The Russian Art of War – Why the West Has No Strategy and Ukraine will lose
Baud is careful to stress that understanding an adversary is not the same as endorsing them. Intelligence, he reminds us, comes from the Latin intelligere — to understand. Without that understanding, diplomacy becomes impossible and force becomes the only remaining instrument.
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A conversation with Colonel Jacques Baud
Ian Proud, Aug 28, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/the-russian-art-of-war-why-the-west?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=211519795&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Colonel Jacques Baud, former Swiss strategic intelligence officer and author of The Russian Art of War: How the West led Ukraine to Defeat, has spent decades studying how different military cultures understand and wage war. His detailed, heavily referenced book — written early in the conflict — remains one of the clearest explanations of why Russia continues to hold the strategic advantage in Ukraine.
Baud’s central argument is simple but profound. During the Cold War, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact organised their forces around three interlocking levels of warfare: tactical, operational and strategic.
After 2001, Western armies largely abandoned the operational level as they shifted to counter-terrorism.
Fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan reduced war to a series of tactical engagements.
When the same mindset and equipment were transferred to Ukraine, the results were predictable.
Russia never made that shift. Its art of war remains built on the classic three levels.
Early in the Special Military Operation, deep operational thrusts toward Kyiv and Kherson were designed to create strategic pressure and force negotiations. When that phase ended, Russia adjusted — not by descending into pure tactics, but by systematically destroying Ukrainian forces while still linking tactical actions to operational and strategic goals.
Ukraine, trained and equipped largely by the West, has remained stuck at the tactical level.
This difference explains much of what we see on the battlefield. Russia’s objectives have been consistent: protect the population of the Donbas, prevent Ukrainian NATO membership, and secure a neutral buffer.
The Istanbul draft of March 2022 already reflected these goals, drawing on historical models of neutrality such as Austria in 1955 and Switzerland in 1815.
The West, by contrast, has never articulated clear, measurable political objectives beyond the vague slogans of “weakening Russia” and “supporting Ukraine.”
Without clear objectives, there can be no coherent strategy and no exit plan.
Industrial capacity reinforces the disparity. Russia’s state-influenced military-industrial complex can prioritise and scale production — whether of artillery shells, missiles or drones — with a flexibility that privatised Western industry lacks.
Lead times for systems such as Patriot missiles are measured in years.
Once Russia recognised the importance of drones, it moved from relative disadvantage to local superiority through industrial mobilisation.
Baud is careful to stress that understanding an adversary is not the same as endorsing them. Intelligence, he reminds us, comes from the Latin intelligere — to understand. Without that understanding, diplomacy becomes impossible and force becomes the only remaining instrument.
The tragedy is that a clearer grasp of Russian thinking in 2022 might have spared Ukraine much of the destruction that followed.
The conversation ends with a sober conclusion. Russia has a coherent political-military strategy underpinned by industry, energy and time.
The West and Ukraine are fighting a war by committee with no clear strategic destination.
In such conditions, the side that knows what it wants — and organises itself accordingly — almost always prevails.
You can watch the full conversation here:
From memory of harm to culture of responsibility
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/08/30/from-memory-of-harm-to-culture-of-responsibility/
The International Day Against Nuclear tests should never be treated as merely symbolic but as a moment to pause before a human memory that remains painfully alive, writes Dr. Ghassan Shahrour
Every year on 29 August, the world marks the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. It should never be treated as merely a symbolic entry on the global calendar. It is a moment to pause before a human memory that remains painfully alive. Since the first nuclear explosion in 1945, more than two thousand nuclear tests have been conducted across different regions of the world. Behind these numbers and locations are human stories: people exposed to radiation, families who lost loved ones, and communities forced to live with health and environmental consequences that have stretched across generations.
From the plains of Kazakhstan to the islands of the Pacific, and from former Soviet test sites to American testing grounds, nuclear tests were never merely technical experiments. They left deep marks on human lives and ecosystems. The last confirmed nuclear explosive test was conducted by North Korea in 2017, a reminder that the prohibition against nuclear testing cannot be treated as a settled achievement.
From Memory of Harm to a Culture of Responsibility
Remembering the victims of nuclear tests is not a return to the past for its own sake. Memory, when joined with responsibility, becomes a force for preventing the repetition of harm. Years of discussions and seminars on nuclear disarmament and human security have shown that the challenge is not only to keep the danger of nuclear weapons visible, but also to ensure that the voices of those harmed do not disappear behind technical and strategic language. Behind every test site there is a human life. Behind every number there is a family, a community, and a memory.
This is why a human-centered culture of disarmament is needed. Such a culture does not view weapons solely through their technical capabilities, nor does it measure security by the size of arsenals or the strength of deterrence. It asks a more fundamental question: What happens to human beings when military power becomes a permanent source of danger?
Nuclear weapons may be described in terms of strategy, deterrence, and balance, but nuclear tests reveal another side of the story: bodies exposed to radiation, environments damaged, and communities forced to live with consequences they never chose. When we restore this memory, disarmament becomes a human issue before it becomes a technical one.
From General Calls to Specific Responsibility
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty CTBT has not yet entered into force, decades after its adoption. Its incomplete entry into force is a reminder that the global norm against nuclear testing is still unfinished. In a world where strategic competition is intensifying and nuclear arsenals are being modernized, calls for the treaty to enter into force cannot remain general. They must become more focused political and civic efforts.
This is where responsibility for the remaining Annex 2 states whose ratification is still required becomes central. The international community, civil society, parliaments, media, and scientific and medical institutions should intensify their calls for these states to take the necessary steps. The goal is not condemnation, but clear and sustained encouragement to fulfill their responsibility toward a global system that prevents the return of nuclear testing.
The CTBT is not merely a technical treaty. Its verification system is essential, but its significance is broader: it is a central pillar of the international effort to prevent nuclear testing and advance nuclear disarmament. Its entry into force would strengthen a vital international norm and reinforce confidence that nuclear testing must not return.
Every year that passes without the treaty entering into force is a missed opportunity to strengthen a norm that protects people, the environment, and future generations.
Civil Society: Turning Memory into Action
This is where civil society plays a decisive role. Survivors, affected communities, humanitarian and medical organizations, and peace advocates do not offer mere testimonies about the past. They carry human knowledge that must inform decision-making. When the story of a person who lived through radiation exposure becomes a heard testimony, and when the memory of an affected community becomes part of public debate, the nature of the issue changes. Nuclear tests are no longer numbers in reports or points on maps. They become human lives with names, memories, and rights.
This is the power of humanization in disarmament: restoring the human face to issues that technical language can obscure. Policy does not change through statements alone. It changes when human harm becomes visible, understandable, and impossible to ignore.
From 29 August: From Memory to Action
The International Day Against Nuclear Tests must be more than a day of remembrance. It should become a yearly point of mobilization for action: raising awareness, supporting survivors, strengthening education, and increasing civic and diplomatic pressure for the completion of the treaty ratification requirements. Media should bring the issue back into public debate. Education should help new generations understand the link between past tests and future risks. Civil society should keep the voices of affected communities at the heart of the campaign and sustain focused pressure on governments whose decisions are necessary for the treaty to enter into force.
Memory alone is not enough. What protects the future is the action that grows from memory. Preventing nuclear tests is not only a matter of treaty law. It is an expression of a culture that says human life is not a field for experimentation, the environment is not a space for sacrifice, and the security of future generations cannot rest on risks they may be forced to pay for.
On 29 August, we do not only remember what happened. We remember the human beings who paid the price. We turn memory into responsibility, responsibility into action, and action into a norm that protects the future. A culture of disarmament begins when human life becomes the starting point.
Dr. Ghassan Shahrour, coordinator of Arab Human Security Network, is a medical doctor, prolific writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, disarmament, and human security. He has contributed to global campaigns for peace, disarmament, and the rights of persons with disabilities. This article first appeared on the Arab Human Security Network website and in multiple other outlets.
Trump’s shipping race with Xi goes nuclear
COMMENT AA BB
Have they factored in the staggeringly huge cost of the multi decades long decomissioning process and disposal of the reactor and nuclear waste? NS Savanna was built 1961, out if service 1972 – the reactor and ship will ‘remain regulated until 2031″ (wikipedia)
Backing from Washington should help address regulatory challenges as well as insurance issues, which represent one of the main hurdles to expanding nuclear propulsion beyond military submarines, aircraft carriers and a handful of Russian icebreakers.
Whereas shipping lines today require coverage for damage to their vessels, the loss of cargoes and injuries to employees, the new ships will need a new level of insurance against nuclear incidents.
US bets uranium-powered British vessels can challenge China’s maritime dominance
Christopher Jasper, Transport industry editor, 29 August 2026
Donald Trump has opened up a new battleground in his trade war with Beijing, and a British start-up building nuclear-powered ships has found itself on the front line.
A US effort to challenge China’s dominance in shipping by building a fleet of nuclear-fuelled vessels is being led by UK-based Core Power.
The start-up, which has 100 employees and moved to London from Singapore in 2020, says it is unique outside Russia and China in having the expertise to integrate reactors with commercial ships, and the White House seems to agree.
Mikal Bøe, the Norwegian founder and chief of Core Power, flew to Washington last week to sign a seven-year pact with the US Maritime Administration…………….
The deal aims to deliver a fleet of zero-emission vessels that travel at 30 knots, or twice the pace of today’s ships, which typically sail slowly to conserve fuel.
They would be assembled in a multibillion-dollar nuclear yard operated by Core Power in the US. Work is slated to commence by 2028, with the first deliveries in 2033.
Trump hopes the plan can revive American shipbuilding and provide a ready market for a nuclear industry.
While China is developing its own maritime nuclear propulsion, the sector is one of the few in which the US is confident it has a major lead.
Onboard reactors heat water to create steam, which generates electricity to drive the engines, providing a permanent source of power and “free speed”, Bøe said…………
The deal aims to deliver a fleet of zero-emission vessels that travel at 30 knots, or twice the pace of today’s ships, which typically sail slowly to conserve fuel.
While the nuclear vessels would cost around $700m (£515m), compared with up to $250m for a large merchant ship, their speed would let them complete far more journeys………………..
Establishing the business case for nuclear power over traditional engines will open up a market to replace 8,000 ships over the next 25 years, Bøe estimates……
Bøe said the Trump administration had been instrumental in accelerating its plans……………
Core Power plans to announce a supplier of nuclear reactors for its ships as early as next month, with BWX Technologies viewed as the frontrunner.
The company is already partnered with BWX – which helped develop the first nuclear submarine in the 1950s – on plans for floating nuclear power plants to supply coastal industrial complexes.
A decision on the location for its nuclear shipyard will follow in the next six months.
A facility capable of producing three vessels a year would have construction costs of about $3bn, increasing to $15bn to churn out ships for the global market………………….
Backing from Washington should help address regulatory challenges as well as insurance issues, which represent one of the main hurdles to expanding nuclear propulsion beyond military submarines, aircraft carriers and a handful of Russian icebreakers.
Whereas shipping lines today require coverage for damage to their vessels, the loss of cargoes and injuries to employees, the new ships will need a new level of insurance against nuclear incidents.
‘The talk of the industry’
Britain’s dominance of the maritime insurance industry could see it play a key role in establishing an insurance regime.
The Technology Prosperity Deal signed by Trump and Sir Keir Starmer last year included a commitment to explore civil nuclear applications at sea and the establishment of a UK-US corridor, which could form the basis of a maritime nuclear insurance zone…………..
Core Power has $200m in financing and will seek to raise a further $600m next year. While existing investors are mostly shipbuilders and owners, the next round will seek to bring in private equity, venture capital and energy companies.
It has also agreed an alliance with authorities in Corpus Christi, Texas, a major US port, to lay out plans for new infrastructure that will be needed for nuclear-propelled tankers.
Mr Bøe said the door was also “wide open” for Britain to become involved in the sector.
Establishing the business case for nuclear power over traditional engines will open up a market to replace 8,000 ships over the next 25 years, Bøe estimates.
He said the first ships could operate on transatlantic routes and that Washington was open to allies – including Britain – becoming involved in the project, although ships were unlikely to be built here.
Bøe said the Trump administration had been instrumental in accelerating its plans.
“The pace at which both nuclear reactors and maritime policy and an action plan to build back shipbuilding capacity have been developed is remarkable,” he said.
“You cannot compete with Beijing on its own terms, we cannot outbid them. But we can put these two things together and establish the world’s first programme for civil maritime nuclear propulsion which creates a whole new adventure and competes with China.”
Core Power plans to announce a supplier of nuclear reactors for its ships as early as next month, with BWX Technologies viewed as the frontrunner.
The company is already partnered with BWX – which helped develop the first nuclear submarine in the 1950s – on plans for floating nuclear power plants to supply coastal industrial complexes.
A decision on the location for its nuclear shipyard will follow in the next six months.
A facility capable of producing three vessels a year would have construction costs of about $3bn, increasing to $15bn to churn out ships for the global market.
The hulls for the ships will be built in Japan or South Korea and floated to the US to be fitted with reactors and engines. The same yard will undertake maintenance and midlife refuelling once supplies of uranium are spent.
Backing from Washington should help address regulatory challenges as well as insurance issues, which represent one of the main hurdles to expanding nuclear propulsion beyond military submarines, aircraft carriers and a handful of Russian icebreakers.
Whereas shipping lines today require coverage for damage to their vessels, the loss of cargoes and injuries to employees, the new ships will need a new level of insurance against nuclear incidents.
Ukrainian nuclear power plant without external power for over a week
This is the 27th time since Russia invaded Ukraine that the Zaporizhzhia plant has had to rely on emergency diesel supplies.
By Al Jazeera Staff and AP, 29 Aug 2026
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southeastern Ukraine has been without off-site power for more than a week, the world’s nuclear energy watchdog has warned.
The plant, which Russia has occupied since 2022, is currently relying on emergency diesel generators, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday.
The plant needs power to keep its six non-operating reactors cool and has only a 10-day diesel supply on site, the IAEA said in a statement.
“The availability of diesel fuel is of paramount importance whenever a nuclear power plant loses off-site power,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has not had a delivery from an off-site storage facility in about six months but was supplied with diesel on Thursday and Friday from another off-site location, the IAEA said.
The Vienna-based agency is now trying to negotiate a local ceasefire to allow repairs to electrical lines.
Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. It has not generated electricity since September 2022, over six months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February that year, but the plant’s reactors must be kept cool to prevent a meltdown of the fuel inside.
“This is the 27th blackout at the plant since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” Ukraine’s deputy head of military law enforcement, Gyunduz Mamedov, wrote on X on Saturday.
The IAEA has had a permanent presence at the site since September 2022, after Russia took control of the Ukrainian facility in March that year.
Japan Govt Asks Eastern City to Accept N-Waste Site Survey
Hitachiomiya, Ibaraki Pref., Aug. 31 (Jiji Press), https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2026083100449
–The industry ministry Monday asked the city of Hitachiomiya in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, to accept a literature survey for selecting a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
If realized, Hitachiomiya would become the fifth site in the country to accept a literature survey, after the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai, both in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, the town of Genkai in the southwestern prefecture of Saga and Minamitorishima, a remote Tokyo island in the Ogasawara chain in the Pacific.
This is the second case of the central government seeking approval for the survey without request from local communities.
Senior ministry officials visited Hitachiomiya and handed a written request to Mayor Sadayuki Suzuki.
“I view the request very positively,” he said, adding that he wants to make a final decision after hearing from the city assembly.
Drilling Begins For First Final Disposal Hole At Onkalo Repository in Finland
By David Dalton, Nucnet 31st Aug 2026
‘Ambitious’ goal is for operational readiness at Olkiluoto facility by end of 2026
Posiva has begun drilling the first hole for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel at the Olkiluoto deep geologic repository in southwest Finland.
Posiva, the company responsible for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel in Finland, said the drilling began on began on 26 August at a depth of 400 metres in the 1.9-billion-year-old bedrock.
The first test disposal holes at the repository, known as Onkalo, were drilled in the autumn of 2022, Posiva said.
The start of drilling for the first actually disposal hole was accelerated followed drilling readiness checks that were carried out before the summer holiday season. In a kick-off meeting on 25 August, safety issues, technical specifications and more detailed plans for the drilling operation were reviewed.
“The final adjustments to the equipment were made in the morning and by early afternoon the drill was already hitting the rock,” said Kimmo Lehtola, construction manager at Posiva Käytö.
The hole, 8.4 metres deep and 1.75 metres in diameter, is where the final disposal canister containing the spent nuclear fuel will eventually be placed. It is being drilled vertically into the floor of a previously excavated final disposal tunnel………………….
Operating Licence Needed
Before final disposal operations can begin, Posiva needs an operating licence from the government. Testing and commissioning activities need to be completed.
“Our ambitious goal is to achieve operational readiness for the start of final disposal by the end of 2026,” said Posiva’s president and chief executive officer Ilkka Poikolainen in August.
At Onkalo, the spent fuel will first be encapsulated before being placed at a depth of approximately 430 metres in the repository, excavated into the bedrock.
Posiva is a private company jointly owned by Finland’s two nuclear power producers: Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), which owns 60%, and Fortum Power and Heat Oy, which owns 40%. The companies are responsible by law for final disposal.
Onkalo is intended for spent nuclear fuel generated by TVO’s Olkiluoto and Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear power stations, which have five units between them.
Posiva’s final disposal plans use a multi-barrier principle. Spent nuclear fuel that has been cooled for several decades is isolated from the environment deep in the bedrock by means of several complementary engineered and natural barriers. https://www.nucnet.org/news/drilling-begins-for-first-final-disposal-hole-at-onkalo-repository-in-finland-8-1-2026
UN spotlights nuclear weapon states’ refusal to ratify test ban treaty at divisive time
Daily Mail, By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1 September 2026
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – With the U.S., Russia, China and other countries that have nuclear weapons refusing to ratify the treaty that bans atomic testing, the United Nations warned on Monday that any new test could trigger another arms race.
U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu told the U.N. General Assembly that it was meeting to mark International Day against Nuclear Tests at a time of “deep geopolitical tension, growing division and diminishing trust,” as well as concern about the possible resumption of testing.
Late last year, the United States and Russia, which have the world´s largest nuclear arsenals, threatened to resume nuclear testing, setting off global alarm bells. President Donald Trump accused Russia and China of conducting tests, which they deny………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.dailymail.com/wires/ap/article-16094507/UN-spotlights-nuclear-weapon-states-refusal-ratify-test-ban-treaty-divisive-time.html
‘Bloodthirsty Psychopath’ Ben-Gvir Touts 2 Viewing Booths at Gallows for Palestinians
. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.
Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation. Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.
The vice president of the European Parliament condemned what she described as “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show.”
by Brett Wilkins | Aug 21, 2026
Still drawing international censure for his genocidal call to kill dozens of Gazans daily, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir faced fresh condemnation Thursday after visiting the construction site of a gallows where Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis are set to be hanged to death, with select Israelis gathering as spectators.
Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, posted a video to social media in which he gloats about the construction of gallows, which is being built in an undisclosed location in central Israel.
“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons – we kept it,” Ben-Gvir says in the video. “I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists law – we did. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”
The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.
Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation. Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing booths where victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.
“Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 was convicted by an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization, whose leader he has openly honored.
Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.
Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions.
“This criminal thug – a sympathizer of murderers of Palestinians, a supporter of terror, and a pathological racist – is also hopelessly infantile,” Cassif told The New Arab on Wednesday. “Soon we will oust him from the government, and next, throw him behind bars.”
European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno accused Ben-Gvir of staging “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show.”
The liberal US pro-Israel group J Street asked on X, “Are we supposed to believe, as some in the Jewish establishment would like us to, that Ben-Gvir’s words somehow tell us nothing about the country he helps govern?”
“He is Israel’s national security minister, and he is now celebrating a facility built to execute Palestinians while Jewish extremists are excluded from the law,” the group added. “As the old saying goes: When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When a government gives someone this much power, we have to reckon honestly with the agenda they are pushing.”
Ben-Gvir – who is under sanctions and banned from countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank – was still being denounced on Wednesday for advocating the daily mass killing of Palestinians, including civilians, in Gaza amid a nearly three-year war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said Wednesday – which was World Humanitarian Day – that Ben-Gvir’s “remarks are appalling, they’re outrageous, they’re dehumanizing, they’re dangerous, and we condemn them unequivocally.”
A spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday in Berlin that Merz “strongly condemns Minister Ben-Gvir’s inhumane statements, which violate international law – they are unacceptable.”
“As the occupying power, Israel must treat Palestinians with dignity, protect their property, and ensure public administration and humanitarian aid,” the spokesperson added.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “unbearable and inhumane,” adding that “further sanctions could be imposed, and all options are on the table.”
In the United States, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo said Thursday on Bluesky that “Ben-Gvir is a bloodthirsty psychopath, war criminal, and one of Israel’s beloved genocidal leaders.”
“America and the world should be sanctioning, divesting, and boycotting Israel in every way until this apartheid regime falls,” he added.
The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectivelyapplies only to Palestinianswho kill Israelis.
Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation. Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing boothswhere victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.
“Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 wasconvictedby an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization, whose leader he has openly honored.
Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.
Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions. Cassif toldThe New Arab on Wednesday:
Walt Zlotow -Trump first president in America’s 251 years to preside over 2 lost wars
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL .30 Aug 26
President Trump loves to brag he ended 8 wars. The truth is a tad darker. He’s presiding over the lost US proxy war in Ukraine to destroy Russia. At the same time he’s presiding over the lost war to destroy Iran in the Middle East on behalf of Israel.
Trump didn’t start the Ukraine war. He correctly blamed predecessor Joe Biden for provoking it on his watch in February 2022. Said it wouldn’t have occurred if Biden hadn’t stolen the 2020 election from him. That’s a wild claim as Trump spent the preceding term arming Ukraine to smash the Ukrainian separatists in Donbas and promoting NATO membership for Ukraine. Both actions were instrumental in Russia’s eventual invasion under Biden.
When reelected in 2024, Trump boasted he’d end the war on day one of his second term. Five hundred, eighty days on, Ukraine is a mere rump state largely land locked and near collapse. Trump has done nothing to end Ukraine’s impending defeat. Just the opposite. He’s still supporting Ukraine with intelligence to fire missiles and drones into Russia having no strategic value promoting victory whatsoever. He’s still selling weapons to NATO to gift Ukraine in their futile effort to stay in the fight.
Trump’s impending defeat in the Iran war is even more catastrophic. This war is all on Trump. He made the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history by believing Israeli war whisperer Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran would collapse within a couple of days if only Trump would assassinate Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
That two day victory expectation has turned into a six month catastrophe, not only for the US military, but possibly also for the world economy unless Trump admits defeat and settles on Iran’s sensible terms.
Two wars, one Trump helped facilitate in his first term, then prolonged in his second term into certain defeat. The second he started all by his demented self whose dire consequences have yet to be sorted out.
Trump’s two lost wars in term two…a dubious presidential achievement, unprecedented and likely never to be repeated or topped in US history.
Autonomous Weapons and Killer Robots: New Warnings, Old Habits
1 September 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark AIM Extra , https://theaimn.net/autonomous-weapons-and-killer-robots-new-warnings-old-habits/
Another bleak warning, another round of Cassandra calls about humanity’s immaculate sense of destructive self. This month, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) Mirjana Spoljaric Egger issued a joint appeal stating that, “We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines.” Both insist that two types of autonomous weapons – unpredictable autonomous weapons and anti-personnel weapons – be prohibited.
In Geneva, the chief of disarmament affairs at UN Geneva, Mélanie Régimbal, held up the fort by reiterating the position taken by the UN that systems selecting or engaging targets and taking human lives in the absence of control and judgment “are politically unacceptable, morally repugnant and should be prohibited under international law.”
Laurent Gisel, head of the arms and the conduct of hostilities division at the ICRC, also spoke from Geneva, describing conflict as “not a story of precision, distinction and restraints” but one “of civilians killed, families displaced, hospitals, schools and homes destroyed at ever greater speed and scale.” In the thick fog of conflict, many variables could come into play. “A combatant can surrender or be wounded and therefore be protected from attack; civilians can enter the area of operations of the autonomous weapons systems; the weapons may encounter a situation that would not have been anticipated.” The dangers of unpredictability in such autonomous systems was hugely problematic. “If it’s not possible to predict it, then how is it possible to limit it?”
These are not remarkable warnings. The UN and ICRC had issued a joint appeal on the subject in 2023, calling upon States to negotiate a legally binding document by 2026. At the level of civil society, the Stop Killer Robots coalition was formed in October 2012 and publicly launched in 2013. The campaign, according to the group, focuses on fostering a world where “we respect each other’s inherent dignity”; take responsibility for choices regarding technology and how it alters the relationships between humans; develop technology to promote peace, justice, human rights, equality and respect for law; and where people work as activists “to build a society and overcome inequalities and systems of oppression.” This is fairly airy stuff, but central is the goal of developing and fortifying “social norms that reject autonomous killing by machine [sic] in warfare, policing, border control and other circumstances.” Control, responsibility, accountability are fundamental features.
That campaign has not made much meaningful progress of late. The faith placed by the military establishment in murderous machines remains an unshakeable one, with the idea of human control over decision making increasingly thinned in favour of the uncritical human consumer of data. That faith has effectively displaced the scrupulous, incredulous decision maker when it comes to acquiring and hitting targets. Within the first few weeks of the Gaza War, beginning on October 7, 2023, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was making generous use of Lavender, an AI decision-support system (DSS) to generate 37,000 individual targets on a crude rating scale of significance depending on affiliations with armed groups. Other systems used in battle included The Gospel (Habsora), which generates target lists and Where’s Daddy?, a platform tracking the locations of individuals ahead of the strike. The resulting slaughter to scale tallied. Far from suggesting a seamless integration of human and machine, the IDF’s conduct suggests a misplaced optimism, and laziness, in deferring to the merits of a killing system.
The disagreement between the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic and the US Department of Defense over the dangerous limits of autonomous systems in war is another case in point. The falling out between the two players in the thanatotic economy was serious enough to see a concerted attempt by the Pentagon to blacklist the firm as a “supply-chain risk.” (This was found on August 27 by the US District Court of the Northern District of California to be an “unlawful retaliation” in violation of the First Amendment and a denial of due process as protected by the Fifth Amendment.) That falling out, however, is not necessarily a boon for those favouring limits on killer robots or fully autonomous military platforms.
In a February 2026 statement, Dario Amodei, the company’s co-founder, conceded that the Pentagon, “not private companies”, made military decisions. “We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit our technology in an ad hoc manner.” Amodei, however, considers himself a politically sentient being, which begs the question as to why he is at the vanguard of denuding humanity’s role in making decisions, notably through encouraging Large Language Models (LLMs) that remove initiative, industry and inventiveness. AI, he claims, can “undermine” democracy, a goal he seems to be pursuing himself. Of personal concern was the use of the company’s technology for mass domestic surveillance, which presented “serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties” and the use of fully autonomous weapons “that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets.” But even here, his quibbles are brittle, given an admission that fully autonomous systems “may prove critical for our national defense.” The concern, it would seem, lay in the reliability of the systems available and whether they would harm American personnel. “We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk.”
Two days after Amodei’s statement, the pre-emptive, joint illegal attack on Iran by the US and Israel commenced, seeing yet another gluttonous use of AI DSS. Targets were generated at speed by the US military’s resort to Palantir’s Maven Smart System, which integrates Anthropic’s Claude AI to assess surveillance data, generate lists of targets and prioritise them. “Many of the targets hit in Iran,” writes Noor Hammad of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), “have been civilian, including a school and healthcare and residential facilities, illustrating the risks of rapid target generation.” Think tankers can always be relied upon to offer the understatement and euphemism in equal measure.
Gisel has told reporters that there is, as things stand, no “confirmed evidence that autonomous weapons have been used to directly target human beings in the battlefield.” This is a distinction with little difference, given the deferential attitudes shown by the technology fetishists in the IDF, the Pentagon and other militaries. If the system says so, it must be right. There is also a risk that these calls for restraint and a legal system of control will simply fatten the detritus of worry without effect. Ahead of the seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) taking place in November, the human species is unlikely to take a pathway that does not first imperil it before seeking, irretrievably, to bottle the escaped genie. From the creation of atomic weapons to the threats of climate change, the worst will always come before any touted panacea. And that panacea, when it appears, is likely to be a mere palliative.
Inquiry into AUKUS – final public hearing today
3 September 2026 AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/inquiry-into-aukus-final-public-hearing-today/
Australia’s independent, crowdfunded Public Inquiry into AUKUS concludes its public hearings today in Canberra, with presentations from Andrew Wilkie, the Hon Kim Beazley AC, Dr Michael Keating, Jon Stanford and Dr Emma Shortis amongst many others.
A huge number of Australians – including a Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministers, senior academics and military experts, community groups and citizens – have presented to the Inquiry across 10 day-long hearings in 8 cities around Australia over the last 12 weeks.
Up to 1,500 people a day have watched the live-streams of proceedings.
Over 800 written submissions have been received.
$200,000 has been raised by crowdfunding, from other individual donors and from civil society organisations, in order to hold the inquiry.
AUKUS Public Inquiry Lead Commissioner Peter Garrett said today that the public hearings have been an extraordinary exercise in real world democracy.
“Everyone associated with the Inquiry has found this process of community outreach and participatory democracy genuinely inspiring.
“It has been many years since Australia has seen something like this.
“The inquiry has asked many questions that the public desperately need answers to, particularly the most pressing one: will AUKUS actually keep us safe and at what cost?”
The Commissioners will draft a comprehensive report which will be presented at the National Press Club in early November.
Livestream of today’s proceeding here
Thank Trump for This: He Has Exposed the Leaking Guts of the War Machine
Every child in the US has a story of this sort, a rendezvous with military propaganda (disguised as amusement)
American warfare since Vietnam has aspired to be fought by gadgets that attack civilians from the sky.
Vietnam exposed a quiet ambivalence in public opinion—the American people have no stomach for massive body counts of US soldiers, and yet poll after poll reveals an atavistic longing for military strength.
There is, however, a new and sudden trickle of hope—Trump’s ham-fisted version of imperialism allows for the public to witness the unflattering inner machinery, the leaking guts of the wounded military organism. The ongoing war in Iran offers something brand new—a nation with a $9 billion military budget has just thrashed a country with a trillion dollar war budget.
As Trump’s approval ratings crater due to his war on Iran, there may never have been a time in US history so ripe for an attack on military spending and militarism.
Phil Wilson, Aug 28, 2026, Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-exposes-war-machine
Forget about Ancient Sparta, Attila the Hun, Hernán Cortés, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, and all of the conquerors that terrified the world with colonial aspirations and a psychopathic lust for blood. None of these ever imagined a $1.5 trillion military budget. President Donald Trump requested that grotesque figure, but don’t give him the kudos—our “fois gras” military machine is a US tradition that predates us all.
The US war machine has scaled Orwellian heights to achieve a virtual blank check to spend on death. For we, stateside, have built a culture entirely at the service of warfare, with myths, stories, and platitudes hardwired into the brains of 349 million people extolling war, not as a necessity, but as ritual, as cleansing, as meditation, and as redemption. We are bombing schools and hospitals to secure the rapture, for the war industry in the apocalyptic end times has been tasked with the creation of biblical events. A recent Huffpost piece by Brandi Buchman quotes US soldiers’ allegations of lunatic fringe Evangelical propaganda from haranguing superiors:
They (US soldiers) are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon.
Thus, war in the Middle East has morphed from the sterile narrative of fighting for freedom and democracy, to the more spectacular notion that US military force has been mobilized to serve Christian prophecy. A military budget cannot achieve the pinnacle of a trillion dollars without a highly evolved story telling industry to prime the population to either enthusiastically back each aggressive nationalistic paroxysm of violence, or to (at the very least) passively capitulate. Think of the advent of apocalyptic biblical warfare as a means of addictive escalation—the nation has gone from coffee and cigarettes to cocaine and crystal meth.
No other era has been forced to see war with the unflinching clarity that this moment demands.
The war propaganda machine in the US is a ceaseless, multifaceted contraption that includes legacy media, the educational system, and the entertainment industry. A nation does not eviscerate tens of millions of “enemy” civilians without first laying a meticulous foundation of brainwashing. I can run the tapes backward to a moment in my own childhood, riveted to the black and white TV absorbing the 1955 Disneyfied tale of Davey Crockett at “The Alamo.” There is Davey outsmarting a gambler, beating up an “Indian,” and bringing both along as conscripts to fight for an Independent Texas. Crockett met his end at the Alamo, but the manner of his death will never be resolved. Did he surrender to Mexican forces (and face execution) or did he die fighting to the death, wielding his exhausted rifle like a club, and falling from a bullet while standing on a hill comprised of Mexican corpses? Of course, the Disney version has Davey Crockett swinging his rifle madly against a vast onslaught of faceless Mexican soldiers as the background song plays out:
The story books say they were all cut low.
But the truth of it is that this just ain’t so,
The spirits will live and their legends grow,
so long as we remember the Alamo.
The film ends with the inscription: “March, 6, 1836, Liberty and Independence Forever.”
Regarding the Alamo, Raul Ramos wrote (in the context of the 2019 effort to remove confederate monuments):
It’s not that the Spanish-built presidio should be demolished or stashed away in some remote museum. The story of the Alamo should be widely studied—but it should be the real history, the one that intersects with and embodies the nation’s history of enforcing a racial order through violence, and the campaigns of white supremacy and slavery that accompanied America’s expansion. The Alamo’s history and myth belong to a war that was inspired, in part, by the drive for slavery, and by a belief in the superiority of whites and their divine right to conquer lands. The Alamo is where the campaign of southern slavery and Native American genocide migrated west and expressed itself in the demonization of Mexicans. It came to symbolize belonging, or, more accurately, defining who belongs and who doesn’t. Rather than being remembered for its historical context, the Alamo represents a litmus test for entry into participation and membership in civic society: Accept the dominant myth, or be marginalized.
The Alamo became a rallying cry, a foundational component of the emerging concept of “manifest destiny”—the ideological core of the most expansive colonial settler state in all of history. But for me it is personal—Davey Crocket at The Alamo inducted me into US war culture at the age of 7. I had my faux coon skin cap, my “smoke gun” that emitted a loud crack and a puff of smoke. The cocking mechanism on this “toy” sometimes snapped shut violently, and many children endured a trip to the ER to have a few stitches to repair a bloody thumb. I remember that well 71 years later.
Every child in the US has a story of this sort, a rendezvous with military propaganda (disguised as amusement) at a defenseless early age. War is implanted into our fragile subconscious at the very dawn of our awareness. But we are not largely destined to embrace warrior culture in the sense of the mythical Davey Crockett, but, rather, we have been trained to get out of the way. American warfare since Vietnam has aspired to be fought by gadgets that attack civilians from the sky. For most of us military patriotism means politely deferring to veterans with a muttered, “Thank you for your service.” We who do not enlist balance personal fear with the idea that war participation manifests the purest virtue.
Vietnam exposed a quiet ambivalence in public opinion—the American people have no stomach for massive body counts of US soldiers, and yet poll after poll reveals an atavistic longing for military strength. . A Gallup poll taken last February showed that 64% of respondents felt that it was important for the US to have the most powerful military on Earth. While the US military budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next nine highest spending nations, Gallup polling seldom shows more than a third of people complaining that spending is too high.
The public is little more than a shadow of the media culture. In 2014 William A. Galston lamented about President Barack Obama’s minor military funding cuts in a piece posted on The Brookings Institute (a centrist, Democratic Party-adjacent think tank) website. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent proposal to cut military spending by a token 10% fell 88-11 in a Senate vote in which both parties reflexively succumbed to orthodox US jingoism. War is not a partisan issue. We all come together to praise and feed the military. US political performance art might be seen as a slavish competition to grovel before the war industry.
There is, however, a new and sudden trickle of hope—Trump’s ham-fisted version of imperialism allows for the public to witness the unflattering inner machinery, the leaking guts of the wounded military organism. The ongoing war in Iran offers something brand new—a nation with a $9 billion military budget has just thrashed a country with a trillion dollar war budget. The US defeat at the hands of Iran is unprecedented—while the US hasn’t won a significant war in 80 years, we have never suffered a defeat with comparable financial consequences. The Iran war, according to Reuters, has a disapproval rating of a staggering 63% of the electorate. The economic fallout from the bungled attack on Iran threatens to escalate to the point of financial collapse in future months. We all live within walking distance of a filling station offering $6 diesel—and that runaway price will almost certainly expand and double, threatening to strangle the US commercial transport system. Mass hunger looms.
We also have American Israel Public Affairs Committee approval ratings at an all-time low and Trump’s approval ratings at catastrophic and utter decline—ostensibly due to his war in Iran. There may never have been a time in US history so ripe for an attack on military spending and militarism.
War once had such an esteemed role in human progress that even the peaceful transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, could not wholly dismiss its virtues:
The student of history acquiesces the more readily in this copious bloodshed of the early annals, bloodshed in God’s name too, when be learns that it is a temporary and preparatory state, and does actively forward the culture of man. War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man. On its own scale, on the virtues it loves, it endures no counterfeit, but shakes the whole society, until every atom falls into the place its specific gravity assigns it.
Emerson believed that war would become obsolete, but I doubt that anyone from the mid 19th century could have imagined that war would one day be the cornerstone of societal and biological collapse. No other era has been forced to see war with the unflinching clarity that this moment demands.
War elevates the need for oil and oil demands war. The oil industry, the military-industrial complex, Big Tech, and mass media have all been structurally conjoined at the intersection of war. War is where capitalist profits interface with mass psychology.
But the gig is up. Public opinion has shifted as Trump and his goons have driven the war machine off of a cliff.
Climate sustainability abides no compromise with war. We are on the cusp of extinction, and war is the primary driver. The US, under Trump, has taken war out of the closet and decoupled it from its patriotic slogans and jingoistic habits. It’s all about the oil, stupid. War has followed the magnet of fossil fuels unerringly to the Middle East. And to compound the predicament, war is environmentally filthy, annually burning more fossil fuels in aggregate than most nations. The US military coughs as much CO2 into the atmosphere yearly as the nation of Portugal. War is also the gauge of our fossil fuel addiction, for US leaders have spent decades murdering millions to procure it.
We all have our psychological histories, our childhood encounters with Disney’s Alamo, with the domino theory, with Saddam Hussein’s invisible weapons of mass destruction. We have reverentially gawked at our father’s and grandfather’s WWII uniforms hanging in the attic, but we all need to thank Trump for creating history’s most transparent war machine. The US military needs to be gutted, cut out like a metastasizing lesion. The patient heaves at death’s door. Do we merely watch?
The Transnational Technocratic Machine: Class War Behind The Flags
One Supply Chain, Multiple Flags
Military budgets in 2026 remain enormous. The U.S. national-defense request approached or exceeded $1 trillion when reconciliation and related measures are included (with the formal DoD request at roughly $961.6 billion). China’s official 2026 defense budget stands at approximately 1.94 trillion yuan, with central-government expenditure of roughly 1.91 trillion yuan—about a 7% increase. Russia’s 2026 military expenditure is budgeted at approximately 14.9 trillion rubles, equal to about 6.3% of GDP, according to SIPRI analysis of the wartime economy. Iran operates with a fraction of those resources but invests heavily in relatively inexpensive drones, missiles, and asymmetric systems.
These numbers are presented as national strength. In practice they recycle capital through the same commercial layers…….. The originating firm often never sees the final military end-user. The profit has already been taken at the commercial stage.
The technocratic class that designs the chips, owns the foundries, finances the distributors, and staffs the regulatory bodies benefits whether the final buyer is a Western defense prime, a Chinese state-linked enterprise, a Russian wartime manufacturer, or an Iranian procurement network.
Gloria Guillo, Tortilla con Sal., August 31, 2026, https://www.tortillaconsal.com/bitacora/node/10200
How a Shared Global Technology Supply Chain Serves Transnational Elites Against Workers Everywhere
The story sold to populations is that the United States, China, Russia, and Iran are locked in geopolitical rivalry, each building separate military-industrial systems to confront the others. That narrative conceals the deeper structure. The weapons carry national markings. The technological base that makes them possible does not. Semiconductors, sensors, power electronics, microcontrollers, RF components, machine tools, and industrial equipment move through the same global commercial networks. Components pass through distributors, brokers, front companies, and third countries before they appear in missiles, drones, radar, or electronic-warfare systems on every side.
What looks like interstate competition is better understood as a transnational class project. A layer of technocrats—executives in semiconductor firms, private-equity and defense-finance networks, logistics conglomerates, and the political managers who write export rules and sanction lists—operates across borders. Their interest is not the security of any particular population. It is the continuous expansion of high-margin dual-use technology markets, the extraction of surplus from workers who fabricate and assemble the components, and the management of scarcity and conflict that keeps demand high. Workers in Taiwanese fabrication plants, Chinese assembly lines, American distribution warehouses, Russian military factories, and Iranian workshops are all inputs to the same circuit. The impoverished in every country pay the taxes, endure the austerity, and absorb the destruction when those circuits feed actual shooting wars.
One Supply Chain, Multiple Flags
Military budgets in 2026 remain enormous. The U.S. national-defense request approached or exceeded $1 trillion when reconciliation and related measures are included (with the formal DoD request at roughly $961.6 billion). China’s official 2026 defense budget stands at approximately 1.94 trillion yuan, with central-government expenditure of roughly 1.91 trillion yuan—about a 7% increase. Russia’s 2026 military expenditure is budgeted at approximately 14.9 trillion rubles, equal to about 6.3% of GDP, according to SIPRI analysis of the wartime economy. Iran operates with a fraction of those resources but invests heavily in relatively inexpensive drones, missiles, and asymmetric systems.
These numbers are presented as national strength. In practice they recycle capital through the same commercial layers. A processor or power-management chip does not know whether it will end in a consumer device or a guidance package. The same is true of sensors, memory, connectors, and machine tools. Once a component leaves the factory, layers of intermediaries can move it across sanctioned and non-sanctioned jurisdictions. Documented cases show U.S.-origin electronics reaching Iranian UAV and missile programs through Chinese and Hong Kong fronts (DOJ indictment of Chinese nationals), with parallel patterns for Russian systems and repeated Treasury designations of procurement networks involving China, Hong Kong, and other transit points. The originating firm often never sees the final military end-user. The profit has already been taken at the commercial stage.
This is not a conspiracy of one secret corporation. It is the ordinary functioning of a globalized production system in which dual-use technology is the most valuable commodity. The technocratic class that designs the chips, owns the foundries, finances the distributors, and staffs the regulatory bodies benefits whether the final buyer is a Western defense prime, a Chinese state-linked enterprise, a Russian wartime manufacturer, or an Iranian procurement network. National flags provide the political cover; class interest provides the continuity.
Workers as the Common Exploited Base
The labor that produces these components is performed by workers whose wages, conditions, and political power are systematically subordinated. Fabrication, packaging, testing, and logistics are concentrated in locations chosen for cost and control. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has documented that the Department of Defense relies on more than 200,000 suppliers and cannot fully identify where all of the microelectronics in the products it purchases are manufactured. According to Defense Department estimates cited by GAO, approximately 88% of microelectronics production and 98% of semiconductor assembly, packaging and testing occur overseas, primarily in Taiwan, South Korea, and China.
That overseas dependence is not an accidental vulnerability; it is a feature that allows capital to discipline labor by threatening relocation or by pitting workforces against one another under the banner of national competition. When governments announce new defense spending, the immediate beneficiaries are the contractors and their financiers. The money then flows downward into subcontractors, component makers, chemical suppliers, and logistics firms—extracting value at every step while the social costs of militarization (debt, inflation, environmental damage, and eventual battlefield casualties) fall on broader working populations.
Sanctions and export controls are presented as tools of national security. In practice they function as instruments of selective scarcity. They raise the price of dual-use goods, create rents for those who can navigate the gray markets, and force poorer states or sanctioned populations into more precarious procurement channels. The same networks that move restricted electronics also move the profits upward. Workers in the sanctioned economies face shortages and intensified exploitation; workers in the sanctioning economies face higher taxes and the ideological demand to identify with “their” military-industrial complex. The technocratic layer remains insulated.
Opacity as Class Power
Supply-chain visibility is weak even inside the largest military systems. The inability of major defense bureaucracies to map every microelectronic origin is not merely bureaucratic failure. Opacity protects the circulation of dual-use technology and the intermediaries who profit from it. When diversion occurs through shell companies and false end-user declarations, the system continues to function for capital while the political narrative of “adversaries” is maintained for domestic audiences. The real common denominator is not shared nationality but shared dependence on a commercial technology base controlled by a narrow transnational stratum.
Disrupting the Machine Means Disrupting Class Power
If the shared technological substrate is what enables large-scale militarization across rival states, then genuine disruption of war requires breaking the class monopoly over that substrate. Nationalist solutions—more sanctions, more domestic production under the same ownership structures, more spending funneled to the same contractors—reproduce the circuit. They merely rearrange which faction of capital captures the rents.
A class-oriented approach starts from the opposite premise: the workers who design, fabricate, assemble, transport, and maintain the dual-use base have no objective interest in feeding any military-industrial system. Their interest lies in converting that productive capacity toward social needs and in denying its conversion into instruments of destruction. That requires transparency forced from below, refusal of dual-use labor discipline, international coordination that ignores official enemy lines, and collective control over the lower tiers of the technological pyramid—the machine tools, specialized materials, and distribution nodes that currently serve capital’s ability to arm multiple sides.
The flags will continue to wave. The budgets will continue to be justified in the language of national survival. But the underlying circuit is class power operating through technology. As long as a transnational technocratic layer can move dual-use components across borders while workers on every side remain divided by nationality and subordinated by wage discipline, the capacity for industrialized war remains intact. Breaking that capacity means treating the supply chain not as a national security problem but as a site of global class conflict—technocrats and their state managers on one side, the workers who actually produce the material basis of modern warfare on the other.
1 This Month
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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