//The Wire//2300Z August 28, 2024//

//ROUTINE//

//BLUF: HOUTHIS ALLEGEDLY ALLOW THE RECOVERY OF THE SOUNION SUPERTANKER IN RED SEA. EGYPT STRENGTHENS TIES WITH SOMALIA.//

 -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----

-International Events-

Red Sea/HOA: The Houthi government has indicated that they will allow the towing/salvage of the supertanker Sounion, which was targeted by Houthi forces last week. The crew abandoned ship after the attack, and the vessel has been adrift for almost a week. Yesterday, a passing merchant vessel spotted the Sounion, which has not sunk and is still on fire. AC: As a reminder of the magnitude of this incident, the Sounion is carrying approximately 1 million barrels of crude oil, or roughly three times the amount spilled during the infamous Exxon Valdez incident in 1989. So far, no significant oil leaks have been reported by the EU ships shadowing the stricken vessel.

Northern Africa: Egypt has begun the delivery of weapons to Somalia, reigniting tensions in the region. Ethiopia (who has a history of conflict and centuries of negative relations with Somalia) has voiced outrage at the military trade pact, claiming that this increased partnership is intended to destabilize the region, and negatively impact their increasing ties with Somaliland (a diplomatically ambiguous region in western Somalia).

-HomeFront-

USA: Yesterday nationwide impacts to cellular communications were reported among AT&T users. AT&T confirmed the sporadic outages and attributed the incident to an issue at a switching center. This systems failure resulted in random outages of many services that rely on AT&T infrastructure, to include 911 call centers in some states.

-----END TEARLINE-----

Analyst Comments: As the US election cycle continues, malign actors both foreign and domestic have the means, motive, and opportunities to target telecoms infrastructure in any way possible. The recent AT&T outages have been extremely serious, impacting FirstNet services and other critical infrastructure…all without the involvement of any nefarious entity. As such, it’s extremely likely that perfectly innocent mistakes or routine service interruptions would be compounded by nefarious intent. In short, a communications outage may begin as an accident, but might not remain as such due to the efforts of malign actors who seek to capitalize on the situation.

Analyst: S2A1

//END REPORT//