Australian authorities said the two gunmen, a father and son, opened fire during a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach in a targeted attack on the nation’s Jewish community. Police also found several improvised explosive devices in one of the men’s cars. The father was killed by police. His son was taken into custody.

At least 15 people were killed, while dozens more were wounded. It’s the latest in a rising wave of antisemitic attacks around the world in the years since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. 

The incident is also deepening a rift between Israel and other nations such as Australia that have formally recognized a Palestinian state. In the wake of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the decision by Canberra “pours fuel” on antisemitic attitudes around the world.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese strongly rejected the notion.

Washington Times Defense and National Security Correspondent John T. Seward visited Fort Carson, Colorado, and got a firsthand look at an advanced new satellite-based digital communications backbone for future warfare. Proponents say it will be critical to keeping the U.S. military on the cutting edge of technology in the 21st century.

Mr. Seward has a deep dive on the new Anduril system that the Army is currently testing at Fort Carson: the Next Generation Command and Control system. 

Brig. Gen. Michael R. Kaloostian, the director for the Command and Control Future Capability Directorate at the Army, told Threat Status in an exclusive interview that the goal for the new NGC2 system is to combine all data available on a battlefield and make it accessible to commanders. The system is a combination of software and new hardware that aims to allow every level of the Army to communicate with each other and share information quickly, while having artificial intelligence help to manage the vast ocean of data — and do it all in a hyper-secure cyber environment that cannot be penetrated by adversary intelligence operatives.

The Times’ Military Correspondent Mike Glenn was on the scene in Huntsville, Alabama, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other key military officials unveiled the future home for the U.S. Space Command at Redstone Arsenal.

The unveiling came after Mr. Trump overturned a Biden administration decision to leave the combatant command at its temporary headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. It’s the latest development in what’s been a long-running political tug-of-war between Alabama and Colorado. And there’s no sign that Colorado is backing down. The state’s attorney general, Philip J. Weiser, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in October and alleged that the decision to transfer Space Command to Alabama was punishment from the White House for Colorado’s new vote-by-mail system.

Alabama officials say Redstone Arsenal has always made sense as the home of Space Command, largely due to its long-term support, infrastructure, and skilled workforce. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, for example, has operated in Huntsville for decades. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to make a key concession ahead of his high-stakes meeting with top Trump administration officials in Berlin: Kyiv is ready to abandon its bid to join NATO.

Mr. Zelenskyy told reporters in a WhatsApp chat that Ukraine has already moved off of its push to join the 32-nation transatlantic alliance. He framed it as a key compromise from the Ukrainian side and one that could potentially open the door to a ceasefire deal, though major sticking points still remain.

Russia has vehemently opposed the notion of Ukraine joining NATO. The Trump administration has expressed opposition to the idea, instead favoring in its Ukraine-Russia peace plan vague security guarantees to be offered by the U.S. and Europe to Ukraine.

Until recently, Ukraine had been pushing hard for NATO membership as a means to guarantee its future security. 

The Trump administration has a key opportunity right now, as it pushes for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, to potentially exploit fissures between Moscow and Beijing and possibly weaken the partnership between those two U.S. adversaries.

In a new piece, Threat Status contributor and Times opinion columnist Daniel N. Hoffman makes the case that the White House should frame the Russia-Ukraine war not only as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempted imperial land grab but also as China’s proxy war against the U.S. and our allies. He urged the administration to pursue a three-pronged strategy that could both lead to peace in Eastern Europe and, over the long term, chip away at the relationship between the two nations.

“First, the intelligence community must continue to recruit spies and steal secrets from Beijing to Moscow so that the Trump administration can consider policy options to understand and most effectively exploit the fault lines in the bilateral relationship between the two dictatorships,” Mr. Hoffman writes, adding that the U.S. should double down on its support for European allies and not sign off on any peace deal that rewards Moscow for its attack on Ukraine.

• Dec. 15 — How the U.S. and Taiwan Can Deter Chinese Coercion by Shoring Up Taiwan’s Partners, Atlantic Council

• Dec. 15 — Critical Minerals: 2025 Year in Review & Looking Ahead to 2026, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Dec. 16 — Assessing the Impact of Western Sanctions on Russia, Brookings Institution

• Dec. 17 — U.S.-Saudi Relationship in the Wake of Muhammad bin Salman’s Visit, Middle East Institute

• Dec. 17 — European and U.S. Approaches to the Middle East and North Africa: Convergences and Divergences, Atlantic Council

• Dec. 18 — FinCEN Modernization and the Future of Financial Crime Enforcement, Foundation for Defense of Democracies