Threat Status was on top of a story that broke late Wednesday about the latest hack targeting a high-profile lawmaker. Sen. Lindsey Graham revealed that the FBI took possession of his phone after someone attempted to trick the South Carolina Republican into thinking he was communicating with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer.

Mr. Graham addressed the potential hack during remarks at the Hill & Valley Forum on Capitol Hill, a gathering of top tech and government officials meeting in Washington to discuss artificial intelligence security. The Times’ Ryan Lovelace was at the event and the first to report on the apparent hack of the senator’s phone.

“Anything you can create apparently can be hacked,” Mr. Graham said at the event.

The revelation came on the same day that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, issued new guidance to help the operators of vital U.S. infrastructure guard against attacks by Russian hackers. Those attacks, the government said, could target dams, water systems, food supplies and other pieces of critical infrastructure. The CISA paper came on the heels of a memo from President Biden earlier this week laying out a new government-wide plan to protect American infrastructure from foreign cyberattacks.

Russian troops used chemical weapons in Ukraine, the State Department said in a report delivered to Congress on Wednesday. Russian forces, the U.S. government said, employed the chemical weapon chloropicrin against Ukrainian positions. The use of such banned weapons “is not an isolated incident, and is probably driven by Russian forces’ desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield,” the State Department said.

In response, the Biden administration sanctioned three Russian government entities associated with Russia’s chemical and biological weapons programs and four Russian companies that have contributed to such entities. The Kremlin fired back and said it “cannot be intimidated” by such moves.

The Russian army, meanwhile, is trying to break down Ukrainian defenses through more traditional military means as well. Russia struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa with ballistic missiles in a Wednesday attack, injuring 14 people and starting a massive blaze, local officials and emergency services said. It was the third attack on Odesa over the past week.

At the United Nations, Russia’s representatives have circulated a resolution calling on all countries to take urgent action to prevent putting weapons in outer space “for all time.” The Russian resolution comes a week after the country vetoed a U.S.-Japan measure aimed at stopping an arms race in space. Russia says its resolution goes much further than the U.S.-Japan version.

Quick reminder: There is a belief in national security circles that Moscow could take drastic steps to control space.

Biden administration officials for months have warned Israel against an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, home to some 1.4 million Palestinian residents and refugees. But, with such an operation now reportedly drawing closer, those warnings are getting more blunt and urgent.

In Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the U.S. “cannot, will not support a major military operation in Rafah absent an effective plan to make sure that civilians are not harmed.”

“And no, we have not seen such a plan,” Mr. Blinken said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin delivered a similar message to his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in a phone call late Wednesday.

The Pentagon also says that a temporary pier under construction off the coast of the Gaza Strip is more than 50% complete and is on track to provide humanitarian relief to the Palestinian enclave, The Times’ Mike Glenn reports.

One of America’s leading nongovernmental organizations still pushing for democratic change in Syria gathered at the Capitol on Wednesday to debate with top foreign relations legislators on “advancing a just resolution in Syria.” Policy discussions included the continued presence of U.S. troops in Syria, accountability for alleged war crimes committed by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and the future direction of the 13-year-old civil war. 

“Members of Congress continue to show broad support of the Syrian people’s pursuit of freedom and democracy, which gives us hope about next steps on justice and accountability,” said Dr. Muhammad Bakr Ghbeis, head of the NGO Citizens for a Secure and Safe America, or C4SSA. 

A major issue of contention was the normalization of the Assad regime by its Arab neighbors and what that means for broader Middle Eastern stability, given continued Iranian aggression and further instability caused by the Israel-Hamas war. The House recently passed the bipartisan Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act, with the bill now before the Senate. Wednesday’s conference saw murmurings among guests about the Biden administration’s lack of support for the measure. 

As part of its broader military buildup, China has begun sea trials for the third aircraft carrier for its People’s Liberation Army, Chinese state media reported. The official Chinese military website announced the carrier sea trials in a three-paragraph dispatch from Shanghai.

The Washington Times’ Bill Gertz is tracking the new developments, the latest example of China’s major naval expansion. The new carrier joins what the Pentagon called in its latest annual report the largest military fleet in the world with 370 ships and submarines. That total includes 140 surface warships, highlighted by Beijing’s push for new aircraft carriers.

The anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocking college campuses across America have a dangerous undertone, writes Clifford D. May, columnist at The Times and founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. May writes: “The leftist ideology that has become dominant on campuses today, sometimes called ‘wokeism,’ adds a twist that is racialist and arguably racist: that all those deemed (by the ‘woke’) as ‘people of color’ are oppressed and entitled to commit any and all atrocities to ‘resist’ those deemed (by the “woke”) as ‘White.’”

Columnist Cal Thomas says the language seen in some anti-Israel quarters today “is often similar to words used by the Nazis in the 1930s.”

“The purpose was to diminish their value among the German people so that killing them would be tolerable, or at least ignored,” he writes.

• May 2 — The Lithium Triangle: To Be or Not to Be Successful, Wilson Center.

• May 2 — Stress Test: The Toll of the War in Ukraine on the Kremlin, American Enterprise Institute.

• May 3 — A new charm offensive? Unpacking Xi’s visit to Europe, Atlantic Council.

• May 3 — After the Vote: Navigating USMCA Trade & Investment in Mexico, Wilson Center.

• May 6 — Launch of Chinese Handcuffs: How China Hijacked the Environmental Agenda, The Heritage Foundation.

• May 7 — Shifting geopolitics in the age of AI: A conversation with Sam Altman, Brookings Institution.

• May 9 — The Erosion of Hong Kong’s Autonomy Since 2020: Implications for the United States, Center for Strategic and International Studies.