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Part V: Blood Money and Broken Oaths —Naming the War Lords – Profiles of Power, Profit, and Permanent War
by Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
There are men who sell wars. And there are men who build the weapons. Often, they are the same.”
— Akashma News, 2025
Patriots. Strategists. Innovators.
That’s how they are introduced on television. But behind every press release and campaign ad is a ledger. And that ledger shows profit made from pain, shares lifted by war, and a cast of powerful individuals who walk between Washington, Wall Street, and war zones—unchallenged, unelected, and unaccountable.
I. The Men Who Sold the Wars
Dick Cheney
CEO of Halliburton before becoming VP.
His company gained $39.5 billion in Iraq War contracts.
Personally retained stock options while architecting war policy.
Donald Rumsfeld
Sat on the board of Gilead Sciences during the planning of biosecurity policy.
Championed a war doctrine that transformed defense into private enterprise.
Zalmay Khalilzad
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Later became a consultant for oil and defense interests in the very regions he helped “liberate.”
II. The Generals and Officials Who Became Investors – or Were Always Connected
Gen. James Mattis
Joined General Dynamics board shortly after retiring.
Benefited from a firm that supplies key components to both U.S. and NATO operations.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Advisor to Palantir, the CIA-funded predictive warfare and surveillance firm.
Former top commander in Afghanistan.
Gen. Michael Hayden
After leading both the NSA and CIA, became a private intelligence consultant.
Affiliated with Booz Allen Hamilton, same firm Edward Snowden worked for before exposing global surveillance.
Lt. Gen. William Hartman
Currently head of U.S. Cyber Command and NSA (acting).
Central figure in the next-gen war theater: data and cyber control.
Condoleezza Rice
National Security Advisor (2001–2005) and Secretary of State (2005–2009).
Former board member of Chevron, which honored her by naming an oil tanker “Condoleezza Rice” in the late 1990s.
Advocated aggressively for regime change in Iraq, despite evidence contradicting the WMD narrative.
Her influence over Afghanistan policy is deeply tied to pipeline geopolitics—not democracy.
As reported in Akashma News (2012), Rice’s connections to energy giants and Hamid Karzai—Afghanistan’s U.S.-installed president and former Unocal pipeline advisor—reveal that “freedom” in Afghanistan may have always been code for oil transit routes and corporate access to Central Asian reserves.
III. Trojan Chips and Phantom Circuits: The Hidden Frontline of Betrayal
“We build our weapons in the name of security—while outsourcing their soul.”
Every F-35. Every smart missile. Every drone or comms satellite in the U.S. arsenal carries inside it parts from foreign nations.
And some of those nations don’t share American values—only American contracts.
Microchips from Taiwan and Israel.
Rare-earth magnets from China.
Optical components from Germany.
Coding subcontractors in India, the UAE, and beyond.
These components are:
Untraceable once installed.
Unverifiable by visual inspection.
Vulnerable to backdoors, malware, timed failure, or embedded surveillance.
In short: weapons may now come pre-compromised.
Israel’s Case: A Known Precedent
In the 1990s, Israeli-manufactured pagers were discovered to be covert surveillance devices, transmitting user location and message metadata without consent. These pagers were sold across Latin America, Europe, and Asia—including to government officials and journalists.
Today’s equivalent?
Cellebrite, Pegasus, NSO Group—all accused of spying on allies and dissidents.
Yet these firms maintain privileged access to U.S. markets and intelligence networks.
What About China?
In 2018, a Bloomberg investigation alleged that Chinese microchips were covertly installed on server motherboards used by Apple, Amazon, and Pentagon contractors.
Even if unconfirmed, the possibility is the threat.
And if Raytheon, Lockheed, or General Dynamics can’t verify every circuit, the entire system is compromised.
IV. The Tech Titans and the Spy Market
Peter Thiel (Palantir)
Created software that maps populations, predicts insurgency, and profiles suspects.
Palantir is funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm.
Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
Bid on the $10B JEDI cloud war contract, and won major DOD deals via AWS.
Amazon’s infrastructure now supports U.S. intelligence, ICE, and military data.
Eric Schmidt (Google/Alphabet)
Served on the Defense Innovation Board.
Helped bridge Silicon Valley with the Pentagon.
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Indirectly involved in Iraq reconstruction and humanitarian tech expansion.
Microsoft still maintains defense partnerships and cloud servicing for secure military communications.
Lord of War (2005) – Fiction Based on Too Many Facts
In Lord of War, Nicolas Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a smooth-talking arms dealer who thrives in the chaos left behind by collapsing governments and constant conflict. Based loosely on real-life figures like Viktor Bout, the film peels back the curtain on the global weapons trade—legal and illegal—and shows how war is less about ideology, and more about inventory management.
Yuri sells to dictators, rebels, and “freedom fighters”—often in the same country, often with weapons traced back to U.S. or Russian stockpiles. He helps stage rebel uprisings, fuels civil wars, and arms child soldiers, all while living comfortably under the protection of great powers who need people like him to do the dirty work off the books.
The film’s final punchline comes in the credits:
“There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation—one for every 12 people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?”
That’s not a line from the movie. It’s the film’s closing warning—and one of the most honest summations of the modern arms economy ever put on screen.
The real difference between Yuri Orlov and the Pentagon’s preferred contractors?
Orlov was honest about being a merchant of death.
V. Conclusion: These Are the Lords of War
They don’t fight on battlefields. They don’t wear medals. But they profit on every bullet, bomb, and biometric scan.
They rotate from command posts to boardrooms, from political office to private consultancy.
And while veterans die waiting for care, while families mourn from Kabul to Kansas, these war lords cash checks, win contracts, and rewrite policy in their image.
They are the hidden government.
And they’ve sold the republic for stock options and subcontracting fees.
“The difference between Yuri Orlov and real war lords? Orlov was fictional—and slightly more honest.”
Built to Exploit: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Architecture of Surveillance Capitalism
By Akashma News
A journalist instinct is to follow the money. Behind every policy, every piece of legislation, and every public justification of “job creation” or “modernization” lies a paper trail of influence, lobbying, and institutional gain. The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) is not just a financial deregulation bill. It is a blueprint for legalized data exploitation, designed not to protect consumers, but to enable powerful actors in finance, law, and technology to erode privacy under the guise of innovation.
A Brief Note on the Glass-Steagall Act
Before diving into the GLBA, it’s important to understand what it replaced. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was enacted in the wake of the Great Depression to curb reckless banking behavior. It established a firewall between commercial banks (which hold your deposits) and investment banks (which take financial risks in markets). This separation protected consumers from speculative losses and systemic risk.
For decades, Glass-Steagall kept the financial system relatively stable. But by the 1980s and 90s, pressure mounted from Wall Street to deregulate. Financial giants wanted to combine services, trade riskier assets, and access more consumer data—all in the name of “efficiency.”
GLBA would be the crowbar that finally pried the firewall open.
Chapter One: A Bill Born of Lobbying
On its surface, the GLBA repealed parts of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing banks, insurance companies, and investment firms to merge. But peel back that surface, and you’ll find a law crafted in boardrooms, pushed by lobbyists, and polished by elite law firms.
The bill was sponsored by Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Representative Jim Leach (R-IA), and Representative Thomas Bliley (R-VA). Its passage paved the way for mergers like Citicorp and Travelers Group, which had already defied Glass-Steagall by merging a year earlier, knowing the law would catch up.
Following the GLBA’s passage, Senator Gramm took a lucrative position as Vice Chairman at UBS Investment Bank, a direct beneficiary of the law he helped draft. The revolving door wasn’t symbolic—it was functional.
Chapter Two: Law Firms and Lobbyists
Major law firms such as Venable LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and Holland & Knight played vital roles in crafting language and lobbying legislators. Their influence extended beyond bill writing—they represented financial institutions who stood to gain billions.
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs lobbied heavily. So did the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable. The prize? The legal ability to aggregate consumer data across services.
Chapter Three: The Illusion of Choice
GLBA’s privacy protections were packaged in Title V, a weak set of guidelines requiring financial institutions to notify customers of data sharing—and allow them to opt out. But the burden is on the consumer, and most never fully understand what they are opting into.
Let’s break this down.
“Nonpublic personal information” sounds technical, but here’s what it really means:
It’s everything a bank or financial company knows about you that isn’t publicly available. That includes your Social Security number, your income, your credit card balances, your mortgage details, what you buy, when you buy it, and where you spend your money.
It’s the digital fingerprint of your financial life.
Under GLBA, banks and their “affiliates” (which often means dozens of partner companies and third-party marketers) can legally share and profit from this data—unless you tell them not to. But most people don’t know they even have that option. The opt-out notices are buried in fine print or written in legalese.
The result? Your private financial behavior becomes part of a massive database, traded and analyzed like a commodity. And this is all legal—because GLBA made it so.
The Constitution is supposed to protect us from this kind of intrusion. The Fourth Amendment was written to safeguard our privacy from government overreach. But what happens when the government outsources surveillance to private corporations? When the law becomes the mechanism for exploitation?
Then we are no longer protected citizens. We are data sources.
Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) raised privacy concerns. Advocacy groups like EPIC and Public Citizen warned the bill prioritized corporate power over constitutional rights. They were right.
Chapter Four: The Rise of Data Capitalism
The GLBA helped usher in a new business model: surveillance capitalism. With legal cover, financial institutions began collecting, selling, and analyzing behavioral and financial data. This economy flourished with the help of tech giants and their tools.
Enter Peter Thiel. In 2003, Thiel co-founded Palantir Technologies, a data analytics firm that marketed itself as a tool for counterterrorism and security. But the story starts earlier—with the quiet establishment of In-Q-Tel.
In-Q-Tel, originally launched in 1999—the same year the GLBA passed—is the CIA’s venture capital arm. Its mission: to identify and invest in private tech companies developing tools for national security and intelligence. That includes data analytics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and surveillance tech.
Acting as a bridge between Silicon Valley and the intelligence community, In-Q-Tel accelerates the commercialization of technologies that would otherwise take years to be adopted by government agencies. By investing in early-stage startups, the agency ensures these tools align with intelligence priorities from the ground up.
It’s not a stretch to say that Palantir, which received early government contracts and whose architecture resembles core In-Q-Tel investment priorities, is a kind of public-facing evolution—or even a rebranding—of In-Q-Tel’s deeper ambitions. The surveillance state didn’t just grow—it was engineered and privatized.
Banks like JPMorgan used Palantir to spy on internal threats. But Palantir wasn’t alone. Israeli firm NSO Group, known for its Pegasus spyware, is suspected of having U.S.-based contracts and informal influence within federal surveillance strategy. Though publicly denied, internal tech sourcing from foreign firms is not uncommon in post-9/11 America.
Minority Report Wasn’t Fiction, It Was a Warning
In 2002, the film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, imagined a future where people were arrested not for what they had done—but for what they might do. The state used advanced technology to predict crimes before they happened, stripping individuals of their rights in the name of public safety.
That future is now. Predictive policing is real. It uses algorithms, historical crime data, and social profiling to forecast who might commit a crime—or even who might be a “threat.” It has already been deployed in cities across the U.S. and abroad.
Palantir is one of the companies enabling it. The connection between GLBA, surveillance tech, and predictive policing isn’t cinematic paranoia. It’s a roadmap that was drawn in legislation, funded by public money, and sold as innovation.
Minority Report warned us. We didn’t listen.
Chapter Five: The Infrastructure of Control
GLBA’s repeal of Glass-Steagall was not just about profit—it laid the legal groundwork for data pipelines that now span banks, credit bureaus, tech platforms (Venmo, Zelle, PayPal), and federal agencies. With FinCEN and the Patriot Act as co-conspirators, every transaction became a data point.
The result? A legally compliant surveillance state—outsourced to private corporations.
Chapter Six: Legal, But Not Right
Edward Snowden said it best: “What is right is not always what is legal.” GLBA was legal. But its effects—on privacy, democracy, and human autonomy—are deeply wrong.
Today, our financial footprints are monitored, mined, and monetized. Not for national security. Not for economic health. But for institutional dominance. This isn’t oversight. It’s exploitation.
Final Notes: The Fight Isn’t Over
We name this system for what it is: institutional corruption enabled by the revolving door, driven by profit, and shielded by law. As journalists and citizens, we must continue to track the networks, question the narratives, and expose the architecture.
Because the next bill will already be in motion before the public even hears its name.
Sources & References
Congressional Record on the GLBA (1999)
OpenSecrets Lobbying Profiles (1998)
Palantir company reports, Forbes, Business Insider, Government Contracts
EPIC archives on GLBA privacy concerns (2004)
Church Committee and In-Q-Tel background
Public statements by Senator Richard Shelby (2015)
Reports on NSO Group and international surveillance contracts
*2023)
Snowden interviews and public lectures
Minority Report (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg
In-Q-Tel official mission summary and public records
The Imposition of the Techno-Elite and the Disregard of an American President
by Akashma News
Originally published April 02, 2025
Updated May 23, 2025 6:22 pm PT
In a moment of historic technological acceleration, we find ourselves standing at the threshold of a political transformation few fully recognize. The rise of artificial intelligence, once a tool for innovation, is now becoming the mechanism by which elite technocrats are reshaping the very structure of democratic governance. Leading this charge is Elon Musk—a figure who has subtly, yet effectively, positioned himself as more than just a tech mogul. Through AI-driven influence and psychological manipulation, Musk‘s digital persona and network of parody accounts have flooded online discourse, branding him a modern-day hero while veiling a deeper strategic maneuver: the quiet dismantling of traditional democratic norms.
Curtis Yarvin, known by his pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, laid the intellectual foundation for this movement through the philosophy of the Dark Enlightenment. He argues that democracy is obsolete, and that governance should be handed over to CEOs—technocratic kings who operate governments like corporations. Musk’s rise appears to be the real-world embodiment of this vision. His DOGE AI—a network of influence, data analysis, and control mechanisms—operates like a federal agency without oversight. In doing so, Musk has effectively created a parallel power structure that renders the American presidency symbolic, relegating figures like Donald Trump to the role of the “illusionary strongman”—a puppet with the power of a pen, but none of the script.
This perspective was sharpened by a compelling LinkedIn post from Jon Sneider, whose TED Talk on the concept of “Black Enlightenment” explores the merging of the Dark Enlightenment philosophy with MAGA populism. Sneider points to the strategic alignment of figures like Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and Musk in reshaping American politics through AI, media, and psychological warfare.
Months before the 2024 elections, Musk was already seeding public consciousness through parody accounts portraying him as Iron Man, Captain America, and other mythologized figures. One such account, @elonmuskADO, was created in January 2024 and quickly amassed over 424,000 followers. Its 100,000+ posts functioned not as satire but as strategic distractions and brand amplification. Another account, @elonmuskAOC, garnered 1.6 million followers and was similarly used to shape Musk’s public image through calculated distraction and self-advertising. In an era where online presence shapes public opinion, Musk was scripting a new mythology for himself—one where he is savior, innovator, and shadow statesman.
Meanwhile, real-world crises have continued to escalate: the threat of a global war, two ongoing genocides, surging food prices, rising unemployment, rampant homelessness, and widespread violence. As these issues intensify, Musk’s meme-laden mythos offers citizens dopamine hits of distraction while consolidating unprecedented control.
Beyond social media influence and AI dominance, Musk is rapidly building an empire of technological infrastructure that spans the earth and the stars. Through companies like X, Grok AI, Tesla, Neuralink, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, Musk is not just innovating—he is positioning himself at the center of multiple critical systems. Tesla’s grid of EV chargers is expanding into a de facto national energy network. Tesla Solar brings control over decentralized power generation. Grok AI provides real-time analysis and influence over public discourse. Neuralink taps directly into the human brain, potentially redefining autonomy and consent.
SpaceX claims to deliver cargo into space, but the specifics of “what” and “why” remain largely classified. The weight of tens of thousands of tons launched into orbit raises chilling questions: are these satellites for communication, surveillance, or something more sinister? Starlink blankets the skies with internet access—but also functions as a surveillance-ready mesh of data collectors, or potentially even a sky-bound army of autonomous observers. The Boring Company is tunneling beneath cities, ostensibly for transit innovation—but what else lies beneath? Why must cave explorers obtain permits? What is down there that must be regulated so tightly?
Illustration by:
Akashma in collaboration with ChatGPT (AI-generated visual concept depicting a dystopian technocratic regime).
Peter Thiel and the Libertarian Blueprint for Technocratic Rule
Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and co-founder of PayPal, has also significantly influenced the ideological landscape that enables technocratic dominance. In his 2009 essay, “The Education of a Libertarian”, Thiel famously declared:
> “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
This stark assertion reveals Thiel’s deep skepticism toward democratic governance, aligning closely with the core tenets of the Dark Enlightenment. Thiel envisions a future where liberty can only flourish outside traditional state structures—through innovations like autonomous zones, seasteads, and digital jurisdictions. His ventures, from supporting the Seasteading Institute to backing figures like JD Vance, reflect a calculated effort to circumvent democratic systems and install elite-led governance models.
While Thiel has never explicitly claimed allegiance to the Dark Enlightenment, his investments and public philosophy clearly intersect with its goals: a society optimized by technological elites, not elected representatives.
What we are witnessing echoes the prophetic warnings of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a technocratic elite maintains order not through violence but through engineered consent and psychological control. Huxley feared that pleasure, distraction, and information overload could suppress dissent more effectively than any boot on the neck. Musk’s empire of X, Neuralink, Grok, and AI-powered platforms suggests the beginning of such a dystopia—one in which resistance is not outlawed, but unfollowed. For further insight, see this interview where Huxley warns of technocratic manipulation.
Similarly, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm remain chillingly relevant. In 1984, truth is malleable, language is weaponized, and power is sustained through perpetual surveillance. With Musk’s involvement in satellite systems like Starlink and AI surveillance infrastructure, this vision moves closer to reality. In Animal Farm, the promise of egalitarianism is betrayed by those who claim power “for the people.” Today, populist slogans mask the ascendancy of corporate overlords.
This is not merely a transformation—it is a takeover. AI is a tool, yes, but also a weapon. In the hands of visionary elites without accountability, it becomes a mechanism of domination. The public must awaken to the signs: the meme heroics, the symbolic presidents, the executive orders crafted by algorithms, and the vanishing role of human governance.
We must question the mythology, challenge the distractions, and reassert our agency in shaping a future where technology empowers humanity—not replaces it.
Meme Crowns and Neural Thrones
Image circulated via Elon Musk fan accounts, stylized as ‘Emperor Kekius Maximus’—a Romanesque meme blending irony, ego, and technocratic symbolism.
Meme Crowns and Neural Thrones
One of the most potent forms of psychological warfare in the rise of technocratic dominance is memetic glorification. Case in point: the viral image of Elon Musk depicted in full Roman armor, captioned “Emperor Kekius Maximus.”
This image isn’t just satire—it’s weaponized myth-making. It draws from ancient archetypes and meme culture simultaneously. Roman imperial regalia signals conquest, dominance, divine entitlement. “Kekius” nods to the alt-right’s ironic religiosity rooted in internet troll culture. And “Maximus”? It seals the symbolism: Musk as supreme ruler.
In this frame, Musk is no longer a CEO—he’s cast as an emperor of the postmodern empire. This is digital ego-mythology: combining ironic memes with authoritarian iconography to cultivate loyalty disguised as humor.
These memes are not organic. They are engineered signals, creating emotional resonance with disenfranchised audiences, especially younger demographics fluent in meme language. It fosters identification, loyalty, and complicity—turning Musk into both tech messiah and rebel king, even as he consolidates more control than most heads of state.
The myth is persuasive because the man wields real power: AI infrastructure, energy systems, space access, and neural experimentation. The crown may be virtual, but the throne is increasingly literal.
@AkashmaNews
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References:
Aldous Huxley – Britannica
George Orwell – The Orwell Foundation
Brave New World – SparkNotes
1984 – SparkNotes
Curtis Yarvin – Wikipedia
Dark Enlightenment
European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS):
The Education of a Libertarian, by Peter Thiel (2009)
What we must understand about the Dark Enlightenment Movement
Akashma Online News 