Axios

Israel is negotiating with Hungary's government over the future contents of a new revisionist Holocaust museum to be opened in Budapest. Israeli officials told me the nationalist right-wing Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán wants to use the museum to whitewash any involvement of the Hungarian state or the Hungarian people in Nazi crimes during World War II.

The bigger picture: This is another example of a populist government in central Europe trying to rewrite the history of World War II and distance themselves from any history of antisemitism or cooperation with the Nazis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is accommodating those steps because it needs the support of the central European governments – mainly Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic — inside the EU.

Almost 26 years after he left office a one-term president, George H.W. Bush was remembered today as a great man — with the chancellor of reunified Germany and the president of free Poland in the pews.

Why it matters: The world that was in many ways born during the Bush administration — as the Soviet Union crumbled, democracy spread and America’s preeminence solidified — is under severe threat.

Despite diplomatic efforts by the U.S., new satellite images show that North Korea has expanded an unidentified long-range missile base along the "mountainous interior of the country," CNN's Zachary Cohen reports.

Why it matters: The construction does not technically violate any agreement between the U.S. and South Korea, per CNN. However, the activity shown from the images is more evidence that the Yeongjeo-dong missile base and a nearby site remain active, leading the Trump administration to conclude that Pyongyang has failed to live up to its promises.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that if the U.S. exits a Cold War-era missile treaty and begins developing new intermediate-range missiles, his country will follow suit, per the AP.

The backdrop: President Trump has threatened to withdraw from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty — which bans land-based nuclear missiles in Europe — because Russia has developed and fielded a banned missile system. All 29 NATO members backed the U.S. accusation yesterday, saying: "It is now up to Russia to preserve the INF Treaty." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. would begin withdrawal in 60 days if Russia remains in violation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has recommended no prison time for former national security advisor and Trump campaign aide Michael Flynn, citing his “substantial assistance” with the investigation, according to a new court document filed late Tuesday.

Why it matters: Flynn, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about his conversations with former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak before President Trump’s inauguration, had agreed to cooperate fully with Mueller's investigation. Flynn’s guilty plea and move to cooperate was one of the first such deals in the Mueller probe.

With the flourish of a significant concession, China said today that it will punish companies and individuals who steal intellectual property, a primary U.S. complaint. But China hands are skeptical.

"What they’ve done in the past is fail to enforce or, when they have to enforce, find somebody they don’t like, blame them, and then say to the Americans, 'See?'"

On Dec. 1, Defense Secretary Mattis became the first Trump administration official to publicly confirm that the Kremlin continues to interfere in U.S. democracy, including in last month's midterm elections. Mattis has described Putin as a “slow learner,” but a new tracking project shows him to be an operator who has spent nearly two decades sharpening and deploying a set of asymmetric tools across the Atlantic.

The big picture: Election interference is just one part of Russia’s strategy. The Alliance for Securing Democracy has catalogued Kremlin fingerprints on over 400 incidents of interference in 42 countries. Beyond bots and troll farms, the toolbox includes information operations, cyberattacks, political subversion, strategic economic coercion and malign finance.

When it comes to cybersecurity research, the not-for-profit lab MITRE has traditionally maintained neutrality toward commercial products. But last week, it released its first security product evaluations. Here's why and how MITRE made the leap into what might at first sound like Yelp territory (but really isn't).

Why it matters: MITRE is best known for its role in assisting the government in public/private partnerships. In cybersecurity, until now, a lot of its high-profile work was more as an archivist than an active defender.

The Chinese government announced Tuesday that it would implement a total of 38 different punishments for companies that engage in intellectual property theft, an issue that has long been a source of headaches in U.S.-China trade negotiations, Bloomberg reports.

The big picture: IP theft by Chinese companies poses a threat to both national security and American companies' ability to turn profits, currently costing between $225 billion and $600 billion annually, according to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. The Chinese government says violators would be restricted from receiving financial support from the government and designated in various databases, including a registry that could be accessed by foreign lenders.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's government has been found in contempt of Parliament for the first time in history in a 311-293 vote in the House of Commons after a refusal to publish its full legal analysis on Brexit. Andrea Leadsom, leader of the Commons, announced immediately after the vote that the government would publish the complete document.

Why it matters: The BBC's political correspondent Iain Watson said that the loss was "an unwelcome distraction rather than a disaster" for May, but it highlights just how incredibly difficult it will be to get the Commons to back her Brexit deal — and potentially, her premiership — in next week's critical "meaningful vote" on the issue.

Rep.-elect Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) plans to lead a congressional delegation to the occupied West Bank next year, breaking with the traditional visit to Israel for newly elected members of Congress sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), The Intercept reports.

The big picture: Tlaib, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, told The Intercept that she wants the delegation "to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region." She added, "I don’t think AIPAC provides a real, fair lens into this issue. It’s one-sided. … [They] have these lavish trips to Israel, but they don’t show the side that I know is real, which is what’s happening to my grandmother and what’s happening to my family there."