Dead Drop: April 5 - 11

CLOUD COVER: Iran has been targeting American tech companies in the Gulf with drone and missile strikes since the war began. Oracle was on the list — the IRGC cited the company's cloud and AI contracts with the Pentagon and founder Larry Ellison's ties to the Israeli government as a reason for targeting them. When debris from an intercepted Iranian drone hit the facade of an Oracle building in Dubai Internet City, authorities confirmed they responded to a "minor incident" — no injuries reported. Amazon Web Services later confirmed that two of its data centers in the UAE were directly struck, and a third in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike. President Trump has threatened to bomb Iran back to the stone age. Apparently, they are trying to bomb the US and its allies back to the dial-up age.

AMERICAN SCIENTISTS VANISHING IN THE SOUTHWEST. ONE EX-FED HAS A THEORY: Over the past ten months, four people with ties to U.S. nuclear and aerospace programs have vanished without a trace in the American Southwest — among them a retired Air Force general and a NASA materials scientist. A former senior FBI official thinks foreign spies are behind it. Law enforcement, so far, does not appear to agree. Chris Swecker, former assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, told the Daily Mail the disappearances look "extremely suspicious" and may represent a coordinated foreign intelligence operation targeting people with access to sensitive U.S. secrets. China is his top suspect. He'd also like to keep an eye on "some of our friends" — Pakistan and India among them. Worth noting: several researchers in related fields have also died during this period, but police have attributed two of those deaths to suspects acting alone with no established espionage motive, and a third shows no evidence of foul play. The deaths and the disappearances may have nothing to do with each other — and Swecker, now a private citizen, is drawing connections across cases he has no official access to. He may be right. He may also be pattern-matching. As far as we know, the FBI hasn't said a word either way.