The D Brief: US, Japan, S. Korea sign pact; Israel hits school; US warns Lebanon residents; Why is autocracy thriving? And a bit more.

New: U.S. Forces Japan will be upgraded to a warfighting command. The Pentagon will expand the three-star command to a joint force headquarters with operational control of U.S. forces based there, part of an effort to deepen ties between the U.S. and Japanese militaries and to streamline command and control of joint operations, senior defense officials told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday.

USFJ is “currently, primarily, an administrative command,” one official said.“They do day-to-day management of the alliance, but not operational command of forces. So it'll be a significant difference for them.” The upgraded command will report directly to the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. D1’s Patrick Tucker, who is traveling with Austin this week, has more, here. The Wall Street Journal also reports, here.

ICYMI: Japan’s Self-Defense Force is also setting up a new joint operations command to coordinate its Ground, Maritime and Air branches. The plans were announced in February and the center is to become operational next March. 

Beijing’s reax: “China is strongly dissatisfied with the exaggeration of China's threat and the malicious speculation of regional tensions,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Monday, according to Reuters. China “has always maintained its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security and does not pose a threat to any country,” he said. “We strongly urge the United States and Japan to immediately stop interfering with China's internal affairs and stop creating imaginary enemies.”

U.S., Japan, South Korea sign pact amid “deteriorating” regional security. A first-ever gathering of defense chiefs from the three nations here produced a Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework that will include “senior-level policy consultations, information sharing, trilateral exercises, and defense exchange cooperation, to contribute to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, in the Indo-Pacific region, and beyond.”

A joint statement from Austin, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara, and South Korea’s Minister of National Defense Shin Won-sik also expressed “grave concern” over increasing Russian-North Korean cooperation, and vague opposition to “unilateral attempts to change the status quo,” which is a reference to China and Taiwan. 

U.S.-Japanese missile agreement. Separately, the United States and Japan announced a new effort to co-develop and produce missiles and counterstrike capabilities, including the PAC-3 and AIM-120 AMRAAM. D1’s Tucker has more, here.

From the region: 

• “North Korean charged in cyberattacks on US bases, defense firms,” Defense News reported Friday; 
• “Lawmakers from 6 countries say Beijing is pressuring them not to attend summit in Taiwan,” the Associated Press reported Sunday from Beijing; 
• “The Sky’s the Limit: Comparing China’s ADIZ Intrusions” around Taiwan and Japan, which is a new analysis published Friday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1958, President Eisenhower signed legislation creating NASA.

Americans in Lebanon should “develop a crisis plan of action and leave before a crisis begins,” warned U.S. Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter in a video message posted to social media on Monday. 

The warning comes two days after a deadly rocket attack into Israel from Lebanon that killed a dozen children and teenagers and wounded nearly 40 others on a soccer field Saturday afternoon in the Golan Heights. The attack was likely carried out by Hezbollah forces inside Lebanon, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote Sunday evening. And Israeli officials have since authorized retaliatory strikes inside southern Lebanon, according to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

• At least one of those retaliatory strikes may have taken place Monday when two people on a motorcycle were killed and three others wounded in southern Lebanon, according to the Associated Press, citing Lebanese state-run media. 

Also on Saturday, an Israeli airstrike on a school in central Gaza killed 30 Palestinians and wounded over 100 others in the city of Deir al-Balah. Israel claims Hamas was using the school to store weapons and fighters. The BBC has a bit more, here. 

Update: “Israeli military action in Gaza has since killed 39,258 Palestinians and injured another 90,589,” CNN reports, citing Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Another almost 2 million Gazans have been displaced, which is nearly the entire population, according to the UN. Reuters notes, “U.N. and humanitarian officials accuse Israel of using disproportionate force in the war and of failing to ensure civilians have safe places to go, which it denies.”

Send U.S. private-security contractors into Gaza? That’s a terrible idea, argues strategist Peter W. Singer of the New America think tank in Washington. 

Where this comes from: According to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, Israeli, U.S., and UAE leaders want to hire and deploy U.S.-based armed contractors, after a ceasefire, to help the wartorn enclave find its footing in the post-war future. 

Singer’s reax: “If hiring armed contractors for Gaza is actually being planned, then the people behind it should answer some basic questions before it moves from a mere bad idea to a policy failure,” he writes in Defense One. Those questions fall into several categories, including money, screening, legal accountability, perceptions, and a few more. Continue reading, here. 

Related reading:

• “Erdogan says Turkey might enter Israel to help Palestinians,” Reuters reported Sunday from Ankara; 
• “Negotiators Meet to Revive Push for Hostage Release and Cease-Fire in Gaza,” the New York Times reported Sunday; 
• And ICYMI, “On U.S. Trip, Netanyahu Receives Clear Message on Gaza War: Wrap It Up,” the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. 

The U.S. Army is distributing new gear to select units for experimentation. That includes new Infantry Squad Vehicles, small drones, lighter body armor and helmets, and an electric wheel-barrow-type cart the service is calling STEED.

But the drones, in particular, pose their own challenges, Defense One’s Sam Skove reported Saturday. “Before you bring in a helicopter to a landing zone, you now have to make sure that that airspace has been cleared” of drones, Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, said last week. 

Thanks to the Army’s latest equipment push, “We have a small unmanned aerial system in the hands of squad leaders that can see three to five kilometers from their current position, which allows them to understand the battlefield better,” Evans said. But adversary drone recognition is also a challenge, he explained. Read on, here.

Memo on AI's national-security implications heads for Biden's desk. President Joe Biden is expected to receive a classified memo outlining AI's threats to national security and suggesting limits to its deployment, several sources with knowledge of the memorandum’s contents told Nextgov/FCW.

Ordered up by Biden’s October executive order on AI, the memo is meant to help "develop a coordinated executive-branch approach to managing AI’s security risks." It is expected to build on last year's guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget and international commitments discussed in recent meetings at Bletchley Park and Italy. The memo focuses on national security systems in military and intelligence agencies, but also some of FBI’s and DHS’s systems, a source said. It will likely also discuss U.S. leadership in AI innovation and standardization, and  domestic workforce challenges. Read on, here.

Lastly today: Why is autocracy thriving? Anne Applebaum’s new book Autocracy, Inc. argues that globalization policies intended to benefit Western capitalists (and everyone else in trickle-down fashion) also helped a coterie of authoritarians whose ties are cemented less by ideology and more by business deals. 

Irony alert: “Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states,” Applebaum writes. Nobody imagined that autocratic and illiberal ideas “would spread to the democratic world instead.” The New York Times has a review, here.