Announcement By the Acting Chair

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. This is a poorly conceived and ill-intentioned attempt to kill the United States' support for the Defence Innovation Accelerator of the North Atlantic program, otherwise known as DIANA, which is a cooperative NATO effort to outsmart and out-innovate our adversaries.

The DIANA program was set up by NATO as an effort to spur increased defense research and development funding to rapidly adapt to a new era of strategic competition by bringing key defensive experts together with the NATO alliances, leading entrepreneurs, and academic researchers.

The DIANA initiative is specifically designed to leverage breaking developments and critical advances and next-generation defense capabilities such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics, space domain, as well as advanced materials and manufacturing sciences for the benefit of all NATO allies.

With U.S. adversaries such as Russia in its brutal, unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine and our global competition with China where China in its efforts to outpace the United States in technological superiority and undermine international norms and freedoms continue their malign efforts, it is more important than ever that we work closely with our NATO allies to out-innovate and out-compete at the leading edge of defense technology.

Eliminating funding from the DIANA program is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing--the opposite. We should be working together with our NATO allies in a collective way. Therefore, I encourage all Members to oppose this amendment.

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Chairman, this week, NATO leaders held a summit in Lithuania to discuss, address, and prepare for the alliance's future. It was done with the United States at the table, leading the efforts to galvanize ambitions in the face of multiple threats, most notably those related to Russia's unjust and tragic war against Ukraine.

In Lithuania, allies agreed to continue to ramp up support for Ukraine and use the 2 percent of GDP amount as a floor. Some of our strongest allies in the alliance are set to move even beyond that threshold in the coming years. We have not seen NATO stronger, NATO working closer together, NATO speaking together.

Now, I know that the former President thought that NATO had outlived its usefulness and that we should not be a part of it. This amendment would lend itself to that type of mentality. We know that the strength of NATO is its unity. We know that what Mr. Putin was after was to divide NATO. We don't need to utilize any language or have any language that would accelerate that thought.

What we need to do is to make sure that we continue with the spirit of what took place at the NATO summit. The language of this amendment seeks to create disunity at a time when NATO's unity is being actively tested by Vladimir Putin. So, no, we should not agree to denounce our allies in the NDAA, as this amendment does. We should not look to reignite some of the disunity and disruption that previous America First policies promoted.

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Mr. MEEKS. As I said, we should not look to reignite some of the disunity and disruption that America First or America only promoted. We don't need to call out in an amendment our strongest of allies. This amendment calls out and criticizes and denounces Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Denmark, France, and many others in the middle of war.

I surely would not want to be fighting a war in a bunker saying we are allies and then someone is denouncing me. That is not the way allies stick together and fight an unjust war that is currently taking place in Ukraine where you have Russia taking land from a sovereign country.

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Chair, what NATO has done when they have seen the taking of property from a sovereign country is stick together. The one thing that Mr. Putin did think would happen was that we would be divided. That has not happened, and NATO has been stronger because they see the inhumanity and the criminal activity that is now taking place by Vladimir Putin. One voice, standing together, to stop that.

While it is the Ukrainian people who are fighting, it is the allies in NATO who are giving the ammunition that is necessary to win. But for that, this war would have been over in 2 weeks or less. It is that unity that has continued until Ukraine will win this fight. We must stand together, not giving any weakness of disunity.

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