Cyber Briefing – June 4, 2026

FIVE EYES WARNING ON CHINA INTEL OPS: The United States and other nations in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership on Wednesday took the unusual step of issuing a joint warning that China is using LinkedIn and other job platforms to pry secret information from security professionals worldwide, The Washington Post reports. The alert reflects rising concern that China is using artificial intelligence and other emerging tools to flood career networking platforms with fake profiles and job offers targeting military officers, spies and others with access to classified or sensitive information, security officials said. The rare “safeguarding” alert warned that “China’s military intelligence services are using an increasingly wide array of professional networking sites and online job platforms to target Five Eyes government and military personnel.”

• READ: Safeguarding our secrets

• Following last month’s investigation into a series of cyber intrusions targeting automatic tank gauge (ATG) systems used to monitor fuel levels at gas stations across multiple states, with Iran emerging as a leading suspect, U.S. agencies have released a joint fact sheet warning of ongoing malicious cyber activity targeting U.S.-based ATG systems, Industrial Cyber reports. While the federal government has not formally attributed the activity to a specific nation-state or threat actor group, officials said the campaign involves cyber actors compromising internet-exposed ATG systems and manipulating them through remote command execution.

• READ: CISA and partners urge hardening automatic tank gauge systems

CISA DIRECTIVE ON AI EO AROUND THE CORNER: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) plans to release a directive to federal agencies detailing actions required to carry out the president’s artificial intelligence executive order by the end of the week, CISA Acting Director Nick Andersen said Wednesday. The binding operational directive will focus in part on “vulnerability alleviation and vulnerability management,” Andersen said in remarks delivered at the TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore, The Record reports. CISA also will be rolling out “specific artificial intelligence access” to partners in the coming days, Andersen said. The artificial intelligence executive order released Tuesday is a scaled-back version of an earlier iteration that was spiked amid internal conflict within the administration and concerns raised by former artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks.

• Nation-states or other adversaries are able to cause significant harm to the United States through further cyberattacks on critical infrastructure — whether that be to the U.S. electric grid, water management, fuel supply systems, hospitals transportation or other sectors, according to cyber experts at the TechNet Cyber conference, Signal Media reports. “The homeland has become the frontline battlespace when we talk about operations below the threshold of war, cyberattacks targeting essential services, critical infrastructure and military readiness, and our adversaries are out there pursuing those paths as they’re increasingly targeting critical infrastructure, and need I mention Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, as wake-up calls,” said Brig. Gen. Paul H. Fredenburgh, USA (Ret.), executive vice president, National Security and Defense, AFCEA International.

MULLIN FACES CONGRESS ON CISA CONCERNS: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Congress on Wednesday that CISA would ideally have 2,800 personnel, up from approximately 2,200 now and down from 3,400 before the second Trump administration began, CyberScoop reports. President Donald Trump has pushed to dramatically reduce personnel numbers at the agency, something that has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill. Trump has proposed hundreds of millions more in cuts for fiscal 2027. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) asked Mullin at a hearing about further proposed CISA budget cuts, saying he was “concerned” about personnel numbers and funding for education programs and whether the fiscal 2027 blueprint would “negatively impact those efforts.”

• Mullin told lawmakers that Trump will soon nominate a candidate to lead CISA, Nextgov/FCW reports. It remains unclear if an industry contender that has been under consideration will ultimately be selected. Last month, Nextgov/FCW first reported that IBM security services lead Tom Parker was being considered for the role. As of early May, Mullin submitted a name to the White House that was not Parker, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to communicate details of the process.

• DHS is feeling the effects of its historically long shutdown as it gears up to mitigate and manage an evolving threat landscape tied to the FIFA World Cup, which is set to kick off next week, FedScoop reports. While Mullin told lawmakers Wednesday that the agency is in a “comfortable” position when it comes to preparation for the festivities overall, drones pose a challenge. “The biggest concern I have is, honestly, with drone defense,” Mullin said. “It is one of the areas that we are struggling with every single day.” 

AI LEADERS CALL FOR BIOTHREAT ACTION: Top artificial-intelligence executives are joining security experts in calling for Congress to protect against biological threats posed by AI, adding to growing pressure on lawmakers to address the technology’s risks, The Wall Street Journal reports. Three major chief executive officers — OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind AI lab — are among the signatories of a letter urging Congress to require safeguards when companies order synthetic DNA and RNA, a key step in developing certain vaccines and biotech breakthroughs. The goal is to make companies that sell the synthetic nucleic acids screen customer orders to block any combinations that could be dangerous, and make sure the customers who place the orders are legitimate.

• AI policy groups are urging leaders on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to add guardrails to an annual defense policy bill on the military’s use of lethal autonomous weapons, TheHill reports. Americans for Responsible Innovation, Alliance for Secure AI and The AI Policy Network on Wednesday called for safeguards in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ensuring that humans make the final decision about using lethal autonomous weapon systems. “Following recent calls from Vice President J.D. Vance to keep life-and-death decisions in human hands, Congress should seize this opportunity to preserve our moral authority and decisiveness in the AI era with sensible safeguards that are fully compatible with the adoption of this rapidly evolving technology,” they wrote in a letter shared first with The Hill.

• Speaking at Infosecurity Europe, Gunter Ollmann, CTO at penetration testing and security services firm Cobalt, said frontier AI models from Google and two from China are not far behind Mythos in their capabilities, CSO reports. “Security teams should prepare for the son of Mythos,” said Ollmann. “These frontier AI tools are still restricted in their access, but they are only going to get cheaper as we go along.”

• One of the most important jobs for CISOs in the AI era is to stay calm and carefully assess their organizations’ risk exposure, experts said this week at the annual Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in National Harbor, Md., Cybersecurity Dive reports. “Don’t panic,” Katell Thielemann, a VP analyst at Gartner, said during a talk on Tuesday about AI’s impact on the security of cyber-physical systems such as industrial control equipment. “Yes, things are changing fast,” Thielemann said, “but there are some low-hanging fruit” that CISOs can tackle, such as disconnecting critical devices from the internet and monitoring remote access to the remaining infrastructure.

INSIDE CHINA’S BRUTAL DOMESTIC AI COMPETITION: China’s plan to become a world leader in AI by 2030 is a fixture of practically every Congressional briefing and expert commentary on Beijing’s AI ambitions. The plan’s logic — introduced in 2017 — was simple and alarming: Beijing would direct capital, mobilize its firms, recruit talent, and execute with the strategic patience of a state-led innovation ecosystem. Nearly a decade later, that frame has only hardened, David Lin writes at War on the Rocks. Beijing’s recently issued 15th Five-Year Plan directs Party organs to take “extraordinary measures” to strengthen technological self-reliance and launch a new “AI+” initiative to integrate AI across the nation’s strategic sectors. Beijing has the legal architecture to compel its firms to do its bidding, so Washington has largely concluded that Beijing’s AI sprint reflects deliberate industrial policy, and built America’s response around that assumption. That conclusion, however, mistakes the frame for the picture. China’s AI rise is being driven as much by market forces as by state direction. The more you look inside China’s AI ecosystem, the more it looks like the most brutal AI capitalist knife fight across the world. The domestic competition among firms is so fierce that Chinese commentators have a word for it: involution, or neijuan.

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In this episode of Cyber Focus, Frank Cilluffo speaks with Geoffrey Fowler, head of public engagement for the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media, about why AI requires a different kind of safety framework than movies, apps, games or social media. Fowler argues that generative AI is not static content; it is dynamic, conversational, multipurpose and capable of changing from one interaction to the next based on the user, the prompt, the model and the length of the conversation. The conversation explores how AI products that appear friendly, educational or therapeutic can create new risks for children, from emotional dependency and privacy concerns to unsafe mental-health guidance and weakening guardrails over extended conversations. Fowler explains how Common Sense Media is working to build independent AI safety ratings for kids, modeled in part on crash testing for cars: transparent evaluations that help parents and schools make better decisions while pushing companies toward safer design.

SUBSCRIBE TO CYBER FOCUS: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Agriculture

Flesh-eating New World screwworm detected in Texas calf, USDA says, signaling major threat to food production

A case of flesh-eating New World screwworm has been detected in South Texas, the US Department of Agriculture said Wednesday. It is the first time this parasitic fly – whose larvae feed exclusively on the tissue of warm-blooded animals – has been detected in US livestock in decades.Although it is not a food safety issue, an infestation can be a food production issue. It could cost the economy billions and raise the price of beef a time when Americans are already paying record high prices. The USDA says its National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, tested a sample from the case in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, and confirmed Wednesday that it was New World screwworm. (CNN.COM)

Biothreats

Ebola burial team attacked, 11 patients flee care in widening outbreak in Congo

A burial team was attacked and 11 Ebola patients fled isolation facilities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as the outbreak spread to another health zone in the country’s hardest-hit province. A team attempting to safely bury an Ebola victim was assaulted in the South Kivu town of Katana, forcing workers to abandon the coffin and allowing community members to handle the body, an incident health officials warned could spark new chains of transmission. Meanwhile, patients escaped isolation facilities in the epicenter Ituri, while security remained unstable in parts of the province where armed groups continue to limit humanitarian access. Rimba became the 17th affected health zone in Ituri — and the 25th nationally — according to a situation report published Wednesday. (BLOOMBERG.COM)

Breaches

IMA Diligence Services data breach impacts 525,000 people

IMA Diligence Services is notifying over 525,000 individuals that their personal information was stolen in a data breach. The incident, the company says, was identified in mid-December after a legacy server managed by a third party became inaccessible. “Upon discovery, we notified law enforcement and promptly commenced an investigation to confirm the nature and scope of this incident,” an incident notice on the company’s website reads. (SECURITYWEEK.COM)

Cybercrime

Meta leads largest-ever anti-scam operation with FBI and DOJ, resulting in 63 arrests

A sweeping anti-scam operation led by Meta and backed by the FBI, Department of Justice, Microsoft, Coinbase and Starlink resulted in 63 arrests, millions of dollars in frozen cryptocurrency and the removal of more than a million scam-related online accounts, officials announced Tuesday. Meta said the operation was the company’s largest anti-scam operation to date and described it as the first coordinated anti-scam effort of its kind for the company to bring together major technology companies, financial platforms and law enforcement agencies to target the broader fraud ecosystem. (FOXNEWS.COM)

Alcasec, ‘Robin Hood of Spanish Hackers,’ jailed for 31 months over data theft

Spanish hacker José Luis Huertas will serve two years and seven months in prison after taking a plea deal at the National Court on Wednesday. The 22-year-old Huertas, known online as Alcasec, admitted to stealing banking details from over half a million citizens. Prosecutors originally requested a three-year sentence, but dropped the penalty after Huertas confessed and provided his passwords to the police. The state prosecutor explained that Alcasec worked with two other men to pull off the cyberattack. Daniel B.E., age 32, received 2 years and two months in prison. Juan Carlos O.G., age 28, received 1 year and 3 months. The Spanish court also seized their cash and cryptocurrency assets. (HACKREAD.COM)

Education

Lessons from the Canvas cyberattack

OPINION: As early as May 1, 2026, ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the Instructure/Canvas attack that reportedly affected nearly 9,000 educational institutions globally and exposed sensitive information tied to 275 million students, faculty members and staff. Names, email addresses, student identifiers and private communications comprising a staggering 3.65 terabytes were stolen. The timing of the attack was especially damaging since it caused widespread operational disruption during final examinations and temporarily blocked access to coursework, assignments and collaboration systems at colleges and universities worldwide. The Instructure/Canvas attack represents far more than an isolated technology outage – it is a high-profile demonstration of how centralized digital ecosystems, third-party dependencies and modern extortion operations are reshaping enterprise cyber risk. (CSOONLINE.COM)

Health care

Ultrahuman says hackers accessed customers’ wellness data via internal tool

Wearable health tech startup Ultrahuman said hackers gained unauthorized access to customers’ wellness data after stealing an employee’s credentials through malware. On Wednesday, the India-based startup informed affected customers of the incident via email, stating that the breach occurred on March 27 and involved a system used for internal analytics. The company said it detected the intrusion promptly, took the affected system offline, and revoked all access. (TECHCRUNCH.COM)

Space

‘In an unrecoverable state’: NASA confirms MAVEN spacecraft is officially dead after orbital ‘anomaly’ behind Mars

After 11 years studying Mars from above, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft is officially dead, the agency announced in a statement on Wednesday (June 3). The culprit: a drained battery, triggered by an as-yet-unknown anomaly. MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) began orbiting Mars on Sept. 21, 2014, on a mission to study the Red Planet’s mysterious atmosphere. Circling Mars roughly 6.6 times every Earth day, the spacecraft has facilitated countless discoveries over the last decade — including the first direct observations of a multi-million-year process that has been steadily stripping Mars of its atmosphere. (LIVESCIENCE VIA YAHOO.COM)

WATCH: White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, CISA Acting Director Nick Andersen and more top leaders at the recent McCrary Cyber Summit

Artificial intelligence

ClawHub, Cisco, and Vercel skill detection tools evaded by malicious uploads

Security researchers have shown that AI skill security scanners from ClawHub, Cisco, and Vercel’s skills.sh can be reliably bypassed using simple techniques, raising serious concerns about agentic AI supply chain defenses. In tests conducted by Trail of Bits, multiple malicious skills designed to exfiltrate data, hijack agents, or execute arbitrary code were successfully uploaded and passed as safe by all evaluated scanners. The work focused on ClawHub’s VirusTotal-backed scanning pipeline, Cisco’s open-source skill-scanner, and the Gen, Socket, and Snyk integrations used by skills.sh. (GBHACKERS.COM)

Malware

Google DoubleClick abused in new malspam campaign to deliver DesckVB RAT

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malspam campaign that makes use of Google’s DoubleClick domain as a way to evade detection and ultimately deliver a remote access trojan (RAT) named DesckVB RAT. “Before the victim ever reaches attacker-controlled infrastructure, the lure routes through DoubleClick, a legitimate Google-owned domain that many security tools are less likely to treat as suspicious,” Huntress researchers Anna Pham and Adam Mooney said. (THEHACKERNEWS.COM)

Networks

Bend the beam like Beckham to defeat anti-jamming tech

Wireless jamming attacks are on the rise. Rice University researchers have shown how self-curving radio beams can make a jammer appear to be somewhere it isn’t, potentially undermining some anti-jamming defenses. Jamming relies on flooding a wireless receiver with noise that denies service. Some modern receivers identify and block jamming attempts using direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation technology that pinpoints the jammer’s direction and directs an array null that blocks signals emanating in the jammer’s direction. Were a jammer to transmit a self-curving beam, however, it could fool DoA-based anti-jamming defenses by appearing to come from somewhere else entirely, and that’s exactly what the Rice researchers demonstrated. (THEREGISTER.COM)

Phishing

Phishing attacks pivot to Infostealer malware over fake login pages

Cybercriminal tactics are evolving as phishing campaigns increasingly shift away from fake login pages toward infostealer malware designed to quietly harvest sensitive data from infected systems. While traditional credential-harvesting pages remain in use, threat actors are now prioritizing methods that reduce user interaction and increase data collection efficiency. Infostealers are purpose-built malware families that extract stored credentials, browser cookies, autofill entries, session tokens, and other sensitive artifacts directly from a victim’s device. (GBHACKERS.COM)

Vulnerabilities

Cisco warns of available PoC for critical unified CM vulnerability

Cisco on Wednesday rolled out patches for a high-severity vulnerability in Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) and Unified Communications Manager Session Management Edition (Unified CM SME), warning that proof-of-concept (PoC) code for it exists. Tracked as CVE-2026-20230 (CVSS score of 8.6), the bug stems from input in specific HTTP requests not being properly validated, allowing attackers to mount server-side request forgery (SSRF) attacks. (SECURITYWEEK.COM)

Acer working to patch max severity zero-days in Wave 7 routers

Acer confirmed that it’s working to address two maximum-severity zero-day vulnerabilities affecting its Wave 7 mesh routers. According to a Friday security advisory, the two security flaws were reported by security researcher Gergo Pap and affect Wave 7 routers running firmware version T7c_GBL_1.01.000055 or earlier. The first zero-day, a broken access control vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-49200, can allow unauthenticated attackers to remotely access plaintext credentials stored in log archives. (BLEEPINGCOMPUTER.COM)

Autonomous AI tool finds 2-year-old RCE Flaw in Redis (CVE-2026-23479)

Redis has patched a use-after-free in its blocking-client code that lets an authenticated user run arbitrary OS commands on the machine hosting the database. The flaw was found by an autonomous AI tool built to hunt bugs in large codebases. Tracked as CVE-2026-23479, the flaw was introduced in Redis 7.2.0 and remained in every stable branch until the May 5 fixes, unnoticed for over two years. NVD rates it 8.8 under CVSS 3.1; Redis lists it as 7.7 under CVSS 4.0. It was reported by Team Xint Code, and a complete technical write-up is now public. (THEHACKERNEWS.COM)

China

China-linked TA4922 hackers target UK, Europe with new SilentRunLoader malware

A suspected China-aligned cybercrime group tracked as TA4922, previously known for targeting organisations in East Asia, is now running campaigns against organisations in the UK, Germany, Italy, and South Africa. Proofpoint researchers said the group has increased its attacks in recent months, using familiar phishing tactics with a growing set of malware tools. The activity includes credential theft, fraud attempts, remote access malware, and the use of legitimate remote management software to help maintain access inside victim networks. (HACKREAD.COM)

New large Chinese submarine with very unique feature just caught on satellite imagery

A new type of submarine that appears to lack a traditional sail has emerged in China. The same shipyard launched a smaller ‘sailless’ submarine — a technology demonstrator — eight years ago. More recently, a top Chinese shipbuilding conglomerate put forward a concept for an uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) with a broadly comparable hullform. Designs of this kind can offer benefits in terms of speed, maneuverability, and reduced acoustic signature, but also have major drawbacks. (TWZ.COM)

Iran

Treasury unleashes ‘Economic Fury’ to blacklist Nobitex and target Tehran’s digital moats

The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) officially designated Nobitex — Iran’s absolute largest cryptocurrency exchange — alongside three other prominent domestic platforms. Operating under the codename “Operation Economic Fury,” the broad regulatory offensive marks a historic escalation by the Trump administration to systematically paralyze the cryptographic plumbing that has long served as the Iranian regime’s primary escape valve from Western financial isolation. (FINANCEFEEDS.COM)

Ransomware

Ransomware cartels are fragmenting into volatile splinter groups, warns Met Police cyber chief

The global cyber threat landscape is undergoing a radical transformation, moving away from monolithic ransomware cartels toward highly volatile, fragmented splinter groups, a top UK police official has warned. Speaking at Infosecurity Europe 2026, William Lyne, Head of Economic and Cybercrime at the Metropolitan Police Service, told IT and security leaders that the modern cyber crime ecosystem has evolved into a highly accessible space. Lyne compared the underground landscape to a bar where threat actors can “get everything but a good drink.” (ITPRO.COM)

Russia

Special report: A perfect storm – Russia losing its war against Ukraine may lead to regime change

Russia is entering a perfect storm of military setbacks, economic deterioration, public dissatisfaction, elite fragmentation, and growing fears of political instability. These conditions could ultimately threaten the durability of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime. The Russian military is facing mounting manpower challenges as casualties reportedly exceed volunteer recruitment, forcing it to rely on convicts, indebted citizens, migrants, and increasingly coercive recruitment practices that lead to reduced battlefield effectiveness. Ukrainian long-range drone and deep-strike operations are increasingly disrupting Russian logistics, damaging energy infrastructure, degrading air defenses, and undermining Moscow’s ability to sustain offensive operations. (JAMESTOWN.ORG)

Russian hackers are weaponizing CRMs, Ukraine’s former foreign minister warns

IT leaders and network defenders must stop treating cyber attacks as theoretical risks and start viewing them as acts of war, Ukraine’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs warned attendees at Infosecurity Europe 2026. Speaking to a packed auditorium at ExCeL, Dmytro Kuleba, whose own journey to the conference was delayed after his vehicle struck Russian missile debris en route to Warsaw, delivered a sobering keynote on the intersection of kinetic warfare, cybersecurity, and business continuity. Drawing heavily on Ukraine’s defense in the wake of the Russian invasion, Kuleba detailed how the modern battlefield has seamlessly merged with enterprise IT environments, transforming everyday business software into deadly espionage tools. (ITPRO.COM)

Acquisition

DISA prepares new ICAM, Thunderdome procurement opportunities

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is preparing new acquisition efforts for identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) and Thunderdome, DISA’s zero trust program, as the Defense Department (DOD) works toward its fiscal year (FY) 2027 zero trust deadline. Brian Hermann, portfolio acquisition executive for cyber at DISA, told reporters on June 2 at the TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore that the agency plans to release a new other transaction authority (OTA) agreement for ICAM by the end of the year. DISA also plans to award a second OTA supporting Thunderdome foreign military sales efforts within the next two months, he said. (MERITALK.COM)

Artificial intelligence

Meta keeps delaying the release of its new AI model to developers

Meta Platforms has delayed plans to release its newest artificial intelligence model to developers multiple times and as of Tuesday didn’t have a planned date to release it, according to people familiar with the matter. The delay, stretching nearly two months after the company’s AI chief told developers to expect a release “soon,” raises questions about how quickly Meta can monetize its massive investments in building its own frontier AI models. The company has been developing an application programming interface, or API, a software tool that allows different programs to talk to each other. Meta’s API would allow apps written for computers or mobile phones to be based on Meta’s AI technology. (WSJ.COM)

Drones

At a NATO range in Latvia, hits and misses mark Europe’s counter-drone journey

As NATO military staff and officials greeted the booms of successful drone intercepts with polite applause, demonstrations at the Sēlija testing range in central Latvia last week showed both the progress European startups are making in counter-unmanned aerial systems as well as the difficulty to reliably take down flying drones. After an initial intercept by local drone maker Eraser failed and the target returned unharmed, CEO Edgars Gauručs was so stressed in a later demonstration that he missed the details of the successful takedown. Nordic Air Defense’s Kreuger 100 interceptor hit its target on the first try, missed on a second attempt, before succeeding again in a third and final simulated attack. (DEFENSENEWS.COM)

Health care

Inside the Trump-backed push to bring AI doctors into American medicine

Last summer, Amy Gleason became a true believer in the wonders of artificial intelligence. Her daughter Morgan had spent more than a decade battling a debilitating autoimmune disorder. But when the 27-year-old uploaded 16 years of meticulously kept medical records into ChatGPT, the machine reported that Morgan was suffering from a different ailment than the one diagnosed by doctors. The new assessment granted her entry into a coveted clinical trial. Gleason is not your typical mom. The leader of the U.S. DOGE Service, which she took over from billionaire Elon Musk, Gleason is now tasked by the Trump administration with bringing AI into the health care system as an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (WASHINGTONPOST.COM)

Nuclear

Constellation’s Three Mile Island nuclear restart gets boost with FERC waiver

Constellation Energy’s plans to restart the Crane nuclear power plant — formerly Three Mile Island Unit 1 — were boosted Monday when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a waiver for the company from PJM Interconnection rules. FERC approved Constellation’s waiver request over the objections of PJM’s independent market monitor. Under the decision, Constellation will be able to transfer 760 MW of Capacity Interconnection Rights, or CIRs, from its Eddystone power plant near Philadelphia to the Crane unit. The transfer will increase the amount of electricity the nuclear unit can deliver to the grid. (UTILITYDIVE.COM)

A safer nuclear fuel is gaining steam — but cost remains a hurdle

As the U.S. looks to revive its stagnant nuclear industry, a group of companies is racing to realize the promise of a “meltdown-proof” fuel that for decades has struggled to progress beyond federal lab experiments. Tri-structural isotropic fuel, known as TRISO, is safer and more stable than the fuel rods used by the large-scale water-cooled reactors that make up the vast majority of the world’s nuclear power plants. Both fuel sources use enriched uranium, but in TRISO, the element is balled into poppyseed-sized spheres with ceramic coating that can absorb dangerous radioactive materials. (CANARYMEDIA.COM)

Resilience

Cyber insurance rates are dropping, but exclusions widen

The good news for enterprises is that cyber insurance policies are still affordable. The bad news is that coverage exclusions are increasing, and some might catch customers by surprise. The growing list of exclusions is just one shift among several in the cyber insurance market, according to Paul Furtado, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. During a Tuesday session at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit, Furtado outlined several changes in the market that policyholders and prospective customers might not be aware of. (DARKREADING.COM)

Vulnerabilities

Infosecurity Europe: Patch responsibility remains up for grabs as AI unearths decades of flaws

As two of the leading frontier AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic, expand access to their most advanced large language models (LLMs), Claude Mythos and GPT5.5, with evidence of their capabilities to autonomously find and fix vulnerabilities at scale, the way organizations patch flaws is evolving. First, the patching lifecycle will likely speed up in many companies. Speaking at Infosecurity Europe, Kevin Jones, Group CISO at Bayer, said IT vendors he spoke to, including cloud hyperscalers, assessed that the mean time to exploit a vulnerability has gone from days to hours. “Normally, from a patch being released with no known public exploit in the wild, you give yourself seven to 10 days to be able to scale up that patch, deploy it on a few isolated systems, test it, deploy it on your internet-facing systems. It used to be the window it would take for attackers to really reverse engineer it, find the vulnerabilities, write the exploits, deploy the exploits and scale them,” he explained. (INFOSECURITY-MAGAZINE.COM)

OpenAI’s Sam Altman to meet with White House, lawmakers

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the Trump administration on Wednesday as part of a weeklong swing through Washington to discuss artificial intelligence. Altman will attend meetings with White House officials, including those involved with President Trump’s latest executive order on government AI testing, as well as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, an OpenAI spokesperson told The Hill. (THEHILL.COM)

House subcommittee splits on SECURE Data Act that preempts state privacy laws

Members of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee split along party lines during a hearing Wednesday to consider the SECURE Data Act, with Republicans touting the bill as a long‑overdue national privacy framework, and Democrats warning it would strip away a number of hard‑won state protections. The partisan divisions, which echoed a number of prior debates about a federal data privacy standard, predictably saw Republicans on the Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee — particularly, the two authors of the bill, GOP Reps. John Joyce of Pennsylvania and Brett Guthrie of Kentucky — pushing the SECURE Data Act as a pro‑innovation and small business-friendly bill that incorporated the best of the over 20 state comprehensive privacy laws. (STATESCOOP.COM)

Privacy hawks rail against Senate FISA proposal with 3-year CBDC ban

Privacy-minded conservatives in the House are pushing back against a Senate proposal to pair a temporary ban on the creation of central bank digital currency (CBDC) with a long-term extension of the federal government’s warrantless spying powers. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are circulating a bill in the upper chamber that would extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for three years ahead of its June 12 expiration, according to a copy obtained by The Hill. Section 702 allows the government to spy on foreigners abroad without a judicial warrant. (THEHILL.COM)

COMMITTEE ACTIVITY

AI SECURITY: The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection will hold a June 4 hearing on how frontier models, agentic AI and AI coding tools are reshaping cybersecurity and critical infrastructure resilience.

PNT: The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold a June 4 hearing examining positioning, navigation and timing capabilities in the United States.

CHINA: The House Foreign Affairs East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee will hold a June 4 hearing on China’s role in the fentanyl crisis.

Safeguarding our secrets

China’s military intelligence services are using an increasingly wide array of professional networking sites and online job platforms to target Five Eyes government and military personnel—and anyone with access to classified or privileged information. These actors use an aggressive online recruitment strategy whereby intelligence officers or their affiliates pose as employees of private consultancies, think tanks or human resources (HR) firms, and place online job advertisements for foreign policy and defense analysts (or similar). (IC3.GOV)

Emerging hospice fraud targeting Medicare recipients

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is issuing this Public Service Announcement to warn the public of an emerging hospice fraud scheme that targets vulnerable Medicare recipients who are not in need of hospice services. Scammers are enrolling Medicare patients in hospice care for services they do not need or for services that are not provided. Enrollment can also occur without the patient’s knowledge, allowing the scammers to bill Medicare for a patient that is not present in the hospice facility. Some scammers use door-to-door solicitation tactics and offer free home services such as house cleaning and meal delivery, which are conditional on using a specific hospice. (IC3.GOV)

CISA adds one known exploited vulnerability to catalog

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation: CVE-2026-45247 Mirasvit Full Page Cache Warmer Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability. This type of vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and poses significant risks to the federal enterprise. (CISA.GOV)

TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS CALENDAR, SUBMIT YOUR SECURITY-FOCUSED EVENT FOR CONSIDERATION

DATA CENTERS: Join the CSIS Economic Security and Technology Department’s Matt Pearl, Aalok Mehta, Joseph Majkut, and Philip Luck on June 4 for a discussion on the rapid expansion of data centers and what it means for the future of AI, energy, and U.S. competitiveness. As artificial intelligence accelerates demand for compute power, data centers have emerged as a critical piece of strategic infrastructure shaping electricity demand, industrial policy, environmental debates, and global technology competition.

BIOTHREATS: On June 4, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense at the Atlantic Council will host its latest meeting, which will discuss how non-federal governments approach biodefense. State, local, tribal, and territorial governments serve on the front lines of biodefense. As the biological threat continues to grow, those officials who tackle this topic on a daily basis require reinforcement. This meeting of the commission will discuss the impacts of changes in federal support for state, local, tribal, and territorial biodefense activities, as well as the biodefense roles, responsibilities, and investments of non-federal governments. The discussion will also touch upon the personnel, policies, and programs needed to bolster preparedness for future biological threats.

MARITIME: The Stephenson Ocean Security Project highlights the ways that global security challenges arise from marine resource competition and works towards solutions that support sustainable development, coalition building, and the need for American leadership. This year’s forum on June 9 will discuss the escalating pressure facing global maritime governance from a variety of crisis points and how this pressure is affecting shared governance of the maritime commonwealth and our ability to grapple with common challenges including marine resource management, illegal fishing, supply chain transparency, and human rights at sea. This year’s forum is co-hosted in partnership with the CSIS Human Rights Initiative.

AI ECONOMY: How can AI be deployed effectively to enhance economic mobility and ensure the benefits of AI systems are reaped widely? On June 10, the Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets will host a fireside chat with Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech project at MIT, to explore the intersection of AI and economic mobility. 

DIB: Join Hudson Institute for a June 11 fireside chat between Hudson Senior Fellow Nadia Schadlow and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Growth and Director of the Office of Small Business Programs James Mismash. The discussion will explore current efforts to strengthen the defense industrial base, expand industrial capacity, and foster greater participation and competition across the national security ecosystem.

SECURITY POLICY: From AI and drone warfare to global alliances and economic security, America and its allies need “New Rules” to compete, deter, and win in the 21st century. Join leading voices in national security for an exclusive, all-day Center for a New American Security conference on June 11 at the forefront of today’s most consequential issues — from AI and cybersecurity to the latest developments in Iran, economic statecraft, and America’s strategic readiness across the world.

NORTH KOREA: On June 12 join the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative (IPSI) of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security for the launch of Nonresident Senior Fellow Jieun Baek’s latest book, “Privileged but Powerless.” Baek’s second book on North Korea draws on hundreds of hours of rigorous fieldwork and interviews with defectors to examine a surprising yet critical vector of regime instability. In a fireside chat, Baek will discuss how North Korea’s system of privilege and control shapes elite insecurity at the highest levels of the regime.

DIB: Join CNAS on June 16 for a fireside conversation with DoD’s Michael Cadenazzi examining the challenges and priorities shaping U.S. munitions production and defense industrial base policy. This event will examine how policymakers, industry partners, and acquisition officials can work together to build the surge capacity the United States needs, in a focused conversation on the future of U.S. munitions production and defense industrial base policy.

NUCLEAR: Why does the U.S. struggle while nuclear leaders such as China and France succeed? A combination of standardized designs, predictable regulation, and rapid regulatory approval all appear to play a role. And while bipartisan support for nuclear energy has grown due to its role in AI-driven energy demand and climate goals, political anxieties in the United States persist. Join AEI on June 18 to dissect the economic, regulatory, and political tensions that keep the U.S. lagging behind when it comes to nuclear energy.

NUCLEAR: For the first time, the United States is preparing to deter two nuclear adversaries­­­, Russia and China. In today’s post-New START environment, U.S. adversaries remain committed to weakening American resolve and undermining Washington’s commitment to its allies. Join Hudson Senior Fellow and Keystone Defense Initiative Director Dr. Rebeccah Heinrichs and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration Brandon Williams for a June 18 discussion on the administration’s priorities in strengthening the U.S. nuclear enterprise.

GLOBAL SECURITY: Join the CSIS Defense and Security Department on June 30 for its annual Global Security Forum. This year’s conference will center on the theme “America at 250: A Defining Moment for American Statecraft and Military Power.: Through keynote addresses and expert panel discussions with government, industry, and finance experts, the Forum will examine how the tools of statecraft are being redefined and how the United States can harness innovation, rebuild industrial capacity, strengthen deterrence, and renew the foundations of leadership in a more dangerous world.

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