Braxton Taylor
At $142 billion, the White House claims it has “signed the largest defense sales agreement in history” following President Trump’s arrival to the Middle East this week for talks with regional officials, including Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday.
The equipment allegedly falls under five categories: “(1) air force advancement and space capabilities, (2) air and missile defense, (3) maritime and coastal security, (4) border security and land forces modernization, and (5) information and communication systems upgrades,” according to a fact sheet, which was short on specifics for those defense-related deals.
Notable: The White House touted a Saudi investment pledge for artificial intelligence, including “$20 billion in AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the United States.”
Several leading U.S. AI business leaders tagged along with Trump for the MBS talks. Those attendees included Sam Altman of ChatGPT; Jensen Huang from Nvidia; Ruth Porat of Alphabet; and Amazon’s Andy Jassy, according to the New York Times. Eleven of the 20 executives donated to Trump’s inauguration fund, journalist Judd Legum reports.
While in Riyadh, Trump also met with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Shara, a former al-Qaeda commander who took over in Damascus after a rebel offensive toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. He also spent five years in a U.S. military prison in Iraq, and until December had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. He’s since worked to moderate his image in order to gain the support of the international community and open Syria to business and investments previously closed off under Assad’s brutal rule.
New: The White House announced it is lifting sanctions on Syria “in order to give them a chance at greatness,” Trump said Tuesday in Riyadh. “It’s their time to shine. We’re taking them all off,” Trump said.
Expert reax: “There’s no understating what this means to ~25 million Syrians — 90% of whom live under the poverty line after 50+yrs of Assad rule & 14yrs of war,” Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute tweeted Tuesday. Anticipated impacts include lower food and fuel prices, the latter of which already dropped 30% in the past 36 hours, Lister noted.
Trump’s first impression of Syria’s al-Shara: He’s “very good, a young attractive guy, tough guy, [with a] strong past. He’s a fighter, he’s got a real shot at pulling it together,” Trump said Wednesday.
Coverage continues below the fold…
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1955, the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact came into existence, and lasted until February 1991.
Commentary: China’s Mideast tech deals increasingly belie the narrative of close U.S.-Gulf security cooperation, write BluePath Labs’ Tye Graham and New America’s Peter W. Singer in the latest edition of “The China Intelligence.”
“The Persian Gulf is quickly turning into China’s favorite testbed for the next-generation of digital infrastructure,” they write. “The result not only runs counter to the narrative of close U.S.-Gulf cooperation, but also presents major security challenges. The United States bases many of its regional forces within or near the same urban areas now wired by Chinese gear.” Read on, here.
Trump is in Qatar today for talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Al-Thani visited Moscow last month for talks with Vladimir Putin inside the Kremlin.
Al-Thani is looking to “gift” a $400 million luxury airliner to Trump so the president can have his own long-desired Air Force One. Since his first term, he’s been trying to customize the U.S. president’s official plane featuring livery more closely resembling his campaign aircraft, ditching the iconic aircraft’s JFK-era light blue in favor of a navy and gold mix.
By the way: Trump’s Qatari Air Force One would likely pose “huge security risks,” Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported Tuesday. Overhauling the Qatari royal family’s Boeing 747-8 to meet the rigorous standards required of a U.S. presidential aircraft would take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. After all, in addition to carrying the president around the world, presidential jets are part of the nuclear command and control structure so the president can fight a nuclear war. “There are going to be huge security risks with this. No question about it. But Trump can choose to accept them. He’s the commander in chief,” one former Air Force official said.
Given Trump’s desired timeline (by the end of the year), the jet could end up lacking classified systems, secure communications, and defensive capabilities typically required in a presidential jet, and the program might not have enough time to thoroughly strip the jet to sweep for bugs and other spy devices, Decker reports. The program’s initial requirements are part of the reason Boeing is behind in building the new Air Force One jets. The VC-25B aircraft were originally scheduled for delivery in 2024, but delays have pushed projections to 2028 or 2029.
Another possible snag: The Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause outlaws a president from accepting an emolument or gift from a foreign government without permission from Congress.
ICYMI, there’s been at least one other potentially suspect Qatar-Trump deal: “On the short flight to Qatar, I asked President Trump how it came to be that a firm backed by the Emirati government used the Trump family company’s digital coins for a $2 billion deal,” Jonathan Swan of the New York Times reports. “Trump insisted he did not know about the deal,” and told Swan, “I don’t know anything about it. I really don’t know anything about it. But I’m a big crypto fan, I will tell you.”
Expert reax: “This also runs afoul of the foreign emoluments clause,” argue Norman Eisen and Richard W. Painter, who both served as ethics counsels during both Democratic and Republican administrations, writing Wednesday in the New York Times. “The conflict of interest is clear. How can we trust someone who is in charge of regulating crypto if he could benefit from lax regulation?”
Additional reading:
Around the Defense Department
Developing: JSOC commander likely to be SOCOM pick. The Trump administration is expected to nominate Vice Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley to lead U.S. Special Operations Command, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Bradley, a Navy SEAL who now leads Joint Special Operations Command, is the frontrunner to replace Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, who took command of SOCOM in August 2022. A former senior military official who remains close to SOCOM and the special operations community said the White House “loves Mitch because of what [naval special operations] are doing in Yemen. And he is a smart and personable guy.”
Worth noting: Bradley is also in the running for the nomination to become chief of naval operations. The CNO’s post has been vacant since January, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti. More, here.
Update: The Air Force’s F-47 fighter jet will fly an estimated 70 percent farther without refueling than today’s F-22s, allowing tankers to stay farther from the fray, which is a key advantage in a potential Pacific conflict, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported Tuesday citing an infographic posted online Tuesday by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin.
The estimate pulls back the veil just a tiny bit on the highly classified F-47, of which officials have said little more than that it will outperform today’s fifth-generation F-22s and F-35s. The graphic says the F-47 will fly faster than Mach 2. By comparison, the Raptor has a combat radius of 590 nautical miles and also flies faster than Mach 2. The F-35 has a combat radius of 670 nautical miles and a top speed of Mach 1.6.
Also: The F-47 will be operational in “2025 to 2029,” according to the graphic, but the service has not clarified whether that means first flight, initial operating capability, or something else. Air Force officials have previously said the new jet would fly before the end of Trump’s administration in 2029. Read more, here.
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