The President's Daily Brief - June 22nd, 2022. Did Russia Just Attack America? The FBI is Investigating

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

It’s June 22nd. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ First up, the Russians may have attacked America. There was a possible cyber attack a couple weeks ago in Texas that could be connected to the natural gas wars that I briefed you on yesterday. It’s a big story, and it’s coming up. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, Joe Biden confirmed yesterday that he’s considering a gas tax holiday, that basically means a suspension of federal gas taxes. But will that make a difference to your pocketbook? We’ll discuss.  Finally this morning, US weapons have sunk a Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea. I’ll explain exactly what happened and why it’s important. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's June 22nd. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the president each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, the Russians may have attacked America. There was a possible cyber attack a couple of weeks ago in Texas that could be connected to the natural gas wars that I briefed you on yesterday. It's a big story, and it's coming up. As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar.

First, Joe Biden confirmed yesterday that he's considering a gas tax holiday, and that basically means a suspension of federal gas taxes. But will that make a difference to your pocketbook? We'll discuss. Finally, this morning, U.S. weapons have sunk a Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea. I'll explain exactly what happened and why it's important. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right,

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Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. First up this morning on the PDB, America may have been attacked by Russia. investigations are underway this morning, but early indicators suggest that it may have been a cyber attack.

So I'm going to explain to you all the details of this alleged attack and what it could mean for us. So here's what you need to know. About two weeks ago, there was an explosion in the city of Quintana, Texas, and that's about an hour south of Houston. Now, Quintana is the home of the Freeport liquefied natural gas facility, and that's where the explosion happened. and it shut down that plant through at least the end of this year. Now, that name, Freeport LNG, and that explosion, should actually ring a bell. I spoke of it yesterday when I briefed you all on the natural gas wars in Europe. So to quickly recap, the United States has promised to send our liquefied natural gas or LNG to Europe.

And that's because Russia is cutting off gas supplies to the entire continent, with supplies down about 50% in just the past week. But because of that explosion at the Freeport LNG plant, it's going to make it much harder for America to prop up Europe during this energy crunch, and it increases the risk of economic recession throughout the European Union. Plus, there is a very real possibility of people freezing to death next winter because they rely on that natural gas to heat their homes. Well, we now have reporting that the FBI is,

is in fact investigating this explosion in Quantana, specifically looking at whether Russia was involved. Sources of a reporter that I trust on this have confirmed it. The Bureau, however, is pretty tight-lipped this morning about their involvement, and they're saying, quote, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation into this matter, end quote. But there's reason to think that the Russians were involved, so let me explain that circumstantial evidence.

Back in February, Russian military intelligence hacked into more than 100 computers belonging to current and former employees of 21 major energy companies. In some cases, the hackers got into those computers themselves, but in other cases, they were actually paying up to $15,000 to other hackers who had already gotten into those same energy companies in previous hacks. Now, at the time, the belief was that Russia was probing for future targets, laying the groundwork for attacks depending on. how the war in Ukraine went or our involvement. So flash forward from February to June 8th, just four months later. At the Freeport facility that morning, there was an LNG transfer line that for years had been operating normally. It's a line that runs from the storage tanks to a terminal where the LNG would be piped

into waiting chips. But on June 8th, that transfer line had a sudden increase in the pressure inside the pipe, and it ruptured. There was a leak and a gas vapor cloud built up, and then it ignited. The explosion damaged the facility and knocked it off line until at least December of this year. Now, it's possible that this transfer line could have corroded over time, or the metal just failed. But oil companies watch for that. In fact, they have physical inspections for just such a thing. Plus, and here's the point. They have industrial computer systems that monitor things like internal pressures, plus they can adjust it as needed. Now, what's strange in this case is that apparently

that computerized safety system didn't kick in. The question is why, and how that pressure spiked in the first place? Well, sources are reporting that because of these oddities, plus the scale of the damage, the FBI got involved. And now their cybercrimes team is on the hunt. If the Russians were involved in this, they would have likely used a type of malware called the Triton or Tris system. This was developed specifically to take over industrial control systems and to defeat the safety systems that normally prevent these kinds of explosions. So whether or not this quote-unquote accident pans out as a Russian cyber attack, well, let's see. But if I were briefing you this morning in the Oval Office, we would talk about two things.

First, Moscow had the ability and the motive to do it. Second, this attack, if true, signals how the Russians will likely respond to our proxy war in Ukraine. So let's dive into that first piece, the ability and the motive. We know that the Russians have the capability to engage in cyber warfare. In fact, Russian criminal groups have a very long history of hacking our critical food and energy systems for ransom. consider the colonial pipeline attack. That happened last year on a pipeline that carries gasoline and diesel and jet fuel from Texas to the New England states. And it was likely done by what's called the Darkside Group, and that is almost certainly based in Russia.

And then a couple of weeks after that colonial pipeline attack, there was another one. The company JBS, which is one of the world's largest meat providers, including here in the U.S., well, they were hacked by a Russian group called Revel. Finally, there was the cyber attack on the American agricultural organization called New Cooperative, which has a big computer system that monitors food supply chains and the feeding schedules for millions of chickens and hogs and cattle. They were hacked by a group called Black Matter, which is located in Russia. The point of all these attacks plus others is that the Russian government or hacking groups under Putin's thumb have a very clear track record of successfully targeting our critical infrastructure.

Okay, the second key here is that Russia also had a very strong motive to attack us. Because as you all know from my previous briefs, they've got Europe on the ropes. They're cutting off the gas supply right now as Europeans need to fill up their storage tanks for wintertime. So Moscow is in no mood to see America or anyone else help the Europeans out of their energy crunch. So if Moscow can blow up the facilities that would otherwise replace their gas, well, all the better, they'd say, it might force Europe to end the sanctions against Russia. Or if nothing else, it'll make Berlin and Paris and Brussels feel as much pain as Moscow.

Meanwhile, and this is incredibly important, this potential attack tells us something else, something about the future. Russia likely won't drop a nuclear bomb on America, so long as they have other more stealthy ways to cause us pain, like taking down a meat processor or a fuel pipeline, or maybe an LNG facility. The problem is that stopping these kinds of attacks is really hard, because in an era of vulnerable computer systems and remote workers,

there are just too many ways for our adversaries to trick us, to hack us, and then embed themselves into our critical systems. So the bottom line is that anything online is vulnerable, and that should be the message to every company and every person in America. So either we find ways to take our lives and our critical systems offline, you know, to do things manually like we used to in the old days, or we should be prepared to deal with very deadly consequences when we go to war with countries like Russia, who have very good cyber capabilities.

And as we deal with those deadly consequences, we're going to be. we have to remember that they'll be very painful for not just Americans, but maybe in a case of this LNG facility in Texas, painful too for millions of Europeans. Coming up, a closer look at what's on my radar. As always, I'm watching a few of the stories this morning. Put these two on your radar. First, Joe Biden confirmed yesterday that he's considering a gas tax holiday

that basically would mean a suspension of the federal gasoline taxes. So the hope here is that by removing these taxes, you and I would pay less at the pump, and that would lower the inflation pain that we're all feeling. But how much less pain would we actually feel? I mean, that's the question here. So the tax is 18.4 cents per gallon for gas and another 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel. So for the average driver of an SUV in this country, just as an example, that would save you about $4.60 a week.

Now, you can decide how much less paying that is for you and your family, depending on your budget. But as you think about it, keep this in mind, there will be a hidden cost. You see, the gas tax provides about 80% of the money for the highway trust fund. And that outfit, in turn, provides the funding for highway construction and maintenance, plus capital expenditures on things like mass transit, buses, and trucks. trains. So by saving $4.60 a week, American drivers will be paying elsewhere, and at some point, we're going to have to pay it all back to the Highway Trust Fund. So the bottom line here is that if

you see politicians in D.C. talk up their plan for a gas tax holiday, just know that it's not a whole lot back in your pocket, because eventually you're going to have to pay for it, one way or another. Regardless, I'll be watching what politicians say about this, and I will keep you posted as always. Finally this morning, I have confirmation that U.S. weapons have sunk a Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea. So let me explain what happened and why it's so important. Late last week, the Ukrainian military used some of those anti-ship missiles that I briefed you on previously to sink a Russian transport vessel. So to recap that previous brief, the U.S. and our European partners, Denmark in particular, we sent Ukraine two different sets of anti-ship missiles to

attack the Russian Navy in the Black Sea. The goal, of course, was to sink those Russian ships that are blocking Ukraine's ports, and then to get out that much-needed Ukrainian wheat to the global marketplace. Well, those missiles have obviously arrived and been put to use. One of those systems, the harpoon, we can now confirm has destroyed a very heavily armed Russian vessel in a black sea that was transporting, actually, personnel, weapons, and ammunition. It's the first strike that's been publicly acknowledged, and it comes just a couple of days after there were new promises of more systems that will be both sea and land-based all to sink more Russian ships. So whether or how Russia responds to this, well, frankly, remains to be seen this morning, but clearly there's

a risk of major escalation. And that's not just to the Ukrainians, but to us in our interests all around the world. As always, I'll keep you posted. And that, ladies and gentlemen, your morning brief. As always, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John, chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Good day.