Tag: pentagon

Pentagon Bans EV Giant BYD from Defense Contracts, Citing Chinese Military Ties

The Pentagon has added Chinese tech giant Alibaba, electric vehicle (EV) titan BYD, and search engine Baidu to its list of companies that cannot secure U.S. defense contracts because they are linked to the Chinese military.

The Department of War began maintaining a list of “Chinese military companies” in 2021 known as the 1260H list, named after the section of the defense authorization act that created it. Companies on the list are known to provide services to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), although they are not explicitly state-owned firms.

The list is supposed to map out the extensive coordination between China’s military complex and private companies, and caution American companies that doing business with named companies could risk their physical or intellectual property to end up in the hands of the PLA.

The new additions, made on Monday, brought the 1260H list up to 188 companies, from 130 last year. Although companies on the list are not automatically subjected to punitive sanctions, the Chinese government considers the 1260H list to be anti-competitive and unfair – more of an effort to “contain” China’s growing industrial sector than to address real security threats.

On Monday the Chinese Embassy to the United States accused the Pentagon of “overstretching the concept of national security and making discriminatory lists to go after Chinese companies.”

“The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies,” the embassy said.

Alibaba released its own statement insisting that it is “not a Chinese military company, nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy.”

“We will take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent our company,” an Alibaba spokesman said.

The Pentagon noted that Alibaba, BYD, and Baidu are all affiliated with the Chinese Communist government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Another firm, robotics company Unitree, made the list because it “knowingly received assistance” from the Chinese state.

Fortune noted on Monday that all three of China’s top artificial intelligence (A.I.) companies – Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent Holdings – are now 1260H listed entities.

Two chipmakers that were seemingly removed from the list this year, ChangXin Memory Technologies and Yangtze Memory Technologies, have been restored. When they vanished from the list in February, some critics said the Trump administration was attempting to placate China ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting with dictator Xi Jinping.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said Monday that not only was the 1260H list necessary and appropriate, but even stronger action should be taken against companies that appear on it.

“These Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests,” he said. “Any of them that are publicly traded on U.S. exchanges should be immediately delisted and their products should be removed from supply chains our country depends on.” 

Moolenaar added, “American companies must stop doing business with these threats to our national security; otherwise they are enabling China’s military ascendance.” 

Keep reading

U.S. Secretly Deployed Paratroopers to Israel

When the Pentagon announced that the 82nd Airborne was deploying to the Middle East in March, it concealed a key detail: some of the paratroopers were headed to Israel, as revealed in an Army deployment order I obtained.

A military source involved in war planning tells me the deployment is tied to new U.S.-Israeli joint contingency plans, completed since February, for seizing Kharg Island and carving out coastal territory inside Iran.

The 82nd Airborne Division is the Army’s premier quick reaction force, trained to parachute into hostile territory.

By keeping the deployment quiet, the Pentagon headed off public debate over a joint U.S.-Israeli operation inside Iran — a prospect many considered plausible at the time, amid a fever pitch of mainstream reporting on a potential ground invasion. The secrecy also sidestepped what’s euphemistically called “host nation sensitivities.” A joint U.S.-Israeli operation raises thorny questions for America’s Gulf Arab “partners,” especially over logistical support — hence the 82nd, which could launch directly from Israel without any Gulf state’s consent to use its territory.

The Army deployment order, issued April 7, 2026, directs elements of the 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment — the storied “Geronimo” battalion — to deploy to Israel on “temporary duty.” The Israel deployment has not been previously reported.

The Pentagon has never acknowledged it; in public it has said only that the 82nd was bound for “CENTCOM,” the military’s term for U.S. Central Command, the combatant command responsible for the entire Middle East. The press echoed the vague terminology, suggesting the unit was headed to existing U.S. bases in Kuwait or Qatar.

Asked about the number of troops deployed to Israel and their mission, the Pentagon referred my request to CENTCOM, which at the time of publication had not yet responded.

In late March, the New York Times reported that senior military officials were “weighing a possible deployment of a combat brigade from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division … to support U.S. military operations in Iran.” The forces would come from the division’s Immediate Response Force — a brigade of roughly 3,000 soldiers able to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours. Those forces, the Times noted, “could be used to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub.”

The groundwork had been laid weeks earlier. The Army abruptly pulled the division’s 300-member headquarters from a planned exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana, officials told the Times, so the command element wouldn’t be “caught out of place if the balloon went up.” The Aviationist reported that the division’s commander, Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegtmeier, and his command element had been ordered to deploy, and tracked a string of flights leaving Pope Army Airfield, which serves Fort Bragg, for the Middle East.

When the Pentagon finally did talk about the 82nd publicly, it took pains to keep Israel out of it.

Keep reading

Pentagon Names Alibaba, Baidu, And BYD In Updated Chinese Military Companies List As DoD Contracting Bans Loom

The Department of Defense has filed a major update to its official list of “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States, formally naming or reaffirming high-profile firms including Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, BGI Group, and Autel as companies linked to Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy.

The notice, filed on Monday and scheduled for Federal Register publication on June 10, comes just weeks before new restrictions on Department of Defense contracting with listed entities take effect on June 30. The companies are alleged to have ownership or ties to SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), affiliations with MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), PLA connections, support from China’s “Little Giant” industrial program, or a presence in military-civil fusion zones.

Section 1260H requires the Pentagon to identify Chinese companies that conduct commercial business while also supporting or being affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army or China’s defense-industrial base. The list has existed for years, but the consequences are now becoming more significant. Effective June 30, the DoD will be barred from entering into, renewing, or extending contracts directly with listed companies or entities they control. A broader indirect ban – covering goods or services that incorporate products from these firms – follows in June 2027. Additional rules restrict DoD contractors from working with entities that lobby on behalf of listed companies.

In short, the Pentagon is putting major Chinese companies on notice that it views them as potential extensions of China’s military and defense ecosystem, even if those companies are better known globally for consumer products, cloud services, electric vehicles, drones, or biotech.

Keep reading

Dept. of War removes Wicca, about 180 other belief systems as recognized religions

The Department of War recently dropped approximately 180 belief systems from its list of recognized religions for U.S. military personnel, including Wicca and other neo-pagan faiths.

A May 20 memo issued by the Undersecretary of War Elbridge A. Colby and signed by Anthony Tata, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, trimmed the list from 211 faiths to 31, according to Military.com.

The move intends to “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy,” said the memo, which ordered the revision of the “religious affiliation codes” to go into effect within 60 days.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” the memo added.

Some of the belief systems that have been removed from the list include atheism, which was replaced by a general “no religion” or “agnostic” designation; pagan or Earth-based faiths such as Wicca, Druidism, Heathenism and members of The Troth; New Age beliefs such as Eckankar, Rosicrucianism, shamanism and spiritualism; as well as other alternative belief systems, including Deism, Unitarian Universalism and practitioners of “magick.”

The religions that remain are various denominations of Christianity, Buddhism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and the Baha’i faith.

The directive ultimately came from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who pledged last year to overhaul the military’s Chaplain Corps by refocusing it on religious ministry and eliminating what he called secular influences.

Hegseth announced the initiative in a video message on Dec. 16, 2025, that promised to “make the Chaplain Corps great again” and condemned New Age notions in the “Army Spiritual Fitness Guide” that he ordered eliminated.

Hegseth, an Evangelical whose church is affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), has repeatedly promised to root out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and other “woke garbage” from the Pentagon. He has drawn scrutiny during his tenure as Secretary of War for his use of Christian rhetoric, such as invoking imprecatory psalms against the enemies of the United States, weeks after the U.S.-Israeli attack against Iran.

An anonymous U.S. Army veteran who is ordained as a priest in Wicca and the neo-pagan faiths of Ásatrú and Druidism expressed anger to Military.com about the new list. The individual, who served three tours in Iraq, claimed it “rekindled that anger” they felt upon allegedly being discriminated against by military chaplains 20 years ago for being a self-described pagan.

Keep reading

Angry Pentagon Sources Leak Report Of Israel’s ‘Unhinged’ Spying On US Officials

It’s no secret that Israeli spying and surveillance is pervasive, and it is often even directed at its most powerful ally and backer, the United States. But the phenomenon has escalated of late, outraging Washington intelligence officials.

Behind the scenes of this alliance which mainstream media and pundits typically project as essentially untouchable, deep-seated friction is boiling over. In an unprecedented move, the Pentagon has officially elevated Israel’s counterintelligence threat level to its highest possible category, driven by surging internal alarm that this primary Mideast regional ally is aggressively ramping up espionage operations targeting senior US officials – even Trump’s own top Iran negotiator.

The intelligence warning, freshly reported this weekend by NBC News and The New York Times, highlights a profound rift within the national security apparatus as tensions mount between the Trump administration and Israel over the ongoing joint war on Iran.

The revelation’s timing is interesting, given it comes after Axios reported at the start of this month that on a phone call President Trump ‘steamrolled’ Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump is said to have been “pissed” and at one point yelled and berated Netanyahu, saying “What the fuck are you doing?”

And now, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is broadcasting an internal alert raising Israel’s specific threat designation to “critical”. According to details revealed in a Sunday NBC report:

The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said.

The DIA assessment includes a seven-page document and features a chart, according to one of the current U.S. officials. The document says the assessment of Israel is that its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a “critical level,” according to the official.

And parallel to this, a report by the NY Times lists out names that are very high level within the Trump administration. Israel has allegedly focused its electronic and human efforts to eavesdrop on the following officials (likely among others):

  • Steve Witkoff, Trump’s premier regional negotiator.
  • Elbridge A. Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official.
  • Michael P. DiMino IV, one of Colby’s primary deputies.

The Israeli embassy in Washingtons has slammed the reports as ‘completely false’: “This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on,” it said in a statement.

Keep reading

NBC Report: Pentagon Raised Threat of Israeli Spying on US to Highest Level – White House Denies Report

The Pentagon has designated Israel at the highest counterintelligence threat level amid increasing concerns that the top Middle East ally is spying on US officials to gather information on Trump’s decision-making as it pertains to Iran, two US officials reportedly claim, according to NBC News. 

An Israeli Embassy spokesperson denied that Israel spies on the United States, describing the notion as “completely false.”

“Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials. Israel intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated,” the spokesperson said.

The White House further denied the report, saying, “This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on.”

The report from NBC cites two unnamed US officials and one former US official and points to past instances of Israel and the US both spying on allies, including Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in prison for selling US intelligence to Israel.

Keep reading

US Service Members Targeted Via Commercial Location Data, Pentagon Tells Senators

Adversaries have used commercially-available location data to attack individual US service members in war zones, according to a report furnished by the Department of Defense to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, and first reported by Reuters. Wyden is a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee. 

Responding to four questions Wyden had posed about this potential avenue of vulnerability for service members deployed to the Middle East, the Pentagon said that US Central Command “has received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater. The Threat Fusion Cell identified, tracked, and disseminated these threats through the USCENTCOM Threat Working Group and to component force protection personnel.” 

Elaborating on the nature of the threat, the Pentagon noted that: 

“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries ​to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes.” 

The Pentagon’s brief set of responses did not provide details on any specific incidents. Early in the US-Israeli war on Iran, two DOD officials were wounded in an Iranian drone strike on a Crowne Plaza hotel in Bahrain. After the strike, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran had built a “target bank” of both American and Israeli personnel.  “The fact that they’ve now pinpointed the residences/locations of some of these forces has really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard,” the official said, without detailing Iran’s methodology. He did say the building of the target bank began after the 2025 12-Day War.   

Keep reading

Pentagon Cuts the Faith-Code Maze From 200-Plus to 31

The Pentagon just cut its list of religious affiliation codes for service members from over 200 down to 31. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the reform in March as part of a broader effort to refocus the Chaplain Corps.

Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata later released the memo making the change official. The old system had sprawled into a giant administrative junk drawer, stuffed with codes many troops never used and chaplains didn’t need to serve the force. From Just the News:

Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata released the memo, stating the change will “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy,” according to Military.com.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata said. 

Hegseth said the previous system had grown to “well over 200 faith codes,” called it “impractical and unusable,” and noted many codes were never used at all. He also said 82% of religious service members use only six of the codes. From Religion News Service:

Hegseth has been explicit about his Christian faith. He worships at a church run by a self-described Christian nationalist and has held Christian worship services at the Pentagon. He has pushed social media messages that mix war preparations with Bible verses as well as official statements that champion a disputed, faith-focused version of U.S. history.

In 2017, during the first Trump administration, when the military expanded the number of recognized religious faiths it said it was doing so to provide “more accurate demographic data for religious groups,” to enable “better planning for religious support to the force” and to provide “a better assessment of the capabilities and requirements of each Military Service’s Chaplain Corps.”

The reform renames the old “faith and belief coding system” as “religious affiliation codes” and returns the list to a simpler purpose: providing chaplains clear information so they can support troops in line with their stated faith background and practice.

The new list keeps broad religious categories that cover the faith service members report most often. The list includes Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, agnostics, and major Christian groups such as Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and others.

The dropped codes include atheism, Asatru, Eckankar, New Age churches, paganism, spiritualism, Troth, Unitarian Universalism, and several Wiccan groups.

It’s time to cue the usual panic choir, warming up somewhere between “theocracy” and “how dare the database stop flattering my boutique label.”

There’s an argument that the change could make smaller faith groups less visible in the military system, where Hegseth’s chaplain reforms are part of a wider Christian emphasis at the Pentagon.

Those concerns deserve a hearing, but the policy doesn’t ban any service member from worshipping, seeking accommodation, speaking with a chaplain, or holding any belief.

A code list isn’t the First Amendment.

Keep reading

Goldman Sits Down With Anduril As ‘War Unicorns’ Reshape Defense Tech

Palmer Luckey’s defense startup, Anduril, is emerging as the Department of War’s answer to the urgent need for affordable, scalable advanced weaponry produced at lightning speed, rather than through the slow, over-budget procurement cycles that have long defined the legacy primes.

The twin conflicts raging across Eurasia and the Middle East, from the Russia-Ukraine war to the U.S.-Iran war, have forever altered modern warfare, with drones, seaborne drones, ground robots, and AI kill chains now reshaping the battlefield.

The quick rise of Anduril, something we call a “war unicorn,” has attracted the attention of Goldman analysts, who recently felt compelled to sit down with Anduril executives to better understand the story and how it will play a major role in the next phase of rebuilding America’s defense-industrial base.

Analyst Noah Poponak recently hosted Anduril co-founder and CEO Brian Schimpf and head of investor relations Allison Lazarus in New York to gain more color on how the defense company is solving the defense industry’s biggest bottleneck, speed.

Oculus headset creator Palmer Luckey, who founded the company in 2017, has focused on building lower-cost, scalable systems in categories such as drones, counter-UAS, and missiles, positioning itself against a legacy defense-industrial base that includes Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and many others.

Keep reading

Appeals Court Sides with Crazed Biden Judge, Rules Pentagon Illegally Banned Transgender Troops – Hegseth Responds

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that the Pentagon illegally banned transgender troops.

In a 2-1 ruling, the DC Circuit Court Appeals sided with crazed Biden judge Ana Reyes and said the Trump Administration’s transgender troop policy violated the Constitution.

The Associated Press reported:

A Trump administration policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, a divided panel of federal appeal court judges ruled on Monday.

The majority opinion by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit largely upholds a March 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C. Reyes concluded that President Donald Trump’s executive order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.

The administration appealed after Reyes issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys for six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military. The appeal court’s majority decided that the injunction should be narrowed to the plaintiffs currently serving in the military but not those seeking to join.

In January 2025, President Trump signed the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” executive orders, which direct every element of the U.S. military to “operate free from any preference based on race or sex” and root out gender insanity and made up pronoun usage, respectively.

Last March, Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee from Uruguay, issued a temporary nationwide injunction blocking Trump’s transgender military ban.

Keep reading