threats

The D Brief: New anti-drone office; Navy’s costly landing craft; EUCOM’s advice to industry; West Point purge; And a bit more.

Pentagon stands up new task force to coordinate anti-drone efforts. The Joint Interagency Task Force 401 will spearhead the acquisition and integration of air defense systems to take down small unmanned aerial systems, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday in a video.

That includes the department’s Replicator 2 project, Hegseth wrote in a Wednesday memo, adding that the group will “rapidly deliver Joint C-sUAS capabilities to America’s warfighters, defeat adversary threats, and promote sovereignty over national airspace.”

The memo also shuts down the five-year-old Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. “The JCO had great intentions but struggled to compel the different services and organizations to participate,” an Army official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told Defense One. “Whereas the JIATF will have a lot more ability to coordinate and compel.” Meghann Myers has more, here.

The U.S. Navy’s new landing craft cost 40% more than expected. The Ship-to-Shore Connector program from Textron Systems—the service’s next-generation Landing Craft Air Cushion (PDF)—is at risk of a congressionally-mandated termination of the program.

What happened: Labor, material, and supply chain costs have risen roughly 40 percent from their 2021 baselines, according to a Pentagon acquisition report declassified and cleared for public release on Aug. 21. A Nunn-McCurdy breach was formally declared in April. Now the Navy “is currently executing [the] required re-certification process” to assert to Congress “that the program is essential to national security.” That’s expected in October. 

What’s behind the spike: Textron has delivered 13 of the craft since 2012, including five since January 2024. But the Navy “entered into a follow-on construction contract with Textron in November 2024 to procure nine” more of the landing craft with money appropriated for fiscal years 2022 to 2024, the report says. A Nunn-McCurdy breach was declared shortly after the Navy awarded a $167 million contract for UK-based Rolls Royce engines in February 2025. So far, Congress has appropriated money for 35 of the landing craft, which leaves 22 still to be delivered. 

More reading:

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston and Lauren C. Williams. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida, killing more than 1,800 people and causing an estimated $125 billion in damages.

Trump 2.0

The Trump administration is pausing training at the federal government’s primary law enforcement academies for anyone not related to immigration enforcement, saying the change is necessary to meet the president’s “immediate priorities,” Eric Katz reported Thursday for Government Executive.

What’s going on: The administration is in the midst of surging 10,000 employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, creating unprecedented demand at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. Training needs could create bottlenecks as ICE seeks to rapidly onboard the new officers and agents, current and former officials have warned, and the administration is now taking drastic measures to avoid those pitfalls. 

After reporting the pause, DHS said in a statement it was “actively supporting training programs for many agencies during the surge,” as well state, local and international partners, “as space and resources allow.” It also noted that some training schedules may be adjusted to accommodate ICE’s needs, but it would restart those as early as possibly in fiscal 2026. More, here. 

Developing: After Trump was “disappointed” by the Army’s June parade in Washington, the “Navy is trying to plan a bigger celebration this fall, hoping for a shimmering spectacle with seacraft,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. 

Update: Trump’s Pentagon is reinstalling slaveowner Robert E. Lee’s portrait at West Point’s library, the New York Times reported Thursday. 

The 20-foot-tall portrait, “which includes a slave guiding the Confederate general’s horse in the background,” will go back up “three years after a congressionally mandated commission ordered it removed,” Greg Jaffe writes. 

Background: “What is important to remember is that the initial installation of the Robert E. Lee portrait had little to do with history. It was installed in the 1950s,” noted Civil War historian Kevin Levin. “To understand why you need to appreciate the vagaries of historical memory. The relevant history or context is the 1950s and not the 1860s.” How so? Levin continues: 

  1. “The Cold War created a need for a unified front against the perceived threat of the Soviet Union and communism. American history was framed to encourage a unified front that tolerated no dissent, which necessitated glossing over lingering tensions from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Memory of Lee played a vital role in this.”
  2. “The civil rights movement threatened this consensus view as white southerners brandished Confederate flags in the post Brown v. Board of Education period.”
  3. “By the mid-1950s the federal government was in the process of planning for the upcoming 100th anniversary or Centennial celebration of the Civil War. As part of Cold War culture this commemoration would push a reunion narrative with Lee at the center. Lee became the quintessential American.” He has a little bit more to say about the matter on Substack, and you can find that here. 

Second opinion: “I am a simpleton, but it does not make much sense to me to hang a picture of a literal traitor in the halls of your military learning institution,” Bloomberg’s Gerry Doyle wrote on social media. He added, “this is one of those things where ‘nuance’ is just a smokescreen obscuring the core issue, which is—again—that lee and the confederacy committed treason against the united states, and then got beaten soundly in the resulting war, which was about the legality of slavery.”

Additional reading: “Inside Pete Hegseth’s Civilian Purge at West Point,” via Jasper Craven, writing Thursday for Politico.

Federal judge: White House advisor Kari Lake can’t fire Voice of America director. NPR reports: “Instead, by law, Lake must have the explicit backing of an advisory panel set up by Congress to help insulate the international broadcaster and its sister networks from political pressure. As President Trump dismissed six of the seven members of the panel shortly after taking office and has not named their replacements to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Lake cannot take such an action.” Read on, here.

The ruling is a rare hiccup in the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle U.S. government efforts to shape global opinion, which Defense One’s Patrick Tucker wrote about earlier this year.

Additional reading: 

Ukraine developments

Test your arms and gear in Ukraine, NATO’s military chief urges companies. Too few defense contractors are testing their technology in real-world situations against a peer adversary, NATO’s military chief said Thursday, praising companies that are making the effort to work with the Ukrainian military. “Those few that have tried it have either learned a lot, or they’ve decided to go home because they can’t compete in that environment. But that is going to be the environment that we face,” said Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who leads U.S. European Command and serves as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He spoke virtually at an NDIA event. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more, here.

Industry opinion: “If you want to sell to European ministries of defense, to European militaries, they will want to know that your system is working in Ukraine, that you are testing it there, that you’re evaluating it there,” said Jan-Hendrik Boelens, CEO and co-founder of the Munich-based drone developer Alpine Eagle. 

Boelens helped create what Alpine Eagle calls its “Sentinel” counter-drone system, which they say is the world’s first air-to-air, counter-UAS system. He explains how the system works in a new Defense One Radio podcast interview you can find here. 

“Rather than just using drones to strike ground targets or provide aerial surveillance, what you can do is essentially equip these drones as fighter jets, both with small interceptors attached that can shoot down other drones, as well as with sensors to detect and track other drones,” Boelens said. 

“We deploy multiple drones in a coordinated fashion,” he said. “Some of them are carrying sensors, some of them are carrying effectors. Some of them are carrying both. And essentially, with the distributed sensor network that we deploy, we find the targets, then we make sure that a drone carrying an interceptor is putting itself into a firing position that maximizes the probability of actually hitting the target. And then when the target is within firing range and is locked, we launch the interceptor drone, pretty much like an air to air missile.”

The German military is working with Alpine Eagle as their “launch customer,” Boelens said. And that’s been especially useful for the Sentinel because “as soon as you give it to a customer, give it to a user, then things start to break. You start to find out what’s wrong, which assumptions were and were not correct. And that’s been extremely valuable.” Hear the rest of our 15-minute conversation over on Spotify or Apple podcasts. 

Pending U.S. arms sale to Ukraine: 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition missiles and 3,350 Embedded Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation Systems with Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module, for a total cost of $825 million. 

“Ukraine will use funding from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway and Foreign Military Financing from the United States for this purchase,” the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Thursday. Additional details, here. 

Update: Real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff’s go-it-alone diplomacy is frustrating U.S. and European officials, Politico reported Friday. His “solo approach has led to repeated miscues with Russia, leaving Trump’s pledge to quickly end the war between Russia and Ukraine adrift.” More, here.

Etc.

And lastly this week, here are several recent AI-related developments we noticed and thought we’d pass along: 

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August 29, 2025
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The D Brief: Ousted DIU chief’s legacy; Russian UAVs over Germany; DDG of drones?; Robot wingman takes flight; And a bit more.

Ousted DIU leader leaves behind a blueprint for faster tech. Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Beck, a champion of acquisition reform who was instrumental in the Pentagon’s push to rapidly build and deploy new technology, resigned Friday due to political pressure, Defense Department sources told Defense One’s Patrick Tucker. Pentagon officials had raised concerns about Beck’s political donations to Democrats, Reuters reported Monday.

Beck’s efforts had received broad endorsement from Republican lawmakers and SecDef Hegseth. A March memo from the Defense Secretary’s office essentially directed a scaling-up of DIU’s practices: removing barriers and contract restrictions so the services and the combatant commands can purchase new technology through streamlined contracts. The memo also gave DIU a central role in execution, directing the undersecretary for acquisition “in coordination with the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit” to produce an implementation plan.

In July, Hegseth doubled down with a second memo building on Beck’s efforts, “delegating authorities to procure and operate drones from the bureaucracy to our warfighters” and giving brigade commanders greater authority to buy new tech. The changes, which had been urged for years by lawmakers and government watchdogs, were made possible by Beck, one former official said. Tucker has more, here.

The 10-year-old DIU will be led in an acting capacity by Emil Michael, defense undersecretary for research and engineering, DOD officials have confirmed. 

Report: The final draft of the National Defense Strategy has been distributed in the Pentagon. Nikkei Asia says the 80-page document draws from Vice President JD Vance’s speeches and interviews and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby’s book Strategy of Denial.

ICYMI: “Civilian and uniformed Pentagon officials have said publicly that this administration is prioritizing the geographical United States in its national security policy, a departure from recent administrations—including Trump’s first—that have described conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific or terrorism in the Middle East as the biggest threats to America,” Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported earlier this month.

Podcast: Ohio State University’s Angus Fletcher uses his work with U.S. special operations forces to explain a new neuroscientific approach to intuition, imagination, emotion, and common sense. He talked with your D Brief-er for Defense One Radio’s Ep. 191: “Primal Intelligence.” Listen, here.

Could a flotilla of robot boats do the job of a destroyer? “We have a thesis in TF66 we call the ‘deconstructed DDG,” said Rear Adm. Michael Mattis, who leads an effort to figure out how low-cost, commercially available uncrewed systems might fit into the Navy’s Sixth Fleet. “We think that with 20 USVs of different, heterogeneous types, we could deconstruct a mission that a DDG could do. And we think we could do it at a cost point of essentially 1/30 of what a DDG would cost.” Mattis talked more about his team’s work Wednesday at the NDIA conference; Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has more of that, here. 

More reading:

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1867, U.S. Navy Capt. William Reynolds of USS Lackawanna formally seized possession of the Midway Atoll for the United States.

Around the Air Force

A second B-21 Raider bomber will likely fly by year’s end, joining the pre-production test aircraft that first flew in late 2023 and has since been flying up to twice a week. That news comes from Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, who spoke Wednesday at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute. Gebara added that the extra $4.5 billion for the aircraft provided in the reconciliation bill would go a “long way” to help move to full-rate production.

The three-star joined other military officials in suggesting that the Air Force may need to buy more than the planned 100 B-21s, but he said it will be a “long time” before the service comes to an official conclusion about that. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has a bit more, here.

Gebara added a rare public comment about the deployment of the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb. Asked about recent reports that American nukes are back in the UK after almost two decades, he declined to answer directly but said, “We now have F-35, 5th-gen sensor-fused aircraft, many of our allies purchasing the same aircraft, common training, common TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures], with our modernized B61-12 weapon that has been fully deployed throughout the continent.”

That almost, but not precisely, echoed what another senior nuclear-weapons official has said. “The new B61-12 gravity bombs are fully forward deployed, and we have increased NATO’s visibility to our nuclear capabilities through visits to our enterprise and other regular engagements,” Jill Hruby, who was then the administrator of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, said in January. 

No successor: Hruby stepped down as NNSA director at the beginning of the Trump administration. Brandon Williams, a former GOP congressman, was quickly named as her successor but has not been confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The NNSA website says an acting director is in place.

A “robot wingman” makes first flight. The YFQ-42A, General Atomics’ entry in the contest to build collaborative combat aircraft for the Air Force, took off Wednesday from its airport in Palmdale, California, according to a service press release. Anduril says its rival YFQ-44 will fly “soon.” Decker has more, here.

Related reading:

Trump 2.0

ICE and CBP agents want to stage out of a naval base north of Chicago (Naval Station Great Lakes) during the month of September “as part of President Donald Trump’s plan to target Chicago,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday. 

“These operations are similar to what occurred in Los Angeles earlier this summer. Same [Department of Homeland Security] team,” the base’s commander said in an email Monday. He also said “there is the potential to also support National Guard units,” adding, “Not many details on this right now. Mainly a lot of concerns and questions.”

One source told the paper that “about 30 to 40 ICE agents had been practicing riot control tactics at the military installation for months, using flash-bang grenades and marching in phalanxes with shields. The source said the planned operation would likely involve more agents than had been previously running drills, noting that the barracks can house 200 people.”

Second opinion: “We know that Donald Trump bringing in ICE and other federal enforcement to Chicago isn’t about ‘law and order’ because he is once again refusing to coordinate with our local officials,” said Army veteran and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois. She also called it “yet another unwarranted, unwanted and unjust move straight out of the authoritarian’s playbook that will only undermine our military’s readiness and ultimately weaken our national security.” 

And: “May I remind the President that deploying the military to Chicago, and derailing critical operations at Naval Station Great Lakes, would be both unhelpful and illegal,” Duckworth’s Senate colleague Dick Durbin said. Full story, here. 

Meanwhile, Reuters reports Trump’s police takeover and military occupation of the nation’s capital has yielded not one case “involv[ing] someone being charged with a violent offense” in the nearly two weeks since it began. 

Out of more than 500 criminal cases filed since August 11, “records show Trump’s anti-crime task force was involved in at least 69 local cases over the past two weeks, of which nearly half were comparatively minor offenses, including misdemeanors,” the wire service reported Wednesday. “The rest were felonies under the local D.C. code, not the more serious federal felonies that agencies usually handle. About half of those were for carrying a firearm without a license, possessing drugs with intent to distribute, or both.” More, here. 

ICYMI: “Just 38% of Americans support using troops for law enforcement in the U.S. capital, with 46% opposed,” Reuters reported Wednesday from new polling results. More than three-quarters of Republicans supported it compared to just 8% of Democrats. Among independents, “28% were in favor and 51% were opposed.” More, here. 

Hoagie-hurler update: Federal prosecutors could not get a grand jury to indict the Air Force veteran and Department of Justice employee who tossed a Subway sandwich at a CBP officer in Washington on August 13, shouting “fascists” and said, “I don’t want you in my city!”  

Why bring it up: “It is extremely unusual for prosecutors to come out of a grand jury without obtaining an indictment because they are in control of the information that grand jurors hear about a case and defendants are not allowed to have their lawyers in the room as evidence is presented,” the New York Times reports. “Prosecutors typically have 30 days to secure an indictment after a defendant is arrested. If they fail to do so within that window, they either have to reduce the charges to a misdemeanor or dismiss the case altogether.”

Update: Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center will “probably [be] going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said in an email last Friday, according to the Associated Press. 

Background: This new development comes “less than a week after a federal judge in Miami ordered the detention center to wind down operations, with the last detainee needing to be out within 60 days.” Florida officials have asked the judge to delay her deadline, pending an appeal. More, here. 

Additional reading: 

Russia’s Ukraine war

Russian drone and missile attacks killed at least 18 Ukrainians overnight, the Wall Street Journal reports from Kyiv, calling it “the worst death toll in the capital since Trump held talks in Alaska earlier this month with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.” 

At least four of those killed were children, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy said on social media. 

“Russia has no intentions of ending this war,” Finland President Alexander Stubb wrote on social media after Russia’s latest deadly attacks. And “Russia has not changed its main strategic aim of destroying the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” he stressed, and added, “Finland will continue to support Ukraine with all necessary diplomatic, financial and military efforts. For as long as it takes.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni: “The intense attacks on Kyiv this night demonstrate who stands on the side of peace and who has no intention of believing in the negotiating path. Our thoughts go to the Ukrainian people, to civilians, to the families of defenseless victims, including children, of the senseless Russian attacks.” 

New: Russians or their proxies are flying surveillance drones over eastern Germany, where the U.S. and its allies move weapons, the New York Times reported Thursday. “The flights, concentrated in the eastern German state of Thuringia, were also reported by WirtschaftsWoche, a German publication that has reported extensively on the [alleged Russian] sabotage campaign” throughout Europe since Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion began in 2022. 

“U.S. officials confirmed the flights but said they were unable to track their origin. They believe the drones have been flown by Russians or people working for Russian intelligence services,” the Times reports. More, here. 

Related reading: 

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August 28, 2025
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The D Brief: ‘Anything I want to do’; 2,234 Guardsmen in DC; USAF’s boom woes; War Department?; And a bit more.

President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday he has unlimited power, and that includes the power to send the military to any state or city he chooses, he told reporters at the White House. 

“I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States,” Trump said during a televised cabinet meeting that ran for more than three hours Tuesday. (Here’s a transcript, via Roll Call.)

Trump was reacting to public tension over the Pentagon’s reported plans to send troops into Chicago, which U.S. military officials have been planning for several weeks as a White House response to “crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration” in Illinois’ largest city, according to the Washington Post. If the governor of Illinois requests the Guard troops, the process would likely proceed somewhat quickly. But Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has been especially vocal about declining Trump’s desired Guard deployment to Chicago, saying at a Monday press conference on the matter, “Do not come, Donald Trump. You are neither wanted nor needed here in Illinois.” 

Additional context: Trump has “attacked the counterweights to his own authority in government, particularly focusing on Democratic governors and cities governed by Democratic mayors,” the New York Times reminds readers, and points out, “The president has not suggested sending troops to cities with higher crime in states that lean Republican.”

Also worth noting: “Although high crime rates have persisted for decades in Chicago, violent crime there has dropped since the pandemic, and murders are down by 50 percent since 2021,” the Times reports. And “Over the last year, crime has fallen in nearly every major category tracked by the Chicago Police Department.”

Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller: “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization,” the president’s top immigration advisor told TV personality Sean Hannity of Fox on Monday. “It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists,” he said, and insisted—using patriotic “purity” rhetoric of autocrats and dictators throughout history—the “Democrat Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens.” 

ICYMI: Every state in the National Guard already has “quick reaction forces,” Randy Manner, a retired Army two-star who has served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, told ABC News this week. 

But the new, specialized Guard troops Trump is demanding for each state in an executive order signed Monday? “They’re going to be there to police Americans,” Manner said.

Coverage continues below…

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1776, Revolutionary troops were flanked and defeated by a far larger British force in Brooklyn, but Gen. George Washington saved his army with a retreat to Manhattan.

Update: National Guard troops sent to the nation’s capital for “out of control” crime are now picking up trash and spreading mulch, NBC4 Washington and the Washington Post reported Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. 

“Normally the Park Service does that, but the administration laid off the workers,” Brad Heath of Reuters noted on social media. Additional video confirmed the troops’ activity, which Pentagon officials said two weeks ago would be a possibility. 

“Today here, we are right outside the waterfront. Had everyone with gloves and trash bags and all the materials they needed, and instructions to head out and pick up the trash,” a Guard soldier said in a video posted to social media over the weekend. 

“The joint task force had 2,234 members as of Monday morning, including 929 members of the D.C. National Guard and 1,305 members of the Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia National Guards,” NBC4 reports. 

Worth noting: “About half of U.S. adults, 53%, say they approve of Trump’s handling of crime…even as statistics show violent crime is down in Washington and across the nation following a coronavirus pandemic-era spike,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday, citing a survey of 1,182 U.S. adults conducted between August 21 and 25. 

Caveat: “The poll shows there is less public support for federal takeovers of local police departments, suggesting opinions could shift over the coming weeks or months, depending on how aggressively Trump pursues his threats.” Read more, here. 

Follow-up: Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said he agrees with Trump that the Defense Department’s name should be changed to the “War Department” because “George Washington started the Department of War because he wanted us to win our wars,” and “It’s not just about words; it’s about the warrior ethos,” he said during Trump’s three-hour cabinet meeting Tuesday. 

In case you missed it, Trump said Monday he wants to officially change the name “over the next week or so,” during remarks at the White House. “We’re just going to do it,” Trump said when asked if he has considered lawmakers’ opinions on the matter. ABC News has more from Hegseth’s remarks at the cabinet meeting. 

Balky booms: The refueling boom on the Air Force’s KC-46 tankers has been involved in three accidents that have cost tens of millions of dollars to repair. Two took place in 2022 and another last year, according to investigation reports released by the Air Force on Monday.

During the most recent of the mishaps described in the reports, a tanker’s boom got stuck in the fuel receptacle of a F-15E, then released with enough recoil to strike the tanker. The boom broke apart, resulting in $14 million in damages. That mishap was primarily caused by the boom operator’s control inputs, investigators found. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more, here.

Navy “looking forward” to F/A-XX builder decision. Now that Congress is moving to restore funding for the sixth-generation fighter jet, the service is waiting for Pentagon leaders to pick a company to build it, according to Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air Forces, speaking Tuesday at a CSIS event.

Background: In March, the Navy was reportedly close to picking a company to build F/A-XX, but an announcement never came, and the service ended up gutting funding for the aircraft in its 2026 budget request, throwing the program into limbo. But Congress is on track to reverse those cuts: Senate appropriators added $1.4 billion to F/A-XX in their draft defense spending bill and House appropriators added $972 million to their version. Decker has more, here.

Additional reading: 

Etc.

Trump-linked “covert operation” in Greenland? Officials in Denmark are reportedly aware that “at least three people with connections to President Donald Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday, relaying reporting from Danish public broadcaster DR. 

BBC: “DR’s report on Wednesday gave details of a visit by one American to Greenland’s capital Nuuk, saying he was seeking to compile a list of Greenlanders who backed US attempts to take over the island. The aim would be to try to recruit them for a secession movement.” 

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has summoned America’s top diplomat in Denmark, Mark Stroh, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Copenhagen, over the matter. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom [of Denmark] will of course be unacceptable,” Rasmussen told Time magazine.

“It is important for us to speak out very clearly against the United States,” Rasmussen told reporters Wednesday, according to Reuters. He called the allegations “completely unacceptable,” and added, “If anyone thinks they can influence it by creating a ‘fifth column’ or that type of activity, then it is contrary to the way states cooperate.” 

Additional reading: 

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August 27, 2025
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