Brazil’s top electoral court has given Meta 24 hours to prove it is treating campaign content from incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro equally on its online platforms, threatening a daily fine for noncompliance. The ruling follows allegations from Lula's campaign that the social media giant is suppressing Lula’s campaign content ahead of Sunday’s closely contested presidential runoff.
Brazil’s top electoral court has given Meta 24 hours to prove it is treating campaign content from incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro equally on its online platforms, threatening a daily fine for noncompliance. The ruling follows allegations from Lula's campaign that the social media giant is suppressing Lula’s campaign content ahead of Sunday’s closely contested presidential runoff.
Trudy weakens to tropical storm after warnings of strong winds and heavy rain, while one person killed in Greece
In contrast to the quiet Atlantic hurricane season, there has been ongoing activity in the Pacific, with Trudy being the 22nd and latest named system. The category 2 hurricane remained roughly 100 miles (160km) south-west of the coast of Mexico, meaning the worst of the conditions stayed offshore. However, the US National Hurricane Center put coastal parts of the states of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima under hurricane warnings, with sustained winds of up to 60-90mph forecast on Sunday.
Rainfall totals of 100-150mm were likely for these areas, prompting warnings of flooding and landslides. Warnings also covered the risk of a dangerous storm surge accompanied by damaging waves in areas of onshore winds across the coast of south-western Mexico. By Monday morning, Trudy had weakened and been downgraded to a tropical storm, with coastal warnings being lifted.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro traded personal attacks in a heated presidential debate on Sunday, a week before a closely contested run-off. The rivals accused each other of lying and corruption while clashing over the economy, security and healthcare ahead of the October 25 vote.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro traded personal attacks in a heated presidential debate on Sunday, a week before a closely contested run-off. The rivals accused each other of lying and corruption while clashing over the economy, security and healthcare ahead of the October 25 vote.
Four Canadian service members were killed and 39 people hospitalised after a fire broke out during military training at a base in Alberta on Saturday, officials said. Premier Danielle Smith said Sunday that at least 19 patients were in critical condition, with some suffering severe burns requiring prolonged intensive treatment.
Four Canadian service members were killed and 39 people hospitalised after a fire broke out during military training at a base in Alberta on Saturday, officials said. Premier Danielle Smith said Sunday that at least 19 patients were in critical condition, with some suffering severe burns requiring prolonged intensive treatment.
Amid global demand for Patriot interceptors, Lockheed Martin recently unveiled its most advanced interceptor, the PAC-3 Edge, which could offer improved performance against ballistic missiles and hypersonic threats.
EurAsian Times takes a deep dive into the evolution of Patriot Air Defense Systems, but before that, let’s start with the news.
PAC-3 EDGE
The new interceptor missile builds on the combat-proven PAC-3 MSE technology, which has proven its worth in multiple conflicts, including Ukraine and the Middle East.
The new PAC-3 Edge incorporates a new seeker, an upgraded control system, and a more advanced solid rocket motor developed with Northrop Grumman.
These new features will improve the missile interceptor’s range, altitude, speed, and precision.
It is part of the US Army’s Future Interceptor program, which is currently in competition.
“The Army’s decision to progress Lockheed Martin into the next stage of development affirms its confidence in Lockheed Martin’s proven Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) experience and the company’s ability to deliver an advanced, layered defense,” the company said in a statement.
Lockheed Martin will advance development and begin testing PAC-3 Edge in 2027 to prepare for rapid deployment by 2031, it added.
Patriot PAC-3 ACE. Credits Lockheed Martin.
“Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 Edge interceptor leverages the combat-proven PAC-3 MSE, delivering even greater maneuverability, power and velocity to ensure the Army’s layered defensive architecture remains the most advanced in the world,” said Tim Cahill, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control president.
PAC-3 interceptors come in three variants: the lower-cost PAC-3 ACE, legacy PAC-3 CRI, and the prestigious PAC-3 MSE.
The company said it invested US$250 million in the Strigo Product Center to fund new, industry-leading seeker technology that increases precision and maneuverability against evolving threats.
PAC-3 Edge is designed to be integrated with existing and future Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) capabilities, including the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), the M903 launcher, containerized launchers, and HIMARS Flex.
The US Army’s selection of Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 Edge program highlights the service’s efforts to improve its existing layered air defense systems to address evolving aerial threats.
While the company did not provide technical details of the new seeker technology, analysts believe that it could be a dual-mode or multimode configuration that integrates multiple sensors to better detect, track, and intercept evolving threats such as hypersonic cruise missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), maneuvering ballistic missiles, and the ability to distinguish real threats from decoys.
In the war in Ukraine, while the PAC-3 MSE interceptors have proved highly effective in countering ballistic missiles and aircraft, they have struggled to intercept Russia’s hypersonic missiles, such as Oreshnik, Zircon, and Kinzhal.
Furthermore, while PAC-3 MSE interceptors were highly effective against ballistic threats in the initial phase, their performance gradually declined as Russia adapted its missiles to perform increasingly complex terminal maneuvers.
According to a Financial Times report based on Ukrainian Air Force data compiled by the Center for Information Resilience, Patriot interceptors’ ballistic interception rate reached 37% in August 2025 but fell to a low of 6% in September.
This decline was linked to Russian tactical improvements, such as missiles changing trajectory and missiles capable of performing terminal maneuvers.
However, despite this drop in interception rates, Patriot batteries remain Ukraine’s only defense against Russian ballistic threats.
The new PAC-3 Edge interceptors will provide increased protection against such maneuvering missile threats and hypersonic missiles.
Notably, the unveiling of new PAC-3 Edge interceptors comes as global demand for PAC-3 interceptors has increased, and Lockheed Martin is establishing new facilities to raise its interceptor production rate.
Lockheed produced nearly 620 interceptors in 2025; however, it plans to triple Patriot interceptor production to 2000 by 2030.
Patriot PAC-3 interceptors are also included in the Pentagon’s Munitions Acceleration Council (MAC), which is targeting 12 legacy and two “emerging” munitions as part of its ambitious plan to ramp up production and ink a series of agreements with key vendors to ensure cost efficiency while maintaining production stability, according to fiscal 2027 budget documents.
Rising global demand for PAC-3 interceptors, requests from multiple countries to establish Patriot interceptor production facilities, and the unveiling of the advanced PAC-3 Edge interceptors underscore the Patriot air and missile defense system’s continued relevance more than four decades after it first became operational.
The Evolution Of Patriot Air Defense Systems
The MIM-104 Patriot is the US Army’s primary air-and-missile defense system.
Although it was initially designed as an anti-aircraft system, newer Patriot variants can engage ballistic and cruise missiles, drones, loitering munitions, and aircraft.
A typical Patriot battery includes a radar set, an engagement control station, power generation, other support vehicles, and several launch stations.
The US Army Missile Command first developed the Patriot concept in 1961 as the Army Air Defense System for the 1970s (AADS-70s).
The AD system was meant to be mobile and replace the static HAWK and Nike Hercules emplacements.
In 1964, the US Army renamed it Surface-to-Air Missile, Development (SAM-D).
Three years later, in 1967, the Department of Defense selected Raytheon as the prime contractor. SAM-D’s first flight test took place in November 1969.
Although Raytheon won the prime SAM-D contract in 1967, it did not build everything alone. Martin Marietta joined early as a major subcontractor to handle missile assembly, launcher vehicles, and canister production.
In 1974, the Department of Defense reoriented the SAM-D program to support a Track-Via-Missile (TVM) guidance system and a simplified concept of operations.
Patriot AD System.
The revised and re-engineered system was renamed PATRIOT (Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept On Target) in 1976.
Patriot entered full-rate production in September 1980, and the US Army activated its first Patriot missile battalion in May 1982.
The Army added significant upgrades to the Patriot system throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1985, the Department of Defense (DoD) started efforts to add a ballistic missile defense capability to the system.
In 1986, the Army upgraded Patriot to the Patriot Advanced Capability-1 (PAC-1) standard, which included software changes that allowed it to engage tactical ballistic missiles.
The PAC-1 was deployed by 1988.
Soon, the US Army began efforts towards the PAC-2 standard, which involved modifications to the missile fuze, warhead, and guidance to engage more capable ballistic missiles like the Soviet OTR-23.
The Patriot system first saw combat service during the 1991 Gulf War, defending critical assets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Israel. The PAC-2 missiles were used to intercept Iraq’s Scud missiles.
Martin Marietta built the PAC-2 interceptors.
In 1993, the US Army added remote launch capability to Patriot systems, allowing missile launchers to be deployed over 10 km from the radar. This also more than tripled the system’s defended area.
Later, the US Army also developed the PAC-3 standard.
The most significant PAC-3 upgrade was a new interceptor with hit-to-kill technology, developed by Lockheed, which defeats targets by striking them directly rather than using a blast-fragmentation warhead.
Lockheed achieved the first-ever hit-to-kill intercept in 1984 with the Homing Overlay Experiment, using impact force alone to destroy a mock warhead outside Earth’s atmosphere. Further development and testing produced today’s PAC-3 missile, which won a 1993 competition to become the US government’s first hit-to-kill interceptor.
In 1995, Lockheed Corp merged with Martin Marietta to create one of the US’s largest defense aerospace companies, combining two key components of the Patriot program: Martin Marietta’s established Patriot infrastructure and production facilities and Lockheed’s cutting-edge hit-to-kill technology.
This newly formed mega-contractor rolled out the PAC-3 missile interceptor.
The PAC-3 standard itself included three distinct configurations, Configuration 1, 2, and 3, which improved its radar, seeker, and range.
The US declared PAC-3 Configuration 3 combat-ready in August 2002.
PAC-3 Configuration 3 had its first combat test in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In 2010, the US Army successfully tested an upgraded PAC-3 interceptor, the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE).
According to CSIS’s Missile Threat, the PAC-3 MSE features an enlarged motor and other enhancements to nearly double the PAC-3’s range. It achieved initial operational capability in late 2016.
Patriot is a long-range, high-altitude, all-weather missile tested more than 2,500 times with U.S. Army oversight. (Image: Raytheon)
The PAC-3 also features an active Ka-band radar seeker for endgame guidance. With its lighter weight and newer propulsion system, the PAC-3 can reportedly defend an area seven times greater than the PAC-2.
Patriot currently employs a single AN/MPQ-53, AN/MPQ-65, or AN/MPQ-65A radar set to detect and engage targets. Unlike other air defense systems, the Patriot radar combines surveillance, tracking, and engagement in a single unit.
The AN/MPQ-53 was the world’s first phased-array air defense radar and was employed with legacy PAC-2 systems.
The AN/MPQ-65A is the most advanced Patriot radar; however, the US Army is currently transitioning to use the new Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radar, which offers 360-degree coverage and significantly greater detection range.
Furthermore, while the AN/MPQ-53 and -65-series radars are passively scanned arrays, LTAMDS is an active electronically scanned array (AESA) that uses gallium nitride (GaN) power amplifiers, offering greater jamming resistance, beam agility, and power efficiency than previous systems.
360-degree coverage is essential to counter Russia’s evolving “wolf-pack tactics,” which involve launching dozens of aerial targets simultaneously, including drones and ballistic and cruise missiles, that approach from different directions and strike at once.
Only the US and Poland are procuring the LTAMDS at present. In September, the US awarded a US$1.7 billion contract to produce nine radars for the two users.
Currently, 18 countries operate the Patriot AD system. These include the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece, Spain, South Korea, the UAE, Ukraine, Qatar, Romania, Sweden, Poland, and Bahrain.
In 2023, the US allowed countries to transfer Patriot batteries to Ukraine, where they have repeatedly intercepted Russian ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
For instance, on May 16, 2023, the Ukrainian Air Force claimed it used Patriot to intercept a salvo of six Kinzhal missiles over Kyiv.
However, rising global demand for PAC-3 MSE interceptors and Russia’s adaptive missile technology, which involves terminal-phase maneuvers, have necessitated a two-pronged strategy: boosting PAC-3 interceptor production and developing more advanced interceptors.
The PAC-3 Edge will keep the Patriot AD system relevant amid evolving aerial threats.
Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
There is now a growing debate over what constitutes war and whether it should include strikes on data centers. They represent a new front in warfare, in which facilities powering the technology behind many critical industries have become targets.
As it is, the definition of a military attack seems to be changing over time.
Conventionally, it was understood to occur when tanks or fighter planes crossed a border. Then it was expanded to include the use of missiles that were fired without crossing the border but hitting a city and causing physical destruction of “vital infrastructure and death”.
Such attacks justified a country retaliating under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which legitimizes a war under “Right to Self Defense” if an “armed attack occurs.”
Now there is a growing school of thought that “vital infrastructure” must include any disruptive attack on data centers, whether kinetic or non-kinetic, amounting to significant loss of function. It should be treated as a use of force and trigger the affected country’s right to self-defense under Article 51, the argument goes.
Apparently, vulnerabilities in modern digital infrastructure have turned data centers into primary targets in contemporary warfare. As society becomes deeply integrated with cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and automated logistics, data centers have evolved into the nervous system of modern statecraft.
Attacks on digital infrastructure are no longer limited to cyberattacks (non-kinetic) that cause banking collapses and disrupt vital systems like power grids and hospitals by cutting off Internet access; they now include kinetic strikes on data hubs that affect nations’ military capabilities and expose financial vulnerabilities.
After all, modern defense systems rely heavily on cloud-based logistics. Data centers process satellite imagery, coordinate drone operations, run predictive maintenance algorithms for fighter jets, and host classified communication networks. Thus, taking down these nodes effectively blinds an adversary’s command structure.
This has been noticed in the recent conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. For instance, on September 23, Russian Geran-5 jet drones hit the Inkom Business Center in Kyiv, housing Datagroup’s data center. Four people died, and internet service for 100,000 households was down for hours.
On September 27, Kyivstar — Ukraine’s central mobile operator — and Vodafone Ukraine’s data centers were hit. Russia’s Defense Ministry justified this by saying that “Data centers were being used for the benefit of the Ukrainian military.”
Two weeks later, Ukraine returned the favor. It launched highly targeted long-range drone strikes hitting major data hubs across Russia, inflicting significant disruption on the country’s digital economy.
Between October 8 and October 14, 2026, Ukrainian forces carried out a series of “symmetrical responses” to counter earlier Russian attacks on Ukrainian internet and telecommunications assets. The strikes specifically crippled infrastructure belonging to Yandex (often called “Russia’s Google”) and Sberbank, Russia’s largest banking and technology conglomerate.
A police car is parked in front of a burning oil terminal following an air attack in Saint Petersburg on October 18, 2026, amid the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Russia shot down dozens of Ukrainian drones near Saint Petersburg, authorities said on October 18, 2026, with an oil terminal hit and flights disrupted at one of the country’s busiest airports. (Photo by AFP)
Similarly, in February-March 2026, during US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the latter hit back not only at oil but at data centers — Google, Microsoft, and Oracle cloud infrastructure in the Gulf, particularly those located in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
Apparently, when Amazon Web Services’ Bahrain facility suffered “physical damage to cooling infrastructure from debris”, it became the first known case of an AWS data center damaged in an interstate war.
Iranian missiles near Al Udeid Air Base damaged an Oracle Cloud data center in Doha. Microsoft also confirmed “connectivity issues” in the Qatar Central region.
The same happened to the Google data center in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, which hosts Aramco cloud.
G42 [UAE AI company backed by Microsoft] data center in Abu Dhabi was also affected, forcing it into blackout mode.
In other words, from Kyiv to Bahrain, a pattern is clearly apparent — belligerents no longer distinguish between cloud and command. Data centers that host banks and brigades are treated as brigades. They have officially transitioned from commercial tech infrastructures to critical national security assets.
As Omar Sultan Al Olama, the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, said the other day, “Unfortunately, they’re more important than bridges. They’re more important than roads. They’re more important than tunnels because our whole lives are on these devices that we’re using”.
Incidentally, the UAE is revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data center project following the Iranian strikes. The original plan envisioned a 10-square-mile campus in Abu Dhabi, to be built in partnership with American tech companies like Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco. Now the data centers will likely be spread out across the UAE. Sultan Al Olama said, “ The UAE will change its data centre rules and stop promoting where they are”.
According to Kirk Cameron, founding director of the Institute for Advanced Computing at Virginia Tech, “Data centers are now on the critical path for modern digital infrastructure. The loss of key data centers could collapse economies, disrupt public and private transportation with loss of GPS, and affect government essential services for health, emergency dispatch, and power grids.”
Many agree with him when he argues that “Data centers are competitive advantages in warfare. Knocking out capabilities means potentially crippling combat operations for an adversary. It’s also a form of economic warfare and could lead to longer-term competitive challenges for the target.”
All this brings the question of whether bombing a data center constitutes an act of war. Does the definition of war need to change?
The main challenge to this question lies in what is called the “Gray Zone” of conflict, particularly in non-kinetic attacks. Unlike a missile launch, which leaves clear radar signatures and identifiable points of origin, cyber operations offer plausible deniability.
Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, attacking a dual-use target is governed by the principles of distinction and proportionality. Here, attacking a dual-use target is legal only if the military advantage gained outweighs the civilian collateral damage.
If an attack on a data center shuts down military communications but also disables the life-support monitoring systems of dozens of regional hospitals, the strike violates proportionality. Such an operation can be classified as a war crime, reinforcing the argument that major cyber infrastructure operations carry the same legal weight and consequences as traditional warfare.
But any clear distinction in such cases is neither easy nor free from contention. For instance, when Russia attacked data centers in Ukraine, it claimed that these were being used by Ukrainian intelligence and military. However, Ukraine denied the charge.
As Kasia Klonowska, an authority on international law, says, “Due to a lack of a definition of the treaty- terms weapons, means or methods of warfare, it is unclear whether non-weaponized AI decision-support systems should be subjected to a legal review prescribed by Article 36 of the Additional Protocol I. It remains a challenge to determine exactly what should be subjected to review beyond weapons.
“You have very limited situations in which they would actually qualify as lawful targets when they’re used by the military, and even then, it’s very difficult for the attacker to know whether that’s happening or not. If they are purely processing military data, they could be legitimate targets. But many, if not most, are dual-use.”
To address the legal ambiguity surrounding digital warfare, Prof. Ben Hines has proposed what he calls a “Substantive Necessity” framework, reinterpreting international law under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Under this framework, a non-kinetic cyber attack amounts to an armed attack when the victim state, based on clear and convincing evidence, apprehends a hostile act that has fundamentally compromised, or is imminently poised to compromise, the functioning or security of infrastructure crucial to the state’s ability to function.
The framework argues that traditional international legal thresholds for “force” and “gravity” do not inherently require physical destruction or kinetic weaponry. Under this test, taking down a country’s primary data center cluster that hosts banking, health, emergency dispatch, GPS — even without an explosion — is an armed attack. Because effects equal or exceed kinetic.
Viewed thus, it is not surprising that Western nations like the US, the Netherlands, and France are clearly asserting that a disruptive attack on data centers that causes significant loss of function will be treated as a use of force and may trigger the right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
In sum, as the line between the physical and digital worlds disappears, international law is adapting to treat high-consequence infrastructure attacks as equivalent to an armed attack.
Data centers are now firmly on the front lines of global conflict, where a single breach can serve as the definitive catalyst for war. The lines between civilian infrastructure and military assets are dangerously blurring.
Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting onpolitics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
Since it was established in 1956, Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta has hosted legendary Democratic leaders while its founder played a key role in the city’s move from a Republican to Democratic stronghold. With the state’s Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff leading the polls in the midterms amid rumours of a future presidential run, the tavern is once more at the heart of the political action.
Since it was established in 1956, Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta has hosted legendary Democratic leaders while its founder played a key role in the city’s move from a Republican to Democratic stronghold. With the state’s Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff leading the polls in the midterms amid rumours of a future presidential run, the tavern is once more at the heart of the political action.
On October 14, 2026, in her address to the Senate ahead of the European Council, Giorgia Meloni did something that, until just a few years ago, would have seemed unthinkable for a right-wing Italian government: she publicly distanced herself from the President of the United States to defend a position even more uncompromising than his own. The issue at hand was the diesel fuel agreement announced by Donald Trump following a phone call with Vladimir Putin, accompanied by a temporary license from the U.S. Treasury that reopens the global market to Russian fuel. For the prime minister, this is a “very risky” decision: it legitimizes Moscow while bombs are falling on Ukrainian cities, provides it with new revenue, and weakens the leverage of sanctions. During the same session, Meloni argued that Putin is seeking a new enemy, and that that enemy could be Europe; and that a Ukraine that stopped defending itself would not achieve peace, but occupation.
So much for the news report. The rest was left to the chamber and the newspapers. The applause from the majority was joined by that of a portion of the opposition: Azione, Italia Viva, and the reformist wing of the Democratic Party. La Stampa framed support for Kiev as a matter of values and borders – those borders that “are being defended there.”
There is also a detail that speaks louder than many analyses. When questioned by ANSA, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed the prime minister’s remarks with a curt response: “It’s none of her business.” At the same time, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in London, welcomed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and denouncing the restriction of military satellite services provided to the Ukrainian army. Elon Musk, for his part, clarified that the StarShield network belongs to the U.S. government and that any restrictions depend on the U.S. military and, ultimately, on the president. Washington deals with Moscow; Moscow responds to Washington. Rome applauds itself. Pathetic, isn’t it?
Not an exclusively Italian case
It would be a mistake to view the October 14 session as merely an episode of domestic politics. Italy’s stance is the national manifestation of a framework that today unites nearly all European capitals, and which has three rules. The first: the conflict in Ukraine is presented as an existential clash between political civilizations, in which any compromise amounts to surrender. The second: the Russian threat is projected beyond Ukraine, onto EU territory, so as to make rearmament an indisputable necessity. The third, the most insidious: internal dissent is attributed to the enemy’s influence.
Germany offers the clearest example. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who as early as 2023 had called for the country to become kriegstüchtig – capable of waging war – and who has since pointed to a timeframe of just a few years within which Russia could attack a member of the Alliance, has argued in recent days that the widespread fear of war in German society is being deliberately fueled by Putin and the AfD. This line of reasoning deserves attention. In a country that lost millions of lives in the two world wars, the fear of a new conflict would not need external agents to explain itself. Attributing it to Moscow and the main opposition party means transforming a legitimate political sentiment into a national security issue.
The same pattern is repeated elsewhere, albeit with different nuances. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski claims credit for the results of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and infrastructure; his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, argues that now is not the time to ease sanctions, but to tighten them. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are acting as a negotiating bloc, so much so that Meloni herself has asked that they do so at least with a formal mandate from all partners. These words are backed by numbers: the ReArm Europe plan presented by the Commission in March 2025; the commitment made at the NATO summit in The Hague to raise defense and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035; and the 90-billion loan to Kiev approved by the European Council in December 2025. This rhetoric is not the eccentricity of some minister; it is literally the official language of the Union – and unfortunately, we have grown accustomed to it.
A foolish and counterproductive stance
Calling this approach foolish is not polemical hyperbole, if by “foolishness” we mean the stubborn persistence in repeating behavior that produces effects opposite to those declared. This is evident on three levels.
The first is strategic. Deterrence theory has taught us for decades that a threat is only as valuable as the credibility of the one making it, and that credibility depends on the ability to back up one’s words with action. Today’s Europe is raising the tone without having the tools to back it up. The Starlink affair has demonstrated this with almost textbook clarity: the Ukrainian military, which Europeans fund and encourage, depends for communications and drone guidance on infrastructure owned by an American company and controlled by the Pentagon. All it takes is a decision in Washington for part of the operations to grind to a halt. Promising victory in a war where one does not control the satellites is a form of strategic hypocrisy, and adversaries see it for what it is.
The second aspect is economic, of course. As early as 2024, Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness identified the energy price differential with the United States as one of the factors behind the continent’s industrial lag. Since then, the rejection of Russian hydrocarbons has become dogma; the war in Iran has driven fuel prices even higher; and the commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defense promises to absorb resources that public budgets simply do not have – unless at the expense of healthcare, pensions, and civilian investments. The paradox is clear: just as Washington, for entirely domestic reasons tied to the midterm elections, is seeking cheap diesel even from Moscow, European governments are touting the fact that they pay more for energy than their competitors as a moral principle.
The third level is diplomatic, and perhaps the most decisive one. A foreign policy that rules out negotiation on principle dooms itself to being left out of the talks when negotiations finally begin. And that is exactly what is happening: the United States and Russia are hammering out energy agreements, the pace of the war, and the terms of a possible truce, while Europe merely comments. Zakharova’s response to the Italian prime minister is not merely a diplomatic snub.
It is the exact measure of the weight Moscow currently attributes to European capitals. One can debate whether it is right; it is harder to argue that it is wrong as a description.
The price of credibility
The deepest damage, however, is not measured on the front lines or even in the markets. It is measured in the relationship between institutions and citizens. When the gap between what is proclaimed and what actually happens becomes visible to the naked eye, public discourse loses its value. For four years, European citizens have been told repeatedly that Russia’s defeat is near, that sanctions are bringing it to its knees, and that every new aid package will be the decisive one. Now they see their main ally negotiating with Moscow, Ukraine dependent on decisions made in Washington, and their own governments increasing military spending while public services deteriorate. No foreign disinformation campaign is needed to breed mistrust. A simple comparison between rhetoric and results is enough.
This distrust stems from a crisis of representation with deeper roots. About a decade ago, in his book *Ruling the Void*, Peter Mair described – well in advance – the withdrawal of political parties from society toward the state, and the gradual separation between responsible government – that is, one faithful to external constraints – and representative government – that is, one responsive to the demands of voters. Together with Richard Katz, he coined the term “cartel party” to describe political formations that compete in the electoral arena but share the management of resources and fundamental policy decisions. The cross-party applause on October 14 is an almost perfect illustration of that model. On an issue of life-and-death importance – the cost of energy and the fate of industry – voters who dissent find no political alternative in Parliament that represents them.
The effects are plain for all to see. In France, governments fall one after another without a stable majority emerging. In Germany, the ruling coalition governs with the strongest postwar opposition breathing down its neck. In Italy, abstention has become the largest “party.” Procedures remain intact, elections are held regularly, but significant decisions are made elsewhere, and the vote ends up merely confirming choices that have already been made.
Governing through distrust
At this point, a less obvious question arises. If distrust damages institutions, why do Europe’s ruling classes continue down a path that fuels it? The simplest answer would be incompetence. But there is a more robust hypothesis that better explains the facts: distrust, within certain limits, is a resource for governance.
Here’s how the mechanism works. A disillusioned electorate becomes fragmented, abstains from voting, and scatters among new and unstable parties. Fragmentation leads to ungovernability; ungovernability, in turn, makes “responsible” grand coalitions, technocratic governments, and cross-party agreements – which keep forces deemed unreliable out of power – indispensable. The more unstable the system is, the more necessary the center becomes, as it promises stability. The crisis of representation, rather than weakening those in power, consolidates their position, because it makes them the only bulwark against the chaos that the crisis itself has produced.
War perfects this mechanism in two ways. First, it allows dissent to be treated as a security issue. When the fear of conflict is attributed to Putin and the opposition, those who call for negotiations cease to be political adversaries and become vehicles of enemy influence. Carl Schmitt identified the state of exception as the place where sovereignty is revealed; Giorgio Agamben has shown how the exception tends to become an ordinary technique of governance.
A permanent state of emergency – whether health-related, financial, or military – removes decision-making from democratic debate and entrusts it to those who present themselves as guarantors of collective survival. Second, war justifies shifting decision-making to forums beyond electoral control: the European Commission, the European Council, NATO, and small-group formats such as the E3.
We must be precise on one point, so as not to slip into caricature. This interpretation does not presuppose a plan agreed upon in some secret room. There is no need for that. It is enough that interests converge: the defense industries seeing orders increase, the European bureaucracies acquiring new powers, the ruling parties finding a raison d’être in the emergency, and the major media conglomerates peddling moral mobilization. Each acts in its own self-interest, and the sum of these self-interests produces a self-perpetuating system. We are, to all intents and purposes, in a Gramscian “organic crisis” – the phase in which the old dies and the new cannot be born, and in which morbid phenomena proliferate. The management of mistrust is one such phenomenon: a way to survive the crisis without resolving it.
Winning at any cost
The final question remains – and it is the most serious one. What are these elites willing to sacrifice to emerge victorious from the current phase? Looking back at recent years, the answer is that part of the sacrifice has already been made. Politics was sacrificed when fundamental decisions were shifted outside of parliaments and the distinction between majority and opposition became merely ornamental. The economy was sacrificed when the continent’s industrial competitiveness was subordinated to geopolitical objectives set elsewhere, accepting unsustainable energy prices and the very real risk of deindustrialization. Those who have already given up these two pillars have little to lose when it comes to the third – the human cost.
For now, that cost is being borne primarily by the Ukrainians. Even members of the Verkhovna Rada who zealously supported the line of all-out war – such as Mar’jana Bezuhla – or who have distanced themselves from it – such as Anna Skorochod – describe a country with destroyed infrastructure, forced mobilization marked by abuses, and a population on the brink of collapse, and admit that the conflict has become a business opportunity for some; but the cost is also beginning to fall on European societies: in public budgets, in wages eroded by energy inflation, and in the idea – now voiced without embarrassment by sitting ministers – that we must get used to the prospect of fighting.
Here, the rhetoric of war reveals its deepest function, for it does not serve to win the war against Russia, which no European government has the means to win on its own. It serves to win the domestic battle, to maintain control over political systems that can no longer generate consensus and that need an external enemy to justify their continued existence. In this sense, the human cost is not a side effect of the calculation. It is a variable, adjusted according to the convenience of the moment, in the perpetual dance of death that is political utilitarianism.
There is an alternative, and it does not amount to surrender: it consists of bringing diplomacy back to the center of European foreign policy, recognizing that a now multipolar international order cannot be governed by moral crusades, and restoring to parliaments and voters the power to decide on war and peace. The indicators for gauging whether anything is changing are concrete: the mandate that the next European Council will – or will not – entrust to the negotiators; the fate of the sanctions regime following the U.S. exemption on diesel fuel; and the stability of national budgets in the face of the 5% target.
As long as the response remains the one applauded on October 14, Europe will continue to pay an ever-increasing price for a war it does not control, while those who govern it will find in its very instability the reason to remain where they are.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that US President Donald Trump’s decision to waive sanctions and tariffs on Russia would last 60 days, as the move drew bipartisan criticism and raised fears in Ukraine that Washington could ease further restrictions on Moscow.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that US President Donald Trump’s decision to waive sanctions and tariffs on Russia would last 60 days, as the move drew bipartisan criticism and raised fears in Ukraine that Washington could ease further restrictions on Moscow.
“No Kings, Vote Now” was the theme of a rally in Atlanta, one of many organised across the US on Saturday. While many demonstrators denounced US President Donald Trump’s policies, organisers said the rally was aimed at getting out the vote in the November 3 midterm elections and protecting democracy in America.
“No Kings, Vote Now” was the theme of a rally in Atlanta, one of many organised across the US on Saturday. While many demonstrators denounced US President Donald Trump’s policies, organisers said the rally was aimed at getting out the vote in the November 3 midterm elections and protecting democracy in America.
According to an Ifop poll for the newspaper Marianne, nearly half of Muslims and Jews would consider leaving the country if Marine Le Pen were to emerge victorious in the presidential election next year. 20% of them would “certainly” do so.
Which candidate would cause you to leave France? This is one of the questions posed by the Ifop poll for Marianne, released on Thursday, October 15. The study reveals that a significant proportion of Muslims and Jews say they are prepared to leave the country if Marine Le Pen wins the 2027 presidential election.
Some 46% of that number are planning “leaving France to settle in another country,” while 20% say they will “certainly” take the plunge. More broadly, 40% of younger French people say they have made plans to leave. Among voters of La France Insoumise, the figure rises to 43%. Furthermore, 44% of Jewish citizens responded that they would consider leaving the country.
Marine Le Pen’s rise to power could create “significant obstacles” and generate “high levels of fear and insecurity,” Francois Kraus, director of the political division at Ifop, explained to journalists. More than eight out of ten Muslims fear an “increase in attacks and discrimination” against them. This concern is particularly relevant in the context of the National Rally’s plan to ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in public spaces. Confirmed at the end of August by MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the new measure would impose stiff fines on offenders and is expected to be included in Marine Le Pen’s platform for the 2027 presidential election. To circumvent the legal hurdles that such a ban might encounter, the presidential candidate is reportedly considering putting it to a referendum.
Meanwhile, only 27% of Muslim respondents would be willing to “conceal [their] religious affiliation on a daily basis,” for example, by ceasing to wear the headdress in public (18%). More broadly, 41% of those surveyed, regardless of their religion, would refuse to “respect laws” they consider “unjust.” This distrust affects three out of four Jean-Luc Melenchon voters and nearly half of civil servants (45%). According to the latest Ifop-Fiducial poll, Marine Le Pen maintains a significant lead in the first round. Depending on the scenario, the National Rally candidate is in first place with between 32% and 36% of the total vote.
While Le pen has remained antagonistic towards Islam in France, she has often cast herself as a protector of the Jewish people in the country.
In 2024, she remarked, “The best shield for French people of the Jewish faith is the National Rally. It is the only movement that has the will, the conviction and the means to fight Islamist fundamentalism, which is the major danger facing them.”
Yet, nearly as many Jews said they would leave the country under a Le Pen presidency as Muslims.
Every October 12, history once again becomes a battlefield. This year, the two events took place just a few days apart and a few thousand kilometers from one another. On one side, the White House, where on October 9, Donald Trump honored Christopher Columbus in front of a marble statue reassembled from fragments of the Baltimore monument that had fallen into the harbor in 2020, and signed a proclamation linking the 1492 voyage to the 1776 Declaration of Independence and promising that the explorer’s legacy will not be erased by “radical extremists.” On the other side were Indigenous organizations that for more than thirty years have rejected even the name of the continent, calling it Abya Yala.
The dispute over the continent’s name is a dispute over sovereignty, and the fact that it is resurfacing with such intensity in 2026 – while Washington is rewriting its relations with the Western Hemisphere in an openly hegemonic manner – is no mere coincidence of the calendar.
The name “America” originated in a cartographic workshop in the Vosges Mountains. In 1507, in Saint-Dié, Martin Waldseemüller printed a large wall map of the world and a brief accompanying treatise, proposing to name the new fourth part of the world after Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator who had argued that those lands were not Asia. On the map, the name appears in the southern part of the continent. Within a few decades, it came to apply to the entire continental landmass. None of the people who lived there were consulted.
In 1958, the Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman developed a thesis on this that retains its power to this day: America was not discovered, it was invented. Not in the trivial sense that it did not exist before, but in the sense that Europe constructed a new geographical and conceptual entity, placing it within its own image of the world and assigning it a role in its own universal history. The name was the first act of this construction. Before being conquered by force of arms, the continent was conquered on paper.
There is also a second appropriation, less discussed in Europe and deeply felt south of the Rio Grande. In common usage, “America” means the United States. The shift is not merely lexical. On December 2, 1823, James Monroe declared to Congress that the American continent was no longer to be considered open to European colonization: the phrase “America for Americans” already contained, in embryo, the idea that the Americans par excellence were those of Washington. Two centuries later, the same logic has led to pressure regarding the Panama Canal in 2025 and the military operation in Venezuela in January 2026. When an indigenous movement utters “Abya Yala,” it thus challenges two names at once: the one imposed by Europe and the one annexed by the United States.
The nomos of discovery
To understand why the word “discovery” is not neutral, we must turn to the law. Carl Schmitt, in a 1950 book that remains one of the foundational texts of legal geopolitics, argues that 1492 ushered in the first global nomos of the earth: an ordering of space based on the seizure of land. The European powers recognized one another as legal subjects and treated the New World as a free space, available for occupation. The papal bull Inter caetera of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 drew a line from pole to pole that divided the planet between Castile and Portugal. Those who lived on those lands did not participate in the division: they were its objects.
Schmitt describes this order with a jurist’s admiration for an effective legal construct, and his analysis must be read with that in mind. But the mechanism he identifies is real and has had a long institutional life. In 1823, the same year as the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case Johnson v. M’Intosh: Justice Marshall ruled that “discovery” conferred sovereign title to the land upon the European power – and later upon the United States as its successor – leaving the indigenous peoples with a mere right of occupation. The Doctrine of Discovery has remained part of American jurisprudence to this day. It was not until March 2023 that two Vatican departments issued a joint statement formally distancing themselves from it, acknowledging that 15th-century papal bulls were used to justify the expropriation of indigenous peoples.
The human cost of this system is measured in figures that remain uncertain, though their order of magnitude is not. A study published in 2019 in *Quaternary Science Reviews* estimated that between 1492 and 1600, the population of the Americas plummeted by about 90 percent, due to the combined effects of epidemics, war, forced labor, and social disintegration; the reforestation of abandoned lands was so extensive that it left a trace in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Tzvetan Todorov, in his book The Conquest of America, had already spoken of the greatest genocide in human history, questioning how knowledge of the other could coexist with its destruction. The “discovery,” in other words, was also the disappearance of most of those who were there.
What Abya Yala means
Abya Yala comes from the language of the Guna, the people who inhabit the Caribbean coast of Panama and certain areas of Colombia. In its form “Abiayala,” it is usually translated as “land in full maturity”; other renderings such as “living land” or “land of vital blood” are also in circulation. The transition from a local place name to a continental name is recent. According to the most widely cited accounts, it was the Bolivian Aymara leader Takir Mamani who proposed that indigenous peoples adopt this name in their documents, in place of that of the colonizers. The proposal took shape during the wave of protests that accompanied the 500th anniversary in 1992, when counter-celebrations marking “500 years of resistance” stood in opposition to the official commemorations. In the 2000s, the summit meetings of indigenous peoples across the continent permanently adopted it as part of their name.
The Guna’s choice is no accident. This is a people who, in 1925, rose up against the Panamanian state and eventually secured an autonomous comarca – now known as Guna Yala – with its own institutions and effective control over the territory: one of the most successful examples of indigenous self-governance on the continent. Borrowing their word means choosing as an emblem a concrete experience of territorial sovereignty, not mere nostalgia.
It should be noted that Abya Yala does not erase the plurality of local names: Anáhuac for the Nahua world of central Mexico, Tawantinsuyu for the political and territorial organization of the Incas, and Pindorama for the Tupi lands of present-day Brazil. Each of these names expresses a different cosmology of space. Abya Yala functions as common ground, a sort of federal name that does not replace the specific ones. This is an important detail, because it signals that the project is not the invention of a single, symmetrical indigenous identity mirroring the “American” one, but rather a coordination among diverse actors.
Cartography as an act of sovereignty
From a geopolitical perspective, naming is the first form of possession. This is well understood by states that rename gulfs and seas, contest place names on official maps, and impose transliterations in international institutions. The year 2025 provided a textbook example with the U.S. renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. In this context, Abya Yala is a counter-toponym: a name that does not seek to occupy school atlases, but rather to wrest from hegemonic power the monopoly on the description of space.
The Latin American decolonial school has given this insight a precise theoretical form. Aníbal Quijano has termed the structure that survives the end of formal colonialism “the coloniality of power”: a hierarchy of peoples, knowledge, and territories that continues to organize the international division of labor and the production of knowledge. Walter Mignolo has shown how “Latin America” itself is a designation that originated in the nineteenth century in French and Creole circles, with specific political functions. The year 1492 marks not only the beginning of the conquest of the Americas but also the birth of the world-system centered first on Europe and later on the Atlantic. Challenging the continent’s name therefore means challenging the founding date of the unipolar order, tracing it back to its very roots.
Here, the issue intersects with the debate on multipolarism. A multipolar order is not merely a different distribution of power among great states. It implies the recognition that there are multiple civilizations, each with its own concepts of space, law, and relationship to the land. The 2008 Constitution of Ecuador and the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia have translated some of these concepts into positive law: the former by recognizing rights inherent to nature, the Pacha Mama, and the latter by reestablishing the state as plurinational. These are imperfect experiments, but they represent the most serious attempt in the hemisphere to build a form of statehood that does not derive entirely from the European model.
Columbus, Italy, and two identity politics
For the Italian reader, the story takes an additional turn. Columbus Day did not originate as a celebration of conquest. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation came a year after the New Orleans lynching, in which eleven Italians were killed by a mob: the commemoration also served to offer the Italian-American community – which was facing discrimination at the time – a founding hero with whom to identify. Columbus thus became a tool for the integration of a minority that Anglo-Saxons considered little more than white.
Today, that history is being enlisted in a different battle. When Biden first proclaimed Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2021, and when Trump makes it the target of his own “Columbian restoration,” what is clashing are two identity politics within American society, each of which uses 1492 as a symbolic resource. Italian Americans find themselves serving as a shield for an operation that primarily concerns the definition of the U.S. nation and its relationship with the rest of the hemisphere.
Italy and Europe can avoid this dilemma. Remembering Columbus as a navigator, as a figure of Mediterranean and Genoese culture, and as a man of his time does not oblige one to subscribe to the “nomos” of discovery or the legal doctrine that derived from it. One can honor the sailor while rejecting the claim of ownership. Indeed, it is precisely from Europe that a gesture of historical maturity might emerge, similar to the one made by the Holy See in 2023: distinguishing the memory of the person from the legitimization of a spatial order that has produced expropriation and death on a continental scale.
October 12, 2026, revealed two opposing ways of approaching the same date. Washington used Columbus to reaffirm a narrative of national founding that, in foreign policy, translates into a renewed claim to guardianship over the hemisphere. Indigenous movements used Abya Yala to remind us that that hemisphere had names, political systems, and sovereignty before 1492 – and that it still retains some of them today.
There is no symmetry between the two positions. One has aircraft carriers, sanctions, and courts; the other has a word and territories to defend one by one, but the history of maps teaches us that names have a long life – longer than the empires that imposed them. “America” appeared on a map printed in a small town in the Vosges and ended up designating half the planet.
No one can say today what fate awaits Abya Yala, but the mere fact that millions of people refuse to call their land by another’s name already speaks volumes about the crisis of the order that name had ushered in.
Founded less than a decade ago in 2017, US defense technology company Anduril has reached a roughly US$90 billion valuation in a recent employee tender offer, placing its private-market value in the same range as, or above, the public-market capitalizations of long-established defense firms such as Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
According to a Bloomberg report, Anduril Industries Inc. opened a tender offer allowing its employees in 16 countries to sell shares at a valuation of about US$94.80 each, with the total offer capped at about US$ 1.3 billion. The subscription period is open from October 13 to November 9.
Unlisted companies often offer employees and others a chance to cash out shares they hold through tender offers to retain talent.
Notably, in recent years, AI-focused, venture-backed startups increasingly use tender offers rather than public listings to give employees access to cash.
AI startups such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Clay, ElevenLabs, and Harvey have used employee tender offers to stay private longer while still offering cash incentives to retain talent.
Anduril’s tender offer will push the AI-focused defense company’s valuation to US$90 billion, up nearly 50 percent from its May valuation of US$60 billion.
Beneath this skyrocketing valuation lies the story of how the global defense market, and the U.S.’s famous defense-industrial complex in particular, has transformed beyond recognition in just a decade.
What Anduril’s US$90 Billion Valuation Tells Us
For generations, slow-moving, mammoth defense-industrial houses lobbied for lucrative Pentagon contracts and delivered hardware-centric defense platforms over decades-long procurement cycles.
This system created the U.S.’s distinct politico-military-industrial complex, dominated by legacy prime contractors, including the Big Five: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.
Today, however, venture-backed startups increasingly dominate the U.S. defense market, offering software-defined autonomous weapons systems with AI integration.
In this market, a defense product’s journey from concept to initial operational clearance (IOC) and front-line deployment takes years, sometimes even months, not decades.
For instance, the Zumwalt-class destroyers program traces back to the 1990s Surface Combatant for the 21st Century (SC-21) and DD-21 programs. Construction of the lead ship began around 2009; it was launched in 2013, commissioned in October 2016, and was finally accepted around 2020. The ships have since undergone multi-year modifications to carry hypersonic missiles.
Similarly, the B-2 Spirit program spanned two decades, from the 1970s to the 1990s; the F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) program also took nearly two decades, from early concept work in 1996 to Initial Operational Capability in 2015.
However, venture-backed firms such as Anduril, Shield AI, and Palantir focus on software platforms that can be updated iteratively, often paired with smaller or modular hardware, and use faster acquisition pathways.
For instance, Anduril was founded in 2017. It piloted its AI-powered Sentry surveillance towers on the U.S.-Mexico border around 2018, within a year of its founding, and later made them a program of record, deploying hundreds by the early 2020s.
Similarly, Shield AI was founded in 2015. The company reported deploying its AI autonomy software stack, AI Hivemind, for the first time around 2018, within three years. Hivemind has since operated on dozens of platforms, including drones, F-16s in tests, helicopters, and, more recently, maritime and space systems, in GPS-denied, contested environments.
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) programs of these defense AI startups are progressing much faster than the typical two-decade development cycle for traditional fighter aircraft.
For instance, Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury, a jet-powered, uncrewed autonomous combat aircraft with mission-autonomy software such as Hivemind and Anduril’s own Lattice, is already in testing.
The contrast is stark. While traditional defense platforms were hardware-centric, with development cycles spanning decades, these new software-centric Autonomous platforms emphasize rapid prototyping and continuous software updates, compressing development timelines to years, and even months.
Another advantage of these software-centric defense platforms is that their upgrades also take months, not years, enabling continuous updates.
The war in Ukraine has shown that the modern battlefield is changing every few months.
For instance, FPV drones first appeared in the war in Ukraine around May 2022; by September 2022, Kyiv had introduced maritime drones.
Barracuda-100M. Credits: Anduril Industries.
In 2024, Russia countered Ukraine’s Starlink-linked drones with its Fiber-optic drones, which were immune to jamming. By the end of 2024, these drones carried air-to-air missiles such as the R-73 and R-60. Ukraine also armed its naval drones with surface-to-air missiles.
By 2025, Ukraine had developed multiple drone interceptors that reversed the cost-benefit advantage drones had over traditional interceptor missiles.
Russia responded with jet-powered drones that can fly at 500-600 km per hour and is developing others that can exceed 800 km per hour.
This continuously evolving battlefield means traditional procurement cycles spanning decades no longer suit modern warfare, where systems become outdated within months.
A hardware-centric approach can’t meet the demands of this evolving battlefield; therefore, the Pentagon increasingly prefers working directly with Silicon Valley-based AI defense firms.
Anduril’s US$ 90 billion valuation reflects this broader story. Anduril, however, is not the only AI defense firm cashing in on this trend.
Palantir, founded in 2003, is already worth nearly US$480 billion, more than any of the Big Five.
Palantir’s valuation is nearly seven times Northrop Grumman’s, more than five times General Dynamics’, nearly four times Lockheed Martin’s, three times Boeing’s, and nearly double RTX’s.
Similarly, Scale AI is worth US$29 billion, Shield AI around US$13 billion, and SandboxAQ and Applied Intuition around US$15 billion.
“Companies like SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril have been tapped for multi-billion-dollar contract awards from the Pentagon for communications, targeting, unpiloted vehicles, anti-drone defenses, and hypersonic weapons. The funds from these awards will flow to the companies over time, which should put them in the top ranks of Pentagon contractors by value of awards within the next several years,” a recent report from the Costs of War project said.
What sets Palantir and Anduril apart is that while most AI defense firms have only one product in their portfolios, such as autonomous aircraft, counter-drone systems, or data fusion software, these two firms are offering a range of products.
Anduril offers AI-powered software, autonomous drones, cruise missiles, drone interceptors, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), underwater drones, undersea sensor networks, autonomous rotorcraft, surface-to-air interceptor missiles, autonomous sensor towers for land, water, and sea, radars, infrared imaging, and more.
Earlier this month, Anduril won a contract worth up to US$2.9 billion with the U.S. Navy to boost submarine production. The company is also investing US$3.7 billion to scale a new shipyard in Maryland. The new facility will build components for the Virginia-class submarines.
Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey was also selected to lead “Project Meridian: The Future of Warfare,” a new 120-day initiative tasked with identifying the technologies and capabilities needed for future military dominance.
Anduril has also been selected to build the next generation of Army goggles, the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), which are “intended to give soldiers everything from night-vision capability to warnings of incoming airborne threats.”
However, Anduril’s most lucrative contract could be in border security technologies. The Big Beautiful bill commits over US$6 billion for various border security technologies. However, as Eurasian Times reported earlier, the bill’s conditions mean Anduril is the only firm that qualifies for these border surveillance tenders.
Anduril has also been called the Nvidia of the US defense market.
The sky-high valuation of Palantir and Anduril will also have a knock-on effect on other Silicon Valley-based AI-defense firms.
If these new tech defense firms maintain their growth momentum for another decade or so, then we might have to redefine the ‘Big Five’ of the US defense market.
Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
A US Air Force (USAF) pilot flying an F-22 Fighter Jet controlled an Anduril YFQ-44A Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) from the Raptor’s cockpit earlier this month, the service announced on Thursday.
The F-22 pilot served as an airborne “quarterback,” issuing high-level tactical directives to a single YFQ-44A.
The YFQ-44A’s onboard autonomy software interpreted and executed those directives in real time, conducting dynamic flight maneuvers and simulated combat tasks.
“This achievement demonstrates what is possible when we are aligned with industry on a shared imperative: delivering capability to the warfighter at unprecedented speed,” said Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink.
“We are driving urgency into every part of acquisition from rapid integration and flight learning to disciplined assessment, so we can turn promising technology into combat capability at the pace the threat demands.”
The event brought together personnel from the 412th Test Wing, 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, 309th Software Engineering Group, Experimental Operations Unit, F-22 System Program Office and the CCA Software Autonomy and Teaming Branch.
The Department will use data from this test milestone to inform continued software integration, developmental testing, and the Air Force’s future CCA concepts.
“This flight shows the power of crewed-uncrewed teaming and the advantage it provides our warfighters,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach. “We must test often, learn fast and give commanders what they need, when they need it.”
Mark Shushnar, Anduril’s vice president of autonomous airpower, said: “The US Air Force’s CCA program is the fastest-moving, most mature CCA program anywhere in the world, and will be the first to field operational aircraft,” Shushnar said. “Getting there demands that Anduril and the U.S. Air Force work together to prove out the capability, define the operational procedures, and build trust between operators and their semi-autonomous wingmen.”
YFQ-44A CCA
USAF Takes Delivery of Fury and Vengeance Drones
Earlier, as EurAsian Times reported, the USAF took delivery of its first two CCAs, Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury and General Atomics’ FQ-42 Vengeance, and sent them to the Experimental Operations Unit at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.
The aircraft, developed under prototype designations YFQ-44A and YFQ-42A, will now test how uncrewed, semi-autonomous jets can fly with crewed fighters and add cheaper mass in contested airspace.
“Anduril delivered the first CCA, the YFQ-44A, to the Experimental Operations Unit [EOU] last month, and General Atomics delivered the YFQ-42A last week,” the USAF announced on September 24. The aircraft were delivered at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, and will now support Air Combat Command-led operational experimentation to refine how CCA will be employed alongside crewed aircraft in contested environments, the USAF added.
Earlier, Meink highlighted the significance of putting the systems in Airmen’s hands: “Putting CCA in the hands of Airmen is how we build the operational future of this program. Anduril’s Fury and General Atomics’ Vengeance deliveries show we can move at incredible speed, compete, and deliver cost-effective combat power to the force.”
The sentiment was echoed by the Chief of Staff, Gen. Ken Wilsbach, who said, “We’re thrilled to welcome Fury and Vengeance to the experimental operational unit. Our Airmen are excited to see what Collaborative Combat Aircraft can do.”
The program secured deliveries in just over two years after the service down-selected the two contractors in April 2024, and within a year of the two aircraft’s maiden flights.
In July, an Anduril YFQ-44A fired an AIM-120 AMRAAM at a simulated target over the Mojave Desert after taking off from Edwards Air Force Base. The Air Force called it the first CCA live-fire event; some accounts said the missile was inert.
A human operator retained weapons-release authority throughout the demonstration. That month, the Air Force also conducted an Agile Combat Employment exercise with both Collaborative Combat Aircraft designs at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, shifting the platforms from controlled test conditions into more realistic operational use, as the EurAsian Times reported.
More recently, Meink said the service aims to have at least 500 CCAs in service by 2032, speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “Today, the first FQ-42 and FQ-44 increments are already rolling off the assembly line,” he said. “They’ll be performing many of the same missions that we do with manned fighters today,” he added.
A YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft lands after a test flight at a California test location. The program is structured to develop modular, uncrewed aircraft designed to operate alongside fifth and sixth-generation aircraft. (Courtesy photo)
CCA Gathers Pace
The CCA program is a flagship USAF initiative to develop a new generation of uncrewed “fighter drones” to fly alongside manned jets. The CCAs, or “loyal wingmen,” are designed to boost air superiority in contested environments like the Indo-Pacific or even the Middle East.
They are intended to boost the USAF’s combat capabilities by carrying extra air-to-air munitions, extending sensor coverage, and executing missions that would otherwise put human pilots at risk.
Reports have indicated that these CCAs will primarily serve as airborne “missile trucks” in their initial deployment, flying in formation with crewed jets to provide additional firepower. However, their roles could be expanded to include electronic warfare, intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance, and, in the future, fully autonomous missions.
The Pentagon plans to mass-produce these CCAs at a significantly lower cost than conventional fighter jets. The USAF-developed CCA drones are estimated to cost between US$25 million and US$35 million each, about one-third the cost of an F-35.
USAF officials report that the service plans to order about 150 drones in Increment 1. However, the service is seeking about 1,000 of these aircraft over several iterative development cycles. This large number may also drive design modifications and evolution over time.
Earlier, Frank Kendall, the former United States Secretary of the Air Force and who launched the CCA program, said the USAF is working to acquire what could ultimately be a fleet of multiple CCA drone types through iterative development cycles.
“I don’t regard CCAs as expendable. They’re not munitions. … we don’t send them all to die,” Kendall said. “So there needs to be enough survivability in them – the combination of how you equip them, design them, plus tactics so that you can have reasonable attrition in most areas – but they are things that you are willing to let a few of die to gain an advantage”.
Earlier, Kendall explained in 2022: “These have got to be cheaper platforms, and one of their features is that they’re at least attritable, if not expendable. That opens up a whole range of tactics that we currently would not contemplate because we’d be sacrificing manned aircraft, and we’re not going to do that.” (2022) “We need to imagine a world in which fighter planes aren’t the dominant platform, and that the CCAs are not just there to help the fighter planes; they’re actually there to win the war.
You’ve got to free your mind of the idea that there will always be a fighter pilot.” On building trust through exercises: “I think that’s going to be fascinating when we start using CCAs at Red Flag. When the guys with the CCAs are beating the crap out of the guys without them, and not losing any manned fighters, that’s going to be pretty obvious, right?” He also recounted asking a pilot why there wasn’t more resistance: the answer was, “Sir, these things are going to save our lives.”
Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, Air Force Chief Modernization Officer and Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Design and Requirements, made an interesting remark in May 2026: “I have a lot of experience with that program [CCA]. My prior job was out at Nellis Air Force Base, where [we were] standing up the Experimental Operations Unit. And I’m very enthusiastic about the opportunities of the future for CCA-type aircraft. It’s one of the primary platforms that we will use to explore practical use for AI.
There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll find some disappointments and nasty surprises, but we’re also going to discover some opportunities as we fly the aircraft in an operationally representative environment…
I would also add that there are adversaries that are working very aggressively to field their own autonomous CCA-like capabilities, and I don’t think we can predict when this will happen, but I think most of us, based on what we’ve seen from artificial intelligence, would assess that there will come a point where a robot fighter is better than a manned fighter. And I say this as a person who identified and grew up professionally in the fighter pilot community.
The question is, when will that happen? And I think it would be a tragic shame if the United States didn’t have a better answer if we were facing robot fighters that were better than our manned fighters. So for all these reasons, I’m very bullish on CCAs, but it’s going to take decades to develop.”
“I can imagine a day in the future, 10 years [from now], maybe more, where a CCA autonomy algorithm does a better job flying a fighter airplane than I did as a captain. That hurts my ego a little bit. But at the same time, I see that this trend is happening, and we’ve got to find a way to do that… As you institutionalize these capabilities, it’s not too surprising that maybe fighter pilots are not too enthusiastic about the idea of fielding a capability that will start to replace some of what they do—how they define themselves.”
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