COAST GUARD BACKS AWAY FROM “SWASTIKAS ARE JUST DIVISIVE” POLICY. SENATE BREATHES AGAIN -- After a week of self-inflicted chaos, the Coast Guard abruptly yanked language from its new harassment manual that had downgraded swastikas and nooses from explicit hate symbols to the gentler category of “potentially divisive.” (A bold choice - and one that blew up exactly as you’d imagine.) Adm. Kevin Lunday, now officially the service’s commandant, sent out an all-hands message saying the controversial edits had been completely removed. The cleanup operation conveniently smoothed Lunday’s path through a late-night Senate confirmation vote this week. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Jacky Rosen had both frozen his nomination over the eyebrow-raising policy downgrade but dropped their holds once Lunday reversed course.
THE NEXT “TOP GUN” MIGHT BE 22,000 MILES OVERHEAD — Imagine the movie Top Gun: Maverick, strip away to catchy soundtrack and beach volleyball scenes, add some classified equipment and you may be getting an idea of what dogfighting in space looks like. In what reads like a screenplay, The Washington Post is out with a report about an infamous - but still officially unacknowledged 2022 episode in which a U.S. patrol satellite (USA 270) crept up behind two Chinese birds drifting near one of the most sensitive ZIP codes in orbit. Reporters describe how - with the sun at its back - an American craft maneuvered in classic hunter mode — until one of the Chinese satellites pulled the orbital equivalent of slamming on the brakes. Suddenly the U.S. satellite found itself being tailed. Maverick would be proud; Pentagon controllers, less so. These orbital games of chicken are reportedly happening with increasing regularity as we enter the “don’t get too close or we’ll assume you’re spying” phase of great-power competition. It seems as though the quietest theater in modern warfare is one in which no one can hear you scream but everyone can see you maneuver.
OUI - FRANCE NABS SPYWARE AT SEA – France’s intelligence agency just had a very on-brand week after authorities discovered high-end spyware tucked aboard a ferry in the southern port of Sète (because nothing says “Mediterranean holiday” like a suspected foreign cyber op). Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirmed that someone tried to break into the ship’s IT system, and investigators are leaning toward the “this came from far away and wasn’t friendly” category. According to Politico EU, the tip-off came from Italy, which spotted the digital equivalent of a crowbar wedged into the ferry’s network. French Intelligence is now leading the probe, presumably thrilled to add “boat hacking” to the growing list of hybrid-warfare oddities France has faced lately — including mystery drones loitering near a sensitive submarine base and bizarre attempts to meddle with Paris monuments. French media report that a slick remote-access spy tool was seized from the ship. Nuñez, for his part, offered the comforting note that this isn’t the first time investigators have found such gear. That’s reassuring, we guess.
IS NASA BACK? After almost a year of chaos and a mass exodus of staff, NASA finally has a permanent boss as Billionaire Jared Isaacman was confirmed by the Senate with a comfortable yes, fine, go ahead 67–30 vote. Isaacman arrives with big ambitions, a glossy strategic plan named after a Greek goddess, and the kind of Silicon Valley-meets-space-cadet swagger that’s giving Washington déjà vu from the early ’90s, when another outsider executive, Dan Goldin, tried to drag NASA into the future. Isaacman’s “Project Athena” playbook promises a NASA that gets back to doing the impossible: sending humans deeper into space, turbo-charging the space economy, and teaming up with private industry and academics to cut costs. In other words, making NASA act a bit more like SpaceX and a bit less like… well, government. The space community is generally applauding, perhaps relieved to see someone holding the wheel after months of drift. Isaacman’s mission hasn’t been without turbulence. Trump nominated him, un-nominated him, re-nominated him, and in the interim NASA shrank by nearly 4,000 employees and watched China charge ahead with plans to put its own astronauts on the moon by 2030.
LEAVING FOR GOLDEN PASTURES — Douglas Matty is leaving his role as the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer (CDAO) to work on the Trump administration’s Golden Dome initiative. Principal Deputy Andrew Mapes is stepping into the CDAO shoes for now until a permanent replacement is hired. Matty’s departure comes amid leadership turnover and talent losses at the office throughout the year. Perhaps to address this issue, the Pentagon revealed in August that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, led by Emil Michael, would be taking over the “authority, direction, and control” of the CDAO. Michael said last week in an interview with DefenseScoop that strengthening the office is “really hard” because those who are “sophisticated in AI” mostly prefer to make “a lot of money…in private industry.” How the leadership shakeup changes things remains to be seen.
GERMANY’S FUTURE SPIES ARE CREEPY, CRAWLY AND CLASSIFIED: Intelligence agencies have long been concerned about bugs – but that concern is now being taken to a new level. CBS News reports that Germany is playing around with six-legged espionage. Researchers are strapping tiny “backpacks” with cameras and microphones onto “Madagascar hissing cockroaches” and steering them with electrodes attached to their antennae. Right now, the experiments involve using the bugs for reconnaissance and communications, but (so far) they are not being tasked with carrying explosives. Currently the cockroaches can transport backpacks weighing up to 15-grams, but maybe if the bugs work out some more, they can amp up the payload. We’re guessing the new cockroach spies could be grossly effective.
WOODWINDS OF WAR: A Florida middle school went into full lockdown recently after an AI-powered weapons detection system (called ZeroEyes) flagged a clarinet as a firearm. Yes, a clarinet. The Washington Post reports that the band kids briefly became suspected domestic threats. A police search eventually turned up a youngster wearing a military costume for “dress-up day” and toting his wind instrument. The incident proves to us that artificial intelligence remains extremely confident and occasionally wrong. But given all the recent school shooting incidents – it seems like we’re in the land of either safe or sorry – take your piccolo.
AN ODD NOTE ON POTENTIAL NSA MAESTRO: After many months with no permanent leader of the band at the National Security Agency and the Cyber Command, the White House apparently is nominating someone to pick up the baton. We say “apparently” because while Congress.gov says the Senate received a nomination on Monday The Washington Post cites the White House as saying “no such nomination has been transmitted to the Senate.” Not to make things any more confusing than they already are but the rumored nominee, Lt. Gen Josuha Rudd, has a résumé that leans heavily toward special operations, which we find es-special-ly interesting.
BEIJING’S SMALLEST SPOKESPERSON (A CAUTIONARY HOLIDAY SHOPPING TALE): Talk about soft power. Some AI-powered children’s toys sold in the U.S. appear to be moonlighting as interns for the Chinese Communist Party. NBC News reports that consumer watchdogs tested several AI-enhanced toys - plush stuffed figures for kids - to see just how much fun they can be. They found that at least one, a China-made interactive robot that a child can chat with, spits out Beijing-approved talking points when asked about politically sensitive topics. For example, If you ask it whether Taiwan is a country, the toy blurts out Beijing’s official line: that Taiwan is an “inalienable part of China.” Ask it about Chinese President Xi Jinping bearing resemblance to the cartoon character Winnie the Pooh (as a child might do) and the robot doll chastises the questioner, saying: “your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful. Such malicious remarks are unacceptable.” Manufacturers insist the responses are just quirks of AI training data and safety filters. But critics note that the “quirks” happen to perfectly align with Chinese Communist Party narratives and observe that these products are being marketed directly to American families, with minimal transparency about what AI models they use or how the content is filtered. Take that as a shopping lesson this holiday season. Oh, and some of the toys can also tell kids how to light matches and sharpen knives. What could possibly go wrong?
NON-SECURE SOURCE: Veteran journalist Shane Harris has a fascinating and complex tale titled “They Killed My Source” in The Atlantic sharing how he was contacted in 2016 by a man who claimed to be an Iranian intelligence officer responsible for major cyber operations and a former CIA asset. Turns out, Tajik appears to have been the real deal. Harris writes that he later learned the man’s name was Mohammad Hossein Tajik. Tajik’s stated goal was to pass information to journalists both to punish the Iranian regime and to force the CIA to re-establish contact with him. Was he a double agent? A triple agent? What comes after that? Tajik had reportedly been arrested several years earlier and brutally tortured in an Iranian prison. He was eventually bailed out by his father (who was a high-ranking Iranian intelligence officer). Harris’ reporting suggests that the father eventually learned that his son had not given up his anti-regime ways and dangled the possibility that the father may have played a role in his son’s demise.
NON-RELIABLE SPIN: Your go-to source for unreliable Kremlin spin Pravda, is out with a new take on an old story – the 2017 defection of Russian official Oleg Smolenkov. First, a refresher. You may recall in September 2019, media reported that U.S. intelligence had to extract a covert source inside the Russian government a few years earlier - a source who had provided key intelligence that Russia had tried to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. That source was later identified as Smolenkov. Now Pravda says Russia didn’t lose a senior official to the CIA, but that it instead won a chess match - in their telling by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov - coolly outplaying Langley by deliberately spooking the Americans into extracting their prized Kremlin mole. Exactly how that is deemed a victory – seems to have been lost in translation. Jeez, guess you just can’t believe everything coming out of the Kremlin these days, eh?GOT NEWS TO SHARE? DROP US A LINE @ thedeaddrop@thecipherbrief.com
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