A News Aggregator That Covers The World's Major Wars And Conflicts. Military, Political, And Intelligence News Are Also Covered. Occasionally We Will Have Our Own Opinions Or Observations To Make.
Showing posts with label u.s. intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label u.s. intelligence. Show all posts
Avril Haines tells of ‘grinding, attritional war’ but sounds cautious note over Ukraine’s prospects in expected counter-offensive
Washington does not believe the Russian military can recover from its losses in Ukraine to make territorial gains there this year, the top US intelligence official has said, but she warned that Vladimir Putin still believes that time is on his side.
The assessment, presented by the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, at a Senate hearing on Wednesday morning, was noncommittal on whether Ukraine could take back significant amounts of occupied land in its planned counter-offensive this spring. Haines said that would depend on multiple factors, including the loss of Ukrainian troops and equipment in resisting Russian attacks.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -China will deepen its cooperation with Russia to try to challenge the United States despite international condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine, the leaders of U.S. intelligence agencies said on Wednesday.
"Despite global backlash over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China will maintain its diplomatic, defense, economic, and technology cooperation with Russia to continue trying to challenge the United States, even as it will limit public support," they said in a threat assessment released as the Senate Intelligence Committee held its annual hearing on worldwide threats to U.S. security.
The search for the perpetrators has begun following Monday's sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Which countries could have been behind it, and how secure is Europe's critical infrastructure at the bottom of the sea?
The route of the gas pipelines through the Baltic Sea could have been copied out of a cruise catalogue. From Ust-Luga near St. Petersburg, the route leads through the Gulf of Finland, then south past the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, past Gotland in Sweden, past Bornholm through Danish waters before approaching the German coast and ending in Lubmin in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It's a route where you wouldn't typically expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, a region intended for comfortable vacations. A place where all was well.
WNU Editor: What caught my eye in the above Der Speigel report is this ....
.... The Germans were warned in summer by the CIA about a possible attack scenario on the Nord Stream pipelines. U.S. intelligence claimed to have intercepted Russian communications in which concerns were expressed about possible Ukrainian attacks on Western infrastructure. The Ukrainians allegedly tried to rent a boat in Sweden for this purpose. The CIA did not consider the scenario of a Ukrainian attack to be very credible, but the mere fact that the possibility of an attack on Western infrastructure was mentioned by the Russian side prompted the Americans to warn the Germans about the scenario.
Is Ukraine responsible for launching an attack that destroyed Nord stream 1 and 2? Maybe.
For the past few months I have been reading and hearing reports from Russian media and social media of Ukrainian plans and plots ranging from a dirty bomb or chemical attack on Moscow or Saint Pertersburg to false flag operations where Russia would be blamed. I presume this is what the CIA is talking about.
But to conduct a maritime operation on the Nord Stream pipelines where hundreds of kilograms of high explosives were placed at four different locations to explode at the same time is a sophistication that I do not see Ukraine having.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent huge sums “in an attempt to manipulate democracies from the inside,” a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
Russia has secretly funneled at least $300 million to foreign political parties and candidates in more than two dozen countries since 2014 in an attempt to shape political events beyond its borders, according to a new U.S. intelligence review.
Moscow planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more as part of its covert campaign to weaken democratic systems and promote global political forces seen as aligned with Kremlin interests, according to the review, which the Biden administration commissioned this summer.
A senior U.S. official, who like other officials spoke to reporters Tuesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence findings, said the administration decided to declassify some of the review’s findings in an attempt to counter Russia’s ability to sway political systems in countries in Europe, Africa and elsewhere.
* Vladimir Putin is preparing for a 'prolonged' war in the Ukraine, President Joe Biden's spy chief warned
* U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned the fighting will grow worse and that Putin will expand his reach beyond the Donbas region
* 'We are not confident that the fight in the Donbas will effectively end the war,' Haines said
* 'We assess President Putin is preparing for prolonged conflict in Ukraine during which he still intends to achieve goals beyond the Donbas'
* She and Lt. General Scott Berrier, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Directory, testified before Senate Armed Services Committee
Vladimir Putin is preparing for a 'prolonged' war in the Ukraine, President Joe Biden's spy chief warned on Tuesday, and he will grow more 'unpredictable' and 'escalatory' in his invasion.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned the fighting will grow worse and that Putin will expand his reach beyond the Donbas region in southeast Ukraine.
His targets could include neighboring Moldova, which is mostly encircled by Ukraine and, in its east, has Transnistria, a breakaway region controlled by pro-Russian separatists with the help of around 1,500 Russian troops.
(CNN)President Joe Biden recently told his top national security officials that leaks about US intelligence sharing with Ukrainians aren't helpful and need to stop, according to an official familiar with the conversation.
Last week, after the White House denied providing direct intelligence to Ukrainians "with the intent to kill Russian generals," Biden spoke separately with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
He told them that it was not helpful for information to become public about what the US was sharing with the Ukrainian forces fighting the Russian invasion, an official said, and stressed that the leaks regarding such information must stop.
Biden's message to his top national security officials was first reported by NBC News.
“It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence,” one U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them [the Russians], Putin specifically, before they do something."
It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance. Coordinated by the White House National Security Council, the unprecedented intelligence releases have been so frequent and voluminous, officials said, that intelligence agencies had to devote more staff members to work on the declassification process, scrubbing the information so it wouldn’t betray sources and methods.
WNU Editor: "In a break with the past" .... ?!?!?!? Are you kidding me!!!! U.S. intelligence has always been used to justify past U.S. government policy and actions. Need I remind everyone about "weapons of mass destruction".
But what is different this time is that the platforms that can be used to point out errors/discrepancies/and misinformation on the current war are making sure that different points of views that do not conform with the media/government narrative are banned/shadow banned/or suspended .... Scott Ritter's Twitter Reinstated After Suspension Over Ukraine Remarks (Newsweek). And in the case of Russian media, being banned outright.
And this censorship does not stop there. In the current conflict Youtubers and those who use Blogger (this includes WNU ) have already been warned by Google to not "exploit, dismiss, or condone the war". Translation .... do not question the prevailing narrative.
The top US general in Europe said Tuesday there “could be” a gap in US intelligence gathering that caused the US to overestimate Russia’s capability and underestimate Ukraine’s defensive abilities before Russia attacked Ukraine.
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month, US intelligence assessed that the country-wide assault could lead to Kyiv falling into Russian hands within days. But Russia’s military has been bogged down around the capital as the war has entered its second month, beleaguered by sustainability and logistics problems, along with an unexpected stiff resistance from Ukrainian fighters.
Testifying at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, US European Command chief Gen. Tod Wolters was asked by Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, if there was an intelligence gap that caused the US to overestimate Russia’s strength and underestimate the Ukrainian defenses.
The narrative from the Kremlin has been different, and it has been the same since the start of the invasion. No plans to take-over Ukraine, to defend the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics from “Ukrainian aggression”, and to pursue the “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of the country .... Russian President Putin Announces Special Operations Have Been Launched Against Ukraine (February 24, 2022).
I think the problem with US intelligence and the Pentagon is that they made their own assessment on what were Putin's goals, and then evaluated the Russian military campaign based on that assessment. If they had evaluated the Russian military campaign based on Putin's own stated objectives, I see a different assessment and conlusion.
To begin .... Ukraine's military has been seriously degraded, with its best and experienced fighters are now facing defeat in the Donbas region. The Azov battalion has been wiped out in Marioupol, albeit at the expense of the entire city being destroyed. The entire Luhansk region is now almost entirely under Russian military control. And thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk region are now surrounded and cut off.
The scope of this debacle is probably one of the reasons why Ukraine President Zelensky is pushing the current peace talks, knowing too well that in the next week or two the full extent of this military disaster will become known.
As for storming Ukraine's major cities. In the first week of the war my biggest fear was that the Russian military will use artillery and missile strikes to entirely devastate the centers of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and elsewhere. I bought into the Western media and U.S. government narrative that this was going to happen. That Russian forces were going to storm the cities. It is now 5 weeks into the war, and it is clear (to me) that this was not the Kremlin's objective. It looks like the purpose of this part of the Russian campaign was to put pressure on Kyiv and other cities to tie down the Ukraine military, thereby making resupply efforts to the Ukraine military in the eastern part of the country all but impossible. And the Russian military has been successful. Ukraine forces are tied down around the cities, and there has been no and/or limited resupplies to the eastern part of the country.
So what is next?
After Russia's eastern military campaign is over, I suspect the dynamics of the war are going to shift dramatically. Supply lines will shift and tens of thousands of Russian troops and their Chechen allies in the Donbas will now be free to advance to the central parts of Ukraine with their focus on the city of Dnipro.
Update: This US General is probably right .... US commander estimates nearly three-quarters of Russian forces are dedicated to Ukraine (FOX News). There are approximately 280,000 soldiers in the Russian Army, and according to most estimates there are currently 150,000 to 200,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The Russian military in total numbers almost one million, and I suspect their entire focus right now is to accomplish their objectives in Ukraine.
* US officials named a former politician as Kremlin pick for a puppet regime
* But Oleg Tsaryov laughed off the idea, saying he was not important enough to even get invited on to state TV
* It is the latest example of Washington trying to beat Putin at his own game
* Officials have kept up a steady stream of intelligence briefings on Ukraine
* Experts say the idea is to prevent the Kremlin being able to control the information battlefield and claim that Ukraine is the real aggressor
Washington fired another shot in the information war with Russia, it emerged on Tuesday, with American officials claiming the Kremlin wanted to install a little known former politician as part of a puppet regime in Ukraine.
Oleg Tsaryov, now a sanatorium director, laughed off the idea that he was a pawn in Vladimir Putin's grand plan, saying that he was simply not important enough.
But the episode offers an insight into the information war being waged between Washington and Russia over Ukraine.
THE MOST SENIOR INTELLIGENCE officer in the United States has said in a letter that the nation’s system of classification is flawed and undermines its national security. This view was expressed by Avril Haines, who heads the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the body that directs and coordinates America’s 18 intelligence agencies. Haines, 52, was appointed to the position last year by President Joe Biden, and is seen as a potential reformist of the US intelligence community.
FILE PHOTO: Technicians work at a genetic testing laboratory of BGI, formerly known as Beijing Genomics Institute, in Kunming, Yunnan province, China December 26, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
BETHESDA, Md. — Chinese firms are collecting genetic data from around the world, part of an effort by the Chinese government and companies to develop the world’s largest bio-database, American intelligence officials reported on Friday.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center said in a new paper that the United States needs to better secure critical technologies including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors and other technologies related to the so-called bioeconomy.
China and other countries are trying to dominate these technologies, and are using both legal and illegal means to acquire American know how, said Michael Orlando, the acting director of the counterintelligence center, an arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
* U.S. intelligence officials warned that America’s status as a global superpower depends on maintaining a lead in five key technologies.
* America’s rivals are trying to steal every one of them, the officials added.
* The five technologies are artificial intelligence, quantum computing, bioscience, semiconductors and autonomous systems, according to a new intelligence community report.
WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials have issued a stark warning: America’s status as a global superpower depends on maintaining a lead in five key technologies – and America’s rivals are trying to steal every one of them.
Officials said they are concerned that foreign theft of American technologies could not only rob the United States of economic leadership in the key sectors, but could threaten the country’s ability to even remain active in the industries at all.
The five technologies identified by intelligence officials are:
In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell speaks with Mike Orlando, the acting director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, about the range of foreign espionage threats facing the U.S. from adversaries and challengers like Russia and China.
Orlando and Morell discuss how "non-traditional collectors" within the academic and business sectors are increasingly tasked by foreign governments to steal intellectual property and other secrets. Orlando, a career FBI agent who has specialized in counterintelligence, explains how NCSC has sought to warn U.S. private sector entities against espionage threats that have evolved in range and sophistication.
WNU Editor: A former Director of the CIA (Michael Morell) interviewing/talking to the acting director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (Mike Orlando). Or to put it more bluntly. Two "spooks" talking to each other on news program.
The outcome of the Nagorno-Karabakh region sets back U.S. interests considerably.
The guns are now silent across Nagorno-Karabakh as Russian peacekeepers take up positions along the ceasefire line. Even at the best of times in Washington, DC, attention spans are short, but in a political season dominated by recounts and a presidential transition, even more so. Congress, however, has broader responsibilities than just to posture for partisan gain. With elections over, the Senate and House intelligence committees should instead focus on investigating the three intelligence failures which the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict exposed.
WNU Editor: No warnings or concerns were voiced by anyone in the US intelligence community until Azerbaijan launched its offensive 6 weeks ago. If that is not a complete intelligence failure, I do not know what is.
For regular readers of this blog, predictions of an imminent war started by Azerbaijan have been regularly posted since 2011 (see small sample below)
Anthony Ming Schinella, 52, died on June 14 in Arlington, Virginia. A medical examiner's report revealed that the senior intelligence official died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head
Anthony Schinella, the national intelligence officer for military issues and a longtime CIA official, killed himself at his home.
One of the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence officials died by suicide at his home in the Washington, D.C., area in June, but the U.S. intelligence community has remained publicly silent about the incident even as the CIA has conducted a secret investigation of his death.
Anthony Schinella, 52, the national intelligence officer for military issues, shot himself on June 14 in the front yard of his Arlington home. A Virginia medical examiner’s report lists Schinella’s cause of death as suicide from a gunshot wound to the head. His wife, who had just married him weeks earlier, told The Intercept that she was in her car in the driveway, trying to get away from Schinella when she witnessed his suicide. At the time of his suicide, Schinella was weeks away from retirement.
Soon after his death, an FBI liaison to the CIA entered Schinella’s house and removed his passports, his secure phone, and searched through his belongings, according to his wife, Sara Corcoran, a Washington journalist. A CIA spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
* This week has featured a flurry of reports on information U.S. intelligence picked up about a spreading outbreak in China's Wuhan province in November
* It wasn't until December 31 that China informed global health officials of the new coronavirus outbreak
* Information was included in President's Daily Brief in January after weeks of vetting
* Spies gained information gained through human intel, computers, and satellites
* Defense officials back on ABC News report that December report featured intel dating back to November
* Trump hit back Thursday night, calling it 'fake news' and a 'Hoax'
* New report says spies collected raw intelligence in November and put it in 'situation report'
* This week it was revealed trade advisor Peter Navarro penned doomsday memos about the coronavirus in January and February
U.S. spies officials collected raw intelligence about a developing health situation in Wuhan, China in November and put it into a report that got shared with federal officials – but didn't warn that a pandemic was forming, according to the latest disclosure in how the administration learned about the coronavirus.
The report of a more calibrated November caution by U.S. spies comes after an onslaught of pushback from the Trump administration to an earlier report this week that spies caught wind of the developing coronavirus and drafted a memo that made it to the White House with the November information.
President Trump called that report a 'Hoax' in a tweet very early Friday morning.
WNU Editor: Here we go again. Just like the mainstream media's Russian-collusion coverage for almost two and a half years, a major news network (ABC News) is using the same playbook, but this time they are saying that anonymous sources are telling them that US intelligence was aware of a medical-health crisis in China in November and tried to warn the White House. Sighhh .... regular readers of this blog know that this blog predicted this doubling down yesterday .... U.S. Medical Intelligence Chief Denies US Media Reports That There Was A Memo Warning About A Coronavirus Outbreak In November 2019 (April 9, 2020). My only advice to ABC News and news outlets like the the Daily Mail is the following. When it comes to using anonymous sources on President Trump, your record sucks. You have to do better.
* U.S. intelligence picked up information on a spreading outbreak in China's Wuhan province in November
* It wasn't until December 31 that China informed global health officials of the new coronavirus outbreak
* Information gained through human intel, computers, and satellites, ABC News reports
* National Center for Medical Intelligence documented concerns
* Information was included in President's Daily Brief in January after weeks of vetting
* This week it was revealed trade advisor Peter Navarro penned doomsday memos about the coronavirus in January and February
The head of a Defense Intelligence Agency center has denied a report that its medical health team issued a memo to the White House warning of a spreading outbreak in Wuhan, China based on information it gleaned back to November.
The denial followed a report Wednesday that officials around the U.S. government received a warning about the growing contagion – culminating its inclusion in the President's Daily Brief in early January.
'As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,' Col. R. Shane Day, the center's director said in a rare public statement on an intelligence matter.
WNU Editor: Here is an easy prediction. ABC News will stick with their story, and those who want to believe in the existence of such a memo will not change their point of view. Can anyone say "fake news" .... AGAIN!
More News On The U.S. Medical Intelligence Chief Denying US Media Reports That There Was A Memo Warning About A Coronavirus Outbreak In November 2019
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks to reporters during a break in the testimony by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland before a House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 20, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstReuters
Schiff said every Senate-appointed official in the DNI's hierarchy had been removed.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff accused President Donald Trump's top intelligence official Tuesday of undermining "critical intelligence functions" by keeping Congress in the dark about organizational changes he's been implementing.
"This effort appears to be proceeding despite the Coronavirus pandemic and amid indications ... of political interference in the production and dissemination of intelligence," Schiff wrote in a four-page letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.
.@Gstephanopoulos: “Did the Pentagon receive an intelligence assessment on COVID in China last November from the National Center for Medical Intelligence?”
While Congressional Democrats dominated headlines with their impeachment of President Trump - who was ultimately acquitted by the Senate, US intelligence officials were sounding the alarm that a serious illness was sweeping through China's Wuhan region.
A November intelligence report by the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) outlined concerns over what is now known as the COVID-19 pandemic - warning that it could be a "cataclysmic event," according to ABC News, citing two officials familiar with the document's contents. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House."
WNU Editor: The first cases of the coronavirus outbreak were reported in the middle of November .... Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17 (SCMP). More here .... First Covid-19 case happened in November, China government records show - report (The Guardian). Are we to believe that from a few cases in November the U.S. intel community made the determination that a 'cataclysmic' coronavirus crisis was around the corner and tried to warn the White House?!?!?! Even before Chinese doctors started to raise the alarm in December?!?!?! This ABC News report and the anonymous intel source makes no sense. U.S. intelligence is not that good.
I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.
