Axios

Roger Stone has long been reported to be under the microscope of special counsel Robert Mueller for possibly acting as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which in 2016 published thousands of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence operatives.

Driving the news: NBC News has obtained text messages that appear to show radio host Randy Credico sending Stone updates about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s plans to release Clinton campaign emails, days before they were published. Stone has claimed he never spoke directly to Assange, and that Credico, who writes in the text messages that he is best friends with Assange’s lawyer, functioned as his intermediary. Mueller is reportedly investigating whether Stone has tried to intimidate Credico, who as a witness to the investigation has contradicted Stone's version of events, per the WSJ.

British Prime Minister Theresa May announced Wednesday on Downing Street that — after a marathon five-hour meeting — her Cabinet has agreed to back a draft Brexit agreement between U.K. and EU negotiators.

What to watch: May will provide details on the agreement before the House of Commons on Thursday, calling it "a decision which is in the best interests of our entire United Kingdom." But while she has managed to get her Cabinet on board, it will be more difficult to convince the entirety of the House of Commons, including "hard Brexiteers" in her own Conservative Party who are threatening the possibility of a no confidence vote against May over the deal, according to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.

Go deeper: Read the draft agreement here

A geopolitical contest is playing out in one of the world’s least developed countries —Papua New Guinea (PNG). In this case, geopolitical competition, often the source of war and strife, may be a force for good.

What's happening: Leaders from 20 countries will arrive in the island nation this weekend for the start of the annual APEC summit, a club of nations located in the Pacific region. The summit provides a backdrop to an ongoing tug-of-war over the country’s allegiance: before representatives from the U.S. and neighboring Australia touch down in Port Moresby, PNG’s seaside capital, Xi Jinping will arrive on Thursday for the first ever official state visit by a Chinese president.

The Russian military interfered with GPS signals during NATO's Trident Juncture, a massive military exercise in Norway that involved 50,000 alliance and U.S. personnel, a NATO spokesperson told CNN.

The big picture: Held between Oct. 25 and Nov. 23, it was NATO's largest military exercise since the Cold War. It came about a month after Russia held its own massive war games, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said was in response to "the current international situation, which is often quite aggressive and unfriendly to our country."

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has resigned over his opposition to a ceasefire with Palestinian militants in Gaza, slamming the move as "surrendering to terror," reports the BBC.

The big picture: Lieberman's resignation follows two days of violent clashes in Gaza that left eight people dead. Lieberman also said all members of his party, Yisrael Beiteinu, would quit the government coalition, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a slight majority in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, and the looming possibility of a snap election if other coalition members should quit as well, according to Haaretz.

U.S. national security is in greater peril “than at any time in decades,” according to a new report from a panel of top national security experts tasked by Congress with reviewing the state of American national defense.

Why it matters: The U.S. has entered into an era of "great power competition" with China, which poses an unprecedented challenge to U.S. dominance both economically and militarily, and with an increasingly assertive Russia. According to the report from the National Defense Strategy Commission, American military superiority has deteriorated to the point where the U.S. “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia.” As U.S. superiority fades, the authors write, the likelihood of war rises.

The United Kingdom and the European Union have agreed on a draft Brexit agreement at a "technical level," reports the BBC.

The state of play: Prime Minister Theresa May is meeting with members of her Cabinet one by one tonight to discuss details of the deal, and she has called a special full Cabinet meeting to discuss the agreement at 2 p.m. (8 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, according to a No.10 spokesman. This could force top members of May's government to either support the deal or step down. Even if it passes muster, May still faces the difficult task of getting her Conservative Party — and the rest of Parliament — on board for a vote.

WannaCry, once the greatest cybersecurity calamity in history, now doesn't work. A website critical to its function is now controlled by civic-minded security researchers, and the fixed deadline to pay the ransom has long passed. Yet WannaCry still accounts for 28% of ransomware attacks — the most of any ransomware family.

The big picture: According to a new study by Kaspersky Lab, the defanged North Korea linked ransomware is still spreading uncontrollably. The spreading mechanism that passed WannaCry from victim to victim that was so virulent in the 2017 attack is still active, even if the ransomware itself isn't. "This is not an uncommon occurrence, as there are multiple currently defunct worms that are still automatically spreading in the wild and infecting unpatched/unprotected machines," wrote Fedor Sinitsyn, senior malware analyst, via email.