🔥 Israel Official: 'No Choice' But To Launch a 'Short, Sharp War' With Hezbollah

Good Morning. 

A new report from the Defense Health Agency revealed that the top reason for troop hospitalization last year was mental health treatment.

The majority of male patients were diagnosed with adjustment disorders and alcohol abuse, while most female soldiers who had been admitted to a hospital had major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress.

If you or someone you know could use some help, try contacting Military OneSource’s free and confidential peer support services.

You’re never in this alone.

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THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

The war between Israel and Lebanon has intensified, as Lebanon shot 200 rockets into northern Israel, in response to the killing of a senior commander in Lebanon.

Escalations between the two nations have been anticipated as the war in Gaza began to wind down.

Officials from Israel, including the nation's retired Major General Giora Eiland and Israel's Financial Minister Bezalel Smotrich have said that Israel has "no choice" but to launch, as Smotrich explained it, a "short" and "sharp war" against Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon with ties to Iran.

Israeli official statements echo a recent statement by the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed grave concerns about the potential escalation of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY & DIPLOMACY

Counterterrorism

• The suspect in the attempted assassination of Slovakia's populist prime minister, Robert Fico, is now facing terror charges as part of an investigation by authorities.

• Greece’s anti-terrorism police arrest seven people over separate arson attacks against an Israeli-owned hotel and a synagogue in central Athens earlier this year.

• Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is sending a delegation to negotiate a hostage release with Hamas.

Military & Defense

• Canada's prime minister announced Wednesday the appointment of Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan as the first woman to lead the G7 and NATO member nation's military.

• The Pentagon announced it will deploy dozens of advanced fighter jets to multiple bases in Japan as part of a modernization plan amid growing tensions with China, North Korea and Russia.

• Putin said that the Taliban, a banned group in Russia, are Moscow's "allies" in fighting terrorism because they are in control of Afghanistan.

Cybersecurity

• Early last year, a hacker gained access to the internal messaging systems of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and stole details about the design of the company’s AI technologies. The company did not inform the F.B.I. or anyone else in law enforcement.

• Twilio has confirmed that an unsecured API endpoint allowed threat actors to verify the phone numbers of 33 million Authy multi-factor authentication users, potentially making them vulnerable to SMS phishing and SIM swapping attacks.

• One of the biggest password compilations ever was leaked, titled RockYou2024.txt, contains nearly 10M unique plaintext passwords.

• The FBI have placed a $10M bounty on the head of a Russian hacker who allegedly targeted the Ukrainian government's cyber infrastructure in the lead up to the 2022 invasion.

Counterintelligence & Espionage

• The Australian government will spend more than $2B with Amazon to build and run top-secret data centers for the country’s spies and military.

• Ukraine arrested a couple in the port city of Odesa who had been taking photos of sensitive objects for Russian intelligence while pretending to have a wedding photoshoot.

Transnational Organized Crime

• Brazilian police have indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro for money laundering and criminal association in connection with undeclared diamonds received from Saudi Arabia during his time in office.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

The Defense Innovation Unit plans to spend most of its nearly $1 billion fiscal 2024 budget to accelerate existing projects and add new ones in technology areas like counter uncrewed aerial systems and space transport.

Congress approved a nearly 10-fold funding increase in FY24 for the Pentagon’s commercial technology hub to support its expanding mission to help the Defense Department quickly foster and field commercial capabilities in large numbers. Prolonged budget deliberations delayed the release of appropriations, which meant that DIU’s funding came more than five months into the fiscal year, presenting the organization with the challenge of using that money in a short period of time.

In other news…

Three years after launching the AI and Data Acceleration to help combatant commands adopt artificial intelligence tools and concepts, the Pentagon is crafting a long-term vision for the program.

A professor at the University of Michigan is working on a novel type of beamed propulsion that utilizes both a particle beam and a laser in the hopes of sending a small spacecraft to the nearest solar system.

A team of Berkeley engineers sent a 3D printer to space as part of the Virgin Galactic 07 mission and autonomously printed and post-processed a total of four test parts.

DEALS & FUNDING

Airbus Defense and Space won a $2.5B contract from the German military to deliver next-generation communications satellites, known as SATCOMBw 3, short for Bundeswehr’s satellite communications system.

The deal includes the development and deployment of two geostationary satellites, along with ground segment upgrades, launch services, and operational support for 15 years.

The spacecraft are slated for deployment before the end of the decade, replacing the aging SATCOMBw 2 system delivered by Airbus 15 years ago.

In other news…

The US Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a $520M production contract for the Foreign Military Sales Block 70/72 F-16 Viper Shield electronic warfare suite.