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BERLIN — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is planning a fresh attempt to meet his U.S. counterpart Pete Hegseth during a trip to Washington and Texas in September, internal planning notes seen by POLITICO show.

The proposed program includes a visit to the Pentagon and a potential bilateral meeting with Hegseth. Officials are also considering meetings with members of Congress, representatives of the U.S. National Security Council and defense industry executives.

The trip, planned for a five-day window in mid-September, would conclude in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with a rollout ceremony for an American-built F-35 fighter jet set to be delivered to the German armed forces.

The plans are still being prepared and the individual meetings depend on the minister’s final schedule.

The German defense ministry declined to comment on the plans. However, it would be Pistorius’ second attempt this year to secure a dedicated meeting with Hegseth in Washington.

The German minister abandoned the U.S. leg of a planned North America trip in May after a meeting with Hegseth could not be arranged . Pistorius went ahead with the Canadian portion of the trip, while Hegseth traveled to the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore.

The episode was a setback for Berlin as it sought direct access to the Trump administration during a period of growing uncertainty over Washington’s military role in Europe.

Pistorius and Hegseth have met before. Most recently, both were at the NATO Summit in Ankara. And during a formal Pentagon visit in July 2025, the two discussed the future of U.S. forces in Europe and Germany’s interest in the American Typhon long-range missile system as well as Tomahawk missiles.

Those questions have only become more pressing. Hegseth announced in June a six-month review of U.S. troop deployments in Europe , while Washington has already reduced some of the military capabilities it makes available to NATO. Pistorius has warned that any American withdrawal must be coordinated with European allies to avoid dangerous gaps in the alliance’s defenses.

Internal planning notes do not identify the specific weapons programs Pistorius could raise in Washington. The notes mention intended discussions on relevant procurement projects, alongside the organization of defense purchasing.

The Texas stop would provide a more ceremonial element to the trip.

A rollout is the formal public unveiling of a newly assembled aircraft — not yet its delivery to the German military. Germany’s first F-35 entered final assembly at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth factory earlier this year and is due to make its first flight and be officially presented on Sept. 18, according to Lockheed Martin .

Germany ordered 35 of the stealth fighters to replace its aging Tornado fleet, including in the sensitive role of carrying U.S. nuclear bombs stationed in Germany in the event of war.

The first eight German aircraft will initially remain in the United States, where pilots will train at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas. The first F-35s are expected to arrive at Germany’s Büchel air base in 2027.

Berlin has also been mulling an expansion of the fleet with another 15 aircraft , POLITICO previosuly reported. The planning notes, however, do not indicate whether that potential purchase will be among the projects discussed during Pistorius’ visit in September.

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This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter— sign up here .

Famously, O. Henry (the pen name of William Sydney Porter), author of “The Gift of the Magi,” and one of the most celebrated short story writers of his generation, and whose legacy is celebrated every year by the O. Henry Prize for Fiction , got his start in prison, while serving time for embezzling funds from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas, where he had worked as a teller.

It’s possible that Porter shouldn’t have been convicted at all: a 1916 report characterized the bank in question as “carelessly managed,” and revealed that “the patrons used to enter, go behind the counter, take out one hundred or two hundred dollars and say a week later, ‘Porter, I took out $200, last week. See if I left a memorandum of it. I meant to.’” The Times report claims that Porter, who by the time he was charged had moved to Houston and taken a job as a columnist with The Daily Post , resigned before one of the “misappropriations with which he was charged,” and that if he had simply gone back to Austin when he was summoned to stand trial, he would have been acquitted.

But he didn’t. Instead, he took a train to New Orleans, and then hopped on a fruit steamer headed for Honduras, where the law could not reach him. But in February of 1897, he learned that his wife was very ill, and he returned to the states to care for her. His wife died in July, and Porter was convicted the following year, and in March 1898, sentenced to five years in prison for embezzlement.

The literary world should be grateful for his poor luck, because it was in prison that Porter “did his first serious literary work,” as the Times puts it. In order to be able to send money home to support his daughter Margaret, he wrote and published 14 short stories, under pen names, including the one with which he would become famous: O. Henry.

Porter was released early for good behavior, on July 24, 1901, and returned to Pittsburgh to live with his daughter and his in-laws, before moving on to New York City. Most importantly, he kept writing, and in 1904 published his first collection of short stories, Cabbages and Kings , followed two years later by The Four Million , which would include some of his most enduring tales, including “The Gift of the Magi.” He was incredibly prolific; he would keep publishing until his death in 1910, and well beyond.

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For years, identity security has been designed to secure an organization's human users. But as agentic enterprises take shape, the identity equation is shifting. Artificial intelligence (AI) agents and AI-powered builders – software tools used to develop websites and applications without coding – are increasingly participating in how access is configured, governed and used.

AI agents are effectively new digital employees , so organizations need a way to know they exist and control what they do throughout their lifecycle. They are becoming operators, helping to administer and secure identity environments through machine-native interfaces.

To add another layer of complexity, desktop agents and AI assistants are also beginning to interact with enterprise applications and resources on behalf of users.

For an agentic enterprise to succeed, these agents need trusted access to do useful work but should not be given direct exposure to secrets they have no meaningful reason to access. To achieve this, organizations need a unified, AI-first identity model, centered on end-to-end visibility, governance and controls which strike a balance between security and appropriate access.

AI agents are reshaping identity

AI has created a new category of digital identity. Like human employees, autonomous agents must be discoverable and managed and governed so organizations can understand what systems and data they can access and who is responsible for their actions.

Traditional identity and access management (IAM) systems relied on static, one-time verification methods in response to access requests made by humans. But in the agentic enterprise, requests also come from autonomous software acting on behalf of human users. Organizations therefore need to know exactly who or what is accessing a system continuously, and if they have the correct permissions to access given information.

At the same time, AI is increasingly managing identities and access. Machine-native interfaces allow agents to help manage human users’ access, troubleshoot issues and support security workflows. While these capabilities can help organizations cut costs and improve efficiency, they are only successful when strong access guardrails are put in place.

AI has created a new category of digital identity. Like human employees, autonomous agents must be discoverable and managed and governed so organizations can understand what systems and data they can access and who is responsible for their actions.

Traditional identity and access management (IAM) systems relied on static, one-time verification methods in response to access requests made by humans. But in the agentic enterprise, requests also come from autonomous software acting on behalf of human users. Organizations therefore need to know exactly who or what is accessing a system continuously, and if they have the correct permissions to access given information.

At the same time, AI is increasingly managing identities and access. Machine-native interfaces allow agents to help manage human users’ access, troubleshoot issues and support security workflows. While these capabilities can help organizations cut costs and improve efficiency, they are only successful when strong access guardrails are put in place.

Building a unified identity model for AI

Mechanisms for securing AI cannot simply be bolted onto identity systems designed for humans. It requires a complete rethink of the identity management model, where human and machine identities are governed through a single framework to prevent tool sprawl and unintentional security blind spots.

As organizations adopt AI tools throughout multiple operational layers, enterprise identity needs to evolve and become easier to manage and automate. Identity can no longer rely solely on human administration.

Tools designed specifically for autonomous agents, such as AI-first headless interfaces, allow builders and AI alike to perform identity-related tasks. Autonomous operators must also be trained to configure access, troubleshoot workflows and apply governance controls within approved policies and guardrails.

Visibility and governance across the entire AI agent lifecycle are also critical. As more agents are deployed, businesses must have complete visibility into their agents and actions.

Every AI should be treated as a first-class identity, with a designated human owner, as well as clear policies and full auditability throughout its entire lifecycle. As these agents operate across the enterprise, their actions should be traceable to a human user responsible.

Finally, AI agents need trusted ways to interact with enterprise resources without being given direct access to the credentials or secrets that enable them. Coding and desktop agents increasingly interact with systems on behalf of users, but exposing them to credentials or long-lived secrets creates unnecessary risk. Instead, access to enterprise resources should be brokered through just-in-time privileged controls.

This allows enterprises to maintain oversight of how permissions are granted, governed and audited without exposing the underlying secrets behind that access. Together, these capabilities create a unified identity model which extends governance across human and AI identities without creating a parallel identity stack.

The future of the agentic enterprise

AI agents cannot operate as intended and deliver meaningful value without access to enterprise systems. But granting unrestricted access or exposing sensitive information creates an entirely new risk to organizations.

The future of the agentic enterprise depends on maintaining governance, visibility and control across both human and digital identities. This means identity must become programmable, AI agents should be governed throughout their lifecycle and agent access needs to be given without unnecessary exposure to sensitive data .

A unified identity strategy provides the means to operate AI agents more safely and efficiently while maintaining centralized governance, accountability and control.

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Science word of the day: Heliosphere

Pronunciation: HEE'-lee-uhs-feer

What it means: The heliosphere is the region around the sun that's affected by the solar wind, a flow of charged particles emanating from the sun. Think of the heliosphere like a giant bubble encompassing the sun and planets, reaching out into space at three times the distance of Pluto . This bubble protects the solar system from radiation emanating from outer space, but the solar wind can also erode planetary atmospheres. Luckily, Earth is protected by its own bubble, the magnetosphere, which helps deflect the solar wind.

How to use it in a sentence: Because the entire solar system is traveling through space, scientists have long pictured the heliosphere as comet-shaped, but recent research suggests the bubble of solar wind looks more like a sad, deflated croissant .

Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, Chain Word ?