The House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released last Tuesday, includes a section, numbered 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” Quincy Institute analyst Ben Freeman argued in a May 29 article that “The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948.”
“Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation,” Freeman writes further. “The U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. has with any other country in the world.”
The language of Section 224 of the bill requires the DOD to appoint an “executive agent” who, among other things would be responsible for:
“synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation, by–
(1) identifying jointly developed or Israeli-origin technologies with operational utility for potential integration into United States systems and programs of record;
(2) ensuring collaborative research initiatives involving government, private sector, and academic institutions in the United States and Israel, is done in a manner that protects sensitive technology and information and the national security interests of theUnited States and Israel;
