Tag: pentagon

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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President Trump Says U.S. to Send More Weapons to Ukraine Just Days After Pentagon Warned of Depleted Stockpiles

In a whiplash reversal that has infuriated America-First conservatives, President Donald Trump now says the United States “has to” ship still more arms, missiles, and ammo to Ukraine — just days after the Pentagon froze deliveries because our own stockpiles are running dry.

Less than a week ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth halted Patriot interceptors, artillery shells, and precision missiles, citing “dangerously low” U.S. inventories.

The Trump Administration is withholding shipments promised by the Biden Regime after the Pentagon’s policy chief Elbridge Colby found the US’s stockpiles of munitions and air defense missiles are dangerously low.

Last September, the Biden Regime announced an eye-watering $8 billion in military aid for Ukraine during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Congress has approved nearly $175 billion in aid and military assistance for Ukraine.

“Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves’, the president argued. ‘We’ve given so many weapons, but we are giving weapons, and we’re working with them and trying to help them,” Trump said.

Yet on Monday night, seated beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump declared that Ukraine is being hit “very hard” and must receive more “defensive weapons.”

“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump told reporters.

“Defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess,” he added.

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Pentagon halting some promised munitions for Ukraine

The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.

The decision was driven by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, and was made after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles, leading to concerns that the total number of artillery rounds, air defense missiles and precision munitions was sinking, according to three people familiar with the issue.

The initial decision to withhold some aid promised during the Biden administration came in early June, according to the people, but is only taking effect now as Ukraine is beating back some of the largest Russian barrages of missiles and drones at civilian targets in Kyiv and elsewhere.

The people were granted anonymity to discuss current operations. The Pentagon and White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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