The D Brief: Fentanyl now a ‘WMD’; Airstrikes rise in Somalia; Cocom consolidation, mulled; Post-quantum encryption; And a bit more.

The U.S. military attacked three more alleged drug-trafficking boats off the Latin American coast, this time all three “were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” officials at Southern Command said in a statement and compilation video posted to social media Monday evening. 

“A total of eight male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions—three in the first vessel, two in the second and three in the third,” SOUTHCOM said. As before, no evidence was provided to back up their claims. 

The attacks raise the death toll to 95 people spread across at least 25 strikes, which have left two survivors, the New York Times reports in its updated tracker, which includes U.S. military attacks going back to Sept. 2.

New: The White House says it has now designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” according to an executive order posted online Monday. President Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth have claimed their attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats stems from their war on drug cartels and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., which experts say travels into the country via Mexico and not the Caribbean, as the New York Times explained last month.

A note on alleged strategy: Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in an interview published today that the president “wants to keep on blowing boats up until [Venezuelan dictator Nicholas] Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” VF’s Chris Whipple noted immediately afterward, “Wiles’s statement appears to contradict the administration’s official stance that blowing up boats is about drug interdiction, not regime change.” Former State Department counsel Brian Finacune called this strategy “​​as boneheaded as it is illegal.” 

Extra reading: Wiles also told the Times in a separate interview published Tuesday (gift link) that the president “has an alcoholic’s personality,” and that the vice president has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade.” What’s more, she called Elon Musk “an avowed ketamine” user and described White House budget director Russell Vought as “a right-wing absolute zealot.”

U.S. International Command? Pentagon ponders major consolidation of combatant commands. CJCS Gen. Dan Caine is preparing to brief SecDef Hegseth on a plan to consolidate U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command under the control of a new U.S. International Command, the Washington Post reports, citing five people familiar with the matter. 

“If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals,” four Post reporters write. “Such moves would complement other efforts by the administration to shift resources from the Middle East and Europe and focus foremost on expanding military operations in the Western Hemisphere, these people said.”

U.S. NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM would also be consolidated, an idea reported earlier this year by NBC News. The consolidation is “meant to speed decision-making and adaptation among military commanders,” one senior defense official told the Post.

But one former defense secretary said it would likely reduce regional expertise. “The world isn’t getting any less complicated,” Chuck Hagel said in an interview. “You want commands that have the capability of heading off problems before they become big problems, and I think you lose some of that when you unify or consolidate too many.” Read on, here (gift link).

Commentary: The White House’s new National Security Strategy is “the longest suicide note in U.S. history,” writes Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. Noting that the 2025 NSS differs most starkly from its predecessors in neglecting to name any country that threatens the United States, Applebaum writes: “I am not sure whether there has ever been a moment like this one, when the American government’s most prominent foreign-policy theorists have transferred their domestic obsessions to the outside world, projecting their own fears onto others. As a result, they are likely to misunderstand who could challenge, threaten, or even damage the United States in the near future. Their fantasy world endangers us all.” Read that, here (gift link).

Update: Syrian DOD casualties named. The pair of U.S. soldiers killed on Saturday were Iowa National Guardsmen: Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, the chief of the National Guard Bureau said in a Monday post. 

Consideration: Is carrier Wi-Fi distracting sailors? Investigations released last week into the loss of three F/A-18 Super Hornets and a collision with a merchant vessel by the carrier Harry S. Truman found training gaps and a lack of focus and professionalism, due perhaps to overwork or even distraction by the relatively recent arrival of shipboard wifi, Navy Times reported last week.

Coverage continues below…

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1944, the Battle of the Bulge began.

It’s been a record year for U.S. airstrikes on militants in Somalia, with at least 114 to date, according to a detailed running tally compiled by researchers at the Washington-based New America think tank. The second-busiest year—in a campaign that stretches back to 2003—was 2019 with 66 recorded strikes. 

The most recent declared strike occurred Sunday, though it’s unclear if it resulted in any casualties, according to the press release from U.S. officials at Africa Command. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM noted in a change of transparency that’s become a staple of U.S. military activity in Africa since about April. 

About 500 U.S. troops were stationed in Somalia earlier this year, and their attention has focused almost exclusively on airstrikes targeting either al-Shabaab insurgents fighting the government based in Mogadishu—in more than 40 U.S. strikes this year—or Islamic State militants lingering a bit further to the northeast, often around the Golis mountains in the semi-autonomous Puntland region. More than 60 U.S. strikes have targeted IS-Somalia, according to New America’s data. U.S. troops also conducted a ground raid targeting IS-Somalia in late July, the only publicly-known raid of its kind in 2025. 

Not every U.S. strike results in a death, as AFRICOM officials told New America’s David Sterman. Still, according to his digging, somewhere ​​between 115 and 292 people have been killed in those U.S. operations. How many were militants and how many were civilians? It’s unclear, and AFRICOM hasn’t clarified. (Hat tip to Spencer Ackerman and Wesley Morgan for bringing attention to these developments.)

Also notable: UAE troops have conducted at least 19 airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Somalia this year as well, Caleb Weiss of FDD’s Long War Journal reported in late July. However, it’s likely that “this number could be higher, as the UAE does not publicly announce such operations,” and “UAE strikes are only confirmed through Puntland officials officially commenting on them,” Weiss wrote. 

A key question for the White House remains: Escalate or exit? Both options seem to carry risks. Recall that back in April, the New York Times reported the Trump administration’s National Security Council was “divided” over how to handle Somalia, with some—citing years of similar action—concerned an increase in U.S. strikes might have little effect, while others feared withdrawal could “inadvertently incite a rapid collapse.” 

Five alleged “high-threat” migrants were sent to U.S. detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Sunday, Carol Rosenberg of the New York Times reported Sunday. They came as part of a wider group of 22 migrants, which were the first arrivals of their kind in two months, a defense official told Rosenberg. 

“The latest transfers, from Louisiana, raised to about 730 the number of men who have been held at the base since early February, when the Trump administration began using it as a way station for ICE detainees designated for deportation,” she added. 

For comparison, during America’s Global War on Terror, the U.S. held as many as 780 men and boys in detention at Guantánamo, only seven of whom were convicted, according to a 2023 report (PDF) by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism. 

Before the Sunday transfers, just 15 men were held at the American military prison at Guantánamo, Rosenberg reported last month. “Of those, 9 have been charged with war crimes in the military commissions system—seven have yet to be put on trial and two have been convicted,” she wrote. Read more, here. 

At least eight U.S. veterans have been deported, and the Trump administration plans to deport dozens more, Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner announced Saturday using data from the Department of Homeland Security obtained in September by House Armed Services Committee member and Marine veteran Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. 

Why bring it up: DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told lawmakers in a hearing last week, “We have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans.” But Magaziner then showed her U.S. Army veteran Sae Joon Park, who was deported this summer as part of Trump’s anti-immigration crackdowns. Noem later promised to look into the circumstances behind Park’s deportation, as two different Democratic lawmakers requested in August. 

ICYMI: “The Trump administration is sharing all air travelers’ names with ICE officials to find people with deportation orders,” the New York Times reported Friday in an update to a program that began “quietly in March.” 

Officials at the Transportation Security Administration are now sharing the data “multiple times a week,” after which “ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.” 

Related reading: 

• “As Trump misses deportation goals, ICE pushes migrants to give up their cases,” Reuters reported Thursday; 
• “Greg Bovino’s the star of Trump’s deportation show. We trace his roots,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday; 
• “How a US Citizen Was Scanned With ICE's Facial Recognition Tech,” 404 Media reported Saturday; 
• “Trump administration says White House ballroom construction is a matter of national security,” AP reported Monday.

Etc.

Building post-quantum gear is hard. A new partnership aims to make it easier, Defense One’s science and tech editor Patrick Tucker reported Monday. SEALSQ, which specializes in “quantum-safe” chips, and Airmod, a French company that specializes in secure electronics for aerospace and drones, say they can help companies produce the larger, more energy-intensive software that meets standards for quantum-safe hardware and software environments, as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST. 

Under a deal announced Monday, the partners will use Airmod’s middleware software to help clients turn “months of complex cryptographic integration into days” by allowing clients to bridge more easily apply software from previous applications into new ones. 

Why it matters: The standards reflect growing concern and certainty among a broad range of computer and security professionals that engineers—most likely in either China or the United States—will announce the development of a quantum computer capable of breaking Shor’s algorithm before 2035. This is the encryption standard that runs at the heart of most of the world’s financial transactions, web surfing, and device-to-device communication (such as drone operation). 

Whoever wins the race would essentially have a backdoor into private transactions and communications all over the world. Continue reading, here. 

The White House recently suspended a $40 billion “technology prosperity deal” with the UK that Trump agreed to during a visit there in September, the Financial Times reported in a Monday follow-up to New York Times reporting Saturday. The agreement spanned cooperation in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy. 

Why bring it up: “It shows how the administration is continuing to leverage trade policy to push foreign governments to make more concessions on trade and other policies,” the Times noted. “People familiar with those talks said US officials were becoming increasingly frustrated with the UK’s lack of willingness to address so-called non-tariff barriers, including rules and regulations governing food and industrial goods,” FT reports. Reuters has a bit more.

Also from the UK: “New MI6 Chief Warns Putin is ‘Dragging Out’ Ukraine Talks,” Bloomberg reported Monday.