Tim Starks

Senate moves one step closer to passing health care cyber reforms A legislative package that would overhaul cybersecurity practices at the Department of Health and Human Services sailed through committee.

A legislative package that would overhaul cybersecurity practices at the Department of Health and Human Services sailed through committee. via @derekbjohnson.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/senate-passe...

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

Seeing the lengthy list of changes/cutbacks to CISA catalogued in this one piece makes it clear there is little left of it. The agency is less than a decade old and struggled for years to find its footing before it started to make progress. But all advances it made have been gutted in last 12 months

2026 Neal Awards Finalists - Neals

Pleased to be one of several Scoop News Group journalists named as a finalist for the Jesse Neal Awards this year. My story was part of a package of reporting we did across publications on the Trump administration's AI Action Plan that was nominated for Best News Coverage.

Judge: IRS broke law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ in giving DHS data A court on Thursday issued an opinion on a data-sharing agreement between the taxpayer agency and federal immigration authorities.

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Intellexa founder, three others sentenced to 8 years in prison over Greek spyware scandal A Greek court sentenced the founder of the Intellexa Consortium and three associates to prison for their role in a sprawling spyware scandal that has dominated Greek headlines since it came to light i...

Intellexa associates- incl founder - sentenced to 8 years in prison in Greece. (They remain free on appeal). Spyware combatant John Scott-Railton on impact to biz: "This is going to be a huge ball and chain that Intellexa’s executives are going to be dragging around."
therecord.media/spyware-inte...

Anthropic’s Pentagon Showdown Is About More Than AI Guardrails The high-stakes conflict between the Defense Department and a $380 billion tech powerhouse goes to the heart of just how far AI can go in warfare.

Anthropic conceded the Defense Department could use its AI tools for missile defense and cyber operations, but the Pentagon continues to pressure Anthropic to further loosen its usage rules in a disagreement that has stretched on for at least two months.
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

FTC says it won’t enforce COPPA against proper use of age verification tools The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday issued a policy statement advising industry that it will not bring enforcement actions against website and online service providers who collect, use and...

Industry take note: FTC won't enforce COPPA for age verification under certain conditions

therecord.media/ftc-says-it-...

4Chan knew about Jeffrey Epstein's death 38 minutes before the rest of the world. The FBI tried to figure out how. The Epstein files address a long-running side plot of Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 death while in jail on sex-trafficking charges.

Great pull from the Epstein files. FBI tried to figure out who on 4chan had scooped all news outlets on Epstein's death, but the trail went cold when they couldn't find who had that IP address.

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

'precisely where you do need a strong...federal security function. We already have a national shortage of #cybersecurity experts...you can’t just replicate that expertise 50 times over'-Errol Weiss, Health-ISAC. Amen. From @timstarks.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn... @gate15.bsky.social

Was a wonderful special

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

A disturbing assessment—& an important read—from my colleague Tim Starks imstarks.bsky.social on the White House's gutting of the nation's once-preeminent #cybersecurity agency — and why that threatens our national security. | via @cyberscoop.bsky.social

cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn...

Exclusive: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives An internal diplomatic cable said such efforts could interfere with AI-related services.

Scoop: Rubio has ordered US diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives worldwide

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Chinese group’s ChatGPT use reveals worldwide harassment campaign against critics OpenAI said a Chinese law enforcement agency uploaded reports to ChatGPT that details a worldwide digital operation to track and silence regime critics at home and abroad.

OpenAI said a Chinese law enforcement agency uploaded reports to ChatGPT that details a worldwide digital operation to track and silence regime critics at home and abroad. via @derekbjohnson.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/chinese-chat...

Vulnerabilities grew like weeds in 2025, but only 1% were weaponized in attacks Too many defenders and researchers are paying attention to defects and unsubstantiated exploit concepts that aren’t worth their time, VulnCheck’s Caitlin Condon said.

Would-be attackers spent 2025 swimming in a sea of more than 40,000 newly published vulnerabilities, VulnCheck said in a report released Wednesday, but only 1% of those defects were exploited in the wild cyberscoop.com/vulncheck-ex...

Exclusive | Spy Agency Blocks Congress From Seeing Gabbard Whistleblower Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office rejected Democratic efforts to see all the underlying material about a foreign conversation that discussed Jared Kushner.

News: The Trump administration told Congress it won’t share the classified underlying intelligence—a conversation two foreigners had about Jared Kushner—that led to a whistleblower complaint against U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard, citing claims of executive privilege. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

Terrific @timstarks.bsky.social reporting on the situation in CISA —>
cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn...

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

This is a really great deep dive from @timstarks.bsky.social into the slow, bureaucratic strangling of CISA by the Trump administration over the past year.

Thanks man. Linked to a good number of your stories on this too

Tim dug up all the dirt on CISA. His reporting captures the agency's decline and serves stark warnings about the messes that could unravel when the next major crisis hits.

@timstarks.bsky.social's story does a good job of capturing the widespread concern about CISA's capabilities and its readiness to help critical infrastructure with the next major attack: cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn...

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

Former CISA employees say the "level of trust" between the feds and the private sector is weakening or gone, and they worry the country is moving toward a fragmented, every-sector-for-itself reality. cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn...

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

With Sean Plankey’s nomination stalled, Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala is overseeing a chaotic transition. One industry source told CyberScoop that "nobody would argue he’s doing a great job," pointing to reported security lapses and a "lack of capacity." cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn...

Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble One year into the second Trump administration, CISA faces a 33% loss in personnel and shuttered divisions. Experts warn of "decimated" capabilities and a leadership vacuum as the agency struggles to m...

I spoke to a ton of people for this comprehensive story about CISA one year into the Trump administration, and all sorts were VERY unsparing in their criticism. cyberscoop.com/cisa-personn...

CrowdStrike says attackers are moving through networks in under 30 minutes The average time from intrusion to network movement in 2025 was 29 minutes, a 65% increase in speed from the year prior.

CrowdStrike says attackers are moving through networks in under 30 minutes cyberscoop.com/crowdstrike-...

Anthropic accuses Chinese labs of trying to illicitly take Claude’s capabilities Anthropic claims Chinese labs DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax used "industrial-scale" distillation to siphon Claude’s AI capabilities for offensive cyber ops.

Anthropic on Monday accused three Chinese artificial intelligence laboratories of stealthily trying to siphon Claude’s capabilities for their own models, potentially in a way that could fuel offensive cyber operations via @timstarks.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/anthropic-ac...

Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofs: Ein Königreich kann man nicht beleidigen Der Bundesgerichtshof weist Marokkos Klage gegen einen Bericht der ZEIT über die Spähsoftware Pegasus ab. Und stärkt den Schutz der Pressefreiheit.

🇩🇪Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has rejected 🇲🇦Morocco’s lawsuit against Die Zeit over its reporting on the Pegasus #spyware, reinforcing press freedom protections.

www.zeit.de/politik/ausl...

“Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm.”

FBI: Threats from Salt Typhoon are ‘still very much ongoing’ One insight the bureau took from the campaign is that “base configuration errors and known CVEs” along with other cyber hygiene shortfalls left U.S. telecoms vulnerable.

“ .. top FBI cyber official said Salt Typhoon, the Chinese cyber espionage group behind the widespread compromise of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure in 2024, continues to pose a broad threat to both America’s private & public sectors.” cyberscoop.com/fbi-salt-typ... @cyberscoop.bsky.social

State Dept. official says post-quantum transition plans will outlive current leadership Governments and businesses have a shared interest in seeing post-quantum encryption broadly adopted throughout society.

Governments and businesses have a shared interest in seeing post-quantum encryption broadly adopted throughout society.
cyberscoop.com/post-quantum...

HHS burrows into identifying risks to health sector from third-party vendors A Department of Health and Human Services official said Thursday that HHS is devoting a lot of attention to the security of third-party service providers after the 2024 Change Healthcare cyberattack.

A department official speaking at CyberTalks said HHS is trying to help the sector on finding where those risks are. via @timstarks.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/hhs-burrows-...