LET’S GET THIS PROCESS STARTED: President Trump may not be interested in talking to the Taliban after a series of deadly attacks this year, but Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani is. Ghani opened the 2nd Kabul Process Conference, attended by representatives from about two dozen countries, with what he called on Twitter “a detailed peace offer to Taliban and Pakistan on behalf of the Afghan people.”

SUSPICIOUS SUBSTANCE: Several people reported feeling sick after an envelope containing a suspicious substance was opened yesterday afternoon on the Marine Corps side of Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Va., around 3:30 p.m. “Shortly after receiving the letter, 11 people started to feel ill and caused the evacuation of the building,” said a statement issued by the base last night. “After the evaluation of 11 people, three personnel were transported in stable condition for further medical evaluations.”

CNN reported this morning that field tests came back negative for any harmful substance, and quoted law enforcement officials as saying the letter contained derogatory language, at times unintelligible, addressed to a commanding officer at the base. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and FBI are conducting a joint investigation, and further testing of the mystery substance is underway.

TRUMP ‘POLITICAL THEATER’: Trump struck a deal with Boeing to buy two new Air Force One 747 jetliners for $3.9 billion, and the White House touted the deal as another example of the president’s negotiating prowess. “Thanks to the president’s negotiations, the contract will save the taxpayers more than $1.4 billion,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

The thing is, industry experts can’t make the math work. The purported savings would mean the original price was $5.3 billion, a figure no one seems to know the basis for. In December 2016, Trump railed that the $4 billion price tag was “out of control” and threatened to cancel the order. The Air Force budget listed the program fiscal 2019 at $3.9 billion, while last year’s budget had the two-aircraft program listed at $3.6 billion, not adjusted for inflation.

“There’s no evidence of a discount,” U.S. aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia told Reuters. Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Teal Group, accused the Trump White House of engaging in “political theater.”

A Boeing official, when asked about the increase, dodged the question and merely listed the work to be covered by the contract. Boeing also sent out a tweet that was music to the president’s ears. “Boeing is proud to build the next generation of Air Force One, providing American Presidents with a flying White House at outstanding value to taxpayers. President Trump negotiated a good deal on behalf of the American people.”

HAPPENING TODAY, TRUMP’S SPACE BUDGET: The Center for Strategic and International Studies hosts a forum this morning at 8 on national security in space and what Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget request would do to address it. Reps. Mike Rogers and Jim Cooper, the two lawmakers behind the push to create a Space Corps, will speak together on a panel. Also, Reps. Doug Lamborn and Dutch Ruppersberger will talk about the views of their Space Power Caucus.

RUSSIA PAYS NO PRICE: The outgoing head of U.S. Cyber Command had harsh words for Russia in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Adm. Mike Rogers, who is also National Security Agency director, told the committee that Trump has not specifically authorized the U.S. to disrupt Russian cyber operations or head off potential attacks on the 2018 elections.

“I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity.”

DEMS WANT RUSSIA COUNTERPUNCH: That testimony infuriated Democrats on the committee who were slack-jawed that no cyber countermeasures were being employed. “Why the hell not? What’s it going to take?” said Sen. Claire McCaskill. “I want somebody to sit in that chair and say to the United States of America we’ve got this and until we have that moment, Russia is winning and that is disgusting.” Democrat after Democrat questioned Rogers about a cyber counterpunch to fend off Russia before the midterm elections, but Rogers said he would need direction from the president or Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to target the foreign operations. “I don’t have the day-to-day authority to do that,” he said.

Three Armed Services Democrats wrote to Mattis Feb. 6 asking that he take action against the Russians, who hacked the Democratic Party’s emails and used an army of bots in an attempt to stoke U.S. political divisions online. Intelligence officials have also warned Moscow will target the elections this fall. “One of the things that we asked is that the national mission teams, which are part of the U.S. Cyber Command’s cyber mission, should be ordered to prepare to engage Russian cyber operators and disrupt their activities as they conduct clandestine influence operations against our forthcoming elections,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, who sent the letter with Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Richard Blumenthal.

Rogers, an Obama appointee who is set to retire this spring, pushed back on assertions that nothing has been done in response to the Russian meddling, saying he has taken some steps under his existing authority. “Based on the authority that I have as a commander I have directed the national mission force to begin some specific work. I’d rather not publicly go into that, using the authorities that I retain as a commander of this mission,” he said.

“Everything that as both director of NSA and what I see on the Cyber Command side leads me to believe that if we don’t change the dynamic here [Putin] is going to continue and 2016 won’t be viewed as something isolated. This is something that will be sustained over time.”

MEANWHILE, D.C. TROLLS RUSSIA: It wasn’t a cyber retaliation, but the city of D.C. played a little tit-for-tat with the Russians on Tuesday. The section of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Russian Embassy in D.C. was officially renamed Boris Nemtsov Plaza after a critic of Putin who was gunned down in Moscow three years ago. The renaming was pushed by Sen. Marco Rubio and approved last month by the D.C. council. But it also drew praise from Sen. John McCain, who has lauded Nemtsov and sponsored legislation for the street name change.

“Today, 5,000 miles away from Moscow, Boris Nemtsov’s friends, family, and admirers unveiled the world’s first memorial to this great man,” McCain, who is at home in Arizona battling brain cancer, said in a released statement. “The greatest memorial to Boris will be a free Russia. And that Russia will proudly build memorials to Boris. In the meantime, America will gladly pay tribute to Boris Nemtsov — and to the millions of Russians who share his vision.”

As tensions increase between Washington and Moscow, the two countries have resurrected a Cold War-era type of trolling using street names. A Russian lawmaker proposed renaming an alley near the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as 1 North American Dead End, the New York Times reported. To which State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert responded, “If Russia should choose to rename the road in front of our embassy, that is certainly their choice. And I think that would, in fact, be a good example of our support of freedom of the press and freedom of expression.”

SPY BUDGET RELEASED, SORT OF: Trump sent Congress the largest-ever publicly disclosed request for spy agency funding, the administration revealed Tuesday. Details about the so-called “black budget” are slim, but Trump is requesting $59.9 billion for non-military intelligence agencies and $21.2 billion for military intelligence in fiscal 2019.

The civilian spy request is 3.8 percent higher than what Trump requested last year, and the military figure is 2.4 percent higher than last year’s request. The non-military request covers the 16-member U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA and the National Security Agency, and is collectively known as the National Intelligence Program.

NO NEGOTIATOR: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s lead ambassador for talks with North Korea has decided to retire, to the dismay of a top Senate Democrat.

“[W]e have lost our lead negotiator on North Korean denuclearization efforts,” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday after Ambassador Joseph Yun announced his plan to retire. “Without the full weight of a robust diplomatic presence in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States will be left on the sidelines at a time when we can least afford it. The stakes are too high.”

Yun has served as the special representative for North Korea since 2016. In that role, he has helped to coordinate an international sanctions campaign while also maintaining quiet contact with the regime to secure the release of Americans imprisoned in the country.

NORTH KOREA-SYRIA CONNECTION: The State Department is denouncing the “depravity” of North Korea’s reported decision to sell chemical weapons supplies to Syria’s president Assad, who has used the banned weapons against his own people in a long-running civil war.

“This is something that the United States has had concerns about for quite some time, that North Korea, especially as North Korea becomes more desperate, that they look for different, creative, and horrific ways to try to make money to fund their criminal regime,” Nauert told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing. “And when I say ‘criminal regime,’ I mean their illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

That includes supplying chemical weapons paraphernalia to the Assad regime, according to an unreleased United Nations report that leaked earlier Tuesday. The report, which Nauert stipulated she has not seen herself, blends the two most pressing weapons-of-mass-destruction crises in the world. North Korea is racing to develop the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon, while Assad’s use of chemical weapons has provoked one U.S. airstrike and divided the U.N. Security Council.

THE RUNDOWN

Defense News: Graham returns from Israel: We must ‘stop the Iran-Assad machine’

Air Force Times: ‘Jack of all trades’: Poignant clip from Nat Geo documentary highlights soldier killed in Niger ambush

Australian Broadcasting: USS Carl Vinson Aircraft Carrier Sails Through South China Sea In Defiance Of China

Business Insider: We climbed into an Apache helicopter’s cockpit and saw why it’s one of the most difficult aircraft to fly

Defense One: The US Will Spend $500M on Syrian Kurds This Year. For What?

Washington Post: Kushner’s overseas contacts raise concerns as foreign officials seek leverage

Breaking Defense: Air Force T-6s Return to Flight; OBOGS Monitoring Cited

Navy Times: Super Hornets and Growlers to get bigger fuel tanks

Task and Purpose: Trump Was Right: The Navy’s New Aircraft Catapult Is No Match For ‘Goddamned Steam’

The Hill: Armed Services chair: US should be ‘alert’ about Russian mercenaries in Syria

USNI News: Aegis Fleet Champion Vice Adm. James H. Doyle, Jr. Dies

New York Times: As Xi Jinping Extends Power, China Braces for a New Cold War

Stars and Stripes: How a soldier’s death in Afghanistan ended up in a German court, 4 years later