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Promptware Kill Chain is a new five-step model that explains how attacks against AI systems powered by large language models (LLMs) behave more like full malware campaigns than one-off “prompt injection” tricks. It treats malicious prompts and poisoned…
A White House meeting produced plans for a U.S.-Denmark working group, but no change to Trump’s designs on the island.
Longstanding diplomatic agreements and existing U.S. base would permit military expansion.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland are visiting Washington today for talks with State Secretary Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance. The meeting follows nearly two weeks of escalating threats from President Trump about annexing Greenland, even if it requires using the U.S. military.
Preview: “We face a geopolitical crisis, and if we have to choose between the U.S. and Denmark here and now, then we choose Denmark,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told reporters in Copenhagen on Tuesday, while standing beside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “We stand united in the Kingdom of Denmark,” he added, according to Reuters.
Trump reax to Nielsen: “I disagree with him. I don’t know who he is, don’t know anything about him, but that’s going to be a big problem for him,” the president told reporters Tuesday.
The president repeated his insistence on seizing Greenland on social media Wednesday. “The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome [missile defense program] that we are building,” he wrote in his post, and again claimed Russia or China would take Greenland if the U.S. doesn’t, though no one has made that allegation other than Trump. “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable,” Trump said in the post.
Experts have repeatedly noted that seizure is unnecessary. “There’s a way for the Trump administration to get what it says it wants, and that’s mineral access and military bases, by doing something that should be normal,” Nick Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and U.S. ambassador to China, told TIME on Friday. “And that’s respecting Denmark, working with them diplomatically on the basis the Danes have suggested: ‘We are sovereign, but we welcome American investment and military presence’.”
See also: “I’m in Denmark’s Parliament. Mr. President, We’re Already on Your Side,” said Ida Auken, with nearly two decades’ experience in parliament, in an op-ed for the Times on Sunday.
Greenland POV: “We’re not going to sell our soul. We’re not stupid,” Pipaluk Lynge, leader of the Parliament’s foreign and security policy committee, told the New York Times, reporting Wednesday from the capital city of Nuuk. After traveling to “different parts of the territory” and speaking to many residents from “different walks of life,” the Times reports “people on the island don’t want to be recolonized by a new outside power, and that only a small minority has even the faintest flicker of interest in joining the United States.” Read more, here.
A U.S. military takeover of Greenland “will be the end of NATO,” said European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius told Reuters on the sidelines of a security conference in Sweden on Monday. “Who will recognise that occupation and what impacts on all the relationships in between the United States and Europe, including, for example, trade, where also Americans can face quite painful negative consequences?” he asked.
Kubilius said he did not think a Greenland invasion was likely, but noted “there is such an obligation of member states to come for mutual assistance if another member state is facing military aggression,” referencing the European Union’s treaty article 42.7 regarding mutual self-defense.
NATO’s former top military officer also said he believed Trump seizing Greenland by force would be “the end of NATO,” he told the New York Times on Monday. However, retired Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer said he thinks it’s more likely Trump is just using the threat as a negotiating tactic to compel more security resources for the arctic region.
Related new legislation on Capitol Hill: A bipartisan senate duo on Tuesday introduced a new bill they say is designed to keep Pentagon or State Department money from being used “to blockade, occupy, annex or otherwise assert control over the sovereign territory of a NATO member state without that ally’s consent or authorization.”
It’s called the “NATO Unity Protection Act,” and it comes from the desks of Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “This bill sends a clear message that recent rhetoric around Greenland deeply undermines America’s own national security interests and faces bipartisan opposition in Congress,” Shaheen said in a statement. “The mere notion that America would use our vast resources against our allies is deeply troubling and must be wholly rejected by Congress in statute,” Murkowski added.
European officials are waking up to a growing number of Russian-linked sabotage efforts across the continent (but not on Greenland), three researchers write in a new report from the London-based Royal United Services Institute. These attacks involve arson, vandalism, and attempted bombings, and have struck several countries including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and the UK. These Russian-linked efforts “are often carried out by ordinary individuals who are recruited via encrypted messaging apps and paid in cryptocurrency,” the authors warn in their report. In other words, “Hostile actors now outsource low-cost tasks to disposable individuals (or ‘agents for a day’) recruited online.”
In several cases, Russian ringleaders seem to be “exploit[ing] the presence of Ukrainian migrants, with the aim of provoking public distrust and political tension.”
Topline: “For NATO states, the challenge lies in addressing both the operational risks posed by these decentralised attacks and the broader strategic implications of a system deliberately structured to blend criminality, social manipulation and state-directed hybrid warfare.” The authors shared nearly two-dozen recommendations to help expose, educate and address the multifold threat these Russian sabotage operations pose for Europe and its allies. Find the full report, here.
And from the region: One of Europe’s largest ammunition makers is about to launch an initial public offering of around €30 billion, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. That would be Prague-based Czechoslovak Group, and their IPO announcement could come as soon as today.
That IPO is seen as “as part of a wave of European defence groups” looking “to capitalise on investor enthusiasm amid a significant sector rally,” FT writes. Others expected soon include Franco-German tank maker KNDS and British metal engineer Doncasters Group.
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1799, the young U.S. government ordered 10,000 muskets from inventor Eli Whitney, a deal that validated his interchangeable-parts manufacturing scheme—and pioneered defense contracts with provisions for “excusable delays.”
Three “meta trends” are reshaping warfare, INDOPACOM commander says. Information operations, cognitive operations, and cyber operations are key to keeping the U.S. military ready to face off against China, Adm. Sam Paparo, told a standing-room-only audience at the Honolulu Defense Forum. One way the command will prepare is by incorporating information operations into “every plan, every investment, every operation,” Paparo said. “We don’t bolt information operations on the end. We integrate and suffuse it from the very start.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reports from Hawaii, here.
Grok is in, ethics are out in Pentagon’s new AI-acceleration strategy.
Seven “pace-setting projects” will “unlock critical foundational enablers” for other U.S. military efforts, the department announced Monday in a six-page document that also directs the department’s many components to fulfil a four-year goal to make their data centrally available for AI training and analysis.
The new strategy directs efforts to remove all “blockers” to the expanded use of AI tools. It discards Biden-era mention of ethical use of AI and casts suspicion on the concept of AI responsibility.
It also bans the use of unnamed models with left-leaning “ideological ‘tuning’” while announcing plans for widespread access to the right-leaning Grok. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Pentagon networks, including classified ones, would enable access to the Elon Musk-owned, Saudi– and Qatari-backed AI chatbot noted for its partisan, even Nazi, slant and its willingness to create sexually explicit images of children. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports, here.
The Atlantic: “We asked the DOD if it endorsed xAI’s sexualized material or if it would reconsider its partnership with the company in response. In a statement, a Pentagon official told us only that the department’s policy on the use of AI “fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that “any unlawful activity” by its personnel “will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action.” Read that, here.
Related reading: “America’s Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem—Too Many Data Centers,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Update: U.S. military officials claim convenience, not “perfidy,” during their controversial first boat strike in September. The Defense Department used an “aircraft painted in civilian colors to carry out a lethal Sept. 2 strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean because the unit could be the quickest ready for the operation—not because it was trying to deceive the targets,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday after allegations of another possible war crime from that encounter surfaced in New York Times reporting the day prior.
It is perhaps worth noting, however, that on 29 August Reuters reported “seven U.S. warships, along with one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, were in and around the Southern Caribbean,” which is at least four days before that questionable lethal attack on the small boat. In addition, the U.S. military is widely regarded as the most advanced in the world, and it is difficult (though not impossible) to imagine the small boat carrying such an allegedly lethal quantity of drugs that continued U.S. surveillance and follow-on interdiction—via the Coast Guard or others—was out of the question.
At any rate, “Questions about perfidy have arisen in closed-door briefings of Congress by military leaders,” the Times reported Monday, which suggests lawmakers have begun engaging in the oversight process of the Defense Department that their duties dictate.
Developing: The U.S. military allegedly bought a powerful sonic device during an undercover operation that some investigators suspect is linked to the so-called “Havana Syndrome” that affected U.S. officials serving in embassies abroad, CNN reported Tuesday.
The device “produces pulsed radio waves” and “is not entirely Russian in origin, [though] it contains Russian components,” according to CNN.
An alleged weapon with similar characteristics was reportedly used during the U.S. military’s raid to abduct Venezuela’s leader on January 3, the New York Post reported Saturday. Though that report has struck several U.S. veterans and observers as suspect for a number of possible reasons, as former State Department official and independent journalist Sasha Ingber explained in a 12-minute video Tuesday.
Ingber also claimed U.S. special operations forces “captured” the weapon “some months ago” and “have been testing it to understand how it works.” According to Ingber, “What is de[s]cribed sounds like an acoustic weapon, like an LRAD,” or long-range acoustic device. “These devices are incredibly common, and are even used by law enforcement.”
“The claim could also be bogus,” Ingber cautioned, while noting, “Whether these stories are true or not, make no mistake. The US has had non-lethal, directed-energy weapons for decades.” Catch her video in full, here.
As violent protests continue to stir across Iran, some personnel at the U.S. military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar have been advised to leave by this afternoon, Reuters reported Wednesday from Doha. One official referred to the advisory as “a posture change and not an ordered evacuation.”
Why now: “Tehran warned regional countries it would strike U.S. military bases in case of an attack by Washington, after President Donald Trump threatened to intervene in Iran,” Reuters notes.
By the way: “Chinese surveillance firm Tiandy is helping Iran track, identify, and repress innocent protesters—moving from street cameras to knock-on-the-door arrests,” Craig Singleton of the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote on social media Tuesday morning, referencing a report on the technology that he wrote three years ago. “This is digital authoritarianism in action,” Singleton added.
Meanwhile in the U.S. state of Minnesota this week, “ICE using private data to intimidate observers and activists, advocates say,” Minnesota Public Radio reported Tuesday.
And in additional reporting from the Middle East, “Since the beginning of the ceasefire, Israel has demolished more than 2,500 buildings in Gaza,” the New York Times reported Tuesday in a multimedia presentation featuring satellite imagery, video and before-and-after photography.
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Adm. Paparo says they’re key to keeping the U.S. military ready to face off against China.
Did Trump’s attacks on boats off Latin America involve a second type of war crime? The Defense Department is accused of killing shipwrecked survivors after a strike on an alleged drug-running boat on Sept. 2 in the Caribbean Sea near Trinidad and Tobago. But the New York Times reported Monday that the attack may also have involved a second war crime: “perfidy”—that is, disguising military equipment as civilian in order to sneak up and kill someone.
The Pentagon’s first strike that day used a secret plane disguised to look like a civilian aircraft, officials briefed on the matter told the Times. The exact aircraft has not been revealed, though Reddit users reportedly spotted one such apparently-modified 737 at an airport in the U.S. Virgin Islands in September.
In search of a precedent, “the United States considers perfidy to be a crime in noninternational armed conflicts,” one legal expert told the Times. To this end, “It charged a Guantánamo detainee before a military commission with that offense over Al Qaeda’s 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in which militants in a small boat floated a hidden bomb up to the side of the warship while waving in a friendly manner,” said Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former judge advocate general officer. Several other legal experts and JAG officials offered additional insight. Continue reading (gift link), here.
The U.S. military’s last known strike on alleged drug-trafficking boats occurred on New Year’s Eve. Those strikes, 35 reported in total, have killed at least 123 people, according to the Defense Department. Mutilated bodies and broken boats have washed ashore in Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago, along with traces of what appear to be marijuana, the Times reported in October and December.
We have new insight into one lingering post-invasion question: How did the U.S. military get so close to Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro without losing any troops during its surprise attack and abduction on Jan. 3? The Russians had supplied Maduro with air-defense equipment, but they appeared to have been almost entirely ineffective on the morning of the attack. American officials now allege “Venezuela was unable to maintain and operate the S-300” Russian system, “as well as the Buk defense systems, leaving its airspace vulnerable,” the New York Times reported separately on Monday.
What’s more, “photos, videos and satellite imagery found that some air defense components were still in storage, rather than operational, at the time of the attack,” the Times reports. Read more—including video clips and annotated post-attack photos—here (gift link).
Venezuelan blockade analysis: After the U.S. seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic on Jan. 7, the incident raises several questions for international observers and U.S. allies, Kevin Rowlands and Caroline Tuckett wrote Monday in a commentary for the London-based Royal United Services Institute. They write, “Legally, it will all come down to a simple question: was the ship Russian or not?” And “Geopolitically, it will come down to a simple statement: might is right.”
“Sanctions are not just paper declarations; they need to be enforced and how this incident is eventually legally assessed will affect how other states justify similar action,” Rowlands and Tuckett advise. However,” If that assessment takes place in an international tribunal, will the losing party honour the outcome? If it is settled ‘out of court’ then others will take note.” Read the rest, here.
See also: “What the Bella-1 Teaches Us About Targeting Shadow Fleets,” via Jose Macias of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, writing Thursday.
And for what it’s worth, “We are now 25 days beyond the statutory deadline for the full release of the Epstein files,” justice reporter Scott MacFarlane observed Tuesday on social media. To date, less than 1% of those files have been released by the Justice Department, in apparent contravention of bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. The day of Maduro’s capture, January 3, was the statutory deadline for the Department of Justice to provide Congress with a written justification for any redactions in the Epstein files, as required by the law. The Trump administration has missed both deadlines without consequence.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2021, President Trump was impeached for a second time, this time on charges of inciting insurrection during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The Pentagon says it has a new artificial-intelligence implementation plan intended to “unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, [and] focus our investments,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday.
During a visit to SpaceX in Texas, Hegseth said Elon Musk’s xAI platform, Grok, will be added into Pentagon networks as part of the military’s new AI strategy—though this has been known publicly since at least July. “Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said Monday. Reuters has a bit more.
The Defense Department also announced a $1 billion investment in L3Harris’ Missile Solutions business as part of new “multi-year procurement framework agreements for solid rocket motors.” The idea is to bolster the Pentagon’s “critical missile programs, such as PAC-3, THAAD, Tomahawk, and Standard Missile,” according to a statement Monday. More, here.
Update: Sen. Kelly sues Hegseth for seeking to demote him over “illegal orders” video. In a 46-page lawsuit filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., alleges that efforts by the Trump administration to punish him for a video (in which he and others tell troops that they need not follow illegal orders) violate the First Amendment, the separation of powers, due-process protections, and the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution. Read on, from States Newsroom.
In a separate statement, Kelly said Hegseth’s “unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: if you speak out and say something that the President or Secretary of Defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted.”
Additional reading: In case you missed it, “GSA’s procurement chief is attending negotiations for Ukraine and Gaza,” Nextgov’s Natalie Alms reported Friday.
Quantum cameras could remake space-based intelligence. In a month or two, a Boston-based startup Diffraqtion will test a “quantum camera” for space-based imaging. If it works, it could slash the cost of missile defenses and give smaller NATO allies and partners spy-satellite capabilities that were once exclusive to major powers, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Monday.
One of Diffraqtion’s cameras is the size of a small suitcase, and is launchable for just half a million dollars. That just might be the key to shooting down highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles, as envisioned by the White House’s Golden Dome effort. The method proposed by Diffraqtion might lower the cost of the imaging systems on space-based interceptors, or even reduce the number needed to do the job. Continue reading, here.
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U.S. President Donald Trump declared himself Venezuela’s new leader on Sunday evening, two days after the Defense Department announced it had seized the fifth tanker of alleged Venezuelan crude oil since December. In a social media post, Trump referred to himself as “acting president” of the South American nation, using what appeared to be a screenshot of a webpage from Wikipedia.
About that fifth seized tanker: Early Friday, U.S. forces “launched from the USS Gerald R. Ford [aircraft carrier] and apprehended Motor/Tanker Olina in the Caribbean Sea without incident,” military officials at Southern Command said on social media. A 40-second video accompanied the post, and appeared to show armed U.S. forces boarding the tanker via helicopter and spreading out before the video panned out and stopped.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shared a much longer video of the incident on her social media feed, and said the tanker was “suspected of carrying embargoed oil” and “had departed Venezuela attempting to evade U.S. forces” before the U.S. Coast Guard took control of the vessel. In his own social media post about the incident, Trump claimed the interception was conducted “in coordination with the Interim Authorities of Venezuela,” but he did not elaborate.
Venezuela’s interim leader, oil minister Delcy Rodríguez, reportedly asked the U.S. military to seize the tanker because it “left the country without permission,” the New York Times reported Saturday, citing satellite imagery as well as Venezuelan officials, who released a statement about the episode Friday claiming the tanker departed before paying for the crude onboard.
The ship was one of at least 16 that attempted to evade Trump’s naval blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers, the Associated Press reports. “U.S. government records show that the Olina was sanctioned for moving Russian oil under its prior name, Minerva M, and flagged in Panama.” The vessel had been traveling since November with its transponder turned off.
For what it’s worth, “the Olina is loaded with 707,000 barrels of oil, which at the current market price of about $60 a barrel would be worth more than $42 million,” AP adds.
Alert: “U.S. citizens in Venezuela should leave the country immediately,” according to an American embassy warning issued Saturday from Caracas. The embassy also discouraged Americans in Colombia from traveling through Venezuela for the foreseeable future.
“There are reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States,” the warning reads, and advises U.S. citizens in Venezuela to “remain vigilant and exercise caution when traveling by road.” What’s more, “Intermittent power and utility outages continue throughout the country,” the statement reads.
By the way: ExxonMobil’s CEO said Venezuela is “uninvestable” following a meeting Friday between Trump and 17 other U.S. petroleum executives at the White House. “We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen here,” CEO Darren Woods told the president Friday, adding, “If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable.”
Trump’s reply: “I’ll probably be inclined to keep Exxon out,” he told reporters Sunday. “I didn’t like their response. They’re playing too cute,” the president said.
Another company, ConocoPhillips, said it wants to recoup its roughly $12 billion loss from the 2007 nationalization of Venezuelan companies. Trump said he wasn’t interested in that.
“We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault,” Trump said. “That was a different president. You’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back.”
Relatedly, “On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order to block courts or creditors from seizing revenue tied to the sale of Venezuelan oil held in U.S. Treasury accounts,” Reuters reports. It’s unclear how that may play out in courts or how Congress will react. Read more at Quartz, Politico or Axios.
And ICYMI: The Project on Government Oversight filed a lawsuit for the Pentagon to release the unedited footage of SOUTHCOM’s September 2 boat strike, which killed two survivors of the initial U.S. military attack. Lawmakers have seen the footage, but the Defense Department won’t release it publicly. “We want to shed light on what really happened here, because the public deserves to know,” POGO said in a short statement Friday.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1991, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to attack Iraq in Kuwait’s defense.
Apparently eager to capitalize on his Venezuelan takeover, Trump said Friday, “We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not. Because if we don’t it, Russia or China will take over Greenland. If we don’t do it the easy way we’re gonna do it the hard way.”
He repeated that Sunday evening, telling reporters on Air Force One, “We’re talking about acquiring, not leasing, not having it short-term, we’re talking about acquiring and if we don’t do it, Russia or China will and that’s not going to happen while I’m president…we have to have ownership. You really need title, as they say in the real estate business.”
“What you are essentially talking about here is the United States going to war with NATO, the United States going to war with Europe,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Chris Murphy, D-Conn., warned in a video Friday after Trump’s remarks. To be clear, he added, “You’re talking about the U.S. and France being at war with each other over Greenland.”
Latest: British and German officials are drawing up plans to boost troop levels on Greenland “to show US President Donald Trump that the continent is serious about Arctic security and to try to tamp down American threats to take over the self-ruling Danish territory,” Bloomberg reported Sunday.
Those discussions have involved French officials as well, the UK’s Telegraph reports, writing, “The plans, still at an early stage, could involve British soldiers, warships and planes being deployed to protect Greenland from Russia and China.”
Bigger picture: Trump’s “pursuit of the territory has plunged Nato into crisis and prompted speculation that the 75-year-old alliance could fall apart,” the British newspaper notes. “The Telegraph also understands the European Union is drawing up plans for sanctions on US companies should Mr Trump reject the offer of a Nato deployment.” That could include restrictions on Meta, Google, Microsoft and X, as well as unnamed U.S. banks and financial institutions.
“A more extreme option could be to evict the US military from its bases in Europe, denying it a key staging post for operations in the Middle East and elsewhere,” though that indeed seems quite extreme. Read more, here.
For what it’s worth, the British tabloid Daily Mail alleged Saturday, “According to sources, Trump has asked Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to prepare the invasion plan, but it is being resisted by the joint chiefs of staff on the grounds that it would be illegal—and not be supported by Congress.”
Another consideration: While a U.S. military invasion of Greenland would be an unprecedented violation of values among the U.S.-led NATO alliance, and it would arguably be unconstitutional, such orders may not necessarily be “illegal” for American troops. “Manifestly illegal orders would be [to] wipe out all civilians, murder pows, [or] torture prisoners,” attorney in international law Jennifer Elsea observed on social media. “Jus ad bellum and the constitution are not for the military to decide,” she added. And though an invasion of Greenland “might persuade some GFOs to resign rather than follow such orders, but I doubt they would be in serious legal jeopardy if they don’t,” she suggested.
Next on the radar: The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Vivian Motzfeldt, are headed to Washington for talks with Trump officials.
The U.S. military says it “conducted large-scale strikes against multiple ISIS targets across Syria” on Saturday. The strikes came in response to an ISIS attack on U.S. and Syrian forces in Palmyra on Dec. 13 that killed two American soldiers and one U.S. civilian interpreter, military officials at Central Command said in a statement.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Warplanes and drones dropped more than 90 bombs on roughly three dozen targets, according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command. Targets included ISIS infrastructure, smuggling routes and weapons caches, he said. The Jordanian military also took part in the strikes.”
Trump administration mulls military action as hundreds die in Iranian protests. As “the country’s supreme leader that he would expand a government crackdown on some of the most widespread demonstrations in the Islamic Republic’s history,” the Washington Post reported, Trump officials are reported weighing their options, which could include “lethal force or nonlethal options, such as cyberattacks that curtail Iran’s ability to limit internet access for protesters who are organizing against the regime in Tehran.” On Friday, Trump threatened lethal action if the Iranian regime continues to kill protestors.
About 490 protesters and 48 state-security personnel have died in the past two weeks, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, the WSJ reports. The group also “tracked 10,000 arrests, as the Islamic Republic has been cracking down on protests that started when merchants in Tehran began striking after a precipitous drop in the currency and has since spread to more than 96 cities.”
Iran returns the threats: “Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian Parliament, said in addition to hitting U.S. bases, Iran would strike Middle Eastern shipping lanes and Israel.” Read on, here.
Senators from both sides of the aisle doubt U.S. military intervention would help. “I don’t know that bombing Iran will have the effect that is intended,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC News on Sunday. Paul and Democratic Senator Mark Warner said that a U.S. military attack on Iran, far from undermining the regime, could “rally the people against an outside enemy”—as happened in 1980, when an invasion by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein helped the then-new revolutionary government cement control in Tehran. Reuters has more.
Commentary: “Five conditions determine whether revolutions succeed. For the first time since 1979, Iran meets nearly all of them,” Karim Sadjadpour and Jack A. Goldstone write at The Atlantic.
Army’s noncommittal procurement strategy is creating quandaries for vendors. “The Army’s new acquisition strategy—buy fast, in small quantities, then maybe buy a lot more—is causing headaches for at least one of the vendors working on the service’s new medium-range reconnaissance drone,” reports Defense One’s Meghann Myers, here.
Meet the dronemakers of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division. More and more, the division is relying on the soldiers of its Lightning Lab to produce the cheap and cutting-edge drones it needs. Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad visited the unit’s HQ in an old movie theater at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks. Read, here.
The U.S. military has a recruiting program that claims to offer protection for the immigrant parents of American citizens, which was launched in 2013 and is known as Parole in Place. Greg Jaffe of the New York Times travelled to rural Oregon to learn more from Army recruiters. Story, here (gift link).
Big-picture consideration: “ICE, and the use of the National Guard to protect ICE, has been covered as immigration story, but America’s immigration and customs agents aren’t only being used for that purpose,” warns in a new podcast episode of “Autocracy in America” from The Atlantic. “The Trump administration is also using ICE and the National Guard to project power, to demonstrate that it can operate without restraint, and in defiance of the law.”
Applebaum: “How is the deployment of these agents and soldiers legal? Has anything like this ever happened before? It seems any American can now be detained or harassed, or even killed. The American National Guard can be used as puppets in a presidential game—is that legal too?” Listen in at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube to learn more.
For what it’s worth, Trump said last week that he regrets not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election, the New York Times reported after its four-hour interview with the president on Wednesday.
Relatedly, a Coast Guard “Veteran says he was seized by immigration agents on cruise in case of mistaken identity” just last week, Task & Purpose reported Friday.
Additional reading:
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CISOs describe a shift in how they define success. New research from Absolute Security shows broad agreement that resilience outweighs security goals centered on prevention alone. Security leaders increasingly define their role around keeping the busin…
Trump’s Venezuelan oil plan may take years to unfold: American oil executives are to gather at the White House Friday as President Trump looks to develop his plans to extract Venezuela’s oil resources and a U.S. armada continues to stage off the country’s shores. That meeting comes roughly a day after Venezuelan officials said the death toll from the Pentagon’s Saturday assault in Caracas had risen to at least 100, including Cuban bodyguards for abducted Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and dozens of civilians across the capital city.
“I have cancelled the previously expected second Wave of Attacks [on Caracas], which looks like it will not be needed, however, all ships will stay in place for safety and security purposes,” the president announced on social media at 4:19 am ET on Friday.
“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” the president said.
However, the New York Times reported Friday, “oil giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips that have deep pockets, vast expertise and, crucially, experience in that country have privately expressed reservations about committing the kind of money it would take to meaningfully boost Venezuelan oil production.”
And: “Political uncertainty in the United States and Venezuela is another major obstacle, as oil investments often are measured in decades, and companies would need to be confident that any deal would last long enough for them to make a decent profit,” the Times writes.
That’s a point reiterated separately on Wednesday by veteran journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the Times, who noted, “for context, I am Cuban-American (my family fled Castro). I am also part Panamanian (yes I remember the US invasion of Panama). I have a degree in Latin American studies. I covered Latin America as a journalist since 2000 when I lived in Colombia, then Mexico and Brazil. I’ve been to Venezuela many many times. oh yeah, I also lived in and covered Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.”
“And for people saying Venezuela isn’t Iraq because it doesn’t have sectarian conflict, please understand the history of Latin America, armed conflict and transnational criminal groups,” Garcia-Navarro said. “It’s a different problem but not an easier one. You have heavily armed paramilitary forces, cartels, corrupt military all with unlimited funds, big guns and reasons to cause havoc.”
Which is to say the future of Venezuela has great potential for catastrophe, as Army veteran Monica Toft of Tufts University explained in a column this week in The Conversation.
That all may be why “Trump and his advisers are planning a sweeping initiative to dominate the Venezuelan oil industry for years to come,” as the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. But exactly how this may play out is anyone’s guess. “The only major oil company operating there is Chevron, and new entrants lack the relationships, staff and logistical capabilities to hit the ground running. Analysts say it would take years to significantly boost production there,” the Journal writes.
Another problem: The U.S. already pumps more oil than any other country, and “oil prices are already low, with the U.S. benchmark hovering around $56 a barrel,” the Journal reports. Relatedly, “Many companies see $50 a barrel as a threshold below which it becomes unprofitable to drill, and a sustained period of low oil prices could decimate the U.S. shale industry, which has been a key backer of the president.”
This is all partly why Trump has tapped billionaire oil magnate and Republican donor Harry Sargeant to help hone his extraction plans, Reuters reported Thursday. “Sargeant’s business interests in Venezuela are relatively small in comparison to the oil giant Chevron, the only U.S. oil company with federal authorization to export oil from the country, but he has been doing business there since the 1980s.” What’s more, “During the Iraq war, Sargeant contracted with the Pentagon to transport fuel to U.S. troops.”
By the way: Trump’s spy chief was cut out of Venezuela plans over her past views regarding potential U.S. intervention there, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Within this context, White House aides reportedly joked that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s job title stood for “do not invite.”
In a Wednesday interview, Times reporters asked Trump what limits his global powers. The president responded, “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” Trump said in that Oval Office interview, “It depends what your definition of international law is.”
Also notable, according to the Times: Trump “acknowledge[d] some constraints at home, even as he has pursued a maximalist strategy of punishing institutions he dislikes, exacting retribution against political opponents and deploying the National Guard to cities over the objections of state and local officials.” But he also “made clear that he uses his reputation for unpredictability and a willingness to resort quickly to military action, often in service of coercing other nations.” More, here.
The Senate on Thursday voted 52-47 to limit Trump’s war powers regarding military operations inside Venezuela. Trump was evidently upset by the resolution, and complained on social media that the five GOP senators who voted for it “should never be elected to office again.”
The resolution is unlikely to proceed. The House rejected a similar measure in December. And even if the lower chamber were to advance a new one, Thursday’s Senate vote tally is not sufficient to override a veto from Trump, should the process advance to that point in the coming days.
Developing: Trump’s war on alleged drug cartels may be moving inland. The president told Sean Hannity of Fox on Thursday that he’s authorized attacks against drug cartels not just at sea, but on land now as well. “We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country,” Trump said less than two minutes into a 17-minute interview. Hannity did not request elaboration.
Trump teased a similar escalation in November when he told U.S. service members, “You probably noticed that people aren’t wanting to be delivering [drugs] by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop them by land also. The land is easier.”
Mexico’s president has reportedly rejected U.S. on-the-ground troop presence inside her country. And on Monday, Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters, “On several occasions, [Trump] has insisted that the U.S. Army be allowed to enter Mexico. We have said no very firmly—first because we defend our sovereignty, and second because it is not necessary.”
What might a U.S. ground operation against cartels around Mexico look like? We discussed the matter with longtime special operations journalist and author Kevin Maurer on our podcast in August. Listen to that conversation here.
From the region: “Russia Recruits Young Migrant Women from Latin America to Build Iranian Drones,” two researchers at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said in a new report published Thursday. Workers are being recruited from more than a dozen Latin American countries and are often sent under allegedly misleading pretenses to work at a drone production facility based in Tatarstan.
The Russian program, known as Alabuga Start, could be the target of future U.S. sanctions, FDD’s Maria Riofrio and Max Lesser suggest. More, here.
Developing: The White House is considering payments of $10,000 to $100,000 to each of the 57,000 or so Greenlanders in a bid to persuade them to “join” the U.S., Reuters reported Thursday. That latter end of that spectrum could add up to about $6 billion.
Still in play: “The White House has said military intervention is possible, though officials have also said the U.S. prefers buying the island or otherwise acquiring it through diplomatic means,” the wire service writes.
Trump’s NATO Ambassador Matt Whitaker is scheduled to speak next Wednesday at the Reagan Library. And State Secretary Marco Rubio is reportedly set to speak with Danish officials about Greenland next week, too.
Whitaker told Newsmax on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers think Greenland isn’t safe enough, and he cited global warming in defense of Trump’s imperial ambitions regarding the Danish territory.
“As the ice thaws and as the routes in the Arctic and the High North open up,” Whitaker told the right-wing news network, “Greenland becomes a very serious security risk for the mainland of the United States of America.”
Big-picture consideration: “Pro-colonialism talking points get a boost from top Trump aide Stephen Miller,” Jonathan Allen of NBC News wrote in an analysis piece Wednesday.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller told CNN on Monday. “Greenland should be part of the United States,” he insisted, and went on to explain Trump’s recent foreign policy aggression thusly: “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Berlin reax: Trump risks turning the world “into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Wednesday. Reuters’ headline: “German president says US is destroying world order.”
Relatedly, how does Trump feel about China’s leader potentially invading Taiwan? “That’s up to him,” the president told the Times in his Thursday interview. Meanwhile, a Slovenian magazine depicted Trump in a less-than-flattering manner on its cover Friday. Newsweek has more on that image, here.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1918, a brief skirmish between Yaqui fighters and U.S. Army cavalry soldiers, later dubbed the Battle of Bear Valley, marked the last firefight of the American Indian wars.
USAF consolidates some acquisition program offices into mission-focused groups. On Thursday, service officials revealed the first five of the new groups and the “portfolio acquisition executives” who will run them—but observers note that most of these uniformed and civilian leaders were already running multi-mission groups anyway. “Good things are happening here, but for the Air Force it’s more of a continuation of work that’s been going on for some time,” one former service leader told Defense One’s Thomas Novelly. Read, here.
ICYMI: In November, the Office of the Secretary of Defense took control of most of the Air Force’s largest acquisition programs, including the new Sentinel ICBM and B-21 bomber.
Marine Corps picks industry team to create a robot wingman of its own. The Air Force effort to develop collaborative combat aircraft gets most of the press—and the funding—but the Marines are also working on a drone to accompany their own fighter pilots. On Thursday, the service announced that Northrop Grumman will provide systems to be integrated on Kratos’s existing VX-58 Valkyrie to produce the Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Force Uncrewed Expeditionary Tactical Aircraft, or MUX TACAIR. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports, here.
Buyback-ban update: The top Democrat on the Senate Arms Services Committee said he believes Trump’s attempt to limit defense companies’ stock buybacks may fall to legal challenge unless they are codified into law. “Frankly, if Congress doesn’t codify it, they’ll go into court. My sense [is] it’s really difficult to justify tax changes because the president wanted to change them,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told reporters. “I think they [lawmakers] would have to because they [defense firms] have no shortage of lawyers, and they’ll go into court and say, ‘This is not within the tax code. You can’t do it.’” Breaking Defense has that, here.
The Philadelphia shipyard touted as the key to Trump-administration naval buildup needs more space, company officials told the Wall Street Journal. Hanwha, the South Korean shipybuilder that owns the Philly yard and has pledged to invest in its capacity, “is in active discussions with multiple federal, state and local officials about opportunities to expand capacity and property for storage around the Philadelphia region,” WSJ reports. “The company aims to ultimately crank out up to 20 ships a year in Philadelphia, up from annual output of just one or two vessels recently.” Read on, here.
Lockheed delivered 191 F-35s last year—a record that reflects the Pentagon’s refusal to accept many of the jets the previous year because promised capability upgrades had not been completed. Reuters, here.
ICYMI: Lockheed received on-time bonuses for jets delivered late, GAO reported in September.
A man and a woman were shot by ICE agents in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday as they drove away from agents who stopped them. The pair, whose names were not released by officials, were later treated at a local hospital.
ICE says both were affiliated with the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, though similar allegations have fallen apart before advancing in court.
Portland’s mayor wants a full investigation of the incident. “There was a time we could take [ICE] at their word. That time is long past,” said Mayor Keith Wilson.
The shootings drew protestors to an ICE building in Portland, the Associated Press reported, one day after similar protests erupted in Minneapolis after the deadly shooting of a woman there.
And in Maryland: “Anne Arundel County Police for the first time publicly disputed the federal agency’s account of a violent Christmas Eve incident involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Glen Burnie,” the Baltimore Banner reported Thursday.
Also: “Data released by ICE shows that virtually the entire growth of detention in the last few months has been among people with no criminal record at all—no criminal convictions and no pending criminal charges,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council pointed out Friday, citing the new statistics from ICE. “Only about 10% of people detained by ICE who have a ‘criminal record’ committed a serious violent offense. The most common prior convictions are immigration offenses (like illegal entry/reentry) and traffic offenses,” he added.
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Developing: The White House says it will put the proceeds from selling seized Venezuelan oil into offshore accounts, so that the money would not be held by the U.S. Treasury but be controlled by President Trump, as he declared on social media Tuesday evening.
The official line from the administration: “All proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan crude oil and oil products will first settle in U.S. controlled accounts at globally recognized banks,” the Department of Energy announced Wednesday. “The only oil transported in and out of Venezuela will be through legitimate and authorized channels consistent with U.S. law and national security,” according to a fact sheet.
This raises serious questions, Lisa Desjardins of PBS reported, including:
Greenland update: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet with Danish officials next week in the wake of Trump’s declared interest in acquiring the territory by force or otherwise.
Rubio told lawmakers this week Trump wants to buy Greenland, not invade it. But Danish officials for years have been adamant the island is not for sale. Indeed, the New York Times reported Thursday, “Denmark does not have the authority to sell the territory, and Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has repeatedly scoffed at the idea, reiterating this week: ‘Our country is not for sale.’”
Danish troops in Greenland would “shoot first, ask questions later” in response to an invasion, Denmark’s defence ministry confirmed on Wednesday. Under a policy in place since 1952, soldiers are required to “immediately” counter-attack invading forces without awaiting orders. Ministry officials have confirmed that the policy remains in place. More, here.
Canadian officials are discussing “a voluntary civilian-defence force” to support its military after Trump floated the possibility of using “economic force” to turn America’s northern neighbor into its 51st state, The Economist reported Wednesday. Relatedly, “Plans are now regularly updated to deal with a surge of migrants who might want to enter Canada from the United States. Mr Trump’s predilection for sending troops into states run by Democrats while using his department of justice to prosecute his political opponents has compelled Canada to prepare for the event of civil strife next door.”
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1814, Gen. Andrew Jackson led U.S. forces to victory in the Battle of New Orleans, unaware that U.S. and British officials had formally ended the War of 1812 about two weeks earlier.
New: The president said he wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the coming year. That would amount to a roughly 50% increase from an already historically-high total for FY2026.
According to Trump, “This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe,” he wrote on social media Wednesday afternoon, just five days after sending the military to abduct Venezuela’s leader and less than three days since he threatened to annex Greenland, which is territory of America’s NATO ally Denmark.
Trump said his tariffs “and the tremendous Income that they bring” make a $1.5 trillion defense budget possible, thereby allegedly “producing an unparalleled Military Force, and having the ability to, at the same time, pay down Debt, and likewise, pay a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!”
Reality check: Trump’s apparent plan to dramatically boost defense spending “while paying down debt…is not based in mathematical reality,” NBC’s Sahil Kapur pointed out on social media. For one thing, Trump’s tariffs brought in roughly $236 billion through November, which is less than half of Trump’s proposed spending hike.
And far from paying down the national debt, the tariff income is dwarfed by last year’s federal budget deficit, which rose by $2.2 trillion during his first year in office, according to a recent USA Today analysis.
Second opinion: “It is not clear to us that defense contractors have the capacity to absorb the magnitude of this increase even if it’s spread over FY27-30,” analyst Byron Callan wrote in a note following Trump’s social media post. And during a mid-term election year, “An increase of this magnitude will put non-defense spending in sharper focus.” As a result, “Reconciliation might again be attempted by Congress, but the GOP margin in the House will be razor-thin through March, and without reconciliation, there would need to be 60 votes in the Senate to move this size increase forward.”
What’s more, “An increase of this magnitude would appear to override efforts to find cost savings and other efficiencies in the DoD budget,” Callan warned. And it’s entirely unclear what kind of consequences that might have.
Trump also declared a pay cap for defense CEOs to encourage them to produce weapons faster, though it’s not yet clear how that might be enforced.
He also said he would bar defense companies from buying back stock and issuing dividends until they invest more to develop new technologies and increase production. Later on Wednesday, the White House released an executive order to that effect, Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports.
Trump: “From this moment forward, these Executives must build NEW and MODERN Production Plants, both for delivering and maintaining this important Equipment, and for building the latest Models of future Military Equipment. Until they do so, no Executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars,” the president announced on his social media platform. “I will not permit Dividends or Stock Buybacks for Defense Companies until such time as these problems are rectified,” he added.
In a separate post, Trump took particular aim at “Raytheon,” likely a reference to RTX. He said the company would receive no further defense contracts until it invests more in production capacity, nor be allowed to buy back its own stock “until they are able to get their act together.”
For the record: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX did not respond to requests for comment on the president’s statements by publication. General Dynamics, HII, and L3Harris declined comment.
Worth noting again: Trump didn’t specify how restricting buybacks or measuring research investments would be enforced, Williams writes.
Expert reax: For a number of years, some U.S. shipyards have maintained a “backlog” of ships paid for but not built or even started. “Yet we instinctively order more ships each year,” Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation said. “The yards could use this backlog to justify investments in modernizing the yards—or they could use this future revenue to justify payments such as dividends or stock buybacks. They have all too often chosen the latter.”
“A lot of problems need to be addressed to get our shipbuilding system back in order, and this action will certainly not do this alone,” he said, “but it is part of an overall effort that includes more investments, partnering with successful Korean yards and more efficient design and acquisition processes.” Read more, here.
Congress pumps brakes on Army’s plans to outsource flight training. “Tucked into the 3,000-page National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law last month, is a provision stating that funds can’t “be obligated or expended to solicit proposals or award a contract for the implementation of any transformation of the Initial Entry Rotary Wing training program”—a reference to the Army’s Flight School Next plan to shift training for new helicopter pilots from an in-house school to a contractor-owned and -operated model, reports Defense One’s Thomas Novelly.
Bidders winnowed: But right around the time the law was passed, the Army was notifying several bidders that they would move on to the next phase of the competition for the Flight School Next contract. Novelly has the names, here.
The Pentagon’s push to accelerate the tempo of battlefield adaptation is hindered by arms-purchase contracts that forbid troops to repair or modify their gear in the field, special operators and defense experts warn. They note that Ukrainian forces often must ship U.S.-supplied weapons out of the country for maintenance, but can modify Ukrainian-built drones to advance the tactical state of the art. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports, here.
An ICE officer shot and killed a woman attempting to drive away from a stop in Minneapolis on Wednesday. “The woman, identified by the Minneapolis City Council as Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot in the head on Jan. 7 in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis. The fatal shooting was captured on video by witnesses and sparked widespread anger amid heightened political and community tensions over immigration activity in the city,” USA Today reported.
Video evidence refutes Trump-administration officials’ attempts to portray the shooting as self-defense, the New York Times reports.
ICE officers have shot at least 14 people in the past year, according to The Trace, which tabulates incidents of gun violence. The total includes three people who were observing ICE and five who were driving away. At least four people have died after being shot by ICE. Read, here.
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