Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that delays in selling a $14 billion arms package to Taiwan are based on worries about shortages in U.S. military production. “This is not about Taiwan in specific, but when we sell something, that means we don’t have it anymore,” Mr. Rubio told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.

The Trump administration agreed to sell $11 billion in arms to Taiwan in December. But a new $14 billion arms package focused on missile defense is being held up despite approval by Congress in January. Arms sales to Taiwan are opposed by China, and the topic was a central factor in the White House talks between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi.

The Chinese president told Mr. Trump behind closed doors Thursday that he hopes the U.S. will oppose Taiwan independence and handle the issue with “prudence” as a foundation for strategic cooperation, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency. In Beijing, a Chinese military spokesman said the U.S. should use “extreme caution” in conducting arms sales to Taiwan.

Ramped-up ballistic missile and drone attacks targeting sites across Saudi Arabia in recent days, including in the holy city of Mecca, is testing the mutual defense pact the kingdom signed last month with Turkey and Pakistan. So far, the Saudis’ new partners have shown little appetite for joining the widening war against Iran and its Houthi proxies.

Pakistan, a key Saudi ally since the 1960s, has had some 8,000 troops stationed in the kingdom for years, along with fighter squadrons, drone units and air defense operations. Still, Islamabad this week was quiet about committing more. Turkey has been similarly noncommittal. Threat Status Special Correspondent Jacob Wirtschafter analyzes the situation in a dispatch from the region.

Retired Pakistani Air Force Maj. Gen. Zahid Mahmood says Islamabad could provide Riyadh with HQ-9/P and LY-80 air-defense systems — both Chinese designs — along with counter-drone weapons, radars and early-warning tools. Chinese hardware already sits inside Saudi defenses: The kingdom has deployed China’s Silent Hunter laser as part of a counter-drone system protecting key sites and U.S.-made Patriot batteries, and it has bought Chinese armed drones.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told The Washington Times’ Tim Constantine in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York that Cairo firmly believes the U.S.-Iran war must end at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. “We believe there is no military solution,” said Mr. Abdelatty, who described Mr. Trump as a “man of peace” capable of ending the conflict. 

Egypt and its neighbors across the Middle East are paying a heavy economic price from the war. Disruptions to commercial ship traffic through the Suez Canal, a key source of revenue for Cairo, are estimated to have cost the country $11.5 billion. “For a country like Egypt, this is big, big money,” Mr. Abdelatty said.

Egypt also has seen a major influx of refugees fleeing the Gaza Strip, the epicenter of Israel’s military campaign against the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group. The foreign minister said his nation views itself as a “main pillar of stability” across the region and is playing a central role — alongside such other regional powers as Qatar, Pakistan and Oman — in trying to facilitate a lasting peace.

Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn reports that the U.S. Navy appears to be standing by its choice of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System over legacy steam catapults for Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, despite Mr. Trump’s criticism of the cutting-edge system.

EMALS uses a linear induction motor beneath the flight deck to launch aircraft from carriers, rather than high-pressure steam from hydraulic catapults. Minnesota-based Kato Engineering last week was awarded a $49.2 million contract for the EMALS’ energy storage subsystem, which accumulates and discharges the massive electrical energy required to launch planes.

The Navy announced this week that it is seeking vendors to provide recirculation pumps for EMALS. The pumps send liquid through the system to cool the power components and motor generators.

In addition to finding a way to “work together to ensure” that AI “is not used for unauthorized hacking, the engineering of vaccine-resistant pathogens or the launch of global cyberattacks,” Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi “must communicate in a timely and secure manner” to ensure that U.S.-China security incidents “do not escalate,” writes Joseph R. DeTrani. 

The summit “should address Taiwan and the South China Sea,” Mr. DeTrani, a former associate director of national intelligence, argues in an op-ed for The Times. “Preventing conflict should be the paramount objective.

“Then there is the nuclear issue. Over the years, China has refused to discuss it with the U.S.,” Mr. DeTrani writes, asserting that “if nuclear risk reduction is the goal, then China should accept the U.S. invitation to discuss nuclear-related issues.”

• Sept. 28 — Rebuilding Venezuela: Progress and Challenges, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 28 — Takeaways from the Trump-Xi Summit: The Economic Security Angles, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Sept. 30 — Regional Reactions to the U.S.-China Summit, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 1 — Winning the Adoption War: Diffusing AI Across the U.S. Military, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Oct. 2 — What’s Next for U.S.-China Relations? A Conversation with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Brookings Institution

• Oct. 12-14 — AUSA Annual Meeting and Expo, Association of the U.S. Army

• Oct. 15 — The Rise and Fall of the U.S.–Pakistan Relationship After 9/11, Stimson Center

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX