Things to Keep an Eye On
Erik Prince's case for privateering, Arab states draw the line, FBI Agents Association forgets Johnathan Buma, CIA buyouts, Jens Stoltenberg returns
Erik Prince’s fantasy
Matt Boyle has given Erik Prince space in the Israeli website Breitbart to elaborate on his bizarre idea of using letters of marque to go after drug cartels. Prince suggests the president could issue them, but it’s a power clearly reserved to Congress, just as officer commissions are. What he wants is government cover for vigilantism against cartels. The problem is formal government cover would render this an obvious act of war if it were done without the permission of the Mexican government. Privateering was always viewed dimly by most governments, and while you could argue there are use cases for it in the 21st century, dry-foot operations in a neighboring sovereign country, where the booty concerned is quantities of drugs, is probably not one of them. What’s Erik Prince’s plan for all that cocaine?
Arab states united in opposition to transferring Palestinians from Gaza
China has also said they’re opposed to the idea, which makes it an unforced error by the Trump administration, giving the CCP the opportunity to state the point of view consistent with international law and most of the world. Middle East Eye reported this week that the Jordanians would consider the expulsion of Palestinians a casus belli. Norman Finkelstein has alleged the pro-Israel opinion at the International Court of Justice is about one third plagiarized from NatCon founder and former CUFI honcho David Brog.
The Turkish government has expressed concern that, even if Hamas complies with the remainder of the deal, the Israelis will restart the killing with the support of the Trump administration. The Saudi government has said their demand for a Palestinian state is non-negotiable, and former intel chief Turki bin Faisal wrote a beautiful letter to Trump asking him to back off Jared Kushner’s ethnic cleansing plan. And the Egyptian government has formally rejected the idea of forced displacement of the residents of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the State Department has signed off on a $7 billion arms transfer to Israel without the usual OK from the head of the House Foreign Affairs chairman, already presuming, as is done pro forma these days, that the supposedly necessary internal State Department checks on illegal arms transfers are observed. The Jewish People Policy Institute published a poll showing 73 percent of Israelis view forced displacement favorably.
U.S. Steel moves to litigate
Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel allege the Biden administration engaged in a sham review. CFIUS is very important, but they’re probably right that it was fake:
The brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, sets forth the legal and factual grounds for the Companies’ lawsuit, detailing how President Biden made a predetermined decision for political reasons, not national security, causing CFIUS to engage in a sham review of the Transaction so that he could block it.
The opening brief filed today is an important step towards vindicating the Companies’ commitment to the Transaction. The CFIUS litigation will continue on the expedited basis already established by the Court, with briefing to be completed by March 17 and oral argument to follow.
FBI Agents Association squeals
I’ve heard tell that the FBI Agents Association is privately concerned about SA Johnathan Buma’s situation. But they haven’t stuck their necks out for him. So I’m not sure why we should care about their squealing as Trump moves to remove agents involved with Jan 6 investigations. The real reason Buma was thrown under the bus is that publishers, and the people who manage the telling of whistleblower stories like his, will not allow it to be told if it reflects poorly on Israel in any way.
The FBI has worked with the ADL for decades, even though it has long-documented ties to the mafia. And the institutions that would tell a story like Buma’s, like Hollywood or publishing, have a pretty heavy hand and will fire anyone who crosses Israel. So that probably has a lot to do with why Buma got fucked. It would be a relief to hear our brave G-men were able to grow some balls and talk about the issue, but not a ball to be found at the FBI’s advocacy organization, it appears.
CIA buyouts
The Central Intelligence Agency’s employees have all been offered buyouts:
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday became the first major national security agency to offer so-called buyouts to its entire workforce, a CIA spokesperson and two other sources familiar with the offer said, part of President Donald Trump’s broad effort to shrink the federal government and shape it to his agenda.
The offer — which tells federal employees that they can quit their jobs and receive roughly eight months of pay and benefits — had up until Tuesday not been made available to most national security roles in an apparent cognizance of their critical function to the security of the nation.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally decided he also wanted the CIA to be involved, one of the sources said.
Jens Stoltenberg becomes Norway’s finance minister
The former NATO general secretary gets back in the saddle:
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s former secretary-general, will make a surprise return to the frontline of Norwegian politics as finance minister, as the Nordic country frets about being caught in the middle of a US-EU trade war.
“I am deeply honoured to have been asked to help my country at this critical stage,” Stoltenberg, who served as prime minister for nine years, said on Tuesday.
Federal charges for Googler stealing AI secrets for China
A Chinese national who has been indicted for allegedly stealing AI secrets from Google is facing additional charges, federal prosecutors said.
The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. Ding, a 38-year-old software engineer who had lived in Newark, was previously indicted on four counts of theft of trade secrets last March after he allegedly stole 500 confidential files from Google.
He was hired by the company in 2019, prosecutors said.
According to the superseding indictment, Ding allegedly uploaded more than 1,000 files containing confidential company information into his personal Google Cloud account from May 2022 through May 2023.
Israel cancels spyware contract with Italy
Meta raised the alarm about Paragon’s spyware about two weeks ago. It’s unclear whether the spyware is more or less directed from Israel, as is the case for Pegasus, but it’s still Israeli spyware. They’re going to claim they’re doing the right thing and that Italy violated the terms of service:
Paragon Solutions, a startup that sells access to surveillance technologies, including phone spyware, has cut ties with the Italian government, according to reports in The Guardian and Haaretz.
On Thursday, citing an anonymous source, The Guardian reported Paragon suspended its contract with Italy on Friday after WhatsApp said it had disrupted a hacking campaign leveraging the Israeli startup’s spyware targeting around 90 people. On Wednesday, Paragon terminated the contract once the company determined that the Italian government had broken “the terms of service and ethical framework it had agreed under its Paragon contract,” according to the British newspaper.
Hegseth supports a Pentagon audit
This is positive news about the direction Secretary Hegseth may be heading:
Cyabra partner jailed in Abu Dhabi
Andrew Grunstein, who runs some sort of intelligence company and was working with Cyabra, was jailed by the Emiratis along with a few others about whom details are slowly trickling out. He was initially being brought in as an OSINT expert, but it seems they changed their minds. The UK Foreign Office is reportedly concerned. To get him out they might have to admit that a lot of these companies are not really British or American or Australian, but Israeli spy firms, and therefore pose risks.
Not really a James Bond-looking guy, is he?
Kyrgyz Russian arms trafficking indictment
This one in New York:
Earlier today, an indictment was filed in federal court in Brooklyn charging Sergei Zharnovnikov, an arms dealer and citizen of Kyrgyzstan, with conspiring to export firearms from the United States to Russia without the necessary licenses and with illegal smuggling. Zharnovnikov traveled from Kyrgyzstan to the United States last month and was arrested on January 24, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was attending the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show to meet with U.S. arms dealers. Zharnovnikov has been detained pending trial and will be arraigned in the Eastern District of New York at a later date.
Former Whitefish Housing Authority executive director sentenced for embezzlement
Wonder if he knows some of the realtors there:
The former executive director of the Whitefish Housing Authority was sentenced today to four months in prison and four months of home confinement, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $144,842 for embezzling from the organization, which receives federal funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich said.
The defendant, Dwarne Lamont Hawkins, 46, of Fairview Heights, Illinois, pleaded guilty in October 2024 to theft from organization receiving federal funding.
Another Trojan Shield extradition
This is such a great story:
Alexander Dmitrienko of Finland became the last of eight defendants extradited so far to admit participating in the worldwide conspiracy to distribute ANOM hardened encrypted communication devices to criminal syndicates. The ANOM enterprise facilitated drug trafficking, money laundering, and obstruction of justice crimes.
The eight defendants were among 17 indicted in San Diego in 2021 in connection with Operation Trojan Shield, a first-of-its-kind, international law enforcement effort in which the FBI secretly operated an encrypted messaging network. The ANOM criminal enterprise was responsible for the distribution of more than 12,000 devices in 100 countries. While ANOM’s criminal users unknowingly communicated on the system operated by law enforcement, agents catalogued more than 27 million messages between users around the world whose criminal discussions were covertly obtained and reviewed by the FBI.
So this is the indictment of the people who distributed the phones. The indictments of the people who received them are ongoing.