HAVE A CUP OF ESPIONAGE: Much of the world is focused on events in Qatar right now and a sport most of the world calls “football” but is known to Americans as “soccer” (to the extent it is known at all.) The FIFA World Cup is generating headlines for the matches, the political shenanigans that landed the event in that unlikely location, and the repressive conditions that many athletes, journalists, fans – and local “guest” workers are being asked/forced to accept. The Cipher Brief doesn’t usually focus on sports – but what caught our eye was a report released recently by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, predicting that Qatar will also face cyber threats of Olympian proportions during the course of the games. The report says that the 2022 FIFA World Cup is a “target-rich environment for cyber espionage and surveillance against foreign dignitaries and businesspersons alike.” To make matters worse, Russia reportedly holds a series of grudges against the Qataris – and some theorize that Moscow may mess around just to embarrass Qatar (a country that already has a proclivity to score “own goals” and embarrass themselves without any help.) Recorded Future says they were not aware of any imminent cyber security threats – but their spidey sense says: watch out.
ELON-GATE: So far, Elon Musk’s conquest of Twitter is going so well – it would appear that his campaign was developed by the same brilliant strategists who planned Russia’s hostile takeover of Ukraine. Musk still has time to turn things around, of course, and rescue some of the $44 billion he sank into the acquisition. Musk has 118 million followers on his personal twitter account. According to our math, if he can just convince each of them to mail him a check for about $375 – he should be able to pay off his Twitter debt. But Musk may have trouble keeping the social media platform afloat even then – since he has laid over half the staff and somewhere near half the rest seem to have beaten him to the punch and departed on their own accord. What makes any of this Dead Drop material is that we noticed a LinkedIn announcement from (former CIA officer and TCB fav) Nada Bakos, who for the past 14 months has been working as a “senior policy trust and safety officer” at Twitter. Bakos revealed that she decided to take the severance package and get out while the going was good. You may recall her book The Targeter: My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House which was favorably reviewed in The Cipher Brief. Apparently, she decided challenging the White House and dealing with terrorists was one thing – but putting up with the “hard core” leadership at Twitter was just asking too much.
THE PLOT THICKENS: The missile that landed just across the Ukrainian border inside Poland on November 15th made an enormous impact – not just because of the crater it left, or the two farmers who were tragically killed – but because of the potential geopolitical implications that sent shockwaves around the world. Initially, experts (including ours) were saying that in a matter of hours the world would likely know where the missile came from and whether it landed where it did through accident or intent. Turns out, answers were not as speedy and definitive as most had hoped. For more of the early tick-tock – check out the survey of TCB’s finest minds in our piece The Impact of a Single Missile. We couldn’t help but notice that senior Ukrainian officials were urging caution before jumping to conclusions. Outside of Moscow – the general consensus is that Russia bears the blame – whether they fired the missile – or fired a missile at Ukraine – and a Ukrainian attempt to shoot it down led to the impact in Poland. But here is one possible explanation of what happened that is so wacky it might be true. A video posted on YouTube by a Ukrainian named Denys Davydov notes if you take the latitude from Kiev…and the longitude from the Ukrainian city of Lviv …and plot it as a single location, it turns out to be almost exactly where the missile struck in Poland. So, the idea is – that some knuckleheaded Russian might have plugged in some bad numbers and hit Poland by mistake. One person who likely hopes that explanation holds up, may be (now former) AP correspondent James LaPorta who reportedly was fired over the story that quoted a single “senior U.S. intelligence official” saying “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.”
FAMILIAR ECHO: Mike Boal has hit it big in Hollywood in the past as a writer and executive producer for films like “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” Now, he is branching out to television with a new series called “Echo 3” which is airing on AppleTV+. According to Military Times, the plot is about two veteran special operators who are also brothers-in-law. In the series, they somehow get involved in trying to rescue one of their wives, who is “a research scientist exploring drug therapies who is later kidnapped in a political plot that threatens to expose a war in the remote jungles near the Colombia-Venezuela border.” Boal says veterans and active-duty military are sometimes portrayed by Hollywood “in a kind of cookie cutter or cartoonish way” but he hopes to avoid that. We wish him luck – but are not sure he entirely avoided a cartoonlike atmosphere since his two main male characters go by the names “Bambi” and “Prince.”
YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY: The website We are the Mighty posted an article recently headlined “From ‘China Beach’ to ‘NCIS”: 6 of the best military veteran TV writers.” The piece starts with the line: “Here are the 5 Best military veteran TV writers.” Their list: WWII Army veteran Rod Serling of “The Twilight Zone,” Marine vet Don Bellisario who brought us “Magnum P.I.” and “NCIS,” Norman Lear who was in the Army Air Corps during WWII and is known for “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times,” Vietnam-era USMC vet William Broyles who wrote “China Beach” and dual entry Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds who were responsible for “M*A*S*H”. Gelbart was in the Army in WWII and Reynolds in the Navy. We note that most of those shows - and writers - are very old.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
IT’LL ALL COME OUT IN THE WASH: A military court in Moscow has reportedly put a colonel from the Russian general staff through the wringer. Radio Free Europe/Libertysays Colonel Ivan Mertvishchev is in two months pretrial detention for “demanding a washing machine as a bribe” from the head of a local enlistment center responsible for recruiting soldiers for the war in Ukraine. The colonel allegedly threatened the man with a bad evaluation, staining his reputation, if he didn’t deliver a suitable laundry device. The colonel now faces up to 12 years in prison and a load of fines unless his lawyers can come up with some convincing spin. The original story appeared in Kommersant.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE: It is heartwarming how professional sports teams in the United State go out of their way every November to salute current and former service members as part of their Veterans Day/Week/Month celebrations. Among those doing the honors recently were the Minnesota Vikings who, during TV commercial time outs, elected to show on their jumbo screen at U.S. Bank Stadium, salutes to service personnel submitted by fans. The Vikings fumbled a bit, however, by including a tweet from a fan who sent in a picture of someone in uniform and a caption saying: “This is my cousin Joel who served in the Army.” He added: “He has always been an inspiration and someone I look up to for his heroism. He is also a HUGE Vikes fan. #skolsalute.” Turns out, however, the person shown was reportedly not a soldier but a veteran adult film star who goes by “Johnny Sins.” The error was not, however, the worst thing the Vikings showed on the Jumbotron. That honor would go to the final score: Dallas 40 – Minnesota 3.
THANK US FOR OUR SERVICE: By donating your finest news tips to us (real ones – not those fake sleazy ones). Send them to: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com
