The U.S. government’s increasing reliance on Microsoft is facing fresh scrutiny on Capitol Hill despite the Biden administration touting its private sector collaborations as key to its cyber and tech innovation policies. Microsoft’s president is headed to Capitol Hill on Thursday to answer for his company’s struggles to defend the federal government from cyber attacks.

The House Homeland Security Committee is looking to get to the bottom of problems that a federal board of cyber investigators in March called a “cascade of security failures at Microsoft,” according to committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green, Tennessee Republican, and ranking member Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat.

The two say they are particularly focused on an incident involving Chinese hackers breaching the Big Tech company’s products. The hackers accessed Microsoft Exchange Online mailboxes in May and June of 2023, including email accounts belonging to GOP Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, among others, according to the Cyber Safety Review Board’s March report. 

Ms. Raimondo has been among the most outspoken Biden administration officials on the issue of blocking exports of the most sophisticated U.S.-produced microchips to China.

Russia is ramping up efforts to recruit Africans to fight in Ukraine to shore up growing battlefield losses and sustain multiple offensive thrusts along the front line, according to an “Intelligence Update” circulated this week by Britain’s Ministry of Defense.

The update, posted on social media, says the Kremlin is offering a $2,000 sign-up bonus and a monthly $2,200 paycheck — along with the promise of a Russian passport — for African recruits. Moscow has focused specifically on the central African countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Uganda.

“Russia is likely expanding its recruitment across the Global South to avoid additional mobilizations within Russia itself,” British defense intelligence officials wrote.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call for a snap election at the end of June came after a right-wing nationalist National Rally party headed by Mr. Macron’s political nemesis, Marine Le Pen, took 32% of the vote — double the total for Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party — in Sunday’s European Parliament elections.

Mr. Macron’s term ends in 2027, and he could have stayed in office despite the dismal showing, special foreign correspondent Eric J. Lyman writes in a dispatch from Paris. But with his approval levels eroding in France, 46-year-old Mr. Macron evidently felt he could not govern effectively after such a devastating blow.

The French fracas is just one fallout from the startling gains made by what were once considered fringe “far-right” parties in some of Europe’s biggest, most pro-EU powers. The Social Democrats of German center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats secured less than one-third of the European vote. The far-right Alternative for Democracy, or AfD, once considered far beyond the pale in the German political spectrum, came in second.

Federal prosecutors have won a three-year prison sentence against a social media “swatter” who gained internet fame by broadcasting himself as he made bogus police reports, tricking departments into sending SWAT teams to terrorize innocent people.

Ashton Connor Garcia, 21, attempted at least 20 swattings. Among his targets were an 8-year-old boy, a teacher who had survived a school shooting and a teen he had ordered to carve herself, demanded she make a sexual video and then retaliated when she ignored him.

The conviction and prison sentence mark a relatively rare win at the federal level, according to The Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan, who reports that swatters regularly brag about their ability to get away with their crimes.

Swatting comes from the Special Weapons and Tactics teams that police departments use in dangerous cases, such as those involving active shooters or hostages. Officers go in with guns drawn, terrifying the targets and sometimes creating dangerous situations. Police say they have a duty to respond to the calls.

President Biden’s actions — such as honoring Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s deceased president, lobbying European allies not to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s meeting, and ignoring Iran’s steady march to nuclear weapons — make no sense, according to Jed Babbin.

“Raisi was known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ for having condemned tens of thousands of political prisoners to death” in the 1980s, writes Mr. Babbin, a columnist for The Times. “Even though he obviously didn’t deserve it, the United Nations Security Council stood for a moment of silence to honor the terrorist. U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood stood with the other members of the council.”

Over the past three weeks, Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken have reportedly been lobbying France, Germany and the United Kingdom not to take up a measure censuring Iran for its continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons, Mr. Babbin adds.

“Most American presidents have, since the 1979 Iranian revolution that put the ayatollahs in power, vowed that Iran would never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons,” he writes. “In August 2022, Mr. Biden joined that club by telling then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid that Iran would never be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Mr. Biden has evidently forgotten that vow.”

• June 11 — Hostile Intent: UAE Subversion & Transnational Repression, International Human Rights Advisors.

• June 11 — A Pivotal Year: Assessing the Russia-Ukraine War in 2024, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

• June 11 — Report Launch: Friendshoring the Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

• June 12 — India’s Post-Election Foreign Policy, Stimson Center.

• June 12 — New Hurdles for Elections in Latin America, Wilson Center.

• June 12 — The Indo-Pacific and the World: A Conversation with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, Stimson Center.

• June 12 — The New Iron Triangle: Achieving Adaptability and Scale in Defense Acquisition, Hudson Institute.

• June 14 — Preparing the Next Generation of Diplomats, U.S. Institute of Peace.