The President's Daily Brief - December 8th, 2023: Article 99 Activated, Venezuela's Crackdown, & Cyber-Security Breaches

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief:   UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invokes a rare power in the UN Charter in a strong move to push for a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict.   As the situation in Venezuela escalates, we delve into the government's latest actions against political dissidents and the rising border tensions with Guyana.   The UK levels serious allegations against Russia's Security Service, charging them with an extensive cyber-hacking campaign. We explore the implications for national security.   In the Back of the Brief, we uncover the potential breach of classified South Korean defense data by North Korean hackers.   Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.   Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Friday, December 8th. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. We'll begin today's show with the latest from Gaza and a new effort by the UN General Secretary to bring about a ceasefire by invoking a rarely used power. Later, the Venezuelan government launches a crackdown on political opponents as tensions over its border with Guyana continue to grow. And the UK is accusing Russia's security services of a sustained cyber hacking campaign, targeting politicians and other public figures. Finally, in today's back of the brief, and staying on the topic of cyber shenanigans, North Korean hackers may have stolen classified information on a new laser weapon system critical for South Korean defense. But first up, the PDB spotlight.

Israeli forces continued their operations across southern Gaza, engaging with Hamas in raids conducted in the Jabaliyah refugee camp and in the urban center of Kan Unis. Israeli defense forces remain on the hunt for the terror group's top leaders, Yaya Sinwar and Mohamed Dief. Meanwhile, the IDF have accused Hamas of launching rocket attacks from within humanitarian zones in Gaza. Now, these zones have been established to provide civilians with a safe haven amidst the conflict. You'll recall that the UN and the international community in general has spent the past weeks

criticizing Israel for planning and now engaging in southern Gaza without adequately thinking of creating these safe zones or havens for the Palestinian residents and those who fled south during the earlier IDF operations in the north. Now, it will be interesting to see if the UN and the international community, community have any criticism for Hamas for now using those same safe zones and havens from which to launch their attacks. The IDF reported two distinct rocket assaults, including a significant barrage targeting Bersheba emanating from areas designated as non-combat zones or safe zones. At the same time, in northern Israel, Hezbollah is escalating its attacks. On Thursday, militants

killed an Israeli civilian by firing an anti-tank. missile at his vehicle near the Lebanese border. In response, the IDF executed air strikes against multiple Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. Now, these strikes targeted a variety of Hezbollah infrastructure, including rocket launch sites and observation posts as part of Israel's retaliation against the Iranian-backed group. Amidst these escalating tensions, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez took an extraordinary step on Wednesday. He formally alerted the UN Security Council of a global threat posed by the Gaza conflict by invoking what's known as Article 99 of the UN Charter. Now, this rarely used authority enables the UN leader to bring any issue deemed as a threat to

international peace and security before the Security Council. And this is the first time that Gutierrez has employed Article 99 since his appointment as Secretary General in 2017. In his letter to the members of the UN Security Council, Gutett has urged a collective call to end the conflict, describing the two months of warfare as having caused, quote, appalling human suffering, physical destruction, and collective trauma across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Now, this is legitimately a rare event for the UN. The last formal use of Article 99 was more than three decades ago during the Lebanese Civil War. Now, apparently, the almost two-year war, ongoing in Ukraine as a result of Putin's invasion, hasn't met the U.N. Secretary's bar for, quote, appalling human suffering, physical destruction,

and collective trauma. I'm sure the fact that Russia is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council has nothing to do with Gutierrez's thinking. Interestingly, over the course of the UN's existence, only 50 nations have never been elected to serve a two-year term as one of the non-permanent members of the 15-member Security Council, and Israel is in that group. The 15-member Council is scheduled to convene today to deliberate on a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Now this move has sparked criticism from Israel. ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, lambasted Gutierrez, labeling his letter, quote, a new moral low. Erdan accused the UN Secretary General of employing Article 99 solely to exert pressure on Israel. Similarly, Israel's foreign minister condemned Gutierrez, accusing him of supporting Hamas and calling for his resignation. He further stated that Gutierrez's leadership at the UN poses, quote, a danger to world peace. All right, when we return, an update on the escalating crisis between Venezuela and Guyana as the Maduro regime cracks down on its domestic opposition.

Go figure, a leftist dictator cracking down on the opposition. What will we see next? And a massive cyber hacking campaign by Russia is uncovered in the UK. I'll be right back. Welcome back. We return to our ongoing coverage of the escalating crisis in South America, following Venezuela's recent referendum to annex a large portion of neighboring Guyana. As we discussed earlier this week on the PDB,

Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro took definitive steps to enforce this referendum on Tuesday when he ordered the country's state-owned companies to immediately start exploiting Guyana's rich deposits of oil and minerals in the region of Eskibo. Officials in Guyana responded Wednesday by beefing up their own security. measures in the oil-rich region. They also reached out to the United Nations Security Council and the U.S. military for assistance. Now, the U.N. said that they will hold a closed-door meeting on Friday to discuss the issue, while U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Wednesday pledged, quote, unwavering support for Guiana in the face of Maduro's aggression. In the show of unity, the U.S. joined Guiana in a joint military exercise along their border on Thursday.

Now, as a reminder, Venezuela's claim over the Esquibo region is rooted in a territorial dispute that goes back to Spanish colonial times. The area that Maduro is attempting to grab constitutes two-thirds of Guyana's landmass, about the size of the nation of Greece or the U.S. state of Georgia for comparison purposes, and it houses about one-sixth of Gianna's total population. Now, while leaders in Venezuela have long coveted the terrorism, the terrorism, territory, the controversy was reignited after ExxonMobil discovered massive deposits of oil in the region in 2015. The discovery propelled Gianna's economy into one of the fastest growing in the world, much to the apparent irritation and envy of their neighbors in Venezuela.

It's worth noting, however, that Venezuela is hardly united behind Maduro's aggressive push to seize control of the territory. We recently noted on the PDB and Associated Press Report, that indicated very low voter turnout for the referendum, despite the Maduro regime claiming that some 10.5 million voters turned out. There was also dissent among the country's opposition leaders, prompting an authoritarian crackdown on Wednesday, led by Venezuela's top prosecutor. So the Attorney General, under Maduro's orders, leveled charges of conspiracy and treason against a dozen opposition members, including the former leader of the National Assembly and campaign staffers of presidential candidate Maria Corina Makado.

The Attorney General claims they conspired against the referendum using cryptocurrencies to mask their financial efforts to sway the results of the vote, though no evidence substantiating those claims was presented. Opposition leaders argued that the poor voter turnout for the referendum was a, quote, monumental defeat for the Maduro regime. Maduro has given foreign oil companies working in the Skibe, Oce, three months to withdraw their operations and has proposed establishing a military unit to oversee security in the region. In the face of international condemnation, however, it remains unclear how Maduro will choose to proceed. Okay, shifting our focus to domestic U.S. as

well as ally UK security concerns. We're learning more about Russia's years-long cyber hacking campaign against the U.S. and the U.K. aimed at sowing discord in Western democratic institutions. The U.S. Justice Department released an indictment Thursday against two Russian operatives, who, they said, targeted former and current high-ranking U.S. officials stealing valuable intelligence regarding U.S. national security.

The theft also included hacks of email accounts tied to officials within the U.S. Department of Energy, giving the hackers access to U.S. nuclear energy secrets, according to a report by CNN. Now, the indictment noted that the intelligence, quote, would be particularly valuable to the Russian government's efforts to engage in malign foreign influence, end quote. The U.S. indictment named the hackers as Alexandrovich Periatko, an officer with VIII. Russia's FSB and Andrei Stanislovich Kornens, an IT expert. The two men who live in Russia were also hit with targeted sanctions from the U.S. Treasury Department. The State Department offered $10 million to anyone providing information identifying the hacker's present location. That's $10 million. So if you happen to know where Andre or Alexandrovich are right now,

check in with the U.S. Treasury Department and the State Department. Fara allegedly conducted hundreds of targeted hacks against politicians, civil servants, academics, and journalists in the U.S. and the U.K. They engaged in deep research of their targets, creating false accounts that masqueraded as trusted friends of the victims. Now, U.S. and U.K. officials condemned the Putin regime's cyber espionage operation on Thursday, including substantial efforts by the hackers to interfere in the 2019 U.K. general election by leaking documents related to U.S.-Uk trade negotiations.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron called the hacking campaign completely unacceptable, well, that's very diplomatic, isn't it, and promised to hold Russia to account for its actions. British leaders issued an official summons to the Russian ambassador to the UK on Thursday to answer for his country's sustained cyber attacks on Western democracies. Now, Russia's cyber operations are vast, and campaigns, targeting Western officials will undoubtedly continue. Officials in the U.S. have warned that Russian and Chinese influence operations are gearing up ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. All right, coming up in the back of the brief, South Korean officials are sounding the alarm

over North Korean hackers. I'll be right back. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, because behind every headline, is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. In today's back of the brief, we're going to stay on the topic of cybersecurity. South Korean officials are sounding the alarm over North Korean hackers who they're accusing of stealing classified information on some of the country's most advanced weaponry,

including a state-of-the-art anti-aircraft laser system. The group behind these alleged cyber heists is known as Anderil, identified by the U.S. Department of Treasury in 2019 as a North Korean state-sponsored hacking entity. And Aadriel has a notorious track record of targeting foreign businesses, government agencies, and especially the defense industry. It's reported that the group accessed data from 14 entities, exploding a massive trove of data from defense and research firms in South Korea.

The hackers are said to have siphoned off 1.2 terabytes worth of data, and that's a lot of data, which included sensitive details on advanced anti-aircraft weaponry. The sole Metropolitan Police Agency has decosed that these cyber attackers infiltrated South Korean companies 83 times from December 2022 to March of this year, 2023, utilizing local hosting services to carry out their operations. Now, disturbingly, many of the affected companies didn't even detect the breaches. Others chose to just not report the incidents, fearing that the breaches would damage their reputation. And both of those problems, failure or lengthy delay in detecting breaches within a system and corporate reluctance to publicly disclose a breach for fear of reputational or

value damage, well, those problems continue to hamper efforts to improve cybersecurity practices. Now, the theft didn't stop at defense secrets. The hackers also looted hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin, a tactic that's become all too familiar with North Korean hackers. This year alone, North Korea is implicated in the theft of roughly three hundred and $40 million in cryptocurrencies over just the first three-quarters of the year. Currently, there's an ongoing investigation, a joint effort between South Korean authorities and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to ascertain the full scope of the data compromised. And one other point to note here. Any secrets stolen by North Korean hackers will be shared

with both the Chinese and Russian regimes. China is, of course, North Korea's primary benefactor. And, as has been previously reported here on the PDB, Putin and Kim Jong-un have exchanged friendship bracelets during this year based on Putin's need for military hardware support and Kim's desire for Russian weapons technology and assistance. And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief for Friday, 8 December. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back later today with the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.