According to a lengthy report by the New York Times, President Trump’s decision on June 22 to authorize airstrikes at nuclear sites across Iran was influenced in part by Fox News. For days, Trump was fed a steady diet of pro-war personalities on the cable channel, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and hardline anti-Iran congressional hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

However, according to an RS analysis, many other Fox guests were funded by the defense industry, which absolutely stood to gain from the shift to a hot war between Israel and the U.S. and Iran. One by one, these guests lined up on White House TV screens to praise Israel’s strikes and urge further U.S. involvement. As Palantir Founder and CEO Alex Karp put it bluntly back in 2022, “bad times are very good for Palantir.” Of course, many of these conflicts of interest were not disclosed on air.

One of Karp’s employees, former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), appeared on Fox praising Israel’s war campaign against Iran. “I think beyond the physical destruction that Israel’s attacks have imposed, there is a sort of mental destruction underway, right? Taking out key leadership in the IRGC, taking out 8 of the 13 top Iranian scientists,” he said in a reference to the assassination of senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “I do think we’ve set the nuclear program back, but this is the early stage of what will be a multi-phase complex back and forth, and important that we, America, stand firmly behind our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.”

Gallagher is now the head of defense at Palantir, a military contractor that provides AI-enabled targeting capabilities. Last year Palantir signed an agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to “harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions.”  (...)

President Trump and other White House officials are suggesting that questioning the decision and efficacy of bombing Iran shows a lack of patriotism and disparages American troops.

These claims harken back to the Iraq War when supporters of the policy insisted that critics or skeptics were simply anti-American or didn’t support the troops.

(...)

“How about we celebrate that? How about we talk about how special America is, that we — only we have these capabilities? I think it's too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news.”