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Military Corruption News Articles
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Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on military 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.

For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


Veterans of Atomic Test Blasts: No Warning, and Late Amends
2016-05-29, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/30/us/veterans-of-atomic-test-blasts-no-warni...

Several hundred thousand [soldiers] took part in atmospheric nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific and in Nevada. They were posted within range of exploding bombs — in effect made to be guinea pigs in studies of how combat troops might stand up in a war fought with nuclear arms. Many among these “atomic veterans” suffered cancers and other diseases. Frank Farmer ... witnessed 18 atomic detonations in 1958. “It’s so bright you actually see your bones in your hands.” He and his shipmates were issued no protective gear. Despite government assurances that their exposure to radiation had been insufficient to inflict physical harm, veterans could see they were getting sick in disproportionate numbers. Some began to speak out, ignoring oaths they had signed never to discuss their experiences. “More and more I heard about guys that had prostate cancer and lung cancer and all kinds of cancers,” said Mr. Farmer, who suffered hearing loss and a body rash that did not go away. Decades passed before corrective measures were taken. Issues raised by [these] difficulties resound in modern wars. As with the atomic veterans, officialdom’s default position has generally been to wave off any suggestion of a link between a soldier’s illness and a command-level decision. That was the case with Agent Orange ... in Vietnam. Years passed before the government accepted a “presumptive” connection between herbicides and cancers afflicting Vietnam veterans. Soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war complain of breathing problems, neurological damage, gastrointestinal disorders and other illnesses. Many suspect that blame lies with practices off the battlefield.

Note: Don't miss a profoundly moving 22-minute documentary in which several atomic veterans describe in detail what happened, how they suffered, and how the government denied responsibility for decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our War Information Center.


Retired U.S. Generals, Admirals Take Top Jobs with Saudi Crown Prince
2022-10-18, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/veterans-us-fo...

More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel – including scores of generals and admirals – have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation. In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent. Saudi Arabia's paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush. Others who have worked as consultants for the Saudis since Khashoggi's murder include a retired four-star Air Force general and a former commanding general of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. All the while, the gulf countries' security forces have continued to commit human rights abuses at home and beyond their borders. With shared intelligence, aerial refueling and other support from the U.S. government and contractors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have intervened in Yemen's civil war to disastrous effect, triggering a global humanitarian crisis and killing thousands of civilians.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon Was Involved In Domestic Censorship Scheme, New CTIL Whistleblower Files Show
2023-12-07, Public on Substack
https://public.substack.com/p/pentagon-was-involved-in-domestic

A second whistleblower has come forward with Slack messages showing far greater government and military involvement in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) than we had previously discovered. The CTIL Slack "disinformation" channel and the "law enforcement escalation" channel included current and former FBI employees, as well as personnel from the Michigan Cyber Command Center, the US Defense Digital Service (DDS), and at least one European government. Some of the military's involvement in censoring information and shaping opinion has been out in the open. In 2017, the DOD added "information" as the seventh joint function of the military. With the addition of "information" as a function of defense, DOD effectively declared that citizens' perceptions, attitudes, decisions, and behaviors were subject to military scrutiny and manipulation. The Censorship Industrial Complex ... aims to undermine and denigrate populist actors and movements through allegations that anti-government sentiment is linked to hate, conspiracy theories, or Russia. Supposed attempts to stop "disinformation" are really attempts to prevent opposition and challenges to the international political and military order. The new files suggest that the US and UK military and intelligence officials and contractors created the Censorship Industrial Complex's to defeat populist sentiment, not just individuals.

Note: The extensive collusion between Big Tech and government officials to censor COVID information is barely beginning to come to light. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight
2023-09-07, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/07/22-years-of-drone-warfare-and-no-end-in-sight/

In 2023, this country's drone warfare program has entered its third decade with no end in sight. Despite the fact that the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 is approaching, policymakers have demonstrated no evidence of reflecting on the failures of drone warfare and how to stop it. Instead, the focus continues to be on simply shifting drone policy in minor ways within an ongoing violent system. Washington's war on terror has inflicted disproportionate violence on communities across the globe, while using this form of asymmetrical warfare to further expand the space between the value placed on American lives and those of Muslims. Since the war on terror was launched, the London-based watchdog group Airwars has estimated that American air strikes have killed at least 22,679 civilians and possibly up to 48,308 of them. Such killings have been carried out for the most part by desensitized killers, who have been primed towards the dehumanization of the targets of those murderous machines. In the words of critic Saleh Sharief, "The detached nature of drone warfare has anonymized and dehumanized the enemy, greatly diminishing the necessary psychological barriers of killing." While the use of drones in the war on terror began under President George W. Bush, it escalated dramatically under Obama. Then, in the Trump years, it rose yet again. Though the use of drones in Joe Biden's first year in office was lower than Trump's, what has remained consistent is the lack of ... accountability for the slaughter of civilians.

Note: A 2014 analysis found that attempts to kill 41 people with drones resulted in 1,147 deaths. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Taliban's Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along
2023-08-04, MintPress News
https://www.mintpressnews.com/taliban-successful-opium-eradication-afgahnista...

The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently produced 90% of the world's heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation across the country. Western sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl – a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than 100,000 Americans yearly. A similar attempt by the Taliban to eliminate the drug occurred in 2000, the last full year that they were in power. It was extraordinarily successful, with opium reduction dropping from 4,600 tons to just 185 tons. However, as soon as the United States invaded in 2001, poppy cultivation shot back up to previous levels and the supply chain recommenced. Afghanistan's transformation into a preeminent narco-state owes a significant debt to Washington's actions. Poppy cultivation in the 1970s was relatively limited. However, the tide changed in 1979 with the inception of Operation Cyclone, a massive infusion of funds to Afghan Mujahideen factions aimed at exhausting the Soviet military. The U.S. directed billions toward the insurgents, yet their financial needs persisted. Consequently, the Mujahideen delved into the illicit drug trade. By the culmination of Operation Cyclone, Afghanistan's opium production had soared twentyfold.

Note: Read powerful evidence that the CIA and US military are directly involved in the drug trade. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The US cannot be complicit in allowing child soldiers
2023-07-31, The Hill
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4125729-the-us-cannot-be-complicit-...

In its newly released 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the Biden administration provided a glaring, but largely unnoticed, admission that it has failed to implement a key provision of U.S. law aimed at preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers. The report acknowledged that the administration has yet to finalize a congressionally mandated list of governments complicit in child soldier recruitment or use. With this list responsible for spurring urgently needed U.S. child soldier prevention efforts, its delay could have potentially severe consequences. Despite decades of concerted action to end the use of children as tools of war, the recruitment and use of child soldiers remains one of the most widespread abuses inflicted upon children in conflict, with the UN having verified the recruitment and use of 7,622 child soldiers last year – a 21 percent increase compared to 2021. Among those implicated in the use of child soldiers are security forces and armed groups led or supported by governments that rely heavily on U.S. defense cooperation to sustain their security operations. Somalia, for example, which recruited and used dozens of child soldiers in 2022, is among the most significant recipients of U.S. military aid in sub-Saharan Africa, with U.S. security assistance to and peacekeeping operations in the country amounting to roughly $3 billion over the past decade. The Biden administration can incentive governments implicated in the recruitment or use of child soldiers to put an end to these horrendous practices.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
2011-02-24, Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/another-runaway-general-a...

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war. The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation. "My job in psy-ops is to play with people's heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I'm prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you're crossing a line." Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

Note: Read more about military PsyOps used to manipulate populations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Rainmaking Is Used As Weapon by U.S.
1972-07-03, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/03/archives/rainmaking-is-used-as-weapon-by-u...

The United States has been secretly seeding clouds over North Vietnam, Laos and South Vietnam to increase and control the rainfall for military purposes. Government sources, both civilian and military, said during an extensive series of interviews that the Air Force cloud seeding program has been aimed most recently at hindering movement of North Vietnamese troops and equipment and suppressing enemy antiaircraft missile fire. The disclosure confirmed growing speculation in Congressional and scientific circles about the use of weather modification in Southeast Asia. Despite years of experiments with rainmaking in the United States and elsewhere, scientists are not sure they understand its long term effect on the ecology of a region. The weather manipulation in Indochina, which was first tried in South Vietnam in 1963, is the first confirmed use of meteorological warfare. One well-informed source said that Navy scientists were responsible for developing a new kind of chemical agent effective in the warm stratus clouds that often shielded many key antiaircraft sites in northern parts of North Vietnam. The chemical, he said, "produced a rain that had an acidic quality to it and it would foul up mechanical equipment–like radars, [and] trucks." "This wasn't originally our planning," the official added, "it was a refinement." Apparently, many Air Force cloud-seeding missions were conducted over North Vietnam and Laos simply to confuse or "attenuate" ... the radar equipment that controls anti aircraft missiles.

Note: Despite potentially grave risks, some are calling for large scale geoengineering to combat climate change. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on climate change from reliable major media sources.


Taliban now has access to $85 billion of American military equipment
2021-08-26, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/08/26/taliban-now-has-access-85-b...

The Taliban now has access to $85 billion worth of American military equipment and the biometric data of the Afghans who have assisted soldiers over the past 20 years, a Republican congressman has warned. Jim Banks, a former US Navy reservist, said that the vast amount of hardware left behind includes 75,000 vehicles, 200 airplanes and helicopters and 600,000 small arms and light weapons. "The Taliban now has more Black Hawk helicopters than 85 per cent of the countries in the world," he said. Other equipment seized by the Taliban includes night-vision goggles, body armour and medical supplies, he said. Mr Banks says he is sure of the numbers because he worked as a foreign military sales officer, acquiring the equipment that America provided, then turning it over to Afghan forces. "Unfathomable to me and so many others, the Taliban now has biometric devices which have the fingerprints, eye scans and biographical information of all the Afghans who helped us and were on our side in the last 20 years," Mr Banks said. "There is no plan by this administration to get those weapons back. Already, the Taliban say they have deployed an elite unit boasting high-tech equipment to guard sites in the Afghan capital. The militants' propaganda channels released a slick film of a unit called the "Badri 313 Brigade", saying they would be on the streets of Kabul. Slow motion footage showed them wearing modern helmets, sun glasses, body armour and carrying similar rifles to the Afghan forces.

Note: Why didn't the military prioritize removing this huge amount of equipment that they knew would be taken over by the Taliban? Do you think this equipment might have been left behind on purpose by those who profit from war? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


How the Pentagon Uses a Secretive Program to Wage Proxy Wars
2022-00-07, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2022/07/01/pentagon-127e-proxy-wars/

Small teams of U.S. Special Operations forces are involved in a low-profile proxy war program on a far greater scale than previously known. While The Intercept and other outlets have previously reported on the Pentagon's use of the secretive 127e authority in multiple African countries, a new document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act offers the first official confirmation that at least 14 127e programs were also active in the greater Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region as recently as 2020. In total, between 2017 and 2020, U.S. commandos conducted at least 23 separate 127e programs across the world. Separately, Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general who headed both Special Operations Command and Central Command, which oversees U.S. military efforts in the Middle East, confirmed the existence of previously unrevealed 127e "counterterrorism" efforts in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Basic information about these missions – where they are conducted, their frequency and targets, and the foreign forces the U.S. relies on to carry them out – are unknown even to most members of relevant congressional committees and key State Department personnel. Through 127e, the U.S. arms, trains, and provides intelligence to foreign forces. 127e partners are then dispatched on U.S.-directed missions, targeting U.S. enemies to achieve U.S. aims. "If someone were to call a 127-echo program a proxy operation, it would be hard to argue with them," [said a former senior defense official].

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Rather than focus on how the U.S. got out of Afghanistan, focus on how it got in
2021-08-17, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/17/rather-than-focus-how-us-g...

There should be a serious accounting for the Afghanistan debacle. The United States waged its longest war in a distant, impoverished country. After two decades, more than 775,000 troops deployed, far more than $1 trillion spent, more than 2,300 U.S. deaths and 20,500 wounded in action, tens of thousands of Afghani civilian deaths, the United States managed to create little more than a kleptocracy. Rather than focusing on how we got out, it would be far wiser to focus on how we got in. The accounting can draw from the ... Afghanistan Papers project. The papers come from ... the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, based on interviews with hundreds of officials who guided the mission. Their words are a savage and telling indictment. Under President George W. Bush, the early mission – to defeat al-Qaeda and get Osama bin Laden in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – quickly turned to nation-building. That mission was an abject failure from the beginning. Adjusted for inflation, the United States spent more money developing Afghan institutions than it had spent to help all of Western Europe after World War II. Yet as Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan concluded, the "single biggest project" stemming from the flood of dollars "may have been the development of mass corruption." Nearly $10 billion was spent to eradicate poppy production but as of 2018, Afghan farmers produced more than 80 percent of the global opium supply.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


‘Wow, What Is That?' Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects
2019-05-26, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html

The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds. "These things would be out there all day," said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. "With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we'd expect." No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial. Lieutenant Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said ... that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance. But the objects have gotten the attention of the Navy, which earlier this year sent out new classified guidance for how to report what the military calls unexplained aerial phenomena, or unidentified flying objects. The sightings were reported to the Pentagon's ... Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which analyzed the radar data, video footage and accounts provided by senior officers from the Roosevelt. Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence official who ran the program until he resigned in 2017, called the sightings "a striking series of incidents."

Note: The fact that the media is no longer debunking UFOs suggests that a gradual acculturation process is being used. Those in the know have been aware of many intense UFO encounters reported by military officers and more for many decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


CIA in Ukraine – An Ex-CIA Agent's View
2024-03-03, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/03/cia-in-ukraine/

The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present. The story, "The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin" ... relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the US, and "several European countries." There is a CIA listening post in the forest along the Russian border, one of 12 "secret" bases the US maintains there. Beginning in 2016, the CIA trained an "elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them." One of the reasons that I believe the Times article was "authorized" by the intelligence community is because of what isn't in it. There's no mention, for example, that the United Nations has deemed Ukraine to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where money just seems to disappear into foreign accounts and the pockets of Ukrainian government officials. There's no mention that Ukraine has become a "supermarket" for black market weapons and that western weapons meant for the war effort have popped up all over the world. And there is no mention at all that it was the CIA and the State Department that were responsible for the 2014 overthrow of the Ukrainian government in the first place, an action that resulted in Russia's decision to invade eight years later.

Note: John Kiriakou is a whistleblower, former CIA counter-terrorism officer, and former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In our War Failures and Lies section in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center, we discuss how the CIA has supported Neo-Nazis in Ukraine since at least 2014, the year of the far-right coup that incorporated the Nazi group Azov Battalion into the country's National Guard. Since then, declassified government documents show that Ukraine was systematically developed as a proxy for US war against Russia. In 2016, Congress removed a ban on funding Ukrainian neo-fascist groups, effectively paving the way for American arms and weapons to fall in the hands of Ukraine's Nazi organizations.


The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You)
2024-01-17, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/17/the-military-industrial-complex-is-the-winn...

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas's horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country's indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there's a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex. In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in "national defense" spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could well top $900 billion for the first time. Annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin's contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government's entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Before investing ever more tax dollars ... the military strategy of the United States in the current global environment should be seriously debated.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Military Industrial Complex Scam
2023-12-30, LA Progressive
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/military-industrial-complex-scam

In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. Despite these remarkable and costly debacles ... the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades. American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money. To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today's federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA. Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays.

Note: War profiteering is an old game. General Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


How 9/11 Bred a "War on Terror" from Hell
2023-09-07, TomDispatch
https://tomdispatch.com/how-9-11-bred-a-war-on-terror-from-hell/

The day after the U.S. government began routinely bombing faraway places, the lead editorial in the New York Times expressed some gratification. Nearly four weeks had passed since 9/11 ... and America had finally stepped up its "counterattack against terrorism" by launching airstrikes on al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military targets in Afghanistan. The Project on Defense Alternatives concluded that American air strikes had killed more than 1,000 [Afghan] civilians during the last three months of 2001. By mid-spring 2002, the Guardian reported, "as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the U.S. intervention." Under the "war on terror" rubric, open-ended warfare was well underway – "as if terror were a state and not a technique," as Joan Didion wrote in 2003. "We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of America's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war." Unlike those killed on 9/11, the Iraqi dead were routinely off the American media radar screen, as were the psychological traumas suffered by Iraqis and the decimation of their country's infrastructure. For the White House, the Pentagon, and Congress, the war on terror offered a political license to kill and displace people on a large scale in at least eight countries. The resulting carnage often included civilians. The dead and maimed had no names or faces that reached those who signed the orders and appropriated the funds.

Note: A 2021 report estimated that the War on Terror had "killed up to 929,000 people and cost over $8 trillion." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How Palantir Is Shaping the Future of Warfare
2023-07-10, Time Magazine
https://time.com/6293398/palantir-future-of-warfare-ukraine/

Palantir's founding team, led by investor Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, wanted to create a company capable of using new data integration and data analytics technology – some of it developed to fight online payments fraud – to solve problems of law enforcement, national security, military tactics, and warfare. Palantir, founded in 2003, developed its tools fighting terrorism after September 11, and has done extensive work for government agencies and corporations though much of its work is secret. Palantir's MetaConstellation platform allows the user to task ... satellites to answer a specific query. Imagine you want to know what is happening in a certain location and time in the Arctic. Click on a button and MetaConstelation will schedule the right combination of satellites to survey the designated area. The platform is able to integrate data from multiple and disparate sources – think satellites, drones, and open-source intelligence – while allowing a new level of decentralised decision-making. Just as a deep learning algorithm knows how to recognise a picture of a dog after some hours of supervised learning, the Palantir algorithms can become extraordinarily apt at identifying an enemy command and control centre. Alex Karp, Palantir's CEO, has argued that "the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


World powers in rush to get killer robots on battlefield in AI arms race, as concerns grow they can turn on humans
2023-07-10, New York Post
https://nypost.com/2023/07/10/new-netflix-doc-unknown-killer-robots-warns-of-...

Weapons-grade robots and drones being utilized in combat isn't new. But AI software is, and it's enhancing – in some cases, to the extreme – the existing hardware, which has been modernizing warfare for the better part of a decade. Now, experts say, developments in AI have pushed us to a point where global forces now have no choice but to rethink military strategy – from the ground up. "It's realistic to expect that AI will be piloting an F-16 and will not be that far out," Nathan Michael, Chief Technology Officer of Shield AI, a company whose mission is "building the world's best AI pilot," says. We don't truly comprehend what we're creating. There are also fears that a comfortable reliance in the technology's precision and accuracy – referred to as automation bias – may come back to haunt, should the tech fail in a life or death situation. One major worry revolves around AI facial recognition software being used to enhance an autonomous robot or drone during a firefight. Right now, a human being behind the controls has to pull the proverbial trigger. Should that be taken away, militants could be misconstrued for civilians or allies at the hands of a machine. And remember when the fear of our most powerful weapons being turned against us was just something you saw in futuristic action movies? With AI, that's very possible. "There is a concern over cybersecurity in AI and the ability of either foreign governments or an independent actors to take over crucial elements of the military," [filmmaker Jesse Sweet] said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How A Notorious Georgia Army School Became America's Training Ground For Global Torture
2023-07-05, MintPress News
https://www.mintpressnews.com/notorious-georgia-army-school-became-americas-t...

Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists. "The school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America," James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress, adding, "But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture – even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don't meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering." In 1996, the Pentagon was pressured into releasing the school's official training manuals. Even a casual glance through the nearly 1200 pages of instructions makes for sobering reading and dispels the myth forever that the U.S. is a benevolent global force.

Note: The School of the Americas graduated more than 500 human rights abusers. The identities of many other US-trained troops operating in other countries remain hidden by US courts. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


All aboard the gravy train: an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine
2023-06-27, The Grayzone
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/27/gravy-train-independent-audit-ukraine/

In the roughly 16 months since Russia's February 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict, the US government has approved several multi-billion dollar spending packages to sustain the Kiev military's fight against Moscow. Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington's budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case. US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security's looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone. In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine's sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank – all while Congress went to loggerheads over America's ballooning national debt. (Western financial interests including BlackRock Inc. are among the largest holders of Ukrainian government bonds.) Calculating the total dollar amount that the US has given to Ukraine is incredibly challenging for multitude of reasons: there is a lag in reporting expenditures; covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won't be publicly disclosed; and direct military assistance in the form of military equipment is not calculated in the same manner as raw cash.

Note: The above article doesn't provide a total figure. Congress approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2022. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


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