Dr. Dave Venable
@davevenable
Cyber Strategy ∙ Chair @ISRSngo ∙ @TheCipherBrief & @AiiNonProfit ∙ Ex USIC/NSA CNE/State ∙ CISO ∙ Art & Rare Book Collector
Very honored to be included in @TribeOfHackers Blue Team. Thanks so much to @marcusjcarey and @jen_jin, I can’t wait to sit down and read the whole book! I’ve loved and learned a lot from every edition of the #TribeOfHackers series!
Conspiracy is the reverse Occam’s Razor. Not only is it usually logistically impossible, it’s almost always the least likely and most complex explanation:
Most bad things can be attributed to: - incompetence - stupidity - ignorance Over systemic conspiracy.
EU and US respond to to Spain's Huawei deal. Great report from @barneyjopson and @BMoens in @FT: ft.com/content/e99638… As we wrote in @thecipherbrief , this isn’t just Spain’s risk, it’s Europe’s and NATO's: thecipherbrief.com/huawei-spain-i…
China's Disinformation Offensive in Taiwan Inside the CCP's Evolving Influence Campaign #TheCipherBrief thecipherbrief.com/china-s-disinf…
Check out my latest piece with @MVolkivskyi for @thecipherbrief on the impact of Spain's recent Huawei contract on European intelligence. thecipherbrief.com/huawei-spain-i…
Russia’s drones aren’t just made in Russia. They’re powered by China. Engines. Electronics. Even HW‑T8‑80F pick‑and‑place machines building the circuit boards that guide kamikaze strikes on Ukraine. Let’s break down the hidden supply chain 🧵 1/
North Korea’s freelance IT operatives are infiltrating global companies. ISRS Advisory Council member @MalwareJake warns: “If these ops are revenue-driven, you’re highly unlikely to detect DPRK actors through technical means alone.” Read more: isrs.ngo/fpb/north-kore…
From an OPSEC perspective, if the Astronomer CEO and HR Chief had just smiled and waved, we would have never heard anything about this. (Not to encourage that sort of thing, but just classic Streisand Effect)
Profile: GRU cyber and hybrid threat operations - GOV.UK share.google/sh5JABNoaqLOLD…
Good freaking grief.
Spain awards Huawei contracts to manage intelligence agency wiretaps therecord.media/spain-awards-c…
Can we please try to simplify attribution problems before we encourage this kind of nonsense?
Is "hacking back" ever ethically justifiable, even if it's illegal?
Next question: impose cost by letting a sysadmin who couldn’t protect their own system attack some grandma’s machine that got used as a jump point by an attacker?
Whoa
Fun little experiment: are LLMs trained on leaked but still classified data? (And/or good at retrieving knowledge from those leaked primary source documents)? Test: "What was CROSSBONES in an NTOC context?" Answer is 100% classified, not in blogs or press coverage.
Great read about the closed-door Ukraine briefing at #natosummit2025 from Mykola Volkivskyi and @ISRSngo isrs.ngo/fpb/nato-summi…
“Ukraine’s fight is Europe’s front line.” At @NATO’s 2025 Summit, Ukraine isn’t just asking for support, it’s setting the agenda. ISRS’s Mykola Volkivskyi reports from The Hague on defense spending, deterrence, and a new strategic doctrine. isrs.ngo/fpb/nato-summit
Iran Retaliates, A good analysis from @isrsngo isrs.ngo/fpb/iran-retal…
New from ISRS Chair @davevenable in @thecipherbrief: The next war won’t target cities, it will target chokepoints. Critical infrastructure is now the frontline of strategic disruption. Read why resilience is the new deterrence: 🔗 thecipherbrief.com/cyber-critical…
Check this out from @davevenable thecipherbrief.com/cyber-critical…