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Geopolitics, emerging technology, and skills shortages are reshaping cybersecurity priorities across industries, according to a new PwC report. The findings show a mix of rising awareness, persistent weaknesses, and uneven preparation for the next wave…
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:
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.
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.
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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The volume of cyberattacks has reached staggering levels, with new tactics that blur the line between legitimate and malicious activity. A new threat report from Comcast, based on 34.6 billion cybersecurity events analyzed over the past year, shows wha…
Weeks after ordering the U.S. military to kill 17 people in boats off Venezuela, the Trump administration justified the much-criticized strikes by telling Congress this week it believes the United States is in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which—if not checked by Congress or the courts—would grant him “extraordinary wartime powers,” the New York Times reported Thursday.
Why it matters: “In an armed conflict, it is lawful to kill combatants for the opposing force on sight,” Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt write for the Times. And that means from the White House’s perspective, “the laws of war permitted it to kill, rather than arrest, the people on the boats because it said the targets were smuggling drugs for cartels it has designated as terrorists” because thousands of Americans die each year from overdoses.
WH to lawmakers: “Based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a noninternational armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations.” The notice did not specify which cartels, nor explain how it confirms that its targets are indeed cartel members.
Loose ends: “The surge of overdose deaths in recent years has been driven by fentanyl, which drug trafficking experts say comes from Mexico, not South America,” the Times reminds readers. Further, the White House “has not explained how selling a dangerous substance constitutes a use of force, and Congress has not authorized the use of any type of military force against cartels.”
Lawmaker reax: “Declaring war and ordering lethal military force without Congress or public knowledge—nor legal justification—is unacceptable,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, and ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. “Drug cartels must be stopped,” Reed said, but “Every American should be alarmed that [President Trump] has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy.”
“Trump’s actions are illegal, unconstitutional, and dangerous,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “He is leading us willy-nilly into war with Venezuela. I have ‘determined’ that this is a terrible idea,” he added.
Expert reax: The White House’s claim “that the U.S. is somehow in an armed conflict does not do the trick because it’s not supported by the facts,” said Brian Finucane, former State Department counsel on counterterrorism and military rules of engagement, speaking to CBS News. “What this boils down to is the President of the United States asserting a prerogative to kill people based solely on his own say so,” he told NPR Friday.
“There is a world of difference between al Qaeda murdering almost 3,000 people on 9/11 by crashing airliners into buildings (an actual armed attack) and people dying from ingesting illegal drugs (not an armed attack),” Finucane wrote on social media Thursday. He adds, the U.S. government’s “position on cyberspace provides a useful touchstone for non-traditional uses of force. Drug smuggling does not meet this threshold.”
Some questions Trump’s claim raises include: “Is a coca farmer a military target now? Someone who sells gas for the boats? Someone who happens to live in a crime-controlled town? A lieutenant or sergeant who is on the take?” asked Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office on Latin America. “With so little clarity about who the enemy is, the chance of innocent civilians being killed is enormous.”
Also: why didn’t Trump invoke an armed-conflict rationale earlier? None was mentioned in the president’s Sept. 4 War Powers Resolution report to Congress about the first Caribbean strike, notes Marty Lederman, a Georgetown law professor and Just Security executive editor, in “Legal Flaws in the Trump Administration’s Notice to Congress on ‘Armed Conflict’ with Drug Cartels.”
Coverage continues below…
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 2015, the U.S. military killed 42 people and injured more than 30 others when an Air Force AC-130U gunship opened fire on a hospital run by Doctors without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
In Chicago, at least three federal agencies stormed an apartment complex at 1 a.m. local Tuesday with drones and helicopters overhead, and used flashbang grenades to burst through the building as they pulled sleeping people out of their apartments and zip-tied their children—some without any clothes on—outside for several hours, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday. “Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building,” and left residents’ homes trashed upon their eventual return between three and five hours later.
Sizzle reel: Homeland Security officials turned footage of the raid into a sort of highlight video posted online Thursday.
Officials arrested 37 people at the apartment, which they claimed was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.” However, those Homeland Security officials “gave no evidence to support the assertion, and authorities did not confirm that any of the people arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang,” the Sun-Times reports.
The people brought outside “looked very distraught,” an eyewitness told local ABC7 News. “I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too—had them zip tied to each other. That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*ck them kids.’”
“Even if you’re not a mother, seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible,” a neighbor said.
Said one detained U.S. citizen: “I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up. I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
Historian and author Garrett Graff called it not just “a dark and almost certainly illegal escalation of the out-of-control agency’s war on the American people,” but also “a portrait of an authoritarian secret police that seems set to model itself on history’s worst fascist enforcers.”
He continued: “There is no warrant any judge could give—or at least, in theory, that any reasonable judge would ever sign!—that gives federal authorities the right to break down the doors of every apartment in a building in search of undocumented immigrants. That is almost exactly the definition of the so-called ‘general warrants’ or ‘writs of assistance’ that the British used against US colonists that helped spur the Revolution—warrants then very specifically outlawed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.” (Graff goes into greater detail about precedents of this sort, like the so-called “Palmer Raids” of the country’s first Red Scare, here.)
Legal reax: “There is a gulf in America,” said attorney Ken White, writing Thursday on social media. “The gulf is not just between people who oppose this and people who are indifferent to it or reluctantly accept it in support of immigration policy or see it as collateral damage.”“The gulf is between people who see this as brutal and inhuman, and people who see the victims of this as inhuman,” he said. “The other side of this is not merely saying ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,’ it‘s people who say ‘lol fuck those eggs.’ It’s between decency and thuggish, swaggering, nihilistic evil. This is not merely about indifference to the brutality against the least of us that is characteristic of our system; that happens under every administration. This is about brutality being the goal, because it makes evil people happy to see others brutalized.”
Inside the emergency effort to create a European drone wall: As Russian drone incursions across Europe spike, the European Union committed Wednesday to one of the most ambitious multi-nation defense projects in history: a Europe-wide “drone wall,” envisioned as a network of new sensors, artificial intelligence software, jammers, cheap missiles, and more to thwart small-drone attacks, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Thursday from Estonia.
The concept is still in its infancy. But dozens of Estonian defense tech startups working in autonomy, drone detection and defeat, and other areas related to drone defense gave Defense One a glimpse of how autonomous vehicles, inexpensive short-range missiles, hunter drones and AI concepts are laying the groundwork for the future of defeating drone swarms. And nearly all of them highlighted ongoing partnerships with Ukrainian front-line commanders as part of their development process.
While the drone wall concept belongs to the European Union, it overlaps in geography, technology, and objectives with a separate NATO effort called Eastern Shield, a push to increase eastern-flank area defense under NATO command and control. Continue reading, here.
And in partner-nation developments, we have several new reports from Reuters:
Commentary: “Shadow economies” are growing, and it’s past time for U.S. military planners and operators to take into account these black markets that help rogue states and actors and fray alliances, argues Army Maj. Benjamin Backsmeier, writing Thursday in Defense One.
And lastly this week: An Army battlefield network upgrade led by Anduril and Palantir was described as “deeply flawed” and viewed by Army officials as “very high risk” due to an alleged “likelihood of an adversary gaining persistent undetectable access,” the Army’s chief technology authorizing official said recently, Reuters reported Friday—two days after Breaking Defense initially reported that some“deficiencies” had been “mitigated.”
The network is the Army’s NGC2 platform, which “connects soldiers, sensors, vehicles and commanders with real-time data,” but an Army review last month “paints a bleak picture of the initial product,” Mike Stone of Reuters reports. “We cannot control who sees what, we cannot see what users are doing, and we cannot verify that the software itself is secure,” the Army memo said.
Notable: Breaking Defense reported “that in the three-plus weeks since the document was written and subsequently circulated within industry, the problems have been addressed.” And the Army’s chief information officer Leonel Garciga told Reuters the memo helped in “triaging cybersecurity vulnerabilities” and mitigating them. However, “Other deficiencies highlighted in the memo include the hosting of third-party applications that have not undergone Army security assessments,” and “One application revealed 25 high-severity code vulnerabilities,” while “Three additional applications under review each contain over 200 vulnerabilities requiring assessment, according to the document.” Read more, here.
Additional industry-related reading: “Elon Musk’s SpaceX took money directly from Chinese investors, company insider testifies,” ProPublica reported Thursday.
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The newly unsealed testimony marks the first time direct Chinese investment in the company has been disclosed, raising new questions about foreign stakes in one of America’s most important military contractors.
Hegseth expands war on leaks. Washington Post: “The Pentagon plans to impose strict nondisclosure agreements and random polygraph testing for scores of people in its headquarters, including many top officials, according to two people familiar with the proposal and documents obtained by The Washington Post, escalating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on leakers and internal dissent.”
A draft memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg says that all troops, civilian employees, and contract workers within the Office of the Defense Secretary and the Joint Staff—likely more than 5,000 people—would be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that “prohibits the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process.”
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell declined to answer questions about the plan, saying in an email that The Post’s reporting is “untrue and irresponsible.” Read on, here.
The Trump administration has introduced the limited use of NDAs at other federal departments, including the Veterans Affairs Department and Interior Department.
Silicon Valley in St. Louis? Movers and shakers in the Gateway City, having welcomed the recently opened National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus in the Bottle District, now have their sights set on turning the city into a hub for geospatial startups, arguing, perhaps, that St. Louis and defense technology go together like toasted ravioli and marinara. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson 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 2018, Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and cut into pieces with a bone saw during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Amid a government shutdown, at least 15 government oversight websites were down Wednesday evening, removing access to watchdog reports and required hotline and whistleblower links, Natalie Alms of Nextgov reported.
The outages are not due to the shutdown—it’s a deliberate move by the White House, whose Office of Management and Budget is withholding funds from the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. CIGIE is an independent entity charged by Congress with addressing oversight issues that involve more than one government agency. It provides training for investigators and auditors and acts as a watchdog for the government watchdog community.
OMB claims the IGs “have become corrupt, partisan, and in some cases, have lied to the public,” a spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW in a statement. With the websites gone, so is access to the reports of those offices as well as links for whistleblowers. Read more, here.
Some of the affected OIG offices have posted to social media to offer phone numbers and alternative online hotline complaint forms. And links to the pre-Oct. 1 versions of the sites are available here.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s campaign against the government’s independent watchdogs, which began with Trump’s firing of 17 IGs soon after he took office, a move that a federal judge recently said was an “obvious” violation of the law.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a review of the reporting processes for his department’s IG, which is currently investigating him for allegedly using an unsecure, unapproved app to conduct official business in the form of sending strike plans over Signal.
In a Tuesday memo, Hegseth said IG offices must now decide whether tips are backed by “credible evidence” within seven days and to track any “repeat complainants.” Reuters: “One U.S. official who approved of Hegseth’s move said the memo could mean fewer frivolous complaints, allowing investigators to focus on more important tips. But critics of the reforms argue they could ultimately hamper oversight, weaken the independence of the IG and put whistleblowers in an impossible situation.” More, here.
Trump falsely claimed National Guard troops were “in place” in Portland on Wednesday, but “no troops could be seen anywhere around the outside of the ICE facility on South Macadam Avenue,” Portland’s KGW news reported shortly afterward, though they are expected sometime early next week.
“I’m guessing [Trump] means that the 200 individuals have been selected and sent to Camp Rilea for training,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, told KGW. “He may also mean the command structure from Northern Command has arrived in Oregon. He may mean that. It’s definitely the sort of thing where it would be nice to have the right appointed person clarify those details. We’re all trying to get the best information we can, and it’s very fuzzy.”
Trump also falsely claimed “ANTIFA and the Radical Left Anarchists” were attacking federal law enforcement and immigration officers, and “many people have been badly hurt, and even killed” because he said the city is “a NEVER-ENDING DISASTER” that’s “run like a Third World Country.”
In reality, “The ICE facility in the South Waterfront neighborhood has been the site of small-scale but frequent protests in recent months, leading to a handful of arrests and some complaints about noise and tear gas, though there have been no significant injuries or deaths reported, and nearby residents and Portland police have both described the marches as relatively peaceful,” KGW reports.
Local police reax: “The city of Portland is about 145 square miles. This is one city block,” Portland Police Chief Bob Day told reporters Tuesday. “And even the events that are happening down there do not rise to the level of attention that they are receiving.”
And ICYMI: “Federal officers have arrested just 5 people at Portland ICE building since July 4,” KGW8 reported Tuesday.
Legal insight: “The Trump administration is hoping no one notices that, although federal law defines ‘domestic terrorism,’ it provides no special authorities against anyone whose behavior meets that definition,” Georgetown University national security law professor Steve Vladeck writes on Substack.
He’s talking about Trump’s recent “National Security Presidential Memorandum-7” (NSPM-7), which is a memo signed last Thursday titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” That memo, Vladeck says, “reflects a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to cast a whole lot of constitutionally protected speech and political activity as unlawful ‘political violence and intimidation.’” The point of the memo seems to be “to scare, intimidate, cajole, and harass a wide array of non-governmental (and non-profit) organizations into self-censoring—lest they risk triggering the investigations and potential prosecutions the memorandum threatens,” Vladeck writes.
On its face, the memo is “an exercise in legally empty but rhetorically dangerous symbolism,” says Vladeck, “one that is trying to coerce more and more individuals and groups to ‘obey in advance,’ even though there are no new substantive rules that they need to actually obey.” Read on, here.
Additional reading:
Developing: The U.S. will soon begin helping Ukraine strike deeper inside Russia via a new intelligence-sharing agreement pertaining to “long-range missile strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. “President Trump recently signed off on allowing intelligence agencies and the Pentagon to aid Kyiv with the strikes,” U.S. officials said as Trump’s recent efforts to end Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion have gone nowhere so far.
Also pending: Possible U.S. delivery of Tomahawk and Barracuda cruise missiles as well as “other American-made ground- and air-launched missiles that have ranges of around 500 miles,” officials told the Journal. Vice President JD Vance teased the Tomahawk possibility Sunday. The Kremlin’s reaction the following day seemed relatively muted compared to November 2024, e.g., according to Reuters reporting Monday.
Even without the new intelligence, Ukraine has attacked 21 of Russia’s 38 large oil refineries since January, triggering fuel shortages and price hikes that one gas station manager compared “to the hyperinflation experienced by post-Soviet Russia,” according to the BBC. “In my opinion we haven’t had a crisis like this since 1993-1994,” he said.
An estimated 38% of Russia’s oil refining capacity is reportedly offline, and about 70% of that was caused by Ukrainian drone strikes, according to Moscow-based newspaper Lenta, reporting Tuesday.
Panning out: “Retail petrol prices have surged, while wholesale prices—the cost at which retailers buy from producers—have risen even faster, growing by 40% since January.”
One large plant near Moscow has been hit five times this calendar year, but August was the busiest month with more than a dozen such attacks. Read more, here.
New: Russia appears to have modified its ballistic missiles to better evade Patriot air defense systems, the Financial Times reports. That includes Moscow’s “Iskander-M mobile system, which launches missiles with an estimated range of up to 500km, as well as Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles, which can fly up to 480km,” officials said.
“The missiles now follow a typical trajectory before diverting and plunging into a steep terminal dive or executing manoeuvres that ‘confuse and avoid’ Patriot interceptors,” according to Ukrainian and western officials. These adjustments appear to have helped Russia attack “At least four drone-making plants in and around Kyiv” over the summer, including “strike on August 28 on a facility producing Turkish Bayraktar drones.”
Related: The Polish government believes Russia deliberately sent drones into its airspace last month to test the resolve of the country and its NATO allies—and that such tests will keep coming. That means the Polish military needs a better counter-unmanned systems plan, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told reporters on Wednesday. The European Union is leading that effort, he added, securing $150 billion in loans for member states, as well as joint ventures with Ukraine, whose counter-UAS prowess was born out of necessity in the nearly four years it’s been fighting off Russian drones, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports.
Also this week: Finland said it’s gonna help protect Denmark’s airspace, which is one of several European nations that have experienced suspicious overflights of sensitive sights.
Additional reading: “Suspicious drones apparently spied on critical infrastructure,” Germany’s Der Spiegel reported Wednesday, highlighting newly-revealed overflights of German army and naval bases in Sanitz and Rostock as well as defense industry locations elsewhere.
Lastly: President Trump seems to have quietly committed the U.S. to defending Qatar, according to an executive order Trump signed Monday during Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House.
The order is “bizarre,” observed Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing Wednesday on Substack. He then focuses on what he says are “two big problems with this from the broader perspective of the practice of U.S. extended deterrence and alliances. First of all—and I’ve expressed this frustration elsewhere—it matters to the United States, its people, and U.S. allies that assurances and extended deterrence relationships are codified in treaties,” he writes. And secondly, “from the vantage point of U.S. treaty allies, these relatively empty assurances to Qatar could be seen as cheapening the value of actually being in a treaty alliance with the United States.”
After some consideration, he goes on to describe Trump’s order as “a perverse reflection of the domestic political incentives that shape how the United States thinks about its various allied relationships” under the current president, in particular. “I won’t go as far as to argue that this new executive order for the Qataris is a huge problem for American alliances in 2025,” he continues. “[T]hat would be hyperbolic and there are far more obvious culprits. But it’s certainly not the sort of thing that makes the actual treaty allies remember or recognize any value in an actual treaty-based relationship.”
Second opinion: “An executive order is not a treaty and can be overturned by another president, but the declaration of a military commitment to a foreign nation without ratification by the Senate as the Constitution requires shows the belief of administration officials that they can act as they wish without consulting Congress,” writes Heather Cox Richardson of Boston College.
However, “the deal shows just how ill-advised Trump’s illegal demand for, and then receipt of, a $400 million luxury 747-8 from Qatar turned out to be, for now it certainly looks as if Qatar received U.S. military commitments in exchange for a used plane,” she adds.
Additional reading:
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Warsaw’s foreign minister also hopes the U.S. will send more troops to train with its military.
SecDef used his unprecedented meeting to unveil 10 personnel and due-process initiatives. Hundreds of admirals, generals, and senior enlisted leaders sat mostly silent as Pete Hegseth strode a stage at Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, inveighing against “fat” troops and leaders and announcing initiatives around physical fitness and grooming standards, the inspector general process, and mandatory training. Some of the initiatives flow from reviews Hegseth has ordered since taking the job in January.
Others take aim at processes that affect or have affected the secretary himself. For example, he called for a review of the inspector general process, which enables troops to anonymously report concerns without fear of retaliation. Hegseth is under investigation by the department’s inspector general for allegedly using an unsecure, unapproved app to conduct official business in the form of sending strike plans over Signal.
He also called for a review of the rules governing the retention of “adverse information” on personnel records, which can hamstring a service member’s assignment or promotion chances. Hegseth has said he resigned from the D.C. National Guard in 2021 after his superiors concluded that his tattoos were associated with white supremacist ideology and barred him from serving at Biden inaugural events. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports on the event and lists the 10 new initiatives, here.
Rewind: You can watch Hegseth’s speech at C-Span or read DOD’s transcript of it.
Hegseth was followed by President Trump, whose hourlong talk meandered among various subjects. Former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols wrote at The Atlantic, “The most ominous part of his speech came when he told the military officers that they would be part of the solution to domestic threats, fighting the ‘enemy from within.’ He added, almost as a kind of trollish afterthought, that he’d told Hegseth, ‘We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military—National Guard, but military—because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.’”
CNN tallied and annotated a wide variety of false claims Trump told the generals in a fact check from reporter Daniel Dale, here.
In reruns: Watch Trump’s speech on C-Span or read a transcript via Roll Call.
Capitol Hill reax:
Stateside headlines:
How Trump’s speech played overseas:
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 with Tom Novelly. 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 1961, the Defense Intelligence Agency was formed.
The Air Force’s leadership shakeup continues. Gen. Thomas Bussiere, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, announced he was stepping away from his military career. Bussiere said Tuesday evening in a LinkedIn post he “made the difficult decision to request retirement from the United States Air Force for personal and family reasons.”
Bussiere: “While I’m stepping away from active duty, my commitment to service remains,” the four-star general said. “I look forward to finding new ways to support our Air Force, our national defense, and the incredible people who make it all possible.”
His sudden announcement follows Trump’s speech Tuesday, and it comes after Bussiere’s nomination to serve as the Air Force’s vice chief of staff was withdrawn last month without any public explanation. Bussiere had overseen aspects of Operation Midnight Hammer, the B-2 bomber mission this summer targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.
It also immediately follows President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gen. Ken Wilsbach, the former head of Air Combat Command, to serve as the service’s new top uniformed leader. “The trust and confidence placed in me is not something I take lightly,” Wilsbach said in a press release Tuesday. “If confirmed, I intend to strengthen our warrior ethos and to build a more lethal force that is always ready to defend our homeland and deter our adversaries around the world.”
Also: America’s military drawdown from Iraq continues, Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Wednesday. “In accordance with the President’s guidance and in alignment with the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission and the joint statement issued on Sept. 27, 2024, the United States and Coalition partners will reduce its military mission in Iraq. This reduction reflects our combined success in fighting ISIS and marks an effort to transition to a lasting U.S.-Iraq security partnership in accordance with U.S. national interests, the Iraqi Constitution, and the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement.” More, here.
Additional reading:
Louisiana’s GOP governor wants to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops across his state until at least October 2026. “The proposed mission and scope for the Louisiana National Guard would be to deploy throughout the state to urban centers, supplement law enforcement presence in high-crime areas, provide logistical and communication support, and secure critical infrastructure,” Gov. Jeff Landry said in his Monday letter to the Defense Department. The troops are expected to spread out across New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport, the only three cities Landry mentioned in his letter.
“This request builds upon the successful model of Title 32 deployments in other jurisdictions, including Washington D.C. and Tennessee, and will provide critical support during several high-profile events, including the Bayou Classic, Sugar Bowl, and Mardi Gras. Louisiana National Guard deployments to New Orleans following Hurricane Ida (2021), Hurricane Francine (2024), the January Ist Terrorist Attack, Superbowl LIX, and Mardi Gras (2025),” Landry said in the letter.
Local reax: “Crime is not eliminated by soldiers on the streets—crime is reduced when people have access to better jobs/careers/wages, education, healthcare, and opportunity,” said Rep. Joy Walters, a Democrat from Shreveport.
Panning out: “New Orleans has had the fewest murders this year since 1970,” said crime trends analyst Jeff Asher, writing Monday on social media. “This is a wholly unnecessary stunt,” he added. Read more at The Daily Beast.
Critical reax: “The National Guard is supposed to protect our state during real emergencies, not to serve as political props,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “Flooding the cities we love with military troops is dangerous and would make people afraid to go about their daily lives. Safe communities are built by investing in our communities,” she said.
Missouri GOP Gov. Mike Kehoe just authorized his National Guard to help ICE with state-wide deportations until at least October 2026. The troops are expected to help with “data entry, case management, and logistical support,” Kehoe said in a statement Tuesday. “The Missouri National Guard is uniquely equipped to provide this essential administrative support, and we are confident their contributions will be invaluable to immigration enforcement efforts,” the governor said.
Local reax: “Using the brave women and men of our National Guard as paper pushers and case managers at immigration facilities undermines their mission and the law, directs them away from the important storm-response and local public safety efforts Missourians care about, and marks another example of Missouri public policy operating for the interests of Washington elites rather than everyday Missourians,” said Kansas City Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas.
Critical reax: Kehoe’s announcement “ignores the needs of the St. Louis community that is still in the midst of clean up from a devastating tornado,” said Luz María Henríquez, executive director at the ACLU of Missouri. “With the backdrop of masked immigration agents breaking apart our families and communities, it is particularly concerning that the Governor is asking Guard members to voluntarily participate in this agenda. At the same time, he is failing to provide resources to the communities impacted by a natural disaster,” she added.
Related reading:
The U.S. government shut down at midnight. Trump has promised to initiate more mass layoffs, as Eric Katz of GovExec reports.
Background: “Disagreement stemmed from a deadlock in Congress over Democratic demands over health care—and Republican efforts to kick that can down the road,” the Associated Press reports in a liveblog documenting shutdown developments. “At issue are tax credits that have made health insurance through the Affordable Care Act more affordable for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits are set to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t extend them—which would more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay.”
For the Defense Department, Seamus Daniels of the Center for Strategic and International Studies published an explainer Tuesday: “What a Government Shutdown Would Mean for Defense Funding in FY 2026.”
And lastly: The Trump administration wants to cut federal counterterrorism money to New York by $187 million, which would be “an 86 percent reduction from what the state received under the Biden administration,” the New York Times reported Tuesday after nearly a dozen states sued the Department of Homeland Security to block the funding cuts.
“The grants helped fund bomb squads, canine teams and chemical weapon detection,” the Times reports. They also “helped train officers to respond to an active shooter situation or a collapsed building, and paid for intelligence analysts and for members of the National Guard standing watch at Grand Central Terminal.”
Local reax: “A Republican administration literally defunding the police is the height of hypocrisy,” Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Tuesday. “And walking away from the fight against terrorism in the No. 1 terrorist target in America is utterly shocking.”
Related reading:
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