Authored by Matt Bedingfield via RealClearDefenseolitics,
Last week, U.S. Navy destroyers began escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz under Project Freedom, the most aggressive American action in the strait since Iran shut it down in March.
The naval blockade of Iranian ports is now in its fifth week. U.S. warships are running mine-clearance operations, intercepting Iranian-flagged cargo, and absorbing drone threats daily. And the permanent magnets in those destroyers' guidance systems are still refined in China. So are the rare earths in their radar arrays and the cobalt in their battery backups. The war just proved what the 2027 DFARS deadline already assumed: we cannot fight a conflict while depending on an adversary for the materials inside our own weapons.
And the Pentagon's largest untapped source of those materials is already sitting in its own warehouses.
The Pentagon has a multi-year backlog of classified electronics it can't destroy fast enough. It also has a critical minerals shortage it can't solve fast enough. The copper, gold, palladium, silver, and tin locked inside those warehoused devices are exactly the metals it's spending billions to source elsewhere. That elsewhere, increasingly, can't be China. Beginning January 1, 2027, the Pentagon can no longer enter contracts for materials mined, refined, or separated in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
The Numbers Don’t WorkThe United States generates roughly eight million metric tons of e-waste every year, and the number is climbing. AI infrastructure is accelerating the cycle. Data centers replace server hardware every three to five years. Each generation of defense electronics contains more critical minerals than the last.
Only about 15 percent of U.S. e-waste gets recycled. And that figure hides a deeper problem. The printed circuit boards inside those devices, the components richest in strategic metals, are almost entirely exported overseas for processing. None of the recovered metals stay here without first leaving.
Washington isn't ignoring it. Project Vault, the administration's $12 billion critical minerals stockpile, is a serious commitment. The Department of Energy just opened a $500 million funding opportunity for domestic critical minerals recycling. There's talk of export restrictions on raw e-waste. But before we build a fence around these materials, we first need something inside it: the domestic capacity to process them onshore.
If an export ban went into effect tomorrow, we'd pile up a mountain of e-waste with no way to recover what's inside. That's the capability gap. New mines take a decade to permit. Traditional smelters cost a billion dollars and take seven to ten years to build. Neither delivers the batch-level traceability federal compliance now demands. The 2027 deadline will not wait.
A Faster Path Already ExistsA new generation of hydrometallurgical processing, including biosorption, can recover high-purity metals from end-of-life electronics at commercial scale without the footprint of a smelter. These facilities can be built in about 15 months for roughly $40 million each. They maintain full chain of custody from waste stream to refined metal. And the upstream supply chain already exists: some 900 certified e-waste recyclers operate across the country today. What's missing is the domestic processing capacity to keep those metals here.
This isn't theoretical. My company, Mint Innovation, proved the model last month when HP announced the PC industry's first certified closed-loop recycled copper. Copper recovered from HP's own end-of-life circuit boards, independently certified, placed back into new HP products. The same technology can close the loop for the Department of War. Add mobile destruction units that process classified hardware on site, feeding directly into domestic metal recovery with no offshore processing, and the result is full auditability from destruction to refined metal.
When I testified before Congress on this issue, not a single member pushed back on the diagnosis. This is one of those rare problems that doesn't break along party lines. The FY 2026 NDAA recognized the potential of recycled-material pathways by expanding exceptions within DFARS sourcing restrictions. Congress has opened the door. The Pentagon needs to walk through it.
A Framework Is Already in PlaceThe United States doesn't have to do this alone. The State Department's Pax Silica initiative and the February 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial established a framework for allied cooperation with Japan, Australia, the U.K., South Korea, and others. Five Eyes nations are already coordinating to counter Chinese price manipulation and build friendshored supply chains. Domestic e-waste processing fits squarely into that strategy. A modular biosorption facility built in the U.S. today becomes a template Pax Silica partners can replicate tomorrow.
Modular secure destruction facilities co-located on military installations could clear classified hardware backlogs and recover critical minerals simultaneously. A security liability becomes a strategic asset.
The fastest way to build a domestic critical minerals supply chain is to recover the metals already here. The Pentagon is sitting on both the problem and the solution.
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Matt Bedingfield is President of Mint Innovation, a recycling technology company that recovers critical minerals from electronic waste using proprietary biosorption and hydrometallurgical processing. Mint partnered with HP earlier this year to produce the PC industry's first certified closed-loop recycled copper.
Tyler Durden Wed, 05/20/2026 - 23:25Anti-immigration movements in the US and Europe have been saying it for years: The Islamic world is barbaric and backwards, built on archaic ideas that are completely antithetical to western values. Yet, progressive governments and their media allies continue in their attempts to portray these cultures as "the same", or, as sympathetic.
The historical Islamic justification for child marriage comes from the story in the Hadith of Muhammad's marriage to a 6-year-old girl named Aisha, which he consummated when she turned age 9. Apologists often claim this is limited to the poor rural backwaters of places like Afghanistan, but it is common in Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and even Egypt. And, in many cases these children are sold into marriage in exchange for monetary compensation or property.
In a recent BBC report from journalists in Afghanistan child marriages are examined in dark detail, yet, the BBC seems to place more sympathy on the parents (fathers) selling their daughters for coin while ignoring the grotesque nature of the tradition. In other words, blame the economic circumstances, not the parents doing the selling.
However, this narrative glosses over the fact that child sex slavery is a longstanding problem in Muslim culture, not a new trend spurred on by recent economic distress. The outlet presents the families selling children as sympathetic, suggesting that the children will be sold, likely into a life of sexual abuse, but at least they will still be alive.
No blame is places on the fathers who are either too incompetent or too lazy to secure the basic needs of their own children. And no blame is placed on the culture which normalizes the practice. In fact, the BBC diverts blame to the loss of foreign funding from outside governments and NGOs.
This is a thinly veiled propaganda hit by the BBC. Afghanistan received substantial funding from the US through the now defunct USAID institution under the Biden Administration. USAID dispersed nearly $4 billion to Afghanistan from 2021 to 2025 until it was shut down by Trump and DOGE. The message seems to be "This is Trump's fault".
Keep in mind, Biden abruptly pulled all troops and private contractors out of Afghanistan in 2021, allowing the Taliban to retake government power and inflict the oppressive theocratic authoritarianism that leads to the conditions the BBC dramatically outlines. Little girls not being allowed to go to school is a direct result of Sharia Law, which is a direct result of Biden leaving Afghanistan in Taliban hands (along with billions of dollars in US military equipment).
Thus, the only value of girls in the Afghan economy is as slaves for sale. The worst part is that, in many cases, these girls are sold for marriage to relatives. Meaning, they will eventually be forced to bear children through inbreeding.
Only 15 years ago this behavior was widely admonished in the western media. Today, it is shielded with spin in the name of protecting the multicultural agenda.
The most interesting aspect of the BBC report is the way in which they build a narrative of distraction rather than addressing the cultural elephant in the room. Their goal was apparently to showcase the dire effects of foreign funding cuts, but they ended up proving once again why the west should have nothing to do with the third world.
Tyler Durden Wed, 05/20/2026 - 23:00Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced May 19 that its agents have launched an investigation into Washington State’s practice of housing male inmates in women’s prisons.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson speaks during a news conference outside the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash. on April 28, 2026. Nick Wagner/The Seattle Times via APGov. Bob Ferguson was notified in writing of the federal probe into an alleged pattern of “violating the constitutional rights of female prisoners incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, Washington,” the DOJ stated.
The investigation is based on allegations that the prison has failed to protect female prisoners from sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism, and sexual intimidation by males who identify as females housed with them at the facility.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said the practice would be a violation of the prisoners’ Eighth Amendment protections from cruel and unusual punishment.
“Under my leadership, the Civil Rights Division will not allow women incarcerated in jails or prisons to be subject to unconstitutional risks of harm from male inmates,” Dhillon said in a statement. “The constitutional rights of women cannot be sacrificed at the altar of appeasing unsupported and dangerous ideologies.”
The Washington State Department of Corrections adopted a policy in 2020 to allow men who identify as transgender to request a transfer to women’s facilities. The policy requires housing accommodations for inmates who are transgender, intersex, and gender-neutral to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
The state is one of a small number of states to adopt similar policies. Maine, California, New York, Minnesota, and New Jersey also allow people who identify as transgender to be housed in a prison that matches their choice in gender. California and Maine were notified in March that their policies were also under investigation.
The DOJ said it was also collecting information from the public on men housed in women’s jails and prisons anywhere in the country as part of a wider investigation.
Investigating transgender prison policies is part of the Trump administration’s program to eliminate “gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the federal government,” which was an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in 2025.
The DOJ plans to review policies at the Washington prison and the Department of Corrections, and any evidence that has been reported. Federal investigators will work with the state to remedy any violations, according to the letter.
The investigation comes weeks after the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning nonprofit think tank, filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s corrections policy, alleging it has led to violence, sexual abuse, intimidation, and fear among female inmates.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, accompanied by her aides, speaks at the Justice Department in Washington on Sept. 29, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesThe complaint was filed on behalf of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, Fair for All, Inc., and Faith Booher-Smith, an inmate who was allegedly violently attacked by a transgender inmate at the prison in 2025.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim female inmates have been forced to share cells, showers, bathrooms, and other intimate living spaces with male inmates, stripping them of the sex-based protections of a women’s prison.
“A women’s prison is supposed to protect women,” said Leigh Ann O’Neill, chief legal affairs officer at the institute. “Washington’s policy turned that basic duty on its head.”
The Washington governor’s office did not return a request for comment about the investigation.
Tyler Durden Wed, 05/20/2026 - 22:35