Dispatches

by Susan Katz Keating Not everything moving through war is a physical object. Some of the most valuable commodities in a conflict zone are identity, permission, and cover. You need the right document, the right credential, and the right story, at the right checkpoint. My team and I at Soldier of …

by Susan Katz Keating China and other foreign actors are using Ukraine as a testbed, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets to gather real-time data on drones, intelligence sources told Soldier of Fortune. The grainy figures moved across the screen, creeping through murky terrain like shadows come to life. A blip …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The work has been called the most dangerous form of journalism. Amid my daily influx of emails, text messages, and phone calls, I frequently am hit up by people who want to go downrange under my name. They approach me with variants on the following requests. …

by Susan Katz Keating For decades, war correspondents earned the right to carry a PRESS credential into dangerous places. Now outsiders, operatives, and opportunists are seeking the same protection without earning it, because in conflict zones a press card can open doors, lower rifles, and get you out of a …

by Susan Katz Keating In years gone by, they called it the Living Room War. Every evening, American families watched grainy footage of helicopters lifting from rice paddies, and listened to body counts read in calm anchor voices. The war came home, but it arrived on a schedule, filtered through …

by Susan Katz Keating World SitRep tracks selected developments in conflicts, armed networks, and illicit activity, focusing on significant shifts and emerging patterns. Hizballah Cash Flies Commercial Air A smuggling network uses airline passengers to carry hundreds of millions of dollars in cash bound for Hizballah, the US Treasury Department …

by Susan Katz Keating The movie dropped. The files keep coming out. We’ve been covering this for years. Here’s your field briefing. With a major UFO film hitting theaters, the timing feels almost scripted. But at Soldier of Fortune, we didn’t wait for Hollywood to greenlight a script before digging …

by Susan Katz Keating The call came in the early morning hours from a friend who heard it through a friend before it was news. A CH-47 Chinook carrying U.S. special operations personnel had been shot down in Afghanistan. The helicopter, call sign Extortion 17, was brought down on Aug. 6, …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Russia repeatedly has been accused of poisoning its enemies. The historical record offers a useful test before drawing conclusions about this case. My inbox filled up within hours of the news. The question was consistent: “Did the Russians poison Lindsey Graham?” I don’t know. Did anyone …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The images are so gruesome I won’t post them. But they’ve been flooding my inbox, as if I didn’t already know that men are getting chewed up on the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia. These particular images come from a social media account that claims to …