Soldiers are “being fed,” “still training” amid government shutdown, 8th Army commander says.

In a 70-20 vote, the Senate passed its $925 billion defense bill Thursday, a month after House lawmakers passed their $893 billion version of the bill. “Armed Services committees will now attempt to negotiate a compromise bill that can pass by the end of the year,” Politico reports. Notable: The Senate’s version restricts U.S. troop reductions in Europe and in South Korea. It also seeks “to overhaul the Pentagon’s complex acquisition process to ramp up the defense industrial base and allow the military to more quickly field needed weapons and technology.” 

Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: “This year’s NDAA reflects the severity of the threat environment we find ourselves in—one that we have not faced since World War II. This bill centers on two main themes: rebuild and reform. My colleagues and I have prioritized reindustrialization and the structural rebuilding of the arsenal of democracy, starting with drone technology, shipbuilding, and innovative low-cost weapons. We have also set out to enact historic reforms in the Pentagon’s budgeting and acquisition process to unleash innovation and root out inefficiencies.”

Jack Reed, D-R.I., and SASC’s ranking member: “This is a good, bipartisan bill that supports our troops and strengthens America’s security. It provides essential resources for servicemembers and their families, modernizes key platforms, and invests in critical technologies like hypersonics, AI, and cybersecurity. This NDAA also bolsters our posture against China and Russia, supports America’s allies, and prepares the Department of Defense for emerging threats.”

AUSA preview: Amid the shutdown, the Army will do its best to talk about transformation, counter-drone gear, and acquisition reform next week at the year’s biggest Army-oriented conference: the annual meeting of Association of the U.S. Army in downtown Washington, D.C. (Agenda, here.)

On Tuesday, AUSA is to bring together the current and former commanders of U.S. Army North to talk about threats to the homeland, promising a rare public discussion on what has become the Defense Department’s top priority as the second Trump administration prepares to roll out its National Defense Strategy. Defense One’s Meghann Myers offers a curtainraiser on that panel and other planned talks of note, here.

By the way: The shutdown limits how the Army can fund travel and meals, so AUSA has donated roughly $1 million to bring senior leaders to D.C., CNN reported Thursday.

Senate to USAF chief nominee: You need to fix alarming mission-capability rates and rising sustainment costs for the Air Force’s F-35A fighter jet, senators said at Thursday’s confirmation hearing for Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the former head of Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces, who was nominated last month to serve as the service’s top uniformed leader. 

Wilsback declined to endorse the service’s ongoing China-focused reorganization launched by current chief Gen. Dave Allvin, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported from Capitol Hill, here.

BTW: Allvin’s retirement ceremony is being held today at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. 

For the second time in a month, a U.S. warship commander has been relieved of duty. Cmdr. Robert Moreno, who led the Blue Crew of the ballistic missile submarine USS Wyoming, was relieved on Wednesday by his squadron commander, who lost confidence in Moreno’s ability to command, the Navy announced without further detail. That followed the Sept. 11 firing of the captain of a littoral combat ship. (Navy Times, USNI News)

Better barracks? “A new barracks task force aims to improve military living conditions,” Military Times reported Thursday after Defense Secretary Hegseth posted a video about the topic to social media. In an Oct. 6 memo, Hegseth ordered the task force to get him recommendations within 30 days.

Task & Purpose: “The Pentagon’s new Barracks Task Force will steer toward private sector ‘investment opportunities’ and contracting to overhaul the military’s junior enlisted barracks,” the outlet reported Thursday. See also T&P’s original report on the effort, which includes good background on the oft-woeful state of enlisted living conditions, here.   

Coverage continues below…

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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 and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so 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 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was established at the Fort Severn Army post in Annapolis, Md.

Developing: Tennessee National Guard troops are expected to start patrolling Memphis today, the Associated Press reports in what will be the fifth American city with a visible military presence since Trump’s re-election. (The others are Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland.) 

Reminder: Tennessee’s Republican governor supports Trump’s use of the military on U.S. streets. Gov. Bill Lee also could have ordered this deployment months ago since he is in control of his state’s Guard troops and didn’t need input from Trump to make the call. The mayor of Memphis, on the other hand, is an elected Democrat—though he’s said he does not oppose additional assistance for city issues like “law enforcement, beautification, and homelessness services,” Mayor Paul Young said on social media in September. 

Also notable: Crime in Memphis is currently at a 30-year low, according to the local police. However, Memphis has the highest violent crime rate per capita of any U.S. city, according to FBI data. 

New: On Thursday, District Judge April Perry paused for two weeks Trump’s deployment of 200 National Guard troops from Texas and 300 more from Illinois to the Chicago region. “I have found no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” she said in her oral ruling late Thursday afternoon. 

Adding more Guard troops to Chicago “will only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started,” Perry said Thursday. She also stated there appears to be “a growing body of evidence that DHS’ version of events are unreliable.” 

Homeland Security officials have also been using “unreliable evidence,” which casts “significant doubt on DHS’s credibility on what is going on in the streets of Chicago…I am very much struggling to find where this would stop,” she said. 

Gov. Pritzker: “[T]here is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a statement on social media after Perry’s ruling Thursday. 

Worth noting: Oklahoma’s GOP governor shared his opposition to Texas Guard troops in Chicago, telling the New York Times on Thursday, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.” Stitt’s attorney general, however, felt differently, as States Newsroom reported near the bottom of its dispatch on the matter Thursday. 

Related: Federal agents in Chicago have also been targeting journalists, prompting a different judge on Thursday to grant a 14-day temporary restraining order banning federal agents from “[d]ispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, threatening or using physical force against any person whom they know or reasonably should know is a Journalist, unless [the] Defendants have probable cause to believe that the individual has committed a crime.”

ICYMI: “Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online,” Isaac Stanley-Becker reported last Thursday for the Atlantic.

Images from allegedly “war-torn” Portland: Here are National Guard troops sent to Portland in line to eat donuts last Thursday. 

Congressional opposition: “An authoritarian President—emboldened by a rubber-stamp Congress and a deferential Supreme Court—is sending military troops against American citizens who are peacefully protesting in city after city,” said Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley in a statement Thursday. 

“This is un-American and a fundamental violation of the purpose of our military, which is to defend us from foreign powers, not to be a tool in a President’s hand to attack people who disagree with their point of view,” Merkley said. 

“Americans have the right under the First Amendment to protest this Administration’s cruel and misguided immigration policies,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said. “There is no rebellion or insurrection happening in our state…If the Trump Administration truly wanted to help my city of Chicago and our state of Illinois, it wouldn’t defy Illinois elected leaders. It would work with us. It would restore the millions of dollars it suspended in crime prevention and public safety grants.”

“This kind of use of the military poses a tremendous threat to all of our civil liberties, even if we are not from California or Oregon or Illinois,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal. 

“Today, it’s California. Today, it’s Illinois. Today, it’s Oregon. Where will it be tomorrow? Where does this end?” said California Sen. Adam Schiff. “I’ll tell you where it ends. It ends in more civil strife. It ends in more morale problems in the military. It ends in a lesser democracy. And if we are here in nine months, where will we be with four years of this? And I’ll tell you this, we will not be a democracy. At the pace we are going in four years, we will not be a democracy,” said Schiff.

Read more: 

• “Trump paints a grim portrait of Portland. The story on the ground is much less extreme,” which is an on-the-ground fact check from the Associated Press, published Thursday;
• Also from Portland, a U.S. citizen was abducted and detained by ICE last Thursday; the city’s Willamette Week newspaper has more on local resident Frank Miranda;
• And “Chicago ICE raids, National Guard troops prompt new school leaflets: ‘Know your rights,’” Reuters reported Friday from the windy city. 

Another thing: The National Guard is upset that some of its Texas soldiers appeared to be out of compliance with fitness regulations, according to an Associated Press photo from a Tuesday report out of a suburb of Chicago.

“All National Guard Soldiers and Airman [sic] are required to meet service-specific height, weight and physical fitness standards at all times,” the National Guard Bureau said in an unusual statement Thursday. “When mobilizing for active duty, members go through a validation process to ensure they meet those requirements. On the rare occasions when members are found not in compliance, they will not go on mission. They will be returned to their home station, and replacements who do meet standards will take their places,” the statement reads. 

Developing: Venezuelans prepare for possible U.S. invasion. In coastal Venezuela, “Since the first [U.S. military boat] strike [on Sept. 1], military camps have become ubiquitous in the area as Maduro’s regime prepares for a potential invasion,” Nancy Youssef, Gisela Salim-Peyer, and Jonathan Lemire reported Thursday for the Atlantic.

Reminder: “[T]he idea that Maduro is a major drug lord is a key justification for the strikes,” the trio of reporters write. Indeed, Maduro is “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in August. However, “The idea that Maduro’s regime runs a drug enterprise big enough to endanger American lives is also viewed skeptically in Venezuela, and not just among Maduro apologists,” Youssef and company report. “If the argument is that drug trafficking is a good reason to threaten to invade a country, you’d have to invade Mexico first,” one former Venezuelan official said. Read more, here. 

Another theory for U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats: “[T]he endgame of the military strikes against drug cartels in international waters is to lay the groundwork to use lethal military force against Americans at home,” argued former FBI agent Asha Rangappa, writing last week on Substack. “If [Trump] can provoke confrontation between civilians and the military—perhaps one where there is open gunfire or anything that he can use to claim that our military is under attack or in harm’s way—he can then justify arbitrarily designating Americans as military targets,” she writes. 

Trump 2.0

Developing: The Pentagon is sending 200 troops to Israel as ceasefire monitors, the New York Times reported Thursday evening. Those forces are set to “join soldiers from nations in the region, including Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to provide oversight” for the Israel-Hamas agreement officials from both sides agreed upon late last week. 

“The first of the 200 troops have already started to arrive in Israel and more will follow over the weekend to begin setting up the new coordination center.” Tiny bit more, here. 

Related reading: “How Trump got his Gaza deal done,” via David Ignatius of the Washington Post, writing Thursday. 

For those in the administration still thinking about strategic competition with China, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a new report assessing “costs and benefits for seven key alliances across eight core areas of U.S.-China strategic competition.” Among their findings: 

• “The Philippines has advantageous military geography—but lacks other benefits and poses an entanglement risk in the South China Sea.”
• “Japan can further U.S. aims with China across all eight categories, especially as its defense spending increases. It is willing to cooperate in several key areas and poses low risk of entanglement.”
• “Australia can make contributions at a more modest level…Risk of entanglement is low.”
• “South Korea is reluctant to use its economic and military power to counter China but poses a substantial military burden and risk on the United States. Chip manufacturing and other nonmilitary capabilities help strengthen the case for the alliance.” Read over the full report, here. 

And lastly: A Rutgers scholar specializing in antifa tried to flee to Spain after receiving death threats, but when he got through security and to the gate at Newark Liberty International Airport Wednesday, the airline told him “the reservation was just canceled,” the New York Times reports. 

The death threats emerged after “Some students involved in the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA, the political group founded by Charlie Kirk, began circulating an online petition that claimed [assistant professor Mark] Bray was an ‘outspoken, well-known antifa member’ and referred to him as ‘Dr. Antifa’ while calling for his dismissal,” AP reports. “He said he learned of the petition calling from his ouster when Fox News contacted him for comment. He said he has since received additional threats and that his home address and personal information about his family were posted on social media.”

Note: “Doxing,” or posting someone’s personal information (such as home address) is one of the acts the White House said it will now consider as part of its sprawling “domestic terrorism” designation, administration officials announced in late September—after Trump declared Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no such category under U.S. law. 

White House: “The Attorney General shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.”

Additional reading: 

• “ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day,” 404 Media reported last week; 
• “El Paso bishop brings Pope Leo XIV desperate letters from migrants in crosshairs of US crackdown,” AP reported Wednesday from Vatican City; 
• “Republicans reject push to block Trump from using Qatari jet as Air Force One,” Politico reported Thursday; 
• “Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar,” AP reported Wednesday from Thailand;
• And ICYMI, “Trump administration planning 7,500-person refugee ceiling,” which prioritizes white South Africans, Reuters reported over the weekend. 

Admin note: We’ll be back with this newsletter on Tuesday following a day off for Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

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‘Stop trying to control every step’ of shipbuilding, senator tells Navy. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., a freshman senator and former SEAL, thinks the sea service needs to abandon its decades-old practice of being extremely hands-on during the construction of its ever-more-complicated warships. 

An average naval officer is not a shipbuilding expert. They’re just not,” Sheehy said Wednesday at a CSIS maritime-security event. “It takes decades to build that institutional knowledge of not just naval architecture, but also knowledge of the industrial base, to effectively build the ship and build it fast and build it right. And the Navy lost that institutional knowledge decades ago.” And, he said, if the Navy can shift its focus from requirements—and change orders—to outcomes, the rest of the Pentagon may follow.

Spread the repair workload. For his part, Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Tim Kaine, D-Va., said the Navy should look to share maintenance and repair work with allies and partners. “We have to be 100 percent better. And that is not incremental, that is, again, expanding your capacity through creative work with allies and bringing the private sector—and the innovative part of the private sector, not just the incumbent part of the private sector—bringing them in a much more robust way,” Kaine said at the same event. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has more, here.

Lawmakers call for more defense biotech research as China pursues breakthroughs. As the Trump administration slashes scientific research funding, Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and his colleagues are hoping to impress upon the executive branch the necessity of biotech as a national-security priority. “One general category in which the Chinese, in particular, are out-classing us, is in bio-manufacturing, industrial applications of biotech – new materials, for example – and new life-saving compounds that could be a great utility to warfighters,” Young said at a Wednesday event hosted by the With Honor Institute.

See 49 recommendations for how the U.S. can invest in and use biotech in defense from an April report by Young’s National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports, here.

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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 and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so 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 1969, Illinois Gov. Richard Ogilvie ordered more than 2,500 Chicago-area National Guard troops to assist police after protests spread during the trial of the “Chicago Eight,” who were charged with fomenting unrest during the previous year’s Democratic convention. 

Around the Defense Department

Sinking speedboats in the Caribbean won’t stop drugs from getting to the United States, writes the New York Times in an illustrated (and animated) explainer. The Trump administration has said that it is attacking boats—four in the past month—and killing all on board because they are smuggling drugs from Venezuela. “But Mr. Trump’s focus on Venezuela is at odds with reality: The vast majority of cocaine is produced and smuggled elsewhere in Latin America, according to data from the United States, Colombia and the United Nations. And Venezuela does not supply fentanyl at all, experts say.” The Times has maps, charts, and stats, here.

Related reading: 

• “Colombia’s President Says Boat Bombed by U.S. Was Carrying Colombians,” the NYT reported Wednesday;
• “Senate Republicans vote down legislation to check Trump’s use of war powers against cartels” on Wednesday, per the Associated Press;
• “Legal experts fear Trump admin is ignoring JAGs on cartel strikes, Guard deployments,” Defense One’s Tom Novelly reports from a CNAS event.

Update: Trump’s Pentagon has opened nearly 300 investigations into critics of the slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. The probes span service members, civilian workers and contractors, but they’ve resulted in just “a smattering of disciplinary action” so far. 

Additional reading: 

• “The Pentagon Doubles Down on Muzzling Reporters,” Ivan Nagy writes for the Columbia Journalism Review;
• “Before Pete Hegseth Joined Trump’s War on DEI, He Advocated for Educational Equity as a Harvard Student,” the Harvard Crimson reported Wednesday; 
• “Most support bringing US troops home from Iraq, Syria: Survey,” The Hill reported Thursday, citing a poll conducted by Concerned Veterans for America and YouGov;
• “VA’s disability program is an ‘honor system.’ These veterans are defrauding it,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday. 

Trump’s militarization of American cities

National Guard members from Texas were seen Thursday morning at an ICE facility in Chicago, the local Sun-Times newspaper reports. At least three vans with about 45 Texan National Guard troops arrived at the Broadview ICE facility late Wednesday. The troops can be seen in a video posted to social media Thursday morning. An estimated 200 Texas soldiers are in the Chicago area. 

Later today, U.S. District Judge April Perry is set to hear arguments over Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s request for a temporary restraining order to block the deployment of both Illinois and Texas Guard members to Chicago. “The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived Tuesday at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days,” the Associated Press reports. 

Update: Clergy and faith leaders have joined protests at the ICE facility in Broadview. “Three say they’ve been shot with pepper balls, sometimes while praying,” the Religion News Service reported Tuesday.  

More dissent from Democratic lawmakers: “This is the fourth time that Trump has taken the extreme and dangerous move to send the military into an American city without the consent of state and local authorities,” Rep. John Garamendi of California said in a statement Wednesday. “The Founders made clear the distinction between presidents and kings. Presidents do not get personal militaries, dictators do,” he said. “Fearful of kings and occupying military forces, our Founders thought hard about how to ensure military forces were responsive to lawful, civilian control and not inappropriately used against their fellow citizens…These actions are unacceptable and contrary to the democratic values our nation was founded upon.” 

Mapped: See how militarism is spreading across U.S. cities targeted by Trump in this map from the Associated Press, published Wednesday. 

Trump held a roundtable discussion with mostly far-right influencers Wednesday to signal aggressive new measures targeting anti-fascism protesters. Attorney General Pam Bondi attended, and told the president in front of cameras Wednesday, “Just like we did with cartels, we are going to take the same approach, President Trump, with antifa—destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We are going to take them apart.”

Critical reax: “Cartels have actual leadership structures, central funding, command and control, and more,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council pointed out on social media. “‘Antifa’ is mostly a philosophy. That the Attorney General doesn’t know the difference is quite the thing to admit!”

• By the way: Eight of the 12 “influencers” invited to Trump’s antifa roundtable have direct financial ties to Talking Point USA, the far-right activist organization founded by Charlie Kirk, researcher Jared Holt pointed out online Thursday. 

Trump called protesters “paid anarchists,” and claimed, “They’re like insurrectionists. They’re terrible people, but you really wonder why. Why are they doing it? What are they gaining? Other than they’re obviously paid. They’re paid a lot of money.” He also told his audience at the roundtable, “You’ll be finding it out very soon, you should see what we have on these people. These are bad people. These are people that want to destroy our country. We’re not going to let it happen.”

The White House on Wednesday also released a screed targeting the city of Portland, Oregon, which it claimed has been turned “into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property” because of “an Antifa-led hellfire.” 

“Premeditated anarchy” is what Trump called protests in Portland. “That’s why, as President Donald J. Trump mobilizes federal resources to safeguard lives and property,” the White House said in its Portland flier. 

See for yourself: Here’s on-the-ground video from protests in Portland on Tuesday.

Deportation-nation update: The U.S. conducted at least 1,464 immigration enforcement flights last month, including removals to 48 countries, according to open-source observers at ICE Flight Monitor from Human Rights First. That represents “the highest monthly total to date, averaging 49 flights per day.” 

During such flights, “individuals are nearly always restrained by handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons, including during any layovers and fuel stops,” HRF writes, noting, “The harsh conditions during enforcement flights raise serious human rights concerns.”

Additional reading: 

• “A quarter of FBI agents are assigned to immigration enforcement, per FBI data,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday;
• “Homeland Security Cyber Personnel Reassigned to Jobs in Trump’s Deportation Push,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday; 
• “Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims agent said, ‘Do something b—-‘ before shooting,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday, isolating at least five different inflammatory claims ICE agents made which later fell apart upon closer inspection; 
• “Ken Paxton Compared Charlie Kirk to Jesus—Then Used Him as an Excuse to Crush Free Speech,” Texas-based journalists at The Barbed Wire reported Wednesday; 
• And “Trump’s war on the left: Inside the plan to investigate liberal groups,” via Reuters, reporting Thursday. 

Israel

Developing: Israel and Hamas appear to be close to forging some kind of ceasefire in Gaza. “Israel said a truce would take effect on Friday and start a 72-hour window to exchange hostages and prisoners,” the New York Times reports almost exactly two years after the conflict erupted with a brutal surprise attack by Hamas militants. Trump said he’s considering traveling to the region sometime this weekend, too.

Caveats: This “initial agreement addresses only a few of the 20 points in a plan Mr. Trump proposed last month, and some of the most difficult issues between Israel and Hamas appeared to have been left to a future phase of negotiations. Those include who would rule postwar Gaza and whether, to what degree and how Hamas would lay down its weapons.”

And lastly: A Scottish maritime museum somehow ended up in Israel’s video models of alleged Hamas infrastructure, Israel’s progressive +972 Mag reported Wednesday. 

The gist: As Israel’s military responded to the Hamas attack two years ago, its three-dimensional illustrations posted to social media “coalesced into a distinct and consistent visual style. They usually begin with satellite imagery, followed by transitions into 3D visualizations that then often present an X-ray wireframe view of an interior or underground scene, intercut with real drone footage of airstrikes or bombings.” 

However, after reviewing 43 animations produced by the Israeli army since October 7, 2023, “many contain serious spatial inaccuracies or prefabricated assets—sourced not from classified intelligence but rather from commercial libraries, content creators, and cultural institutions.” And one of those inaccuracies included “scans from a boat-building workshop in Scotland” that had been “uploaded to the internet by the Scottish Maritime Museum under an unrestricted Creative Commons license.” Those files were used by Israel to illustrate alleged “Hamas bunkers or Iranian weapons facilities.”

So far, more than 50 third-party assets lifted from unrelated artists and institutions have been identified, and those “were replicated hundreds of times across animations of sites ranging from Gaza to Iran,” reporter Oren Ziv writes. Story, here. 

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A former military lawyer and a former judge encouraged commanders to stand up to unlawful orders.

Skeptical senators grill White House pick to lead Indo-Pacific policy. Led by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a bipartisan slice of the Senate Armed Services Committee took turns on Tuesday expressing concerns about the Trump administration’s inward shift in national-security focus and its alienation of key allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

Wicker: “The Chinese Communist Party, along with the nuclear-armed Russia and North Korea, pose a significant threat to the United States. The scale and scope of that threat put a premium on our alliances. In light of that, I’m disappointed with some of the decisions the department has made with respect to our allies in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan. A few of these choices have left me scratching my head.” 

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.: “There are some rumors, I guess, circulating that the new national defense strategy is going to shift priority away from the PRC and away from the Indo-Pacific, and instead focus on the Western Hemisphere. We’ll see what happens when that comes out,” Kelly said. “If that’s true…this shift is alarming, because most of what is briefed to this committee focuses on ‘how are we going to deter China’.”

The senators spoke during the confirmation hearing for John Noh, the Trump administration’s pick to be assistant defense secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs. Noh, who is currently ASD for East Asia, responded that China is “an enormous concern of mine.” But he waffled when Wicker asked about the Trump administration’s decision to cancel $400 million in military aid to Taiwan, and cited President Donald Trump’s stance that the island’s government should up its defense spending to about 10 percent of its GDP. 

Wicker worried that “DOD may be using the Ukraine playbook with Taiwan by taking defense items procured with presidential drawdown authority and returning it to the defense stockpile” which misaligns with “congressional intent, and would require Taiwan to purchase these items that have already been authorized as PDA.” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has more from the hearing, here.

The U.S. military in Syria says it killed a militant planner in an unspecified strike Thursday last week. The militant’s name was Muhammad ’Abd-al-Wahhab al-Ahmad, and U.S. Central Command officials claim he was an “attack planner” with Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group. Tiny bit more, here. 

Additional reading: “Hegseth announces ‘barracks task force’ during speech to new recruits,” The Hill reported Tuesday.

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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 and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so 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, U.S. Army Cpl. Alvin York killed 28 German soldiers and captured 132 others, which eventually won him the Medal of Honor.

Militarizing America’s streets

President Trump said Wednesday morning he thinks Chicago’s mayor and the state’s governor should be jailed. Writing on social media, Trump said Wednesday shortly after 8 a.m. ET, “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!

Reuters notes: “Neither Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson nor Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has been accused of criminal wrongdoing,” though “Johnson signed an executive order on Monday creating an ‘ICE Free Zone’ that prohibits federal immigration agents from using city property in their operations.”

Governor JB Pritzker wrote in reply: “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”

Chicago’s Mayor Johnson responded: “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere.”

By the way: 58% of Americans “think the president should send armed troops only to face external threats,” according to new polling published Wednesday by Reuters/Ipsos. That includes 51% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats. But when asked if the president should be able to send troops even if a governor objects, there’s a sharp split with 70% of Republicans saying yes but just 13% of Democrats saying they feel similarly.

“I think it’s a bad precedent,” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said Tuesday of President Trump’s order to deploy out-of-state National Guard troops to Chicago. “I worry about someday a Democrat president sending troops or National Guard from New York, California, Oregon, Washington state to North Carolina.”

“I don’t see how you can argue that this comports with any sort of conservative view of states’ rights,” he added. 

Tillis wasn’t the only Republican dissenting this week. “This is not the role of our military,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Tuesday as well. “It’s one thing if governors ask and they say, ‘Hey, I need help.’ That’s the way we’ve handled it before,” she said. “I am very apprehensive about the use of our military for policing and more the politicization that we’re seeing within the military…We’re seeing these orders, we’re seeing a directive that is unprecedented and it should make us all concerned,” Murkowski said. 

“I think [Trump is] just poking his finger in [Portland’s] eye,” one anonymous senator told The Hill. “I don’t know it’s the best way to solve the issue, but it looks like in Portland, the place is on fire, but that could be isolated reports,” said the Republican, who requested anonymity. 

But that’s largely where the Republican dissent ends for sending Texas soldiers to Illinois without the consent of the latter’s governor. Read more at The Hill.

The six senators from Illinois, Oregon, and California warned Tuesday that Trump is “moving us closer to authoritarianism” with his troop deployments against governors’ wishes. “Whether in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Portland, the Trump Administration continues fabricating claims of chaos and crime on American streets to justify his false assertions that there is a ‘need’ to deploy troops into our cities—all while literally defunding our police by cutting funding that helps local law enforcement,” Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon, and California’s Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff.

“None of our states asked for this. None of our states need this. And none of our National Guard Troops—who are our friends and neighbors—signed up to intimidate their fellow Americans in their own communities or to be used as political pawns by a vindictive President,” the senators said, and called for Trump to “immediately reverse course and end these un-American deployments.” 

Army veteran Tammy Duckworth: “We know deploying the military is not about protecting [Homeland Security] officials, because these same officials are escalating their tactics every day to provoke a manufactured crisis to justify sending in the military,” the retired lieutenant colonel said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “We know it’s not about crime, because Trump literally defunded the police by slashing $800 million in public-safety programs. This is about Trump’s desire to crush dissent and erode our constitutional rights.”

“The President wants to use our military as his personal police force that goes into American cities, detains civilians on our bases and intimidates people who disagree with him,” Duckworth continued. “Who wins in that scenario? Not the American people. Not our servicemembers. Only Donald Trump, along with our enemies who will exploit our distraction.” 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune: “If there are federal personnel who are being threatened, then I think the president has a right to protect them,” the Republican from South Dakota said Monday, calling Trump’s decision to send out-of-state troops to Illinois “a justifiable use of executive branch authority.” 

Commentary: “The greatest crisis of American civil-military relations in modern history is now under way,” argues Tom Nichols, former Naval War College professor, writing in the Atlantic on Tuesday. “Despite the firing of several top officers—and Trump’s threat to fire more—the U.S. armed forces are still led by generals and admirals whose oath is to the Constitution, not the commander in chief. But for how long?” he asked while emphasizing, “I write these words with great trepidation.” 

Nichols reminds us that Trump has already “declared war on Chicago; called Portland, Oregon, a ‘war zone’; and referred to his political opponents as ‘the enemy from within.’ Trump clearly wants to use military power to exert more control over the American people, and soon, top U.S.-military commanders may have to decide whether they will refuse such orders from the commander in chief.” 

“The Democrats are too timid, and the Republicans are too compromised. Only by standing together can the senior military officials warn Trump away from leading America into a full-blown civil-military confrontation,” Nichols writes. Read the rest (gift link), here. 

Additional reading: “Chicago journalists, protesters sue Trump administration, alleging ‘extreme brutality,’” Politico reported Tuesday. 

Shutdown shenanigans

Republican leaders in Congress are at odds over emergency legislation to pay troops during the government shutdown, Politico reported Tuesday afternoon. The tensions pit Speaker Mike Johnson, who is in favor of the legislation, against Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who told reporters, “Honestly, you don’t need that.”

Update: Trump is threatening mass layoffs during the ongoing shutdown, but that may be illegal, the New York Times reported Tuesday. What’s more, “Budget experts said that the White House had also incorrectly presented layoffs as a fiscal necessity, something no other president in the modern era has done. Not even during the longest federal stoppage on record—a five-week closure in Mr. Trump’s first term—did the government shed workers so that it could finance the few operations that are allowed to continue.”

In still more confusing messaging from the White House, on Tuesday, the Trump admin said furloughed feds were not guaranteed back pay. On Wednesday, it sent notices saying they were, Eric Katz of Government Executive reports. 

Additional reading: 

• “How Does the Government Shutdown Impact the U.S. Industrial Base?” researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies fielded several related questions in an explainer published Monday; 
• “Federal shutdown deals blow to already-hobbled cybersecurity agency,” University of Maryland, Baltimore County researcher Richard Forno wrote Tuesday; 
• “Denied in July, DHS intelligence office resumes efforts to shed staff,” Nextgov reported Tuesday; 
• And Trump’s “C.I.A. Deputy Director Has Replaced Agency’s Top Legal Official With Himself,” the New York Times reported Monday. 

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National Guard troops are headed to Chicago and could arrive as soon as Tuesday after a federal judge on Monday scheduled a hearing on the matter for Thursday in order to review what she said was more than 500 pages of filings. 

The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago sued the Trump administration Monday over the Guard deployment, which would send up to 300 Illinois National Guard soldiers and up to 400 more Guard troops from Texas into Chicago ostensibly to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and facilities, but over the objection of the governor of Illinois. “These advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous,” the suit alleges. 

“The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at night,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said at a press conference Monday. “Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send military troops to our city.”

After a judge paused Guard deployments to Oregon on Sunday, Trump said Monday he’s open to invoking the Insurrection Act, which would authorize the U.S. military to assist civilian state or federal authorities, including police, to put down an insurrection. The act has been invoked just 30 times in the past 230 years; the last time was in 1992 during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. “I’d do it if it was necessary,” Trump said Monday. “If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors, or mayors were holding us up.”

Trump: Chicago is “like a war zone,” the president claimed Monday. (He’s made similar claims about Portland, Ore., though the judge hearing the matter on Sunday did not agree, and described the president’s characterization as “simply untethered to the facts.”) “You can go to Afghanistan, you can go to a lot of different places, and they probably marvel at how much crime we have,” Trump said of Chicago on Monday. 

Pritzker: “There is no invasion here. There is no insurrection here,” he said Monday. “The folks in the neighborhoods do not want armed troops marching in their streets,” the governor said. 

Critical reax: Trump’s use of an obscure statute (10 U.S. Code § 12406) to deploy troops over governors’ objections is “unprecedented,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. That law permits a Guard authorization if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against the U.S. government. 

“I think we’ve all got to be very, very, very concerned about armed federal agents and troops reporting to the president exercising claims of police power in this country,” Shamsi said, and cited the ruling Sunday from Judge Immergut. “We’re only in the first year of this presidency,” and already—as Immergut pointed out Sunday—Trump tried “circumventing a court decision that reasoned that there was no justification” for National Guard troops in Portland. 

Local reax: In addition to Tuesday’s military-style immigration raid on an apartment complex, “We are also seeing masked, heavily armed federal law enforcement officers, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, marching through downtown Chicago heavily armed, in camouflage, and in masks threatening people and questioning others who are simply doing nothing more than visiting Millennium Park with their family on a Sunday afternoon,” said Colleen Connell, executive director the ACLU in Illinois. “We also tragically saw ICE agents shoot and kill one person at a traffic stop in Franklin Park, a near-in suburb, and misrepresented what happened at that scene.”

“I want to be very, very clear that sending heavily armed federal agents and now National Guard troops from potentially thousands of miles away into our beautiful city of Chicago is unnecessary, it’s inflammatory, and it puts public safety and human beings at risk,” Connell said Monday. 

Meanwhile, “The federal deployment of 300 National Guard troops in California has been quietly extended through January 2026,” the New York Times reported Monday, citing court documents filed this weekend in Oregon. 

Coverage continues below…

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Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to 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 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 2001, the U.S. military’s invasion of Afghanistan began.

Trump delivered another overtly partisan speech to the military on Sunday, this time to sailors aboard the USS George H.W. Bush off the coast of Norfolk, Va., and less than a week since his wandering remarks to generals and admirals during an unprecedented meeting last Monday in Quantico.  

“Now we’re in Memphis,” Trump said. “And we are going to Chicago,” he told the sailors. “We send in the National Guard…We send in whatever is necessary. People don’t care. They don’t want crime in their cities.” Trump also mocked his predecessor for falling down steps, and declared, “We’re not politically correct anymore, just so you understand.”

“And I want you to know that despite the current Democrat-induced shutdown, we will get our service members every last penny,” the president said. “Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. Do not worry about it. It’s all coming. It’s coming. And even more, because I’m supporting the across-the-board pay raises for every sailor and service member.” 

Shutdown trivia: U.S. service members could miss their first paycheck of the shutdown if negotiations drag beyond Oct. 15. 

“But we have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats,” the president told members of the Navy. “They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens that pour into the country,” he said Sunday—less than three days after calling Democrats “The Party Of Hate, Evil, And Satan” amid Republican lawmakers and pundits blaming violence in the country on dangerous rhetoric from the left side of the political spectrum. 

War on drug boats

Update: The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has argued in a classified memo “that the president is allowed to authorize deadly force against a broad range of cartels because they pose an imminent threat to Americans,” CNN reported Monday. However, “At the Pentagon, some military lawyers, including international law experts within [DoD’s Office of General Counsel], have raised concerns about the legality of the lethal strikes on suspected drug traffickers,” with multiple current and former JAGs telling CNN “the strikes do not appear lawful.”

ICYMI: The White House last week told lawmakers they believe the country is in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels, and that’s why they feel U.S. troops can kill people in speedboats instead of interdicting and arresting those inside the vessels traveling around the Caribbean Sea, north of Venezuela.  

New: The New York City Bar Association called the Pentagon’s attacks on boats in Latin America “illegal summary execution” that are “prohibited by both U.S. and international law,” which is to say those military actions are akin to “murders,” the organization said in a statement Monday. 

The group also asked “Congress to remind the President that he lacks authority to continue to misuse our military forces for similar unlawful attacks on foreign vessels and their civilian crews and that continuation of such attacks is unlawful.”

For your ears only: Just Security recently posted a new podcast discussion about Trump’s lethal strikes in the Caribbean, which have killed at least 21 people so far. The guests “examine an important new chapter in the use of force against drug cartels” in a discussion that “explores how far presidential powers extend in such contexts.” Listen, here. 

Extra reading: 

• “Trump Calls Off Diplomatic Outreach to Venezuela,” the New York Times reported Monday in a development that potentially “paves the way for a possible military escalation against drug traffickers or the government of Nicolás Maduro”; 
• “Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago fear for their lives and jobs after US strikes in the Caribbean,” the Associated Press reported Monday on location; 
• “Stephen Miller Is Going for Broke,” Jonathan Chait wrote for the Atlantic on Monday; 
• “As Money Rushed In, ICE’s Rapid Expansion Stalled Out,” veteran immigration reporter Nick Miroff wrote Monday for the Atlantic;
• “ICE impersonator incidents rise during Trump’s second term,” CNN reported Thursday; 
• And in broad explainers, the New York Times on Monday asked and answered, “What Is the National Guard?” 

Around the Defense Department

OK for F/A-XX? Sources tell Reuters that SecDef Hegseth has approved the Navy’s effort to build a sixth-gen fighter of its own, clearing the way to choose between options offered by Boeing and Northrop Grumman after years of delay.

Background, from August: “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,” Defense One wrote. “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. Cheever’s comments today appear to confirm that F/A-XX is in fact moving ahead.”

Industry had more than 1,500 questions for the Missile Defense Agency about the gigantic $151-billion, 10-year contract vehicle for work on the ambitious Golden Dome missile-defense project, so officials have pushed the deadline for pitches for slices of the work one week to Oct. 16, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reports, here.

The Army established Transformation and Training Command on Thursday, combining missions and assets from the now-deactivated Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command. The merger is part of the service’s Army Transformation Initiative (ATI) effort announced by Hegseth in May. Breaking Defense has more, here.

Additional reading: “Marines retire ‘workhorse’ Assault Amphibious Vehicle after 50 years,” Military Times reported Monday.

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Over the weekend, President Donald Trump tried repeatedly to send the U.S. military into two more American cities—including to Portland, Oregon, “in direct contravention” of a judge’s order on Saturday—and against the wishes or requests of both states’ elected governors. 

The state of Oregon sued the White House last week over Trump’s decision to send 200 Oregon National Guard troops to Portland following the president’s claim that the city is “ravaged” by war, with “ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” The troops were scheduled to begin arriving in Portland early this week, prompting U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut to issue a ruling on the lawsuit Saturday. 

“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” wrote Immergut, who was appointed by Trump. “There is not a legal basis to bring federalized National Guard members into Oregon,” she told the administration’s lawyers, stressing, “You have to have a colorable claim that Oregon conditions require it, but you don’t.”

“This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut said in her ruling. She added, “Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.”

So on Sunday, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth ordered 300 California National Guard troops to Oregon, which prompted California to join Oregon’s lawsuit against the administration’s alleged abuse of power. Hegseth’s decision to use California troops in this instance “is the legal equivalent of a child kicking a sibling after his mother says ‘violence is never acceptable, so I order you to stop hitting your brother,’” observed Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice. “If any other litigant pulled a stunt like this, they (and their lawyers) might well be facing sanctions.” 

After an emergency hearing later Sunday, Immergut again froze the deployment of National Guard troops to Oregon for two weeks, and extended her freeze to cover all 50 states.

Then Sunday evening, Trump ordered the Texas National Guard to “Illinois, Oregon, and other [unspecified] locations throughout the United States,” for 60 days (PDF), including “up to 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployment in Portland, Chicago, and elsewhere, under Title 10, section 12406.” That is the same legal justification the White House used in June to order troops to protect immigration-enforcement officers in California. 

Notable: Last month, District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the June order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the military from conducting civilian law enforcement unless authorized by Congress—and that’s just what the troops were doing as they tagged along for patrols and carried out riot response as well as traffic and crowd control. “The ruling is historic, as it is the first time a court has issued an injunction to stop a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878,” wrote Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice. However, the White House appealed Breyer’s ruling, which put a hold on his decision.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker: “No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate” the 400 Guardsmen from Texas. “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” he wrote on social media Sunday night. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.” 

“I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate,” Pritzker said. “There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation,” he added, and said, “The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness.”

But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is all in, responding to Pritzker on social media: “I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials. You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it. No Guard can match the training, skill, and expertise of the Texas National Guard. They defend our country with pride. America must also know that Texas still has thousands of National Guard assisting with the Border security.”

Reminder: Just four years ago, Abbott argued the federal government had practically no authority over his National Guard when it came to enforcing COVID vaccinations. 

The state of Illinois is now suing the White House over this latest National Guard order, Gov. Pritzker announced today on social media. 

Legal reax: “We are watching the adjudication of some of the most important constitutional issues of federalism, executive discretion, and judicial review since the 19th c[entury],” argues Lindsay Cohn of the U.S. Naval War College. She lists a series of possibly-applicable judicial precedents going back to 1827, and finds that the related matters “haven’t been adjudicated in a long time, and there is at least room in the jurisprudence to find that the earlier precedents are quite narrow.”

Second opinion: “Texas proudly invading Illinois. It’s hard to describe the level of potential constitutional crisis here,” Bradley Moss said on social media. 

One more thing: “Reuters took a closer look at violent crime in D.C. after President Trump began a show of force” in August, Brad Heath of Reuters reports. “Despite the big investment of federal resources, it’s really hard at this point to see any dramatic changes.” Story and data, here. 

Extra reading: 

• “Trump officials discussed sending [82nd Airborne] Army division to Portland, text messages show,” the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported Friday; 
• Georgetown University’s Steve Vladeck highlights an early judicial precedent in his short essay, “Courts and Domestic Use of the Military,” written Sunday; 
• And former DOD official Janine Davidson writes Monday to caution the public regarding what she sees as “Trump’s Outline of a Domestic War: The real message from Quantico,” published at Just Security.

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Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to 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 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 1884, the U.S. founded the Naval War College in Rhode Island. 

Around the Defense Department

Hegseth says the U.S. military has blown up a fourth alleged drug-hauling boat. On Friday, the SecDef tweeted that “four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel” were killed “in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela.” 

“Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics,” Hegseth wrote, offering no evidence. You can read his tweet and watch a video clip of an explosion, here.

Reax: “If one man alone decides when and where America fights, we abandon the checks and balances that safeguard our democracy,” Sen. Jack Reed, D.-R.I., said in a statement.

Sea routes from Venezuela to U.S. territory, mapped by Philip Bump, a former Washington Post data reporter.

Hegseth fires Navy chief of staff, a Trump appointee who helped reorganize the service’s policy and budgeting offices. Jon Harrison had worked with Secretary John Phelan on the changes, which among other things sought to reduce the power of the Navy undersecretary. “The sudden ouster, according to two defense officials and a former defense official, follows the confirmation this week of Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao,” Politico reported Friday.

Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course continues to boost recruiting. “Mr. Trump’s election win and a higher unemployment rate among people ages 16 to 24 could have played a small role in improving recruiting, Army officials said. The Army’s recent success, though, would not have been possible without the program at Fort Jackson. About 22 percent of the Army’s more than 61,000 new recruits this year came in through the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a senior Army official said,” the New York Times reported off an August visit to the program.

Rewind to a year ago, when the program helped the service break a two-year streak of missing recruiting goals. In 2024, the FSPC contributed some 13,000 soldiers, more than a quarter of the Army’s total recruits for the year, Defense One reported in September 2024.

NGA wants to put its idle PCs to work. “Analysts will be plenty busy at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s new St. Louis campus, but they won’t use their powerful workstations around the clock. So General Dynamics Information Technology is helping NGA stitch together the high-end PCs so their unused compute power can be harnessed even when their humans are elsewhere,” reports Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams.

Around the world

A wave of Russian airstrikes across Ukraine. Early on Sunday, 53 ballistic and cruise missiles and 496 drones struck nine regions of the country, Ukrainian officials said, adding that the barrages appeared to target civilian infrastructure.

At least five people died in Lviv, a western-Ukrainian city that had earlier in the war been seen as a haven from the fighting. Saturday’s attack was the largest in the region since the war began. AP reports, here.

China is secretly bartering for Iranian oil, a financial lifeline for the regime. “Iranian oil is shipped to China—Tehran’s biggest customer—and, in return, state-backed Chinese companies build infrastructure in Iran,” the Wall Street Journal says in an exclusive report. “Completing the loop, the officials say, are a Chinese state-owned insurer that calls itself the world’s largest export-credit agency and a Chinese financial entity that is so secretive that its name couldn’t be found on any public list of Chinese banks or financial firms.” More, here.

Zoom out: the scheme is just part of the world’s growing “shadow economy” that “are no longer peripheral nuisances but core strategic terrain,” Army Maj. Benjamin Backsmeier wrote in a recent op-ed for Defense One. “Trade executed outside regulatory, taxation, and enforcement frameworks prolongs wars, defangs sanctions, frays alliances, and helps rogue governments and groups survive and thrive. These flows have long been treated as problems for law enforcement, but military and defense policymakers and planners must increase their efforts to account for and stem them.” Read that, here.

Lastly today: China’s infowar in the Philippines. Reuters has a 2,000-word deep dive on a 2021 campaign by a Chinese company that created fake social-media accounts to push narratives as Beijing’s naval forces ramped up efforts against the archipelagic nation—and worked to drive a wedge between Manila and Washington. Read that, here. 

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