Threat Status for Tuesday, March 25, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
The White House has ordered an inquiry into why the top editor at The Atlantic was included on an encrypted group chat with Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz about U.S. military strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen.
… The sharing by senior administration officials of war plans in the group chat is fueling some heated exchanges at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Worldwide Threats” hearing Tuesday, with committee members hearing testimony from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other spy agency chiefs.
… Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN the situation amounts to a “security violation” and “there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff.”
… Mr. Hegseth, meanwhile, received an intelligence briefing on China threats during a visit Monday to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. Threat Status’ Bill Gertz is traveling with the defense secretary.
… Virginia-based shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries says it will develop a new high-energy laser weapon for the U.S. Army to counter drones.
… And the National Reconnaissance Office — the U.S. intelligence agency that operates the government’s surveillance satellites — partnered with the Space Force and SpaceX for the launch of its NROL-69 mission.
Mr. Hegseth received intelligence briefings during a visit to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii on Monday with a heavy emphasis on threats posed by China.
Mr. Gertz, who is traveling with Mr. Hegseth, reports that the defense secretary arrived aboard an Air Force E-4 nuclear command post aircraft for his first visit to the region as the Pentagon’s top civilian leader. He is scheduled to visit the Philippines and Japan, U.S. treaty allies, later this week.
“The Indo-Pacific Command is shifting priorities to make sure we are deterring threats in the future. President Trump’s been focused on that,” Mr. Hegseth said. He asserted that close cooperation with regional allies is critical to ensuring the Indo-Pacific region’s freedom and openness.
Mr. Hegseth was greeted Monday by the head of Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Sam Paparo, who has sounded the alarm during recent months on increasingly aggressive Chinese military activities around Taiwan.
The Federal Communications Commission’s new national security team is investigating Chinese tech companies suspected of skirting U.S. restrictions. The probe represents the first initiative of the new team announced earlier this month by the FCC, which regulates communications in the U.S.
“The FCC has taken concrete actions to address the threats posed by Huawei, ZTE, China Telecom and many other entities that pose an unacceptable risk to America’s national security, including by doing Communist China’s bidding,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement. “To safeguard our networks, the FCC has placed those [Chinese Communist Party]-aligned entities on our Covered List, and we have revoked many of the FCC authorizations that they had been operating under.”
To kick-start its investigation, the FCC said it sent letters and “at least one subpoena” to entities on its covered list, which counts equipment and services that the U.S. government decides pose an unacceptable risk to safety and national security.
Japan has launched a new joint command structure for its armed forces that is designed to address decades of inter-service rivalries and communications failures. The new Japan Joint Operations Command (JJOC), which will be comprised of 240 personnel, was announced Monday by the Defense Ministry in Tokyo.
“Our nation is facing the most severe and complicated security environment in the postwar era,” Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said on announcing the JJOC, which he described as having “great significance.
Japan was deeply shaken by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is also threatened by nuclear-armed North Korea and Chinese expansionism around Taiwan as well as Japan’s own southern island archipelagoes.
Mr. Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees federal networks and grantees broadcasting news — and hope — into closed societies. For decades, these networks, including Voice of America, have provided an “important link between the free world and oppressed people living under dictatorships, and their elimination will diminish U.S. national security interests,” writes Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a member of The Washington Times editorial board.
“I should know. I was the longest-serving presidential appointee at USAGM during the first Trump administration,” writes Mr. Shapiro, who asserts that under the right leadership the agency has “great potential.”
“In the world of ever-increasing propaganda and control by totalitarian regimes, there is no other source of real facts and news that is available to people living under the cloud of oppression,” Mr. Shapiro writes. “The fact is our enemies would love nothing more than to mute the Voice of America and its sister networks. With the rise of totalitarianism and the aggressive posture of these propagandistic regimes, there is no more important time to pump up the volume for freedom and liberty throughout the world.”
The United States has “no stronger or more loyal ally in the Indo-Pacific than the Philippines,” writes Erik Bethel, who served as the first Trump administration’s director at the World Bank from 2018-2020 and is currently a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Bound by a century-old alliance, deep cultural ties, and a shared history of sacrifice, our nations have stood together in war and peace,” Mr. Bethel writes. “Yet today, as the Philippines faces daily threats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea, the U.S. risks taking this critical relationship for granted.
“This is a geopolitical struggle and a daily fight for Filipinos’ sovereignty. Chinese forces repeatedly harass Philippine vessels near Second Thomas Shoal, deploying water cannons, ramming supply boats, and blocking Filipino troops aboard the BRP Sierra Madre,” Mr. Bethel writes. “This is not mere posturing — the PRC, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is actively engaging in a campaign of armed aggression against a sovereign state, one that happens to be a treaty ally of the United States.”
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