Threat Status for Tuesday, August 26, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
President Trump says he’s ready to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
… U.S. and Indonesian forces have begun annual joint military drills with a dozen other nations showing defensive unity toward China.
… Australia is expelling Iran’s ambassador after accusing Tehran of orchestrating antisemitic arson attacks in Melbourne and Sydney.
… Mr. Trump said at his meeting with South Korea’s president that “big progress” can be made on North Korea.
… Israeli artillery strikes Monday on one of the main hospitals in Gaza are reported to have killed at least 20 people.
… Opposition in Uganda is outraged over the country’s agreement to take in deported migrants from the United States.
… And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s No Manning Required Ship program recently rolled out a first-of-its-kind autonomous unmanned surface vehicle.
Mr. Trump said the U.S. trade deal with South Korea will remain in place, with 15% tariffs on South Korean goods, after talks Monday at the White House with President Lee Jae-myung. The two leaders also discussed a shipbuilding deal, a potential summit with North Korea and the cost of U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula.
In their first meeting, Mr. Lee asked Mr. Trump to seek a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and Mr. Trump agreed. “We can do big progress with North Korea,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Lee sought to charm Mr. Trump by hailing recent stock market gains, the gold finishes added to the Oval Office and his peacekeeping efforts.
The South Korean president even joked that Mr. Trump could build a Trump Tower in North Korea if peace between the nations is achieved. The quip came even after Mr. Trump had temporarily thrown the tenor of Monday’s White House summit into doubt before it began. On social media, he questioned the South Korean government’s raids on churches and asked whether a “purge or revolution” was taking place.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this month christened the USX-1 Defiant, a first-of-its-kind autonomous unmanned surface vehicle designed from the ground up for deployment in the sea without a human crew. Virginia-based Serco Inc., the tech company that designed the Defiant, says it “embodies a new spirit of innovation.”
Military officials say the 180-foot, 240-metric-ton vessel, part of DARPA’s No Manning Required Ship program, has a simplified hull design that will allow rapid production and maintenance operations at any port or shipyard that can support yachts or working boats. The Navy wants maritime drones for fleet operations and continued experimentation to advance robotic maritime strategies and tactics.
Ukraine’s naval drones, meanwhile, resemble speedboats without seats. They can carry explosives, weapons or surveillance equipment. The remote-controlled vessels can be built for about $250,000 each, making them cost-effective for one-way attack missions.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal that was recently brokered by the Trump administration has redrawn the diplomatic map of the South Caucasus, displacing Russia and Iran while positioning Washington as the primary mediator.
Washington Times special correspondent Jacob Wirtschafter offers a deep dive, examining in a dispatch from Istanbul how the deal opens critical transport and trade routes, including the Zangezur corridor, which links Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave to Turkey. Part of the deal includes granting the U.S. exclusive rights to develop the corridor for the next 99 years.
The agreement, forged nearly five years after Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Karabakh War, reflects the desire of Armenia and Azerbaijan, both once a part of the Soviet Union, to reduce dependence on Moscow and Tehran while offering new economic, security and geopolitical opportunities in Central Asia. It represents a power shift in the region away from Russia and Iran and toward Turkey and the United States.
It is the “sunniest of times for South Korea’s export-dependent economy and the cloudiest,” according to former Washington Times Foreign Editor David R. Sands, who writes that “despite a highly uncertain domestic political environment and the ever-present threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea on its divided peninsula, South Korea has managed to create world-class domestic industries” selling semiconductors, automobiles and much more.
“But because the South Korean economy has been so dependent on trade and an open global marketplace, the new Trump administration’s push to rebalance America’s trading position and attack what [Mr. Trump] calls economy-sapping trade deficits has hit Seoul particularly hard,” Mr. Sands wrote in an op-ed published ahead of this week’s summit between Mr. Trump and the South Korean president.
“In the end, Seoul’s worst nightmares did not come to pass,” he wrote, noting that “the two sides announced a deal to set the U.S. tariffs to 15% comparable to what rivals in Japan and the European Union now face, while South Korea also pledged massive investments of $350 billion in American shipping and another $100 billion to purchase American liquefied natural gas (LNG).”
Unleashing American energy means “utilizing our nation’s abundant natural resources to stimulate domestic economic prosperity, create well-paying jobs and ensure access to affordable energy here at home,” according to Rep. Bruce Westerman.
“But the benefits don’t stop there,” writes the Arkansas Republican, who serves as chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and is a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
“By fully harnessing our domestic energy supplies, we can help secure the energy needs of our allies and actively combat the rise of foreign adversaries including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” he writes. “The United States and allies like South Korea, fueled by America’s energy resources, will be able to stand strong in their commitment to freedom and democracy worldwide, building a more prosperous future for everyone.”
• Sept. 2 — Strategic Vision or Strategic Challenge: China’s Leadership in a Multipolar World, Chatham House
• Sept. 2 — Envisioning the Threat to Taiwan: A Cross-strait and Beyond Seminar, Atlantic Council
• Sept. 4 — The Digital Front Line: Building a Cyber-Resilient Taiwan, Hudson Institute
• Sept. 9 — From Monroe to the Golden Age: Charting America’s Path in Latin America, Alexander Hamilton Society
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