Russia ‘categorically rejects’ involvement in election hacking ‘witch hunt’

As has been the case since the Russian government was first accused of working to undermine American confidence in the U.S. presidential election process last October, the Kremlin continued to deny the latest round of allegations levied their way in last week’s intelligence briefings to both the current and incoming American presidents. “These are baseless […]

Russia is using the ongoing conflict in Ukraine to prepare for the next major war

On April 26, 1937 the world got its first taste of the impact of strategic air power.   German aircraft belonging to the Condor Legion attacked the Basque city of Guernica. Ignoring military targets and concentrating on the civilian population, German planes killed somewhere around 1500 people and wounded thousands more. The gutted shell of the […]

France thwarts 24,000 cyber-attacks against defence targets

France says it was the subject of 24,000 cyber-attacks against defence targets last year. Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said such attacks have been doubling every year and this year’s presidential elections could be targeted. He said it would “naive” to think that France was immune to the type of cyber-campaign that targeted the US election, […]

Former CIA operations officer weighs in on expulsion of Russian diplomats

The report card has been in for a while, and the news is not good. U.S. counterintelligence, our ability to protect U.S. national security secrets from our enemies and rivals, is in shambles. It doesn’t take a former CIA station chief like me to see the stark wreckage of failure surrounding the intel community like the aftermath of […]

President-elect vows to set up safe zones and hints at 5th Special Forces Group

Trump expressed both a desire to eliminate ISIS and concern for the lives lost in Syria, which means it’s likely he’ll take action with 5th Special Forces Group and JSOC. The President-elect Donald Trump made comments vowing to set up ‘safe zones’ in Syria. He made the comments in acknowledgment of the humanitarian crisis in […]

Trump calls intel briefing ‘constructive,’ praises intelligence officials

Only hours after calling public concerns about Russia’s involvement in the pre-election hacking of the DNC’s email servers “a political witch hunt,” President-elect Donald Trump seems to have had a slight change of heart about America’s intelligence community. Trump had a meeting with top intelligence officials on Friday, wherein he was briefed on election-related Russian […]

Russia announces military drawdown in Syria

MOSCOW—Russia’s top general said Friday his country would draw down its military presence in Syria, starting with a withdrawal of its warships from the eastern Mediterranean. Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, said Russia would withdraw the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov from the waters off the coast of Syria. The ships deployed […]

Reality of DNC ‘hack’ a simple phishing scam that’s landed in your inbox

Hacking has become a buzzword in our society and it’s been misplaced on the leaked DNC emails that were almost given away, not stolen. The reality of this hack was it was simple, so simple your twelve-year-old daughter or son probably would have caught it. However, a DNC staffer fell for it. This is something […]

Declassified report says Putin ‘ordered’ effort to undermine faith in U.S. election and help Trump

Russia carried out a comprehensive cybercampaign to upend the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and “aspired to help” elect Donald Trump by discrediting his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a report released Friday. The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying […]

Information operations in a post-factual world

SOFREP is currently working on a in-depth series of articles about shaping operations, namely information operations, shaping operations, influence, and covert control.  In the meantime, the following article from Defense One gives a insightful look into deception in a post-factual world, and why America needs to make moves to counter it. Conventional military dominance is […]

Russians get their bubba on at fantasy combat ranch in St. Petersburg

In a half-lit basement on a side street in St. Petersburg, 18 men holding reproduction Makarov pistols were fumbling through an exercise, racking the slides, taking aim and firing. Click, click, click, click, click. Repeat. Denis Gariev, the instructor, called out to pause the training. He was not about to air his political views, an ethnic […]