Thursday’s highly anticipated closed-door Capitol Hill briefing from Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, sparked very different reactions from the Republicans and Democrats who watched video footage of the “second strike” against an alleged drug boat in September. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine also briefed lawmakers.

The biggest headline is Adm. Bradley said no one issued a “kill them all” order during the Sept. 2 strike, in which U.S. forces fired a second time on the vessel after two individuals survived the initial strike. That second, or “double tap,” strike led some critics to accuse the Pentagon under Mr. Hegseth of committing a war crime by firing on helpless combatants with the intention of killing them.

Key Republicans came away seemingly satisfied with the explanations from top military commanders. But powerful Democrats said they were deeply disturbed by the video footage shown to them and called on the White House to publicly release the unedited video of the strike.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz tracked the warnings from government officials and energy experts this week about the real and growing threats to the American energy grid posed by communist China. The big takeaway here is that China’s government has penetrated networks used to control the U.S. electric grid and could use the covert access to shut down the flow of electricity to Americans in a crisis or conflict.

Such actions could, in theory, be taken in concert with a Chinese attack on Taiwan with the goal of forcing the U.S. to abandon any plans to intervene militarily on behalf of the island democracy.

In addition to its cyber espionage, China’s government-linked hackers are “pre-positioned” to conduct cyberattacks on the electric grid and other critical infrastructure, Zachary Tudor, associate director at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, told a House subcommittee hearing. That means China-linked hackers could already have a presence inside critical U.S. infrastructure systems and could choose to activate their attacks at any moment.

Military Correspondent Mike Glenn offers some sobering numbers on the sheer scale, monetarily speaking, of America’s failed efforts in Afghanistan: Congress appropriated just over $148 billion for Afghan reconstruction from 2002 to 2025. About $88 billion of that was spent creating a military that swiftly collapsed in August 2021 in the face of pressure from the Taliban.

Those figures don’t include the $763 billion spent arming the Afghan military and security services during the two-decade war or the $14 billion used to resettle about 200,000 Afghans in the U.S.

By comparison, the Marshall Plan cost American taxpayers about $135 billion in today’s dollars to rebuild 16 countries, including allies such as France that were devastated by years of war.

Gene Aloise, the acting special inspector general in charge of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, laid out those deeply troubling figures in a briefing with reporters this week. They also include the roughly $7.1 billion worth of U.S.-funded military weapons and hardware, $24 billion in military infrastructure and $24 billion in civilian infrastructure left for the taking when the U.S. withdrew from the country. 

It is alleged fraud, money laundering and criminal conspiracy on a massive scale, impacting thousands of people across multiple countries. More than 120,000 workers are said to staff call centers in Myanmar and Cambodia, where scammers target unsuspecting, often lonely Americans and other Westerners with flattery and lies on Tinder, TikTok and other social media platforms while using ChatGPT, malware, deepfake forgeries and technological tricks to appear trustworthy.

Victims are lured by get-rich-quick schemes involving Bitcoin, real estate or other faux investments. Others are coerced into falling in love with a sweet-talking stranger who slowly shifts the relationship into draining their assets through deceit or sextortion.

In one form or another, such scams have been around for generations. But artificial intelligence and other technological advancements have made them even more effective and tailored to an individual’s specific vulnerabilities.

In the latest crackdown, Thai authorities seized more than $300 million from two Bangkok banks accused of laundering money from those online scam centers. Police have arrested 29 of 42 accused conspirators in the investigation.

The Trump administration insists it is on firm legal ground in its targeting of alleged drug boats and the “narco-terrorists” aboard them. But in a new piece for The Washington Times, Threat Status contributor Andrew P. Napolitano argues that the nation’s military leaders are shirking the Constitution with the military campaign.

Even setting aside the firestorm around the “second strike” on an alleged drug boat in September, Mr. Napolitano says the Trump administration is inventing its own rationale.

“Based on evidence he says he has and chooses not to share, Mr. Trump has designated these folks in the speedboats as ‘narco-terrorists’ and argued that his designation offers him legal authority to kill them. Yet ‘narco-terrorist’ is a political phrase, not a legal one,” writes Mr. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey and an author. “There is no such designation or defined term in American law. Labeling them confers no additional legal authority.

“Outside a legally declared war in which U.S. military personnel are engaged in legally killing armed military personnel of the country with which the U.S. is at war, the Constitution requires due process — a fair jury trial with its attendant protections — whenever the government wants to take life, liberty or property from any person,” he says. 

• 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

• Dec. 9 — Building a Golden Age for the U.S.-Japan Economic Partnership: Ensuring Security, Stability and Prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Dec. 9 — Twisted Sisters: Biodefense Supply Chains and Stockpiles, Atlantic Council 

• Dec. 10-12 — Spacepower Conference 2025, Space Force Association 

• Dec. 11 — NATO and the Cloud: A Conversation with Assistant Secretary-General Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, Royal United Services Institute