The News You Need, Friday, August 7th, 2026
Thiel's Anduril funds MAGA to get Pentagon contracts, Justine Moore brags about fabricating history, Testosterone will be Pete's weird legacy, Russian drones discovered at Leipzig Airport.
Trump’s Pay-to-Play: Anduril Shows How it Works
The Guardian
Palmer Luckey at Anduril’s headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, on 10 October 2025. Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Scott: Washington has never before experienced anything quite like the way the tech bros spin the system for their benefit. Regulatory oversight has become something from the receding past. Generous funding of Trump and MAGA is essential. And in exchange there is never any shortage of no-bid government contracts in the billions, which in the end furnish yet another path for control and manipulation of government. Aram Roston unwinds how Anduril, another piece of the Peter Thiel empire run by Palmer Luckey, makes it all happen.
Co-founder of defense firm Anduril has donated $5.9m to Republicans and bundled more, while reaping billions in Pentagon contracts
Wealthy Republicans on the west coast received an emailed invitation in July to an upcoming fundraiser titled “Keep the Senate”. The email, obtained by the Guardian, described the event as a “private roundtable and dinner with the National Republican Senatorial Committee” where donors can pledge $50,000 for seats at the head table, and mingle with legislative heavy hitters from Capitol Hill including the Senator majority leader, John Thune, and Mike Rogers, who is running for Senate in Michigan with Donald Trump’s endorsement.
One of the organizers listed on the invite was the defense industry tycoon Palmer Luckey, the 33-year-old co-founder of sprawling weapons manufacturer Anduril Industries.
The invitation is one of dozens of emails obtained by the Guardian that unravel Luckey’s vast Maga political fundraising over the last seven years.
A longtime GOP donor and activist who spoke on condition he not be identified in order to preserve his political relationships said Luckey was now the “godfather of Republican fundraising on the west coast”.
“If you’re raising campaign money in California, you have to go to Palmer Luckey,” he said. “Luckey is the top tier. There are others who are important below him but no one at his level.”
Anduril, launched just nine years ago, has emerged as a major military contractor for the Trump administration, working on contracts for everything from drones to autonomous jet fighters to space-based interceptors.
In March, the US army awarded a $20bn sole-source contract to Anduril for a variety of drones it sells, though it is not clear which of its weapons systems are operational or have been deployed for combat in US operations.
Andreessen Horowitz Partner Boasts That the Company’s New Tech Can Fabricate Fake History Like in “1984”
Futurism
On X, Justine Moore discusses the wonders that are suggested by 1984, including non-stop recomposition of history to meet current needs.
Scott: For most of the world, George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 is about the horrors that the future may hold for humanity. For the tech bros, however, it presents a grab bag of objectives to achieve.
Text-to-video AI generating tools have come a long way. Just three years ago, we were all unsettled by grisly clips of actor Will Smith’s face morphing while “eating” a moving pile of spaghetti. Thanks to major leaps in tech, these tools can now generate photorealistic fake footage at the drop of a hat — which could have devastating implications for efforts to keep disinformation at bay.
However, those who are heavily invested in AI are welcoming the rapid unraveling of truth as AI slop continues to flood the internet. Case in point: Andreessen Horowitz partner Justine Moore, who recently boasted that the venture capital firm-backed Black Forest Labs’ Flux 3 AI tool — which launched in late July — was “exceptional at generating historical footage.”Moore shared a 20-second clip of “elementary school students in the ’90s predicting how we’ll use computers.” On the surface, it seems like a feel-good narrative of young kids accurately forecasting major advances in tech.“They’ll probably do our homework,” one of the AI-generated children said in the clip. “Maybe they’ll make movies for us,” another fictional child added, perfectly echoing Hollywood executives’ desires to turn the entertainment industry into a slop factory.
Mandatory Testosterone Tests Are a Terrible Idea. A Doctor Explains Why.
Der Spiegel
Scott: Mandatory testosterone tests are a predicate to forced testosterone enhancement shots? Sounds like something the Nazis would have introduced in the Wehrmacht. And indeed it was. Which may be where Pete Hegseth got the idea. But Spiegel turns now to a doctor for analysis and finds of course that it’s pure quackery combined with an irrational fondness for the experimental use of drugs. Hegseth is himself a prime specimen for what this can produce.
Pete Hegseth is known to carry a small silver compact with a curious white powder in his jacket’s right breast pocket. His staffers frequently bet on what the powder is.
When is a man a man? The question once preoccupied German rock star Herbert Grönemeyer in his 1984 hit “Männer” (”Men”) – and to this day, we struggle to answer it conclusively and universally. A glance inside the underwear, of course, reveals the biological reality in most cases.
But whether someone feels like a man, behaves in stereotypically masculine ways, or otherwise conforms to male role expectations is by no means settled by the presence of the equipment. In short: More than 40 years after Grönemeyer’s hit, a numerical measurement of manhood remains all but impossible.
The U.S. “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth apparently refuses to accept this. Under his plans, service members aged 30 and older will be required to undergo annual testosterone tests. Behind the initiative lies a conception of masculinity and men’s health that, on closer inspection, is highly questionable.
In a video posted to the platform X under the title “The High-T Department of War,” he holds forth on the individual war fighter as America’s “most decisive tactical advantage.” The tests, he says, are meant to ensure that soldiers have “the right testosterone levels” to perform at their best. He has repeatedly invoked the warrior ethos in the military and the ideal of the traditionally masculine fighter in the past.
Experts and medical professional societies, by contrast, recommend testosterone testing – for good reason – only for men with specific symptoms, clear risk factors, or certain preexisting conditions. Testosterone levels in healthy men can fluctuate naturally. Screening hundreds of thousands of soldiers would be a textbook case of overdiagnosis and would very likely lead to false-positive results and overtreatment as well.
The consequences of Hegseth’s bizarre idea should not be taken lightly. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) can cause considerable side effects, especially when it is not medically necessary in the first place. One possible complication is erythrocytosis, an increase in red blood cells that can promote thrombosis, strokes, or heart attacks.
And Pete’s Band Plays On
MAGA Country Music
Charles: Last month Vermont Congresswoman Becca Balint pointed out that Pete Hegseth’s obsession with testosterone was “indicative of the fact that there are so many people in this administration that have some weird, intense, homoerotic feelings towards men while also being incredibly homophobic.”
MAGA Country Music has now put Pete’s obsession to music, to magnificent effect.
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