1. President Donald Trump has decided he’s going to the last-minute global gathering of the nation’s top generals that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered last week, he said Sunday, setting the stage for a highly unusual meeting between the commander in chief and top U.S. military leaders. Trump’s appearance at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia not only overshadows Hegseth’s planned address but adds new security concerns to the massive and nearly unprecedented military event, which has required some generals and admirals to travel thousands of miles. Trump cast the discussion largely as a pep talk. “It’s really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things. It’s just a good message,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News. “We have some great people coming in and it’s just an ‘esprit de corps.’ You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’? That’s all it’s about. We’re talking about what we’re doing, what they’re doing, and how we’re doing.” The comments came after The Washington Post reported earlier in the day that Trump was joining the event, whose creation caught senior military leaders by surprise last week. Notice went out to offices around the Pentagon that the decision will “significantly change the security posture” of the speech, set for Tuesday morning at Marine Corps University. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
2. American officials were alarmed in 2023 when they discovered that Chinese state-controlled hackers had infiltrated critical U.S. infrastructure with malicious code that could wreck power grids, communications systems and water supplies. The threat was serious enough that William J. Burns, the director of the C.I.A., made a secret trip to Beijing to confront his Chinese counterpart. He warned China’s minister of state security that there would be “serious consequences” for Beijing if it unleashed the malware. The tone of the meeting, details of which have not been previously reported, was professional and it appeared the message was delivered. But since that meeting, which was described by two former U.S. officials, China’s intrusions have only escalated. American and European officials say China’s Ministry of State Security, the civilian spy agency often called the M.S.S., in particular, has emerged as the driving force behind China’s most sophisticated cyber operations. (Source: nytimes.com)
3. An ambitious Pentagon plan to field thousands of cutting-edge drones to prepare for a potential conflict with China has fallen short of its goal, and the military has struggled to figure out how to use some of the systems in the field, according to people familiar with the matter. The effort, launched two years ago as a way to quickly buy low-cost autonomous weapons to counter China’s growing military capabilities, is now being shifted to a new organization over concerns it isn’t moving fast enough, the people said. The move reflects frustrations over setbacks in the program known as Replicator, a signature effort of the Biden administration’s Pentagon that aimed to deliver thousands of air-, land-, and sea-based AI systems by August 2025. (Source: wsj.com. Italics mine. How Ukraine does it might be a good place to start.)
4. Russia unleashed a barrage of drones and missiles on Ukraine overnight into Sunday, killing at least four people, with Kyiv suffering the heaviest assault. It was the first major bombardment since an air attack on Ukraine’s capital left at least 21 people dead last month. Separately, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. was considering selling Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles. Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Administration, confirmed Sunday’s casualties via Telegram and said that 10 others were wounded in the attack, which targeted civilian areas across the city. A 12-year-old girl was among the dead. Thick black smoke could be seen rising from a blast near the city center. “The Russians have restarted the child death counter,” Tkachenko wrote on Telegram. (Source: apnews.com)
5. Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant entered its fifth day running on emergency generators Saturday, prompting mounting safety concerns. External power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, has been cut for more than four days in a record outage at the six-reactor facility on the front line of the war, Greenpeace Ukraine warned Saturday. Emergency diesel generators are being used to power cooling and safety systems after the final power line was severed on Tuesday, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, but the external power supply was not restored. (Source: apnews.com)
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