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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.”
Part III: Blood Money and Broken Oaths: The Empire’s Ledger – Mapping the Timeline of Treason
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
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
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