Zerohedge

Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday that an investigation is underway into the deaths of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and their dog. 

Hackman, 95, Betsy Arakawa, 63, and their dog were all found dead after deputies entered their home around 1345 local time Wednesday. 

“We can confirm that both Gene Hackman and his wife were found deceased Wednesday afternoon at their residence on Sunset Trail,” the sheriff’s office said, adding, “This is an active investigation – however, at this time we do not believe that foul play was a factor.”

NBC affiliate KOB of Albuquerque reported that a neighbor called the local sheriff’s office to conduct a welfare check earlier Wednesday. The bodies of “The French Connection” star were not formally identified until 1230 local time Thursday. 

Hackman was one of the top actors of his generation, portraying villains, heroes, and antiheroes in dozens of movies from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s. His final on-screen appearance was in the 2004 film Welcome to Mooseport.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must act to protect Americans from fake versions of GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro and take “decisive action” against bad actors engaged in such trade, a letter from a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from 38 U.S. states said.

“My fellow attorneys general and I are urging the FDA to protect consumers from the growing threat posed by adulterated or counterfeit versions of these drugs,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a signatory of the letter, said in a Feb. 20 statement.

“From inspections to enforcement actions, the FDA has several important tools at its disposal to help put an end to this unlawful and deceptive conduct. A federal response is necessary because many of the counterfeit drugs are shipped from outside of the country.”

The bilateral letter, issued a day earlier, said that demand for GLP-1 medications such as Mounjaro, Zepbound, Ozempic, and Wegovy has “skyrocketed.” The high costs of these medications and supply shortages “have created opportunities for wrongdoers to cash in and endanger consumers,” it said.

Fake GLP-1 drugs have entered the U.S. supply chain from nations such as China, Turkey, and India, the attorneys general said.

“These counterfeits can contain contaminants, other unknown drugs, or dangerously high amounts of active ingredient(s). Scammers have also repackaged injectable insulin and falsely sold it as Ozempic,” they said.

Injecting counterfeit drugs “can lead to serious side effects for consumers, sometimes necessitating hospitalization,” the letter said, adding that most consumers cannot identify fake from legitimate variants.

The letter raised the issue of retailers illegally selling active ingredients of GLP-1 medications directly to consumers online without any prescriptions. These active ingredients come from unregulated sources and pose a risk of contamination, it said.

Consumers use the ingredients to formulate drugs without adequate knowledge of safely dissolving the active ingredients, drawing it into syringes, and then injecting the substance into the body, the attorneys general wrote.

There are also compounding pharmacies that produce GLP-1 medications on their own, with some choosing to “cut corners” in pursuit of profits, the letter says. Last year, Eli Lilly and Company, the manufacturer of Mounjaro and Zepbound, said it had identified compounded drugs that have “safety, sterility, and efficacy problems.”

“Some have contained bacteria, high impurity levels, different colors (pink, instead of colorless), or a completely different chemical structure than Lilly’s FDA-approved medicines,” the company said.

Novo Nordisk, which manufactures Ozempic and Wegovy, has filed lawsuits against several pharmacies, weight loss clinics, and medical spas in multiple U.S. states for selling compounded drugs claiming to contain semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic.

The letter called on the FDA to “work with federal partners like the Department of Homeland Security to intercept counterfeit GLP-1 drugs before they reach unsuspecting consumers.”

It asked the agency to send warning letters to sellers supplying active ingredients directly to people and “follow up with enforcement action if companies continue to act unlawfully.”

“The FDA should also ramp up enforcement against any compounding pharmacies that may be illegally participating in this market,” the attorneys general wrote. “The FDA must work in partnership with state pharmacy boards to ensure compounded GLP-1 drugs are produced in a safe, sanitary way.”

Health Risks and Shortages

There have been multiple instances of fake GLP-1 drugs creating health issues for people.

In October 2023, Austria’s Federal Office for Safety in Health Care said it received reports of several people who had to be treated at a hospital after they used suspected counterfeit Ozempic. The patients suffered seizures and hypoglycemia, which occurs when the blood sugar level is very low.

Authorities in the UK issued a warning the same month about fake Ozempic being distributed in the country. Side effects included hypoglycemic shock and coma.

In December 2023, the FDA announced the seizure of thousands of units of counterfeit Ozempic that were discovered in a “legitimate U.S. drug supply chain.”

On Feb. 21, the FDA announced that the shortage of semaglutide injections has been resolved. These products have been in shortage since 2022 in the face of rising demand.

“FDA confirmed with the drug’s manufacturer that their stated product availability and manufacturing capacity can meet the present and projected national demand,” the agency said.

“Patients and prescribers may still see intermittent and limited localized supply disruptions as the products move through the supply chain from the manufacturer and distributors to local pharmacies.”

Novo Nordisk said that all doses of its FDA-approved semaglutide drugs—Wegovy and Ozempic—were being “continuously shipped, meeting or exceeding expected U.S. demand.”

“FDA’s decision means that making or selling a knockoff compounded drug that is essentially a copy of Ozempic or Wegovy is illegal, under compounding laws, with rare exceptions,” it said.

Meanwhile, real GLP-1 drugs can also pose health risks. A recent study found a higher risk of a rare eye condition among individuals with Type 2 diabetes who used semaglutide.

The condition, called non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, occurs when blood flow to the optic nerve, which sends signals from the eyes to the brain, gets blocked. This can lead to sudden vision loss.

“In the absence of a known mechanism for this association, we urge clinicians to weigh the concern for an increased risk of a rare but potentially blinding eye condition with the many therapeutic benefits of semaglutide,” authors of the study wrote.

Pick up some not fake weight loss pills here…

Today, fewer than one in five young American adults reported smoking cigarettes in the past year—with smoking having declined more than 50% from its peak.

While occasional and social smoking among young adults persists, the overall trend from 1988 to 2023 across casual and heavy smoking reveals a remarkable and sustained decline.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the percentage of U.S. young adults aged 19-30 who have smoked cigarettes over 12 months since 1988, based on data from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Trends in Cigarette Smoking in Young Americans (1988-2023)

More than one-third (37.5%) of young adults in the U.S. smoked cigarettes in 1988, when the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research first started measuring data.

This figure has declined by almost half in 2023, with less than one-fifth (18.8%) of young adults smoking cigarettes in the last 12 months.

Cigarette smoking among 19 to 30 year-olds peaked in 1998 at 39.7%, and has declined steadily since then. For the 14 year period from 2004 to 2017, cigarette smoking rates declined every single year, only bumping up slightly in 2018 and now most recently in 2023 to 18.8%.

Despite the one percentage point uptick in past 12-month smoking in 2023, every measure—whether past 12-month, past 30-day, daily, or heavy use—has experienced significant decreases over both the past five and 10 years.

Daily cigarette smoking in young adults has continued to fall in 2023 to 3.6%, and only 2% of young adults reported smoking half a pack or more a day.

While cigarette smoking has declined, vaping has surged among young adults in the United States. This graphic shows the surge in cannabis and nicotine vaping since 2017.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

A lot of people out there just want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is just great.  Meanwhile, rampant lawlessness is raging all around us and our society is literally coming apart at the seams.  I just don’t get it.  How can people insist that things are fine when just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is on the rise?  

Nobody can deny that the moral decay of America is accelerating, and unless we reverse course and choose another direction conditions will continue to get even worse.  

The following are 11 shocking examples of how completely and utterly lawless our society has become…

#1 We are in the midst of the worst wave of cargo theft in our history.  Earlier today, I came across a Los Angeles Times article about a very alarming series of train heists that have been taking place in the Mojave Desert…

The thieves stealthily board eastbound freight trains, hiding out until they reach lonely stretches of the Mojave Desert or high plains far from towns. They slash an air brake hose, causing the mile-long line of railcars to screech to an emergency stop.

Then, they go shopping.

That’s the modus operandi described by investigators in a string of at least 10 heists targeting BNSF trains in California and Arizona since last March. All but one resulted in the theft of Nike sneakers, their combined value approaching $2 million, according to investigators.

Thankfully, authorities have been able to catch some of those that have been involved in these thefts.

Of the eleven suspects that were charged in relation to a heist on January 13th, nine of them were in the U.S. illegally.

Sadly, these sneaker thefts are just the tip of the iceberg.

We are being told that there were “at least 65,000 railroad cargo thefts last year”, and that represented a whopping 40 percent jump from the year before…

There were at least 65,000 railroad cargo thefts last year, a 40% increase from 2023, according to industry estimates compiled by the Assn. of American Railroads. The thefts — which are typically classified as burglaries because they don’t involve directly confronting victims, as with robberies — are believed to have cost the nation’s largest rail companies more than $100 million, according to the trade group.

Those figures may be an undercount, because railroads don’t publicize all thefts, Lewis said. Details typically emerge publicly only when arrests are made and criminal complaints are filed.

#2 A McDonald’s location in Brooklyn has completely banned everyone under the age of 20 from entering because of all the crime kids have been committing there…

A crime-ridden Brooklyn McDonald’s is carding customers at the door and forbidding anyone under 20 to enter without a parent or proper ID — in what might be a first for the fast food goliath.

The restaurant, at Nostrand and Flatbush avenues took the drastic step last week, after a group of kids wearing ski masks swirled in after school and attacked a security guard, breaking a glass door, according to manager Amber Hussain.

Over the past year, large groups of teens have regularly been causing all sorts of chaos at that particular McDonald’s…

Every day after school for the year she’s worked there, somewhere between 15 to 20 teenagers come in and “trash the store” — throwing ice at customers, snatching bags of foods from Uber drivers and smoking weed inside the restaurant, Hussain told The Post.

The McDonald’s — in the area nicknamed “the junction” — is infamous in the neighborhood. It’s been the scene of multiple shootings and stabbings over the years.

#3 Speaking of Brooklyn, a 23-year-old man has just been charged with repeatedly raping a 7-year-old boy and posting videos of the abuse on the dark web…

A Brooklyn man allegedly raped a young boy he was babysitting, filmed the vile abuse and posted it on the dark web — and authorities fear there may be other victims.

Ramel “Menah” Warner lived with the victim’s family in Brooklyn for two years and frequently babysat the 7-year-old victim, federal prosecutors said in court papers. Warner, 23, allegedly made six different videos of the abuse, investigators said.

He was charged Jan. 29 in federal court with acting in a manner injurious to a child, forcible touching, and sexual abuse of an individual under the age of 11.

#4 Apparently someone that does not like Elon Musk very much just shot up a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon…

A Tesla dealership in Salem was vandalized Wednesday morning, about a month after a vehicle at the dealership was lit on fire.

Police officers responded just before 5 a.m. to a report of windows damaged at the dealership on Mission Street Northwest. The officers found the windows damaged from gunshots.

#5 Romance scams have become extremely popular in recent years.  But one woman with dual citizenship took things to an entirely new level by killing several of her victims…

A Las Vegas woman with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship ran a “romance scam on steroids” that caused the deaths of three people, FBI Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans said during a news conference where, with the Nevada U.S. attorney’s office, he announced the unsealing of a 21-count superseding indictment against her.

Apparently Aurora Phelps was targeting men in their 70s and 80s, and she would use drugs to incapacitate them…

“We believe Phelps connected with each of them through an online dating application, so she could lure them into her confidence under false pretenses and then drug them with dangerous doses of prescription sedatives or other controlled substances,” Evans said. “Once she incapacitated her victims, Phelps stole their cars, accessed their bank and brokerage accounts to withdraw cash and used their credit cards to make a variety of purchases — including luxury retail goods and gold.”

Three of the four victims in the indictment were found dead shortly after their encounters with Phelps, Evans said. One died in Southern Nevada, according to a graphic of a timeline presented by Evans.

Thankfully, law enforcement was able to catch up with Aurora Phelps, but there are countless other romance scammers out there these days.

#6 Some of the most evil criminals of all often occupy some of the highest positions in our society.  After all this time, the Washington Post has finally been forced to admit that Dr. Anthony Fauci really was funding horrific beagle abuse and that he worked really hard to cover it up…

• In a shocking turn of events, the Washington Post has admitted it published disinformation fed to it by NIH to discredit White Coat Waste Project and defend Fauci from our evidence that he funded beagle abuse in Tunisia.
• The move came days after Congress confronted him about the beagle testing we exposed and Fauci admitted to Congress that he personally signed off the dog labs
• Internal NIH records obtained by WCW prove that Fauci funded the Tunisian dog lab and that he was involved in a cover-up to mislead the media and public.
• Within hours of Fauci complaining to colleagues he was being “bombarded by protests” over Beaglegate, the NIH fabricated a story that they were mistakenly cited as the funder, had the journal issue a correction, fed the fake news to WaPo, and worked to scrub the project from its website.

Of course now that Joe Biden has pardoned Fauci, it is highly unlikely that he will ever be charged for his numerous crimes.

#7 The New York Post recently ran a story with this very alarming headline: “Trans migrant charged with raping 14-year-old boy in NYC bathroom”…

A migrant transgender woman wanted by federal immigration officials allegedly stalked and raped a boy in Manhattan this week, The Post has learned.

Nicol Suarez allegedly followed the 14-year-old into the bathroom of a bodega across the street from Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem Tuesday and attacked him, police and sources said.

The boy then left the bathroom and flagged down witnesses, who alerted police, the sources said.

#8 In North Carolina, a 44-year-old woman that is married and that is the mother of two children has been charged with 80 counts of child rape.  The two boys that she repeatedly had sexual encounters with were 12 years old at the time…

A married mother-of-two was arrested in North Carolina on 80 counts of child rape.

Sara Jean Sellers, of Shallotte, was arrested on Friday on multiple charges related to sexual crimes against children, according to the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office.

The 44-year-old mother engaged in these alleged acts from 2018-2019, and two boys who were 12-years-old at the time are said to be involved, prosecutors said.

#9 This next example is even worse.  A teacher in Houston, Texas was actually pimping out students at her school.  One victim was allegedly being forced to have sex with five to ten men a night…

Student sues Houston, TX school district for IGNORING her pleas for help after being trafficked by a teacher for sex.

Texas teacher Kedria Grigsby allegedly recruited, groomed and trafficked several teen girls for sex.

One victim says she was forced to sleep with 5-10 men a night and make $1,000 a day for the teacher. When she showed up to school with bruises, the school allegedly ignored her.

#10 For hackers looking for a huge score, crypto heists have become a really big thing.  Unfortunately, Bybit was just the victim of the largest crypto heist of all time…

As reported by the BBC, Dubai-based crypto firm Bybit is down $1.5 billion in Ethereum after hackers compromised its digital wallet. If the hackers successfully make off with the dough, that would make this the largest single crypto heist ever, more than doubling the previous record holder’s ill-gotten gains.

#11 Even when vicious criminals are caught, in most cases it is just a matter of time before they are released.  In Connecticut, a cannibal that literally ate the eyeball and part of the brain of a man after killing him with an axe is back on the streets…

A cannibal in Connecticut has been granted conditional release from a psychiatric hospital after brutally killing a man with an axe, eating one of his eyeballs, and part of his brain.

Benjamin Franklin once said that “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom”.

In the early days of this country, our society was not plagued by theft, rape, scams and violence.

That is because Americans were much more virtuous in those days.  If we also want to be virtuous, we need to return to what they believed.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what has happened to us.

Any society that embraces evil will be plagued by evil.

Being lawless is a choice.  At this point our moral decline is so advanced that it really would be a major miracle to get this country turned around again.

*  *  *

Michael’s new  book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The first phase of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is coming to a close, with Hamas Thursday night expected to handover the bodies of four more deceased Israelis. This time there won’t be a handover ceremony, after outraged Israeli officials threatened it could collapse the deal and all progress made.

Negotiations for the second phase don’t really appear to have gotten of the ground as yet. The first phase took effect Jan.19 – and has resulted in the release of 25 living hostages by Hamas, as well as the bodies of four more.

The deal called for the exchange of some 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel. Over 60 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Israel, but some half are suspected to be dead at this point.

Conditions in the Gaza Strip continue to deteriorate amid winter conditions. “Sila Abdul Qader is the seventh child confirmed to have died from the cold in Gaza in just 24 hours,” Al Jazeera reports Thursday.

Meanwhile, Turkey is warning that once Israel gets all its citizens back, Prime Minister Netanyahu will simply resume the war, also as the White House has been vocalizing plans for a total displacement of the Palestinian civilian population there:

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says he fears Israel will resume the war on Gaza after all the captives are released.

“As it is known, an ethnic cleansing war was witnessed by the whole world; almost 60,000 civilian Palestinians were killed, most of them were women and children. This must never reoccur,” Fidan said.

“However, it is feared that once all Israeli captives are released, Netanyahu will resume the war. There are deep concerns in this respect and they give rise to constant threats within the region,” he said.

Turkey has also called Israeli policies ‘expansionist’ – also as tanks and ground forces this week went into the West Bank, resulting in the expelling of some 10,000 Palestinians there (and counting).

Indeed there would be less incentive for Tel Aviv to hold back future military operations. For this reason, Hamas may slow-play future releases, and this is likely to greatly complicate any hopes for a phase two or three sticking.

Early this week, US National Security Advisor Mike Walz, after six Israelis were recently freed on Saturday, has said it was Hamas’ fear of Trump that made this possible.

“Hamas is listening to the president… 29 hostages are alive today and reunited with their families because the whole world listened when President Trump said there would be all hell to pay after the Biden administration couldn’t get this done for 15 months,” Waltz told “Fox & Friends” on Monday.

The timeline of the deal seems to back this assessment – that indeed it was anticipation the Trump presidency would push the deal over the line. That deal had been agreed to on January 19, 2025 – literally the day before Trump was inaugurated.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed a proposal from President Trump to cut military spending in half as part of a potential three-way arrangement between the US, Russia, and China.

“I think it’s a good idea. The US would cut by 50%, and we would cut by 50%, and then China would join if it wanted,” Putin said in an interview on Monday. The Russian leader said he couldn’t speak for China but said Moscow could “come to an agreement with the US, we’re not against it.” He added that it was a “good proposal, and we are ready for a discussion about this.”

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian was asked if China supported the proposal. He didn’t give a direct answer but said China’s “limited defense spending is completely out of the need of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests, and the need of maintaining world peace.”

As things stand, the US spends significantly more on its military than Russia and China combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2023, the US accounted for 37% of global military spending. China came in second but was still far behind, accounting for 12% of military spending, and Russia was in third at 4.5%.

When Trump floated his proposal to cut spending, he also suggested the idea of denuclearization. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many you could destroy the world 50 times over or 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and [Russia] is building new nuclear weapons, and China is building new nuclear weapons,” he said.

While Trump seems to favor the idea of limiting military spending and reducing nuclear weapons, he is also advancing policies that will have the opposite effect.

The president has backed a budget plan from House Republicans that will raise the US military budget by $100 billion and also signed an executive order to develop a massive new missile defense system, which risks starting a new arms race.

Pope Francis remains in critical but stable condition, according to the latest medical report. 

In recent days, hundreds of worshippers have gathered at masses in Buenos Aires to pray for his recovery. 

Statista’s Anna Fleck reports that, at 88 years old, the Argentine Pontiff is the second-oldest Pope in history to have held office. Only one other Pope has served to a later age than Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

 

You will find more infographics at Statista

Leo XIII holds the record as the oldest reigning Pope, reaching the age of 93. 

His papacy spanned 25 years, from 1878 to 1903. 

However, the longest documented tenure belongs to his predecessor, Pius IX (1846–1878), who led the Church for over 31 years before passing away at 85 years and nine months.

It is believed that only Saint Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, served longer – approximately 34 years.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

The US might go along with this though to accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU” led by a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others.

Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz declared on Sunday after the snap elections’ results started streaming in that he envisages helping his country “achieve independence” from the US. This is a dramatic statement that few could have foreseen any German leader saying just several months ago but that just goes to show how fundamentally Trump 2.0 is revolutionizing International Relations. Here’s what he told a televised roundtable about his foreign policy plans:

“The interventions (meddling) from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.

My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

I would never have believed that I would have to say something like that on television. But at the very least, after Donald Trump’s statements last week, it is clear that the Americans – at least this part of the Americans in this administration – are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

That’ll be a lot easier said than done for several reasons. 

To begin with, Germany hosts around 50,000 US troops at five Army garrisons and two Air Force bases. The US also displaced China as Germany’s top trade partner last year. Moreover, the US became Germany’s largest LNG partner last year too, which covered around 9% of its total gas usage last December. These three factors make it difficult for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US but the US might also go along with this for its own purposes.

Many of its troops in Germany can be redeployed to Asia for containing China and/or to Poland as part of that country’s power play to replace Germany as the US’ top ally in Europe. While casual observers might interpret these outcomes as victories for the military dimension of Merz’s policy, they’d come at a huge economic cost to the local communities that are employed by these US bases and receive their troops’ business. This observation segues into the US’ trade leverage over Germany.

While some think that Trump’s threatened tariffs can create strategic openings for China, at present, the EU is actually working with the US to prevent Chinese “overcapacities” in steel and other products from flooding the bloc as they desperately search for new markets amidst Trump’s new tariffs. In other words, Trump’s tariffs have thus far created a domino effect where China tries to dump newly tariffed products onto the EU, which in turn considers tariffing these same products. This works to the US’ advantage.

Lastly, the only realistic way for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US in the energy sphere is to lead the EU in removing the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions and agreeing to import pipeline gas from it once more, but the Baltic States and Poland stand in the way. Not only that, but the whole reason behind the latest transatlantic rift is Trump’s comparatively softer approach towards Russia, not him going harder on it than they are. It would therefore contradict their logic to lift sanctions on Russia.

Nevertheless, the past three years proved that Germany is willing to sacrifice its objective national interests in pursuit of ideological goals, which in the most recent context refer to signaling displeasure with Trump over his policies towards Russia (and to a lesser extent their domestic socio-legal affairs). Accordingly, it might therefore try to make good on Merz’s pledge to “achieve independence” from the US through the previously mentioned means, though this could be counterproductive as was explained.

Even so, the US might still go along with it by using this as the pretext for redeploying most of its troops in Germany to Asia and/or Poland, which could occur in parallel with targeted sanctions against Germany and the punitive curtailment of the LNG upon which around 1/10th of its gas industry now depends. The combined effect could be economically devastating enough to prompt snap elections or at the very least accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU”.

What’s meant by that concept is the diversification of power from Germany to a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others, each of which have strategic bilateral significances for the US such as controlling Central Europe, managing African affairs, and monitoring the Mediterranean. There’d be some collateral damage together with twists and turns along the way, but the processes that the US could set into motion in response to whatever Merz might do could forever change the EU to Germany’s detriment.

Authored by R. Jordan Prescott via RealClearDefense,

With unprecedented zeal, Special Government Employee Elon Musk and his DOGE team have descended upon multiple agencies to execute its cost cutting agenda. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said DOGE will be welcomed at the department but simply accessing its accounting systems will not provide the visibility needed. The Department of Defense has failed seven consecutive audits, its financial information systems are a disaster, and solutions have been elusive.

Thou Shalt Be Audited

In 1990, Congress passed The Chief Financial Officer Act and one provision required every agency to be audited in full. Between 1991 and 2013, DOD only subjected itself to partial audits. In 2014, Congress required DOD to comply in full by 2018.

Unsurprisingly, DOD failed this first audit. The DOD Inspector General identified 20 material weaknesses, which are shortcomings that, in simple terms, means errors will occur but they won’t be caught or corrected before it is too late.

For the next seven years, audits never reported less than 25 material weaknesses. The associated “notifications of findings and recommendations” would average almost 2,500 reissued and 850 new NFRs every between 2019 and 2023.

Big Checkbook, Antiquated Calculators 

Two major deficiencies have persisted throughout — the Fund Balance with Treasury (the department’s checking account) and Information Technology.

In the former, the department can’t balance its $800 billion-plus checkbook and lacks the tools to research discrepancies or produce the receipts.

On the latter, the department simply has too many obsolete systems; in 2021 the DODIG reported the department wouldn’t be retiring 140 legacy systems until 2036.

In 2017, the department’s Chief Financial Officer began using a data platform called Advana to build the missing universe of transactions so desperately needed to support auditability.

However, Advana is a data repository, not a tool for validating data; reliability is the responsibility of system owner from which Advana is drawing. Moreover, Advana does not have access to data across the entire department.

To overcome these challenges, the Deputy Secretary of Defense “decreed” in May 2021 that data sharing would be maximized. More pointedly, Advana would be the “single source of truth” for objective, informed decision-making.

Beginning with the 2022 audit, the DODIG began recommending the department use Advana to address the aforementioned Fund Balance with Treasury deficiency.

In May 2023, the Government Accountability Office credited the department with progress but noted its remedial plans still lacked basic details, such as interim dates to track the steps taken to achieve auditability.

Similarly, the DODIG identified problems with Advana. In October 2024, the DODIG examined whether billions of dollars in Ukraine assistance had been used in accordance with federal law.

The DODIG tersely reported “DOD did not.”

The DODIG found the department did not have documentation for $1.1 billion in outlays. More notably, the DODIG identified the amount as Questioned Costs, those transactions that may constitute legal or regulatory violations.

To date, Congress has appropriated $111 billion in Ukraine assistance

In 2025, the DOD budget totals $850 billion and the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair is aggressively pursuing a $200 billion increase.

Even a conservative (e.g. generous) projection of ten percent in questioned costs would mean almost $100 billion in transactions that could be violations of law or regulations.

Follow the Blockchain … 

To extract itself from its fiduciary quagmire, DOD should embrace blockchains.

Blockchains are a secure means of executing and recording transactions without the need for a central authority. Per its protocols, transactions are recorded transparently and permanently; the data is synchronized in real time and shared in full by all stakeholders.

Inherently immutable, blockchains ensure data integrity, transparency, and above all, auditability.

To its credit, Congress has encouraged DOD to use the technology. According to a 2018 congressionally-mandated study, adoption would improve cybersecurity, supply chain efficiency, continuity of operations, and, most importantly, auditability.

An Air Force Institute of Technology publication from 2022 also examined the advantages of employing blockchains.

First and foremost, the publication acknowledged DOD blockchains could not mirror Bitcoin, which permits anyone to have access and the ability to record transactions. Instead, the sensitivity of data and need to restrict user rights dictated that a DOD blockchain would be a “permissioned private” database, not Bitcoin’s permissionless public variant.

To demonstrate its effectiveness, the publication summarized its application by Walmart, a common comparison given the company’s size and logistical sophistication.

In 2020, Walmart launched the “world’s largest blockchain industrial application solution” to date.

Under its existing system, disputes over Canada-based invoices occurred in approximately 70% of deliveries and required labor-intensive investigations taking six and eight months to resolve. While Walmart found paying the disputed amount easier, it also meant paying a 38 percent overage.

The contracted provider configured a blockchain within eight months and conducted a two-month pilot. The results were such that Walmart swiftly moved all seventy of its Canadian suppliers on the blockchain by 2022. The blockchain reduced disputes to 1.5% of all deliveries, dispute resolution times shortened, and the company saved millions.

The provider was DLT Labs, a small Canadian company founded in 2017 – not a major prime charging hundreds of billions.

The blockchain was a distributed ledger architecture that had been developed by a non-profit launched in 2015 by the Linux Foundation — not a multi-year acquisition program.

The publication also demonstrated how the Walmart blockchain outperformed current DOD accounting systems in terms of lifecycle costs, transaction throughput, and error rates.

Lastly, the publication catalogued how blockchains satisfied existing regulatory regimes governing information technologies and would address its audit deficiencies.

While the confrontation between a trillionaire and a trillion-dollar entity will be epic, the brutal reality is neither will win because defense spending is the quintessential unknown unknown.

In the thirty-four years since the first required audit, DOD has lived down to the low expectations ascribed to government bureaucracies. Congress is now requiring the department to pass an audit by 2028.

The department’s financial systems are marred by unreliable data and archaic technologies. Blockchains constitute an elegant solution to these failings and more.

R. Jordan Prescott is a private contractor working in defense and national security since 2002. He has been published in The National Interest, Small Wars Journal, Modern War Institute, 19fortyfive, and RealClearDefense.

The global space economy reached $596 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $944 billion by 2033.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the size of the space economy as of December 2024, based on data compiled by Novaspace.

The space economy includes government agencies and companies involved in the production and launch of satellites and spacecraft, data generation, Earth-based infrastructure, R&D programs, and more.

Over 10,000 Satellites Orbit the Earth

Space-based applications that are enabled by space, such as weather forecasting, remote sensing, satellite navigation systems, and satellite television, make up the largest portion of the market, representing $308 billion.

Satellite services are another major component of the space economy, generating $137 billion per year. Currently, over 10,000 satellites orbit the Earth, with SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, controlling half of the market.

Upward Trajectory

2024 set spaceflight records for the fourth consecutive year, with 259 launches worldwide—an average of one launch attempt every 34 hours, according to a recent analysis of the global space economy.

The study, published by The Space Report, also predicts that the pace of launches will continue to rise this year.

The U.S. dominated the launch cycle in 2024, outpacing China by more than 2-to-1, according to the report. Meanwhile, Russia significantly increased the number of satellites it deployed into Earth orbit, rising from 21 in 2023 to 98 in 2024.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Visualized: Every Moon in the Solar System on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.