Six Secrets is now The Brief: Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week we’ll bring you one story that matters, plus a few that don’t!
Your Brief for May 9, 2024: CIA funded art exhibitions, a night in the house from Up, a record breaking AI investment and more!
News
An Ape Treats His Own Wound
Who would have thought great apes understood herbal medicine? A group of scientists in Indonesia have discovered they just might!
A fascinating discovery was made by biologists Caroline Schuppli and Isabelle Laumer who noticed that an orangutan, by the name of Rakus, was ripping leaves off Akar Kuning vines three days after sustaining a facial injury. Rakus would then chew the vine leaves and apply the resulting juice directly onto his wound. He even, seemingly in an effort to make his own band aid, placed chewed leaves on top of his injury to seal it. The Akar Kuning plant is no random choice, it is commonly used in traditional medicine for its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
The biologists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Konstanz, Germany, made their findings at the Suaq Balimbing research site in Indonesia. The location is home to roughly 150 endangered Sumatran orangutans.
This is the first report of intentional wound treatment of this kind by a great ape species and provides deeper insight into the world of our closest non-human relatives.
Travel
A Night In The House From Up
Want to sleep at Prince’s house or go on tour with a reggaeton superstar? Now you can!
Airbnb has introduced Icons, providing new experiences for those looking for something extra special. Brought to you by the world's greatest icons, the new Airbnb category enables travelers to embark on magical real world adventures that one could only dream of. CEO Brian Chesky has said that “as life becomes increasingly digital, we’re focused on bringing more magic into the real world. With Icons, we’ve created the most extraordinary experiences on Earth.”
11 icon opportunities have been introduced so far, including an overnight stay at the Ferrari Museum in Emilia-Romagna, a living room performance from Grammy winning artist Doja Cat, a stay in Prince's Purple Rain House, a night at the Musée d'Orsay and more! Icons even offers a stay in a recreation of the house from Pixar’s Up, consisting of more than 8,000 balloons and suspended over Abiquiu, Mexico. How wild is that! Start packing your bags for a crazy adventure…
True Spies
The Courier
It’s the summer of 1971, a young American man emerges from the lobby of a hotel in Moscow on his way to a covert appointment in the city. His name? Howard Kaplan, a 21 year old American student who grew up in the shadows of the Holocaust, his mother an Auschwitz survivor. Kaplan arrives at his destination, an unmarked apartment, and is greeted by a stranger who urgently ushers him inside…What is he doing at this apartment in Moscow?
While studying abroad in Jerusalem during his junior year of college Kaplan ran into a fellow student, an American girl from his highschool. There she introduced him to an American Israeli man, an operative of the Israeli government, who had been tasked with smuggling literature in and out of Russia and was collaborating with Jewish dissident organisations behind the Iron Curtain! A time when the USSR tightly controlled the import and export of books in a world where censorship reigned supreme and writers struggled to make their voices heard. The soviet state was all too aware of the power of ideas, for ideas had brought down the old Tsar.
Kaplan learns that the mysterious Israeli operative is busy recruiting students to go to Moscow on their way back home. Intrigued by the idea of smuggling documents out of Soviet Russia for the Israeli government he could hardly turn down the adventure…
Join Howard Kaplan himself, now an author of spy novels, in a story of close calls, covert tradecraft and undercover cabbies in this week's podcast selection ‘The Courier’.
Have you heard the rumors that Mark Zuckerburg might be building a doomsday bunker in his $100 million Hawaii compound? Well, if doomsday is around the corner then having a bunker sounds good right? Or does it...
Discover what it might be like to live underground in a post-apocalyptic world in Fallout, the new TV series inspired by the best selling video game. It’s the year 2296, more than 200 years after the world was destroyed in nuclear warfare during “The Great War”. A young woman by the name of Lucy leaves her home in Vault 33, a fallout bunker, in hopes of finding her kidnapped father. During the war many fled to bunkers, called vaults, in order to survive nuclear devastation. Now, generations later, vault dwellers are all too unaware of what has become of the world above!
The surface world, known as the wasteland, is a desolate, violent and polluted place filled with mutant creatures and deadly bounty hunters. Join Lucy on a journey through the wasteland to discover the truth behind the seemingly innocent vaults and unravel the mystery of what really caused nuclear fallout… You may decide you don't want a doomsday bunker after all!
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Spy Objects
CIA Funded Art Exhibitions
What connects the radical 20th century painter Jackson Pollock and the CIA? More than you’d think. What if we told you there is a secret history behind Pollock’s 1949 masterpiece, Number 8… An image of swirling paint strokes, splatters, and an array of colors sat on a canvas with no single focal point.
In 1950 a new division of the CIA was born, the Propaganda Assets Inventory. A crucial investment in psychological warfare and pro US messaging during a time when there was a strong communist force coming out of the East. Through this operation, the CIA setup a bogus arts agency called the Congress for Cultural Freedom and recruited a cohort of state funded philanthropists who under the CIA’s instruction funded a very select series of exhibitions. This brings us back to Pollock’s painting Number 8…
The painting was part of an exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York that toured in the late 1950’s. And who was behind it? The CIA of course! The first details of the Propaganda Assets Inventory were only declassified in 1966, a decade after Pollock died in a car crash in New York. It’s very likely he went to his grave with no idea that he’d been the beneficiary of a CIA propaganda campaign!
Listen to contemporary artist Daniel Arsham’s take on the story behind Number 8 and learn how a painter can be leveraged by a government.
We may soon sip martinis in the back seat while ghost chauffeurs drive us to our destination. Japan's SoftBank as well as California chipmakers Nvidia and Microsoft have just made the biggest investment ever in a European AI startup! Wayve, a UK based firm, received a staggering $1.5bn for the development of their next-gen AI software.
The firm, founded in London in 2017, plans to launch their own embodied AI technology. Embodied AI interacts with environments and learns in real time from the world around it; able to adapt to random situations that do not follow patterns or rules, for example a dog jumping into the street or a driver falling asleep at the wheel.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has stated he hopes the investment will help the UK establish itself as a major player in the AI race. Currently the most valuable AI firms are based in the United States or China but Wayve may be ready to break the mold.
Art
Unexpected Inspiration
Some of us might have coped with a difficult break-up by speaking with friends or family, but French writer and photographer Sophie Calle took the experience of heartbreak to a new frontier. In 2005 she found herself at a crossroads in life having received an upsetting email from her then boyfriend abruptly ending their relationship. His closing words, "take care of yourself," left her in a state of emotional ambiguity, unsure of how to process or respond to the email.
As many artists do, Calle chose to turn her pain into creative inspiration, embarking on an unconventional breakup journey. She forwarded the email to over 100 women from diverse professional spheres, inviting them to respond to the message in whatever way they felt they could best express themselves; whether it be writing a poem, creating a song, or drawing an image, they were welcome to explore the themes of the breakup however they chose.
What unfolded was her artwork Take Care of Yourself, a remarkable piece born out of heartbreak and collaboration. As the responses poured in from the 107 women, each reply offered Calles unique perspective on the end of her relationship. Crossword puzzles, songs, religious interpretations, paintings, and more flooded, in transforming Calle's playful idea into a rich tapestry of creative expression and a truly unique coping mechanism.
Following its acclaimed debut in the French Pavilion of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the culmination of Calle's artistic endeavor found permanence in the form of a hardcover book, immortalizing all responses into a work fit for any coffee table.
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