CIA CTO, REALLY REAL: Last Friday, CIA Director Bill Burns announced the appointment of Nand Mulchandani to serve as the first Chief Technology Officer at the Agency. His job will be to “…ensure the Agency is leveraging cutting-edge innovations and scanning the horizon for tomorrow’s innovations to further CIA’s mission.” Mulchandani comes with an impressive resume. Most recently, he was CTO and Acting Director of DoD’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. He has extensive experience in the private sector and degrees from Cornell, Stanford and Harvard. Mulchandani was born in India and later became a U.S. citizen. We noticed the announcement of his appointment sparked a lot of pride in his former homeland. And he apparently has a lot of friends judging by his LinkedIn post, where he talked about his new assignment. Within a few days, it had generated close to 40,000 likes, 2,500 comments and over 4 million impressions. Most of the comments were positive. A few folks speculated that he wasn’t a real person but just a CIA-invented avatar. And a few troglodytes chastised him for revealing his secret gig. That prompted Mulchandani to post an update informing readers that not everyone at CIA is undercover, his new role is designed to be public facing, and Dead Drop is assured that yes, he is a real person.
YOU CAN MAKE THIS STUFF UP – BUT YOU SHOULDN’T: In case you haven’t noticed, the Ukrainians have been outdoing the Russians in a variety of ways since the February 24 invasion of Ukraine. On the land, in the air and on the sea – Kyiv has been kicking butt. Not only that, but they have also run rings around the Russians when it comes to information warfare. Still, their performance in that domain has not been flawless. Case in point: there was word this week that the heroic pilot the Ukrainians had dubbed “the Ghost of Kyiv” was just an apparition. Apparently, the flyboy was just a figment of the fertile minds of Ukrainian air force officials who tried to spin a story about how the Ghost “embodies a collective image” of their many heroic pilots – but was not a single person. Until recently, they claimed ‘he’ was real. The Ukrainians had been feeding the Ghost’s legend since the start of the war – with some of their accounts crediting him for shooting down 40 Russian aircraft (which should have been a red flare, right there.) The Ukrainians even released ‘footage’ of some of his kills – which, as it turns out, were created in a flight simulator. Still, the disinformation seemed successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Here at The Dead Drop (DD), we kinda feel like they didn’t need to dream up the Ghost – a manuever that will only serve to undermine legitimate claims of military success going forward.
SAY WHAT? Watching MSNBC at breakfast time recently, we heard something that made us spit out our Morning Joe. Anchor Mika Brzezinski was teasing an upcoming segment on Ukraine featuring an interview with a retired “Master Sergeant” who she said leads “the Association of the United States Navy.” Hah, we thought. Mika doesn’t know they don’t have Master Sergeants in the Navy. Moments later though, Anchor Joe Scarborough interviewed the guest. Scarborough is a native of Navy town Pensacola, Florida, so he would know for sure this wasn’t correct. But he too, referred to the interviewee as a Master Sergeant. Jason Beardsley, Joe said, is the executive director of the aforementioned Navy association. The joke was on us – we looked up Beardsley – who is indeed a retired Army E-8. And according to his LinkedIn profile and twitter account, he runs the “AUSN.” The next day, Beardsley published an OPED in the Washington Times titled, “Our military and intelligence leaders are failing us.” At the bottom of the piece, the Times noted that Beardsley was a sailor before becoming a Green Beret. This still raises the question – didn’t any career sailors apply for the job? DD suggests that One thing Beardsley might do, is work on his organization’s website which, unless we missed it, doesn’t reveal that they have a retired Master Sergeant in charge.
THAT DIDN’T GO DOWN WELL: Politicoreports that members of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees have started getting new secret briefings from DoD regarding what everyone (except the Pentagon) calls “UFOs.” But many of those receiving the briefings reportedly have been underwhelmed. For example, unidentified aide to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) said “DoD need to take this issue much more seriously and get in motion.” Another aide – this time one working for Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) courageously speaking on background said: “Rubio is definitely frustrated,” adding that DOD is “…not doing enough, not sharing enough.” One House member, Rep. Tim Burchett (R, TN) said: “I don’t trust the Department of Defense to get this right since leadership there has always been part of a cover-up.” We are not sure about that. Perhaps the Pentagon leadership have just been busy searching for signs of intelligent life on earth.
FLIPPER FIGHTS WITH VLAD? Some folks were surprised last week to see reports that Russia has deployed trained dolphins to prevent Ukrainian divers from attacking their ships at the Black Sea naval base in Sevastopol. Employing the marine mammals makes sense – since they are less likely than Russian troops to use unencrypted cell phones to call home, thereby exposing their positions. NBC News quoted an expert from the U.S. Naval Institute noting the Russians also deployed dolphins to Syria in 2018, “to counter enemy divers, retrieve objects from the sea floor, and perform intelligence operations.” The U.S. Navy’s marine mammal program dates way back to 1959. We learned from the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific’s website that you too might be able to request their “mammal recovery services.” While the USN dolphins and sea lions are used mostly for anti-mine warfare, other branches of the military; federal, state, and local agencies; and even “private parties with an approved support agreement” can request that they help you find stuff you lost underwater. And the good news is “in most cases the cost of employing” them “is limited to travel related services.” The dolphins probably insist on flying first class, however.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
I FEEL THE NEED, THE NEED TO DISBELIEVE: In addition to real Navy fighters featured in the long-delayed “Top Gun: Maverick” movie about to hit theaters on May 27th – there is also a fictional plane they call: “Darkstar.” The filmmakers built a full-size mockup of the hypersonic jet which is said to resemble a possible future SR-72. According to the website Sandboxx, the film’s producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, claims that, “The Navy told us that a Chinese satellite turned and headed on a different route to photograph that plane. They thought it was real. That’s how real it looks.” We’re guessing if the U.S. government detected Chinese satellites being re-routed – they would not likely inform Hollywood – especially the makers of a film so beholden to China that they removed a Taiwan flag patch from Maverick’s flight jacket to avoid bruising feelings in Beijing.
GOT ANY NEWS SO BIG IT COULD BE SEEN FROM SPACE? Don’t make us move our satellites, just email news tips to us at: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
Today’s constant barrage of information makes it easy for countries to wage disinformation campaigns and your emotions are the weapon of choice. Learn how disinformation works and how we can fight it in this short video. This is one link you can feel good about sharing.
