October 2nd, 2026: Iran’s Economy Is Getting Worse & Kasparov Warned of Assassination Plot

It's Friday, the 2nd of October. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage, and still on the road, and still apparently in some posh hotel room in the UK. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the latest signs of trouble for Iran's economy, as stranded tankers, a record low currency, and tighter U.S. pressure point to a deepening economic crisis. Later in the show, China-linked hackers are using fake identities, including that of a former U.S. official, to target experts working on artificial intelligence. Well, I am shocked. Plus, we'll add the latest on the RAF Fairford investigation, where Britain now says it believes Iran played a role in the suspected plot near the airbase. And in today's Back of the Brief, the former world chess champion and longtime Putin critic Garry Kasparov says security services warned him he may be the target of an assassination plot. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. For months, the Iranian regime used the Strait of Hormuz to trap commercial shipping inside the Gulf and force the rest of the region to feel the cost of the war. Now, roughly twenty Iranian or Iran-linked tankers are sitting stranded off the coast of the Gulf. Their engines are idle, unable to return home, and reportedly running short on food, fuel and fresh water. The Wall Street Journal reports that those vessels are among dozens of tankers caught in Asian waters since the U.S. reinstated its blockade of Iran in July. Many had been involved in the shadow trade that moved sanctioned Iranian oil to China. And now, Washington is going after the infrastructure that keeps that trade functioning, pressuring governments and private companies to keep it running. So, let's take a look at what's happening in the U.S. right now. Let's take a look at what's happening in the U.S. right now. right now. All right, coming up next, China-linked hackers target U.S. AI experts, and Britain says Iran may have played a role in the suspected RAF Fairford plot. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker. I'm Mike Baker here with a word about personal health and weight loss. Now, everybody's talking about weight loss injections because, well, the results are so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. But what if you're looking to lose weight but not interested in painful weekly injections, particularly after you see some of those side effects? Well, that's why doctors created a weight loss supplement called Lean. That's L-E-A-N. And the results have been remarkable. The studied ingredients in Lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite and cravings, so you're not as hungry. But listen, Lean is not for the casual dieter with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at BrickHouse Nutrition created Lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. Let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping, so you can add Lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit TakeLean.com and enter PDB for your discount. That's promo code PDB at TakeLean.com. Welcome back to the PDB. Chinese hackers are reportedly targeting some of America's leading artificial intelligence experts in an effort to gain access to their emails. And according to cybersecurity researchers, the real target may be Washington's plans for the global AI race. Reuters reports that a hacking group linked to China has been impersonating prominent American AI and national security experts, including a former White House official, in an effort to steal passwords from researchers and policy specialists. The campaign was uncovered by the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, which tracks the group under the name TA419. That's catchy. According to the company, the hackers have been targeting people at American and Japanese think tanks, defense contractors, universities, and law firms since at least 2025. More recently, they've actually begun impersonating experts in artificial intelligence and national security. Among the most high profile is Lynn Parker, who recently served as principal deputy, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and played a leading role in shaping the Trump administration's AI policy. Proofpoint says the hackers sent emails appearing to come from Parker and other experts, typically proposing some kind of AI collaboration or policy initiative. Targets would then be directed to websites designed to steal their passwords. Reuters independently identified another Chinese target as Alex Engler, another former White House official, who now leads the, Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy. Engler says he received an email supposedly from Parker, inviting him to participate in a new AI policy project. But something about the message, as he put it, felt, quote, slightly nebulously off. After checking with other people in the field, Engler realized Parker had not sent the email. Now, the campaign appears to have been relatively small. Proofpoint says fewer than 10 people at a handful of organizations were apparently targeted. But who those, people were, and what they worked on, may tell us considerably more about what the hackers were after. According to Proofpoint, the targets included experts working on AI regulation, export controls, and America's national AI strategy, leading researchers to conclude that the operation may reflect, quote, an intelligence interest in U.S. policymaking rather than technology theft alone. Proofpoint attributed the campaign to China based on the malware and internet infrastructure used in the attacks, along with, quote, "competitive cyber-spionage." The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters' request for comment on this latest report. Now, Beijing has long denied accusations that it conducts cyber-espionage. And Beijing has long snickered quietly after making those denials. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters' request for comment on this latest report. But if Proofpoint's assessment is correct, the operation offers an interesting window into the broader competition between Washington and Beijing over artificial intelligence. Beyond their interest in what American AI systems can do, there is enormous value for Chinese intelligence in understanding how Washington plans to regulate the technology, what capabilities it intends to restrict from reaching China, and where American policymakers believe the competition is heading. And there is clearly an advantage to China if they can also manipulate opinion in the U.S. to call for more guardrails on AI development. The timing here is also interesting. Just last week, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to establish a new dialogue that's good between the two countries on artificial intelligence, along with a bilateral communication channel for AI-related incidents as part of a broader effort to stabilize relations between Washington and Beijing. And now we learn that, at the same time as Xi was in Washington making nice, a China-aligned hacking group has been busy targeting the U.S. experts involved in shaping American AI policy. All right, I want to turn now to Britain, where the prime minister says there are quote, strong indications that Iran played a part in Sunday's suspected plot outside RAF Fairford. That's the airbase used by American bombers to strike the Iranian regime. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham made that assessment public on Wednesday in an interview with the BBC, putting Iran at the center of an investigation that's already triggered a security response and alarm among Western allies. Immediately after the arrests, you may recall, Burnham urged people not to speculate about the suspect's motives or connections to other countries. Counterterrorism police subsequently confirmed that they were examining whether a foreign state was involved, including whether proxies were, quote, knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state. Now, Burnham is going further, publicly naming the Iranian regime, quote, saying there are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford, while stressing that this remains a quote, ongoing, complex, and serious police investigation. Well, I'm glad it's serious. So, what has led him from warning against speculation to making that accusation himself? Well, Burnham declined to disclose the evidence, supporting his assessment, saying more would be released in due course. We don't know yet whether new findings prompted that shift or whether officials are now prepared to say more about information they already held. But either way, publicly pointing to Tehran raises the stakes in an already serious investigation. As I discussed earlier this week on the PDB, RAF Fairford is in western England, sitting about 90 miles outside of London, and American bombers have been using it in recent months as a launchpad to conduct missions in the war against Iran. If the connection to Iran is established, the questions extend well beyond those five men to what the Iranian regime wanted to accomplish. Burnham says British and American officials have been in close contact as the investigation develops. Burnham had already been signaling concern about an outside connection. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the incident was connected to a foreign country, although he stopped short of naming one. He did, however, specifically point to Iran's threats against American interests worldwide, saying, quote, we're going to always take that very seriously, end quote. Meanwhile, investigators have released more details about what they found outside Fairford. Five British men, all in their 20s and living in London, were arrested. Near the base early Sunday morning on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offenses. More than 85 nearby homes were evacuated, while police and military personnel spent more than two days examining the three white vans, including with a bomb disposal robot. But on Tuesday, authorities announced a finding that complicated the picture. There was an unspecified quantity of gasoline inside the vans, but no explosives or improvised explosive devices. By then, all five suspects had been released on bail Monday. That was a decision police defended, following criticism from some, including President Trump. Shortly after the arrests, Trump had said the suspects planned, quote, big damage. British authorities have not publicly explained what evidence would support that description. Still, the absence of a bomb does not explain what the men were doing there. But you ask yourself, did one of the suspects help bring police to the scene? Well, that is now under investigation. Police say a local resident called it around, 1.36 in the morning Sunday, after seeing masked men around three parked white vans. Yeah, that does sound suspicious, but that was not the first warning that authorities received. Almost an hour earlier, someone reported three suspicious vehicles heading toward the base. Now, according to the Times of London, the BBC and other British outlets, investigators believe that earlier call may have come from one of the five men subsequently arrested. Police declined to confirm whether a suspect made it. The Times, reports that this may have been a surveillance, maybe a dry run to test security, or a stunt intended to send a message to the British government. Investigators are also reportedly examining whether the caller got cold feet, or whether contacting police was in fact part of the plan. Iran, meanwhile, as you might suspect, is pointing to the suspect's release on bail as grounds to dismiss the accusation. Its embassy in Britain rejected the allegations on Monday. Then, on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Abbas Aradji responded, directly to Burnham, saying, quote, And in today's back of the brief, a former chess champion, Gary Kasparov, says he was warned that his life may be at risk as authorities investigate suspected plots against Russian dissidents abroad. More on that when we come back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me ask you a question. What happened the last time you called a business and nobody picked up the phone? 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In today's Back of the Brief, I want to talk about Garry Kasparov, who has spent years speaking out against Vladimir Putin's regime from outside Russia. Now, the longtime Kremlin critic says American and Lithuanian security services warned him that in exile, his life is in danger. That warning comes amid allegations that Russian intelligence was involved in assassination plots against Kremlin opponents living abroad. Now, Kasparov is best known as a former world chess champion, but he has also become one of the Kremlin's most persistent critics. After retiring from chess in 2005, Kasparov entered politics to fight what he saw as Putin's authoritarian consolidation of power, a campaign that has since included outspoken opposition to the Kremlin's repression at home and aggression against Ukraine. In a Substack post Wednesday following a Reuters report, he said that he and Ivan Tutrin, a Lithuanian-based Ukrainian, were in a relationship. He said that he and Ivan Tutrin, Russian opposition activist, had been advised to take precautions. Kasparov wrote, We were, however, warned by security services in Lithuania and the U.S. that our lives were in danger and that we should take precautions. Last month, U.S. authorities announced charges against five people over alleged Russian intelligence-linked plots to assassinate two opposition figures, one in the U.S. and another in Lithuania. According to authorities, recruits were paid to conduct surveillance on both intended targets. Several media reports, which have not been independently confirmed, named three possible targets. Kasparov, who lives in New York, Ilya Ponomaryov, another Russian dissident based in Ukraine, who travels regularly to the U.S., and Tutrin. But there's an important distinction. Kasparov says neither he nor Tutrin were told that they were the specific targets of the alleged plots. The warning they received, he says, was broader but still chilling. Their lives were in danger and they should take precautions. Putin's regime has faced accusations of pursuing, poisoning, threatening, and killing opponents beyond Russia's borders. Moscow naturally denies any connection to assassination plots. We had nothing to do with Litvinenko or Skripal or any variety of others. Last month, the Kremlin said it saw no reason to comment on the U.S. allegations without what it called credible evidence and facts. But that denial does not answer the allegations now brought by American authorities, and it does not explain away the, warning that Kasparov says he and Tutrin received from U.S. and Lithuanian security services. After being warned that his safety may be at risk, Kasparov says he will not be intimidated into silence, writing, quote, I will continue to do everything I can to rally the free world against Putin's murderous dictatorship, end quote. And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief for Friday, the 2nd of October. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at pdbatthefirsttv.com. Finally, you'll want to tune in to this weekend's edition of our highly possibly critically acclaimed show, The PDB Situation Report, we're joined by the amazing astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil does, frankly, a really commendable job keeping up with my highbrow academic theories and smart guy ways. We're talking all about artificial intelligence, and we'll get a look at his new book, Take Me to Your Leader. Bill Rogel from the Foundation for Defensive Democracies also returns. This time, we're focused on the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. You can catch it tonight at 10 p.m. as always on The First TV. And, of course, on our YouTube channel. Some are calling it the gold standard of YouTube channels. I don't know who those some people are, but I'm sure they're out there. Just search up Ad President's Daily Brief on YouTube, of course, and it's also available wherever you get your podcast stuff. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. I'm Mike Baker. I'll see you next time.