Why Canada is preparing for a (long shot) US invasion

Nadine Yousif; Robin Levinson-King - in Toronto
Sat, October 3, 2026 
BBC


[Getty Images]

Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted last week that he has prepared for a once-unthinkable scenario - a US invasion.

Noting the risk was low and the likelihood highly improbable, he told the New York Times he had a responsibility to consider all possibilities as the US-Canada relationship is redefined under the Donald Trump presidency.

"That's just risk management," Carney said.

Trump's global tariffs and his often-repeated desire to make Canada the 51st state has led Canada to war game an attack by the Americans.

In 2025, the US president said it was "highly unlikely" that the US would ever use force against Canada. Instead he said, he would continue to exert economic pressures to obtain political aims.

"President Trump has done more than anyone to protect the great people of Canada," the White House told the BBC in a statement this week.

Military experts who spoke to the BBC also think an invasion is a long shot, pointing to the multiple ways the two countries work together on defence.

But the issue is clearly weighing on Canadians' minds.

In January, after the US captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, a Leger poll suggested that over 30% of Canadians believed that a US invasion was likely.
Why it is unlikely to happen

A war between Canada and the US would be complicated and almost difficult to imagine, said Lt-Gen Christopher Coates, a former military officer of 34 years with the Royal Canadian Air Force who held various senior positions

"I was involved in military operations for my whole career, and we never considered the possibility that there would be a military attack coming from US territory," he told the BBC.

Coates, who had served on Nato missions, noted that Canada and the US collaborate on many aspects of military defence.

They are both members of the north Atlantic defence alliance, which mandates members to defend a fellow member-nation should they be attacked.

The two countries also conduct joint Arctic defence missions under the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), and frequently share intelligence.

Because of this, Coates said he believes an attack by the US on Canada would not begin with an armed assault, but rather with more discreet means like cyberwarfare.

After President Trump shared an AI meme with gun-toting geese, the BBC's Jessica Murphy asks how Canada could hit back economically
Not always the best of friends

After World War II, Canada and the US became natural allies for the latter part of the 20th Century, and have become heavily integrated economically, militarily and culturally.

But it wasn't always this way. In fact, a core tenet of Canada's identity is its resistance of US expansionism in the 18th and 19th Centuries, said Tim Foran, a researcher with the Canadian War Museum.

"Fear of the United States is foundational to the political project that is Canada," he said.

Canada was formed as a collection of British North American colonies who remained loyal to the British Crown when the colonies in the modern-day US rebelled.

Before the formation of Canada, the US had attempted to invade British North American colonies, taking control of Montreal in 1775 and nearly conquering Quebec City.

In the war of 1812, the Americans invaded what was known then as Upper Canada, Lower Canada and the maritime colonies repeatedly, resulting in a stalemate. During that war, British troops famously burned down the White House in retaliation.

Foran said that at the time, the colonies that later became Canada relied on Great Britain and its Royal Navy for its defence, as well as indigenous peoples who served as generals in major battles.

Canada again contemplated war with the US post-World War I in response to its growing power and influence.

It drafted a plan that was informed by secret trips to border cities made by Canadian army generals, who would pose as tourists and snap photos of bridges and highways for intelligence.

They also spoke to local residents to better understand their enemy.

A war was an unlikely scenario then, said Andrew Burtch, a researcher with the Canadian War Museum with expertise on Canada in the 20th Century, but the Canadians still wanted to be prepared.

"That's part of what militaries do," he said. "They envisage all sorts of different scenarios."

Canada-US relations have deteriorated under the second Trump presidency. [Getty Images]

What a US invasion could look like

Even if a US invasion is extremely unlikely, Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said the fact that Canadians were preparing was a sign of just how drastically the global order has shifted.

He added Canadian leaders do have hard questions to ask about how closely they want to continue working with the American military - a partnership that gives them valuable information should they want to harm Canada in any way.

"It's really doing harm to relationships with the United States, and there's a certain amount of legitimate fear," he said.

Americans might not take Trump's comments about making Canada the 51st state seriously, he said, but Canadians clearly do - and are prepared to defend themselves if needed.

So what would it be like if it happened?

The first phase of a war could be quite short.

According to the model used by the Canadian military, as reported on by the Globe and Mail newspaper earlier this year, a US attack would see Canada's strategic positions overwhelmed within a week

Its military would quickly be outnumbered, forcing Canadian forces to resort to guerilla-type warfare to try to suppress their enemy.

Allied nations like France and Britain would be called on to provide support and defence for Canada, the newspaper reported in January, citing senior government officials.

The theoretical model is believed to be the first time in a century that Canada planned for an American assault.

The modelling is on the lighter end of military combat planning, Coates said.

He said that Canada, unlike its Nato allies, was lagging behind when it came to having a response plan in place in the event of any ground invasion, and that it was now playing catch-up in this era of unpredictable geopolitics.

Part of that, he said, was made evident by a recent call by Canada's defence chief to drastically increase the size of its military, including the addition of as many as 300,000 lightly trained citizen soldiers.

An invasion of Canada might not be straightforward from the US point of view either.

Even with its outsized military, the US would have a difficult time getting buy-in for a fight with Canada, said Schmidt.

"I think you would have a large number of American officers who would resign if given the order to invade Canada," he said.

"They would see it as an illegal and immoral order."

Schmidt said Canadian soldiers and American soldiers routinely train together, and share a mutual respect.

But in the unlikely scenario that relations would deteriorate to the point of combat, Schmidt said the US would likely focus on acquiring valuable Canadian resources like oil and minerals, and political decapitation.

"You would see a a kind of operation that would mirror perhaps what you saw in Venezuela," he said, referring to US military action earlier this year to capture former Venezuelan President Maduro.

Although he acknowledged the US has greater military capacity, he said that "pound for pound" Canadian soldiers would be able to put up a fight.

‘Spit on our sacrifice’: Canadian veterans fume after Trump and allies take jibes at military

John Semley
Tue, October 6, 2026 


Canadian troops launch their assault on the Whale's Back in Eastern Afghanistan 13 March 2002.Photograph: Canadian Press/ShutterstockMore

On the morning of 11 September 2001, Perry Chalmers was running drills for the Royal Canadian Regiment's specialised mortar platoon in New Brunswick when he heard the news: America was under attack. Word quickly spread across the base. "I went inside to watch the news," the former corporal recalls. "And there was a huge feeling of – and you're going to have to excuse me – holy shit. What the fuck just happened?"

Chalmers called his wife, who informed him that, just before 10:30am, the second of the World Trade Center towers had fallen. With that, his battalion was put on notice: dispatched to nearby airports to assist in the forced landings of commercial aircraft after the shutdown of North American airspace.

The Canadian troops went to retrieve their rucksacks and any other necessities, should they need to spring into action at a moment's notice. As Chalmers recalls: "Things started to happen really quickly."

Chalmers would deploy to Afghanistan, on a nine-month tour of combat duty, where he saw combat alongside US troops. He put his mortar platoon training to good use, as a counter-IED engineer, dealing with the threat of improvised explosives in conjunction with the US army's 10th Mountain Division.

He was one of more than 40,000 members of the Canadian armed forces who served in Afghanistan, supporting US and Nato operations. The Canadians lost 158 lives. In 2007, a stretch of Ontario's highway 401 was rechristened the "Highway of Heroes" to commemorate the convoys of fallen soldiers ferried between the military base in Trenton, Ontario, and the coroner's office in Toronto.

This response to 9/11 was consistent with the longer history of Canadian-US military cooperation. About 14,000 Canadians landed on Juno Beach in Normandy on D-day during the second world war. More than 26,000 Canadians served in the Korean war. While Canada did not officially participate in the Vietnam war, an estimated 30,000 Canadians headed across the border to volunteer for the US military.

Over the course of the war in Afghanistan, Chalmers can count 35 fellow Canadian troops who lost their lives. But he never really brooked any regrets, or bad feelings, about his role in the US-led war. "My experience was that we were participating in an operation to help our brothers and sisters in the United States," he says. "None of them ever snubbed their noses at us. We were treated as equals, and respected, for what we brought to the table."

But no longer. While calling Canada "a state", US vice-president JD Vance recently commented that it "had underinvested in its military that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America".

Going one step further, Donald Trump's transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, told Fox News that Canada "doesn't have a military".

Self-styled "secretary of war" Pete Hegseth has spent time on X, mocking Canadian cadets and criticising a Canadian coast guard detachment for taking part in a Pride celebration. Trump himself was criticised earlier this year for claiming that Canadian and other Nato forces in Afghanistan were "never needed", claiming these allies "stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines".

The remarks have been condemned at the highest level of the Canadian government. The defence minister, David McGuinty, described Hegseth's social media posts as "below the dignity of the office he holds". Amid a serious diplomatic dispute between the two nations, the prime minister, Mark Carney, accused Trump and Hegseth of "doing memes".

"It's disrespect and betrayal," Chalmers says. "It makes me very angry."

"It's really hard to hear how ungrateful they are, especially Vance, who served," said Chris Banks, a retired Canadian army sergeant with nearly two decades of experience. "To hear him spit on our sacrifice is insulting, it's hurtful, and it's disrespectful to the dead. On the other hand, these men have proven themselves nothing more than children. So when I heard JD Vance say it, it's like, 'Oh, good. Dumbass said something else'".

Banks deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, where he was part of a Canadian platoon that laid down cover fire for Americans under attack from the Taliban. To this day, he still has vivid memories of taking cover in a ditch near Pashmul, alongside an American platoon, looking up as the trees overhead were shredded by shrapnel.

He says he was proud to serve. But when he came home to Ontario in 2009, he felt something had changed. He began drinking heavily – sometimes as much as a litre of vodka a day – and struggling with suicidal thoughts. All hallmarks of PTSD. He received treatment, and now advocates for the mental health and wellbeing of other Canadian veterans. Still, a tinge of bitterness remains, when he thinks back on fighting on behalf of the US.

"I lost a part of myself," he says. "In that war we fought, for them."

***

Nancy Payne still remembers exactly where she was when she found out her son had died. Cpl Randy Payne served with a military police unit, stationed in Wainwright, Alberta. He was part of a specialised close protection team, charged with safeguarding high-ranking officers, government officials and other VIPs, in war zones.

On 22 April 2006, an armoured vehicle triggered a roadside bomb outside Kandahar airbase, killing Payne and three other Canadian soldiers. It was the deadliest attack on Canadian forces since 2002 – when four Canadian soldiers were killed by a US bomb after a disastrous friendly fire incident at the Tarnak Farms training facility in Afghanistan.

Nancy was at home, alone, when the phone rang in the dead of the night. It was her son's commanding officer. "When you get a call at three in the morning from Randy's boss, you know it's not good news," she recalls, speaking over the phone from her home in Lansdowne, Ontario. "I just kept saying 'Not my Randy … not my Randy'."

In 2025, the Royal Canadian Legion awarded Nancy a Silver Cross, a commendation for Canadian military mothers. She laid a wreath at the national war memorial during the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa.

More locally, she has commemorated her son with a prize – "the Captain's Award" – bestowed to students who distinguish themselves in athletics and leadership at his former high school. She, too, is unnerved by the US attacks on the Canadian military and veterans like her son. "What they're saying is not right," she says. "We were neighbours for so long. That's all changed, now."

Nancy is not the only military mother who feels this way. Earlier this year, Jane McKay, mother of deceased Master Cpl Tim Wilson, penned an op-ed for the Toronto Sun newspaper taking aim at the Trump administration. "Trump has no respect for any soldier – American, or Canadian, or those from the Nato alliance," she wrote. "He owes them all an apology."

Some US politicians have tried to make amends. On 1 September, Arizona Democrat senator Rueben Gallego travelled to Ottawa on an official congressional trip. The goal was to strengthen the weakening trade relations between the two nations. But Gallego made a point of singling out Hegseth's anti-Canadian military tweets as "deeply disrespectful to the men and women of Canada that have died fighting with us".

For veterans like Chalmers, such lip service may be too little, too late. He used to play tabletop strategy games with a group of civilian friends in the US, via the online social platform Discord. That all ended when they laughed off his concerns about Trump's talk of Canada becoming the "51st state". Banks used to routinely take his family across the border for vacations and stateside shopping trips. No more. "I loved working with Americans, I loved training with them," he says. "But now it's hard to have that same level of empathy."

Would he eagerly enlist to help the US again?

"What would happen if there was another hypothetical 9/11?" he says. "I hate to say it, but why would any nation, ever again, partner with the United States, if this is how they treat their closest neighbour and ally?"

 

  

When is the right time to compare US politics to the Nazi era? This expert on Christian nationalism says: now

David Smith in Washington
Sat, October 3, 2026 

THE GUARDIAN


Donald Trump delivers the keynote address at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Policy Conference on 22 June 2024 in Washington DC.Photograph: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

The lawyer Mike Godwin famously came up with the "law" that, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one (or 100%).

Robert P Jones thought long and hard about whether to go there in his latest book. But the more he studied US demographic numbers, considered the rise of Christian nationalism and heard Donald Trump use the language of racial purity, he found the conclusion inescapable. "This is our 1933," he writes.

So it is that Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy begins with the rise of the Nazi party and the complicity of the German people, including German Christians and churches.

Jones cites Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor imprisoned for opposing Hitler, remembered for the poem First They Came. But for the first four years of Hitler's reign, he notes, Niemöller did not fully oppose the Nazis. He later regretted that he and the Protestant German church did not speak out sooner.

Backslide returns to the analogy in its epilogue. He writes: "Just as God asked Niemoller where he was between 1933 and 1937, God will ask us where we were between 2025 and 2028. Just as Germans who backed Hitler and the Nazi Party after 1933 were fully aware of what they were joining, so Christians who have backed Trump and the MAGA movement a second time know and bear responsibility for what they are now endorsing."

Sitting in his downtown Washington office, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) contends that US democracy is experiencing a severe "backslide" that is directly aided and abetted by an "apostate" white Christianity, including Trump's language on the campaign trail.

"This dehumanising language, talking about immigrants as vermin, and this racial purity language, like they're 'poisoning the blood of our country'. What does that mean? If they're poisoning the blood, what's the pure blood? We know where that story goes," he said.

Trump has repeatedly used the concept of genetic inheritance. In 2020, addressing a mostly white crowd in Minnesota, he declared: "You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory, you think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota."

Normalisation is a perennial danger.

"If don't want to live in a place where we have a thuggish police force that's kidnapping people off the street in masks and killing US citizens in the streets, now's the time to speak up," Jones said.

Backslide cites historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt's 1950 The Aftermath of Nazi Rule report for Commentary magazine based on interviews with postwar Berliners: "A great number of Germans, especially among the more educated, apparently are no longer capable of telling the truth even if they want to."

Jones grew up a Southern Baptist in Jackson, Mississippi, went to church five times a week and earned a master of divinity degree. His previous books include The End of White Christian America in 2016, White Too Long in 2020 and The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future in 2023. He called this one Backslide very deliberately.

Related: The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy review: necessary chronicle of US racist history

In international political science, "democratic backsliding" has become the established academic term for the systematic erosion of democratic norms, judicial independence and voting rights. Yet Jones recognises that the term carries an even older resonance.

"In the evangelical world I grew up in, backslide was a word we heard all the time – a theological word about the fear of falling away from the faith," he says, tracing the word's history back through the Oxford English Dictionary to the 16th-century Protestant reformer John Knox.

In Jones's diagnosis, white American Christianity has committed a profound act of apostasy by trading its spiritual core for political dominance. By endorsing anti-democratic tactics, white Christian institutions have become the primary engine behind the country's autocratic slide.

To understand how a major religious tradition arrived at this moral impasse, Jones turns to the arithmetic of demographics. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, white Christian Americans still constituted 54% of the US population. By 2014, that figure had dropped to 47%. Today, white Christians account for 41% of the country.

The decline among white evangelicals, long considered a bedrock of conservative politics, is even steeper. At the turn of the 21st century, white evangelicals represented a quarter of all Americans; today, they make up barely 13%. The Southern Baptist Convention, the country's biggest evangelical denomination, has lost more than 3 million members since its 2006 peak.

Faced with shrinking numbers and cultural marginalisation, white evangelicalism embraced not spiritual renewal, but existential panic – creating fertile ground for Trump's demagoguery.

"Trump loves to talk about the art of the deal and, in many ways, there's been a massive quid pro quo deal struck between a declining white evangelical population and Trump," Jones observes. "His big appeal to them was less about policy and more anti-immigrant: I'm going to restore an America that looks like you, and I'm going to restore power to the Christian churches.

"He was literally saying on the campaign trail: this is a quid pro quo deal. Give me your votes and you won't even have to vote again. I'll fix it so you don't have to vote again.'"

This transactional alliance marks a complete departure from the religious right of the late 20th century, which wrapped its political ambitions in the language of morality.

"You don't hear those words any more," says Jones, contrasting today's movement with Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority or the "Values Voters" summits of the George W Bush era. "What we have now is an overtly anti-democratic Christian nationalism flying under the banner of: 'We believe this country belongs to us, and we're going to use the power we can to claim it.'"

This Faustian bargain relies purely on power rather than shared theology – a dynamic starkly highlighted by the contrast between Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. While Vance recently discussed the End Times with 22-year-old evangelical podcaster Bryce Crawford, awkwardly reflecting on his evangelical upbringing and subsequent conversion to Catholicism, Trump operates largely without theological pretence.

Jones continues: "He makes straight appeals to self-interest: if you're for me, I'll be for you. Evangelicals are willing to forgive a whole host of sins for the idea that he is going to bring them back into power as their numbers are dwindling."

The real world manifestation of this transaction plays out every Sunday across thousands of congregations. While high-profile megachurches such as First Baptist church in Dallas make their political allegiance explicit, Jones contends that overt political sermonising is rarely needed.

"Once you have churches that are largely segregated by race and increasingly segregated by partisanship, all you really have to do is keep out any critique. It's reinforced by Fox News, Christian radio and going home to people of like mind. You don't have to overtly teach Christian nationalism; you just keep it from being critiqued."

PRRI's extensive empirical data undermines the widespread belief that religious attendance automatically fosters civic tolerance or democratic values.

Jones says: "Particularly among white evangelicals, on several measures around Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant views, anti-Black views, and anti-Muslim views, going to church actually makes your views more extreme. It's not the case that more church is the answer to democracy."

The dangerous potential of this theological radicalisation materialised dramatically during the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Christian symbols were displayed prominently throughout the insurrection, including wooden crosses set up on Capitol grounds and rioters holding "Jesus Saves" banners alongside Confederate flags.

Yet official investigations largely overlooked this central element, influenced in part by political figures like Congresswoman Liz Cheney on the House select committee. "I was stunned to see very little of it in the House select committee report," Jones recalls. "It was a huge loss and a huge skewing of public perception that we didn't take those Christian symbols at the riot seriously."

Today, this blend of Christian nationalism and military authority reaches into the upper echelons of the national security apparatus. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sports tattoos featuring Crusader iconography – including the medieval battle cry Deus Vult ("God wills it") next to a Jerusalem cross – while renaming the Department of Defense as the "Department of War". Hegseth has welcomed vocal Christian nationalists such as Pastor Doug Wilson to lead a worship service at the Pentagon.

Jones comments: "I can't imagine much more dangerous than somebody who thinks, 'I am the instrument of God, I alone understand how the forces of good and evil are aligned,' while holding the power to deploy the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. While George W Bush took care after 9/11 to explicitly state that the US was not at war with Islam, today we are making radicalisation propaganda films for extremists by presenting ourselves as a Christian nation at war with Islam."

Behind the public spectacle of rallies and political theatre, ideologues such as Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 and advocate of the "unitary executive" theory, are laying the groundwork for a government rooted in Christian nationalist principles. "They are building an apparatus designed to institutionalise this worldview across the federal government," Jones warns. "It is an intentional, long-term project to reshape American democracy in their own image."

Despite the alarming trajectory detailed in Backslide, Jones resists total pessimism. The central message of his book is that "backsliding is not irreversible" and that national recovery remains possible through honest confrontation with history and sincere repentance.

Across the country, alternative Christian voices are beginning to organise against Christian nationalism. Figures such as James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian running for the US Senate in Texas, and Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas are offering a pro-democracy theological vision.

"For a long time, mainline Protestants were taught propriety and politeness, leading to a reticence to speak out," Jones notes. "If we don't want the public and future face of Christianity to be only Christian nationalism, we have to present a public version of Christianity that is compatible with democracy – one that leans into care for the orphan, the widow and the immigrant."

Ultimately, Jones argues, neither sacred texts nor historical precedents will dictate the future of US democracy. He hopes his book will make white Christians realise they face a decision similar to the one that confronted the establishment Christian church in Nazi Germany in 1933.

"It's a wake-up call to see the bright lines that are being crossed, to be clear-eyed about how dangerous that is, and for those readers who are Christian – particularly white and Christian – to realise we have a particular responsibility to offer a different version of faith. Because it is our faith that's been hijacked and used to legitimise this illiberal, anti-democratic, authoritarian movement that's running rampant and taking over in the US."

Republicans say they hate communists. So why do they like Donald Trump?

Eduardo Porter
Sun, October 4, 2026 
OPINION

THE GUARDIAN


'The president's statist leanings mark a dramatic break with the market-focused presidencies of his recent predecessors, Democrat and Republican.'Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images

Americans will never accept the Democratic party's slide to the left, or so desperate Republicans are hoping.

With the midterm elections fast upon us, Zohran Mamdani's promise of a few city-run bodegas in New York City will scare the bejeezus out of middle America. Disgust over the democratic socialists' unicorn-and-puppy promises of a world without capitalism will keep the Republicans in power.

Leading the charge against the new reds-under-the-bed is Donald Trump. "Together, we will defeat communism," Trump promised in his recent TV ads.

Trump's supporters might be surprised to discover that the United States is, indeed, sliding in the direction of a command and control economy. But the state takeover of the means of production is not being driven by the left. The grab for the US's productive resources is the project of none other than Trump – who, it's a fair guess, has never read Lenin.

The latest evidence comes in data crunched by the V-Dem project in Sweden, which measures the erosion of democracy around the world. It built a scale to gauge "state ownership of the economy". As noted by Cullen Hendrix from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, from 2002 to 2024, the US ranked among the four countries with the least state control. In 2025, the first year of Trump's second term, it dropped from second place to 16th.

By November of last year, the Trump administration had spent more than $10bn taking stakes in companies he deemed essential for national security, from Intel to a range of ventures mining for critical minerals. It also acquired an option to take a stake in Westinghouse, which makes nuclear reactors. And it blackmailed Nippon Steel into granting Trump's Washington a "golden share" in exchange for the go-ahead to purchase US Steel.

To be fair, Trump's acquisitiveness notwithstanding, the US is not even close to flirting with the flavor of socialism favored by the Soviet Union and its satellites in the second half of the 20th century. By the V-Dem accounting, Washington's stake in the economy is still smaller than in 163 countries.

Government-run companies are a standard feature in many market economies. The Norwegian government has a majority stake in its massive oil company, which puts the country in 18th place. Even "communist" countries are pretty capitalist: private companies contribute 60% of China's GDP.

And in a geopolitical landscape shaped by competition with China, there is a reasonable case to be made for Washington to take equity stakes in industries that are critical for American leadership and security, and which might not develop autonomously in competition with rivals heavily subsidized by Beijing.

Yet Trump's wanton lunge for private assets lacks the discipline required for this kind of strategic positioning.

The president's statist leanings mark a dramatic break with the market-focused presidencies of his recent predecessors, Democrat and Republican. The question is, what motivates him? His appetites are embedded in a body of thought that is skeptical, if not outright hostile, towards essential building blocks of the global market economy. He has pushed back against globalization since his first term in office, seemingly drawn to the Marxist-inspired dependency theory, which washed across Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s proposing protectionism and state industrial policy as a path to economic development.

His lust to control the economy is there for all to see. Though the supreme court already slapped down his attempt to take over trade policy from Congress, he is still threatening to "STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT". His promise to give $5,000 to every American if Republicans maintain control of Congress in November's elections underscores how he views the state's coffers as his private piggy bank. Even his commie-bashing ads were paid for by taxpayer dollars.

Still, he clearly has no interest in the dictatorship of the proletariat, caring little if at all for the fate of the downtrodden. His preferred flavor of redistribution takes from those on the bottom to give to those on the top.

If anything, Trump reminds us that socialism is not the only ideological justification for state projects to take control over resources and wealth.

Watching the US president bow to Xi Jinping last week, it's tempting to think that Trump wants to emulate China's leader. Xi gets to rule unimpeded over more than one billion Chinese. He gets to shape China's society and economy at will – purging this rival, raising that sycophant to power.

But Xi's China is too disciplined for Trump. The Chinese leader still relies on hordes of technocrats to execute a coherent strategy aimed to achieve technological superiority. The US president doesn't have the attention span for this kind of thing.

Rather, Trump's model might be Vladimir Putin, who rules Russia like a fiefdom. Or maybe one of those dictators the US used to support in Latin America during the cold war: Haiti's Papa Doc Duvalier or Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, who saw government as a tool to enrich their families and cement dynasties in power. If nothing else, Trump's dealings with crypto suggest he views his administration as a road to family riches.

Karl Marx may not be Trump's guiding light. But his writings can help understand Trump's place in history. Marx proposes that his tome The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, about the 1851 coup that brought Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte to power in France, was meant to "demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part".

Americans may be grateful that their most recent class struggles didn't produce a homegrown Lenin. But they did deliver Donald Trump.

Perhaps this does not condemn the US to an autocratic future. Hendrix points out that while Trump "clearly wants to be king", the US's political economy may not let him. Putin managed to establish autocratic rule over a fairly primitive, oil-based economy. This kind of control "is much harder to achieve in a modern complex economy" such as that of the United States, Hendrix noted. You can't simply seize the oil to run the place.

Though Trump may fail, Americans' acquiescence as he grabs for power raises a question for those who freak out over Mamdani's city-run bodegas: why is Trump's lurch to take over the American economy any better than what they hear from the Democratic Socialists of America?

Eduardo Porter is a journalist focused on economics and politics. He writes the newsletter Being There on Substack

How close did Nazi Germany really come to a nuclear reactor?

Josh Kirschner
Wed, September 30, 2026

Techlicious 

Image credit: Josh Kirschner/Techlicious via ChatGPT

Key takeaways

A new analysis in PNAS Nexus reveals that Nazi Germany's last reactor experiment, B8, would have needed significantly more uranium and heavy water to sustain a nuclear chain reaction than previously claimed by physicist Werner Heisenberg.

Nazi Germany's last reactor experiment would have needed about twice the uranium and more than twice the heavy water it contained to sustain a nuclear chain reaction, according to a new analysis in PNAS Nexus. That contradicts the account of its designer, physicist Werner Heisenberg, who said after the war that the reactor fell just short and lacked only a modest amount of uranium.

Whether Germany could have built a working reactor has been argued for eight decades, because a reactor is one route to producing the material for a bomb. Fear of a German lead drove much of the early American nuclear effort, yet the researchers found almost no technical evaluations of the German program. Much of its original data stayed classified until the 1970s, which left Heisenberg's postwar claims largely unchecked.

The Nazi experiment, called B8, was built in April 1945 in Haigerloch, a village in southwestern Germany where Heisenberg's team had moved after Allied bombing wrecked Berlin. It held 664 five-centimeter cubes of natural uranium, hung in chains inside a tank of 1,400 liters of heavy water. Heavy water is a form of water that slows neutrons so they are more likely to split uranium atoms. Layers of graphite and ordinary water surrounded the tank.

A reactor is "critical" when each round of fission releases enough neutrons to trigger the next, so the reaction feeds itself. Scientists express this as a number called k-effective, where 1.0 is the threshold. In a 1947 article in Nature, Heisenberg wrote that "a relatively small amount of uranium would in all probability have sufficed" to get B8 there.

The team, from institutions including the University of Maryland and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, tested that claim by rebuilding B8 in a standard nuclear simulation code. Only 14 of the roughly 1,100 uranium cubes used by Germany's wartime program have known locations today, and the researchers examined two of them. One measured slightly less dense than pure uranium metal because of internal pores, and the other confirmed natural, unenriched uranium. For the heavy water, they used a 1947 measurement of samples recovered from B8 itself, which found it was 96.8 percent pure. Graphite impurities came from archival wartime lab analyses.

With those inputs, the model reproduced Heisenberg's own 1945 neutron measurements. It put B8's k-effective at 0.94, meaning each generation of neutrons was about 6 percent smaller than the last and the reaction died out. Even with perfectly pure heavy water, the figure rose only to 0.95.

Closing that gap took far more material than the small shortfall suggests. Depending on the layout, a critical version of B8 would have needed roughly 3,000 to 4,100 kilograms of uranium and 3,300 to 3,800 kilograms of heavy water, against the 1,538 and 1,549 kilograms actually used. Germany's total estimated inventory was 2,572 kilograms of uranium and 1,890 kilograms of heavy water. Pooling everything the country had would have brought B8 only to about 0.96.

Heavy water was the biggest constraint. The only source was the Norsk Hydro plant in Vemork, Norway, which the Germans controlled from April 1940 until Allied bombing destroyed it in November 1944. It produced 2,840 kilograms over the war. France seized 185 kilograms in 1940, another 140 kilograms were lost when an earlier Heisenberg experiment exploded in 1942, and Norwegian commandos sank 679 kilograms in 1944, leaving at most 1,836 kilograms in Germany by 1945. The researchers calculate a critical reactor would have needed about 1.8 times the heavy water Germany had available, and about 1.2 times its uranium.

Some historians have argued Germany should have switched to graphite, as the Americans did. The team modeled that too. German graphite was made from coke refined from coal in the Ruhr, which carries more boron, an element that absorbs neutrons. Graphite reused in B8 from the earlier B7 experiment contained an estimated 3.4 parts per million of boron-equivalent impurity, against 1.4 for the purified graphite used in the U.S. program. The Americans made theirs from petroleum coke, which Germany could no longer import after a British naval blockade began in January 1940. The simulations showed no critical graphite pile was possible with the uranium and graphite Germany had.

As a check on their numbers, the researchers compared B8 with Chicago Pile 3, a similar heavy-water reactor the U.S. Manhattan Project built in 1944. It reached criticality with about 2.5 metric tons of uranium and 3.8 tons of heavy water, close to what the model says B8 required. Most of B8's uranium cubes were likely shipped to the United States after the war and melted down for the American nuclear stockpile, the paper says.

NAKBA 2.0

What is ‘Herod’s Pool’, and why is Israel developing it in the West Bank?

Al Jazeera Staff
Mon, October 5, 2026 

Key takeaways

Israeli authorities are developing an outdoor pool in the occupied West Bank, diverting water from a Palestinian village to create "Herod's Pool" in an effort to strengthen Israel's hold on historical sites.See more

Israel says that work has begun on a development project around an outdoor pool in the occupied West Bank filled after settlers illegally diverted water from a Palestinian village over the summer.

Instead of restoring the water to the village of Fasayil, near Jericho, Israeli authorities are working to formalise what has now been termed "Herod's Pool", named after an ancient Jewish king.

On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right settler, announced that "development and preservation" of Herod's Pool had commenced, connecting it to a larger project to "strengthen [Israel's] hold" on and preserve historical sites.

"The Settlement Revolution continues!" he declared in a social media post that carried an image of workers and wheelbarrows near the site.

The announcement follows Smotrich's June pledge of more than three million shekels (almost $1m) to develop the site, even though the pool sits on privately-owned Palestinian land belonging to a farmer.

The illegal diversion of water to the pool is part of Israel's monopolisation of water resources in the occupied West Bank's fertile Jordan Valley.

It also marks the latest Israeli seizure of Palestinian land in the name of archaeological heritage.

Here's what we know about the Herod's Pool project.
What is 'Herod's Pool'?

Herod's Pool is the name Israeli settlers have given an ancient reservoir that lies in the Palestinian village of Fasayil. It is named after Herod the Great, a Jewish king from the first century BC.

The reservoir sits next to a natural spring.

Although settlers claim it once belonged to King Herod, archaeologists have not established when the pool was built. Alon Arad, executive director of Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO that defends cultural heritage rights and monitors the political use of archaeology, told the Reuters news agency that the pool's origins are unclear.

"We see in many cases the use of archaeology … to create this feeling that the West Bank is exclusively Jewish," he said.

Israeli politicians and settlers have also sought greater Israeli control over "Solomon's Pools", three ancient reservoirs in Bethlehem governorate, which have been used by Palestinians for generations.

Palestinians say the targeting of their water sources is part of a comprehensive plan to seize the resources of the occupied West Bank and force them off their land.

Israelis at a spring near the Palestinian village of Fasayil in the occupied West Bank on August 9, 2026. Residents say Israeli settlers diverted water from the spring, causing crops to die [Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]

Who owns the pool?

The reservoir sits on land belonging to Palestinian farmer Saad Nemer and his family. Nemer says that his grandfather purchased the property more than a century ago. Israeli-issued documentation and older title records reviewed by Reuters support the family's ownership claim.

Nemer said that settlers had been repeatedly redirecting water from his farm to swim in the pool. He explained that settlers had stolen his irrigation pipeline for the task, and over time the theft had left his farmland scorched and his greenhouses empty.

Nemer also said that settlers had threatened him and beat one of his employees.

The Israeli military body that administers the occupied West Bank, COGAT, has acknowledged that the water was diverted "without authorisation" and said it would investigate, even as Smotrich and other Israeli politicians celebrate the pool.

Nemer told The New York Times that he had been informed by COGAT that his water would be restored, but said it returned for only one day before being cut off again. He is now fearful of approaching the reservoir to reconnect his pipeline due to settler violence.

Saad Nemer visits his arid farm in the Palestinian village of Fasayil in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, August 9, 2026 [Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]

How have Israeli settlers invoked Herod?

While there is no proven link to Herod, the name features prominently in Israeli heritage projects across the occupied West Bank, which Israel refers to as "Judea and Samaria" in an attempt to separate it from its Palestinian population.

Critics, including archaeological rights groups, say such projects are increasingly being used to extend Israeli control over Palestinian land and heritage sites.

There is Herodium, a sprawling hilltop structure south of Jerusalem, said to be the ruins of a fortress the king erected. It has been under Israeli control for decades and operates as a national park, despite Palestinian protests that it is part of their heritage.

In Sebastia – ancient Samaria – Israel has dedicated large amounts of funding since 2023 to excavate the city's archaeological park and develop it as an Israeli "national park", usurping Palestinians who have long showcased the archaeological ruins as part of their history.

Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who himself lives in an illegal West Bank settlement, has said it would be "first and foremost a Jewish heritage site". His office cited excavation of "the magnificent Roman city built by King Herod" when describing the archaeological periods the project intends to expose.

The Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron – where Israel has repeatedly restricted Muslim access – stands on land considered to be Prophet Abraham's burial place by Muslims and Jews. Part of it is believed to have been built during the Herodian era.

In 2017, UNESCO recognised Hebron's Old City as a Palestinian heritage site, and warned that it was endangered by Israeli settler encroachments.

Ahead of UNESCO's decision, prominent Hebron settler Yishai Fleisher – who has served as an adviser to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – objected to the designation on the grounds that it was "built by a Jewish king", referring to Herod.

Fragment of world's oldest peace treaty unearthed in Turkey

Kristina Killgrove
Tue, September 22, 2026
LIVE SCIENC

Key takeaways

Archaeologists have discovered a 3,400-year-old fragment of the world's oldest known peace treaty, the Treaty of Kadesh, signed by Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and Hittite king Hattusili III around 1269 B.C.



Archaeologists have found a fragment of cuneiform recording the Treaty of Kadesh, which was signed by Egypt's Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III around 1269 B.C. | Credit: Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Archaeologists have discovered a 3,400-year-old fragment of the world's oldest known peace treaty, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has announced.

The agreement, known as the Treaty of Kadesh, was signed around 1269 B.C. by Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and Hittite king Hattusili III. Other parts of the treaty have already been found, but the new fragment was unearthed during an excavation at Hattusha, in north-central Turkey.

"We have found traces of peace, thousands of years old, in the soil of Anatolia," Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, said in a Sept. 21 translated statement. The newly discovered cuneiform tablet fragment contains text from a section of the treaty related to the treatment of refugees, according to the statement. "It reminds us of our responsibility to protect human life and dignity," Ersoy said.

Archaeologists unearthed the fragment from a building in the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha. The Hittite Empire controlled central Anatolia from about 1650 to 1200 B.C. during the Bronze Age. Archaeologists have discovered numerous examples of diplomatic documents at Hattusha that were written in Akkadian, the earliest documented Semitic language, including other fragments of the Treaty of Kadesh.

The royal leaders signed the treaty around 1269 B.C. to mark the end of a lengthy war between the ancient Egyptians and the Hittite Empire, and it is regarded as the world's oldest known peace treaty. Although known as the Treaty of Kadesh, the document does not actually mention the Battle of Kadesh, which occurred several years earlier, so it is also called the Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty, the Eternal Treaty or the Silver Treaty.

The treaty was preserved by inscriptions in two ancient cities. In the early 19th century, archaeologists first discovered the treaty inscribed in hieroglyphics on the walls of a temple dedicated to Ramesses II in Thebes (modern Luxor). Fragments of the Akkadian cuneiform text of the treaty were first identified at Hattusha in the early 20th century.

Marking the end of a two-century-long war over lands in the eastern Mediterranean, the Treaty of Kadesh marks a military détente between Ramesses II and Hattusili III. According to a translation of the treaty provided by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, it includes lines like, "He is a brother to me and he is at peace with me; and I am a brother to him and I am forever at peace with him," referring to the two leaders. "The country of Egypt and the country of Hatti [Hittite Empire] will be forever in a state of peace and of fraternity as it is with us."

The treaty has further provisions for coming to a country's aid if it was invaded and on how to treat refugees. The text mentions that any refugee from Egypt to Hattusha will be returned to Egypt, and any Hattusha refugee to Egypt will be returned to Hattusha, as fleeing was considered a crime.

However, the treaty specifically forbids punishing refugees: "Their tongue and their eyes are not to be pulled out; their ears and their feet are not to be cut off; their houses with their wives and their children are not to be destroyed." Part of this text appears on the newly discovered cuneiform fragment. Ongoing excavations may help uncover the remaining parts of the treaty, according to the statement.

A copper replica of the Treaty of Kadesh is displayed prominently today in the United Nations Conference Building in New York City. According to the U.N., "the treaty pledges eternal friendship, lasting peace, territorial integrity, nonaggression, extradition, and mutual help. The pledges in this treaty are similar to the United Nations ideals."

 Ukraine launches one of largest aerial attacks on Moscow in years

Ellie Cook
Tue, October 6, 2026 

Ukraine launched nearly 700 drones toward Moscow overnight, killing two people in one of Kyiv's largest assaults on the Russian capital, according to Russian officials.

More than 650 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were detected heading for the Moscow region between 8:30 p.m. Monday and 5 a.m. Tuesday local time, according to Moscow's mayor, Sergey Sobyanin.

Sobyanin later said another 68 drones had been "destroyed" en route to the Russian capital.

It marked one of Ukraine's biggest drone attacks on Moscow in two years, Russia's Tass state news agency reported.

Moscow's four airports grounded all flights in the early hours of Tuesday, and Russian media reported four flights heading for the Russian capital from Turkey had turned back mid-journey due to flight restrictions. Nine aircraft were diverted from Moscow to St Petersburg.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday its air defenses had intercepted 868 Ukrainian drones over 11 Russian regions, as well as the annexed peninsula of Crimea and over the Sea of Azov, overnight.

A 71-year-old man was killed in a suburb of southern Moscow, and a 20-year-old man died northwest of the Russian capital, said Moscow Regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov. Nine others were reported injured.

Ukrainian and independent Russian sources said the Moscow region's largest oil depot, named as the Volodarskaya Line Production and Dispatch Station (LPDS), was targeted by Kyiv overnight.

The Volodarskaya depot supplies three of Moscow's major airports and pumps out more than 3 million tons of petroleum products each year, according to the SPRAVDI project, which is backed by the Ukrainian government. It shared footage widely circulating online on Tuesday, purporting to show the facility in flames.

Newsweek could not independently verify these clips.

A damaged apartment building following a drone attack in Kotelniki in the Moscow region on September 20.

This is a breaking story

Tooth with jade inlay reveals ancient Maya skill as dentists

A study of a pre-Hispanic molar with a jadeite inlay concludes it was treated while its owner was still alive. The find is the first documented case of such an inlay in a Mayan back molar.

Rafael Salido

EURONEWS
Sun, October 4, 2026 



A single molar can provide new clues about the knowledge and skills of the ancient Maya in dentistry. A study published (source in Spanish) in the journal 'Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports' analyses a lower first permanent molar with a jadeite inlay on its surface and concludes that the tooth was modified while the patient was still alive.

The tooth belongs to a pre-Hispanic osteological collection at the Popol Vuh Museum of Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. The researchers found a well-defined cavity at the point where the four main cusps of the molar meet, in which the jade piece was firmly fixed with a cementing material.

"The cavity is perfect," explains Elma Vega-Lizama, a dental anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Yucatán in Mexico and co-author of the study, in comments reported (source in Spanish) by 'National Geographic'. "It is really a good procedure: well executed, clean."

The location of the inlay is particularly significant. Dental modifications documented among the ancient Maya were concentrated mainly in the anterior teeth, such as incisors and canines, and generally had an aesthetic purpose or were linked to social identity. In this case, however, it is a posterior molar, so the researchers rule out the idea that its function was purely ornamental.

To determine whether the intervention had been carried out before or after death, the researchers used cone-beam computed tomography. The images revealed extensive dystrophic calcification of the pulp chamber, a biological response indicating that the tooth was alive when the inlay was placed. In addition, the pulp chamber was well preserved and showed features consistent with a young adult individual.

The authors point out in the article that this find is "the first documented case of an occlusal inlay in a posterior tooth among the ancient Maya", that is, the first documented case of an inlay in the occlusal surface of a posterior tooth among the ancient Maya. The discovery broadens current interpretations of this civilisation's dental knowledge.
The mystery of its purpose

The exact purpose of the intervention, however, remains unclear. The researchers, from Universidad Francisco Marroquín, the Autonomous University of Yucatán and the Popol Vuh Museum, believe it may have had a therapeutic or palliative purpose, although they also leave open the possibility that it formed part of an unusual symbolic practice. The article stresses that it cannot be proved with certainty whether the inlay was used to fill a carious lesion.

The case is particularly striking because, despite the high prevalence of caries and abscesses among Mesoamerican populations, there is little evidence of interventions intended to relieve these conditions. The researchers also recall that the ancient Maya had considerable experience with dental drilling techniques. According to the study, "less than 4% of the drilling reached the pulp chamber".

The tooth analysed is therefore an exceptional case in Maya dental archaeology. For the authors, it shows that dental modifications in this civilisation were more varied than previously thought and underlines the need to continue investigating the more unusual dental interventions of ancient Mesoamerica.

This text was translated with the help of artificial intelligence. Report a problem : [feedback-articles-en@euronews.com].

Skull fractures suggest servants of Egypt’s ancient kings were sacrificed

Nicola Davis

Science correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, October 4, 2026 


A fresco depicting a funeral procession in ancient Egypt.Photograph: DEA/F Guenet/De Agostini/Getty Images


Court officials and craftspeople serving early Egyptian kings may have been sacrificed when their ruler died, according to research that found fractures in several ancient skulls.

The royal cemetery of Umm el-Qa'ab near Abydos features the tombs and enclosures of the First Dynasty rulers of Egypt, and dates as far back as 3,000BC.

Not only royalty were buried at the site: surrounding these structures are graves thought to belong to people associated with the royal households – including ladies, seal-bearers, inspectors and artisans.

Writing in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, Dr Roselyn Campbell, author of the study from Purdue University in the US, notes: "While Aha, the first ruler of the First Dynasty, seems to have only had a few subsidiary burials, his successors included hundreds of subsidiary graves around their tombs and enclosures."

The graves of the retainers were excavated in the 1920s by the English Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who believed them to be an example of human sacrifice – a view some later experts agreed with.

But there was a snag: Petrie did not find any evidence of trauma on the remains. While he suggested the individuals may have been buried alive, others suggested the retainers died naturally and were later reburied at Abydos when their ruler died.

Campbell re-examined the skulls of 46 retainers excavated from graves surrounding the funerary enclosures of three different royals – King Djer, King Djet, and Queen Merneith – from the Duckworth Collections at the University of Cambridge.

"This question of whether or not retainer sacrifice was practised in Egypt has been debated for over a century, but this is the first study to examine the human remains from the tombs themselves," Campbell told the Guardian.

Campbell reports that 18 of the skulls showed signs of potentially lethal trauma such as fractures and – in one case – a chopping injury to the eye.

Campbell believs Petrie may have seen the skull fractures but did not realise they were injuries that occurred around the time of death, rather than arising as a result of later damage.

The fractures, she adds, are unlikely to have been caused by a mace – a weapon often depicted in ancient Egyptian art as being used by a victorious king to smite his enemies. Instead they are more likely to have been caused by flat, wide objects made of wood or antler.

"For the crania without trauma, we cannot be certain they were sacrificed. It's quite possible that some of the retainers were sacrificed, while others were not," she said. "With such a small sample size of the original burial population, we simply can't see the full extent of these funerary rituals, nor can we be sure that this sample is truly representative of all the retainers."

Campbell noted the number of subsidiary graves tapered off quickly and seems to have disappeared with the beginning of the Second Dynasty.

Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo, said while the idea of retainer sacrifice was not totally new, "this paper is one of the few times that rigorous current methodologies are being used to evaluate these remains".

She added: "The practice was short-lived, with people being replaced by statuettes. Possibly some or all retainers felt that this was a boon and that they would enjoy an eternal life in the service of the god-king, though they might also have resented it, been terrified, and tried to escape this fate."

Dr Dawn McCormack, an Egyptologist at Samford University, Alabama, said similar sacrifices had occurred across different cultures and times, adding that not everyone at the Egyptian site may have been compliant.

"If you really think about what those scenes would have looked like, it would have been very gruesome," she said. While noting that the study only involved a small number of skulls from the burial site, "the idea that some of the people may have been violently killed, I think, is something that in reality we might expect", she said.

Egypt's First Kings May Have Been Buried With Human Sacrifices

Jess Cockerill
Sun, October 4, 2026 

SCIENCE ALERT

Illustrative generic image of a skull in a laboratory.

 (EvgeniyShkolenko/iStockphoto/Getty Images)

Key takeaways

Archaeologist Roselyn Campbell's modern forensic approach confirms potentially lethal injuries on 18 of the 46 skulls excavated by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in ancient Egyptian First Dynasty graves.

You might have read somewhere that in ancient Egypt, royalty were often buried with people sacrificed to serve them in the afterlife, but archaeologists aren't actually so sure about that.

When British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie excavated graves surrounding the tombs of ancient Egyptian First Dynasty kings in the 1920s, he found the remains of many more people – hundreds, in some cases.

At the time, he suspected the people in these satellite graves could have been sacrificed shortly after each king's death, in what is known as a retainer sacrifice.

But Petrie was unable to find evidence for how these people died, a gap that has left this theory open to doubt.

Archaeologist Roselyn Campbell, of Purdue University in the US, has been revisiting Petrie's work with a modern forensic approach, confirming that 18 of the 46 skulls Petrie preserved and brought back to England show signs of potentially lethal injuries.

She presents her findings in a new paper, published today in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

These skulls were unearthed from around the royal funerary complexes at Umm el-Qaab in ancient Abydos, where they were interred near ancient Egypt's first kings. These First Dynasty leaders ruled from around 3078 to 2900 BCE.

Some of the graves surrounding the royal burials were marked with names and official titles, identifying them as lower- or mid-level officials, or artisans.

"Each subsidiary burial was a simple chamber in a row of dozens of others," says Campbell.

"Some people had a simple coffin. Most people had a few grave goods, like ceramic vessels, and many graves also included small objects like copper tools, projectile points, or small ivory figurines."

Campbell has been re-analyzing the skulls of these ancient Egyptian civilians for several years.

Linear fractures across the skullcap are the most common injuries she has found – a kind of damage that is usually caused by flat, wide objects.

In a few of the skulls, Campbell also found sharp force injuries, including "a penetrative injury to the side of the head" and "a chopping injury to the eye".

"While it is certainly possible that some individuals may have died peacefully from some other cause and been buried around the royal funerary complexes, it is also clear that many of these individuals did experience perimortem trauma of some kind," Campbell writes.

In other words, it's quite likely that these subjects were killed deliberately, by traumatic blows to the head.

"Petrie believed that the closure of so many graves at once made individual interments after natural deaths unlikely, and the apparently hasty closure of so many tombs along with the identity of officials associated in some way with the royal court led him to conclude that these burials probably represented retainer sacrifice," Campbell writes.

Her findings lend further credence to Petrie's theory: that the people in these subsidiary burials may have been sacrificed when their king died, with the belief that they would serve their ruler in the afterlife.


If so, it also seems this practice started very early in the culture of ancient Egypt.

"Some retainers might have volunteered to die to achieve eternal life or honor, others may have been chosen or even forced," Campbell suggests.

"If I had unlimited resources, I would love to figure out where the bodies of these individuals might be and analyze them!

"Still, this study shows how much new information about the past can be revealed when we revisit previous data armed with updated methods and knowledge, even for datasets that are incomplete and imperfect like this one."

The research has been published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

KILLER BOTS

Ukraine says using AI robot guns to shoot down new Russian drones

AFP
Mon, October 5, 2026 


Twelve of the AI-powered turrets have been installed in Kyiv, officials said (Handout)

Ukraine has begun using artificial intelligence-enabled robot guns to take down Russia's new and fast-moving jet-powered drones, the Ukrainian air force said Monday.

For months, Kyiv has been seeking new ways to intercept the new Russian drones pounding the Ukrainian capital as it faces a dire lack of suitable ammunition to take them out.

Russia's newer jet-powered drones move faster and are harder to intercept than the traditional models, which are based on Iranian Shahed drones.

As part of Ukraine's efforts to respond, "robotic turrets are now being installed on bridges", air force spokesman colonel Yuri Ignat told national television.

"There have already been shoot-downs" of the drones, including the bigger, faster and more powerful Geran-5 version, he told national television.

Speaking to AFP, Ignat explained that the new turrets, which have been seen by AFP journalists in the Ukrainian capital, use "optical vision and artificial intelligence to eliminate the human factor and deliver strikes".

Sergiy Beskrestnov, a technology adviser to the Ukrainian president, explained on Telegram over the weekend that the new automated turrets were "an innovative Ukrainian solution that shoots down (drones) using machine guns controlled by artificial intelligence".

He said that 12 of the turrets had been installed in Kyiv, adding that "more turrets will be installed in the future".

- Not a panacea -

Ignat acknowledged that the new system had a small operating radius.

Ukraine's robotic gun turrets have scored their first kills of Russia's fastest attack drones

Business Insider

"It can operate at about one kilometre plus. And it works when conditions are favourable, when the attack approach angle is suitable," he told AFP.

"This is not some kind of panacea," he said, stressing that the turrets were part of "an integrated air defence system that provides engagement of these targets at different tiers".

"Of course we rely on all available assets."

Ignat said that currently, most of the work against jet-powered drones "is actually done by aviation".

"Because they fly high, they fly fast, it's the fighters that can catch them, especially the F-16s," he explained, adding that some pilots could "sometimes shoot down more than 10 Shaheds in a single sortie".

But the pilots were often forced to use aircraft cannons against drones, "because there are no missiles, (or) there are very, very few", he lamented.

Ukraine, which has repeatedly sought more support to fend off Russia since its full-scale invasion began in 2022, has been accelerating the integration of artificial intelligence into its defence capabilities.

It is already using the technology on the frontlines to guide drones, detect targets for strikes and coordinate large-scale operations.

bur-nl/jc/gv

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv claims half of Russia’s oil refining capacity destroyed

Guardian staff and agencies
Mon, October 5, 2026 

Black smoke billows from a Moscow oil refinery after a Ukrainian drone attack in June.Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Long-range Ukrainian strikes have taken out more than half of Russia's oil refining capacity, hampering Moscow's ability to supply its forces during the war, the defence ministry in Kyiv has claimed. Ukrainian forces have repeatedly attacked refineries from Moscow to Siberia, sparking a widespread fuel crisis in Russia earlier this year that forced authorities to restrict petrol sales. "Fifty-one per cent of struck refining capacity is a significant blow to the enemy's economy, to its ability to carry out aggression and supply its troop groupings," Ukrainian defence minister Yevhenii Khmara said. "Our deep strikes continue to bring the war to Russian territory."


Russian officials have not released figures on damage to the country's oil infrastructure. But in a rare acknowledgment of the strikes' economic impact, Vladimir Putin said they had cost Russia roughly 1% of its gross domestic product. "They started attacking oil refineries and openly declared the goal of damaging our economy. Did they achieve their goal? Partially," the Russian president told a meeting of the Valdai Club forum of international foreign policy experts last Thursday.


Donald Trump has blamed Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries for high petrol prices, saying the Iran war was no longer responsible. "What's driving up Gasoline is no longer the strait of Hormuz, because Record Numbers of Barrels are coming out now on an almost daily basis, but the word, 'Refineries,' where Russia's are being blown up by Ukraine," the US president posted on his Truth Social platform.


Six people were killed and nearly 60 injured when Russian bombs struck a residential area of Ukraine's north-eastern city of Kharkiv on Monday, officials said. Rescue workers led stunned ‌residents out of badly damaged buildings and flats, guiding them carefully around piles of rubble. Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, lies close to the Russian border and has come under regular shelling and drone attacks since Moscow invaded in February 2022. French president Emmanuel Macron condemned Russia's decision to scale up strikes on civilian infrastructure, saying Moscow "has made the irresponsible choice to intensify its strikes on civilian infrastructure and targets".

Russian drones struck a grain ship in the Black Sea on Monday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, after Romania reported a ship had caught fire and sunk near its coast with two crew members killed. "A horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel in neutral waters carrying corn," the Ukrainian president said on X, adding that the ship was Turkish-owned and that Azerbaijani and Indian nationals were onboard. Romanian authorities said two crew members had died and 11 were rescued after the 139-metre-long (455 foot) Royad Mammadov caught fire in the Black Sea, an increasing battlefield for drone attacks in the war. War-related objects found in the Black Sea had more than doubled in six months, maritime risk expert Ambrey said last month in a report. At least a third of them carried live payloads. The objects include unexploded ordnance, drones and other unmanned vehicles found washed ashore or floating at sea, it said.


Ukrainian drones attacked two facilities at the Russian-held ⁠Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine overnight on Monday, but there was no threat to nuclear safety, the ⁠head of Russia's state ⁠nuclear corporation ​said. Alexei Likhachev, director general of Rosatom, said a driver delivering food for plant employees was killed in the drone attack. According ⁠to Likhachev, a laboratory building and a radioactive waste processing plant were the targets. Ukraine has not commented on the incident.


Ukraine has begun using artificial intelligence-enabled robot guns to take down Russia's new and fast-moving jet-powered drones. For months, Kyiv has been seeking a way to intercept the new Russian drones pounding the Ukrainian capital, even as it faces a dire lack of suitable ammunition to take them out. Presidential adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said on social media that 12 automated turrets had been installed in Kyiv to counter jet-powered Shahed drones, with more planned. Ukraine's air force later said it had used the robotic turrets to successfully shoot down Russian jet-powered drones, including the Geran-5, for the first time. "It's machine vision that is used for the shootdowns," air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said on Ukrainian television. "Artificial intelligence makes it possible to engage even jet-powered drones."


Germany's foreign intelligence chief has warned that the country risks being drawn into a conflict with Russia as hybrid attacks ordered by Moscow increase. Martin Jaeger, head of Germany's BND spy service, told lawmakers on Monday that Russia's undeclared "shadow war" against Germany and its allies was escalating further and has "taken on a new, more dangerous character". Berlin has invested record sums into rebuilding its military to deter Russia, and is among the largest supporters of Ukraine in the war with Moscow. In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief ⁠Kaja Kallas said Russia ⁠was putting lives at risk across Europe with hybrid attacks.