NDAA Section 224 Aims To Fuse US & Israeli Military Industry

by Matt Agorist,The Free Thought Project:

(Common Dreams) At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the US to the Israeli military more than ever before.

Buried in the House’sversionof the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel DefenseTechnologyCooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine theUS militarywith the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflationadjusted) in military assistanceIsraelhas received from the US since its founding in 1948.

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Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israelimilitary-industrial complexcooperation. 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 itsNATOpartners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via theDefence Production Action Plan. And, as the No. 1arms dealerin 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’sglobal 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 theIsrael lobbyand its robust network of socialmediainfluencers. 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 inMississippiandArkansas, 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 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 theMiddle East.