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.

Moscow Times, 6/2/25

Moscow Times is a western owned media outlet.

Russian billionaires have collectively gained $22.5 billion since the start of the year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The ranking of the world’s top 500 richest people includes 22 Russians whose combined wealth stood at $317.7 billion as of Monday.

Metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin remained Russia’s richest person, with his net worth rising by $3.82 billion since January to $31.7 billion.

He was followed by Lukoil founder Vagit Alekperov, whose net worth rose by $561 million to $25.9 billion, and mining magnate Vladimir Lisin, who retained third place with $24.2 billion despite losing $1.62 billion in five months.

The only Russian billionaire to lose more than Lisin was fertilizer tycoon and AS Monaco football club owner Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose wealth dropped by $1.77 billion to $9.21 billion, placing him in the bottom five.opinionRussia’s Potato Dilemma Risks Causing a Health CrisisRead more

Russia’s wealthiest woman Tatiana Kim lost $597 million and ranked 21st with a net worth of $6.77 billion, just ahead of metals tycoon Iskander Makhmudov, who rounded out the list at $6.74 billion.

Makhmudov, whose fortune rose by $3.61 billion, was among the top gainers after Potanin and Alisher Usmanov, whose wealth grew by $3.7 billion to $16.9 billion, making him the seventh-richest Russian.

Senator Suleiman Kerimov added $3 billion to reach $10 billion in 15th place. Industrialist Viktor Vekselberg earned $2.25 billion to reach $9.54 billion, while tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov earned $2.03 billion and ranked 10th with a net worth of $13 billion.

After Potanin, Alekperov and Lisin, the top five wealthiest Russians also included Novatek gas major chairman Leonid Mikhelson, whose fortune rose by $860 million to $23.2 billion, and industrialist Alexei Mordashov, who lost $598 million and was valued at $22.6 billion.

By David Hambling, Popular Mechanics/Yahoo News, 6/24/25

On Saturday, June 21, 2025, following a spate of unprecedented aerial attacks that Israel carried out against Iran just days before, the United States joined the war and used bunker-busting bombs to strike three key Iranian nuclear sites and their underground bunkers: the Fordow fuel-enrichment plant, the Natanz nuclear facility, and the Isfahan nuclear technology center.

Operation Midnight Hammer, the Pentagon’s codename for the strikes on Iran, marks the first-ever use of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a colossal 30,000-pound bomb that only the B-2 stealth bomber can carry. As such, America has been regarded as the only country capable of taking out Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, and therefore its nuclear program—but if it actually accomplished that feat is yet to be seen.

While President Trump declared that the operation “completely and totally obliterated” the sites, Iranian officials downplayed the attacks. As of publication time, it’s unclear the level of damage inflicted based on satellite imagery alone, but a CNN report published on Tuesday afternoon claims that the strikes on Iran did not destroy the country’s nuclear program and has instead only set it back by a matter of months, according to early U.S. intelligence.

If history serves as any indication, there is a chance Iran’s underground nuclear facilities could be partially or wholly intact. That’s because up until now, in the quiet arms race between concrete and bombs, the concrete has been winning.

In the late 2000s, for instance, rumors circulated about a bunker in Iran struck by a bunker-buster bomb. The bomb had failed to penetrate—and remained embedded in—the surface of the bunker, presumably until the occupants called in a bomb-disposal team. Rather than smashing through the concrete, the bomb had been unexpectedly stopped dead. The reason was not hard to guess: Iran was a leader in the new technology of Ultra High Performance Concrete, or UHPC, and its latest concrete advancements were evidently too much for standard bunker busters.

Stephanie Barnett, Ph.D, of the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. is involved in developing stronger concrete to protect civilian buildings from terrorist attacks, and has heard about Iran and its ultra-tough concrete. While civilian audiences have been enthusiastic about the advancements in concrete, she occasionally hears less positive responses from military personnel attending her presentations.

“One officer told me, ‘If you make this stronger blast- and impact-resistant material, we need to think about how to get through it,’” Barnett says.

The U.S. Air Force introduced its first modern bunker buster in 1985. General-purpose bombs have a thin steel casing filled with explosives, while bunker busters have a narrower profile, with a thicker casing and less explosives. This design concentrates all the weight on a smaller area, making it an ice pick rather than a hammer, so the bomb can smash through concrete or burrow through earth to strike deeply-buried targets.

While the same general-purpose bombs from the 1990s are being used today, bunker busters had to go through several generations of upgrades. In the early 2000s, the Air Force even developed a special type of steel for the purpose, known as Eglin Steel, in association with steel specialist Ellwood National Forge Company.

Eglin Steel is a low-carbon, low-nickel steel with traces of tungsten, chromium, manganese, silicon, and other elements, each contributing a desirable property to the whole. Eglin Steel is the gold standard for bunker-busting munitions, although in recent years it has been supplemented by new USAF-96 steel, which boasts similar performance but is easier to produce and work with.

Materials scientists distinguish between the two qualities of toughness and hardness, and it is the balance between them that drives arms races between weapons and armor.