TRT World

Lawmakers target Section 1217 of the Senate Armed Services Committee bill and Section 219 of the House-passed measure, which would boost co-production, technology transfers and joint research across AI and cyberwarfare.

Warning of Israeli leverage

The senators stressed that deep integration would hand Israel leverage over American military assets.

They pointed to the Israeli government’s prior use of co-production terms on missile defence to block the transfer of American Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine, warning that the initiative would embed Israeli technology into the American defence industrial base and make future policy shifts costly.

The letter also noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly claimed credit for the framework to shift defence ties “from aid to partnership.”

The senators cautioned that this strategy seeks to replace transparent Foreign Military Financing channels with opaque defence acquisitions, particularly after Netanyahu boasted about seeking a confrontation with Iran for decades, a war that lawmakers characterised as a “strategic disaster” for American interests.

The coalition also demanded excluding Section 618 from the intelligence authorisation title, which mandates expanding intelligence sharing with Israel while prohibiting the executive branch from suspending, reducing, or materially limiting that cooperation.

Tying the president’s hands from adjusting intelligence sharing would be “irresponsible,” the lawmakers argued, particularly after public disclosures revealed that the Defence Intelligence Agency recently elevated the counterintelligence threat from Israel to its “highest level.”

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