As the Trump administration tries to finalize a deal to sell 48 advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon intelligence report compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency has raised fears that China could acquire the warplane’s technology via espionage or its security partnership with Saudi Arabia if the sales go through.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to approve the agreement, before it continues through an interagency review process.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, is expected to meet with Trump at the White House on Nov 18. The top items on the agenda are the potential F-35 deal and a mutual defense agreement. Saudi Arabia is the biggest buyer of American weapons.
Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi defense minister, wrote on social media on Nov 11 that he had recently met with Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy. “We reviewed the Saudi-US relations and explored ways to bolster our strategic cooperation.”
Prince Mohammed and his aides have also been prodding the US to move forward on talks to approve helping Saudi Arabia develop a civilian nuclear program, an effort that has prompted US officials to discuss whether the kingdom could use that nuclear technology to try to develop a nuclear weapon.
In addition to the concerns over China acquiring F-35 technology, the proposed sales also raise questions about whether the US government would be compromising Israel’s regional military advantage. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has F-35 jets, and it used them for airstrikes in Iran in Oct 2024 and June 2025.
Congress says the US must ensure that Israel can defeat “any credible conventional military threat” while sustaining “minimal damage and casualties.”
In 2020, the first Trump administration agreed to sell F-35 jets to the UAE as part of a deal to get that nation to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel in the Abraham Accords. Some US officials objected to the sales because of the UAE’s close partnership with China and because of concerns that Israel’s military advantage would be weakened.
The Biden administration suspended the deal in early 2021 to review it, mainly out of fear that China could acquire the F-35 technology if the jets were in the UAE. The US then gave the UAE a list of demands, which included installing kill switches in the jets so that the US government could render them inoperable if necessary. Emirati officials considered the demands too onerous, and the deal fizzled.
The same concerns have arisen with Saudi Arabia. US officials are discussing whether to place safeguards on the F-35 technology, though it is unclear what would be enshrined in a sales agreement and what suggestions the Pentagon’s intelligence report lays out, if any.
China and Saudi Arabia have some military ties. The Chinese military is helping Saudi Arabia build ballistic missiles and acquire more capable ones, as well as operate them. The Saudis had bought short-range ballistic missiles from China for years, and they recently began purchasing more capable Chinese missiles that can travel farther. They also started to acquire the technology to create their own components, set up production facilities and conduct test launches, with the apparent goal of being able to produce their own missiles.
For Saudi Arabia, acquiring the F-35 — America’s premier fighter jet — would give its air force major advantages in stealth and would help its pilots assess a complex battle space in ways that its existing fighter fleet cannot.
“In a nutshell, the F-35 represents the pinnacle of Western combat aviation in terms of both capabilities and prestige ‘bragging rights’.”
nytimes.com/2025/11/13/us/
