Threat Status for Friday, April 11, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
President Trump’s bare-knuckle tariff policy is creating one of the biggest great power tests ever faced by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who escalated the U.S.-China trade war Friday by announcing a tariff increase from 84% to 125% on U.S. goods.
… The U.S. Space Force removed the commander of the Pituffik base in Greenland, citing comments critical of Vice President J.D. Vance.
… Iran says ahead of high-stakes talks with the U.S. this weekend that it may expel United Nations nuclear inspectors if Mr. Trump’s military threats continue.
… Hundreds of former diplomats and military members joined with fired U.S. Institute of Peace employees in calling on a district court judge to block the Trump administration’s effort to shutter the independent organization.
… An Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip killed a Hamas militant who led one of the bloodiest attacks of the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, rampage.
… Mr. Trump signed into law a bill that dramatically loosens cryptocurrency regulations.
… And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman won’t rule out building weapons for the U.S. military.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood, now a senior vice president at Anduril, goes inside the rapidly evolving intersection between advanced technology and the most sophisticated war-fighting platforms currently operated by the U.S. military in an exclusive interview on the latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast.
“How do I fly an unmanned system ahead of a manned aircraft? Get the enemy threat radars to come online with an unmanned system, let them shoot their missiles at our unmanned systems [and] protect the manned aircraft?” Mr. Thurgood asks during the interview. “Today, we don’t do that. We fly a manned aircraft out there, and we expect the human to fight that fight in real time and protect themselves and their aircraft and crews there.
“There is this adaptation of technology that is directly tied to our strategies and how we fight wars,” he says. “Sometimes we have really great technology, and we have to learn how to fight it. In other words, it’s so good, it came so quickly, we have to think about fighting it as we’re building it.”
The episode also includes a discussion on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s claim that Chinese troops are now fighting alongside Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
Large and aggressive Chinese military activities near Taiwan are threatening U.S. and allied security, according to Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, who testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that his forces are strong enough to deter Chinese military action in the region — but that discouraging future Chinese aggression will require a buildup of American power.
Chinese military drills near Taiwan, an island democracy aligned with the United States, are not exercises but “dress rehearsals” for a “forced unification,” said Adm. Paparo in reference to the Chinese Communist Party’s stated goal of taking control of Taiwan via force if necessary.
The admiral told lawmakers that other concerns in the region include North Korea’s continued buildup of nuclear weapons and forces, a threat that has intensified with the expansion of its growing partnership with Russia. He said that in exchange for providing troops and weaponry for Russia’s Ukraine war, North Korea is receiving Russian missile and submarine technology. Pyongyang, he said, has supplied Russia with “hundreds” of KN-24 short-range missiles and thousands of artillery shells.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed China’s growing influence in the Western Hemisphere during a visit this week to Panama, asserting that Beijing’s control of strategic and critical infrastructure in Latin America “cannot and will not stand.”
“China’s military has too large of a presence in the Western Hemisphere,” Mr. Hegseth told the 2025 Central American Security Conference in Panama. “Make no mistake, Beijing is investing and operating in this region for military advantage and unfair economic gain.” It was the second Cabinet-level visit to the strategic Central American nation since Mr. Trump took office in January, following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in February. The administration is vowing to counter China’s growing activities in the region with a push to reduce Beijing’s operational influence over the Panama Canal.
China reacted harshly to Mr. Hegseth’s Panama visit. A top foreign ministry spokesman accused the Trump administration of “maliciously” attacking China while attempting to sabotage its efforts with Panama. Threat Status is tracking the extent to which the Cold War-style maneuverings between Washington and Beijing in the region intersect with the growing U.S.-China trade war.
Once, the United States was an uncontested superpower capable of fielding a military more powerful and more advanced than any other. That is “no longer” the case, write Wilson Beaver and Anna Gustafson of The Heritage Foundation. “Instead, a rival has emerged that poses a serious and credible threat to America and its allies.
“Today, China boasts revisionist intentions evident through its buildup of the world’s largest navy and its aggressive maritime behavior toward American partners and other neighbors, such as the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam,” write Mr. Beaver and Ms. Gustafson.
“Beijing relentlessly challenges Taiwan’s security, and it continues to modernize and militarize at a pace unseen since the height of the Cold War. Meanwhile, it increasingly challenges the United States, putting it at risk of becoming a second- or even third-tier nuclear power,” they write. “The longer this fact is ignored, the more perilous the situation becomes.”
The U.S. intelligence community “is on a path to its next catastrophic failure” and “the Defense Department, which owns a massive portion of the intelligence community’s capabilities, is doing nothing to stop the next preventable disaster,” writes Richard Westhoff, civilian intelligence oversight specialist in the Defense Department.
“Of the 18 intelligence community organizations, nine fall under the Defense Department, including five armed services intelligence elements, four major intelligence community agencies, service-affiliated intelligence agencies, and dozens of defense intelligence components throughout the defense agencies, combatant commands and the Joint Staff,” Mr. Westhoff writes. “Despite this massive investment, the Pentagon does not have a single senior official dedicated to intelligence oversight at the department level.”
“Oversight of intelligence activities is fundamentally broken,” he writes. “To prevent the next catastrophic intelligence failure, the Pentagon should immediately halt all efforts that pay lip service to intelligence oversight and restore a dedicated senior official and office to oversee critical intelligence and intelligence-related activities.”
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