To an outside observer, the drills would appear to reflect that Washington’s relationship with Cairo, a cornerstone of US policy in the region, remains on solid ground. But underneath all that military hardware, the sands are shifting, as Egypt slides closer to China. It’s time for the US to wake up to the danger, reorient its bilateral relationship and perhaps use the next Bright Star to make a different point altogether. Bright Star exercises began in 1980, born out of the Camp David Accords that saw Egypt become the first Arab state to make peace with Israel, and have long been a barometer of US-Egypt ties. While they came to a halt during the Arab Spring, their return in 2017 under Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El Sisi was meant to reaffirm the strategic partnership that successive administrations in Washington have called indispensable.

But though the US-Egypt relationship may be indispensable now, there’s competition. Just four months earlier, Cairo hosted “Eagles of Civilization 2025,” the largest Sino-Egyptian bilateral exercise ever. Featuring Chinese J-10 fighter jets, KJ-500 early warning aircraft, and Z-20 helicopters, the drill signaled Cairo’s deepening military relationship with Beijing. Far from being a one-off, Eagles of Civilization 2025 capped a decade of growing Sino-Chinese defense ties, involving arms sales, technology transfers, and Chinese participation in Egyptian infrastructure projects with dual-use potential. One month, Cairo is integrating Chinese forces and reportedly purchasing Chinese-made air defense systems. The next, it is carrying out exercises with the United States and NATO partners. To Egyptian officials, this is all a part of a hedging strategy aimed at maximizing benefits from both Washington and Beijing while minimizing costs.

I can’t believe the Egyptians committed geopolitical adultery. Outrageous!

Unless Washington confronts Cairo’s double game, the Bright Star exercise series risks becoming less a symbol of enduring partnership and more a symptom of flawed US strategy. To Washington, Egypt’s behavior is a strategic liability. Joint exercises like Bright Star give Egypt familiarity with some US tactics, techniques, and procedures. If that information makes its way to Chinese forces, it could erode US military advantages. And more broadly, this situation sends muddled signals to the region: if Egypt can have it both ways, why shouldn’t others? While Washington cannot stop Cairo from hedging altogether, it can set clearer boundaries and guidelines. US financial assistance to Egypt has continued on autopilot. Washington provides Cairo $1.3 billion annually in Foreign Military Financing (FMF), nominally to sustain peace with Israel, support counterterrorism, and increase interoperability with US forces. In practice, it has become a subsidy for the regime helping to arm Egypt while simultaneously freeing up Cairo’s own funds to purchase Chinese military systems.

Congress should consider Cairo’s actions and initiate a review to determine whether current levels of FMF to Egypt align with U.S. interests. Cairo shouldn’t be overconfident in the outcome of such a review. After all, the Trump administration suspended nearly all security aid to Pakistan in January 2018 after running out of patience with Islamabad’s double game of receiving US funding while backing the Taliban. More recently, India, another Bright Star 25 participant, has faced tariffs over continued purchases of Russian oil. Washington can also restrict the scope of Bright Star exercises as a signal of its displeasure. For example, if Cairo continues to deepen ties with China, the next Bright Star should be smaller in size and limited in mission sets. The Bright Star exercises have been a reminder of what US- Egyptian cooperation can deliver by enhancing interoperability and operational readiness. Yet without a recalibration based on Cairo’s drift toward Beijing, Bright Star and other drills risk projecting a façade of US influence even as China gains ground. Bright Star should reflect an enduring partnership, not an outdated commitment that no longer aligns with US strategic interests.

Y’know, I’m not, like, an expert on Cold War-era arms deals, but I feel like back then it was more so the tendency to try to entice countries by giving them stuff, not threaten them to take it away? Like, surely cutting cooperation just drives that country further towards China, now that they’re the only ones who can offer them the gear they need? no carrot, only stick . carrots, in this economy?

I make the “in this economy” joke, but honestly I do wonder if this behavior is actually connected to de-industrialization to some degree - perhaps when the empire has a bountiful harvest of military equipment, it can afford to just hand stuff out left and right, on the off chance that it helps bring countries into its sphere of influence, and is willing to take the risk that some of those countries play both sides for freebies - but when supplies are tight, it has to pick and choose who it gives stuff to more carefully? At least for the immediate post-Soviet period, the US, and the West more broadly, was in a position where they were the only ones that could really supply the fancier military tech countries might need - but now with China catching up, there’s less of a reason for countries to get tangled up in deals with Western countries specifically. The US is still a leader in the latest planes and air defense I guess, but that stuff’s too expensive for most countries to afford in anything beyond token numbers anyway.

As Beijing beckons, is Washington sleepwalking on Egypt? Just like, in general?

“When the Navy goes and industry goes and [negotiates] contracts with the shipbuilders … we have got to ensure those folks who are pricing those components — of course, we want to be competitive — but we have got to reflect prices that can allow us to have the labor pool that we need for the long term,” said the official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity. The official also said that the nature of shipbuilding programs means cost is driven up by schedule delays. “Getting a workforce that is sustained, that is retained, that gets trained … and stays. That’s the best, cost model we can have … If that’s a short-term adjustment in what our labor rates look like and how they reflect against the service industry growth that’s happened in the nation, then we’ve got to adjust.”

The issue of pay for shipyard workers — especially the kind of entry-level ones the service is anxious to see join the workforce in the coming decade — has been a pervasive problem for both the Pentagon and industry. As shipbuilding executives often put it, over the years, food service, retail and other industries have slowly increased their respective entry-level wages to be competitive, or even better, than the pay a first-year shipyard worker could expect. “People can go do far less difficult things for just about the same money from an entry wage standpoint,” Kari Wilkinson, an executive at HII, the United States’s largest military shipbuilder, told Breaking Defense last year. “I will say though that within a year-and-a-half to two years, you can double your salary as a shipbuilder.” Despite the promise of better pay in the future, the workforce attrition numbers speak for themselves. Brett Seidle, a senior Navy civilian, told lawmakers in March that “50 to 60 percent” of new industrial base workers, recruited through the Navy’s ongoing campaigns, quit within their first year on the job. “Those folks are coming, and then we’re attriting out way too quick,” he said at the time.

HII, General Dynamics Electric Boat and senior Navy leadership have lobbied Congress and two different administrations to move forward with the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support plan that would, among other things, increase wages for various shipyard workers. That bill, colloquially known as SAWS, has appeared to stagnate on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of numerous lawmakers calling out the Navy for a “lack of transparency” on its funding requests. “It’s incredibly frustrating to know how important building a submarine [or] building a destroyer is, and to hear often that there’s a story of, ‘Well, I’ll go to Chick-Fil-A’ or ‘I’ll go to,’ you fill in the blank,” the official said. “We must overcome that as an enterprise.”

I, uh, I’m not sure if I’m just tired but I have no idea what that last quote is even saying. I’ll go to, you fill in the blank? Huh?

The BLS said on Friday that the annual release of consumer expenditures data — initially set for Tuesday — would be “rescheduled to a later date.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not respond to a request for a comment. Neither did The Department of Labor, which oversees the statistics agency.

It is the only “federal household survey to provide information on the complete range of consumers’ expenditures and incomes,” the BLS website says.

Crucially, the data is also used to determine the weighting of specific goods and services in the Consumer Price Index for the year ahead.