— Riyadh's airport reopens a week after the Houthi strikes, but several foreign airlines have yet to return and the Houthi warning against Saudi airports still stands.
— A nationwide day of protest against the cost of living turns violent in several French cities, from Paris to Limoges, where the town hall is gutted by fire.
— Criminals use a deepfake of the voice of Intesa Sanpaolo's chief executive to defraud the bank of €95 million — one of the largest known cases of AI-enabled CEO fraud.
I.
Riyadh's airport reopens, but business travel to Saudi Arabia stalls
King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh reopened on 18 October, a week after the Houthi strikes covered in last week's Briefing. Struck four times in five days, the airport saw the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in more than a decade, and at least 20 people were killed in that week's attacks.
Reopening does not mean a return to normal. The foreign carriers that suspended services during the strikes, including Air India, flydubai, the Lufthansa Group and Pakistan International Airlines, have not all announced when they will return. Embassy advisories to avoid Riyadh airport were issued during the attacks, and the Houthis' warning to airlines and travellers against using Saudi airports, with exceptions only for those serving Mecca and Medina, remains in force.
Further strikes over the coming weeks appear likely: the Houthis have shown repeated reach of more than 1,000 km and have publicly named airports as targets. For companies, the risk to staff is mostly incidental — being in the wrong terminal at the wrong time — but it is real enough to justify travel approval rules and a planned road exit to a neighbouring country.
Key terms — et leur équivalent français
strike ≠ attack
frappe (militaire, à distance) ≠ attaque (terme général)
A nationwide day of protest against the high cost of living turned violent in several French cities on Saturday 17 October. Paris was the epicentre, with clashes at Place de la République, looted shops and a bar set on fire. In Limoges, the town hall was gutted by fire, and fresh tensions were reported in Lyon the following day.
The Interior Ministry reported 2,397 arrests and 997 police officers and gendarmes injured, seven of them seriously. According to the head of the French retail federation, about 1,500 businesses were targeted nationwide, with damage estimated at several hundred million euros. The commerce minister is due to meet business, insurance and banking representatives on Monday.
For organisations with city-centre sites, the lesson is that they do not need to be the target to be hit. Damage often happens on the margins of a march, along its route or near its end point. Monitoring announced protest dates and routes, deciding early whether to close a site, and keeping staff informed are now routine tasks for corporate security teams in France.
A deepfake voice, a WhatsApp message and €95 million
Italy's largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, has been the victim of one of the largest known cases of CEO fraud using artificial intelligence. In February 2026, criminals used a deepfake of the voice of its chief executive, Carlo Messina, to target the chairman of its private banking subsidiary, Fideuram. The case was made public at the end of September.
The method was simple. An urgent WhatsApp message about a confidential overseas transaction came first, followed by a phone call in which the cloned voice made the request credible. Several payments, totalling about €95 million, were approved. The bank detected the unusual transfers quickly and recovered about €59 million; the remaining €36 million is believed to have been converted into cryptocurrency.
The case shows that the line between fraud and security is disappearing. Senior executives whose voices and faces are widely available online are now attack surfaces in their own right. Training, call-back procedures through a known number, and a simple rule — no urgent payment on the strength of a single call or message — remain the most effective defences.
Key terms — et leur équivalent français
CEO fraud
fraude au président
deepfake
hypertrucage, deepfake
voice cloning
clonage de voix
chief executive ≠ chairman
directeur général ≠ président du conseil d'administration
Duty of care is an employer's legal and moral obligation to protect its staff from foreseeable risks, including when they travel or work abroad. It is not a promise that nothing will happen. It is a duty to anticipate: to know where staff are, to assess the risks of a destination before departure, to inform them, and to be able to help or bring them home if the situation changes. This week's three stories show its full scope. A traveller caught in an airport strike, an employee in a branch on a protest route and an executive whose voice is cloned are all exposed to risks their employer could have foreseen. In each case, intelligence is what turns duty of care from a principle into practice. (Duty of care — devoir de protection, obligation de sécurité de l'employeur.)
A new issue every Monday
The week's essentials in defence, security and intelligence, assessed from open sources: in English, with key terms translated into French.