JD Work
Former intel, now academic @NDU_CIC, @TheKrulakCenter, @SIWPSColumbia @ColumbiaSIPA, @CyberStatecraft, @ElliottSchoolGW, @PAISWarwick. Apolitical, views=own
- Imagine for a minute how the adversary intrusion operators feel, who having put all of the work into another year’s campaign against Davos events, find that basically no one is attending this year because center of gravity is absolutely in DC at the moment.
- Going into a national security special event with a staggeringly bright communications footprint involving absolutely no fail missions, it sure would have been nice to have confidence that SALT TYPHOON has been evicted from US telecom networks before now.
- Apparent counterrevolutionary / revenge hits against Iranian judiciary figures involved in extrajudicial prisoner killings & moharebeh cases, reads like something out of John Wick, with edged weapon engagement used to acquire battlefield pickup small arms.
- Beyond a few idiots posting to Red Note in their military & other gov roles, there is substantial incentive for United Front to surge video exfiltrated from cyber espionage, in new placement under hijacked or synthetic identities.
- Claude instructed kitchen table nuclear ☢️ experimentation livestream is definitely a 2020s reboot of the Manhattan Project (1986) movie. Or perhaps that sad story about the Boy Scout who tried to build a neutron source by scraping together americium.
- One really ought to be concerned about the errors in Apple Intelligence presentation of news. Because when even Cupertino cannot get it right, the roll your own LLMs being pushed across agencies & services for national security missions almost certainly aren’t going to be better.
- State practice in offensive cyber countervalue targeting of objects of military - economic potential have defined international norms far more decisively than any number of aspirational prohibitions. This is the agreed fight, whether we like it or not.
- It is tempting to think that adversary actors exploiting BeyondTrust may getting nervous about possible attention following headline disclosures, & are rotating in other similar tooling for survivability. This would be an excellent example of discrete, measurable reaction suggesting additional
- One wonders what is so critical that GUGI recover, or destroy in place, when diving on the sunken hulk of a smugglers' vessel lost due to poor maintenance, incompetence in wartime retreat. As a first impression, one might assume exquisite cryptographic material, but this is table stakes
- A ransomware crew claiming hits on multiple medical targets, including hospital and psychiatric practices, and also hitting a historic convent operating since 1578, very much tells you what kind of scum you are facing off against.
- Framing Chinese government interactions with RedNote as meetings with “government relations” to discuss “concerns”, as if these were ordinary Western lobbyists, is a fundamental analytic error. The Communist Party issued orders to a subordinate Party cell, mandated as a mechanism
- One knows job markets are tough for those coming into the game, but distortions are becoming ever weirder. Saw a billet circulating for what is essentially an entry level analytic role that demanded specific intelligence professional certification, explicitly rejecting substitution
- The number of commentators that still don’t understand what they are watching when they see SpaceX launches is surprising. But this is so different from how most bureaucratic impulses function it deserves explanation. Every operational act requires
- One wonders what 74455 will do to commemorate the passing of Monsieur Lynch.
- It is regrettable that something so important as cyber would be reduced to a last minute afterthought of an executive order that is essentially for all political purposes, & operational outcomes, dead on arrival. There was no need for this, especially in this manner.
- A startup announcing its progress, and further funding rounds, towards thylacine de-extinction is precisely the future @GreatDismal anticipated. Would getting one be seen as too klept adjacent of an aesthetic and therefore gauche?
- New research into KV botnet pattern of life as ORB network raises question if inevitable delays imposed by attempting to treat counter-cyber operations actions as a law enforcement & judicial matter may have allowed the adversary to blunt counter-botnet takedown & remediation efforts...
- A no notice deployment of private military contractor seabed warfare assets to defend the Trans Pacific Express cable and other nearby undersea links from “accident” would be an interesting assertion of rights by international joint venture partners.
- The 🇨🇳Communist ideological apparat is almost certainly entirely unprepared to encounter the weight of the American cultural - political memespace, and the speed at which it shifts. Breaking down firewalls via app wars should be their worst nightmare. Our people are inherently an unruly bunch...
- Tally of recent munitions expenditures in Red Sea fight is just first accounting of real costs masked by the illusion that we could continue to indefinitely ride out enemy attack. Every empty rack in the shot locker will haunt us, & all the moreso the day we cannot assure perfect defensive fires.
- It is baffling to see naval designers continue to attempt to delete gun mounts when they are now proven to be a must have layer in lower end swarm defeat. No matter how nice a maybe sometime future laser mount may be. Add back in 5”, plus several Bofors for each engagement arc.
- More than seven years of known, disclosed options to directly degrade TYPHOON / PANDA implants at scale (and almost certainly in play quite a while before). So much wasted opportunity must be noted, even as we may be pleased to see effects this week.
- Over / under odds that a newly banned app suffers an "unexpected" & "mysterious" 0day resulting in breach or destructive effects against user base mobile devices, just as they are forced to exit market?
- Misread a line a “hostage compute” and now will be assigning operations design for future counter ransomware campaigns not merely against targeting of data encryption but selective control of chipset.
- Natsec law panel discussion I'd be interested in hearing: "Failing political parties, 18 U.S.C. § 951, and the special relationship." This is the intersection of some hard political science, foreign policy analysis, and intelligence studies puzzles
- Down the rabbit hole of DPRK energy targeting, once again. And as always, the arguments over strategic effects optionality are forefront of problem space. It is as if folks deliberately wish to ignore backbearings for anything other than arguments supporting KJ of mere espionage.
- I most dislike the prospective imminent return of the recurring fabrications of “news” about national security matters that simply did not happen, but arose out of Beltway chatter pervasive enough (or planted sufficiently well enough) to advance talking points for a cycle.
- DJI reportedly deliberating enabling drone ops in violation of prior flight restriction geofencing should be seen as preparation for large scale irregular attacks against critical targets, on a sufficiently near term timeline that they expect US policy to be unable to react.
- Naming carriers after living Presidents is a poor choice, as it may too heavily burden their namesake should we lose that ship in combat.
- Nothing says timely warning analysis like dissemination of product “anticipating” copycat threats around a high profile incident some 45 days later.