THE BEST NATIONAL SECURITY BALL OF THEM ALL: The Cipher Brief is hosting its annual HONORS Dinner this week in Washington, recognizing the best of the best from the national security community. We kind of like this dinner because it offers a clear focus on the broader community of professionals who must come together to ensure future national security. Let’s face it: one person could never do this on their own. The categories in which honorees are being recognized include leadership in the battlespace, leading innovation in government, investing in the future, journalism, storytelling and cyber. We hear that there are many attendees who are beyond excited at the chance to be a part of a more holistic celebration of the community, we hear that Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian is especially excited. That’s mostly because he discovered that he’s still able to fit into this tux this year (pictures to follow).
INVEST HERE: We hear that General David Petraeus (Ret.) - one of the prestigious presenters at this year’s Cipher Brief HONORS Dinner - has taken on an additional mission. The current partner at KKR and Chairman of KKR’s Global Institute is adding Chairman of KKR Middle East to his resume. In the new position, he’ll be working with KKR’s Julian Barratt-Due, who will be heading up a new dedicated investment team in the region. “My time in the Middle East in uniform and later as CIA Director comprised a substantial and very important chapter in my life,” Petraeus wrote on social media. “I have returned to the region many times each year since leaving government and joining KKR nearly 12 years ago. During that time, the countries in the region have rapidly established themselves as investment powerhouses, guided by impressive visions, extraordinary innovation, and strong fiscal positions. In fact, I am back in the Gulf States right now, and there is a clear sense of optimism around the momentum and the enormous opportunities that lie ahead.”
TARIFFS DELIVERED THE JOLT, NOW COMES THE BUILD: President Trump has had a heck of a time convincing a lot of folks that his tariff strategy is a good idea. TBH, we feel like we’re at the end of a yoyo string just trying to follow along every day - but JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is more serious and is warning of a possible recession because of the impact that the tariffs moves have made on the markets. Others though, are calling the tariff play a “bold move” in the right direction. The managing partner at America’s Frontier Fund Gilman Louie published an opinion piece in The Cipher Brief this week saying that while the president’s tariff track is reshaping global trade – it’s only half the equation. (You mean there’s more where this came from? Get us some anti-dizziness medication.) Louie argues that tariffs alone can’t finish the job and that the president and team Trump need to focus as well on another initiative the president has started, advancing the idea around the creation of a national sovereign wealth fund. We suggest you read the piece to really understand where this is headed. Or you can just do what we’re doing and have a drink instead.
MAKE MINE A VESPER: A new cocktail book from the former Chief of Central Eurasia division at CIA, Rob Dannenberg is said to be coming out in May from CI4 Publishing. The mix on this one is interesting. It’s said to include stories from the field that include some from former CIA collaborators Joseph Mullin and Dale Bendler. We hear Dead Drop readers will have early access to order the cocktail book in plenty of time for Father’s day. Cause what father doesn’t want a gift that combines the CIA and cocktails?
The intersection of technology, defense, space and intelligence is critical to future U.S. national security.Join The Cipher Brief on June 5th and 6th in Austin, Texas for the NatSecEDGE conference. Find out how to get an invitation to this invite-only event at natsecedge.com
DOES THE SHIP OF STATE LEAK FROM THE TOP: Who could have seen this coming? OK, you can put your hands down. Back in late March, the Dead Drop summarized reports that senior Pentagon officials were mightily exercised over what they said were false reports that Elon Musk was about to be briefed on top secret war plans for China. Even though they said the story was false, DOD officials were so mad that they launched an investigation that included the use of polygraph tests. Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, ordered that anyone found leaking would be referred to the “appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution.” Now come reports that “team Hegseth” has suspended some of their own Now, let’s remember here that no one is guilty until proven so (facts do still matter). On Tuesday, Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to Secretary Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, DOD’s deputy chief of staff, were reportedly suspended and escorted out of the building. Both had previously worked for the Secretary at Concerned Veterans for America. The following day, Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg reportedly was also suspended and placed on leave. What are the chances that any of them will be facing any charges? We don’t know but we checked our Magic 8 Ball and it told us: “signs point to no.” If any of these folks had been holdovers from the previous administration – we might have gotten a different prediction.
MAYBE THE PENTAGON SHOULD CONTRACT OUT SECURITY TO AUGUSTA NATIONAL: The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Master’s tournament, has mastered the ability make local government officials keep stuff they don’t want reported – out of the news. Lawyers for the city of Augusta redacted information from FAA records before making them available to media organizations that had requested the information under open records laws. The request was simply about members and guests travelling by private jets to the local airport to attend events at the course. There is considerable doubt as to whether the town lawyers have the authority to withhold that information – but so far, they have successfully done so. Apparently, city officials are better at keeping federal government secrets than the feds.
BAN THOSE BOOKS: It looks like the Army and Air Force are catching up with the Navy when it comes rescuing their service members from the danger of possibly seeing scary books. The Associated Press reports that those two services have now ordered officials to go through their libraries, just as the Navy has done at Annapolis, to weed out books with what is deemed to be an unhealthy focus on gender and minorities and such. Perhaps there will be a new Commander in Chief’s trophy awarded to the service that can ban the most books. The current number to beat is the Naval Academy’s 381 titles – which, as we recounted last week, included Maya Angelou’s book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings but spared books like Mein Kampf.
WHY NOT UNRAVEL HISTORY WHILE YOU’RE AT IT: When the guided missile destroyer, USS BARRY (DDG-52), was placed in commission in 1992, like most Navy ships, it was given a nifty shield (kind of a coat of arms that could be used on patches, ballcaps etc.) and a motto. The BARRY’s motto was “Strength and Diversity.” You know where this story is going, right? Sometime over the past few weeks, without fanfare, official Navy websites have deleted the word “diversity” from the ship’s motto. This would be dumb enough on the face of it – but it turns out that when the motto was chosen three decades ago – official documents show that the word “diversity” was mostly chosen to refer to the ship’s multi-mission capability. BARRY was designed to go after surface vessels, air targets, submarines – a diverse set of targets. Get it? In explaining the motto originally, officials did throw in an additional nod to the ship’s namesake (revolutionary war hero Commodore John Barry’s) Irish heritage – but the motto had nothing to do with that D-E-I stuff that hadn’t been invented or named yet. But today’s thought police have silently cut the word “diversity” from the ship’s motto. Oddly, they haven’t gotten around to fixing the patch which can still be seen bearing that verboten word. “Strength”, however, seems to us to be too short for a motto.
THERE’S NO GOING BACK (FOR NOW): This may come as a shock, but there have been stories floating around on social media that are not exactly accurate. One in particular, involving Afghanistan and the CIA, got so much traction that news organizations like the AFP felt obliged to fact-check it. The stories in question claimed that Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Ellis, had flown to Afghanistan in a C-17 aircraft recently to meet with government officials there about the U.S. taking over Afghanistan’s Bagram air base once again. While President Trump has mused that it would be nice to regain control of Bagram (not unlike how he has said it would be good to control Greenland and the Panama Canal) AFP quotes CIA Director of Public Affairs Liz Lyons as saying that "reports that CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis was at Bagram Air Base are false."
BASE(MENT) MOTIVES: China is reportedly planning to build a new “super-embassy” in London but leaks and speculation about what it’s really planning have senior British officials seeing red. According to The Daily Mail, construction plans for the facility have been given a green light by the new UK government, even though the plans call for “two suites of anonymous unlabeled basement rooms and a tunnel, with their exact purpose ‘redacted for security reasons.” According to some reports, Beijing’s new embassy would be built adjacent to the Tower of London. What could go wrong, right? The previous Tory government was said to have been slow rolling the Chinese effort – and now some politicians are accusing the new government of cozying up to the Chinese by letting them do whatever they want in the basement.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
ROCK SOLID UFO REPORT: For some reason, there seem to be a lot of old reports about alien sightings (dating back to when UAPs were called UFOs) rematerializing. Here’s a fun one: A story in the New York Post says that, back in the early 1990s, the CIA somehow acquired a 250-page KGB report about how some Soviet soldiers once encountered a “flying saucer” over Ukraine. The report said that, while conducting training in Ukraine, Soviet troops saw a “low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer.” So, doing what their Russian successors would have done, they shot at the unknown object, causing it to crash. This is where it gets weird(er). Five short humanoids were said to have emerged from the wreckage and then “merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape.” That big ball of aliens allegedly exploded and turned 23 Soviet soldiers into “stone poles.” The CIA report about the Soviet document was declassified in 2000. We’re guessing the “stone poles” story was the work of a stoned Soviet. We are just hearing about this tale now but in some circles, you may have heard of it before. The story about Soviet soldiers turned into limestone-like poles was featured on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast last year – so don’t take it for granite.
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