On TikTok, the war against Iran began with a series of videos from influencer types in Dubai, Doha, and elsewhere in the Middle East. They sat on restaurant patios or on hotel-room balconies and pointed their phone cameras skyward to document missiles flying through the air of their respective cities, then disappearing into puffs of smoke as they were shot down.
I have been working in Ukraine since 2019, first as an active Green Beret advising in an official capacity, then after leaving that service, directing special operations on the ground and more recently carrying hard-won lessons back to NATO before they are forgotten or overtaken by the next news cycle.
From what I have seen on open-source intelligence, the Israelis had essentially developed a capability to tap existing public CCTV networks in Tehran and then layered on top of that, a bunch of data integration software that enable them to build targeting packages on senior leaders. My sense is that there was a US-sourced piece of humint that was then able to be fed into that model.
The biggest question is: What kind of business partner does the government want to be? They need the AI companies. The government's a superpower but here it's trying to jam a lot of policy. This reflects tension between government dependence on private AI firms and its desire to impose regulatory requirements through procurement mechanisms rather than traditional legislative channels.
So we've gone from identifying the target to now coming up with a course of action, to now actioning that target, all from one system. This is revolutionary. We were having this done in about eight or nine systems where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to our desired end state, in this case closing a kill chain.
The scam typically involves state-backed fraudsters applying for remote IT work in the west, using fake identities and the help of facilitators in the country where the company targeted is based. Once hired, they send their wages back to Kim Jong-un's state and have even been known to threaten to release sensitive company data after being fired.
I was giving these scenarios, these Golden Dome scenarios, and so on. And he's like, 'Just call me if you need another exception.' And I'm like, 'But what if the balloon's going up at that moment and it's like a decisive action we have to take? I'm not going to call you to do something. It's not rational.'
SpaceX began requiring verification of Starlink terminals on Feb. 4, blocking unverified Russian units from accessing its services. Almost immediately, Ukrainian eavesdroppers heard Russian soldiers complaining about the failure of "Kosmos" and "Sinka" - apparently code names for Starlink satellite internet and the messaging service Telegram.
Dear Secretary Pete Hegseth, I realize that this is a big ask, but would you please invade and take possession of my son and daughter-in-law's apartment? Or maybe you'd like to make them an offer first? Either way, as a concerned mother and patriot who believes that national security begins at home, I feel it's my duty to let you know that Otis and Luna, the co-dictators of Unit 4-C, at 439 Bergen Street, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, must be overthrown.
Russian military intelligence is recruiting young people online to carry out arson and other acts of sabotage across Europe. In this week's issue, Joshua Yaffa reports on the Kremlin's secret campaign to undermine the West's support for Ukraine-and breaks down how "single-use agents" are being deployed across the Continent. Some of their missions are small-putting up posters, or picking up a package-while others involve physical attacks, for example setting off explosives and starting fires.
Over the past year, waves of federal layoffs have left thousands of government employees and contractor clients suddenly out of work. For foreign intelligence services, that disruption has opened new opportunities. With more former U.S. officials seeking employment or freelance work - often in specialized national security fields - adversaries, namely China, have stepped in, posing as consulting firms, research groups and recruiters.
Within two years, it had spread to every continent. Members - a lot of them teenagers - were finding kids as young as nine on Minecraft and Roblox. They'd befriend them, earn their trust, then trap them. They forced children to hurt themselves on camera. To hurt animals. To do things I'm not going to describe here. That kid from Texas is serving eighty years now. But 764 didn't stop. It splintered and kept growing.
A double agent, by contrast, is an intelligence asset who is knowingly and deliberately directed by one service to engage another in espionage. The controlling service uses that agent to feed information (called feed material) -true, false, or mixed-to the adversary. They do so to simultaneously study the adversary's tradecraft, collection priorities, and decision-making. In the Russian system, double agents also serve a bureaucratic function: they generate statistics, "success stories," and operational narratives that demonstrate effectiveness to political overseers and ultimately to Putin himself.
Entering the cyber world is stepping into a warzone. Cyber is considered a war zone, and what happens there is described as cyberwar. But it's not that simple. War is conducted by nations (political), not undertaken by criminals (financial). Both are increasing in this war zone we call cyber, but the political threat is growing fast. Cyberwar is a complex subject, and a formal definition is difficult.
