Cyber warfare

“See you in Valhalla” is how Kash Patel said farewell to Charlie Kirk. Unfortunately, it now seems that Patel’s own sanctum has now been breached. Iran-aligned hackers have broken into the FBI director’s personal email inbox and released the contents online. What did they leak? The un-redacted Epstein files? The truth behind the Kennedy assassination? Not quite. None of the 300 purloined emails were even sent during Patel’s time at the FBI. The hackers, no doubt cackling manically while doing so, instead released according to the Guardian: a series of personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum. Take that!

The past week has seen the war in Ukraine, which has been simmering for the last seven years, once more come to the boil. According to Kiev, Russia has massed as many as 85,000 troops near its border, while Moscow has actively talked-up the possibility of full-scale war and warned that it ‘would mean the beginning of Ukraine’s end’. Is such a war likely? You can forgive Kiev for worrying so — Vladimir Putin is already getting his excuses ready. The Kremlin claims to have an obligation to protect the residents of the Donbass if tensions continue to rise (just like it claimed to have an obligation to the residents of Crimea, in 2014, prior to annexing the peninsula).