Covert Intel and Operations

PODCAST: #38 Dr Ian Stanier, former head of the U.K. Counter-Terrorism Policing’s HUMINT Unit, discusses informant management, informant motivation, the Stasi and the recruitment of Kim Philby. Listen via Reducing Crime on m.soundcloud.com/reducingcrime/…

Iranian hackers are targeting aviation, oil and gas companies in espionage scheme, researchers say cnn.com/2026/05/22/pol…

Really interesting read. “Guilty by Association?” aaron-edwards.co.uk/guilty-by-asso…

Full article: Smart new world: adapting human intelligence for the digital age tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Full article: The Emergence of Cognitive Intelligence (COGINT) as a New Military Intelligence Collection Discipline tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

“There is rising public and political concern about Palantir’s widening reach in UK public services, where it has more than £600m in contracts with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Financial Conduct Authority and several smaller police forces”

London mayor Sadiq Khan blocks £50m Met police deal with Palantir Guardian Exclusive: Scotland Yard had been in talks to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/m…

Is this another indication that europe is adapting in response to an increasingly erratic and unreliable ally? “Italy settles on Airbus tanker purchase in swing toward European equipment” defensenews.com/global/europe/…

War in pieces: Air Force wants special ops plane that can be built on the fly. The single-engine, prop-driven OA-1K, is built to give isolated special operations teams eyes overhead and firepower on call from rough dirt strips with little support.#covert militarytimes.com/news/your-mili…

In April / May 1940, the Soviet Union, at Katyn, massacred 21,857 Polish nationals including Polish officers, police and ‘intelligentsia’. Russia still attempts to downplay the war crime which some have described as genocide. archives.gov/research/forei…

I’m the Foreign Minister of Sweden. Don’t Overestimate Russia. nytimes.com/2026/05/20/opi… via @NYTOpinion

The U.K. deputy ambassador to Washington, James Roscoe, has left his post abruptly amid an investigation into a leak from the National Security Council. politico.eu/article/uk-dep…

The former Mount Royal Hotel near Hyde Park, London. Here, in Room 360, on 20 April 1961, GRU officer Oleg Penkovsky met a team of CIA-SIS officers including Harold “Shergy” Shergold, who had just got a confession from SIS officer George Blake, who had been spying for the KGB.

A Stasi operative photographs a Central Intelligence Agency operative who is simultaneously photographing him in return during the 1960s. During the Cold War, East Germany’s Ministry for State Security — better known as the Stasi — operated one of the most extensive domestic surveillance systems in modern history. This photograph, usually dated to the 1960s, is often described as showing a Stasi operative photographing a suspected Central Intelligence Agency operative who was photographing him at the exact same time. The image became a powerful symbol of the constant cat-and-mouse atmosphere that defined Cold War espionage, where Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies and Western operatives were perpetually monitoring one another. The Stasi relied heavily on photography, hidden cameras, informants, and physical surveillance to track both foreign intelligence targets and ordinary East German citizens. By the 1980s, the agency employed around 90,000 official personnel and oversaw a vast network of civilian informants spread throughout East Germany. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, intelligence officers regularly carried out counter-surveillance operations, creating a world in which spies were often watching other spies while simultaneously trying not to be watched themselves.

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: The Telegraph can reveal a secret Chinese surveillance platform used to track foreigners, journalists and individuals deemed “of interest” to the state @sophia_yan explains how the platform's records label her as "trackable" ⤵️ telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

The GRU unit responsible for poisoning Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, blowing up the Vrbětice ammunition depot in the Czech Republic, and attempting a coup in Montenegro is now running the largest Russian disinformation network in Europe. VIGINUM, the French agency monitoring foreign digital interference, attributed the Storm-1516 operation publicly to Unit 29155 of the GRU in 2025. That same unit handles physical sabotage, targeted assassinations, and now coordinated information warfare from a single organizational chart. The convergence matters. The fake “Epstein-Macron” article planted on a cloned France-Soir website earlier this year, the Doppelganger network mirroring Bild, 20minutes, ANSA, The Guardian and RBC Ukraine, and the Matryoshka campaign currently targeting Armenian elections all sit under officers who learned their trade on kinetic operations. Until Europe stops treating information warfare and hybrid security as separate policy files, the threat will keep being structurally underestimated. The GRU already runs them as one operation.

🚨Corruption, dysfunction, and the hidden weaknesses behind Putin’s security state. What happens when an intelligence system becomes consumed by corruption, fear, and loyalty to the regime instead of truth? Was honored to dicuss this and more on below episode of “At the Boundary” with Dr. Jeffrey Rogg. ✅Here is a summary of episode: CIA operations officer Sean Wiswesser argues that the dysfunction inside Russia’s intelligence services is not an exception to the system – it is the system. 👉Discussing his new book, Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War (👉 a.co/d/01mSE1Qy) Wiswesser explains how the FSB and SVR have become organizations shaped by cronyism, politicized analysis, and institutional decay. He and Dr. Jeff Rogg examine how those failures contributed to Russia’s disastrous assumptions before the invasion of Ukraine and why authoritarian intelligence systems struggle to deliver honest assessments to political leaders. 👉The conversation also explores Russian active measures, disinformation campaigns targeting democracies, and the growing role of intelligence services in sustaining Putin’s rule. 🚨This is a candid examination of how secret police culture, corruption, and information warfare continue to define Russia’s confrontation with the West. My appreciation to Jeff and the show for having me on, they did a great job and are very professional! 👇Here is the link to the pod: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-… #Russia #RussianIntelligence #UkraineWar #Ukraine #CogAI #SpecialOperations #Security

'Flag Man' Behind Nazi-Linked Anti-Migrant Protests Pleads Guilty to Assaulting Woman – Byline Times bylinetimes.com/2026/05/18/fla…

FAKERS: New Publication from Professor Rory Cormac nottingham.ac.uk/suit/news/2026…

Russia’s war in Ukraine faces a growing crisis on the home front. Russia is reaching the limits of its industrial capacity and struggles to replace huge manpower losses. To sustain its war, Moscow will have to mobilise its economy and society far more deeply and coercively. This will require command-like controls that would be greatly disruptive and unpopular. There are signs the Kremlin has begun to prepare for this. It will be a decisive moment for Russian and European security. 🌐Online 📅Tuesday 19 May 2026 ⏰10:00–11:15 BST 🗨️ Nigel Gould-Davies (@Nigelgd1), John Raine (@JohnARaine1) Register now: go.iiss.org/3P4T5IF

BBC undercover operatives discover details of financial arrangements liked to people smuggling operations into the UK bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…