Threat Status for Tuesday, February 11, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang.
President Trump is warning that “all hell” will break loose if Hamas does not release the remaining hostages it is holding in the Gaza Strip by Saturday. The Palestinian militant group fired back early Tuesday morning and said the president’s “language of threats has no value.” Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is set to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House Tuesday, with the tense situation in Gaza and Mr. Trump’s Palestinian relocation proposal at the top of their agenda.
… European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned Mr. Trump’s 25% tariff on foreign steel and aluminum, and vowed that Europe would retaliate.
… China’s military could launch a rocket or missile Tuesday that may land near the coast of the Philippines, according to a government warning from Manila.
… World leaders gathered in Paris this week for a major artificial intelligence summit are eyeing nuclear power as the way to fuel their energy-thirsty AI projects.
… Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has changed the name of North Carolina’s Fort Liberty back to its original moniker, Fort Bragg. The name was changed in 2023 as part of the Defense Department’s shift away from base names that honored Confederate military leaders. The sprawling military complex was originally named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, but Mr. Hegseth announced the newest iteration of the name will instead honor Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero.
… Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard cleared a key Senate test vote on Monday night and is expected to be confirmed by the full chamber on Wednesday.
… And short-range drone strikes killed at least 139 civilians in Ukraine last month, according to new data from the United Nations released Tuesday.
Mr. Trump is showing no signs of backing down from his controversial plan to push some 2 million Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and redevelop the war-torn enclave. The president has said Gaza residents would be expected to vacate to nearby Arab countries, raising questions about whether they would be ejected forcibly. And he also didn’t rule out cutting foreign aid to countries such as Egypt and Jordan if they don’t take in more Palestinians.
“We’ll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, from where all this danger is,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News that aired Monday. “In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land, no big money spent.”
The prospect of resettling huge numbers of Palestinians to Jordan seems to be a nonstarter with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who is in Washington today and will meet with Mr. Trump at the White House. Mr. Trump’s Gaza proposal is sure to be at the top of the agenda.
So, too, is Mr. Trump’s threat that “all hell” will break loose if Hamas does not release the remaining hostages it is holding. The Iran-backed militants are believed to still be holding 73 people who were taken from Israel during their Oct. 7, 2023, rampage. The two sides reached a U.S.-backed ceasefire deal recently that saw some hostages released, but Hamas on Monday accused Israel of violating that agreement.
The group also fired back at Mr. Trump directly, potentially adding more fuel to an already volatile situation in the region.
Democrats and other critics are appalled by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s push to remake the federal government with his “Department of Government of Efficiency.” But Mr. Musk has plenty of detractors across the Atlantic, too.
Correspondent Eric J. Lyman writes in a fascinating new piece that Mr. Musk, now one of Mr. Trump’s key allies here at home, is proving to be the ultimate multitasker as a central figure in Western politics.
In recent weeks, the billionaire entrepreneur has waded into fraught domestic political controversies in some of Europe’s most prominent traditional powers. A few examples: Mr. Musk has had a longstanding friendship with Italy’s conservative prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. He’s at odds with center-left German Chancellor Olaf Scholz amid Mr. Musk’s vocal support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. And Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis is just one of several European officials who have been vocal about their concerns with Mr. Musk’s power.
“Someone cannot simply use their platform, wealth and connections to try to dictate how governments are formed in each nation,” the Greek minister told Parapolitika Radio. “This is becoming increasingly dangerous.”
And here in the U.S., there’s a new chapter in the ongoing public feud between Mr. Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, after Mr. Altman reportedly rejected and then mocked Mr. Musk’s offer to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion.
The tech giant Google took several steps this week to keep on the good side of the Trump administration. For starters, the company said in a blog post Monday that the “Gulf of Mexico” is now officially “the Gulf of America” for U.S. users in its Google Maps app.
“As we announced two weeks ago and consistent with our longstanding practices, we’ve begun rolling out changes to reflect this update,” the blog post says. “People using [Google Maps] in the U.S. will see ‘Gulf of America,’ and people in Mexico will see ‘Gulf of Mexico.’ Everyone else will see both names.”
Separately, the company’s popular calendar function no longer tells users about the start of Black History Month and other such months, a move that comes amid a broader backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — initiatives. A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the company had gotten feedback that it was missing some key “cultural moments” in its calendar, and ultimately decided that “maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable.”
The decision by Google comes on the heels of the Defense Department also scrapping all official events recognizing “identity months,” including Black and Women’s History Month commemorations.
This week’s AI summit in Paris is making news on multiple fronts. Lead tech correspondent Ryan Lovelace is tracking the apparent agreement among world leaders that nuclear power is key to fueling power-hungry AI projects. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said as much as he tried to lure companies to Canada, saying his nation is a “reliable AI partner.”
“As an environmentalist, for me, the debate is over: Large-scale nuclear reactors must be part of the solution for the future because if we’re not willing to embrace nuclear now, then coal-powered AI from other parts of the world will shape the coming decades for the worse,” Mr. Trudeau told attendees.
On Tuesday morning, all eyes were on Vice President J.D. Vance, who addressed the summit as part of his first trip abroad since taking office. He left no doubt that the Trump administration will stand against what he called “excessive regulation” of the AI sector.
The vice president said that the Trump administration will “ensure that AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias,” and he pledged the U.S. would “never restrict our citizens’ right to free speech.”
Notably, the U.S. did not sign a joint statement signed by more than 60 nations, including China, that pledged to “promote AI accessibility to reduce digital divides” and “ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.”
How much blame does Moscow bear for migration crises across the Western world? Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, chairman of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, and Maryan Zablotskyy, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, dissect that complex question in a new piece for The Washington Times.
They write that there is an aspect of the border crisis often overlooked: “Russian action and its puppet regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela aiming to destabilize the Western world. Starting in 2014, migrants flooded into Europe through the eastern route, enabling Russia to pressure the EU to lift sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea.”
And now a similar situation is playing out here, thanks to Moscow and some of its allies, they write.
“How can migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela suddenly climb from less than 1% of southern border illegal encounters to 20%? Totalitarian regimes have made life intolerable in those nations,” they write. “The U.S. border will never be secure if the Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan regimes — protected by Russia and with cooperation from drug cartels — can turn on the flow of migrants at will.”
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