Dead Drop: March 11

FINALLY FILLING SEATS: There were a couple high-power personnel announcements in the Intelligence Community this week.  DNI Avril Haines welcomed Dr. Adele Merritt as the IC Chief Information Officer. Merritt has worked at NSA, DOE, NSC and in the private sector at a non-profit “focused on advancing cybersecurity, innovation and collaboration through partnerships with industry, academia, and government.” Michael Waschull has been acting IC CIO for over a year and will stay on as deputy. And the White House announced the President’s intent to nominate Kate Heinzelman to be General Counsel of the CIA. She currently serves as Chief Counselor in the Office of the Attorney General. In the past, she worked as an Associate Counsel to the President, an Assistant to the AG for National Security in DOJ and on the staff of the DNI. Oh, and she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and for Judge Merrick Garland when he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals. The CIA GC job requires Senate confirmation and has been vacant for quite a while.

WELL, NOT MUCH ELSE HAS WORKED: The Daily Star says Russia is preparing to deploy “robo-balls” in their attack on Ukraine. The devices are said to look like the BB-8 droid from Star Wars and have previously been deployed in Syria. The formal name for them is “Sphera.” The baseball-sized units are said to have four video cameras giving them a 360-degree view and microphones that can pick up sound and send it to operatives “up to 50 meters away” (which doesn’t sound that far away to us.) There is some video from four years ago, of Sphera in action. If Vlad’s lads have really good arms, perhaps they can toss robo-balls ahead of themselves and find out why their military convoy has been stuck for a couple weeks.