WantToKnow.info: Military Corruption News

Docs Show Navy Got ‘UFO’ Patent Granted By Warning Of Similar Chinese Tech Advances

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The bizarre saga of the U.S. Navy and its sudden willingness to admit that its personnel regularly encounter unidentified objects in the skies keeps getting stranger. Clearly, the narrative is being carefully controlled by the Department of Defense and the Navy. Maybe the most curious additions to the still-developing saga is a set strange aerospace patents filed by one Salvatore Cezar Pais, an aerospace engineer ... at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) headquarters in Patuxent River, Maryland. One of these patents describes a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft” claimed to be capable of truly extraordinary feats of speed and maneuverability in air, water, and outer space alike [without leaving a heat signature] thanks to a revolutionary electromagnetic propulsion system. This is possible, Pais claims in the patent, because the craft is able to “engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level” by exploiting the laws of physics. All matter contains energy on the quantum level. By theoretically creating its own incredibly dense and polarized energy field, the hybrid craft is claimed to be able to create a quantum ‘vacuum’ around itself which allows it to repel any air or water molecules with which it interacts. Thus, the craft can essentially ignore aerodynamic or hydrodynamic forces, or so it is claimed in the patent. Not only are we now being told that Navy pilots have witnessed aircraft behaving exactly like the craft these patents describe, but some of the pilots’ visual descriptions of those anomalous aircraft even seem to be uncannily similar to the drawings of the aircraft as depicted in Pais’ patents. One of those patents depicts a curiously and distinctly shaped gravitational wave generator that resembles the Tic Tac-shaped object reported by retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor and other Nimitz Carrier Strike Group pilots in encounters that took place in 2004 off the Baja Coast.

Note: Don't miss our new video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity w/ Daniel Sheehan and Amber Yang. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.

- TWZ (previously The War Zone)

Emails Show Navy’s ‘UFO’ Patents Went Through Significant Internal Review, Resulted In A Demo

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The War Zone continues to dig into the bizarre U.S. Navy patents authored by enigmatic inventor Dr. Salvatore Pais and the seemingly unusual circumstances of their approval by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). These patents included bizarre technologies such as a “high temperature superconductor,” a “high frequency gravitational wave generator,” a force field-like “electromagnetic field generator,” a “plasma compression fusion device,” and a hybrid aerospace/underwater craft featuring an “inertial mass reduction device.” They seem to describe the theoretical building blocks of a craft with UFO-like performance. Each of the Navy inventions are credited to one Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, who, at the time the patent applications were submitted, was an aerospace engineer at NAVAIR’s Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) in Patuxent (Pax) River, Maryland. Every one of Pais’ recent inventions depends on what the inventor calls “the Pais Effect,” described in numerous publications by the inventor as the “controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma) via accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration under rapid (yet smooth) acceleration-deceleration-acceleration transients.” Emails reveal that numerous employees of NAWCAD and the Pax River Invention Evaluation Board took them seriously enough to clear Pais’s patents for the USPTO application process. We also now know these inventions resulted in the Section 219 Basic Applied Research/Technology Transfer program that was successfully funded and resulted in a physical demonstration and further experimental testing.

- TWZ (previously The War Zone)

Landmark Deal Would Officially Add Laser Weapons to US Army Arsenal

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The US Army is about to make a working laser weapon an official part of its arsenal. The Pentagon is poised to sign a contract to acquire and rapidly deploy what’s called an Enduring High Energy Laser in and around bases across the world to defend them from drone attacks. It will mark the first time that the US military will have committed to equipping its forces with laser weapons in significant numbers. The US military, at this moment, has either deployed or is actively testing a half-dozen laser weapons systems. The deployments haven’t all gone great. Four vehicles equipped with Raytheon air-defense lasers were yanked from the Middle East after poor reviews from soldiers. One laser, built by the defense contractor AeroVironment and positioned along the southern US border, accidentally zapped a party balloon in February, causing the Federal Aviation Administration to briefly close the airspace around El Paso, Texas. Once it was reopened, the laser shot down a Border Patrol drone by mistake. Despite such mishaps, the Army appears ready to go beyond the one-offs and the experiments. The Pentagon and its suppliers had been scrambling to field something, anything to defend against mass-produced, low-cost attack drones. They’ve rolled out radio frequency jammers, microwave weapons, an array of missiles, drones designed to kill other drones, even copies of the Iranian robots. None of them ... have been enough.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and warfare technology.

- Wired

A Civilian Plane Crashed in New Mexico. Was the Military’s Tech to Blame?

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This past May, a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air medevac plane took off from Roswell, New Mexico, and headed west to the town of Ruidoso to pick up a patient. It shouldn’t have been a challenging flight for the two pilots and two nurses aboard. The temperature was 69 degrees; the sky was clear. The 60-mile journey normally takes a half hour, at most. But once airborne, the plane ran into trouble. At the White Sands Missile Range that night, US military personnel were conducting a GPS jamming exercise that left the King Air pilots—and anyone else within hundreds of miles—unable to use modern navigation systems. Forced to revert to older technology, ones that they rarely if ever use, the medevac pilots got disoriented and crashed into the side of a mountain. There were no survivors. The accident marked the first time that GPS jamming had contributed to the crash of a civilian plane in the United States. But it was just one of a string of recent disruptions across the world. In the past year, the US military appeared to have sent out notices for at least 10 such exercises. “As drone warfare and electronic warfare expand, airlines are increasingly encountering navigation disruptions hundreds of miles beyond the actual conflict zone,” says Eliran Almog, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Cyviation. Since 2023, planes flying over large swaths of the Middle East, the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea regions have endured waves of GPS jamming.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and warfare technology.

- Wired

Pentagon proposes new secrecy power to withhold unclassified records from public-access laws

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Pentagon is asking Congress for broad new authority to withhold unclassified records from the public, a proposal that transparency advocates say could significantly reduce the public's ability to scrutinize the nation's largest federal agency and understand how billions of taxpayer dollars are spent. The legislative proposal seeks to create a new section of federal law allowing the defense secretary to exempt certain "controlled unclassified information," or CUI, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act if the U.S. military determines the records concern national defense vulnerabilities and concludes that the harm from disclosure outweighs the public interest. Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy, [said] that for decades, there has been "a massive overclassification problem throughout the executive branch." "The last thing the government needs is a new power to withhold information under the FOIA," Kaufman wrote. If adopted, the legislation would become part of a FOIA system that has long suffered from chronic delays. The most recent annual Pentagon FOIA report said that at the end of the 2025 fiscal year, there were 30,476 backlogged requests, a 42% increase from 2024. Although FOIA requires agencies to respond within 20 working days in most cases, requests can remain pending for months or years, forcing petitioners to enter into costly litigation to compel agencies to act.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and military corruption.

- CBS News

Autonomous Robots Confirmed to Have Killed Human Soldiers

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Humanity has officially passed a grim milestone: the first confirmed death at the hands of a fully-autonomous robot weapon. A senior figure involved in the Ukrainian defence industry admitted that a fully autonomous drone deployed to the front lines of the Russo-Ukranian war has claimed human lives. The event has been kept under wraps for two years, Ukrainian drone maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy said. The device itself was a quadcopter drone designed to zip to the front line, loiter around a perimeter for roughly 10 minutes, then launch into “terminator mode.” This mode, the Ukranian drone expert explained, involves the use of an unidentified AI model to automatically seek out and attack human targets. During the operation in question ... it identified and ultimately attacked “a couple of [Russian] soldiers” and “one truck.” “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead,” Kokhanovskyy [said]. “There is no connection to the drone at all ... everything it sees will be killed.” While this marks the first known strike of its kind, it’s fair to say the world’s militaries have been inching toward this for a while. The Israeli Defence Forces, for example, have long deployed loitering suicide drones to hover over various demarcation zones across Palestine. More recently, US military operatives used Anthropic’s Claude to select bombing targets across Iran. If Kokhanovskyy is to be believed, humanity has crossed a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

Note: This is being called AI's "Oppenheimer moment". For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and artificial intelligence.

- Futurism

AI-powered military neurotech: Mind enhancement or control?

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Neurable, a consumer neurotechnology startup, has partnered with the Air Force to study whether electrode-studded headphones can track service members’ cognitive fitness. The $1.2 million project adds to the Pentagon’s growing investment in the $3 billion market for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) — helmets, earbuds, other wearable devices and medical implants that use artificial intelligence to make sense of brain signals. Now, advances in AI enable BCIs to interpret or change brain activity with unprecedented accuracy and speed. So much so that some scientists and neuroethicists say the capacity to monitor signals that reveal a warfighter’s or a veteran’s mental states, visual perceptions or inner dialogue may outpace the ability to shield that data from misuse. “One could certainly imagine how enforced use of such devices could create a very dystopian basis for behavioral control,” warned James Giordano, director of the National Defense University’s Center for Disruptive Technology. Some neuroethicists, however, cautioned that the use of brain wearables may also invade troops’ privacy and foster prejudice. “We need to be much more reflective on, much more concerned about and much more focused on the implications of altering a person’s brainwaves,” through neurofeedback training, “as compared to having them work out more or do more pull-ups,” said Jared Genser, a lawyer and co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation.

Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI, biotech dangers, and mind control.

- Military Times

How directed energy weapons may change the way the US wages war

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this week, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth observed what he called a successful test of “directed energy weapons” against drone and cruise missile attacks as part of the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome for America” project. These new weapons, also known as “DEWs,” promise defensive measures that can counter drone and missile attacks. They also offer applications against human targets, both on the battlefield and, more controversially, off it. The weapons ... damage their targets not with physical projectiles but with highly concentrated electromagnetic energy fired at the speed of light in the form of sound and particle beams, microwaves and, most famously, lasers. Shooting down such drones with conventional missiles is a drain on resources that favors the attacker. DEWs offer a means to counter this strategy without straining the defender’s financial resources. With cheap drone attacks, “your enemy can bankrupt you, so we have to deploy these lasers,” former U.S. Navy pilot Matthew “Whiz” Buckley [said]. “The economics are starting to level the battlefield here.” Their long-term health impacts on human targets are also not yet clear, which has been a source of controversy following the use of DEWs to disperse crowds, including protesters, and the belief that such weapons may have been used covertly on U.S. officials both at home and abroad, resulting in those attacked suffering from what’s been called “Havana syndrome.”

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and non-lethal weapons.

- NewsNation

How the Peter Thiel-Linked Dialog Club Secretly Ranks Its Members

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dialog, the private network cofounded by Peter Thiel, grades its event attendees on a hidden scale, ranking them by wealth and fame, tracking their relationships, and using algorithms to help decide who they should meet, who they should sit with, and who no longer belongs. Founded in 2006 by Thiel and data broker Auren Hoffman, Dialog is a private club that convenes politicians, investors, entrepreneurs, military leaders, executives, academics, and journalists for invitation-only, off-the-record retreats. According to a Dialog document shared by a past participant, it has “over 1,000 paying members,” and more than 2,500 people have attended its annual retreats. Dialog assigns people grades before they join. Of the 192 dossiers examined by WIRED, 130 are tagged as members. The rest are prospects with files bearing markings like “First Time Dialoger” or “Warm.” Everyone—members and prospective invitees alike—is assigned a grade of A, B, or C. The “C” grade appears reserved for the most famous and influential; only one in seven received it. Most people—141 of 192—received a “B.” The final tier, “A,” appears primarily assigned to older, established members whom the graders consider less notable. The leak also points to a built-in matchmaking system that pairs members for both networking and dating. (Roughly 10 percent of respondents opted into a singles pool.) More than three-quarters already have a list of algorithm-suggested matches.

Note: Is this Dialog Society the Bohemian Grove of Big Tech? Read how Thiel worked with the CIA to influence the origins of Facebook, and how Palantir software helped the NSA spy on the entire planet.

- Wired

The weirdest things a leak revealed about Peter Thiel’s secret club

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Well, data leaked by the Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew (who also brought us the justice department’s no-fly list back in 2023) is shedding new light on Dialog, the private social club co-created by the former PayPal boss Peter Thiel and the angel investor Auren Hoffman. The network has been around since 2006, and regularly gathers politicians, entrepreneurs, foreign officials, academics, Silicon Valley founders and even Hollywood folks for invitation-only retreats. there are a few weird things we’ve discovered from this leak. Dialog grades its retreat attenders on a hidden scale, ranking them according to their wealth and fame. Everyone is assigned a grade of A, B or C, with the “C” grade being awarded to the most famous and influential. Lower-grade attenders are charged full-price roughly 70% of the time, while only about a quarter of VIPs have to shell out the bigger bucks. Planned events range from sessions like “Bring Back Nuclear” to others focused on “Disinformation and Deepfakes”, “Contrarian AI Takes”, “Democracy Under Surveillance” and “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness.” The agenda also includes sessions on cult-building (moderated by the founder of the Christian site Pray.com, no less), one on “Navigating WWIII” and a session titled “How’s Your Sex Life?” Dialog has a matchmaking system that pairs members for networking and dating. The data exposed in the leak includes home addresses, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, and other bio-datas.

- The Guardian

Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said?

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies. Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty. Away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force. Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg’s speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of crony-capitalism. This year’s conference had a wartime flavour: with the “Future of Warfare” on the agenda, and a participant list including the four-star admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. From the private sector there was a healthy contingent of military contractors and drone manufacturers.

Note: Is this Dialog Society the Bohemian Grove of Big Tech? Read more about the shadowy history of the Bilderberg secret society.

- The Guardian

UFO whistleblower claims billions in secret spending hidden from Congress

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) whistleblower and former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch accused intelligence agencies Tuesday of hiding billions of dollars in secret government spending from Congress. His investigation uncovered what he described as “slush funds” — pools of money allegedly operating outside normal congressional oversight channels — worth billions of dollars annually that were allegedly used to support activities operating outside normal oversight channels, Grusch said speaking at a Capitol Hill event alongside members of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. “This is also a real fraud, waste and abuse issue,” Grusch said. “During my investigation, I found slush funds to the tune of billions of dollars per annum for these activities.” Asked what the government knows about nonhuman intelligence, Grusch claimed the government is aware of “several” different alien species. “It’s a continuum from corporeal bipedal type life to, you know, what I would consider is like sentient plasma life,” Grusch said. “But there are several that this government is aware of.” Federal investigators recently alleged that former CIA official David Rush used a fraudulent “special access program” as part of a scheme involving more than $40 million in gold bars and millions in government funds, drawing renewed attention to how highly restricted government programs can operate with limited outside visibility.

- New York Post

One of the 11 disappeared scientists claimed she was hit with Pentagon’s top-secret weapon after revealing UFO theory

Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Pentagon has announced that they employ specialized energy weapons for defense. The Department of War’s Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael announced this development in an X post. The post ... included a pic of said weaponry firing a laser beam and a soldier holding his head in pain. Dubbed directed energy weapons or DEWs, these advanced instruments of war use focused rays to disable electronic weapons such as drones and incapacitate — or even kill — enemy soldiers. According to the X post, these beams are comprised of “concentrated electromagnetic energy or atomic or subatomic particles.” With this announcement, the Department of War seemingly confirmed years of so-called rumors that claimed that the government was developing this science fiction-esque weapon. Perhaps one of the most notable figures sounding the alarm was deceased scientist Amy Eskridge, 34, who was involved in extensive research into anti-gravity technology, UFOs, and extraterrestrial life. The researcher, who allegedly died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2022, had claimed she was hit by a DEW attack in her own home in Huntsville, Alabama not too long before her death. Her theory was seconded by retired British intelligence officer Franc Milburn, whom she had enlisted to investigate harassment she received after she threatened to disclose information about the subjects of her research.

Note: Read more about the mysterious ailments said to be caused by directed energy weapons. Is there a connection to other missing or dead scientists? For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on non-lethal weapons and UFO disclosure.

- New York Post

Ukraine's military has a real Nazi problem

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he claimed one of his goals was the country’s “denazification.” The Kremlin still uses this narrative as a cornerstone of its war propaganda. In their zeal to deconstruct Russian propaganda, Western elites created a propaganda myth of their own: there are no Nazis in Ukraine. This fiction required the whitewashing of Azov, a unit founded in 2014 by the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine under the leadership of Andriy Biletsky. Azov became notorious for extremist ideology, Nazi symbolism, and allegations of war crimes in the Donbas. In 2018, the U.S. Congress banned the group from receiving American weapons, funding, or training. After Russia’s full-scale invasion, that stigma vanished almost overnight. Kyiv repackaged Azov [as] the 3rd Assault Brigade. Western media rebranded and whitewashed it. Questioning this narrative became taboo and labeled as “Russian propaganda.” Neo-Nazi networks are deeply embedded in parts of Ukraine’s military structure. Some Ukrainian military units have incorporated Nazi-linked symbols into their official insignia. The Zelensky government — and President Volodymyr Zelensky himself as commander-in-chief — have made a political bargain with the far right. Since 2022, far-right activists and networks have flooded into the security and defense sector. In conditions of total war and chronic manpower shortages, this alliance ... is becoming entrenched. Ukraine’s Western partners ... tolerate extremists inside Ukraine’s armed forces as long as those extremists continue fighting.

Note: Our Substack, Working Together To End the War On Peace in Ukraine, investigates how US collaboration with extremist nationalist groups and neo-Nazis in Ukraine helped contribute to today's Russia-Ukraine war. We also provide evidence that US and NATO policies, covert intelligence agency operations, media censorship, and corporate profiteering have fueled the conflict while blocking genuine peace efforts. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and military corruption.

- Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft

DoD not allowed to fix most of its own stuff. Guess who's cashing in?

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Because defense contracts often prevent the military from repairing its own equipment, critics say weapons companies are price-gouging the Pentagon at every turn. The military’s lack of a “right to repair” doesn't just allow defense contractors to charge thousands of dollars, for fixes that could be done for free or very cheaply. Rather, the Pentagon’s dependence on weapons makers for maintenance undermines military readiness. Namely, contractors’ extensive repair delays and sweeping decisions about whether to service gear routinely leave warfighters without critical equipment and weapons systems — even while deployed. Many DoD contracts now leave repair and maintenance, which can make up as much as 70% of a military program’s lifetime cost, to the vendors. “It's a cash-cow for them,” Ben Freeman, director of the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy Program, tells RS. “They can charge literally thousands of dollars to replace things that service members could replace for pennies.” Take the RQ-11 Raven drone, for example. After hard landings, it often has trouble starting back up again. But due to contractual restrictions, the military is barred from making repairs and must ship the drone to the contractor at a cost of $26,000, regardless of the issue. When an extensive repair backlog meant service members were temporarily allowed to fix the drone themselves, however, they found they could solve the problem — a broken connector — for free with hot glue.

Note: Read more on how congress has prevented the military from repairing its own equipment. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

- Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft

Marine Animals in the Strait of Hormuz Don’t Get a Ceasefire

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Beneath the surface of the Strait of Hormuz and the surrounding Gulf lies a biological sanctuary. The region is home to around 7,000 dugongs and fewer than 100 Arabian humpback whales—a nonmigratory population that cannot leave these waters. Naval mines, residual military activity, and congested shipping lanes mean the strait remains a high-risk environment—not just for vessels but also for the ecosystems beneath them. Underwater explosions and military sonar don’t just scare whales, they can physically blind them, leading to stranding and death. The Arabian humpback whale, unlike its cousins in the Atlantic, does not migrate. For them, the Gulf is not a corridor but home, a permanent habitat. Olivier Adam, a researcher at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, says that the Gulf’s resident cetaceans—better known as marine mammals—have limited options: Either abandon their habitat or remain and endure prolonged exposure to noise. In the case of Arabian humpback whales, relocation is not realistic, as they are one of the only populations that do not migrate between feeding and breeding areas. “These baleen whales have no way to escape,” he says. Whales rely on sound for nearly every essential function: feeding, navigation, reproduction, and social interaction. When that acoustic environment is disrupted, the effects are immediate. In shallow coastal zones, where biodiversity is concentrated, even small disruptions can cascade through the ecosystem.

Note: Read more about the decimation of populations of whales and dolphins over the last decade resulting from the year-round, full-spectrum military practices carried out in the oceans. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and marine mammals.

- Wired

We Need to Kick Prediction Market Betting Out of Journalism While We Still Can

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On Thursday, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was involved in the raid to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela was arrested on charges that he used classified information to make more than $400,000 by betting on the operation before it happened. In the hours before the U.S. attacked Iran, hundreds of anonymous bets over $1,000 were placed on the U.S. striking Iran by the next day, which the New York Times said suggested that some users might’ve “seen the strike coming.” Prediction markets, such as industry leaders Polymarket and Kalshi, have exploded in popularity. They create or exacerbate an array of problems, but at the Media and Democracy Project, or MAD, we believe they have the potential to severely harm the way news is reported, perceived, and engaged with. Suppose that prediction markets achieve their claims of providing better forecasts than other methods. Casino journalism [would still be] bad for journalism and the public. Most of the “propositions” offered on these markets are based on news reports; reporters provide the raw material on which these bets are made. In effect, traders on prediction markets are betting on the content of news stories. An Israeli journalist recently received death threats over his refusal to rewrite his report on an Iranian missile strike, on which $23 million of prediction market “investments” were riding. As the markets become larger, and their use in news increases, the incentive for market manipulation will also grow.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and Big Tech.

- The Intercept

How Project Maven Put A.I. Into the Kill Chain

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

[Veteran journalist Katrina Manson's] new book, “Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare,” is an ... account of the ongoing reconfiguration of the U.S. armed forces for a new technological era. “Project Maven” is structured as an intellectual and professional biography of Drew Cukor, a Marine Corps intelligence officer largely responsible for ... this military transformation. Cukor insists that Maven was never supposed to be a weapon. He frequently defends the project as nothing more than an integrated data platform ... for a world made better and safer by A.I. warfare. In 2018, Google employees staged a massive walkout to protest the company’s work on a primitive iteration of the project. In the aftermath of the Google fiasco, Cukor turns to Palantir (in addition to Microsoft and Amazon) to make Maven a reality. NATO now has its own Maven contract with Palantir, and that prompted ten member nations to pursue one, too. The Maven Smart System has become a global surveillance apparatus—it can keep track of forty-nine thousand airfields all over the world—but its current work is hardly limited to intelligence provision and analysis. A “single click,” [journalist Katrina] Manson reports, “could send coordinates through a tactical data link to a specific weapons platform so that it could fire at the target.” The entire process, from target identification to target destruction, is four clicks. Officials told Manson that Maven was “accelerating operations and ‘enabling lethality’ at combat headquarters around the world.” Maven is only one part of the A.I. tool kit. Manson uncovers evidence of two clandestine killer-robot programs, one aerial and the other aquatic, which are being developed in haste. For the first time, the Pentagon’s proposed budget contained a line item for comprehensively self-directing systems. A machine can shoot, Manson reports, up to “ten times faster than an assassin.”

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.

- New Yorker

Pentagon to adopt Palantir AI as core US military system, memo says

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Palantir (PLTR)’s Maven artificial intelligence system will become an official program of record, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg said in a letter to Pentagon leaders, a move that locks in long-term use of Palantir’s weapons-targeting technology across the U.S. military. Maven is a command-and-control software platform that analyzes battlefield data and identifies targets. It is already the primary AI operating system for the U.S. military, which has carried out thousands of targeted strikes against Iran over the last three weeks. Designating Maven as a program of record will streamline its adoption across all arms of the military. The memo ordered oversight of Maven be moved from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon’s Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office within 30 days. Future contracting with Palantir will be handled by the Army, the letter said. Feinberg’s order is a significant win for Palantir, which has landed a growing stream of contracts with the U.S. government, including a deal announced last summer with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion. Those awards have helped double the company’s stock price in the past year, lifting its market value to nearly $360 billion. Maven can rapidly analyze huge amounts of data from satellites, drones, radars, sensors and intelligence reports, and use AI to automatically identify potential threats or targets.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.

- Yahoo News/Reuters

Wait—Laser Guns Are Real Now?

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Laser guns are real now. Actual militaries are deploying actual lasers in actual combat. “This is a technology that has been under development for decades,” [said] Iain Boyd, an aerospace engineer. “And it’s only really now just really starting to enter the public view.” The Army has outfitted trucks with anti-drone lasers, and the Air Force has added ground-based lasers to its arsenal. Russia, China, and the United Kingdom are all developing—and in some cases already deploying—laser weapons, and last year, Israel became the first country to use a laser in combat to destroy a drone. The very real lasers now being deployed on battlefields around the world have some notable differences from most of their science-fictional forebears. They’re silent, for one thing—no pew pew sound effects—and the beam they produce is invisible. Real lasers have a number of other advantages. $13 a shot is pretty good compared with the Navy’s standard missile interceptors, which cost $2 million apiece. Another advantage of lasers is that they just keep going. Last year, Chinese scientists successfully beamed a precision non-weapon laser all the way to the moon. But infinite range is also a drawback. If a laser missed a drone, Boyd said, the beam could continue for hundreds of miles and hit, say, a commercial airliner. Even if a laser beam did hit its target, Boyd said, its light could still scatter and cause all manner of collateral damage.

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on warfare technologies.

- The Atlantic

Pentagon Inks Massive $200 Million Deal to Buy Controversial Cluster Weapons From Israel

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Department of Defense has quietly signed a $210 million deal to buy advanced cluster shells from one of Israel’s state-owned arms companies, marking unusually large new commitments to a class of weapons and an Israeli defense establishment both widely condemned for their indiscriminate killing of civilians. The deal, signed in September and not previously reported, is the department’s largest contract to purchase weapons from an Israeli company in available records. The shells are designed to replace decades-old and often defective cluster shells that left live explosives scattered across Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, and other nations. The terror of cluster weapons persists long after the guns that fired them have quieted, as civilians return to fields, forests, and settlements laced with bomblets that can explode years later without warning. “The footprint of the injuries of these weapons is so horrifying,” said Alma Taslidžan, advocacy manager for the aid organization Humanity & Inclusion. The Cluster Munition Monitor has documented more than 24,800 cluster munition injuries and deaths since the 1960s, three-quarters from unexploded remnants. In 2024, cluster munitions killed at least 314 civilians, the majority of them in Ukraine. Major military powers — like Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the United States — have never signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans its 112 member states from using or producing those weapons.

Note: American cluster bombs kill countless civilians in countries like Yemen while the world's biggest banks profit from the weapons trade. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and military corruption.

- The Intercept

President George HW Bush ‘knew' of 1964 alien contact with humans in New Mexico: documentary

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The truth is out there — and late President George H.W. Bush apparently knew it — telling a federal official that an alien made contact with humans at a secretive New Mexico air base in 1964. Eric Davis, an astrophysicist who was a scientific advisor on the since-disbanded Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program ... claimed that Bush confirmed to him in a private conversation details of contact between the military and an alien creature at Holloman Air Force Base in Otero County. Bush told him that three spaceships were seen approaching the base and that an interstellar being emerged from one ship and had a face-to-face encounter with military and CIA officials, Davis said during an interview in “The Age of Disclosure,” a documentary. “One of them landed on the tarmac and a non-human entity deboarded the craft that landed and interacted with uniformed Air Force and civilian CIA personnel,” Davis claimed. “And when [Bush] asked for more details he was told that he did not have a need-to-know,” he relayed. Davis claims in the film that alien bodies were recovered in Russia in 1988, pulled from the wreckage of a large tic-tac shaped UAP, or unidentified anomalous phenomena. Hal Puthoff, a former AATIP member, quantum physicist and longtime disclosure advocate, claimed there were several different types of ETs. “The bodies recovered are not all the same type,” Puthoff said in the documentary, though he declined to detail them.

Note: In the Controlling the UFO Narrative: Government Cover-Ups and Secret Programs section of our UFO Information Center, we present a 2019 leaked memo with Dr. Eric Davis and former Director of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Admiral Thomas R. Wilson. They discuss the existence of deeply classified black budget programs dealing with non-human technology and the different departments and people involved. Our 26-minute video UFO Disclosure: Breakthrough Technology and Awakening Human Consciousness features interviews with leading experts along with well-sourced, verifiable information to help you make sense of this fascinating issue and its immense potential to transform our world.

- New York Post

The US military aided mass child rape in Afghanistan. Now its soldiers are committing this crime at Fort Bragg

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is an epidemic of child sex crimes in and around Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Since 2021, and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, dozens of elite soldiers stationed at the military base have been convicted of raping children, distributing child pornography, and other similar offenses. Many of these soldiers served in Afghanistan, where ... the U.S. military aided their local allies in “bacha bazi” (boy play): the practice of kidnapping and keeping boys as sex slaves, large numbers of whom were enslaved on U.S. military compounds. According to investigative journalist Seth Harp, who uncovered a massive narcotics smuggling and distribution network run by elite military operators ... there has been a tenfold increase in such cases since 2021. [Former United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, Special Forces Green Beret, and a former Battalion Commander at Fort Bragg Anthony] Aguilar notes: “When you deploy as a military and you have all of your 90 cubic inch containers that get locked up will all your stuff in it. Those don’t get inspected when they fly back over on a military aircraft and land at Fort Bragg…[They learn] How easy it would be to transport and traffic weapons, drugs, and yes, even humans, back and forth, from country to country. It is all very doable. And it is all very lucrative.” “Military leadership at the highest ranks are aware of what is happening, and they choose to cover it up. The whole time that the U.S. was in Afghanistan, they were working with, protecting, funding, and arming guys who were systematically raping little boys, keeping them in chains on U.S. military bases – chained children on U.S. bases who were raped on a nightly basis!” At Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar Province in 2014, [former Fort Bragg paratrooper Jordan] Terrell recalls seeing a group of young bachas running around the base. One, he noticed, “had something hanging out of his butt.” At first confused by the site, he later realized that what he saw was the child’s prolapsed anus from being repeatedly sodomized.

Note: The State Department belatedly released a report admitting that, for nearly 20 years of occupation, there existed, "a government pattern of sexual slavery on government compounds." US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal that American contractors at DynCorp engaged in drug use and the exploitation of young “dancing boys” in Afghanistan. At the same time, US soldiers were formally ordered not to intervene as Afghan police and militia allies sexually abused children on US bases. Dyncorp was also involved in child sex slavery rings in Bosnia and Colombia, where US military soldiers and international contractors working under DynCorp bought, raped, and trafficked kids as young as 12.

- MSN News

US trashed Somalia, can we really scold its people for coming here?

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The relatively small Somali community in the U.S., estimated at 260,000, has lately been receiving national attention thanks to a massive fraud scandal in Minnesota. A central theme of Trump’s anti-Somali rancor is that they come from a war-torn country without an effective centralized state, which in Trump’s reasoning speaks to their quality as a people, and therefore, their ability to contribute to American society. It is worth reminding ourselves, however, that Somalia’s state collapse and political instability is as much a result of imperial interventions, including from the U.S., as anything else. Cold War geopolitical machinations partly created the contextual background to the 1977-78 Somalia-Ethiopia war. Somalia’s defeat in this war set the stage for the disintegration of the state in 1991. This threw the country into a prolonged state of conflict, resulting in mass displacement and migration. U.S. drone strikes in Somalia have continued over the past two decades with varying degrees of intensity at different times. Since Trump returned to office, his administration has dramatically increased the drone campaign, while the transparency of the decision-making process and consequences of these strikes have become more opaque. Recent scholarship has noted the link between U.S. militarism in Somalia and the policing and surveillance of Somali immigrants in the U.S. Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric ... conveniently omits the U.S role in fomenting instability.

Note: Read about the terrible consequences of US policy in Somalia. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

- Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft

U.S. Secret Weapon May Have Incapacitated Maduro’s Guards

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it,” a Venezuelan security guard says in a video widely shared on social media and promoted by the White House. His account tells how U.S. special forces in Venezuela captured then-President Maduro using new technology which incapacitated the entire protective team and allowed two dozen U.S. troops to easily defeat hundreds of defenders. Guard: "At one point, they launched something—I don't know how to describe it... it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move." In the 90’s and early 2000s, the Pentagon poured resources into the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, now rebranded the Joint Intermedia Force Capabilities Office. Their task was to develop non-lethal, or less-lethal weapons which ... would disable or incapacitate people. The Pentagon worked on a wide variety of concepts, including strobe dazzlers, malodorants and electroshock projectiles. One of the biggest was the millimeter-wave Active Denial System or ‘pain beam’ which could inflict severe pain and drive back rioters from several hundred meters away. A patented device known as Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control (EPIC) ... uses radio waves “to excite and interrupt the normal process of human hearing and equilibrium.”

Note: Acoustic or sonic weapons can vibrate the insides of humans to stun them, nauseate them, or even "liquefy their bowels and reduce them to quivering diarrheic messes," according to a Pentagon briefing. These devices can also cause excruciating pain, with some able to heat up skin from a distance and others that can beam sound into the skull of a human. Learn more about non-lethal weapons in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

- Forbes

Guinea-Bissau: The ‘narco-state’ the US virtually ignores

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On November 26, soldiers of the Presidential Guard took power in yet another West African country. This time, it was Guinea-Bissau — the tiny country on the Atlantic coast better known to the world as the region’s first “narco-state.” Since its independence in 1974, the former Portuguese colony has endured nine coups, making it one of West Africa’s most fragile states. [The country] acts as a key transit point for the cocaine trade between the northern tier of South America and Europe. The latest coup is the second successful military takeover this year in Africa’s rapidly expanding coup belt. According to the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), “Politics and cocaine in Guinea-Bissau have gone hand in hand for decades. Upheavals in one cause ripples in the other.” The United States established diplomatic relations with Guinea-Bissau in 1975. Guinea-Bissau’s importance as the key transshipment point for cocaine between Colombia and the fast-growing market in Europe grew steadily over the years since. In 2013, Gen. Antonio Indjai, Guinea-Bissau’s senior military official at the time, was charged for conspiring to traffic drugs and procure military-grade weapons including surface-to-air missiles for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia (the “FARC”). In 2019, one of two large cocaine shipments seized in Guinea-Bissau was linked to ... the Al-Mourabitoun terrorist group, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Note: Many of the recent coups in Africa have been carried out by people affiliated with US intelligence or military interests. Read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.

- Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft

Congress Quietly Kills Military “Right to Repair,” Allowing Corporations to Cash In on Fixing

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The idea of a “right to repair” — a requirement that companies facilitate consumers’ repairs, maintenance, and modification of products — is extremely popular, even winning broad, bipartisan support in Congress. That could not, however, save it from the military–industrial complex. Lobbyists succeeded in killing part of the National Defense Authorization Act that would have given service members the right to fix their equipment in the field without having to worry about military suppliers’ intellectual property. The decision to kill the popular proposal was made public Sunday after a closed-door conference of top congressional officials, including defense committee chairs. For the defense industry ... the proposal threatened a key profit stream. Once companies sell hardware and software to the Pentagon, they can keep making money by forcing the government to hire them for repairs. Defense lobbyists pushed back hard against the proposal when it arose in the military budgeting process. The CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association claimed that the legislation could “cripple the very innovation on which our warfighters rely.” The contractors’ argument was that inventors would not sell their products to the Pentagon if they knew they had to hand over their trade secrets as well. As a piece of legislation, the right to repair has likely died until next year’s defense budget bill process. The notion could be imposed in the form of internal Pentagon policies.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

- The Intercept

America Pours Billions Into the Military. We Don’t Know Where It All Goes.

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 2011, the Army decided to get its soldiers new pistols. The Pentagon won’t complete delivery until 2027 at the earliest. The story of the Pentagon’s new pistols would be funny if it didn’t point to a serious problem at the heart of America’s military. The Department of Defense has built a gilded fortress of people and processes that is slow, wasteful and married to the past. Of all the obstacles to fielding the military that America needs, the Pentagon’s bureaucracy may be the hardest to overcome. The byzantine system for buying and testing weapons isolates the military from the innovative parts of the American economy. Congress underwrites the dysfunction with appropriations that are designed to deliver wins for its members rather than for America’s national security. As the House and Senate work toward the country’s first trillion-dollar defense budget, over $52 billion is for things members of Congress added, unbidden, to the Pentagon’s wish list, according to the independent budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense. No one can keep track of where all the money goes. The Defense Department is the only major federal agency never to get a clean bill of health from outside accountants, and has failed its last seven audits in as many years. When the bean counters can follow the money, they often find it has been wasted. The system feeds on itself. Pentagon officials and congressional staff members have long migrated to the arms industry.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

- New York Times

Lawmakers Pave the Way to Billions in Handouts for Weapons Makers That the Pentagon Itself Opposed

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On Thursday, lawmakers in the House approved a “pilot program” in the pending Pentagon budget bill that could eventually open the door to sending billions to big contractors, while providing what critics say would be little benefit to the military. The provision, which appeared in the budget bill after a closed-door session overseen by top lawmakers, would allow contractors to claim reimbursement for the interest they pay on debt they take on to build weapons and other gadgets for the armed services. One big defense contractor alone, Lockheed Martin, reported having more than $17.8 billion in outstanding interest payments last year, said Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the nonprofit Stimson Center. “The fact that we are even exploring this question is a little crazy in terms of financial risk for the government,” Gledhill said. Gledhill said even some Capitol Hill staffers were “scandalized” to see the provision in the final bill, which will likely be approved by the Senate. The switch to covering financing costs seems to be in line with a larger push this year to shake up the defense industry. The Pentagon itself was dubious in a 2023 study conducted by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. The Pentagon found that policy change might even supercharge the phenomenon of big defense contractors using taxpayer dollars for stock buybacks instead of research and development.

Note: Read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption.

- The Intercept

Anduril Partners With UAE Bomb Maker Accused of Arming Sudan’s Genocide

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The American weapons maker Anduril ... is partnering with EDGE Group, a weapons conglomerate controlled by the United Arab Emirates, a nation run entirely by the royal families of its seven emirates that permits virtually none of the activities typically associated with democratic societies. In the UAE, free expression and association are outlawed, and dissident speech is routinely and brutally punished without due process. A 2024 assessment of political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House, a U.S. State Department-backed think tank, gave the UAE a score of 18 out of 100. The EDGE–Anduril Production Alliance, as it will be known, will focus on autonomous weapons systems, including the production of Anduril’s “Omen” drone. The UAE has agreed to purchase the first 50 Omen drones built through the partnership. EDGE Chair Faisal Al Bannai explained in a 2019 interview that EDGE was working to develop weapons systems tailored to defeating low-tech “militia-style” militant groups. Nathaniel Raymonds, who leads the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health ... argued that “not since Operation Cyclone,” the CIA effort to arm the Afghan mujahideen, “has there been a covert action by any nation state to arm a paramilitary proxy group at this scale and sophistication and try to write it off as just a series of happy coincidences.”

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.

- The Intercept