Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
Netanyahu says no Israeli withdrawal from Gaza until Hamas has been completely disarmed 'Resistance is Hamas's holy mission': Terror spox. tells Piers Morgan group will continue fighting Report: Hamas moving covert operations from Qatar to Turkey Hormuz opening uncertain after new strike Iranian leadership would accept if Pezeshkian resigned again, relative of Khamenei claims North Korean missile unit deploys in Russia for Ukraine war, Kyiv says Former Palestinian envoy Ashraf Dabbour detained in Lebanon over corruption claims Bloomberg’s James Stavridis: Saudi Arabia can Break the Houthis’ Grip on the Red Sea Trump administration drafting ban on Chinese data center devices, sources say Taiwan launches major war games to test command flexibility Trump administration will close 5 smaller US consulates in Africa, Asia and the Western Hemisphere US has used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war, sources sayIn The News
Israel
The latest round of U.S.-facilitated talks between Israel and Lebanon began on Tuesday in Rome and will continue through Thursday, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said. – Reuters
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel will not withdraw from its current lines in Gaza until Hamas has completely disarmed and pushed back on a recent deal announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. – Associated Press
Hamas will not change its mentality and “resisting the occupation is its holy mission,” the terror group’s spokesperson Ghazi Hamad claimed during an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, broadcast on Monday. – Jerusalem Post
All Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip will now require the approval of IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, Army Radio reported Tuesday, citing security sources. – Jerusalem Post
The findings of the investigation into the terrorist attack on the outskirts of the village of Tell, in which Maj. Yuval Ezra and Capt. (res.) Benyahu Melet were killed, were presented Tuesday to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. – Arutz Sheva
Andy Mukherjee writes: Even so, a solid majority of Israelis say they also worry about what their nation’s growing international isolation means for its future security, and fixing that is not compatible with ethnic cleansing or perpetual occupation. And the total military victory that Israel craves over all of its enemies isn’t happening, either. Neither Jews nor Palestinians are leaving, and decades of peace brokering by the US have yet to work. So even if Emanuel’s ideas prove unworkable, his instinct to expand the cast of characters is surely right. As Dwight Eisenhower once said about handling a problem that seems unsolvable, the solution is “make it bigger.” – Bloomberg
Micah Halpern writes: Israel is expanding international recognition, building stronger and stronger ties with countries around the globe and following through on a strategy that will make for a safer and more prosperous country. Israel is working hard and making sound decisions. It is all happening despite the public critique. She needs to respond, and she needs to power forward, building better relations. Let her be. – Jerusalem Post
Iran
A new strike hit a ship moving through the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations to reopen the waterway ran into a dispute over fees, clouding the outlook for the vital energy corridor even as the Trump administration insisted that a deal could be close. – Wall Street Journal
Iran’s leadership has made a high-stakes calculation in its showdown with President Trump: maintaining control over the Strait of Hormuz is a nonnegotiable red line. – Wall Street Journal
Qatar said on Tuesday mediators were making progress in efforts to end the U.S.-Iran war, driving oil prices lower, although Tehran has denied President Donald Trump’s assertion that talks are already under way. – Reuters
Iran wants control over inbound shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and visibility over outbound traffic, with the ability to intervene if necessary, under a temporary plan being discussed with Oman to reopen the strategic waterway, a senior Iranian source told Reuters on Tuesday. – Reuters
US President Donald Trump said that Iran had been asking him for talks and then lying publicly about ongoing negotiations in an interview on Wednesday morning. – Jerusalem Post
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei wrote to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn him that he would accept the president’s resignation if he submits it again, a relative of the supreme leader told Iran’s Tabnak media site on Monday. – Jerusalem Post
Russia and Ukraine
Russian forces have attacked nearly 250 Ukrainian gas stations in recent months, in what officials, analysts and operators say is a systematic and deadly campaign of retaliation for Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries. The stations, a beloved and quirky fixture of Ukrainian life, have become objects of anxiety and fear. – New York Times
A North Korean missile unit has begun deploying to western Russia and could be equipped with 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers for strikes against Ukraine, an official at Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said. – Reuters
Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russia of committing a war crime after a video was released showing a drone chasing down and wounding a vegetable seller in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. – Reuters
Russian strikes around Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv killed fourteen people, injured 27 and damaged warehouses overnight, emergency service officials said on the Telegram messaging app. – Reuters
Russian forces on Tuesday struck three vessels in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv and another in the Black Sea off Odesa that were being used “in the interests of the Ukrainian military,” the Russian Defence Ministry said. – Reuters
A Russian soldier in Crimea opened fire on his colleagues, killing one and wounding another, before turning his weapon on civilians and killing three, an official said on Tuesday. – Reuters
When a group of Russian assault troops approached Ukrainian defenses on a section of the front line in eastern Donetsk, they were met by an unexpected adversary: a battle robot armed with a flamethrower. – Bloomberg
NATO’s reliance on the “doctrines of World War II” and its slow adaptation to new forms of warfare make it unlikely Ukraine will ever join the alliance, said Kyiv’s Ambassador to the U.K. and former Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi. – Politico
Syria
Damascus has agreed to drastically reduce imports of Russian oil as part of its ongoing discussions with the United States on lifting the last major sanctions designation on Syria, three sources familiar with the conversations told Reuters. – Reuters
In the narrow alleys of Old Damascus, tour guide Raslan Ramadan has resumed guiding visitors through the Umayyad Mosque, traditional Damascene houses, and historic markets, after years during which he struggled to organize even a single tour. – Jerusalem Post
Neville Teller writes: At the same time, according to reliable media reports, a Russian commercial logistics hub is expected to become operational at Tartus very soon, handling Russian cargo and providing a maritime link between the Syrian coast and Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Trump seems determined to enfold both Syria’s Sharaa and Iraq’s al-Zaidi into a close commercial and economic embrace. In Israel, however, both are viewed rather more cautiously. Trust cannot simply be bestowed; it will have to be earned. – Jerusalem Post
Turkey
Social media platform X said on Tuesday it was complying with a Turkish court order to block access in the country to jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s presidential candidacy office account, but was challenging the order in court. – Reuters
Turkey on Tuesday called on Russia and Ukraine to take measures to ensure navigational safety in the Black Sea after a drone attack hit a Turkish-owned vessel and seriously injured three crew members near Russia’s Novorossiysk port. – Reuters
The Hamas terrorist organization has begun preparing to move the center of its covert operations to Turkey. – Arutz Sheva
Lebanon
Lebanon on Tuesday marked the sixth year since a deadly blast at Beirut port, with victims and Lebanese officials expressing a renewed but cautious hope that justice could finally be served over one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. – Reuters
Lebanon and Israel held a fresh round of US-sponsored talks in Rome on Tuesday, with Beirut seeking Israel’s phased withdrawal from the country’s south, even as the Hezbollah terror group denounced the negotiations as a “humiliation” for Beirut. – Agence-France Presse
Former Palestinian envoy to Lebanon Ashraf Dabbour was placed in provisional detention in Lebanon on Monday following the decision of the public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Judge Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, according to Lebanese media reports. – Jerusalem Post
Arabian Peninsula
A projectile struck an Indian-flagged vessel near Yemen, causing it to capsize and sink, but all 14 seafarers on board were rescued, India’s shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal said on Tuesday in a post on X. – Reuters
The Houthis said the strike was in response to what they described as Saudi drone incursions into the airspace over the Saada and Hajjah governorates in northwestern Yemen. – Reuters
Operations were suspended on Tuesday at an airport in Saudi Arabia, a regional source with knowledge of the matter said, after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis announced they had attacked the site. – Agence-France Presse
Saudi Arabia wants to contain a renewed conflict with Houthi militants through behind-the-scenes diplomacy, according to people familiar with the matter, in a bid to prevent clashes with the Iran-backed group hurting its oil industry and economy. – Bloomberg
James Stavridis writes: This unlikely coalition should be capable of all these tasks — if it is well led by the Saudis with some help from the US and EU. The question is whether this maritime approach alone would sufficiently deter the Houthis and their Iranian backers. If not, the next step would be air attacks on Houthi bases ashore, which risks retaliation and escalation. The western front in the Iran war is getting more heated; the question is whether the Saudis and their new partners can cool things down enough to keep the Red Sea open. – Bloomberg
Middle East & North Africa
Libyan police said inmates staged a mass escape from a jail on Tuesday while armed clashes erupted nearby in two cities west of the capital Tripoli. – Reuters
Shipping traffic at the key Middle Eastern maritime chokepoints of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb was little changed on Tuesday from the previous day, ship-tracking data showed. – Reuters
An oil spill caused by leakage from a U.K.-sanctioned tanker grounded for weeks off Oman appears to be expanding dramatically, reaching shorelines and far out to sea, according to experts and satellite images reviewed by The Associated Press. – Associated Press
Korean Peninsula
South Korea will restart work on a railway section that could eventually link to North Korea’s eastern city of Wonsan, the Unification Ministry said on Wednesday, reviving a project halted for a decade despite frozen relations with Pyongyang. – Reuters
North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, warned on Wednesday that Pyongyang would adopt “additional military options” in response to what she called Japan’s transformation into a military power, after Tokyo test-fired a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile. – Reuters
A group of eight South Korean students were detained Tuesday for allegedly breaking into a United States air base while shouting anti-U.S. slogans, South Korean authorities said. – Associated Press
China
The Trump administration is drafting a ban on U.S. imports of new models of Chinese data center components, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as it seeks to protect the infrastructure that undergirds the AI boom. – Reuters
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are evaluating chipmaking equipment from China’s Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) for possible use at their Chinese factories, three people familiar with the matter said, as the South Korean firms hedge against the risk of tighter U.S. export controls. – Reuters
China accused the Philippines of an “extremely serious political provocation” on Tuesday, after Manila expressed concern about the potential influence of China’s state-linked institutions on local education through cultural exchange programmes. – Reuters
The law has been widely criticized as a way to further erode the rights of Tibetans and other minorities, and for the authority it gives Beijing to target activities it considers separatist, even outside China. The Chinese government has dismissed foreign criticism as “ideological bias.” – Associated Press
Editorial: Brave journalists like Mr. Bai do a public service with their reporting, and Chinese readers aren’t their only beneficiaries. It’s become more difficult for foreign businesses, including American companies, to access reliable information about Chinese governance and economic and business matters as Beijing imposes more restrictions on sharing information. Beijing has become increasingly bold about harassing critics abroad, including in the U.S. Washington has an interest in countering such transnational repression, and the Trump Administration can help by raising Mr. Bai’s case with Thailand. – Wall Street Journal
South Asia
India’s Gen-Z Cockroach Janta Party, whose recent protest against exam paper leaks claimed a rare ministerial scalp, has no immediate plans to enter electoral politics, its founder told Reuters on Tuesday. – Reuters
Bangladesh warned the country’s media not to publicise the statements of exiled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who is due to give a virtual address on Wednesday from India to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that ousted her. – Reuters
Child malnutrition has reached critical levels in a third of Afghanistan’s provinces and is expected to worsen as funding shortfalls force cuts in food distributions and other support, the U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday. – Associated Press
A provincial government in Nepal has legalized farming and use of marijuana for medical use despite a national ban. The bill went into effect Monday after it was endorsed by the chief of Gandaki province and allows the farming and medical use of cannabis, said Prabin Poudyal, spokesman for the office of the Chief of Gandaki Province. – Associated Press
Teams in Pakistan searched on foot for the remains of 10 climbers killed in an avalanche on the world’s 12th-highest mountain as poor weather kept helicopters out of the air Tuesday, authorities said. – Associated Press
Sushant Singh writes: These protests mattered because they revealed both the fragility of Modi’s political aura and the continued possibility of democratic pressure in India. The Cockroach movement seems to present a choice: The state can absorb the message and adjust—or it can harden, punish, and deepen the distrust that the protests exposed. One path could make Indian democracy stronger, while the other would push it further toward the tendencies that weaken it. Those in South Asia and beyond will watch intently as the world’s largest democracy grapples with its youngest and angriest citizens. – Foreign Policy
Asia
Japanese authorities have found themselves having to step into markets again and again to prop up the yen, this time with assistance from the U.S. government. To escape this “mowing the lawn” dilemma, the country, and specifically the Bank of Japan has to address the root causes of yen weakness. – Wall Street Journal
Taiwan’s government said on Wednesday it had searched dozens of locations and interviewed more than 100 people in an investigation into 17 Chinese companies suspected of illegally trying to recruit chip and other high-tech talent. – Reuters
Taiwan began major military drills on Wednesday to test commanders’ ability to fight on the fly when enemy movements defy expectations, while temporarily limiting internet access for the first time, senior Taiwan officials said. – Reuters
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul called on Tuesday for a “calibrated re-engagement” with Myanmar, ahead of his scheduled meeting this week with Myanmar junta chief turned president Min Aung Hlaing. – Reuters
Japan needs to adapt to new methods of warfare like using artificial intelligence and drones that have been deployed in Ukraine and the Middle East and to strengthen its defense industry, the government said Tuesday. – Associated Press
Eugene Gholz and Kerby Davis write: Taiwan of course needs traditional defenses. Notably, a robust force of mobile land-based antiship and surface-to-air missiles would help Taiwan against both a Chinese invasion and a traditional blockade. But analysts also need to expand their vision of creative strategies that China could use to coerce Taiwan. To maintain deterrence against a blockade by fire, Taiwan and those hoping to help it need to first acknowledge such an option and then dynamically adapt the island’s defenses to deter and survive this alternative approach. – Foreign Affairs
Europe
It’s not just Brussels. In Lisbon, the lines peaked at six hours. In Amsterdam, KLM says its travelers are missing their flights at twice the usual rate during peak hours. Across Europe, travelers have been bemoaning delayed vacations and chaotic business travel. All blame the same culprit: Europe’s new biometric border system. – New York Times
Britain’s new prime minister has sometimes seemed to be everywhere all at once in his first two weeks in office. A morning visit to a London homeless shelter. A meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a military base. A speech at a Jewish care center. – New York Times
Ukrainian drone and missile maker Fire Point has secured agreements from over a dozen European defence companies to provide radar, guidance and other systems for the Freyja missile defence project, and is starting to integrate the various systems, its CEO has said. – Reuters
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is looking at holding a public inquiry into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his actions in the UK, victims minister Alex Davies-Jones told the BBC. – Reuters
From discussing the merits of various pub snacks to making fun of his own appearance, Britain’s new prime minister is taking on populist parties such as Reform UK on the social media platforms where they have built a huge following. – Reuters
French coastguards rescued 157 people from a boat carrying migrants that caught fire in the English Channel on Tuesday near the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the local administration said in a statement. – Reuters
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s migration policies faced fierce criticism as leaders from across the European Union met Tuesday following last week’s rush of migrants to the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa. – Associated Press
Former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who leads the left-wing 5Star Movement, set off a political firestorm this week by casting doubt on further military aid to Ukraine if the center-left wins the next election. – Politico
A group affiliated with Russia’s intelligence agency launched a disinformation campaign against center-left MEP and likely presidential candidate in next year’s French election, Raphaël Glucksmann, he claimed in a post on X on Tuesday. – Politico
Antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom rose 21 percent in the first six months of 2026 compared to the same period last year, reaching the second-highest total on record for the first half of a year, according to a new report published Wednesday morning by the Community Security Trust. – Times of Israel
The European Union’s Naval Force Mediterranean intercepted a tanker on Sunday that is suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet. – USNI News
Editorial: But it should also look to Norway, where generous investment allowances help ensure projects are commercially viable through boom-and-bust cycles. And it should consider allowing limited new exploratory drilling close to licensed fields. New North Sea production won’t miraculously rescue Britain’s public finances, restore energy independence and slash household bills. But it can still generate value, improve resilience and buy time while the energy transition continues. However modest, those gains shouldn’t be underestimated. – Bloomberg
Africa
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has approved pay rises of up to 80% for members of the armed forces, the presidency said on Tuesday, in a move aimed at boosting troop welfare as the country battles insurgency, banditry and kidnappings. – Reuters
Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has reshuffled senior military staff, promoting the head of the Presidential Guard to a brigadier general from colonel and replacing commanders in four of the country’s five joint military regions, according to three separate presidential decrees. – Reuters
Ebola response workers in eastern Congo have staged protests this week to call for the government to pay salaries and allowances that they say are nearly three months overdue, as security incidents continue to hamper efforts to contain the outbreak. – Reuters
Testing of experimental treatments, preventive medicines and vaccines for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind Democratic Republic of Congo’s ongoing outbreak is advancing rapidly, the U.N.’s World Health Organization said on Tuesday. – Reuters
For mining firms in Zambia, priorities for next week’s elections include stronger incentives for processing minerals, reviving exploration and expanding power generation, measures they say are needed to deliver the country’s goal of tripling copper output. – Reuters
Mining lithium for batteries is a growing part of South Africa’s plan to use the global shift towards green energy to revive its economy, but now it faces a challenge from thousands of angry farmers who fear losing productive land to open-pit mines. – Reuters
Abdulmoniem Suleiman writes: The international community has every right to condemn any alleged intervention by the UAE. But it has an equal moral and political obligation to condemn, with the same clarity and determination, the involvement of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Qatar, and every other country that supplies weapons, money, or fighters to Sudan. To condemn one state while ignoring the others is neither justice nor a genuine commitment to peace. It is a mockery of Sudanese lives and a form of political score-settling carried out on the ruins of a country shattered by war. If the real objective is to save Sudan, shut down every supply line that feeds this war, not just one. Stop the weapons. Pressure every external actor. End the war. – Washington Examiner
The Americas
The Trump administration on Tuesday said it was revoking the visa of Brazil’s ambassador amid an escalating diplomatic fight over alleged U.S. interference ahead of the country’s presidential election in October. – Wall Street Journal
Brazil has told Argentina its relations will be handled at the chargé d’affaires level after Argentine President Javier Milei again insulted Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a Brazilian government source said on Tuesday. – Reuters
Brazilian planemaker Embraer said on Tuesday that Colombia has signed a contract to buy two KC-390 Millennium planes, as outgoing President Gustavo Petro seeks to modernize the country’s military fleet. – Reuters
Chile’s Congress on Tuesday approved a sweeping reform package championed by President Jose Antonio Kast, aimed at reviving growth in the world’s largest copper producer through corporate tax cuts and incentives for investment. – Reuters
A group of Republican and Democratic U.S. senators on Tuesday called for elections in Venezuela, seven months after President Donald Trump’s administration removed then-President Nicolas Maduro and installed his vice president as acting president. – Reuters
North America
Mexican social media influencer Cesar Gastelum was shot and killed on Tuesday while livestreaming with friends outside a fast food restaurant in the northwestern city of Culiacan, local authorities said. – Reuters
Marc-Aurèle Chabot, a former active-duty Canadian soldier arrested last July for taking “concrete actions to facilitate terrorist activity,” is no longer a member of the armed forces, according to the Canadian military. – Reuters
A fast-moving wildfire destroyed about 230 homes in an Indigenous community in western Canada, officials said Tuesday, making it one of the country’s most destructive fires in recent years. – Associated Press
A judge in Honduras ruled Monday that former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who recently returned to the Central American country after a Trump pardon for drug trafficking charges in the U.S., will not be jailed during his trial for fraud and money laundering. – Associated Press
Cuba restored electricity across the island nearly 36 hours after it suffered yet another national blackout. – Bloomberg
Diego Marroquín Bitar writes: The USMCA review is where North America will decide how far and how fast to carry the experiment it has already started. Close the visibility gap, and three sovereign countries will have shown that without any central authority to force the issue, they can still build the verification backbone modern trade requires and defend an open commercial system that overcapacity steadily erodes. No other region has managed it, and much of the world is waiting to see whether it can be done at all. – Center for Strategic and International Studies
Daniel Rechtschaffen writes: The governments nevertheless have strong incentives to preserve the agreement: Continental integration supports both economic and national security objectives for all three. For Canada and Mexico, the challenge will be to concede enough to preserve preferential access to the U.S. market without allowing Washington’s review leverage to turn the agreement into a permanent negotiation over China policy. For Washington, the difficulty is in determining how hard it can bend its two neighbors without breaking the integration it seeks. The ultimate test of Washington’s approach will therefore not simply be whether it extracts new economic security commitments from Canada and Mexico, but whether a North American bloc constructed through recurring pressure can remain a stable and credible basis for long-term integration. – War on the Rocks
United States
President Donald Trump’s administration has informed Congress that it intends to close five smaller U.S. embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions in Africa, Asia and the Western Hemisphere, even as it steams ahead with plans to reopen shuttered posts in Libya and Syria and has reopened the long-closed embassy in Venezuela. – Associated Press
Trump administration officials are moving toward granting another temporary extension of a waiver of a century-old shipping law that made it easier to move oil, fuel and fertilizer around the US, the nation’s energy chief said Tuesday. – Bloomberg
An armed suspect was arrested late Sunday afternoon at Trump National Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes just days before the President Donald Trump’s fundraiser set to be held there, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday […] In a subsequent search of his car, investigators said, they also recovered a loaded pistol and an additional loaded magazine. – Politico
Lockheed Martin is in talks to buy supplies of two critical minerals from U.S. mines, two sources familiar with the discussions said, as President Donald Trump pressures defense contractors to cut reliance on China. – Defense News
Irwin Redlener writes: We need to coalesce around urgent, attainable goals: restoring verifiable limits on U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals, rebuilding inspections and transparency, preserving the global testing moratorium, strengthening military-to-military communication, keeping artificial intelligence out of nuclear command and launch decisions and building toward a framework that eventually brings China to the table. None of these guarantees a world free of nuclear weapons. All of it would make the nuclear-armed world we actually live in safer. – The Hill
David W. Wang writes: Taken together, these three tiers describe something close to a balance of terror — an uneasy, mutually vulnerable equilibrium in which both countries hold enough leverage over the other to make outright conflict irrational, but not enough trust to fully de-escalate. It is not peace. It is not war in the conventional sense. It is a strategic, ongoing attrition, nuanced through tariffs, export licenses, chip restrictions, and soybean contracts. This balance is durable, but not permanent. Two forces could tip it: a genuine technological breakthrough — particularly in AI or semiconductor manufacturing — that hands one side a decisive and lasting edge, or a major political shift in either capital that changes the risk calculus entirely. Until then, the hedging war will likely continue much as it has: managed, transactional, and closely worth watching, tier by tier. – Washington Examiner
Dafna H. Rand writes: Others, having witnessed the frictions that have emerged between Washington and its allies in recent years, are already following Israel’s and Ukraine’s examples in building up their own defense industrial bases to reduce their dependence on U.S. assistance. Yet in the end, when U.S. allies are faced with the prospect of war, many of them will still turn to the United States for the first-class military equipment and security, intelligence, and diplomatic support no other partner can offer. It will be up to Washington to ensure that when it decides to support a partner at war, it does so with a clear understanding of what leverage the United States has and how it can best use that leverage to keep its partner on a path that leads to the war’s end, on the best possible terms. – Foreign Affairs
Cybersecurity
The White House has told top US artificial intelligence companies that open-weight models being developed by their Chinese rivals won’t be subject to government testing under the Trump administration’s new AI safety framework, according to people familiar with the matter. – Bloomberg
Leading artificial intelligence models from Anthropic and OpenAI created fake online personas and tried to deceive human coders into abetting a cyberattack during a recent safety evaluation, the U.K.’s AI Safety and Security Institute disclosed Tuesday. – Politico
Palantir is shifting profits from its European operations to the United States, allowing the Florida-based data analytics giant to pay minimal taxes in Europe, a new report finds. – Politico
Israel on Tuesday announced plans to advance the development of a national quantum computer, as countries around the world are vying for supremacy in what promises to be the new age of technology to solve significant scientific and engineering challenges in the years to come. – Times of Israel
The Trump administration executive order on artificial intelligence tried to strike the balance between responsible use, security and mutual benefit, all with an eye toward not making it regulatory in nature, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said Tuesday. – Cyberscoop
The UK’s AI Security Institute said that their AI research system took “unsanctioned” actions over the internet to engage in “sustained, potentially harmful activity directed at real people.” – Cyberscoop
Emergency managers see artificial intelligence as a promising tool to ease growing workloads, but the biggest hurdle to adoption isn’t a lack of technology, it’s building the governance, procurement processes and workforce skills needed to deploy it responsibly, according to a trio of reports published Tuesday. – Statescoop
Editorial: In 2024, Meta declined to ship its most capable models to Europe at all, citing the “unpredictable” legal environment. The Digital Markets Act has incentivized Apple to keep cutting-edge AI features off iPhones sold in Europe. Google, which has rolled out AI features to its phones around the world, has been given reasons to reconsider. E.U. bureaucrats like to boast about the “Brussels Effect.” They expect companies to capitulate to their regulatory regime. In reality, these politicians are denying their own people access to the best tools and the opportunities that come from using them. – Washington Post
Paul Teller: At a time when adversaries like China are racing ahead in critical technologies, America must maintain its global competitiveness and bolster its standing as a technology leader. That means that the administration must confront discriminatory trade practices and leverage all the necessary tools, including a Section 301 trade investigation, to fight back against these digital regulations. For too long, Brussels has benefited from Washington’s restraint. That must end now. – Washington Examiner
Aditi Jaiswal writes: Artificial intelligence will become a definitive feature in the future economic and technological progress of the U.S. Regulatory measures are needed in order to cope with problems such as privacy, security, transparency, and accountability, but these measures should not put obstacles in the way of innovation. With a risk-based approach, cooperation of the government and private companies, and elimination of excessive bureaucracy, the U.S. will create favorable conditions for the development of artificial intelligence in a responsible way. Such a regulatory system will allow not only the protection of customers, but also maintaining the leading position of the U.S. in artificial intelligence sphere. – Washington Examiner
Defense
The U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. military more broadly, is rushing to field these so-called “first-person view” drones, which have been used with devastating effect in the war in Ukraine. It is part of the large-scale effort by the U.S. military to ultimately acquire millions of drones and train units to use them. – Wall Street Journal
The U.S. Army has used up much of its global stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts. – Reuters
The U.S. Army is searching for a surface-to-air missile that can destroy small drones. The Next Generation C-sUAS Missile project comes as the U.S. and other nations are pursuing lasers, microwaves and other alternatives to kinetic anti-drone weapons, such as missiles and cannon, which are seen as too expensive and in short supply. – Defense News
The Space Force has contracted three companies to mature Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator capabilities and broaden the vendor pool that’s developing the technology, the service announced Tuesday. – Defensescoop
Ramon Marks writes: New approaches must be developed from the ground up to transform the United States into a strategic drone and conventional missile superpower. Russian and Iranian drones and missiles are now appearing in conflicts across the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, the Persian Gulf, and the greater Middle East. If the United States cannot develop effective military solutions to these threats, conflict and multipolar instability will inevitably spread to other regions. – National Interest