A provision in the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is causing a stir for allegedly tightening the relationship between the United States and Israeli militaries closer than ever before.

Section 224 of the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal year 2027 NDAA is titled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

“This section would require the Secretary of Defense to designate an executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation,” the section reads.

“Members of Congress have quietly advanced an alarming proposal: to further fuse the U.S. and Israeli militaries via sharing data, co-producing weapons, and integrating AI, cyber, and autonomous systems. It’s buried in the House NDAA as Section 224, and it would give Israel deeper military integration with the U.S. than any country in the world, including NATO allies,” the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft wrote.

“The move would also shield the relationship from public scrutiny by shifting it from visible aid votes into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal,” it added.

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To be sure, the U.S. has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the U.S. provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the U.S. providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the U.S. beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.

The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East.

This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance.

“If the provision in the NDAA to integrate/synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries (section 224) makes it out of committee, I’ll offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said.

“We are a sovereign country,” he added.

“Section 224 of the 2027 NDAA – National Defense Authorization Act integrates the U.S. military with the Israeli military. This is what complete capture to a foreign government looks like and there hasn’t been a single shot fired,” former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene commented.

Al Jazeera shared further:

“What Congress is trying to do now is find different ways of entrenching the relationship so deep in America’s own defence industrial base that it’s impossible to root it out,” Josh Paul, a former US State Department official and founder of the advocacy group A New Policy, said about the controversial provision.

“A new section of law in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would give Israel unprecedented access to American technology and would force the United States military to integrate Israeli defence technologies into our own critical military supply chain, giving Israel incredible leverage over America’s own defence priorities,” he added in a video posted on social media on Friday.

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The two countries already build missile defence systems together, such as the Iron Dome.

The bill would extend their joint work into many more areas of modern warfare, from artificial intelligence (AI) to drones and cyber operations.

The provision comes amid turmoil in the Middle East following the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year.

In February, US and Israeli forces attacked Iran together, triggering five weeks of war; Iran struck back at Israel and at US bases in the Gulf before a ceasefire took hold in April.

Read the 2027 NDAA draft HERE.

 

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