By Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone, 7/13/25

Journalist Mick Hall was accused of slipping “Russian disinformation” into copy at New Zealand’s state broadcaster, sparking an international furor about Kremlin infiltration. Following an intel agency investigation, his name was cleared.

Now, Hall tells The Grayzone how a simple copy editing dispute brought him into Five Eyes’ crosshairs.

Until two years ago, Mick Hall was a fairly obscure journalist publishing wire copy for Radio New Zealand (RNZ), far-removed from media capitals like Washington and London where international opinions are shaped. But in June 2023, Hall suddenly became the target of Five Eyes intelligence agencies when he was accused by Western sources – including his own employer – of inserting “Russian disinformation” into wire stories.

What started with a dispute of Hall’s copy edits turned into an investigation by New Zealand’s Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (NZSIS), which briefed top government officials about its probe. For months afterward, major Western media outlets fretted that Kremlin agents had infiltrated New Zealand’s national broadcaster.

But Hall insisted he had been unfairly accused and defamed by a pro-war element driven into the throes of paranoia by the Ukraine proxy war. In November 2024, he lodged a formal complaint against the NZSIS, demanding to know whether Wellington’s primary intelligence service “acted lawfully and properly” and followed “correct procedure” in its investigation, and if any information gathered about him “was shared appropriately, including with overseas partners.”

On April 9, New Zealand’s Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (NZSIS) published the results of the investigation triggered by Hall’s complaint. The Inspector General report noted its investigation lasted between June 10 and August 11 2023, and was closed due to “no concerns of foreign interference” being identified.

The Inspector General acknowledged the intelligence services’ probe was initiated purely due to public “allegations [emphasis added] of foreign interference,” rather than substantive evidence of any kind, and expressed sympathy that Hall found it “disconcerting to discover” he had “come to the attention of an intelligence agency…particularly as a journalist reporting on conflicts where different views can validly be expressed.” However, it concluded NZSIS’ actions were “necessary and proportionate”, and the agency acted “lawful [sic] and properly.”

Hall’s name had been cleared, but he had been denied any recompense for being smeared as a Kremlin agent, and having his career in national media effectively destroyed.

An ounce of truth

The manufactured scandal surrounding Mick Hall’s copy edits trace back to New York City, where a lawyer and Democratic party hack named Luppe B. Luppen erupted in outrage at something he happened across on RNZ’s website.

In a Twitter/X post, Luppen complained that RNZ had republished a Reuters article authored by the news agency’s Moscow bureau chief Guy Faulconbridge, with “utterly false, Russian propaganda” inserted. Namely, that the February 2014 Maidan “revolution” was in fact a “violent” US-sponsored “colour revolution,” provoking a civil war in eastern and southern Ukraine, during which local “ethnic Russians” were “suppressed.”

Mick Hall was responsible for inserting this wording.

He told The Grayzone, “it always seemed odd to me a New York-based lawyer would come across a republished Reuters story on a small national broadcaster’s website in the South Pacific – I’ve not read too much into it, but it felt strange at the time, and still does.” Nonetheless, Hall believed his changes were legitimate given the story’s content, and stands by his decision to this day.

Since joining RNZ in September 2018 as a “digital journalist” and subeditor, he was responsible for selecting and processing news stories from international news agencies and wire services for republication on the broadcaster’s website. Hall frequently found that copy by the BBC, Reuters, and other prominent Western news services contained extraordinary bias and distortions. He felt compelled to balance the coverage by adding context, or amending and deleting passages which seemed overtly ideological.

When the Ukraine proxy war erupted in February 2022, Hall sensed that Western news agencies were not even attempting to conceal their biases any longer.

Manufactured crisis boomerangs on RNZ

On June 9th 2023, RNZ placed Hall on leave and announced an urgent investigation into his supposedly Kremlin-influenced editing. By this point, the foundations of an international scandal had been laid. For months afterwards, “disinformation experts”, think tank hawks, mainstream ‘journalists’ and politicians whipped up a paranoid, conspiratorial frenzy over Hall’s edits. The BBC, Independent, New York Times and Reuters cranked up the controversy with blanket coverage. The Guardian’s obsessively anti-Russian Luke Harding took a particularly keen interest.

Olga Lautman, a Ukrainian nationalist from arms industry-funded think tank CEPA, strongly suggested that Hall was taking orders from the Russian state to insert “disinformation” into RNZ’s output. This libelous conjecture was not helped by RNZ chief Paul Thompson offering a servile public apology, in which he begged for forgiveness for “pro-Kremlin garbage…[ending] up in our stories.” An internal audit identified “inappropriate” edits made by Hall in 49 stories, out of 1,319 he worked on for RNZ in total – exactly 3.71%.

At his lawyer’s suggestion, Hall produced a detailed document listing every story he edited that had been flagged by RNZ for supposedly “inappropriate” tampering. He included personal explanations for why changes were made and passages inserted, along with expert supporting commentary from figures such as economist Jeffrey Sachs and political scientist John Mearsheimer. However, Hall gave up after just 39 stories. “The reasons RNZ flagged the remaining 10 – such as referring to Julian Assange a journalist – were so ridiculous, it seemed a waste of time,” he explained.

RNZ subsequently appointed an independent panel to assess the fiasco. In a bitter irony, the report they published on July 28 2023 was a rebuke to Hall’s accusers. It declared that “not all of the examples of inappropriate editing identified by RNZ were found by the panel to be inappropriate.” Moreover, the panel accepted Hall “genuinely believed he was acting appropriately,” and “was not motivated by any desire to introduce misinformation, disinformation or propaganda.”

While the report accused Hall of several cases of “inappropriate editing,” breaching both RNZ’s editorial policy and its contractual agreement with Reuters, the panel did not conclude this was deliberate, but a well-intentioned effort to add “balance and accuracy into the stories.” Moreover, the edits flagged by the panel as “inappropriate” were usually factual, and contained valuable historical context. For example, Hall amended a May 2022 story about the attempted evacuation of Mariupol to note that Azov Battalion “was widely regarded before the Russian invasion by Western media as a Neo-Nazi military unit.”

That Azov’s extremist background, history and ideology has been obfuscated and whitewashed since the proxy war began is a basic statement of fact. The panel even acknowledged the group’s neo-Nazi links had “been noted, reported on and debated” previously, but bizarrely found Hall’s “uncritical and unexplained inclusion” of this inconvenient truth “had the effect of unbalancing the story.” This was despite the panel admitting, “experienced people operating in good faith can and do disagree” on editorial standards, which are in any event “matters for judgment”.

Conversely, the review was extremely scathing of how Hall’s “errors were framed” by RNZ’s leadership. Their conduct was found to have “contributed to public alarm and reputational damage which the panel believes was not helpful in maintaining public trust.” It furthermore concluded “the wider structure, culture, systems and processes that facilitated what occurred” were the state broadcaster’s responsibility. Grave “gaps” in supervision and training of RNZ’s “busy, poorly resourced digital news team” were identified. For example, “limitations on changing content” from newswires weren’t clearly communicated to staff.

An “intense Western-wide witch hunt over a single person amending newswire copy”

For Hall, many questions about the affair linger today – not least how the Inspector General reached his conclusions. The report states, “much of the information my inquiry has considered is highly classified, which limits the information I can provide you to explain my findings.” It is difficult to conceive what “highly classified” information NZSIS “considered” given the public nature of the allegations against Hall. What’s more, both the independent review panel and NZSIS cleared him of any wrongdoing within two months of the first accusations.

Similarly curious was the vague language which filled the three-page report. For example, it claimed that NZSIS had taken “relatively limited steps” in investigating Hall. Yet it failed to clarify which steps were taken. Confusing matters even further, the Inspector General admitted “NZSIS shared information about the conclusion of its enquiries with interested parties… to allay concerns of foreign interference.” The identity of those “interested parties,” and why it was NZSIS’ responsibility to ameliorate their baseless anxieties, was also unclear.

“We’ll likely never know the answer to any of these mysteries. I lodged my complaint when I learned NZSIS briefed both the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office on my case. I also have grounds to believe at least one of Wellington’s Western intelligence partners was given information on me,” Hall tells The Grayzone.

“This was a simple matter of minor procedural errors on my part, and disagreement over editorial standards with RNZ’s management, which could’ve been quietly and professionally resolved internally. Instead, I was thrust into the glare of the international media and the Five Eyes global spying network. The intense Western-wide witch hunt over a single person amending newswire copy at a tiny news outlet could indicate there was some kind of deeper, darker coordination at play. Again though, we’ll probably never know.”

By William Hartung, Antiwar.com, 7/2/25

Originally published at TomDispatch.

The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would cut $1.7 trillion, mostly in domestic spending, while providing the top 5% of taxpayers with roughly $1.5 trillion in tax breaks.

Over the next few years, the same bill will add another $150 billion to a Pentagon budget already soaring towards a record $1 trillion. In short, as of now, in the battle between welfare and warfare, the militarists are carrying the day.

Pentagon Pork and the People It Harms

The bill, passed by the House of Representatives and at present under consideration in the Senate, would allocate tens of billions of dollars to pursue President Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project, which Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has described as “a fantasy.” She explained exactly why the Golden Dome, which would supposedly protect the United States against nuclear attack, is a pipe dream:

“Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. This effort has been plagued by false starts and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat… Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons.”

The bill also includes billions more for shipbuilding, heavy new investments in artillery and ammunition, and funding for next-generation combat aircraft like the F-47.

Oh, and after all of those weapons programs get their staggering cut of that future Pentagon budget, somewhere way down at the bottom of that list is a line item for improving the quality of life for active-duty military personnel. But the share aimed at the well-being of soldiers, sailors, and airmen (and women) is less than 6% of the $150 billion that Congress is now poised to add to that department’s already humongous budget. And that’s true despite the way Pentagon budget hawks invariably claim that the enormous sums they routinely plan on shoveling into it — and the overflowing coffers of the contractors it funds — are “for the troops.”

Much of the funding in the bill will flow into the districts of key members of Congress (to their considerable political benefit). For example, the Golden Dome project will send billions of dollars to companies based in Huntsville, Alabama, which calls itself “Rocket City” because of the dense network of outfits there working on both offensive missiles and missile defense systems. And that, of course, is music to the ears of Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who just happens to come from Alabama.

The shipbuilding funds will help prop up arms makers like HII Corporation (formerly Huntington Ingalls), which runs a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the home state of Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss).  The funds will also find their way to shipyards in Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia.

Those funds will benefit the co-chairs of the House Shipbuilding Caucus, Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA). Connecticut hosts General Dynamics’ Electric Boat plant, which makes submarines that carry ballistic missiles, while Virginia is home to HII Corporation’s Newport News Shipbuilding facility, which makes both aircraft carriers and attack submarines.

The Golden Dome missile defense project, on which President Trump has promised to spend $175 billion over the next three years, will benefit contractors big and small. Those include companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon (now RTX) that build current generation missile defense systems, as well as emerging military tech firms like Elon Musk’s Space X and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, both of which are rumored to have a shot at playing a leading role in the development of the new anti-missile system.

And just in case you thought this country was only planning to invest in defense against a nuclear strike, a sharp upsurge in spending on new nuclear warheads under the auspices of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) has been proposed for fiscal year 2026. Thirty billion dollars, to be exact, which would represent a 58% hike from the prior year’s budget. Meanwhile, within that agency, nonproliferation, cleanup, and renewable energy programs are set to face significant cuts, leaving 80% of NNSA’s proposed funding to be spent on — yes! — nuclear weapons alone. Those funds will flow to companies like Honeywell, Bechtel, Jacobs Engineering, and Fluor that help run nuclear labs and nuclear production sites, as well as educational institutions like the University of Tennessee, Texas A&M, and the University of California at Berkeley, which help manage nuclear weapons labs or nuclear production sites.

Weakening the Social Safety Net — and America

And while weapons contractors will gorge on a huge new infusion of cash, military personnel, past and present, are clearly going to be neglected. As a start, the Veterans Administration is on the block for deep cuts, including possible layoffs of up to 80,000 employees — a move that would undoubtedly slow down the processing of benefits for those who have served in America’s past wars. Research on ailments that disproportionately impact veterans will also be cut, which should be considered an outrage.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of veterans from this country’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to suffer from physical and psychological wounds, including traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cutting research that might find more effective solutions to such problems should be considered a national disgrace. In the meantime, active-duty personnel who are getting a tiny fraction of the potential Pentagon add-on of $150 billion are similarly in need.

Worse yet, turn away from the Pentagon for a moment, and the cuts in the rest of that “big beautiful bill” will likely have an impact on a majority of Americans — Democrats, independents, and MAGA Republicans alike.  Their full effects may not be felt for months until the spending reductions contained in it start hitting home. However, enacting policies that take food off people’s tables and deny them medical care will not only cause unnecessary suffering but cost lives.

As President (and former general) Dwight D. Eisenhower, a very different kind of Republican, said more than 70 years ago, the ultimate security of a nation lies not in how many weapons it can pile up, but in the health, education, and resilience of its people. The big beautiful bill and the divisive politics surrounding it threaten those foundations of our national strength.

Clash of the Contractors?

As budget cuts threaten to make the population weaker, distorted spending priorities are making arms producers stronger. The Big Five — Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — produce most of the current big-ticket weapon systems, from submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles to tanks, combat aircraft, and missile-defense systems. Meanwhile, emerging tech firms like Palantir, Anduril, and Space X are cashing in on contracts for unpiloted vehicles, advanced communications systems, new-age goggles for the Army, anti-drone systems, and so much more.

But even as weapons spending hits near-record or record levels, there may still be a fight between the Big Five and the emerging tech firms over who gets the biggest share of that budget. One front in the coming battle between the Big Five and the Silicon Valley militarists could be the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI).  According to Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, one of the goals of ATI is to “eliminate obsolete systems.”

Driscoll is a harsh critic of the way members of Congress put money in the budget — a process known as “pork barrel politics” — for items the military services haven’t even asked for (and they ask for plenty), simply because those systems might bring more jobs and revenue to their states or districts. He has, in fact, committed himself to an approach that’s incompatible with the current, parochial process of putting together the Pentagon budget. “Lobbyists and bureaucrats have overtaken the army’s ability to prioritize soldiers and war fighting,” he insisted.

Driscoll is talking a tough game when it comes to taking on the existing big contractors.  He’s evidently ready to push for “reform,” even if it means that some of them go out of business. In fact, he seems to welcome it: “I will measure it as success if, in the next two years, one of the primes is no longer in business.” (“Primes” are the big contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics that take the lead on major programs and get the bulk of the funding, a significant portion of which they dole out to subcontractors all over the country and the world.)

Ending pork-barrel politics in favor of an approach in which the Pentagon only buys systems that align with the country’s actual defense strategy, as Driscoll is suggesting, might seem like a significant step forward. But be careful what you wish for. Any funds freed up by stopping congressional representatives from treating the Pentagon budget as a piggy bank to buy loyalty from their constituents will almost certainly go to emerging tech firms ready to build next-generation systems like swarms of drones, weapons that can take out a hypersonic missile, or pilotless land vehicles, aircraft, and ships. Driscoll is a major tech enthusiast, as is his friend and Yale law school classmate J.D. Vance, who was first employed by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, who then backed his successful run for the Senate from Ohio.

Since the tech firms don’t have the equivalent of the Big Five’s extensive production networks in key congressional districts, they need to find other ways to persuade Congress to fund their weapons programs. Fortunately, the Silicon Valley militarists have a significant number of former employees or financial backers in the Trump administration who can plead their case.

In addition, military-tech-focused venture capital firms have hired at least 50 former Pentagon and military officials, all of whom can help them exert influence over both the Trump administration and Congress. The biggest “catch” was Palantir’s hiring of former Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who had run the hawkish Congressional special committee on Communist China.

Some journalists and policy analysts have wondered whether the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk will hurt the military tech sector. Well, stop fretting. Even if Trump were to follow through on his threat to cut the government funding of Musk’s firms, the tasks they’re carrying out — from launching military satellites to developing more secure Internet access for deployed military personnel — would still proceed, just under the auspices of different companies. There would be some friction involved, simply because it’s hard to shift suppliers on a dime without slowing down production.  And the transition, should it occur, would also add cost to already exceedingly expensive programs.

But Trump’s threat to cancel Space X’s contracts may just be more grist for his verbal combat with Musk rather than anything his administration plans to follow through on. Even if Musk and his president never reconcile, the DOGE cuts to international diplomacy and domestic social services that Musk spearheaded will still do serious damage for years to come.

Money Can’t Buy Security

A shift toward emerging military tech firms and away from the Big Five will be about more than money and technology.  Key figures among the growing cohort of Silicon Valley militarists like Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, see building weapons as more than just a necessary pillar of national defense. They see it as a measure of national character.

Karp’s new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, mixes the Cold War ideology of the 1950s with the emerging technology of the twenty-first century. He decries the lack of unifying concepts like “the West” and sees too many Americans as slackers with no sense of national pride or patriotism. His solution, a supposedly unifying national mission, is — wait for it! — a modern Manhattan project for the development of the military applications of artificial intelligence.  To say that this is an impoverished version of what this country’s mission should be is putting it mildly. Many other possibilities come to mind, from addressing climate change to preventing pandemics to upgrading our educational system to building a society where everyone’s basic needs are met, leaving room for creative pursuits of all kinds.

The techno-optimists are also obsessed with preparing for a war with China, which Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old founder of the military tech firm Anduril, believes will happen by 2027. And many in his circle, including Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, are convinced that any potential risks from the development of AI pale in comparison to the need to “beat China,” not just in getting to sophisticated military applications first, but in winning a future war with Beijing, if it comes to that. Talk of diplomacy to head off a war over Taiwan or cooperation on global issues like climate change, outbreaks of disease, and building a more inclusive, less unequal global economy rarely come up in discussions among the hardcore militarist faction in Silicon Valley.  Instead, that group is spending inordinate amounts of time and money seeking to influence the future of U.S. foreign and military policy, a dangerous development indeed.

Whether the emerging tech firms can build cheaper weapons with superior capabilities will be irrelevant if such developments are tied to an aggressive strategy that makes a devastating conflict with China more likely. While the fight between the Big Five and the tech leaders may prove interesting to observe, it is also ominous in terms of this country’s future economic and foreign policies, not to speak of the shape and size of our national budget.

The rest of us, who aren’t billionaires and don’t draw $20 million in annual compensation packages like the CEOs of the big weapons firms (directly or indirectly funded by our tax dollars), should play a leading role in rethinking and revising this country’s global role and our policies at home. If we don’t rise to that challenge, this country could end up swapping one form of militarism, led by the Big Five, for another, spearheaded by hawkish, self-important tech leaders who care more about making money and spawning devastating new technologies than they do about democracy or the quality of life of the average American.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author, with Ben Freeman, of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home (forthcoming from Bold Type Books).

Copyright 2025 William D. Hartung

Russia Matters, 7/21/25

1. For a number of reasons, including Russia’s numerical advantages in troops and air power,¹ “Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine is gaining ground as its forces attack on multiple fronts,” according to The New York Times’ Ivan Nechepurenko and Constant Méheut. Russia gained more than 214 square miles of Ukrainian territory in June compared to 173 square miles in May, according to the data collected by Ukraine’s OSINT group Deep State and analyzed by the two NYT journalists.² And Russia is not just seeking to capture more territory. “Its goal is to destroy Ukraine’s military potential, its army,” Valery Shiryaev, an independent Russian military analyst, was quoted as saying in the NYT article. According to the data collected by the Institute for Study of War and analyzed by RM staff, Russia’s net territorial control in Ukraine, if only including gains made after the launch of the full-blown invasion in February 2022, increased from 44,229 square miles in May 2025 to 44,463 in June 2025. If one compares the monthly rate of change in Russia’s control of Ukraine’s territory in June 2025 (234 square miles) with the average monthly rates of change in such control in the five preceding months of this year (Period I, 130 square miles) and in the 18 months that had preceded June 2025 (Period II, 153 square miles), then one sees that the June 2025 rate is considerably higher than the average rate during either of these two periods.*
2. “Mass attacks of Shaheds, an Iranian-designed drone now manufactured in Russia, appear to be overwhelming Ukraine’s beleaguered air defenses, with the drone hit rate reaching its highest levels since Moscow’s invasion,” Charles Clover and Christopher Miller report in the Financial Times. “Ukrainian air force data suggests about 15% of the drones penetrated defenses on average between April and June—rising from just 5% in the previous three months,” these FT journalists report. “The success of the drones in recent months demonstrates how cheap mass can overwhelm even sophisticated and layered air defenses,” especially if the drones are modernized to enable them to fly higher, faster and further, according to the duo.
3. “The Ukrainian system of power has transformed so much that the name of the prime minister is no longer as important as it once was. In the current system, only the president and his chief of staff really matter,” Konstantin Skorkin writes in reference to the recent cabinet reshuffle in Ukraine. “The latest reboot is generally being explained as a move by the head of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, to strengthen his position even further… As his relationship with Washington deteriorated, Yermak felt it was necessary to shore up his influence on domestic policy,” Skorkin explains in his commentary for Carnegie Politika. That Ukraine’s new prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, is a protégé of Yermak is something that Financial Times’ Miller also mentions in his analysis of the latest political developments in Ukraine. Miller focuses his analytical take on “anti-corruption raids on prominent Ukrainian figures and moves to favor loyalists in senior positions.” These actions “have led to accusations that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government is sliding into authoritarianism,” Miller writes. “If the institutions meant to enforce checks and balances are turned into political tools, Ukraine risks losing the democratic core it fought to build after 2014,” Miller warns.

By Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 7/7/25

To a considerable degree, President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 because voters embraced his message of keeping America out of protracted conflicts and his promise to end the war in Ukraine.

The administration has made substantial operational headway, particularly in reopening stable channels for dialogue with Russia, but it has proven difficult to arrive at a framework for a negotiated settlement that enjoys buy-in from all the stakeholders — Ukraine, Russia, and Europe.

A sharp diversion of American resources and attention to the Middle-East threatens to make the goal of facilitating a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine more evasive still.

The Israel-Iran war stimulated an effusion of speculation, most of it unfounded, around Russia’s supposed interests in aiding its “ally” Iran. In point of fact, there is no tangible sense in which Russia is militarily allied to Iran. One has merely to read the text of the Russia-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, signed in January 2025, to discover that the parties’ only concrete security obligation toward one another if either one comes under attack is to “not provide any military or other assistance to the aggressor which would contribute to the continued aggression.”

Moscow’s relationship with Tehran, though it is more than simply friendly and does reach quite far in the fields of economic and political cooperation, is part of a larger portfolio of Middle-Eastern interests that includes maintaining constructive relations with Israel and the Arab states. The idea that Russia had the slightest intention of allowing itself to be drawn into a military confrontation with Israel over Iran was based purely on the ideological framing, popular among certain subsets of the transatlantic foreign policy community but with little connection to reality, that Moscow is duty-bound to support Tehran by dint of shared autocratic affiliation.

No less wrongheaded is the notion that U.S. strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities sent a “message” to Russia about American resolve, as it’s unclear what that message was supposed to be.

When it comes to potential aggression against NATO countries, there is no indication that the Kremlin doubted or wanted to test the deterrent credibility of American commitment to the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense provisions prior to the American bombing runs. On the issue of Ukraine, the U.S. has repeatedly demonstrated even under a previous administration which was vastly more invested in Kyiv’s victory that it will not fight Russia over Ukraine. It is neither credible nor advisable, considering White House officials’ consistent skepticism of the idea that core U.S. interests are on the line in Ukraine and their desire to deescalate tensions with Russia, to maintain any degree of strategic ambiguity on the prospect of entering direct hostilities with Russia.

Moreover,, the Iranian strikes were conducted in the context of American and Israeli escalation dominance, which made it possible for the U.S. to seize the diplomatic initiative and steer the conflict to its termination with a ceasefire between Israel and Iran after twelve days.

No such conditions exist between Russia and Ukraine, where it is Moscow that maintains the battlefield initiative and holds the capacity to intensify or de-escalate the war as it sees fit.

Yet the linkage between Russia and Iran is significant in other ways. One can easily see how Kremlin officials would fall upon the belief that the White House knew about Israel’s decision to attack Iran and used previous rounds of nuclear talks with Tehran to lull Iranian leadership into a false sense of security. This perception, if left unaddressed, can run a red pen through the work the administration has done to build bilateral trust with Russia and present itself as a good faith negotiator.

The best way to dispel this lingering sense of unease is to make an effort to reengage Iran in substantive negotiations. To the extent that Russia shares and is in a position to contribute to the U.S. goal of achieving a peaceful framework for an Iran without nuclear weapons, the administration should consider taking Putin up on his offer to support the Iran talks.

Russia is already deeply engaged in the region, reportedly including through secret negotiations with Israel over Iran and Syria. Leveraging the Moscow-Tehran-Jerusalem triangle as a vector for reviving the Iran nuclear talks not only advances American interests in the Middle-East but, insofar it establishes larger U.S.-Russia linkages, can generate positive diplomatic momentum toward a negotiated settlement over Ukraine.

The Iran-Israel war has also accentuated the hard limits of U.S. ability to sustain, whether directly or indirectly, multiple high-intensity conflicts.

Previously apportioned U.S. aid packages to Ukraine were slated to run their course by the end of summer. The Pentagon’s reported decision to terminate them prematurely evinces the stark tradeoffs, all too often lost on neoconservative observers, that the U.S. faces in funding foreign war efforts across the world while maintaining its own domestic stockpiles and defense posture.

As Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, keenly understands, there is not a bottomless reserve of interceptors and other munitions to sustain an attrition war that Ukraine is slowly losing in a theatre that is not vital to core U.S. security interests. Yet resource constraints, though no doubt real and deeply felt by this administration, are only one piece of this puzzle.

Administration officials repeatedly warned that the U.S. would “walk away” unless progress is made toward a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine. It was always the case that the likeliest, most readily available path to walking away runs not through explosive proclamations of the kind that followed the disastrous February Oval Office confrontation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but rather through a slow, deliberate, and initially subtle diversion of resources and attention away from Ukraine that becomes more pronounced as its cumulative effects compound over time.

The U.S. effort to help Ukraine since 2022, with all its multifarious security, diplomatic, and economic prongs, is the most ambitious aid program ever to be undertaken by a non-belligerent on behalf of a third country to which it has no formal commitments. Observers presciently warned that the all hands on deck strategy taken by the Biden administration was unsustainable given the challenges faced by the U.S. in other parts of the world, but anything less than singleminded focus on Ukraine was always bound to lead to the unraveling of the West’s maximum-pressure program against Russia and, with it, Kyiv’s ability to prosecute the war.

The aid decision is yet the latest reminder, as if any more were needed, that time is not on Ukraine’s side. Ukrainian and European efforts to get the White House to recommit to the Biden-era “as long as it takes” approach to this war will only expedite the administration’s divestment from it.

Still, American engagement in the peace process remains critical for both Ukraine and broader challenges surrounding European security. Kyiv and its European partners need, now more than ever, to repair to a viable set of initial war termination proposals that can secure U.S. buy-in and serve as a point of departure for getting U.S.-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine back on track.

By Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone, 6/23/25

A coterie of British and American academics advising the US National Security Council explicitly urged Ukraine adopt the tactics of ISIS in a detailed proposal for “anti-rail drone operations,” according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone.

The aggressive war plans recommended in the files eerily foreshadowed Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, which consisted of a series of brazen drone attacks waged inside Russia between May 24 and June 1 – the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. A pair of Ukrainian bombings of Russian trains in Bryansk on May 31 and Kursk and the following day left seven dead, and injured more than 30 people, including two children.

The attacks on Russian rail infrastructure have continued since the launch of Operation Spiderweb, suggesting the British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.

The leaked plans reviewed by The Grayzone explore the use of “inexpensive drones” as “a low-cost means for disrupting Russian logistics,” but also include blueprints for terror attacks composed by three “drone experts” before being passed to the Biden administration’s then-Director for Russia at the National Council, Col. Tim Wright.

Those experts belonged to a secret academic-intelligence cell called Project Alchemy, whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone, and which was founded with a mission to “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

As previously reported here, Project Alchemy researchers called “to take a page from ISIS’ playbook,” presenting the jihadist group’s psychological operations as a model for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. The Grayzone can now reveal that Alchemy’s team also urged US war planners to look to the Islamic State for inspiration in using commercial drones for attacks on Russian civilian targets.

One academic advising the Alchemy cell, Zachary Kallenborn of George Mason University, recommended Ukraine carry out “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian-held railways, suggesting that Kiev first “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.” In other words: double tap kamikaze drone strikes.

“Drones also could provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] in finding and tracking trains to support larger actions,” with satellite imagery exploited for targeting purposes, Kallenborn added.

An unnamed Durham University researcher consulted by the NSC declared that “ISIS showed in their battles against the Iraqi military” that drones could be “modified via a simple drop mechanism… to serve as effective munitions delivery platforms.” The conversion of everyday commercial drones into munitions-bearing killing machines would prove one of the most deadly tactics of the war for both sides.

The origin of Kiev’s ‘drone swarm’ offensives?

During a meeting between military historians from Kansas State University and faculty from the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, academic war planners discussed “the idea of using inexpensive drones to prevent Russia from using captured Ukrainian railroads to resupply their combat units.” The academics then delivered the proposal to “three drone experts in the Ukraine Working Group who each provided their analysis for how to achieve this.”

A separate leaked document describes the Working Group as a vast collection of “strategic studies, military technology and Eastern Europe regional studies experts” who “came together to analyze the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to think deeply about policy options” which could “assist Ukraine’s defense (short of deploying combat forces).” The Working Group was composed of “approximately 60 experts hailing from states throughout NATO.”

The operations file begins by noting that, “when operating in its own territory,” the Russian army “relies on its well-developed rail system which is integrated with Ukraine’s domestic rail network.” As Russian forces moved deeper into Ukraine, the Working Group forecasted that they would “increasingly need to rely on Ukraine’s rail system or face logistic-induced paralysis as their lines of supply lengthen and their road-based logistical become increasingly inefficient.”

“The question should therefore be posed as to whether inexpensive drones can be used to hinder Russian efforts to use those portions of Ukraine’s railway network they have captured,” the document stated. An academic using the initials “M.E.D.” who hailed from Britain’s prestigious Durham University declared, “if Ukrainian forces could sustain attacks on occupied railroads, they could hamper Russian forces’ ability to operate deeper inside of Ukraine.”

While believing it “unlikely that drone attacks, even kamikaze attacks, could bring down bridges” – although this “would be ideal” – they suggested “commercial drones could be modified with a sufficient explosive to inflict meaningful damage of railroads, it would greatly complicate Russian efforts.” After all, “even a small amount of damage would force rail traffic to stop until repairs could be made to the line.”

These attacks “could be carried out away from major stations likely to have active air defenses,” and “augment attacks by stay-behind guerrilla forces.” M.E.D. cited a July 2018 paper on Islamic State’s “innovative” use of drones published by the West Point military academy’s “combating terrorism center” as a reference point for such tactics. It discussed “creative ways” ISIS had deployed “simple, low-cost, and replaceable devices” to devastating effect against its adversaries, which could be replicated by the US and its allies.

M.E.D. postulated that “if larger drones could be procured, of if light commercial aircraft could be modified to fly as drones, they might be able to damage rail bridges enough to force substantive repairs, which would greatly slow rail traffic” – a proposal which closely resembles the June 1 attacks on rail bridges in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk regions. “Another possibility” was “to use a number of commercial drones in a swarm attack” comparable to Ansar Allah’s September 2019 strikes on Aramco sites in Saudi Arabia, “wherein a number of thermite munitions are used to weaken steel or concrete infrastructure.”

“Even if the rail bridges are not destroyed outright weakening key areas – perhaps through the use of suicide drones striking them directly after triggering their payload – would necessitate close inspection and hinder the ability to use the bridges safely,” M.E.D. concluded. Throughout the proxy war, Ukraine has regularly deployed drone swarms against Russian targets, in some cases inflicting significant damage.

“Track switches would probably be good targets too”

Another “drone expert” consulted by the St. Andrews cabal was Dominika Kunertove, formerly of Swiss university ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies. Kunertove currently serves as director of “a research project on future drone warfare and technology” at the Atlantic Council, the semi-official, arms-industry funded think tank of NATO in Washington DC.

Kunertove suggested using drones to strike “anything that uses” railroads, rather than railways themselves, as this would mean “neither side would be able to use railroads for some time (in case [Ukraine] recaptures…territory previously held by Russians.” This June, Kiev destroyed a military supply train carrying heavy armor, including tanks and artillery systems in an effort dubbed Operation Spiderweb 2.0.

Meanwhile, Zachary Kallenborn, a self-described “war doctor in training” from George Mason University’s Schar School, noted the “limited payloads” offered by commercial drones, with “only a few pounds” of explosive able to be attached to them, meant “the best bet would be to hit sensitive, difficult to repair targets to maximize harm.” While admitting to “not know too much about rail infrastructure,” he suggested “switching yards, engine houses, or the equipment to load and unload trains” as prospective targets.

“Track switches would probably be good targets too,” Kallenborn said, as “a hit would disrupt multiple lines and…would be tougher to repair.” He went on to advocate “[thinking] about how drones can support broader anti-rail operations.” While “slowing” operations intended were “definitely good,” Kallenborn believed it would be “be more useful to use drones” to target “supply trains themselves,” echoing Dominika Kunertove’s suggestions.

Kallenborn specifically highlighted five commercial drone models which could be outfitted with explosives and sent to disrupt rail operations, including the $2,200 DJI Mavic III, which Ukrainian forces used in their attack on a Russian fuel train this May 24.

“All of these would need to be modified to allow carrying and dropping of any munitions, which will increase the cost,” Kallenborn wrote. But “depending on model, there may be secondary suppliers who can help with that,” he noted.

Still, Kallenborn appeared to express some cynicism about the utility of drones. He urged the National Security Council to “consider the opportunity cost of drones vs other approaches.” He speculated there were “probably a lot of tracks… in relatively isolated areas where planting explosives by hand might be plausible and might be better timed to fix a train.”

That task that could be handily carried out by secret Operation Gladio-style “stay-behind guerrilla forces” which other British academics proposed standing up as part of a proposal to strike “sensitive, difficult to repair targets to maximize harm” in Russian territory.

In the face of constant Russian battlefield gains and a looming reduction in Washington’s military aid to Ukraine, the British government remains committed to spending vast sums on ensuring Kiev has a vast supply of drones at its disposal at all times.

As Ukraine places drone attacks on Russian infrastructure at the heart of its increasingly desperate strategy, Project Alchemy’s ISIS-inspired plans are more relevant than ever.