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6:30 PM ET, Monday, September 11, 2023

The Cipher Brief curates open source information from around the world that impacts national security. Here's a look at today's headlines, broken down by region of the world:  

The Americas

U.S. Marks Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks.  The U.S. marked the 22nd anniversary of the September 11, 2011, attacks on Monday.  President Joe Biden, who just concluded a five-day trip to India and Vietnam, marked the day by addressing over 1,000 servicemembers, first responders and their families at a military base in Anchorage, Alaska — a departure from presidential custom of spending the day in Washington or New York.  Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials joined families at the 9/11 Memorial, while second gentleman Douglas Emhoff laid a wreath at the memorial for United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  Reuters

Lula Rolls Back Comments that Putin Could Freely Attend G20 Summit in Brazil.  Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday rolled back comments he made saying Brazil would ignore a war crimes arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin if he attended the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Rio de Janeiro next year.  Lula said on Saturday that Putin would be invited to the meeting and could “go easily” if he decided to attend, signaling that Brazil would not recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s arrest warrant for Putin over his alleged role in the forced deportation of children from Ukraine.  Lula later said on Monday that it would be up to Brazil’s judiciary to decide on a potential arrest, and not his government.  However, he added that Brazil would review its membership in the International Criminal Court, noting that “the U.S., India, and China didn’t sign the treaty.”  Reuters Al Jazeera

Western Europe

British Parliamentary Researcher Accused of Being a Chinese Spy.  British media reports that London’s Metropolitan Police arrested a parliamentary researcher in March for allegedly working as a spy for China.  Lawyers for the researcher released a statement on his behalf in which he denies the accusations and maintains he is “completely innocent,” adding that he has only ever worked to “educate others” about challenges and threats from the Chinese Communist Party.  The Chinese Embassy in the UK also rejected the allegations, saying that the claim that the suspect was “stealing British intelligence” is “completely fabricated and malicious slander.”  Police said Sunday that they have released two suspects, including the researcher, on police bail until early October, adding that they were arrested under the Official Secrets Act.  The second suspect has not commented publicly on the matter.  British Prime Minister Sunak said he had raised “concerns about any interference” in Britain’s democracy with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the Group of 20 summit in India.  However, lawmakers and security officials have called on Britain to strengthen its response, in contrast with efforts by Sunak’s government to engage with China while raising such issues.  South China Morning Post Reuters

Central and Eastern Europe

U.S. Considers Giving Ukraine Longer-Range Missiles Filled With Cluster Munitions.  U.S. officials say the Biden administration is close to approving the delivery of longer-range missiles armed with cluster bombs to Ukraine.  Officials said the U.S. is considering sending either or both Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) with a 190-mile range or Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles with a 45-mile range packed with cluster bombs.  The U.S. has so far sent 155 mm artillery with an 18-mile range which can carry up to 48 bomblets to Ukraine.  The ATACMS could send over 300 bomblets, and the GMLRS system could disperse up to 404 munitions.  Sources said the weapons, which could deal significant damage deep inside Russian-occupied territory, aim to back progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, especially in areas that Ukrainian troops are attempting to pierce through Russian lines.  The weapons would be drawn from U.S. stockpiles if they are sent.  Officials note that the decision to transfer the ATACMS or GMLRS is not final and could ultimately fall through.  While Ukraine currently has a version of the GMLRS system in its arsenal, it has yet to receive any ATACMS from the U.S. despite asking for them for months.  Reuters

UK Says Russia Targeted Cargo Ship in Odesa Port.  The U.K. on Monday accused Russia of targeting a civilian cargo vessel in Odesa port on the Black Sea on August 24.  Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made the accusation in an update to parliament, saying that “declassified intelligence” showed Russia launched missiles at the ship.  Britain’s foreign office said the missiles, including two Kalibr missiles fired from a Black Sea Fleet missile carrier, were shot down.  The statements mark the first time an official has commented on a cargo ship being targeted since Ukraine began efforts to allow vessels stranded in the Odessa port to sail to open waters.  Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to the accusations.  Reuters

Armenia, U.S. Start Joint Military Drills Near Yerevan.  Armenia and the U.S. started joint military training exercises near the Armenian capital of Yerevan on Monday.  The 10-day “Eagle Partner” exercise involves 85 U.S. troops and 175 Armenian soldiers.  Armenia’s defense ministry said the drills aim to prepare Armenian forces to participate in international peacekeeping missions.  Russia, which has a military base in Armenia, has opposed the drills.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he does not expect “anything good” to come from the drills, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow will “monitor the situation.”  The drills come amid heightened tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.  Both sides have accused each other of recently building up troops near their border.  Reuters RFE/RL Wall Street Journal

Ukraine Warns Russia Could Be Preparing Mobilization Campaign.  Ukraine’s military warned on Monday that Russia could soon launch a new large mobilization campaign to recruit hundreds of thousands of soldiers from inside Russia and occupied Ukraine.  The Ukrainian General Staff said “a mass forced mobilization of the population is expected soon… due to the occupiers' catastrophic losses” so far in the war.  The General Staff did not provide evidence in its statement to support this accusation but claimed that the new campaign would aim to recruit between 400,000 and 700,000 soldiers.  The General Staff also claimed that Russians recruited in Moscow and St Petersburg would remain “minimal” and that a mobilization drive would instead draw heavily from regions outside the two cities.  Russian officials have said that there are no current plans to initiate a new mobilization wave and that Moscow is focusing on recruiting professional soldiers.  Reuters

Ukrainian Decoys Exhausting Russian Firepower.  Ukrainian company Metinvest, once Ukraine’s largest metallurgy group, is contributing to the war effort by creating replicas of weapons deployed by the Ukrainian military to act as decoys.  A Metinvest spokesperson said hundreds of decoys have been destroyed by Russian forces, which saves Ukrainian lives and protects precious military assets while wasting expensive Russian ammunition.  The decoys are made of extremely cheap material like plywood but are built to look like legitimate targets from the air and have enough metal added to them to fool radars and drones.  The spokesperson said the company’s decoys have been so successful that it is struggling to keep up with demand.  CNN

Ukraine Expanding Use of Drones to Counter Russians.  The Wall Street Journal is out with a report on how the Ukraine war has proven to be an incubator of the use of drones in conventional combat.  The report says that Ukraine has accelerated its use of drones for military purposes, progressing from off-the-shelf drones for reconnaissance to drones made from scratch or 3D-printing machines to deliver explosives.  In the spring, Ukrainian troops added first-person-view (FPV) drones to their arsenals to overwhelm Russian defenses and target heavy weaponry in swarm attacks.  Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” initiative, launched last summer, is spearheading these efforts to promote the use and innovation of drones in the battlefield, often with private sector involvement.  Ukrainian military officials and analysts say drones are being integrated into Ukraine’s ground forces at an unprecedented scale, which they say will shape future conflicts.  Russia has also relied on drones in its invasion of Ukraine, learning from some Ukrainian tactics, such as the deployment of FPVs.  Wall Street Journal

Germany's Baerbock Visits Kyiv.  German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Kyiv on Monday, marking her fourth trip to the Ukrainian capital since the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022.  Baerbock pledged to help Ukraine as it seeks membership in the European Union.  She also called on Russia to return abducted Ukrainian children, asserting that Moscow is brainwashing them “with the aim of turning them against their own homeland” and that their return to Ukraine will be “the first step towards peace.”  Kyiv says Russia has forcibly taken around 20,000 Ukrainian children from occupied areas, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner over their alleged role in the abductions.  Deutsche Welle

Asia and Oceania

Chinese Premier Told Biden that Rising China Not a Challenge for U.S. Chinese Premier Li Qiang told U.S. President Joe Biden that China’s rise is not a challenge for the U.S. and that the two sides should strengthen communication.  According to China’s foreign ministry, Li stressed to Biden at the sidelines of the G20 summit in India that China’s development should be seen as an opportunity and not a challenge and called for more engagement between the U.S. and China.  The ministry added that Biden reportedly said the U.S. hopes China’s economy will grow and that Washington “will not hurt its growth.”  Biden said in a subsequent visit to Hanoi that his participation in the summit and pursuit of stronger ties with Vietnam are not aimed at “containing China” or starting a new “cold war” but are about alliance-building to “maintain stability.”  Li and Biden’s meeting was the highest-level engagement between the U.S. and China in months, though military exchanges are still on pause due to continued U.S. sanctions on Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu.  South China Morning Post

Australian Security Raid on Chinese Academic Casts Doubt on Further Exchanges.  Last month, Australia’s security agency and police reportedly questioned a Chinese university scholar and seized some of his equipment over security reasons.  Sources said the Chinese scholar visited universities in three Australian states in July and August and specialized in foreign policy research at a Beijing university.  The Guardian reported that during the raid, the scholar was told his visa was being assessed for security reasons and that he has since returned to China.  The incident has caused some Australian academics to reconsider their China travel plans out of fear of retaliation.  This comes as a high-level dialogue between Chinese and Australian delegations resumed in Beijing on Thursday after a four year hiatus. One participant in the dialogue was a Chinese scholar who had his Australian visa revoked in 2020 by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization amid concern over foreign interference in politics.  The Albanese government has said that foreign interference targeting academics is a critical threat to Australian democracy.  Reuters The Guardian

Pakistan Says Taliban Building ‘Unlawful Structures’ on Border.  Pakistan on Monday accused the Afghan Taliban of encroaching on its territory with the construction of an “unlawful structure” within Pakistan, and also accused Afghan forces of “indiscriminate firing” in an incident that led to the closure of the main border crossing between the two countries last week.  The Torkham border crossing has been closed since Wednesday after forces from both sides exchanged fire, stranding hundreds of trucks and thousands of travelers.  The Taliban administration foreign ministry claimed that the shooting started after Pakistani security forces fired on Afghan troops while they were fixing an old border outpost.  Pakistan’s foreign ministry countered that the shooting was related to Afghan Taliban constructing a structure inside Pakistani territory, which violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.  Disputes along the Afghan-Pakistani border have been a source of tension between Kabul and Islamabad for decades.  Reuters

Middle East and Northern Africa

Israel Says South Lebanon Airport Used for Iranian Attacks.  Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has accused Iran of setting up an airport in southern Lebanon to stage attacks against Israel.  At a recent international security conference, Gallant showed aerial images of what he described to be an airport built by Iran made to pursue “terrorist objectives” against Israel.  Gallant further specified that the site could accommodate mid-sized aircraft and that the location of the site was near the Lebanese village of Brisket Jabbour.  Israel has been long troubled with Iran’s support for militants in the region, with tensions rising this year after several incidents with Lebanese Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border.  Reuters Associated Press Times of Israel

Sub Saharan Africa

Commercial Flights to Mali’s Timbuktu Halted Over Islamist Blockade. The only commercial airline flying to the central Mali city of Timbuktu, Sky Mali, has canceled flights due to an increased security risk within the city, which has been under a month-long Islamist blockade.  Timbuktu has been suffering a food shortage and lack of aid supplies since an al Qaeda affiliate group cut off access to the city by road and river in August.  Sky Mali announced the suspension of flights shortly after two residents said they had heard shell fire near the city’s airport on Monday morning.  Insecurity in Mali has increased since the West African country’s military leadership threw out French troops and asked U.N. peacekeepers to leave, inviting Russian private military contractors to fill the gap.  The halt to flights came after an al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a military base in northeastern Mali on Friday.  Authorities also blamed the group for an earlier attack on another military camp and a river boat that killed over 60 people.  Reuters Barron’s

Cyber and Tech

UK Critical Services Organizations Report Record Number of Cyberattack Disruptions.  In just the first six months of the year, cyberattacks causing significant disruption of British critical IT infrastructure were greater in number than any previous full year, reports from government agencies indicate.  Thirteen such online disruptions affected organizations providing critical technology services so far this year, jumping from four attacks per year in 2021 and 2022.  Reportable cyberattacks must meet specific thresholds for critical services, such as the loss of electrical supply to 50,000 customers for more than three minutes.  The essential services covered by this category range from power plants to IT infrastructure to healthcare sectors.  Security experts contacted by Recorded Future News commented that the increase from previous years may be caused by improvements in service providers’ awareness of reporting duties and detection capabilities rather than by surges in attacks by hackers.  A government spokesperson agreed that clearer understanding in critical industries of reporting requirements likely resulted in an increase this year of reported incidents, adding “there is no evidence that any current increase is linked to an increase in hostile activity and any suggestion otherwise is without basis whatsoever.”  The Record

Joint UK Agency Study Examines Cybercriminals’ Integrated Attack Methods.  A joint report of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and National Crime Agency (NCA) focuses on the increasing professionalism of the “ransomware ecosystem” as it seeks to “gain efficiencies and maximize profits.”  The joint report downplayed how the NCSC and NCA handle individual ransomware variants, noting that such too much attention to random strains is of limited use “unless the underlying disease is addressed.”  The focus of the report is on the overall attack path employed by cybercriminals, from initial access attempts leading to the deployment of ransomware and eventual extortion demands and payouts.  Lindy Cameron, the NCSC chief executive, said the agencies’ analysis focused on the “complexities of the cybercrime ecosystem” and the way the interlocking elements of technology, partners, and distributors “contribute to the devastating outcomes of ransomware attacks on the UK’s organizations.  The NCA’s director general, James Babbage, noted that while some individual threat actors and groups have been forced to disband, “as a whole the criminal industry is effective at amending its activities and business models dynamically to efficiently extract funds from victims.”  The Record

Pro-China Disinformation Campaign Links Maui Wildfires to U.S. Military.  Pro-China social media and blog postings are attributing the recent wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui to experimental U.S. military weapons, part of a wide-ranging Chinese disinformation campaign.  NewsGuard singled out 85 social media and blog accounts in August and September that disseminated allegations and video content suggesting that Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency had concluded the U.S. military was responsible for the wildfires.  The disinformation was spread across a number of platforms, including Facebook, X, YouTube, and the blog site, Medium.  Many of the postings carried a nearly identical message that “this Hawaiian wildfire is just a ‘weather weapon’ attack experiment conducted by the US military!”  According to NewsGuard, the influence operation targeted users in multiple countries, with content rendered in 15 languages besides Chinese, including English, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Indonesian, and Marathi, an official Indian language.  NewsGuard contacted a number of the platforms targeted by the influence operation, including X, YouTube, Quora, Vimeo, Tumblr, and Pinterest, for comment on the accounts involved in the disinformation campaign and to determine if there were any linkages to China. None of the platforms responded to NewsGuard’s questions although several seem to have taken down accounts that NewsGuard flagged.  NewsGuard

Meta Planning New, More Powerful AI Language Model To Keep Pace with Competition.  Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has embarked on a new AI large language model (LLM) development program that reportedly will be several times more powerful than the Llama 2 model it released in July.  The projected LLM could help clients create systems to generate sophisticated text content, analysis, and other services.  Sources said the training of the new LLM is expected to begin in early 2024.  Meta’s development of data centers to support its AI programs are underway, including acquisition of Nvidia’s most advanced H100 AI chips.  Unlike the Llama 2 model, which was deployed on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, Meta plans to train the new model on its own systems and to be made available to companies as an open source tool.  Possible downsides to offering an open source model include increased risks of incorporation of copyright-protected information as well as greater exposure of the tool to bad actors who could use it to spread disinformation and perform other malignant actions.  Wall Street Journal

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