A provision hidden inside this year's defense spending bill would permanently fuse U.S. and Israeli military technology, from artificial intelligence to autonomous weapons systems.

"I can't think of another example of Congress formalizing integration of critical national security technologies with a foreign power."

— Retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore

Section 224 of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act does not look like much on paper. Tucked into thousands of pages of routine military spending language, it establishes what its sponsors call the "United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative." The name sounds bureaucratic. The substance is unprecedented.

The provision would create a permanent framework for integrating Israeli-developed technologies directly into U.S. military research, procurement, manufacturing, and acquisition processes. It covers artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cyberwarfare, biotechnology, missile defense, and defense industrial production. Once enacted, the integration would be difficult, if not impossible, to unwind.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore, who has taught military history at multiple institutions, told The Intercept he could find no historical precedent for Congress formally binding critical national security technologies with another country in this way. Unlike traditional foreign military aid programs that transfer weapons or funding, Section 224 would entangle the two militaries at the level of research and development itself.

The House Armed Services Committee approved the legislation on Thursday evening, advancing it to the full House for consideration. Only a handful of legislators from both parties have spoken out against it, and their objections were swiftly overruled.

Section 224 did not emerge from the Pentagon or from any defense planning process. It is closely modeled on a bipartisan bill called the FUTURES Act that was introduced earlier this year in both chambers and died without advancing. The FUTURES Act was sponsored by Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, Republican; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Democrat; Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, Republican; and Representative Don Davis of North Carolina, Democrat. All four received substantial campaign support from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying organizations.

The bill received public backing from both AIPAC and FDD Action, the advocacy arm of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has long pushed for deeper U.S.-Israel defense cooperation. When it failed as standalone legislation, its core provisions reappeared almost verbatim in Section 224 of the NDAA.

Legislative records reviewed by The Intercept show that Section 224 adopts the same initiative and many of the same provisions previously proposed in the FUTURES Act. This is not how defense policy is normally written. It is how lobbying works when its targets are embedded in committee leadership.

Translation: a foreign lobby drafted legislation, failed to pass it, then watched as the exact same text got inserted into must-pass spending legislation where individual members have little ability to amend or debate it.

The stated rationale for Section 224 is economic rather than strategic. The Obama-era Memorandum of Understanding with Israel provides approximately $3.3 billion annually in foreign military financing and $500 million annually for missile defense cooperation, totaling $38 billion over ten years through 2028. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in January that he wanted to reduce Israel's dependence on American military assistance over the coming decade.

Section 224 reframes U.S.-Israel military relations as a partnership rather than a patronage arrangement. Instead of sending money, America would share technology infrastructure. Proponents argue this mirrors how the United States collaborates with allied nations like the United Kingdom and Australia through programs such as AUKUS.

But the comparison does not hold. The UK and Australia are treaty allies with democratically accountable governments and established defense industrial bases. Israel is a country whose military has been conducting an ongoing war of occupation, whose AI-driven surveillance and targeting systems have been used to identify and kill Palestinian civilians, and whose government has repeatedly rejected calls for ceasefire even as the death toll in Gaza climbed into the hundreds of thousands.

Rep. Ro Khanna of California attempted to strip Section 224 from the NDAA at the committee stage. His amendment failed after opposition from both Republicans and Democrats, including Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith of Washington, who argued that the United States benefits from access to Israeli military technologies developed under real-world combat conditions.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky also condemned the proposal before it moved forward, writing on social media that he would offer a floor amendment to remove it if it survived committee. Massie is known for opposing all foreign military aid, a stance that drew the ire of AIPAC and millions in spending against him in the recent primary he lost to a Trump-backed challenger. He will not be around to vote on the final bill.

The Pentagon has refused to answer questions about Section 224. The Intercept contacted both the House Armed Services Committee and the Department of Defense, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's office, seeking clarification on the provision's origins and whether Pentagon officials participated in its development. Neither responded before publication.

That silence is notable given reporting published this past weekend by the New York Times and Military.com, which detailed growing Defense Department concerns about Israeli espionage activities targeting U.S. military installations and personnel. The Pentagon has reportedly raised alarms about the scale of intelligence gathering by Israeli agencies on American soil, including at bases where joint exercises are conducted.

The timing raises an obvious question: why would the United States deepen technological integration with a country whose own defense establishment is allegedly spying on it? Why hand over access to U.S. research and development processes when your own security apparatus considers that other government a threat?

Astore's concern centers on artificial intelligence specifically. Israel is widely regarded as a global leader in AI predictive models for surveillance and targeting, using both manned and unmanned drones. The smart technologies Israel has deployed against Palestinians could very well be adapted by the U.S. government for domestic use, particularly against groups that Trump's administration has already designated as potential terrorists.

Wes Bryant, a former Air Force special operations member who previously served as chief of civilian harm assessments at the Pentagon's Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, put it more bluntly. He described Israel as "wantonly committing atrocity and genocide largely facilitated by its use of AI," and warned that deeper military integration makes the United States complicit in those same practices.

Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick, co-authors of the upcoming book "Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power," described Section 224 in a piece for The Guardian as "not an alliance with a talented and responsible ally that will help keep the US safe, but a trap being set by Israel and its lobby to bind our country to a state that, for all its past promise, has gone rogue."

The language is strong. It also captures what makes this provision dangerous: it is designed to be irreversible. Once Israeli AI systems are integrated into U.S. military procurement, once joint cyberwarfare capabilities are developed together, once the two defense industrial bases are woven into a single fabric, pulling them apart would require political will that neither party currently possesses.

This is not about friendship between nations. It is about permanently outsourcing American national security decisions to another country's military-industrial complex, with all the geopolitical entanglements that follow. If Israel pursues actions that provoke regional conflict, the United States will find itself committed by shared technology infrastructure rather than by treaty or choice.

The House votes next. The Senate will have its own version to reconcile. And somewhere in the thousands of pages of defense spending language, Section 224 waits to become law.

The question is not whether AIPAC wanted this outcome. They made their intentions clear months ago. The question is why Congress is handing them exactly what they asked for, hiding it inside a bill too large for most members to read, and calling it national security.