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Tag: international relations and national security

  • Chinese hacking group targeting US agencies and companies has surged its activity, analysis finds | CNN Politics

    Chinese hacking group targeting US agencies and companies has surged its activity, analysis finds | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    An elite Chinese hacking group with ties to operatives indicted by a US grand jury in 2020 has surged its activity this year, targeting sensitive data held by companies and government agencies in the US and dozens of other countries, according to an expert at consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

    The findings highlight the biggest cyber-espionage challenge facing the Biden administration: combating a Chinese hacking program that the FBI has called more prolific than that of all other governments in the world combined.

    The Justice Department has aggressively sought to expose the alleged data-stealing campaigns through indictments, and made the case that Chinese hackers have robbed American companies of intellectual property, causing huge losses. But China-based hackers have often developed new tools or otherwise altered their operations, according to analysts.

    One of the Chinese groups tracked by PwC has targeted dozens of US organizations in the last year, including government agencies and software or tech firms, said Kris McConkey, who leads PwC’s global cyber threat intelligence practice. The intruders often comb networks for data that could offer insights into foreign or trade policy, he said, but also dabble in cryptocurrency schemes for personal profit. He declined to detail what types of US government agencies, whether at the federal, state or local level, were targeted.

    “They are, by far, the most active and globally impactful [hacking group] that we track at the minute,” McConkey, who closely follows China-based hackers, told CNN. He believes the attackers have been successful in breaching at least some organizations because they operate on a vast scale, targeting organizations in at least 35 countries this year alone.

    McConkey traced part of the activity to an ostensibly legitimate cybersecurity company based in the Chinese city of Chengdu, but he stopped short of publicly connecting the hacking to the Chinese government. US officials have for years accused China of using front companies to conduct hacking that feeds the government’s sprawling intelligence collection efforts.

    China has repeatedly denied allegations of hacking and Beijing has in recent months stepped up its own accusations that Washington has conducted cyber operations against Chinese assets.

    Cybersecurity issues have been a repeated source of friction between the world’s two biggest economies; President Joe Biden raised the subject on a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping last year.

    McConkey was one of multiple private cyber specialists who exposed the operations, and sometimes the alleged locations, of hackers from China, Iran and elsewhere at a recent conference called LABScon, hosted by US security firm SentinelOne, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

    Adam Kozy, who tracked Chinese hackers at the FBI from 2011 to 2013, showed the audience a photo of a People’s Liberation Army building in the city of Fuzhou that allegedly houses officers who conduct information operations against Chinese adversaries. That unit has targeted Taiwan, Kozy said, and “is the main area for China’s disinformation operations.”

    In their investigations of foreign hackers, the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors have drawn on those types of revelations from private researchers.

    At least one FBI agent and officials from the National Security Agency and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency attended the conference, a reminder of how reliant government officials are on data held by tech firms to pursue spies and cybercriminals. Sometimes that work happens not in a classified facility but in the halls of a luxury hotel.

    Morgan Adamski, a senior NSA official, told conference attendees that the coronavirus pandemic changed how her agency worked with private firms to guard sensitive data targeted by hackers.

    “The pandemic actually helped because it no longer revolved around big government meetings in a room, in a SCIF [Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility], where you couldn’t use any of the information,” said Adamski, who heads the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which works with defense contractors to blunt the impact of foreign hacking.

    After US defense contractors began working from home during the pandemic, she said, Chinese government hackers exploited the virtual private networking (VPN) software the contractors were using. One hacked contractor, which she didn’t name, shared data with federal agencies so they could build a clearer picture of what was going on.

    Asked by CNN whether the NSA and other federal agencies responding to the hacks were able to evict the Chinese hackers, Adamski said it’s an iterative process.

    “When you talk about nation-state actors, you kick them out, but they’re going to come back,” Adamski said, “especially if you’re a defense industrial base company that is producing critical military intelligence for the Department of Defense.”

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  • Tudor Dixon seeks a culture war in campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer | CNN Politics

    Tudor Dixon seeks a culture war in campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tudor Dixon, the Republican taking on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November’s midterm election, is turning to tactics that have worked for other Republican winners in competitive governor’s races as she seeks to turn the race into a cultural battle over education, transgender athletes and more.

    But her clash with a well-funded Democratic incumbent governor – one taking place in a state where a referendum that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution has emerged as a dominant issue – is showcasing the limits of those efforts at cultural appeals to the moderate, suburban voters who could decide the race’s outcome.

    National Republicans have largely abandoned Dixon in the race’s closing weeks, leaving her outspent and floundering in one of the nation’s most important swing states.

    Dixon sought to change the race’s trajectory on Saturday when former President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan for a rally in Warren with Dixon and other GOP candidates, including Matthew DePerno, who is challenging Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Kristina Karamo, who is taking on Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Dixon, DePerno and Karamo have all parroted Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

    Trump called Whitmer “one of the most radical, most sinister governors in America,” criticizing her support for abortion rights and Michigan’s pandemic-related lockdowns.

    The former President, echoing Dixon’s focus on cultural issues and education, called Dixon “a national leader in the battle to protect our children by getting race and gender ideology out of the classroom.”

    Trump’s attack on Whitmer as “sinister” is the latest in a series of rhetorical escalations by the former President. On Friday, he said on his social media website Truth Social that the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, had a “death wish” after Congress approved stopgap funding to avert a government shutdown.

    Dixon, meanwhile, spoke twice Saturday – once before Trump, and again when Trump invited her on stage. As she lambasted Whitmer, the crowd repeated a familiar Trump rally chant, this time directed at Whitmer rather than 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up.”

    “We’re not going to let our kids be radicalized. We’re not going to let our kids be sexualized. We’re not going to let our law enforcement be demonized. We’re not going to tell our businesses they can’t expand,” Dixon said.

    Dixon, a conservative commentator and first-time candidate, emerged from a crowded primary after receiving the financial support of former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos’ family. The Michigan GOP megadonors funded a super PAC bolstering Dixon’s campaign. And Trump waded into the race in the closing days of the primary with a Dixon endorsement that came after a handwritten letter from DeVos urged him to back Dixon, as reported by The New York Times.

    “The Dixon campaign is seeking to get its name ID up and MAGA base fully engaged to close the polling gap and that is what they hope to gain from a Trump rally in Macomb County,” said John Sellek, a Republican public relations adviser and head of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs in Lansing.

    However, she has struggled to raise money and gain traction since her August primary victory.

    Democrats on Saturday said Dixon’s comments at the Trump rally were an effort to distract from issues on which her positions are unpopular – particularly abortion rights.

    “Tonight, Michiganders saw a schoolyard bully on stage – not a leader,” Michigan Democratic Party chairwoman Lavora Barnes said in a statement. “Tudor Dixon hurled insults and rattled off a litany of grievances because she knows that her dangerous agenda to ban abortion and throw nurses in jail, dismantle public education, and slash funding for law enforcement is out-of-step.

    “Michigan families deserve a real leader who will work with anyone to get things done, and Tudor Dixon has shown time and again she will continue to divide and pit people against each other if it means she and Betsy DeVos gain political power,” Barnes said.

    Whitmer’s campaign and her supporters have dwarfed Dixon in television advertising spending – and Dixon’s campaign is currently off the air in Michigan, underscoring the reality that major Republican donors have shifted their focus to other races they view as more winnable.

    Since the primary on August 2, Democrats have spent about $17.6 million on ads in the governor’s race, while Republicans have spent just $1.1 million, according to data from the firm AdImpact. And over the next month through election day, Democrats have $23.4 million booked while GOP has just $4.3 million booked.

    Early voting is already underway in Michigan. And in the governor’s race, Whitmer is widely viewed as the favorite by nonpartisan analysts. The race is rated as one that “tilts Democratic” by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. The Cook Political Report and University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate it as “likely Democratic.”

    “The battle has been fought on the Democrats’ terms with millions and millions of dollars, and there’s been essentially no effort to fight back,” Michigan-based Republican strategist John Yob said on the Michigan Information & Research Service Inc.’s “MIRS Monday” podcast this week. “On the Republican side, we’ve never faced this before. And, you know, it doesn’t look very good in terms of a way out unless some serious money gets on TV pretty quickly.”

    The most dominant issue in the governor’s race has been abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Michigan’s Republican-led legislature has refused to change a 1931 law that would prohibit abortion in nearly all instances. Whitmer and other pro-abortion rights groups sued to block that law. And a Democratic-backed referendum that would amend Michigan’s constitution to guarantee abortion rights is on November’s ballot in the state.

    Dixon, who opposes abortion except when necessary to protect the life of the mother, has struggled to redirect the race’s focus.

    “You can vote for Gretchen Whitmer’s position without having to vote for Gretchen Whitmer again,” she told reporters last week, explaining that voters could support the referendum but oppose the incumbent governor.

    In an effort to shift the contest’s focus, Dixon’s campaign has borrowed tactics from Republican governors who have won in battleground states in recent years.

    For months, she has focused on parental control of schools’ curriculum, as well as school choice. It’s a message built on that of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose 2021 victory was an early harbinger of a potentially favorable political landscape for the GOP in this year’s midterm elections.

    “That’s why Gov. Youngkin’s message resonated,” Dixon said in an August interview on Fox News alongside Youngkin, who was campaigning in Michigan.

    “He said, ‘I’m listening to you. I want parents involved. And I’m going to bring you back into the schools,’” Dixon said. “That’s what people want to hear right now.”

    In her latest move to redefine the race, Dixon this week proposed two policies aimed at the LGBTQ community and schools.

    In Lansing on Tuesday, Dixon proposed a policy modeled after the controversial measure Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year that critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

    “This act will require school districts to ensure that their schools do not provide classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K through three, or in any manner that has not age- or developmentally appropriate,” Dixon told reporters, blasting what she called “radical sex and gender instruction.”

    Florida’s HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education bill, passed earlier this year effectively bans teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms for young students. LGBTQ advocates say the measure has led to further stigmatization of gay, lesbian and transgender children, causing more bullying and suicides within an already marginalized community.

    Then, on Wednesday in Grand Rapids, she unveiled her proposal for a “Women’s Sports Fairness Act,” which would ban transgender girls from competing in sports with the gender they identify with.

    “As a mother of four girls, nothing infuriates me more than the prospect of my daughters losing their friends and their teammates, losing opportunities in sports or otherwise, because some radically progressive politicians decided one day that they should have to compete against biological men,” she said. “Gretchen Whitmer has embraced the trans-supremacist ideology, which dictates that individuals who are born as men can be allowed to compete against our daughters.”

    Whitmer’s campaign has largely ignored Dixon’s proposals, and did not respond to a request for comment on them. Instead, Whitmer has in recent days emphasized her economic message and her support for abortion rights.

    Whitmer is leaning into policies enacted by Democrats in Washington in recent months, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August.

    Whitmer in September signed an executive directive capping insulin costs at $35 per month and out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year for Medicare recipients.

    And last week, Whitmer announced that student loan borrowers will not be taxed on the debt relief that Biden had ordered.

    What has dominated media coverage of the race in recent days, though, are a series of jokes Dixon has made about the 2020 kidnapping plot against Whitmer.

    A federal jury in August convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in 2020. They were also convicted of one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction after prosecutors detailed their plans to blow up a bridge to prevent police from responding to the kidnapping of the governor. The men now face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

    “The sad thing is that Gretchen will tie your hands, put a gun to your head, and ask if you’re ready to talk,” Dixon said at an event last week in Troy alongside Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump White House aide. “For someone so worried about being kidnapped, Gretchen Whitmer sure is good at taking business hostage and holding it for ransom.”

    After her comment drew backlash, Dixon joked again about the kidnapping plot at a second event Friday, this time with Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former President.

    She told a crowd that, at a stop with President Joe Biden at the Detroit Auto Show last week, Whitmer looked like she’d “rather be kidnapped by the FBI.”

    “Yeah, the media is like, ‘Oh my gosh, she did it again,’” Dixon said, anticipating the reaction to her second reference of the day to the 2020 kidnapping plot.

    As she told the crowd that her earlier remarks about the plot to kidnap Whitmer had been characterized as a joke, Dixon said: “I’m like, ‘No, that wasn’t a joke.’ If you were afraid of that, you should know what it is to have your life ripped away from you.”

    Whitmer’s campaign and Democratic groups condemned Dixon’s remarks Friday.

    “Threats of violence and dangerous rhetoric undermine our democracy and discourage good people on both sides of the aisle at every level from entering public service,” Whitmer campaign spokesperson Maeve Coyle said in a statement.

    “Governor Whitmer has faced serious threats to her safety and her life, and she is grateful to the law enforcement and prosecutors for their tireless work,” Coyle said. “Threats of violence – whether to Governor Whitmer or to candidates and elected officials on the other side of the aisle – are no laughing matter, and the fact that Tudor Dixon thinks it’s a joke shows that she is absolutely unfit to serve in public office.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Steps of a Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York were splashed with red paint | CNN

    Steps of a Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York were splashed with red paint | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York appears to have been defaced with red paint, following a similar incident in which the Russian consulate was vandalized with red spray paint.

    The two vandalism incidents come after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning stages of annexation of parts of Ukraine.

    An eyewitness told CNN that they saw a person in a face mask splash red paint on the steps of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral on New York’s Upper East Side late Friday night.

    The cathedral’s spokesperson, Abbot Nicodemus, also confirmed the vandalism to CNN.

    Remnants of the paint could be seen Saturday morning, after the eyewitness observed a woman working to scrub it away.

    “We sincerely do not understand those individuals that allow themselves acts of vandalism in relation to our cathedral. We pray for them,” Nicodemus said n a statement to CNN. “We want them to realize that the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA carries out important spiritual and peacemaking activities here, and we are open to all people, regardless of their nationality and political beliefs.”

    The New York Police Department said it was not aware of or investigating this incident.

    The NYPD previously told CNN it was investigating the red graffiti on the Russian consulate building as a “possible bias incident.” There were no updates in that investigation.

    The spokesperson told CNN that Friday’s incident is the third case of vandalism since the beginning of the year in which the cathedral has been marked with paint or written with “insulting” inscriptions.

    In addition, “insulting” calls and emails have been received by the cathedral, Nicodemus said, adding that some include direct threats against the clergy and parishioners.

    Saint Nicholas Cathedral said it is “compelled to turn such messages to the police,” said Nicodemus. “We are grateful to the law enforcement agencies of New York for their prompt response to our messages and their constant support.”

    The cathedral said that since February, its parishioners have been actively involved in collecting financial and humanitarian assistance for the victims of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

    Half of the parishioners of the cathedral are Ukrainian, Nicodemus said

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  • GOP congressional candidate Joe Kent’s ties to white nationalists include interview with Nazi sympathizer | CNN Politics

    GOP congressional candidate Joe Kent’s ties to white nationalists include interview with Nazi sympathizer | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Despite disavowing White nationalism last spring when one of its adherents endorsed him, a US House candidate in Washington subsequently gave a previously unreported interview in June to a Nazi sympathizer and White nationalist.

    While Republican Joe Kent touted his support for prominent far-right figures like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar and supported MAGA policies, he was speaking with Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer.

    Kent’s exchange with Arnold is all the more notable because just weeks later Kent’s campaign worked to distance him from Arnold after photos surfaced of the pair together. A Kent campaign strategist told the Associated Press in July that the campaign did not do background checks on those who took selfies with the candidate.

    Arnold has a well-documented history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements, including once calling Adolf Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

    In a statement to CNN, campaign spokesperson Matt Braynard said, “Joe Kent had no idea who that individual was when he encountered him on the street and Joe Kent has repeatedly condemned the statements that the individual is accused of making.”

    Braynard added that the campaign screens all interview requests and that Arnold approached Kent on the street by what he assumed was a local journalist. “None of the questions gave Joe any indications that the individual had any racist or antisemitic views and, if he had, Joe would have cancelled the interview immediately,” said Braynard.

    The campaign said that Arnold “is not in any way part of our campaign nor would we allow our campaign to be associated with someone who has that background. We also have no record of any contribution from that individual and if we had received one, we’d return it.”

    Kent, a former Green Beret and gold star spouse endorsed by former President Donald Trump, ran in this summer’s primary against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021.

    In August, Kent advanced to November’s general election against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez under the state’s top-two primary system after edging out Beutler, who placed third. Inside Elections recently redesignated the race as more competitive, moving it from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican.”

    On a since-suspended Twitter account and active channel on Telegram called “Pure Politics,” Greyson, or “American Greyson” as he calls himself, has shared posts that called Nazi men the “pure race” and that the US should have sided with the Nazis during World War Two. Arnold has falsely claimed there were “Jewish plans to genocide the German people,” and in a post, he shared a quote that said the “Jewish led colored hordes of the Earth” were attempting to exterminate White people.

    Arnold was pictured in multiple photographs with Kent at a fundraiser in April and has been canvassing for Republican candidates with Washington State Young Republicans, with one recent photo showing Arnold in a Joe Kent shirt according to photos on their public Instagram.

    Speaking with Arnold, Kent praised Gosar’s stance on illegal and legal immigration in a friendly five-minute interview.

    “Paul Gosar has been excellent, obviously immigration – border state down there. He took me down to the border, so I got a firsthand feel of all the crises we face there,” said Kent. “Representative Gosar also has some awesome legislation he’s proposed about getting rid of a lot of the legal immigration.”

    Arnold was at the Capitol during the January 6, 2021, riot, posting a video of himself leaving the steps of the front of the building saying they were being “chased out by communists,” calling the riot “an American baptism,” as he said police were deploying tear gas. There is no indication he entered the building, and he has not been charged with any crime.

    While Kent has tried to shift his campaign rhetoric toward the center – including by removing calls to adjudicate the 2020 election from his website sometime between June and July – his campaign has been bogged down by associations with white nationalists and extremists, whom Kent has repeatedly had to distance himself from.

    Back in March 2022, Kent disavowed Nick Fuentes, a 24-year-old far-right white nationalist, after Fuentes endorsed Kent in the primary. Fuentes is the architect of the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist conference held annually that received intense backlash this year after Gosar appeared at the event and Greene attended it.

    Kent said at the time that he was unfamiliar with Fuentes despite a brief call with him in spring 2021 about the candidate’s social media strategy. In April 2021, Kent tweeted in defense of Fuentes after he was banned from Twitter.

    “Many are glad that their political rivals are targeted by the state & big tech, they hate Trump, @NickJFuentes & MAGA. This short side thinking has led to some of the greatest tragedies in human history. We must fight for all speech & fight the confluence of gov & big tech.”

    He later said he stood by his comments but reiterated he did not want Fuentes’ endorsement because of Fuentes’ “focus on race/religion.”

    Kent’s website also features an endorsement from Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers who was censured by the Republican-controlled Arizona senate after she gave a speech to the white nationalist conference calling for public hangings.

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  • Ginni Thomas tells January 6 committee she didn’t discuss election activities with Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

    Ginni Thomas tells January 6 committee she didn’t discuss election activities with Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stressed that her election activities were separate from her husband’s role on the high court during her Thursday meeting with the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Thomas addressed her dynamic with her husband through a prepared statement at the onset of the four and a half hour meeting with the panel, two sources familiar told CNN.

    “Regarding the 2020 election, I did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities,” Thomas said under oath in her opening statement obtained by CNN. “And I did not speak with him at all about the details of my post-election activities, which were minimal, in any event. I am certain I never spoke with him about any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election, as I was not involved with those challenges in any way.”

    Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the January 6 committee, told CNN that Thomas answered “some questions” in her interview with the panel and reiterated her belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

    “Yes,” the chairman said when asked if Thomas said she still believes the election was stolen. “She said that.”

    Thompson would not divulge what the committee asked about, including whether she addressed her text messages with then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. In her prepared remarks, Thomas asserted that her husband was “completely unaware” of her texts with Meadows until the media reported on them.

    When asked if Thomas tried to clear up her previous statements, as her lawyer said, Thompson told CNN, “We didn’t accuse her of anything.”

    Thompson said that overall, “at this point we are glad she came in.” And asked whether the panel will incorporate the interview into its next, currently unscheduled hearing, he said, “If there’s something of merit.”

    When entering her voluntary interview on Thursday morning, Thomas declined to tell CNN why she felt the need to speak to the committee and instead said, “Thank you for being here.”

    She declined to say whether she spoke with her husband about her beliefs that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. “Thank you for your question, I look forward to answering members,” she told CNN.

    Thomas’ prepared remarks, however, stressed, “that my husband has never spoken with me about pending cases at the Court. It’s an iron clad rule in our home.”

    “Additionally, [Justice Thomas] is uninterested in politics. And I generally do not discuss with him my day-to-day work in politics, the topics I am working on, who I am calling, emailing, texting, or meeting,” she added.

    Thomas’ attorney, Mark Paoletta, confirmed the voluntary interview last week.

    “She was happy to cooperate with the Committee to clear up the misconceptions about her activities surrounding the 2020 elections,” Paoletta said in a statement after Thursday’s interview. “As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas had significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. And, as she told the Committee, her minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated.”

    Members of the panel have long said they are interested in speaking with Thomas, particularly after CNN first reported text messages she exchanged with Meadows prior to January 6 about overturning the election.

    But in the months after those messages emerged, there had been little indication that compelling her to testify was a top priority for the panel despite subsequent evidence that Thomas also encouraged state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate electoral win.

    Thomas attended the rally that preceded the attack on the US Capitol, as she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, where she stressed that her and her husband’s professional lives are kept separate. She also said that she had left the gathering before the protesters turned violent.

    She has also been publicly critical of the House January 6 investigation, calling on House GOP leaders to boot from their conference the two Republicans serving on the select committee.

    Thompson also told CNN that the panel had yet to reschedule its next hearing, after postponing it on Wednesday because of Hurricane Ian. The Mississippi Democrat said he doubts the hearing will take place next week.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Thursday.

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  • At least 23 dead after suicide bomb blast at educational center in Kabul | CNN

    At least 23 dead after suicide bomb blast at educational center in Kabul | CNN

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    Kabul, Afghanistan
    CNN
     — 

    A suicide bomb attack on an education center in Kabul has killed at least 23 people, most of whom are believed to be young women, in the latest sign of the deteriorating security situation in the Afghan capital.

    The explosion took place on Friday at the Kaaj education center, in a predominantly Hazara neighborhood – an ethnic minority group that has long faced oppression.

    Students were taking a practice university entrance exam at 7:30 a.m., local time (11 p.m. ET) when the blast first took place, Kabul Police Spokesman Khalid Zadran told CNN.

    Abdu Ghayas Momand, a doctor from Ali Jinah Hospital, where some of the victims have been taken, said 23 people had been killed and 36 more injured.

    There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

    Taiba Mehtarkhil, an eyewitness, told CNN many of the casualties were young women. She had gone to the center to look for her friend after she heard news of the attack and was confronted with scenes of chaos and despair, she said.

    “I saw parents, other members of the families of the Kaaj students, screaming and running up and down,” she said. “Some were trying to get emergency medical attention to their loved ones and some others were looking for their sons and daughters. I saw around 20 killed and many more wounded with my own eyes.”

    Mehtarkhil’s friend survived the attack as she was running late and hadn’t reached the classroom when the blast occurred, she said.

    Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been multiple attacks against the Hazara community.

    The Islamic State of Khorasan Province has claimed responsibility for 13 attacks against the Hazaras and been linked to three more that have killed and injured at least 700 people, according to Human Rights Watch.

    “The Taliban authorities have done little to protect these communities from suicide bombings and other unlawful attacks or to provide necessary medical care and other assistance to victims and their families,” the report added.

    A string of attacks in Kabul have claimed dozens of lives in recent weeks.

    Earlier this month, two Russian embassy employees were among six people killed in a suicide blast near the Russian embassy, and in August, an explosion at a mosque during evening prayers killed 21 people and injured 33 more.

    This is a breaking news story. More to come.

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  • Beware deepfake reality as Trump dominates headlines | CNN Politics

    Beware deepfake reality as Trump dominates headlines | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    After earlier and incorrectly predicting his own arrest this week, former President Donald Trump veered into the more sinister business of predicting violence and catastrophe if he’s arrested.

    Whether the prediction turns into reality is another thing entirely.

    Trump’s reemergence into the headlines, as both a third-time presidential candidate and a potential defendant, is threatening to pull the country back into his reality. Trump has not been formally charged with any crime and denies all wrongdoing.

    Compare the lived reality where people interact, mostly in peace, and go about their lives with the Trump-centered, fake world available on social media.

    In the real world, Trump hasn’t been charged with anything. On Twitter, fake photos of his arrest generated by artificial intelligence have been viewed millions of times.

    In the real world, prosecutors have to form a methodical criminal case before they indict a defendant. On social media, Trump says everything is part of a plot against him.

    Positing the idea of violent retribution into the echo chamber of his Truth Social platform early Friday, Trump said it is “known that potential death & destruction” that would be “catastrophic for our Country” would result if a charge is brought against him.

    In a post Thursday, Trump went into all caps – the typographical equivalent of screaming – to declare his innocence and add, “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL.”

    The veiled threats place a new form of pressure on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has already been threatened by Republicans in Congress with an investigation. Without naming Bragg in the Friday post, Trump said anyone who would charge him with a crime is “a degenerate psychopath that truely (sic) hates the USA!”

    CNN’s Brynn Gingras and Kara Scannell reported Friday that Bragg’s office received a package containing a white powder substance and a threatening note. They added that while authorities determined there was no dangerous substance, the package capped off a week where law enforcement has seen continual threats against the court, including several bomb threats, all of which turned out to be unfounded.

    Meanwhile, rather than condemn Trump’s latest post, top Republicans in Washington like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to answer questions about it.

    The photos of Trump being arrested were created in jest by Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, who asked an AI art generator to make a photo of “Donald Trump falling down while being arrested,” according to The Washington Post.

    “I was just mucking about,” Higgins told the Post. “I thought maybe five people would retweet it.”

    Bellingcat, ironically, uses social media posts and other digital data to prove facts, uncovering crimes and investigating atrocities. CNN worked with Bellingcat, for instance, to uncover the Russian operatives who apparently tried to poison the now-jailed dissident leader Alexey Navalny. The group has also used social media to track down apparent war crimes in Ukraine.

    The fake photos, while requiring a double take, were clearly not real. But it is that first impression that can be misleading – and lasting. They fed Trump’s narrative of persecution, a visual manifestation of the drama he puts into his posts.

    There’s more and more of this online, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell fiction from reality.

    Earlier this month, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan had an incredible video report on the power of AI-generated audio. In addition to magically mimicking Anderson Cooper, he used an AI generator to call his parents. The computer sounded like his voice, but it was not O’Sullivan talking. While his mother later said O’Sullivan’s Irish accent felt off during the conversation, she did not catch it in real time.

    “When we enter this world where anything can be fake – any image, any audio, any video, any piece of text, nothing has to be real – we have what’s called the liar’s dividend, which is anybody can deny reality,” Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information, told O’Sullivan.

    There are many examples of deepfake photos and videos if not tricking people, then certainly causing harm – such as women whose faces have been deepfaked, without their consent, onto pornography.

    When something is repeated enough online or when a fake narrative takes hold, it can influence the real world. That’s certainly what happened on January 6, 2021, when conspiracy theories that blossomed online turned into an attack on the Capitol.

    “There is no online and offline world; there’s one world, and it’s fully integrated,” Farid told O’Sullivan with regard to the potential for AI to create a false reality online that bleeds into the real world.

    “When things happen on the internet, they have real implications for individuals, for communities, for societies, for democracies, and I don’t think we as a field have fully come to grips with our responsibility here,” he said.

    It’s something to be very careful of as we look at what could be a historic period in which a former president, current candidate, serial conspiracy theorist and master of social media potentially faces criminal charges.

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  • Six US troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries following Iran-backed attacks in Syria | CNN Politics

    Six US troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries following Iran-backed attacks in Syria | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Six US service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries as a result of attacks from Iran-backed groups in Syria last week.

    Four US troops at the coalition base near al Hasakah that was attacked on March 23 by a suspected Iranian drone, and two service members at Mission Support Site Green Village attacked on March 24, have been identified as having brain injuries in screening since the attacks, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday.

    “As standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injuries,” he said. “So these additional injuries were identified during post-attack medical screenings.”

    Those screenings are ongoing, he added.

    One of the service members has been transferred to Baghdad for further treatment, a US defense official familiar with the matter told CNN, noting that Baghdad has more advanced treatment options and better specialists than remaining on base in Syria.

    The other five US service members who have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries are being treated at their facilities.

    The news comes a week after the suspected Iranian drone struck a facility housing US personnel, killing an American contractor and wounding five service members. The US responded with precision air strikes on facilities associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Ryder said Thursday killed eight militants.

    The US service members who were wounded in the attacks last week, Ryder said, “all are in stable condition.”

    Of the five injured in the original attack on March 23, one other service member is receiving treatment in Germany, while two others and a contractor are being treated in Iraq, and two have returned to duty. The service member who was injured in attacks on March 24 is also receiving medical care and is in stable condition, Ryder said.

    In 2020, more than 100 service members were diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries after an Iranian missile attack on the al Asad military base in Iraq. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at the time that symptoms take time to manifest.

    “[I]t’s not an immediate thing necessarily – some cases it is, some cases it’s not,” he said. “So we continue to screen.”

    Mild traumatic brain injuries, or concussion, is one of the most common forms of TBI among service members. But TBIs can also be debilitating; veterans described symptoms of dizziness, confusion, headaches, and irritability after sustaining TBIs, as well as changes in personality and balance issues.

    On Thursday, Ryder reiterated US officials’ remarks last week that the US “will take all necessary measures to defend our troops and our interests overseas.”

    “We do not seek conflict with Iran,” he said, “but we will always protect our people.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • What to know about Florida’s challenge to the immigration parole policy | CNN Politics

    What to know about Florida’s challenge to the immigration parole policy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge late Thursday night temporarily blocked one of the Biden’s administration’s key tools to try to manage the number of migrants in US Customs and Border Protection custody.

    The ruling came just before Title 42 expired, and administration officials say it will make their job more difficult amid the expected influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border. An appeal is expected.

    Here’s what to know:

    The plan, released Wednesday, allowed the release of migrants from CBP custody without court dates, or, in some cases, releasing them with conditions.

    As number of migrants increases at the border, the Department of Homeland Security said its plan would help release the immense strain on already overcrowded border facilities. As of Wednesday, there were more than 28,000 migrants in Border Patrol custody, stretching capacity.

    The administration previously released migrants without court dates when facing a surge of migrants after they’re screened and vetted by authorities. The plan would have allowed DHS to release migrants on “parole” on a case-by-case basis and require them to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    Florida sued to halt the policy, and District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, agreed to block the plan for two weeks.

    Wetherell, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said the administration’s explanation for why its policy was only unveiled on Wednesday, when the end of Title 42 was anticipated for months, was lacking. He also said the Biden administration simply failed to prepare.

    “Putting aside the fact that even President Biden recently acknowledged that the border has been in chaos for ‘a number of years,’ Defendants’ doomsday rhetoric rings hollow because … this problem is largely one of Defendants’ own making through the adoption and implementation of policies that have encouraged the so-called ‘irregular migration’ that has become fairly regular over the past 2 years.”

    Wetherell added: “Moreover, the Court fails to see a material difference between what CBP will be doing under the challenged policy and what it claims that it would have to do if the policy was enjoined, because in both instances, aliens are being released into the country on an expedited basis without being placed in removal proceedings and with little to no vetting and no monitoring.”

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking on “CNN This Morning,” called the ruling “very harmful” and said the administration is considering its options.

    “The practice that the court has prevented us from using (is) a practice that prior administrations have used to relieve overcrowding,” Mayorkas said. “What we do is we process screen and vet individuals and if we do not hold them, we release them so that they can go into immigration enforcement proceedings, make whatever claim for relief, they might and if they don’t succeed, be removed.”

    Assistant secretary for border and immigration policy Blas Nuñez-Neto said the ruling “will result in unsafe overcrowding at CBP facilities and undercut our ability to efficiently process and remove migrants, which will risk creating dangerous conditions for Border Patrol agents as well as non-citizens in our custody.”

    Wetherell’s ruling will block the policy for two weeks. A preliminary injunction hearing has been scheduled for May 19.

    The Justice Department has requested a stay on the court ruling, according to a Friday filing. The filing addresses two separate rulings in the case, both of which have to do with the release of migrants. If the request is not granted, the Justice Department said it intends to seek emergency relief from the Eleventh Circuit by Monday afternoon.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Biden will ‘at some point’ meet with China’s Xi Jinping, top White House official says | CNN Politics

    Biden will ‘at some point’ meet with China’s Xi Jinping, top White House official says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden will “at some point” meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as the two countries work to reset normal relations amid what has been an extremely tumultuous and tense year in the relationship.

    “We will, I hope, soon see American officials engaging at senior levels with their Chinese counterparts over the coming months to continue that work. And then, at some point, we will see President Biden and President Xi come back together again,” Sullivan told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview on “GPS” that aired Sunday.

    “There is nothing inconsistent with, on the one hand, competing vigorously in important domains on economics and technology, and also ensuring that that competition does not veer into conflict or confrontation. That is the firm conviction of President Biden,” Sullivan added.

    Sullivan’s remarks come as relations between the world’s two biggest economies remain strained.

    China’s defense minister on Sunday accused the United States and its allies of trying to destabilize the Indo-Pacific region – just hours after the US had accused a Chinese warship of cutting in front of an American vessel that was taking part in a joint exercise with the Canadian navy in the Taiwan Strait, forcing the American vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. The incident marked the second time in two weeks that Chinese military personnel have engaged in aggressive maneuvers in the vicinity of US military personnel near China’s border. A Chinese fighter jet conducted an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea last week, the US military said Tuesday.

    Tensions between Washington and Beijing soared in February after a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over the continental US and was subsequently shot down by the American military.

    The incident prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned trip to Beijing. While the trip has not yet been rescheduled, the State Department announced Saturday that the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs is traveling to China this week “to discuss key issues in the bilateral relationship.”

    China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang said in May that a “series of erroneous words and deeds” by the United States had placed relations between the two superpowers on “cold ice,” but stabilizing ties was a “top priority.”

    Amid the US efforts to reengage with China, Sullivan met with top Chinese official Wang Yi in Vienna last month in one of the highest-level engagements between US and Chinese officials since the spy balloon incident.

    There is a desire, Sullivan said, to “put a floor under the relationship” in order to more responsibly manage the competition between them.

    “There are a number of different elements to that. But one of the key ones is that as we have intense competition, we also have intense diplomacy,” he said.

    Biden, as recently as mid-May, projected optimism that he would eventually meet with his Chinese counterpart “whether it’s soon or not.” The two leaders last met in November at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, for a three-hour conversation that Biden afterward described as “open and candid.”

    Meanwhile, Sullivan also told Zakaria that the US believes the highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive will result in Kyiv taking back “strategically significant territory.”

    “Exactly how much, in what places, that will be up to developments on the ground as the Ukrainians get this counteroffensive underway,” Sullivan said. “But we believe that the Ukrainians will meet with success in this counteroffensive.”

    Asked if this meant he expected some form of negotiations by the end of this year, Sullivan wouldn’t provide any sort of timetable but said that developments on the battlefield will have a “major impact” on any future negotiation.

    “But what I will say is this: President Zelensky himself has said that this war will end ultimately through diplomacy,” Sullivan said.

    The Ukrainian military has been spotted moving military hardware toward the front lines of its conflict with Russia and carrying out attacks against Russian targets that could facilitate an offensive, including recent strikes in the Russian-occupied southern port city of Berdiansk.

    A senior US official confirmed to CNN in May that Ukraine had begun conducting “shaping” operations in advance of a counteroffensive against Russian forces. Shaping involves striking targets such as weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems to prepare the battlefield for advancing forces.

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  • How Meta got caught in tensions between the US and EU | CNN Business

    How Meta got caught in tensions between the US and EU | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta has perhaps become the most high-profile casualty of a long-running privacy dispute between Europe and the United States — but it may not be the last.

    Meta has been fined a record-breaking €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) by European Union regulators for violating EU privacy laws by transferring the personal data of Facebook users to servers in the United States. Meta said Monday it would appeal the ruling, including the fine.

    The historic fine against Meta — and a potentially game-changing legal order that could force Meta to stop transferring EU users’ data to the United States — isn’t just a one-off decision limited to this one company or its individual business practices. It reflects bigger, unresolved tensions between Europe and the United States over data privacy, government surveillance and regulation of internet platforms.

    Those underlying and fundamental disagreements, which have simmered for years, have now come to a head, casting a significant shadow over thousands of businesses that depend on processing EU data in the United States.

    Beyond its huge economic implications, however, the fine has once again highlighted Europe’s deep mistrust of US surveillance powers — right as the US government is trying to build its own case against foreign-linked apps such as TikTok over similar surveillance concerns.

    The origins of Meta’s fine this week trace back to a 2020 ruling by Europe’s top court.

    In that decision, the European Court of Justice struck down a complex transatlantic framework Meta and many other companies had been relying on until then to legally move EU user data to US servers in the ordinary course of running their businesses.

    That framework, known as Privacy Shield, was itself the outgrowth of European complaints that US authorities didn’t do enough to protect the privacy of EU citizens. At the time Privacy Shield was created, the world was still reeling from disclosures made by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. His disclosures highlighted the vast reach of US surveillance programs such as PRISM, which allowed the NSA to snoop on the electronic communications of foreign nationals as they used tech tools built by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others.

    PRISM relied on a basic fact of internet architecture: Much of the world’s online communications take place on US-based platforms that route their data through US servers, with few legal protections or recourse for either foreigners or Americans swept up in the tracking.

    A 2013 European Parliament report on the PRISM program captured the EU’s sense of alarm, noting the “very strong implications” for EU citizens.

    “PRISM seems to have allowed an unprecedented scale and depth in intelligence gathering,” the report said, “which goes beyond counter-terrorism and beyond espionage activities carried out by liberal regimes in the past. This may lead towards an illegal form of Total Information Awareness where data of millions of people are subject to collection and manipulation by the NSA.”

    Privacy Shield was a 2016 US-EU agreement designed to address those concerns by making US companies certifiably accountable for their handling of EU user data. For a time, it seemed as if Privacy Shield could be a lasting solution facilitating the growth of the internet and a globally connected society, one in which the free flow of data would not be impeded.

    But when the European Court of Justice invalidated that framework in 2020, it reiterated longstanding surveillance concerns and insisted that Privacy Shield still didn’t provide EU citizens’ personal information the same level of protection in the US that it enjoys in EU countries, a standard required under GDPR, the EU’s signature privacy law.

    The loss of Privacy Shield created enormous uncertainty for the more than 5,300 businesses that rely on the smooth transfer of data across borders. The US government has said transatlantic data flows support the more than $7 trillion dollars of economic activity that occurs every year between the United States and the European Union. And the US Chamber of Commerce has estimated that transatlantic data transfers account for about half of all data transfers in both the US and the EU.

    The Biden administration has moved to implement a successor to Privacy Shield that contains some changes to US surveillance practices, and if it is fully implemented in time, it could prevent Meta and other companies from having to suspend transatlantic data transfers or some of their European operations.

    But it’s unclear whether those changes will be enough to be accepted by the EU, or whether the new data privacy framework could avoid its own court challenge.

    The possibility that US-EU data transfers may be seriously disrupted is refocusing scrutiny on US surveillance law just as the US government has been sounding its own alarms about Chinese government surveillance.

    US officials have warned that China could seek to use data collected from TikTok or other foreign-linked companies to benefit the country’s intelligence or propaganda campaigns, using the personal information to identify spying targets or to manipulate public opinion through targeted disinformation.

    But US moral authority on the issue risks being eroded by the EU criticism, a problem for the US government that may only be compounded by its own missteps.

    Just last week, a federal court described how the FBI improperly accessed a vast intelligence database meant for surveilling foreign nationals in a bid to gather information on US Capitol rioters and those who protested the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

    The improper access, which was not “reasonably likely” to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime, according to a Justice Department assessment described in the court’s opinion, has only inflamed domestic critics of US surveillance law, and could give ammunition to EU critics.

    The intelligence database at issue was authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the same law used to justify the NSA’s PRISM program and which the EU has repeatedly cited as a danger to its citizens and a reason to suspect transatlantic data sharing.

    While the US distinguishes itself from China based on commitments to open and democratic governance, the EU’s concerns about the US are not much different in kind: They come from a place of deep mistrust of broad surveillance authority and suspicions about the potential misuse of user data.

    For years, civil liberties advocates have alleged that Section 702 enables warrantless spying on Americans on an enormous scale. Now, the FBI incident may only further validate EU fears; add to the existing concerns that led to Meta’s fine; contribute to the potential unraveling of the US-EU data relationship; and damage US credibility in its push to warn about the hypothetical risks of letting TikTok data flow to China.

    If a new transatlantic data agreement is delayed or falls apart, Meta won’t be the only company stuck with the bill. Thousands of other companies may get caught in the middle, and the United States will have to hope nobody looks too closely at why while still trying to make a case against TikTok.

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  • Exclusive: Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks, sources say | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks, sources say | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Ukraine has cultivated a network of agents and sympathizers inside Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets and has begun providing them with drones to stage attacks, multiple people familiar with US intelligence on the matter told CNN.

    US officials believe these pro-Ukrainian agents inside Russia carried out a drone attack that targeted the Kremlin in early May by launching drones from within Russia rather than flying them from Ukraine into Moscow.

    It is not clear whether other drone attacks carried out in recent days – including one targeting a residential neighborhood near Moscow and another strike on oil refineries in southern Russia – were also launched from inside Russia or conducted by this network of pro-Ukrainian operatives.

    But US officials believe that Ukraine has developed sabotage cells inside Russia made up of a mix of pro-Ukrainian sympathizers and operatives well-trained in this kind of warfare. Ukraine is believed to have provided them with Ukrainian-made drones, and two US officials told CNN there is no evidence that any of the drone strikes have been conducted using US-provided drones.

    Officials could not say conclusively how Ukraine has managed to get the drones behind enemy lines, but two of the sources told CNN that it has established well-practiced smuggling routes that could be used to send drones or drone components into Russia where they could then be assembled.

    A European intelligence official noted that the Russian-Ukrainian border is vast and very difficult to control, making it ripe for smuggling – something the official said the Ukrainians have been doing for the better part of the decade that they’ve been at war with pro-Russian forces.

    “You also have to consider that this is a peripheral area of Russia,” the official said. “Survival is everyone’s problem, so cash works wonders.”

    Who exactly is controlling these assets is also murky, the sources told CNN, though US officials believe that elements within Ukraine’s intelligence community are involved. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has set general parameters for what his intelligence and security services are allowed to do, two of the sources said, but not every operation requires his sign-off.

    Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the head of the Ukrainian Security Service suggested to CNN that the mysterious explosions and drone strikes inside Russia would continue.

    “We will comment on instances of ‘cotton’ only after our victory,” he said. Quoting the head of the Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk, the spokesperson added that regardless, “‘cotton’ has been burning, is burning, and will continue burning.”

    “Cotton” is a slang-word that Ukrainians use to mean explosions, usually in Russia or Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. Its origins date back to the early weeks of the war and stem from the fact that the Russian word for a “pop” is very similar to the Ukrainian word for cotton.

    There has been a steady drumbeat of mysterious fires and explosions inside Russia over the last year, targeting oil and fuel depots, railways, military enlistment offices, warehouses and pipelines. But officials have noticed an uptick in these attacks on Russian soil in recent weeks, beginning with the attack on the Kremlin building. It appears to be “a culmination of months of effort” by the Ukrainians to set up the infrastructure for such sabotage, said one of the sources familiar with the intelligence.

    “There has been for months now a pretty consistent push by some in Ukraine to be more aggressive,” this person said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of US intelligence. “And there has certainly been some willingness at senior levels. The challenge has always been their ability to do it.”

    A specialist inspects the damaged facade of an apartment building after a reported drone attack in Moscow on May 30, 2023.

    Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, has consistently proposed some of the most brazen plans for operations against Russia and values symbolic acts, US officials told CNN.

    Classified Pentagon documents leaked online earlier this year revealed that the CIA urged Budanov to “postpone” attacks on Russia on the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, according to the Washington Post. Budanov agreed to the CIA’s request, the classified documents reportedly said. But drones were spotted near Moscow on February 28, just days after the one-year anniversary of the war.

    Another leaked US intelligence report obtained by CNN, which is sourced to signals intelligence, says that Zelensky in late February “suggested striking Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using drones, since Ukraine does not have long-range weapons capable of reaching that far.

    It is not clear whether that plan moved forward, but oil facilities in Rostov Oblast have caught on fire after being hit by suspected drones several times over the last year – attacks Russia is now investigating and has blamed on “criminal actions by the Armed formations of Ukraine.”

    “All I will comment on is that we’ve been killing Russians,” Budanov told Yahoo News last month when asked about the car bomb attack that killed the daughter of a prominent Russian political figure in Moscow’s suburbs last year. The US intelligence community assessed that that operation was authorized by elements within the Ukrainian government.

    “And we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine,” Budanov added.

    Publicly, senior US officials have condemned the strikes inside Russia, warning of the potential for an escalation of the war. But speaking privately to CNN, US and western officials said that they believe the cross-border attacks are a smart military strategy that could divert Russian resources to protecting its own territory, as Ukraine gears up for a major counteroffensive.

    On Tuesday, the UK’s Foreign Secretary told reporters that Ukraine has “the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself. Legitimate military targets beyond its own borders are internationally recognized as being part of a nation’s self-defense…We should recognize that.”

    French Vice Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, chief of operations of the Joint Staff, told CNN on Friday that the attacks inside Russia are merely “part of war” and offer an opportunity to send a message to Russia’s population.

    “There is a war there and it could concern you [the Russian public] in the future,” Vaujour said of the attacks. “And so it’s a good way for Ukrainians to address a message not only to Vladimir Putin, but to the Russian population,” he added.

    Regarding the attacks, he said that it wasn’t “forbidden” for Ukraine to think about that.

    Ukrainian officials, moreover, have said privately that they plan to continue the attacks inside Russia because it is a good distraction tactic that is forcing Russia to be concerned with its own security at home, according to a US source who has spoken to Ukrainian officials in recent days.

    In an intelligence update, the UK Ministry of Defense said that attacks by pro-Ukrainian partisan groups and drone strikes in the border region of Belgorod have forced Russia to deploy “the full range of military firepower on its own territory.”

    “Russian commanders now face an acute dilemma,” the update said, “of whether to strength defences in Russia’s border regions or reinforce their lines in occupied Ukraine.”

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  • McCarthy attempts damage control after questioning Trump’s strength as a candidate | CNN Politics

    McCarthy attempts damage control after questioning Trump’s strength as a candidate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy has scrambled to contain the fallout after he suggested that former President Donald Trump might not be the strongest candidate in the 2024 presidential race – comments that outraged Trump allies and raised fresh questions on the right about why the speaker has yet to endorse Trump in the crowded GOP primary.

    McCarthy called Trump Tuesday morning to apologize, two sources familiar told CNN, after McCarthy said during a CNBC interview that he thinks Trump can win in 2024, but does not know if he is the “strongest” candidate.

    McCarthy explained to Trump that he misspoke on CNBC, and also claimed that some reporters took some of his comments out of context, the sources said. Allies were pleased with McCarthy’s apology, though several Trump advisers told CNN they were still wary of the speaker. The New York Times was first to report on the call.

    And the damage control didn’t end there.

    Not long after his call with Trump, McCarthy walked back his remarks and offered effusive praise of Trump in an exclusive interview with the right-wing publication Breitbart. A Trump campaign adviser told CNN, “I don’t think anyone can read his interview yesterday and not believe that he fully supports (Trump).”

    McCarthy’s campaign then also blasted out a fundraising email calling Trump the “strongest” opponent to beat President Joe Biden.

    McCarthy’s scramble to stay in Trump’s good graces and reiterate his loyalty both privately and publicly shows how much he is still beholden to the former president, who remains popular among McCarthy’s right flank. Yet McCarthy has refused to endorse in the primary so far – an example of the delicate tightrope he is walking when it comes to Trump.

    But the speaker is likely to come under increasing pressure to get off the sidelines as the race heats up, even as some senior Republicans have advised McCarthy to stay neutral, worried it could put some vulnerable House Republicans in a tough spot. Privately, there are deep misgivings among a faction of Republicans about having Trump as their presidential nominee.

    Some in Trump’s orbit say McCarthy has indicated to them that his endorsement could hurt Trump with far-right factions of the party that view McCarthy as part of the establishment. One Trump adviser did not scoff at this reasoning, pointing to how enraged with McCarthy some of Trump’s most ardent supporters were at the speaker’s comments Tuesday.

    But overall, those close to Trump expect McCarthy to ultimately endorse Trump, particularly after the former president stepped up his support for McCarthy in his speaker election earlier this year.

    Sources close to Trump believe the former president helped secure the speakership for McCarthy after urging House Republicans to vote for the embattled leader after McCarthy lost three straight speakership votes in January. Trump also made calls on McCarthy’s behalf ahead of the vote. McCarthy finally secured the gavel on the 15th ballot and immediately thanked the former president for his support.

    As of right now, however, McCarthy has no intentions of endorsing Trump – or anyone – in the primary, according to sources familiar with the speaker’s thinking, though it’s still early and his calculus could change.

    Since getting into the race, Trump has been aggressively courting endorsements from allies on Capitol Hill, which he believes will help solidify his status as the front-runner. So far, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik is the highest-ranking House Republican to endorse Trump.

    In the past, some advisers to the former president have brushed off questions as to why McCarthy has not offered an endorsement of Trump in 2024, and instead dodged the question when asked by reporters.

    McCarthy, too, has avoided the question. When recently asked by CNN whether he plans to endorse anyone in the primary, McCarthy said: “I could, yes, very well.”

    Within Trump’s world, there have been questions about why the former president hasn’t cut McCarthy loose.

    “He could have let him go after January 6,” one Trump ally said, pointing to a recording of McCarthy, released by The New York Times, telling GOP leaders that he would push Trump to resign after the insurrection.

    Others close to Trump see a utility in the former president’s relationship with the now-speaker, specifically the ongoing investigations into Democrats by Republicans in the House.

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  • Elon Musk is the gift that keeps on giving to Mark Zuckerberg | CNN Business

    Elon Musk is the gift that keeps on giving to Mark Zuckerberg | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    At the start of last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat.

    Revelations from hundreds of internal company documents, known as the Facebook Papers, had drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers, users and civil society groups in late 2021 and forced company executives to appear before Congress. Zuckerberg’s plan to rebrand Facebook as Meta and pivot to the so-called metaverse was met with broad skepticism. And the company’s core ad business was under significant pressure from privacy changes made by Apple.

    But then, the attention of lawmakers, media and the tech world writ large abruptly shifted to another tech billionaire: Elon Musk.

    Musk early last year criticized Twitter, then nearly joined its board, then agreed to buy the company before launching a monthslong and ultimately unsuccessful fight to get out of the deal. The saga, which only continued after Musk completed the deal and pushed through numerous controversial changes, often dominated news cycles. In the process, it seemed to make Twitter’s rivals look better managed and draw away critical attention that might otherwise have been focused on other tech giants, including Meta, as they went through painful layoffs and suffered declines on Wall Street.

    This week, however, Zuckerberg notched his biggest win from Musk yet. After years of trying and failing to capture Twitter’s audience with copycat features, Zuckerberg is now capitalizing on Twitter’s struggles with a new app called Threads. Meta’s Twitter clone launched this week to unprecedented success, despite Meta’s history of privacy violations and enabling election meddling, not to mention longstanding concerns that the company and Zuckerberg wield too much power over the social media market.

    The app’s overnight success was a direct result of the chaos under Musk’s leadership of Twitter since last October. During that time, he has managed to anger many of the platform’s users and advertisers with his erratic statements, mass layoffs and significant changes to Twitter’s policies. While Twitter users have lamented what Musk’s ownership has meant for the platform, it may be the best thing that could have happened for Zuckerberg.

    “Musk has done one thing after another to piss off his own user base,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School.

    Some early Threads users even commented on the strange nature of the situation — that they would be eager to join a social network run by one billionaire whose company has faced intense public criticism simply because they were so eager to get away from another.

    “It boggles the mind,” one user posted to Threads. “I boycotted Facebook years ago and when I heard about this I joined immediately.”

    “Never used [Facebook] nor [Instagram],” another user said, adding that they had to join Instagram for the first time to gain access to Threads. “Last thing I would have EVER expected was to use any platform of Zuckerberg’s.”

    And yet, by Friday, Zuckerberg said Threads had reached 70 million user signups — amassing a user base nearly a third of the size of Twitter’s in fewer than two days for a platform that could eventually help knock out one of Facebook’s chief rivals and give a boost to Meta’s struggling ad business.

    If Musk is a boon to Zuckerberg’s fortunes, he’s an unlikely one. Zuckerberg and Musk have often been at odds over the years.

    In 2018, in the wake of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Musk said he had deleted the Facebook pages for his companies Tesla and SpaceX because the platform “gives me the willies.” And later that year, he also deleted his Instagram account.

    More recently, Musk has claimed that Instagram “makes people depressed” and appeared to imply that Meta was complicit in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Zuckerberg has also thrown jabs at Musk, including after a SpaceX explosion accidentally blew up a satellite that was being used by Facebook, and in a critique of his stance on artificial intelligence during a 2017 Facebook Live broadcast.

    But earlier this year, Zuckerberg also complimented Musk’s leadership of Twitter. In a podcast interview last month, Zuckerberg said that “Elon led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner … I think that those were generally good changes.”

    In some ways, Musk’s moves at Twitter may have given Zuckerberg and Meta — as well as other tech companies — cover to take similar actions without as much criticism. Meta announced it would eliminate more than 20,000 employees over two rounds of layoffs, marking the largest cuts in its history. But Meta came off looking responsible compared to Twitter’s mass layoffs by handling the cuts professionally and providing more robust severance.

    After Musk restored the account of former President Donald Trump following a two-year suspension that began after the January 6 attack, Twitter faced criticism from civil society civic? groups who called on advertisers to boycott the platform. But Meta, along with YouTube, followed suit several months later (although those platforms cited their own risk analyses, rather than Musk’s leadership, in explaining their decisions).

    The distraction and chaos of Musk’s Twitter takeover could hardly have come at a better time for Zuckerberg and Meta.

    The social media giant’s business had a brutal year — posting its first-ever quarterly revenue decline as a public company during the June quarter, and then again in each of the two remaining quarters of the year, as it struggled with a weak online advertising market while pouring billions into its plan for the metaverse. The company lost more than $600 billion in market value during 2022.

    Now, the launch of Threads marks a huge new opportunity for Meta and Zuckerberg. Threads could be a way of getting social media users to spend even more time on Meta’s apps, especially as Facebook increasingly struggles with the perception of being a has-been platform that’s less attractive to younger users.

    Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that he hopes to eventually have more than one billion users on Threads, far more than the 238 million active users on Twitter prior to Musk’s takeover.

    Although there are no ads on the platform yet, Threads could also ultimately supplement Meta’s core advertising business. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who oversaw the Threads launch, told The Verge in an interview about the new platform this week that, “if we make something that lots of people love and keep using, we will, I’m sure, monetize it” through advertising.

    For Musk, losing Twitter users, or having its future growth hamstrung, thanks to Threads, could mean further harm to the $44 billion investment he made to buy the social media platform — and, perhaps more importantly, to his reputation as a genius with a knack for turning around troubled companies.

    Musk appears to be trying to push back against Zuckerberg’s turn of fortune. On Wednesday, a lawyer for Musk sent a letter to Meta threatening to sue the company over the rival app, accusing it of trade secret theft through the hiring of former Twitter employees. (Meta denied the charge.)

    The Twitter-Threads battle has raised the stakes for another fight: a cage fight that Musk and Zuckerberg have spent the past several weeks planning. Zuckerberg, a regular practitioner of Brazilian jiu jitsu, appears to have the upper hand.

    But whether or not the fight ends up going forward, Zuckerberg seems to have already won.

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  • Harris accuses ‘so-called leaders’ of pushing propaganda and waging culture wars in fiery Florida speech | CNN Politics

    Harris accuses ‘so-called leaders’ of pushing propaganda and waging culture wars in fiery Florida speech | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Vice President Kamala Harris went headfirst into flashpoint culture war issues Friday when she slammed Florida Republicans for the state Board of Education’s newly approved set of standards for teaching Black history, accusing “so-called leaders” of pushing propaganda and willfully misleading children.

    It’s the latest example of Harris acting as a rapid response voice for the administration, quickly deploying around the country in the immediate aftermath of a controversial vote or law being passed to offer forceful pushback of moves taken by state Republicans on guns, abortion and education. On Wednesday, the Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, sparking criticism from education and civil rights advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the “full truth” of American history.

    “We know the history. And let us not let these politicians who are trying to divide our country win” Harris said in her fiery high-profile speech. “They are creating these unnecessary debates. This is unnecessary to debate whether enslaved people benefited from slavery. Are you kidding me? Are we supposed to debate that?”

    Harris said that she was concerned Republicans want to “replace history with lies.” She highlighted new standards, which, according to a document posted to the state’s Department of Education website, require instruction for middle schoolers to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

    It is the latest development in the state’s ongoing debate over African American history, including the education department’s rejection of a preliminary pilot version of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course for high school students, which it claimed lacked educational value. The White House has spoken out forcefully against book bans and other steps to remove elements of American history from school curricula, and the issue was included in Biden’s reelection announcement video in April.

    The president’s advisers view the issue as one that can galvanize Democrats in next year’s elections, and Harris’ presence in the state at the epicenter of boiling culture wars seeks to present Harris and Biden as the safeguards against extremist steps that could limit freedoms and speech.

    On her eighth trip to Florida since taking office, Harris criticized the state’s governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis – though not by name – in what has become a clear strategy to increase the Biden administration’s engagement with the Republican. That strategy has been bolstered by polling and research showing Americans opposed to banning books that include information on slavery and other issues.

    DeSantis hit back Friday, accusing Harris and Democrats in a tweet of spreading lies “to cover for their agenda” and telling reporters in Utah that the vice president’s criticism of Florida’s Board of Education was “absolutely ridiculous.”

    Earlier in the day, the former California attorney general had adopted a prosecutorial cadence to shine light on the Biden administration’s efforts to stand as a safeguard against what she called a national agenda by extremists to claw back rights.

    “These extremists, so-called leaders should model what we know to be the correct and right approach if we really are invested in the well-being of our children. Instead, they dare to push propaganda to our children. This is the United States of America. We’re not supposed to do that,” she said.

    Harris made the point that American allies and enemies abroad know the history of slavery in the US but these proposals, she alleged, would leave children from the US without that same knowledge.

    “That’s building in a handicap for our children that they are going to be the ones in the room who don’t know their own history with the rest of the world,” she said.

    On the standards themselves, Harris described the atrocities of slavery in detail, reciting how children were ripped from their mothers’ arms and were treated as less than human.

    “So, in the context of that, how is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization,” Harris questioned.

    Asked by CNN about the benchmark, DeSantis deflected, saying he “wasn’t involved.”

    “You should talk to them about it. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it,” the governor said.

    Pressed further, DeSantis said: “I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life. But the reality is, all of that is rooted in whatever is factual. They listed everything out. And if you have any questions about it, just ask the Department of Education.”

    Harris has spent the summer months traveling the country to speak out in support of freedoms she and Democrats believe are under attack by Republicans, including abortion and the right to learn. The vice president has appeared in front of base Democratic voters that include Black voters, women and young people to deliver her message.

    Friday’s last-minute trip to Florida – it was only scheduled on Thursday night – marks the second time this year she’s delivered high-profile remarks in the Sunshine State meant to condemn Republican attacks on rights. Harris told the mainly Black crowd in Jacksonville’s historic LaVille neighborhood that the administration was listening and quickly responding to their concerns.

    “You are not alone,” Harris said.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Asian Americans are anxious about hate crimes. TikTok ban rhetoric isn’t helping | CNN Business

    Asian Americans are anxious about hate crimes. TikTok ban rhetoric isn’t helping | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Ellen Min doesn’t go to the grocery store anymore. She avoids bars and going out to eat with her friends; festivals and community events are out, too. This year, she opted not to take her kids to the local St. Patrick’s Day parade.

    Min isn’t a shut-in. She’s just a Korean American from central Pennsylvania.

    Ever since the US government shot down a Chinese spy balloon last month, Min has withdrawn from her normal routine out of a concern she or her family may become targeted in one of the hundreds of anti-Asian hate crimes the FBI now says are occurring every year. The wave of anti-Asian hate that surged with the pandemic may only get worse, Min worries, as both political parties have amplified fears about China and the threat it poses to US economic and national security.

    “You can’t avoid paying attention to the rhetoric, because it has a direct impact on our lives,” Min said.

    That rhetoric surged again this week as a hostile House committee grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew for more than five hours on Thursday about the app’s ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. After lawmakers repeatedly accused Chew, who is Singaporean, of working for the Chinese government and tried to associate him with the Chinese Communist Party, Vanessa Pappas, a top TikTok executive, condemned the hearing as “rooted in xenophobia.”

    Chew had taken pains to distance TikTok from China, going so far as to anglicize his name for American audiences and to play up his academic credentials — he holds degrees from University College London and Harvard Business School. But it was not enough to prevent lawmakers from blasting TikTok as “a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party” and as “the spy in Americans’ pockets,” all while mangling pronunciations of Chew’s name and the names of other officials at its parent company, ByteDance. After Chew’s testimony, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said the CEO should be “deported immediately” and banned from the United States, saying his defense of TikTok was “beneath contempt.”

    There are good reasons to be mistrustful of ByteDance given that it is subject to China’s extremely broad surveillance laws. (TikTok has failed to assuage concerns the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance to improperly access the data, despite a plan by TikTok to “firewall” the information.) And the Chinese government’s authoritarian approach to numerous other issues clashes with important American values, said many Asian Americans interviewed for this article.

    But they also warned that policymakers’ choice to use inflammatory speech — in some cases, language tinged with 1950s-era, Red Scare-style McCarthyism — endangers countless innocent Americans by association. Moreover, politicians’ increasingly strident tone is creating conditions for new discriminatory policies at home and the potential for even more anti-Asian violence, civil rights leaders said.

    “We are afraid that, more and more, the actions and the language of the government is premised on the assumption that just because we are Chinese or have cultural ties to China that we could be disloyal, or be spies, or be under the influence of a foreign government,” said Zhengyu Huang, president of the Committee of 100, an organization co-founded by the late architect IM Pei, the musician Yo-Yo Ma and other prominent Chinese Americans. “We want to deliver the message: Not only are we not a national security liability — we are a national security asset.”

    But as the country wrestles with China’s influence as a competitive global power, caught in the middle are tens of millions of Americans like Min who, thanks to their appearance, may now face greater suspicion or hostility than they experienced even during the pandemic, according to Asian American lawmakers, civil society groups and ordinary citizens.

    The heated rhetoric surrounding China has undergone a shift from the pandemic’s early days, when xenophobia linked to Covid-19 was unambiguous.

    At the time, Asian Americans feared an uptick in violence inspired by derogatory phrases such as “Kung-flu” and “China virus.” That language had emerged amid then-President Donald Trump’s wider criticisms of China, which had led to a damaging trade war with the country. It was against that backdrop that Trump first threatened to ban TikTok, a move some critics said was an attempt to stoke xenophobia.

    In recent years, criticism of China has significantly expanded to encompass even more aspects of the US-China relationship. Concerns about China have gone mainstream as US national security officials and lawmakers have publicly grappled with state-backed ransomware attacks and other hacking attempts. The Biden administration has sought to confront China on how the internet should be governed, and like the Trump administration, it’s now taking aim at TikTok, again.

    As that shift has occurred, criticism of China has stylistically evolved from blatant name-calling to the more clinical vocabulary of national security, allowing an undercurrent of xenophobia to lurk beneath the respectable veneer of geopolitics, civil rights leaders said.

    People rallied during a

    In January, House lawmakers stood up a new select committee specifically focused on the “strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” At its first hearing, the panel’s chairman, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, said: “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”

    A week later, US intelligence officials warned that the Chinese Communist Party represents the “most consequential threat” to US global leadership. An unclassified intelligence community report released the same day said China views competition with the United States as an “epochal geopolitical shift.” (Even so, the report maintained that the “most lethal threat to US persons and interests” continues to be racially motivated extremism and violence, particularly by White supremacy groups.)

    While some policymakers have added that their issue is with the Chinese government, not the Chinese people or Asians in general, leaders of Asian descent say the caveat has too often been a footnote in debates about China and not emphasized nearly enough. Leaving it unsaid or merely implied creates room for listeners to draw bigoted conclusions, critics said.

    “That can’t be a footnote; it can’t be an afterthought,” said Charles Jung, a California employment attorney and the national coordinator for Always With Us, a nationwide memorial event to remember the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that killed six Asian women. “I’m speaking specifically, directly to both GOP and Democratic politicians: Be mindful of the words that you use. Because the words you use can have real world impacts on the bodies of Asian American people on the streets.”

    The current climate has led to at least one US lawmaker directly questioning the loyalty of a fellow member of Congress.

    California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, who was born in Los Angeles and is the first Chinese American elected to Congress, last month confronted baseless claims of her disloyalty from Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden. Gooden’s remarks were swiftly condemned by his congressional colleagues. But to Chu, the incident was an example of the way politics surrounding China, technology and national security have fueled anti-Asian sentiment.

    “Rising tensions with China have clearly led to an increase in anti-Asian xenophobia that has real consequences for our communities,” Chu told CNN.

    Concerns about xenophobia are bipartisan. Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican, told CNN there is “no question” that anti-Asian hate crimes have risen since the pandemic.

    California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, who was born in Los Angeles and is the first Chinese American elected to Congress, last month confronted baseless claims of her disloyalty from Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden.

    “This is unacceptable,” said Kim. “Asian American issues are American issues, and all Americans deserve to be treated with respect. We can treat all Americans with respect and still be wary of threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    But even in discussing the Chinese government’s real, demonstrated risks to US security, the way that some Americans describe those dangers is counterproductive, needlessly provocative and historically inaccurate, said Rep. Andy Kim, a New York Democrat and a member of the House select committee. Even the name “Chinese Communist Party” can itself prime listeners to adopt a Cold War mentality — a framework whose analytical value is dubious, Kim argued.

    “A lot of my colleagues, especially on the select committee, use rhetoric like, ‘This is a new Cold War,’” said Kim. “First of all, it’s not true: The Soviet Union was a very different competitor than China. And it’s framed in a very zero-sum way … It’s very much being talked about as if their entire way of life is incompatible with ours and cannot coexist with ours, and that heightens the tension.”

    In a November op-ed, Gallagher and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio directly linked that rhetoric to TikTok, calling for the app to be banned due to the United States being “locked in a new Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party, one that senior military advisers warn could turn hot over Taiwan at any time.”

    Just because China may view its dynamic with the United States as an epic struggle does not mean Americans must be goaded into doing the same, Kim argued. Beyond the violence it could trigger domestically, a stark confrontational framing could cause the United States to blunder into poor policy choices.

    For example, he said, the right mindset could mean the difference between legally fraught “whack-a-mole” attempts to ban Chinese-affiliated social media companies versus passing a historic national privacy law that safeguards Americans’ data from all prying eyes, no matter what tech company may be collecting it.

    Security researchers who have examined TikTok’s app say that the company’s invasive collection of user data is more of an indictment of lax government policies on privacy, rather than a reflection of any TikTok-specific wrongdoing or national security risk.

    “TikTok is only a product of the entire surveillance capitalism economy,” said Pellaeon Lin, a Taiwan-based researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “Governments should try to better protect user information, instead of focusing on one particular app without good evidence.”

    Asked how he would advise policymakers to look at TikTok, Lin said: “What I would call for is more evidence-based policy.” Instead, some policymakers appear to have run in the opposite direction.

    Anti-China sentiment has already led to policies that risk violating Asian-Americans’ constitutional rights, several civil society groups said.

    John Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, pointed to the Justice Department’s now-shuttered “China Initiative,” a Trump-era program intended to hunt down Chinese spies but that produced a string of discrimination complaints and case dismissals involving innocent Americans swept up in the dragnet. The Biden administration shut down the program last year.

    More recently, Yang said, proposed laws in Texas and Virginia aimed at keeping US land out of the hands of those with foreign ties would create impossible-to-satisfy tests for Asian-Americans, showing how anti-China fervor threatens to infringe on the rights of many US citizens.

    “National security has often been used as a pretext specifically against Asian-Americans,” Yang said, referring to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the racial profiling of Muslim-Americans following Sept. 11. “We should remember that many Chinese-Americans came to this country to escape the authoritarian regime of China.”

    16 TikTok app STOCK

    Though he fears the situation for Asian-Americans will get worse before it gets better, Yang and other advocates called for US policymakers to stress from the outset that their quarrel lies with the Chinese government and not with people of Chinese descent.

    “We know from experience in the United States that once you demonize Chinese people, all Asian people living in this country face the brunt of that rhetoric,” said Jung. “And you see it not just in spy balloons and the reactions surrounding it and TikTok and Huawei, but also in modern-day racist alien land laws.”

    Growing up in Pennsylvania, Min was no stranger to racially motivated violence: Her home was regularly vandalized with eggs, tomatoes and epithet-laden graffiti (“Go home, gooks”); her father once discovered a crude homemade explosive stuffed in his car.

    But fears of racism stoked by modern US political rhetoric has forced Min to change how her family lives in ways they never had to during her childhood.

    Last year, amid another spate of assaults targeting elderly Asian-Americans, Min said her mother sold the family dry-cleaning business and moved to Korea, following Min’s father who had moved the year before.

    “It was a sad reality to say that as much as we want our family close to us and their grandchildren, they will be safer in Korea,” Min said.

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  • Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

    Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Justice Department’s use of a key criminal charge against hundreds of January 6 rioters, saying they can be charged with obstructing Congress.

    The appeals court said obstruction can include a “wide range of conduct” when a defendant has a corrupt intent and is targeting an official proceeding, such as the congressional certification of the presidential election on January 6, 2021.

    The major ruling affects more than 300 criminal cases brought in the wake of the Capitol riot. The Justice Department has used the charge – obstructing on official proceeding – as the cornerstone of many of the more serious Capitol riot cases, where defendants were outspoken about their desire to stop Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win or were instrumental in the physical breach of the Capitol building.

    In the cases that prompted the appeal, the defendants had allegedly assaulted law enforcement at the Capitol, which overwhelmed the protection around members of Congress in the building and caused the Electoral College certification to stop for hours.

    The statute makes it a felony to alter, destroy or mutilate a record, document or other object with the intent of making it unavailable in an official proceeding, or to “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.

    The ruling has been hotly anticipated in the January 6 investigation, and a loss for the Justice Department would have imperiled hundreds of cases against individual rioters.

    But the three judges on the panel weren’t united in their interpretation of the law, with each writing separately about how the obstruction statute should be interpreted.

    “The broad interpretation of the statute – encompassing all forms of obstructive acts – is unambiguous and natural,” Judge Florence Pan of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote Friday in the 2-1 majority opinion.

    The holding from Pan also lays out how prosecutors may use the obstruction charge, which carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence, when weighing defendants’ actions on January 6.

    The circuit court’s opinion – which is now binding precedent in DC federal courts, unless additional appeals change the ruling – could potentially be used against future defendants in January 6-related cases, including ones being looked at by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies.

    Yet their opinions on Friday left unsettled a key question on how the Justice Department could use the charge against others with potentially less clear corrupt actions.

    Pan’s majority opinion didn’t decide how the courts should define corrupt action taken by rioters – potentially putting limits around how the Justice Department could use the charge in the future.

    Pan and Walker split on whether the definition of “corruptly” would mean that prosecutors would have to prove a defendants’ actions were to benefit themselves or others people, if they charge obstruction related to January 6.

    That question could arise again in future appeals, and the judges weren’t clear which interpretation may be the controlling law now in DC.

    “Because the task of defining ‘corruptly’ is not before us and I am satisfied that the government has alleged conduct by appellees sufficient to meet that element, I leave the exact contours of ‘corrupt’ intent for another day,” Pan wrote. She noted that the rioter cases that prompted the appeal left no room for disputing corrupt intent, seeing as the defendants were alleged to have assaulted police.

    In his concurring opinion, Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker took a narrower approach to the obstruction law, finding that it requires a defendant to act “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”

    Even so, Walker found that the obstruction law that the DOJ has charged rioters with applies in this case.

    “True, the Defendants were allegedly trying to secure the presidency for Donald Trump, not for themselves or their close associates,” Walker wrote. “But the beneficiary of an unlawful benefit need not be the defendant or his friends. Few would doubt that a defendant could be convicted of corruptly bribing a presidential elector if he paid the elector to cast a vote in favor of a preferred candidate – even if the defendant had never met the candidate and was not associated with him.”

    DC Circuit Judge Greg Katsas disagreed with his colleagues in the 2-1 decision. Katsas sided with a lower-court judge, who had thrown out obstruction charges against some January 6 rioters because the actions during the insurrection didn’t deal specifically with the mutilation of documents or evidence in an official proceeding.

    Katsas argued that his colleagues’ interpretation of the obstruction law was too broad and would allow for aggressive criminal prosecutions any time a protester knew they may be breaking the law. He contended that the law requires that a defendant was trying to “seek an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage” while the January 6 cases in question involve “the much more diffuse, intangible benefit of having a preferred candidate remain President.”

    Walker, however, wrote in his opinion that that law applied even under Katsas’ reading.

    “The dissenting opinion says a defendant can act ‘corruptly’ only if the benefit he intends to procure is a ‘financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage.’ I am not so sure,” Walker wrote. “Besides, this case may involve a professional benefit. The Defendants’ conduct may have been an attempt to help Donald Trump unlawfully secure a professional advantage – the presidency.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Top Republican investigating Biden administration Afghanistan withdrawal requests transcribed interviews | CNN Politics

    Top Republican investigating Biden administration Afghanistan withdrawal requests transcribed interviews | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul announced Sunday that he had formally requested a series of transcribed interviews from current and former State Department officials as part of his panel’s investigation into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    The Republican-led committee’s requests for on-the-record interviews are its first in the probe of the frenzied final weeks of the 2021 withdrawal, during which a suicide bomber attacked the Kabul airport and killed 13 US service members and more than 100 Afghans.

    The Texas Republican sent requests Friday to Jonathan Mennuti, former acting chief of staff to acting Under Secretary of State for Management Carol Perez; Mark Evans, former acting deputy assistant secretary for Afghanistan; James DeHart, former leader of the Afghanistan Task Force; Consul General Jayne Howell; and former Ambassador Daniel Smith, who led the State Department’s after-action review of the withdrawal.

    McCaul asked that the witnesses contact the committee to arrange for their interviews by May 22.

    “Through our ongoing investigation, we have determined these five individuals have important information that is critical to uncovering how and why the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and the injury of 47 more, and in the abandonment of more than a thousand U.S. citizens and hundreds of thousands of our Afghan partners in a country controlled by terrorists,” McCaul said in a statement on Sunday.

    “It is crucial they speak with the committee without delay. As we continue to gather evidence, the Committee will continue to interview additional current and former administration officials involved in the planning and execution of the withdrawal,” he added.

    The requests come after McCaul threatened to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for a dissent cable written in March by former US diplomats in Kabul criticizing the administration’s plans to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.

    McCaul said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that he is “prepared to move forward” with contempt of Congress proceedings against Blinken for not providing the requested material.

    “This would be the first time a secretary of state has ever been held in contempt by Congress and it’s criminal contempt. So I don’t take it lightly,” McCaul said.

    A State Department spokesperson previously called the panel’s threat to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress an “unnecessary and unproductive action.”

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  • McCarthy tells Republicans he’s ‘nowhere near’ a debt limit deal with Biden as deadline nears | CNN Politics

    McCarthy tells Republicans he’s ‘nowhere near’ a debt limit deal with Biden as deadline nears | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Republicans during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that he’s not close to a bipartisan deal with President Joe Biden to avoid a first-ever default on the nation’s debt.

    “We are nowhere near a deal,” McCarthy told Republicans. “I need you all to hang with me.”

    As each day passes without a deal, the clock is ticking closer to a looming deadline for default – which could be catastrophic for the global economy and have financial effects on countless Americans.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reaffirming in a letter to McCarthy on Monday that it is “highly likely” that the US Treasury will not be able to pay all of its bills in full and on time as soon as June 1. But several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, have suggested that they do not believe Yellen’s estimate of June 1 as the so-called X-date for potential default and called on her to testify before Congress.

    While McCarthy has maintained that both parties could still obtain a deal by the June 1 deadline, he is also now accusing the president of trying to “disrupt” negotiations by bringing proposals involving Medicare and Social Security back “into the fold.”

    Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern said McCarthy told members during Tuesday morning’s meeting they should go home and work their districts if a deal isn’t reached by the White House and Republican negotiators by Memorial Day weekend. Members can always be called back, but Hern told reporters that this is a deal that has to be reached between a few key people.

    “The negotiations are with the speaker and his team and the White House and their team. And so the rest of us being here, just waiting around, doesn’t do any good for anyone,” Hern said.

    McCarthy’s continued optimism about securing a deal before next month follows a meeting at the White House with Biden on Monday evening, where he had underscored that both parties are united in their goal of reaching an agreement to raise the nation’s debt limit before the country defaults.

    “I felt we had a productive discussion. We don’t have an agreement yet, but I did feel the discussion was productive in areas that we have differences of opinion,” McCarthy said outside the West Wing, adding that the “tone” of Monday’s meeting was also “better than any other time we’ve had discussions.”

    Monday evening’s meeting at the White House came after negotiations hit a snag and were put on pause Friday, and representatives of each side spent most of the next two days criticizing the other while defending their own positions. But the parties appeared to smooth things over to resume negotiations when Biden and McCarthy spoke over the phone as the president was aboard Air Force One returning to Washington after a trip to Japan.

    Biden, in a statement, called Monday’s discussion in the Oval Office productive while acknowledging that areas of disagreement persist.

    “We reiterated once again that default is off the table and the only way to move forward is in good faith toward a bipartisan agreement,” Biden wrote. “While there are areas of disagreement, the Speaker and I, and his lead negotiators … and our staffs will continue to discuss the path forward.”

    On Monday evening, McCarthy maintained that both he and the president “agree we want to be able to come to an agreement.”

    McCarthy’s team and White House negotiators have been meeting daily in an effort to come to a consensus on the budget and the debt ceiling. Negotiators also met through the night on Monday and reconvened Tuesday morning.

    The speaker on Monday also acknowledged that he does not plan to waive the House’s three-day rule – which requires that legislation be posted for at least three days to allow House members to study it before it can be voted on.

    McCarthy has repeatedly warned that the White House and House GOP must reach a deal this week to avoid default. And if negotiations drag on, waiving the three-day rule could allow the legislation to pass more quickly. However, there are concerns that expediting the legislative process by waiving the rule may lead to members voting to support something they aren’t fully informed on.

    The speaker said he “would give everybody 72 hours, so everybody knows what they’re voting for.”

    Despite continued talks, House members on both sides of the aisle appear remain divided over the approach to debt ceiling discussions.

    House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday evening asserted that talks are moving in the “wrong direction.”

    At a hastily called news conference on the steps of the Capitol, Jeffries attacked the GOP for rejecting a White House compromise – to freeze domestic spending at the current levels. Republicans instead want to roll back spending to previous years’ levels and write into law that spending would be capped for several years.

    “They’ve rejected the fact that President Biden is willing to consider freezing spending. It will reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. This is what the extreme MAGA Republicans say that they want. They rejected. They rejected an unwillingness to not put the country through this again,” the New York Democrat said. He also repeatedly refused to say if House Democrats would accept a spending cut, as McCarthy has demanded.

    Jeffries’ position is critical because McCarthy will almost certainly need House Democratic support to pass any deal cut with the White House.

    During Tuesday’s closed-door meeting with Republicans, at least one hardline member – Rep. Chip Roy of Texas – complained about Republicans seeking a compromise that water downs what they passed in the House, according to a source in the room. Roy said it’s about saving the country, not seeking a deal.

    Still, a number of Republicans – even some who haven’t always backed McCarthy – said they are standing by the speaker and are happy with how he’s negotiated up until this point.

    “I am very confident in Kevin McCarthy as our speaker,” Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina told CNN. “I don’t want Speaker McCarthy’s job. That’s a very tough job … he’s got the five families to deal with and a caucus of one right here. He’s doing a great job of pulling people together.”

    “I do not envy his position. I would not want it. He’s had a lot of success in bringing a lot of different factions together within the party and that is no small feat, and it’s not easy,” Mace said.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, who voted against the House’s GOP debt ceiling plan said that “McCarthy is very good at deal cutting. I trust him.”

    “If he says it’s going to start snowing in Knoxville tomorrow, I am running down … and buying a new sled,” Burchett added.

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  • Convicted spy Robert Hanssen dies in prison | CNN Politics

    Convicted spy Robert Hanssen dies in prison | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Robert Philip Hanssen, who received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds for the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia, has died, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced Monday. He was 79 years old.

    Hanssen had been in custody at Colorado’s USP Florence ADMAX since July 17, 2002.

    “On Monday, June 5, 2023, at approximately 6:55 am, inmate Robert Hanssen was found unresponsive at the United States Penitentiary (USP) Florence ADMAX in Florence, Colorado,” a release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. “Responding staff immediately initiated life-saving measures. Staff requested emergency medical services (EMS) and life-saving efforts continued.”

    “Mr. Hanssen was subsequently pronounced deceased by EMS personnel,” the release said.

    In 2001, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy in exchange for the government not seeking the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

    Investigators accused him of compromising dozens of Soviet personnel who were working for the United States, some of whom were executed. He shared details of several US technical operations such as eavesdropping, surveillance and interception of communications. And he gave the Soviets the US plans of how it would react to a Soviet nuclear attack, both in protecting top government officials and retaliating against such an attack.

    The

    Hanssen case rocked the US intelligence community    , exposing major flaws in how the FBI and other agencies vet those with access to the nation’s secrets.

    After Hanssen’s treachery was exposed, investigators learned he had full access to the FBI and State Department’s computer systems and would spend hours trawling undetected for classified information. In his 25 years with the bureau, with access to highly sensitive sources and methods about US intelligence efforts targeting the Soviet Union and Russia, Hanssen had never been subjected to a polygraph examination.

    After the Hanssen case, the FBI moved to strengthen its so-called insider threat programs aimed at safeguarding the nation’s secrets by closely scrutinizing the finances and travel of personnel with access to classified information, and increasing the use of polygraphs to routinely assess employees for continued allegiance and suitability.

    Before Hanssen was exposed, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “security was not a principle priority. There was no security division. The FBI didn’t have enough expertise. We moved to address that.”

    Hanssen began spying for the Soviet Union in 1979, three years after he had joined the FBI as a special agent.

    The counterintelligence officer worked as a spy for nearly 15 years, during some of the most consequential times for US and Russia relations and continuing past the end of the Cold War. He took a hiatus from spying for four years in the 1980s after being convinced by his wife, Bonnie.

    In a letter allegedly written by Hanssen to the Russians, he said that he was inspired as a teen by the memoirs of British double agent Kim Philby.

    “I decided on this course when I was 14 years old,” says the letter cited in the FBI’s affidavit. “I’d read Philby’s book. Now that is insane, eh!”

    The FBI began surveilling Hanssen in 2000 after he was identified from a fingerprint and from a tape recording supplied by a disgruntled Russian intelligence operative.

    After he was caught in 2001, Hanssen told his US interrogators, “I could have been a devastating spy, I think, but I didn’t want to be a devastating spy. I wanted to get a little money and get out of it.”

    Hanssen apologized for his actions during his sentencing in 2002. “I am shamed by it. Beyond its illegality, I have torn the trust of so many. Worse, I have opened the door for calumny against my totally innocent wife and our children. I hurt them deeply. I have hurt so many deeply,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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