Threat Status for Monday, February 16, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
… Poland’s president said Sunday his country should explore developing nuclear defense capabilities, given the ongoing threats from neighboring Russia.
… The British and German defense chiefs issued a joint warning Monday that Europe may need to focus more on defense, as “intelligence” shows “Russia’s military posture has shifted decisively westward.”
… The warning came on the heels of the Munich Security Conference, where the lack of progress in Russia-Ukraine talks was a major theme, while NATO’s secretary-general said Russia is suffering “crazy losses.”
… Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Slovakia on Sunday and Hungary on Monday, as the Trump administration pushes for energy agreements with both.
… President Trump’s critical mineral push is fueling tensions among African nations.
… And questions are swirling over why the Pentagon published — then suddenly unpublished — an expanded list of Chinese military companies linked to the People’s Liberation Army and operating in the United States.
Tensions are rising between China and Japan — a key U.S. security ally in Asia — following Tokyo’s seizure of a Chinese fishing vessel off the Japanese coast. The incident came after Japan’s conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has a notably hawkish posture toward Beijing, won a record number of seats in Japan’s lower house of parliament.
China operates the world’s largest fishing fleet and is frequently accused of predatory trawling practices around the region and around the world. The fleet backs up the Chinese coast guard and navy as a centrally directed “maritime militia,” notably over disputed fishing grounds, and in maritime territorial disputes.
It is possible that Beijing is using the fishing fleet to provoke the Takaichi government in Tokyo. In November, Beijing retaliated strongly when Ms. Takaichi said Japan would consider Chinese military action around the U.S.-aligned island of Taiwan to be an existential threat to Japan — a situation that would trigger the activation of Tokyo’s Self Defense Forces.
European nations have ramped up defense spending in recent years, and some on the continent have credited pressure from Mr. Trump for the change. However, key European leaders fired back at Mr. Rubio’s assertion in a speech at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend that the U.S. wants to renew trans-Atlantic alliances with partners “proud of their heritage” and not “shackled by guilt and shame.”
Mr. Rubio touted the shared civilization and Christian heritage on both continents, telling European leaders to embrace their own national sovereignty and reject political arguments that seek to shame them into accepting unchecked illegal immigration and, in the process, the slow erosion of their own national identities.
Former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, now the top foreign policy official for the European Union, pushed back on Sunday. “Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” she said, arguing that the values embodied by European countries should be applauded, not derided.
The Trump administration has made reducing Chinese dominance of critical mineral supply chains a national security priority, and Mr. Trump’s push to create a critical minerals trading bloc is forcing African nations to take sides. While some have quietly aligned with China, the U.S. has won new allies, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
But growing tensions between the U.S.-aligned nations and the rest of the continent are boiling over. South Africa’s minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, Gwede Mantashe, has accused his Congolese counterpart of selling out to the Americans, according to the Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper.
The allegation reportedly came during an exchange behind closed doors last week at a major mining conference in Cape Town. Threat Status Special Correspondent Joseph Hammond reported on the situation in a dispatch from South Africa, examining how delicate mineral diplomacy is now intertwined with global power politics.
The U.S. military airlifted a next-generation mobile nuclear reactor from California to a facility in Utah over the weekend, marking a key step forward in what the Trump administration has cast as a cutting-edge plan to deliver reliable energy at military facilities.
In a collaboration between the Pentagon and reactor-maker Valar Atomics, a U.S. C-17 aircraft moved the unfueled reactor from March Air Reserve Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Military officials said the reactor is bound for Utah San Rafael Energy Lab to undergo testing and evaluation.
The Pentagon wants to use small, mobile reactors to produce reliable energy that’s not reliant on local electric grids, which could fail or potentially even become targets during a conflict. Nuclear reactors traditionally have been massive structures. The act of moving an entire nuclear reactor via a single military aircraft is a significant and historic step.
Clifford D. May writes that “Iran’s rulers are self-proclaimed jihadis who for 47 years have stated their genocidal goals with exquisite clarity: ‘Death to Israel!’ and ‘Death to America!’
“They are also the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, and, lately, they have been massacring tens of thousands of unarmed Iranians,” writes Mr. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in an op-ed for The Washington Times.
“Similarly, the Hamasniks in the Gaza Strip, also self-proclaimed jihadis despite being seriously battered in the barbaric war they launched, are sticking to their guns — literally and figuratively,” he writes, adding that “President Trump and other Western leaders” might want to hear a “few words of wisdom from Niccolo Machiavelli. … Delaying a conflict doesn’t make it go away; it only gives your enemy time to get stronger while you lose the advantage of initiative.”
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