Military Corruption News Articles

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The European Union expects Georgia to change radically to accommodate the EU. The Georgian government expects the EU to change radically to accommodate Georgia. What brought matters to a head between Georgia and the EU was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Georgian government condemned the invasion, sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine and imposed certain sanctions on Russia. However, it tried to block Georgian volunteers going to Ukraine to fight and rejected Western pressure to send military aid and to impose the full range of EU sanctions, leading to fresh accusations of being "pro-Russian." On this, President Kavelashvili pushed back very strongly. He accused the West of trying to provoke a new war with Russia that would be catastrophic for Georgia. Georgia has a government that represents the interests of our people…the same media outlets that accuse us of being under Russian influence tell the same lie about President Trump," [he said]. President Kavelashvili accused the U.S. "deep state" and organizations like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the European Parliament of mobilizing the Georgian opposition to this end; "but despite all this pressure, we stood and continue to stand as guardians of Georgian national interest and of Georgian economic growth" – the latter comment a veiled reference to the very important economic links between Georgia and Russia.

Note: Our Substack, Working Together To End the War On Peace in Ukraine, challenges the dominant narrative on the Ukraine war, arguing that US and NATO policies, wartime corruption, media censorship, and corporate profiteering have fueled the conflict while blocking genuine peace efforts. Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.

Seth Harp's The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces [is] an exposĂ© of the criminality and violence carried out by returning Special Forces personnel in American communities. We're in the middle of a political crisis right now in which the military's role is being radically expanded, including into US domestic life, all on the basis of fighting crime and drugs, and drugs being a national security threat. Yet ... damaged soldiers end up carrying out crime and violence at home as well as getting involved in the drug trade. Todd Michael Fulkerson, a Green Beret who was trained at Bragg, was convicted earlier this year of trafficking narcotics with the Sinaloa cartel. Another guy, Jorge Esteban Garcia, who was the top career counselor at Fort Bragg for twenty years – his job was to mentor and coach retiring soldiers on their career prospects – was literally recruiting for a cartel and was convicted of trafficking methamphetamine and supporting a violent extremist organization. And then a group of soldiers in the 44th Medical Brigade at Fort Bragg – all these soldiers are at Fort Bragg – were convicted of trafficking massive amounts of ketamine. You can look at every single region of the world that's a massive drug production center – which there really are not that many of them – and in every case, you can see that US military intervention preceded the country's becoming a narco state, not the other way around.

Note: Don't miss our in-depth investigation into the dark truths behind the War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and the War on Drugs.

AI could mean fewer body bags on the battlefield – but that's exactly what terrifies the godfather of AI. Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist known as the "godfather of AI," said the rise of killer robots won't make wars safer. It will make conflicts easier to start by lowering the human and political cost of fighting. Hinton said ... that "lethal autonomous weapons, that is weapons that decide by themselves who to kill or maim, are a big advantage if a rich country wants to invade a poor country." "The thing that stops rich countries invading poor countries is their citizens coming back in body bags," he said. "If you have lethal autonomous weapons, instead of dead people coming back, you'll get dead robots coming back." That shift could embolden governments to start wars – and enrich defense contractors in the process, he said. Hinton also said AI is already reshaping the battlefield. "It's fairly clear it's already transformed warfare," he said, pointing to Ukraine as an example. "A $500 drone can now destroy a multimillion-dollar tank." Traditional hardware is beginning to look outdated, he added. "Fighter jets with people in them are a silly idea now," Hinton said. "If you can have AI in them, AIs can withstand much bigger accelerations – and you don't have to worry so much about loss of life." One Ukrainian soldier who works with drones and uncrewed systems [said] in a February report that "what we're doing in Ukraine will define warfare for the next decade."

Note: As law expert Dr. Salah Sharief put it, "The detached nature of drone warfare has anonymized and dehumanized the enemy, greatly diminishing the necessary psychological barriers of killing." For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and warfare technology.

"Ice is just around the corner," my friend said, looking up from his phone. A day earlier, I had met with foreign correspondents at the United Nations to explain the AI surveillance architecture that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is using across the United States. The law enforcement agency uses targeting technologies which one of my past employers, Palantir Technologies, has both pioneered and proliferated. Technology like Palantir's plays a major role in world events, from wars in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine to the detainment of immigrants and dissident students in the United States. Known as intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (Istar) systems, these tools, built by several companies, allow users to track, detain and, in the context of war, kill people at scale with the help of AI. They deliver targets to operators by combining immense amounts of publicly and privately sourced data to detect patterns, and are particularly helpful in projects of mass surveillance, forced migration and urban warfare. Also known as "AI kill chains", they pull us all into a web of invisible tracking mechanisms that we are just beginning to comprehend, yet are starting to experience viscerally in the US as Ice wields these systems near our homes, churches, parks and schools. The dragnets powered by Istar technology trap more than migrants and combatants ... in their wake. They appear to violate first and fourth amendment rights.

Note: Read how Palantir helped the NSA and its allies spy on the entire planet. 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 Big Tech.

August 4, 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Operation Storm. Little known outside the former Yugoslavia, the military campaign unleashed a genocidal cataclysm that violently expelled Croatia's entire Serb population. Croat forces rampaged UN-protected areas of the self-declared Serb Republic of Krajina, looting, burning, raping and murdering their way across the province. Up to 350,000 locals fled, many on foot, never to return. Meanwhile, thousands were summarily executed. As these hideous scenes unfolded, UN peacekeepers charged with protecting Krajina watched without intervening. Meanwhile, US officials strenuously denied the horrifying massacres and mass displacement amounted to ethnic cleansing, let alone war crimes. Operation Storm was for all intents and purposes a NATO attack, carried out by soldiers armed and trained by the US and directly coordinated with other Western powers. Despite publicly endorsing a negotiated peace, Washington privately encouraged Zagreb to employ maximum belligerence, even as their ultranationalist Croat proxies plotted to strike with such ferocity that the country's entire Serb population would "to all practical purposes disappear." High-ranking Croat officials privately discussed methods to justify their coming blitzkrieg, including false flag attacks. In preparing for the offensive, Croatian soldiers were trained at Fort Irwin in California and the Pentagon aided in planning the operation.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.

For the past 12 years, I have tried to share moments beyond the dramatized images of battlefield action, emotional homecomings and veterans in crisis. I've photographed the often-overlooked everyday moments that make up this military life. The constant moves and goodbyes. Objects that make up this life that don't exist in civilian domestic spaces. The days after a deployment, when a service member "re-integrates" back into the family and into civilian society. John didn't start going to therapy until after he had turned in his retirement papers. He was concerned that it might jeopardize his career. I am on my computer when John leaves a notebook on my desk. He doesn't say anything. It is the journaling he has been doing with his therapist – her new strategy to get him to open up. He starts the journal with how many US soldiers and Afghan security forces were killed in each operation and what awards were given: Silver Stars, Bronze Stars with valor, Purple Hearts. I know the casualties are what weighs most heavily on him, but he is proud of the awards given to his soldiers. Then he goes into detail about a traumatic event he experienced in Afghanistan. As I read his vivid recollections of violence – which included body parts, trails of blood and the smell of burnt flesh – tears ran down my face. I am only beginning to understand what he has been through. John's career spanned the entirety of the 20-year "war on terror."

Note: Read about the tragic traumas and suicides connected to military drone operators. A recent Pentagon study concluded that US soldiers are nine times more likely to die by suicide than they are in combat.For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.

President George W. Bush created a new command to oversee all military operations in Africa 18 years ago. U.S. Africa Command was meant to help "bring peace and security to the people of Africa." Gen. Michael Langley, the head of AFRICOM, offered a grim assessment of security on the African continent during a recent press conference. The West African Sahel, he said last Friday, was now the "epicenter of terrorism" and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were "unfortunately right here on the African continent." Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted 23 deaths from terrorist violence in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel and Somalia. By 2010, two years after AFRICOM began operations, fatalities from attacks by militant Islamists had already spiked to 2,674. There were an estimated 18,900 fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa last year, with 79 percent of those coming from the Sahel and Somalia. This constitutes a jump of more than 82,000 percent since the U.S. launched its post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts on the continent. As violence spiraled in the region over the past decades, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance were key leaders in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. At least five leaders of the 2023 coup d'Ă©tat in [Niger] received American assistance.

Note: Learn more about the US military's shadow wars in Africa. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on terrorism and military corruption.

Before signing its lucrative and controversial Project Nimbus deal with Israel, Google knew it couldn't control what the nation and its military would do with the powerful cloud-computing technology, a confidential internal report obtained by The Intercept reveals. The report makes explicit the extent to which the tech giant understood the risk of providing state-of-the-art cloud and machine learning tools to a nation long accused of systemic human rights violations. Not only would Google be unable to fully monitor or prevent Israel from using its software to harm Palestinians, but the report also notes that the contract could obligate Google to stonewall criminal investigations by other nations into Israel's use of its technology. And it would require close collaboration with the Israeli security establishment – including joint drills and intelligence sharing – that was unprecedented in Google's deals with other nations. The rarely discussed question of legal culpability has grown in significance as Israel enters the third year of what has widely been acknowledged as a genocide in Gaza – with shareholders pressing the company to conduct due diligence on whether its technology contributes to human rights abuses. Google doesn't furnish weapons to the military, but it provides computing services that allow the military to function – its ultimate function being, of course, the lethal use of those weapons. Under international law, only countries, not corporations, have binding human rights obligations.

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

The US military may soon have an army of faceless suicide bombers at their disposal, as an American defense contractor has revealed their newest war-fighting drone. AeroVironment unveiled the Red Dragon in a video on their YouTube page, the first in a new line of 'one-way attack drones.' This new suicide drone can reach speeds up to 100 mph and can travel nearly 250 miles. The new drone takes just 10 minutes to set up and launch and weighs just 45 pounds. Once the small tripod the Red Dragon takes off from is set up, AeroVironment said soldiers would be able to launch up to five per minute. Since the suicide robot can choose its own target in the air, the US military may soon be taking life-and-death decisions out of the hands of humans. Once airborne, its AVACORE software architecture functions as the drone's brain, managing all its systems and enabling quick customization. Red Dragon's SPOTR-Edge perception system acts like smart eyes, using AI to find and identify targets independently. Simply put, the US military will soon have swarms of bombs with brains that don't land until they've chosen a target and crash into it. Despite Red Dragon's ability to choose a target with 'limited operator involvement,' the Department of Defense (DoD) has said it's against the military's policy to allow such a thing to happen. The DoD updated its own directives to mandate that 'autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems' always have the built-in ability to allow humans to control the device.

Note: Drones create more terrorists than they kill. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on warfare technology and Big Tech.

Today marks 50 years since the end of the American War in Vietnam, which killed an estimated 3.3 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, tens of thousands of Laotians and more than 58,000 U.S. service members. But for many Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian people; Vietnamese Americans; and U.S. Vietnam veterans and their descendants, the impacts of the war never ended. They continue to suffer the devastating consequences of Agent Orange, an herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military that contained dioxin, the deadliest chemical known to humankind. As a result, many people have been born with congenital anomalies – disabling changes in the formation of the spinal cord, limbs, heart, palate, and more. This remains the largest deployment of herbicidal warfare in history. In the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the Nixon administration promised to contribute $3 billion for compensation and postwar reconstruction of Vietnam. But that promise remains unfulfilled. Between 2,100,000 and 4,800,000 Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian people, and tens of thousands of Americans were exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin during the spraying operations. Many other Vietnamese people were or continue to be exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin through contact with the environment and food that was contaminated. Many offspring of those who were exposed have congenital anomalies, developmental disabilities, and other diseases.

Note: Rep. Rashida Tlaib recently introduced The Agent Orange Relief Act of 2025 to attempt to provide relief for some of the victims of this toxic chemical. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and toxic chemicals.

In recent years, Israeli security officials have boasted of a "ChatGPT-like" arsenal used to monitor social media users for supporting or inciting terrorism. It was released in full force after Hamas's bloody attack on October 7. Right-wing activists and politicians instructed police forces to arrest hundreds of Palestinians ... for social media-related offenses. Many had engaged in relatively low-level political speech, like posting verses from the Quran on WhatsApp. Hundreds of students with various legal statuses have been threatened with deportation on similar grounds in the U.S. this year. Recent high-profile cases have targeted those associated with student-led dissent against the Israeli military's policies in Gaza. In some instances, the State Department has relied on informants, blacklists, and technology as simple as a screenshot. But the U.S. is in the process of activating a suite of algorithmic surveillance tools Israeli authorities have also used to monitor and criminalize online speech. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the State Department was launching an AI-powered "Catch and Revoke" initiative to accelerate the cancellation of student visas. Algorithms would collect data from social media profiles, news outlets, and doxing sites to enforce the January 20 executive order targeting foreign nationals who threaten to "overthrow or replace the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and the erosion of civil liberties.

Outer space is no longer just for global superpowers and large multinational corporations. Developing countries, start-ups, universities, and even high schools can now gain access to space. In 2024, a record 2,849 objects were launched into space. The commercial satellite industry saw global revenue rise to $285 billion in 2023, driven largely by the growth of SpaceX's Starlink constellation. While the democratization of space is a positive development, it has introduced ... an ethical quandary that I call the "double dual-use dilemma." The double dual-use dilemma refers to how private space companies themselves–not just their technologies–can become militarized and integrated into national security while operating commercially. Space companies fluidly shift between civilian and military roles. Their expertise in launch systems, satellites, and surveillance infrastructure allows them to serve both markets, often without clear regulatory oversight. Companies like Walchandnagar Industries in India, SpaceX in the United States, and the private Chinese firms that operate under a national strategy of the Chinese Communist Party called Military-Civil Fusion exemplify this trend, maintaining commercial identities while actively supporting defense programs. This blurring of roles, including the possibility that private space companies may develop their own weapons, raises concerns over unchecked militarization and calls for stronger oversight.

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

Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers – Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego – to build prototype versions of its proposed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. The lack of coverage was surprising, given that the Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon's costliest new projects. But consider that the least of what the media failed to note. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of the country's largest and most powerful defense contractors – Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman – posing a severe threat to the continued dominance of the existing military-industrial complex, or MIC. The very notion of a "military-industrial complex" linking giant defense contractors to powerful figures in Congress and the military was introduced on January 17, 1961, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address. In 2024, just five companies – Lockheed Martin (with $64.7 billion in defense revenues), RTX (formerly Raytheon, with $40.6 billion), Northrop Grumman ($35.2 billion), General Dynamics ($33.7 billion), and Boeing ($32.7 billion) – claimed the vast bulk of Pentagon contracts.

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

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's February memo ordering all diversity, equity and inclusion-related content to be removed from Pentagon websites was so vague that military units were instructed to simply use keyword searches like "racism," "ethnicity," "history" and "first" when searching for articles and photos to remove. The implications of Hegseth's memo were overwhelming, since the Defense Department manages over 1,000 public-facing websites and a huge visual media database known as DVIDS – with officials expected to purge everything relevant within two weeks. As a result, the manual work of individual units was supplemented with an algorithm that also used keywords to automate much of the purge, officials explained. Other keywords officials were instructed to search for included "firsts" in history, including content about the first female ranger and first Black commanding general, as well as the words "LGBTQ," "historic," "accessibility," "opportunity," "belonging," "justice," "privilege," respect" and "values," according to a list reviewed by CNN. The department is now scrambling to republish some of the content, officials said. "Of all the things they could be doing, the places they're putting their focuses on first are really things that just don't matter ... This was literally a waste of our time," a defense official said. "This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared."

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

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he has a singular mission. "We do warfighting here at the Department of Defense," he said. Right now, the U.S. military is looking to pour money into the renovation of 35 golf course sand traps at the Woodlawn Golf Course at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Air Force Special Operations Command also wants to purchase sterile mushroom compost for the golf course greens at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. The Army, for its part, plans to issue a service contract that will cover maintenance in the golf course clubhouse at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. What golf has to do with lethality is a question that the Defense Department failed to answer. Nor would the Pentagon weigh in on the hundreds of millions of dollars wrapped up in, or swallowed up by, military golf courses. The Pentagon did not provide a full tally of its current inventory of golf courses, which The Intercept put at around 145. Even at a time of rampant cost-cutting across the federal government ... the U.S military's golf habit is not on chopping block. The Trump administration announced this week that hundreds of federal properties were available for sale. The General Services Administration, the government's real estate arm, released a list of 443 structures and properties deemed "not core to government operations." Currently, no military golf courses are up for sale on the GSA's website.

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

Every two years since 1990, at the start of each new Congress, [Government Accountability Office] scientists, actuaries and investigators have produced a "high risk list" of where the federal government mismanages its resources and taxpayer money. Over that 35-year span, more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars has been saved by implementing the GAO's recommendations. The 2025 list cites at least $150 billion in payment errors and fraud in each of the past seven years – chiefly in overpayments by Medicare, Medicaid, the unemployment insurance system and the Earned Income Tax Credit. And that $150 billion figure is no doubt vastly understated, given that agencies failed to report improper payments for at least nine "risk-susceptible" programs. The government's failure to collect all the taxes that it is owed was estimated to have cost more than $600 billion in the 2022 tax year alone, which underscores how absurd it is for Musk to cut the Internal Revenue Service workforce in half. The Defense Department ... is responsible for about half of discretionary spending. "There are many major acquisitions across the government, including DOD weapons systems, GAO boss Gene Dodaro [said]. "They're on the high list." Pentagon contracts and the ones the Energy Department signs regarding nuclear weapons, he added, "are consistently overrun, over budget and delays occur. And they don't deliver on the promises."

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

Alexander Balan was on a California beach when the idea for a new kind of drone came to him. This eureka moment led Balan to found Xdown, the company that's building the P.S. Killer (PSK)–an autonomous kamikaze drone that works like a hand grenade and can be thrown like a football. The PSK is a "throw-and-forget" drone, Balan says, referencing the "fire-and-forget" missile that, once locked on to a target, can seek it on its own. Instead of depending on remote controls, the PSK will be operated by AI. Soldiers should be able to grab it, switch it on, and throw it–just like a football. The PSK can carry one or two 40 mm grenades commonly used in grenade launchers today. The grenades could be high-explosive dual purpose, designed to penetrate armor while also creating an explosive fragmentation effect against personnel. These grenades can also "airburst"–programmed to explode in the air above a target for maximum effect. Infantry, special operations, and counterterrorism units can easily store PSK drones in a field backpack and tote them around, taking one out to throw at any given time. They can also be packed by the dozen in cargo airplanes, which can fly over an area and drop swarms of them. Balan says that one Defense Department official told him "This is the most American munition I have ever seen." The nonlethal version of the PSK [replaces] its warhead with a supply container so that it's able to "deliver food, medical kits, or ammunition to frontline troops" (though given the 1.7-pound payload capacity, such packages would obviously be small).

Note: The US military is using Xbox controllers to operate weapons systems. The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on warfare technologies and watch our latest video on the militarization of Big Tech.

On February 1, 2025, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), in coordination with the federal government of Somalia, conducted the first airstrikes in the country under the new Trump administration. The strikes targeted ... a hub for ISIS-Somalia (IS-S). IS-S is now an integral financial and recruitment hub for the global Islamic State network, generating millions of dollars in revenue and growing its ranks with fighters from as far north as Morocco to as far south as Tanzania. The United States has been carrying out operations in Somalia since at least 2002 without a formal war declaration. Shortly after the September 11, 2001, plane attacks, George W. Bush ... sent Special Forces and CIA operatives to Somalia to capture suspected al-Qaeda members. The Obama years saw an unprecedented rise in drone warfare. The full scale of the air war remains unknown. The death toll of these operations are also unknown; U.S. claims denying civilian casualties are routinely disputed by people on the ground and the Somali government. A 2023 letter authored by 24 Somali and international rights organizations and addressed to the Secretary of Defense says: "Civilian victims, survivors, and their families have yet to receive answers, acknowledgement, and amends despite their sustained efforts to reach authorities over several years." From Somalia to Afghanistan, Iraq to Libya, the American promise of safety arrives on the wings of drones, its humanitarianism indistinguishable from war.

Note: Read a leaked CIA report that admits drone strikes and targeted killings can backfire by increasing support for extremist groups, especially when civilians are killed or insurgent leaders gain notoriety. For more, read about the failure of US military policy in Somalia.

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency began its cost-cutting efforts by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. DOGE has since targeted agencies focused on children's education, protecting the natural world, and food safety. But after more than a month running roughshod through government, DOGE has made strikingly few cuts at the Pentagon, whose bloated budget tips the scales at around $850 billion – accounting for about 13 percent of federal spending. One Pentagon official said that DOGE has so far taken on "weak" agencies, but that Musk's cost-cutters will be "steamrolled" if they lock horns with the Defense Department. Major savings at the Pentagon can be found through the reduction or elimination of dysfunctional, expensive, or dangerous weapon systems like the F-35 combat aircraft; vulnerable Navy ships with limited utility like a new generation of aircraft carriers; and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, according to William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The F-35 combat aircraft is a bloated boondoggle, and it's already on Musk's radar. More than two decades in, the F-35 is still suffering from key flaws in its software and hardware – a total of 873 unresolved defects, according to one Pentagon analysis. If it's allowed to run its course, the F-35 will be the most expensive weapons program in history, at a total cost of $1.7 trillion.

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 government waste.

On February 10, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order ... to pause the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The FCPA was the first law in modern history to ban a country's own citizens and companies from bribing foreign officials. Citing the law as one of the "excessive barriers to American commerce abroad," President Trump has instructed the attorney general to–at her discretion–"cease the initiation of any new FCPA investigations or enforcement actions." This move ... risks a revival of the pre-1970s period, when bribery was a routine practice among major U.S. arms contractors. In late 1975 and early 1976, Idaho Sen. Frank Church's Subcommittee on the Conduct of Multinational Corporations of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee exposed widespread foreign bribery on the part of U.S. oil and aerospace firms, with the starring role played by Lockheed Martin, which bribed officials in Japan, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Mexico, and Colombia in pursuit of contracts for its civilian and military aircraft. A 2022 Quincy Institute study found that U.S.-supplied weapons were present in two-thirds of the world's active conflicts, and that at least 31 clients of the U.S. arms industry were undemocratic regimes. If President Trump is serious about his campaign pledge to "stop the war profiteering," it is the worst possible time to shelve the FCPA, given that bribery by U.S. companies is alive and well.

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

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