By Brian McDonald, Substack, 6/3/25

It’s now June 2025, more than three years since the West imposed what was billed as the harshest sanctions regime in modern memory. And yet, strolling through Moscow today, you’d struggle to find much evidence of siege. The metro still glides under the city, smooth, spotless, and absurdly cheap.

Cranes peck away at the skyline. Cafes are busy even on a Monday night.

None of which is to say Moscow hasn’t changed. It has—in small ways, and some not so small. It still feels unmistakably European. But it’s a Europe outside the EU, orbiting on its own track.

A lot of famous names are gone. No McDonald’s, no IKEA, no Zara. In their place, Russian versions, Chinese entrants, and homegrown upstarts that mimic the aesthetic, if not the price point. Yet Burger King still grills away, and KFC has become Rostic’s again. Starbucks lives on in everything but name as Stars Coffee. Capitalism didn’t leave. It changed its clothes.

On the high street, Turkish and Chinese brands have filled the gaps. Many Western luxury names still linger—Lacoste, Armani, Saint Laurent—but these days they share space with labels few outsiders would recognise. Luxury perfumes are easy to find. iPhones too. In fact, they’re sometimes cheaper here than in the EU.

Nightlife, once among the continent’s most electric, has changed. The once visible LGBT scene has largely vanished. Even the legendary Propaganda nightclub has shut. But the lights are still on––Simach still rocks and rapper Timati’s Flava is the place to be seen. With suitably absurd prices to boot.

The pubs are busy. Guinness is a luxury at 950 rubles ($12), so people drink local stouts like Black Sheep instead, at less than half the price. Barmen report take home earnings of around 150,000 rubles a month with tips. That’s about $1,800, and in Moscow, it goes surprisingly far. Rent is still modest, and a single metro ticket costs $0.85. Unlimited monthly travel is $40. Three times cheaper than in Berlin.

Restaurants remain lively. But signs of strain are there. Birds, once a flashy Moscow City skyscraper favourite, has closed. So too has the legendary Williams in Patriki. Chefs grumble about inflation, but the kitchen staff still show up, and wages are rising. Unlike in much of Europe, pay here hasn’t stood still in recent years.

The real shift is human. The migrants and tourists are different. The Americans have gone. So have the Germans. Irish pubs that once echoed with the English language now host mostly Russians. On the streets you now hear Arabic, Persian, and Chinese. Moscow feels more Global South than Global West.

Cuisine tells the same story. A decade ago, decent Indian food was a rarity. Now it’s everywhere—upmarket on Tverskaya, or downmarket in the suburbs. Not just for expats. Russians eat there too, curious and increasingly cosmopolitan in their tastes.

Politics? Hardly a whisper. Summers used to bring protests around Trubnaya. Often attended by more Western journalists than actual Russians. Now, silence. The liberal opposition is either muted, abroad, or fearful to show its head. The political void isn’t heavy with menace. It just feels absent. Moscow keeps moving, with or without the drama.

Football, once a cultural anchor, has drifted too. This year’s Champions League final came and went with barely a murmur. Match TV no longer shows it. You can find a stream online, but it’s no longer an event. Hard to believe the World Cup final was played here just seven years ago.

The Ukraine conflict is present, but not prominent. You see the uniforms, the occasional poster. And sometimes, a stranger leans in and asks what you think of the “special military operation.” But there’s no rationing. No gloom. Construction crews keep pouring concrete. Shops stay stocked. Streets stay swept.

The cars have changed. The Hyundais and Toyotas are thinning out. Mercedes and BMWs still pass by, though they’re harder to come by. Now, it’s BYD, Geely, Hongqi—badges of status from a different place.

The digital world reflects the city’s new orientation. While Western media like CNN and The Guardian are not blocked and can still be accessed directly, others require a VPN. The same applies to Instagram, X and Youtube. This, however, comes with a shrug from most Muscovites. After all, it was the EU that first blocked Russian media for its own citizens, they remind you. In this new bifurcated world, reciprocal restrictions are just part of the game.

The departure of many liberals, both native and foreign—the journalists, artists, and tech workers—has also left a cultural mark. Once fixtures of Moscow’s cosmopolitan energy, many left for Berlin, Tbilisi, Istanbul and further afield. In their absence, the city recalibrated. Few mourn the ‘relocants,” as they’re derisively known. Among many who stayed, they’re seen as quitters—self-important chumps who abandoned the ship and now jeer from the shore.

Tourism patterns have shifted too. Paris weekends and London shopping sprees are out. Now it’s Dubai, Antalya, Bangkok. The destinations may be different, but the appetite to travel hasn’t dimmed.

Moscow’s mood, if it can be captured, is one of motion without anxiety. No triumph. No collapse. Just a city learning to walk a new path. A couple dances to a busker on Arbat. A policeman eats a shawarma near Leningrad Station. A barista at Stars Coffee hands you a cappuccino with the faintest shrug.

Life ticks on. The sanctions were meant to isolate. Instead, they’ve underlined a truth: this city, with all its contradictions and churn, is going its own way. There is no fanfare. Just a shrug and another step forward.

To walk Moscow today is to encounter a capital that no longer seeks the West’s approval—and may not miss its presence either.

By Kit Klarenberg & Wyatt Reed, The Grayzone, 5/25/25

Leaked documents show the supposedly self-reliant anti-Kremlin outlet Mediazona asked the UK gov’t for £300,000. With foreign funding drying up, the “independent” news site now faces financial crisis.


Mediazona, the self-styled “independent” Russian outlet which partners with the BBC to track the deaths of Russian troops, requested hundreds of thousands of pounds directly from the British government, according to a tranche of leaked official documents.

Having mainly targeted Russians since its founding in 2014 by members of the Western-backed troupe of provocateurs known as Pussy Riot, Mediazona has largely remained off the radar of news consumers in the West. But that changed with the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine. Since the first day of the conflict, Mediazona has collaborated with the BBC Russian Service on a project tracking the deaths of Russian servicemen through open source methods. Mediazona describes “the work [as] meticulous and time-consuming,” requiring “relentless efforts of journalists.”

Who or what was footing the bill was left unmentioned in the description of the initiative, which was clearly designed to foment dissent and opposition to the proxy war among Russian citizens. Now, leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone indicate that between 2020 and 2023, Mediazona was in line for vast, secret grants for anti-Kremlin agitation from the British Foreign Office, under the official auspices of London’s opaque “Global Britain Fund.”

From Pussy Riot to Mediazona

Leaked files related to the information warfare effort show London earmarked a myriad of NGOs, rights groups, and news outlets in Russia were earmarked for receiving hundreds of thousands in order to undermine the Kremlin with propaganda and supposed civil society initiatives. Among the most prominent proposed repeat recipients was Mediazona.

One prospective grant from the Foreign Office would have transferred a whopping £300,000 between 2020 – 2023 to the outlet, which describes itself in the application as “Russia’s leading independent and socially focused media company.”

Boasting that “Mediazona contributes to the discussion of many legal and structural problems haunting Russian society and state, and also reports on foreign events (including in the UK) that have implications for Russians,” the proposal laid out the “key objectives set for Mediazona,” which included “[challenging] the official version of events by providing audiences with high-quality investigative journalism, compelling eye witness accounts and live feeds from the ground.” If approved, Mediazona would also “develop critical thinking amongst young Russians through the proactive use of social media networks and interactive content.”

The applicants bragged that Mediazona’s “prominent status on the Russian-language internet” meant “issues raised through its publications” would “have measurable resonance, stimulating constructive engagement between multiple stakeholder groups including public officials.”

Mediazona would be expected to produce “around 120 news articles per week, at least 18 investigative reports per month and a series of online feeds delivered from crucial events across Russia.” The Foreign Office pledged, “this programming will serve to expose corruption and the abuse of power whilst bringing credible and authentic voices into the public domain.” In addition, the editorial team hoped to “forge new partnerships with key players in the Russian and international media landscape, thereby ensuring powerful multiplier effects.”

Elsewhere, the British Foreign Office received a petition for £150,000 over two years on behalf of Zona Prava, an NGO which was also founded by Pussy Riot. The organization would expose alleged human rights abuses in Russian prisons, via “public events” such as “hot lines, round tables, seminars, information events with the invitation of public figures and government representatives.” Meanwhile, in “close cooperation” with Mediazona, Zona Prava would produce “at least 800 materials in federal and regional media… at least 10 videos” and potentially one or two documentaries.

British intel circumvents ‘foreign agent’ law

The leaked documents make clear that the British were aware that their activities were illegal under Moscow’s Foreign Agent law. A funding application for Equal Rights Trust, a Global Britain Fund recipient charged with lawfare operations referred to cryptically as “targeted strategic litigation” explicitly describes a British government-funded effort to evade the new law. “As part of our current project” being financed by the UK Foreign Office, ERT wrote that it “has undertaken an extensive risk assessment of the Russian context, including commissioning an independent consultant to produce a report on the Foreign Agent Law.” As a result, “ERT is now well-versed” in various “procedures to mitigate the risks of transferring funds to Russia,” which “allowed for the ongoing successful implementation of activities despite the Foreign Agent law.”

These procedures included “diversifying means of transferring of funds, on-going assessment on methods of transfer, clear lines of communication with the recipient on when and how transfers are made, neutral codes and payment reference for bank records, and maximum amounts per transfer and numbers of transfers using the same method.”

ERT concluded that “it is simpler and safer for all concerned to work without a formal partner to distribute funds to project beneficiaries,” and instead “work with a series of informal partners through consultancy agreements.” ERT was said to have “utilised this approach to great success in similar environments.”

It is unknown if the Global Britain projects involving Mediazona went ahead, and, if so, whether they used such “procedures” to launder the money. But the outlet’s long standing public alliance with the British state, via the project mapping Russian war casualties with the BBC’s Russian Service, highlights the outlet’s perceived utility as a conduit for anti-Kremlin agitprop.

Mediazona lashes out at damaging leaks with libelous allegations

If financing did flow to Mediazona under “Global Britain,” it would not have been the first time London covertly supported the group’s activities. In February 2021, leaks reported by The Grayzone revealed how Mediazona had, alongside Meduza, received covert backing from British intelligence in the form of “audience segmentation and targeting support” some years prior. The assistance formed part of a wider clandestine effort to “weaken the Russian state’s influence.” While Mediazona’s top brass issued no official statement or response to the disclosures, a retort of sorts was promptly forthcoming.

Days after this outlet’s reporting appeared, Mediazona published a sensational exclusive, claiming Amnesty International’s decision to rescind Western-backed, imprisoned Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s “prisoner of conscience” status resulted from a sinister Kremlin-orchestrated “campaign,” led by “individuals tied” to Russian state broadcaster RT. The supposed culprits were The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté, and a freelance writer and translator known as Katya Kazbek – neither of whom were tied to RT in any way.

Maté’s apparent sin was revealing how Amnesty had revoked Navalny’s status “given the fact that he advocated violence and discrimination and he has not retracted such statements.” For her part, Kazbek stood accused of posting a viral Twitter thread documenting Navalny’s lengthy history of racism, xenophobia, and association with and promotion of Neo-Nazi figures and groups, which he consistently refused to repudiate. She was subsequently doxxed by Bellingcat editor Natalia Antonova, who revealed sensitive private details, including her home address.

Amnesty International issued a statement explicitly denying “external pressure” from any source influenced its decision to remove Navalny from its list of “prisoners of conscience.” Nevertheless, Mediazona’s hatchet job was promptly translated into English by Meduza, where its charges were seized upon by mainstream Navalny endorsers and Western news outlets, including the BBC.

Meduza’s then-investigative editor, Alexey Kovalev, appeared to acknowledge the bogus story was revenge for articles exposing Britain’s clandestine support of both Mediazona and Kovalev’s employer, Meduza. In a 2021 tweet, Kovalev accused the author of this article of having “unleashed a careless conspiracy theory,” insisting that the leaked documents exposing those ties were “fake.” In closing, he sneered: “consider us square.”

But the documents, and recent announcement by both Mediazona and Meduza, indicate that claims of secret Western sponsorship for the supposedly-independent outlets were anything but “fake.”

In a lengthy plea posted across their social media accounts entitled “Mediazona on the brink,” the group groaned that they were “running out of money” and urgently needed 5,000 monthly subscribers just “to stay afloat.” After Western sanctions forced Visa and Mastercard out of Russia, “funding from our readers” dried up, they wrote, explaining that the Ukraine proxy war’s outbreak “collapsed” the outlet’s business model “overnight.”

Mediazona claimed they’d already begun laying off staff as a result of budget cuts, warning if their subscriber target was not reached, layoffs “will have to continue.” Before the war, they claimed, the outlet was funded “almost [emphasis added] entirely” by reader donations. This glaring caveat strongly suggests they had been at least partially backed by government funding – a notion seemingly confirmed in a February 28 Euractiv interview with Nikita Dulnev, director of Mediazona’s Central Asia branch, who directly linked his outlet’s financial woes to the Trump administration’s shutdown of USAID.

Dulnev was described by Euractiv as one of many “media professionals in Eastern European countries” who fear Washington’s “abrupt funding cut” to local propaganda projects “could inflict lasting damage on the region’s media infrastructure.” In the article, Dulnev lamented, “for years, we had some support and didn’t diversify much. That’s why we had to pause our work.” Dulnev’s LinkedIn profile lists him as formerly employed by the “Khodorkovsky network.”

That international anti-Kremlin propaganda group was formed by London-residing exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was released with members of Pussy Riot in December 2013 as a “magnanimous gesture” by Moscow towards the Russian opposition. Since then, Khodorkovsky has openly plotted Vladimir Putin’s downfall, though the full extent of this agitation is unknown.

Pussy Riot cofounders Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova launched Mediazona almost immediately after their release alongside Khodorkovsky. A 2014 press release announcing their outlet’s founding explicitly linked Mediazona’s creation to the lack of “space for anything in [Russian] media that criticizes Putin’s policies.”

It was thus evident from day one that Mediazona was intended to serve as an extension of Pussy Riot’s political activism in Russia, which previously included Tolokonnikova’s participation in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008, and other incendiary, criminal acts that would get perpetrators jailed almost anywhere in the world. The outlet quickly became a dependable megaphone for Western-sponsored opposition figure Alexei Navalny until his February 2024 death.

A February 2025 New York Times report confirmed Meduza had been in receipt of unacknowledged funds from USAID, a traditional US intelligence cutout, amounting to 15% of its annual income. This budgetary shortfall, they claimed, was sufficient to put the outlet’s entire future in jeopardy, and inflict more damage on its operations than previous alleged “cyberattacks, legal threats and even poisonings of its reporters.” The New York Times noted that financing for opposition media outlets from other foreign governments was “tiny in comparison with American funding” cut by the Trump administration.

Moreover, “traditional media supporters” such as the CIA-connected Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations have “abandoned much of [their] media funding” outright. This abrupt lack of overseas bankrolling for anti-Kremlin propaganda operations was parenthetically acknowledged in Mediazona’s desperate March 31 plea for reader donations, which lamented that “grants from various foundations” are no longer forthcoming “in the current situation.” It appears Mediazona is also a victim of the US-led cessation of foreign funding for ‘independent’ media projects targeting enemy states.

As funding from Western governments dries up, Pussy Riot has launched a page on OnlyFans. The group’s “fetish/kink friendly” official profile on the website, widely used by sex workers, promises paying subscribers “daily exclusive photos and videos,” “one on one chatting,” “custom content and items,” and “exceptional service for all your personal requests.”

At the time of publication, promotional offers on three and six-month subscriptions are offered. It is unknown how many NATO member states, if any, have availed themselves of the opportunity.

Reported by The Lever Daily, 6/26/25

Lining their pockets off Trump’s war. In the months between Election Day and the president’s unauthorized strikes in Iran, nineteen members of Congress or their spouses reported purchasing defense stock in companies contracted with the government, reports Sludge. That includes Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, defense firms that all saw their stocks jump after the June 13 strikes on Iran.

• One of the biggest purchases came from Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who bought between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in defense firm L3Harris in May. Meanwhile, the House Armed Services Committee’s Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.) purchased between $1,000 and $15,000 in Boeing, L3Harris, and Northrop Grumman stock just two weeks before the June 13 bombing.

By Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone, 6/4/25

During an end-of-year investor call this February, Palantir CEO, co-founder and militant Zionist Alex Karp bragged that his company was making a financial killing by enabling mass murder.

“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies,” he stated, adding: “And on occasion, kill them.”  

On this front, Karp claimed Palantir was “crushing it,” and he professed to be “super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.” 

Karp went on to predict social “disruption” ahead that would be “very good for Palantir.”

“There’s a revolution. Some people are going to get their heads cut off,” he warned, suggesting that his firm was producing the most vital technology enabling elites to restore control during the coming unrest.

Denver-based Palantir [which specializes in software platforms for big-data analytics] is already playing a decisive role in the besieged Gaza Strip, where its products assist Israel’s application of a ferocious AI targeting system known as Lavender which directs its ongoing genocide.

In the face of public protest, Karp has acknowledged that he is directly involved in killing Palestinians in Gaza, but insisted the dead were “mostly terrorists.”

Karp at the World Economic Forum in May 2022 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. (World Economic Forum / Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 )

At the start of January, the overtly pro-Israeli firm’s board of directors gathered in Tel Aviv for its first meeting of the new year. Since then, its financial fortunes have improved dramatically.

Throughout May, Palantir’s stock exploded, making it the S&P 500’s top-performing company. On June 2, Palantir’s share price hit an all-time high, a year-on-year jump of 512 percent, turbocharging the company’s market value to roughly $311 billion.

Driving this abrupt burst of investor exuberance was a series of lucrative deals signed with multiple U.S. government agencies since Donald Trump took office, and the expectation Palantir will ink massive contracts going forward.

Domestic Mass Surveillance & Pentagon Targeting

On May 30, The New York Times published a lengthy probe linking these deals to an executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump in March, calling for seamless, mass sharing of data across government agencies through a Palantir application called Foundry. 

The report did not explain to readers how Palantir emerged as a small startup thanks to sponsorship from the C.I.A.’s venture capital wing, In-Q-Tel, which gifted Peter Thiel’s company $2 million in 2004. Instead, the paper leaned in to a partisan angle playing on Democratic fears that Trump could abuse a unified database to target political foes. 

Thiel at the 2022 Converge Tech Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Nonetheless, the Times provided valuable insight into Palantir’s penetration of a vast array of U.S. government agencies, by raking in more than $113 million in federal government spending since Trump took office, on top of “additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.”

In late May, the company’s existing contract with the Department of Defense was beefed up by $795 million, bringing it to an eye-popping total award of $1.3 billion.

Palantir currently provides the Pentagon with AI targeting software known as Maven, which it uses in battlefields from Syria to Yemen to Ukraine and beyond. The contract will last until at least May 2029.

The Trump administration’s fondness for Palantir has placed its data analytics and storage tool Foundry in at least four federal agencies, including the DHS and Health and Human Services Department. Talks are also apparently ongoing with the Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service to adopt the resource.

This would facilitate merging all these agencies’ datasets.

Please Donate to the

Spring Fund Drive!

According to the Times, Palantir was selected to deliver on Trump’s order to enhance intradepartmental data sharing by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

At least three DOGE members previously worked at the company, while two others have worked at Thiel-funded firms. The outlet cited leaked screenshots indicating DHS officials exchanged emails with DOGE in February about merging citizen records, while quoting nameless Palantir employees worrying “about collecting so much sensitive information in one place,” particularly given the allegedly “sloppy” approach to security of “some DOGE employees.” 

Musk with Trump on May 30 at a departure ceremony for the DOGE adviser in the Oval Office. (White House/Molly Riley)

While focusing heavily on the risks posed by Trump’s embrace of Palantir technology, the Times acknowledged in passing the company “has long worked” with different branches of the U.S. federal government, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In February 2022, Palantir was enlisted by the Biden administration to manage Covid vaccine distribution.

Meanwhile, in April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “removal operations team” gave Palantir $30 million “to build a platform to track migrant movements in real time.”

Karp, for his part, has infuriated Trump’s base by boasting during an interview in Davos, Switzerland, in 2023 that he “singlehandedly stopped the rise of the far-right in Europe” through an application called PG.

The following February, he claimed before an audience at the Future Investment Initiative Institute that by supposedly stopping “innumerable terror attacks” across Europe, Palantir prevented the resurgence of fascism.

“I love when I’m getting yelled at in cities in Europe,” Karp declared. “Keep yelling at me… the only reason why someone’s not goose-stepping between me and you is my product,” he laughed.

Privatized National Security State Backbone

For years, Palantir has been at the heart of U.S.-led efforts to neutralize Iran’s alleged nuclear program. It has created a predictive analytical tool dubbed Mosaic for the purpose, used by the International Atomic Energy Agency and U.S. officials to visualize ties among the people, places and material involved in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities.

Data harvested and pored over by the resource includes potentially tainted material supposedly stolen from Tehran by Mossad.

Such work mimics the services Palantir has provided for U.S. government agencies such as the C.I.A., DHS, F.B.I. and Pentagon. These entities routinely turn over untold quantities of data to the firm to exploit for a variety of applications.

For example, Palantir’s Gotham tool has been weaponized by the U.S. military to supposedly predict insurgent attacks. In Afghanistan, it combined maps, intelligence briefings and incident reports for mission planning, leading Bloomberg to dub Palantir the “secret weapon” of the so-called war on terror.

Meanwhile, documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden indicate the U.S. signals intelligence giant and its British counterpart GCHQ have relied heavily on Palantir’s products.

A leaked 2011 presentation connected the company’s wares to multiple secret Five Eyes spying operations, and provided glowing personal testimonials from the agencies’ analysts.

One crowed: “[Palantir] is the best tool I have ever worked with. It’s intuitive, i.e. idiot-proof, and can do a lot you never even dreamt of doing.”

Local law enforcement agencies are also making use of Gotham. The total number of forces worldwide using the technology is unknown, but leaked Los Angeles Police Department training documents on Gotham, including an “Intermediate Course” and an “Advance Course,” shed significant light on the tool’s internal workings.

The sheer volume of data collected on citizens — whether they are law-abiding, are suspected of having committed a crime, or are simply connected to individuals accused of wrongdoing — is staggering.

This includes sex, race, names, contact details, addresses, prior warrants, mugshots, surveillance photos, personal relationships, past and current employers, tattoos, scars, piercings and other identifying features. Such a cutting-edge service doesn’t come cheap, and Gotham subscriptions run to millions of dollars annually.

The vast windfall reaped from multiple state entities since Palantir’s inception has made the firm’s founders very wealthy indeed —Karp’s personal worth alone is currently estimated at $12.2 billion — and allowed the company to go public in September 2020.

On top of the privacy concerns raised by a secretive company with access to so much private data, the practical efficacy of Palantir’s technology has also come under scrutiny since its Foundry application was implanted in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) in December 2020.

That’s when Palantir was awarded a legally dubious no-bid contract to run the Service’s Covid-19 Data Store for two years despite warnings that the company could preside over “an ‘unprecedented’ transfer of citizens’ private health information” into its own database.

Palantir stand at the NHS Confederation conference 2022. (Rathfelder / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The following year, the NHS awarded Palantir a $447 million contract to build a “Federated Data Platform” combining the medical records of all British citizens.

Next, the British government paid millions to a consultancy firm called KPMG to market Palantir’s platform to local NHS Trusts, which oversee the administration of individual hospitals throughout the country. Since then, several senior medical officials have warned that Palantir’s technology was inferior to current systems, and could actually hinder NHS work.

Yet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has continued his government’s cooperation with Palantir, even visiting the company’s offices in downtown Washington, D.C., immediately after meeting with Trump this February. Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir UK, cheered Starmer’s attitude after the visit: “You could see in his eyes that he gets it. The ambition is there — the will is there.” 

Palantir’s Mosley happens to be the grandson of Sir Oswald Mosley, the World War II-era Nazi sympathizer who led the British Union of Fascists.

While Thiel’s personal affinity for Trump and close relationships with key members of the president’s cabinet may have eased Palantir’s entry into sensitive government areas, the company’s current trajectory has been years in the making.

Having penetrated the national security state of countries across the West, the firm and its messianic CEO are working to consolidate a trans-Atlantic network of control with unprecedented powers, lucrative profits, and a growing body count. 

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

This article is from The Grayzone.

By Piers Robinson, Substack, 6/26/25

Dr Piers Robinson is a co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, Research Director for the International Center for 9/11 Justice, co-editor of the Journal for 9/11 Studies & co-editor of Propaganda in Focus.

On the 12 of June, the world’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), issued a damning statement that accused Iran of being in breach of its commitments to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its resolution, adopted during the 1769th session of its board of governors, declared:

Iran has failed to provide the co-operation required under its Safeguards Agreement, impeding Agency verification activities, sanitizing locations, and repeatedly failing to provide the Agency with technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at several undeclared locations in Iran or information on the current location(s) of nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment, instead stating, inconsistent with the Agency’s findings, that it has declared all nuclear material and activities required under its Safeguards Agreement.

Within hours Israel initiated attacks on multiple Iranian nuclear sites justified by the claim that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb. What turned out to be a 12-day war on Iran had begun and, by the 22nd of June, the US had bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran had launched a strike on a US military base in Qatar.

As soon as the IAEA had issued its statement on the 12 of June, Iran accused it of co-ordinating with Israel and sharing data provides by the IAEA’s Mosaic artificial-intelligence platform. As Sarah Bils details, the Mosaic platform was developed by Palantir who also ‘power IDF targeting in Gaza and Ukraine’s battlefield’. Palantir was also co-founded by Peter Thiel who is closely allied to US president Trump. By June 18th the Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, was having to admit on CNN that there was no ‘proof of a systematic weapons program’ (Bils, 2025).

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the IAEA is, to all intents and purposes, entangled in propaganda efforts aimed at legitimating military action against Iran in pursuit of what are long-standing policies aimed at obtaining ‘regime-change’ in Iran. If this does indeed turn out to be the case, it fits a pattern in which manipulated or spun intelligence and co-opted international institutions are used as trigger mechanisms for war. At this juncture, a brief reminder of recent history helps clarify and contextualise what we are seeing today with the IAEA and Iran.

The Case of Syria and Alleged Chemical Weapons Attacks

Between 2011 and 2024, during the Western-backed regime change war against Syria, repeated allegations were made that the Syrian government was using chemical weapons against its civilian population. None of these allegations stand up to scrutiny, yet they have been a central component of a propaganda campaign designed to demonise the Assad government as well as to both maintain and increase Western military actions. At critical junctures Western intelligence-linked actors have been involved in fabrications related to alleged chemical weapons incidents (see here and here).

Throughout this 14-year period the world’s chemical watchdog, the United Nations-linked Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), played a central role in maintaining the false narrative. This was achieved through the creation of an ad-hoc mechanism, the Fact Finding Mission (FFM), that actually operates outside the framework of the Chemical Weapons Convention. These FFMs became integrated with covert operations carried out by Western-linked actors, some of whom were involved in the staging of chemical weapons incidents.

In what was a demonstrably corrupt scientific process, matters came to a head during the OPCW FFM sent to investigate the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, 2018. Here investigators involved with the FFM ended up blowing the whistle on how the investigation had been corrupted. Evidence leaked from the OPCW demonstrated that the investigation had been manipulated so as to reach a ‘pre-ordained conclusion’ blaming the Syrian government. Rather than investigating the corruption within his organisation, the OPCW’s Director General, Fernando Arias, chose to smear and then silence his own inspectors.

The Case of Iraq’s alleged WMD stockpiles

During the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US and British governments repeatedly accused the Iraqi government of producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These claims were based on intelligence and, at the time, the US faced varying degrees of resistance from the international organisations tasked with assessing Iraqi capabilities. Dr Hans Blix – head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection – resisted US pressure to confirm their intelligence. José Bustani, the first Director General of the OPCW, was forced from his post by John Bolton (Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs) because he would not play ball with the US propaganda drive. The US invaded Iraq in March 2003, triggering years of violence and destruction within the country.

As is now well-established, following years of inquiries and leaks, that the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq had been manipulated and, in some cases, likely fabricated to present a seriously misleading impression of Iraqi WMD capabilities. The notorious September Dossier published by the UK government even claimed Saddam could fire missiles against British targets within 45 minutes of an order from Saddam Hussein. None of this was true and nothing was ever found in Iraq.

Moreover, it is now clear that the WMD narrative merely served the purpose of enabling a regime-change war planned since the 1990s which, in turn, was part of a series of conflicts planned and enabled by the 9/11 manufactured war trigger.

History Repeats Itself

There is a clear pattern here in which false claims about the production and use of prohibited weapons – chemical, biological, nuclear – are made by belligerent states seeking to instigate and justify war. In doing so, international organisations, which are supposed to maintain the peace by objectively and fairly monitoring any alleged activities, are either sidelined or co-opted by belligerent nations. Institutions established for peace have become weapons of war.