Threat Status for Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
An intel report from key U.N. member states, including the U.S., says Russia supplied North Korea with air defense missiles, electronic warfare gear and missile guidance technology in exchange for Pyongyang’s backing of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
… Russian forces continue to grind deeper into Ukraine despite setbacks such as Ukraine’s underwater strike Tuesday on Russia’s crucial bridge to Crimea and Sunday’s massive drone attack.
… U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker wants every member to commit at least 5% of its gross domestic product to defense and security “starting now.”
… Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth caught flak for skipping a major Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at NATO headquarters on Wednesday.
… Dutch opposition parties are scrambling a day after an anti-Islam lawmaker sparked the collapse of the country’s coalition government.
… The winner of South Korea’s presidential election is a consistent Japan-basher but has said he won’t degrade Seoul-Tokyo-Washington security coordination.
… Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei firmly rejected the U.S. nuclear proposal and says his country will not abandon its uranium enrichment program.
… And here’s a look inside the $1.2 billion contract the U.S. Space Force has awarded to BAE Space and Mission Systems to deliver a constellation of missile tracking satellites.
North Korea has supplied at least 100 ballistic missiles and millions of rounds of artillery shells and rockets to Russia, in addition to dispatching 11,000 troops to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, according to an international intelligence report compiled by U.N. members, including the United States.
The report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team asserts that Russia, in exchange, has supplied North Korea with air defense missiles, electronic warfare gear and technology that helped improve the guidance of North Korean missiles.
Large shipments of Russian oil have also been sent to North Korea in violation of multiple U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, states the report, which provides the most comprehensive public assessment to date on the military and the expanding cooperation between the two U.S. adversaries.
The announcement by U.S. Special Envoy Thomas Barrack that Washington will scale down the American military presence in Syria from eight bases to one comes as the Trump administration seeks to generate a positive relationship with Syrian leader Ahmad al-Sharaa and a dramatically new policy toward the war-torn Middle East nation.
“What I can assure you is that our current Syria policy will not be close to the Syria policy of the last 100 years, because none of these have worked,” Mr. Barrack told the Turkish broadcaster NTV on Monday.
Questions remain over how small the American troop footprint will be, and the extent to which pockets of extremist militancy in Syria will seek to seize on the policy shift to spread Islamic State terrorist activity in the country. The U.S. currently has about 2,000 troops stationed in Syria, reportedly working with the new government to root out rebel groups and to prevent an ISIS resurgence.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei declared Wednesday that his country will not abandon its uranium enrichment program, rejecting the newest proposal from the U.S. as “rude” and “arrogant.”
Two Chinese nationals were charged Tuesday with conspiracy to smuggle into the United States a fungus with potential use as a terror weapon against American agriculture. “The alleged actions of these Chinese nationals — including a loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party — are of the gravest national security concerns,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said in announcing the charges.
Jian Yunqing, 33, and Liu Zunyong, 34, both from China, were also charged with making false statements and visa fraud. Both were paid by the Chinese government and studied plant pathogens at universities, according to court documents. An FBI complaint in the case suggests one of the suspects was engaged in secret biological weapons work.
U.S. officials say Mr. Liu was caught with the fungus in July and his samples were seized along with electronic devices. He was then denied entry and processed for removal back to China. He had left the country in April 2024 after having worked at a University of Michigan laboratory. A detention hearing for Ms. Jian, currently in custody, is scheduled for Thursday in federal court.
The U.S. Army has exceeded its fiscal 2025 recruiting goal with four months to spare, with 61,000 future soldiers on board and average per-day enlistments up by more than 50% over last year.
The surge in recruiting is a major win for the Trump administration, specifically for Mr. Hegseth, who has focused heavily on rolling back woke military policies that he said were hurting recruiting and military readiness and otherwise negatively affecting America’s armed forces.
One of the steps he is taking is the identification and administrative separation of transgender troops from fighting forces. On Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth ordered the Navy to change the name of a ship named after gay rights icon Harvey Milk, though the Pentagon later issued a statement saying no official renamings had been announced.
Exactly what impact any specific policy may have on recruiting is unclear, but officials argue that the Trump administration’s overall approach entices more young men and women to sign up.
The Philippines and Vietnam are “so different in terms of colonial experiences, culture, governance, revolution and protest that it would seem absurd to imagine they would ‘ally’ against China,” writes Don Kirk, a former Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. “Like it or not, though, in an environment in which the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they are in this struggle together.
“Just as Manila and Washington are historic allies, so, too, is Washington bound to Hanoi, once its mortal enemy,” Mr. Kirk writes. “A State Department memorandum and a separate ‘vision statement’ provide the framework under which the U.S. has proffered electronic gear and coast guard cutters for the Vietnamese to patrol their long coastline and see what the Chinese are doing in the South China Sea.”
He adds that “as Washington seeks to draw Hanoi from Beijing’s orbit, more aid is sure to come.”
• June 5 — Gen. Thomas Bussiere on Global Strike Command’s Role in Strategic Deterrence, Atlantic Council
• June 5 — Caught in the Middle: Iraq’s Positioning in U.S.–Iran Tensions, Chatham House
• June 9 — Why the U.S. Needs to Win the Biotechnology Race Against the CCP, Hudson Institute
• June 10 — U.S.-China competition and the Value of Middle East Influence, Defense Priorities
• June 10 — Adapting the U.S. Nuclear Posture in Response to Adversary Threats, Hudson Institute
• June 26 — The Realities of an Invasion of Taiwan, Stimson Center
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