The Pentagon’s secretive Replicator program isn’t about drones, at least not entirely. If it were, it has fallen short of its goal to field “multiple thousands” of attritable autonomous systems by August 2025. The exact number is classified, but the initiative seems to have fielded only hundreds, not thousands, by the target date.

Replicator’s proponents say it has succeeded in its broader and arguably more critical mission to spark significant changes in how the Defense Department procures and fields cutting-edge systems, such as modern drones, and the speed with which it delivers 21st-century technology to warfighters in key theaters, especially the Indo-Pacific.

Former leaders of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, including Doug Beck, the former Apple executive who led the unit for years, say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now embracing those broader changes on an even grander scale. Following Mr. Hegseth’s speech last week on acquisition reform, Mr. Beck told Threat Status in his first public comments since leaving the DIU that the secretary’s announcements were “a clear indication of how serious the secretary and his team are about taking that transformation to the next level.”

China’s recent declaration of a nature reserve on a disputed South China Sea shoal is illegal and an example of Beijing’s legal warfare, according to a new report by lawyers at the Pentagon’s Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific Command.

Beijing in September unilaterally declared a national nature reserve covering 13.5 square miles on Scarborough Reef in the South China Sea. The reef, a rock about 120 miles west of the Philippine island of Luzon, is claimed by China, Philippines and Taiwan.

Mr. Hegseth recently told defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Beijing’s move was “yet another attempt to coerce new and advanced territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea at your expense.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 promised then-President Obama that China would not militarize disputed islands in the sea. During the years since, however, Beijing has deployed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles on several disputed islands that were built up over the years.

Syria will step up its attacks on foreign terrorists in its country as Damascus looks to assist the U.S. in curbing the regional influence of the Islamic State, Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. Special Envoy Tom Barrack, who made the assertion this week after Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House.

While most headlines about Mr. al-Sharaa’s talks Monday with Mr. Trump focused on the Syrian president’s commitment to join the multinational counter-ISIS campaign, Mr. Barrack’s comments on X suggested the discussion ran deeper, with Mr. al-Sharaa — a former al Qaeda leader — recognizing the geopolitical nuance of taking a stand against Iran-backed Hezbollah.

National security sources tell Threat Status that a serious Syrian push against Hezbollah could ease the al-Sharaa government’s friction with Israel, which is focused on countering a Hezbollah resurgence in nearby Lebanon, following the death last year of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike. 

Mr. Trump has stirred global attention by threatening to send U.S. forces into Nigeria. Some call it bold leadership, others say it’s dangerous interference. The Threat Status video team sat down with Washington Times special foreign correspondent Joseph Hammond for an exclusive video breaking down what’s really happening behind the brewing crisis in Africa’s most populous nation.

The video dovetails with Mr. Hammond’s recent dispatch on how the killing of some 3,100 Christians in Nigeria over the past year — more than anywhere else in the world — has been blamed on Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province and Fulani militant herders, who frequently target Christian farmers.

At least 100,000 Christians and 60,000 Muslims have been killed in the oil-rich but economically poor West African nation since the current round of fighting began in 2009, according to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law.

Retired CIA Station Chief and Clandestine Services Officer Daniel N. Hoffman, an opinion contributor to Threat Status, writes in a Times op-ed that “by far the national security threat with the shortest fuse, which we must detect and preempt with the greatest alacrity, continues to be terrorism.

“The U.S. military and intelligence community have a presence in the Middle East and an impressive record of finding, fixing and finishing terrorist threats, often in coordination with our regional allies,” Mr. Hoffman writes. “Yet Afghanistan, a failed terrorist state full of ungoverned space and sanctuary for the Islamic State group and al Qaeda terrorists plotting against us, presents an altogether greater challenge.

“The Trump administration, especially our military and intelligence community, should be clear with the American people and congressional oversight about the threat picture in Afghanistan, especially the growing external operations capabilities of al Qaeda and the Islamic State group,” he writes. “The administration should have a strategy to take the fight to the enemy, preferably with as small a U.S. military footprint as possible.”

• Nov. 17 — Success After Service: Careers in Tech and Cybersecurity for Veterans, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 17 — Power Under Pressure: The Fight to Protect Taiwan’s Energy Lifelines from Beijing’s Aggression, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Nov. 19 — Why U.S. Economic Security Runs Through Central America, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 19-21 — Defense TechConnect Summit, Defense TechConnect Innovation Summit & Expo

• Nov. 20 — Delivering Space Capabilities for Warfighting Advantage, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Nov. 20 — Countering the Criminal Drone Threat in the Americas, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Nov. 20 — Prepared, Not Paralyzed: Managing Artificial Intelligence Risks to Drive American Leadership, Center for a New American Security

• Dec. 2-3 — AI+ Space Summit, Special Competitive Studies Project