If the Trump administration moves ahead with severe cuts to U.S. foreign aid, the risks are real that China, Russia and other autocratic powers will seize the opportunity to fill the void and ramp up anti-U.S. and anti-democracy propaganda in fragile democracies around the world. 

That was a core message that International Republican Institute (IRI) President Daniel Twining offered in an exclusive video interview with the Threat Status Influencers series. IRI is itself a nonprofit organization that relies heavily on federal funding to engage in democracy promotion activities in countries on every continent.

“It’s appropriate for the new administration to come in and look at where that money is going. Does it align with U.S. interests? Is it strategic? Is it valuable? We welcome that our programs will pass that test. One thing we don’t want to do is take Team America off the field,” said Mr. Twining, who emphasized that only 1% of the U.S. federal budget currently goes to foreign assistance.

That funding can help the U.S. avoid costly confrontations in the future, according to Mr. Twining: “We’ve had four-star generals say to us: ‘Where IRI succeeds, the Army, the Marines don’t need to fight. We are your biggest champions because you can help people solve problems through local agency and good government that prevent countries from tipping over to the point where suddenly they turn into a situation that requires a U.S. national security response.’” 

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are no longer a local insurgency — they are going global. Washington Times special correspondents Jacob Wirtschafter and Waseem Abu Mahadi dig into the development in a dispatch from the region, examining how the rebel group has threatened global trade, launched strikes on Israel and formed dangerous alliances with extremist groups to destabilize the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have launched more than 250 attacks on commercial and military vessels, forcing global shipping companies to reroute away from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, which handles 12% of global trade.

Longtime Yemen watchers predict that not even the tentative ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a Houthi ally, will change the group’s trajectory with so much money and influence on the line. The United Nations estimates that the Houthis earn $180 million monthly from shakedown schemes to allow ships to pass safely in the areas it controls.

A U.S. intelligence aircraft crashed Thursday in the southern Philippines, killing one U.S. service member and three defense contractors. The crash occurred during a “routine mission” in support of U.S.-Philippine security cooperation activities, according to a statement from the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command.

The aircraft was identified by Philippine authorities as a Beechcraft Super King Air 300. According to FAA records, the twin-engine plane is owned by Metrea Special Aerospace ISR in Bethany, Oklahoma.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing the propeller-driven aircraft flying low over Ampatuan, a town in the southern region of the Philippine archipelago, where U.S. troops have been deployed for decades to help local officials battle militants linked to the Islamic State. The plane appeared to be surveying an area when it suddenly nose-dived into an open field, according to the Philippine News Agency.

The CIA’s fundamental duty “must be to protect the agency’s clandestine sources,” writes Daniel N. Hoffman, a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the agency.

Mr. Hoffman, opinion contributor to Threat Status, writes that Former CIA Director John Brennan, who was “never comfortable dealing with the messy business of human intelligence gathering, once told NPR, ‘We don’t steal secrets. We uncover, we discover, we reveal, we obtain, we solicit — all of that.’”

“But the CIA does steal secrets,” writes Mr. Hoffman. “That’s why the sources who are spying on our behalf, if they are caught, face the most dire consequences, including, in some cases, execution.”

“Mr. Ratcliffe must ensure that the CIA is equipped with the right personnel, bureaucratic structure and budget to recruit and handle these prized sources safely and securely,” Mr. Hoffman writes. “He is reportedly taking the positive step of reviewing whether Mr. Brennan’s reorganization of the CIA should be reversed because of its negative impact on the agency’s primary mission.”

China’s insatiable appetite for exotic and laboratory-treated animals has “repeatedly served as the breeding ground for pandemics,” writes Miles Yu, Threat Status opinion contributor and head of the China Center at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington.

“The 2003 SARS outbreak was officially linked to the consumption of virus-infected civet cats. COVID-19 followed an eerily similar trajectory,” writes Mr. Yu, who homes in on the related issue of “tainted meat and dairy products” that “appear to have originated not from a wet market alone but from China’s biological laboratories, where rogue scientists and ethically bankrupt researchers facilitated their release into the human food chain.”

• Feb. 7 — China and Russia: Strategic Dynamics, MITRE

• Feb. 10 — The U.S.-India Partnership under Trump 2.0, Observer Research Foundation America

• Feb. 10-11 — Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, the French government

• Feb. 11 — China’s Power: Up for Debate 2025, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Feb. 11 —  Congressional hearing examining China’s strategic port investments in the Western Hemisphere and the implications for U.S. homeland security, House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security

• Feb. 14-16 — Munich Security Conference, MSC 2025

• Feb. 17-21 — International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) 2025, United Arab Emirates