China, Russia hacks exploiting US spies; JSOC book leaks worry commanders; Turkey finally bombs ISIS; UAE troops in Yemen; And a bit more.

China and Russia are “aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases—including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms—to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents,” U.S. officials told the L.A. Times.
The casualties to U.S. intelligence so far: “At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised.”
“Unprecedented” U.S. sanctions against China are in the works. Right around the time Chinese President Xi Jinping makes his first appearance at the White House in September, the Obama administration could issue a major response to “the rising wave of ­cyber-economic espionage initiated by Chinese hackers, who officials say have stolen everything from nuclear power plant designs to search engine source code to confidential negotiating positions of energy companies,” the Washington Post reports, as “officials from national security agencies, as well as at Treasury, which is the lead agency on economic sanctions under the executive order, have been eager to push ahead.”
Sanctions of this kind would “would mark the first use of an order signed by President Obama in April establishing the authority to freeze financial and property assets of, and bar commercial transactions with, individuals and entities overseas who engage in destructive attacks or commercial espionage in cyberspace.”
The criteria: The alleged dirty business of sanctioned companies and officials “must meet one of four ‘harms’ [laid out in the April executive order]: attacking critical infrastructure, such as a power grid; disrupting major computer networks; stealing intellectual property or trade secrets; or benefiting from the stolen secrets and property.
Rising urgency. “Just last month, the FBI said that economic espionage cases surged 53 percent in the past year, and that China accounted for most of that.” Officials also noted the draft sanctions are not a response to the enormous breach at the Office of Personnel Management, though “the severity of the OPM incidents helped convince wavering officials that firm action in the economic spying realm was warranted.”
Delicate timing: “I can see maybe [the White House would] shift the timing by a few days,” one administration official said, “but I can’t imagine they’d shift the overall decision,” especially since White House officials are “on the same page now” regarding the need for a response of some kind. Read the rest, here.
And China just showed off new ballistic missiles during rehearsals for its Thursday parade to commemorate victory over Japan in WWII, IHS Janes reported, noting, “Perhaps the most prominent revelation was the DF-26 3,000-4,000 km intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM).” Get up to speed on that and a half-dozen other missiles, warheads and ICBMs, here.
How is the parade dividing China’s neighbors in the region? India and Japan’s heads of state are skipping the circus; South Korea’s president is attending. Bloomberg has more on that front, here.
Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is set to arrive in China today for a four-day visit capped by the parade Thursday, Reuters reports. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for atrocities in Darfur, but since China is not a member of the ICC, the alleged war criminal will probably have a Coke and smile and enjoy the show.

Attention, U.S. special operators: classified leaks aren’t yours to share. That’s the word from Defense Secretary Ash Carter ahead of the Monday book launch of “Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command,” by defense journalist Sean Naylor, reports Defense One’s Kevin Baron. “Obviously, it’s not up to any individual who is entrusted with national security secrets to disclose them,” Carter said Friday, when he was asked about the book, “and especially when it would affect the ability to protect our people and our country, our compromised secrets.” The book is already riling up the intelligence and special operator community for what it reveals (and alleges)—it could be an interesting week. Let us know what you think.

Turkey is finally in on the air campaign against the Islamic State, or ISIS, after nine months of lobbying by U.S. officials. “Our warplanes, along with coalition fighter jets, have started joint air operations as of last night against Daesh targets that pose a threat to our country’s security,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
A Vice News journalist and his fixer will appear in Turkish court today after their arrest late last week on grounds they supported PKK militants. Now Turkish officials have charged the two British citizens with supporting ISIS.
ISIS reportedly destroys another world heritage site in Syria. ISIS used explosives to blow up more of a 2,000-year-old ancient temple in Palmyra, Syria, WaPo reports. This not long after the group demolished the smaller nearby temple of Baal Shaamin last week.
In Iraq, ISIS is trying to quell unrest in the town of Rutbah, bordering Jordan, by tying some 100 residents to light poles and detaining some 200 others, the town’s mayor tells AP this morning. More on the ISIS fight below.

Back stateside, DARPA is ramping up its search for swarm drones that it can retrieve in mid-air, Defense One Tech Editor Patrick Tucker reports. “In what some might regard as a swipe at certain high-priced fighter jets, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced a new program to develop distributed drones that can be recovered in the air via a C-130 transport plane, and then prepped for re-use 24 hours later. They’re calling them Gremlins.” Read the rest, here.
Enough with the talk of “killer robots”—it’s cramping DARPA’s effort to get ahead of the robotics curve, Gill Pratt, the agency’s robotics challenge program manager tells Tucker in a Q&A just ahead of Pratt’s departure from DARPA.
What’s the biggest problem with robotics in national security? “People have this notion that robots are dangerous because they have legs, so perhaps they can come get us. The danger is not in the legs. It’s in the camera and the microphone,” Pratt says. Read that exchange in full, here.

From Defense One

Need a blueprint for how to respond to a state-sponsored cyber attack? Tobias Feakin, director of the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, attempts to fill a growing gap in 21st-century deterrence with this framework that lays out escalating levels of response to cyber incidents ranging from simply defacing a website all the way up to “loss of life.”

Welcome to Monday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Kevin Baron. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Here’s our subscribe link. And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.

The U.A.E. has stepped up its role in the war for Yemen. A “secretive” intervention of nearly 100 Emirati troops into the port city of Aden in July may have helped turn the tide of months of Houthi advances south, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The ground operation, which Saudi Arabia has joined, is the biggest by Sunni Arab states against the growing influence of Shiite Iran since the Arab Spring began.”
Why the U.A.E.? “Saudi Arabia’s ground forces, often insufficiently trained, have had few successes in this war. The U.A.E., by contrast, had rotated its elite troops for more than a decade through combat deployments against the Taliban in southern and eastern Afghanistan. In part as a result, it possesses what some U.S. officials consider the second-best military in the Middle East, after Israel.”
And Saudi-led jets struck what they said was a bomb-making factory in northern Yemen on Sunday. Residents, however, told Reuters the strikes killed three-dozen civilians. And this remains a problem for the coalition since, Reuters adds, “In another air raid on the capital Sanaa, residents said four civilians were killed when a bomb hit their house near a military base in the south of the city…Air strikes killed 65 people in the frontline city of Taiz last Friday, most of them civilians, and the bombing of a milk factory in Western Yemen in July killed 65 people including 10 children.”
Meantime, the Saudi-led coalition reportedly just got an influx of some 5,000 militia fighters from the southern region, primarily in and around Aden. That bit from AFP, here.

Iran deal sitrep: Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley is now the 31st Senate Democrat to come out in support of the Iran deal, The Hill reports. This leaves the party just three votes shy of having enough Senate support to ensure passage of the deal despite Republican objections. Thirteen Senate Dems remain undecided.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: It’s now or never for Pakistan to curb cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. That’s what U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice told leaders in Islamabad on Sunday. Background: “The Afghan government has lashed out at Pakistan over a series of deadly bombings in Kabul in recent weeks that have killed dozens of people—including three Americans—and which the Afghan government blames on the Haqqani network, a jihadist group it says is based in Pakistan,” WSJ reports.
What’s in it for Pakistan? “$300 million in U.S. military aid if it doesn’t crack down harder on the Haqqani network.”

What would U.S. advisors do if sent to the front lines of the counter-ISIS fight? Presumably they would help strengthen and refine the accuracy of coalition airstrikes. However, as Bing West writes in this WaPo op-ed, “Some scenes will shock. Iraqi soldiers will execute Islamic State terrorists while advisers watch. And what if an American is captured and burned alive? If we send in air controllers, we are committing to war without a public consensus at home and with Iraqi and Iranian generals determining the battlefield strategy.”
Talk about a delicate region. There are four (arguably five) wars taking place in the Middle East right now, BBC reports and tries to make sense of it all, here.

Ash Carter now has a blueprint for making the military’s personnel system a bit more competitive with the civilian side—adding flexibility and options for continuing education that have a hefty price tag, Military Times reports. “The proposals will cost money—for targeted pay raises for troops, to build massive new computer systems, to send troops to Ivy League civilian graduate schools and to create new offices with highly skilled employees, among other things. In total, the package of reforms might cost more than $1 billion a year, according to one defense official familiar with the plan.” Carter is expected to make a formal statement on the 120-page report by the end of September.

That F-35 vs. A-10 test? Chill, it’s not til 2018. The Pentagon's Office of Operational Test and Evaluation stirred the A-10 pot with its news of a dogfight, of sorts, but it really only shows the A-10 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, Defense News reports. F-15s will be included, among others. The story, here.
While we’re on the A-10—for the low, low price of $12.99, you can have your own shot glass made from a used Warthog 30mm shell casing.

Lastly today, we remember retired decorated Navy SEAL Capt. Tim Holden, 64, who was struck by a car and killed Friday morning while riding his bicycle in Bethesda, Md. “During his military career, Tim served as Commanding Officer of SEAL Team ONE in San Diego. He deployed as Deputy Commander, Naval Special Warfare Task Group Central, in support of Operation Desert Shield and as Commander of Naval Special Warfare Task Unit MIKE for Operation Desert Storm. Captain Holden also served as Commodore Special Warfare Group ONE in San Diego. He retired in 2001,” an obit here reads. Holden went on to work as a tech executive, holding down a spot as Chief Strategy Officer for the firm IOMAXIS, based in Springfield, Va.