VIDEO: FDD's online harassment against critics of Trump’s State Department
The role Foundation for the Defense of Democracies served as a messaging hub for a controversial taxpayer-funded project, has never been revealed until now.
Earlier this month, Responsible Statecraft reported — based on recently obtained documents via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — that the hawkish DC think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was at the center of an online harassment campaign funded by the State Department that targeted Americans, including journalists, and human rights advocates, because of their opposition to Donald Trump's Middle East policy. Quincy Institute Multimedia Producer Khody Akhavi breaks the story down:
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Top photo credit: Senior military leaders look on as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) speaks at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia September 30, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS
The White House published its 2025 National Security Strategy on December 4. Today there are reports that the Pentagon is determined to develop new combatant commands to replace the bloated unified command plan outlined in current law.
The plan hasn't been made public yet, but according to the Washington Post:
If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals in the military. It would reduce in prominence the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command by placing them under the control of a new organization known as U.S. International Command, according to five people familiar with the matter.
In addition, the plan reportedly calls for realigning U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command under a new headquarters to be known as U.S. Americas Command. As a result of these moves, the number of combatant commands would be reduced from 11 to 8 and would shrink the number of four-stars who report to Hegseth.
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine is supposed to roll this out in detail to the secretary this week. “Those familiar with the plan said it aligns with the Trump administration’s national security strategy, released this month, which declares that the ‘days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,’” the Post reported.
The text of the NSS is short and frank. It renounces the pursuit of global domination, downgrades the Middle East to a peripheral concern, and announces that American military power will concentrate on the Western hemisphere unless the homeland comes under direct attack. On paper this looks like a sensible retreat from overstretch. In practice, it is a vague plan for a halfway house. Halfway houses seldom survive because they try to keep one foot in the past while pretending to step into the future.
Concrete measures are absent from the so-called strategy and the command structures to support it.
The following points must be addressed if anything is to change:
First, defend America first. Keep ground and air forces at home or close to it except when the United States or its treaty partners in this hemisphere face direct attack. In the 80 years since WW II, National Strategy relied on forward deployed armed force, a dangerous practice in a world where precision strike and surveillance are ubiquitous. At this point in the history of the United States, America’s global warfare state is both a strategic liability and a financial crash waiting to happen.
Second, secure the global commons without subsidizing everyone else on the planet. America must retain enough naval and space power to keep sea lanes, air routes, and orbits open. This commitment benefits everyone. Everyone can contribute. Start charging or at least stop calling the current arrangement charity.
Third, it is a good idea if the Pentagon streamlines command structures as mentioned in the above Washington Post report. New commands should be theater command structures designed for defense, not offensive warfare. They should be associated with directions—North, South, East and West. Functional command structures should be consolidated into fewer, more agile headquarters.
Fourth, freeze all promotions to three- and four-star rank until a proper review is complete. The military currently boasts more admirals than ships and more generals than maneuver brigades. The goal should be to cut overhead by at least 30 percent and restore clear civilian control. Keep in mind that true lethality begins with the creation of new fighting formations consisting of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines with new equipment who’ve lived and trained together for long periods under competent leadership.
Fifth, cultivate partnerships with major states that share an interest in access to the global commons and the suppression of criminality. For instance, the Indian Navy already patrols vast areas of the Indian Ocean from the Strait of Malacca to the Red Sea. American Naval Power does not need to always be present in the region to perform this task.
Sixth, rebuild the national industrial base. Identify the shipyards, factories, and supply chains needed for great-power competition and protect them. Closing many of the overseas bases that no longer serve a strategic purpose would free roughly 10 billion dollars a year according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. Spend the money on steel mills and semiconductor fabs instead of glossy programs that promise miracles and deliver slide decks.
Seventh, Operation Southern Spear illustrates the danger of old habits colliding with new rhetoric. Attacking Venezuela because Washington has the capability to do so is reminiscent of the decision to intervene in Vietnam. American military and economic hegemony are prohibitively expensive because Washington persists in confusing foreign intervention with national defense. Unless there is an identified, attainable political-military objective for American Military Power, Washington should avoid its use.
The new national security strategy and the interest in reducing the numbers of unified commands admits in principle that America’s current military posture is unsustainable, but more than the admission is needed. Washington has spent over half its tax dollars on military operations since World War II, and by 2022, its military budget alone exceeded that of the next ten countries combined. This massive military spending diverts resources from domestic infrastructure, education, and social programs.
Apart from nuclear arsenals, no foreign adversary poses an existential threat to the American homeland. Terrorism and transnational criminality persist, but both are matters for border security and police work. In most cases, they do not entail carrier strike groups or the commitment of World War II-style Army Divisions.
The new national security strategy and the concept of fewer unified commands is a step in the right direction, but it remains a halfway house that won’t crush the swollen headquarters or the single service parochialism that stifles innovation. Halfway houses fail because they compromise with conservative habits of mind that are tied to the status quo.
The above-mentioned points can advance the goals outlined in the new National Security Strategy, but without them, the problems afflicting American military performance since 1965 will not be solved.
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Top image credit: U.S. Soldiers assigned to Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Iowa National Guard and Alpha Company, 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, conduct a civil engagement within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility Oct. 12, 2025 (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Zachary Ta)
Two U.S. National Guard soldiers died in an ambush in Syria this past weekend.
Combined with overuse of our military for non-essential missions, ones unnecessary to our core interests, the overreliance of part-time servicemembers continues to have disastrous effects. President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and Congress have an opportunity to put a stop to the preventable deaths of our citizen soldiers.
In 2004, in Iraq, in a matter of weeks, I lost three close comrades I served with back in the New York National Guard. In the following months more New York soldiers, men I served with, would die.
In 2024, three U.S. Army reservists were killed at Tower 22 in Jordan supporting a mission whose purpose remains a mystery; and now two more soldiers were shot to death in Syria after being pulled from their civilian lives to serve in the Middle East.
None of these soldiers will ever return to the families and the lives they were called away from. We need to think about how we got here and why they were sacrificed.
The National Guard grew out of the U.S. tradition of states’ militias, and like the various branches’ reserves, historically served as a strategic military backup, for use during emergencies requiring large and rapid mobilizations of national military power.
This began to change in 1973 when the Department of Defense adopted the “Total Force Policy.” This post-Vietnam shift had several rationales and effects. With the end of conscription, the U.S. military needed a larger, more easily mobilized, and more integrated reserve. Additionally, many policymakers believed, in the wake of major conflicts in Korea and especially in Vietnam which relied nearly entirely on a draftee active-duty force, that greater reliance on part time citizen soldiers would lead to better decisions on when the U.S. would conduct large-scale, long-term military operations.
This resulted in an evolution from the traditional role of strategic reserves to a more integrated operational reserve force. By the 1990s, reserve and National Guard units were participating in the Gulf War and supplanting active duty forces on routine peacekeeping missions in the Sinai and in the Balkans. The evolution understandably changed immediately after September 11, 2001, when Air National Guard units scrambled to provide immediate patrols of skies. Shortly thereafter, then-Secretary Rumsfeld began large-scale mobilizations. They never stopped.
Since 2001, more than 900 U.S. reserve component service members have died in conflicts. A handful of these were among those called to action in Afghanistan after 9/11. The vast majority occurred during our prolonged nation-building efforts there and Iraq.
The military’s reserves now make up nearly 40% of the force, and our generals have grown too dependent on them. Active duty forces are stretched thin, and adding requirements for ground forces in peacekeeping, stability and support, and train and advise missions would stretch them even thinner.
So, we must ask “why are they there?” Are our operations in Iraq, Syria, or Jordan achieving truly “vital” national security objectives? Are they worth keeping our young men and women in remote locations far from home, away from civilian lives while facing constant attacks? Why do we remain committed to leaving 2,000 troops in Iraq alone?
The two soldiers killed in Syria over the weekend have been identified as Sgts. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, 25, and William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of the Iowa National Guard. The Army reservists killed at Tower 22 in Jordan in 2024 were Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, all from Georgia. These names are added to the more than 8,000 service members who also died in the post September 11 conflicts.
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have chosen to revert the Department of Defense into the Department of War. They have emphasized the proper role of the military as securing U.S. interests by use of force only when necessary. Secretary Hegseth has particularly called for a return to a military identity as a lethal fighting force.
Under the Total Force Policy, this includes the entire reserve component. This strategy implies that our reserve supply of citizen soldiers, sailors etc., should only be called to active duty when American interests are worth fighting for. It highlights the fact that our current “boots on the ground” missions in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East are not essential to the current administration’s definition of U.S. interests, especially as clarified under the new National Security Strategy.
The “Total Force Policy,” in its 21st century interpretation, is probably here to stay. We can’t return to a military that relies almost solely on our active-duty force. We can, however, ensure that when we do call up our part-time military members, it is only for true national interests.
Our current interests in the Middle East are not worth the lives of “boots on the ground,” from any service component, citizen soldiers least of all. The White House and Congress should cooperate to ensure we are wisely deploying our young service members into danger only when necessary.
Discussions of the war in Gaza tend to focus on what’s visible. The instinct is understandable: Over two years of brutal conflict, the Israel Defense Forces have all but destroyed the diminutive strip on the Mediterranean coast, with the scale of the carnage illustrated by images of emaciated children, shrapnel-ridden bodies, and flattened buildings.
But underlying all of this destruction is a hidden force — a carefully constructed infrastructure of Israeli surveillance that powers the war effort and keeps tabs on the smallest facets of Palestinians’ lives.
Few people understand this system more deeply than Mohammed Mhawish, a Palestinian journalist who fled Gaza in 2024 after being targeted by Israeli airstrikes for his reporting. In a recent essay for New York Magazine, Mhawish traced the contours of Israel’s surveillance system through the eyes of the Gazans who live through it every day.
RS spoke with Mhawish over email to get his insights about how this system of surveillance has powered the war in Gaza and created a culture of fear among Palestinians. The conversation also touches on Mhawish’s decision to leave Gaza — and how he knows that Israel tried to kill him for his journalism.
RS: In your piece, you mention a poll saying that "nearly two-thirds of Gazans believed they were constantly watched by the Israeli government." How does this feeling of surveillance affect life in Gaza? How would you describe the feeling to those of us who have never experienced it?
Mhawish: In Gaza, surveillance actively structures daily life. It determines how people move, communicate, gather, and survive. Nearly everyone I spoke to understood themselves as data points inside a system that continuously observes, records, and evaluates them.
This awareness produces a constant state of constraint. Phones are treated with suspicion, even fear. People limit calls, change SIM cards, power down devices, avoid repeated routes, and hesitate before gathering with others. Parents instruct children not to linger in certain places. Journalists and medics described modifying their work because they knew patterns could be extracted and interpreted later. Surveillance works by narrowing the range of what feels safe for everyone there.
What distinguishes Gaza is that surveillance is both totalizing and opaque. People know they are being watched, but they don’t know how, by whom, or according to what criteria. There is no way to clarify a misunderstanding or correct a false assumption. The system does not explain itself. That uncertainty turns ordinary behavior into potential exposure.
For those who have never lived under it, they might need to imagine that every movement, call, or association could be logged and assigned meaning by an unseen authority, and that those judgments could lead directly to deadly consequences in real time. It is fear of being misclassified by a system that can not be challenged.
RS: Israeli officials often point to the fact that they withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2006 as evidence of their benevolence. They argue Israel had essentially allowed Palestinians to have a territory that they could govern on their own, and Palestinians had wasted that chance by allowing Hamas to take power. How does your work complicate the narrative of Israeli disengagement from Gaza? What did surveillance look like before the war?
Mhawish: My reporting shows that Israeli “disengagement” from Gaza was never a withdrawal from control. It was merely a shift in how control was exercised. Physical presence was replaced with technological dominance.
Long before the current war, Gaza existed under constant aerial surveillance, communications interception, population registries, and data-driven monitoring. Israel controlled Gaza’s borders, airspace, coastline, electromagnetic spectrum, and civil registries. Movement in and out of the Strip, access to medical care, imports, and even family reunification were all mediated through Israeli databases informed by surveillance.
Surveillance allowed Israel to manage Gaza remotely and comprehensively. Intelligence sources and prior investigations describe systems that mapped neighborhoods, tracked social and familial networks, and analyzed behavioral patterns. Control did not require soldiers on every street, only access to required sensors, databases, and algorithms capable of rendering the population legible from afar.
This fundamentally undermines the idea that Gaza was ever allowed to govern itself. Governance without sovereignty is not autonomy. Surveillance ensured that Israel retained decisive authority over Gaza’s population while maintaining the fiction of withdrawal.
RS: Israel bombed your apartment in late 2023, destroying your home and injuring you and your family. What led you to conclude that this attack was a response to your journalistic work? Did other press colleagues have similar experiences?
Mhawish: The bombing of my apartment was a direct result of my reporting.
In the weeks leading up to the strike, I received multiple threats from the Israeli military in response to my journalistic work. These included direct communications warning me about my reporting. Eventually, I received a phone call informing me that my house would be bombed. Shortly afterward, it was.
My apartment was civilian. There was no military activity there. My family was inside. The strike destroyed our home and injured my family members.
What made this experience even more unmistakable was how common it was among Palestinian journalists. Colleagues told me a similar sequence: reporting, threats, warning calls, and then strikes on their homes rather than on them in the field. These attacks often targeted family residences, maximizing harm while sending a clear message.
This is part of a systematic effort to intimidate journalists by demonstrating that reporting carries consequences not only for them, but for their family. It collapses the distinction between professional risk and private life and makes journalism itself a punishable act.
RS: What do we know about the role of American companies in this surveillance regime?
Mhawish: American technology companies are not peripheral to Israel’s surveillance architecture. Israeli military and intelligence units rely on U.S.-based cloud infrastructure, data storage, data processing, and AI-related technologies to collect, analyze, and retain vast amounts of information on Palestinians.
This relationship is reinforced by the movement of personnel between Israeli intelligence units and major tech firms, creating a feedback loop in which military expertise informs commercial products and commercial tools enable military surveillance. While companies often claim neutrality, their technologies are embedded in systems that monitor, categorize, and target a civilian population under occupation.
Gaza demonstrates how commercial technologies developed for efficiency, scale, and optimization can be repurposed for population-level surveillance and warfare. The issue is [companies] are not willing to accept responsibility when their tools become foundational to systems of domination.
RS: How could this surveillance regime be used for the proposed system of only allowing "vetted" Palestinians to live in rebuilt communities on the Israeli-occupied side of the yellow line in Gaza?
Mhawish: The proposed vetting system is only possible because the surveillance infrastructure already exists. Israel has spent years building databases capable of assigning suspicion and risk scores to individuals based on opaque criteria derived from communications data, movement patterns, and social networks.
Applied to reconstruction, this system could determine who is allowed to return, who receives travel permits, who is denied treatment outside, and who is permanently excluded. Vetting does not follow a transparent legal process, because it’s based on an algorithmic judgment rendered without explanation or appeal.
This kind of system enables displacement without explicit expulsion. People would be filtered out quietly — through denied access, stalled applications, or unexplained rejections — while the underlying logic remains hidden. Surveillance becomes a mechanism for shaping the postwar population under the language of security.
In that sense, Israel's surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza is about controlling who is allowed to exist, where, and under what conditions afterward.
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