White House had Pentagon delay a hypersonic missile test before Biden-Putin summit

By Alexander Ward and Quint Forgey

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U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the start of the U.S.-Russia summit in Geneva, Switzerland. | Denis Balibouse/Keystone via Getty Images

With less than a week to go before President JOE BIDEN met Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN for a June summit in Switzerland, the White House ordered the Pentagon to delay a long-planned hypersonic missile test so as not to raise tensions with Moscow.

According to three people who spoke to Alex and LARA SELIGMAN, including a defense official and a senior congressional aide, a high-level White House staffer contacted the office of the secretary of Defense to request that the test be postponed. Biden at the time was preparing for a tough discussion with his Russian counterpart, and officials worried that launching such a provocative weapon right before it could send the wrong signal or sabotage the meeting altogether.

The defense official did note, however, that the Russians likewise “didn’t do [provocative] things in advance of that summit. This is not unusual at all for the sake of table-setting.”

The sources spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. A White House spokesperson said our account is “not accurate.” The Pentagon declined to comment. No one would detail who in the White House made the request or who in DoD received it.

Putin clearly didn’t get the message the administration was trying to send him, even after in-person talks with Biden. Russia’s Defense Ministry announced on July 19 — a month after the summit — that it tested a hypersonic missile long praised by Putin. Russia has since continued to launch more and more of those weapons, with the U.S. failing a hypersonic missile test of its own earlier this month. (China also conducted one of their own tests this summer, to Washington’s great concern.)

The Pentagon isn’t sugar-coating their view on the threat Putin poses. “Russia is still the most imminent threat [today], simply because they have 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons, plus or minus, deployed against us today,” Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. JOHN HYTEN told reporters — including our own PAUL MCLEARY — at a breakfast Thursday morning.

Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons that puts U.S. and allied troops across Europe at risk, “because the risk of escalation with a quote-unquote tactical nuclear weapon — which is the dumbest term in the history of the world — is real,” Hyten said. “We have to worry about that and we have to worry about that in the near term.”

Just before the summit, Russia sent warships off the coast of Hawaii, leading the U.S. to scramble F-22s and a carrier already near California to “monitor” the situation, a different defense official told POLITICO. The White House was “curious” as to the nature of the exercise particularly since it was around the time of the presidential summit but gave no specific direction to DoD commanders.

Now Biden is heading to Europe for a meeting of the G-20 in Rome and a major climate summit in Glasgow, but Putin won’t personally be at either event, though he may participate virtually for the environmental gathering. In the meantime, Microsoft reported this week that the hacking group backed by the Russian foreign intelligence service, or SVR, and behind the large-scale SolarWinds hack in 2020 is actively looking to score another major hack.

That effort is part of a much broader espionage campaign, as Microsoft reported that it had informed 609 customers that they were the victims of 22,868 Nobelium cyberattacks between July 1 and Oct. 19 — including those related to the SolarWinds-like campaign. That’s more than the 20,500 total cyberattacks in the three years prior to July 1 by the SVR-tied group.

ANNE NEUBERGER , deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, gave a brief update today on the status of joint U.S.-Russia cybersecurity talks first announced at the end of the Biden-Putin summit in June. She warned again that Moscow “is accountable for criminal activity coming from within its borders that achieves a disruptive national security impact and that affects the strategic stability between our countries.”

“We have had an open, direct and candid dialogue — a number of times, a number of discussions — to outline our expectations in that area, to pass information regarding individual criminal activity. And there have been some initial steps,” Neuberger said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. The United States, she added, was “really looking for continued, real action, and to continue this direct and candid discussion to achieve those outcomes.”

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FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY –– NATSEC PROFESSIONALS WANT 'SWIFT' CONFIRMATIONS: 338 former national security officials sent a letter to top Senators urging them to expedite the confirmation of State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development nominees held over by Republicans.

“We urge you to exercise decisive leadership to swiftly facilitate committee hearings and votes for all pending State Department and USAID nominees,” the professionals wrote. “If unanimous consent agreements cannot be obtained to expedite votes, we ask that you once again dedicate the floor time necessary to approve these nominations by regular order.”

The letter — sent to Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL, Senate Foreign Relations Chair BOB MENENDEZ (D-N.J.) and ranking member JIM RISCH (R-Idaho) — was organized by the left-leaning Foreign Policy for America advocacy group. The signees include retired ambassadors and flag officers and former top officials who served throughout the government, many of whom are big names like WILLIAM WEBSTER, MICHÈLE FLOURNOY, VINCENT STEWART and ROSE GOTTEMOELLER.

As of today, the Biden administration has nominated 73 people to be ambassadors, but only six have been confirmed — a historically low rate of 8 percent.

ANDREW ALBERTSON, the executive director of Foreign Policy for America, lays the blame for the delay in confirmations at the feet of Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas). “What Sen. Cruz is doing is incredibly dangerous. This is a full blown crisis,” he told NatSec Daily in an interview. “If the Senate needs to stay through weekends to clear some of these and to make him pay a price for messing up his colleagues’ travel plans, so be it.”

Former Senate Majority Leader TOM DASCHLE (D-S.D.), who is on the group’s advisory board, told us that a few lawmakers holding up the president’s nominees — and Senate leadership’s unwillingness to prioritize ramming them through — “sends a terrible message around the world.”

ERIN PERRINE , Cruz’s press secretary, responded to the letter and the criticism. “Three hundred national security professionals haven't been paying attention or don't know how the Senate works. Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer are the reason that so few nominees have been confirmed. Until the last couple of weeks, they had only managed to bring a handful of ambassadors to the floor — which they exclusively run,” she sent in a text to NatSec Daily. “Their focus is on woke gender politics and blaming Sen. Cruz for their incompetence. Real experts who aren't liberal hacks know to direct their complaints to the White House.”

4 INTEL AGENCIES DIDN’T PREDICT KABUL’S FALL: The Wall Street Journal’s VIVIAN SALAMA and WARREN STROBEL have a huge story today about how multiple leading U.S. intelligence agencies didn’t foresee the swift collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

“A month after President Biden announced his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops, for instance, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a May 17 report titled 'Government at Risk of Collapse Following U.S. Withdrawal.' The report estimated that the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would fall by year’s end, according to a summary,” they wrote. “Less than a month later, the agency issued another analysis titled: ‘Afghanistan: Assessing Prospects for a Complete Taliban Takeover Within Two Years,’ according to a summary.”

“A June 4 Defense Intelligence Agency report, meanwhile, said the Taliban would pursue an incremental strategy of isolating rural areas from Kabul over the next 12 months, according to a summary. In an ‘Executive Memorandum’ on July 7, the DIA said the Afghan government would hold Kabul, according to a person familiar with the report,” Salama and Strobel continued.

POLITICO has previously reported on intelligence agencies updating their assessments as the Taliban advanced across Afghanistan. But that hasn’t stopped widespread allegations that the intelligence community is partly at fault for telling officials that it had enough time to evacuate Americans and others before a quick militant takeover.

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down and who really has the president's ear in West Wing Playbook, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

WH ANNOUNCES MORE AID TO AFGHANISTAN: National Security Council spokesperson EMILY HORNE announced the U.S. will provide nearly $144 million in new humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan’s people, who are in dire need of help since the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

“This brings total U.S. humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and for Afghan refugees in the region to nearly $474 million in 2021, the largest amount of assistance from any nation,” Horne said.

In September, China offered $31 million in emergency aid to Afghanistan and keeps promising to help the Taliban “rebuild” the country. The U.S. clearly wants to not only keep pace, but provide more than China.

IT’S THURSDAY: Thanks for tuning in to NatSec Daily. This space is reserved for the top U.S. and foreign officials, the lawmakers, the lobbyists, the experts and the people like you who care about how the natsec sausage gets made. Aim your tips and comments at award@politico.com and qforgey@politico.com, and follow us on Twitter at @alexbward and @QuintForgey.

While you’re at it, follow the rest of POLITICO’s national security team: @nahaltoosi, @woodruffbets, @politicoryan, @PhelimKine, @BryanDBender, @laraseligman, @connorobrienNH, @paulmccleary, @leehudson, @AndrewDesiderio and @JonnyCustodio.

MYANMAR MILITARY’S TORTURE CAMPAIGN: The Associated Press’ VICTORIA MILKO and KRISTEN GELINEAU report that Myanmar’s military is conducting a widespread and deadly torture campaign against detainees.

“Since its takeover of the government in February, the Myanmar military has been torturing those it has detained in a methodical and systemic way across the country, The Associated Press has found in interviews with 28 people imprisoned and released in recent months,” they report. “While most of the torture has occurred inside military compounds, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has also transformed public facilities such as community halls into interrogation centers, prisoners said.”

The Tatmadaw has a long history of using torture, particularly before the country’s transition to democracy began in 2010. But now “the torture is the worst it’s ever been in scale and severity, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors deaths and arrests. Since February, the group says, security forces have killed more than 1,200 people, including at least 131 detainees tortured to death.”

The Biden administration has placed many sanctions on Myanmar’s military because of the coup and other human rights violations but has been unwilling to push further partly out of fear for further hurting the country’s people.

NORTH KOREA USES RANSOMWARE TO INFILTRATE SANCTIONS OFFICIALS: North Korea has gotten much better at using digital tools to evade multilateral sanctions placed over its nuclear program, Foreign Policy’s COLUM LYNCH reports.

“ AARON ARNOLD, an American investigating sanctions violations for the United Nations in North Korea, received what seemed to be an innocuous email last October. JAMES SUTTERLIN, a U.N. official in the office that manages sanctions experts, ostensibly forwarded a link to what was described as the U.N. Security Council’s forecast of its activities for the month,” Lynch wrote. “Only, Sutterlin had not written the email, and the link, they would later discover, was part of a phishing attempt by the North Korean government.”

The scene is part of a decadeslong evolution in how Pyongyang has targeted U.N. and other officials worldwide.

“[T]he efforts have grown increasingly sophisticated as North Korea’s hackers succeeded in penetrating the experts’ personal and U.N. accounts as well as developed a deeper understanding of the inner workings of the sanction specialists,” Lynch reports. “Today, the experts receive as many as three or four hacking attempts a month, via email, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media platforms, disguised as messages from Chinese diplomats, journalists, colleagues, and others.”

North Korea is one of four nation states — alongside Russia, China and Iran — that cause the world large cybersecurity headaches.

BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now.

RAYTHEON WORRIES ABOUT FOREIGN SALES: Our friends at Morning Defense (for Pros!) write that a major defense contractor, Raytheon Technologies, fears a disruption in foreign military sales, per the firm’s recent SEC filing.

Why it matters: Regulatory approvals for direct commercial sales granted under the Trump administration may be paused or revoked if the military equipment has not been delivered, the company said.

One example: Raytheon cited $440 million in advance payments from an unidentified Middle Eastern country for items it fears will not get the required regulatory approvals, meaning the money will have to be returned.

'TO GET RID OF SADDAM HUSSEIN': Something interesting happened during former Democratic Sen. JOE LIEBERMAN’s interview with NBC News and Peacock’s MEHDI HASSAN last night: The lawmaker said he and his former colleagues authorized the Iraq War “to get rid of SADDAM HUSSEIN” — not mainly to rid him of weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there.

“I was in the majority of members of the Senate Democratic Caucus who voted to authorize President [GEORGE W.] BUSH to go to war in Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein,” Lieberman told Hassan.

In the run up to the war, the Bush administration’s case was that Hussein could use his nonexistent WMDs against the U.S. and its allies unless an American-led coalition forcibly took them from him. But Lieberman is saying that wasn’t the reason he and other Democrats (including the current president) gave Bush’s team the green light — it was for regime change.

NatSec Daily reached out to Lieberman to see if maybe he misspoke or misremembered, which can happen. He responded via email that he meant exactly what he said.

“I don’t see the difference. The threat was from Saddam, who had shown in his invasion of Kuwait and threatening of Saudi Arabia, two important American allies, in 1990 that he wanted to be the dominant power in the Middle East. He was aggressively anti-American and brutally repressive to most of the Iraqi people. His WMD programs (chemical and biological and his planned and desired nuclear program) were means by which he hoped to achieve his hegemonic goals. After Saddam was overthrown, those threats and that repression ended,” Lieberman wrote to us.

TUBERVILLE WANTS VACCINE MANDATE HEARING: Sen. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-Ala.), a freshman lawmaker on the Senate Armed Services Committee, yesterday sent a letter to the panel’s chair asking for a hearing on the impact of vaccine mandates on the defense-industrial base.

“Thousands of small contractors for the Department of Defense face an excruciating choice in the coming weeks: fire employees who choose not to take the relatively new COVID vaccine or face the loss of contracts from the Pentagon. This untenable position, playing out across the country, threatens our national security. Small business remains the backbone of American enterprise and the ingenuity machine in our competition with China. We cannot afford to slow them down,” Tuberville wrote to Sen. JACK REED (D-R.I.).

Our friends at Morning Defense (for Pros!) reported on the many protests at shipyards and other contractors against the vaccine mandate.

FORMER TRUMP DOD OFFICIAL WANTS BIDEN TO TAKE CHINA MIL THREAT SERIOUSLY: ELBRIDGE COLBY, the former top Pentagon official in the Trump administration, wrote a WSJ op-ed blasting the administration for an “imprudent assumption” that China doesn’t pose a direct military threat and drag the U.S. into a war.

For Colby, China is such a threat because it’s signaled a desire to overtake Taiwan by force, “increasingly may have the ability to pull it off,” and its window for an invasion is closing.

His solutions? Help Taiwan vastly improve its defenses, put pressure on allies like Japan to defend Taiwan, and reprioritize America’s global posture.

“The U.S. military will have to scale down in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and even Europe. America had a chance to make a more evolutionary and balanced shift to Asia, but we blew it,” he wrote. “Now we need to focus, even if it means the military must effectively drop everything else.”

— NATALIE HENGSTEBECK has been detailed over as a program examiner to the Office of Management and Budget's education, income maintenance and labor division. She most recently was an AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow at the State Department's Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

— ZACK COLMAN, POLITICO: “JOHN KERRY faces long odds to cement legacy at climate summit”

— MELISSA SANCHEZ, ProPublica: “Dozens of Traumatized Afghan Kids Struggle Inside a Shelter That’s Ill-Equipped to Care for Them”

— CHICO HARLAN and STEFANO PITRELLI, The Washington Post: “ MARIO DRAGHI, hosting the G-20, has put Italy in enviable shape”

— The first full day of Biden’s European trip: After arriving in Rome, the president and first lady JILL BIDEN will visit Vatican City for an audience with POPE FRANCIS. The president also will hold bilateral meetings with Italian President SERGIO MATTARELLA, Italian Prime Minister Draghi and French President EMMANUEL MACRON.

— The Atlantic Council, 9 a.m.: “Unlocking Uzbekistan’s Potential — with JOHN HERBST, NAVBAHOR IMAMOVA, JENNIFER BRICK MURTAZASHVILI, VINAYAK NAGARAJ and ELDOR TULYAKOV”

— The Center for Global Development, 9 a.m.: “India and Working Women — with ASHWINI DESHPANDE, SHANTA DEVARAJAN and ALICE EVANS”

— The Hudson Institute, 10 a.m.: “The End of American Intelligence Dominance? — with BRYAN CLARK, EZRA COHEN and MICHAEL DORAN”

— The Wilson Center, 10 a.m.: “ Australia, China, and the Indo-Pacific: A Discussion with TONY ABBOTT, 28th Prime Minister of Australia — with ROBERT DALY and ABRAHAM DENMARK”

— The Middle East Institute, 10:30 a.m.: “ Israel’s Designation of Six Palestinian NGOs as “Terrorist”: Costs and Consequences — with UBAI AL-ABOUDI, KHALED ELGINDY, SAHAR FRANCIS, SHAWAN JABARIN, TAHREER JABER, KHALED QUZMAR and FUAD ABU SAIF”

— The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 1 p.m.: “ Pipelines and Ceilings: The Gender Gap in Nuclear Policy — with SARAH BIDGOOD, MARIANA BUDJERYN, HEATHER HURLBURT, SYLVIA MISHRA, NOMSA NDONGWE and JENNY TOWN”

— The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1 p.m.: “ Next Steps in Critical Infrastructure Protection: Challenges for CISA and Congress — with JEN EASTERLY, JOHN KATKO and JAMES ANDREW LEWIS”

— New America, 1:30 p.m.: “U.S. Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis — with JOSEPH BRYAN, SHARON E. BURKE and COLIN H. KAHL”

Have a natsec-centric event coming up? Transitioning to a new defense-adjacent or foreign policy-focused gig? Shoot us an email at award@politico.com or qforgey@politico.com to be featured in the next edition of the newsletter.

And thanks to our editor, Ben Pauker, for allowing us to conduct our missile tests whenever we want.

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