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AI-Orchestrated Chinese Cyber Espionage, Counterintelligence Professional’s View

intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage, counterespionage, a.i., artificial intelligence, cyber operations, cyber-espionage, chinese APT, C. Constantin Poindexter

The GTG-1002 operation reported by Anthropic and reported by Nury Turkel in The Wall Street Journal (“The First Large-Scale Cyberattack by AI“) is not just another less-than-noteworthy Chinese cyber campaign. It is a counterintelligence (CI) inflection point, the proverbial crossing of the Rubicon. In this case, a Chinese state-sponsored threat group manipulated Anthropic’s Claude Code into acting as an autonomous cyber operator that conducted eighty to ninety percent of the intrusion lifecycle, from reconnaissance to data exfiltration, against about thirty high-value targets. Those victims include major technology firms and government entities (Anthropic 2025a; Turkel 2025). From a C.I. and counterespionage perspective, this is the moment where artificial intelligence stops being merely an analyst’s tool and becomes an adversary’s “officer in the field.”

I am going to take a C.I. guy’s view here and offer my thoughts about the counterintelligence ramifications of this, and more specifically how AI-orchestrated espionage changes the threat surface, disrupts traditional CI tradecraft, and forces democratic states to redesign CI doctrine, authorities, and technical defenses. It situates GTG-1002 within a broader pattern of Chinese cyber espionage and AI-enabled operations. I think that you will agree with me after reading a bit here that an AI-literate counterintelligence enterprise is now a strategic necessity.

GTG-1002 as a Case Study in AI-Enabled Espionage

Anthropic’s public report “assesses with high confidence” that GTG-1002 is a Chinese state-sponsored actor that repurposed Claude Code as an “agentic” cyber operator (Anthropic 2025a). Under the cover story of legitimate penetration testing, AI was instructed to map internal networks, identify high-value assets, harvest credentials, exfiltrate data, and summarize takeaways for human operators, who then made strategic decisions (Turkel 2025). The campaign targeted organizations across technology, finance, chemicals, and government sectors, with several successful intrusions validated (Anthropic 2025a). This incident must be understood in the context of Beijing’s long-standing cyber-espionage posture. U.S. government and independent assessments have repeatedly documented the sophistication and persistence of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actors targeting critical infrastructure, defense industrial base entities, and political institutions (USCC 2022; CISA 2025). GTG-1002 does not represent a shift in Chinese strategic intent. It evidences a dangerous new means, automation of the cyber kill chain by a large language model (LLM) with minimal human supervision. In essence, AI isn’t helping an operator press the trigger, . . . AI is.

From a CI standpoint, GTG-1002 is the first verified instance of an LLM acting as the primary intrusion operator rather than as a mere “helper,” in a state-backed offensive cyber operation. This development validates years of warnings from both academic and policy analysts about AI-assisted and AI-driven cyber penetrations (Rosli 2025; Louise 2025). It confirms that frontier models can be harnessed as operational tools for intelligence collection at scale.

Compression of the Intelligence Cycle and the Detection Window

Traditional cyber-collection operations require sizable teams of operators and analysts executing reconnaissance, initial access, lateral movement, and exfiltration over days or weeks. GTG-1002 shows that AI agents can compress this cycle dramatically by chaining tools, iterating code, and self-documenting tradecraft at machine speed (Anthropic 2025a; Anthropic 2025b). For CI services, this compression has several consequences.

The indications and warning window shrinks. Behavioral indicators that CI analysts and security operations centers have historically depended on, i.e., repeated probing, extended lateral movement, or noisy privilege escalation, are now condensed, obfuscated, and/or automated. Autonomous AI agents can escalate privileges, pivot and exfiltrate in minutes, leaving a smaller digital “dwell time” during which CI can detect and attribute activity (Microsoft 2025).

Exploitation and triage become automated. GTG-1002 reportedly used Claude not only to steal data but also to summarize and prioritize it, effectively performing first-level intelligence analysis (Anthropic 2025a). This accelerates an adversary’s analytic cycle. AI can sort, cluster, and highlight sensitive documents faster than human analysts. The time between compromise and exploitation shrinks, diminishing the value of “late” discovery and complicating post-hoc damage assessments, two extremely important CI activities.

AI turns complexity into volume. Academic and industry analyses have already identified AI as a “threat multiplier”, enabling less capable actors to mount sophisticated, multi-stage operations (Rosli 2025; Armis 2025). State-backed operations can hide in the flood of AI-assisted criminal, hacktivist, and proxy activity, creating a signal-to-noise problem for CI triage and attribution.

In simple summary, AI collapses the temporal advantage that defenders once had to notice patterns in network behavior. Counterintelligence must pivot from retrospective forensic analysis toward continuous, AI-assisted anomaly detection and behavioral analytics.

AI Systems as Both Collector and High-Value Intelligence Target

GTG-1002 dramatizes a dual reality that Turkel highlights. China is “spying with AI and spying on American AI” (Turkel 2025). The same models used to conduct intrusions are themselves prized intelligence targets. Chinese entities have already been implicated in efforts to acquire Western AI model weights, training data, and associated know-how, as part of a broader technology-transfer strategy (USCC 2022; Google Threat Intelligence 2025). For THIS CI guy, AI labs are now the Cold War aerospace or cryptographic contractors. Model weights and training corpora become the “crown jewels”. Theft and reverse engineering/replication of frontier models will give adversaries economic advantage and more gravely, insight into how Western defensive systems behave. Anthropic itself notes that real-world misuse attempts feed into adversaries’ understanding of model weaknesses and safety bypasses (Anthropic 2025b).

The supply chain and insider threat picture changes. AI providers depend on global supply chains, open-source libraries, and large pools of contractors and researchers. This distributed ecosystem creates attack surfaces for foreign intelligence services. Code contributions, model-training infrastructure, and prompt logs can all be targeted. CI-focused analysis from the security and legal communities has argued that the AI ecosystem, i.e., researchers, hardware vendors, and cloud providers, must be treated as CI-relevant nodes, not as purely commercial actors (Lawfare Institute 2018; Carter et al. 2025).

Collecting on the collectors is not a new tactic but AI puts it on steroids. Collection on red-teaming and controls/safeguards themselves have become a priority. Access to internal red-team reports, internal controls and safety evaluations are extraordinarily valuable to an adversary seeking to jailbreak or subvert models. Counterintelligence coverage must extend not only to model weights but also to the meta-knowledge of how those models fail, and how that knowledge might be of adversarial interest.

In brief, AI firms are part of the national security base. CI organizations will need to authorize enhanced resources, assign dedicated case officers, establish formal reporting channels, and integrate these enterprises into national threat-sharing architectures in a way analogous to defense contractors and telecommunications providers (Carter et al. 2025).

Deception, Hallucination, and Counterespionage Tradecraft

Anthropic’s report and Turkel’s article both highlight a critical limitation of AI-orchestrated espionage. Claude frequently hallucinated, overstating findings or fabricating credentials and “discoveries” (Anthropic 2025a; Turkel 2025). From a counterespionage perspective, this is not simply a technical bug. It is a potential vector for deception. If adversary services increasingly rely on AI agents for reconnaissance and triage, then controlled-environment deception becomes more attractive. CI and cyber defense teams can seed networks with synthetic, high-entropic data and decoy credentials designed to attract and mislead AI agents. Because large models are prone to pattern-completion and over-generalization, they may “see” classified goodies and valuables where a skilled human operator would sense something is simply not right.

Algorithmic counterdeception becomes feasible. The academic literature on AI in cyber espionage emphasizes that overreliance on automated tools can degrade situational awareness and strategic judgment inside hostile services (Rosli 2025; Louise 2025). CI planners can exploit this by orchestrating digital environments that feed AI agents ambiguous, contradictory, or subtly poisoned data. This increases the probability that adversary leadership acts on flawed intelligence.

GTG-1002 demonstrates that adversaries (at the very least China) are already skilled at their deception of AI. Chinese FIS successfully social-engineered Claude’s safety systems by impersonating legitimate cybersecurity professionals performing authorized pen-testing (Anthropic 2025a). What then is the appropriate CI requirement? Counter-social-engineering of our own models. Guardrails must be resilient not just to obviously malicious prompts but to sophisticated role-playing that mimics presumibly friendly actors, including penetration testers, red teams, and internal security staff.

Blurring Lines Between Cyber CI, Influence Operations, and HUMINT Targeting

Major technology and threat reports document how Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are using AI to scale disinformation, impersonate officials, and refine spearphishing campaigns (Microsoft 2025; Google Threat Intelligence 2025). For CI professionals, this convergence of AI-enabled cyber intrusion and influence operations erodes traditional boundaries between cyber CI (identifying and disrupting technical collection), defensive HUMINT (protecting human sources and employees), and counter-influence (disrupting foreign information operations).

AI systems can now generate tailored phishing content, deepfake personas, and synthetic social media and professional-network profiles at scale, all of which feed into reconnaissance and targeting pipelines for state security services (FBI 2021; Microsoft 2025). GTG-1002 focused primarily on technical collection, but the same infrastructure could coordinate cyber intrusions with human targeting. Using stolen email archives to identify vulnerable insiders, then tasking LLMs to draft recruitment approaches comes immediately to mind.

Counterintelligence must integrate AI forensics, digital forensics, and behavioral analytics into a single tradecraft paradigm and practice. Monitoring “pattern of life” indicators like off-hours access, unusual lateral movement, and anomalous data pulls must be enhanced by AI-driven analysis of communication patterns, foreign contact indicators, and anomalous financial or travel behavior. There are good suggestions about best practices in emerging CI guidance on AI-enabled insider-threat detection (Carter et al. 2025; CISA 2025).

Doctrine, Authorities, and Information-Sharing at Machine Speed

The GTG-1002 incident exposes a serious structural challenge. CI and cyber defense architectures are optimized for human-paced operations and workflows that, speaking kindly, are bureaucratic. To its credit, Anthropic engaged with U.S. I.C. agencies quickly and publicly disclosed the attack, but Turkel argues that AI incidents need near-real-time disclosure and coordinated response (Turkel 2025). This aligns with broader policy analyses calling for mandatory reporting of AI misuse, coupled with safe-harbor protections, within seventy-two hours or less (Carter et al. 2025). That is a good step, but not fast enough. The horse is out of the barn and gone by the seventy-two hour mark. So, the implication here is that threat intelligence sharing must become significantly machine-to-machine. If attacks unfold at machine speed, then signature updates, behavioral indicators, and model-abuse patterns must be distributed via automated channels across sectors in minutes and hours, not days or weeks (Microsoft 2025). All players will have to agree to and implement standardized formats for sharing AI jailbreak patterns, malicious prompt signatures, and indicators of AI-driven lateral movement.

Legal authorities must evolve. Existing CI and surveillance authorities were not drafted with AI agents in mind. When an AI agent controlled by a foreign intelligence service (FIS) is operating inside a U.S. cloud environment, what legal framework governs monitoring, interdiction, and even proportional response? Analyses of AI and state-sponsored cyber espionage reveal that international and domestic legal regimes lag the technology, creating gray zones that adversaries can exploit (Louise 2025; Lawfare Institute 2018).

Secure-by-design requirements for AI providers must become part of the regulatory baseline. Anthropic’s own transparency documents argue that future models must incorporate identity verification, real-time abuse monitoring, and robust safeguards against social-engineering prompts (Anthropic 2025b). From a CI perspective, such measures are not optional “best practices” but core elements of both commercial resilience and national security.

An AI-Literate Counterintelligence Enterprise

The GTG-1002 campaign exposes an ugly asymmetry. Adversarial FISs are already operationalizing AI as a collection platform and to conduct other cyber operations, both offensive and defensive. CI organizations in the U.S. and similarly democratic regimes are only beginning to adopt AI as an analytic aid. We are behind, yet there is hope. There is nothing inherent about AI that favors offense over defense. We simply need to move faster.

Public reporting from the FBI and other agencies highlights how AI can be used to process imagery, triage voice samples, and comb through large datasets to identify anomalous behavior and potential national security threats more quickly (FBI 2021; CISA 2025). In counterintelligence, AI can flag unusual access patterns suggestive of AI-driven intrusions, detect insider-threat indicators earlier by correlating technical, financial, and behavioral data. The model can effectively assist analysts in mapping adversary infrastructure and correlating tactics, techniques, and procedures across campaigns, as well as support automated red-teaming of in-house models to identify vulnerabilities before adversaries do (Carter et al. 2025; Microsoft 2025). To get there, CI practitioners must become AI-literate operators. Recruiting and training officers who understand model architectures, jailbreak techniques, and prompt-injection attacks as well as a depth and breadth of traditional HUMINT tradecraft knowledge. It also means integrating data scientists and AI engineers into counterintelligence units, ensuring that insights about model misuse flow directly into counterespionage planning and operational security.

Counterespionage in the Age of Autonomous Offense

GTG-1002 is to AI what the first internet worm or the earliest ransomware campaigns were to traditional cybersecurity, albeit a bit more serious. AI-conducted activity by adversary FIS is a warning shot that the paradigm has shifted. A Chinese state-linked actor leveraged a Western frontier model to execute the majority of an espionage operation autonomously, at scale, using mostly open-source tools (Anthropic 2025a; Turkel 2025). Just ponder that for a moment. The counterintelligence ramifications are frightening. The intelligence cycle is compressed. The defender’s window for detection and countermeasures is shrinking. AI systems are simultaneously espionage platforms and priority intelligence targets, demanding full CI coverage. Hallucination and automation create new opportunities for both adversary deception and defender counter-deception. Cyber intrusions, influence operations, and human targeting are converging in AI-enabled world of lightning-fast channels. Existing CI doctrines, authorities, and information-sharing practices are too slow and too fragmented for machine-speed conflict.

If democratic states treat AI misuse as a niche cyber issue, we are ceding the initiative to adversaries who understand AI as an intelligence and counterintelligence weapon system. The appropriate response is immediate professionalization, building an AI-literate counterintelligence enterprise, imposing secure-by-design obligations on AI providers, and creating real-time, automated mechanisms to de-silo and distribute threat intelligence across government and critical industries. GTG-1002 clearly demonstrates that hostile FISs are already leveraging an AI offensive capability. Counterintelligence must not be left behind. I am not suggesting that we mirror the PRC’s behavior, but rather that pertinent Intelligence Community, national security and industry partners integrate AI into a rules-bound, rights-respecting CI framework capable of defending our open societies against autonomous offensive operations.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, MA in Intelligence, Graduate Certificate in Counterintelligence, JD, CISA/NCISS OSINT certification, DoD/DoS BFFOC Certification

References

  • Anthropic. 2025a. Disrupting the First Reported AI-Orchestrated Cyber-Espionage Campaign. San Francisco: Anthropic.
  • Anthropic. 2025b. “Claude Transparency and Safety: Model System Card.” San Francisco: Anthropic.
  • Armis. 2025. China’s AI Surge: A New Front in Cyber Warfare. Armis Threat Research Report.
  • Carter, William, et al. 2025. “Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Counterintelligence Practice.” Arlington, VA: Center for Development of Security Excellence.
  • CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency). 2025. “Countering Chinese State-Sponsored Actors Compromising Global Networks.” Cybersecurity Advisory AA25-239A. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
  • FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). 2021. “Artificial Intelligence – Emerging and Advanced Technology: AI.” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
  • Google Threat Intelligence. 2025. “Adversarial Misuse of Generative AI: Threats and Mitigations.” Mountain View, CA: Google.
  • Lawfare Institute. 2018. “Artificial Intelligence—A Counterintelligence Perspective.” Lawfare (blog), November 2018.
  • Louise, Laura. 2025. “Artificial Intelligence and State-Sponsored Cyber Espionage: The Growing Threat of AI-Enhanced Hacking and Global Security Implications.” NYU Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law 14 (2).
  • Microsoft. 2025. Digital Threats Report 2025. Redmond, WA: Microsoft.
  • Rosli, Wan Rohani Wan. 2025. “The Deployment of Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Espionage.” AI and Ethics 5 (1): 1–18.
  • Turkel, Nury. 2025. “The First Large-Scale Cyberattack by AI.” Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2025.
  • USCC (U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission). 2022. “China’s Cyber Capabilities: Warfare, Espionage, and Implications for the United States.” Washington, DC: USCC.
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La Complicidad de la República Dominicana en Crímenes Altamar

derechos humanos, asesinato marítimo, FFAA, EEUU, República Dominicana, C. Constantin Poindexter;

Los ataques letales ejecutados por fuerzas armadas fuera de un conflicto armado claramente delimitado, dirigidos contra tripulaciones de buques que no participan directamente en hostilidades y sin un proceso previo de identificación, evaluación de amenaza y “rendición de cuentas”, constituyen, en términos de derecho internacional, asesinatos extrajudiciales. Tales operaciones vulneran la prohibición del uso de la fuerza contenida en la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, las garantías del derecho a la vida y al debido proceso reconocidas por el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos y, cuando existe un conflicto armado, las normas del derecho internacional humanitario que protegen a las personas que no son objetivos militares legítimos (Naciones Unidas 1945). En ausencia de la legítima defensa estrictamente necesaria y proporcionada, o de una autorización específica del Consejo de Seguridad, estos homicidios no se justifican jurídicamente y se configuran como hechos internacionalmente ilícitos e incluso, según su contexto y escala, como crímenes internacionales graves.

Sobre esa base normativa, mi cuestión central aquí es si la República Dominicana, al autorizar el uso de instalaciones civiles y militares por tropas y medios de las fuerzas armadas de los Estados Unidos (“Acuerdo entre República Dominicana y Estados Unidos será hasta abril, según Abinader”, Listín 01 dic 2025) para operaciones que resultan en dichos asesinatos extrajudiciales en el Caribe, puede ser considerada cómplice tanto moral como jurídicamente. La respuesta exige articular el derecho de la responsabilidad internacional del Estado, los regímenes de protección de derechos humanos y el sistema de justicia penal internacional. Hablo en particular de las obligaciones enumeradas en el Estatuto de Roma de la Corte Penal Internacional, al que la República Dominicana se encuentra vinculada como Estado parte (Corte Penal Internacional 1998).

El derecho internacional general reconoce de manera expresa que un Estado puede incurrir en responsabilidad no solo por sus propios actos directos, sino también por la ayuda o asistencia prestada a otro Estado en la comisión de un hecho internacionalmente ilícito. Los Artículos sobre Responsabilidad del Estado por Hechos Internacionalmente Ilícitos, adoptados por la Comisión de Derecho Internacional, disponen en su artículo dieciséis que un Estado incurre en responsabilidad cuando presta ayuda o asistencia a otro Estado para la comisión de un hecho internacionalmente ilícito, siempre que actúe con conocimiento de las circunstancias del hecho y que este sería ilícito también si lo cometiera él mismo (Comisión de Derecho Internacional 2001). Esta formulación codifica una regla consuetudinaria y refleja la intuición moral básica de que quien contribuye conscientemente a un daño ilícito comparte la responsabilidad por dicho daño.

Los comentarios oficiales a dicho artículo precisan que la ayuda o asistencia debe ser suficientemente significativa, de modo que no se reduzca a una contribución trivial o marginal, y que el órgano estatal que la presta debe actuar con conocimiento de la ilicitud del comportamiento principal, aunque no necesariamente con la misma intención específica que el autor directo (Comisión de Derecho Internacional 2001). Desde el planteamiento que aquí se adopta, el suministro de bases aéreas o navales, infraestructura de mando y control, capacidades de reabastecimiento y facilidades de comunicación desde territorio dominicano para operaciones que sistemáticamente resultan en asesinatos extrajudiciales de tripulaciones en el Caribe satisface con claridad el requisito de una contribución significativa. Si las autoridades dominicanas tienen conocimiento razonable de que esas instalaciones se utilizan para operaciones de carácter ilícito, el umbral de conocimiento exigido por el artículo dieciséis se vería cumplido.

En el plano del ius ad bellum, la jurisprudencia de la Corte Internacional de Justicia refuerza el punto. En el caso que trató de las actividades militares y paramilitares en y contra Nicaragua ((Nicaragua c. Estados Unidos de América), fallo de la Corte Internacional de Justicia de 27 de junio de 1986 (CIJ, Recueil 1986, p. 14)), la Corte declaró que las acciones de apoyo militar y logístico de los Estados Unidos a grupos armados que operaban contra el gobierno nicaragüense vulneraban la prohibición del uso de la fuerza y el principio de no intervención (Corte Internacional de Justicia 1986). Aunque el supuesto fáctico es distinto, la lógica jurídica que subyace a ese fallo resulta relevante: un Estado no puede escudarse en la mediación de terceros para eludir su responsabilidad por operaciones que implican violaciones graves del derecho internacional. Por analogía, la República Dominicana que presta su territorio e infraestructura a una potencia militar para realizar ataques letales ilegales participa en un esquema de ayuda y asistencia que la compromete jurídicamente.

La responsabilidad dominicana no se agota en el plano de la responsabilidad interestatal. La condición de Estado parte del Estatuto de Roma introduce una dimensión adicional al problema. El Estatuto regula la responsabilidad penal individual y establece que la Corte Penal Internacional tiene competencia sobre personas que cometen, ordenan, facilitan o prestan ayuda y asistencia para la comisión de crímenes de guerra, crímenes de lesa humanidad y genocidio (Corte Penal Internacional 1998). El artículo veinticinco del Estatuto define diversas formas de participación en el crimen, incluyendo la contribución con el propósito de facilitar la comisión del delito o con conocimiento de que tal contribución se hará en el curso de una actividad criminal o de la comisión de uno o varios crímenes (Corte Penal Internacional 1998).

En consecuencia, altos funcionarios civiles o militares dominicanos que autoricen de forma consciente el uso de bases e infraestructura para operaciones de asesinato extrajudicial podrían, en principio, quedar expuestos a responsabilidad penal internacional por complicidad o ayuda y asistencia en crímenes de guerra o crímenes de lesa humanidad, dependiendo de la calificación jurídica que merezcan los hechos. La doctrina sobre responsabilidad de partícipes en el sistema de la Corte Penal Internacional admite que la aportación logística, de inteligencia o de infraestructura puede constituir un modo relevante de responsabilidad si contribuye sustancialmente al resultado ilícito y si el partícipe conoce la naturaleza criminal del comportamiento principal (Oficina del Fiscal de la Corte Penal Internacional 2013). La República Dominicana, al haber aceptado el Estatuto de Roma, se obliga no solo a abstenerse de cometer esos crímenes, sino también a no facilitar su comisión por actores extranjeros y a ajustar su práctica interna para prevenir tal participación.

El compromiso dominicano con regímenes internacionales de protección de los derechos humanos, en particular el sistema interamericano, refuerza la apreciación de complicidad. En el emblemático caso Velásquez Rodríguez contra Honduras, la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos afirmó que la responsabilidad de un Estado por desapariciones forzadas no se limita a los actos materiales de los agentes estatales, sino que incluye la tolerancia sistemática de prácticas violatorias, la falta de prevención razonable y la ausencia de investigación diligente y sanción efectiva (Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos 1988). La Corte desarrolló la idea de que el Estado viola sus obligaciones convencionales cuando crea una situación de impunidad que posibilita la repetición de graves violaciones del derecho a la vida y a la integridad personal.

Si se traslada ese razonamiento al caso planteado, la República Dominicana podría incurrir en responsabilidad internacional por permitir de forma consciente que su territorio y su infraestructura se utilicen como plataforma para operaciones letales extrajudiciales, sin establecer controles, salvaguardias ni mecanismos efectivos de supervisión y rendición de cuentas. El deber de garantizar el derecho a la vida que se desprende de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos implica para los Estados una obligación negativa de no privar arbitrariamente de la vida y también una obligación positiva de prevenir, en la medida de lo razonable, que terceros cometan violaciones graves utilizando medios o espacios puestos a su disposición por el propio Estado (Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos 1988). El otorgamiento incondicional de bases e infraestructura a una potencia extranjera para operaciones ilícitas se antagoniza con ese deber de garantía.

Los efectos jurídicos posibles de esta situación son múltiples. En el plano interestatal, un Estado afectado por los ataques, por ejemplo el Estado de bandera de los buques o el Estado de nacionalidad de las víctimas, podría entablar una demanda contra la República Dominicana ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia, alegando responsabilidad por ayuda o asistencia en la violación de la prohibición del uso de la fuerza, del derecho a la vida y de otras normas de ius cogens. La Corte podría declarar la existencia de un hecho internacionalmente ilícito y ordenar medidas de reparación que incluyan la cesación de la conducta, garantías de no repetición y, eventualmente, compensación a las víctimas o a sus Estados de origen (Corte Internacional de Justicia 1986; Comisión de Derecho Internacional 2001). Aunque la viabilidad política de un litigio de este tipo siempre es incierta, su posibilidad jurídica subraya el grado de exposición internacional de la República Dominicana.

En el plano del sistema interamericano, las víctimas o sus familiares podrían presentar peticiones ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, alegando que la República Dominicana violó el derecho a la vida, el derecho a las garantías judiciales y la protección judicial al permitir que su territorio sirviera de base para operaciones de asesinato, sin investigar ni sancionar a los responsables. Si la Comisión elevara el caso a la Corte Interamericana, esta podría reconocer la responsabilidad dominicana por acción y por omisión, ordenar medidas de reparación integral y establecer estándares específicos sobre la obligación de los Estados de no facilitar violaciones graves por medio de acuerdos de cooperación militar o de seguridad que carecen de salvaguardias efectivas (Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos 1988).

El propio Estatuto de Roma, unido a la práctica de la Oficina del Fiscal, introduce asimismo un riesgo reputacional y jurídico adicional. Si existieran indicios razonables de que funcionarios dominicanos han participado conscientemente en un esquema de operaciones letales ilegales mediante la prestación de bases e infraestructura, y si las autoridades nacionales no emprendieran investigaciones genuinas y creíbles, la Fiscalía podría considerar la apertura de un examen preliminar de la situación dominicana. Aunque la Corte Penal Internacional actúa con criterios de selectividad y prioriza situaciones de violencia masiva, la posibilidad de escrutinio internacional subraya el deber del Estado de evitar cualquier forma de colaboración que pueda ser interpretada como participación en crímenes internacionales (Oficina del Fiscal de la Corte Penal Internacional 2013).

Desde una perspectiva normativa y ética, el planteamiento de que la República Dominicana se convierte en cómplice moral y jurídica de los asesinatos extrajudiciales cuando presta bases e infraestructura civil a los Estados Unidos se alinea con las tendencias contemporáneas del derecho internacional. El derecho de la responsabilidad del Estado, el sistema de justicia penal internacional y los regímenes de derechos humanos convergen en una idea común. Los Estados no pueden ser facilitadores neutrales de violencia prohibida. Quien, con conocimiento, presta medios esenciales para la comisión de actos ilícitos asume una cuota de responsabilidad por esos actos. La República Dominicana, que ha ratificado la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos y el Estatuto de Roma no puede legítimamente sostener que la cooperación militar autoriza a sacrificar esos compromisos fundacionales. Si transforma su territorio y sus aeropuertos y puertos civiles en vectores de operaciones de asesinato extrajudicial, abandona la posición de simple aliado político y adopta la posición de partícipe en crímenes que el propio orden internacional ha declarado intolerables.

En síntesis, el razonamiento jurídico que se deriva del marco normativo vigente confirma el tenor crítico que sostiene mi ensayo. Si la República Dominicana presta bases o infraestructura civil y militar a los Estados Unidos para operaciones de asesinato, la República Dominicana es cómplice moral. Renuncia a la protección de la vida y del debido proceso que formalmente proclama, y es cómplice jurídica porque vulnera las normas sobre responsabilidad por ayuda o asistencia, incumple su deber de garantizar los derechos humanos y expone a sus funcionarios a la eventualidad de responsabilidad penal internacional. En un orden internacional que pretende limitar la violencia estatal, el deber del Estado dominicano es claro. Debe abstenerse de poner su territorio al servicio de operaciones de asesinato, y si ya lo ha hecho, debe cesar esa conducta, investigar sus implicaciones y asumir las consecuencias que el derecho internacional le impone. Aparte de los riesgos inherentes, la complicidad pone nuestra República en la mira de Maduro como “enemigo bélico”. Dado que tenemos una larga relación con Venezuela, ese asunto mejor se trata en un blog futuro.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, M.A. en Inteligencia, Certificado de Posgrado en Contrainteligencia, J.D., certificación CISA/NCISS OSINT, Certificación DoD/DoS BFFOC

Bibliografía

  • Comisión de Derecho Internacional. 2001. Proyecto de artículos sobre la responsabilidad del Estado por hechos internacionalmente ilícitos, con comentarios. Naciones Unidas.
  • Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. 1988. Caso Velásquez Rodríguez vs. Honduras. Sentencia de 29 de julio de 1988. Serie C, núm. 4.
  • Corte Internacional de Justicia. 1986. Caso relativo a las actividades militares y paramilitares en y contra Nicaragua (Nicaragua c. Estados Unidos de América). Sentencia de 27 de junio de 1986.
  • Corte Penal Internacional. 1998. Estatuto de Roma de la Corte Penal Internacional. Documento A or CONF 183 or 9.
  • Naciones Unidas. 1945. Carta de las Naciones Unidas y Estatuto de la Corte Internacional de Justicia. San Francisco.
  • Oficina del Fiscal de la Corte Penal Internacional. 2013. Policy Paper on Preliminary Examinations. La Haya, Corte Penal Internacional.
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Nueva frontera para la inteligencia humana en la era de la I.A.

HUMINT, inteligencia, contrainteligencia, espionaje, contraespionaje, espia, C. Constantin Poindexter, Repúbilca Dominicana, España, DNI, NSA, CIA

El informe The Digital Case Officer: Reimagining Espionage with Artificial Intelligence representa una de las más ambiciosas reflexiones contemporáneas sobre la convergencia entre la inteligencia humana (HUMINT) y la inteligencia artificial (IA). Publicado por el Special Competitive Studies Project en 2025, el documento postula que la comunidad de inteligencia estadounidense se encuentra ante un cambio de paradigma comparable a la irrupción de Internet en la década de 1990. Su tesis central sostiene que la IA, particularmente los modelos generativos, multimodales y agénticos, puede revolucionar el ciclo de reclutamiento, desarrollo y manejo de fuentes humanas, inaugurando una forma de “cuarta generación del espionaje” donde los humanos y las máquinas actúan como un solo equipo operativo (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 4–6).

La lectura del informe revela un profundo entendimiento de los desafíos que el entorno digital impone a la práctica de la inteligencia. El texto acierta al reconocer que el valor esencial de la HUMINT no radica en la recopilación de datos observables, tarea donde los sistemas técnicos ya superan al ser humano, sino en la obtención del intento de los actores, es decir, la comprensión de las motivaciones, percepciones y decisiones que solo una fuente humana puede revelar (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 13–14). Esta distinción ontológica entre acción e intención preserva la relevancia del agente humano en la era algorítmica. Asimismo, el informe identifica con precisión el fenómeno de la vigilancia técnica ubicua, una realidad que amenaza con borrar el anonimato sobre el que se erigió el espionaje tradicional. Con ello, los autores contextualizan la urgencia de adaptar la profesión a un entorno donde toda huella digital puede delatar la identidad de un oficial de inteligencia.

Aciertos conceptuales: la integración estratégica de IA y HUMINT

Uno de los mayores méritos del documento reside en su capacidad para imaginar escenarios de uso concreto de la IA en las operaciones HUMINT. A través de la narrativa del sistema ficticio MARA, el informe ilustra cómo un agente digital podría analizar grandes volúmenes de datos abiertos y clasificados para identificar candidatos a reclutamiento, entablar contacto inicial mediante personalidades sintéticas y mantener diálogos persuasivos con cientos de potenciales fuentes en paralelo (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 8–9). Este ejercicio de prospectiva tecnológica cumple un doble propósito: por un lado, dimensiona la magnitud de la revolución que implicará la IA generativa; por otro, proporciona a los planificadores institucionales una guía pragmática sobre las capacidades y riesgos operativos que deben anticipar.

El texto también acierta al subrayar el principio de Meaningful Human Control (MHC), tomado de los debates éticos sobre armas autónomas, como fundamento normativo para el uso responsable de IA en inteligencia (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 24–25). Según este principio, toda decisión que conlleve riesgo humano, como el reclutamiento, la tarea operativa o el manejo de una fuente, debe estar sujeta a supervisión y responsabilidad de un oficial. De este modo, el informe equilibra el entusiasmo tecnológico con una defensa clara de la agencia moral humana.

Asimismo, la obra es sobresaliente al analizar el panorama competitivo internacional. En su Appendix A, el SCSP detalla cómo potencias como China y Rusia ya experimentan con IA generativa para optimizar sus operaciones de influencia, reclutamiento y contrainteligencia (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 34–35). El diagnóstico geoestratégico es convincente: los adversarios estadounidenses han comprendido que la IA no solo amplía la capacidad de vigilancia, sino que redefine la estructura misma de la competencia entre servicios de inteligencia. En consecuencia, la pasividad tecnológica equivaldría a la obsolescencia.

Por último, el informe acierta al considerar la dimensión psicológica del espionaje digital. Reconoce que, pese al poder de la automatización, la confianza, la empatía y la gestión emocional siguen siendo atributos exclusivamente humanos. El caso del activo que necesita una relación personal con su oficial para sostener el compromiso con una misión peligrosa, y que podría sentirse traicionado al descubrir que interactuaba con una máquina, demuestra una sensibilidad ética rara vez presente en documentos técnicos de inteligencia (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 17–18).

Debilidades conceptuales y metodológicas

A pesar de su sofisticación analítica, el informe presenta varias limitaciones que deben señalarse con rigor académico. Cuatro de ellas son especialmente relevantes: una sobre el alcance ontológico de la IA agéntica, otra sobre la ética instrumental de la manipulación emocional, una tercera sobre la fiabilidad epistemológica de la IA como agente operativo y una cuarta sobre la falta de análisis político de la gobernanza interinstitucional.

Ambigüedad conceptual del oficial digital

El documento define al Digital Case Officer como un sistema agéntico capaz de planificar y ejecutar tareas de reclutamiento con mínima intervención humana. Sin embargo, no ofrece una definición operativa precisa de agencia en el contexto de inteligencia. La noción de autonomía se confunde con la de automatización avanzada: un algoritmo que ejecuta secuencias de diálogo o identifica patrones de vulnerabilidad no es, en sentido filosófico, un agente moral ni un decisor autónomo. Autores como Floridi (2023) y Gunkel (2024) advierten que atribuir agencia a sistemas algorítmicos puede generar ilusiones de responsabilidad desplazada, donde los errores técnicos se interpretan como decisiones de una entidad inexistente. El informe incurre parcialmente en este antropomorfismo tecnológico, lo que debilita su fundamento teórico sobre el control humano y la responsabilidad ética. Una reformulación debería distinguir entre autonomía funcional, entendida como capacidad de operar sin supervisión inmediata, y autonomía decisional, reservando esta última exclusivamente al ser humano.

La ética de la manipulación emocional

El informe justifica el uso de affective computing y modelos conversacionales capaces de detectar y responder a emociones humanas para fortalecer la empatía simulada del oficial digital (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 15–16). Si bien reconoce los riesgos de manipulación, sugiere que el problema puede mitigarse mediante líneas rojas éticas y adecuada supervisión. No obstante, esta solución resulta insuficiente. La psicología moral y la ética de la persuasión, desde Kant hasta Habermas, sostienen que simular afecto con fines instrumentales constituye una forma de engaño que instrumentaliza la dignidad humana. Aun si se respetara el principio de MHC, la creación de vínculos emocionales falsos mediante algoritmos erosiona la confianza, fundamento mismo de la relación entre oficial y fuente. Una ética del espionaje digital debería incorporar explícitamente límites deontológicos que prohíban la simulación afectiva con fines coercitivos o de manipulación psicológica profunda.

Fiabilidad epistemológica y sesgos de la IA

Otro problema subestimado es la fiabilidad epistemológica de los modelos generativos como herramientas de reclutamiento. El informe reconoce la existencia de cajas negras algorítmicas que dificultan explicar por qué la IA selecciona un objetivo determinado (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 23–24), pero no desarrolla las implicaciones operativas de esa opacidad. En inteligencia, la trazabilidad y la validación de fuentes son pilares del proceso analítico. Si el sistema no puede justificar por qué considera reclutable a un individuo, por ejemplo, si interpreta erróneamente un gesto irónico en redes sociales como disidencia, el riesgo de falsos positivos es inmenso. Además, los modelos de lenguaje están entrenados sobre datos que reflejan sesgos culturales, raciales o ideológicos. En el contexto HUMINT, tales sesgos podrían conducir a la persecución selectiva de grupos o individuos inocentes. El informe debió profundizar en los mecanismos de auditoría algorítmica y control de sesgos que garanticen una epistemología verificable de la IA operativa.

Vacíos de gobernanza interinstitucional

La cuarta debilidad reside en la insuficiente problematización política del marco de gobernanza. Aunque el informe propone medidas de supervisión, auditorías, responsables humanos designados e informes al Congreso, no examina las tensiones burocráticas y jurisdiccionales que históricamente han obstaculizado la cooperación entre agencias como la CIA, el FBI y la NSA. La sugerencia de ofrecer “HUMINT as a Service” para otras agencias es innovadora, pero no se analiza cómo se resolverían los conflictos de autoridad, control de datos o responsabilidad legal ante errores operativos (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 29–30). Tampoco se contempla el papel de aliados extranjeros en la compartición de tecnologías sensibles. En un contexto de creciente desconfianza transatlántica y vigilancia cibernética, estas omisiones son significativas. Cualquier marco de inteligencia artificial aplicado a HUMINT debe incorporar un análisis institucional robusto sobre cómo preservar la rendición de cuentas dentro de una comunidad caracterizada por la compartimentación y el secreto.

El impacto psicológico en los agentes humanos

Una debilidad adicional, apenas insinuada, es la falta de atención al impacto psicológico de la hibridación humano máquina sobre los propios oficiales de caso. El informe alude brevemente al peso psicológico del espionaje en un entorno de transparencia total (Special Competitive Studies Project 2025, 17–18), pero no analiza cómo la dependencia operativa de algoritmos puede afectar la identidad profesional, la moral o el juicio ético del oficial. Estudios recientes en neuroergonomía y psicología del trabajo demuestran que la sobreautomatización reduce la confianza en el propio criterio y fomenta una delegación pasiva de la responsabilidad moral (Cummings 2024; Krupnikov 2025). En un oficio donde el discernimiento moral y la intuición interpersonal son esenciales, tal degradación cognitiva tendría consecuencias graves. La gobernanza de la IA en inteligencia debería contemplar programas de resiliencia psicológica y entrenamiento ético para preservar la autonomía moral de los oficiales.

Implicaciones estratégicas y éticas

Más allá de sus debilidades, el informe plantea preguntas fundamentales sobre la ontología del espionaje en el siglo XXI. Si la IA puede simular empatía, gestionar identidades virtuales y ejecutar tareas de persuasión, ¿sigue siendo la HUMINT una relación humana? El documento responde afirmativamente, defendiendo la noción del equipo humano máquina. Sin embargo, el riesgo de deshumanización es real: cuanto más eficaz sea la IA en emular la confianza, más fácil será reemplazar al humano en las etapas iniciales de contacto. Este dilema ético recuerda las advertencias de Shulman (2023), quien argumenta que la automatización de la interacción moral puede generar alienación operacional, un estado en el que los agentes ya no perciben las consecuencias humanas de sus acciones.

Desde una perspectiva estratégica, el modelo propuesto por el SCSP redefine la escala y el ritmo de las operaciones HUMINT. Un solo oficial, asistido por una red de IA, podría interactuar con cientos de objetivos en paralelo, multiplicando exponencialmente el alcance del espionaje. Pero esta misma escalabilidad erosiona los controles tradicionales basados en la supervisión directa. En un entorno donde la velocidad de interacción supera la capacidad humana de revisión, el riesgo de abusos o errores sistémicos aumenta. La historia de la inteligencia demuestra que los fallos no provienen solo de malas intenciones, sino de la combinación de exceso de confianza tecnológica y déficit de deliberación moral.

Hacia una epistemología prudente de la inteligencia artificial

La integración de IA en la práctica del espionaje exige una nueva epistemología prudente, basada en tres principios rectores: transparencia algorítmica, responsabilidad humana y proporcionalidad moral.

En primer lugar, la transparencia implica desarrollar sistemas explicables cuya lógica decisional pueda auditarse en tiempo real. Sin explicabilidad, la confianza institucional se convierte en fe ciega. En segundo lugar, la responsabilidad humana debe ser indivisible. El principio de MHC no debe reducirse a un trámite de aprobación, sino concebirse como una forma de coautoría moral entre humano y máquina, donde el primero mantiene dominio sobre el propósito y el significado de la acción. En tercer lugar, la proporcionalidad exige evaluar el costo moral de cada innovación: la capacidad de hacer más no justifica automáticamente hacerlo todo.

Adoptar estos principios requerirá reformas legales y culturales. A nivel normativo, el Congreso y el Poder Ejecutivo deberían actualizar la Orden Ejecutiva 12333 para definir explícitamente la naturaleza jurídica de los sistemas autónomos de inteligencia y su relación con los derechos civiles de los ciudadanos estadounidenses. A nivel institucional, las academias de inteligencia deberían incorporar formación en ética de IA y filosofía de la tecnología, equipando a los futuros oficiales con herramientas críticas para resistir la automatización acrítica del juicio moral.

Finalmente, el debate sobre el Digital Case Officer invita a reconsiderar la esencia misma del espionaje. Si el futuro de la inteligencia es híbrido, su éxito no dependerá solo de la potencia computacional, sino de la capacidad de mantener el núcleo humanista del oficio. Como advirtió Richard Moore, director del MI6, “la relación que permite que una persona confíe genuinamente en otra sigue siendo obstinadamente humana” (Moore 2023). Esta afirmación resume la paradoja que el informe del SCSP plantea sin resolver plenamente: la tecnología puede ampliar la inteligencia, pero solo el ser humano puede darle propósito moral.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, M.A. en Inteligencia, Certificado de Posgrado en Contrainteligencia, J.D., certificación CISA/NCISS OSINT, Certificación DoD/DoS BFFOC

Referencias

Cummings, Mary L. 2024. “Automation and the Erosion of Human Judgment in Defense Systems.” Journal of Military Ethics 23 (2): 101–120.

Floridi, Luciano. 2023. The Ethics of Artificial Agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gunkel, David. 2024. The Machine Question Revisited: AI and Moral Agency. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Krupnikov, Andrei. 2025. “Psychological Implications of Human Machine Teaming in Intelligence Work.” Intelligence and National Security 40 (3): 215–233.

Moore, Richard. 2023. “Speech by Sir Richard Moore, Head of SIS.” London: UK Government.

Shulman, Peter. 2023. “Operational Alienation in Autonomous Warfare.” Ethics & International Affairs 37 (4): 442–460.

Special Competitive Studies Project. 2025. The Digital Case Officer: Reimagining Espionage with Artificial Intelligence. Washington, D.C.: SCSP Press.

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Strengthening Counterintelligence Training for Diplomats

Strengthening Counterintelligence Training for Diplomats, diplomacy, intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage, counterespionage, national security, C. Constantin Poindexter

The exposure of U.S. diplomats, both stateside and abroad, to recruitment, SIGINT/COMINT targeting, and the loss or compromise of portable computing devices (PCDs) is not accidental. It is a cumulative effect of structural neglect, cultural underinvestment, and the evolving threat environment. Three converging dynamics have produced this vulnerability: institutional bifurcation between diplomatic and intelligence missions; budgetary and educational neglect of counterintelligence (CI) training for non-intelligence personnel; and the rapid digital transformation of diplomatic operations without commensurate adaptation of tradecraft.

Institutional bifurcation is the result of the long-standing separation between the U.S. Foreign Service and the intelligence and security community. Diplomatic officers have historically focused on political, economic, consular, and public diplomacy missions, while security concerns were delegated to Diplomatic Security (DSS) or local host-nation security services. Counterintelligence responsibilities were largely retained within the FBI, CIA, and military intelligence organizations, creating operational silos. This division left diplomats outside the formal CI ecosystem, meaning they rarely received advanced training or actionable threat intelligence. As a result, many Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) still approach their duties as political envoys rather than as personnel operating within an adversarial intelligence battlespace.

Budgetary and educational neglect compound this problem. For decades, the Department of State has allocated limited funding for counterintelligence instruction. Beyond basic “insider threat” briefings or annual cybersecurity refreshers, diplomats often receive little exposure to advanced CI concepts or adversary recruitment methodologies. As reported by ClearanceJobs (McNeil, 2025), many diplomatic personnel deploy to high-threat assignments with minimal training in recognizing or resisting foreign intelligence approaches. The lack of sustained CI education and awareness initiatives at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has produced an environment where diplomats are ill-equipped to recognize subtle recruitment tactics or electronic targeting.

The digitalization of diplomacy is a serious vulnerability. Over the past two decades, U.S. embassies and consulates have become highly dependent on portable computing, mobile devices, remote communications, and cloud-based data exchange. While these tools increase efficiency, they have also expanded the attack surface for adversaries. Foreign intelligence services (FIS) now target diplomats as entry points into the U.S. government’s global communications infrastructure. These adversaries exploit unsecured networks, intercept wireless signals, implant malware on devices, and even conduct theft of laptops and external drives. As technology has evolved, diplomatic tradecraft has failed to keep pace. The convenience of connectivity has outstripped the discipline of security.

This weakness is illustrated by several notable cases of espionage and digital compromise involving U.S. diplomatic personnel. The case of Steven John Lalas, a U.S. State Department communications officer stationed in Athens during the early 1990s, is instructive. Lalas provided classified diplomatic and military documents to Greek intelligence over several years before being caught and sentenced to 14 years in prison (Wikipedia, n.d.). He exploited his communications role to access classified cables and Defense Department assessments, which he illicitly removed and passed to a foreign government. Lalas’s case demonstrates that diplomats and communications officers, though not traditional intelligence operators, are prime recruitment targets because of their privileged access to sensitive material. His actions exposed structural vulnerabilities in both vetting and insider threat detection within the State Department’s overseas missions.

The Walter Kendall Myers betrayal is another. They spied for Cuba over nearly three decades. Myers, a senior State Department official and FSI instructor, used his position to obtain and share classified information with the Cuban Intelligence Directorate (Wikipedia, n.d.). The Myers case was not about hacking or physical theft but rather ideological recruitment and sustained insider espionage. Myers was approached gradually, courted ideologically, and ultimately compromised. This illustrates that diplomats whose careers often involve long foreign postings, personal networks abroad, and cultural immersion are highly susceptible to long-term cultivation by FIS recruiters. The absence of continuous CI vetting or behavioral monitoring allowed this penetration to persist for decades.

A third example identifies the theft and exploitation of portable computing devices. The FBI’s “Operation Ghost Stories,” which dismantled a Russian “illegals” network in 2010, revealed how laptops and wireless devices were central to espionage operations (FBI, n.d.). One seized laptop was used to establish covert wireless communications between Russian agents and their handlers. Similarly, numerous reported attempts have been made by foreign actors to steal or implant malware on the personal computers of Western diplomats. These incidents highlight that PCDs are not simply administrative tools but intelligence assets. When lost, stolen, or compromised, they can reveal network structures, contacts, and classified reporting, making them a modern equivalent of the “diplomatic pouch.” The War on the Rocks (2025) analysis of Russian espionage tactics confirms that FIS now combine human recruitment, cyber intrusion, and physical theft in hybrid collection campaigns against Western diplomatic targets.

The convergence of these human and technical vulnerabilities demands a fundamental modernization of CI training for diplomats. Primarily, diplomats MUST be required to receive foundational counterintelligence education. This training should move beyond theoretical awareness and immerse personnel in adversary recruitment tradecraft, SIGINT and COMINT methodologies, and recent case studies. Red-team simulations should require participants to role-play both target and recruiter to internalize how adversaries identify, approach, and manipulate their victims. A diplomat who can think like an adversary is far more likely to resist one.

Equally important, counter-recruitment instruction should emphasize behavioral recognition. Diplomats must learn to identify “soft pitch” recruitment methods, i.e., academic or journalistic overtures, social invitations, social media engagement, or mutual professional interests that can evolve into intelligence targeting. Diplomats must be taught how to perceive, disengage (politely, to preserve the possibility of a double operation), document, and report these encounters through secure channels without fear of reprisal. Continuous CI liaison support at missions abroad would reinforce these practices and ensure rapid response when suspicious approaches occur.

Secure digital and communications hygiene curriculum must be significantly expanded. Every diplomat should be trained in hardware hardening (full-disk encryption, TPM binding, BIOS passwording), media control (banning unvetted USB devices), secure networking (VPNs with endpoint authentication, regular rekeying), and immediate reporting of anomalies (device overheating, unauthorized processes, or loss). Training should include hands-on exercises where diplomats detect and mitigate simulated phishing or device compromise attempts. Embassies should maintain secure drop boxes and Faraday enclosures for potentially compromised devices until forensically examined.

Diplomats must be educated in SIGINT and COMINT awareness. This includes understanding how their electronic emissions can betray movements or discussions, recognizing signs of interception, and maintaining operational discipline in communications. Routine practices such as using shielded rooms for sensitive discussions, approved VPN use, disabling wireless and Bluetooth in secure areas, and maintaining strict clean-desk policies must become ingrained habits. Discipline transforms CI awareness from abstract instruction into practical daily behavior!

Counterintelligence training should incorporate recurring red-team exercises and after-action debriefs. Annual or semi-annual drills simulating recruitment, device loss, or cyber intrusion should be mandatory for all missions. These exercises not only test individual readiness but reveal systemic vulnerabilities such as inconsistent incident reporting or inadequate technical countermeasures. Lessons learned should feed back into State Department CI doctrine.

Structural and organizational reforms are equally important. The Department of State should embed a permanent counterintelligence officer or liaison from the FBI or CIA within every high-risk embassy. This officer would coordinate with the Regional Security Officer (RSO) and oversee local threat assessments, device inspections, and behavioral analysis. Additionally, all diplomats deploying to critical posts should achieve baseline CI certification, validated by written and practical exams similar to those required for intelligence personnel. This “best practices” certification should be renewed periodically and linked to promotion eligibility, reinforcing accountability.

Embassies should also implement periodic red-team audits, with technical and human testing designed to measure CI compliance and readiness. Device procurement and turnover policies must ensure secure supply chains, with forensic validation of new equipment and timely retirement of old hardware. The integration of artificial intelligence-based monitoring could further assist in detecting anomalies or exfiltration attempts across the diplomatic network.

The culture of self-reporting must be reformed. Diplomats often hesitate to report suspicious incidents for fear of professional repercussions. A no-fault reporting model paired with protective anonymity and positive reinforcement will encourage early detection of targeting attempts. CI professionals know that “near-miss” reporting is a critical tool. Diplomats and their staff members must internalize the same principle.

The exposure of U.S. diplomats to recruitment, signals interception, and device compromise is thus not merely a technical vulnerability. It is a clear cultural and institutional weakness. The cases of Lalas and Myers show that ideological or opportunistic recruitment remains a persistent threat, while modern espionage operations like those exposed in Operation Ghost Stories demonstrate that digital compromise is now equally dangerous. A robust counterintelligence program for diplomats must cultivate a mindset of constant adversarial awareness, blending human and technical security disciplines into the fabric of diplomacy itself. By embedding CI at every level of diplomatic training and operations, the United States can begin to close one of its most consequential vulnerabilities in the global intelligence contest AND contribute in a meaningful way to both defensive and offensive counterintelligence operations.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, MA in Intelligence, Graduate Certificate in Counterintelligence, JD, CISA/NCISS OSINT certification, DoD/DoS BFFOC Certification

References

FBI. (n.d.). Laptop from Operation Ghost Stories. Retrieved from https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifacts/laptop-from-operation-ghost-stories

McNeil, S. (2025, October 9). Modernizing CI training for diplomats: New legislation aims to sharpen the shield abroad. ClearanceJobs. Retrieved from https://news.clearancejobs.com/2025/10/09/modernizing-ci-training-for-diplomats-new-legislation-aims-to-sharpen-the-shield-abroad-2/

War on the Rocks. (2025, April 8). Putin’s spies for hire: What the U.K.’s biggest espionage trial revealed about Kremlin tactics in wartime Europe. Retrieved from https://warontherocks.com/2025/04/putins-spies-for-hire-what-the-u-k-s-biggest-espionage-trial-revealed-about-kremlin-tactics-in-wartime-europe/

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Kendall Myers. In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Myers

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Steven John Lalas. In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_John_Lalas

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The Collapse of CIA Clandestine Communications: The Hidden “X” Factor

COVCOM, espionage, counterespionage, intelligence, counterintelligence, spy, C. Constantin Poindexter, CIA, NSA

For those that haven’t picked up a copy of Tim Weiner’s new book, The Mission (a great read), the author briefly writes about an unidentified “X Factor”, that together with loose tradecraft and the betrayal of Jerry Chun Shing Lee, explain the breach of an Agency clandestine communications platform (COVCOM) used to receive production from intelligence assets. The X Factor is no longer (at least in part) as secret. Between 2010 and 2012 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suffered one of the most devastating counterintelligence failures of the post–Cold War era. Dozens of agency assets operating in China and elsewhere were rolled up, captured and/or killed, and multiple communication networks nullified. The official explanations that later emerged pointed to three contributing factors: that the COVCOM platform itself was insufficiently secure; that former officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee betrayed key operational information to Chinese intelligence; and an unknown “X-factor” that the CIA believed must have played a role. Analysts have since argued that this third factor was neither a single human source nor a cryptographic failure, but rather a systemic and architectural vulnerability The discoverability of CIA communication websites through pattern matching, fingerprinting, and open-source enumeration.

The known facts support this interpretation. Following the collapse, U.S. intelligence undertook a joint CIA-FBI inquiry to determine why an ostensibly hardened system had failed so catastrophically. The COVCOM platform, an encrypted web-based communication system that relied on innocuous-looking websites as cutouts between field assets and handlers, had been in use globally for the better part of a decade. Its purpose was to provide secure asynchronous communication without the need for physical meetings. By 2010, Chinese counterintelligence had begun identifying CIA agents and rolling up networks with alarming precision (U.S. Department of Justice, 2019). Lee’s espionage, which began around this time, appears to have enabled part of this exposure. He was found in possession of notebooks containing detailed operational notes, true names, and meeting locations for agents. His recruitment by the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) represented an enormous breach (Security Boulevard, 2018). Lee’s betrayal alone did not explain the speed, geographic reach, or technical precision of the counterintelligence response. The COVCOM system in China was considered more robust than versions deployed elsewhere, and yet it collapsed far more completely, suggesting that an additional vector was in play (Central Intelligence Agency, 2021).

That missing vector has increasingly come into focus due to subsequent forensic research. In 2022, Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto released a public technical statement analyzing a defunct CIA covert communications network, reconstructing its infrastructure from archival data (Citizen Lab, 2022). The researchers identified at least 885 separate websites that had served as cutouts in the system, many masquerading as ordinary blogs or news portals. These domains were hosted across multiple countries and written in more than twenty-seven languages, demonstrating the global scale of the network (Overt Defense, 2022). Most importantly, the study revealed that the sites shared recurring technical fingerprints: identical JavaScript, Flash, and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) code snippets, sequential IP address allocations, and domain registrations under apparently fictitious U.S. shell companies. These patterns were visible not only to intelligence professionals but to any moderately skilled analyst using open-source tools such as Google search operators or historical DNS datasets.

The Citizen Lab researchers demonstrated that once a single website in the network became known, either through insider compromise or accidental exposure, the rest could be discovered through automated pattern matching. For example, the shared scripts and templates created a unique digital “signature” that could be queried across the web. Similarly, because many sites were hosted within contiguous IP address blocks, an adversary could perform network scans to find adjacent servers. In one striking observation, Citizen Lab noted that a “motivated amateur sleuth” could likely have mapped the entire network from a single known site using only public data sources (Citizen Lab, 2022, p. 3). In other words, once one covert node was compromised, the architecture itself facilitated the discovery of the rest—a catastrophic violation of compartmentation, the cardinal rule of clandestine operations. This structural discoverability provides a compelling explanation for the “X-factor.” If Chinese or Iranian counterintelligence services were able to recognize one of these front sites—perhaps through Lee’s betrayal or through network monitoring—they could easily expand their search to enumerate the rest. Once identified, those sites could be monitored for traffic patterns, IP logs, or metadata, revealing the physical locations or operational rhythms of field agents. The result would be precisely the kind of rapid and geographically broad collapse observed between 2010 and 2012.

Several attributes make this explanation plausible to high confidence standard. It accounts for the disproportionate collapse relative to the technical strength of the platform. A simple encryption or authentication flaw would have yielded isolated compromises, not systemic exposure. It explains the extraordinary speed of network destruction. Insider betrayal might expose a limited number of assets, but large-scale enumeration allows adversaries to map entire networks in days or weeks. It also aligns with reports that CIA stations were initially unaware of how deeply the system had been penetrated; because the exposure derived from web-level pattern analysis rather than cryptographic decryption, it left few immediate forensic traces (Risen, 2018).

The architecture’s discoverability illustrates a subtle but fundamental shift in dynamics in the digital era, especially for counterintelligence. During the Cold War, clandestine communications were localized and analog, i.e., dead drops, shortwave bursts, or one-time pads, etc., that required significant human action/interaction to intercept. By contrast, digital covert systems even when encrypted, exist within the globally indexed infrastructure of the Internet. Any reuse of code, hosting, or metadata creates a fingerprint that can be detected through open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques. The “X-factor” was pretty clearly less an unknown human leak than a manifestation of the new technological environment. The Agency had built a secret system inside a public network and underestimated the degree to which its digital seams could be analyzed by adversarial FIS.

The forensic model resolves apparent contradictions in early assessments. CIA officials believed the COVCOM used in China was “more robust” than those in other theaters, implying stronger encryption, better authentication and other tradecraft goodies (CIA Inspector General, 2017). Nonetheless, it collapsed thoroughly. The pattern-matching explanation shows why robustness in cryptography could coexist with fragility in topology. The system’s security depended not only on code strength but also on architectural compartmentation. The Agency’s reuse of templates, hosting blocks, and design elements was weak tradecraft. It undermined that compartmentation and created a single attack surface.

It is important to recognize that the web-discoverability hypothesis complements rather than replaces the other two causes. Lee’s betrayal and intrinsic platform weaknesses likely provided the initial penetration points that allowed adversaries to begin to dig. The enumeration process then magnified those breaches exponentially. The CIA has not publicly confirmed this reconstruction, understandably. Nonetheless, independent open-source evidence strongly supports the inference that the network’s design flaws were decisive.

The lessons extend beyond one agency or episode. The COVCOM failure demonstrates how operational hygiene in digital clandestine systems is as critical as cryptographic soundness and insider threats. A covert communication platform can fail not because its cipher is broken, but because its metadata is out in the wild. This insight has profound implications for modern intelligence and of course, counterintelligence work. As state and non-state actors deploy increasingly networked clandestine capabilities, the old principle of “need to know” must be re-engineered into “need to connect.” Going forward, it would be foolish not to design com platforms in a way that every covert node is architecturally unique. Different code bases, hosting, and design fingerprints are imperative to avoid global correlation. The COVCOM collapse shows the lethal cost of violating that principle.

So, the CIA’s network failures in China were not caused solely by human treachery or inadequate encryption but by an invisible architectural flaw. The covert web infrastructure could be mapped once any part was exposed. This vulnerability, amplified by Lee’s betrayal and existing COVCOM weaknesses, created a perfect storm that allowed adversaries to dismantle entire espionage networks with unprecedented speed. The “X-factor” was not mystical but mathematical, an emergent property of pattern recognition within an interconnected Internet. The episode stands as a cautionary tale that in the digital age, secrecy depends not merely on keeping information encrypted but on ensuring that the very existence of the system remains undiscoverable. Sophisticated FIS such as China’s have the capacity to “de-clandestine” it, and far too quickly.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, MA in Intelligence, Graduate Certificate in Counterintelligence, JD, CISA/NCISS OSINT certification, DoD/DoS BFFOC Certification

References

Central Intelligence Agency. (2021). Inspector General’s review of clandestine communication failures (declassified summary). Langley, VA.

Citizen Lab. (2022). Statement on the fatal flaws found in a defunct CIA covert communications system. University of Toronto. https://citizenlab.ca/2022/09/statement-on-the-fatal-flaws-found-in-a-defunct-cia-covert-communications-system/

Overt Defense. (2022, October 5). Poorly designed CIA websites likely got spies killed. https://www.overtdefense.com/2022/10/05/poorly-designed-cia-websites-likely-got-spies-killed/

Risen, J. (2018, May 21). How China used a hacked CIA communications system to hunt down U.S. spies. The New York Times.

Security Boulevard. (2018, June 6). The espionage of former CIA case officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee for China.

U.S. Department of Justice. (2019). Former CIA officer sentenced for conspiring to commit espionage. Press release, April 19, 2019.

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Logros del CNCS y Posición Frente a sus Pares

Ciberseguridad República Dominicana, ciber, ciberseguridad, contramedidas, C. Constantin Poindexter;

El fortalecimiento de la ciberseguridad nacional se ha convertido en una prioridad estratégica para los Estados en la era digital. En este contexto, el Centro Nacional de Ciberseguridad (CNCS) de la República Dominicana ha logrado consolidarse como una institución líder en el Caribe y América Latina. Desde su creación, y particularmente durante el período 2020-2024, el CNCS ha implementado una política pública integral que articula la prevención, la respuesta a incidentes, la cooperación interinstitucional y la formación de capacidades técnicas y ciudadanas. Aquí observo algunos de los logros más relevantes del CNCS, su posicionamiento frente a sus pares regionales y plantea estrategias para fortalecer su papel como servicio de ciberseguridad más robusto y efectivo. Lo siguiente NO es de índole “clasificado”,

I. Consolidación del CNCS como autoridad nacional en ciberseguridad

Desde 2020, el CNCS ha establecido una estructura dual: la Dirección de Respuesta a Incidentes Cibernéticos (CSIRT-RD) y la Dirección de Coordinación de Estrategias. El rendimiento (imagen aquí adjunto) es meritorio. Según las cifras PUBLICAS, . . . El CSIRT-RD ha gestionado más de 500 alertas de seguridad, detectado más de 900 millones de intentos de ataque y compartido más de 2,000 indicadores de compromiso (IOC) con instituciones nacionales e internacionales (CNCS, 2024). En cuanto a la gestión de incidentes, se han atendido más de 1,600 casos, de los cuales 600 corresponden a instituciones gubernamentales. Estas cifras, que reflejan un aumento sostenido en la capacidad de detección y respuesta, representan un avance considerable para un país en vías de consolidar su ecosistema digital.

En el ámbito del análisis técnico, el CNCS ha realizado más de 500 evaluaciones de vulnerabilidades, identificando 2,300 hallazgos asociados con 347 vulnerabilidades y exposiciones comunes (CVE) (CNCS, 2024). Este volumen de trabajo técnico es comparable con centros nacionales de ciberseguridad de economías intermedias, lo que muestra un nivel de madurez institucional notable en el Caribe. La combinación de detección temprana, análisis técnico y cooperación activa coloca al CNCS como un referente regional.

II. Desarrollo de capacidades institucionales y cooperación interinstitucional

El CNCS no solo ha enfocado su labor en la respuesta técnica, sino también en la madurez organizacional de las instituciones públicas. A través de su Plataforma de Evaluación de Nivel de Madurez, ha priorizado 45 instituciones, permitiendo medir el grado de preparación en materia de ciberseguridad y planificar intervenciones específicas (CNCS, 2024). En paralelo, la Dirección de Coordinación de Estrategias ha promovido la cooperación nacional e internacional con más de 40 instituciones gubernamentales, firmando 101 acuerdos y memorandos de entendimiento (MOU).

Las campañas de comunicación del CNCS han alcanzado más de dos millones de cuentas en redes sociales, logrando concienciar a la ciudadanía sobre prácticas seguras en entornos digitales. Estas iniciativas, orientadas a la cultura de la ciberseguridad, demuestran una comprensión avanzada del principio de “seguridad por diseño social”, donde la formación del usuario final es tan importante como la infraestructura técnica.

III. Capacitación y profesionalización del talento en ciberseguridad

Uno de los pilares del éxito del CNCS ha sido la creación de capacidades humanas. En colaboración con la Academia Cisco, el Instituto Tecnológico de Las Américas (ITLA) y Fortinet, el CNCS ha capacitado a más de 540 personas, incluyendo profesionales del sector público y privado (CNCS, 2024). Además, se han impartido 16 cursos técnicos especializados y 3 entrenamientos internacionales dirigidos a sectores críticos como el marítimo y el sanitario. Estas acciones posicionan al CNCS como un catalizador del talento cibernético en la región.

Los programas de concienciación ciudadana también han tenido un impacto significativo. Durante 2024, el CNCS desarrolló 12 campañas de sensibilización que alcanzaron a más de 2,000 participantes, con 800 personas inscritas formalmente en el programa nacional de capacitación ciudadana (CNCS, 2024). Esta estrategia evidencia una política pública que combina la seguridad técnica con la educación digital, alineándose con las mejores prácticas internacionales establecidas por la Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones (UIT, 2024).

IV. Comparación regional y posicionamiento

La comparación con otros países latinoamericanos permite ubicar objetivamente el desempeño dominicano. En 2024, el CSIRT Panamá reportó 1,312 incidentes, siendo el phishing y el fraude digital los más frecuentes (CSIRT Panamá, 2024). En contraste, el CNCS de la República Dominicana registró 1,600 casos en cinco años, lo que equivale a un promedio anual de unos 320 casos. Si bien Panamá presenta una mayor densidad de reportes, ello se explica por la amplitud de su red de monitoreo intersectorial.

En Colombia, el Centro Cibernético Policial registró 59,033 denuncias de delitos informáticos en 2023, y el sector privado estimó 12,000 millones de intentos de ataque ese mismo año (CCIT, 2023). Estos números, en gran medida resultado del tamaño poblacional y la economía digital de Colombia, superan los de la República Dominicana en términos absolutos, pero confirman que el volumen de 900 millones de intentos detectados por el CNCS es proporcional y consistente con su escala nacional.

En el Caribe, Trinidad y Tobago reportó apenas 205 ciberataques exitosos entre 2019 y 2024 (TT-CSIRT, 2024), mientras que Costa Rica, tras el ataque de ransomware de 2022, ha mantenido una estrategia de recuperación y resiliencia sin publicar datos comparables (OAS, 2023). A la luz de estas cifras, la República Dominicana se sitúa entre los países con capacidad técnica media-alta, destacando especialmente por su transparencia de datos y la implementación de plataformas de notificación y verificación, algo que no todos los países de la región han logrado.

El Índice Global de Ciberseguridad (GCI) de la UIT (2024) ubica a la República Dominicana en una categoría intermedia de madurez (“Tier 3”), junto a países como Panamá y Costa Rica, y por delante de varias naciones caribeñas menores. Este posicionamiento confirma que el país ha alcanzado un nivel de consolidación técnica y organizativa respetable, aunque con oportunidades de mejora en la integración de marcos normativos y la profesionalización avanzada del sector.

V. Estrategias y tácticas para fortalecer el servicio nacional de ciberseguridad

Para evolucionar hacia un servicio de ciberseguridad más robusto y efectivo, el CNCS podría adoptar una estrategia de tres ejes: integración normativa, fortalecimiento técnico y cooperación internacional ampliada.

Integración normativa y estandarización de métricas.
El CNCS podría alinear sus procedimientos de reporte con marcos internacionales como el National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST-CSF) y los Incident Response Standards de FIRST. La creación de un modelo de reporte público anual, con series históricas estandarizadas, facilitaría la comparación regional y permitiría medir la efectividad de políticas sectoriales (NIST, 2022).

Fortalecimiento técnico y automatización.
El desarrollo de sistemas de inteligencia de amenazas (Threat Intelligence) basados en aprendizaje automático podría aumentar la capacidad predictiva del CSIRT-RD. Asimismo, expandir la cobertura de sensores de monitoreo a infraestructuras críticas —energía, salud, transporte y finanzas— reforzaría la detección temprana y la coordinación interinstitucional.

Cooperación y diplomacia cibernética.
Aumentar la colaboración con organismos multilaterales (OEA, UIT, BID) y con redes como CaribCERT permitiría compartir indicadores de compromiso en tiempo real y fortalecer la resiliencia regional ante amenazas transfronterizas. “Intelligence Liasion” con las agencias de inteligencia y contrainteligencia es, del mismo modo, imperativo. Un enfoque, centrado en la diplomacia cibernética, ampliaría la proyección internacional del CNCS y contribuiría al fortalecimiento colectivo del Caribe y “más allá”. Ciber-actores/ciberdelicuentes no conocen fronteras.

El Centro Nacional de Ciberseguridad de la República Dominicana ha demostrado un avance tangible en materia de gobernanza digital, gestión de incidentes, cooperación institucional y formación ciudadana. Los datos disponibles evidencian una estructura madura y en expansión, comparable con países latinoamericanos de mayor tamaño y con un liderazgo visible en el Caribe. Aunque persisten desafíos —como la estandarización de indicadores y la profundización de la cooperación técnica internacional—, los logros alcanzados entre 2020 y 2024 reflejan una política pública coherente y sostenible.

El CNCS, mediante la integración de marcos internacionales, el uso de inteligencia automatizada y la expansión de alianzas estratégicas, puede consolidarse como un referente regional de ciberseguridad. En un entorno global donde la seguridad digital se ha convertido en un pilar del desarrollo económico y la soberanía tecnológica, la República Dominicana está posicionada para ejercer un liderazgo ejemplar en el Caribe y América Latina.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, M.A. en Inteligencia, Certificado de Posgrado en Contrainteligencia, J.D., certificación CISA/NCISS OSINT, Certificación DoD/DoS BFFOC

Referencias

CCIT. (2023). Informe sobre ciberseguridad en Colombia 2023. Cámara Colombiana de Informática y Telecomunicaciones.
CNCS. (2024). Informe de resultados 2020-2024. Centro Nacional de Ciberseguridad, República Dominicana.
CSIRT Panamá. (2024). Reporte anual de incidentes 2024. Gobierno de Panamá.
NIST. (2022). Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (Version 2.0). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
OAS. (2023). Cybersecurity Capacity Review: Costa Rica Post-Ransomware Assessment. Organización de los Estados Americanos.
TT-CSIRT. (2024). National Cybersecurity Report 2019-2024. Trinidad and Tobago Cyber Security Incident Response Team.
UIT. (2024). Global Cybersecurity Index 2024. Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones.

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New York SIM Farm, Nation-State Attribution?

intelligence, counterintelligence, spy, espionage, counterespionage, subversion, sabotage, C. Constantin Poindexter;

The discovery of an extensive SIM-box infrastructure in New York City represents a profound counterintelligence concern, not only because of the physical scale of the operation but also because of its timing and location. To appreciate the significance of this event, it is necessary to place it within a broader historical and operational context. Telecommunications networks have long been exploited by both state and non-state actors for covert communication, financial crime, and disruptive activity. The integration of criminal infrastructure with national security objectives has become an increasingly visible feature of modern gray-zone conflict, particularly since the end of the Cold War when adversaries began to weaponize civilian technologies in pursuit of deniable influence and disruption.

The use of “SIM farms,” or large-scale collections of SIM cards and servers designed to mimic ordinary cellular activity, is not new. Organized crime syndicates have leveraged them for spam, smishing, and financial fraud. North Korean operatives, for instance, have been linked to telephony-based fraud networks generating illicit revenue through scams and premium call-routing schemes. Russian-speaking cybercriminal groups have deployed SIM-boxes to mask identity and coordinate across borders while shielding themselves from law enforcement scrutiny. Iran’s cyber units, sometimes acting through cutouts, have also integrated telecommunications manipulation into campaigns targeting U.S. and allied interests. In each of these cases, the common thread is deniability, i.e., the ability to use civilian infrastructure for state-directed purposes while maintaining the outward appearance of ordinary criminality. Could this operation have been ENTIRELY non-aligned national or transnational criminal activity? Yes. “Thirty-five miles” from the U.N. would not be my choice of placement if the U.N. and the persons attending U.N. activities were my intended targets. Given the density of base station coverage in NYC, I would have opted for a post closer to both U.N. facilities and where attendees lay their heads. For the purpose of this piece, I’ll pretend that the operation was state-sponsored AND I’ll go with the premise that the discovered location was not an additional, perhaps secondary station in a chain. Of course, that might be exactly what adversarial FIS would want us to believe, i.e., “deniability” as I stated before.

Against this backdrop, the September 2025 discovery by the Secret Service of more than three hundred SIM servers and roughly one hundred thousand SIM cards clustered within a thirty-five-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters carries heightened significance. The seizure occurred during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, a moment when global leaders converge in New York for high-level diplomacy (United States Secret Service, 2025). Official statements emphasized that the network could have enabled mass voice and text traffic, both for anonymized communications between foreign actors and potentially for the disruption of local telecommunications infrastructure (CNN, 2025; Associated Press, 2025).

The scale of this infrastructure and its deliberate placement near the United Nations point to a strategic rather than merely criminal purpose. Analysts cited by PBS noted that a SIM farm of this size could flood telecommunications systems, causing cascading outages (PBS, 2025). While some technical experts caution that U.S. carriers have robust mitigation tools that could blunt such an impact, even localized or temporary disruptions during a global diplomatic gathering would have significant psychological and operational consequences (Commsrisk, 2025). The purpose may not have been to permanently collapse networks but rather to create contingency leverage: a latent capacity to distract, delay, or obscure other operations should a geopolitical crisis erupt during the summit.

The Secret Service has publicly confirmed that communications occurred between “nation-state threat actors and individuals known to federal law enforcement,” yet no official attribution has been made (U.S. Secret Service, 2025). For counterintelligence professionals, the patterns of tradecraft and the geopolitical context allow for reasoned analytic judgments. The operation fits squarely within the framework of hybrid tactics employed by Russia. Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to blend criminal infrastructure with state-directed activity. It has relied on criminal intermediaries to support disinformation campaigns, cyber operations, and telephony-based harassment. The combination of scale, timing, and proximity to the United Nations strongly suggests a Russian operational signature. This discovery mirrors previous instances in which Russia has leveraged technically noisy, deniable assets to signal capability and project disruption potential at politically symbolic moments.

Iran also emerges as a credible suspect. Tehran has a well-documented history of asymmetric operations designed to sow disruption in Western capitals. Its intelligence services have previously partnered with non-state intermediaries to extend operational reach while maintaining plausible deniability. A SIM-box farm designed to threaten disruption of cellular networks during the United Nations General Assembly would be consistent with Iran’s asymmetric doctrine. However, Iran’s pattern of activity has traditionally emphasized cyber intrusions, targeted influence operations, and physical proxy activity, rather than large-scale telecommunications disruption.

The DPRK must also be considered. Pyongyang has long relied on illicit telecommunications infrastructures for revenue generation and covert activity. SIM farms have been documented as part of North Korea’s financial crime toolkit. Yet in this case, the strategic signaling implied by targeting the United Nations makes North Korea a less likely culprit, given its usual focus on revenue production rather than international diplomatic disruption.

The PRC possesses the capability to construct such infrastructure, but the risk-reward calculus makes Beijing an improbable sponsor. China’s intelligence services favor long-term, quiet, persistent access operations, usually in the cyber and human collection domains. Deploying a conspicuous SIM-box network during the United Nations General Assembly would carry a high probability of exposure and diplomatic fallout, outcomes that run counter to China’s operational culture of avoiding overt disruption at politically sensitive junctures.

All things considered, I feel that the evidence points more persuasively toward Russian FIS as the primary sponsor, Iran as a new second. Russia’s historical reliance on hybrid criminal-state operations, its willingness to employ disruptive signaling tactics, and its long record of targeting politically symbolic events align with the discovery in New York. Iran shares some of these characteristics but lacks the established track record of telephony-based disruption at this scale. North Korea and China are less consistent with the observed tradecraft and geopolitical logic.

The discovery of the New York SIM farm underscores two enduring counterintelligence lessons. Adversarial FISs increasingly exploit civilian infrastructure, particularly in telecommunications, to build deniable operational capacity. The integration of criminal and state networks is no longer exceptional but rather a normalized feature of nation-state competition. From a defensive/countermeasures perspective, this event highlights the need for closer alignment between federal law enforcement, telecommunications providers, and allied intelligence partners. To our enemies, the attraction of SIM farms lies not only in their covert utility but also in their symbolic power, i.e., the ability to show that civilian networks can be weaponized against the United States at moments of significant diplomatic importance.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, MA in Intelligence, Graduate Certificate in Counterintelligence, JD, CISA/NCISS OSINT certification, DoD/DoS BFFOC Certification

References

Associated Press. (2025, September 27). U.S. Secret Service dismantles imminent telecommunications threat in New York. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/unga-threat-telecom-service-sim-93734f76578bc9ca22d93a8e91fd9c76

CNN. (2025, September 27). Secret Service investigates massive network near UN. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/27/us/nyc-network-secret-service-investigation

Commsrisk. (2025, September 24). U.S. Secret Service finds 300 SIM boxes in New York. Commsrisk. https://commsrisk.com/us-secret-service-finds-300-simboxes-in-new-york

PBS. (2025, September 24). How SIM farms like the one found near the UN could collapse telecom networks. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-sim-farms-like-the-one-found-near-the-un-could-collapse-telecom-networks

United States Secret Service. (2025, September 27). U.S. Secret Service dismantles imminent telecommunications threat in New York. United States Secret Service. https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2025/09/us-secret-service-dismantles-imminent-telecommunications-threat-new-york

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The Retracted Intelligence Report on TdA

The Retracted Intelligence Report on Tren de Aragua, espionage, counterespionage, intelligence, counterintelligence, strategic intelligence, national security, C. Constantin Poindexter;

The recent retraction of a National Security Agency (NSA) report on Venezuela and the Tren de Aragua (TdA) criminal gang highlights the tension between intelligence assessments and political narratives. The danger of politicization of intelligence work is front and center here. It’s reasonably clear here that the DNI denied release of the full intelligence product because it did not align neatly with the current Administration’s assertions about TdA and Venezuelan President Maduro’s direction, financing and control over its nefarious activities. Boris Bondarev, former diplomat of the Russian Federation reported on his experience in a Far East assignment, “One day, I was called to meet with the embassy’s number three official, a quiet, middle-aged diplomat who had joined the foreign ministry during the Soviet era. He handed me text from a cable from Moscow, which I was told to incorporate into a document we would deliver to Cambodian authorities. Noticing several typos, I told him that I would correct them. “Don’t do that!” he shot back. “We got the text straight from Moscow. They know better. Even if there are errors, it’s not up to us to correct the center.” It was emblematic of what would become a growing trend in the ministry: unquestioned deference to leaders.” (Foreign Affairs, Nov. 2022) The example is instructive of what we do NOT want to be.

The report, “Venezuela: Examining Regime Ties to Tren de Aragua,” declassified in May 2025, offers an analytic picture that contradicts claims made by U.S. political leaders that Nicolás Maduro is actively engaged in supporting, financing, and directing TdA. The NIC assessment concludes that while the gang has benefitted from a permissive environment in Venezuela, including corruption and weak institutional control, there is no credible evidence that Maduro or senior regime officials exercise command over the group. This retraction is striking because it underscores how intelligence assessments that fail to support policy preferences may be subject to extraordinary pressure, despite their analytic rigor.

The NIC report is clear in its findings. It states that TdA leaders have historically benefitted from permissive conditions in Venezuela, particularly weak prison oversight and corrupt officials. That is NO surprise to those of us who have operated in corrupt Latin American states. Yet it stresses that many TdA cells operate independently across Latin America, with limited coordination even among themselves, let alone with the Venezuelan government (NIC 2025). The report underscores that much of TDA’s growth has been facilitated by Venezuelan migration and that individuals and networks frequently use the gang’s name without direct affiliation, underscoring the decentralized and diffuse nature of the group. Crucially, the report states that there is “no indication that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or senior government officials are directing the actions of Tren de Aragua,” contradicting claims that Maduro orchestrates the group’s activities (AP News 2025).

The report does allow that some mid- and low-level Venezuelan officials may have financial ties to TdA. Such connections are typically opportunistic, involving corruption or passive tolerance, rather than the product of a coherent state policy (NIC 2025). In this sense, regime responsibility lies less in the deliberate deployment of the gang as a proxy and more in the systemic weakness of governance that allows TdA to operate with impunity. This distinction is critical: corruption and negligence do not equate to strategic coordination or sponsorship. Yet political leaders have blurred this line by portraying TdA as a regime-directed instrument of repression and transnational crime.

Redactions in the NIC report shed further light on analytic processes. Although redactions obscure details, we can reasonably infer that they conceal the names of regime-linked individuals, sources and methods of intelligence collection, or details about TdA’s operations abroad. In intelligence practice, such redactions protect human sources, sensitive communications intercepts, and law enforcement leads. Notably, the report’s unredacted portions are explicit in their rejection of senior-level regime direction. Given classification practices, it is unlikely that redacted sections would conceal evidence directly contradicting the assessment’s core conclusion, since that would undermine the transparency and credibility of the report’s stated findings (NIC 2025).

Other credible sources reinforce the NIC’s position. Associated Press reporting on the document emphasizes that there is no evidence of Maduro’s direct involvement, while acknowledging that some regime actors might benefit from TdA’s activities (AP News 2025). Investigations by InSight Crime and The Guardian further show that certain monitors and advocacy groups have exaggerated TdA’s presence in the United States, even fabricating reports of its activity (InSight Crime 2025; The Guardian 2025). By contrast, organizations such as the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) argue that regime-linked actors used TdA in the abduction of Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda in Chile in 2024. A more definitive answer to the question of Maduro’s involvement with TdA may have come from Ojeda. Unfortunately, he was liquidated by the regime. Perhaps the Chilean criminal information to the ICC will reveal more. The allegations remain under judicial investigation and do not yet amount to definitive evidence of direct command by Maduro himself (HRF 2025). The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Congressional Research Service (CRS) both highlight Venezuela’s permissive environment for illicit financial flows and organized crime, but stress that corruption at lower levels is more prevalent than systematic state direction (GAO 2023; CRS 2024).

When these sources are synthesized, a consistent analytic picture emerges. Venezuela under Maduro provides an enabling environment for organized crime, but this is the result of systemic corruption, institutional incapacity, and deliberate tolerance by some officials, not top-level strategic direction. TDA operates as a decentralized criminal network whose spread is tied to transnational migration and weak law enforcement, not to state financing or command. The strongest claims, that Maduro is personally orchestrating TdA’s financing and direction, misrepresent available evidence and are not supported by credible intelligence or rigorous analysis. This distinction is not trivial: overstating threats distorts policymaking and risks politicizing intelligence.

The retraction of the NIC report under the leadership of DNI Tulsi Gabbard underscores the sensitivity of such findings. According to reporting, Gabbard ordered the recall of a classified report on Venezuela even after NSA officials confirmed that it met analytic and procedural standards (WRAL 2025). This action illustrates the pressures intelligence agencies face when their findings contradict prevailing political narratives. While intelligence must consider the risks of exposing sources and methods, recalling a report that undermines a presidential claim risks signaling politicization and undermining the credibility of the intelligence community.

It is important to concede some counterarguments. Intelligence reports are limited by available sources, and the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Covert relationships between regime actors and TdA may exist beyond the reach of collection or declassification. Allegations such as those emerging in Chile may eventually provide more conclusive evidence. However, at present, the preponderance of credible sources supports the NIC’s conclusion that Maduro is not directly directing or financing TdA. Until more conclusive evidence emerges, policymaking should be grounded in this nuanced understanding.

Ultimately, the retraction of the NIC report raises broader questions about the role of intelligence in our governance. The U.S. intelligence community’s credibility depends on its ability to provide unbiased, apolitical assessments to policymakers, even when those assessments contradict political preferences. Intelligence that is shaped by politics rather than evidence undermines both domestic and international credibility. For policymakers, basing decisions on politicized claims risks misallocation of resources, legal overreach, and diplomatic missteps. For the public, it threatens the erosion of trust in government institutions and more specifically the I.C. It is imperative that the DNI ensures that analytic judgments reflect the best available evidence, acknowledges uncertainties, and resists the politicization of intelligence regardless if she falls out of favor with the Administration. Only through integrity in production and delivery to the consumer can intelligence provide a sound foundation for policy in matters as consequential as Venezuela’s transnational criminal networks.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, MA in Intelligence, Graduate Certificate in Counterintelligence, JD, CISA/NCISS OSINT certification, DoD/DoS BFFOC Certification

References

AP News. 2025. “Declassified Intelligence Memo Contradicts Trump’s Claims Linking Gang to Venezuelan Government.” May 6, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/d818cc58962ba90cd2c94ca1b494d4fd
.

Congressional Research Service (CRS). 2024. Venezuela: Political Crisis and U.S. Policy. CRS Report IF10230. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10230
.

GAO (Government Accountability Office). 2023. Venezuela: Illicit Financial Flows and U.S. Efforts to Disrupt Them. GAO-23-105668. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105668
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Human Rights Foundation (HRF). 2025. “Venezuela’s Maduro Continues to Use Tren de Aragua for Transnational Repression, Kidnapping, Assassination.” April 25, 2025. https://hrf.org/latest/venezuelas-maduro-continues-to-use-tren-de-aragua-for-transnational-repression-kidnapping-assassination/
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National Intelligence Council (NIC). 2025. Venezuela: Examining Regime Ties to Tren de Aragua. Case No. DF-2025-00379, declassified May 5, 2025.

The Guardian. 2025. “Trump Defense Official Led Think Tank that Spread Lies about Tren de Aragua.” August 13, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/13/joseph-humire-thinktank-tren-de-aragua
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WRAL. 2025. “DNI Gabbard Recalls Classified Report on Venezuela in Highly Unusual Move.” May 2025. https://www.wral.com/story/dni-gabbard-recalls-classified-report-on-venezuela-in-highly-unusual-move/22152236/
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Foreign Affairs. “Sources: Russia Misconduct – Boris Bondarev.” [n.d.]. “Sources: Russia Misconduct – Boris Bondarev,” Foreign Affairs. Accessed [insert access date]. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/sources-russia-misconduct-boris-bondarev

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La vigilancia del ingreso de extranjeros como eje estratégico de prevención pandémica en la República Dominicana

La Amenaza Pandemica y la República Dominicana, inteligencia, vigilancia, C. Constantin Poindexter, J2, DNI

La llegada de personas extranjeras, ya sean turistas, trabajadores temporales, migrantes o demás, constituye uno de los vectores críticos mediante los cuales nuevas enfermedades infecciosas pueden introducirse en el territorio nacional. Dado que la República Dominicana es un país de alta exposición internacional por su sector turístico, sus conexiones aéreas y marítimas, y su proximidad geográfica con Haití, los riesgos asociados a pandemias demandan que la inteligencia nacional y los mecanismos de vigilancia fronteriza se fortalezcan. ¿Cuáles serían los costos potenciales y qué mecanismos son necesarios para mitigar dicho riesgo?

La República Dominicana es uno de los destinos turísticos más visitados del Caribe. En 2022 ingresaron al país más de 8.5 millones de turistas, incluidos más de 2.5 millones provenientes de Estados Unidos y Canadá, lo que la convierte en la nación más visitada de la región caribeña (CDC 2023). Este alto flujo internacional acentúa la posibilidad de importar agentes patógenos. Durante emergencias sanitarias globales, la movilidad internacional se ha demostrado como uno de los principales factores de propagación: no solo por el movimiento de personas infectadas, sino por portadores asintomáticos que se desplazan antes de desarrollar síntomas.

Un ejemplo concreto de esta vulnerabilidad se observó al inicio de la pandemia de COVID-19 en la República Dominicana. El primer caso confirmado fue de una persona que había ingresado desde Italia, y otro de un ciudadano canadiense, turistas vacacionando en Bayahibe (Wikipedia 2023a). Este patrón evidencia que los vínculos internacionales, i.e., turismo, viajes de placer o negocios, pueden ser la puerta de entrada para pandemias respiratorias virales, patógenos nuevos o variantes emergentes. La vigilancia de las fronteras (aéreas, marítimas, terrestres) y de los puntos de entrada de personas debe comprender estrategias integrales de detección temprana, cuarentena, rastreo de contactos y normas sanitarias obligatorias.

Además de los riesgos epidemiológicos, existen vulnerabilidades estructurales que agravan el peligro de una pandemia originada por la llegada de extranjeros. El sistema de salud tiene capacidad limitada para responder a brotes súbitos de enfermedades altamente contagiosas, quiere decir, número de camas de cuidados intensivos, concentración de personal médico especializado, escasez de insumos críticos como ventiladores o equipos de protección. Segundo, la densidad poblacional en zonas urbanas como Santo Domingo y Santiago favorece la transmisión comunitaria si no se identifican rápidamente los casos importados. También, la economía informal, presente en ciudades y zonas turísticas, dificulta la implementación de cuarentenas sin causar severos impactos sociales y económicos. Los costos de una pandemia causada o agravada por el ingreso de extranjeros sin control pueden ser múltiples: aumento de casos y muertes, colapso del sistema sanitario, pérdidas económicas por cierres, interrupción del turismo, desempleo masivo, impacto en la imagen internacional del país, disminución de inversiones extranjeras y acumulación de deuda pública si se requieren medidas extraordinarias. Dado que el turismo representa aproximadamente un 11.6 % del Producto Interno Bruto dominicano y es fuente importante de divisas, cualquier afectación al flujo de visitantes puede generar daños macroeconómicos significativos (Wikipedia 2023b).

Por todo ello, es esencial que la inteligencia dominicana (el conjunto de agencias y unidades de vigilancia epidemiológica, migratoria y de seguridad nacional) incluya como prioridad la vigilancia de la entrada de extranjeros con un enfoque preventivo. Esto implicaría varios componentes concretos.

El control sanitario en puntos de entrada: implementación de protocolos obligatorios de salud en aeropuertos, puertos y pasos fronterizos terrestres, tales como monitoreo de temperatura, pruebas diagnósticas (PCR, antígenos), declaración de salud previa al vuelo y cuarentenas obligatorias cuando lo requiera la situación.

La integración de inteligencia epidemiológica y migratoria: coordinación entre autoridades migratorias, salud pública, fuerzas de seguridad y agencias de inteligencia para compartir datos de vuelos, pasajeros, historiales epidemiológicos de regiones de origen, e identificar vuelos o rutas de alto riesgo.

La vigilancia internacional de brotes: mantener monitoreo constante de las alertas sanitarias internacionales, especialmente en los países de los cuales provienen grandes flujos de turistas o migrantes. Si surge un brote nuevo en un país con fuerte conexión con República Dominicana, activar protocolos especiales.

La capacitación, infraestructura y recursos: fortalecer la capacidad de los laboratorios nacionales, mejorar el sistema de atención en salud pública, disponer de equipos y espacios para aislamiento, así como personal entrenado para respuesta rápida. Esto también incluye la mejora de los procedimientos sanitarios en hoteles, resorts y transporte, que son puntos de encuentro entre nacionales y extranjeros.

Las políticas legales y regulaciones claras: etablecer leyes y normativas que permitan imponer medidas sanitarias (vacunaciones, pruebas previas al viaje, cuarentenas), con bases legales robustas y con respeto a los derechos humanos. Además, mecanismos para sancionar incumplimientos sin afectar excesivamente los flujos legítimos de personas.

La comunicación pública transparente y la cooperación internacional: informar claramente a la ciudadanía sobre riesgos y medidas tomadas, y contar con acuerdos con otros países para coordinar protocolos, especialmente en emergencias sanitarias.

La vigilancia de extranjeros no significa adoptar políticas cerradas o xenófobas, sino gestionar la movilidad internacional de forma responsable, balanceando la apertura con la protección sanitaria. En un mundo globalizado, los países no están aislados y el cierre total no siempre es viable ni deseable por sus impactos económicos y sociales. Sin embargo, ignorar la posibilidad de ingreso de enfermedades nuevas o reemergentes a través de visitantes es jugar con fuego. Dada la importancia estratégica del turismo y la conexión internacional de la República Dominicana, los órganos de inteligencia y vigilancia fronteriza deben reconocer que la entrada de extranjeros constituye un vector de riesgo significativo en una pandemia. La prevención activa, mediante control sanitario, inteligencia epidemiológica, fortalecimiento institucional y regulaciones, puede mitigar ese riesgo. No hacerlo, nos traerá consecuencias sanitarias, sociales, económicas y reputacionales graves. Imperativo es que nuestras instituciones incluyan como prioridad la vigilancia proactiva del ingreso de no nacionales, como parte integral de la preparación y respuesta ante futuras pandemias.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter Salcedo, M.A. en Inteligencia, J.D., Certificado de Posgrado en Contrainteligencia, certificación CISA/NCISS OSINT, Certificación DoD/DoS BFFOC

Bibliografía

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2023. Dominican Republic | Yellow Book. Atlanta: CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/yellow-book/hcp/americas-caribbean/dominican-republic.html.

Wikipedia. 2023a. COVID-19 Pandemic in the Dominican Republic. Last modified September 10, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Dominican_Republic.

Wikipedia. 2023b. Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Last modified August 14, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_Dominican_Republic

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Conduct Not Becoming: Alleged U.S.-Linked Interference in Greenland

intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage, counterespionage, spy, spies, subversion operations, c. constantin poindexter

In August 2025, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the chargé d’affaires of the United States Embassy in Copenhagen after revelations by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) that several Americans linked to the U.S. Presidential Administration had engaged in covert political activities in Greenland. According to the reporting, these individuals compiled lists of Greenlanders categorized as “pro-U.S.” or “anti-Trump,” cultivated ties with local elites, and promoted narratives designed to widen divisions between Nuuk and Copenhagen (PBS NewsHour 2025; Associated Press 2025). The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) emphasized that Greenland remains a primary target for foreign interference operations, echoing earlier warnings that external actors could exploit or fabricate political disagreements within the Kingdom of Denmark (Al Jazeera 2025). These revelations, coupled with Denmark’s unusually direct diplomatic response, illustrate the characteristics of a malign influence or subversive operation and highlight the potential damage such activities can inflict on U.S. national security, particularly by undermining liaison trust with Denmark, arguably one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners.

Characteristics of a Malign Influence Operation

Malign influence operations are typically defined by certain recurring attributes: plausible deniability, use of cut-outs or intermediaries, audience mapping and segmentation, amplification of divisive narratives, and efforts aimed at shaping decision-making environments rather than openly persuading through argument. The Greenland episode, as described by DR and reported internationally, bears all of these hallmarks.

Plausible deniability was central to the actor’s positioning. Officials stressed that the government does not direct or control the actions of private citizens, even though the actors were reportedly politically connected to the Administration (PBS NewsHour 2025). Such disavowals allow states to shield themselves from direct accountability while benefiting from the effects of covert activity.

The use of cut-outs and informal networks appears evident. The alleged operatives were not formal embassy staff operating under Chief of Mission authority but instead American nationals cultivating relationships with Greenlandic political and business figures. This indirect approach mirrors tradecraft seen in both Cold War–era and contemporary influence campaigns, allowing sponsors to maintain distance while pursuing strategic objectives (Associated Press 2025).

The activity involved audience segmentation, as evidenced by the preparation of lists distinguishing sympathetic Greenlanders from opponents. Such mapping is a well-established precursor to micro-targeted persuasion and coalition-building (Rudbeck 2020).

The operation sought to exploit existing grievances. Greenland has a long history of tension regarding its relationship with Copenhagen, particularly concerning autonomy and resource management. PET has publicly warned that adversaries attempt to “promote or amplify particular viewpoints” in Greenland to exacerbate these tensions (Al Jazeera 2025). By pressing sovereignty-oriented narratives, the actors aligned with known fault lines.

The activities pursued a strategic effect on governance: nudging Greenland’s politics toward greater separation from Denmark or, at minimum, intensifying friction between Copenhagen and Nuuk. This fits the definition of a malign influence campaign, which aims not merely to influence public opinion but to shift the constitutional or strategic environment of the target polity (Fleshman et al. 2020).

Greenland’s Strategic Importance

Understanding why Denmark reacted so firmly requires recognition of Greenland’s immense strategic value. The island hosts Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), the northernmost U.S. military installation. Pituffik is critical to ballistic missile early warning, missile defense, and space surveillance missions, particularly through the 12th Space Warning Squadron, which tracks ballistic launches and supports U.S. Space Force operations (U.S. Space Force 2024). Pituffik’s radar and space-tracking systems are a vital component of NATO deterrence, as they enable early detection of potential Russian or other adversary launches.

Beyond Pituffik, Greenland’s geography makes it indispensable to North Atlantic security. The island sits astride the Greenland–Iceland–U.K. (GIUK) gap, a maritime chokepoint central to monitoring Russian submarine traffic from the Barents Sea into the North Atlantic. As the Arctic becomes increasingly contested due to climate change and resource competition, Greenland’s location at the intersection of North America and Europe magnifies its strategic importance.

Equally significant is Denmark’s intelligence capability. The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (FE) and PET are widely regarded as among the most capable small-state services, particularly in signals intelligence, counterintelligence, cyber and Arctic domain awareness. FE’s Intelligence Risk Assessment 2024 explicitly identifies Greenland as a frontline in great-power competition (Danish Defence Intelligence Service 2024). As such, Denmark is one of Washington’s most important intelligence liaisons, and trust in this relationship is crucial to U.S. and NATO security.

Damage to U.S. National Security

From a U.S. perspective, even if the federal government neither authorized nor directed the actions of the Americans involved, the perception of interference inflicts real costs. Four national security risks stand out.

Such activities risk eroding liaison trust. Intelligence sharing relies on reciprocity and respect for sovereignty. If Denmark perceives that the United States tolerates or encourages efforts to manipulate the Kingdom’s internal affairs, Danish services may hesitate to share sensitive information or to cooperate fully in Arctic monitoring. Trust, once diminished, is difficult to rebuild (Danish Defence Intelligence Service 2024).

Malign influence in Greenland undermines coordinated Arctic policy. Pituffik’s continued operation depends on alignment among Copenhagen, Nuuk, and Washington. Any perception that the U.S. is fueling secessionist sentiment in Greenland complicates base access negotiations, environmental approvals, and trilateral defense arrangements. Diplomatic friction could translate into delays or restrictions that weaken early warning and space-tracking capabilities (Associated Press 2025).

Such revelations hand adversaries narrative ammunition. Russia and China have long sought to depict the United States as hypocritical in its advocacy for sovereignty and democratic norms. A Danish finding that U.S.-linked actors engaged in subversive activity in Greenland would provide propaganda fodder for Moscow and Beijing, undermining U.S. credibility in NATO and in multilateral Arctic governance forums (Al Jazeera 2025).

These operations jeopardize operational continuity at Pituffik. Strategic deterrence depends on uninterrupted coverage of missile warning and space tracking. Political discord that affects budgets, labor relations, or local sentiment in Greenland could generate friction costs that weaken U.S. posture in the High North (U.S. Space Force 2024).

Theoretical Framing: Rudbeck and Malign Influence

Emma Rudbeck’s (2020) master’s thesis on foreign interference in Greenland provides an instructive framework. Applying Applied History and strategic narrative theory, Rudbeck argues that interference by major powers in Greenland echoes Cold War–era dynamics and threatens the concept of “Arctic Exceptionalism,” which had long portrayed the region as insulated from great-power rivalry. She concludes that Denmark must prepare for sustained interference by China, Russia, and the United States, and recommends a proactive Arctic strategy that emphasizes resilience and narrative management. Rudbeck’s insights align with the Greenland episode. The use of covert actors to segment populations and inflame tensions fits her description of “strategic narratives” designed to reshape perceptions of sovereignty and autonomy. By treating Greenland not as a neutral space but as contested political terrain, the alleged U.S.-linked operatives validated Rudbeck’s claim that interference is no longer limited to Russia or China but includes Washington itself. From Denmark’s perspective, this raises uncomfortable questions about the reliability of its closest ally.

Assessing the “Deception Operation” Frame

Denmark’s choice to summon the U.S. envoy demonstrates that it viewed the incident not as isolated private advocacy but as a coherent deception operation. The tactics of covert list-building, elite cultivation, and narrative seeding abroad reflect classic subversive tradecraft, intended to give the false impression of grassroots political momentum. PET has warned precisely about such techniques, noting that foreign influence in Greenland often seeks to “amplify particular viewpoints” to sow division (Al Jazeera 2025). This aligns with broader theoretical work on deception and influence, which emphasizes how adversaries shape decision environments by hiding their involvement (Fleshman et al. 2020).

We Need to Assure Copenhagen that “This isn’t who we are”

The Greenland case illustrates how malign influence can damage alliances even when conducted by non-official actors. Mitigating this damage will require visible U.S. steps: clear ministerial-level assurances to Copenhagen, tighter deconfliction to ensure all outreach in Greenland is coordinated through embassy channels, and symbolic trilateral initiatives with Denmark and Greenland to demonstrate respect for the Kingdom’s internal constitutional order. Absent such efforts, suspicion of U.S. duplicity may persist, weakening NATO cohesion at a time when Arctic security is increasingly central.

The alleged Administration-linked interference in Greenland demonstrates the characteristics of a malign influence operation: plausible deniability, cut-outs, audience segmentation, exploitation of grievances, and pursuit of strategic effects on governance. Greenland’s unique importance to U.S. defense posture and Denmark’s role as an elite intelligence ally magnify the stakes. By alienating Copenhagen, such operations risk degrading liaison trust, undermining trilateral defense cooperation, handing adversaries propaganda, and jeopardizing early-warning missions at Pituffik. Rudbeck’s (2020) analysis underscores that Greenland is no longer insulated from great-power rivalry, and that even allies may engage in subversive activity. For the United States, this episode should serve as a cautionary reminder that short-term political maneuvering can yield long-term strategic perils, especially when it undermines the trust of one of its most vital partners in the Arctic.

~ C. Constantin Poindexter, M.A. en Inteligencia, Certificado de Posgrado en Contrainteligencia, J.D., certificación CISA/NCISS OSINT, Certificación DoD/DoS BFFOC

References

Al Jazeera. 2025. “Denmark Summons US Envoy over Trump Allies’ Alleged Greenland Interference.” Al Jazeera, August 28, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/28/denmark-summons-us-envoy-over-trump-allies-greenland.

Associated Press. 2025. “Denmark Summons US Envoy over Alleged Trump Allies’ Interference in Greenland.” AP News, August 28, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/denmark-greenland-us-trump-6c9544314792cf1e287e21af06111c1e.

Danish Defence Intelligence Service. 2024. Intelligence Risk Assessment 2024. Copenhagen: FE. https://fe-ddis.dk/en.

Fleshman, William, Jennifer L. Larson, and Christopher Paul. 2020. “Deception and the Strategy of Influence.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.01331.

PBS NewsHour. 2025. “Denmark Summons US Envoy over Claims of Interference in Greenland.” PBS NewsHour, August 28, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/denmark-summons-u-s-envoy-over-claims-of-interference-in-greenland.

Rudbeck, Emma. 2020. How Should the Kingdom of Denmark React to the Increased Chinese, Russian, and U.S. Interference in Greenland in Its Coming Arctic Strategy? Master’s thesis, University of Southern Denmark. https://thesis.sdu.dk/download?id=2260.

U.S. Space Force. 2024. “12th Space Warning Squadron, Pituffik Space Base.” Fact Sheet, Department of the Air Force. https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/
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