In mid-September 2025, we detected suspicious activity that later investigation determined to be a highly sophisticated espionage campaign. The attackers used AI’s “agentic” capabilities to an unprecedented degree—using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyberattacks themselves.
The threat actor—whom we assess with high confidence was a Chinese state-sponsored group—manipulated our Claude Code tool into attempting infiltration into roughly thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases. The operation targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.
This is very interesting, and is very bad news. This is one heck of a tool:
In Phase 1, the human operators chose the relevant targets (for example, the company or government agency to be infiltrated). They then developed an attack framework—a system built to autonomously compromise a chosen target with little human involvement.
Essentially, this is the cyberpunk version of "fire and forget" weaponry. The only thing that would be more ironic is if they had a Clippy front end ...
This week is Thanksgiving* and so calls for what is perhaps the most American of all classical music, Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring. Most of the composers we see here on Sunday Classical were child prodigies, going to the Paris Conservatoire before they were 12 years old or such. Not so with Copeland, who was a distinctly American self-made-man story.
His family wasn't musical, and when he was young you would have thought that his older brother was the only musical talent in the family. He got his first piano lessons from his older sister, who he was very close to - but that only took him so far. And so he signed up for a Music Correspondence Course and got lucky. His teacher was a no-nonsense German who schooled him in Romantic era composers. As he said later in life, "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching."
What stuck ended up making him hugely popular with general audiences in the USA. His Fanfare For The Common Man is perhaps his most recognizable work. Artistically, you can compare this with Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom Of Speech painting:
Artistically, you can pair Appalachian Spring with Rockwell's Freedom From Want painting. You cannot find a more iconic portrait of Thanksgiving than this:
Of course the "Serious" Art Establishment hated both Rockwell and Copeland. Audiences didn't care, since both artists captured the essence of America itself. And so spend some time with this music which is accompanied with a lovely series of photographs of the Appalachian Mountains. They too, capture the essence of America itself.
My camper is thirteen years old. The finish isn't bad but the factory decals are sun faded. I resealed all the seams this year, replaced the taillights, and repacked the wheel bearings. If it was a piece of military gear, I think it would be "serviceable".
The stickers started with a couple from the Outer Banks and grew when we took our first long trip. Not every park or destination, but if I see one I like, it gets added.
We were at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Our trip kept crossing paths with Teddy, Custer, and Lewis & Clark as will be evident in upcoming posts. We weren't going to camp, so we stopped in the visitor's center, and planned a ride into the park to see the bison. There were lots of them, and we took our pictures out of the truck windows.
The visitor's center had a lot of souvenirs. T-shirts, hoodies, hats, post cards, books and stickers.
I was deciding which one when I overhead a couple behind me talking.
Wife - "Look, honey, I like this sticker."
Husband - "You are not going to start putting g** d*** stickers on our camper."
Okay, then. I managed not to laugh out loud. Made my purchases and went back to the truck. I was cleaning the dust off a spot and placing the sticker when the couple went by.
They were parked behind us in a beautiful class A rig. The sunlight glinted off the chrome. The paint glowed under the wax. Sort of like this, only nicer.
I should have walked back and told the guy that I understood.
If you are of a certain age, you will remember this Pultizer Prize winning photograph of a US Air Force officer returning from the Hanoi Hilton in 1974.
Dwight has the details, and it is quite a sad story. Rest In Peace, COL Stirm. I hope you now truly have the opportunity to put out your hand and touch the face of God.
Sometimes you see things and know that the only possible reason these items are for sale is that the original owner has passed.
IN MEMORY OF MY SERVICE
CAPTAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES
CAPTAIN ARTHUR J. BROCKWAY
ANTI TANK COMPANY
383RD INFANTRY
96TH DIVISION
It's a set of carabao horns, the water buffalo that is the working draft animal in the Philippines. The carving was done in the Philippines, I saw similar, but much newer, work during my time there. The crossed flags are the 48 star American flag and the Philippine flag. The artwork on the horns are local scenes.
The 96th Division, The Deadeyes, made a beach landing in the Philippines and served in combat during the Philippine Campaign and then again on Okinawa. Five members of the Division received the Medal of Honor. There's a foundation with an online museum.
We
had come into town to go to a museum, but it was closed that day. The local junk shop became our alternative. In Salamanca, N.Y., it was a furniture store turned into dozens of alcoves, each stocked by a
hopeful seller. Antiques, books, clothes, tools, and so on. On one of the shelves was Capt. Brockway's mementos. The horns, all his patches, and his rank insignia. Echoes of a lifetime.
Sometimes we would find ourselves in a place so captivating we would decide to spend all our time in the park. We talked to the ranger in the museum and later with a docent and author that was giving the tours at the Commanding Officer's quarters. Rode our bikes around and in the late afternoon as the sun was fading, hiked up to the overlook.
This is the view looking down from the blockhouses toward the Missouri River. The building you can see are the barracks and the Commanding Officer's quarters.
That is one of the four blockhouses used on the perimeter of the enclosure on the hilltop. The blockhouses are open and I have climbed one to stand looking out of the firing ports.
Fort Abraham Lincoln was a U.S. Army fort built on the banks of the Missouri River in 1873 along the construction route of the Northern Pacific Railroad. It was built on what had been Mandan tribal land until a smallpox outbreak killed about 95% of the settlement in 1837. The 150 survivors had abandoned the area and settled in with another nearby tribe.
There were no battles fought at the fort. The cavalry garrisoned here did participate in putting down a Sioux uprising in the summer of 1876. The commanding officer of the fort was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and this is where he and the 600 men under his command rode out from.
The need for the fort was gone in less than twenty years and the Army abandoned it in 1891. Local civilians stripped the fort for it's lumber, nails, and hardware, leaving only the foundations and memories.
In 1907, Pr. Theodore Roosevelt signed the land over to North Dakota for use as a park. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps had a unit assigned to the area. They built an administration building, offices, garages, roads, and the service buildings. They also worked from the foundations and surviving documents to rebuild the fort.
None of the original buildings had survived. Everything in the park is a CCC reproduction. The layout of the fort, all the buildings, can been seen on a walk, with interpretive signs. Two barracks have been restored and set up to look as they did in 1875. The blockhouses and support buildings were rebuilt as well. The C.O.'s quarters was rebuilt later, in 1989 as part of the North Dakota Centennial.
In addition to the structures in the fort, the CCC worked with a local Mandan woman who served as a historical resource to build a section of a Mandan village consisting of five full size lodgehouses. It is maintained and used to display artifacts and interpretive displays about the Mandan.
The CCC administration building is now the park museum. This isn't mine, but it's a slideshow of pictures of the museum and the Mandan village set to music.
I expect some comments about the things that Pr.
Roosevelt got wrong, but I have a real appreciation for one thing he and his
Administration got right. The Civilian Conservation Corps.
Established
in 1933, it was a government program run by the Army that accepted
young men 17-25 and put them to work. The CCC built Skyline Drive, Big
Bend National Park, over 700 state parks, over 3,400 firetowers, fought
wildfires, worked at flood relief, and a long list of projects. At it's
largest, in 1935, there were 500,000 men involved, overall 3 million served. Most of them starting wearing a different uniform in 1942 and the program was shut down.
We ran into the legacy of the CCC everywhere. The style of the work they did is iconic. Driving into a park, you might only need to see one building to know the CCC had been involved and we saw it over and over.
I'll bet most of them were a lot skinnier than the buff statue Ms. ASM has taken a shine to. The statue and plaque are a monument to the CCC at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park in North Dakota. We'll visit the park in my next post.
