President Donald Trump has quietly terminated the $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponisation Resilience Fund, sources confirm, triggering a storm of criticism from British defence chiefs who accuse Washington of strategic drift. The fund, established in 2021 to counter foreign interference in critical infrastructure, was shuttered by executive order late last night with no public explanation.
White House insiders say the move is part of a broader retrenchment: Trump believes the money was being siphoned by 'deep state' bureaucrats and used against his political allies. But the decision has left London fuming. 'This is a direct blow to the Five Eyes alliance,' said Air Marshal Sir James Horton, former head of UK Strategic Command. 'Without this fund, our ability to detect and disrupt state-sponsored cyber attacks is crippled. The Americans are pulling the ladder up behind them.'
Documents obtained by this newsletter show the fund financed 47 joint operations last year alone, including takedowns of botnets in Eastern Europe and a covert operation to expose Iranian disinformation cells in the Baltics. British intelligence sources say the fund's collapse leaves a 'dangerous vacuum' that Russia and China will exploit.
Downing Street has refused to comment on the record, but a senior defence official told me: 'We are deeply disappointed. This is not the action of a reliable ally. We are reassessing our intelligence-sharing protocols.' The mood in Whitehall is one of resignation: the UK has limited leverage. Trump has made clear he views such multinational funds as 'globalist boondoggles'.
The fund's cancellation is the latest in a series of unilateral US decisions that have frayed transatlantic trust. Last week, Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action's successor framework. Two weeks prior, he slashed funding for the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn.
'I've been covering this beat for 15 years. This is the most reckless abandonment of alliance commitments I've ever seen,' said Clara Devereux, a former MI5 analyst now at the Royal United Services Institute. 'The British defence establishment is stunned. They're scrambling to find alternative funding, but there's nothing on this scale.'
A Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, dismissed the criticism: 'The fund was a slush pile for bureaucrats who hate the president. We don't need to be the world's piggy bank. Let Europe pay for its own defence.'
The official added that Trump plans to reallocate the $1.8 billion to domestic priorities, including border security and 'draining the swamp.' But British defence chiefs fear the damage is done. 'Trust takes years to build and minutes to destroy,' Horton said.
I have seen internal UK Ministry of Defence briefings that describe the US as an 'unpredictable partner' and recommend 'accelerating independent capabilities' in signals intelligence and cyber operations. The language is unusually blunt: 'We can no longer rely on the United States for strategic coherence.'
For now, the money is gone. The question is whether the alliance can survive this level of neglect. As one source put it: 'Trump is playing with fire. And we're all going to get burned.'
