Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
Indonesia Weighs Sending Up to 8,000 Troops for Gaza Peace Plan Northwestern University’s Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro: Hamas’s boasting indicts the West Iran detains prominent political figures, expanding crackdown on dissent Iran says it could dilute enriched uranium if all sanctions are lifted US issues fresh guidance to vessels transiting Strait of Hormuz as Iran tensions simmer JPost Editorial: Tehran must be confronted: Trump, Netanyahu should lead the West's moral stand Ukraine opens up arms exports, seeking to cash in on wartime technology China to support 'reunification forces' in Taiwan, go after 'separatists' Deadly insurgency threatens a U.S. plan to invest in Pakistan’s mineral riches Israeli president’s visit to Australia prompts protests and arrests U.S. seizes tanker in Indian Ocean after monthlong chase from Caribbean How U.S. special forces are training in an Arctic warfare bootcampIn The News
Israel
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates led regional states on Monday in condemning Israel’s move to ease settlement expansion and widen its powers in the West Bank, a step critics said went in the direction of annexing occupied land. – Reuters
Israeli forces killed four militants in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday after they emerged from an underground tunnel and opened fire on troops, Israel’s military said. – Reuters
A White House official on Monday reiterated U.S. President Donald Trump’s opposition toward Israel annexing the West Bank. – Reuters
Britain on Monday called on Israel to reverse its decision to expand control over the West Bank, joining Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in criticising the move. – Reuters
Indonesia’s army is preparing up to 8,000 troops for a possible peacekeeping mission in Gaza, underscoring President Prabowo Subianto’s push for the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation to take on a bigger role in international security. – Bloomberg
An independent Jerusalem-based journalist was arrested after reporting that he suspected he had been approached by Iranian operatives in January. – Jerusalem Post
Israel and Azerbaijan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on AI at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on Tuesday. – Jerusalem Post
A technology campus featuring a mission control room for space operations, laboratories that simulate conditions on Mars, acceleration programs for startups and international academic research is launching Thursday at Mitzpe Ramon under the leadership of the Israeli company Creation‑Space. – Ynet
Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro write: That wasn’t the case at a rally at the Sydney Opera House held two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, when the crowd burned Israeli flags and chanted “Where are the Jews?” On the first night of Hanukkah in 2025, they were at Bondi Beach. Today’s mass murderers no longer need to hide their crimes from the West’s educated elites, who applaud them. Terrorist boasting testifies to our own moral decline. – Wall Street Journal
Walter Russell Mead writes: And it’s partly because many Arabs now believe that regional stability is more threatened by Israeli resistance to the idea of a Palestinian state, even as a distant future prospect, than by the feeble moves of the moribund regime in Tehran. The loose Sunni coalition of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Syria and Pakistan is fragile and, the rivalries among its members are intense. But as long as the alignment persists, Israeli regional diplomacy will struggle to advance the integration of the world’s only Jewish state into the Middle East. – Wall Street Journal
Emmanuel Navon writes: In this emerging order, Israel’s strategic value lies not in what it extracts from the ground, but in what it enables across allied systems. By contributing technology, security, innovation, and strategic connectivity – and by deepening cooperation with partners such as India, Japan, and South Korea – Israel can play a disproportionate role in shaping the architecture of allied supply chains. – Jerusalem Post
Rachel Avraham writes: January 2026 did not change Israel’s strategic environment – it clarified it. The American withdrawal strengthened Turkey. Kurdish forces collapsed. Russia reemerged as a functional intermediary. And Israeli society entered a phase where internal instability rivals external danger in perceived urgency. Bridging the gap between perception and reality is no longer an academic task. It is now a strategic necessity. – Arutz Sheva
Iran
In a sweeping crackdown on Iran’s internal political opposition, security forces have arrested at least seven prominent reformist politicians and summoned seven others to court, according to Iran’s judiciary, state media reports and the reformist political party. – New York Times
Iran could agree to dilute its most highly enriched uranium in exchange for all financial sanctions being lifted, its atomic chief said on Monday, one of the most direct indications so far of its position at talks with Washington. – Reuters
The United States issued fresh guidance on Monday to commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane for Middle East oil supplies, as tensions simmered between Washington and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program. – Reuters
A top Iranian security official traveled Tuesday to Oman, the Mideast sultanate now mediating talks between Tehran and the United States over the Islamic Republic’ nuclear program aimed at halting a possible American strike. – Associated Press
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran is “completely serious” about the negotiations with the Trump administration as it seeks to avoid airstrikes, but blamed the U.S. for a “very large wall of distrust” between the two sides. – Newsweek
High-resolution satellite imagery of Iran’s Isfahan nuclear complex, taken on Sunday and published on Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, reveals significant changes around the site’s tunnel entrances. – Arutz Sheva
Editorial: In the visit to Washington, Netanyahu and Trump have an opportunity not just to posture but to lead. Let that leadership be defined by steadfast support for the Iranians’ cry for freedom and justice, not by another round of appeasing talks that allow tyranny to persist.The Iranian regime’s brutality is not a distant abstraction; it is a humanitarian and security catastrophe that demands action, not more talks that buy time for killers to plan the next massacre. – Jerusalem Post
Russia and Ukraine
Russian forces are trying to press forward around the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s military said on Monday, hoping to conclude a months-long campaign to seize the strategic hub as Moscow seeks to capture the whole of the Donetsk region. – Reuters
Ukraine is opening up exports of its domestically produced weapons, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, a way for Kyiv to cash in on a wartime technological arms race against Russia to generate badly needed funds. – Reuters
Russia remains open for cooperation with the United States but is not hopeful about economic ties despite Washington’s ongoing efforts to end the Ukraine war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published on Monday. – Reuters
Oil and gas exports have sustained Russia’s finances throughout its war against Ukraine. But as the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion approaches, those cash flows have suddenly dwindled to lows not seen in years. – Associated Press
Ukraine has launched Mission Control, a first-of-its-kind digital command-and-control system designed to unify planning, execution and reporting for all drone operations across the country, as Kyiv seeks more innovative ways to move the frozen front line on the battlefield after almost four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. – Defense News
The Trump administration’s push to acquire Greenland has produced a carefully calibrated response from Moscow. An air of restraint in public comments masks more private concern over potential threats to Russian submarine operations, combined with satisfaction at widening cracks in the transatlantic alliance, according to analysts. – Defense News
Marc Champion writes: All of these measures to persuade Putin he can gain nothing more by fighting should have been taken long ago. The fact that they weren’t means that when a ceasefire is eventually agreed, as in time it must, this won’t be a Nobel Prize-earning feat. It will instead have come after the US first extended the war by taking pressure off the Kremlin, and having forced Ukraine into far greater concessions than it should have had to make. – Bloomberg
Middle East & North Africa
A fire at a fuel production unit caused a huge blaze at Iraq’s Baiji refinery on Monday, killing a worker and injuring 13 others, according to police, medical sources and the country’s oil ministry. – Reuters
US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Admiral Brad Cooper praised the Lebanese Armed Forces for its discovery of a Hezbollah terror tunnel in a post on CENTCOM’s X/Twitter on Monday. – Jerusalem Post
Neville Teller writes: The Syrian leadership rejects any Israeli claim to a protective role over Syrian Druze, portraying it as cover for reinforcing a demilitarized belt along the Golan to Israel’s advantage. Sharaa insists that reasserting central control is integral to his policy of unifying the nation. Will he eventually bring his disparate minority interests, such as the Kurds and the Druze, within the overall control of a unified national government that represents a democratic, albeit Islamic, state? That is the conundrum he currently represents. – Jerusalem Post
Veysi Dag writes: Nevertheless, none of these events diminishes the symbolic and political importance of Rojava for Kurds throughout the region. For many, it remains a rare experiment in self-rule, gender equality, and grassroots governance under extremely challenging conditions. To conclude, what transpired in northeastern Syria was not the result of an international conspiracy but rather the outcome of internal fragility and external realignment. Rojava had options, but it failed to take adequate precautions at crucial moments, making accountability inevitable. – Jerusalem Post
Korean Peninsula
South Korean authorities said on Tuesday that e-commerce giant Coupang needs to fix vulnerabilities in its security systems that they blamed for causing a massive data leak at the company. – Reuters
South Korea will set up a committee to conduct preliminary reviews of U.S. investment projects as it seeks to speed up the implementation of a $350 billion investment package pledged under a trade deal with Washington, officials said on Tuesday. – Reuters
A South Korean politician has faced disciplinary action from his party after suggesting that the country could “import” women from other nations to address its low birth rate and declining population. – Newsweek
China
China will offer firm support for “patriotic pro-reunification forces” in Taiwan and strike hard against “separatists”, the top Chinese official in charge of policy towards the democratically-governed island said in comments published on Tuesday. – Reuters
Taiwan’s government on Monday condemned the “harsh” sentence handed out to Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai and called for his release. – Reuters
Britain said it was expanding its visa route for those who want to move from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom, in reaction to the sentencing of Jimmy Lai, the Asian city’s most vocal China critic, to 20 years in jail. – Reuters
Harlan Ullman writes: But perhaps Xi set 2027 as an accounting date in which the Chinese Army would be measured for its performance and not necessarily be ordered to invade. Maybe the firings were a signal of Xi’s seriousness. Given the massive corruption that seems to have infected the senior ranks of the military’s leadership, Xi might be seeing the same incompetence and corruption that Gorbachev had once observed across Russian society. Xi will not fall into Gorbachev’s trap of applying “openness” and “restructuring,” which led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. Instead, Xi is employing the old-fashioned method of putting in his team. We shall see if that works, and whether China faces real decline. – The Hill
Jennifer Lind writes: To meet the challenge of an innovative China, then, the United States must lean into the strengths that have made it a technological powerhouse: world-class educational institutions (and the overseas talent they attract), well-regulated and deep financial markets, global financial leadership, a robust culture of entrepreneurship, a vibrant civil society, and a unique position at the center of innovation networks in both Europe and Asia. China has shown that, through adaptation, authoritarian regimes can innovate effectively and compete with democracies. How well the United States deals with the rise of smart authoritarianism depends on whether it can adapt, too. – Foreign Affairs
South Asia
The Trump administration in December said it would invest $1.25 billion in a restive, resource-rich province of Pakistan as part of a strategic effort to counter China’s dominance in critical-mineral supply chains. Within weeks, the perils of the plan became evident. – Wall Street Journal
India is in talks with Brazil, Canada, France and the Netherlands over deals to jointly explore, extract, process and recycle critical minerals, sources said, as it broadens its global outreach to secure supplies of key raw materials. – Reuters
Bangladeshis will head to the polls on Thursday, with nearly 128 million people eligible to vote, in a key test of the country’s return to democracy after a popular uprising toppled long‑time leader Sheikh Hasina in August 2024. – Reuters
China’s influence in Bangladesh, boosted by the 2024 ouster of New Delhi‑aligned leader Sheikh Hasina, is likely to deepen after this week’s election, although politicians and analysts say India is too large a neighbour to be sidelined completely. – Reuters
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday sent a message of condolences to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari over last week’s deadly explosion in Islamabad. – Reuters
Adani Enterprises said on Tuesday that a U.S. agency is conducting a civil investigation into the company’s transactions that may have involved Iran or parties subject to U.S. sanctions. – Reuters
Pakistan’s president has warned that the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan has created conditions “similar to or worse than” those before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a sign of rising tensions with Kabul after last week’s mosque attack in Islamabad, which analysts said Monday highlights militants’ reach to the capital. – Associated Press
Asia
The arrival of Israel’s president in Australia on Monday to mourn the deaths of 15 people shot at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach set off protests and clashes in Sydney between the police and activists who had objected to his invitation from Australia’s leader. – New York Times
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Tuesday that he was confident that his new government will complete its full four-year term. – Reuters
The Philippines’ ambassador to the United States on Tuesday underscored the need to “cool” the temperature with China, after both sides signaled their willingness to set aside tensions in the South China Sea and explore areas of economic cooperation. – Reuters
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul will meet his counterparts from Central Asian countries in Berlin on Wednesday, said a ministry spokesperson, with themes including energy and Russian sanctions circumvention on the agenda. – Reuters
Vice President JD Vance landed in Armenia on Monday — a country that no sitting U.S. vice president or president has visited before — as the Trump administration offered economic opportunities while it works to advance a U.S.-brokered deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan. – Associated Press
Karishma Vaswani writes: Moving too cautiously would undercut her mandate, but moving too boldly could alarm neighbors. It would also feed into Beijing’s narrative that Japan’s military threat has merely been dormant. For now, the wind is at her back. Her victory gives Tokyo rare political stability to play a larger part in a region squeezed between American volatility and mounting Chinese pressure. For much of Asia, that balance is not just welcome — it is increasingly essential. For China, that is precisely the problem. – Bloomberg
J. William DeMarco writes: The question for the United States and its allies, then, is not simply whether they can defeat an invasion if it comes. It is whether they can prevent a slower defeat: one in which hesitation becomes habit, ambiguity becomes shelter, and delay becomes destiny. In such a contest, the absence of battle may not signal success. It may signal that paralysis has already begun. – War on the Rocks
Europe
The leader of the Scottish Labour party, Anas Sarwar, urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign on Monday, intensifying pressure on the British leader over his decision to make Peter Mandelson the ambassador to the United States despite his close ties to Jeffrey Epstein. – New York Times
The European Union should consider either an unprecedented 30% across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods or a 30% depreciation of the euro against the renminbi to counter a flood of cheap imports, a French government strategy report said on Monday. – Reuters
Sweden will tighten citizenship rules with applicants facing a longer, eight-year wait before they can apply, a minimum wage threshold and a test of their understanding of Swedish society, the centre-right government said on Monday. – Reuters
International war crimes prosecutors said on Monday Kosovo’s former president Hashim Thaci controlled ethnic Albanian guerrillas and should be convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 45 years in prison. – Reuters
Migrants deported from Britain to France under a new “one-in one-out” scheme did not have enough access to translators, legal advice or information about what would happen to them next, inspectors said in a report published on Monday. – Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead a sizeable U.S. delegation to the Munich Security Conference starting on Friday, underscoring the importance of transatlantic relations despite a “crisis of trust”, the head of the forum said. – Reuters
Germany has indicted a Ukrainian national in connection with allegations of a plot linked to Russian intelligence to detonate parcel packages in Europe, German prosecutors said in a statement on Monday. – Reuters
NATO is expected to launch a mission in the coming days that could boost its surveillance and military assets in the Arctic, five sources told Reuters, following tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and European allies over Greenland. – Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe’s troubled next-generation fighter jet, the Future Combat Air System, must move forward in spite of squabbles between Dassault Aviation SA and Airbus SE over who should lead the program. – Bloomberg
The EU executive wants to cut Chinese firms out of lucrative EU public contracts at home and abroad by overhauling its budget rules, according to three European Commission officials. – Politico
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is softening a push to take greater control of EU intelligence sharing after a standoff with her foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, four officials with knowledge of the discussion told POLITICO. – Politico
Three Jewish men were harassed by a knife-wielding individual in Paris, in the latest antisemitic incident to spark outrage within France’s Jewish community, prompting local authorities to launch a criminal investigation and bolster security amid a rising tide of antisemitism. – Algemeiner
Africa
Foreign investors from Shell to British American Tobacco are downsizing in South Africa. Those decisions could mark a watershed moment for a country where the government’s ability to deliver basic services has become so limited that private firms have taken over many basic civic functions. – Wall Street Journal
Ethiopia is hosting a secret camp to train thousands of fighters for the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group in neighbouring Sudan, Reuters reporting has found, in the latest sign that one of the world’s deadliest conflicts is sucking in regional powers from Africa and the Middle East. – Reuters
The U.N. rights chief said on Monday that fatal drone strikes on civilians in Sudan are continuing even after the army broke prolonged sieges of southern cities held by the RSF paramilitary forces. – Reuters
Uganda’s Information Minister Chris Baryomunsi condemned a military raid on opposition leader Bobi Wine’s home last month, telling Reuters that the popstar-turned-politician had not committed any crime and was free to return there. – Reuters
Eritrea on Monday rejected accusations by Ethiopia that it was responsible for military aggression and was backing armed groups inside Ethiopian territory as “false and fabricated”, calling the claims part of a hostile campaign by Addis Ababa. – Reuters
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has warned Israel against establishing a military base in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, as Mogadishu bolsters strategic ties with Middle Eastern states amid mounting regional tensions. – Algemeiner
The Americas
U.S. forces chased down an oil tanker fleeing the quarantine around Venezuela all the way to the Indian Ocean, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Monday, a monthlong pursuit that ended in the ship’s capture. – Wall Street Journal
Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA has reversed most output cuts at its own oilfields and joint ventures in the Orinoco Belt, the country’s main crude region, boosting total output close to 1 million barrels per day (bpd), sources close to operations said. – Reuters
Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office said Monday it will file corruption charges against the president of national oil company Ecopetrol that hearken back to his days as a campaign manager for President Gustavo Petro. – Associated Press
Cesar Conda and Thomas Trask write: While necessary for protecting Americans against the harms caused by Venezuela’s former leader, the adminstration’s recent move means the situation in the region is now more fraught than in recent memory. As Trump seeks to advance the “Donroe Doctrine” by floating potential future military action against other bad actors in the Western Hemisphere (such as Cuba, which, notably, is less than 1,000 miles from Puerto Rico) and expressing interest in territories like Greenland, he should also re-think the country’s relationship with somewhere much closer to home. If the White House is serious about protecting America’s citizens and future, then welcoming Puerto Rico as the 51st state is a great place to start. – The Hill
North America
President Trump threatened on Monday to not allow the opening of a new bridge connecting Canada with Detroit, marking the latest source of political tension between the two countries. – Wall Street Journal
Air Canada is suspending service to Cuba due to a shortage of aviation fuel on the island. The flag carrier is suspending service, effective Monday, and over the following days it will operate empty flights to Cuba to pick up about 3,000 customers already there to bring them home. – Wall Street Journal
The Nicaraguan government blocked Cuban migrants from entering the country without a visa, cutting off what was once a popular and profitable route to the United States that had drawn the ire of the Trump administration. – New York Times
Mexican authorities have recovered 10 bodies in the search for workers kidnapped last month from a mine run by Canada’s Vizsla Silver Corp in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa, the country’s attorney general’s office said on Monday. – Reuters
Russia said on Monday the fuel situation in Cuba was critical and U.S. attempts to “suffocate” the island’s economy were causing many difficulties, pledging to act against any sort of military intervention and expressing Moscow’s solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela. – Reuters
“China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security, and opposes foreign interference,” Lin Jian, a foreign ministry spokesperson, told a regular news conference. “We will always provide support and help to the Cuban side to the best of our ability.” – Reuters
Georges A. Fauriol and Mary Speck write: The United States seems to be focusing almost exclusively on deployment of the GSF in line with the president’s opposition to “nation-building.” But the United States and other international donors will need to provide more than military support to ensure that the country can not only hold credible elections but also establish an accountable government capable of delivering basic services to its citizens, including a functional justice system, education, and healthcare. Otherwise, Haiti and its regional allies may be condemned to yet another cycle of instability and intervention. – Center for Strategic and International Studies
United States
In the five days since the last remaining nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia expired, statements by administration officials have made two things clear: Washington is actively weighing the deployment of more nuclear weapons, and it is also likely to conduct a nuclear test of some kind. – New York Times
Bomb threats on Monday forced the temporary closure of schools and municipal buildings in Springfield, Ohio, where the sizable population of Haitians has made the small city a focus of the debate over immigration and President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. – New York Times
Before federal agents seized hundreds of thousands of ballots from an elections office outside Atlanta late last month, a state judge had made clear that he was preparing to release copies of them. That would have allowed members of the public to seek access to the ballots, from the 2020 presidential election, and draw their own conclusions. – New York Times
The general counsel for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Monday warned the attorney for an anonymous government employee not to directly share a top-secret complaint about Gabbard’s handling of classified material with members of Congress. – Associated Press
A federal appeals court in San Francisco granted a stay allowing the government to proceed with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for immigrants from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua. – Fox News
Alex Witkoff writes: Dismantling protections, legitimizing extremist rhetoric, and appointing figures who alienate large segments of the Jewish community are not combating antisemitism. New York should be the safest place in America to be Jewish. Right now, it is becoming a warning sign of what happens when leadership looks away. Jewish families are asking questions no New Yorker should ever have to ask. Is it safe to wear a kippah? To send children to Hebrew school? To walk home from synagogue? With more than a million Jews calling this city home, the stakes could not be higher. History is watching. Silence is a choice. And once again, it is the wrong one. – Jerusalem Post
Decker Eveleth writes: Ultimately, the biggest risks stemming from the collapse of New START have little to do with warhead or delivery vehicle numbers. Rather, they lie in the gradual erosion of trust between the United States and Russia, compounded by a changing technical reality that incentivizes posture changes. How this will unfold is impossible to predict. What is clear, however, is that negotiating the arms control treaty of tomorrow may be far more difficult than the Trump administration expects. As Rubio said, it’s a process that will take years. We should be prepared for the possibility that it may take a decade for any new arms control treaty to enter into force—and for all major nuclear states to become more evasive in the meantime. – Foreign Policy
Cybersecurity
As the Trump administration seeks to sweep away obstacles to developing artificial intelligence, the president’s team has brought its zeal for the new technology to the federal government itself. – Washington Post
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration plans to spare firms such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft from upcoming tariffs on chips as they build AI data centers, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. – Reuters
The world’s biggest social media companies face several landmark trials this year that seek to hold them responsible for harms to children who use their platforms. Opening statements in one such trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court began on Monday. – Associated Press
Bank of America Corp. nearly doubled its prediction for Taiwan’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring 2025 propelled by demand for artificial intelligence. – Bloomberg
The rest of the world including the U.S. relies on Europe for essential chipmaking technology, officials and executives said Monday. – Politico
The European Commission will ask Meta to halt new terms that prevent rival artificial intelligence chatbots from using WhatsApp, acting on concerns that the U.S. company is breaching the bloc’s antitrust rules. – Politico
The Trump administration wants some of the world’s largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. – Politico
Russia has granted political asylum to a Spanish national accused in his home country of “cyberterrorism and espionage” in support of Moscow, according to Russian state media. – The Record
Editorial: But such effects are hypothetical. The real danger is political interference that hamstrings America’s space development and gives China an upper hand. Democrats and astronomical groups are also opposing Mr. Carr’s proposal to exempt satellites from environmental reviews. They say satellites could indirectly affect U.S. earthlings by, say, brightening the night-time sky. The Federal Aviation Administration separately evaluates the environmental impact of rocket launches in the U.S., which has in the past delayed satellite launches. Permitting difficulties are America’s economic Achilles’ heel. Let’s hope they don’t get in the way of U.S. space innovation. – Wall Street Journal
Defense
Tensions are simmering in the icy Arctic. North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are sending a growing number of soldiers to the High North to help prepare for the threat of a potential Russian invasion. They quickly discover that newcomers need to learn a whole new set of skills to merely survive, let alone fight a war. – Wall Street Journal
A U.S. military boat strike, the third this year, blew up a vessel suspected of carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday, killing two people and leaving a lone survivor, the Pentagon’s Southern Command said. – New York Times
The United States will turn over two of NATO’s major command posts – in Naples, Italy and Norfolk, Virginia – to European officers, a military source told Reuters on Monday. – Reuters
The U.S. Air Force must buy at least 500 sixth-generation fighters and bombers — more than it already plans — to be able to prevail in a war against China, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said Monday. – Defense News