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William Schryver
With additional materials by Patrice Greanville

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F-16s, Romanian bases, and NATO pilots

I shall return yet again to the prospect of “Made in the USA” F-16s sallying forth boldly into eastern Ukraine to "teach the cabbage heads what Airpower(capitalized) really means."

From what information I've been able to glean in recent weeks, it does in fact look as though the US is aggressively setting up air ops housekeeping in Romania, very near the Black Sea coast — ostensibly to serve as the base of F-16 operations against Russia.

I submit that the preparation of this base is implicit proof that they have long-since assembled and, likely for many months, been honing the skills and teamwork of a few squadrons of "NATO-affiliated contractor pilots" — and the plan must be to use them.

You see, if the “true plan” were to put a dozen woefully undertrained Ukrainian apprentice kamikazes behind the wheel of 1980s vintage F-16s, and then wave them off on a glorious one-way mission into the wild blue yonder ... well, you don't need much of a logistical hub for that operation.

So, if they're really working to prepare what is reputed to be the "largest NATO base in Europe", the logical conclusion is that it is intended to house, maintain, and sustain at least a couple squadrons of NATO "volunteer" pilots flying much later F-16 models than the European boneyard relics Ukraine has long been promised.

Hey, I say field five full squadrons, and outfit at least a couple of them with the latest model F-16 Vipers.

Go big or go home.

Make it the last “all in” roll of the wunderwaffe dice.

Never mind that literally no one in the US air fleet, at any level, has any experience whatsoever in high-intensity air combat operations against an enemy that:

- can match or exceed you with high numbers of superior air frames

- will be flying from interior lines, with well-established logistical infrastructure

- backed by high numbers of the finest layered air defenses on the planet

- with far superior magazine depth

- and will significantly outrange NATO platforms in almost every plausible scenario.

Oh, yeah. And I almost forgot: anyone (including the perpetually catastrophist Russian murmurers) who believes for a moment that Russia will not act to obliterate a NATO base in Romania under such circumstances ... well, that's just silly talk.

Of course, they will. They'll hit it hard. Really hard — with a strike package that exceeds anything ever thrown at a Ukrainian target over the course of this war.

It could well become the most intensely pressure-packed moment in modern times — a situation exceptionally fraught with the possibility of catastrophic miscalculation.

Every time I stop to think about these things, I just shake my head at the obvious stupidity of it all.

If the Imperial Masters of War actually attempt such an air campaign against Russia, not only will the entire operation almost certainly end up being a logistical debacle of truly epic proportions, but the combat results will be shockingly one-sided — disastrous to the point the US will very likely feel compelled to cease operations after just a few days, and try to spin it into some sort of "bold statement” that "achieved its purposes".

But it will be ugly. Exceedingly ugly. And everybody that is anybody of consequence in power structures around the world will know the score and understand exactly what it means.

Tip Jar

FYI: Over the life of this blog, a few generous people have pledged some money to support it. But I have never required a paid subscription to read my stuff. And I still won’t. However, I have now “enabled” subscriptions purely as a means by which, if people are so inclined,

they may support me with whatever amount they so choose. I also include a “Tip Jar” link in every post, if you’d like to go that route. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s purely voluntary. Everyone will still be able to read everything I write. For all of you who have previously pledged to support this blog, I express my genuine gratitude. I hope my writing has been informative in some small manner and aided you in your quest to understand our crazy world a little better. — Will Schryver
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ADDENDUM BY THE EDITOR
The rationale for a fierce Russian attack on a new Romanian air base can be read in the document below.

With little publicity and less democratic discussion, the US has been training NATO pilots for a nuclear strike on Russia.

SEE ALL PUBLICATIONS

GLOBAL RISK

New Nuclear Bomb Training At Dutch Air Base

12.13.23|3 MIN READ|TEXT BY HANS KRISTENSEN

The Dutch air base at Volkel appears to have started integration training with the new U.S. B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb in 2021, even before the bomb went into full-scale production and entered the U.S. stockpile in 2022.

An image included in a Sandia National Laboratories video from early-2022 that snapshots accomplishments from 2021 shows what appears to be a B61-12 training shape hanging under the right wing of an F-16 (see image below).

F16 with nuclear bomb

The Dutch air force apparently started training for the new U.S. B61-12 guided nuclear bomb in 2021.

posted on a public forum shows the outline of a vault inside a Protective Aircraft Shelter at Volkel Air Base (see below).

Eleven aircraft shelters at Volkel are equipped with an underground nuclear weapons storage vault.

Although the training B61-12 is mounted on an F-16, the weapon is not yet assigned to the NATO fighter jets. The B61-12 has entered the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, but it is so far only assigned to the B-2 strategic bomber, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The fighter jets (F-15E, F-16, Tornado) have completed integration flights but had, as of recently, not yet been assigned the B61-12 (see table below). The new F-35A that will take over the nuclear strike role at Volkel and other European bases had also not been assigned the B61-12 yet, but U.S. European Command training was scheduled to start in 2023.

The new B61-12 nuclear bomb had, until recently, only been assigned to the B-2 strategic bomber not yet to dual-capable fighter aircraft.

The 312^th Squadron of the 1^st Wing at Volkel Air Base is part of the so-called NATO nuclear sharing arrangement where the United States equips Dutch F-16s (and aircraft of five other NATO countries: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey) and trains their pilots to employ U.S. B61 nuclear bombs in war. During peacetime, the weapons are under the custody of U.S. Air Force units (the 703^rd Munitions Support Squadron (MUNSS) at Volkel).

The location of the USAF nuclear weapons custodial unit at Volkel Air Base is written in tiles.

On December 8, 2023, the 312^th Squadron performed what is known as an elephant walk where 14 F-16s were displayed on the runway at the same time. A similar display was performed in 2021. At least one of the pilots in the 2023 event can be seen wearing a helmet visor with a nuclear weapons explosion mushroom cloud (see image below). It is possible, but unknown, that this is the helmet of the commander of the 312^th Squadron.

One of the pilots in the December 2023 elephant walk at Volkel Air Base wore a nuclear mushroom cloud design on his helmet visor.

The nuclear weapons upgrade at Volkel Air Base is part of a broad nuclear modernization program of U.S. non-strategic nuclear forces in Europe that includes replacement of aircraft, bombs, base infrastructure, nuclear command and control, readiness level, operational planning, and public visibility.

There is no public information that the B61-12 bombs have been shipped to Europe yet but the C-17A nuclear transport aircraft has been cleared and the first shipments could potentially begin next year. If so, they would replace the estimated 100 B61-3/4 nuclear bombs currently deployed in Europe (see figure below).

Additional information:

• Nuclear Notebook: Nuclear Weapons Sharing, 2023
• Increasing Evidence That The US Air Force’s Nuclear Mission May Be Returning To UK Soil
• The C-17A Has Been Cleared To Transport B61-12 Nuclear Bomb To Europe
• NATO Steadfast Noon Exercise And Nuclear Modernization In Europe

This publication was made possible by generous contributions from the New-Land Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, the Prospect Hill Foundation, Longview Philanthropy, the Future of Life Institute, Open Philanthropy, and individual donors. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

Lili News 029

In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License •
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Jimmy Dore
BEN SWANN

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Swann and Jimmy may tilt a bit too much toward "both-sidism" here, denouncing Netanyahu and demonising Hamas, but overall this is an explosive revelation because of its obvious plausibility.

Bombshell Drops: Israel Was In On It! w/ Ben Swann

The Jimmy Dore Show

Jun 14, 2024 #TheJimmyDoreShow

Investigative journalist Ben Swann has compiled substantial evidence demonstrating that the Israeli government was aware well in advance that Hamas was planning the October 7th attacks. Not only did Egypt warn Israel and the IDF had collected their own intelligence, but Hamas was staging obvious military exercises leading up to the fateful date. Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to Swann about why the Netanyahu government might have allowed this attack to take place.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License •
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Scott Ritter
Billy Bob (and Blowback Roundtable) • AniaK • Carl Zha

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"The West's double standard is outrageous!"

Scott Ritter is a voice of sanity still largely ignored in the national debate, which is a disgrace, product of a deliberate establishment information blockade. After a lifetime dedicated to nuclear disarmament and the quest for peace and justice in a world that remains largely ignorant, indifferent and often hostile to his message, Scott Ritter, now confronted with the latest criminal insanity of the Ukraine War, that is, the West's latest provocation on Russia (blowing up Moscow's nuclear alarm radars to facilitate a sneak US "first strike"), has had enough. He's giving up on the human race, especially the brainwashed masses in the captive "collective West", and we can't blame him for that. No decent person can avoid feeling despair and even angry frustration at the state of the West, and especially the Hegemon itself, where, in a trifecta of circumstances, ignorance reigns supreme as poverty stalks the land, while the top 0.0001% accumulate ever larger fortunes to do their evil work. (This is the inevitable result of living under a compulsively warmongering oligarchy instead of a democracy). The symptoms are everywhere, mirroring the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure, once the envy of the planet. In this benighted land, as social focus and priorities are wasted on huge imbecilities, the depraved political and media classes work nonstop to push the US and the world toward a wholly unjustified nuclear Armageddon. The situation is so serious and urgent that truthful information has become akin to oxygen—indispensable to everyone alive. Below (courtesy of Billy Bob, Reporterfy Media and AniaK) the materials you need to start paying attention, and, hopefully, join the conversation.—PG

SCOTT RITTER | CARL ZHA |America's Upcoming Conflict | China Is Next | GAZA, IRAN, UKRAINE

Streamed live on May 6, 2024 UNITED STATES

SCOTT RITTER ,"WE'RE GOING TO DESTROY THE WORLD IF WE GO TO NUCLEAR WAR".

Through the eyes of
May 30, 2024
Must-watch discussion, with Scott explaining his mounting frustration and anger at the absence of effective public mobilization against the reckless warmongering behaviour of the Western ruling cliques. This is a lesson on many topics that make Ritter the natural expert to consult, including what Russia's responses might be to the latest Ukraine/NATO attacks on Moscow's strategic radar stations, attacks that clearly cannot alter the course of the Ukraine war but which would definitely benefit NATO in case the US alliance chose to attack and decapitate Russia's leadership using a "first strike". Ritter discusses also fascinating details about the nature of drone warfare, in which Ukraine is (somewhat surprisingly) second to none, and the urgent need for Russia to quickly develop countermeasures to strategic drones, as these remain largely immune to radar detection.

Ritter VS Zha Debate Discussion

Billy Bob

May 31, 2024
A Not-to-be-missed discussion!
How well does the West —especially its ruling elite—understand Putin? Can they grasp what Xi is all about? These questions matter because the Western world is literally on the brink of economic and political collapse. Many economists and bankers throughout the "collective West" have announced that a huge economic implosion is liable to happen very soon, with incalculable political and geostrategic effects, including the inability of the US empire to maintain its hundreds of military bases, and a hypertrophied annual military budget that, in dollar amounts, dwarves the rest of the world's expenditures, but which does not buy the Empire the quality nor effectiveness it seeks. The panel also discusses Scott Ritter's debate with Carl Zha, and the reasons why Scott feels dismayed by the seeming lack of response and commensurate antiwar reaction to the criminal plots being hatched by the Western elites.

Lili News 029

In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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Craig Murray
CONSORTIUM NEWS

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Craig Murray: The Drive for War

Prime Minister Róbert Fico at the E.U. Parliament in Strasbourg in July 2016.” (European Parliament, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND)

CraigMurray.org.uk

The collective shrug with which the Western media and political class noted the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has been telling.

Can you imagine the outrage and emotion that would have been expressed by Western powers if not Fico but a pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian leader within the EU had been attacked? The new orders for weapons that would have been presented to the arms manufacturers, the troops that would have been deployed, the sabres that would have been rattled?

Instead, we have the media telling us that Fico opposed sending arms to Ukraine and opposed threatening Russia. We are told he did not accept the mainstream narrative on Covid vaccinations. The media do not quite say he deserved to be shot, but they come very, very close.

Listen to this Sky News report on the shooting of Robert Fico.

Not only do they come close to justifying it because he opposes aid to Ukraine, but they also casually imply that he's being paid by the Kremlin.

This casual accusation is so prevalent in the West, and toxic. https://t.co/dccTYXKcGt

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 15, 2024

There are now an ordered set of neoliberal beliefs to which anybody in a Western nation participating in public affairs must subscribe, or they are beyond the pale.

Not to subscribe to all of these beliefs makes you a “populist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, a “Putin puppet” or a “useful idiot”.

These are some of the “key beliefs”:

No. 1) Wealth is only created by a small number of ultra-wealthy capitalists on whom the employment of everybody else ultimately depends.
No. 2) The laws governing financial structures must therefore tend to concentrate wealth on these individuals, so that they may deploy it as they choose.
No. 3) State-created currency must only be concentrated in and distributed to private financial institutions.
No. 4) Public spending is always less efficient than private spending.
No. 5) Russia, China and Iran pose an existential threat to the West. That comprises both an economic threat and a physical, military threat.
No. 6) Colonialism was a boon to the world, bringing economic development, trade and education to people of inferior cultures.
No. 7) Islam is a threat to Western values and to world development.
No. 8) Israel is a necessary project for spreading Western values to the uncivilised Middle East.
No. 9) Security necessitates devoting very substantial resources to arms production and the waging of continual war.
No. 10) Nothing must threaten the military and arms industry interest. No battle against corruption or crime can override the need for the security military industrial complex to be completely unchallenged and internally supreme.

Dependent Orthodoxies

TikTok. (Solen Feyissa, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Within this architecture of belief, other orthodoxies hang dependent, such as the correct way to respond to a complex pandemic, or support for NATO and impunity for the security services. (Support for Israel is probably better portrayed as a dependent point, but with the subject of Gaza so prominent at the moment I have figuratively moved it into the main structure.)

Any deviation on any point of belief is a challenge to the entire system, and thus must be eradicated. You will note there is no room whatsoever, within this architecture of thought, for values like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. They simply do not fit. Nor is it possible within this architecture to incorporate actual democracy, which would give people a choice of what to believe.

If you accept this architecture of thought, then you must argue that the genocide in Gaza is a good thing, and it threatens the entire structure if you state that it is not a good thing. That is why we have witnessed the spectacle of politicians defying and then repressing their own people, willing to place all of their political capital at the service of genocidal Zionism.

Words struggle to convey the horrors we have all seen from Gaza, and in no way does it lessen the terrible suffering nor the extent of the crime to observe that it has caused a major rift in the neoliberal belief system which cannot be hidden from the people.

Gaza has ramifications leading to questioning throughout the system. Why is Tik Tok being banned, to stop people getting information on Gaza? Why is it a problem that the platform is owned by China?

What has China done that makes it an enemy? China has no military designs on the West. Of recent purchases most of us have made of physical goods, a high proportion have come from China. Why is an important trade partner an “enemy”?

Why is Russia our enemy? The notion that the Russian army is going to land on the Wash is utterly implausible. The Russian state, over centuries and wildly differing regimes, has never had the slightest desire to invade the British Isles. In the U.K., under various governments, for almost three centuries charlatans have been claiming a threat of Russian invasion to justify higher defence expenditure.

Why the need to have “enemies” at all?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(s)

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

Lili News 029

In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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Mark Taylor
DEMOCKRACY.INK

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OBSCENE: Conference Of Big-Tech War Criminals Portray The Moral Vacuum Of America

MARK TAYLOR

MAY 19, 2024

(Editor’s Note: I was a little shocked to see this piece in The Guardian, but — hey — good for them. The article is a devastating portrayal of the soulless corporate monsters running this country. They are, truly, the personification of Jewish intellectual and writer Hannah Arendt’s classic book ‘The Banality of Evil’. — Mark Taylor)

WE REPRODUCE THE MATERIAL BELOW AS A PUBLIC SERVICE

I’ve written about relationships between tech companies and the militarybefore, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything I saw or heard at this conference. But when it ended, and I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been completely sucked out of my body.

‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference

America’s military-industrial complex took center stage at AI Expo for National Competitiveness, where a fire-breathing panel set the tone

The co-founder and CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, and Adm Tony Radakin at the event last week. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Palantir

By Caroline Haskins
THE GUARDIAN (UK)

On 7 and 8 May in Washington DC, the city’s biggest convention hall welcomed America’s military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that’s not how they would describe it.

It was the inaugural “AI Expo for National Competitiveness”, hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the “techno-economic” thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference’s lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that’s best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump’s family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces.

The conference hall was also filled with booths representing the US military and dozens of its contractors, ranging from Booz Allen Hamiltonto a random company that was described to me as Uber for airplane software.

At industry conferences like these, powerful people tend to be more unfiltered – they assume they’re in a safe space, among friends and peers. I was curious, what would they say about the AI-powered violence in Gaza, or what they think is the future of war?

Attendees were told the conference highlight would be a series of panels in a large room toward the back of the hall. In reality, that room hosted just one of note. Featuring Schmidt and the Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, the fire-breathing panel would set the tone for the rest of the conference. More specifically, it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death. The vast majority of people there fell into group one.

I’ve written about relationships between tech companies and the military before, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything I saw or heard at this conference. But when it ended, and I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been completely sucked out of my body.

‘The peace activists are war activists

Swarms of people migrated across the hall to see the main panel, where Karp and Schmidt spoke alongside the CIA deputy director, David Cohen, and Mark Milley, who retired in September as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, where he advised Joe Biden and other top officials on war matters. When Schmidt tried to introduce himself, his microphone didn’t work, so Cohen lent him his own. “It’s always great when the CIA helps you out,” Schmidt joked. This was about as light as things got for the next 90 minutess the moderator asked general questions about the panelists’ views on the future of war, Schmidt and Cohen answered cautiously. But Karp, who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock

He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.” Members of the audience laughed when he mocked fresh graduates of Columbia University, which had some of the earliest encampment protests in the country. He said they’d have a hard time on the job market and described their views as a “pagan religion infecting our universities” and “an infection inside of our society”. (He’s made these comments before.)

“The peace activists are war activists,” Karp insisted. “We are the peace activists.”

A huge aspect of war in a democracy, Karp went on to argue, is leaders successfully selling that war domestically. “If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any armies in the West ever,” Karp said.

Inside Palantir’s booth at the event. Photograph: Caroline Haskins

Earlier in the panel, Milley had said that modern war involved conflict in “dense urban areas with high levels of collateral damage”, clearly alluding to the war in Gaza, but too afraid to say it. But every time Karp spoke, Milley became more bombastic. By the panel’s end, he was describing Americans who oppose the war in Gaza as “supporting a terrorist organization”.

“Before we get self-righteous,” Milley said, in the second world war, “we, the US, killed 12,000 innocent French civilians. We destroyed 69 Japanese cities. We slaughtered people in massive numbers – men, women and children.”

Meanwhile, Schmidt mainly talked about the importance of drones and automation in war. (He is quietly trying to start his own war drone company.) For his part, Cohen urged the room to see the 7 October attack as a “big warning” about tech in military settings. Although Israel had invested “very heavily” in defense and surveillance technology, it had failed to stop the attack, Cohen noted. “We do need to have a little bit of humility.”

This didn’t seem to be a common view. The prevailing attitude of the conference was when systems fail, it just means you need newer technology, and more of it.

I walked out of the panel in a quiet daze. Milley’s comments about the second world war echoed in my head. It was, frankly, jarring to hear a recent top US official defend Israel’s mass killing of Gazan civilians by invoking wartime massacres that not only preceded the Geneva Conventions, but helped justify their creation.

All around me, I overheard upbeat conversation between hundreds of people who had just heard the same things I had – easygoing comments about lunch, travel or the next panel. I felt like we were living in totally different realities.

Shaky soldier vision

After pacing around for 10 minutes trying to enter a social headspace, I plugged my phone into an outlet and said hi to the person next to me, a man who appeared to be in his late 50s. I asked what he thought about the panel. Smiling meekly, he said it was “interesting” to hear Milley describe the Second World War that way.

“Have you seen Oppenheimer?” he asked.

No, I said, but I’d read The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

I thought he was going to talk about the hubris of people who build weapons of war. Instead, he told me he works in nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos laboratory. Reaching into his backpack, he handed me a few Los Alamos pens and stickers.

After chatting for a few minutes – he wouldn’t get into much detail about his work, but did show off pictures of his expensive-looking rental car – he started packing up his things. “I just thought of something,” he said abruptly, laughing. “I am the new Oppenheimer!”

I managed to force a laugh as he started back to the Los Alamos booth.

Throughout the conference, I wandered to different booths. I ended up running into two people I knew from college. At the NSA booth, a young woman told me that the agency is great for “work-life balance”. I also stopped by Palantir’s career booth, where an employee, Elizabeth Watts, told me that the kind of person who works for Palantir is someone who wouldn’t be scared away by Karp’s panel. “People who are interested in national security, who understand there aren’t black and white solutions,” she said. “People who want to defend Western democracies.”

AI War Big Tech conference Palantir booth

In Palantir’s cavernous main booth, I tried on a VR headset to test Palantir’s new augmented reality tool for soldiers. I was told I’d be able to direct a truck or drone while continuing to see the world around me. But when I put on the headset, my field of vision became shaky and out of focus. It reminded me of goggles they made us wear during Dare anti-drug programs in middle school, meant to simulate being drunk.

Many people had been trying on the headset that day, a Palantir employee explained to me. In order for you to see things clearly, the headset has to fit your head and eyes perfectly. He didn’t offer to adjust the headset, so my hi-tech soldier vision remained out of focus.

On the evening on the first day, Palantir had a social event with free drinks. The only options were two IPAs, and I had one called “the Corruption”. It was, bar none, the worst beverage I’ve had in my entire life. I ended up talking to a Canadian man named Sata, who appeared to be in his mid-20s. He said he was an investor in Palantir, so I asked how he had gotten the money.

“I got in a car accident,” he said. After getting a small payout, he invested. So far, he said, he had made money from the investment, but lost money from this trip.

No answers on ethics

To my knowledge, the only other journalist covering the conference was my friend Jack Poulson, who said I should join him at a panel discussion about ethics and human rights. It was being held as far away from the rest of the conference as it could get while remaining physically inside the building. You had to exit the main exhibit hall, walk down two extremely long hallways, and enter a door at the very end to find it.

The moderator decided to let everybody else ask their questions and let the panelists choose which to answer. Unsurprisingly, no one directly answered Jack’s question.

Later, as I entered the main conference hall, I found myself right behind a group of kids with tiny backpacks. They appeared to be in first or second grade. I asked a teacher, a blond woman with glasses, if there was an exhibit for kids. She said no, but one of them had a dad working at the event.

A slim man with dark hair approached the kids. He had a Special Competitive Studies Project pin on his suit. Beaming, he took a picture with them. About 30 minutes later, I found him taking the kids on a tour. He was squatting down to their height and pointing at something in a booth for a military vendor. I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Helping choose what gets bombed

I also went to a panel in Palantir’s booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two “privacy and civil liberties engineers” – a young man and woman who spoke exclusively in monotone. They also used countless euphemisms for bombing and death. The woman described how Palantir’s Gaia map tool lets users “nominate targets of interest” for “the target nomination process”. She meant it helps people choose which places get bombed.

After she clicked a few options on an interactive map, a targeted landmass lit up with bright blue blobs. These blobs, she said, were civilian areas like hospitals and schools. The civilian locations could also be described in text, she said, but it can take a long time to read. So, Gaia uses a large language model (something like ChatGPT) to sift through this information and simplify it. Essentially, people choosing bomb targets get a dumbed-down version of information about where children sleep and families get medical treatment.

“Let’s say you’re operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza,” I asked the engineers afterward. “Does Palantir prevent you from ‘nominating a target’ in a civilian location?”

Short answer, no. “The end user makes the decision,” the woman said.

Only one booth, a small, immersive exhibit with tall gray walls, seemed concerned about the ordinary people affected by war. It was run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

A door-like opening brought me into an emergency shelter for a young family caught in a conflict zone. There was a small couch with an open sleeping bag on top, and children’s toys in the corner. A yellow print-out warned the inhabitants to “STAY IN DESIGNATED SAFE ZONES”. A radio on a kitchen table seemed to be playing the news, but the connection was spotty.

The exhibit was small, but in a conference largely celebrating the military-industrial complex, it stuck out. It felt like a plea for someone, anyone, to consider the victims of war.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(s)

Caroline Haskins is a freelance reporter based in New York covering tech with a focus on politics, labor, and culture. She has previously worked as a staff reporter at Business Insider, BuzzFeed News, and Vice's Motherboard, and as a research editor at Business Insider.

I also went to a panel in Palantir’s booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two “privacy and civil liberties engineers” – a young man and woman who spoke exclusively in monotone. They also used countless euphemisms for bombing and death. The woman described how Palantir’s Gaia map toollets users “nominate targets of interest” for “the target nomination process”. She meant it helps people choose which places get bombed.

Lili News 029

In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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The Last Wunderwaffe

William Schryver
With additional materials by Patrice Greanville

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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.