North Korea rejects US allegations over $6 billion Binance crypto heist

North Korea on Tuesday dismissed US allegations that it was behind a $6 billion cryptocurrency theft from Binance as "absurd rhetoric", accusing Washington of seeking to portray the country as a cybercriminal state and warning that US hostility could affect future diplomatic engagement.

Issued on: 03/11/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, on March 2, 2019. © Jorge Silva, Reuters


North Korea on Tuesday dismissed as "absurd rhetoric" US allegations that it was behind a $6 billion cryptocurrency heist on the Binance platform, saying they proved Washington remained hostile towards it, state news agency KCNA said.

The denial issued by Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong Un, comes as Pyongyang has stayed silent on US President Donald Trump's overtures to resume summit diplomacy. Kim Yo Jong warned that North Korea had "issues to reconsider" over what it calls US hostility.

The FBI said at the weekend that North Korea was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, in what could be the largest-ever financial heist.

"The FBI is trying to brand the DPRK as a 'cybercriminal state,' claiming that it obtained information that a hacking organisation 'supported' by the DPRK was involved in the incident," KCNA quoted Kim Yo Jong, a ruling party official, as saying. DPRK is a short form for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"But the US assertion is absurd rhetoric and nothing new," Kim said.

"It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the US misleads international public opinion as if all the cybercrimes in different parts of the world are our deeds."

Cybersecurity experts say North Korean hackers are among the world's most prolific crypto thieves and the proceeds help fund the country's weapons programmes. North Korea denies all allegations of its links to cryptocurrency theft and other cybercrimes.

North Korea is one of the world's most impoverished countries but has poured resources secured through illicit means and activities banned under UN Security Council resolutions into its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes.

Kim Yo Jong said North Korea would "reconsider" unspecified issues in light of the "very unpleasant US hostile attitude". While she did not elaborate, North Korea has not publicly responded to Trump's offers to resume summit diplomacy, and experts have said Pyongyang may be weighing its options.

The FBI said members of a North Korean state-sponsored unit known as TraderTraitor were responsible for the Binance attack. Law enforcement had observed them converting the stolen assets to the cryptocurrency Ethereum, and expected them to launder the assets further.

Binance has said it has covered most of the assets stolen from the platform by using company money.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)

Russia's military budget buys close to 90% of America's in artillery shells - IntelliNews Lambda

Russia's war budget is a fifth of the Pentagon's in dollars, but counted in shells, tanks and jets rather than dollars, the gap is far narrower. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin November 2, 2026

Russia's military budget is a fifth of America's in dollars, but counted in artillery shells rather than dollars, it buys close to 90% as much.

And the Kremlin is spending big - and more than it can afford. Nominally, Russia's military spending this year is on course to approach RUB17 trillion ($211bn), which is as much as RUB5 trillion ($62bn) more than it initially planned to spend at the start of this year. 

While official figures are opaque, the government's budget plan had pencilled in RUB12.1 trillion ($150bn) for "national defence" in 2026, while SIPRI estimated total actual planned military expenditure at RUB14.9 trillion ($185bn), or 6.3% of GDP, in March. Next year's 2027 budget will lift defence spending again to RUB17.1 trillion ($212bn), or a whopping 41% of all spending. 

It's a lot of money, but it is still only a fifth of what the $961.6bn the Pentagon requested for FY2026. And if President Donald Trump gets his way, that will rise to $1.5 trillion next year. 

However, spend a dollar in Russia and it goes a lot further than one spent in the US as wages and input costs are a lot lower. Consequently, economists prefer to compare PPP (purchase power parity) adjusted spending that takes this difference in price into account. 

At the Bank of Russia's official rate of RUB80.56 to the dollar, RUB17 trillion ($211bn) adjusted for PPP Russia's defence spending is  worth about $574bn - not 22% of US spending but close to 60% of the US figure - still a big gap, but may be enough to keep Russia in the game if it went to war with the US. 

The International Institute for Strategic Studies made the same kind of adjustment in its Military Balance 2025, valuing Russia's 2024 defence spending of RUB13.1 trillion ($163bn) at $462bn in PPP terms - more than the EU and the UK combined that would be in the frontline if war in Europe really does break out.

Artillery shell units 

The story doesn’t stop there as even the PPP adjustment flatters the US. The PPP adjustment is an aggregate adjustment to the value of the currency that takes everything into account, but military production is very specific. The difference between what a dollar spent in the market can buy you in the market is not the same as what it pays for in Russia’s drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan or the artillery shell plants in the depths of Siberia.

On the flip side, the US defence sector is bloated, and its products are, in comparative terms, badly overpriced. Instead of comparing dollar-for-adjusted dollars, it makes more sense to compare the cost of production of like-with-like. A dollar of Pentagon money buys fewer shells, tanks and jets than a dollar's worth of rubles does in Russia. Counting the military spending in terms of "artillery shell production units" then Russia's spending on the weapons it actually uses in its war in Ukraine is just under 90% of US spending. 

Artillery shell units are the basic comparison as everything that goes into making the Soviet-era standard 152mm shell is Russian: the metal, the gunpowder, the power, the labour. One shell costs an estimated $1000 to make, according to defence publication Militarnyi, whereas the Nato equivalent 155mm shell costs $4000 to make in the US, according to consultancy Bain & Company. The PPP adjustment implies the Russian shell should be about 2.7-times cheaper, but the actual difference is Russian shells are four-times cheaper to make than American shells. 

If the war were entirely about shelling the enemy then Russia and the US spending is almost on a par. 

Russia's 2026 military spending at the market rate, at PPP and in artillery-shell terms, against the Pentagon's FY2026 request. Source: Bank of Russia, US Department of Defense, Bain & Company, IntelliNews calculations

Artillery is the simplest place to start and they have played a key role in the early stages of the Ukraine conflict which was largely an artillery duel for the first two years; Russia was lobbying ten shells on to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) for every one they could fire back. By 2023 Ukraine was already in crisis as it was running out of ammunition and the West scrambled to find more shells after its own stockpile was depleted.

The cost is not the only factor to consider in military spending comparisons: there is no point having more money to spend if you don't have the industrial capacity to make the shells. Bain reckoned Russia would turn out 4.5mn shells in 2024 against the combined production of 1.3mn in the US and the EU. Since then Russia has doubled or tripled its production capacity. 

The US is struggling to scale up. The Army raised 155mm output from 14,000 to 36,000 rounds a month by March 2026, or 432,000 a year, missing its goal of 100,000 a month by October 2025, the Pentagon's inspector general found in a report published on July 9.

Just how wide the gap is between the US defence sector’s ability to make something as simple as shells was highlighted by the US military’s catastrophic failure to expand domestic explosives production.

The Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, operated by BAE Systems, is the country’s sole domestic producer of RDX and HMX - two powerful explosives used in missiles, bombs and artillery ammunition. The US Army committed one billion dollars to modernise the 84-year-old facility, but production increased a meagre 3% of its 1944 peak. Further upgrades intended to increase capacity have been delayed until at least 2029, and the plant faces a backlog of orders stretching one to two years. The lack of these two explosives threatens to become a crucial bottleneck that will severely hamper the US ability to wage war at a time when demand for munitions is sky high and rising.

At the same time the US only has three plants making the metal parts for shells which suffer from similar problems related to underinvestment. Output of shells is currently capped at 71,000 a month, according to the Wall Street Journal. Russia's howitzer output alone is about eight-times higher than the US rate.

At Bain's 4:1 ratio, Russia's $211bn buys as many shells as $844bn spent in the US, or 88% of the Pentagon's request. On the 2025 Russian contract price the ratio is 3.1:1, which still puts Russia's spending at about $654bn in US shell terms, or 68%.

Artillery shell	US / Nato	Russia
Standard round	155mm (M795 high-explosive)	152mm (OF25 high-explosive)
Estimated unit cost (Bain & Company, 2024)	about $4,000	about $1,000
Russian contract price, 2025	-	RUB104,000 ($1,291)
Shells bought for $1mn	250	about 775-1,000
Output	36,000 155mm rounds a month (March 2026)	3.4mn howitzer rounds in 2025; 7mn artillery rounds of all types
Russian spending in US shell terms	$962bn (US request)	$654bn-844bn (68%-88% of US)

Sources: Bain & Company via Sky News; Militarnyi; Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service; US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General; IntelliNews calculations

Tanks and fighter jets

Russia has a big advantage over the US in shell production, but the bigger, more complicated platforms show a smaller discount. A serial T-90M, the so-called Amarta Main Battle Tank, Russia's most modern in production, costs about RUB350mn ($4.3mn), military journalist Kirill Fedorov estimated in April, while the Kyiv Post has put it at about $4.5mn. Russia has never published the price. The US Army's FY2020 procurement budget gave a gross unit cost of $10.6mn for the M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams, the US' best tanks - about 2.5 times as much and on a par with the PPP dollar -adjusted spending. 

The Su-57 fifth-generation fighter costs about RUB2.2bn (34.6mnatthe2019averageexchangerate)aplanewhenthedefenceministryordered76foraboutRUB170bn(2.6bn) in 2019, Kommersant reported. By comparison the US' fifth generation F-35 has an average buy-and-fly cost of  $82.5mn - about 2.4 times the Su-57's price, and the latest contract for 296 jets came to $24.3bn for the airframes alone.

On armour and aircraft the multiplier of 2.4-2.5 sits just below the economy-wide PPP ratio of 2.7, putting Russia's spending at about 52%-54% of the US level in tank or jet units.

Platform	US	Russia	Cost ratio (US:Russia)
Main battle tank	M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams: $10.6mn (Army FY2020 budget)	T-90M: about RUB350mn ($4.3mn) to $4.5mn (estimates)	about 2.5:1
Fifth-generation fighter	F-35A: $82.5mn average flyaway (Lots 15-17)	Su-57: about RUB2.2bn ($34.6mn at 2019 rate) (2019 contract)	about 2.4:1

Russian prices are estimates or press-reported contract totals; US prices are official budget or programme figures. Sources: US Army, F-35 Joint Program Office, Kommersant, Kyiv Post, IntelliNews calculations

Drones and missiles

In drones the unit-price edge disappears altogether but the volume edge takes over.  IntelliNews published an infographic guide to Russia and Ukraine’s missiles and drones, where the key takeaway is the Kremlin this year has upgraded its workhorse Geran-2 drone, based on the prop-driven Iranian-designed Shahed-136 loitering munition, to the much more advanced and hard to stop Geran-4 and the cruise missile-lite Geran-5, plus the very similar Banderol cheap and power cruise missile against which Ukraine has at best partial protection.

Leaked documents put Russia's projected cost of a localised Geran-2 at about $48,800 in 2023, Militarnyi reported in February 2024. The US LUCAS, a copy of the Shahed, costs about $35,000 a unit, according to US Central Command. But the LUCAS is still on the drawing board and not in serial production. Currently, what drones the US has costs between $20mn and $250mn to make with its best known drone, the MQ-9 Reaper costing 30mn–50mn each - two orders of magnitude more than Russia's drones, which are now state-of-the-art.

In effect the US has next to nothing in its drone arsenal, whereas Russia was producing an estimated 2mn drones and 2,500 missiles a year by 2025, much of it at the Alabuga plant in Tatarstan, and now builds about 3,000 jet-powered Geran-4 drones a month. Europe's combined drone production is estimated to be 300,000 a year by comparison. 

Russia has already moved beyond the original Iranian design following a technology swap in 2015 and since then the two wars in Ukraine and Iran have been driving an expanding CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) technology swap where each partner is helping the others develop better weapons based on hard battlefield data. As a result Russia is currently winning the drone arms race with Ukraine, whereas the US has been reduced to trying to reverse engineer Iran's technology.

The Geran-2 flies at 150-180 km/h. The Geran-3 reaches 300-370 km/h, the Geran-4 about 500 km/h, and the Geran-5 reportedly over 1,000km/h. Ukraine's fastest interceptor drone can manage 450kmh and so can't catch Russia's newest missiles from behind. With  an estimated cost of $170,000-200,000 apiece, according to Defense Express, the Geran-4 is one of the most effective drones on the battlefield.

The Banderol, a cross between a strike drone and a light cruise missile, cruises at 500-560 km/h, and estimates of its cost run from up to $50,000 to $150,000-300,000, Ukrainska Pravda reported in September. The US has no jet-powered one-way attack drone in mass production at all. 

Missiles are harder to compare, because Moscow publishes no prices but a wealth of experience earned from the seven decades of the Cold War. Ukrainian estimates put an Iskander-M ballistic missile at about $3mn and a Kh-101 cruise missile at about $13mn, Forbes Ukraine calculated.

The US Army's budget requests put its comparable Precision Strike Missile at $1.7mn-3.5mn, and trade-press estimates put a Tomahawk at $1.9mn-3.6mn, so on these figures the US pays less per missile. Russia's edge lies in weapons the US does not have at all: the hypersonic Kinzhal, estimated at $10mn-15mn, and the Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, put at $20mn-50mn by Ukrainian sources. China, Russia and now Iran all have hypersonic missiles, while the US version is also still in development. 

Weapon	US	Russia	Note
One-way attack drone	LUCAS: about $35,000	Geran-2: about $48,800 (2023 projected cost)	US cheaper per unit; Russia makes thousands a month
Jet drone / light cruise missile	none in mass production	Geran-4: $170,000-200,000 (est.); Geran-5: not published; Banderol: up to $50,000 to $300,000 (est.)	Speeds 450-600 km/h
Short-range ballistic missile	PrSM: $1.7mn-3.5mn; ATACMS: about $1.5mn	Iskander-M: about $3mn (est.)	No Russian advantage on these estimates
Cruise missile	Tomahawk: $1.9mn-3.6mn (est.)	Kh-101: about $13mn (est.)	Russian prices are Ukrainian estimates
Hypersonic / intermediate-range	none in service	Kinzhal: $10mn-15mn; Oreshnik: $20mn-50mn (est.)	No US equivalent fielded

Sources: US Central Command, US Army budget requests, Militarnyi, Defense Express, Ukrainska Pravda, Forbes Ukraine, ArmyInform

The chip in the machine

Cost and capacity are two of the three limits on Russia's war machine. The third is technology, and it is the one the Kremlin controls least.

Russia's drones and missiles are cheap and they are plentiful, but unlike the artillery shells they are not Russian all the way through. Strip the casing off a Geran or an Iskander and what is inside is a smorgasbord of components, much of it Western.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made the audit public on June 2: five Kalibr cruise missiles fired at Ukraine contained 145 foreign components between them, 33 Iskanders contained 1,122, and 650 strike drones of various types contained more than 17,000. Russian drones and missiles, he said, “cannot be produced at all without components imported from other countries”.

As Kyiv finds itself under a 24/7 bombardment of missiles and drones as Putin escalates the increasingly brutal tit-for-tat missile war, Bankova’s pleas for the West to crank up its technology sanctions have become increasingly shrill. Russia can out-produce the West on shells because it can find everything it needs at home, but it cannot out-produce the West on signal processors, programmable logic and radiation-hardened memory, because it does not make them. But Russia does have friends who do and they are getting increasingly good at it.

Ukraine's Defence Intelligence now publishes the evidence component by component on its War&Sanctions portal, and the catalogue is countable. IntelliNews tallied every card on the portal for four weapons – 464 in all. The pattern is not the simple one. Substitution is happening, but it runs in two directions at once.

On drones, Russia is going Chinese:

Geran-2: In a sample whose newest identified part dates from June 2023, 70 of 75 catalogued components came from firms headquartered in the US and its allies and just three from China.

Geran-4: with parts made as late as March 2026, the Western share is down to 56 of 74 and China's is up to 12. The Iranian Mado engine that powered the original has gone, replaced by Chinese Telefly turbojets. Colonel Oleksandr Zaruba of Ukraine's weapons testing institute said in June that around 50 parts in each Shahed are now made in China or Taiwan.

On missiles, Russia is substituting for itself:

Kh-101 cruise missile: in a sample whose newest part dates from November 2022, carried 138 catalogued components of which four were Russian.

Iskander-M: in a sample with parts made as recently as April 2025 carried 177, of which 38 were Russian – Mikron, Morion, Proton, Kremnii El – and a further eight came from Integral, the Belarusian state chipmaker. Even so, two-thirds of that missile is still Western by origin.

Integral is a lesson in itself. It shipped more than 6mn microchips worth $130mn into Russia between March 2022 and June 2024, 80% of all Belarusian chip exports to the country, and Ukraine's SBU has confirmed its parts inside Iskander, Kh-101, Kh-59M2A and S-300 missiles. Its own production lines run on German microscopes, Swiss vacuum valves, British vacuum systems, Japanese wafer slicers and American test rigs, fed by 99.999% pure hydrochloric acid routed out of Germany through Poland, Turkey and Kazakhstan. The substitute for Western technology is manufactured with Western technology.

The deepest layer has not moved at all. The Kometa is Russia's own anti-jamming navigation module, the thing it built to replace Iran's Nasir receiver and the reason Geran drones still fly through Ukrainian electronic warfare; its antenna has gone from four elements in mid-2023 to sixteen. It is Russian-designed and Russian-assembled – and of its 37 foreign components, 34 come from Western firms and 28 from American ones. Russia has substituted the module. It has not substituted the silicon inside it.

That is the ceiling. Russia's three mass-scale chip plants – Mikron, Angstrem and Milandr, all in Zelenograd – produce at 90 nanometres. The industry ministry's roadmap targets 28nm by 2028 and 14nm by 2030, which IntelliNews has reported as unrealistic; China is already below 10nm and the US is heading for 2nm.

Up to 82% of Russia's electronic components were imported before 2022, and the state is putting about RUB175bn ($2.2bn) a year into microelectronics against an estimated RUB1.5-2.5 trillion for a single modern fab and RUB3-5 trillion for the equipment to fill it. Russia cannot buy the lithography machines and it cannot build them.

Which is why Kyiv keeps pressing. Tighten the export controls hard enough and the lines at Alabuga and Izhevsk slow, because the parts cannot be made at home and the workarounds – distributors in Hong Kong, shell companies, the long daisy-chain through Central Asia and the Gulf – are expensive and traceable. The Kyiv School of Economics found $7.3bn of critical battlefield components reaching Russia from coalition-based firms in a single year, almost all through third-country intermediaries.

But the window is closing, and not because enforcement is improving. Every Chinese part that replaces an American one is a part the West can no longer switch off, and Chinese quality is rising fast – the CRINK technology swap means Beijing is now a developer of these systems, not merely a supplier of parts for them. Conflict Armament Research has recorded a “discernible increase” in Chinese content in Shahed-type drones.

Sanctions on Western technology would bite today. On present trends they will not bite for much longer.

 

Foreign components catalogued by Ukraine's Defence Intelligence in two Russian drones and two Russian missiles, by the manufacturer's home country. Source: War&Sanctions portal, 464 component cards tallied by bne IntelliNews on November 2; Militarnyi; Kyiv School of Economics; CSIS

The like-for-like index

Set side by side, the categories show where Russia's money goes furthest. In shells, the ammunition this war burns through fastest, Russia's ruble buys three to four times as much as a Pentagon dollar. In tanks and jets the multiplier is about 2.5. In drones Russia pays roughly the same per unit as the US but unlike the US, already has large-scale, fully developed production, churning them out in the millions a year. In hypersonic missiles, Russia has no American rival to price against and America has no effective air defence to protect against them.

Measure	Cost ratio (US:Russia)	Russia's $211bn in US-equivalent terms	Share of US $962bn
Market exchange rate	1:1	$211bn	22%
Drones (Geran-2 vs LUCAS)	0.7:1	$151bn	16%
Fifth-generation fighters	2.4:1	$502bn	52%
Main battle tanks	2.5:1	$521bn	54%
Economy-wide PPP	2.7:1	$574bn	60%
Shells (2025 contract price)	3.1:1	$654bn	68%
Shells (Bain & Company)	4:1	$844bn	88%

Ratios apply one weapon class to the whole budget for illustration only. Source: IntelliNews calculations from the sources above

Preparing for the wrong war

"Generals always prepare to fight the last war," British Prime Minister Winston Churchill quipped. The US is still buying what it has always built: stealth fighters, heavy tanks and expensive precision missiles. Russia's biggest advantage is that it is fighting a war now and buying for it.

Ukraine has turned war into an asymmetric contest where the cost-to-kill ratio decides who wins, not who has the biggest or smartest bombs. A Patriot PAC-3 interceptor costs about $4mn, while the drones fired at it cost $20,000-30,000. An attacker can make 150-200 drones for every interceptor. The new paradigm is a man with a flywatter trying to fend off an attack by a swarm of hornets. 

The doctrine has shifted the “Command of the Commons” doctrine the US has been following for decades - the deployment of powerful weapons in bases scattered around the world so it can respond to any crisis quickly with overwhelming force - to the Command of the Reload, in which the side that can build more cheap, "good-enough" weapons wins. 

Ukraine is praised for its pioneering drone innovations, but Russia is innovating too and currently has the edge in drones over Ukraine. The CRINK technology swap and informal alliance is proving to be decisive. The only answer the US has to the CRINK hypersonic missiles is the Army's Dark Eagle that has flown a few flight tests and its first battery of eight missiles is assigned to a unit in Washington state. Its first operational fielding was expected in July, according to the Congressional Research Service brief on the programme. The Air Force revived its own ARRW hypersonic missile with a $694mn production contract earlier this year.

The pace of change on the Russian side is fast. The Geran family has gone from 150-180 km/h for the Geran-2 to 450-600 km/h for the Geran-5 in under two years and Russia is keeping its foot on the pedal. US weapons development has no war driving it at that speed.

Washington had a chance to learn from the experts but fluffed it. Zelenskiy offered Trump a mega-deal in July 2025, Ukrainian drones in exchange for American missiles, and a $50bn drone deal was rejected. "We don't need any help," Trump said in March, as the US rolled out the LUCAS instead.

The US war on Iran that began in February has shown what that costs. Iran's asymmetric tactics have blunted American air power, and eight months on Tehran is still setting preconditions for ending the war. The US and Israel armed themselves for the wrong war, and Russia's military is far more powerful than Iran's. Even if the US outspends Russia by about 10% in like-for-like terms, it is spending more of that money on the wrong weapons, and risks the same experience in any war with Russia's far more powerful and experienced army. 

This article was produced with the help of IntelliNews Lambda analytical tool

Trump Is Dealing With a Different North Korea

by Kyle Anzalone | Nov 2, 2026 | 

With all of President Donald Trump’s wars – Iran, Yemen, Ukraine, Nigeria, Somalia, Venezuela, and cartels – it’s easy to lose track of what is happening on the Korean Peninsula. However, since Trump returned to the White House, a series of developments on the Korean Peninsula have increased the risk that a relatively minor border incident could escalate into a much larger conflict.

The first, and potentially most important, was a policy shift by Pyongyang that began before Trump returned to the White House. North Korea abandoned its longstanding goal of reunification with South Korea, moving toward treating the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) as an international border.

Pyongyang ruled out any direct negotiations with Seoul. North Korea argues that South Korea is a proxy of the US, and therefore any meaningful agreement will be with Washington, not Seoul.

Additionally, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is in no hurry to meet with Trump. Pyongyang says that preconditions to any negotiations include Washington dropping its demand that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons, and the US must end its hostile policy.

And while Trump has suggested he would like to meet with Kim, Washington has refused to drop the demand for denuclearization, and Pyongyang has rejected any talks.

With the diplomatic pathway at a standstill, concerning military developments have emerged on the Korean Peninsula.

Over the past several months, the US has participated in two major rounds of military exercises in the region, including the bilateral Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) drills with South Korea in August and the trilateral Freedom Edge exercises with South Korea and Japan in September.

While Trump announced the UFS would be halved as they are too hostile toward North Korea, Pyongyang argued that the gesture was not enough and that even the scaled-back war games were proof of Washington’s aggressive posture.

North Korea responded to the war games with its standard fiery rhetoric and missile tests.

The annual wargames typically cause a few months of heightened tensions on the peninsula before flaming out. However, this year other developments have continued to escalate the situation.

First, Pyongyang is upset by the US aiding South Korea and Japan’s efforts to develop nuclear-powered attack submarines. North Korea has also accused the US of upsetting regional stability through its support for South Korea’s nuclear-powered submarine ambitions. Pyongyang has separately criticized discussions in Japan about acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

Adding to tensions is a landmine explosion south of the border that injured three South Korean soldiers. Seoul says that North Korea planted the mine on the southern side of the DMZ, but Pyongyang denies the allegation.

Seoul said it would take “countermeasures” in response to the landmine south of the MDL.

Last month, Kim Yo Jong, a senior official and sister of Supreme Leader Kim, warned that the situation inside the DMZ had become concerning. “Now the situation of the southern border is very unstable,” Kim said. “A grave situation is prevailing along the southern border due to the reckless behavior of the ROK military gangsters.”

Kim also accused South Korean soldiers of repeatedly firing warning shots and issuing loudspeaker warnings at North Korean troops working near the border.

She continued, “To cope with the prevailing situation, our military leadership is examining the issues of deploying more tactical strike means along the southern border as a preemptive and suppressive measure to deal with contingency, and of resuming the loudspeaker broadcasting against the ROK, and considering other necessary and appropriate measures.”

The situation creates the possibility that a relatively minor incident along the heavily militarized DMZ could provoke retaliation, triggering a cycle of escalation.

Nearly all the progress that was made between the US, South Korea, and North Korea aimed at ending the decades-long hostility has now been undone. When Trump first took office, tensions on the Korean Peninsula were high, in part, from a similar landmine explosion in the south-side of the DMZ in 2015.

While Trump initially approached Kim with threats of nuclear annihilation, Seoul would eventually help to broker talks between Washington and Pyongyang. Kim would meet several times with Trump during his first administration, as well as multiple summits with then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The diplomacy resulted in a moratorium on kinetic US-South Korean war games and North Korean missile tests. Additionally, Pyongyang and Seoul began removing military posts and loudspeakers along the MDL. Loudspeakers and border outposts are now back.

No doubt, there is a significant reason for pessimism in Korea. However, there is one bright spot: Kim – in statements from North Korean officials – and Trump continue to tout the positive relationship between the two leaders.

Maybe the relationship will rekindle the diplomatic period from 2018-2020, but that seems to require Washington recognizing Pyongyang’s new conditions for talks. The Trump administration may believe that it is dealing with the same North Korea it was in 2018, but Pyongyang’s geopolitical standing has significantly shifted during the Joe Biden presidency.

A major victory for Kim was signing a mutual defense pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a treaty that was sealed with North Korean blood after Ukraine invaded Kursk. The treaty gives Pyongyang a powerful new partner and raises the potential costs of a conflict involving North Korea.

Additionally, the US military has been depleted by supporting Ukraine and the ongoing war against Iran. As Washington is struggling to keep enough military assets in the Middle East, it moves its aircraft carrier strike group and advanced air defense systems out of East Asia.

An emboldened Kim will be less likely to make concessions to the US than he was just a few years ago, and renewed diplomacy with North Korea will require Washington understanding the new reality.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.

Dire warning as 'cornered and desperate' Trump ally tips the world toward nuclear war

By:Robert Davis

Nov 01, 2026

RAW STORY


President Donald Trump may be "sleepwalking" toward a nuclear conflict at the urging of one of his "cornered and desperate" allies, according to one analyst.

Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host, posted a lengthy warning on X, alleging that the Trump administration may approve a nuclear strike on Iran within a week of the midterm elections. It's an issue that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls Trump about "every day," according to Carlson.

"The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program," Carlson wrote. " No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one."

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Carlson noted that the recent election results in Israel made Netanyahu's pleas more urgent. Netanyahu's governing coalition took a shellacking in the election because of a surge in support for Israel's Arab parties, which could pave the way for Netanyahu's exit from state politics.


"Netanyahu is cornered and desperate," Carlson noted. "After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations, and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war."

"No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final," Carlson added.

"We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months," Carlson added. "Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called 'battlefield nukes' easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it."

As $6 billion stolen from Binance, record hack rattles crypto market

30.10.2026

Photo: Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez/dpa

By Andrej Sokolow and Christoph Dernbach, dpa

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has been hit by a cyberattack involving an estimated $6.3 billion in digital assets.

Deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended following what is believed to be the largest theft from a cryptocurrency exchange to date.

Users' funds remained "safe" and that it would cover all losses from the "security incident," Binance says. 

Working with blockchain partners, the exchange had so far frozen affected cryptocurrency assets worth around $3 billion, it adds.

The stolen assets include Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins such as Tether and USD Coin, whose values are pegged to traditional currencies.

Blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs attributed the attack to North Korean hackers belonging to the TraderTraitor group. The attackers moved most of the $6.3 billion within 20 minutes, apparently in an attempt to prevent the assets from being frozen, TRM says.

The attackers tried to move the stolen assets through a series of transactions to evade restrictions. They still controlled cryptocurrencies worth around $2.4 billion that could not be frozen by their issuers, TRM says.

Preliminary internal investigations by Binance suggest the attack may have originated from a compromised laptop belonging to one of the company's software engineers.

The attackers may have used the device to gain access to a service computer and initiate unauthorized withdrawals.

Binance said there was currently no evidence that private wallet keys had been compromised. Investigators were instead examining whether the infrastructure used to authorize transactions had been manipulated.

"Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly," Binance says. "We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice."

How can you protect yourself?

The Swiss financial regulator offers investors a series of tips to protect themselves from illegal or fraudulent providers including:

• Take time to consider your investment decisions. Don't allow yourself to be put under pressure. Diversify your investments; don't put all your eggs in one basket.
• Innovative technologies and products such as virtual currencies can be attractive, but they can also be risky. "In reality, major breakthroughs are few and far between. Find out as much as you can, and only invest when you are sure you understand what is being offered."
• Always remember the fundamental rule of investing, that high returns always mean high risks. The risk of loss is often much more real than the chance of turning a profit.
  

Markets upset

The news of the hack rattled cryptocurrency markets, with Bitcoin briefly falling below $77,000 to its lowest level in around six weeks.

Other major cryptocurrencies, including Binance's own BNB token, also declined, while the sharp sell-off triggered millions of dollars in liquidations of leveraged trading positions.

The attack dwarfs the previous record theft of around $1.5 billion in digital assets from cryptocurrency exchange Bybit in early 2025, which was also attributed to the North Korean hacking group.

The incident has also renewed scrutiny of Binance, which operates without a fixed headquarters and has faced regulatory criticism in Europe, where it lacks a licence under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

The $6.3 Billion Warning For The Age Of AI Payments – Analysis

October 31, 2026

By Burak Oktenli

Key Takeaways:

Binance disclosed an estimated $6.3 billion security incident on 30 October, with about $3 billion in assets frozen, after a potentially compromised DevOps laptop enabled unauthorized withdrawals; investigators at TRM Labs and Chainalysis have linked the attack to North Korean operators, though official attribution remains incomplete.

The episode underscores that a valid blockchain signature does not prove genuine authorization, and it coincides with the payments industry’s early pilots of AI agents that can execute pre-approved transactions.

The article concludes that institutions must enforce narrow, independently checked transaction mandates for AI agents, because a technically accepted instruction can move money before the responsible party fully understands what occurred.

The Binance breach is not evidence of a rogue AI theft. It exposes a more immediate financial-security problem: a technically valid transaction can still be one nobody had the authority to make.

An attacker does not have to break a blockchain to move billions of dollars. It may be enough to make a financial system accept an instruction that should never have been authorized.

On October 30, Binance disclosed an estimated $6.3 billion impact from a security incident and said about $3 billion in affected assets had been frozen. Its preliminary investigation pointed to a potentially compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, access to a service container and unauthorized withdrawal transactions. The exchange said it had found no evidence of leaked wallet private keys, suspended deposits and withdrawals during checks, and promised to cover customer losses. Its technical post-mortem is still pending.


Blockchain investigators at TRM Labs and Chainalysis have linked the attack to North Korean operators. Their assessments are consequential, but an independent official attribution and a complete account of the intrusion have not yet been established. Most important for this debate, there is no verified evidence that an autonomous AI agent executed the attack.

The financial effects are real regardless of the attribution. Crypto markets and related shares fell as the industry scrambled to locate assets, suspend access and restore confidence. The amount affected, the amount frozen, the final loss and what customers eventually recover are different numbers. Treating them as interchangeable obscures what a recovery has actually achieved.

The episode matters for a second reason. Just as digital finance confronts another extraordinary failure of access control, the payments industry is beginning to let artificial intelligence execute transactions on behalf of customers and businesses. Those are different developments. Their collision creates the next security question: what happens when the software making a request also has the credentials to make the request financially binding?

The signature is not the permission

A blockchain can faithfully record a transaction authorized by a valid signing process while telling us very little about whether the real owner wanted it. A stolen credential, compromised interface, misconfigured delegation or breached approval service can all turn a prohibited payment into an apparently legitimate instruction.

The danger is not confined to one exchange. On October 29, Polymarket temporarily halted trading after a third-party provider was compromised, then restored service and promised to reimburse affected users. That was a separate incident, with no demonstrated common attacker or AI involvement. It nevertheless showed how financial services inherit operational risks from software and suppliers outside their immediate control.

There is also a clear national-security precedent. In February 2025, the FBI attributed roughly $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit to North Korea. That was a state-linked financial crime, not a rogue-AI episode. It demonstrated how the compromise of digital-asset custody can reach beyond exchange customers into sanctions enforcement and strategic competition.

Now consider how payment automation changes the exposure. An agent that can purchase cloud services, data access or other digital resources can extend the consequences of a mistake or compromise beyond its own application. A criminal can use AI to assist an intrusion. An authorized agent can be redirected by malicious material it reads. A correctly functioning agent can also spend beyond its owner’s intention if its mandate is too broad. These mechanisms differ, but all converge at the point where an instruction becomes a financial commitment.

This is not a speculative technical category. NIST reported in March that malicious instructions embedded in webpages, repositories or other external content can hijack AI agents into unintended actions. That testing does not show an AI stealing money from Binance. It shows why a model’s ability to interpret instructions is an inadequate place to enforce payment authority.

AI payments are arriving, with important limits

The commercial transition is already visible. On October 20, Visa, BILL and Billtrust announced a live pilot in which registered AI agents execute approved supplier-invoice payments through business portals. Crucially, the pilot does not let the agent independently decide what to buy: the buyer approves the payment first. Visa’s design uses authenticated agents, tokenized credentials and transaction controls.

Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines initiative likewise explores permissioned machine-to-machine payments for digital services. The company presents controls and budgets as part of the design; its broader machine-payments program remains a developing offering. These distinctions matter. Responsible systems are not simply handing unrestricted wallets to models. They are trying to make payment execution automatic without making permission unlimited.

The challenge is keeping that discipline when agents work across suppliers, service accounts, payment processors and jurisdictions. A finance officer may authorize an invoice, but a sub-agent should not inherit a general license to pay a new counterparty. A legitimate credential proves who is presenting it; it does not, by itself, prove that the amount, purpose and recipient remain inside the buyer’s mandate.
Build the control at the transaction boundary

On October 27, NIST published proposed design tenets for agent identity systems. They call for distinct agent identities, traceable delegation, least privilege, short-lived permissions, signed mandates and human-review triggers for consequential actions. These are design proposals, not binding financial regulations. They are nevertheless a practical starting point for a more internationally consistent approach.

The institution granting an agent financial authority should define the principal, permitted purpose, eligible counterparties, transaction ceiling, cumulative budget and expiry. The payment service, rather than the model’s own explanation, should independently enforce those conditions. Delegation to another agent should narrow permissions, never silently enlarge them.

An unusual recipient, a larger payment or a sensitive service should require a separate approval based on trustworthy transaction details. A human shown only the agent’s summary is not a meaningful independent reviewer. The check must expose what will actually be signed or settled, including the destination and the effect of the transaction.

Emergency response must extend beyond closing a chat window. Revocation should disable credentials and payment tools, flag commitments already accepted by suppliers, and preserve records that distinguish what was requested, approved, attempted, completed, frozen or recovered. The ability to stop new transactions is valuable. It is not the ability to undo every settled one.


The Binance freezes offer a limited but important example. Issuers and other intermediaries can sometimes immobilize assets or block further movement, as roughly $3 billion in identified assets had been frozen by October 30. But intervention varies by token, platform and jurisdiction. Freezing an asset is not the same as returning it, and the capacity to freeze should carry clear legal procedures and accountability rather than become an arbitrary financial veto.

There is a second technical horizon to manage. Also on October 27, NIST finalized a transition roadmap for quantum-vulnerable cryptography. That future-facing work is unrelated to the Binance intrusion. It reminds financial operators that digital signatures and trust infrastructure must remain upgradeable. Even a stronger, quantum-resistant signature, however, cannot decide whether the person or software using it was entitled to move the money.

The geopolitical stakes are not simply that AI might make cybercrime faster. They are that international finance is creating more pathways for software to purchase services and move value while states, custodians and vendors still disagree about where approval ends and responsibility begins. Cross-border incident cooperation and narrow, enforceable transaction mandates will matter as much as raw model capability.

The most alarming AI-finance headline would announce that a machine has stolen billions. This week’s evidence does not support that story. It supports a more urgent one: money can move through instructions that are technically accepted before the institution responsible for them understands what happened.

A valid signature can move money. It cannot prove the money should have moved.


About Burak Oktenli
Burak Oktenli holds an MBA and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His research addresses the governance of authority in autonomous and AI-enabled systems, and his writing has appeared at the Modern War Institute at West Point, RUSI, RealClearDefense, RealClearMarkets, and Geopolitical Monitor. He is the author of Authority Architectures for Autonomous Systems, a ten-volume series on how authority in autonomous systems is delegated, monitored and recovered, at authority-architecture.me.
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