Russia

Last August, the intel world was abuzz following the news that a previously unknown hacker collective, "The Shadow Brokers" had hacked and released legitimate hacking tools from the NSA's own special-ops entity, the "Equation Group", with initial speculation emerging that the Russians may have penetrated the US spy agency as suggested by none other than Edward Snowden. The Shadow Brokers released a bunch of the organization's hacking tools, and were asking for 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million at the time) to release more files, however failed to find a buyer.

It appears efforts to improve British relations (especially trade, post-Brexit) with Russia are on hold as British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has cancelled his forthcoming trip to Moscow...

I will now not travel to Moscow on Monday 10 April. My priority is talks w/ my #G7 counterparts about Syria and Russia's support for #Assad

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 8, 2017

In the span of just one week, President Trump and his team have pivoted from declaring that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad could stay in power, to launching airstrikes against his regime—and possibly committing the United States to a new military conflict whose scope and scale are unknown.   

Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,

Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

Paul Craig Roberts