The Bunker: Trump’s Solo Fight

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: President Trump flies solo in launching an attack on the long-festering Iranian nuclear program; the Pentagon and Silicon Valley try to inject some 21st century vim into military procurement; the world’s atomic arsenals, after decades of shrinking, will soon become bigger and more deadly; and more.

A MAN, A PLAN, IRAN

Who authorized this latest U.S. war?

Waging undeclared wars willy-nilly has been an American tradition since World War II. But Saturday’s Operation Midnight Hammer blow to Iran by U.S. B-2 bombers and submarine-launched cruise missiles has taken things to a whole new level. Want proof? Well, here is a list of the wars launched by the U.S. since that “Good War,” and the populations of those nations under attack by the U.S. In all these conflicts, lawmakers of both parties have legislatively winked at presidents of both parties, eagerly subcontracting out responsibility for how things turned out:

• North Korea, 1950-53: 11 million
• North Vietnam, 1964-73: 17 million (PDF)
• Grenada, 1983: 95,000
• Panama, 1989-90: 2 million
• Iraq 1, 1991; Iraq 2, 2003: 27 million
• Afghanistan, 2001: 20 million
• Libya, 2011: 6 million

Iran, with a population of 90 million, has more people than any of those — and more than all of them put together. (Something worth knowing, even if Iran war hawk Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), a member of the foreign relations committee, does not.)

Iran’s nuclear-weapons effort is a boil that needs to be lanced. Preferably through diplomacy, but via destruction if required. Here’s hoping a fragile ceasefire holds. Bully for the president if his draw to an inside straight works. But Tehran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. The rush to war was all inside Trump’s head, egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. A Washington Post poll conducted before the attacks showed only 25% of those Americans surveyed supported the idea, with a commanding 45% opposed.

This is a war of choice, launched by a commander-in-chief who failed to garner a majority of the votes cast for president last year. Officially, Congress was a bystander to the most consequential act the U.S. can take against another nation. Incredibly, and sadly, the Trump administration reportedly briefed Republican congressional leadership, but no House Democrats, before the bombs fell.

Trump, who pledged to refrain from the “forever wars” that cost nearly 7,000 (PDF) Americans their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, is hoping for a short one. But, as they like to say at the Pentagon, hope is not a strategy. “Well,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth conceded when asked about this U.S.-Iran war’s duration, “anything can happen in conflict.”

The notion of a president unilaterally attacking a major country — one the Founding Fathers knew as Persia — without a formal declaration of war from Congress surely would have left them dumbfounded.

It should also be of grave concern to all Americans. They keep re-electing lawmakers who, for the past 80 years, have refused to fulfill their fundamental obligation to their constituents, the Constitution, and the people — military and civilian, friend and foe — who will perish because of their elected representatives’ persistent pusillanimous perfidy.

RETHINKING THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Time to cut the Big 5 down to size?

It takes industrial-strength giants to wage industrial wars. That’s why B-2 bombers built by Northrop (the Pentagon’s #3 contractor) dropped 15-ton bunker-busters made by Boeing (#5) on Iran. A submarine apparently built by General Dynamics (#4) joined them in launching a barrage of cruise missiles made by Raytheon (#2) toward Iran’s nuclear-production sites. Those are four of the Pentagon’s “Big 5” prime contractors (ironically, only #1 Lockheed is missing from the hit list).

But the recent enlistment of officials from high-tech companies like Meta (Facebook), OpenAI (ChatGPT), and Palantir, is raising concern that Silicon Valley is taking over. “How Big Tech Captured the Army,” The Bulwark reported June 17. “Palantir and AI are inside the house.”

But let’s keep things in perspective: it’s only a tiny landing party. The Army announced June 13 that it has created “Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps” (the service still desperately needs marketing help). It has signed up four high-tech honchos to serve as lieutenant colonels in the Army Reserve, while keeping their day jobs and avoiding some of the training reserve officers generally need. “In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems,” the Army said, aiming “to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal.”

This could represent a big change. “There’s a lot of patriotism that has been under the covers that I think is coming to light in the valley,” Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s top tech bro, told the Wall Street Journal. “Less than a decade ago,” the paper added, “even working on technology that might be used in the military — never mind suiting up for service — was anathema in Silicon Valley.” Others are more skeptical.

But anything that will spur established defense contractors to be lighter, cheaper, and faster should be welcomed by troops and taxpayers, if not by the Big 5 themselves. “I will measure it as success if in the next two years, one of the primes is no longer in business, and the rest of them have all gotten stronger,” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said last month.

Make way for the Big 4!

PROLIFERATING CONCERNS

Nuclear arsenals set to grow

The Cold War’s nuclear-reduction high is coming to an end. As the U.S. and Russia-née-Soviet Union reduced their gigantic atomic arsenals following the putative end of their superpower rivalry 35 years ago, the number of city-busting nuclear weapons worldwide shrank. But with scant progress on any new A-arms accords, that respite, alas, is over. “Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric, and the abandonment of arms-control agreements,” Hans M. Kristensen of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said June 16.

Unfortunately, the issue of nuclear nonproliferation, which has been smoldering for decades, erupted in flames last weekend at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. More conflagrations will come without new arms-control pacts.

To B-2, or not to B-2, that is the question.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Chips vital in war

When Ukraine ran out of metal shells for the bombs they drop from their drones on Russian invaders, they turned to Pringles potato-chip cans, Tom Mutch reported June 20 in Defense News.

→ Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map

The Pentagon has shifted responsibility for Greenland — which Trump wants to acquire from Denmark — from its European Command to its Northern Command, Chris Gordon reported June 17 at Air & Space Forces Magazine. NORTHCOM is the U.S. military organization responsible for defense of the U.S.

→ Back to the future

U.S. troops and their European allies recently prepared to grapple with the threat posed by drones, Pringle-armed or otherwise, by digging World War I-like trenches, Marine Corps Times’ Todd South reported June 18.

Thanks for joining The Bunker in the trenches this week. Consider forwarding this on to fellow grunts so they can subscribe here. (Please pass the Pringles.)