Attack by Black Sea Vessel Halt Ukrainian Corridor and Raise Trade Risks
Published: July, 29 2026
Between July 20 and 27, 2026, increasing attacks on merchant vessels in the Black Sea caused shipping to be suspended on Ukraine’s maritime corridor and disrupted tanker operations around Russia’s Novorossiysk port. Ukrainian and international officials reported rising risks to crews and cargoes that led to calls for UN Security Council action and scrutiny of regional maritime security and trade flows.
Shipping Suspended on Ukraine’s Black Sea Maritime Corridor
Ukrainian officials recently reported that shipping on Ukraine’s dedicated maritime corridor in the Black Sea has been suspended, with no vessel traffic recorded for the first time since 2023. This came about following recent attacks against commercial vessels and seafarers in the area; ship operators therefore decided to assess voyage risk more thoroughly and temporarily cease transits along this corridor. Ukrainian authorities stated that all ports remained operational while this decision by individual companies or operators reflect an heightened threat environment.
This incident coincides with Ukraine’s peak agricultural harvest season when outbound grain shipments usually increase dramatically. Ukrainian officials stated that on affected days no ships passed through the Black Sea corridor, underscoring how security incidents directly impacted export flows. Charterers and commodity traders who depend on predictable access to Ukrainian ports for grain cargoes, as well as route planners and insurers operating voyages in the northwestern Black Sea region, expressed serious concern over this disruption to operations and made additional assessments more complex for journeys in that part of the sea.
Market participants now face increased uncertainty regarding near term scheduling and utilization of the corridor. Its suspension comes amid evolving risk guidance in the region, such as existing advisories on military activity, mines and drone operations. Shipowners and charterers are monitoring official updates, security advisories and insurance conditions closely as they assess whether to resume voyages to Ukrainian Black Sea ports.
Tanker catches fire off Romania after reported drone strike, 8 crew missing
Romanian authorities launch search and rescue operation after reported explosions aboard San Marino-flagged vessel; Romania, Bulgaria to discuss possible NATO consultations
Aysu Bicer
15 October 2026•Update: 15 October 2026
ArchiveLONDON
Eight of the 12 crew members aboard a San Marino-flagged tanker are missing after the vessel caught fire following reported explosions off Romania’s Black Sea coast, Romanian naval authorities said Thursday.
The Wine Trader reported several explosions and a fire at around 7 am local time (0500GMT) while sailing from Tunisia to Romania, according to information provided by the authorities.
The tanker was located 13 nautical miles (24 kilometers) east of the mouth of the River Danube near Sulina when the incident occurred.
A search and rescue operation is underway for the missing crew members, with two Black Hawk helicopters and two rescue boats deployed, Romanian authorities said.
The immediate priority is to reach the four crew members confirmed to be alive, while ensuring the safety of rescue teams amid reports of very high waves in the area.
The Romanian Interior Ministry released video footage showing a helicopter hovering above the vessel.
The incident came amid a series of reported drone attacks on vessels in the western Black Sea region.
On Tuesday, two merchant ships were struck by drones farther south along the coast of Bulgaria, Romania’s neighbor.
One of the vessels sank, leaving 11 crew members missing. Bulgaria said it suspected Russia was behind the attack and summoned the Russian envoy.
Russia said two cargo ships carrying military cargo bound for Ukraine’s Odesa port had been hit during a sea crossing but did not identify the vessels.
Meanwhile, the presidents of Romania and Bulgaria are due to discuss Thursday whether to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty.
Mercenary group helping quell Haiti gangs, Erik Prince says
A pedestrian walks near the Bank of the Republic of Haiti, right, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 21, 2019.Associated Press / Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery, file
Prince, a Hillsdale College graduate and the founder of mercenary security business Vectus Global, said Tuesday that some of his employees were successfully fighting gangs in Haiti. They were supporting a task force of Haitian national police, he said. The former U.S. Navy SEAL shared a video clip from CNN depicting a gang leader asking Prince’s mercenaries to cease operations. In addition to boots-on-the-ground support, Prince’s Vectus Air Defense Systems is known to carry out drone strikes.
Haiti has been mostly controlled by gangs since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The police task force and its partners, including Prince’s group, have focused on fighting gangs in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Violence has continued across the country—for instance, a farming community’s church was burned in August, and dozens were reported dead. A United Nations-backed, multinational gang suppression force has deployed to Haiti and reported some success. But after months of operations, the UN said Sept. 29 that the force hadn’t yet reached its target size of 5,500 troops.
Prince said he recently saw evidence of better security conditions on a trip to Port-au-Prince. Combined security forces halted gangs’ advance in the capital and made progress in pushing them back, he added. Some markets reopened, children were once again walking to school in uniform, and police were patrolling the streets, he claimed.
However, the latest UN report on violence in Haiti noted that security forces sometimes killed bystanders while targeting gangs, especially during operations using explosive drones. At least 95 people not associated with gangs were killed from April to June, and the drones killed or hurt six children, according to the UN report. The report also said that while security forces curbed gang activity in some areas of the capital, violence worsened in other neighborhoods as rival gangs clashed.
Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read a feature profile of Erik Prince and his evangelical Christian roots in the Midwest.
After multiple sources previously told the Guardian that Erik Prince – Maga ally and founder of the now defunct mercenary company Blackwater – was looking to work with Ukraine’s invaluable drone sector, recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents confirm he now is.
Swarmer, which bills itself as a battle-tested Ukrainian startup specializing in autonomous drone software, filed for an initial public offering and has recruited Prince to help sell the company as non-executive chair.
“Swarmer is a software-first defense technology company focused on collaborative autonomy and intelligent swarming, originating from the cauldron of modern combat in Ukraine,” said Prince in a letter to prospective stockholders in the filing, released earlier this month.
“Since April 2024, Swarmer’s platform has been deployed in Ukraine with more than 100,000 real-world missions in active combat environments, informing the software and machine-learning models that feed into it.”
Defense industry hawks have eyed the battlefield intelligence the Ukrainian military has accrued in over four years of combat with Russia. The war has caused close to 2m casualties, but global military elites, like Prince, are also seeing glimpses of what a future war between world powers might look like and what products the US or its geopolitical rival China will need to buy.
On its website, Swarmer lauds endorsements from the newly installed Ukrainian defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who is aggressively lobbying the US and other Nato allies to buy into his country’s weapons industry. Swarmer products, powered by artificial intelligence, are on the cutting edge of the future of war, with software enabling pilots to control drone swarms.
Swarmer mentions the potential profits in drone warfare in the same filing, noting to investors that “defense forces, including the US Department of Defense [and] Nato allies”, see “autonomous drone operations” as “requiring immediate investment”.
In a July announcement on the grounds of the Pentagon, the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, declared that the US was “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance” in a memorandum calling for the mass production, purchase and adoption of all unmanned vehicle platforms.
“Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation, accounting for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine,” he said.
“Erik is trying to network with companies here, for Congo,” said an executive at a multinational defense contractor with business in Ukraine. “He poached some operators who served here too.”
Through a spokesperson, Prince declined to comment on his work in Ukraine and about recruiting drone operators from there to serve in the DRC. Swarmer did not respond to a request for comment regarding its relationship with Prince.
In the fall, Swarmer, which advertises several “mission templates” for drones ranging from surveillance to something it calls a “Killbox”, secured millions in investment.
Prince and a legion of Silicon Valley executives, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have descended on Kyiv in recent years looking to score government contracts and access to both the software powering combat drones and the Ukrainian operators pioneering their flight.
But even as a frontman, Prince comes to Swarmer as a highly controversial figure who is also a known associate of Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Steve Bannon. Blackwater – Prince’s former company that made millions in contracts with the Pentagon and the CIA – has become synonymous with the corruption and failures of the war in Iraq. A 2007 massacre in Baghdad at the hands of some of Prince’s mercenaries led to prison sentences, congressional inquiries and the company changing its name.
Prince eventually resigned as the CEO in 2009, but hung around the defense contracting world and pursued ventures in China, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, South Sudan and Ukraine, where in 2020 he pitched Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a multibillion-dollar private army to help settle what was a frozen war in the eastern Donbas region.
In September, multiple sources described to the Guardian how Prince was making several trips to Kyiv, courting Ukrainian drone makers who might be eager to sell him into their business – Swarmer fitting the profile of the type of company with which he was looking to do business.
“I guess he finally found the company to invest in, in Ukraine,” said a former American special forces soldier with experience in Ukraine and knowledge of the defense companies operating there.
Swarmer has featured in western media since its founding in 2023, along with several other Ukrainian tech companies emerging from the flurry of Pentagon and Nato weapons transfers to Ukraine and the rush to continue resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion by any means necessary.
Mostly outgunned against the Kremlin’s vast arsenal and coffers, Ukraine has turned to drones and homegrown solutions as asymmetric equalizers. Recent remarks by Zelenskyy puts Swarmer among hundreds of other Ukrainian drone companies that are now active in the country.
“As of today, we have 450 companies producing drones, 40 to 50 of which are top-tier,” said Zelenskyy in a recent speech. “Everyone wants to invest, so 2026 will be a year of investment in our technologies, primarily in drones.”
Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning
Since 2011, the UAE has regularly resorted to using mercenaries to wage its wars in Libya and Yemen. Its small population of 2.7 million leaves it unable to recruit enough troops. It is also risk averse in deploying them abroad where casualties for an unsupported cause are unacceptable to the population. Hence, the oil-rich state started hiring contract soldiers from abroad to fight for it in Yemen against the Houthi rebels.
This leads to a rather strange situation. Colombians hired by an Abu Dhabi based company employed by the UAE are fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The involvement of Erik Prince, the controversial ex-founder of Blackwater, should hardly come as a surprise at this point. Especially given his role as a mercenary captain for the UAE. These mercenaries have manifested in multiple different organisations and groups with their own operating procedures/character. (Source)
The most notable are as follows:
Reflex Response Security Consultants (Headed by Erik Prince and filled with ex-Colombian special forces)
Spear Operations Group (Delaware-based company led by a Hungarian-Israeli Abraham Golon, specialised in targeted assassinations)
Black Shield Security (Involved in a forced conscription scandal tricking Sudanese migrants with misleading jobs)
Oct. 16 (UPI) — China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, warned Israeli President Isaac Herzog that his country must stop its expansion of settlements in the West Bank by force, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Friday.
The state-run Xinhua news agency said Wang made the comments Thursday during a meeting with Herzog on the sidelines of a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, telling Herzog that Israel must “halt and reverse the forced establishment” of settlements in the West Bank and that the “Palestinian question” was the most egregious wrong of the 21st century.
Wang said promoting peace and reconciliation in the region was the “cornerstone of China’s Middle East policy” and that “China has consistently maintained that the Palestinian question is the greatest historical injustice of this century and that the two-state solution is the right way to resolve the question.”
However, Wang said that preventing an unfolding “catastrophe” from spreading by reopening full humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip was the immediate priority, stressing that Beijing was ready and willing to work with the international community to push all sides to resume negotiations and consultation.
UNICEF in the State of Palestine Humanitarian Situation Update – The West Bank
Reporting Period 30 April 2026
Report
Highlights
Strain on essential services for children: Across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, more than 800,000 people require health and WASH assistance – roughly one in four residents – particularly in Area C and the Jordan Valley, where displacement, movement restrictions and settler violence continue to severely constrain access to safe water and sanitation. Over 150,000 children face barriers to safe and continuous education due to insecurity, movement restrictions and damage to infrastructure. Access constraints and economic impediments are weakening already fragile systems which children rely on for survival and development.
Deepening psychosocial and child protection needs: Continuous exposure to militarised operations, other conflict-related violence including settler violence, displacement and intimidation is driving high levels of psychological distress among children, with partners reporting extreme fear, sleep disturbances, behaviour changes and other symptoms associated with anxiety and forms of traumatic stress. Needs for child protection and mental health and psychosocial support significantly exceed available services, especially in high-risk areas of the West Bank.
Displacement, movement restrictions, and demolition-driven instability: So far in 2026, two-thirds of displacement incidents linked to settler attacks and access restrictions occurred in the Jordan Valley, disproportionately affecting herding and rural communities. Approximately 12,000 children from three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm governorates remain displaced for more than a year with no concrete prospect for return, while hundreds of homes in the camps have been demolished. Children across the West Bank face daily movement restrictions and coercive measures that disrupt their access to services, particularly Education. More than 220 households are at risk of displacement from pending eviction and demolition orders in Silwan neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. Demolitions, evictions and repeated settler attacks continue to uproot children from their homes, schools and services, deepening instability and distress.
Grave violations, detention, and other conflict-related violence impacting children, primarily boys: Between 1 January and 30 April 2026, 13 Palestinian children (13 boys) were killed and over 139 injured (126 boys, 13 girls) in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, with over one-third of injuries due to live ammunition during militarised operations and settler-related violence. Nearly 350 children from the West Bank are held in military detention, subject to violence, ill-treatment and harsh detention conditions; only 7 per cent have been convicted of any crime and half (49 per cent) are held under administrative detention orders, without charges or any trial. Since October 2023, violence against children has reached levels unseen in decades, marked by unprecedented killings, injuries, and arbitrary detention.
Fifty-eight stories of black glass on Fifth Avenue – though Trump told everyone it was 68. He skipped floor numbers to make the building seem taller than it actually was.[2] Right from the start, shell companies based in places like Panama, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands bought 43 condos there – all cash.[3] And nobody had to say whose money it was.
Here’s how it worked: Trump Tower was one of the only buildings in the city that would let you buy a condo through a shell company and pay entirely in cash.[3][6] No name on the deed. No proof of income. No questions about where the money came from. He’d built the perfect machine for making money disappear – and the people who needed that service found him fast.
On August 22, 1983 – months after the building opened – a shell company called “Lasa Trade and Finance” bought apartment 54-K in Trump Tower.[4] Public records show different prices depending on the source – one filing lists $446,875, another lists $1.65 million – but the buyer behind the shell company was the same: Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the dictator of Haiti.[4] Not former dictator. Current dictator. A man who was, at that very moment, looting his country’s treasury while his people starved.
Now, the Snopes fact-check on this sale adds an important qualifier: there’s no evidence Trump or his company took part in any money laundering scheme in this sale.[4] That’s how shell companies work – they hide the real buyer. But that’s also the point. Trump built a system where he didn’t have to know. He sold luxury condos to anonymous shell companies paying cash, and he never had to ask who was really writing the check. Whether he knew it was a dictator or not, he’d built the machine that made it possible.
Three years later, in February 1986, a popular uprising drove Duvalier out of Haiti.[5] When he fled, American officials said he held $200 million to $500 million in foreign bank accounts.[4] Haiti’s new government said some of it was already parked in Trump Tower. The Haitian people’s money, sitting in a Manhattan penthouse under a shell company name.
Then came the transaction that would set the pattern for the next four decades.
In 1984, a man named David Bogatin walked into Trump Tower and bought five luxury condos for somewhere between $4.9 million and $6 million, depending on who’s counting.[3][6] All cash, according to his partner Michael Franzese.[7] No mortgage. According to reporter Craig Unger, he “appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money.”[6] Trump reportedly attended the closing personally.[6]
And Franzese later said he was a silent partner in the deal – that Bogatin was “the front guy” buying them.[7] The partner – invisible. The source of the money – invisible. Millions of dollars in cash from a man with no visible way to earn it, and nothing in the record shows anyone in Trump’s organization asked a single question.
Here’s what Trump would have known if he’d bothered to look: Bogatin was a Russian emigre with deep ties to organized crime. He was partnered with Michael Franzese of the Colombo crime family in a massive gasoline tax scam – fuel run on paper through dummy companies that never paid the tax.[7] By Franzese’s own later testimony, it brought in as much as $9 million in cash a week – money that needed to be laundered.
Trump Tower condos were perfect for that. Buy with cash through a shell company, and dirty money becomes Manhattan real estate. Clean. Legitimate. Untraceable.
In 1987, New York prosecutors caught up with Bogatin. He pleaded guilty to charges related to the gasoline bootlegging scheme.[6] Then, instead of showing up for sentencing, he jumped bail and fled the country.[6] When the government seized his Trump Tower apartments, New York state prosecutors said he’d bought them “to launder money, to shelter and hide assets.”[6]
This was the mid-1980s, and something was shifting in New York’s criminal underworld. The Italian families that had dominated organized crime for decades were getting hit hard by federal RICO prosecutions. The Russians were moving in – not replacing the Italians, but filling the gaps they left. Real estate was the first place the money went. And Trump Tower, with its anonymous shell company purchases and no-questions-asked closings, was the front door.
But by then, the money had already done its work. Criminal cash had been transformed into Trump Tower equity. And Trump had facilitated every step of it.
The question the Bogatin deal answered was simple: would Trump ask where the money came from? Would he care? Would he demand to know?
No. He wouldn’t. He didn’t.
And that opened a door that would never close.
That same year – 1984 – a mob-connected gambling kingpin named Robert Hopkins showed up at a Trump Tower closing with a suitcase holding between $150,000 and $200,000 in cash.[8] Hopkins ran New York’s largest illegal gambling ring. The tax returns he gave the bank said he was a jeweler making more than $500,000 a year – but the state prosecutors who later convicted him found no evidence he had any job or reportable income. He counted the cash out on the table. A Trump limousine ferried the cash to a New Jersey bank that did business with his casino.[8] Deal closed.
This has every hallmark of money laundering. You take money that came from crime, feed it through a legitimate-looking real estate transaction, and it comes out looking clean. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has literally published advisories warning that all-cash purchases by shell companies are “an attractive avenue for criminals to launder illegal proceeds while masking their identities.”[3]
Trump didn’t just ignore these red flags. He built a business model around them.
A BuzzFeed News investigation later found that between 1980 and 2017, more than 1,300 Trump condos across his branded properties were purchased in all-cash transactions by shell companies.[3] That’s one-fifth of all Trump-branded condos ever sold. The total value: roughly $1.5 billion in transactions that hit Treasury Department red flags for money laundering.[3]Data from the BuzzFeed News investigation into shell company purchases across Trump properties
One thousand three hundred condos. $1.5 billion. One-fifth of every Trump-branded condo sold in the US.
These weren’t a few bad apples slipping through the cracks. This was the business. From the moment Trump Tower opened, anonymous buyers with unexplained cash were Trump’s bread and butter. Dictators. Mob bosses. Russian organized crime. Anyone with money they couldn’t explain and a need to make it disappear – Trump was open for business.
And nothing in the record shows he ever asked where it came from. The law didn’t make him.
The test was whether Donald Trump could be useful. Whether he would look the other way when dirty money showed up at his door. Whether he could be relied upon to take the cash, close the deal, and never ask questions.
He passed. Every time.
By the mid-1980s, everyone who mattered knew it. Russian organized crime knew it. The American mafia knew it. Foreign kleptocrats knew it. And the Soviet bloc’s spies – Czechoslovakia’s StB had been interested in Trump since 1977, as I showed in Essay 1 – knew it too.
Trump Tower wasn’t just a building anymore. It was a laundromat. You brought your dirty money, you left with a deed and property records that showed nothing but a shell company name. Trump got his cut. And nobody ever had to explain anything to anyone.
Which is exactly why, in January 1987, a Soviet ambassador named Yuri Dubinin would send Donald Trump a letter with an offer – one that, if former KGB officer Yuri Shvets is right, he’d been groomed to accept.
That’s the next essay.
Correction, September 27th, 2026: This essay first said David Bogatin bought his five condos in the names of shell companies – nothing shows that. It also said a Snopes fact-check found no evidence Trump knew Duvalier was the buyer – Snopes said there’s no evidence Trump or his company took part in any money laundering scheme in that sale. It said Bogatin fled two months after pleading guilty and that federal agents seized his condos and said he’d bought them to launder money – nothing shows the two-month timing, and it was New York state prosecutors who said that. It said Duvalier fled hours before a revolution with $500 million to $800 million – a popular uprising drove him out, and American officials said he held $200 million to $500 million in foreign bank accounts. It said the gas scheme moved fuel across state lines for millions a transaction – it ran fuel through dummy companies that never paid the tax. It said Robert Hopkins brought a briefcase with $200,000 in cash – it was a suitcase with $150,000 to $200,000. And it said the Soviet ambassador picked up the phone to make Trump an offer in 1987 – he sent a letter, in January 1987.
Update, September 27th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so – Craig Unger, Michael Franzese, Wayne Barrett, Haiti’s new government and former KGB officer Yuri Shvets – and they now give the range of prices reported for Bogatin’s condos, what the Treasury actually warned, that it was Czechoslovakia’s spies who took an interest in Trump in 1977, that the one-in-five figure counts Trump-branded condos in the US, and that nothing in the record shows anyone asked where the money came from, while the footnotes now point to the pages that back each line.
Musk-led war commission triggers alarms in Pentagon
Two of the Defense Department’s biggest contractors will help lead a project that could directly benefit them.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, from left, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attend the welcome ceremony for President Donald Trump by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026. | Maxim Shemetov/AP
Pentagon officials warn that Pete Hegseth’s plan for a pair of billionaire defense contractors to help steer the military’s future will produce conflicts of interest that threaten the long-term integrity of the department.
The Defense secretary’s effort, dubbed Project Meridian, asks SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey — along with former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich — to “map the trajectory of future warfare.” They are supposed to report back in four months.
The Pentagon revealed few details about the commission or the scope of its jurisdiction beyond the four-paragraph memo that authorizes it and an insistence the U.S. needs to “dominate” the next generation of warfare. It’s unclear whether the initiative would give the executives the vast sway Musk enjoyed last year as leader of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. But both Musk and Luckey head companies that have contracts with the Pentagon worth billions of dollars — and nine current and former officials said any preferential access could allow them to funnel even more business their way.
“This is entirely indicative of the decay and oligarchy that has taken over our government and, in many cases, directly through purchasing influence and power and authority, blatantly right in front of us,” said Wes Bryant, a retired Air Force master sergeant who until last year led the Pentagon’s civilian harm assessments. “They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.”Related Tags
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has handed Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey a direct seat at the table shaping how America fights its future wars, and the congressman representing the heart of Silicon Valley wants answers. Project Meridian, formally commissioned on September 30, gives the two tech executives — alongside former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — 120 days to study everything from subterranean warfare to cislunar space, with a public report and classified annex due by January 28, 2027.
The study’s stated mission is to examine how artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, and biotechnology should be woven into future U.S. military operations, according to the U.S. Department of War. Hegseth discussed the project in an address focused on developing and fielding future weapons. As Sam Liccardo noted in a social media post pointing to coverage of the announcement, Musk and Luckey are now positioned to help decide the military’s technology priorities — a role that has drawn scrutiny given both men’s deep financial stakes in defense contracting.
Musk’s SpaceX holds more than $6.4 billion in active Pentagon contracts, including a $4.16 billion satellite deal and a $2.29 billion communications contract, while Luckey’s Anduril Industries holds a Marine Corps counter-drone contract worth up to $642 million along with missile and autonomous aircraft awards, per the TechCrunch reporting cited in connection with the announcement. Critics argue that Project Meridian may align the two men’s business interests with their new official advisory roles, according to that same reporting on the initiative.
MITRE Brought In to Police Conflicts of Interest
To address those concerns, the Department of Defense assigned the MITRE Corporation — a federally funded research nonprofit that manages research and development centers for the federal government — to administer Project Meridian and conduct conflict-of-interest evaluations for outside advisers, according to WVIK. The arrangement includes conflict-of-interest reviews for outside advisers.
But scrutiny has also landed on Pentagon official Emil Michael, whom Hegseth directed to commission the study through MITRE. Michael, the Defense Department’s chief technology officer, earned up to $24 million in profit on January 9, 2026, from selling private stock in Musk’s xAI — after the Pentagon signed a December 22 agreement paving the way for xAI’s Grok chatbot to be deployed on GenAI.mil, according to The Guardian. Michael had originally disclosed holding between $500,000 and $1 million in xAI stock when he joined the administration in 2025, the outlet reported.
Michael also disclosed selling between $5 million and $25 million in Perplexity AI stock in June 2026, a firm from which he had previously accepted a personal loan of up to $500,000 before entering federal service, according to Decrypt. Michael served on Perplexity’s advisory board before stepping down upon joining the Department of Defense in May 2025, the same report notes.
…………
included ‘FORTRESS America,’ a plan for military base power grid independence, an expansion of officer commissioning pipelines at five universities, and a new Office of Religious Affairs, according to Army.mil’s account of the speech. The address was delivered to junior officers and enlisted personnel, underscoring how the Pentagon is framing the technology overhaul as part of a broader restructuring of the department.
Hoodline has previously reported on local fallout from Hegseth’s announcement, including an Atlanta council member’s push to ban police robot weapons following the Autonomous Warfare Command reveal, and on Liccardo’s separate legislative work defending a foreign graduate work program. Whether Project Meridian’s eventual recommendations reshape how the Pentagon buys technology remains to be seen
U.S. Army Sgt. Brandyn Brooks, a 15P aviation operations specialist with the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, Task Force CARDINAL, monitors mission systems at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, June 8, 2025. Brooks supports operational integration of Project MAVEN tools, enhancing real-time situational awareness for Army aviation assets. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brianna Badder. Source: DVIDS.
The Department of Defense is expanding its use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by formalizing Palantir Technologies’ Maven system as a long-term program, signaling a shift from experimental tools to operational infrastructure.
Project Maven began in 2017 as a Pentagon effort to use AI to help analysts process massive volumes of surveillance imagery and video, but it has since evolved into a broader military intelligence and targeting platform that fuses data from multiple sensors to identify objects, assess threats, and support operational decisions.
Now, the Pentagon is moving to integrate those capabilities more broadly across the force. While the geospatial intelligence portion of Maven was designated a program of record under the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in 2023, the Pentagon is now moving to expand that designation into a broader, department-wide program with wider adoption across the services.
Elevating Maven to a “program of record” places it within the military’s formal budgeting and acquisition system, ensuring continued funding and long-term deployment.
The company’s footprint inside the Pentagon has grown through a series of expanding contracts rather than a single award. In addition to Maven-related deals, the Army awarded Palantir an enterprise agreement in 2025 that could be worth up to $10 billion over a decade, aimed at consolidating data and software systems across the service.
Palantir’s work on Maven itself has also expanded through multiple awards, including a five-year, $480 million Army contract in 2024, a roughly $100 million follow-on expansion later that year, and a 2025 contract modification valued at up to $795 million for continued system support and software licensing.
The latest move does not replace those contracts. Instead, it builds on earlier efforts by expanding Maven from a narrower intelligence program into a broader, Pentagon-backed capability intended for long-term, department-wide use.
What the System Does and Why It Matters
Maven uses artificial intelligence to process imagery and sensor data collected from drones, satellites and other surveillance systems. The goal is to reduce the workload on human analysts and speed up decision-making.
In practice, that means the software can help analysts find objects faster, flag notable activity, and feed those detections into systems used for operational awareness.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency says Maven’s AI tools are integrated into military workflows to detect and identify objects in imagery and video, while helping analysts locate objects faster and spot abnormal or significant activity in near real time.
Palantir’s role is to provide the underlying data architecture that connects these systems. Its platforms allow different military units to share and analyze information across networks and use it to support planning and operations
Rethinking defense ties with US, Israel eyes shift from patronage to partnership
Story by Nava Freiberg
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Once thought irreversible, Israel’s rock-solid bond with the United States has become a matter of debate, with the future shape of ties between the allies hanging in the balance. At the center of those deliberations is Jerusalem’s defense partnership with its most powerful and beneficent friend, which faces the possibility of being pared back significantly.
So many people caught up in conflict around the world, Yemeni people do not get a chance to stay safe…..
Houthi strikes mark the end of Saudi Arabia’s Yemen ‘containment strategy’
The Houthis are better equipped for war than they were a decade ago, while Saudi Arabia now has more to lose from escalation
This handout image released by the Iran-backed Houthi forces on 7 September 2026 purportedly shows a ballistic missile strike on trucks carrying military equipment from Saudi Arabia to the al-Wadiah military camp in Yemen’s Hadhramaut province (Ansarullah Media Centre/AFP)
Published date: 14 October 2026 22:19 BST|Last update:1 day 11 hours ago
Saudi Arabia’s bid to “contain” the Houthis in Yemen while doubling down on economic growth at home is collapsing, posing one of the most serious tests for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since he rose to power, according to analysts and diplomats.
A decade ago, the crown prince led the kingdom into a war aimed at ousting the Houthis from power. The conflict turned into a quagmire for Saudi Arabia, sapping its resources and sparking widespread backlash due to its devastating bombing campaign. In the end, Saudi Arabia cut its losses and maintained an uneasy truce with the Houthis since 2022.
“This is the collapse of Saudi Arabia’s containment strategy,” Rob Geist Pinfold, an international security expert at King’s College London, told Middle East Eye.
“The way Saudi Arabia approached the Houthis in the last few years was not dissimilar to how Israel treated Hamas in Gaza before 7 October [2023]. The Saudis felt they had the Houthis where they needed them. They weren’t at the stage to reach a political solution, but they felt they had disincentivised them from escalating again.”
The conflict erupted again after Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa airport in July to prevent a plane carrying Houthi officials from landing. MEE reported that Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah military advisors were on board along with weapons systems.
‘The dogs were eating their bodies’: Thousands of Yemenis flee war across the sea
Refugees arriving in Djibouti say while they can reason with forces on the ground, there is no protection against fighter jets and bombs.
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After her break for safety, Ms Mohammad has spent recent days sharing a tent with three other families at a refugee camp outside Obock.
Their tents pitched on a baking plain outside the town are like ovens during the day and the refugees complain of a lack of water and amenities.
She told the Telegraph: “The Houthis came into the village and the air attacks started almost immediately.
“The Houthis were shooting at the plane from nearby our house and the planes were bombing them.”
Her husband, Arafat Ali Mohammad, said he had seen the aftermath of one air strike that hit a house in the village, killing several inhabitants.
“The dogs were eating their bodies,” he said.
Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition in support of the internationally-recognised government.
The Royal Saudi Air Force, which is equipped with F-15, Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoons jets, has played a major part in the war supporting Yemeni government ground forces.
The Houthis have accused the Saudis of conducting hundreds of air strikes in recent weeks, including 94 against areas under their control on Friday alone.
Refugees told the Telegraph the main reason for their flight was a fear of being hit by air strikes, but they also complained of abuses by the Houthis.
Sheikh Saeed Abdeelah, aged 69, arrived 21 days ago with his wife and four daughters.
“We haven’t got a home, we haven’t got good water, we haven’t got anything here,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
“After the Houthis came, the war planes came. The Houthis told us to leave. One said to me: ‘This land is mine now.’ If you speak up, they shoot you.”
“Djibouti is a very, very good country, they are generous, but we have nothing in this camp. No school, no hospital, nothing.”
Barahona said, describing scenes of migrants who arrive “with just a bottle of water and very little else.”
For those who are able to attempt a sea crossing, it remains a potentially deadly journey; 139 bodies were recovered and 84 people were still missing after an overloaded boat carrying more than 300 people sank in the Red Sea last week, Barahona said. Others die of dehydration attempting to cross the desert on foot.
Meanwhile, the failure of the short rainy season this year has left 25 percent of Obock’s host communities at crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity, he added, and UN agencies were working “as one” under the coordination of local officials to address the crisis.
The UN Refugee Agency is helping authorities register new arrivals, the International Organization for Migration is serving 1,500 hot meals twice a day and running a migrant center that arranges voluntary returns to Ethiopia, UNICEF is helping to shore up water systems, and the World Food Programme is distributing food.
Barahona praised Djibouti for its refugee laws, which he described as being among the most generous in the world, granting freedom of movement, the right to work formally, and access to healthcare and education. But he warned that the stability of the country, in a region surrounded by conflict, should not be taken for granted.
“I think it’s expecting too much of Djibouti, which is really doing its homework in the Horn of Africa, that Djibouti alone can handle all this movement of people without an impact on its own budget and its own development path,” he said.
“The Horn of Africa continues to need at least one country, one spot, that can remain peaceful and stable, as Djibouti has been so far.”
This stability, he said, “is not by miracle; it is the result of a lot of work and very wise decisions across the years,” including the enduring authority of traditional leaders who continue to settle disputes over land and cattle by consensus.
The country also hosts US and Chinese military bases just 12 kilometers apart, while maintaining good relations with each nation.
“Djibouti doesn’t have oil, doesn’t have gas, but it has a lot of wise decisions and a very strategic position,” Barahona said.
Climate change and climate-induced migration in the Horn of Africa could seriously exacerbate security risks in the region. The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reiterates the grim facts of climate change in Africa. The continent has contributed little (less than 4 percent) to total greenhouse gas emissions but has already suffered serious consequences, from biodiversity loss to reduced food production. In East Africa particularly, drought frequency has doubled. Yet, between 2010 and 2018, most Horn countries received less than the average amount of climate adaptation funding per capita for lower-income countries, despite ranking at the top of climate vulnerability indices. Not only is financing for adaptation measures insufficient, but climate research in the region is also under-resourced.
The Horn of Africa is extremely vulnerable to climate change, as it encompasses vast drylands, numerous pastoralist communities, multiple border disputes, unresolved trans-boundary water-rights issues, and porous land borders. The region also has a traumatic and politically contentious history with natural disaster, famine, and conflict, including the 1983–85 Ethiopian famine and the controversial 1992–93 humanitarian intervention in Somalia. In fact, the impetus for forming the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in 1986 was to address drought and desertification from a regional perspective, with peace and security issues added to the organization’s mandate in 1996 due to the obvious interconnection of those issues. The Horn’s history informs and sometimes politically distorts perceptions of current climate-related threats.
Ongoing conflicts in the region add complexity to any effort to envision future scenarios. The Horn is not just at risk for conflict and instability—conflict and instability are its current reality. In Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, multiple ongoing conflicts involve violent clashes between military and militia forces. The region already hosts nearly 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers and over 12 million internally displaced persons. The Horn is currently the site of one of the world’s worst food insecurity crises; in August of 2022 the number of highly food-insecure people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia reached twenty-two million, and some already face famine conditions. Although conflict and crisis prevention is at the heart of efforts to identify interconnected climate and migration risks, for many in the region, the present is already characterized by insecurity, and the future by uncertainty.
Can You Still Buy Sally Rooney Books in the UK? Titles Withdrawn Despite ‘Normal People’ Selling One Million Copies
Rooney’s publisher stops UK book supplies over her support for Palestine Action
ByRia Pathak Published 15 October 2026, 9:27 AM BST
Published in 2018, ‘Normal People’ was later adapted into a successful BBC television series starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. Image via Hulu/Element Pictures
Sally Rooney’s books are still available in UK bookshops, despite her publisher withdrawing new supplies over her support for Palestine Action. The move has reignited debate about the intersection of literature, politics and law in Britain.
On Wednesday, Faber, a leading independent publishing house, confirmed it would stop distributing the Irish novelist’s work in Britain in every format, with her agreement. The decision affects bestsellers, including Normal People, which has sold more than one million copies in the UK, but retailers can continue selling physical stock already on their shelves.
Availability of Rooney’s Books in the UK
Readers can still purchase existing copies of Normal People, Conversations with Friends, Beautiful World, Where Are You and Intermezzo while shops have them in stock. Waterstones confirmed that retailers are permitted to sell their remaining inventory, according to The Guardian. Second-hand bookshops and resellers may also have copies, although availability will vary.
The decision does not require booksellers to remove titles from display or return unsold copies. Once their remaining inventory is gone, they cannot replenish it through the publisher.
New orders through Faber have stopped. Digital editions have also started to be withdrawn from UK platforms, meaning readers seeking ebooks or audiobooks may find fewer options.
Faber clarified that the announcement applies only to the UK market. The publisher said it would continue selling Rooney’s work in other territories, including markets where the same legal restrictions do not apply.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s party plans to file a complaint against Meta with the Organisation of American States alleging election interference, his campaign said Wednesday. The party accuses Meta of restricting Lula’s online content ahead of the October 25 presidential runoff against far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Meta denies the allegations.
The leftist leader is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term in an October 25 runoff, where he will face Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.
His party maintains that Meta is harming his campaign by restricting his online content, which the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram denies.
“It’s time to denounce (Meta) before the international community, starting with the OAS,” party Communications Secretary Eden Valadares told reporters, adding that Lula himself had ordered the move.
His campaign earlier claimed that Meta in recent days “prevented President Lula’s profile from promoting Instagram feed posts”, while a post from his official account “experienced an interruption in view counts, which affected its reach”.
Meta’s Brazil office denied the charges, calling them “simply false” and “not supported by the facts”.
The incumbent’s campaign called a Thursday meeting with international election observers to discuss the alleged interference.
Lula has claimed that the United States is trying to interfere in the elections in favour of Flavio Bolsonaro, whose father is an ally of US President Donald Trump.
Following the first round of voting, Lula launched a social media push that includes videos of him addressing his online followers.
Nvidia, worth $5.5tn, donates $250m to UK for AI safety research
Pledge spanning five years from world’s most valuable firm comes as concerns about AI agents have risen
Dan Milmo Global technology editorWed 14 Oct 2026 11.10 BSTShare
The $5.5tn (£4.1tn) US chipmaker Nvidia is donating $250m worth of computing power to the UK to support AI safety research.
The donation from the world’s most valuable company comes as the UK government confirmed its AI Security Institute (AISI), which tests advance AI models, will be able to examine cutting-edge technology developed by companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google before they are released.
Nvidia said the donation, which spans five years, would “support agentic safety and security research across the UK”.
Safety concerns about AI agents – highly capable computer programs that are able to design and perform sequences of tasks autonomously – have risen since the summer, when OpenAI confirmed that a “swarm” of agents had attacked Hugging Face, a tech startup.
Nvidia did not reference AISI in its statement but said most of the money would “support the wider UK AI safety and security research community”, with a proportion of the cash going to the British Open-Ended Learning and Discovery Lab, the Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab – run by the Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford and University College London universities – and Imperial College London.
The computing power will be delivered via UK-based datacentres using Nvidia chips.
“The UK brings world-class scientific rigour to this essential engineering challenge,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive. “With this $250m commitment, Nvidia will put accelerated computing in the hands of UK researchers to develop, test and strengthen safeguards for increasingly powerful AI.”
Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s AI minister, said the announcement was a “vote of confidence in our world-leading strength and expertise in AI research”.
On Monday Narayan confirmed that AISI was conducting tests on US-developed AI models before they are released, after reports that the White House had restricted access.
The AI minister also warned that the UK faces agentic attacks similar to the one carried out by OpenAI agents on Australia’s healthcare system this year.
“It seems likely, if not inevitable, that our own cyber defences will be breached,” said Narayan.
China-linked malicious actors called out by UK and international partners for targeting sensitive data globally
Joint advisory with international partners highlights exploitation and compromise of networks belonging to organisations across the globe.
China-linked company Integrity Technology Group has been exposed by the UK and international partners for enabling cyber actors to target organisations worldwide.
AI-enabled tools, large-scale botnets and hands-on exploitation techniques being used to compromise networks and steal sensitive data.
Organisations are being urged to strengthen their cyber resilience and defend against this evolving threat.
A range of malicious cyber activities enabled by a China-linked technology company and the wider ecosystem poses a significant threat as the UK and international partners urge organisations to improve their defences.
Alongside eight international partners from six countries, the National Cyber Security Centre – a part of GCHQ – has issued a new advisory revealing how, Integrity Technology Group (Integrity Tech), a company based in China with links to the Chinese Government, has enabled malicious China-linked cyber actors to exploit and compromise networks belonging to organisations across the globe.
Malicious cyber actors, enabled by Integrity Tech, are uniquely using AI tools, such as automated scanning, alongside large-scale botnets and manual exploitation techniques to compromise and steal confidential data from companies around the world, including critical sectors.
Last year, the UK government sanctioned Integrity Tech, alongside another China-based information security company for their part in heedless malicious cyber activity against the UK and its allies.
The advisory also highlights that the company employs individuals who support a range of malicious cyber activities and contribute to the wider Chinese cyber ecosystem, including developing tools for use and sale, acquiring and hosting infrastructure and compromising networks across the globe.
The activity in the advisory is reported to be consistent with campaigns also publicly known as Flax Typhoon, Ethereal Panda and Red Juliett among others.
The extensive malicious cyber activities, and services by Integrity Tech, that have been exposed today should be extremely concerning for all network defenders.
The breadth of sectors that have been targeted across the globe demonstrate the extent of the threat and all organisations should take note of this warning and engage with NCSC advice and guidance.
We will continue to call out malicious actors and the malevolent ecosystem they operate in.
Paul Chichester, NCSC Director of Operations
Organisations are being urged to understand the threat and techniques used by these cyber actors and follow the mitigation advice to helpful defend against the activity highlighted in the advisory.
In September 2024, the NCSC alongside international partners, exposed Integrity Tech as the operator of a substantial botnet, where a network of internet-connected devices are infected with malware and controlled to carry out cyber attacks, and was utilised by advanced persistent threat group, Flax Typhoon.
Earlier this year, the NCSC alongside industry and 15 international partners from across nine countries issued an advisory and guidance highlighting how organisations can better defend against the cyber threat from covert networks.
The NCSC has co-sealed this new advisory alongside agencies from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and the United States.
Ukraine Loses Starlink Access as Musk Says Zelenskiy Went “Too Far”
SpaceX suddenly throttled access to Starlink with no warning, Ukraine says.
Is Elon Musk using SpaceX to kneecap Starlink access in Ukraine on behalf of President Donald Trump?
A Ukrainian military official claimed Wednesday that Musk’s SpaceX had interrupted functioning of the country’s military-grade Starlink terminals, Reuters reported. Presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian defense forces “did not receive warning about this limitation, and this led to the disruption of several missions.”
The disruption comes just days after Trump publicly criticized Ukraine for continuing to attack Russian oil refineries in the wake of the U.S. lifting sanctions on the sale of Russian oil, and called for the removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Musk weighed in on Trump’s comments on social media Saturday, writing: “Zelensky has gone too far.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, whose country pays for Ukraine’s Starlink access, responded to reports of the disruption.
“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” he wrote on X. Musk did not respond.
If the disruption really is some kind of political intervention, this is only further proof that Europeans—or really, anyone in the world—cannot rely on any of Musk’s products, as they will be at the whims of the billionaire technocrat that still finds himself at Trump’s beck and call.
In a last-ditch attempt to alleviate financial strain ahead of the midterm elections, the Trump administration announced last week that the U.S. would temporarily waive sanctions on Russian diesel sold to the global market through April 2027. Trump claimed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than roughly 2.2 million barrels of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplace. (A small drop in the bucket, all things considered.)
The Trump administration is threatening to cut off intelligence sharing and weapons sales to Europe for Ukraine should Kyiv not halt its deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, multiple outlets reported Monday.
The State Department and the Pentagon made the warnings to officials in Ukraine and Europe over the weekend, with the U.S. military directly communicating the threat to Ukrainian commanders, CNN reported.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
The Financial Times was the first to report on the U.S. warning, which included threats to cut off the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List mechanism for buying American weapons for Ukraine. The initiative is managed by NATO and is used to procure U.S.-produced weapons to be sent to Kyiv.
“They are calling Kyiv … they are calling everyone [in Europe],” an official who received a call from a U.S. defense official told the outlet.
The warnings from Washington follow President Trump’s announcement late last week that the U.S. would purchase 300,000 tons of Russian diesel in an effort to lower fuel prices that have spiked as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
Trump, however, insists Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries have caused U.S. diesel prices to surge ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lambasted the diesel deal as providing the necessary funding to sustain Russia’s war in Ukraine.
On Sunday, Trump surprised Ukraine by announcing that it and Russia had agreed to what he described as an “energy ceasefire.”
Zelensky said at the Warsaw Security Forum in Poland that Ukraine had learned of the deal through news reports.
He wrote on the social platform X that Ukraine supported the proposal but made it clear that Kyiv would not agree to stop its retaliatory strikes without a corresponding halt to Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system.
On Monday, Zelensky said Russia has continued to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including a power plant in Kharkiv.
Last night, while Russian ballistic missiles were landing on Kyiv for the second night in a row with zero American early warning, somebody at SpaceX reached over and turned a dial. Ukrainian drone crews watched their birds climb, stutter, and drop out of contact mid-mission. No notice. No explanation. No comment from the company. Ukraine’s defence forces woke up Wednesday to discover the backbone of their battlefield communications had been quietly throttled by the world’s richest man, four days after he posted that Zelensky “has gone too far,” and six days after Ukraine started burning down the Russian server farms that power the bot, crypto and disinformation economy his entire world runs on.
Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
America dealt two grave betrayals to Ukraine in the past week. More are surely coming.
Last Friday, Donald Trump announced that the United States would again buy Russian diesel. When Volodymyr Zelenskyy protested, Trump said that Ukraine needed new leadership (what is it they say about glass houses?).
Today, Ukraine is facing new restrictions on Starshield, the military version of Starlink, introducing a serious new handicap to Kyiv’s battlefield capabilities. Notably, Elon Musk—no fan of Ukraine and Zelenskyy—was quick to suggest that it was Trump who cut off access.
We cannot overstate the seriousness of these transgressions. Trump and Zelenskyy have butted heads before. Now, the administration is preparing for the next step, outright labeling the Ukrainian president an enemy. If Trump has a stake in Russia’s hydrocarbon sector, the US will declare Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure—essential for Kyiv to level the playing field—as attacks on American interests.
(Trump, meanwhile, shows complete indifference when Russia attacks US properties in Ukraine. Of course, he’s never been held back by hypocrisy.)
Meanwhile Starlink provides essential satellite communications and information to Ukrainian forces. In 2025, Musk wrote on Twitter that Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned [Starlink] off.” Perhaps Mr. Musk is a touch too proud of his own product. Still, his assessment is sadly not so far from the truth.
Trump is just a few weeks from a midterm election in which his Republican Party is expected to lose. Vladimir Putin is watching events from over Trump’s shoulder, and knows that a Democratic Congress could thwart many of his designs in Washington come January. These next three months are therefore critical.
People will look at this situation and ask whether the American president is a Russian asset. Here is my opinion: whether Trump is acting as Putin’s agent or merely an impressionable admirer is not relevant. The outcome would be the same, and the bottom line here is that this was coordinated between the White House and the Kremlin.
As I often say, I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in KGB.
And Elon Musk reveals his power to give and to take away:
Elon Musk Echoes Trump in Calling for New Ukrainian Leadership
In brief: American billionaire Elon Musk backed US President Donald Trump’s calls for Ukraine to replace President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying that the Ukrainian leader had “gone too far.” Musk’s comments came after Trump claimed Zelensky missed chances to end the war and criticized Ukrainian refinery strikes following a controversial bilateral diesel deal with Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made a sharp rebuttal, saying that only the Ukrainian electorate holds the legal and sovereign authority to determine national governance during wartime.
US President Donald Trump presents the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk during the “Golden Age of American Innovation Summit” at the Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, Oct. 8, 2026. (Photo by Kent NISHIMURA / AFP)
He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts.
I’m talking about Elon Musk, of course.
Yesterday, former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Musk for restoring his Starlink satellite’s vital high-speed connectivity: “Thank you, @elonmusk. We hope for your continued support.” (Connectivity had slowed after Musk posted Saturday that “Zelensky has gone too far.”)
But who gave Musk authority to slow his satellite service in the first place — or, for that matter, to publicly comment on Ukraine President Zelensky? (Musk says Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government, and that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” But if that’s the case, why did Fedorov thank Musk?)
Every time I list another of Musk’s outrages, someone says, “Yes, but he’s an innovator!”
He’s not. As is made clear in Alex Gibney’s smart new documentary, “Musk,” Elon didn’t invent Tesla. He didn’t invent X. He didn’t invent SpaceX. He didn’t invent Starlink satellites. He didn’t invent squat.
Musk is to innovation what Trump is to governing. Both are conmen. Both are megalomaniacs. Both love authoritarians and detest democracy. Both are racist and misogynistic. Neither believes in (or harbors an ounce of) empathy toward anyone. Both think nothing of corrupting governments for personal gain. Both say they’re self-made men — and both worship their creators.
Poland has always funded Starlink in Ukraine:
Starlink will continue to operate in Ukraine with Poland’s support
22 February 18:12
Poland continues to support the operation of Starlink terminals in Ukraine, providing uninterrupted internet access to hospitals, schools, critical infrastructure facilities, and frontline regions even during blackouts.
During the full-scale war, Poland has provided Ukraine with more than 29,000 terminals and is financially supporting their operation, which is an important contribution to the country’s resilience.
The Ukrainian authorities expressed their gratitude to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digitalization of Poland, Krzysztof Haukowski, and the entire Polish government for their constant support, solidarity, and willingness to cooperate.
At the end of September, Polish President Karol Nawrocki signed a law extending funding for Starlink terminals in Ukraine. This decision will ensure uninterrupted communication for frontline communities and critical infrastructure when it is most needed.
It should be added that Starlink terminals from Elon Musk’s company play a key role in providing communications in Ukraine during the Russian aggression. However, they are used not only by Ukrainians but also by Russians on the front lines. Although Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has banned the use of Starlink in Russia, there are many intermediaries who buy terminals and send them to Russia.
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