Congress Quietly Moves To Intertwine US, Israeli Militaries On Formal Level

There are some stealth moves afoot by the Trump administration and Congress, which are poised to formalize the long-standing close US-Israel relationship, on the level of a formal defense pact.

A sweeping new legislative proposal in Congress is moving to more deeply intertwine and combine the two countries’ military arsenals. The House of Representatives’ version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released this past week contains Section 224, devoted to military integration with the name “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

The section lays out that the Untied States has already historically contributed an inflation-adjusted $200 billion in military assistance to Israel since 1948, and seeks to more permanently solidify this relationship on a legal basis.

Responsible Statecraft has reported that “Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.”

The report said the new congressional provision “would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech” while further proposing “network integration” and “data fusion.”

Crucially, this would in effect combine both countries’ military data, and further formalize intelligence-sharing. While all of these things already happen to a large degree, it is at the moment still subject to the policies and direction of whatever US administration happens to be in office.

If passed, the new legislation would make this automatic and basically irreversible – again, akin to a formal defense pact or treaty.

What follows is some fuller reporting from Responsible Statecraft, which warms that “the result could well be a US political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East“…

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The US and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the US has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the US provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the US providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the US and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the US beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in US politics: jobs in the US By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on US soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.

The ambitious scheme is unlikely to be met with much resistance from either the mainstream of the Republican or Democratic parties; however, the Dems have tended to vote against giving President Trump free reign regarding Operation Epic Fury. War Powers votes tend to break down along party lines, with the GOP typically shooting down these efforts of Congressional oversight.

But this could sail through with little or nothing in the way of public debate, or even knowledge, at all. It means future generations of taxpayers could find themselves even more deeply on the hook for the permanent defense of a foreign nation.