The former minister left office in July but had said little about his future outside of government until last weekend, when he confirmed that he would not be returning to government and that he would instead begin focusing on several new projects — including building a major defense investment fund and advising the Italian Ministry of Defense. “During the full-scale war, our team gained unique experience working with defense technologies in Ukraine and seeing firsthand how technology is transforming modern warfare,” Fedorov said in a press release. “Now we want to use this experience to build technologies that will strengthen Ukraine, help our allies and ultimately make the world safer.”

Karp’s backing could mean billions in investment for Fedorov and Ukraine’s defense industry. Palantir posted 93% year-over-year revenue growth last quarter, and Karp has watched the company’s valuation soar past $440 billion — up nearly 28-fold from its 2020 stock market debut. Roughly half of its total revenue comes from U.S. government contracts. Fedorov built his reputation as Ukraine’s tech-first defense chief in part on his backing of Delta, Ukraine’s state-of-the-art battlefield management system that fuses drone feeds, radar and field data into a layered dashboard that can be used to oversee the front in real time or learn from a battle’s lessons afterwards. “Ukraine’s Delta common operating system, their modular open system architecture command and control system, is absolutely incredible,” outgoing U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who resigned from his role this week, told the U.S. Senate in May. U.S. Army systems, meanwhile, remain “compartmentalized, isolated and ineffective against modern threats,” he said. The American equivalent of Delta is Palantir’s Maven Smart System, which uses Anthropic’s AI model to similarly combine real-world data and intelligence analysis into a single powerful tool for battle planning and briefing. Karp was among the first Western tech executives to travel to Kyiv after Russia’s 2022 invasion, and Palantir’s tech has since been deployed by more than half a dozen Ukrainian government agencies.

Ukraine’s Brave1 Dataroom, a joint project between the defense ministry and Palantir launched earlier this year, runs on Palantir’s infrastructure and lets Ukrainian companies train AI models — including target-detection systems for countering Shahed-type drones — on real combat data. “We’ve worked together for a half decade,” Karp said in a joint video with Fedorov announcing the partnership. “I have been absolutely inspired by what you and the Ukrainians have pulled off, and very... delighted that we could play a part.” Karp reportedly reached out to Fedorov almost as soon as news of his dismissal broke over the summer. Fedorov told reporters at the time that Karp had called to propose “we do something together,” though he said he asked to revisit the conversation later. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy abruptly dismissed Fedorov from his position in July, despite the former minister’s widespread popularity among civilians and soldiers alike for his tech-first military strategies and aggressive initiatives aimed at tackling some of the government’s toughest wartime challenges. His departure set off weeks of nationwide protests demanding his reinstatement. Fedorov said in Tuesday’s press release that despite his new international ventures, “Ukraine will be the priority for me.”

On Aug. 20, 2025, an 11-hour blaze broke out aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS New Orleans off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, leading to approximately $12 million in damage. Sailors successfully extinguished the blaze, leaving two service members with minor injuries. “As of the signing of this report, the NCIS investigation is ongoing, and the precise ignition source of the fire is unknown,” the report said. “As other causes (e.g., electrical, weather) have been ruled out, NCIS’ initial findings attributed the fire to human interaction, either intentional or due to negligence.” The fire took an abnormal amount of time to suppress because 100 boxes of toilet paper blocked sprinkler heads inside a special clothing storeroom that would have otherwise helped douse the flames, the investigation found.

The toilet paper acted as kindling for the fire, making it grow larger and increase in duration. Hazardous materials, such as aerosol cans, that were not supposed to be in the storeroom were also found present after the fire. The ship’s crew and investigators who responded to the fire also failed to locate the fire promptly, even though an alarm pointed them toward the special clothing storeroom, the report said. Investigators were finally able to locate the fire in the storeroom, but they were unable to break in as they didn’t have the proper forcible entry equipment. The report said that if they had these resources at their disposal, as well as proper training, there was a greater likelihood they could’ve addressed the fire at an earlier time. The investigators were also forced to flee the area outside the storeroom after a firefighting system designed to protect a flammable liquids storeroom nearby deployed too early.

fucking slapstick comedy ass navy

This, coupled with the fact that fire investigators didn’t properly set fire and smoke boundaries, made it so that smoke spread through the ship, and water flooded the forward vacuum, collecting, holding and transfer tank. Setting boundaries can mean closing openings to make sure the fire doesn’t grow. In addition, the command investigation said that leadership aboard the New Orleans didn’t understand how to properly use the ship’s firefighting system, which included sprinklers and a ventilation system. Crews should have focused their efforts on the ventilation system, but instead they used too much water when trying to suppress the fire, creating steam, reducing visibility, flooding spaces and making it harder to travel to the origin of the fire.

After the fire, the USS New Orleans returned to its homeport for planned maintenance in November 2025 and rejoined the service in January 2026. The ship went on to help enforce the U.S. Navy blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after the start of the Iran war. While the service still looks to figure out what caused the fire, it said it has learned from its mistakes. “The insights gained from this incident have been integrated into damage control training and inspection requirements across the Navy, helping ensure that Sailors and Marines throughout the force are better prepared to respond when casualties occur in the future,” a Navy spokesperson told Military Times in an emailed statement.

1. Based on public information, Iran doesn't have an operational ramjet-powered cruise missile
2. Iran has a strong incentive to develop one, because the anti-ship cruise missile program lags behind their ballistic missile program, and faster cruise missiles will give them a much better deterrent against American naval air defenses
3. The Russians have deep experience with ramjet propulsion, the first Soviet ramjet powered missiles were fielded in the 60s
4. The Iranians should be fully capable of developing a fully domestically produced ramjet anti-ship cruise missile. They previously displayed propulsion components and hinted at a ramjet program, so we know they were working on it
5. The supposed transfer here was quite limited, with the Russians simply offering what amounts to technical advice. It doesn't sound like any components actually changed hands.

The idea that this crosses some kind of "red line" is absurd. If the leaks are legitimate, everything was entirely above board. There was a contract for the technical assistance, and it was signed well after the entire world sanctioned Russia into oblivion. The Iranians have every right to develop decades old missile tech. I don't think characterizing Iran as "dependent" on deals like this is fair either. A contract for technical advice from the Russians would cost them little, and accelerate a program they were already actively working on anyway. If anything, a domestically designed platform made with limited Russian assistance is a significant step away from dependency. Iran's anti-ship cruise missile program was highly dependent on adapting Chinese designs until relatively recently

For anyone who isn't a missilecel, ramjets allow for cruise missiles that are >3x as fast as turbojet designs. Speed is a major factor for overcoming air defenses, it dramatically reduces the intercept window and kinetic energy is a major factor in dealing damage to naval targets. Iran has prioritized its ballistic missile program, which was the right call, but developing advanced ballistic missiles doesn't magically grant the know-how for designing a supersonic air-breathing jet engine. It's a totally different problem space. Iran's anti-ship cruise missile program has mainly been copies and iterative development of Chinese platforms until relatively recently. The Shahed platform mostly fills the role of land-attack cruise missiles for Iran at much lower costs and higher production rates. The only real need they have for cruise missiles is in anti-ship applications. They've also developed anti-ship ballistic missiles which is a totally different and rarely accessed part of the missile tech tree but I already wrote like 8000 words on this so I digress. (https://hexbear.net/post/9199214/7353983) The point being that the cost/benefit analysis for Iran has always been to pump resources into their BM program while the incentives just weren't there to the same degree for cruise missiles.

Interesting factoid: the first functioning (test bench only) Soviet ramjet engine was made in 1933. It took until the mid-60s before they started producing them at scale (in the thousands). The Iranians should be able to do this in a fraction of the time, but it's not a trivial project.

https://x.com/svgmzr/status/2094912514173632589

Still no ramject missiles fielded, why not buy something that actually works like Kalibr or Iskander?

The one they'd want to buy here is the P-800 Oniks. They have good SRBMs already and the Kalibr isn't a particularly good platform for Iran. They need fast anti-ship missiles. The one they'd want to buy here is the P-800 Oniks. They have good SRBMs already and the Kalibr isn't a particularly good platform for Iran. They need fast anti-ship missiles. For better or worse, the Iranians have prioritized domestically developed missile platforms. In most cases this was the right call, but the timing on their anti-ship cruise missile program wasn't ideal. If the US had attacked in 2030 instead maybe we'd be having a very different conversation.

Pori has had public business ties to people in Trump’s orbit. In April 2025, Kingsbarn Realty Capital closed a deal to acquire the Los Angeles headquarters of Kim Kardashian’s lingerie company Skims, working with two companies with links to the Trump administration: the Newmark Group and Hankey Capital. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick chaired the Newmark Group before entering the Trump administration, and did not fully divest from the company until May 2025. Don Hankey, the chair of Hankey Capital, is also the chair of an insurance company that underwrote Trump’s $175 million bond in his appeal in 2024 of a New York civil fraud judgment. Pori personally thanked both companies in the press release announcing the deal, which he said was made possible in part by Hankey Capital. Between 2024 and 2025, Pori made monthly, largely small-dollar donations to the Republican Party committee, Trump’s campaign committee and associated PACs. Pori does not have a history of donating to national political campaign efforts before October 2024, according to a NOTUS analysis of the Federal Election Commission donor database. Neither Pori nor the Interior Department have publicly expressed interest in the Yosemite land exchange. Early this year, members of Congress were notified for the first time that the Park Service was considering the land exchange in Yosemite. The notification was vague. It implied that the Land and Water Conservation Fund would be used to enable the exchange but gave no details about the valuation of the land in Yosemite or what the Park Service might accept in return. It did not name the developer or indicate that the exchange was a high priority. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, sent Interior a list of projects that they endorse for the fund; the proposal for Yosemite was not on the list. “The Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chair and Ranking Member told the Interior Department which projects they agreed on to go forward. That didn’t include the Yosemite project, which Senator Merkley objected to,” said Justin Krakoff, the deputy communications director for Merkley. Murkowski’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

California’s two Democratic senators told NOTUS they opposed the proposed exchange. “The Land and Water Conservation Fund exists to acquire land and interests in land in order to safeguard natural areas, water resources, and cultural heritage — and to provide recreation opportunities for all Americans,” Sen. Alex Padilla said. “Projects should be chosen on merit, not on an applicant’s connections to high-ranking Trump Administration officials.” “Yosemite is one of California’s natural wonders and must be protected from further development. The courts struck this project down once, but this administration appears hellbent on moving forward in the face of opposition from the public, Congress and the courts. But the only thing the administration cares about is whether there is money involved. We will fight this again,” said Sen. Adam Schiff. The Park Service can likely move forward on a land exchange without any further congressional involvement. If the land exchange eventually occurs as planned, it is likely that it will face a legal challenge from environmental and conservation groups. The National Parks Conservation Association said it strongly opposes the plan. “After a century of protecting Yosemite, the National Park Service is now working in overdrive to turn over land to a private developer in a secretive, backroom deal. This is an attack on the American people that own this national park. It would also be unlawful and a court previously rejected a road development proposal,” said Mark Rose, the group’s Sierra Nevada program manager. He would not comment on the group’s legal strategy.

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer. National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS. Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.

The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests. The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley. The planning process has created a tense environment inside the National Park Service for the people involved; Kingsbarn’s proposal is backed by the full weight of the Interior Department’s top political leadership, sources said. “They want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” said one person familiar with the conversations. “The political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual,” said another person familiar with the conversations and the park’s history. If the deal goes through, the Trump administration would be breaking with 150 years of American precedent at the birthplace of the national park system. The federal government has historically strived to expand the crown-jewel national parks, not give up land within them. “The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” said Cicely Muldoon, a 40-year veteran of the Park Service who served as Yosemite’s superintendent for about five years. Muldoon retired from Yosemite shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2025. “Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” she said.

Interior’s advocacy for the deal is a significant reversal of a pledge Secretary Doug Burgum made in his 2025 confirmation hearing: “The national parks, absolutely we need to support and protect every single inch of those,” he said. It also contravenes the presidential message Trump shared on Aug. 24 of this year, to announce the beginning of National Park Week: “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.” And it goes against the agency’s past position on this specific piece of land. The Park Service has received this privatization request before, and it has rejected it repeatedly for over two decades. In a statement to NOTUS, a spokesperson for the National Park Service said “no final decisions have been made,” but that any land exchange or access proposals “would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and Departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes.” “If a proposal advances, the Department would follow established procedures to ensure appropriate coordination, transparency, and public involvement, consistent with federal law,” the spokesperson said. After publication, Lanny Davis, who is working as an attorney for Kingsbarn, confirmed the Nevada company was pursuing a land exchange with the Park Service. “It wasn’t Donald Trump; it was me, liberal Democrat Lanny Davis, former counsel to President Clinton, went to the Department of Interior, and we made the argument that this is a pro-environmental decision to allow this road to be directly built to allow the residents of this privately owned property to gain entrance or exit to the park,” Davis said. “The road we’re building is a direct pathway that does not endanger any endangered species, and is simply a road.” It would be a “land exchange under the law,” Davis said.

A limited-liability company controlled by Kingsbarn purchased the undeveloped land outside Yosemite for $4 million in 2024, calling the property “Sanctuary at Yosemite” in records reviewed by NOTUS. Historically the land was called Hazel Green Ranch. Its previous owner was a California developer named Lewis Geyser, who had tried for years to persuade the Bush administration, and then the Obama administration, to let him build a short private road in Yosemite. He planned to develop Hazel Green Ranch as a resort. In the early 2000s, the Park Service appeared interested in the possibility of working with Geyser as part of a broader plan to dramatically reduce the development pressure on the Yosemite Valley. But that plan quickly collapsed, and the National Park Service in turn refused to allow any further development within the boundaries of Yosemite. Geyser eventually sued in 2007 to try to force the issue, losing first in district court and again on appeal in 2012. Both times, the judges ruled that Geyser did not have a claim to a private road. While the federal government has an obligation to provide an exit for private properties completely enclosed by federal lands, it doesn’t have to allow for new roads when one already exists. The land’s existing access road — albeit old, long and winding — runs through Forest Service lands. When Kingsbarn took over the land from Geyser in 2024, Pori’s company almost immediately approached Interior about again trying to build the private road. “We got an email from the new owner, reopening this issue that we felt was long closed,” Muldoon said. “Whoever bought the land hadn’t done their due diligence and realized that this was not a possibility by law, to build a new entrance essentially into Yosemite National Park for private purposes. So happily, when I left, it was still in that place.” But whereas the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations said no, Trump’s Interior is pushing hard to say yes. Every few weeks, at the direction of their political superiors, staff at the Park Service have scheduled meetings with Kingsbarn, multiple sources said. Pori sometimes attends the meetings with his associates, including Davis, a lawyer and lobbyist who served as an adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton and represented a list of controversial clients including Michael Cohen, Harvey Weinstein and the former dictator of Equatorial Guinea. Davis has not listed Kingsbarn or Pori as clients in his federal lobbying disclosures. Staff are required to send regular updates on their progress to political appointees inside Burgum’s office, and they are occasionally berated by political staff for not moving fast enough, according to two people familiar with the process. The current superintendent of Yosemite, Ray McPadden, has been pressured by people at the Interior Department and has tried to help move the land exchange along, according to two people familiar with his role.

Under the rules that govern public lands, any land that the Park Service chooses to surrender must be replaced by land of equivalent value. While land exchanges are quite common for the federal government, they usually begin with an agency identifying a piece of land it wants to add to a park or forest. The Park Service trying to give a piece of a park to a private individual is an “unusual case,” said one former Park Service official, who added that the pursuit of this deal in secret makes it especially unprecedented. For the exchange to happen, NPS has to appraise the land inside the park and identify land it wants somewhere else in California of equivalent value. The developer would then need to acquire the property and give it to the Park Service in the exchange. The appraisal of the land within Yosemite is currently ongoing and is a difficult and lengthy task, sources said. How to value a piece of Yosemite is a hard question to answer — and likely cannot account for how the land is eventually developed, however lucrative that may be. “Obviously this looks kind of unseemly, with the value of this property potentially exploding with the deal,” said one person familiar with the agency’s conversations. “They may give them acreage somewhere else to add to a national park unit that is ostensibly of equal value, but to the developer the value of the ultimate Hazel Green deal is incredible.” “It kind of smells, you know. It’s not quite right,” they added.

Delivering his State of the Navy address in Norfolk, Virginia, later that evening, Caudle said more than 27,000 sailors and more than two dozen ships had supported combat operations in America’s conflict with Iran. “Think about the scale of what your sailors accomplished,” he said.**

uh... not a lot, evidently?

“We brought together naval forces from waterfronts on both coasts.” In addition to operations, Caudle said costs for personnel are ballooning with what the Navy said are record numbers of reenlistments while in combat theater, which comes with unplanned bonuses to dole out and military moves to fund. “What does that come out of legally? There’s only one place really that can come out of for me, and that’s my [facilities] readiness sustainment modernization account,” Caudle said. “That goes right to the heart of your CNO, because that’s the foundry account, and so that thwarts some of the work I’m trying to do with unaccompanied barracks and other things.” Among Caudle’s most emphasized stateside pursuits is his “No Sailor Lives Afloat” initiative, which aims to move unaccompanied sailors living on ships into shore-based housing. In his address, he said the Navy had successfully moved more than 6,000 sailors off ships and was in the process of investing more than $375 million across 95 different construction projects for barracks and housing, chow facilities and gyms. A Thursday report from The Guardian contained accounts, denied by the Navy, that combat spending was forcing the service to shift funds from payroll accounts, which then had to be backfilled by accounts earmarked for future spending.

Meanwhile, Caudle said the Navy had to replenish its missile stockpiles and grow in both personnel and ship production to meet readiness targets for a scenario involving multiple conflicts. Regarding increasing production of munitions including the Tomahawk and SM-6 missile, he said the military had to demonstrate stable demand with its own funding. “What we’ve recognized is this has to be a risk-sharing venture. The way we buy down risk for them to refacilitize, recapitalize, start more shifts is to give them longer contracts,” Caudle said, adding that the goal was to standardize contracts of at least seven years. “And what we’re seeing is a fundamental shift already with those levels of commitments and orders. Tomahawk production’s up, SM-6 production’s up, and you’re already seeing the fruits of this.” In June, the White House requested $67.1 billion in supplemental funding for the Defense Department to replenish depleted munitions and cover the cost of months of combat in Iran. In testifying before Congress in July about the request, a combative Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was grilled by lawmakers about the conflict, undertaken without consulting Congress, and the unclear objectives of the costly war.

Meanwhile, the defense budget request for Fiscal Year 2027 nears a historic $1.5 trillion, an increase of more than 40% over the previous year. “I don’t think we should be offended by $1.5 trillion,” Caudle said, adding that the figure didn’t even reach the 5% of GDP that the U.S. requested NATO allies invest in their own defense. “I mean, it takes a lot of money to go give the security, the vital national interest and security of our system, with an armed forces that we need to allow the economic machine of the United States to work most effectively,” he continued. “If there’s any plug that I would give all of you, it’s ‘I need my money,’ OK?”

Since the 2013 Edward Snowden leaks, surveillance and debates surrounding it have become part of the American experience. In recent years, Ring video doorbell users have successfully pushed back against the company’s policy of sharing data with police departments. A nationwide movement is demanding the discontinuation of Flock Cameras, a widely adopted automatic license plate reader that gathers data on anyone who drives past. However, another concerning surveillance trend has flown under the radar. Since 2023, local and state police departments across the country have purchased technology for real-time monitoring of smart devices from the Israeli firm Cognyte Solutions LP. Israel is a hub of spy technology, with more surveillance companies per capita than anywhere else in the world. This phenomenon is largely due to the elite Israeli Military Unit 8200, a signals intelligence unit that serves as a pipeline to private industry, with a reported 80% of founders in the domestic homeland security industry having served in the unit. However, Cognyte had a slightly different founding story stretching back to 2018. The company was originally the security and defense division of Verint Technologies, another Israeli firm. In October of that year, a Haaretz investigation accused Verint of allowing its technologies to be used by authoritarian governments to oppress their citizens. The company’s telecommunications monitoring equipment, called Cell-Site Simulators (CSSs), was, according to the report, used by Azerbaijan and Indonesia to hunt down LGBTQ+ citizens, by South Sudan to spy on enemies of the regime, by Bahrain to imprison a famous human rights activist in the country, and by the Bogota Police to surveil political demonstrators.

A year after the Haaretz report broke, in December of 2019, Verint announced it would spin off a new, independent company from its security technologies division, named Cognyte. In 2020, Cognyte was found, according to documents published by a Burmese human rights group, to have sold its proprietary CSS software, known as “FalcoNet,” to Myanmar’s military just before its coup attempt. According to a U.S. State Department report released after the sale, the regime was regularly monitoring cellular and electronic communications of its citizens, surveillance that helped enable extrajudicial killings, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and a host of other abuses. Although the State Department report made no specific mention of Cognyte, the firm was one of only two major surveillance-for-hire firms to be doing business with the Burmese armed forces. The offending technologies in all of these cases, CSSs, are radio frequency transmitters that retransmit a signal from an existing cell tower, amplify it, and dampen any background signals. This tricks a phone’s innate connection algorithm into connecting with a CSS, allowing access to all unencrypted calls and messages. This means a CSS operator can then peek at the usage of all connected devices in real time, regardless of the devices' intended target. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading anti-surveillance legal and advocacy group, has found that the software is used in over 80 U.S. police departments nationwide. According to the group, it has played a role in a wide array of covert, warrantless searches.

Worse, these simulators continue to advance. In recent years, we have learned these devices now operate on 5G and Wi-Fi bands, meaning app usage and internet searches can also be monitored. They can also be installed in false ceilings in police cruisers, which can be activated like a built-in GPS, or even specially made backpacks, both of which Cognyte sells. This makes them highly portable, easily deployable, and extremely difficult to track. Starting in 2022, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) purchased Cognyte hardware to monitor the cell phones of Haitian refugees, with a further contract being finalized in 2024. That same year, Albuquerque PD awarded Cognyte a contract to be its sole Cell-Site Simulator provider. Baltimore Police Department also has a documented Cognyte connection, but it is unclear if they are still contracting with the firm. Cognyte is listed as a technology vendor on BPD’s website, but the contract appears to have expired in 2023 and, per the Atlas of Surveillance, a new CSS provider was engaged. The last calendar year has been especially successful for Cognyte in the American state and local law enforcement sector. Since late 2025, it has won bids with three major law enforcement agencies in the U.S.: the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., in November; the New York Police Department in December; and the Texas State Police in March of 2026. The Texas State Police told RS the technology is being used solely for search and rescue. None of the other departments responded to requests for comment, nor did Cognyte Solutions.

The major question remains: should citizens be concerned by the adoption of this technology, especially considering the company and country of origin’s respective records on human rights? Civil liberties expert Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights and Dissent, an advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., said that these systems, on their face, are violating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches based on their tendency to collect more data than those of their specific target. ”I can’t imagine why law enforcement would want to use this technology unless the goal is…. to create a dragnet under the mistaken belief that new technology is somehow exempt from existing protections,” Gibbons told RS. Cognyte and its predecessor Verint are not outliers in aiding human rights abuses. Israeli defense and security firms are known to test their technologies on Palestinian citizens in the West Bank or Gaza, raising concerns even before their products are widely distributed. And despite the Israeli government’s role in approving and licensing arms exports, many Israeli firms continue to face accusations of misconduct. Firms such as Cellebrite, which sells hardware to hack locked phones, and NSO Group, a purveyor of “zero-click” malware that assumes control of a smartphone without any user interaction, are facing international scrutiny, in part, because of sales to repressive governments.

Most of the contracts noted above displaced incumbent vendors. So why are agencies switching to Cognyte? It is hard to say at the moment. Part of the trend may be due to a highly usable AI-enabled data dashboard, dubbed “NEXYTE”, that, according to the company’s website, “allows law enforcement to connect the dots faster.” Public demonstrations featured on the site show a data-fusion system that takes publicly available information, like social media posts, and combines it with police investigative files. These are used to create a “threat score”

ah, we've created the psycho-pass system from hit anime (Don't create the) Psycho-Pass (system)!

and link a subject to “known accomplices.” One demonstration classifies an individual as a “drug mule” based on an Instagram post about expensive perfume, a purchase deemed inconsistent with the individual's expected income level. It should be noted that, although this software appears to be Cognyte’s central offering according to their public webpage, contracts obtained by RS do not indicate if this system is included in its CSS offerings. Gibbons stated that although the technology itself concerns him, the source gives him further pause since Israel is a nation with “very permissive surveillance.” “There are many problems in the United States…however, we have something more of a system, at least on paper, for regulating the police and intelligence agencies. These technologies are being produced in a context that is fundamentally different from ours,” Gibbons said.

On Thursday, U.S. SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan met with the Colombian and Ecuadorian defense ministers in San Lorenzo, Ecuador. The trio agreed on a plan to significantly expand their military cooperation along the Ecuador-Colombia border, moving past episodic U.S.-partnered missions and toward sustained combined operations against groups Washington has designated as terrorist organizations. This development is significant because it occurs at the time U.S. military forces are already operating on the ground with Ecuadorian forces in Esmeraldas, with the precise manner of cooperation publicly unknown. Additionally, on Aug. 23, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella announced all illegal armed and criminal groups will be classified and treated strictly as “terrorists” under a new “Comprehensive Security and Public Order Strategy,” further laying the groundwork for expanded military cooperation with the U.S. and Ecuador. The new U.S.-Colombian-Ecuadorian tripartite framework and broader commitments made at the recent Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C) in Panama raise an even larger question: what types of U.S. military cooperation will occur across the Americas, and under what authorities?

The framework, in deepening the integration of U.S. military forces on land, may see those forces advising foreign military forces, participating in combined operational planning, and supporting or even participating in future combined patrols and lethal strikes inside Ecuadorian and Colombian territory, and potentially elsewhere in the region. The distinction is important because ‘security cooperation and security assistance’ can describe varying levels of activity, each governed by different authorities and with different levels of risk and consequences. U.S. military engagement with foreign security forces is best understood as four increasingly consequential forms of involvement, each with their own unique legal and political requirements and associated costs: training and equipping; advising and assisting; partner-enabled U.S. operations; and direct employment of U.S. forces. Training and equipping foreign security forces is the day-to-day practice of U.S. military security cooperation with foreign military forces. The purpose of the Global Train and Equip program is to conduct or support programs that provide training, services and equipment to the national security forces of foreign nations, with the goal of enhancing the capability of partner nations. The legislative authorities to provide such training include 10 U.S.C. 333 and require human rights vetting of foreign security forces under the Leahy Laws and inclusion of training components on the law of armed conflict, human rights, the rule of law, and civilian control of the military. The second, and deeper, level of partnership with foreign security forces is advise and assist. Such longer-term advisory teams were developed because shorter-duration Mobile Training Teams under traditional train-and-equip authorities “did not provide the continuity” nor customized solutions necessary to achieve strategic goals. The U.S. has previously created two such teams in Latin America: one in El Salvador in 1984 and one in Colombia in 2003. These activities are conducted under different authorities depending on the activity. Two examples are 10 U.S.C. 321 and 10 U.S.C. 322, if the primary purpose of the activity is training of U.S. Forces. The next level is partner-enabled U.S. operations. Under 10 U.S.C. 127e, the secretary of defense, with the concurrence of the U.S. ambassador or chief of mission in a given country, may provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals that support or facilitate authorized ongoing U.S. special operation forces to combat terrorism. At this level, the previously noted relationship is reversed, with foreign forces now supporting or facilitating a U.S. military operation. However, 10 U.S.C. 127e does not in itself provide the authority to introduce U.S. armed forces into hostilities; separate authorities, such as a specific Authorization for Use of Military Force, are required for that purpose. The highest, and most intense, level of interaction is direct U.S. force operational employment within a foreign country. Such operations may be conducted in accordance with Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which, under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, requires congressional notification within 48 hours after the employment of forces. A War Powers Resolution notification was made in September 2025 following the opening boat strike that preceded Operation Southern Spear, and in January 2026 for Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela.

Beginning on March 3, 2026, U.S. and Ecuadorian military forces launched joint operations, named “Operation Total Extermination”,

including a combined strike against Comandos de la Frontera inside Ecuadorian territory. On March 9th, the president notified Congress of the operation, “consistent with the War Powers Resolution.” The report was made under 50 U.S.C. §1543(a)(3) regarding substantial enlargement of U.S. forces already located in a foreign country, and not the §1543(a)(1) provision regarding introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities. On August 7, 2026, Ecuador’s Ministry of Defense announced, and posted photos from, Operation “Piraña del Norte,” in which Ecuadorian forces, with U.S. support, destroyed a clandestine facility in Esmeraldas; no War Powers Resolution notification specifically addressing that operation has yet been made public. With Colombia’s entry into the Shield of the Americas and plans to host a coalition intelligence and operational headquarters in Medellin, Ecuador’s expanding partnered military operations with U.S. forces, and the U.S. looking to operationalize its activities in the region, security cooperation relationships could span all four levels of categories and authorities, including combined military operations that may require additional War Powers Resolution notifications to Congress. The question remains: as the Trump administration seeks to expand U.S. joint military operations across Latin America, will it continue to rely on presidential war powers or seek congressional authorization?

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finds that the maintenance backlog for military installations has ballooned to more than $285 billion — leaving many facilities in disrepair, while risking readiness and service members’ quality of life. This figure is a jump up from 2022, when the maintenance backlog was about $137 billion. But the backlog continues to grow, because the services only request about 80% of the funds they need for installation repairs and maintenance. “By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report, released Friday, found. Indeed, service members face a range of issues at the facilities where they work and live. Barracks at Naval Station Norfolk, for example, have had suspected mold since 2023. But the installation office declined requests to test the growth observed there “due to the cost of testing and potential remediation.”

if we just don't test for the health hazard it means there isn't one!

Another highly used facility at that Naval station had evidence of asbestos and significant water damage, GAO found. While all the station’s piers require renovation, the Navy was “actively improving” only one — leaving the rest to operate in a “degraded condition.” At one Naval Base Guam facility, GAO observed, rust build-up and algae on an emergency door’s lock could “affect the door’s functionality during an emergency.” The base’s facilities have also been prone to HVAC failures and roof leaks, GAO found, leading to suspected mold. Beyond physical hazards and operational risks, other issues undercut service members’ overall quality of life. About 3,000 soldiers live at Fort Wainwright, for example, yet the army installation’s dining facility was only built to serve 800. “The dining facility is not able to serve soldiers in a timely manner, so many opt to eat less-healthy food in their living spaces at their own expense, especially in the winter when it is too cold to wait in line outside,” GAO found. Officials have repeatedly advocated for expanding the dining facility, but the installation has not yet received the funding needed to do so. The maintenance backlog continues to swell despite the Pentagon’s rapidly expanding budget. The White House requested a record $1.5 trillion defense budget for FY 2027.