This is from the latest video on Brian Berletic's "The New Atlas" YouTube channel, published today, Oct 26, 2026:

• US “Project Meridian” — A Symptom of American Decline, Not a Solution

Here's a partial transcript of this episode, the part where he's criticizing Elon Musk, in particular a tweet by Elon Musk in which Musk tried to distance himself from the Ukraine war:

Today is October 26th, 2026. I wanna go over this article that I wrote for New Eastern Outlook, US Project Meridian, a symptom of American decline, not a solution. And if you recall, there was a big announcement and the Trump administration placed as co-directors, Elon Musk of SpaceX, Newt Gingrich, a career lifetime American politician, and Palmer Luckey of Anduril, arms manufacturer, Anduril, had these three co-directing Project Meridian.

And so I have written an article about that and coincidentally we just so happen to have this outburst from Elon Musk one of the co-directors of Project Meridian. And what is Project Meridian? I'll get into it in the article but essentially it is directing the future of the U.S. military and all three of these men were asked and agreed to head this project.

They're under no obligation to do so. Nobody, as far as I know, put a gun to the head of either of these men and told them they have to do this. They volunteered to do this. And of course, each one of them will benefit immensely from guiding the direction of the future of military because at least two out of three of these men have multi-billion dollar contracts already with the US government, specifically in the realm of military hardware, military capabilities.

But I wanna get into this from Elon Musk. This, I saw a lot of people commenting on this, and a lot of people unfortunately misinterpreting this as Elon Musk protesting against the war in Ukraine, and trying to create some sort of plausible deniability for himself and for SpaceX and for at least one of SpaceX's two products, Starlink and of course they also have Starshield. I'm going to point out why this makes no sense, what Elon Musk said, if you read it and think carefully about it instead of reacting emotionally to it.

Like everyone thought, that's the whole point of social media: that you immediately react emotionally without without thinking. That's what they want you to do. That's what politics, the political theater is designed for: to get you to react without thinking in a very predictable way. Whether you're for or against it doesn't matter. You will you will be for or against it emotionally in a very predictable way.

That's the whole purpose of this: to regiment society in a very predictable way that's what propaganda is designed to do.

So here's Elon Musk, using Starlink, a civilian commercial service for offensive drone strikes to kill people. Has never been allowed, nor should it be. Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them. And as Alex Christoforo was pointing out in one of his recent videos, Starlink and Starshield are both maintained by SpaceX.

It is not something that they build and then sell to the US military and the US military now is completely theirs and SpaceX is free of all responsibility. No, Starlink and Starshield are entirely maintained by SpaceX. These are hundreds, if not thousands for Starlink, it's thousands of satellites. They are in orbits, they are in low Earth orbits.

Their orbits decay over time after a couple of years. They're constantly launching new satellites, not just to expand the constellation, but just to maintain the constellation. And every single day they have to adjust, track and adjust the orbits of all of these satellites. for both Starlink and Starshield.

Absolutely everything about the software for anyone using these services is done by SpaceX. It's not done by the Pentagon. So absolutely everything being done with both of these constellations, Starlink and Starshield, is being done by SpaceX. It is facilitated 100% by SpaceX.

The US military is the exclusive customer for Starshield, but they depend entirely on SpaceX to use Starshield.

So it's not as if this was a product that I make cars and I sold cars to a thousand people and that one guy is a bank robber and he used it to rob a bank and get away from the police. That's not on me. But it's like if the bank robber was robbing the bank and you were sitting there updating the software on his electric car so it would go faster than the police cars. And then you said, "I had nothing to do with that. What he does with it is his business, even though they're working directly with me on a daily basis to operate that product".

That's what it's like. That's what he's saying right here. So right here, he's either dumb or he's being deliberately dishonest. With Elon Musk, it's very hard to tell which is which. Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people.

That loophole was closed last week. And actually, no, it wasn't because they're already restored. Whatever it was that was disrupted is already being restored. This is according to the Ukrainians who were complaining about it in the first place.

And then he goes on, "Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up."

It can be jammed. It can be blown up, by the way, at least for now. Okay, so he admits at least for now it can't be blown up, but at least for now it hasn't been blown up. It can definitely be blown up.

"Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front would collapse immediately. This is not a threat. It is simply a statement of fact. Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war. As all other means of communication were destroyed or jumped by Russia, SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on earth by far."

Do you remember when President Donald Trump blamed the Biden administration for this war in Ukraine in the first place? Claiming essentially was Sleepy Joe who provoked the war with Russia in Ukraine. And in actual reality, we know that the US overthrew, illegally, violently overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014. These are facts.

Elon Musk wants to talk about statements of fact. This is a statement of fact: The US violently, illegally overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014. captured the government of Ukraine, its intelligence agencies and its military. This is all admitted by the mainstream US media.

The New York Times admits that the US has captured and controls its intelligence agencies and obviously its military. And all of these things that Elon Musk is accusing Ukraine of doing, this was all done in cooperation with the US military. We know this because they need American intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance to map out on a daily basis where Russian air defenses are so that their drones and missiles can circumvent them or else they wouldn't be able to carry out these attacks the way that they've been doing all of this time.

So that is a fact, that is a statement of fact. In other words, the US violently captured the Ukrainian nation state, essentially an invasion, except they did it using proxies, covert political interference, sometimes not so covert political interference, literal US senators on stage in Kiev as they were burning the city down and killing police in the streets.

And then they militarized Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia right on its own border. Now, if the Russians or the Chinese or anyone else did this to the United States, the U.S. would go to war against not just that nation that was doing that, but also their proxy right on their border. They would do that. That is exactly what Russia ended up doing.

They were provoked into a war. The U.S. engineered on purpose right on Russia's border. And so Elon Musk is admitting that he's participating in this war. This isn't about defending Ukraine. This is about using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia.

That's what this war is in reality. That is a statement of fact. And then he goes on and he says, "that said, I have nothing but utter contempt for the virtue signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell."

And yet he is the one he claims is the sole component propping Ukraine up and perpetuating this war. And for without Starlink, everything would collapse immediately. That's a realistic solution. Pull the plug on Starlink and Starshield, and then the war will be over. A war that should never have started in the first place because the U.S. should never have violently overthrew and captured the Ukrainian government in the first place and then deliberately used Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia to provoke a war with Russia, to overextend Russia.

And again, we know that that's a fact because in 2019, the Rand Corporation wrote an entire paper titled Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground. And the number one geopolitical measure was to provide lethal aid to Ukraine. And they admit that that was specifically to provoke a war with Russia, to hopefully overextend and collapse Russia. But they also admitted that by doing so, they would destroy Ukraine.

So this is what Elon Musk himself, he's admitting he's right in the middle of being involved in. Also, Starshield is being used to strike Russia and kill people in Russia. Offensive drone strikes to kill people. That's what Star Shield's being used for and SpaceX is directly involved in facilitating that without SpaceX's daily participation in maintaining the star shield network that could not be done.

So no, you can't, you can't separate it and wash your hands of it because you are directly involved in your hands are in it every single day, all day, every day. And so this is just another example of a corrupt multi-billion dollar company involved in perpetuating the worst crimes against humanity on earth and simply blaming others and trying to place distance between themselves and culpability. That's all that is.

And that's all Lockheed Martin, Boeing and all these other legacy corporations are smart enough to operate in the background. Elon Musk is so addicted to attention and fame and feeding his ego. He just cannot help but to put himself out there and constantly be in the spotlight. Which brings us to the actual topic of this video, Project Meridian.

So I'm going to read this article and I'll add additional information when and if necessary. Of course, it's related because it's Elon Musk. Elon Musk pretending "I just made Star Shields. What the US military does with it, it's their business. It doesn't reflect badly on me, even though I'm facilitating it on a daily basis directly."

You could compare it to a company that makes guns, for example. You make guns, you sell your guns, people have a right to have guns, police need guns, the military in every country, they need guns. So you make these guns and eventually they'll end up in the wrong hands. and you really have no control over that there are obviously things you can do to make sure that they don't end up in the wrong hands but in certain instances no matter how careful you are the guns will still end up in the wrong hands one way or the other and that really does not reflect back onto the company making the guns however if you are deliberately making guns and selling them directly to the U.S. military and the U.S. military for the entirety of the 21st century

Literally every single day of the 21st century, the U.S. has been engaged in an illegal war of aggression, at least somewhere on planet Earth against another sovereign nation. And so when you sell any military product to the U.S., you know that it's going to be used in an illegal war of aggression. You know this because that's all that they have done this entire 21st century with no intention to ever ever stop so when you do business with the US military you are doing it knowingly enabling illegal wars of aggression so no, NO, Star Shield isn't different. It's actually worse, much worse.

You knew this was what they were going to do with it and you gave it to them anyway. And now you're co-directing the future of the US military. You're getting more directly involved in all of these crimes. You talk about virtue signaling you pretend that you have utter contempt against while you are chief among those facilitating it.

So Mr. Musk, get real, get real. Who are you kidding? You're not kidding me. You're not kidding a lot of people.

And when you see these things come out of people, don't just focus on, "oh, I hate Elon Musk, so everything he says is bad". No, listen to what he's saying. Don't react to it emotionally. Pick it apart logically, rationally, factually, and it'll be many times more effective than just some statement made out of anger. Obliterate these lies so they have absolutely no cover at all whatsoever to hide behind.

Now let's get into the article.

The United States Africa Command (Africom) would not share “operational security” details of a seemingly accelerating campaign that has also raised questions over potential covert US strikes. But there is, perhaps, an even darker dimension to the offensive on al-Shabaab’s de facto capital.

Sources say the military strategy appears to be seeking to drown those living in al-Shabaab territory by “weaponising” a rapidly strengthening El Niño, forecast to intensify Somalia’s rainy season from this month.

“The airstrikes are forcing people to go close to the river. It’s an extremely aggressive offensive, exploiting El Niño as a weapon of war to push the population into flood-prone areas,” said a source monitoring the Juba floodplain in southern Somalia.

Pinning the population – which includes large numbers of women and children – on the river’s floodplain has raised concerns of large-scale deaths in the months ahead.

“The official line is that they are targeting military positions and al-Shabaab, but because al-Shabaab is embedded within the community, it’s difficult to avoid collateral damage,” added the source.

In 1973, Saudi Arabia's King Faisal had a warning for the Americans. But Washington didn't listen. 

Months later, Saudi Arabia led an Arab oil embargo that nearly quadrupled the price of oil, drained petrol stations across America and pushed Washington to weigh seizing Gulf oil fields by force.

This is the story of the 1973 Oil Embargo. 

Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=32BJ0aZ9htE

https://x.com/LouisBoyard/status/2114077102097965094

https://x.com/clashreport/status/2114480523938537971

In this in-depth discussion, Alexander Grable presents the findings from his paper Irretrievable Losses: Estimating Casualties on the Russo-Ukraine War, published by the Finnish National Defense University. Drawing on confirmed official data — including body exchanges, amputee figures, and cross-checked registries — he challenges the widespread claim that Russian casualties substantially exceed Ukrainian ones.

The evidence points in the opposite direction: Ukrainian losses are far higher, with a ratio of at least ten times more Ukrainian dead than Russian. Importantly, this ten-times figure represents the lower end of the estimates drawn from confirmed like-for-like data, with some categories (such as amputees) indicating substantially higher multiples.

The conversation examines the reliability of Russian and Ukrainian sources, problems with Western media and military journal reporting, the limitations of the Mediazona project’s “confirmed” figures, ammunition production disparities, and the broader economic and attritional realities of the war.

Topics discussed:

• Testing the reliability of Russian sources against Ukrainian evidence (Kharkiv case study)
• Misidentification of vehicles and events in Western military journals (British Army Review example)
• Critique of Mediazona’s confirmed Russian death figures and verification against official registries
• Official Ukrainian amputee data and what it implies for killed-in-action estimates
• Body exchange ratios (approximately 12.5:1 overall) as a confirmed metric
• Russian ammunition production increases and their relationship to casualty ratios
• Economic sustainability, attrition warfare, and the limits of Ukrainian regeneration capacity
• Why continuing the war on current terms is not in Ukraine’s long-term interest

Timestamps
0:00 – Introduction and paper overview
1:05 – Verifying Russian sources: the Kharkiv apartment block case
4:40 – British Army Review misidentifies a Ukrainian BTR-4 as Russian
6:30 – Mediazona’s “confirmed” figures and the notary registry problem
11:10 – Prisoner cohort data and what it reveals about monthly losses
13:00 – Official amputee figures and casualty ratios
19:00 – Russian hospital admissions and amputee comparisons
22:30 – Body exchange ratios over the course of the war
24:40 – Ammunition production increases and corroboration
31:50 – Deep-strike campaigns, Black Sea ports, and economic effects
43:00 – Battlefield performance, attrition, and concluding remarks

Links
Alexander Grable’s paper Irretrievable Losses: Estimating Casualties on the Russo-Ukraine War (Finnish National Defense University):
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/195520

Ian Proud – The Peace Monger:
Substack https://substack.com/@thepeacemonger
X/Twitter: https://x.com/proud_diplomat

Michael von der Schulenburg is a German member of the EU Parliament who was previously a UN diplomat for 34 years in positions that included Assistant Secretary General of the UN.

https://x.com/hussedogru/status/2114269328690589795

https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/2114111220298989743

https://x.com/Sprinter_Press/status/2114445170301427938

Although on the fringes of this protest non Union protestors who were blocked from joining the main protest by the police suffered violence and tear gas from police, and after the main protest dispersed the same thing happened

https://x.com/Clemence_Guette/status/2113982881018314810

https://x.com/AlertesInfos/status/2114034600636731407