TEAM AMERICA TAKES ANOTHER HIT: Washington just proved (again) that when politics calls, national security expertise gets the pink slip. Case in point: Vinh Nguyen, the NSA’s chief data scientist and one of the government’s brightest minds in artificial intelligence, cryptology, and advanced mathematics. His specialty? Building AI to supercharge foreign signal collection and pioneering quantum computing projects — you know, the kind of work that could crack modern encryption wide open and rewrite the rules of espionage. Basically, it’s the national security equivalent of having Einstein on the payroll. Julian Barnes from The New York Times reports that Acting NSA director Lt. Gen. William Hartman tried to keep Nguyen from losing his security clearance last week, asking DNI Tulsi Gabbard for actual evidence that Nguyen had done anything that warranted his name being on a list of 37 professionals who were losing their security clearances. Friends and colleagues say Nguyen isn’t just some math nerd in the basement; they describe him as the architect of cutting-edge intelligence systems designed to keep the U.S. ahead of adversaries like Russia and China. His dismissal leaves America weaker at the very moment its rivals are racing toward quantum supremacy. Now, we’re not quantum scientists or anything, but if we were Beijing, we’d be on a hiring spree right now. That can’t be good for Team America.
The Dead Drop uses its own sources and methods to bring you the very best gossip from the world of national security and let's just say, well, we're pretty busy these days. Got something to share? Drop us a note at thedeaddrop@thecipherbrief.com.
FLAG MATTERS: A couple weeks ago, The Dead Drop reported that the Army was replacing its top spokesperson, Brigadier General Amanda Azubuike, with a civilian who is a “veteran of Republican campaign finance in North Carolina.” In that piece, we mentioned that there was concern in the Navy that their uniformed Chief of Information might also be replaced with a civilian political appointee. Apparently, that won’t happen (for now). But this week, Rear Admiral Ryan Perry, the Navy’s “CHINFO,” told staffers that he will be retiring in October (after three years in the job) and that his uniformed Navy reservist deputy will be filling in until a new rear admiral selection board can choose another person to fill the gig. Late last year, Captain Jereal Dorsey, who had been spokesman for CJCS Chairman C.Q. Brown, was selected for flag rank and was expected to take Ryan’s role. But now we hear that he’s been shuffled off to another job in the Navy Department staff. We’d usually tell you exactly what that job entails – but when we checked today, Dorsey’s bio was missing from the Navy Department’s website that lists all of its active duty admirals. And his LinkedIn profile hasn’t been updated in a while. We also noticed that BGen Azubuike, who had the Army chief spokesperson job for only about a year, recently modified her LinkedIn page to say that she is “a transitioning military officer.”
PENTAGON PINS PARTICIPATION MEDAL -- Back in June, The Dead Drop asked (somewhat jokingly) if the active duty U.S. Marines who were deployed to the streets of Los Angeles would be eligible for medals for facing down the insult-throwing Angelenos in the Home Depot parking lot. Now, keep in mind, our job is to call out the absurdity in things – not the politics – so guess how surprised we were when we found out from Stars and Stripes that the Department of Defense has established the “Mexican Border Defense Medal” (MBDM). So, you wanna know how to get one? In a memo to the Service Secretaries, the Secretary of Defense authorized awarding the MBDM to service members supporting Customs and Border Patrol efforts for “30 consecutive or nonconsecutive days.” The service has to be in the U.S. within 100 nautical miles from the border with Mexico. In case you were wondering, at its closest point, L.A. city limits are about 95 miles from the border at Tijuana. So, the Marines may have just made it under the wire. And as they were milling around L.A. for about 5 to 6 weeks, they easily meet the 30-day threshold.
I TAKE THAT BACK -- President Trump has yanked the security clearances of 37 current and former intelligence officials including a CIA analyst who is still serving undercover and an NSA quantum-computing expert (which kinda sounds problematic from a national security standpoint, no?). DNI Tulsi Gabbard said in a memo signed on Friday, that the ‘clearance stripping’ is a move to restore “sacred trust,” though the memo didn’t provide evidence that anyone had actually misused classified material. The move leaves some current officials sidelined and raises separation-of-powers questions since the list also includes a senior Senate aide. Legal experts are calling the move unconstitutional, arguing that the gutting of expertise in the name of fighting politicization is, well, the definition of politicization.
SPEAKING OF DRINKING: Cipher Brief Expert Rob Dannenberg, who served as CIA’s Chief of Central Eurasia as well as spending some quality time in Moscow as Chief there, appeared on ABC’s This Week with Martha Raddatz on Sunday. Dannenberg has been writing a series of opeds in The Cipher Brief (that he writes himself – usually over a cocktail according to our own intelligence) sharing his insights in an open forum for President Trump on how to negotiate (and how not to negotiate) with Russian President Vladimir Putin. We think President Trump is getting quite a good deal with Rob’s free advice, considering that when he left CIA, he went to work for major corporations that paid big bucks for his expertise. Rob co-collaborated recently on a new book with former case officer Joseph Mullin aptly titled, A Spy Walked Into A Bar: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cocktail Tradecraft. We’re thinking that the headache of dealing with Russia of late might press one to order a beverage.
YET ANOTHER RUSSIAN-DRIVEN REASON TO DRINK: The New York Times reported recently that Russian intelligence could be behind the recent hack of the PACER computer system that manages federal court documents. The hack, first reported by Politico, may have divulged the names of confidential informants and protected witnesses. The paper reported that cybersleuths don’t know who the hackers are or why they’ve been trying to get into relatively low-level criminal cases, but note the fact that a number of cases involved people with Russian and Eastern European surnames who are living in the New York City area.
IF ONLY REAL DIPLOMATS WORKED THIS WAY -- Netflix is dusting off The Diplomat for a third season, landing October 16. Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, and Allison Janney are all back to keep pretending international crises can be solved with just the right side-eye and a perfectly timed quip. The trailer’s out, promising more glamorous diplomacy, less messy reality — basically West Wing meets soap opera, round three. Where’s my popcorn? The trailer is here.
FLORIDA CONGRESSWOMAN SAYS “INTER-DIMENSIONAL” VISITORS ARE AMONG US: Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) was on the Joe Rogan experience podcast last week, citing experiences she had while serving in the Air Force and sharing lessons she has learned from her current service on the House Oversight Committee. Luna said, “Based on the photos that I’ve seen, I’m very confident that there’s things out there that have not been created by mankind.” She dubbed these things as “interdimensional beings” saying that she believes “they can actually operate through the time spaces that we currently have.” Rogan got her to admit that she has not seen a portal open or personally seen a spaceship, but Luna says she has seen photos that are otherworldly. Gosh, there’s just so much we could say here…
TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is dual-hatted these days, also serving as Acting NASA administrator. So, it was kind interesting when Duffy told Fox News host Jimmy Failla recently that he had asked for a briefing on aliens (the interdimensional kind) but had not yet been given one. (If it were us – we’d ask for that briefing early on in our tenure maybe.) Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was also musing about the final frontier recently telling a podcaster that she believes extraterrestrial life is possible and that she has her own views and opinions on the subject – but has to be careful with what she shares. So now, of course, we all wanna know what she knows.
(SEMI) REAL WOMEN OF COURAGE: In last week’s Dead Drop, we said we hoped that reports (later denied) that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth supported the view that women shouldn’t vote – would not harm female recruitment. Fear not, DOD announced that so far, recruitment of women across the board is up this year. Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson appeared on the Matt Gaetz show on OAN to trumpet the news. Her remarks were shown side-by-side with a handful of images of steely-eyed women in uniform. Here’s the rub: Unfortunately, all of those images were created by AI. Gaetz later apologized saying, "We made a mistake," adding "We used AI-generated images of female service members as part of our B-roll package, and we shouldn’t have. The DOD didn’t give us these images; Grok did. And we'll use better judgment going forward."
I’LL JUST DO IT MYSELF THEN: Jonathan Pollard, 71, the one-time civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who served 30 years in a U.S. prison for spying for Israel, is now an Israeli citizen and is running for the Knesset. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Pollard laid out his 10-point platform. Among other things, he said, Israel should be willing to nuke its enemies. “We should admit that we have a nuclear arsenal and that we will use these weapons at a time and place of our choosing,” he said. “If you’re not ready to use them, the enemy is not afraid of us anymore. We are going to have to threaten to use them and think about the scenarios under which we will use these weapons. Put up or shut up.” Pollard also said Israel must annex all of Gaza, expel all Arabs and repopulate it with Jews. “Diplomacy is a waste of time,” he reportedly told the Post. When it comes to the leg he has to stand on, Pollard expressed no contrition for passing U.S. national security information to Israel, saying he acted because the U.S. “illegally withheld information it had promised Israel, especially since it was ‘war-winning; information. Pollard told the Post that he hasn’t found an Israeli party that aligns with his views of Israeli military power, so he’s running as an independent.
LUXURY GIFTS AND LEGAL RISKS: New York Magazine nailed it with the headline of a recent story “The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry.” Terry is a former CIA analyst and in her post-Agency career, became everybody’s private sector go-to Korea expert. Her husband, Max Boot, is a longtime Washington Post columnist, and a conservative critic of Russian President Vladmir Putin. Terry was indicted in the Southern District of New York last year on allegations of violating the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act. She’s accused of accepting “luxury goods, high-priced dinners, and more than $37,000 in covert funding for a public policy program focusing on Korean affairs that Terry controlled.” In other words, she allegedly went out to dinner with South Korean officials, took a handbag and a few other gifts and a couple of honoraria. She was accused of using other people’s talking points to write some OPEDs. In Washington, that happens, (probably a lot more than anyone cares to admit). Terry has vehemently denied the charges asserting that she never acted under foreign direction.
PYONGYANG GETS PWNED: According to TechCrunch, two hackers calling themselves “Saber” and “cyb0rg” claim they compromised the computer of a North Korean government hacker and leaked its contents. The hackers published an account of their feat in the latest issue of Phrack magazine, a cybersecurity e-zine distributed at a recent Def Con hackers conference in Las Vegas. They say they compromised a workstation containing a virtual machine and a virtual private server belonging to a North Korean hacker who worked for the North Korean government espionage group known as Kimsuky, APT43 and Thallium. The hackers said they provided the pilfered data to outfits that work in the public interest. We tried to access Saber and cyb0rg’s Phrack attack – linked in the TechCrunch story but our computer warned us it was unsafe – so maybe the North Koreans hacked the hackers who hacked their hackers? Trying to figure out this story makes us need a drink. Where's Rob Dannenberg when you need him?
COIN BASE: Wired Magazine recently spilled the beans about a hugely profitable slot machine program on military bases. Being the military, the Army has an acronym for the ones they handle: “ARMP” – is short for the Army Recreation Machine Program. During FY 2024 the ARMP brought in $70.9 million and netted $53 million. The Army handles the slots for their service, the Navy and Marines – but the Air Force has their own one-armed bandit wing. The magazine reports that they money earned from the machines is plowed back into Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) projects like golf courses, bowling alleys and libraries. Not everyone is happy about the slots though, as some say it feeds gambling addiction problems.
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