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Turkish Spy Networks Raise Europe's Concern

Turkish Spy Networks Raise Europe's Concern
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Turkish Spy Networks Raise Europe's Concern

Turkish Spy Networks Raise Europe's Concern

Ankara’s problems with the countries of the European Union are mounting.

The EU will hold this week a summit to discuss sanctions against Turkey, because of its continued military build-up and oil exploration off the Greek coast.

In addition to Ankara’s blackmail of Europe with the refugee crisis, its refusal to abide by its pledges at the Berlin conference on Libya, and its recent intervention in the escalation between Azerbaijan and Armenia, a new chapter has recently emerged, represented by Turkey’s intelligence operations in Europe, specifically in Austria and Germany, where there is a large Turkish community.

Adrian Hanni, an expert at the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, estimates the number of Turkish spies in Austria to be close to 200, noting that the Turkish spy network was the second largest in Austria and Germany, after the Russian network.

The intelligence expert explained that Ankara’s recruitment of agents takes place in two ways: either by luring them with money through Turkish diplomatic missions in Vienna or groups of mosques and religious organizations deployed in Austria, or through arrests.

He explained: “After arresting a person in Turkey, the Turkish security authorities make the detainee chose between facing imprisonment and carrying out spying operations on opponents.”

Hanni noted that Austria’s public move against Turkish intelligence was “a warning not to cross the red lines.” He added that Vienna “usually tolerates espionage operations as long as the matter is not related to its own security.”

Austria had pledged to take steps against Turkey after the arrest of a Turkish expert a few weeks ago, which it said had confessed to carrying out espionage operations for Ankara.

These espionage operations have caused the arrest of more than 35 Turkish citizens, who also hold Austrian citizenship, when they visited their relatives in Turkey. Upon their arrival at the airport, the Turkish authorities confronted them with pictures of them demonstrating against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Vienna at the end of June.

Security experts believe that the European country is investigating other cases of espionage led by Turkey on its soil.

In recent weeks, Austria arrested a Turkish spy in Vienna, and the Turkish opposition uncovered a plot that Turkish intelligence was preparing to carry out assassinations in Vienna targeting politicians who had uncovered a Turkish spy network in the country.

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World

China, Iran Among Countries That Have Used AI to Aid Spying, Anthropic Says

The Anthropic logo in this illustration taken June 5, 2026. (Reuters)
The Anthropic logo in this illustration taken June 5, 2026. (Reuters)
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China, Iran Among Countries That Have Used AI to Aid Spying, Anthropic Says

The Anthropic logo in this illustration taken June 5, 2026. (Reuters)
The Anthropic logo in this illustration taken June 5, 2026. (Reuters)

Anthropic said Thursday it shut down multiple cases of state-sponsored surveillance operations that used its artificial intelligence (AI) models, and warned that governments and state-aligned actors are increasingly using AI to spy on ethnic minorities and dissidents.

The incidents were found and disrupted between January and July, and they originated in China, Iran and west Africa, Anthropic said in a report about misuse of its models.

These surveillance campaigns "targeted the same diaspora and dissident communities these regimes have historically targeted. These include pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong, Tibetan and Falun Gong communities across Asia, and Iranian minority communities and opponents of the Iranian regime abroad," the report said.

In one case, Iranian actors developed a way to identify people through their social media accounts; in another, a contractor working for Malian national security authorities used Claude "to design the underlying software that enabled the intelligence gathering."

"AI is now being used in place of an engineering workforce," the report said.

Anthropic also disrupted efforts by users to design weapons, conduct questionable biological research, and create dating scams.

The San Francisco-based AI lab also accused Chinese developers of deceptively using Claude to produce responses to user queries while simultaneously "distilling" that data to improve their own models.

Distilling is an industry term that refers to a process where one AI model is used to train another one.

Chinese developers have previously been accused of using that technique without permission, essentially stealing resources from American labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Now Anthropic alleges that China's Moonshot and DeepSeek have also secretly used Claude to generate answers given to its users.

"In one instance, over a ten-day period, Moonshot relayed almost 300,000 customer requests to Anthropic" through a "network of 5,380 fraudulent accounts, most of which appeared to be located in Singapore and Japan," the report said.

Some of that data contained sensitive user information, potentially in violation of privacy agreements.

"We do not know if Moonshot notified their customers that their requests were being rerouted to Anthropic and exposed to a third party," the report said.

DeepSeek used similar techniques.

When it comes to the research Anthropic detected and blocked that was related to biological weapons, the intent of the actors was less clear-cut and the AI lab did not identify them.

"The individuals implicated in these case studies are working scientists. We do not assert that they intended harm, and identifying them or their labs could expose them to harm," the report said.

The scientific research in those cases involved work around the mosquito-born chikungunya virus, a "highly-pathogenic" strain of the bird flu, a family of viruses that include smallpox and mpox, venoms and other toxins.

World

Iran is Reportedly Producing Ballistic Missiles Again in Underground Facilities

FILE PHOTO: A man walks next to a symbolic mockup of an Iranian missile and an Iranian flag at Imam Hussein Square in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A man walks next to a symbolic mockup of an Iranian missile and an Iranian flag at Imam Hussein Square in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
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Iran is Reportedly Producing Ballistic Missiles Again in Underground Facilities

FILE PHOTO: A man walks next to a symbolic mockup of an Iranian missile and an Iranian flag at Imam Hussein Square in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A man walks next to a symbolic mockup of an Iranian missile and an Iranian flag at Imam Hussein Square in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iran has resumed its production of ballistic missiles using stockpiled components and working in underground facilities, officials from the US and Middle East familiar with the matter said.

Despite heavy attacks on its missile sites and industrial facilities during the initial phase of the war, Iran has been busy assembling liquid-propellant missiles, which have to be fueled just before launch, as well as solid-propellant missiles, which can be stored ready to fire, some of the officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Intelligence points to activity at several underground sites, including the Khojir missile facility in southeastern Iran, those officials said. Iran is also attempting to build new underground assembly points to avoid getting struck again, the daily quoted them as saying.

 

A banner with a picture of US President Donald Trump next to an Iranian missile system at Azadi Square in Tehran, Iran, July 30, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

So far, Iran is mainly assembling the new missiles from existing components in more limited quantities than before the war, the US and regional officials said. The US and Israel damaged a number of industrial facilities needed to produce missile components and missiles themselves, and the naval blockade has complicated imports of parts and ingredients for solid fuel.

The renewed production underscores the difficulty of fully dismantling Tehran’s missile program, a goal of the war the US and Israel launched on Feb. 28.

“When there are no bombings of the facilities, you can replace damaged infrastructure, and you can buy new components from other countries and store them in the facilities,” said Tal Inbar, a senior analyst at the US-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. “You have to be extremely naive to think that Iran is not rebuilding its missile-production capabilities.”

A White House official didn’t directly address the question of whether Tehran had resumed production of ballistic missiles but said that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated and its military forces severely degraded. “Iran is weaker now than ever before, and President Trump will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” the official said.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said the US had “destroyed up to 90% of Iran’s drone, ballistic missile, and naval industrial base” and “significantly degraded” Iran’s ability to launch missiles and drones.

World

Next 9/11 Shock Might Be Being Planned Where We’re Not Looking, UK’s MI5 Chief Says

A person takes a photo of the "Tribute in Light" public art installation commemorating the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks as it shines up from the skyline of lower Manhattan in preparation for the 25th anniversary, in New York City, on September 10, 2026. (AFP)
A person takes a photo of the "Tribute in Light" public art installation commemorating the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks as it shines up from the skyline of lower Manhattan in preparation for the 25th anniversary, in New York City, on September 10, 2026. (AFP)
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Next 9/11 Shock Might Be Being Planned Where We’re Not Looking, UK’s MI5 Chief Says

A person takes a photo of the "Tribute in Light" public art installation commemorating the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks as it shines up from the skyline of lower Manhattan in preparation for the 25th anniversary, in New York City, on September 10, 2026. (AFP)
A person takes a photo of the "Tribute in Light" public art installation commemorating the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks as it shines up from the skyline of lower Manhattan in preparation for the 25th anniversary, in New York City, on September 10, 2026. (AFP)

Intelligence services must not dwell ‌too much on past threats but accept that a new strategic shock along the lines of the 9/11 attacks could already be in preparation where they are not looking, the head of Britain's MI5 spy agency said.

In an opinion piece published on Friday to mark 25 years since al-Qaeda militants crashed hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, MI5's Director General Ken McCallum said security agencies had to be ready to adapt to current ‌and future challenges.

"We ‌know that the next strategic shock ‌will, ⁠by definition, not resemble ⁠the last one. That is perhaps the most important lesson of all," McCallum wrote in the commentary for the Independent newspaper.

"We must of course always learn from the last attack – but must beware of preparing brilliantly to fight yesterday’s enemy, using yesterday’s methods, against yesterday’s target ... The uncomfortable truth is that the ⁠next strategic shock may already be taking shape ‌somewhere we are not yet ‌looking."

Al-Qaeda, though diminished, remains a threat, as does the aspiration of ‌that group and other militants for mass casualty attacks, McCallum ‌said.

This was recently borne out by a foiled extremist plot to kill hundreds in gun attacks on the Jewish community in the northern English city of Manchester, he added.

But McCallum said MI5 was ‌also facing rising state-backed aggression, ranging from sabotage carried out by criminal proxies to cyberattacks on ⁠power stations.

Unlike ⁠in 2001, many systems and services are in the hands of the private sector and it will require governments, businesses and academia all working together to close vulnerabilities and to respond swiftly in a crisis, he said.

"We cannot wait for the next shock to discover who owns the vulnerability, who has the authority to act, or who was supposed to pick up the phone," he wrote.

"We owe the victims of 9/11 – and those who will otherwise become the victims of tomorrow’s attack – something more than remembrance. We owe them preparation, resilience and the courage to adapt before the next shock arrives."