Top U.S. and Ukrainian officials, under pressure from the White House to meet a Thanksgiving deadline for a peace deal with Russia, said Sunday they had made significant progress in talks in Switzerland that Mr. Rubio called the most productive in “a very long time.”

Mr. Rubio and Andrii Yermak, Ukraine’s top negotiator in Geneva, were publicly upbeat despite skepticism from U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle about the 28-point, notably Russia-friendly, peace plan that was leaked to the press last week.

However, major uncertainties remain. It’s unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has bought into the plan. Mr. Zelenskyy was initially skeptical of the plan last week but said over the weekend that negotiators had assured him some of Ukraine’s concerns have been addressed.

The nuclear submarines Mr. Trump green-lighted in his meeting with Lee Jae-myung last month may help the South Korean president reassure a public wary of an upcoming shakeup over control of South Korea’s troops — and move Seoul closer to developing nuclear weapons. Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon examines the situation in a dispatch from Seoul.

Mr. Lee, leading a liberal party that has customarily sought increased defense autonomy, has vowed to regain operational control of South Korean troops in wartime — or “OPCON Transfer” — from the U.S. by the end of his term in 2030. With Mr. Trump demanding more of allies, that looks on point. But the move has been slow-walked since the early 2000s as it could have effects across the alliance.

Though the subs would be nuclear-propelled, not nuclear-armed, the deal is huge. Washington has shared related technologies with only one ally, the U.K., while Australia is also set to receive them per the 2021 AUKUS agreement. The only other countries operating nuclear boats are China, France, India and Russia.

The federal government is failing to take steps to protect hundreds of undersea communications cables needed for both military and civilian activity that are vulnerable to sabotage by foreign adversaries, a panel of experts warned in testimony last week to the House Homeland Security subcommittee on transportation and maritime security.

About 600 underwater fiber-optic cables connected to the United States are the physical backbone of the U.S. economic system, involving more than $12 trillion in financial transactions a day. Tim Stronge, chief researcher at the company TeleGeography, testified that “the strategic importance of this network boils down to three characteristics: These cables are vulnerable, they are critical and they are irreplaceable.”

The hearing followed the release of a congressional report revealing how China is developing new capabilities for cutting undersea communications cables in a future crisis or conflict. “China has increasingly engaged in undersea cable-cutting activities as a gray zone pressure tactic, and there is mounting evidence that Beijing is developing new cable-cutting technologies for potential wartime use,” warned the report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Several attendees at the 19th annual Dubai Air Show, which drew defense and aerospace companies from more than 150 nations to the United Arab Emirates, said regional conflict and security shifts have pushed governments and industry leaders to pay renewed attention to strategic security partnerships with Arab powers in the Persian Gulf.

“What’s clear here is a new shift to Asia, and in particular the Middle East, rather than the previous focus on Europe,” Luis Campos, chairman of Portuguese drone manufacturer Beyond Vision, told Threat Status at the show. “I believe we’re going to see the Ukraine war end in the next few months,” he said. “With that, there will be a new surge in defense spending. Asia — particularly, the Middle East — will be where a lot of the focus is over the next few years.”

Threat Status Special Correspondent Joseph Hammond was on the ground in Dubai. He offers a wrap-up and analysis of some of the major deals that were inked at the show, including new partnerships between such U.S. companies as L3Harris Technologies and Anduril with the Emirati advanced technology and defense conglomerate EDGE Group.

During the Opium Wars of the 19th century, Britain and other Western nations “humiliated a weakened China by forcing the import of harmful drugs on its population to make a fast buck,” writes former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie, who asserts that “Xi Jinping, the communist Chinese leader for life, has embarked on his own 21st-century opium war against the United States.

“The flow of opioids and counterfeit drugs into the United States is perhaps retribution for a long-ago defeat. More ominously, it is an asymmetric assault on a strategic American vulnerability: our medical supply chain,” Mr. Wilkie writes in an op-ed for The Times. “China understands that dominating or corrupting that supply chain gives it strategic leverage for its hegemonic ambitions.

“The downstream effects are visible on the streets, where fentanyl kills twice as many Americans in one year as the number who perished in a decade in Vietnam,” he writes. “Americans are now dying from illicit and unverified drug compounds that have made their way into the supply chain, placed there with counterfeit corporate and chemical makers that China has slipped into our system, often through drug cartels.”

• Nov. 26 — Iraq’s 2025 Elections: What Comes Next? Chatham House

• Dec. 2 — Strengthening U.S. Alliances and Partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, Brookings Institution

• Dec. 2 — Keeping China Grounded: Ensuring Long-Term U.S. Tech Leadership in Low Earth Orbit, Center for Strategic & International Studies

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

• Dec. 4 — The FIFA World Cup and National Security Resilience: Private-Sector Perspectives, Atlantic Council

• Dec. 5 — Moldova’s Euro-Atlantic Path: Regional Security, Energy Opportunity and Democratic Resilience, Hudson Institute

• Dec. 6 — 2025 Reagan National Defense Forum, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute