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U.S. Department of Defense

U.S. Department of Defense

Federal Agency

Appears in 14 stories

Stories

Trump freezes $28 billion in east coast wind farms

Rule Changes

Coordinating national security review with Interior

On December 22, 2025, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum paused all major offshore wind construction on the East Coast: Vineyard Wind, Revolution Wind, Sunrise Wind, Empire Wind, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. These five projects, representing $28 billion in investment and enough power for millions of homes, halted on orders from Washington citing radar interference and national security risks near military installations.

Updated 33 minutes ago

China's silent invasion: hackers embedded in America's critical infrastructure

Force in Play

Publishing annual assessments of Chinese military capabilities

Chinese hackers have burrowed deep into America's power grids, water systems, telecommunications networks, and transportation infrastructure—not to steal secrets, but to flip a kill switch. The Pentagon's December 2024 report confirms Beijing expects to fight and win a war over Taiwan by 2027.

Updated 59 minutes ago

Trump keeps troops in the capital—for now: appeals court freezes order to end D.C. guard deployment

Force in Play

Executing extended deployment through 2026 amid litigation

The troops were supposed to start leaving Washington. Instead, the D.C. Circuit hit pause and let President Trump's National Guard deployment keep rolling while judges decide who really holds the keys to security in the nation's capital.

Updated Yesterday

Trump’s Venezuela “blockade” turns sanctions into a Navy problem

Force in Play

Backstopping interdiction threat with ships, aircraft, and regional deployments.

Trump's Venezuela "blockade" threat is now backed by policy. Washington has added new Venezuela-linked sanctions and also targeted Iran's shadow-fleet network. Together, these expand the pool of already-sanctioned vessels that the U.S. Navy could board if they try to trade with Venezuela.

Updated Yesterday

Trump turns the southern border into military ground

Force in Play

Operating National Defense Areas and deploying troops on the border

Donald Trump has quietly turned long stretches of the southern border into de facto military bases. Under a new system of National Defense Areas, soldiers can stop migrants, hold them, and help prosecutors charge them as trespassers on military land.

Updated 5 days ago

House’s $900 billion defense bill ties troop raise, Ukraine aid and a boat-strike backlash

Rule Changes

Gains record $901 billion authorization and acquisition reforms; faces travel‑budget restrictions if boat‑strike footage not provided to Congress.

President Trump signed a nearly $901 billion defense bill into law on December 18, 2025, cementing the 65th consecutive year Congress has passed a National Defense Authorization Act. It delivers troops a 3.8% pay raise and locks in $800 million for Ukraine weapons over two years.

Updated 6 days ago

Record $901 billion US defense bill tests Trump-era military priorities and Ukraine commitment

Rule Changes

Implementing NDAA directives on force posture, Ukraine assistance, DEI policy rollback, and border deployments

Congress passed the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2025, authorizing a record $901 billion in national security spending. The House approved the final compromise 312–112 on December 10, and Trump signed it December 18 without an Oval Office ceremony.

Updated 6 days ago

Trump’s 2025 national security strategy revives Monroe Doctrine and pivots U.S. power to the Americas

Force in Play

Implements hemispheric military posture and anti‑cartel strikes

On December 5, 2025, the Trump administration released a 33-page National Security Strategy declaring a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The document formally revives the 19th-century idea of the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence and promises to reassert American preeminence across the Americas.

Updated 6 days ago

Pentagon orders U.S. troop withdrawal from Germany after Trump-Merz Iran rift

Force in Play

Executing the withdrawal

U.S. troops have been stationed in Germany continuously since 1945. On May 1, 2026, the Pentagon began rolling back a piece of that posture: roughly 5,000 service members—about one in seven Americans currently in the country—will leave over the next 6 to 12 months, taking a full brigade with them. A long-range fires battalion that the U.S. had pledged to deploy at the 2024 NATO summit, designed to put deeper-strike weapons on alliance soil for the first time since the Cold War, was cancelled in the same order.

Updated May 2

Pentagon threatens to blacklist Anthropic over military AI safeguards

Rule Changes

Designated Anthropic supply chain risk; shifting to OpenAI/xAI

Anthropic's Claude became the first commercial AI model deployed on classified U.S. military networks in late 2024. Over sixteen months later, the Department of Defense formally designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk"—a label historically reserved for foreign adversaries—after the company refused to permit Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons. The unprecedented action followed failed negotiations and President Trump's directive to cease federal use of Anthropic tech, forcing contractors to cut ties.

Updated Mar 10

Ukraine turns battlefield drone expertise into diplomatic currency

New Capabilities

Procurement talks ongoing as Ukraine seals Gulf-wide deals; requested initial specialist deployments

Russia began bombing Ukrainian cities with Iranian-made Shahed drones in October 2022. Over three and a half years later, Ukraine has transformed that threat into an exportable edge: low-cost interceptor drones, as cheap as $2,100 each, now handling over 70% of Shahed kills. The Pentagon, NATO allies, and Gulf states sought these systems, culminating in Ukraine's Gulf defense pacts—first with Saudi Arabia on March 27, 2026, followed by 10-year deals with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar on March 28 during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's tour. Ukraine has deployed over 200 counter-drone specialists to Gulf states, with the Pentagon and others in procurement talks.

Updated Mar 6

Pentagon AI contracts reshape the line between Silicon Valley and the military

Rule Changes

Transitioning AI provider from Anthropic to OpenAI

For decades, the United States military chose its weapons contractors and the contractors complied. Artificial intelligence changed that equation. On March 3, OpenAI and the Department of Defense amended a freshly signed AI contract to explicitly ban the use of the technology for domestic surveillance of American citizens—a concession the Pentagon had refused to grant Anthropic just days earlier, triggering that company's blacklisting from all federal agencies.

Updated Mar 3

America's race to mass-produce combat drones

New Capabilities

Program administrator

The Pentagon spent $398 million on small drones in 2022. Four years later, as Ukraine demonstrated that $400 drones could destroy $10 million tanks, Congress authorized $1.7 billion—a fourfold increase. Now the Department of Defense has launched its most ambitious small-drone initiative ever: a $1.1 billion program to field more than 300,000 one-way attack drones by 2028, with the first 30,000 expected by mid-2026.

Updated Feb 4

The military pay equation: Congress races to fix recruitment and retention through wallet

Rule Changes

Implementing congressionally-mandated compensation increases

On January 1, 2026, every U.S. service member got a 3.8% pay raise—bringing an E-1's monthly check to $2,407. It's the third consecutive above-inflation increase Congress has delivered, part of a scramble to fix a system where junior troops qualified for food stamps and all branches except the Marines missed recruitment targets in 2023. The Army hit just 77% of its goal that year. Then Congress opened the spigot: 4.6% in 2023, 5.2% in 2024, and a historic 14.5% for junior enlisted in 2025. The strategy worked: fiscal 2025 delivered the strongest recruiting performance in 15 years, with all branches averaging 103% of goals and fiscal 2026 starting equally strong.

Updated Jan 30