Tag: military industrial complex

Ukraine Plans To Hyper-Innovate Humanoid Robot Soldiers

At the start of February, we pointed out that “humanoid warfare nears” and suspected these war bots were headed for Ukraine for testing. 

That hunch was confirmed by early March, after a TIME Magazine article reported that Foundation Robotics, a U.S.-based startup developing humanoid robots for industrial and military applications, had recently sent two Phantom MK1 robots to Ukraine for testing. 

Mike LeBlanc, co-founder of Foundation… 

The modern battlefield across western Eurasia has become the world’s AI weapons lab, where drones, autonomous systems, electronic warfare, and ground bots are being stress-tested in real time. 

For any ‘war unicorn’ startup trying to validate AI-enabled killing machines, Ukraine has become the proving ground, and soldiers on the front lines will quickly tell these startups whether their products work or not – that’s the part of hyperinnovation that people aren’t seeing yet, but it is becoming visible as low-cost AI killing systems begin to spread across the world. 

Last month, we were the first to debut a new video showing the Phantom MK1 robot operating a mobile light mortar system during a live-fire training exercise in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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The Chancellor, the Asset Manager, and the Missiles

There is a particular kind of arrangement that no law forbids and no scandal quite captures, because nothing in it is hidden. It sits in plain view, in regulatory filings and procurement requests, and it works precisely because everyone involved can say, truthfully, that they broke no rule. Friedrich Merz’s Germany is building one of these in real time.

Start with the weapons. In July 2025, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told Washington that Germany wanted to buy the American Typhon launch system and Tomahawk cruise missiles — the system’s first foreign sale, the decision left entirely to the United States. Trade outlets, citing Politico, put the order at three launchers and some 400 Tomahawk Block Vb missiles, north of €1 billion. Nearly a year later, Washington has not answered. The request stalled after Merz criticized the American war on Iran and Trump pulled 5,000 troops out of Germany and canceled a planned long-range-fires deployment. Europe’s would-be military leader, it turns out, cannot get deep-strike capability without American factories and a president’s goodwill. So much for sovereignty.

Now follow the money, because that is where the story actually lives. The Tomahawk is built by RTX, formerly Raytheon, where BlackRock sits among the largest institutional holders. The Typhon launcher is Lockheed Martin’s, where BlackRock has disclosed beneficial ownership above 5 percent in a Schedule 13G filed with the SEC. And BlackRock is where Merz spent four years before climbing back into politics: from 2016 to 2020 he chaired the supervisory board of its German arm. The man asking Washington to sell Germany missiles was, until lately, the public face of a firm that profits when the missiles are sold.

His time there was not quiet. In November 2018, while Merz chaired its supervisory board, prosecutors raided the Munich offices of BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland over cum-ex trades — the dividend-stripping fraud that drained the German treasury of tens of billions of euros. The conduct under investigation predated his arrival, prosecutors named him no suspect, and he called the practice “completely immoral” and ordered the firm to cooperate. Note the pattern all the same: this is a man who has spent his career adjacent to the machinery, never holding the smoking gun, always in the room.

Then came the policy. The fiscal lock came off before Merz was even sworn in. As leader of the election-winning CDU and chancellor-in-waiting, he drove through the outgoing Bundestag — on March 18, 2025, weeks before he took office, and deliberately before the newly elected parliament could convene — the amendment exempting defense spending above 1 percent of GDP from the constitutional “debt brake.” The borrowing limit Germans had treated as sacred since 2009 was gone, replaced by an open tap. German military spending rose 24 percent in 2025 to $114 billion, the largest in NATO Europe. Merz has pledged more than €750 billion for the armed forces.

And BlackRock holds the contractors cashing in. It disclosed a 6.91 percent stake in Rheinmetall, the tank-maker whose shares have soared since 2022, with the ownership chain running through the very German subsidiary Merz once chaired. It crossed the 5 percent threshold in the sensor firm Hensoldt. These are not idle positions. They are the firm collecting on a rearmament its former chairman set loose.

Merz, naturally, denies the whole framing. “I never accepted a lobbying mandate,” he told Die Zeit. The transparency group LobbyControl notes that BlackRock’s own description of his job included cultivating contacts with governments and regulators — which is what lobbying is, whatever euphemism rides on the business card.

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Creepy, Armed Robot Dogs Cleared For Evaluation By U.S. Military

K-9s have provided invaluable service over the years. They will continue to serve for a long time. But in the higher risk environments, robotic K-9s are rapidly approaching service.

For years, you’ve probably seen the interesting and cute Boston Dynamics Robo Dog in person or YouTube videos.

Get ready for kinetic steel, thunder, and bark on four robotic legs.

These new military grade dogs will be very useful in urban and field settings while biological K-9s are reserved for less hostile situations.

The real K-9s will be around for years, it will be interesting, or scary, if the robo dogs can be networked and led by real K-9s.

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In the shadow of Minab: Inside the US testing of ‘new missiles’ on Iran’s Lamerd

In Lamerd, in Iran’s southern Fars province, the threat of war gave way to reality when previously untested missiles struck a school, sports grounds and nearby neighbourhoods.

The attack came just six hours after the double-tap strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab on 28 February, over 400km away in Hormozgan province, where 120 children, 24 staff, seven parents, a school bus driver and a pharmacist were killed.

Four missiles from a new weapon system, the Lockheed Martin Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which had never before been seen or deployed, would be field-tested on the town of 30,000 people.

At 5.11pm (1.41pm GMT), the missiles struck a residential area where a row of homes adjoined a few neighbourhood shops.

Rounia Fakori, 12, was at volleyball practice when the first explosion shook the school building.

“We were in our practice when we heard the first impact. We rushed to the door,” she recalled.

Then another missile struck, plunging the girls and their coaches into darkness as smoke and heat filled the sports hall. The force of the blast slammed the doors shut.

“We couldn’t see anything,” the girls’ volleyball coach, Rahimeh Shehabi, told Middle East Eye. “We could only hear the screams of the children.”

As the missiles struck the school and sports hall, a football game was underway outside.

Eleven-year-old Mahdiar was playing with his friends, including 12-year-olds Ilya Khatami and Abdulmosavar Rahmani, when explosive shrapnel tore through the area.

According to Mahdiar, he and one of his friends ran towards the canopy, where their football coach, Mahmoud Najafi, called out: “Come here quickly, it’s dangerous there.”

Ilya and his coach then rushed towards the building to help open the door for the girls and women trapped inside as a fourth missile struck, rattling the sports hall.

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Ukraine Closes Week Of Record Drone Attacks On Russia By Hitting Important Weapons Plant

Ukraine announced Saturday that it used its Flamingo cruise missiles overnight to strike Russia’s Titan-Barrikady weapons plant, which reportedly manufactures parts for its powerful Oreshnik missile.

The military plant is in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which is a major industrial city in southwest Russia. Writing on X, President Zelensky described it as a “major industrial complex” where Russia “produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems.”

“Every Russian defense facility involved in the war against Ukraine is a legitimate target for our long-range strikes,” he wrote.

The Associated Press reports, “Volgograd Gov. Andrei Bocharov confirmed an attack on a business in the region’s Krasnooktyabrsky district, saying 10 people had been wounded and taken to a hospital. He said production facilities at the site were damaged but did not identify the company.”

Additionally, “Ukraine’s state security service said Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces also struck an oil pumping facility in Russia’s Vladimir region that supplies fuel to Moscow, for the second time this month.”

But on the other side of the border, Ukrainian media reports that Russia was also busy with now nightly airstrikes:

Russian forces targeted production facilities belonging to the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions.

The barrage of attacks included 129 drones, of which 113 were destroyed or jammed by Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian media reported.

The Russian overnight attacks on Ukraine killed two people and injuring more than 20, according to state officials.

At a moment much of the globe’s attention remains fixated on Iran and the fate of energy shipping through the largely blocked Strait of Hormuz, the Ukraine war is rapidly escalating.

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China’s Expanding Biological Warfare Capabilities: Fueled by Military-Civil Fusion and AI

U.S. intelligence assessments warn that China is combining artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and military-civil fusion in ways that could significantly expand its biological warfare capabilities.

The United States government has long assessed that China operated an offensive biological weapons program from the early 1950s through at least the late 1980s. Two facilities in Beijing and Lingbao City, according to the State Department, weaponized ricin, botulinum toxin, anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia during that period. China acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention on November 15, 1984, which prohibits the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

Beijing has consistently maintained it has never possessed such weapons and is in full compliance. The State Department’s position, however, is that China likely continued operating an offensive program after signing the convention and that the earlier program was never verified as dismantled, a requirement the treaty imposes on all signatories. Beijing canceled a bilateral BWC-related meeting with Washington in early 2022 and has declined to provide the treaty’s required disclosures.

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Alibaba Sues Pentagon to Remove ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label

Chinese tech titan Alibaba filed suit against the U.S. Department of War on Wednesday, arguing there was “no basis in fact or law” for the Pentagon to label it as a “Chinese military company” earlier this month.

The Department of War maintains a list of companies that perform services for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, known as the “1260H List” after the legislation that created it. Since 2021, the list has been updated and refined to paint a full picture of China’s fusion between “private” firms and its military-intelligence complex.

The Pentagon added several big corporate names to the list on June 8, including Alibaba. The listed companies, and the Chinese government, objected to the designations as unfair and arbitrary.

“The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said, as soon as the updated 1260H list was announced.

Alibaba was particularly aggressive in claiming that it was “not part of any military-civil fusion strategy,” and immediately declared its intention to “take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent our company.”

Alibaba made good on that threat with a petition to the San Jose division of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. Another Chinese firm, WuXi AppTec, filed its own challenge in the District of Columbia on June 11.

Both Chinese companies claimed they have suffered damages from what they viewed as an unfair designation. Alibaba said it was losing business partners in America, which could severely hinder its U.S. ventures.

A key issue in the lawsuit was Alibaba’s challenge to the Pentagon’s claim that the company is linked to China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

SASAC is an agency controlled directly by the powerful State Council of China. It manages the “shares” owned by the Chinese Communist government in partly-independent companies, as well as assets that are fully owned by the state.

When Alibaba was added to the 1260H list, the Pentagon said it was “indirectly affiliated” with SASAC, while its ties with MIIT make it a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base.”

Alibaba’s suit contents it is merely “regulated” by those agencies, not “affiliated” with them, and it has no choice about complying with their regulations.

“The relationship is no different from Alibaba’s dealings with United States government agencies. A regulator is not an affiliate,” the company contended.

The Chinese company further claimed its designation interferes with its First Amendment rights, because lobbyists that work for companies on the 1260H list can be restricted from doing business with the Department of War.

“The designation thus does not merely impose commercial costs – it strips Alibaba of its ability to speak, to petition the government through its chosen representatives,” the petition said.

On Monday, the Chinese government added ten American firms to its export control list, seemingly in retaliation for Alibaba and other firms being placed on the 1260H list.

Chinese state media said the move was “a response to Washington’s repeated weaponization of unilateral sanctions and entity lists to suppress Chinese enterprises, including its groundless addition of Chinese firms to its so-called military-industrial entity list.”

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The American Way of War, War, War

That title of mine is certainly repetitive of me (me, me), but how can you not be repetitive in the distinctly repeated world of Donald J. Trump (Trumped, Trumped)? I mean, twice already and who really knows what’s to come?

Here’s the question nobody seems to be asking right now, though: What country will Donald Trump attack next? Yes, at the moment, he’s still wildly wound up in his Iran war/truce/peace/or you name it (tomorrow). Yesterday, it was, of course, Venezuela, and next week it might be Cuba or Greenland, or who on (or off) this planet knows where? And I haven’t even mentioned his military’s ongoing bombing runs in Somalia, which are barely noticed in the mainstream media here. And who knows what I’ve forgotten or what to expect in this increasingly bizarre world of ours from the president who swore repeatedly in his third election campaign that he would never, never, never go to… yes, of course, war?

Hey, only the other day, Secretary of War (a title which, of course, couldn’t be blunter in the age of You Know Who) Pete Hegseth warned that “what happens with the future of Cuba is in the hands of the president of the United States and the leadership of Cuba. No matter what, the Department of War is going to be prepared and postured for any possible contingency.”

Ah, yes, any possible contingency except one, of course: victory (which, since the Second World War, just hasn’t been in the American vocabulary) or, for that matter, peace. I mean what could possibly go wrong in a world that now, remarkably enough, has its first trillionaire, Donald Trump’s (sometimes) buddy Elon Musk? (On that, Senator Elizabeth Warren commented all too aptly: “I want to be clear: This is not just some fluke. It is a feature of a rigged economy.”)

What, in fact, could possibly go wrong on such a rigged planet? I’m sure Donald Trump and Elon Musk couldn’t imagine. What could go wrong on a world in which no American president ever seems to realize that wars are simply never to be won by this country, no matter its power and the ever-ballooning size of the Pentagon budget, now possibly heading for – ah, yes, talking about trillionaires! – $1.5 trillion yearly (and, no, that is not a typo), if Donald Trump has anything to say about it? And in Congress, mind you, that’s still referred to as “defense” spending.

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Sheer Madness: UK Tests Long-Range Missile For Ukraine To Bomb Moscow – The US Needs To Pull Out Of NATO Immediately

Ukraine is making it clear they are seeking to “bring the war to Russia” – and this is what’s behind the recent series of massive Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow, which has wreaked havoc particularly on energy refineries, and air travel for the region. That Ukraine desperately wants to gain back what leverage they are able to is fully understandable, however, that NATO is backing such actions against a nuclear-armed superpower constitutes madness. 

Aside from covert targeting assistance, the UK is taking things in a more overt direction, having reportedly just tested missiles with a range of 300 miles which is intended to be sent to Ukraine’s military. 

The British missile platform has the capability of delivering 500-pound warhead to Moscow.

The Telegraph offers some further details regarding context to the major Ukraine support program in the following:

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) challenged firms to build long-range strike weapons that can fly at more than 370mph, cost about £400,000 each and can be built at a pace of 20 a month.

Some 27 bids from industry were made with Dragon’s Den-style pitches held last February, before six UK companies were awarded contracts worth around £5m each to design prototypes for testing in just seven months.

By last December, only three suppliers remained: MBDA UK, which makes the Storm Shadow stealth missile, MGI Engineering, a UK small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) with a background in Formula 1 technology, and Rotron Aerospace, another UK SME with a history of working with the MoD.

And the publication confirms that “New systems that can attack targets more than 300 miles away have been tested at a range in the Hebrides, with further trials taking place in the UK over the coming months.”

For missiles of this range and power, this is a relatively cheap price tag, and can apparently be rapid-produced at that.

UK Armed Forces Minister Louise Sandher-Jones has said the new missiles are intended to “complement” the Storm Shadow cruise missiles London sends to Ukraine.

“The UK stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine, and we will continue to provide the support it needs to defend itself against Russian aggression,” she stated. “Project Brakestop shows what happens when we combine that commitment with the talent and ingenuity of British industry.”

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When Military Fellows Replace Hill Staff

The pattern is obvious. In an overworked House office, whoever has time and capacity to produce a clean draft often decides what gets written. On defense portfolios, that is increasingly a uniformed fellow on detail from the Department of Defense. In practice, executive-branch detailees do not supplement staff capacity; they replace it on key tasks, shaping agendas, drafting text, and gatekeeping information that will later govern their own departments.

About ninety military fellows cycle through the Hill each year, with roughly two dozen each from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and a dozen more from the Marine Corps. Their credentials are strong and intentions usually public-spirited. The problem is institutional. A congressional staffer owes undivided loyalty to Article I. An officer owes loyalty to a chain of command that runs to Article II. When workloads are crushing, that conflict is resolved by inertia rather than deliberation. The fellow who can deliver tonight becomes the author of governing text tomorrow. It is a story of structural capture by convenience.

Over 60 years ago, in his farewell speech, President Eisenhower warned us that “[i]n the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning rings truer than ever in 2026.

The consequences show up at every stage of the legislative cycle. On agenda setting, the person who can assemble a background memo first defines what “the options” are and which studies count as credible. On drafting, the earliest pass at bill or report language anchors debate. Overworked offices edit at the margins rather than reopen baseline assumptions. On oversight, the same fellow who helps frame hearing questions may later return to the department whose programs those questions were meant to scrutinize. Even the most ethical detailee will struggle to elevate uncomfortable data from inside the building where they will soon work again. In practice, the executive’s representative becomes the de facto author of legislative text that will govern the executive.

Defenders of the model claim Congress cannot meet deadlines without fellows. That is an indictment of congressional resourcing, not a defense of blurred powers. Speed at the price of independence is not a neutral trade. Second, they say members direct fellows’ work, so the institution remains in control. Direction is not authorship. When staff are underwater, authorship migrates to the person with time, not the person with authority.

There is also a practical equity problem. In many House offices the fellow becomes the defense staffer by default. That is replacement, not augmentation. Civilian staff lose chances to develop subject matter expertise, and offices become dependent on a pipeline they do not control. When the fellow rotates out, the capacity gap reopens. The department’s institutional memory remains intact. The House’s does not.

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