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north korea
US Navy SEALs 'Slaughtered' Civilians During Botched 2019 North Korea Mission
Congress was reportedly never informed about the covert attempt by the first Trump administration to plant a listening device in North Korea during high-stakes nuclear negotiations.
Sep 05, 2025
US Navy SEALs shot dead a number of civilians during a botched secret mission to plant a listening device inside North Korea during tense nuclear negotiations between the first Trump administration and the government of Kim Jong Un in 2019, The New York Times reported Friday.
Dave Philipps and Matthew Cole reported for the Times that President Donald Trump personally approved the covert operation, which was tasked to SEAL Team 6's Red Squadron, the same unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden. Although the elite sailors rehearsed the nighttime mission for months, things fell apart when a small fishing boat appeared out of the dark in what the SEALs thought was a deserted area.
"Flashlights from the bow swept over the water. Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire," wrote Philipps and Cole. "Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead. The SEALs retreated into the sea without planting the listening device."
Officials familiar with the mission told the Times that the SEALs then pulled two or three bodies from the boat, punctured the victims' lungs with knives so their bodies would sink, and threw the dead fishers into the sea.
It didn’t “leave them dead.” Navy SEALs slaughtered three innocent people.
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— Daniel Malmer (@malmer.com) September 5, 2025 at 6:10 AM
According to the Times:
The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged, or even hinted at, by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and are being reported here for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law...
The aborted SEAL mission prompted a series of military reviews during Mr. Trump's first term. They found that the killing of civilians was justified under the rules of engagement, and that the mission was undone by a collision of unfortunate occurrences that could not have been foreseen or avoided. The findings were classified.
It is not known whether or how much North Korea's government knew about the mission. While Trump's erstwhile untried tactic of direct negotiations with Kim averted escalation of the 2018-19 standoff, the high-profile summits between the two leaders yielded no substantial progress toward denuclearization or a peace treaty.
The US and North Korea are technically still at war. Between 1950-53 US forces killed an estimated 20% of all North Koreans—around 1.9 million men, women, and children—according to Gen. Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay, who served as strategic air commander during the war after overseeing World War II firebombing raids on Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
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'Nightmare Scenario': Watchdog Says AI Cybercrime Shows Vital Need for Regulation
"Countries with lax regulations, like the US, are prime targets for these crimes," said Public Citizen's J.B. Branch.
Aug 28, 2025
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed Wednesday that its technology has been "weaponized" by hackers to commit ransomware crimes, prompting a call by a leading consumer advocacy group for Congress to pass "enforceable safeguards" to protect the public.
Anthropic's latest Threat Intelligence Report details "several recent examples" of its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Claude "being misused, including a large-scale extortion operation using Claude Code, a fraudulent employment scheme from North Korea, and the sale of AI-generated ransomware by a cybercriminal with only basic coding skills."
"The actor targeted at least 17 distinct organizations, including in healthcare, the emergency services, and government and religious institutions," the company said. "Rather than encrypt the stolen information with traditional ransomware, the actor threatened to expose the data publicly in order to attempt to extort victims into paying ransoms that sometimes exceeded $500,000."
Anthropic said the perpetrator "used AI to what we believe is an unprecedented degree" for their extortion scheme, which is being described as "vibe hacking"—the malicious use of artificial intelligence to manipulate human emotions and trust in order to carry out sophisticated cyberattacks.
"Claude Code was used to automate reconnaissance, harvesting victims' credentials and penetrating networks," the report notes. "Claude was allowed to make both tactical and strategic decisions, such as deciding which data to exfiltrate, and how to craft psychologically targeted extortion demands."
"Claude analyzed the exfiltrated financial data to determine appropriate ransom amounts, and generated visually alarming ransom notes that were displayed on victim machines," the company added.
Anthropic continued:
This represents an evolution in AI-assisted cybercrime. Agentic AI tools are now being used to provide both technical advice and active operational support for attacks that would otherwise have required a team of operators. This makes defense and enforcement increasingly difficult, since these tools can adapt to defensive measures, like malware detection systems, in real time. We expect attacks like this to become more common as AI-assisted coding reduces the technical expertise required for cybercrime.
Anthropic said it "banned the accounts in question as soon as we discovered this operation" and "also developed a tailored classifier (an automated screening tool), and introduced a new detection method to help us discover activity like this as quickly as possible in the future."
"To help prevent similar abuse elsewhere, we have also shared technical indicators about the attack with relevant authorities," the company added.
Anthropic's revelation followed last year's announcement by OpenAI that it had terminated ChatGPT accounts allegedly used by cybercriminals linked to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen, said Wednesday in response to Anthropic's announcement: "Every day we face a new nightmare scenario that tech lobbyists told Congress would never happen. One hacker has proven that agentic AI is a viable path to defrauding people of sensitive data worth millions."
"Criminals worldwide now have a playbook to follow—and countries with lax regulations, like the US, are prime targets for these crimes since AI companies are not subject to binding federal standards and rules," Branch added. "With no public protections in place, the next wave of AI-enabled cybercrime is coming, but Congress continues to sit on its hands. Congress must move immediately to put enforceable safeguards in place to protect the American public."
More than 120 congressional bills have been proposed to regulate artificial intelligence. However, not only has the current GOP-controlled Congress has been loath to act, House Republicans recently attempted to sneak a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation into the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Senate subsequently voted 99-1 to remove the measure from the legislation. However, the "AI Action Plan" announced last month by President Donald Trump revived much of the proposal, prompting critics to describe it as a "zombie moratorium."
Meanwhile, tech billionaires including the Winklevoss twins, who founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, are pouring tens of millions of dollars into the Digital Freedom Fund super political action committee, which aims to support right-wing political candidates with pro-crytpo and pro-AI platforms.
"Big Tech learned that throwing money in politics pays off in lax regulations and less oversight," Public Citizen said Thursday. "Money in politics reforms have never been more necessary."
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This New Dawn for Korean Democracy Must Center Feminist Peace
As the rising far-right threatens peace, stability, and democracy around the world, Lee Jae-myung and South Korea’s leadership must prioritize and support women’s leadership and peace building.
Jun 04, 2025
This week marks a new dawn for democracy in South Korea. South Koreans have successfully held a snap election, electing Lee Jae-myung as their new president.
The Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung represents a marked shift from former President Yoon Suk Yeol whose surprise martial law declaration last December beset the country with weeks of “insurrection insomnia.” Yoon’s actions upended politics in South Korea with multiple leaders cycled through office in the span of a few weeks. Yoon also fanned the flames of a far right surge in South Korea and exacerbated tensions with North Korea.
In contrast, Lee Jae-myung has pushed for a new approach to North Korea, calling for pragmatic diplomacy and a gradual shift toward peace. Lee’s election offers an opening not only for peace but also for restoring democracy and advancing women’s rights in the country.
As feminist peace activists working in international solidarity, we know that all Korean people deserve to reunite with their family members and live in lands free from landmines and pollution and violence from military bases.
While we celebrate this new dawn for South Korea’s democracy and successful election of a progressive president, feminists recognize that, for the first time in 18 years, none of South Korea’s presidential candidates in this snap election were women, and none—including Lee—placed gender equality at the forefront of their campaigns. Indeed, Lee largely avoided any explicit discussion of gender equality, despite the leadership of young women in ousting Yoon.
If Lee is really to mark a new start to South Korea’s democracy, he must uplift women’s leadership and peace building. No democracy can thrive under toxic patriarchy and militarism. Policies rooted in militarism often shift resources away from policy areas that are critical to the advancement of women and girls. Attacks on democracy and the expansion of militarism threaten women’s rights, and women are more likely to be exposed to gender-based violence during wartime.
That is why, in the week leading up to the snap election, and on the 10-year anniversary of Women Cross DMZ’s founding crossing, I brought a delegation of feminist delegates to march with hundreds of Korean and international women outside the largest overseas U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea to call for an end to the 75-year-old Korean War.
Our international delegation included diasporic peace leaders, including Afghan American, Indigenous, Korean American, and South Asian feminists—a powerful act of solidarity recognizing that the ongoing Korean War is a global war. (The U.S.-led United Nations command in Korea is a multinational force with combat forces and contributions from over 20 countries worldwide.)
Our solidarity trek was more timely than ever—and showed how war, militarism, democracy, and women’s rights are deeply intertwined.
Many people don’t know that the Korean War never technically ended but was only halted by the signing of an armistice in 1953. This unresolved state of war has not only kept Korean families separated but has resulted in the buildup of troops and weaponry on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea, ready to reengage in conflict at a moment’s notice. Militarism, war, and division of the peninsula have especially impacted women, who have been leading calls for peace.
The state of war has also shaped South Korean politics throughout history, threatening democracy. Politicians—often backed by the United States—have used the Korean War as justification to maintain power and squash dissent, labeling those who call for peace and democracy “communists” and threats to national security. In December, former President Yoon, who rose to power by courting men who are anti-feminist, declared martial law, accusing the Democratic Party of conducting “anti-state activities” and collaborating with “North Korean communists” to destroy the country. Later, it was revealed that Yoon attempted to bait North Korea into conflict as a pretext for his martial law declaration.
Yoon’s actions were exceptionally brazen, but he was also part of a long line of South Korean authoritarian militaristic leaders. Our international delegation bore witness to this legacy, visiting major sites of South Korean and U.S. militarism: the DMZ, the Civilian Control Zone, Pyeongtaek, Dongducheon, Jeju.
In each place, we learned about the deep scars stemming from decades of war and militarism—including the struggles of Daechuri farmers horrifically brutalized and displaced by state authorities during the expansion of U.S. military base Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek. We also met with Gangjeong villagers protesting the South Korean naval base destroying their ways of life, Dongducheon organizers preventing the destruction of “Monkey House,” and sex worker organizers in Yongjugol fighting for their livelihoods and homes.
While each struggle differed, what was striking was how at each place, people described that state authorities spent millions policing them, surveilling them, wiping out histories, and destroying their homes. They remarked that instead, government officials could have just as easily spent those resources and time on providing social services, healthcare, recognition of history—all the things that actually keep us all safe and secure.
As feminist peace activists working in international solidarity, we know that all Korean people deserve to reunite with their family members and live in lands free from landmines and pollution and violence from military bases.
Given the current attacks on democracy in the United States and across the globe, transnational acts of solidarity are more important than ever. The next generation of South Korean feminist activists say that political leaders must recognize and honor the diversity of the population—including across gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, and racial backgrounds. It is time to imagine a “new democracy”—“not going back to the democracy we used to have.”
Women play crucial roles in changing society from one rooted in militarism to one rooted in peace. Research shows that when women are involved in peace processes, outcomes are more likely to be reached and to last. As the rising far-right threatens peace, stability, and democracy around the world, Lee Jae-myung and South Korea’s leadership must prioritize and support women’s leadership in building sustainable peace.
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