Coast Guard and FBI cyber teams boarded two Texas-bound tankers after attacks on their systems at sea
Rear Adm. Amy Grable, commander of Coast Guard Cyber Command, said investigators who boarded the Liberian-flagged crude tanker VL Prosperity on August 21 “did find malicious cyber activity”; a second Texas-bound tanker was also boarded, and the US is investigating whether the attacks are linked. Iranian state media claimed hackers reached the ship's propulsion, navigation and cargo systems and cut communications for 30 hours from August 7; the US has not attributed the attacks, and the Coast Guard found no evidence the ship had become unsafe to navigate (via CBS News).
NSA splits into five mission centres, one of them for artificial intelligence
Army Gen. Joshua Rudd, who leads both the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, is reorganising the agency into five mission centres — China, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, combat support and global intelligence , each with its own chief. The Record reports that the announcement started a 30-day clock for the directors to submit redesigns, that the centres are expected to reach full operational capability by January, that the head of the AI centre has been selected but not named, and that it is unclear what becomes of existing bodies such as the Cybersecurity Collaboration Center.
US Cyber Command names a new chief AI officer as its AI budget rises to $138 million
The Record reported that US Cyber Command named Rear Adm. Ronzelle Green, previously head of research and development at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as its chief artificial intelligence officer, succeeding Brig. Gen. Reid Novotny. It reports the command's AI funding rising from $5 million in fiscal 2026 to $138 million in fiscal 2027.
The National Cyber Director's office and Texas launch a six-month cyber pilot for water utilities
Project Watershed 250 is a six-month pilot run by the Office of the National Cyber Director with Texas Cyber Command, offering water and wastewater utilities red-team testing of current defenses, system hardening with private-sector tools, and AI tooling for utility cyber defenders. Twelve companies are named: Parsons, Microsoft, Fortinet, Google Cloud, Palo Alto Networks, Amazon Web Services, Reflection AI, Cloudflare, Zscaler, Forescout, Abnormal AI and Dragos. No number of participating utilities and no dollar figure is stated.