"Former FBI officials said they could not recall a single instance in which a senior official like Bongino received a waiver and was then given a top secret clearance."

"The school fees for Zaira, their 17-year-old daughter, have gone unpaid, she said, while their son, Libiston, 11, was traumatized after another child showed him the video shared by Mr. Trump, apparently showing the father’s boat being blown to pieces." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/w...

This is a popular tactic. Google recently said that Chinese hackers got vulnerability information from Gemini by posing as capture-the-flag participants. cloud.google.com/blog/topics/...

The U.S. and 10 other countries conducted a joint law-enforcement operation against a major infostealer, a remote access trojan, and a botnet, disrupting more than 1,000 servers and seizing 20 domains. The suspected lead operator of the RAT was also arrested. www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/...

With President Donald Trump's signature last night, the federal government is reopening and two major cybersecurity programs have been temporarily revived — but the road ahead is uncertain. www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisa-20...

Farewell, humble penny. Who knew that getting rid of something so small could feel so huge? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/b...

"Having saturated its own market with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungry countries in the developing world." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/c...

CISA has updated its directive to agencies about patching vulnerable Cisco firewalls after some agencies attested to compliance despite updating to software versions that were still vulnerable. Hackers are still breaching agencies using these vulns. www.cisa.gov/ed-25-03-gui...

"A senior U.S. military officer with no digital warfare experience has emerged as a top contender to lead U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, Recorded Future News has learned." therecord.media/cyber-comman...

"Do not repeat this insight" indeed

"The decision didn’t come through formal channels but by a series of phone calls from the Pentagon, one of the sources said. The circumstances were unusual and seemed designed to omit a paper trail, according to multiple sources." www.cnn.com/2025/11/11/p...

Yikes.

"The provision, tucked into a measure to fund the legislative branch, appears to immediately allow for eight GOP senators to sue over their phone records being seized in the course of the investigation by Jack Smith ... into the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/u...

Good @laurenfeiner.bsky.social story about the state of CISA that highlights potentially corrosive fears among the agency's critical infrastructure partners about the Trump administration's cuts and politicization: www.theverge.com/policy/81688...

And then we'll get to do this all over again!

Special crossover edition with @patrickhowelloneill.com and @selenalarson.bsky.social's boy Ben!

"The model is conservative, assuming, for example, that [State] will fully sustain the programs that remain. As of November 5th, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children." www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

China is reportedly behind the newly disclosed hack of the Congressional Budget Office, and it may still have access to some CBO systems: www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/p...

“Lairmore had testified that the sandwich ‘exploded all over’ his chest and claimed he could smell mustard and onions. But a photo showed that the sandwich was still in its wrapper on the ground after it hit Lairmore in his bulletproof vest.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

CISA's filing in the shutdown layoffs lawsuit provides the first confirmed count of laid-off employees in the Stakeholder Engagement Division: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... (h/t www.nextgov.com/people/2025/...) CISA says employees are exempt from injunction b/c they're not in a union.

New: Google says it has discovered at least 5 malware families that use AI to rewrite their code and generate new capabilities on the fly, suggesting AI-powered malware is finally starting to take off. cloud.google.com/blog/topics/... Report also has interesting stories about state actors' AI use.

Democrats get the statewide trifecta.

34-year-old Zohran Mamdani will become New York's first Muslim mayor.

Democrats hold the New Jersey governor's office.

Another history-making result in Virginia.

First big (projected) result of the night.

@ddimolfetta.bsky.social looks at the consequences of layoffs and furloughs on the NSA's hacking and espionage missions, which may be faltering as people leave or sit at home: www.nextgov.com/people/2025/...

The EI-ISAC "tried to set up its own ...version of [CISA's] situation room for this year’s election. The effort failed because the organization, which lost federal funding this year, couldn’t afford the software licensing fees required to collect and share data..." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

"The intimidation included approaching country officials during coffee breaks to warn them they might not be able to transit via the US, or that they and their families could face restrictions on entering the country if they acted against American interests..." www.ft.com/content/4e0a...

"Mr. Lee picked up one of the phones, still in its box, and admired it. Then he asked how good the security was. Mr. Xi laughed. 'You can check if there’s a backdoor,' he said..." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/w...

Really bad stuff. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/b...

Happy Halloween! 🎃🤖🐾🦇

If you're not denying these facts, then how can you say there was no cover-up? 🤔 www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

"Nearly nine months after Trump became chair of the center and more than a month into its main season, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years..." www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

The FCC has published the text of the proposed order undoing its cyber requirements for telecoms, which will get a vote at next month's meeting: docs.fcc.gov/public/attac... It says the requirements lacked legal standing and wouldn't be as effective as "an agile and collaborative approach."

"'I'm sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,' Mercer said in his email. 'I would strongly suggest dropping this story.'" www.propublica.org/article/paul...

How did I miss that The Diplomat's latest season became reality two weeks after it dropped? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/w...

The FCC will vote next month to eliminate cybersecurity requirements for telecommunications companies that the commission created under Democratic leadership in the waning days of the Biden administration, Chairman Brendan Carr announced today. www.fcc.gov/news-events/...

The Python Software Foundation is forfeiting a $1.5 million NSF grant because it came with Trump administration anti-DEI strings that would have affected PSF's entire portfolio. The grant would have helped fix flaws in major coding languages. cyberscoop.com/python-softw...

"Many parishioners are too scared to leave home to attend Mass, buy food or seek medical care, as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown targets their communities." apnews.com/article/immi...

"ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds." www.wired.com/story/chatbo...

"You can be amusing, but not funny" is a great encapsulation of bureaucratic thinking.

I guess time will tell whether or not @arimelber.bsky.social's book is mis-shelved here.

ICYMI: We've got a new @hothtakes.bsky.social episode about the Mandalorian and Grogu teaser trailer and the ... curious decision to make this the first Star Wars movie in seven years. hothtakes.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/h...

CISA held a town-hall meeting for SED employees this afternoon to discuss the mass layoffs in their division. Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala spoke briefly but took no questions, per a transcript I obtained, and neither he nor other speakers addressed the consequences of decimating the division.

With Trump pardoning Changpeng Zhao and accusing the Biden administration of persecuting him because it hated cryptocurrency, here's a reminder of what the IRS's cybercrime investigators dug up on CZ and Binance. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int...

"[ICE] has placed new recruits into its training program before they have completed the agency’s vetting process ... [S]ome of the recruits failed drug testing, have disqualifying criminal backgrounds or don’t meet the physical or academic requirements to serve..." www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

Nice story by @timstarks.bsky.social about how the government's marquee asset-visibility program can't see many of the assets that hackers target the most: cyberscoop.com/f5-vulnerabi...

One detail that didn't make it into this story: The admin's ban on most work travel particularly hurt CISA's now-RIF'd international team, which couldn't attend events like this week's Singapore International Cyber Week, where countries share best practices and form partnerships.

Recent layoffs at CISA are "the latest in an ongoing trend of the diminishment of our critical infrastructure protection capabilities," Megan Stifel, a former White House cyber policy staffer, told me. "The federal government has increasingly left industry to go it alone."