The latest Threat Status Weekly Podcast, which dropped this morning, goes inside this week’s Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington. National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang interviewed a range of industry leaders on the floor of the summit, where hundreds of private cybersecurity firms spent the week mingling with U.S. intelligence and defense officials.

The podcast features discussions on the future of AI in intelligence gathering, foreign adversary hacking of U.S. systems, America’s own offensive cyber operations and the possibility of a “cyber doomsday” attack before the November presidential election.

Joe Saunders, the founder and CEO of RunSafe Security, a pioneer of “cyberhardening technology,” tells Threat Status in one interview that China-backed hacking operations are coordinated and pervasive, describing them as an “advanced persistent threat.”

They are using “multiple techniques” to insinuate themselves on devices toward what in the future could be a more “large-scale attack,” says Mr. Saunders, whose firm boasts it has a “team of former U.S. government cybersecurity specialists who know how attackers think about problems, how they weaponize attacks, and how they choose targets.”

Friday’s summit offers Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida a chance to leave office on a high note by providing support to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and underscoring the historic thaw in bilateral tensions, according to a dispatch from Seoul by Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon.

Defying the domestic pushback from voters, the media and civil society, Mr. Yoon, who took office in 2022, has made improving long-troubled relations with Japan the centerpiece of his overseas policy. It has been a high-risk move, downplaying historical frictions over remuneration for wartime forced labor and also over disputed signage related to Korean victims at Japanese historical sites.

Mr. Kishida and Mr. Yoon have now met 12 times, a major increase compared to previous administrations. During their terms, they also took part in a first-ever trilateral summit with President Biden. Though both have separate defense treaties with Washington, no formal alliance binds the three. The Kishida-Yoon working relationship has enabled emergent trilateral security ties.

Military forces in China and Russia are closely watching U.S. programs to protect satellites and space systems and could counter those measures with a large-scale attack, according to a senior U.S. Space Force general.

Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, told the recent Intelligence and National Security Summit that the Pentagon and Space Force are moving toward the use of large constellations of satellites that will make targeting more difficult for Beijing and Moscow, both of which have developed several types of satellite-killing weapons.

“Proliferation means I’m now spreading out orbitology across multiple different orbits, so that they can’t just take out one satellite; they have to take out a bunch of satellites,” he said in remarks that were first reported by Air and Space Forces magazine.

With wars raging in multiple parts of the world and America’s adversaries moving closer together, speculation is swirling over the role national security issues will play in the highly anticipated Sept. 10 debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump.

One issue likely to come up is the claim by both to have the support of American veterans. A new poll shared with Threat Status shows Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris on that front, but found the former president’s support among veterans and active-duty military personnel, and their families, has actually dropped by at least 9 percentage points since 2016. “His lead among active-duty members has fallen from 19 points to just 5, while among family members, his lead is down to 2, from 12 in 2016,” according to the nationwide survey of 1,703 likely voters that was conducted in late August by Change Research.

Tuesday night’s debate could get heated: Former GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker writes that Mr. Trump should ask Ms. Harris whether she still supports the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and why, he says, problems with U.S. border security are worse now than they were four years ago.

Whatever the cost, Russian President Vladimir Putin could never allow Ukraine, a border nation with a sizable Russian-speaking population, to enjoy the liberty and democratic freedoms that Mr. Putin’s massive KGB theme park denies to Russian citizens back home, writes retired CIA officer and Threat Status contributor Daniel N. Hoffman.

“Mr. Putin’s Ukraine strategy reminds me of a cautionary tale a Russian intelligence officer once told me about how, if Mr. Putin saw a beautiful house next to his dilapidated one, he would rather burn down his neighbor’s home so all would be forced to live in equal squalor rather than fix up his own place,” writes Mr. Hoffman.

He also argues that “with Russia having suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties since the war began, Mr. Putin could not admit that his armed forces and intelligence services have grossly underperformed or that Ukraine’s courageous and innovative soldiers have so effectively defended their country from an unprovoked invasion.”

• Sept. 9 — The Role of China in Africa’s Just Energy Transition, Wilson Center

• Sept. 9 — Voices for Peace and Human Rights in Israel/Palestine, Stimson Center

• Sept. 10 — Strategic Planning in Chaos: The Future of the U.S.-Israel Security Partnership, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Sept. 10 — How to Counter China’s Global South Strategy in the Indo-Pacific, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 12 — Ground Forces and Great Powers: A Conversation with U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Stimson Center