Madam Secretary Season 5 Episode 12 revolves around a defense contract that could lead to international trouble.

Dalton and Russell call Elizabeth in because a major defense contractor wants the US to buy more F-40 planes than are in the budget. Their idea is to offset the cost by selling them to Taiwan and Dalton wants Elizabeth to convince Taiwan of this idea.

Elizabeth doesn't like it. This will cause problems between Taiwan and China and China may pull out of a fair trade agreement. She promises to talk but nothing more.

At a meeting, a Military Affairs expert, Gary Martin, argues against this plan and later asks Blake to discuss it over drinks. Elizabeth is then contacted by Minister Chen of China, who is angry and says if this deal goes through China will go to war.

Intelligence shows that someone in the State Department leaked the plan to China ahead of time. Blake is called in and questioned about Gary. Blake is upset and doesn't believe Gary had anything to do with the spying. Later, while Blake has his drink with Gary, the FBI raids Gary's home and finds out his girlfriend stole the memo off his laptop and sent it to Fossors, the defense contractor, who shared it with China. Elizabeth realizes that this was a ploy to force the US to sell the planes to Taiwan.

Dalton is not happy about this. He cancels the contract with Fossors and China goes back to the trade agreement. But someone takes a photo of Elizabeth with Chen and a Congressman named Brandt says Dalton sold out to the Chinese and he's putting an emergency rider in the budget. Russell says either they fix this or they shut down the government.

Elizabeth meets with Congress and explains the situation, but most of them plan to vote for the rider anyway -- until an anonymous source notifies the DOJ that Fossor engages in illegal campaign contributions and the like.

The rider is dead, but Elizabeth is upset when she hears about what happened with Fossor now.

Meanwhile, Daisy and Matt argue when Daisy wants Matt to watch her dog in his office and he falls asleep and lets the dog escape.

To find out what happens, watch Madam Secretary Season 5 Episode 12 online/