H.R.4061: You Don’t Have to Declare a Police State to Build One

The Pentagon’s Black Budget, Palantir’s Rise, and the War Coming Home

You probably didn’t read the defense bill that passed the House of Representatives last week. No one really does. Not even our own elected Representatives.

But maybe reading isn’t the point. When your campaign is backed by defense contractors, AIPAC, and party-aligned PACs, voting yes is just part of the deal. Ignorance isn’t just bliss. It’s incentivized.

I wonder if Rep. Mike Flood read this one before voting yes? As we know, he’s already admitted he didn’t read the last 1,100-page “Big Beautiful Bill” before voting yes. So what makes this one any different?

But unlike our elected Representatives and Senators, I actually read this bill. Let’s talk about it, and why it’s so concerning.

Important Note: While the House passed it, the Senate has not as of now. You still have time to call your congressmember and demand they fix this shit.

So, this bill, H.R.4016

It gives the Pentagon, the same Pentagon who has not passed a single audit since they began in 2018, $831.5 billion dollars to spend. And out of the $831.5 billion, at least $600 million is explicitly labeled as classified, confidential, or open-ended with zero transparency.

But don’t worry. Pentagon accountability is in good hands. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, noted military expert, sober decision-maker, and man who’s never once texted war plans to a journalist after six bourbons, fully endorses he will make this happen in about 4 years. And the DOD affirms this by saying they are making “momentum” toward a clean audit. Whew. I was worried there for a second.

The Secretary of Defense of the United States of America, Pete Hegseth.

Now, some of what this money will go to is openly listed, but much of it shielded behind vague terms, and blank checks. All funded by the courtesy of the American tax-payer.

For example, there is a whopping $500 million marked for “reforming national security systems” with no explanation, and a clause that lets military officials spend it in secret, no questions asked, as long as they sign the right form.

So what exactly are “national security systems” they’re reforming? Well, the bill doesn’t actually say. There’s no actual definition, list of programs, or even examples listed in it. Just a few lines allocating half a billion dollars the DOD, free to use, until September 2026 when the next budget comes at the start of the fiscal year.

All they have to do to use this money? Sign a Certificate of Necessity (also known as a CON; which is a perfect name) and boom, money.

Historically, it’s been exposed that these CONs have been used to fund black ops, secret surveillance systems, and battlefield tech we didn’t learn about for decades. Sometimes it’s a stealth fighter. Sometimes it’s AI that flags “suspicious behavior.”

Once a CON is signed, there is no additional congressional approval needed, and no public oversight. That money is there to use for {REDACTED}, and they don’t have to tell the taxpayers who are funding them squat.

Side Note: How much do you think the D.O.D spends on black markers every year?

Here’s What Happens Next:

Classified funds flow to a select handful of military tech firms. These companies build predictive AI, surveillance platforms, and advanced tracking systems. These are tools built for war. Yet, quietly, they’re often brought home to be used on Americans.

Sometimes it's through private contractors “commercializing” military tech for domestic use. Others it's through programs like Operation 1033, which funnels military-grade weaponry to local police departments, where it ends up aimed at civilians instead of enemy combatants.

The U.S. government uses something called a CRADA) a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) to partner with private contractors, allowing them to take military-developed technologies and commercialize them for civilian use.

And one of the biggest beneficiaries of this war-to-home pipeline? Palantir.

A name that won’t stop showing up in every shadowy corner. They are one of the defense contractors raking in millions through the Pentagon’s shadowy AI initiative known as Project Maven.

This ever-growing D.O.D project started in 2017; it was created to develop artificial intelligence that could analyze drone and satellite footage for the military. And by 2019, Palantir did commercialize and created the program Foundry, their civilian-facing platform. A sanitized copy of their warzone AI Gotham.

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It didn’t take long before Foundry began showing up in hospitals, Fortune 500 boardrooms, and government agencies alike. This was military-grade tech, sanitized with buzzwords, and quietly deployed on the American public.

From 2012 to 2018, a secret partnership let New Orleans police mine social media, gang ties, and arrest records to forecast who might shoot or be shot. The city only found out years later.

Sadly, New Orleans is often the target of militarized police. Since 2010, New Orleans police have received millions in military-grade gear through the 1033 program including armored vehicles, night-vision scopes, riot equipment, even tactical weapons. Gear turned on civilians in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore during the protest. And In 2012, they got “predictive policing,” courtesy of Palantir.

A similar instance was in sunny Los Angeles, California. Operation LASER used Palantir analytics to tag “chronic offenders,” flooding Black and Latino neighborhoods with cops until an audit and public outrage forced LAPD to shut it down in 2019.

On July 9, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officers confront protester Ieshia Evans near the city’s police headquarters (Source: Reuters).

So, once a tool can identify a “pattern of interest”, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s Iran or New Orleans, does it? I mean, if war-grade algorithms can stalk Bourbon Street and Boyle Heights in secret, imagine what they’ll do with a fresh river of untraceable cash.

Meanwhile, in the Land of Priorities

While lawmakers slashed food assistance, housing programs, and public education in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” they had no issue approving $500 million for Israel’s missile defense. That funding is presented as untouchable, above politics, automatically necessary.

But what it really does is free up Israel’s own budget for offensive operations: airstrikes, demolitions, and military campaigns that have already displaced, disabled, and murdered thousands of innocent in Gaza and the West Bank.

We’re funding a genocide in Gaza one where civilians are not only bombed, but deliberately starved, as food, fuel, and aid are blocked with surgical cruelty while American tax dollars keep the weapons flowing.

At home, we’re told to accept cuts, belt-tightening, and “fiscal restraint” while quietly expanding black budget spending on surveillance technology, biometric tracking, and predictive policing systems.

At the same time, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is rapidly reshaping the structure of government, consolidating control in the executive branch, rewriting civil service protections, and removing internal checks that once slowed authoritarian overreach.

What we’re watching is a shift — not just in spending, but in values. The federal budget is being restructured to serve the architecture of enforcement: weapons abroad, surveillance at home, and fewer services in between.

And in a post–Trump immunity ruling world (thanks SCOTUS), where official acts are shielded from prosecution, that infrastructure isn’t just theoretical. It’s usable. The line between “defense” and “domestic control” is getting harder to see.

The paperwork still says democracy, but the blueprint underneath is starting to look like something else entirely.

And maybe that’s the point.

You don’t have to declare a police state to build one. You just have to budget for it. Fund it. Normalize it. Let it grow while everyone’s looking the other way. A few votes. A few signatures. A few billion dollars tucked into a classified line item.

The architecture is already being assembled. Piece by quiet piece. If it ever snaps into place, there won’t be a press conference. Just a knock at the wrong door. Just a protest that disappears. Just silence where public oversight used to be. And by then, it won’t matter who read the bill.

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Note from the Author:

If you’ve made it this far, first of all thank you. Most people don’t read hundreds of pages of budget bills. Most lawmakers don’t either. But I do. Not because it’s fun (it isn’t), but because someone has to.

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Thank you for being here.

Love, Dissent in Bloom ♥