Buried in the US$1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act is a provision that would deepen US military cooperation with Israel while walling that cooperation off from further congressional oversight.
Section 219 (formerly section 224) creates the role of an “executive agent” focused on folding Israeli technology into US weapons programs, and vice versa, including in missile and air defense technologies as well as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyberwarfare, and autonomous systems. Once implemented, the provision would speed efforts to embed Israeli technologies into US weapons systems in ways almost never codified into law, even for allies. As the protracted experience with unwinding Turkish participation in the F-35 program shows, practically, integration binds the United States to rely on producers in ways that become next to impossible to walk back later, even if lawmakers want to.
Because the defense bill is considered a “must-pass” measure to keep the military funded, legislators often add other elements, including provisions like section 219 that, ordinarily, could draw fierce opposition and that might not be passed on their own.
Section 219 also calls for “data fusion.” In defense doctrine, data fusion means combining feeds from many sensors and intelligence sources into a single targeting picture. The United States would be absorbing Israeli data, which may have been collected under problematic mass surveillance programs. Moreover, section 219 would be reinforced by section 622 of the intelligence apppriations bill, which mandates intelligence sharing and would further promote combining US intelligence streams with Israeli ones that could then be used by the Israeli military for targeting. This is a risky proposition considering the Israeli military’s track record, including its use of digital tools, which Human Rights Watch found risk civilian harm due to reliance on faulty data and inexact approximations.
The United States has already provided the Israelis with intelligence they have used in operations, which Human Rights Watch has warned could amount to aiding and abetting war crimes. But under section 219, intelligence feeds could end up permanently flowing into Israel’s systems at the sole discretion and oversight of the US secretary of defense. Because section 219 is pushing for integration rather than sales or transfers, further congressional approvals wouldn’t be required.
Israeli forces’ widespread war crimes, crimes against humanity, and its ongoing acts of genocide in Gaza should give the United States pause about closer military association. Instead, section 219 proposes to deepen entanglement, in a way that makes the risks of complicity ongoing. Legislators still have a chance to strip this damaging proposal out.
