Tag: pentagon

Shock Claim: Govt. Docs Reveal Pentagon’s “Self-Spreading” Vaccine Development, Already Passed Animal Trials

The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) has obtained new documents through a Department of Defense (DoD) request for proposal revealing the U.S. military’s funding of a controversial self-spreading vaccine program known as DARPA INTERCEPT.

The documents reveal, say ICAN, that the animal trials were a success and that the next step of development is to inject terminally-ill humans next.

ICAN reports that Autonomous Therapeutics, a biotech company, has already published results showing successful tests of its self-spreading vaccines in monkeys. Their stated goal is to build “synthetic immune systems.”

FOIA Revelations on “Tiny Trojan Horses”

Last year, ICAN drew public attention to U.S. government studies on self-spreading vaccines. Now, ICAN attorneys have uncovered fresh details showing that DARPA’s INTERCEPT program funded the development of ‘therapeutic interfering particles’ (TIPs). These are engineered viruses designed to act as “tiny Trojan horses” that carry genetic material from person to person.

The FOIA records show that the INTERCEPT program planned not only to create these spreading particles, but also to build computer models to predict how TIPs could move from a single cell to an entire population.

The military’s role in this work has been reported for several years, such as in this 2020 Washington Post profile.

Contract Awarded to Autonomous Therapeutics

Documents reveal a 2016 DoD request for proposal calling for a “biological system for replicating ‘human-like conditions’” to study the evolutionary dynamics of mutating pathogens and diseases. This contract was awarded to Autonomous Therapeutics, co-founded by Ariel and Leor Weinberger.

Leor Weinberger has published research testing TIPs engineered for HIV on rhesus monkeys. He is now pursuing plans to inject TIPs into terminally ill HIV patients. ICAN warns that such genetic payloads could integrate permanently into patients’ DNA and could possibly spread beyond the intended clinical trial population.

Scientists have typically justified this research on the basis that it could be utilized to stop quick outbreaks of major viruses such as Ebola and quickly stop potential pandemics.

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Defense Department Continues Ignoring Harms to Readiness by Pushing Flu Shots Contrary to Large Body of Evidence

After the tyrannical enforcement of the now-rescinded 2021 COVID-19 shot mandate, now determined to be “unlawful as implemented,” skepticism of all vaccines has clearly increased throughout the military community.

Sadly, some service members are facing punitive actions for objecting to the flu shot, having argued it is ineffective and detrimental to not only their health, but also their religious convictions. An anonymous Marine officer and Air Force Major Brennan Schilperoort share a similar moral and religious objection to the shot, while also suffering adverse effects from a previous injection. Additionally, both officers have also shown natural immunity.

Rather than recognizing their Constitutionally protected religious rights to substantiate their objection, the military has decided to separate both individuals from service. Although Maj. Schilperoort’s pay was restored by the Air Force, it must be noted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is aware of their situation, but has thus far remained silent on the issue of separation over the flu shot.

The Gateway Pundit spoke to independent journalist Jeremy Hammond, whose articles about the flu shot have elicited high praise from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For Hammond, “The coerced vaccination of military service members is yet another unfortunate example of how the government systematically violates individuals’ right to informed consent.” He explained, “This policy exists despite scientific evidence indicating that getting an annual flu shot can actually increase the risk of influenza illness.”

A Cleveland Clinic study of their 54,402 employees during the 2024-2025 flu season found the flu shot was not effective in preventing the transmission of the respiratory illness. Results of the study can be found at MedRxiv, pronounced “med-archive,” an online platform used to share “preprints” in the medical, clinical, and health science fields.

The manuscript is a preprint, meaning it has not been peer-reviewed. Thus, “it reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice,” according to the site.

While some might question the validity and reliability of the research as a result, preprints are also known to allow for quicker dissemination of research, provide opportunities for feedback from the scientific community, or could simply be considered an early version of the research manuscript.

With these parameters in place to consider, the study found “in an analysis adjusted for age, sex, clinical nursing job, and employment location, the risk of influenza was significantly higher for the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated state, yielding a calculated vaccine effectiveness of −26.9%” [emphasis added]. Therefore, based on this data, it can be stated vaccinated individuals were 27 percent more likely to get the flu.

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LEAK: Pentagon Inspector General Has ‘Evidence’ Hegseth Signal Chat Included Classified Information From Central Command – Pentagon Spox Responds

Another day, another leak.

CNN and The Washington Post on Wednesday reported that sources say the Pentagon Inspector General has ‘evidence’ that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal chat included classified information from Central Command.

The Pentagon Inspector General expanded his investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the double-encrypted app Signal in May.

Steven Stebbins took over as Acting Inspector General after President Trump fired the previous IG and 17 other inspectors general.

Stebbins was first appointed to his position in 2015.

Pete Hegseth has been under heavy attack since before his confirmation hearing and the leaks keep coming.

The Pentagon Inspector General expanded his probe following The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Hegseth’s wife and brother participating in Signal chat groups.

Pete Hegseth was blamed for not noticing Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the Signal chat group with other high-level Trump Administration officials.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded to the latest leak in a statement to CNN: “This Signal narrative is so old and worn out, it’s starting to resemble Joe Biden’s mental state. The Department stands behind its previous statements: no classified information was shared via Signal. As we’ve said repeatedly, nobody was texting war plans and the success of the Department’s recent operations–from Operation Rough Rider to Operation Midnight Hammer–are proof that our operational security and discipline are top notch.”

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Pentagon shifts focus to drone warfare to bolster American military power

Drone warfare is emerging as a central strategic tool in the Trump administration’s plan to expand American military power.

The U.S. pioneered remotely piloted weapons during the war on terrorism in the post-9/11 era, when the term “drone” became a verb for effective strikes against al Qaeda figures in several corners of the world. The military term for missile attacks by large Predator and later Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles was simply “death from above.”

Since the early 2020s, drone weaponry has advanced dramatically from those initial, long-range missile carriers to an entirely new generation of warfare that has come into sharper focus during the Russia-Ukraine war.

In one recent two-day period, Russia fired 355 Iranian-made Shahed-type drones, including decoys, at Ukrainian targets. The wide-scale use of such one-way attack quadcopters and other pilotless aircraft underscores how drone warfare is rapidly becoming the face of modern warfare.

It’s not just Russia and Iran. Other U.S. adversaries are now in the drone manufacturing game, often pioneering inexpensive ways to mass-produce basic but deadly small drones.

China has notably developed a vast slate of drones for attack and support operations and is said to be producing as many as 100,000 small drones monthly. By contrast, the U.S. defense industrial base produces about 5,000 to 6,000 small drones monthly.

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Military Bases in Indiana, New Jersey Will Be Converted to Migrant Holding Centers

The Secretary of Defense has confirmed that a military base in Indiana and another in New Jersey will be converted to house detained immigrants who are awaiting deportation.

Since Trump came into office this year, the administration has added sixty facilities to the list of those used to house migrants marked for deportation, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Now, two more are being added to that list. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth supplied a letter to Congress to inform them that Camp Atterbury in central Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey will be available “for temporary use by the Department of Homeland Security to house illegal aliens,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.

In the letter, Hegseth insisted that turning space over to immigration enforcement “will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.”

The timeline to begin shipping migrants to the bases has not been determined.

Camp Atterbury already has facilities to accommodate 7,000 in its dorm-style housing for families, and open barracks for singles. The buildings are equipped with central heating and air conditioning, and bathroom facilities.

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Report: Microsoft’s Chinese Engineers Access Pentagon Systems with Minimal Oversight from ‘Digital Escorts’

Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.

A ProPublica investigation has uncovered that Microsoft is relying on engineers based in China to help maintain sensitive computer systems for the U.S. Department of Defense, with only minimal oversight from U.S. personnel. This arrangement, which Microsoft deems critical to winning the Pentagon’s cloud computing business, could potentially expose some of the country’s most sensitive data to espionage and hacking by China.

The system relies on U.S. workers with security clearances, known as “digital escorts,” to supervise the Chinese engineers and serve as a firewall against malicious activities. However, ProPublica found that these escorts often lack the advanced technical skills needed to effectively monitor the foreign workers, who possess far greater coding expertise. Some escorts are ex-military with little software engineering experience, earning barely above minimum wage.

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Pentagon Awards Contracts To 4 Artificial Intelligence Developers

The U.S. Department of Defense announced on July 14 that it has awarded contracts to four U.S.-based artificial intelligence (AI) developers to address national security challenges.

Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI will each receive a contracting award with a ceiling of $200 million, according to a statement shared by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.

The office said these four companies would help “develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.”

“Agentic AI” refers to systems designed to operate with minimal human input.

Formed in 2021, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office is responsible for speeding up the military’s adoption of AI systems.

OpenAI was the first of the four contract awardees to announce its contract with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.

In June, the company unveiled “OpenAI for Government” and said its first partnership under the new initiative would help the Pentagon office identify and prototype new AI tools for administrative operations.

Anthropic has developed the Claude family of AI chatbots.

In June, Anthropic announced the development of custom “Claude Gov” models intended for national security clients.

The company said agencies operating at the highest level of the U.S. national security sector are already using these AI models.

Formed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2023, xAI serves as a parent to X Corp., which operates the social media platform X. Among its services, xAI has developed the Grok AI chatbot.

On July 14, xAI announced “Grok for Government” and confirmed that the service holds contracts with the Department of Defense and the U.S. General Services Administration.

Google Public Sector Vice President Jim Kelly said in a July 14 blog post that the new AI announcement with the Department of Defense would build on a long-standing partnership between Google and the U.S. military.

Kelly said his company would give the military access to its Cloud Tensor Processing Units, which power Google’s current AI applications.

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Hegseth Confirms Pentagon Will No Longer Participate In “Globalist” Forum

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has confirmed that the Pentagon will no longer play any role in the Aspen Security Forum, a think tank described as a “mountain retreat for the liberal elite.”

Hegseth posted simply “correct” with a link to a Just The News article about the Pentagon pulling all its scheduled speakers at the “globalist” talking shop.

The report states:

The Defense Department cited the left-wing nature of the Aspen Institute and the participation of such critics of President Trump as Biden administration National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

The annual forum put on by the Aspen Institute – which has been dubbed “the mountain retreat for the liberal elite” – describes the event as “the premier national security and foreign policy conference in the United States.”

Roughly a dozen top Defense Department officials – including the secretary of the Navy and the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command – are still listed as speakers on the Aspen Security Forum agenda this week, but a source told Just the News over the weekend that that will no longer happen.

“The Department of Defense has no interest in legitimizing an organization that has invited former officials who have been the architects of chaos abroad and failure at home,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Just the News.

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The Pentagon’s about to start using xAI’s Grok — and other federal agencies could be next

Elon Musk’s xAI is launching a new government-facing service. Its first client happens to be the largest employer on Earth.

The Department of Defense will pay up to $200 million for “Grok for Government,” a new collection of AI products geared toward use by federal, local, and state governments.

The department has also awarded similar contracts to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, which launched its own government-facing initiative last month.

“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Doug Matty, Chief Digital and AI Officer of the Department of Defense, said in a statement.

xAI said its government-facing products would include models designed specifically for national security purposes and eventually for use in classified environments.

The company also said those products would be available for purchase via the General Services Administration, opening the door for other federal agencies to use them.

The announcement comes less than a week after Grok went on an antisemitic rant on X. The company later apologized for the chatbot’s “horrific behavior,” though workers at the company erupted in anger internally over the incident.

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The Pentagon spent $4 trillion over 5 years. Contractors got 54% of it.

Advocates of ever-higher Pentagon spending frequently argue that we must throw more money at the department to “support the troops.” But recent budget proposals and a new research paper issued by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown University suggest otherwise.

The paper, which I co-authored with Stephen Semler, found that 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors. The top five alone — Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion) – received $771 billion in Pentagon contracts over that five year period.

This huge infusion of funds to arms makers comes at the expense of benefits for active duty personnel and veterans of America’s post-9/11 wars. Despite pay increases in recent years, there are still hundreds of thousands of military families who rely on food stamps, live in subpar housing, or suffer from other financial hardships.

Meanwhile, there are plans to cut tens of thousands of personnel at the Veterans Administration, close Veterans health centers, and even to reduce staffing at veteran suicide hotlines. And many of the programs veterans and their families depend on — from food stamps to Medicaid and more — are slated for sharp cuts in the budget bill signed by President Trump earlier this month.

It would be one thing if all of the hundreds of billions of dollars lavished on weapons contractors were being well spent in service of a better defense. But they are not. Overpriced and underperforming weapons systems like the F-35 combat aircraft and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) have shown themselves to be quite effective at consuming taxpayer dollars, even as the run huge cost overruns, suffer lengthy schedule delays, and, in the case of the F-35, are unavailable for use much of the time due to serious maintenance problems.

The problems with the Sentinel and the F-35 are likely to pale in comparison with the sums that may be wasted in pursuit of President Trump’s proposal for a leak-proof “Golden Dome” missile defense system, a costly pipe dream that many experts feel is both physically impossible and strategically unwise. In the more than four decades and hundreds of billions of dollars spent since Ronald Reagan’s pledge to build an impenetrable shield against incoming ICBMs, the Pentagon has yet to succeed in a test conducted under realistic conditions, and has even failed in a large number of the carefully scripted efforts.

And Golden Dome is more ambitious than Star Wars — it is supposed to intercept not just ICBMs, but hypersonic missiles, low-flying drones, and anything else that might be launched at the United States.

The good news is that if you are a weapons contractor, whether from the Big Five or the emerging military tech sector in Silicon Valley, Golden Dome will be a gold mine, regardless of whether it ever produces a useful defense system.

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