Tag: military industrial complex

FLASHBACK: Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale

Perhaps your real life is so rich you don’t have time for another.

Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.

“SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”.

SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.

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FLASHBACK: Weaponized Narrative Is the New Battlespace

Conventional military dominance is still critical to the superpower status of the United States. But even in a military sense, it is no longer enough: if an American election can be controlled by an adversarial power, then stealth aircraft and special forces are not the answer. With lawmakers poised to authorize $160 million to counter Russian “fake news” and disinformation, and the CIA and the Congress examining meddling in the U.S. election and democracies around the world, it’s time to see weaponized narrative for what it is: a deep threat to national security.

Weaponized narrative seeks to undermine an opponent’s civilization, identity, and will by generating complexity, confusion, and political and social schisms. It can be used tactically, as part of explicit military or geopolitical conflict; or strategically, as a way to reduce, neutralize, and defeat a civilization, state, or organization. Done well, it limits or even eliminates the need for armed force to achieve political and military aims.

The efforts to muscle into the affairs of the American presidency, Brexit, the Ukraine, the Baltics, and NATO reflect a shift to a “post-factual” political and cultural environment that is vulnerable to weaponized narrative. This begs three deeper questions:

  • How global is this phenomenon?
  • Are the underlying drivers temporary or systemic?
  • What are the implications for an American military used to technological dominance?

Far from being simply a U.S. or U.K. phenomenon, shifts to “post-factualism” can be seen in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, France, and the Philippines, among other democracies. Russia, whose own political culture is deeply post-factual and indeed post-modern, is now ably constructing ironic, highly cynical, weaponized narratives that were effective in the Ukrainian invasion, and are now destabilizing the Baltic states and the U.S. election process.

Such a large and varied shift to weaponized narrative implies that the enablers are indeed systemic. One fundamental underpinning – often overlooked – is the accelerating volume and velocity of information. Cultures, institutions, and individuals are, among many other things, information-processing mechanisms. As they become overwhelmed with information complexity, the tendency to retreat into simpler narratives becomes stronger.

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The Global Deep State: A Fascist World Order Funded by the American Taxpayer

The debate over U.S. foreign aid is a distraction.

That’s not to say that the amount of taxpayer money flowing to foreign countries in the form of military and economic assistance is insignificant. Even at less than 1% of the federal budget, the United States still spends more on foreign aid than any other nation.

The latest foreign aid spending bill includes $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Since World War II, the U.S. has given more foreign aid to Israel than any other country ($318 billion), with the bulk of those funds designated for Israel’s military efforts.

Even so, more than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance.

As Forbes reports, “U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.”

Whether or not that some of that foreign aid is used for legitimate purposes, the global welfare system itself is riddled with corruption and waste. As Adam Andrzejewski rightly asks, “Do taxpayers instinctively know that they are funding choir directors in Turkmenistan, filmmakers in Peru, aid for poultry farmers Tanzania, and sex education workshops for prostitutes in Ethiopia?”

The problem is not so much that taxpayers are unaware of how their hard-earned dollars are being spent. Rather, “we the people” continue to be told that we have no say in the matter.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

This financial tyranny persists whether it’s a Democrat or Republican at the helm.

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U.S. Military Told Pharma Exec the Virus “Posed a National Security Threat” on February 4th 2020 – Weeks Before a Single Death Occurred

A leaked recording obtained by investigator and writer Sasha Latypova features an executive at the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca stating the following:

It wasn’t a surprise to me when I got a call on February 4th from the Defence Department here in the U.S. saying that the newly discovered SARS-2 virus posed a national security threat.

This is an astonishing, major-newspaper headline-worthy revelation.

Here’s what was happening on February 4th 2020:

Virus activity in the U.S.:

  • According to CNN, on February 4th there were 11 “confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus” in the United States. 
  • There were zero reported deaths from the virus in the U.S.
  • As documented in my recently launched Covid Timeline Wiki Project, the New York Times had two headlines about the virus focused on China and travellers from Wuhan. There were no op-eds on the virus.

Virus activity internationally:

  • Approximately 490 reported deaths.
  • The disease caused by the virus had not even been named “COVID-19” yet.
  • The WHO said the outbreak “was not yet a pandemic”.

Behind-the-scenes virus-related activity: EUA & PREP Act:

  • Crucially, the FDA and HHS declared the first emergency basis for issuance of Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) for Covid on February 4th. 
  • EUA is an authority that was granted to the FDA “to strengthen public health protections against biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological agents”.
  • As explained in a previous article, EUA powers were granted to the FDA to be used in situations of grave, immediate emergencies involving weapons of mass destruction. They were intended to allow the use of countermeasures against biological, chemical, nuclear or radiological (CBRN) agents without going through all the usual steps of ensuring safety and efficacy, because the immediate threat of the CBRN attack would be so much greater than any potential risks caused by the countermeasure.
  • In conjunction with EUA, PREP Act protection was also granted retroactively to February 4th (announced March 17th). The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, as noted in a previous article, legally indemnifies from all liability anyone who does anything related to a product that receives Emergency Use Authorisation. Again, this was intended for very extreme emergency situations involving CBRN agents, so that if a countermeasure caused harm while being used during the attack, no one would get sued.

Origins cover-up:

  • Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar, Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes and others in the international group of gain-of-function funders and researchers were conspiring to publish multiple documents denying the possibility that the virus could have emerged from the virus lab they were funding and working with in Wuhan, China.
  • Emily Kopp at U.S. Right to Know has compiled a detailed timeline of these activities, many of which occurred on the days just before and just after February 4th 2020.

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US Army spent billions on a new helicopter that now will never fly

The U.S. Army is ending its latest effort to build a new armed scout helicopter, known as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, an abrupt change of direction that marks one of the department’s most significant program cancellations of the last decade.

The service had already spent at least $2 billion on the program and had requested another $5 billion for the next five years, according to budget documents.

The helicopter program arrived in 2018 with lofty expectations. Army leaders hoped it would serve as a model for new acquisition approaches for its most complex and most expensive weapon systems. Prototypes from Bell Textron and Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky were expected to fly later this year. And, perhaps most importantly, the aircraft was slated to provide a long-needed armed scout solution after decades of starts and stops.

But Thursday, the Army’s top acquisition officials described a new vision and major aviation overhaul. In addition to ending FARA, the Army plans to get rid of its entire Shadow and Raven unmanned aircraft fleets, said Doug Bush, the service’s acquisition chief.

It will also stop fielding its new replacement for UH-60 Lima-model Black Hawk utility helicopter — the Victor-model — to the Army National Guard and instead field UH-60 Mike-models, the latest variant used in the active force, Bush said.

Finally, the service will delay procurement of its next-generation helicopter engine, which was set to be used in all UH-60s, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters as well as to power FARA.

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World War Grift – Who’s Driving the Global ‘Defense’ Racket

War is a bad thing. Most people will agree. Often a war is perpetrated for an ostensibly good cause. It is seen as an unfortunate side effect that regular people are killed, maimed, scarred and diminished – whilst the ‘baddies’ somehow remain at large. Well then, if war is bad, and often ineffective, why does it continue?

In this article we will delve into the private corporations who insidiously overlap with their governmental and media counterparts to promote, fund and facilitate endless conflicts. We will also assess the case for acts of war and explore the theory that war is often perpetrated for financial profit rather than any moral cause.

Cui Bono?

‘Cui Bono’ is a fancy Latin phrase, that you might hear from Sherlock Holmes during an investigation. It means, ‘Who benefits?’. It is often used in political discourse as a knife to cut through the tangled webs of intrigue and speculation around events and get to the heart of the matter. Here we are discussing a global business, arms manufacturing and sales. It is a worldwide industry and has myriad influences. When it is presented in sound-bites by the corporate-owned media, we are seeing a glimpse, only a small portion of the picture. It is usually designed to make the reader or viewer think a certain thing – as we will discuss later. Yet when we take a wide-lens view the picture becomes cloudy with many different angles. We ask cui bono? – who benefits from violent conflict, in particular those hot conflicts of today: Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, Saudi Arabia/Yemen and so on?

It is an easy implication to lay at the door of the arms industry. More violence is more profit. Even mere instability in a country can lead to a ramping up of arms purchases by the military of a state. The massive price tags for weapons, the long lead-time of research and development coupled with the bottomless pockets of government budgets make for a fertile landscape for exploitation. It is not only the private military corporations who benefit, but the politicians and nation states too. The politicians get huge kickbacks from lobbyists, too much money to maintain that moral compass they may have once had. They also have a useful ‘casus belli’ – a ‘case for war’ which is a sure fire vote winner. Remember that Margaret Thatcher was set to lose her seat as leader of the UK until a miraculous military victory over Argentina in 1982 galvanised massive public support and a massive electoral victory. War for votes is nothing new. Yet these days, selling war is an uphill battle. I believe, perhaps naively, that most people don’t like suffering and violence. The Anglophonic destruction of Iraq through two wars ended up an unpopular decision, similarly the US’ failed conquest in Vietnam is viewed regretfully in hindsight. So we are left pondering, why must suffering the curse of armed warfare continue?

Before we delve too deep into the long grass, let us set our sights on our targets. We know the names of countries, sometimes politicians, but who are the arms dealers, the manufacturers of death who lurk in the shadows and create shiny new weapons of mass destruction?

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Military May Get Its Own SpaceX Starship Rockets For Dangerous Missions

The Pentagon has approached SpaceX regarding the purchase of Starship space launch vehicles for sensitive, high-risk missions, the company has said. At present, the U.S. government relies on non-military contractors to launch payloads for various operations, including satellite launches, and does not have its own space launch vehicles — at least any that are disclosed — which it could deploy in a potential contingency scenario. SpaceX is already working with the Air Force and Space Force on the ‘Rocket Cargo’ program, which seeks to rapidly deliver cargo, and possible personnel, anywhere on Earth that can support a landing.

Aviation Week was the first to report on the DoD’s interest in Starship, following comments made by a SpaceX official at the Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Florida on January 30.

SpaceX’s complete ‘Starship’ system, as The War Zone has highlighted in the past, comprises a super-heavy rocket booster and spacecraft. Starship — which will be capable of landing vertically — constitutes the largest, and most powerful, rocket ever flown, according to the company, and is reportedly capable of carrying up to 150 metric tons while being fully reusable. Eventually, SpaceX intends for its Starship system to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars, but it is still in relatively early flight test development.

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Ukraine Set To Receive Bomb So New It Hasn’t Reached US Arsenal Yet

The Pentagon is poised to begin equipping Ukraine with a long-range precision bomb that’s so new it hasn’t even hit the American arsenal yet, Politico reports. The first shipment could arrive as early as Wednesday. 

The precision-guided Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), a joint project of Boeing and Saab, comprises a 250-pound explosive that’s attached to a rocket motor and fired from ground launchers. From a range of about 90 miles, it’s supposedly accurate within a meter. The US military has an air-launched version, but not this new ground-launched one, six of which were fired in a final, pre-ship test conducted at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base on Jan. 16, according to a Reuters source.  

The weapon has one feature that’s particularly attractive: since it’s already “paid for,” the Pentagon can ship it to Ukraine without waiting for additional Ukraine war-funding legislation that’s been held up in Congress for months. That’s especially important at a time when Ukraine’s stockpile of 100-mile Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) is running low. The US has put off requests to supply ATACMS to Ukraine — partly out of concern that doing so would be seen as a Western escalation — only to later supply them anyway, with the missiles making their debut in October.  

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If there are advanced spacecraft why would they crash?

Members of Congress have heard testimony about alleged UFO crashes and retrievals. The stories sound much like the plot of a sci-fi movie but are now being taken seriously in Washington.

The question is, if there are advanced spacecraft from beyond, why would they crash?

April 18, 1962, an unknown object entered Earth’s atmosphere over Cuba, traveled up the East Coast, and then made an abrupt 45-degree left turn at New York. It blazed across the heart of the U.S., and was pursued by military jets that could not keep up, and then landed in a small town in Utah where it knocked out electricity, locals said, before taking off again. Somewhere over east-central Nevada, it exploded in a massive fireball seen all over the west.

“It’s a fantastic case involving, not only a few hundred witnesses, thousands of witnesses saw this thing as it traveled across the United States.” UFO Investigator and author Preston Dennett said.

According to an Air Force intelligence report, one military pilot who chased the object thought it was structured, not just a fireball, and that it was gasping and sputtering as it flew. The Air Force’s infamous Project Blue Book explained it away as a meteor, despite its highly unusual maneuvers.

In the early 2000s, Las Vegas was the annual host to a UFO crash conference, where the best-known investigators shared information about dozens of similar incidents. Ryan Wood was the conference organizer and wrote a book listing more than 70 possible UFO crashes.

“The best cases are the ones where we have multiple witnesses, some physical evidence, and multiple investigations by a variety of people over a long period of time,” Wood said.

Wood admits some of the tales might be disinformation or made up. Former Army Intelligence Col. John Alexander, himself a UFO investigator, expressed glaring doubt.

“It seems inconceivable to me that this hyper-advanced technology came a trillion miles to crash in our backyard once, let alone that this stuff keeps falling down,” Alexander said.

If these are advanced craft from another galaxy or dimension or century, why would they crash here?

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“CHIMERA” METAMATERIAL ACHIEVES PREVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE MULTI-TERRAIN INVISIBILITY

A new metamaterial that taps into the power of animals who camouflage themselves in nature has achieved the first successful multi-terrain invisibility, making it effectively invisible to visible, microwave, and thermal scanning techniques.

Dubbed Chimera after the multi-faceted monster of Greek mythology, the new material can achieve its previously impossible capabilities in a range of environments, much like the animals who inspired its development, offering significant potential for both scientific and military applications.

MULTI-TERRAIN INVISIBILITY INSPIRED BY UNIQUE CLASS OF ANIMAL

In nature, certain animals have adapted themselves to appear virtually invisible to both predators and prey. The most famous of these is the chameleon, which can adapt its outer appearance to match its environment almost perfectly.

However, the chameleon is not the only poikilotherm lauded for its ability to achieve a form of invisibility to aid its survival. For example, the bearded dragon is noted for its ability to conceal itself thermally by matching the temperature of its environment, while the glass frog can make itself transparent so that predators cannot see it directly.

Now, a team of researchers says they have combined the adaptive ability of all three animals to produce a metamaterial that is effectively invisible across microwave, visible, and infrared spectra to achieve previously impossible multi-terrain invisibility.

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