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Ukrainian military forces carried out a fresh wave of overnight drone attacks on oil facilities deep inside Russia.

… Pro-Kremlin sources say Russian drones now possess AI–enabled capabilities that can recognize and target combat uniforms, according to a Hudson Institute situation report.

… Threat Status’ special “Operation Huntsville” project will have a multimedia team of journalists on the ground at next week’s Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

… Defense contractor Leidos has announced it will provide infrared sensors for 18 missile warning and tracking satellites built by Sierra Space as part of the Golden Dome program.

… The U.S. Space Force has announced $615 million in contracts for space-based sensing and targeting to California-based Rocket Lab, Alabama-based Systems & Technology Research and a third vendor whose name has been kept secret “due to operational security.”

… AI and better protection are coming to U.S. Army tanks, Scott Davis, the former program executive for Ground Combat Systems, tells the Threat Status podcast in an exclusive interview.

… The South Korean military has a massive deal with Hanwha Aerospace for the production and delivery of Arion-SMET unmanned ground vehicles.

… And President Trump is vowing to punish “leakers” who say U.S. munitions are running short.

‘God-calculator’ finishes testing in the desert

The U.S. Army’s $3 billion Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) digital communications system is “ready but not done” following a major war game stress test in the Mojave Desert, according to military officials. The AI-integrated system was nicknamed the “God-calculator” by soldiers during the testing at Fort Irwin, California.

Mr. Seward was with the soldiers for the war game testing, carrying out multiple exclusive interviews examining how the new system operates, whether it will work in actual combat and what advantages it presents for the future of Army planning, intelligence, targeting and logistics tasks using machine learning and advanced new AI models.

“The models aren’t perfect, but then again neither were the war games in the past where we were using dice and standing around a big map in the dirt, moving wooden blocks around,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, told Mr. Seward. “It’s helping us think through problems, helping us solve those, and we don’t have to all be in the same physical space to do that.”

Ukraine and Iran wars are merging

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas Bergeson, the former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, says the lines separating the war between Russia and Ukraine and the U.S.-Israel war with Iran are starting to blur, with close tactical relations between Russia and Iran undergirding concerns of a widening multinational war.

“What we’re seeing today is clearly the Iranians and the Russians are supplying each other with various technologies that are being used on the battlefield against Ukraine,” Gen. Bergeson said during a discussion hosted this week by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America think tank.

At the same time, Israel and Ukraine have emerged as increasingly influential players on the fast-evolving defense technology landscape intertwined with the two wars. Both countries are now selling their advanced drone and counter-drone capabilities as battle-hardened and tested.

Bombing hospitalizes director of Russian drone factory

The director of a Russian drone factory that makes “Ghoul” Upyr first-person view drones for Russian forces operating in Ukraine was badly wounded in a car bombing that ripped through a small Russian town this week, according to local news reports.

Vladimir Tkachuk, the founder of Uraldronzavod, was hospitalized after the explosion that killed the driver of the car he was riding in. He is an ardent supporter of the Kremlin’s military action in Ukraine and is a Russian influencer on Telegram.

The car bombing was the second such incident inside Russia this week. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, an Army general appointed to lead the Russian Aerospace Forces, was reportedly targeted in an explosion at a Moscow restaurant Saturday that killed five and injured 19 people. No one has claimed responsibility for either attack.

Opinion: Let competition regulate AI

Pope Leo XIV and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are AI alarmists, argues Peter Morici, an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, who writes in an op-ed in The Washington Times that those two contemporaries should be “mindful of competition from autocratic states.

“Pope Leo and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei could conceivably persuade Western nations to ban military application of autonomous AI,” Mr. Morici writes. “But they cannot protect the West from Chinese and Russian aggression.

“Regulation is required to curb the abuses AI shares with social media, but not to govern the pace of its build-out,” he argues, explaining that the natural forces of competition and the markets are the best means to impose regulation.

Opinion: Senate must act to protect children from China’s AI

In another zone of the AI issue, Donna Rice Hughes, a longtime children’s online safety advocate and president and CEO of Enough Is Enough, writes in an op-ed in The Times that “putting limits on users’ access to AI might seem like a counterintuitive strategy, but China knows that AI chatbots are digital spies.

“Without the defensive strategy of congressional action, China’s advanced ‘digital spies’ owned by Chinese companies such as DeepSeek and Tencent are able to collect sensitive and personal data from American children and adults alike, in addition to harming children with its addictive by design algorithms,” she writes.

Ms. Hughes argues that “research shows that 1 in 3 children prefer talking to an AI companion rather than a real person” and that AI chatbots need to be regulated by Congress to curtail damage to “children’s mental, physical and sexual well-being.”

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Threat Status Events Radar

• Aug. 9-12 — DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 2026, Defense Intelligence Agency

• Aug. 11-13 — Space & Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Alabama

• Aug. 17 — Beyond Pyongyang: Regional Development, Modernization and Inequality in North Korea, Stimson Center

• Aug. 18 — The Hormuz Implications for Energy Policymaking: Japan and South Korea, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

• Aug. 27 — 2026 Navy Summit, Potomac Officers Club

Thanks for reading NatSec-Tech Thursdays from Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, John T. Seward and Guy Taylor are here to answer them.

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A wave of overnight Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and areas surrounding the Ukrainian capital killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens.

… The strikes crippled logistics facilities belonging to four of Ukraine’s largest retail and industrial groups, the Kyiv Post reports.

… A Tehran-backed Houthi missile strike Wednesday on a Saudi oil tanker threatened to derail delicate progress in U.S.-Iran talks.

… Threat Status’ Operation Huntsville reporting project will have a multimedia team of journalists on the ground at next week’s Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

… Big oil companies from Europe to the U.S. and the Mideast are reporting massive profits as the war with Iran sends oil and gasoline prices higher.

… German authorities found and deactivated a drone with an explosive device at Leipzig/Halle Airport on Wednesday.

… Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn has a report on the European Union’s use of interest from frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine on the battlefield.

… Millions of Shiite Muslims are gathered in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala for an annual pilgrimage amid fears of U.S.-Iran escalation.

… And the Pentagon is drafting a new U.S. nuclear strategy in case of war with China or Russia, according to an NBC News report citing unnamed sources.

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U.S.-Iran talks on tightrope as Houthis claim missile strike

The Iran-backed Houthi militants of Yemen claimed responsibility Wednesday for a missile strike on a Saudi-flagged oil tanker in the Red Sea, escalating the risk to commercial shipping in the region and threatening to topple precarious progress in U.S.-Iran talks this week.

U.S. and Middle East officials said Tuesday that they were zeroing in on a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed to progress, while Iranian officials said they were engaged in consultations with Oman, the neutral sultanate situated across the critical Persian Gulf shipping corridor.

It remains to be seen how the Houthi attacks occurring on the other side of the region will affect the U.S.-Iran negotiations. Regional officials say a potential Strait of Hormuz deal between Iran and Oman calls for ships to enter the Persian Gulf through an Iranian-controlled route and exit through an Omani-controlled route. It is not clear whether the Trump administration would accept the deal, which Iran says would be contingent on the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports.

Russia trying to turn Black Sea into ‘second Strait of Hormuz’

Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha warned that Russia is trying to turn the Black Sea into a “second Strait of Hormuz,” saying Moscow’s attacks on Ukrainian ports are a campaign of “economic and humanitarian terror” that has essentially halted the movement of Ukrainian vessels through key trade routes toward the Mediterranean during the height of the agricultural harvest season.

Threat Status Special Correspondent Guillaume Ptak reports in a dispatch from Kyiv that Ukrainian officials, traders and analysts estimate the country has already lost about one-third of its grain export capacity through Black Sea ports. Even cargo that continues to move becomes less profitable, with higher freight and insurance costs burdening Ukrainian exporters and farmers whose margins have already been squeezed by damaged infrastructure, expensive energy, labor shortages and lost farmland.

Ukrainian forces have answered Russia’s assault with their own attacks on Russian ships and maritime logistics in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. The campaign has forced restrictions at Russian grain terminals and a ban on nighttime vessel movements at Novorossiysk, showing that maritime insecurity is spreading across the region.

China restricting drone exports to the U.S.

Chinese Communist Party leaders said Wednesday that Beijing is imposing new restrictions on exports of Chinese drones to the U.S. and banning Chinese companies from engaging in trade or other activities with six American entities, including Applied DNA Sciences Inc. and the nongovernmental group Human Rights in China.

The Associated Press reports that officials in Beijing said the restrictions are in response to recent moves by Washington, including a ban by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on imports of Chinese drones and the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to add 43 Chinese companies to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list blocking imports of goods made with forced labor.

Tensions appear to be rising between the world’s two biggest economies ahead of an expected U.S. visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September for the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering. The latest developments come after signs of warming U.S.-China ties following President Trump’s visit and summit with Mr. Xi in Beijing in May.

Opinion: The axis of aggressors vs. America

North Korean troops and munitions “beef up Russia’s war against Ukraine,” while Russia “provides Pyongyang with sophisticated technology for its missiles, drones, satellites and submarines,” writes Clifford D. May, who notes that Iran has “sent Moscow drones” and that Russia has reportedly repaid the favor by providing Tehran with intelligence for targeting U.S. bases in the Middle East.

“Beijing is believed to give Moscow microelectronics for ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles,” Mr. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a Threat Status contributor, writes in his latest column for The Washington Times. “Credible reports say Beijing now plans to send Tehran hundreds of portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles capable of shooting down American aircraft. Discounted Iranian oil keeps Chinese refineries running.

“Do you see a pattern?” he writes. “Several years ago, Waller Newell — perhaps the world’s leading scholar on tyrants throughout history — observed the increasing alignment among America’s four principal adversaries.”

Opinion: Trump should stop negotiating and win against Iran

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg writes in an op-ed for The Times that “you cannot prosecute a war like a business deal.

“War is too difficult to leave to chair-bound critics, people who lack an understanding of the principles of conflict or those who contemplate dollar signs rather than strategy,” writes Gen. Kellogg, a former National Security Council chief of staff now with the America First Policy Institute.

“This is especially true of proactive military action, or a war of choice. This is also why this war must be won, not managed,” he writes. “Wars of choice carry a higher threshold. Choosing to go is different from being forced to go or acting in self-defense; this is why winning matters even more. Losing a war of choice erodes deterrence more rapidly and diminishes a nation’s ability to project power.”

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Threat Status Events Radar

• Aug. 5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

• Aug. 6 — Sudan’s War: Humanitarian Cost, Prospects for Peace and Potential Ways Forward, Arab Center Washington, D.C.

• Aug. 9-12 — DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 2026, Defense Intelligence Agency

• Aug. 11-13 — Space & Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Alabama

• Aug. 17 — Beyond Pyongyang: Regional Development, Modernization and Inequality in North Korea, Stimson Center

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

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Qatari officials confirmed Tuesday that active negotiations are taking place between Iranian and U.S. delegations.

… Ukrainian long-range drones struck Russian logistics hubs near Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday.

… A new episode of the Threat Status Influencers exclusive video interview series explores the clash between President Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” and China-Russia influence operations in Latin America.

… Chinese media reported Tuesday that Beijing has launched another batch of low-orbit internet satellites.

… Eight leftist students were arrested Tuesday after breaching the perimeter of Osan Air Base, the headquarters of the U.S. 7th Air Force in South Korea.

… A former Trump administration diplomat charged with defaming the South Korean president during a 2025 speech in Washington has been told he cannot leave South Korea pending the outcome of the case.

… Eugene Gholz and Kerby Davis write in Foreign Affairs that China has an “underexamined option” of carrying out a “blockade by fire” missile strike campaign against Taiwan’s port infrastructure.

… An analysis by The Insider says the votes of new immigrants in Israel from Russia and Ukraine could prove decisive for incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Knesset elections this fall.

… And the U.S. Army is testing a plan at Fort Stewart, Georgia, for soldiers to use meal cards at fast-food chains on post.

Africa’s Ebola crisis collides with U.S.-China battle over critical minerals

The Democratic Republic of Congo is struggling to contain the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak it’s ever seen, with more than 3,400 cases and over 1,700 deaths reported since May 15. With the Trump administration pulling back on U.S. aid to Africa, China has seized the opportunity to step up efforts to win the hearts and minds on the continent.

Threat Status Special Correspondent Joseph Hammond examines the situation, writing that the Chinese Communist Party is deploying medical aid and diplomats in a show of strength, with Beijing’s foreign policy often tying humanitarian assistance to longer-term goals, including protecting Chinese access to critical minerals.

Beijing already dominates much of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mining industry, but Washington has sought to challenge Beijing’s primacy. The Trump administration has created its own Ebola task force involving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department and the Department of Defense. The administration hopes renewed engagement will create opportunities for American companies to gain access to Congo’s copper, cobalt and other strategic minerals.

Watch: Inside the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and the shifting politics of Latin America

Longtime Latin America expert Michael Shifter joined the Threat Status Influencers series for an exclusive video interview examining the political nuances of the region that the U.S. national security community should consider when weighing how countries across the Western Hemisphere are likely to respond to Mr. Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine.”

Mr. Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue, shared his insights on the emergence of conservative and populist political leaders in Central and South American countries, and the extent to which the Trump administration is — or is not — in a position to capitalize on pro-U.S. and pro-free market sentiment at a moment when China and Russia are increasingly active in the region, with Russia, particularly, pushing anti-U.S. propaganda in Latin America.

“It’s undeniable that there is a more politically aligned region for President Trump and his policies than there has been before,” he says, though he argues that “much of this is luck, because in a lot of these countries, there were leftist presidents that came before. It’s hard to point to many examples where Trump himself has really been instrumental in this turn.”

Qatar confirms U.S., Iran are negotiating

Qatari officials said Tuesday that they are actively mediating new negotiations between U.S. and Iranian delegations — with draft proposals relating to the future of the Strait of Hormuz being exchanged between the two sides — and that mediators from Oman and Pakistan are also involved in the talks.

The assertions from the Qatari Foreign Ministry came as a projectile near the coast of Oman struck an unidentified cargo vessel in the strait, a day after Mr. Trump said the new negotiations with Iran will be Tehran’s “last chance” for a deal and blamed the Iranian regime for engaging in “duplicitous” disavowals of his earlier assertions that a peace agreement could be imminent.

The core of the current dispute rests on the administration’s demand that Tehran cede control of the strategic waterway. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters on Monday that the only diplomatic conversations Iran is engaged in are with Oman over creating an “understanding on a route that would ensure the safe passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Opinion: Presence is deterrence — restore America’s maritime patrol in the Taiwan Strait

The “most important security development in East Asia this year” involved “two white-hulled coast guard vessels,” according to Miles Yu, who notes in his Red Horizon column for The Washington Times how American officials for the first time publicly acknowledged that the U.S. and Taiwan coast guards had “conducted joint patrols in the Taiwan Strait.

“It was the first visible step toward restoring the maritime presence that kept peace in the Taiwan Strait for nearly two decades, and whose disappearance has allowed Beijing to wage its campaign of maritime coercion ever since,” writes Mr. Yu, who heads the Hudson Institute’s China Center and contributes regularly to Threat Status.

“Peace in the Taiwan Strait cannot rest on communiques or diplomatic formulas alone. It depends on ships at sea, operating routinely, visibly and lawfully,” he writes. “America did not preserve stability in Asia by withdrawing from contested waters. It preserved stability by remaining there.”

Opinion: U.S. must reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Failure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz will “reverberate far beyond the Middle East, emboldening America’s adversaries worldwide,” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles Wald writes in an op-ed for The Times.

“The U.S. military can restore freedom of navigation through the critical waterway,” Gen. Wald writes. “But it will require determination and patience to implement and stick with a three-pronged campaign: opening a protected corridor through the strait so commerce can move now; cutting off Iran’s overland supply routes; and signaling a willingness to reescalate if Iran resumes targeting ships.

“Hormuz is too important to global commerce to remain closed. Roughly a quarter of the world’s oil trade and a fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade normally transit the waterway,” he writes. “More than 30% of the world’s traded urea and roughly 20% of the world’s fertilizers also transit through Hormuz. Disruption of these commodities threatens much of the world’s food supply.”

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Threat Status Events Radar

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

• Aug. 6 — Sudan’s War: Humanitarian Cost, Prospects for Peace and Potential Ways Forward, Arab Center Washington D.C.

• Aug. 9-12 — DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 2026, Defense Intelligence Agency

• Aug. 11-13 — Space & Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Alabama

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

Share

Threat Status has a new exclusive video examining key geopolitical developments in Latin America tied to the Trump administration’s “Donroe Doctrine.”

… Iran says it’s not in talks with the U.S. over the Strait of Hormuz, despite President Trump’s assertions that a new peace deal is imminent.

… Iranian authorities on Monday executed two men accused of spying for Israel.

… Russian authorities are blaming Ukraine for a deadly weekend bombing at an Italian restaurant in Moscow.

… The Pentagon announced new agreements with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin on Monday to dramatically increase production of Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile interceptor components.

… Iraq and Turkey inked a deal over the weekend to pipe Iraqi oil toward the Mediterranean as Baghdad shifts away from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

… The F-35B fighter jet that crashed Friday at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego was part of a group of aircraft returning from a mission in the Middle East.

… And Scott Davis, the former program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems with the U.S. Army, examines the role tanks will play in future wars in an exclusive interview on the latest Threat Status podcast.

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Russia unleashes glide bomb assault while Ukraine pleads for Patriot interceptors

Ukrainian officials said Monday that Russian military planes dropped eight powerful glide bombs on residential districts of Zaporizhzhia, a southern Ukrainian city that has long been a flash point in the war because Russian forces control a key nuclear power plant there.

The Sunday night bombing came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded anew for countries to provide Kyiv with more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems. The systems, which are critical for blocking Russian missile onslaughts, are in short supply worldwide as a result of the ongoing U.S.-Iran war in the Middle East.

On a separate front, the Kyiv Post reported Monday that a major reshuffle of national security leaders within Mr. Zelenskyy’s Cabinet continues, with Rustem Umerov, former defense minister and secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, now appointed the head of Kyiv’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SZRU.

Iran denies Trump’s assertions of potential peace deal

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told a press conference Monday that Tehran is not in talks with the U.S. over control of the Strait of Hormuz, even as Mr. Trump insists that final negotiations could begin as soon as this afternoon.

Iranian officials warned that the strait will remain mostly closed to commercial shipping until the U.S. ends its naval blockade and military campaign against Iran.

A tenuous ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran appeared to be holding Sunday after Mr. Trump announced over the weekend that negotiators had hammered out a deal to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that the potential agreement led him to “cancel the attack” he had been planning.

South Korea is testing naval drones

The South Korean navy conducted its first-ever mine-clearance drill combining a crewed vessel with multiple unmanned systems on Monday near the port city of Busan on the southern end of the Korean Peninsula.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports from Seoul that the trials involved both the South Korean navy and arms company Hanwha Systems, and included an artificial intelligence component. Assets engaged were a 730-ton minesweeper, aerial reconnaissance drones, two surface drones and underwater drones.

Monday’s testing followed the conclusion last week of the massive Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) multinational military drills hosted by the U.S. Navy in Hawaii. The South Korean navy’s 3,100-ton frigate Daejeon was named “Top Gun” in deck gunnery during the drills. The vessel earned the honor after outshooting 13 warships from 10 nations in RIMPAC’s “Naval Surface Fire Support Rodeo” competition.

Inside the U.S. push to outcompete China on rare earths

The Associated Press has a new feature story looking inside the workings of Phoenix Tailings, a company that recently received a $500 million loan from the Pentagon to build a factory in New Hampshire that could help the U.S. break the chokehold China has on the processing of critical minerals.

Phoenix Tailings CEO Nick Myers joined the Threat Status podcast for an exclusive interview last year, discussing Beijing’s dominance in rare earth elements critical to the manufacture of advanced-technology products, including high-end U.S. weapons systems.

The company produces critical precious metals from the powder left behind at traditional mines, using electrolysis in what’s known as the separation and metallization process, a particularly weak stage in the U.S. mines-to-magnets supply chain.

Opinion: America’s edge begins with its aviators

American military aviation is “second to none, not simply because we operate the world’s most advanced aircraft, but because of the exceptional patriots who fly them,” writes Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican and retired U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, who authored the Warrior Impact from Neurological and G-Force Stress (WINGS) Act.

The legislation is included in the version of the 2027 defense authorization recently passed by the House. Ms. Kiggans writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times that it “directs the secretary of Veterans Affairs to conduct a long-term study of military aviation veterans.

“By examining flight histories, operational exposures and long-term health outcomes,” she writes, “this research will help military leaders and medical professionals strengthen aviator health, sustain peak performance and preserve operational readiness throughout an aviator’s career.”

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Threat Status Events Radar

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

• Aug. 9-12 — DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 2026, Defense Intelligence Agency

• Aug. 11-13 — Space & Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Alabama

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

Share

One idea for the U.S.-Iran war that appears to be gaining traction on Capitol Hill and in some national security circles: Simply declare victory and stop fighting.

… Mr. Wolfgang and Mr. Taylor dive into why this may be geopolitically difficult for President Trump on the Threat Status podcast episode that dropped this morning.

… The war continues to expand across three fronts, and Iran’s military said Friday it had struck two oil tankers attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

… The U.S. Army says it has tested the “Hammer of the Gods” powerful electronic signal-scrambler designed to disrupt the navigation and communications equipment used by enemy drones and missiles.

… The new U.S. ambassador in Seoul was born in South Korea and speaks fluent Korean and Japanese, which could be critical in navigating the occasionally sticky three-way U.S.-South Korea-Japan security alliance against China and North Korea.

… A new analysis on NATO by Harvard’s Belfer Center says there are “encouraging signs that European governments are responding to American pressure to spend more on defense and accelerate weapons procurement.”

… A spiraling border crisis has seen some 60,000 migrants cross from Morocco into Ceuta, a small Spanish territory in North Africa, with more than a dozen deaths reported.

… And the Trump administration has brought the first case in the U.S. Alien Terrorist Removal Court, seeking to oust an Afghan woman who prosecutors say supported her son’s ISIS-inspired plot to kill people on Election Day in 2024.

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Will Egypt be drawn into the U.S.-Iran war?

Egyptian officials said Thursday a drone attack one day earlier caused a fire aboard two vessels — a U.S.-owned storage facility and a Greek tanker — at the Mediterranean port of Damietta, confirming that the war between the U.S. and Iran has reached the one Arab state that had managed to stay on the sidelines.

Mr. Trump said Wednesday the incident in Egypt was “Iran-related.” Iranian officials are denying responsibility, saying the attack was a potential “false-flag” operation. Special Correspondents Jacob Wirtschafter and Waseem Abu Mahadi examine the situation in a dispatch from the region, where analysts remain unsure whether Tehran was behind the attack.

It’s notable that Egypt and Iran had agreed in February to restore full diplomatic relations and exchange ambassadors. “I rule out that Iran itself was the executor of the operation,” says Hany El-Aasar, executive director of the National Center for Studies, a Cairo think tank. Tehran, he said, has no interest in widening “the circle of its enemies” or in spending “the positive development it has reached in its bilateral relations with Cairo.”

New U.S. envoy facing thorny South Korea alliance

New U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Michelle Steel will have a crowded schedule as she takes on the role of representing Washington in Seoul, the capital of one of America’s most important military and economic allies on China’s periphery and in direct proximity to the North Korean nuclear threat.

Ms. Steel, 71, is a former Republican member of Congress from California. But she was born in South Korea, where her original name was Park Eun-joo. She lived with her parents in Japan before moving to the U.S. at age 19 and becoming a naturalized citizen. Her fluency in Korean and Japanese could be priceless in navigating the complexities of a country central to a region that lies in the shadow of China, North Korea and Russia.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports from Seoul on several contentious diplomatic issues on the immediate horizon. One is a regulatory brouhaha over a major 2025 data breach involving Coupang, a U.S.-listed company that does the bulk of its business in South Korea. Others include slow movements on both a U.S. promise to enable South Korean nuclear submarine construction and a South Korean pledge to invest $350 billion in the United States.

U.S. nuclear weapons agency upgrading blast detectors on GPS satellites

The National Nuclear Security Administration is upgrading sensors on GPS satellites that will better monitor nuclear blasts around the world, according to the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons agency.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reports that the agency sent the fifth, next-generation Global Burst Detector sensor system to the U.S. Space Force this month for future launch on new GPS satellites.

The nuclear agency said the new blast monitoring systems will be deployed as Russia issues nuclear threats in its war against Ukraine and China rapidly expands its nuclear forces beyond those normally needed for deterrence. North Korea also is expanding its nuclear stockpile and missile systems that are capable of striking the United States.

Ukraine envoy’s SOS: Need missiles

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna says her country faces a critical missile shortage as its push to drive out Russian invaders churns through a fifth violent year — and that Washington needs to stay focused on helping Kyiv reverse the shortage.

“This winter we need missiles,” Ms. Stefanishyna told reporters at a Thursday breakfast briefing in Washington hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “So many people will die over the winter” without them, she said.

Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn was at the breakfast, during which Ms. Stefanishyna acknowledged that Mr. Trump has given Ukraine the green light to manufacture its own interceptors for the Patriot missile system. The catch, she said, is that the program will only bear fruit somewhere from a year to five years from now.

Opinion: Trump’s tit-for-tat strikes will not defeat Iran’s regime

Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler asks the question: “Why are U.S. strikes always just a response to Iranian aggression?”

“The U.S. needs to finish the job with Iran, end these tit-for-tat strikes and start targeting what is left of the Iranian leadership, as they will never enter good faith negotiations,” writes Ms. Sadler, who adds that while the U.S. military has achieved “major tactical successes,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has taken advantage of every U.S. pause in military action and “is clearly not backing down.”

The “Shiite Islamist fundamentalism” of the Iranian regime means “absolute political and religious subordination to Iran’s supreme leader, with a mission to protect and spread Islamic revolutionary ideals beyond Iran’s borders to ultimately dominate the world,” she writes in her column. “There is no negotiating with this ideology.”

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Threat Status Events Radar

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

• Aug. 9-12 — DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 2026, Defense Intelligence Agency

• Aug. 11-13 — Space & Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Alabama

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

Share

Send tips to Defense and National Security Correspondent John T. Seward and National Security Editor Guy Taylor.

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The Pentagon said American forces “struck dozens” of Iranian military targets early Thursday, including command centers, missile and drone facilities and “coastal surveillance and defense sites.”

… Iran publicly hanged two men this week who were accused of attacking police during nationwide anti-government protests in January.

… The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on two Iranian entities that control traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

… A new tech-sharing agreement will let the Ukrainians produce the British-designed radar jammer Stone Clock for themselves.

… The Pentagon’s U.S. Central Command has officially launched “Task Force Talon Synapse,” a joint effort with the United Arab Emirates to accelerate the military’s development of artificial intelligence applications.

… Conversations at the Farnborough International Airshow focused more on new defense tech than on large-scale aircraft.

… Danti, the Georgia-based AI company that has U.S. Air Force and Space Force contracts and allows users to search satellite imagery and other geospatial data, has unveiled the next generation of its agentic intelligence platform.

… The Virginia-based defense tech giant Leonardo DRS is acquiring Raft, also a Virginia-based company. Raft’s open-architecture mission software specializes in multi-domain data fusion and AI for real-time situational awareness.

… And the Navy announced a $17 million contract this week for California-based Attalon to produce a new SONGBOW ship-based laser weapon.

The shift to AI-enabled warfare

The U.S. Army is pushing forward with its new Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) system after a successful test of a $3 billion prototype in the Mojave Desert. The AI-enabled system amounts to a massive overhaul of the Army’s communications and planning architecture, replacing previous and in some cases aging equipment with a combination of off-the-shelf components and advanced technologies.

Mr. Seward was on the ground at Fort Irwin, California, to witness the recent NGC2 testing. The Army’s Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve told reporters on Wednesday the system will boost the capability of soldiers and leaders in the field, not replace them.

NGC2 is being developed by a slew of U.S. defense tech contractors, including Anduril and Palantir. The system consolidates all of the available information on a battlefield in one place for commanders — and AI — to use for planning, targeting, intelligence and other operations.

Inside the new U.S.-Ukraine military drone partnership

New details are emerging on the preliminary U.S.-Ukraine drone production cooperation deal struck earlier this month, under which Ukrainian systems are to be sent to the Pentagon for testing as part of the U.S. military’s “Drone Dominance” program.

Threat Status Special Ukraine Correspondent Guillaume Ptak reports from Kyiv that the goal of the partnership is to turn Ukraine’s battlefield-tested drone industry into a resource for the U.S. military. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign the documents on July 22.

U.S. law requires production of American military systems to be anchored inside the United States. For Ukraine, the new agreement offers something Kyiv desperately lacks: the money and industrial scale needed to sustain a defense technology sector that is quickly outgrowing Kyiv’s ability to buy everything it can make.

Is Iran carrying out strikes on U.S. data centers in the Middle East?

Newly released satellite images appear to confirm Iran’s assertions that it carried out destructive strikes on commercial infrastructure around the region, including two Amazon Web Services data centers in Bahrain earlier this month.

Amazon has yet to confirm that the Bahrain attack took place or that the company’s facilities suffered any damage, but images originally published by Iranian state media reportedly show significant damage to two AWS data centers at Zallaq and Askar in Bahrain following an Iranian cruise missile attack. Those images have now been substantiated by a set of lower-resolution photos from the European Space Agency reviewed by Bloomberg analysts.

While it’s unclear if the U.S. was using the AWS centers for military or intelligence purposes, the development is fueling unease. “Commercial cloud facilities were never designed to sit inside a kinetic threat environment, and now they are being treated as legitimate military targets,” says Laurynas Satas, CEO of the Lithuania-based defense tech firm Aktyvus Photonics. Threat Status previously reported that defense contractor Anduril, a company that works closely with AWS, had its data centers attacked in the Middle East.

Congress wants Pentagon reports on missile shortages

The House-passed version of the 2027 defense authorization and policy bill has a section that calls for the Pentagon to report to Congress on whether the U.S. military has a dangerous shortage of missiles and anti-missile interceptors because of the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and other “unplanned global taskings.”

The Pentagon would be required under the legislation to produce quarterly reports to assure Congress that “deterring China and maintaining a favorable balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific region is a strategic priority of the United States,” according to a House report on the $1.1 trillion 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

The House version of the bill would also require the director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff to clarify the impact that contingency deployments and diverted assets have on U.S. military operations worldwide. This comes amid reports that President Trump paused some strikes on Iran due to concerns that escalation would lead to dangerous shortfalls in anti-missile interceptors and limit U.S. hard power projection capabilities in other theaters, including the Pacific.

Opinion: Hyperscale data center ban reeks of politics, hurts Americans

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul “handed Beijing a win” in the race for AI supremacy by signing the ban this month, according to Chuck Flint, who writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times that genuine concerns among Americans have been “amplified by geopolitical adversaries pumping our social media channels with propaganda as part of cognitive warfare.”

Mr. Flint, who suggests the development may be tied to a Chinese influence campaign to turn Americans against data center construction, writes that “President Trump was on Ms. Hochul within a day … telling her to reverse course immediately.

“Other states are watching,” writes Mr. Flint, the executive director of the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity. “Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Vermont and Virginia all have moratorium bills pending, and every one of those legislatures is waiting to see whether New York pays a price.”

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Threat Status Events Radar

• July 30 — Future of U.S. Land Power: Under Secretary of the U.S. Army Mike Obadal, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

• Aug. 9-12 — DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 2026, Defense Intelligence Agency

• Aug. 11-13 — Space & Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Alabama

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

Thanks for reading NatSec-Tech Thursdays from Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, John T. Seward or Guy Taylor are here to answer them.

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Jordan intercepted missiles launched from Iran early Wednesday after U.S. and Saudi forces pounded Tehran-backed proxies in Iraq.

… Iran condemned the U.S.-Saudi airstrikes, while Ukrainian authorities warned of a convergence between their war with Russia and the war gripping the Middle East.

… Kyiv separately says it hit a major Russian oil refinery after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

… Tehran, meanwhile, says countries that accept its frozen funds to pay for damage to attacked commercial ships will be barred from using the Strait of Hormuz.

… An NK Pro analysis of satellite images indicates that North Korea has built and then buried a new facility at its main factory producing short-range ballistic missiles for Russia.

… The U.S. Coast Guard has awarded a $9.8 million contract to Orion Construction to build housing and a maintenance support facility in Seward, Alaska.

… A Chinese military scientist covertly sent vials of a coronavirus to a Minnesota laboratory in 2018, according to declassified documents released by a U.S. Senate committee.

… Human trafficking in Asia’s cyber-scam compounds is “surging,” with the end target American families, according to a new United Nations report highlighting the role of Chinese crime syndicates.

… And a major new survey shows 58%-60% of young Africans are optimistic about Trump-era outcomes but that China is more trusted on the continent.

Are the Ukraine and Iran conflicts merging into a single major war?

The Ukrainian military’s successful drone strike on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that Kyiv says was transiting weapons components from Russia to Iran has underscored the growing convergence between the most active wars raging on the world stage.

Tehran, which for years has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in exchange for strategic backing from Moscow, is threatening direct counterstrikes against Ukrainian targets. Ebrahim Azizi, the chairman of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote on X that “Ukraine may soon come to understand that Iran does not leave its actions unanswered.”

Mr. Zelenskyy is pushing the narrative that the U.S.-Iran war and the Ukraine-Russia war are two fronts in a global conflict against autocratic states, asserting that Kyiv has “recorded active Russian satellite surveillance” over the Middle East that Moscow has provided to Tehran to help Iranian forces more accurately monitor and target American assets in the region.

Middle East war churns as Iran’s proxies in Iraq take center stage

U.S. and Saudi Arabian forces struck sites in eastern Iraq on Tuesday after Iran-backed militias used those locations to launch drone attacks across the region, Pentagon officials said. The strikes came just hours after the American military said it repelled a surprise Iranian missile attack targeting U.S. troops.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said in a statement that “all Iranian missiles were successfully intercepted.” Riyadh, meanwhile, said its forces shot down drones fired by Iran-backed militias in Iraq that attempted to target oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.

The back-and-forth strikes ended a brief pause in the U.S.-Iran war, which has drawn in countries across the Middle East. Despite a renewed U.S. bombing wave, Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq and Yemen retain stockpiles of missiles and drones that can target American and allied forces in the region.

North Korea safe in its nuclear fortress while Iran reels from aerial attacks

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s ever-evolving nuclear deterrent, which was once bolted onto land-based launch systems, is now shifting toward a “nuclear triad” of ground-, sea- and air-based assets. Asia Editor Andrew Salmon, who is based in South Korea, writes that Mr. Kim’s pursuit of such a shift looks increasingly prudent when viewed within the context of the situation in Iran, which is armed with only conventional non-nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s nuclear triad pursuit expands Pyongyang’s strategic options, upgrades second-strike capabilities and enables better dispersal and concealment of assets, reducing vulnerability to incoming strikes. It’s an aggressive, costly strategy, but one that analysts say has been validated by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, in which Iran has been pummeled by waves of Israeli and American airstrikes.

Mr. Kim and his late father, who oversaw the country’s first nuclear detonation in 2006, may have managed, despite the colossal costs of their program, to have attack-proofed one of the world’s most repressive regimes, a foreboding lesson for the West as authoritarian governments around the globe take note.

Opinion: Time to address the North Korean nuclear threat

North Korea is “now strategically closer to Russia and China than at any other time since the Korean War,” according to Joseph R. DeTrani, who writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times that “the United States is doing nothing to challenge the growing power of the axis of authoritarians: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

“The irony is that North Korea has, since 1994, wanted a normal relationship with the U.S., yet the U.S. appears incapable of addressing the North Korean nuclear threat,” writes Mr. DeTrani, a former associate director of national intelligence and opinion contributor to Threat Status.

“On July 19, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and declared that North Korea ‘stands by Moscow until victory in the war with Ukraine is achieved. Ties with Russia are a strategic priority for Pyongyang,’” he writes. “I worked with Ms. Choe, a fluent English speaker, from 2003 to 2016, and I know that she and others would prefer to engage in dialogue with the U.S.”

Opinion: How to break Iran’s terrorist regime

Mr. Trump has stated repeatedly that Iran’s rulers “must never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, but he has not clearly explained why, so let me put it bluntly: They would use them,” Clifford D. May writes in his column for The Times.

“Iran’s rulers are self-proclaimed Islamic revolutionaries and the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism,” writes Mr. May, also a Threat Status opinion contributor and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “For 47 years, they have vowed ‘Death to America!’ If they obtain nuclear warheads and missiles that could deliver them to American cities, why would they refrain?

“If you think they would not dare because, in retaliation, we would strike back with our own nukes, think again,” he writes. “These are jihadis who, for decades, have been murdering their own people, including dissidents, religious minorities and women who have failed to cover their hair as the mullahs prefer.”

Threat Status Events Radar

• July 29 — North Korea’s Post-Party Congress Economic Course and Implications for the Korean Peninsula, Stimson Center

• July 30 — Responding to Global Threats: A Conversation with Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, Hudson Institute

• July 30 — Future of U.S. Land Power: Under Secretary of the U.S. Army Mike Obadal, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• July 30 — The Board of Peace’s Gaza Plan: Broken or Working as Intended? Arab Center Washington, D.C.

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

The possible U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal and the prospect of Israel-Saudi normalization loom large over the Trump-Netanyahu summit.

… President Trump is also meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who like Mr. Netanyahu, is in town for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral.

… Rep. Pat Harrigan, North Carolina Republican, says he’s worried about long-term “unintended consequences” that could emanate from the Pentagon’s move toward taking financial stakes in private companies.

… The Pentagon has formally begun its “European Posture Review” of NATO to determine the future level of U.S. troops and firepower necessary to meet America’s commitments as a NATO ally.

… International Monetary Fund President Kristalina Georgieva says conservative Argentine President Javier Milei has restored market confidence in the South American nation.

… Mr. Milei, who swept into office in 2023, has separately garnered attention for pushing back at China’s space-base operations in Argentina.

… The Pentagon’s U.S. Central Command has officially launched “Task Force Talon Synapse,” a joint effort with the United Arab Emirates, to accelerate the military’s development of artificial intelligence applications.

… And no tsunami was detected following a major earthquake that shook southern Japan on Tuesday.

Navy carrier strike group patrolling tension-filled South China Sea

The U.S. Navy has deployed the USS George Washington and its advanced F-35 jets to the contested South China Sea amid growing tensions between the Philippines and China. U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Lee Lipton says the carrier strike group is “upholding FREEDOM of Navigation and Overflight in the South China Sea.”

The deployment comes after a recent confrontation between Chinese coast guard ships and Philippine vessels that resulted in injuries to a Filipino seaman along with a harsh denunciation by the State Department of Chinese maritime bullying.

The Chinese coast guard injured a Philippine service member during a clash July 20 near the Philippine-occupied Second Thomas Shoal. Philippine military personnel from a grounded naval vessel being used as a base at the shoal had launched two inflatable boats to intercept Chinese coast guard vessels when the confrontation took place.

Harrigan fears ‘unintended consequences’ of Pentagon’s investment stakes in defense firms

The Pentagon’s plan to take financial stakes in private companies could inflict long-term “unintended consequences” on the U.S. defense industry, Rep. Harrigan, a rising star on the GOP national security policy landscape, says in an exclusive interview on the latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast.

Mr. Harrigan, a combat-decorated Green Beret, is the latest high-profile Republican to raise questions about the administration’s deepening financial footprint in the private defense sector. Some critics say the arrangements could unfairly tip the scales toward certain companies and, in the long run, erode market competition and make it harder for the military to obtain the munitions and raw materials it needs.

“I’m not comfortable with it at all, and I haven’t been comfortable with it since it began,” Mr. Harrigan told Threat Status. “I think it’s brilliant in the sense that it solves legitimate short-term problems that we have, but I think the long-term problem that it creates in anti-competitiveness is going to boomerang around to bite the defense industry right in the rear end.”

Inside Zelenskyy’s warnings about DPRK-Russia plans

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned in recent days that North Korea is preparing to deploy 30,000 fresh troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Since June, preparations have been underway in Russia’s Voronezh region to receive them,” Mr. Zelenskyy wrote on X on July 25. Voronezh, a transportation hub southeast of Moscow, lies about 95 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports from South Korea that Russia needs combat troops, and North Korea, with the world’s fourth-largest army, has more than 1 million active troops. The economically-challenged regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, meanwhile, has been selling so many arms to Russia that the value of the exports over three years likely exceeds its annual gross domestic product.

Mr. Zelenskyy has said Kyiv also learned that Russia is preparing another round of its own mobilizations, claiming Moscow has enlisted 221,000 soldiers this year and sustained nearly 225,500 losses. A recent visitor to the Russian Far East told The Times that recruiting stations are open around the clock in a bid, apparently, to lure late-night candidates for the armed services — especially those who might be under the influence of alcohol.

Will the Trump-Netanyahu summit produce a breakthrough?

Mr. Trump’s high-stakes White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday — the first face-to-face between the two since the February commencement of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran — comes amid mounting uncertainty over the war’s future and the prospect that an Israel-Saudi normalization may be on the horizon.

“For President Trump, the meeting with Netanyahu will be all about making sure that Israel stays in line with U.S. strategy toward Iran,” says Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council. “Since the start of the war, we’ve seen Washington and Jerusalem drift apart on how they see the Iranian problem and how each would like the current war to be concluded.”

Mr. Trump last week offered a major nuclear deal to Iran-rival Saudi Arabia on the condition the Saudis join the Abraham Accords and officially recognize Israel as a country. Riyadh has long said such recognition will only happen if the Israelis guarantee the creation of an independent Palestinian state — an unlikely prospect as long as Mr. Netanyahu remains in power in Jerusalem.

Opinion: Beijing’s new law claims the right to punish U.S. citizens

A new Chinese law “claims the right to punish people who have never set foot in China,” according to Stan Kwiatkowski, who writes in an op-ed for The Times that the “most alarming provision … states that organizations and individuals outside China who ‘undermine ethnic unity’ are to be pursued for legal responsibility.”

“Amnesty International has warned that this clause could be used as a tool for transnational repression, and the vagueness is the point,” writes Mr. Kwiatkowski, a political commentator and host of the YouTube channels “Hard News” and “Freedom Is Not Free.”

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has warned the Chinese law codifies Beijing’s policies to erase the religion, culture and language of minority groups both inside and outside China. Mr. Kwiatkowski writes that the U.S. “must do everything it can to shield its residents from Beijing’s reach.”

Threat Status Events Radar

• July 29 — The Democratic Republic of Congo at a Crossroads: Presidential Succession and Conflict in the East, Brookings Institution

• July 29 — North Korea’s Post-Party Congress Economic Course and Implications for the Korean Peninsula, Stimson Center

• July 30 — Responding to Global Threats: A Conversation with Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, Hudson Institute

• July 30 — Future of U.S. Land Power: Under Secretary of the U.S. Army Mike Obadal, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• July 30 — The Board of Peace’s Gaza Plan: Broken or Working as Intended? Arab Center Washington, D.C.

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

Share

The Iranian ship that was attacked Saturday by Ukraine in the Caspian Sea contained components for drones and missiles on their way to Iran, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel.

… The Russian navy is forming drone units to counter Ukrainian strikes in the Black and Azov seas.

… The Pentagon on Monday announced major new deals with L3Harris and Lockheed Martin to expand production capacity for Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile systems.

… NBC News reported Friday that U.S. military commanders have been selectively intercepting Iranian attacks to preserve diminishing weapons stocks.

… The Trump administration says it “inherited” a depleted supply of weapons.

… The 43-year-old new leader of Ukraine’s military belongs to a younger generation of officers whose formative combat experience came after Russia’s first invasion in 2014.

… Two mosques in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were set on fire over the weekend in an apparent Israeli settler attack.

… Former Cuban President Raul Castro was conspicuously absent from a major communist revolution rally on Sunday.

… The Coast Guard cutter Healy, a polar icebreaker and the largest vessel in the service, was towed to Seattle on July 13 after a breakdown.

… And National Guard troops deployed to Washington for the Trump administration’s crime crackdown initiative are being moved out of hotels and into apartments.

Knife-edge tensions continue in Middle East war

A pause in military strikes by both U.S. and Iranian forces held for a third day Monday after weeks of escalation in the war. Regional sources say mediators led by Qatar and Pakistan scrambled for a third day and made some progress toward returning U.S. and Iranian officials to the negotiating table.

The developments come weeks after the violent collapse of the major ceasefire and memorandum of understanding deal that President Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed last month. Tensions reached a crescendo last week with an attack by Iran-backed Houthi militants on Saudi oil assets and a retaliatory Saudi strike that hit a port in Yemen’s Houthi-held city of Hodeidah.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz says American military action remains a possibility. “What the president is doing right now, as we’ve seen all along, is giving the talks some space,” Mr. Waltz told NBC‘s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Talks are ongoing. They’re happening at every level, from the more technical aspects of it all the way to the highest levels.”

NATO fighter jets down another suspected Russian drone

Two Romanian F-16 fighter jets scrambled from an air base under NATO’s operational command Sunday and shot down a suspected Russian drone that had crossed into the Eastern European country’s airspace.

It was the third such incursion and interception in as many days in Romania, which is both a NATO ally and European Union member nation. Romanian President Nicusor Dan said one of the drones intercepted in recent days appears to be “a Shahed type, used by the Russian Federation in the war of aggression against Ukraine,” according to The Associated Press.

Before the last three interceptions, Romanian jets shot down a drone in the skies above Estonia in May, according to Mr. Dan. Romanian pilots and planes are based in Lithuania, from where they have broad strike capabilities as part of NATO’s force posture.

Japan is launching a new intelligence agency

Japan is set to launch a new counterintelligence agency, the National Intelligence Bureau, and hold the first meeting of its new National Intelligence Council on Friday. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will chair the inaugural meeting of the 10-member NIC. Kazuya Hara, director of Cabinet intelligence and a former senior police official, will lead the new NIB.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports that the moves by Tokyo to upgrade intel collection, analysis and sharing may be overdue. The Royal United Services Institute, a British defense think tank, in June dubbed Japan a “spy paradise” for its lax counterintelligence and related laws.

According to a Sunday editorial in Kyodo News, Japan’s agencies lack appropriate numbers of analysts and, due to a culture notoriously embedded in the nation’s bureaucracies, do not share intelligence beyond their own silos.

Opinion: How to break the Iran war deadlock

International law “need not be an obstacle; it can be an asset to America’s political objectives,” according to James S. Gilmore III, who writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times that “we must go back to international law, adhere to it and insist that Iran do the same.

“I also propose adding a diplomatic initiative,” writes Mr. Gilmore, a former governor of Virginia and former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“President Trump should convene a conference of the nations of the world to call on Iran to surrender its aspirations to control the Strait of Hormuz and restore it to its proper status as an open waterway under international law,” he writes. “That conference would rally the world to constrain Iran. Every nation has a stake in the global oil and fertilizer markets. No nation would choose to be held hostage by Tehran.”

Opinion: America should invest in Ukraine’s Black Sea deep-water gateway

While war continues in eastern Ukraine, a project is taking shape in the country’s south that could define Ukraine’s future for decades: a deep-water seaport known as the Berezan Port project.

“For Ukraine, the project provides an opportunity to rebuild its industrial base near a modern, private, world-class shipping hub,” writes Jon Queen, CEO of Berezan Port LLC. “For the United States, it is an opportunity to secure a position in the strategically vital Black Sea region and gain access to resources that America urgently needs.”

Mr. Queen writes in an op-ed for The Times that “the United States and its allies should view Berezan Port as a strategic investment in the postwar order of the Black Sea.”

Threat Status Events Radar

• July 29 — The Democratic Republic of Congo at a Crossroads: Presidential Succession and Conflict in the East, Brookings Institution

• July 29 — North Korea’s Post-Party Congress Economic Course and Implications for the Korean Peninsula, Stimson Center

• July 30 — Responding to Global Threats: A Conversation with Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, Hudson Institute

• July 30 — Future of U.S. Land Power: Under Secretary of the U.S. Army Mike Obadal, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• July 30 — The Board of Peace’s Gaza Plan: Broken or Working as Intended? Arab Center Washington, D.C.

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

Thanks for reading Threat Status. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

Share

President Trump has drawn a furious response from Iran with his assertion that commercial shippers attacked in the Middle East should be compensated by frozen Iranian assets.

… The Pentagon just inked a nearly $7 billion software consolidation contract with Oracle.

… Steve Bowsher, CEO of CIA-backed venture capital fund and nonprofit In-Q-Tel, says “we are witnessing a profound transformation in the way wars are fought.”

… Joseph Wu, the secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council, says the “scale and regularity of Chinese military activity around Taiwan make complacency impossible.”

… Colombia’s conservative president-elect says he wants to restart the U.S.-backed “Plan Colombia” and create a Medellin-based regional training center against drug trafficking and transnational threats.

… The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will impose tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 countries that failed to enforce bans on goods produced with forced labor.

… And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has tallied nearly 600,000 deportations since Mr. Trump took office.

Podcast exclusive with Rep. Pat Harrigan: Should Trump de-escalate in the Middle East?

Rep. Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican and rising star on the GOP’s national security policy landscape, weighs in during an exclusive interview on the latest Threat Status podcast on whether Mr. Trump should declare victory and end the Iran war.

“You can logically make an argument and follow what Ronald Reagan did in 1984, following the Beirut, Lebanon, bombing, where we lost 241 American service members, where they just concluded we’re going to continue having problems in this region as long as we are there,” says Mr. Harrigan, a West Point graduate and a former Army Special Forces Green Beret who served two tours in Afghanistan.

“What would that de-escalation do right now? Well, it would certainly relieve pressure on global energy markets,” he says. “It would relieve pressure on our regional allies that are being harassed by Iran. It would take this out of the forefront of the media for the November election. And it would keep our troops out of harm’s way in the short term. … Those are all significant positive impacts.”

Will the Saudis recognize Israel?

Mr. Trump clarified the terms of the potential U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal on Thursday, saying it won’t happen unless Riyadh formally recognizes Israel’s existence as a country and normalizes diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Mr. Trump also said that if the deal comes together, the Saudis would be prohibited from producing nuclear weapons.

The developments came a day after unease emanated from Israeli leaders and several Republican lawmakers over the deal that was hastily signed this week in Washington with few details made public. Meanwhile, the administration scrambled to underscore the U.S.-Saudi security partnership amid attacks on Saudi oil ships by Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea.

Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that the deal won’t go forward unless Riyadh joins the Abraham Accords, the 2020 agreements that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Kazakhstan have signed the accords, while Sudan signed the general declaration but has not completed bilateral normalization with Israel.

House defense bill seeks Pentagon report on CCP influence in South Korea

The $1.15 trillion version of the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill that was passed by the House this week calls on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to conduct an assessment of the Chinese Communist Party’s “malign influence” in South Korea and the intelligence risks it poses to American military forces based in the region.

The bill calls for the Pentagon to produce a report on the situation and include an assessment of the growth of Chinese technology companies in South Korea and whether they represent defense risks. A spokeswoman on Capitol Hill said the provision was added during markup of the bill last month and was sponsored by Rep. Ronny Jackson, Texas Republican.

The measure, which must be reconciled with a Senate version of the defense bill, reflects Republican concerns that the government of liberal South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is moving the country closer to its communist Chinese neighbor. China has been Seoul’s largest trade partner, just ahead of the United States, in recent years, despite the close U.S.-South Korea military treaty alliance.

U.S. military inks software consolidation contract with Oracle

The Pentagon announced the massive deal — worth nearly $7 billion over the coming decade — with American multinational technology behemoth Oracle late Thursday, covering the entire Defense Department, Coast Guard and intelligence community.

Oracle said the “Enterprise Software Initiative” deal will speed up the Pentagon’s procurement process. Under the deal, military departments, agencies, offices and their private-sector contractors “can expedite the procurement of Oracle commercial products and services,” the company said.

The deal comes at a crucial moment for Oracle, which saw its stock price drop by 39% so far this year. It also comes at a politically delicate time for the company’s co-founder and former longtime CEO, Larry Ellison, widely viewed as a close ally of Mr. Trump.

Opinion: Putin’s Ukraine war revives NATO’s original core mission

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “famously argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, sparked NATO’s rejuvenation and return to its core mission,” writes retired CIA Clandestine Services Officer Daniel N. Hoffman.

“European NATO members, especially, should have seen the ominous warnings when Mr. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014,” Mr. Hoffman, a regular opinion contributor to Threat Status, writes in a column for The Washington Times.

“They should also have seen it in Moscow’s transformation of defector Alexander Litvinenko into a polonium-210 human dirty bomb in downtown London in 2006 and in Russia’s 2018 use of a Novichok nerve agent against former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal,” he writes. “Yet it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his fellow citizens who awakened Europe from its post-Cold War slumber by courageously defending their nation against the Kremlin’s barbaric February 2022 invasion.”

Threat Status Events Radar

• July 24-29 — Project Convergence-Capstone 6, U.S. Army

• July 29 — The Democratic Republic of the Congo at a Crossroads: Presidential Succession and Conflict in the East, Brookings Institution

• July 29 — North Korea’s Post-Party Congress Economic Course and Implications for the Korean Peninsula, Stimson Center

• July 30 — Responding to Global Threats: A Conversation with Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, Hudson Institute

• July 30 — Future of U.S. Land Power: Under Secretary of the U.S. Army Mike Obadal, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• July 30 — The Board of Peace’s Gaza Plan: Broken or Working as Intended? Arab Center Washington, D.C.

• Aug. 4 — Navigating the Strait of Hormuz Energy Crisis: Global Policy Responses, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 4 — Taiwan’s Ever-Changing Security Environment, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

Thanks for reading Threat Status.

And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang are here to answer them.

Go Inside the Ring. Click here for the new weekly newsletter from Bill Gertz, delivered every Thursday morning.

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U.S. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein is slated to give a Golden Dome update at next month’s Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

… The new Dark Eagle hypersonic missile deployed by the U.S. military to Guam moves at 17 times the speed of sound.

… Speculation is swirling over whether the U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal will require Riyadh to commit to unannounced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

… Allowing Saudi uranium enrichment gives Riyadh a “potent source of leverage to extract future concessions from Washington,” warns Rosemary Kelanic, the head of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.

… Here’s a look inside the new agreement for Ukraine to export drones to the U.S. for military testing.

… The Federal Communications Commission has extended “exceptions” relating to drones and drone components on the Pentagon’s “Blue AUS List.”

… The U.S. “will make Southeast Asia a focus for American AI exports” under an initiative called “AI Spark” announced at this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

… BAE Systems held a major “plugfest” near Detroit for software companies to test interoperability and “open systems architecture standards that are reshaping how defense technology is designed and delivered.”

… And this week’s disclosure that OpenAI’s tech acted on its own in an unprecedented hack of AI startup Hugging Face adds to growing concern over the messy intersection between AI and cybersecurity.

Army deploys new hypersonic missile to Guam

The U.S. Army’s Seventh Infantry Division on Sunday posted a photo online of Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, leader of the U.S. Pacific Command, walking next to the new Long Range Hypersonic Weapon — the formal name for the U.S. Army’s newest ultra-high speed missile, which is also known as Dark Eagle.

PACOM spokesman Army Maj. Jimmy Sheehan told Stars and Stripes, which first reported the deployment, that the photo was taken during the Valiant Shield exercise that wash held on Guam last month. but he did not say if the missile system remains on the island.

Dark Eagle missiles can travel a speeds up to 17 times the speed of sound — fast enough to evade missile defense systems — and have a range of about 2,175 miles — enough to reach targets in China. The new missile is one of the first hypersonic weapons that Adm. Paparo has called for deploying to better deter China, which also has deployed hypersonic missiles, specifically the DF-17 road-mobile missile.

Lockheed pushes lower-cost Patriot interceptors at Farnborough

Lockheed Martin is developing lower-cost interceptors to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles and cheap drones that have caused havoc on battlefields in Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. defense industry giant unveiled the Patriot PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector this week at Britain’s Farnborough International Airshow near London.

Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn offers a deeper dive on the ACE, which Lockheed says is designed to defeat a wide range of threats for less than half the cost of a PAC-3 Missile System Engagement, which costs about $4 million per missile.

Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a statement that developing and producing the interceptor with European partners will create a shared, interoperable system that strengthens NATO’s transatlantic defense posture.

Ukraine’s Patriot missile license deal ‘poster child’ for U.S. defense industrial base problems

For Ukraine, it could be a much-needed lifeline. But for the U.S., giving Kyiv a license to produce its own Patriot missiles underscores the erosion of production capabilities across the American defense industrial base.

On the latest episode of the Threat Status podcast, Miles Arnone, CEO of Re:Build Manufacturing, explains how the once-mighty U.S. defense industry is now struggling to manufactire critical weapons systems at scale — including the Patriot batteries that have become crucial elements of Ukraine’s defense against Russian ballistic missile attacks, as well as the last line of defense for Gulf allies against incoming Iranian missiles.

Ukraine has pleaded for more Patriots, made by U.S. firms Lockheed Martin and RTX. But the Trump administration says it will give Ukraine a license to build them, viewing that as a better option than attempting to rapidly scale up production in America.

“It’s a poster child for the problem that we have from all of this deindustrialization that we’ve allowed to happen,” Mr. Arnone said of the Patriot licensing decision. “We literally have a product in super high demand that we have unique capability to design and make — and we can’t produce it.”

Kyiv to export drones to U.S. for testing

Washington and Kyiv have signed a preliminary agreement for testing by the U.S. military, which seeks access to Ukrainian drone innovations for the Pentagon’s “Drone Dominance Initiative,” a $1 billion program to purchase 200,000 small, lethal drones by 2027.

The preliminary agreement, first reported Wednesday by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, marks a major shift in Ukraine’s relationship with the West, as it evolves from being purely a recipient of military aid to a respected producer of defense technology.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington hosted a memorandum of understanding signing ceremony Wednesday between UFORCE, a Ukrainian company that designs and manufactures aerial, ground and maritime drones, and Oregon-based RECONCRAFT, which focuses on high-performance vessels for military, law enforcement and search-and-rescue operations.

Opinion: When AI annihilates American civil liberties

Hundreds of millions of license plates in the United States are being tracked by something called “Flock,” and most people do not even know it, according to Dylan Oliver, who writes in a Washington Times op-ed that advanced license plate-reading Flock cameras are being used by law enforcement agencies and municipalities across the United States.

AI surveillance is spreading, leaving us all at risk of government overreach, writes Mr. Oliver, the social media manager at The Alliance for Secure AI. He adds: “Three-quarters of American voters now support limits on AI surveilance, opposing the indiscriminate monitoring of civilians that we see today.

“They are worried because AI is clearly making it easier for the federal, state and local governments to violate our constitutional rights,” Mr. Oliver writes. “As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, Flock has created a ‘dangerous nationwide mass-surveillance infrastructure’ that tracks U.S. citizens without a warrant, ‘expand[ing] beyond the uses for which it is initially justified.’”

Threat Status Events Radar

• July 23-29 — Project Convergence-Capstone 6, U.S. Army

• July 23 — The Path Ahead for U.S.-South Korea Shipbuilding, Stimson Center

• July 24 — Taiwan’s National Mobilization Against the China Threat, Hudson Institute

• July 29 — North Korea’s Post-Party Congress Economic Course and Implications for the Korean Peninsula, Stimson Center

• July 30 — The Board of Peace’s Gaza Plan: Broken or Working as Intended? Arab Center Washington D.C.

• July 30 — U.S.-North Africa Relations in an Era of Strategic Disruption, Stimson Center

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute

Thanks for reading NatSec-Tech Thursdays from Threat Status. Don’t forget to share it with your friends who can sign up here. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’ve got questions, John T. Seward and Guy Taylor are here to answer them.

Go Inside the Ring. Click here for the new weekly newsletter from Bill Gertz, delivered every Thursday morning.

The Trump administration signaled Wednesday morning that it may announce a major deal to allow Saudi Arabia to develop a nuclear program. The development comes a day after Mr. Trump threatened to bomb Iran-backed Houthi militants if they try to impose a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia — a key U.S. security partner and the primary Sunni Muslim Arab rival to Shiite Persian Iran.

A U.S.-Saudi agreement could have a pivotal impact on the wider security dynamics underpinning the ongoing war in the Middle East. The BBC reports the agreement could be worth billions of dollars to the American companies that would be involved in building a Saudi facility to produce enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants but also to make nuclear bombs.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday threatened to bomb the Houthis, who control much of southwestern Yemen and maintain effective command over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a critical waterway at the southern end of the Red Sea. The Saudis have relied on their East-West Pipeline to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, redirecting oil to the Red Sea port of Yanbu — a route now facing the Houthi threat.

Rubio warns Asian leaders to be wary of Iran’s moves

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Asian leaders Wednesday during a visit to the Philippines that if Iran is allowed to control and collect shipping tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, a “very dangerous precedent” will have been set that other authoritarian powers could replicate in geopolitical friction ports elsewhere around the world.

He made the assertion in opening remarks at the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Manila. Top diplomats from the U.S., China, Russia and several other countries are gathered in the Philippine capital for the summit.

The Associated Press reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Moscow would like to see a quick settlement between the U.S. and Iran. “There are those eager to incite each party to keep the conflict going,” Mr. Lavrov said. “But we aren’t one of those.”

State Department: Havana promoting communism in U.S., report warns

Cuba’s communist regime has been engaged in a long-term campaign of subversion in the United States through espionage and support for radicals and leftists, including black-clad Antifa street thugs and the organizers of riots in the wake of the death of George Floyd, according to a new State Department report.

Cuban intelligence “infiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists [and] backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil,” states the report, which asserts that Cuban operatives today are inside hundreds of front groups, activist organizations, solidarity centers and ideological nongovernment and nonprofit networks.

The report, titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism” and based on secret intelligence and open sources of information, also asserts that Cuba’s intelligence service continues to have “scores of still-unidentified agents” inside the U.S. government.

Japan’s defense minister calls for debate on nuclear arms

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, one of the higher-profile members of the hawkish Cabinet of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, is overseeing an expansion of defense ties across the Indo-Pacific amid growing Japanese concerns about China’s aggressiveness and America’s reliability. He is now also urging his countrymen to openly debate whether nuclear weapons have a role in Japan’s defense.

In comments last weekend, Mr. Koizumi cited France and Finland. He said France is expanding and dispersing its nuclear arsenal and offering protection to NATO allies. Finland last month voted to lift its ban on hosting nuclear weapons on Finnish soil, allowing allied nuclear arms for defensive purposes. China reacted harshly on Monday, saying that if Japanese authorities “stick to their miscalculations on the nuclear issue,” then the Japanese people “will eventually pay a heavy price.”

For decades after World War II, pacifist Japan was reluctant to speak or move forthrightly on defense. Since a reinterpretation of its constitution in 2014-2015, however, Japan has been beefing up its offensive assets, including acquiring F-35 carriers and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Now it is expanding defense and defense industrial relationships beyond traditional ally Washington.

Opinion: Defense companies should not have the Pentagon as a shareholder

Jed Babbin, a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator, takes issue with the recent revelations that the U.S. government, “through the Department of Defense, has purchased stock in more than 20 companies, including leaders in artificial intelligence and rare-earth mining.

“The government has not yet asserted ownership of any of these companies, but such nationalization could be only a step away,” Mr. Babbin writes in his column for The Times. “The problem is that the U.S. acquisition system is based on competition. Under the laws and regulations governing American procurement, offers must be solicited and evaluated in ‘full and open’ competition before a contract is awarded.

“So, how is the government supposed to decide between offerors if it owns a stake in one of the companies?” Mr. Babbin writes. “It cannot — and corruption is sure to follow.”

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