No, you're absolutely right. National security can be defined very broadly. Ultimately, national security is whatever the government says it is. We saw that early during the Trump administration, when all of a sudden tariffs were imposed on our steel and aluminum, because of national security. From our point of view, we were no threat to the United States' national security—on the contrary—but in the mind of Donald Trump we were.
Obviously, we can all agree that it was not national security. It was much more about protectionism, but, yes, national security can be invoked for other purposes. Again, with transparency in mind, obviously national security takes many forms. I'm not sure we can define it in a way that says, okay, this is national security; this is not.
Given the example of land, you can say, if a foreign country buys all our agricultural land and decides that it wants to starve us and decides not to exploit those lands, that's a national security issue. Now, if it exploits it and then exports it somewhere else, maybe too much to our liking to China, but then, if the revenues are taxed here and we can buy other stuff, you might say that's not a national security issue.
Your question is correct, and it reflects the challenges. In a way, to me, if there are decisions that are made on national security grounds, they have to be justified somehow, at a minimum, to Parliament, which ultimately is supposed to hold government to account.