Joe Kent, President Trump's former top counter-terrorism official, is under investigation by the FBI's Criminal Division for allegedly improperly sharing classified information. The investigation began months before Kent's recent resignation, according to four individuals with direct knowledge of the probe who spoke to Semafor.
His first wife wasn't in the CIA, and didn't know he worked for the government agency. He couldn't tell her where he'd actually been that day or why he'd sometimes come home late. Even harmless details he couldn't share with her, he said. He'd come home, and she'd ask how his day was, what he'd done, and who he'd interacted with, and he recalled only giving one-word answers like "great," "nothing," and "nobody."
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.
The International Spy Museum will unveil its newest special exhibit, " Camouflage: Designed to Deceive," on March 1. The museum has previously featured artifacts that used elements of camouflage, like the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish with "adaptive camouflage" that appeared in the 2024 exhibit "Bond in Motion." For the first time, however, the Spy Museum will dedicate an all-new exhibit to exploring the history of camouflage, in an installation that will be on display for the next three years.
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.
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.
It was a love letter written by one of the more important British spies of the cold war that made Tom Brass realise he had never fully known his mother. The spy in question was John Cairncross, the alleged fifth man in the Cambridge spy ring, whose spycraft also helped the Soviets win the Battle of Kursk and turn the tide of the second world war.
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.
Shadow AI is the unsanctioned use of artificial intelligence tools outside of an organization's governance framework. In the healthcare field, clinicians and staff are increasingly using unvetted AI tools to improve efficiency, from transcription to summarization. Most of this activity is well-intentioned. But when AI adoption outpaces governance, sensitive data can quietly leave organizational control. Blocking AI outright isn't realistic. The more effective approach is to make safe, governed AI easier to use than unsafe alternatives.
The Telegraph reports that the activity focused on phones used by senior aides around former prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, with the suspected access stretching back to 2021. Intelligence sources described the compromise as extensive, with one saying the activity went "right into the heart of Downing Street," although it remains unclear whether the prime ministers' own devices were accessed directly.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in
