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Government Corruption
A band of innovators reimagines the spy game for a world with no cover By David Ignatius July 10, 2025
2025-07-11
[WAPO] Aaron Brown was working as a CIA case officer in 2018 when he wrote a post for an agency blog warning about what he called "gait recognition." He cautioned his fellow officers that computer algorithms would soon be able to identify people not just by their faces, or fingerprints, or DNA — but by the unique ways they walked.

Many of his colleagues, trained in the traditional arts of disguise and concealment, were skeptical. One called it "threat porn." But Brown’s forecast was chillingly accurate. A study published in May reported that a model called FarSight, using gait, body and face recognition, was 83 percent accurate in verifying an individual at up to 1,000 meters, and was 65 percent accurate even when the face was obscured. "It’s hard to overstate how powerful that is," Brown said.

Brown’s story illustrates a profound transformation that is taking place in the world of intelligence. For spies, there is literally no place to hide. Millions of cameras around the world record every movement and catalogue it forever. Every action leaves digital tracks that can be studied and linked with others. Your cellphone and social media accounts tell the world precisely who and where you are.

Further, attempts at concealment can backfire in the digital age. An intelligence source told me that the CIA gave burner phones to a network of spies in a Middle Eastern country more than a decade ago and instructed them to turn the phones on only when sending operational messages. But the local security service had devised an algorithm that could identify "anomalous" phones that were used infrequently. The network was exposed by its attempt at secrecy.

"The more you try to hide, the more you stand out," Brown explained. He wouldn’t discuss the Middle East case or any other operational details. But the lesson is obvious: If you don’t have a cellphone or a social media profile these days, that could signal you’re a spy or criminal who’s trying to stay off the grid.

Brown, a wiry former Army Ranger and CIA counterterrorism officer, is one of a small group of ex-spies who are trying to reinvent American intelligence to survive in this age of "ubiquitous technical surveillance," or UTS. He launched a new company this year called Lumbra. Its goal is to build AI "agents" that can find and assess — and act upon — data that reveals an adversary’s intentions.

Lumbra is one of nearly a dozen start-ups that I’ve examined over the past several months to explore where intelligence is headed in 2025. It’s a dazzling world of new technology. One company uses data to identify researchers who may have connections to Chinese intelligence. Another interrogates big data systems the way an advertising company might, to identify patterns through what its founder calls "ADINT." A third uses a technology it calls "Obscura" to bounce cellphone signals among different accounts so they can’t be identified or intercepted.

Most of these intelligence entrepreneurs are former CIA or military officers. They share a fear that the intelligence community isn’t adapting fast enough to the new world of espionage. "Technologically, the agency can feel like a sarcophagus when you see everything that’s happening outside," worries Edward Bogan, a former CIA officer. He now works with a nonprofit called 2430 Group — the number was an early CIA cover address in Washington — that tries to help technology companies protect their work from adversaries.

The Trump administration recognizes this intelligence revolution, at least in principle. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said during confirmation hearings he wants to ramp up covert operations, with officers "going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do." That’s a commendable goal, but if the agency doesn’t reinvent its tradecraft, Ratcliffe’s bold talk may well fail. Traditional operations will only expose the CIA and its sources to greater risk.

A CIA spokesperson said this week in response to a query: "Today’s digital environment poses as many opportunities as it does challenges. We’re an adaptable agency, and it is well within the ingenuity and creativity of our officers to develop ways to navigate effectively in complex environments. In fact, we are exploiting many of the same technologies to recruit spies and steal information."

Brown takes hope from the work that younger CIA officers are doing to reimagine the spy business: "Some of the agency’s smartest people are working on these tradecraft problems from sunup to sundown, and they are coming up with unique solutions."

The CIA’s technology challenge is a little-noted example of a transformation that’s happening in every area of defense and security. Today, smart machines can outwit humans. I’ve written about the algorithm war that has revolutionized the battlefield in Ukraine, where no soldier is safe from drones and precision-guided missiles. We’ve just seen a similar demonstration of precision targeting in Israel’s war against Iran. For soldiers and spies everywhere, following the old rules can get you killed.

(Illustration by Raven Jiang/For The Washington Post)
The art of espionage is thousands of years old. The Bible speaks of it, as do ancient Greek, Persian and Chinese texts. Through the ages, it has been based on two pillars: Spies operate in secret, masking who they are and what they’re doing (call it "cover"), and they use techniques to hide their movements and communications (call it "tradecraft"). Modern technology has shattered both pillars.

To recall the mystique of the CIA’s old-school tradecraft, consider Antonio J. Mendez, the agency’s chief of disguise in the 1980s. He described in a memoir how he created ingenious facial masks and other deceptions that could make someone appear to be a different race, gender, height and profile. Some of the disguises you see on "The Americans" or "Mission Impossible" use techniques developed by Mendez and his colleagues.

The CIA’s disguises and forgeries back then were like works of fine art. But the agency in its first few decades was also a technology pioneer — innovating on spy planes, satellite surveillance, battery technology and covert communications. Its tech breakthroughs were mostly secret systems, designed and built in-house.

The Silicon Valley tech revolution shattered the agency’s innovation model. Private companies began driving change and government labs were lagging.

Seeing the disconnect, CIA Director George Tenet in 1999 launched the agency’s own venture capital firm called "In-Q-Tel" to connect with tech start-ups that had fresh ideas that could help the agency. In-Q-Tel’s first CEO was Gilman Louie, who had previously been a video game designer. In-Q-Tel made some smart early investments, including in the software company Palantir and the weapons innovator Anduril.

But the CIA’s early attempts to create new tradecraft sometimes backfired. To cite one particularly disastrous example: The agency developed what seemed an ingenious method to communicate with its agents overseas using internet addresses that appeared to be news or hobby sites. Examples included an Iranian soccer site, a Rasta music page and a site for Star Wars fans, and dozens more, according to investigations by Yahoo News and Reuters.

The danger was that if one agent was caught, the technology trick could be exposed — endangering scores of other agents. It was like mailing secret letters that could be traced to the same postbox — a mistake the CIA had made with Iran years before.

Iran identified the internet ruse and began taking apart CIA networks around 2010. China soon did the same thing. The agency’s networks in both countries were largely destroyed from 2010 to 2012.

In a 2012 speech during his stint as CIA director, Gen. David H. Petraeus warned that the fundamentals of spying had changed: "We have to rethink our notions of identity and secrecy. ... Every byte left behind reveals information about location, habits, and, by extrapolation, intent and probable behavior."

But machines moved faster than humans in the spy world. That’s what I learned in my weeks of on-the-record discussions with former CIA officers working to develop the espionage tools of the future. They describe a cascade of commercial innovations — instant search, mobile phones, cheap cameras, limitless accessible data — that came so quickly the CIA simply couldn’t adapt at the speed of change.

Duyane Norman was one of the CIA officers who tried to move the system. In 2014, he returned from overseas to take a senior operations job. The agency was struggling then to recover from the collapse of its networks in Iran and China, and the fallout from Edward Snowden’s revelation of CIA and NSA secrets. Norman remembers thinking that "the foundations of our tradecraft were being disrupted," and the agency needed to respond.

Norman convinced his superiors that in his next overseas assignment, he should try to create what came to be called "the station of the future," which would test new digital technology and ideas that could improve offensive and defensive operations. This experiment had some successes, he told me, in combating surveillance and dropping outmoded practices. But the idea of a "station," usually based in an embassy, was still a confining box.

"You’re the CEO of Kodak," Norman says he warned Director Gina Haspel when he retired in 2019, recalling the camera and film company that dominated the industry before the advent of digital photography. Kodak missed the chance to change, and the world passed it by.

When I asked Norman to explain the CIA’s resistance to change, he offered another analogy. "If Henry Ford had gone to transportation customers and asked what they wanted, they would have said ’faster horses.’

"That’s what the CIA has been trying to build. Faster horses."

The intelligence community’s problem was partly that it didn’t trust technology that hadn’t been created by the government’s own secret agencies.

Mike Yeagley, a data scientist who runs a company called cohort.ID, discovered that in 2016 when he was working with commercial mobile phone location data. His business involved selling advertisers the data generated by phone apps. As a cellphone user moves from work to home — visiting friends, stores, doctors and every other destination — his device reveals his interests and likely buying habits.

Yeagley happened to be studying refugee problems back then, and he wondered if he could find data that might be useful to NGOs that wanted to help Syrians fleeing the civil war into Turkey. He bought Syrian cellphone data — cheap, because it had few commercial applications. Then, on a whim, he began looking for devices that dwelled near Fort Bragg, North Carolina — where America’s most secret Special Operations forces are based — and later appeared in Syria.

And guess what? He found a cluster of Fort Bragg phones pinging around an abandoned Lafarge cement plant in the northeast Syrian desert.

Bingo! The cement factory was the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command task force that was running America’s war against the Islamic State. It was supposed to be one of the most secret locations on the planet. When I visited several times over the past decade as an embedded journalist, I wasn’t allowed to walk more than 50 yards without an escort. And there it was, lighting up a grid on a commercial advertising data app.

Yeagley shared that information with the military back in 2016 — and they quickly tightened phone security. Commanders assumed that Yeagley must have hacked or intercepted this sensitive data.

"I bought it," Yeagley told them. Even the military’s security experts didn’t seem to realize that mobile phones had created a gold mine of information that was being plundered by advertisers but largely ignored by the government.

Thanks to advice from Yeagley and many other experts, data analytics is now a growing source of intelligence. Yeagley calls it "ADINT," because it uses techniques developed by the advertising industry. Who would have imagined that ad salespeople could move faster than secret warriors?

(Illustration by Raven Jiang/For The Washington Post)
Glenn Chafetz had been station chief in three countries when he returned to Langley in 2018 to take an assignment as the first "Chief of Tradecraft" in the operations directorate. It was the agency’s latest attempt to adapt to the new world, succeeding the Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance Working Group, which in turn had replaced the CCTV Working Group.

"People realized that the problem wasn’t just cameras, but payment systems, mobile apps, WiFi hubs — any technology that produced data that lived permanently," Chafetz recalls. But there was still a lack of understanding and resistance from many officers who had joined the CIA when there were no cellphones, digital cameras or Google.

For the older generation, tradecraft meant executing "surveillance detection routes" to expose and evade trackers. Case officers had all gone through field training to practice how to detect surveillance and abort agent meetings that might be compromised. They met their assets only if they were sure they were "black," meaning unobserved. But when cameras were everywhere, recording everything, such certainty was impossible.

Chafetz lead a team that tried to modernize tradecraft until he retired in 2019. But he remembers that an instructor in the agency’s training program admonished him, "New officers still need to learn the basics." The instructor didn’t seem to understand that the "basics" could compromise operations.

The tradecraft problem wasn’t just pervasive surveillance, but the fact that data existed forever. In the old days, explains Chafetz, "If you didn’t get caught red-handed, you didn’t get caught." But now, hidden cameras could monitor a case officer’s meandering route to a dead drop site and his location, long before and after. His asset might collect the drop a week later, but his movements would be recorded, before and after, too. Patterns of travel and behavior could be tracked and analyzed for telltale anomalies. Even when spies weren’t caught red-handed, they might be caught.

The CIA’s default answer to tradecraft problems, for decades, was greater reliance on "nonofficial cover" officers, known as NOCs. They could pose as bankers or business consultants, say, rather than as staffers in U.S. embassies. But NOCs became easier to spot, too, in the age of social media and forever-data. They couldn’t just drop into a cover job. They needed an authentic digital history including things like a "LinkedIn" profile that had no gaps and would never change.

For some younger CIA officers, there was a fear that human espionage might be nearly impossible. The "station of the future" hadn’t transformed operations. "Cover" was threadbare. Secret communications links had been cracked. The skeptics worried that the CIA model was irreparably broken.

After all my conversations with veteran CIA officers, I’ve concluded that the agency needs an entirely new tool kit. Younger officers inside recognize that change is necessary. Pushing this transformation from the outside are scores of tech-savvy officers who have recently left the CIA or the military. It’s impossible at this stage to know how many of these ventures will prove successful or important; some won’t pan out. The point is the urgent need to innovate.

Let’s start with cellular communications. That’s a special worry after Chinese intelligence penetrated deep inside the major U.S. telecommunications companies using a state-sponsored hacking group known as "Salt Typhoon." A solution is offered by a company called Cape, which sells customers, in and out of government, a mobile network that can disappear from the normal cellular grid and protect against other vulnerabilities.

Cape was founded in 2022 by John Doyle, who served as a U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant from 2003 to 2008 and then worked for Palantir. His "Obscura" technology bounces mobile phone identifiers among thousands of customers so it’s impossible to trace any of them. He calls his tactic "opportunistic obfuscation."

One of the most intriguing private intelligence companies is Strider Technologies, founded in 2019 by twin brothers Greg and Eric Levesque and chief data officer Mike Brown. They hired two prominent former CIA officers: Cooper Wimmer, who served in Athens, Vienna, Baghdad and Peshawar, and other locations; and Mark Pascale, a former station chief in both Moscow and Beijing. The company also recruited David Vigneault, former head of Canadian intelligence.

Strider describes itself as a "modern-day economic security agency." To help customers secure their innovation and talent, it plucks the secrets of adversaries like China and Russia that steal U.S. commercial information. China is vulnerable because it has big open-source databases of its own, which are hard to protect.

Using this data, Strider can analyze Chinese organizations and their employees; it can study Chinese research data, and how it was obtained and shared; it can analyze the "Thousand Talents" programs China uses to lure foreigners; it can track the contacts made by those researchers, at home and abroad; and it can identify connections with known Chinese intelligence organizations or front companies.

Eric Levesque explained to me how Strider’s system works. Imagine that a software engineer is applying to work for an international IT company. The engineer received a PhD from a leading American university. What research did he conduct there? Was it shared with Chinese organizations? What research papers has he published? Who in China has read or cited them? What Chinese companies (or front companies) has he worked for? Has this prospective employee touched any branch of the Chinese civil-military conglomerate?

Strider can operate inside what China calls the "Great Firewall" that supposedly protects its data. I didn’t believe this was possible until Levesque gave me a demonstration. On his computer screen, I could see the links, from a researcher in the West, to a "Thousand Talents" program, to a Ministry of State Security front company. It turns out that China hasn’t encrypted much of its data — because the authorities want to spy on their own citizens. China is now restricting more data, but Levesque says Strider hasn’t lost its access.

We’ve entered a new era where AI models are smarter than human beings. Can they also be better spies? That’s the conundrum that creative AI companies are exploring.

Scale AI sells a product called "Donovan," named after the godfather of the CIA, William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan. The product can "dig into all available data to rapidly identify trends, insights, and anomalies," says the company’s website. Alexandr Wang, the company’s founding CEO (who was just poached by Meta), explains AI’s potential impact by quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer’s statement that nuclear weapons produced "a change in the nature of the world."

Vannevar Labs, another recent start-up, is creating tools to "influence adversary behavior and achieve strategic outcomes." Its website explains: "We develop sophisticated collection, obfuscation, and ML (machine learning) techniques to provide assured access to mission relevant data."

The company’s name evokes Vannevar Bush, an MIT engineer who headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, which oversaw all major U.S. research projects during World War II, including the launch of the Manhattan Project.

Lumbra.ai, the company launched in March by Brown, seeks to create what he describes as a "central nervous system" that will connect the superintelligence of future AI models with software "agents." After leaving the CIA in 2021, Brown met with Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI, to refine his thinking. To describe what agentic AI can do, he offers this hypothetical: "We can find every AI researcher, read all the papers they’ve ever written, and analyze any threats their research may pose for the United States." Human spies could never be so adept.

LUMBRA

"No one said we have to collect intelligence only from humans," Brown tells me. "When a leader makes a decision, someone in the system has to take a step that’s observable in the data we can collect." Brown’s AI agents will create a plan and then build and use tools that can gather the observable information.

Brown imagines what he calls a "Case Officer in a Box." Conceptually, it would be a miniaturized version of an agentic system running a large language model, like Anthropic’s Claude. As an offline device, it could be carried in a backpack by anyone and left anywhere. It would speak every language and know every fact ever published. It could converse with an agent, asking questions that elicit essential information.

"Did you work in the Iranian weaponization program?" our Case Officer in a Box might ask a hypothetical Iranian recruit. "Where was your lab? In the Shariati complex? Okay, then, was it in the Shahid Karimi building or the Imam Khomeini building? Did you work on neutron triggers for a bomb? How close to completion was your research? Where did you last see the prototype neutron triggers? Show me on a map, please."

The digital case officer will make a great movie, but it’s probably unrealistic. "No one is going to put their life in the hands of a bot," cautioned Wimmer, a fabled CIA recruiter. The agent would suspect that the AI system was really a trick by his own country’s spies. Brown agrees that recruiting a human spy will probably always require another human being who can build the necessary bond of trust. But once that bond is achieved, he believes technology will enhance a spy’s impact in astonishing ways.

Here’s the final, essential point. Human spies in the field will become rare. Occasionally, a piece of information will be so precious that the CIA will risk the life of one of its officers, and the life of an agent, to collect the intelligence in person. But that kind of face-to-face spying will be the exception. The future of espionage is written in zeros and ones. The CIA will survive as a powerful spy agency only if it makes a paradigm shift.

Link


Home Front: WoT
Tulsi Gabbard Identifies Biggest National Security Threat, and It's Not What We've Been Told
2025-03-03
[PJMedia] In a sane political environment, this would have passed as a decidedly unremarkable, albeit not quite one-hundred-percent accurate, observation. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, recently warned that “radical Islamist terrorism” is the biggest national security threat the nation faces today.
Then the drugs and violence brought in by narco gangs aided and abetted by Communist China must be the second biggest.
Well, of course. The top terror groups worldwide are all Islamic. On Sept. 11, 2001, Islamic jihadis carried out the largest-ever terror attack on American soil. Numerous other Islamic jihad attacks have taken place in the U.S., at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, New Orleans, and numerous other places. The Biden regime caught numerous people on the terror watch list crossing into the U.S. from Mexico and released at least 99 of them into the country. Gabbard was therefore making an entirely reasonable assessment.

Gabbard said: “We look at the past four years of open borders, where we had tens of millions of people coming across our borders, many of whom we don’t know who they are or what their intentions are, very specifically the threat of radical Islamist terrorism here within our country is higher than it’s ever been before, not only because of Biden’s open borders, but because of his and his administration’s fear of being called Islamophobes.”

For Gabbard to speak of “radical Islamist terrorism” was not quite accurate, as there is nothing “radical” about Islamic jihad violence. It is mainstream and deeply rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah. And “Islamist” is a phony word that corresponds to nothing in Islamic theology. It is just an attempt to distance Islam from the crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings.

Nevertheless, her statement was a tremendous improvement over the Biden regime. FBI director Christopher Wray testified before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2021, saying: “The top threat we face from [domestic violent extremists] continues to be those we identify as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs), specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

Old Joe Biden then said it during his speech to a Joint Session of Congress in April 2021: “We won’t ignore what our own intelligence agencies have determined – the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today is from white supremacist terrorism.”

The following month, a revealing piece in Yahoo News by “journalist” Alexander Nazaryan stated that Biden’s desperately corrupt and partisan Attorney General Merrick Garland “told Congress on Wednesday that violence incited by white supremacists poses ‘the most dangerous threat to our democracy.’ That assertion reflects near-universal consensus among national security experts, including those who worked for the Trump administration.”

In June 2021, Biden doubled down: “As I said in my address to the joint session of Congress: According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — white supremacists. That’s not me; that’s the intelligence community under both Trump and under my administration.”
Related:
Tulsi Gabbard 03/01/2025 Trump axes security clearances for law firm attorneys who aided special counsel Jack Smith
Tulsi Gabbard 02/27/2025 Data Republican Just Got Doxxed, Found Lots of Support incl. from DOJ
Tulsi Gabbard 02/26/2025 DNI Tulsi Gabbard moves to terminate, revoke security clearances of NSA employees tied to explicit chatrooms

Related:
White supremacist 02/12/2025 O9A and 764 - Two
White supremacist 02/11/2025 NY Mag in Hot Water With Black MAGA After Fake News Piece
White supremacist 02/09/2025 Violent clashes after armed neo-Nazis drape swastika flags from Ohio overpass

Link


-Short Attention Span Theater-
How Tucker Carlson blocked 'warmonger' from becoming Trump's defense secretary
2024-12-19
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Journalist Tucker Carlson successfully lobbied President Donald Trump to keep his former Secretary of State and CIA director Mike Pompeo out of his second administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump's decision to block Pompeo from his administration demonstrates his willingness to trust non-traditional media sources and outsider confidants rather than establishment figures with experience in government.

Pompeo, a four-term congressman from Kansasm was first in his class at West Point, and a graduate of Harvard Law University before entering the Trump administration in 2017 as the director of the CIA.

Trump shifted Pompeo to the State Department in 2018 after the disappointing tenure of former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, the president's first choice to lead the department.

Carlson has long been a public critic of Pompeo, in particular because of his reported attempt to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

'Mike Pompeo, who is a very sinister person, the worst, and I always thought that and I've told Trump that, never should have let him run CIA or State,' Carlson said in a podcast interview with TV star Roseanne.

The story of Pompeo's efforts against Assange were first reported by Yahoo News in 2021, based on 'conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials.'

Carlson, who urged Trump to pardon Assange, continued hammering Pompeo even after he left office.

'Mike Pompeo tried to have him murdered,' Carlson said, and added, 'Why is Mike Pompeo not in prison?'

Pompeo, Carlson repeated, would repeatedly flatter Trump to get him to trust him and his advice on foreign policy, which was that of a committed pro-war neo-conservative.

“Mike Pompeo, I saw it up close, and I saw it intimately close, is a liar and a flatterer,' he said.

Carlson also grew wary of Pompeo after the former CIA director's lawyers contacted him after he spoke about the John F. Kennedy assassination on his Fox News show.

'I spoke to someone who seen the documents two years ago and I got one fact out of them, which is yes the CIA was involved,' Carlson said during a 2024 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. 'I thought that was news, so I went on TV and said that.'

'His lawyer called me and said, you know, you should know that anyone who tells you the contents of classified documents has committed a crime,' Carlson continued. 'He's threatening me.'

Carlson also blamed Pompeo for convincing Trump not to release the full investigative files of the JFK assassination to the public.

Mike Pompeo is the one who pressed Trump to keep those documents secret,' Carlson said to Rogan. 'Pompeo did that. I think Pompeo is a really sinister person and a criminal. I think that. I think that because the facts suggest that he was caught.'

Carlson told Rogan that Pompeo 'fully expects to become the Secretary of Defense' and called the idea 'completely insane.'

'Why would you give a criminal nuclear weapons?' he asked.

While he was still at Fox, Carlson also criticized Pompeo for escalating tensions with Iran after Trump killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike.

'It seems like about 20 minutes ago, we were denouncing these very people as the Deep State and pledging never to trust them again without verification,' he said in a 2020 Fox News segment. 'Now for some reason we do seem to trust them implicitly and completely.'

Carlson was one of many high-profile critics of Pompeo's views on foreign policy that Trump took to heart as he began drafting officials to serve in his cabinet.

Billionaire Silicon Valley investor David Sacks also opposed Pompeo, noting that the former Trump official was determined to expand NATO and escalate the conflict with Russia for launching a war with Ukraine.

'He's dangerously out of step with President Trump's views,' Sacks wrote before ultimately deleting his post on X.

Sacks also criticized an Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by Pompeo about the best way to proceed on the war in Ukraine.

'This is not a peace plan; it's a way to start WW3,' Sacks wrote bluntly.

Comedian Dave Smith, a libertarian, also voiced his criticism of Pompeo after Trump won the election.

'The "stop Pompeo" movement is great but it's not enough. Right now we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration,' Smith wrote. 'They have had their time at the table and brought nothing but disaster to the world and this country.'

Smith's political influence has exploded in recent months after Rogan endorsed him as someone who 'actually knows what he's talking about.'

Donald Trump Jr. publicly agreed with Smith and indicated he would follow up with his father.

'Agreed 100%!!! I'm on it,' he wrote.

Hours later Trump announced on social media that Pompeo would not be invited back.

'I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,' Trump wrote.

Pompeo was clearly angling for a position in Trump's second administration, even attending a rally with him in Pennsylvania before the election.

At the rally, Trump praised Pompeo as a 'great guy' and urged him to 'stand up' to be recognized.

But after Trump publicly announced Pompeo would not be invited back, he expressed his disappointment on social media.

'Mr. President - I was proud to work with you too. As you said, when we were together last week, you and I built the plan that made the world safer & led to no new wars,' he wrote on X.
Related:
Tucker Carlson 12/16/2024 Nathan Wade admits to working with the White House while prosecuting Trump in GA
Tucker Carlson 12/08/2024 Kamala HQ deletes post making false claims about Tim Pool after successful conclusion to lawsuit
Tucker Carlson 12/07/2024 Armenian community of Aleppo under siege after militants seize city

Related:
Mike Pompeo 11/18/2024 Iran demands trillion dollars from US
Mike Pompeo 11/12/2024 CNN - Trump is already wielding power and causing massive disruption
Mike Pompeo 11/07/2024 Trump backers, former officials being considered for top posts in 2nd administration

Related:
David Sacks 12/06/2024 Trump taps businessman and former Abraham Accords negotiator as hostage point-man, and more noms
David Sacks 06/23/2024 Trump plans to permit green cards to foreign graduates of US colleges
David Sacks 03/11/2024 David Sacks: "Biden's Big Backfire" Is Ukraine, Warns Of "Woke War III"

Related:
Dave Smith 08/14/2024 Smith and Carlson (Youtube)
Dave Smith 05/19/2024 Dave Smith: Russia, Israel, Trump & the Swamp, Obama, and the Media Attacks on Joe Rogan
Dave Smith 07/04/2022 Running Short On Funds For A July 4th Barbecue, Man Opens The Family Safe To Retrieve The 16 Cents He Saved Last Year

Link


Home Front: Politix
The Score Is Currently Two to Nil. Both Crooks and Routh Were Apparently in BlackRock Commercials in 2022(?). Or Maybe Not, According to Snopes, et al.
2024-09-17
Yahoo News, of all places, carried an article yesterday of a Snopes take down of the notion that Routh had been in a BlackRock commercial in 2022(?). The Yahoo article had a 3-4 paragraph comment from Brenden Dilley[@WarlordDilley on X], that discussed Routh being in the commercial, and it made a lot of sense and was echoed elsewhere. However, in the two hours or so that I've been going back and forth trying to figure out what is now missing, during this time the longer comment of Brenden Dilley has now been scrubbed across all web platforms.

Yahoo, to be safe, has even "pulled" its July article of Crooks being in a BlackRock commercial (go to the bottom of the Yahoo News article just above the 'View comments'). Snopes has done the same:

Even @WarlordDilley on X doesn't discuss the Routh commercial.

And I thought I had a story.

Link


Great White North
Bomb threats emailed to over 100 Jewish institutions in Canada
2024-08-23
Here’s hoping the Mounties are quicker to find this lot of vicious idiots faster than the FBI was finding Domagoj Patkovic.
[IsraelTimes] Jewish community leaders say threat was ‘designed to disrupt lives,’ thank law enforcement for swift response; Trudeau decries ‘blatant antisemitism’ of targeted campaign

Dozens of Jewish institutions across Canada received a threatening email early Wednesday morning saying bombs had been planted on their premises and would be detonated later that day, community groups said.

No bombs were reported to have been found as of Wednesday afternoon, although local media said that investigations were still ongoing.

"This was a threat that we took very seriously," a spokesperson from B’nai Brith Canada told local news channel CP24. "We’re very grateful for the swift response from law enforcement to the threat."

Eta Yudin, Quebec vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said there was "no imminent threat," and that the threat seemed to be "nuisance emails designed to disrupt lives," according to Yahoo News.

A spokesperson for the Montreal police department told CBC that the department received an emergency call at 7:10 a.m. from a synagogue, and began to sweep threatened locations, as it began receiving additional reports about the same email.

The Toronto Police also conducted bomb searches, and at least one hospital in Ottawa confirmed that police had swept the premises.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in a statement that it was working with local authorities, and that law enforcement was "engaging with faith-based leaders to ensure they have the information and support they need."

Last month, Trudeau appointed Anthony Housefather to serve as an adviser on the Jewish community and combating antisemitism following a series of violent mostly peaceful attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools in recent months.

Two synagogues in Toronto were attacked in July and had their windows smashed, shots were fired at Jewish schools in Montreal and Toronto in May, and there was a suspected arson attack at a Vancouver synagogue.

Housefather said upon his appointment that he would be seeking an all-of-government approach to addressing rising antisemitism, cutting through bureaucracy either through legislation or through moral suasion.

"We say ’this is federal, this is municipal,’ people are being redirected all over the place and, and they’re just frustrated," he said. "We need coordination between different levels of government."
Related:
Hoax bomb threat 11/15/2018 Calif. Man Pleads Guilty in Fatal Swatting Case, Faces 20+ Years in Prison
Hoax bomb threat 06/29/2018 U.S.-Israeli teen convicted in Israel for bomb threats during Trump's rise
Hoax bomb threat 04/07/2017 JCC bomb hoaxer made millions selling forged docs online — report

Link


Economy
Americans are spending more on travel and live entertainment. But their personal saving rate has taken a dip.
2024-04-01
[Business Insider] During the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans reminisced about the things that used to bring them joy. They never stopped thinking about that last big trip with their families or that last in-person concert they enjoyed with friends.

Four years later, American consumers have mostly moved on from the pandemic and are spending more on experiences than ever before.
WTF? Eating is an "experience."
Prioritizing experiences, however, has led to a major shift in their financial lives: The personal saving rate in the US has declined considerably.
Saving is indeed difficult when you're broke at the end of the month.
The Washington Post recently reported on how consumers in the US have embraced a sort of YOLO — or "you only live once" — mindset. In 2023, consumer spending on foreign trips and live entertainment rose by nearly 30 percent, according to the newspaper.
WAPO? Where I get ALL my news.
Spending levels have so far continued to rise in 2024, too. In February, personal consumption expenditures increased by $145.5 billion compared to January, with $111.8 billion spent on services, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
This story belongs in Yahoo News. Oh wait, it's a news feature there this morning.
Link


-Great Cultural Revolution
Art Museum Warns That Images Of British Countryside Can Evoke ‘Dark' ‘Nationalist' Feelings
2024-03-16
[WIRE] An art museum in England has issued a warning to patrons that images of a British countryside in paintings can evoke what it labeled "dark," "nationalist feelings."

The Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, decided to overhaul some of its displays, something that the museum’s director Luke Syson insisted is not being "woke."

"I would love to think that there’s a way of telling these larger, more inclusive histories that doesn’t feel as if it requires a push-back from those who try to suggest that any interest at all in [this work is] what would now be called ’woke,'" Syson told the Telegraph, as reported by Yahoo News.

The paintings have been moved around into categories in an effort to make the museum "inclusive."

"Being inclusive and representative shouldn’t be controversial; it should be enriching," Syson said.

One of the signs in the Nature Gallery, showing the work of artist John Constable’s paintings of English hills, noted that the artwork can stir feelings of "pride towards a homeland."
Link


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
The Hidden System of American Imperialism in Africa
2023-10-20
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Text taken from an article which appeared in afrinz.ru

Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics

[ColonelCassad] The US established an extensive network of outposts in more than a dozen African countries under the pretext of fighting terrorism after the events of September 11, 2001. 29 military bases in 15 countries stretch from one end of Africa to the other. The US Africa Command (US AFRICOM), created in 2008, is responsible for their coordination in accordance with US strategic goals, which remains a key instrument for promoting Washington’s “global leadership” policy on the continent. In the material of military analyst Darko Todarovski for the “Africa Initiative” about how the US military presence in Africa works.

AFRICOM is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the United States Department of Defense. The operating budget of AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany alone was $375 million in fiscal year 2023. Officially, AFRICOM, in addition to counterterrorism operations, is responsible for “fighting regional conflicts” and supporting military relations with 53 African countries. His area of ​​responsibility covers all of Africa, with the exception of Egypt, which is in the sphere of interests of the US Central Command.

AFRICOM has a force of more than 7,200 troops. The largest concentration of US military facilities is in the Sahel states in the west of the continent and in the Horn of Africa in the east.

The largest US military base in Africa is Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. The strategic importance of this site is due to its proximity to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which a significant part of world trade passes. There are about 300 military personnel permanently stationed at the base itself. Their main attack weapons are drones and patrol aircraft.

US military facilities in West Africa are officially used for anti-terrorist operations. Burkina Faso and Chad provide infrastructure for US drone reconnaissance flights. Bases in Cameroon and Niger also house permanent US Army contingents involved in African military training programs.

In eastern Africa, the United States is actively cooperating with Kenya, Somalia and the Seychelles. The last two states provide the United States with airports for reconnaissance UAVs.

The United States also has agreements with 19 African countries on the right to host American fuel reserves on their territory and provide refueling services for US Air Force aircraft.

In addition to conducting African drone surveillance, cross-border raids, reconnaissance and interrogation programs, AFRICOM has assumed responsibility for security training for African countries.

In addition to AFRICOM, there is also the Special Operations Command Africa, or SOCAFRICA, which oversees elite units and plays a huge role in the US military effort on the continent. Under the leadership of SOCAFRICA, Washington constantly sends Green Berets and Navy SEALs to hot spots on the continent. According to a list provided by SOCAFRICA to Rolling Stone reporters, in 2021, US commandos were deployed to 17 African countries - Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Tunisia. And in 2022, they were added to at least five more African countries - the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal and Somalia.

Roughly 14% of U.S. commandos deployed overseas in 2021 were sent to Africa, ranking the continent second in the number of deployments behind the Greater Middle East.

In 2019, Yahoo News, using documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, public records and leaks from the US Department of Defense, compiled a list of 36 special operations that the US has conducted or is conducting in Africa. Many of these operations are conducted in countries that the US government does not recognize as combat zones, but in which US troops are nonetheless fighting and, in some cases, even suffering casualties.

SOF operations in Africa are so-called “127e programs,” named for budgetary authorities that allow them to use host nation military units as executors in counterterrorism missions.

At least 15 US-trained officers took part in 13 coups d'état in West Africa and the Greater Sahel from 2014 to 2023, Responsible Statecraft found. These include soldiers from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015 and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); Niger (2023) and Gabon (2023).

AFRICOM's vision is to coordinate not only military command and control, but also diplomatic efforts and other functions of US government agencies in Africa. The US military calls it a "whole of government" approach. AFRICOM engages senior officials from the State Department, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Justice, and other departments.

But for every civilian employee working on U.S. policy in Africa, there are seven in the military, and in many embassies across the continent the number of military attaches outnumbers the number of diplomats.

The current version of the official US strategy in sub-Saharan Africa was published in August 2022, several months after China adopted a concept of relations with the African continent. The frankness of the provisions of this document, which can well be called aggressive, is noteworthy, wrote Nikita Panin, an expert at the HSE Center for African Studies, in his article “African Strategies: Comparing the Approaches of Key Players on the Continent” for the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).

The document openly outlines the US’s readiness to intervene in the internal processes of African countries where and when it suits Washington’s interests in order to “renew Africa’s faith in US global leadership.” The point about encouraging open societies begins with the thesis that such societies “are usually more willing to work in common with the United States, attract more American goods and investments, improve the living conditions of their citizens and fight the harmful activities of the PRC, the Russian Federation and other external forces.”

In the document, the United States openly declares a list of African countries in which, according to Washington, there is a setback in development and democracy: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia and the Sahel states.

According to the strategy adopted by Washington, it is the United States that “can give Africans a choice about how they determine their future, limiting the opportunities for negative state and non-state actors through a calibrated combination of positive incentives and punitive measures such as sanctions.”

At the same time, the United States works not only with the official authorities with which its embassies and representative offices are accredited, but also supports “investigative journalism to combat authoritarianism” and interacts with the judicial system “to protect democracy and human rights, fight corruption, and hold fair elections " The United States intends to support “civil society, including activists, workers, reform-minded leaders, marginalized groups, incl. LGBT+." However, democracy promotion can also come from the United States training “professional, capable, accountable government security forces.”

In turn, AFRICOM’s official priority areas for the period from 2020 to 2025 are:

- countering narratives from America’s strategic competitors - China and Russia;

— weakening and reducing the potential of extremist organizations in the countries of the Sahara-Sahel zone and the Maghreb, countering the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as “containing instability in Libya”;

— containing and weakening the terrorist group Boko Haram;

— suppression of illegal activities and reduction of threats in the Gulf of Guinea and Central Africa in cooperation with identified partners;

— neutralizing the terrorist organization Al-Shabab al-Mujahideen in Somalia and facilitating the process of transferring security responsibilities from the African Union Mission in Somalia to the local government.


The current commander of AFRICOM, 60-year-old General Michael Langley, was appointed to his post by executive order of US President Joe Biden in June 2022. Langley is the first black Marine to become a four-star general in the U.S. Army. He served in Afghanistan, Somalia and Okinawa, and served in several senior positions at the Pentagon and Military Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East. In his public statements, Langley is clear about his priorities:

“The most long-term strategic threat to the United States in Africa is not terrorism. The biggest threat to the United States in Africa is China. Not only for security reasons, but also because of economic competition,” Langley stated publicly.

It is also important, he said, to pay attention to the Kremlin, which is using Wagner PMCs to “fuel instability” and “turn chaos into money.”

PS. It is worth noting that over the past month, the Mali army, with the support of the Wagner PMC, has liberated more than 15 cities, towns and military bases from French-backed militants in northern Mali. After the failure of plans to organize an intervention in Niger, France is increasingly relying on supporting various militants in order to destabilize countries that have fallen out of its sphere of influence.

PS2. By the way, the site itself https://afrinz.ru/category/news/ , which took off on hype after the recent African Forum, is really not bad, there is a lot of different information on African affairs. Previously, it was necessary mainly to monitor what was happening through the profile collection on Twitter and selected channels in Telega.

PS3. By the way, Pushkin reached the Congo.

In the capital of the country, with the help of specialists from Voronezh, they have now established the process of education in Russian. The local population is taught the Russian language, history, culture and geography of Russia.


Link


China-Japan-Koreas
Is China embedding military-aged males inside the U.S. in preparation for war with the United States?
2023-10-07
[LawEnforcementToday] Law Enforcement Today recently reported about the number of military-age Chinese males entering the United States via the porous southern border, using the so-called “Darien Gap.”

That is a favored route for illegals to travel from South America to the United States.

This is a way for Chinese nationals who would otherwise be prohibited from entering the country to join the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the US since Biden’s installation on January 20, 2021.

What does that mean? It means that thousands of young Chinese males, who fall into the demographic of those who would serve in the Chinese military, are allowed into the United States, free to scatter about the country until their asylum “court dates,” often set many months, if not years, from when they cross our border, Michael Snyder writes in Substack.

As with most illegal aliens who have entered the United States, where they went or what they are doing is unknown. Since none are here on student visas, it is a certainty they are not studying molecular biology at Harvard.

Fox News reports the number of Chinese nationals being encountered at our border far exceeds any such encounters in history. And those are the ones who are caught at the border by Customs and Border Protection, not the so-called “gotaways” who evade detection:

So far in fiscal year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered nearly 40,000 Chinese nationals on both the southern and northern borders, far surpassing the approximately 23,500 and 27,800 encountered in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, respectively.

In July, more than 6,000 crossed the border, just two months after the COVID-19 rule that allowed for expelling illegal migrants quickly—known as Title 42—expired.

Most illegal Chinese aliens arrive in the United States having started their journey in Ecuador. From Yahoo News:

The Chinese migrants typically start their journey in Ecuador, which is visa-free for Chinese citizens, as per The Diplomat. From there, they head to Necoli, a town on Colombia’s northern coast, which then leads to the Darien Gap, a 66-mile dense jungle reportedly filled with armed guerillas, drug traffickers, and deadly biodiversity. Some who undertake the treacherous journey allegedly pay smugglers up to $35,000 for help.

Needless to say, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Joe Biden are on top of this potential threat to national security, correct? Not quite. In fact, they are doing nothing about it, which is frustrating many Republican lawmakers.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) expressed outrage over the administration’s handling of the southern border and their apparent ignorance of the Chinese threat. He also believes the Chinese Communist Party is sending these men to the United States for a specific purpose.
NEXT QUESTION:
Are the LSD's in on it?
Or, just stupid to the Military ramifications and reality of OPEN BORDERS?
Related:
Darien Gap: 2023-09-15 Colombian elected officials charging millions on packages to guide migrants toward US border, report says
Darien Gap: 2023-06-10 13K Chinese Migrants Apprehended on U.S.-Mexico Border Since October-1,000 percent increase when compared to the previous year's totals. Most appear to be military age males...
Darien Gap: 2023-05-20 Afghan families traverse most of Latin America to seek asylum at the US border
Link


Cyber
NSA announces new artificial intelligence security center: 'Desperately needed'
2023-10-03
[FoxNews] The National Security Agency (NSA) will launch a new artificial intelligence security center to both protect U.S. AI systems and defend against external threats.

The new security center launches as the U.S. government has increased its use of algorithms and AI systems in defense and intelligence and is seeking to safeguard systems from theft or sabotage. The NSA center will also be responsible for protecting the homeland from external AI-related threats, according to a report from Yahoo News on Monday,

Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, NSA director, told the Associated Press that the new center could be incorporated into the NSA's existing Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which works with the private sector and internal partners to strengthen U.S. defenses from near-peer rivals such as China and Russia.


Christopher Alexander, the chief analytics officer of Pioneer Development Group, told Fox News Digital such a center is "desperately needed for intelligence analysis and is crucial for national security."

"The most obscure details can complete an intelligence estimate and that requires intelligence analysts who can comb through every piece of information, recognize a [pattern] and turn that data into information – and ultimately a finished analysis," Alexander said. "AI and machine learning can take on the role of literally 1000s of lower-level analysts. It works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the sheer amount of data collected allows for whole new methods of analysis."
Link


Home Front: Politix
SCOTUS Rules Against Teamsters Union
2023-06-02
[Yahoo News, hat tip to Epoch Times] The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt another setback to organized labor by making it easier for employers to sue over strikes that cause property destruction in a ruling siding with a concrete business in Washington state that sued the union representing its truck drivers after a work stoppage.

The 8-1 decision overturned a lower court's ruling that said the lawsuit filed by Glacier Northwest Inc, which sells and delivers ready-mix concrete, against a local affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was preempted by a U.S. law called the National Labor Relations Act.

The Washington state Supreme Court in 2021 ruled that the company's claims were preempted by a statute called the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), saying the company's loss of concrete was incidental to a strike that could be considered arguably protected under federal labor law.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the ruling, said the union's actions had not only destroyed the concrete but had also "posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated and imminent harm to Glacier's trucks."

"Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier's property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct," Barrett wrote.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a 27-page dissent, wrote that the ruling "is likely to cause considerable confusion among the lower courts".
Link


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Ukrainian Perspective: Invasion of Ukraine: May 18th, 2023
2023-05-19
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] 22:59 The United States can teach Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 in four months instead of 18, as previously thought. This assessment was given by the Pentagon after two Ukrainian pilots passed a two-week test on flight simulators, Yahoo News reports, citing a report by US officials.

22:27 The White House, among other scenarios, is considering the possibility that the Russian-Ukrainian war will turn into a frozen conflict. Read more in New Korea?

21:33 The German camera manufacturer Leica, despite the announcement of its withdrawal from the Russian market, supplies night vision scopes and binoculars with a laser rangefinder to the Russian Federation, which can be used to adjust artillery fire, writes The Insider.

21:28 The Pentagon confirmed that one Patriot system was damaged in Ukraine - but it has already been repaired, now it is in working condition , said US Department of Defense Deputy Speaker Sabrina Singh.

21:25 Zelensky said that he had held a meeting of the Military Cabinet: "This is our special format for working in a narrow circle with those responsible for the defense of the state. First: the defense brigades are great. We have completed the main strategic tasks - now is not the time to report details. Second: offensive brigades - well done. Getting ready - no details. Third, on the protection of civilians: Air Force, well done - here with details. Our priorities for this week, next and in the near future as a whole are additional air defense systems, additional missiles, training and aircraft, long-range weapons. And it will be."

The President also visited the office of the Crimean Platform and met with the leader of the Crimean Tatar people, Mustafa Dzhemilev: “I am glad to know that our joint work with the Mejlis brings the result Ukraine needs. By the way, we are preparing some very important joint steps in the near future. Issues of Crimea, Crimean prisoners and all we are bringing our people in Crimea to a new international level."

20:58 Scenarios for freezing the war in Ukraine are not discussed anywhere, and they are not on the "real agenda," Podolyak said, commenting on a resonant article by Politico. The article, citing "informed sources in Washington," reports that the US authorities are allegedly discussing the "Korean scenario" of freezing the war in Ukraine. We are talking about the fact that active hostilities will be stopped, and the front line will become the actual border, albeit unofficial.

Podolyak said that any ideas about freezing the war in Ukraine that periodically appear in the media are a "pseudo-analytical product" and the result of the lobbying efforts of Russian diplomacy: "There are no such scenarios on the real agenda, they are not discussed in any cabinets. All players perfectly understand limited resources and time in the Russian Federation and Putin's elite. The path is unchanged. We will pressurize."

20:26 Italy will train Ukrainian recruits in schools and military installations, and will also take part in EU training programs for Ukraine in Brussels, Poland and Germany, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said.

20:17 Kiev prioritizes reaching a consensus of partners on three key decisions: Ukraine's entry into NATO, the provision of Western aircraft and the introduction of new tough sanctions against the Russian Federation, Kuleba said.

19:59 The Pentagon overestimated the American equipment sent to Ukraine by about $3 billion - a mistake that could allow more weapons to be sent to Kiev, Reuters reports, citing a US Department of Defense spokesman. The mistake was the result of a higher-than-guaranteed value of weapons that were withdrawn from US stockpiles and then sent to Ukraine. Congress will be notified of the accounting adjustment.

19:36 The Russians pulled most of their reserves to Bakhmut and significantly strengthened the group. Today, the enemy attacked Bakhmut all day, but all attacks were repulsed. Today, Ukrainian forces control the southwestern part of Bakhmut, Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said. According to her, in the vicinity north of Bakhmut, the enemy also attacked - the attacks were repulsed, in some areas there is an advance of Ukrainian troops by 500 meters.

In the suburbs of Bakhmut in the south, the enemy went on the offensive during the day and tried to regain the lost territories, but suffered losses and was unable to complete their tasks. In some areas, Ukrainian troops advanced 1 km. "The defense of Bakhmut and the suburbs is fulfilling military tasks. Now we are gaining time for certain planned actions," Maliar added.

19:24 The Ukrainian brigade, numbering from three to five thousand soldiers, was trained in Sweden on modern Western equipment and may be one of the most combat-ready units that will take part in the upcoming counteroffensive, writes The Times. The brigade is equipped with Leopard 2 tanks, CV-90 combat vehicles and Archer artillery systems, making it one of the most powerful units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the newspaper writes. It is expected that the Ukrainian military will return to Ukraine in May.

19:17 Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that Ukraine should not join NATO and become a border in a big power confrontation in Europe, and lasting peace on the continent can only be built through dialogue between European states and respect for each other's interests.

"We hope that all parties will strive for common, comprehensive and sustainable security and build a balanced, efficient and durable security architecture based on respect for each other's legitimate security interests in order to realize lasting peace in Europe," Wenbin said.

19:08 Norway, together with the UK, will transfer eight M270 long-range MLRS and three Arthur artillery-guided radars to Ukraine, the country's Ministry of Defense said.

18:52 British Defense Minister Ben Wallace confirmed that Ukraine has begun using long-range Storm Shadow missiles provided by London, but declined to elaborate.

18:13 NATO defense ministers will discuss the possible transfer of Western fighter jets to Ukraine at a meeting in June, which will precede the Alliance's July summit in Vilnius, writes Der Spiegel.

17:35 The third assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced a successful offensive on the western outskirts of Bakhmut, which resulted in a breakthrough of a strip 2 km wide and 700 meters deep. The Ukrainian defenders managed to create a foothold for further counteroffensive. During the offensive, 50 Russians were liquidated, about a hundred more were wounded, four were taken prisoner. Enemy ammunition depots were also destroyed.

17:32 Zelensky will take part in an online meeting of G7 leaders on Sunday, May 21, said Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

17:27 The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the grain deal has been extended until July 17 inclusive without any changes, while the "fundamental assessments" of the implementation of the agreements remain the same: there is no progress on the Russia-UN memorandum, most of the grain allegedly goes to "well-fed European markets ", the supply of Russian agricultural products is blocked. There is also no progress in resuming ammonia supplies and reconnecting Rosselkhozbank to Swift. Without fulfilling these requirements, "there is no question of any expansion of the Black Sea initiative," and the agreement itself will be terminated after July 17, Moscow said.

17:08 The Russians fired at the northern regions of the Donetsk region from the S-300 air defense system, Smerch MLRS, cannon artillery, and also used the FAB-250 high-explosive fragmentation bomb, the Office of the Prosecutor General said. In Konstantinovka, as a result of a direct hit by a shell in a private house, one person was killed, and seven more people were injured in Avdeevka, Toretsk, and Chasovoy Yar.

17:03 Moscow and Kiev agreed to the proposal of Pope Francis to receive his special envoys to discuss a truce, Vatican Cardinal Matteo Zuppi said. It is assumed that Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, the head of the Conference of Italian Bishops, Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, could go to Moscow as a papal special envoy.

16:40 The grain agreement does not provide for satisfying any wishes of Russia that Moscow is trying to initiate, Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar said: "The agreement provides for the mechanisms for the functioning of the grain corridor from Ukrainian ports to international markets. What Russia is trying to attach now, "These are issues related to the ammonia pipeline, the lifting of sanctions on banks and organizations involved in the trade in grain and fertilizers. These issues are still under discussion."

16:26 In Kiev, the beach season will not be opened, residents and guests of the capital are advised to refrain from visiting beaches and recreation areas, since there are no shelters. The corresponding decision was made by the Defense Council of Kyiv, the Kyiv City State Administration reported.

16:22 In Mariupol, the Russians are waiting for the arrival of Shoigu and are holding demonstrative "trainings" with cannon artillery in order to create a "picture of the front line" for the Russian Defense Minister, said Petr Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of the city. He refers to the intercepted conversation of the Russian military, in which they say that yesterday they were given shells, and today they woke everyone up at six in the morning and ordered them to get guns and shoot in the field. When asked why to do this, they answered that Shoigu was coming.

16:00 The Russians hit the village of Tsirkuny, Kharkiv region - a shell hit a private house, one person died, two were injured, Oleg Sinegubov, head of the OVA, said.

15:57 Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk visited an enterprise in Norway that produces NASAMS air defense systems, and said that "very soon" Ukraine will have even more such systems.

15:52 In Belarus, 20 km from the border with Ukraine, a line of "dragon's teeth" has appeared, the monitoring group Belaruska Gayun reports. Anti-tank fortifications were installed 10 km from Gomel, near the M8 highway towards the border with Ukraine. In addition, very close to the "teeth" construction work is underway to build, presumably, fortifications.

15:28 Kiev calls on Western partners not to have high expectations about the Ukrainian counter-offensive and not to consider it something decisive, said Natalia Galibarenko, head of the Ukrainian mission to NATO. According to her, "now it is more important to think about what else can be done to make this counteroffensive successful."

15:09 The SBU reported suspicion to a clergyman of the UOC-MP of one of the communities of the Izyumsky district of the Kharkiv region for cooperation with the occupiers. During the occupation of Izyum, he agitated the locals to go over to the side of the Russian Federation, sanctified the Russian military and starred in propaganda videos. The traitor faces up to eight years in prison.

14:53 The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation stated that tonight, strikes were allegedly carried out on "large warehouses of weapons and equipment of foreign production and enemy reserves", all designated objects were hit.

14:26 Russia has deployed ten Russian Aerospace Forces fighters - eight Su-34s and two Su-30SMs - to the Machulishchi airfield in Belarus, the monitoring group of Belarus Gayun reports.

14:07 The African countries that have come up with a "peace initiative" on Ukraine before visiting Moscow and Kiev want to receive guarantees of a temporary ceasefire and a new "referendum" in the Donbass, writes Jeune Afrique. In turn, the Russian media reported, citing the South African embassy, ​​that the president's representative on the "peace initiative" could come to Moscow this weekend.

13:34 NATO is preparing for a possible conflict with Russia and is developing a specific defense plan for the first time since the Cold War, writes Reuters. It is expected that the document may be approved at the July NATO summit in Vilnius. The head of the NATO Military Committee, Rob Bauer, said that the countries of the Alliance should be prepared for the fact that "a conflict may arise at any moment."

NATO also prepares recommendations for participating countries on the modernization of their armed forces and logistics. "The Allies will know exactly what forces and means are needed, including where, what and how to deploy," Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

13:31 Damage to the energy system of the Kiev region from Russian strikes is about 1 billion hryvnia, said the head of the regional military administration Ruslan Kravchenko. According to him, local authorities have already begun preparations for the next heating season, "but the energy system is in a very difficult state." Kravchenko recalled that since October 2022, 33 strikes have been carried out on energy facilities in the region.

13:25 On May 19-21, the leaders of the G7 states will hold a meeting in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where they will discuss, in particular, an international peace summit regarding Ukraine, as well as further sanctions against Russia.

Deputy Head of the President's Office Igor Zhovkva said in an interview with the Japanese agency Kyodo that Zelensky will definitely take part in the G7 summit, but it is not yet known in what format - in person or online.

13:16 As a result of several waves of Russian missile attacks on the night of May 18, there was only one hit - Kh-101 / Kh-555 missiles in the Khmelnytsky region, the remaining reports of destruction relate to damage from hit targets that fell to the ground, the speaker of the Air Force told UP Yuri Ignat. In particular, according to him, a wrecked rocket fell on an object in the Odessa region, causing destruction, the death of one and the injury of several more people.

In this regard, Ignat stressed that downed missiles also pose a threat, therefore, during an alarm, it is necessary to observe security measures and be in cover.

12:49 After a conversation between Putin and the President of South Africa, it was decided that a number of countries would send a delegation to resolve the "Ukrainian crisis," Peskov said. According to him, the dates of arrival in Russia are being coordinated.

12:44 Yermak said that he had held a briefing on the current security situation in Ukraine for the Chinese government delegation led by the Special Representative of the PRC Government for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui: "He stressed that Ukraine, defending itself from an aggressor who made an unprovoked invasion of our territory, operates exclusively within the framework of international law and the UN Charter. Our state strives to establish a stable and just peace, restore its territorial integrity, as the Ukrainian formula of peace implies."

12:08 Peskov announced a "relative result" in the negotiations to extend the grain deal. In particular, speaking about the possibility of connecting Rosselkhozbank to SWIFT, he noted that options "equivalent to unblocking" are being worked out, there are hopes. As for solving the problem of Russian ammonia supplies, according to Peskov, work continues.

11:53 Lukashenka said that the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is "the biggest big disinformation", and there can be no counter-offensive: "It's just crazy. One to five at the front to fight on equipment and manpower is just crazy." In his opinion, in order to end the war in Ukraine, the parties must develop a "new document for negotiations."

11:31 Chinese Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui completed a two-day visit to Ukraine, during which he met with Zelensky. "There is no panacea for overcoming the crisis, all parties should start from themselves, accumulate mutual trust, create conditions for ending the war and peace negotiations," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the visit.

11:28 As a result of the massive night shelling, there are hits on energy infrastructure facilities, more than 20 settlements were left without electricity, the Ministry of Energy reported. However, in general, the energy system works stably, restrictions for residential consumers are not planned.

11:24 Over the past day, Ukrainian forces have advanced another 150-1700 meters near Bakhmut in different areas, said Serhiy Cherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

11:20 Russians this night again carried out several waves of air attacks from different directions. In total, they fired 30 missiles in Ukraine. Details of the new missile attack - in the material What Russia seeks .

11:16 The Russians have already twice tried to kill the commander of the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Igor Tantsyura, the UE reports, citing sources in military circles. Recently, Prigozhin claimed that his mercenaries killed Tantsyura on the way to Bakhmut. According to the publication, then the commander of the Troop Forces was really attacked: his column was fired upon and hit the car in which Tantsyura was supposed to be. But that day he got into the escort car, she managed to get away from the shelling.

Earlier, the Ukrainian side intercepted the data of the Russians, according to which they knew in detail the route of Tantsyura's movement at the front. Thanks to the timely interception, changes were made to the route. At the same time, it remains unknown where the enemy received information from in both cases.

11:01 A Russian cruise missile Caliber fell in Crimea, ASTRA reports. According to journalists, a shepherd found a rocket in the forest near the village of Vulkanovka, Leninsky district, on the morning of May 17. The experts who went to the scene came to the conclusion that the fallen rocket was Caliber, which belonged to the RF Ministry of Defense.

10:52 Andrey Nebytov, head of the Kiev region police, published a video of the remnants of a Russian missile shot down by air defense forces:

10:46 In the Zaporozhye region over the past day, one person was killed as a result of Russian shelling of Hulyaypol, three more people were injured in Stepnogorsk, according to the OVA.

10:27 In Kazan, on the railway, unknown people set fire to four relay cabinets, as a result of which five freight trains were detained, Russian publics write.

10:18 Kiev is now attacked most often - the capital is in the zone of greatest risk, therefore it requires a high level of protection, said Yuri Ignat, speaker of the Air Force. At the same time, he added that the Patriot is working, and may have been working that night. “Therefore, I ask everyone to remain calm, air defense is working and will continue to protect,” he assured.

In turn, the speaker of OK Pivden, Natalya Gumenyuk, said that the Russians were changing tactics again: in the evening there was not a single launch vehicle in the Black Sea, and before the attack on the Odessa region, the ship with Caliber quickly went to sea. According to her, this is how the enemy wanted to lull the vigilance of the Ukrainian air defense.

09:49 In the Kirovohrad region, air defense forces destroyed a cruise missile in the sky over the Alexandria region and a drone in the Kropivnitsky region. The warhead of the downed missile exploded on the territory of a private household, three houses were damaged, said Andrey Raikovich, head of the IVA. In addition, fragments of a downed drone hit one of the objects - a fire broke out, residents of the surrounding courtyards were evacuated. In both cases, people were not injured.

09:34 Governor of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation Roman Starovoit said that a Ukrainian drone allegedly dropped an explosive device on a sports and recreation complex in Glushkovo, two people were injured.

09:30 In Crimea, a railroad track was blown up, as a result, five wagons with grain derailed, Russian media reported. Preliminarily, the version of the explosion of railway tracks near the village of Chistenkoye, 9 km from Simferopol, is being considered. Trains on the stage Simferopol-Sevastopol temporarily do not run, passengers will be delivered by bus.

09:26 The United States does not allow Ukrainian pilots to start training on F-16 fighters in Europe, despite the willingness of several countries to conduct such training, writes The New York Times, citing a Ukrainian official. According to him, without the permission of Washington, Ukrainian pilots can only get acquainted with the technical language and conduct tactical lessons, while test flights on the F-16 are impossible.

A US senior official told the newspaper that the White House is opposed to delivering F-16s to Ukraine because the fighter jet is too expensive, which means they could take too much of the budget to support Ukraine. Instead, the US administration is going to concentrate on the supply of other weapons. At the same time, the official did not rule out that the Biden administration may allow European countries to transfer their F-16s to Ukraine.

09:17 During the night attack of the Russians, 29 out of 30 missiles were destroyed , the command of the Air Force reported. In particular, from strategic aircraft - two Tu-160s and eight Tu-95s - the enemy fired 22 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles (21 were shot down); from ships in the Black Sea - six Caliber cruise missiles; from ground-based operational-tactical missile systems - two Iskander-K cruise missiles. In addition, the air defense forces shot down two Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs and two reconnaissance UAVs.

08:53 In the morning, the Russians launched a missile attack on the Khmelnitsky region - there is a hit in an infrastructure facility in the Khmelnitsky region, people were not injured, the OVA reported.

08:32 In the Donetsk region over the past day, as a result of Russian shelling, one person was killed (in Konstantinovka), five more were injured. In addition, the body of a child who died during the occupation was exhumed in Tatyanovka.

In the Kherson region, three people were killed, including one child, eight more were injured (including one child), according to the IVA.

08:24 The General Staff announced the approximate losses of the Russian Federation as of the morning of May 18.

  • personnel - about 201,100 (+510) people liquidated,

  • tanks - 3773 (+2),

  • armored combat vehicles - 7373 (+8),

  • artillery systems - 3198 (+32),

  • MLRS - 563 (+1),

  • air defense systems - 318 (+0),

  • aircraft - 308 (+0),

  • helicopters - 294 (+0),

  • UAV operational-tactical level - 2759 (+11),

  • cruise missiles - 990 (+8),

  • ships/boats - 18 (+0),

  • automotive equipment and tankers - 6073 (+6),

  • special equipment - 418 (+1).

08:20 The Russian army continues to concentrate its main efforts on the Limansky, Bakhmutsky, Avdeevsky and Maryinsky directions - there were 36 clashes. Bakhmut and Marinka remain at the epicenter of hostilities, the General Staff said in a morning report .

07:18 Late in the evening on May 17, the Russians launched a missile attack on Odessa. According to OK Pivden, the enemy fired different missiles from different directions. Most were destroyed by air defense, but there are also industrial infrastructure hits. One person died, two were injured.

06:12 At night, the Russians attacked Kiev again - this time from Tu-95MS, Tu-160 strategic bombers from the Caspian region, probably with Kh-101/555 cruise missiles. After launching the missiles, the enemy launched reconnaissance UAVs, said the head of the KGVA, Sergei Popko. According to preliminary information, all enemy targets in the airspace of the capital were detected and destroyed.

A fall of debris was recorded in the Desnyansky and Darnitsky districts of the capital. In the Darnitsky district, a fire broke out on the territory of a garage cooperative, it has already been eliminated. In other areas, debris could fall on parked cars, the local area or a forested area. Information about the victims was not received.

00:51 During a Russian missile attack on May 16, two components of the Patriot air defense system were damaged - a battery generator and part of the system's electronics, CNN reports, citing sources. The damage was minimal, the system remained functional throughout the attack and continues to remain online.

The US sent inspectors to test the system. US officials are still evaluating exactly how the SAM components were damaged, as it does not appear that any of them were directly hit by a Russian Kinzhal missile or other munition. One theory is that rocket debris may have damaged Patriot components, but officials are considering other options.

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