DANISH GRAYMAIL? Two top former Danish officials who had been facing trial for leaking classified information got good news last week, when officials in Copenhagen dropped the charges against them. Former minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen and former head of the Danish Defence Intelligence Service Lards Findsen had been charged with leaking highly-classified information but the Supreme Court of Denmark said if they went to trial – the case would have to have been laid out in public – and according to Reuters, the prosecutors didn’t want to do more damage – by revealing in public whatever the two men supposedly leaked. So, what did they leak? We don’t know - although some media reports suggest it had something to do with a secret surveillance agreement between Denmark and the U.S. National Security Agency.
SUBTWEET: The U.S. military is notoriously tight lipped about certain things – among the most closely guarded secrets is the movement of Navy submarines. That’s why it was more than a little eyebrow raising when U.S. Central Command put out a tweet (or whatever you call tweets on “X” these days) announcing that an Ohio-class guided missile submarine had arrived in their area of responsibility. Clearly, a not-so-subtle subtle message was being sent to the Ayatollahs in Iran to tread lightly or the boat could give them a lot of headaches. Originally, this class of submarine carried ICBMs…but four are now designated as guided missile carrying subs and they sport 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Each of those missiles has a thousand-pound warhead. While announcing the deployment, the silent service (as the submarine force is sometimes called) has not completely changed their ways – they did not name WHICH Ohio-class sub is now lurking in range of Iran – but just knowing that some Ohio-class boat is there should be enough to focus minds Tehran’s attention. Not wanting to come in second in un-subtle sub news, Moscow announced this that their new strategic missile carrying submarine named the “Imperator Alexander III” (which must sound better in Russian) launched a “Bulava” ICBM. The Russian defense ministry said the missile was launched from underwater in the White Sea off Russia’s northern coast and hit a target thousands of miles away on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. If you crave more palaver about the Bulava, check out The Cipher Brief’s Open Source Report from Monday morning.
DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE, DOUBLE YOUR FUN: Remember last week, we talked about media reports that Vladimir Putin may have met his maker and had been replaced by a body double? Well, we discovered that recently the tabloid, The Sun, claimed that Japanese facial recognition experts have concluded that Vlad has at least two doubles. One of the tricky parts about deciding who the fake Putin is – is figuring out who the real one is/was. The Japanese experts decided to use the Putin who was at a Red Square parade in May as the real deal – and calculate that the version who drove across the Crimean Bridge five months before that had only a 53% similarity with Parade Putin. But there was a purported Putin put forth in Mariupol in March who garnered only a 40% match with the Red Square guy. And the Mariupol and Bridge guys only had 18% similarity with each other. No further word on the real Vlad’s real condition.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: What sparked the recent White House Executive Order (EO) on Artificial Intelligence (AI)? And how did the order get created in far less time than complex papers usually require? According to the Associated Press, the decision was triggered in part by President Biden after watching Tom Cruise’s movie “Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” The bad guy in the film – is not a guy but a rogue AI device known as “the Entity” that sinks a submarine and kills its crew at the start of the flick. At first, we thought attributing the AI EO to “MI” was the work of a rogue movie studio publicist – but AP quotes deputy White House Chief of Staff Bruce Reed as confirming the impact of the movie saying of Biden: “If he hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about.” Reed said he watched the film with the president. Good thing they didn’t watch “Barbie” at Camp David, or the AI Executive Order might still be on the drawing board.
AIR MASTERS: Coming in January is a big budget miniseries on Apple TV+ called “Masters of the Air” about the World War II Eighth Air Force’s 100th Bombardment Group. The unit engaged in vicious battles over Europe losing 732 airmen and had 177 aircraft shot down on bombing runs during a 22-month period. Military.com notes that the series took longer to shoot and get ready to stream than it took for the Army Air Forces to bomb Nazi Germany into submission. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are executive producers. Given their past successes – we don’t expect the series to bomb.
AIM HIGHER: Remember last week, we told you about the great progress made by the Pentagon’s UFO-hunting outfit the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)? The unit introduced a form that current and former government officials can use to report unexplained aerial sightings. Well this week, Sean Kirkpatrick the AARO boss announced that he is retiring from the federal government because he is ready to “move on” and explains that he has “…accomplished everything I said I was going to do.” Really? We would have thought the AARO head would have targeted finding out stuff like – you know, what those UFOs are…
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN: We recently listened to an interesting podcast by the fine folks at the International Spy Museum about FBI agent turned Russian turncoat Robert Hanssen. Well, to be precise the podcast is about another podcast about Hanssen. The Spy Museum interviewed CBS correspondent Major Garrett and others who participated in an eight-part deep dive into Hanssen. The series is called “Agent of Betrayal.” We thought about doing a Cipher Brief podcast about the podcast about the podcast but the whole idea made us dizzy.
SHAMELESS (Promotion): Bits of interesting stuff going on at The Cipher Brief:
HOW TO WRITE A BOOK THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ: The Cipher Brief does have a new podcast out however, featuring someone who knows a lot about writing books. Serial best-selling author George Galdorisi has written a ton of them – including several of the rebooted Tom Clancy Op-Center series. His latest book is a non-fiction work that he wrote with co-author Kevin McDonald offering practical advice to aspiring writers. What’s it called? It’s aptly titled, Braveship Writers Share Their Secrets: How to Write Books People Actually Read. We really like this podcast because the interviewer, Cover Stories Podcast co-host Bill Harlow, has also written tons of books that people have actually read. You can listen to the Cover Stories podcast (and subscribe to it as well) wherever you listen to podcasts.
HOW TO SIGN UP FOR A NEWSLETTER THAT ACTUALLY COVERS BOOKS: It’s getting to be that time of year when we all begin to scramble to find the ‘perfect’ gift for the person who has everything. The Cipher Brief is offering reader’s a free subscription to the Under/Cover Book Review Newsletter so you can find out which books our experts say are the best of the season.
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