Good Morning. It was a great kickoff to the Spaceport Cup, where Frontsight’s Rachel Brooks is reporting on the “the next generation of engineers to take the sum of human dreams into orbit” who are competing in the world’s largest collegiate rocketry competition. Be sure to check out her first dispatch and good luck to all the contestants. See you in space!

— 🐈‍⬛ Acoustic Kitty

THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

China's Rage and Iran's Defiance Follow G-7 Calls-To-Action

China has lashed out against a recent statement made by the Group of 7 at their summit in Italy warning China to cease distributing weapons components to Russia. The PRC described the statement as "full of arrogance, prejudice, and lies." G7's documentation accused China of supplying materials to aid Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and criticized its actions in the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, Iran has strongly rebuffed the G7 leaders for their condemnation of its recent nuclear program escalation. The G7 cautioned Tehran against advancing its uranium enrichment and threatened new sanctions if ballistic missiles were transferred to Russia.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY & DIPLOMACY

Counterterrorism

• The United States is sharpening its counterterrorism focus on Somalia, going after increasingly high-profile targets linked to a resurgence of the Islamic State terror group from its base in the Horn of Africa .U.S. officials are concerned that IS-Somalia has moved from being a key cog in the Islamic State global financial network to hosting the group’s top leader.

• A paper in Science argues that high-assay low-enrich uranium (HALEU) fuel for nuclear reactors can theoretically be used to make a fission bomb and requires tighter regulations governing access to, and transportation of, the material.

Military & Defense

• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, opened the 56th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on a grim note with data showing that the number of civilian deaths in armed conflict soared by 72 percent in 2023.

• South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after about 20 to 30 North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line while doing construction work in the area.

• US Congress is laying the groundwork to restore nuclear weapon capabilities on roughly 30 B-52H Stratofortress bombers that had been converted to drop only conventional munitions as part of the New START arms control treaty with Russia.

Cybersecurity

• The head of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) warned that the commercial space industry is facing an onslaught of cyber attacks and other threats, but lacks the resources and coordination to adequately defend itself.

• Cleveland’s City Hall has been closed for more than a week because of the ongoing problems from a ransomware attack on the city’s computer systems. The city has not said how long the closure could drag on, but efforts have taken weeks in other U.S. cities that have fallen victim to similar attacks.

• Hackers who stole terabytes of data from Ticketmaster and other customers of the cloud storage firm Snowflake tell WIRED how they obtained access.

Counterintelligence & Espionage

• A university professor was jailed Tuesday in Estonia after being found guilty of spying for Russia. He was sentenced to six years and three months in prison for collecting information about Estonia’s defense and security policy and the people and infrastructure related to it.

• Russia has turned increasingly to blackmail and financial incentives to hire Germans to spy for it after the blow dealt to its intelligence services by Europe's expulsion of some 600 Russian diplomats according to Germany's domestic security service.

Transnational Organized Crime

• Four members of the UK's richest family are on trial in Switzerland for human trafficking tied to their alleged practice of importing servants from India to look after their children and household.

• A team of Haitian police commanders have met Kenya’s inspector general of police ahead of a planned deployment to fight gangs in the violence-hit Caribbean country that is expected to take place by the end of June.

• The UN reports that 580,000 Haitians have now fled their homes due to gang violence, a 60 percent spike since March.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Cal Poly’s Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group has published a 95-page report on the rising threat of cyberattacks targeting space systems.

The project, led by National Space Council's Users' Advisory Group member Patrick Lin, developed the ICARUS ("Imagining Cyberattacks to Anticipate Risks Unique to Space") matrix, which can be used to study over 4 million unique threat scenarios.

In other news…

In a breakthrough for early stroke detection, a team of biomedical engineers at Melbourne’s RMIT University say their new AI-driven smartphone technology can potentially identify strokes within seconds with an accuracy rating of 82% by detecting facial asymmetry.

France’s Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the country plans to build Europe’s most powerful classified supercomputer for defense purposes. The announcement comes 3 months after France announced it intention to reallocate €2 billion of funding from the 2024-2030 defense budget to AI.

The US Navy plans to deploy several medium unmanned surface vessels in an accelerated time frame and is conducting market research to identify existing resources to support this mission based on a new RFI issued this week.

DEALS & FUNDING

The United States Space Force's Space Systems Command (SSC) has awarded four contracts to Blue Origin, CACI International, General Atomics, and Viasat to develop space laser communication terminal prototypes, marking the first phase of the $100M Enterprise Space Terminal (EST) program.

The EST program, overseen by SSC's Space Domain Awareness and Combat Power Program Executive Office, seeks to ensure seamless on-orbit crosslink compatibility between future space systems. These ESTs will play a crucial role in the development of the Space Data Network, a space mesh network designed to bolster resiliency and provide diverse information pathways.

In other news…

Vyoma awarded Aerospacelab a contract to build a microsatellite that will carry Vyoma's second Space Situational Awareness (SSA) optical payload in 2025 as part of its efforts to builds a 12 satellite low-latency SSA constellation.

Frontier Technology has been selected by the Space Rapid Capabilities Office as one of twenty companies to compete for the estimated $1B Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2) indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract to develop a next-generation ground software system for military satellites.

Quantum Systems, a developer of dual-use reconnaissance drones, has secured an approximately $19.7M contract to supply the Romanian Ministry of Defense with its advanced Vector unmanned aerial systems.

Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific has awarded a $2.7M follow-on contract to software company EpiSci to advance the Navy’s Project Overmatch initiative.

Nvidia overtook Microsoft and became the world’s most valuable company on Tuesday.

The Defense Department awarded GE Aerospace a $1.1B contract for the procurement of T700 turbine engines, which will be used in Army helicopters, as well as for other services.

China's Rage and Iran's Defiance