Pentagon quietly shut legally required program to prevent civilian deaths by military, watchdog finds
Trump administration accused of cutting military’s civilian harm program in light of US strike on girls’ school in Iran
Guardian, Joseph Gedeon and Cate Brown in Washington, 16 May 26
The Pentagon has quietly dismantled a program it is legally required to operate to prevent and respond to civilian deaths in US military operations, according to its internal watchdog.
A report released by the department’s inspector general concluded the US military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy, and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).
Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of making deep cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) program, designed to handle training and procedures critical in limiting civilian harm in theaters of war.
While the program has not been officially canceled, the inspector general’s report said that funding had ended for a data management platform; committee meetings had halted; and many dedicated personnel had been lost or reassigned.
“As a result, the DoW [Department of War] may not comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy,” the report read. “A policy required by federal law.”………………………………………………………………….
Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon chief, has recently come under fire over deadly attacks on Iran, including a US strike in Minab that killed at least 175 people, a majority of them children, at an all-girls school.
Limiting casualties has not been a top priority during Hegseth’s tenure at the Department of War, rebranded last September from the Department of Defense. When pressed on civilian casualties in Iran, Hegseth has pivoted to blame the Iranian regime for placing rocket launchers in civilian areas, and also claimed no nation in history had taken more precautions than the US to avoid civilian deaths.
The inspector general’s report, and people familiar with the office, tell a different story.
“My assessment is that they’ve left a semblance of the department because Hegseth was taking heat for illegal operations,” said Wes J Bryant, an air force combat veteran who was the chief of civilian harm assessments on the CP CoE program.
He described a stream of forced resignations and halted investigations since Hegseth assumed his post, saying there were only seven people left reporting to the program, and that they are “locked out of all operations” and have been relegated to “a closet office” in Virginia.
Bryant was forced out of his job last spring, as the Trump administration removed safeguards that once restrained US forces from authorizing the use of lethal force, according to a ProPublica report.
The inspector general’s report, published on 13 May, points to an inflection point in February, when two senior officials – the acting under-secretary of war for policy, Elbridge Colby, and the secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll – separately proposed to Hegseth the program be cut or eliminated.
One proposal went further, according to the report, and recommended scrapping its action plan and its underpinning departmental instruction entirely. Then, without waiting for a response, the military began acting as if the cuts had already been approved……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/15/pentagon-civilian-death-program
The United Arab Emirates said a drone strike caused a fire at the perimeter of its Barakah nuclear power plant
There were no
injuries and radiation levels remained safe. The emirate’s state news
agency said on Sunday that authorities were “handling a fire that broke
out in an electric generator outside the inner perimeter” of the Barakah
power plant “caused by a drone strike”. The UAE did not apportion blame
for the attack and there was no claim of responsibility.
But the emirate
has borne the brunt of Tehran’s retaliatory attacks since the US and
Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28.
FT 17th May 2026,
https://www.ft.com/content/c4b786a6-55d4-4689-b19e-48a48f7946e6
UAE blames Iran or proxies for strike near nuclear plant, as Trump tells Tehran ‘clock is ticking’
Abu Dhabi denounces ‘dangerous escalation’ as Iran war ceasefire grows more precarious, and US president voices impatience at stalemate
Julian Borger in Jerusalem, 18 May 26, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/17/uae-blames-iran-or-its-proxies-for-drone-strike-fire-near-nuclear-plant
The United Arab Emirates has blamed a fire near its nuclear power plant on a drone launched by Iran or one of its proxies in what the UAE called a “dangerous escalation”.
The fire was just outside the Barakah nuclear plant and caused no injuries or radiation alerts, with the emirate’s nuclear regulator saying there was no radioactive leak or risk to the public.
But it came at an extremely tense moment in the sixth week of a ceasefire in the Iran war, with peace talks stalled and Donald Trump voicing impatience at the deadlock.
“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” the US president wrote on his Truth Social site.
According to Axios, Trump met national security advisers on Saturday at his golf course in Virginia and is due to meet his national security team on Tuesday to discuss options.
Trump also spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu before an Israeli security cabinet meeting to discuss Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, amid widespread speculation in Israel that the Iran war will restart in the absence of signs of compromise.
According to state media, the UAE foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, held talks with other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia with which it has had a strained relationship recently. Riyadh condemned the attack.
The minister also informed the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, of the details of the drone strike. He told Grossi that his country had the full right to respond to such “terrorist attacks”.
The IAEA said in a social media post that Grossi expressed “grave concern about the incident and says military activity that threatens nuclear safety is unacceptable”.
The UAE is reported to have retaliated for earlier Iranian attacks on its oil infrastructure with airstrikes on Iranian facilities. It has tightened its partnership with Israel over the course of the war and has been the most hawkish of the Gulf states over military action against Iran.
The UAE’s defence ministry said the drone that targeted the Barakah plant was one of three that “entered the country from the western border direction”.
It said the unmanned aircraft had hit “an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter of the Barakah nuclear power plant in the Al Dhafra area”.
“Investigations are ongoing to determine the source of the attacks, and updates will be disclosed upon completion of the investigations,” the ministry added.
Anwar Gargash, an Emirati presidential adviser, made clear that he believed Iran or a regional proxy were the perpetrators.
“The terrorist targeting of the Barakah clean nuclear power plant, whether carried out by the principal perpetrator or through one of its agents, represents a dangerous escalation,” Gargash wrote on X.
Gargash called the incident “a dark scene that violates all international laws and norms”, and accused those responsible of having a disregard for civilian lives.
Epic Interruptus: The Iranian Snare and American Defeat
13 May 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/epic-interruptus-the-iranian-snare-and-american-defeat/
On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran. The article says much about Kagan’s own identification with the obvious, some feat given the military fancy and fantasy that continues to blot the current Trump administration.
Be that as it may, he finds the Iran War dishing out a defeat to the United States of unique quality, one that “can neither be repaired nor ignored.” No ultimate American triumph could emerge, and nothing would “undo or overcome the harm done” to “return to the status quo ante.” The Strait of Hormuz would not be “open” as it was prior to February 28. Iran’s regional position, far from being blunted, had improved. China and Russia had been strengthened; the US “substantially diminished.” “Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”
This prompting was undoubtedly due to the claim made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 5 in the White House Press Briefing Room that Operation Epic Fury had concluded, though US President Donald Trump, ever keen to keep an iron in the fire, huffed that Iran had to “agree to give what has been agreed to.” (The “what” is always the problem in Trumpland.) Not doing so would result in bombing “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.” The President had also “paused” Project Freedom, that massive prop of wishful thinking involving the use of the US military to escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The pause – effectively a breezy termination – had been induced, in no small part, by the grumpiness of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, worried that adventurism in the Strait would incite yet another round of Iranian attacks on Gulf states. To show his disapproval, the Crown Prince had refused to permit the use of the Prince Sultan Airbase for US operations.
Iran’s airstrikes had also shown far more bite than was initially reported, at least in the Western media stable. Some of this can be put down to the restrictions on the release of satellite imagery supplied by commercial providers Vantor and Planet. Both have been compliant with the Pentagon’s request to either limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of timely imagery covering the region. The Iranians, through state-affiliated news outlets, felt no such restraint.
On May 6, The Washington Post, after examining Iranian satellite imagery, reported that some 228 structures of pieces of equipment at US military sites across the Middle East since February 28 had been damaged and destroyed. Hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, vital radar, communications and air defence equipment had been struck by Iran’s forces. The dangers posed by Iranian strikes had been so formidable as to force some US bases in the region to relocate personnel out of missile range.
In its analysis, the paper claims to have verified some 109 images, aided by a comparison with lower-resolution imagery obtained from the European Union’s Copernicus satellite system, and any high-resolution images at hand from Planet. The Iranian images also confirmed previously reported damage or destruction inflicted on a number of US military assets: the radomes at Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait and at the 5th Fleet Headquarters; the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defence radars and equipment located at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base and two sites in the United Arab Emirates; a second satellite communications site located at al-Udeid Air Base, and an E-3 Sentry command and control aircraft and a refuelling tanker at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The analysts roped in to examine the images were impressed. Mark Cancian, a former Marine Corps colonel and senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), found the strikes to be “precise.” “There are no random craters indicating misses.” William Goodhind of the open-access research project Contested Ground, in addition to noting the destruction of equipment, fuel storage and air base infrastructure, found damage to “soft targets, such as gyms, food halls and accommodation.”
To add stinging insult to burgeoning injury, the defences used to cope with Iranian strikes proved staggeringly draining and disproportionately costly. The CSIS estimates the use of at least 190 THAAD interceptors and 1,060 Patriot interceptors between February 28 and April 8, running down inventories of both at 53% and 43% respectively. And just to improve the mood in Washington, Tehran, according to an analysis by the US intelligence community, retains roughly 75% of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and roughly 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. Vague as they are, that’s another objective of Operation Epic Fury dashed.
While the childish pantomime of non-diplomacy continues (Trump rages that the ceasefire with Tehran, given the latest “piece of garbage” of a counter proposal, is on “life support”), Washington is banking on a strangulation policy through yet another project of dubious merit: Economic Fury. “As Iran’s military desperately tries to regroup, Economic Fury will continue to deprive the regime of funding for its weapons programs, terrorist proxies, and nuclear ambitions,” tooted the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on May 11. “Treasury will continue to cut the Iranian regime off from the financial networks it uses to carry out terrorist acts and to destabilize the global economy.”
Economic Fury, still in its swaddled infancy, also risks early retirement. Iranian stubbornness and stout resilience continues to trouble analysts in the intelligence community. A CIA analysis circulated this month concluded that Tehran could withstand the US naval blockade for between 90 to 120 days before experiencing dramatic economic deterioration. Iran’s economy may be in a wretched state, but parochial determination has a certain staying power. Bureaucratic bickering, however, often finds its way, and a senior US intelligence official (that could be anyone) has surfaced to counter the claims of the assessment. Genuine, extensive and rapid economic damage is being inflicted. The US remains in the ascendant.
These varied intelligence assessments of decorative astrology cannot escape the dunderheaded reasoning that undergirded the war, along with the failure to appreciate the shocks caused, not merely by Iran’s closure of the Hormuz Strait but its systematic shredding of the US security guarantee for Gulf states. Unlike the fumbling, inventive antics shown prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the CIA and allied intelligence services were well aware that a campaign against Iran was freighted with terrible risk. Ensnared and trapped, Trump will find it hard to avoid using the good offices of China’s President Xi Jinping to lean on Beijing’s ally. If so, it is bound to come at an exacting price.
How Russia signals nuclear resolve with civilian nuclear energy infrastructure.
Iran today: a different geopolitical climate for nuclear energy. In the most recent war in Iran, Russia has so far refrained from making explicit nuclear threats, but the United States and Israel may have adopted a similar ad hoc approach that substitutes threats on civilian nuclear energy infrastructure for traditional nuclear threats.
Trump’s threats suggest that the United States has begun blurring the lines between conventional energy infrastructure, nuclear energy infrastructure, and nuclear weapons.
Bulletin, By Elena Tiedens | Voices of Tomorrow | May 14, 2026
The Russian state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom evacuated hundreds of workers from the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran in late March. The Rosatom employees who remain are responsible for ensuring the safe operation of a nuclear power plant in a war zone—but may also serve the dual purpose of re-affirming Russia’s interests in the region. Long treated as the peaceful counterpart of nuclear weapons, civil nuclear power plants now play a role as a nuclear signaling option in wartime. (Nuclear signaling can be thought of as a non-explicit reminder, at a step below a direct threat, that is meant to call an adversary’s attention to the risk posed by one’s possession of nuclear weapons—though experts disagree on terminology and definitions.)
Russia began its pattern of power plant-based nuclear signaling at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. There, Russia has deterred Ukrainian forces from retaking the plant by threatening nuclear destruction, potentially leading to nuclear weapons use, should Ukraine and its allies attack Zaporizhzhia. In recent months, Russia has made similar statements about the potential for nuclear catastrophe at the Bushehr plant, as a deterrent to further US strikes.
Although this type of nuclear signaling is likely not a fully developed aspect of state nuclear strategy, Russia has increasingly relied on nuclear power plants as an ad hoc line of defense during wartime. Given Rosatom’s global footprint—Rosatom’s civil nuclear energy projects are expanding across the world, with at least 41 civil nuclear energy projects planned in 11 countries ranging from Bangladesh to Hungary—states must reconsider their nuclear energy contracts with the nationalized energy company. And because there are indications that the United States and Israel may be following Russia’s lead in their recent
strikes on Bushehr, the global community must redefine and condemn signaling with nuclear power plants as a new nuclear threat.
Nuclear signaling at Zaporizhzhia. The Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant—the largest nuclear power plant in Europe—was a watershed moment in nuclear history: the first military occupation of a civilian nuclear power plant. Russia first invaded the Zaporizhzhia power plant in March 2022, and after Rosatom’s efforts to redirect the plant’s electricity from the Ukrainian to Russian energy grids failed, the Russian military repurposed the plant as a military base from which to launch further operations in Eastern Ukraine.
Russia warned that attempts to retake the plant could trigger a nuclear disaster, followed by potential Russian nuclear weapons use. In September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was not afraid to use nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory, including the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant. These statements served as a nuclear deterrent without the deployment of a single warhead—and consequently were less risky for Russia. Although Russia’s occupation of the plant constitutes a serious nuclear, environmental, and humanitarian risk, Russia has attempted to reverse the narrative to signal that a Ukrainian effort to retake the nuclear power plant would be an unjustifiable nuclear risk.
In Ukraine, Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia has become an essential aspect of its nuclear posture, which treats a potential Ukrainian defense of the plant as a nuclear redline. Although Russia has faced international condemnation for its activities in Zaporizhzhia, Russia may view statements about the reactor as less risky and escalatory than those involving weapons capabilities.
Nuclear signaling in the Twelve-Day War. During the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel in June 2025, Russia proved itself willing to use similar rhetoric about the potential for civil nuclear disaster. After the United States got involved toward the end of the war and bombed Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow, Russia sought to deter further attacks—but without providing political support or military hardware that would detract from its objectives in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova warned that any US strike on the Bushehr plant “would be an extremely dangerous step with truly unpredictable negative consequences.”
Putin went a step further. When asked how Russia was supporting Iran, Putin implied that continued operation of the Bushehr reactor during the June 2025 war was Russia’s primary means of support for Iran. “Isn’t that support? Iran has not asked us for any other support,” Putin said.
Russia’s approaches in Ukraine and in the Twelve-Day War are not identical, but they both demonstrate a willingness to weaponize civilian nuclear infrastructure through deterring attacks and in service of its strategic objectives.
Iran today: a different geopolitical climate for nuclear energy. In the most recent war in Iran, Russia has so far refrained from making explicit nuclear threats, but the United States and Israel may have adopted a similar ad hoc approach that substitutes threats on civilian nuclear energy infrastructure for traditional nuclear threats. Since mid-March, the United States and Israel have launched four separate strikes that have reportedly hit within the perimeter of the Bushehr nuclear complex. Although the United States and Israel have not claimed responsibility for the strikes—and the projectiles have not hit the reactor or resulted in radiation leaks—the possible targeting of a nuclear power plant is an alarming escalation.
This risk is particularly acute in light of US President Donald Trump’s March 21, 2026, threat to “obliterate their [Iran’s] power plants, starting with the biggest one first.” Some experts have speculated that Trump intended to threaten a strike on Bushehr, which is not Iran’s largest power plant but is the country’s largest nuclear plant. While attacks on civilian energy infrastructure are generally illegal under the Geneva Conventions, a strike on Bushehr would also constitute a risky weaponization with serious nuclear escalation risks beyond those associated with non-nuclear civilian energy infrastructure. Although less thoroughly articulated than Russian threats involving Zaporizhzhia, Trump’s threats suggest that the United States has begun blurring the lines between conventional energy infrastructure, nuclear energy infrastructure, and nuclear weapons.
Rosatom’s reactors worldwide and implications for the global nuclear order. Scholars have begun to identify the new role of nuclear energy infrastructure in war, but what is missing is a serious reckoning with not only the environmental and human effects of attacks on nuclear energy infrastructure but also the ways in which such threats intersect with traditional nuclear signaling. Nuclear energy is not a new wartime technology akin to drones or cyber warfare. Instead, it should be understood as an object of evolving strategic thought. This is not to say that signaling with nuclear power plants isn’t dangerous; to the contrary, it is extraordinarily dangerous. But experts should resist the urge to view nuclear energy and nuclear weapons as distinct threats. The risks of nuclear weapons—physical radiation and uninhibited escalation—can also occur in a world in which nuclear powers see nuclear energy as a platform on which to project their strategic objectives.
This moment not only requires a clear articulation of the risks but also a willingness of all states to reject the use of nuclear energy for wartime signaling. This refusal crucially includes nuclear weapons states but also countries across the world who have increasingly become recipients of Rosatom power plants in what has sometimes been dubbed “the new nuclear age.” As Rosatom’s civil nuclear reactor enterprise expands, Russia’s allies and partners, neutral states, and the global nuclear community must take steps to lessen these risks.
Even for Russian allies and partners like Iran, Rosatom’s nuclear power plants do not serve as a meaningful form of defense but rather as a way for Russia to provide rhetorical—but not tangible—support. For example, Iran has not benefited from Russian signaling as it continues to face devastating losses. Meanwhile Russia has received much-needed financial relief from oil sanctions lifted by the Trump administration. Russia’s allies considering contracts with Rosatom might take the Iranian case as a cautionary tale………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Nuclear energy at the 2026 NPT Review Conference. At the ongoing NPT Review Conference, states have already raised the alarm about threats to nuclear energy infrastructure during wartime. The European Union, for instance, urged Russia “to refrain from carrying [out] attacks on such infrastructure, which constitute a serious threat to nuclear safety and security.” The Non-Aligned Movement broadly condemned strikes on nuclear infrastructure. Both statements treated risks at nuclear energy installations as the unfortunate byproduct of careless actions and armed conflict in the vicinity of power plants. But the connection between nuclear energy and nuclear escalation is not accidental; it is the result of an increasingly prevalent nuclear signaling strategy.
During the Cold War, US and international diplomats saw nuclear energy and other civil nuclear technologies as the peaceful partner to nuclear weapons, an assumption embedded in the NPT and other global nuclear treaties. But recent developments raise the possibility that nuclear energy installations will increasingly become flashpoints in war.
Preventing this outcome requires states to hold each other accountable and to forcefully denounce the use of nuclear energy infrastructure in nuclear signaling. At the NPT Review Conference, state parties should, at a minimum, resolve to follow and implement the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Seven Indispensable Pillars for nuclear safety and security in Ukraine, which include resolutions to maintain the physical integrity and backup power supply of nuclear plants……………….. https://thebulletin.org/2026/05/how-russia-signals-nuclear-resolve-with-civilian-nuclear-energy-infrastructure/
‘He asked if I would defend them’: Trump shares key details of Xi meeting
Michael Koziol, 16 May, 26, https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/he-asked-if-i-would-defend-them-trump-shares-key-details-of-xi-meeting-20260516-p5zxnw.html
Washington: Xi Jinping asked directly whether the US would defend Taiwan in a war, Donald Trump said, as he divulged key details of his conversations with the Chinese president while flying home from the high-stakes meeting in Beijing.
The two men also spoke “in great detail” about US arms sales to Taiwan, which China would like to stop, and which Trump has not committed to continuing. He said he would make that decision soon, after speaking with the leader of Taiwan.
“President Xi and I talked a lot about Taiwan … he’s against very much what they’re doing,” Trump said aboard Air Force One.
“He does not want to see a fight for independence because that would be a very strong confrontation … I didn’t make a comment on it, I heard him out. I have a lot of respect for him.”
Asked by a reporter whether he would defend Taiwan, Trump said he would not answer – maintaining the long-standing US position of strategic ambiguity. He said he gave the same response to Xi.
“He asked me if I would defend them. I said, ‘I don’t talk about that’. There’s only one person that knows that. You know who it is? Me.”
In December, the Trump administration approved a record $US11.1 billion ($15.5 billion) arms package for the self-governing democracy (over which China claims sovereignty). But the president has delayed approval of another package worth up to $US14 billion.
Trump indicated he did not feel bound by the so-called “six assurances” given to Taiwan in 1982 under then president Ronald Reagan, one of which was that the US would not consult China about arms sales to Taiwan.
“1982 is a long way, that’s a big, far distance away,” he told reporters on the plane. “[Xi] brought that up, he talked about that to me – so what am I gonna do, say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you about it because I have an agreement that was signed in 1982?’
“I made no commitment either way. I’ll make a determination over the next fairly short period of time. I have to speak to the person – you know who he is – that is running Taiwan.”
Trump said he and Xi also discussed lifting US sanctions on Chinese oil companies that buy oil from Iran, and would decide in the next few days.
The US president’s account of his conversations with his counterpart were far more detailed than the summary given by the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, when answering questions from state-affiliated news agencies.
Wang said the two men spent nine hours together across their several encounters, which included the bilateral meeting, a banquet dinner, a visit to the Temple of Heaven and tea/lunch at Xi’s Zhongnanhai compound.
He emphasised the centrality of the Taiwan question, repeating Xi’s message that “if handled poorly, the two countries will clash, pushing the entire Sino-US relationship into a very dangerous situation”.
Wang added that China hoped the US would take “concrete actions” to safeguard the relationship, which the Chinese are now framing as being one of “constructive strategic stability”.
On Iran, Trump said he did not seek Xi’s assistance in pressuring Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – but that he believed China would lean on its partner regardless, as Beijing also wanted the passage open and free.
“I’m not asking for any favours, ’cos when you ask for favours you need to do favours in return. We don’t need favours,” Trump said.
He also lashed out at journalists on Air Force One, accusing The New York Times’ veteran correspondent David Sanger of treason after he asserted Trump had failed to achieve the political changes he sought in Iran.
“I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy,” Trump said to Sanger.
“You should know better, David. You know better. Your editors tell you what to write, and you write it, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”
He also clashed with a BBC journalist who asked about the missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school at the beginning of the war, which reportedly killed about 175 people.
The US has not taken responsibility despite a New York Times report saying a preliminary investigation confirmed it was an American missile. Trump said it remained under investigation.
Meanwhile, the US State Department announced Israel and Lebanon would extend their ceasefire by a further 45 days following two days of talks in Washington.
Israel is not at war with Lebanon but struck targets associated with the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in the country, including the capital Beirut, during the war against Iran.
It has continued its strikes leading up to this week’s talks, despite the ceasefire that began on April 16. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 22 people were killed in attacks on Wednesday, including eight children.
The Washington talks represent the first high-level diplomatic relations between Israel and Lebanon for more than 30 years. State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott said political negotiations would resume in early June and a security discussion would be added on May 29.
While the Beijing summit did not produce many immediate tangible outcomes, Trump said China agreed to buy 200 aircraft from American manufacturer Boeing – less than the 500 the firm initially hoped for – and up to 750 “if they do a good job”
This summit was just “the beginning”, he said, noting he and Xi could meet as many as four times this year. Trump has invited Xi to the White House on September 24 – during the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level week – and Beijing confirmed the Chinese leader would visit the US in the northern autumn.
The two leaders could also meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in China in November, and the G20 world leaders’ summit December, hosted at the Trump National Doral resort in Miami.
with Lisa Visentin, Reuters
Golden Dome plan would cost $1.2 trillion, CBO finds
That’s seven times what Trump initially said, and almost double the congressional office’s first estimate.
12 May, 26, Thomas Novelly, https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2026/05/golden-dome-cost-trillion-cbo/413485/
The Golden Dome missile-defense system would cost $1.2 trillion to build out, far more than the White House has budgeted, according to a new estimate by Congressional researchers.
The figure is roughly double the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment last year of a potential space-based interceptor system, based on the expansive yet vague executive order issued in the busy first week of the second Trump administration. It’s nearly seven times larger than President Trump’s original promise to build it for $175 billion.
And it’s fifteen times larger than the $79 billion the administration plans to spend in the Golden Dome for America account over the next five years, which excludes other-related missile defense funding.
“The system would provide significantly expanded defensive capabilities but would not be impenetrable, particularly against large-scale attacks from peer adversaries,” the office said in an emailed statement. “CBO’s estimate is substantially higher than publicly cited administration figures, which may reflect differences in scope, time frame, and assumptions.”
In the last two months, Golden Dome’s budget has swelled by $10 billion. And the program’s leader has conceded that space-based interceptors, a cornerstone of the proposed missile shield, may be too costly to build.
The bulk of the funds—about $730 billion—would purchase only enough space-based interceptors to destroy about 10 incoming ballistic missiles.
The new CBO assessment was requested by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon.
The $1.2 trillion estimate is not far off from a projection published by Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst and space expert with AEI. In September, Harrison wrote that roughly $1 trillion over two decades could buy enough space-based interceptors to take out five missiles in the boost phase, 50 hypersonic weapons in the glide phase, and 50 warheads in midcourse. The sum would also purchase nearly 150 missile-warning and -tracking satellites, 10 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense battalions, 10 Patriot batteries, eight THAAD batteries, and two Aegis Ashore sites.
But the administration’s $185 billion budget won’t buy anywhere close to that, Harrison said.
“The fact that CBO’s estimate is almost an order of magnitude higher than what the administration says it will cost can only mean one thing: the administration is not actually building what the executive order described,” he said. “The CBO analysis and my previous analysis both demonstrate that the homeland missile defense you can buy for $185 billion is an incremental improvement over what we have today but not an impenetrable shield that will forever end the missile threat to the United States.”
When asked by lawmakers last month about the AEI analysis and past estimates, Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program’s leader, said he’s been “laser-focused on affordability” and that the Pentagon is doing business differently than it has in the past.
“When we start talking about the different cost estimates, the first thing I always say is, first of all, they’re not estimating what I’m building,” Guetlein said. “They are estimating the modernization or the continuation of the legacy systems that we already have, and they just take the cost of a legacy system, and they multiply it out and they get these really large numbers and they say, well, that must be it. That is not what Golden Dome is doing.”
The Trump administration has leaned heavily on funds outside the baseline defense budget to make Golden Dome a reality. Last year, the Pentagon netted $24 billion in reconciliation funds for the program. For the 2027 defense budget, the administration requested more than $17 billion from the same funding source and just $400 million from the annual Pentagon budget.
Additional reconciliation funds are not guaranteed, but the administration has projected future support in the baseline budget — the Pentagon plans to request an estimated $14.7 billion in the 2028 budget and projects it to rise to $16 billion by 2031, according to the American Enterprise Institute data.
Last year’s Golden Dome executive order called for fielding the “development and deployment” of space-based interceptors that can hit a missile within minutes of its initial launch. But physics shows that weaving a defensive web to stop any number of missiles from anywhere would require tens or hundreds of thousands of satellites.
Space interceptors, as the CBO’s estimate points out, are the most expensive component. Guetlein also told lawmakers last month that he’s focused on staying within the budget and said, “If we cannot do it affordabl[ly], we will not go into production” on boost-phase space-based interceptors.
CBO researchers said the $1.2 trillion estimate could be reduced if space-based interceptors aren’t included.
“Because of the limited information available about the Administration’s planned [national missile defense] architecture, a direct comparison of DoD’s and CBO’s [defense] systems and their costs is difficult,” the report said. “If the space-based interceptors—which have a high cost per kill—were deleted from CBO’s notional NMD system, the system’s 20-year cost would drop to $448 billion, but the overall system would not align with the objectives outlined in the ‘Iron Dome’ executive order, which specifically called for space-based interceptors.”
In light of the new estimate, Harrison said, Congress should have serious doubts about prioritizing and funding space-based interceptors instead of focusing on more attainable homeland security defenses.
“One of the lingering questions for Congress is: why are we still funding [space-based interceptor] development? Prototyping the system and maturing the technology will not prove or disprove its ability to scale with the threat—scalability is a matter of orbital mechanics, and the prototyping effort does nothing to change that,” Harrison said. “SBIs do not scale. We are throwing away billions of dollars on a system with no future, when that money could instead be used to buy more of the ground-based interceptors and drone defenses we are in desperate need of today that do scale with threats.”
Nakba Day: Muhammad Shehada on Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza & Ongoing Palestinian Resilience
SCHEERPOST, May 15, 2026 , Democracy Now
Palestinians around the world are marking Nakba Day, 78 years after their forced mass displacement led to the establishment of the Jewish-majority state of Israel. Decades later, Palestinians still face widespread oppression and violence from the Israeli state as it continues its expansionary project. “Israel tried, since 1948 until today, to destroy us as a people, as a group, and they failed at it. Our people are still there, resilient,” says Palestinian writer Muhammad Shehada, who was born in Gaza and now lives in Denmark. Shehada discusses the ongoing process of the Nakba, including its latest intensification after October 7, 2023. “Now this veneer of civility has fallen off. The mask was taken off. And now it’s a matter of national pride in Israel to brag about annihilating Palestinians.”
Shehada also describes current conditions in Gaza — still under Israeli blockade and occupation — and what he calls the “disarmament trap” of unfairly weighted negotiations designed to strip Palestinians of political autonomy. “The ‘realistic’ proposal that Israel is putting on the table is surrender, capitulate, become fully defenseless, weaponless, and entrust the very army that carried out a genocide against you to be merciful towards you once you are an easier target than you ever were before.”
Finally, he responds to the Israeli government’s recent threat to file a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, after the paper published a column by longtime opinion writer Nicholas Kristof about systemic sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. “It’s the newspaper of record. It’ll be spread and disseminated widely to an American audience,” says Shehada about the allegations levied in Kristof’s piece. “So we see, basically, an Israeli panic attack in return.”
Transcript…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/15/nakba-day-muhammad-shehada-on-israels-ethnic-cleansing-in-gaza-ongoing-palestinian-resilience/
From “Mission Accomplished” to Missile Shortages: The Iran War Narrative Unravels.
May 12, 2026, Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/12/from-mission-accomplished-to-missile-shortages-the-iran-war-narrative-unravels/
Ben Norton dismantles the triumphalist rhetoric surrounding the U.S. war on Iran in this blistering breakdown of a conflict that appears far more costly — and far less successful — than Washington admits. Drawing on reporting from CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, and Fortune, Norton argues that despite Donald Trump’s repeated claims of “victory,” Iran has inflicted extensive damage on U.S. military infrastructure across West Asia while preserving much of its missile capability. The video traces the widening economic, military, and geopolitical fallout of a war that critics say is enriching defense contractors while pushing the region — and the global economy — toward catastrophe.
Rather than a show of overwhelming American dominance, Norton presents the war as a warning sign of imperial overreach: damaged U.S. bases, depleted missile stockpiles, fractured alliances, and mounting costs projected to surpass $1 trillion. He also examines how Gulf monarchies once marketed as “safe havens” are now facing infrastructure destruction, economic instability, and growing fears of becoming permanent targets in a spiraling regional conflict.
While Donald Trump continues declaring Iran “militarily defeated,” a growing body of mainstream reporting paints a very different picture — one Ben Norton argues reveals the limits of American military power in the region.
In a sweeping analysis for Geopolitical Economy Report, Norton dismantles what he calls the propaganda surrounding Washington’s war on Iran, citing investigations from CNN, NBC News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times showing that Iranian strikes have heavily damaged U.S. military installations throughout West Asia.
According to Norton, the contradiction is becoming impossible to ignore: while the White House insists the war is a success, leaked intelligence assessments and major media investigations describe destroyed radar systems, damaged aircraft, emptied bases, and U.S. troops relocated out of range of Iranian fire.
“The war is not going swimmingly,” Norton argues. “The evidence shows the exact opposite.”
“Many Bases Are All But Uninhabitable”
One of the video’s most explosive sections centers on reports that Iranian missile strikes have rendered major U.S. facilities across the Persian Gulf region severely damaged or unusable. Norton cites reports claiming at least 16 American military sites were hit, with more than 228 structures or pieces of equipment reportedly damaged.
He highlights descriptions from mainstream outlets detailing destroyed hangars, communications systems, barracks, fuel depots, and air-defense infrastructure — damage so extensive that some bases were allegedly evacuated or partially abandoned.
Norton also points to reports that thousands of U.S. personnel have been relocated to Europe or moved into temporary facilities as Iranian strikes continue targeting American positions throughout the region.
A Trillion-Dollar War
The economic cost, Norton warns, could become staggering.
Referencing reporting from Fortune and estimates from analysts at Harvard Kennedy School, he argues the war’s total cost could exceed $1 trillion once infrastructure losses, weapons depletion, reconstruction, and long-term veteran care are fully accounted for.
Meanwhile, he notes, the Pentagon is reportedly burning through advanced missile systems at alarming rates. Norton cites figures claiming the U.S. has already used roughly half its stockpiles of several key interceptor and precision-strike systems — a depletion that could take years to replace.
For Norton, the contradiction is politically devastating: endless funding for war while healthcare, housing, and social programs continue facing austerity at home.
He highlights a recent Fortune report, Harvard policy expert Linda Bilmes — who previously exposed how the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cost trillions more than official government estimates — warned she is “certain” the true price tag of the Iran war will exceed $1 trillion for U.S. taxpayers once long-term military care, destroyed infrastructure, weapons depletion, and regional fallout are fully accounted for. The warning lands as the Pentagon reportedly burns through advanced missile stockpiles while Americans continue hearing there is “no money” for healthcare, childcare, housing, or social programs at home.
That constant cry that “there’s no money” comes from the fool at the top — and it should be challenged in every discussion about war. War costs money. Endless war drains societies dry while those in power pretend basic human needs are somehow unaffordable. Look at America’s so-called adversaries: many invest in infrastructure, innovation, science, and long-term development, while the U.S. continues pouring trillions into destruction. We behave like a civilization trapped in permanent attack mode, reacting with brute force instead of evolving beyond it.
Pete Hegseth LIVE: Pentagon admits Iran war cost hits $25 billion after explosive hearing testimony – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGiQPlwQX4
At the same time, War God Pete Hegseth claims far less money has been spent than critics and economists say is actually being burned through in the conflict. As the war on Iran enters its third month, Hegseth is facing growing backlash on Capitol Hill over the true cost of the war — and how much the Pentagon may be hiding from the public. During a tense House Armed Services Committee hearing, Pentagon officials claimed the U.S. has spent roughly $25 billion so far, largely on missiles, munitions, and military maintenance. But lawmakers and economists warn the real cost could be vastly higher once rising fuel prices, damaged military infrastructure, supply chain disruptions, and long-term economic fallout are fully counted. Rather than seriously addressing those concerns, Hegseth lashed out at critics, accusing skeptical lawmakers of being “reckless,” “feckless,” and “defeatist” for questioning Donald Trump’s handling of the war — a response critics say reflects growing panic inside an administration struggling to defend an increasingly costly, destabilizing, and unpopular conflict.
“Iran Is Not Iraq”
A recurring theme is that Iran has proven far more resilient than U.S. planners anticipated.
Washington expected a rapid collapse through “decapitation strikes” and economic pressure. Instead, he says, Iran maintained much of its missile arsenal, reopened underground facilities, and strengthened internal political cohesion in the face of external attack.
With intelligence assessments reportedly concluding Iran still possesses roughly 70–75% of its missile stockpile and launcher capacity despite weeks of bombardment.
Despite repeated claims from Donald Trump and the Pentagon that Iran’s military capabilities have been “crippled,” recent U.S. intelligence assessments reportedly conclude that Iran still maintains a significant portion of its missile-launching infrastructure. According to CNN, roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers remain intact — including underground systems hidden in tunnels and caves — while thousands of drones and major coastal defense capabilities are still operational, raising fears that Tehran retains the ability to inflict major damage across the region.
With the result clearly being not regime change — but deterrence.
Gulf Monarchies Feeling the Blowback
The video explores the growing panic spreading through the Gulf monarchies that have long hosted U.S. military power in the region. Ben Norton argues that Saudi Arabia’s hesitation to fully back further escalation reflects a deepening fear that the war with Iran is no longer controllable. In a parallel conversation with Danny Haiphong, Mohammad Marandi says Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are beginning to realize that Washington’s military presence is not shielding them from catastrophe — it is making them targets. As energy infrastructure comes under threat, tourism declines, deficits soar, and oil-dependent economies face mounting instability, the illusion that the Gulf could remain insulated from regional war is rapidly collapsing. Reports that some Gulf governments restricted U.S. military access during the failed “Project Freedom” operation in the Strait of Hormuz only fueled perceptions that cracks are forming within America’s regional alliance system. “The U.S. isn’t protecting these countries,” Norton argues. “It’s turning them into targets.”
The Larger Warning
The war as part of a larger crisis of American empire: a military superpower capable of unleashing enormous destruction, yet increasingly unable to achieve its political goals.
For critics of the war, it becomes less about whether Iran is “winning” and more about whether Washington’s model of endless militarized dominance is beginning to fracture under its own contradictions.
And as the costs rise — economically, politically, and morally — Norton argues the gap between official rhetoric and reality is becoming harder to conceal.
A nation that claims there is “no money” for healthcare, housing, education, or childcare somehow always finds trillions for bombs, bases, sanctions, and endless war. Yet despite the overwhelming firepower, the destruction, and the propaganda, Washington still appears unable to impose the political outcomes it demands. Instead, the war is exposing weakened alliances, destabilizing the global economy, draining military stockpiles, and turning America’s closest regional partners into potential targets. The question is no longer whether this conflict is sustainable — but how much damage will be done before the political class admits the project itself is collapsing.
Nuclear winter: Why study it now?
A weeklong series on the catastrophic realities of nuclear war
By François Diaz-Maurin, 12 May 26– https://thebulletin.org/2026/05/nuclear-winter-why-study-it-now/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Nuclear%20winter%3A%20Why%20study%20it%20now%3F&utm_campaign=20260514%20Thursday%20Newsletter
Against a backdrop of increased tension among the world’s major powers, the risks and effects of nuclear war have received growing interest in recent years. These topics were discussed at the highest political and scientific levels during the Cold War. They are now back front and center, even though the world and the type of nuclear risks it faces have changed in many ways since.
Last year, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published its long-awaited report on the environmental impacts of nuclear war. The last time it did such a comprehensive study was in … 1985. Also, an independent scientific panel mandated by the United Nations is preparing to submit a report on the effects of nuclear war to the UN General Assembly next year. The UN never had a scientific panel dedicated to the issue. Meanwhile, new research based on the most advanced climate models is bringing new insights into the understanding of the global effects of nuclear war. And nuclear war scenarios are evolving, beyond the all-out nuclear exchange between the two Cold War superpowers to include more complex scenarios of limited nuclear exchange involving smaller arsenals—but with the inherent risk of escalation.
These recent developments raise uncomfortable questions: Are scenarios of limited nuclear exchange—scenarios that might not trigger irreversible nuclear winter—making the use of nuclear weapons more likely? Is it morally acceptable for scientists to work on scenarios of nuclear war below the “threshold” for nuclear winter? And do such scenarios even exist, given the irreducible risk of escalation and uncertainty in human behavior involved?
To address these questions, the Bulletin asked experts in nuclear winter and associated scientific areas about what they know of the global effects of nuclear war and what decision-makers should do to reduce the risk of self-destruction.
In the first piece of the series, atmospheric chemist John W. Birks tells the fascinating yet little-known history of how he and his colleague Paul Crutzen first discovered the global climatic effect of nuclear war, later known as “nuclear winter.”
In an interview, Earth scientists Brian Toon and Alan Robock discuss their latest book, Earth in Flames (Oxford University Press, 2025), which draws parallels between the extinction of dinosaurs and potential human extinction from nuclear war. Nuclear war is much more unpredictable than asteroids, but, Toon and Robock emphasize, unlike the dinosaurs of 66 million years ago, humans can avoid causing their own extinction.
In a second interview, atmospheric chemist and climate scientist Susan Solomon describes her role as a co-author of the study, published last summer by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, on the environmental impacts of nuclear war. Solomon explains how the study made her realize the importance of the science of rising smoke and fuel loads at nuclear detonation sites in nuclear winter scenarios and discusses a major limitation of the study: not including the radiation fallout effects.
Finally, in the last piece of the series, food security expert Florian Ulrich Jehn explains how nuclear war would impact the global food trade, arguing that it is not morally misplaced for countries that do not possess nuclear weapons—and therefore have no say on whether they will ever be used—to prepare for the possibility of a nuclear winter.
Jeffrey Sachs: New European Military Bloc for War Against Russia
May 13, 2026 , Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/13/jeffrey-sachs-new-european-military-bloc-for-war-against-russia/
Europe’s political class is sleepwalking into a catastrophe of its own design. In a sweeping, blistering conversation with Glenn Diesen, economist and diplomat Jeffrey Sachs lays out how the continent—once poised to build a “common European home” with Russia—is instead resurrecting the most dangerous instincts of the 20th century. What began as NATO expansion for “security” has metastasized into a new, explicitly European military bloc built not with Russia, but against it, and without the American umbrella that once restrained escalation.
Sachs argues that this isn’t strategy—it’s madness: a lethal mix of Eastern European Russophobia, German political amnesia, British imperial nostalgia, and Washington’s long project of hegemony. The result is a Europe preparing for a war it cannot win, against a nuclear superpower, over a security architecture that could have been inclusive, stable, and peaceful.
Highlights “NATO would not move one inch eastward.” Sachs cites the explicit 1990 U.S.–German promise to Gorbachev—now erased from Western memory—as the original betrayal that set today’s crisis in motion.
The rejected alternative: a “common European home.” Gorbachev offered a demilitarized, inclusive security system “from Rotterdam to Vladivostok.” Europe and the U.S. chose bloc politics instead.
NATO expansion wasn’t about defense—it was about hegemony. Sachs: U.S. strategists like Brzezinski saw NATO as the military arm of a unipolar world, with Ukraine as the “geopolitical pivot” to keep Russia permanently weak.
Germany broke its own word—and its own strategic brain. Sachs argues that German leaders—from Merkel’s capitulation in 2008 to Mertz’s open militarism today—abandoned the country’s historic role as Europe’s peace‑anchor.
Eastern Europe’s “visceral Russophobia” is steering the EU. The Baltics and Poland, shaped by Cold War trauma, now drive Brussels’ most aggressive policies—while Western Europe follows to preserve EU unity.
The 2008 Bucharest Summit was the point of no return. Merkel knew NATO’s pledge to bring in Ukraine and Georgia was a casus belli—and folded anyway. Sachs calls this the moment “Europe lost it.”
The Maidan coup as the hinge moment. Sachs describes the 2014 U.S.-backed overthrow as the event that finally installed a government willing to pursue NATO membership despite prior Ukrainian neutrality.
Europe is now preparing for war—without the U.S. shield. Sachs: A new European military bloc including Ukraine “just means war with Russia. It’s nuts.”
Australians continue Gaza aid mission despite recent kidnappings, beatings
15 May 2026 AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/australians-continue-gaza-aid-mission-despite-recent-kidnappings-beatings/
11 Australians departed from Türkiye on Thursday night (Australian time) in the final phase of the Global Sumud Flotilla mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and break Israel’s illegal naval blockade. They are joined by around 500 participants from almost 50 countries.
Organisers say interception remains a significant risk from Friday night onwards as vessels sail through international waters toward Gaza.
Five of the 11 Australians currently sailing were illegally intercepted by the Israeli navy two weeks ago while traveling from Italy to Greece. 22 flotilla vessels were intercepted and destroyed, and crew members were abducted and held on board an Israeli prison ship for almost two days at sea, reporting violence, abuse and theft of their passports.
Following their release to Greek authorities in Crete, activists have vowed to continue the mission.
The 11 Australians sailing from Türkiye to Gaza are:
● Juliet Lamont
● Isla Lamont
● Anny Mokotow
● Sam Woripa Watson
● Zack Schofield
● Dr Bianca Pullman Webb
● Neve O’Connor
● Surya McEwan
● Helen O’Sullivan
● Violet Coco
● Gemma O’Toole
● Cameron Tribe
Medical professional Dr Bianca Pullman Webb reports that:
“The siege hasn’t ended, the genocide hasn’t ended and Israel continues its crimes with impunity. Breaking the siege is more important than ever. Challenging the siege is the least I can do as a person of conscience. Palestinians, including my medical colleagues, deserve to live and work in safety and freedom.
“I’m tired of the genocide and international inaction. The community on the flotilla and what we’re doing gives me hope.”
Nakba Day and National Solidarity Rallies
The flotilla’s departure coincides with Nakba remembrance events. Large rallies are planned across Australia this weekend, connecting the maritime mission with broader public calls for humanitarian access and justice for Palestinians.
About the Global Sumud Flotilla
The Global Sumud Flotilla is a civilian-led international initiative bringing together activists, medical professionals and humanitarian advocates to deliver aid to Gaza and draw attention to the ongoing blockade and humanitarian crisis.
Social media video of Australians speaking to why they are sailing
While Pentagon Spends Billions on War, Military Families Say They’re Getting Short-Changed
Spouses of deployed military say they’re struggling with the costs of child care, groceries, housing.
CAPITAL & MAIN, 13, 2026, By Marcus Baram
On April 21, nearly two months into the Iran war, the Pentagon unveiled a $1.5 trillion budget request that promised to bolster services for members of the military and their families.
The proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins in September includes $90 million in additional funding specifically for the design of military child development centers and barracks, as well as pay increases ranging from 5% to 7% for service members.
“With this funding request, we directly invest in our people, recognizing and respecting our warfighters, their families and the daily sacrifices they both make for our nation,” said Lt. Gen. Steven P. Whitney, who oversees force structure, resources and assessment at the mammoth agency.
But for some military families whose loved ones are currently deployed overseas, those changes may be too little, too late. The vast sums being spent on the war effort, at least $29 billion as of May 12, has not prompted the Trump administration to provide enough support services to help those families cope with their extra burdens.
The war-related inflation — gas prices rising more than $1.50 a gallon, higher energy bills and more expensive groceries — is hitting military families especially hard, say spouses of active-duty military and advocacy groups for military families. They also say that they’re not seeing the support services that have been offered during previous wars, such as the Iraq War.
“Our costs keep rising and it’s hard to keep up,” said the wife of a serviceman deployed overseas in the Mideast since last fall. She lives near a cluster of military bases south of Denver, has a full-time job and is studying at night for her PhD, forcing her to pay for babysitting for her 8-year-old son. She and another spouse of active-duty military deployed in the Middle East requested anonymity to speak openly due to their fears of reprisal.
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
Before the government shutdown last fall, the Military Families Advisory Network surveyed members and found that one in four active duty military families were struggling with food insecurity. The group is finalizing a more recent survey and already sees that the degree of food insecurity has “significantly increased,” said Shannon Razsadin, the executive director of the group.
“One of the things that families are citing as a pain point is the rising cost of groceries, which is one of the first times that we’ve seen that specifically called out in the research.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://capitalandmain.com/while-pentagon-spends-billions-on-war-military-families-say-theyre-getting-short-changed
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.
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