Pentagon breach hits 2.76 million people as drone warfare gets a four-star command
The US military moved from announcing counter-drone money to institutionalising it this week: a new four-star command, a memo ordering 30-day approval deadlines, and roughly $7 billion in Domestic Shield contracts all landed within days of each other. At the same time, breach disclosures piled up across sectors, from the Pentagon's own personnel system to a Danish university to four South Korean banks. If you read one story, read the Pentagon breach: it is the second major federal data exposure disclosed in recent months, and this one leaked Social Security numbers alongside military roles for 2.76 million people.
This week's pick
- Pentagon notifies 2.76 million people of monthslong personnel data breach Attackers exploited a flaw in a Defense Manpower Data Center file-sharing system to pull unencrypted Social Security numbers and military roles between October 2025 and July 2026, the second major federal breach disclosed in recent months.
OSINT
- Russia's GRU used 20 million Telegram job ads to recruit disposable saboteurs Finland's intelligence agency says GRU sabotage recruitment accelerated this summer, now targeting defence manufacturers and Ukraine-support logistics after a Polish Starlink station arson.
- GRU-linked Storm-1516 network shifts its false claims to the Baltic states The Kremlin-tied operation began pushing four fabricated claims about the Baltic states in August, cloning real media outlets' websites to pass them off as legitimate reporting.
- Satellite data confirms Ukrainian strike on Russia's largest jet-drone base NASA thermal satellites detected fires at Russia's Tsymbulovo base, one of its largest jet-drone hubs with over 100 strike drones on hand, after reported Ukrainian strikes.
- OSINT investigators identify Alabuga executive who presented jet drones to Putin Ukrainian OSINT team Evocation.info identified the Alabuga executive Putin hugged on camera as Ildar Tazutdinov, already under US sanctions for shipping Iranian drone parts.
- Fact-checkers debunk fake BBC deepfake report on Flydubai hijacking attempt A fabricated video dressed as a BBC report blamed an Indian passenger and pilot for a Flydubai hijacking attempt; a deepfake detector scored it 99 per cent AI-generated.
Drones
- Army task force awards roughly $7 billion in counter-drone contracts under Domestic Shield JIATF-401 and the Army awarded roughly $7 billion in counter-drone contracts, including $4.65 billion split across ten companies like DroneShield, L3Harris and SmartShooter.
- Hegseth announces new four-star command to scale drone and autonomous warfare Defence Secretary Hegseth announced a new four-star combatant command to drive military-wide drone and AI adoption, targeted to stand up by October 2027.
- Hegseth orders Pentagon to cut bureaucratic delays in counter-drone approvals A new Hegseth memo requires any stalled counter-drone approval request to escalate after 30 days and directs reuse of prior test data instead of restarting assessments.
- EU Council approves DECODER, a joint drone and counter-drone programme The EU Council approved five defence projects eligible for EU funding, including DECODER, a joint programme to help member states build and deploy drone and counter-drone technology.
- Lithuania shuts Vilnius Airport, scrambles NATO jets over suspected drone from Belarus Lithuania briefly closed Vilnius Airport and scrambled NATO Baltic Air Policing jets after an unidentified aerial object entered from Belarus over the Ukmerge region.
VC Investment
- AMD to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion in all-stock deal AMD agreed to acquire spatial-intelligence startup World Labs for $8.2 billion in stock, with Fei-Fei Li joining as chief scientist reporting to CEO Lisa Su.
- EliseAI raises $350 million at $4 billion valuation to deepen AI automation in housing and healthcare EliseAI nearly doubled its valuation to $4 billion in just 13 months, with Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer co-leading a round joined by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.
- Counter-drone company Fortem Technologies closes $50 million Series B led by Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin led a $50 million Series B into counter-drone company Fortem Technologies, building on the $25 million it already committed in April.
- Supabase raises $150M led by GIC, acquires Turso to power agentic databases Supabase raised $150 million led by Singapore's GIC and is acquiring SQLite startup Turso to serve lightweight, agent-spun-up database workloads.
- Homeward raises $120M Series D as it bets on buy-before-you-sell financing Homeward raised a $120 million Series D led by Saluda Grade plus a separate $330 million debt facility, pushing its total equity raised since 2018 to $360 million.
CyberSecurity
- Four of South Korea's largest banks disclose data breaches within days of each other Shinhan, KB Kookmin, Hana and BNK each disclosed separate breaches in loan or employee-support systems within two days, with Shinhan's exposing about 25,000 customers after an authentication bypass.
- Danish university DTU breach exposes data of up to 200,000 people Hackers used compromised credentials to download data from DTU's identity system spanning two decades, potentially affecting up to 200,000 current and former users.
- Fortinet warns of critical FortiMail zero-day exploited in the wild Fortinet warned a critical FortiMail path-traversal flaw is under active zero-day exploitation, letting unauthenticated attackers write arbitrary files via crafted HTTP requests.
- Cisco warns of actively exploited authentication bypass in SD-WAN Manager Cisco disclosed a critical authentication bypass in Catalyst SD-WAN Manager after finding it already under active exploitation, letting attackers act as an admin user via one crafted request.
- Misconfigured Supabase apps expose data in over 16,000 databases Researchers found over 16,000 misconfigured Supabase databases exposing readable data, traced to missing row-level security and misused public API keys.