Threat Status for Monday, January 26, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
… The Trump administration’s new National Defense Strategy says the Pentagon “will guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America and Greenland.”
… New reports indicate Iranian security forces killed or executed at least 40,000 anti-regime protesters earlier this month — a death toll much higher than originally feared.
… Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the U.S.-Ukraine security agreement is “100% complete” after trilateral talks among the U.S., Ukraine and Russia.
… The comments sparked hope of a breakthrough with the Russian side, but a senior Kremlin official said Monday major challenges remain on the path to a final settlement.
… Drone strikes set fire to an oil refinery inside Russia Sunday, while Russian forces targeted multiple locations in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.
… Agence France-Presse has a report examining how Russia’s shadow fleet keeps oil exports flowing despite Western pressure.
… Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney tried Sunday to dial down the heat in an increasingly acrimonious back-and-forth with President Trump.
… And the Middle East Council on Global Affairs has a new analysis on challenges facing Gulf Arab powers as they compete for strategic importance in the international artificial intelligence race.
The strategy report issued late Friday by the Pentagon calls for a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere, emphasizing the Trump administration’s policy goal to “guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America and Greenland.” The document also seeks more accommodation of communist China with a call to deter Beijing in the Indo-Pacific through “strength, not confrontation.”
Other major elements reflect Mr. Trump’s focus on forcing allies and partners to do more to support American interests and his objective of revitalizing the U.S. defense industrial base. The strategy states in a section on defending the homeland that in addition to greater border and maritime security, the Pentagon would deploy the Golden Dome missile defense system with a new emphasis on countering drone strikes. A robust and modernized nuclear deterrent also is a key element.
On the China portion of the strategy, Mr. Trump seeks stable ties with Beijing that include fair trade and “respectful relations” based in part on the president’s efforts at direct engagement with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We will be strong but not unnecessarily confrontational,” the 34-page strategy states. “This is how we will help to turn President Trump’s vision for peace through strength into reality in the vital Indo-Pacific.”
A U.S. aircraft strike group churned toward Iran over the weekend, as reports emerged that Iranian security forces executed at least 40,000 anti-regime protesters on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9 — a death toll significantly higher than international observers had feared. The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, meanwhile, says his force is ready with its “finger on the trigger” if the U.S. attacks.
Gen. Mohammad Pakpour delivered the warning Saturday, following Mr. Trump’s assertion last week that an “armada” of U.S. warships had been dispatched to waters near Iran. The Pentagon said an aircraft carrier strike group would be in the area within days, but it’s unclear what kind of action the Trump administration intends to take, if any.
The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group rerouted from the South China Sea in mid-January as Mr. Trump ramped up threats to use the American military to halt the killing of protesters. The strike group includes Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Iran.
China’s defense ministry announced over the weekend that two senior Chinese generals have been placed under criminal investigation by the Chinese Communist Party. The most powerful officer of the People’s Liberation Army. Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and CMC Gen. Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the PLA joint staff department, face probes for “serious discipline and law violations,” according to a ministry statement.
The CCP Central Committee, the party’s highest governing body, ordered the investigation. Details of the alleged crimes were not disclosed. However, CCP investigations such as those conducted for the two generals are normally the first step in the complete removal from power.
The commission is chaired by Mr. Xi and is the organization that controls the PLA while making decisions on going to war. The latest action reduces the CMC to two members — Mr. Xi and Gen. Zhang Shengmin after the removal of all but one of the six PLA leaders on the panel appointed in 2022. Since that year, Mr. Xi has purged about 120 military officers for alleged corruption or as part of a plan to bolster the senior ranks of the PLA.
Retired U.S. Army Col. Joe Buccino notes that the U.S. National Security Strategy published in November promised to rid the hemisphere of “hostile foreign incursion,” secure our access to “key strategic locations” and deny adversarial ownership of America’s ”strategically vital assets.”
With Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro out, the Trump administration sets out to secure those promises, Mr. Buccino writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times, adding that “it would be smart for the rest of the region to look beyond Venezuela and understand what cooperation with Mr. Trump actually means.
“First, the communist dictatorship in Cuba will no longer be Beijing’s (or anyone else’s) playground of anti-American operations in our hemisphere. The usual games played by other Latin American governments about Cuba will come at a price,” Mr. Buccino writes. “Furthermore, any Chinese military presence in our hemisphere must be shut down and their personnel sent home, or their hosts will face consequences. This has implications for our friends as well as our foes.”
Daniel N. Hoffman, a retired CIA Clandestine Services officer, writes that the case of convicted spy Aldrich “Rick” Ames, who was arrested in Virginia in 1994, “laid the groundwork for a robust counterintelligence strategy that continues to enable the most consequential military operations against our adversaries.
“I happened to be in Finland the day the FBI surrounded Ames outside his home and took him into custody,” writes Mr. Hoffman, an opinion contributor to Threat Status. “It was shocking enough to me that Russia had been running such a high-level CIA penetration, but even more so because during my first year of government service, I worked an interim assignment in the CIA office where Ames was serving as a branch chief. He was aloof and full of hubris and had no time for us junior officers.
“I’ll never forget having to sit through one irretrievably tedious meeting in Ames’ cramped office, while longing to escape his chain-smoking,” Mr. Hoffman writes in a Times op-ed. “Little did I know at the time that I was in the presence of one of the most notorious spies in our history, a man who would transform the CIA’s counterintelligence operations for the rest of my career.”
• Jan. 29 — Pax Silica: Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg on the AI Race and Economic Security, Hudson Institute
Thanks for reading Threat Status. Don’t forget to share it with your friends, who can sign up here. And listen to our weekly podcast available here or wherever you get your podcasts.
