Tag: pentagon

Dem Megadonor Reid Hoffman Scrubbed From Pentagon Board Website Ahead of Trump Inauguration

Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman appears to have quietly left a premier Pentagon advisory board after the election of Donald Trump, raising questions about whether he quit the organization on his own or was forced off because of his work to keep Trump out of the White House.

Hoffman joined the Defense Innovation Board, chaired by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, in October 2022. The group provides advice to the Pentagon on how to implement new technologies into the military and work more efficiently with private companies.

Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, was listed as a board member until at least Nov. 27, according to archived versions of its website, but is no longer listed there. If Hoffman was forced off the board, it would be the latest example of a federal agency cleaning house ahead of Trump’s second term. Trump has said he will not allow Democrats or Republicans afflicted with what he called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to work in federal agencies. In December, the FBI quietly shut its Diversity and Inclusion office.

Hoffman’s position on the board caused outcry from Republicans over his ties to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his funding for controversial political projects to help Democrats. And in July, Hoffman came under fire after he said he hoped his political tactics would make Donald Trump an “actual martyr.” Days later, a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

The National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative legal group, called for Hoffman to “be dismissed” from the board because of what it called Hoffman’s “irresponsible and dangerous remarks” about Trump.

The Defense Innovation Board noted that request at its July 17 board meeting, according to board records. Bloomberg discussed the attempted assassination, though he did not speak about Hoffman’s remarks or acknowledge the National Legal and Policy Center complaint, according to a transcript of the meeting.

The Pentagon, the Innovation board, and members of the board did not respond to requests for comment about Hoffman’s departure.

“I think Reid Hoffman saw the writing on the wall and resigned from the board, on which he should not have been on in the first place,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center.

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Went MIA Twice Last Year And Didn’t Tell Congress

Lloyd Austin transferred his responsibilities as defense secretary to a subordinate on two separate occasions last year and didn’t inform Congress as required by federal law, according to an explosive inspector general report released Wednesday. The revelation marks another instance in which Austin has been caught going MIA while leading the Pentagon.

Released by the office of the Department of Defense (DOD) inspector general, the report primarily focuses on a controversy involving Austin that arose in January 2024. The defense secretary was admitted to Walter Reed’s ICU on Jan. 1 after reportedly “experiencing severe pain,” which seemingly stemmed from an “initial medical procedure” he underwent on Dec. 22, 2023, according to The Guardian.

The report confirms Austin’s procedure was related to a prostate cancer diagnosis.

As I previously wrote in these pages, the American people, Congress, and high-ranking Biden administration officials — including President Biden — were unaware of Austin’s absence for several days. Even Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks — whom Austin transferred his responsibilities to and was vacationing in Puerto Rico at the time — was also unaware of the situation until she was briefed on the matter days after Austin was admitted to the ICU.

But it appears that wasn’t the only instance in which Austin failed to properly notify relevant authorities about transferring his duties to Hicks.

According to Wednesday’s IG report, the Pentagon “did not report two [Assumption of Functions and Duties] AFDs, occurring on June 17, 2024, and June 21, 2024, to the Comptroller General and Congress” as required by federal law and DOD policy.

The DOD IG noted how both transfer of power notifications “stated that the reason for the AFD was travel” and that Hicks “was serving as the Acting Secretary of Defense.” While the directives “did not indicate the expected duration of the transfer” of authority, “the June 17 AFD lasted 1 hour and the June 21 AFD lasted 35 minutes,” according to the report.

“However, although these AFDs were reported to the [White House Situation Room], they were not reported to the Comptroller General and Congress,” the analysis reads.

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Pentagon Contractor Fired After Undercover DoD “Stop Trump” Exposé

A top advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon has been fired after an undercover investigation caught him on camera admitting he’s working with generals on a ‘stop-Trump’ effort.

Former FBI Special Agent Jamie Mannina – an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, was confirmed as having been let go following an undercover exposé by James O’Keefe’s OMG Media.

Via James O’Keefe:

“I’ve been in conversation with a couple of retired generals to explore what we can do,” Jamie Mannina, advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, former FBI Special Agent, and self-proclaimed “spy hunter,” disclosed to an undercover OMG Journalist his plans to utilize irregular strategies to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.

Mannina also described his “ghost writing” with a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, National Security Leaders for America, saying, “What we were doing was we were trying to explain to the American people the national security consequences of another Trump presidency.” He elaborated on his recent activities, saying, “Since the spring, I was working with these retired generals, retired ambassadors,” adding, “They’re like one, two, or three-star generals and admirals. You probably know maybe four stars.” He acknowledged the organization’s ultimate goal, emphasizing, “This organization tried to defeat Donald Trump.”

Mannina further revealed that he was participating in a “huge meeting with military leaders; in a very secure room called ‘The Tank.’” The Tank is a nickname for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Conference room which is a (SCIF), a Compartmentalized Information Facility. Discussing the focus of these meetings, Mannina shared that “the United States has specialized in artificial intelligence and emerging technology, quantum, [and] cybersecurity.” He elaborated on the potential of quantum technology, stating, “Quantum is incredibly fast, super-computing. That doesn’t yet exist, but will soon exist, and when it does, it will change everything.”

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Former FBI Agent and Pentagon Senior Advisor Outed by O’Keefe Media Group was Allegedly Filmed by ‘Predator DC’ in November 2021 at a 15 Year-old Girl’s ‘Home’

Yesterday, The Gateway Pundit’s Jordan Conradson reported on a new exposé from James O’Keefe’s OMG that showed Jamie Mannina, a former FBI agent, Hillary Clinton campaign staffer and a just-fired Senior Advisor to the Joint Staff of the Department of Defense spilling the beans on high-level efforts to subvert President Trump’s next term in the Oval Office.

Mannina mentioned he worked for a “top consulting firm”, which the video states is Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), one of the largest contractors for the United States government.  In 2022, BAH was the 6th largest government contractor with $5.9 billion in government contracts.

In November 2021, a Predator DC video allegedly shows “Jamie” arriving at a house where he believed a 15 year-old girl was going to engage in sexual acts with him.  The video starts out with the cameraman and hosts hiding in a closet.  You can hear the girl making small talk with “Jamie” when he arrives.

Eventually, she tells “Jamie” that she is going to go put her “school-girl outfit on” and requests that he is already naked when she returns.  “Jamie” responds with reluctance saying that he’d “be happy to” but “we’re just five minutes in.”

Shortly after, “Jamie” is confronted by the camera crew and hosts who tell him, “Jamie, go ahead and have a seat right there on that stool for me.”

“Jamie” says he doesn’t want to be on camera and makes a bee line for the door.  At this point, the hosts, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl introduce themselves.  He responds, “I know who you are” as he begins to leave.

“We’re doing a story on adults who come to have sex with underage teens.  You’ve come here today to have sex with an underage girl.”

“No, I said no, sir,” he responded.  “I said ‘no, I didn’t want to do it.'”

“Jamie” then leaves the home in a black Camaro.

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‘Project Pandora’: DoD Experiments to Control Human Behavior with Microwave Radiation

A declassified collection of documents confirms the U.S. military, in league with the State Department and CIA, conducted experiments investigating the “potential of exerting a degree of control on human behavior by low level microwave radiation.”

The documents comprise a cache of operational procedures, research summaries, appendices, administrative notes, and memorandums outlining ‘Project Pandora.’

Project Pandora was a Cold War-era U.S. research initiative led by ARPA (now DARPA) to investigate the biological and behavioral effects of low-level microwave radiation, including its potential for surveillance, psychological influence, and non-lethal weaponization, with experiments involving animals, and human testing.

It was suggested at one section of the cache that Pandora would include the use of “various basic wave forms” on “biological tissue,” including a “program that might look at possible behavioral implications from the point of view of a weapon or interrogation device.”

Such a program was to “be handled on a SECRET level.”

The cache document has resurfaced amid bombshell reports that the Pentagon approved the use of directed-energy weapons (DEWs) on American citizens, as well as speculation that DEWs were used in relation to the recent Los Angeles fires.

The resurfaced document confirms the DoD has been developing such technology for decades.

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Pentagon Reluctantly Admits Russian ‘Incremental Gains’ In Eastern Ukraine

With just days to go before the United States gets a new Commander-in-Chief with Trump’s inauguration on Jan.20, the Pentagon has made a rare admission, acknowledging that Russian forces are basically dominating on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The Pentagon during its daily press briefing on Monday acknowledged Russian forces’ “incremental gains” in the Donbass. Below is from the question and answer transcript: 

Q:  And then a completely different topic — can you give us an update on the Ukrainian battlefield? Does Putin indeed have the upper hand right now?

PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY MAJOR GENERAL PAT RYDER:  Well, what we’re seeing on the battlefield is that, especially in the East, Russia has made some incremental gains. Of course, it’s very tough fighting, as well as in the Kursk region as well. But when you talk about the upper hand, of course, tactically, again other than those incremental gains, what you’re seeing strategically is that again Russia has not achieved any of Its strategic objectives that it set for itself almost three years ago.

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The CDC, Palantir and the AI-Healthcare Revolution 

The Pentagon and Silicon Valley are in the midst of cultivating an even closer relationship as the Department of Defense (DoD) and Big Tech companies seek to jointly transform the American healthcare system into one that is “artificial intelligence (AI)-driven.” The alleged advantages of such a system, espoused by the Army itself, Big Tech and Pharma executives as well as intelligence officers, would be unleashed by the rapidly developing power of so-called “predictive medicine,” or “a branch of medicine that aims to identify patients at risk of developing a disease, thereby enabling either prevention or early treatment of that disease.”

This will apparently be achieved via mass interagency data sharing between the DoD, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the private sector. In other words, the military and intelligence communities, as well as the public and private sector elements of the US healthcare system, are working closely with Big Tech to “predict” diseases and treat them before they occur (and even before symptoms are felt) for the purported purpose of improving civilian and military healthcare.

This cross-sector team plans to deliver this transformation of the healthcare system by first utilizing and sharing the DoD’s healthcare dataset, which is the most “comprehensive…in the world.” It seems, however, based on the programs that already utilize this predictive approach and the necessity for “machine learning” in the development of AI technology, that this partnership would also massively expand the breadth of this healthcare dataset through an array of technologies, methods and sources.

Yet, if the actors and institutions involved in lobbying for and implementing this system indicate anything, it appears that another—if not primary—purpose of this push towards a predictive AI-healthcare infrastructure is the resurrection of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-managed and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-supported program that Congress officially “shelved” decades ago. That program, Total Information Awareness (TIA), was a post 9/11 “pre-crime” operation which sought to use mass surveillance to stop terrorists before they committed any crimes through collaborative data mining efforts between the public and private sector.

While the “pre-crime” aspect of TIA is the best known component of the program, it also included a component that sought to use public and private health and financial data to “predict” bioterror events and pandemics before they emerge. This was TIA’s “Bio-Surveillance” program, which aimed to develop “necessary information technologies and a resulting prototype capable of detecting the covert release of a biological pathogen automatically, and significantly earlier than traditional approaches.” Its architects argued it would achieve this by “monitoring non-traditional data sources” including “pre-diagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.” While ostensibly created to thwart “bioterror” events, the program also sought to create algorithms for identifying “normal” disease outbreaks, essentially seeking to automate the early detection of either biological attacks or natural pathogen outbreaks, ranging from pandemics to presumably other, less severe disease events.

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Pentagon Launches Fresh Assault On Houthis In Yemen Ahead Of 2025

The war in Yemen and the Red Sea continues to intensify, following several ballistic missiles launched on Israel by the Iran-backed Houthis last week and this month. The pattern is that for whatever the Western coalition throws at the Houthis in terms of bombing raids, the militant group only intensifies its assaults.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that forces under US Central Command (CENTCOM) have launched fresh attacks on Yemen after the Houthi militants targeted American warships and commercial ships earlier the same day.

US Navy ships and aircraft conduced the new attacks, striking Houthi-controlled coastal regions of Yemen, according to the CENTCOM statement.

American warplanes had destroyed “seven cruise missiles and one-way attack UAVs over the Red Sea,” the statement continued. “There were no injuries or damage to U.S. personnel or equipment in either incident,” it said.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam denounced the strikes as “an American aggression” and “a blatant violation of the sovereignty of an independent state and a blatant support for Israel.”

CENTCOM has justified the new action as necessary “to degrade Iran-backed Houthi efforts to threaten regional partners and military and merchant vessels in the region.”

Earlier on Tuesday the Houthis had also launched two more missiles at Israel. These direct attacks on Israel out of Yemen are coming almost daily at this point, and Israeli forces have also stepped up aerial attacks on Yemen in coordination with the Western coalition in the Red Sea.

Just days ago, on Thursday, Israel conducted some of the largest attacks on Yemen to date, hitting the international airport in Sanaa and other facilities. 

But the Houthis have clearly remained undeterred. Short of a full-scale ground invasion, these Western coalition aerial attacks are unlikely to do anything but prolong the war, which the Houthis say is a response to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip.

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Drones continue to buzz over US bases. The military isn’t sure why or how to stop them

A series of drone sightings over military bases across the country has renewed concerns that the US doesn’t have clear government-wide policy for how to deal with unauthorized incursions that could potentially pose a national security threat.

“We’re one year past Langley drone incursions and almost two years past the PRC spy balloon. Why don’t we have a single [point of contact] who is responsible for coordination across all organizations in the government to address this?” the recently retired head of US Northern Command and NORAD, Gen. Glen VanHerck, told CNN. “Instead, everybody’s pointing their fingers at each other saying it’s not our responsibility.”

Indeed, there have been multiple instances of drone incursions over military bases since mysterious drone swarms were spotted around Joint Base Langley-Eustis and other sensitive military sites in Virginia last year, and since a Chinese spy balloon transited the continental US in 2023.

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Pentagon Reveals the US Has More Than Twice the Number of Troops in Syria Than Previously Disclosed

The US has 2,000 troops in Syria, far more than the 900 number the Pentagon has been sharing publicly.

On Thursday, the Pentagon revealed the US has roughly 2,000 troops occupying Syria, more than twice the number it has been disclosing.

For years, the US has said it has about 900 troops inside Syria. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the troops levels have been at 2,000 for a “while,” well before the regime change that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Since the regime change in Syria on December 8, the Pentagon has been asked repeatedly about the number of US troops in the country and kept repeating the 900 number. Ryder claimed he had just learned that it was significantly higher than he had been saying.

“As you know, we have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 US troops deployed to Syria. In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interest, we recently learned that those numbers were higher, and so asked to look into it. I learned today that in fact there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria,” he said.

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