NATSEC-TECH THURSDAY — April 17, 2025: Every Thursday’s edition of Threat Status highlights the intersection between national security and advanced technology, from AI to cyber threats and the battle for global data dominance.
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The U.K. Ministry of Defense says that it has tested a groundbreaking new radio wave weapon that can take down drone swarms.
… This could be a major development in the global push to develop effective counter-drone tools. British soldiers said they used a “radio frequency directed energy weapon” to disable multiple drone swarms.
… Back in the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration is flying more than 100 commercial drones along the New Jersey coast this week to test new safety systems.
… Crosswalks in Silicon Valley saw their usual pedestrian prompts replaced by AI-generated audio mimicking Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump.
… L3Harris says it has completed a $125 million expansion at its space manufacturing facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to build capabilities needed for the Trump administration’s planned “Golden Dome” missile shield.
… Agentic AI is coming to the spy business. The CIA says it’s ready and will keep humans “in the loop.”
… Palantir wants high school students to join its ranks instead of going to college.
… The European Commission denies that it recommended staff use burner phones while on official missions in the U.S.
… And 80,000 Telegram messages revealed how an English town became a Russian spy hub.
One key to beating China in a high-stakes 21st-century tech race is ending American policies that subsidize Chinese growth.
That was the central message this week from Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who touted a Trump administration plan that emphasizes promoting and protecting America’s advantages — and reversing policies of a Biden administration that he said sought to “protect its managerial power from the disruptions of technology, while promoting social division and redistribution in the name of equity.”
“After 30 years of subsidizing Chinese growth, it is time for us to stop helping a rival catch up with us in that race,” Mr. Kratsios said at the Endless Frontiers Retreat. “Strict and simple export controls and know-your-customer rules, with an unapologetic America-first attitude about enforcing them, are central to stopping China from continuing to build itself up at our expense.”
The Trump administration plans to promote American innovation in artificial intelligence, quantum technology and semiconductors through the smart and creative allocation of taxpayer funds, the right choices of what to regulate, and making the technology easy to adopt and ship abroad, he said.
It’s a nightmare scenario: China’s cutting-edge hypersonic weapons take out America’s aircraft carriers in the opening minutes of a conflict in the Pacific. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to believe such an outcome is possible.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz shines a light on past comments from Mr. Hegseth, who said during an appearance on “The Shawn Ryan Show” in November that Beijing is specifically designing its military to defeat the U.S. And that means building hypersonic weapons tailored to take out America’s greatest military advantages, one of which is its fleet of aircraft carriers.
“Take hypersonic missiles,” Mr. Hegseth said. “So if our whole power projection platform is aircraft carriers and the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe. And, yeah, we have a nuclear triad and all that, but [carriers are] a big part of it. And if 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?”
Countering the Chinese hypersonic missile threat to the homeland U.S. is a central motivation behind Mr. Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile shield project. Figuring out ways to counter those weapons in other arenas, including at sea, is also a top priority inside the Pentagon.
Nvidia says it will manufacture its artificial intelligence supercomputers entirely in the U.S., a move the White House touted as an example of what it calls the “Trump effect”: leading tech companies heeding the administration’s call to headquarter their production on American shores.
Nvidia says it has commissioned more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing space in Arizona and Texas for the effort.
“Within the next four years, Nvidia plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL,” the company announced in a blog post Monday. “These world-leading companies are deepening their partnership with Nvidia, growing their businesses while expanding their global footprint and hardening supply chain resilience.”
The company said mass production at plants in Houston, with Foxconn, and in Dallas, with Wistron, are set to accelerate in the next 12 to 15 months.
Mr. Trump shared the announcement in a Truth Social post.
The White House faces a bipartisan backlash over reported plans to slash NASA science funding by nearly 50%. The Washington Times’ Vaughn Cockayne has more on this story, including a strong statement condemning the plan from the bipartisan chairs of the congressional planetary science caucus.
Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican, joined Rep. Judy Chu, California Democrat, in opposing the Trump administration’s reported plans to cut the science budget. The lawmakers say the proposed cuts would severely weaken the U.S. on multiple fronts.
“NASA Science is a cornerstone of our nation’s space program, supporting thousands of jobs nationwide and driving countless scientific discoveries and technological advancements,” they said in a joint statement. “If enacted, these proposed cuts would demolish our space economy and workforce, threaten our national security and defense capabilities, and ultimately surrender the United States’ leadership in space, science, and technological innovation to our adversaries.”
Mr. Bacon’s involvement could signal broader bipartisan opposition to the White House’s agenda. So far, public opposition to the proposed cuts has come from congressional Democrats, most of whom appear concerned with the impact the cuts would have on their districts or states.
No politician or political party is recession-proof. And that could be bad news for Mr. Trump and fellow Republicans if aggressive tariffs on Chinese imports slow U.S. economic growth or, in a worst-case scenario, spark a full-blown recession.
Economist and Washington Times columnist Peter Morici makes that case in his new column, in which he spells out the risks that lie ahead for the president, even though Mr. Trump has temporarily suspended most of his reciprocal tariffs.
“If the economy swoons and does not measurably improve by the summer of 2026, the Republicans will relearn a hard lesson about the primacy of economics,” Mr. Morici writes, adding that the GOP could lose control of Congress as a result.
• April 30 — Robins Air Force Base Tech Expo, NCSI
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