Section 224 of the House Armed Services Committee's version of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” would require the Secretary of Defense to designate an executive agent to “synchronize” cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli militaries. The provision goes well beyond the long-standing joint work on missile defense: it lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, and licensing across artificial intelligence, quantum computing, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, and biotech.
The measure is a congressional initiative rather than a Trump executive action, but the Trump administration's Defense Department would implement it, and it is advancing amid the administration's deep entanglement with Israel during the Iran war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote Rep. Marlin Stutzman on June 1, 2026 thanking him for endorsing a “new framework of joint defense cooperation, codevelopment, coproduction and mutual investment” in areas including missile defense, AI, unmanned systems, cybersecurity, and next-generation platforms.
The Armed Services Committee marked up the bill on June 4; an amendment by Rep. Ro Khanna to strike Section 224 failed by a voice vote, and the provision now heads to the House floor. Critics, including the foreign-policy outlets Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept, described it as an unprecedented step toward permanently integrating the two countries' defense establishments “beyond military aid,” advanced with little public debate. (For scope: Section 224 is a congressional provision, included here because the executive branch would administer it.)