US Weapons Orbiting Earth, Military Says – The Wednesday AM Quickie 9/16/26

By Whitney Curry Wimbish — Sep 16, 2026

It’s unclear to me why Elon Musk is allowed to run a fake voter registration site to steal people’s data. Sounds illegal! Corey is back tomorrow. -Whitney

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THE BIG NEWS

US Deployed Weapons to Space, Military Says for First Time

The US military has active weapons orbiting the Earth, US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced, according to the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post. It is the first time the government has acknowledged such weapons; Meink would not give details, but a US Space Force spokesperson told the Guardian that it was “employing kinetic [combat] and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities.” An unnamed Washington Post source said the military could use the weapons to destroy “an enemy’s satellite if it’s being used to target American troops or a U.S. satellite.”

“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink said at the annual Air, Space, Cyber Conference on Monday. “This is why the United States now has, on orbit, space-control weapons.”

US officials have warned for years that China and Russia “have been practicing offensive maneuvers in orbit, such as using lasers or jamming that put U.S. satellites at risk,” the Washington Post reported. Now military experts say the American announcement could prompt an arms race between the three countries. Per the Guardian:

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell who has spent decades compiling a list of rocket launches, told the Guardian it was reasonable to assume Washington had such weapons in space, likely jammers, as it had already deployed several satellites with secret payloads.

He said that after the announcement, Russia and China would now “respond in kind” and deploy their own weapons.

“In the long run, I find it questionable whether this is in the US national interest, and for sure we will see comparable systems from China, if they don’t already have them,” he said.

Even radio jamming would be a big escalation of military activity in space, said McDowell, who worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics until he retired this year.

Victoria Samson, the Secure World Foundation’s chief director of space security and stability, told the Defence One website that the US now has to accept that the Chinese and Russians will do the same. “Well, that’s huge, because I don’t think any US government official has ever said that before,” she said.

MORE STORIES TO WATCH

EU Planning to Make Canada First Associate Member

“European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needed to tighten its cooperation with like-minded democracies, in particular Canada, to retain the continent’s sovereignty and tackle threats from what she called “'an openly hostile world,'” the Wall Street Journal reported early this morning. The world is making plans without the US.

ChatGPT Relies on Humans to Read Chat Prompts

OpenAI’s chatbot needs human workers to run properly, so the company is hiring “hundreds of contractors who read a massive stream of real users’ ChatGPT prompts,” 404 Media reported. These prompts include sensitive personal information; The 900 million people using the app are unlikely to realize that other people are reading their chats because OpenAI does not say so. According to the documents 404 Media reviewed, the contractors are training ChatGPT “to not anthropomorphize itself, and to be less sycophantic,” two qualities that multiple lawsuits say have caused people to kill themselves. It puts the lie to the claim that AI is evolving on its own. Per 404 Media:

The news also dispels the misconception that these models are improving only because of OpenAI’s mass scraping of the internet, the talent of its well-paid engineering and AI teams, or the power of its newer models. An important and overlooked part are the outside contractors paid to read and review ChatGPT responses to real prompts over and over again. Anthropic confirmed to 404 Media it is also using human review to improve its models.

“No,” someone who works with the prompts said when asked if they think ChatGPT users know that humans are reading their chats. “I don’t think they would imagine some contractor somewhere [...] is analyzing the conversations.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined fascist Steve Bannon at the ‘Pro-Human Assembly’ in DC, the Guardian and NBC News reported. They called for limits on artificial intelligence but disagreed on what those should be; others at the meeting included Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), actors, an archbishop, and union leaders.

Kennedy Center Shuts Down After Trump Tantrum

A federal judge blocked Trump’s attempt to put his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts building, so the board members he installed shut the place down, the NYT and Washington Post reported. At around 4:30 p.m., they used the PA system to tell workers and visitors that “The center is now closed to the public. Please exit the center by way of the Hall of States.” Then, like everything else Trump does, the closure fell into disarray. First the digital signs outside, which usually announce upcoming performances, displayed a flashing red “EMERGENCY ALERT” saying that the building was closed to the public. Not even an hour later, “the digital warnings had vanished and guards had unblocked some doors. By about 6 p.m., all doors were locked.” Officials said the closure was to allow for a two-year renovation that will cost $257 million. But Trump said that unless a judge lets him put his name on the building, he’ll stop that from happening.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

Newsom Promises Not To Run for President in 2028 If Harris Does Doing so would be “mutual assured destruction,” he said. Harris has run twice and lost. via LA Times, Politico and the Washington Post.
Dems Prep Investigation into Don Jr.’s Relationship With Russian Oligarch Umar Kremlev, Who Paid for His Wedding “It’s baffling that the son of a President would even think about allowing a Russian oligarch to bankroll his wedding,” Rep. Roberg Garcia (D-CA) said Tuesday; he told Don Jr. to preserve records and communications related to their relationship. via HuffPost.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Turns Hiring Spree Into Firing Spree, Prompting One New ICE Officer to Kill Himself Officials were so lazy that they didn’t bother to do basic background checks and are now getting rid of people who never should have been hired in the first place; one new officer responded to his impending termination by shooting himself to death outside the agency’s Philadelphia office. via the Washington Post.
FBI Director Kash Patel Defends Opening Hiring to Candidates Who Have Engaged in Bestiality Lawmakers from both parties at a Senate Judiciary Committee demanded Kash Patel explain why he fired numerous experienced agents; they also struggled to understand why he changed hiring policies to allow trainees who have engaged in bestiality or prostitution. via The Hill and the Washington Post.

SOME NUMBER

$43,500

That’s how much Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made in taxpayer-funded paychecks during his 92 days he was missing in action. He returned to the Senate yesterday.

ON THE SHOW TODAY

9/16: Sam and Emma are in the studio today and their guest is K. Sabeel Rahman, author and professor of law at Cornell University, who will discuss his article co-authored with Sam Berger in Just Security, “Building Governing Machinery for the Next Pro-Democracy Moment.”

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Anybody who claims the Nazi Holocaust is no biggie must be shut down immediately.

PARTING WORDS

“I was trapped in the tunnel. ... I felt trapped in the hospital room, too. I finally feel free here in my village.”

– Mechanical foreman Sanjay Sah, 30, who was trapped in a hydropower tunnel for nine days after last month’s catastrophic flooding in Nepal. He spent a week in hospital care in Kathmandu, then returned home to Tilath Koiladi, near the border with India, where his family and community members welcomed him back with a ceremony. Sah was one of three power station workers rescued from the tunnels; another 900 remain missing. Overall, there are still 5,130 people missing across Nepal. At least 1,386 people died. Sah said he wants to stay in his village for now, “but if I am called back to duty, I will go.”

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