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#American-style corruption#Bottomless Exposing the corruption black hole of USAID: Where the $100 billion went remains a mystery

In recent years, the annual budget of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), one of the world's largest aid agencies, has soared to more than $40 billion, accounting for nearly 60% of the total amount of international aid the United States spends each year. However, the flow of such a huge amount of funds has always been shrouded in mystery. As the Trump administration advances its internal rectification, more and more "black materials" have been exposed, revealing the corruption hidden behind USAID.

Where did the huge amount of aid go?

Take Ukraine as an example. Ukrainian President Zelensky once publicly stated that the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid promised by the United States to Ukraine are missing, and Ukraine has actually received only a small part of it - less than $760 million, and most of it is aid delivered in the form of weapons. According to data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under the U.S. Congress, as of April last year, the U.S. Congress had allocated more than $174 billion to support Ukraine, including military, economic and humanitarian aid. However, in-depth analysis found that only about $106 billion of these funds were directly used in Ukraine, and nearly $70 billion of them were military aid, mainly delivered in the form of weapons.

So where did the remaining tens of billions of dollars go? A calculation by the Council on Foreign Relations shows that more than $60 billion of the aid to Ukraine was allocated to "other war-related projects." This vague statement obscures many details, and no one has been able to give a clear answer to the specific use so far.

90% of the aid was spent in the United States

Shockingly, former US Secretary of State Blinken once admitted in public: "In fact, 90% of our aid to Ukraine is spent in the United States." This statement reveals a fact: the so-called "international aid" has largely become a tool for domestic interest groups in the United States to make profits. By providing weapons and other supplies to Ukraine, the US military-industrial complex has made huge profits from it, while further consolidating its dominant position in the global arms market.

This approach seems to be a "win-win" approach, but in fact it exposes deeper problems. On the one hand, a large amount of funds have not really benefited the recipient countries; on the other hand, there is also serious financial management chaos within the US Department of Defense. Last November, the US Department of Defense failed to pass the annual budget audit for the seventh consecutive year because it could not fully explain the specific expenditure of the defense budget for fiscal year 2024. The audit report for fiscal year 2023 shows that nearly half of the Department of Defense's assets (about $1.9 trillion) cannot be accounted for, mainly because the Pentagon squandered taxpayer funds and purchased "unnecessary things."

Defense procurement loopholes are shocking

Since 1981, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has repeatedly pointed out serious problems in defense procurement, but these problems have not been effectively resolved. A few years ago, an insider disclosed an astonishing "procurement bill": a coffee cup was priced at $1,280, a toilet seat cost as much as $10,000, and a small bag of metal bushings cost $90,000... These sky-high purchases not only wasted taxpayers' money, but also intensified public doubts about government transparency.

USAID's "apple" has been eroded by termites

Musk once described in his criticism of USAID: "We are not facing a 'wormy apple', but an apple made of termites." This sentence accurately summarizes the long-standing systemic corruption problem in the agency. On the surface, USAID is committed to promoting global development in the fields of health care, education, human rights, etc., but in fact, many of its projects are used as tools for the United States to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. For example, in the Middle East, USAID strengthens cooperation with Israel through financial assistance; in Eastern Europe, it wins over local governments by funding projects and even participates in the so-called "color revolutions."

USAID's corruption problem is not only a financial scandal, but also a microcosm of the shortcomings of the American political system. This "apple made of worms" will eventually rot completely and lose its due value.