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An Malicious actors are using reliable internet resources, such as the Internet Archive, more frequently to disseminate clandestine malware components in a worrying increase in cyberthreats. This tactic exploits the inherent trustworthiness of such pla…
During a Wednesday photo op, protesters booed Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as they met with National Guard troops in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station.
The protesters shouted “Free DC!” as the men tried to speak to cameras, with Vance boasting, “A lot has changed in the past seven days,” or since President Trump ordered a flood of troops and federal agents into the city after citing false and exaggerated crime statistics. “You guys are doing a hell of a job. I’m proud of you and we’re grateful,” Vance told the soldiers as the protests continued.
“We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies who all need to go home and take a nap because they’re over 90 years old,” Miller told the cameras while standing beside Hegseth and Vance at a Shake Shack. He also called the demonstrators “crazy communists” and claimed—without evidence, and despite scenes like this in the Columbia Heights neighborhood on Tuesday—they have “no roots” in Washington, which Miller said is “one of the most violent cities on planet Earth.” And: “By the way,” he added, “most of the citizens who live in D.C. are Black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens for generations.”
Update: 61% of DC residents say they feel less safe with Trump’s military occupation and federal takeover of the nation’s capital, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll. 79% of DC residents surveyed say they oppose Trump’s takeover, while only 17% say they support it.
There are better ways to improve things, residents suggested. Those include “increased economic opportunities in poor neighborhoods (with 77% support), stricter national gun laws (70%), an increased number of Metropolitan Police officers patrolling communities (63%) and using outreach workers to resolve disputes (57%),” CNN reports off the new poll.
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Panning out, Trump’s DC takeover “Looks a Lot Like an Immigration Raid,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. “In practice, the most visible impact of Trump’s federal takeover has been the immigration-enforcement effort in [select neighborhoods] including Mount Pleasant,” as illustrated in this video taken Friday and posted online by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We’re taking America back, baby,” one of the masked men said as his crew tore down an anti-ICE banner. (His remark arguably begs the questions “back” from whom, and who is “we”?)
Trump’s federal agents “have pulled delivery drivers off mopeds, arrested construction workers and demanded proof of legal status from vendors selling mangos and watermelons,” the Journal reports. “Vehicle checkpoints have sprung up nightly, and ICE vans have parked outside daycare centers and churches that tend to employ immigrants.”
Notable: “Of the 465 total arrests from the start of operations in the District of Columbia through Tuesday, roughly 44%, or 206, have been arrests of immigrants in the country illegally, according to a White House official.” Read more (gift link), here.
Nationwide: “Deportations Reach New High After Summer Surge in Immigration Arrests,” the New York Times reported Wednesday with a slew of updated government-provided data.
Background: “In late May, Stephen Miller…ordered ICE leaders to escalate arrests across the board, even if it meant broadening its focus beyond immigrants with a criminal record. Since then, almost all of the increase in arrests has been of people without any prior criminal convictions.”
In new podcast discussions, The Atlantic’s David Frum spoke with immigration reporter Caitlin Dickerson to unpack for listeners “How ICE Became Trump’s Secret Army.”
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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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1968, James Anderson Jr. posthumously received the first Medal of Honor awarded to an African American Marine. He had perished as a 20-year-old private first class when a grenade landed near him and his fellow Marines. “Unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, he reached out, grasped the grenade, pulled it to his chest and curled around it as it went off,” his citation reads.
A new attack drone team is defining UAV warfare for the Marines. In January, the Marine Corps stood up a 12-person Attack Drone Team to be its point outfit for developing tactics, techniques and procedures for the armed first-person viewer drones that are increasingly fielded to its infantry units. Defense One’s Meghann Myers talked with the commander of Weapons Training Battalion, the team’s parent unit. Read her report, here.
Meanwhile, the Air Force is asking companies to build ‘exact replicas’ of the Shahed-136 drone to help develop defenses against the Iranian-designed, Russian-built weapon, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports.
And the Navy? Here’s a Wednesday headline from Reuters: “The US Navy is building a drone fleet to take on China. It’s not going well.”
Pentagon reductions set back critical AI-data platform. After users flocked to Advana, DOD’s AI office laid out a plan to keep it growing. Then came DOGE. “You tell this organization to do ‘A.’ Then you cut contracted staff by 80 percent and you have a turnover of close to what, 60 percent? Things are going to break. Things are going to get delayed. We’re in both places,” said one defense official who asked for anonymity to speak freely. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker explains what Advana is, why more than 70,000 defense employees were using it, and how badly needed improvements to keep it working have been brought to a halt.
A naval aviator has been rescued off the Virginia coast after their F/A-18E jet went down Wednesday morning, the Navy said in a press release.
Russia launched more than 600 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight in what the Associated Press reports was “one of its biggest aerial attacks on Ukraine of the year.”
At least one person was killed in western Lviv and three others were injured when the attacks struck more than two dozen residential buildings, a kindergarten and administrative buildings, Ukrainian officials said. “A U.S. electronics plant near the Hungarian border was also struck,” AP reports, describing it as “one of the biggest American investments in Ukraine.”
“Several cruise missiles were lobbed against an American-owned enterprise in Zakarpattia,” President Volodymir Zelenskyy noted on social media Thursday. “It was a regular civilian business, supported by American investment, producing everyday items like coffee machines. And yet, it was also a target for the Russians.”
“The Russians carried out this attack as if nothing has changed at all, as if there are no global efforts to stop this war,” Zelenskyy said, and emphasized despite Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, “There is still no signal from Moscow that they truly intend to engage in substantive negotiations and end this war.”
NATO diplomats are newly worried because, as one said, it appears “The U.S. is not fully committed to anything,” Politico reported Wednesday after talks between U.S. European allies this week regarding a potential post-war Ukraine. The talks involved Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine. “The main takeaway is [a peace deal is] is not moving very quickly,” one European official told Politico.
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Researchers have discovered a complex campaign using trojanized software that uses authentic code-signing certificates to avoid detection and turn compromised machines into unintentional residential proxies, according to a recent threat intelligence no…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a stark warning to the public, private sector, and international partners regarding persistent cyber threats from actors affiliated with the Russian Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Center 16. …
Threat actors are posing as Google support agents in an increasing number of complex social engineering attacks in order to take advantage of account recovery tools and obtain user credentials without authorization. These campaigns leverage legitimate-…
Japan saw a significant increase in ransomware attacks in the first half of 2025, with incidences increasing by about 1.4 times over the same period the year before. According to a detailed investigation by Cisco Talos, 68 ransomware cases targeted Jap…
Update: More than 2,000 National Guard troops have been assigned to the nation’s capital as part of President Trump’s “crime emergency” announced in an executive order nine days ago. But the troops aren’t in high-crime regions; rather, they’re sticking to tourist areas such as the National Mall and Union Station, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Rewind: Trump says crime is “out of control” in Washington despite Justice Department data showing violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low.
Being seen: “The National Guard presence, with desert sand-colored vehicles parked near the capital’s most visited tourist spots, is now showing up regularly on social media feeds in posts by visitors to Washington,” the Times reports.
A U.S. military Humvee crashed into a car in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington early Wednesday, according to a video posted to Reddit. “Luckily [the] driver appeared conscious but firefighters brought out jaws of life to open [the car] door,” the Reddit poster said.
Notable: “The National Guard has also started sending military lawyers to work on incoming misdemeanor cases stemming from the deployment of forces, to help relieve the burden on the often understaffed U.S. attorney’s office in Washington,” Helene Cooper of the Times writes.
Expert reax: “This military occupation of the district is unprecedented and unjustified. If it’s allowed to stand, this country will be well on its way to becoming a police state,” said former Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Goitein, now with the Brennan Center for Justice. “There is a centuries-old principle against using the military for domestic law enforcement,” she added, referencing the Posse Comitatus Act. “The reason is obvious: if the president can turn the military against the people, he can suppress dissent, quash individual liberties, and undermine democracy.”
“To be clear, no court has endorsed this legal fiction, nor has Congress weighed in on the matter,” Goitein explained in a social media thread Monday. She goes on to unpack three legal loopholes in the Posse Comitatus Act that Trump is exploiting with the Guard assignment in Washington.
“Through his manufactured emergency, President Trump is engaging in dangerous political theater to expand his power and sow fear in our communities,” said Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU’s National Security Project.
“No matter what uniform they wear, federal agents and military troops are bound by the Constitution, including our rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, due process, and safeguards against unlawful searches and seizures,” Shamsi said in a statement.
How long can Trump’s DC occupation continue? “It’s not clear what could bring this to an end, other than intervention by the courts, by Congress or overwhelming public disapproval,” Goitein told NPR. “This administration is not immune to public pressure,” she noted in the social media thread.
Coverage continues below…
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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1998, the U.S. used cruise missiles to attack alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan as a response to U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania two weeks prior.
Developing: The U.S. Navy sent three warships close to Venezuela ostensibly to fight drug trafficking, Reuters reported Monday, noting the ships were expected to arrive on either Tuesday or Wednesday.
Involved: Three U.S. Aegis guided-missile destroyers—USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham and the USS Sampson. Around 4,000 troops as well as “several P-8 spy planes, and at least one attack submarine” have also been tasked to assist.
Background: The White House has labeled eight drug cartels “foreign terrorist organizations,” and has reportedly ordered the U.S. military to attack the cartels, according to New York Times reporting on August 8. Two of those cartels are allegedly based in Venezeula—and the White House says one is under the command of the country’s leader Nicholas Maduro. (We discussed these developments in a recent podcast you can find, here.)
Expert reax: “It’s not legal to sink a boat in [international] waters, killing those aboard, on suspicion that it is carrying drugs for an organized crime group declared ‘terrorist.’ Congress has approved no Authorization for Use of Military Force for that,” said Adam Isaacson from the Washington Office on Latin America.
Caracas reax: “In response to the increased U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, President Maduro announced a plan to mobilise 4.5 million militia members across the country,” according to LatinAmerica Reports, writing Tuesday. “No empire will come to touch the sacred soil of Venezuela, nor should it touch the sacred soil of South America, no empire in the world,” Maduro said in public remarks Monday evening. More, here.
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The Army has been tasked with protecting the ex-wives of Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as part of a “sprawling, multimillion-dollar initiative” that spans family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and D.C., the Washington Post reported Wednesday. However, the “unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency,” which is the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID.
“I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy,” one official told the Post, adding, “Nobody has.” According to precedent, “Historically about 150 of the agency’s approximately 1,500 agents serve on VIP security details.” But one person said the current estimate is about “400 and going up,” while another put it somewhere “over 500.”
Reminder: A man dressed as a police officer and assassinated a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota in mid-June. The White House did not allege “out of control” crime or send any Guard troops or additional federal agents to the lawmakers’ family homes in Minneapolis in response. But Army agents are now working long-term assignments protecting Hegseth’s second wife in Minnesota where they “sit on luggage” or “sit in the cars on the driveway,” officials told the Post.
Also worth noting: Trump removed the security detail assigned to former Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley upon taking office in January. “Administration officials said at the time that Milley’s security was taken away as a means to hold him accountable for perceived disloyalty,” the Post recalls. Read the rest, here.
See also: “How Pete Hegseth’s zeal to bring religiosity to the Pentagon is dividing the military,” via Ben Makuch of the Guardian, writing last week.
A U.S. firm is offering a Shahed-like drone. On Monday, Alabama-based drone manufacturer Griffon Aerospace unveiled the MQM-172 Arrowhead, which looks a lot like the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 that Russia is raining down on Ukraine by the thousands. The company’s website provides no range data, but the Arrowhead can apparently match the Shahed’s 100-pound payload. (Via Interesting Engineering.)
And ICYMI: “Late last week, Ukraine unveiled a ‘Flamingo’ cruise missile, with a claimed 3,000 km range and a warhead over 1,000 kg. The warhead is 2x that of the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile,” analyst Byron Callan noted in his post-Anchorage assessment (PDF) this week.
A new poll shows a “dramatic rise” in Republicans’ support for Ukraine, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs announced Friday.
What’s new: A 21-point swing brought the share of Republicans who support sending military and economic aid to 51 percent.
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DNI Tulsi Gabbard has revoked the security clearance of the NSA’s chief data scientist. The New York Times reports that Gabbard rebuffed a request by the acting NSA director, Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, to show evidence that Vinh Nguyen should lose his clearance. “Ms. Gabbard, on orders from President Trump, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics.”
NYT: “Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.” Read on, here.
Gabbard also revoked security clearances for about three dozen other people on Tuesday, including former White House officials. Announcing the move on social media, Gabbard said the people had “abused the public trust.”
She “did not offer evidence to back up the accusations,” the Associated Press reports.
Former CIA director: Gabbard’s actions are part of a campaign of retribution. “It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government,” William Burns, the former diplomat and spymaster, wrote Wednesday in The Atlantic. “It is about paralyzing public servants — making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.” Read on, here.
FBI Director Kash Patel is diverting agents from their specialties— combatting terrorism, hackers, public corruption, child sex crimes, white-collar crime and civil rights—to focus on violent crime, Ken Dilanian of MSNBC reported Tuesday. “If more agents are working on violent crime cases as their total number is being reduced, these officials say, there won’t be the manpower left to devote the same level of resources to national security and other threats. Multiple current and former FBI officials say they have already seen that happening over the past several months, as agents have been diverted to immigration enforcement and veterans with years of experience have left the bureau.” Read on, here.
Additional reading: “‘Profound harm’: Veterans blast Trump threat to mail-in ballots that could disenfranchise thousands of troops,” the UK’s Independent reported Tuesday.
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Al-Tahery Al-Mashriky, 26, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was given a 20-month prison sentence for several charges of illegal computer access and data exfiltration, part of a major crackdown on ideologically driven cyberthreats. Al-Mashriky, affiliated…
The Noodlophile Stealer malware, initially uncovered in campaigns leveraging fake AI video generation platforms, has evolved into a targeted spear-phishing operation that weaponizes copyright infringement notices to infiltrate enterprises with substant…
In a surprise, USAF chief announces upcoming retirement. Gen. David Allvin, a few months shy of halfway through his expected four-year term as Air Force chief of staff, has announced his intention to retire “on or about Nov. 1,” depending on when his replacement is confirmed.
The former airlifter pilot is the latest casualty in the Trump administration’s replacement of the military’s top officers, according to the Washington Post. “Allvin was informed last week that he would be asked to retire and that the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted to go in another direction, said a person familiar with the matter, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. As a trade-off, the Pentagon would allow Allvin to announce the decision, this person said, adding, “It was certainly not his choice.”
Transparency note: Hegseth’s office did not respond to requests for comment. An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment.
Three more GOP governors are sending their National Guard troops to occupy the nation’s capital. “The announcements by Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana brought the number of state troops detailed to the president’s effort to more than 1,100—and the number of states to six,” the Associated Press reported Monday.
Rewind: Over the weekend, West Virginia’s Republican governor said he would send at least 300 troops while South Carolina said it’s sending 200 troops and Ohio offered up 150 of its National Guard for duty in Washington, D.C.
The troops have been assisting law enforcement with tasks like trash pickup, “crowd control and patrolling landmarks such as the National Mall and Union Station,” according to AP, which notes, “Their role has been limited thus far, and it remains unclear why additional troops would be needed, though attention-getting optics have long been a part of Trump’s playbook.”
Reminder: In his press conference announcing a takeover of the D.C. police and the Guard deployment, President Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify his action—claiming the show of force was necessary to tame Washington’s out-of-control criminal activity, though actual crime in the city is at its lowest point in decades.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves echoed those false claims to justify his troop deployment Monday, alleging like Trump, “Crime is out of control there, and it’s clear something must be done to combat it.”
Louisiana’s Gov. Jeff Landry went a bit further, and said he looked forward to more cities being occupied by National Guard troops. “We cannot allow our cities to be overcome by violence and lawlessness,” he said in a statement on Facebook Monday, and added, “I am proud to support this mission to return safety and sanity to Washington DC and cities all across our country, including right here in Louisiana.”
Commentary: What National Guardsmen in the nation’s capital need to hear. “You have every right to expect a clear mission, an unambiguous chain of command, and appropriate training,” advises Paula Thornhill, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, writing Monday for Defense One.
Additional reading: “White House sending social media teams with FBI on some arrests in D.C.,” Reuters reported Monday.
Coverage continues below…
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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1953, The CIA and British intelligence helped overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran.
Developing: The Navy is planning to cut at least a third of its civilian public affairs force, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported Monday. The Navy’s chief of information office is now on the clock to deliver a plan that will reduce the service’s civilian public-affairs staff by at least 35 percent, according to a memo signed by Navy Secretary John Phelan earlier this month.
The move would also centralize hiring for all civilian PAOs and all communications-related contracting to Department of the Navy headquarters. “This initiative is essential to eliminate duplicative roles, concentrate talent on the highest priority functions, focus contracting support where it is most needed and ensure alignment with commitment to mission-driven resource management, cost savings and operational lethality,” Phelan wrote in the memo, which gives the department 45 days from its Aug. 7 signing to submit a plan.
Panning out: The Navy and Marine Corps public affairs reorganization comes just weeks after the Army announced it would rebrand its central Office of the Chief of Public Affairs to the Army Global Communications Office, though cuts to force structure were not part of that announcement.
And earlier this year, the Army pushed out Brig. Gen. Amanda Azubuike, who had been serving as the chief of public affairs since June 2024. Rather than a uniformed service member, the service will soon have a political appointee helming its communications office: a fundraising consultant for North Carolina Republican campaigns named Rebecca Hodson.
Slashing Defense Department civilian jobs has been a key feature of the second Trump administration, going back to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive in February to reduce their numbers by 5 to 8 percent, alongside a hiring freeze that rescinded existing job offers. That would add up to more than 60,000 of the 770,000 civilians who worked for DOD at the beginning of this year. Continue reading, here.
There’s now a new medal for the Pentagon’s border guards on migrant watch along the country’s wall with Mexico, according to a Defense Department memo dated last Wednesday. It’s called the Mexican Border Defense Medal, and soldiers will need to have worked within 100 miles of the border for at least 30 days, beginning the first day of Trump’s second term, to qualify. What sequence must it follow on the dress uniform? Read the bottom third of the memo to find out.
New podcast episode: The Pentagon’s Golden Dome clampdown. Six months into President Trump’s return to the White House, here’s what we know about the Pentagon’s ambitious and controversial missile defense program, featuring Defense One’s Patrick Tucker, who attended the recent missile defense symposium in Huntsville, Ala. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Seven European leaders gathered at the White House to seek commitments about the war in Ukraine, one day after Trump hosted Putin in Alaska. In a Monday meeting that “often had a dreamlike quality — with made-for-TV moments and unexpected interludes,” the New York Times wrote this morning, the Europeans “won a potentially vital, if vague, expression of support from Mr. Trump for postwar security guarantees for Ukraine and sidestepped a discussion of territorial concessions, according to Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany. Still, they all but acquiesced to Mr. Trump’s abandonment of a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine as a condition for further talks.”
Give it another week to 10 days to work out the next details, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy said Monday after the meeting with Trump. “Security guarantees will probably be ‘unpacked’ by our partners, and more and more details will emerge. All of this will somehow be formalised on paper within the next week to 10 days,” Zelenskyy said.
However, “The question of territories is something we will leave between me and Putin,” he added. Reuters has a bit more.
Report: Zelenskyy offered to buy $100 billion in U.S. arms in exchange for security guarantees. according to the Financial Times, writing off a document seen by the newspaper and citing “four people familiar with the matter.” The proffered deal also includes a $50 billion deal to produce drones with Ukrainian companies. Read on, here.
Bottom line, maybe: “Europe’s leaders essentially where they were before Mr. Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Alaska last week: subject to the president’s faith that he can conjure a deal with the Russian leader to end the grinding war,” the New York Times reported Monday. See also another Times piece that lists five takeaways, including Trump’s insistence that the U.S. will send no peacekeeping troops to the wartorn country.
Tom Nichols’s take: “Perhaps the Europeans did the best they could, stiffening Trump’s spine a bit after whatever browbeating he took in Alaska. But in the end, all of Trump’s showmanship has resulted in no substantive progress. Putin’s war continues. That said, Alaska is still part of the United States, America is still in NATO, and Kyiv remains free—and in this second Trump presidency, perhaps that counts as a good-enough day.” Read that at The Atlantic.
And lastly: The high cost of Trump’s election lies. On Monday, right-wing channel Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading lies that their voting technology had been rigged so Trump would lose the 2020 presidential election. When you add that to the $787 million Fox News agreed to pay for the same lies, we’re looking at a bill of over $850 million that Trump’s lies cost just these two businesses.
But Trump is still insisting he can’t lose an election without his opponents cheating. He used the complaint again Monday on social media, writing a lengthy diatribe vowing “to lead a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines in order to “bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” Trump wrote the post three days after Russia’s Vladimir Putin allegedly told him in Alaska, “Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,” Trump said in an interview with Sean Hannity.
The problem: “the U.S. Constitution is very clear that no president has the power to dictate election rules,” because “The framers were determined to prevent that power from falling into the hands of a potential dictator and so gave it to the states and Congress,” Boston College’s Heather Cox Richardson observed Monday after Trump’s screed on social media.
One significant concern for the months ahead: Trump and his team appears to be “preparing to reject any election results that they don’t like,” Richardson warns, citing his declining mental faculties in front of European leaders Monday, a slowing economy, and growing discontent with his job performance.
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