Millions in Israeli military funding flow to US universities: Report
Al Mayadeen | August 26, 2026
The Israeli Ministry of War and Israeli weapons companies have directed millions of dollars in unreported funding to US university research programs for weapons development, either sponsoring research directly or serving as a pass-through entity for the funding, according to a Drop Site investigation.
A review of state and university audits, foreign-funding disclosures, and other institutional records identified millions of dollars in financial ties over the last two decades between the Israeli Ministry of War, Israeli weapons manufacturers, and US universities, much of which does not appear consistently in national databases intended to track foreign funding into US universities.
An analysis of audit records, building on findings compiled by the Antiwar Initiative, an academic research group that documents connections between universities and the global arms industry, found more than $15 million in unreported or inconsistently reported entries for funding tied to the Israeli Ministry of War or Israeli defense manufacturers.
Israeli Ministry of War funding reaches US universities
According to DSN, the true scale of Israeli support is difficult to determine because entries for such funding were often not reported in public filings mandating disclosure of foreign gifts, but were discovered by manually cross-referencing public and internal databases, audit records, and acknowledgments in academic papers.
Some projects listed in university materials as being sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of War or weapons companies also did not include the amounts of funding provided, or contained inconsistent or contradictory records in audit databases.
Drop Site reviewed and verified public records showing research grants, tuition payments, and gifts totaling millions of dollars to dozens of colleges and universities across the country. The data shows examples of financial support and sponsorship for American researchers from the Israeli Ministry of War, as well as Israeli weapons manufacturers such as Elbit Systems.
Records dating from 2004 to 2025 point to a large number of schools that have had financial relationships with the Israeli Ministry of War or Israeli weapons manufacturers, including Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech, the University of Connecticut, the University of Tennessee, the University of Maryland, the University of Florida, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Rhode Island, the University of New Mexico, Washington University in St. Louis, and the State University of New York.
The recorded financial relationships include time-bound research contracts and do not indicate whether relationships with the ministry are still ongoing. Previous reporting has documented ministry funding of programs at MIT and student protests there over the relationship.
In addition to financial support from the ministry and Elbit, records also showed sponsorship of individual research projects related to military technologies by Israeli defense manufacturers Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries.
Taken together, the records reveal an opaque defense-research pipeline spread across some of the country’s most prominent universities.
Defense research ties span major American campuses
In one example that illustrates the typical nature of these ties, a War Ministry-sponsored project at the University of Connecticut was listed in public audit records under the title, “Impact Point Prediction Research for Short & Medium Range Thrusting Projectiles.”
Connecticut’s annual federal-award schedules record $668,456 in funding under that title across nine fiscal years between 2013 and 2023, with the funder listed as “Israel’s” Ministry of War. Another Israeli Ministry of War-linked research project at the school titled “High Sensitivity SQUIDs for Magnetic Field Detection” received $251,336 in funding across the same period.
Federal law requires colleges and universities receiving federal assistance to disclose gifts and contracts totaling at least $250,000 in a calendar year from a foreign source, though transactions below that threshold may remain outside the public reporting system. But these multi-year contributions do not consistently appear in federal databases intended to help the public track foreign money flowing into American universities.
The Education Department’s latest public disclosure of foreign gifts and funding contains no “Israel”-attributed entry for the University of Connecticut, even as entries for ministry funding appear in other databases and audit documentation.
The Israeli occupation government and its allies in Congress are now seeking to transform relationships like these from a scattered research pipeline into formal American defense policy. The fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act already directed the Pentagon to establish a US-Israeli Defense Industrial Base Working Group to consider integrating “Israel” into what it calls “the American National Technology and Industrial Base.”
A proposal advanced by the House Armed Services Committee for the fiscal 2027 NDAA would go further, creating a United States-“Israel” Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative charged with expanding bilateral research, development, testing, weapons production, and industrial cooperation.
If these measures become law, the scattered funding connections documented in American university audit trails and research papers would become part of the American military-industrial base’s architecture.
Israeli weapons companies fund military research
Israeli forces have used drones, automated intelligence tools, persistent aerial surveillance, precision-guided projectiles, and large-scale data analysis throughout the genocide in the Gaza Strip, as well as wars on Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Yemen.
Those operations draw upon technologies originating in the same research fields that the Israeli government and weapons manufacturers have paid American academics to advance, including video surveillance, human-activity recognition, autonomous flight, network analysis, target identification, magnetic sensing, and projectile impact modeling.
At the University of Central Florida, researchers have received funding from Elbit Systems to develop algorithms to recognize human activity and detect objects in video.
Records from the University of Tennessee show that a US subsidiary of Elbit also provided $514,500 in payments to the school between 2023, 2024, and 2025. The available public documentation does not identify what programs or researchers the contributions were intended to support, with the description listing the purpose of the funding simply as “tuition payments for various students.”
“For relatively small sums, like the price of funding a single PhD—Israel has gained major new capabilities that have bolstered its capacity to commit genocide in Gaza, carry out a brutal occupation of Lebanon, and spark a war with Iran that has escalated to a region wide conflict,” said William Hartung, a political scientist and expert on the US arms industry and Pentagon budgetary practices.
Many awards from the Israeli Ministry of War are classified as US Department of War expenditures, with the Israeli ministry identified as the pass-through entity that administers the grants. MIT, for example, has stated that the money for its projects funded by the Israeli ministry originated with the US Department of War.
The US provides an estimated $3.8 billion in annual military aid to “Israel” on top of other forms of assistance.
Some audit records identify the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which administers US security assistance and weapons-transfer programs, as the primary agency providing the funding that was ultimately directed by the Israeli Ministry of War.
The public documents do not establish whether every dollar for particular research support at a school came from “Israel’s” treasury, from US military assistance placed under Israeli procurement authority, or from some combination of the two.
Audit trail reveals actual numbers
In the summer of 2025, MIT professor Markus Buehler withdrew from an Israeli Ministry of War grant after a student-led campaign publicized the project. The decision followed more than a year of protests over MIT’s defense relationships with “Israel”, which the university says amounted to $4 million for individual ministry-linked projects between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2024, plus $290,000 in fiscal 2025.
A trail of open-source records traces similar financial and research relationships between the Israeli defense establishment and schools in Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Florida, New Jersey, Texas, California, and Virginia.
At Columbia University, annual audits name two ministry-linked projects and record $799,190 in grants. One Ministry of War-funded project for “Direct 3D Printing of Integrated Electro Mechanical Systems” accounted for $469,999 from 2016 through 2021, while another for “Optimizing Micro Resonators Based Sensor” accounted for another $329,191 from 2021 through 2024.
Columbia’s fiscal 2024 audit lists the latter project under the US Department of War, with the “Israeli Ministry of Defense” as the “pass-through name,” and records $25,327 in funding.
The Research Foundation for the State University of New York shows audit entries for five Israeli Ministry of War-linked projects totaling $949,915 from 2010 through 2021.
Florida’s statewide audits record $1,195,795 in expenditures passed through the Ministry of War from 2012 through 2021, while not identifying the schools that received all of this funding.
Campus records connect at least some of the awards to the University of Central Florida and the University of Florida. One University of Florida engineering publication names an Israeli Ministry of War-sponsored project, “Coupled Size and Rate Effects in Ultra-High-Performance Concrete,” beginning in 2012. While listing the project under “Sponsored Research,” the newsletter did not identify the amount the school received from the ministry for the study.
In response to a request for comment about another $150,000 contract beginning in March 2015 that named the Israeli Ministry of War at UC Berkeley, a spokesperson said that, “UC Berkeley complies with all of the statues and regulations that apply to contracts and gifts from foreign sources,” noting that the school is only involved in fundamental research and adding that, “every government, every researcher, every person in the world can read the results of our research in freely available scientific publications.”
UC Berkeley did not respond to additional questions about the purpose of the ministry funding. Other schools contacted by Drop Site did not respond to requests for comment or stated that they could not provide information about the cited funding.
In addition to records from audits, public information from individual researchers provides more hints of the scope of Israeli military research funding.
In February, The Nation reported that computer-vision researchers Mubarak Shah and Abhijit Mahalanobis received a $200,000 Elbit Systems of America grant in 2020 to develop “human activity recognition” technology, while Mahalanobis received another $60,000 for algorithms involving object detection and human-activity recognition.
At the University of Maryland, aerospace engineering professor Inderjit Chopra’s research page lists two Israeli ministry grants: $150,000 for “Autonomous Operation of Micro-Helicopters,” from 2011 to 2012, and $300,000 for “Aeromechanics of Rotorcraft in High Speed Flight,” from 2014 to 2016.
A curriculum vitae filed by another researcher in a separate US Patent and Trademark Office proceeding lists Israeli Ministry of War funding of $150,000 for “Functional Targeting of Terror Networks: A Big Data Approach,” from February 2017 through December 2018, and $153,520 for “Fast Algorithms for Group Between-ness Centrality in Massive Social Networks.”
Princeton University records identify physicist Michael Romalis on a $600,000 contract called “Pulsed Scalar Atomic Magnetometer.” The university’s fiscal 2018 sponsored-awards report names the Government of “Israel’s” Ministry of War and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency as sponsors and gives a contract period from July 2015 through June 2019.
Texas Tech University’s engineering newsletters list another award for $400,000 from the Israeli Ministry of War to research a “Sealed Vircator HPM System,” naming James Dickens, John Mankowski, and Andreas Neuber as researchers.
The vircator technology has a clear military application: Texas Tech’s Center for Pulsed Power and Power Electronics describes vircators as compact, high-power microwave sources and says its work includes coordinating vehicle-mounted emitters with GPS timing to place a microwave “hot spot” at a desired location, an application potentially useful for combating drone swarms.
The purpose of a separate Israeli Ministry of War-linked funding stream at the University of Texas at Austin is less clear from the public records. UT Austin’s fiscal 2013 financial report identifies $58,992 in expenditures under an Israeli Ministry of War purchase order. Statewide audit schedules record expenditures under the same purchase order reappearing in public audit records from 2010 through 2014, for $299,952.
The audit archive contains still more Israeli military-named expenditures, including recorded contributions to Northwestern University and Washington University in St. Louis, and repeated entries for the Ministry of War in audits for the state of Virginia.
But the opaque nature of some support that turned up in public records means that financial and in-kind support to universities may not even be recorded in any audit trail at all.
At the University of Texas at Dallas, Haoran Wei and Nasser Kehtarnavaz produced a video-surveillance system in a study that the published paper indicated was “funded by Elbit Systems of America through a contract with the University of Texas at Dallas” without mentioning the amount of financial support.
The report also noted that the company had provided “far-field video clips” to help conduct their research on target recognition.
Federal disclosures leave gaps in funding records
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act generally requires a federally assisted university to report covered gifts and contracts from a foreign source when they meet or exceed $250,000, including multi-year contracts meeting that threshold over their duration.
Under the Education Department’s example, a five-year research contract worth $50,000 a year is reportable at signing because its lifetime value is $250,000.
The Education Department’s inspector general warned in February 2025 that oversight of the system was weak, with insufficient controls to ensure reporting requirements were being met.
The current disclosure thresholds also make it easier for foreign countries to contribute amounts below that number to avoid triggering reporting requirements while still providing significant sums for individual research projects.
That lack of oversight contributes to a situation in which millions of dollars from a foreign military under increasing scrutiny in the US for human rights abuses and facing genocide charges from international courts have been used to fund military research at American universities.
These relationships are now coming under greater scrutiny at a time when public opinion on “Israel” has soured in the US due to the genocide in Gaza and the Israeli aggression in other regional wars. “No self-respecting university should accept funding from Israel, given its destabilizing, destructive, and inhumane use of U.S. weapons,” said Hartung.
Pro-‘Israel’ Dems win key panel posts, influence over West Asia policy
Al Mayadeen | August 26, 2026
Three vocally pro-“Israel” House Democrats were given influential posts on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, with Rep. Jared Moskowitz taking the reins of the subcommittee that oversees US policy toward West Asia, according to Axios.
The appointments represent a significant win for the Democratic Party’s pro-“Israel” wing despite growing pro-Palestinian sentiment among the party’s grassroots.
“If Democrats take control of the House, I’ll be in a position to help steer US policy on Israel and the Middle East,” he told Axios.
In addition to Moskowitz leading Democrats on the West Asia and North Africa subcommittee, pro-“Israel” Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell were appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday. They all defeated left-wing primary challengers during this election cycle who targeted their support for “Israel”.
Rep. Mark Pocan, a pro-Palestinian progressive and outspoken critic of AIPAC, was also appointed to the panel.
Pro-Israeli lawmakers overtake committee
Rep. Greg Meeks, the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said the appointees’ “experience, commitment, and expertise will strengthen our work and help guide the committee as it addresses urgent challenges in national security and diplomacy.”
“I look forward to working closely with all of our members during this turbulent time when Congressional oversight is most needed,” added Meeks, who is also a vocal supporter of “Israel”.
AIPAC punishes Democrats over ‘Israel’, ends their fundraising
This notably comes after AIPAC suspended campaign fundraising support for more than two dozen House Democrats who voted in July in favor of reducing billions of dollars in US military funding to “Israel”.
On Wednesday, more than 100 Democrats in the House backed an amendment to the fiscal 2027 State Department and national security appropriations bill introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The measure would have barred funds in the legislation from being used to assist “Israel” and cut the Foreign Military Financing program by $3.3 billion.
The amendment was defeated in a 104-314-10 vote. Democrats were nearly evenly divided on the proposal, while Massie was the only Republican to support it. The vote underscored an increasingly visible shift within the Democratic Party regarding the United States’ closest ally in West Asia.
‘Israel’ forcibly evicts UNRWA center in occupied al-Quds
Al Mayadeen| August 26, 2026
Israeli forces began forcibly evicting the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, from its vocational training center in occupied al-Quds on Tuesday, escalating “Israel’s” campaign against the agency and its services for Palestinian refugees.
The Qalandia Training Centre, located between the Kafr Aqab neighborhood in occupied al-Quds and the Qalandia refugee camp, was established in 1952 and provides vocational training to around 340 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank each year, according to UNRWA.
The operation followed repeated warnings from the agency that Israeli authorities were preparing to target the facility.
Israeli forces enter UNRWA center in occupied al-Quds
UNRWA said Israeli forces “forcibly entered” the training center at around 10 am local time, with at least four armored vehicles and more than 50 Israeli occupation personnel entering the compound.
Around 20 UNRWA staff members were present at the facility at the time.
An AFP journalist at the scene reported that Israeli occupation forces closed the main road near the center’s entrance while forces inside moved between its buildings.
A convoy of three civilian vehicles was later seen leaving the facility under Israeli military escort.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the evacuation had begun under his directive and following legislation targeting UNRWA.
UNRWA condemns forced entry
UNRWA condemned the Israeli operation, stressing that armed forces had entered a United Nations facility without authorization.
“UNRWA unequivocally condemns this unauthorised and deeply concerning incursion,” the agency said.
It added that the “entry of armed occupation forces into a United Nations facility, without the authorisation or consent of the United Nations, is unacceptable.”
The operation directly affects a facility that has provided vocational training to Palestinians for more than seven decades.
Israeli far-right Police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir celebrated the operation, saying Israeli forces were implementing legislation to remove UNRWA from the site.
He later published an image of an Israeli flag above the entrance to the training center alongside the caption, “UNRWA in our hands.”
‘Israel’ escalates campaign against UNRWA
“Israel” has repeatedly accused UNRWA of providing cover for Hamas and alleged that its personnel carried out resistance operations alongside Hamas fighters.
Legislation severing Israeli ties with UNRWA and banning the agency from operating in Israeli territory took effect in January 2025.
However, investigations into the allegations have not substantiated “Israel’s” broader claims as presented by its officials.
A review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna identified “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA but said “Israel” had not provided conclusive evidence for its central allegations.
Israel exports 6 times more arms per capita than US, 19 times more than Russia
MEMO | August 26, 2026
Israeli arms exports per capita in 2025 were roughly six times greater than the United States and 19 times greater than Russia, a new study has found, revealing the extraordinary scale of Israel’s weapons industry relative to its population.
The latest study by Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa found that Israel exported arms at a rate equivalent to roughly $263 per citizen in 2025, compared with $41 per person in the US and $14 in Russia. Calculated against Israel’s Jewish population alone, the figure rises to $340 per person, around eight times the US rate and 25 times Russia’s.
The findings are based primarily on figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), whose Arms Transfers Database tracks major conventional weapons. Although the US remains by far the largest weapons exporter in absolute terms, Abulhawa found that adjusting exports for population produces a dramatically different picture.
Israel ranked seventh in total arms exports between 2020 and 2025, behind the US, France, Russia, Germany, China and Italy. But once the same data is divided by population, Israel moves far ahead of every major weapons-exporting country. Its per-capita arms exports were roughly 2.5 times those of Norway, the nearest competitor, and more than six times those of the US.
The study found that this dominance is not the result of a single exceptional year. Israel has been either the world’s largest arms exporter per capita, usually by a considerable margin, or close to the top in every year of the past 25 years.
Looking across the entire 1960-2025 period covered by the database, Israel also recorded the highest average arms exports per capita of any country, at the equivalent of $56 per person every year over 65 years. The study found that Israel’s lead over competing arms exporters has widened particularly sharply during the past decade.
Abulhawa also examined arms exports against the size of national economies, showing how deeply the weapons trade is embedded in Israel’s economic model.
Using SIPRI figures, Israeli arms exports amounted to around 0.25 per cent of GDP in 2023, more than three times the equivalent proportion in France and more than six times that of the US.
But SIPRI does not count much of Israel’s lucrative trade in drones, ammunition, small arms, cyber technology, surveillance equipment, services and training. Using governments’ own wider figures for defence contracts instead, Israel reported $13 billion in arms-export agreements in 2023, equivalent to around 2.5 per cent of its GDP.
Proportionally, that makes Israel’s arms-export economy around eight and a half times larger than that of the US and almost nine times larger than France’s, according to the study.
The figures suggest that while larger powers make more money from weapons in absolute terms, no comparable country derives as much arms-export business relative to the size of its population and economy as Israel.
Netanyahu Claims Reaching Agreement With Iran Impossible
Sputnik – 26.08.2026
TEL AVIV – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that reaching a “good” agreement with Iran’s authorities is impossible.
A ceasefire between the United States and Iran has been agreed upon, including freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, Pakistani military sources and Iranian security sources previously told Sputnik. The parties are expected to officially announce the ceasefire in the coming days.
Speaking at an event on settling the West Bank, the Israeli prime minister said that he is determined to ensure no threats from Iran. Netanyahu said that he discussed this with US President Donald Trump a few weeks ago at the White House.
“We discussed three options. I told him about an old option – to reach a good agreement. We have no objections. But I doubt that with this group of people … an agreement can be reached. I told him [Trump] that an agreement is impossible,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister said that the second option is a resumption of hostilities.
Trump announced the launch of an economic operation against Iran on August 20, calling it “isolation on an unprecedented scale.” He urged US allies to join Washington.
Tehran will use all its resources to combat Washington’s economic pressure, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday, adding that the only option for the US is respectful dialogue with the Iranian people.
Strait of Hormuz won’t reopen unless US accepts Iran’s conditions: IRGC
Press TV – August 26, 2026
The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed unless the United States halts its blockade and accepts Tehran’s conditions for implementing a recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), said the spokesperson of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi said on Wednesday the strategic waterway is firmly under Iranian control and that hostile military forces have been pushed back.
“The Strait of Hormuz is in our hands, and no enemy military vessels are currently present inside the Persian Gulf,” he added.
He said all warships have retreated at least 400 kilometers away from the Strait, adding that from a military and territorial standpoint, “no vessel is capable of transiting this waterway without Iran’s permission and management.”
Addressing the administration of the Strait, which is geographically shared by Iran and Oman, the IRGC spokesman said Tehran has been in active negotiations with Muscat for the past month.
General Mohebbi confirmed that the two sides have reached mutually acceptable agreements regarding the demarcation of their respective shares of the waterway and the distribution of revenues generated from maritime traffic.
He also said the waters near the Omani coast are fully under joint control.
US obstruction primary obstacle
Despite the progress with Oman, General Mohebbi pointed to the United States as the primary obstacle to normalizing traffic through the world’s most critical energy chokepoint.
“The United States is creating obstacles in this process, which has caused delays.”
General Mohebbi stated that if Washington ceases its interference and returns to the framework of the existing MoU, Iran is prepared to reopen the Strait in accordance with that agreement.
“Therefore, the United States must accept our conditions,” the IRGC spokesman said.
“If the US does not accept our conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will under no circumstances be reopened.”
Tehran has established new regulatory frameworks requiring commercial vessels to register with Iranian authorities, obtain transit permits, follow Iran-designated shipping routes, and utilize Iran-provided security and insurance mechanisms amid the US-Israeli war of aggression.
The Islamabad MoU is a landmark 14-point diplomatic framework brokered primarily by Pakistan, with mediation support from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey.
Signed in mid-June between Iranian and US leadership, the agreement was designed to halt the military aggression, ensure an immediate and permanent cessation of hostilities, and establish a clear roadmap for de-escalation.
A central pillar of the agreement was the easing of wartime restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz and the initiation of further negotiations toward a comprehensive, final settlement.
However, the fragile framework has recently unraveled. Tehran announced the suspension of its own obligations under the accord, asserting that Washington shattered the agreement first through bad-faith negotiations, continued economic coercion, and a failure to honor its commitments.
This diplomatic impasse has prompted urgent, high-level shuttle diplomacy by Pakistani officials, including the Chief of Army Staff, who are actively working to salvage the MoU and prevent the region from sliding back into open conflict.
Iran inflicted billions in damage to American intelligence sites during US-Israeli aggression: Report
Press TV – August 26, 2026
Iranian missile and drone strikes during the US-Israeli aggression caused unprecedented damage to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) facilities and equipment across West Asia, a report says.
Four officials familiar with the damage told NBC News that the destruction represents an unprecedented setback for US intelligence agencies.
Since CIA was established in 1947, it has never experienced attacks on its facilities and equipment on a similar scale, the officials said.
Iranian missiles and drones hit intelligence sites as well as conventional military targets, including a CIA office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and an intelligence center in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah Province.
Radar systems and other surveillance equipment were also struck, along with fixed electronic intelligence stations, satellite communications systems and data-processing centers.
Power lines and cooling systems needed to operate high-technology equipment were damaged, reducing Washington’s ability to monitor developments across West Asia.
The strikes also spread across a wide geographic area, with an earlier assessment finding more than 100 targets.
Those countries included Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the report said while it put the number of damaged US bases at 16.
The financial toll is enormous, with the American Enterprise Institute estimating that infrastructure repairs alone could exceed $5 billion, excluding damaged equipment and weapons.
The US Department of War requested $67 billion in emergency funding in late July, including $18.2 billion to replenish Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) and other advanced missiles.
The cost of the wider war has also been staggering, with Bloomberg reporting that the US fired 13,629 munitions at Iranian targets between February and April.
CBS News estimated the total cost of the aggression at no less than $50 billion, while Joint Chiefs Chairman Daniel Caine warned that renewed fighting could dangerously deplete US interceptor supplies.
The attacks have also exposed failures in American preparations, prompting questions over why US facilities were not better protected against Iran’s growing missile and drone capabilities.
Seth Jones of the American Enterprise Institute offered a blunt assessment, saying, “The US walked into this war and had not sufficiently thought through base defense in any way, shape or form, and we got hammered.”
The latest round of US-Israeli aggression against Iran began on February 28, when Washington and Tel Aviv forces launched large-scale strikes on Iranian territory.
Iran responded with daily waves of missiles and drones targeting US and Israeli assets.
Although Iran and the US signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on June 17 in an effort to end the aggression, repeated US attacks on southern Iran violated the agreement.
Iranian authorities have since suspended all contact with Washington until it ends its military attacks and hostile rhetoric.
Former CDC Scientist Whose Studies Were Used to ‘Debunk’ Vaccine-Autism Link Will Plead Guilty
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 24, 2026
A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist who played a crucial role in research rebutting any link between vaccines and autism is expected to plead guilty next week to wire fraud and money laundering.
Poul Thorsen, 65, is finalizing a plea deal with prosecutors relating to charges stemming from a 2011 federal indictment, Nathan Kitchens, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, told The Defender.
Thorsen, who began working for the CDC in the late 1990s, faces two counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering related to over $1 million in CDC grant money. The funds were earmarked for autism and public health research, but Thorsen allegedly used them to buy a home, two cars and a motorcycle.
Kitchens declined to comment on whether Thorsen will plead guilty to all or some of the charges.
Thorsen has been held in federal custody without bail since his extradition from Germany to the U.S. in May. The case is being heard at a federal court in Georgia, where the CDC is headquartered.
Researcher James Grundvig, the parent of a child with autism who was vaccine-injured, called the expected guilty plea “a very big deal.”
Grundvig, who wrote “Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC,” which focused on the Thorsen case, praised U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for extraditing Thorsen “in record speed.”
He said Thorsen likely understands that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have “all the goods” to prosecute him.
“I guess Thorsen’s realizing, since he’s in American jail already and has no chance for bail, he might as well make a plea deal,” Grundvig said.
Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1994 and 2009 — and who President Donald Trump nominated to lead the CDC in late 2024 before retracting his nomination in March 2025 — welcomed the plea agreement but said it isn’t enough.
“It would be a miscarriage of justice if a plea deal failed to include a thorough investigation of allegations of scientific fraud,” Weldon said.
Danish independent vaccine safety researcher Vibeke Manniche, M.D., Ph.D., said some of the federal funds Thorsen is said to have misused may have been intended for vaccine-autism studies. Manniche said the guilty plea calls Thorsen’s research into question.
“An obvious question is whether he also has been cheating with data to achieve the results he sought,” Manniche said. “That we don’t know. A good rule in gold-standard science is replication, and it would be wise, for so many reasons, to replicate his work,” independently of the institutions Thorsen had been affiliated with.
Grundvig noted that the Thorsen indictment included unnamed co-conspirators, suggesting that the investigation may implicate more people — and also the controversial autism research that Thorsen helped publish in 2002 and 2003 that was cited as proof of no link between vaccines and autism.
“I think that’s going to be the second part of the story,” Grundvig said. “It could be an avalanche of bad news for both pharma and the CDC.”
Thorsen studies cited in dismissing over 5,000 vaccine injury claims
Despite questions around how those studies were conducted, the Madsen-Thorsen papers were used in 2011 to dismiss over 5,000 claims filed by the parents of autistic, vaccine-injured children. The claims were part of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding pending before the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
In “Master Manipulator,” Grundvig — whose son’s case was one of the claims dismissed as a result of Thorsen’s research — described Thorsen as “a world-class villain whose manipulation of health data gave CDC and big pharma what they wanted: a report clearing thimerosal of any possible role in the autism crisis.”
According to Weldon:
“The real crime is not absconding with research dollars, but unresolved allegations around his research which served as the basis for the CDC and the U.S. government dismissing vaccine injury claims by thousands of injured children. These actions set back vaccine safety research by more than two decades.”
Grundvig suggested the Thorsen investigation and his guilty plea may call into question the dismissal of the omnibus cases, as it would “then make all of those vaccine omnibus proceedings completely fraudulent because it was based on a fraud, and that should reopen the cases.”
Hooker, whose omnibus claim for his son was also dismissed, said Thorsen likely didn’t act alone in misusing federal money or misrepresenting vaccine-autism research — and that the role of some of his key collaborators should be examined.
“There should be a separate investigation against Dr. Diana Schendel, who was Thorsen’s direct grant supervisor and lover and approved all of his invoices for expenditures from his CDC grant money. Dr. Schendel undoubtedly knew of Thorsen’s activities but did not report them to the authorities and could have spent some of the stolen grant money as well,” Hooker said.
Schendel maintained an inappropriate romantic relationship with Thorsen and later accepted a position at Denmark’s Aarhus University to lead autism research there. She remains employed at Aarhus University — and at Drexel University — today.
Thorsen continued to live in Denmark for years after the 2011 U.S. indictment. He worked there as a gynecologist despite an extradition treaty between the two countries and an INTERPOL warrant for his arrest.
Hooker added:
“Other co-conspirators who knew of the inappropriate relationship between Thorsen and Schendel over the seven-year grant history at CDC include Coleen Boyle, Ph.D., former director of the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities), and Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsop, former branch chief of the Developmental Disabilities Branch at the CDC.
“These individuals at a minimum should be brought in for questioning. Both have also been implicated in the MMR-autism fraud from the DeStefano et al. 2004 paper, where data showing a strong relationship between MMR timing and autism in Black boys was illegally destroyed.”
Thorsen’s vaccine-autism studies full of ‘irregularities’
When he first joined the CDC as a visiting scientist, Thorsen’s research focused on birth defects and developmental disabilities.
However, by the early 2000s, Thorsen shifted his focus to autism research. His work in this area left a strong imprint, fueling future narratives that autism isn’t linked to vaccines.
According to a 2017 report by the World Mercury Project — predecessor to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — Thorsen’s influence on U.S. vaccine projects and policies “is extensive” because his studies were used to dismiss a possible link between vaccines and autism.
One of the most influential studies became known as the “Madsen study,” a population-based study of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
Published in 2002 in The New England Journal of Medicine and co-authored by Thorsen, the Madsen study concluded that there is “strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”
However, according to the 2017 World Mercury Project report, the Madsen study was “flawed” from the outset because the researchers reviewed clinical records of only 40 of the 316 children who had autism in the study’s cohort.
A peer-reviewed analysis published last year cast further doubt on the study’s conclusions.
In 2003, Madsen and Thorsen co-authored another influential study, published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study did “not support a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and the incidence of autism.”
Thimerosal is a mercury-based adjuvant used in some vaccines, which some scientists and advocates for people with autism have suggested may trigger autism.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said there are “numerous data irregularities” in the Thorsen studies.
In their critique of the 2002 paper, Hooker and Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, found significant errors in the paper. They concluded the study’s unadjusted results “do not support rejecting the causal link” between the MMR vaccine and autism.
In a critique of the 2003 Madsen-Thorsen study, Hooker and researcher Jeffrey Allen Trelka concluded that the study’s findings “may have been skewed by participant selection and changes in diagnostic groupings.”
Other critiques of the 2002 and 2003 studies raised concerns about ethical considerations. Both studies relied on Danish population data. According to the 2017 World Mercury Project report, the studies bypassed ethical reviews required for this category of research, as required by federal law.
When the CDC discovered Thorsen hadn’t obtained the required ethics approvals, the agency didn’t report the errors, and the studies weren’t retracted. Instead, CDC officials engaged in a cover-up, the 2017 report states.
“Given these irregularities, Thorsen should also be under investigation for data fraud as he clearly withheld data and could have altered data” from Danish official sources, Hooker told The Defender.
Manniche said that if it is proven Thorsen tampered with the data in his studies, it would be a “terrible tragedy,” because “parents were told that the MMR vaccine was safe and sound and that it couldn’t harm the child.”
As of July 31, there were 1,931 reports claiming onset of autism or autism spectrum disorder following MMR vaccination contained within the federally run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Will Thorsen sing?
Grundvig suggested that, as part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Thorsen may have an incentive to provide testimony or information targeting other CDC figures.
“Thorsen’s 65 years old, born in 1961 … does he want to die in an American jail?” Grundvig asked. “I don’t think so. So, I think he wants to make, and will make, a plea deal. The only way he’s going to make a plea deal is with someone like Kennedy and maybe others in the Department of Justice that look at a bigger case,” Grundvig said.
Grundvig suggested this “bigger case” may involve the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO Act.
“There’s a bigger fraud involved than just stealing money, and I think it goes back to the vaccines, it goes back to the studies that the CDC cooked up,” potentially implicating Schendel and Madsen.
“Will he be used as a star witness against the CDC old guard and all of the shenanigans that went on massaging of science, of science papers, influence on Pediatrics and other journals, in order to get all of this done back in the early 2000s in order to exonerate vaccines and erase the autism signal?” Grundvig asked.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Jordanian police arrest Drop Site correspondent for ‘sedition’ over online post
The Cradle | August 25, 2926
Jordanian intelligence officers arrested Ali Younes, a Jordanian-American journalist and Drop Site News correspondent, for allegedly “undermining the national security” of the Hashemite kingdom by sharing an article on social media that called for cutting US assistance to Amman.
Younes, a former Al Jazeera journalist, was detained upon his arrival at Queen Alia International Airport on 17 August, where he was held for questioning prior to being released with orders to appear before prosecutors in Amman.
Security officials told Younes and his lawyer that the case rests on his sharing of an article published in July by the American Conservative, which called on Washington to halt the billions of dollars it sends to the kingdom.
Prosecutors have classed the post as undermining Jordan’s national security, an offense that could put him behind bars for a year.
At a court hearing, prosecutors widened the file to include sedition and hate crimes, and barred Younes from leaving the country.
The article at the center of the case, headlined “Stop Sending Billions in US Aid to Jordan,” challenged the scale of Washington’s support for the monarchy and questioned why US citizens should bankroll King Abdullah.
Jordan has received $33.8 billion in US assistance over the past 75 years, with additional sums due under existing agreements.
Drop Site News has demanded that Jordanian authorities drop the charges and lift the travel ban on their colleague, and called on Washington to assist Younes as a US citizen against the accusations.
Across the Gulf and the wider region, the US war on Iran has been used as a pretext for domestic repression, with Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar all turning cybercrime, counterterrorism, and nationality laws against their own populations.
Hundreds of citizens and residents have been detained over war-related speech, from filming strikes to expressing sympathy for Tehran, with penalties running to life imprisonment, mass revocations of nationality, and the expulsion of lawmakers from parliament.
In Kuwait, the Education Ministry stripped the country’s only Iranian private school of its license and ordered it closed on 6 August, telling parents to move their children elsewhere.
In Bahrain, activist Mohammad al‑Mousawi was arrested at a checkpoint and tortured to death in March after being accused of links to “secret Iranian cells,” with witnesses and medical evidence documenting beatings, cable whippings, and electrocution burns.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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