Section 219 of the current House defense bill creates a permanent executive office inside the Pentagon with one job: accelerate US-Israel military integration. Not a pilot program. Not a time-limited review. A standing office with no ceiling, no sunset, and every incentive to keep expanding.
We’re not talking about spare parts contracts. We’re talking about artificial intelligence for the US military. Autonomous weapons. Cyber warfare. Intelligence systems that determine who gets flagged as a threat and who becomes a target. Six programs like that aren’t interchangeable with six thousand bootlace orders. They can be the brain and nervous system of the entire machine for decades to come.
And this office — according to policy analysts who’ve studied the bill — outranks the Pentagon’s own office responsible for blocking risky technology transfers. This, with a country our own intelligence agencies have flagged as the highest espionage threat level against America we have. Higher than many formal adversaries.
This is about sovereignty. When a co-developed targeting algorithm flags a human being for death, who determined why? Whose data trained it? Whose rules govern it? Who’s accountable when it’s wrong? That’s not a procurement question. That’s a question of who actually controls American military force.
And every dollar that flows into this arrangement — open-ended, permanent, growing — is a dollar Congress will tell you next year we don’t have for your healthcare, your groceries, your infrastructure, your future.
My opponent, 30-year AIPAC-funded Congressman Adam Smith, co-sponsored this bill, pushed to advance it, and killed the amendment in his own committee that would have stripped it out. He was thanked by name publicly by Netanyahu for it. Then, under pressure from constituents — and from millions of views on videos calling him out by name — he said he’d changed his mind and would fight to remove it. Days later, on national television, he told the country it barely mattered.
He doesn’t get to have it both ways. Either it mattered enough to reverse his position, or it was as small as he told the cameras. What actually changed? Not his convictions. His math. He didn’t discover his spine in July. He discovered a primary challenge he couldn’t wave off anymore.
Here’s what we should all be demanding right now:
1. Strip the executive agent provision — or give it its own recorded vote. Not a rider buried in a thousand-page bill.
2. Require frequent, public, independent audits of every AI and intelligence system this touches.
3. Prohibit American technology from ever supporting violations of the law. With teeth.
And here’s who you can call today:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune & Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker & Ranking Member Jack Reed
WA Senators Patty Murray & Maria Cantwell — tell them we expect a fight, not a rubber stamp
Already holding the line: Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Peter Welch — call and tell them to keep going
House Speaker Mike Johnson & Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers
This is not over. Conference hasn’t happened yet. Every call gets logged. Every call counts.
I’m Melissa Chaudhry, candidate for Congress in Washington’s Ninth District. My father and my husband are decorated, disabled American veterans — Navy and Army both. I have lived what war costs a family long after the uniform comes off. Subjecting our military to a foreign government is personally offensive to me, and I have the standing to fight it.
Unlike Adam Smith, I don’t take defense contractor money. I don’t take corporate PAC money. I don’t take foreign interest money. I will fight for American sovereignty, constitutional war powers, and a real public debate — before the switch gets flipped, not a press release after.
Care. Courage. The Constitution.
Vote Melissa for Congress. 🇺🇸
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