Congress is considering legislation that would embed Israel's military deeply within the US military-industrial complex. Stunned by the cratering of public support for Israeli policies in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank and towards Iran, Israel's advocates are frantically seeking to preserve and even escalate US support for the Jewish state in ways that do not rely on defense of its policies or permit scrutiny of the manipulations involved.
Politically, this means avoiding public discussion of Israeli policies in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank or Iran and disguising the sources of massive amounts of money pouring into election races to defeat candidates raising questions about US support for Israel. The proposed legislation shows what this means bureaucratically.
News of section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act – a section that would deeply intertwine the US and Israeli militaries by committing to bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements and an unprecedented integration of the US and Israeli weapons industries – triggered an immediate backlash led by Representatives Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, to strip the section from the defense budget.
Origins of the Legislation
The origins of this addition to the defense budget tell us much about how Israel's lobby pursues a foreign country's interests even as 60% of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Israel.
In February, Representatives Don Davis (D-NC) and Ronny Jackson (R-TX) introduced the United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security (Futures) Act of 2026 alongside companion legislation in the Senate introduced by Senators Ted Budd (R-NC) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). Israel's lobby prominently endorsed and lobbied on the legislation.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-Israel think tank originally incorporated as "Emet" (the Hebrew word for "truth"), advocated for closer integration of US and Israeli militaries in a December report. Two months later, the FDD was the only outside validator for the legislation on Davis's press release. "The United States–Israel Futures Act builds on decades of successful collaboration by improving cooperation across the public, private, and academic sectors to swiftly develop, test, and field defense technologies that will help safeguard US service members and provide Israel with the means to combat a diverse set of threats," said Tyler Stapleton, senior director of government relations at the FDD.
On 19 February, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) endorsed the legislation, highlighting its "key provisions" including "encouraging US-based co-production, joint ventures, and manufacturing partnerships with Israeli industry." Aipac also reported lobbying on the US-Israel Futures Act on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Defense. While neither bill made it out of committee, the same legislative architecture appeared in Section 224 of the NDAA, buried deep within the 505-page draft.
Implications of the Initiative
Make no mistake, the intent and consequences of this legislation, dubbed the United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, go far beyond the sharing of military technology. For Israel-first theorists, it is the proverbial camel's nose. By making the United States increasingly dependent on Israeli technology – in AI, quantum computing, high-powered lasers, cyberwarfare, anti-drone systems, and other advanced fields – while transferring America's most sophisticated technologies to Israeli governments, Israel and its advocates are steering the relationship toward something asymmetrical: a structure designed to harness American power for the aims of "Zionism 2.0."
That vision was advanced by David Wurmser, the main author of the Clean Break document – a 1996 policy paper submitted to Benjamin Netanyahu. Its signatories included Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, all highly placed within the George W. Bush administration as architects of the Iraq invasion. Wurmser introduced this new framework in a report titled Israel 2048: A Blueprint for a Rising Asymmetric Geopolitical Power, advocating an Israeli security strategy based on "preventative wars." US authorization for these wars is to be achieved by forging such an intimate relationship that Israel becomes "indispensable" to the United States in its global struggle to defend "western civilization."
Their vision is of "New Jerusalem" (the US) wedded to "Old Jerusalem" (Israel) on the basis of both having been divinely chosen for the mission of saving civilization from the "red-green" alliance. For Israel, this means ruling all territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, dominating the Middle East, launching wars of prevention against all potential adversaries (including Turkey, Iran, and even Egypt), and serving as the US's most important ally in its global struggle.
Now is the time to say what Section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act really is: not an alliance with a talented and responsible ally, but a trap being set by Israel and its lobby to bind our country to a state that has gone rogue.
