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A alarming cybersecurity report by Nisos has uncovered a sophisticated employment scam network potentially affiliated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). This network targets remote engineering and full-stack blockchain developer rol…
Socket’s Threat Research Team has uncovered a dangerous npm package named koishi-plugin-pinhaofa, masquerading as a spelling-autocorrect helper for Koishi chatbots. Marketed innocently, this plugin embeds a insidious data-exfiltration backdoor that sca…
A newly identified piece of malware, dubbed the “Hannibal Stealer,” has emerged as a significant cybersecurity threat due to its advanced stealth mechanisms and obfuscation techniques designed to bypass modern detection systems. This modula…
Advanced persistent threat (APT) groups with ties to China have become persistent players in the cyber espionage landscape, with a special emphasis on European governmental and industrial entities, according to a thorough disclosure from ESET’s A…
Russia’s military carried out its “largest single drone strike of the war against Ukraine” early Sunday morning. The attacks killed at least one woman after the munitions fell across eastern, northern, and central parts of the country, including Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk oblasts, Reuters reports.
At least 273 Shahed and decoy drones from nearly a half dozen points inside Russia, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in its Sunday analysis. An estimated 88 drones were allegedly shot down and more than 120 decoy drones were “lost in location,” according to the Ukrainian air force.
Trendspotting: “Russian forces are innovating their long-range drone strike tactics in order to offset the effectiveness of Ukrainian mobile defense units and overwhelm the Ukrainian air defense umbrella,” ISW observed.
Bigger picture: “Russian forces are sustaining significant battlefield losses at rates that are likely unsustainable in the medium- to long-term,” and Putin “has mismanaged Russia’s economy, which is suffering from unsustainable war spending, growing inflation, significant labor shortages, and reductions in Russia’s sovereign wealth fund,” ISW added.
However, “the Kremlin has not been preparing the Russian information space for a peace agreement in the near future and that Russian forces and society do not anticipate an imminent end to the war,” the ISW team wrote in a warning to those monitoring talks toward some sort of ceasefire.
How were last week’s peace talks Ukraine-Russia peace talks, the first of their kind in more than three years? From Kyiv’s perspective, it was an acceptable start, but there is still a long way to go, said Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, writing Monday on social media.
“The Ukrainian delegation succeeded in keeping the talks in a dignified manner. All Russian attempts to issue threats were rejected,” Zelenskyy said. Still, he continued, “Ukraine insists on the need for a full and unconditional ceasefire in order to save human lives and to establish the necessary foundation for diplomacy. Such a ceasefire must be long enough and include the possibility of extension. Our proposal, shared by our partners, is 30 days — we are ready for this,” he said.
“Ukraine is not afraid of direct talks with Russia, and it is important that the Russian leadership not prolong the war,” Zelenskyy added. He’s also ordered the establishment of what he called “a permanent, expanded national negotiation group” for potential future talks with Russian officials—at least in part because Zelenskyy visited Turkey last week for face-to-face talks with Putin, but Putin sent lower-level negotiators to Istanbul instead.
Zelenskyy met with U.S. State Secretary Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance in Rome on Sunday. During those brief talks, “I reaffirmed that Ukraine is ready to be engaged in real diplomacy and underscored the importance of a full and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible,” Zelenskyy said afterward.
Coming soon: Trump is set to speak to leaders of both Ukraine and Russia later Monday.
Expert reax: “Putin aims to stall by avoiding a cease-fire and to keep Trump’s trust by not losing the chance to maintain good relations with the U.S.,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst based in Moscow, told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. “Putin will try to convince Trump that he remains committed to peace, but the Russian side will continue to reject the ‘first cease-fire, then negotiations’ formula.”
While talks drag on and Russian attacks continue, what sort of things does Ukraine need to continue defending against Putin’s missiles and drones? Retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery shared some of his observations after his latest trip to Ukraine last week for The D Brief. Read over his recommendations for U.S. officials and policy makers here.
Developing: Russia’s military is bolstering bases along its border with Finland. That includes rows of tents, “new warehouses that can store military vehicles; renovations to fighter jet shelters; and steady construction activity on a helicopter base that had been mostly unused and overgrown,” the New York Times reported Monday after reviewing new satellite imagery.
So far, “NATO officials say this is nothing like the buildup along the Ukraine border before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022…But Finland is one of NATO’s newest members, joining two years ago, and the moves no doubt reflect Moscow’s own perception of a threat.” More, here.
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Welcome to this Monday 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 Audrey Decker. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1935, storied British army officer Thomas Edward Lawrence passed away at the age of 46 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident near his English home just two months after leaving the army.
The U.S. Army will need to line DC with metal plates to protect the streets from tanks for Trump’s military parade, AP reported Friday. The parade will march through DC on June 14, which is the Army’s 250th birthday and, coincidentally, Trump’s birthday.
According to the latest known plans, the parade will feature 25 Abrams tanks which can weigh 60 tons or more. “Concerns over the tanks’ weight, and what that would do to D.C.’s streets, ultimately kept them from being used for a parade during Trump’s first term,” Tara Copp and Michelle Price of AP explain. “The metal plates are seen as the best way to protect the streets. Each plate weighs hundreds of pounds and will be placed at points along the parade route where the tanks will turn—and where their metal and rubber-shoed tracking that helps them move can do the most damage.”
In all, the parade will feature about 150 vehicles, (including Abrams, Strykers, and Humvees), 50 aircraft, and 6,600 soldiers who will sleep in government buildings around DC.
The total cost could reach up to $45 million, the Washington Post reported last week.
Special Forces’ ability to rapidly deploy and buy new tech faster should be a model for the rest of DOD, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports from the Global SOF Foundation conference in Tampa, Fla. At the conference, SecDef Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the new Joint Chiefs chairman, “outlined a new, special-operations-like vision for the U.S. military: smaller teams, quicker equipping, faster operations, more autonomy.”
A new mindset will help the military address a wider array of threats faster, officials said during the conference. “You adopt advanced technologies early. You make them better and then you help them spread to the rest of the joint force. You are willing to experiment and fail while learning from each failure and each success. We need you to keep doing that. You are acquisition reform,” Hegseth said. Continue reading, here.
Foreign defense companies want to expand their business in the U.S., Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reported Friday. Despite recent turmoil over the Trump administration’s trade and foreign policy, companies like Saab, Lufthansa Technik, and CBC Global Ammunition are investing in new factories to break into the U.S. defense market. Several execs said that the Trump administration’s hostility hasn’t derailed their plans to build in the U.S. More, here.
And lastly, for your ears only: The U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific littorals. Two generals based in Japan sat down with Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad to discuss the Corps’ multiyear modernization campaign and preparations for potential conflict with China. The conversation was part of our recent State of Defense event series. You can listen on our website, here.
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Two generals based in Japan discuss the Corps’ multiyear modernization campaign and preparations for potential conflict with China.
Army designating Reserve units for repeat deployments to INDOPACOM. As Army units from Washington state to South Korea prepare themselves for a potential war with China, the service has decided that it would like some of its reserve units to have that same Indo-Pacific expertise, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported Thursday from AUSA’s Land Forces symposium in Honolulu.
“We ask our reserves to be globally available, but I want them to be regionally aligned,” Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, the head of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, said Thursday. “We don’t want to just keep rotating different units through this theater, because…if you keep changing the faces, you’re not going to build the readiness that we want to do collectively.”
The next step would be having those units keep some of their equipment in those partner countries, so that they don’t have to pack it in and out with each deployment. Read on, here.
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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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1916, the Brits and French signed their secretive Sykes-Picot agreement partitioning the Middle East into spheres of influence.
Mark Montgomery recently returned from another trip to Ukraine, where the retired U.S. Navy rear admiral had several discussions with military officials from the defense ministry, Kyiv’s general staff, and more. Montgomery is the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington.
“They need two things from us. Just stone cold, need them,” he told The D Brief this week. “If they don’t have them, they’ll still survive, but there’ll be a lot more Ukrainian deaths.” And those things are:
“I can tell they’re conserving munitions when it comes to shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles,” Montgomery said. And this is incredibly unfortunate, he observed, because “Ukraine just does not move the needle” in terms of press coverage and international attention anymore. “I’m shocked at the lack of press. I’m in Israel a lot. I’m in Taiwan a lot. But the amount of cruise and ballistic missile attacks—you know how they had the April attack in the October attack in Israel? That attack was a consolidated three or four days of any three or four days in Ukraine. But they’re just getting it again and again and again, you know, every three or four days. And we don’t cover it much, and they’re making hard choices” in terms of what to shoot down and what to let slam into Russia’s intended targets.
“Here’s one of the things they’re kicking ass with: shooting down drones and cruise missiles with F-16s,” he said. “The plane was made for it. It’s fantastic. But what they really need, though, is to not use AIM-9 Xs and guns. It’d be great if we gave them a system called the APKWS—it’s like a 2.75-inch rocket. If you remember the old Zuni rockets, I know that’s a long time ago, but they’re fired from like a barrel launcher that the plane carries. The rockets are laser-guided.” But most notably, “They’re cheap—in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. And it’s not a technology issue, because we’ve already sold them to their army,” Montgomery said. “Now we need to sell them to their air force; they’re cheap enough. They could sell them those things and they’d have a great cost benefit on shooting down a cruise missile. It’s even cheaper than a Shaheed [suicide drone].”
“I spent some time with the F-16 unit, and my first impression was that our Air Force did a great job training” the Ukrainians, he said. “These guys were converts from planes, but they were good and smart and use the weapons systems really well. We need to be creative and innovative and continue to help them, because they will hold off the Russians. Their resilience will outlast the Russians. But it can be brutal, even more brutal than it’s been if we don’t do that intelligence support.”
“Their drone industry is obviously impressive,” he said while cautioning, “We would have trouble completely replicating it, because I think they still use a lot of Chinese parts. However, they’re working on that. They’re innovative in these systems. They’re innovative in some of the kinetics, some of the weapon systems I see in building munitions. There’s gonna be some great opportunities for [the U.S.] and the Ukrainians and maybe Taiwan too, to really create some useful carryover weapons.”
One key to all this: “I think congressional support would go a long way,” Montgomery said. “I don’t think there’s opposition inside the administration; there just may not be momentum. But senators can provide the impetus to get working—these senators and congressmen like [Nebraska GOP] Rep. Don Bacon can get there and get the ball moving so that the administration then has to take some action.”
Despite more than three years of constant missile and drone attacks, “The Ukrainians are not going to buckle,” Montgomery said after this latest visit. “I’ve seen nothing like it. I don’t see any trend other than they’re resilient, they’re dogged, they’re committed. In fact, I would tell you this time I saw more kids out than I’ve ever seen out. I mean, you know, they strike me as a big middle finger to Putin.”
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“Ram This Through”: Working closely with executives at Starlink, the U.S. government has made a global push to help expand Musk’s business empire in the developing world,” ProPublica reported Thursday after traveling to Gambia to confirm that Trump’s State Department conducted a monthslong campaign to push a small African country to help Musk’s satellite internet company Starlink.
Why it matters: “The saga in Gambia is the starkest known example of the Trump administration wielding the U.S. government’s foreign policy apparatus to advance the business interests of Musk, a top Trump adviser and the world’s richest man.” The Washington Post previously reported certain details about the White House’s State-Starlink efforts abroad; ProPublica gathered more.
Expert reax: “If this was done by another country, we absolutely would call this corruption,” said Kristofer Harrison, a former high-level State Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “Because it is corruption,” he added. Another called it “bad on every level.” Full story, here.
And lastly: How does the repetition of lies reinforce them? How do malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media? We won’t know the answers to those questions anytime soon because they are among 1,400 scientific research grants the Trump administration has cancelled at universities across the country, the New York Times reported Thursday.
Why cancel these studies? “Officials at the Pentagon, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation contend that the research has resulted in the censorship of conservative Americans online, though there is no evidence any of the studies resulted in that,” the Times reports.
Ostensibly, “The cuts are part of the administration’s broader push to cut federal spending,” the Times writes, “but they also reflect a conviction among conservatives that the government used researchers at universities and nongovernmental organizations as proxies to restrict content on Facebook, X, YouTube and other social media platforms.”
Said one researcher: “I’m almost certain this is going to lead to a vastly more polluted information environment.” Read more (gift link), here.
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The service is also looking at prepositioning equipment for troops to train on.
The Socket Threat Research Team has uncovered a surge in supply chain attacks where threat actors weaponize open source software libraries to deliver malicious payloads such as infostealers, remote shells, and cryptocurrency drainers. With modern devel…
Trump calls for “F-55” and “F-22 Super” aircraft: During his multi-day trip to the Middle East, President Trump pitched two new U.S. military jets while standing beside top U.S. aerospace executives Thursday in Qatar. “One of the things that, for the people that reach us in the military, I asked to look into, the F-35,” Trump told his audience in Doha.
“We’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade, but we’re also doing an F-55. I’m going to call it an F-55, and that’s going to be a substantial upgrade, but it’s going to be also with two engines, because the F-35 has a single engine. I don’t like single engines,” the president said. “Even this man [GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp], he’s the best in the world at engines, but on occasion, I know you won’t admit this, if an engine goes out it’s nice to have two, three or four engines. That’s why I like the 747, it’s got four. Today they’re getting very big and, as a little more cost saving, they’re getting two very, very big ones. No matter how good, you know, they tell me, Larry, the engine will never go out. Well, I think it goes out on occasion fairly rarely.
“We’re going to do an F-55 and I think, if we get the right price, we have to get the right price, that will be two engines, and a super upgrade on the F-35 and then we’re going to do the F-22,” the president continued. “I think the most beautiful fighter jet in the world is the F-22, but we’re going to do an F-22 Super, and it will be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet.”
Context: The F-22 was made by Lockheed Martin, which recently lost its bid to build the Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47 fighter, was cut from the Navy’s own stealth-jet competition, and has said it is now looking at ways to “supercharge” its F-35.
Among the skeptics is the Aviationist’s Stefano D’Urso. If Trump’s remarks are true, he wrote Thursday, it would amount to “a substantial upgrade over the F-35 as it would require an extensive re-design of the airframe to be able to host two engines, and that is highly unlikely given the complexity and costs involved. The other option would be an alternative engine, something that has already been discussed in the past,” but was abandoned as too costly.
There are already upgrades planned for the two aircraft, including “the F-35’s Block 4/Technology Refresh 3 upgrade and the F-22’s ongoing upgrades to keep it in tip-top shape until the F-47 NGAD is operational.”
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Trump also visited U.S. troops at Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base Thursday, where he hailed a Qatari pledge to invest $10 billion in upgrades, Reuters reports. Just before he arrived, U.S. comedian Theo Von told racist jokes that drew groans from the uniformed audience, according to the Associated Press.
Now the president is in the UAE for the final leg of his Mideast trip. There Trump visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the country’s largest, with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. AP calls it “an important symbol of national identity”; the country’s founder, Sheikh Zayed, “is buried in the mosque’s main courtyard.”
Update: The $142 billion Saudi arms deal Trump announced Wednesday in Riyadh might not be all that, analyst Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners wrote (PDF) with a bit of historical context on Wednesday. “There were no specifics on what KSA would buy or when, and there is precedent for a similar announcement in 2017 that was not as dramatic as the total amount announced,” said Callan.
Still, with an estimated $946 billion in total Saudi defense spending planned through 2035, “It might not be unreasonable to assume that the U.S. takes 15% of that total,” which would amount to about $142 billion.
Also: U.S. military weapons exports are the focus of a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning. No one from the Defense or State Departments is attending; but former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy William Greenwalt has been called up, as well as Keith Webster of the Defense and Aerospace Council, and Lisa Saum-Manning of RAND. That began at 9:30 a.m. ET. Livestream here.
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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 1970, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington became the U.S. Army’s first female generals in the service’s history.
Hegseth’s $1.4 billion redirect for border ops: A draft plan from Trump’s Pentagon would redirect more than $1.4 billion for military operations along the southern border, Politico reported Tuesday. The pitch comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team adheres to a 12-month continuing resolution, which extends through March.
The money would be shifted from priorities like base repairs, troop-relocation costs, and service members’ pay and benefits. A similar approach was implemented during Trump’s first term for the purpose of building his border wall, which was never completed.
Notable: “The Pentagon may also submit further proposals to move some of the $848 billion lawmakers allocated the department for the stopgap,” Politico’s Robbie Gramer and Joe Gould report, and emphasize details within the plan could still change.
Developing: Trump’s Homeland Security Department wants more than 20,000 National Guard troops to help crackdown on immigrants, the New York Times reported Thursday. “It was unclear what role state National Guard members would play and whether they would be involved in rounding up people for deportation,” a defense official told the Times.
The Guard has never been used in this capacity before, and many questions are still unanswered about how the plan could proceed. A bit more, here.
Pacific multidomain task forces are looking for long-range drones. Uncrewed ISR aircraft that can fly long distances in stormy Pacific weather are at the top of the wishlist for the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force, which is now part of the Army’s rapid experimentation and fielding “Transformation in Contact” program, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports from AUSA’s Land Forces Pacific symposium in Honolulu.
Also: “Army prepping for Pacific conflict with prepositioned equipment, logistics hubs,” Myers adds from Hawaii.
Developing: Senators call for Starlink investigation. “We ask that you investigate whether the Trump Administration is intervening to benefit Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk, as it negotiates tariff agreements and other matters with foreign governments,” wrote seven Democratic senators in a Wednesday letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump administration officials.
Background: The letter cited a May 7 Washington Post report that “‘U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name,’ and often in the context of trade negotiations. These reports indicate that Mr. Musk may be using his official role and his proximity to the President as leverage for his own personal financial benefit—even if it comes at the expense of American consumers and the nation’s foreign policy interests.” Read the letter (PDF), here.
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Putin was a no-show for peace talks with Ukraine on Thursday. Despite Ukraine’s president announcing his attendance in advance, the Kremlin spent several days avoiding the question of whether or not leader Vladimir Putin would attend the planned talks in Istanbul. On Thursday, Russian officials confirmed Putin would not attend, and dispatched aides and deputy ministers to Istanbul instead. Reuters referred to them as a “second-tier team of negotiators.”
“Theater props” is how Ukraine’s president described the aides Putin sent. “We all know who makes the decisions in Russia,” President Volodymir Zelenskyy said Thursday in Turkey. Ukrainian officials, he said, don’t know if Putin’s proxies “are able to decide on anything,” much less the future of Kyiv and its invaded territories.
Even so, Zelensky dispatched his Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to Istanbul for talks with Russian officials. Their goal is “to attempt at least the first steps toward de-escalation, the first steps toward ending the war—namely, a ceasefire,” Zelenskyy said.
“Today, Russia once again demonstrated that it does not intend to end the war,” Zelensky wrote on social media after visiting with Turkish President Recep Erdogan. “Moreover, such a Russian approach is a sign of disrespect—toward the world and all partners. We expect a clear and strong response from partners,” he said.
Trump reax: “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” he told reporters Thursday.
Lastly: It would likely take Europe 25 years and a trillion dollars to replace the U.S. military presence on the continent, should the U.S. withdraw after forging a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. That’s according to a new analysis from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, published Thursday.
In the meantime, “Russia could be in a position to pose a significant military challenge to NATO allies, particularly the Baltic states, as early as 2027,” the authors conclude. “By then, Russia’s ground forces could mirror its February 2022 active equipment holdings through a combination of refurbishment and the production of new systems.”
For America’s European allies, “To fill certain gaps more quickly, buying abroad will thus remain necessary, specifically in areas where at present there is little to no European option available, such as rocket artillery or low-observable fighter aircraft,” IISS writes. “European allies will also need to prioritise investments in systems capable of attacking Russia’s anti-access capabilities to reduce vulnerabilities quickly.” Continue reading, here.
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