NATO's 5 Percent Pledge Rewrites the Alliance's Spending Math
The Hague summit communique commits allies to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 — but the split between core defense and infrastructure does the real work.
Security
Coverage spanning defense posture, intelligence oversight, homeland security and cyber threats to infrastructure, built on testimony and public documents.
What a Continuing Resolution Actually Does to Pentagon Spending
Stopgap funding freezes weapons programs at last year's levels and bars new starts, and the compliance costs surface long after the shutdown threat that triggered it fades.
Authorized vs Appropriated: Two Budgets
Congress writes two different defense numbers every year — the NDAA's authorization and the appropriations bill's budget authority — and only one of them lets the Pentagon spend a dollar.
How DHS Security Grants Reach Cities
About a billion dollars a year flows from FEMA to states and big cities for terrorism prevention and preparedness — through a formula-and-competition machine shaped by risk scores and spending rules.
Space Force and the Orbital Traffic Jam
The US military catalog of tracked orbiting objects has swelled past 47,000 entries, and keeping two of them from colliding has become a Space Force mission in its own right.
How US Chip Export Controls Work
Since October 2022, the Commerce Department has run the most sweeping technology restrictions of the export-control era — and patched them every time industry found a gap.