Russia Targets the 2024 Paris Olympics
An arson attack on France's rail system, 2 Russians arrested, and a Russian disinformation campaign foiled in France and 7 Chechens detained in Belgium
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Russia Targets the 2024 Paris Olympics
Russia may be banned from the Olympics because *gestures broadly* but the big bad wolf is undeterred and has made its presence felt by proxy.
Hours before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, arsonists attacked France’s high-speed rail network by setting fires to rail locations around the country that have routes into the capital. The intent was to choke off rail routes into Paris from all directions and the arsonists set ablaze pipes containing signaling cables for the rail system. Fires were reported near the tracks on 3 lines before dawn and a separate attempt on another line was foiled by rail agents.
The CEO of national railway company SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, estimated that 800K passengers were impacted by the disruption. He also stated that evidence shows “a desire to seriously harm” the French people, adding, “The places were especially chosen to have the most serious impact, since each fire cut off two lines.”
As prosecutors opened an investigation, SNCF got to work to get operations back to normal. By Friday evening, it issued a statement ensuring that it would provide transport for all Olympic delegations and that it boosted ground and air surveillance. French Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete told the press that trains resumed operations by Friday afternoon and that most trains will be mostly back to normal on Saturday. Officials did caution to expect some delays through Sunday.
Prosecutors told the press that the arsonists damaged property that threatened the nation’s “fundamental interests” and that charges for this crime could carry prison sentences of up to 20 years.
This is a developing story.
The Russian Plot to Disrupt the Games
Earlier this week, French authorities announced that they dismantled a Russian disinformation campaign and arrested 2 men involved in a violent Russian-orchestrated plot to “destabilize the Olympic Games.”
One thing needs to be said about France and it’s that officials do not fuck around with national security. Officials erected a heavily surveilled security zone around Paris on July 18 called the “anti-terrorism perimeter” to ensure the safety of the 11M expected attendees at the games, including the 10,500 competing athletes. Paris is essentially on lock down and the only way to enter the zone is to have been registered and to submit to background checks for clearance.
And that’s not all. QR code passes are being used to track people’s movements and facial recognition devices have been installed around Paris to track for known criminals and foreign agents, especially foreign agents from Russia.
No European country has triggered Article 5 against Russia for Putin’s many assassinations on dissidents in NATO member countries or for its ongoing hybrid warfare. It wouldn’t be surprising if none do for what Russia has already been caught doing leading up to and, now, on opening day of the Olympics.
2 Russians arrested in France
On Tuesday, French authorities arrested a 40-year-old Russian man at his Paris apartment for being highly sus. Officials alleged that the Russian chef, who has lived in France for 14 years, is connected to the FSB and shared “intelligence with a foreign power [Russia] with a view to provoking hostilities in France.” That crime comes with a sentencing of 30 years in prison.
An investigation into this man has been ongoing and officials said that intelligence services have been tracking him for months. According to reporting by The Guardian, in May, investigators intercepted a phone call to his handler on his return trip from Istanbul back to Paris. Le Monde reported that he was kicked off his flight for “excessive alcohol consumption” and caught a flight from Bulgaria, which is where this conversation took place. It was allegedly about the opening ceremony.
On Wednesday, French authorities announced that they had arrested an 18-year-old man in Gironde, a region in southwest France, on suspicion of “planning a violent action against the Olympic Games.” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told French broadcaster BFMTV that this was a separate plot and that the youngster was taken into custody on Tuesday for targeting the “organization of the Games.”
Officials gave no more information about the suspect or what his plans were. They only told the press that they were investigating the matter. This is a developing story.
Russian Disinformation Campaign Dismantled
In addition to the physical disruptions, Russia deployed a disinformation campaign that used a geopolitical issue to instill fear among Olympics attendees. The problem with this for Russia is that international authorities and private companies were aware that Russia would do just this so it was easy to spot.
In June, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center issued a report revealing that one of Russia’s goals was to generate a threat of violence during the Paris Olympic Games “to deter spectators from attending the Games.”
Last Sunday, July 21, a doctored video was posted on X by an account with the handle “Hamas fighter,” which was created in February and has posted only a few dozen times. Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, told NBC News that the video was then laundered through Kremlin-friendly Arab and French West African news outlets on Monday, in a “classic Russian placement and layering strategy.”
By Tuesday it was reposted by Simeon Boikov, Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin’s Australian propagandist who goes by “Aussie Cossack” and squats in Sydney’s Russian Consulate. 2 hours after Boikov retweeted it, it was shared by Pravda-En, a Russian propaganda outlet, and spread through pro-Russian channels on Telegram, including Golos Mordora and cited Arabic-language media reports.
The video is doctored to address French President Emmanuel Macron and the people of france in Arabic. In it, a man with a scarf wrapped around his face says “rivers of blood will flow through the streets of Paris” for France’s support of Israel in the war and for welcoming Israeli athletes.
But it turns out that the video was recycled from a previous one created for Ukraine by a disinformation unit within Russia’s Internet Research Agency called Storm-1516.
Researchers from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center told NBC News that this video has the classic markers of a Storm-1516 campaign. This includes creating videos in which a conspiracy is alleged and then posting them on social media via new accounts to launder through Telegram and fake websites that impersonate local news organizations or as sponsored content on foreign news sites.
7 Chechens detained in Belgium for suspected terrorism
Late Thursday, Belgian authorities executed a series of raids that resulted in 7 individuals being detained for suspected terrorist activities.
The Belgian Federal prosecutor's office told Reuters that 3 suspected members of Islamic State’s Afghan branch ISIS-Khorasan were among those detained and were charged on Friday with planning a terrorist attack. They also confirmed that the remaining 4 were released of which 3 were questioned by an investigative judge.
Neighboring countries to France are coordinating security efforts for the Paris Olympics. Some events are being held in Lille, which is just 12 miles from the France-Belgium border. And they’re not taking any chances with security. The detained were taken into custody in Antwerp, Brussels, Liège, and Ghent and are all Chechens. Chechnya is a republic of Russia.
Spokesperson Arnaud d’Oultremont told The Associated Press that investigators had “not yet identified the suspects’ concrete objectives.”
This is a developing story. There have been no indications that this raid is connected to the arrests made in France. But there is a common chaos agent denominator and that’s Russia.
China and Russia military aircraft intercepted by NORAD off Alaskan coast
Speaking of saber-rattling, on Wednesday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) intercepted 4 Russian and Chinese bombers off the coast of Alaska. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the press that the aircraft did not enter U.S. airspace and got within 200 miles of the Alaskan coast, but that the military cooperation between Russia and China raises concerns. Wednesday’s exercise marks the first time the two allies’ aircraft have flown together in international airspace in this North American area. It also underscores their expanding military cooperation following naval ships from both being spotted in the Bering Sea in 2022 and 2023.
This also marks the first time that Chinese bomber aircraft have flown within the Alaskan Air Defense Idenfication Zone and the first time Chinese and Russian aircraft have taken off from the same base in northeast Russia. U.S. and Canadian fighter jets with NORAD detected, tracked, and intercepted 2 Russian Tupolev Tu-95 long-range bombers and the two Chinese H-6 bombers.
An Olympics scandal by Canada’s women’s soccer team kicks off Paris games
Days before Friday’s Opening Ceremony, Canada’s women’s soccer team—and defending Olympic champions—were caught using drones to spy on New Zealand’s training sessions. The teams still went toe-to-toe on Thursday in a group match in which Canada defeated New Zealand 2-1. But because of the bad optics, Canada’s head coach Bev Priestman voluntarily sat out the game.
On Monday, a supervisor of the training sites reported a drone hovering above Auguste Dury stadium to the police. In a statement, the Saint-Etienne prosecutor’s office stated that Lombardi “had effectively filmed the closed-door training of the New Zealand women’s team, with the help of a drone” on two separate occasions. Lombardi was arrested and questioned by prosecutors where he admitted that the video footage from the drone “helped him learn the tactics of the opposing team.”
He was charged with maintaining an unmanned aircraft over a prohibited area, which charries a maximum prison sentence of 1 year and a fine of $49K. Hours before the match, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) swiftly fired 2 team staffers for misconduct—Joseph Lombardi, an analyst, and Jasmine Mander, an assistant coach. Lombardi also accepted an 8 month prison sentence, the confiscation of the drone and other electronics seized from his hotel room, and was sent back to Canada. Mander was also put on a flight back to Canada but was not charged.
But Canada Soccer announced it will conduct an independent investigation and FIFA has launched disciplinary proceedings as well. It’s probably because this isn’t the first time a Canadian soccer team has used a drone to spy on an opposing team. In 2021, Honduras’ men’s soccer team abruptly stopped a training session prior to its World Cup qualifier against Canada after discovering a drone hovering over the field.
POTUS signs Federal Prison Oversight Act into law
On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Federal Prison Oversight Act into law following its passage in the Senate on July 10. The oversight bill was introduced in 2022 by Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and was sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Braun (R-IN). The House passed the bill in May, which was shepherded by Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Lucy McBath (D-GA). An independent ombudsman will be appointed to oversee federal prison operations and field complaints. The DOJ inspector general will also conduct risk-based inspections of all 122 facilities and will assign each one a risk score, as well as provide recommendations to address failures.
Video game actors strike while developers unionize
On Thursday, SAG-AFTRA announced that unionized video game actors and performers, including voice actors, motion-capture workers, and stune workers, will go on strike beginning Friday. The strike comes after nearly 2 years of negotiating with major video game publishers over a new contract remained gridlocked. SAG-AFTRA told the press that progress over fair wages and worker safety was reached, but that publishers—Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts (EA), Insomniac Games, Warner Bros. (WB) Games, and The Walt Disney Company—refused to budge on ensuring worker protections for the use of artificial intelligence (AI). In September 2023, the union voted 98% in favor of authorizing a strike—roughly one year after the contract expired. After negotiations broke down last week, SAG-AFTRA’s national board voted on July 20 to give authority to the union’s chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland to call a strike.
The industry strike follows a massive unionization effort by game developers for Microsoft. On Wednesday, World of Warcraft developers officially formed the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). It is now the largest wall-to-wall union at the tech giant—meaning inclusive of multiple departments—and includes more than 500 designers, engineers, artists, producers, etc. across Activision Blizzard offices in California and Massachusetts. (Microsoft acquired the company in October 2023.) Also, 60 Blizzard QA testers based in Austin, Texas—who work on Diablo and Hearthstone—unionized with the CWA as the Texas Blizzard QA United.
The new game developers guild is significant as it comes less than one week after Bethesda Game Studios—the maker of blockbuster titles such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout—unionized with the CWA. This guild, which includes 241 members across Bethesda’s offices in Maryland (known as CWA Local 2108) and Texas (known as CWA Local 6215), is the second largest wall-to-wall union at Microsoft. (Microsoft acquired Bethesda in March 2021.)
Before this year, the majority of the industry’s unionization efforts were by QA workers. In March, 600 QA workers at Activision unionized with the CWA to form the Activision Quality Assurance United – CWA, which covers workers across the company’s offices in California, Minnesota, and Texas. QA workers formed the first unions at Activision Blizzard and at Microsoft Game Studios in 2022.
JD Vance gets meme’d by a couch
In a really weird turn of events, a joke posted online about GOP vice presidential running mate JD Vance has morphed into urban legend and may end up permanently staining the Ohio senator’s reputation. Earlier this week, The Associated Press fact-checked the claim that Vance wrote in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy that he had sex with a couch, which has since gone viral and become a meme. But, by Thursday, the AP retracted the fact check and archived the article page. The original article page now displays a “page unavailable” error message. To be clear, the joke that Vance wrote about having intersectional relations in his book has been debunked, but since the AP can’t verify whether Vance actually did the act or not, it retracted the fact check. This is how urban legends are born and Vance will just have to sit and lean back into it.
Grand Jury indicts North Korean military intelligence operative for cyberattacks
On Wednesday, a Kansas City, Kansas grand jury indicted a North Korean military intelligence operative for launching cyberattacks against the United States. The Department of Justice announced the criminal charges against the hacker, Rim Jong Hyok, on Thursday, alleging that he was part of a conspiracy by the Andariel Unit of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau to hack and extort U.S. hospitals and other healthcare providers. The Justice Department also revealed in a press release that the unit laundered ransom proceeds through a Chinese bank to fund more cyberattacks on U.S. military bases, NASA, and government and energy entities worldwide from which it stole sensitive information.
The 17-page indictment reveals that Hyok and his co-conspirators targeted 17 entities across 11 states, as well as defense and energy companies in China (a key NK ally), South Korea, and Taiwan with malware. The mission was to steal information for NK military intelligence to use to advance the isolated country’s military and nuclear capabilities. For more than 3 months, the unit had access to NASA’s computer system where it stole 17 gigabytes of data. They also gained access to systems for defense companies in California and Michigan, as well as Randolph Air Force base in Texas and Robins Air Force base in Georgia. A senior FBI official told reporters that the unit was searching for information about fighter aircraft, missile defense systems, satellite communications, and radar systems.
An arrest is unlikely, but an indictment enables the U.S. Government to issue stricter sanctions against North Korea.
California Governor puts pressure on state agencies to criminalize homelessness
On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies and departments to adopt homeless encampent policies that are consistent with the one by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Now, all state agencies must coordinate with local service providers to take inventory of encampments and dismantle them. This state directive follows the Supreme Court decision that ruled that prohibiting encampments on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” That ruling also legalized fining, jailing, and removing homeless individuals for violating ordinances. It also does not require cities to provide enough shelter beds for those impacted by encampment removals.
While Newsom does not have the authority to enforce the order, his administration can apply pressure by withholding funding for municipalities. California has the largest homeless population in the United States—more than 180K people, which amounts to roughly one third of the nation’s 653,100 homeless. The governor has spent $24B on cleaning up streets and housing people, but has refused to account for whether any of the funded efforts are improving the situation or to admit that the money has not gone toward a solution, but a temporary bandaid.