All posts tagged: Pentagons

Intel Officials Predict the Pentagon’s Bill for the Iran War Will Exceed 0 Billion

Intel Officials Predict the Pentagon’s Bill for the Iran War Will Exceed $100 Billion

Published by skeptic

President Donald Trump restarted the Iran conflict with days of missile strikes, and US intelligence officials now estimate the total military cost of the war for the Pentagon could exceed $100 billion, according to two people directly familiar with the matter. The officials were tracking the total cost of Operation Epic Fury to be in the $50 to $100 billion range at the end of May, dovetailing with confidential congressional estimates putting the costs to date at around $80 billion. The Trump administration has not disclosed its cost estimates for the Iran war. In June the White House made a request for $88 billion to cover some of the costs of the war, but even that is an undercounting, the people say. Part of the reason why a final cost is not available is that the Pentagon is still deciding whether to replace all the aircraft destroyed or damaged beyond repair during the conflict, the people say. If the Pentagon decides not to replace certain aircraft, defense officials have told lawmakers, they will not request …

Pentagon’s Hegseth Warns Cuba That Arms Procurement Could Invite Confrontation

Pentagon’s Hegseth Warns Cuba That Arms Procurement Could Invite Confrontation

Published by Sam Flores

U.S. NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, June 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned ⁠the ⁠government of Cuba on Wednesday against seeking weapons that could ⁠strike the U.S. homeland or the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, saying it would invite a confrontation Havana could not ​withstand.  Hegseth, speaking to U.S. troops during a visit to the U.S. base, said he still hoped for a positive relationship with Cuba. “It would be unwise of the government of Cuba to try to procure ‌or get access to the types of weapons that ‌could reach this base or the American homeland,” Hegseth said, without offering more specifics about the weaponry in question. “They would be inviting the kind of confrontation not only do they not want ⁠but they could not stand. ⁠No country on Earth can match the capabilities of the United States of America.” Hegseth’s visit is the latest ​high-profile trip to the communist-ruled island by a senior American official as President Donald Trump steps up pressure on Havana. It came less than two …

Alibaba, Baidu, BYD named on Pentagon’s China military list

Alibaba, Baidu, BYD named on Pentagon’s China military list

Published by Sam Flores

A general view of the office building of Baidu is in Pudong, Shanghai, on Feb. 9, 2026. Ying Tang | Nurphoto | Getty Images The Pentagon added a slew of Chinese companies, including Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc and carmaker BYD, to a list of entities it believes have aided the Chinese military, complicating the fragile diplomatic relationship between Washington and Beijing. The Defense Department published an updated “1260H list” Monday evening stateside — a roster of companies the Pentagon considers affiliated with China’s military or defense industrial base. The designations do not impose sanctions explicitly, but mean the Defense Department will be prohibited from contracting directly with listed companies starting later this month, and from procuring their products or services through third parties beginning in June 2027. “These indirect restrictions could force some U.S. firms that work with the U.S. military to drop designated Chinese firms as suppliers,” said Michael Hirson, head of China Research at 22V Research. Baidu’s American depositary receipts dropped 2.1%, Alibaba slumped 0.8% and BYD slid 0.8%. The additions come after President …

Watch live: Defense tech officials testify before House on Pentagon’s digital posture

Watch live: Defense tech officials testify before House on Pentagon’s digital posture

Published by Sam Flores

Emily Michael, the Pentagon‘s top technology officer, and others will testify before a House Armed Services Committee panel on Thursday afternoon about the U.S. military’s digital posture. The hearing comes just two weeks after eight major artificial intelligence firms agreed to deploying their artificial intelligence systems within the Defense Department‘s classified networks. That news followed a… Source link

US Budget Watchdog Estimates Golden Dome Will Cost .2 Trillion, Dwarfing Pentagon’s 5 Billion Estimate

US Budget Watchdog Estimates Golden Dome Will Cost $1.2 Trillion, Dwarfing Pentagon’s $185 Billion Estimate

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) – The nonpartisan Congressional ⁠Budget ⁠Office estimated on Tuesday that ⁠U.S. President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield could cost about $1.2 ​trillion to develop, deploy and operate over 20 years, a figure that dwarfs a $185 billion price ‌tag offered by the program’s Pentagon ‌director. Golden Dome envisions expanding ground‑based defenses such as interceptor missiles, sensors and command‑and‑control systems ⁠while adding space‑based ⁠elements meant to detect, track and potentially shoot down incoming threats ​from orbit. These would include advanced satellite networks and orbiting weapons. The CBO estimated acquisition costs alone for the system would total just over $1 trillion, with the space-based interceptor layer — a constellation of 7,800 satellites — ​accounting for about 70 percent of acquisition costs. The system would cover the entire United ⁠States, including ⁠Alaska and Hawaii, and ⁠would have the ​capacity to fully engage an attack from a regional adversary such as North Korea. However, the ​CBO warned the system ⁠could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack from Russia or China. “The President’s so-called …

5 Highlights From The Pentagon’s UFO Files

5 Highlights From The Pentagon’s UFO Files

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Jacob Burg & Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours – the ALFstein files), Apollo 11 astronauts reported seeing a “sizeable” object close to the moon with a “fairly bright light source” that they described as a “possible laser,” in a newly released post-mission crew debriefing from NASA. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported a UAP that resembled a football-shaped body near Japan in 2024. The image was released on May 8, 2026. Department of War That document, along with videos and images of unknown objects in airspace from nearly all corners of the globe, was included in newly released files from the Pentagon related to the U.S. government’s investigations into unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). The first tranche of files was released on May 8. “As for my promise to you, the Department of War has released the first tranche of the UFO/UAP files to the Public for their review and study,” President Donald Trump wrote on social media Friday morning. “With these new Documents and Videos, the …

Vance Doubts the Pentagon’s Depiction of the Iran War

Vance Doubts the Pentagon’s Depiction of the Iran War

Published by Sam Flores

In closed-door meetings, J. D. Vance has repeatedly questioned the Defense Department’s depiction of the war in Iran and whether the Pentagon has understated what appears to be the drastic depletion of U.S. missile stockpiles. Two senior administration officials told us that the vice president has queried the accuracy of the information the Pentagon has provided about the war. He has also expressed his concerns about the availability of certain missile systems in discussions with President Trump, several people familiar with the situation told us. The consequences of a dramatic drawdown in munitions reserves are potentially dire: U.S. forces would need to draw from these same stockpiles to defend Taiwan against China, South Korea against North Korea, and Europe against Russia. Both Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and General Dan Caine, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have publicly said that U.S. weapons stockpiles are robust, and portrayed the damage to Iranian forces after eight weeks of fighting as drastic. Vance’s advisers, who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity, told us …

The Download: AI health tools and the Pentagon’s Anthropic culture war

The Download: AI health tools and the Pentagon’s Anthropic culture war

Published by skeptic

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.  1 California has defied Trump to impose new AI regulations Governor Newsom signed off on the new standards yesterday.  (Guardian) + Firms seeking state contracts will need extra safeguards. (Reuters $) + States are installing guardrails despite Trump’s order to stop. (NYT $)  + An AI regulation war is brewing in the US. (MIT Technology Review)   2 Experiments have verified quantum simulations for the first time It’s a breakthrough for quantum computing applications. (Nature) + Which could one day help solve healthcare problems. (MIT Technology Review)  3 The new White House app is a security and privacy nightmare It extensively tracks users and relies on external code. (Gizmodo) + The new app promises “unparalleled access” to Trump. (CNET) + It also invites users to report people to ICE. (The Verge)  4 Big Tech’s $635 billion AI spending faces an energy shock test The Middle East crisis is clouding prospects for growth. (Reuters $) + Here are three big unknowns about AI’s energy burden. (MIT Technology Review)  5 Meta and Google have been accused of breaking child safety rules Australia suspects they flouted a social media ban. (Bloomberg $) + Indonesia …

The Pentagon’s culture war tactic against Anthropic has backfired

The Pentagon’s culture war tactic against Anthropic has backfired

Published by skeptic

The stakes in the case—how much the government can punish a company for not playing ball—were apparent from the start. Anthropic drew lots of senior supporters with unlikely bedfellows among them, including former authors of President Trump’s AI policy. But Judge Rita Lin’s 43-page opinion suggests that what is really a contract dispute never needed to reach such a frenzy. It did so because the government disregarded the existing process for how such disputes are governed and fueled the fire with social media posts from officials that would eventually contradict the positions it took in court. The Pentagon, in other words, wanted a culture war (on top of the actual war in Iran that began hours later).  The government used Anthropic’s Claude for much of 2025 without complaint, according to court documents, while the company walked a branding tightrope as a safety-focused AI company that also won defense contracts. Defense employees accessing it through Palantir were required to accept terms of a government-specific usage policy that Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan said “prohibited mass surveillance of …