Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon offers a look at the changes inside Taiwan’s military command structure and how a new decentralized approach could enable individual units, under the initiative of local commanders, to respond immediately to a surprise attack.

The most likely perpetrator of such an attack would be Communist China, which has long laid claim to the island democracy.

Mr. Salmon reports on a new document from Taipei’s Defense Ministry that is something of a blueprint for how Taiwan’s military could sustain combat under individual officers, regardless of an electronic warfare offensive that blacks out communications — or even the decapitation of Taipei’s political leadership. The Defense Ministry instructed all units to implement “distributed control” in the event of an attack and to carry out necessary combat missions without waiting for orders. 

It’s not just about drugs. Or oil and rare earth elements. And it’s not solely about the U.S. exerting control over its own hemisphere and pushing back against encroachment into the Americas by Russia and China.

Mr. Trump’s fixation on Venezuela reflects his belief that Venezuela is one of the most important pieces on a high-stakes global chessboard. The president seems to be operating on the theory that Venezuela, through a series of military and geopolitical moves and perhaps a bit of good luck, could be transformed from a hostile narco-state to a friendly democracy with major reserves of gold, minerals and heavy crude oil.

Analysts say Mr. Trump soon may face a stark choice: Follow through with the ouster of Mr. Maduro or risk appearing weak, if an aggressive U.S. pressure campaign fails to push the dictator from office.

Beneath the Trump versus Maduro feud — which dates back to Mr. Trump’s first term — is the matter of Venezuela’s deep reservoir of natural resources, including the world’s largest oil reserves and major supplies of crucial minerals and gold. María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, seemed to suggest that a new government in Caracas could give the U.S. greater access to the country’s gold and minerals.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers Tuesday that the Pentagon will not release the full, edited video of a controversial “second strike” against an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September. Mr. Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed key members of Congress about the administration’s military campaign against those boats — a campaign that has now killed nearly 100 people.

Mr. Trump previously said he had no problem releasing the full, unedited video of the Sept. 2 strike, in which U.S. forces struck a vessel for a second time after two individuals — described by the administration as “narco-terrorists” — survived the first attack. Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, now the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, is said to have given the order for the second strike.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have regularly released on social media edited footage of the strikes on alleged drug boats, including the moments when the vessels are struck and explode into flames. Mr. Hegseth’s refusal to release the full, unedited video of the Sept. 2 incident is sure to fuel questions about exactly what that footage shows.

Divisive as they may be, the Trump administration is saving lives with its strikes against boats allegedly moving drugs from Latin America into the U.S. 

Steve Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general and a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, makes the case that Mr. Trump has rightly reversed a failed Biden administration policy that allowed drug cartels to funnel deadly narcotics into the U.S. He argues that once all of the politics and controversy are stripped away, one clear point remains: The president is taking decisive action to protect his country and its citizens.

“Politics is always filled with noise, and this story is no different, but to me and millions of other Americans, the facts here are simple,” Mr. Marshall writes in a column in The Times. “Narco-terrorists are funneling drugs through Central America and the Caribbean and onto our streets, leaving tens of thousands of Americans dead and neighborhoods less safe. Mr. Trump’s strategic offensive actions should be lauded.

“The choice before us is clear: We can either stand with Mr. Trump’s decisive action to protect American lives, or we can return to the failed policies that allowed cartels to poison our communities and threaten our security,” he says.

The assault by Hamas on Israel didn’t peak on Oct. 7, 2023. Instead, the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group continued its war on the Jewish state in the years since, relying on friendly media outlets and social media platforms to bend global public opinion in its favor.

Clifford D. May, an opinion contributor to Threat Status, explains in detail how Hamas and its allies have been stunningly effective in shaping narratives and, in the process, stoking anti-Israel and even antisemitic attitudes around the world.

“The most effective combatant in the cognitive war: the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera media platforms, which went so far as to assign Hamas operatives as reporters,” writes Mr. May, the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

“Major media outlets parroted Al Jazeera and repeated fake statistics provided by Hamas-controlled ‘local authorities’ and the ‘Gaza Health Ministry,’” he writes in The Times. “TikTok, a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party, contributed to the anti-Israel effort. Iranian and Russian bots also spread hate and lies and incited violence.”

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

• Dec. 17 — Assessing the Implications of China’s Rise as a Space Power, Center for Strategic & International Studies

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

• Dec. 18 — Ukraine: Pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prospects for Peace, Brookings Institution

• Dec. 18 — How Can Ukraine Best Secure the Homefront? Atlantic Council

• Dec. 18 — Space Year in Review: A 2025 Recap and 2026 Outlook, Center for Strategic and International Studies