Beyond drones, hypersonic missiles and cyberattacks lies another, much more elemental risk to U.S. national security: people.

On the latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast, Clearspeed CEO and co-founder Alex Martin dives into the complex issue of trust dominance and explains the groundbreaking work his company is doing to rethink and transform U.S. security vetting. At its core, Mr. Martin said, the company aims to much more quickly and accurately assess whether an individual — a prospective government employee or a potential foreign ally in the Mideast, Africa or elsewhere — poses a security risk. 

Mr. Martin explains in detail how the Clearspeed approach works. But he took aim at what he believes is a fundamental problem in Silicon Valley thinking right now.

“Silicon Valley has lost their imagination. What they’re doing is they’re following the money, as opposed to getting ahead of where the problem is,” he said. “And everyone in Silicon Valley is obsessed with drones, robotics and hardware, and they should be, because we need those things. Those are important. But the real risk is in our people. Bad actors who don’t look like enemies. The human threat that’s the soft underbelly of national security. Chinese threat financing and influence. This is all being overlooked.”

Dominica, a relatively small Caribbean island of just 72,000 inhabitants, is suddenly taking on major geopolitical importance for this reason: It’s emerged as a key cog in the machine of China’s global expansion.

Washington Times correspondent Guillaume Ptak has a fascinating dispatch from the island and offers in-depth reporting on China’s big plans in the region. Chief among them is the ongoing construction of Dominica’s new international airport, a flagship project financed and built by Chinese companies. It’ll be Dominica’s first international airport and is expected to host flights from Europe, North America and elsewhere around the world.

And it’s not just Dominica. All over the Caribbean, large-scale infrastructure initiatives are being carried out by Chinese companies and workers, bringing tantalizing promises of long-term economic development. 

The Trump administration is seeking to counter Chinese influence in the Caribbean. But, as Mr. Ptak reports, China’s long-term plan to build geopolitical alliances through economic investment is racing ahead.

Chinese influence is on the rise elsewhere. In the South China Sea, there’s growing fear of a China-Philippines military clash over disputed islands there — and that’s left Manila seeking a deal.

Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon takes readers inside the tense standoff between China and the Philippines over those contested islands, reefs and even fishing spots off the northern coast of the Philippines. In Manila, Mr. Salmon reports, officials are looking for a diplomatic way out as opposed to continuing down a road that could lead to a full-blown military confrontation.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told the 46th Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Malaysia early this week that he’s seeking a “legally binding code of conduct” in the South China Sea. Secretary for Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo reportedly said that Manila is open to “anything within the scope of diplomatic means or peaceful means or cooperation.”

The question is whether Beijing wants to de-escalate an increasingly hostile dynamic in the region.

The main sticking point in current U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations seems to be the issue of uranium enrichment. Tehran says the matter is nonnegotiable, while the Trump administration wants to end enrichment on Iranian soil because the process can quickly and relatively easily be used to make nuclear weapons.

Obama-era Secretary of State John Kerry is largely to blame for Iran’s current position. Fred Fleitz, vice chair of the America First Policy Institute and former National Security Council chief of staff, argues in a new piece for The Times that the Obama administration and Mr. Kerry specifically made a grave error in acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich uranium during the first iteration of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations more than a decade ago.

Iranian officials, he writes, “have no interest in enriching for peaceful purposes.”

“They are clinging to Mr. Kerry’s foolish concession on the right to enrich uranium for one reason: They want to make large amounts of nuclear weapons fuel,” he writes. “Iran doesn’t want to build just one nuclear bomb. It intends to make dozens of them.”

Chinese and Russian footprints across Africa are already significant. And a long-simmering sovereignty crisis in the Western Sahara could pave the way for them to grow further.

Former White House National Security Adviser and Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton delves into this complex, high-stakes geopolitical issue in a new op-ed for The Times. He argues that the U.S. should embrace an independence vote for the people of the Western Sahara, a large territory on North Africa’s west coast that is about 80% controlled by neighboring Morocco and its military.

Mr. Bolton contends that the U.S., by supporting a sovereignty vote for the native Sahrawi people, could foster a new, geopolitically beneficial relationship on the continent.

“With Chinese and Russian influence mounting across Africa, this is no time to provide another opportunity to increase their influence,” he writes. “U.S. policy on the Western Sahara should return to its 1991 origins, supporting a referendum for the Sahrawis to determine their own future.”

• May 30 — Imagine AI Live ‘25, Imagine AI Live

• May 30-June 1 — IISS Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore), International Institute for Strategic Studies

• June 2-4 — AI+ Expo, Special Competitive Studies Project

• June 3 — CNAS 2025 National Security Conference | America’s Edge: Forging the Future, Center for a New American Security 

• June 4 — The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East with Sen. James Risch, Hudson Institute

• June 25 — The New IC, Intelligence and National Security Alliance