“…a military laser-based anti-drone system was believed to have accidentally shot down a U.S. government drone.” www.reuters.com/business/aer...

Someone let the penguins of the Heard and McDonald Islands know that their long ordeal is coming to an end.

If a person checks their watch while you’re talking, it’s probably because they’re timing you and this is a competition. Keep talking. It’s win-time baby. You got this.

Infosec used to be serious

"Breaking the military’s capacity to resist the party’s commands, especially in a crisis, is of utmost importance to Xi—even more so than...combat readiness. His driving concerns about party control of the military ... are existential." www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-des...

"Pax Silica builds on a hierarchical model where Washington defines the rules...Some actors are brought in as ‘capability nodes’, while others – notably the EU and Taiwan – are treated more as markets rather than full strategic co-architects." www.iiss.org/online-analy...

Sobering reporting on the risk of Iranian civil war. 'According to multiple accounts, masked men armed with knives killed basijis, the regime’s volunteer vigilantes. “It’s already a civil war,” says a young woman in Mashhad. “We’re just not saying it.”' www.economist.com/middle-east-...

"Taken together, the Xu and Lin episodes point to the same pattern. Even limited or ‘hedged’ dissent within the PLA has resulted in immediate sidelining, and any perceived challenge at the highest level has provoked decisive purge and persecution." engelsbergideas.com/essays/china...

"There is one message that we should take away from the current round of talks to end the war in Ukraine: Putin does not want the war to end right now." My latest update on war and strategic competition. mickryan.substack.com/p/putin-cann...

I don’t ask a lot from y’all in exchange for spending thousands of dollars a year to give the public free court records. Please share this piece far and wide.

Hello, World! Welcome back! I have new blog :-) tracesofhumanity.org/hello-world/

The UK creative industries — which contributed £125 billion to the economy in 2024 and supported 2.4 million jobs — are being destroyed by an AI sector that... contributed just £11 billion in the same year and supported only 85,000 jobs.

FBI document describing “Epstein's personal hacker. was an Italian citizen born in Calabria who developed zero-day exploits and offensive cyber tools and sold the tools to governments” www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

Schumer and Jeffries negotiating to limit the number of journalist arrested by the Department of Justice each year to a maximum of 20.

"In late September, Akhundzada ordered the internet and phones to be shut off, severing Afghanistan from the rest of the world. Three days later the internet was back, with no explanation of why. But what had happened behind the scenes was seismic" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Palo Alto Networks patched a high-severity vulnerability that could allow unauthenticated attackers to disable firewall protections in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

NEW: A hacker gained control of 1,100 mobile phones powering covert, AI-generated ads on TikTok. Then, he shared details of the operation with 404 Media. A look inside how startup Doublespeed, which is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is creating AI spam pages on TikTok to promote products.

An absolutely superb podcast from my colleague @tom.risky.biz and @thegrugq.bsky.social featuring Hamid Kashfi discussing the evolution of Iranian APTs. 10/10 risky.biz/BTN148/

Grok has invaded Poland

Old School US Military: Boring dads (and increasingly moms) who can get a shipping container full of explosives, MREs, & spare parts anywhere in the world in 72 hours with no drama. Cult of the Operator: Midlife crisis dads (and occasionally moms) who will starve to death w/o the old school types.

My proposal for US-China relations after Trump is to start a direct, uncle-to-uncle cultural exchange program where we being all of the most Dongbei guys over here to meet midwestern dads, and we send southerners over to Sichuan province. I think it can fix things.

I'm not like other girls, I'm a numbers station that's been continuously reciting the digits of pi to the tune of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" since 1953.

Microsoft Outlook is pants at usability and running a fat GUI isn’t great for security. About a year ago I went on a mission to make mutt (the CLI mail client) work in a sandbox so I could read my work Microsoft365 mail nicely and more securely. Here’s how

Pushback to the policy shift announced earlier. “Google DeepMind staff in the UK are seeking to unionise in an effort to challenge the company’s decision to sell its artificial intelligence technologies to defence groups and ties to the Israeli government”

I need time to write a proper skeet for this monster post but if you’re the type to trust me - this is a great read sensepost.com/blog/2025/in...

But we're going to have beautiful empty shelves and it's something I think you'll be seeing very soon. We won't be the country of clutter anymore. [doing accordion hands] it's called minimalism. Ok?

French prosecutors allege that a Le Monde journalist's book on the DGSI, France's domestic intelligence service, led to the arrest and execution of a Syrian agent who was run as part of a Mossad-DGSI operation. www.intelligenceonline.com/government-i...

On the importance of cultural "mimicry" to the work of illegals and non-official cover intelligence officers. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The EU is rather slow on the uptake. 12 years ago: "According to SPIEGEL information, the US placed bugs in the EU representation in Washington and infiltrated its computer network. Cyber attacks were also perpetrated against Brussels in New York and Washington." www.spiegel.de/internationa...

"Stuxnet still flunks the test of cyberwar, as I argued in 2013: It was not a disruptive incident, technology did not cause offense to dominate, the attacker was not a weak asymmetric actor; and deterrence shaped the attacker’s decisions." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New phone, Houthis

i wonder if maybe we should stop writing post-apocalyptic fiction just until we're sure that's not where rich people are getting their ideas

Russian satellites practiced attack-and-defense maneuvers. Multiple Russian satellites coordinated to surround and isolate another in low-Earth orbit, demonstrating potential spacecraft targeting. Meanwhile, China tested maneuvering satellites in close formation. edition.cnn.com/2025/03/16/p...

We heard you needed some more time, so we wanted to let you cook. We decided to push the Phrack 72 CFP deadline back until June 15th. Stay tuned for upcoming Phrack events. Print this flyer out and give it to someone IRL!!

Unsealed court docs: US investigators believe hackers behind the 2022 LastPass breach stole $150M in XRP, now worth ~$700M, from one person in January 2024 (Thomas Brewster/Forbes) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Just got an email from the Fulbright Association. As of right now, funding has been cut off to 12,500 US citizens currently abroad and and more than 7,400 foreigner scholars and students in the United States

Have you watched or listened to Between Two Nerds with @tom.risky.biz and @thegrugq.bsky.social yet? You should! Deny, degrade, discombobulate! Audio: risky.biz/BTN109/ Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEXg...

It appears that the LLM/AI chat Grok3 system prompt has been updated to ignore questions about whether Musk or Trump are spreading disinformation? Do you know why this may be the case?

Spyware as a service: Challenges in applying export controls to cloud-based cyber-surveillance software (17 February 2025) www.sipri.org/commentary/t...

Case in point because perhaps you are not aware of it. It’s actually Poland who bought really lots of Starlinks for Ukraine. Poland pays subscription fees for Ukraine. It’s a business arrangement. Would the U.S. try to cancel it…?

The US can disable Starlink access over Ukraine by arguing that it does not want to participate in the armed conflict. They could try to reason in this way potentially applying space law directly. I wrote about this in 2023. @justsecurity.org www.justsecurity.org/86823/the-ou...

Union chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz has called for talks with France and Great Britain for nuclear protection. "We need to talk to each other what it might look like," he said. Currently, Germany participates in NATO nuclear weapons sharing arrangements.

Breaking: Apple pulls end-to-end encrypted storage option from UK after secret order for a back door. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Don't mind me any, just keeping those busybodies in the AWS & GitHub security teams from getting in my way as I bro down and crush code.

Enough with the wake-up-call mantra. It’s time for real European action. The European Commission and Parliament should urgently pass binding regulations explicitly prohibiting the entry of Russian tanks into the EU—perhaps with a strongly worded press release to show we mean it.

AI is changing research and science as we know it. There's a need to urgently reassess PhD programs. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Are you interested in cultural transmission, medieval manuscripts or digital humanities, and want to pursue a PhD in a city bustling with intellectual and cultural life ? Come work with us !

This device was used by the German Army to capture and decode Yugoslav telegraphy signals in Kosovo: www.cryptomuseum.com/telex/rs/ga0...

“A key finding is that tactical drones are inflicting roughly two-thirds of Russian losses…twice as effective as every other weapon in the Ukr arsenal put together…remarkable…for weapons which did not officially exist in the Ukr mil at start of the war” www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...