The tariff war means we’re dealing with this now instead of waiting until we’re actually in the middle of a war to restart domestic manufacturing of the stuff.
[ZeroHedge] The United States would deplete its munitions stockpile if it entered into genetic warfare against a global superpower, Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens warns.
Stephens, who co-founded of the cutting-edge defense startup alongside Palmer Luckey, dropped the chilling warning on Auren Hoffman’s World of DaaS podcast.
“The reality is, if we got into a hot conflict with a great power, we would run out of munitions in a week,” Stephens told Hoffman. “We’ve built these capabilities that are incredibly exquisite, incredibly custom, with really complicated supply chains.”
Stephens, who is also a partner at Peter Thiel’s venture capital fund Founders Fund, pointed out that the U.S. is struggling to supply Saudi Arabia with enough Patriot missiles to counter daily Houthi attacks, leaving the the Middle East Kingdom to seek out additional inventories from other nations due to limited availability.
“What that means is, our partner nations, like Saudi Arabia, for example, which is fighting this ongoing conflict with the Houthis—they’ve got stuff being shot into their sovereign territory, creating havoc on a daily basis,” Stephens explained. “We cannot sell them enough Patriot missiles. They literally have to go to other partner nations and try to buy their inventory of Patriot missiles”
Stephens also highlighted that in cases like Ukraine, the U.S. is rapidly depleting both its own and available inventories of military capabilities to support the war effort, with limited resupply options, as manufacturers resort to calling retirees back to rebuild assembly lines.
“Then you see situations like Ukraine, where we deplete not only the available inventory but also our own inventory of the capabilities we’re sending to support the war effort, with no ability to actually resupply,” the technology executive said. “The Primes are literally calling people out of retirement to rebuild assembly lines to make some of these capabilities.”
The AP reported back in November 2024:
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are eating away at critical U.S. weapons stockpiles and could hamper the military’s ability to respond to China should a conflict arise in the Indo-Pacific, the top U.S. commander for that region said Tuesday. Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo cautioned Tuesday that the U.S. providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel is now impeding his ability to respond in the Indo-Pacific, such as if China invades Taiwan.
“It’s now eating into stocks, and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” Paparo told the Brookings Institution last year.
Stephens’ stark warning echoes a recent interview with Luckey, who stressed that rebuilding the U.S. manufacturing base is not only feasible but critical to counter rising global volatility.
“If we can't make the things that we need to maintain our quality of life, then we are actually just subservient to our adversaries,” Luckey, who leads Anduril as CEO, told legendary music producer Rick Rubin on his Tetragrammaton podcast.
“Is there a possibility that over time America could get back its manufacturing base? Absolutely,” Luckey told Rubin. “The problem that we did, I mean there's a million problems, but what we did is hollowed out our country by allowing China into the World Trade Organization and allowing American companies to outsource manufacturing to China without penalty, without import tariffs, without any reason to not do it.”
“Why wouldn't you, if you're allowed to just send it to another country where everything's cheap, where it's dirt cheap and there's no environmental regulations and no labor laws, why wouldn't you do that? And we've been able to get a bunch of cheap shit over the last 50 years as a result,” the startup billionaire added. “That has helped the United States. Everyone's able to buy cheap TVs and cheap cars and cheap stuff because of China's rise. The flip side of that is that there's no more manufacturing in the United States.”
[VANGUARDNGR] Senior Special Assistant on Public Enlightenment to the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress APC, Chief Oliver Okpala has fired back at a former chieftain of the party, Engr. Buba Galadima, describing him as a paperweight, incapable of influencing any real electoral victory.
Galadima had in a recent interview reportedly claimed that the National Chairman of APC, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has no electoral value, but Okpala said the former APC chieftain ''is a failed, rejected and frustrated politician without any base in Nigeria''.
''His past political record of mercantilism, political duplicity and incompetence clearly shows he has no space of existence in the current political landscape in the country'', he added.
Okpala wondered how Galadima could say that a man who has been a two-time Governor of a state like Kano and at present, chairman of the APC, lacks electoral value.
''His statement clearly portrays him as a mischievous personality, politically.
''We know galadima's garrulous and weightless antecedents and we are not surprised by this his baseless claims.
''He was a well known member of the Buhari Organization but always preferred to take skewed positions, that made all attempts of the organization to win elections futile. Is that the kind of person who would determine who has electoral value?
''Ganduje is a well known, tested and trusted, results-oriented technocrat and politician of high repute, who successfully led Kano for two uninterrupted terms.
''He is a man with infallible proof of performance across Kano and beyond. His developmental projects are still littered across Kano state, a testament to his unbroken connection with the people.
''Ganduje is a grassroots politician with results to show. Where are Galadima's results? He is a barren, outdated politician who has outlived his usefulness.
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04/25/2025 00:00 ||
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[Meduza] ‘A raging meat grinder’ How a riot in Krasnodar highlights the Russian army’s desertion problem.
In Krasnodar, Russia, around one hundred soldiers detained on suspicion of desertion staged a riot in a bold escape attempt last week. Seven managed to break free — four were quickly recaptured, and three remain at large. RFE/RL’s Kavkaz.Realii looked into what sparked this mass attempt to flee and what it reveals about how the Russian army treats deserters. Meduza shares an abridged translation of the outlet’s reporting.
On the night of April 18-19, around 100 soldiers accused of desertion broke through a perimeter fence at the Krasnodar garrison commandant’s office in an attempt to escape. Police quickly placed the area under heightened security, blocking traffic and conducting vehicle searches.
Seven soldiers managed to escape, according to the Telegram channel Baza. Four were captured shortly afterward, while the remaining three are still at large.
Almost immediately after news of the escape attempt broke, activists from the Kuban Anti-War Committee said that law enforcement had been contacting local Telegram channel administrators, asking them to “keep quiet.” Official bodies, including the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and local authorities, haven’t commented on the situation. The Russian propaganda outlet RT reported that police were “looking into things.”
The escape attempt was driven by conditions of detention, according to the wife of one soldier held there and a lawyer representing two others. They told the Telegram channel Astra that dozens of soldiers had been living in tents for months, including during the winter. “They’re all drinking there; my husband was beaten three weeks ago, he was covered in bruises. I demanded that the injuries be documented [but there was] no investigation,” one source told Astra. “Some of those being held are category D [unfit for military service], some are missing an eye, some are missing limbs.”
A lawyer who spoke to Astra on condition of anonymity confirmed that some detainees had been held in the camp for more six months. “They live in tents outside. They’re given food. There’s an outdoor toilet, a shower. They’re behind a wire fence. They don’t leave the area, there’s morning [and] evening roll call. That’s it. More than a hundred people, and they do nothing,” the lawyer said.
The Kuban Anti-War Committee confirmed to Kavkaz.Realii that they had previously received reports about the deserters being held in Krasnodar, but their exact location was previously unknown. The Committee also highlighted that forced returns to the front lines, including through detention, have become widespread in the region.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] "There was a cemetery in those fir trees. We went in there, there was a grave from the 70s, and next to it were soldiers' boots sticking out of the ground," Zhora points out the sights to the rumble and clank of a well-worn caterpillar tractor.
He himself got into the search at the call of his heart - his own grandfather died not far from here. He came to meet the searchers who work in the Smolensk region, and stayed. He says he got attached, found "his" people, he only regrets that it didn't happen earlier.
And protruding boots are a common sight in these parts, Red Army soldiers who died in the battles of the summer and autumn of 1941 are lying everywhere. They were used for plowing and sowing, for building houses, their bones were thrown into village trash bins, soldiers are lying in the same places where they repaired equipment - at motor and tractor stations.
The settlement has long since disappeared, an open field. But the metal detector and probe clearly show - here are bricks from some building, here are all sorts of plows and gears, and next to it is a pit with those who "gave their lives so that we could live."
The pathos of newspaper editorials and official speeches was always far from the reality, in which there was simply no one to bury the dead - after the war, only women and teenagers remained, surviving with great difficulty.
They earned their workdays by filling trenches and cells for the daily chores of the collective farm while all the men were at the front, and then those who remained alive served out their service. They plowed the land with themselves and the few cattle. There was no one to drag the rotting corpses and there was no reason. And then it somehow became boring, forgotten, there was no time: the plan had to be fulfilled.
Perhaps the villages and farmsteads disappeared without a trace, unable to withstand the freedom that fell upon them after the collapse of the Union, and for that reason too. Because of the injustice towards their soldiers, patiently waiting to be pulled out of the swamp and buried humanely, year after year, decade after decade.
Since there was no time, no desire, no impulse of conscience, someone from above decided that there was no point in fighters being neighbors with such people. That is how the current Great Wasteland came to be, where here and there lie the named and the nameless, "in anatomical order" and beaten by shrapnel, absorbed by the swamp until completely dissolved, torn apart by animals and plows.
Those who died in the offensive battles of the Battle of Smolensk in an attempt to prevent a breakthrough of German troops in the Moscow direction.
And we are shaking on the "armor" through the Smolensk jungle, periodically diving into tasty mud baths to eliminate this injustice. The search team "Height named after Dmitry Syachin" has been working in this area for a very long time, but there is no end in sight. Therefore, on the site of one of the disappeared villages, a base camp appeared with a huge structure for cooking and eating, a bathhouse and other amenities.
For work and equipment.
There is nothing better than a caterpillar here, this has been proven in practice.
The only thing is that you can only ride it from above, where branches with cheerful green foliage are constantly trying to blow you down to the sinful earth. From the last populated area to the place - seven kilometers, for each new party of searchers you have to run either on this very GTS or on the legendary "Karakat", assembled like Frankenstein's monster, from a variety of cars.
Its owner is also a legendary figure - Uncle Vova is a local, a villager, he has been digging practically since infancy and periodically pokes into space with his hand with stubs of fingers, cut off by a circular saw. There, all the ditches were filled with German boxes, here they found a machine gun, and here everything was strewn with mines.
“I defused thousands of them, whatever you want,” he boasts, recalling his youth, when “three-monthers” were sent to demining, young guys who had been voluntarily and forcibly trained in sapper courses.
But Uncle Vova is self-taught, and apart from two fingers on his other hand, torn off by a detonator, he has no losses. Searching is his passion. While his health allowed, he could even wander through the forest for three days in winter, taking an hour's nap by the fire. Like all post-war children, he grew up in the midst of a war that had stuffed the earth with iron and people.
Many people here collected weapons, poached, and stunned fish with TNT. But few were interested in Soviet soldiers. But Uncle Vova (who insists on keeping things simple and calling him simply "Nikolaich") is priceless in this regard.
"Karakat" on huge tractor wheels is completely autonomous, you can sleep in it and there is a stove. Therefore, at any time of the year, with the same passion, a man of many talents and an interesting biography breaks through overgrown roads, cuts down fallen trees, explores new places, with a simple device finds the first fighters, around whom others are sure to be found.
On this basis, Uncle Vova laughingly scolds the city dwellers who come: "I woke up early, cleared my throat, went and dug. I come back - they're asleep. I went again in the other direction and dug. I come back - they're asleep again."
But we honestly get up no later than eight. You can't lie there any longer anyway, the whole forest starts ringing with bird voices with the first rays of the sun, bumblebees hum loudly above the tent and a fresh wind rises, flapping the awning like a sail.
Even though it's Easter and you can't work, it's not considered a sin to look for fighters. So we head out to a well-known place not far from the camp. The squad leader Ilya Podkolzin is racing through the jungle like the swift-footed elf Legolas, Uncle Zhora is stomping behind him, cursing, and I'm already dragging myself behind him, shuffling heavily in my unfamiliar rubber boots.
You can't do without boots here, as well as without tracked vehicles, water stands everywhere after fresh April snowfalls. And in the deep ravine where Ilya leads us, there is a real quagmire of healing black mud, in which you can go knee-deep.
"The events here took place in August 1941. One of the regiments of the 251st Rifle Division was advancing here. The fighters were seeping through the ravines and then heading for a German stronghold located on the hill slightly to the right. Another stronghold was behind the village of Pochinok-Vtoroy. And the Germans took these fortifications for a long time and bloodily, " the commander shows what is here and how. " In practice, the fuss here probably lasted for about a month until they drove ours out of here. We have already raised more than a hundred fighters here on these lines."
The high-rise building in the wilds is not visible, only when you pass it with your feet, it is clear that you are descending. And the Red Army soldiers, under the deadly fire of enemy artillery and mortars, tried to hide in this very ravine, cut by forest streams.
It turned out to be a natural "trench", along the upper edge of which shallow trenches are visible here and there, but all empty. The old excavations are all right along the riverbed, and after wandering through the forest, we still return to this place, poking probes into any holes and just into the ground.
This technology usually means that the fighters have a minimum of metal, and a metal rod with a “bullet” and a cross handle is a classic search tool.
An experienced hand and a trained ear will immediately determine what is knocking - a bone, a piece of iron, wood, metal. Although Zhora immediately tells with sadistic pleasure the story of how the whole team uprooted a century-old spruce, under which there were "absolutely correct" knocks, but it turned out to be a stone and a rotten root.
But this time everything worked out as it should.
While we were wandering along the tributary of the stream, Ilya, who had run off to check the rifle pits somewhere to the side, returned and "snitched" the soldier right at the entrance to our ravine. About forty centimeters of semi-liquid mud, then clay - and there he is. He is lying on his back, his legs folded in a strange way, his head is broken, his femur at the joint has cracked into three parts. Right there, the deadly fragment is brazenly turning red, standing out against the black background - the bastard who took the soldier's life. Deeper into the ground.
The soldier's belongings include a trouser belt, a brand new, unsmoked mess tin under his back, and tarpaulin boots.
The boot tops were amazingly preserved in the swamp, which is a rare case for tarpaulin. The swamp is generally an excellent preservative, any experienced searcher will recall cases when brains or hair were preserved in the remains, here it is appropriate to click your tongue with respect and shake your head.
But there was no medallion or anything signed.
The most interesting thing here is the archaeological clearing. On one side is a slope that you have to bite into to have a place to sit down, on the other is a stream that is trying to add water to the excavation, and as an honorary prize - tons of high-quality sticky mud that does not want to part with the shovel. Then you crawl along it to the banner on which the remains are laid out - in such soil it is easy to lose something without noticing.
And that's how it turned out.
As we trudged back to the camp, having fairly divided the load, I suddenly discovered something hard in my boot. It rolled back and forth, alternately pressing on my heel and then my foot, and just wouldn’t find its place. I had to pull off the rubber to discover to my surprise… the phalanx of my little finger inside. Apparently it had stuck to my gloves and fallen out of the boot.
Have you ever had a human finger rub your foot? Well, I have another one added to my collection of scary stories.
Although a person gets used to everything, and the constant proximity to death eventually ceases to cling. The soldiers who died 84 years ago are practically as alive as the men who are noisily smoking nearby, you don’t expect any threat from them, just as you don’t expect it from your comrades. You can also talk to them, they are the most grateful listeners. And then they are often remembered in conversations around the campfire: “Do you remember that one from the ravine? The one with the glass flask.”
We have an even relationship: you came to help them return from the war as brothers and don't expect any favors in return. Moreover, they have already done their part in full, and we owe them this. And when you are dying from the heat or screaming obscenities, waving off fat horseflies that mercilessly gnaw every living creature, or rolling around up to your ears in mud somewhere - there is always an understanding that it was much harder for them.
That generation had to endure sufferings that were beyond our capacity. Even this torment after death, when soldiers lie unburied for decades, like a heavy seal. Who else is so patient with God?
Perhaps the search movement was inspired by our Lord. He chooses among people those who have a living conscience and directs them to where restless warriors are waiting. An ordinary person sees a forest or a field before him, but the one who is led by an invisible hand sees sinkholes in the ground, sagging trenches, a rotted cartridge case, pulled off the parapet by a plough.
For some reason he is drawn to poke the probe exactly where the bone will knock familiarly or a characteristic depression will appear. And the heart will jump as if for the first time: "There is a fighter!"
And if you're lucky, you're supposed to shout at the top of your lungs: "A medallion!" So that everyone runs to look at the black pencil case or some ampoule with a piece of paper inside, to rejoice, to hope that they'll be able to read it. Although we've seen this many times.
Every spring, people in military gear and rubber boots flock to the Great Wasteland to dig into the ground again and again, digging up soldiers' bones and names. So that injustice can at least be eradicated. And it doesn't matter how many years have passed - the main thing is that everyone is found.
[Oneindia] The brutal terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, where 26 innocent people - mostly tourists - were bumped off by Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...> 's proxy, The Resistance® Front (TRF), is not an isolated tragedy. It is a chilling reminder of a long history of Islamist terrorism in the Kashmir ...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there.... Valley, rooted in a hate-fuelled ideology that sees Hindus, and anyone who doesn't conform, as expendable. The attackers didn't want money. They didn't make demands. They came only to kill, with surgical hate, chanting the same slogans that once echoed through the Valley during the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990.
This wasn't just an attack on people - this was an attack on the very idea of Bharat.
ECHOES OF 1990: THE FORGOTTEN EXODUS
The Pahalgam massacre bears haunting similarities to the genocide and forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits over three decades ago. Back then, temples were desecrated, homes torched, and families driven out by threats echoing from loudspeakers - "Convert, flee, or die." Of the estimated 120,000 to 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley, nearly 90,000 to 100,000 fled by mid-1990. By that time, between 30 and 80 had already been killed by bad boys.
Today, when tourists are killed for simply being Indian, for embodying the spirit of unity and integration, we must ask - has anything really changed?
The answer is clear: it has changed only under a government that refuses to bend to terror - a BJP-led government.
Under PM Narendra Modi's leadership, abrogation of Article 370 was a historic blow to separatist forces. But terror outfits, propped up by Pakistain and its jihad factories, continue to target civilians because they cannot stand the thought of a peaceful, pluralistic, and united Jammu and Kashmir. Pahalgam is their act of desperation - a last-ditch attempt to terrorise a land that has begun to heal.
THE GLOBAL PATTERN: HINDUS PERSECUTED IN BANGLADESH AND PAKISTAN
What happened in Pahalgam is not limited to Indian soil. The pattern is painfully familiar across other countries. Hindus, whether in the Kashmir Valley, Bangladesh, or Pakistain, have borne the brunt of a radical ideology that has no place for pluralism, tolerance, or democracy.
In Bangladesh, the Hindu population has dropped from 22% in 1951 to under 8% today. In 2024, a total of 76 attacks targeting Hindus were reported- temples vandalised, homes burned, and women assaulted.
In Pakistain, the story is even darker: blasphemy ...the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider it to be a crime. In Pakistain you can commit blasphemy by looking cross-eyed at a Koran... laws are weaponised, temples razed, and minor Hindu girls forcibly converted. Over 100 incidents targeting Hindus were reported in just the first ten months of 2024.
The international community has turned a blind eye. Liberals raise their voices for every global minority - except the Hindu one. Why is the pain of Hindus so inconvenient to global conscience?
BJP: THE ONLY BULWARK AGAINST RADICAL TERROR
It is only under the BJP that India has moved from appeasement to assertion. The abrogation of Article 370, the firm surgical responses to cross-border terror, and the commitment to resettle Kashmiri Pandits in their homeland show that the PM Modi government doesn't just mourn - it acts.
While opposition parties indulge in vote bank politics and play blind to Islamist radicalism, BJP has stood as a wall between terror and the common man. The blood spilled in Pahalgam is a grim reminder of why a strong, nationalist leadership is non-negotiable.
[Oneindia] A peaceful spring afternoon in the picturesque hill station of Pahalgam, nestled in south Kashmir's Anantnag district, turned into a nightmare on April 22. What should have been a moment of serene escape for visiting tourists quickly descended into a chilling scene of bloodshed as armed terrorists launched a brutal, targeted assault-not just on lives, but on religious identity.
In what eyewitnesses describe as a premeditated religious massacre, the attackers demanded the names and ID cards of the victims, separating them based on their faith. Male tourists were forced to strip so the terrorists could identify them using medieval methods, checking for circumcision-a grotesque and deliberate strategy used to isolate Hindus. Those singled out were then ordered to recite the kalima-an Islamic declaration of faith-and those who refused or hesitated were shot in cold blood. Every step was designed to isolate Hindus and murder them for their identity.
"This was not just a terror strike. This was ideological jihad masquerading as militancy," said a senior BJP leader. "This is part of a long-term war against the religious and cultural identity of India."
Twenty-six people lost their lives in Pahalgam. All of them were unarmed civilians. Many were tourists from other parts of India-families who had come to the valley for peace, not politics. Their only "crime" in the eyes of their killers was that they were Hindu.
This was not random. This was not resistance. This was religious cleansing by design. The massacre fits a familiar and horrifying pattern-one deeply linked to Pakistan's ISI-backed strategy of proxy war in Kashmir. According to security analysts, the objective is clear: foment communal tension, bleed India through ideological warfare, and destabilise harmony in one of the most sensitive regions of the country.
Yet this ideology isn't confined to Kashmir. From selective killings in West Bengal to the recent riots in Nagpur, a consistent thread of jihadist violence runs beneath the surface. To these extremists, every standing Hindu temple is a defeat, every festival a provocation. For them, killing a Hindu isn't a crime-it's divine justice. And yet, the global narrative chants: "Terrorism has no religion."
"When we call it out for what it is-jihad-we're told we're being 'communal'. That is moral cowardice, and it is deadly," said another BJP voice. "It emboldens terrorists. It ensures victims are forgotten while their killers are rationalised."
But this time, the response from New Delhi is not weak-kneed diplomacy. It is not silence. It is not appeasement.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, India is not just condemning terror-it is confronting it.
Home Minister Shah's visit to the site and his assurance that Bharat will not bend to terror sends a clear message. Prime Minister Modi's statement that every terrorist and their backers will be identified and punished shows the resolve of a new India. The message is simple: those who kill our people will not sleep easy. Justice will be delivered-not in press conferences, but in action.
This was not an attack on just tourists-it was an attack on the soul of India. And we will no longer allow the selective targeting of Hindus to be brushed under the carpet. India will respond-not just with force, but with clarity.
From Delhi to every inch of Indian soil, the message is loud and clear: this is a new India-unafraid, unyielding, and united under a leadership that doesn't just condemn terror, but crushes it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider it to be a crime. In Pakistain you can commit blasphemy by looking cross-eyed at a Koran...
