LICENSE TO EXPEL — DIPLOMACY GETS THE BOOT: Russia has ordered an unnamed British diplomat to leave Moscow within two weeks, accusing the official of engaging in espionage - a charge London dismisses as “malicious and baseless,” according to the Associated Press. The Kremlin says its security services uncovered evidence of intelligence activity; the UK says this is yet another round of Moscow’s favorite sport: evidence-free finger-pointing with a side of geopolitical theater. The Guardian adds that the move comes amid already brittle UK-Russia relations and a long history of mutual expulsions that tend to escalate faster than a bad Cold War reboot. If history is any guide, this won’t end with one lonely suitcase rolling through Sheremetyevo. Expect the UK to respond with a reciprocal expulsion of a conveniently mysterious Russian “diplomat” from London, continuing the familiar exercise where everyone insists that they’re “shocked” that embassies sometimes house intelligence officers. (Maybe they should read the Dead Drop more often). While it’s unlikely that diplomatic relations between the two countries will freeze over the expulsion, it could be a sign of a deeper chill ahead.
DRILLING DOWN ON CHINA’S “SUPER-EMBASSY” BASEMENT IN LONDON: Nothing says “diplomacy” like constructing a secret underground chamber literally next to a host country’s critical data cables. The Dead Drop mentioned the project last April - but now plans for the construction of China’s “super embassy” in London’s Royal Mint Court seem to be moving ahead. That’s despite the fact that the sprawling new embassy - set to be Europe’s largest - reportedly will include 208 underground rooms, with one troublesome chamber just meters from fiber-optic cables that carry financial and communications data across the City of London. The installation would also have hot-air extraction vents - exactly the sort of thing you’d expect if you were hiding servers…or just doing a lot of laundry. The British government insists that MI5 and MI6 have signed off on safeguards for the project but opposition MPs and security experts have dubbed the concept “lunacy,” warning that approving the build could hand Beijing a “launchpad for economic warfare” because of its proximity to the UK’s digital nervous system. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly expected to approve the plans before traveling to China to meet President Xi next week.
THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS: Pete Hegseth announced in a speech this week that DOD is about to integrate Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot across both its classified and unclassified networks as part of a new AI Acceleration Strategy. Hegseth says the goal is to get “the world’s leading AI models” embedded throughout the military’s systems, feeding everything from unclassified data to intelligence databases into generative AI for analysis, planning, and decision support. Hegseth signaled that Grok will go live later this month, standing shoulder‑to‑shoulder with others like Google’s AI engines in DoD workflows. It’s kind of inconvenient though that halfway around the world in Southeast Asia, Reuters reports that regulators in Malaysia and Indonesia have temporarily blocked access to Grok, claiming its image capabilities were being misused to generate non‑consensual, sexually explicit AI imagery of real people, including minors. xAI, the company behind Grok said it would restrict image generation while it investigates “lapses” in the system. We don’t really know what that means for the Pentagon other than we guess you’ll know that the lapses haven’t been addressed yet if you start seeing images of Iranian mullahs in their underwear.
G7 GETS SHOVED TO THE CANVAS FOR WHITE HOUSE UFC NIGHT – In one of the era’s odder foreign-policy footnotes, France has quietly moved the 2026 Group of 7 summit back a day in the middle of June - so that the meeting of senior international leaders doesn’t butt heads with a White House-hosted Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event scheduled for June 14. June 14 also happens to be U.S. Flag Day and President Trump’s 80th birthday. The UFC showdown - a mixed martial arts spectacle usually confined to arenas - will set up an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn with room for about 5,000 spectators and with an overflow viewing party in the nearby Ellipse with room for another 85,000 more watching on big screens. The Guardian reports that officials in Paris say the change was the result of routine coordination between G7 partners, but the optics are just too tempting for an outlet like The Dead Drop, to let drop.
DOOMSDAY UBER: The Air Force’s E-4B “Doomsday Plane” touched down at LAX last week, delivering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for what the Pentagon described as routine “Arsenal of Freedom” events — and delivering other people a fresh debate over why a nuclear-war command post was needed for a domestic Los Angeles flight. Critics online quickly fixated on the price tag, circulating claims that the aircraft costs more than $370,000 an hour to fly. But that number reflects fully loaded lifecycle and readiness accounting - not the figures the Pentagon typically uses for flight operations. Other published DoD reimbursable rates and prior reporting put the E-4B’s flight-hour cost closer to $160,000 an hour, still expensive, just not apocalypse-level expensive. It’s unclear whether at that rate your first checked bag flies free. Adding to the intrigue of the Doomsday flight, online influencer and fledgling Pentagon press corps member Laura Loomer says she was along for the ride, posting on X that she accompanied Hegseth to Los Angeles and attended events with him. The Pentagon has not released a passenger manifest and has offered no explanation for why Nightwatch was the aircraft of choice. Perhaps all the other executive aircraft were tied up moving narco-dictators around and preparing for the invasion of Greenland.
NSA ENDS DEPUTY DIRECTOR DROUGHT: After a notably long stretch without a permanent senior civilian at Fort Meade, the National Security Agency has announced Tim Kosiba as its next deputy director — the agency’s top civilian and de facto chief operating officer. The move ends questions inside and outside NSA about how long one of the government’s most consequential intelligence agencies could operate without a permanent second-in-command. Kosiba is no outsider. A 33-year intelligence community veteran, he previously ran some of the agency’s most sensitive cyber and signals intelligence operations, including holding senior roles tied to computer network operations and NSA Georgia, its largest field site. The previous NSA Deputy Director, Wendy Noble, was removed from the position along with the Director, Gen. Timothy Haugh, in April 2025 because a social media influencer didn’t like them. It’s absurdity at its finest - but with NSA and U.S. Cyber Command navigating leadership transitions amid intensifying cyber competition with China, Russia, Iran, and others, the absence of permanent leadership had become a lingering anomaly. Kosiba’s arrival doesn’t solve every challenge facing the agency — but it does finally confirm a civilian adult in the room. As we reported in December, several news organizations said the administration had sent to the Senate the nomination of Army Lt. Gen Joshua Rudd for promotion to four stars and assignment as head of NSA and the Cyber Command. Almost a month later, however, the White House has yet to confirm their plan to nominate Rudd.GOT NEWS TO SHARE? SEND IT OUR WAY: Editor@thecipherbrief.com
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