Category: Wires

The Pentagon assesses that China’s production of nuclear warheads has slowed after a rapid buildup since 2020, with fewer new weapons added to its arsenal. But China’s program continues to expand, focusing on lower-yield nuclear weapons and early counterstrike capabilities, and remains on track to field 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade.

The China Military Power Report — an annual unclassified Pentagon assessment of Beijing’s capabilities delivered to Congress — departs from the language of recent editions that emphasized the looming challenge of China’s military buildup, instead highlighting President Donald Trump’s efforts to stabilize ties with the world’s fastest-growing military power.

Beijing’s total nuclear warhead arsenal likely remained in the low 600s, the report says, similar to last year’s figures, “reflecting a slower rate of production” — down from the estimated 100 additional warheads a year since 2020. The report notes that the People’s Liberation Army is, however, continuing “its massive nuclear expansion,” and showing “no appetite” for arms control discussions.

The report strikes an overall more conciliatory tone on Beijing’s military ambitions. Where last year’s assessment described Beijing as the “pacing challenge” for the U.S. military — a term also used during Trump’s first administration, this year’s report describes China’s rapidly expanding military as a “logical” result of the country growing more wealthy and powerful.

“President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China, and the Department of War will ensure that he is able to achieve these objectives,” it reads.

Despite the shift in tone, the report lays out mounting challenges posed by Beijing’s ambitions to assert control over Taiwan and expand a conventional missile force that is increasingly approaching U.S. capabilities.

Analysts say it highlights the challenges facing the Trump administration in balancing efforts to prioritize U.S. interests in trade while projecting military dominance in the Indo-Pacific.

“There’s an inherent contradiction running through the report: It lays bare the scale of China’s military expansion and Taiwan ambitions while simultaneously suggesting the relationship is stabilizing. Those two stories can’t be reconciled — no matter how hard the administration tries to preserve the trade truce,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

The annual military assessment comes as Trump prepares to travel to Beijing next year, following a trade détente reached with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea that eased tensions over Trump’s aggressive tariff program and Beijing’s weaponization of its rare-earth monopoly.

The report comes as the White House is signaling different priorities on China. The recently released National Security Strategy — a document outlining the administration’s defense priorities — frames China’s challenge more in economic terms while shifting the U.S. focus to threats in the Western Hemisphere.

Even as tensions have eased since the South Korea meeting, national security frictions continue to flare up between the two countries. On Monday, Beijing reacted angrily to the U.S. seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker en route to China amid escalating tensions between Washington and Caracas. Chinese officials also strongly condemned the approval of a record $11 billion U.S. weapons package for Taiwan last week.

The Pentagon report notes that Beijing is ramping up efforts to “coerce” Taiwan to unify with China through a campaign of military patrols — including a twofold increase in incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone between 2023 and 2025 — and using increasingly aggressive political rhetoric as part of a campaign to undermine the island’s independent rule.

China’s embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite producing fewer nuclear warheads, China’s broader nuclear program has expanded in other ways, including the development of more versatile low-yield weapons and upgrades to its counterstrike systems, the report notes. China has likely loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles into desert silos, advancing capabilities for long-range strikes closer to U.S. territories.

At over 600 nuclear warheads, China’s arsenal remains far smaller than U.S. stockpile of around 3,700, but the report says upgrades in China’s program likely have enhanced its ability to rapidly retaliate. “This reliance on the strategic level of deterrence — likely nuclear weapons, but also cyber and space capabilities — indicates the growing confidence and comfort the PLA has with conventional escalation,” it said.

The significance of China’s expanding arsenal has been thrown into sharper relief amid rising global tensions over nuclear weapons. Russia has stepped up nuclear intimidation since its invasion of Ukraine, while Trump has ordered the United States to resume nuclear testing “immediately,” accusing Moscow and Beijing of skirting a three-decade moratorium.

Analysts said a slowdown in the production of nuclear weapons could also point to changes in China’s threat perception. “Beijing may currently perceive a reduced existential threat from the United States and, accordingly, less urgency to pursue nuclear expansion at maximum speed than during the peak of U.S.-China hostility around 2021,” said Tong Zhao, a nuclear specialist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He added that China’s 2023 overhaul of the PLA Rocket Force following a corruption scandal could mean the country is working to “prioritize internal reform and more sustainable, effective long-term growth.”

Elsewhere, the Pentagon report notes China’s advance of military programs in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum technology, and advanced semiconductors — partly through acquisitions of U.S. technology. While restrictions on high-end processors have constrained China’s AI industry, illicit smuggling networks have likely allowed companies such as Deepseek and Huawei to obtain U.S. semiconductors for projects with potential military significance.

The Trump administration has sought to balance U.S. security and trade with Beijing — maintaining restrictions on some high-end chips while, earlier this month, lifting controls to allow approved customers in China access to advanced Nvidia H200 semiconductors.

“The Pentagon is warning that China already treats advanced accelerators as a strategic asset — using intermediaries and shell networks to evade controls — so the White House’s desire to reopen the export spigot is strategically backward,” Singleton said. “It turns an enforcement problem into a policy choice that strengthens exactly the capability the report flags as a growing threat.”

BEIRUT — For the first time in three years, the Gaza Strip’s tiny Christian community is celebrating Christmas without the immediate threat of war.

A ceasefire has brought the enclave a measure of calm, and over the past few weeks, Christians there have embraced the holiday spirit, lighting up trees and passing out sweets.

On Sunday, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, led a Christmas Eve Mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, where he baptized the newest member of the community, a baby named Marco Nader Habshi.

“It will not be full of joy, but it is an attempt to renew life,” Elias al-Jilda, 59, a prominent member of Gaza’s Orthodox population, said of this season’s holiday celebration. He said he remembers the days when Christmas in Gaza meant citywide festivities, with Muslims and Christians coming together. “It was a special occasion,” he added, “an opportunity for us to breathe.”

But while the holidays have long brought a sense of relief, the Christian community in Gaza — one of the world’s oldest — was already in decline. Now, with the devastating conflict between Hamas and Israel, the population has further diminished, and church leaders warn that postwar deprivation could push more people to leave.

Like most Palestinians in Gaza, Christians’ “houses were destroyed, their businesses were destroyed, their living conditions are difficult,” said Archbishop Atallah Hanna, head of the Sebastia diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

According to Hanna and Jilda, who serves on the council of the Arab Orthodox Church in Gaza, the territory’s total Christian population has fallen from about 1,000 members before the war to almost half of that today. It’s a drop that reflects, in part, a long-term trend of Christian emigration from the Palestinian territories — only in Gaza, the number of Christians is so small that any loss feels like a substantial blow.

At the same time, Israel’s military actions in Gaza have accelerated Christian flight from the enclave. Residents began leaving at a steady clip, either with help from family members abroad or in medical evacuations. Jilda described the departures as “an attempt to survive,” while those who stayed in Gaza “survived by what can only be described as a miracle,” he said.

At least 44 Palestinian Christians have been killed in the conflict, according to a committee overseen by the Palestinian government. Some were killed in Israeli sniper or artillery attacks that hit Gazan churches, the committee said, while others died of illness, injury, or malnutrition because of a lack of food or medical care.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, which began after the Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says a majority of the dead are women and children. Around 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas assault, and some 250 others were taken into Gaza as hostages.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced, the United Nations says, and wide swaths of the enclave, including houses, farmland, and infrastructure, are destroyed.

The fighting forced Gaza’s Christians — the majority of whom are Greek Orthodox or Catholic — to take refuge in its two main churches. Most sheltered in Holy Family Church in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The church, which is Catholic, has much more space for accommodating the displaced. Others huddled about 1.5 miles away in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius, established in the year 425.

“There is an assumption that Gaza has no Christian population, or no Christian history,” said Yousef AlKhouri, a Gaza native and dean at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank. “And that’s not true.”

He said that Gaza, despite its size, has produced many Christian theologians, politicians and scholars over the years. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are also believed to have passed through the territory on their way to Egypt, AlKhouri said — a story that, according to him, gave Holy Family Church its name.

For Jilda and his family, Holy Family Church served as a sanctuary after their home in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood was destroyed one month into the war. After the ceasefire began, they moved into a rental home in the city but are still trying to furnish it.

Today, most of the region’s Palestinian Christians are still sheltering at the churches, as reconstruction has yet to begin and a rainy winter season has inundated the tents in which displaced residents live.

Like Jilda, AlKhouri, who grew up in Gaza in the 1990s, said he remembers a time when Christian life there was not just about survival. “The celebrations of Christian and Muslim festivals were shared,” he said, adding that there was always a sense of solidarity among “Palestinian Christians and Muslims in Gaza: going to school together, playing together, going to the YMCA.”

But over time, as the peace process with Israel collapsed and hopes for a Palestinian state dimmed, the conflict began tearing at the community. In Gaza, Hamas and its secular rival, Fatah, fought a brief but bloody civil war that saw the Islamists take control. Since then, Christmas celebrations have been largely private and subdued.

Still, as Pizzaballa held a high-profile Mass this week, he urged Christians in Gaza to hold on.

“We are called not only to survive, but to rebuild life. We must bring the spirit of Christmas — the spirit of light, tenderness and love. It may seem impossible,” he said, “but after two years of terrible war, we are still here.”

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented journalists a new version of a peace plan Wednesday that suggests he is open to withdrawing troops from eastern Ukraine to create a demilitarized zone if Russia agrees to do the same as part of a settlement to end the war.

The suggestions marks Zelensky’s first inch toward any sort of compromise on the issue of territory in the eastern Donbas region, which Russia has demanded full control of despite failing to take several major cities militarily. The issue of territory remains one of the most contentious in discussions, with Ukraine arguing that giving up its land will only embolden Russia to attack again.

The 20-point draft Zelensky publicized Wednesday is far from final and has not been agreed to by Russia, which will probably oppose several major points, including the demand for both sides to withdraw their forces from Ukraine’s east.

The document is the latest iteration of a proposal to end the war after weeks of difficult negotiations following a U.S. threat last month to cut off all support for Ukraine unless the country signed on to a 28-point version that made major concessions to Russia.

That warning triggered a diplomatic frenzy, including many meetings between a Ukrainian delegation and President Donald Trump’s negotiators, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The latest plan makes clear that Ukraine continues to oppose the idea that it would be forced to withdraw its troops from its east but would consider doing so if Russia did the same. The goal would be to create a free economic zone that is not controlled by either military, Zelensky said.

Any such agreement, however, would require a national referendum, which would be difficult to organize without a ceasefire in place. It would also require Russia agreeing to this and other points in the document, which remains unlikely.

The establishment of a free economic zone would require significant work to determine who would control the territory, including potentially foreign peacekeepers. Russia has previously opposed the idea that foreign troops be stationed in Ukraine and the two sides will likely find it difficult to agree which countries would contribute troops to such a mission.

Such an arrangement was suggested by the United States, which has repeatedly raised various suggestions that would prioritize business after the war. Zelensky previously said that if Ukrainian forces were to withdraw from any territory, it would only be logical for Russian forces to withdraw the same amount. He had also cast skepticism on how to secure such a zone, citing potential vulnerabilities to Russian infiltration.

Russia has previously stated that even if it did withdraw its military from some regions, it would expect to still control the area with police and national guard units.

Zelensky also said Wednesday that the current draft includes a peacetime Ukrainian military of 800,000 troops. The initial version would have limited the size to 600,000. Ukraine has repeatedly stated that its best security guarantee is its own armed forces.

The draft also includes references to security guarantees that would amount to similar protections as NATO’s Article 5, which sees an attack on one member as an attack on all. An earlier draft of the plan had barred Ukraine from becoming part of NATO, which was deemed unacceptable to Ukrainians, who have put joining the alliance into their constitution.

Zelensky has emphasized in recent remarks that no one can view Ukraine as an obstacle to the peace process, but any plan cannot condemn future generations of Ukrainians to war with Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to specific points in the plan Wednesday but told journalists that Russia’s main demands “are well known to our colleagues in the U.S.”

Russia intends “to formulate our further position and continue our contacts in the very near future through the existing channels that are currently working.”

Russia has shown little sign it is interested in finding a real settlement to the war. Ukraine had requested a Christmas truce, which Russia declined. Russia has continued to aggressively bomb Ukraine in recent days, targeting the energy grid and triggering more widespread blackouts across the country. Russia’s early-morning attack on Tuesday killed three people, including a 4-year-old child.

Warnings continue that more bombardment is likely as the energy system is under greater stress responding to the subzero temperatures taking hold across Ukraine.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, a police car exploded in Moscow, killing two police officers in the same spot where a general was killed by a car bomb two days earlier. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attacks but Russia has suggested Kyiv could be behind the operations.

The Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement that two traffic police officers saw a suspicious individual near a police car. As they approached to detain him, an explosive device detonated.

Two prominent Russian military bloggers pointed fingers at Ukrainian and European special services, blaming them for the attack and attempting to destabilize Russia from within.

“I believe that the Ukrainian (British, and U.S.) intelligence services are trying to open a second (subversive) front inside Russia,” state media military correspondent Alexander Sladkov wrote on his Telegram blog.

Sladkov also questions whether the CCTV surveillance system bolstered in Moscow in recent years would help identify those responsible for the attack, and noted that if the investigation results are not released this week, it will be a “demonstration of weakness.”

Another war reporter, Alexander Kots, wrote that the explosion “clearly bears the mocking signature” of special services from Ukraine and Britain.

“This is a typical British anti-crisis: sow panic among the population, destabilize it from within, create a sense of insecurity, undermine the authority of the authorities and the security services, provoke public discontent with the special military operation, and provoke rallies calling for its swift end,” Kots wrote.

The Trump administration is seeking contractors to help it overhaul the United States’ immigrant detention system in a plan that includes renovating industrial warehouses to hold more than 80,000 immigrant detainees at a time, according to a draft solicitation reviewed by the Washington Post.

Rather than shuttling detainees around the country to wherever detention space is available, as happens now, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement aims to speed up deportations by establishing a deliberate feeder system, the document says. Newly arrested detainees would be booked into processing sites for a few weeks before being funneled into one of seven large-scale warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each, where they would be staged for deportation.

The large warehouses would be located close to major logistics hubs in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri. Sixteen smaller warehouses would hold up to 1,500 people each.

The draft solicitation is not final and is subject to changes. ICE plans to share it with private detention companies this week to gauge interest and refine the plan, according to an internal email reviewed by the Post. A formal request for bids could follow soon after that.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said she “cannot confirm” the Post’s reporting and declined to answer questions about the warehouse plan.

NBC and Bloomberg News previously reported on ICE’s internal discussions about using warehouses as detention centers. The full scope of the project, the locations of the facilities, and other details contained in the solicitation have not been previously disclosed or reported.

The warehouse plan would be the next step in President Donald Trump’s campaign to detain and deport millions of immigrants, which began with a scramble to expand the nation’s immigrant detention system, the largest in the world. Armed with $45 billion Congress set aside for locking up immigrants, his administration this year revived dormant prisons, repurposed sections of military bases and partnered with Republican governors to build immigrant tent encampments in remote regions.

The administration has deported more than 579,000 people this year, border czar Tom Homan said earlier this month on the social media platform X.

The new facilities will “maximize efficiency, minimize costs, shorten processing times, limit lengths of stay, accelerate the removal process and promote the safety, dignity and respect for all in ICE custody,” the solicitation said.

“We need to get better at treating this like a business,” ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons said at a border security conference in April, according to the Arizona Mirror. The administration’s goal, he said, was to deport immigrants as efficiently as Amazon moves packages: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”

Commercial real estate experts say concentrating detainees in warehouses would create its own logistical problems. Such structures are designed for storage and shipping, not human habitation. They tend to be poorly ventilated and lack precise temperature controls — and, because they are typically located far from residential areas, they may not have access to the plumbing and sanitation systems needed to support thousands of full-time residents.

“It’s dehumanizing,” said Tania Wolf, an advocate with the National Immigration Project who is based in New Orleans — about one hour south from the site of a planned warehouse in Hammond, La. “You’re treating people, for lack of a better term, like cattle.”

ICE plans to heavily modify the structures to include intake areas, housing units with showers and restrooms, a kitchen, dining areas, a medical unit, indoor and outdoor recreation areas, a law library, and administrative offices, according to the solicitation. Some of the facilities will include special housing designed for families in custody.

The majority of the planned warehouses are in towns, counties, and states led by Republicans supportive of Trump’s immigration policies. Two of the largest warehouses are planned for towns with Democrat-led local governments: Stafford, Va., and Kansas City, Mo.

If the government leased a warehouse in Stafford, it would need to comply with the city’s zoning laws and building codes, said Pamela Yeung, one of seven supervisors on Stafford’s Democrat-led board.

“Immigration policy is federal, but its impacts are local,” Yeung said in an emailed statement. “Any facility of this scale would affect infrastructure, public safety, and social services.”

ICE held more than 68,000 people at the beginning of this month, agency data shows, the highest number on record. Nearly half, or 48 percent of these people, have no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, ICE data shows.

Some administration officials have complained about the complexity of the current detention system. A 2015 government watchdog report found that deportation flights often leave the country with empty seats because of the logistical difficulty of bringing enough people eligible for deportation to an airplane at the same time.

The government already awarded one $30 million contract for help with “due diligence services and concept design” for the new facilities, procurement records show. That award fueled a public backlash among members of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, a Kansas tribe that said a business connected to the tribe had acted against their wishes in pursuing the contract.

Tribal chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick said in a Dec. 17 video that the tribe has exited the contract and plans “to ensure that our nation’s economic interests do not come into conflict with our values in the future.”

The business that won the award, KPB Services LLC, could not be reached at phone numbers listed online for the company.

The biggest newly proposed warehouse would hold up to 10,000 detainees in Stafford, an industrial area 40 miles south of Washington. A facility with capacity for up to 9,500 people is planned for Hutchins, near Dallas; and another with space for 9,000 in Hammond, east of Baton Rouge. Currently, ICE’s biggest facility is a makeshift tent encampment built this summer at the Fort Bliss U.S. Army base in Texas. It now holds around 3,000 people but was expected to have a capacity of 5,000 by year’s end.

The warehouse solicitation document names nine active detention centers as part of the project’s final phase, suggesting that at least those facilities would continue to be used. The plan does not mention whether other existing facilities would be phased out.

It does not give a timeline for beginning work on the project but says the facilities must begin accepting detainees 30 to 60 calendar days after the start of construction.

Staffing facilities of this size is likely to be a challenge, said Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden. Prospective workers will need medical or other specialized training and will have to pass federal security clearances, he said.

This problem is already bearing out in other new facilities. In September, the government’s own inspectors found that the Fort Bliss site employed less than two-thirds of the security personnel it had agreed to in its contract.

“We can always find more warehouses,” Houser said. The ability to operate the facilities safely, he said, is “always limited by staffing.”