For this post, in addition to information about the NDIA, see excerpts from a recent guest article at
by Catherine Austin Fitts - “Musings on the Department of Defense” - which is extensively referenced, and recognizes the work of and in highlighting the central role of the DoD in “the most recent round of poisoning and bankrupting Americans during the Covid-19 operation”.Also: recommended pre-reading on the relationship between the USA and Australia (and the UK and Canada) regarding CBRN Defense, and the Anglosphere’s pre-Covid program for military-led Medical Countermeasures (MCMs) against biological attacks and emerging infectious disease threats can be found here…
“We Must ACT NOW or Risk/ Gamble the Future!”
The mighty U.S. military-security-industrial complex is war-gaming on stage this week, preparing for the next ‘existential threat’ (and the money to be made from it).
NDIA - the National Defense Industry Association - is holding its annual Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Defense (CBRN Defense) conference in Baltimore.
(Note: The “Biological” in CBRN encompasses all ‘biothreats’ regardless of whether their ‘origin’ is natural, accidental or deliberate - or unknown.)
The focus of the conference this week is:
“Counter-WMD and Pandemic Preparedness Inflection Point”.
Sounds serious!
Here’s a glimpse of the final session of Day 1…
For a brief bit of background on NDIA…
According to the website, the association supports “the Defense and National Security Community”. As an “educational” organization (which boasts 65,000 individual members!) NDIA “drives strategic dialogue in national security”.
And it is not-a-lobby-firm. (NDIA’s bold - see below.)
Scratch that.
NDIA actually works to “strengthen the government-industry partnership” and “engages all three branches of government” with regards to policy issues that involve “the defense-industrial base”.
Note the last infographic, and the trifecta of “Government, Academia, Industry”.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Remember the DoD’s pre-Covid plan for a “Medical Rapid Response” to a biological ‘outbreak’ or attack involving so-called “Rapid Response Partnerships” between government, academia and industry (and NGOs and international organizations) for the accelerated development and deployment of medical countermeasures (MCMs)??
The 3 minute video from June 2019 can be found here.
“Musings on the Department of Defense”
Before looking at details of this week’s NDIA conference, here are a few key cut-and-paste quotes from the must-read aforementioned article by Catherine Austin Fitts at
:DOD: A Big Annual Budget
The annual budget request by the Department of Defense for fiscal 2025 is $849.8 billion. That is a lot of money. […]
It is fair to say that military policy is often organized around what generates stock market profits—and employment and revenues in Congressional districts—as opposed to what is needed to ensure a high-performance military.
[…]
Which is to say that wherever you are in America, if you follow the money, invariably it will lead back to a military or intelligence budget and related political leashes, most involving contracts, purchases, grants, and/or payrolls. It pays to track those leashes into your community, company, employer, and family and friend circles. Inevitably, those intimate connections are there.
-Catherine Austin Fitts
Furthermore…
The Role of Defense Contractors
The U.S. government is not run by political appointees and the civil service; it is run by private corporate contractors and banks. The largest defense contractors also hold significant contracts at non-military agencies, allowing for significant integration with the military across government.
[…]
Privatization through U.S. federal government contracting has put many operations beyond the governance or control of the government itself.
-Catherine Austin Fitts
And the big-picture view on the DoD:
In theory, this makes DOD and the U.S. government’s bank depository […] the largest money laundering institutional team in the history of the world.
-Catherine Austin Fitts
The Biodefense-Biosecurity-Biotechology Boondoggle
Returning to this week’s NDIA conference…
The list of speakers features an impressive line-up of prominent panic-pushers representing government/military and the private sector.
And it looks like retired military (and now-defense-industry) is a category in a league of its own!
Here’s a random selection — including some names and faces and topics that also popped up at the recent annual “World Vaccine Congress” in Washington D.C.
Some of the CBRN Defense subject areas which this cross section of experts expound upon include…
Detection and Decision-Making Capabilities
CAPT Mark Scheckelhoff, US Army
Director of Biodefense PreparednessU.S. Department of Homeland Security
Medical Countermeasure Capabilities
COL Matthew Clark, US Army
Joint Project Manager CBRN MedicalJoint Program Executive Office CBRN Defense (JPEO-CBRND)
Dr. David Hone
Chief Scientist, Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
Implementing the National Biodefense Strategy
Maj Gen Dr. Paul Friedrichs, USAF (Ret)
Inaugural Director, Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy
The White House
Industry Perspective on Resilience
Craig Kennedy
Senior Vice President, Global Supply ChainModerna
Research Innovation
Dr. Shannon Greene
Program Manager, Biological Technologies OfficeDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
DHS CWMD AND CBRN Strategy and Priorities
Mary Ellen Callahan
Assistant Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, CWMD
Doing Business with DHS
COL Jay Reckard, US Army (Ret)
Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President CBRNE DefenseNoble
Doing Business with DOD
Dr. Frederick Cox
Director, Research and Operations Directorate, DEVCOM Chem-Bio CenterU.S. Army
COL Thamar Main, US Army (Ret)
Technical Project ManagerARServices Limited
Partnering with Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)
Dr. Judy Laney
CBRN Chemical Medical Countermeasures Program ChiefBiomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)
There’s no photograph for Dr Judy Laney of BARDA. But - for a different event involving BARDA - here’s another pic of Maj Gen Dr. Paul Friedrichs, USAF (Ret), the inaugural Director of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR) at the White House - at a BARDA Industry Day:
And Dr. Jason Roos - that mysterious masked man… formerly of the DoD’s JPEO-CBRND agency - is also making an appearance at the conference this week.
Perhaps minus the January 2020 full military hazmat suit?
Post-Covid, Dr Roos moved from JPEO-CBRND to “ARPA-H” - the new ‘DARPA for Health’ at HHS (formed in 2022) - where he now holds the position of Scalable Solutions Mission Office Director.
It’s hard to keep up with all the USG alphabet agencies — especially the growing list of defense and health “international MCM stakeholders”:
(By comparison, Australia’s CDC is only a few months old! And no DARPA… yet!)
Finally, the sponsors for this event include MCDC and CWMD — the two major consortia for biodefense contractors, tasked with “Accelerating DoD’s Fielding of Prototypes” for medical countermeasures.
And, of course, Moderna — the “DoD’s baby”, per this recent post*.
Plenty to mull over here.
Is it all too big to fail - until it does - as Catherine Austin Fitts implies?
*Postscript: