Gay senior Pentagon official vows to 'undo' MAGA progress on undercover video. It doesn't go well.



Undercover reporter James O'Keefe has struck again.

The U.S. Navy has placed a senior Pentagon official on administrative leave after a hidden camera from a "gay" date with O'Keefe on July 6 appeared to catch the official criticizing President Donald Trump and vowing to reverse the administration's policy changes.

'Why do the gays in DC spill all the beans to me each and every single time?'

In footage shared to social media by O'Keefe on Wednesday, a disguised O'Keefe is out with an individual he identified as the director of business operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, Brandon Newsom. On the video, Newsom claims to "oversee all corporate ops, so like HR, IT, security."

Newsom tells O'Keefe that while the Trump administration policies challenge his morals, "I want to stay and stick it out, so that way, when the time comes, I can undo whatever's been done [by the Trump administration]," video appears to show.

The alternative, he suggests in the video, is risking having someone who supports the administration take over his responsibilities.

When asked what specific policies he would seek to undo, Newsom appears to tell O'Keefe, whose disguise consisted of a blonde dye-job and a "Freddie Mercury" mustache, "I don't think there should be one specific prayer service."

The Pentagon's monthly voluntary worship services have ruffled feathers besides Newsom's in recent months.

Rachel Laser, the CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, complained in March, "Even if these prayer services are presented as voluntary, there is pressure on federal employees to attend in order to appease their bosses — especially since these services occur amidst the Trump administration’s campaign to punish anyone who doesn’t comply with its Christian Nationalist agenda."

Newsom, who expressed an openness to holding a prayer service where "all religions are recognized," is apparently keen also on doing away with the administration's schedule policy/career reform, which he told O'Keefe directly impacted him.

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"I was converted to schedule policy, which means all of my protections as an employee have been stripped away," Newsom appears to say in the video. "Hopefully that's the first thing that gets undone."

Although he acknowledged that he lacked the authority to change policy, Newsom appears to tell the undercover reporter that he has "the influence."

In addition to apparently divulging his desire to see multiple MAGA policies reversed, Newsom appears to tell O'Keefe that rogue elements have already done their best to hinder implementation.

"There's a lot of things that they [the Trump administration] tried to do at the very beginning ... they've still not rolled out because you have certain folks in certain positions who can slow-roll things," Newsom appears to say in the footage.

Later in the video, O'Keefe's date appears not only to call Trump a "textbook narcissist" but claims that the Iran war is "completely stupid" and "based on one man's ego."

O'Keefe later tweeted, "Why do the gays in DC spill all the beans to me each and every single time?"

When asked for comment, the Pentagon referred Blaze News to the Navy, which did not immediately respond.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao did, however, address the undercover report on Wednesday evening, stating, "The Department of the Navy takes the conduct shown in this video extremely seriously."

"Such statements and apparent intent to leverage a position to undermine the policies and direction set by our elected leaders are inappropriate and incompatible with the standards expected of Department personnel," continued Cao. "Effective immediately, this individual has been placed on administrative leave while we determine next steps to ensure accountability and protect the integrity of our mission."

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Pentagon identifies 2 US soldiers killed in Jordan — others remain unidentified



The Pentagon has named two previously unidentified U.S. soldiers who were killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan late last week.

On Monday, the Department of War identified the fallen soldiers as 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, both of whom were killed during an enemy attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

'She gave the ultimate sacrifice for her country and will always be remembered as a hero.'

Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, who was killed in action on Friday, enlisted with the U.S. Army in 2025.

Gonzales was assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She served as a 14P Air and Missile Defense crew member, according to the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command Public Affairs press release.

“We are profoundly saddened by the loss of Pvt. Isabella Gonzales,” said Brig. Gen. Glenn Henke, commanding general of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. “She gave the ultimate sacrifice for her country and will always be remembered as a hero. Our hearts go out to her family, friends, and teammates. Our immediate priority is ensuring they have the resources and support they need to process this grief together.”

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1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, who died on Saturday, was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"1st Lt. Feehan’s unwavering dedication to our mission, our values, and the air defenders he led will leave an enduring legacy,” Brig. Gen. John Dawber, 32nd AAMDC commanding general, said. “We stand fully committed to supporting his family and loved ones through this incredibly difficult time, and we will never forget his ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation.”

Feehan will receive "the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Combat Action Badge, and be posthumously promoted to captain," according to a U.S. Army press release.

"Godspeed, heroes. Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve," Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, following an initial CENTCOM announcement of the casualties.

The CENTCOM post added that four American service members were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals and have since been discharged. Other personnel were evaluated for minor injuries and have since returned to duty.

CENTCOM also announced that "one service member is currently missing," in the same Saturday post.

The identity of the missing service member has not yet been confirmed, though a Central Command public release announced that U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains at the location on Sunday. The remains were being examined at the time of the release.

In the same release, CENTCOM announced a separate incident in northern Iraq that left one U.S. service member dead and another wounded during a "controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone."

This brings the casualties over the weekend to at least three, with many more injuries being reported as well.

These announcements come at the end of more than a week of consecutive strikes against Iran as ceasefire negotiations continued to deteriorate. On Sunday, CENTCOM announced the conclusion of the ninth consecutive evening of strikes to "further diminish Iran's ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz."

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'Jarring': Democrats, CNN talking heads whine about Hegseth's plan to maximize testosterone in the military



The liberal media didn't appear particularly fussed when, during the Biden administration, the U.S. Army announced that it would provide trans-identifying service members not only with elective genital mutilation surgeries but with hormone therapy.

When, however, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday both that troops ages 30 and older will undergo mandatory annual screenings for testosterone deficiency and that those with low levels will be offered voluntary testosterone replacement therapy as part of a new "High-T" initiative, liberal media personalities rushed to clutch their pearls.

'Is this a good idea?'

The liberal talking heads over at CNN — the network whose host Dana Bash admitted in 2024 of Democrats' appeal to men with lower testosterone — appeared especially shaken by the announcement.

"We owe our warriors the absolute best medical care in the world, and this program delivers on that obligation," Hegseth said in a video statement.

The war secretary added, "Taking care of your long-term health means ensuring you remain strong, resilient, and capable — not just for your next deployment, but for the rest of your life so you can thrive long after you take off the uniform."

According to the Pentagon, its new "enhanced screening protocol" is aimed at optimizing performance, combatting "operator syndrome," and maximizing mission readiness, and "complements the efforts outlined in the 'Warfighter Performance Optimization — Total Force Fitness' memorandum."

When pressed by CNN's Erin Burnett to comment on Wednesday about the policy, Rt. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, suggested that testosterone is "not connected to the reality of the modern battlefield."

Burnett followed up by complaining that "it was really jarring just to hear that today, and obviously, you know, all the implications of it."

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins set the stage for Democratic Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) to similarly complain about the policy, which he said "seems sick."

"Somebody, please wake me up from this dystopian nightmare where we have such unserious people in some of the most important positions, not just in America, one of the most important positions globally," Booker said.

"This is ridiculous, and it should be mocked, and it's just another reason why we should remove him from office," he added.

John King, CNN's chief national correspondent, also concern-mongered about the policy, asking Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), "Is this necessary? Is this a good idea? A bad idea?"

"It's a weird idea," Kelly said. "I mean, what have we seen from this secretary of defense so far? We see him run around on a stage talking about lethality and killing people. Now, he is talking about testosterone. This isn't what we need. What we need is better leadership."

NewsBusters highlighted that absent from CNN's coverage of the policy was any counterpoint.

In its coverage, the Washington Post similarly neglected to address any upsides of the policy, instead amplifying concerns from physicians such as Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown University, who said that "this is non-evidence-based and could cause harm."

While across the Atlantic, there was some huffing and puffing over the policy at the Guardian, the BBC dared to print expert insight suggesting that testosterone screens and boosts might be beneficial.

Dr. Mohit Khera, a specialist in hormone replacement therapy and a professor of urology at Baylor College of Medicine, told the BBC that all men over 30 should undergo testosterone screenings, as it is a top marker of their current and future health.

"The key here is that many young men have low testosterone levels, which puts them at a disadvantage in terms of muscle mass, energy, and that could be an issue if you are in combat," Khera said.

Khera noted that while you have to be careful not to give someone testosterone unless "they do have some kind of symptoms," the benefits of hormone replacement therapy are increased muscle mass, decreased risk for depression, and decreased fatty deposits.

Admiral Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has expressed his full support for the testosterone initiative, stating, "Optimizing testosterone supports strength, endurance, healthy body composition, cognitive performance, mission readiness, and overall well-being — ensuring America's fighting force is prepared to perform at its highest level."

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House GOP weds SAVE Act to key funding bill, unshouldering burden of success onto Thune and company



House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced late last month that he would bundle the SAVE America Act with the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act so that Senate Republicans are presented with the choice of both bolstering the integrity of American elections and funding national defense — or neither.

"We're going to pass a MIRV, or what's better known as a 'merge onto the rule,'" said Johnson, adopting the military acronym for multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle, a ballistic missile that carries multiple warheads. "So what that means is, when Republicans vote for the rule, they'll be voting not just for the NDAA and everything else in there, but they'll be voting to merge onto that the SAVE America Act we passed back in February."

'WHATEVER IT TAKES.'

Johnson noted further that "if any Republicans choose to vote against the rule, they will be voting against that outcome. So we think this is another good way to show the resolve of the House."

House Republicans' resolve was tested and proven on Tuesday in a successful 215-211 vote in favor of a special rules resolution that included language that would attach the SAVE America Act (S.1383) to the end of the NDAA once it passes the House.

Florida Rep. Randy Fine was the lone Republican who voted against the rule.

Ahead of the vote, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) — who previously opposed the rule — noted on X, "We will try the MIRV process on the condition that Speaker Johnson attaches the SAVE America Act to all the appropriation bills and all must-pass bills here in the House and ensures it is sent to the Senate as one bill. If John Thune strips it out in the Senate that will be on him and the entire country should be watching what he does."

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Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

Luna said after the vote, "The House is doing its job, now it's the Senate's turn. All eyes on John Thune. If SAVE America fails all of America will know who to blame."

While Luna preemptively assigned the burden of the act's success to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), Democrats appear dead-set on blocking the linked NDAA, claiming their opposition has something to do with the protracted Iran conflict.

Although he too initially opposed the rule, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) suggested after its passage on Tuesday that it was worthwhile.

"That’s what we need," said Burchett, reported The Hill. "We need to just keep pounding the Senate and forcing them to take the right stand."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) was among those enthusiastic over this turn of events, stating, "THANK YOU to House Republicans for delivering on their promises to the American people and setting a good example for us in the Senate."

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) emphasized after the vote that with the midterm elections just a few months away, "we must try EVERYTHING we can to get the SAVE America Act passed. WHATEVER IT TAKES."

In addition to tethering the SAVE America Act to the 2027 NDAA, the rule advances other legislation, including a measure that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide and the State Department appropriations bill.

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How the United States can take the lead in autonomous warfare



The debate over autonomous weapons has started from the wrong premise.

Critics ask whether the United States should permit machines to kill. Advocates frame the question as whether we can afford to fall behind adversaries who will deploy such systems regardless. Both sides treat autonomous lethality as a novel moral category that demands a novel governing framework.

The United States will field autonomous systems regardless of whether the public debate reaches a satisfying resolution.

The U.S. military already possesses such a framework, however. It has been used for decades, it scales naturally to autonomous systems, and the public debate would improve considerably if both sides understood these realities.

The military governs the use of force through weapons control statuses, a graduated system that every air defense operator and ground commander knows by three commands. “Weapons hold” authorizes engagement only in self-defense or under specific order. “Weapons tight” authorizes engagement only against targets positively identified as hostile. “Weapons free” authorizes engagement against any target not positively identified as friendly.

A commander sets the status based on mission, threat, and environment, as units within his command may operate under different statuses depending on the situation. The framework already calibrates lethal authority to circumstance. It does not require a soldier to seek individual approval for every trigger pull, because the controlling judgment comes from the posture the commander has set rather than in each discrete engagement.

This structure maps directly onto the problem of autonomous weapons.

The objection that a machine cannot exercise the contextual judgment that distinguishes a combatant from a civilian, a threat from a bystander, has force only in environments where discrimination is genuinely difficult — precisely the condition the weapons control framework already addresses.

The Taiwan Strait and downtown Tehran are not the same operating environment, and no serious framework should govern them in the same way.

Consider the contrast. An autonomous system operating in the Taiwan Strait is tasked with engaging naval vessels in a declared conflict zone where civilian traffic is minimal. Every surface combatant of a certain signature is presumptively hostile and faces a discrimination problem that is nearly trivial. The environment is uncluttered, the targets are large and militarily unambiguous, and the consequences of restraint include the loss of American ships and sailors to adversary missiles that outpace any human operator’s reaction time.

A weapons-free or weapons-tight posture for autonomous engagement in that environment is defensible on the same grounds that justify those postures for human-operated air defense.

The same autonomous system operating in a dense urban environment such as downtown Tehran, where combatants and civilians occupy the same streets, should operate under weapons hold, which requires a human to authorize each engagement. The environment dictates the posture, and the framework already exists to make that determination.

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ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

The Pentagon has, in fact, started to incorporate this framework into existing policy. Directive 3000.09, updated in January 2023, requires that autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force. It also requires that the design of such systems confine each engagement to a time frame and geographic area consistent with commander and operator intentions.

The directive presupposes that the appropriate level of human control varies with the system and mission rather than holding constant across all cases.

What the directive does not yet do, and what the public debate has not yet grasped, is connect that variation to the weapons control vocabulary the force already uses, which would render the entire question legible to commanders, policymakers, and the public in terms the military has been employing for generations.

Adopting this approach requires trusting the military to set the posture, which is the crux of the matter for a public institution. The objection that the U.S. cannot trust commanders to calibrate autonomous lethal force responsibly proves too much.

We already trust those same commanders to calibrate human lethal force through an identical framework — one that, when commanders adopt the wrong posture, produces civilian casualties.

An autonomous system governed by the same logic inherits the same accountability structure, because the commander who sets a weapons-free posture for an autonomous system owns the consequences exactly as the commander who sets it for a battery of human-operated interceptors.

A public institution governing an autonomous force must establish this policy explicitly rather than allow it to emerge on a case-by-case basis from procurement decisions and after-action reviews.

The military should state as a matter of doctrine that autonomous weapon systems operate under weapons control statuses set by the responsible commander; that the status a commander may set for a given system depends on the discrimination difficulty of its operating environment; and that the most permissive postures remain available only in environments where the discrimination problem is genuinely simple.

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Tasha Art/Getty Images

This codification would accomplish two things that the current ambiguous debate does not. First, it would give commanders a clear and familiar vocabulary for governing systems that would otherwise arrive without doctrinal handholds. Second, it would give the public a transparent standard by which to hold the institution accountable, because a weapons control status is a decision with a name and an owner rather than a diffuse property of an algorithm that no one can identify.

The alternative is not a world without autonomous weapons. Adversaries are building them, the technology is proliferating, and the United States will field autonomous systems regardless of whether the public debate reaches a satisfying resolution.

The alternative to adopting a clear framework is fielding these systems under an ambiguous one, in which the absence of explicit doctrine forces operators and engineers to improvise the hardest decisions in the moment rather than letting commanders govern them in advance within a system the nation has already validated across decades of use.

The military knows how to use lethal force. The framework is sound, familiar, and accountable. The task now is to apply it deliberately to new autonomous systems rather than assume that such systems require the country to invent its ethics of force from scratch.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at the American Mind.

UFO disclosure is a test of whether citizens still own reality



This week, as critics lined up to call Steven Spielberg’s June 12 film “Disclosure Day” the best thing he has made in 20 years, Glenn Beck made a point on his program that matters more than the movie.

The real story, Beck argued, is not whether Spielberg is running a quiet psychological operation for the Pentagon. The real story is that we have entered what Beck calls “the death of free will” — an age in which the device in your pocket studies what frightens you, flatters you, and keeps you watching, then feeds each of us a private version of reality until no two Americans can agree on what is true.

A faction that insists on deciding how much reality you can handle and an algorithm that quietly decides which reality you will see are two versions of the same problem.

He is right. I would push the point one step further.

That is precisely why the fight over UFO disclosure matters more than it appears.

I am an attorney by training and a California public school science teacher of 19 years. I have published 20 books, all on governmental and corporate corruption, and none of them touched anything I would have called fringe. Two and a half years ago, I co-wrote “Catastrophic Disclosure: The Deep State, Aliens, and the Truth” with documentary filmmaker Michael Mazzola.

I came to the subject as a skeptic. What convinced me something serious was being hidden was not a sighting or a leaked photograph. It was a congressional hearing.

On July 26, 2023, three credentialed witnesses — Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch and Navy pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor — testified before the House Oversight Committee. Anyone who has covered Capitol Hill knows witnesses are vetted exhaustively before they testify under oath.

Grusch described an active military program of UFO crash recovery, reverse engineering, and the retrieval of “biologic” remains. He said he was denied access when he asked for it. Either the witnesses were lying, or the government was. As a lawyer, my instinct was to look for what we call best evidence: the earliest accounts, made before anyone had reason to shade the truth.

That brings me to the documents.

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On May 8, the Pentagon began releasing what it calls “never-before-seen” files on unidentified anomalous phenomena under a new program called PURSUE. The first tranche, roughly 162 documents, includes Apollo-era astronaut sightings, decades-old military records, and pilot encounter reports over the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. More tranches are promised on a rolling basis. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called it “the first in what will be an ongoing joint declassification and release effort.”

One document, dated December 19, 1947, is a letter from H.M. McCoy, the Air Force chief of intelligence, transmitting reports on what were then called “flying discs.” McCoy wrote that continued reports from qualified observers still made the matter one of concern.

A second document — a September 23, 1947, assessment by Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining of the Air Materiel Command — is blunter. Twining concluded that “the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” He described disc-shaped objects roughly the size of manned aircraft, with metallic surfaces, maneuvering in ways that suggested intelligent control at estimated speeds above 300 knots.

That was the Air Force’s own view in 1947. In 2026, our best and brightest still cannot give the public a credible answer. We have walked on the moon. We have edited human DNA. Yet, we still cannot explain what military pilots record on infrared cameras over the Persian Gulf.

Credit where it is due. The May 8 release would not have happened without the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), and the persistence of Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.). President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deserve credit for the directive that made it possible. This is real progress and the kind of transparency that should not be a partisan question.

But it is a first step, not a final one.

When I started the book, my co-author described a quiet war inside the national security state between two factions. One wanted “controlled” disclosure, a careful release at a pace the public could absorb. The other wanted “full” disclosure, the entire record at once. The first faction feared the second would trigger what it privately called catastrophic disclosure — a revelation severe enough to disrupt the basic institutions of public life.

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Moor Studio/Getty Images

What that faction fears the public will learn, I do not know. I will not pretend I do.

Here is where Beck’s warning and my book meet. A faction that insists on deciding how much reality you can handle and an algorithm that quietly decides which reality you will see are two versions of the same problem. Both take away the same thing: the right to look at the evidence and judge it for yourself.

Beck worries that the machine will hand each of us a custom world and convince us we discovered it on our own. The defense against that is not a better algorithm. It is a shared, documented, public record — primary sources and sworn testimony any citizen can read and weigh.

That is exactly what disclosure produces. It is also exactly what the “controlled” faction wants to ration.

In an age when truth is splintered into a million private feeds, a common set of facts is not a small thing. It may be the only thing.

On June 12, Spielberg releases “Disclosure Day.” He has spent his career telling stories about contact, from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” He is a serious filmmaker with serious sources. The question is whether the disclosure he puts on screen looks like what the government released May 8 — or like something larger it is still holding back.

I hope it is the larger one.

Beck asks what is real. In a free country, the answer starts with the documents.

The American public can handle them. We have earned them.

'Glowing orbs' disclosed in military UFO docs — 10 feet in front of an intelligence official



Newly released Department of War documents shed light on possible aerial capabilities of UFOs.

On Friday morning, the Pentagon announced a document dump of more Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena files, revealing the findings of a current U.S. intelligence official.

'The object then split into two and changed direction.'

The official said that in 2025, he was part of a team sent to investigate unusual noises and sightings of "orb-like" objects near a sensitive U.S. military facility.

"Our mission was to investigate loud thuds heard in the mountains on the test range, which coincided with ... sightings reported over the previous several nights," the government official wrote.

While flying at low altitude in a helicopter, the intelligence officer discovered "a large cave entrance with no visible end in sight," but saw no safe landing spot.

Realizing they were low on fuel, the pilots took him to a prearranged rendezvous point and dropped off one unknown official before heading to a tanker for refueling. Before long, their Joint Operations Center had detected hits on radar, in the same area sightings were made on previous nights.

Using infrared goggles, ground teams soon reported seeing a UAP and described it as "super hot," low to the ground, and moving at high speed.

"The object then split into two and changed direction," the officer said of the ground team's description, but this wouldn't be the only time the unidentified object seemingly performed the unbelievable maneuver.

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Luis Gutierrez/Norte Photo/Getty Images

The officer and the two pilots soon arrived and scanned the area with night-vision goggles, infrared, and the naked eye. The ground team then informed them that the foreign object had risen from the ground and moved within 10 feet of the helicopter before dropping below it and speeding off.

"The pilots observed it through NVGs and saw it split into two as a smaller object emerged before it accelerated out of sight," the officer recalled.

The helicopter allegedly pursued the object, but was unable to match its speed. The officer was later told that several fighter jets in the area were asked to help identify the UAP.

The "close UAP encounters" allegedly lasted over an hour and took place when the helicopter was asked to search a nearby mountain.

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Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

The report's summary said the incident occurred sometime in 2025 and referred to the official encountering unidentified "glowing orbs" both at close range and at a distance.

It further described the object as accelerating away in two different directions. Numerous "higher-altitude" orbs were described as the objects that came close to the helicopter.

Photos are featured along with the report, including ones that allegedly show the object after splitting in two. However, the bulk of the photos are dated as being captured in 1999.

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US calls Canada’s bluff on defense spending; 'pauses' 86-year-old alliance



The Pentagon appears to be sending Ottawa a message: Rhetoric is no substitute for military capability.

The Department of Defense announced Monday it was “pausing” the 86-year-old Permanent Joint Board on Defense between the United States and Canada, according to Undersecretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby. The move comes amid mounting frustration in Washington over Canada’s chronic defense underinvestment — and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s increasingly confrontational rhetoric toward President Donald Trump.

'We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Real powers must sustain our shared defense and security responsibilities.'

Established in 1940 by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, the board became one of the earliest pillars of continental defense cooperation. Coming as Nazi Germany tightened its grip on Europe and fears grew over Atlantic security, the agreement reflected Roosevelt’s recognition that American and Canadian security could no longer be treated separately.

That alliance eventually evolved into NORAD and decades of deep military integration between the two countries.

All talk

Now Washington appears to be signaling that the relationship cannot continue on autopilot.

“We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” Colby wrote on X. “Real powers must sustain our rhetoric with shared defense and security responsibilities.”

Colby argued that while a militarily capable Canada benefits the United States, Ottawa has repeatedly failed to meet its defense commitments in a credible way.

The timing is awkward for Carney, whose government has loudly projected Canadian independence from Washington while remaining vague about how it intends to rebuild the country’s depleted armed forces.

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Jet blues

Although Ottawa recently claimed the government had finally reached NATO’s benchmark of spending 2% of GDP on defense, critics have questioned how the government arrived at that number. Media reports have indicated that the Liberals counted items such as landscaping at military bases and civilian airport infrastructure upgrades as defense expenditures.

More tellingly, Carney’s April 28 Spring Economic Statement reportedly contained little detail on major procurement priorities.

That uncertainty now extends to Canada’s planned purchase of 88 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. Despite years of delays and political debate, the Carney government is still reviewing the order, with Defense Minister David McGuinty recently confirming that alternatives remain under consideration.

One possibility floated by Ottawa is a mixed fleet pairing the American-made F-35 with Sweden’s Saab Gripen fighter. But U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has repeatedly warned that Canada’s role in NORAD could be jeopardized if Ottawa fails to follow through on the full F-35 purchase.

Buy or beware

The concern is not merely political but operational. Every branch of the U.S. military that flies fighter aircraft is transitioning to the F-35 platform, which is also used by several of Canada’s closest defense partners, including the British Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force. Hoekstra has argued that the Gripen would create interoperability problems inside a continental defense structure increasingly built around the F-35 ecosystem.

For Washington, the frustration is becoming increasingly obvious: Canada wants the diplomatic stature and moral authority of a serious middle power while continuing to hesitate on the military commitments required to sustain that role.

The Pentagon’s decision to pause the defense board may ultimately prove symbolic. But symbols matter in alliances — especially when they come from Washington.

After decades of assuming continental defense cooperation was automatic, the United States now appears willing to publicly question whether Canada is prepared to carry its share of the burden.

The Pentagon is blowing a fortune fighting bargain-bin drones



For the past two years, one image has circulated among defense analysts: a U.S. Navy destroyer firing a Standard Missile-2, which costs about $2.1 million, to intercept a Houthi drone that likely cost $2,000.

Nobody in that chain made a bad decision. The ship had to be defended. But the Navy has now fired more than 200 such missiles in the Red Sea since late 2023 at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Project that math onto future conflicts — Taiwan, the Baltics, the Persian Gulf — and the picture gets alarming fast.

Sophistication matters. Volume matters more. Flexibility may matter most of all.

The standard answer is to demand better technology: lasers, interceptor drones, smarter jamming. But that misses what Ukraine has shown over three years of the largest sustained drone war in history. Much of the technology needed to defeat cheap drones at reasonable cost already exists. What America lacks is the doctrine, procurement flexibility, and industrial base to field it at scale.

What defenders need is simpler: distributed sensors, disciplined targeting, and layered defenses that match the cheapest effective response to each threat.

Ukraine now produces about 1,500 interceptor drones per day. They cost $1,200 and $4,700 apiece, a fraction of the $29,100 to $46,520 Shahed drones they destroy. One in three Russian aerial threats over Ukraine is now brought down by an interceptor drone rather than a missile. Ukraine’s overall interception rate sits around 80%, achieved not through Patriot batteries alone but through layers of cheap, rapidly iterated hardware built by 450 domestic manufacturers.

Ukraine’s advantage is not just volume. It is decentralization. Units, volunteers, and defense-tech firms operate in a flexible ecosystem that lets them adapt systems to terrain, weather, and enemy tactics as conditions change.

The American model moves the other way: centralized requirements, standardized programs, and long acquisition cycles. That system can produce extraordinary weapons. It cannot adapt when the battlefield changes faster than the program office. The United States faces different constraints, especially at sea and across global commitments, but the underlying economics do not change.

As of 2022, the United States was producing roughly 500 to 600 Patriot missiles per year. That stock can be burned through in weeks during a high-intensity conflict. This is not a missile-design flaw. It is the result of three decades of underinvestment in manufacturing capacity and a procurement system optimized for sophistication over volume. America still buys platforms better than it buys kill chains — the linked system of sensors, decisions, and interceptors — and counter-drone defense demands the reverse.

Meanwhile, Russia, working from Iranian Shahed blueprints, scaled launches to more than 44,000 in the first 10 months of 2025, four times the previous year’s rate. The United States is now in an industrial competition and, on current trajectory, losing it on volume.

RELATED: The combination that can renew America’s defense industry

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The tactical lessons from Ukraine are hardly mysterious. Detect early, match the weapon to the threat, and keep defenses mobile. Ukraine’s mobile fire groups — pickup trucks with machine guns and thermal imagers — proved effective enough that Russia rushed to copy them, with limited success. Israel’s Iron Beam laser intercepts threats at roughly $2 to $5 per shot. These systems work.

The problem is that “works in Ukraine” and “enters U.S. inventory at scale” are separated by an acquisition process that takes years, prizes exquisite performance over adequate volume, and was never designed for six-week innovation cycles.

The 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh offers another warning. Armenia’s air defenses collapsed not because drones are invincible, but because Armenia lacked modern, layered defenses. Institutional neglect, not technological inevitability, proved decisive.

None of this means expensive interceptors are obsolete. Advanced threats still require advanced interceptors. And as CSIS has noted, a $2 million missile protecting a $2 billion ship and its crew is rational. The point is not to abandon high-end systems. It is to stop treating them as the first and only answer to every aerial threat and to build the lower tiers of the defense stack with the same urgency we bring to the top.

That means procurement reform that many defense insiders regard as somewhere between very hard and politically impossible. It means accepting lower unit performance in exchange for higher production volume, a trade the Pentagon’s acquisition culture instinctively resists. It means pressuring major defense contractors to share production with smaller, faster manufacturers.

Sophistication matters. Volume matters more. Flexibility may matter most of all.

Ukraine learned that lesson under bombardment, because it had no choice. The United States still has the luxury of learning it in advance.

The danger is that luxury breeds delay.

Pentagon UFO investigator claims UAPs target nuclear sites — and some officials believed they were demons



As the release of the UFO files to the public has finally begun, Pentagon UAP investigator Luis Elizondo recalls his own experiences with recovered materials, secret Pentagon operations, and the terrifying connection between UAP sightings and America’s nuclear technology.

“I actually gave a briefing to a senior member of the Department of Defense in 2017, several briefings, about the material that I’ve personally held in my hand,” Elizondo says, noting that the material found at the time “did not exist” with humans.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is shocked, pointing out that there’s a theme with the sightings.

“Nuclear test sites or nuclear sites, and water, why?” Glenn asks Elizondo.


“It’s not just nuclear weapons. It’s nuclear propulsion, nuclear technology. We’ve seen them over our national laboratory, Savannah River facility. There’s some reports that came out,” Elizondo says, explaining that there seems to be a correlation between UAPs, water, and nuclear technology.

“That’s why my colleagues and I had put forth a plan called Interloper to try to get one of these things,” he says.

The idea behind Interloper, Elizondo explains, was to create a “honey trap” that would be an "irresistible target.”

“We would put this nuclear carrier strike group in a certain area, and then as a UAP showed up, we turned on the lights. We turned on all our sensor data to start collecting information, telemetry and other stuff on these signatures, on these UAP,” he tells Glenn.

However, it was “killed by somebody at a very senior level.”

“There’s some speculation why that occurred. A lot of folks believe it's because we were getting too close to another UAP effort, long-running UAP effort that the U.S. government had going on, and it was put on ice for a little while and they were getting concerned that maybe our group was getting too close to their group,” he explains.

There’s also a group Elizondo calls “Collins Elite,” who are “more radical religious individuals in the government.”

“They had a moral issue with us pursuing this topic. They believe that it contradicted their theological belief system, that these UAP were in fact demons,” Elizondo explains.

“If you studied UAP, then you were going against the word of God,” he adds.

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