The Biden administration says six more nations are joining its push to restrict commercial spyware tools — essentially malicious software developed by private companies that enables hackers to covertly soak up information from people’s computers and phones.

Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Poland and South Korea are the six additions to a group now totaling 17 countries agreeing to counter the development and spread of commercial spyware tools. National Security Tech Reporter Ryan Lovelace notes, however, that questions persist about the speed and effectiveness of the U.S. government’s approach to fighting cyberespionage.

Whether the Biden administration’s coalition of nations voluntarily agreeing to do their part to slow the spread of spyware is working to diminish any adversary’s operations is unclear. Hacking equipment used by China is particularly hard to track. Information about it spilled into the news last month, following the unprecedented leak of a top Chinese contractor’s hacking tools and internal corporate communications.

The crisis in Haiti, U.S. intelligence warnings on generative AI “hallucinations” and underreported lobbying by TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance are all on the table in the latest Threat Status podcast.

The episode includes an interview with Gabe Scheinmann, executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society, a nonprofit group active on U.S. college campuses that aims to inspire young Americans toward service as future national security and foreign relations leaders. Mr. Scheinmann says students he speaks with grasp very clearly that TikTok is a social media tool that can be “fashioned into a weapon … by a foreign adversary.” 

The podcast also features a discussion with Brookings Institution Director of Foreign Policy Research Michael O’Hanlon, who offers eye-opening insight on a range of topics. On China-Russia relations, with Beijing buying Russian oil amid the severing of Russia-EU energy ties over Ukraine, Mr. O’Hanlon says that while China is “friendlier to Russia than we would like” and has helped Russia in Ukraine, it has not provided weapons. 

He also discusses the “oil price cap” that the U.S. helped impose on Russia, asserting that it was “designed explicitly to allow Russia to keep exporting oil and gas because [Washington] didn’t want to take all that oil and gas off the market. We just wanted Russia to be paid less for it.” In that sense, he tells Threat Status, “a country that’s trading with Russia is not necessarily working at complete counter-purposes to our own foreign policy.”

A team of senior Israeli officials is headed to Washington to “hear U.S. concerns” and “lay out an alternative approach that would target key Hamas elements in Rafah without a major ground invasion,” according to Biden administration National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. He made the assertion Monday after President Biden spoke via telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — their first call since a hot mic captured Mr. Biden saying after his State of the Union address earlier this month that he and the Israeli leader needed a “come to Jesus meeting.”

The White House said Mr. Biden voiced “deep concerns” on Monday’s call over Israel‘s potential military operation in Rafah, the city on Gaza‘s southern border with Egypt where more than 1 million Palestinian civilians are sheltering. Israel has vowed to launch an offensive against entrenched Hamas militants there. The Biden administration has opposed the Israeli plan, warning it would lead to “anarchy.” Mr. Sullivan said Israel will hold off on the military operation until the impending meetings in Washington conclude.

The developments came a day after the Pentagon’s Central Command said it had conducted its 13th humanitarian airdrop into Gaza with two Air Force C-17s dropping more than 28,800 meals and 34,500 bottles of water into the northern stretch of the Palestinian enclave for trapped residents there.

GOP lawmakers are asking Mr. Biden to authorize the U.S. Navy to blockade the Florida coast to stop an anticipated mass migration of people fleeing Haiti. The Florida lawmakers say the administration has the power under federal law to use the Navy to stop a mass migration and, given the unrest and violence in Haiti, it’s time to trigger that power.

The Coast Guard is generally the first line of defense, but the lawmakers say it won’t be enough. Army Gen. Laura Richardson, head of U.S. Southern Command, said last week she had already asked for increased capacity because existing resources “are insufficient to address the scope and scale of the anticipated mass migration.”

Whitewashing political Islamism as fundamentally different from terrorism fails to recognize the complex anti-Western ideology common in these groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, according to James S. Robbins and Lisa Daftari, who argue that President Biden is the latest occupant of the White House to have “misjudged political Islam’s radical undercurrent.”

“Foreign policy leaders need to understand the DNA of political Islam, an ideology and movement that seeks to use religious beliefs for political power and control, often at the expense of democratic values and principles,” Mr. Robbins and Ms. Daftari write. “The policies and positions adopted by the Carter, Obama and Biden administrations in these contexts reflect a misunderstanding of political Islamism’s basic hostility to liberal democratic values. … By engaging, tolerating or emboldening groups and regimes under the broader umbrella of political Islam, the U.S. has distorted the lines between moderates and extremists.”