— French and British jets fly a joint simulated nuclear-strike mission for the first time, a concrete step under the 2025 Northwood Declaration.
— Microsoft says China-linked hackers used an AI framework, ARTEX, to attack hundreds of organisations in aerospace, defence, energy and finance.
— South Korea estimates North Korea has laid around 960,000 land mines in the DMZ since 2024, turning the border into a minefield.
I.
France and Britain rehearse a nuclear strike together for the first time
On 20 and 21 October, French and British fighter jets flew a joint simulated nuclear-strike mission for the first time. During exercise Rummy, Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons escorted Rafale jets of France's Strategic Air Forces over the Mediterranean, supported by A330 MRTT tanker aircraft. The crews took off from Saint-Dizier air base in north-eastern France. No real nuclear weapons were involved.
Both countries operate nuclear-armed submarines, but only France has an airborne component: Rafale jets able to carry a nuclear-tipped cruise missile. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces presented the drill as a step in implementing the Northwood Declaration of July 2025, in which London and Paris agreed that no extreme threat to Europe would fail to prompt a response from both. Each country keeps sovereign control of its own weapons, and decisions on their use are not shared. A senior analyst at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique called it a revolution for a force that has always operated alone since the 1960s.
The context explains the timing. With doubts over US security guarantees and an aggressive Russia, France is working with European allies on a concept of "forward deterrence." The message of Rummy is aimed at Moscow as much as at European capitals: Europe's two nuclear powers can now coordinate, not just coexist.
China-linked hackers use AI to speed up their attacks
Microsoft says a hacking group linked to the Chinese government used an AI tool to launch cyberattacks on hundreds of organisations worldwide, both public and private. The group relied on a framework called ARTEX. Its targets included companies in aerospace, defence, energy and financial services. Microsoft says it confirmed the campaign by analysing system logs and other records.
Speed is the striking point. In several cases, the attackers gained privileged access to an organisation's cloud infrastructure in under three hours, and sign-in attempts peaked at 2,900 per minute. ARTEX was reportedly used against South Korean financial institutions from late September; it is not yet clear whether it was also behind a recent series of attacks on Japanese firms.
For defenders, AI changes the clock rather than the method. Stealing credentials and escalating privileges are old techniques; what is new is the pace. Detection that depends on someone reading alerts the next morning is no longer enough. Multi-factor authentication, strict limits on privileged accounts and automatic alerts on abnormal sign-in volumes are the basics that buy time.
South Korea's military estimates that North Korea has laid around 960,000 land mines inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) since 2024, according to lawmakers on the parliamentary intelligence and defence committees who received the briefing. Experts put the total number of mines under the DMZ, including those laid by South Korea and its allies, at about two million. Unification Minister Chung Dong-young gave the same estimate during a parliamentary audit on 7 October.
The work appears to have started in April 2024, a few months after Kim Jong-un declared the two Koreas to be separate, hostile states. Besides laying mines, Pyongyang is reportedly clearing land, building barriers, tactical roads and barbed-wire fences, and blocking the roads that connect North and South. North Korean mines laid on the southern side of the military demarcation line were blamed for blasts on 21 September that injured three South Korean soldiers.
The main risk is an accident rather than a deliberate attack. Where the two sides disagree on the exact position of the line, soldiers on patrol or engineers at work can cross it without knowing, step on a mine or trigger a clash. This is why Seoul formally proposed military talks to the North on 23 October to clarify the line and restore communication channels. A fortified border with no dialogue is a border where small incidents can escalate quickly.
Deterrence means discouraging an adversary from acting by convincing them that the cost would be greater than the gain. Analysts distinguish two forms. Deterrence by punishment threatens unacceptable retaliation after an attack: this is the logic of the French and British nuclear forces. Deterrence by denial makes an attack unlikely to succeed in the first place: this is the logic of a mined and fenced border, or of cyber defences that spot an intruder before any damage is done. This week's three stories show both forms at work, and one common lesson. Deterrence only works if it is credible and if the message is understood. Coordination between allies, a clearly agreed line on the ground and fast detection are all ways of making that message hard to misread. (Deterrence — dissuasion ; deterrence by punishment — dissuasion par la menace de représailles ; deterrence by denial — dissuasion par interdiction.)
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.