Tag: technology

Trump wages war, his sons get payoff through savvy investments

The U.S. military desperately needs drone capabilities for President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and fast. Coincidentally, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., are on the case.

Indeed, the Trump brothers are pumping money into defense-tech oriented firms that have already secured Pentagon contracts, or have already put battle-tested products to market. For example, they’ve invested in Powerus, a new drone company aiming to harness its “strong relationship with Ukraine” as a means to acquire and leverage war-tried Ukrainian drone technologies in a competitive U.S. market. Having bought out several competitors, Powerus already does business with the U.S. military.

In other words, the Trump family stands to benefit financially from the war, and already are.

Eric Trump also invests in Israeli drone firm and DoD contractor Xtend, whose “low cost-per kill” attack drones have been used by the IDF in Gaza. Expanding to the U.S., the company opened an office near Tampa last summer.

Donald Trump Jr. has a $4 million stake in, and sits on the board of Unusual Machines, a drone parts startup. In December, it secured a $620 million DoD loan — the largest loan in the history of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital — to make drone parts.

And Trump Jr. is a partner at 1789, a “patriotic capitalist” venture capital firm which backs a number of defense-tech startups. The firm, which Trump Jr. joined in November 2024 — right after his father was re-elected to the presidency — has since seen explosive growth: the assets it manages jumped in value from $150 million to more than $2 billion by the end of last year.

Suggesting the firm influences U.S. policy outright, Trump Jr. explained at a Future Investment Initiative event last year that 1789 “understand[s] what the administration wants to do, because [the firm] helped craft some of the messaging.”

Conflicts of interest percolate

As William Hartung, a Quincy Institute senior research fellow, tells RS, the Trump family’s defense-tech pursuits can be linked to a larger network of technology firms and venture capitalists that has significant influence within the Trump administration.

“The emerging military tech sector has deep ties to the administration, starting with vice-president J.D. Vance’s relationship with Palantir founder Peter Thiel, who employed Vance and helped fund his Senate run,” Hartung said. “The fact that Donald Trump Jr. — not only the president’s son but a close political advisor and unofficial spokesperson — will now profit personally from the fate of specific military tech firms adds an even more profound conflict-of-interest.”

To this end, 1789’s portfolio includes a number of defense-oriented companies, such as Anduril, Hadrian, SpaceX, and Vulcan Elements, a DOD contractor that makes rare-earth magnets, which are also backed by controversial venture capitalist Peter Thiel or his VC firm Founders Fund. A Silicon Valley kingmaker and Palantir co-founder to boot, Thiel has simultaneously worked to influence U.S. politics, bankrolling Congressional campaigns while many in his orbit now occupy major positions in the Trump administration.

Notably, Trump Jr. also sits on the advisory board of controversial prediction market Polymarket — which 1789 and Thiel’s Founders Fund also back — fostering an environment where people with insider awareness regarding the outcomes of world events could theoretically profit from that knowledge.

Hartung warns such political access — and, in the case of 1789, venture capital funding — can give certain defense-tech startups an unwarranted edge.

“Venture capital allows firms to stay in the market longer before they score their first big government contract, be it with the Pentagon, an intelligence agency, or the Department of Homeland Security,” Hartung told RS. “But once these influential firms have sunk substantial funds in a startup, they may use their influence to get that firm a contract whether or not its technology is ready for prime time, just to get a return on funds invested up to a given point in time.”

“If they can recruit the president’s son to join in boosting a particular firm, whether or not its product has been proven effective, they have a whole new level of influence, which can be wielded to serve their financial interests rather than the public interest,” Hartung said.

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Glam Iranian businesswoman busted at LAX, charged with helping regime sell drones, bombs and ammo

A glamorous Iranian businesswoman with a US green card was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport for allegedly trafficking arms on behalf of Tehran.

Shamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills, was taken into custody on Saturday night and charged with brokering deals for Iranian drones, bombs, and millions of rounds of ammunition bound for Sudan, according to the office of the US Attorney for the Central District of California.

Mafi had allegedly conducted the arms deals while in close contact with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, which provided instruction and funds for her to open a business in the US to operate out of, according to court records.  

“She is charged with a violation of 50 U.S.C. § 1705 for brokering the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and sold to Sudan,” First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said Sunday, announcing the arrest.

Mafi posted glam pics of herself traveling the world — including posing in a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz roadster.

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Russian Missile Strikes Would Bury EU’s Drone Scheme for Ukraine Instantly – Expert

The key vulnerability in this plan lies in the gap between the European assembly of the “carcasses” and the Ukrainian installation of the “brains,” suggests military journalist Aleksey Borzenko, deputy chief editor of the Literary Russia newspaper.

Speaking to Sputnik, Borzenko argued that the arrangement remains viable only until Russian missiles target the assembly sites.

The main issues lie in logistics and combat efficiency, he explains:

The drones’ fuselages and engines cannot be shipped to Ukraine in low-profile containers, so they will remain viable only until Russian Kalibr missiles strike them.

Splitting the production cycle into two unsynchronized stages — one in Europe and one in Ukraine — creates a bottleneck at final assembly. As a result, even simple disruptions, such as border protests or bureaucratic delays, can easily paralyze the entire process.

Even if Europe manages to deliver thousands of drones, they will likely be shot down by Russian air defenses and electronic warfare systems. Thus, increasing the number of UAVs would merely drive up European budget expenditures without improving outcomes.

“Meanwhile, the European facilities themselves—whose addresses have been made public—become legitimate targets. Attacks on them don’t have to be purely military; targeted acts of sabotage or cyberattacks on design documentation would suffice,” the expert adds.

Ultimately, while the plan may look viable on paper, its actual results will be inversely proportional to the billions of euros spent on it, Borzenko concludes.

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What (and How) Should Our Students Be Taught Today?

In an age like the present, which is choking on the virtually exclusive valorisation of technology, what (and how) should students be taught, or putting it differently, what should they learn? Just consider the proliferating crises affecting the entire world population – the ongoing war in Ukraine, the fluctuating Iran war and its broadening ripple effect on energy prices (which is already affecting, not only availability of oil and petrol, but food supplies as well), and the social and political strife connected with ‘illegal immigrants’ in the US, Britain, and Europe, to mention only some – then it seems a daunting task to answer this question.  

There are many – too many – intellectual sources, contemporary as well as throughout the history of the world, from which I could draw to answer it in a very provisional manner, so I’ll have to be selective, but here goes. My perspective is mainly Western. 

From the ancient Greek thinker, Plato – who had assimilated the insights of his predecessors, from Thales through Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others to Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, of course, his teacher, Socrates, who claimed that he had learned from a woman named Diotima – we learned that Being and Becoming are the two poles constituting the tension field in which things appear in the material world of the senses and of particular things, on the one hand, and the intelligible world of the universal Forms, on the other. 

Aristotle, Plato’s Macedonian pupil (who taught Alexander, destined to become The Great), argued that the universal Forms are not outside of particular things, but their intelligible part instead. Together, they comprise what he called an entelechy. Moreover, Aristotle gave us an encompassing conceptualisation of causality as a sort of ‘fourfold’ (a concept that later returns in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, denoting the touchstone for a truly human mode of living), which is far richer and more fecund in explanatory terms than its modern reduction to only one of these. The four Aristotelian causes are the material, formal, working, and final causes, respectively. 

A tree, for instance, has a material embodiment, or matter (the trunk, branches, leaves, and so on). It also has an intelligible form – not its shape, but its comprehensible essence, and a working cause, which accounts for its change, or growth. Its final cause, or telos, is perhaps the most important, insofar as it explains why the tree develops in the way that it does. 

Obviously, for a human being this schema is more complex, although easily comprehensible. We have bodies (material cause), a formal, intelligible essence which makes us what we are, as distinct from other things, a working cause which explains changes in the course of our growth, and a final cause or human telos, which instantiates that towards which we ‘grow’ or what we strive for, both as a species and as individuals. For every individual the telos or final cause is different; some work towards the ideal writer they want to become, others strive for excellence in cooking, or singing, and so on. In this sense, our future(s) is a crucial factor for understanding what we do at present.

From the above it is already apparent that learning in what Bernard Stiegler calls a ‘transindividual’ manner – where knowledge is transferred from one individual to another, or others – always involves an incremental complexification. In this way, Plato, for instance, synthesised the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors, and Aristotle took this process further, giving us a synthesis that was even more comprehensive than Plato’s.

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Divers & police dogs join Hazmat cops’ probe after ‘drones carrying radioactive material target Israeli Embassy’

POLICE dogs and divers have been deployed to central London as cops probe footage of drones “carrying radioactive substances targeting the Israeli Embassy”.

Cops in hazmat suits, divers and fire brigade dogs have been called in to join the search as officers investigate “discarded items” in the popular Kensington Gardens.


Counter terror cops are investigating claims an Iran-linked group targeted the nearby Embassy of Israel with drones “carrying dangerous substances”.

Metropolitan Police divers and London Fire Brigade’s investigation dogs have since arrived in the park and are assisting a search of the area.

Scotland Yard’s chemical biological radiological nuclear van (CBRN) is also on the scene.

As the investigation continued police divers arrived in a large white lorry with a police search and recovery team also assisting the probe.

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Scientists Can’t Seem To Stop Going Missing Under Mysterious Circumstances

Ten U.S. researchers and scientists have reportedly died or disappeared over the past 33 months amid increasing speculation about the cause of some of the disappearances.

Steven Garcia, a 48-year-old government contractor who allegedly had top-level clearance at a key nuclear facility disappeared in August 2025 after reportedly leaving behind his phone, wallet and keys, taking a gun and leaving his home in New Mexico on foot, NewsNation reported Thursday. Moreover, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland similarly went missing on Feb. 27 after leaving his home in Albuquerque on foot, the outlet reported.

Eight other well-known scientists and researchers in the U.S. have reportedly died or gone missing over the past few years, raising questions about whether some of these cases might involve suspicious circumstances. However, U.S. officials have not identified any definitive connection between the cases, according to an April 9 Newsweek report.

Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), who Garcia served as a contractor for, produces 80% of the non-nuclear material part of the U.S.’ nuclear weapons, The Daily Mail reported, citing an anonymous source.

“Over the past year, 10 different US specialists, ranging from scientists working on aerospace, nuclear and UAP research have all gone missing. Most of the cases have been labelled as old person wandering off, or disappearing when hiking,” professor and independent journalist Adam Cochran wrote in a Tuesday X post responding to the Daily Mail’s story. “But it’s way too many to be a coincidence especially when many of them worked together, and all happened to work on top US secrets…”

During a Wednesday press briefing, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about whether the U.S. government is planning to investigate the spate of reported disappearances and deaths.

“There are now 10 American scientists who have either gone missing or died since mid-2024,” the reporter said. “They all reportedly had access to classified nuclear or aerospace material. Is anybody investigating this to see if these things are connected?”

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UFO-linked scientist who warned ‘my life is in danger’ found dead at 34 becomes ELEVENTH mysterious case

A scientist experimenting with anti-gravity tech was found dead at 34 after warning that her life could be in danger, marking another mysterious case of deaths and disappearances in recent years. 

Amy Eskridge was just 34 years old when she allegedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in Huntsville, Alabama on June 11, 2022. However, neither the police nor the medical examiners have publicly released any details of an investigation ever taking place.

Before her death, she was openly researching and trying to develop anti-gravity technology, a way to control or cancel out gravity, which could revolutionize space travel and energy production.

Anti-gravity propulsion has also been widely discussed by UFO researchers, who have claimed this advanced technology is what allows alien spacecraft to achieve impossible speeds. 

Conspiracy theorists have also claimed the US military has been experimenting with this technology for years, but the government has denied that alien technology exists.

In 2020, Eskridge stated she was planning to present novel foundational work regarding antigravity but needed approval from NASA. 

Since her passing, shocking details, including an unearthed interview with Eskridge herself and independent findings submitted to Congress have claimed that the death was not a suicide and was instead part of an elaborate ‘murder’ conspiracy.

Eskridge’s death marks the eleventh person with ties to America’s space or nuclear secrets who has died or mysteriously vanished in recent years, putting US national security experts on edge. 

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FBI Recovers Deleted Signal Messages Through iPhone Notifications

The FBI successfully recovered private Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone even after the app was deleted. Learn how this security loophole works and the simple setting you must change today to keep your chats private.

Most of us prefer using the Signal app because it is supposed to be very secure with a remarkable end-to-end encryption system that hides our chats from everyone else. It also has a message-disappearing feature to help us set a message deletion time.

But the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found a way to read private Signal messages on an iPhone, even after the app was deleted. This was revealed in a court case in Texas that these messages can stay hidden in the phone’s memory longer than we expected.

How the loophole works

The case involves a woman named Lynette Sharp and an attack on a Texas detention centre in July 2025. During the trial in April 2026, the FBI revealed they recovered her messages even when she had deleted the Signal app. The bureau, reportedly, retrieved the messages from the iPhone’s push notification database.

During the trial, FBI Special Agent Clark Wiethorn explained how investigators accessed the evidence. When a message arrives, the phone shows a little preview on the screen, which is handled by the phone’s operating system and not the Signal app.

Even if Signal deletes the message later, the phone’s system can save a copy of that preview in its own records. To read these saved messages from Signal, the FBI used Cellebrite, a forensic tool often used by law enforcement to scan seized devices.

A key finding is that the FBI could only see incoming messages, not the ones Sharp sent, which confirms the data came from the notification storage. It shows that while the app’s encryption is strong, the phone’s operating system keeps its own logs of everything.

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Drivers worry as federal surveillance technology becomes mandatory in new cars by 2027

The car you buy in 2027 may come with something you never agreed to: a built-in system that monitors your eyes, your alertness, and your behavior behind the wheel. Under Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is required to finalize rules mandating “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology” in all new passenger vehicles. This is not a proposal. It is federal law already in motion. The safety argument behind this mandate is hard to dismiss. According to NHTSA data, more than 13,000 people were killed in alcohol-impaired crashes in 2021 alone, accounting for nearly a third of all U.S. traffic deaths that year. Alcohol-related crashes cost the American economy approximately $280 billion annually, covering medical expenses, legal proceedings, and lost productivity. The federal government believes this technology can prevent between 9,000 and 10,000 of those deaths every year. But saving lives comes with a cost that goes beyond dollars. As automakers prepare for the rollout, millions of drivers are asking questions that no one in Washington has fully answered yet: Who owns this data? Can it be used against you? And when did your car become a witness?

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Comical AI: Israel suggests Iranian military spokesman who mocks Trump is actually a computer-generated FAKE

Israel has suggested that the Iranian military spokesperson known for mocking Donald Trump may be artificial intelligence. 

In a post on the IDF’s Farsi-language account, Israeli officials said that Ebrahim Zolfaghari seems more like an AI-generated product than a real human. 

‘If you have seen him in an interview or in the field, tell us. If not, help us prove that he is an artificial intelligence product,’ the post reads.

‘Are [they] forced to create fictional characters to talk to people? And what does this say about the credibility of their messages?’

Having gained global attention for mocking Trump, Zolfaghari has been likened to ‘Comical Ali’ – the infamously inaccurate Iraqi Minister of Information, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf. 

Zolfaghari gained notoriety for his attempts to conduct psychological warfare against Israel and the US, famously warning that US troops would become ‘food for the sharks of the Persian Gulf’ and threatened to return Israel to the ‘Stone Age. 

In one video almost three weeks into the war, Zolfaghari mocked Donald Trump for his use of social media, telling the president: ‘The outcome of war cannot be determined by tweets, the result of war is determined on the field.’

He continued: ‘The very place where you and your forces do not dare approach and you can only talk about it in your tweets.’

Wearing military clothing, Zolfaghari ended his message with a mocking smile, telling Trump: ‘It is better to name this war as Epic Fear, instead of Epic Fury.’

In another video after Trump floated joint control of the Strait of Hormuz and suggested he didn’t know who was currently leading Iran, Zolfaghari ridiculed the US President saying: 

‘Hey, Trump, you are fired… You are familiar with this sentence. Thank you for your attention to this matter.’

In a separate video, Zolfaghari intensified his criticism and questioned Washington’s claims of diplomacy.

‘Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves?’ he added.

Similar to the current Iranian spokesperson, Iraq’s 2003 Information Minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf known as ‘Comical Ali’, became infamous for his delusional daily briefings during the US invasion. 

At the war’s start, Al-Sahhaf boasted that American troops would ‘all die.’ 

He once claimed previous foreign invaders had always met a disastrous end, citing a obscure history book for journalists to read at his home. 

And he frequently mocked Western leaders as ‘blood-sucking bastards,’ losers, and fools.

In one particularly outrageous moment, Comical Ali declared to western journalists that the ‘infidels’ were facing ‘slaughter’ even as US tanks rolled into Baghdad.

From his vantage point on the roof of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, and ignoring the sight of Iraqi troops retreating across the Tigris, Al-Sahhaf proclaimed that the city was ‘safe.’

‘Baghdad is safe. The battle is still going on. Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Don’t believe those liars,’ he declared.

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