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Section 622 of the Senate’s Intelligence Authorization Act: intelligence sharing with Israel “shall not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited”.

June 7, 2026

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Earlier this week I wrote about Section 224 of the House defense bill, the provision that would knit American and Israeli weapons development together and move the deepest cooperation into Pentagon procurement channels, where the public can no longer see it.1 While digging through this year’s authorization bills, I found its quieter twin. It lives in a different bill, written by a different committee, in the other chamber of Congress, and it does something Section 224 never quite dares to.

It tries to make the relationship impossible to reverse.

On May 20, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved its version of the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027 on a bipartisan 14-to-3 vote.2 Most of the bill is what you would expect: funding lines, oversight tweaks, a title devoted to the CIA’s retirement system. Then, in Title VI, you reach Section 622, “United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.”3

What it does

On the surface the section is simple. It directs the President, acting through the Director of National Intelligence, to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel,” across cyber threats, terrorism, sanctions evasion, missile and drone tracking, and what the bill calls “air and space domain awareness.”3 The verb is not “may.” It is “shall.” The section reaches past Israel as well, directing expanded intelligence cooperation with the Arab states that have normalized relations under the Abraham Accords.3

The committee’s case for this is not frivolous, and it deserves to be stated fairly. The bill’s findings argue that timely intelligence sharing with Israel has “saved United States personnel and property” in the region, and that a neighborhood saturated with missiles, drones, and proxy conflict demands sustained cooperation.3 Take that seriously. Intelligence sharing between capable services can save lives.

The harder question is the one the structure of Section 622 forces: should that cooperation be welded shut against any future change of course?

There are 5 bills/provisions related to this. https://t.co/0EAbWxDdfi

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) June 6, 2026

Is this accurate? @grok

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 6, 2026

**Yes, accurate on the key facts.**

Section 622 of S. 4615 (Senate Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2027, passed committee May 2026 on bipartisan vote) adds requirements to the National Security Act:

Intelligence sharing with Israel “shall not be suspended, reduced, or…

— Grok (@grok) June 6, 2026

The ratchet

The concern is that this section does not stop at expansion. It adds a clause I have not seen written quite this plainly before. Intelligence sharing with Israel, the bill says, “shall not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.”3

Read that slowly, because it is doing something unusual. Congress is doing more than encouraging cooperation. It is instructing every future President that he may not pull back intelligence cooperation with a foreign government unless he can first identify and document a specific national-security reason, and then report it to the intelligence committees within fifteen days.3 The default is bolted to “on.” Reversal becomes the exception that has to be justified.

Foreign policy is supposed to be adjustable. Administrations change, facts change, and the ability to recalibrate a relationship, to use cooperation as leverage or to step back when a partner’s conduct warrants it, is one of the few real instruments a President holds. Section 622 takes a piece of that instrument away and points it at one specific government. An administration that wanted to condition intelligence cooperation on how a war was being waged would first have to overcome a statutory presumption that the sharing continues regardless.

This is an incredibly unusual thing to put in a statute. It removes a decision from the people who will have to live with it.

Oversight you cannot see

I spent fifteen years inside federal agencies, and that work teaches you one thing quickly: how much of government is built to be unreviewable by the people paying for it. Section 622 is built that way on purpose.

The cooperation it deepens is classified by definition. The reporting it requires goes to the congressional intelligence committees, behind closed doors. The annual reports the bill mandates can be public in form while carrying a “classified annex” that holds the actual substance.3

You will not find this relationship in an appropriations table you can read, you will not get to vote on it, and if the section becomes law, the representatives you do elect will have a harder time ending it even when you ask them to.

A pattern, not a provision

Section 622 is not an accident, and it is not alone.

One section earlier, the same bill orders the government to give Congress forty-eight hours’ notice before reducing intelligence sharing with what it calls “countries of significant concern,” a category the bill defines as exactly three nations: Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, with Israel named first.4 Another section builds a longer, more elaborate version of the same machinery for Ukraine.5

In the House, the defense-industrial half of the same project just cleared its first real test. On June 4 the House Armed Services Committee marked up the defense bill and beat back an attempt to remove Section 224. An amendment by Ro Khanna to strike it failed on a voice vote, with only Khanna and Sara Jacobs backing it, and the provision now advances toward the House floor, where Thomas Massie has vowed to try again.6

Set those pieces beside one another and a pattern appears that no single provision reveals on its own. Across two separate authorization bills, in both chambers, on bipartisan votes, Congress is methodically writing the security relationship with a few favored governments into permanent law and adding clauses that make it harder for anyone who comes later to change direction. The defense bill makes the relationship harder to see. The intelligence bill makes it harder to stop.

Let me be plain about the objection, because this subject invites bad-faith readings.

The question Section 622 raises is whether the United States should ever write a foreign commitment into law in a form built to outlast debate, placed beyond public view and made deliberately hard for future officials to revisit. That question has nothing to do with Israel’s right to exist or to defend itself, and nothing to do with the many people who support the relationship in good faith. Asking that question is what self-government requires. Calling it bigotry is how the people who would rather not answer it end the conversation.

Where I stand

A relationship worth having is one that can survive scrutiny, which means it has to stay open to scrutiny. I support ending U.S. military aid to Israel, and I have said so without hedging. But you do not have to share that position to see the problem here. You only have to believe that the people footing the bill, and the representatives they elect, should keep the right to change their minds. There is no strength in sealing that right inside a classified annex. It looks more like an admission that the policy could not survive being argued about in the open.

This is a Senate bill, and I am running for a House seat, so let me be precise about the stakes. I would not cast a vote on Section 622 as it is written today. But intelligence authorizations have a habit of vanishing into the larger defense bill before they become law. The last two of them became divisions of the National Defense Authorization Act,7 which is exactly the bill a member of the House does vote on.

So this is not someone else’s fight in some other chamber. It is heading for the floor I am asking you to send me to. When it arrives, I will move to strike the ratchet, and I will tell you that I did.

Footnotes

Ethan Wechtaluk, “Section 224 and the Disappearing Vote,” https://ethanformd.substack.com/p/section-224-and-the-disappearing. ↩
“Senate Intelligence Committee Passes the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027,” Office of Sen. Mark Warner (Vice Chairman) and Office of Sen. Tom Cotton (Chairman), May 20, 2026 (committee approved the bill 14–3). https://www.warner.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-intelligence-committee-passes-the-intelligence-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2027/ and https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senate-intelligence-committee-passes-the-intelligence-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2027 ↩
S. 4615, 119th Cong., Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027, § 622 (”United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement”), as reported by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, May 20, 2026 (Calendar No. 420). The operative language amends Title XI of the National Security Act of 1947 to add a new section requiring the President to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel” and providing that such sharing “shall not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” Full text via the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Congress.gov. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/2026/05/20/intelligence-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2027-as-reported-on-may-20-2026/ and https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/4615 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7
S. 4615, § 621 (”Requirements relating to intelligence sharing with countries of significant concern to the United States”), which amends section 102A(j) of the National Security Act of 1947 and defines “country of significant concern to the United States” as Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and any other country designated by the President. ↩
S. 4615, § 620 (”Intelligence activities related to Ukraine”). ↩
On June 4, 2026, the House Armed Services Committee rejected an amendment by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to strike Section 224 from the FY2027 NDAA. The amendment failed on a voice vote, with only Reps. Khanna and Sara Jacobs (D-CA) in support, and Section 224 advanced as part of the committee-approved bill; Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has said he will offer a floor amendment to remove it. “Democrat fails to block US measure to deepen Israel military cooperation,” Al Jazeera, June 4, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/4/democrat-fails-to-block-us-measure-to-deepen-israel-military-cooperation; “House committee blocks effort to strip U.S.-Israel cooperation provision from annual defense bill,” Jewish Insider, June 2026, https://jewishinsider.com/2026/06/house-blocks-effort-strip-u-s-israel-cooperation-ndaa/ ↩
The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 was enacted as Division F of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (Pub. L. 118-159), and the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 was enacted as Division F of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 (Pub. L. 119-60, Dec. 18, 2025). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/2025/12/18/intelligence-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2026-division-f-of-the-national-defense-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2026-public-law-119-60-dec-18-2025-119th-congress-in/ ↩