#spy-case-collapse

#spy-case-collapse

Many of the foundations that have underpinned Australia's security, prosperity and democracy are being tested: social cohesion is eroding, trust in institutions is declining, intolerance is growing, even truth itself is being undermined by conspiracy, mis- and disinformation.

Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'

Joe Kent, President Trump's former top counter-terrorism official, is under investigation by the FBI's Criminal Division for allegedly improperly sharing classified information. The investigation began months before Kent's recent resignation, according to four individuals with direct knowledge of the probe who spoke to Semafor.

Russian military intelligence is recruiting young people online to carry out arson and other acts of sabotage across Europe. In this week's issue, Joshua Yaffa reports on the Kremlin's secret campaign to undermine the West's support for Ukraine-and breaks down how "single-use agents" are being deployed across the Continent. Some of their missions are small-putting up posters, or picking up a package-while others involve physical attacks, for example setting off explosives and starting fires.

Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin, 31, of Krasnodarskiy, Russia, led the two ransomware operations between early 2019 and mid-2021, involved in 130 extortion attempts.

An unidentified foreign hacker broke into the FBI's field office in New York in 2023 and compromised files related to the bureau's investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to Reuters. The hack took advantage of a server at the Child Exploitation Forensic Lab in the FBI's New York Field Office that was left inadvertently vulnerable by an FBI special agent working on the case.

A double agent, by contrast, is an intelligence asset who is knowingly and deliberately directed by one service to engage another in espionage. The controlling service uses that agent to feed information (called feed material) -true, false, or mixed-to the adversary. They do so to simultaneously study the adversary's tradecraft, collection priorities, and decision-making. In the Russian system, double agents also serve a bureaucratic function: they generate statistics, "success stories," and operational narratives that demonstrate effectiveness to political overseers and ultimately to Putin himself.

The FBI identified and addressed suspicious activities on FBI networks, and we have leveraged all technical capabilities to respond.