The D Brief: USAID lockout; Musk seizes US payment system; Global markets tumble; Army aviation’s bad year; And a bit more.

Musk continues assault on USAID, seizes America’s purse

Just in: Staffers have been locked out of the U.S. Agency for International Development headquarters in downtown D.C., after Elon Musk said Donald Trump approved a shutdown of the congressionally established foreign-aid agency, the Associated Press reports.

Just Security: “Dissolving USAID would be a final assault on the foreign aid agency, where the administration already has issued a stop-work order for huge swaths of development assistance and other aid, abruptly put at least 56 of its senior career staffers on administrative leave, and laid off several hundred contractors working directly for the agency. Such an action, however, likely would go far beyond the executive branch’s actual legal authority.”

Musk announced the coming shutdown of USAID over the weekend after sharing a series of hostile posts toward the agency—simultaneously emphasizing support from certain Republicans to reduce the government costs and accusing Democrats of criminal behavior for expressing concern about how Musk and his aides may be breaking laws concerning unauthorized access to classified information. 

“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk tweeted at 2:34 am ET Monday. “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing. That’s why it’s got to go. It’s beyond repair,” Musk posted shortly afterward. 

Background: Musk’s “comments come after the [Trump] administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams” because they “lacked high enough security clearance to access that information,” the Associated Press reported Sunday. However, “Members of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, eventually did gain access Saturday to the aid agency’s classified information, which includes intelligence reports,” a former official told AP.

Senate Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee sent an urgent letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the episode at USAID. The lawmakers requested an “immediate update about the access of USAID’s headquarters, including whether the individuals who accessed the headquarters were authorized to be there and by whom, whether all individuals who accessed classified spaces have active security clearances at the appropriate level, what they were seeking to access, if any [personally-identifiable information] of American citizens was breached, and whether any review is underway regarding potential unauthorized access to sensitive personnel information and classified materials.” 

“This incident as a whole raises deep concerns about the protection and safeguarding of matters related to U.S. national security,” the senators warned. Read more, here. 

House Foreign Affairs Committee Dems shared their own message of alarm Sunday afternoon, writing on Musk’s social media platform, “DOGE’s attempt to bulldoze its way into classified systems is part of a broader agenda to dismantle US foreign aid and soft power.

“Broligarchs don’t get an all-access pass to America’s most sensitive info,” the House Democrats said. “Our security and global leadership are not for sale,” they added. Musk replied to the tweet, writing in accusation, “You have committed a crime.” 

New: Musk is also “shutting down some payments to federal contractors” as part of his “effort to modernize federal information technology,” Bloomberg reports. 

Musk was also given “direct access to a payment system that distributes trillions of dollars to Americans each year,” the Wall Street Journal reported, describing his latest moves as “the start of a far-reaching campaign by Musk to upend the federal government agency by agency.” 

Two potential problems: Musk’s DOGE “is run by individuals with ties to the tech sector who haven’t been confirmed by the Senate and could benefit financially from the actions DOGE takes,” the Journal writes, noting, “Much about DOGE’s operations remains murky.” 

But Trump said he supports Musk’s wrecking-ball approach. “I think Elon is doing a good job,” Trump told reporters Sunday night. “He’s a big cost-cutter. Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy.” Trump also alleged that “radical lunatics” were in charge of USAID.

Historian’s reax: “The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That’s it,” said Tim Snyder of Yale University, writing Sunday. 

New: Markets around the world tumbled as Trump launched his global trade war, hitting Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs and China with 10% tariffs in the opening salvos, Reuters reported Monday morning. “Shares in Tokyo ended the day down almost 3% and Australia’s benchmark—often a proxy trade for Chinese markets—dropped 1.8%…Around lunchtime in Europe, Germany’s DAX index was down 1.8%, France’s CAC down 1.9% and Britain’s FTSE 100 down 1.5%.”

Developing: Trump said he’s paused tariffs on Mexico for one month, after drawing a concession from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to “immediately reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl,” she said on social media Monday morning. 

Canada announced its own retaliatory tariffs of 25% on the U.S. Sunday. Products include chicken, turkey, flour, several dairy products, tomatoes, several fruits, coffee, tea, spices, and lots more. 

“The Dumbest Trade War in History,” is how the Wall Street Journal’s  editorial board described these developments, writing Friday (gift link). 

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Welcome to this Monday 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 1961 amid nuclear war contingency planning, the U.S. Air Force launched Operation Looking Glass.

Foreign policy under Trump 2.0

SecState Rubio’s Panama trip. After Sunday’s meeting and amid Trump threats to simply “retake” the Panama Canal, Panama’s president announced his government won’t renew a development agreement with China, and will also try to end it early. 

BBC explainer: “There is no public evidence to suggest that the Chinese government exercises control over the canal, or its military. However, Chinese companies have a significant presence there,” including the contracts to operate two of the five nearby ports. BBC also quotes Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, as saying that the companies might be able to send to the Chinese government potentially useful strategic information on ships passing through the waterway flows through these ports. “There is an increasing geopolitical tension of economic nature between the US and China,” Berg said. “That kind of information regarding cargo would be very useful in the event of a supply chain war.” Read on, here.

Rubio’s message for American foreign policy: The world is broken into spheres of influence with the U.S. over one corner, and it’s time for Trump to consolidate America’s advantages at all costs, even if it comes at the expense of weaker states. 

In his own words: “It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power,” Rubio said to former Fox host Megyn Kelly last week. “Eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet,” he said. 

Ankit Panda’s stark interpretation: “Great power competition is over. It’s an era of great power politics now.” That means, he said, “essentially a world of ‘rogue’ great powers: economic coercion in service of annexation, wars of conquest, and hemispheric revisionism.”

Philippine president offers a deal to China: Stop sea aggression and I’ll return U.S. missiles. Last April, the U.S. sent its Typhon missile—aka Strategic Mid-range Fires System–to the northern Philippines for training purposes, as the longtime treaty allies put it, drawing loud protests from Beijing. Asked about the situation on Thursday, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. responded that China has missile systems that “are a thousand times more powerful than what we have.” He continued: “Let’s make a deal with China: Stop claiming our territory, stop harassing our fishermen and let them have a living, stop ramming our boats, stop water cannoning our people, stop firing lasers at us and stop your aggressive and coercive behavior, and we’ll return the Typhon missiles.” more, here.

South Africa president fires back against Trump, Musk. On Sunday, the U.S. president threatened to cut off aid to the country because, he claimed without evidence, that its government ” is confiscating land” and “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly”. His attack was “echoed on X by his South African-born billionaire backer Elon Musk, who suggested that white people were the victims,” Reuters reported, adding: “White landowners possess three-quarters of South Africa’s freehold farmland, compared with 4% for Black landowners. Black people make up about 80% of South Africa’s total population, while about 8% are white.” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that “his government had not confiscated any land and he looked forward to engaging with Trump to foster a better understanding over a policy he said ensures equitable public access to land.” More, here.

Europe scrambles

Officials from 27 EU countries plus Britain plus NATO are meeting today to figure out how to pay for efforts to improve European defense. NYT: “As Russia threatens from the East and Mr. Trump’s support wavers from the West, Europe’s leaders agree that they need a plan to both coordinate and expand their military resources. But diverging national interests and competing budget priorities mean that reshaping European defense will be difficult, expensive and lengthy.”

Go deeper: What will it take to deter Russia? A recent CSIS report looks at three questions: “What are the main security threats in Europe for the United States and its allies? What are U.S. interests in Europe? What is the appropriate U.S. force posture in Europe?” Read that, from Seth Jones and Seamus Daniels, here.

Allies view the White House as an economic threat: “Mr. Trump pledged on Sunday night to slap new tariffs on European trading partners ‘pretty soon.’ That is intensifying a sense in Europe that it needs to be able to fend more for itself in a world where the United States is a less reliable partner.” More, here.

And as an imperial threat: Trump “has refused to rule out the use of military force to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark,” AP reported. “Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that it would ‘be a cruel paradox, if during the time of this direct Russian threat and Chinese expansion’ that the EU and the United States might end up in a ‘conflict among allies’.”

Around the Defense Department

Army aviation was having a bad few years, even before Wednesday’s crash. The service’s fiscal 2024 mishap rate was the highest since 2007, making it “a year that Army Aviation looks back on in hopes of never repeating,” the Army Combat Readiness Center said in a damning annual assessment released just days before the mid-air collision near Reagan National Airport that killed 64 people on a jetliner and three soldiers in a UH-60 Black Hawk. 

“The accident has elevated to a national tragedy the type of training accidents that rarely make many headlines, at a time when Army aviation is trying to rebuild its safety culture,” Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports. Read on, here.

The Army has now identified all three soldiers aboard the Black Hawk: 

• Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, from Durham, North Carolina. Lobach, who had more than 450 hours of flight time the pilot; she was undergoing her annual night evaluation flight.
• An evaluator, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland.
• The crew chief, Staff Sergeant Ryan O’Hara, 29, from Lilburn, Georgia.

Moving out on Trump’s “Iron Dome for America” order. The Missile Defense Agency has issued a request for information from industry about how they might approach various anti-missile systems. The announcement says an Industry day is planned for Feb. 18 and responses to the RFI are due on Feb. 28.

Background: 

And lastly: Trump ordered anti-ISIS strikes in Somalia. On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued this statement: “At President Trump’s direction and in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, I authorized U.S. Africa Command to conduct coordinated airstrikes today targeting ISIS-Somalia operatives in the Golis mountains. Our initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed.”

The strikes killed “key figures” of the ISIS group, the government of Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region said in a statement.

Background from Al Jazeera: “ISIL has a relatively small presence in Somalia compared with al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab, but experts have warned of growing activity.”

Defense One