DIA - UNCONFIRMED – We’re hearing from the rumor mill that DIA Deputy Director Christine Bordine’s last day in that role was today (Wednesday) and that Greg Ryckman will serve as Acting Deputy Director. We’re also hearing that the permanent DD could be a political appointee but that’s nothing but rumor right now. We hear Martin Kindl is the new Deputy Director of Global Integration. He formerly served as DJ2 at Joint Staff and more recently as Deputy DDGI.
CONFIRMED – Kelli Arena has been named as the new President and Chief Executive Officer of The National Cryptologic Foundation starting next month. A lot of insiders know Kelli from her time serving in senior leadership roles at NSA. In this role, she’ll be overseeing strategic direction for the organization as well as operations, fundraising and partnerships. The Foundation was established back in 1996 and works to educate folks on all things spanning from cryptologic history to the future of cybersecurity. No small mission there.
BEEPER REPUBLIC: Russia's ongoing mobile internet blackout, ostensibly imposed to keep Ukrainian drones from using cellular signals for targeting, has produced an unexpected side effect: a run on 20th century technology. According to Cybernews, pager sales in Moscow jumped 73% and paper road map sales surged 170%. Some Russians are even dusting off walkie talkies. The Moscow Times cites the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology helpfully suggesting that Muscovites could always use the stars and the sun to navigate if their cellphone maps stopped working. The Kyiv Post reports that the Kremlin has reverted to landlines and a State Duma lawmaker proposed installing payphones with internet access in Russian cities as a remedy. And you thought long TSA lines in the United States were inconvenient.
GRU COLONEL'S COVERT ANT COLONY BECOMES A CASUALTY OF WAR: The Insider, the Latvia-based Russian investigative outlet that has made a cottage industry of unmasking GRU operatives, published a gem this week involving Iran, air defense radar, and roughly 1,000 ants. Yes, ants. GRU Lt. Col. Yuly Deryabin was posted to Tehran to advise Iran on Russian radar systems. Then the U.S. and Israel reportedly wiped out most of Iran’s air defenses on Day One, including the systems Deryabin was there to protect. A career setback, to say the least.
But the real story is the ants. The Insider says that Deryabin, who apparently inherited a fascination with exotic insects from his father, a Soviet shipbuilding engineer who later decamped to a remote village and founded a “Birch Bark Museum,” had been smuggling rare ant specimens home from foreign postings for years, using diplomatic immunity to sidestep customs (and possibly health inspectors).
It was, by all accounts, a tidy side hustle: a Laotian Diacamma queen can fetch $1,200 on Russia’s black market. Who knew there was an ant black market? When the Russian embassy in Iran was evacuated, Deryabin’s wife fled to Moscow with the ant farm, minus the ants. Deryabin had stuffed the colony into test tubes and mineral water bottles in the embassy bunker, then pleaded with his GRU superiors to authorize their exfiltration. His boss cited the “difficult operational situation” and declined. The ants began dying en masse. Russia’s air defense advisory mission in Iran, it turns out, ended not with a bang but with a colony collapse. Which, no doubt, really bugged the GRU officer.
THE DEVIL, YOU SAY: Vice President J.D. Vance told MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson last week that UFOs are probably demons. Not aliens (of the intergalactic kind.) Not foreign adversary drones. Not misidentified atmospheric phenomena. Demons. "Every great world religion," Vance explained, "has understood that there are weird things out there." He added that he's "obsessed" with the UFO files and has been trying to get to Area 51, but scheduling has been a problem - which, to be fair, is a very human excuse for not confronting your demons. The Veep told Johnson that he was obsessed with UFO files when he came into office but stuff like the economy and national security keep getting in the way of getting to the bottom of the matter.
HOT FOOT COURTESY OF KYIV: Ukrainian intelligence, it turns out, has been thinking inside the box - the shoebox. The Kyiv Post, citing the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi, says that Kyiv's special services routed tens of thousands of heated boot insoles packed with 10–15 grams of explosives to Russian frontline troops, smuggling them through Poland and Belarus via Russian volunteer networks and charity organizations. The FSB eventually intercepted a truck carrying 502 of them, announcing it had foiled a plot designed to "sever part of a soldier's limb during combat missions." A Ukrainian intelligence source claimed the seized batch was a fraction of what had already been delivered, and that earlier shipments "did their job." This follows a February operation in which booby-trapped FPV drone goggles were sent to Russian UAV pilots through the same volunteer channels. The Ukrainians, it seems, have mastered the logistics of charitable giving.Got news to share? Drop us a note: Editor@thecipherbrief.com
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