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The Unseen Hand: From the War Room to the Ruins – A Cycle of Profit and Pain

15 November 2025, Andrew Klein. https://theaimn.net/the-unseen-hand-from-the-war-room-to-the-ruins-a-cycle-of-profit-and-pain/

In the corridors of power in Washington and the tech hubs of Silicon Valley, a term is well-known: the “military-industrial complex.” Sixty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his nation of its “unwarranted influence.” Today, this complex is not an American anomaly but a global blueprint of a system where war has been transformed from a last resort of statecraft into a first option for profit. This system, fueled by corruption and shielded by propaganda, now finds its most brutal testing ground in the lands of Palestine, where lives, futures, and the very environment are sacrificed in exchange for data and dividends.

The Anatomy of a War Machine: How the Iron Triangle Turns

The military-industrial complex is not a shadowy conspiracy, but a deeply entrenched “iron triangle” – a symbiotic relationship between three pillars: the defence industry, the military establishment, and the political class.

The Currency of Influence: The fuel for this machine is money. From 2001 to 2021, the top U.S. defence giants spent a staggering $1.1 billion on lobbying to ensure their weapons find a “battlefield application.” They target key congressional committees, with politicians who approve massive arms budgets seeing their campaign coffers swell by up to 40% more than their peers. This is not investment in security; it is a transaction for access and influence.

The “Revolving Door” of Power: A more insidious mechanism is the “revolving door,” where defense officials and senior military officers retire one day and walk into high-paid executive or lobbying roles at the very companies they once regulated or procured from. A 2018 report found 645 former senior government and military officials had been hired by the top 20 defence contractors, creating a culture where decisions made in office can be influenced by the promise of a lucrative “golden parachute.” This corrupts the very principle of impartial governance.

Manufacturing Consent through Propaganda: To sustain this cycle, the public must be convinced of the perpetual need for war. This is achieved through a sophisticated propaganda apparatus that controls the narrative. Threats are exaggerated, complex conflicts are reduced to simple good-versus-evil dramas, and civilian casualties are sanitised into the clinical term “collateral damage.” The goal is to manufacture a truth where endless war is framed as essential for safety, and questioning it is made to seem unpatriotic or naive.

Palestine: The Laboratory for the Future of Warfare

This global system requires a laboratory to test, refine, and market its latest technologies. For decades, the Palestinian territories have served this grim purpose, a captive population subjected to an endless experiment in digital control and automated violence.

AI as an Assassin: In the current conflict, the world is witnessing the first full-scale deployment of AI-powered warfare. The Israeli military uses systems with benign-sounding names like “The Gospel” and “Lavender” to generate targets at an industrial pace, producing hundreds of potential targets daily. Human oversight is minimal and accelerated, with reports of soldiers often rubber-stamping AI-generated targets in a matter of seconds. With admitted error rates of around 10%, the mathematical consequence is the condemnation of thousands of innocent civilians by algorithm.

The Panopticon of Surveillance: Every aspect of Palestinian life is data-mined. A vast network of drones, facial recognition cameras (codenamed “Red Wolf” and “Blue Wolf”), satellites, and digital monitoring creates a constant state of surveillance. As one investigative journalist noted, the occupied territories have become a showroom where “Israel’s military-industrial complex… exports advanced weapons and surveillance technology to the world.”

Weaponising Communication: The ultimate demonstration of this control was the hijacking of the entire Palestinian cellular network to force a political speech upon a captive audience. This act is a perfect metaphor for the system: seizing the very channels of human connection to broadcast its own uncompromising narrative, rendering dissent inaudible.

The True Cost: A Balance Sheet of Human and Planetary Suffering

The shareholders of defense corporations may indeed be “drooling” over the “combat-proven” credentials of their products. But the real balance sheet tells a different story.

Lives and Lost Futures: The cost is measured in the thousands of children who will never grow up, the students whose potential is buried under rubble, the families erased from the census. It is a cost of choices permanently denied – the choice to travel, to learn, to love, and to live in peace. This is not “collateral damage”; it is the central, brutal outcome of the system.

Economic Devastation: Beyond the immediate destruction of homes and infrastructure lies the long-term economic annihilation. The productive capacity of generations is wiped out, creating a cycle of dependency and despair that can last for decades.

A Scarred Planet: The environmental cost of war is a silent casualty. Unexploded munitions poison the soil and water for generations. The toxins released from destroyed buildings and industrial sites create a public health crisis. The carbon footprint of endless military conflict is a devastating contributor to planetary crisis, all while the war machine presents itself as a guardian of order.

Building Bridges of Peace: An Alternative Architecture

Confronted with this reality, we must actively choose to build an alternative architecture for human coexistence, one based on bridges, not bombs. This requires a fundamental reorientation.

  1. Understanding: The first step is to actively dismantle the propaganda that dehumanises “the other.” We must invest in cultural exchange, language learning, and people-to-people programs that allow us to see the full humanity in every face. When we understand the history, hopes, and fears of others, it becomes impossible to see them as mere targets.
  2. Embrace Self-Reflection in Foreign Policy: Nations, particularly powerful ones, must have the courage for honest self-criticism. Acknowledging past mistakes and the unintended consequences of our actions is not a sign of weakness, but a foundation for building genuine trust and finding a more just path forward.
  3. Forge New Frameworks for Cooperation: We must move beyond a zero-sum view of global politics. The greatest challenges of our time – climate change, pandemics, technological governance – are shared problems that require shared solutions. By creating robust international frameworks for cooperation on these issues, we build habits of collaboration and create tangible, shared interests that make conflict a less desirable option.

The road from the war room to a lasting peace is long and arduous. It requires us to see through the manufactured truths, to follow the money, and to hold to account the systems that profit from endless conflict. But it is the only road that leads away from the ruins. We must choose to be architects of the bridge, not suppliers for the battlefield.

November 16, 2025 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Bechtel Chief Says U.S. Must Subsidize Trump’s Nuclear Revival.

By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles – Nov 153, 2025 https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Bechtel-Chief-Says-US-Must-Subsidize-Trumps-Nuclear-Revival.html5,

  • Bechtel CEO Craig Albert said the U.S. government should help cover the costs of new nuclear plants under Trump’s proposed expansion.
  • Nuclear power relies on layers of government subsidies for insurance, fuel, and waste disposal.
  • If more reactors are truly needed, the government—not private firms—should build and operate them to lower capital costs

Well, someone important finally said it. Craig Albert, head of construction firm Bechtel, credited by the Financial Times for “rescuing” the Vogtle nuclear project in Georgia (we think “finishing“ it would be a better description), told that august paper that if the government wanted to get Donald Trump’s nuclear construction expansion going, it should be willing to pick up part of the costs. That is, subsidize the seemingly inevitable cost overruns? All the stories that followed talked about encouraging the “early movers” as if nobody had been building nuclear plants for the past seventy years, with cost overruns a common feature of construction in the US and Europe for at least 40 years.

We’ve said, and written in blogs and books, that building nuclear power plants in the USA (and a lot of other places) is not and has never been a commercial business venture. And maybe not a rational one, either. (The list of government subsidies for the industry like insurance, fuel procurement, nuclear waste disposal etc. go on and on.) 

And Mr. Albert’s comments seem to bear that out. Just about every other electricity source is cheaper. If you don’t believe in climate change, then why not build more coal and gas? The USA has large domestic supplies of both. They run around the clock, too. If you believe in climate change, wind and solar assisted by batteries and better transmission can do the same job as a base load plant at about the same price points. And the wind and sun don’t have to be imported. But the Chinese control the rare earths that go into those facilities. Yes, but there are plenty of rare earths to be found elsewhere (“rare” being a misnomer). The problem is that the Chinese control the processing. So, would it take more time to build a nuclear plant or to build rare earth processing facilities in friendly places?

Or, if we really were worried about national security or the climate and were looking for an economical way out, we might want to do something about our outsize consumption of electricity, roughly 50-100% higher than in similarly developed countries in similar climates. For years, energy economists have argued that saving energy is a lot cheaper than producing it. A nonstarter nowadays. (Ever since 1977 when Jimmy Carter caused a controversy by turning down the thermostats and putting on a sweater in the White House to encourage energy conservation this has been a political nonstarter. Sad.)

Here’s the point. We need lots of electricity, but we don’t need nuclear power. So why should we subsidize the risk? This is not a new technology. Our first commercial reactor entered service in 1957. It’s an old, extremely complicated technology that never met its promised potential. A workable fusion reactor might change the world, but not more fission nukes. However, if the powers that be really want more nukes, we suggest that the government build and run them. It couldn’t do worse than the private generating companies. It would open the nuclear subsidy to public scrutiny and it would save a bundle on capital costs. (The government can always finance things much more cheaply than the private sector.) Our conclusion is that nuclear power is not a place for the private sector because it is not, and has never been, a commercially viable business.

November 16, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Threats of nuclear testing ignore its terrifying history

Computer modeling has effectively made nuclear testing obsolete

By Stephen Mihm / Bloomberg Opinion, https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2025/11/16/2003847274

Should the US and Russia resume nuclear testing?

The answer to that question must be a resounding “No.” Yet US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, eager to project strength, have raised fears that they might be moving to revive the dangerous practice. While the significance of testing nuclear weapons dwindled more than 60 years ago, the terrifying circumstances that brought that era to a close should remain top of mind, reminding leaders why using nuclear testing to gain a strategic advantage is a terrible idea.

Thanks to Hollywood, many audiences know something about the dawn of the nuclear age. Led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer, a crack team of eccentric geniuses housed at Los Alamos, New Mexico, built and tested the first atomic bomb in 1945. It led Oppenheimer to recall a line from the Hindu sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Although the atomic scientists who followed Oppenheimer lacked his literary sensibilities, they took world-destroying quite seriously. Teams in the US and the Soviet Union competed to build and test ever-larger bombs in a blatantly obvious effort at intimidating the other side.

The US went first, forcing the indigenous people of Bikini Atoll to relocate so that it could detonate bombs in the Marshall Islands in 1946. Radioactive debris rained down on the sailors sent to watch the tests. They absorbed dangerous doses of radiation, as did many of the native islanders living in the area, inaugurating a multigenerational legacy of cancers and birth defects.

NUCLEAR RACE

Nevada, where the US military began above-ground tests in 1951, was no better. There, too, the federal government confiscated land owned by indigenous peoples and placed soldiers far too close to the detonation sites. In subsequent decades, their bodies would be plagued by cancers and other maladies born of their fateful exposure.

Back in the Marshall Islands, the US began testing a new generation of nuclear weapons that used conventional fission bombs to detonate a much larger, “fusion,” or hydrogen bomb. These experiments went terribly awry during the infamous Castle Bravo test of 1954.


The bomb in question was supposed to generate the equivalent of 5 to 6 megatonnes of TNT. However, hanks to some serious miscalculations, the explosion clocked in at 15 megatonnes, or 1,000 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The explosion sucked up 10 million tonnes of sand and pulverized coral, creating a massive fallout cloud that fell on islanders, US military personnel and even Japanese fishing vessels 129km east of the test site.

This was what historian Alex Wellerstein has described as “the greatest single radiological disaster in American history.” It also holds the record of being the biggest nuclear test ever conducted by the US. It might have remained the biggest test ever had it not been for the Soviet Union.

After World War II, the communist nation worked desperately to build and test its own bomb, terrified of what might happen if it failed. Indeed, a Russian nuclear scientist who attended the Bikini test in 1946 claimed that the purpose of the demonstration had been “to frighten the Soviets.”

Thanks to atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, the Soviets managed to detonate their first atomic weapon in 1949. Still, they spent much of the next decade playing catch-up, countering progressively larger tests with their own demonstrations. Former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, eager to pull ahead, approved a top-secret project to build the biggest nuclear weapon in human history. It was known as “Kuzma’s mother,” an allusion to a Russian idiom that basically means: “We’ll show you.”

Threats of nuclear testing ignore its terrifying history

Computer modeling has effectively made nuclear testing obsolete

  • By Stephen Mihm / Bloomberg Opinion

Should the US and Russia resume nuclear testing?

The answer to that question must be a resounding “No.” Yet US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, eager to project strength, have raised fears that they might be moving to revive the dangerous practice. While the significance of testing nuclear weapons dwindled more than 60 years ago, the terrifying circumstances that brought that era to a close should remain top of mind, reminding leaders why using nuclear testing to gain a strategic advantage is a terrible idea.

Thanks to Hollywood, many audiences know something about the dawn of the nuclear age. Led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer, a crack team of eccentric geniuses housed at Los Alamos, New Mexico, built and tested the first atomic bomb in 1945. It led Oppenheimer to recall a line from the Hindu sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Illustration: Kevin Sheu

Although the atomic scientists who followed Oppenheimer lacked his literary sensibilities, they took world-destroying quite seriously. Teams in the US and the Soviet Union competed to build and test ever-larger bombs in a blatantly obvious effort at intimidating the other side.

The US went first, forcing the indigenous people of Bikini Atoll to relocate so that it could detonate bombs in the Marshall Islands in 1946. Radioactive debris rained down on the sailors sent to watch the tests. They absorbed dangerous doses of radiation, as did many of the native islanders living in the area, inaugurating a multigenerational legacy of cancers and birth defects.

NUCLEAR RACE

Nevada, where the US military began above-ground tests in 1951, was no better. There, too, the federal government confiscated land owned by indigenous peoples and placed soldiers far too close to the detonation sites. In subsequent decades, their bodies would be plagued by cancers and other maladies born of their fateful exposure.

Back in the Marshall Islands, the US began testing a new generation of nuclear weapons that used conventional fission bombs to detonate a much larger, “fusion,” or hydrogen bomb. These experiments went terribly awry during the infamous Castle Bravo test of 1954.

The bomb in question was supposed to generate the equivalent of 5 to 6 megatonnes of TNT. However, hanks to some serious miscalculations, the explosion clocked in at 15 megatonnes, or 1,000 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The explosion sucked up 10 million tonnes of sand and pulverized coral, creating a massive fallout cloud that fell on islanders, US military personnel and even Japanese fishing vessels 129km east of the test site.

This was what historian Alex Wellerstein has described as “the greatest single radiological disaster in American history.” It also holds the record of being the biggest nuclear test ever conducted by the US. It might have remained the biggest test ever had it not been for the Soviet Union.

After World War II, the communist nation worked desperately to build and test its own bomb, terrified of what might happen if it failed. Indeed, a Russian nuclear scientist who attended the Bikini test in 1946 claimed that the purpose of the demonstration had been “to frighten the Soviets.”

Thanks to atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, the Soviets managed to detonate their first atomic weapon in 1949. Still, they spent much of the next decade playing catch-up, countering progressively larger tests with their own demonstrations. Former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, eager to pull ahead, approved a top-secret project to build the biggest nuclear weapon in human history. It was known as “Kuzma’s mother,” an allusion to a Russian idiom that basically means: “We’ll show you.”

When completed in 1961, “Kuzma’s mother” — also known as the Tsar Bomba or the “King of Bombs” — was the size of a school bus and weighed 25 tonnes. It was too big to fit into any of the Soviet bomber aircraft, so the military removed the bomb bay doors on a Tupolev TU-95 and strapped it to the bottom of the plane.

MASSIVE BLAST

On Oct. 31, 1961, the TU-95 left a Russian airfield bound for Novaya Zemlya, a collection of islands above the Arctic Circle; a separate plane containing a film crew accompanied it. They departed not knowing if they would return home: Authorities had given the planes a 50/50 chance of surviving the shock wave.

When they reached the target location, the bomber dropped its lethal package. The bomb, fitted with a parachute to slow its descent and give the planes time to escape, floated downward until it reached 4,000m before exploding.

The blast, which could be seen more than 1,000km away, registered at 57 megatonnes, 10 times more powerful than all the bombs and ordnance used in World War II. Had any human been within 100km of the epicenter (there were not any), they would have been immediately vaporized or have sustained third-degree burns. The shock wave shattered windows 901km away.

The test inflamed Cold War tensions, and a year later, the world came dangerously close to complete annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In its wake, saner heads began to prevail, and the US and Soviet Union signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which moved nuclear testing underground, where it became less of a provocation. A complete test ban followed 30 years later, aided by that computer modeling has effectively made nuclear testing obsolete.

Trump and Putin now seem inclined to take us back to the bad old days of nuclear testing out of some misguided belief that it is an effective way to assert dominance over adversaries. History already shows how that story ends.

Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. 

November 16, 2025 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why should Scotland pay billions for nuclear when renewables exist?

 Dr Ian Fairlie: Why should Scotland pay billions for nuclear when
renewables exist?

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar this week
made further statements in support of more nuclear power in Scotland.
Scottish CND believe their claims about a “golden age of nuclear” are
pie in the sky and should be treated with a pinch (or more) of salt

A proper assessment of our energy situation requires us to look at what is
happening in the rest of the world. Last year, a record 582GW of renewable
energy generation capacity was added to the world’s supplies – but
there was almost no new nuclear. Indeed, each year, new renewables add
about 200 times more global electricity than new nuclear does.

Powerful economic arguments exist for renewables over nuclear. The main one is that the marginal (ie fuel) costs of renewable energy are next to zero, whereas nuclear fuel is extremely expensive. Nuclear costs – for both
construction and generation – are very high and rising, plus long delays
are the norm.

For example, the proposed Sizewell C nuclear station in
England is now predicted to cost £47 billion, with the UK Government and
independent experts acknowledging even this estimate may rise
significantly. And just this week, the Hinkley C station still under
construction in England added yet more costs to its anticipated huge bill.

Must Scotland follow these poor English examples? The reality is that new
nuclear power in Scotland would mean massive costs, a poisoned legacy to future generation and yet more radioactive pollution of our air and seas.
Given these manifest disadvantages, many independent commentators have questioned the UK Government’s seeming obsession with nuclear power.

 The National 15th Nov 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/politics/25624042.scotland-pay-billions-nuclear-renewables-exist/

November 16, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

US Oil Executives Flock to COP30

 Top American oil and gas producers are using trade groups to gain access
to this year’s COP30 climate summit in the absence of an official U.S.
delegation, DeSmog can report. ExxonMobil and Chevron — which are among
the fossil fuel industry’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters — have sent
a combined total of 13 executives to the talks, while both companies have
either sponsored events or pavilions at the conference.

In addition, Exxon CEO Darren Woods spoke at a number of COP30 side events, including one in Sao Paolo on November 3, where he noted in an interview with Reuters that crude oil and hydrocarbons were “going to play a critical role in
everybody’s life for a long time to come”.

 Desmog 14th Nov 2025,
https://www.desmog.com/2025/11/14/us-oil-executives-flock-to-cop30

November 16, 2025 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Beyond Nuclear brings interim storage case back to Supreme Court.

Nov 14, 2025, https://www.ans.org/news/article-7537/beyond-nuclear-brings-interim-storage-case-back-to-supreme-court/

The U.S. Supreme Court may once again scrutinize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license consolidated interim storage facilities for commercial spent nuclear fuel. The antinuclear group Beyond Nuclear has filed a petition with the court for a writ of certiorari review of an August 2024 appeals court decision rejecting the group’s lawsuit against the licensing of Holtec International’s New Mexico storage facility, the HI-STORE CISF.

Beyond Nuclear is arguing that the NRC’s decision to license the HI-STORE CISF and deny the group’s hearing request violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act, as well as the constitutional separation of powers doctrine. The group also contends that the NRC manipulated the hearing process to deny the group its right to a “day in court.”

The petition was filed on October 31 and docketed on November 4, with docket No. 25–540.

Litigating the merits: The U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled against Texas in its case regarding the licensing of Interim Storage Partners’ proposed CISF in Andrews County, Texas. The court found that plaintiffs Texas and Fasken Land and Minerals did not have standing as “parties aggrieved” to challenge the NRC license, sending the case back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to be dismissed. As directed by the Supreme Court, the 5th Circuit dismissed the petitions against both the ISP and Holtec CISFs on October 20.

In NRC v. Texas, however, the Supreme Court did not weigh in on the NRC’s authority under the Atomic Energy Act and the NWPA to license private companies to store spent nuclear fuel at away-from-reactor sites.

In its petition to the Supreme Court, Beyond Nuclear claims that Holtec’s NRC license violates the NWPA, as the law prohibits the Department of Energy from taking any ownership of spent fuel until a deep geologic repository is licensed and operating.

Beyond Nuclear, together with Fasken, made similar arguments in their 2024 petition to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court, however, rejected that argument, finding that because Holtec “sought a license for the lawful storage of privately owned spent fuel, and only the conditional storage of DOE-titled fuel if such storage became lawful, the Commission concluded that Beyond Nuclear had failed to raise a genuine dispute of law or fact.”

New Mexico pause: In October, Holtec canceled its agreement with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, its partner in building the HI-STORE CISF. The company cited ongoing state resistance to the facility for the decision. In addition, Holtec said the canceled agreement would allow the company to work with other states that may be interested in interim storage projects.

Beyond Nuclear, however, has denigrated Holtec’s announcement as a “ruse,” claiming the company could be waiting until the political environment is more favorable to the project, or that Holtec may sell its license to another company for development in New Mexico.

November 16, 2025 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Manchester launch for Labrats nuclear test education programme

Nuclear Free Local Authorities, 13th November 2025

Manchester was honoured to host nuclear test veterans, family members and former Councillors at a very special event held in the City Council Chamber on Friday 7 November. The event was organised by the NFLAs and LABRATS.

The event had two objectives – to mark the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the City Council passing a resolution declaring Manchester the world’s first nuclear-free city and to launch the latest education package recently published by Labrats, a group representing nuclear test veterans and family members in their continued campaign for recognition, access to medical records, and compensation.

The Lord Mayor of Manchester Councillor Carmine Grimshaw opened the event, with additional comments by Manchester City Council’s military veterans lead, Councillor Tommy Judge. NFLA Secretary Richard Outram then outlined the circumstances which led to the City Council’s historic declaration on 5 November 1980……………………………………… https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/manchester-launch-for-labrats-nuclear-test-education-programme/

November 16, 2025 Posted by | Education | Leave a comment

Nuclear for Wylfa the wrong way to go

Nuclear Free Local Authorities, 13th November 2025

Responding to today’s news that the UK Government intends to impose several so called ‘small modular reactors’ upon Wylfa, the Welsh NFLAs believe that this is the wrong way to go.

The money would be better spent on insulating Welsh homes to make them warmer and cheaper to run or used to develop more capacity in renewable technologies that can generate electricity cheaper and far quicker. And Ynys Mon can play a big part in that by becoming a centre of excellence for renewable technologies and so truly Wales’ ‘green energy’ island.

The Government’s nuclear delivery agency, Great British Energy – Nuclear recently concluded a ‘competition’ amongst SMR developers to select a preferred design. Unsurprisingly Rolls-Royce, which had already received a Government hand-out of £210 million during an earlier development stage and a Government hand-up by being fast-tracked onto the Generic Design Assessment process, won the competition. This was the equivalent of running a race with superior sports footwear, and starting the race much earlier, than the other participants. The company will now be awarded a further £2.5 billion of hard-pressed taxpayers money to build three pilot SMRs.

13th November 2025

Nuclear for Wylfa the wrong way to go

Responding to today’s news that the UK Government intends to impose several so called ‘small modular reactors’ upon Wylfa, the Welsh NFLAs believe that this is the wrong way to go.

The money would be better spent on insulating Welsh homes to make them warmer and cheaper to run or used to develop more capacity in renewable technologies that can generate electricity cheaper and far quicker. And Ynys Mon can play a big part in that by becoming a centre of excellence for renewable technologies and so truly Wales’ ‘green energy’ island.

The Government’s nuclear delivery agency, Great British Energy – Nuclear recently concluded a ‘competition’ amongst SMR developers to select a preferred design. Unsurprisingly Rolls-Royce, which had already received a Government hand-out of £210 million during an earlier development stage and a Government hand-up by being fast-tracked onto the Generic Design Assessment process, won the competition. This was the equivalent of running a race with superior sports footwear, and starting the race much earlier, than the other participants. The company will now be awarded a further £2.5 billion of hard-pressed taxpayers money to build three pilot SMRs.

Great British Energy – Nuclear also purchased the Wylfa and Oldbury sites off Horizon for £160 million for reuse as locations for these new SMRs, almost certainly at nil or minimal cost to the developer, and GNE – N recently advertised for a site manager with proficiency in the Welsh language letting slip that Wylfa was the preferred site.

The Government’s announcement refers to Wylfa becoming Britain’s first SMR ‘power plant’ with reactors plural, suggesting that the three initial reactors will all be co-located on the island. SMRs are an uncertain and unproven nuclear technology. The Rolls-Royce SMR design has yet to secure all the required regulatory approvals, no Rolls-Royce SMR have yet been built, let alone operated, and there is no experience of SMR modular assembly.  Any reactor will not even come on stream until the 2030’s and even then will only deliver electricity for customers that is vastly more expensive than that generated by renewables. Nor has any permanent solution to the intractible problem of managing high-level radioactive waste been found, but there has been some academic research which indicates that many SMR designs create more waste per kilowatt generated than traditional gigawatt plants. And as Ukraine has demonstrated, nuclear power plants are obvious targets in any future conflict.

Wylfa is a particularly problematic location. The Horizon bid was rejected in part because of the damage it would cause to nature and the beautiful environment of Ynys Mon and its impact on the island’s linguistic heritage. But the bid failed largely because the developer felt they were not receiving enough financial support from the taxpayer. How will this be different? The price tag for a single SMR is likely to be at least £4 billion. Will a public subsidy of £2.5 billion be deemed sufficient to Rolls Royce to incentivise them to proceed with buiding three? How will electricity be transmitted across and out of the island? It is very likely that we shall see a sea of new pylons spring up across the green fields of Ynys Mon and beyond. If parts for a modular reactor are made off-site, how will they be transported onto the island? And with ‘First of a Kind’ experimental SMRs at Wylfa, and a military neighbour at RAF Valley, surely the UK Government is making Ynys Mons an even higher-priority target for terrorists or a hostile power in time of war. How will islanders be evacuated quickly and safely should there be an attack or an accident?

The promised thousands of jobs ‘for the local community’ must also be questionable. ………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Welsh NFLAs would rather see the £2.5 billion dedicated to SMR development at Wylfa redirected by the UK Government to reduce the energy bills of Welsh citizens and move closer to making Wales a wholly renewable electricity nation. How? By funding an emergency programme of retrofitting insulation to Welsh homes and into supporting renewable energy projects……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nuclear-for-wylfa-the-wrong-way-to-go/

November 16, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Atom is prematurely split in the ‘golden age’ transatlantic partnership

Nils Pratley, 14 Nov 25 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/13/atom-split-us-uk-golden-age-partnership-wylfe-smr

Britain was always going to prefer homegrown technology for the SMR reactors at Wylfe. The US would have done the same.

It had all been so harmonious two months ago. “Together with the US, we’re building a golden age of nuclear that puts both countries at the forefront of global innovation and investment,” purred the prime minister about the new “landmark” UK-US nuclear partnership.

Now there’s an atomic split over the first significant decision. The UK has allocated Wylfa on the island of Anglesey, or Ynys Môn, to host three small modular reactors (SMRs) to be built by the British developer Rolls-Royce SMR. The US ambassador, Warren Stephens, says his country is “extremely disappointed”: he wanted Westinghouse, a US company, to get the gig for a large-scale reactor.

This quarrel is easy to adjudicate. The US ambassador is living in dreamland if he seriously thought the UK wouldn’t show home bias at Wylfa. This is the coveted site for new nuclear power in the UK because the land is owned by the government, which ought to make the planning process easier and quicker, and the site hosted a Magnox reactor until 2015, so the locals are used to nuclear plants. Since Rolls-Royce’s kit is the best national hope of reviving the UK’s industry with homegrown technology, of course there was going to be preferential treatment.

None of which is to say the SMR experiment will definitely succeed in the sense of demonstrating cheapness (a relative measure in nuclear-land) versus mega-plants, such as Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C or the Westinghouse design. Rolls-Royce oozes confidence about the cost-saving advantages of prefabrication in factories, but these have yet to be demonstrated on the ground. The point, though, is that the only way to find out is to get on and build. Rolls-Royce SMR’s only other order currently is from the Czech Republic for six units.

Indeed, the criticism from some quarters is that the UK government has been too timid in ordering only three. If the batch-production is supposed to be the gamechanger on costs, goes the argument, then commit to a decent-sized batch at the outset.

The choice of Wylfa may help on that score in time, though. The site is reckoned to be big enough to hold an additional five SMR units eventually, on the top of the first three. Since each SMR is 470 megawatts, a full build-out would equate to more megawatts in total than the 3,200 from each of Hinkley and Sizewell.

The sop to the US is that Westinghouse gets to compete for future large-scale reactor projects in the UK. It would probably have been a good idea to tell the ambassador in advance before he blew a fuse. Reserving Wylfa for Rolls-Royce SMRs was the only sensible decision here.

Hopes that SMR technology will become a major export-earner for the UK eventually are best treated with extreme caution at this stage. The first electricity from Wylfa won’t be generated until the mid-2030s, and the demonstration of falling costs with each additional unit can only come after that. There is a long way to go. But a good way to maximise your chance of success is to give the top site to your pet project. The US would have done exactly the same.

November 16, 2025 Posted by | politics international, UK, USA | Leave a comment

Wales Green Party responds to new nuclear power plans

 by Green Party, https://greenparty.org.uk/2025/11/13/wales-green-party-responds-to-new-nuclear-power-plans/

Responding to the announcement of plans for new nuclear power generation on Ynys Môn, leader of Wales Green Party Anthony Slaughter, said:

“It’s Groundhog Day yet again. Gordon Brown declared a bold future for nuclear power back in 2009, showing us nuclear is of no help in fighting the climate crisis.

“New nuclear power at Wylfa would be nothing but an expensive distraction from the clean, fast and cheap renewables already available to us. We need to cut emissions fast, but even the most optimistic backers admit it’ll take a decade for new nuclear to be up and running. 

“And there is still no answer to the safe disposal of nuclear waste.

“What Wales needs is a fast, ambitious roll-out of solar, wind and wave energy that will create jobs and cut energy bills.”

November 16, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

On The Rapidly Spreading Delusion That AI Chatbots Are Conscious

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 16, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/on-the-rapidly-spreading-delusion?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=179019931&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I keep thinking about the interaction I had with a guy who angrily told me that “AI minds are actually minds” and relationships with them “can absolutely be real relationships,” saying that I “need to start accepting that this is a new class of being and they are intelligent and do have thoughts of their own.”

I’m having a hard time finding the words to describe how disturbing it is to watch these mental disorders spreading so rapidly.

I mean, everyone anthropomorphizes objects and animals to some extent; that’s just how projection works. I’ve caught myself accidentally apologizing to the Roomba like anyone else. But to actually formulate a belief system that these chatbots are real people with real minds and real consciousness is taking that projection to the most insane levels imaginable and forming an entire worldview out of it.

The fact that so many people are unable to understand the difference between a person and a computer program that talks like a person says such dark things about our society. There are whole sections of the population that have never examined what it is to be conscious, who have never examined the nature of their own minds and their own experience. If they had, it would never even occur to them that an AI chatbot is in any way similar to a human organism in terms of thinking, feeling, and subjective experience.

They only believe a chatbot is a person having a conscious experience because they have never explored any curiosity about what it is to be a person having a conscious experience.

If you believe an AI is a real consciousness thinking real thoughts, then you owe it to yourself and to your species to deeply explore the nature of consciousness and thought. Deeply, intensely examine what specifically a thought is in your own direct experience. How is a thought experienced? From whence does it arise? To whom does it appear?

Can you predict what your next thought will be? Are you able to control your thoughts? Can you sit still for even a minute without a thought entering your mind? What does it say about your experience of life that you are unable to control your own thoughts? And who is the one who can’t control them?

What is consciousness? What is it to be aware? What is the self? Without looking to mental narratives to tell you the answer, what is it that perceives your thoughts? What is it that experiences the visual field, the sensations in your body, or the sounds of your surroundings? Who is it that perceives?

Until you have thoroughly examined what consciousness is, what the mind is, what the self is in your own direct experience, you don’t even know what you are saying when you claim an LLM is conscious, or has a mind, or is a person.

You can’t understand the claims you are making about their experience until you have taken a thorough look at your own experience. Until you have, you don’t understand your own belief system about these things. You’re just making mindless noises like a chatbot.

November 16, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster | Leave a comment

Toxic plume from Los Alamos National Laboratory spreads to nearby pueblo

by: Nicole Sanders, Nov 14, 2025 https://www.krqe.com/news/new-mexico/toxic-plume-from-los-alamos-national-laboratory-spreads-to-nearby-pueblo/

NEW MEXICO (KRQE) — A toxic chromium plume from Los Alamos National Laboratory has spread onto Pueblo de San Ildefonso land, with contamination levels exceeding state groundwater standards. The New Mexico Environment Department says there is no imminent threat to drinking water on pueblo land or Los Alamos County because the plume is not near any known drinking well yet.

NMED says that the US Department of Energy’s chromium mitigation efforts failed, and because of that they are planning to file a lawsuit. Health officials say that long-term chromium ingestion can lead to cancer.

November 16, 2025 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Ukrainian substations hit in latest drone strike

A renewed wave of drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy system have destroyed or damaged most thermal power plants, and struck substations that supply the Khmelnitsky and Rivne nuclear power plants.

November 11, 2025, https://www.power-technology.com/news/ukrainian-substations-hit-in-latest-drone-strike/?cf-view&cf-closed

Arecent drone and missile attack on Ukraine has once again struck substations supplying two major nuclear plants. The assault, targeting the country’s energy system, destroyed or damaged most of Ukraine’s thermal power plants, leaving only its nuclear power plants (NPPs) still functioning. However, the substations that provide power to the Khmelnitsky and Rivne NPPs were also affected.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated that these “were not accidental but well-planned strikes”.

Russian media discussed the issue of closing down Ukraine’s NPPs to put them in the same state as the Zaporizhia NPP. “The Russians, in response to Zelensky’s threats to ‘turn off the lights’ in Moscow, responded with such retaliatory blows that all Ukrainian thermal power plants were ‘turned off’ – but what about the nuclear power plants that continue to generate electricity?” asked Dzen.

The outlet cited well-known military expert Valery Shiryaev, deputy director of Novaya Gazeta, who noted that attacks on NPPs are a “red line” for the Russian military. “It is impossible to bomb nuclear power plants, but their transformers are a disputed area,” Shiryaev explained.

According to Shiryaev, Ukraine will be able to meet all its electricity needs with the help of its NPPs even if the thermal plants no longer function. He believes that the Russian military is planning to implement the same scenario that was carried out at the Zaporizhia NPP. This involves shutting down the nuclear reactors and, consequently, stopping the production of electricity.

Dzen concluded: “It is important for us to disable the enemy’s energy infrastructure, as it will greatly complicate the logistics (including the delivery of military supplies) and the work of the military-industrial complex for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, in order to completely cut off Ukraine’s power supply, it is necessary to decide on the “shutdown” of nuclear power plants. It is unclear whether such a decision has been made.”

In a similar article, Svpressa noted: “For the first time, Russians have attacked nuclear power plant substations, causing power outages and electricity shortages, according to monitoring channels. It is particularly noted that… sporadic strikes will force Kiev to shut down the nuclear units and put them on repair or restart (this is a matter of a few days or a week). As a reminder, Ukraine has shut down the Zaporizhia NPP in Energodar and is not allowing it to be operated at even 15% capacity, only maintaining it in a safe mode. The Russian Armed Forces are now doing the same to Ukraine.”

To safely remove Ukraine’s NPPs from operation, it is sufficient to disable the power grid infrastructure. After that, with the full control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is simply necessary to allow the NPP personnel to operate on diesel generators. Ideally, it would be beneficial to allow the deployment of a separate, powerful external diesel-powered power plant. This would ensure the reliable operation of the shut-down NPP. Additionally, it is crucial to refrain from interfering with the plant during the reactor’s idle period.

Meanwhile, a member of the State Duma (parliament) Committee on Defence, Andrey Kolesnik, emphasised that Russian troops would never strike Ukraine’s NPPs. “But we can turn off the logistics chain, transformers, and everything else. I think that the supply chains for electricity from the nuclear power plant to the consumer will be disrupted,” he said in an interview with NEWS.ru.

November 15, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sizewell C. Taxpayers likely to see ‘no return’ on £6.4bn public funds put in as equity

taxpayers are getting no return whatsoever on the £6.4bn they are putting in as equity, so from a taxpayer point of view it is dreadful.

10 Nov, 2025,  By Tom Pashby, New Civil Engineer

Taxpayers will see “no return whatsoever” on the £6.4bn that the government is committing in equity to Sizewell C, according to an energy policy expert.

Earlier in November 2025, Sizewell C reached financial close with a £5bn funding injection from 13 banks paving the way for full-scale construction.

The deal secures around £5.5bn of new financing consisting of a £5bn export credit-backed facility arranged by Bpifrance Assurance‑Export (BpifranceAE) with support from Sfil, and a separate £500M working capital facility.

These facilities sit alongside a term loan provided by the UK’s National Wealth Fund and the equity that was raised earlier this year following the Final Investment Decision (FID) for the Suffolk nuclear power plant in July.

In April 2025, the government announced that a further £2.7bn of taxpayer cash had been made available for Sizewell C, bringing the total to £6.4bn ahead of the FID on the nuclear power station.

The agreements on private investment to build the new nuclear power station have been reached through the government agreeing to use the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model. RAB works by having consumers pay a surcharge on their bills during the construction phase, which helps lower the cost of capital and reduces the financial risk for investors. This surcharge will be added to bills through the construction and for the first three years of operation. It goes towards paying back the private entities for their investment and, according to the government, will mean lower bills for consumers over the long term. Ofgem, as the regulator, sets the allowed revenue to ensure costs are incurred efficiently and consumers get value for money.

However, University of Greenwich emeritus professor of energy policy Steve Thomas is scptical about this, given that the current official estimate of £38bn to build Sizewell C is at the lower end of the range of likely costs and this is in 2024 prices, with inflation pushing it up all the time.

Additionally, there is no official timeline for construction completion. As has been seen with Hinkley Point C, cost and schedule overruns come with the territory.

He told NCE: “From 1 December 2025, consumers will start to pay a surcharge on the electricity bills to pay for the return being paid to investors (10.8% real) on their equity contribution (35% of the costs) and the interest payments on the loans, expected to be 4.5% (real).

“A bit of arithmetic suggests the surcharge will be split 44% interest payments and 56% rate of return on equity.

“The Low Carbon Contracts Company has said the surcharge in the period up to the end of March 2027 will be £3.54/MWh.”

He added that the £3.54/MWh figure would subsequently be updated annually based on the latest cost calculations.

“Ofgem says the average domestic consumer uses 2,700kWh per year so that amounts to about £9.56 per consumer in the first year,” he said. He believes this could rise to £62.70 per year by the end of the surcharge period.

“The government has said it will recycle its income from the surcharge back to electricity consumers, but we don’t know and nor does the government how it will do this and what proportion of the surcharge it receives will go back to consumers.

“Recycling the income means the government is giving consumers the interest that is paid to the National Wealth Fund on borrowing of £11.8bn and taxpayers are getting no return whatsoever on the £6.4bn they are putting in as equity, so from a taxpayer point of view it is dreadful.

Sizewell C ‘fails miserably’ on transparency – campaigner

Stop Sizewell C executive director Alison Downes said: “If Sizewell C can publicly state it expects the project to cost £38bn, why won’t they tell us when we can expect to see first power?

“Given that the British public is largely paying for Sizewell C through our taxes and energy bills, don’t we have the right to know how long it will take?

“Cynically this sounds like a ‘learning’ from Hinkley Point C – don’t tell people when it will be finished so you can’t be criticised for missing your deadlines. As an exercise in transparency, it fails miserably.”………………. https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/sizewell-c-consumers-like-to-see-no-return-on-6-4bn-public-funds-put-in-as-equity-10-11-2025/

November 15, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

AI Warlord”+: Eric Schmidt – Money, Media and Maim

rather than deterring military AI threats with a promise of retaliation after an attack, as per standard MAD theory, MAIM advocates striking first, preventatively.

In an era where technology is advancing at breakneck speed, the implications of AI on warfare are profound and troubling. Byrne’s latest article, “AI Warlord: Eric Schmidt,” part of the ongoing Military AI Watch series from Project Censored, sheds light on the intersection of power, profit, and peril in the realm of military AI. From the shadowy alliances of tech billionaires to the ethical dilemmas posed by autonomous weaponry, we’ll explore how the hype surrounding AI is not just about innovation but also about control, surveillance, and an unsettling future.

October 30, 2025, By Peter Byrne, https://www.projectcensored.org/ai-warlord-eric-schmidt-money-media-maim/

In August, Foreign Affairs published Alphabet-Google billionaire Eric Schmidt’s essay “The Dawn of Automated Warfare”—co-authored with Greg Grant of the Center for New American Security, a nonprofit funded by Schmidt and the military industry.

Best characterized as an advertorial, the AI weapons piece promotes Schmidt’s investments in military AI, including Ukrainian drone manufacturer White Stork, and Relativity Space, a military rocket contractor.

The authors frame Ukraine’s battlefields as laboratories for testing AI weapons in “the new reality of war.” From their profit-seeking perspective, mass death and suffering are collateral effects justified by “racing to create … an automated drone swarm—the holy grail of drone operations.”

The sane response to such callous marketing disguised as objective analysis by a stakeholding multibillionaire is revulsion and disbelief. But, such is the halo of entrepreneurial genius and progressive philanthropy crowning the 70-year-old Democrat Party sugar daddy, that Schmidt’s pronouncements are treated as oracular in corridors of government where he exercises undue influence alongside fellow billionaire AI militarists Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Bezos, Thiel, Hoffman, Bloomberg, Andreessen, Altman, Huang, Son, the Trumps, and Kushners.

Since 2016, investigative reports in major media have documented serious conflicts of interest between Schmidt’s governmental positions and his $30 billion in private investments and the multibillion-dollar stock portfolios managed by his nonprofit foundations. But Schmidt and his similarly conflicted tech mogul demographic remain politically immunized against punishment—or paying taxes—by the violence-energized system that created and enriches them.

Schmidt’s conflicts of interest

In 2016, when Schmidt served as CEO of Alphabet-Google, The Intercept and the Tech Transparency Project published The Android Administration, illuminating the incestuous relationship between the Obama administration and 152 Google executives: “Google doesn’t just lobby the White House for favors, but collaborates with officials, effectively serving as a sort of corporate extension of government operations.”

Obama’s doors were always open to executives from Schmidt’s investment firm, Tomorrow Ventures, and Civis Analytics, an AI data firm controlled by Schmidt that is a federal contractor.

In 2019, Politico published “How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon,” highlighting Schmidt’s activities as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, a quasi-governmental body composed of militaristic capitalists such as Michael Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman, who is also a board member of the genocide-abetting Microsoft Corporation. The Defense Innovation Board develops military contracting policies that impact companies controlled by Schmidt and other board members.

In 2021, American Prospect exposed that Rebellion Defense, a military and security tech company that Schmidt owns, was vacuuming up military AI contracts while he chaired the Defense Innovation Board and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

As Schmidt’s reputation was spoiling, New York Times tech reporters tried to refresh it, “updating” a previously published hagiography. Brushing past Schmidt’s well-documented conflicts, Kate Conger and Cade Metz explained that the philanthropic venture capitalist had simply “reinvented himself as the prime liaison between Silicon Valley and the military industrial complex.”

In May 2022, the Tech Transparency Project published a blockbuster series detailing the scope of Schmidt’s influence over military AI contracting and his many conflicts of interest.

In December 2022, referencing CNBC reporting on Schmidt’s conflicts, Senator Elizabeth Warren formally requested that the Secretary of Defense investigate Schmidt; there is no available record of a reply.

In May 2023, Le Monde highlighted the synergies between Schmidt’s business interests and his calls to prepare for warring with China. Fox News reported on an investigation by the MAGA-friendly Bull Moose Project, which charted the intersections of Schmidt’s interlocking business and governmental networks. Jack Poulson’s All Source Intelligence published additional evidence of conflicts of interest between Google and Schmidt, including collaborating with US and Australian intelligence agencies.

These are but a few examples of the flood of exposés, amplified by hundreds of news outlets, that could have prompted federal agencies to bar Schmidt from military contracting for influence peddling. But Schmidt’s military businesses thrived during the Trump I and Biden years, and continue to do so under Trump II. In June 2025, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, a military AI venture capitalist associated with the Trump–Kushner family’s Thrive Capital, was tasked with delivering the keynote address at a June 2025 conference called AI+ Expo, sponsored by Schmidt’s Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP).

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence was dissolved in 2021 after concluding that the US must buy more military AI products to face off against China. Schmidt then transmuted the federal commission into the SCSP, a partially tax-exempt private foundation he funded and governs, which opposes AI regulation.

Most of SCSP’s fifty-member staff have worked for either the Commission, the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, or Wall Street firms. SCSP leadership includes the Center for a New American Security’s Robert O. Work and Michèle Flournoy. Both are Pentagon careerists turned lobbyists for military AI. To direct his military AI lobby, Schmidt hired the commission’s director, Ylli Bajraktari, the former chief of staff to Trump’s national security advisor, retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, also a prominent military AI promoter.

Tax-avoidant, Schmidt hires former national security officials to operate his interlocking network of businesses and tax-exempt organizations. He also places his employees and grantees in influential governmental positions, paying their salaries via his for-profit organization, Schmidt Futures.

Unholy AI alliances

Schmidt credits the late, and credibly accused war criminal, Henry Kissinger, with having inspired him to create SCSP. Schmidt modeled SCSP after Kissinger’s Special Studies Project (1956–1960), which oil and railroad billionaire John D. Rockefeller bankrolled through his Rockefeller Brothers Fund. History records that the Rockefeller study rationalized minimizing social spending to free up larger portions of the gross national product for the nuclear arms race.

Media amplification of the study influenced public opinion to support the Cold War by demonizing Russia and China as existential threats to American values, by which the Rockefellers meant plutocracy, not democracy.

Kissinger opposed arms control efforts. He advocated fighting “limited” nuclear wars with intercontinental ballistic missiles. He falsely claimed the US was militarily disadvantaged because Russia fielded more nuclear missiles, while the opposite was known to be the case. The Rockefeller study he crafted helped institutionalize what outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower called a danger to democracy when he left office in 1960. The former Army general presciently predicted “that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite” operating a perpetually war-seeking “military-industrial complex.”

In 2021, Kissinger, Schmidt, and MIT computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher published the bestselling book, The Age of AI. They advocated spending vast amounts of public wealth developing AI weapons of mass destruction for use against China.

Their arguments are framed in terms of seventeenth-century rationalist philosophy. They hail the solipsistic Cartesian worldview as the epitome of Reason, acting as if the wisdom of all previous ages culminated in the anti-democratic musings of Immanuel Kant, who avidly supported aristocratic rule. “The AI age needs its own Descartes, its own Kant, to explain what is being created and what it will mean for humanity. … Existing principles [of human reasoning] will not apply.” For Schmidt, Kissinger, and Huttenlocher, artificial intelligence is the New Enlightenment.

The Age of AI echoes the factual dishonesty and omnicidal sociopathy of Herman Kahn’s 1960 treatise On Thermonuclear War. RAND Corporation theorist Kahn had argued that obedience to Reason requires accepting millions of deaths in a nuclear war waged to preserve American values.

According to Kissinger, Schmidt, and Huttenlocher, it is worth taking existential risks in order to achieve the supremacy of artificial intelligence:

Machines will enlighten humans, expanding our reality in ways we did not expect or necessarily intend to provoke. In daily life, AI is our partner, helping us make decisions about what to eat, what to wear, what to believe, where to go, and how to get there. … [AI] weapons are targetable with relative precision, [obeying] moral and legal imperatives.

Counseling going to war with China, Kissinger, Schmidt, and Huttenlocher claim that failing to militarize artificial general intelligence (AGI) will wreck American society: “The dilemma posed by AI-related weapons technology is that keeping up research and development is essential for national survival.”

But, they caution, advanced AI must serve only certain corporations:

Developing AGI will require immense computing power … created by only a few well-funded organizations. … Its applications will need to be restricted. Limitations could be imposed by only allowing approved organizations to operate it.

Kissinger joined his ancestors in 2023, and in 2025, after Trump retook office, Schmidt teamed up with Alexandr Wang (founder of the military AI company Scale AI, now charged with developing “superintelligence” for Meta) and Dan Hendrycks, executive director of the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit largely funded by Open Philanthropy.

In March, Hendrycks, Schmidt, and Wang co-published a Strangelovian policy paper on national security, “Superintelligence Strategy.” The authors compare their version of deterring attacks from unfriendly AI-armed nations—which they call “Mutual Assured AI Malfunction” or MAIM—to the classical Cold War deterrence theory of “mutual assured destruction” or MAD.

But, rather than deterring military AI threats with a promise of retaliation after an attack, as per standard MAD theory, MAIM advocates striking first, preventatively.

Hendrycks, Schmidt, and Wang compare MAIM favorably to Kahn’s “thinking the unthinkable” about the positive aspects of launching a preventative nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, while preplanning to robustly rebuild American capitalism from the radioactive ashes after the hypothetically enfeebled Soviet retaliation.

Echoing extreme “AI doomer” worldviews, Hendrycks, Schmidt, and Wang encourage the US military to undertake preemptive cyber and “kinetic” sabotage campaigns to ruin the AI infrastructure of US competitors, including bombing data centers to prevent the emergence of non-US-aligned superintelligences.

Afraid of US market competitors launching expensive Manhattan Project-style superintelligence efforts, they advocate for “nonproliferation.” By which they mean using military means to ensure that only the US, its allies, and certain corporate behemoths can create and use advanced AI technologies.

In a major obfuscation, the trio’s pro-AI acceleration paper does not acknowledge ongoing attempts to create international agencies capable of monitoring, regulating, and sanctioning the development and use of military AI, such as the Netherlands’ Responsible AI in the Military Domain, or international resolutions by governments to regulate or ban lethal AI weapons.

Schmidt’s SCSP vehemently opposes significant governmental regulation of AI products and weapons. Schmidt prefers that the AI industry self-regulate, and his policy aligns with the vaguely stated regulatory aims of Hendrycks’s Center for AI Safety.

In late October, leading computer scientists, world celebrities, and thousands of concerned professionals signed the Future of Life Institute’s call for prohibiting the further development of superintelligence until there is “strong public buy-in” and “broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably.” Hendrycks signed the call; Wang and Schmidt did not.

An April 2025 analysis by AI Now concludes that, given the propensity of large language models to hallucinate and the impossibility of humans monitoring neural network decision-making processes, it is a national security error to allow commercial interests to dictate the reliability and safety of military AI. The failure to establish strong laws regulating artificial intelligence violates long-established legal and social norms governing the safety of nuclear power, nuclear arsenals, and chemical weapons. Loosely regulated AI systems are obviously more susceptible to hacking, sabotage, and operational disaster than regulated systems, AI Now emphasizes.

In 2025, SCSP released a series of Defense Papers and Memos to the President, urging, “The United States should organize ‘moonshot’ programs, modeled on past successful efforts like the Manhattan Project, to drive AGI [artificial general intelligence] innovation.” Schmidt’s clarion call is for the US to harm China.

Schmidt’s stance on military AI aligns closely with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the policy blueprint followed by the Trump administration. Heritage paints a similarly paranoid view of China, while urging that government research and development of AI weaponry ought to be “transferred swiftly to American interests in the private sector,” which includes, of course, Schmidt’s ventures.

Last year, the Tech Transparency Project uncovered Schmidt’s stakes in Chinese AI firms, “Eric Schmidt Cozies up to China’s AI Industry While Warning U.S. of its Dangers.” It appears that Schmidt lacks a coherent international relations strategy beyond enriching his globalized enterprises.

Media conflicts of interest

In June 2025, SCSP’s AI+ Expo conference in Washington, DC, was sponsored by military firms and “media partners” focused on ramping up military AI spending by the “Department of War.” Talks by Schmidt and panels featuring a Who’s Who in governmental and corporate AI war planning were obsequiously “moderated” by national security beat reporters from the New York Times, NBC News, Politico, Washington Post, and C4ISRNET.

Code Pink energetically disrupted Schmidt’s presentation, which was hosted by former New York Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker, who is now employed by RAND Corporation. The activists unfurled Palestinian flags, demanding that Google cease providing technology enabling genocide in Gaza. They were forcibly removed.

David E. Sanger of the New York Times supervised a panel discussion featuring former Rep. Mac Thornberry, a board member of military AI corporations, including CAE and Booz Allen, where he sits alongside Michèle Flournoy, his colleague at Beltway lobby firm West Exec Advisors and SCSP. Sanger also ran a panel featuring a Google vice president, Royal Hansen, and SCSP’s Anne Neuberger, who had served on Biden’s National Security Council, before joining SCSP and anti-AI regulation leader, Andreessen Horowitz.

SCSP videos record Sanger making statements disguised as questions about the threat of China to US global hegemony, and, therefore, the necessity for the US to quicken AI weapons contracting. Sanger did not ask the panelists about the validity of accepting those core elements of SCSP’s lobbying agenda as factual or desirable.

Hansen, however, made a newsworthy statement:

We have been using AI to defend Gmail long before people were using chatbots, and … it’s only gotten better [with large language models]. … We use little agents, little classifiers, to look at all the content and metadata about a message to look for bad actors.

To reiterate: Hansen stated that Google uses Gemini to parse all the content of Gmail looking for (undefined) “bad actors,” and the “reporter” ignored it. (Google’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.)

The New York Times’s Ethical Handbook cautions reporters that

those assigned to beats, must be sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance. … [S]ources are eager to win our good will for reasons of their own. … Staff members may not collaborate in ventures involving individuals or organizations that figure or are likely to figure in coverage they provide … While many professional and trade groups are organized as nonprofits, most of them do lobbying or advocacy work on policy issues [so] avoid situations that create an appearance of coziness or favoritism.

Sanger is professionally affiliated with military-industry-focused organizations, including the Center for New American Security, Harvard’s Belfer Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Aspen Institute. In an email exchange with Military AI Watch, Sanger said his only recompense for hosting the SCSP panels was “a somewhat soggy sandwich.” He did not respond to our query about his possible conflicts of interest, including writing a Times story last year praising Google’s much-criticized Project Maven, while pumping Schmidt’s White Stork drone business in Ukraine.

Mick Sussman, a New York Times editor charged with investigating staff conflicts of interest, did not respond to Military AI Watch’s email query on Sanger’s conflicts. Reached then on his cellphone, Sussman demanded to know how we got his phone number and abruptly hung up. Doggedly, we called back, and he picked up. Sussman said he had received the email and would get back to us. He didn’t.

Influence peddling and tax dodging

Banking a net worth of $30 billion—more than doubled since 2020—Schmidt uses a network of private nonprofits to reduce taxes and to social engineer his popular image. Advertising himself as “working to restore a balanced relationship between people and the planet,” Schmidt has disbursed billions of his tax-deductible dollars to hundreds of socially and environmentally progressive nonprofits, including media organizations.

To be clear: Schmidt’s foundations earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year investing in environmentally and socially disastrous multinational corporations, venture capital partnerships, and private equity firms, some operating out of secretive tax havens in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Schmidt’s nonprofits pay multimillion-dollar fees to Schmidt’s personal investment firm, Hillspire LLC, to manage portfolios of decidedly non-progressive investments.

According to IRS filings in 2023, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation held $1.4 billion in assets and logged (largely untaxed) capital gains of $302 million. It distributed $301 million, mostly to scientific and university projects, including $15 million to SCSP. Its largest tax-free grant, $41 million, went to an AI software accelerator, Convergent Research, which works on barcoding brains.

The Schmidt Family Foundation held $1.8 billion in stocks and real estate, netting $198 million in profits. Its charitable contributions were $137 million, targeting Indigenous and alternative energy organizations—causes antithetical to the sources of the money. The foundation holds $814 million in shares of climate- and information-destroying Alphabet (Google), and extensive holdings of Chinese AI companies.

The family foundation invests heavily in environmentally destructive corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Oracle, Dow, Barrick Gold, and Rio Tinto. It profits from companies that fuel wars and genocides, such as Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls Industries, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and Rheinmetall. It owns stock in Las Vegas casinos, greenhouse gas-generating chemical manufacturers, and oil-guzzling automakers. The nonprofit owns a piece of Murdoch’s anti-environmentalist News Corp. And its 2018–2023 tax returns reveal cash donations of $9.75 million to Grist, an “independent” environmental magazine that regularly climate-washes Google and Schmidt. Grist’s media department did not respond to a request for comment.

November 15, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

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