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Ransomware, third-party disruptions, and the rise of AI-powered attacks are reshaping the cyber risk landscape in 2025. A new midyear analysis from Resilience shows how these forces are playing out in real-world incidents and how they are changing the …
A 1.5 billion-pps DDoS hit a European defense service, hijacking IoT gear across 11,000 networks.
The post Your Smart Devices Just Fueled a Record-Breaking DDoS Attack appeared first on eSecurity Planet.
A manhunt is underway after 31-year-old American far-right “youth whisperer” Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while answering a question about gun violence during an outdoor speaking event at a Utah college campus Wednesday afternoon. The shooter appears to have fled the scene, which erupted in chaos moments after a shot rang out, striking Kirk in the neck in front of about 3,000 people at Utah Valley University, just north of Provo.
“Officials believe Kirk was shot from a roof,” and at least two videos have been shared that seem to show a gunman, but it’s not yet clear, the BBC reports.
Latest: Investigators Thursday morning said they’ve recovered a rifle in a wooded area around campus and isolated a footprint for further analysis, NBC News reports. The weapon was described as a “high-powered, bolt-action rifle,” which authorities say they believe was used in the shooting. Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox: “This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation,” he told reporters at a press conference Wednesday, adding, “I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination.”
Kirk was one of the most visible and influential activists in conservative U.S. politics, beginning in 2012 when he co-founded the organization Turning Point USA after dropping out of college at the age of 18. By the time he reached 31, he’d become famous while spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories as conservative donors helped him build “a $92 million-a-year political empire, with millions of followers online and a direct line to President Donald Trump like few others,” Fortune reports. “Today, Turning Point says it has a presence in more than 3,500 high school and college campuses nationwide—and its revenue, per tax filings, has skyrocketed from $4.3 million in 2016 to $81.7 million in 2023. When combined with its political-action arm, Turning Point Action, that figure tops $92 million.”
FBI Director Kash Patel thought authorities had captured Kirk’s shooter Wednesday afternoon, but he spoke too soon. “The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement,” he wrote in a follow-up social media post two hours later. “Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in interest of transparency.”
A second person taken into custody was also later released, the New York Times reports. Patel’s “backtrack was a source of significant embarrassment for the F.B.I. director on a day when three former F.B.I. agents filed a lawsuit against Mr. Patel that portrayed him as a partisan neophyte more interested in social media, and swag, than in the day-to-day operations of the nation’s flagship law enforcement agency,” the Times noted.
President Trump ordered flags to be lowered. “In honor of Charlie Kirk, a truly Great American Patriot, I am ordering all American Flags throughout the United States lowered to Half Mast until Sunday evening at 6 P.M.,” the president wrote on social media Wednesday. His order spans “the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions,” the White House said in a separate statement. Trump also said Thursday he will award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Bigger picture: Kirk’s shooting has “punctuated the most sustained period of U.S. political violence since the 1970s,” Reuters reports, noting its reporters have “documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts across the ideological spectrum since supporters of Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” That includes the June murders of Democratic Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, as well as the stalking and shooting of Minnesota Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman, in addition to the attempted shooting of their daughter by a man dressed as a police officer in the early morning hours of June 14. The shooter had in his possession a hit list of 45 Democratic elected officials.
Contributing factors for rising political violence in the U.S. include “economic insecurity, anxiety over shifting racial and ethnic demographics, and the increasingly inflammatory tone of political discourse,” Reuters reports separately. “That anger is amplified by a mix of social media, conspiracy theories and personal grievances.”
Without any evidence, Trump blamed “the radical left” for Kirk’s shooting. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now,” he said in a video posted online Wednesday evening. He also vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
Expert reax: “In the past, we had elected officials that would seek to bring the country together rather than to cast blame,” Bruce Hoffman, who specializes in counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Associated Press. “We’ll have to see what in the coming days our national leaders have to say about this, and whether they can be effective in lowering the temperature.”
Second opinion: “This is an administration that, whether you agree with it or not, has made profound changes to this country in the eight months it’s been in office,” Mike Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland, told Reuters. “Some people love it, some people hate it. The people that hate it are starting to act out. People who love it are going to act out against those people that hate it, and it becomes a vicious spiral that could lead us into something really, really bad.” The New York Times has similar reporting 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 with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day 24 years ago, the 9/11 attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
House NDAA passes. The lower house’s $892.6 billion defense authorization bill includes “a 3.8% pay raise for troops and plans to improve the military’s acquisition system, including by shortening approval timelines and increasing artificial intelligence research,” Reuters reports.
It would rescind decades-old AUMFs. A bipartisan effort added “an amendment to rescind a pair of open-ended war powers laws, originally adopted in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq but used for a host of military missions worldwide since then,” Military Times reports.
It also includes several conservative policy dictates. New York Times: “The 231-to-196 vote, mostly along party lines, reflected how Republicans in Congress have transformed the annual Pentagon policy measure, once an overwhelmingly popular bill, into a vehicle for conservative social policy dictates. For the third consecutive year, Republicans attached new restrictions to block diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a range of climate restrictions, and an increase in the flow of decommissioned military weapons into a civilian firearms program—alienating even Democrats who had initially supported it.”
Not in the bill, per Military Times:
Update: Minuteman ICBM may operate until 2050. The Sentinel program to replace the Minuteman III has gone so badly that the Air Force is now considering operating the already-half-century-old ICBM until 2050, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
What’s going on: “The Air Force reported to Congress in 2021 that Minuteman III would reach the end of its service life in 2036. Now, facing delays to Sentinel, the Air Force is evaluating options to continue operating Minuteman III through 2050,” said the report, which was released Wednesday. “The Minuteman III Program Office concluded that operation of Minuteman III until 2050 is feasible.” One of your D Briefers has more from the report, here.
Developing: The U.S. is on the brink of selling Finland more than 400 AMRAAMs, which refer to AIM-120D-3 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles from defense prime RTX, the Pentagon’s arms export agency announced Wednesday. The weapons “could be used to arm the Finnish air force’s current Boeing F-18 Hornet fighters and on-order Lockheed Martin F-35As,” Flight Global reports.
If the deal goes forward, it would “add to a record run of major contracts for the AMRAAM, with the most recent having been a $3.5 billion order to provide missiles to the US military and 19 international customers,” Craig Hoyle of Flight Global adds.
We forgot to flag another big U.S. sale of six Patriot air defense systems to Denmark for $8.5 billion. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that one two weeks ago, which “will require the assignment of 12-17 additional U.S. Government and 17-23 contractor representatives [who will need] to travel to Denmark periodically for up to 7 years for equipment fielding, system checkout, training, and technical and logistics support,” according to DSCA.
We’re also late to a separate, record-setting $9.8 billion U.S. Army deal with Lockheed Martin to make 1,970 Patriot PAC-3 missiles in southern Arkansas. Army officials announced the order last Wednesday, which Stars and Stripes described as “the largest in the history of the company’s missiles and fire control unit.”
Panning out: Especially since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “Lockheed Martin has been working to increase its production for years and plans to deliver more than 600 interceptors in 2025, topping its record-breaking production of 500 last year,” Stripes writes. See also local coverage from near Camden, Arkansas, where the missiles will be made.
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ODNI likely to curtail counterintelligence center in latest shake up. Two intelligence-coordination centers would shrink or be closed under a reorganization plan that some observers say will hinder the U.S. ability to counter spies and terrorists, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Wednesday.
ODNI is considering either closing or greatly reducing the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the National Counterterrorism Center, according to current and former officials. These developments are the latest moves in a broad restructuring of the U.S. intelligence community under Trump. Certain elements of that restructuring, which spans ODNI, CISA, the FBI, NSA, CIA, and other agencies, are already harming information sharing with partner intelligence agencies around the world, Tucker reports, citing sources. The changes, they say, are exposing the U.S. government, businesses, and civilians to a wide range of new espionage threats.
While the existence of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center at ODNI is not widely known, it plays a key role in U.S. understanding of how spies are spying on us, as one source succinctly put it. So while it rarely makes big headlines, the failure of counterintelligence operations could result in the loss of critical U.S. secrets. Continue reading, here.
And lastly: New polling shows a majority of Americans are uncomfortable with Trump’s moves to expand presidential power, Reuters reported Thursday. That includes Trump’s decision to deploy the U.S. military in American cities.
“On crime, only 32% of Americans said they would feel safer with armed soldiers deployed to large cities in their state,” Reuters reports. For a little more on those numbers, “Some 62% of Trump’s fellow Republicans were warm to military patrols in big cities, but only one in four independents felt the same way, as did just one in 10 Democrats.” More, here.
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That would be some 15 years longer than the Air Force was planning.
A cybersecurity researcher’s recent discovery from yesterday should make every gym member’s blood run cold. Jeremiah Fowler uncovered something that defies belief, 1,605,345 audio recordings sitting completely exposed online. No password. No encryption. No protection whatsoever. These were not random files. They were five years of personal phone calls and voicemails from gym members spanning […]
The post 1.6 Million Voices Stolen: Your Voice Could Be Next appeared first on eSecurity Planet.
NATO officials met in an emergency session after Russian drones were shot down over Poland. The intrusion prompted a rare coordinated shootdown effort by the alliance featuring Polish F-16s, Dutch F-35s, an Italian AWACS aircraft, a NATO aerial tanker, and German Patriot air defense systems, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters Wednesday.
Moscow’s military used “more than 10 Russian Shahed drones” in the incident, which European Union Commission President Ursula von der Layen described as “a reckless and unprecedented violation of Poland and Europe’s air[s]pace.”
Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, “In total, at least several dozen Russian drones were moving along the border of Ukraine and Belarus and across western regions of Ukraine, approaching targets on Ukrainian territory and, apparently, on Polish territory,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “Our air defense forces destroyed more than 380 Russian drones of various types. At least 250 of them were [Iranian-designed] ‘shaheds.’”
“This is the first time NATO aircrafts have engaged potential threats in Allied airspace,” the alliance’s military spokesman said in a statement, and noted alliance members are “committed to defending every kilometre of NATO territory, including our airspace.”
After the intrusions, Poland invoked NATO’s Article 4, which is an agreement to meet among allies when one feels threatened. “A full assessment of the incident is ongoing,” Rutte said, stressing, “What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident.”
Rutte’s message to Russia: “Stop violating Allied airspace. And know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
POTUS reax: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” the U.S. president wrote on social media Wednesday morning, without elaborating.
The view from Berlin: This was not “a matter of course correction errors or anything of that sort. These drones were quite obviously deliberately directed on this course,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
Canada’s prime minister called the incident “reckless and escalatory,” and vowed to “remain vigilant against Russia’s attempts to widen and prolong the conflict with Ukraine.”
Even Putin ally Viktor Orban declared Hungary “stands in full solidarity with Poland following the recent drone incident,” and said on social media, “The violation of Poland’s territorial integrity is unacceptable.”
The U.S. ambassador to NATO threw his support behind the alliance in a short statement and vowed to “defend every inch of NATO territory.”
Capitol Hill reax: “The Administration’s policy towards Russia is weak and vacillating, and Putin is taking advantage of it,” said Armed Services Committee member Rep. Don Bacon, R-Illinois, writing Wednesday morning on social media.
“An act of war” is how fellow HASC member Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, described the incident, writing on social media as well. He added, “I urge President Trump to respond with mandatory sanctions that will bankrupt the Russian war machine and arm Ukraine with weapons capable of striking Russia. Putin is no longer content just losing in Ukraine while bombing mothers and babies, he is now directly testing our resolve in NATO territory.”
Two senators on the Foreign Relations Committee released a bipartisan statement criticizing President Trump for insufficient pressure on Moscow, writing, “It has been three weeks since President Trump met with Vladimir Putin. Since that time, Putin met with fellow autocrats in Beijing to conspire against America and returned to Moscow to escalate his illegal invasion of Ukraine,” said co-chairs of the Senate NATO Observer Group Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, and Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina. “Russia has now launched the largest aerial assault since the invasion began—firing more than 800 drones and missiles, setting Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers ablaze and killing civilians, including a mother and her infant.”
“At the very moment Putin escalates, the United States appears to be cutting back,” the senators warn, flagging “Programs like Section 333 security cooperation, which includes the Baltic Security Initiative—lifelines for NATO’s eastern flank—[that] are now on the chopping block, even as Europe takes on more of the burden. The message this sends is dangerous: that the United States is pulling back just as the stakes in Ukraine and for NATO’s security are at their highest. Our adversaries are taking note that they can wait out American support—that does not make America safer.”
“Putin has shown us time and again that he is a liar and a murderer. He never wanted peace,” said Shaheen and Tillis, who also encouraged the passage of new “legislation that imposes crippling sanctions on Putin’s regime” because “the cost of inaction to America’s security is too high.”
Related: Russian officials “are engaging in a top-down Kremlin-organized effort to threaten Finland,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Tuesday assessment. Moscow’s threats include the allegation that Finland is becoming a “real hotbed of fascism faster than Ukraine” and that “nothing can be ruled out” in terms of a Russian military intervention into Finland, according to Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairperson Andrei Kartapolov on Tuesday. And that charge came one day after Dmitry Medvedev of Russia’s Security Council threatened Finland with “language that directly mirrored the Kremlin’s false justifications for its invasions of Ukraine,” ISW writes, warning these threats may be used “to justify future Russian aggression against a NATO member state.”
Update: Russia is losing fewer troops as its invasion continues to progress across eastern Ukraine, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Tuesday assessment, citing statistics from Ukrainian officials. From May to August, Russia lost about “68 casualties per square kilometer seized,” compared to “an average of 99 casualties per square kilometer gained in January, February, March, and April 2025,” a half-dozen researchers write in ISW’s latest analysis.
Behind the downward trend: Russia has changed how it uses drones in support of combat troops on the ground in an effort “largely led by UAV operators of Russia’s Rubikon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies,” ISW writes. That organization was established one year ago, but their operations picked up in early 2025 and have been boosted by the growing use of fiber optic aerial drones, which are impervious to jamming by Ukrainian forces along the frontlines. Background: “Russia began to proliferate Rubikon UAV units across the frontline in April and May 2025, and ISW has observed reports of Rubikon units operating in Kursk Oblast and throughout eastern Ukraine from northeastern Kharkiv Oblast to the Velykomykhailivka direction in western Donetsk Oblast.” More, here.
For your ears only: Listen to CNA’s Sam Bendett discuss the Rubikon Center and much more in the latest episode of Defense One Radio: “How drone warfare is changing.”
Additional reading: “Tanks Were Just Tanks, Until Drones Made Them Change,” the New York Times reported in a curious interactive on Monday.
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 with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1939, the British accidentally sank one of their own submarines near Norway, marking the Brits’ first sub loss of the war. Only two of the 55-man crew survived.
Gulf nations ask: if U.S. protection can’t stop an attack on Qatar, what good is it? That’s the gist of a New York Times article on the reverberations from Tuesday’s air strike that sought to kill Hamas officials in Doha.
Key quote: “Qatar being unable to protect its own citizens with literally the U.S. Central Command on its territory has prompted locals to question the value of the American partnership,” said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a research group. “It’s a real problem for Gulf leaders. And it should worry the United States as well.”
WH spox: Trump “feels very badly” about the attack. The president learned about the attack from the U.S. military, and told envoy Steve Witkoff to tip off the Qatari government, Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. Eliminating Hamas is a “worthy goal,” Leavitt read from a prepared statement. “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” More from Axios, here.
NYT has an explainer on the attack, here.
No DOW in NDAA. At least one lawmaker has tried and failed to make the Department of War renaming official, reports Reese Gorman of News of the United States. “An amendment introduced to the NDAA that would rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War—which requires an act of Congress—was not found in order by the Rules Committee.”
News summaries sent to National Guard leaders reflect public “fear” and troops’ “shame” over D.C. deployment, the Washington Post reports off copies of the summaries slipped to them. “Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” one summary, from Friday, said. “One segment features a local [resident] describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.” More, here.
Trump’s DC “emergency” expires at midnight, but it’s not clear what will change in the nation’s capital. New York Times: “The end of the 30-day period has no bearing on the thousands of National Guard troops, drawn from the District of Columbia itself and from eight Republican-led states, who have been deployed to Washington. Neither does it directly affect the hundreds of additional federal law enforcement officers — from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies — who have been sent out into the city to patrol. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will continue to take people into custody around Washington, as they did long before the emergency was declared.” More, here.
New: Trump’s Pentagon chief spoke to his Chinese counterpart Tuesday, Pete Hegseth’s spokesman announced Wednesday in what to our knowledge is a first for Hegseth.
In his phone call with Defense Minister Adm. Dong Jun, “Hegseth made clear that the United States does not seek conflict with China nor is it pursuing regime change or strangulation of the [People’s Republic of China]. At the same time, however, he forthrightly relayed that the U.S. has vital interests in the Asia-Pacific, the priority theater, and will resolutely protect those interests,” the Defense Department said in a short statement.
INDOPACOM: “The homeland is in the Pacific.” In a Monday speech, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel Paparo said he’s not concerned about reports that defending the homeland is the Pentagon’s new top priority. “The Indo-Pacific is the priority theater of the United States of America.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad has a bit more from Honolulu, here.
China is trying to strongarm Palau with soft power. Beijing is deliberately attempting to “erode leadership, disrupt vital services, and weaken confidence in government” in Palau, and has sent drugs to wash ashore on the Pacific nation to “weaken our community,” the country’s president said Monday. Hlad explains how, here.
Related: “Leaked files show a Chinese company is exporting the Great Firewall’s censorship technology,” reports Toronto’s Globe and Mail.
China’s submarine buildup, illustrated by the Wall Street Journal: “China is on the verge of becoming a world-class submarine power, with new technology and a bigger, better fleet that is gaining on the U.S. and its allies—spurring a new undersea arms race in the Pacific.” Find that here.
To keep up, a U.S. sub yard is turning to AI. “By the end of this year, our plan is to have every single person in our manufacturing shops—17 different businesses, basically across 550 acres—doing work based on the output of what AI tells us to go do. At the end of [2026] all of the people working on all of our ships will be directed by what AI tells us to do,” Brian Fields, the chief technology officer for HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division, said Tuesday. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has a bit more, here.
The Trump administration has sent a War Powers Resolution report to Congress laying out its justification for the deadly Sept. 2 attack on a speedboat in international waters. Quote: “In the face of the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories, we have now reached a critical point where we must meet this threat to our citizens and our most vital national interests with United States military force in self-defense.” Read more, via the War Powers Resolution Reporting Project, here.
Even with this required notice, the attack was unlawful in several ways, writes Marty Lederman, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, in Just Security. “…it’s likely that the President lacked any affirmative domestic authority to order the strike, and the strike itself appears to have violated several legal prohibitions.”
And the U.S. military broke a bedrock principle. “As I’ll discuss at the end of this piece, regardless of which laws might have been broken, what’s more alarming, and of greater long-term concern, is that U.S. military personnel crossed a fundamental line the Department of Defense has been resolutely committed to upholding for many decades—namely, that (except in rare and extreme circumstances not present here) the military must not use lethal force against civilians, even if they are alleged, or even known, to be violating the law.” Read that, here.
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A researcher unpacks recent adaptations in drone technology after more than three years of Russia’s ongoing Ukraine invasion.
The western Pacific country is one of only a handful that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Breaking: Israel’s military carried out an attack inside Qatar’s capital city on Tuesday, which is more than 1,000 miles away, including “a precise [air] strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Israeli Defense Forces announced on social media.
Targets inside Doha included Khalil al-Hayya, the top negotiator for Hamas, according to Reuters, citing Israeli media. The IDF says those it sought to kill “are directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre, and have been orchestrating and managing the war against the State of Israel.” Unnamed sources told Reuters separately that the negotiating team survived the Tuesday strikes in Doha; the claim has not been verified at press time.
Bibi: “Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on social media. “Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” he added. According to Axios, “The assassination attempt in the Qatari capital comes amid a renewed U.S. effort to reach a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.”
Notable: Israel’s Channel 12 reported U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the Israeli strikes, according to an Israeli official.
Qatar’s top diplomat condemned the “cowardly Israeli attack,” which he said struck “residential buildings housing several members of the Political Bureau of Hamas.”
Jordan’s top diplomat also condemned “the cowardly Israeli aggression against the sisterly State of Qatar as a flagrant violation of international law,” Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi wrote on social media.
Safadi added that he expects more attacks from Israel outside its own borders, warning, “Israel will continue to escalate its aggression, its brutal wars, and its violations of international law, and its threats to regional and international security and peace, unless the international community, particularly the Security Council, takes the necessary steps to deter it and curb its aggression.” His Kuwaiti counterpart expressed similar disdain for the attack on social media Tuesday as well.
Israel also attacked at least three targets in Syria on Monday, Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute flagged on social media. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned those attacks on social media on Tuesday, describing them as a “flagrant violation of international law and the 1974 Disengagement Agreement between Syria and Israel.”
ICYMI: The Israeli military destroyed Syria’s Ministry of Defense in a series of airstrikes in July. MEI’s Lister has a bit more on that situation, here.
New: Israel used leaflets to warn the estimated million or so people still living in Gaza City to evacuate ahead of an upcoming attack by ground forces, the Associated Press reported Tuesday from the Gaza Strip. “Previously, the military has warned specific sections of Gaza City to evacuate ahead of concentrated operations or strikes,” but never the full city until now.
However, “many families can’t evacuate even if they want to, because displacement sites are overcrowded and because it can cost more than $1,000 in transportation and other costs to move to southern Gaza, a prohibitive amount for many,” AP reports, citing United Nations officials.
Notable: “Hamas’ armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed six people on the outskirts of Jerusalem” on Monday, Reuters reports.
By the way: Israel’s military has destroyed at least 50 high-rise buildings in Gaza over just the past two days, which Bibi described as “only the beginning of the main intensive operation, the ground incursion of our forces.”
Big picture: “We are in an intense war against terrorism on several fronts: in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon, and in Iran that backs them all,” Netanyahu announced Monday.
Panning out: “Israel has been accused of genocide, including this month by the world’s biggest group of genocide scholars, over its nearly two-year campaign in the Palestinian enclave that has killed more than 64,000 people according to local authorities,” Reuters adds.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1948, Soviet army Capt. Kim Il Sung was appointed the first-ever premier of North Korea, which had just been founded with the help of the Soviet military.
The U.S. naval presence in the Caribbean is up sixfold, counting not by number of hulls but their total displacement, write CSIS’s Mark Cancian and Chris Park, who use that lens and several others in their new report, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications.”
The effort extends from Trump’s campaign vow to “demolish the foreign drug cartels.” But now, Cancian and Park ask, “With Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warning that military action ‘won’t stop” with the Sept. 3 attack on a speedboat, “what does a war on cartels mean in military terms?” Read their analysis, here.
FWIW: “Members of the U.S. Congress have asked for the legal rationale for the deadly strike, noting that the administration has yet to say how it knew who was in the boat or what it was carrying,” Reuters reports. In response, White House officials “had agreed to provide a classified briefing for congressional staff on Friday, but the meeting was abruptly rescheduled for Tuesday.” Read more, here.
Commentary: “A killing at sea marks America’s descent into lawless power.” Jon Duffy, a retired Navy captain who held command at sea as well as policy positions in the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill, and on the National Security Council, writes that the U.S. “has crossed a dangerous line” with the speedboat strike. “This was not a counterdrug operation. It was not law enforcement. It was killing without process. And it was, to all appearances, against the letter and the spirit of the law.”
Duffy adds, “This strike is not only about 11 lives lost at sea. It is about the precedent set when the military is unmoored from law, and when silence from senior leaders normalizes the abuse….The oath is clear: unlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It is betrayal.” Read that, here.
Related: “Republicans in Congress are eager for Trump to expand his use of the military on US soil,” AP reported Monday.
Marines press ahead with JLTV purchase after Army quits program. The Marine Corps will keep buying the Humvee-replacing Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, though it may end up with fewer than planned if the Army’s sudden exit drives up the cost per vehicle. Defense One’s Meghann Myers has a bit more, here.
Anduril and Palantir-backed startup Rivet are officially competing to make the Army’s futuristic wearable gear with virtual displays, Defense One’s Myers reported separately Monday.
The $350 million competition is a follow-on project to the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which was just a headset. This new program—called Soldier Borne Mission Command—includes complementary computers and wearables like watches. In the end, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey told reporters on Monday, there will probably be “dozens” of different headsets under the program, rather than one contractor picked to make one product.
For what it’s worth, Luckey has dubbed himself “the world’s best head-mounted display designer,” going back to his creation of the Oculus Rift, an early, commercially-available VR headset. “There’s nobody better than me, and I know what I’m doing, and I’m going to make sure that we do it the right way,” he said Monday. Continue reading, here.
New: Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear is leaving soon to take a job at Auburn University, Breaking Defense reported Monday.
Tournear’s been in the post since October 2019, which is long enough to leave with a few accomplishments under his belt, he said in an interview. Those include “proving that Link 16 could be used by satellites to transmit targeting data to weapons platforms in the air, on land and at sea,” and “proving that satellites based in low Earth orbit (LEO) could successfully detect and track missiles.” Continue reading, here.
Related: Need a “Golden Dome” primer? Shera Frankel of the New York Times turned in this explainer Monday (gift link).
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The impact on American security from the Ukraine conflict, especially the impact on the nuclear and extended deterrent for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are significant. A key part of America’s dilemma is that the nation’s deterrent strength was diminished more than enhanced and that Moscow may simply be willing to ignore American deterrent […]
Restoring Ukraine Sovereignty Requires Restoring Deterrence was originally published on Global Security Review.