Trump’s Flurry of National Security Policies

Trump Announces Drone Tariffs, Cyber Memo in Flurry of National Security Policies

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World Brief:

Trump’s Flurry of National Security Policies

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Trump’s Flurry of National Security Policies

The administration made moves on drones, cyberwarfare, and ship building.

By **Eli Wizevich**, an editorial fellow at *Foreign Policy*, and **Maxine Davey**, an editorial fellow at *Foreign Policy*.

!U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Aug. 14.

*U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Aug. 14.*

U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Aug. 14. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

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August 14, 2026, 4:17 PM

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the **United States**’ new national security directives, a drone incursion into **Latvian** airspace, and a controversial delay in **Zambia**’s election.

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**Policy Action In Washington**

U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a slate of national security directives this week, including aggressive tariffs on drones, measures that free U.S. companies to hack on behalf of the government, and changes to Navy policy.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the **United States**’ new national security directives, a drone incursion into **Latvian** airspace, and a controversial delay in **Zambia**’s election.

Sign up to receive World Brief in your inbox every weekday.

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**Policy Action In Washington**

U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a slate of national security directives this week, including aggressive tariffs on drones, measures that free U.S. companies to hack on behalf of the government, and changes to Navy policy.

In the name of “securing American drone dominance,” the Trump administration on Friday announced a 100 percent tariff on drones weighing more than 25 kilograms and drones with thermal imaging; a 25 percent tariff on small drones, even those without particular national security concerns; and a 15 percent tariff on drone parts from allies such as the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Drones from the United Kingdom will only face a 10 percent tariff.

Trump will implement the tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives the president a more legally durable tariff strategy for national security risks after the Supreme Court ruled against a different method in February. The White House’s announcement makes no mention of China, but the move is widely seen as attempting to counter Chinese dominance, as drones have become a critical part of modern warfare from Ukraine to Iran to Latin America.

In a national security memorandum on Wednesday, Trump also directed the U.S. government to partner with “vetted” private companies to conduct cyberattacks and surveillance against foreign transnational criminal networks that target U.S. citizens. While the announcement does not say which companies might sign on or what their specific missions would be, it establishes a framework for federal government oversight of such activities and sets guardrails against cyberattacks that would cause loss of life or “rise to the level of use of force or armed attack under international law.”

The move offloads work from U.S. military and intelligence agency hackers and puts the United States on more equal footing with the likes of Russia, China, and Iran, which have long merged private cyber capabilities with the state. Hackers linked to these governments “have a history of targeting U.S. critical infrastructure,” including recent suspected Iranian cyberattacks on vulnerable U.S. water systems, *Foreign Policy*’s Rishi Iyengar and Christina Lu report. However, the directive makes it clear that it only targets criminal groups that are “not an institutional part of a foreign government or wholly operated under a foreign government’s direction.”

But some experts warn that Trump’s directive risks inflaming global cyberwarfare and that attributing cyberattacks to specific actors is a fraught undertaking. “People are regularly and willingly wrong on pretty important incidents,” Nick Carr, threat intelligence lead at Microsoft and a former official at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, wrote on social media.

Finally, Trump achieved a longtime goal on Thursday, when he mandated the Navy’s return to steam catapults to launch jet fighters from aircraft carriers, replacing a newer electromagnetic catapult system. The switch could cost billions of dollars. The memo also allows the Navy to outsource building to overseas shipyards and orders the Pentagon to build a fifth naval shipyard for submarines and aircraft carriers.

The order comes alongside growing concerns over the strength and health of the U.S. military, including reportedly poor conditions onboard the USS *Abraham Lincoln*, a depleted drone arsenal, and a loss to Ukrainian troops in a military training exercise earlier this year.

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**What We’re Following**

**Fire and drones.** Ukrainian drones battered Ust-Luga, Russia’s largest Baltic Sea port, on Friday morning, causing a fire and imperiling a key node in Russia’s oil export network. Russian officials claimed that the country’s air defenses shot down 54 Ukrainian drones, that the fires have been put out, and tha