US Intel: Putin May Escalate Hybrid Attacks on NATO to Test Western Resolve

From the long arc of great power rivalry, a familiar pattern reasserts itself: a calculating adversary probing not with armies, but with ambiguity. U.S. intelligence now assesses that Vladimir Putin is recalibrating his risk tolerance, authorizing deniable hybrid operations — cyberattacks, sabotage, disinformation — designed to test whether NATO's unity holds and whether Washington's commitments still carry weight. The question being asked is not whether war will come, but whether the bonds of collective defense can be strained quietly, beneath the threshold of response.