Khanna Vows Amendment to Kill 'Insidious' Effort to Deepen Military Ties Between US, Israel

US Rep. Ro Khanna on Sunday said he will introduce an amendment to kill a provision tucked inside the sprawling 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would deepen ties between the American and Israeli militaries.

Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote on social media that he would work to ensure the provision, Section 224 of the NDAA, is removed from the bill in the House Armed Services Committee, which is set to mark up the $1.15 trillion legislation on Thursday. The provision, according to legislative text unveiled last week, would "require the secretary of defense to designate an executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation."

Khanna's pledge to spearhead committee efforts to remove the provision came after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—who has partnered with the California Democrat in pushing for the full release of the Epstein files—condemned Section 224 on social media and vowed to "offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor" if it survives the House Armed Services Committee.

"We are a sovereign country," Massie wrote.

Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, noted last week that while the US and Israel "already work together heavily on missile defense," Section 224 "would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more."

"It also proposes 'network integration' and 'data fusion.' In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data. If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world," Freeman wrote. "The result could well be a US political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East."

The NDAA provision has drawn outrage from anti-war groups that are pushing American lawmakers to cut off military assistance to Israel over its genocidal assault on Gaza, which has been carried out with the help of US weaponry. Last month, the Trump administration fast-tracked the approval of a transfer of American rockets to the Israeli military, which receives around $4 billion per year in aid from the US.

"While Americans oppose more military aid to Israel, Congress is inserting something even deeper and more insidious into the US military budget (NDAA): US integration with the Israeli military!" Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, said last week. "Tell Congress: Reject Section 224 of the NDAA. No military integration. No weapons and AI partnerships."

Section 224 is crammed into legislation that, if passed, would authorize more than $1 trillion in military spending for the coming fiscal year—part of President Donald Trump's push for an unprecedented $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027.

Experts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) noted in a Monday analysis that "while the recently released chairman’s mark of the NDAA does moderate some aspects of the budget—such as introducing guardrails on the 'Trump-class' battleship program—it does not go nearly far enough."

"Congress should refuse to authorize the president’s unjustifiable increase request," CAP argued. "Instead, lawmakers should insist on a disciplined defense budget that makes sense, ensuring that funds are spent on programs critical for the well-being of American servicemembers and modern defense needs—not vanity projects with limited military utility."