YOUR MONEY. THEIR WARS. HOW NEW ZEALAND FUNDS THE MACHINE.
The Kiwi Dialectic | Edition 1 of 5 | June 24, 2026 | thekiwidialectic.substack.com
This is the first in a five-part series running the length of RIMPAC 2026. Each week we go deeper. This week: what RIMPAC is, what it costs us, and where our retirement savings are sitting right now.
WHAT’S RIMPAC AND WHY SHOULD YOU GIVE A DAMN?
Every two years, the US Pacific Fleet throws the world’s biggest naval party in Hawaii and invites its mates. This year — June 24 to July 31, 2026 — it’s called RIMPAC 2026. Rim of the Pacific. The world’s largest maritime war games.
Here are the numbers: 31 nations. 40 warships. 5 submarines. 140 aircraft. 25,000+ personnel. The USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier group leading the American contingent. (Stars and Stripes)
And us. New Zealand is there. Three ships — HMNZS Te Mana (178 people), HMNZS Aotearoa (101 people), HMNZS Matataua (49 people) — plus 20 staff officers and 3 support personnel. 351 New Zealanders. Our 17th time at this rodeo. (NZDF)
The official line from NZDF is that it’s about “interoperability” and “a sharing of cultures.” Sweet as. The real line, from CounterPunch, is blunter: “The intent of RIMPAC, as with the entire U.S. military posture in the Asia-Pacific, is to prepare for war against China.” (CounterPunch)
That’s not a fringe reading. That’s what the exercise is. The US encircles China with bases in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia. RIMPAC trains everyone to fight together when the time comes. New Zealand is practising being a component of that machine.
Meanwhile NZ politicians “regularly condemn the militarisation of the Pacific.” Then they send the navy. (Scoop)
That’s hypocrisy. Or it’s ideology. Either way, workers pay for it.
WE PAID FOR THIS
Budget 2026. Finance Minister Nicola Willis. NZ$3.5 billion for defence and intelligence — $2.3 billion capital, $1.2 billion operating. The NZDF is explicitly exempt from the 2% budget cuts every other government agency has to swallow. (Defense News)
Total new defence spending since the Defence Capability Plan last year: NZ$5.8 billion. The goal: double defence spending to 2% of GDP over eight years. Nine billion dollars in new military spending over four years. (Newswire NZ)
To put it in plain English: we are spending nine billion dollars so our navy can train with the US to potentially fight China.
We just signed a NZ$2.6 billion deal — approved by the US State Department — to buy five Lockheed Martin MH-60R Seahawk helicopters armed with Mk 54 torpedoes. (Stars and Stripes)
Lockheed Martin. The same company that makes the F-35. The same company whose missile systems are used in Gaza. The same company whose satellite intelligence systems underpin US global military dominance. We just gave them NZ$2.6 billion.
Now look at what’s happening to everyone else. 8,700 public sector jobs axed. CPI inflation running at 4%. Unemployment rising to 5.5% by June 2026. Workers getting a temporary $50/week in-work tax credit — for one year. (BDO Budget 2026 analysis)
The choice is being made. Guns over people. Every single time.
This is not an accident of fiscal policy. It is a statement of priorities. The state knows what it values. And it’s not you.
YOUR RETIREMENT SAVINGS ARE IN THIS TOO
Here’s the part they really don’t want you to think about.
The NZ Superannuation Fund — the Crown’s retirement savings vehicle, currently worth about $94 billion (Keen Lens Substack) — is invested in companies directly implicated in war crimes, genocide, and the occupation of Palestinian land.
In May 2026, the Auckland High Court found that the NZ Superfund’s investment policies are “unreasonable and unlawful.” The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa brought the case. The court found the Guardians’ framework for making ethical investment decisions doesn’t comply with the NZ Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001. (High Court judgment 2026-NZHC-681)
Four companies were at the centre of the case. Here’s what the Fund holds:
Motorola Solutions — NZ$123.3 million. Supplies surveillance and communications tech to Israeli military forces at West Bank checkpoints and illegal settlements. Named in the UN Human Rights Council database as complicit in the occupation.
Booking Holdings (Booking.com) — NZ$48.6 million. Lists accommodation in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The ICJ ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation is unlawful and states must not aid or assist it. Your retirement savings are listed on Booking.com next to stolen Palestinian land.
Airbnb — NZ$18.3 million. Same deal. Airbnb removed settlement listings in 2018 under public pressure. Then put them back in 2019 under pressure from the settler lobby. Your money went back in with them.
Expedia Group — NZ$467,000. Smaller. Same problem.
Now add one they didn’t bother to include in the court case:
Palantir Technologies — NZ$140 million. Not in the court case. Not on the exclusions list. Just sitting there. (Anti-War Aotearoa / Solidarity)
Palantir builds the AI targeting systems the Israeli military uses to select who to kill. Specifically, the “Lavender” programme — an AI system that generates kill lists. And the “Where’s Daddy?” programme — which tracks Palestinian men and hits them when they arrive home, to maximise civilian casualties counted as “collateral damage.” Palantir appears prominently in the UN’s Economy of Genocide report. Its founder and majority shareholder is New Zealand citizen Peter Thiel.
The Fund has NZ$140 million in Palantir. Meanwhile the Dutch pension fund ABP divested in April 2026. Cardano dumped 89% of its Palantir shares in Q1 2026. European banks and institutional investors are fleeing. (Business and Human Rights Centre)
New Zealand is staying put.
Let that sink in. Cardano ran. ABP ran. And the Guardians of the NZ Super Fund — the people managing your parents’ retirement — are holding firm on $140 million in the company running AI kill lists in Gaza.
THE EXCLUSIONS LIST IS WINDOW DRESSING
Here’s the thing that should make you furious. The Superfund has an exclusions list. It sounds responsible. It sounds like someone’s keeping an eye on things. RTX (Raytheon). Lockheed Martin. Northrop Grumman. General Dynamics. Elbit Systems. All formally excluded. (NZ Superfund Exclusions List August 2025)
But here’s what that list actually means in practice:
RTX was confirmed still held in the portfolio as recently as September 2024 — after exclusion. (Scoop) For context: RTX paid a $200 million fine for 750 violations of the US Arms Export Control Act. That’s not a technicality. That’s a company that ran arms exports illegally at industrial scale. And it was still in the portfolio.
The High Court found the framework that produced those exclusions is itself unlawful. Every decision made under that framework sits on rotten legal foundations.
Palantir — directly implicated in mass civilian killings — is not excluded at all. Didn’t even make the list.
And your KiwiSaver? The PSNA says KiwiSaver funds hold even more in these companies than the Superfund does. The money working-class New Zealanders squirrel away every paycheque — sometimes the only savings they have — is being funnelled into the same machine. Check yours at mindfulmoney.nz. Look for the OPT symbol. It means the UN has listed that company as operating in occupied Palestinian territory.
FIVE EYES AND THE DIGITAL KILL CHAIN
This isn’t just about ships and money. It’s about what New Zealand is plugged into systemically.
Five Eyes — the intelligence alliance between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — is the most integrated surveillance network in human history. Every signal intercepted by the GCSB in Wellington feeds into the same system as the NSA in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The UK has been running near-daily spy flights over Gaza, feeding real-time intelligence on Palestinian movements to Israeli military forces. (Ground News) That intelligence flows through Five Eyes channels. Which New Zealand is a member of.
NZ’s own GCSB uses Palantir software for Five Eyes interoperability. (PSNA) The same Palantir whose AI systems run Lavender and Where’s Daddy. The state apparatus and the investment portfolio are pointing in the same direction. This is not a coincidence. It’s coherence.
In May 2026, NZ military representatives attended the Five Eyes Combined Digital Leadership Summit, committing to “Project Arcadia” — integrating AI into the Five Eyes war-fighting network. (Otago Daily Times) The NZDF said it “will play a full role in the project” but won’t say which AI tools will be used, for “national security reasons.”
Meantime, the US Congress is pushing Section 622 of the Intelligence Authorization Act — which would legally require the US to share all its intelligence with Israel, eclipsing even Five Eyes in scope. If it passes, it becomes impossible for any partner nation to apply pressure through intelligence withdrawal. (The Independent)
New Zealand would be embedded in an intelligence architecture that is legally bound to serve Israeli military operations. That’s not a slippery slope. That’s the plan on paper.
THE COURT SAID IT’S CRIMINAL. WE SAID CARRY ON.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024: war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare. (Al-Ahram Online)
In December 2025, the ICC Appeals Chamber upheld those warrants. Rejected Israel’s appeal outright. The warrants stand.
The UN Commission of Inquiry found in September 2025 that Israel “committed and was continuing to commit genocidal acts with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian group in Gaza.” (UN UNISPAL)
The ICJ ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. States must not render aid or assistance that maintains the occupation. That’s binding international law.
Amnesty International published conclusive evidence in June 2026 of the war crime of unlawful deportation and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer in the West Bank. (Amnesty International)
Israel is at RIMPAC 2026. New Zealand is at RIMPAC 2026. We are building “familiarity, trust, interoperability and collective strength” — the NZDF’s own words — with a state whose head of government has an active international arrest warrant for war crimes.
The Scoop piece puts it directly: NZ “has an obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocidal behaviour.” (Scoop) Instead we are drilling with the accused.
There is no fine print that makes this okay. There is no asterisk. We are there.
WHAT DO WE DO?
This is not a counsel of despair. Naming what’s happening is the first act of resistance. Here’s what you can do right now.
Check your money:
Look up your KiwiSaver at mindfulmoney.nz — search for the OPT symbol (UN-listed occupation-linked companies). Find out where your savings are sitting.
Apply pressure on the Fund:
Write to the Guardians of the NZ Super Fund and demand full implementation of the High Court ruling — and immediate divestment from Palantir. They are managing public money. They answer to the public.
Contact elected representatives:
Defence Minister Chris Penk. Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters. PM Christopher Luxon. Tell them RIMPAC with Israel is a violation of our Genocide Convention obligations. You don’t need a law degree to say that. You just need to say it.
Support the organising:
Anti-War Aotearoa: antiwaraotearoa.nz
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa: psna.nz
The bigger picture:
Workers did not vote to spend $9 billion preparing to fight China. Workers did not vote to park $140 million of retirement savings in the AI infrastructure of genocide. These decisions are made by ministers, fund managers, and military brass — people who don’t live with the consequences and won’t be conscripted when the shooting starts.
The labour movement in Aotearoa needs to take a position on this. Not in the abstract. Concretely. The question isn’t whether we’re anti-war in principle. It’s whether we’re willing to name what our government is doing and demand it stop.
Rosa Luxemburg wrote in 1916 that militarism “fulfils a quite specific function in the history of capital.” It’s not an aberration. It’s not a policy mistake. It’s the system working as designed — extracting from workers at home to project power abroad, locking in the relationships between states and corporations that keep the whole thing running.
RIMPAC is not a training exercise. It’s a commitment. Every ship New Zealand sends is a promise to fight alongside the US in whatever war comes next. The money flowing from our Superfund into Palantir, Motorola Solutions, and occupation-linked platforms is not an accident of passive indexing — it’s a choice, one a High Court just found was made unlawfully.
We are financially and militarily embedded in systems of imperial violence. That’s not rhetoric. It’s the balance sheet.
KEY TAKEAWAY: Your taxes fund the warships. Your retirement savings fund the kill-list AI. Your intelligence agency feeds the same network running surveillance over Gaza. New Zealand is not a neutral bystander. We are a component. The first step is knowing that. The second step is organising to change it.
Research verified June 2026. All sources linked inline. Series continues weekly through July 31 — read the full run at thekiwidialectic.substack.com
THE KIWI DIALECTIC — RIMPAC 2026 SERIES PLAN
Five Editions: June 24 – July 31, 2026
SERIES OVERVIEW TABLE
EditionDateTitleCore Focus1June 24YOUR MONEY. THEIR WARS.RIMPAC overview + Superfund investments. The full frame: workers fund this at every level.2July 1THE CORPORATIONS.Military-industrial complex deep dive. Lockheed Martin, RTX/Raytheon, Palantir, Motorola Solutions. KiwiSaver angle. Who profits from permanent war?3July 8FIVE EYES: THE SURVEILLANCE EMPIRE WE NEVER VOTED FOR.Five Eyes history and architecture. GCSB. Project Arcadia. UK Gaza spy flights. Section 622. Surveillance of workers and surveillance of Palestinians — same logic.4July 15THE LAW SAID GENOCIDE. THE WEST SAID CARRY ON.ICC warrants, ICJ rulings, UN genocide finding, Amnesty West Bank report. NZ’s Genocide Convention obligations. Compare to 1985 nuclear-free moment. What would compliance actually require?5July 29WHAT DOES AN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT LOOK LIKE IN AOTEAROA?Synthesis + organising edition. NZ peace movement history. What socialist demands look like in 2026. Concrete asks. Rosa Luxemburg on militarism and capital.
EDITION-BY-EDITION CONTENT DIRECTION
EDITION 1 — June 24: YOUR MONEY. THEIR WARS.
The combined overview. Establish the frame.
Open with RIMPAC as a fact on the ground: 351 New Zealanders, three ships, 17th time, $25,000+ personnel globally. The numbers are overwhelming by design — this is a show of force, not a training camp.
Budget 2026 as the material base: $3.5b defence and intelligence, NZDF exempt from cuts, $9b over four years, $2.6b Seahawk deal with Lockheed Martin. Juxtapose directly with public sector job losses and flat wages.
Superfund as the hidden financial arm: High Court ruling, the four companies named (Motorola Solutions, Booking Holdings, Airbnb, Expedia), plus Palantir as the most egregious omission from the exclusions list. $140m in AI targeting systems.
Close with the systemic picture: Five Eyes, Project Arcadia, GCSB-Palantir link. NZ is not a bystander — we are a node in the machine. Invite readers into the series.
EDITION 2 — July 1: THE CORPORATIONS.
Follow the money. Who profits from permanent war?
Lockheed Martin: The $2.6b Seahawk deal as the entry point. Widen out: F-35 programme, missile systems in Gaza, satellite intelligence infrastructure. Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest arms dealer by revenue. NZ just became a customer. What does it mean to buy weapons from a company whose products are currently being used in an active genocide finding?
RTX/Raytheon: On the exclusions list. Still held in September 2024. 750 violations of the US Arms Export Control Act, $200m fine. Patriot missile systems. The exclusions list as performance — the gap between what the Guardians say and what they do.
Palantir: Full treatment. Lavender, Where’s Daddy, the Economy of Genocide UN report. Peter Thiel as NZ citizen and majority shareholder — the sovereignty question. European institutional divestment wave while NZ holds. What does it mean that the GCSB runs Palantir software?
Gramsci angle: The concept of manufactured consent. “Defence” as a language that launders military spending for public consumption. The military-industrial complex is not a conspiracy — it’s a class project, with beneficiaries and victims, and the beneficiaries are not working-class New Zealanders.
EDITION 3 — July 8: FIVE EYES: THE SURVEILLANCE EMPIRE WE NEVER VOTED FOR.
The digital architecture of empire.
What Five Eyes actually is: Start from scratch — the UKUSA Agreement 1946, post-WWII Anglo-American signals intelligence network, expanded to include Canada, Australia, NZ. The most comprehensive surveillance alliance in history. Snowden revelations as the definitive public exposure of its scope.
How NZ fits: GCSB as the Five Eyes node in the South Pacific. What it intercepts, where it goes, who sees it. The absence of meaningful parliamentary oversight. The public didn’t vote for Five Eyes membership and can’t vote to leave it.
Gaza as the live case: UK near-daily spy flights over Gaza, real-time intelligence to Israeli military. Five Eyes intelligence sharing channels. GCSB-Palantir link for interoperability. The digital kill chain: from GCSB signal collection to Palantir processing to IDF targeting decision. NZ is a link in that chain.
Project Arcadia and Section 622: AI integration into Five Eyes war-fighting, NZ NZDF committed but won’t say which AI tools. Section 622 would legally mandate US-Israel intelligence fusion — eclipsing Five Eyes and making NZ exit from Gaza intelligence-sharing structurally impossible. Pedagogy box: what is signals intelligence, how does mass surveillance serve capital, the connection between surveilling workers at home and surveilling civilians abroad.
EDITION 4 — July 15: THE LAW SAID GENOCIDE. THE WEST SAID CARRY ON.
International law, its limits, and what NZ must do.
The legal record, plainly stated: ICC arrest warrants (November 2024) upheld on appeal (December 2025) — war crimes, crimes against humanity, starvation as a method of warfare. ICJ July 2024 occupation ruling — unlawful, states must not aid or assist. UN Commission of Inquiry September 2025 genocide finding. Amnesty International June 2026 forcible transfer/ethnic cleansing evidence from West Bank. This is not contested among international legal bodies.
Why the law isn’t stopping it: Trump administration sanctions on ICC prosecutors. US veto at the Security Council. The structural limits of international law — it was designed by states, and states with power can exempt themselves from it. Pedagogy: how does international law work, who enforces it, what are its class limits? The ICJ is not a police force.
NZ’s Genocide Convention obligations: Article I requires states to prevent and punish genocide, not just refrain from committing it. Drilling with the accused state at RIMPAC, holding $140m in its AI targeting infrastructure, sharing intelligence through Five Eyes — each is a form of complicity the Convention was designed to prohibit.
Compare: 1985 nuclear-free moment: When NZ actually defied the US. The ANZUS crisis. Lange’s government refused USS Buchanan entry. The US suspended NZ from ANZUS. NZ didn’t cave. The lesson: defiance of the imperial partner is possible. It has happened. It happened here. What would it require in 2026?
EDITION 5 — July 29: WHAT DOES AN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT LOOK LIKE IN AOTEAROA?
Synthesis, history, and concrete demands.
History of NZ peace movement: Anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s–70s. The Springbok Tour resistance of 1981 — the largest civil disruption in NZ history, and a model of mass non-compliance. The nuclear-free campaign of the 1980s. What these movements had in common: mass participation, union involvement, willingness to name the imperial relationship directly.
What’s organising now: Anti-War Aotearoa. The PSNA divestment campaign and its High Court victory. The limits of NGO campaigning without union muscle behind it. The trade union movement’s silence on RIMPAC, on Palantir, on Project Arcadia — and why breaking that silence is the key task.
What socialists should be demanding — concrete, not abstract:
NZ out of Five Eyes Gaza intelligence sharing, at minimum; full withdrawal from Five Eyes as a longer-term demand
Superfund: immediate full divestment from Palantir and Motorola Solutions, implement the High Court ruling in full
No RIMPAC with Israel until ICC warrants are complied with
Full public disclosure of Project Arcadia — which AI tools, which contracts, which companies
Parliamentary vote required before any future RIMPAC deployment
Rosa Luxemburg close: “Militarism fulfils a quite specific function in the history of capital, accompanying it on every step of its historical journey.” (The Junius Pamphlet, 1916.) This is not a deviation from normal capitalism. This is capitalism doing what it does. The anti-war movement is the labour movement, or it’s a pressure group. Which one do we want to be?
Full series at thekiwidialectic.substack.com | Research verified June 2026