Tag: perpetual war

CCP Linked Entities Hold Properties Adjacent to Military Bases Across the US

Over the past few years, several sensitive properties near U.S. military bases have been purchased by Chinese entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party. In 2022, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government panel that reviews foreign purchases of American land or companies for national security risks, received a tip that a company called MineOne had bought land within a mile of an air base.

The report triggered a national security review. MineOne, which is majority owned by nationals of the People’s Republic of China, purchased 12 acres within one mile of Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and began converting the property into a cryptocurrency-mining facility.

Also in 2022, Chinese billionaire Zhong Shanshan purchased 23 acres of industrial land in Nashua, New Hampshire, for $67 million. The site is close to L3Harris Technologies, near BAE Systems’ electronic systems division, and within 30 minutes of New Boston Space Force Station. The sale bypassed CFIUS review despite its proximity to these defense facilities.

In 2023, Fufeng Group bought 370 acres about 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base. The company’s chairman, Li Xuechun, served as a deputy to the Shandong Province People’s Congress and was honored as a provincial Model Laborer. Grand Forks Air Force Base was being expanded at the time to lead future intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations. Fufeng leadership has repeatedly emphasized the Party’s role in guiding the company’s development. The project was halted after Pentagon objections.

That same year, Chinese real estate tycoon Sun Guangxin spent tens of millions to buy more than 140,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base, where U.S. military pilots train. Sun is a former captain in the People’s Liberation Army with close links to the CCP. His senior advisers are former PLA generals, and he operates dozens of CCP grassroots branches. The land includes a private runway and sits between Laughlin Air Force Base and the U.S.-Mexico border. Sun is the wealthiest businessman in Xinjiang Province and a long-time CCP member.

Some of these problematic purchases are harder to trace back to the Chinese Communist Party because they are carried out through layers of shell companies and intermediary entities, sometimes using U.S. or Canadian residents to further obscure CCP involvement. One example is the network of companies connected to Esther Mei and her husband, Cheng Hu, which corporate and property records show has acquired land beside several sensitive U.S. military installations.

One of these properties, the Knob Noster Trailer Park in Missouri, sits directly outside Whiteman Air Force Base, home of the B-2 Spirit nuclear-capable stealth bomber fleet.

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Russia’s AI Enabled Drones: The Next Evolution of Warfare

Russia is now fielding long-range, fiber-optic–controlled drones while simultaneously accelerating development of fully autonomous, AI-driven attack drones that mark a dramatic shift in its battlefield strategy. Ukrainian officials confirm that Moscow is deploying jam-proof fiber-optic FPV platforms with a 50-kilometer range, forcing Ukrainian units to cover supply routes with netting to protect vehicles from incoming strikes.

At the same time, Russia is rolling out a new generation of AI-enabled systems powered by smuggled NVIDIA Jetson processors, which were supposed to be blocked by sanctions but are now appearing inside multiple Russian drones.

Ukrainian drone specialist Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov reports that Russia has adapted Ukrainian innovations for its V2U autonomous strike drone, while other captured systems, like the Shahed MS001 and Tyuvik, show that Russia is rapidly building an arsenal of “digital predators” capable of finding and attacking targets without human control.

The V2U remains Russia’s most advanced autonomous platform. First deployed in Ukraine’s Sumy region in February 2025, the drone was being used 30–50 times per day by mid-May across multiple fronts. It navigates by using machine vision to compare live imagery with digital terrain maps stored on a solid-state drive, upgraded to 128 GB in later versions. A 14-megapixel camera, laser rangefinder, and NVIDIA Jetson Orin processor enable the drone to identify targets, conduct terrain analysis, and strike without GPS or human commands.

Russian forces update its onboard code almost weekly, training the AI directly through battlefield experience. The drone’s AI is powerful enough to fly up and down roads searching for targets, though its limited ability to distinguish targets has led to mistakes, including striking civilian infrastructure such as a public toilet instead of a vehicle.

To extend range, Russian forces deploy large “mother drones” that transport smaller V2Us deep into contested airspace before releasing them for individual strikes. Russia is also experimenting with coordinated swarms of seven or eight V2Us, each painted with distinct wing colors to visually identify one another.

According to Ukrainian analysts, these drones can maintain formation, coordinate attack order, and perform anti-air evasive maneuvers if a member of the group is shot down. This behavior resembles early machine-driven swarm intelligence and may be adapted for Russia’s long-range Shahed drones, creating fully autonomous loitering-munitions swarms capable of saturating Ukrainian defenses.

Captured drones reveal the scale of Russia’s dependence on foreign components. The V2U relies on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin for AI processing, Intel wireless adapters, Sony optical sensors, and numerous Chinese-made motors, drives, and batteries. The MS001, an upgraded Shahed variant, also carries a Jetson Orin paired with a thermal imager and digital modem, allowing it to recognize ground objects and strike moving targets rather than simply flying to preset coordinates.

A third autonomous drone, the Tyuvik, resembles a miniature Shahed and is now reportedly in mass production. Tyuvik can locate and strike moving armored vehicles despite using inexpensive commercial hardware, suggesting it also depends on smuggled Western or Chinese AI processors.

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US approves new $330m arms deal for Taiwan

Washington has cleared a $330-million package of aircraft parts and maintenance support for Taiwan on 13 November, marking the first US arms sale since President Donald Trump returned to office. 

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the approval and thanked Washington for continuing what it described as a policy of regularized arms sales.

The State Department decision includes equipment, spare parts, and repair services for Taiwan’s fleet of US-made F-16 and C-130 aircraft, as well as components for its domestically produced Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF). 

The Pentagon said the proposed sale “will improve the recipient’s capability to meet current and future threats by maintaining the operational readiness of the recipient’s fleet of F-16, C-130,” and other aircraft.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the package will help maintain fighter readiness, bolster air defenses, and strengthen the island’s ability to respond to China’s “gray-zone” incursions. 

President Lai Ching-te’s government has vowed to ramp up defense spending amid China’s continued military pressure around the island. 

Taiwan’s presidential office called the deepening security partnership with Washington “an important cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Beijing expressed anger at the sale, repeating its claim that Taiwan is part of its territory. 

China’s Foreign Ministry said “the Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in China–US relations,” and warned that China will do what is necessary to defend its “sovereignty, territorial integrity and security.”

Taiwan requested the package earlier this year, seeking “non-standard components, spare and repair parts, consumables and accessories, and repair and return support for F-16, C-130, and Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF) aircraft,” according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Trump has said Chinese President Xi Jinping told him he would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office, a remark made after the two leaders met in South Korea as trade discussions continued. 

Reuters reported there had been “fear in Taipei that there could have been some sort of ‘selling out’ of Taiwan’s interests,” which did not materialize as Washington proceeded with the sale.

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Chatham House hosts notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi mob leader

London-based think tank Chatham House has hosted notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi Yevhen Karas as a speaker at an event called ‘War in Ukraine: The battleground for the future of Europe’.

The think tank presented Karas as the commander of the 413th Separate Battalion of Unmanned Systems ‘Raid’ of Ukraine’s armed forces, failing to mention his colorful neo-Nazi background.

Karas is known as the founder of the notorious S14 far-right paramilitary group, created in 2010 as a youth offshoot of the far-right Svoboda party. The name of the group is a stylized form of the Ukrainian word ‘Sich’, referring to an administrative and military center for Cossack proto-states, and contains the number ‘14’, widely used by assorted white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations worldwide.  

The number refers to a 14-word phrase by American white supremacist David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The S14 itself, however, has insisted its name refers to the date it was created and denies being a neo-Nazi organization, but merely a “Ukrainian nationalist” group.

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House Armed Services Chair Urges Trump Admin to Publicly Disclose Legal Basis for Boat Strikes

Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) offered his ringing endorsement of a recent closed-door briefing on the ongoing campaign of U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats from Latin America, and urged the Trump administration to go public with its legal rationale for the operations.

Rogers was among a handful of lawmakers briefed on the strikes on Nov. 5, in a closed-door sensitive compartmented information facility, commonly referred to as a “SCIF.” Such facilities are used to control access to information that the U.S. government has classified.

“There was nothing that we should have been in a SCIF talking about,” Rogers, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 12. “They should be talking to all y’all, because it was very well done, completely legal what they’re doing, and they should be more transparent about it, in my view.”

Alongside a U.S. military build-up in the Caribbean Sea and a campaign of pressure against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that have been growing since the summer, U.S. forces have been bombing suspected drug boats in the region since September. In that time, U.S. forces have conducted at least seven strikes in the Caribbean Sea, nine in the eastern Pacific, and three more in unspecified locations throughout the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility, which covers Central America and South America.

“I’m fine with what they’re doing down there, and I think that the lawyers that did that, talked about the legal basis, should do it publicly,” Rogers said.

The ongoing U.S. military campaign, which the Trump administration has described as a “non-international armed conflict,” has met with skepticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

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Iran Tells UN It Holds US Responsible for Israeli Bombing Campaign That Killed Over 1,000

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has sent a letter to top UN officials calling for the US to be held accountable for Israel’s attacks on Iran during the 12-Day War, which killed more than 1,000 people, including senior military officials, nuclear scientists, and many civilians.

In the letter, Aragchi cited Trump’s recent comments about how he was “in charge” of the Israeli attacks. “Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that,” Trump told reporters on November 6. “When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.”

Aragchi said the attacks on Iran violated international law and called for compensation. “The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its full and unimpeachable right to pursue, through all available legal means, the establishment of accountability for the responsible States and individuals and to secure compensation for the damages sustained,” he wrote.

The only direct airstrikes that the US launched during the war were the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, but the US supported the Israeli attacks by refueling Israeli jets throughout the 12 days, according to reports in Israeli media. The Trump administration also engaged in a deception campaign aimed at keeping Iran off guard before the initial Israeli attack.

Israel conducted its first airstrikes on Iran on June 13, two days before the US and Iran were scheduled to hold another round of nuclear negotiations. Hours before the initial bombing started, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was committed to a “diplomatic solution” with Iran.

According to Iran’s Foundation for Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, at least 1,100 people were killed in Iran during the bombing campaign, including 132 women and 45 children. The US-funded Washington-based NGO Human Rights Activists in Iran, which is very critical of the Iranian government, has said that it identified 436 civilians and 435 members of Iran’s security forces who were killed. According to Israeli figures, 28 people were killed in Israel by Iranian missile attacks, all but one of them being civilians.

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Inside the CIA’s secret mission to sabotage Afghanistan’s opium

In 20 years of grinding war in Afghanistan, the United States dropped a multitude of weapons from the skies: Millions of tons of ordnance. Hellfire missiles launched from Predator drones. Even the “Mother of All Bombs,” the most powerful nonnuclear bomb in existence. And, amid the more conventional projectiles, tiny poppy seeds. By the billions.

On and off for over a decade, the Central Intelligence Agency conducted an audacious highly classified program to covertly manipulate Afghanistan’s lucrative poppy crop, blanketing Afghan farmers’ fields with specially modified seeds that germinated plants containing almost none of the chemicals that are refined into heroin, The Washington Post has learned.

The covert program, which has not previously been disclosed, is an unreported chapter in the 2001-2021 U.S. war in Afghanistan and in the long checkered history of American efforts to combat narcotics globally, from Latin America to Asia. Its existence was confirmed by 14 people familiar with aspects of the secret operation, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified project.

The program’s disclosure comes as the war on narcotics is again dominating the security agenda. President Donald Trump has declared war on drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere, ordering more than a dozen lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, designating cartels as terrorist groups, and moving a vast naval and air force to the region. He has also authorized the CIA to take aggressive covert action against drug traffickers and their supporters.

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‘Bloody hydra’ of Ukrainian corruption stretches worldwide – Moscow

A “many-headed bloody hydra” is draining Western taxpayers’ money through sprawling corruption schemes in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned, arguing that the latest scandal in Kiev exposes a network far larger than a simple case of graft.

In a social media post on Thursday, she described a global structure “wrapped around the planet,” channeling funds from Western taxpayers to the elites who profit from the conflict.

Her remarks followed the launch of a major probe by Ukraine’s Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) into alleged embezzlement at the state nuclear operator Energoatom.

According to Zakharova, officials in Kiev serve merely as instruments within a broader machinery involving institutions such as the European Commission and NATO, while the real beneficiaries sit in the inner circles of Western liberal democracies.

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Report: Trump Presented With Options To Bomb Venezuela, No Final Decision Made

Senior military officials on Wednesday presented President Trump with options for potential military operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land, CBS News reported on Thursday.

The report, which cited White House officials familiar with the meeting, said that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine were involved in the briefing that presented potential options for the “coming days,” though no final decision was made.

The report comes after signs that the president was cooling on the idea of launching a war with Venezuela, though a US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, and three US Navy destroyers, just arrived in the region, significantly bolstering US forces in the Caribbean.

The leaks to CBS about the briefing could be part of the psychological operation against Maduro aimed at pressuring him to voluntarily step down from power, though that’s unlikely to happen. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 5 that the president expressed reservations about attacking Venezuela and that he was content with slowly building up US forces in the region and continuing the illegal bombing campaign against alleged drug-running boats in the region.

The push toward a regime change war in Venezuela is being driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security advisor. Reports have said that Stephen Miller, the president’s senior domestic policy advisor, also favors war, but there are concerns within the administration that taking out Maduro could plunge Venezuela into chaos and lead to another migrant crisis, akin to what happened in Libya after Muammar Gaddafi was brutally killed during a US and NATO bombing campaign.

Rubio has previously directly compared ousting Maduro with the killing of Gaddafi. Back in 2019, when the first Trump administration attempted to unseat Maduro, Rubio posted a photo on Twitter of Gaddafi in the moments before he was killed as a threat to the Venezuelan leader.

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Trump’s Pentagon name change could cost up to $2 billion

President Donald Trump’s directive to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as $2 billion, according to six people with knowledge of the potential cost.

The name change, which must be approved by Congress, would require replacing thousands of signs, placards, letterheads and badges, as well as any other items at U.S. military sites around the world that feature the Department of Defense name, according to two senior Republican congressional staffers, two senior Democratic congressional staffers and two other people briefed on the potential cost.

New department letterhead and signage alone could cost about $1 billion, according to the four senior congressional staffers and one of the people briefed on the potential cost.

One of the biggest contributors to the cost of changing the name would be rewriting digital code for all of the department’s internal and external facing websites, as well as other computer software on classified and unclassified systems, the four senior congressional staffers said.

The government could decide not to make every change to the Department of Defense branding, which could bring down the cost.

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