threats

The D Brief: Anthropic says no to DOD; Afghanistan-Pakistan war; Ukraine tactics update; US laser downs DHS drone; And a bit more.

Artificial-intelligence titan Anthropic rejected the U.S. military’s terms for use of its Claude platform on Thursday, warning that “in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.” 

The firm’s CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement that he has refused to allow Claude to be used for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens or to guide fully autonomous weapons, rejecting Pentagon requests to make unfettered use of the model.

Claude is one of just two large generative-AI models that the Pentagon has made available on classified networks, and it is the only one that belongs to a cutting-edge group of frontier models, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports. The military isn’t saying just how it uses such models. But Emil Michael, former Uber exec and current defense undersecretary for research and engineering, has suggested that their uses include intelligence and planning.

Earlier Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell gave Anthropic an ultimatum, declaring on Twitter that the company has “until 5:01 PM ET on Friday” to comply with the Defense Department’s unrestricted terms for use or the Pentagon “will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk.” He also threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to use the company’s product without the company’s permission. 

In his statement, Amodei called our DOD’s “contradictory” threats. He notes that the spokesman “threatened to designate us a ‘supply chain risk’—a label reserved for U.S. adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.”

Emil Michael responded angrily on Twitter, accusing Amodei of being “a liar” and having “a God-complex. He wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk,” Michael alleged. He also claimed Anthropic has no corporate values, but rather “their own plan to impose on Americans their corporate laws,” and called it “your worst nightmare.” He later repeated his allegation that Anthropic is “lying,” and said the Pentagon wants “warfighters to use AI without having to call @DarioAmodei for permission to shoot down an enemy drone swarms that would kill Americans.” 

But dropping Claude from Defense Department networks is easier said than done, Tucker reports. Operators would have to reconfigure data inputs that they are feeding into models, re-examine how to share data in real-time with the intelligence community which also uses Claude widely, and re-validate that replacement models were functioning as the military expected it to, sources said. 

Why is Claude the only known AI platform deployed on classified networks? According to a defense official: Anthropic’s tools were the easiest to deploy on cloud networks powered by AWS, which contributes the largest chunk of the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. The two companies are especially close: AWS is the leading cloud-service provider to Anthropic, which trains its models using Amazon’s proprietary Trainium chips.

Notable: It could take a year or longer to replace the capability lost by Claude’s departure, Tucker reports. However, a defense official said that he expected additional frontier-AI models to be widely available on the Pentagon’s GenAi.mil interface before summer. Continue reading, here. 

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Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2019, a Pakistani air force pilot shot down Indian MiG-21 pilot Abhinandan Varthaman during a dogfight amid renewed tensions in Kashmir.

Around the Defense Department

The U.S. military shot down a DHS drone over Texas, lawmakers say. On Thursday, an unidentified military service used a laser weapon to down a “seemingly threatening” drone in far western Texas. The FAA consequently closed airspace around Fort Hancock, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. But the drone turned out to be owned by Customs and Border Patrol, Democratic lawmakers said hours later. More from the Associated Press, here.

The Army is tweaking a battlefield dashboard, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports off a brief on how the 25th Infantry Division is helping to improve the Next Generation Command and Control system.

Cost estimate for new Sentinel ICBM plan won’t arrive until year’s end. Two years ago, the Pentagon informed Congress that Sentinel’s estimated cost had ballooned 81 percent, largely because the Air Force had discovered that it would not be able to reuse the missile silos used by today’s Minuteman ICBMs. By the end of 2026, officials say, the program will return to the engineering-development phase with new funding, construction, and schedule plans. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has more, here.

Senators grill ASD nom over election security. “I’m just asking, do you think it would be appropriate to station troops next to polling stations? Simple yes or no,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, asked Mark Ditlevson, the administration’s nominee to be assistant defense secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs. Ditlevson called the question “speculative,” declining to discuss “what threat levels may exist during an election cycle.” Warren retorted: “I have to say, if you’re not willing, just to say, ‘No, it is not appropriate,’ then I have real concerns about you in this job.” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.

The questions reflected concerns about White House interference: “Ahead of the midterm elections, an emboldened President Trump has shown an increased eagerness to leverage the full investigative, prosecutorial and legislative powers of the federal government to bend election mechanics to his will,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday. 

“Emergency” order floated: “Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

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Af-Pak tensions

Pakistan and Afghanistan are at “open war” with each other, Islamabad’s defense minister announced Thursday evening following a series of crossborder attacks and airstrikes this week inside key Afghan cities including Kabul and Kandahar. Afghanistan’s Paktia province was also hit in overnight airstrikes from Pakistani forces, Reuters reports. 

The alleged death toll in the recent attacks is remarkable, with 274 Taliban killed according to Pakistan. The Taliban sharply disputed that and said only 13 militants had been killed in addition to 55 Pakistani soldiers and 19 border posts seized by the Taliban, according to the group’s spokesman. Neither side’s claims could be verified. 

Point of friction: Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and Baloch separatist groups. It’s a common allegation, as AP reports “Pakistan has also frequently accused neighboring India of backing the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, allegations New Delhi denies.” Afghanistan and Pakistan also fought briefly in October before mediators from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia stepped in to resolve tensions. 

Turkish, Qatari and Saudi officials have rejoined mediation talks again after the recent clashes, AP reports. Iran’s top diplomat also encouraged calm on both sides; but Tehran is looking to avoid another conflict with the U.S. amid their next planned talks, slated for next week in Vienna. 

Russia’s war on Ukraine

Ukraine says Russia used a long-range, nuclear-capable cruise missile at least four times this month. It’s Moscow’s SSC-8/9M729 cruise missile, which Reuters reports “prompted Trump to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, then a cornerstone of nuclear arms control, in 2019” because it can “far beyond the permitted limit of 500 km (310 miles).” 

“Russia had fired the 9M729 at Ukraine twice in 2022 and 23 times between August and October last year, the first known combat uses of the missile anywhere,” Reuters adds, noting that its use in Ukraine is “a striking example of how the nuclear arms control edifice emerging from the Cold War has crumbled in recent years.”  

Russia launched more than three dozen missiles and over 400 drones at Ukraine overnight Wednesday, ahead of U.S.-Ukraine talks in Geneva, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Thursday assessment. Ukrainian air defenses and malfunctions stopped all but five missiles and 46 drones, which struck 32 locations across the country in that attack. Targets included “gas infrastructure in Poltava Oblast, electrical substations in Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts,” with related outages stretching across five regions, ISW reports. 

Tactical note: “Russia has launched strike packages with 25 or more missiles five additional times in February,” according to ISW. This is notable because “Russian forces often launch no or few missiles for multiple days in a row before launching strike packages with a significantly higher quantity of missiles, likely stockpiling missiles between strike series to maximize damage by launching several missiles alongside a large quantity of drones to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses.” Read more, here. 

Developing: Ukraine aims to cover 4,000 km of roads with anti-drone nets by the end of the year, Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Wednesday. They’re already helping, he said: “In just one month, we increased the speed from 5 km per day in January to 12 km in February. This significantly improved the safety of military movements and ensured stable functioning of frontline communities,” Fedorov said on the Telegram app. Reuters has more, here.

Iran buildup

Trump was briefed on his Iran-war options Thursday by CENTCOM’s top commander, ABC News reported after the meeting. Axios had similar reporting, but it’s unclear what information was exchanged during Adm. Brad Cooper’s briefing. 

Some Iran hawks close to Trump have begun encouraging Israel to take the lead in the next attacks inside Iran, at least partly in the hopes that would help “muster support from American voters for a U.S. strike,” Politico reported Wednesday. 

New: Just 27% of Americans said they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” trust in Trump’s judgement on the use of military force, according to a new survey of voters published Thursday by AP. 

And the White House has latched onto “a series of false or unproven claims” in its “arguments this week for another military campaign against Iran,” the New York Times reported Thursday. Those include allegations “that Iran has restarted its nuclear program, has enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days, and is developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States.” The Wall Street Journal offered a similar angle Friday, writing in its headline, “Iran Is Far From Building ICBMs, Experts Say, Despite Trump Warning.” 

But U.S. officials have told non-essential personnel to leave the embassy in Jerusalem, the State Department announced Thursday citing unspecified “safety risks.” A similar order was issued earlier this week in Lebanon.  

The Pentagon also sent F-22s to Israel this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday after videos of their arrival in southern Israel appeared on social media. 

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Trump 2.0

Trump’s foreign policy is “a resurrection of the mission of empire—acquiring the territories and resources of sovereign peoples—that animated European and other well-armed powers up to the 20th century,” veteran foreign affairs reporter Edward Wong wrote Friday for the New York Times. “He has seized the leader of Venezuela while claiming the country’s oil and attacking nearby civilian boats. He has pushed Cuba into a humanitarian crisis through a blockade, and asserted a right to control Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. And he has amassed the largest U.S. military force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threatening a new war against Iran after attacks last June,” Wong reminds readers. 

Why it matters: “extremist forces will exploit this development to attract new recruits,” one expert warned. And “Russia and China could benefit, after decades of trying to rally other countries to their side by criticizing what they have called American imperialism,” Wong writes. Read more (gift link) here. 

ICE has reportedly recruited so many new hires that it’s having trouble vetting them all, Reuters reported Thursday, citing an internal email from the agency. For a force of around 10,000 officers, ICE data suggests it added another 6,000 or so through January. The email referenced a “high volume of new hires” and reportedly “said stalled background checks could create uncertainty for field offices when allegations arise related to actions before joining ICE.” A DHS spokesperson denied a struggle in processing. Read more, here.

When it comes to immigration, the White House is escalating its drive to welcome white South Africans. “The U.S. aims to process 4,500 refugee applications from white South Africans per month, far above President Donald Trump’s stated refugee program cap,” Reuters reported Thursday. 

Background: “Trump ordered a halt to refugee admissions into the U.S. after taking office in 2025 as part of his crackdown on legal and illegal immigration. But weeks later, he launched an effort to bring in white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity as refugees, saying they had been violently persecuted in the majority-Black country. South Africa’s government has rejected that claim, while some refugee advocates have criticized the Trump policy.”

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February 27, 2026
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The D Brief: Reports: Caine has concerns; USAF mobility chief; Senators seek boat-strike info; Arrest in China-training case; And a bit more.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine is concerned the White House’s National Defense Strategy “underplayed the threat posed by China and the U.S. military’s need to prepare for a potential future conflict in the Indo-Pacific,” CNN reported Wednesday. 

“Caine hand-delivered memos to [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the Pentagon’s policy chief Elbridge Colby outlining his disagreements over the new National Defense Strategy that Colby’s office had drafted,” a source told CNN. 

Caine’s reported reservations over the NDS are surfacing amid parallel reports about his advice regarding possible U.S. military strikes against Iran. Axios, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times recently relayed reports of Caine’s concerns that a new war could be more prolonged and damaging than some Iran hawks in Washington are willing to publicly admit. 

Despite the president’s claims that last June’s strikes inside Iran “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program, the president’s envoy Steve Witkoff claimed on Saturday that Iran is now “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material.” On Wednesday, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked Vice President JD Vance, “Can you explain to the American people why the United States would need to strike Iran to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon if the U.S ‘obliterated. their enrichment program last summer?” 

Vance declined to answer, and replied instead, “I’m not going to make any news on Iran today.” Meanwhile, the administration’s third round of informal U.S.-Iran talks continue today in Geneva, led by Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Axios has the latest, which at a reported midpoint is inconclusive so far, here. 

A 65-year-old former Air Force officer was arrested this month after allegedly spending more than two years training military pilots in China, according to the Department of Justice, which announced the charges Wednesday. His name is Gerald Brown, and he left active duty in 1996 as a major after 24 years of service. He was arrested Wednesday in Jeffersonville, Indiana, WDRB reports from Louisville, Ky.

While in the Air Force, he served as a fighter pilot instructor and simulator instructor on a variety of military aircraft, including the F-4 Phantom II, F-15, F-16, and A-10. He later worked for two U.S. defense contractors training U.S. military pilots on the A-10 and the F-35. But, allegedly, in August 2023, he began correspondence for the job that would ultimately lead to his arrest. He flew to China four months later, where he began training pilots in the Chinese military. He returned to the U.S. earlier this month, and was arrested shortly afterward.

If his case sounds familiar, “​​​​The charges against Brown follow similar charges filed against former U.S. Marine Corps pilot Daniel Edmund Duggan in the District of Columbia in September 2017,” the Justice Department said Wednesday. Duggan was later charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act and conspiring to engage in money laundering. 

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The Air Force’s top mobility leader is pushing for decades-old air transports and tankers to be replaced sooner than the late 2030s, as currently planned, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported Wednesday from the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium in Colorado. 

Background: A solicitation memo late last year detailed the service’s plans to keep the C-5 and C-17 flying until 2045 and 2075, respectively. A next-generation airlift is not expected to be fielded until at least 2038. “We must pay attention to that strategic capability,” Lt. Gen. Reba Sonkiss, the interim head of Air Mobility Command, told reporters on Tuesday. We’re, again, woefully behind on the modernization front for our strategic air forces.”  

A particular platform of concern: KC-135s. “I cannot have a 90-year-old tanker refueling a B-21, and if you do the math, as we reach the end of programs for things, that’s the reality,” she said. Meanwhile, she praised the C-5 as a “critical tool” but recognized its longstanding problems. The aircraft, first fielded in the 1970s, achieved only a 48 percent mission-capable rate as of 2024. “It is an old airplane,” Sonkiss said. “We have to get after what next looks like, and we can’t wait until we’re shoveling it into the boneyard before we get to that discussion.” Read more, here. 

Technical update: U.S. defense startup Anduril flew its YFQ-44A collaborative combat aircraft with Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy software as well as its own, the company said Wednesday, marking another step in the Air Force’s ongoing drone wingman competition. “The aircraft took off and autonomously approached a designated point where Shield AI’s mission autonomy software stack, Hivemind, was activated to complete a series of test cards,” Anduril said in a news release. “Following completion of Hivemind tests, Anduril was able to seamlessly switch to Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy stack to complete the same test points, before returning safely to land.”

Anduril announced the development on the last day of the ASFAW symposium. The startup’s YFQ-44A also began integrated weapons testing earlier this month, Novelly reported Monday.

Today on Capitol Hill, Trump’s top Pentagon official responsible for planning National Guard deployments to multiple U.S. cities is testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. That’s Mark Ditlevson, who has been nominated as the Pentagon’s next Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs. 

But the full scope of his responsibility in that post is much larger. It also includes all defense and security policy for Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island reminded Ditlevson in his opening remarks that “Chairman [Roger] Wicker and I have repeatedly directed the Department to submit basic information—required by law—to the Committee regarding the ongoing boat strike campaign in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.” 

“To date, the Department has failed to submit to Congress the Execute Orders and videos related to these operations, and it has refused to make public the legal justifications and intelligence underpinning the strikes,” Reed said. “Given that you were the Acting Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs during the build-up of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean, and you continued to hold that position after the Department of Defense launched its campaign of military strikes against alleged drug boats, I expect your commitment today to submit these legally required documents to Congress.”

Former Texas state Sen. Brian Birdwell is joining Ditlevson before SASC. Birdwell is a 20-year Army veteran who participated in the Gulf War and was later wounded during the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon. He’s been nominated as the next assistant secretary for sustainment. Catch a livestream of their testimony, here. 

Additional reading: 

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Thomas Novelly. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1945, American forces seized the Philippine island of Corregidor from the Japanese.

Latin American developments

The Cuban coast guard killed four people in a speedboat who had allegedly opened fire upon them Wednesday morning, the Cuban Embassy to the U.S. said in a statement on Twitter. 

The incident occurred roughly one nautical mile from the Cuban shore at Cayo Falcones, which is about 260 miles southeast of Key West. 

Narrative of the encounter: “When a surface unit of the Border Guard Troops of the Ministry of the Interior, carrying five service members, approached the vessel for identification, the crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the commander of the Cuban vessel,” the embassy said in its statement. “Four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured. The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.”

While the boat was registered in Florida, Cuba was careful not to claim its occupants were American. And later Wednesday, the Cuban government said all 10 in the speedboat were “armed Cubans living in the U.S. who were trying to infiltrate the island and unleash terrorism,” the Associated Press reports. 

Most of the 10 “have a known history of criminal and violent activity,” Cuban officials said. At least one of the four killed, Michel Ortega Casanova, “was a truck driver and an American citizen who lived for more than 20 years in the U.S.,” his brother told AP. He said his brother had become “obsessive and diabolical” in pursuit of freedom for Cuba. 

State Department reax: “We’re going to have our own information on this,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday on the sidelines of a regional conference at a Marriott resort in the Caribbean. “We’re not going to base our conclusions on what they’ve told us,” he said of the account from Cuban officials. He also declined “to speculate about whose boat it was, what they were doing, why they were there, what actually happened.”

“Suffice it to say it is highly unusual to see shootouts on open sea like that,” Rubio said, and noted, “we do have constant contact with them at the Coast Guard level where they notify the U.S. Coast Guard on a variety of things, including migrants and so forth.” 

The U.S. has expanded Venezuela oil exports to Cuban businesses—just not to the Cuban government, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday. The change in licensing policy applies to Cuba’s “private sector (e.g., exports for commercial and humanitarian use in Cuba)” but does not extend to “the Cuban military, intelligence services, or other government institutions.” 

According to Rubio, “These would be sales to a very small private sector that exists in Cuba, and that’s always been legal,” he said Wednesday. “This would just expand to the numbers that could do it.”  However, he warned, “If we catch the private sector there playing games and diverting it to the regime or to the military company, if we find that they’re moving that stuff around in ways that violate the spirit and the scope of these permissions, those licenses will be canceled.” 

By the way: Back stateside, abducted Venezuelan President Maduro can’t afford a lawyer for his trial in New York over alleged drug trafficking, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported after reviewing recent court documents made public Wednesday. 

Maduro is hoping to use Venezuelan government money to fund his defense, but U.S. authorities refuse, citing sanctions against the country. Maduro’s current lawyer argues the block is effectively “interfering with Maduro’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel in perhaps the highest-profile criminal prosecution in the country,” Cheney writes. 

Elsewhere in the region: Mexico is considering legal action against Elon Musk after he alleged Monday that the president is linked to drug cartels and “saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say.” Pursuing such a case in the U.S. would be a longshot, however, because President Claudia “Sheinbaum would need to prove Musk knowingly said something false about her or recklessly disregarded the truth when he said it,” Reuters reported Tuesday. 

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February 26, 2026
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The D Brief: SOTU quiet on policy; Defense tech’s European shift; Ukraine war in 10 charts; Cockpit AI evades ‘missile’; And a bit more.

President Donald Trump broke his own record for the longest-ever State of the Union address Tuesday evening at the U.S. Capitol, alternately rousing and misleading his captive audience with a string of “long-debunked falsehoods familiar from his rallies, interviews and social media posts,” CNN’s reported in an annotated fact check following his 108-minute presentation. 

Trump took credit for a “trillion-dollar” defense budget. He falsely claimed tariffs funded a pay bump for troops. He alleged that last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. He again falsely claimed he “ended eight wars” in the past year. “It isn’t funny,” he said as audience members snickered when he began to list the conflicts. 

He also boasted of deploying the National Guard to the nation’s capital, and falsely claimed “we have almost no crime anymore” in Washington, D.C., as a result. But homicides were lower in 2014, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports, citing D.C. police statistics. Trump also said crime was down 100 percent in January 2026 compared to January 2025, which would have meant the city had experienced zero crime the entire month. D.C. actually saw a 30-percent drop in crime in 2025, which followed a similar drop in 2024.

But as the U.S. military masses Mideast forces on the order of the Gulf War and 2003 Iraq invasion, Trump said relatively little about a potential new war with Iran. Of the strikes last June that targeted Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, “We wiped it out and they want to start all over again,” he said Tuesday. “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said, and added, “As president, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must.” 

By the end of the historically long address, Reuters noted, Trump had “done little to explain to the American public why he might be leading the U.S. into its most aggressive action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.” The New York Times offered similar reporting on the subject.

“The brief case he laid out was not for nonproliferation, but for regime change,” said Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic. “He made the accusation—rightly—that Iran is an odious regime and a supporter of terrorism. He vowed that they would never get a nuclear weapon. And that was it.” Similarly, CNN described the annual address as Trump’s “chance to recast his unpopular mass deportation effort, explain why U.S. warships are massing for possible military action with Iran, and stare down Supreme Court justices who last week rejected his unprecedented use of tariffs.”

Instead, he used the occasion to award multiple Medals of Honor, two Purple Hearts, a Legion of Merit and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. One of those honored was Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover, a helicopter pilot wounded in the operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last month. Both he and retired Navy Capt. Royce Williams were awarded the Medal of Honor; Williams was recognized for his role in a harrowing dogfight over Korea in 1952. 

“The only thing Trump did not do was explain his policies—especially about war and peace—to Congress or the American people,” Nichols wrote. 

Not attending Trump’s fifth SOTU: Ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, and more than three dozen additional lawmakers. 

For what it’s worth: “Six in ten Americans, including a significant slice of Republicans, think President Donald Trump has become erratic as he ages, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll” published Tuesday. That includes 89% of Democrats, 30% of Republicans and 64% of independents. 

Related reading: 

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1991, the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact disbanded after nearly 36 years. 

Around the Defense Department

Several trends are shifting defense tech toward Europe, reports Defense One’s Patrick Tucker. They include new EU laws that require cloud providers to establish infrastructure on the continent and to safeguard data from the U.S. government. Tucker also points to the buy-European bent as the region’s militaries rearm, and the war in Ukraine that is serving as a battle lab for technology and acquisition practices. Read that special report, here.

Here are 10 charts about the Russia-Ukraine war, produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and published yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Some of the chart titles: “Russian GDP Growth Is Stagnating,” “Russia Is Advancing at Historically Slow Rates,” and “The Financial Burden of Supporting Ukraine Militarily Has Shifted.” See those and more, here.

ICYMI: “A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them” is the headline atop The Guardian’s Feb. 20 blockbuster report. “Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe—including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy—dismissed them.” Read it, here.

Air Force test pilots used tactical AI to evade a missile. “Late last year, test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base, California, received a simulated warning for an incoming surface-to-air missile while flying Lockheed’s experimental X-62A Vista jet. The onboard AI detected the missile and, without the pilot’s control, conducted an evasive maneuver,” Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported from the Air and Space Forces Association’s conference in Aurora, Colorado, citing officials with Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works research arm.

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February 25, 2026
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