🔥 Russia Accuses U.S. in Crimea Missile Strike

Good Morning. 

China's Chang'e-6 mission has achieved a historic milestone by successfully returning to Earth with the first-ever lunar samples collected from the far side of the moon. The returning capsule safely touched down in Inner Mongolia on June 25, 2024, marking a significant advancement in China's space exploration capabilities.

Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed the mission as a landmark achievement in the country's pursuit of becoming a space and scientific powerhouse. The lunar samples will be transported to Beijing for extensive analysis and research, while the Queqiao-2 relay satellite will continue its scientific exploration missions.

— 🐈‍⬛ Acoustic Kitty

THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Russia has summoned the US ambassador to protest a Ukrainian missile strike on Crimea that killed 4 and injured over 150 people. Moscow directly blames Washington for supplying advanced missiles to Ukraine and has vowed retaliation, significantly escalating tensions between the 2 global powers.

The incident highlights Ukraine's growing reliance on Western-supplied weapons, including recently approved longer-range US missiles. This escalation could potentially lead to broader geopolitical repercussions between Russia and the United States.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY & DIPLOMACY

Counterterrorism

• The United States has imposed sanctions on nearly 50 entities and individuals accused of operating a "shadow banking network" that has moved billions of dollars for Iran's military since 2020, supporting weapons provision to proxy groups and drone transfers to Russia.

• At a U.N. Security Council meeting, the U.S. and European allies clashed with Iran and Russia over Tehran's expanding nuclear program, with Western nations accusing Iran of exceeding agreed limits and vowing to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, while Iran and Russia blamed U.S. sanctions and defended Tehran's right to peaceful nuclear development.

• U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Russia's Defense Minister for the first time in 15 months, emphasizing the importance of communication amid ongoing tensions over Ukraine and recent attacks on Crimea.

• The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure between October 2022 and March 2023.

Military & Defense

• North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters, according to South Korean and Japanese officials, amid ongoing tensions and ahead of planned trilateral military exercises involving the US, South Korea, and Japan.

• Hamas militants used a Chinese-made HJ-8L anti-tank guided missile to attack an Israeli Namer Combat Engineering Vehicle near Rafah in southern Gaza, raising questions about the acquisition of Chinese weapons by the group.

• National Guard soldiers from the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team became the first Guard members to field-test the Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon systems, including the XM7 rifle and XM250 automatic rifle, at Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

Cybersecurity

• CISA confirmed that a cyberattack in January on the Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT) system may have allowed hackers to access sensitive information about U.S. chemical facilities, including security plans and vulnerability assessments, though no evidence of data exfiltration was found.

• Chinese hackers, suspected to be state-sponsored, have intensified cyberattacks on Taiwanese organizations in sectors like government and technology between late 2023 and early 2024, coinciding with Taiwan's presidential elections and subsequent leadership change.

• A cyberattack on Indonesia's national data center, attributed to LockBit-affiliated hackers, compromised 210 government institutions and disrupted airport operations, with the attackers demanding an $8M ransom.
  Hackers have published stolen data from a ransomware attack on Synnovis, a medical diagnostics service used by major London hospitals, disrupting NHS services and potentially compromising patient information.

Counterintelligence & Espionage

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a U.S. felony charge in a deal that resolves his long-running legal saga, allowing him to be freed after 5 years in a British prison and return to Australia, ending the controversy over his publication of classified documents.

• Russian spy ships Sibiryakov and Wassili Tatischtschew are suspected to be gathering intelligence on Israel's newest submarine, INS Drakon, during its sea trials off the coast of Germany.

• Turkey's former intelligence chief and current foreign minister Hakan Fidan admitted that controversial ByLock messaging app data, used to prosecute thousands of alleged Gülen movement members, was obtained through extralegal methods without proper judicial oversight.

Transnational Organized Crime

• 2 alleged leaders of the Mexican drug cartel La Nueva Familia Michoacana have been indicted in the United States on heroin trafficking charges, while the U.S. Treasury Department has imposed economic sanctions on them and other cartel members for fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling.

• A judge dismissed felony charges of engaging in organized criminal activity against 9 former Houston police officers involved in a botched 2019 drug raid, but prosecutors plan to amend and re-present the charges to a grand jury.

• INTERPOL announced that a coordinated international operation involving 39 countries led to 219 arrests and the identification of 1,374 potential victims in a major crackdown on human trafficking networks.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft has concluded its Project Natick experiment with underwater data centers, which showed promising results including lower failure rates compared to land-based counterparts, but the company is no longer operating any active undersea data centers and will instead apply the learnings from the project to other scenarios.

The experiment, which began in 2018, involved placing giant tubes filled with data center components 117 feet below the surface of the Scottish sea. Despite the project's success in demonstrating the potential benefits of underwater data centers, such as better temperature control and reduced environmental impact, Microsoft has decided not to pursue this approach for its current data center operations.

In other news…

Weights & Biases, an AI developer platform, received recognition from the Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit for successfully completing a prototype MLOps pipeline for mine countermeasures, demonstrating its capability to accelerate AI delivery and meet the unique needs of government organizations in managing machine learning workflows.

U.S. Space Command's leader, Gen. Stephen Whiting, has renewed calls for satellite refueling capabilities in orbit to enable dynamic space operations and outmaneuver adversaries, despite ongoing debates within the Space Force about the cost-effectiveness and military utility of such technology compared to alternatives like launching new satellites.

Researchers from Rice University have theoretically discovered new flat electronic bands at the Fermi level in quantum materials, which could lead to advanced quantum computing applications, novel electronic devices, and new quantum states of matter that potentially operate at higher temperatures.

Yale researchers have identified a gene called CALHM2 that, when knocked out in natural killer cells, significantly enhances their ability to infiltrate and combat solid tumors across multiple cancer types, potentially improving the effectiveness of CAR-NK cell therapy against cancers that have been resistant to current immunotherapies.

DEALS & FUNDING

Anduril, a US defense startup backed by Peter Thiel, has raised $1.5B in new funding at a valuation of about $14B. Thiel's Founders Fund contributed $400M, with new investor Sands Capital co-leading the round.

The seven-year-old company, which makes drones and autonomous weapons systems, is part of a rapidly growing defense technology sector that has attracted $135B in venture capital from 2016 to 2022. Anduril recently beat out traditional defense players for a major US Air Force contract to develop an unmanned fighter jet. The company doubled its revenue to about $500M last year and aims to reach $1B in revenue by 2026.

In other news…

Noblis has been awarded a 10-year, $4B contract by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to support its Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction program, which aims to reduce the proliferation and use of WMDs through procurement, systems engineering, maintenance, and sustainment of technology platforms.

The Defense Manpower Data Center has awarded a $1.5B blanket purchase agreement to 9 companies for IT modernization efforts, focusing on software development, IT security, and cloud migration using Amazon Web Services.

The United States is poised to announce a new $150M military aid package for Ukraine, which will include munitions for HIMARS and other critical supplies drawn from U.S. stockpiles, as part of the ongoing support authorized by the $61B Ukraine funding bill signed in April, while Russia has accused Ukraine of using previously provided ATACMS missiles in recent strikes on Crimea and the Belgorod region.

The Air Force and Northrop Grumman have negotiated a higher cost ceiling for the next 19 B-21 Raider bombers after the company took significant losses on the initial fixed-price production lots, potentially increasing the per-unit price of the aircraft while still aiming to meet the original average procurement cost target.

Weill Cornell Medicine received a $1.5M grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop an AI-based system for predicting bone metastases in prostate cancer patients, using molecular profiles, spatial arrangements, and cellular interactions in tumor samples to personalize treatment and potentially identify new therapeutic targets.