Threat Status for Tuesday, June 30, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang.
A major joint patrol by Russian and Chinese bombers over the Sea of Japan and the western Pacific is raising alarm bells in the region.
… The Trump administration is expected to announce Wednesday that it won’t renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
… The uncertainty surrounding the talks raises more questions about the fate of the fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire, which was already in danger of collapsing entirely.
… Overland AI won a contract to build autonomous ground vehicles for the Marine Corps.
… Malaysia says it has extended for another year the search for the wreckage of Flight MH370, which disappeared 12 years ago.
… Mr. Trump is ratcheting up the pressure on Syria to take the lead battling Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
… Leonardo DRS CEO John Baylouny discusses what his company is doing to expand U.S. shipbuilding capacity in an exclusive conversation with Threat Status.
… And prosecutors in Monaco say the suspect who placed an explosive device that injured three people — including a reported Ukrainian tycoon— is still at large.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz is tracking the latest developments out of the Pacific, where strategic bombers and warplanes from China and Russia conducted a joint patrol over the Sea of Japan, East China Sea and western Pacific over the weekend.
It’s the first such joint patrol since December, and it comes at a delicate moment for the region. The six-hour patrol included between 10 and 15 warplanes, identified in regional government statements as four nuclear-capable Chinese H-6 and four Russian bombers — two Tu-95s and two Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft.
In response, U.S. F-35 jets, Japanese F-15 jets and unspecified South Korean military aircraft were dispatched to monitor the flights, according to allied military statements and video footage released by the Russian military.
Mr. Gertz has more context on the flights, including how both the Chinese and Russian militaries characterized the exercises and the public rebukes they drew from both Japan and South Korea.
There’s more to unpack from the full-blown revival of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, which had been effectively defunct for more than a year.
The remade board will be led by Amb. Robert Lighthizer, a former U.S. trade representative. Former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota will serve as the board’s vice chair. The body will also include Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which invests in several defense technology companies, including Anduril. The company builds autonomous systems and software platforms for military applications.
Here’s why all of this matters: The Pentagon is undergoing sweeping changes on many fronts, from the military’s force posture in Europe to its relationship with private defense contractors. The Defense Policy Board will, at least on paper, play a role in key policy decisions on those and many other high-stakes issues.
The U.S. nuclear program was built for a world that no longer exists. And China’s emergence as a nuclear power, along with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, means America must make massive investments in its nuclear arsenal.
That was a key takeaway from Sen. Deb Fischer’s keynote address last week at a major naval power forum in Washington, hosted by Threat Status. Ms. Fischer, a Nebraska Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. needs to rapidly scale its triad of nuclear options to respond to the growing threat posed by China’s atomic ambitions.
She specifically cited the need for more nuclear-capable bombers.
“One hundred bombers are not enough. We need at least 200 to meet those current demands,” she said.
The full video of Ms. Fischer’s address is available here. And there is much more exclusive content from IndoPac 2026 | Naval Dominance: Shipbuilding, Autonomy & C2, which was hosted by the Threat Status national security team at the U.S. Navy Memorial.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, more commonly known as FISA, has lapsed. That means national security agencies have lost one of their most powerful tools for tracking foreign targets at a time when terrorism and espionage threats directed at the U.S. are surging.
While U.S. intelligence collection will obviously continue, there are multiple reasons why this development is deeply important to national security.
Here’s one of the biggest: An active intelligence professional told Defense and National Security Correspondent John T. Seward that as much as 60% of the information in Mr. Trump’s daily intelligence update involves FISA-labeled intelligence in one way or another. That means the daily intel briefs funneled directly to the commander in chief could eventually be impacted by the loss of FISA.
The controversy over FISA — as it has for decades — stems from the collection of Americans’ data and the civil liberties concerns associated with it. Multiple government agencies with access to the intelligence can search a large database without a warrant, even using words or tags focused on U.S. citizens, as long as the data was collected in connection with a foreign person.
There is good reason for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be scared, writes Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a member of The Washington Times Editorial Board. The once-feared Russian ruler reportedly has retreated into secret bunkers, and his inner circle is banned from using internet-connected phones or public transportation. Kremlin officials, cooks, photographers and bodyguards are under intense surveillance.
Those moves seem driven by fear of a potential coup or even an assassination attempt, as questions grow about the long-term fallout Russia faces because of its war against Ukraine. Mr. Putin has navigated tight political situations before. But a unique combination of factors exists this time, Mr. Shapiro argues, and the Russian leader has limited time if he wants to avoid the same fate as former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
“Mr. Putin understands the power of perception, which is why he built his career on projecting strength. He probably recognizes that the Soviet perception of Khrushchev as a defeated leader is what forced him out,” Mr. Shapiro writes. “For Mr. Putin, the clock is ticking. If the Russian ruler is as smart as he thinks he is, he will seek a way out of Ukraine now. This would give him some plausible deniability, shielding him from a potentially devastating defeat — and consequences far worse than Khrushchev’s countryside exile.”
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