More results...
Threat actors, ranging from state-sponsored organizations to non-state actors, are using sophisticated cyber weapons to breach and destroy vital infrastructure in a time when digital and physical security are becoming more intertwined. These tools, oft…
Threat actors have increasingly adopted ClickFix, a sophisticated social engineering technique that deceives users into executing malicious commands under the guise of resolving common computer issues like performance lags or pop-up errors. This method…
Sum includes hundreds of millions for more missiles as Pentagon reviews stockpiles.
Security researchers have uncovered a sophisticated evolution in the SLOW#TEMPEST malware campaign, where threat actors are deploying innovative obfuscation methods to evade detection and complicate analysis. This variant, distributed via an ISO file c…
For the first time since taking office in January, President Trump has reportedly authorized unspecified U.S. weapons transfers to Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which takes from U.S. stockpiles, Reuters reported Thursday. The possible arms transfer is expected to total around $300 million.
Trump also told NBC he will deliver a “major statement” regarding Russia on Monday, the same day his Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is expected to begin a weeklong visit to the country, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reports.
About those U.S. weapons, Trump told NBC in a phone interview Thursday, “The weapons that are going out are going to NATO, and then NATO is going to be giving those weapons [to Ukraine], and NATO is paying for those weapons.”
According to Reuters, “The package could include defensive Patriot missiles and offensive medium-range rockets, but a decision on the exact equipment has not been made.”
Why it matters: “The Trump administration has so far only sent weapons authorized by former President Joe Biden,” Reuters notes.
Small CODEL to Kyiv: Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal visited Ukrainian officials on Thursday, President Volodymir Zelenskyy tweeted afterward. The three men “discussed the continued supply of weapons from the United States and joint weapons production,” the president wrote. “We are ready for different formats, including purchasing a large defense package from the United States, jointly with Europe, to protect lives,” he added.
Developing: Blumenthal and Graham are co-sponsoring a bill to add more sanctions and tariffs on countries allegedly supporting Russia’s ongoing Ukraine invasion, including “a 500 percent tariff on imported goods from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium, and other products,” as Blumenthal announced in May.
“Our current priority is bolstering air defense,” Zelenskyy said Friday following another night of Russian drone strikes, which injured at least nine people in Kharkiv, Zelenskyy said separately on social media.
As Russia increases its long-range missile production, NATO will need to do the same as quickly as possible, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Rafferty told Reuters during an interview this week in Germany. “The Russian army is bigger today than it was when they started the war in Ukraine. And we know that they’re going to continue to invest in long-range rockets and missiles and sophisticated air defences. So more alliance capability is really, really important,” Rafferty said.
Relatedly, “Trump defense deal with NATO is a big, beautiful win for America,” the president’s secretary of state said Thursday in a commentary published in USA Today.
Rubio also said since January, Russia has “lost 100,000 soldiers—dead, not injured, dead. And on the Ukrainian side, the numbers are less but still very significant,” the state secretary said Thursday during an ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Malaysia.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1914, the U.S. Navy launched its first oil-powered battleship, USS Nevada (BB-36).
How China’s new rare-earth export controls target the Pentagon, and the world. By replacing export ceilings with a flexible licensing scheme, Beijing has equipped itself with a more potent and WTO-proof means of strategic coercion, write Tye Graham and Peter W. Singer in the latest edition of Defense One’s The China Intelligence column.
The pivot is designed to increase Beijing’s leverage over Pentagon supply chains, as official statements and state-linked commentators make clear—and it may become a signature tool of great power competition. Read on, here.
Related reading:
Expect layoffs soon, State tells staff. Widespread layoffs will be taking place “soon” under plans that had been held up by court order, then cleared by a Supreme Court decision, the State Department told employees on Thursday evening. The cuts are part of a reorganization that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced to eliminate or consolidate hundreds of offices, Deputy Secretary for Management Michael Rigas said in an email to staff, which will include a “targeted reduction in domestic workforce.” GovExec has more, here.
Related: DHS intelligence office halts staff cuts after stakeholder backlash. Nextgov: “The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has briefly paused plans to terminate most of its employees following pushback from law enforcement associations and Jewish community groups, according to two people familiar with the matter.” Read on, here.
DHS is asking local police to broaden their definition of “violent tactics” during protests to include “mundane acts like riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter,” WIRED reported Thursday.
Citing the text of DHS “threat bulletins” issued during last month’s #NoKings demonstrations, “Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even ‘on foot’ are framed as potential ‘scouts’ conducting reconnaissance or searching for ‘items to be used as weapons.’ Livestreaming is listed alongside ‘doxxing’ as a ‘tactic’ for ‘threatening’ police. [And] Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters—or as participants in ‘surveillance sharing,’” WIRED’s Dell Cameron writes.
Reax: “The DHS report repeatedly conflates basic protest, organizing, and journalism with terroristic violence, thereby justifying ever more authoritarian measures by law enforcement,” Ryan Shapiro, executive director of the open-government nonprofit group Property of the People, told Cameron. “It should be sobering, if unsurprising, that the Trump regime’s response to mass criticism of its police-state tactics is to escalate those tactics.”
Related reading:
Update: DOGE cuts vacated a key post that could have linked the National Weather Service with public safety personnel in the Texas city of Kerrville this past weekend, where more than 100 people died and at least 160 are still missing following flash floods in central Texas. The missing official took an unplanned early retirement amid pressure from Trump and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” and the employee was not replaced, former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad told CNN on Tuesday.
Also: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem slowed FEMA’s response in an effort to take charge of expenses over $100,000, CNN reported Wednesday. She waited more than 72 hours to authorize FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue teams as local rescue crews combed the area for survivors and bodies. But with a death toll already over 100, “Officials within FEMA warn that if the disaster had spanned a larger area and multiple states, the confusion and delays could have been even more severe,” CNN’s Gabe Cohen and Michael Williams wrote.
DHS response: “The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CNN.
Additional reading:
Technology is making it harder for spies to hide. Can the CIA up its game for the new reality? The Washington Post’s David Ignatius put the question to current and former member of the intelligence community; the outlook is…mixed. Read, here.
More German F-35s: will they or won’t they?
Lastly this week: “A British F35 fighter jet stranded in India may finally fly back home after inspiring memes,” AP reports.
]]>
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury has taken a strong stance against cyber-enabled financial schemes that support North Korea’s illicit weapons programs by imposing sanctions on Song Kum Hyok, a mal…
Identity-driven assaults have increased by a shocking 156% between 2023 and 2025, making up 59% of all confirmed threat instances in Q1 2025, according to data conducted by eSentire’s Threat Response Unit (TRU). This dramatic shift from tradition…
The Houthis in Yemen sank their second ship in two days when a Liberian-flagged cargo ship, Eternity C, went down in the Red Sea early Wednesday morning.
That follows the recent sinking of another Greek-owned merchant vessel, the Magic Seas, which the Houthis attacked on July 6 in a four-hour assault involving sea drones and militants aboard skiffs launching RPGs. The 22-person crew was rescued by a passing merchant vessel and dropped off in Djibouti. The Houthis later boarded and sank the abandoned Magic Seas with explosives.
At least four of the Eternity C’s 25-person crew died; three were from the Philippines, and another was from Greece. Ten other crewmembers have been rescued from the sea, according to the European Union’s regional maritime force, Operation Aspides, writing Thursday morning on social media. But the rest of the crew are still missing, and at least some were allegedly picked up by the Houthi naval forces.
The Houthis attacked the Eternity C for 16 hours using ballistic and cruise missiles, according to the Yemeni group, which posted videos purporting to show the launches. The ship was largely empty after visiting Somalia from Houston with a load of soybeans. At least two Houthi missiles landed direct hits on the Eternity C, as illustrated in Houthi drone footage. But the Houthis also appear to have placed explosives on the side of the vessel to ensure its sinking, maritime analyst Sal Mercogliano explains in his video on these developments.
Magic Seas and Eternity C are the first commercial vessels the Houthis have attacked since December. They’re also the third and fourth vessels sunk by the Houthis since they began assaulting commercial ships in November 2023, following the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas militants one month prior. (The first two were the Belize-flagged MV Rubymar, which sank in March 2024; and Greek-owned bulk carrier Tutor, which sank on June 18, 2024.)
And the U.S. naval response? “There are two American destroyers believed to be operating in the Red Sea,” Jon Gambrell of the Associated Press reports. “However, the ships attacked had no U.S. ties and a ceasefire between the Houthis and America announced after the bombing campaign earlier this year still appears to be holding.”
Relatedly, “The U.S. military has two aircraft carriers in the Mideast, the USS Nimitz and the USS Carl Vinson, but both likely are in the Arabian Sea, far from the site of the attacks,” Gambrell writes.
Official U.S. reaction so far: “The United States condemns the unprovoked Houthi terror attack on the civilian cargo vessels MV Magic Seas and MV Eternity C in the Red Sea,” the State Department said in a statement Tuesday, adding, “The United States has been clear: we will continue to take necessary action to protect freedom of navigation and commercial shipping from Houthi terrorist attacks, which must be condemned by all members of the international community.”
What lies ahead: Likely more Houthi attacks. That’s because, as Mercogliano noted in his video, “What the Houthi are saying is that they’re targeting vessels that are in any way connected to Israel, either through the ship themselves or the parent company. This means one out of every six ships on the world’s oceans are going to be connected with this.”
“This is a massive mess,” Mercogliano said. “The European Union’s Operation Aspides does not have the naval platforms to do anything. The U.S. just spent the first half of 2025 bombing the crap out of the Houthis in Operation Rough Rider. The Vinson and Nimitz battle group are out in the Indian Ocean. The Ford battle group is working up off the east coast of the United States; it’ll be weeks before it’s in the Mediterranean. I’m not sure what can be done.”
His advice: “I think we have to do what has been working over the past year, and that has been targeted convoy operations escorting vessels through the Red Sea because you are not going to diminish the Houthi.”
The U.S. may have to go back even further to the Navy’s tanker-escort mission Operation Earnest Will during the Iran-Iraq war in 1987, Mercogliano suggested.
Houthi statement: “We will continue our military operations in support of the oppressed Palestinian people…until the aggression against Gaza stops and the siege is lifted,” the group said in a statement. CNN has more.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1943, the Allied invasion of Sicily began and ultimately freed the island from the grips of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany by mid-August.
UK, France will work on their nuclear arsenals together under a first-of-its-kind deal meant to help deter Russian aggression, the New York Times reported Thursday. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France are to announce the details today.
Background: Nuclear analyst Ankit Panda laid out the logic of such a deal back in March. “Europe must be clear-eyed about the geopolitical tectonic shifts underway and their consequences. Chief among these is the idea that, given political tides in Washington, relying on the United States for the long haul is intolerable,” Panda wrote in Defense One.
“While little can be done overnight to replace the load-bearing role that the United States once played in European security, including with its nuclear weapons, Macron’s call should galvanize the continent’s capitals into an interrogation of the promises and limits of nuclear deterrence. As Europeans enter this new strategic debate, several questions will arise, and they won’t have simple answers.” Read on, here.
Moscow’s 2022 deal to produce Iranian Shahed drones was key to its recent record-breaking barrages, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Notable: “More than 24,000 drones have barreled toward Ukraine’s towns and cities since the start of this year, according to an analysis of Ukrainian figures by the Center for Information Resilience, a U.K.-based open-source investigations organization. Wednesday’s attack included more drones in a single night than in the entire month of July last year.”
“They’re constantly beating new records,” said Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force. Read on, here.
Developing: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met for 50 minutes today in Malaysia, emerging with what Rubio called “new ideas” for Russia-Ukraine peace talks. AP reports, here.
Update: Russia has seized $50 billion in assets since invading Ukraine. Reuters: “The conflict has been accompanied by a significant transfer of assets as many Western companies fled the Russian market, others’ assets were expropriated and the assets of some major Russian businesses were seized by the state.” More, here.
ICE agents have been ordered to “enhance” security at three Marine Corps bases. A pilot program has stationed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at Camp Pendleton in California, Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia and Marine Corps Base Hawaii. “The move, aimed at bolstering security around these bases, has raised as many questions as it seeks to answer,” Fox’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten reported Monday.
A Pentagon statement said the effort “aligns with the enhanced security measures we are implementing at all our installations worldwide to deter unauthorized installation access by foreign nationals” and that the ICE presence “enhances installation-level force protection by increasing visibility, coordination, and threat awareness at critical access points and in surrounding areas.” Read more, here.
Additional reading:
]]>
Climate change is making disasters more common, more deadly and far more costly, even as the federal government is running away from the policies that might begin to protect the nation.
Trump’s Pentagon is under fire for not coordinating fully with the White House before halting recent weapons transfers to Ukraine, the Associated Press reported Tuesday evening, citing administration officials.
Trump on Monday said he’d reversed that decision to halt arms to Ukraine, which just fended off another overnight attack from Russia involving more than 720 drones and at least a dozen missiles—including six alleged hypersonic missiles—striking 11 regions in the country, according to Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. Reuters reports those 720-plus drones set a new record for the three-plus-year conflict.
“This is a telling attack—and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.
Blame game: Politico reported last week that Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has been accused of ordering the pause in arms transfers, which reportedly involved “Patriot antimissile interceptors, AIM-120 antiaircraft missiles, howitzer rounds, AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, GMLRS missiles to arm Himars rocket launchers, Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and grenade launchers,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian reported Tuesday “The decision was rather made by [deputy defense secretary Stephen] Feinberg…to whom Colby reports,” and “Defense secretary Pete Hegseth then signed off on Feinberg’s determination.” CNN—noting Hegseth lacks a chief of staff or close advisors—reported Tuesday it was ultimately Hegseth who made the decision. But Politico reported Tuesday Colby is nevertheless facing intense scrutiny for having “gotten out ahead of the administration on several major foreign policy decisions.”
For his part, Trump was seated beside Hegseth when he told reporters Tuesday at a cabinet meeting that he didn’t know who ordered the pause, and asked in response to the question, “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”
Worth noting: “The Secretary of Defense had also previously paused weapons being sent to Ukraine in both February and May,” The Daily Beast reminded readers.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin,” Trump said at the televised cabinet meeting. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump told his audience. When asked what Trump will do about it, he declined to say, and added, “We want to have a little surprise.”
Trump continued: “Putin is not… he’s not treating human beings right” and is “killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I’ve approved that,” the president said Tuesday.
Happening today: Hegseth is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Pentagon. Read a bit more on Israel and its military at the bottom of today’s newsletter.
Commentary: “What Pete Hegseth Doesn’t Understand About Soldiers.” Parts of Hegseth’s anti-woke agenda “seem like common sense,” writes Mike Nelson, a retired Army Green Beret, in The Atlantic. “Why wouldn’t a department charged with fighting America’s wars encourage a warrior spirit by empowering the people who risk their life in combat? Clearly it should. Still, Hegseth risks creating a false dichotomy—that one must choose between lethality and professionalism. This view comes at a cost to operational effectiveness as well as moral clarity.” Read on, here.
Profiled: Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Cain, by Mark Bowden, of Black Hawk Down fame. Excerpt: “Caine’s background might actually make him better suited for the top job today than many of his peers. Particularly since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, American military action has primarily employed three sectors: air power, covert special ops, and intelligence. The attacks against Iranian nuclear sites in June certainly involved two of these and likely all of them. Here Caine has more direct experience than most four-stars.” More, here.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1944 and after more than three weeks of fighting, the U.S. military claimed victory at the Battle of Saipan in the northern Mariana Islands, which suddenly put much of Japan within range of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ new B-29 bombers.
Intelligence officials worry a sabotage campaign blamed on Russia is growing more dangerous. The AP goes deep, with anecdotes, maps, and more, to lay out the growing dimensions of a continent-wide pattern. Read that, here.
Denmark to buy, rent air defenses as it rushes to rebuild missile shield. Copenhagen will buy ground-based air defense systems from Germany and France and lease them from Norwegian manufacturers “as the country seeks to urgently fill critical air defense gaps,” Defnese News reports. “The decision comes almost two decades after Denmark decommissioned its ground-based air defense capability, in 2005, in an attempt to focus more on international operations.” More, here.
After right-wing influencers and GOP lawmakers spread conspiracies about “weather weapons,” a U.S. extremist group took credit for attacking a weather station in the wake of recent flash floods that killed more than 110 people and left around 160 people still unaccounted for, WIRED reported Tuesday.
Targeted: A Nexrad—or Next Generation Weather Radar—system, used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to detect precipitation, wind, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. The Nexrad system used by Oklahoma City’s News 9 was broken into, damaged and knocked offline briefly Sunday night. A 39-year-old male suspect in the case was arrested Tuesday, News 9 reports; he has not yet been charged, but an investigation is under way.
About the extremist group: It’s called Veterans on Patrol, and they’re an Arizona-based, anti-government extremist group run by a Christian nationalist named Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Meyer “rallies hard-right extremists and conspiracy theorists around the issue of immigration and encourages vigilantism,” SPLC reports, citing VoP’s own messaging on Telegram going back to at least 2021. “Not to be confused with everyday Christianity, Meyer’s Christian nationalist beliefs push hateful falsehoods about immigrants, Native Americans, the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and government officialdom,” SPLC writes.
Meyer told WIRED this week, “Anyone that’s going out to eliminate a Nexrad, if they haven’t harmed life, and they’re doing it according to the videos that we’re providing, they are part of our group.” He added, “We’re going to have to take out every single media’s capabilities of lying to the American people. Mainstream media is the biggest threat right now.” Read more, here.
Related reading:
See also:
Israel has launched a new ground incursion in Lebanon, despite truce. Officials said on Wednesday that these “targeted operations” were aimed at military infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah. According to the New York Times, “The military did not say when the operations took place. But the announcement came amid rising tensions over Hezbollah’s disarmament, a core requirement of an increasingly shaky cease-fire agreement signed in November, which ended the deadliest conflict between the two sides in decades.” More, here.
Additional reading:
]]>