Tag: military industrial complex

‘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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As Hegseth Touts Autonomous Warfare Command, Human Rights Expert Pushes Civilian Protections

As the US military accelerates its adoption of autonomous weapons systems amid a growing global artificial intelligence arms race, one expert told Common Dreams on Wednesday that “greater action needs to be taken urgently” to protect civilians and ensure meaningful human control over rapidly developing technologies.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional lawmakers Wednesday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget for 2027 that the military will soon have a new “sub-unified command” dedicated to autonomous warfare.

Hegseth, who advocates “maximum lethality” for US forces, has expressed disdain for what he called “stupid rules of engagement” designed to minimize civilian harm. He has overseen the dismantling of efforts meant to mitigate wartime harm to civilians – hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed in US-led wars during this century, according to experts.

This “maximum lethality” ethos, combined with AI-powered systems allowing for exponentially faster and more numerous target selection, has raised concerns that have been underscored by actions including Israel Defense Forces massacres in Gaza and Lebanon, and US attacks like the cruise missile strike on a school in Iran that killed 155 children and staff.

“A sole focus on achieving maximum lethality is inherently incompatible with civilian protection,” Verity Coyle, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) crisis, conflict, and arms division, told Common Dreams. “If the United States truly seeks to protect civilians, it should forgo this limited focus and ensure it has guardrails in place that assess the proportionality of its actions and guarantee a distinction between civilians and combatants.”

“Under international humanitarian law, civilian protection requires that military actions abide by the principles of distinction and proportionality,” Coyle noted. “In other words, military actors must distinguish between civilians and combatants and ensure that the resulting harm to civilians from their actions would not be excessive in comparison to the perceived military gain.”

Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems – commonly called “killer robots” – stress the need for meaningful human control. However, with industry-backed efforts afoot to ban state and local governments from placing guardrails on AI development, retaining such control could become increasingly difficult as the technology advances.

“The lack of serious guardrails… shows a troubling lack of concern for these real and immediate risks to civilians both in the United States and abroad,” Coyle said. “While we have seen some Congress members and state legislators express concern over these developments, greater action needs to be taken urgently.”

Asked about the “if we don’t build it, they will” mentality of many US proponents of unchecked AI development that is reminiscent of the Cold War nuclear arms race, Coyle said the United States is ignoring its “ability to set the global agenda and international humanitarian law norms.”

“As we see greater integration of AI in the military domain and resulting civilian harm, we need strong international leadership to respond to these threats, not states relinquishing their responsibilities,” she asserted.

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Germany Aims to Become EU’s Strongest Military Force by 2039

Germany has now openly declared its intention to become the dominant conventional military power in Europe by 2039. What Berlin is doing is a structural shift that has been building quietly for years, and now it is being formalized in plain sight. The plan calls for expanding the Bundeswehr to roughly 460,000 personnel, including reserves, with about 260,000 active troops, effectively doubling the scale of its usable force compared to today.

What stands out is that this is taking place at the same time Germany’s economy is stagnating, with growth forecasts collapsing toward just 0.5% while inflation rises due to energy pressures and geopolitical tensions. You are witnessing the classic historical pattern where governments shift resources toward military buildup as economic conditions weaken. This is precisely how capital is redirected during periods of rising geopolitical risk.

Germany’s military budget tells the real story. The Bundeswehr is now operating with roughly €108.2 billion in 2026, making it one of the largest defense budgets in the world, and a dramatic departure from the decades when Germany refused to even meet NATO’s 2% threshold. Just a few years ago, Germany was spending closer to €80–90 billion annually, and now projections show spending rising toward €150–160 billion by 2029, or roughly 3.5% of GDP.

This is a staggering transformation. For decades, Germany deliberately maintained a weak military posture as part of the post–World War II settlement. Now they are not only rearming, but they are also explicitly stating they intend to be the strongest conventional force in Europe. That would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.

From the perspective of the Economic Confidence Model and the war cycle, this fits perfectly into the timing window we have been warning about. The arrays have been showing a convergence of civil unrest and international war cycles into 2026–2027. What we are seeing in Germany is not isolated. It is part of a broader shift across Europe, where governments are preparing for sustained conflict risk, not a temporary crisis.

Germany has also moved beyond simply increasing spending. They are restructuring the entire military system, including technology integration, AI-driven warfare, and logistics infrastructure that can support rapid deployment across Europe. This is preparation for long-term engagement capability, not defensive posturing. Once governments begin investing at this scale, they are not planning for peace. They are preparing for confrontation.

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Shutting Down the War Machine

Right at this moment, we are witnessing an unprecedented shift of resources from domestic investments in the United States to the military-industrial complex (aka the war machine). The only comparable period in our history was the buildup to World War II, when the United States confronted a powerful adversary in Nazi Germany with designs to control not just Europe, but the world. The current buildup is breathtaking in scope and will certainly prove devastating in its impact — not just on this country’s foreign and domestic policies but also on the economic prospects of average Americans.

When, in 2023, my colleague Ben Freeman and I first conceived of our book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, we viewed it in part as a cautionary tale about just how high the Pentagon budget might rise in the years to come (absent pushback from Congress and the taxpaying public). By the time our book came out in November 2025, however, the Pentagon budget had already topped the $1 trillion mark and, only recently, President Trump has proposed to instantly add another $500 billion to that already staggering figure and to do so in a single year’s time. And imagine this: such a proposed increase alone is higher than the total military budget of any other nation on Earth. Mind you, the current high levels of spending have already underwritten a provocative, unnecessary intervention in Venezuela and a region-wide war in the Middle East, and the larger costs of all this in human lives and damage to the global economy are guaranteed to shape the lives of the rest of us globally for years to come.

To add insult to injury, the Pentagon announced that it would seek a $200 billion supplemental appropriation to pay for its war on Iran, which has spread across the Middle East. That $200 billion would have been in addition to the $1.5 billion proposed for the Pentagon’s future budget. According to an analysis by Pentagon budget expert Stephen Semler, the Iran war, which started on February 28th with Israeli and U.S. air strikes on that country, cost the United States more than $28 billion just in its first two weeks. And to put that in perspective, $28 billion is more than three times the Trump administration’s proposed annual budgets for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency (at a time when the climate crisis and the need to head off future pandemics are essential to the health and security of all Americans). Worse yet, it’s all for a completely senseless war that should never have been started.

As President Trump alternates between engaging in negotiations to end the war and threatening to wipe Iran off the map — or even just walking away to bomb another day — there are reports that the supplemental budget request to pay for the war on Iran will shrink from the proposed $200 billion to $98 billion. And that $98 billion will include other things in addition to war costs, including disaster relief and aviation modernization.

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Palantir’s Draft Push Collides with Washington’s Automatic Registration Machine

In 1777, Thomas Jefferson warned John Adams that a national military draft would rank among the most hated measures imaginable. Colonists had rebelled against British press gangs. That grievance made the Declaration of Independence. Nearly 250 years on, a $350 billion data giant echoes the idea. Palantir Technologies, fresh off zero federal taxes on $1.5 billion in U.S. income, just called for universal national service. Timing? Perfect. Or ominous.

The company’s manifesto hit X last Sunday. It boils down 22 points from CEO Alex Karp’s 2025 book, The Technological Republic, co-written with Nicholas W. Zamiska. One line stands out: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.” (Fortune)

Palantir didn’t invent the draft. America tried it first in the Civil War. Then World War I. World War II. Korea. Vietnam. The last call came December 7, 1972. Jimmy Carter mandated male registration in 1980. Now comes the shift. Starting December 18, 2026, Selective Service goes automatic for men 18 to 26. No forms. No opt-out nudge. Government databases do the work. President Donald Trump’s National Defense Authorization Act locked it in. (Time)

Why now? Compliance dipped. Selective Service says automation streamlines everything, frees staff for readiness. It pulls from Social Security, DMV, student loans, immigration records. Citizens. Immigrants. Undocumented. Dual nationals. Green card holders. All in, within 30 days of turning 18. “This statutory change transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS through integration with federal data sources,” the agency states. (Newsweek)

Palantir stays silent on direct ties. No contract announced for Selective Service. Yet speculation swirls. The firm holds a $10 billion U.S. Army deal for software and analytics. (U.S. Army) Its platforms run Project Maven, the Pentagon’s AI targeting tool. Reports link it to Gaza strike lists for Israel. (Mother Jones) Over half its revenue flows from government. 2026 guidance? $7.18 billion to $7.2 billion, up 70%.

And taxes. Zero federal in 2025, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (ITEP) Karp once framed the mission bluntly: “scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” (The Guardian) The manifesto adds layers. Silicon Valley owes a “moral debt.” Remilitarize Germany, Japan.

This lands amid the seventh week of U.S. action in Iran. Tensions simmer. Automatic registration isn’t a draft. But it builds the list. Critics see a data grab. Edward Hasbrouck, draft researcher, warns it props up war planning. Selective Service seeks broader data sharing with law enforcement, even abroad. (Hasbrouck.org)

On X, reactions mix alarm and shrugs. One user ties Palantir directly: “They will use existing gov databases (think Palantir) to find and register them.” (X post by @allenanalysis) Another calls it fearmongering: “This has always been a thing… now it is automatic. That is the only change.” (X post by @CarmineSabia) Palantir’s post drew shares, but no company reply to Fortune.

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Japan Lifts Ban on Weapon Exports In Break With Post-WW2 Pacifism

Pacifist post-war Japan is no more.

Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s capitulation on August 15, 1945, and the instrument of surrender was signed on September 2, aboard the USS Missouri, ending WW2.

Since then, Japan turned its back on the martial aspect of its society and embraced pacifism.

But now, over eighty years later, Japan has scrapped most of its restrictions on weapons exports as it boosts both its own military and its arms industry.

Bloomberg reported:

“The cabinet of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Tuesday approved changes to defense export rules that will for the first time since World War II allow overseas shipments of weapons. Previously, companies could only export military equipment for use in operations related to rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and minesweeping.

’These decisions are intended to safeguard Japan’s security and further contribute to the peace and stability of the region and the international community amidst rapidly evolving changes in the security environment’, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said in a press briefing after announcing the decision. ‘At the same time, the government will uphold the fundamental principles of a peaceful nation that have been built over more than 80 years since the end of the war’.”

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