Latest / The President's Daily Brief / PDB Afternoon Bulletin | September 29th, 2026: Russia Carries Out an Attack on NATO Soil & Iran’s Cryptocurrency Network

Transcript

PDB Afternoon Bulletin | September 29th, 2026: Russia Carries Out an Attack on NATO Soil & Iran’s Cryptocurrency Network · The President's Daily Brief

• 0:12
  It's Tuesday,
• 0:12
  the twenty-ninth of September.
• 0:14
  Welcome to the PDB
• 0:16
  afternoon bulletin.
• 0:17
  I'm Mike Baker,
• 0:18
  your eyes and ears on the world stage.
• 0:20
  Let's get briefed.
• 0:21
  First up,
• 0:22
  an alleged Russian attack on NATO soil is adding urgency to Europe's effort
• 0:27
  to build a common response to Russian sabotage and other hybrid attacks.
• 0:32
  Later in the show,
• 0:33
  a new Senate investigation says Iran has relied heavily on cryptocurrency.
• 0:38
  To move money around US sanctions,
• 0:40
  exposing a digital workaround in the regime's shadow banking network.
• 0:45
  But first,
• 0:46
  today's afternoon spotlight.
• 0:48
  European officials are once again confronting a familiar problem.
• 0:52
  How do you respond when Russia is accused of attacking a NATO country
• 0:56
  in a manner that falls short of outright warfare and when it's difficult
• 1:01
  to ascertain with certainty
• 1:03
  who the culprit is?
• 1:05
  The latest case in what has become known as Putin's hybrid war against the EU
• 1:09
  comes from Estonia,
• 1:10
  where authorities now say an arson attack last month
• 1:14
  against the defense company Milgram Robotics
• 1:17
  wasn't random vandalism.
• 1:18
  Authorities say it was a deliberate act of sabotage
• 1:21
  commissioned by Russian security services.
• 1:24
  The fire broke out on the 15th of August at a building used by Milrem
• 1:28
  in Tallinn,
• 1:29
  that's the Estonian capital.
• 1:31
  The damage was limited,
• 1:33
  but the target was significant.
• 1:35
  Milrem builds unmanned ground vehicles and other military systems,
• 1:39
  including equipment supplied to Ukraine.
• 1:41
  Three Latvian suspects were arrested in the days after the attack
• 1:45
  and later transferred to Estonian custody.
• 1:48
  Estonia's domestic intelligence service now says the operation
• 1:52
  was planned in advance and directly attributable to Russia.
• 1:56
  Now you ask yourself,
• 1:58
  I wonder if the Kremlin denies those accusations.
• 2:01
  Well,
• 2:02
  uh,
• 2:02
  let me think.
• 2:03
  Yes,
• 2:03
  the Kremlin has denied those accusations.
• 2:06
  Now as we've been covering for quite some time here on the PDB,
• 2:09
  European governments are seeing a growing pattern of sabotage,
• 2:13
  arson,
• 2:13
  cyberattacks,
• 2:14
  and
• 2:14
  other disruptive operations
• 2:16
  that they believe are designed to weaken support for Ukraine,
• 2:20
  intimidate governments,
• 2:21
  and test how far Moscow can push things
• 2:24
  without provoking a conventional military response.
• 2:27
  Estonia's foreign minister says Russia is effectively
• 2:30
  testing Western democracies step by step.
• 2:33
  Looking to see what it can get away with
• 2:36
  and how NATO will react,
• 2:38
  Estonia
• 2:39
  is now pushing allies to publicly condemn and attribute attacks
• 2:43
  when they believe Moscow is responsible
• 2:45
  and to establish clearer consequences for those operations.
• 2:49
  Well,
• 2:49
  that all sounds fairly reasonable.
• 2:52
  European defense ministers
• 2:53
  are now considering a new common framework
• 2:56
  for responding to so-called hybrid attacks,
• 2:59
  operations that may be hostile,
• 3:00
  deliberate,
• 3:01
  and damaging
• 3:02
  but still fall below the level of an armed attack
• 3:05
  that would clearly trigger NATO's Article 5 mutual defense clause.
• 3:10
  The European Commission has proposed what it calls
• 3:12
  an emergency security protocol
• 3:14
  along with a broader counter hybrid playbook
• 3:18
  designed to help governments coordinate quickly
• 3:20
  when one member state is hit by sabotage
• 3:22
  or cyber attacks or other forms of interference.
• 3:25
  Officials are also discussing what a proportional response
• 3:29
  might actually look like,
• 3:31
  and that is where a complicated situation
• 3:34
  gets more complicated.
• 3:35
  If Russian forces crossed Estonia's border with tanks,
• 3:38
  NATO's response would be relatively straightforward.
• 3:41
  But what happens when someone sets fire to a defense contractor?
• 3:45
  What happens when a railway line is sabotaged,
• 3:48
  a drone appears over sensitive infrastructure,
• 3:51
  or a criminal intermediary
• 3:52
  carries out an operation that intelligence services later trace back to Moscow?
• 3:57
  Those incidents can be serious.
• 3:59
  They can disrupt military production,
• 4:01
  damage critical infrastructure,
• 4:03
  and undermine
• 4:04
  public confidence.
• 4:06
  But individually they may not look like acts of war.
• 4:10
  That ambiguity is part of what makes
• 4:12
  hybrid operations worthwhile from Moscow's perspective.
• 4:16
  They create pressure without necessarily
• 4:19
  creating the kind of clear cut event
• 4:21
  that forces NATO to respond collectively.
• 4:24
  European governments have been wrestling with this for years,
• 4:26
  and the problem has grown since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• 4:31
  Authorities across Europe have investigated a large number
• 4:34
  of suspected sabotage incidents linked to Russia,
• 4:38
  although the strength of the public evidence varies from case to case.
• 4:41
  Estonia says the Milram attack
• 4:43
  fits that broader pattern.
• 4:46
  The challenge now is deterrence.
• 4:49
  European officials want Moscow to believe that
• 4:51
  these operations will carry a real cost,
• 4:54
  but they also have to decide,
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  well,
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  what that cost should be
• 4:58
  more sanctions,
• 5:00
  diplomatic expulsions,
• 5:01
  some form of coordinated retaliation against Russian intelligence networks.
• 5:06
  That's the key question confronting European governments.
• 5:09
  What is proportionate,
• 5:10
  appropriate response?
• 5:12
  When there is sufficient evidence to tie Moscow to
• 5:15
  an act of hybrid warfare within the EU or
• 5:18
  targeting NATO allies,
• 5:20
  clearly the standard harshly worded memo
• 5:23
  or the stern look from a diplomat
• 5:26
  is not going to change Putin's stripes.
• 5:29
  And there's another complication.
• 5:31
  Any common EU mechanism would have to complement
• 5:34
  NATO rather than create a competing system.
• 5:37
  Some European officials are already warning.
• 5:39
  That another layer of decision making could
• 5:41
  make responses slower instead of faster,
• 5:44
  but the Milgram case helps explain why the debate is happening now.
• 5:48
  If Estonia's assessment is correct,
• 5:51
  Russian security services commissioned an attack inside a NATO country
• 5:56
  against a company helping arm Ukraine.
• 5:59
  The fire itself did not cause catastrophic damage at the facility,
• 6:03
  but the larger question is whether Moscow believes
• 6:06
  it can keep carrying out operations like this
• 6:09
  because the West
• 6:10
  has never clearly defined what happens next.
• 6:14
  Alright,
• 6:15
  coming up next,
• 6:16
  Senate investigators say Iran has leaned heavily on digital dollars
• 6:20
  to help bypass sanctions
• 6:22
  and keep money moving through its shadow banking network.
• 6:25
  I'll be right back.
• 6:27
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• 6:28
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• 6:29
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  Welcome back to the afternoon bulletin.
• 8:48
  Washington has spent years trying to squeeze
• 8:50
  Iran out of the global financial system,
• 8:53
  but a new Senate investigation says the regime has
• 8:56
  found a new way
• 8:57
  to move money outside the traditional banking system,
• 9:00
  and it involves one of the largest names in cryptocurrency.
• 9:04
  The report comes from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
• 9:08
  Investigators examined 846 cryptocurrency wallets
• 9:13
  that had already been sanctioned or targeted for seizure by the US or Israel
• 9:17
  because of alleged connections to Iran and its regional proxies.
• 9:22
  According to the report,
• 9:23
  84% of those wallets conducted all or nearly all
• 9:27
  of their transactions using a cryptocurrency called USDT
• 9:31
  issued by the company
• 9:33
  Tether.
• 9:34
  Now for those of you not fully up to speed on the ins and outs of cryptocurrency,
• 9:38
  Tether issues what's known as a stablecoin
• 9:41
  called USDT.
• 9:42
  Unlike Bitcoin,
• 9:43
  which can swing wildly in value,
• 9:46
  1 USDT is designed to stay worth,
• 9:49
  well,
• 9:50
  about $1.
• 9:51
  It's a digital dollar that can be moved around
• 9:54
  the world without going through the traditional banking system.
• 9:57
  American sanctions are designed in part
• 9:59
  to cut Tehran off from banks that rely on
• 10:01
  dollars and access to the US financial system.
• 10:05
  The Senate report argues that USDT has given Iranian entities another way
• 10:10
  to move funds,
• 10:11
  conduct trade,
• 10:12
  and access something resembling dollars
• 10:14
  without relying on those same financial institutions.
• 10:18
  Investigators say the network has been used for everything from
• 10:21
  moving money into and out of Iran
• 10:23
  to supporting the rial and facilitating oil sales.
• 10:27
  The report also says USDT has appeared
• 10:29
  in networks connected to Iran's regional proxies
• 10:33
  and the purchase and sale of drones
• 10:35
  and other military equipment.
• 10:37
  Now one of the stranger pieces of the investigation
• 10:40
  involves Iran's central bank.
• 10:42
  Documents reported earlier by the Journal
• 10:45
  appeared to show an Iranian company arranging the purchase
• 10:48
  of tens of millions of dollars' worth of USDT
• 10:51
  on behalf of the Central Bank of Tehran.
• 10:54
  Blockchain and analysts later linked some of that cryptocurrency.
• 10:58
  To money stolen during the roughly $1.5 billion hack
• 11:03
  of the Baibit crypto exchange,
• 11:05
  an attack attributed
• 11:06
  to North Korea.
• 11:08
  Unlike some cryptocurrencies,
• 11:10
  USDT is issued by a centralized company.
• 11:12
  That means Tether
• 11:14
  can freeze USDT that's sitting in specific wallets.
• 11:18
  The company has worked with law enforcement and
• 11:20
  has frozen some wallets
• 11:22
  tied to sanctioned or criminal activity,
• 11:25
  but Senate investigators argue that Tether has
• 11:27
  not always acted quickly or consistently enough
• 11:31
  when sanctioned wallets were identified.
• 11:34
  Tether did not respond to the Journal's request for comments on this report,
• 11:38
  and Iran
• 11:39
  may already be adapting.
• 11:41
  The journal cites blockchain data showing that USDT
• 11:44
  accounted for a much smaller share of activity
• 11:47
  across Iran-linked wallets this August than it did in previous years.
• 11:52
  It likely means that enforcement pressure is already pushing Iranian networks
• 11:56
  toward other methods,
• 11:58
  but the Senate investigators say USDT still appears repeatedly in wallets,
• 12:02
  most recently targeted by the US,
• 12:05
  including
• 12:05
  wallets linked to Iran's central bank
• 12:08
  and oil sales networks.
• 12:10
  Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut
• 12:12
  has now referred the findings
• 12:14
  to the Justice Department and Treasury Department
• 12:17
  and asked both to examine Tether's
• 12:19
  sanctions and anti-money laundering compliance.
• 12:23
  And that my friends,
• 12:24
  is the PDB afternoon bulletin
• 12:26
  for Tuesday,
• 12:26
  the 29th of September.
• 12:28
  Now,
• 12:28
  if you have any questions or comments,
• 12:29
  and I hope you do,
• 12:30
  just reach out to me at PDB@thefirstv.com.
• 12:34
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• 12:43
  I'm Mike Baker and I'll be back tomorrow.
• 12:45
  Until then,
• 12:47
  stay informed,
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  stay safe,
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