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'Best Minds'? Hegseth Taps Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich to Lead 'Future of Warfare' Project
"A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military," said one observer. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Sep 30, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that three men—none of whom have served in the military and two who make billions of dollars from it—will help lead a new Pentagon project on the “future of warfare," even as he moves to eliminate hundreds of senior armed service leadership position, including many generals and admirals.
Hegseth unveiled Project Meridian during his “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The 120-day initiative will examine emerging technologies that the Department of Defense believes will be critical in future warfare.
"America's best minds" will be brought together to “reimagine what warfare will look like in the future,” Hegseth said.
To that end, the defense secretary said that "Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation's best minds, Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich."
Musk, the world's wealthiest human, is already deeply involved in US national security infrastructure through SpaceX—the recipient of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts—and other businesses. He was previously part of the administration as the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Luckey, who like Musk is a major Trump donor, is the co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries. Last year, he said that Anduril planned to produce “large numbers" of cruise missiles, fighter jets, and other artificial intelligence-powered weapons systems.
“If we have to fight Iran, and China, and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed,” Luckey said in pushing for more arms production.
Gingrich is a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who had been pushing for war with Iran since at least 2005. Like President Donald Trump, he has been accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War by receiving numerous deferments; in Trump's case for bone spurs, and for Gingrich because he was a student and a father.
"Those three great Americans are going to be joined by a team of senior leaders, hand-picked private sector leaders, and subject matter experts from across our nation's unmatched innovation, academic, and policy ecosystems," said Hegseth—whose Senate confirmation last year was so contentious due to concerns about him being unfit for office that it required a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance.
The defense secretary also announced the creation of an Autonomous Warfare Command—or Autowarcom—"a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force."
The appointments come as Hegseth simultaneously pursues a major reduction in the military’s senior leadership. He announced Wednesday that the Pentagon would eliminate 20% of its roughly 800 general and admiral positions by January—doubling a previously announced 10% reduction. Hegseth described the cuts as necessary to eliminate “redundant force structure” and “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”
The reductions follow the removal or early departure of more than two dozen senior military and civilian defense officials since Hegseth became defense secretary.
The contrast has drawn criticism from lawmakers and military observers, who expressed alarm at the prospect of removing experienced officers while handing an influential role in planning future war to warfare technology executives and a hawkish former lawmaker who is no longer accountable to the public.
"Interesting. A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military," NewBlue USA executive Marty Taylor said on social media. "What could possibly go wrong?"
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Federal Judge Rejects Trump's Rationale for Hiding Memo on 'Cold-Blooded Murder' at Sea
“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” said one legal expert.
Sep 30, 2026
A key memo from the Office of Legal Counsel at President Donald Trump's Department of Justice has underpinned the administration's yearlong campaign of bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the White House has been adamant that the document should be kept secret.
But on Wednesday, Judge Paul Engelmayer in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the administration's rationale for keeping the memo hidden, saying that the Department of Defense and US Southern Command have adopted its contents as its "working law" while conducting 70 strikes on boats and killing at least 234 people who officials claimed, without evidence, were "narco-terrorists."
After the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a Freedom of Information Act request calling for the release of the 40-page memo, the administration argued it needed to remain secret to protect confidential deliberations and attorney-client communications.
Engelmayer noted that administration officials have repeatedly cited the memo in public statements to explain why it was bombing dozens of boats that it claimed were operated by drug cartels—which experts and family members of some of the victims have called into question.
“The agency defendants cannot claim surprise from this consequence of the executive branch’s repeated public statements embracing the OLC memo—and it only—as setting out the legal parameters for the boat strikes,” Engelmayer wrote.
Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, called the order "a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law."
“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians," said Stein.
The judge ordered the administration to turn the memo over to him so he can determine whether it should be released to the public. He also ordered officials to provide information about who has seen the memo and how they have used it, and called on the administration to provide details on whether the memo could be protected from public view as a "closely held presidential advice document."
Engelmayer gave the administration until October 14 to comply with the order.
The boat strikes have been carried out as part of Trump's stated push to defeat drug cartels in Latin America. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has pointed out that there is little evidence the administration is ensuring it is targeting drug boats, as the presence of drugs on a boat has not been identified as "targeting criteria" for the operation in congressional briefings. Some victims have been identified as fishermen and other people who had little, if any, involvement with drug trafficking.
Beyond that, legal experts say that even if the 234 victims were drug traffickers, the boat bombings constitute extrajudicial killings and violations of international law—something Trump himself appeared to brag about last week when he said at the United Nations General Assembly that "we don’t waste our time" addressing alleged drug crimes in the court system.
“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” said Baher Azmy, legal director for CCR. “If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial murders in legalese to provide Trump cover, the public needs to see that analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name.”
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Hegseth and His Anti-Woke Military: An Assessment
The hard-nosed approach by the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth toward the training and deployment of American armed forces is not only unwise and counterproductive. It is a disgrace to the reputation of the United States.
Sep 30, 2026
On September 30, 2025, a swaggering Secretary of Defense (“War”), Pete Hegseth, delivered his “warrior ethos” lecture to the 800 top generals and admirals of the American military, whom he had assembled for a command performance.
One year later, an assessment is called for.
“The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things... we became the ‘woke’ department,” he said. We must “remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage,” he fulminated, adding that “serving with fat or unfit or under-trained troops” is a violation, in effect, of the Golden Rule. (You wouldn’t want to share a foxhole with a fat person, so don’t be fat yourself). Henceforth, the “highest standards” must be met. He told his audience that it is “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals.”
Was our first president and commander-in-chief too “woke” for Secretary Hegseth?
Secretary Hegseth would see to it that “grooming standards” would be strictly enforced. “No more beardos!” He wants a “lethal department of war.” Furthermore, “words like bullying and hazing and toxic have been weaponized and bastardized... basic training is being restored to what it should be: scary, tough, and disciplined.”
“We’re empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring that future war fighters are forged... and yes, they can put their hands on recruits.”
In what way has Hegseth’s tough training regimen been helpful in the country’s pursuit of its war with Iran? Probably in no way. A drone operator obviously requires different skills from a WWI or WWII infantryman.
Finally, in his oration, Hegseth announced, “We don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.” That particular point raises serious questions, discussed later. (The questionable legality of the Iran War itself cannot be discussed in this limited space.)
In his blustering speech, Secretary Hegseth either ignored or was unaware of important critiques published shortly after WWII. During that war, a team of social psychologists conducted for the Research Branch, Information and Education Division of the War Department, an extensive study, consisting of numerous opinion surveys, on the attitudes of American fighting men. It was an attempt to discover the motivations that made men fight. This four-volume study, edited by Samuel A. Stouffer and published in 1949, is known as The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath.
The study debunked the myth that discipline will crumble in combat in the absence of terror in training. It further debunked the myth that glorification of trivia (grooming and “spit and polish”) increases combat proficiency. It also shattered the illusion—prevailing in the officer corps at the time—that Black soldiers would prefer to serve under white officers rather than under Black officers.
In 1946, another in-depth military study, known as the Doolittle Board, issued even more striking assessments of officer-enlisted relations in the armed forces. Among other proposals, it recommended that the social distinctions between enlisted soldiers and officers be greatly eased.
Secretary Hegseth’s machismo, his atavistic and simplistic notions of warrior ethos, clearly drive his policy preferences. If he were aware of the Stouffer study or the Doolittle Board, he would likely deem their recommendations as too “woke.”
And yet, they were in step with the American military’s original philosophy of maintaining morale, good order, and discipline. For hundreds of years, army manuals have exhorted officers to recognize the intimate relationship between discipline and morale. Even Baron von Steuben, the Prussian military theorist whose codes were adopted wholesale by the American revolutionary army, realized the importance of morale in armies that reflected the caste systems of 18th-century Europe. These, for example, are some of von Steuben’s “Instructions for the Captain”:
His first object should be, to gain the love of his men, by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity, inquiring into their complaints, and when well founded, seeing them redressed.
The baron’s “Instructions for the Sergeants and Corporals” convey the same message:
In teaching the recruits, they must exercise all their patience, by no means abusing them, but treating them with mildness...
George Washington relied on Baron von Steuben’s manuals. Was our first president and commander-in-chief too “woke” for Secretary Hegseth?
There is an aspect of Hegseth’s bombastic oration which is even more problematical, his proclamation that henceforth, “we... don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.” This dangerous notion has impelled Hegseth to launch policies which, in the opinions of many lawyers, military and civilian, have led to American officials and military personnel committing murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—both in the war against Iran and in the campaign to execute without trial suspected drug traffickers in small boats in the Caribbean.
Although military subordinates must obey all lawful orders or be subject to court-martial for violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), they must disobey unlawful orders. What makes an order illegal? When an order is “so manifestly beyond the scope of the superior officer’s authority and the order is so obviously and palpably unlawful as to admit of no reasonable doubt of its unlawfulness,” there is actually a duty to disobey it. (U.S. v. Kinder, 14 CMR 742, 1953). “I was just following orders” in such a case is no defense. Examples of obviously illegal orders are those to target civilians; or abuse trainees; or torture or kill detainees; or otherwise to violate federal law or the Constitution. The prosecutions of Americans for their cruel actions at Mai Lai in the Vietnam War and Abu Ghraib in the Iraq War are situations where the defense of “just following orders” was not successful. In those situations, crucial rules of engagement were not followed. The bottom line: The law requires American soldiers to be reasoning agents, not unquestioning robots. Scaring trainees into unquestioning obedience does not prepare them for modern warfare.
Violations of international law, as embodied in the Geneva Conventions, can also subject a civilian or soldier to criminal prosecution. At least since 1949, the Geneva Conventions have prohibited “cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Since his speech, Secretary Hegseth has announced that under his regime, American troops should “give no quarter,” meaning show no mercy, even to surrendering or disarmed combatants. This policy was applied to the drug-trafficking suspects in the Caribbean who, under Hegseth’s orders, were killed by American military personnel. The excuse given by him and President Donald Trump, is that the drug-runners are combatants in a “war,” which is nonsense. Trump and Hegseth claim they were given legal cover by an official opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel. That classified opinion—which purports to justify the killing of drug traffickers without legal proceedings—is strongly disputed by human rights organizations and many others. Unfortunately, it remains classified to this day. In my opinion, like the memo written by John Yoo purporting to render lawful the waterboarding of terrorism suspects during the Iraq War, it will someday be discredited. And the perpetrators of the Caribbean killings might find themselves indicted.
The hard-nosed approach by the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth toward the training and deployment of American armed forces is not only unwise and counterproductive. It is a disgrace to the reputation of the United States.
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'We Won't Let Him': Efforts to Stop Trump Grow as Work Observed at 'Illegal and Immoral' Arch
"I will continue doing everything in my power to stop this illegal and reckless attempt to turn our nation's capital into a monument to Donald Trump," vowed Rep. Don Beyer.
Sep 25, 2026
While Americans are stressed about the economy and President Donald Trump's approval rating has hit a historic low, the second-term Republican is focused on vanity projects like his proposed 250-foot "Triumphal Arch," which opponents are trying to block.
The watchdog group Public Citizen is planning a protest and press conference for the morning of October 1 at Memorial Circle in Washington, DC. Speakers include Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.), military veterans, and other critics of the "self-indulgent project" that lacks congressional approval—and which Trump is now trying to push as a national security project.
"Trump's planned construction is not only illegal," Public Citizen said in a Thursday statement, pointing to the lawsuit it filed on behalf of three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian. "It is an affront to American veterans and their families."
"The arch will sit on Memorial Circle along the Potomac River, impeding the symbolic line-of-sight between the Lincoln Memorial in DC and Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where hundreds of thousands of our nation's military members have been laid to rest," explained the group, which has secured from a federal judge temporary restrictions on work at the site.
Beyer—whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery—headed to the site on Thursday. He said in a statement that "after hearing from constituents who saw construction equipment at the site of Trump's proposed vanity arch, I drove down to Columbia Island to see for myself. When I arrived, I found workers operating heavy equipment who told me they were conducting archaeological work to evaluate the composition of the soil."
"When I asked whether this work was a precursor to construction of the arch, they said that they could not answer," the congressman continued. "The logical conclusion, however, is that the presence of this heavy equipment and additional surveyors is a clear indication that the Trump administration is preparing to move forward with construction. That would be deeply troubling. Trump's arch is illegal and immoral, and the administration is also under court order requiring 48 hours' notice before work proceeds."
"Yet, the administration appears to be pushing ahead with activity at the site even while it still has not done the basic work necessary to understand the consequences of this project," Beyer warned. "There has been no adequate assessment of the regional impacts of this 250-foot structure on public safety, vehicular traffic, air traffic, or historic sites, including the implications of Trump's latest ravings about using the arch as a base for drone and sniper operations."
Beyer, who also shared video of his visit to the site on social media, added that “Donald Trump and his administration are determined to find a way to push this project through by any means necessary, regardless of the law or the concerns of the people who live here, but my constituents have made their views abundantly clear: They do not want this project. Neither do I. I will continue doing everything in my power to stop this illegal and reckless attempt to turn our nation's capital into a monument to Donald Trump."
In May, Beyer and Dina Titus (D-Nev.)—who, as co-chair of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, led challenges to the administration's illegal attempts to fund the arch using the National Endowment for the Humanities budget—introduced the Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act, which would explicitly prohibit construction of Trump's project.
"As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch. While destroying historical monuments and artifacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself," Titus said at the time. "The American people deserve a leader who is responsibly using federal funding for critical government services, not for self-promotion."
After months of pushback over the project, Trump announced last Sunday that "at the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage."
"There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World," the president wrote on his Truth Social platform. "Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, DC, IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all!"
The Hill reported Friday that analysts and lawmakers "are perplexed by President Trump’s surprise declaration," with Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, telling the outlet that adding military elements to the arch "is not totally fictional or crazy—but also not optimal."
Whether or not the project include military components, "to build an arch on federal land (that is not in the White House complex), the administration needs to navigate a lot of bureaucracy," The Washington Post noted Thursday. "The administration has argued the arch doesn't need to abide by DC's height laws for buildings and that it doesn't need congressional authorization because Congress authorized something similar a century ago nearby."
However, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation—whose members are picked by the president—has attempted to abide by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and related regulations, and consulted with local officials "to seek ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate adverse effects to historic properties that would result from this undertaking."
ABC News highlighted that "the law says federal officials don't have to reach an agreement with state officials on mitigation of those harms, but they do have to try. Those consultations can then be unilaterally terminated if there's a failure for parties to meet in the middle."
The council's vice chair, Travis Voyles, on Thursday wrote to Tammy Stidman, associate regional director for lands and planning at the National Park Service, that "we are hereby terminating consultation," but the panel "will develop and transmit its final comments to the secretary of interior," aiming to deliver them by October 7.
According to the Post, "The administration is hoping to start construction by November."
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Trump Is Busy Renaming and Remaking the World In His Grotesque Image
Setime before his third term in office, he’ll suddenly begin tearing down the West Wing of the White House (including the Oval Office) and in its place will construct a triumphal statue of—but of course, who else?—himself.
Sep 24, 2026
Honestly, in this strange world of ours, what is there to write about except, of course, Donald Trump?
Oh, well, as a start, I could write about my country’s war with Iran and the way the militaries of the two countries are going after each other’s naval vessels. Oh, wait, that couldn’t be a more Trumpian subject, could it?
So, maybe I could write about great white sharks, which would certainly be cooler to see than “our” president. But what do I know about great white sharks? (Of course, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that, the moment after I wrote that, I put “Trump, Great White Shark” into my search window and promptly came up with a set of pieces beginning with the Palm Beach Post‘s “President Trump Misses Great White Shark Visit to Mar-a-Lago Waters” and The Guardian’s “Trump Is ‘Obsessed’ and ‘Terrified’ of Sharks—But His Fears Are Excessive.”
Sooner or later, once he’s finished with all the cities, states, and politicians, he could, of course, move on to the rest of our vocabulary and I would be able to Trump you rather than stump you when I write my future pieces.
Or maybe, I could write not about the present disaster of a war in the Strait of Trumpmuz, but the next one my country is likely to face, undoubtedly with Turkey—or do I mean Indonesia, or maybe Turkmenistan, or even perhaps Turkwomenistan (a country still to be created, of course, but that’s no reason not to go to war with it)? And all of them could be turned into Trumpific countries. Still, that’s so boringly unpredictably predictable, don’t you think? I mean, as the old line went, war, what is it good for? And the classic answer (if only!): Absolutely nothing! But in the era of Pete Hegseth and crew, that would need to be changed to: Absolutely everything!
Or maybe I could write about the odds that “my” president might be peached—that is, covered in overly ripe fruit, since in a historic first (or do I mean second?), he’s already been impeached twice to distinctly little effect. So why not try that instead? It makes him sound delicious, don’t you think?
Or perhaps I could focus on the future of mail-out voting, since “my” president is already distinctly (and yes, I just can’t help using that word again) determined to severely limit, if not simply do away with, the mail-in version of the same. Or maybe instead, I could deal with his administration’s likely urge to wipe out any chance of the future creation of an Antarctic Report Card about the second fastest-warming (and melting) area on this planet (and its ice sheet that has existed for a mere 30 million years or so), since his crew has already gone after the latest report on the fastest-warming place of all, the Arctic, by—yes, of course!—ending its funding.
Or, hey, how about if I focus instead on the fate of the US military’s privates, since Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been taking superior care of its leaders who have been endlessly in the news. After all, he’s already fired or blocked the promotion of more than 80 generals and admirals, or about 10% of its high command (and I don’t have the slightest doubt that he’s just getting started). Sooner or later, when all the generals and admirals are gone, he’ll have to move down the ranks, right? I can’t help but believe that, in the end, he and the rest of his crew in Washington will be eager to fully privatize the military and turn themselves into the missing generals and admirals, or do I mean privates first class?
Or, come to think of it, since Donald Trump (labelled by The Guardian‘s Marina Hyde as this planet’s “most tireless freelance cartographer”) has had the urge not just to rename Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico as Lake America and the Gulf of America, but to dub the state of New Mexico as “New America,” how about if I spend a little time on what I’m sure will be his future renaming efforts. I mean, he’s certainly going to rename New York City (where he, like the author of this piece, was born so long ago) Old Trumpian City; and California as Trumpifornia (and, of course, its governor as Gavin OldTrump); and North and South Carolina as North Trump and South Trump, not to speak of Florida as Florump.
Phew! That was one long sentence and yet we’re undoubtedly only at the start of his renaming process. Sooner or later, once he’s finished with all the cities, states, and politicians, he could, of course, move on to the rest of our vocabulary and I would be able to Trump you rather than stump you when I write my future pieces.
Or, for that matter, I could skip to the president’s dance hall (undoubtedly to be known someday as Trump’s rock and roll) for which he’s already torn down the East Wing of that historically less than interesting building, the White House, or the 250-foot Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck he’s building that will be larger than Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, and instead put my energy into predicting the president’s next major architectural surprise in Washington, DC. Here’s my best guess (and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t come true): Sometime before his third term in office—and count on him wanting that (to hell with such an ancient and useless document as the Constitution)—he’ll suddenly begin tearing down the West Wing of the White House (including the Oval Office) and in its place will construct a triumphal statue of—but of course, who else?—himself (or rather Himself). It goes without saying that it will be larger not just than the Arc de Triomphe but his own Arch of Triumph. And when he’s done with that, you can count on one thing: There will simply be no way to make our nation’s capital any more statuesque.
Not surprisingly, his White House spokespeople are already praising his construction efforts in Washington, including his magnificently green Trump Memorial Reflecting (or do I mean Deflecting?) Pool. As one of them put it recently, “Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, no other president has done more to beautify our nation’s interior than President Trump.” (And don’t you find it beyond weird, under the circumstances, that, as The Washington Post reports, “nearly 2 in 3, 65% [of Americans], feel dissatisfied or upset” by his Washington building projects?)
Or what about a possible desire to replace presidentially loathed “birth tourism”—no matter that the Supreme Court last summer ensured babies born here would indeed become US citizens despite every effort by the Trump crew—with something distinctly presidential and much to be loved: “death tourism.” Wouldn’t that be the perfect formula for You Know Who?
Oh, and I don’t think I even mentioned it, but a source within the administration has assured me privately that President Trump is going to end his second term in office and begin his third term—no, the Supreme Court wouldn’t dare stop him!—by renaming himself Donald Trumplincoln and will come to be known in his later years as “Old Don” as his Civil War-era predecessor was known as “Old Abe.” (Whoops, sorry, my mistake! That was an eagle of the Civil War era!) I meant “Honest Abe“ and (Dis)Honest Don.
And none of that, not a bit of it, should seem even faintly surprising from such a distinctly presidential figure.
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'I Don't Think Any US Government Official Has Ever Said That Before': On-Orbit Space Weapon Confirmed?
"The US also now has to accept the Chinese and Russians doing/saying the same," one expert noted.
Sep 14, 2026
US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink seemingly revealed Monday that the United States has launched into orbit "space-control weapons."
"Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist," Mink said during a speech at an Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) conference in Maryland. “This is why the United States now has, on-orbit, space-control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action."
SpaceNews reported that when asked about the comment by AFA president and CEO Burt Field, Meink declined to elaborate.
"That phrase was very well thought out," Meink responded. "So whatever I said before is what I say again."
"It is critically important that we maintain our dominance, not only in the air but in space," he added, according to AFA's magazine. "So, we've had to take steps to make sure that when we're threatened, we can take care of that.”
Defense One noted that experts were "shocked" by his admission‚ including Victoria Samson, the Secure World Foundation's chief director of space security and stability.
"Well, that's huge, because I don't think any US government official has ever said that before," she said. "The US also now has to accept the Chinese and Russians doing/saying the same. I don't think that this is going to be in the interest of US national security.”
Although Meink wouldn't offer details on the weapons, Samson said: "I'm going to guess what he's talking about is not a kinetic space-control weapon due to multiple comments government officials have said about avoiding debris causing counter space... So I'm going to go with my first guess: space-based jammers, electronic warfare."
While President Donald Trump has made a habit of attacking international bodies and pacts, the United States is, in theory, limited by the Outer Space Treaty, as a founding party that signed the agreement nearly six decades ago.
Under that treaty—to which China and Russia are also parties—governments agree not to "place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner."
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Report Details 500+ Yemeni Civilian Casualties From 2023-25 US Airstrikes
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," said Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused."
Sep 10, 2026
A report released Thursday examines the more than 500 Yemeni civilians its authors said were killed or wounded by US airstrikes in the Middle East nation during a recent 17-month period amid the open-ended so-called "War on Terror" that has left nearly one million people dead in around half a dozen nations over the past 25 years.
The report—authored by the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights and published by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—documents 46 US airstrikes that took place between December 2023 and May 2025 that caused at least 576 civilian casualties, including 213 deaths and 363 injuries. Among the casualties were at least 50 children and 25 women.
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell contended.
"It's important that we continue to account for the civilian lives lost, harmed, and disrupted in Yemen and other US war zones," she added. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused in Yemen in support of the Israeli government's wars since 2023."
The overwhelming majority of the casualties covered by the publication occurred during President Donald Trump’s 2025 "Operation Rough Rider" campaign. Mwatana estimates that the operation killed 208 civilians and wounded 341, while the Pentagon has acknowledged a smaller toll of 153 killed and 243 wounded.
Seven of the 46 strikes took place between December of 2023 and January of 2025 during former President Joe Biden's "Operation Prosperity Guardian," a military campaign that came amid Houthi rebel attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
Among the deadliest attacks covered by the report was the April 2025 bombardment of Ras Isa oil port ordered by Trump, in which US strikes killed scores of people and wounded more than 150 others. Human Rights Watch called the bombing an “apparent war crime,” saying the destruction of the civilian oil facility also threatened vital fuel supplies in a country already devastated by years of war and humanitarian crisis.
The campaign also included the April 28 bombing of a detention center in Saada while jailed African migrants were sleeping. Amnesty International has called for a war crimes investigation into that attack, in which scores of migrants were killed.
Mwatana researchers conducted site visits and 59 interviews with survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses, first responders, and other sources for the new report.
"The first strike hit while we were in deep sleep. I could not believe what I saw—30 of my fellow detainees died; their bodies were charred, and the smell of burned flesh filled the air," one 25-year-old Ethiopian survivor of the Saada attack recounted. "The place was crowded with bodies, while others were screaming and calling for help and rescue... we could do nothing for them."
In addition to physical harm, survivors described the deep psychological trauma suffered by victims. One mother said her 8-year-old son Taha "saw his father after he was hit by shrapnel—how he was bleeding, and how his intestines were coming out."
"His father was screaming: ‘Run… leave me and run before the American aircraft strikes again and finishes me off,'" she continued. "Taha still cannot sleep; when he does, he wakes up terrified. Whenever he hears thunder or any loud noise, he runs in fear, his whole body trembling."
Overall, US strikes covered by the report "hit civilian structures such as homes, shops, farms, residential neighborhoods, and infrastructure," the publication notes, adding that airstrikes "also caused severe damage to infrastructure and critical facilities, compounding the humanitarian suffering of local populations by striking essential service facilities, particularly in rural areas that already face acute shortages of clean water, electricity, and health services."
"Given Yemen’s economic deterioration and the catastrophic humanitarian situation produced by the armed conflict that has been ongoing since September 2014, it is likely that the US strikes expanded the cycle of poverty in Yemen by increasing unemployment and multiplying the number of households that lost breadwinners and sources of income," the report adds.
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces during the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
The Costs of War Project says that in the first two decades following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, "between 363,939 and 387,072 civilians were killed by multiple warring parties in post-9/11 war zones, including 12,690 civilians in Yemen."
Mwatana for Human Rights chair Radhya Al-Mutawakel said Thursday that "the losses caused by US airstrikes against civilians cannot be regarded as temporary harm that ends when military operations cease. Civilians who have lost loved ones, homes, or sources of income continue to bear the consequences of these attacks, amid economic and humanitarian conditions that do not provide them with even the minimum capacity to recover.”
"Protecting civilians is not limited to avoiding killing or injuring them; it also includes respecting civilian objects and livelihoods," Al-Mutawakel added. "The United States must assume its legal and moral responsibility to recognize the civilian victims of its military operations in Yemen, provide them with redress and reparation, and hold accountable those responsible for the violations inflicted upon them.”
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25 Years of War Was the Exact Wrong Response to 9/11
Stop throwing money at a broken, destructive war machine. Stop threatening and blockading our neighbors. Close overseas bases and bring our troops home. Tax the wealthy and start rebuilding our country.
Sep 09, 2026
The lesson of 9/11 should be that war is not the answer to any of the problems facing the United States. After inflicting violence and chaos on country after country for twenty-five years in a “global war on terror” that has evolved into a Zionist genocide and a revived Cold War against Russia and China, the widespread public opposition to Trump’s war on Iran suggests that most Americans have finally learned that lesson.
Unfortunately, powerful sections of our corrupt business and political elites have not.
Most Americans old enough to remember September 11, 2001, can still recall the horrifying images played endlessly on our TV screens as the scale of the mass murder became clear. But we also remember something else: the sinking feeling that the hopes and dreams of billions of people, in the US and around the world, would be pushed to the back-burner for the foreseeable future, as our leaders and corporate media all too predictably embraced a new agenda of revenge, fear-mongering, jingoism and military violence.
As Rumsfeld made clear to his subordinates from the outset, the 9/11 crisis provided an open-ended pretext for endless wars against enemies who had nothing to do with the attacks...
We found out later that only hours after the attacks—less than six hours after the first plane struck the World Trade Center and barely five hours after the Pentagon was hit—the planning for America’s military response to the 9/11 massacre was already under way.
At 2:40 pm, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld convened a meeting at the Pentagon. Notes taken by Undersecretary Stephen Cambone, later obtained by CBS News, recorded Rumsfeld demanding the “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.”—meaning Saddam Hussein—“at the same time” as Osama bin Laden. Then came the chilling instruction: “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
Twenty-five years later, we can look back and see how the US government used September 11 to unleash a crusade of violence, war crimes and chaos across the world. Experts like Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz and military historian Michael Howard warned from the beginning that declaring a “war on terror” made no sense and would make matters worse.
They were right, of course. But when the State Department’s annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report for 2004 showed an unprecedented increase in global terrorism following the US invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply cancelled and discontinued the report, replacing it with a new one with different criteria to prevent comparison with previous years.
But, as Rumsfeld made clear to his subordinates from the outset, the 9/11 crisis provided an open-ended pretext for endless wars against enemies who had nothing to do with the attacks, and for the remilitarization of the United States after the small reduction in its military spending after the end of the Cold War.
Total US military spending for the past 25 years has exceeded $21 trillion (in 2024 dollars), surpassing the combined spending of the other 18 largest military powers in the world. During that time, China has built a whole new civilization and infrastructure, and leapfrogged the US economy to become the world leader in clean energy, high-speed rail and technological sectors in which the US was once preeminent.
Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for these counter-productive choices, and the appalling human costs of these wars on the countries the United States has attacked, bombed or invaded make this an especially atrocious way to squander our nation’s wealth.
The history of the United States during this period calls to mind an old Greek myth. Croesus, the famously wealthy king of Lydia, asked the Oracle at Delphi what would happen if he invaded Persia. The Oracle told him, “If you cross the Halys river, a great empire will fall.” Encouraged, Croesus launched the invasion. But he lost the war, and the empire that fell was his own.
In pursuing their global imperial ambitions, our leaders and ruling classes have discounted and betrayed the real sources of America’s prosperity and security: the well-being of the American people and peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world.
They have led us into war, poverty and extreme inequality, and hollowed out a system of government that was slowly becoming more democratic. At home, decades of political struggle by labor, civil rights and other social movements produced enormous advances, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, major investments in public infrastructure and education, and a highly progressive tax system—with the top income tax rate at 91% until 1963—that helped finance those public goods and narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Contrary to the “End of History” theory embraced by many policymakers after the Cold War, and Margaret Thatcher’s famous insistence that “there is no alternative” to the extreme neoliberal capitalism that she and Ronald Reagan ushered in, societies always have political and economic alternatives. It is only a transparently self-serving choice by America’s corrupt ruling classes that saddles us with a system that keeps all decision-making power in their own hands in order to build their own wealth to the detriment of the country we all share.
We can see one alternative today in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pursuing a different set of priorities: expanding free childcare, making major investments in affordable housing, improving public transportation, and freezing rents for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments. Electoral politics can be part of the solution, but only if it reflects what ordinary people really want, instead of limited choices between oligarchic “lesser evils.”
Americans are demanding a renewal of social progress, with universal healthcare, quality public education, and all the things we need but can’t afford as long as this bloated, destructive war machine remains our government’s top priority. As Martin Luther King lamented in 1967, “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube.”
Twenty-five years is a long time to keep moving in the wrong direction, especially when that direction involves endless war and the destruction of other countries. We are a long way from where most Americans would like our country to be. But we have a pretty good idea of what is wrong and what we need to do:
Stop throwing money at a broken, destructive war machine. Stop threatening and blockading our neighbors. Close overseas bases and bring our troops home. Tax the wealthy. Start rebuilding our country, and replace war and militarism with cooperation and problem solving. Take public ownership and responsibility for things we all need and use, like education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure, and utilities. Abolish ICE, and other militarized institutions that waste our national resources and do not serve the public good. Insist that the military be scaled back to its legitimate role of defending the United States against a possible, but very unlikely, foreign military attack.
If we have truly learned the lesson of the past twenty-five years, then we must translate it into policies that reflect that. The real test is not whether we can finally see what went wrong after 9/11. It is whether we are able to change course.
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Amnesty Says US-Israeli Attacks With Indiscriminate Weapons in Tehran May Have Been War Crimes
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law."
Sep 08, 2026
The recent resumption of US airstrikes in Iran, including on a wedding party where at least 25 civilians were killed last week, made Amnesty International's Tuesday report on previous suspected US-Israeli attacks in Tehran in the early days of the war all the more urgent, said the organization as it pointed to new evidence of potential war crimes by the American and Israeli militaries in the densely populated Iranian capital.
Amnesty analyzed US-Israeli airstrikes on three residential neighborhoods—Resalat, Niloufar, and Javadieh—between March 1-13, in which the coalition used "explosive weapons with wide-area effects," killing at least 41 civilians and damaging multiple homes, a school, businesses, and other civilian infrastructure.
“Amid the resumption of US strikes in Iran and renewed threats by US President Donald Trump to target civilian infrastructure, it is imperative that the US and Israel end all unlawful attacks and strictly comply with international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects during the planning and execution of military operations," said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.
The group noted that military infrastructure and police stations—which could be considered legitimate military targets in Iran, as the police forces are part of the broader armed forces there—were struck in the attacks in question. Israel and the US have not publicly claimed responsibility for the three specific attacks, but they announced strikes against Iranian "regime" targets in Tehran at the time of the airstrikes.
Amnesty emphasized that even if military and police buildings were the primary targets, "a large presence of civilians was clearly foreseeable" when the US and Israel evidently carried out the attacks in the three neighborhoods, which "resulted in devastating and yet entirely predictable consequences for civilians."
International law demands that warring parties do not carry out "indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks" that could harm civilians across the surrounding area, said the group.
Military leaders, said Amnesty, are also obligated to "choose weapon types and attack methods that reduce the risk of harming civilians and destroying civilian objects."
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law," the group stated. "Additionally, an attacking party remains at all times bound by the principle of proportionality, weighing the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from an attack against the expected harm to civilians and civilian objects, including the reverberating humanitarian consequences resulting from the attack."
"Launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians and disproportionate attacks are war crimes," said Amnesty.
The group analyzed satellite imagery and verified 60 videos of the three attacks, as well as reviewing public statements from officials in the US, Israel, and Iran to reach the determination that US and Israeli forces had potentially committed war crimes in the Tehran neighborhoods—a possibility the group said must be independently investigation.
In Niloufar, where at least 20 civilians were killed on March 1, eyewitness accounts described two explosions at around 9:00 pm local time, when restaurants and other businesses were open in the bustling neighborhood.
The attack directly struck a police station, but residential buildings and businesses were also struck.
A shop owner told Etemad Online that "before the attack… dozens of people were sitting in front of the cafés in the square. All the shops were open... When the police station was struck, those who were sitting on the pavement in front of the cafés were killed."
"The whole street was full of blood," they added. "I saw one person whose chest had been pierced by broken glass. Many children, women, and young people were killed here that night."
Callamard said that "the civilian death toll, the scale of destruction, the timing of the attacks, the impact on nearby civilian structures, and the lack of effective advance warnings point to alarming failures by the US-Israeli coalition to abide by the obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and spare civilian objects."
At least 16 people were killed in Resalat on March 9, in an attack that heavily damaged a building belonging to the Basij battalion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as three buildings adjacent to the facility. Amnesty International confirmed that at least one of the buildings, known as Number 12, was a residence.
Satellite imagery from March 6, 2026 (left) shows the Basij facility and nearby buildings in the Resalat neighborhood. On March 21, 2026 (right), imagery shows four distinct buildings with heavy damage and destruction. (Photo by ©Planet Labs PBC)
Twelve members of the same family were killed when Number 12 was struck, and an informed source identified as Payam told Amnesty that "there were no military people, no special individuals, no one connected to the government, no important person" in the building.
"Everyone living [in Number 12] was ordinary civilians," he said. "The whole building was families.”
The husband of a 26-year-old woman who was killed in the attack told Etemad Online that the scene of the bombing was "so horrific that they will never leave my mind. Body parts were found separately... A hand had been thrown to the entrance of the road or onto the roof of a house."
The attack in Javadieh, a densely populated low-income neighborhood in Tehran, took place on March 13 and killed at least five civilians, with a police station on Ghorbani Street a possible target.
"The destruction and damage extended well beyond the police station, and affected homes, businesses, and other civilian structures across the surrounding neighborhood," said Amnesty. "State media reported that several nearby residential buildings were also destroyed and many others severely damaged."
Videos verified by Amnesty show the impact of the blast extending up to more than 50 meters (164 feet) away from the police station. A restaurant, bakery, and motorcycle shop were all damaged, as well as a number of residential buildings.
Amnesty called on the US, Israel, and Iran to coordinate inquiries by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission regarding allegations of "serious violations of international humanitarian law by all parties."
Tens of thousands of US and Israeli attacks on Iran have killed at least 1,469 civilians, including hundreds of children. Israel has also killed at least 4,333 people in Lebanon since early March, in retaliation for Hezbollah's strikes in response to the assault on Iran. In retaliatory strikes across the region, Iran has killed at least 50 people civilians, according to Amnesty.
“The US/Israeli strikes in Tehran investigated by Amnesty International may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes," said Callamard. "They must be the object of independent, impartial, effective, and transparent investigations."
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When Weddings Become Battlefields, the Laws of War Begin to Fray
The US strikes on a wedding in Kuhestak and a school in Minab expose a larger test: whether the laws protecting civilians constrain powerful states as well as their adversaries.
Sep 08, 2026
On September 1, a US airstrike hit a family compound in Kuhestak, southern Iran, as women and children gathered for a wedding celebration. At least five people were killed and dozens more injured. Associated Press reporters who visited the town documented extensive damage and civilian suffering. Reuters later reported that imagery, debris, and weapons assessments were consistent with a direct hit by a US munition, while US officials said the incident was under review. The immediate facts matter. But the larger question is already unavoidable: What happens to the laws of war when civilian spaces repeatedly become part of the battlefield?
The significance of Kuhestak extends beyond the number of casualties or the identity of the weapon. The deeper danger is what incidents like this can do to the norms meant to limit warfare. If homes, schools, hospitals, wedding gatherings, or refugee sites are repeatedly treated as tolerable consequences of military necessity, the distinction between battlefield and civilian life begins to lose practical meaning.
International humanitarian law was designed precisely to prevent that erosion. Its rules do not make war safe, and they do not prohibit every attack that may harm civilians. They do, however, require parties to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, prohibit attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, and require feasible precautions to minimize civilian loss. The principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution are not political preferences. They are the legal architecture intended to preserve a minimum boundary between military necessity and human life.
International law rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, norms weaken when exceptional conduct is repeated, defended, or left without meaningful scrutiny.
That distinction matters when assessing the US position as well. Washington says it does not target civilians and that its operations in southern Iran were aimed at military infrastructure, including air-defense, communications, and maritime assets. The Associated Press reported those stated objectives alongside the civilian toll in Kuhestak. Under the laws of war, the existence of a legitimate military objective can matter greatly. Civilian casualties, by themselves, do not automatically prove an unlawful attack. But that is precisely why transparent investigation is essential: Was the target properly identified? Were the expected civilian risks assessed? Were feasible precautions taken? And was the anticipated military advantage sufficient to justify those risks?
Kuhestak is especially troubling because it follows another catastrophic episode in the same province. On February 28, a strike hit a school in Minab. In March, Amnesty International said its investigation found US forces responsible for the attack, which killed 156 people, including 120 children, and concluded that the United States had failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. Amnesty called for a transparent and thorough investigation and accountability for those responsible. Minab therefore cannot simply be treated as an unresolved rumor in the background of the current war.
Seen together, Minab and Kuhestak raise a deeper concern. One catastrophic civilian strike may be explained as a failure of intelligence, targeting, weapon performance, or judgment. A pattern of incidents, however, raises a different question: whether civilian protection is being pushed too far to the margins of operational decision-making. The danger is not only the immediate loss of life. It is the gradual normalization of exceptions.
If civilian protection becomes a principle honored only when convenient, the damage will not stop with one town or one conflict.
International law rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, norms weaken when exceptional conduct is repeated, defended, or left without meaningful scrutiny. Each time a serious civilian-harm incident is absorbed into the routine language of war without transparent findings or accountability, the practical force of the rule diminishes. What is described today as an exceptional mistake can become tomorrow's accepted risk.
Some will argue that this concern overstates the implications of incidents that occur in a high-intensity conflict. War is chaotic. Military assets may be located near civilian areas. Information can be incomplete, and even precision weapons cannot eliminate human error or unintended harm. Those points are real, and international humanitarian law itself recognizes that civilian casualties can occur even in attacks directed at lawful military objectives.
But acknowledging the realities of war is not the same as accepting the erosion of its limits. The law matters most precisely when military pressure is intense and operational decisions are difficult. If the protections owed to civilians become flexible whenever the strategic stakes are high, then their universality becomes conditional on power, geography, and political convenience. A rule that constrains only weak states, while powerful ones receive the benefit of endless exceptions, is not a universal rule for long.
The consequences would reach far beyond Iran. The laws of war function only if states expect them to apply across conflicts and regions. A standard weakened in the Middle East will not remain neatly contained there. Future belligerents in Europe, Africa, or East Asia can point to conduct tolerated elsewhere and demand the same latitude for themselves. Selective enforcement does more than produce unequal justice; over time, it changes what governments believe they can do.
A rule that constrains only weak states, while powerful ones receive the benefit of endless exceptions, is not a universal rule for long.
The appropriate response, therefore, is not to prejudge every disputed strike or to assume that every civilian death proves a war crime. It is to insist on independent, transparent, and verifiable investigations; publication of meaningful findings; and accountability wherever violations are established. The United States should be held to the same standards it expects other states to observe. The same standard must apply to Iran, Israel, and every other party to an armed conflict. Universality is the point.
The question raised by Kuhestak is ultimately larger than one wedding, just as Minab was larger than one school. It is whether the international community still believes that even in war there are people, spaces, and rules that military necessity cannot simply sweep aside. If civilian protection becomes a principle honored only when convenient, the damage will not stop with one town or one conflict. What will have been weakened is the boundary that keeps war from becoming limitless—and once that boundary disappears, no nation can assume that its own civilians will remain safely on the other side of it.
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