Tag: military industrial complex

With Operation Popeye, the U.S. government made weather an instrument of war

It was a seasonably chilly afternoon in 1974 when Senators Claiborne Pell, a Democrat from Rhode Island, and Clifford Case, a Republican from New Jersey, strode into the chambers of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for a classified briefing. While the meeting was labeled “top secret,” the topic at hand was rather mundane: They were there to discuss the weather.

More specifically, Pell, the chairman of the now-defunct subcommittee for Oceans and International Environment, and his colleague were about to learn the true extent of a secret five-year-old cloud seeding operation meant to lengthen the monsoon season in Vietnam, destabilize the enemy, and allow the United States to win the war.

Though it cycled through several names in its history, “Operation Popeye” stuck. Its stated objective—to ensure Americans won the Vietnam War—was never realized, but the revelation that the U.S. government played God with weather-altering warfare changed history. The Nixon administration distracted, denied, and, it seems, outright lied to Congress, but enterprising reporters published damning stories about rain being used as a weapon, and the Pentagon papers dripped classified details like artificial rain. Eventually, the federal government would declassify its Popeye documents and international laws aimed at preventing similar projects would be on the books.

But the public would, more or less, forget it ever happened. Given the rise of geo-engineering projects, both from municipal governments and private companies, some experts believe Popeye is newly relevant.

Keep reading

Raytheon CEO: The Idea That Biden Would Cut Defense Spending is ‘Ridiculous’

Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes told CNBC on Tuesday that the idea that Joe Biden would cut military spending if he is elected president is “ridiculous.” Hayes was responding to warnings from Republicans about possible cuts to the Pentagon under a Biden administration.

President Trump has presided over a significant increase in the Pentagon budget, bringing it from $700 billion in 2018 to $733 billion in 2020. Despite this record budget, Biden said in an interview with Stars and Stripes that he expects the budget to increase in certain areas.

The Raytheon CEO went on to warn of threats posed to the US by China and Russia that the military needs to compete with. “We have lost our technological edge to the Chinese, and in some cases to the Russians, and we’re going to have to invest more dollars into some of these new technologies if we’re going to be able to compete with these new threats,” Hayes said.

Keep reading

How the Military Ran Its 1970s Psychic Intelligence Program—Many Memos, Naturally

FOR DECADES DURING THE COLD War and into the 1990s, the United States military ran a program that used “psychoenergetics”–psychokinesis, telepathy, and, most prominently in this case, “remote viewing”–to collect intelligence.

This isn’t some clever promotion for the new X-Files. The collection of records on the program released by the National Security Archive has recently expanded to 51 separate documents. As befitting a government agency, many lay out the incredibly weird protocols of psychic espionage in boring memos, endless strings of acronyms, and, of course, budget analysis. 

The program (or programs, as the collection of different psychic efforts had many different names over the years) developed an emphasis on remote viewing, which involves using psychic powers to somehow see something in a place away from where you actually are located. This began after early experimenters in the 1970s were able to provide detailed information about a Soviet R&D facility. After that, the military fielded a secret remote viewing team for years.

Keep reading

No Matter Who Wins, The War Machine Wins

The US government is pushing yet another unproven election meddling narrative about yet another disobedient government, this time targeting Iran and Russia.

This is exhausting. Do I really need to type this bullshit out?

Fine. Okay. Here we go again:

At a press conference with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray it was announced that Iran and Russia have separately obtained some voter registration information, and that Iran has been using its information to send bizarre threatening emails to Democratic voters with the goal of swaying the election.

As usual, no evidence of these allegations has been provided. Democrats are saying this completely unsubstantiated claim proves the Iranians want to help Trump, Republicans are saying it proves they’re trying to help Biden. Both are ridiculous.

Keep reading

Pentagon estimates cost of new nuclear missiles at $95.8B

The Pentagon has raised to $95.8 billion the estimated cost of fielding a new fleet of land-based nuclear missiles to replace the Minuteman 3 arsenal that has operated continuously for 50 years, officials said Monday.

The estimate is up about $10 billion from four years ago.

The weapons, known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, are intended as part of a near-total replacement of the American nuclear force over the next few decades at a total cost of more than $1.2 trillion.

Some, including former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, argue that U.S. national security can be ensured without ICBMs, but the Pentagon says they are vital to deterring war. The Trump administration affirmed its commitment to fielding a new generation of ICBMs in a 2018 review of nuclear policy.

Keep reading