Threat Status for Friday, July 24, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
… The Pentagon just inked a nearly $7 billion software consolidation contract with Oracle.
… Steve Bowsher, CEO of CIA-backed venture capital fund and nonprofit In-Q-Tel, says “we are witnessing a profound transformation in the way wars are fought.”
… Joseph Wu, the secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council, says the “scale and regularity of Chinese military activity around Taiwan make complacency impossible.”
… Colombia’s conservative president-elect says he wants to restart the U.S.-backed “Plan Colombia” and create a Medellin-based regional training center against drug trafficking and transnational threats.
… The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will impose tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 countries that failed to enforce bans on goods produced with forced labor.
… And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has tallied nearly 600,000 deportations since Mr. Trump took office.
Rep. Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican and rising star on the GOP’s national security policy landscape, weighs in during an exclusive interview on the latest Threat Status podcast on whether Mr. Trump should declare victory and end the Iran war.
“You can logically make an argument and follow what Ronald Reagan did in 1984, following the Beirut, Lebanon, bombing, where we lost 241 American service members, where they just concluded we’re going to continue having problems in this region as long as we are there,” says Mr. Harrigan, a West Point graduate and a former Army Special Forces Green Beret who served two tours in Afghanistan.
“What would that de-escalation do right now? Well, it would certainly relieve pressure on global energy markets,” he says. “It would relieve pressure on our regional allies that are being harassed by Iran. It would take this out of the forefront of the media for the November election. And it would keep our troops out of harm’s way in the short term. … Those are all significant positive impacts.”
Mr. Trump clarified the terms of the potential U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal on Thursday, saying it won’t happen unless Riyadh formally recognizes Israel’s existence as a country and normalizes diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Mr. Trump also said that if the deal comes together, the Saudis would be prohibited from producing nuclear weapons.
The developments came a day after unease emanated from Israeli leaders and several Republican lawmakers over the deal that was hastily signed this week in Washington with few details made public. Meanwhile, the administration scrambled to underscore the U.S.-Saudi security partnership amid attacks on Saudi oil ships by Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea.
Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that the deal won’t go forward unless Riyadh joins the Abraham Accords, the 2020 agreements that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Kazakhstan have signed the accords, while Sudan signed the general declaration but has not completed bilateral normalization with Israel.
The $1.15 trillion version of the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill that was passed by the House this week calls on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to conduct an assessment of the Chinese Communist Party’s “malign influence” in South Korea and the intelligence risks it poses to American military forces based in the region.
The bill calls for the Pentagon to produce a report on the situation and include an assessment of the growth of Chinese technology companies in South Korea and whether they represent defense risks. A spokeswoman on Capitol Hill said the provision was added during markup of the bill last month and was sponsored by Rep. Ronny Jackson, Texas Republican.
The measure, which must be reconciled with a Senate version of the defense bill, reflects Republican concerns that the government of liberal South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is moving the country closer to its communist Chinese neighbor. China has been Seoul’s largest trade partner, just ahead of the United States, in recent years, despite the close U.S.-South Korea military treaty alliance.
The Pentagon announced the massive deal — worth nearly $7 billion over the coming decade — with American multinational technology behemoth Oracle late Thursday, covering the entire Defense Department, Coast Guard and intelligence community.
Oracle said the “Enterprise Software Initiative” deal will speed up the Pentagon’s procurement process. Under the deal, military departments, agencies, offices and their private-sector contractors “can expedite the procurement of Oracle commercial products and services,” the company said.
The deal comes at a crucial moment for Oracle, which saw its stock price drop by 39% so far this year. It also comes at a politically delicate time for the company’s co-founder and former longtime CEO, Larry Ellison, widely viewed as a close ally of Mr. Trump.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “famously argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, sparked NATO’s rejuvenation and return to its core mission,” writes retired CIA Clandestine Services Officer Daniel N. Hoffman.
“European NATO members, especially, should have seen the ominous warnings when Mr. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014,” Mr. Hoffman, a regular opinion contributor to Threat Status, writes in a column for The Washington Times.
“They should also have seen it in Moscow’s transformation of defector Alexander Litvinenko into a polonium-210 human dirty bomb in downtown London in 2006 and in Russia’s 2018 use of a Novichok nerve agent against former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal,” he writes. “Yet it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his fellow citizens who awakened Europe from its post-Cold War slumber by courageously defending their nation against the Kremlin’s barbaric February 2022 invasion.”
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