US accuses Russia of power-grid hacks; Seven die in helo crash; Overhaul at ODNI; A puzzling calm in the Persian Gulf; and just a bit more...

Here’s a first: “The U.S. government publicly blamed Russia for a multi-year cyber campaign to break into American nuclear power facilities and other critical industries,” Reuters’ Dustin Volz reported Thursday.

The news this comes out of: New sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department Thursday morning on “19 Russian people and five groups, including Moscow’s intelligence services, for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other malicious cyber attacks.” The Daily Beast dives into those sanctions in more detail, here.

Reminder: The sanctions required by Congress passed on a Senate vote of 98 to 2 and House vote of 419 to 3, New America’s Peter Singer tweeted Thursday.

But back to that Russia-hacking-the-U.S.-power-grid story: There’s not a ton of detail that’s publicly releasable yet, it would seem. But of the things we can talk about, we know “The campaign targeted engineers and technical staff with access to industrial controls, suggesting the hackers were interested in disrupting operations," said Ben Read, manager for cyber espionage analysis with cyber security company FireEye Inc.

U.S. officials “declined to say whether the campaign was still ongoing or provide specifics on which targets were breached, or how close hackers may have gotten to operational control systems.” Read the rest from Reuters, here.

Pentagon spox: Russia is violating the Syrian ceasefire. "The Russians made a deliberate choice not to restrain the Assad regime. Thus, the carnage in East Ghouta continues. Russia is morally complicit and responsible for Assad's atrocities," Dana White told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse.

Going further, White said, "Russia is either incompetent, committing illegal acts or both. Russia is propping up the Assad regime, not targeting Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists in Syria. Russia could stop the civilian casualties in Syria." A bit more, here.

From Defense One

There Are More and More Threats that Militaries Can't Stop. People's Forces Can Help // Elisabeth Braw: Populations are not fragile flowers – far from it. Treating them as a national-security resource can boost a society's resiliency, and even its deterrence.

Cold War Tactics Return to Britain // Yasmeen Serhan: Spies, intrigue, and expulsions are back in a way not seen in decades.

Telling the Truth About CIA Torture // Ali Soufan: Trump's nominee to lead the agency should answer a number of tough questions about her role in its now-defunct "enhanced interrogation" program.

Global Business Brief, March 15// Marcus Weisgerber: When 3D printing collides with the law; Interview with Sikorsky's chief; AF1's new hangar; Top Gun 2; and more.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Email us. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. OTD1802: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was created to build a military academy at West Point, N.Y.

Helicopter crash in western Iraq claims the lives of all seven U.S. service members on board. The aircraft — a HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter “went down near the town of Qaim in Anbar Province at approximately 2:45 p.m. ET.,” USA Today reports this morning.
"The crash did not appear to be the result of enemy activity," according to the U.S. military. But we could not find USA Today’s claim that CNN reported the helicopter "was not on a combat mission when it crashed" in CNN’s report of the incident. This story is still developing, so expect a bit more — including the names of those who died — in the coming days.

McMaster on the way out? That’s what the Washington Post reported Thursday evening. Citing “five people with knowledge of the plans,” the Post wrote that President Trump has decided to fire Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and is interviewing candidates to become his third national security adviser in 14 months.
But: At 10:12 p.m. on Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders tweeted: “Just spoke to @POTUS and Gen. H.R. McMaster - contrary to reports they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC.” So stay tuned.

Overhaul at ODNI. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is reorganizing his office, which oversees the nation’s 16-agency intel community, Politico reports. The plan, based in part on a survey of ODNI employees and revealed to Coats’ staff on Wednesday, “will focus the office on four major functions: integrating intelligence streams from the various agencies it oversees; allocating resources among the agencies; promoting national security partnerships that include the private sector and foreign intelligence services; and developing strategies to grapple with future threats.” It’s meant to make ODNI more agile, and push decisions “out of the top-level offices and down to the lowest logical level of the bureaucracy.” Read on, here.
The National Reconnaissance Office has a leak, writes Seamus Hughes, an intel-policy official-turned-GWU researcher. “A former contractor was fired, allegedly stole $340,000 worth of military equipment, and posted classified code online.” Hughes lays it out in a series of tweeted images from Justice Department documents, here.
What’s the NRO? The once-supersecret spy agency builds America’s gigantic, bleeding-edge intel-gathering satellites, like these Cold War examples but presumably far more advanced now. Its budget is roughly on par with the NSA’s and about one-third less than the CIA’s.

In February, Chinese hackers began escalating attacks on U.S. companies linked to the disputed South China Sea, Bloomberg reports today off recent findings from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, Inc. "The suspected Chinese cyber-espionage group dubbed TEMP.Periscope appeared to be seeking information...in areas like radar range or how precisely a system in development could detect activity at sea," according to FireEye analyst Fred Plan.
Kinds of data targeted: Tech that could be used "to determine how closely a vessel could sail to a geographical feature."
Attack vector: spear-phishing, “in which emails with links and attachments containing malware are used to open back doors into computer networks. In some examples, the emails were made to look as if they originated from a 'big international maritime company,'" Plan told Bloomberg. Read the rest, here.

Trump-Kim summit forecast, of sorts, from PACOM’s Adm. Harris: "I think we can't be overly optimistic on outcomes. We'll just have to see where it goes if and when we have the summit," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. A bit later, he added, “We've never been in a position where a president, our President, has met with a leader of North Korea ever, so I don't have a way to predict the future. I just think that we have to go into this eyes wide open."
In the in-between time, Harris’s troops and sailors "will continue to fully support the President's maximum pressure campaign and be ready to respond with our allies and partners to the full range of contingency scenarios." More from CNN, here.

FWIW: North Korea’s foreign minister is in Sweden today, possibly setting the stage for the upcoming talks with President Trump, the New York Times reported Thursday. “Sweden has long played an intermediary role between the United States and North Korea, which do not have diplomatic relations. With the United States lacking an embassy in North Korea, Sweden is the so-called protecting power that provides consular services for Americans, including meeting with citizens who are imprisoned there.”
Other moves Thursday: The North Korean FM's "trip to Sweden came as South Korea’s foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, traveled to Washington Thursday to meet with State Department officials with the aim of keeping a Trump-Kim meeting on track. The recent firing of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has fueled fears that a changing of the guard at the State Department could derail plans for the talks." More here.

Secret talks between Yemen's Houthis and Saudi Arabia? “Diplomats and Yemeni political sources” told Reuters this idea has been in the works for the past two months. According to those sources, “the Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam had been in direct communication with Saudi officials in Oman on a comprehensive solution to the conflict.”
Notable: “a representative of the internationally recognised government” was not invited, “underlining a series of deepening Yemeni squabbles which have hobbled the coalition war effort.”
The more you know: There have already been three rounds of attempted peace talks between the Houthis and the Yemeni government. Perhaps without the latter now, maybe the result will be different. According to Reuters, Yemeni officials were not happy they were left out of these “secret” talks. More here.

SecDef Mattis is still puzzled by Iran’s lack of "provocative and dangerous maneuvers against U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf," the Associated Press reported Thursday traveling with Mattis from Bahrain back to Washington. “It’s like an outlier, and I don’t know why,” he said.
By the numbers: “For the first eight months of 2017, the Navy recorded 14 instances of what it describes as “unsafe and/or unprofessional” interactions with Iranian forces. It recorded 35 in 2016 and 23 in 2015.”
Other ways Mattis says Iran is being provocative: Weapons testing and Iran’s involvement in Iraqi elections. To the first point, the AP writes that Mattis explained “the strait between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, off the coast of southern Yemen, is being used as a ‘proving ground’ for advanced Iranian weaponry. This includes anti-ship missiles, radars, mines, ballistic missiles and explosive boats.”
To the second point, which formed the thrust of AP’s report: “We have worrisome evidence that Iran is trying to influence — using money — the Iraqi elections,” Mattis said. “That money is being used... to sway candidates, to sway votes — not an insignificant amount of money, we believe, and it’s highly unhelpful... We know that they are doing what they can to impact the elections, and we don’t like it.” Read on, here.

From the region: “Saudi Prince Says Kingdom Will Build Nuclear Weapons If Iran Does,” via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. This news comes from an upcoming CBS interview with Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman, slated to air in full on Sunday.
In his own words: “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”
The Iranian response came quick, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi calling MBS a "delusional naive person" who "never talks, but with lies and bitterness" and has "no idea of politics." More here.

Finally this week: Two very short clips of drone training success and failure. They come to us from the UK’s Royal Tank Regiment, training on the handheld recon drone, the Black Hornet 2. First to the success, here. Then to the failure — which, if you’ve ever flown an off-the-shelf drone that sells for less than $50, you know what this is like — over here.
Have a safe weekend, gang. And we’ll catch you again on Monday!