Oh man -- I've been playing the game all weekend. The official official EA Red Alert 3 website FTP Server now offers patches to update the various language editions of Red Alert 3 to version 1.02. Word is: "This patch for Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 corrected aggressive patch checks that could result in main menu sluggishnes [sic]." Interestingly, this EA FTP directory already contains patch 1.03.
There's no word (yet) what's changed though.