The Wire - July 22, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z July 22, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: VIOLENCE CONTINUES IN SYRIA. MICROSOFT SOFTWARE VULNERABILITY RESULTS IN CYBERATTACKS ON SHAREPOINT USERS. AIRMAN KILLED DUE TO MALFUNCTIONING SERVICE PISTOL, INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY TO DETERMINE CAUSATION.//

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-International Events-

Middle East: The civil war in Syria continues as before, with various tribes continuing to consolidate gains in their respective areas. The Jolani government remains largely centered in Damascus, and most of the violence continues in Suwayda.

Analyst Comment: Most western nations are still pretending that a ceasefire exists and is in effect, when in practice there is no such cessation of hostilities as tribal violence and random executions of civilians are becoming more common on all sides. An American citizen aligned with the Druze was executed a few days ago, drawing concerns of what the international response will be to the escalating violence throughout the region. So far, there hasn't been much interest from the international community to get involved in Syria again, with the exception of Israel and Turkey (who are the biggest external nationstates involved in the conflict so far). However, this is Syria and things happen quickly here.

-HomeFront-

USA: Microsoft has faced scrutiny for their response to a recent software vulnerability that was recently announced. Over the weekend Microsoft revealed the discovery of a critical vulnerability within the Sharepoint ecosystem, which was discovered after thousands of government and enterprise-level customers experienced significant cyberattacks (mostly from well-known Chinese hacking groups).

Analyst Comment: This morning, it became known that this vulnerability was actually already known, and was identified by Trend Micro (a cybersecurity firm) which found the exploit back on July 8th during a hacking competition. Microsoft allegedly issued software fixes to patch the vulnerability, however a few days ago malign actors were observed utilizing the exploit anyway, confirming that Microsoft's efforts to patch this Sharepoint bug were ineffective.

Washington D.C. - The Department of the Air Force has launched an investigation into the M18 service pistol following the death of a service member due to safety concerns. The US Air Force will cease all issuance of the M18 platform while the investigation is ongoing, following several other government agencies which have already halted the use of this weapon system due to safety concerns.

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Analyst Comments: For those who are not aware of the implications of the M18 scandal, this scandal has been building for some time and opinions are sharply divided. Sig Sauer has been the center of much controversy surrounding the P320 (the civilian designation of the M18 service pistol) after multiple reports emerged from owners regarding the pistol not being drop-safe. Most modern handguns incorporate some sort of "drop safety" into their design, which prevents the pistol from firing if the gun is dropped. After admitting there was a problem regarding the drop safety on early P320's, Sig issued a recall and allegedly fixed the issue. However, after some time, an entirely separate series of issues began to be reported, namely that in some cases, the pistol would discharge on it's own at random while holstered. When these reports came out, Sig Sauer did everything in their power to silence these concerns, and several Public Relations efforts were undertaken to shame and gaslight P320 owners into thinking that the problems were entirely the result of the end user and not a design flaw. However, despite the months of denial, problems remained.

Several law enforcement agencies halted the use of the M18 a few months ago after very-well-documented cases confirmed that sometimes the M18 will fire a chambered round while holstered, in some cases without even being jostled or otherwise manipulated (thus removing the potential for user error from the equation). Ten days ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stated that they will be transitioning back to the Glock 19 service pistol due to the concerns with the P320 platform. Five days ago, the FBI released a report at the behest of the Michigan State Police, who requested a forensic evaluation of the P320 handgun involved in a completely unprovoked discharge that occurred last month. This forensic analysis did not indicate much, as the FBI was not able to figure out what happened in this specific case. However, their testing did indicate that Sig's claims regarding some of the internal safeties could be overridden under certain conditions. But by and large, this report was mostly inconclusive in determining exactly what is causing these pistols to fire unintentionally.

Immediately after this report was released, the US Army stated that they will take no action regarding their adoption of this handgun. A few days later, a USAF Airman at the 90th Security Forces Squadron took his pistol off his belt (while still holstered), and placed the firearm on his desk. The holstered pistol then fired the round that was in the chamber, striking the service member in the chest, killing him.

As most people outside the gun world may not grasp the gravity of this situation (understandably so), this incident has the potential to be the "Ford Pinto" of the gun world. Thus, once more details come to light, this may end up being one of the biggest defense procurement scandals of all time. In short, everyone knows there's a problem with the P320/M18 platform, but right now Sig Sauer is the only entity that seems to know what's going on with their pistols, and they aren't talking. The FBI doesn't have the technical know-how to engineer a test to re-create what is going on, but pistols keep going off regardless. And this time, a service member is dead because of the hesitation and lack of aggressiveness to investigate these incidents. Sig Sauer has been sued well over a dozen times regarding this handgun's safety concerns, but once again this has been a tough problem to solve and not many people are willing to put in the work to find the flaw....or to fight VERY well funded legal efforts to stifle the identification of a problem with the P320 platform.

Most people are treating this situation with kid-gloves because the firearms community is big-business, and throwing around allegations of a design flaw that can kill someone is a dangerous game. In the civilian world, most firearms enthusiasts have been aware of the problems for some time, but once again haven't been able to nail down exactly what the problem is. Since there are other alternatives to the P320 platform on the market, often times the juice wasn't worth the squeeze when it came to figuring out what is going on here. Most people didn't feel particularly strongly about the issue either way; if someone was concerned about it then they would select a different firearm and move on, no big deal. The issues couldn't be reproduced reliably, and there was enough grey area in the civilian world to allow for some people to keep using the P320 with no issues, but others deciding that it just wasn't worth the risk after years of scandal, especially with a wealth of other firearms on the market at a similar price point that didn't have the headache of scandal surrounding them.

In the professional defense procurement world, however, it's a much different game. Regarding the M18's in the US Army alone, the contract that was awarded for this pistol was over $580 million, which means that Sig's company is on the line. And (to speculate slightly) if it eventually becomes known that Sig had prior knowledge of a design flaw that could have prevented deaths...but did nothing about it except to deny the claims and shame those voicing concerns, this has the potential to become a rather serious issue. As a reminder, Sig Sauer has the primary contract to provide not just handguns to the Army, but rifles as well. The M7 rifle was adopted to replace the M4 platform a couple of years ago, and these new rifles are just now starting to enter military use. While the M7 platform has no similar safety concerns, the M18 scandal is still not a good look for the company that is now responsible for providing the bulk of small arms to the US military.

In any case, this entire affair is emblematic of much bigger concerns within the defense industry at large. Right now, the United States is operating a peacetime military force. This will not always remain so forever. If the United States cannot reliably trust one of the cheapest individual weapons systems issued to the solider, then not much else can be trusted either...if we cannot do the little things right, there's not much hope in doing the big things right. Of course, these challenges are not out of our grasp, nor are these issues particularly unique. However, sometimes a re-examination of what we're doing - from the top of the military industrial complex, all the way down to the individual - is helpful for staying on track for the challenges ahead.

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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