questions about the actual effectiveness of the F-35A’s internal gun emerged last month after the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an independent nonprofit, published a heavily redacted declassified copy of a report on the Joint Strike Fighter program from the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E). POGO obtained the document, which is dated February 2024, via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided its own analysis of the contents. The report also underscored long-standing maintenance and logistics challenges that have contributed to historically low readiness rates across all variants of the F-35 and that could have worrisome impacts on future combat operations. The War Zone has explored those issues and their broader ramifications in detail in a past feature.

“The F-35 lethality assessment suffered from the inability of the F-35’s gun to hit the targets because of design and installation issues,” according to an unredacted section of the February 2024 DOT&E report that POGO obtained.

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Russia Raises Military Budget for Next Three Years

What began as a special military operation has turned into the start of the next world war, and Russia is paying heavily. Russian President Vladimir Putin passed a new budget over the weekend that will allocate 32.5% of the total budget (13.5 trillion rubles) for FY25 to defense spending, which accounts for 6.2% of total GDP.

The amount in proportion to the total budget spent on defense in FY24 was 28.3%. Notably, the budget is factoring in military costs for the next three years – this war will not simply end with Trump. Russia’s pre-war military expenditure was only 3.6 trillion rubles, rising to 5.5 trillion at the beginning of the war from 5.5 trillion rubles in 2022 to 6.4 trillion rubles in 2023.

Russia must find a way to finance this war. The Kremlin estimates GDP for 2024 to come in at 195.8 trillion rubles, although last year’s GDP was 172.1 trillion rubles. The GDP for 2025 is anticipated to be 214.6 trillion rubles. The nation is confident it will continue earning but that is not enough to fund the growing war.

Putin has already raised taxes for the first time in nearly 25 years. The corporate tax rate will rise by 5% from 20% to 25%. The government expects to generate an additional 2.6 trillion rubles in revenue once the tax is implemented in 2025. Russia’s Finance Ministry believes that 2 million people, 3.2% of the working population, will see a rise in their taxes. Taxes on investments will not change. “The changes are aimed at building a fair and balanced tax system,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said, adding that the additional funds would bolster Russia’s “economic well-being.”

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The Insanity of Neocons

Stephen Bryen, who’s now retired from a stellar career at the very highest levels both in the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex and in the Executive and also the Legislative branches of the U.S. Government, and whose predictions about the war in Ukraine war thus far have consistently turned out to be true, is, for whatever reason, nonetheless a neocon (advocate for increasing yet further the U.S. empire) in the case of China; and, so, while he’s realistic about the need for the U.S. Government to withdraw from Ukraine, he is nonetheless a normal neocon in regards to China.

On November 29th, he headlined “China Alarmed As US Marine Prepare HIMARS and ATACMS for Yonaguni”, and argued that it’s a good move by Biden now, that he’ll be placing in Japan U.S. missiles that can hit Taiwan for the purpose of “stopping a Taiwan invasion,” by which stupid phrase he intends to mean that we’ll be stopping “an invasion of Taiwan,” by — you guess whom, which is, of course, according to the neocons’ plan, to be done by — China, as soon as Taiwan will announce that it is NOT a part of China, and for which purpose the U.S. Government has been arming Taiwan so that Taiwan can then (with American weapons and maybe direct Military involvement) resist the invasion by China that will be China’s inevitable response to this U.S.-planned breakaway from China by Taiwan. And THAT will then give the U.S. Government the ‘right’ to invade and conquer China — which is the real objective of all of this scheming and war-planning by Breyen and ogther neocons.

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Weakness, Not Wokeness, Plagues US Generals

“The military is run by civilians, but the politics are supposed to stay outside,” one currently serving Army lieutenant general told Military.com. “It could be very hard to do our job if we have to constantly be making sure we’re appeasing someone on a political or partisan level.”1

 An active duty three-star general gave this anonymous quote published in military.com in mid-November 2024 reflecting fear and frustration amongst US generals with the coming analysis of American generals and a board to decide which ones are fit to continue to serve. Ironically, this general’s statement sums up EXACTLY why US generals deserve scrutiny and why many deserve the pink slip. First, the general spoke anonymously, reflecting a lack of personal courage and conviction to put his/her name on the record. Second, the comment about “appeasing” betrays what generals have been doing for decades. Generals, like leaders in any industry should be strong willed and confident enough to speak up to correct a wrong, regardless if it is politically unpopular and/or puts their career at risk. Unfortunately, modern generals with this quality are tragically few and far between. Instead, the legion of generals behave like meerkats, banding together like the comical safari documentaries about the animals. An exploration of exactly why the generals deserve scrutiny and termination for failure to perform their duty follows:

FRAUD

When budgets get extremely inflated, it is very easy to ‘lose money’ through acts of commission or omission by Pentagon leadership. Stories such as these are not uncommon:

(2024): “Raytheon to pay $950m over fraud, bribery, schemes.” The fraud scheme was from 2000 to 2020. Recall that the current SECDEF was an executive at Raytheon 2016-2020 during the height of the fraud…2

(2023): “‘This was not a surprise:’ Pentagon again fails annual audit of $3.8Trillion in assets.”3

(2021): “The Pentagon has Never Passed an Audit. Some Senators Want to Change That.”4

Waste

 In the author’s 15 years of active-duty service, the US Army went through the following uniform changes at the expense of billions of taxpayers’ dollars:

3 physical fitness uniforms

  3 everyday/combat uniforms

  3 formal uniforms

  3 dress uniforms

None of these uniform changes contributed in any way to victory in America’s longest war. The only benefactors were the companies that made the uniforms and associated apparel (military industrial complex). Silence from the US generals.

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US Military Supplier Accuses Ukraine’s Police and Ministry of Defense of Corruption

Sinclair & Wilde, which supplies military uniforms to Ukraine, has accused the country’s National Police and Ministry of Defense of corruption and extortion over unpaid equipment. The company made the claim in an open letter posted by BGD Legal & Consulting, its official representative.

“Sinclair & Wilde categorically denies the false and baseless claims made in the recently released video by the National Police Force of Ukraine [which alleges illegitimate price hikes by the US firm]. It is clear that the release of this story is an attempt by the National Police Force to cover up their own internal corruption and the corruption of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine in its continued attempts to deny payment to Sinclair & Wilde after it repeatedly refused to pay bribes requested of it,” the letter states.

Sinclair & Wilde signed five contracts with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense for military uniforms. The company reportedly agreed to delay a $12.5 million payment on the fifth contract until the equipment was delivered. However, Ukraine purportedly later refused to pay both the fifth contract and the outstanding debt from the first one, despite receiving the goods.

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China Using U.S. Investor and Consumer Funds for Its Military

The People’s Republic of China is modernizing its military for a potential conflict with the United States, with Xi Jinping aiming for readiness by 2027—though a slowing economy may delay this goal.

Despite these tensions, China continues to benefit from U.S. capital markets, with significant funding for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) coming from American investors and consumers, effectively putting U.S. money to work against its own interests.

Since 2012, U.S.-China financial ties expanded significantly but have contracted since 2020 due to China’s economic slowdown, increased capital controls, and heightened U.S. government scrutiny of investments in China.

Much of this slowdown can be directly attributed to President Trump’s U.S.-China trade war, which significantly curtailed China’s access to U.S. funds.

During his first term, President Trump recognized the China threat and imposed numerous restrictions to decrease China’s access to U.S. capital.

His administration banned U.S. investments in Chinese firms linked to the military and intelligence sectors through Executive Order 13959 and pushed for the delisting of Chinese companies that failed to comply with U.S. audit requirements under the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act.

The expansion of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) blocked Chinese acquisitions of U.S. firms in sensitive sectors, such as technology and infrastructure.

Trump also implemented Section 301 tariffs on over $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, reducing their competitiveness in U.S. markets. Export controls targeted critical technologies, while the federal retirement fund was barred from investing in Chinese firms.

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