PRINCE OF THE AIR — Blackwater founder Erik Prince has reportedly launched an air defense company offering both hardware and operational management of air defense systems. The company Vectus Air Defense Systems has partnered with the Ukrainian drone software company Swarmer, which Prince is also heavily involved in. The Financial TImes describes Vectus as being presented as an “air defense as a service” model. Prince has been associated with a number of companies around the world since selling Blackwater to outside investors. He has also advised the Chinese government on some of Beijing’s global initiatives. Wanna know more how Prince got here? We recommend you pick up Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War for some light (and fascinating) weekend reading.
THE SPIES WHO CAN'T GET PAID: The CIA has a problem that sounds like the setup to a bad joke: so many Agency officers are retiring, there are not enough people to process their pensions. The Washington Post reports that the agency's retirement system is so overwhelmed by departures that some former officers are waiting up to nine months or longer for their first full retirement check. The CIA calls the volume of cases "unprecedented." Meanwhile, OPM's workforce, which helps handle the paperwork, has fallen by a third since 2024, while the average time to process a federal retirement claim has climbed from 79 days to 109. Having a bunch of people with a lot of classified information in their heads and not enough cash in the bank – is said by some to be a counterintelligence nightmare. Too bad we don’t have a Department of Government Efficiency or something like that to get all this back on track, eh?
WHEN SABOTAGE ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY HAS TO GET THERE: Even saboteurs need a pilot program. A court in Stuttgart convicted Ukrainian national Yevhen B. this week of acting as an agent for Russian intelligence and conspiring to commit arson, sentencing him to one year and three months, all of it already covered by time served in pre-trial detention. According to Reuters, prosecutors said he arranged for two packages, stuffed with GPS trackers and spare auto parts, to be mailed from Germany to Ukraine via a Ukrainian parcel service, at the direction of a contact in Russian-occupied Mariupol. The court said the real purpose wasn't the parts, but the data: a logistics test run for future incendiary shipments. Two co-defendants were acquitted outright, a result Reuters noted "fell well short" of what prosecutors wanted.
WHO YOU GONNA CALL? SPY BUSTERS: Germany's domestic intelligence service has opened a helpline for people who fled Russia, China, Iran and other authoritarian countries and now fear they are being targeted by their former governments. According to Reuters (as picked up by the Moscow Times) the BfV says dissidents, journalists and others facing intimidation, surveillance, abduction or assassination attempts can call for help. A 16-page brochure advertising the service also asks callers to share what they know about the repressive tactics of their former governments. It's a clever arrangement: The spies are offering a hotline for people being spied on by spies.
A PUSH FOR INDEPENDENCE DID HIM IN – Max D. Lederer Jr. , publisher of the legendary military newspaper Stars and Stripes, has announced his retirement, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his allies in the Pentagon are moving to take over editorial control. According to the Associated Press, Lederer wrote a memo to the staff saying it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.” Lederer’s departure comes four months after the Pentagon fired S&S ombudsman Jacqueline Smith, who wrote in a farewell column, “No one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence.” Recently, Stars and Stripes has been reporting on deteriorating crew conditions on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, during its 250-plus day deployment. Hegseth and President Trump have repeatedly downplayed reports of miserable conditions attributed in part to Iran’s destruction of resupply hubs in the Middle East.
THE MABNA MULLIGAN: The Justice Department has unsealed a superseding indictment charging 17 alleged members of Iran's Mabna Institute, (a hacking outfit that is accused of targeting professors at 144 U.S. universities and 178 foreign universities on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and other Iranian entities. Prosecutors believe the hackers successfully compromised roughly 8,000 professor’s email accounts after attempting to breach more than 100,000. They allegedly stole more than 31 terabytes of research, academic material and intellectual property. Some of the stolen material was then reportedly sold through Iranian websites to universities and other customers, according to Reuters. Nine defendants were charged in 2018. Yesterday, the DOJ added eight more. The State Department is also offering up to $10 million for information leading to the location or arrest of five of the suspects.
CAMPUS SECURITY REVIEW: The Pentagon has assigned 30 American universities some homework: review their foreign partnerships, especially those involving Chinese institutions, and cut ties that DoD considers problematic. The Associated Press reports that schools have two weeks to complete the review or risk losing federal funding. The schools reportedly include Harvard, MIT and Johns Hopkins, along with universities that previously operated Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government-backed campus centers that became a major target of U.S. scrutiny over concerns about Beijing's influence and access to American research. The Pentagon hasn't officially identified the 30 schools. A U.S. official did, however, leak the list to reporters, according to the AP…which is an interesting information-handling decision in a story about information security. The universities have 14 days to review their partnerships and terminate any that run afoul of the Pentagon's requirements.
BALLROOM DIPLOMACY? — Rodney Mims Cook Jr, chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, who is overseeing Trump’s controversial White House ballroom construction, held talks with Kremlin officials in Russia this summer as part of a quiet diplomatic mission, according to reporting by the Financial Times today. The paper cited people familiar with the matter. While attending Russian president Vladimir Putin’s economic forum in St. Petersburg in June, Cook reportedly met with Kremlin officials, including Anton Kobyakov, a senior aide to Putin and at a question-and-answer session with Putin, Cook passed on a “good hello from your friend, President Trump,” adding: “We have a lot of ideas to talk about between our two capital cities in the next week.” Putin reportedly thanked Cook and said he “pushed the puck back” to Trump.
ESPIONAGE ON THE HORIZZEN: Reportedly, a small Brisbane consultancy called Horizzen had a few domestic clients, no interest in expanding, and no plans to hire anyone in the U.S. That didn't stop applications pouring in. Starting mid-2025, according to the Guardian, Horizzen fielded calls and applications from strangers touting defense and security credentials for jobs the firm never posted. Turns out someone had cloned the company’s name, logo, and website into a fake "international consultancy" advertising defense, trade, and politics roles. It wasn't alone. The FBI seized 13 such domains back in June with the assistance of counterintelligence partners in Australia, Canada, the U.K., and New Zealand. The scheme, prosecutors say, targeted Americans with security clearances: pay for open-source information first, then bigger money for more sensitive material, then a quiet migration to encrypted chat. "The fake consulting company domains seized by the FBI illustrate the lengths the Chinese government's intelligence services will go to," said the FBI's Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director for counterintelligence, in the original DOJ announcement. Sounds like a down-underhanded tactic to us.
YOU’VE GOT EMALS – NO WAIT! President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to figure out how to replace the Ford-class carrier’s electromagnetic catapults (called EMALS) with the steam technology they replaced — starting with CVN-81, the future USS Doris Miller. USNI News says the memo gives the Pentagon 60 days to produce a plan, including timelines and costs. EMALS replaced the steam catapults that launched carrier aircraft for seven decades. The first three Fords — Ford, John F. Kennedy and Enterprise — reportedly would keep it; but Doris Miller and subsequent carriers would go backward. The irony: according to Newsweek the Navy says electromagnetic catapults are more efficient, require fewer sailors and are easier and cheaper to maintain. They also reportedly provide more precise launches and less violent acceleration for aircraft. China’s newest carrier, Fujian, chose EMALS too. Then came the second throwback. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that, at the President’s request, the Navy is also considering moving the Ford-class carrier’s island — the command tower — from its current position near the stern toward the middle of the ship, making it look more like a WWII carrier. The aft location isn't an aesthetic accident: it creates more aircraft parking space and reduces turbulence during landings. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, who studied the idea during Trump's first term, told the Post the move would require an extensive redesign affecting the ship's weight and buoyancy. An earlier Pentagon study reportedly put the price in the billions and added years to construction. And that's the real problem: the Navy already has too few carriers to meet its commitments (ask the crew of the Abraham Lincoln.) Every year added to Doris Miller's construction schedule is another year of asking other carrier crews to stay at sea longer waiting for relief. Let’s hope someone doesn’t get the idea to go back to wooden decks on carriers next.
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