Akashma Online News

by Marivel Guzman | Akashma News

“History is not only written by the victors. It’s bankrolled by them.”
— Akashma News, 2025

Follow the wars. Follow the resignations. Follow the contracts. Follow the betrayal.

I. 1991–1997: From Desert Storm to Corporate Warm-Up

1992–1995: Cheney becomes CEO of Halliburton.

Over $3.8 billion in Pentagon contracts under his leadership.


1994: Bill Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive 25, quietly expanding U.S. peacekeeping and private contractor roles abroad.

1995: Carlyle Group recruits ex-officials like George H.W. Bush and James Baker.

II. 2000–2003: The Setup Before the Storm

2000: Bush-Cheney campaign begins with heavy oil and defense lobbying support.

Sept 2000: PNAC publishes Rebuilding America’s Defenses—calls for a “Pearl Harbor-like event” to reshape U.S. global policy.

2001 (pre-9/11):

CIA briefs Bush on potential Al-Qaeda threat.

NSA surveillance pilot programs begin domestically.


Sept 11, 2001: The attacks become the pivot point.

Congress passes AUMF.

PATRIOT Act signed Oct 26, 2001—ushering in surveillance capitalism.

III. 2003–2008: The Iraq Gold Rush

2003: U.S. invades Iraq on false WMD intelligence.

KBR receives $7 billion in no-bid contracts.

Halliburton stock surges.


2004: Blackwater awarded $21 million for diplomatic security in Iraq.

2005:

Don Bacon rises in cyber command roles.

Palantir Technologies begins DOD contracts under CIA’s In-Q-Tel.


2006–2007:

Iraq Reconstruction money disappears—$6.6 billion unaccounted for.

Gen. Petraeus surges troops; war contractors surge profits.


2007: Microsoft and Google sign early-stage DOD support contracts for infrastructure and field operations.

IV. 2009–2016: The Silent Profiteering Years

2009:

Barack Obama inherits Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire.

Expansion of drone warfare and NSA surveillance under Hayden.


2010:

Palantir wins major U.S. Army contracts.

General Dynamics, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton among top 5 war profiting firms.


2011:

U.S. “withdraws” from Iraq.

Defense contractors begin pivoting to cyber operations and homeland surveillance.

2013: Edward Snowden leaks NSA surveillance programs.

2014–2015:

ISIS rises—Palantir and Amazon AWS used in military targeting systems.

Senate quietly approves expanded surveillance with corporate partners.

V. 2017–2020: Enter the Tech Lords

Trump years:

Peter Thiel, founder of Palantir and Trump ally, embedded himself into U.S. intelligence architecture.

Palantir wins ICE contracts for predictive policing, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle fought over the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract—a digital backbone for U.S. war and surveillance.

Tech billionaires weren’t building apps. They were constructing a battlefield without borders.


2018:

JEDI Cloud Contract bid begins—Microsoft vs. Amazon vs. Oracle.


2020:

COVID emergency legislation used to redirect funds into “cyber defense and biosecurity” infrastructure.

VI. 2021–2024: The New Hybrid War Economy; Afghanistan’s Ghosts and Ukraine’s Windfall

2021: Afghanistan withdrawal—$7B in military equipment left behind.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 left $7 billion in abandoned U.S. equipment. And a whole new contract market: homeland security, border tech, biometric screening.

The Ukraine war triggered a second boom:

Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin—all reported historic profits.

Cyber contractors were deployed to NATO allies.

Former generals rotated into new roles: consultants, board members, defense liaisons.

Laurie Buckhout was appointed Deputy Secretary for Cyber Policy in 2025. Lt. Gen. William Hartman assumed acting control of Cyber Command and the NSA.

Meanwhile, Rep. Don Bacon—decorated officer, now House cyber subcommittee chair—oversaw funding pipelines that matched lobbying spreadsheets.

2025: The Year the Veil Slipped

This year, everything came full circle.

The CBS leak exposed that cyber operations against Russia were paused—allegedly for political optics, not strategy.

Gen. Hartman denied wrongdoing.

Bacon confirmed it.

Hegseth, the Trump-aligned Secretary of Defense, was revealed to have used Signal to issue battlefield instructions—from his phone.

The cyber war had begun. But the real battle was being waged in boardrooms and committee hearings, where revolving doors never stopped spinning.

Cyber Command & NSA controversies over “paused” operations.

Pete Hegseth–Trump-appointed Secretary of Defense under fire.

Don Bacon leads cyber oversight—but questions emerge on defense lobbying.

New revelations link PAC donations to cyber security procurement priorities.

Conclusion: A Ledger Written in Blood

From Desert Storm to drone storms, from Baghdad to Big Data, America’s war story is no longer about victory.

It’s about returns.

Generals became lobbyists. Presidents became investors. Congress became shareholders.

And the people—the soldiers, the taxpayers, the wounded, the dead—they were left with flags and folded letters.

This is not a tragedy. It is a crime. And the evidence is in the timeline.

Part IV: Blood Money and Broken Oaths: Collateral Empire – The Civilian Toll and the Future of Resistance