Mind boggling lunacy

The Trump administration is still actively working to make a deal to send U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, according to two U.S. officials and two professional staffers at federal agencies with direct knowledge of those conversations. American energy businesses are still hoping to cash in on Riyadh’s push for energy diversification.

“This could be a very big contract. This administration is all about contracts,” said Hussein Ibish, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “And there is a big market here that U.S. companies can get in on. The question is if the U.S. will decide, in the end, to go through with an official agreement or not.”

During the first few months of President Trump’s administration, members of his team tried to pull together a nuclear export deal that included private U.S. companies, according to three people with direct knowledge of those efforts and a congressional report issued in late February.


That pursuit raised concerns at the time among professional staff inside the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce. Those worries grew as it became clear that members of the administration had not engaged in regulatory and legal conversations about the export of such technology. Worse, the nuclear export plan was, in essence, the work of a single company. The firm, IP3, was connected to a pack of former generals, including then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and its proposal was “not a business plan,” one senior political official told investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, but rather “a scheme for these generals to make some money.”

Professional staff and officials in the administration told The Daily Beast they are still concerned about the possible connection between efforts by private businesses to engage with Saudi Arabia on nuclear energy and the quiet, ongoing discussions between senior U.S. officials and Riyadh about a deal. Those government-to-government conversations, some of which took place in Riyadh, have often excluded professional staff and taken place behind closed doors, according to two individuals with knowledge of the interactions.

Intelligence officers, steeped in how Mr. Trump views the world, now work to answer his repeated question: Who is winning? What the president wants to know, according to former officials, is what country is making more money or gaining a financial advantage.

While the professionals do not criticize Mr. Trump’s focus, they do question whether those interests are crowding out intelligence on threats like terrorism and the maneuvers of traditional adversaries, developments with foreign militaries or geopolitical events with international implications.
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Some of what bores Mr. Trump in traditional intelligence briefings, according to former officials, are the detailed analyses of the activities and motivations of secondary foreign officials. The president wants information about the leader of various countries, not the underlings.

But the president has also shown less interest in details about potential terrorist plots or cloak-and-dagger spy work — the kind of secret information that excites most officials. In his view, too little traditional intelligence analysis examines economics and trade as a fundamental driver of international conflict. “Economic security at home goes hand in hand with national security abroad,” said Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council.

So in security briefings, Mr. Trump peppers officials with questions about economic competition with China, including Beijing’s efforts to gain technological superiority and to achieve trade advantages over the United States.

He has also shown a fascination with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, repeatedly asking why she will not cut a deal with him on military spending despite his advisers’ explanation that the German government’s coalition agreement constrains Ms. Merkel’s ability to increase defense funding. And he has pressed his intelligence briefers on why Berlin is allowing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia to go forward if Germany is truly worried about Moscow’s aggression.

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly spoken to intelligence and military briefers about the cost of American bases overseas and the defense expenditures of allies in Europe and Asia, according to White House officials.

The president’s push also has national security officials thinking about the economic angles of international flash points. When Russia seized Ukranian sailors and ships in the Sea of Azov, officials in Washington began studying the implications to shipping. White House officials argued that the Europeans would have the most leverage given their dominance of the industry. But they also argued that by raising the costs of shipping, the Russians were “shooting themselves in the foot,” a senior administration official said.