North Korean outburst puts WH off-balance; Spies vs. US supply chains; CENTCOM lists 17 airstrikes in Yemen; Cellphone-tracking firm, hacked; and just a bit more...
White House scrambles as its Korean summit plans are thrown into uncertainty. Backdrop: “North Korea stunned Washington on Tuesday by threatening to abandon talks between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un if Washington insists on pushing it ‘into a corner’ on nuclear disarmament,” CNN reported Wednesday.
The nuclear question. When President Trump was asked by reporters if he is still insisting North Korea denuclearize, the Washington Post reports Trump responded by saying simply, “Yes.”
For its part, North Korea wants Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, to pipe down about the Libya talk. Speaking to CBS in late April, Bolton (and not for the first time) “invoked Libya's decision to denuclearize during the Bush administration as a model for US policy on North Korea,” CNN writes.
Problem is that didn’t turn out too hot for then-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi — who agreed in 2003 to abandon his “nuclear weapons program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions and reintegration into the international community,” the Post reminds us separately.
North Korea would seem to be keeping that very much in mind, if DPRK’s vice foreign minister’s words are taken at face value. Those words: “If the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit,” Kim Gye Gwan said in a statement carried Wednesday from the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Said White House PressSec Sarah Sanders of that Libya model, speaking to reporters on Wednesday: “I haven't seen that that's a specific thing. I know that that comment was made. There's not a cookie cutter model on how this would work."
And on the wider possibilities of the planned meeting on June 12 in Singapore: “If they [the North Koreans] want to meet, we’ll be ready; and if they don’t, that’s O.K., too.”
Said Bolton to Fox News radio on Wednesday: “We are trying to be both optimistic and realistic at the same time. I think that’s where the president is. We are going to do everything we can to come to a successful meeting, but we are not going to back away from the objective of that meeting, which is complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.”
As for other WH officials, some reminded the New York Times, “the United States had not made any concessions to Mr. Kim, aside from the meeting itself. Mr. Kim has agreed to stop nuclear and missile tests and to blow up an underground nuclear site in the presence of foreign journalists.”
Said Victor Cha, the White House’s former pick to be the next Ambassador to South Korea: “Welcome to the world of negotiating with the obstreperous North Koreans… [the threat to cancel the June talks is] a splash of cold water on all of those who thought this was going to be easier and different this time.” More from the Times, here.
Apparently unchanged: the involvement of B-52s in exercises near South Korea.
For your eyes only: A peek at South Korea’s air force, charted and mapped by Contemporary Issues and Geography. Check it here, and order it on Etsy, if you’re so inclined.
In related DPRK news: The analysts of 38North have joined the Stimson Center.
From Defense One
Spies Are Going After US Supply Chains, Intel Agencies Say // Patrick Tucker: As cyber defenses close the easier holes, foreign agents are looking to penetrate makers of parts and software.
Seize This Moment for Afghan Peace Talks // Johnny Walsh: In spite of recent attacks, the Taliban has signaled willingness to bend from its hardline past. The Trump administration should take advantage of the opportunity
The Campaign to Denuclearize North Korea Crashes Back to Earth // Uri Friedman: Kim Jong Un "has been playing a high-risk, high-return game. And he has never lost a bet thus far."
Microsoft Invades Amazon's Turf in Spookville // Patrick Tucker: An intelligence-community contract for cloud and AI services is just a prequel to the upcoming battle for the Pentagon's massive cloud contract.
Homeland Security Unveils New Cyber Strategy // Joseph Marks: It envisions clearer consequences for agencies that don't meet their cyber responsibilities.
White House Cuts Cyber Coordinator Role But Lawmakers Say Not So Fast // Joseph Marks: House Democrats charged National Security Adviser John Bolton's move lowers the White House's cyber expertise as threats are increasing.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. On this day in 1973, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities began televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair.
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NATO’s Secretary-General is in DC. Jens Stoltenberg will meet midday with President Trump at the White House, but a planned Rose Garden press conference appears to have been cancelled, VOA’s Steve Herman reports.
17 US airstrikes in Yemen since February. In a press release, CENTCOM says strikes on the AQAP terror group — formally, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — include four in February, seven in March, and four in April. Targets included “an AQAP training camp in western Hadramawt governorate April 11 and an AQAP checkpoint for asserting regional control and raising illegal revenue in al Bayda governorate April 23. Other air strikes took place in al Bayda, Hadramawt, Zamakh and Shabwah governorates.”
Civilians killed? From the release: “U.S. Central Command is aware of reports of alleged civilian casualties following the March 29 air strike against AQAP in al Bayda governorate. A credibility assessment is being conducted.”
A-10s fight off Taliban. The armored attack jets “are over Farah city, Afghanistan, in an attempt to prevent the city’s fall to Taliban forces during the first major assault against a provincial capital since the Taliban began their annual fighting season,” Military Times reports. On Tuesday, Taliban forces were stopped in fierce fighting about two miles from the city center, according to Khaama Press, a local news outlet. “The situation around Farah province has been deteriorating for months, as noted by the Long War Journal.” Read on, here.
How 17 years of war will make you sound. Tweeted the Air Force this morning: “The Taliban Forces in Farah city #Afghanistan would much rather have heard #Yanny or #Laurel than the deafening #BRRRT they got courtesy of our #A10.” (ht @Elizabeth_McLau.) The U.S. may want to call a few more Warthogs in before going on at much more length — if this map of Taliban control in the country is any indication.
U.S. formally designates another terror group: ISIS-GS, short for “ISIS in the Greater Sahara. From the State Department release: “ISIS-GS emerged when Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi and his followers split from Al-Mourabitoun, an al-Qa’ida splinter group...Al-Sahrawi first pledged allegiance to ISIS in May 2015, and in October 2016, ISIS acknowledged it received a pledge of allegiance from the group under al-Sahrawi. ISIS-GS is primarily based in Mali operating along the Mali-Niger border and has claimed responsibility for several attacks under al-Sahrawi’s leadership, including the October 4, 2017 attack on a joint U.S.-Nigerien patrol in the region of Tongo Tongo, Niger, which killed four U.S. soldiers and five Nigerien soldiers.”
Adversaries are going after U.S. supply chains, according to top officials with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Patrick Tucker reports: “President Trump astounded many in Washington on Sunday by vowing to rescue ZTE, the Chinese manufacturer whose mobile phones are viewed as a security threat by the U.S. intelligence community. America’s own spies have been warning that China and other potential adversaries might seek to weaken U.S. security through the electronic goods and services it buys.” Read on, here.
Cellphone-tracking company, hacked. Last week, the New York Times reported that a company called Securus Technologies sells telecom data that allows law-enforcement agencies to know “the location of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds.”
Problem #1: The service has been used inappropriately.
Problem #2: The company has been hacked, revealing “usernames and poorly secured passwords for thousands of Securus’ law enforcement customers,” Motherboard reports. So what? “Location aggregators are—from the point of view of adversarial intelligence agencies—one of the juiciest hacking targets imaginable,” says Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Senate Intel committee: Russia tried to help Trump. USA Today: “That bipartisan conclusion was announced by Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., in a statement after a closed hearing with former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan and former National Security Agency director Mike Rogers. The Senate committee's agreement with the intelligence agencies stands in stark contrast to the House Intelligence Committee, where the Republican majority disputed the conclusion that the Russians tried to help Trump defeat Clinton.” Read on, here.
For reference: Here’s the declassified version of the intelligence community's report on Russian activities in the 2016 election.
Also yesterday: “The Senate Judiciary Committee released more than 2,500 pages of documents on Wednesday related to its investigation about a meeting in 2016 between top Trump aides and a delegation of Russians who promised to help the campaign.” That, via NPR, here.
Microsoft wins Pentagon cloud contract — no, not that one. “The U.S. intelligence community has inked a contract to expand its use of Microsoft Azure cloud services for government, which will better enable it to use a suite of ‘intelligent algorithms’ — a deal that just might help the Seattle-based company in the looming fight for a truly massive Pentagon cloud award.” Our own Patrick Tucker has the story, here.