President Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands at the White House, Sept. 29, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

1. The United Kingdom, France, and Canada announced plans to sanction Israeli settlements in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, an initial step that could pave the way for a broader boycott of the Israeli economy.

• Sanctioning Israel: The three countries will take steps to ban the import of goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria and enforce targeted measures against the settlements and those who facilitate or profit from them. London has confirmed that individuals and companies providing services to these communities face sanctions. It has further barred advertising properties for sale in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria and has expanded sanctions on so-called “terrorist settlers.” Jerusalem responded forcefully, declaring that the British Consulate in eastern Jerusalem would be shuttered, among other measures.
• A self-defeating strategy: The United Kingdom’s policy overhaul entails the rejection of license applications for arms exports, which risks damaging the UK-Israel security relationship, write FDD’s Ben Cohen and Edmund Fitton-Brown. Yet, Britain itself benefits significantly from the relationship, including access to Israeli intelligence, joint training exercises, and cooperation with a country that London classifies as a “tier 1” cybersecurity partner. The British approach contrasts with Germany’s, as Berlin moves to deepen its defense relationship with Israel. Read more about it here.
• The slippery slope: Some have argued that London’s actions pander to the pro-Palestinian lobby and will have little impact on UK-Israel trade. “However, a ban on the import of goods from Judea and Samaria could have a sweeping impact under a maximalist interpretation of the rule, since companies based inside Israel’s 1948 borders may have operations in the disputed territories,” warn Cohen and Fitton-Brown.
• Block the boycott: Washington should vociferously condemn the UK’s decision, explain Cohen and Fitton-Brown. Policymakers should also urge U.S. entities to carefully review applicable U.S. antiboycott prohibitions and reporting requirements, including those arising under the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act. Relatedly, the pair recommend the Commerce Department’s Office of Antiboycott Compliance “issue notices that companies complying with these sanctions efforts targeting Israel may be in violation of U.S. law.” Beyond outreach to individual companies, the administration could also issue coordinated guidance clearly explaining that companies complying with these measures may violate U.S. antiboycott law and face other consequences.
• ✔︎ Backup from the Hill: On Wednesday, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) sent a letter to the Treasury Department, warning that the UK is not acting alone. Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Finland, and Iceland have pledged to provide support for the ban, signaling a broader effort to economically isolate Israel. “Such policies not only promote economic discrimination, but also create legal uncertainty for U.S. companies operating in these countries,” Tenney explained. She urged Treasury to determine whether these countries’ policies would require U.S. companies to boycott Israel pursuant to the Ribicoff Amendment. If so, she recommended Treasury add the offending countries to the U.S. boycott list “without delay” to protect U.S. companies from unintended legal exposure.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Ministerial in Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 2, 2026 (@USTreasury via X)

2. Treasury’s Operation Economic Outcast sanctioned “all remaining Iranian airlines” on Tuesday, along with individuals and entities supporting Iran’s aviation sector. This action came as Iran attacked U.S. forces in the Middle East this week, prompting U.S. strikes on Iranian oil vessels.

• Grounding Iranian airlines: The Iranian regime uses its aviation sector to move weapons, personnel, and illicit cargo. The Treasury Department said the action was aimed in part at grounding U.S.-sanctioned, regime-backed Mahan Air by targeting its foreign enablers. Treasury also sanctioned covert front companies, foreign middlemen, and deceptive transshipment networks that Tehran relies on to obtain U.S.-origin aircraft and sensitive technology. In addition to the sanctions, Treasury also suspended several aviation authorizations, including General License J-1, which allowed non-U.S. airlines to fly U.S.-origin aircraft, or aircraft made with American parts, into Iran. The administration’s naval blockade now has an aviation counterpart.
• Mahan Air’s dark side: Iran’s airlines are instruments of Tehran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), explain FDD’s Mark Dubowitz and Miad Maleki. Mahan Air is a prime example, transporting personnel and facilitating financial transfers to the IRGC. The airline’s front companies abroad have also acquired American components with potential drone applications that are subject to U.S. export controls. Mahan Air has also covertly moved fighters and weapons for Tehran’s proxies. The regime may also use the same routes that transport IRGC operatives to Iraq to “bring Iraqi militia fighters and Hezbollah operatives back into Iran — to crackdown on the domestic unrest the regime fears most,” warn Dubowitz and Maleki.
• What do the sanctions mean? “Every bank, lessor, service provider or fuel supplier that touches them now faces secondary-sanctions risk,” explains Maleki. The authorizations that allowed Iranian planes to obtain safety-related parts, fuel, and emergency repairs abroad are also suspended, Maleki adds, as is the authorization for payments related to flights crossing Iranian airspace. General License J-1’s suspension also prevents foreign airlines from flying almost any commercial aircraft into Iran, because nearly all of them are considered U.S. origin due to containing 10% U.S. content. According to Maleki, this puts at risk the routes linking Tehran to major centers for regional trade and banking, from Doha to Istanbul.
• Enforce the grounding: These measures will only have a lasting impact if Washington enforces them aggressively, including by ensuring adherence to the suspension of General License J-1. The Commerce Department and Treasury should be prepared to penalize any foreign carrier, lessor, or service provider that continues enabling U.S.-origin aircraft to reach Iran after Treasury’s September 23 deadline to wind down business. The administration should also issue clear compliance guidance to foreign airlines, lessors, financial institutions, and other potential facilitators detailing their risk of exposure to U.S. sanctions.
• Follow Mahan to the tarmac: Treasury previously designated Mahan Air pursuant to Executive Order 13224 for supporting the IRGC-Quds Force. Washington should now use that same authority to designate the Iran Airports and Air Navigation Company (IAC) for facilitating Mahan Air, FDD Action’s Matt Zweig tells us. As the state-owned enterprise that manages all of Iran’s civilian airports, IAC operates and manages the services that keep Mahan Air’s terror-linked operations moving. Having targeted Iran’s airlines and their foreign facilitators, Treasury should now close the infrastructure gap by imposing terrorism sanctions on this state-owned enterprise that keeps Mahan Air and other designated airlines operational.

President Trump attends G7 working session V, on AI and the digital age, in Evian-les-Bains, France, Jun. 17, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

1. A new joint cybersecurity advisory warned this week that China-based companies are extracting proprietary capabilities from American AI models at “an industrial scale.” Washington must act now to protect American technology and preserve the nation’s lead in AI.

• Massive theft: The advisory found that Chinese AI companies are extracting proprietary functions and capabilities from American frontier models as a core part of their AI development strategy. Through a technique called “distillation,” Chinese companies can train their own AI models by repeatedly querying more advanced American models and using the resulting outputs as training data. The new model then inherits much of the original’s capability without the research and investment. While distillation can be done legitimately, the advisory found that leading Chinese firms went further, using proxy networks, fraudulent accounts, and other methods to gain unauthorized access to U.S. AI models and evade safeguards and geographic restrictions. One Anthropic executive said these practices helped shrink America’s AI lead over China down from 12 to 18 months to approximately six to nine months.
• Beijing’s long game: China’s approach to AI follows a familiar playbook. It acquires foreign technology, subsidizes domestic champions, restricts foreign competitors, and floods global markets. After helping Beijing dominate global industries from shipbuilding to rare earths, that strategy could now threaten America’s AI leadership, explain FDD’s Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin. “The software running a robot, or deciding how a network moves its traffic, needs access to do its job,” Pottinger and Tobin break down. “That’s precisely the access a cyber attacker seeks: persistent reach into the system and a channel back home, providing the means to steal data or even shut down the system remotely.”
• A hacker’s den: Chinese hackers have already been caught burrowing into American power, water, transportation, and other systems, potentially positioning Beijing to disrupt critical infrastructure during a crisis. The Trump administration has restricted Chinese hardware, but “hardware is only the body,” Pottinger and Tobin conclude. “The intelligence that runs inside it is the brain, and that job is unfinished.”
• Change the rules: The Commerce Department barred cybersecurity firm Kaspersky’s products in 2024, because Russia could compel the company to serve Russian security services. Pottinger and Tobin recommend using the same authority against Chinese firms that have conducted malicious distillation campaigns targeting American models. Commerce should also bar those firms’ models from American cloud platforms and block traffic to their developers.

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner en route to Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, Sept. 4, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

2. U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s visit to Moscow and Kyiv last weekend underscored continued U.S. efforts to advance peace talks, but additional pressure on Russia will be needed to produce meaningful negotiations.

• 2 envoys, 2 cities: In Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for three hours. Afterward, a White House official said the two sides had discussed “substantive” plans for next steps, to be announced in the coming weeks. The envoys then met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, where talks centered on winter support, security and economic guarantees, and Patriot air defense systems for Ukraine. Despite the diplomatic push, Zelenskyy remains skeptical of Russia’s willingness to negotiate and thinks “the war will continue” into the winter months. He told Axios that Witkoff and Kushner’s visit was primarily to “unblock” the diplomatic process, although the envoys also brought some new ideas.
• More pressure needed: “Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s visit to Kyiv was much needed as it was their first time visiting the capital during their role as negotiators to bring Russia’s invasion to an end,” FDD Action’s Daniel Vaynshteyn tells us. Their visit also provided a first-hand demonstration of the Kremlin’s disinterest in peace. Russian strikes closed Kyiv’s airport, forcing the envoys to travel by rail. Although Moscow paused strikes until the envoys left, Russian forces quickly resumed their attacks afterward, striking a school and clinic, among other sites. “Real progress towards ending this war will require the United States to increase pressure on the Kremlin to halt its offensive,” adds Vaynshteyn.
• Congress takes another step forward: House lawmakers should pass the Senate-passed Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act (H.R. 5334) to give the White House the tools it needs to put further economic pressure on Russia. This week, the measure was added to the House’s portal, and the Rules Committee scheduled a hearing Monday afternoon on it. These procedural developments position the legislation for possible House consideration, though they do not guarantee a final vote. But time is short. The bill must clear the House before the October recess so that any additional pressure can take effect before winter, when Russia has previously targeted Ukraine’s power grid to “freeze out” Ukrainians. This strategy leverages civilian suffering to shape Kyiv and Washington’s strategic decisions.

Marines with Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command sit in the cyber operations room at Lasswell Hall, Fort Meade, Maryland, Feb. 5, 2020. (Staff Sgt. Jacob Osborne)

Integrate cyber into the joint warfight.

For a decade, U.S. cyber forces have been organized to disrupt cyber threats below the level of armed conflict, and to wield cyber as a standalone instrument. This posture is not well-suited to the cyber domain’s emerging role as a combat enabler. The U.S. military now needs to adapt how it plans, resources, and employs cyber effects across every domain, integrating them so tightly that commanders can call for cyber effects as readily as they can for kinetic effects. Against a peer competitor like China, deficiencies in how the U.S. military integrates and employs cyber tools are a dangerous vulnerability. In a recent article, FDD’s RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Matthew Ferren explain how the Pentagon should reorganize to employ cyber effects in joint operations against a peer competitor:

• Create an independent U.S. Cyber Force. Congress and the administration should establish a U.S. Cyber Force with full statutory responsibility for recruiting, training, equipping, and retaining cyber personnel. The new service should absorb cyber teams currently housed within the existing services, develop a distinct cyber culture and doctrine, and build career paths that compete with the private sector for talent.
• Integrate cyber into combatant commands. The cells that now connect CYBERCOM to the combatant commands act mainly as liaisons with limited authority to deliver capabilities to commanders. The Pentagon should restructure the cells so the connection becomes a genuine planning and employment relationship, rather than a liaison function. It should also establish tactical cyber units that permanently embed with forward forces to deliver close-access effects, allowing forward commanders to employ them to enable their missions.
• Ready the joint force for a peer cyber fight. CYBERCOM should mature its processes to assess cyber battle damage and develop a cell for continuous capability iteration, ensuring cyber units can evolve during a peer conflict. All joint units should train and exercise under cyber-degraded conditions, assuming their networks, sensors, and communications cannot be perfectly defended against adversary interference.

The first map to depict a separate Western hemisphere with the Pacific as a separate ocean, created in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller. (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division)

💭 What’s in a name? This Wednesday marked the 250th anniversary of our country’s official naming, but the name and what it meant evolved over time. Here’s how it happened 👇

• 🗳️ Congress takes the lead: On September 9, 1776, the Second Continental Congress formally adopted the name “United States of America” for the new nation. An acting secretary to George Washington, Stephen Moylan, is credited with the first known use of the name in a letter to Washington’s aide-de-camp in January 1776. This predates known uses of the name by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, who have both once been credited by historians for naming the nation.
• And Unified? Since when? Well, the credit for that aspect traces back farther to Benjamin Franklin, who popularized the concept of a political union in his famous “Join, Or Die” political cartoon in 1754. Paine also stressed the idea in Common Sense, in 1776, as references to “United Colonies” became increasingly common.
• From “colonies” to “states”: So why the change from colonies to states? Well, they declared it. The final paragraph of the Declaration of Independence concluded, “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”
• 🧭 America’s roots: Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci is credited with realizing that the lands he explored in 1492 were part of a new continent. He referred to the land as “Mundus Novus,” or New World in English. However, in 1507, a German mapmaker published a book on geography that referred to these lands as “America.” The name stuck.
• Dropping the “se”: The shift from “these United States” to “the United States” reflected a deeper change in how Americans thought about their country. The shift from plural to singular accelerated after the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln captured that emerging national identity in the Gettysburg Address, stating “that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” The Union’s victory also reinforced the federal government’s claim to sovereignty over individual states.

Well, you would think that put an end to it. But a century after the name was official, bids to rename our country United States of Appalachia or Alleghenia also had to be defeated. Plus, there is always a chance that someone tries again…