UNCLE SAM'S EMPTY QUIVER, FULL PRISONS? According to the Washington Post, President Trump's patience "boiled over" at Camp David last Friday when he reportedly confronted Secretary of War/Defense Pete Hegseth over depleted stocks of Patriot interceptors, THAAD missiles, and other items one might consider relevant to an air war with Iran. Sources told the paper that Hegseth pinned the shortfall on his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for allegedly failing to keep the President fully apprised. Here’s the rub: the White House swears none of this happened. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insists she was standing right there and it's "100% fake news," while Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell offered a similar verdict. The President himself weighed in with a midnight Truth Social post declaring the U.S. has "massive amounts" of munitions and that the "leakers" of these "treasonous statements" are being hunted down and face long jail sentences. Which raises a logistical question for the legal team: on what charge does one imprison a person for leaking a thing that isn't true?
LIECHTENSTEIN'S SECRECY VAULT SPRINGS A LEAK: The tiniest tax haven in Europe just lost the one thing it was built to protect: everyone's names. The Record reports that hackers spent two days inside Liechtenstein's Register of Beneficial Owners before anyone noticed, walking off with ownership records for 31,000 companies, foundations, and trusts. The register, created in 2021 specifically to satisfy EU anti-money-laundering rules, exists to tell regulators who's actually behind the shell entities. And it apparently just told someone else instead. Sources say the breach began July 29 and went undetected for two days, and there's no evidence the data was modified or deleted — just quietly removed. The cyberattack prompted the government to form a "crisis unit," headed by the Prime Minister, to address the fallout. Given that there are only about 40,000 people living in Liechtenstein (what some call a financial services company masquerading as a country) this feels like a pretty big crisis.
SOUTH KOREA REPLACES SPY-CATCHING AGENCY, PROMISES NEW ONE WON'T STAGE A COUP: As some countries (like Japan and Sweden) are starting new intelligence agencies - others are breaking up old ones. Case in point: South Korea. The Korea Herald reports that the country’s Defense Ministry pulled the plug this week on the Defense Counterintelligence Command, the country's 49-year-old military spy-hunting agency. You might remember that the old command didn't just chase North Korean spies, in December 2024, elements of it got dragged into then-President Yoon Suk Yeol's short-lived, deeply unpopular attempt to declare martial law, an episode that ended with Yoon being impeached. Moving forward, the tasks of the old command will be carried out by three brand-new outfits; a Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters (spies, terrorism, guarding the secrets behind U.S. Navy ship repairs in Korea), a National Security Investigation Group (espionage and treason prosecutions), and a Cyber Forensic Investigation Unit (hacking cases), each smaller and presumably less coup-capable than the sum of their old parts.
USS MORE PAPERWORK: This is a hairy one. It seems the U.S. Navy (that once hunted U-boats) now hunts five-o'clock shadow. A not-so-secret article in the Military Times reveals that the Navy's latest offensive is a war on chin hair. As of a July 31 memo, any command with a sailor on a facial hair waiver now owes headquarters a monthly "Facial Hair Accommodation Accountability Report," due the 15th of each month. The waivers mostly cover Pseudofolliculitis Barbae — the razor-bump condition that makes daily shaving genuinely painful. Sailors now get a hard 12-month clock (four 90-day waivers, no more) to cure the condition or face discharge. They also have to carry their waiver paperwork on their person at all times, like a hall pass for their face.
A LIBERTARIAN'S HOTEL EMPIRE MEETS AN ACTUAL GOVERNMENT: Turns out founding a nation is harder than founding a startup. Balaji Srinivasan, a Stanford-trained engineer, former Coinbase tech chief, and author of a book arguing that the internet has made traditional nation-states obsolete, decided to test his theory in real life. His plan: rent out a hotel in a mostly-empty, Chinese-built luxury development in Malaysia, fill it with a few hundred tech workers paying $1,500 a month for co-working space and a good gym, and use it as the prototype for what he hoped would someday become a new country. According to The Wall Street Journal, two years in, the actual government of Malaysia was unimpressed. After an Instagram post alleged the project housed Israeli citizens, a legal tripwire in a country that doesn't officially recognize Israel, authorities investigated. They reportedly found no evidence of Israeli violation but then separately, ordered the operation closed over licensing irregularities. Srinivasan's response was pure founder bravado: he threatened to pull his and his wealthy friends' investment from Malaysia entirely. Never one to let grass grow, within hours, he posted a video signing a deal to relocate his project to Kazakhstan, flanked by a Kazakhstani deputy prime minister who previously held an executive post at Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The lesson: sovereignty may just be a permitting problem you haven't solved yet.
HONG KONG'S YOUTH GO TO CAMP: About 500 Hong Kong students reportedly swapped their smartphones for square-cornered bunks this week as the PLA Hong Kong Garrison kicked off its annual summer camp at San Wai Barracks. The South China Morning Post says the event is a two-week immersion in drill formation, mock shooting drills, and the exacting art of the military "tofu block," the impossibly crisp bedding fold that has become something of a rite of passage for the territory's youth. One eager student reportedly spent days practicing his laundry-folding at home in advance, evidently unwilling to be shown up at bed inspection. Now in its 20th-odd year, the camp continues its quiet, steady work of instilling discipline, patriotism, and a working knowledge of infantry fighting vehicles in Hong Kong's next generation. American drill sergeants worry about testosterone levels. Chinese ones worry about 45-degree bedding creases. Everyone's got their priorities.
BEIJING'S JERSEY SHORE OF AUTHORITARIANISM: While the world's billionaires are off in Saint-Tropez comparing yacht sizes, China's Communist Party leadership continues its seven-decade tradition of quietly relocating to Beidaihe, a modest seaside town 186 miles from Beijing every summer. According to CNN, the annual retreat, which dates to Mao's air-conditioning-free 1953, is heavy on secrecy and light on hot air balloons — both banned, along with drones and private boat charters, as security tightens each July. Nobody announces the leaders' arrival; they simply vanish from state media until, as if summoned by tide charts, they reappear having apparently rebooted the nation's agenda for the back half of the year. It is not all fun and games though. Chinese President Xi Jinping's chief of staff this year reportedly convened several dozen scientists and academics for a conference because hey, nothing says "beach vacation" like a symposium on AI or quantum physics.
WASHINGTON’S NEW IMMIGRATION POLICY: NO HUMANOIDS Meanwhile, it was no day at the beach last week for Chinese robot makers. The Federal Communications Commission has taken another step in America's technological decoupling from China by banning imports of new Chinese-made humanoid and quadruped robots, declaring the machines pose "unacceptable" national security risks. The concern isn't that they'll immediately reenact The Terminator—it's that their cameras, microphones, sensors and network connections could be exploited to collect intelligence, map sensitive facilities, or even be remotely commandeered by hostile actors. Beijing blasted the move as protectionism, while U.S. officials insist they're simply trying to ensure America's next generation of AI-powered helpers don't come with an invisible "Made for Espionage" feature. Apparently, Washington has decided that if the robot uprising ever comes, it would prefer the invaders be assembled in America.
SPY AGENCY START UPS: NOW A GROWTH INDUSTRY: Japan launched a new centralized intelligence body on Friday for the first time since World War II, with the National Intelligence Bureau replacing structures long criticized as disjointed and ineffective. According to Nikkei Asia, supporters say the NIB is meant to lay groundwork for an eventual anti-spy law and a full external foreign intelligence service along the lines of the CIA or MI6. Tokyo has reportedly been shopping for advice from the U.S., Australia, and Germany. Sweden, meanwhile, is building its own MI6 knockoff after concluding its military intelligence service was excellent at counting tanks and terrible at reading minds. Per The Economist, the review, the brainchild of former PM Carl Bildt, found Sweden's spy shop could track Russian hardware but whiffed badly on Russian intentions, most notably in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The new outfit called Utrikes underrättelsetjänst (mercifully shortened to “UND”) is expected to be up and running by early next year. Bottom line up front: it seems like today's spy business is booming — mostly on the strength of hindsight.
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