The federal government has issued its most thorough verdict yet about the drone sightings in New Jersey in recent weeks: Some are law enforcement, some are commercial flights, some are hobbyists and many are actually airplanes, helicopters or even stars mistaken for drones, the government said.

The joint statement from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration came after the feds said they had deployed drone-detecting technology and “trained visual observers” to get to the bottom of the mysterious flights, which had captivated and unnerved local residents and now have spread beyond New Jersey to neighboring states.

Officials confirmed there had been drone sightings over military bases but said they weren’t worrying, saying that such incidents “are not new.” 

Despite the government’s best efforts, this is hardly the end of this story. Mr. Trump on Monday took direct shots at the Biden administration’s handling of the matter, saying that the government knows more about the craft than it is revealing publicly.

“The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s [from] a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went,” Mr. Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

It was a newsworthy day at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump also appeared alongside SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, and the two men jointly announced a $100 billion investment by the Japanese financial and tech giant in the U.S. over the next four years. They said it will create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and infrastructure.

Japanese officials appear keen to cultivate close ties to the president-elect. Asia Editor Andrew Salmon has a deeper dive on that side of the story, writing that senior Japanese figures are eager to strengthen ties with Mr. Trump partly due to uncertainty elsewhere in the region. That, of course, includes South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol has been impeached by the National Assembly after his short-lived martial law declaration earlier this month. 

The uproar over alleged Russian interference in Romania’s presidential election, and TikTok’s potential role in it, is escalating quickly. Tuesday morning saw multiple developments in this geopolitically complex story, including the EU’s announcement of an official investigation.

In the U.S., a bipartisan group of key senators weighed in and highlighted the fact that Russia allegedly used the popular China-owned social media platform to fuel political unrest in Europe.

“We condemn Putin’s manipulation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled TikTok to undermine Romania’s democratic process. The world must wake up to the serious threat to democracy posed by Russian manipulation of TikTok to undermine our free societies,” the senators said in a joint statement.

This all stems from the Romanian election and the confusion surrounding it. A Romanian court has thrown out the first round of voting after a long-shot conservative populist candidate, Calin Georgescu, surged to the top of a crowded field after an alleged “aggressive promotion campaign” on TikTok to promote his candidacy. Declassified EU and Romanian intelligence files allege that the scheme included payments worth a total of $381,000 to TikTok influencers to promote Mr. Georgescu.

For its part, TikTok has maintained it is working hard to protect the integrity of the platform during the Romanian electoral process. The company’s full statement includes a thorough breakdown of what the company says were “covert influence networks” seeking to promote certain candidates, including Mr. Georgescu.

Here’s the big takeaway: Threat Status is always watching for new ways in which members of the “Axis of Authoritarians” could be working together to undermine democracy or sow discord in the U.S. and Europe. And in this case, the allegation is that Russia-linked figures used a wildly popular and influential China-controlled social media app to influence presidential election results in a NATO member country.

This is all taking place as a U.S. ban on the platform approaches, driven by fears that China is using TikTok for coordinated influence operations. That ban is set to take effect next month, and tech giants Apple and Google are facing growing pressure from influential House lawmakers to explain how they’ll enforce it.

…If it actually goes into effect, that is. It seems conceivable that the incoming Trump administration could try to stop the ban. At his eventful Mar-a-Lago press conference, Mr. Trump had kind words for the app.

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” he said, adding that he won the youth vote by 34 percentage points and “there are those that say that TikTok had something to do with it.” 

The political turmoil gripping South Korea has raised fears that perhaps North Korea could try to exploit the situation for its own gain.

But that would be a major mistake, writes Joseph R. DeTrani, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and opinion contributor to Threat Status. In a new piece for The Times, Mr. DeTrani argues that North Korea’s allies ought to be cautioning Pyongyang against any moves that could fuel further instability on the Korean peninsula or, in a worst-case scenario, provoke a military conflict.

“Democracy in South Korea is resilient, as witnessed by the speed with which Mr. Yoon — in six hours — rescinded his martial law decree,” Mr. DeTrani writes. “Hopefully, North Korea’s allies China and Russia are cautioning Mr. Kim to refrain from any provocative move against South Korea. This is especially true now, when relations between South and North Korea are at a historic low. Indeed, both Koreas should refrain from any actions that could be viewed as provocative.”

• Dec. 17 — Celebrating the U.S. Space Force and Charting its Future, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Dec. 18 — The NATO perspective: Strengthening Resilience within the Alliance, Atlantic Council

• Dec. 18 — Mission Brief | Irregular Warfare in an Era of Great Power Competition, Center for a New American Security

• Dec. 18 —  American Confidence in Elections: Prohibiting Foreign Interference, Committee on House Administration 

• Dec. 19 — Putin Loses in Syria. Is Russia in Retreat? Atlantic Council