Threat Status for Tuesday, February 10, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
The CIA is trying to “turbocharge” its access to advanced private tech amid growing U.S.-China competition.
… Pakistan’s president says Taliban rule over Afghanistan has created conditions similar to the pre-9/11 era.
… U.S. Southern Command says it hit another suspected narco-trafficking vessel — the 39th since strikes began in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.
… Indonesia plans to send some 8,000 troops to Gaza under the U.S.-backed peace plan.
… A senior Labor Party member in London tells Threat Status British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is unlikely to be forced to resign.
… A Russian military jet made an overnight visit to North Korea on Monday.
… Cuba is running out of airline fuel as the Trump administration ramps up pressure.
… Chinese and South Korean officials held rare defense talks last week, discussing a possible resumption of long-suspended joint maritime search-and-rescue drills.
… A Defense Department employee has been charged with working as a money mule for a Nigerian fraud network.
… And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is likely to skip a major NATO summit in Brussels next month.
The Taliban government controlling Afghanistan has created conditions “similar to or worse than” those that gripped the war-torn nation prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States, according to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who issued the warning days after Islamic State terrorists carried out a deadly attack in Islamabad.
Mr. Zardari made the remarks this week while thanking the international community for condemning Friday’s suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the Pakistani capital that killed 31 worshippers and wounded 169. The Pakistani president’s comments are likely to outrage the Taliban government in Kabul and stir frustration in New Delhi, both of which have condemned Friday’s suicide attack.
Mr. Zardari said India is “assisting the Taliban regime and threatening not only Pakistan but regional and global peace.” The previous Afghan Taliban government, which controlled Kabul from 1996 to 2001, sheltered al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
President Trump on Monday threatened to block the opening of a bridge between Michigan and Ontario until the U.S. is given control of half of it as well as adequate compensation. The president also slammed Canada for cozying up to China.
His comments were the latest broadside against Canada, as tensions soar between the major neighboring trading partners. Trump administration officials have been holding covert meetings with a fringe group seeking to separate the oil-rich province of Alberta from the rest of Canada.
Ottawa, meanwhile, has been working to increase its trade relationship with Beijing amid frustration over Mr. Trump’s whiplash tariff policy and the rising costs it brings. Mr. Trump recently threatened to slap Canada with a 100% tariff if the country makes a trade deal with China and criticized Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, Switzerland, in which he strongly denounced the American president.
A growing chorus of voices across Britain’s political spectrum has called for Mr. Starmer — the Labor Party leader — to resign over his ties to Peter Mandelson, whose name appears in the Epstein files. Mr. Starmer appointed Mr. Mandelson in 2024 as ambassador to the United States, placing him at the center of Britain’s most important diplomatic relationship with its longtime ally.
Despite the mounting controversy in London, a senior Labor member of Parliament tells Threat Status that Mr. Starmer is unlikely to be forced to resign. However, the political fight is likely to grow.
After 14 years in the political wilderness, the Labor Party returned to power after a July 2024 general election victory. The election signaled further fragmentation of the British electorate, with the populist right-wing Reform Party entering Parliament for the first time. Meanwhile, far-left opponents of Mr. Starmer, including former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, entered Parliament as independents.
A first step to winning the cognitive war against China “is to acknowledge that our national security leaders remain unaware, unprepared and unarmed to fight it,” writes Edward Haugland, a retired federal senior executive and U.S. Air Force veteran. “It is ill-defined by many analysts and functional experts who wrongly link the definition of cognitive war to a specific function, when, in fact, it crosses any and all functions.
“China has used TikTok and other social media to conduct surveillance, targeting and disinformation campaigns,” Mr. Haugland writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times. “It controls the majority of rare earth minerals and produces the majority of critical antibiotics. It has infiltrated spies into varied federal, state and local governments.
“To start winning this war, we must understand that there are no limits to the means we must apply,” he writes. “The Defense Department is not the right lead; no one department is. We must forge a new foundation for national security that aligns expertise, authorities, capabilities and capacities across all national functional areas, public and private, to support defense and drive proactive offensive operations.”
For too long, Iran has been “allowed to establish a strategic footprint in Latin America that directly threatens U.S. national security,” Emilio T. Gonzalez, a retired U.S. intelligence officer, writes in a Times op-ed.
“Leftist Latin American regimes were passive, if not complicit, in allowing Iran’s growing presence in the region,” writes Mr. Gonzalez, who argues that “Iran’s presence will diminish as President Trump’s emphasis on democracy in Latin America takes hold.
“For the first time in more than two decades, Venezuela, Iran’s primary base of operations, is under an interim leadership that the United States can influence,” he writes. “Bolivia, Iran’s secondary hub, is under new leadership seeking to repair ties with Washington.”
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