PDB Afternoon Bulletin | August 21st, 2026: The Taliban Is Losing Control of Afghanistan & Hackers Target U.S. Infrastructure

It's Friday, the 21st of August. Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. And congratulations for making it to the end of another work week. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the Taliban marks five years back in power, but a growing armed resistance renewed fighting with Pakistan and the persistent threat from ISIS are raising new questions about just how secure the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan really is. Later in the show, federal agencies are warning of an active cyber threat targeting the industrial computers, a control America's water systems, power infrastructure, and factories. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. This month marks five years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. On August 15th, 2021, Taliban fighters swept into Kabul as the Afghan government collapsed and America's 20-year war came to an end. Five years later, the Taliban remains well firmly entrenched. It controls the capital, the government, and essentially all of Afghanistan's territory, not to mention all the military hardware left behind in the wake of the U.S. military's chaotic withdrawal. Here at the PDB, we thought we'd take the time to check in on a country that spent 20 years in the U.S. headlines, but now, the often barely warrants an occasional mention. Soon after returning to power, the Taliban barred girls from secondary school and women from universities. Today, Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are formally prohibited from secondary and higher education. The U.S. estimates a 2.4 million Afghan girls have no been excluded from school. Maybe just spend a moment thinking about how awful that is. Women have also been pushed out of large parts of the workforce and faced severe restrictions on their movement and participation in public life. Journalists, activists, former government officials, and others perceived as critics of the regime have faced arbitrary detention, intimidation, and abuse. And beneath all of that is a grinding humanitarian crisis. The U.N. estimates that nearly 22 million Afghans, roughly 45 percent of the population, require humanitarian assistance this year. More than 3.7 million children under 5 are acutely malnourished. And more than 5 million Afghans have returned or been deported from neighboring Iran and Pakistan since 2023, putting even more pressure on housing, jobs, and basic services. And then, there's Pakistan. The Taliban once enjoyed close ties with Islamabad, but not anymore. Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of allowing the Pakistani Taliban, the TTP, to operate from Afghan territory. Kabul denies it. Those tensions are now erupted into open conflict. Earlier this year, Pakistan launched airstrikes against targets in Afghanistan, including around Kabul and Kandahar. Taliban forces retaliated against Pakistani positions, fighting has continued sporadically, with another round of Pakistani airstrikes just in June. And now, the Taliban is facing another problem at home. A growing collection of armed groups trying to challenge its rule. Our friends at the foundation for defensive democracies, long-war journal, have been tracking this issue closely. Now, the best-known opposition group is the national resistance front, led by Ahmed Masood, the son of the famed deceased anti-Taliban commander, Ahmed Shahmasood. There's also the Afghanistan Freedom Front, led by former Afghan army chief Yasin Ziyah. And last month, another group called the Homeland Soldiers Front, briefly seized up district center in the north-eastern province of Badakshan. According to the long-war journal, it was the first district center that the Taliban had lost since retaking the country in 2021. The Taliban quickly regained control, but symbolically, the brief takeover mattered. And now, another group is entered the fight. On the first of August, the Afghan United Front announced that it had begun military operations against the Taliban. The group is led by Netad General Sami Sadat, a former commander in the Afghan National Army, who fought the Taliban in Hellman province before the collapse of the former government. His forces say they've already carried out a series of attacks across Afghanistan, including operations in Kandahar and Hellland. Now, we should be careful here. Most of those battlefield claims come from the resistance groups themselves and haven't been independently verified. But Sadat's entry is interesting for another reason. He's a Pashtun. That's important, because much of the organized anti-Taliban resistance since 2021 has been concentrated in northern Afghanistan and associated with the ethnic Tajik strongholds like Ben Shir. Sadat appears to be deliberately trying to expand the insurgency into the Taliban's traditional Pashtun heartland in southern Afghanistan. His groups first claimed attack came in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, and home to its supreme leader. Sadat told Long War Journal that choosing Kandahar was deliberate. His message to the Taliban was simple, nowhere is safe. Now, he's also appealing directly to NATO for help, not for troops, he says, but material support for Afghans, willing to fight the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Pakistani Taliban. Now, there's no indication that any of these resistance groups currently have the manpower, the weapons, or territorial base required to overthrow the Taliban. The regime still controls the country's major cities, institutions, and security forces. And after 20 years of war, there appears to be very little international appetite for plunging back into Afghanistan. But five years ago, the Taliban's great claim was that it had finally ended the war. It had defeated the Afghan government, driven out the US, and claimed to have crushed the remaining resistance and restored order under a single authority. Five years later, it's a far more complicated picture. The Taliban is fighting with Pakistan along its border, ISIS remains active inside the country. Anti-Taliban resistance groups are stepping up operations in the north. And now, a former Afghan general is trying to open a new front in the Taliban's southern hardland. None of that means that Taliban government is about to fall, of course. But five years after declaring victory, the men who conquered Afghanistan, but once again, finding themselves surrounded by enemies. All right, coming up next, we've been tracking cyber attacks against water systems in Minnesota, New Jersey, and beyond. Now a new federal warning suggests hackers may be probing a much broader weakness in America's critical infrastructure. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now let me take just a minute to talk to you about an incredibly important subject. I'm talking about the absolute key to your health. I'm talking about sleep. So let me ask you a question. Do you snore? Well, I know it's a personal question, but as a result of you snoring, did somebody, I don't know, maybe your partner hand you a CPAP machine. And then at some point, did you just stop using it? Look, CPAP users, you know, the mask never quite seals. The hose is tugging at you every time you roll over. And eventually, much like the rower and the exercise bike, the machine just ends up sitting abandoned in a closet. Well, here's your answer. Excite OSA works a different way. It treats a root cause instead of just managing the noise and you use it while you're awake. 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The water remained safe, service continued, and the systems were eventually restored. But now, the federal government is issuing a new warning, and it suggests this threat extends well beyond some local water utilities. On Wednesday, the NSA, FBI, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, issued a joint advisory warning of what they call a "active threat" against industrial control equipment manufactured by Siemens. Specifically, hackers are targeting a family of devices known as S7 Series Programmable Logic Controllers. Now, if you don't know what that is, a programmable logic controller, or a PLC because, of course, is an acronym, is basically just a small industrial computer. But unlike the computer sitting on your desk, these machines control things in the physical world. They can tell pumps when to turn on, open and close valves, regulate pressure, control manufacturing equipment, and monitor machinery to make sure everything is operating correctly, which is why they're so important, and they're everywhere. The Siemens controllers highlighted in the government's warning are used not only in water and wastewater facilities, but also in energy production, chemical plants, manufacturing facilities, and the food and agriculture industries. Federal officials warned that if hackers successfully compromised these systems, the results could include shutdowns, equipment damage, safety problems, and, potentially, cascading disruptions across interconnected infrastructure. And there's another concerning development here. The hackers are apparently using AI. According to the advisory, AI tools are dramatically reducing both the expertise and the amount of time required to develop software capable of exploiting these industrial systems. In plain English, attacking this kind of equipment used to require fairly specialized technical knowledge. AI is making it all easier. And that's potentially a major change in the cyber threats facing American infrastructure. We've already seen what can happen when someone gains access to these systems. During the recent attacks against water utilities, hackers were able to interfere with remote operations. Some facilities lost the ability to monitor equipment normally. In other incidents across the country, authorities have reported water pressure problems and flooding. So far, there's been no widespread disruption to America's drinking water. But the concern is, where this all goes next. And of course, there's a question of Iran. Federal officials haven't formally blamed Tehran for the latest attacks. In President Trump, as publicly said, he does not believe Iran was responsible for the wave of attacks in Minnesota. Oh, but cyber security experts suspect an Iranian connection. And federal agencies have repeatedly warned this year that Iranian affiliated hackers are targeting the exact type of industrial equipment now under attack. Back in April, US agencies warned that Iranian linked hackers were exploiting internet-connected programmable logic controllers across American critical infrastructure. Then, last month, officials expanded that warning to include equipment manufactured by companies, including Siemens. And now we're seeing an act of campaign targeting those devices while the US remains at war with Iran. Coincidence? Well, I don't know. Again, attribution in cyberspace is difficult, and investigators have not publicly pinned, at least yet, these latest attacks on Tehran. But, whoever is responsible, the larger vulnerability is becoming increasingly clear. America's critical infrastructure has become heavily automated and increasingly connected to the internet, and that makes it more efficient. But, it also creates thousands of potential doors for an adversary to try to open. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Friday, the 21st of August. Now, if you have any questions or comments, and I hope you do, just reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. And to listen to the show ad-free, well, just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting PDB premium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back over the weekend with the latest addition of the PDB situation report. As always, you can catch it in past episodes on our YouTube channel, just head on over to YouTube and search up at President's Daily Brief. And, of course, on podcast platforms everywhere. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.