u/JournalistAdjacent

Another week of spy stories! The singular event of greatest focus was, of course, the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the middle of the week, but plenty more happened and this week including:

• Iran executed Erfan Shakourzadeh, a 29 year old aerospace engineer who was accused of spying for Israeli and/or US intelligence agencies.
• Deanonymizing Starlink users is becoming a lucrative venture for cyber espionage firms, and is naturally creating worry for those organizations and individuals that use the devices to act against oppressive regimes.
• Eileen Wang, mayor of the town of Arcada in California, resigned after pleading guilty to acting as a foreign agent of China.
• Despite a ceasefire earlier in the week being inked, Ukraine continues to catch Russian spies.
• The US has stepped up its spy planes and drone surveillance of Cuba in the coming days.
• US announces $200,000 award for information leading to arrest of former  Air Force Office of Special Investigation operator Monica Witt, who was accused of spying for Iran in 2019.

... And so much more!

Good morning, evening, night or whatever time of day it is to you! Welcome to more Spy News! This past week we saw a number of developments in the Iran and Ukraine wars, and... well I'll just get to it:

• Austria persona non grata'd three Russian diplomats, accusing them of spying and aiding in constructing a Russian "forest of antennae" at the Russian embassy in Austria.
• Fears of a coup are growing, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is responding by increasing his security personnel
• Valtori, Finland’s Government ICT Centre, was breached earlier this year and though details remain sparse this week we learned that the breach reached all the way to President Alexander Stubb's office.
• Japan is set to launch a new national intelligence agency, said to be modeled after the United States' agencies, and is looking to get the task underway by July of this year with 700 employees to start with.
• Argentina is getting in on the "detaining Russian spies" game, revoking the residency permit of Dmitrii Novikov, 26 of Russia, accusing him of working with Project Lakhta, a malign influence organization with ties to Russia and was overseen by Wagner Group.

.... And so much more!

Another week of intelligence news, this week there's:

• Italy extradited 34-year-old Xu Zewei, accused Chinese hacker who allegedly stole vaccine research, among other cyber operations, to the US.
• In a twist to the usual "FSB vs. SBU" stories: this week an FSB agent tasked with assisting in assassination of a commander in Odessa was caught using a commercial GPS device, a TK905-Mini.
• Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) mysterious Bureau 9 is said to be closely monitoring Vatican-affiliated educational, charitable, and missionary institutions, classifying them as potential centers of foreign influence against China.
• The UK expelled an unnamed diplomat in a tit-for-tat move after Russia expelled a British diplomat in March.
• China's pressure on Zambia led to the cancellation of Human Rights conference appropriately named RightsCon.

... And so much more!