The D Brief: Landmark shift in US-Cuba relations; The spies in the middle; Rubio rising; A view from inside Langley; What Hollywood gets wrong about North Korea; And a bit more.

Cuba?? Sure, why not. President Obama pulled off a stunner on Wednesday announcing the U.S. would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba after a 50-year American embargo failed to oust Fidel Castro and his regime, or do much else. The deal was 18 months in the making; a complicated mashup involving the Pope, Canada and Ben Rhodes, capped with a 45 minute phone call between Obama and Raul Castro on Tuesday. The Miami Herald has more about the historic deal here.

Another bad deal? The announcement immediately drew criticism from conservatives, who said Obama once again gave away too much to get what the he wanted. The U.S. got the freedom of aid worker Alan Gross and one Cuban who spied for the Americans. In exchange, the U.S. traded back three of the “Cuban five” spies held in America. Castro’s regime, meanwhile, gets global legitimacy, which conservatives argued would give hope to America’s adversaries.

The “known-knowns” on the unnamed U.S. spy? WaPo’s Adam Goldman has this: “U.S. officials said the release of the Cuban-born spy, first identified as Rolando Sarraf Trujillo by Newsweek.com, was a major priority for the intelligence community as part of any deal with the Cubans... While U.S. officials say the spy was ranked among the United States’s best assets in Cuba, a former senior CIA official said there was another alongside him, an individual known as ‘Touchdown,’ who defected in the late 1980s. Touchdown revealed that many of the CIA’s assets in Cuba were double agents.” More here.

Defense One’s Molly O’Toole with the view from Capitol Hill: “…the shift could have broad implications for foreign policy and national security, particularly on partnerships in the region and tensions with Russia. It also raises the stakes on Obama’s relationship with Congress—and the 2016 presidential race…

“Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, ‘Let’s be clear, this was not a “humanitarian” act by the Castro regime. It was a swap of convicted spies for an innocent American. President Obama’s actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government…’

“Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who represents a large Cuban population, vowed to block the changes as the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee. ‘Today’s announcement initiating a dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Cuba is just the latest in a long line of failed attempts by President Obama to appease rogue regimes at all cost…Cuba, like Syria, Iran and Sudan, remains a state sponsor of terrorism.’”

But Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who visited Cuba this year, argues in Defense One that the U.S. policy was ripe for change. “…Obama and his team knew something that many previous administrations before them also knew: U.S. policy toward Cuba was self-defeating. Five decades of an embargo, five decades of hostility, had not dislodged the Castro brothers, and had not brought even a suggestion of democracy to the island.”

For complete details, the State Department has set up a quick reference page, here.

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The D Brief, Defense One's new, first-read national security newsletter. Gordon is out sick today for the FIRST TIME in his history of morning newsletter writing, if you can believe that. So direct all complaints to Defense One Executive Editor Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron), who helped pinch hit for one day only with Ben Watson. If you'd like to subscribe to The D Brief, reply to this email and let us know, subscribe here or send us a holler at glubold@defenseone.com. Please send us your tips, your tidbits, your scoops and stories, your think tank reports and best of all your candy, but send it to us early for maximum tease. And whatever you do, we hope you'll follow us @glubold and @natsecwatson.

Today, Lt. Gen. James Terry, the nominal war commander for operations in Iraq and Syria, briefs at the Pentagon. If the briefing he gave reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week in Kuwait is any guide, he’ll say today that the Islamic State is on the “defensive” and that it is far less mobile than it was even a few months ago.

Terry, last week: “I would just characterize it as ISIL operationally probably on the defense trying to hold what they had gained yet still able to conduct some limited attacks.”

“Terry’s characterization of the jihadist fighters signals a positive, tactical development but does not amount to any kind of a turning point in the fight against the extremist group, which he said has ‘no respect for humanity.’”

In that story for Defense One Terry said that because the group has slowed down, they are that much easier to target. Terry is also expected to detail the latest contributions from a coalition of the willing, other nations that have agreed to or are agreeing to chip in. You can watch the livestream of his briefing here at 10 a.m. this morning.   

Meanwhile in Syria, a Texas plumber’s truck has found its way to the front lines where the Ansar al-Deen Front has evidently mounted a heavy machine gun in the bed. Chris Smith Gonzalez for Galveston’s The Daily News: “Mark Oberholtzer, who has owned and operated Mark-1 Plumbing in Texas City for the past 32 years…said he traded in the truck to an AutoNation dealership three years ago. He usually takes the decals off his vehicles when he sells them but he left it on this truck with the expectation that AutoNation would remove it… ‘How it ended up in Syria, I’ll never know.’” More here.

A View From the Inside: In a commentary for Defense One, Joseph DeTrani, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), breaks his silence in defense of the IC and interrogations. In an “I was there” first-person account, DeTrani writes about his time at CIA for the first time, reminding folks that the impact at Langley of missing the 9/11 attacks was “devastating.” A “never again” atmosphere took over CIA’s mentality, especially to prevent nuclear WMD’s from falling into terrorist hands, and Americans, he argues, should remember that when considering the so-called enhanced interrogation program. “This was the impetus for the establishment of terrorist detention facilities – to take terrorists off the streets and with a coercive interrogation program obtain the intelligence necessary to prevent another terrorist attack against the homeland,” he writes. “The terrorist threat is still with us.”

Was this Congressional candidate’s CIA background too much for voters this November?  Kevin Strouse, a former CIA officer and Army Ranger who made tracks in Iraq and Afghanistan entered the race for Pennsylvania’s 8^th district this past election cycle—and took a pounding at the polls by incumbent Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. Strouse conducts a post-mortem of his campaign at a tense moment for American voters’ relationship with the intelligence community for the natsec blog Overt Action, here.

This Just In: Defense industry’s poll calls for more defense spending. A poll chartered by the Aerospace Industries Association, or AIA, the lobbying group that represents more than 300 defense and aerospace firms, found 69 percent of Americans believe defense spending should get a boost to counteract rising threats. Marion Blakey, AIA president and CEO, announced the results Wednesday at AIA’s annual luncheon gathering of defense and aerospace hacks and flacks. It was the 50th year AIA held the event, jokingly called the defense prom because so many journos and PR reps attend.

The poll also found that 78 percent of more than 800 registered voters surveyed believe threats to American security are increasing due to ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. More on the poll, here.

Attacking the Caps. AIA also is planning a major blitz next year against defense spending caps, often called sequestration, which are set to return in 2016. The association was the most vocal opponent of the spending caps before and when they began in March 2013. “We’re telling Congress it’s high time to relegate the budget caps to the dumpster of bad policy ideas,” Blakey said.

The group also released its annual aerospace and defense industry forecast, which show military sales were flat at $87.3 billion in 2014. From the report:  “Aircraft sales increased marginally 0.8 percent, or $420 million, to $52.6 billion in 2014. Missiles dropped 4.1 percent, or $840 million, to $19.9 billion; and DOD space spending increased 5.5 percent, or $2.6 billion, to $48.8 billion.”

Reduced DOD spending was partially offset by a 9.2 percent growth in defense exports. “Foreign sales will continue to be a key area of focus for defense companies, but defense export growth will not offset declines in domestic procurement spending,” the report states. AIA projects DOD-related sales to increase to $91.6 billion in 2015. You can read the full report here.

Army Aviation Update: Army officials will give an update on the service's controversial aviation restructure initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. You can catch the livestream of that talk at 1 p.m., here.

Following Hagel’s announcement of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Initiative—what’s been called the third offset strategy to neutralize the technological advancements of other foes—Naval officer B.J. Armstrong says it’s a little dishonest to claim the military has a history of being “too stove-piped, too conservative, and too top-down to really innovate.” For War on the Rocks, Armstrong delves into the Marine Corps' pioneering development of helicopter tactics as an alternative to the landings at Normandy or Okinawa way back in the 40s and 50s. It’s a stellar read you can find right here.

Veterans Group (and Heritage) to wage a campaign against Obama for “Leading from Behind.” The folks at Concerned Veterans of America on Thursday are launching a video that “focuses on how a lack of a clear national security strategy created a failed state in Libya.” Spokesman Bill Turenne, Jr., says “The Libya video serves as the first salvo in what will be a sustained effort by CVA to reexamine the many failures of the Obama/Clinton/Kerry foreign policy from a veteran’s perspective and identify lessons learned so that these grave misjudgments are not repeated by future presidents.” No mention of Gates, Panetta or Hagel in that policy critique. CVA also left out that the videos are coproduced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“Future case studies will focus on how the ‘reset’ with Russia led to the dire situation in Ukraine, how Obama’s failure to negotiate a SOFA in Iraq and back up his empty “red line” threats in Syria led directly to the rise of ISIS as well as the “pivot to Asia” that turned out to be just a head-fake.” The military likes to say the enemy gets a vote—we look forward to seeing if CVA/Heritage includes Putin, Maliki, Assad and China’s votes in their critical assessment.

U.S. veterans—especially those who served in Vietnam—can now apply to upgrade their discharge status with PTSD consideration via a Pentagon webpage, here. Military Times has more on the decision, here.

U.S. officials are now asserting North Korea was in fact “centrally involved” in the Hollywood-shaking cyber attack on Sony Pictures—an attack that has now taken the comedy “The Interview” out of its Christmas day release nationwide. David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth for the NYTs: “The administration’s sudden urgency came after a new threat was delivered this week to desktop computers at Sony’s offices, warning that if ‘The Interview’ was released on Dec. 25, ‘the world will be full of fear…Remember the 11th of September 2001,’ it said. ‘We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time…’

"Some within the Obama administration argue that the government of Kim Jong-un must be confronted directly. But that raises questions of what actions the administration could credibly threaten, or how much evidence to make public without revealing details of how it determined North Korea’s culpability, including the possible penetration of the North’s computer networks.” More here.

What Hollywood doesn’t “get” about North Korea. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Scott Snyder has this bit on how the work of filmmakers actually serves to downplay the threat from Pyongyang. That, here.

And this “insider” bit on Team America: Long before Netflix and iPads caught on, travellers flying around the globe with the defense secretary brought lots of notebooks filled with DVD movies to share and play on the big screens in the press cabin. One such return trip from Asia with Secretary Robert Gates featured a screening of Team America (the unrated version). Luckily, by the time of the shocking puppet sex scene, most of the reporters and staff already had gone to sleep and soon after the movie (which frankly is hard to sit through to the end) was shut off so people could get some shut eye. Gates, for the record, was not in that cabin.

A court in Pakistan just granted bail to the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Saaed Shah for the WSJ this hour, here.

Boko Haram is suspected is killing another 32 and kidnapping more women and children in northeast Nigeria. AFP, here.

The D Brief corrects: Yesterday we initially noted a Naval F-16 pilot, Capt. Butch Wilmore, now in charge of the International Space Station. A friend of The D Brief politely pointed out “the listing of the Naval pilot as a F-16 driver will draw fire from the AF and Navy.” Our second reference correctly lists him as the F/A-18 fighter pilot that he in fact is. Our sincere apologies to the Airmen and Sailors out there, and we regret the error.