Category: Audio Posts: Selected Articles

The forecasting about Russia’s misinformation campaign aimed at diverting attention to another ‘unsuitable’ target in matters of supplying weapons to Hamas militants for attacking Israel was confirmed. 

On October 7, RLI warned that by using its warm relations with Hezbollah, Russia would send to the Gaza Strip a few units of weaponry captured on Ukraine’s battlefields – as evidence to back their claims. 

The next day, October 8, Russian affiliated military intelligence-Telegram channels were actively spreading a fake story claiming that Israeli soldiers near Ashkelon had found a pickup truck with a Soviet-made RPG-7 anti-tank grenade. The weapon allegedly had markings of a ‘Ukrainian unit from Mukachevo, Zakarpattia region’.

As we know, this weapon belongs to the 128th mountain infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. While studying the materials, we came to the conclusion that this is the part of the weapons (including Soviet RPG-7 and AGS-17 automatic grenade launchers) the mentioned unit lost in December 2022 near the village of Pidgorodne, one mile in the north- east of Bakhmut town. They left the weapon while withdrawing from its positions, which came under the control of the Wagner PMC militants.

In this way Ukrainian Soviet-type weapons were transported by the Wagner Group to Russian territory, then the ammunition was sent by Russian Aerospace Forces to the Khmeimim airbase, Syria, and further to the training bases of Hezbollah and Hamas fighters in the vicinity of Damascus. However, we found evidence of Hamas militants being armed with Russian export AK-103-2 assault rifles.

In 2019, we tracked illegal AK-103 rifles sales on the Iraqi market after the Assad regime government supplying the guns.

The AK-103 entered service in Russia in 1993, precluding its placement in Soviet-era warehouses. Thus, these facts confirm the Kremlin’s involvement in the preparation and organization of the Hamas operation against Israel. As far as we know the Wagner and Redut mercenaries trained Palestinians at the training bases in Syria. Since both Russian units are under the operational control of the Main Directorate of the General Staff (formerly the GRU), the transfer of captured weapons to the Middle East is part of Russians’ preparations of the special operations in the region and may indicate that the attack on Israel could have been planned in the spring-summer of 2023.

Moreover, we think that there is a high possibility that Russian PMCs could enter the arms market by supplying both captured and Russian Soviet-style weapons to paramilitary and terrorist groups in the Middle East and Africa.

Prior, we published a report on ties and supplies of Russian weapons to terrorist organizations in the Middle East; in particular, the weapons were used during attack an Israeli school bus. 

It is unlikely that the Israeli Merkava battle tanks were destroyed by Palestinian operators launching civilian drones equipped with a combat element drop system. Such an accuracy proves a high-skilled training and practice of the drone operators.According to our estimates, the UAV operators were trained by Iranian or Russian specialists who have got their skills during the war against Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Georgia’s fifth President Salome Zourabichvili provided evidence on ‘Russian disinformation’ during a Q&A hearing of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. In her testimony, Zourabichvili emphasised that Georgia was at risk of becoming a grey zone, and that more actions need to be taken by the West to counter Russian influence and propaganda abroad.

The evidence hearing, titled ‘Disinformation diplomacy: How malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy’, focused largely on the political situation in Georgia, and what role Russia is playing in the country’s political and social affairs.

In her testimony, given virtually over Zoom, Zourabichvili highlighted that currently in Georgia, ‘every day brings new repressive laws’, citing the restrictive media and civil society legislation passed in parliament that same day, noting that ‘practically everybody is in one way or another under the repressive laws’.

Zourabichvili compared Georgian Dream’s recent actions to those of Russia’s in terms of its own suppression of civil society, with the difference being that in Georgia, the process ‘is going extremely fast’.

‘We do not have a justice system anymore in Georgia’, Zourabichvili said, after stating that out of 400 people detained as part of the ongoing protests, 50 still remain in prison. She also gave testimony related to the disappearances of civil society activists who ‘reappear in some police station’ and the treatment of prisoners in custody, including most recently of opposition politician Elene Khoshtaria, who accused police of assaulting her before stripping her naked. In all cases, Zourabichvili again noted the similarities to the ‘Russian method’.

However, Zourabichvili emphasised that a characteristic of Georgia’s civil society throughout the decades has been its resilience, and that there still exists a ‘very vivid’ Georgian civil society that is resisting the government oppression.

She also highlighted that a key difference between Georgia and Belarus, which British MPs used as a comparison case in their questioning, was that Georgia had long been ‘completely dependent on and also sustained by’ the EU and US, who reformed all government institutions and have now left the government isolated. Another difference she noted was that she remained in Georgia, unlike the Belarusian opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

However, while resistance continues, Zourabichvili stressed that Georgia is currently at risk of becoming a grey zone, where those sanctioned by Russia can find the freedom to operate.

Citing Georgia’s offshore law, which allows taxes and duties to be exempted on offshore assets being brought into the country, Zourabichvili claimed that any potentially sanctioned oligarch could make use of this loophole by becoming a Georgian citizen. In addition, she noted that Georgian citizens are not considered to be under sanctions by Georgian banks if proof has not been sustained by the Georgian courts, again creating the possibility for anyone friendly to the Georgian government to bypass Western sanctions if they are granted Georgian citizenship by the new president, Mikheil Kavelashvili.

In a separate discussion, after one MP asked whether the West had done enough to counter pro-Russian narratives in the past, Zourabichvili responded: ‘I think we have received no support’.

In her testimony, Zourabichvili took the West, including the UK, to task, making it clear that Georgia has long been a testing spot for Russia, whether in terms of actual military action, such as the 2008 August War, or disinformation campaigns and election  interference. She claimed that what Russia learns from its experiences in Georgia, it then transfers into other conflicts, such as in Ukraine.

When asked about whether the UK should sanction the pro-government television station Imedi — often accused of being a Georgian Dream propaganda outlet, and which is owned and operated out of London — Zourabichvili told the MPs that ‘I think you know what you should do’, before going on to criticise the current sanctions policy.

According to her, while the current sanctions being enacted might please Georgia’s protesters, given their focus on punishment, they do not serve the ‘ultimate purpose’ of changing behaviour. Therefore, Zourabichvili pressed that sanctions should be linked in a ‘stick and carrot policy of conditionality’.

During her testimony, Zourabichvili also touched upon the 2024 parliamentary elections, which she claimed had been a ‘large, sophisticated, manipulation operation’ that was ‘inspired and supported by Russians and Russian methods’.

Towards the end of the session, the parliamentary committee was notified that the government had decided to put Russia on the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, meaning that ‘anyone working for the Russian state in the UK will need to declare what they are doing or risk jail’, a decision Zourabichvili welcomed.

‘I don’t know whether it will help us directly, but it is something very positive. The more people realise that something is happening, the sooner we will see a real strategy’, she said.

Elon Musk said Friday that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, had acquired his social media platform, X.

He said that the deal was an all-stock transaction that valued X at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk wrote in a post on X.

The deal combines two of Musk’s most high-profile companies, but because they are not publicly traded, no details about the deal were made public outside of Musk’s post. It’s unclear if the deal included any immediate windfall for Musk.

X recently raised $1 billion from investors, valuing it at $44 billion, according to Bloomberg. Musk took X (then Twitter) private in 2022 at nearly the same valuation. Musk was recently served with an SEC summons in the long-running lawsuit over Musk’s alleged failure to disclose his ownership in Twitter before bidding to buy it entirely.

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, reposted Musk’s message adding: “The future could not be brighter.”

Musk launched xAI in 2023 and rolled out Grok, an AI-powered chatbot similar to those from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and many other AI companies. Since then, Grok has been infused into X, with many users now often asking it to respond to posts and weigh in on arguments.

Musk has billed Grok as an anti-“woke” AI that is “truth-seeking,” though it has been found to disagree with him on many issues.

“This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach,” Must wrote. “The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.”

Amid the broader boom in AI companies, Musk’s xAI has found interest from investors. Major Wall Street firms Blackrock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Sequoia Capital, and the top chip companies Nvidia and AMD invested in xAI in December. That funding took the AI company’s value to $45 billion. As recently as last month, reports said xAI was considering another fundraising round that would value the company at $75 billion.

The rush to develop — and invest in — advanced AI has included billions of dollars in plans to build out the computing power, electricity infrastructure and human capital necessary to develop increasingly powerful models capable of performing complex tasks. Money has poured into AI startups while tech giants including Google, Amazon and Meta have announced plans for significant spending on all things AI.

Meanwhile, both AI and Musk have grown more political. Musk has emerged as among the most high-profile of President Donald Trump’s advisers, and Trump made AI a campaign issue, promising to rein in regulation. Just days into his second term, Trump signed an executive order aimed at undoing Biden administration efforts to put some safeguards on AI development while encouraging its growth.

Many AI and tech executives as well as technologists and industry watchdogs have warned about the implications of an all-out AI arms race, particularly as other countries including China are pushing to lead on the technology.

U.S. shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries announced this week that it will develop a new high-energy laser weapon for the Army to combat drones.

Huntington Ingalls said Monday that it will develop the weapons system for the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. Its open architecture system will be capable of fixed-site defense and will easily integrate into Army vehicles, the company said.

“We are proud to provide a critical enabler for the Army, delivering an effective, interoperable, sustainable and scalable system that will meet force protection requirements and support U.S. strategic objectives,” said Grant Hagen, president of the Mission Technologies’ Warfare Systems division. “We look forward to collaborating with the RCCTO on this important effort that will protect the warfighter with an affordable counter-UAS solution.”

The company added that the open architecture design is perfectly in line with the goals of the Army.

“Aligned to the system’s Modular Open Systems Approach architecture, this data directly supports Army’s objectives for interoperability, affordability, scalability, supply chain resilience and rapid innovation,” a statement from Huntington Ingalls reads. “The weapon system will allow the Army to interchange subsystems and software as the weapon evolves to meet national security demands.”

Huntington Ingalls will develop a prototype laser system that can track and destroy unmanned aircraft. Before transitioning into low-rate initial production, the system will undergo field testing to determine its operational capabilities.

Huntington Ingalls’ new contract follows a solicitation last July in which RCCTO called on contractors to deliver white papers on systems that could defeat unmanned aircraft systems. The July solicitation asked specifically for fixed-site defense and rapid integration capabilities.