Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
Israel braces for uncertainty with early election results pointing to deadlock WSJ Editorial: Netanyahu gives Israel one more surprise Vance reaches out to Iranian hard-liner in bid to restart peace talks Ukraine sends drones towards Moscow, Russia strikes Kharkiv, officials say A ceasefire in a Ukrainian city is holding, officials say, as Moscow and Kyiv await US-led talks Houthis strike Yemen's Aden airport after evacuation warning U.S. restricts trade with Chinese genomics company US and Japan to establish a Japanese facility for joint missile production Bolsonaro lands in Miami after fleeing Brazil WSJ Editorial: To Brazil’s victor goes political revenge U.S. expels Cuban diplomat after extraordinary U.N. verbal clash Tech giants ramp up resistance to ICE in bid to avoid democratic scrutinyIn The News
Israel
Israel’s fiercely contested election appeared to be headed toward weeks or months of grueling negotiations over who will serve as prime minister, putting the nation possibly right back to where it was just before the wars now engulfing the Mideast. – Wall Street Journal
For decades, Israel’s Arab parties have been relegated to the margins of Israeli political life, often sitting on the sidelines while Jewish parties assembled a governing coalition in Parliament and picked a prime minister. – New York Times
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party accused Arab parties of allegedly stealing Israel’s Knesset election through widespread electoral fraud, bribery, intimidation, and ballot manipulation, demanding an immediate investigation by law enforcement authorities in a statement following Tuesday’s vote. – Jerusalem Post
Israel Police rejected Likud’s claims that the election had been “stolen” on Thursday morning, stating that there was no investigative or intelligence evidence to support the allegations. – Jerusalem Post
Central Elections Committee Chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg instructed Shin Bet Chief David Zini to investigate information regarding foreign funding intended to skew the elections in Israel. – Jerusalem Post
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday that it had killed six members of the Hamas terror group in recent strikes in the Gaza Strip, including three terrorists who participated in the October 7 onslaught. – Times of Israel
US President Donald Trump’s administration has not made a decision to intervene in efforts to assemble an Israeli governing coalition following the inconclusive outcome of the elections, a US official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday. – Times of Israel
The Hebron municipality said on Wednesday that the Israel Defense Forces was continuing its operation in the city for a sixth consecutive day, following Friday’s shooting attack at the entrance to Hebron in which Palestinian gunmen killed two IDF soldiers. – Times of Israel
Editorial: The best option may be a unity government, as President Trump urges, joining the Likud with the centrist opposition and excluding the rest. It would be a natural decision if not for the polarization around Mr. Netanyahu: Opposition leaders don’t want to work with him, and he won’t play second-fiddle. This means Israelis may soon be returning to the polls. It’s an outcome that Mr. Netanyahu fears the least because he would have momentum, better options and hang on as Prime Minister in the meantime. But he wasn’t wrong late Tuesday night to suggest that Israel has a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with our partner President Trump, to remove the existential threat from Iran once and for all.” This is no time for Israeli paralysis. – Wall Street Journal
Editorial: Nobody is suggesting that a unity government would be easy, or even necessarily successful. But Herzog is right to warn against returning to the ballot box, particularly before every reasonable avenue for forming a government has been exhausted. The campaign is over. The public has fulfilled its democratic responsibility. Netanyahu, Eisenkot, Bennett, and the other party leaders now have a responsibility to examine what can be achieved through negotiation. Whatever their differences, they owe the country at least a serious conversation. – Jerusalem Post
Marc Champion writes: To have a chance of success, all of these policy changes would have to begin now — and that requires Eisenkot and his partners to bring Israel’s Arab parties and voters into the equation. Anything else, including a unity government formed with Netanyahu and his Likud party, would be unable to change Israel’s course. This choice is binary. It will decide which Israeli state — the secular-democratic whole or the Jewish, majoritarian one — is to be the actual Israel. – Bloomberg
Iran
Vice President JD Vance is engaging one of Iran’s most powerful hard-liners to revive peace negotiations even as President Trump threatens to restart the war after next week’s midterm elections, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said. Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, and previously Iran’s longest-serving commander. – Wall Street Journal
Iranian families are cutting back on food, housing and education as the eight-month-old war with the United States fuels one of the country’s worst inflation surges in decades, eroding incomes and pushing households to the brink. – Reuters
Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced award-winning film director Jafar Panahi to five years in prison and the seizure of all his assets, Iran’s semi-official Nournews reported on Wednesday, citing his lawyer but without mentioning the charges he faced. – Reuters
Qatari mediators have presented Iran with a new draft deal to end the war with the US and Israel, an official briefed on the negotiations said, but a senior Iranian official said Doha had only put forward unacceptable ideas that did not amount to an offer. – Reuters
U.S. officials have told several Middle East countries and regional allies to be prepared for potential renewed military action against Iran after next week’s midterm elections in the United States — as well as the possibility that Iran will attempt to retaliate against them, according to two diplomats briefed on the matter. – Associated Press
Russia and Ukraine
Russia downed most of 613 drones heading towards Moscow overnight, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram on Thursday. In Ukraine, meanwhile, Russia attacked Kharkiv, the country’s second biggest city, damaging an educational institution, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram. – Reuters
President Vladimir Putin hailed Elon Musk as a genius on Wednesday, acknowledging Russia is only beginning to roll out its answer to his Starlink satellite internet system. – Reuters
A planned six-day ceasefire in and around a Russia-occupied city in southern Ukraine held for its first day and night, officials said Wednesday, but Moscow and Kyiv battered each other elsewhere as they awaited a date for the next round of U.S.-brokered talks. – Associated Press
The Pentagon’s watchdog is refusing a bipartisan request to investigate recent disruptions to Starlink and Starshield satellite internet service to Ukraine, raising concerns among lawmakers that the military and even its independent inspector general are reluctant to confront the influence that SpaceX chief Elon Musk has over defense communications. – Associated Press
The Trump administration and the Kremlin are discussing the possible lifting of US sanctions on Russia’s multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, Russian state media quoted a Kremlin aide as saying, in what would be another US concession to Moscow in negotiations to end its war in Ukraine. – CNN
Trends in federal data back up the Ukrainian president, showing that the steep initial rise in diesel prices followed the start of the Iran war — not Ukrainian strikes on Russian production infrastructure. – Defense News
Aurel Braun writes: As Vladimir Putin intensifies his war of aggression in Ukraine, he should be aware of the risks of Trumpian friendship. Banking on additional funds from energy sales and sanctions relief, and basking in the American administration’s lavish praise, may not prove an effective strategy. Should President Trump become significantly disappointed with Russia and/or should America take decisive action against Iran, the friendship with President Putin might suddenly fracture. If anything resembles an iron law governing relations with President Trump, it is that they too often end badly for his “friends.” – The National Interest
Dana Stroul writes: But it would be an important first step in denying Tehran opportunities to drive wedges between long-standing allies and partners. If, instead, the current trajectory of political discord, piecemeal missions, and short-term adaptation by commercial shippers continues, Iran and the Houthis will learn that they can exploit divisions among foreign governments, selectively escalating maritime threats to extract concessions. And other U.S. adversaries will learn the same lesson—that economic disruption is an extraordinarily effective weapon when the world lacks the will to defend its commons. – Foreign Affairs
Turkey
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Turkish investors were ready to acquire a stake in the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, which is being developed by Russia’s Rosatom in Turkey, Interfax news agency reported. – Reuters
Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler on Wednesday warned Russia and Ukraine against further attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea, saying Ankara reserved the right to take legal action against the strikes, in Turkey’s most direct intervention to date. – Reuters
President Tayyip Erdogan told US President Donald Trump by phone that Turkey is making efforts to resolve the issues in the Strait of Hormuz and Yemen diplomatically under its defense alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Erdogan’s office said on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post
Mem Husedin writes: At the UN General Assembly last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of Erdogan: “He has murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians.” The time has come for Turkey either to face an anti-apartheid-style movement or to address the issue by fully recognizing the distinct identity of its Kurdish citizens and their autonomous agency in Kurdistan. There is no space left to continue with an ideology that is a remnant of Hitler and Mussolini. The time is now. – Jerusalem Post
Middle East & North Africa
The economies of the Arab world must channel more investment into productive sectors, the United Nations’ assistant secretary general said, after the war in Iran exposed the region’s structural weaknesses. – Wall Street Journal
Libya’s eastern-based government banned the entry of Iranian and Afghan nationals through all land, sea and air ports, the government said late on Wednesday. – Reuters
Algeria’s national carrier Air Algerie resumed direct flights to Tripoli on Wednesday after a halt of nearly 12 years, the internationally recognised Government of National Unity media office said. – Reuters
Yemen’s Houthis attacked Aden airport on Wednesday, Yemeni government forces said, after the Iran-aligned group warned people to evacuate the facility as fighting escalated in the impoverished country caught in the wider Middle East conflict. – Reuters
Iran-backed Houthi rebels say Saudi-led airstrikes have killed 14 people in a busy market in northern Yemen. – Associated Press
The 3 million EGP (Egyptian pound) fine, about NIS 166,749, imposed on Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of independent Egyptian news outlet Mada Masr, and the site’s closure have drawn international condemnation. Officials and human-rights organizations warn of Egypt’s continued crackdown on press freedom and free speech. – Jerusalem Post
Gender-based violence against Alawite women has become a tool for sectarian and “political score-settling” in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime nearly two years ago, with the new authorities complicit in the rape and abductions through the obstruction of investigations, a report published by the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) alleged. – Jerusalem Post
Korean Peninsula
A Russian network of brokers sponsored by Pyongyang has taken North Koreans to work in Russia in exploitative conditions and in violation of UN sanctions, some at factories that turn out items Moscow uses in the Ukraine war, a rights group said. – Reuters
North Korea fired around 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea off its east coast on Thursday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. – Reuters
The United States imposed sanctions on Wednesday to target what the Treasury Department said were North Korean government-run schemes that use IT workers to defraud US businesses and generate revenue for Pyongyang’s weapons programs. – Reuters
A South Korean special prosecutor on Thursday demanded the death penalty for ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol, ahead of an appeals court verdict on rebellion charges over his brief imposition of martial law in December 2024. – Associated Press
China
The Trump administration on Wednesday added BGI, a major Chinese genomics company that U.S. officials have long eyed with suspicion, to a trade blacklist aimed at barring products made with forced labor in China. – New York Times
China has more than 50 navy and other official vessels operating in a wide swathe of sea stretching from southern Japan down to Taiwan and off the Philippines, a senior Taiwan official said, calling the threat level “obvious”. – Reuters
China’s commerce ministry on Thursday condemned the United States for placing several Chinese companies on a list of businesses Washington alleges use Uyghur forced labour or source material from Xinjiang, and said Beijing would take steps to safeguard its interests. – Reuters
South Asia
An association representing 21 of India’s established news organizations has asked the country’s Supreme Court to strike down provisions of a new privacy law, warning that it would cripple investigative journalism and force newsrooms to close. – New York Times
India is open to hearing concerns from media groups about its privacy law and wants to protect press freedom, its IT minister said on Wednesday, in the first government comments since major media publishers challenged the legislation in the Supreme Court. – Reuters
An oxygen cylinder exploded inside a parked ambulance at a government-run medical facility in southern Pakistan, killing at least 10 people, including a patient of the facility, police and hospital officials said Thursday. – Associated Press
In years gone by, Afghanistan’s poppy fields produced about 80% of the world’s opium, used in the manufacture of morphine as well as in illegal drugs like heroin. Four years ago, the Taliban began enforcing an opium ban so strict that poppy all but vanished from Afghanistan’s fields. But now their Supreme Leader’s edict is beginning to fray, worn down by a practical problem: legal crops no longer pay and many Afghan farmers say they are struggling to feed their children. – Reuters
Asia
The United States and Japan have agreed to establish a Japanese facility for the joint production of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, the Japanese defense chief said late Wednesday. It is the latest move by the allies, which have repeatedly expressed alarm over China’s growing assertiveness in Asia. – Associated Press
The Philippines’ top diplomat arrived in Myanmar on Wednesday to oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid, as Myanmar’s military-backed government seeks to improve strained relations with its neighbors and other countries. – Associated Press
Taiwan said it suspects China was behind Pakistan briefly closing its airspace to Taiwanese airlines, Deputy Foreign Minister Chen Ming-chi said, without providing evidence for the assertion. – Bloomberg
Thailand revoked the citizenship of its chief rabbi, the latest move in a widening government campaign against foreign nationals accused of breaking laws or circumventing rules in a country long known for welcoming outsiders. – Bloomberg
Finland’s Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen visited New Zealand on Oct. 21 to discuss security issues with officials there. His travel agenda also included Australia and Japan, signaling the Northern European country’s interest in the region despite the geographical distance. – Defense News
David Fickling writes: We could be entering a similar moment. The rising force in international relations is the chokepoint maximizer, looking for leverage over computer chips, critical minerals, intellectual property and trade flows to subdue its rivals. This year’s conflict over the Strait of Hormuz is a prime example. With barriers rising to commerce, migration, and capital, free ports like Singapore are in lonely waters. “If there were no international law and order, and big fish eat small fish and small fish eat shrimps, we wouldn’t exist,” founding father Lee Kuan Yew mused in a 2007 interview. “A siege? Control of sea lanes? We’ll just starve.” – Bloomberg
Europe
Two high-speed trains collided in Spain, killing at least 68 people and marking one of the country’s deadliest rail disasters and the second on the same line this year. – Wall Street Journal
The U.K. government Wednesday set out new plans for spending and taxation intended to keep it on track to narrow its budget deficit, but at a slower pace than previously hoped for. Outlining an annual budget that he said was intended to provide “breathing space” for households facing higher energy bills as a result of the war between the U.S. and Iran, Treasury chief John Healey announced only modest increases in spending and taxation. – Wall Street Journal
Spain’s transportation minister said a train crash that killed dozens on Wednesday appeared to result from an “inexplicable” decision by traffic control operators to tell a high-speed train to continue its journey when another train was stopped farther along the tracks. – New York Times
In June SAIC Motor, one of China’s largest electronic vehicle manufacturers, chose a sleepy port just outside Ferrol as the site for a major plant. The project, which is expected to provide more than 1,000 jobs, has prompted widespread celebration across Ferrol. – New York Times
The demonstrations in France have partly inspired those in Italy, both protesters and political analysts said. But the public outcry in Italy also reflects a buildup over months and years of frustration about cost-of-living increases, lack of well-paid job opportunities and a widespread sense of stagnation. – New York Times
Sea drones struck a container ship off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast on Wednesday, the ship’s owner and the government said, the latest in a string of attacks that have raised concerns about the growing scope of Russia’s war in Ukraine. – Reuters
Italy will raise taxes on banks, insurers, energy firms and the gaming industry to help finance its 2027 budget, ministers said after cabinet approved the last financial bill under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni before an election due next year. – Reuters
Magyar’s government plans to establish a new environmental protection authority with powers to inflict fines of as much as 5 billion forint ($15 million) on big companies that rack up “three strikes” against the rules within five years. – Bloomberg
Anton Jäger writes: Yet a certain youthful nihilism, in the face of such somber prospects, is hard to qualify as irrational. Political prediction always exudes a whiff of astrology. Even if a Serbia-style scenario is hard to envision, Europe’s current upheavals will undoubtedly have short-term effects, perhaps jerking French public opinion to the right or swaying Spanish voters to the left. Yet whatever the protests’ consequences on the level of formal politics, their root conditions — fiscal retrenchment, digital entropy, grief over a future annulled — are unlikely to recede. It is hard to believe the protesters will either. – New York Times
Lionel Laurent writes: It bears repeating: France is not Greece circa 2010. But being strangled by a mounting debt burden can still be painful even if it doesn’t lead to the kind of sovereign default France last experienced in the 1790s. Markets can move quicker than governments’ best-laid plans. The current investor mood is a recognition that the government has chosen wisely from several bad options. Yet there are more choices to come, and the calm may not last. – Bloomberg
Africa
More than a week after the first Ebola case was confirmed in Nigeria, pressing questions about how the virus arrived in Africa’s most populous nation remain unanswered. – New York Times
President Vladimir Putin told African leaders on Wednesday that Russia was their best partner, accusing what he cast as a colonial West of still trying to exploit the continent’s resources and using debt to hold back development. – Reuters
The US imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s ministry of defense on Wednesday over the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Kigali and bring an end to the fighting. – Reuters
Major American and foreign airlines urged the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reconsider new rules requiring all US-bound travelers to attest they have not been in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the prior 21 days. – Reuters
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Wednesday that his country had received a first batch of Russian Su-35 fighter jets and that it would later get S-400 air defence systems from Moscow as part of a drive to bolster its military capabilities. – Reuters
The United Nations’ political mission in Somalia ends Saturday, closing more than three decades of successive U.N. missions that helped rebuild a country shattered by civil war and leaving no agreed replacement to help rival leaders resolve disputes. – Associated Press
Authorities are investigating a possible poisoning after an Israeli businessman in his 40s was found dead on Wednesday at a restaurant in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. – Jerusalem Post
The Americas
Just days after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in Miami Wednesday after fleeing his home country, where he faces mounting legal pressure from a Supreme Court that has already sent his father to prison. – Wall Street Journal
As Brazilian and international outlets reported that Bolsonaro had left the country, he was still in Brazil, while a private jet waited for him across the border in Argentina. At 12:21 a.m. Wednesday, the Gulfstream G400 took off from Puerto Iguazú and whisked him to Ecuador and then Miami, where his entry was facilitated by Trump allies his family spent years cultivating. – Wall Street Journal
Costa Rica’s government has withdrawn its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a major trans-Pacific trade pact, and dismissed its foreign trade minister, president Laura Fernandez said on Wednesday. – Reuters
United Nations human rights experts said Wednesday that Nicaragua’s co-presidents have established a dictatorship and that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed.” – Associated Press
Bolivia’s once-mighty natural gas industry has shriveled so dramatically that the country is set to begin importing the fuel after decades as one of the region’s major producers and exporters. – Bloomberg
Editorial: Over the next four years Lula will probably nominate as many as four new Supreme Court justices on the 11-seat bench. It will be up to the new Brazilian Senate to defend judicial integrity and independence. Countries that go from freedom to autocracy follow a similar path: A demagogue wins at the polls, seizes the judiciary and jails his enemies. Where institutions are strong, the rule of law can survive. It isn’t clear that Brazil can. – Wall Street Journal
North America
The U.S. expelled a Cuban diplomat after the island country’s foreign minister loudly interrupted an address by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz criticizing Havana’s leadership, and the two shouted at one another in an extraordinary exchange at the world body’s famous rostrum. – Wall Street Journal
El Salvador will send over 2,000 soldiers to Haiti to rescue missing personnel and support anti-gang security operations, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday, while Haiti’s electoral council postponed planned presidential elections to next year. – Reuters
Canada and the European Union agreed to “ever closer association” but dropped the contentious idea of associate EU membership in a joint declaration seen by Reuters ahead of a Montreal summit hosted by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney starting on Thursday. – Reuters
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday that trade talks with the US were advancing as both sides assessed whether an agreement could be reached before midterm elections on November 3. – Reuters
The U.N. General Assembly condemned the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba for the 34th year on Wednesday, even as Washington’s campaign to influence the outcome led to a number of countries voting against the resolution or sitting out the decision for the first time. – Associated Press
Washington and Ottawa have increased the tempo of their trade talks over the past week, after President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke by phone on Oct. 21. – Politico
United States
The Trump administration has ratcheted up its use of subpoenas to seek information from big technology companies about users critical of its immigration policies. Now, with Democrats pushing to regain power in the midterm elections, Silicon Valley is ramping up its quiet resistance. – Wall Street Journal
A US judge strongly rebuked the Trump administration on Wednesday by rejecting a request by the Justice Department to temporarily block California from counting mail ballots for the midterm elections from more than 20,000 registered voters the department alleges are likely noncitizens. – Reuters
A Minnesota prosecutor charged conservative activist James O’Keefe and influencer Cam Higby on Wednesday with felony unlawful voting and identity theft for posing as registered voters at Minnesota polling places during the August primary as part of a hidden-camera stunt they later posted online. – Reuters
Hassan Tyler writes: House leadership from both parties needs to make a commitment to keep the select committee in the next Congress. It is imperative that they do so publicly and before organizing votes, so it is reauthorized on the first day of the 120th Congress, avoiding lapse, leverage or political games arising from myriad fights between the parties as the majority likely swings to the Democrats. With the pace of technology breakthroughs and China’s advancement, Congress can’t afford to put export-control issues on the back burner for a few months and hope everything is still fine down the road. A decision like that will only lead to us squandering our lead in the AI race. – The Hill
Lee Zeldin writes: Building on that work, EPA has protected Americans’ Right to Repair their own tractors and non-road equipment under the Clean Air Act, and this past July took further action to advance the Freedom to Fix in accordance with President Trump’s memo. The math here is simple. When American producers can produce, America wins through lower gas and diesel prices, lower heating bills, lower grocery costs and more good-paying energy jobs. Lower costs at the well and higher energy supplies mean more money in your wallet. – Fox News
Cybersecurity
An activist group published a searchable database of more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees and contractors on Wednesday, exposing the identities and contact information for immigration officers, border agents and undercover investigators, according to documents posted online. – Washington Post
Authorities seized the domain of Virtualine, a bulletproof hosting provider that cybercriminals used to commit a large-scale sextortion scheme, ransomware, data theft, malware hosting and money laundering, the Justice Department said Tuesday. – Cyberscoop
Prosecutors announced charges against six alleged scammers based out of Africa who targeted Americans with fake non-fungible token (NFT) investment scams by posing as women on dating websites, netting hundreds of victims. – Cyberscoop
Japan Airlines said one of its IT providers suffered a data breach that leaked the personal records of more than 90,000 customers, adding to a series of cyberattacks on Japanese firms that has prompted government action in recent days. – The Record
Moldova is investigating whether foreign state actors were involved in a major cyberattack on its government systems that exposed sensitive personal information and disrupted dozens of public services, the country’s prime minister said Wednesday. – The Record
A leak website was published Wednesday, showcasing internal data on more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees and contractors after it was obtained by hackers who claimed to have breached an identity service used by the agency. – Cyberscoop
Editorial: As AI develops, and if new risks emerge, democratically elected governments may assert themselves. For now, market discipline and enforceable liability offer imperfect but valuable checks on the behavior of the frontier labs. Who guards the guardians? The Roman poet Juvenal asked that question nearly 2,000 years ago. The appropriate response to a future that nobody can confidently predict is not to concentrate more power in the hands of a clique of self-appointed guardians. – Washington Post
Ibrahim Dagher and Kevin Xiao write: The government has built emergency lanes like this before, like the Telecommunications Service Priority program. Further, lying to a government agency is a federal crime, which should deter imposters. During the attack on OpenCode, its co-founder wrote that his team needed AI agents running around the clock “because that’s what [the attackers] have.” With a hacking avalanche under way, vulnerable Americans need a way to call agents of their own. – Wall Street Journal
Pat Fallon writes: Combined with growing private-sector capabilities in superintelligence, cryptography, and advanced computing power, the US government and private-sector partners can move beyond reactive cyber defense and take the initiative to identify and target potential threats ahead of time. Bringing our most critical sectors—large financial institutions, healthcare providers, oil and gas producers, critical infrastructure entities, and telecommunications and internet providers—into the cyber fight is key to improving our country’s cyber defenses. – The National Interest
Defense
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the Pentagon’s top military planner, a defense official said Wednesday, the latest in a series of generals to be ousted and one that comes even as President Donald Trump is weighing renewed strikes on Iran in the eight-month-long war. – Associated Press
An emergency was declared at a massive Department of Energy nuclear site in South Carolina after a laboratory fire left one employee with minor injuries, officials said. – Fox News
A U.S. Marine Corps drone detachment is operating from a Philippine airfield in Palawan near South China Sea flashpoints in the Spratly Islands, USNI News has learned. – USNI News
The U.S. Marine Corps recently used the Neros Archer First Person View drone in a live-fire exercise at Camp Fuji, Japan, for the first time, the service announced. – USNI News
The USS Spruance has broken records for the longest destroyer deployment since the end of World War II. – Military News
Sam Mullins, Michael Mayo, and Niel Kaneshiro write: The F-35 parts debacle is a reminder of the inherent vulnerabilities of globalized supply chains, which U.S. adversaries are increasingly eager to exploit. The United States must rely on international partnerships to revitalize its defense industrial base—but true burden sharing is possible only if U.S. partners can keep critical technologies secure. The United States and its allies must strive to stiffen the security of their military research, production, and supply chains. Only with those protections can they realize the gains that come from working together. – Foreign Affairs
Margaret M. Cassidy and Andrew Swick write: The recent National Defense Authorization Acts have clearly expressed congressional intent, seemingly designed to restore control over defense strategy, force structure, and executive accountability. But they do not supply political will. Whether Congress treats the National Defense Authorization Act and related appropriations as tools to control the executive branch and to influence U.S. defense strategy, or whether it allows its powers to fade into the background, will be revealed in the coming months. Either way, the next Congress needs to take action to assert its oversight of the executive branch and its vision of U.S. national security, because it will determine the future of U.S. national security well beyond this administration. – War on the Rocks