The Wire - August 28, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z August 28, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: UKRAINE WAR REIGNITES AS BOTH SIDES LAUNCH OFFENSIVES. WHITE HOUSE ALLEGEDLY WITHDRAWS PLAN TO IMPORT 600,000 CHINESE STUDENTS AFTER MAJOR PENTAGON CYBER VULNERABILITY EXPOSED.//

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-International Events-

Europe: Overnight the war escalated with large-scale missile/drone attacks being conducted by Ukraine and Russia. Missile strikes were reported in Kiev, at least one of which struck the building currently being used by British advisors. In Russia, Ukrainian forces launched a major attack as well, targeting oil refineries hundreds of miles behind the lines.

Analyst Comment: As usual, who started what is hard to determine. Some say that the strikes at the British council office were actually the debris of Ukrainian missile defenses, whereas others say it was a deliberate strike. Likewise, what was struck in Russia is not entirely confirmable, though Ukraine has increasingly started to target legitimate and militarily-valuable oil refineries over the past few months. Either way, this latest spat likely won't completely derail diplomatic efforts, but it will probably pump the breaks on peace talks for a few days.

-HomeFront-

Washington D.C. - The White House has allegedly reversed the decision to admit 600,000 Chinese students, backtracking on the policy to state that the total number of Chinese visas issued per year will remain as before, at around 300,000.

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Analyst Comments: The reversal of the 600,000 Chinese students policy is a positive move for national security, but this will probably come back again at some point. Continuing political tradition, the White House cannot admit that their policy decision was wrong, so they have to phrase this as simply a misunderstanding. This probably came after defense officials got involved as the national security concerns are very openly observable on this issue. On the same exact day as this announcement, SECDEF Pete Hegseth released a video explaining a recent discovery at the Department of Defense. Pentagon systems were accessed by unauthorized contractors (who just so happened to be Chinese nationals employed by Microsoft) to service Department of Defense servers, and that Pentagon data was being stored on data servers in China.

This short video, though causing more questions than answers, is the tip of the iceberg regarding what is very likely to be a very big problem. A two-minute video of the SECDEF explaining that the entire existence of the Pentagon was probably breached by Chinese spies embedded at the Microsoft corporation (and that the practice has been going on for years), is not a good sign. It has long been suspected by anyone remotely connected with defense industry that any byte of data more complicated than a pocket calculator has probably been breached by the Chinese military. This has been the quiet assumption for many years, and the SECDEF's recent statement confirms that this idea is certainly more true than anyone would like to think. Considering these developments (and the overwhelming backlash) the White House will probably seek to quiet down the import of Chinese students for a while. However, this will be something to keep an eye on just in case politicians try to slip this by the American people once again.

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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