Important Takeaways:
- Iran is accelerating online activity that appears intended to influence the U.S. election, in one case targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack, Microsoft said Friday.
- Iranian actors also have spent recent months creating fake news sites and impersonating activists, laying the groundwork to stoke division and potentially sway American voters this fall, especially in swing states, the technology giant found.
- The findings in Microsoft’s newest threat intelligence report show how Iran, which has been active in recent U.S. elections, is evolving its tactics for another election that’s likely to have global implications. The report goes a step beyond anything U.S. intelligence officials have disclosed, giving specific examples of Iranian groups and the actions they have taken so far.
- The report also reveals how Russia and China are exploiting U.S. political polarization to advance their own divisive messaging in a consequential election year.
- Iran’s U.N. mission sent The Associated Press an emailed statement: “Iran has been the victim of numerous offensive cyber operations targeting its infrastructure, public service centers, and industries. Iran’s cyber capabilities are defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces. Iran has neither the intention nor plans to launch cyber attacks. The U.S. presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere.”
- Microsoft’s report aligns with recent warnings from U.S. intelligence officials, who say America’s adversaries appear determined to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims ahead of November’s vote.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia is preparing military countermeasures in response to the planned American deployment of longer-range missiles in Germany, the Russian deputy foreign minister said on Thursday, adding that the U.S. move was “destructive to regional safety and strategic stability.”
- “Without nerves, without emotions, we will develop a military response, first of all, to this new game,” the deputy minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, told Interfax, a Russian news agency.
- In a separate comment published by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mr. Ryabkov said that Moscow had anticipated the decision and that Russia had started preparing “compensating countermeasures” in advance.
- In a joint statement, the United States and Germany said Washington would begin “episodic deployments” of the missiles in Germany in 2026, including those that are “significantly longer range” than the ones currently deployed throughout Europe.
- The statement said that the periodic deployments would be preparation for “an enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.” Ultimately, the weapons will include nonnuclear SM-6 missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons, the statement said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel is bracing for a worst-case scenario that U.S. officials believe could materialize within just hours — the possibility of a direct attack on Israeli soil by Iran in retaliation for a strike almost two weeks ago that killed seven Iranian military officers.
- Two U.S. officials told CBS News that a major Iranian attack against Israel was expected as soon as Friday, possibly to include more than 100 drones and dozens of missiles aimed at military targets inside the country.
- With the Iranian retaliation expected at any time, the U.S. State Department on Thursday warned Americans in Israel not to travel outside major cities, which are better protected from incoming rocket fire by the country’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
- “Whoever harms us, we will harm them,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday as he visited troops at an Israel Defense Forces airbase. “We are prepared… both defensively and offensively.”
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Important Takeaways:
- American, British forces carry out large-scale strikes on Houthis in Yemen
- The U.S. and U.K. conducted large-scale air and missile strikes on Houthi rebel facilities across Yemen on Monday, according to a joint statement, stepping up operations against the militant group as it vows to continue attacking ships in the Red Sea.
- The U.S. and U.K. militaries, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, hit eight Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the Houthis’ continued attacks, according to a joint statement from the countries involved. The precision strikes were “intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners,” the statement said.
- The joint strikes targeted a Houthi underground storage site and targets connected to the Houthis’ missile and air surveillance capabilities, according to the statement. The underground bunker contained more advanced weapons than the facilities targeted in the coalition’s initial strikes this month, according to a senior military official, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive operational details.
- “Our aim remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea,” the statement said, “but let us reiterate our warning to Houthi leadership: we will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats.”
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Important Takeaways:
- China urges regional alert as US military steps up forward deployment
- China’s defense ministry on Thursday urged the Asia-Pacific to be on high alert as the United States steps up forward military deployment in the region, after reports of a U.S. plan to revive a Pacific airfield that launched atomic bombings of Japan.
- The Chinese military is paying close attention to moves by the United States, and will firmly safeguard China’s maritime rights, security and sovereignty in the region, Wu Qian, a spokesperson at the defense ministry, told a regular news conference.
- Earlier in December, a U.S. air force general told Japan’s Nikkei newspaper that the U.S. military will make “significant progress” towards reclaiming the Tinian North airfield from overgrown jungle vegetation in the coming months, as part of a plan to disperse aircraft across the Indo-Pacific region as China’s missile threat grows.
- The airfield, abandoned after World War II, lies on Tinian Island, part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, and about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Guam.
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Important Takeaways:
- Xi vows to prevent anyone ‘splitting Taiwan from China’
- President Xi Jinping vowed on Tuesday to resolutely prevent anyone from “splitting Taiwan from China in any way”, the official Xinhua news agency reported, a little more than two weeks before Taiwan elects a new leader.
- China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei, and has ramped up military and political pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.
- Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary elections on Jan. 13 and how the island handles relations with China is a major point of contention on the campaign trail.
- Xi said “the complete reunification of the motherland is an irresistible trend”.
- “The motherland must be reunified, and inevitably will be reunified,” Xinhua cited Xi as telling senior officials from the Communist Party.
- China says the Taiwan election is an internal Chinese affair but that the island’s people face a choice between war and peace and any attempt at Taiwan independence means war.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- Chinese scientists war-game hypersonic strike on US carrier group in South China Sea
- Hypersonic weapons could be “catastrophic” for the most potent aircraft carrier group in the US fleet, according to war game simulations run by a team of military planners in China.
- Military planners conclude the Gerald R. Ford and its fleet could be destroyed ‘with certainty’ in rare published report
- The researchers said 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles were used to sink the US Navy’s newest carrier and its group in 20 simulated battles
Read the original article by clicking here.
Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- China Is Preparing For War; Is The US Ready?
- Both the United States and China are investing record-breaking sums in building up their military capabilities. Leadership on both sides increasingly appears to consider such a conflict as inevitable, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
- Xi has ordered the regime’s military wing to prepare for war, and to be ready to launch an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.
- Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.)… Russia’s ongoing conquest of Ukraine, and the United States’ failure to deter it, contain all the lessons necessary to prepare for what comes next in Taiwan.
- “If we don’t learn the right lessons from the failure of deterrence in Ukraine, authoritarian aggression and the CCP’s malign influence will spread to the Indo-Pacific, and our New Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party could quickly become hot,” Gallagher told The Epoch Times.
- “To prevent this, we have to act with a sense of urgency and do everything we can to deter a CCP invasion of Taiwan.” “If the Chinese Communist Party invaded Taiwan today, we would not be well positioned to defend our friend, our interests, or American values in the Indo-Pacific,” Gallagher says.
- The United States must choose, he believes, to arm Taiwan to the teeth now or come to Taiwan’s aid at a much greater cost later.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- Iran says forces U.S. submarine to surface in Gulf, U.S. denies
- “The U.S. submarine was approaching while submerged, but the Iranian submarine Fateh detected it and carried out… maneuvers to force it to surface as it went through the Strait (of Hormuz). It had also entered into our territorial waters but … it corrected its course after being warned,” Irani said.
- “This submarine was doing its best, using all its capacities, to pass in total silence and without being detected,” Irani said. “We will certainly reflect to international bodies the fact that it had violated our border.”
- The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, denied what it called Iranian “disinformation”.
- Iranian and U.S. forces have had a number of confrontations in the past. In early April, the Iranian navy said it had identified and warned off a U.S. reconnaissance plane outside the mouth of the Gulf. In 2019, Iran shot down a U.S. drone which it said was flying over southern Iran.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- US Shoots down 4 Mystery Objects in 8 Days: ‘It’s Very Disturbing’
- S. fighter jets shot down another unidentified flying object over the weekend, this one over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday. This is the fourth flying object to be shot down in North American airspace in just eight days.
- The Pentagon says they’re still trying to determine what exactly the objects are and what they’re doing.
- Officials say the latest octagon-shaped device was unmanned and floating above sensitive sites at only about 20,000 feet. The Pentagon says they aren’t ruling anything out – not even UFO’s.
- Fighter jets also shot down objects over Alaska and Canada over the weekend. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “it represented a reasonable threat to civilian aircraft. Canadian and American fighter jets were scrambled, and an American F-22 successfully shot down the object.”
- The pilots who took out the flying object over Alaska on Friday described it as a type of small airship that interfered with their sensors before they shot it down. While the Pentagon says these objects do not appear to be related to the giant Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the South Carolina coast, officials are still trying to determine if China is responsible.
- For now, there are more questions than answers about what these mysterious flying objects are, what their purpose is and who’s behind them
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