THE SIGNALS WERE THERE: President Trump announced Thursday that Mike Waltz will no longer be serving as National Security Advisor and that he is nominating Waltz to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations instead. Vice President JD Vance called it a promotion in an interview with Fox News but rumors have been flying sinceWaltz publicly accepted responsibility for letting the fox into the henhouse by inadvertently adding Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat discussing a real time military operation against the Houthis in Yemen. Even though President Trump expressed his support for Waltz, it was becoming clear to insiders that Waltz was being sidelined for the foul. In a sign that the move may have been somewhat sudden, President Trump also announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was going to be taking on the responsibilities of National Security Advisor in addition to steering the State Department. Sounds like a lotta work. That might be why no one has held two roles like that since the days of Henry Kissinger. Or it could be because of a potential conflict. New York Times Chief White House Correspondent David Sanger wrote Thursday that, “The Kissinger experiment has not been considered a success by most historians” because the National Security Advisor is expected to “help resolve differences among the State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, among others.”
CYBER GROUND TRUTH: With tens of thousands of people descending on central California this for RSA’s Cybersecurity Conference, you can imagine how chaotic the streets of San Francisco have been. Microsoft CVP Kelly Bissell broke down the numbers in an exclusive Cipher Brief interview and shared many of the major themes from this year - including; AI-driven defense, the spike in cyber fraud and scams (yes, we’ve all gotten that text message telling us we owe toll fees) and Cloud and Quantum security (why aren’t we talking more about that?). Perhaps most interesting for Dead Droppers though is that Former CISA Director Chris Krebs showed up. Krebs, as you know, is the target of a Presidential Memoranda because he refused to tell the American people that the Biden-Trump election was rigged. As if the memoranda wasn’t enough, officials have also revoked Kreb’s Global Entry status. (We’re not travel agents but we’re gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that he not make any trips to El Salvador anytime soon.) Krebs appearance was the first real opportunity to publicly measure the level of support he’s receiving from the shell-shocked cyber community. Spies tell the Dead Drop that when Krebs showed up for an industry dinner with about 200 guests, they all gave him a standing ovation.
LEST WE FORGET: This week marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Vietnam. But you might not have known it if all you read are government websites (thank goodness no one does that). It turns out that the administration reportedly ordered U.S. officials to stay away from ceremonies marking the milestone. Why, you ask? Well, the war of course, didn’t turn out so well for the U.S. with more than 58,000 KIA. Some are speculating though that the reason why administration officials didn’t want to remember it is because of the whole “Cadet Bone Spurs” social media attack on President Trump, who did not serve. Maybe it struck a nerve? Hundreds of Vietnamese Americans showed up for a ceremony in San Diego at the USS MIDWAY Museum ship. History buffs will remember that the MIDWAY played a key role in facilitating the rescue of more than 3,000 refugees during ‘Operation Frequent Wind’ in 1975. The ship’s 96-year-old former commanding officer RADM Lawrence Chambers described some of the dramatic scenes from a half century ago but oddly, no active-duty senior naval officers were there to speak. Those who are remembering the war remember how costly, divisive and heartbreaking it was. The Cipher Brief offered something of a time machine opportunity for several folks who were there and would later go on to serve in senior roles in national security and journalism, including former CIA Acting Director John McLaughlin, Ambassador John Negroponte, Lt. Gen, James Clapper, CIA veteran Marty Peterson and Cipher Brief Columnist and award-winning writer Walter Pincus.
LEST WE FORGET AGAIN: Newly confirmed Secretary of the Navy John Phelan left Washington last week for his first international trip to the Pacific. During a stopover in Hawaii, Phelan paid a solemn visit to the USS Arizona memorial and posted short videos on social media. Unfortunately, in two separate Tweets (or X posts or whatever you call ‘em these days,) Phelan (or whomever writes his social media posts) marked that fateful day as June 7, 1941. Yes, everyone indeed does need an editor. The date was eventually corrected – but not before some folks captured the images and made fun of the new Secretary of the Navy for not knowing the date of the Pearl Harbor attack. That Twitter-verse can be so unforgiving.
HIGH PROFILE: The whole point of The Dead Drop is not to take things too seriously, so we’re also noting that Phelan seems to be adopting a ‘made for Twitter’ communications strategy by signing proclamations in big folders on camera for the world to see. The PR blitz may be the work of Kristina Wong, who Phelan recently introduced (on X-Twitter) as his new “Director of Communications and Chief Spokesperson for the Department of the Navy.” Ms. Wong, who came from Breitbart News, is a bit of a departure from previous folks who have served in that role. Since shortly after Pearl Harbor Day (you know back in June 1941) the chief spokesperson for the Navy has been an active-duty admiral.
MEET AND GREET? Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Russia’s TASS news agency that he had a “very constructive conversation” during a phone call with his CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Naryshkin said he wasn’t going to “rule out the possibility of a meeting in the near future.” This was the second reported call between the two. We haven’t noticed the CIA announcing or confirming the call or any possible visits but we have no reason to doubt Naryshkin. After all – would the SVR lie? We would, however, have loved to have been a fly on the wall during those conversations. If ever there was a caption contest, eh?
BENCHMARKED FOR ESPIONAGE: BUGS IN PUBS AND PARKS: Blimey. The Mirror in the UK says British spy chiefs have warned that parks and pubs near the Houses of Parliament have been bugged by Chinese spies looking to suck up State secrets. For example, the Red Lion pub, located close to Parliament was said by one source to be “full of Chinese agents.” Five-star London hotels are also reportedly sometimes infested with bugs (the audio kind). And some of the park benches nearby are also allegedly wired for sound. What is the world coming to when you can’t even hide your secrets in Hyde Park?
VICTORY AT SEA: Two weeks ago, the Dead Drop wrote about the official motto of the Navy guided missile destroyer USS BARRY (DDG-52) having been quietly changed. For about a third of a century, the motto had been “Strength and Diversity” – and the “diversity” mostly referred to the diverse kind of weapons on the ship. Then the diversity disappeared. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (and Cipher Brief expert) retired Admiral James Stavridis was the second commanding officer of the BARRY in the early 1990s. He recently wrote about diversity in the motto being deep-sixed in a piece for Bloomberg headlined “My Old Warship Is Caught Up in the Battle Over DEI.” Something must have worked – because official Navy websites now seem to have quietly restored the original motto.
VICTORY FOR TOM HANKS: If you’re like us and love the show Slow Horses on Apple TV+ then you’re probably going to love hearing that the network has given the green light to a television adaptation of Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir novels. The small screen version will take us back to 1930s Berlin as seen through the eyes of an ex-policeman who gets pulled into the Nazi world. Spies tell us that the adaptation is based on Kerr’s book, Metropolis, which sees Kerr’s main character Gunther Berlin, joining the elite Berlin Murder Squad. We extra think this will be a good one because the project is hitched to Tom Hank’s Playtone Film Production Company. The Cipher Brief interviewed Hanks as part of the 2025 HONORS Dinner which recognized Hollywood pioneer (and Hanks’ buddy) Walter Parkes.
SPEAKING OF HANKS: Word is out that the actor has written and is starring in a sequel to his very popular World War II Navy movie “Greyhound” which (according to ScreenRant) was one of Apple TV+’s biggest movies ever when it was released in 2020. At the time we called it “Top Gun for ship drivers.” The sequel is said to start filming in Australia in January 2026 and will feature Hanks as the commanding officer of a Navy destroyer as he and his crew move “from the beaches of Normandy to the Pacific Ocean as they help turn the tide of the war.” We reported back in 2022, that a sequel to Greyhound was on the horizon – but now it appears to be closing in on production.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
THE PRICE OF WAR: It’s not easy to work up a lot of sympathy for Russian military invaders of Ukraine, but one can’t help but be taken aback by photos of Maxim Bakharev who was once an Olympian who won a gold medal in the 2018 Karate World Championships. He was recently elected “Chairman of the Council of Sports Veterans at the Moscow Regional Branch of the Russian Kickboxing Federation” – an honor that came after Bakharev lost all four limbs fighting in Ukraine. The accounts of how he was injured vary a bit between the Ukrainian and Russian versions. The Russian version says: “Despite suffering multiple wounds to his arms and legs, Bakharev held the line, destroyed 2 tanks and 4 BMPs, and eliminated around 20 enemy fighters — continuing to command even while critically injured. All his comrades were lost in the battle. Bleeding and unable to move his arms, he crawled toward a radio and, using his nose, managed to call for help.”
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