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Welcome back to Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2019s Situation Report, where one of your co-authors spent the long weekend scuba diving in Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela, blissfully unaware of what was about to go down just a few miles away.<\/p>\n On that note, here\u2019s what\u2019s on tap for the day: Trump orders a military strike <\/strong>on an alleged drug boat <\/strong>in the Caribbean<\/strong>, Israel considers West Bank annexation<\/strong>, and Chinese hackers<\/strong> siphon up global data.<\/p>\n Even as U.S. President Donald Trump attempts to end wars<\/a> in Europe and the Middle East, he is sending the United States careening into a new conflict in Latin America\u2014and further transforming the military\u2019s role in the process.<\/p>\n In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump shared a 29-second video that showed a speedboat coasting through unidentified waters before suddenly exploding into flames. The boat was struck by the U.S. military on Trump\u2019s orders, he said, alleging that it was ferrying members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua who were \u201ctransporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that destroying the boat rather than intercepting and seizing it was intended to deter other \u201cnarcoterrorists.\u201d \u201cWhat will stop them is when you blow them up,\u201d Rubio told reporters<\/a> during a visit to Mexico. \u201cAnd it will happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n Chasing cartels.<\/strong> Tuesday\u2019s strike is the first operationalization of Trump\u2019s secret order to the U.S. military last month to begin directly going after drug cartels, which was reported<\/a> by the New York Times<\/em> but still has not been made public. It also comes amid a broader U.S. Navy deployment<\/a>\u2014which includes at least three destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, a nuclear-powered submarine, three amphibious ships, and thousands of troops\u2014to international waters off the coast of Venezuela, purportedly to pressure Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n The Trump administration considers Maduro to be an illegitimate leader and has alleged that he is involved in the drug trade himself. Maduro said<\/a> before the U.S. strike that Venezuela was at \u201cmaximum preparedness\u201d to defend itself against any U.S. military action, but it\u2019s not immediately clear if or how he plans to retaliate.<\/p>\n By using the Navy to go after individual alleged drug boats, Trump is continuing his trend of throwing the U.S. military\u2019s immense might at problems outside its normal purview. As Chatham House\u2019s Christopher Sabatini wrote in FP<\/a> on Thursday, intercepting and taking action against drug traffickers in international waters is traditionally overseen by the Coast Guard. Although it is not unprecedented for the Navy to participate in such operations, launching a military strike on the boat without verifying its occupants or contents is a departure from normal procedure.<\/p>\n The jurisdictional disarray that the Coast Guard might be feeling will be familiar to police in multiple U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where Trump has deployed the National Guard to quell protests and fight crime, respectively (and in the latter case, sometimes to mulch cherry trees and pick up garbage<\/a>). Both of those deployments have been challenged<\/a> in court<\/a>. Trump has also sent thousands of troops to the U.S. southern border to aid his immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n Congress and the law.<\/strong> The strike also raises a slew of legal questions, both in terms of domestic and international law, particularly given that Congress has not authorized military action against Tren de Aragua or Venezuela. Trump designated Tren de Aragua and other drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations soon after returning to office, which administration officials have said<\/a> gives him legal authorities to target such groups in new ways. But it\u2019s still hazy legal territory, even though presidents from both parties have taken military actions abroad without congressional approval<\/a>.<\/p>\n Though Congress alone has the power to declare war, presidents are the commanders in chief of the military and generally have broad power to take actions necessary to protect national security. Whether this strike rises to that level is a larger question.<\/p>\n Presidents have been given extremely wide latitude to take military action against terrorist groups in the post-9\/11 era and have often tested the limits of their powers and the law in the process. But drug cartels are not covered under the authorizations for use of military force passed by Congress in relation to terror groups.<\/p>\n In recent years, lawmakers in Washington have increasingly pushed for Congress to reassert its authority over war powers and rein in the powers given to presidents following 9\/11. So far, the congressional response over this incident has been relatively muted, though some Democrats have raised concerns.<\/p>\n In comments to Politico<\/em><\/a>, Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, questioned Trump\u2019s legal authority to strike a vessel that \u201cposed no threat\u201d to the United States. Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers have cheered Trump on, with Sen. Lindsey Graham posting<\/a> on X that the strike was the \u201cultimate\u2014and most welcome\u2014sign that we have a new sheriff in town.\u201d<\/p>\n Russ Vought<\/strong>, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a key architect of Project 2025, is now the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, taking over the job from Rubio.<\/p>\n Charles Borges<\/strong>, the Social Security Administration\u2019s chief data officer, who submitted a whistleblower complaint alleging that employees of the Department of Government Efficiency had mishandled the private data of millions of Americans, resigned<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Nemat Shafik,<\/strong> the former Columbia University president whose handling of pro-Palestine campus protests led to her resignation after Trump\u2019s criticism, is now the chief economic advisor<\/a> to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n What should be high on your radar, if it isn\u2019t already.<\/em><\/p>\n West Bank annexation talk.<\/strong> Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday proposed<\/a> that Israel annex roughly 82 percent of the West Bank in order \u201cto remove, once and for all, this idea of a Palestinian state.\u201d The proposal comes as more countries move to recognize Palestine as a state and amid rising global pressure for Israel to end the war in Gaza. The Knesset also voted in July in favor of a nonbinding motion for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n The United Arab Emirates warned that such a move would cross a \u201cred line<\/a>\u201d and deal a major blow to the Abraham Accords at a time when the Trump administration continues to push for more Arab countries to normalize ties with Israel.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s unclear how much support, if any, Smotrich\u2019s proposal has from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Jerusalem Post<\/em> reported<\/a> that following the UAE\u2019s warning, the idea was removed from the agenda of a Thursday meeting being convened by Netanyahu to discuss the economic and security situation in the West Bank.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s warning to the West.<\/strong> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Paris on Thursday for a meeting with the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d group of countries to discuss postwar security guarantees for Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron announced that 26 countries have formally pledged to deploy troops \u201cby land, sea, or air\u201d to Ukraine as a \u201cform of reassurance\u201d following a prospective truce deal.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the problem: There\u2019s no peace agreement on the horizon, and the process is largely stalled despite major efforts by the Trump administration to move things forward.<\/p>\n Russia, which partially justified its 2022 invasion of Ukraine by citing Kyiv\u2019s NATO ambitions, has also warned the West that it will not sign off on an agreement that would see foreign troops stationed in its next-door neighbor.<\/p>\n \u201cRussia does not intend to discuss unacceptable foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form whatsoever,\u201d Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday.<\/p>\n Chinese hackers\u2019 field day.<\/strong> Remember Salt Typhoon<\/a>, the Chinese hacking group that has repeatedly alarmed the U.S. government over the past few years? Their reach and damage is far more extensive than previously thought, according to a sweeping new report<\/a> from more than a dozen cyber agencies, including from the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and several European countries.<\/p>\n Chinese cyberattackers have had \u201cpersistent, long-term access to networks\u201d around the world, the agencies said in the report, and have been \u201cperforming malicious operations globally since at least 2021.\u201d That includes targeting and gaining access to global telecommunications, government, military, and transportation networks, with the hackers feeding information back to China\u2019s intelligence agencies, the report added.<\/p>\n