MICROREACTORS – the Next Big Little Nuclear THING!
Noel Wauchope, 15 August 2026, https://theaimn.net/microreactors-the-next-big-little-nuclear-thing/
Forget about Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – they’re not cool anymore!
What the world needs now is MICROREACTORS – so saith the global nuclear lobby. And we know they must be right, because they’ve already explained how the world needs a NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE to solve climate change, energy shortage, world peace etc…
Now there are substantial differences between microreactors and small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) , even though at first glance microreactors might seem to be just teeny weeny versions of SMRs. Whereas an SMR produces up to 300 MWe , a microreactor produces anything from 1 MWe up to 50MWe
There are fuel differences . SMRs can use LEU – Low Enriched Uranium or the more powerful HALEU – High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium . Microreactors can, in theory, use LEU fuel, but that could not work out to be economic. The fuel must be the more powerful HALEU – High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium. And in fact, Most microreactor plans use the more complex TRISO Fuel (Tri-Structural Isotropic), in which the tiny kernels of HALEU are coated with multiple layers of ceramic and carbon. That makes TRISO very safe, but very expensive.
Really, the most important difference is in – Who Pays For Microreactors?
Well, you do, if you’re a tax-payer. The only economically viable way to fund microreactors is to make them military installations, government funded. SMRs are supposedly economically viable, and were touted to become a private enterprise success. That’s until the NuSCale SMR financial fiasco
The beloved ever-about -to-happen nuclear renaissance needs a new theme, and that new funding source. The old theme was ENERGY– the new theme is DEFENCE.
For quite a while now, it has been obvious, and indeed a boast of the nuclear lobby, that new small reactors would support the defence sector, and nuclear weaponry, by providing the trained staff that are so badly needed, as the old nuclear boffins retire,
But times have changed, and also the nuke lobby is getting desperate. With all the international political drama going on, obviously the top priority now is war. (Did I hear someone say, what about diplomacy, negotiation? Look, that’s time-consuming, takes high mental ability, and there’s no money in it) Yes, what we and the nuke industry need now is war preparation.
So the nuclear industry is regalvanised, with a spate joyous media articles, mostly – worded like this one – Antares Raises $470M to Field Military-Focused Microreactors. Optimistic statements abound:
Power up: Antares and their nuclear startup frenemies moving so fast is good news for the Pentagon, which is where that 2028 number comes into play in a few places.
In May 2025, President Trump signed a series of executive orders to accelerate the Department of Energy’s “Manhattan Project 2.0.” -notably Executive Order 14299, “Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security,” Then came Executive Order 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,”- getting rid of, or watering down public safety, radiation and environmental standards. The full import of this has been documented by Kristen Thomason in her superb article – “If you’re already afraid, just wait until you hear about Manhattan Project 2.0″
A lot of hype about microreactor energy for data farms, with Silicon Valley tech billionaires all on board, – and the craze is for so many “start-ups “
I had every intention of going through all the hazards, impediments to these microreactors ever becoming a commercial reality. But guess what ? OKLO, probably the leader of the pack, has done it for me. After the usual hypy article, glorifying their new microreactor, OKLO makes this revealing statement at the end:
As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, the actual results or performance of Oklo may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. The following important risk factors could affect Oklo’s future results and cause those results or other outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements: risks related to the development and deployment of Oklo’s powerhouses, fuel fabrication and fuel recycling facilities, and radioisotope production activities; the risk that Oklo is pursuing an emerging market with no commercial project operating and regulatory uncertainties; risks related to acquisitions, divestitures, or joint ventures we may engage in; the need for financing to construct plants, which remain subject to market, financial, political, and legal conditions; risks related to an inability to raise additional capital to support our business and sustain our growth on favorable terms; the effects of competition; risks related to accessing high-assay low-enriched uranium, plutonium, and other fuels (including recycled fuels) at acceptable costs and under acceptable timelines; risks related to our supply chain; risks related to power purchase agreements; risks related to human capital; risks related to our intellectual property; risks related to cybersecurity and data privacy; changes in applicable laws or regulations, including tariffs; the outcome of any government and regulatory proceedings and investigations and inquiries; and the other factors set forth in our documents we have filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).
The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive.
I was going to try and list all those factors – to throw some cold water on the microreactor parade – and that leading microreactor developer has done it for me!
As I tried to research all those factors to consider about micoreactors, I made the discovery that amongst the pro nuclear experts themselves, there are the gold nuggets of the truth. Not only has OKLO raised those contentious questions, but in a lengthy video – Nick Touran, a nuclear engineer and manager at TerraPower, unearths the sobering realities of micro nuclear reactors:
It’s long – but he spells it all out, if you can take the time:
Chapters:
00:00 Visions for microreactors 03:49 Defining microreactors 11:56 The problem of radiation shielding 18:48 Original microreactor projects 24:29 Niche applications 30:32 The problem of neutron economy 40:08 The problem of fuel 53:03 The problem of operations and maintenance 1:00:17 The problem of commercialization 1:05:42 The problem of spent fuel 1:09:27 The problem of scaling 1:12:36 The problem of licensing
Nick Touran and OKLO might be hopeful for microreactor success some time in the future. But they – pro nuclear people, are well aware of the obstacles and especially of the financial costs.
So, if they can take the microreactor hype with a grain of salt, the rest of us, who are not part of the development process, should be taking that hype with a bucketful .
Walt Zlotow – Israel mimicking Nazis at end of WWII…destroying evidence of genocide
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 13 August 26
As the Nazis were collapsing in the spring of 1945, they furiously tried to cover up their massive genocide of Jews and other undesirables they engaged in during WWII.
Eighty-one years on we’re learning that Israel appears to be practising a similar cover up of its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza that, astonishingly, is still going on ten months after the Trump brokered ceasefire that he trumpeted to end it.
Once the massive bombing stopped, the World Court issued an order for Israel to preserve evidence of genocidal acts committed in Gaza. But in a new report by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that Israeli forces and contractors “are conducting a wide and organized operation to process and clear the rubble from neighborhoods and facilities they have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and relocate it from areas under their military control to outside the strip. This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites. This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble. The systematic removal of rubble at this pace conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, including summary executions and killing unarmed civilians.”
What did the Israeli genocide in Gaza look like?
In April the World Bank, UN and EU jointly published a report that estimated around 68 million tons of rubble from over 200,000 buildings are spread across Gaza’s 141 square miles after relentless bombing that left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, injured or missing and up to 2 million forcibly displaced, starved or sickened. That’s the entire Palestinian population.
The Euro-Med report says at least 10 million tons of rubble “have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip by approximately 400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport machinery, operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection, that are active across eastern and southern Gaza.”
While it’s impossible to understand why any nation, be it Hitler’s Germany or Netanyahu’s Israel, would commit genocide, it’s certainly understandable why both would feverishly seek to cover it up.
At UN Security Council, Officials Say Israeli Settler Violence Has Brought West Bank to ‘Breaking Point’
“Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels,” said a coordinator for the Middle East peace process. “Many incidents occurred in the presence of Israeli forces.”
August 12, 2026, Julia Conley Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settler-violence-west-bank
“Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels,” said a coordinator for the Middle East peace process. “Many incidents occurred in the presence of Israeli forces.”
That violence exemplified what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called an escalating “ethnic cleansing” operation that Israel’s military allows.
As B’Tselem said Wednesday, settlers had established an illegal outpost in the yards of two Palestinian families’ homes, “forcing the families out and taking over their homes,” and the US-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had done nothing to protect the Palestinian residents.
“Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in full view of everyone,” Yuli Novak, president of B’Tselem, told Anadolu Agency, adding that the settlers’ seizure of the Palestinian homes was “not an isolated incident.”
Home demolitions by Israeli forces; attacks on healthcare infrastructure, homes, and schools; mass displacement of Palestinians; and the expansion of illegal settlements across the West Bank have brought the occupied Palestinian territory to “the breaking point,” said a top humanitarian official at the United Nations Security Council Tuesday, calling for a “coordinated international effort” to end the violent Israeli occupation.
At a meeting on the situation in the territory, Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, addressed the council as families in the town of Qusra, northern Nablus, were facing days of attacks by Israeli settlers.
That violence exemplified what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called an escalating “ethnic cleansing” operation that Israel’s military allows.
As B’Tselem said Wednesday, settlers had established an illegal outpost in the yards of two Palestinian families’ homes, “forcing the families out and taking over their homes,” and the US-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had done nothing to protect the Palestinian residents.
“Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in full view of everyone,” Yuli Novak, president of B’Tselem, told Anadolu Agency, adding that the settlers’ seizure of the Palestinian homes was “not an isolated incident.”
Breaking the Silence, an organization run by former IDF members who oppose the occupation, explained how settlers, with the backing of the military, essentially blockade individual homes as a method of driving Palestinians out.
“Violent settlers may do the ‘dirty work’ of daily terror against Palestinian men, women, and children, but neither this terror nor ethnic cleansing would be possible without the army’s support,” said the group. “Village after village, house after house. It keeps happening because it is policy.”
At the Security Council meeting, Alakbarov said Israeli forces have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the West Bank in 2026 so far, while children make up nearly half of the 3,800 Palestinians who have been displaced by settler attacks, demolitions, and evictions.
“One hundred and twenty-seven Palestinian communities have experienced full or partial displacement since January 2023, including 47 that have been entirely displaced, affecting more than 6,390 Palestinians,” said Alakbarov. “Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels. So far this year the UN has documented more than 1,430 incidents involving Israeli settlers that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both, affecting approximately 260 Palestinian communities. Many incidents occurred in the presence of Israeli forces.”
As Alakbarov spoke Tuesday, the World Health Organization warned that the West Bank has also seen an uptick in violence against healthcare infrastructure, with Israeli carrying out 83 attacks on healthcare transport such as ambulances and 11 attacks on medical centers and facilities, injuring at least 33 people and killing four. July saw a surge in healthcare attacks—a hallmark of Israel’s assault on Gaza that began in 2023—with 37 strikes on infrastructure.
Settler attacks were once mainly concentrated in Area C, which comprises about 60% of the West Bank and is under Israeli control.
But Alakbarov said settlers are increasingly waging violence against Palestinians in Areas A and B, which are under the administration of the Palestinian Authority.
“The future of the region is at stake,” the UN permanent observer for the state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, told the Security Council. “International will cannot bow before the colonial whims of the Israeli government.”
Israeli officials in recent months have advanced and approved about 12,360 housing units in settlements across the West Bank this year, with the Security Cabinet signing off on 13 new settlements in the central part of the territory last month. The move further isolates East Jerusalem, which Palestinians consider the capital of a future Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank.
Last year Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also signed an agreement to develop 3,400 new units in the E1 settlement, which would also cut off access to East Jerusalem. The prime minister said as he approved the deal, “There will be no Palestinian state.”
The approvals of more settlement housing this year and the escalation in IDF-sanctioned violence against Palestinian communities across the West Bank “are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” Alakbarov said Tuesday.
“The situation in the West Bank must be treated as an emergency requiring urgent action,” he said. “The concern is not only the continued expansion of settlements, but the speed and systematic manner in which new facts are being created on the ground. New outposts are established, often with state support, and can be retroactively authorized or incorporated into the wider settlement system. From these outposts, settler violence and intimidation have driven the displacement of Palestinian communities.”
He added that the spread of settler outposts in agricultural and grazing areas is “deeply troubling.”
“Requiring only a small number of settlers, they enable control over vast areas of land,” said Alakbarov. “Israeli monitoring organizations report that agricultural and pastoral outposts now exercise effective control over close to 20% of the West Bank.”
Israeli forces also arrested 23 Palestinians on Tuesday, including two children, days after a large-scale operation at Qalandia refugee camp resulted in the detentions of more than 60 people.
Hannah Sulieman, deputy executive director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), emphasized that 355 Palestinian children are currently being detained in Israeli military prisons—“the highest number in eight years.”
The arrests and the violence mean that for children and their families in the West Bank, “the fundamental spaces of childhood—the home, the classroom, the street, the community—are becoming increasingly unsafe,” said Sulieman.
“Children in the West Bank have the same rights as children everywhere,” she said. “To live, to learn, to be protected, and to imagine a future beyond violence and fear.”
Syria agrees to surrender Assad-era nuclear material to IAEA
Matthew Hoare Absi Smeisem, Damascus, 11 August, 2026
Syria has agreed to surrender its remaining stockpile of nuclear material to the UN’s atomic watchdog, but the breakthrough is unlikely to bring Damascus and Israel any closer to a security agreement, a senior Syria analyst told The New Arab, as negotiations remain stalled over Israeli occupation and withdrawal demands.
“The legacy reactor residue unlocks none of that,” Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, told TNA, saying the nuclear file was largely separate from the disputes that have frustrated US attempts to broker an agreement between the two countries.
The assessment comes after US and Israeli officials told Axios that Syria had agreed to hand the material over to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under a US-brokered deal reached several weeks ago, following weeks of Israeli threats to bomb Syrian facilities.
The Trump administration and the IAEA had raced to secure the material amid concerns that the issue could provoke a new crisis involving Israel, Syria and potentially Turkey.
The stockpile is a remnant of a secret nuclear programme pursued under the Assad regime more than two decades ago. The material was reportedly connected to the Al-Kibar nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzor governorate, which Israel destroyed in 2007, although several storage and research and development sites remained intact.
A US official said the material included powdered uranium ore known as yellowcake, which can be enriched as part of the process of producing nuclear fuel or weapons and could also potentially be used in a “dirty bomb”.
Six months after Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow, Syria’s new government agreed to give the IAEA unrestricted access to the facility and several other sites connected to the former government’s nuclear programme.
But Israeli officials later said they had detected possible attempts by Syria’s new authorities to access material at a facility known as Site 99 and suspected they were receiving assistance from Turkey………………………………………………………………………..https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-agrees-surrender-assad-era-nuclear-material-iaea
Heat, water shortages, jellyfish: nuclear energy is becoming uncontrollable
while a reactor needs water to dissipate its heat, it cannot turn rivers into scalding baths.
What technological advancements are needed to secure water supplies when a river runs dry ?
What will the state of the Danube be in 2050, 2070, or even 2100 ?
Heatwaves, droughts, rivers that are too hot or too low: since June, European nuclear power plants have been experiencing numerous power reductions and shutdowns. One question is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid: is nuclear power still manageable in a warming world ?
By
Laure Noualhat, August 14, 2026 , https://reporterre.net/Le-climat-met-le-nucleaire-europeen-a-sec-Le-nucleaire-rattrape-par-la-question-du
On August 12, shortly before 10 a.m., a fifth of France’s nuclear power plants were offline. Exactly 20.4 % of their production capacity was unavailable due to ”
environmental constraints “ or ” external environmental causes , “ a record since 2015, calculated by AFP using data from EDF .
Thirteen reactors were affected: eight completely shut down, and five operating at reduced capacity. On one hand, rivers were either too hot or too low after five heat waves ; on the other, at Gravelines (Nord), several tons of jellyfish had clogged the water intakes of Western Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Nuclear power can be controlled, certainly, but it still needs to be cooled.
In Golfech, on the banks of a sweltering Garonne River, the situation has taken on the air of a summer ritual. On August 8, at 9 p.m.,
EDF once again shut down reactor number 2. The Garonne threatened to reach 28°C the following day, the threshold beyond which the power plant must reduce its production or shut down to comply with environmental regulations and avoid harming aquatic life. Since reactor number 1 was already undergoing maintenance, the plant was no longer producing any electricity. The same scenario, to varying degrees, played out at Bugey (Ain), Saint-Alban (Isère), and Tricastin (Drôme), where the Rhône River’s waters, having become too warm, led EDF to adjust its production.
Because while a reactor needs water to dissipate its heat, it cannot turn rivers into scalding baths. Discharges from power plants are regulated by the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority (
ASNR ), which sets, for each site, limits on the temperature increase of the watercourse between upstream and downstream, as well as a maximum temperature that must not be exceeded.
What uses will be prioritized as droughts occur ?
This summer, the Bugey nuclear power plant
was the only French plant to request a temporary modification of its thermal regulations , the ASNR ( French Nuclear Safety Authority) told Reporterre . The Rhône River was already very hot upstream, while RTE (the Frenchelectricity transmission network operator) demanded that a minimum power output be maintained to guarantee grid security. The Authority therefore agreed to temporarily raise certain limits, but only between July
10 and 20. This compromise aptly summarizes the dilemma ahead: protecting a river already suffering from the heatwave while preventing the electrical grid from overheating as well.
In Chooz, in the Ardennes region, the problem isn’t the temperature but the amount of water. The Meuse River’s flow rate dropped drastically at the beginning of August. The two reactors were shut down, not because there wasn’t enough water to safely cool the facilities, but to comply with the Franco-Belgian agreement guaranteeing a minimum flow for the various river users. Thus, nuclear power is confronted with a question already familiar to farmers, industrialists, and river conservationists: who has the right to water when it becomes scarce ? Which uses will be prioritized as droughts continue to occur ?
Controllable… but not climate-insensitive
Taken separately, each of these episodes seems almost commonplace.
EDF has long adjusted its power plants’ output during heat waves. In 2003, the utility even sprayed the Fessenheim reactor building with water jets!
But their repetition, and especially their simultaneity, changes the landscape. Up to 7.3 gigawatts of French nuclear power were unavailable on August 12 or constrained by the heat and low flow rates. ” This is a record peak in environmental unavailability ,
“ according to AFP . At the same time, there was a lack of wind in Germany, and air conditioners were running more frequently, which drove up electricity prices.
However, it would be wrong to claim that the nuclear fleet is faltering; it’s simply overheating. It’s actually producing significantly more than during the major crisis of 2022 when 32 reactors were unavailable due to stress corrosion cracking. The real issue lies elsewhere. A nuclear power plant is an enormous thermal machine that must dissipate some of its heat. It can produce electricity without wind or sun, but not without cold water. And this resource, too, is caught up in the whirlwind of climate change.
The Danube is offering a much more stark demonstration this summer. In Hungary, the Paks power plant, which supplies nearly half of the country’s electricity, saw
its production plummet in early August due to the river’s exceptionally low water level.
“A temporary rise in water levels then allowed for the recovery of some production, but the government has announced its intention to re-examine the cooling requirements of the Paks
II project ,” explains András Kéri of the climate policy institute Energiaklub. ”
A power plant built today will only be operating at full capacity in the second half of this century…
“ What will the state of the Danube be in 2050, 2070, or even 2100 ?
It’s difficult to say.
Further downstream, Romania faces an even more critical situation. The country will shut down its only nuclear power plant on August 13th, for the first time since the 2003 drought, as the Danube’s flow has dropped too low. As early as July 28th, the operator of the Cernavodă site shut down Unit 1 due to a Danube level described as ” very low and unprecedented” .
The intake canal had to be dredged and the riprap blasted to redirect the flow. When the river needs to be reshaped locally to maintain electricity production, climate adaptation is no longer just a chapter in an annual report. Switzerland also experienced this very real future firsthand by reducing the two reactors at Beznau to 50% of their capacity when the Aare River reached the critical temperature of 25°C.
In France and Switzerland, most of these power reductions do not signal a loss of safety and are precisely intended to comply with environmental regulations. In Hungary and Romania, the extreme low water level of the Danube more directly impacts operating conditions. But for the electrical grid, the result is comparable: megawatts considered readily available on demand become slightly less so at the very moment when heat increases certain needs.
And as the Anthropocene knows how to keep things interesting, the Gravelines nuclear power plant has added jellyfish to the mix. On August 10, their massive arrival in the water intakes triggered the automatic shutdown of 3 of the 6 reactors. EDF insisted there was no safety issue . And besides, is this becoming a regular occurrence ? A similar incident had already happened in August 2025 .
European nuclear power is therefore not collapsing under the heatwave. But this summer is challenging a simplistic way of speaking: ” controllable “ nuclear power does not mean ” insensitive to climate . “ It depends on it, like everything else.
What about EPR2s
The issue becomes considerably more serious when we look at the reactors currently in the design phase. EDF asserts that it has sized the future EPR2 reactors ” with regard to heatwave risks “ by taking into account the IPCC climate scenarios for 2070 and 2100, ASNR told Reporterre . EDF has allocated €8.7 billion by 2040 to adapt its nuclear, hydroelectric, and island activities to climate change , notably through the Adapt project, which aims to assess, plant by plant, their vulnerability to rising temperatures, droughts, and changes in water resources.
In 2023, the Court of Auditors still estimated investments directly attributable to climate adaptation of the nuclear fleet at around €600 million for the following fifteen years. Going from €600 million to €8.7 billion in three years is a gigantic leap !
The ASNR (French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management) emphasizes the need to maintain ” margins , “ as tomorrow’s climate may diverge fromprojections. Every ten years,” safety standards must therefore be reassessed,
“ and facilities may need to be adapted to higher temperatures. But how, specifically ?
What technological advancements are needed to secure water supplies when a river runs dry ?
No one is saying.
To date, nuclear power plants evaporate 833 million cubic meters
of fresh water per year. While this water is reintroduced into the water cycle, it remains unavailable for other needs (domestic consumption, agriculture, industry, etc.). With the future EPR2 reactors —particularly those located along rivers—this will increase the amount of water drawn from rivers to
1,232 million cubic meters per year and from the seas to 575 million cubic meters
per year, according to figures from Global Chance.
France’s Power Prices Jump 22% as Heatwave Trims Nuclear Output
By Michael Kern – Aug 11, 2026,
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Frances-Power-Prices-Jump-22-as-Heatwave-Trims-Nuclear-Output.html
The new heatwave in France is curbing nuclear power generation in Europe’s biggest nuclear electricity supplier and leading to spiking day-ahead power prices.
France’s day-ahead power prices soared by as much as 21.8% to $164.39 (142.5 euros) per megawatt hour (MWh) on Tuesday morning local time, per LSEG data cited by Reuters, as nuclear power generation is expected to be curbed at the mid-day peak on Wednesday.
Data by nuclear power plants operator EDF showed that France would see its nuclear generation cut by 7.3 gigawatts (GW) on Wednesday, equal to 12% of the total capacity, amid this week’s heatwave which is at least the fifth extremely hot wave to grip the country since June.
Power prices in France, where nuclear energy accounts for about 70% of the electricity mix, are now being pressured upwards by reduced nuclear output as water levels in rivers used for cooling reactors are low and/or very warm.
Additional upward pressure comes from the increase in power consumption during these heatwaves.
France has already had to resort to curbing nuclear power generation amid the prolonged and intense heatwaves this summer.
In the middle of last month, France’s nuclear power generation was slashed by 6.4 GW amid a prolonged and intense heatwave that hiked river temperatures and limited the ability of the power plants to use the water to cool reactors.
The heatwaves have also affected nuclear power output in central and eastern Europe, where Hungary and Romania this month were forced to shut down reactors at their respective only nuclear power plants, due to the lowest water level of the Danube river in 90 years.
Hungary saw one of the turbines at the Paks nuclear resume electricity production on Monday as the Danube water level inched up thanks to rainfall in Austria.
Romania, for its part, last week blasted a rock formation and sank barges filled with rocks to deviate the Danube’s flow and secure enough water for cooling the reactors of its only nuclear power plant at Cernavoda.
Once secret report on atomic weapons production released as greens fight plans in SC.
The State, By Sammy Fretwell August 14 , 2026
A nuclear safety watchdog group says it has obtained formerly hidden information that bolsters arguments against building atomic weapons plants in New Mexico and South Carolina — but a key federal agency doesn’t see it that way. The federal government has released sections of a report, sought by environmental groups opposed to spending billions of dollars on new factories to produce plutonium pits, key ingredients in atomic bombs.
Environmentalists have said the report could contain information showing that pits are not aging as fast as the government contends, so there is no need for factories to replenish the stockpile. Important sections of the report had not been released until last week, nuclear safety watchdogs say. The unredacted report summary, developed by a team of consulting scientists and released under an open records request, says pits are beginning to age but that they remain adequate for use in nuclear weapons, as environmentalists have argued. Despite that, the report — known as a JASON study — recommends continuing with plans to produce pits for use in weapons.
Jay Coghlan, who heads Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said the report makes his case against building the pit production facilities, which are expected to cost the government more than $30 billion. If the current stock of pits is in good shape and aging slowly, there is no need to move forward with production of factories in South Carolina and New Mexico, he and others contend. “It looks like this plutonium aging excuse doesn’t really hold water,’’ he said in a news release.
His organization, as well as South Carolina’s Savannah River Site Watch and other environmental groups say they are worried that new pit production could crank up a nuclear arms race, while also leading to dangerous testing for new weapons that would rely on the new pits. Highly toxic nuclear material could leak from an underground test sites, Coghlan said. The pits contain plutonium, one of the most deadly atomic materials. Environmentalists also say it isn’t worth spending more than $30 billion for the project, as is projected.
“There are both environmental concerns and there are very serious proliferation concerns,’’ Coghlan said. “The existing stockpile is highly reliable.’’ The National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, interprets the report differently…………………..
Read more at: https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article316871213.html#storylink=cpy
Why the FBI is working with China and Russia, despite everything
An unexpected turn is reshaping global security beyond the old rivalriesPublished 11 Aug, 2026 An unexpected turn is reshaping global security beyond the old rivalries
11 Aug, 2026 , RT.com Ladislav Zemánek
In an era defined by fierce geopolitical competition, FBI Director Kash Patel has charted a course that prioritizes pragmatism and results.
By building selective yet substantive law-enforcement partnerships with China and Russia, the bureau is demonstrating that great powers can set aside deeper differences to confront transnational crime that endangers citizens everywhere. This development deserves recognition as a mature, interest-based approach, showing that effective governance in a multipolar world requires the capacity to cooperate wherever it delivers concrete gains.
Breaking the ice with Beijing
Patel’s engagement with his Chinese counterparts marks a clear departure from years of a near-total freeze in high-level law-enforcement contacts. In November 2025, he became the first FBI director to visit China since 2016, meeting Vice Minister of Public Security Xu Datong. He returned in July 2026 for discussions with State Councillor and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong.
Chinese officials have called for deepening constructive dialogue grounded in mutual respect. According to Patel, the results were made possible by direct engagement under the Trump administration’s leadership. The relationship did not emerge overnight; it followed President Donald Trump’s May 2025 visit to China and subsequent high-level understandings on fentanyl precursors. What matters is that both sides chose to institutionalize the opening rather than allow it to remain a one-off diplomatic gesture.
Institutionalizing daily cooperation
Four dedicated working groups now operate on cyber fraud, violent crimes against children, counternarcotics, and a fugitive task force. Chinese Ministry of Public Security officers travel to FBI facilities in the US on a monthly rotating basis; FBI personnel make reciprocal trips to China. Officials on both sides report near-daily communication – an intensity of contact that had not existed for years.
This steady exchange has already produced operational results. One notable joint action, Operation Sand Dollar, brought together the FBI, China’s Ministry of Public Security, and Dubai police against a major cyber-scam center. The effort yielded roughly 300 arrests, the seizure of approximately $300 million, and the liberation of thousands of trafficked workers. Such outcomes illustrate the practical value of treating certain criminal networks as shared problems rather than exclusive domains of competition.
Patel has been explicit about the philosophy guiding this work. He has noted that the decision to pursue cooperation with China despite widespread advice against it proves what is possible with almost any counterpart: “The fact that we did it with China when everyone said, ‘Don’t do it,’ and, ‘You can’t do it,’ shows what we can do with almost anyone.” The partnerships are deliberately limited to specific categories of transnational crime; they do not pretend to resolve broader strategic disagreements. That clarity of scope makes them sustainable under the current circumstances.
Opening a channel to Moscow
The same pragmatic approach is being applied to Russia. Patel is preparing a visit to Moscow and St. Peterburg, tentatively scheduled for mid-October, with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) expected to serve as host. The last sitting FBI director known to have traveled to Russia was Robert Mueller in 2013. Patel’s planned trip builds on quieter collaboration already underway for more than a year against violent criminal networks.
This outreach occurs against the backdrop of Trump’s broader effort to reduce tensions with Moscow. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have made repeated visits, including meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and further contacts are anticipated. Putin’s special envoy on foreign investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, has publicly welcomed the emerging China-Russia-US intelligence and law-enforcement cooperation, signaling that Moscow sees value in the channel.
Complementary signals across government
Patel’s initiative does not stand alone. Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, long regarded as a China hardliner, has expressed clear interest in visiting China and revitalizing professional military-to-military ties. Colby’s willingness to explore direct engagement signals an important evolution: Even those most focused on strategic competition now recognize that sustained channels of communication and cooperation on discrete issues can reduce miscalculation risks and open space for practical problem-solving………………………………………………… https://www.rt.com/news/644113-fbi-china-russia-cooperation/
NATO’s $Trillions Delivered Two Strategic Defeats in Four Years. Now We’re Too Broke to Fight.
Both men were scathing about the absence of honest strategic thinking. Politicians equate money spent with security achieved. Senior officers too often tell ministers what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear
In conversation with Douglas Macgregor and Steve Jermy
Ian Proud, Aug 13, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/natos-trillions-delivered-two-strategic?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=211003191&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I sat down with two of the most clear-eyed military realists working today: retired US Army Colonel (Ret’d) Douglas Macgregor and Commodore (Ret’d) Steve Jermy RN.
The starting point was simple and damning. A couple of years ago NATO countries accounted for 53 per cent of global military spending. That share has only grown as European governments have scrambled to increase defence budgets. Yet in the space of four years the Western alliance has suffered two major geostrategic defeats — first in Ukraine, now in the Persian Gulf against Iran. That is unprecedented in my lifetime.
Macgregor put it bluntly. The force structure the United States (and by extension much of NATO) has built over the last thirty years was designed for short, offensive wars against weak opponents who lacked serious air and missile defences. Commit that force against a large, prepared adversary with mountains, underground facilities and modern stand-off weapons, and the limitations become obvious very quickly. “Wrong force, wrong mission, wrong place, wrong time,” he said.
Jermy approached the same problem from the other side of the Atlantic. He pointed out that Western armed forces are configured primarily as air-sea powers, while the opponents we have chosen to confront are land powers capable of denying us both air superiority and sea control. He also returned to a theme he has written about for years: industrial capacity and energy remain the real foundations of military power. Without them, no amount of money spent on exquisite platforms will deliver victory.
The Royal Navy’s collapse from roughly seventy major surface combatants in his day to a handful of frigates and destroyers today is not just a British problem — it is a symptom of a wider Western failure to match resources to strategy.
Both men were scathing about the absence of honest strategic thinking. Politicians equate money spent with security achieved. Senior officers too often tell ministers what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
The result is a succession of campaigns that fail the basic tests of strategy: they are neither effective, efficient, nor enduring.
We talked about historical examples that still matter — Campbell-Bannerman’s refusal to commit a British army to the Continent, Eisenhower’s acute awareness of manpower limits, George Kennan’s clear-eyed distinction between vital and peripheral interests. The common thread is the same: great powers that refuse to define their actual interests end up exhausted and broke.
The most sobering line came near the end. Macgregor noted that going broke may ultimately force the reform that political will has so far refused. We are reaching the point where the West can no longer afford the wars its leaders keep starting.
You can watch the full conversation here.
It is not comfortable viewing, but it is necessary. If we are serious about peace rather than perpetual conflict, we first have to stop lying to ourselves about the balance of power.
Sizewell: multi-million euro contract awarded to Halton Wales
A major contract has been awarded to Halton Wales, part of Halton Group,
to supply specialist high-integrity HVAC dampers for the Sizewell C nuclear
power station project. The contract was said to represent a major strategic
and commercial milestone for Halton. Valued in the several tens of millions
of euros, it is one of the most significant project awards in the company’s
history. The contract builds on Halton’s successful contribution to the
Hinkley Point C project.
Insider Media 14th Aug 2026,
https://www.insidermedia.com/news/south-east/halton-selected-to-support-sizewell-c-nuclear-power-station-scheme-we-are-proud-to-contribute-to-a-project-of-national-importance
Sizewell – The bizarre public-private finance arrangement
The bizarre public-private finance arrangement for the construction of
Sizewell C is already paying off – for the lawyers. Linklaters was
advising the Government. Taxpayers provide 90% of the funding while private
investors including EDF and Centrica get control and eventually trouser
double digit returns. No wonder Linklaters is pleased. A government
contract initially worth £16m had by last July become £32m.
Private Eye 14th Aug 2026,
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/
What Is the Next Weapon? The Rise of the Adaptive Military Ecosystem
Phil Butler, August 10, 2026, https://journal-neo.su/2026/08/10/what-is-the-next-weapon-the-rise-of-the-adaptive-military-ecosystem/
Every generation of warfare produces a defining weapon, but history shows that weapons themselves rarely determine victory. The decisive advantage belongs to the societies capable of creating the organizations, industries, and human expertise necessary to transform new technologies into sustained military power.
The New Battlefield
The longbow reshaped medieval warfare, the musket transformed infantry combat, the tank revolutionized maneuver, and nuclear weapons altered the strategic balance of the world. Today, many believe the next decisive weapon will be the autonomous drone, artificial intelligence, or some future robotic system. The deeper transformation, however, may be something more fundamental: the ability of nations to build adaptive military ecosystems capable of continuously creating, deploying, and improving those technologies. (see CSIS report)
The war in Ukraine has become the most significant military laboratory of the modern era. It is a conflict where the weapons of the twentieth century remain fully present: artillery, armor, missiles, aircraft, and infantry formations. However, these elements are effective only if they can operate inside a battlefield environment transformed by drones, electronic warfare, satellite communications, and rapid technological adaptation. The most visible symbol of this transformation has been the drone. Small unmanned systems have changed reconnaissance, targeting, logistics, and tactical operations. They have made portions of the battlefield more transparent and forced commanders to reconsider how forces maneuver, conceal themselves, and survive. Yet focusing only on drones risks misunderstanding the deeper revolution. The drone is not the weapon; the system surrounding the drone is the weapon.
A modern unmanned platform depends upon communications networks, intelligence gathering, software, electronic warfare protection, manufacturing capacity, trained operators, maintenance systems, and the ability to rapidly modify designs based on battlefield experience. The true capability is not the aircraft itself but the entire cycle that allows a military organization to observe, adapt, produce, and improve. This distinction matters because every major military transformation in history has been driven not simply by invention, but by integration. The tank did not revolutionize warfare merely because armored vehicles existed. It changed warfare when armies developed doctrine, communications, logistics, and command structures capable of exploiting armored mobility.
The same principle now applies to autonomous systems and artificial intelligence. Recent Russian military discussions reflect this same search for integration, with proposals emphasizing the deployment of unmanned systems alongside traditional combat platforms, including concepts involving drone capabilities integrated with armored formations. According to Dmitry Kuzyakin points out the need for close contact, remote drone systems for the moment the line of contact collapses, when traditional drones cease to be the ultimate weapon. However, while such approaches represent only one component of a much larger transformation, they illustrate the growing recognition that future warfare will depend on combining legacy systems with autonomous capabilities rather than replacing one with the other. And as we now observe, recent military discussions have increasingly focused on this challenge. A Russian military perspective examining emerging systems emphasized that technological change requires corresponding changes in organization, training, and operational employment. The significance of this argument extends beyond any single country because it recognizes a fundamental truth: possessing advanced technology is not the same as possessing the ability to use it effectively.
This conclusion is increasingly reflected across defense analysis communities. The RAND Corporation has examined artificial intelligence and autonomy as potentially disruptive military technologies because their importance extends beyond individual weapons systems. AI changes the military decision cycle itself by transforming how information is collected, analyzed, and acted upon. Similarly, research from the Royal United Services Institute examining lessons from Ukraine has emphasized the growing importance of electronic warfare, communications resilience, intelligence networks, and the integration of traditional military capabilities with emerging technologies. Together, these perspectives point toward the same conclusion: future warfare will not be defined by a single revolutionary weapon. It will be defined by the ability to connect many capabilities into a coherent and adaptive system.
The New Arsenal
The industrial foundations of warfare are also undergoing a transformation. During the great conflicts of the twentieth century, military power was measured through factories, shipyards, steel production, fuel supplies, and the ability to manufacture enormous quantities of conventional weapons. Those capabilities remain essential, but the modern defense industry increasingly extends into areas once considered separate from military power. Semiconductor production, software engineering, artificial intelligence research, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and communications infrastructure are becoming central components of national defense capability. The modern battlefield is increasingly connected to research laboratories, technology companies, and industrial networks. This does not mean traditional weapons have become irrelevant. Artillery, aircraft, armored vehicles, and naval systems remain critical. But the pace of technological change means that military advantage will increasingly depend upon how quickly those systems can evolve after they enter service.
The twentieth-century model of procurement often operated on timelines measured in decades. The emerging model increasingly operates on timelines measured in months or even weeks. A battlefield lesson can become a software improvement. A tactical vulnerability can produce a new countermeasure. A design limitation can lead to a revised production method. The strategic competition therefore shifts from simply producing weapons to producing adaptation. This requires a new understanding of military personnel. Future forces will still require soldiers, commanders, and traditional combat specialists, but they will increasingly operate alongside engineers, software developers, robotics technicians, intelligence analysts, electronic warfare specialists, and manufacturing experts. The emergence of this new military workforce is already producing new models of service that blur the traditional boundary between civilian expertise and defense capability. Programs such as the U.S. Army’s Executive Innovation Corps and the Navy’s innovation reserve initiatives seek to bring highly skilled technology professionals from the private sector into military service while allowing them to maintain their civilian careers, creating a flexible pool of expertise in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, and advanced software development. The military professional of the future will need more than proficiency with a particular platform. Increasingly, effectiveness will depend upon the ability to operate within a network of humans and machines that constantly changes.
The concept of military power is expanding. The battlefield is no longer only where soldiers fight. It also exists in laboratories, factories, data centers, communications networks, and training environments where future capabilities are developed. The strongest defense industries will therefore not simply manufacture weapons. They will create learning systems. They will be organizations capable of taking information from the battlefield, converting that information into knowledge, and turning that knowledge into improved capability faster than an opponent can respond. And for Russia, the idea of creating a technical force incentivized for voluntary service should be put into place. By this, I envision highly skilled persons being trained in facets of modernized warfare being part of a military/private initiative that provides for the most skilled operators serving in the various fields to operate or develop these new synergies, who then become part of a wider complex that will constantly evolve and universally incentivize service.
The New Advantage
Read more: What Is the Next Weapon? The Rise of the Adaptive Military EcosystemThe history of warfare is a history of adaptation. The greatest military transformations occurred when societies reorganized themselves around new realities. Naval power changed when nations built industrial fleets and global logistics networks. Air power changed when states developed aviation industries, pilot training systems, and integrated command structures. Nuclear strategy changed when nations built entirely new scientific and industrial institutions.
The emerging era follows the same pattern. The future advantage will not belong simply to those who possess the most advanced weapon. It will belong to those who can create the strongest adaptive ecosystem around that weapon. This has implications for every major defense power. Whether considering Russia, the United States, China, NATO members, or other nations seeking modern military capability, the central challenge is the same: creating institutions capable of continuous learning and technological evolution.
Future defense partnerships may increasingly resemble technological networks. Different nations may contribute different strengths, manufacturing capacity, scientific research, software development, industrial resources, logistics, or specialized expertise. The effectiveness of the collective system may become more important than the capability of any single participant. The question “What is the next weapon?” therefore has an unexpected answer. It may not be a drone, a robot, or an artificial intelligence system. It may be the ability of a society to repeatedly create the next weapon after the current one becomes obsolete.
The defining competition of the twenty-first century will not simply be between armies. It will be between systems of innovation, adaptation, and resilience. Victory has always belonged to those who can change the nature of the battlefield faster than their opponents can adjust. In the next era of warfare, adaptation itself may become the ultimate strategic weapon.
Swarming jellyfish overrun French nuclear plant on same date two years in a row
The jellyfish invasion is the latest in a series of climate change-driven incidents that have affected a record number of French nuclear reactors over the summer.
August 11, 2026 By Nicolas Camut,
https://www.politico.eu/article/swarming-jellyfish-overrun-french-nuclear-plant-on-same-date-two-years-in-a-row/
Aug. 11 is quickly becoming jellyfish invasion day at the Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France.
Despite spending hundreds of thousands of euros to protect the plant from a jellyfish swarm like the one that saw reactors shuttered on Aug. 11, 2025, French utility provider EDF on Tuesday was again forced to bring the parts of the facility offline due to the presence of “several dozen tons” of jellyfish blocking pumping systems.
“On-site teams are fully mobilized to ensure the safety of the facilities and to reconnect the reactors to the national power grid,” EDF said in a statement.
Three fishing vessels are now “constantly patrolling off the coast of the plant” to conduct “preventive fishing operations […] 24/7,” the company added.
Tuesday’s jellyfish invasion is the latest in a series of climate change-driven incidents that have affected French nuclear energy during a particularly infernal summer.
Nuclear power plants are typically built by rivers or on coastlines so they can use nearby water sources to cool their reactors. But a record number in France this summer have been forced to temporarily shut down due to heatwaves and droughts affecting their water supply.
Rising sea temperatures have made jellyfish swarms more common along the French coast in recent years, and those swarms can affect a plant’s ability to bring in seawater — which is what happened at Gravelines. Following last year’s incident at the plant along the North Sea, EDF installed cameras and deployed fishing boats to monitor the situation.
While the vessels “prevented a massive influx of jellyfish” on Saturday and Sunday, they were eventually overwhelmed as the swarm grew from “about 100 kilograms” to “several dozen tons,” the French state-owned utility giant said.
Opponents of nuclear energy were quick to jump on the incident.
“This only highlights that nuclear power plants are ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of climate change,” the French branch of Greenpeace said in statement.
Gaza’s Board of Pieces
Israel will never permit reconstruction in Gaza. It will never restore health facilities or water treatment plants. It will never turn over authority to an International Stabilization Force (ISF), one which only exists on paper. It will never permit the creation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza or agree to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. But Trump’s Gaza Riviera is nothing more than a pathetic temporary camp along the ceasefire line near Rafah. It consists of “portable cabins” under Palestinian administration and a tiny international security force, according to The Guardian
August 11, 2026 Chris Hedges ScheerPost
There is no ceasefire in Gaza. There is no functioning “Board of Peace.” There is no roadmap to ending the genocide or mechanism to creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has refused to implement or abide by any of the conditions of Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” since its inception. It won’t begin to honor them now.
There is only genocide. It changes shape and intensity. But it does not change its essence.
Trump’s plan is a mirage, a conjuring trick, a fleeting vanity project. In October 2025, Trump gathered world leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to announce his peace deal, which he said “took 3,000 years” to achieve, before disappearing offstage. The peace plan, like the smoke-and-mirrors act that defines the Trump era, has been relegated to a dark memory hole, as our P.T. Barnum commander in chief trots out another bloody spectacle: war on Iran.
Trump announced a “historic” agreement on July 30 that entailed “the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.” He called the 15-point plan, credited to the Board of Peace, which has no Palestinian representatives and installed Trump as its chair for life, “a monumental step toward lasting peace and security.”
But Hamas swiftly qualified the demand by saying that handing over its heavy weapons was only contingent on Israel ending “all forms of” its “aggression” and withdrawing its occupying forces from Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu blithely dismissed Trump’s proposal. Israel, he said, will not withdraw its forces until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed.
Read this to mean never.
The peace plan — which was endorsed by the United Nations in a stunning disregard for Palestinian sovereignty and international law — was never more than a publicity stunt. It exists to provide Israel with the diplomatic cover to bring the genocide to its intended conclusion — the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza — a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
Since the “ceasefire” went into effect on Oct. 10, 2025, two months before the Trump “peace plan” was formalised, Israel has killed 1,258 Palestinians in Gaza.
Ceasefires with these body counts are not ceasefires.
Once Gaza is emptied, the West Bank will be next.
Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, this one is the least serious.
Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire began — which took place — it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement.
That is the point.
“It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand,” I wrote when the plan was announced. “Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only ‘rhetoric’”
Israel, I noted, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”
“Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement?” I asked. “Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?”
“How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?” I continued. “How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?”
“Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?” I wrote. “Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?”
Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed and around 81 percent of all structures are damaged, according to UN estimates. The Strip has been reduced to 61 million tons of rubble, including nine million tons of hazardous waste that includes asbestos, industrial waste, and heavy metals, in addition to unexploded ordinance and an estimated 10,000 decaying corpses. Israel has demolished some 1,500 buildings since the ceasefire went into effect.
How can anyone believe that Israel, intent on leveling Gaza, will reverse itself to allow Palestinians to rebuild what it spent so much time, money and blood to destroy?
Retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, echoed this sentiment on Sunday on Israel’s 103FM radio station.
“Israel has no interest in Gaza being rebuilt, it is better for us that it be destroyed for generations to come,” Eiland said.
“The greater the despair in Gaza and the greater the destruction, and the greater the monument to what they did on October 7, years to come, that is good,” he added.
Israel will never permit reconstruction in Gaza. It will never restore health facilities or water treatment plants. It will never turn over authority to an International Stabilization Force (ISF), one which only exists on paper. It will never permit the creation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza or agree to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. But Trump’s Gaza Riviera is nothing more than a pathetic temporary camp along the ceasefire line near Rafah. It consists of “portable cabins” under Palestinian administration and a tiny international security force, according to The Guardian…………………………………………………………………………………
Palestinians, 90 percent of whom have been displaced, continue to live in tent cities amid rubble and open pools of raw sewage. They lack toilets or electricity. There is an 80 percent unemployment rate. Tens of thousands of children suffer acute malnutrition in Gaza. A child, on average, is killed every day.
Tacitus understood. They made a desert and call it peace.
Trump’s plan was not designed to end the conflict. It was not designed to provide an equitable settlement for the Palestinians. It was not designed to halt the ongoing mass slaughter. It was designed to allow Israel to complete its genocide and drive surviving Palestinians from their homeland — the culmination of the Zionist dream.
Trump, however obtuse, has at least figured this out. https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/11/gazas-board-of-pieces/
The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with Trump
Our new book, Israel’s Lobby, tracks the growth over decades of the most powerful foreign policy lobby in American history.
Today, the influence of the groups loosely known as the Israel lobby has only become more powerful. Truman’s bind – caught between his sense of the national interest and the domestic political price of defying a powerful lobby – was something that, in the decades to come, president after president would experience.
To fast forward: Donald Trump’s decision to go to war on Iran earlier this year came after a sustained campaign by Israel to convince the US to join the disastrous operation. It also came in defiance of several of his top advisers, as well as the 45% of Republicans who hold an unfavorable view of Israel.
Ian Lustick and Eli CliftonSun 2 Aug 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/02/pro-israel-lobby-presidents
In 1948, with war raging in Palestine, Harry Truman found himself trapped.
On one side were Zionist lobbyists and the president’s domestic political advisers, who were urging him to support the establishment of a Jewish state in as much of Palestine as possible. On the other were his top foreign policy and national security officials, led by the secretary of state, George C Marshall. Their unanimous recommendation was to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, which they believed would trigger war in the Middle East and endanger the future of US relations with the Arab and Muslim world.
With the exception perhaps of George Washington, no diplomatic or military leader in American history had a reputation for patriotic virtue and skilled devotion to duty comparable to that of Marshall. Truman was in awe of the secretary of state, who, as chief of staff of the US armed forces, had been hailed by Winston Churchill as “the true organizer of victory” in the second world war. After the war, it had been Marshall who launched the plan named after him to rebuild Europe.
In the mid-1940s, Marshall pushed quietly but steadily against the Zionist movement’s proposals to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. He was concerned that American support would open opportunities for the Soviet Union to exploit Arab anger, put Middle Eastern oil supplies at risk in the event of a war between the Soviet Union and the United States, and require the deployment of unavailable American troops to prevent bloodshed and instability in Palestine. These were, indeed, the strongly held views of virtually all of Truman’s most important military and foreign policy advisers.
Exploiting the fact that most voters were ignorant or uncaring on the issue, the [Israel] lobby used enormous resources … to punish or reward politicians
Truman was personally and deeply moved by the suffering of Jewish survivors of the Nazi “Final Solution”, but also irritated by and at times furious with the constant hectoring to which he was subjected by campaigners for recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine, including the World Zionist Organization and a host of other Jewish delegations, friends and politicians. Despite his personal exasperation, he could not ignore them. Coming in an election year that would pit him against Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, pressures from the Zionist lobby forced him into an excruciating and embarrassing position.
Read more: The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with TrumpWith Palestine engulfed by civil war, Arab states threatening to invade and the last British soldiers about to leave the country, Truman called a meeting of his top advisers on 12 May 1948. According to Marshall’s own account of the meeting, he warned Truman against adopting the policy strongly advanced by Clark Clifford, his main political adviser, to recognize the state of Israel before it was established.
Such a move, according to Marshall, would be a “transparent dodge to win a few votes”, he said, leaving the “great dignity of the office of the President … seriously diminished”. Marshall declared he would not personally be able to vote for Truman should he bow to political pressure on the issue. A shaken Truman closed the meeting by saying he agreed with Marshall.
However, within two days, exquisitely sensitive to the tenuousness of his hold on the presidency and the power of Zionist sympathizers to throw New York’s electoral votes to the Republicans, he ordered that the US recognize Israel.
Today, the influence of the groups loosely known as the Israel lobby has only become more powerful. Truman’s bind – caught between his sense of the national interest and the domestic political price of defying a powerful lobby – was something that, in the decades to come, president after president would experience.
To fast forward: Donald Trump’s decision to go to war on Iran earlier this year came after a sustained campaign by Israel to convince the US to join the disastrous operation. It also came in defiance of several of his top advisers, as well as the 45% of Republicans who hold an unfavorable view of Israel. That decision may be most quickly explained as yet another example of the erratic policymaking that define Trump’s two terms as president. But a closer examination of the experience of several of his predecessors reveals that this presidential decision is more the rule than the exception.
The fact is that from Truman to Trump, most American presidents have caved to the demands of Israel and its advocates. Driven by the fear of domestic political defeats, presidents have regularly rejected or abandoned foreign policies that both they and their most senior advisers believed were in the best interests of the US and at the expense of making meaningful progress in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Our new book, Israel’s Lobby, tracks the growth over decades of the most powerful foreign policy lobby in American history. Composed of a panoply of organizations, groups and individuals who advocate American policies that explicitly favor the interests of Israel, the lobby was nurtured – and has been encouraged and guided – by Israeli governments. Exploiting the fact that most voters were ignorant or uncaring on the issue, the lobby used enormous resources and concentrated attention to punish or reward politicians at every level depending on their willingness to follow lobby instructions.
Over 20 years after the Truman episode, for example, President Gerald Ford launched what he referred to as a “reassessment” of US policy in the Middle East. The initiative had been advanced by Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, as a way to escape from two years of embarrassing failures to move toward a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement. Both Ford and Kissinger had become intensely dissatisfied with Israeli stonewalling.
The reassessment was conducted by the committee of “Wise Men” convened by Kissinger: former government officials who had served as pillars of the postwar US foreign policy establishment. The unanimous recommendation of the committee was pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to achieve a comprehensive peace, in cooperation with the Soviet Union.
Clear indications that Ford intended to accept this recommendation triggered a powerful mobilization by leading Israel lobby organizations, such as the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). The lobby’s decisive achievement was a letter drafted by Aipac and delivered to Ford demanding that the president “make it clear … that the United States, acting in its own national interests, stands firmly with Israel in the search for peace in future negotiations”, signed by 76 senators.
Ford was “mad as hell” at what he believed to be an Israeli campaign to use the lobby to obstruct diplomacy. But he was cowed. To protect his chances for election the following year, Ford rejected the unanimous recommendation from the “Wise Men”, returning instead to the step-by-step process that had so infuriated him, a process of essentially buying slices of the Sinai Peninsula – seized from Egypt in 1967 – from Israel with increasing amounts of aid and then returning them to Egypt. Ford and Kissinger also vastly increased the scale and scope of US support for Israel.
That included a sweeping new collection of US political, economic, military and diplomatic commitments made in a US-Israeli Memorandum of Agreement that, along with secret annexes, was signed on 1 September 1975. Aides to Kissinger described the guarantees and concessions made to Israel in these negotiations as “mind-boggling” and “simply incredible”. In his memoir, Ford wrote bitterly about the Aipac letter signed by three-quarters of the Senate that had ruined his diplomatic plans and cast a pall on his election campaign.
Indeed, Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter. The lobby hoped Carter, who won 71% of the Jewish vote, would abandon aspirations for a comprehensive Middle East peace, but he was quick to disappoint. The president set his sights on a peace treaty resolving the core issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict. With high poll numbers and an American public that seemed ready for a commonsense, problem-solving president, Carter voiced his belief in March 1977 in the need for a “Palestinian homeland” as a key feature of the Middle East peace he wished to achieve.
The pro-Israel lobby immediately mobilized against Carter’s peace initiative. In a closely held 50-page memorandum for the president in early June, Carter’s senior adviser on domestic political affairs warned him that he would suffer serious consequences, including risks of failing to receive the renomination of his party, as a result of lobby opposition to his public consideration of a Palestinian homeland. Undeterred, Carter offered direct criticism of what he described in an Oval Office meeting as the prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s increasingly inflexible positions. His differences with Menachem Begin, who became Israel’s prime minister in May 1977, were even sharper. Meanwhile Carter began intensive communications with Egyptian, Syrian and Palestinian leaders.
In October 1977, the US secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, issued a joint communique with Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, committing the superpowers to achieving “as soon as possible a just and lasting settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict”. Though fully expecting opposition to the president’s Middle East policy, the administration was stunned by the nearly apoplectic reaction to the US-Soviet statement by both the Israeli government and the lobby. Profoundly concerned with the political damage, Carter requested a meeting with the Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Dayan, in New York. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, who was present at the meeting, “Dayan in effect blackmailed the President by saying that unless he had assurances that we would oppose an independent West Bank and that we would give them economic and military aid, he would have to indicate our unwillingness in his public statements here in the United States … ‘I can go,’ said Dayan, ‘to the American Jews.’” Faced with this threat, Carter surrendered.
The next day, Vance and Dayan issued a joint statement summarizing a US-Israeli “working paper” prepared in the early hours of the morning. The statement affirmed negotiations would be dramatically scaled back and would not frame a Palestinian homeland as a central issue. The end result was a celebrated “separate peace” between Israel and Egypt that earned Carter, Begin and Sadat Nobel peace prizes, but also led to the isolation of Egypt in the Arab world and the assassination of Sadat. It also set the stage for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and settlement projects that resulted in Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It is likely, 13 years later, that President George HW Bush felt just as Carter must have felt when, faced with the Israel lobby’s ferocious opposition to his Arab-Israeli peace initiatives, he made public his frustration with its influence. In a failed effort to boost the prospects for the upcoming Madrid peace conference, Bush suspended US loan guarantees amounting to what Israel was spending on housing in occupied territories and faced ferocious opposition from the Israel lobby for doing so. In a press conference he described his exasperation.
“We’re up against very strong and effective, sometimes, groups that go up to [Capitol Hill]” Bush said. “I heard today there was something like a thousand lobbyists on the hill working the other side of the question. We’ve got one lonely little guy down here doing it.”
The lobby’s ability to thwart presidential peace initiatives was on particularly powerful display again during the Obama administration. No president before him had entered the White House with such detailed knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, such a record of personal engagement with both Jews and Palestinians, and such a sustained commitment to closer American relations with Arabs and Muslims. Fully embracing a “two-state solution” to the problem, he launched a high-profile peace initiative to be jumpstarted by a full-scale Israeli freeze on West Bank settlements.
But a storm of outrage in Israel and among leaders of Israel’s lobby in the United States, and the public feud that erupted between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, proved more costly to the former than the latter. Obama quickly reversed course, in effect replacing his peace process envoy George Mitchell, who was closely identified as friendly to the Palestinians, with Dennis Ross, a lobby insider, whose advice to ditch the effort altogether the president quickly implemented. Instead of pressing Israel to stop settlements, Obama made a personal call to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, threatening to pull $450m in American aid to the Palestinians if Abbas did not withdraw an anti-settlement resolution put forward at the UN security council. In Obama’s address to the United Nations, general assembly, in the first year of his second term, he shifted dramatically from language used in his previous UN speeches. Instead of criticizing Israeli settlements and pressing for a two-state solution, he identified himself with Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism, opposed any UN action contrary to Israel’s insistence on direct negotiations between the parties, and condemned challenges to the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.
The reason for Obama’s dramatic retreat is easily inferable from his memoir, A Promised Land, in which he complains about Aipac’s ability to cow American politicians into obeisance by invoking fears of being labelled antisemitic, and emphasized his own particular vulnerability to such threats as “a Black man with a Muslim name who lived in the same neighborhood as Louis Farrakhan”.
In the wake of the genocide, the politics of the issue in America have changed as numerous Americans react with passion to Israeli onslaughts
More recently, in Joe Biden, the Israel lobby found a president who genuinely believed the Jewish state deserved the “special relationship” with the US. The firmness of that commitment was put to the test by Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Socialized into accepting the lobby’s mantra that any “daylight” between Washington and Jerusalem would encourage Arab intransigence, and remembering the political punishment Obama received for showing “tough love” to the Israelis, Biden, quashed all recommendations from his top advisers to do something meaningful to stop the Israeli onslaught on Gazan Palestinians. When he did make limited complaints about excessive civilian casualties and implemented minor delays in American resupply of Israeli armaments, the Republican Jewish Coalition responded by slamming the administration for inserting daylight into the US-Israel relationship, while Aipac sent a detailed memorandum to members of Congress defending Israeli actions as limited, necessary and designed to reduce civilian casualties.
The experience of these administrations demonstrates the wisdom and extraordinary insight of America’s first president, George Washington. In his Farewell Address, Washington warned that the American system of government could all too easily be exploited by a group with a “passionate attachment” to a foreign country. In a system designed to rely on the mobilization of countervailing power to limit the effects of factions driven by self-interest or very particular points of view, Washington argued that since any faction committed to the interests of another country would not naturally find its influence checked by effective domestic opposition, it would therefore drive the United States into exaggerated and dangerous commitments abroad and implicate it in quarrels and wars contrary to the country’s interests.
In the wake of the genocide, the politics of the issue in America have changed as numerous Americans react with passion to Israeli onslaughts in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. Biden and Kamala Harris paid heavy costs for knuckling to Israel and its lobby. Nearly a third of voters who voted for Biden in 2020 and did not vote for Harris in 2024 said that ending Israel’s violence in Gaza was the top issue influencing their voting decisions. Across both parties, support for Israel has plummeted; 60% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel, and a record number of Israel critics are winning congressional primaries.
But these losses have not deterred Israel or its lobby from working to reverse Trump’s 2024 campaign promises to avoid wars in the Middle East, to pursue even closer relations between the US and Israeli militaries, and to spend millions to thwart the rise of critics of the country.
To be sure, American supporters of Israel and its governments have every right to express their opinions and work to shape public policy, and the lobby is by no means the only vehicle for moneyed interests that warp American democracy. Moreover, American presidents have free will: the George W Bush administration was run by many who were in perfect ideological alignment with the Israeli right. An incompetent and gullible Trump is plainly responsible for yielding to Israeli pressure and dragging the US into the latest war.
But unless other groups are able to act freely with other interests in mind – and without the threat of antisemitism accusations – US policy in the Middle East will remain dangerously distorted. Both to secure and advance American interests abroad and to protect American freedoms at home, Americans must unite to prevent any foreign power from enjoying the influence over policy and public debate that Israel has exercised, both directly and through the faction operating on its behalf.
- Eli Clifton is a co-founder and senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
- Ian Lustick is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in Arab-Israeli relations and US foreign policy
- This essay was adapted from the book Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power , out 11 August by Atria/One Signal Publishers
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