RUSSIA PRACTICES CABLE-CUTTING, GETS CAUGHT MID-REHEARSAL: Russia's GUGI, a secretive Russian military unit whose entire job is apparently finding ways to tamper with the ocean floor, brought its homework to the Arctic this spring, and NATO reportedly caught them in the act. Reuters reports that British, Norwegian and U.S. forces tracked and confronted Russian submarines near Norway's Svalbard archipelago as they tested a new weapon that western officials believe was built to sever undersea fiber-optic cables without leaving a trace. The cables in question carry communications data between Svalbard and mainland Norway. According to the reporting, no cables were actually cut, and the Russian vessels eventually left the area. Britain and Norway previously disclosed a version of this story back in April, but the new reporting adds three details that weren't previously made public: the exact location, the existence of the untraceable sabotage technology itself, and the fact that U.S. forces were quietly part of the operation all along. This kind of fits with the whole Gray Zone argument that Moscow is testing capabilities today that it could use against NATO infrastructure tomorrow. This time, NATO just happened to be watching.
CITY OF DREAMS, RAF’S WORST NIGHTMARE — A sixteen-story luxury resort in Cyprus has a better sightline on NATO assets than most defense contractors. British and American officials are reportedly concerned about a Chinese-owned resort sitting roughly 4.5 miles from RAF Akrotiri, one of Britain’s most strategically important overseas bases. Called, “The City of Dreams Mediterranean,” the facility commands a panoramic view of the base. IntelNews reports that the RAF base is home to F-35s and U-2 “Dragon Lady” reconnaissance aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force. (Starting to see a problem here?) According to the reporting, the resort belongs to Melco Resorts & Entertainment, which is run by Chinese-Canadian billionaire Lawrence Ho, who sits on China’s National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, part of Beijing’s United Front system. Melco has called espionage concerns “entirely unfounded.” British security officials reportedly plan counter-intelligence measures. We’re just not sure how you do that when it comes to a hotel with five-star reviews and views to die for.
ROBO-COP OUT: CHINA TRAINS THE BOTS: China's military is exploring humanoid robots for reconnaissance, logistics, hazardous missions and urban combat. According to Reuters, one project at the National University of Defense Technology has six robots working in two assault teams to clear buildings. The news agency reviewed more than 100 Chinese military procurement documents and papers, including one competition that simulated robots "infiltrating behind enemy lines." Here’s the rub here: China has the manufacturing edge. Its companies built about 95 percent of the world's humanoid robots that were shipped in 2025, and this news comes fresh off of the country’s ‘Robot Games’ where the machines danced, boxed and ran. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the technology isn't quite battle-ready just yet. Power drain, reliability issues and basic coordination still seem to trip the bots up.
LOOKING TO MAKE A COOL $10 MILLION? The State Department is offering $10 million for information on Amir Yaryab, the Iranian official whom the U.S. believes runs the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' cyber unit. Officials reportedly believe the unit includes some of Tehran’s greatest hacking crews, including CyberAv3ngers - the group believed to be behind the 2023 and 2024 attacks on American water utilities. (And don’t forget that officials believe Iran-linked hackers have breached more than 100 water entities since late July of this year.) According to reporting by The Record, Yaryab also oversees groups that stand accused of targeting shipping, energy, hotel, and telecom systems across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. Now, there's a bit of déjà vu here because Washington issued an essentially identical $10 million reward for the same hacking operation last year. Nobody collected.
HOW DO YOU SAY ‘NO THANKS’ IN CHINESE? Turns out not every intelligence service pays U.S.-style bounties. While Washington was dangling $10 million for tips on Yaryab, prosecutors in Taiwan indicted a retired Taiwanese navy sergeant (who has only been identified by the surname Ma) for allegedly running a China-directed recruitment effort dating back to 2008. According to the reporting, the operation was trying to build a network covering Taiwan's military, maritime affairs, and coast guard. According to Taipei Times, Ma's biggest target was a retired major general, whom he allegedly tried to recruit with a payment of NT$42,100, or roughly $1,370. A second target reportedly got a phone and some cash for his trouble but then simply declined to cooperate.
WHO’S YOUR DADDY? Here’s an update to a story we told you about in a previous Dead Drop: you might remember that a University of Waterloo student was accused of taking $20-to-$30 photo assignments from a Chinese contact, and ended up snapping pictures of airplanes and FedEx facilities in Toronto and Chicago cashing in on somewhere between $74 and $500. Now, apparently, his sister has entered the chat. In a social media post cited by CBC News, the accused’s sibling offered a hypothesis: “If my brother is a Chinese spy, then I'm Trump's father.”
REPORTING FOR DUTY: Sometimes you can tell a lot about the future of Intelligence based on how governments are spending their money. Take for example, that the Defense Department is soliciting technology that uses AI-generated “personas” to create phone signals that can mimick real users. The goal here? We don’t know. Maybe it’s to confuse anyone who’s trying to track U.S. personnel through their devices. The problem though: “digital exhaust”. Reportedly, location data, device IDs, and other metadata that phones collect are constantly leaked and according to the solicitation, adversaries can use that exhaust to track daily routines. The fix: might be a “digital exhaust deception system.” Imagine AI personas that can generate realistic activity patterns that are intentionally designed to fool automated network analysis. The hardware for this solicitation needs to weigh less than two pounds and run for up to 36 hours. Military Times reports the system has to do more than spam fake signals though. It reportedly also needs a convincing “pattern of life” to beat increasingly sophisticated AI analysis. (What might make this feel really real is if the fake personas report for testosterone testing, eh?)
A NEW KIND OF FBI SPECIAL (AI) AGENT: FBI Director Kash Patel posted a video on X recently boasting that the FBI is putting “cutting-edge technology” into the hands of its agents. There’s just one problem: Apparently nobody put the cutting-edge technology into the hands of the person checking the AI’s work. As Gizmodo reports, the largely AI-generated video displays the FBI seal at about the 18-second mark, identifying the agency as the “Federal Bureal of Investigation.” And “Bureal” is hardly the only AI tell. The video also features an agent with apparently malformed hands, a photographer with no hands at all, a man whose eye appears to be looking somewhere other than at the document in front of him, and an agent frantically shoving mysteriously morphing pages into a binder. Patel’s narration touts AI as a way to help the FBI “move faster to keep up with 21st century criminals.” Judging from the video, the criminals shouldn’t be too hard to catch.
PROFESSOR OF PAYBACK: Ukraine has reportedly found a novel way to collect part of a $4.22 billion debt from Russia: take ownership of one of Moscow’s cruise ships. Norwegian authorities have seized the Russian-owned Professor Molchanov in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard at the request of Ukraine's state-owned energy company Naftogaz. As Reuters reports, Naftogaz won a $4.22 billion arbitration award over Russian seizures of Ukrainian energy assets following Moscow's 2014 (illegal) annexation of Crimea. Russia hasn't paid, so Naftogaz has been hunting for Russian assets abroad. Enter the former oceanographic research vessel now used for commercial expedition cruises. The ship now sits in the Arctic port of Barentsburg. News of the seizure caught the attention of the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin is now describing the move as "state terrorism," while Russia's ambassador to Norway called it both politically motivated and illegal. Sounds kinda like the whole Ukraine war thing that Moscow started, eh?
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