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NATO Summit moments you might have missed
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Thursday, July 9, 2026
Read today's intelligence from our experts
Katherine Golden, AC Intel Anchor
This week, we’ve brought you our experts’ biggest takeaways on the NATO Summit, from Europe’s new defense commitments to Ukraine’s big wins. But there were other surprises, controversies, and noteworthy moments. Today, our keen-eyed experts point them out.
For example, Markus Garlauskas, who leads our Indo-Pacific work, argues that the South Korean president’s attendance was “a meaningful positive sign,” since “European and Indo-Pacific security are connected.” But he’s concerned about the Alliance’s “unwillingness to name China explicitly as a national security threat” in the communiqué.
Meanwhile, former intelligence officer Phyllis Berry has her mind on the fact that NATO hasn’t committed yet to holding another summit next year. Like a meeting that should just be an email, skipping the summit could avoid “drama” and “allow members to focus more attention on how to ensure that increased spending leads to increased capabilities.”
But for Ibrahim Al-Assil, the most consequential development from Ankara had little to do with NATO at all. Your AC Intel starts there.
1.
In Ankara, Syria’s future was rewritten
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After US President Donald Trump said in Ankara that he would work to remove Syria from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, Ibrahim from our Syria Project writes that the country’s future will now “depend less on international restrictions and more on the government’s ability to govern effectively.”
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2.
Trump’s Patriot promise is “a good story” for Ukraine and the US
Ukrainian marine veteran Yevhenii Malik argues that the United States is proving itself to be a “great partner of Ukraine and NATO” by granting Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missiles. Although, he adds, Washington must address lingering questions on the arrangement, because Ukraine “cannot wait for long,” with its infrastructure in Russia’s crosshairs.
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3.
Pluribus scored 18 Emmy nominations. Our expert rating: 3.29/5.
The critics have weighed in on the entertainment value of Pluribus. But when it comes to realism, biodefense expert J.T. O’Brien says he had a “physical, body horror reaction” when a character removed personal protective equipment in the presence of an alien virus. It was “just bad decision after bad decision... I don’t think that’s how it would go,” he says on the latest episode of The Biollywood Podcast.
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4.
New Middle East corridors are about more than bypassing Hormuz
Allison Minor, a former director for Arabian Peninsula affairs at the US National Security Council, explains that setting up new corridors for trade and movement across the Middle East would “strengthen cooperation” as the region “continues to suffer from ... high political fragmentation.”
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