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NB: This is a recycled broadcast containing updated material, but includes the original broadcast in its entirety.
For some time, Mr. Emory has accessed the work of the remarkable Paul Manning. Part of the CBS news team that covered World War II (along with the late Edward R. Murrow), Manning authored the landmark title Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile (Lyle Stuart, copyright 1981), detailing the post-war career of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s most important aide.
Long rumored to have been killed at the end of the war, Bormann escaped to Latin America with all of the liquid wealth of the Third Reich at his disposal. Bormann has used that wealth to finance (literally) an Underground Reich, an institution that wields profound (though largely unrecognized) influence in the contemporary world. Mr. Emory believes that (barring a significant change in political reality) the Bormann group will prove to be the decisive element in human affairs.
This broadcast details Manning’s last published work: the Bormann organization’s initiation of joint nuclear weapons development between Germany, Argentina and South Africa and its promotion of the Condor II missile project, jointly developed by Iraq, Egypt and Argentina. (It should be noted that Manning’s second book on the Bormann organization was never published. His son Jerry was murdered at that time, in retribution for his work on the Bormann group, according to Manning’s intelligence contacts.) The joint weapons development was intended to give Germany nuclear and intercontinental missile technology that it was officially forbidden from possessing.
Shortly after World War II, the discovery of uranium in Argentina spurred the clandestine nuclear development program. At the time, Argentina was ruled by Juan Peron, who was very close to Bormann and the Nazi emigre community in Argentina.
Instigated by the Bormann group, the program was greatly assisted by the Siemens Corporation’s development of two nuclear reactors for Argentina. The Condor II missile project would have given Sadam Hussein a greatly expanded missile capability, had the U.S. not secretly intervened with Argentina to interdict the missile’s progress. Much of the information accessed by Manning came from Leon Grunbaum, a Holocaust survivor and nuclear scientist. Grunbaum was subsequently murdered.
Program highlights include: the close relationship between Nazi Germany and Iraq during World War II; the perpetuation of the Nazi-Iraqi link in the decades after the war; the close links between Egypt and the Bormann group; details of the hierarchical structure of the Bormann group (allegedly headed, in the early 1990s, by Bormann’s son Adolph Martin and his sister Neumi); the rigorous surveillance of and harassment of Leon Grunbaum (culminating in his murder); the theft of Grunbaum’s notes while he was visiting Switzerland; remarkable similarities between the reality of the Bormann group as reported by Manning and the portrayal of the organization in the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk.
Fascism and the Dangers of Economic Concentration
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident
Describes an unexplained 1979 nuclear test, with the possible responsible party as apartheid-era South Africa.
I am seeking if there is a link between the great leader of Atomic Energy in Argentina Abel Julio Gonzalez and the attempt of ultra rightists to develop an atomic military complex in Argentina with the help of german scientists.
If one was to design a next-generation nuclear power plant design, what features might one want to include in that of technology? That’s the question that’s suddenly become much more topical now that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have selected a location in Wyoming for their joint next-generation Natrium reactor nuclear power plant. As we might expect, the new sodium-cooled design is cheaper and have a simpler than traditional nuclear power plants. That’s due, in part, to a reliance on sodium and molten-salt, instead of water, for transferring the heat from the reactor a steam reactor or save the heat for later use. That brings us to another feature of the new design, which is that the plant’s generating capacity can be rapidly brought up or down depending on demand. And due to the simplified design, the cost of these plants could come in at around $1 billion, a fraction of the cost of traditional plants. It all sounds great so far, right?
Well, how about the fuel? Are these the kind of next-generation nuclear reactors that rely on far less dangerous sources of nuclear fuel like thorium reactors? Nope. They use uranium. Not only that, they use highly enriched uranium. Yep. While the traditional water-cooled reactor relies on fuel with around 3.5% uranium-235 content, the fuel for these Natrium reactors uses 20% uranium-235 material, making the fuel for these plants tempting for groups seeking weapons-grade enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. 20% enrichment is the threshold for “highly enriched uranium”. While weapons-grade uranium is going to typically be enriched at levels exceeding 85%, note that it is technically possible to build a nuclear bomb with fuel as low as 20%. So the fact that these new nuclear reactors rely on 20% enriched uranium fuel is kind of a big deal.
Also keep in mind that, thanks to the simplified design, the plants also require 80% less expensive reinforced concrete. So if any terror groups decide to wage an attack on one of these Natrium reactors, it’s going to be a lot easier to pull that attack off. Recall the plans by the Florida-based Atomwaffen cell to trigger a nuclear meltdown at a Miami-area nuclear plant by mortal attack. Those kinds of attacks sound like they will be a lot more viable in a plant that uses 80% less reinforced concrete. So let’s hope the simpler design of these plants helps mitigate the consequences of successful attack on the structure. Because while there are definitely some benefits to these Natrium reactor designs, it sounds like the main benefits are in the cheaper costs to build the plants. Cheaper and simpler is is nice, but not necessearily the top priority when considering nuclear power:
“Nuclear power experts have warned that advanced reactors could have higher risks than conventional ones. Fuel for many advanced reactors would have to be enriched at a much higher rate than conventional fuel, meaning the fuel supply chain could be an attractive target for militants looking to create a crude nuclear weapon, a recent report said.”
Anyone looking to build a nuclear bomb? Head on over to the new Natrium plant in Wyoming. That’s the implicit advertisement that comes with this technology, so while these types of plants may be simpler and cheaper to build, that ‘cheaper and simpler’ approach better not be applied to plant security.
But it sounds like there is one advantage to this highly enriched uranium fuel: it requires fewer refueling stops. So it sounds like there are fewer opportunities to interdict the nuclear fuel on the way to, or from, the plant. That said, it also means fueling these plants will involve the regular shipping of weapons-grade uranium. So let’s hope these refueling cycles are extremely high-security events:
“Both reactors would also depart from conventional designs in using a fuel that is more highly enriched in uranium-235, the fissile isotope that is key to generating a chain reaction. To minimize the risk that the fuel, fresh or spent, could be diverted to create a nuclear weapon, water-cooled power reactors run on fuel that it is 3.5% uranium-235. The Natrium and Xe-100 reactors would use fuel enriched to 20%, which would enable them to run longer on a batch of fuel and extract more energy from it. Such fuel isn’t currently produced in the United States, but current manufacturers could make it relatively easily, Finan says. The fuel would also be difficult to divert to weapons, she says, in part because it would require fewer refueling stops.”
Don’t worry about the fact that these reactors use highly enriched uranium that could be stolen to use for nuclear weapons because there won’t be a large number of opportunities for theft. Those are the kinds of assurances we’re getting. Non-assuring assurances that ignore the reality that, whether or not these reactors have infrequent refueling cycles, there’s still going to be the need for the nuclear fuel industry to start producing, storing, and shipping this kind of weapons-usable fuel if this type of nuclear technology becomes popular. There’s no denying that making weapons-grade uranium the standard fuel for new nuclear power plants is going to inevitably make weapons-grade uranium more plentiful and available for loss and theft.
Of course, while the threat of lost weapons-grade uranium is an obvious huge risk with this technology, there’s also the obvious huge risk of a meltdown. Which raises the question: does this sodium-cooled reactor technology have a history of meltdowns? Yep. A largely under-recognized history that includes the worst nuclear accident in US history. And it doesn’t sound like there’s anything in this new sodium reactor design that has somehow avoided the risk of future meltdowns. They would presumably be touting new safety features if such features were available.
So as we can see, this new nuclear technology being advanced by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates appears to have one distinct advantage: the plants are cheaper to produce. That’s the big advantage. Cheaper nuclear power infrastructure. Which seems like the kind of advantage that’s mostly just a short-term advantage with a lot of long-term costs.
So are dealing with Donald the Nuclear Dilettante? Donald the Mafia Don always looking for the next score? Donald the Blackmailed Stooge? Donald the Fascist Destroyer of Worlds? All of the above? These are the kinds of questions that are likely still driving federal investigators looking into the hoard of 11 additional sets of classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago Monday night.
As we saw, Trump reportedly returned 15 boxes of classified documents to the National Archives back in January. But didn’t give it all back. Not by a long shot. It’s becoming one of the biggest mysteries of this story: Trump didn’t just keep a few classified documents. He kept a trove. Why? Of what value is this?
Those questions of ‘why’ deepened significantly with an update about the most sensitive documents that appear to have been animating the federal officials who called for the raid: Trump was holding documents on nuclear weapons. The documents are described as some of the most sensitive documents the US possesses.
It also sounds like documents involving signals intelligence — a potentially very sensitive area — were turned over with the 15 boxes back in January, suggesting there could be more signals intelligence documents in the 11 sets of documents the FBI retrieved on Monday. But it sounds like it’s the nuclear secrets that prompted a ‘hair on fire’ response inside the federal government.
Another factor in this whole mess is that it turns out a Trump lawyer told the DOJ back in June that all of the classified materials had been returned. That was obviously was very untrue. Was the lawyer lying or misinformed by Trump? We don’t know. But someone was lying about the existence of these documents, quite possibly Trump himself. Again, why? Why take such enormous legal risks just to possess these materials? Of what value was this to Trump?
Is he trafficking in nuclear secrets? That would obviously be a highly lucrative trade. The kind of trade that could inspire a Mission Impossible movie. But
was Trump that insanely corrupt? Perhaps. He does appear to be insanely corrupt. And let’s not forget his dark fascination with nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Trump was calling for an expansion of the US’s nuclear forces back in December of 2016, before he even took office. He even seemed to welcome a new nuclear arms race at the time.
It’s also worth recall the interesting ties to a South Africa’s clandestine nuclear program held by one of Trump’s closest allies: Peter Thiel. Thiel’s dad led the South African Uranium-mining operations. It’s the kind of story that serves as a reminder that the global demand for this kind of technology is going to generally be a clandestine demand. In other words, if there’s a thriving elite blackmarket for nuclear secrets it’s not like we’re normally going to hear about it. It’s also a reminder that Trump’s close relationship with the Saudi royal family puts him in the proximity of the same “Safari Club” nuclear technology trafficking network that helped to facilitate Pakistan’s Saudi-sponsored nuclear ambitions.
There’s also Trump’s famously corrupt relationship with Turkey’s President Erdogan. Recall Erdogan’s declarations back in 2019 that Turkey wanted nuclear weapons. Did Erodgan dangle some new Turkish Trump Tower deals in exchange for a technology assist?
And then there’s the intertwined nuclear schemes being developed during the 2016 Trump presidential campaign that were never really fully fleshed out in all of the Trump-Russia investigations. There was Michael Flynn’s plan for a nuclear ‘Marshall Plan’ to build nuclear power plants across the Middle East (minus Iran). And there was the scheme by Felix Sater and Michael Cohen, along with far-right Ukrainian politician Andreii Artemenko — a specialist in diplomacy with both the US and Middle Eastern nations — to building of Ukraine’s nuclear power sector and potentially turn Ukraine into an electricity exporter as part of a broader peace plan proposal between Ukraine and Russian. Nuclear-related schemes have in Trump’s orbit since before he was even elected.
But also recall that disturbing story from 2020 that involved both nuclear power and nuclear weapons: the Department of Energy (DOE) announced it was going to select a company for a public-private partnership in generating next-generation nuclear power technology. As we saw, the company selected in October of 2020 was TerraPower, backed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. TerraPower uses sodium-cooling technology that reportedly reduces the odds of a meltdown. And it also has a ‘feature’ with some rather concerning security implications: traditional water-cool nuclear plants run on fuel at 3.5% Uranium, which avoids the risk of fresh or spent fuel being diverted for use in nuclear weapons. These new TerraPower reactors can run on fuel up to 20% Uranium. And while a higher Uranium concentration allows the reactors to run more efficiently, 20% Uranium is also at the low end of what can potentially be used to build a nuclear weapons.
So one of the last moves by the Trump administration involved creating a government-subidized crash course development of a nuclear power technology that uses potentially weapons-grade fuel. Might that have something to do with Trump’s post-presidential fixation on the US’s nuclear secrets? Because if the US’s nuclear industry is being position for a big government-subsidized revival using new technologies involving reactors using weapons-grade fuel, it’s not hard to imagine that the US’s nuclear secrets could be of immense potential commercial value in that new industrial sector.
Or maybe the commercial value of those nuclear documents was far more direct: the ongoing maintenance and upgrading of the US’s nuclear force and market competition to get those government bids. The point being that it’s not at all hard to imagine those nuclear secrets were worth a fortune.
Of course, the intelligence value was obviously immense too, and you can’t separate commercial value and intelligence value when you’re talking about someone like Trump. The quid pro quos write themselves:
“The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the list of items seized by FBI agents during the search included 11 sets of classified documents; four were marked top-secret, three were secret and three were identified as confidential — the lowest level of classified information. The Journal reported that the inventory of what was taken also referred to a set of documents marked “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” a government label for a more closely held form of top secret information.”
11 additional boxes of documents. That’s a lot more than the 15 documents Trump willingly turned over earlier this year. What on earth could be in these 11 boxes Trump so desperately wanted to keep his hands on? Well, nuclear weapons-related info, for starters. It’s one of the most sensitive possible areas Trump could have plundered. But perhaps the biggest clue that this was nuclear secrets Trump was holding onto were genuinely ‘explosive’ in nature is the fact that Trump is already publicly calling the reporting on nuclear secrets a “hoax” and is asserting that the FBI planted evidence. That’s some ominous consciousness-of-guilt behavior right there:
But this wasn’t just 11 boxes of nuclear secrets. So what else what in there? Well, the 15 boxes voluntarily returned back in January contained signals intelligence. So we can reasonably guess there’s a lot more of that sitting in those 11 sets of materials:
What else will investigators discover? We’ll see. Or probably won’t see since they presumably won’t be giving detail info on the contents of these top secret materials.
But we’ll likely see who else may be criminally culpable in these fiasco. People like the Trump lawyer who reportedly informed the Justice Department back in June that all materials had been returned:
“The existence of the signed declaration, which has not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Mr. Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators about the material. And it could help explain why a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction was cited by the department as one basis for seeking the warrant used to carry out the daylong search of the former president’s home on Monday, an extraordinary step that generated political shock waves.”
Trump sure wanted to keep his hands on the contents of these 11 boxes. They literally officially lied to the DOJ about their existence just two months ago...after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division!
What on earth could be in those documents to make them worth this criminal peril? Are we looking at a blackmail situation? Or just gross greed? Odds are its’s a variety of motivations given the sheer volume of materials Trump withheld. Maybe the signals intelligence was withheld to show to his friends in places like Saudi Arabia, while the nuclear secrets was kept for more commercial purposes? These are all questions we had better hope investigators are meaningfully able to ask.
But as the following article from back in May of 2020 reminds us, when it comes to Trump’s fascination with nuclear technology we don’t have to speculated entirely about what he may have had an interest in. The Trump administration was intent on reviving the US nuclear power industry. And public-private partnerships with the Department of Energy was their vehicle for that revival. Potentially lucrative public-private partnerships.
And as we’ve seen, the technology ultimately selected for this pilot program was Bill Gate’s TerraPower sodium-cooled nuclear reactors. The goal was a working prototype within 7 years. And as we also saw, one of the ‘features’ of the NuTerra reactors is that they operate using Uranium enriched up to 20%, far higher than the 3.5% Uranium fuel used by traditional water-cooled nuclear reactors. And as we also saw, the reason traditional reactors use less enriched Uranium is precisely to minimize the risk that the fuel, fresh or spent, could be diverted to create a nuclear weapon. So the hot new nuclear technology that the Trump administration selected for a big government-subsidized rapid development within 7 years was a platform that could generate weapons grade Uranium. Might that be at all related to Trump’s fascination with nuclear secrets? One of his administration’s 2020 decision was to put in motion a process that could result in the commercial production of weapons-grade Uranium. He presumably knew this was the case. What sort of dark commercial opportunities did this government-subsidized plan for the commercial enrichment of nuclear fuel to weapons-grade levels open up for someone in Trump’s position? These are the kinds of questions that investigators had better be asking right now:
“In the latest effort to revive the United States’s flagging nuclear industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new prototype nuclear reactors within 7 years, the agency announced last week. The reactors would be the centerpiece of DOE’s new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which will receive $230 million this fiscal year. Each would be built as a 50–50 collaboration with an industrial partner and ultimately could receive up to $4 billion in funding from DOE.”
Some lucky partner was slated to receive potentially billions in government funding in a 50–50 public-private partnership. That was the announcement in May of 2020, with Bill Gates’s TerraPower being selected five months later. lucky partner was selected ended up being Bill Gates’s TerraPower. And as this article indicates, the Trump administration was already thinking about these ‘more efficient’ reactor designs that can run on up to 20% enriched Uranium:
How personally engaged was Trump on this DOE project? It sounds like the kind of thing that could have absolutely fascinated him. And having the opportunity to shape a kind of revival of the US nuclear power sector also sounds like the kind of topic that could have animated Trump. So when the opportunity came along to revive that nuclear power sector using enriched weapons-grade Uranium, we have to ask: just how personally interested was Trump in this weapons-grade nuclear power plant? The whole scheme just exudes a kind Trumpian destructive grandeur.
So as we can see, part of what makes the news about Trump’s hoarding of nuclear secrets so disturbing is that the motive is not at all obvious. Not because there’s no discernible motive, but because there are so many plausible motives. Greed? Blackmail? Fascist espionage? Which was it? This is why it’s also useful to keep in mind that ‘All of the above’ is a viable motive when we’re talking about someone like Trump. Which presumably explains, in part, the ‘hair on fire’ government response.
It’s indictment-o-rama time for the US in what will undoubtedly prove to be another grueling stress test of the US’s political and legal systems, with former President Donald Trump facing 37 charges related to the trove of classified and top secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago. As we saw, Trump’s initial defense in the face of the scandal was to claim much of the classified content was shipped to Mar-a-Lago by mistake. But according to this indictment, Trump was at the center of orchestrating a scheme to obscure the existence of the documents from the government and even from his own lawyers at one point.
So what was in the top secret and classified documents? Prosecutors aren’t giving details, obviously, but we are told that it include war plans and nuclear secrets, in keeping with earlier reports about nuclear secrets being found in the trove.
that lack of clarity on what exactly it was that Trump decided to take raises an intriguing question that has sort of been implicitly raised by some of the other bizarre news that hit this week: So what are the odds that Trump didn’t also take some top secret documents involving the US’s UFO programs? Because as we also saw this week, there’s a the Pentagon whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, alleging the US has been in an 80 year global competition to salvage non-man-made vehicles and technology. What are the odds Trump didn’t learn about these programs while he was president? And if he did learn about them, what are the odds he didn’t keep some of those documents too given his sticky fingers?
So with the Pentagon seemingly taunting use with the dangle of some sort of ‘UFO disclosure’ story days before is indictment hitting, you have to wonder: is this classified documents scandal on the cusp of accidentally forcing some sort of UFO disclosure? Or, on the flip side, are we looking at the perfect set up for a ‘UFO disclosure’ hoax? Like a ‘well, we didn’t want to tell you all about this, but Trump’s behavior forced it’ kind of scenario? Time will tell. But with Trump apparently being willing to risk prosecution to keep documents of this nature, it’s hard not to suspect he took stuff far more exotic than just nuclear secrets
:
“Prosecutors painted Trump as the chief architect in retaining and concealing the documents at every stage, alleging he was “personally involved” in packing up boxes at the White House in January 2021 and later suggested to one of his lawyers to say “we don’t have anything here” after a subpoena was issued for them in 2022.”
Donald Trump was the chief architect of an attempt to hide the classified and top secret document from the US government’s attempts to have them returned. That’s at the core of this indictment. It’s not simply carelessness in taking documents he shouldn’t have taken. This was an active cover up that Trump orchestrated at Trump’s behest. He even had the documents hidden from his own attorney. You know you’re engaged in a shady scheme when you can’t even let your attorneys in on it:
And then we get to the available information on what was actually in these documents. And it’s more or less what we should expect: nuclear secrets and war plans. Exactly the kind of topics Trump finds most titillating:
But, of course, the US’s military secret can get a lot more titillating than just nuclear weapons. For example, back in September of 2019, Trump notoriously hinted at the US possessing weapons more powerful than nuclear weapons, a possible hint at anti-matter bombs.
But, of course, of all the possible military secrets the US possesses, none are going to be more exotic and exciting than possible UFO secrets. And as Trump let’s us know back in October of 2020, weeks before the election, he was looking into the US’s UFO secrets:
““I will tell you this: We have now created a military the likes of which we have never had before. In terms of equipment, the—the equipment we have, the weapons we have, and hope to god we never have to use it. But have created a military the likes of which nobody has, nobody has, ever had. Russia, China, they’re all envious of what we had. All built in the USA. We’ve rebuilt it all—$2.5 trillion dollars. As far as the other question I’ll check on it, I heard about it two days ago actually.””
“I heard about it two days ago actually.” That was Trump’s response in October of 2020 to a question about why the DoD set up a UFO task force in August of that year. According to Trump, he was going to “check on it”. This was less than a month before the 2020 election and all of the chaos that ensued as Trump did whatever he could to cling to power:
This is a good time to recall how David Charles Grusch — the Pentagon whistleblower alleging the US has been in an 80 year global competition to salvage non-man-made vehicles and technology — was serving as the representative for the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019–2021 for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). What are the odds Trump wasn’t privy to Grusch’s findings?
So what was then-President Trump allowed to learn about the US’s top secret UFO-related research? He technically would have had access to that kind of info. What did he learn? And, more importantly for the ongoing indictment, what documents was he allowed access to regarding those UFO programs? It’s just one of the many rather exotic questions that are implicitly raised by this historic indictment. Including the question of whether or not Trump was allowed to taken anything other than documents. Films perhaps?
The aliens are getting antsy. That’s at least one interpretation of the mass mystery drone sightings across New Jersey in recent weeks. And while the alien interpretation may be fanciful, it’s not that much less fanciful than many of the explanations we’re getting.
Yes, large drones of a variety of designs are hovering over the public with no explanation. No one knows where they came from, who is operating them, or really anything at all about them. All we know is these are unlike drones anyone has seen before. Serving a purpose no one knows. It’s a real mystery, compounded by the mysteriously casual response by authorities. Not only has no action been taken to somehow get to the bottom of who is responsible for these drones, but we are being assured that there’s nothing to worry about and they pose no known risk to the public. That’s at the same time we’re hearing growing speculation that the drones are some sort of foreign government psyop, with the usual suspects (Russia, China, and Iran) taking the blame. One New Jersey Republican congressman has already blamed an Iranian “mothership” sitting off the coast for launching the drones. The Pentagon has refuted this theory.
Alarmingly, the drones aren’t just mysteriously hovering in the skies of New Jersey. They’re apparently deploy electronic warfare capabilities. At least that’s one interpretation for the reports of car clocks that mysteriously change when the drones flew overhead and then changed back after leaving. Experts suggest this points to GPS jamming technology since so many modern cars set their clocks based on GPS. And yet, authorities are remarkably subdued about it all. One would think GPS-jamming mystery drones would potentially pose a risk to the public. But apparently not.
But it’s also important to keep in mind that this is far from the only mystery wave of drone sightings in recent years. For example, there was the mystery drones hovering around Swedish nuclear plans back in 2022 that were blamed on Russia, despite no actually video footage ever capturing them. And as we’re going to see, mystery drones were flying around sensitive US military sites in at least two states in 2023. Not only were drones flying over sensitive naval sites in Langley, Virginia, but a government nuclear research facility in Las Vegas ended up upgrading its anti-drone technology after a mystery drone incident of its own. Langely might be accessible from the coast but Las Vegas definitely isn’t. At least not unless those drones have a very impressive range.
And that question about the range of these drones, and the fact that no one seems to be able to track where they are launched from or landing, brings us to another angle to this story to keep in mind: the US has been working on nuclear drone technology for decades. And based on a 2012 report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), it sounds like the main obstacle to the creation of nuclear drones is political. Not technological.
The FAS report was based on what was then a recently concluded plausibility study carried out by Sandia labs and Northrup Grumman on the development of nuclear drone technology. We’re told that no hardware was actually built for the study. It was purely theoretical and based on computer simulations. And yet, as we’re going to see, Northrup Grumman is known to have patented a drone equipped with a helium-cooled nuclear reactor as long ago as 1986. Beyond that, designs for nuclear-powered aircraft go back to the 1950s. And according to the FAS report on this study, “Based on requirements and direction provided by Northrop Grumman, Sandia performed focused studies to translate stated needs into conceptual designs and processes that could be transferred easily from Sandia to industry design and production personnel.” Easily transferable technology sure sounds like readily available technology. And, again, this was 2012. There’s presumably a lot more easily transferable technology of this nature available today.
So could we be looking at what amount to an elaborate psyop to showcase ultra-persistent nuclear drone technology? On the one hand, if true, that seems like a giant scandal. But on the other hand, let’s keep in mind on current political context of nuclear energy and regulations: thanks to the surging demand for electricity from both crypto-currency (Bitcoin in particular, which now uses as much electricity as the entire nation of Poland) and AI technology, there’s been a resurgence in interest in using nuclear energy to fill the gap. But not new big expensive nuclear reactors. No, the interest is in ‘cheap’ nuclear power. Lower coast nuclear plants that could be established to power a power-hungry data center, for example. And at this point all indications are pointing towards a second Trump administration that is completely captured by the crypocurrency and AI industries, with massive deregulations just around the corner.
Might nuclear powered drone technology be part of the ‘fun’ of a second Trump administration? It’s hard to rule it out at this point, at least if public opposition really was the primary hurdle to overcome. Public opposition isn’t really going to be an issue under a second Trump term after he starts sending the military in to deal with protesters, after all. And that brings us to another very disturbing possibility to keep in mind: nuclear-powered drones that can surveil cities for months at a time will come in really really handy should Trump decide to impose some sort of police state on large ‘blue’ cities.
And that’s all why we have to ask: is this a psyop designed to not scare the public but instead to showcase the incredible capabilities of new micro-nuclear technology. Or rather, ‘new’ micro-nuclear technology that isn’t necessarily all that new. What will be new is the public’s approval for it after everyone is done being amazed. Could that be what we’re looking at here?
If so, keep in mind that the American public isn’t the only audience here. The world, including the US’s adversaries, are getting this drone showcase too. Which is a reminder that, should we see an embrace of nuclear drones for domestic uses, we should probably assume the military uses are ready too. Yes, nuclear powered military drones are an international political headache waiting to happen. But, again, that may not be a factor for the incoming Trump administration. Especially if the nuclear fuel used isn’t seen as weaponizable.
So we’ll see what kind of explanation we eventually get for this. But it’s hard to imagine at this point that this obvious psyop isn’t domestic in nature. It’s not aliens. And almost certainly not a foe. How about an ad for a toy the Military Industrial Complex has been waiting to play with for decades? A toy with electronic warfare capabilities seemingly already ready for deployment:
“One eyewitness told the network that they saw a ‘parade’ of the drones, some as big as compact cars, roaring over the sky in procession.”
A parade of drones, some as big as compact cars. That’s what eyewitnesses are reporting. Which doesn’t just point out the scale of this public spectacle but also the diversity of the drone designs involved. Some of this are as big as compact cars but not all of them. It’s a mystery drone showcase. But they aren’t just showcasing an array of designs. They’re also apparently showcasing some sort of electronic warfare signal jamming capabilities. And yet, we are simultaneously told by authorities that no laws are being broken and there’s no cause for alarm. It’s quite the spectacle:
And as we should expect, there’s the obligatory attribution to Russia. It’s Russian psychological warfare, according to retired police lieutenant Tim McMillan, who goes on to suggest its similar to the 2022 mystery drone incidents near Swedish nuclear plants. This is a good time to recall how part of what made those Swedish mystery drones such a mystery was a lack of any actual captured footage despite all the reports of large winged drones. And here we are, with very visible mystery drones hovering over the US getting blamed on Russia as some sort of bizarre psyop response to the US’s greenlighting of long-range missile strikes inside Russia. When in doubt, blame it on Russia:
So if Russia is sending mystery drones over New Jersey, how are these drones getting there? Is there some sort of drone mothership floating off the coast of New Jersey? Or are Russia agents inside the US surreptitiously launching and landing these drones from inside the US? These drones are taking off and landing from somewhere. And that brings us to the following report from back in October, a couple of months before the latest drone waves, about similar drone sightings reported last year near sensitive US military sights. Specifically, the Navy’s main base for SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port. And while these locations are on the coast and could hypothetically be accessible to drones launched from sea, there’s another sensitive location that was buzzed by drones but very far from any oceans: a US government nuclear weapons testing facility close to Las Vegas. We are told this site upgraded its anti-drone systems after up to five drones were detected over the site in October 2023. Did these drones fly in off the West Coast over California? Or fly in from Mexico? Because if not, it’s hard to imagine they weren’t launched from inside the US And despite all these mystery drones flying over these highly sensitive sites, there’s no indication any steps were taken to shoot them down or somehow disable them:
“The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that mysterious uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been spotted around the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, shortly after sunset during a period of more than two weeks.”
It’s a pretty amazing scene being described here. No, the drones aren’t the amazing part of the scene. It’s the fact that they aren’t being shot down or somehow intercepted that’s the amazing part. Made all the more amazing by the fact that we’re also told these drones were using a frequency band not associated with commercial drones. Why wasn’t this a cause for major alarm?
And then we get this interesting explanation for the lack of any sort of interception of these drones: unless they pose an imminent threat, by law drones cannot be shot down near military bases. And yet, as the article reminds us, the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in February of last year. So a spy balloon off the coast can be shot down while drones near military bases can fly around as much as they want until they pose an imminent threat? It’s a very unsatisfactory explanation, especially given the fact that a Chinese graduate student was charged with a violation of the Espionage Act for using a drone to photograph classified Naval ships in Virginia just months earlier:
And then there’s the drone sightings over the nuclear weapons testing facility near Las Vegas. How did those drones get there? They presumably didn’t fly in from the West coast, right? With no one in California noticing?
All in all, it’s looking increasingly implausible that the US is facing some sort of foreign drone invasion. And yet, it’s pretty fascinating to see how these large car-sized drones are seeing flying around with no takeoffs or landings reports. Where are they coming from and where are they going? How are they refueling? Drones can’t fly forever.
And yet, we’re obviously being shown new drone technology. Which raises the question: are these the “ultra-persistent” drones the US military has studied in the past? If so, that might explain the extreme hesitancy on the part of the US authorities in shooting them down. Because those ultra-persistent drones designs, which promised the capacity to fly for months at a time, relied on a special kind of fuel: nuclear fuel:
“Essentially, the tech allowed for “ultra-persistent” drone flight that didn’t require traditional fuels. As the FAS points out, the study doesn’t ever say “nuclear,” but all of the giveaways are there: “decommissioning and disposal” wouldn’t be issues otherwise.”
When the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) put out its report on these experimental drones back in 2012, it didn’t explicitly say the drones were nuclear powered. But it wasn’t exactly a secret either. And yet, while it sure sounded like the study concluded that the technology was ready, it was politics that was standing in the way. The idea of nuclear powered drone crashes is just too political unpalatable for the public to handle. At least that was the perception at the time:
And as the report reminds us, while the military applications for this kind of nuclear drone technology are obvious, don’t forget about the enormous domestic applications that go well beyond commercial applications. Like Homeland Security drones that can hover over cities for months at a time:
And as the following report in the Guardian, about these same nuclear drone plans pouts out, the US military has been working on nuclear-powered aircraft since the 1950s and Northrop Grumman is known to have patented a drone equipped with a helium-cooled nuclear reactor as far back as 1986. In other words, this is technology that has probably been technology available for a long time now. Politics really is the primary obstacle. The politics of public fears over small flying nuclear reactions:
“The Sandia-Northrop Grumman team looked at numerous different power systems for large- and medium-sized drones before settling on a nuclear solution. Northrop Grumman is known to have patented a drone equipped with a helium-cooled nuclear reactor as long ago as 1986, and has previously worked on nuclear projects with the US air force research laboratory. Designs for nuclear-powered aircraft are known to go back as far as the 1950s.”
Nuclear drones weren’t new technology in 2012. Making them even more not-new today. What is the state of that technology at this point? At the same time, note how we’re told no hardware was actually built for this research project. Sandia and Northrup Gumman just used computer simulations to arrive at their nuclear solutions. The kinds of solutions that could be transferred easily from Sandia to industry design and production personnel, which further suggests this is actually pretty old technology they were looking at. Again, it’s the politics standing in the way, not the technology. That’s the message of this 2012 FAS report:
“It added that “none of the results will be used in the near-term or mid-term future”, due to political constraints.” That was 2012. Are the political constraints still going to be there in 2025? If not, welcome to our nuclear-drone future. Well, it’s not just nuclear drones. A nuclear-whatever future. Nukes abound. Because the future is now. And it’s radioactive. But nothing to worry about. It’s safe radiation. And necessary for all the crypto and AI. Plus the climate. And don’t forget war.