Peter Williams worked as an executive at Trenchant, the cyber unit of US defence contractor L3Harris. He stole at least eight zero-day exploits developed exclusively for US government use and sold them to Operation Zero between 2022 and 2025.Source: DOJ sentencing documents

What is Trenchant at L3Harris?

Trenchant is L3Harris's specialist offensive cyber capability unit that develops hacking tools for classified US government programmes.Source: DOJ / OFAC

What is the L3Harris Iver4 900 autonomous underwater vehicle?

The Iver4 900 is a submarine-launched autonomous underwater vehicle manufactured by L3Harris, designed for launch and recovery through standard torpedo tubes. It entered delivery to the US Navy under a Defense Innovation Unit contract in May 2026.Source: Lowdown

Background

L3Harris Technologies is a US defence and aerospace company whose Trenchant cyber unit developed zero-day exploits exclusively for US government use. Former Trenchant executive Peter Williams stole at least eight of those exploits and sold them to Operation Zero between 2022 and 2025. Williams pleaded guilty on 29 October 2025 and was sentenced to 87 months on 24 February 2026.

L3Harris is one of the largest US defence contractors, operating across electronic warfare, space, communications, and cyber domains. The company is also a significant maritime autonomy supplier: on 27 May 2026 it announced that its submarine-launched Iver4 900 autonomous underwater vehicle is in delivery to the US Navy under a Defense Innovation Unit contract. The Iver4 900 is designed for launch and recovery through standard torpedo tubes, placing L3Harris alongside HII's REMUS programme in the emerging market for torpedo-tube-compatible AUVs serving allied navies.

For the defence industrial base, the Williams case prompted reviews of technical controls on classified cyber-tool repositories. The combination of OFAC's simultaneous sanctioning of the buyer network and DOJ sentencing of the insider creates a two-end enforcement signal across both the supply and demand sides of the exploit-theft pipeline.