Wall Street Is Pairing Up With the Army to Build Data Centers
“the kinds of things AI can be used for, and some of them are horrifying in terms of the speed with which they can enable killing or the extent to which they can expand surveillance networks,”
For example, reporting by the Military Times suggests that the Pentagon’s Maven AI system, which was developed by Palantir and “classifies targets, recommends weapons systems and generates strike packages in near real time,” was involved in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, Iran, which killed 155 people, most of them young schoolchildren.
The Army data center buildout comes as the Pentagon increases its use of AI in military operations.
By Derek Seidman , Truthout, May 11, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/wall-street-is-pairing-up-with-the-army-to-build-data-centers/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=65c219f2a8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_05_11_09_33&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-65c219f2a8-650192793
Two trends, seemingly separate, have been accelerating over the past few years. First, Wall Street has been plowing billions of dollars into financing data centers. Second, the U.S. military has been ramping up its use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Now, these two trends are directly merging. In late March 2026, the U.S. Army announced its selection of companies to build and operate two hyperscaled data centers on two different military installations. Both data centers — one at Fort Bliss, Texas, the other at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah — will be backed by some of the world’s top Wall Street firms.
An Army spokesperson told Truthout that the Army has entered into “an exclusive negotiation period” with the companies to negotiate “specific lease economics” on what will be “long term, 50-year” leases.
The spokesperson also said that “[i]nstead of receiving cash for the lease, the Army will be compensated through ‘in-kind consideration,’” meaning that “the Army accepts services or improvements of equal or greater value in lieu of cash rent — specifically, a key portion of the dedicated data computation capabilities to directly support our warfighting needs.”
The data centers will be “100 percent privately financed, built, and operated by the developers,” said the Army spokesperson, and confirmed that they “are indeed commercial data centers” that will be allowed to sell off excess computing capacity commercially.
All this comes as the U.S. military accelerates the use of AI in its operations. One top Army official has said the data centers will be used “to meet rising demands for computational power required for AI applications, including drone swarms, advanced simulations, and real-time operational analysis.”
As one industry website put it, “data centers are war infrastructure now.”
But local residents and some experts are expressing alarm over the data centers due to their environmental impacts and their potential burden on water and electric grids, as well as what these deals represent for military and corporate accountability.
“We’ve seen examples of the kinds of things AI can be used for, and some of them are horrifying in terms of the speed with which they can enable killing or the extent to which they can expand surveillance networks,” Roberto J. González, an expert on U.S. militarism at San José State University, told Truthout.
Army Data Center Deals
The two planned Army data center complexes will be massive projects. The Fort Bliss data center will be located on 1,384 acres of military land and is scheduled to become operational in 2027. It will be built and operated by the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s top private equity firms, and a major investor in data centers more broadly.
According to local news outlet El Paso Matters, the three-gigawatt data center complex “would consume more electricity than all of El Paso Electric’s 460,000 customers combined.”
The Dugway Proving Ground data center project will be built on approximately 1,201 acres and is scheduled to become operational in 2029. It will be constructed by data center builder CyrusOne, which is jointly owned by KKR, also a top private equity firm and huge investor in data centers, and Global Infrastructure Partners, the private infrastructure investment arm of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
The Army spokesperson told Truthout that the 50-year leases for the data centers will be “Enhanced Use Leases authorized by Title 10 of the U.S. Code, Section 2667” — a federal statute permitting the defense secretary to lease out underutilized military land to “promote the national defense or to be in the public interest” — and that “[t]he developer assumes 100 percent of the financial risk to build the infrastructure.”
The deals come after a 2025 executive order from Donald Trump, titled “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” which includes a specific statute allowing the Pentagon to “identify suitable sites on military installations” for data center infrastructure and to “competitively lease available lands” for qualifying projects.
While the deals haven’t been finalized, and key details on the terms of the contracts haven’t been announced, the billionaire-led firms developing the data centers will be allowed to sell excess computing power from the facilities on commercial markets.
These two planned facilities are likely just the beginning of the Army’s data center deals. The military news site Task & Purpose reports Army contract requests for two more data centers at Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the latter including “several potential spots … within one mile of civilian areas and one-half mile of civilian housing.”
Task & Purpose also notes that the Air Force released a request for lease proposals for data centers last year at several bases.
The Army deal breaks new ground for the military. “This will be the first hyper-scale data center that the Pentagon has ever done,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the Wall Street Journal in March.
“Military AI Dominance”
The planned facilities come as the U.S. military accelerates the integration of AI into its operations and, aided by new Trump administration policies, bolsters its access to data centers, which generate the computing capacity that powers AI.
In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth published a memorandum ordering the acceleration of “America’s Military AI Dominance” by “becoming an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force across all components.” The order follows Trump’s January 2025 executive order on “removing barriers to American leadership in artificial intelligence.”
Notably, Hegseth’s memo emphasizes corporate America’s driving role in this initiative, emphasizing that the military’s AI makeover will be “fueled by the accelerating pace of commercial AI innovation coming out of America’s private sector.”
On April 3, a few months after Hegseth’s memo, the Army launched its Army Data Operations Center (ADOC) which, according to a press release, “will serve as the operational engine for the Army’s transformation into a data-centric force.” Labeled a “911 for data,” ADOC will integrate “fragmented” data across the Army’s operations globally to help to “operationalize data” for goals like “shortening the sensor-to-shooter timeline,” and ultimately “securing the Army’s advantage now and in the future,” according to the press release.
González, who’s written about Big Tech’s transformation of the military-industry complex, told Truthout that the Trump administration’s military AI push is focused on developing “autonomous unmanned drones in battlefield situations” that “will rely heavily on AI for everything from navigation, to target selection, to pattern recognition for identifying different potential targets.”
González also said the growing use of AI in the military will bolster “AI decision support systems” that “stitch together different kinds of unstructured and structured data” — which could include things like “metadata about phone conversations, cell phone locations, and internet use patterns” — to “create a list of targets.”
González cites Israel’s genocidal siege against Palestinians as an example. “This is precisely what the Israel Defense Forces were using in [Israel’s] war in Gaza to create lists of suspected enemies who were then targeted for assassination, essentially,” he said.
González warns that growing autonomous, AI-driven military systems will intensify surveillance and weaken the ability to hold individuals to account. “These systems often fail, and they also diffuse accountability when a machine, rather than a person in the loop, is making the decision over life or death,” he said.
For example, reporting by the Military Times suggests that the Pentagon’s Maven AI system, which was developed by Palantir and “classifies targets, recommends weapons systems and generates strike packages in near real time,” was involved in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, Iran, which killed 155 people, most of them young schoolchildren.
The Military Times noted that Maven “generated hundreds of strike coordinates in the first 24 hours of the Iran campaign” and that it was unclear if any human verified the coordinates that targeted the school, which were based on “outdated intelligence.”
In March, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg declared that Maven would become, as a Reuters headline put it, a “core US military system.”
“Sweetheart Deal”
The proposed data center at Fort Bliss — which would be the third major data center in the El Paso area — has sparked concerns among locals over the potential strain on water and energy resources.
Read more: Wall Street Is Pairing Up With the Army to Build Data CentersWhile many specific terms of the deals remain to be seen, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, worries that private interests that covet land to build data centers could get a “sweetheart deal” from the Army well below the pricey market rates for data center square footage.
“My primary concern is that it’s a huge public subsidy to these private data center developers,” said Slocum.
The Army spokesperson told Truthout “[t]he return on investment for the American taxpayer” in these deals “is realized through massive cost avoidance.”
“By having private companies fund and build these data centers on underutilized Army land, the developers take on the financial risk, and the Army receives essential data processing capacity without direct cash outlays,” the spokesperson said.
Slocum also noted that data centers could stress the local grids near the military bases — concerns shared by El Paso residents. “Most military bases in the United States are not isolated islands,” he said. “They’re interconnected with the grid, and they’ll need to draw upon additional power resources from the grid.”
Slocum expressed alarm that placing data centers on military land could support the Trump administration’s efforts to protect fossil fuel-generated power production — which often powers data centers — by connecting it to “national security.”
“Military bases are in all 50 states and every corner of the power grid,” said Slocum. “Any power plant connected to that grid can now conceivably be needed for national security to supply a base.”
The Army spokesperson told Truthout that “[m]inimizing community impact was a primary selection criterion for these projects,” and that “[t]he chosen proposals were selected specifically because they feature innovative solutions designed so as not to burden local communities or utilities.”
The Army spokesperson also said that “before any final lease is signed, a detailed environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) must be completed.”
“A Larger Tech Ecosystem”
Pentagon deals around tech weaponry with big financial investors are nothing new. González has written about Silicon Valley venture capitalist financiers’ role in transforming the U.S. military-industrial complex, with firms like Palantir and Anduril ascending.
“There’s a shifting of the center of gravity from the traditional, established defense firms like the Lockheed Martins and Boeings to these new groups that we more often associate either with commercial tech products rather than military interests,” said González.
The new Army data centers deals, struck with some of the biggest global diversified Wall Street firms, represent a further strengthening of the nexus between finance and tech for military uses.
“The tech industry is closely aligned with industries like private equity and venture capital firms,” said González. “It’s all a larger tech ecosystem.”
The military also seems intent on striking similar deals in other areas. “Beyond data centers, the Army is looking at doing similar leasing arrangements for critical mineral processing and other types of manufacturing,” reported the Wall Street Journal.
Private equity’s new data center partnerships with the U.S. Army come as this powerful sector is intensifying its investments along the entire AI supply chain. As Truthout previously reported, private equity has been channeling hundreds of billions of dollars into financing data centers and other AI infrastructure — from the data center buildings themselves to the fossil fuel power generation that supports their operations.
The Carlyle Group building the Fort Bliss data center oversees $475 billion in assets. The firm was co-founded by billionaire David Rubenstein, who remains Carlyle’s co-executive chairman. Rubenstein is an influential philanthropic donor, and Joe Biden spent numerous Thanksgivings at Rubenstein’s $34 million Nantucket complex during his presidency.
BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and KKR own CyrusOne, the firm building the Dugway data center. KKR was co-founded by mega-billionaire Henry Kravis, who remains KKR’s co-chair. The firm oversees $744 billion in assets and is a major data center investor globally.
BlackRock, led by billionaire Larry Fink, is the world’s largest asset manager, overseeing $14 trillion in assets. BlackRock has aggressively moved into private investment in infrastructure in recent years, including data centers.
In March 2025, amid Trump’s threats to “take back” the Panama Canal, BlackRock coordinated with the Trump administration to acquire a massive portfolio of global ports that included two Panama Canal ports.
BlackRock has also been acquiring utilities and power generation companies that have been tied to providing energy to proposed data centers. BlackRock also co-owns Aligned Data Centers, one of the world’s largest data center companies.
Truthout reached out to Carlyle, KKR, and BlackRock for comment. Carlyle and KKR did not respond, and BlackRock’s GIP declined to comment.
Pushing Back
While the data center boom is often portrayed as an unstoppable force, communities across the U.S. have been resisting their construction, sometimes successfully.
“There’s a lot that individual communities can do to push back against these trends,” González emphasized, including supporting the “small but important number of elected officials” who oppose the data center frenzy.
Moreover, the grassroots movement against reckless data center construction is accumulating lessons and growing nearly everywhere.
“People should never lose hope in what political commitment can do to confront even the most powerful institutions or trends,” said González.
Rodent infestation caused by Israel’s destruction of Gaza is now creating a public health catastrophe
More than 70,000 infections have been recorded in Gaza this year, as rats bite children as they sleep and skin diseases kill those prevented from receiving treatment abroad. Health officials say a plague outbreak is no longer a remote possibility.
By Tareq S. Hajjaj May 8, 2026, https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/rodent-infestation-caused-by-israels-destruction-of-gaza-is-now-creating-a-public-health-catastrophe/
At the beginning of April, Enshrah Hajjaj, a 61-year-old woman with diabetes, woke up in her tent in Gaza City to find blood on her toes. She couldn’t figure out how she started bleeding, so she treated herself inside her tent with her family and carried on with her day. A week later, she woke up again to find the same bleeding toes — but this time, half of them were missing. She began screaming, and her family rushed her to the hospital, where doctors told her that rats had eaten through them while she slept. As a diabetic, she had lost much of the sensation in her feet, a common complication of the disease, and had felt nothing.
Enshrah’s case is far from isolated. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, four displaced people have died from skin diseases directly linked to rodent infestations, though the Ministry was unable to confirm the specific diseases in each case, citing the absence of laboratory materials needed for testing.
Nisreen Kilab, head of the Environmental Health Department at the Health Ministry, said the symptoms observed in several patients indicate a virus transmitted through rodent waste and bites, which can be fatal in some cases. “We suspected several leptospirosis infections, but unfortunately, these cases could not be confirmed through laboratory testing due to the absence of the required means,” she told Mondoweiss.
Kilab said the skin diseases spreading in Gaza are driven by insect, flea, and rodent bites, warning that without urgent intervention, the outbreak will only deepen.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 70,000 cases of ectoparasite infections were reported in Gaza in 2026, while over 80% of displacement camps reported recurring rodent and pest infestations, as well as skin conditions such as scabies and lice. The WHO’s representative described this as “the unfortunate but predictable consequence when people live in a collapsed living environment.”
Enshrah Hajjaj now lives in constant fear, especially at night. “I sleep while awake,” she told Mondoweiss. “I haven’t experienced a single night’s peace after this incident. I can’t feel my feet, and half my foot is numb, so I’m afraid of waking up one day to find that rodents ate off my entire foot without me feeling it.”
The conditions around Enshrah’s tent and the tent encampments in Gaza have been described by health officials as particularly conducive to the spread of rodent infestations, with piles of garbage rising in small hills only a few hundred meters away from the displacement camps. The camps themselves sit amid pools of sewage and mud.
“At first, there was an accumulation of rubble and debris, and later a buildup of garbage near displacement centers,” Kilab said. “More than 90% of Gaza’s population is displaced and living in tents, which has led to a frightening increase in population density, and a high population density means a faster spread of disease.”
Kilab said that the 40 million tons of accumulated waste across Gaza have made matters worse. “These conditions are an ideal breeding ground for epidemics,” she explained.
When skin disease becomes a death sentence
Contracting a skin disease in Gaza has become potentially fatal, while local hospitals lack the means of diagnosing them. Patients who need specialized care abroad cannot leave, as exit permits for medical travel remain beyond reach due to Israel’s continued closure of the Rafah border crossing, despite its obligation to facilitate medical evacuations and general travel through the crossing as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire with Hamas.
Last February, Muhammad Dhiban died after suffering from a skin disease that doctors in Gaza could not identify. The disease damaged his kidneys and reached his brain, causing meningitis. He was unable to travel for treatment and died in Gaza. In April, Ibrahim Abu Aram died from a severe blistering skin condition that covered his body in open sores. According to his family, the infection had spread to his brain. For months, both men and their families appealed to decision-makers to allow them to leave Gaza for treatment, but no response was forthcoming.
Dhiban and Abu Aram likely died of one of several diseases now spreading among the displaced. “There are several diseases transmitted by rodents, such as Lassa fever, typhus, and Salmonella, that are likely making up most of the infections we’re seeing,” Kilab said. “They’re all carried through rodents, insects, and their waste.” She warned that if health institutions failed to contain the epidemic, Gaza could face an outbreak of the plague, a possibility she said is no longer remote.
Abdel Qader al-Basyouni, a father of four, told Mondoweiss now afraid of what might happen to his youngest child, who was recently bitten by a rat while sleeping at night. The child developed a fever and complications that the family described as severe.
Al-Basyouni said that what Palestinians endure in the tents is something no one in Gaza has ever experienced. Rats once rarely entered homes, and hearing of a rat biting a person was extremely uncommon. “Never in my life have I ever heard of a rat attacking and biting a human,” he said. “Not until after this war.”
His wife, Yasmin al-Basyouni, said the garbage never stops accumulating. Neither does the bombing, nor the further accumulation of rubble. Meanwhile, sanitation and cleanup efforts can’t keep up with the rate at which waste is produced.
“So what awaits us?” she asked. “What awaits our children in the tents during the summer, with the greater spread of rodents and insects? Is death waiting for us? Is the plague waiting for us?”
The situation has gotten so dire, she said, that they have been reduced to wondering whether their children will die of bombs or rodent bites. “Are rats also our enemy now?” she added.
The Limits of Power -The War on Iran Will Likely End in American Retreat
Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares, May 11, 2026, https://www.savageminds.co/p/the-limits-of-power
The war against Iran that the United States and Israel launched on 28 February 2026 will likely end in an American retreat. The United States cannot continue the war without producing disastrous consequences. A renewed escalation would likely lead to the destruction of the region’s oil, gas, and desalination infrastructure, causing a prolonged global catastrophe. Iran can credibly impose costs that the United States cannot bear and that the world should not suffer.
The US-Israel war plan was a decapitation strike, sold to President Donald Trump by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Barnea, the director of the Mossad. The premise was that an aggressive joint US-Israeli bombing campaign would so degrade the Iranian regime’s command structure, nuclear programme, and IRGC senior leadership that the regime would fracture. The United States and Israel would then impose a pliable government in Tehran.
Trump seems to have been convinced that Iran would follow the same course as had occurred in Venezuela. The US operation in Venezuela in January 2026 removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in what appears to have been a coordinated operation between the CIA and elements inside the Venezuelan state. The US won a more pliant regime, while most of the Venezuelan power structure remained in place. Trump seems to have believed naively that the same outcome would occur in Iran.
The Iran operation, however, failed to produce a pliant regime in Tehran. Iran is not Venezuela, historically, technologically, culturally, geographically, militarily, demographically, or geopolitically. Whatever happened in Caracas had little relation to what would take place in Tehran.
The Iranian government did not fracture. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), far from being decapitated, emerged with a tightened internal command and an expanded role in the national-security architecture. The supreme leader’s office held; the religious establishment closed ranks behind it; and the population rallied against external attack.
Two months on, Trump and Netanyahu have no Iranian successor government under their control, no Iranian surrender to close the war, and no military pathway whatsoever to victory. The only path, and the one the US seems to be taking, is a retreat, with Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz and with none of the other issues between the US and Iran settled.
Several reasons explain America’s disastrous miscalculations and Iran’s successes.
First, American leaders fundamentally misjudged Iran. Iran is a great civilisation with 5,000 years of history, deep culture, national resilience, and pride. The Iranian government was not going to succumb to US bullying and bombing, especially reflecting on the fact that Iranians remember how the US destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953 by overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a police state that lasted 27 years.
Second, American leaders dramatically underestimated Iran’s technological sophistication. Iran has world-class engineering and mathematics. It has built an indigenous defence industrial base, with advanced ballistic missiles, a homegrown drone industry, and indigenous orbital launch capability. Iran’s record of technological development, built up despite 40 years of escalating sanctions, is a stunning national achievement.
Third, military technology has shifted in a way that favours Iran. Iran’s ballistic missiles cost a small fraction of the US interceptors deployed against them. Iranian drones cost $20,000; US air-defence interceptor missiles cost $4m. Iran’s antiship missiles, with costs in the low six figures, threaten US destroyers that cost $2-3bn. Iran’s anti-access and area-denial network around the Gulf, layered air defence, drone and missile saturation capacity, and sea-denial capability in the strait have made the operational cost of imposing American will on Iran far higher than the United States can sustain, especially taking into account the retaliatory destruction that Iran can impose on the neighbouring countries.
Fourth, the US policy process has become irrational. The Iran war was decided by a small circle of presidential loyalists at Mar-a-Lago, with no formal interagency process and a National Security Council that had been hollowed out across the preceding year. Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned on 17 March with a public letter describing “an echo chamber” used to deceive the president. The war was the output of a decision-making system in which the deliberative apparatus had been turned off.
This was neither a war of necessity, nor a war of choice. It was a war of whim. The underlying premise was hegemony. The United States was attempting to preserve a global dominance that it no longer possesses, and Israel was trying to establish a regional dominance that it will never have.
The likely endgame, given all this, is that the war will end with a return to something close to the status quo ante, except for three new facts on the ground. First, Iran will have operational control over the Strait of Hormuz. Second, Iran’s deterrent posture will be significantly raised. Third, the US long-term military presence in the Gulf will be significantly reduced. The other issues that supposedly prompted the US to attack Iran—Iran’s nuclear programme, regional proxies, the missile arsenal—will most likely be left where they were at the start of the war.
Even as the US retreats, Iran will not press its advantage against its neighbours. Three reasons explain why. First, Iran has a long-term strategic interest in cooperation with its Gulf neighbours, not an ongoing war. Second, Iran will have no interest in restarting a war it has just successfully ended. Third, Iran will be restrained, if any restraint is needed, by its great-power patrons, Russia and China, who both desire a stable and prosperous region. The Iranian leadership understands this clearly, and will stop the fighting.
Trump will no doubt try to depict the coming retreat as some great military and strategic victory. No such claims will be true. The truth is that Iran is far more sophisticated than the United States understood; the decision to go to war was irrational; and the underlying technology of war has shifted against the US. The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at an acceptable financial, military, and political cost. What America can regain, however, is some measure of rationality. It’s time for the US to end its regime-change operations and return to international law and diplomacy.
Plutonium Pit Bomb Production: the Beginning of the End
The abandoned MOX plant at Savannah River 32 years behind schedule and $10 billion over budget, is 70% complete. Its conversion to the Savannah River Plutonium Pit Facility is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Scheduled to open this year, it now is slated to make its first pit in 2035. Savannah River Site remains one of the most polluted places in the U.S. and is near the top of the EPA’s hazardous sites.
Whether the plutonium pit production, costing tens of billions of dollars, is even necessary, though required by Congressional statute, is contentious. NNSA’s own studies indicate that the thousands of pits stored at Pantex are viable for at least another 100 years. One study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found the pits in the strategic security stockpile would be reliable for 150 years. Other classified studies about the dependability of existing plutonium pits could demonstrate the same result, and should be released.
Mark Muhich, May 8, 2026, https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/08/plutonium-pit-bomb-production-the-beginning-of-the-end/
One portion of a gargantuan plan to modernize the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, costing $1.5 trillion over the next twenty years, has been opened for public scrutiny and comment beginning this week.
Thanks to years-long legal challenges by environmental and community groups in California, New Mexico and South Carolina, the National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, was ordered by a federal district court to reveal plans for the manufacture of plutonium “pits” at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Citing the National Environmental Protection Act,1969, U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, South Carolina, found that NNSA had ignored NEPA statutes, and required the Department of Energy, and its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons bureau, National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, to produce a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, PEIS, that details the manufacture, transport and waste deposition associated with plutonium pit production in Aiken, S.C. and Los Alamos, N.M.
Plutonium pits are the core of a thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb). Tens of thousands of pits were manufactured during the Cold War. Pit production was concentrated almost entirely at Rocky Flats, Colorado, near Denver. The FBI raided Rocky Flats in 1989, after numerous fires, accidental plutonium releases, and whistleblower reports of dangerous working conditions at the plant. Rockwell International, the general Contractor at Rocky Flats, settled criminal charges of environmental violations for $18. 5 million (less than the bonuses it received from the government) and closed the plant in 1991. Rocky Flats was declared a Superfund site, and after costly remediation was converted into a national wildlife sanctuary. Some of the most polluted sections of Rocky Flats remain radioactive and will be sequestered forever. Communities near Rocky Flats received $375 million in compensation for increased incidents of cancer. The U.S. has manufactured very few plutonium pits since Rocky Flats closed.
Congress mandated renewed production of plutonium pits in 2015 with funding from the Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers required the manufacture of 30 pits by this year (2026) and 80 pits per year by 2030, an entirely fanciful schedule. During the Cold War, Savannah River Site had produced plutonium but never pits, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), produces up to ten pits per year for research purposes, but has never produced pits approaching the Congressionally mandated 30 pits per year. Due to frequent accidents and safety violations, LANL has in some years produced zero pits.
NNSA’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement describes the intricate sequence for producing new pits for new nuclear weapons. Existing plutonium pits, around 12,000 plutonium pits, are stored at the Pantex facility in Amarillo, TX, and will be driven in specialized semi-trucks across the country on public highways to LANL and SRS. Once secured at these facilities, any oxidized impurities from aging will be removed using hot sulfuric acid and other agents. The pits are then melted, molded into spheres and machined to extremely precise dimensions. Large volumes of transuranic wastes are produced in the pit production process. Tons of transuranic wastes will be transported over public highways to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M. Radioactive waste from SRS will pass through Atlanta and follow I-20 and I-10 to the WIPP facility.
WIPP is the only facility designed to accept and store transuranic waste from nuclear weapons production. However, the New Mexico Environment Department only permitted WIPP to accept “legacy” transuranic waste from LANL, originating from the first Manhattan Project, 1942-45. NMED has not yet agreed to permit increased volumes of waste at WIPP. Plutonium waste could be stored on site at Los Alamos and Savannah River, though this would generate an entirely new set of environmental problems.
Mandated by the Defense Authorization Act of 2015, NNSA is required to produce 30 plutonium pits by this year, and 80 pits per year by 2030. SRS, slated to fabricate 50 pits per year, has never made a plutonium pit. New buildings to house the pit production in South Carolina “repurposed” a defunct mixed oxide plant. The MOX plant was designed to downblend plutonium pits from nuclear weapons decommissioned per the agreement between the U.S. and Russia to reduce their nearly 100 tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium. While the Russians constructed and operated their MOX plant, the MOX plant at Savannah River experienced massive cost overruns and decades of delays. Putin suspended the agreement in 2016, blaming non-compliance on the part of the U.S.
The abandoned MOX plant at Savannah River 32 years behind schedule and $10 billion over budget, is 70% complete. Its conversion to the Savannah River Plutonium Pit Facility is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Scheduled to open this year, it now is slated to make its first pit in 2035. Savannah River Site remains one of the most polluted places in the U.S. and is near the top of the EPA’s hazardous sites.
Robert Oppenheimer selected Los Alamos for the design and construction of the first fission atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the decade since, LANL’s research and development of plutonium pits has created thousands of massive transuranic waste dumps on site. Plutonium has leaked into groundwater and has crossed canyons, contaminating native communities like the adjacent San Ildefonso and more distant pueblos. Plutonium is one of the most carcinogenic materials on Earth and has a half-life of 27,000 years.
LANL has never produced 30 pits per year, as mandated by Congress. Between 2007 and 2011, LANL produced 31 pits in total. Selected for its isolation and inaccessibility, LANL has chronic difficulties recruiting and retaining workers. LANL has experienced serious fires and accidents, and has been fined $16 million by the New Mexico Environment Department for neglecting the “legacy” wastes stored on site.
Whether the plutonium pit production, costing tens of billions of dollars, is even necessary, though required by Congressional statute, is contentious. NNSA’s own studies indicate that the thousands of pits stored at Pantex are viable for at least another 100 years. One study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found the pits in the strategic security stockpile would be reliable for 150 years. Other classified studies about the dependability of existing plutonium pits could demonstrate the same result, and should be released.
The new plutonium pits proposed in NNSA’s Environmental Impact Statement are designed for entirely new thermonuclear weapons. The W87-1 warhead will arm the new Sentinel missile system, replacing the aging fleet of Minuteman III intercontinental missiles. The Sentinel program is years behind schedule and hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. Cost estimates for the 50 years of Sentinel deployment are over $300 billion.
Ironically, while the NEPA plutonium pit program is being presented to the public this week, the Eleventh Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is ongoing at the United Nations in New York. The NPT was first ratified by 192 countries in 1970, including the U.S. The NPT is the only remaining international nuclear treaty. It calls for the right for countries to peacefully develop nuclear power reactors, and stipulates that nuclear-armed states are obligated to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons arsenals.
NNSA’s Draft PEIS describes new plutonium pit production to be “consistent with the NPT while maintaining nuclear weapons competencies and capabilities at the weapons laboratories.”(p.1-6). The glaring dichotomy if this determination is refuted by the International Court of Justice, finding in 1996 that signatories to the NPT must adhere to
The legal import of [the NPT Article VI] obligation… goes beyond that of a mere obligation of conduct; the obligation involved here is an obligation to achieve a precise result – nuclear disarmament in all its aspects – by adopting a particular course of conduct, namely, the pursuit of negotiations on the matter in good faith.” [Para. 99]
NNSA violated the NEPA requirements to address the environmental damage of federally funded projects. The public now has an opportunity to submit comments to the NNSA until July. In particular, the plutonium pit fabrication for new nuclear weapons contravenes the Non-Proliferation Treaty despite what the draft PEIS asserts, per the decision by the ICJ.
Submit comment by email to NEPA-SRS@srs.gov
The Global Laser Weapon Wave
The UAE offers vivid proof that high-energy laser weapons are proliferating faster than anyone predicted — and the Iran war revealed a looming challenge on the horizon
Jared Keller, Laser Wars, May 12, 2026
On April 30, the Financial Times reported Israel had sent a version of its 100 kilowatt Iron Beam high-energy laser weapon to the United Arab Emirates to help Abu Dhabi fend off hundreds of missiles and drones fired by Iran since the beginning of the US military’s Operation Epic Fury. The FT notes the deployment is one of the first examples of major defense cooperation between the two countries since the 2020 Abraham Accords — a display of “the value of being Israel’s friend,” according to a regional official.
There is little information publicly available on Iron Beam’s performance in the UAE. But on May 7, Defence Blog reported a Chinese-made vehicle-mounted laser weapon had been spotted at Dubai International Airport. Tentatively identified as consistent with the Guangjian-21A system first displayed at the Zhuhai Airshow in 2022, there was no announcement of the systems’ export from Beijing or an acknowledgement of its arrival in the country from Abu Dhabi.1
The sudden appearance of laser weapons in the UAE isn’t a total surprise: the government has previously expressed interest in procuring foreign directed energy systems through both direct sales and strategic partnerships and even pushed to develop its own indigenous research and development ecosystem. But neither story mentioned that the Abu Dhabi was already in the process of acquiring an American laser weapon system as well. A notification to Congress published on April 15 revealed that the UAE had asked to buy 10 counter-drone Fixed Site-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft Integrated Defeat Systems (FS-LIDS) from the US Defense Department for $2.1 billion — and, notably, the system’s command and control (C2) architecture was being specifically scoped to integrate an unnamed laser weapon “being purchased” by Abu Dhabi through direct commercial sales.2
Three laser weapons. Two geopolitical blocs. One customer. This is the state of the global laser weapons race: a competitive, proliferating market where systems from rival powers increasingly coexist in the same inventory and even the same operational theaters……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.laserwars.net/p/military-laser-weapon-arms-race-uae-israel-china-united-states?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3569396&post_id=197062483&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=rq5yc&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
‘The odds are not in our favour’: who sets the Doomsday Clock – and what can they tell us about the future of humanity?
because nuclear bombs have not been used since 1945, the public has developed a false sense of security. We don’t like to contemplate the role played by luck. “We’ve been lucky, because the odds are not in our favour. The more weapons that exist, for longer, the more likely it is something will go wrong,”
Guardian Sophie McBain, Sat 9 May 2026
The Earth is getting hotter. Conflicts are raging, in the Middle East and Ukraine, each increasing the chance of nuclear war. AI is infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives, despite its unpredictability and tendency to hallucinate. Scientists, tinkering in labs, risk introducing new, deadly pathogens, more destructive than Covid. Our pandemic response preparedness has weakened. The Doomsday Clock – a large, quarter clock with no numbers, keeps ticking, counting down the seconds until the apocalypse. Tick. Tick. Tick. In January, we reached 85 seconds to midnight. Experts believe humanity has never stood so close to the brink.
“What we have seen is a slow almost sleepwalk into increasing dangers over the last decade. And we see these problems growing. We see science advancing at a rate that defies our ability to understand it, much less control it,” says Alexandra Bell, CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organisation that sets the Doomsday Clock. She speaks of the “complete failure in leadership” in the US and other countries, which are doing little to address global, catastrophic threats, even as they feed into one another. Climate change increases global conflict, for instance, and the incorporation of AI into nuclear decision-making is, frankly, terrifying.
Bell speaks over video call from her office in Washington DC, which is decorated with a huge world map, Day of the Dead cushions and a framed print of Barbie superimposed on to a mushroom cloud – a gift from a colleague in response to the Barbenheimer phenomenon, because in this field it helps to have a sense of humour.
Bell, who has spent much of her career working on nuclear arms control, believes that because nuclear bombs have not been used since 1945, the public has developed a false sense of security. We don’t like to contemplate the role played by luck. “We’ve been lucky, because the odds are not in our favour. The more weapons that exist, for longer, the more likely it is something will go wrong,” she says – though she’s quick to add that diplomatic disarmament and peace-making efforts also played a big role……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2026: Inching to doomsday. It’s 85 seconds to midnight
In January, the clock was set to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been. Within four weeks, the AI expert Gary Marcus argued on the Bulletin’s website that humanity was already “significantly closer to the brink”, after a showdown between AI developer Anthropic and the White House revealed Trump’s determination to have unrestricted military access to AI. A recent study found that in simulated war games, leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons 95% of the time.
Two days later, the US and Israel began bombing Iran, raising the risk of nuclear war. “Further escalation or expansion of the conflict could lead to actions driven by miscalculation, misperception or madness, as President Kennedy once said,” warned Alexandra Bell, who succeeded Bronson as president of the Bulletin in 2025. From the start, she worried about the lack of a plan to secure Iran’s nuclear materials, and that other countries would conclude that having nuclear weapons is the only way to maintain their security…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/09/doomsday-clock-ai-iran-ukraine-war-climate-breakdown-nuclear-apocalypse
Will Trump’s failed Iran war provoke his break from Netanyahu’s ironclad grip?
10 May 2026 AIMN Editorial – Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/will-trumps-failed-iran-war-provoke-his-break-from-netanyahus-ironclad-grip/
On Iran war day 71 it’s clear Trump has not only lost his war, he’s blundered the world into a looming economic catastrophe. As horrendous as that is, it wasn’t even Trump’s idea. Trump was simply following orders from his real boss, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On February 11, Netanyahu arrived at the White House with Mossad Director David Barnea. They encouraged – if not demanded – invasion. The Netanyahu-Barnea tag team argued Iran would collapse within a couple of days from a combination of assassinating Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei, massive bombing, Mossad-fomented civil unrest and ground incursions by Kurdish fighters.
That couple of days has morphed into 71 days of arguably the greatest military disaster in US history. Instead of collapsing within a couple of days, Iran retaliated against the massive US, Israeli bombing onslaught with their own. Result? All 13 US bases in the neighboring Gulf States are damaged or destroyed. Gulf States infrastructure has suffered massive damage. So has Israel, suffering its worst bombing in its 78 years.
Worst of all, Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a fifth of world oil supply which may cause a worldwide recession, if not depression. The Netanyahu-Barnea presentation was a blizzard of lies Trump swallowed whole in spite of Intelligence assessments to the contrary.
As the world careens toward economic catastrophe, Trump is completely out of options to achieve any of his war goals. Check that. Friday he alluded to striking Iran with nuclear weapons. Trump told reporters on whether the ceasefire if off: “If there’s no ceasefire you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran.”
Assuming he either doesn’t order nuclear strikes, or his military commanders disobey this directive to do so, Trump is facing the worst military defeat in America’s 250 years, all brought on by his fealty to Benjamin Netanyahu. What motivated Trump’s caving to the Israeli Prime Minister? Was it the hundreds of millions in campaign cash showered upon Trump and his Republican Congress? Was it the ‘Epstein Button’, damaging evidence related to the Epstein pedophile enterprise that Trump dare not risk being exposed? Is Trump simply an ardent Zionist believing that any Israeli murder and mayhem to further Israeli expansion and Middle East dominance is worthy of Trump’s enabling?
While we’ll likely never know, Trump must be contemplating the enormity of the disaster he’s inflicted on the Middle East, and very soon the US and entire world. The one benefit that may result from Trump’s immoral, criminal war is he may be rethinking his special relationship with the man who brought on the greatest calamity of his life, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump needs to truly become the peace president he campaigned to be in 2016. He can do that by quitting his senseless and lost Iran war. He needs to jettison his subservience to Netanyahu’s vision of Greater Israel. He needs to cut off all US military aid to Israel till Netanyahu or his successor end the genocide in Gaza, near genocide in Lebanon and quest to destroy its hegemonic rival, Iran.
If Trump refuses to do the right thing, events on the battlefield and the world economy may push Trump aside and hopefully implement that peace initiative without him.
Israel targets southern Lebanon with internationally banned phosphorus shells
May 5, 2026 , https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260505-israel-targets-southern-lebanon-with-internationally-banned-phosphorus-shells/
The Israeli army shelled towns in southern Lebanon with phosphorus munitions Tuesday, according to the National News Agency NNA.
The agency reported that the towns of Kounine and Beit Yahoun in the Bint Jbeil district were targeted with artillery shells containing phosphorus, which are banned internationally.
Israeli warplanes separately carried out airstrikes on the towns of Kafra, Braachit and Safad al-Battikh in the Tyre district, said the report.
Additional strikes hit Beit al-Sayyad and Mansouri, where three raids targeted residential homes, according to the agency.
No casualties were reported.
Despite a ceasefire that was announced April 17 and extended until May 17, the Israeli army continues daily strikes in Lebanon and widespread demolition of homes in dozens of villages.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that the death toll from Israeli attacks since March 2 has reached 2,702, with 8,311 injured.
War Dividends: Potential U.S. Arms Sales to the Middle East Surge in Q1 2026
On March 19, the U.S. approved $8.5 billion in potential sales to the UAE, split across four potential deals. These approvals included a $4.5 billion sale of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) for integration with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system, a $2.1 billion sale of counter-UAS equipment, a $1.2 billion deal for 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a $644 million sale of F-16 munitions. Kuwait was approved to purchase eight Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars on the same day, at a cost of $8 billion. The U.S. also signed off on $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support for Jordan
– by Jon Hemler and Derek Bisaccio, https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/23/us-foreign-military-sales-q1-2026-middle-east-iran-war/
During the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. government approved over $45 billion in potential Foreign Military Sales (FMS) with the overwhelming majority supporting Middle Eastern allies. Of total global approvals, the region garnered 81 percent, or over $36.6 billion in estimated sales value for defense equipment.
Direct comparisons between first-quarter FMS approvals and the combat systems currently being used by the United States, Israel, and allied Arab states are imperfect. Approved agreements do not automatically translate into deliveries. Follow-on contracts, payments and shipments might not materialize for months or years, if at all. Even so, FMS activity can be a meaningful indicator of geopolitical and industrial trends. This is increasingly true given the scale of combat, stakeholders involved, and weapons consumption driven by the Iranian War.
Middle East
Countries in the Middle East spend heavily on defense, devoting some $177.5 billion to military expenditure in their FY26 budgets by conservative estimates. Many of the region’s governments, moreover, possess immense reserve assets that can be leveraged to support procurement when needed.
Over 81 percent of FMS approvals in the first quarter of 2026 covered potential sales to American partners in the Middle East, corresponding with the deterioration in the regional security environment during this timeframe. These approvals can be generally grouped into two tranches, with the first set announced around the end of January. On January 30, the U.S. approved a Saudi request for 730 Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles, which, together with support equipment, carry an estimated price tag of $9.0 billion. That same day, the U.S. also approved four sales to Israel worth a combined $6.6 billion, with the largest being a potential $3.8 billion sale of 30 AH-64E attack helicopters.
The U.S. and Israel began military operations against Iran on February 28, beginning a weeks-long air campaign in retaliation for the country’s brutal crackdown on protesters the month before and aiming to dismantle Iran’s offensive military capabilities and nuclear program. Iran retaliated with missile and drone salvoes targeting Israel, regional U.S. military bases, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. According to some estimates, Iran fired as many as 6,400 missiles and drones at the GCC countries and Jordan across 41 days of operations. The majority of these attacks were intercepted, but Iranian attacks did manage to penetrate Gulf air defenses and hit sensitive sites. Amid these barrages, the GCC countries made a series of requests for ammunition and radar systems from the U.S., leading to a group of FMS approvals in mid-March.
On March 19, the U.S. approved $8.5 billion in potential sales to the UAE, split across four potential deals. These approvals included a $4.5 billion sale of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) for integration with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system, a $2.1 billion sale of counter-UAS equipment, a $1.2 billion deal for 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a $644 million sale of F-16 munitions. Kuwait was approved to purchase eight Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars on the same day, at a cost of $8 billion. The U.S. also signed off on $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support for Jordan
All six of the deals announced on March 19 were approved under an emergency exception to Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, waiving the typical Congressional review requirement. That process would normally take roughly 30 to 40 days, during which the sides would be unable to move forward with contract negotiations.
Europe
Around $3.8 billion in FMS approvals in the first quarter of 2026 – 8.5 percent of the overall total – target European requirements. A sizable chunk of this total comes from Spain’s $1.7 billion request for mid-life upgrades to its Álvaro de Bazán-class frigates. The upgrade program will principally include integrating the AEGIS weapon system to expand the warships’ air-defense capabilities.
On March 10, the State Department approved the sale of 20 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Sweden, with a price tag of $930 million. Should Stockholm move forward with a purchase agreement, it would become the eighth or ninth European customer for the multiple rocket launcher, joining Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. (Hungary, another potential customer, announced plans to acquire HIMARS on April 9, ahead of the incumbent government’s loss in general elections several days later.)
The U.S. also approved an FMS deal with Denmark, blessing the sale of 100 AGM-114R HELLFIRE air-to-surface missiles at a possible cost of $45 million. Relations between Washington and Copenhagen have become turbulent in the second Trump administration over Greenland’s political future, but beneath the headlines, the two countries remain strong defense partners.
Only one FMS approval for Ukraine (which Forecast International groups in the Eurasia region) was announced in the first quarter of 2026, on February 6. Kyiv requested to buy spare parts for its U.S. Army-supplied vehicles and weapons, at an expected cost of $185 million.
Over time, European countries are aiming to reduce their dependency on the U.S. for military equipment, pursuing various national and intra-European projects to improve the continent’s own defense industry. This process was jump-started in 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has accelerated over the past year as European capitals increasingly worry that the U.S. may withdraw from the NATO Alliance.
Europe (not including Ukraine and Russia) is expected to spend $508.9 billion on defense in FY26, up from around $300 billion on the eve of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Five years ago, only a handful of NATO countries met the Alliance’s 2 percent of GDP target, but most are now at least at that threshold, if not well exceeding it.
Industry Trends
From a weapons systems standpoint, missiles and related equipment represent the largest category of approved potential sales from the quarter at nearly $16.0 billion and 35 percent of the total. Relatedly, the three highest-cost possible deals involve various offensive and defensive missile and networked electronic systems that have featured prominently in military operations during the war in Iran.
Of these, American defense giants Lockheed Martin and RTX are well-positioned to capitalize on a prospective windfall of over $21 billion in the aforementioned FMS to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Domestically, Lockheed Martin and RTX both emerged as beneficiaries of several historic multi-year framework agreements with the Pentagon during Q1 2026, to boost precision munitions and interceptor production for the U.S
Like FMS approvals, these agreements do not indicate signed contracts or solid revenue. However, subsequent large-scale contacts are likely to follow in the coming years as the U.S. moves to surge critical munitions production. Some related contracts are already unfolding. In early April, Lockheed Martin received a $4.76 billion award supported by U.S. Army and FMS allocations for PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles.
Raytheon, an RTX company, also won a handful of LTAMDS contracts from the U.S. government during the first quarter, including a $905 million production contract on April 16 that contributes to an overall $5.36 billion cumulative framework.
Strategic pivot
The awards to Lockheed Martin and RTX, alongside FMS approvals for key systems emerging from the Iranian War, underscore a broader shift in Washington’s approach to weapons deals. On February 6, 2026, the White House issued an Executive Order entitled “America First Arms Transfer Strategy” to reshape priorities for foreign military equipment sale policy.
Though the Trump Administration’s order references arms transfers as a foreign policy tool, the text primarily focuses on strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base. Indeed, the order states that the strategy “will ensure that future arms sales prioritize American interests by using foreign purchases and capital to build American production and capacity.” A deeper read of the subsections signals a reprioritization of strategy – one that emphasizes utilizing arms sales to bolster domestic industry over foreign policy objectives.
With launches slated to grow a hundredfold, Space Force seeks more sites, money, people, and AI
Even today’s accelerated pace strains decades-old launch facilities.
Defense One Thomas Novelly, Senior Reporter, May 7, 2026
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The guardians manning screens in the mission-ops center here oversaw the launch of five types of rockets in April, a new record that involved NASA’s Artemis II, the first reused New Glenn booster, and a Falcon 9 lofting the final GPS III satellite. But tomorrow’s Space Force may have no time to mark even epochal missions. Within a decade, service leaders say, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will be launching hundreds of rockets a year.
To facilitate the Pentagon’s fast-growing demand for orbital capability, the Space Force is looking for more launch sites, more money, more troops, and more AI.
“In 2025, the Space Force saw a drastic increase in mission requirements across space access, global mission operations, and space control. This trend shows no signs of slowing,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top uniformed leader, told House lawmakers last week. “The Space Force we have today is not the Space Force we will need in the future.”
Nestled on a thin stretch of land just miles from nature preserves and cruise-ship ports, the historic Cape Canaveral facility launched 36 rockets in 2021, its first year as a Space Force facility. Last year, it sent 110 into the heavens, while its California counterpart, Vandenberg Space Force Base, launched another 65.
This year, Space Force leaders intend to launch more than 200 rockets from their two main launch sites. And by 2036, they project, the pair will launch as many as 3,000 annually, according to a service document released last month.
That’s going to take more launchpads…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Pushing policy
The Space Force’s top brass has been making that pitch as well.
Last month at the Space Symposium in Colorado, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman unveiled “Objective Force 2040,” an ambitious vision with a section on expanding the service’s launch capabilities.
“As the space domain becomes increasingly linked both to national security and to economic prosperity, the importance of space access grows commensurately,” the document said. “This is a significant challenge because the Space Force has supported exponential growth in launch cadence over the past few years using the same physical infrastructure first built decades ago. The future operating environment will only exacerbate this strain, with booming government and commercial demand as well as new mission requirements for responsive and scalable space access.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
People problems
Increasing the number of launches will require more than money. Top Space Force officers have recently called for doubling the service’s end-strength over the next decade.
But even that won’t be enough, they say. Guardians will need to lean on AI to help. ………………………….. The Objective Force document calls for a service that can “operate at machine speed, leveraging artificial intelligence and autonomous systems while maintaining the primacy of human judgment for critical decisions.”……………………. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2026/05/launches-slated-grow-hundredfold-space-force-seeks-more-sites-money-people-and-ai/413403/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Defense%20One:%20Breaking%20%285/7%29%20launches&utm_term=newsletter_d1_alert
Russia’s Threat Of A Massive Retaliatory Strike On Kiev Likely Isn’t A Bluff
Andrew Korybko, May 07, 2026, https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias-threat-of-a-massive-retaliatory
Russia can’t afford to discredit itself abroad, nor can Putin’s ruling United Russia party afford to discredit itself at home four months before the next polls, by threatening overwhelming retaliation against Ukraine if it attacks Moscow’s Victory Day parade only to symbolically retaliate or do nothing at all.
The Russian Defense Ministry warned local civilians and the staff of diplomatic missions in Kiev of their country’s plans to launch a massive retaliatory strike on the city center if Ukraine goes through with Zelensky’s threat to attack Moscow’s Victory Day parade on 9 May. This was followed by Russia announcing ballistic missile tests from Kamchatka from 6-10 May. Shortly afterwards, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated the Defense Ministry’s warning, thus ensuring that the world is aware of it.
This threat likely isn’t a bluff for three sequential reasons. The first is that Russia wants to deter Ukraine from attacking Moscow’s Victory Day parade for self-evident reasons, both relating to optics and the security of its VIPs, to which end it threatened overwhelming retaliation if this happens. The second reason is that Russia cannot threaten such a response without actually going through with it if provoked, otherwise it would irredeemably discredit itself, and more audacious attacks would then likely follow.
And third, Russia is finally signaling its willingness to overwhelmingly retaliate against decision-making centers in Kiev per the Foreign Ministry’s additionally specified threat in the event of Ukraine carrying out this high-profile provocation due to its hardline Kremlin faction partially superceding its moderate one. To explain, Putin hitherto restrained his military due his belief in “The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as well as his concerns about an uncontrollable escalation spiral sparking World War III.
Once Trump returned and responded positively to Putin’s offer of dialogue for resolving the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which Biden rejected, Putin and his fellow moderates dangled a resource-centric strategic partnership for incentivizing compromises. The US was receptive to such a partnership, but Russia rejected its demanded compromises that were presented as a precondition, while the US rejected Russia’s own such demands and didn’t coerce compliance from Ukraine or NATO either.
While Trump declined to escalate the Ukrainian Conflict amid this impasse, he still greenlit the rolling back of Russian influence across the world in a bid to coerce Putin into the US’ demanded compromise, namely freezing the conflict in exchange for sanctions relief without resolving the root issues. Informally known as the “Neo-Reagan Doctrine”, it’s placed Russia under pressure in at least 15 different countries, thus discrediting the moderate faction and prompting some among it like Putin to rethink their views.
The Third Gulf War, in which Iran attacked regional US bases without triggering an uncontrollable escalation spiral, then convinced Putin to finally listen to the hardliners who’ve been urging massive strikes on Ukrainian decision-making centers in Kiev since the get-go. Public opinion, which is important ahead of September’s next Duma elections, has long aligned with the hardliners on this issue. Putin now seems to have assented but only in retaliation to Ukrainian attacks against Moscow’s Victory Day parade.
These factors make it unlikely that Russia is bluffing, in which case the country itself wouldn’t just be discredited abroad, but so too would the ruling United Russia party be discredited in voters’ eyes four months before the next polls. There’s already speculation of a protest vote in support of the communist and nationalist opposition parties, which might prompt various reforms if it happens, but a large-scale one driven by any hypothetical bluff could herald an era of uncertainty that Putin would prefer to avoid.
FIFA-Backed “Board of Peace” Plan for Gaza Stadium Ignores Needs of Palestinians
By Dalia Abu Ramadan, May 7, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/07/fifa-backed-board-of-peace-plan-for-gaza-stadium-ignores-needs-of-palestinians/
How can recreational projects be proposed when even the most basic foundations of life have not yet been rebuilt?
In February, Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” struck a $50 million agreement with the football-governing body FIFA, with grand promises to build a national stadium, sports academy, and over 50 “mini-pitches.” The initiative seeks to redirect global attention away from Gaza through so-called “peace agreements” that do not exist on the ground — mere labels placed over unremoved ruins.
How can more than 50 football fields be planned while no real effort is made to establish peace first? How can sports projects be discussed in a place still under daily bombardment, where infrastructure has collapsed and conditions continue to worsen with every passing season?
The only change is that the intensity of the fighting has slightly decreased, but life has not become any easier. It is not simple to live while constantly expecting death — your own or that of your loved ones — at any moment.
On April 28, I went out with my mother to shop when we suddenly heard a heavy bombardment. I called my father, who was also outside, and the sound was very close to us. He told us he had heard the same intense bombardment. Minutes later, people in the street began saying that a car had been targeted and completely burned, killing civilians nearby. Among the victims were four people, including Khaled Naeem Abu Nahl, a child who was killed at the door of his home.
This is one of many stories that followed the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza.
On April 29, we had an appointment with a seamstress, but we found her shop closed. My mother called her to ask where she was. The answer came as a shock: Her husband, from the Al-Shawa family in the Al-Saha area, had been killed the day before. “Didn’t you hear?” she asked. My mother hung up in disbelief. How can a simple seamstress, trying to earn a living, suddenly become a widow responsible for an entire family?
In March, a story spread that caused widespread fear, revealing a part of the tragedy we are living through in Gaza away from the rest of the world’s eyes: A father said the screams of his newborn son woke him up one night, and he found the 28-day-old baby’s face covered in blood after a large rat had bitten him on the cheek.
Since the beginning of 2026, some of the most severe crises we have been facing are the spread of rodents amid the continued failure to remove rubble, and the fact that many people are still trapped beneath the debris. Imagine life in a city reduced to ruins — a place turned into a dumping ground for waste and destroyed homes, where we struggle to survive. Rats consume whatever little furniture remains, while we live in tents surrounded by destruction, with sewage seeping from beneath them.
The World Health Organization has reported more than 17,000 cases of disease among displaced people in Gaza linked to rodents and external parasites since the beginning of this year, amid a severe deterioration in health and humanitarian conditions as a result of Israel’s ongoing aggression.
How can a life that resembles hell, deprived of the most basic necessities, be reduced to discussions about building football stadiums, while Gaza’s entire infrastructure has been destroyed? How can recreational projects be proposed in a place where even the most basic foundations of life have not yet been rebuilt?
Trump, together with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, promote projects presented as symbols of peace and prosperity, while the basic needs of people are being ignored.
Imagine building stadiums amid rubble, disease, and a toxic and dangerous environment, while this is being framed as a vision of peace and development.
“It is strange how everything has been set aside in favor of building stadiums. What about stopping the bombardment first? What about the basics?” my friend Lama said.
She points out that some things have slightly improved, such as the entry of food compared to before, yet daily shortages remain — basic items like eggs are still not consistently available. She says the image presented to the world suggests that famine has ended, while the reality on the ground is different.
Lama asks: Do they believe that building stadiums will give the world the impression that Gaza has been rebuilt and is now living in peace?
One day, I was speaking with my friend Ahed, who is about to graduate, and asked her about Trump’s idea. She laughed sarcastically and said, “Instead of building stadiums, focus on securing students in schools and universities — and provide them with transportation first.”
For a moment, and through Ahed’s words, I realized how much we have lost the true meaning of life. I was speaking about the diseases we are facing — dehydration, severe diarrhea, hepatitis, and meningitis — caused by the spread of rodents and the weakened immunity resulting from famine, effects that we are still suffering from today.
Suddenly, Ahed brought me back to another reality that is no less harsh: the destruction of universities, schools, and transportation — as if we are living between two layers of suffering at the same time.
We have forgotten the meaning of luxury; it no longer even crosses our minds. We ask for nothing more than a warm home and genuine safety. But who can truly understand how we feel, if they have not lived our reality?
This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Trump claims his mass murder in the Caribbean saved a million American lives…real number 0
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 6 May 26
President Trump sure loves committing mass murder worldwide. Gaza, Iran, Somalia, Niger, Iraq, Yemen, Venezuela are among nations he’s victimized with violent murder. Add in countries like Cuba where he’s essentially murdering innocents with life suffocating sanctions, he’s racked up tens if not over a hundred thousand deaths in 6 years exercising his presidential License To Kill.
While bombing innocents worldwide was practiced by all presidents since at least Bill Clinton, Trump is unique in ordering mass murder bombing of small boats in the Caribbean. He ghoulishly lunched Operation Southern Spear in the Caribbean last September. In the past 8 months Trump, playing Long John Silver instead of a decent world leader, has blasted 54 little boats to smithereens, sending 185 innocents to Davy Jones Locker.
His justification? ‘Oh they’re certainly running fentanyl and cocaine to the Homeland killing millions of Americans.’ Trump claims the boats were all part of 24 narco terrorist cartels but couldn’t name a single one. When a couple of Trump’s targets survived the bombing, Trump’s military polished them off with another murderous salvo. ‘Can’t let these stinkin’ narco terrorists floating around gathering up the drug packages floating nearby’ was the justification for instant execution.
Trump lies shamelessly about everything. But his Whoppers about the bombings dwarf anything Burger King could cook up. Trump claims “Drugs entering our country by sea are down 97 percent.” More absurd, Trump calculates each boat he obliterates saves 25,000 American lives. Both figures are so preposterous one must ponder where he pulls them from.
Funny, if drugs arrivals are down 97%, one might conclude that border drug seizures would be similarly down. Yet, Customs and Border Protection note that seizures at U.S. borders and along coasts have increased from 38,000 lbs. to 44,000 lbs. (16%) in the 7 months following Trump’s mass murder spree compared to the 7 months before it began. In drug crazed America, usage is up, prices are stable and supply is plentiful.
But with Trump steering the Ship of State, state sponsored murder is up, prices of everything legal are escalating, and display of decency, morality and common sense nowhere to be found.
DAYS 53-65: World on the Brink in the Hands of a Madman
“We’re talking about a few people led by a delusional old man who never was very good at anything but is very bad at this. … So there’s no process. This is a case where an individual can make decisions.
Netanyahu is his own case. He’s a very, very dark pathological figure. … This is what we have. We do not have either rational leadership or a rational process in I think either country, the U.S. or Israel. …Actually both countries add a strain of religious zealotry which is also pretty strange.”
One crazed man holds the fate of the world in his hands and his name is Donald Trump. Can his administration, the Deep State, the War Powers Act, Russia or anybody else stop him? asks Joe Lauria
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, May 4, 2026, https://consortiumnews.com/2026/05/04/days-53-65-world-on-the-brink-in-the-hands-of-a-madman/
Donald Trump “indefinitely” extended the ceasefire with Iran on April 21 and over the last 12 days the certifiable man in the White House has vacillated between words of peace and threats of all out war as he stands alone on the brink of a decision that could end the world as we know it for the foreseeable future.
Under unrelenting pressure from Israel to restart the war with with Tehran, Trump holds almost unprecedented individual power to unleash a series of events that could bring the world economic system to a crashing halt.
To those armchair warriors who think they are smarter than everyone else and ridicule anyone who thinks the American president sometimes actually runs the show and isn’t always subject to the wiles of the Deep State, consider what economist Jeffrey Sachs has to say about it.
Former British MP and TV host George Galloway asked him on Sunday: “If there is a war, it seems to rest on the tortured, fevered speculation and social media ramblings and so on of one individual. How can that be?”
Sachs responded:
“Do individuals make a difference? Well, when there are systems, the answer is no, not so much. But we have completely broken all rational systems in the United States. And by that I mean the actual processes of decision are quite exposed right now and they rest with Trump. It’s weird. But it’s not an exaggeration.”
At a White House meeting on Feb. 11, Israeli Prime Minister and Mossad Director David Barnea on video hook-up sold Trump on attacking Iran. Netanyahu later admitted he had been trying to convince American presidents for 40 years to do that. They had all disagreed because their advisors explained what would happen: Iran would fight back, striking Israel, U.S. bases and its allies in the Gulf and closing the Strait of Hormuz — exactly what has now happened.
“Trump was fool enough to to buy it or to go along with it given his range of pressure points and interests and delusions,” said Sachs. “Everyone else in this small room basically thought it was nuts except for [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth who’s an absolute blooming idiot right alongside Trump.”
The New York Times reported that none of Trump’s aides in the room spoke up at the time, but afterward told the newspaper they thought the Israelis were selling the delusion that the Iranian government would collapse in days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quoted as saying the Israeli pitch was “bullshit.”
“We’re not talking about an interagency process,” said Sachs. “We’re not talking about intelligence estimates. We’re not talking about a plan. We’re not talking about the president of the United States consulting with congressional leaders. We’re not talking about American public opinion, which runs overwhelmingly against everything that is happening.”
He said:
“We’re talking about a few people led by a delusional old man who never was very good at anything but is very bad at this. … So there’s no process. This is a case where an individual can make decisions. Netanyahu is his own case. He’s a very, very dark pathological figure. … This is what we have. We do not have either rational leadership or a rational process in I think either country, the U.S. or Israel. …Actually both countries add a strain of religious zealotry which is also pretty strange.”
Deep State Efforts
After the Deep State tried to destroy Trump’s first presidency by interfering illegally in domestic U.S. politics in the scandal known as Russiagate, Trump put together for the second term an administration of sycophants who won’t oppose him like John Bolton, Jim Mattis and Gen. Mark Miley, did in the first. (Bolton would certainly be on board for regime change in Iran.)
So this most consequential decision is up to one, very unstable man. Relaunching the war would invite vowed Iranian retaliation against energy installations throughout the Gulf, plunging the world into an economic dark age.
In trying to decide what to do, Trump may very well be calculating whether he will personally make a profit as he acts the part of the quintessential American businessman: profits über alles … (as I discussed today in my interview with Regis Tremblay.)
Trump is under considerable Israeli pressure to resume the bombing and risk catastrophe.
Miriam Adelson, Trump’s billionaire Israeli donor, was rumored to have been back at the White House to push war on Trump. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz last week said in a chilling video that Israel is “waiting for a green light from the U.S.” because “Israel is ready to renew the war against Iran … to return Iran to the dark and stone age by blowing up the central electric power facilities and crushing the national infrastructure.”
Katz complained: “We did not ask for a ceasefire, we were never looking for a ceasefire. … I want to emphasize that we will not abandon this field until the aggressor is seriously punished and until he finally repents.” Extraordinary that he called Iran the aggressor and in religious terms.
Afterward, Trump posted a picture of himself holding a machine gun in front of an exploding battlefield with the words, “No more mr nice guy….”
Can He Be Stopped?
A couple of weeks ago Galloway said that if a British prime minister had posted images of himself as Jesus Christ and in the next moment threatened a genocidal destruction of Iran’s civilization, men in white coats would be at No. 10 the next morning to remove him. Why is this not happening in America?
In a parliamentary system a British prime minister’s own party would in this case agree with a vote of no-confidence, the government would collapse, a new party leader and prime minister would be chosen and that would be the end of it.
In the American system, removing the leader, who is both head of government and head of state, is exceedingly difficult. The only options are impeachment and conviction, or an invocation of the 25th Amendment. Perhaps that’s what motivated Cole Allen, given the stakes and the unusual power in the hands of an unstable president.
The War Powers Act
The 1973 War Powers Act, which gives a U.S. president 60 days to start a war before Congress can end it, can’t seem to stop Trump either. Hegseth and Trump tried to deceive Congress into believing Trump “terminated” the war and that he’s waging only an economic blockade in order to beat the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Act.
Trump told Congress in a letter on the deadline day last Friday that “there has been no exchange in fire between United States forces and Iran” since April 7, meaning that the hostilities he began on Feb. 28 “have terminated.”
Regarding the need for Congress to either authorize the war, or he must end it, Trump said: “I don’t think that it’s constitutional, what they are asking for.” He said the U.S. is on its way to “a big victory” in Iran. “These are not patriotic people that are asking.”
If he restarts hostilities he may argue he’s started a new war with a fresh 60 days. Does Congress have the guts to call him out?
A Grand Bargain?
Russia is making its bid to prevent Trump from restarting the war. In a 90-minute call to Trump last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that resumed military action by the U.S. and Israel would have “inevitable and extremely damaging consequences.”
Trump told reporters that Putin “likes to be involved” and that he offered to take Iran’s 60 percent enriched uranium. Trump said he told Putin to focus on ending the war in Ukraine first. Trump said the two wars in Ukraine and Iran could potentially end on a “similar timetable.”
On Consortium News’s Saturday evening program The World This Week, analyst Scott Ritter suggested that Putin may be offering Trump a grand bargain to solve both wars. Russia would save Trump from the Iran trap by taking the uranium and in exchange Trump would accede to Russian terms to end the war in Ukraine.
Presuming such an offer was made, it would not resolve the issue of the hold Netanyahu has over Trump, very possibly because Israel in all likelihood owns a copy of the unredacted Epstein files and videos, which could well incriminate Trump.
There would also be the matter of getting the fiercely Russophobic Europeans, chief among them Britain, to go along with a deal in Ukraine that would favor Russia. While Trump ridicules Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he reveres the king. He looks into the king’s eyes and appears to see another one.
Charles Butts In
On the same day Trump spoke to Putin, King Charles III was at the U.S. Capitol addressing a joint session of Congress. At one point the king essentially spoke about preparing for war against Russia.
He said Britain was “committed to the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the Cold War.” He spoke of the U.S. and Britain standing “shoulder to shoulder, through two World Wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security. … that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people.”
He praised NATO for keeping North Americans and Europeans safe from “our common adversaries.” And then he praised the two most important of the Five Eyes. “Our defense, intelligence and security ties are hard-wired together through relationships measured not in years, but in decades,” he said.
Despite being mesmerized by the crown, Trump apparently didn’t get the message about keeping the pressure on Russia. Two days later he pulled 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany in a fit of pique after German Chancellor Frederic Merz accurately said Iran had “humiliated” the United States.
It is that humiliation of having lost the first phase of this war that could indeed be a chief factor in Trump being reckless enough to restart it.
Ukraine drone attacks hit nuclear power plant, Baltic port
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hails ‘successful destruction’ of the port, as Russia warns of oil price rises.
By AFP and Reuters 3 May 20263 May 2026
Ukrainian drone attacks have targeted the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine and a Russian Baltic Sea port, as Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of killing civilians in overnight air raids.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said a drone had targeted the external radiation control laboratory, a part of the plant located outside the nuclear power plant’s perimeter, on Sunday. It said it was not yet clear if there had been injuries.
“IAEA team at the site has requested access to the lab,” agency chief Rafael Grossi said. He reiterated that attacks near nuclear sites pose nuclear safety risks – both sides have repeatedly targeted nuclear infrastructure
Earlier on Sunday, Ukrainian forces also launched an attack on the Russian Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said,
The attack on Primorsk, a major oil-exporting outlet, did not result in an oil spill but it caused a fire in the town that was extinguished, Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko said.
More than 60 drones were downed overnight over the northwestern region, he added.
Ukraine confirmed the attack on the port, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claiming it as a “successful destruction of the facilities of the port of Primorsk”.“The missile ship ‘Karakurt’ was hit, as well as a patrol boat and another tanker of the shadow oil fleet,” the Ukrainian president said in a post on Telegram.
“Significant damage was also done to the infrastructure of the oil loading port,” Zelenskyy also claimed………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/3/ukraine-drone-attack-hits-russian-baltic-port-governor-says
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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