Anyone who’s camped out at a folk music festival and has been woken up at 2 a.m. by a blaringly rendered version of “Bella Ciao” knows that trumpet players are terrorists.
asserted
players → camp → Ciao
But the Trump administration is taking that a bit literally: The Department of Commerce announced in early August that it plans to implement a 25 percent tariff on brass instruments, citing national security concerns about America’s perceived overreliance on foreign copper alloys.
asserted
it → take → alloys
The move throws into sharp relief how far the term “national security” has wandered from its bare-bones literal meaning: defending a country from threats.
asserted
term → throw → threats
Our leaders have been referencing “national security” more or less since the founding.
asserted
leaders → reference → founding
In a 1791 address to Congress, George Washington argued that militias were “of primary importance” to the young country’s “national security” to, among other things, fight against the “deluded tribes.”
asserted
militias → argue → tribes
But the term didn’t enter everyday vernacular until much later.
asserted
term → enter → vernacular
During the New Deal era, as historian Andrew Preston put it in his book Total Defense, its meaning expanded: “Security became ideological as well as territorial, normative as well as physical, global and not just continental.
asserted
Security → put → book
It became, as it still is today, all-encompassing.”
asserted
it → become → ?
Americans’ anti-communist fervor during the Cold War then laid the groundwork for today’s formalized national security state.
asserted
fervor → lay → state
The National Security Act of 1947 created many of the structures we now see as intrinsic to our national security, such as the CIA, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense—even if it never actually defined the term.
asserted
it → create → term
Everybody can just kind of hang what they want onto it,” Delaware Law School professor Elizabeth Beavers told me.
asserted
Beavers → hang → me
The September 11 attacks weighed down that tree with a host of new meanings.
asserted
attacks → weigh → meanings
Yumna Rizvi, a fellow at the Center for International Policy, cites the fall of the twin towers as the point when national security swallowed the world.
asserted
security → cite → world
Within days, Congress passed a sweeping authorization of military force that has yet to be repealed, and President George W. Bush was calling for a “crusade” against “terrorism.”
asserted
Bush → pass → terrorism
By January 2002, the US had opened its prison at Guantánamo Bay for combatants in the so-called global war on terror.
asserted
US → open → terror
Just over a year after 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was officially up and running.
asserted
Department → run → Security
“We became a fear-based, hyper-security state,” Rizvi said.
asserted
Rizvi → become → ?
National security went from being a governmental priority to a full-blown religion.
asserted
security → go → religion
Bits of twisted steel from the wreckage of the towers were shipped all over the world and welded into ad hoc memorials in places like a strip mall in Parma, Ohio, and a firehouse in Giddings, Texas, where they were honored as saintly relics—“franchising 9/11 memory,” as researchers Samuel and Max Holleran put it.
asserted
Holleran → ship → it
Some “survivor steel” was even melted into the hull of the USS New York, a warship later deployed to the Persian Gulf.
asserted
steel → melt → Gulf
The subsequent 20 years of war cost an estimated 900,000 lives—including about 15,000 Americans—and at least $4 trillion.
asserted
years → cost → Americans
Events like the annual Christianity & National Security conference continue to cloak it in religious fervor.
asserted
Events → continue → fervor
Meanwhile, “national security” has become a catchall for anything the government wants to spend money on—including domestic initiatives with little or no benefit to the public.
asserted
government → become → public
Every president since Bush has made use of the blunt weapon of national security to push their interests, but Donald Trump’s use has been unprecedentedly brazen.
asserted
use → make → interests
Canceling offshore wind leases and dialing back limits on toxic chemical emissions are national security.
asserted
Canceling → cancel → emissions
Erasing transgender people from public life is national security, too.
asserted
Erasing → erase → life
As people started pushing back against these energy-guzzling, chatbot-sustaining behemoths en masse, those who stand to profit from the data center boom turned to a familiar argument.
asserted
who → start → argument
“It is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance,” Trump, who has invested millions of dollars in companies that build data center infrastructure, wrote in a 2025 executive order.
asserted
that → achieve → order
Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, whose 40,000-acre data center proposal in Utah was met with furious backlash, promptly labeled his opponents Chinese Communist Party plants and declared his project a national security necessity.
asserted
project → meet → opponents
“Who would want to stop us from having the compute capacity to develop AI?
asserted
Who → want → AI
Which adversary would want that?
asserted
adversary → want → that
There’s only one, it’s China,” he said on Fox News.
asserted
he → ’ → News
And Trump has described the AI giant Anthropic alternately as either useful to national security or a national security threat, depending on the day.
asserted
Trump → describe → day
Republicans aren’t alone in hanging their priorities on this Christmas tree.
asserted
Republicans → hang → tree
Gun violence has been dubbed a national security issue, and a spate of recent think pieces have declared Trump himself a national security threat.
asserted
Trump → dub → pieces
Other ideas transcend party lines.
asserted
ideas → transcend → lines
For decades, the Pentagon viewed climate change through that lens—“If you can’t land troops in a foreign country because the beach you thought was going to be something you could land on is no longer there, then it’s a national security issue,” one retired general warned on NPR during the first Trump administration.
uncertain
general → view → administration
(The Defense Department “does not do climate change crap,” Secretary Pete Hegseth now insists.)
asserted
Hegseth → do → crap
The outcome, of course, is that if national security is everything, then national security is nothing at all, apart from a tool to revive a zombie army of post-9/11 legal mechanisms against all sorts of domestic dissidents—the slew of anti-ICE protesters charged under Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 can attest to that.
asserted
slew → revive → that
“The system has expanded to new uses, new targets, new opportunities to vilify, to punish, to create division.
asserted
system → expand → division
…and 2 more, not listed.
