Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on Wednesday honored the 184 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon. The ceremonies include a private event for family members to remember their loved ones who were killed when Islamist radicals hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the building.

Pentagon employees gathered Tuesday in the building’s center courtyard to honor colleagues who lost their lives in the attack, part of a coordinated terror strike on sites in New York and Washington that signaled the start of America’s 20-year war on terror in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Rebelling passengers helped bring down one of the hijacked planes at a site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

President Biden, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump all attended a service Wednesday at the memorial site at ground zero in New York City, honoring the 2,977 lives lost in the attack 23 years ago on the World Trade Center.

An expanding divergence between the U.S. and South Korea on how to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat will present knotty challenges for either a Trump or Harris administration.

Analysts say there are clear signs the U.S. foreign policy establishment has accepted that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will never give up his nuclear arsenal — a factor now fueling voices in Seoul that South Korea should develop a nuclear capability of its own rather than relying on Washington’s promises to protect it in a crisis.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon writes in a dispatch from Seoul that with U.S.-North Korea diplomacy effectively on ice under Mr. Biden, the race between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump is being closely watched in the South Korean capital.

Mr. Trump has signaled a willingness to resume the extraordinary personal dialogue he began with Mr. Kim during his first term in office, but events on the peninsula and around the world give the North Korean leader more wriggle room than was the case when the two summited in 2018 and 2019.

The head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific command, in the first direct communications in years with a senior Chinese general in charge of regional forces, called on Beijing to “reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond,” according to a Pentagon statement.

Adm. Sam Paparo held the video teleconference with Gen. Wu Yanan, commander of the People’s Liberation Army southern command, on Monday and urged his forces to abide by international law in the strategic waterway. Beijing has made expansive sovereignty claims in the South China Sea that are rejected by the U.S. and smaller countries around the region, including U.S. treaty ally the Philippines.

Monday’s meeting was the first time in more than two years that a regional PLA commander spoke to a commander of the Hawaii-based command, despite repeated efforts to resume direct communications the American side believes will reduce tensions. The Chinese Defense Ministry issued a one-paragraph statement on the video call, saying only that the two officers “exchanged in-depth views on issues of common concern,” the ministry said.

Gen. Wu was abruptly installed as the new commander for the southern region in July amid clashes between Chinese maritime forces and Philippines vessels. He was previously in charge of PLA forces under the central theater command that is responsible for defending Beijing.

Congress heard horrifying testimony Tuesday about a network of assassins associated with Mexican cartels and operating in the U.S.

Mike Boudreaux, sheriff of Tulare County in California, said his department recently dismantled the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations in his area, including the arrest of a self-admitted cartel hit man who claimed more than 25 kills in the state. The sheriff testified that in the course of his investigation, which targeted some 50 cartel associates, he was told that smuggling people, drugs and guns across the border is “easier now than in the history of their cartel.”

The revelations shocked members of the House Judiciary Committee, who wanted to know whether the problem was nationwide.

Threat Status opinion contributor Clifford D. May examines what led to and followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, asking whether Americans today are capable of understanding that “we’re in an even more dangerous era.”

“Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are building their military capabilities as fast as they can. Bipartisan commissions have found the U.S. defense budget and military size inadequate given this expanding threat matrix,” writes Mr. May. “The U.S. is failing to deter the Iran-backed terrorist militias who have attacked American forces more than 170 times in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. has been unable or unwilling to defeat the Houthi terrorists — also armed, trained and instructed by Iran.”

“And while President Biden has been supporting Ukrainians fighting to retain their independence and Israelis fighting genocidal enemies, his preference is for ‘cease-fires’ and ‘negotiated settlements,’” he writes. “That’s not how tyrants and terrorists are deterred, much less defeated.”

The failure to rescue eight Americans held hostage in the Gaza Strip underscores growing peril for U.S. citizens abroad, writes Darion Ouligian.

“While the American passport boasts 188 visa-free or visa-on-entry destinations, the Biden administration’s failure to publicly attempt a rescue of our own is creating danger for American travelers,” he writes. “This failure sends a message to bad actors worldwide: America is weak. The Americans are not coming. Americans abroad are no longer off-limits.

• Sept. 11 — Afghanistan under the Taliban: Power Dynamics, Regional Relations and U.S. Policy, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 12 — Navigating the National Security Inflection Point: A Conversation with the Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Sept. 12 — Ground Forces and Great Powers: A Conversation with U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Stimson Center

• Sept. 16 — What Remains of the Myanmar Economy After the Coup, Stimson Center

• Sept. 16 — The United States and India: Milestones Reached and the Pathway Ahead, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 20 — Confronting the Axis of Upheaval, Center for a New American Security