A majority of Muslim-Americans voted for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in this week’s election, while just 21 percent supported Republican Donald Trump and 20 percent voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to newly released data.
The survey, conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and released on Friday, polled 1,575 verified Muslim-American voters nationwide.
CAIR also released exit polling results from Michigan and Maryland voters. Out of the 502 Muslim-Americans surveyed in Michigan, 59% supported Dr. Stein, 22% voted for Trump, and 14% pulled the lever for Harris. Stein received 81% of the vote from Muslim-Americans in Maryland with Harris earning 12% and Trump around 4%.
The results stand in stark contrast to results from previous cycles. CAIR found that in 2020 President Biden had support from 69% of those surveyed, with Trump earning 17%, and other candidates 3%. Additionally, a study released in October of 2016 found that 72% of Muslim-American voters supported Hillary Clinton, while 4% voted for Trump, and 5% chose other candidates.
CAIR says the dramatic shift away from the Democratic Party candidate can be explained in large part by President Biden’s Middle East policy. ”Our final exit poll of American Muslim voters confirms that opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza played a crucial role,” CAIR National Government Affairs Director Robert S. McCaw said, “leading to a sharp drop in support for Vice President Harris compared to the support President Biden received from Muslim voters in 2020, and a sharp rise in support for third party candidate Jill Stein. President-Elect Trump also managed to make in-roads with Muslim voters.”
Aaron is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft and a contributor to the Mises Institute. He received both his undergraduate and masters degrees in international relations from Liberty University.
Top Photo: Green Party presidential nominee attends a rally in Dearborn, Michigan (REUTERS)
The American Enterprise Institute has officially entered the competition for which establishment DC think tank can come up with the most tortured argument for increasing America’s already enormous Pentagon budget.
Its angle — presented in a new report written by Elaine McCusker and Fred "Iraq Surge" Kagan — is that a Russian victory in Ukraine will require over $800 billion in additional dollars for the Defense Department, whose budget is already poised to push past $1 trillion per year.
Before addressing the Ukraine conflict directly, it’s worth looking at the security outcomes of high Pentagon spending during this century. As the Costs of War Project at Brown University has found, the full costs of America’s post-9/11 wars exceed $8 trillion. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people have died, millions have been driven from their homes, thousands of U.S. personnel have died in combat, and hundreds of thousands of vets have suffered physical or psychological injuries. And this huge cost in blood and treasure came in conflicts that not only failed to achieve their original objectives but actually left the target nations less stable and helped create conditions that made it easier for terrorist groups like ISIS to form.
Any call for ratcheting up Pentagon spending needs to reckon with this record of abject failure for a military first, “peace through strength” foreign policy. The new AEI report fails to do so.
As for its central thesis — that a Russian victory in Ukraine will require a sharp upsurge in Pentagon spending — neither part of the argument holds up to scrutiny.
Russia’s performance in Ukraine makes it abundantly clear that Moscow’s armed forces are deeply flawed. They are in a stalemate with a much smaller neighboring country that has parlayed superior morale and an infusion of U.S. and European weaponry into a fighting force that can hold its own against Russia’s much larger military. The only prospect for a Russian victory would be a long war of attrition in which Moscow’s advantages in population and arms production “win” the day.
But even a prolonged war is unlikely to result in total military victory for a Russia, and governing whatever portions of Ukraine it might control will be extremely costly, both economically and in terms of personnel. As a result, even if Moscow were to eventually win a Pyrrhic victory in Ukraine, it would be in no position to take on the 31 member NATO alliance. And it is long past time for our European allies to finally build a coherent military force that can defend its territory without a major U.S. supporting role.
The AEI report is wildly out of touch with current realities, which are tilting towards an approach that would pair continued support for Ukraine’s defensive capabilities with the beginnings of diplomatic track, an approach my colleagues at the Quincy Institute have been advocating since early in the conflict.
We are confronted with an almost mystical belief in official Washington that the first answer to any tough security problem is to increase Pentagon spending and spin out scenarios for addressing a potential war, rather than crafting a strategy in which preventing or ending wars takes precedence.
A cold, hard look at the wars of this century definitively shows that a military first foreign policy is a fool’s errand that does far more harm than good. How long will the American public sit still for this misguided, immensely costly conventional wisdom?
It’s long past time to take a fresh look at America’s military spending and strategy. Unfortunately, the new AEI report does little to reckon with the actual challenges we face.
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Top Image Credit: Diplomacy Watch: US empties more weapons stockpiles for Ukraine ahead of Biden exit
The Biden administration is putting together a final Ukraine aid package — about $500 million in weapons assistance — as announced in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s final meeting with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which coordinates weapons support to Ukraine.
The capabilities in the announcement include small arms and ammunition, communications equipment, AIM-7, RIM-7, and AIM-9M missiles, and F-16 air support.
“We all have a stake in ensuring that autocrats cannot place their imperial ambitions ahead of the bedrock rights of free and sovereign peoples,” Defense Secretary Austin remarked to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group before announcing the aid. “Ukraine is waging a just war of self-defense. And it is one of the great causes of our time.”
The Defense Contact Group was formed by Austin; its future remains unclear as administrations prepare to change hands.
Indeed, incoming President Donald Trump has increasingly critiqued Biden's Ukraine strategy. In a news conference from Mar-a-Lago earlier this week, the president-elect said that the Biden administration’s talk of Ukraine’s possible NATO ascension played a role in Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine.
"A big part of the problem is, Russia — for many, many years, long before Putin — said, 'You could never have NATO involved with Ukraine.' Now, they've said that. That's been, like, written in stone," Trump said.
"And somewhere along the line Biden said, 'No. [Ukraine] should be able to join NATO.' Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that."
Trump’s comments about Russia’s invasion rationale follow other critical remarks regarding war. In particular, Trump recently emphasized there had to be a “deal” on Ukraine, as people are “dying at levels nobody has ever seen.” He had also said in his 2024 Person of the Year Interview With TIME that “the number of people dying [in the Ukraine war is] not sustainable…It’s really an advantage to both sides to get this thing done.”
Trump's pick for Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, meanwhile, has postponed a trip to Ukraine, originally set for early this month, until sometime after Trump’s inauguration. According to Newsweek, reasons for the postponement have not been made public, and a new trip date has yet to be determined.
— Ukraine launched a second Kursk offensive this week, according to ABC News. "We continue to maintain a buffer zone on Russian territory, actively destroying Russian military potential there," Zelensky said about the offensive. Ukraine also hit a Russian air force oil depot in Engles, in Russia’s Saratov territory, hundreds of miles within the country’s borders on Wednesday, where a state of emergency has been declared in response.
— Russia says it’s captured the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove; Ukrainian forces say the city is still being fought over, according to AFP. Russia also bombed Ukrainian city Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday in an attack injuring 100 and killing 13.
— The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared on X that Ukraine could replace Hungary’s role in NATO or the EU “if Hungary chooses to vacate it in favor of membership in the CIS or CSTO.” The Ukrainian MFA’s tongue-in-cheek statement, showcasing growing tensions between Ukraine and Hungary, was made in an X thread accusing Hungary’s leadership of “manipulative statements” about Ukraine’s recent decision to end gas transits from Russia to Europe. Namely, Hungarian FM Péter Szijjártó had threatened to block Ukrainian EU ascension over the gas transit halt, which he said could hurt Europe’s energy security.
"A country that signs an Association Agreement with the EU or aspires to become an EU member must contribute to the EU's energy security by providing transit routes. Therefore, closing gas or oil routes is unacceptable and contradicts the expectations associated with EU integration,” FM Péter Szijjártó said.
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Top Image Credit: Palmer Luckey, Founder of Anduril Defense Industry Disruptor - President Speaker Series (2024) (YouTube/Screenshot)
Venture capital (VC)-backed defense tech companies like Anduril, Palantir, and Scale AI have quickly risen to prominence in the weapons industry, increasingly beating out “Big Five” defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and RTX (formerly Raytheon) for military contracts.
And now directly challenging traditional weapons contractors’ grip over the industry, Anduril and Palantir are forming a consortium with fellow defense tech upstarts including SpaceX, OpenAI, Saronic, and Scale AI to jointly bid for military contracts, according to reporting from the Financial Times.
In a press release announcing the consortium, Anduril and Palantir depicted the effort as a way to deliver key “technological infrastructure” to the government and other partners that would “transform America’s world-leading AI advancements into next-generation military and national security capabilities,” which they present as critical to maintaining America’s military dominance amid increasingly tenuous geopolitical conditions.
But forming a consortium to jointly bid for contracts signals an intention to collude, rather than compete, with one another for funding. When considered in tandem with defense upstarts’ recent spate of blossoming partnerships, the consortium appears poised to further concentrate both lucrative government contracts and political influence in the hands of an emerging class of weapons tech start-ups — and the powerful billionaires behind them.
Defense tech partnerships and power plays abound
The companies reportedly involved in the consortium share key characteristics — they are VC-backed start ups either rooted in defense or, as in OpenAI’s case, increasingly building a profile in the industry.
Indeed, after dropping language barring military applications of its tech on its website early last year, OpenAI brought on a retired former National Security Agency (NSA) director and retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone to its board of directors. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX has also garnered a multitude of military and intelligence contracts worth billions.
On CNBC late last month, former Palantir employee and Empros Capital founder Alex Fishman elucidated upon the Consortium’s propensity to boost Palantir’s role in the weapons industry as a kind of coordinator, while giving other prospective participants a critical edge in their respective endeavors. “I think [the consortium is] an absolutely enormous opportunity…for Palantir, that means being the glue, that means tying it all together, that means coordinating all of these things. Of course, for SpaceX, that means projecting dominance through space, and for Anduril, dominance in the drone arena. And for Open AI, it means bringing the best AI models to bear.”
Initial consortium partnerships may be announced as soon as this month. Meanwhile, Anduril and Palantir are making other critical bids to consolidate forces, including integrating Palantir’s “AI Platform,” or AIP, with Anduril’s “Lattice” autonomous software platform to bolster AI capabilities in the national security realm, according to the same press statement announcing the consortium. Anduril has also launched a “Lattice Partner Program” to integrate its Lattice autonomous operating system into other companies’ operations, including many defense and deep tech startups, including Forterra, Impulse Space, Numerica, Oracle,Saronic, Scale AI, Textron Systems and Valinor — some of which have notably been contacted to join the consortium.
The announcements emphasize that such software integrations foster interoperability critical to sharing information between partners within military contexts, where access to rapidly developing battlefield information can be key to making timely warfighter decisions. What goes unmentioned is how integrating Anduril’s (or any given weapons tech company’s) software into myriad defense tech companies’ systems’ operations may further secure its position as a defense industry staple, thus positioning it for both contracts and industry-wide influence to boot.
Crucially, news of the consortium materializes as the companies it’s to involve are economically rivaling, if not outright surpassing, the very traditional defense contractors the consortium aims to challenge. With a valuation of $350 billion, SpaceX is now the world’s most valuable private company, with Open AI gaining ground with a recent $157 billion valuation. And Palantir’s stock price more than quadrupled last year, further, making it more valuable than both RTX and Lockheed Martin.
The Thiel Connection
Critically, Anduril, Palantir, and other reportedly consortium-involved tech startups, including Scale AI, OpenAI, and SpaceX, are funded by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, especially through his VC firm Founders Fund. The controversial Silicon Valley kingmaker has simultaneously worked to influence policymaking processes via the funding of a number of successful congressional campaigns over the years, including the previous U.S. Senate campaign of now incoming Vice President J.D. Vance.
The consortium announcement coinciding with an incoming Trump administration, meanwhile, is timely given defense tech players’ affinities towards Trump, whose interests, they posit, align with defense tech efforts to allegedly make the industry more cost effective, in contrast with Big Five business models that often ask for hefty contracts up front, complete work slowly, and frequently price-gouge.
“I think Trump is a change candidate…he wants to get more for less,” Anduril head and long-term Trump supporter Palmer Luckey excitedly told CNBC after Trump’s re-election. “I think you can do [defense spending] with less if you do it right…if you select the right companies, you can succeed and spend less.”
But Lockheed Martin Chief Financial Officer Jay Malave posits that the efficiency Luckey supposedly cherishes could actually bolster the DoD budget, thus securing more funds for weapons contractors of all stripes. “With government efficiency, you could see elements of addition by subtraction, so ultimately, you could see a higher budget request than what we've seen from the prior administration.”
Meanwhile, a Defense Department official told Defense One that altogether, he could see growing defense tech partnerships as “a play to shape the next administration’s approach” to procuring and buying defense tech.
Ultimately, circumstances at hand suggest that a Palantir- and Anduril-led defense tech consortium will be bidding for contracts — at the hands of a friendly Trump administration.
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