Military Corruption News Articles

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The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections. In August of 2018, President Trump signed [an] executive order ... called National Security Presidential Memorandum 13. Its contents are still classified, but essentially it allows the Cyber Command to go ahead and conduct all kinds of operations inside foreign networks without going back to the president for prior approval. The first thing it did was go after those units in Russia that were responsible for a lot of the election-hacking. They went after the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence unit that had been responsible for breaking into the D.N.C.. A lot of that ... was made public. What wasn’t made public was a parallel effort to go inside the Russian power grid, to put some code in places where the Russians ... wouldn’t see it, in case the U.S. ever needed to act against Russia’s utilities as the Russians were putting malware in our systems.

Note: A 2007 New York Times article describes the formation of the Air Force Cyberspace Command to arm the US military in anticipation of widespread computer-based warfare. A more recent Guardian article says, "we might already be living through the first world cyberwar." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

A British tribunal has ruled that a former member of the UN police force in Bosnia was unfairly fired after she reported to her superiors that colleagues in the police force used women and children as sex slaves in connivance with Balkan traffickers. It was at least the third scandal this year involving international aid workers and vulnerable local populations. The UN officially has not commented on the latest case, in which the whistleblower, Kathryn Bolkovac, an American citizen living in the Netherlands, charged she was fired in 2000 for sending e-mails to her employer, the U.S. recruitment agency DynCorp, stating that other UN police officers from several countries were linked with prostitution rings. Bolkovac was posted to Sarajevo in 1999 to investigate sex trafficking but soon began filing reports that UN officials and international aid workers themselves were involved in it. She said UN workers frequented bars where girls as young as 15 were forced to dance naked on tables and engage in sexual acts with clients. UN peacekeepers stood by while girls who refused to take part in sex acts were beaten and raped by pimps. One police officer paid $1,000 for a girl he kept captive in his apartment. Earlier this year, a joint report by Save the Children and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that about 70 workers from aid organizations and UN agencies were suspected of extorting sexual favors from children and young women among refugees in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in exchange for food.

Note: The case of this courageous whistleblower was turned into a movie. For lots more, see this article from the UK's Independent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

Haiti could be Erik Prince's deadliest gambit yet. Prince's Blackwater reigned during the Global War on Terror, but left a legacy of disastrous mishaps, most infamously the 2007 Nisour massacre in Iraq, where Blackwater mercenaries killed 17 civilians. This, plus his willingness in recent years to work for foreign governments in conflicts and for law enforcement across the globe, have made Prince one of the world's most controversial entrepreneurs. A desperate Haiti has now hired him to "conduct lethal operations" against armed groups, who control about 85% of Haitian capital Port-Au-Prince. Prince will send about 150 private mercenaries to Haiti over the summer. He will advise Haiti's police force on countering Haiti's armed groups, where some Prince-hired mercenaries are already operating attack drones. The Prince deal is occurring within the context of extensive ongoing American intervention in Haiti. Currently the U.S.-backed, Kenyan-led multinational police force operating in Haiti to combat the armed groups is largely seen as a failure. Previously, a U.N. peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilizing Haiti from 2004 through 2017 was undermined by scandal, where U.N. officials were condemned for killing civilians during efforts aimed at armed groups, sexually assaulting Haitians, and introducing cholera to Haiti. Before that, the U.S. was accused of ousting Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he proved obstructive to U.S. foreign policy goals, in 2004.

Note: This article doesn't mention the US-backed death squads that recently terrorized Haiti. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world.

The inaugural "AI Expo for National Competitiveness" [was] hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the "techno-economic" thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference's lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that's best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump's family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces. I ... went to a panel in Palantir's booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two "privacy and civil liberties engineers" [who] described how Palantir's Gaia map tool lets users "nominate targets of interest" for "the target nomination process". It helps people choose which places get bombed. After [clicking] a few options on an interactive map, a targeted landmass lit up with bright blue blobs. These blobs ... were civilian areas like hospitals and schools. Gaia uses a large language model (something like ChatGPT) to sift through this information and simplify it. Essentially, people choosing bomb targets get a dumbed-down version of information about where children sleep and families get medical treatment. "Let's say you're operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza," I asked the engineers afterward. "Does Palantir prevent you from ‘nominating a target' in a civilian location?" Short answer, no.

Note: "Nominating a target" is military jargon that means identifying a person, place, or object to be attacked with bombs, drones, or other weapons. Palantir's Gaia map tool makes life-or-death decisions easier by turning human lives and civilian places into abstract data points on a screen. Read about Palantir's growing influence in law enforcement and the war machine. For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.

Skydio, with more than $740m in venture capital funding and a valuation of about $2.5bn, makes drones for the military along with civilian organisations such as police forces and utility companies. The company moved away from the consumer market in 2020 and is now the largest US drone maker. Military uses touted on its website include gaining situational awareness on the battlefield and autonomously patrolling bases. Skydio is one of a number of new military technology unicorns – venture capital-backed startups valued at more than $1bn – many led by young men aiming to transform the US and its allies' military capabilities with advanced technology, be it straight-up software or software-imbued hardware. The rise of startups doing defence tech is a "big trend", says Cynthia Cook, a defence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based-thinktank. She likens it to a contagion – and the bug is going around. According to financial data company PitchBook, investors funnelled nearly $155bn globally into defence tech startups between 2021 and 2024, up from $58bn over the previous four years. The US has more than 1,000 venture capital-backed companies working on "smarter, faster and cheaper" defence, says Dale Swartz from consultancy McKinsey. The types of technologies the defence upstarts are working on are many and varied, though autonomy and AI feature heavily.

Note: For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.

While attempting to control the weather might sound like science fiction, countries have been seeding clouds for decades to try to make rain or snow fall in specific regions. Invented in the 1940s, seeding involves a variety of techniques including adding particles to clouds via aircraft. It is used today across the world in an attempt to alleviate drought, fight forest fires and even to disperse fog at airports. In 2008, China used it to try to stop rain from falling on Beijing's Olympic stadium. But experts say that there is insufficient oversight of the practice, as countries show an increasing interest in this and other geoengineering techniques as the planet warms. The American Meteorological Society has said that "unintended consequences" of cloud seeding have not been clearly shown – or ruled out – and raised concerns that unanticipated effects from weather modification could cross political boundaries. And there have been instances when cloud seeding was used deliberately in warfare. The United States used it during "Operation Popeye" to slow the enemy advance during the Vietnam War. In response, the UN created a 1976 convention prohibiting "military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques". A number of countries have not signed the convention. Researcher Laura Kuhl said there was "significant danger that cloud seeding may do more harm than good", in a 2022 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Note: Regenerative farming is far safer and more promising than geoengineering for stabilizing the climate. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on geoengineering and science corruption.

The Pentagon's technologists and the leaders of the tech industry envision a future of an AI-enabled military force wielding swarms of autonomous weapons on land, at sea, and in the skies. Assuming the military does one day build a force with an uncrewed front rank, what happens if the robot army is defeated? Will the nation's leaders surrender at that point, or do they then send in the humans? It is difficult to imagine the services will maintain parallel fleets of digital and analog weapons. The humans on both sides of a conflict will seek every advantage possible. When a weapon system is connected to the network, the means to remotely defeat it is already built into the design. The humans on the other side would be foolish not to unleash their cyber warriors to find any way to penetrate the network to disrupt cyber-physical systems. The United States may find that the future military force may not even cross the line of departure because it has been remotely disabled in a digital Pearl Harbor-style attack. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Defense reported 12,077 cyber-attacks between 2015 and 2021. The incidents included unauthorized access to information systems, denial of service, and the installation of malware. Pentagon officials created a vulnerability disclosure program in 2016 to engage so-called ethical hackers to test the department's systems. On March 15, 2024, the program registered its 50,000th discovered vulnerability.

Note: For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.

Militaries, law enforcement, and more around the world are increasingly turning to robot dogs – which, if we're being honest, look like something straight out of a science-fiction nightmare – for a variety of missions ranging from security patrol to combat. Robot dogs first really came on the scene in the early 2000s with Boston Dynamics' "BigDog" design. They have been used in both military and security activities. In November, for instance, it was reported that robot dogs had been added to President-elect Donald Trump's security detail and were on patrol at his home in Mar-a-Lago. Some of the remote-controlled canines are equipped with sensor systems, while others have been equipped with rifles and other weapons. One Ohio company made one with a flamethrower. Some of these designs not only look eerily similar to real dogs but also act like them, which can be unsettling. In the Ukraine war, robot dogs have seen use on the battlefield, the first known combat deployment of these machines. Built by British company Robot Alliance, the systems aren't autonomous, instead being operated by remote control. They are capable of doing many of the things other drones in Ukraine have done, including reconnaissance and attacking unsuspecting troops. The dogs have also been useful for scouting out the insides of buildings and trenches, particularly smaller areas where operators have trouble flying an aerial drone.

Note: Learn more about the troubling partnership between Big Tech and the military. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

The United States prepared a rebel force to join the offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, fighters have claimed. British and American-trained fighters in the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA), a group aligned against Islamic State, were told "this is your moment" in a briefing by US Special Forces before Assad was ousted. The RCA revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and "be ready" for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad regime. Having worked with the RCA to dismantle the Islamic State's Syrian caliphate, the US still pays its fighters a salary to prevent the terror group's resurgence. Syria's 13-year civil war ... threw up a bewildering array of militias and alliances, most of them backed by foreign powers. It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until it broke away in 2017. It is equally ironic that rebel factions supported by the US are co-operating with those backed by Turkey in places like Palmyra, while fighting against each other elsewhere in the country. While Turkey opposed the US-supported Kurds in Syria, it was in full agreement about the threat posed by Isis. In recent days, the US has carried out dozens of air strikes on Isis positions even as its Kurdish allies have come under sustained attack from Syrian factions supported by Turkey.

Note: Watch former CIA director John Brennan suggest that the Syrian rebels we previously supported now pose more of a threat to Syrians and American interests. As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through. A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were "not accepting of reality", 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit symptoms of aggression. "This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child," Helen Pattinson, chief executive of War Child UK, said. "Alongside the levelling of hospitals, schools and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war." The estimated death toll in Gaza is more than 44,000 and a recent assessment by the UN Human Rights Office found that 44% of the fatalities it was able to verify were children. About 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, approximately 90% of the territory's total population, have been displaced, many several times. Half of that number are children who have lost their home and been forced to flee their neighbourhoods. More than 60% of the surveyed children reported having experienced traumatic events during the war and some had been exposed to multiple traumatic events. An estimated 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied, separated from their parents.

Note: American companies are profiting from the war in Gaza. Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has failed for the last 33 years to pass a financial audit. With assets that are approximated at $3.8 trillion probably maybe ... the DoD is surpassed by only JPMorgan/Chase and its $4.2 trillion as the largest U.S. entity when ranked by assets. According to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report last year, "DOD financial management has been on our High-Risk List since 1995. DOD's spending makes up about half of the federal government's discretionary spending. Its physical assets comprise almost 68 percent of the federal government's physical assets. DOD has not yet received an audit opinion on its annual department-wide financial statements. It has been unable to accurately account for and report on its spending or physical assets." The DoD's Number 2 largest supplier, Raytheon and the Government's Number 31 largest supplier, Dell, both agreed to pay millions to resolve Department of Justice (DoJ) investigations this past October and November. The DoJ reported that Raytheon agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve the government's investigations into a major government fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

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.

A federal jury held a defense contractor legally responsible for contributing to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib for the first time. The jury awarded a total of $42 million to three Iraqi men – a journalist, a middle school principal, and fruit vendor – who were held at the notorious prison two decades ago. The plaintiffs' suit accused Virginia-based CACI, which was hired by the U.S. government to provide interrogation services at Abu Ghraib, of conspiring with American soldiers to torture detainees. CACI had argued that while abuses did occur at Abu Ghraib, it was ultimately the Army who was responsible for this conduct, even if CACI employees may have been involved. The defense contractor also argued there was no definitive evidence that their staff abused the three Iraqi men who filed the case – and that it could have been American soldiers who tortured them. The jury did not find that argument persuasive. The case was filed 16 years ago but got caught up in procedural hurdles, as CACI tried more than 20 times to dismiss the lawsuit. The plaintiffs – Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, and Asa'ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba'e – had testified about facing sexual abuse and harassment, as well as being beaten and threatened with dogs at Abu Ghraib. "My body was like a machine, responding to all external orders," [said] Al-Ejaili, a former journalist with Al Jazeera. "The only part I owned was my brain."

Note: Read more about the horrors of Abu Ghraib. Learn more about US torture programs 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.

At the Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) event in August, the US Defense Department tested an artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous robotic gun system developed by fledgling defense contractor Allen Control Systems dubbed the "Bullfrog." Consisting of a 7.62-mm M240 machine gun mounted on a specially designed rotating turret outfitted with an electro-optical sensor, proprietary AI, and computer vision software, the Bullfrog was designed to deliver small arms fire on drone targets with far more precision than the average US service member can achieve with a standard-issue weapon. Footage of the Bullfrog in action published by ACS shows the truck-mounted system locking onto small drones and knocking them out of the sky with just a few shots. Should the Pentagon adopt the system, it would represent the first publicly known lethal autonomous weapon in the US military's arsenal. In accordance with the Pentagon's current policy governing lethal autonomous weapons, the Bullfrog is designed to keep a human "in the loop" in order to avoid a potential "unauthorized engagement." In other words, the gun points at and follows targets, but does not fire until commanded to by a human operator. However, ACS officials claim that the system can operate totally autonomously should the US military require it to in the future, with sentry guns taking the entire kill chain out of the hands of service members.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.

The Air Force overpaid for soap dispensers used in the bathrooms of C-17 military aircraft by 7,943% – or more than 80 times the price of similar commercially available dispensers – according to a Defense Department inspector general report released Tuesday. The dispensers were one of about a dozen spare parts for which Boeing overcharged the Air Force, according to the report, resulting in nearly $1 million in additional and unnecessary costs. The costs of the soap dispenser from Boeing, the similar soap dispenser and the number of dispensers purchased by the Air Force were redacted in the report, but in total, the Air Force overpaid $149,072 for the soap dispensers. An anonymous tip about the dispensers launched the inspector general's audit into the spare parts. "The Air Force needs to establish and implement more effective internal controls to help prevent overpaying for spare parts for the remainder of this contract, which continues through 2031," Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch said in a statement. Boeing has a contract with the Air Force that lets Boeing purchase needed spare parts for the C17, and the Air Force reimburses Boeing for the spare parts purchased, according to the report. "Significant overpayments for spare parts may reduce the number of spare parts that Boeing can purchase on the contract, potentially reducing C-17 readiness worldwide," Storch said.

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

The current debate on military AI is largely driven by "tech bros" and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries' uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. Despite their influence on the conversation, these tech industry figures have little to no operational experience, meaning they cannot draw from first-hand accounts of combat to further justify arguments that AI is changing the character, if not nature, of war. Rather, they capitalize on their impressive business successes to influence a new model of capability development through opinion pieces in high-profile journals, public addresses at acclaimed security conferences, and presentations at top-tier universities. Three related considerations have combined to shape the hype surrounding military AI. First [is] the emergence of a new military industrial complex that is dependent on commercial service providers. Second, this new defense acquisition process is the cause and effect of a narrative suggesting a global AI arms race, which has encouraged scholars to discount the normative implications of AI-enabled warfare. Finally, while analysts assume that soldiers will trust AI, which is integral to human-machine teaming that facilitates AI-enabled warfare, trust is not guaranteed. Senior officers do not trust AI-enhanced capabilities. To the extent they do demonstrate increased levels of trust in machines, their trust is moderated by how machines are used.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.

At Fort Liberty, thousands of soldiers who were trained on the Army's antiterrorism policy saw slides that labeled several legitimate nonprofits as terrorist organizations – a blunder that went on for seven years before photos of the slides were posted to social media this summer, prompting outrage. Nonprofits that were incorrectly labeled as terrorist groups included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, as well as the anti-abortion groups Operation Rescue and National Right to Life. The advocacy groups Earth First, Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were also listed. "Incorrectly labeling legitimate organizations as terrorist groups not only undermines the credibility of the training, but also puts service members at risk of being unfairly scrutinized or penalized based on their associations or memberships," said Rep. Andy Kim, D-NJ. "We must be cautious and purposeful in how we define and identify threats to our national security." The soldier who created the slides was an employee of the local garrison and added the nonprofits based on open-source research. The Army didn't find any evidence that the soldier sought to subvert Defense Department policy or to further a personal political viewpoint. Members of Congress first became aware of Fort Liberty's antiterrorism training this summer, when photos of slides used during a July 10 training were shared online.

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

One day after pagers detonated across Lebanon, reportedly killing twelve people ... a second wave of explosions has been reported across the country. Today's detonations were reportedly through the manipulation of walkie-talkies made by ICOM, a Japanese firm whose American branch also serves as a significant supplier to the U.S. military. The combined confirmed death toll has already reached 26, and roughly 3,000 people have been reported injured. The Tuesday explosions are primarily linked to the ICOM IC-V82, an electronic receiver with both military and civilian uses. ICOM, based in Osaka, Japan, has a global footprint. U.S. government disclosures show that the company's American affiliate has received at least $8.2 million in contracts with the U.S. federal government since 2008. The series of explosions in Lebanon have raised concerns about the future of war that includes infiltration of supply chains and limitless exploits through electronically connected devices. The attacks will likely fuel increased scrutiny over military and civilian supply chain security, which has long been a potential vulnerability. The two rounds of blasts happened one day after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly stepped up demands for the U.S. to support "military action" against Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia linked to Iran. Social media posts have also claimed that ATMs, solar panels, and other electronic devices across Lebanon exploded today.

Note: Intelligence agencies from several countries have infiltrated computer supply chains to spy on people more easily. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion, multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing. This January, a review of the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act ... found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81 percent over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' "Doomsday Clock" – an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict – is now set at ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it's been since that tracker was first created in 1947. Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating "use them or lose them" weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61 percent of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption 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.

For more than a decade, the U.S. had a significant counterterrorism partnership with Niger, with nearly 1,000 American troops stationed at two airbases: one near the capital in the populated south of the country, and another, on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert. That partnership came to a sudden end this past March 16, when a spokesperson for the country's ruling junta took to national television to announce that the government was unceremoniously kicking the U.S. military out. "The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees," Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said. "The United States is proud of the past security cooperation between U.S. forces and Nigerien forces, a partnership which effectively contributed to stability in Niger and the region," a State Department official [said]. But statistics supplied by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies ... show that terrorist violence in West Africa spiked while that partnership was in effect. Fatalities from attacks by militant Islamist groups in the Sahel, for example, have jumped more than 5,200 percent since 2016. As violence has spiraled, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. Since 2008, the US military has been connected to coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Gambia, Chad, and Guinea. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

"El Flaco" ... works as a mercenary, he said, and had come to discuss a closely guarded secret of Mexico's most powerful cartels: The FGM 148 Javelin infrared-guided, missile launcher. El Flaco maintains he has been trained to perform special operations using shoulder-fired weapons, including the Javelin. He said he now trains others to use it as well. If El Flaco is telling the truth, Javelins would be among the most extreme examples of the escalation in the arms race between cartels and Mexican military. Cartels' arsenals now include belt-fed gatling guns, drone bombs and land mines. The U.S.-made Javelin is the most sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launcher in the world, with a range of a mile and a half. Its main purpose is to destroy military tanks, but it also has the capacity to take down low-flying helicopters. There are holes in the U.S. tracking system. During the Iraq War in 2003, the department lost track of 35 Javelins provided to Iraqi allied forces. ISIS was found to have a Javelin in Syria, Kurdish fighters there also obtained a Javelin and the weapon was found at a Libyan warlord base. Since 2018, the Mexican government has reported seizing a dozen rocket launchers and 56 grenade launchers from cartels. Thomas Brandon with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was clear that "criminal organizations and drug cartels based in Mexico continue to look towards the United States as a source of supply for firearms and in this case military grade weapons such as grenades, machine guns, and Man-Portable Air Defense."

Note: American officials allowed thousands of illegal guns to be trafficked into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

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