After plunging near 60 year lows in the prior week (at 192k), initial jobless claims rebounded (as many expected) to 236k last week – back into the ‘normal’ range and nothing at all to worry about from a labor market perspective…

Source: Bloomberg

Sure enough it was California in large part that was responsible for the chaos…

Source: Bloomberg

But while initial claims rebounded back to ‘normal’, continuing jobless claims plummeted

Source: Bloomberg

We assume whatever screw-up that seasonal adjustments caused in initial claims the week before have rippled through to the continuing claims data this week, but still – taken at face value, it’s great news!

However, there could be an even more silver lining as we noted last week, before Trump sent out his ICE troops, California’s Continuing Claims were running ~400K per week. Beginning in the summer, however, these claims steadily dropped… and perhaps this week’s crash in continuing claims is the chopping block coming down on illegals claiming benefits in California?

We’ve highlighted a new theme: data centers in low Earth orbit, or at least the race to get these AI chips into space.

Week after week, the news flow shows a new space race taking shape, as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman appear to be the major players in the scramble to get chips into orbit – almost certainly joined by other billionaires quietly working behind the scenes.

The latest news on the AI chips-in-space theme comes from a Bloomberg report that Musk’s SpaceX is planning to raise $30 billion at a $1.5 trillion valuation, with some of the proceeds expected to be used for space-based data centers.

We must note that Musk has the only capable space program that could rapidly deploy space-based data centers at scale; neither China nor Russia, nor even Bezos’ Blue Origin, currently has this capability.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT founder Sam Altman attempted to buy rocket startup Stoke Space this past summer, with the intent of joining the space race to launch AI chips into orbit.

A new Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday afternoon added more color about the Musk-Bezos space-based data center race:

Bezos’ Blue Origin has had a team working for more than a year on technology needed for orbital AI data centers, a person familiar with the matter said. Musk’s SpaceX plans to use an upgraded version of its Starlink satellites to host AI computing payloads, pitching the technology as part of a share sale that could value the company at $800 billion, according to people involved in the discussions.

The push to move data centers into low Earth orbit is all about sidestepping Earth’s power constraints and soaking up precious resources, harnessing essentially limitless solar energy, and leveraging space’s near-zero thermal environment to keep advanced AI chips cool.

“Taking resource-intensive infrastructure off Earth has been an idea for years, but it has required launch and satellite costs to come down. We are nearing that point,” Will Marshall, CEO of satellite operator and builder Planet Labs, told WSJ.

Making spaceflight affordable has been SpaceX’s focus with its reusable rockets, and once Starship becomes commercialized, costs should drop even further.

Let’s remind readers that SpaceX is effectively America’s rocket program – and it leads the world by light-years.

This makes Musk and xAI uniquely positioned to scale data centers quickly.

SpaceX also leads in terms of spacecraft upmass…

WSJ noted that Google and Planet Labs plan to conduct a 2027 space test using satellites equipped with Google AI chips. Early tests aim to demonstrate feasibility, while full-scale systems will require thousands of satellites to match a single large terrestrial data center.

Latest from Musk about data centers in space. 

The lowest cost place for data centers is space when 300 GW of computer data center you can power and cool in space when you have continuous solar and no batteries needed. @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/J5EMJt8rRw

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) November 19, 2025

And Bezos. 

Jeff Bezos plans to build a data center in space within the next 10+ years.

Unlimited solar energy available 24/7, space is an ideal location for data centers.$AMZN AWS is set to make major moves out there. pic.twitter.com/KJCEO973eQ

— Bourbon Capital (@BourbonCap) October 3, 2025

Why stop with data centers in low Earth orbit? How about on the moon? We’re sure Starlink’s in-space mesh network can help with that… So crypto mining on the moon as well? All things space are about to kick off with SpaceX’s IPO slated for next year. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In yet another chilling assault on free speech and cultural identity, a London primary school teacher has been dragged through the wringer for simply pointing out Britain’s Christian roots to a Muslim student.

This outrageous case exposes how woke bureaucrats are weaponizing child protection rules to silence anyone who dares affirm traditional values in a multicultural minefield.

Suspended, sacked, and slapped with a ban from working with kids, the educator’s only “crime” was enforcing school policy and delivering a dose of reality about the UK’s religious landscape. Backed by the Free Speech Union, he’s now fighting back against this blatant overreach that reeks of leftist intolerance for inconvenient truths.

Teacher banned after telling Muslim child that Britain is Christian country https://t.co/P4jEdY0irl

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) December 9, 2025

The incident kicked off when the teacher caught students washing their feet in the boys’ bathroom sinks—a clear violation at the non-faith school where prayers were confined to a designated room. According to reports, he addressed the group, explaining the rules and emphasizing British values of tolerance.

But one pupil took offense, claiming the teacher said the school wasn’t religious and suggested an alternative. Specifically, the child reported the teacher stating, “Britain is still a Christian state,” while noting the King’s role as head of the Church of England. The educator also allegedly remarked, “if you want that, there’s an Islamic school a mile away,” referring to accommodations for Islamic practices.

Police from the Metropolitan’s child abuse team got involved, probing a potential hate crime. Though that inquiry was dropped, the local safeguarding board branded the teacher’s comments as causing “emotional harm” to the child, leading to his ban from the profession.

The school wasted no time: suspended in March 2024, sacked for gross misconduct by February 2025 after nearly three years on the job.

With the aid of the Free Speech Union, the teacher is now suing the local authority. Lord Toby Young, the group’s director, remarked, “This teacher lost his job and almost ended up being barred from the profession for life just because he pointed out to a class of Muslim schoolchildren that the national religion of England is Anglicanism.”

He drove the point home: “Things have reached a pretty pass in this country if a teacher can be branded a safeguarding risk because he says something that’s incontestably true. If he’d claimed that Islam is the official religion of England, even though that’s not true, I doubt he would have got into any trouble.”

Young’s critique highlights the double standard plaguing Britain’s institutions, where affirming the majority culture invites punishment, but pushing minority agendas gets a free pass.

The teacher successfully appealed the ban and now works part-time at another school outside London. Yet the damage is done—his career derailed over a factual statement in a lesson on tolerance, no less.

This fiasco echoes broader concerns that safeguarding protocols are being hijacked to target conservative views. Just days prior, an ex-Royal Marine faced a similar ban for online posts criticizing illegal immigration, as noted in related coverage.

A jury took just 17 minutes to unanimously clear Royal Marine veteran, Jamie Michael, of stirring up racial hatred after he was arrested for a posting a video about illegal immigration.

Despite their verdict, Jamie has been banned from working with children. An official… pic.twitter.com/w1KoReHtRA

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) December 8, 2025

Leftist enforcers in education and government are stifling dissent under the guise of “protection.” It’s no secret that unchecked multiculturalism, fueled by open borders policies, has led to clashes like this, where schools become battlegrounds for identity politics.

The teacher’s legal team stressed the school’s non-faith status and the informal ban on playground prayers, extending to sink usage. But facts didn’t matter to the ideologues who prioritized feelings over reality.

In a nation where Christianity shaped laws, holidays, and institutions for centuries, stating the obvious now risks professional ruin.

Britain’s slide into this woke dystopia serves as a stark warning. If bureaucrats are allowed to redefine “harm” to include historical facts, then free expression crumbles. The teacher’s fightback offers hope, but it underscores the urgent need to dismantle these speech-suppressing mechanisms.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Conservative and outspoken libertarian-leaning Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced legislation Tuesday for the United States for formally withdraw from NATO. Sen. Mike Lee is also helping lead the charge, introducing companion legislation in the Senate.

The bill argues that the US military cannot be seen as the police force of the world, and that given NATO was created to counter the long-gone Soviet Union, which no longer exists, American taxpayers’ money would be better spent elsewhere.

“We should withdraw from NATO and use that money to defend our own country, not socialist countries… US participation has cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and continues to risk US involvement in foreign wars… America should not be the world’s security blanket – especially when wealthy countries refuse to pay for their own defense,” Massie said.

That latter part is likely designed to gain Trump’s attention and sympathy, given the president has been emphasizing this point all the way back to his first term.

The bill if passed would require the US government to formally notify NATO that it intends to end its membership and halt the use of American funds for shared budgets. Republican Senator Lee actually introduced similar legislation earlier this year, but it stalled in committee.

Of course, most Congress members have viewpoints which merely reflect the ‘pro-NATO’ established position of the vast majority of Western politicians generally, so it’s very unlikely to ever be passed.

Massie wrote on X, “NATO is a Cold War relic. The United States should withdraw from NATO and use that money to defend our country, not socialist countries. Today, I introduced HR 6508 to end our NATO membership.” 

“Our Constitution did not authorize permanent foreign entanglements, something our Founding Fathers explicitly warned us against,” he said additionally. 

The NATO Act:

• Requires the President to formally notify NATO of U.S. withdrawal under Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
• Concludes that NATO’s original Cold War purpose no longer aligns with current U.S. national security interests.
• Finds that European NATO members have adequate economic and military capacity to provide for their own defense.
• Prevents use of U.S. taxpayer funds for NATO’s common budgets, including its civil budget, military budget, and the Security Investment Program.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has introduced companion legislation, S.2174, in the United States Senate. The text of the NATO Act is available at this link.

“If you could snap your fingers and get us out of NATO today, would you?” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked in a post on X.

“Yes,” Massie replied.https://t.co/Nifjbtt7O1

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) January 29, 2025

Under pressure from Trump, NATO members agreed this year to gradually raise their defense spending to 5% of GDP, significantly above the old 2% guideline. European leaders were finally amenable to this, despite mocking it years ago during Trump’s first term, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the “threat” to Europe that they perceive.

Moscow has denied time and again that it has ‘expansionist’ ambitions – yet US and EU leaders continue to portray Putin as some who dreams of reestablishing an old empire, or else revive Soviet power and borders.

Authored by Niall McCrae via Off-Guardian.org,

British people are glum and grumbling after Rachel Reeves’ budget, but what did they expect? They should know by now that government is an extortion racket.

While many voters regret their decision in last year’s general election, die-hard Labour supporters continue to make excuses: Tory mismanagement and Brexit ruined the economy. Daily Mail readers, meanwhile, have been told that the budget has taken from hard-working families to give to benefit claimants.

This is exactly what the powers-that-be want people to believe, not only as the old divide-and-rule strategy, but because society needs to understand that jobs are disappearing rapidly, and the future is basic universal income and total dependence on the state.

The looming technocracy has no use for the majority of the workforce. Data and distribution centres will be run by robots. Artificial intelligence will rise through the occupational strata to replace professional practitioners such as lawyers and doctors.

Call it new technology
And they use it to burn
And they show no concern
Work for their prosperity
While the big wheels turn
Now it’s too late to learn
Don’t upset the teacher
Though we know he lied to you
Don’t upset the preacher
He’s gonna close his eyes for you

And it’s a shame
That you’re so afraid
Just a worker waiting in the pouring rain
Putting back the pieces of a broken dream

Father worked in industry
Now the work has moved on
And the factory’s gone
See them sell your history
Where once you were strong
And you used to belong
There was once a future
For a working man
There was once a lifetime
For a skillful hand – yesterday

Prophetic words by the band Erasure, back in 1986. But most people do not heed the warnings, preferring to shoot the messenger.

A talented OffGuardian writer, Todd Hayen, has decided to stop writing due to the abusive responses to his latest article on the persistent faith of citizens in government and in official narratives. He used the term ‘sheep’ for the easily herded folk who take the vaccines and believe in the scripted saviours and bogeymen.

Funny how the same people can be utterly convinced that their own pet catastrophes—Trump returning to power, climate change, systemic racism, white supremacy, overpopulation, or the rise of the far right—are existential threats that will end life as we know it unless we surrender every freedom immediately to stop them. But mention digital id, central bank digital currencies, vaccine passports, social credit systems, or the creeping transhumanist agenda, and suddenly you’re the paranoid one wearing a tinfoil hat.

The threats to humanity are – or at least should be – emphatically clear. A digital prison is being built around us, with the implicit consent of the ‘sheep’, who still think that technology will solve our problems. Convenience, security and efficiency are prized over meaningful social interaction, privacy and freedom. As Hayen explained, this delusion was primed long ago:

Most of them have been psychologically and educationally groomed for decades to believe that socialism, Marxism, or outright communism are not only benign but morally superior. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ sounds noble when you’ve never watched the state decide what your needs actually are. They think communism is free healthcare, student-debt forgiveness, and government UBI cheques. They have no idea it’s secret police at 3 a.m., neighbours denouncing neighbours for extra bread rations, gulags, re-education camps, forced confessions, and a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

I am no less against global corporate capitalism and fascism as I am of leftist totalitarianism, but merely a minority of critical thinkers see through the Left versus Right paradigm. Ask a progressive liberal student whether she’d expect a fascist government to give free money to everyone in society, of whatever colour or creed, and she’d probably scoff at such a ridiculous notion. Welfare is a thing of the Left – that’s how younger generations are taught to love Big Brother.

Britons are led to believe that the government will always be there as a safety net, when the jobs are gone. Therefore, they don’t threaten aa uprising on the throwing of taxpayers’ money at Ukraine or on the perpetual influx – a million every year – of immigrants whose cheap labour will be a temporary pursuit.

The budget is misunderstood by the majority as a giveaway to the workshy. It is really setting the scene for digitally-controlled UBI, and everything else is a sideshow. Or as Erasure called it, ‘The Circus’.

Ukraine is desperately seeking more money, which has been a persistent reality of the war, and the European Union is scrambling to find solutions amid a general Western war weariness which has already seen hundreds of billions poured into Kiev’s coffers.

Currently EU member states are rapidly advancing a plan to permanently freeze as much as €210 billion ($244.38 billion) in Russian state assets to finance Ukraine for at least the next two years. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is seeking to use a loophole to rush this through, based on invoking emergency powers to sanction the frozen assets on a permanent basis, instead of holding the funds based on current six-month renewals, which requires unanimous agreement from all member states.

The plan would see €90 billion (roughly $104.71 billion) released over the next two years. Von der Leyen’s scheme would allow for the plan to pass merely with a qualified majority, and so couldn’t be derailed by just a lone veto. Nations like Germany and Spain have already signaled their support. 

EU leadership is rushing it forward to circumvent holdout Hungary in getting what’s being dubbed a “reparations loan” to Ukraine, and there’s also the idea that it would bolster the EU’s negotiating position in US-led peace negotiations.

EU summits chairman Antonio Costa has vowed to deliver the desired outcome by any means. “The leaders are to decide at a summit on December 18 in Brussels how to deliver on their pledge and Costa told reporters in Dublin he would keep them talking for days, if necessary, until they reach an agreement,” Reuters reports.

It will involve more than just overcoming the hurdle of Hungarian objections, however, given Belgium is not onboard at this point, and the bulk of the Russian funds are kept in Belgian banks.

For starters, Brussels fears immediate negative repercussions from Russia, which could deeply hurt its economy, and so wants guarantees ahead of any EU vote that all members would help absorb the impact.

Von der Leyen has acknowledged the issue, posting on X: “Belgium’s particular situation regarding the use of the frozen Russian assets is undeniable and must be addressed in such a way that all European states bear the same risk.”  She added: “We agreed to continue our discussions with the aim of reaching a consensus at the European Council meeting on December 18.”

Belgium’s initial reaction was to call it “complete madness” – according to The Hungarian Conservative:

‘This is complete madness,’ [Belgian Prime Minister Bart] de Wever said of the proposal in October, according to POLITICO Brussels. The Belgian prime minister argued that the risk of legal and financial retaliation from Moscow is simply too great. He told his colleagues that if Russia were to win lawsuits against Belgium or Euroclear—which holds the frozen assets—the country would be forced to compensate the entire amount itself.

De Wever’s concerns are not unfounded. Reacting to the Commission’s proposal, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that any ‘illegal action’ involving frozen assets would provoke the ‘harshest reaction’, adding that Moscow is already preparing a package of countermeasures. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev described the plan as a ‘casus belli’, labelling the move tantamount to outright theft.

EU diplomats have been in back-and-forth negotiations with Belgium. Germany’s Chancellor Merz has also acknowledged, “What we decide now will determine Europe’s future: Belgium’s particular vulnerability in the issue of utilizing the frozen Russian assets is indisputable and must be addressed in such a way that all European states bear the same risk.”

💼 @PM_ViktorOrban: Brussels wants to seize frozen Russian assets, but we must first ask what countermeasures would follow. If Hungarian companies in Russia lose their assets, why should Hungary support such a move? pic.twitter.com/CBXd54f4PV

— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) October 16, 2025

The European Commission is working on ‘safeguards’. “The Belgian government, along with Euroclear, are looking for financial guarantees from fellow EU member states before committing to supporting the plan,” Fox News writes. “De Wever fears that Belgium will ultimately be held responsible and be forced to pay back the assets that are seized in the event a sanctions deal is negotiated with Russia as a way to end the war in Ukraine.” But without doubt, the Kremlin has been brainstorming the punitive actions it could in turn unleash to make Belgium and Europe feel the pain.

via Middle East Eye

Pakistan has reportedly offered to take back grooming gang leaders in exchange for Britain handing over Pakistani political dissidents living in the UK.

Pakistani media reported that the proposal was made in a private meeting last Thursday in Islamabad between Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and Jane Marriott, the British high commissioner. Naqvi reportedly urged the UK to hand over anti-government figures Shahzad Akbar and Adil Raja.

Akbar, who was a minister in Imran Khan’s government, and Raja, a former army major, are both living in the UK. They have both strongly criticized the Pakistani government over its alleged human rights abuses and suppression of political dissent. 

The British government has previously requested that Pakistan extradite Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf, who were jailed in 2012 as ringleaders of a grooming gang that sexually assaulted and abused 47 girls over two years in Rochdale.

Both Khan and Rauf, Pakistani immigrants, were stripped of their British citizenship after being convicted. But days before a judge ordered them to be deported to Pakistan, they renounced their Pakistani citizenship. Pakistan has since refused to accept them.

According to Pakistani media, the Pakistani government said it would accept Khan and Rauf if the UK hands over dissidents Akbar and Raja.

‘Unprecedented and deeply disturbing’

This comes as the Labor government is facing mounting pressure to take further action on child sexual exploitation. Its attempts to set up a nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs have faced repeated delays and debates about how wide its scope should be.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said on Monday the inquiry must “consider the role of ethnicity, religion and other cultural factors” and should “leave no stone unturned”.

It is thought that Britain is highly unlikely to agree to the reported Pakistani proposal, and the Home Office and Foreign Office have declined to comment on the reports.

Raja, now a freelance journalist, told The Telegraph that the report “is unprecedented and deeply disturbing. It shows the extent to which an authoritarian regime is willing to go to suppress dissent”.

“I have broken no UK law. My only ‘offence’ is practicing journalism and exercising free expression,” he said. “I trust that the UK, a country committed to the rule of law and press freedom, will not allow political critics to be traded away under pressure from a foreign government.”

The Beasts won and they’re still here !

A member of a Rochdale grooming gang who is fighting to remain in the UK has told a tribunal he “has not committed that big a crime”.
Adil Khan, 51 and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, have been told they are to be sent back to Pakistan for the… pic.twitter.com/ygHMs0vwft

— Deport Foreign Criminals (@peterstopcrime) February 16, 2025

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted from government in April 2022 through a parliamentary no-confidence vote following a fallout with the country’s influential military.

He has spent more than two years in prison. Last year a UN report concluded that his detention is arbitrary and in contravention of international law.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

A suspected leader of the criminal gang MS-13 has been arrested in Nebraska, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a Dec. 9 post on X.

Gerson Cuadra Soto, a Honduran national, “is believed to be responsible for overseeing one of their major kill squad units—and suspected of executing the assassination of the son of the former President of Honduras,” Patel wrote.

“This is part of the FBI’s Joint Task Force Vulcan investigation out of @FBIHouston to locate, indict, and arrest members of MS-13 leadership ‘La Mesa.’”

On July 14, 2022, Saíd Omar Lobo Bonilla, son of former Honduran President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, and three other men were killed outside a nightclub in Honduran capital city Tegucigalpa.

Joint Task Force Vulcan is an initiative launched in August 2019 under the first Trump administration that aims to disrupt and eliminate MS-13.

La Mesa, or “The Table,” is a group of senior MS-13 gang leaders who allegedly authorize murders throughout the United States.

Patel commended FBI Omaha, Nebraska, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Drug Enforcement Administration, and other partners for their work that resulted in Soto’s arrest.

“This admin is taking a whole of government approach to dismantling MS-13 and their presence within the country,” he said. MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department in February.

In a Dec. 9 statement, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen welcomed the arrest of Soto, who he said was illegally in the country and living in the city of Grand Island.

“Cuadra Soto, a leader of the terrorist MS-13 gang and Honduran assassin, entered the United States illegally in 2022 under Biden’s watch—eventually obtaining a California driver’s license before establishing a residence in Grand Island,” Pillen said.

“Here’s the simple truth: Weak borders put our families at risk. Thankfully, under conservative Republican leadership, our border has never been more secure.”

Expanding Scope

Under the Trump administration, the FBI has intensified its targeting of foreign criminal groups.

In March, the FBI announced that it was expanding its counterterrorism mission to aggressively battle transnational organized crime.

The announcement was made after the State Department designated several international cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

The FBI changed the name of its Terrorist Screening Center to the Threat Screening Center, saying that the updated name expands the scope of national security screening to cover groups such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua that operate in the United States.

U.S. military personnel escort alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the U.S. government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, on March 30, 2025. Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout via Reuters

“Border security is essential to protecting our country and providing safer communities for our citizens,” Patel said in a statement at the time.

“We’re expanding the watchlist to include cartel and gang members from newly designated foreign terrorist organizations. This change will assist our law enforcement and Intelligence Community partners as we all work together toward the goal of crushing violent crime within our borders.”

In a Dec. 3 statement, the Department of the Treasury said that its Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned key affiliates of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“Under President Trump, barbaric terrorist cartels can no longer operate with impunity across our borders. The Tren de Aragua network’s narcotrafficking and human smuggling operations have long posed a grave threat to our nation,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in the statement.

A March report from the State Department detailed the threats posed by transnational criminal organizations. It specifically highlighted Mexican criminal organizations as “one of the greatest threats” to the United States.

Mexico was deemed to be the most significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, with Mexican groups Sinaloa Cartel and New Generation Jalisco Cartel the primary distributors of these drugs in North America, the report said. Mexico is also the source of most of the heroin and meth seized in the United States.

Palantir Technologies is becoming a deeper partner to the US military as the Navy launches ShipOS, a $448 million effort to use the company’s AI and data tools to improve submarine production, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The deal will provide Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform across select shipyards and suppliers.

The Navy wants to fix chronic delays and overruns affecting its Virginia- and Columbia-class programs. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said the goal is to speed up an industry that has struggled with labor issues and subcontractor delays: “By enabling industry to adopt AI and autonomy tools at scale, we’re helping the shipbuilding industry improve schedules, increase capacity, and reduce costs.”

Palantir CEO Alex Karp emphasized the scale of the challenge, saying, “It takes 10 million man hours to build a submarine. There are 2,000 businesses involved. Every single one of these components is specialized.” He added that tracking parts through software is vital because “that’s exactly why you need software” to remove bottlenecks, arguing that “already that problem’s gone.”

Bloomberg writes that two major shipbuilders and three public shipyards will receive the software first, and Phelan said the same system could later support carriers, the fleet, and even fighter jets.

The Navy expects the Palantir approach could “significantly” reduce the Columbia-class delay, currently projected to push delivery to March 2029. The contract uses a new “shared risk” model. Phelan said, “If they perform well…they’re going to do well and they should.” Karp responded, “You’re forcing us to absorb risk,” adding, “We get paid as we perform…This is not your typical ‘you get paid after everything fails’ kind of contract…We want to change contracting across the US government to ‘you get paid when it works.’”

Among names worth watching in the submarine space are Kraken Robotics, which has signed cooperative R&D agreements with the U.S. Navy for next-generation sonar systems, Huntington Ingalls Industries, the parent of Newport News Shipbuilding, and General Dynamics, which owns Electric Boat, builder of the Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear submarines.

Palantir, meanwhile, is expanding its work with the U.S. Navy, using AI and data management platforms to support fleet readiness, logistics, and complex maintenance programs across submarine and surface operations.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A group of more than 1,000 American Christian Zionist pastors and influencers has spent a week in Israel on an all-expenses-paid trip that was funded by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

“This is the first time in history that the state of Israel has officially partnered with 1,000 strategic pastors to commission them as ambassadors to combat antisemitism and reach the youth of their generation,” Mike Evans, an evangelical pastor who helped organize the trip, told CBN News. “Right now there’s an ideological war that Israel is losing, so they need the evangelicals, they need the Zionists to fight an ideological war,” Evans added.

Christian Zionists like Evans believe that the modern state of Israel has the right to all of the land in historic Palestine, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank, based on the Bible, a view that has its roots in dispensationalism, a Christian theology developed in the US in the 19th century.

The view runs counter to thousands of years of Christian tradition, as it’s rejected by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and many Protestant denominations, yet it has significant influence on US foreign policy. During a speech to the crowd of pastors at the Shiloh archeological site in the West Bank, Evans addressed recent remarks from Vice President JD Vance and President Trump about not supporting the Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territory, which he calls Judea and Samaria.

“You said that the policy of the administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. Mr. Vice President, we love you, and we love America, but the policy of the God who birthed America and the policy of the God who gave these people this land is in fact that Judea and Samaria is Bible land,” Evans said.

“Eighty percent of Bible stories come out of Judea and Samaria. So don’t pressure Israel to give illegal, radical Islam Jew-haters Judea and Samaria,” he said, adding that the MAGA movement is based on the Bible and “upon the God of this book, the God of Israel.”

While American evangelicals have always comprised a solid base of support for Israel, that support has been declining, part of an overall trend among Americans due to Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza.

“There is a growing cancer within the evangelical movement in America, where people are thinking Israel doesn’t matter and there’s nothing biblical about our relationship with Israel. This is very dangerous,” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told CBN News during the summit.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has taken other steps to influence American Christians, including spending millions on a propaganda campaign targeting evangelical churches in the US that is being called the “largest Christian Church Geofencing Campaign in US history” – a project that was revealed by a federal filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The pastors’ summit in Israel concluded with Huckabee “commissioning” the attendees as “ambassadors” to stand with the state of Israel. During their time in Israel, the pastors were addressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told them, “Stand up and be counted. Tell the truth. Speak to young people. Speak up to be counted. I’m counting on you, and I know you’ll do what has to be done. That’s what our destiny calls for.”