Military Corruption News Articles
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A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks has found that they are sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars every year by weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks, who, in turn, pump out reports demanding more war and higher military spending, which significantly increase their sponsors’ profits. The only losers in this closed, circular system are the American public, saddled with higher taxes, and the tens of millions of people around the world who are victims of the U.S. war machine. The think tanks receiving the most tainted cash were, in order, the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations, while the weapons manufacturers most active on K-Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics. There is obviously a massive conflict of interest if groups advising the U.S. government on military policy are awash with cash from the arms industry. The Atlantic Council alone is funded by 22 weapons companies, totaling at least $2.69 million last year. Even a group like the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, established in 1910 as an organization dedicated to reducing global conflict, is sponsored by corporations making weapons of war, including Boeing and Leonardo, who donate tens of thousands of dollars annually.
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.
A recent audit of Pentagon funding of gain-of-function research outside the US “may have shielded” collaborations with Chinese biotech firms — including at least one linked to Beijing’s military, a Republican senator alleged. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for answers about redactions that had concealed the firms — WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron Beijing Co., and Genscript Inc. — from public scrutiny in the audit, according to a letter. “American taxpayers deserve transparency about the programs they are funding, and I am disappointed this OIG report does not provide that accountability,” Marshall wrote. According to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General audit, more than $15.5 million in grants between 2014 and 2023 flowed through subrecipients to “contracting research organization[s] in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential.” However, the 20-page audit cited “significant limitations with the adequacy of data” — and said the Pentagon “did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding ... for the gain-of-function experiments. Such research is classified as “offensive biological work” by the Pentagon, which Marshall said “raises questions” about National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials having admitted this year to funding gain-of-function experiments at the ... Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Last week, the Biden administration said it would allow the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian military unit, to receive U.S. weaponry and training, freeing it from a purported ban imposed in response to concerns that it committed human rights violations and had neo-Nazi ties. A photo posted by the unit itself, however, seems to suggest that the U.S. was providing support as far back as December of last year. The photo, in tandem with the administration’s own statements, highlights the murky nature of the arms ban, how it was imposed, and under what U.S. authority. Two mechanisms could have barred arms transfers: a law passed by Congress specifically prohibiting assistance to Azov, and the so-called Leahy laws that block support to units responsible for grave rights violations. The State Department said this month that weapon shipments will now go forward after a Leahy law review, but won’t comment on if and when a Leahy ban was in effect. The congressional prohibition, the U.S. says, does not apply because it barred assistance to the Azov Battalion, a predecessor to the Azov Brigade. The original unit had earned scrutiny for alleged human rights violations and ties to neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies. The U.S. has not made clear about when the apparent ban started, but a deputy Azov commander and media reports indicate some type of prohibition has been in effect for nearly a decade — though the congressional ban has only been in effect since 2018.
Note: Facebook changed its censorship policies to permit calls for the death of Russian soldiers and praise for the Azov Battalion. Learn more about US covert military support for Neo-Nazis in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
Russia is to blame for coups in the African Sahel, according to a new analysis by the Pentagon’s top Africa researcher, which ignores the U.S. role in training leaders of these mutinies — and two decades of failed U.S. counterterrorism policies in the region. A series of reports by The Intercept found that military personnel who had received U.S. support were involved in coups in Burkina Faso (in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022), Mali (in 2012, 2020, and 2021), and Niger (in 2023). U.S.-supported officers also played a role in coups in Mauritania (2008), Gambia (2014), Chad (2021), and Guinea (2021). The total number of U.S.-trained mutineers across Africa since 9/11 may be far higher than is known, but the State Department, which tracks data on U.S. trainees, is either unwilling or unable to supply it. The Pentagon is mandated to provide a briefing on coups carried out by U.S.-trained African partners to the Senate and House Armed Services committees but missed its March deadline. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism assistance in the Sahel. Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger alone reached 3,716, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a crisis monitoring organization. This represents a jump of more than 41,000 percent.
Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas 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 United States has long had the world’s biggest defense budget, with spending this year set to approach $900 billion. Yet this spending is rapidly being eclipsed by the fastest-growing portion of federal outflows: interest payments on the national debt. For the first seven months of fiscal year 2024, which began last October, net interest payments totaled $514 billion, outpacing defense by $20 billion. Budget analysts think that trend will continue, making 2024 the first year ever that the United States will spend more on interest payments than on national defense. Interest is now the third-biggest expenditure after Social Security and health. And not because any of the other programs are shrinking. While most government expenditures grow modestly from year to year, interest expenses in 2024 are running 41% higher than in 2023. Interest payments are ballooning for two obvious reasons. The first is that annual deficits have exploded, leaving the nation with a gargantuan $34.6 trillion in total federal debt, 156% higher than the national debt at the end of 2010. As a percentage of GDP, the annual deficit has nearly doubled in just 10 years, from 2.8% in 2014 to a projected 5.3% in 2024. The government is also paying more to borrow. From 2010 through 2021, the average interest rate on all Treasury securities sold to the public was just 2.1%. But in 2022, the Federal Reserve started jacking up rates to tame inflation, and the government now pays an average interest rate of 3.3%.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of “spy satellites” for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that “no one can hide” under the prospective network’s reach. The U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies. In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space. The Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military “focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain,” was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy. Space Force’s Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit. The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating “information advantage at the speed of relevance.” Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque.
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 military corruption from reliable major media sources.
A Silicon Valley defense tech startup is working on products that could have as great an impact on warfare as the atomic bomb, its founder Palmer Luckey said. "We want to build the capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter," he [said]. The Anduril founder didn't elaborate on what impact AI weaponry would have. But asked if it would be as decisive as the atomic bomb to the outcome of World War II he replied: "We have ideas for what they are. We are working on them." In 2022, Anduril won a contract worth almost $1 billion with the Special Operations Command to support its counter-unmanned systems. Anduril's products include autonomous sentry towers along the Mexican border [and] Altius-600M attack drones supplied to Ukraine. All of Anduril's tech operates autonomously and runs on its AI platform called Lattice that can easily be updated. The success of Anduril has given hope to other smaller players aiming to break into the defense sector. As an escalating number of global conflicts has increased demand for AI-driven weaponry, venture capitalists have put more than $100 billion into defense tech since 2021, according to Pitchbook data. The rising demand has sparked a fresh wave of startups lining up to compete with industry "primes" such as Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) for a slice of the $842 billion US defense budget.
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 corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.
Despite its long history as part of conflicts, sexual violence is often not reported because of the trauma and shame it brings to survivors, their families and their wider communities. There has also been reticence among various authorities to speak out. Only in modern times, in the 1990s when wars broke out in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, did the United Nations begin to recognize sexual violence as ... a category of war crime. The specific term "conflict-related sexual violence," or CRSV, was first introduced in 2000 when the United Nations Security Council issued a resolution that launched the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The U.N. defined the term as "rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict." [CRSV] is widespread and is used as a tactic of war to assert dominance and power. "It can be just as traumatizing to see your daughter, your sister or your parents being raped in front of you," says [Dr. Ranit] Mishori. "Or you're forced to strip naked in front of soldiers or in the city square. People often carry this trauma without knowing it's an international crime and minimize what happened to them." For conflict resolution and peace building to be successful, survivors need to be included in the process. For some countries this method has already started to work. [In Colombia], they have built women into the peace process. It's not perfect — no peace is perfect — but it is progressive and it is intentional, and that is important. Intentional peace building must be inclusive of survivors of this form of violence.
Note: The public receives censored and sanitized versions of war from the government and the media. Yet in reality, unethical violations of domestic and international human rights law are common and often kept hidden during wartime. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Military strategists believe that a "coronavirus bioweapon" may lurk on the horizon. This possibility is one of several outlined in a new report sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The report “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War Research” delves into how CRISPR gene-editing technology, mRNA vaccines, brain networking, and other technological advancements could unleash new forms of military conflict. “We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts” and “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” that cripple the American military-industrial base,” the report warns. At the same time, authoritarian states might ... brutally suppress "anti-vaccine populists" and enforce compliance. The report claims this could hinder the U.S. due to its more relaxed regulatory environment that values individual liberties, where such crackdowns and forced vaccinations are more difficult to deploy. The report takes aim at Congress, criticizing the recent repeal of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members. It urges lawmakers to resist "anti-vaccine populism" to ensure military readiness. Simultaneously, the report urges the Pentagon to consider using genetic screening to find qualified military recruits and develop clear plans for integrating bioweapon warfare capabilities.
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 military corruption and microchip implants from reliable major media sources .
When the U.S. Government entered into its Covid vaccine agreement with Pfizer, which was acting on behalf of the BioNTech/Pfizer partnership, in July 2020, the agreement encompassed a minimum of 100 million doses of a “vaccine to prevent COVID-19” and a payment of at least $1.95 billion. The Government declared that we were “at war” with a catastrophically dangerous virus. In keeping with the declaration of war, it was a military framework that was used for acquiring the aspirational products that became known as Covid mRNA vaccines. The Government side to the agreement with Pfizer was the Department of Defence (DoD), represented by a convoluted chain of parties, each operating as a subcontractor, or co-contractor, for the next. In fact, agencies governing civilian and public health, like the NIH, NIAID and HHS, do not have the authority to grant certain types of special acquisition contracts, which is why the Covid vaccine contracts had to be overseen by the Department of Defence. Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) ... is a very special way to authorise a medical countermeasure in very specific types of emergencies. EUA was meant for dire situations of warfare or terrorism, not to protect the entire population from naturally occurring pathogens. For this reason, EUA products do not require the type of legal safety oversight that is applied in civilian contexts by the FDA.
Note: Read how the Department of Defense and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority allowed vaccine makers to bypass standard safety testing of their products. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.
The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon’s operations. In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department’s single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general’s findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. In October, President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve $75 billion in combined security assistance for Israel and Ukraine. The request would add to the $44 billion in security assistance already pledged to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, and the tens of billions of dollars in security assistance delivered to Israel over the past five years. Just last month, the Department of Defense failed its sixth straight audit, underscoring the lack of oversight of the funds that Congress forks over to the armed forces every year. The inspector general also reported that the Defense Department’s protocols for protecting its employees are not routinely followed. The Pentagon’s medical treatment facilities failed to consistently triage and record care administered to survivors of sexual assault.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and military corruption from reliable major media sources.
The White House has requested the removal of restrictions on all categories of weapons and ammunition Israel is allowed to access from U.S. weapons stockpiles stored in Israel itself. The move to lift restrictions was included in the White House’s supplemental budget request, sent to the Senate on October 20. “This request would,” the proposed budget says, “allow for the transfer of all categories of defense articles.” The request pertains to little-known weapons stockpiles in Israel that the Pentagon established for use in regional conflicts, but which Israel has been permitted to access in limited circumstances — the very limits President Joe Biden is seeking to remove. Created in the 1980s ... the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel, or WRSA-I, is the largest node in a network of what are effectively foreign U.S. weapons caches. Highly regulated for security, the stockpiles are governed by a set of strict requirements. Under circumstances laid out in these requirements, Israel has been able to draw on the stockpile, purchasing the weapons at little cost. With the WRSA-I, Biden is looking to lift virtually all the meaningful restrictions on the stockpile and the transfer of its arms to Israel, with plans to remove limitations to obsolete or surplus weapons, waive an annual spending cap on replenishing the stockpile, remove weapon-specific restrictions, and curtail congressional oversight. All of the changes ... would be permanent, except for lifting the spending cap, which is limited to the 2024 fiscal year.
Note: Israel has received at least $158 billion in military aid from the US since 1948. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
The Department of Defense relies on hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons and products such as uniforms, batteries, and microelectronics that contain PFAS, a family of chemicals linked to serious health conditions. Now, as regulators propose restrictions on their use or manufacturing, Pentagon officials have told Congress that eliminating the chemicals would undermine military readiness. PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment and can build up in the human body, have been associated with such health problems as cancer. In July, a new federal study showed a direct link between testicular cancer and PFOS, a PFAS chemical that has been found in the blood of thousands of military personnel. In a report delivered to Congress in August, Defense Department officials pushed back against health concerns raised by environmental groups and regulators. According to the report, most major weapons systems, their components, microelectronic chips, lithium-ion batteries, and other products contain PFAS chemicals. These include helicopters, airplanes, submarines, missiles, torpedoes, tanks, and assault vehicles; munitions; semiconductors and microelectronics; and metalworking, cooling, and fire suppression systems. Beyond cancer, some types of PFAS have been linked to low birth weight, developmental delays in children, thyroid dysfunction, and reduced response to immunizations.
Note: If the above link fails, you can read the article here. PFAS are linked to serious health conditions: cancer, liver damage, hormonal disruption, reproductive issues, reduced sperm count, reduced immune response, and more. PFAS have also been found in 45% of US tap water. Read more on how war is hazardous to our health and environment in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch of the U.S. Space Force sat down in his office in Los Angeles one morning in September to deliver a briefing known as a threat assessment. The current “threats” in space are less sci-fi than you might expect, but there are a surprising number of them: At least 44,500 space objects now circle Earth, including 9,000 active satellites and 19,000 significant pieces of debris. What’s most concerning isn’t the swarm of satellites but the types. “We know that there are kinetic kill vehicles,” Lerch said — for example, a Russian “nesting doll” satellite, in which a big satellite releases a tiny one and the tiny one releases a mechanism that can strike and damage another satellite. China, whose presence in space now far outpaces Russia’s, is launching unmanned “space planes” into orbit, testing potentially unbreakable quantum communication links and adding A.I. capabilities to satellites. An intelligence report, Lerch said, predicted the advent, within the next decade, of satellites with radio-frequency jammers, chemical sprayers and lasers that blind and disable the competition. All this would be in addition to the cyberwarfare tools, electromagnetic instruments and “ASAT” antisatellite missiles that already exist. Space Force leaders readily describe their guardians as working toward a state of combat readiness, even as they hope an era of actual conflict never arrives. As space becomes commercialized, it increasingly becomes a geopolitical arena for competition too.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
For almost 4,000 years, some governments have insisted that if wars must be fought, there should be rules. During its assault, on Black Saturday, Hamas broke numerous laws of war, starting with its rocket fire into Israel, which made no attempt to discriminate between military and civilian targets, breaking article 13 of protocol II of the Geneva conventions. Its fighters murdered, tortured and raped, breaking common article 3 of the Geneva conventions and articles 27 and 32 of the fourth convention. They also engaged in pillage and terrorism (33, fourth convention) and the taking of hostages (34, fourth, and article 8 of the Rome statute). In responding to this attack, Israel has also broken several laws of war. These crimes begin with the use of collective penalties against the people of Gaza (article 33 of the fourth convention and article 4 of protocol II). One aspect of this punishment appears to be the pattern of Israel’s bombing and shelling of Gaza. The war crime in this case is the damage to property: article 50 of the first Geneva convention, article 51 of the second Geneva convention and article 147 of the fourth Geneva convention. Many of the buildings hit, including numerous schools and health facilities, do not appear to qualify as military targets, despite Israeli claims that Hamas uses people as human shields. Such indiscriminate attacks contravene article 13, protocol II and article 53, fourth convention. The bombing of mosques breaks article 16 of protocol II.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
For Palestinians in Gaza, Israel’s eyes are never very far away. Surveillance drones buzz constantly from the skies. The highly-secured border is awash with security cameras and soldiers on guard. But Israel’s eyes appeared to have been closed in the lead-up to an unprecedented onslaught by the militant Hamas group, which broke down Israeli border barriers and sent hundreds of militants into Israel to carry out a brazen attack that has killed hundreds. Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. But even after Hamas overran Gaza in 2007, Israel appeared to maintain its edge, using technological and human intelligence. It claimed to know the precise locations of Hamas leadership and appeared to prove it through the assassinations of militant leaders in surgical strikes, sometimes while they slept in their bedrooms. Israel has known where to strike underground tunnels used by Hamas to ferry around fighters and arms. Despite those abilities, Hamas was able to keep its plan under wraps. The ferocious attack, which likely took months of planning and meticulous training and involved coordination among multiple militant groups, appeared to have gone under Israel’s intelligence radar. An Egyptian intelligence official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big,” without elaborating. He said Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza.
Note: According to Efrat Fenigson, a former Israeli soldier who served on the Gaza border, "A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces." How could Israeli intelligence not have known that this attack was coming? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and war from reliable major media sources.
Fort Ord was one of 800 U.S. military bases, large and small, that were shuttered between 1988 and 2005. The cities of Seaside and Marina, Calif., where Fort Ord had been critical to the local economy, were left with a ghost town of clapboard barracks and decrepit, World War II-era concrete structures that neither of the cities could afford to tear down. Also left behind were poisonous stockpiles of unexploded ordnance, lead fragments, industrial solvents and explosives residue, a toxic legacy that in some areas of the base remains largely where the Army left it. Across the country, communities were promised that closed bases would be restored, cleaned up and turned over for civilian use. But the cleanup has proceeded at a snail’s pace at many of the facilities, where future remediation work could extend until 2084 and local governments are struggling with the cost of making the land suitable for development. At more than 1,000 sites within the closed bases, the land is so badly contaminated that no one will ever be allowed to live on it. Sites that were supposed to be clean were later found full of asbestos, radioactivity and other health threats. Military base cleanups are often full of surprises, but Hunters Point is in a league of its own. Two former supervisors at an environmental firm, Tetra Tech EC, which the Navy hired to help clean up the base, were convicted in 2018 of fraudulently submitting clean dirt to a laboratory in place of the contaminated dirt at the shipyard.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) [is] Europe’s biggest arms fair, which takes place every two years in the Excel convention centre in east London. It is a sprawling supermarket of modern warfare, where the world’s armies come to buy the latest AI-guided missiles and tanks, inspect giant warships moored in the Royal Docks, and queue to take a turn sitting in the cockpits of fighter jets. Joystick manufacturers jostle with makers of invisibility cloaks, while purveyors of VR simulators compete with those of radar jammers, next to endless ranks of machine guns. Sleek submarines sparkle on spotlit plinths while flocks of missile-carrying drones dangle from the ceiling like menacing mobiles. “This year feels much busier than usual,” one bomb salesman tells me, standing by a gleaming rack of cone-shaped warheads, polished like trophies in a glass cabinet. “It seems war is back in a big way. People are looking to stock up.” Whereas attendees of this great murderous bazaar may once have felt sheepish, they now proudly march through the entrance gates with their heads held high. Recent events in Ukraine have sharpened minds and opened wallets in relation to government spending on defence. Total global military expenditure reached an all-time high of $2.2tn (£1.8tn) in 2022. Outside the exhibition halls, reality hits. “Please be aware,” a polite protester tells visitors, “that many of the countries you are doing business with are on the UK government’s human rights priority list.”
Note: As one defense executive flat-out told Reuters during the event, "war is good for business." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and military corruption from reliable major media sources.
A half-dozen or so men gathered last month [at] one of Kyiv’s swankiest hotels to discuss the lucrative business of arming Ukrainian troops. The group included Ukrainian military and government officials, who are always in the market for explosive shells. The center of attention was their gregarious host, a Florida-based arms contractor named Marc Morales. And joining the group was a stout, bearded man who served both the buyers and sellers: Vladimir Koyfman, a chief sergeant in the Ukrainian military whom Mr. Morales pays to arrange meetings with his government contacts. The [Biden] administration has sent Ukraine more than $40 billion in security aid, including advanced weapons like HIMARS rockets and Patriot missiles. But the Pentagon also relies heavily on little-known arms dealers like Mr. Morales. The Pentagon has awarded his company about $1 billion in contracts, mostly for ammunition. And records show he has built a roughly $200 million side business selling to the Ukrainians directly. Mr. Morales’s competitors say that he has an unfair advantage. His ties to the Pentagon. Arms brokers from around the world are competing for a limited supply of Soviet-style arms, mostly from Eastern Europe, to then sell to Ukraine. With cash pouring in from Washington, Mr. Morales can afford to pay more than his competitors do, several Eastern European arms dealers complained. He then makes good on his American contracts and buys more ammunition on his own to sell to Ukraine directly.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.
Hours after Senate Democrats blocked an effort to install greater oversight over the billions of dollars the United States is sending to Ukraine, the watchdog who oversaw U.S. spending in Afghanistan issued a warning. Spending too much too fast, with little oversight, would lead to “unanticipated consequences,” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, said at an event. Sopko especially warned about the risk of fueling corruption, perhaps the most damaging legacy of the billions the U.S. spent in Afghanistan and a major factor in the collapse of its effort in the country. “If that much money is coming in, you know some of it is going to be stolen,” he said. “In Afghanistan, corruption was the existential threat. It wasn’t the Taliban. It was corruption that did us in.” Debate over installing a special inspector for Ukraine modeled after SIGAR began swirling on Capitol Hill as it became clear that U.S. support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion would reach unprecedented levels. Congress approved some $113 billion in aid to Ukraine last year, and some analysts put the full figure to date at closer to $137 billion. By comparison, the U.S. spent some $146 billion in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2022 (although it spent far more going to war there in the first place). “By the end of this year, we will have spent more money in Ukraine than we did to do the entire Marshall Plan after World War II,” Sopko said.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
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