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Cyber Command Deputy Chief and Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as the new leader of the Cyber Command and National Security Agency, replacing Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who led major changes in the usage of the command's hackers during his tenure, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Further leadership changes within the Cyber Command and the cybersecurity directorate are expected with the approval of Haugh, along with Cyber National Mission Force Head Army Maj. Gen. William as his deputy earlier this month. Haugh's confirmation comes after both Sens. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., dropped their respective efforts to block the nomination, with the former holding military nominations for almost a year in protest to the abortion policy by the Department of Defense and the latter preventing the nomination until the admission of the NSA's involvement in purchasing Americans' location and web browsing data from data brokers.

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NSA appoints new Cyber Command head | SC Media - SC Media

The U.S. militarys cyber force and its premier spying agency have a new leader.

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, a pair of roles that make him responsible for defending the country from foreign hackers and striking back against them.

Lawmakers voted by voice to confirm Haugh, an Air Force lieutenant general who has served as Cyber Commands deputy commander for the past year, and promote him to the rank of general. Haugh was one of many military officials whose promotions had languished for months after Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) blocked their appointments to protest a Pentagon policy on abortions for service members.

Haugh will take over the reins of both elite cyber forces from Gen. Paul Nakasone, who dramatically expanded the two organizations public profiles and their relationships with foreign allies and private companies.

Under Nakasones watch, Cyber Command crippled ransomware gangs, protected Ukraine by hacking Russian forces and sent teams abroad to help other countries fend off digital attacks while returning with useful insights about how those adversaries operate. The NSA, meanwhile, created a program to share cybersecurity information and recommendations beyond defense contractors. The historically secretive organizations increasing openness about their work marked a dramatic shift, one that Nakasone and his team described as part of a deliberate effort to put their classified intelligence to better use.

Haugh will need to decide whether to continue, expand or restructure these NSA and Cyber Command initiatives, and hell have to evaluate Americas cybersecurity support to Ukraine and Israel as the two close U.S. allies fight major ground wars.

In the Middle East, Irans hacker army could jump into the war between Israel and Hamas at any moment, potentially unleashing a wave of attacks against critical infrastructure like Israeli hospitals and power plants in retaliation for Israels invasion of Gaza. (Iran-linked hackers have already breached several U.S. water facilities after targeting their Israeli-made equipment.) And in Eastern Europe, Russia could further intensify its steady barrage of cyberattacks against Ukraine in an attempt to break the stalemate between the two armies.

Haugh will also confront questions about the future of the union between the NSA and Cyber Command. When the Pentagon created Cyber Command in 2010, it chose the NSA director to lead the new organization, since Cyber Command would heavily rely on the spy agencys personnel and expertise. In the years since, there have been calls to separate this arrangement, but multiple administrations have rejected that idea.

Haugh has said that he supports the current structure because of the amount of overlap between the two organizations missions. But he has also promised to focus his attention on the NSA, whose morale and retention have sufferedin the decade since the embarrassing leaks by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.

My current leadership role with CYBERCOM and my familiarity and knowledge of its leadership, its mission, strengths and weaknesses means that I will be well positioned to comfortably delegate and direct its activities efficiently enabling time management and focus necessary to NSAs global enterprise, Haugh told lawmakers in July.

Haughs position overseeing the U.S.s electronic surveillance mission will put him on a collision course with privacy-minded lawmakers who are pushing for new limits on a key spying power, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that expires next April.

Haugh has called this provision, which lets the government spy on foreigners located outside the U.S. without a warrant, indispensable to national security. And as NSA chief, he could emerge as a more forceful critic of efforts to modify the law.

Before taking the No. 2 job at Cyber Command, Haugh led multiple Air Force organizations responsible for cyber warfare and intelligence collection, along with Cyber Commands main operational wing, the Cyber National Mission Force. He joined the Air Force in 1991 as a graduate of Lehigh Universitys ROTC program.

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Senate Confirms Biden's Pick To Lead NSA and Military's Cyber Force - The Messenger

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Iran-backed militias in Iraq claim to have targeted Israeli gas rig in Mediterranean - The Times of Israel

Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to Amman, Jordan on December 17-18 to meet with senior Jordanian officials, including Prime Minister Khasawneh, and underscore the strength of the U.S.-Jordan partnership. She discussed bilateral and regional priorities, including the shared U.S.-Jordanian commitment to accelerate humanitarian aid into Gaza and enhance the protection of civilians.

Acting Deputy Secretary Nuland then visited Baghdad and Erbil, Iraq on December 19-20, where she discussed bilateral relations and U.S. priorities in the region, including current security challenges.

In Baghdad, she met with Prime Minister Sudani, senior political figures, entrepreneurs, and humanitarians to reaffirm our commitment to a secure, stable, and sovereign Iraq. She congratulated Prime Minister Sudani and Framework leaders on the provincial elections, and underscored the importance of close Iraqi-U.S. cooperation in addressing shared security threats.

In Erbil, she met with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials, political party leaders, and interfaith representatives and discussed the strong U.S. partnership with the Iraqi Kurdistan Region as part of our 360-degree relationship, and heard their perspectives on ongoing efforts between the KRG and Baghdad to foster the KRGs resiliency.

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Acting Deputy Secretary of State Nuland's Travel to Jordan and Iraq - United States Department of State - Department of State

ATKINSON, N.H. Addressing a conference room full of New Hampshire voters, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley shared a grave statistic about the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Weve had more Americans die of fentanyl than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars, combined, the former South Carolina governor said Dec. 14 at the Atkinson Resort and Country Club in Atkinson.

Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid. It is used legally in pharmaceuticals, but most deaths are connected to its illegal manufacture and distribution. Small amounts can be lethal. The opioid factored in nearly 400 New Hampshire deaths in 2022, numbers from New Hampshires chief medical examiner show. The states high rate of opioid-related deaths have been a leading public health concern for several years, just as national overdose deaths have also climbed.

Federal data shows Haleys math is accurate when measuring national fentanyl deaths against U.S. military deaths. About 127,000 Americans died from drug overdoses involving a synthetic opioid other than methadone (primarily fentanyl) in 2020 and 2021 alone compared with 65,278 U.S. military personnel who died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

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Although public officials have long compared drug deaths with war fatalities, U.S. health officials approach addiction issues as public health matters and typically compare opioid deaths with deaths from other public health causes.

Military data from the Defense Departments Defense Casualty Analysis System shows 65,278 people died during the three conflicts when counting hostile battles and other nonhostile, in-theater situations. These figures include deaths from accidents, illness, injury and or self-inflicted causes.

In 2021 alone, the National Center for Health Statistics reported more than 106,000 drug overdose deaths. Of those, 70,601 involved synthetic opioids other than methadone. Fentanyl overdoses are not specifically separated out, but the agencys reports say the fatalities in this category are primarily because of fentanyl. That was up from 2020, when 56,516 people died from drug overdoses involving synthetic opioids other than methadone.

With just a few years worth of data, it is clear that the fentanyl death toll surpasses the wartime death toll Haley specified.

This is not the first time we have seen war deaths used to illustrate a public health issues direness. Politicians and television commentators have used military conflicts to illustrate the toll of gun violence, and more recently President Joe Biden used them to quantify deaths from COVID-19.

Drugs-and-war parallels have been hard to avoid since 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared a war on illegal drugs.

Comparing deaths linked to public health crises to war deaths, and especially the Vietnam War, is a pretty common thing, said David Herzberg, a drug historian and professor at the University at Buffalo. And on its face it is a reasonable strategy for conveying gravity, or seriousness of a crisis.

Fentanyl has taken a deadly toll, especially on younger adults. A Washington Post analysis found that fentanyl overdoses are the leading cause of death for American adults aged 18 to 49.

Drug overdose deaths are counted among the entire U.S. population of over 330 million people; casualties of soldiers occur within a smaller population, so deaths will never surpass the number of people who serve in a given conflict. For Vietnam, that was about 2.7 million, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. But experts like David Luckey, a senior international and defense researcher at the global policy think tank Rand Corp., said that this sort of comparison can show the scope of this problem and put the scale of the illicit fentanyl crisis in a perspective that people can understand.

Comparing the fentanyl death toll to other public health crises such as heart attacks or car accidents, would technically be more accurate, said Herzberg, but might not get the idea across because the public may not know whether those other things are really big problems or not so they arent as useful as a benchmark.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts drug overdose deaths in the category of accidents (unintentional injuries). In 2021, heart disease, cancer and COVID-19 claimed more lives than those who died in accidents. The CDC reported that 695,547 died from heart disease, 605,213 from cancer and 416,893 from COVID-19. The overall number of death counts from accidents was 224,935, of which opioid deaths made up a major portion.

Haleys other comments hint at why shes invoking war numbers. She said fentanyl deaths are among many reasons why she believes China is the United States leading national security threat. China has been preparing for war with us for years, Haley said.

China was the primary source of illicit fentanyl early in the U.S. opioid epidemic, we found. But when the Chinese government banned fentanyl production in 2019, producers switched tactics.

A 2022 Congressional Research Service report found that Chinese traffickers no longer send fentanyl directly to the U.S. Instead, chemists send the materials to Mexican criminal organizations who then produce the fentanyl. Data shows that the vast majority of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking are U.S. citizens.

Haley said, Weve had more Americans die of fentanyl than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars, combined.

Her numbers are right. About 127,000 Americans died from drug overdoses involving a synthetic opioid other than methadone (primarily fentanyl) in 2020 and 2021 compared with 65,278 U.S. military personnel who died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

We rate this statement True.

By Grace Abels, PolitiFact staff writer

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Nikki Haley is correct that fentanyl deaths top casualties from 3 wars combined - The Dallas Morning News