These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation officially closed up shop this week, just six months after it launched. The news came as something of a relief to the organization’s myriad critics, who argued that its privatized approach to aid distribution had contributed to the deaths of some 2,000 Palestinians.
For now, this means that aid in Gaza is being handled by the United Nations and other NGOs with long experience in the field, in coordination with the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center. But private contractors aren’t quite ready to throw in the towel yet.
One such contractor is UG Solutions, a private company that provided armed security at GHF aid distribution points. UGS drew harsh criticism for this work, particularly following a series of allegations from former Green Beret and UGS contractor Anthony Aguilar, who claimed that he saw other contractors commit war crimes during his deployment to Gaza. Further harming the organization’s reputation was the revelation that it had sent at least 10 members of an anti-Muslim biker gang to work security in Gaza.
Undeterred by these controversies, UGS is already staffing up for new deployments at up to 15 aid sites in Gaza starting in December, according to Drop Site. And UGS isn’t the only contractor angling for a role in post-war Gaza. As Drop Site noted, a consulting company called Q2IMPACT has also received a $7 million U.S. contract to “monitor the efficacy of humanitarian aid in Palestine and Lebanon.”
Aguilar told RS that he believes Q2IMPACT is now taking over for the work of the GHF and Safe Reach Solutions, which had coordinated private aid with the U.S. and Israeli governments. “The intent of the privatized aid mechanism under GHF, now under Q2IMPACT and UGS, is to displace the population, establish precursors to kill unarmed civilians, and implement systematic starvation under the guise of humanitarian aid,” he said.
UGS said it is unaware of any new companies contracted to do “humanitarian or logistics work in Gaza” at the moment. “UG Solutions has not been retained by Q2IMPACT nor has had any conversations with the firm, though we are open to discussions with them,” a company spokesperson told RS. UGS also rejected allegations that its contractors had committed war crimes, accusing Aguilar of peddling “the same tired claims which have been rebuked on many occasions in hopes of remaining somehow relevant.”
The State Department, for its part, denied any intention of returning to privatized aid operations and accused Aguilar of “lying.” When asked to clarify what role Q2IMPACT will play in aid distribution, the department did not respond. Q2IMPACT did not respond to a request for comment.
Regardless of Q2IMPACT’s potential role, the return of UGS should be a major cause for concern, Aguilar told RS. The former Green Beret said that, before deploying to Gaza, he and other recruits “received absolutely no training whatsoever.” He alleged that UGS “did not confirm the credentials or abilities of the security guards they hired” in previous rounds of recruiting, adding that the company lacks the resources to “train security personnel at scale to deal with the complexities of the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza.”
UGS denied all of these claims and said its recruits go through a “Humanitarian Security Officer vetting course” involving shooting evaluations and classroom instruction on international law.
Lurking behind this discussion is a broad sense of uncertainty over what the governance of post-war Gaza will look like, assuming that recent Israeli escalations don’t spark a return to open conflict.
The U.S. is now publicly discussing the possibility of building temporary towns of “vetted” Palestinians inside Israeli-controlled portions of Gaza, which they refer to as “alternative safe communities.” Under this plan, roughly half of Gaza would be left in ruins unless Hamas fully surrenders.
It is unclear whether these plans have any relation to the new aid distribution points that UGS is reportedly staffing up for. But they raise similar questions about the role of U.S. and Israeli officials and contractors. Aid experts say relief operations must adhere to strict rules of neutrality or risk putting aid seekers in danger. The very involvement of foreign contractors or Israeli soldiers in aid efforts increases the risk of violent incidents, like those that occurred repeatedly during the GHF’s brief tenure in Gaza.
Private groups like the GHF offer an “enticing proposition” to governments looking for a non-neutral alternative to typical aid organizations, wrote Scott Paul of Oxfam. “But as the failure of the GHF demonstrated, the essential ingredients for humanitarian assistance are not trucks and guns,” Paul continued. “They are the trust of communities, a deep understanding of how crisis shapes what people do and need, a steadfast determination to keep people safe and treat them with dignity, and an uncompromising commitment to avoid being instrumentalized for political or military agendas.”
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
Serious accidents involving U.S. military aircraft soared 55% between 2020 and 2024, according to newly released Pentagon numbers. “These accident rates are incredibly troubling and demand action,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a member of the armed services committee, said November 19 after the Defense Department provided her with the data. Such Class A mishaps (those that destroy aircraft or cause more than $2.5 million in damage, and/or those that kill or permanently disable personnel), killed 90 people, destroyed 89 aircraft, and cost the military $9.4 billion. Warren said her push for more Pentagon transparency into its crash probes is “desperately needed…to save service member lives.”
Good luck with that, senator. The Bunker has tracked military-aviation accidents for nearly 50 years. They frustratingly rise and fall like unscheduled tides. Searching for a common cause is like trying to nail napalm to the wall. Among other elements, crashes can be rooted in wholesale dereliction of duty by the military-industrial complex, retail (i.e., smaller-scale) dereliction of duty, jet-jockey jerks, trying to do too much, or inadequate training. Sometimes, the cause remains unknown.
Every deadly accident is a tragedy for the family, the service, and the nation. These aviators, among the best in the world, often must make split-second decisions while going very fast. There are safeguards and redundancies built into warplanes, which help pilots avoid danger. But a U.S. military aircraft accident usually is triggered by a “perfect storm,” where several things have to go wrong at the same time, or in a cascading chain, for disaster to strike. Therefore there are, alas, an infinite number of causes.
Yet there is a relationship between crashes and training, flying hours, and spare parts — they tend to rise when those three items fall. As The Bunker recently noted, for example, the average number of hours flown each month by Air Force fighter pilots has dropped from 16 in the 1990s, to 10 in the mid-2010s, to about five today. Rusty pilots crash more.
The Pentagon often tends to blame pilots, especially if they are no longer around to defend themselves, for accidents. Beyond that, more money — for better training, and more flying hours and spare parts — is the Pentagon’s familiar refrain following crashes. But military aviation is incredibly complex, and money can only do so much. “The emergencies you train for almost never happen,” World War II pilot Ernest Gunn famously said. “It’s the one you can’t train for that kills you.”
Blueprints are valuable. Blueprints for weapons — including the intellectual property associated with their repair and maintenance — are Fort Knox for defense contractors. For example, while the Pentagon plans to pay $485 billion for 2,470 Lockheed-built F-35 fighters, it’s also projecting that it will spend $1.58 trillion (PDF) more to keep them flying. In other words, the sticker shock associated with actually buying the plane is less than a quarter of the total cost of owning it. It’s the armed and supersonic variant of safety-razor inventor King Camp Gillette’s adage to “give ’em the razor; sell ’em the blades.”
That’s why defense contractors are fighting a Senate proposal in next year’s defense authorization bill that would pick the “vendor lock” they’ve long enjoyed. The provision would force them to hand over to the Defense Department the data that would let the Pentagon, instead of the contractors, fix what taxpayers have bought.
But that, the military’s sky-is-falling suppliers maintain, will imperil national security. “America’s military advantage depends on cutting-edge technology and a strong, resilient industrial base,” argues Eric Fanning, head of the Aerospace Industries Association (and ex-Army secretary). “If we want to keep America safe, we need policies that protect and empower our innovators, not put them in jeopardy.” AIA endorses the “data as a service” model contained in the House version of the defense bill. That would maintain the status quo unless the Pentagon negotiated — paid for, in taxpayer terms — the information it wants for each contract.
Virginia Burger, a Marine veteran and The Bunker’s colleague here at the Project On Government Oversight, is leery of such a deal. “‘Data-as-a-service’ too often demands Internet links likely to be MIA on the battlefield,” she says. “If that’s adopted, I foresee printouts of screenshots stuffed in binders being a checklist item in a maintainer’s deployer bag.” Not a way to wage war.
Both the Defense Department and White House have voiced support for giving the Pentagon more access to contractors’ intellectual property. Members from both houses are expected to resolve the difference next month in the final version of the bill. It could end up being a holiday gift for taxpayers, and a lump of coal for contractors.
Or the other way ’round.
Last week, the Pentagon whittled down its list of key technologies from 14 to six. The half-dozen survivors are “applied AI, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technology, quantum battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics,” the Defense Department said.
But 48 hours later and half-a-world away, the Army unveiled what many grunts would say is a far more critical technology: how they chow down. That’s because the service has established its first “autonomous dining facility,” in South Korea, to see if machines can feed more soldiers more quickly than humans alone.
“An army marches on its stomach,” Napoleon reportedly said. If the U.S. military can develop drones and uncrewed tanks to wage war without risking American lives on and above the battlefield, shouldn’t it be able to build robots to flip burgers and operate Frialators to make freedom fries safely behind enemy lines?
“The autonomous kitchen uses robotic cooking modules programmed to prepare meals from fresh ingredients following standard Army recipes,” explains Chief Warrant Officer River Mitchell, an Army “food adviser.” Hungry troops simply tap a touchscreen menu “and the system automatically portions, cooks and plates each meal,” says an Army press release, sounding like something out of Drone Appétit magazine.
Just like on the battlefield — where the U.S. military insists humans will always be “in the loop” when it comes to launching weapons — humans will always be “in the food” when it comes to launching lunch. “Human oversight remains critical,” Mitchell said. “Our culinary specialists still handle food safety, ingredient prep and quality control.”
This new robo-cooking is rooted in the possibility of war with China. But the Army is too polite to say that out loud. It prefers to describe it as a pilot program ordered up by its Pacific Multi-Domain Training and Experimentation Capability program (love that snappy Army nomenclature!). The goal is to develop “new technologies to enhance sustainment and readiness across the Indo-Pacific region.”
In other words, to make General Tso’s troops chicken.
→ The terrorism-industrial complex
The Trump administration has branded more groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” in 2025 than the U.S. did over the prior decade, Patty Nieberg and Jeff Schogol reported November 18 at Task & Purpose.
Marine veteran Virginia Burger here at the Project On Government Oversight waded into the hurricane triggered by six Democratic lawmakers telling U.S. troops they don’t have to obey unlawful military orders, and President Trump’s resulting bonkerish call for them to be tried for treason (“Aye-aye sir,” Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-Off” Hegseth salivated), November 21 on POGO’s website.
The key military lawyer overseeing the U.S. attacks on suspected drug-smuggling boats from Venezuela concluded the strikes were illegal, but higher-ups in the U.S. chain-of-command dismissed his concerns, NBC’s Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, and Dan De Luce reported November 19.
Thanks for not overruling The Bunker this week, which is thankful for our readers and lots of other things, too. Happy Thanksgiving! Consider forwarding this on to friends and/or foes so they can subscribe here.
President Donald Trump declared in his second inaugural address, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
But he may be trying to get into a war in Venezuela. A chorus of voices on both sides of the political aisle are urging him to stick to his better instincts. Perhaps news this week that the president is now willing to talk to Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro is a sign they are having some impact. Or not.
The New York Times reported last week that, according to its anonymous sources, President Trump had “signed off on CIA plans for covert measures inside Venezuela, operations that could be meant to prepare a battlefield for further action.” This comes after continuing U.S. strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats off the coast and the administration designation of Venezuela’s "Cartel de los Soles" as a foreign terrorist organization — of which we are to believe President Nicolas Maduro is the leader, therefore making him a terrorist threat to the United States.
The Pentagon is reportedly reviving old bases in Latin America too.
It certainly looks and feels like the road to war, including the propaganda: Maduro is illegitimate, a dictator, a trafficker and a terrorist, and the region would be much better off without him.
Members of Congress in both parties are questioning the authority and wisdom of Trump potentially dragging the U.S. into yet another regime change war. The question is whether, collectively, their voices are making a difference.
In early November, outspoken progressive Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna challenged the administration, specifically the defense secretary and the vice president, on X: “(Pete Hegseth) and (JD Vance) you were sent to fight a war that was based on a lie.”
He was referencing the U.S. war in Iraq and the fact both men are veterans of that conflict.
“Now you are asking Americans to trust intelligence for a war in Venezuela… What happened to you?” Khanna charged.
“It’s long past time for Congress to finally get substantive and complete answers to the questions Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been asking for months, and for the Administration to be transparent about its strategic intentions in the region,” Senator Time Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said on Nov. 20 in a statement.
“The American people have no interest in stumbling into an illegal new war that would place the lives of our servicemembers at risk," he added.
On Monday, NPR reported that “a group of mostly Democratic senators is urging Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to declassify and release the legal opinion underpinning the Trump administration’s airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.”
Democrats are expressing frustration over being kept in the dark on how these decisions are made, but so are some Republicans.
Sen. Rand Paul called out Trump on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday for seemingly dragging the U.S. into war with Venezuela without consulting Congress. “The Admin is pretending we’re “at war” with Venezuela to justify blowing up boats all without a vote, without transparency, and without answering to Congress,” he shared on X,
“If it’s war, declare it,” Paul added. “If it’s not, stop acting like it is.”
Paul said that Trump risks appearing to betray his antiwar posturing during the campaign in a way that threatens his own MAGA Republican coalition. "If he invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve," he told Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie,
Marjorie Taylor Greene, arguably the most MAGA member of Congress (she announced her January resignation last Friday) recently shared her opposition with “The View.” “I don't believe in regime change. I don't believe that we should be engaging in war,” she told the daytime talk show. “I don't think that we need to go out and attack other countries."
Trump’s least favorite Republican, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, asked during the government shutdown two weeks ago when air traffic controllers were at risk of not getting paid: “How is it that we have money for regime change in Venezuela but not money to pay air traffic controllers in our country?”
Trump now routinely attacks Paul, Greene, and Massie. But which Republicans are on Trump’s good side these days? Habitually hawkish Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, an avid interventionist whether in Venezuela or anywhere else, appears to be the president’s best friend, and some wonder whether Marco Rubio, who Trump calls the best Secretary of State in U.S. history, has been the primary guiding force in pushing the U.S. to attack Venezuela.
While polls show a strong majority of Americans do not want a U.S. war with Venezuela, old guard Republicans are quite comfortable with the leader of their party getting back to the good old days of neocon regime change.
Republicans and the majority of Democrats 23 years ago went all-in on regime change in Iraq to root out that country’s WMDs, which did not exist. Will the U.S. commit to the same kind of mistake in Venezuela over concerns about drug trafficking that may or may not originate in that country?
“The simple fact is we are headed to a regime change efforts in Venezuela based entirely on a false pretense (flimsier than WMD),” right-leaning Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti observed in late October. “Even more concerning is the anti-war right is silent and seems to believe the government claims about drug trafficking.”
Thankfully, not everyone has been silent. Bipartisan members of Congress demanding that the president come to them first before committing the country to war is commendable, even if they were unable to make those demands official through recent war powers votes.
Since World War II, both Republican and Democratic presidents have carried out acts of war unilaterally, and as many would argue, unconstitutionally. It’s good that some in both parties now think that presidents shouldn’t be allowed to do that anymore.
In Venezuela, and hopefully, anywhere else.
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