Joe Kent asks Americans to urge their senators to reject the NDAA

Former Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent has called upon Americans to urge their Senators to vote against the Fiscal Year 2027  National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) over a provision that substantially expands military technology cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. As both chambers prepare for scheduling their respective full floor votes following the July recess, Kent and other critics of the act have ramped up efforts to block it in light of the Iran war and Israel's operation in Lebanon. 

Kent has strongly opposed section 219 (formerly section 224) of the act, under which the two countries will extensively cooperate on military development. The provision would establish a United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative that would require the defense secretary to appoint an official to coordinate joint research, testing, weapons development, technology integration and industrial cooperation. It would also include missile defense, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, quantum technology, electronic warfare and weapons co-production operations, as per Military.com.

"Merging our military with a foreign country is a treasonous betrayal of our sovereignty. Call your senators & tell them to vote no on the NDAA until the merger w/ Israel (section 219) is taken out," Kent wrote in a post on X. "Tell them that we will never support merging our military with a foreign nation," he added, sharing the Senate switchboard number.

Kent previously explained that the section is cleverly buried deep in the NDAA and entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” In his piece on Responsible Statecraft, Kent explained that the initiative transitions the traditional aid relationship into a deeper partnership between the U.S. and Israel and would also give Tel Aviv "unprecedented access to U.S. technology development and data fusion." He claimed the provision has been publicly endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as it transforms Israel from a top U.S. aid recipient to a full member of the U.S. defense and intelligence apparatus. "By embedding Israel in the production of critical defense technologies, we are creating access and control mechanisms for a nation that has drastically different goals than America does," he wrote, adding that development of key technologies should be restricted to the U.S. only. 

Kent isn't the only one to voice concern over the provision. Earlier, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna introduced an amendment to remove the provision from the NDAA, but the House Rules Committee declined to permit a vote on the amendment during its June 29 meeting. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) has also urged his colleagues to reconsider debate or advancement of the NDAA, citing the ongoing, escalating war with Iran. “It outsources, to another country, decisions on intelligence sharing and weapons production that should only be made by our country," Welch said in his statement.