Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, is heading to Asia on a trip that will take her to Japan, Thailand and India, where she will attend a security conference in New Delhi.
Gabbard will also visit visit France on the way back to the United States, she said in a post on her X account.
It is Gabbard’s second international trip as a top Trump administration official. Immediately after she was confirmed a month ago, she travelled to Germany to attend the Munich Security Conference.
Her first stop after departing Washington on Monday was Hawaii, which hosts a large National Security Agency office as well as the military’s Indo-Pacific Command headquarters.
Gabbard, who represented the state for eight years in Congress, said she would meet with military and intelligence officers while in Hawaii, and would also watch US troops train.
The exact timing and details of Ms Gabbard’s visits to Japan and Thailand were not immediately disclosed.
The Asia trip will culminate in an address on March 18 at the Rasina conference, a multinational gathering of security officials in New Delhi, to which she was invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There, Gabbard will hold bilateral meetings with Indian officials and officials from other countries, a senior Trump administration official said.
The Rasina conference is often attended by senior Russian security officials and experts. It is not clear, however, whether Gabbard will have meetings with Russian officials on the sidelines of the conference.
The Trump administration is pushing for a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, and has been pressuring the Kyiv government to make concessions to end the war.
Trump administration officials’ comments at the Munich conference in February left many European diplomats reeling, particularly Vice President JD Vance’s rebuke of Europe for what he said was abridging conservatives’ free speech.
But Gabbard’s remarks, which focused on counterterrorism cooperation between Europe and America, were well received by European diplomats eager for any sign that US intelligence agencies intend to preserve their partnerships with long-standing allies.
A senior administration official said Gabbard intended to strike similar themes in India and would address counterterrorism, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and intelligence sharing.
- This article originally appeared in The New York Times