New in SpyWeek: Putin Playing With Fire, Here and Abroad

Also: DNI's Congo initiative, CIA's Caracas flop, Kim's Trump card, Covert sub ops, Black budgets, AI warnings, China targets US officials & more

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MOSCOW’S DICEY MAYHEM: Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, says suspected Russian sabotage nearly caused a plane to crash earlier this year. Haldenwang said that “only a lucky coincidence meant that the package caught fire on the ground at a DHL logistics center in Leipzig and not in mid-air. He did not say if it was a passenger or freight plane,” the Financial Times reported. Ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin has been accused of conducting an “increasingly aggressive” campaign of sabotage across Europe. “We’ve seen arson, sabotage and more: dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness,” warned Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security and counter-intelligence agency, of the threat posed by Russia and the GRU, its military-intelligence agency. “The GRU in particular is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets,” he told The Economist on Oct. 8th.

The European Union, meanwhile, needs its own intelligence agency, according to Sauli Niinistö, a former president of Finland, which discarded decades of neutrality to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.