Threat Status for Friday, September 11, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
… The nation paused Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with solemn ceremonies honoring the 2,977 people killed that morning and the thousands more who have died since from related illnesses.
… Oil prices are climbing higher as Iranian forces say they targeted two U.S. vessels near the Strait of Hormuz and Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized a key port city in Yemen.
… The Houthis are threatening to expand attacks on U.S.-aligned Saudi Arabia.
… Brad Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in an exclusive interview on the latest Threat Status podcast, explains how the war on terror shaped today’s great-power competition and how China and Russia are propping up Iran’s war machine.
… Mike “Woody” Woodhouse, a retired U.S. Army officer who is now vice president of Space, Missile and Air Defense at Leonardo DRS, takes us inside the fast-evolving world of advanced missile defense in the latest Threat Status Influencers exclusive video.
… Joseph Sany and Paul-Simon Handy take stock of the challenges and opportunities facing a major U.S.-Africa infrastructure deal in an eye-opening piece published this week by the Institute for Security Studies.
… And retired Air Force Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, a former National Security Agency director and former head of U.S. Cyber Command, was tapped this week to be a principal at strategic consulting firm WestExec Advisors.
Throughout its 25 years, the post-9/11 war on terrorism and all the conflicts that branched from it — including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa — defined presidencies, exacted a staggering human cost, remade the pillars of the federal government and exposed the hard limits of what raw American military might can achieve.
The quarter-century U.S. fight against Islamic extremist terrorism paved the way for today’s global state of play. Emerging rivals such as China spent the past two decades closing military and technological gaps with a United States that, for many years, was more focused on battling terrorist networks such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State than preparing for a major multidomain, great-power war.
Other reverberations can be seen in the U.S. war against Iran, long considered the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and the sponsor of extremist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. The Trump administration’s reluctance to commit ground troops to the Iran conflict can be traced back to the scars inflicted by the war in Afghanistan, widely considered the longest conflict in American history, and the 2003 ground invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as well as the ill-fated nation-building endeavors that accompanied both.
Ambassador Raymond Greene, the top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan, says the island democracy’s military is applying lessons on modern warfare from the conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East, while adopting its own asymmetric warfare tools to prevent a war with China.
In rare public remarks to a defense conference in Taipei this week, Mr. Greene also said a war with China over Taiwan would have a greater impact on the world economy than World War II. The upcoming U.S. visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping — slated for Sept. 24 — will seek to lower the risk of a conflict, the ambassador said.
Taiwan’s key advantage is favorable geography — the 90-mile-wide Taiwan Strait that acts as a buffer with the mainland. “To deter conflict, Taiwan doesn’t need to demonstrate that it could win a war outright,” Mr. Greene said. “It simply needs to convince an adversary that it would struggle to successfully land a large ground force in heavily urbanized, mountainous terrain and sustain it across 90 miles of open, turbulent waters.”
Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Luke J. Lindberg said in an exclusive interview with Foreign Affairs Correspondent Vaughn Cockayne that the USDA is working to rebuild Venezuela’s standing as a U.S. farm export market.
Specifically, the USDA is expanding a package of credit, trade, export-promotion and capacity-building tools to deepen farm sales to Venezuela as the Trump administration moves to expand ties with the Caracas government and access to food following June’s devastating earthquakes and the U.S. Special Forces raid that ousted former Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro.
The suite of opportunities promoted by the USDA includes potentially encouraging the sale of U.S. farm products to Venezuelan importers via the GSM-102 Export Credit Guarantee Program. The program acts as a safety net for American exporters, with the USDA effectively guaranteeing repayment even if a buyer defaults — a mechanism that could make investing in a riskier market such as Venezuela more attractive to U.S. companies.
It’s been a vintage week for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. On Tuesday, he commissioned a nuclear-capable destroyer, bristling with on-deck weaponry. On Wednesday, the first trucks rolled over a road bridge across the Tumen River, expanding transport options between North Korea and Russia beyond a pre-existing rail bridge and sea links.
Also on Wednesday, the nation marked the 78th anniversary of its founding under Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr. Xi sent messages of amity.
On increasingly good terms with Mr. Xi, fully backed by Mr. Putin in return for his support for the war in Ukraine and with President Trump keen to renew bilateral summitry, Mr. Kim’s diplomatic star shines brightly. Domestically, no known opposition exists, his long-dormant economy is growing and his combat-tested conventional force and expanding nuclear deterrent make his rule unassailable.
Joseph R. DeTrani, a former associate director of national intelligence, examines the dangers associated with Mr. Xi’s promotion of an alternative model to Western alliances — one with China in the lead — during the recent 25th anniversary session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Mr. Xi “urged developing nations and the Global South to leverage ‘SCO wisdom’ to press for a more equitable, orderly multipolar world and to reform global governance institutions,” Mr. DeTrani writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times, noting that “the secretary-general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, and other guest delegations were in attendance for the anniversary session.
“It appears that Mr. Xi’s exhortations for a more multipolar world resonate with several developing countries and the Global South,” writes Mr. DeTrani, who asserts that “any real or perceived tension between the U.S. and member countries within NATO, the Quad or AUKUS will make Mr. Xi’s efforts … more attractive to developing countries and the Global South,” referring to the partnership among the U.S., India, Japan and Australia and the alliance among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.
• Sept. 16 — The Transatlantic Watchtower: Iceland’s Role in Great Power Competition, Hudson Institute
• Sept. 17 — A Conversation with Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg on Securing America’s Artificial Intelligence Supply Chain, American Enterprise Institute
• Sept. 22-23 — Nuclear Energy Policy Summit 2026, Atlantic Council
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