President Donald Trump continues to pepper his new government with weapons industry mainstays.
Most recently, Trump has nominated Michael Obadal, a U.S. military veteran and current senior director of defense tech star Anduril Industries, to become the Under Secretary of the Army — the no. 2 civilian official in the organization.
If confirmed, Obadal would essentially act as the Army’s chief management officer, where he would help manage an $185 billion budget. Here, Obadal’s decades-long military career, where he’s commanded units and task forces in both the Army and Joint Special Operations, may serve his new role well. Considering Anduril’s manymilitary contracts and prominent lobbying presence in Washington alike, however, Obadal’s prominent weapons start up job also precipitates a direct conflict of interest.
And Obadal would be working under Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, who has argued that America’s defense industrial base must be revamped — in close collaboration with the weapons industry — to remain competitive with America’s adversaries.
“[W]e must reinvigorate our industrial base and revolutionize our procurement processes. We are not ready for large-scale conflict with a peer adversary. But we must be,” Driscoll wrote after being confirmed as Army Secretary. “Together, we will forge stronger partnerships with the defense industry to ensure you have the firepower to dominate our enemies.”
Critically, defense tech executives, like Anduril’s own Christian Brose and Palmer Luckey, have repeatedly made similar arguments in pushes for military contracts.
Trump is truly leaning on New Tech to populate prominent government roles. He selected Palantir’s former head of Intelligence and Investigations, Gregory Barbaccia, to be the new federal chief information officer, and tapped PayPal Mafia member David Sacks to be the new “White House AI and crypto-czar.” Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire investor sporting significant defense industry ties, was nominated for the position of Deputy Secretary for Defense.
And prominent entrepreneur Elon Musk, now a close confidant to the President through his DOGE role (he also previously threw $200 million at Trump’s successful campaign), is himself a prominent weapons contractor through SpaceX.
Top image credit: President Donald Trump meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance before a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”
This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an "invasion" at the border.
Unfortunately, more than two decades of widely-accepted, bipartisan laws and norms first laid the groundwork for this to occur.
After 9/11, the Bush administration created the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list, and Congress expanded the pre-existing Foreign Terrorist Organization list. These lists allow the executive branch, at its sole discretion, to add and remove individuals and groups to standing lists of “terrorists,” a term that is defined broadly.
The Trump administration has exercised this authority to formally designate transnational cartels as “terrorists” due in part to their role in the flow of people and drugs across the southern border into the United States. They have leveraged this designation to justify a range of actions, including deploying troops to Los Angeles and deporting immigrants to a brutal Salvadorean prison without due process.
Another post-9/11 legal invention that paved the way to what the Trump administration is doing today was the USA PATRIOT Act’s updates to immigration law that allowed deportation of not just those involved in actual violent acts of terrorism, but also those loosely associated with designated “terrorist groups,” even if those associations were peaceful and law-abiding or involuntary and a result of duress. People who have previously been excluded from the United States by these provisions include Iraqi interpreters for U.S. troops, victims of forced labor by violent armed groups in El Salvador, and even Nelson Mandela. These provisions mean that not just alleged members of cartels, but also cartel victims could be denied entry into the United States or deported if already here.
These same post-9/11 immigration law amendments also allow for revoking or denying immigration benefits to foreign nationals who “endorse or espouse” “terrorist activity,” defined broadly. The Trump administration has already revoked the visas of several immigrant students and scholars solely for their nonviolent activities criticizing the U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza, as part of what they call a “zero-tolerance” policy for terrorism. The administration has primarily leaned on an older and more obscure provision of immigration law to carry out these attacks on immigrants’ free speech rights. But if current efforts are blocked by courts, or they wish to go further, post-9/11 immigration law may give them the tools to justify doing so.
The original decision to treat the 9/11 attacks not as crime but as warfare, and to launch a literal “war on terror” in response, remains the primary post-9/11 legal innovation on which so many abuses are made possible. Under this global war paradigm, the Obama administration carried out ruthless drone killings, including one that targeted a U.S. citizen, and justified the strikes with a mish-mash of legal standards that applied rules of war outside of actual war zones, and expansively interpreted what constitutes an “imminent threat” and resulting “self-defense” powers.
Every post-9/11 president has claimed wide authority to use military force so long as it serves a vague “national interest.” We can see echoes of this in the Trump administration’s insistence that the small Venezuelan boat blown up by the U.S. military posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” that the strike complied with the laws of war, and was “in defense of vital U.S. national interests.”
Commentators are entirely correct to denounce these assertions of legal authority. But policymakers have spent more than two decades accepting a war paradigm against whomever presidents determine to be “terrorist,” making it politically and legally all the more difficult to push back against what the Trump administration is doing now.
It is also worth recalling that dragnet detentions and deportations of immigrants under the auspices of the “War on Terror” are not entirely unique to the Trump era. In the Bush administration, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller leaned on civil immigration enforcement authorities to round up more than 1,000 Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants without due process for secret detention until they were “cleared” of terrorism.
A year later, the National Security Entry and Exit Registration System, which some have called the original “Muslim registry,” was launched, imposing onerous registration and surveillance requirements on lawful noncitizen immigrants suspected of no wrongdoing, almost entirely from Muslim-majority countries, with a stated justification of countering terrorism. This program wasn’t fully dismantled until well into the Obama administration, and produced no convictions for acts of terrorism. It did result in the deportation of more than 13,000 people, mostly over minor immigration process violations.
There are more powers that post-9/11 legal infrastructure affords that this administration has not pursued. It is not impossible to imagine terrorism prosecutions against low-level drug purchasers at home, new hot wars across Latin America, and more dragnet deportations of immigrants, justified by a melding of the laws of war, counterterrorism law, and immigration enforcement. This is because, on a bipartisan basis, our lawmakers have built and strengthened a post-9/11 package of powers that gets handed to each successive president, ripe for potential new weaponization and abuse. The targeting of immigrants and cartels as “terrorists,” including with the tools of warfare, is not a sharp deviation from our recent history — it is its logical conclusion.
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Top photo credit: Cmdr. Raymond Miller, commanding officer of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), looks out from the bridge wing as the ship operates with Royal Norwegian replenishment oiler HNoMS Maud (A-530) off the northern coast of Norway in the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle, Aug. 27, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Cesar Licona)
An ongoing Great Power tit-for-tat in which U.S./NATO and Russian warships and planes approach each other’s territories in the Arctic, suggests a sense of growing instability in the region.
This uptick in military activities risks the development of a security dilemma: one state or group of states increasing their security presence or capabilities creates insecurity in other states, prompting them to respond similarly.
The most recent example is a recent U.S.-Norwegian joint patrol on Russia’s maritime border in the Barents Sea. The August 29 operation marks the third time in five years that the U.S. Navy has entered the Barents Sea. In 2020, the U.S. Navy had entered this region for the first time since the 1980s.
“Credible naval forces operating in the Arctic ensure the ability to deter competitors and rapidly respond to crises in the region,” U.S. Fleet Forces Command wrote about the most recent operation.
The U.S. Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Mahan (DDG 72) and USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), Royal Norwegian Navy Fridtjof Nansen-class frigate HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl (F-314), and Royal Norwegian replenishment oiler HNoMS Maud (A-530), took part in the maneuvers. The flotilla is part of a group supporting the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier.
One week before the U.S.-Norway patrol, U.S., U.K. and Norwegian P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine warfare (ASW) planes responded to a potential threat from Russian Yasen-class attack submarines spotted around the USS Gerald R. Ford in the Norwegian and North Seas. The Yasen class is Russia’s newest nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine. They are designed to carry the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile.
The Barents Sea is in the European Arctic and divided between Russian and Norwegian territorial waters. The area is militarily sensitive for Russia as it is home to several Russian strategic air bases as well as the headquarters of the Northern Fleet. The Barents region was the setting for two invasions of Russia by Western troops in the twentieth century: British, American, and French troops intervened in the Russian Civil War by occupying Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and Nazi Germany and Finland invaded the Soviet Arctic during World War II.
Countering Russia and China
President Trump’s rhetoric on acquiring Greenland and Russian and Chinese ships “all over the place” near that island, coupled with the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment (in which the Arctic is mentioned 14 times), demonstrates that the U.S. regards the Arctic as a strategic priority.
Official documents, including the 2024 Pentagon Arctic Strategy, draw attention to Russian and Chinese activities, and the two countries’ cooperation, in the Arctic as the top threats to regional stability.
In recent years, Russia and China have indeed been increasing their security cooperation in the Arctic, too.
In July 2024, Russian and Chinese bombers conducted joint drills over the Chukchi and Bering Seas and the northern Pacific Ocean, marking the eighth patrol since 2019 and the first within Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The aircraft did not enter U.S. or Canadian sovereign airspace and were not seen as a threat, according to NORAD.
In September 2024, the Russian Navy and China’s People's Liberation Army Navy carried out their largest joint naval exercises since the 1990s, dubbed “Ocean-2024.” The return of such “Cold War-era practices” was reported by Russian media as a response to rising tensions with the U.S.
These exercises spanned the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean, Caspian, and Baltic Seas. The U.S. Army deployed troops and rocket launchers to the far tip of Alaska as a reacting show of force.
Norway as NATO’s “tip of the spear”
The U.S.-Norway operation is just the latest development that shows the Arctic is becoming a more geopolitically significant region for the U.S. and NATO. On August 9, NATO Joint Air Command announced the deployment of three B-1B Lancer strategic bombers of the U.S. Air Force to the Ørland Air Base in Norway. The announcement came shortly after the U.S. sent a WC-135R “nuke sniffer” aircraft close to Russia's strategic bases in the Barents region.
On August 31, 2025, Norway and the U.K. signed a strategic partnership agreement that includes the purchase of at least five frigates “to better counter Russia on NATO’s northern flank.” The deal is Norway’s biggest ever military investment, valued at almost $14 billion. Russian diplomats argue that NATO’s efforts to militarize the Arctic are primarily driven by the U.K.
At the end of August 2025, U.S. aircraft made four interceptions of Russian surveillance flights day off the coast of Alaska. NORAD announced that such Russian activity happens regularly and is not seen as a threat. On September 3, 2025, an RQ-4 Global Hawk remote-operated surveillance drone flew along the Norwegian and Finnish borders with Russia, flying over Norway’s Finnmark region for the first time. Thomas Nilsen of the Barents Observer described the “highly unusual move” as a Strategic Communication to Russia.
Diplomatic Solutions
This dangerous spiral demonstrates the need for restraint and diplomatic solutions. These include confidence building measures, military-to-military dialogue, trust-building, and additional measures to reduce the risk of escalation in the region. Such measures are necessary to clarify the intentions behind peace-time military activities.
The availability of complete Automatic Identification System (AIS) data during military exercises in the region would be one such measure to improve transparency. Another could be the establishment of a military code of conduct for the Arctic to define what is tolerable and unacceptable military activity in the region.
Competition between the U.S. and Russia in the Arctic should not be considered an imperative. The Cold War is over. We should be leaning into opportunities that normalize U.S.-Russia relations, not make existing tensions permanent.
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Top photo credit: President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Sunday, September 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump told reporters outside a Washington restaurant Tuesday evening that he is deeply displeased with Israel’s bombardment of Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf that, at Washington’s request, has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012.
“I am not thrilled about it. I am not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump said, denying that Israel had given him advance notice. “I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect of it,” he continued. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy with the way that went down.”
Trump may indeed be upset, but the Israeli Prime Minister is casting him in the same light as Biden: issuing indignant statements over Israeli actions that blatantly undermine U.S. interests, actions that almost certainly could not have occurred without Washington’s tacit consent, while offering no hint that Israel will face consequences for allegedly defying the United States.
To make matters worse, Qatar’s foreign minister revealed that Washington’s so-called warning came not before the Israeli strike, but only after Doha was already under fire.
“The attack happened at 3:46,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani said. “The first call we had from an American official was at 3:56 — which is 10 minutes after the attack.”
Whether Washington knew of Israel’s war plans, colluded in them, or whether Trump is truthful in claiming ignorance, the outcome is the same: Israel has dealt a severe blow to American credibility.
What value does an American security umbrella—or even the hosting of a U.S. base—hold if the United States either conspires in an attack against you, or proves unwilling or unable to prevent one?
That is the question now confronting every U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf, all of whom have staked their survival on American protection. Given how Washington has stripped away every meaningful constraint on Israel since October 7, 2023, their leaders should have known this day was inevitable.
Personally, I do not believe the United States should extend security guarantees — implicit or explicit — to any state in the Middle East. The region is no longer vital to U.S. interests, and America is already dangerously overextended. Existing commitments should be reassessed and, where necessary, rolled back. But this must be done deliberately and on Washington’s terms — not sabotaged by Israel — because the point of the exercise goal is to strengthen the credibility of America’s essential commitments, not to erode U.S. credibility across the board.
Adding insult to injury, Israel has undercut not only the credibility of America’s security guarantees but also its diplomatic standing. This marks the second time this year that Israel has exploited the cover of U.S.-led diplomacy to launch unlawful military action — the first being its strike on Iran in the midst of nuclear talks in June.
Israel may see clear advantages in eroding the credibility of American diplomacy. An America unable to negotiate is an America forced to follow Israel’s lead into reckless military adventures that run counter to U.S. interests. For Washington, this is nothing short of disastrous.
The question now is how Trump will respond. If his claim is true — that he neither received a heads-up nor colluded with Israel — then expressions of displeasure are meaningless unless paired with real consequences for Israel’s repeated sabotage of U.S. interests.
Since late May, Trump has capitulated to Netanyahu on virtually every front — from Iran to Gaza to Lebanon — consistently at America’s expense. This humiliating deference has only emboldened Netanyahu, making him ever more dismissive of Trump and U.S. priorities, culminating in the brazen strike on Doha.
Perhaps this episode will force Trump to recognize the folly of outsourcing American policy in the Middle East to Israel. Only he has the power to reverse course.
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