CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Israel and the United States are Merging their Militaries. Here’s Why.

Photograph Source: Staff Sgt. Yuval Haker – CC BY-SA 3.0

In June 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote to Republican Representative Marlin Stutzman of California, saying that “the time has now arrived [for Israel] to move from aid recipient to partner” with the United States. Yesterday, on Fox News, Netanyahu again repeated the proposal to move “from aid to partnership“.

What Netanyahu proclaims is at the core of the proposed “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, which has been included in a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to push the Pentagon budget to $1.5 trillion in 2027. This proposal to the annual military policy bill aims to essentially merge the Israeli and the US militaries.

While the initial bill, the “United States-Israel FUTURES Act,” failed as a standalone bill, the core provisions have been included in the NDAA. This aims to “expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation”  between the US and Israel, led by an “executive agent” decided by the US Defense Secretary.

This merger would integrate the United States and Israeli occupation militarily, including “data fusion”, “network integration”, research and development, weapons and bio-manufacturing, and collaboration with AI, cyber, and quantum machine learning technologies. While the Israeli occupation forces and US military are already deeply connected and share many of their genocidal tactics, this represents a significant entanglement of........

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