Edge State.

The tyranny of the penny.

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1. CIA Director William Burns believed there was a real risk in the fall of 2022 that Russia could use nuclear weapons on the battlefield against Ukraine, though he said the West should not be intimidated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats. “None of us should take lightly the risks of escalation,” Burns said Saturday in a moderated conversation with the U.K.’s secret intelligence chief Richard Moore at the Financial Times Weekend Festival. “There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said. “I have never thought, however, and this is the view of my agency, that we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that. Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to saber-rattle,” Burns added. (Sources: cnbc.com, youtube.com)

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2. Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has dented Vladimir Putin’s war narrative and triggered “questions” among the Russian elite about the point of the war, two of the world’s leading spy chiefs have said. CIA director Bill Burns said Kursk was “a significant tactical achievement” that had boosted Ukrainian morale and exposed Russia’s weaknesses. It has “raised questions . . . across the Russian elite about where is this all headed”, he said. He was speaking at the Financial Times’ Weekend festival in London on Saturday alongside MI6 chief Richard Moore. Moore said the Kursk offensive was “a typically audacious and bold move by the Ukrainians . . . to try and change the game” — although he cautioned it was “too early” to say how long Kyiv’s forces would be able to control the Russian territory they had seized. It is the first time the two heads have appeared together at a public event in the history of their agencies’ 77-year intelligence sharing partnership. It also represents the latest move by the US and British spy agencies to come out of the shadows to warn the countries they serve about the mounting dangers that the world faces. The spy chiefs spoke about what they called an unprecedented range of threats to the international world order, from Putin’s war in Ukraine and Russia’s campaign of sabotage operations across Europe to the rise of China and rapid technological change. One area of particular focus is the conflict in the Middle East. (Source: ft.com)

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3. Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, a move that gives Moscow another potent military tool in its war against Ukraine and follows stern Western warnings not to provide those arms to Moscow. Washington informed allies of Iran’s shipments this week, European officials said, including a briefing for ambassadors in Washington on Thursday. A U.S. official confirmed the missiles “have finally been delivered.” The shipment involves a couple of hundred short-range ballistic missiles, according to Western officials. Iran has a variety of such weapons, with a range stretching up to around 500 miles. “This is not the end,” a senior European official said, noting that Iran is expected to keep weapons flowing into Russia. The deliveries come as Ukraine’s air defenses are being severely challenged by the Russian missiles and drone barrages. Ukraine has struggled to contain the ballistic missiles fired by Russia. In the six months to March, for instance, Ukraine shot down just 10% of Russian-launched ballistic missiles, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the Ukrainian Air Force. Ballistic missiles are too fast and large for most air-defense systems.  The Patriot missile-defense system is Ukraine’s only reliable way to shoot down these missiles, but Kyiv has few of them. (Source: wsj.com)

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4. Ali Ghulam was the undisputed dollar king of Iraq for almost a decade. His three Baghdad banks wired tens of billions of dollars in that time outside the country, ostensibly for car parts, furniture and other imports. He was one of the biggest operators in an ad hoc banking system set up around two decades ago under the U.S. occupation that gave the Federal Reserve Bank of New York a key role in processing Iraq’s international transactions. Years later, when the Fed finally began looking closely at where the money was going, it shut him down almost overnight. U.S. officials suspect his banks were among more than two dozen Iraqi banks involved in funneling dollars to Iran and its militia allies, using front companies and falsified invoices to circumvent sanctions that block Iran from the global financial system. Audits of Ghulam’s banks completed in May, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, reveal extraordinary details of overseas dollar transactions that auditors said raised money-laundering concerns. Ghulam, in interviews, denied the allegations. (Source: wsj.com)

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5. Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists and grifters to organize at scale and to sidestep scrutiny from the authorities, has looked the other way as illegal and extremist activities have flourished openly on the app. The degree to which Telegram has been inundated by such content has not been previously reported. The Times investigation found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists who coordinate activities among almost one million people around the world. At least two dozen channels sold weapons. In at least 22 channels with more than 70,000 followers, MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were advertised for delivery to more than 20 countries. Hamas, ISIS and other terror groups have thrived on Telegram, often amassing large audiences across dozens of channels. The Times analyzed more than 40 channels associated with Hamas, which showed that average viewership surged up to 10 times after the Oct. 7 attacks, garnering more than 400 million views in October. Telegram is “the most popular place for ill-intentioned, violent actors to congregate,” said Rebecca Weiner, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism at the New York Police Department. “If you’re a bad guy, that’s where you will land.” (Sourc

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