Germany no longer trusts that the US will share intelligence. So Berlin is unshackling its spy agency to stand on its own, after Trump briefly cut Ukraine off.
A new law hands the BND its broadest powers in 70 years, putting the service on a war footing against Russia — FT. 1/
Merz raised the BND budget 25 percent to €1.51 billion and will send parliament a law granting powers it has never held.
Signals intelligence, AI, the right to hack back, and lighter oversight. Chief Martin Jäger calls the BND Germany's first line of defence. 2/
Trump's administration briefly paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March 2025, and the move focused minds across Europe.
Germany realised it can no longer lean on the CIA, the benefactor that long fed the BND its most important information. 3/
Kasparov: Ukraine's drone revolution is the equivalent of gunpowder ending feudalism.
A townsman trained with an arquebus could take down a knight from 50 meters — and the entire medieval vassal system collapsed. What we're witnessing now is a shift of the same magnitude. 1/
Kasparov: The head of Rheinmetall mockingly said a Ukrainian housewife on a 3D printer can make a drone. He didn't realize he was signing the death warrant for the entire military procurement system
A drone for $1,000 that destroys a $10 million tank, that changes everything. 2/
Kasparov: Dictatorships cannot sustain a serious technological race. The war in Ukraine proves this
Russian war bloggers themselves ask why Ukraine has such an advantage, it's mobility, a different system. It's not that Putin is bad. The system is broken. 3/
Snyder: Trump thinks everybody is going to roll over when he says stuff. That's true of a lot of people in his party. It's not true of people in the rest of the world.
Nobody in the world thinks Trump is strong. Nobody. I leave the US— nobody thinks he's strong. 1/
Snyder: They think he has power within a set of institutions that can do things. But they don't think he personally is strong or threatening. He's seen as an incredibly weak leader by everyone.
They're polite to him — you have to be. But everybody sees him as colossally weak. 2/
Snyder: Trump plays a strongman on TV and some people go for that. Similarly the idea he can negotiate — he can't.
He's a worse negotiator than kindergarteners selling lemonade. He can't negotiate at all. But he can play a negotiator on TV. And the charisma is part of it. 3/
Snyder: We've lost this war. I'll make that very clear. We lost it a long time ago.
Americans are very slow to realize we've lost wars, but that doesn't mean we're slow to lose them. We lost this one very quickly. The terms of this peace are basically capitulation. 1/
Snyder: This goes to two issues of American power. First — how incompetent leadership can be. Second — how you get to a situation where radically incompetent leadership is possible.
That second point worries me. We're in a cycle now. And these are wars of whimsy. 2/
Snyder: The answer is Venezuela. That call Trump made to Fox and Friends where he just seemed like he was high. That sentence — we can do this over and over and nobody can stop us.
That's where he switched. From skepticism about war to this utopian idea of violence. 3/
Bolton: Trump doesn't understand the concept of alliances. He thinks we defend Europe, they don't pay, we get nothing. In fact the US gets a lot out of NATO.
It's been a mistake of American politicians treating NATO membership as an act of charity by the United States. 1/
Bolton: If Trump had a strategic vision, if he knew what he was after — there was a lot at stake. The allies can justifiably say: Trump never briefed us on his plans.
He might have had a lot more political support if he had. Instead he played it entirely by ear. 2/
Bolton: Iran, the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, has missiles that can reach Europe but not the United States. Has committed plenty of terrorist attacks in Europe
Trump can't see the virtue of carrying allies with him. That's called alliance management. He doesn't do it. 3/