This is the Intelligence Feed.
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 Saudi Arabia launched multiple unpublicized strikes on Iran in retaliation for attacks on the kingdom during the broader Middle East war, according to two Western officials and two Iranian officials. The strikes, carried out by the Royal Saudi Air Force, were assessed by Western officials to have taken place…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) published a report on May 12, 2026, documenting what it described as the first confirmed instance of a threat actor using an artificial intelligence model to discover and weaponize a zero-day vulnerability. For the first time, GTIG identified a threat actor using a zero-day…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 The European Union's Foreign Affairs Council reached unanimous political agreement on May 12 to impose asset freezes and travel bans on a group of Israeli settlers and settler organizations in the West Bank, alongside parallel measures targeting leading figures in Hamas. The decision, reached during a meeting of the…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 Kaja Kallas, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, publicly rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder serve as a European representative in potential peace negotiations over Ukraine. Kallas made her position clear while speaking to journalists ahead of a…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 President Donald Trump declared on May 12 that the U.S.-Iran ceasefire is "on massive life support" after Tehran submitted a counterproposal that Washington rejected as fundamentally incompatible with its core demands, particularly on Iran's nuclear program. Trump said the ceasefire was in critical condition after Tehran's latest offer did…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 President Donald Trump said Monday he would raise U.S. arms sales to Taiwan directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a summit in Beijing, placing a decades-old cornerstone of U.S.-Taiwan defense policy on the bilateral negotiating table. "I'm going to have that discussion," Trump told reporters, acknowledging that Xi…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who served as NATO Secretary General from 2009 to 2014, called this week for European nations to form a "coalition of the willing" capable of organizing the continent's conventional defense without relying on the United States, citing what he described as mounting uncertainty over Washington's commitment…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 The Department of Defense released 162 declassified files on unidentified anomalous phenomena on May 8, publishing them through a newly launched government website at war.gov/UFO, as part of a multiagency initiative ordered by President Donald Trump [1][2]. The files represent the first tranche released under PURSUE, the Presidential Unsealing…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Rome that the United States is awaiting an Iranian response to its latest proposal to end the ongoing conflict, even as a fresh military exchange in the Strait of Hormuz cast doubt on the durability of the existing ceasefire. Rubio said…
Dispatch Washington · May 16, 2026 President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a three-day cessation of hostilities running May 9 through May 11, timed to coincide with Russia's Victory Day, the annual commemoration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The ceasefire would…