Son of a CIA deputy director fought and died in Ukraine as a Russian soldier

The son of a senior U.S. intelligence officer fought in the Russian army in Ukraine: 21-year-old Michael Alexander Gloss lost his life on the front lines in April 2024. His mother, Julianne Gallina Gloss, had been appointed two months earlier as the CIA’s deputy director for digital innovation under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden. The Russian investigative outlet Vazhnie Istorii revealed his story through leaked medical records from recruitment offices. According to the database obtained by its journalists, Gloss had been serving in the Russian army since at least September 2023.

Gloss is one of more than 1,500 foreign citizens Vazhnie Istorii has identified as serving in the Russian military. According to a source close to the deceased, Gloss “was assigned to assault units.” The military facilities he showed in videos posted on his Russian social media were the same ones shared by Nepalese recruits: a barracks of the 137th Airborne Regiment. According to the outlet, this unit participated in the bloody battle for the town of Soledar, in the Donetsk region, at the time Gloss lost his life. “The circumstances of his death are unknown,” the investigation states.

The deceased came from a military family with significant connections in American cybersecurity. His mother was the first female commandant of cadets at the U.S. Naval Academy and subsequently forged a three-decade career in American intelligence, from the Navy to her final assignment at the CIA as head of digital innovation.

His father, Larry Gloss, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, has worked in cybersecurity his entire life: first as an employee of the National Interest Security Company and then as the owner of his own software provider for the U.S. Department of Defense and other NATO countries.

Vazhnie Istorii reports that Gloss “became a globetrotting hippie in 2023.” That year, “he joined the Rainbow Family anti-war movement, went to an eco-activist camp, and cleaned up earthquake debris in Turkey.” According to an acquaintance, Gloss watched “conspiracy videos” and began discussing ideas of a “multipolar world” and a war against “Western hegemony.”

From Turkey, he moved to Russia, where his visa was about to expire when he went to a recruitment office in Moscow.

Gloss was buried in December 2024. According to chats from the peace movements in which he participated, his family learned of their son’s death six months after he died on the front lines. “The Russian authorities have contacted his family,” wrote a friend of the deceased who spoke to his sister. “They were told he died on Ukrainian territory. We don’t know if he participated in the war; they didn’t give any details.”

An obituary posted by his family on the website of the cemetery where Gloss is buried states that the deceased “loved JRR Tolkien and his depiction of fellowship among heroes. He equally loved Adventure Time and the adventures of Finn and Jake, who were equally just in their quest for simple truth. With his noble heart and warrior spirit Michael was forging his own hero’s journey when he was tragically killed in Eastern Europe on April 4, 2024."

The tribute does not mention Gloss’ service in the Russian army. “Michael had a heightened sense of fairness [...] He wanted the world to be a better place with more fairness, peace and harmony with nature,” his family recalls.

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