Government Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

In 2019, a team of researchers under the leadership of the U.S. science and technology development firm Battelle was awarded a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance its next-gen non-surgical neurotechnology (N3) project – which aims at designing and producing bi-directional brain control technology interfaces for soldiers to use in fields of battle. Initially, brain-computer interface (BCI) research focused on helping those with disabilities achieve partial restoration of a brain-world interface via invasive implant procedures. The overarching DARPA-funded constellation of research projects is called Brain System to Transmit Or Receive Magnetoelectric Signals (BrainSTORMS), and involved the design and production of a nano-transducer capable of being directly injected into specific brain regions to transmit commands from neural activity to an external helmet-based transceiver. The University of Miami revealed that ... magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENPs) can move through human bloodstreams, permeate the human brain, and identify subtle signals from your neurons, subsequently transmitting information to an external computer device in a helmet. We're not living in a neo-feudalistic dystopia where our every thought and impulse is pre-determined by the algorithmic encoding of human brains. But the governments of the world are building the technology to enhance bi-directional brain control.

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 along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mind control.

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.

Projectiles that release powder designed to burn the eyes and throat. Flashbang grenades. Teargas. Launchers that resemble semi-automatic rifles. Often dubbed "less lethal", these weapons can cause serious injuries or even death if misused – but they are deployed by police against crowds in Australia with little scrutiny. "All of these weapons can kill people," says Rohini Haar, a medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights. Haar says there is "almost zero" regulation. In Australia, there are no nationally enforced standards for their use. In some states, police go to great lengths not to share what weapons they have or how they're used. Contracts worth millions for these weapons are often with third-party distributors rather than the manufacturers, obscuring what police have access to. During coronial inquests, after baton rounds and other weapons may have contributed to deaths, Victoria police have sought suppression orders that bar media from describing any details of weaponry. Less lethal projectiles have been connected to deaths and a range of injuries around the world. After the protests that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of US police, doctors undertook a review of the injuries caused by less lethal weapons in Minneapolis. They reviewed up to 89 cases of people injured by police weapons in mid-2020 and found that much of the damage was to the head, neck or face – 16 patients had traumatic brain injuries.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and non-lethal weapons.

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.

US Customs and Border Protection is seeking to hire private investigators to track down deported immigrants and others who have left the United States, and press them into paying the government money, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The work would cover Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, and potentially other countries. The documents, which cap the so-called Tracing and Payment Recovery Services program at $9 million over the next two years, call for "commercial data verification and physical observation services" to confirm where each person lives. As of July, the Department of Homeland Security, CBP's parent agency, says it has issued more than $84 billion in fines to immigrants it has accused of failing to depart the United States. Those fines run against people who are still in the country, at $998 a day for up to five years. Some have reached up to $1.8 million. Hasan Shafiqullah, the Legal Aid Society's immigration supervising attorney, says he's seen some third-party collection agencies add $500,000 in additional administrative fees on top of the US government's fees. Immigrants accused of failing to depart have had their tax returns seized, their wages garnished, and their credit scores ruined. DHS promises that it will forgive failure-to-depart fines if people self-deport using the CBP Home app. The waiver does not include a separate $5,130 fee Congress created last year for people ordered removed in absentia and later arrested by ICE.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

Officers drove Moreno-Mendez to a nearby ICE field office. There, one deportation officer after another approached him with the same demand. Open your mouth. One officer tried to take his fingerprints and swab the inside of his cheek for DNA. He refused. Then another tried. Then a third. Each time, Moreno-Mendez refused. Four days later, Moreno-Mendez was charged with failing to register as a noncitizen and refusing to provide DNA while in federal custody–the latter a misdemeanor. On August 18, 2025, a magistrate judge in Waco found him guilty of each. Moreno-Mendez's case is part of a sweeping expansion of DNA collection from people held for civil immigration violations–a federal campaign that, backed by the threat of prosecution, funnels the genetic profiles of nearly everyone in ICE custody into an FBI database built for criminal investigations. New research from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology estimates that the Department of Homeland Security has become the largest single source of new genetic profiles in the nation's criminal DNA system, with ICE alone potentially adding as many as roughly 920,000 profiles in 2025. The vast majority of people in ICE custody have no criminal conviction. Yet once the DNA profiles of detained people enter the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, law enforcement agencies across the country can compare them against evidence from unsolved crimes.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

Defense industry tycoon Palmer Luckey [is] the 33-year-old co-founder of sprawling weapons manufacturer Anduril Industries. A longtime GOP donor and activist who spoke on condition he not be identified in order to preserve his political relationships said Luckey was now the "godfather of Republican fundraising on the west coast". "If you're raising campaign money in California, you have to go to Palmer Luckey," he said. "Luckey is the top tier." Anduril, launched just nine years ago, has emerged as a major military contractor for the Trump administration, working on contracts for everything from drones to autonomous jet fighters to space-based interceptors. In March, the US army awarded a $20bn sole-source contract to Anduril for a variety of drones it sells, though it is not clear which of its weapons systems are operational or have been deployed for combat in US operations. Anduril, though it is not widely known as a space contractor, announced in May it would work, with a team of other companies, on what may be the mother of all contracting opportunities offered by the Trump administration, the so-called "Golden Dome" anti-missile space-based interceptor effort. Estimates for the Golden Dome range between $185bn and $1.2tn. Anduril says in Trump's first year in office it doubled its revenue – a growth rate of 100%, but still only reached $2.2bn for 2025, which is barely a blip in the Pentagon's trillion-dollar budget.

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

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.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul, who has published Dr. Anthony Fauci's private diary from when he led the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, says that the entries reveal a "level of dishonesty" that is "really astounding." "One of the biggest items that we found in there was that in January of 2020 he already was acknowledging that the virus didn't originate in the marketplace. For years he's been telling you – if you interviewed him last week, he's probably still telling you – the reason we think it came from nature is because they had these exotic animals and that's where SARS came from previously," Paul told reporters. "The earliest people who got COVID were not associated with the marketplace. The Chinese CDC was saying this in January of 2020. He knew it, he told dear diary, but to the public, he commissioned this paper called ‘Proximal Origins,' and in it they go on and on saying it's implausible that it came from the lab and we're really convinced it came from these wild animals in the marketplace," Paul told reporters. Paul has accused Fauci of lying about gain-of-function research into dangerous viruses at the Chinese lab and subpoenaed the 85-year-old former health official to testify before his committee. Paul also said on social media that his investigation into Fauci shows that he "put protecting his reputation ahead of protecting the American people."

Note: As Washington Post reported, Fauci characterized the 6-ft recommendation as "an empiric decision that wasn't based on data" and testified: "It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance." In our latest Substack, COVID Revisited: A Complete Guide to Pandemic Propaganda and the Search for Truth in a Divided World, we explore how many COVID-era policies and mandates didn't actually have a scientific basis, and failed to hold up in the face of real world evidence. We also emphasize the devastating public health costs of fear, division, and social isolation. Read more on how Fauci was "untruthful" to Congress about Wuhan lab virus research.

The pesticide industry has spent decades building a highly effective influence operation in Washington D.C. Its political influence did not begin with the Trump administration. But over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has delivered a string of victories to the pesticide industry that could reshape pesticide use and public health protections for years to come. U.S. Right to Know identified 26 administration officials with ties to the pesticide industry's lobbying or legal network, including 11 political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where former chemical industry lobbyists now occupy the four highest-ranking positions overseeing federal pesticide regulations. In June 2026, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and Bayer in a 7–2 decision likely to block thousands of state-level lawsuits alleging that Bayer failed to warn consumers that Roundup causes cancer. In February 2026, President Trump signed an executive order declaring glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus – a raw material used in glyphosate production and military weaponry – critical to national defense and directing the federal government to prioritize their domestic production. Bayer is the sole U.S. producer of both glyphosate and elemental phosphorus. In June 2025, USDA rescinded regulations that had required farmers to keep basic records documenting when, where and how they applied restricted-use pesticides.

Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Bayer/Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.

Scientific research shows that chlorpyrifos, a widely used insecticide, is strongly linked to brain damage in children. These and other health concerns led several countries and some U.S. states to ban chlorpyrifos years ago, but the chemical was still allowed for use by farmers in the U.S. after successful lobbying by its manufacturer. In August 2021, the Biden Administration acknowledged the danger to children and announced it would ban chlorpyrifos from agricultural use. However, in November 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit overturned the EPA's ban. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents more than 66,000 pediatricians and pediatric surgeons, has warned that continued use of chlorpyrifos puts developing fetuses, infants, children and pregnant women at great risk. Scientists have found that prenatal exposures to chlorpyrifos are associated with lower birth weight, reduced IQ, the loss of working memory, attention disorders, and delayed motor development. A population based case-control study found that, "Prenatal or infant exposure to a priori selected pesticides–including glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and permethrin–were associated with increased odds of developing autism spectrum disorder." According to an analysis published in July 2020, U.S. regulators relied on falsified data provided by Dow Chemical to allow unsafe levels of chlorpyrifos into American homes for years.

Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.

[Annie] Jacobsen's new book, "Biological War: A Scenario" ... is a heavily researched book about contagious and potentially civilization-ending pathogens. Though banned by international treaty, these germs have been weaponized and hoarded by countries that include Russia, North Korea and Syria. Jacobsen has interviewed everyone, from former high-ranking members of the military, the C.I.A., FEMA and NATO to former secretaries of defense, counterterrorism experts, epidemiologists and Sam [expletive] Altman. That so many were willing to talk to her, and have their names affixed to this book, indicates the esteem in which she is held. "Biological War" is fact-based except for Jacobsen's assumption that our leaders have experience, knowledge, integrity and empathy. The infectious killer this book describes, I am sorry to say, exists. It's what's referred to as a chimera pathogen, alive and airborne, a booby-trapped hybrid of two or more viruses. In this case, the infected person first experiences a long wave of euphoria, of the sort that makes one want to rush out and dance with somebody. Later, the suffering begins. Bubbly pink sputum, hacked up bits of lung, "bestial noises," stenches on airplanes mistaken for dirty diapers. This pathogen is engineered to destroy trust in medicine. If a patient is given antibiotics – these would barely help anyway – the disease mutates into a form of deadly encephalitis.

Note: In 1977, a US Senate investigation revealed that, during the Cold War, the Army had secretly conducted at least 239 biological warfare tests by releasing bacteria into American cities and public transportation systems. In one experiment, a bacterial cloud released over the San Francisco Bay Area exposed hundreds of thousands of people, contributing to illnesses and death, and lasting changes to the region's microbial ecology. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on weapons of mass destruction, biotech dangers, and science corruption.

Last year, a middle-aged man was filmed approaching a woman in a shopping centre. It was a sting. The man had expected to meet a woman he had been chatting to online who was offering up her three young children to be abused. But she was, in fact, a paedophile hunter – a decoy. He ran, and was captured on film. The decoy was part of a media organisation known as Dumpen (literally, "the dump"), set up in 2021 to highlight the terrible shortcomings of Sweden's laws on child abuse and defamation by exposing predators. As with every sting executed by Dumpen, both the film of the man being confronted and the numerous messages between him and the decoy were uploaded to its website. This particular individual was given the moniker "Mr Grey". Weeks after posting on Facebook, Angeliqa received a letter from the police, telling her to present herself at a station across the city for questioning. "I took a lawyer with me, and was interrogated about my victimisation of this man," [she said]. She is now one of a few people in Sweden to have been prosecuted for defamation, and is campaigning for a change to the law. Crucially, truth alone is not a defence: a statement can be defamatory under Swedish law even if it is accurate. Further, an archaic clause grants precedence to a person's dignity and honour – even if that person has been convicted of child abuse – over someone else's right to name them as a sexual predator of children.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on judicial system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

In October 2017, [Cissi] Wallin posted a mirror selfie to her tens of thousands of followers on Instagram. "The powerful media man who drugged and raped me in 2006 is named Fredrik Virtanen," the caption began. Today – more than four years later – Mr. Virtanen has never been charged with any crime in connection to his encounter with Ms. Wallin. (He has denied her allegations.) She, meanwhile, is a convicted criminal, at risk of prison time. In 2019 she was charged with and convicted of defamation, after Mr. Virtanen reported her to the police. Other Swedish men have pursued similar tactics: At least 12 criminal convictions have followed of women who had told their own stories since the #MeToo movement began. And now, in what might be a low point in Ms. Wallin's quest for the right to speak about what she says happened to her, she's about to be prosecuted again – after self-publishing a memoir. Although the book doesn't name the man, if she's convicted, the government will seek to have all unsold hard copies of her book destroyed. Despite Mr. Virtanen's being one of the highest-profile writers at the country's largest newspaper, the court concluded that he was not enough of a public figure to justify public interest in his personal conduct. Ms. Wallin's posts, in other words, were not justifiable, and as a result, it didn't matter whether her account of their encounter was accurate. "The court will not review whether the statements were true," the verdict read.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on judicial system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

Down here in the tombs, there aren't any windows," writes Tremane Wood from inside his cell. Wood, 46, spent 17 years incarcerated in H Unit – the underground cells at the state prison in the rural town of McAlester, Oklahoma, where no natural light ever reaches. According to prisoner letters seen by the Guardian and published here for the first time, H Unit – also known by the prisoners as the "tombs" – features a series of windowless cells that are built banked into the earth. The letters also tell of infestations of vermin, unsanitary conditions, and frequent instances of physical and sexual violence. The lack of sunlight is a matter of particular concern to the prisoners. Dr Sondra Crosby, an expert in torture survivors and a public health professor at Boston University and Physicians for Human Rights, calls it "a form of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and torture". Crosby, who has worked with people imprisoned after 9/11 in CIA "black sites", says lack of sunlight was "used to punish people in the darkness of the prisons in Afghanistan". The letters from H Unit offer a glimpse into this sunless world. The prisoners – of whom there are currently 248 in total, according to prison authorities – write of living in squalor, and frequent violence and rape. Many are held in solitary confinement, with almost no human contact. Others stay in two-person cells, where they say violence is common because the space is not large enough for two men. "I've heard men scream and yell and seen them pulled out of cells with blood and waste running down their leg from sexual assault … maybe 5 times," [inmate Edward Sparks III] wrote. [Another prisoner] wrote that "the guards are putting chilli pepper symbols on their vest as a badge for every inmate that they are spraying with mace and the pepper ball gun."

Note: The American prison system has been described as a "sexual jungle" where prison officials quietly permit rape as a way to control the population. To understand how disturbing and common sexual abuse in prison is, read this Human Rights Watch report that documents dozens of first-hand accounts of rape and sexual slavery in prison systems across 34 states. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.

A freshman's dorm mattress at Mississippi State University. A Georgia Medicaid patient's eyeglasses. The goalpost padding at Bauxite High School in Arkansas. The burn ban flag at the Boerne Fire Department in Texas Hill Country. All of them were made by people incarcerated in American prisons. In the United States, prison labor is everywhere, a practice nearly as old as our nation itself. Incarcerated workers are responsible for producing over $2 billion in goods annually, much of which is sold via federal and state prison industries to public institutions. Incarcerated workers make between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour working for state-owned businesses – though in six states, prison workers aren't paid for their labor at all. Proponents of prison labor argue that these work programs are designed to be rehabilitative and beneficial for incarcerated people. But Carla Laroche, Felder-Fayard associate professor of law at Tulane University and the Murphy Institute, says it's more complicated. "Prison labor goes back to enslavement," she said. "Someone is being held in a facility, a prison, and told, ‘You must work.' They don't have a choice whether they work or not, what skills they want to learn, or what kind of job they have. And some people might say, great – everybody has to work. Everybody has to pay their bills. But we have the ability to leave. We have the ability to choose. And we can work for ourselves. In some prisons, if you do not work, you will be held in solitary confinement."

Note: US prison labor is linked to hundreds of popular food brands. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.

News reports have historically allowed us as a society to monitor our government when it exercises its greatest power: ending a person's life. But the state of Indiana has decided to inhibit that public access by banning members of the media from attending executions – unless the condemned person chooses to give a reporter a spot that could instead have gone to their relatives or friends. An appellate court upheld the ban this week. Perhaps the media ban has nothing to do with preserving the dignity of the condemned and is instead about obstructing government accountability and public oversight. Executions in this country were once highly public affairs. Often held in town squares, any member of the public could attend. In the 1830s, government officials began to enact laws that made executions private events. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, support for capital punishment in America has decreased from 80 percent in 1994 to 52 percent in 2026. This division necessitates transparency – otherwise, the only nongovernment actors able to tell the public the truth are dead. As a result of restrictions placed on media access to prisons, prisons have become unjustifiably cruel, less humane and more difficult to monitor. Restricting press freedom erodes human rights and constitutional safeguards and blinds the public to the kinds of cruelty and abuse depicted in HBO's Oscar-nominated documentary "The Alabama Solution."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on judicial system corruption and media manipulation.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) declined Thursday to release additional unredacted records from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, telling a federal judge that it has already adequately complied with the law. The DOJ's response came in the final hours of a court-ordered deadline to remove redactions in at least a dozen documents or "show cause" why it could not. Those documents included "at least eight email exchanges with Mr. Epstein regarding a ‘torture video' and sexual activity with young women, including minors" and interviews with a woman who claims she was abused by President Trump as a minor. The filing pointed to exemptions in the law that allowed the DOJ to withhold or redact records that contained victims' identities and information that could jeopardize a federal investigation, among a few other exceptions. The Justice Department argued that it should not be forced to release any further records to the public but offered to share additional details with the judge in closed-door proceedings. It also asked for a 60-day extension so that the solicitor general can consider a possible appeal, if further action is demanded. The filing comes in a lawsuit from attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang, in which she alleged that the DOJ has violated the transparency law by withholding information. [Attorney General Todd] Blanche has repeatedly defended the administration's handling and rollout of the files.

Note: Don't miss part one and part two of our investigations into the Epstein files so far. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein.

A former CIA officer on Tuesday said that he does not believe that the agency's research on individuals through Project MKUltra ever stopped. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets received testimony during a hearing earlier in the day focused on MKUltra. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has led the push to reveal more about the program, which started under former CIA Director Allen Dulles's orders in 1953. Asked how the human experimentation program was kept quiet for so long, [Tracy Walder, former CIA staff operations officer], pointed to the destruction of much of MKUltra's documentation as the reason. Responding to Watergate, former CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all records related to MKUltra, according to a research paper. "You are absolutely not supposed to do that," she continued. "But I think some of this started coming to light because individuals want justice for what happened to them." Luna resumed the congressional hearings on the experimentation program after a ... new report stating that the CIA added a new document to its reading room about the agency studying mind control. "Administering drugs to people without their knowledge or consent, subjecting humans to psychological torture, and using prisoners and hospital patients as nonconsenting research subjects," Luna said as she opened the hearing. "These are crimes against humanity."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.

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.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.