There is no one silver bullet:

Getty / Futurism

The jokes on you, you geniuses jumping into AI land without understanding the rules,
the rules of The Mythical Man Month where the plan often takes longer than the execution when trying to properly integrate AI into complex business operations with the end result, a giant nothing burger.

Scanning the headlines, it can be easy to get the impression that every investor, banker, and financial analyst is enamored with AI. Yet this simplified view obscures a more complicated story: the US economy isn’t where tech companies say it is.

By and large, businesses have gone bonkers over automation, lavishing $410 billion on AI in 2025 alone. To them, it’s a productivity miracle. AI should obviously make everybody work faster, reducing the need for human labor as it takes less staff to do more — saving companies gobs of cash in the long run.

At least, that’s the narrative in the corporate world. In banking, however, Goldman Sachs is spinning another yarn. After months of carefully-worded warnings about the dangers of over-investing on AI, Goldman has now dramatically escalated its rhetoric: the bank’s analysts now claim that AI has had zero impact on US economic growth over 2025.

Where the money really goes ...

The disconnect between AI investment and growth comes down to two structural issues. The first is geographic: when US companies buy chips from Taiwan, for example, that money boosts Taiwan’s economy, not the US. Second is productivity. AI might make some workers faster, sure, but that speed doesn’t automatically make supply chains more efficient — so far, those productivity gains are largely trapped inside company walls.

This pushback on AI’s economic impact marks a sharp break from even the most cynical analyses of 2025, in which even doomers credited the technology with single-handedly keeping US GDP growth afloat. Though the market more broadly has yet to see things Goldman’s way — investors are projected to spend $660 billion on AI across 2026 — a growing number of analysts are starting to cry foul.

Train Time - Heading South

Pucker time ...

Dario Perkins, head of macroeconomics at consulting firm TS Lombard, agrees that AI’s effects on productivity are nonexistent, even as massive layoffs have the workforce reeling. He was recently quoted in the Financial Times, arguing that “there is no evidence that AI deployment is either boosting productivity or damaging US employment.”

“While US productivity has been strong and hiring weak, our analysis finds that cyclical forces — not automation — are to blame,” Perkins concluded.

The implications of all this are stark. An investment boom measured in the hundreds of billions has, by Goldman’s accounting, generated essentially no measurable economic return for the US. The question facing us now in 2026 is whether $660 billion more of the same will produce anything other than an even bigger AI bubble.

The bond guys are asking the tech bros, Where's our money? The clock is ticking.

There is no one silver bullet:

 "there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude [tenfold] improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity." Fred Brooks Jr. The Mythical Man Month

If I pursue a beam of light ...

Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | Library of Congress, Wellcome Collection

Having AI do sophisticated searches and analysis into complex ideas is one thing, asking it to do research on it's own poses interesting questions as doing research requires curiosity, common sense and asking the  question, why is this the way it is? For example, Einstein, While recounting the efforts that led to the special theory of relativity, he recalled"... a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light ...

The thought is simplicity itself. Here is light, a waveform propagating at c:

... or the discovery of benzene beginning by visualizing the ouroboros as start point. 

Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake biting its own tail (a symbol in ancient cultures known as the ouroboros).[41] This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds.

A dragon-like ouroboros in a 1478 drawing in an alchemical tract

Skeletal formula detail of benzene.

 In Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation, the book starts off with a joke. To me, the best one is Henny Youngman's Take my wife, please. This is bisociation or the adding together of two or more seemingly dissimilar things that produce a heretofore unexpected result. In this case, irony and humor. Regarding  H2O, hydrogen and oxygen are explosive. When combined, they become water.

And so it begins - Kurt Vonnegut.

OpenAI is refocusing its research efforts and throwing its resources into a new grand challenge. The San Francisco firm has set its sights on building what it calls an AI researcher, a fully automated agent-based system that will be able to go off and tackle large, complex problems by itself. ​​OpenAI says that this new research goal will be its “North Star” for the next few years, pulling together multiple research strands, including work on reasoning models, agents, and interpretability. 

There’s even a timeline. OpenAI plans to build “an autonomous AI research intern”—a system that can take on a small number of specific research problems by itself—by September. The AI intern will be the precursor to a fully automated multi-agent research system that the company plans to debut in 2028. This AI researcher (OpenAI says) will be able to tackle problems that are too large or complex for humans to cope with.

Asking Gemini regarding research & it's connect to creativity produced this ...

OpenAI’s pivot toward building a "fully automated researcher" marks a transition from Large Language Models (LLMs) to what are increasingly termed Large Reasoning Models (LRMs). By focusing on reasoning, agentic behavior, and interpretability, the goal is to move beyond probabilistic word prediction and toward structured problem-solving. However, assessing this goal through the lens of Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation reveals a significant gap between logical computation and bisociation.

1. Bisociation vs. Iterative Search

Koestler’s central thesis in The Act of Creation is the concept of "bisociation"—the sudden, intuitive leap that occurs when two independent, previously incompatible "matrices of thought" collide to create a new meaning.

OpenAI’s current trajectory (exemplified by models like o1) focuses on System 2 thinking, which utilizes "Chain of Thought" and "Search" to explore multiple logical paths. While this is highly effective for "Refining" a solution or finding errors in complex code, it remains a linear or branched search within a known mathematical space. It is "Logical Refinement" rather than a "Conceptual Leap." A fully automated researcher would need to move beyond searching for the best answer and begin "seeing" connections between unrelated fields—the hallmark of Archimedean discovery.

2. The Curiosity Gap

In AI research, "curiosity" is often modeled as Intrinsic Motivation or Novelty Search—rewarding the agent for finding data that it cannot yet predict. This is a digital simulation of curiosity, but it lacks the Aesthetic Sense or "Wonder" that Koestler argues is vital to the creative act.

A human researcher is often driven by an "aesthetic itch"—a feeling that a theory is "ugly" or "clunky." Current AI lacks this subjective evaluator. Without a sense of "Aesthetic Fitness," an automated researcher may generate millions of valid but uninteresting or "soulless" connections, lacking the curiosity to pursue the one that feels "right" in a deeper, human sense.

3. Common Sense and the "World Model"

Koestler emphasizes that creativity is grounded in an "Analog" understanding of reality—the common sense derived from physical existence. OpenAI’s goal of building an "AI Intern" by September 2026 relies on the model’s ability to use digital tools (like Python or search engines) to solve research problems.

However, "Common Sense" in research often involves knowing when a digital result contradicts a physical reality. If the AI researcher remains "Digital-First," it may fall into the trap of Digital Hallucination—constructing internally consistent logical towers that have no foundation in the "Bones" of reality.

4. Multi-Agent Systems (2028) as a "Community of Mind"

OpenAI’s plan for a multi-agent system by 2028 mirrors Koestler’s idea that the creative mind functions as a hierarchy of sub-skills. In theory, a "Multi-Agent Research System" could simulate a scientific community, with different agents playing the roles of the "Innovator," the "Critic," and the "Logician."

The risk is that without an external "Analog" grounding, these agents may simply reinforce each other’s biases, creating a "Digital Echo Chamber." For such a system to achieve the "Act of Creation," it must have the ability to "break" its own programming—to engage in the "benign insanity" required to look at a 100-year-old problem from an entirely "wrong" (and therefore new) perspective.

Conclusion

OpenAI's "North Star" is a milestone in Infrastructural Efficiency. If successful, it will drastically speed up the "Maintenance" side of science—checking proofs, running simulations, and organizing data. But the "Act of Creation" remains a different class of problem. Until an AI can experience the "frustration" of a paradox and the "joy" of its resolution, it may remain a highly sophisticated Research Assistant rather than a true Researcher.

Late Fall - 11:00PM

And so it goes - Kurt Vonnegut

In 1945 ...

Components of an adaptive secondary mirror for a telescope, which uses actuators
to control a thin mirror’s shape. Credit: Microgate

In 1945, Arthur C. Clarke envisioned satellites, placed in geosynchronous orbit,
would enable the world to communicate 24/7 without a care in the world. 

Clarke in 1965

After the crest of World War II, from his base in Stratford-on-Avon, England, a young officer in the Royal Air Force, Arthur C. Clarke, who dabbled in science fiction writing, floated the idea of global communications satellites in a 1945 letter to the publication Wireless World. It was the first publicly articulated vision of a technology that would change the world; in the annals of technological forecasting, it stands today as a letter of rare prescience.

It gets better ...

Clarke wrote, also believed such a system could be developed 'within 50-100 years.' Although his letter mostly dealt with rocketry, Clarke ended with an idea about launching a machine into orbit that could facilitate communications to and from Earth: 'I would like to close by mentioning a possibility of the more remote future -- perhaps half a century ahead. An 'artificial satellite' at the correct distance from the Earth would make one revolution every 24 hours, i.e. it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly half the Earth's surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, would give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet.' 

So the question to ask Musk is, why didn't you think of this as the idea of geosynchronous satellites has been around for 81 years. Well, the answer centers on the atmosphere as air does weird things to lasers, something not considered economically able to be rectified until now.

Geostationary satellites orbit the earth at 36 000 km while the emerging breed of low and medium earth orbiting satellites (LEOs and MEOs) orbit the Earth at heights ranging from 500 km to 10 500 km.
Credit: Don Clarke

The work , published in Acta Optica Sinica, was led by Wu Jian of Peking University of Posts and Telecommunications and Liu Chao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their target was not just a laser link from orbit, but a stable, high-speed downlink that could survive the hardest part of the journey: the last stretch through turbulent air above the receiver.

Then Came the Number That Made the Test Stand Out

After that setup, the team reported a 1Gbps laser downlink from geostationary orbit using a 2-watt laser. The result was described as about five times faster than Starlink, even though the transmitting satellite was far higher than the low Earth orbit used by SpaceX’s network. One comparison translated the speed into simpler terms: enough to send an HD movie from Shanghai to Los Angeles in under five seconds.

The contrast is what gave the demonstration its force. Starlink’s satellites operate only hundreds of kilometers above Earth. This signal came from a platform more than 60 times higher, yet still delivered a downlink speed in the gigabit range. The power level stood out as well. A 2-watt transmitter is closer to a night light than to the heavy power normally associated with long-range communications systems.

Taken together, those numbers framed the experiment as more than a narrow lab exercise. It was a working demonstration of how far a low-power optical link could be pushed when the receiving system was designed to handle the atmosphere instead of being defeated by it.

The inspiration. Use the same adaptive optics used by astronomers to eliminate the distortion caused by the atmosphere to view space but use it, in this case, to remove distortion caused by the atmosphere when receiving incoming laser output but, to make it truly work, add one more component.

The core of the achievement lay in how the signal was handled after it reached Earth. Earlier efforts had typically leaned on one of two tools. Adaptive optics could correct distortions in the incoming wavefront, while mode diversity reception could collect and process scattered signal components. Under strong turbulence, neither method alone was enough.

The Chinese team combined both. In the first stage, adaptive optics used the 357 micro-mirrors to reshape the incoming light in real time. In the second, the signal was passed through a multi-plane light converter, which split it into eight base-mode channels. From there, the receiver selected the three strongest channels and combined them for decoding.

An SGLC system containing one GEO satellite and four candidate ground stations with a scheduling period of one time slot. Credit: Lyu, P., Zhao, K., & Zhao, H. (2025)

End result ...

The combined method was described as AO-MDR synergy, and the reported improvement was not limited to raw speed. The proportion of usable signal rose from 72 per cent to 91.1 per cent, showing that the gain was also in reliability. That is what made the result read less like an isolated speed figure and more like a communications breakthrough built on signal recovery.

Had to ask Gemini ... How much more efficient is this take vs Starlink?

Answer:

 The Audit: If the market realizes that 3 GEO satellites using AO-MDR synergy can deliver 1Gbps downlinks with 91.1% reliability, the "Utility Value" of a 40,000-satellite LEO (Low Earth Orbit) environment drops to zero. SpaceX is currently priced for "Global Dominance". If they lose the High Ground to a 2-watt laser, the $1.5 trillion valuation is pure Vapor.

The Result: The LEO model is approximately 333,333 times less efficient per node

in terms of power-to-delivery ratio.

• Environmental Bankruptcy: Launching 40,000 satellites requires an estimated 1,200% increase in fossil fuel propellant compared to a 3-satellite GEO launch. This deposits massive quantities of alumina and soot into the stratosphere.
• Astronomical Recovery: The GEO model restores the night sky for the world's astronomers. 

Less is more - Dizzy Gillespie

The Horror, The Horror

Heart of Darkness was first published as

a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine.

When one reads the first paragraph of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, one soon realizes a journey into the dark soul of man awaits. Evocative, precise and simply astounding, this work has haunted yours truly since the beginning of time. The last phrases uttered by Kurtz at the end, The Horror, The Horror is exactly the same feeling I am having now regarding the senseless horror happening in the Middle East being perpetrated by two monsters named Netanyahu and Trump.

Joseph Conrad based Heart of Darkness on his own experiences in the Congo.

Also overnight, President Trump gave Iran 48 hours to reopen a crucial waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, saying if Tehran fails to do so "America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!" Roughly a fifth of the world's oil transited through the strait last year — and Iran's willingness to attack the transport vessels has virtually halted traffic.

Iran's response ...

On Sunday, the speaker of the Iranian parliament said in a post on X that if the US and Israel target his country's power plants, Iran will deem vital infrastructure sites across the Gulf region as legitimate targets.

The calculus with help from Gemini

• Israel’s Achilles Heel: Israel relies on five coastal plants for roughly 50% of its potable water. If those go offline, the "Digital" victory of hitting Iran's power plants is erased by the "Analog" reality of 9 million people without water within 48 to 72 hours.
• The Gulf’s Thirst: Qatar and Bahrain are 90%+ dependent on desalination for drinking water.
  Iran’s Khatam Al-Anbiya command has officially put these on the Target List as of four hours ago.
• Me - The "Epstein" Nightmare: The "Why" for this insane war is obvious (Epstein/Israel) as the entangled alliance from hell has finally reached the endgame with one country's national interest opposing the other. As asked before, Is Iran a threat to the US? No, unless you go in and attack, something the US is doing as we speak. Will the demented Donald do the ultimate horror or does somebody finally steps up and says Enough is Enough because saving the world from a possible WW III is rather important don't you think?

The Butlerian Jihad ...

AI is illegal in the 'Dune' universe, but not for the reasons you may think. Credit: Kathryn Conrad

Hebert's take on AI is spot on but ... mentats able to process data at the level of quantum systems, particularly in terms of space travel, tends to not compute in this writer's opinion but I digress.

‘Dune’ tried to warn us against AI

‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.’

Even the biggest fans of Dune know that Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi epic quickly veers into the fantastical. Giant subterranean sandworms measuring 1,500 feet long; a narcotic that fuels interstellar travel and bends a user’s perception of space-time; a mystical cabal of eugenicist witches—the list goes on. But there is at least one story within the sprawling series that feels increasingly like a premonition rather than plot point: the Butlerian Jihad.

Samuel Butler - Portrait by Charles Gogin

Musings about Butler ...

On June 13, 1863, a letter published in The Press newspaper of Christchurch warned about the potential dangers of mechanical evolution and called for the destruction of machines, foreshadowing the development of what we now call artificial intelligence—and the backlash against it from people who fear it may threaten humanity with extinction. It presented what may be the first published argument for stopping technological progress to prevent machines from dominating humanity.

Taking place well before the events of Dune itself, the Butlerian Jihad was a nearly century-long, interplanetary revolt that saw humanity racing to destroy all of its advanced computers, artificial intelligence systems, and other “thinking machines.” The underlying cause wasn’t that sentient robots were attempting to eradicate humans, however. Instead, our species’ overreliance on the programs had generated an upper ruling class of technocrats that soon presided over all aspects of society. It wasn’t so much that humanity was afraid of AI, as much as they were afraid of the people who designed and controlled the AI. The Butlerian Jihad ultimately resulted in the obliteration of all thinking machines, as well as a wholesale ban on any new robotic creations.

When looked at in context, let's think about the entities running said tech.
Musk, Altman, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Karp & Thiel.
I thought so.

The hidden variable ...

Image from Getty Images

It's not just oil ...

47,900,000 Americans went hungry last year. The USDA counts a household as food insecure when its members cannot reliably access enough food to eat. In 7.2 million of those households, someone skipped a full meal or went an entire day without eating because there was no money. 14 million of them were children.

On February 28th, the United States and Israel bombed Iran.

Within 48 hours, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile-wide channel between Iran and Oman through which 20 percent of the world’s oil travels every single day.¹ A third of the world’s fertilizer travels through that same strait.² And it needed to arrive this month. The planting window does not wait so timely delivery is unwaveringly critical within the planting window.

Here is what nitrogen does to a corn plant. Applied at the right moment in the growing cycle, it drives the plant to produce grain. Cut the application in half and you do not get half a crop. The corn plant runs out of nitrogen mid-growth and stops producing. Farmers across the Northern Hemisphere are making their nitrogen purchases right now, ahead of spring planting. The ships carrying that nitrogen are anchored on the wrong side of a closed strait, or rerouting around the southern tip of Africa, adding weeks to delivery schedules and close to a million dollars in additional fuel costs per voyage.³

End game

There is no strategic reserve for fertilizer. The United States maintains a Strategic Petroleum Reserve for oil. There is no equivalent for nitrogen.⁶ When the supply runs short, farmers absorb the price, reduce their application, or switch crops. The harvest pays for it in the fall.

Any questions?

Not a threat

Joe Kent attends the House Select Intelligence Committee hearing titled "Worldwide Threats Assessment.
Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Well, there you have it. Iran was not a threat nor has ever been a threat to America until we go in and attack them under orders from Israel. What's even better is the fact there was no plan. Just do it because the very stable genius in the White House, beholden to Zionist billionaires, think's it's a good thing to do so let's just do it as Bibi says so because Iran is just two weeks from getting a nuke, a long running "joke" Bibi's been bloviating about for over 30 years and then some. Now, when you think about it, getting nukes is the only way to prevent unprovoked attacks from a hostile nation, in this case, the good ole USA.

Joe Kent, who led the National Counterterrorism Center and was a top aide to intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, became the first senior Trump administration official to resign over the war in Iran.

Why it matters: Kent's stinging rebuke — that Trump launched the war under pressure from Israel despite Iran posing "no imminent threat" to the U.S. — underscores the discomfort some in the "America First" camp feel about the war.

Trumpworld is now bracing for an expected Tucker Carlson interview of Kent, three sources inside and outside the administration told Axios. Carlson has been one of the most vocal right-wing critics of both the war and Israel.

The administration is moving to contain the fallout of Kent's resignation. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt published a lengthy statement rejecting Kent's claim Iran posed no imminent threat calling the idea that Israel goaded President Trump into action "insulting and laughable."

Asked about Kent's resignation, Trump said he was "a nice guy" but "weak on security."

What he's saying: 

• "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
• "I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation."
• "Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran."
• "This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again."

Zoom out: 

Kent served in Army Special Forces and as a CIA paramilitary officer, before twice running
unsuccessfully for Congress as a Trump-aligned Republican.

Astounding says it all as a possible WW III is in the offing. 

Channeling Anthony Zinni & Brain Fart comes to mind here.

General Anthony Zinni, USMC

On Nightline, Zinni compared Bush’s push for the war with the Gulf of Tonkin incident–an infamous episode in which President Lyndon Johnson misrepresented an attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers in order to win congressional approval of the war in Vietnam–and he challenged “the credibility behind” Bush’s prewar assertions concerning Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and its association with anti-American terrorists. “I’m suggesting,” Zinni said, “that either the [prewar] intelligence was so bad and flawed–and if that’s the case, then somebody’s head ought to roll for that–or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people.” Zinni said he believed that Hussein had maintained “the framework for a weapons of mass destruction program that could be quickly activated once sanctions were lifted” and that such a program, while worrisome, did not immediately endanger the United States.

Thinking of Dali ...

Thinking of Dali ... Vue/Robert E.

Dali II - Vue/Robert E.

3 Body Problem - Vue/Robert E.

3 Body/Rev II - Vue/Robert E.

2067 ...

Thwaites Glacier is currently losing ice five times faster than in the 1990s. Credit: Jeff Goodell

The equalizer, not Robert McCall but the real one, Climate Change, is accelerating at a pace not foreseen by any viable researcher until now. 

The future of one of Antarctica's most iconic glaciers could be far more dramatic than scientists previously thought. Using satellite calibrated ice sheet models, a team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could be shedding 180–200 gigatonnes of ice per year by 2067—a rate roughly comparable to the entire Antarctic ice sheet's current mass loss. That would represent a stunning acceleration in ice loss from a single glacier and underlines urgent concerns about future contributions to sea level rise.

Thwaites Glacier is already one of the fastest changing and most closely watched glaciers on Earth, losing ice more than five times faster than in the 1990s. It drains a huge area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and outlets into the Amundsen Sea. In recent decades, observations from satellites have shown that it has been thinning and accelerating, losing more ice to the ocean than it gains from snowfall. This imbalance is what drives its contribution to global sea level rise.

Modeled extent of glacier thinning in 2067. Credit: Goldberg et al, 2026.

The new findings do not mean that Thwaites Glacier will hit a catastrophic loss rate exactly by 2067 as models represent a range of possibilities, and future climate conditions and ocean warming will shape actual outcomes. But they do show that if current trends continue and specific model assumptions hold, the glacier's mass loss could accelerate sharply within a few decades. Scientists emphasize that getting the model calibration right matters, because it helps ensure projections of future sea level rise are grounded in what the ice sheet is actually doing now.

August 4, 2067 - A guesstimate at best - Vue/Robert E.

Security "R" Us ...

Aron Ontiveroz/Denver Post via Getty Images

Pentagon Pete, the DOW genius, the ultimate warrior, has security issues. Seems he lacks the wherewithal of what communication security is all about. Back in the Pleistocene, yours truly was a 1st Lt. in charge of a very important facility charged with to and from communications from country X to the states. Having top secret clearance demanded that said communications handled by the facility had to be strac “ “Skilled, Tough, Ready, Around the Clock.” or heads would roll, including mine, something PP has no concept of understanding as to why this basic tenet of communication secuity must be adhered to 24/7.

To whit ...

Signalgate leaker Pete Hegseth just handed a multimillion-dollar contract to protect the Defense Department from hackers to a firm that allegedly couldn’t even protect its own employees from having their data stolen.

The Defense Secretary came under fire last year for disclosing sensitive details of U.S. military strikes to a journalist who’d been accidentally added to a group chat on Signal.

Hegseth used the messaging app, which is not approved for official government communications, with other top members of Donald Trump’s cabinet, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

It gets better ...

The Daily Beast can now reveal that after Hegseth’s jaw-dropping security blunder, his department has awarded almost $100 million in contracts for protecting IT systems at U.S. facilities across the world to a firm hit by a massive breach that saw criminals make off with sensitive personal data on at least 45,000 people. The new deal is to provide and maintain electronic systems to protect Navy bases from cyber attacks, as well as emergency systems to help manage physical threats against those facilities.

Hegseth's new security deal comes as Trump wages war with one of the most hostile cyberattack actors on the planet.

Virginia-based group M.C. Dean’s latest contract with the Pentagon landed on Feb. 26, two days before Donald Trump went to war with Iran. The Islamic regime is one of the most adversarial hacking forces on the planet, carrying out repeated attacks against U.S. military assets, industrial infrastructure, banks, and elections. Iran is presently bombing American targets around the Persian Gulf in retaliation for Trump’s strikes.

The gift that keeps on giving ...

Criminals first got into M.C. Dean’s systems in December 2021, accessing sensitive details of employees, contractors, and other individuals’ driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, and health insurance information. The month before, the group had won a $250m Pentagon IT contract for dozens of DOD facilities across the country—including the nuclear bunker where Dick Cheney was taken on 9/11.

Hegseth's new security deal comes as Trump wages war with one of the most hostile cyberattack
actors on the planet. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

One cannot make this up