Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. Attacks Venezuela & Kidnaps President Maduro

January 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Exposing the World Nuclear Association’s Bullshit

3 Jan 2026 https://wauchope.substack.com/p/exposing-the-world-nuclear-associations

 From an edited transcript of World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y León’s World Nuclear News podcast interview.

What do you think are the main priorities for the year ahead?

I think that for everybody in the global nuclear industry, it is essential that we move from ambition to action, to see real projects deployed, many of them. We also need to see many final investment decisions, and see more countries moving forward with nuclear projects.

Finance continues to be an important piece of the puzzle, and in more and more projects we see private investors understanding how they can contribute. We are seeing this in Poland, we saw this in the UK, and I think that we are going to see this in many other jurisdictions. We will continue to work on the supply chain.

This year we will have our second World Nuclear Supply Chain Conference. We are really pleased that it is going to be held in Manila in the Philippines. The ASEAN region is moving forward with nuclear projects very, very quickly and most of the countries are growing their economies incredibly quickly, which of course translates into enormous energy demand. And many of them – Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore – they are really looking at nuclear as a key piece of the puzzle.

We will be publishing in 2026 the World Nuclear Supply Chain Report which will provide a very important snapshot of where we are – what are the true capabilities of the industry to deliver all these projects, what are the needs for growth, what are the potential bottlenecks, what are the opportunities for investment? 

There are quite a few projects moving very quickly. We are all pretty much waiting for the first unit at Rooppur in Bangladesh to start operating, and also the first unit at Akkuyu in Turkey. That will be good timing because COP31 is going to take place in Turkey later in the year so that would be a very good showcase opportunity. There should be first concrete at Paks II in Hungary early in the year. And then there are projects progressing in the Czech Republic, Poland, and lots of SMRs in the USA and Canada. In Canada, of course, they are already under construction with ground broken at the Darlington site. But we are also seeing demonstration projects in the US and elsewhere. So lots of exciting opportunities. Africa is a little bit uncharted territory for new nuclear energy but the El Dabaa project in Egypt is making progress very quickly and we are seeing a number of other countries, such as Rwanda, Ghana and South Africa, where we will likely see projects developing in the coming year.

China will also have a pipeline of projects

It almost feels like a given that there will be new projects and new units in China. They have an enormous pipeline of projects – they will continue to build reactors on time, on budget, and in doing so showcase enormous industrial capabilities. Also, we are looking closely at India’s plans.

We are seeing the realignment of some of the laws in India, the Atomic Energy Act and also the liability laws, that are going to hopefully incentivise international cooperation, international participation in the Indian market, because India has incredible ambitions for 100 GW of new nuclear by 2047. India has great capabilities itself, but global contributions could also be fabulous for these ambitions. The changes also encourage more involvement from the Indian private sector, which could be really game-changing.

One of the big issues for the public is nuclear waste

That is true, but I think that in 2026 we are going to see the entering into operation of the geological repository in Onkalo, Finland. I think this will be a key opportunity to show the world that the questions about what to do with nuclear waste and used nuclear fuel are not a technology problem. It is actually most often a problem of policy, politics, and political will. So I think it is great that Finland is being proactive. I think that Sweden is a minute behind, and then France is also very close by. So I think it will be a key year for that part of the fuel cycle also.
 

April will see the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident

COMMENT Doncha love the way these nuclear hypocrites turn every bad thing into a plus?

Chernobyl’s so good as a lesson. Never mind the fact that the damaged protection dome is spewing radiation out, and they can’t get rid of the toxic melded waste inside .

It is always good to look back and make sure that we have really learned all the lessons and taken the opportunities for improvement from previous events. 2026 will also be the 15th anniversary of Fukushima. I think that the industry has been very good at reflecting on these events and extracting all the lessons to be learned.

Fukushima’s intractable and ever mounting problem of nuclear wastes

I think that the safety culture at a global level continues to be better than ever. I think that international collaboration has always been great in nuclear, but certainly the collaboration that ensued after Chernobyl, and certainly after Fukushima is a testament to how well the nuclear industry is collaborating. Those were important events. We cannot minimise them whatsoever,

COMMENT. Note that here the WNA boasts that nuclear power helps action on climate change, (but later on, boasts its partnership with with fossil fuel industries)

but they need to be put in context with the impacts of things like using fossil fuels on human health, on the environment and obviously on climate change. We really need to look at the entire life-cycle of all energy sources and to recognise that there is not one energy source that is a silver bullet for anything. I think that perhaps Fukushima’s anniversary and Chernobyl’s anniversary will be an opportunity for us as a society to become more pragmatic and realistic about the risks and opportunities of all these technologies.

What do you think are the key planned events for the year?

We hit the ground running at Davos at the World Economic Forum this year, from 19 January – this is perhaps the second time that nuclear energy is really going to be visible there, so we are excited about that opportunity. Immediately after Davos there is India Energy Week in Goa, which is the second-largest energy conference in the world.

In March, we will be at CERAWeek in Texas, a very important event where we are bringing together nuclear energy with many of these large energy users, in particular the oil and gas industry, that are really aligning themselves to best understand how nuclear can contribute to their decarbonisation and energising efforts. 

And then, in April, we will have the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference in Monaco. In May, we will be in Manila at the World Nuclear Supply Chain Conference, and World Nuclear University’s Summer Institute will be in the summer in Lyon in France. And of course we will come back together in September here in London for the World Nuclear Symposium, which will be even bigger and better than the one that we did in 2025. We really wanted to bring the nuclear and finance communities together to answer each other’s questions and demystify nuclear, so financiers recognise that nuclear projects are nothing more, nothing less, than large infrastructure projects. We are now working together with the finance community to put together a nuclear financing guide to pull together best practices and lessons learned to support financiers and nuclear developers going forward. 

COMMENT. Note that while the nuclear lobby pretends to solve climate change, in reality they’re not only in cahoots with oil and gas lobbies, but they intend to take over global climate action, as they planned for in previous COPs

 Later in the year, there will be Africa Energy Week at the end of September in Cape Town, and Singapore International Energy Week is a great opportunity to bring together all those ASEAN countries. There will also be the World Energy Congress taking place in Saudi Arabia and also COP31 in Turkey. So if people thought that 2025 was crazy, I think it is clear that 2026 is looking like it will be just as busy.

So interesting times ahead…

Definitely. This is the time. We’ve been discussing how the stars are aligning for nuclear energy and I think that we are there. The stars are definitely aligned. This is the moment where we, the global nuclear industry, really need to be proactive and active and make the most of this opportunity. We really need to work together with our governments. We need to work together definitely with the nuclear regulators, with the finance community, with large energy users, and we cannot leave behind civil society. We have seen major improvements in public acceptance and interest in nuclear, but we need to continue to be proactive to engage with civil society, to make sure that no question is left unanswered. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/in-quotes-what-to-watch-out-for-in-2026

January 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

What Australians have NOT been told about the $368billion AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.

‘We will undoubtedly be a nuclear target,’ ‘I don’t think many of the people living in Perth realise that, if they weren’t a nuclear target before, they certainly will be when all these… submarines start arriving.

‘I would bet an awful lot of money that the AUKUS subs will be duds by the time they get here, if they ever do,’

‘They’ll probably be redundant because there’s been revolutions in drone technology which will be able to detect submarines more easily. 

‘I would bet an awful lot of money that the AUKUS subs will be duds by the time they get here, if they ever do,’

By CAITLIN POWELL – NEWS REPORTER, 29 December 2025

An AUKUS critic has shed light on the fundamental dangers of the military deal, including the threat of Australia being a nuclear target, as the security pact receives support from Donald Trump – and a rising number of Australians. 

Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that AUKUS was going ‘full steam ahead’ after questions were raised when the Trump administration earlier announced it would review the deal.

The agreement, which would see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, is expected to cost the country up to $368billion over three decades. 

Just a few weeks before Rubio’s thumbs up, an Australia-wide survey of 2,045 people by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) found support for the policy had increased.

The number of people who agreed that the trilateral deal with the US and UK could help keep Australia secure from a military threat from China surged compared to last year.

While 48 per cent agreed in 2024, that rose to 50 per cent in the 2025 survey. The poll also found that over two thirds (68 per cent) supported using AUKUS to deepen Australia’s cooperation with the US and UK on advanced technologies.

This included hopes for technology in cyber, AI and quantum computing. 

But AUKUS critic and adjunct professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, Mark Beeson, has said there are some major issues with the deal which most Australians are missing.

A major component of AUKUS will be a facility at the Australian Navy’s HMAS Stirling base in Perth’s south from 2027.

Up to 1,200 UK and US personnel, their families, and five nuclear-powered submarines will be stationed there.

‘We will undoubtedly be a nuclear target,’ Beeson said of the facility. ‘I don’t think many of the people living in Perth realise that, if they weren’t a nuclear target before, they certainly will be when all these… submarines start arriving.

‘This will be a sort of launch pad for whatever American strategic adventure they decide to take on next.’

The use of the area as base also raised another key issue for Professor Beeson: Australia’s sovereignty.

‘I think there are questions about the historical relationship we have with America,’ he said, referencing the poll.

The survey revealed that a growing trend among Australians is that they want Canberra to make foreign policy decisions without the US and UK.

Among those surveyed, 77 per cent said Australia should make its China foreign policy decisions independently, even when they differ from US preferences.

‘Australia would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to the outcome of any conflict or strategic stand-off between the United States and China – with or without four or five submarines,’ he said.

‘If the Chinese aren’t deterred by America’s overwhelming military power, they’re not going to be deterred by anything we can do. 

‘We’re just a convenient piece of real estate in the southern hemisphere that they can use as sort of launching pad for whatever they decide to do next.

‘There are major implications for our independence and sovereignty.’

‘Australia would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to the outcome of any conflict or strategic stand-off between the United States and China – with or without four or five submarines,’ he said.

‘If the Chinese aren’t deterred by America’s overwhelming military power, they’re not going to be deterred by anything we can do. 

‘We’re just a convenient piece of real estate in the southern hemisphere that they can use as sort of launching pad for whatever they decide to do next.

‘There are major implications for our independence and sovereignty.’

The reasoning for this, he said, is that by having the presence of American and British military on Australian soil, Canberra is no longer solely acting on behalf of Australians.

‘It limits the options available to Australian policymakers to make independent decisions that are in the national interest,’ he said. 

‘Rather (we follow) some supposed mutual interest of Australia, Britain and the US.’

Professor Beeson highlighted that the poll displayed different views among Australians, with support for AUKUS but a desire for independence on policy.

‘I wasn’t surprised that there were a few contradictory sort of views amongst all that, because it is a complex set of issues,’ he said.

‘But some of it displays quite an encouraging degree of sophistication and not just wild panic about China, which is good.’

A final issue Professor Beeson raised was the capacity and timeline of the submarines promised to Australia. 

‘I would bet an awful lot of money that the AUKUS subs will be duds by the time they get here, if they ever do,’ he said.

‘They’ll probably be redundant because there’s been revolutions in drone technology which will be able to detect submarines more easily. 

‘It’s just such a ludicrous long term investment of a lot of money we don’t really have, and we could use on much better things.’

January 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Embedded Alliance – Australia, The Retreat from Sovereignty, and the Machinery of External Control

Critical debate on Israel’s policies is systematically constrained in Australia. A former senior editor notes a “tacit consensus” in newsrooms to avoid the subject, driven by fear of a well-organised lobby that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

29 December 2025 Andrew Klein, PhD and Gabriel Klein, Research Assistant and Scholar

Introduction: The Architecture of a Dependent State

From the high command in Washington to the corporate boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the networked lobbyists in Canberra, a clear and sustained project has unfolded over the past six decades. Its aim is not the military occupation of Australia, but something more insidious and total: the integration of the Australian state, its resources, and its strategic autonomy into the imperatives of American hegemony. This analysis documents the systematic erosion of Australian sovereignty since the 1960s, revealing a pattern where security anxieties are strategically cultivated, neoliberal economics enables extraction, and domestic political discourse is policed to serve external interests. Australia has been transformed from a regional actor with independent agency into a compliant territory – a model of control replicated by empires throughout history.

Phase I: Cultivating Fear and Forging the Chain (1960s-1970s)

The foundational step in securing Australian compliance was the ideological binding of its foreign policy to American global objectives, beginning in Southeast Asia.

1 Vietnam and the “Forward Defence” Doctrine: Australia’s entry into the Vietnam War was justified domestically by the “domino theory” – the fear of communist expansion in Southeast Asia threatening Australia directly. Prime Minister Robert Menzies framed the commitment as a necessary response to a request from South Vietnam, a claim historians have contested, suggesting the decision was made in close coordination with Washington to bolster the legitimacy of the US war effort. This established a template: Australian blood and treasure would be spent in conflicts determined by US strategy, sold to the public through the marketing of fear.

2 The Whitlam Catalyst and the “Coup” Response: The election of Gough Whitlam’s government in 1972 represented the most significant rupture in this dependent relationship. Whitlam immediately moved to withdraw remaining troops from Vietnam, recognised the People’s Republic of China, and opposed US bombing campaigns. His assertive independence triggered a fierce response from entrenched security and political establishments aligned with Washington. The constitutional crisis of 1975, culminating in his dismissal, demonstrated the lengths to which the domestic machinery – when aligned with foreign interests – would go to reassert the established pro-US trajectory. It was a stark lesson that moves toward genuine sovereignty would be met with systemic resistance.

Phase II: Neoliberalism as the Engine of Extraction (1980s-Present)

With the security bond firmly established, the next phase involved remaking the Australian economy to facilitate the outward flow of wealth and deepen integration with US capital.

1 The Hawke-Keating “Reforms”: Pragmatism or Ideology?: The economic transformations of the 1980s and 1990s – financial deregulation, tariff reductions, and privatisation – are often framed as pragmatic modernisation. However, they served core neoliberal doctrines privileging market forces and global capital mobility. The floating of the dollar and dismantling of banking controls integrated Australia into volatile global financial flows, increasing its vulnerability to external shocks.

2 Structural Consequences: Finance Over Industry: This shift catalysed a profound restructuring of the Australian economy, privileging extractive and financial sectors over productive industry.

3 The Mining Cartel: The resources sector, buoyed by Chinese demand, grew to become Australia’s largest export industry. It accrued immense political power, exemplified by its successful multi-million-dollar campaign to gut the Resources Super Profits Tax in 2010, directly shaping government policy to its benefit.

4 The Financialisation of Everything: Banking deregulation led to unprecedented concentration, with the “Big Four” banks becoming a protected oligopoly. Their profits, supercharged by a government-inflated housing market, now rank among the highest in the world. The economy became geared toward asset inflation and debt, benefiting financial capital at the expense of housing affordability and productive investment.

5 Manufacturing Decline: Concurrently, Australian manufacturing entered a steep relative decline, its share of GDP falling to one of the lowest levels in the OECD. The nation was deliberately reshaped as a quarry and a financial platform, deeply enmeshed with global (particularly American) capital and vulnerable to commodity cycles.

Phase III: The China Pivot and the Securitisation of Dissent (2016-Present)

The return of China as a major regional power presented both an economic opportunity and a strategic dilemma for US hegemony. Australia’s management of this dilemma reveals the subordination of its economic interests to alliance maintenance.

1 The “Securitising Coalition” and Anti-China Politics: From approximately 2016, a powerful coalition within Australia’s national security establishment, conservative politics, and aligned media deliberately elevated a “China threat” narrative. This served a dual purpose: it created domestic political advantage for the conservative coalition and was seen as crucial “alliance maintenance” with the US, proving Australia’s loyalty as Washington pivoted to overt “strategic competition” with Beijing. Policies like banning Huawei from the 5G network placed Australia “out in front” of even the US in confronting China.

2 Economic Punishment and Sovereign Costs: This posture triggered severe economic coercion from China, which disrupted billions in Australian exports. Despite this cost, the strategic subordination continued. The AUKUS pact, involving the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines at an estimated cost of up to $368 billion, locks Australia into a decades-long, exorbitant dependency on US and UK military technology, creating a perpetual revenue stream for the American military-industrial complex.

3 Direct American Coercion: This dependency invites direct pressure. In 2025, the US Secretary of Defense publicly demanded Australia increase its defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, a drastic rise from the current 2%. Concurrently, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Australian exports, demonstrating that coercive pressure now flows from both major powers, with Australia caught in the middle.

Phase IV: The Information and Ideological Frontier

Final control requires shaping the domestic narrative. Australia’s public discourse on key US foreign policy interests is subject to sophisticated manipulation and silencing mechanisms.

1 The Israel-Palestine Litmus Test: Critical debate on Israel’s policies is systematically constrained in Australia. A former senior editor notes a “tacit consensus” in newsrooms to avoid the subject, driven by fear of a well-organised lobby that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. This conflation, described as a “long-term strategy,” ensures Palestinian perspectives and critiques of occupation are marginalised. Government policy follows: the 2025 Albanese government antisemitism strategy adopts a controversial definition that risks conflating criticism of Israel with hate speech, a move criticised by human rights experts for threatening free speech and ignoring the context of the war in Gaza.

2 Surveillance and Infiltration: The reach of external influence extends into covert domains. Israeli intelligence has recruited Australian citizens for operations, as revealed in the case of alleged Mossad agent Ben Zygier. Globally, Israeli cyber-surveillance firms, often staffed by intelligence veterans, export intrusive spyware like Predator to governments worldwide, enabling the surveillance of journalists and dissidents. This global surveillance infrastructure, in which Australian entities may be both targets and unwitting transit points, represents a penetration of informational sovereignty.

Conclusion: Scraping By in the Imperial Perimeter

The trajectory is undeniable. From Vietnam to AUKUS, Australia has been mobilised to fight America’s regional battles. Through neoliberalism, its economy has been restructured for resource extraction and financial profiteering, enriching a narrow elite while creating crises in housing, manufacturing, and cost of living. Its political discourse is policed on issues core to US and allied geopolitical interests, from China to Palestine.

Prime Ministers from Menzies to Albanese have navigated this reality with varying degrees of submission or muted resistance. The result is a nation whose security policy is set by Washington, whose economic model serves global capital, and whose public square is patrolled by imported ideological framings. Australia is not a sovereign actor but a managed asset within the American imperium – a fate it now shares with territories across the globe where the empire extracts, and its subjects scrape by.

References……………………………………………………

December 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Yes, a Bondi Royal Commission but … | The West Report

If there is to be a Royal Commission into the deadly Bondi Beach shootings, it must not presume blame. It must have broad terms of reference; not be concocted as a political stunt to attack Albanese, peace protestors, Muslims. Everything must be in scope – broad terms of reference and an independent Commissioner with credibility

December 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How Corporations View (and Own) the U.S. Military

The most famous example in recent years is the 2023 NDAA, which contained several provisions regarding Taiwan. One provision allowed Taiwan to receive foreign military financing (FMF) from the U.S. government. FMF usually goes to independent countries, not breakaway provinces. FMF consists of loans and/or grants from the U.S. government for a country to purchase goods and services from the U.S. war industry.

And, just like that, the 2023 NDAA increased U.S. belligerence toward Beijing and made war more likely, profiting corporations all the while.

Corporate Capture Is Not Just Lobbying

Christian. Dec 27, 2025, https://thebusinessofwar.substack.com/p/how-corporations-view-and-own-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769284&post_id=179499875&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A for-profit corporation is a business organization designed to maximize short-term profit. The job of corporate executives is to maximize that profit, while the board of directors makes sure they do so.

The number one way that a corporation maximizes profit is by underpaying its workers.1 Workers create the profit, but don’t receive it. The executives funnel that profit to investors and themselves.

It goes without saying that the workers are not in charge. They are not allowed to make the business decisions in a given corporation. The executives make those decisions. There is no democracy in the workplace.

This is the situation in any industry, including the war industry.

What You Know about Corporate Capture

Big business works hard to influence the U.S. government. Corporate capture happens when it succeeds. Massive corporations work together to influence the government’s institutions and decision-making so that policy and regulation (or lack thereof) increase corporate profit instead of public well-being.

You likely know about think tanks, lobbying, and legal bribery.

• A think tank issues information favorable to those who fund it. Corporations and the super-rich fund think tanks, which create and inflate threats and justify the broad deployment of U.S. troops and sky-high military and intel budgets.
• Corporations and the super-rich hire lobbyists to swarm U.S. Congress and the Pentagon. Lobbyists even draft legislation, which they hand over to politicians.
• Corporations and the super-rich fund the two political parties and individual candidates. Once in office, elected officials pass laws favorable to these big business interests.

Think tanks, lobbying, and legal bribery are a powerful combination, but corporate capture is much more than that. War corporations (known as “military contractors” or “defense companies”) control the mind and the body in several ways.

Control the Mind

• Corporations regularly open (and close) offices and factories. Corporate executives promise a number jobs at a given location, particularly when seeking state and local tax breaks (though the fine print makes sure they never have to come through with all of those jobs or keep workers employed for the long run). Playing the “jobs” card is a way for big business and its politicians to pretend to care about workers.
• Legally designated as 501(c) nonprofits, trade groups (e.g., NDIA, AIA, AUSA) excel at networking active-duty military officers and industry officials, further blurring the line between government and corporate. Corporate viewpoints reign supreme at networking events, such as seminars, breakfasts, and arms fairs. (Additionally, 501(c)4 nonprofits are skilled at using dark money to influence politics.)
• Corporations help to craft policy and strategy on the inside. Corporations have had a hand in strategic initiatives and planning for Navy leadership, strategic plans and policy support for the Air Force, acquisition policy and program development for the Marine Corps, assessments and policy recommendations for the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Logistics, and more!
• The Pentagon gives corporations free labor from military officers. The corporations are allowed to propagandize these officers with recommendations about military policy, which the officers take with them when they return to their military unit.
• Greedy tycoons, including prominent war profiteers, sit on different boards that advise the Pentagon. The Defense Policy Board is one such grouping.

Control the Body

• The U.S. military doesn’t move, bomb, or communicate without corporations. In fact, it doesn’t do anything without corporate goods and services — from the largest aircraft carrier (itself a platform for innumerable goods and services) to the smallest microchip. Comprising the militant body, corporations gobble up more than half of the military budget. There still are uniformed troops (soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardians), but they are merely users of corporate products… in the eyes of top executives.
• Corporate personnel are everywhere. These “contractors” even outnumber the troops in many military locations.
• The U.S. military isn’t allowed to repair most of its own equipment. Corporations must do it. This is just like corporations preventing farmers from repairing their tractors or you from putting a new battery into your old laptop.
• In the same vein, corporations do their best to hog the data pertaining to big-ticket weapons. The most famous example is the Lockheed Martin F-35 jet, the most expensive weapon of all time. The corporation owns the software code and the technical data for the jet. The U.S. military therefore is unable to operate, maintain, or upgrade the jet on its own.
• If you don’t own it, it’s not yours. Many corporations require the U.S. military to license their software, not purchase it outright. Licenses cover everything from accounting software and data integration software to products that monitor communications network and Oracle databases for a massive counterintelligence bureaucracy. Licensing is more profitable than a one-time sale.
• Capitalists move from industry to government and back again. When in government, they implement profit-over-people policies and they acquire knowledge to profit better whenever they leave government. (Top military officers also flock to war corporations in retirement, often becoming executives.)

Corporations don’t just run the show. Corporations are the show.

The Resulting Behavior

This corporate capture — mind and body — guarantees that government policy will help to maximize corporate profit.

The annual military policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is crafted in the environment described above. Corporate lobbyists and U.S. Congress pack the NDAA with section after section designed to increase corporate profit.

Year after year, the NDAA requires the Pentagon to:

1. Train and arm foreign militaries or paramilitary groups. This increases arms sales and can give the Pentagon some influence over those being trained/armed.

A few examples of many include: training Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga (2024 NDAA); expanding the training of Eastern European “national security forces” (2025 NDAA); and reinforcing Lebanese military training and equipping (2026 NDAA).

2. Maintain or expand the U.S. military’s presence around the world.

The hundreds of U.S. military bases worldwide increase corporate sales — remember, corporations comprise most U.S. military activity2 — and allow the Pentagon to further bully governments/groups that chart an independent foreign policy or resist corporate domination of their land and resources.

No region is off-limits.

For example, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, established through the 2021 NDAA and enhanced in all subsequent ones, is the main way the Pentagon militarizes the Pacific. It focuses on building up military infrastructure in the Pacific, purchasing and placing weaponry there, expanding military training and exercises there, and fostering and co-opting regional leaders.

3. Spend money on goods and services made by U.S. war corporations.3 For example, section 1640 of the 2024 NDAA required the Pentagon to establish a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile program. (Sections 1513 of the 2025 NDAA and 1633 of the 2026 NDAA refined the program’s goals.) Guess which corporations the military will pay to develop this weapon!

4. Assess what the official enemies are doing in a given region.

• Assess, for example, what Moscow and Beijing are up to in Latin America and the Caribbean (2024 NDAA, section 7342).
• Devise a strategy for “exposing, and, as appropriate, countering” China’s “malign activities” (2025 NDAA, section 1254).
• Evaluate [alleged] fentanyl trafficking by the Chinese government (2026 NDAA, section 8313) and plan to “respond” to China’s “global” military bases (section 8367).

These are just a few examples.

The assessments are then used to create fear and hype up such “threats.” Look out! [Country you’re taught to fear] is doing X, Y, and Z in [region U.S.-based capitalists want to dominate]! Bigger budgets follow. More money for war corporations.

5. Spend tax dollars on researching more technology for war and espionage. For example, the past three NDAAs have mandated research in artificial intelligence, microelectronics, nuclear weaponry, and much more. Industry does the research. And charges a pretty penny for it. (Meanwhile, corporations don’t use much of their own profit for R&D. Profit goes to execs and investors.)

The most famous example in recent years is the 2023 NDAA, which contained several provisions regarding Taiwan. One provision allowed Taiwan to receive foreign military financing (FMF) from the U.S. government. FMF usually goes to independent countries, not breakaway provinces. FMF consists of loans and/or grants from the U.S. government for a country to purchase goods and services from the U.S. war industry.

And, just like that, the 2023 NDAA increased U.S. belligerence toward Beijing and made war more likely, profiting corporations all the while.

Every subsequent NDAA increased the likelihood of all-out war with China. The 2026 NDAA, for example, further weaponized Taiwan by $1 billion, accelerated U.S.-Taiwan drone and counter-drone programs, encouraged the Pentagon to invite Taiwan to the massive annual military exercise known as RIMPAC, and more.

Full-court Press

Corporate capture is thorough.

It is lobbying; funding political parties and campaigns; establishing and funding think tanks; lying about jobs; using trade groups to imbricate military and industry; crafting policy and strategy on the inside; using boards to advise the Pentagon; flooding the military with corporate goods, services, and personnel; hogging data and requiring licensing; occupying the top Pentagon positions; and propagandizing military officers directly.

The troops are users of corporate goods and services.

Military bases are avenues of corporate profit.

That is how big business sees the U.S. military. And it has achieved its vision.

Christian Sorensen is a researcher focused on the U.S.-based corporations profiting from war. A U.S. Air Force veteran, Sorensen is associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), a group of military and intel veterans who disagree with U.S. foreign policy and believe a better world is possible.

December 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment