A BRAVE NEW YEAR: The Ukrainian Defense Innovation Fund known as BRAVE1 isn’t waiting around to find out what happens regarding U.S. support for Ukraine after inauguration day. Instead, they’re forging ahead with a focus on the future of defense technology – using the valuable lessons learned from the Ukraine war to help shape the future of warfare by hosting an innovation forum in Kyiv next month. The Cipher Brief is a proud sponsor of the event and for obvious security reasons, some of the conference details are still pretty hush-hush but we do know that Cipher Brief Expert and former CIA Director General David Petraeus (Ret.) will be there to talk about some of the battle-tested defense technologies that have real potential for reaching well beyond any kind of ‘negotiated’ agreement to end the war. The Cipher Brief – which you may remember sponsored not one, but two conferences in Kyiv after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – is continuing the tech development conversations stateside this June in Austin Texas, welcoming not just BRAVE1, but other leading investors in the national security space as well as innovators and military experts. We’re told that The Cipher Brief’s inaugural NatSecEDGE conference is still in clandestine mode but we’re expecting to hear more soon. In the meantime, you can find out more about BRAVE1’s Defense Innovation Forum on their LinkedIn events page.
RUSSIAN SIGNING BONUSES: We’ve been paying attention as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military recruiters have been canvasing prisons looking for new recruits who will ‘volunteer’ to fight in Ukraine. In an update to these rather interesting recruitment tactics, The New York Times reports that a recruit no longer has to be convicted of a crime in Russia to earn a signing bonus. Now, individuals who have been charged with crimes can also get in on the deal with promises that even ‘pending charges’ will disappear if they volunteer to fight. And if you’re in debt, a new law that went into effect last month, promises up to 10 million rubles (about $100,000) of your debt can be forgiven if you sign up to serve.
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