//The Wire//2300Z December 30, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: SAUDI ARABIA BOMBS EMIRATI WEAPONS SHIPMENT IN YEMEN. RAIL DELAYS SPREAD AROUND EUROPE AFTER INCIDENT IN CHANNEL TUNNEL. CROWBAR ATTACK REPORTED AT BRITISH HOSPITAL.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Yemen: Overnight tensions escalated sharply between several nations as the conflict in Yemen threatens to become more serious. Colonel Turki Al-Malki, the Saudi Air Force Colonel that serves as the spokesman for the Saudi mission to Yemen stated that two vessels departed the UAE without permission this morning, and sailed without turning their AIS transponders on before arriving in Yemen. Onboard these vessels were weapons and armored vehicles that the UAE was allegedly trying to smuggle to the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a faction that threatens the Saudi border. As a result, Saudi Arabia conducted a few airstrikes within the Yemeni port of Mukalla, targeting the combat vehicles to be used by the STC. After the strikes, Saudi Arabia also called for the UAE to leave Yemen entirely. A few hours after this morning's scuffle, the UAE announced a cessation of their already-reduced mission in Yemen, and are withdrawing all public support for the STC, per Saudi demands. United Kingdom: This morning an Afghan migrant was arrested for conducting an attack at the Newton-Le-Willows Hospital in Merseyside, a small village halfway between Liverpool and Manchester. The attack began after the man was denied an appointment after entering the lobby with a crowbar in hand. After being told there were no appointments, the man began attacking staff with the crowbar. 5x people were wounded during the attack. Europe: This morning a "major disruption" was reported in the Channel Tunnel, halting train services between London and Paris. The cause of the disruption was two-fold, resulting from several power lines being downed in one tunnel, and a train stuck in the other tunnel, blocking service both ways under the English Channel. Analyst Comment: This sounds like it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but due to the importance of this one tunnel (and the nature of rail logistics), passenger train services were halted from Amsterdam to Paris, all during one of the most heavily-trafficked travels season of the year. Delays have been reported all day, and EuroStar has recommended travelers to avoid trains which use cross-Channel routes until repairs are made. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The situation in Yemen has always been a tangled web of factions, and thing's aren't as simple as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". This latest development is no different, and throughout the day the statements from all parties reflect more of the plot of a soap opera than traditional diplomacy. The STC is a separatist movement in Yemen that is opposing the Houthi's, but also opposing the Saudis. The Saudis know that if the STC were to win the Civil War in Yemen and actually dominate the Houthis, the STC would probably sidestep the formal Yemeni government and succeed in their goal of creating a new state (what they call South Arabia), which the STC has been working toward for some time. The UAE provides materiel support to the STC for several reasons. For one, the UAE and the Saudis have bad-blood between them on cultural grounds, but both the Emirates and the Saudi royal family also don't want the Houthi's to control most of Yemen, thus the reason for both nations teaming up to form the security coalition in Yemen. However, the Saudis also don't want the Houthi's adversaries (the STC) to get too much control either...which the UAE *does* want so as to apply pressure to the Saudis because the UAE and Yemen don't share a land border, so they don't care. In short, the Saudis and Emirates don't actually like each other, but work together to control the dozens of factions at play in Yemen, and this morning, the UAE overstepped their bounds, so the Saudi's bombed their arms shipment. The Emirates have argued that that technically the armored vehicles that they mailed to the Saudi's enemies are not "arms" so it doesn't count as being an arms shipment. In return, the Saudis have pointed out that there were also conex boxes full of explosives onboard the vessels, and re-stating that any threats to their national security will be dealt with swiftly, et al, etcetera, and so on. Daytime TV drama aside, squabbling between factions as large as the Saudi royal family and the seven territories that collectively form the "United" part of the United Arab Emirates usually isn't great for stability in the Middle East, especially since major offensives are currently underway throughout Yemen between several different factions. Whether it's directly related to the drama between the Saudis and the Emirates is not entirely clear, but right now there's a whole lot of shooting going on in the city of Mukalla, the same city struck earlier this morning. Though it was probably planned some time ago, various factions (including STC) are trying to capitalize on the squabbling between the big kids on the playground, so as to improve their own tactical positions on the battlefield. Most Middle Eastern nations have picked up on this as well, and the Qataris and Kuwaitis have both issued statements of solidarity regarding the deterioration of the security situation in Yemen over the past 12 hours or so. All in all, a busy day for the Middle East, and things aren't over just yet. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z February 17, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: SEVERE WEATHER STRIKES APPALACHIA, MAJOR FLOODING REPORTED. MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE CONCLUDES IN EUROPE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Europe: The Munich Security Conference concluded yesterday, with the focus on Ukraine being palpable among participants. While no real progress was made publicly with regards to a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, various actors have made their positions more clear. British PM Kier Starmer declared his willingness to send British soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Germany spent most of the time responding negatively to American statements that urged Germany to pay for their own defense. American Vice President JD Vance spent much of the summit pointing out the freedom of speech problems within Europe at large, signaling a new era of American concerns on the topic, as well as indicating a hard turnaround of American foreign policy away from a multipolar Europe. On the sidelines, the Ukrainian War remained a concern, with Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy expressing increasing levels of irritation that Ukraine is being sidelined with regards to the negotiations to end the war. Canada: This afternoon a catastrophic aircraft crash was reported in Toronto. Delta Flight 4819 suffered a mishap while landing at Pearson International Airport, which resulted in the removal of both wings and the debris coming to a rest on the runway upside down. The fuselage remained mostly intact during the crash landing, and all passengers and crew are reported to have survived at this time. AC: As this is a developing situation, not much is known with any certainly regarding what caused the crash landing. However, weather conditions were less than ideal at the time of the incident. -HomeFront- Southeastern U.S. - Disaster strikes Appalachia again as severe storms have caused unprecedented flooding throughout the region over the past few days. Most of the severe flooding has been reported in Kentucky, which has resulted in 8 fatalities so far. Virginia has also been host to severe flooding, and significant power outages have been reported throughout the Mid-Atlantic, to the northeastern United States. FEMA has been activated, and most of the various jurisdictions throughout the region have varying levels of emergency declarations in place. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The weather events throughout the eastern United States are compounded by not only the winter weather that occurred before the flooding, but additional weather systems that are expected to sweep through the region over the next few days. Catastrophic flooding is bad enough during the best of times, but disaster recovery efforts are made exponentially more difficult when heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures are expected throughout the disaster area. Throughout the disaster zone, power outages during cold weather conditions will also undoubtedly result in more complications and more pressing needs, as many people throughout the region rely on electricity to heat their homes. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the Intel update for April 26th through May 2nd, 2026. So, let's get right to it. Around the world, the various conflicts we have been keeping an eye on over the past few weeks have continued on with a few new conflicts popping off this week. In the Middle East, the very tenuous ceasefire continues between the United States and Iran as the White House has dug in for the long haul when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and no resolution appears imminent. This conflict hindering fuel and fertilizer shipments to much of the world has started to impact other conflicts as well, such as the civil war that has been ongoing in Myanmar or Burma for many years. This energy crisis has exacerbated all of the tensions that normally exist throughout Southeast Asia, and even between China and Japan, tensions are growing as the Far East is also realizing that a global realignment of the world's energy systems is probably unavoidable at this point. Over in Africa, a civil war is brewing in Mali as various groups of Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents have taken over much of the country. Russian forces and mercenaries have been very active in Mali over the past few days attempting to push back the advancing fighters from the major villages and cities, but it's been a tough fight due to the widespread nature of the fighting. The two main groups which are fighting the Russians and the somewhat inept Malian armed forces are JNIM or Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin, as well as the FLA or Azawad Liberation Front. Both groups, which are comparatively new as in they've come about in the past 10 years or so, have been operating freely in the open deserts and smaller villages for several years, but a few days ago they decided that a general uprising was in order, and many different groups have conducted attacks in the capital city of Bamako, as well as Kidal in the northeast of the country, with light skirmishes being reported in many of the smaller towns along the Niger River such as Timbuktu and Gao. Fighting is still intense in some areas, and the Russians have been carrying out artillery and drone strikes for about a week now, so the situation is quite kinetic all around. The biggest impact that this will have for the United States is fairly minimal, but having a black hole power vacuum anywhere in Africa always results in very bad groups popping up and a whole lot of terrorism. Depending on how this unrest develops and how this particular war shakes out, we may see another humanitarian crisis and mass waves of refugees making their way to Europe and or the United States. So, that's always a concern whenever a civil war pops off in Africa, but this is an issue for later on. Right now, it's just something to be aware of so that if and when it spreads to other nations like Burkina Faso and Niger, we'll already be spun up on the trouble that is brewing. Here at home, the flavor this week has been violence, protests, and immigration concerns. I know we're all shocked, shocked I say, at the round of shootings and murders that have transpired this week, but all of these attacks are already constant reminder to be careful and pay attention to threats as they pop up. Yesterday's stabbing at a high school in Tacoma turned out to be exactly what everyone thought, a fight between students which turned into a mass stabbing, so not really a terrorism kind of thing. Also, several raids have been conducted at the various Somali daycares in Minneapolis roughly 4 months after the height of those scandals. Nearly all of these daycares and fraud centers kind of shut down on their own a few months ago once the heat got turned up and their operations got exposed by Nick Shirley and others. But, the raids were carried out nonetheless, and we'll see what comes of these alleged investigations. There have also been a series of rather grizzly murders and horrific crimes that have taken place around the nation this week. General crime season is upon us once again, and I'm plotting all of the bad stuff on my maps so that anyone so interested can be aware of what's going on, but I also don't want to just eat up your time today by describing dozens of brutal murders and abuse cases that now fill the news cycle permanently. It's good to be aware, but it's not good to constantly soak this stuff in all the time because there's no shortage of things to blackpill about, and that's not really productive. Just know that it's summertime, and inner-city crime from the youths is once again at a height, so it's a good idea to stay strapped in the cities if you can. In Washington this week, we also had the third or fourth presidential assassination attempted depending on how you want to count the various attempts so far. The rather infamous Hinckley Hilton in Washington, D.C. was hosted to yet another assassination attempt on President Trump, Vice President Vance, most of the cabinet, and senior congressional leadership. Looking at the actual floor plan of the hotel, it's quite clear that the suspect got incredibly close to one of the doorways into the International Ballroom where the VIPs were located, and there will be endless debate and scrutiny on the U.S. Secret Service response to this attack, which we can get to in due time. Right now, though, since time is of the essence, I would personally be concerned with the level of protection provided by the U.S. Secret Service. Fool me once, right? One nearly successful attempt is a fluke, two is a concern, and three is a pattern. Well, we can't get fooled again, and it's very clear that the concerns of the U.S. Secret Service being able to do their one and only job are not unjustified. Otherwise, around the nation, the May Day protests concluded largely without much notice, though in a few far-left strongholds like New York and Washington, D.C., the protests were more decently sized both in terms of attendance and the average attendee. Interestingly enough, a lot of the more organized groups that typically attend the more communist holidays are actually quite divided by the events in the Middle East, so there are often a lot of internal disputes based on people picking sides in that war. So, it turns out that at least some of the unrest was actually between protesters who supported one thing but not the other thing, and well, we know how that goes. Also, just as a reminder, there's still a guy up on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. It's a one-man protest. He's set a tent up up there on top of one of the arches on the bridge, and it looks like everyone's kind of forgotten that he's there. So, I don't know if they're going to go up there and get him down or just let him kind of come down on his own once he runs out of food or something. I don't know. No one's really paying attention to it, so they might just let it go for now. I don't know. We'll have to see, but it's kind of interesting that a lot of these protests just took place, and since most of the country seems to have protest fatigue, I don't know how much people were paying attention to a lot of these protests. Protests became kind of a daily thing. It's uh a lot of people are kind of burned out on it, it seems. At least the general population is kind of carrying on as normal. But, that's pretty much the homeland for this week. Over in the United Kingdom this week, terrorism concerns remain elevated as the long-term effects of mass migration have resulted in substantial terrorism concerns as enough of a foothold has been achieved by insurgent groups that the more violent groups have freedom of maneuver throughout much of the nation. We've known about this for a very long time, and everyone is well aware of what's happening around the nation, and this is absolutely a case of some people importing the Third World into Britain so as to dilute the ethnic population. And now that they've done that, the people that orchestrated this plan don't like the fact that the people they imported wholesale are actually quite violent toward the same people who imported them. Unfortunately, this is another lightning rod topic that is not really suited to get into detail in this format. If you understand what's going on, I don't need to elaborate, and if you don't understand what's going on, the elaborating is not going to help. So, it's best to just know that this is a complicated issue, and there's really no pleasant way to describe what's going on, but this week has been rather tenuous due to the terror attacks which have been daily occurrences for a long time. The attack in Golders Green this week has served as the catalyst to jolt the British government into doing something, which at the moment is mostly taking the form of increased counterterrorism patrols and presence at public venues, in addition to raising the national terrorism level. Just for context, the national terrorism level in the United Kingdom is much like the United States in that it is not retroactive, but proactive, meaning that this level is not increased because an attack happened, but because an attack is expected to happen. Of course, this is kind of a special case because of the attack in Golders Green. They may have decided to retroactively raise the terrorism level to show that they're doing something, but because this is a proactive assessment, right? Because this is now a a signaling that an attack is quote highly likely within the next few months, many people are asking, "Wait a minute, so you mean this is not over yet?" This has been kind of a point of confusion and contention among British politicians and authorities who are trying to kind of smooth over the situation because we've got both a retroactive community policing kind of problem in Golders Green going on, but we also have future threats which are starting to pop up. So, it's kind of hard to balance this. Are we are we being retroactive or are we being proactive? It's hard to say what what the British authorities are trying to do at the moment. There have been a few raids taking place over the past few days, but they're not really related to very much of anything, such as the Web House in Crewe, which was raided a few days ago. This was and I suppose continues to be the base of operations for what can only be described as a quasi-Islamic-based cult called the Ahmadiyya Religion of Peace and Light. This relatively new religious movement had set up shop in an abandoned orphanage, the Web House in Crewe, and a few days ago this compound was raided by hundreds of police officers, possibly due to this facility being well-known, and in the context of terrorism concerns, this facility was an easy target for raids because it had been known as an epicenter of human trafficking and actual slavery. People were being kept at this facility and forced to work against their will. So, this new religion kind of aspect to it is also really more of an offshoot of Shia Islam, but it's also been disavowed by most of the Shia mosques in the area who are saying, "Yeah, these guys are not us," which made this facility perfect for a raid because it also meant that the majority Muslim areas around the facility wouldn't be too upset because most of the Muslim population viewed these guys as a cult. So, this facility getting rolled up checked a lot of boxes by allowing the police to actually arrest a terrorist for once, but also not upset the Sunni population by raiding a legitimate mosque or something like that. And as of yesterday, forensic teams were observed digging inside the compound, which is never really a good sign, especially in the context of what was allegedly going on at this location. So, we'll have to see what comes of this specific investigation, and most importantly, the community reaction to it, as well as the national outcome of what all of this terrorism stuff is about. A lot of questions are being asked which don't have very easy or convenient or even pleasant answers. I am not British, so I don't know if the terrorism concern is legitimately higher than it has been in the past few months and years, or if this is a knee-jerk reaction to some of the more high-profile attacks that have taken place over the past couple of days. I just don't know. We'll We're going to have to see. It's probably quite debatable, but either way, the situation domestically in the UK is not doing super well at the moment. So, moving to the Middle East for this week, there has been mostly no change from last week. However, just because it's all quiet on the Middle Eastern front doesn't mean that trouble isn't brewing, and it most certainly is. When it comes to the global energy crisis, the situation is getting more serious with each passing day. The Strait of Hormuz remains fully closed to Western-aligned vessels with only local traffic and some Chinese ships successfully transiting the choke point with permission and coordination with the Iranians. The American blockade continues as before with the US Navy interdicting several sanctioned vessels over the past week. Some of these vessels have just been boarded and searched for contraband, and other vessels have actually been commandeered due to having a falsified registration or otherwise were a part of the shadow fleet of cargo vessels that were moving sanctioned cargo around the world. Of note, TankerTrackers, the main company that monitors commercial shipping around the world, has confirmed through their own research that the American blockade is somewhat porous, and at least a small number of sanctioned vessels have transited through the American blockade, even though the terms of the blockade as described by the United States would indicate that some of the vessels should have been stopped. There's been no official explanation for this, and we're also way down into the weeds by examining each and every hull that is moving through the region at this point, but that's still kind of an interesting development worth making note of, I think. Additionally, the Iranians are skirting the blockade in other more indirect ways. For instance, some locals are reporting a sharp increase in cargo trucks transiting the various roadways into Pakistan. So, the Iranians appear to be driving cargo by land across the land border with Pakistan, then loading that cargo into Pakistani ships departing from Pakistani ports. So, that has been a really slick way to get around the American blockade, but again, volume is probably the biggest issue there. Also, we must remember that there are petroleum and gas pipelines going into Pakistan from Iran, as we can see if I turn on the pipeline layer on the map. Of course, the volume through these is fairly minimal and not as much as their main oil terminal on Kharg Island, but this does go to show that the obsession with Kharg Island isn't really capturing the full picture, because the Iranians can always export some oil through Pakistan, and thus keep some of their income. Some vessels have also been observed hugging the coastline and trying to use Pakistani territorial waters to bypass the American blockade, which hasn't really worked out, because they still have to transit the entire Indian Ocean, where the US is interdicting ships, but it's been interesting to watch a few ships try this trick. One other detail to remember is that technically, Iran shares a border with Russia, though through the Caspian Sea. So, it's not exactly a land border, but Russian ships can always transport cargo between Russia and Iran via this waterway. During the early days of the war, the Israelis knew this and bombed many of the major port facilities on the Caspian Sea coastline, but it's been several weeks, and it's not like they can bomb the entire inland ocean, so the Iranians will always be able to get some spicy cargo into their country if they so desire. On the diplomatic front, things are not going well. The United States has issued so many ultimatums and extensions to those ultimatums that it's been hard to keep track of, but for the most part, the situation remains stagnant, and we're officially at the "They have our phone number" stage of diplomatic talks between the US and Iran. Due to this tactical limbo situation, many companies are scrambling to make alternative arrangements while the ceasefire is still in place, which has most notably been observed in the aviation community. This morning, the UAE announced the full resumption of all civil aviation within their nation, so flights are starting to return to normal, or at least the new normal that has settled in across the region. Down at the more tactical level, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and has continued to dig in and make repairs during the ceasefire period. The IRGC and the fast boat navy, as we'll call them, remains largely intact and has been conducting various combat patrols up and down the Iranian coastline, but especially within the Strait of Hormuz. Commercial shipping through the strait has remained minimal, and many commercial shipping groups are still trying to figure out what to do, because they still have ships that are trapped within the Persian Gulf, or otherwise, their income loss is just too great with this waterway closed. Many shipping companies are also looking to the future when or if the situation gets resolved. Even if the strait opens up tomorrow, fully and completely, for real this time, insurance rates are certainly not going back to the level that they were at before the war. The Iranians have proven to the corporate world that the risks to transiting this waterway are extreme, and the United States has proven that we do not have the capability to alleviate that risk. Timeline-wise, there's really no way to know how long this is going to last. Even if the strait were to open up right now, there will be mass famine throughout much of the world, simply because the fertilizer shipments are too late. It's just too late for some of that. In the first world, impacts are already being felt, even though the seriousness of the situation is not really being reflected in the markets. On Wall Street, the points are made up and the rules don't matter, so that's kind of where we're at at this point. The futures markets are eventually going to have to acknowledge reality, but right now, that's still not happening. So, on the economic front, things are just kind of stagnant. Right now, the ceasefire is holding, but both sides are making preparations for future combat actions, so we're not exactly out of the woods just yet. Considering that a huge portion of the military decision-making strategy is often displayed by Fox News, it's helpful to know what they are saying, and I've unfortunately delved into that this week, and most of the pundits and warhawks which have made appearances on Fox have been pushing the president, as in, they have his phone number and they are actively giving the president counsel. They've been pushing him to conduct one last big strike mission to blow up the civilian infrastructure within Iran, and then we roll up the operation and leave. I don't have the time or energy to get into this can of worms, but that's the rhetoric that is being pushed. Moving forward into the next few weeks, the potential courses of action that I see are mostly twofold. One, that we resume bombing again, with the warhawks winning the day and the "Just one more bombing run" idea getting us sucked back into the war, because that last bombing sort is an awful lot like a last cigarette. There's never really just one last mission, ever. Or, the other course of action is that the United States carries on pretty much like we're doing right now, the strait remaining closed, and the Korean War approach that I mentioned last week coming more into effect, meaning that we don't really have a resumption of hostilities, but we also don't resolve the impacts of what's already happened, either. If things stay as they stand right now, this would be a strategic loss for the United States. People are going to argue about that. I mean, you can argue whether this is a Pyrrhic victory or if this is just a straight-up loss, but if things stay as they are right now, this would be a straight-up loss for the United States, for sure. But again, things can change, who knows? For now, it's really hard to determine what the White House is going to do. They could resume bombing again tonight if they wanted to, or we could drag this out for a few decades and never really get to a solution. Europe is going to be crippled first when it comes to the fuel crisis, and Southeast Asia will starve to death because they can't get enough fertilizer to grow food. And based on the character that we've seen so far, that's honestly the most likely outcome for at least right now. All bets are off, though, if we start bombing again, so we'll just have to wait and see how it all works out. And on that note, that's really all I have for today, so let's roll into the Intercepted Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, another great net. I've been really trying to work on the Android version of JSA call. Some people have reported some bugs here and there. Again, it's it just came out. It's it's a new thing, so my guess is that it'll get better with due time, and they've been pumping out a lot of updates over the past few weeks, so hopefully this will start getting a lot better and a lot more feasible, because I tell you, it's really nice to be able to just plug your phone into your radio and not have to worry with a laptop running Windows or Linux or anything like that, so. Either way, it's really good to see alternative means of exchanging information working out in the real world. We are certainly not out of the woods of these censorship eras, just that the things we're being censored about nowadays are a lot different from the past, maybe, but we still have censorship concerns, that's for sure, and strengthening these alternative ways of exchanging information is going to be vastly more important as time goes on. Tough times make tough people, and we can all do with a little bit of toughening up these days, I think, so let's keep at it and let's do the best we can. So, thank you all for sticking with me today. Thank you for all of your support, and we'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

//The Wire//2300Z April 28, 2025// //PRIORITY// //BLUF: VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK KILLS 11X IN VANCOUVER, CAN. MAJOR BLACKOUT UNDERWAY IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. GROUND STOP ISSUED FOR NEWARK DUE TO RADIO COMMS OUTAGE. CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE TO BEGIN ON MAY 8TH. LIKELY CARTEL ARMS SMUGGLER REMAINS FUGITIVE AFTER BEING RELEASED BY JUDGE. SOPHISTICATED IED FOUND AT CHURCH IN OREGON.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Canada: A vehicle ramming attack was conducted at the Lapu Lapu Filipino Heritage festival in Vancouver on Saturday night. Authorities state that the attacker intentionally drove his vehicle into a large crowd of people gathered at the intersection of Frasier and E 41st Avenue, killing 11x people and wounding dozens more. Local authorities have identified the attacker as Kai-Ji Adam Lo, who was arrested at the scene. Local police stated that the attacker was very well known to police, and had been the result of many emergency responses involving mental health incidents. Europe: This morning, a large-scale electrical power outage was reported throughout Spain, before rapidly cascading to include Portugal, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. A few hours after the outage began, French utilities started to come back online. Spain and Portugal appear to be hardest hit, with a total blackout affecting much of the two countries. Portugal's grid operator has not given a timeline for a return of power, and has indicated that the delay might be significant. Grid operators in Spain stated that it will take most of the day to restore power throughout the blackout zones, though as night has fallen much of the region remains without electricity. A state of emergency has been declared throughout Spain, and officials in the provinces of Andalusia, Extremadura, and Madrid (plus the city proper) have requested federal authorities declare the crisis a Civil Protection Level 3, so as to maintain order throughout the night in major cities as the outage persists. AC: This level of emergency declaration is usually only reserved for wartime as it involves a declaration of martial law, and a widespread deployment of military forces. Checkpoints and ID checks are also a part of this plan, along with the restriction of travel, curfews, etc. Ukraine: President Putin has announced that a general ceasefire will take place from May 8-10 along all fronts. AC: Neither American nor Ukrainian leadership has commented on the ceasefire announcement yet, nor have there been any indications as to if Ukraine will be participating in the 72-hour cessation of hostilities. Red Sea/HOA: An aviation mishap was reported onboard the USS HARRY S TRUMAN (CVN 75). During routine aviation operations, one F/A-18 aircraft was lost overboard while being towed by aircraft handlers. The tractor towing the aircraft was lost overboard as well. No casualties were reported as a result of this incident. AC: Warfare is dangerous business, and it would seem that this proverbial "business is getting out of control" for the TRUMAN. This deployment has been rough so far for the entire strike group, as military forces globally experience the follow-on effects of an increased optempo, stressed maintenance schedules, and even complacency. On this one deployment to the Red Sea, one of her escorts shot down one of her own aircraft in a friendly-fire incident (Dec, 2024), she collided with a merchant vessel resulting in damage to her fantail (Feb, 2025), and now an entire aircraft was lost overboard. This is important in the context that she is on her second Captain (the first skipper was fired after the collision) during this deployment...a deployment which was extended a few weeks ago amid rising tensions with the Iranians.  -HomeFront- California: Over the weekend, vandals set fire to a utility pole in Sacramento, causing internet connectivity loss throughout the eastern and central parts of the city for much of the day on Saturday. New Jersey: This afternoon a ground stop was issued for all aviation traffic departing Newark following a reported loss of radio capabilities at the tower. AC: Since this is the busiest air traffic control sector in the United States, this is a big deal. Details are sketchy at best, but pilots report a loss of radio communication with the tower at Newark for unknown reasons. Some unconfirmed reports suggest Newark tower lost radar at some point as well. Either way (and as serious as this incident is), this has happened before. Illinois: A woman was murdered on the Green Line in Chicago last Thursday, after a brief altercation. Witnesses state that Willie Holmes initially started an altercation with a stranger (identified as Emily Carlson) while transiting on an L train, prompting the victim's boyfriend to confront the assailant. Holmes then produced a knife and murdered Carlson. Wyoming: An alleged cartel weapons trafficker remains at large after being a no-show in court on Friday. Ricardo Paez-Quinones was originally arrested after being caught smuggling around 18,000 small arms rounds in Carbon County last month. Paez-Quinones, being an illegal immigrant that was previously deported twice, was indicted by a grand jury following his initial arrest. AC: Despite the original prosecutor arguing that the individual was very likely to be a flight risk due to his connections to organized crime, U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Scott Klosterman released him from custody on a $20,000 bond. Because this bond was unsecured, he did not have to pay a dime up front for his release. He simply walked free to become a fugitive after being allowed to do so by the judge, who knew that most of the suspect's family lived in Mexico, and that he was a twice-deported illegal alien. Oregon: Details regarding the discovery of a suspicious device have been released by local authorities. Last week, a suspicious package was discovered by an employee of a local mechanic shop in La Grande. After authorities were alerted to the device, a local Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team confirmed that the device was an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) that was fashioned as a crude pipe bomb with ball bearings added for additional shrapnel. AC: This story did not gain much traction when it first came to light, however additional details (and photo evidence) has confirmed that this device was located on the sidewalk immediately adjacent to Calvary Chapel. This context indicates that this small-town news story is likely related to the general increase in risks to religious institutions around the nation. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The blackout in Europe is very likely the largest power outage to strike the continent in recent memory, and the effects are very widespread. When power goes out in one neighborhood minor inconvenience is the result, but when a outage strikes on a continental scale, very serious impacts are observed. Portuguese grid officials have claimed that the outage was the result of "rare atmospheric phenomenon". This is comparatively common when severe solar weather causes electromagnetic variations in the Earth's ionosphere. However space weather for the past few days has been very mild, with no watches or warnings even being issued at all over the past few days. Power grid fluctuations occurring with this little solar activity are completely unheard of, making these space weather claims dubious at best. Due to the language barrier, it is possible that the references to "atmospheric" causes were not related to space weather, but rather actual weather. Hot weather can cause power lines to stretch and droop into other lines, the resulting shorting of which can cause exceptionally widespread outages if it occurs in the right place. This has been the cause of several very infamous power outages over the years (combined with mismanaged regulation of voltage, causing transmission lines to heat up and stretch even more). The next most likely theory that is circulating at the moment is that the outage was caused by multiple independent cyberattacks on the core communications functions of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-e). At the moment there's no evidence available to the public that can confirm this for the time being. It also must be noted that almost two weeks ago, Spanish grid operator Red Electrica reached a milestone regarding their renewable energy sector. On April 16, the grid operator claimed that the Spanish electrical grid ran fully on solar, wind, and hydro power for the first time in history. This highlights the recent substantial efforts to further allegedly "carbon-neutral" standards and goals...efforts which in the wake of last month's outage at Heathrow Airport are drawing scrutiny. Of course, not every power outage can be blamed on one single root cause; there are usually long chains of causation for events like this. However, the recent major changes throughout the continent, among all sectors of energy production, certainly will be under major scrutiny as Europe's energy crisis at large starts to impact the average citizen more directly than it has in the past. In Canada, local authorities claim that the attack in Vancouver was not terrorism, however eyewitness statements overwhelmingly confirm this was an intentional terrorist attack. Locals reported the assailant deliberately waited for the event to draw to a close before conducting the attack. He waited until the traffic barriers were being removed as the event was winding down, at which point he threated his vehicle through the barriers that were being removed, to intentionally target the crowd that still remained. After the attack, the assailant exited his vehicle and was confronted/detained by those at the event. While it would be wise to confirm the details of the investigation into this event, enough information has been conveyed by event-goers to fill in the gaps with regards to risk assessment. In this case, it seems as though another mass-casualty event has taken place that would have been preventable had complacency not been a major contributing factor. Reports vary on the status of anti-vehicle barricades for this event. Some state that there were no barricades at all, but rather standard traffic cones which were used for traffic control purposes, while others claim the limited barriers that were emplaced were not sufficient in either traffic control or in preventing the attack itself. Whatever the barrier situation was at the time of the incident, clearly it was not sufficient either in deterring or stopping a major terror attack. Instead of waiting for crowds to disperse fully, traffic barriers being removed before the event was fully over was also likely a factor in attack planning. Much like previous incidents, the proximity to risk is a huge factor many people do not realize. Many people will evacuate a building that's on fire...only to stand 4 feet from the door. Or even more commonly, sprint out of the building just to immediately stop in the doorway, blocking the egress of those behind them. In this case, the exact same mentality could have been a major contributing factor for the success of this attack. If the event ended at midnight, and the traffic barriers and counterterrorism efforts were ceased only 10-15 minutes later, this would have obviously not been adequate to stop the threats that remained as crowds dispersed throughout the area. As such, constant vigilance and situational awareness are desperately needed at all times, especially if local authorities and event-goers alike are largely complacent. Terrorists are patient. Terrorists do not shuffle their feet and moan about their shift being too long. Terrorists can wait a long time and are dedicated to their goals. Terrorists will wait for the precise moment that they have the best possible chance for success, knowing that authorities have to be successful in preventing attacks at all times...while the terrorist only has to be successful once. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z May 04, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: VBIED ATTACK CONDUCTED IN OREGON. NAVCENT PUBLISHES TRANSIT PLAN FOR VESSELS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, WITH MIXED SUCCESS. IRAN CLAIMS TO TARGET US NAVY "PATROL BOAT" IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, CENTCOM CLAIMS TO SINK 6X IRANIAN GUNBOATS IN GULF. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN GERMANY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Strait of Hormuz: Major developments have taken place in the Strait over the weekend. Last night, President Trump announced the creation of "Project Freedom", a plan to allegedly "guide" third-party commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf, so as to at least get non-affiliated ships out of the combat zone for humanitarian reasons. Today, the details of the plan became more clear, and it also became clear that the Iranians did not agree with this plan, nor were they notified ahead of time. Early this morning, the United States revealed that the plan was actually the publishing of an alternate traffic scheme for merchant vessels to transit the Strait using Omani territorial waters. Immediately after this plan was published, two merchant vessels made the crossing attempt, both of which were either struck with Iranian cruise missiles or drones. Later on, a third vessel was reportedly on fire in the Strait, though the cause of the fire is not yet known. Following this incident, the IRGCN released a new map of the Strait, with two no-go barriers depicted to the east and west, further stressing that the Strait is closed. At some point throughout the day, the United States has claimed that two unidentified vessels were able to make it out of the Gulf, though the names of these vessels have not been released yet. Separately, kinetic targeting between the United States and Iran appears to have resumed on the high seas. After the United States announced the implementation of Project Freedom, US Forces conducted kinetic strikes on 6x Iranian gunboats patrolling either the Strait of Hormuz, or the Persian Gulf itself. On the Iranian side, the IRGCN have claimed to have targeted what they describe as an American Patrol Boat with two cruise missiles during the earlier strikes on merchant vessels. The Iranians claim that these missiles were not targeting the vessel, but were serving as warning shots to prevent the US vessel from proceeding further. Analyst Comment: Due to the linguistic and cultural barrier, all Middle Eastern nations tend to use doctrinally incorrect terminology when referring to American warships. In this case, "patrol boat" might not refer to an actual Riverine Command Boat (RCB), but might refer to a Destroyer (DDG) or maybe a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). CENTCOM issued a carefully worded statement confirming that a ship had not been hit, but did not address the claims directly. On the other hand, the Iranians have been known to make outlandish claims regarding the targeting of American warships, so it's equally possible that the Iranians tried to sink the vessel, then claimed that the missiles were "warning shots", so as to save face from successful interceptions. However, last night the sky over Hormuz was filled with munitions, and multiple hulls are burning in the Strait as of this morning, so out of all of the prior claims made by the Iranians, this one is the most plausible situation where the Iranians might have actually come close to hitting an American vessel. United Arab Emirates: After this morning's scuffle in the Strait, four Iranian drones/cruise missiles were reported in Fujairah, as Iranian forces targeted the large oil refinery complex which has been used to circumvent the need for merchant tankers to transit the Strait. The UAE indicated that three of these munitions were intercepted, but one made it through to it's target, with several large fires being reported at the refinery this afternoon. In response to these attacks, the UAE has begun to re-closed their airspace for the next week. Southern Atlantic: An outbreak of Hantavirus has been reported onboard a cruise ship which is currently moored off the coast of Cape Verde. Three passengers have died from the virus so far, and two other passengers are reportedly symptomatic. The vessel remains under quarantine while the extent of the illness is investigated. The vessel had previously departed Argentina, and the full ship's itinerary included stops in the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and a few other smaller islands as part of an Antarctic tour. Roughly 150 passengers and crew remain onboard the vessel. Europe: This afternoon a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Germany, after one assailant rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Leipzig, near a strip mall at the southwest corner of the main town square. Two individuals were killed immediately during the attack, and three others remain in serious condition at a local hospital. The assailant was detained at the scene, but has not yet been identified, other than authorities stating that he is a 33-year-old male from Germany, and at the time of his detention was verbally incoherent. -HomeFront- Oregon: Saturday morning a Vehicle-Borne IED attack was conducted at a gym in Portland. One former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club rammed his vehicle into the main entrance to the facility, before detonating a series of explosives inside the vehicle. The explosives were comprised of several propane tanks, along with unidentified materials. The devices failed to produce a high-order explosion and instead mostly burned, consuming the vehicle. The suspect was the only person killed during the attack, and several other explosive devices were discovered in the vehicle that did not detonate during the fire. Analyst Comment: Local authorities have specifically stated that they are not treating this incident as a case of domestic terrorism, even though this incident meets most traditional criteria for a Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA) due to the attacker using multiple weapons during the attack (the vehicle ramming, and the IED detonations). USA: Around the nation, fuel prices increased substantially over the weekend once again, with a total of 8 states reporting diesel prices over $6.00 per gallon: Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, and California. Nationwide, only two states are below $5.00 per gallon for diesel (Texas and Georgia). Analyst Comment: While many citizens are beleaguered by high gas prices, keeping an eye on diesel is even more important. Diesel prices are directly tied to the consumer market, as everything from food to medicine is transported on trucks and trains that use this fuel. Many commercial-goods companies instituted price control measures two months ago when the war in Iran first began, with Amazon for example instituting a 3.5% surcharge for all third-party sellers on their platform, to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. As the price of diesel and other distillates climb higher, these fees are certain to increase as well. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the Persian Gulf, wishing does NOT make it so. It is unclear as to what decision making process has been used by CENTCOM in the creation of Project Freedom, and it is hard to imagine that the plan really is indeed what has been implied. It's always easy to armchair-quarterback the war, and criticism of the operations so far has been plentiful all around. However, there's no way to sugarcoat this situation...intentionally putting civilian lives at risk without offering sufficient protection is...something. Telling ships that the US will "guide" them through, but this guidance essentially just being a roadmap and no substantial support, is hard to believe...but it sure looks like that's what happened this morning. As with this entire war so far, every single event will be analyzed and debated not just in terms of effectiveness, but also of intent. On the more nefarious end of that scale, one of the more plausible theories for the events of the day is that the goal was to not really open the Strait, but to get the Iranians to fire first, break the ceasefire, and thus justify a resumption of the bombing. Granted, the US doesn't really need a reason to continue the war, but sending a couple of Destroyers into the Strait (if they actually did that, which isn't confirmed) to provide the bare-minimum "security" in order to convince a handful of ships to cross, is not in accordance with traditional naval doctrine. Especially since the wording of the notice announcing "Project Freedom" confirms that NAVCENT clearly stated that they haven't cleared the mines, but that their route takes ships through the minefield. Consequently, using merchant vessels to clear a minefield by driving through it is an interesting choice that will result in cost savings for the US Navy, but is not likely to result in companies trusting the United States. CENTCOM claims that US Navy vessels are in the Strait and protecting merchants from Iranian targeting efforts, but if they are indeed in the Strait they are sailing with their transponders off, which is not exactly indicative of a safe situation. Plus, the two (possibly three) successful Iranian strikes in the minutes after Project Freedom began cast doubt on the success of those escort efforts. One of the critical requirements for warships escorting merchant vessels is to actually protect merchant ships from harm, and if this cannot be guaranteed there's not much confidence in the overall mission. As with any war, there are knowns and unknowns. Deception and obfuscation are critical parts of all warfare, and in this case military deception has been used on all sides to achieve military objectives. Granting CENTCOM leadership as much charity and leeway as reasonable in their planning efforts, it is possible that what is transpiring in the Strait cannot be observed with total certainty by outside forces; it's possible that one or two ships are sneaking through with their transponder turned off. It's also possible that a larger operation is brewing. The US has a lot of tools in the toolbox of deception, but the grand question is how much deception can actually work in such a tight space. Maritime chokepoints and the terrain of the battlespace offer finite parameters to work within...it's a small Strait, and a dude with binoculars perched on any point of 500 miles of Iranian coastline can clearly see any merchant shipping attempting to cross it at any time. Weather is nearly perfect in the region year round, and day or night, there is zero way to conceal a large vessel's transit through the waterway. Considering all angles, it's theoretically possible that the US Navy has actually secretly cleared (or at least marked) many mines, if not from above the waves, then from below. The US certainly has the technical ability to get one or two ships out, but getting traffic back to the pre-war numbers of 100+ merchant ships transiting the Strait every day is not going to be possible without the Iranian's cooperation. Sneaking two ships out successfully (while also losing the same number to missiles), is what most would call a pyric victory at best, and since there are roughly 2,000 merchant vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf right now, this Project has gotten off to a rocky start. From the perspective of the commercial maritime industry, there's simply no way to know beyond all doubt what threats remain, and what the United States and Iran will do. But therein lies the problem...insurance companies and merchant mariners alike don't make decisions based on *all doubt*, but rather *reasonable doubt*. And right now it is very reasonable to not want to transit the Strait due to the risks, which remain insufficiently mitigated by western forces. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z May 04, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: VBIED ATTACK CONDUCTED IN OREGON. NAVCENT PUBLISHES TRANSIT PLAN FOR VESSELS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, WITH MIXED SUCCESS. IRAN CLAIMS TO TARGET US NAVY "PATROL BOAT" IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, CENTCOM CLAIMS TO SINK 6X IRANIAN GUNBOATS IN GULF. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN GERMANY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Strait of Hormuz: Major developments have taken place in the Strait over the weekend. Last night, President Trump announced the creation of "Project Freedom", a plan to allegedly "guide" third-party commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf, so as to at least get non-affiliated ships out of the combat zone for humanitarian reasons. Today, the details of the plan became more clear, and it also became clear that the Iranians did not agree with this plan, nor were they notified ahead of time. Early this morning, the United States revealed that the plan was actually the publishing of an alternate traffic scheme for merchant vessels to transit the Strait using Omani territorial waters. Immediately after this plan was published, two merchant vessels made the crossing attempt, both of which were either struck with Iranian cruise missiles or drones. Later on, a third vessel was reportedly on fire in the Strait, though the cause of the fire is not yet known. Following this incident, the IRGCN released a new map of the Strait, with two no-go barriers depicted to the east and west, further stressing that the Strait is closed. At some point throughout the day, the United States has claimed that two unidentified vessels were able to make it out of the Gulf, though the names of these vessels have not been released yet. Separately, kinetic targeting between the United States and Iran appears to have resumed on the high seas. After the United States announced the implementation of Project Freedom, US Forces conducted kinetic strikes on 6x Iranian gunboats patrolling either the Strait of Hormuz, or the Persian Gulf itself. On the Iranian side, the IRGCN have claimed to have targeted what they describe as an American Patrol Boat with two cruise missiles during the earlier strikes on merchant vessels. The Iranians claim that these missiles were not targeting the vessel, but were serving as warning shots to prevent the US vessel from proceeding further. Analyst Comment: Due to the linguistic and cultural barrier, all Middle Eastern nations tend to use doctrinally incorrect terminology when referring to American warships. In this case, "patrol boat" might not refer to an actual Riverine Command Boat (RCB), but might refer to a Destroyer (DDG) or maybe a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). CENTCOM issued a carefully worded statement confirming that a ship had not been hit, but did not address the claims directly. On the other hand, the Iranians have been known to make outlandish claims regarding the targeting of American warships, so it's equally possible that the Iranians tried to sink the vessel, then claimed that the missiles were "warning shots", so as to save face from successful interceptions. However, last night the sky over Hormuz was filled with munitions, and multiple hulls are burning in the Strait as of this morning, so out of all of the prior claims made by the Iranians, this one is the most plausible situation where the Iranians might have actually come close to hitting an American vessel. United Arab Emirates: After this morning's scuffle in the Strait, four Iranian drones/cruise missiles were reported in Fujairah, as Iranian forces targeted the large oil refinery complex which has been used to circumvent the need for merchant tankers to transit the Strait. The UAE indicated that three of these munitions were intercepted, but one made it through to it's target, with several large fires being reported at the refinery this afternoon. In response to these attacks, the UAE has begun to re-closed their airspace for the next week. Southern Atlantic: An outbreak of Hantavirus has been reported onboard a cruise ship which is currently moored off the coast of Cape Verde. Three passengers have died from the virus so far, and two other passengers are reportedly symptomatic. The vessel remains under quarantine while the extent of the illness is investigated. The vessel had previously departed Argentina, and the full ship's itinerary included stops in the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and a few other smaller islands as part of an Antarctic tour. Roughly 150 passengers and crew remain onboard the vessel. Europe: This afternoon a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Germany, after one assailant rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Leipzig, near a strip mall at the southwest corner of the main town square. Two individuals were killed immediately during the attack, and three others remain in serious condition at a local hospital. The assailant was detained at the scene, but has not yet been identified, other than authorities stating that he is a 33-year-old male from Germany, and at the time of his detention was verbally incoherent. -HomeFront- Oregon: Saturday morning a Vehicle-Borne IED attack was conducted at a gym in Portland. One former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club rammed his vehicle into the main entrance to the facility, before detonating a series of explosives inside the vehicle. The explosives were comprised of several propane tanks, along with unidentified materials. The devices failed to produce a high-order explosion and instead mostly burned, consuming the vehicle. The suspect was the only person killed during the attack, and several other explosive devices were discovered in the vehicle that did not detonate during the fire. Analyst Comment: Local authorities have specifically stated that they are not treating this incident as a case of domestic terrorism, even though this incident meets most traditional criteria for a Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA) due to the attacker using multiple weapons during the attack (the vehicle ramming, and the IED detonations). USA: Around the nation, fuel prices increased substantially over the weekend once again, with a total of 8 states reporting diesel prices over $6.00 per gallon: Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, and California. Nationwide, only two states are below $5.00 per gallon for diesel (Texas and Georgia). Analyst Comment: While many citizens are beleaguered by high gas prices, keeping an eye on diesel is even more important. Diesel prices are directly tied to the consumer market, as everything from food to medicine is transported on trucks and trains that use this fuel. Many commercial-goods companies instituted price control measures two months ago when the war in Iran first began, with Amazon for example instituting a 3.5% surcharge for all third-party sellers on their platform, to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. As the price of diesel and other distillates climb higher, these fees are certain to increase as well. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the Persian Gulf, wishing does NOT make it so. It is unclear as to what decision making process has been used by CENTCOM in the creation of Project Freedom, and it is hard to imagine that the plan really is indeed what has been implied. It's always easy to armchair-quarterback the war, and criticism of the operations so far has been plentiful all around. However, there's no way to sugarcoat this situation...intentionally putting civilian lives at risk without offering sufficient protection is...something. Telling ships that the US will "guide" them through, but this guidance essentially just being a roadmap and no substantial support, is hard to believe...but it sure looks like that's what happened this morning. As with this entire war so far, every single event will be analyzed and debated not just in terms of effectiveness, but also of intent. On the more nefarious end of that scale, one of the more plausible theories for the events of the day is that the goal was to not really open the Strait, but to get the Iranians to fire first, break the ceasefire, and thus justify a resumption of the bombing. Granted, the US doesn't really need a reason to continue the war, but sending a couple of Destroyers into the Strait (if they actually did that, which isn't confirmed) to provide the bare-minimum "security" in order to convince a handful of ships to cross, is not in accordance with traditional naval doctrine. Especially since the wording of the notice announcing "Project Freedom" confirms that NAVCENT clearly stated that they haven't cleared the mines, but that their route takes ships through the minefield. Consequently, using merchant vessels to clear a minefield by driving through it is an interesting choice that will result in cost savings for the US Navy, but is not likely to result in companies trusting the United States. CENTCOM claims that US Navy vessels are in the Strait and protecting merchants from Iranian targeting efforts, but if they are indeed in the Strait they are sailing with their transponders off, which is not exactly indicative of a safe situation. Plus, the two (possibly three) successful Iranian strikes in the minutes after Project Freedom began cast doubt on the success of those escort efforts. One of the critical requirements for warships escorting merchant vessels is to actually protect merchant ships from harm, and if this cannot be guaranteed there's not much confidence in the overall mission. As with any war, there are knowns and unknowns. Deception and obfuscation are critical parts of all warfare, and in this case military deception has been used on all sides to achieve military objectives. Granting CENTCOM leadership as much charity and leeway as reasonable in their planning efforts, it is possible that what is transpiring in the Strait cannot be observed with total certainty by outside forces; it's possible that one or two ships are sneaking through with their transponder turned off. It's also possible that a larger operation is brewing. The US has a lot of tools in the toolbox of deception, but the grand question is how much deception can actually work in such a tight space. Maritime chokepoints and the terrain of the battlespace offer finite parameters to work within...it's a small Strait, and a dude with binoculars perched on any point of 500 miles of Iranian coastline can clearly see any merchant shipping attempting to cross it at any time. Weather is nearly perfect in the region year round, and day or night, there is zero way to conceal a large vessel's transit through the waterway. Considering all angles, it's theoretically possible that the US Navy has actually secretly cleared (or at least marked) many mines, if not from above the waves, then from below. The US certainly has the technical ability to get one or two ships out, but getting traffic back to the pre-war numbers of 100+ merchant ships transiting the Strait every day is not going to be possible without the Iranian's cooperation. Sneaking two ships out successfully (while also losing the same number to missiles), is what most would call a pyric victory at best, and since there are roughly 2,000 merchant vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf right now, this Project has gotten off to a rocky start. From the perspective of the commercial maritime industry, there's simply no way to know beyond all doubt what threats remain, and what the United States and Iran will do. But therein lies the problem...insurance companies and merchant mariners alike don't make decisions based on *all doubt*, but rather *reasonable doubt*. And right now it is very reasonable to not want to transit the Strait due to the risks, which remain insufficiently mitigated by western forces. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z October 28, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: LONDON STABBING KILLS ONE, WOUNDS TWO. FRENCH RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE TARGETED IN ARSON ATTACKS. USA STRIKES 4X NARCO-VESSELS IN PACIFIC OCEAN. MEDICAL RESEARCH MONKEYS ESCAPE AFTER VEHICLE CRASH IN MISSISSIPPI.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- United Kingdom: This morning a mass stabbing was reported in a residential area of Uxbridge, a suburb of London. One person was killed and two others wounded during the attack, with at least one of the wounded being a child. The assailant has been reported to be an Afghan refugee. Analyst Comment: While knife attacks are incredibly common in London, this one was particularly brutal because it was so random and caught on video. The victim was out walking his dog when an Afghan migrant attacked him and stabbed him to death on the street. France: Multiple arson attacks were carried out on the high speed rail lines between Marseille, Nice, and Montpellier. These arson attacks took the form of unknown malign actors setting fire to the signaling equipment (and really anything that looked important) at several points along the tracks. These incidents ended up causing many delays as trains had to be re-routed to other lines to continue service. South America: Overnight, the War Department announced several more airstrikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Three kinetic strikes were carried out on a total of four vessels (one strike targeted two boats that were tied together to exchange bundles of drugs at sea). 14x KIA were reported in total as a result of these strikes, along with 1x survivor. -HomeFront- Massachusetts: Yesterday the DoJ announced the indictment of an Indian national who conducted a stabbing attack onboard a Lufthansa flight on Saturday. The DoJ states that Praneeth Kumar Usiripalli was arrested in Boston after the Germany-bound flight was diverted due to his attack. The press release states that one of the victims awoke to find Usiripalli standing over them, before trying to stab the victim to death. In the ensuing fray, at least one other passenger was stabbed. The assailant also attempted to stab several crew members while attempting to be subdued. Both victims are juveniles, and it's not clear as to why Usiripalli attempted to murder them during the flight. Mississippi: This afternoon a vehicle accident involving a research truck filled with biological specimens was reported on I-59 in Jasper County. This accident resulted in the inadvertent release of several Rhesus monkeys that were being used for medical research at Tulane University. Initial reports from the Sheriff's Department stated that these monkeys are infected with a variety of diseases, including COVID and Hepatitis. However, this afternoon a representative from the University stated that the monkeys were not infectious. Analyst Comment: Yes, this is a real thing that happened. The escape of medical research monkeys happens surprisingly often, usually without much fanfare. In this case, the initial information that these monkeys were carrying the plot of about 4 different apocalyptic movies caused the story to gain a lot of traction immediately. Most of the monkeys have been re-captured and/or killed, but at least one remains on the loose. As such, locals have been advised to keep a lookout. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The attacks on French rail infrastructure are a very common attack vector that is carried out daily throughout the nation. Arson attacks on electrical infrastructure (or in this case, signaling boxes beside the tracks) are carried out with such frequency that the local media doesn't usually report on them unless it causes major disruptions. Usually, the culprits are officially "unidentified", but in the overwhelming majority of cases the attacks are mostly ANTIFA or other types of anarchist groups which seek to destroy things for a political goal or even just for the sake of it. There are usually never any arrests, but most of the time the attacks are eventually claimed by various splinter groups around France. In a growing number of cases, however, it's quite clear that the incident is a case of simple copper theft. Copper theft is a growing trend around Europe and western civilization at large, to include France. In this case, this probably isn't what happened as multiple incidents were reported at several sites simultaneously, which is rare for a copper theft. Copper thieves also don't normally intentionally set fires as burning everything makes it harder to extract the copper cables that are sought. Either way, whether it be simple theft or a coordinated terror attack, the effect is the same...a lot of very annoyed travelers who have to make other transportation plans. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the intel update for May 17th through the 23rd, 2026. It's been a very busy week as usual, so let's get right to it. This week, the flash points from last week continue to build on all fronts. Here at home, domestic crime and general public foolishness has frequently transitioned into a state of civil unrest in some areas, such as the more visible cases in New Jersey. Similarly, riot season is in full bloom this year within the homeland with many major US cities being host to pop-up parties or other similar rioting just for the sake of rioting. Around our hemisphere, the potential for some kind of entanglement in Cuba continues as the rhetoric has been dialed up on that front with American military forces being staged within the Caribbean once again. Overseas, our friends in the United Kingdom have had a rough week when it comes to the details coming out regarding the Henry Doak murder trial, which appears to be another watershed moment for the UK and their two-tier policing system. Around the world, industrial accidents continue to strike petroleum refineries as the global energy crisis continues with no end in sight. In the Middle East, tensions are growing once again as rhetoric from Washington indicates that the United States is interested in reuniting the war once again in an attempt to break Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, in Africa, an Ebola outbreak has been announced in the Congo and hantavirus cases continue to be reported around the world as the previous cruise ship situation has not yet been resolved. All in all, a very busy week once again. A lot of things up in the air and not a whole lot of resolution on many fronts. Moving to strategic movement for this week, there are two main theaters of war that are worth keeping an eye on. Firstly is of course the Middle East where American resupply operations have been conducted as best they can during the ceasefire. All assets and resources are already on station in the Middle East with the exception of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, which is still in the Atlantic somewhere. Depending on when she departed and how fast she is going, it could take a while before she's on station. I know a lot of people are speculating that the war in Iran is scheduled to to again to weekend because there have been some very interesting cases where President Trump has canceled a few functions and rushed back to the White House to be in Washington, you know, just in case national security needs take precedence, which most people seem to think is code word for yeah, we're going to strike Iran again. And especially considering President Trump also said that we are going to strike Iran this weekend. He said that a few days ago. So, this may indeed happen either tonight before this brief comes out or Sunday night or Monday night, who knows? It could happen any day now or it could never happen. We just don't know, so a lot of this is going to be guesswork. But if they are going to reignite the war, they're going to be launching it again without the Eisenhower being on station to protect Israel with missile defenses, which is probably going to be her primary mission if she was supposed to replace the Ford. The scheduling and mission set for a lot of these carrier strike groups is thrown all out of whack because this war has required three carrier strike groups when normally we have only one in the Middle East. So, saying exactly which ones are replacing who is sometimes quite challenging and we don't exactly know what the mission is going to be. If the Ike is replacing the Ford, then she's probably going to be on station in the Mediterranean Sea in the Eastern Med just off the coast of Israel. But if she's supposed to transit Suez and go south into the Red Sea, then that might take a couple extra days. There has been some concern with potential attacks or terrorism or something like that within the Suez Canal because it is again a choke point and a carrier is pretty much a sitting duck when transiting the canal, which is why the Bush carrier strike group when she arrived on station, she actually went around the long way around the continent of Africa. So, the Eisenhower, if she is indeed intended for CENTCOM and she is indeed headed for the Med, she's probably going to stay in the Med. But again, this is really conjecture and just kind of guesswork, but it's still quite handy to know where a lot of strategic assets are located. And right now there are a lot of assets in the Middle East ready to continue the fight if that is the chosen course of action. A little bit closer to home, another potential conflict is brewing, Cuba. And we can see this with the strategic movement once once So, 2 days ago the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group arrived in the Caribbean, taking up station somewhere off the coast of Cuba. This is why it's worth being aware of what high-level strategic military movements are being made, because if we remember, the US parked an aircraft carrier off the coast of Venezuela about 4 months before that operation came to a head. I'm sure many of you were quite annoyed with me for many months talking about how there's an aircraft carrier down there off the coast of Venezuela, but that annoyance actually paid off because we actually did end up launching a little miniature war. Thankfully, it did not come to a full-blown war, and it was really more just a pre-planned raid, but still, that aircraft carrier was an indication. So, this is important in the context of Cuba because right now, basically no one thinks that military action is on the table. No one is seriously considering that the United States might actually engage in some kind of military operation in Cuba. That is not really on anybody's radar, even theoretically. Most consensus seems to conclude that all of this Cuba talk is just talk, and it's really just to satisfy one of President Trump's remaining support bases, the Cuban-American voting block. There is a substantial Cuban presence in Florida, so maybe this is more political rhetoric than anything else to secure votes. I don't know. However, moving an aircraft carrier is not something that is traditionally done on a whim, and based on his term so far, every single time President Trump has moved an aircraft carrier somewhere, he has used it. Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, etc. And since Cuba is 90 mi off the coast of Florida, there will be no observable staging of forces like we see around the world. For instance, we knew Venezuela and Iran were about to pop off almost down to the day because the whole world could clearly see the build-up at forward staging areas. However, in the case of Cuba, every potential target within Cuba is well within range of bases in southern Florida. The combat radius of the standard CH-47 Chinook is about 200 mi, and the MH-6 Little Bird is about 100 mi, so they may need to use the carrier to stage from for whatever they have planned if they have anything planned in Cuba, but at the very very wave top level if the US wanted to launch a some kind of operation in Cuba, there is little chance that we would know about it beforehand unlike the two previous wars we've started this year. So, on the more strategic level, we are working with a total of five active fronts around the world right now that the United States is involved in in some form or fashion and two additional potential fronts that might open up at some point. The United States is involved in the war in Ukraine, the Gulf War, and of course the war on narcotics trafficking in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The US is also somewhat involved in a loose collection of conflicts and civil wars underway in West Africa, and American air strikes in Somalia have been regular and routine for many years now. In addition to these active combat operations, two additional theaters are on the menu, Cuba and of course Taiwan at some point. There hasn't really been any update on either one of these. I'm just giving you the early indications and warnings to keep an eye on Cuba and Taiwan. There's very much debate about both of these locations and what might happen, and it's of course possible that neither of these make the transition to a more active front, but these are the conflicts that could potentially become hot later on. And speaking of the heat here in the homeland, riot season has begun to spread throughout many American cities and suburbs. This is no surprise to anyone who can read between the lines, but this week has witnessed a sharp increase in riots, street takeovers, and general foolishness being undertaken in the streets. Right up front, all of the incidents that have been observed in the headlines this week are not the result of anything specific. This is purely just due to cultural reasons. Most of the mainstream media are calling these incidents teen takeovers, but these are almost always attended by full-grown adults, and the media is just trying to find euphemisms to avoid pointing out the obvious. This week, there have been four high-profile takeover-style events which have occurred in areas not traditionally host to this type of activity. Places like Chicago, Detroit, and the like are generally witness to half a dozen street takeovers every single night, So, it's hard to keep track of them because they just happen so often in these cities, but this week more traditionally upper scale neighborhoods have observed the various exhibitions of churlish behavior such as in Long Branch, New Jersey and also in Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island. Two locations which were at one point staples of wholesome Americana, but lately the neighborhood has gone downhill for obvious reasons. As a result of this rash of takeover events, many towns throughout New England have quietly slipped into full-blown deployment mode with curfews popping up and being enforced with a heavy hand in an attempted to keep the situation from deteriorating into chaos. So, if you are in New England, particularly along the coast, be advised that you will probably see an extremely overwhelming police presence in most public venues, particularly at beaches, over the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of money in the tourism industry up there in the summertime and local towns know that all it takes is one viral video of dudes dancing on top of cars for people to avoid their town this summer. So, spicy times, keep your head on a swivel, be aware of when these crowds start showing up at places and just just be aware. Across the pond, things aren't much better and societal tensions continue to get worse by the day. Just as a bit of an administrative note, the situation has become too chaotic for me to track personally. It's just too big at this point. I try to cover the high-profile crimes and very big incidents that might result in spicy situations, but right now there is literally a groundbreaking major case nearly every single hour in the UK. There are assaults, murders, mutilations, and child trafficking incidents every single hour and I just cannot keep up with all of it. It has literally gotten that bad. Even this week, the murder trial of Henry Nowak is not even the biggest scandal to take place today. Last night, there was a mass stabbing involving six victims in London and there's also another mass rape trial which involves a group of Pakistani men getting very light sentences for the assault and abuse of children. There are around a dozen or so more incidents that I don't have time to get into including a knife-wielding man causing chaos inside a Morrison supermarket, a stabbing attack resulting from a gang initiation, and a handful of other crimes so bad that I can't even give you the approximate details in mixed company. So, suffice it to say it's mass hysteria. Well, maybe not that far, but still quite busy in the United Kingdom. There are many stabbing attacks every day. There are many assaults every single day and it's really hard to pinpoint down where these are taking place for one because a lot of the time, well, not a lot of the time, most of the time the British media has been ordered by the British government to censor this kind of thing. So, we're fighting a losing battle when it comes to the information space on a lot of these assaults and really, really horrific crimes because we just can't figure out that they occur until years later in some cases like the Henry Noak trial. In terms of preparing for what comes next, the United Kingdom is still in the early phases, but some elements might be transitioning to a more active approach to handling this sheer volume of horrific crime. Vigilantism is quite literally the only thing the British people have in some cases at this point, which is unfortunate to realize, but this is the reality of what happens next. In some cases, not all, but some, every option for a peaceful solution has been exhausted. And in some cases there really is no option left. This of course varies case by case, but many British people are finding that out and it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And more than that, the British government seems to be rather oblivious about what happens when the average Englishman gets backed into a corner. So, suffice it to say a mass uprising throughout the UK is very unlikely at the moment at least, but there are increasing numbers of fighting age males who are siding with their countrymen to make the attempt to take back their country from the foreign invaders that have been brought into the British homeland, especially the ones which are just absolutely inconceivably violent. Again, many of you have heard this before, so I won't dwell on it too much, but the situation is quite serious and we may start to see the the early indications of of more organized attempts to handle the situation. I'll just put it that way. So, it ain't over till it's over and as bleak as the situation looks for the Anglo population of Western Europe and by extension the United States as well, there are ways of handling these problems. And I'll just leave it at that for now and I'll continue monitoring the situation in the United Kingdom to see how our brothers across the sea can get by even when the situation gets tough. I'm confident they can handle it uh one way or the other, but it's going to be a long and hard road to get there. So, speaking of tough situations, the crisis in the Middle East continues to make life interesting for most of the planet as the energy crisis continues to grow by the day. Rumors have been flying out of Washington nearly every day this week regarding President Trump being inclined to restart the war, perhaps under a different name to avoid congressional approval, but nevertheless the war rhetoric has been ratcheted up once again. On the tactical front, if the conflict is to begin once more, the Iranians have been very clear about what their targets will be, which mostly comprises of desalination plants and oil refineries. The Iranians have also managed to resupply and build more drones and missiles during the ceasefire. This is all conjecture because there's no real way to know for sure, but some estimates are saying that the Iranians might have replaced a substantial number of missiles and drones to the point that they have largely recovered from whatever supply they depleted during the opening days of the war. Of course, the raw material production capacity, like their ability to make steel and aluminum, within Iran took a huge hit because the United States and Israel completely destroyed or severely damaged many, if not most, of the factories around the country. However, the most important industry for Iran right now is the defense industry and they have been working overtime since the bombs started falling to sprint towards replacing their stockpiles of missiles and drones. How many they have at this moment is anyone's guess, but going off of everything that's happened so far during this war, the United States has done nothing but underestimate the Iranians at literally every single step, which is kind of astounding if you think about it. So, as much as the Pentagon likes to look down on the Iranians, there is not one single aspect of how they have fought the war so far where the Iranians have underperformed. They have been punching above their weight to this entire time. The Iranians certainly and undoubtedly control the Strait of Hormuz, and they project enough influence over the Persian Gulf to keep everybody's head down indefinitely. So, even though technically the Iranians are under-matched in their fight against the United States, technically speaking, as long as the United States keeps fighting the war in the same way, the Iranians will continue to have, if not dominance, that might not be the right word, but they're going to have enough control over a small area to cause a lot of problems essentially indefinitely. But, once again, in time-honored tradition, we will have to see what happens. Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is an interesting position to take, but it's also what happens when American leadership is painted into a corner, which is exactly what's happened. And as far as the Israelis are concerned, this is exactly what they were going for. In the world of grand military strategy, many famous military leaders throughout history have been noted for leaving their options open until the very last minute, which allowed them to have flexibility for as long as possible. For better or for worse, this is the complete opposite of President Trump's personality, as he favors a completely different doctrine. He favors decisive and bold moves in nearly every aspect of his administration. Which is a respectable strategy in business, I guess, but when it comes to warfare, he was by far the most susceptible to this kind of trap. Even for people who wanted to engage in this war, even for the war hawks, even for the military strategists who have been looking to fight a war with their own for decades now, the way that this has come about has been less than ideal because it's left a lot of people with a lot less options than they thought they were going to have when such a war were to break out. During the opening salvos to this war, President Trump killed the Ayatollah, which limited his options right out of the gate. And this got messy very, very quickly. If he had not killed the Ayatollah and to most of the military leadership, I have no doubt that a peace deal would have already been signed. We would already be done with this war. But because the United States killed most of the moderates on the first day of the war, the hardliners are now holding out within Iran and taking the position of making this incredibly painful for the United States. So, the exact opposite of what President Trump has said is actually what happened. We did not kill the hardliners on that first day, and now we're dealing with a more amiable regime. Actually, it's quite the opposite. We killed the moderates first, and now the options are limited for getting out of this because the IRGC leadership has basically taken a position of bring it on. Anyone who has ever cracked a military history textbook could see this coming a mile away because this is essentially a very loose correlation with how World War I began. I'm not saying this is going to be a world war again, although you could argue that World War III has already begun in many other ways. But when it comes to the Iran situation itself, it's quite interesting because it turns out that one of the reasons why World War I began and transitioned from a series of smaller wars into one, you know, large conflagration throughout Europe and even Western Asia before transitioning around the world is that a lot of key leaders and key decisions were forced or were not made. For instance, we cite a lot of times the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as being one of the catalyst for the beginning of World War I. Well, why is that? Why was his assassination so important? Franz Ferdinand's assassination was so critical and so important because he was one of the last dissenting voices, one of the last big voices, that urged the Austria-Hungary Empire to not go to war with Serbia, when thus kick off the war. When he was assassinated, he could not oppose to the war anymore, and so it was on, essentially. This is the short version of it. Same thing happened in Turkey with Enver Pasha. Again, the critical people who were trying to force a war ended up forcing a war. So, we see the same kind of mentality today in Iran, and this has been a very strategic nightmare to manage because the senior political echelons of the United States have made decisions, they have done things, they've committed targeting actions on the battlefield, but also in the political realm that have resulted in having few options later on. So, right now, we're stuck. President Trump has neither a political solution nor a military solution, which is just what the Israelis wanted. And the few allies that we have left are pivoting to China or, in some cases, even Russia. All the while, our strategic petroleum reserve is being drained to sell to Europe to keep global fuel prices low. What's quite interesting about this conflict is that we don't have to wait 100 years to look back uh in retrospect and say, "Oh gosh, now we know what what what started the war." No, we actually know right now. Uh it's quite clear. So, we at least have that going for us. But, in terms of a solution, I really don't know what the US intends to do at this point. There are, indeed, about half a dozen different solutions that would 100% work to end the conflict, but the hard part is getting the ego and foreign influence out of the ear of military decision-makers long enough to actually let them see the light and end this on positive terms. Personally, I think that we're absolutely dealing with a Truman Show situation where President Trump is personally being sequestered from the truth of the military situation on the ground, which is why there's such a huge disconnect between reality and what the White House is saying these days. And breaking this spell is really the only barrier to getting sub $2 gas again, at least within a couple of years. This is most certainly not an apocalyptic all is lost situation. We can get out of this. There are solutions to end this. It just requires our political leadership to get us out of this. I did not declare war on Iran, so I cannot step forward and end the war, right? That's not how this works. Foreign conflicts, foreign wars are squarely in the realm of the executive branch and Congress, but Congress has, you know, shirked their duty on this. So, uh this is now the executive branch's job and because of that, we have to kind of rely on them. This is not something that we can do ourselves or even help with. So, we're kind of at the mercy of the White House when it comes to this war. And they've proven time and time again they're not interested in listening to us. So, that's what makes this hard. That's why we have to kind of prepare for things that are outside of our control. And if the United States goes back to war and the Iranians dutifully respond by blowing up even more petroleum infrastructure, we're probably going to hit that $200 per barrel milestone mostly for zero military gain. So, quite the cliffhanger we end on this week. The stakes are high and potential for another round of war is on the horizon once again. Not only are we not out of this conflict, but we are probably farther away from a peace deal today than we ever have been. This can, of course, be turned around on a single tweet, on a single email. That's all it takes to end this and then we can move on. But right now, we are still in a state of war and seeing as it is Memorial Day weekend, we have the 13 service members who lost their lives while fighting this war. Captain Cody Cork, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant First Class Nicole LaTour, Sergeant Decklin Cody, Major Jeffrey O'Brien, Chief Warrant Officer Three Robert Marzahn, Sergeant Benjamin Pennington, Technical Sergeant Tyler Simmons, Captain Curtis Angst, Captain Seth Kowal, Technical Sergeant Ashley Pruitt, Captain Ariana Savino, and Major John Kleiner. All of these service members were killed in action during the height of the conflict. I just wanted to take a moment to remember that this war has not just blown up pipelines in the Middle East and dropped a bunch of bombs on caves. It's also torn apart American families here at home. We should do well to remember that and hope and pray that these are the last lives lost and that a peaceful end to this nightmare can come about soon. The solutions are there. We can end this. We can walk away, admit our mistakes, and move forward. But until then, we can remember the lives lost and pray that there are no more. And with that, let's finish up today with the Intercepted Ghost Net reports. Surprisingly, this week's Thursday radio night check-in was absolutely packed with people, which was awesome to see. I guess the holiday weekend gave some people enough time to work on radio stuff, which is fantastic. I know I myself struggle a lot of time to finish up work early enough to hop on the net myself, but anyway, I saw a lot of new people testing things out, trying new antennas, new rigs, all kinds of stuff, and participating in the Ghost Net for the first time. So, that was really great. Learning new things, keeping skills sharp, and maintaining lines of communication when all other means fail is quite a useful skill to have. We want to be problem solvers, not problem creators, and trying to have more situational awareness even in a grid-down or a more censored location, this is going to be very helpful in the long run. So, that's all I have for today. Thanks for sticking with me, and as usual, all of my research notes and geospatial products can be found at the links below. And for those of you who are looking to be a little bit more prepared during this weekend of potential interesting times, you can download KMZ files of all of my mapping products so that you can have a better picture of your local area just in case you need it. So, for those of you nerds out there running A-Tac or CalTopo or some other kind of geospatial app, I've got plenty of KMZ files that you can load in for free as needed, so it's all there. All of this work could not be possible without those of you who support my endeavors on Patreon, so I cannot thank you guys enough, and I hope that the products that I'm building are useful, if not for now in some cases, then maybe for later on. We'll see. If nothing else, more tutorials are coming down the line, and I think that'll be pretty handy and maybe helpful for many others to have options and capabilities, especially while working through these strange and interesting times in which we live. So, thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for April 12th through the 18th, 2026. Good grief, it has been a crazy week, crazier than usual, and of course, the focus this week has been on the Middle East due to the ceasefire between the United States and Iran, which has resulted in a lull of the targeting efforts. However, just because the shooting has slowed down somewhat, it doesn't mean that this is over, and there have been some major escalations to be aware of this week, which we'll dive into in a minute. Otherwise, the main focus this week has been on the sharp increase in extremely brutal crime throughout the United States, and also protests within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Protests remain fairly constant in Dublin due to the energy crisis brought on by a combination of local issues as well as the conflict in the Middle East. Over in the UK, the Epsom protests have become more widespread as more local Englishmen have continued to rise up in response to the extremely brutal crime becoming common throughout the nation. Both of these situations continue to develop by the hour, but these are the main hotspots and issues that we're watching this week. So, all in all, not a whole lot of new stuff, but the situation has really gotten quite tense in the Middle East, which has kicked off unrest around the world either directly or indirectly. In the case of Ireland, a lot of the local tensions are being driven by fuel prices, same thing in Australia. And now that the war has been going on for 7 weeks, the chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak, and all of those more long-term or indirect second and third-order effects are starting to be felt around the globe. And based on the strategic movement for this week, it doesn't look like this is going to be ending anytime soon. Taking a look at the strategic resources that are being staged around the world, we have a better picture of what platforms have been dedicated for this fight, and how the rearmament efforts are being undertaken during the brief ceasefire. Most notably, the more interesting observation is the deployment of the George H.W. Bush carrier strike group, which is slated to replace the Lincoln, which is operating in the Arabian Sea. A few days ago, the Bush was observed to taking the long route around Africa, which is a very odd choice when the Suez Canal is the typical route. Officially, there is no explanation as to why she is taking the long route around Africa, but this diversion is likely due to the security threats that are present while transiting a choke point where the ship is constrained somewhat. And the normal route takes the ship through the Suez Canal and also the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is where the Houthis are located. So, when the Ford was moving off station due to the fire damage she sustained in the northern Red Sea, she had to take the risk and transit the Suez to get out of there, but the Bush does not appear to be willing to take the same risk for some reason, probably the Houthis. One caveat that popped up this morning is that the Ford herself might actually be transiting back south through the Suez again to rejoin the war. This is not confirmed at the moment, but a US Navy P-8 Poseidon was observed doing a little advanced recon in the northern Red Sea just a few hours ago, and this kind of track is usually indicative of the anti-submarine reconnaissance efforts that are conducted ahead of a carrier moving through a waterway like the Red Sea. But again, we'll have to see how this goes. Most people thought that the Ford was pretty toasted as far as the war goes, and she's already been on deployment for much longer than the average deployment is supposed to last. And remember, the Ford took part in the Venezuela campaign and immediately shifted to the war with Iran without taking a break. And after that laundry fire, it looked like she was being pulled offline. But maybe not, I don't know. If the war is going to be re-ignited soon, which looks pretty likely at this point, the Navy will need everything they've got in theater. Otherwise, some other notable platforms to be aware of are the expeditionary sea bases, which have been a hot topic to follow in the maritime community for a while now. These vessels are kind of new, they've been around for a few years, but they've really just started getting uh some pretty heavy use throughout the fleet because they're essentially mobile sea bases for special operations, and they serve as more or less a mobile helicopter base that can be used for staging a lot of special resources in a forward area. As I mentioned yesterday, the John L. Canley is moving from PACOM into CENTCOM, which might be an indication of something. It's too soon to tell, but this is the most clear example of resources being moved into CENTCOM from the PACOM area of responsibility, and that's usually not an indication of peace anytime soon. Again, there are a handful of these expeditionary sea bases or ESBs, and I'm pretty sure there's already one in CENTCOM, so I'll track down some of these other hulls and see where they're at. But, on the naval front, there are a lot of resources just pouring into CENTCOM right now. Another clear example of resources being staged comes to us from the always famous Diego Garcia, the small and mysterious island base in the Indian Ocean, which became the focus of international attention last year when this base was heavily relied upon as a staging base for Operation Midnight Hammer. As we all know, B-2s were forward deployed to this island for about a month or so, but eventually they decided to change the mission and to launch from home like normal as Operation Midnight Hammer was just a one-and-done fight instead of a more prolonged campaign. During this current war, this base has served as a logistics hub due to around 13 US bases throughout the Middle East either being completely evacuated or otherwise damaged by Iranian targeting. So, that's the strategic movement for the Middle East, but there are other movements being made to be aware of. Moving closer to the American homeland with strategic movement, there are two other regions to be aware of where military operations are being carried out. For one, Operation Southern Spear continues as before with daily strikes on narco vessels being carried out mostly in undisclosed regions of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Sorry, I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly where the uh Eastern Pacific Ocean strikes are being conducted. The Pentagon has been very, very tight-lipped about where these strikes are actually taking place because I suspect they're taking place off the coast of Ecuador along some known drug trafficking routes between Ecuador and Panama or Ecuador and Colombia. The United States is in partnership with Ecuador, and we actually conducted one of the very first drone strikes in Ecuador to target a narco base or some vague target the Pentagon never really explained, but even though we have a somewhat positive relationship with Ecuador, we do not have a positive relationship with Colombia. And though this is complete speculation on my part, it is possible that these strikes are being conducted pretty close to Colombia, or maybe the drug traffickers are transiting to Colombia and we're striking them in the Eastern Pacific Ocean before they get there into Colombia's territorial waters. I don't exactly know. No one really can know because SOUTHCOM is really just saying Eastern Pacific Ocean. Well, what does that mean? The Eastern Pacific's pretty big, but this has been the way things have been conducted for a long time now. We're bombing a lot of things down south, and we have no idea where it's taking place. This is going to be important to consider considering the other rather concerning strategic movement to be aware of, which is the potential conflict with Cuba. This week, surveillance flights began picking up with an MQ-4 being observed conducting a reconnaissance flight off the southern coast of Cuba, which has coincided with a sharp increase in Cuba rhetoric from the White House and other senior officials. Of course, this surveillance flight was conducted with the drone's transponder turned on, so clearly the Pentagon either did not care that the world was tracking it, or it deliberately wanted to send a message. In either case, the preparations to shift to Cuba are starting to look more possible, at least in terms of some sort of contingency planning taking place. There aren't any indications of resources being staged in the public eye just yet, but there probably wouldn't be since we could launch an invasion of Cuba from Florida. In any case, I'm going to start the IPB process for Cuba next, and slowly start to get ready for that just in case it starts looking more like a serious endeavor over the next few weeks. Right now, it's too soon to tell if any decision's been made. Maybe it already has been made, but in terms of what we're seeing in the real world as far as raw data goes, it's too soon to tell if we've decided to invade Cuba of all places. But, considering how things are going, I'm going to plan for it just in case. On the home front this week, the common theme has been crime. Exceptionally graphic crimes committed by the usual suspects remain a chief concern for many areas with multiple gang shootings and murders being reported around the nation this week. I try not to focus on regular street crime so much because there are literally hundreds of shootings and gang-related crimes that take place every day, and it's just it's just too much to track. But, I did want to highlight that the violence has sharply increased around the country. So, we're definitely in the keep your head on a swivel season. In Washington, D.C., a citywide curfew has been reinstated for all juveniles who must be off the streets by 11:00 p.m. throughout the entire city. Separately, there are additional curfew zones which have an earlier curfew time of 8:00 p.m. These areas are the Navy Yard, an area over by Kingman Park and the Kennedy Stadium, and also the area to the north of surrounding Tacoma Field. These curfews are being enforced by the National Guard, which has continued their persistent mission around Washington, D.C., and all of these areas are in the legendarily high-crime areas. So, we'll see how it works out. My guess is that we're uh we're definitely in high-crime season. And for those of you who want to track a lot of these crimes that I can geolocate and find out where they took place, some of the more high-profile ones are the ones that actually we have some information for. I try to put them on my maps online, but again, we're talking hundreds of shootings a day at least nationwide. So, it's a pretty tall order. It's a pretty big task, but we'll cut through it this summer as best we can. And segueing into the Middle East, things have been happening very quickly in the region over the past few days, with the situation changing by the minute in some cases. So, chances are things will have changed by the time this gets uploaded. However, at this snapshot in time, this is the situation as it stands. Overall, the war in the Middle East, or technically both wars, the Lebanon War and the Iran War, are in a state of pause. No American bombing has been observed in Iran over the past week, and the Iranians have not launched any drone attacks on American bases or third- party nations either, such as GCC states. The Israelis are kind of doing their own thing as usual, but I haven't seen any ballistic missiles impacting in Israel from the Iranians at least over the past few days. Hezbollah took a while to kind of calm down after the ceasefire was announced, so we'll see how that holds. But again, this is very much developing at the moment. So again, the war on the Lebanon side of things remains important because these conflicts are linked to each other, and this week the Israelis were carrying on with their ground invasion up until possibly yesterday. At the moment, it's hard to determine if this is true, but allegedly the Israelis have agreed to a cease-fire in Lebanon as in a stop to their ground advance and a stop to their bombing of Beirut in order to achieve some sort of diplomatic leverage in the Persian Gulf. It's hard to say how all of this is working out and it's hard to say if this is going to last longer than 5 minutes, but that's what's being conveyed by the diplomats on all sides at the moment. Otherwise, most of the focus this week has been on the Strait of Hormuz and its status of being open or closed. I know we may have Hormuz fatigue at this moment, but this is what's driving a lot of the consternation here in the United States. So, we've got to be aware of the insanity that's going on over there. There has been a lot of back and forth between the United States and Iran and the Strait itself has been the biggest point of contention. And the word contention has been a huge understatement. The situation's changed so radically over the past few days that it's very challenging to follow the timeline of events. So, please forgive me if I get some of these details wrong. It's It's been really tough to follow because what's happening in the real world does not matching what's being said by diplomats. Initially, I think yesterday or the day before yesterday, President Trump announced that the Strait was open and available for use by anyone, but the American blockade will remain in place. Shortly after that announcement, the Iranians stated that there were conditions for opening the Strait and as it turned out, shocker, those conditions were exactly the same as what was already in place. Yesterday evening, a few dozen vessels attempted to transit the Strait before being turned back by the Iranians. A few ships did make it through the Iranian side of the blockade and as of right now, all of those vessels that made it through were sanctioned vessels by the United States. So, once they made it through the Iranian blockade, they got turned around by the American blockade and had to go all the way back. As if this wasn't complicated enough, the Iranians decided to close the Strait again this morning and they did it in the most kinetic possible way. Two merchant vessels were targeted this morning in the Strait of Hormuz. One was engaged by small arms or crew-served weapons from two Iranian gunboats and another vessel reported being shot at with some sort of cruise missile or something that did not appear to have impacted the vessel, but it was targeted. Radio chatter from at least one of these vessels suggests that the vessel had been given approval by the Iranians, but it was engaged anyway. So, there's no telling what is going on because as I'm recording this, this incident was just confirmed by the UKMTO. So, I don't know what's going on. Based on a few tweets that I've seen come out in the past few minutes as I have this while I'm recording, it looks like the Iranians are indeed closing the strait again. This will very likely change even before I'm done uploading this video. So, things are so crazy that quite literally nothing might happen. We might just go back to the way things have been for the past month or so. Or if the United States so chooses, we might be back to dropping bombs in Iran by this afternoon. That's how wide the window is regarding our potential courses of action. We simply don't know how this is going to work out. This is why confusion abounds regarding the impacts of the war. The core of the global energy supply is located behind two naval blockades, both of which have been described in questionable terms to the point that vessels are not sure if they're allowed through or not. Right now, the world is watching individual hulls. That's what we're That's what we're down to now. We're tracking individual ships either transiting or attempting to transit the strait because each individual hull is being treated on a case-by-case basis. Insurance companies, they're not going to get down into the weeds this far because the situation is so variable. And if the Iranians are starting to shoot at vessels again and they're closing the strait once again, this is what we might call a minor setback. In terms of things getting back to normal, there's probably another angle to all of this, which is China. The uncertainty regarding at least the American blockade is definitely not helping matters, but if we're thinking about the China angle, which again is probably being way more gracious with this than we probably should be, but we're trying to be well-rounded and not as biased as normal, we have to think of the China angle to this and implementing a blockade to open the strait, you know, closing the straits to open the strait. That's That's That's insanity. That makes no sense. Unless one possible possible very loose theory is that maybe the true goal of the American blockade is just to prevent China from benefiting from Iranian oil while the US is embroiled in the war. Maybe the American leadership doesn't really care about the Middle East in terms of whether or not we get the oil. They just don't want China to have it. Kind of a scorched earth thing. This so the blockade might be more of a scorched earth tactic. I don't know. This is not the openly stated goal by American officials, but reading between the lines, this is the This is the only plausible explanation for a blockade to be implemented in the first place and implemented in the way that it is. So, that's the only theory I can think up in terms of why we would even start this blockade in the first place. But anyway, it's probably a moot point because as of this morning, the real world impacts remain exactly the same as before. As of this morning, the strait is still closed by both the Americans and the Iranians who have reclosed it after a few of their sanctioned vessels made it out. Global fertilizer availability, fuel prices, and the manufacture of plastics, and all of the previous concerns that have come about since the war began, these are still in place. So, there's been no change over the past 7 weeks. And if the Iranians are shooting at vessels again and closing the strait completely, the fat lady has most certainly not sung just yet and this conflict is not yet over. So, that's where things stand right now and that's that's all I've got for today. Sorry to cut things short, but I'm trying to get caught up with some of the more educational stuff I'm working on at the moment and I really need to make some progress on that. So, I will continue to monitor the situation as we say and hopefully we'll have a better picture for how the Hormuz crisis works out. The various clocks are ticking down with Europe and Australia running out of gas and the US is also suffering due to both the fertilizer and fuel crunch that is now beginning to take effect a full 7 weeks after the war began. So, that's all I've got for now. I'm going to cut it here and transition to writing the next report because things are happening rather quickly and we might see another flare-up of conflict over the next few days. So, stay frosty, everyone. Take care and remember that the events overseas are a big concern because they drive our society and they drive a lot of the unrest here in the US, but all of us here at home are more likely to be impacted by routine crime or just crazy times in our day-to-day lives. So, let's keep at it, do the best we can, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for June 14th through the 20th, 2026. It's been quite a busy roller coaster of a week, so let's get right to it. Of course, the main focus this week has been the signing of the memorandum of understanding to start the process for ending the war in the Middle East. Are we getting back to normal? Is this insanity over? Well, not quite, because the subsequent and immediate escalation of the war in Lebanon, while the least surprising development in human history, still has complicated the situation and as of this morning, the fighting in Lebanon continues as the IDF remains on the offensive. Over in the first world, there have been several developments to be aware of throughout Europe and also here in the homeland. In the United Kingdom, barely an hour has passed without a ground-breaking and horrific story coming to light and in the United States, the domestic threats at the national level are elevated due to events in the Middle East, but we'll get to that in just a moment. In the United Kingdom this week, our friends across the pond have been dealing with quite a lot. In Northern Ireland, the unrest has continued with limited riots popping up randomly in Belfast over the past week. More peaceful protests have also taken place fairly regularly throughout the city, even though media coverage has been fairly minimal. Overall in the mainland proper, the bombshell news this week has been the release of the rape gang inquiry report, the privately funded effort to use parliamentary access to investigate the official documents on the rape gang crisis in the United Kingdom. If you are so inclined, you can read the report yourself. I will link to it below, but I will sharply warn you that it will probably be the worst thing you have ever read in your life, full stop. I myself have spent a couple of years coming through the Epstein files to find actionable intelligence and the absolute worst things in the Epstein file are not as bad as the least bad survivor testimony in this report. It is that bad. 250,000 British girls were raped and tortured over the past few decades with the assistance of government who not just covered it up, but actively directed and organized the rape gangs themselves. Since most of the victims had dozens, if not hundreds of perpetrators, we're looking at potentially millions of people that need to be handled. You can look at the appendix and look at the sourcing materials where all of these references are made and they are backed up with other sources. A lot of the testimony in the report is actually from people who are remaining hidden due to the British government prosecuting people who come forward as a victim. So you come forward as a victim, say "Hey, I'm a victim of a rape gang." And guess what? You get thrown in prison. So they're trying to cover it up because the people running the rape gangs are still in power. For us here in the US, if you have the stomach for it, the parts of the report that are not just a record of the atrocity are quite informative because a good chunk of the report details how and why this came to be, and the appendix is handy for name-dropping the entities that were involved in the scandal. Now, I would expect much more detail to come to light now that the true scale of this crisis is known. I would be willing to bet that a lot more people are going to come forward and a lot of whistleblowers are probably going to come forward as well who know exactly where the documents are stored. So there's probably going to be quite a few more reports written. And it's going to be important for us Americans to understand our connection to all of this as well. There is absolutely zero way that a scandal this big is just confined to the United Kingdom when the US and the UK are so heavily intertwined on pretty much everything including culture, banking, powerful people, all of that stuff. That is something to be aware of, right? We are very heavily intertwined with the UK and when they have something this damning coming out of their country, it does affect us as well because it's we're probably implicated in it somehow. In this case, most of the scandal in the UK is confined to mostly enclaves of multiple generations of migrants. And the report specifically states that up to 95% of the perpetrators were Pakistani. Here in the US, we have similar problems, albeit with our own national flavor. So over the next few weeks, it will be important to keep these issues at the forefront of memory because these kinds of issues are what undermines civilization itself. When we allow crimes of this scale into our society, it makes everything worse and erodes away at our very being. Witnessing how the British handle this over the next few years will be helpful for us because if we can't protect the innocent from foreign invaders from within our own borders, then what's the point of having a nation-state anyway? It may sound harsh, but deportation is really in the best interest of these people because everyone who reads this report will no longer be in favor of mass deportations, if you know what I mean. So, it would be wise for those engaging in this behavior to depart the United Kingdom and the United States while you still can. Here on the home front, there have been a few items of note this week, which I have not had much time to dig into. The most substantial of which is the alleged plot to target the UFC event on the White House lawn last weekend. According to the criminal complaint released by the DOJ, this was an effort by five men to use drones and explosives to target the UFC event at the White House, which would prompt an evacuation of the venue, and the would-be terrorists would conduct sniper attacks on the crowd leaving the White House grounds. These individuals were arrested before they were able to carry out their plans, and the FBI announced their great success early this week. Now, the headlines make this seem like a pretty substantial attack, but digging into the details as provided again by the DOJ, it becomes clear that these guys were not exactly playing with a full deck. For one, what happens every single time that an attack takes place at the White House? They lock down. Nobody in or out. This literally happens at least once a month, and these idiots apparently did not know about the very public security measures at the White House. If they had carried out their plan, nobody would be evacuated from the White House grounds, they would have all stayed inside, and the attack would never happened. This is very easy for anyone to see. There was literally a shooting at the White House like a couple weeks ago, and that's exactly what happened. So, I don't know why these idiots didn't know that, but anyway, just to cut right to the chase, ever since I saw the evidence photos of the gear that these guys were alleged to have staged for the attack, my gut assessment was that this was either a bunch of idiots, feds, or both. I mean, even Trantifa does not have so little self-respect that they would conduct a sniper attack with a bullpup shotgun. I mean, come on, guys. This entire plan was so hairbrained that it's honestly laughable. They had planned to conduct a sniper attack from what looks like the Jefferson Memorial, which is hilarious because you can't see the White House from that side of the Tidal Basin. And even so, the area that they had circled on their map was about a mile and a half from the White House. So, these guys were completely inept. But anyway, the grand question remains, how close did they get? After all, an idiot with a rifle can still cause a lot of trouble. So, even if they actually got to DC and found out that all of their plans would not work, they could still have shot somebody. The details that the DOJ released do not indicate whether or not these guys actually traveled to Washington. They were supposed to rendezvous in Fredericksburg, but it sounds like they never made it. It looks like all of them were scattered around the country and they were picked up by the local FBI field offices. So, I don't know if these guys actually planned to travel around at all. It could have been a case of five guys having this story of, "Oh man, I wish I could make it, but I can't." and canceling all on each other at the last minute. I don't know, but the plot was actually discovered because the mother of one of the suspects found out about the plot and turned her son in. So, all in all, I don't know about this one. It's not out of the question for this to be a legitimate attempt, and the evidence provided by the DOJ indicates that the would-be assassins did indeed try to plan the attack. They planned something, even if the average paintball game is much more well thought out. Maybe it was a real thing, maybe it was just an average Redditor on the internet being edgy. I don't know. More generally, though, right now is probably one of the most risky times for domestic terror attacks for one exclusive reason: the events in the Middle East. And let me explain by recapping what has happened so far over the past few days. As we all know, 2 days ago, the memorandum of understanding was signed by both Iran and the United States going into effect immediately to solidify the ceasefire as official, but also to set in motion the planning efforts to work out the details of a more permanent peace deal. The MOU has been published to much outrage all around because even though it's written rather vaguely, the vast majority of the points favor the Iranians very heavily. Immediately after this was signed, the Israelis expanded their bombing campaign in Lebanon, and several armored columns of the IDF have continued their advance along the eastern front to push north and west deeper into Lebanon. Hezbollah has, of course, responded in kind, mostly with anti-tank guided missile, or ATGM, attacks, which are their favored targeting method in this particular region, although FPV drone attacks are starting to become more popular, as well. Yesterday morning, the Qataris announced that they had succeeded in talking the Israelis and Hezbollah into a ceasefire that was to uh take place at 4:00 p.m. local time yesterday, but of course, the Israelis just ignored that and kept shooting. As a brief aside, this is why when we say it's an Israeli-style ceasefire, that's only partially a joke, right? They literally do not believe in the concept of a ceasefire. The Israeli Channel 12 news station literally said that a ceasefire does not mean to cease firing, it means just no major advances or offensive pushes. So, to the Israelis, it's really a foreign concept because they operate on a different set of norms and mores than the rest of the world. They treat themselves differently than everyone else, to include in warfare, especially in warfare. Anyway, cut to this morning uh when the large-scale bombing of Lebanon continued. Bombs have been going off for at least 24 hours now in Lebanon, and they've been uh they've been cratering quite a lot in southern Lebanon between the Litani River and all the way up to Beirut. I'm seeing some reports of munitions hitting uh maybe that far up in some of the suburbs, but still trying to pinpoint where all these bombs are landing, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty big bombing campaign. Now, of course, uh this morning, as I am recording this right now, I see on my screen that the Iranians have announced that they have closed the Strait of Hormuz due to the United States failing to constrain Israel, which is a direct violation of paragraph one of the MOU. Maybe there's a reason why Lebanon is literally the first thing in the MOU because it's the most important thing, and it's the thing that's going to get violated probably the soonest. Well, that's exactly what's happened. Again, this is a developing story right now, so the things are probably going to change by the time I edit this and get it out the door, but this appears to be what's happening right now. The strait may or may not be closed. It's going to probably take if the Israelis keep bombing and the Iranians want to close the strait because of that, it may take several hours, may take a full day for traffic to stop transiting through the strait. I don't think the Iranians are going to hit all the vessels that are currently in the strait right now. They may, I don't know, but right now there's a few dozen ships that are trying to move as fast as they can through the waterway. So, I don't know. They're trying to apply diplomatic pressure and we'll have to see how it works out tonight, but very busy day. Things are moving pretty fast, too fast for me to cover them and then have it out the door pretty quickly. So, that's the more tactical situation as it stands right now at this snapshot in time, but at the more strategic level, there are always more complicated details to be aware of. I myself have had a rather foreboding feeling about this whole thing as it comes to a close and this week has kind of reminded us of how high the stakes are in Washington when it comes to an agreement being signed. The day after a peace agreement is signed is sometimes more dangerous than the day after the war starts. There are a lot of very powerful people that are very, very upset that this MOU has been signed granting Iran so many leniencies. And due to the rather interesting position that the United States finds herself in, anytime big moves are being made with regards to the direction the nation is heading, very mysterious and very coincidental things tend to happen, especially if one particular entity is involved. In short, the war playing out in the shadows continues on and occasionally pops above the surface for the general public to observe. One of these little shadow war items, one of these things that has the fingerprint of fifth generation warfare all over it, came from a New York Times article that was released almost 2 weeks ago, which details the internal reaction within the White House to the growing Epstein scandal last year. I have been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and I wanted to mention this because I think it's related to what's going on right now on the diplomatic front in the Middle East and it might help us get an understanding of the seriousness of what's going on behind the scenes. Again, this is just a hunch. It's not a solid evidence of anything, but it's something to consider. The article itself was a part of a PR effort to promote the upcoming book of the authors detailing and chronicling President Trump's second term, and most of the article focused on the internal discussions within the administration to handle the Epstein issue. Not a rare form of content by any means, and when it was released, it didn't really get too much press coverage because it did not really contain that much new information. And the inside scoop style content detailing internal drama, it's not necessarily something that has implications for national security. However, the importance of this article is not what's in it, but how the information for it was obtained. Some of the quotations in the article seemed a little too specific for just someone having exceptionally good memory. The article described highly sensitive meetings in the darkest corners of the White House about the mismanagement of the Epstein scandal. Meetings so small and with everyone around the table being named that the sources of certain parts can be discerned rather easily. All of this appears to be a fanciful tale at face value, but now that this article has been circulating for a couple of weeks, it's become pretty obvious as in it's more likely than not that they actually have the audio tapes to back up the claims made in this report. Of course, until the raw tapes are leaked, if they are ever leaked, this just could be conjecture to drive book sales. We have to think of that first, right? But at this point it looks like this was a massive security breach that has largely been ignored. For example, the section detailing a meeting in which Dan Bongino resigned directly quotes the conversation in such excruciating detail that there is no way that a tape of this conversation doesn't exist. And since everyone in the room at the time is listed in the article, it doesn't take too much effort to determine who had bugged the meeting. One potential read of the report could be that this is just a political hit job enabled by exceptionally well-placed sources, and that this article is nothing more than that. After all, it's mainstream media, they do hit jobs all the time, they make up stuff all the time. It could just be made up. After all, The New York Times is one of the least trustworthy entities of modern memory. But if you skip right through the standard slop sections of the article and actually read between the lines of what message is being presented, the most dark and pessimistic view of this New York Times report is that it's a shot across the bow. Possibly a warning that other tapes exist on other topics. Following that line of thinking, exactly what's going on can't possibly be known, but the timing of all of this is suspect on its own. They sat on this reporting for over a year only to leak it right now, right at the same time, again, two weeks ago when the White House was internally thinking about signing a peace deal with the Iranians. So, right during a week, the the one time where the world is undergoing profound change, they would have had to have had documents circulating within the White House of this 14-point plan. They didn't just draft it 5 minutes before the meeting with the Iranians. This document has been in circulation probably for a while, maybe about 2 weeks, maybe exactly the same age as this article that was published by the New York Times. And now suddenly everything leaks around the same time. Very interesting timing that. And on the more technical side, I think the significance of the technical surveillance effort can't really be understated either. If a spy can gain an audio recording inside the situation room when the Vice President and other key leaders are there, and they can time that recording so perfectly that someone brings a printed report into the rooms so that the spy can gauge the reaction to that news hitting the the audience there, that is something that the highest levels of nation-state level espionage could not uncover with years of hard work and getting assets in the right place. Just think about this for a second. The Soviets spent the majority of the Cold War fighting tooth and nail to get this level of access. And many spies on both sides of the conflict were tried, convicted, and executed for such endeavors. Nowadays, the gravity of what was accomplished, this technical surveillance effort, is dismissed because talking head journalists who are being fed information have expressed shocking levels of naivety. I do not know why these journalists were so stupid, and somehow they did not understand that they were in very severe danger by publishing very sensitive information. I mean, clearly they did it, and it's going to be interesting to see how this works out, but it's very interesting the timing of all of this and the implications that are made. I don't necessarily believe a lot of the quotes in terms of how they're framed. Maybe there's context missing. I don't know. I'm not really concerned about the content of the article. I, of course, being interested in the things I'm interested in, was mostly focusing on the fact that they got recordings inside the situation room, and we just kind of glossed over that over the past 2 weeks. So, you've got somebody who's controlling journalists or feeding information to journalists proving to the White House that we can get to any of your secret conversations in the very deepest, darkest basements of the White House. Also, another piece of information might be sprinkled on top of all of this to to add a little bit more context. This entire week, most of the Israeli media has been absolutely livid about this MOU being signed. But, more specific than that, Miriam Adelson's newspaper, Israel Hayom, which is a publication that she publishes herself and often writes articles for, that newspaper has been publishing articles condemning the White House in the strongest possible terms for not continuing the war. Of course, understandably, every single Israeli news outlet from the political left, right, and center, these guys are going to be seething at the United States taking concrete steps to end the war. But, in this case, this is the personal family publication of President Trump's biggest donor. And now, around the same time, almost the exact same time, in fact, The New York Times releases this excerpt from an upcoming book that heavily implies that they have audio recordings of some of the most secret White House conversations that have ever taken place. And once again, looking at the very wave top level, what are these conversations about? They're not exactly detailing the President's favorite movie. They're not exactly detailing the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. This report precisely details the biggest [ __ ] in President Trump's armor, the Epstein files. How this situation will develop is anyone's guess, but right now the stakes are palpably high and the potential for very serious things to happen is extremely great. Very strong flashing neon sign messages are being sent to the White House from a certain demographic and that's pretty concerning. Though it might be out of the news cycle now, I'm sure the right people have a very long memory and have not forgotten the Golden Patriot incident, another major message sent to the White House. And I think that that message wasn't interpreted in the way that it was intended to be sent. So, I would expect that a lot of quiet security measures are going to be in place if they're not already in place or trying to be worked up by a lot of the old hands who know ball, as the kids say these days. The idiots at the FBI, yeah, they're useless, but I would venture a guess that a lot of the older guys at varying levels of bureaucracy know the risks and understand that right now, right when a peace deal has been signed and has angered a lot of people who have a lot of deep talents in the government, this is now a very dangerous time. And I'm very concerned about and security of everybody involved in all this because I I think that that's I just get a bad feeling about it. So, now that we've got the the stage set and with all that kind of insanity and very palpable risk kind of noted, okay, duly noted, why did the United States sign this really terrible deal right now? Because let's face it, whether you support the deal or not, pretty much everybody hates it. The war hawks don't like it because it grants a lot of stuff to Iran. The people who don't really care about it don't really like it because it grants a lot of stuff to Iran and we fought the war for basically nothing. The people who are maybe on the fence are looking and saying, "Wait a minute, we blew all this stuff up. My gas prices went up, my grocery bill went up and all of that was for nothing just for us to pay the Iranians reparations." So, basically no one is happy with the deal. Now, that doesn't mean that we should tear up the deal and throw it away. And why did the US, knowing this, why did the US sign this deal right now of all times? Well, there are a few different reasons. I'll just run through them really quickly. First of all is oil. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has run its course. Uh President Trump himself has said that the US was down to only about a few weeks of oil left before we had to do something, which aligns to somewhat with what everyone has been saying for a while. We drained a lot of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve just to keep prices down, and we still could not um keep up with the demand, right? And I think it's now safe to say that the alleged secret operation to get 100 million barrels of oil out of the Gulf, which we discussed last week, I think that was probably completely fake. As much as I would like to think that the US Navy has super secret ways of handling the situation and can pull off some pretty neat tricks, the US Navy's got some pretty cool stuff they can do. Uh I still think that this was a complete fabrication and that we only smuggled a handful of ships out at best during this entire war. Even if we were secretly paying the Iranians through a third-party mediate mediator to get oil out, it still wasn't enough. In any case, uh the White House has said we're out of petroleum. They said it. So, the MOU was signed to open the strait. It might be as simple as that. And this matters because of the timing for tankers. Uh once a tanker is fully filled up with crude oil in the Persian Gulf and it starts heading toward the United States, it's only going to be moving at about 10 to 12 mph, so it takes weeks, sometimes a couple of months to actually get here once the flow of maritime traffic restarts. And again, if weather is poor, uh it can it can add a month to the to the trip. It's hard to say. Since most of these ships have been sitting still in warm water for a while, they now have a big barnacle problem. And the world it does not have enough ports to fully service a lot of these ships, so they're going to be moving pretty slow. They're going to have a lot of drag in the water. So, again, getting this crude uh flow back to normal is going to take a long time. Another reason why we may have chose to end the war right now is due to the loss of strategic assets, mostly radar sites. For all of the damage that we caused in Iran and have tried to catalog over the past quarter of a year, the Iranians have absolutely wrecked our radar sites, and we can't exactly replace them. The United States uh dropping a bomb on the door of an underground mountain complex is not comparable to the Iranians dropping a drone on a billion-dollar radar system. So, remember those sites that they hit during the early stages of the war? Yeah, those weren't even for Iran. Those were for monitoring Russian ballistic missile launches. We lost enough strategic assets to the point that we did not have as many eyes and ears as we used to in the region on that half of the planet. So, that makes it kind of hard to wage a war and continue deeper offensive options well within Iran. So, I think we lost a lot on the technical side of things. Another reason is logistics. Being forward deployed for so long creates logistical challenges that are hard to encapsulate and they're really hard to plan for before a war. A carrier strike group that has been at sea for 6 months is going to have less capability than a carrier that just arrived on station. Now, normally this effect is negligible in terms of overall combat readiness, but we have to remember that this was an over-the-horizon war. The fighting had to be conducted from such extremely long range and the unknown secondary and tertiary effects of that probably caused a lot of complications. It's a lot harder to fight a war when you can't use most of your military bases that you had put throughout the region specifically for war. But by and large, the reason that the US signed this deal is simply due to us running out of options. We really did not have any choice. This is not something that is specific to our nation. This is something every nation is going to deal with that engages in warfare because as time goes on, the options for military success are much reduced. The longer a war drags on, the less likely you are to have a favorable outcome at the end of that war. This is true going all the way back to the Peloponnesian War, right? And in this case, the nature of the target itself was never really a viable military objective. We just we just did not have the technical ability to wage war in Iran. We weren't ready yet. Now, we could have been had we made decisions 20-30 years ago and we didn't have the G watt to shape a lot of our current doctrine, but, you know, wishing doesn't make it so. Yes, we blew up a lot of stuff. We took out their steel industry. We took out a lot of their factories, we took out a pretty much every military target that was above ground in terms of factories and production and all that kind of stuff. And that's no small feat except for the fact that we're now going to give them $300 to rebuild all that stuff. So, not only did we not have good effects on target, we did not drop bombs on buildings that ended up stopping the war, but we're also going to pay for all the damage that we caused. So, you can't even say at the end of this, well, okay, you know, we may be walking away from this and it may not be super strategic the great, but hey, at least we set back the Iranians a long way in terms of their production and their and their weapons. And they're not they're not going to be a threat for a very long time. No, you can't make that argument if you're giving them hundreds of billions of dollars because we're just going to rebuild their stuff bigger and better than it ever was. And we're doing that because we have to because we have no other option. So, again, very frustrating experience, I know. I know that a lot of people are kind of upset with the way that this turned out. I'm sorry that this is the way that it turned out. It is unfortunate. It gives me no pleasure in saying these things. It really doesn't because again, my country lost a war. And I don't really like that fact. It's not pleasant. Even though I did not support the war at all, I personally thought that I I really hoped that we would win it or at least not lose as much as we have. So, there's that just for the record. But that's kind of where we're at right now. And once again, the fat lady has not sung. The the MOU may be torn up by this afternoon by the time I'm done editing this, who knows. The things things are changing by the day. All I know is that right now it seems like the US has run out of options. The Iranians, how many options they have? I don't know. It's probably not unlimited but they have more options than we do. And they have more control over the situation than we do. And since that's the case, every day that goes by and the Israelis continue their situation in in Lebanon, that's just going to make it much more costly for the United States. So, the Israelis are directly hurting the United States with their war in Lebanon because now we're having to give up. We're having to increase the number of zeros on the checks we're giving to Iran. We're going to have to sweeten the pot to get them back to the table. And all of it is just because the Israelis want to make a point of how much they control us. So, yeah, not super great. So, all of that out of the way, and uh all of the past past and present kind of covered, let's move into the future and talk about what's going to happen next. Well, we can't ever really know, uh but there are a few things that could be on the menu over the next few months, weeks, whatever, which would be good to know about. The first one is, of course, Cuba. Uh obviously, the White House is going to need a pretty big win, uh but Cuba is probably going to be re-examined after July 4th, probably once the 60-day uh ceasefire agreement thing is over. Once the United States and Iran sign a full-blown peace deal, then I think we're going to start pivoting to Cuba. Because the White House is going to need a win, and to just purely basing this off of the gut assessment of the personalities involved in all of this, it would make perfect sense. Just as kind of a way of starting over and getting some kind of military victory, some kind of trophy. Now, what that might look like, I have no earthly idea. Cuba is not Venezuela, Cuba is not Iran. Cuba is not what I would call a great military power, either. It's not something that they're going to have a whole lot of say about, but if the US wanted to occupy Cuba or something like that, even more so than we already have with Gitmo, then we probably could do that. And it's going to be uh something to look out for in the future. The next one's China. China, uh dear friends, as you probably can imagine, has been very busy, and they have been taking a lot of notes. For one, they have been able to gain a lot of valuable combat data on the systems and weapons we use, and we used a lot of developmental technologies during this war in Iran. Just as an example, we dropped land mines uh in Iran that have only been ever seen in line drawings. And now the Iranians have given us photos of what they look like, so there's that, you know, weapons technology, dud missiles, uh all the Tomahawks that didn't go off. Yeah, those are going right to Beijing, probably, or Russia. Although Russia probably already has a lot of this stuff, but also on the information warfare side of things, we released dozens of video clips uh from the official CENTCOM account, which should probably have been censored for reasons, but in any case, the Chinese noticed and have probably gained a lot of combat data from the stuff we've actually released officially. I would also be willing to bet that a few of these shoot-down incidents that we have been made aware of during this war were probably carried out by Chinese MANPADS. Just my guess, no evidence on that at all, but that's probably happened or at least some of the missiles that the Iranians have fired are probably Chinese, too. That would be my guess. That would probably be a very sensible thing for the Chinese to do because where else are you going to be able to test your missile systems against a Patriot battery, right? Then in the Middle East. I'm sure the Chinese were all up in that, right? And trying to figure out what they could do. They probably fronted a lot of those missiles for the Iranians. But, apart from the military side of things, the economic response was actually much more interesting and I I'm going to have to dig more into this too because the main reason, not the only reason, but the main reason that oil did not hit two to $300 a barrel is because China cut their imports by over 40% and they started drawing from their own strategic reserves basically as soon as the war started. And personally, I want to know why. Maybe it's purely economic for them, but this decision has been puzzling me for a couple of months and now that we know with a little more clarity that they cut imports by a lot, I want to know why. They could have easily screwed us over, but they didn't. Well, they kind of did a little bit uh because their ships were able to get through sporadically throughout the war, but still, they could have made this a lot more painful for us and I suspect it's because we've told them that they can have Taiwan. I mentioned this back during President Trump's state visit, but at that point, China had already cut imports, so maybe there was something there, I don't know. Something for me to dig into later. Maybe there isn't really a deliberate answer. Maybe it's just Maybe it's complicated. I don't know, but still, kind of interesting. China is always making plans. Some nefarious, some not so nefarious, but they are certainly making strategic moves of their own to dominate their region. Another uh region to watch over the next few weeks is is to be Turkey. Many people seem to suspect that the Israelis and Americans will pivot to Turkey as Turkey is the next big power within the Israelis sphere of influence. I'm not so sure about the Israeli pivot to Turkey just yet because I don't think they're done with Iran yet. And since Iran has come out of this affair drastically more powerful than they were at the start, I don't think the Israelis are going to want to take on Iran and Turkey at the same time. Nevertheless, Israeli politicians have already pivoted toward Turkey. They're already starting to make uh speeches in the Knesset. So, we'll see what they say. Usually, Israelis are pretty pretty open about what they want to do. Uh we just don't tend to take them very seriously, but if you just listen to what the Israelis say in their own uh Knesset, you'll be quite radicalized, I think. Uh but anyway, so Turkey is on the menu and uh finally, another thing to watch out for is the military industrial complex. This is again something I don't need to state too much uh obviously, but domestically, the military industrial complex will be in overdrive to build and sell a complete overhaul of weapons, strategic defenses, base building materials. Everything is going to be on the menu for purchase. And right on the front page of the brochure is going to be a sales tagline that basically says, "You want to avoid getting your rear end kicked in Iran again? Buy our missiles." So, expect some seriously large budgets and continuing resolutions to fund defense-adjacent technologies, probably stuff like AI weapons development, experimental stuff, you name it, right? Bottom line, all of the lessons learned when it comes to munitions and targeting will be approved upon by increasing procurement. But all in all, just to wrap things up for today, it must be noted that this might not be over. It is possible, I don't know how likely it is, but I'll mention it anyway, it's possible that this is merely a brief pause and it's not the real end to the war. It's pretty clear that all sides, like I mentioned earlier, the far left, the far right, the Zionists, and the warhawks, and everybody else, all of the demographics involved look at this deal as it's been signed and say, "This is a bad deal." That is just undeniable. You can call it a surrender document if you want, or you can soften it however you wish, but the deal is certainly not balanced. It favors the Iranians by a wide margin. Now again, I argue that, well, yeah, that's unfortunate. It really is, but we didn't really have any other option. But, there are other thoughts. There are other ideas that this might actually just be a ruse, and that the United States is signing a bad deal intentionally because we have no intent of going by that deal later on. As it stands, the MOU is just that, a memorandum of understanding. It's not a treaty that has been ratified by Congress. So, just like the president signed it, he can equally rip it up, and there will be no legal consequence. I do have to be careful, though, because even though I am personally skeptical about this deal being signed as it has, there is also the motivation to keep the snowball rolling because of the sunk cost of the coming involved in the war. I mean, even for me, uh I have spent months of my life chronicling the war, finding every single bomb crater and missile strike that I can find, in addition to mapping out as much of Iran's military infrastructure as I could find. And now that the war is theoretically over, it was really all for nothing. Now, personally, this doesn't really bother me. It's just kind of the way the intel world works. 90% of what you do never ends up getting used or is a waste for later. That's okay, I'm used to that, no problem. I'm very, very happy that this situation, this war, is being resolved, but the past 6 months have definitely been a whirlwind, and I'll tell you, it doesn't feel super great to have the president himself say things that I personally took a lot of flak for at the time, during the heat of the fighting, when a course correction could have saved lives. The president is saying things that we were saying weeks and months ago, and he's saying it now, but when we were saying it, it could have saved lives if he had admitted to it. In the past 24 hours, President Trump said that it's okay for Iran to enrich uranium, and it's okay for them to have missiles because it's not fair for them to give up their missiles if everyone around them has missiles. J.D. Vance also said that the Israelis better be careful with their words because President Trump is the only head of state in the entire world that is sympathetic to their nation, which is a shocking bit of honesty that I was genuinely surprised to see because it prompts the question of, "Yeah, why is that? Why is it that the entire planet despises them? Could it be due to their actions, particularly their behavior during this conflict?" I don't know. I'm just finishing the question that the vice president himself prompted. Anyway, it would be very, very foolish to think that things have changed on this front because it's very clear that the elephant in the room is going to have to be addressed at some point. Maybe the best thing to come out of the war is that just highlighting who actually is running things. The good news is that the Iranians know how hard of a challenge this is. They are not stupid. They know who runs things here in the US, and they know that signing a document is not likely to change things on that front. So, my guess is that the Iranians will probably be willing to grant a lot of slack on the Lebanon issue for the time being, and they are probably going to play things cool with the Strait of Hormuz as well. I know, not a super popular assessment, I guess, but if they're smart, that's what they're going to do. Now, they have a lot of internal infighting, uh which is obviously uh a factor, but they are certainly not going to shut the strait down anytime they get a hangnail. The Iranians have been very, very calculating and deliberate this entire time, and there's no reason to believe that they won't continue to do so. Remember, they have a new Ayatollah and a relatively new president as well, both of whom are very new in their roles. So, they're playing things very carefully for now. However, the IRGC is simply not going to allow the situation to remain the same in Lebanon. There is an element within Iranian society that wants war. They've said, "Enough is enough," and they want to keep going. Lebanon makes it hard to stifle these elements within Iran, and maybe there's the maybe that's the reason for that. If it was Gaza or the West Bank, that's that's a little bit more complicated, and the Iranians would probably address those issues more indirectly than just launching missiles into Israel every every time some IDF soldier does something in Gaza. They're probably not going to do that. But, Lebanon is a full-blown nation-state that has a way longer history of independence, and they are being straight-up invaded. The Iranians are not going to tolerate a sovereign nation state being invaded in their region. They're just not, because it has the potential to affect them. The Israelis can always one day just decide to bomb targets in Iran, and the US will dutifully provide the subservient aerial refueling that we are legendary for. The IDF, by the way, does not actually have very much long-range aerial refueling capability. They only have uh older, I think, Boeing 707s that have been converted to be aerial refueling platforms. They have had the opportunity to invest in the KC-135 program, if I'm not mistaken, uh but they prefer the US Air Force to do it. Uh they prefer to make us do it for them when they carry out attacks in Iran. It's It's just kind of a domination thing uh that they like to do to us a lot of the time. Sort of like how Netanyahu, when he comes to Washington, he brings all of his laundry, like his entire family's laundry, to take advantage of the diplomatic laundry services in DC. You should look that up if you're interested about that. It's more of an insult to us uh than than anything, but that's kind of what they do. I would say they're not the only nation to do it, but I'm not aware of any other nation that they kind of treats us this way. But, anyway, when the Israelis get us to refuel them when they carry out attacks in Iran, that means we're now involved in the attack in Iran, and guess what? Now, we're back in it again. So, that's how the US will probably be dragged into this again as if the Israelis carry out long-range bombing attacks in Iran, we're going to have to refuel them to do so. They can probably carry out one or two smaller attacks with drop tanks. Again, the Israelis put two secret military bases, two secret airstrips in Iraq for this war. Uh I don't know if they're still there, but they just don't have that long-range targeting capability. They rely on us for that, and we never tell them no. So, when this eventually happens, the Iranians will know for sure that the US was involved in it. We can claim, "Oh, we didn't know the Israelis were going to do anything." Well, our refueling aircraft are off the ground, then they know the the Iranians know that we helped them do it. So, the Iranians are not stupid. If I can figure this out with Twitter, then they can figure this out with the nation state apparatus behind them. And the Iranians, they don't want to live in a status like that. They would prefer to settle a lot of this hostility right now, rather than peeling this band-aid off slowly over the next few years after they inevitably get hit again and again and again and again, every 6 months or so. So, the bottom line is that if the Israelis continue their war in Lebanon, there really is no hope for peace. And right now, there's really no hope for restraining the Israelis, even though it would be very easy to do so. And around and around and around we go. Not a super great way to wrap up the week, I guess, but there's on the one hand hope that we might get back to normal. The the strait maybe opened. Maybe we can get into the into the situation where we have cheap gas again and cheap grocery bills. It's looking hopeful. Uh this time last week, it was not looking hopeful. This time last month, it was definitely off the table. So, we are making progress. This is good. This is a good thing. It's just that these last-minute derailing things are just so completely typical. And nobody really wants to address the elephant room. So, this might be a point of contention that kind of drags out farther. I very highly doubt that the Iranians are going to go back to the full-blown war again unless the US does. I think everybody has a lot to say with this. They may They're probably going to close the strait, though. How that's going to work out, I don't know, because the Israelis are essentially uncontrollable. They're just kind of a rogue actor in all of this. And that's going to complicate things moving forward. So, that's really where we're at right now. And we're going to have to see how this plays out over the next few weeks. For now, that's all I have for today. So, I'll cut it here and we'll finish up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Great work all around as usual. Lots of good reports. I had a pretty significant thunderstorm hit my location right at the moment that the net started. But even though my own antenna was being whipped around quite a bit, I was still able to engage and pick up quite a few offline news reports from around the country. Seeing as how things are going around the world with regards to news being either censored, outright nonexistent, or difficult to access due to data security concerns, efforts like this help us to have other options available just in case. I have also been experimenting a bit with Reticulum over the past few weeks, and I'm starting to get spun up on plugging all of this stuff together. For many of you who read my news reports throughout the week, how cool would it be to one day get these reports completely offline via radio, even if the entire internet and power grid were to go down? I think that would be pretty cool. Uh I've also been working on trying out the Nomad Net, which is kind of a system for hosting primitive web pages that can be accessed via radio if need be. I think that's pretty cool as well, and I look forward to experimenting with this stuff even more, and really improving our resiliency so that no matter what, we can always stay connected. So, that's all I have for today. More to come on a lot of this stuff later on once I get more experience with it myself, and hopefully things can calm down in the Middle East, and a point of stability can at least be reached for a while. Either way, we'll keep an eye on it, so thank you for all of your support. Thanks again to those of you on Patreon who keep the project cooking along, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 3rd through the 9th of 2026. So, let's get right to it. At the more strategic level this week, the insanity continues with events in the Middle East mostly remaining in a state of chaos. At home, multiple domestic issues have been brewing for a while as both the summertime crime and immigration issues remain impacting for many Americans, which has been exacerbated by both the reforms within EBT benefits around the country coming into effect over the past few weeks, but also the international fuel crisis, which is beginning to hit some parts of the globe rather seriously at this point. For us Americans, our canary in the coal mine for the fuel crisis is Europe, and I'm afraid our friends across the pond are feeling the effects of roughly 20% of the global energy supply remaining mostly offline. All of these issues are exacerbating all of the pre-existing conflicts that are going on around the world, and I've made an actual slide this time for tracking some of the conflicts that I'm keeping an eye on that are going on around the world at the moment. Just so that we don't forget that there are a lot of different conflicts that are currently being fought around the world. First off, we have the situation in Venezuela, which has reached a point of sort of stability, although it's still kind of dubious as to what's actually going on. We snatched Maduro, and then that's all we heard from it. There really hasn't been any update on the status of the governance of Venezuela. There have been a few people step up to kind of take control, but this has really become more of a vassal state situation for the United States to export Venezuelan oil. This is what the United States has openly stated, so I don't know how this is working out domestically within Venezuela, but I guess we'll have to see how it works out. I just wanted to remind everyone that Venezuela still is a thing. They still exist, they're still around, and that's still a planning factor for things moving forward, especially with the chaos in the oil markets. Similarly, in the same area, but kind of a different conflict, are the narco strikes, which continue to take place in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. I suspect, again, I don't know, but I suspect off the coast of Ecuador or Colombia. Once again, US Southcom continues to post videos every day of themselves hitting narco boats and fast boats trafficking drugs, and there's really not been a whole lot of explanation as to what's going on here because again, a lot of the justification for the targeting for narcotics vessels in the Caribbean Sea is that Maduro was the technical leader of the cartel of the Sun and because of that, these are combatants now. That was kind of a loose justification at the time, but most people are not going to lose any sleep over drug dealer boats getting, you know, hit with Hellfire missiles. So, it just kind of went from there, but now that Maduro is gone, the strikes continue, right? So, they're not striking things in the Caribbean Sea, they're striking things in the Eastern Pacific. This is kind of an interesting campaign. It's a long-term bombing campaign that is going on that not a lot of people know about. So, that's worthy of consideration. Same thing in Somalia. We are indeed conducting air strikes in Somalia on a fairly regular basis and have been doing so for many years now. So, just want to remind everybody, yeah, that's going on. We're bombing Somalia. It's not very much, but it's still going on. So, you have to kind of account for it. As to why we're doing this, I don't really know. The AFRICOM uh PR pages have mostly just said this is due to, you know, trying to crack down on insurgents who may be eventually potentially supporting the Houthis at some point. I don't know. It's kind of a loose explanation. We may just be bombing stuff just to bomb stuff, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering that there's an active shooting war going on in Mali right now with a civil war underway there. So, that's something to keep an eye on. Africa is definitely pretty hot these days. It's probably not going to matter too much for the United States like I mentioned before, but American tax dollars are going to be funding something one way or the other. So, something to be aware of. Similarly, in the Middle East, we of course have the war in Iran, which we'll of course talk about in great depth, but we also have a war in Lebanon. A lot of people have forgotten about the war in Lebanon is continuing to go on. The ceasefire there in Lebanon kind of just went away. I don't know if it ever really went into effect, but the Israelis are continuing to push into Lebanon to secure their buffer zone or maybe it's more accurately described as living space. I don't know. But, that's that war is continuing on for sure. There was a strike the other day in Beirut. The large-scale bombing of Beirut has largely ceased or largely kind of tamped down a little bit, but they are conducting precision strikes in Beirut, allegedly precision strikes, right? That's definitely going on. And also, of course, we have the war in Ukraine. So, we still have a land war in Europe going on. It has reached a point of stability, I think. It's hard to say with these sorts of things. The war in Ukraine tends to tends to change its nature once a year or so or once every 6 months, depending on how the war has gone so far. And right now, there's currently a ceasefire going on for the uh Victory in Europe uh Day, VE Day. Russia and Ukraine have called a bit of a truce for a couple of days here uh to just, you know, celebrate that holiday, and then they're going to get back to it, but hopefully we'll get close to a peace deal. Again, there has been uh quite a bit of talk with regards to securing a peace deal over the years. We've gotten really close to seeing the end of this war a few times uh right before veering away. So, that can always happen. It's not over until the fat lady sings, and the war in Ukraine is certainly not over just yet. Similarly, in Iran, the war in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf War, whatever you want to call it, is still going on and has mostly transitioned into what I think should probably be called the Hormuz Crisis, because that's basically where a lot of this hostility is uh remaining for now. The larger war, the bombing campaign within Iran, has largely come to a point of pause due to this ceasefire. However, things in the Strait of Hormuz, uh the only thing that really matters in this entire conflict at this point, are still very much uh at a point of contention. So, that's kind of going on. And then also, in Southeast Asia, briefly wanted to mention the Burmese Civil War is still going on. It's been going on for many, many years. It's been a lot of interesting uh combat data coming out of that for those of you who like to study uh the the way of modern war, uh the Burmese Civil War or the Myanmar Conflict or Myanmar Crisis, however you want to phrase it, that is a factor as well, because Southeast Asia is looking at a large-scale famine situation because of the Hormuz Crisis. So, fertilizer can't make it out of the Middle East to Southeast Asia for the rice planting seasons, and that's a bit of a problem. And there's already a hot shooting war in Burma, which the United States, by the way, is supporting like we are supporting the rebels in Myanmar. Publicly, we're not supporting them with military aid, but we are providing them with non-military aid and material and stuff like that. So, again, something the United States is involved in. It's probably not that big of a deal outside the area, and it's not something that's going to spill into a wider region. I mean, it's South these Asia, so it always could, but it's probably not likely. What's more likely is that is that this is going to be a complicating factor as food shortages and food insecurity becomes a thing over the next couple of years due to the planting seasons being thrown off due to the Hormuz crisis. So, again, everything is a domino. Things are coming into fruition that we probably did not expect or, you know, the second and third order effects are starting to rear their ugly head, and they're probably likely to do so over the next few months as well. Hard to predict, but we'll do the best we can with it. Taking a look at the strategic movement for this week, a lot of the assets that are staged around the world are do reflect a lot of these conflicts. So, the biggest change is the departure of the Ford Carrier Strike Group from the Middle East this week. The Ford is going home to conclude her very, very long deployment to the region, and I think she's planned to undergo long-term repairs from the fire that she suffered a few weeks ago. There is no replacement for the Ford right now because the Lincoln and the Bush are operating together as part of the unified command effort that is the American blockade in the Gulf of Oman. Maintaining this blockade is a gargantuan effort, which requires a lot of resources, and since the hostilities are mostly confined to the Gulf of Oman right now, the US forces in the region are concentrated in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, as well as in the Indian Ocean, which is mostly serving as one big interdiction zone for Iranian ships that either run the blockade or otherwise are strategic targets or stateless vessels. So, that's the force allocation that I'm tracking around the world for this week. A lot of hardware, a lot of steel is in the water, and and it doesn't look like there's going to be any change on that anytime soon. So, before we get into the homeland concerns for this week, let me briefly take a moment and recap the tactical situation on the ground in the Middle East, just because a lot has happened and things are starting to become more active after a couple of weeks of ceasefire. There has been a lot of shooting in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 48 hours with skirmishes being reported between Iran and the UAE, as well as between American forces and Iranian gunboats. There's not a whole lot of information on any of these sporadic engagements, but I am working on plotting these as best that I can. Just know that out at sea, it's impossible to know for sure where anything is hit, because unless we see a boat sinking in real time, there's just there's not really a good point of reference for stuff like this. So, it's a lot more challenging uh when there's uh combat on the high seas as opposed to on the land where we could get a satellite image to confirm stuff uh and local eyewitnesses are actually physically there to record this stuff. So, it's been really complicated to plot stuff this week. I'm still waiting on some clean satellite imagery to figure out what actually was struck in uh the UAE and also on Qeshm Island. These things are not exactly uh easy at this point because the stranglehold on information is definitely tightening around the region. On the more diplomatic side of things, two major initiatives have come to a head. Project Freedom from the United States and the Persian Gulf Strait Authority from the Iranians. Details on both are pretty sketchy and hard to verify, but Project Freedom was the short-lived effort to force open the Strait of Hormuz and essentially provide top cover and missile defense for merchant vessels to get out of the Persian Gulf. This effort lasted about 24 hours because the Iranians had struck three of the first five ships that attempted to make a run for it. At least that's the number by my account. It could be more, it could be less. I don't know the exact hour that Project Freedom officially began. Either way, this project is over or at least halted for the foreseeable future, which might be for a variety of reasons. Mainstream media is saying that the US stopped uh Project Freedom because the Saudis and the Emiratis banned the use of their airspace for this operation because they saw it as a sharp escalation that would only result in retaliatory efforts targeting them. I can't confirm beyond all doubt that's what happened because a lot of this is just conjecture and, you know, rumor and stuff like that. But, either way, what's clear is that Project Freedom is over or at least paused for now. In response to this effort, in response to the Project Freedom scuffle, the Iranians formalized what they are calling the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which is basically just a web portal and an email system that ships can use to apply for permission to transit the strait. How this is going to work out is anyone's guess, but the general consensus is that the GCC states are probably not going to accept the Iranians controlling the strait because it was an international waterway before the war. However, again, easier said than done, right? And removing Persian control from this waterway is proving to be way more complicated than anyone in the US government seems to know. So, for now, the situation is kind of a hot shooting stalemate. It's hard to describe. The Iranians control the strait or at least influence it enough to prevent free travel through it. Mines are still a problem. The minefield's still there, and the US Navy can't begin to clear them in earnest until the situation is over. And the merchant traffic through the strait is not looking good and has trickled down to basically nothing. Only local ships and a handful of Chinese and shadow fleet tankers have transited in and out of the Gulf. So, traffic is not anywhere near normal. Quite a tough spot we seem to find ourselves in in the Middle East, but on the home front, things are becoming a little bit more serious as well. On the home front for this week, right now, the biggest factor for the United States is the fuel crisis. Specifically, not just the high prices, but also sheer availability, which might become a problem at some point. For those of you who are looking to plan ahead, and if you're looking for an indicator to start thinking about fuel and preparedness terms, now is the time to start thinking about that. This is a pretty big topic, and it would take far too long to flesh out all of this. But, the short version of what to pay attention to is that there's no real way to know how high gas prices will get before the availability itself is cut off. And there are competing ideas on this from a preparedness perspective. I don't know which one's right. I'll just explain the general idea here. Right now, there are a lot of people who are talking about oil rising to $200 or even $300 per barrel because those are the numbers that President Trump himself said would be acceptable. He clearly stated that even if oil got to $200 a barrel, the current war would be worth it. Now, what might this mean in terms of gas prices? Well, most people expect this to be about 7 to $9 per gallon for regular unleaded. Of course, this figure is going to vary by state quite a bit, but $7 is a general figure that is cited by most journalists. However, this figure is based on an economic model and not really a national defense model. Again, there's competing ideas here. So, economists will tell you the math because they have the spreadsheets. So, if you ask an economist, "Hey, how much could gas prices become if the Strait of Hormuz were to be closed forever?" And they'll dutifully give you a figure. I mean, it's you're going to some high, you know, astronomical number or something like that. But if you ask me that question, I'll tell you that question is kind of a farce because if it's planned to be closed forever, we're going to use strategic resources on Iran, and this is going to be all kind of a moot point. Just to cut right to the point to pay attention to, do not assume that gas prices will just keep getting more and more expensive forever. For as long as this lasts, there is a zero barrier, right? At some point, we're going to be using strategic measures, and gasoline itself will be measured mostly by availability and not its market price. This point is indefinable and unknown because there's just there's just too many factors to know how this is all going to work out, but what is certain is that gasoline is not going to get to 20 or $30 per gallon because long before it gets to that point of scarcity, price alone is not going to be the most important factor, and we'll probably just have a large-scale war before that. Personally, again, I don't know which theory is correct. I just know that a lot of people hop on the news. All the talking heads get on there and say, "Okay, oil is going to be $150 a a if this happens. Oil is going to be $200 a barrel if this happens. And if it goes on for this long, it'll be at $300 a barrel at this date or something like that if something doesn't change. And I think that that is probably not the best way to think about it because long before that, we're going to have issues with availability. And the reason for that is because in terms of what's going on in the Middle East, there are more factors than just the White House and Iran and the Israelis. It's not just about turning the tap on or off. There are complications within the oil production cycle as well. For instance, oil is not just like a spigot that you can turn on and off. There is a ramp up and a ramp down process that takes time. And maintenance is a problem, too. If an oil rig is shut down for too long, things get clogged up from methane hydrates or something, and everything corrodes. It's not something that you can just turn back on in many cases. And when it is turned back on, it might not produce as much oil as before due to these problems. Just to add a little bit of context on this for what a lot of the talking heads are saying, there's an interesting relationship between pumping oil out of the ground, refining it, and then storing it. For instance, Kuwait. Kuwait has produced exactly zero barrels of oil for export for the month of April. So, they're exporting not a single barrel from their from their country during the month of April. But, they're still pumping it out of the ground, and they're filling up their storage slowly. Why are they doing this? Why are they still pumping oil out of the ground to fill up with their storage, you know, fill up their storage tanks, when they know that they can't get a tanker out through the Gulf? Well, it's because you can't exactly turn that stuff off. If you shut down the pumps hard, you know, shut them off completely, then the whole system gets out of whack. So, basically, you have to just turn that turn that production down to a minimum. What that number is is going to vary by refinery, right? You can't really know. If the storage starts filling up, then they then they have to shut that stuff hard down, and it's going to become even longer of a process to start their infrastructure back up again. Before the war, Kuwait was producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day on average. So, you go from 2.5 million barrels to zero barrels exported. That means that either you've cut production all the way down and you're just trickling the oil out of the ground to keep the keep the pipes warm, so to speak. But, it's got to go somewhere. It's got to go into the storage, otherwise very bad things happen with regards to the machinery and maintenance and stuff like that. So, getting back to that 2.5 million barrel per day production level might take a lot longer than we might think, especially if production has been halted or reduced sharply for such a long period of time. OPEC in general, the GCC states, are well known for ramping up and ramping down production for both economic and political purposes. So, there is a little bit of elasticity there, or a lot of elasticity there, in terms of how much they produce versus how much they export. So, there's a lot of flexibility in the system. So, this effect may be negligible. I don't know. But, if we just take the UAE into account, another factor which must be considered is the straight-up destruction of refineries. I've said this many times before, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse here, but several Arab nations have stated that many of their facilities have been damaged to the tune of billions of dollars. And what's more, a lot of these facilities will take years to repair enough to get back to full capacity. So, once again, it's not just an issue of the strait itself being closed and exporting being a problem. It's also on the production side of the house. There are production problems as well. It's going to take many, many, many years to get back to the level, if we are ever to get back to the level of oil production that existed on February 27th of this year. In one day, it all came crashing down, and I don't know how this is going to work out in the future. And, as luck would have it, the destruction or damage of facilities in the Middle East is not the only factor to consider because a lot of refineries have been destroyed or damaged around the world either by industrial accidents or due to armed conflict. Like I mentioned last week, the war in Ukraine starting to involve the targeting of Russian oil refineries is something that is easily forgotten because it's a different war, and it's targeting Russian oil probably won't affect Europe as much because years of sanctions have largely stifled the market for Russian oil in the Western world. But Russia sells a lot of oil to China and China also gets their oil from the Middle East. So China is going to be heavily affected if this continues on because they're getting the double whammy of Russian production being affected. We don't know how much it's affected, but it can't be zero, right? Having 18 or 20 of your refineries being hit by drones and taken offline for a while, that's not nothing. It's got to have some level of impact. But their other main suppliers are also being hindered in the Middle East. So China is definitely paying attention to what's going on. And if everybody who says, "Oh well, it's worth it if we're affecting China." Well, the United States is going to be affected, too. Maybe more so in some areas because the United States, by comparison, is also being heavily impacted because we also import a lot of oil from the Middle East for domestic production and refinement. The US does produce a lot of oil, but it's a different product altogether. This is a gross oversimplification, but the US mostly produces a lot of light sweet crude, which we export around the world. The actual refineries in the US are built to handle the heavy crude from the Middle East. Even though the US does export a lot of oil, a lot of what we need for domestic production actually comes from the Middle East. Thus, our current high gas prices. Why are we exporting so much petroleum if our gas prices are so high? Shouldn't we just keep that here? Well, yeah, probably, but we can't refine it here. So we sell what we can and we buy what we can. And we refine what we can here at home. And what we need to refine here at home is the Middle Eastern oil. That's one of the reasons for the craziness. I've gotten a lot of messages and emails from people asking like, "Why are we sending our oil overseas if we need it here at home?" Well, it's because we can't refine it here. So we sell it to the customer who can. Again, this is a gross oversimplification, but that's kind of the general gist of the how complicated things are at the moment. In the context of refineries around the world being impacted, we're also not immune to problems with domestic production on our end. Just taking a look at the map, we can see the recent problems at domestic US refineries over the past couple of weeks. There have been several fires and maintenance problems that have impacted production, which is undeniable. What is definitely harder to get a bead on is whether or not these incidents are the result of malign action. On the one hand, it's quite the coincidence that the Middle East is cut off, Russian refiners are being taken offline due to the war, and now refineries all around the world from India to China are catching fire. On the other hand, this is exactly what I would expect because when one major refinery is taken offline, all of the others have to take up that slack. And how do they take up that slack? They run to the red line, don't they? Many refiners are being pushed to their limits and beyond in the US right now, and a lot of mothballed units are being brought online again because the US is desperate to produce and refine as much petroleum as possible. So, it's a tough spot because everything's being run at the red line, and things break all the time. Personally, I'd wager that we will continue to see a sharp increase in legitimate and verifiable industrial accidents at refineries in the US over the next few months. So, that's going to be something to be aware of and keep an eye out for as the situation in the Middle East remains in a state of, well, I guess stagnation is still the best word to describe it. Taking all of the words and statements by officials out of the equation and just ignoring all of the talk and rhetoric, the events will speak for themselves. The strait is still closed to Western tanker traffic. The US Navy has not yet been able to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait, therefore supply is down. Demand in the US remains the same and is going to go up as the summertime arrives. And because of that imbalance, prices climb higher, and the official policy of the White House, as it stands, is that $200 a barrel is an acceptable price to pay. Of course, that may change if we ever get close to that. It may just be words right now, but President Trump has given us a number that he says is acceptable. And so, we have something concrete to plan on, for better or for worse. Might not happen tomorrow or ever, but starting to think about the practical ways to insulate against these problems would be a good idea. I was just trying to think the other day, what would I do if gas got up to $9 a gallon? Like, how would I be able to maintain operational readiness if that's the case? Well, it's complicated because it's not just about price, but planning for long-term disruptions would be wise at this point, and I myself am digging down right now to start organizing my mapping products to help wherever possible. There's no need to panic, there's no need to start stock piling fuel at the moment, although I mean, you certainly could if you wanted to, but regardless of what happens in the Middle East, the energy crisis in the homeland is already beginning to happen, and the question is how serious it's going to be. Hopefully, it won't be too bad, but we'll do the best we can no matter what. And with that, that's all I have for today, but I did want to close today by reminding us all that no matter what happens in the Middle East, we still have a lot of problems here in the homeland that are more serious and more impacting to us on a daily basis. One of the biggest problems that has shifted out of the news cycle is the issue of both illegal immigration and the sharp increase in crime around the country. Many of you know that earlier this year I wanted to create a segment just for reminding us of all of the important incidents that took place, but have just become memory hold and forgotten about. And today, I wanted to highlight just one case among many, which is the case of Marco Villanueva Gonzalez. Back in 2018, this individual killed Jordan Huguely by driving 86 mph in a 35 mph zone in Midvale, Utah. This led to a crash which killed Huguely, and at the time Gonzalez was arrested. As he was a juvenile at the time, he was sentenced to only 6 months probation by Judge Tupac Renteria. And from there, he was just basically let go. Jumping forward to last year, since Gonzalez is an illegal immigrant, he was picked up by ICE in Salt Lake City on drug charges and held in ICE detention. This arrest was publicized by the ICE social media page at the time, and everyone just forgot about it and assumed that he got deported. That assumption was incorrect because somewhere along the way ICE let him go. What he has been doing between May of 2025 and now is not known, but it turns out that it is not good because he was just arrested again. On May 4th, he was released from the Salt Lake County Jail to ICE. So, he's back in ICE custody and completely off the grid. We don't know if he's been deported for real this time or if he's been released back into society again. It is hard to make general assumptions based on a case study, but accountability at ICE when it comes to actually deporting criminals has been lacking over the past few months after attention has shifted away from this issue. I don't know how many deportations are happening because ICE stopped publishing the numbers, but I can prove beyond all doubt that at least one person who was in their custody somehow not just evaded deportation, but remained in the United States committing crimes. And I wanted to mention this because it is so incredibly easy for us to forget that there are victims here. A father lost his son by an illegal who suffered no meaningful consequences for his actions. Not only did Gonzalez not show any remorse for his actions, but he continued to be a menace to society for years because Tupac Linteria gave him a slap on the wrist and ICE failed to deport him despite parading around his arrest as a PR victory. All the while a father has been trying to get the tiniest gram of justice for his son. ICE now has the chance to do the absolute minimum and finally deport this individual and it would be a very good idea for them to do so because at this point with tens of thousands of victims like this being murdered every single year, deportation is the moderate, loving, and kind option and the option that allows this individual to evade justice to be honest. But in polite society, this is the option that we have at the moment for handling these types of people and this delicate balance might not be in place forever. So, we'll keep Jordan and his family in our prayers and do what we can to not forget these cases even though the latest shiny object might distract our attention. It's a hard thing to keep a good foundational perspective on events these days because we're constantly dragged from one headline to the next, but we have to remember what the end goal is, which is to do good things, help stop the civilization decline, reverse the bad things, and hold bad people accountable, and do so from a place of honor and magnanimity. We are not going to get out of this mess without everyone putting in their part and going above and beyond to improve the world around them. Many times we don't have a direct way to do this, but we can help in indirect ways at minimum. Picking up trash, keeping yourself clean and physically fit, and learning a lot of new skills that might be helpful are all things that we can do on the individual level. We do not have a chance at tackling these big things until we can do the little things right. For me, one of those little things is building maps and awareness and also working on communication stuff. I know it's boring, but think about how you would have known any of the information I've covered today if a platform goes down. Sure, you might hear it from somebody else or in some alternative way, but I think that strengthening our lines of communication are a basic requirement for moving forward at a time when everything from censorship to technical outages are becoming more of a headache. And that makes for a good transition into the Ghost Net reports for this week. As many of you know, the Ghost Net is a radio net which hopes to provide some level of both emergency preparedness and also everyday use. Back in the day, we used to get the news over the radio, which is a shocking concept now, but this is our attempt to rekindle old-school reliable ways to exchange information around the world no matter what happens. And this week, the net was fantastic once again with many people sharing a lot of information about events and incidents in their local areas around the world. I myself have been trying out the Android version of JS8Call, which is the software package that we use to control our radios, and it seems to be working out quite well. I've heard some reports from people saying that the Android version doesn't decode as well as the desktop version, but I can't really tell a difference on my end. I will say though that it is harder to send longer messages, at least on the version that I have, I can't send more than just one standard block of messages on JS8Call on Android, but the app is continually being updated, so hopefully this will be a good analog to replace a lot of the capability we have from our laptops on our phones at some point. Right now, I've been testing this with my own field radio setup, and I've been trying to streamline the experience as best I can. More to come on that later, but for everyone who might be hearing of the Ghost Net for the first time, you can check out the handbook I've written on it, as well as the entire playlist on the project that's on my YouTube page. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. As always, all of my research can be found on my Obsidian page, and my mapping data can either be found at the links below or on my GitHub page, where I provide updated KMZs for my work as I make updates, which is pretty much every day. So, thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for June 21st through the 27th, 2026. Just when we thought the war was over, we get pulled back in, at least to some degree. This is of course no surprise, so let's get right to it. Around the world, it's been a busy week. The main focus this week has been overseas as the earthquakes in Venezuela have caused widespread devastation throughout the most populated cities, including the coastal areas to the north of the capital, as well as the capital itself. Mass casualties have been reported in all of the hardest hit areas and the death toll is expected to be in the thousands. Over in the Middle East, the war has reignited to some degree, though the full-scale targeting campaign has not returned just yet. These targeting efforts have substantially increased the danger to civilian mariners as disputes regarding the administration of the routes has been complicated by the targeting of merchant shipping. Here on the home front, there have been two items of note for this week which I've been tracking. First of all, has been the severe weather and flooding throughout the American South and East. Flooding has continued throughout the hill country of Texas and the following collapse of the weather system has spawned hundreds of storms throughout the eastern half of the country. On average, this is not really out of the ordinary for this time of year, but some areas have been hosted to more severe weather than is normally expected as many storms have swept through the nation. Also in Texas, a different crisis is developing as the spread of new world screwworm has continued to expand significantly. Right now, the total number of cases is still small, a total of 26 confirmed cases so far, but as with all parasites, this can greatly expand without anyone knowing. Considering that the screwworm larva is so small and hard to find on an animal, sometimes this can get out of control really fast, which is why we've gone from one case to 26 in just a couple of weeks. Just south of the border, where much of our beef supply comes from, the USDA has stated that there are over 30,000 confirmed cases in Mexico. This is why things might get a little busy here pretty soon. Concerns are also emerging that highlight some of the more illicit activity that might be going on throughout the region. It's extremely early, so data is limited and this is mostly gut suspicion more than anything else, but it's possible that illicit cattle practices might be contributing to the spread of this disease. For many, many years now, Central American cartels have relied upon diversifying their portfolios by trafficking not just drugs and people, but also beef cattle. Since cartels are not really inclined to follow safe animal handling practices, these cattle tend to be very prone to catching parasites like screwworm. And since they tend to launder cattle through legit businesses for import into the United States, it's impossible to tell if the cheeseburger you're eating came from a wholesome family farm in Oklahoma or a Mexican cartel. This is demonstrated by cases being reported at the same time in different places. The cases in New Mexico popped up at the same time as ground zero in Texas, and these locations are too far away from each other for the fly to have flown that far, which strongly indicates that it's not spreading from the point of detection in Texas, but rather infected cattle are probably coming across the border separately and going to many different places. I suspect that the spread of screwworm is far worse than anyone knows right now because all of the efforts within the United States to combat the disease, while certainly the right thing to do, it's going to not be as effective if it's running rampant throughout Mexico. Having a significant percentage of our food supply originating from the third world is not great for food security, but we're here now, and there's not much that can be done from our end other than monitor and isolate and try to get ahead of it. We will certainly keep an eye on it for sure. It's not worth panicking over, but definitely do not sleep on this crisis, either, since this has the potential to severely impact our beef supply later on this year. Moving now to take a look at the situation in Venezuela, it's not good. I have been trying to use a lot of the helicopter and drone footage to geolocate damaged or destroyed buildings, and it's been rather tough because a lot of these cities are just completely destroyed. All of these points that you see on the map are damaged buildings that are hand-picked by me as best I can and assessed to using the standard building damage assessment guidelines created and used by FEMA. Red are buildings which are totally destroyed, orange is heavy damage, yellow is minor damage, and green is mostly untouched. Most of the damage has arisen from the heavily populated areas along Venezuela's northern coast, which has been legendary and infamous for contracting companies using very poor construction materials to help build government housing projects in this region, which surprise, surprise, turn out to not be very stable. The geography of the terrain also adds to the vulnerabilities as mudslides have been a common observance here over the years with many tragedies taking place here due to this soil substrate not being very conducive to building large structures. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people lived here in the Catia La Mar area because it was cheap housing with ocean views close to Caracas. This turned out to not be a super great idea as nearly all of these high-rise apartment buildings have collapsed and killed thousands of people. Speaking of the casualties, as with all natural disasters, the true number is hard to assess right now, especially since most of the response is centered in heavily urbanized areas where the population density is extremely high. Complicating factors also include landslides and terrain deformation from the earthquakes making roads impossible to transit outside the main cities, so a lot of the more remote towns are now cut off from major transit routes. Additionally, several aftershocks have continued throughout the area over the past 24 hours, which has made many of the barely standing buildings even more unstable, so it is very, very likely that many of the structures that still remain will probably collapse over the next few weeks. Since people are still living in many of these halfway destroyed buildings, the chances of more fatalities occurring is extremely high. A lot of people simply have nowhere else to go, so they live in what remains of their house even though it's very much a death trap. Venezuela was uh obviously not in super great shape before the earthquakes, and extreme levels of poverty and improvised housing efforts were common throughout the epicenter region for decades. The recent unsettling within the nation after the leader of their country was arrested by the United States also will be a complicating factor because on the one hand the national government is basically in shambles, but there also would be zero chance that the US would have been allowed in to help victims if Maduro was in power, so maybe that will balance out. I don't really know, but either way US Southcom is moving assets to help coordinate the response in the hardest hit areas. Just as a brief digression for a moment on the damage assessment efforts, there are a lot of people touting the use of AI for stuff like this, and I agree this would be a good tool for the job if it actually worked. But sadly in this case, it's just not good enough and produces so many false positives that it's not helpful. And just to show that, I will load in an AI-driven geospatial product that was compiled for this purpose. This is something that Google and I think Microsoft put together, and we can use this to compare and contrast what the truth really is. And just looking at the comparison between what the AI has given us and what I have assessed myself using helicopter footage of the damage, we can see that the AI is hallucinating pretty hard on some of this. Some of the buildings that are utterly pancaked are only listed as minor damage, and some of the places that are marked as destroyed are still standing. So in this case, it was a good try, it was a really good effort, but the AI models that are being touted and being used and and kind of circulating on social media for this, they're really only as good as the data that's put into it. And in this case, a satellite data with more precision would be needed. Preferably synthetic aperture radar, which would cut right through the clouds and make this a lot easier, but those images are very expensive, and in the case of extremely urbanized terrain, it's debatable as to if it would help anyway. So again, good try, but nothing beats the Mark I human eyeball. And even though the boom in AI has really kind of tried to motivate people to use some of these tools a little bit more more commonly than they've been used in the past, coherent change detection has actually been around for a very long time, and that's not an AI-driven thing. Some of these more AI-driven models are not actually that helpful. I just wanted to put that out there because as I was working on this last night, I saw a lot of people like trying to push a lot of these AI-driven models, and it just turns out, well, they're not that accurate. So I foresee this becoming a problem for the disaster preparedness and disaster response community over the years. So, hopefully things will either get better or we'll learn to not rely on tools that we cannot verify ourselves. So, this little digression shows us an important lesson. Just because we have data displayed in a way that looks cool, it doesn't actually mean that it's accurate or even helpful. So, for the products I'm making, the the few products that I can make, I'm trying to use evidence from the ground to assess the damage. And right now, the biggest intelligence gap, the biggest unknowns are the status of Caracas itself, as well as some of the more remote, but still heavily populated towns throughout the countryside. I have high-resolution imagery of Caracas after the earthquakes hit, but there has been cloud cover over much of the city for a couple of days, which has made it hard to geolocate anything. For me, my plan is to do what I can to get a good picture of the situation on the ground, so that any volunteer groups or agencies can be as prepared as possible if they start heading down there. Even though the sort of governance situation with Venezuela is kind of weird right now, I'm sure that there will be some groups heading down. I'm just not plugged into any of them just yet. But, for anyone who knows anyone heading down there who might benefit from some of my geospatial products, as always, everything I'm building is publicly available in three different ways. You can review my ArcGIS maps online just by tapping the links below, which will open up these maps on your phone's internet browser. And if you need more offline access, I publish these layers as KMZs for use with A-TAC or CalTopo, whichever platform your agency uses. And for the researchers who already use ArcGIS, you can pull my layers into your project if you want, because these are published They're published feature classes on ArcGIS online. For me, this is not just a worthwhile effort due to the mass devastation in the region, but it's also a good way to get those training reps in and get more experience in managing disaster situations, even if we might not be able to go to the physical area. So, definitely going to be keeping an eye on Venezuela over the next few weeks, because this disaster is probably one of the worst that that America has ever experienced. Jumping around the world to the Middle East for this week, the situation has deteriorated as Iranian forces have demonstrated that they control the Strait of Hormuz, and they are willing to enforce their tactical advantage with explosives. Over the past few days, several merchant ships have been hit with various munitions by Iranian forces as these vessels were taking the unauthorized Omani route to the south of the normal traffic separation scheme. When the MOU was signed and the strait was truly opened up to merchant traffic, many ships just went for it, and an administrative and organizational disaster rapidly emerged, and the experiences of every ship is individual and unique. Some ships were given permits and continued transiting just like they have been doing since the ceasefire went into effect. Some ships took any route that they could to get out of the Gulf. Some ships kept their transponders off and tried to sneak out between other ships, and many other vessels have remained at anchor as their owners have deemed the situation still too dangerous for them to make the crossing. Earlier this week, the International Maritime Organization worked with all parties, they even got the Iranians on board to conduct a rescue operation to get many of the stranded vessels and mariners out of the Gulf. However, continuing tradition, this operation was paused almost immediately due to the increase of Iranian and American targeting throughout the region. Turns out the Iranians did not really like the ships which were acting unilaterally and taking the Omani route instead of getting a permit and taking the Iranian route. And after about a week of this being tolerated and warnings being issued that the strait is closed, the Iranians' patience wore out and they started striking vessels which were doing their own thing on Thursday night. On Friday, yesterday, the United States retaliated by striking essentially an abandoned dock on Siri Island, also called Sirik Island. And even as early as this morning, it looks like another vessel was actually hit in the Strait of Hormuz once again, bringing the total to, I think, three ships hit over the past 24 hours within the strait. So, the escalations are continuing for the time being, but the good news is that this is unlikely to kick-start more serious bombing efforts because the United States has been drawing down resources from the region. This drawdown effort actually started last week, but I wanted to wait for definitive evidence that the US is actually moving resources back to Europe and not just pretending to move resources around. Most of the assets that have been relocated are aircraft as the US Navy still remains on station in the Gulf of Oman, but earlier this week the Air Force moved a bunch of KC-135s back to Al Udeid Airbase, which we can see on the satellite imagery of the base. This is a big indicator that the large-scale shooting is probably over because this base has been a fat juicy target for Iranian missiles and has been hit many times. So, the fact that the US Air Force is moving these airframes back to Al Udeid is a sign that the US does not expect a return to the more widespread targeting, which is good news. Honestly, this is a message that also works both ways. The Iranians clearly see this too and know that the war is pretty much done aside from the occasional strikes against each other's equipment. How this develops from here is going to vary by the day, even by the hour. And the biggest points of debate moving forward will be around the Strait of Hormuz and whether or not an arrangement can be worked out regarding the transit of the strait. But once again, the Strait of Hormuz is only one half of the equation at this point. The other side of the coin is Lebanon. So, aside from the situation in the Persian Gulf, there have also been some developments with the other main conflict of the region, the war in Lebanon. Yesterday, the White House announced the signing of a document between the United States, Israel, and the Lebanese government to establish a security zone in southern Lebanon. Just to cut right to the chase, this document appears to effectively legalize the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and allows the IDF to keep all of the terrain that they have taken so far and even take a new terrain with this amorphous security zone label. Now, if you think this sounds rather surprising and rather unfortunate for the Lebanese, rest assured quite a few Lebanese are also extremely upset about this and mass protests and riots have been ongoing throughout Beirut for the past couple of days. As you are perusing the photos of the signing of this document, the more astute among you might realize that someone is missing from the table, most notably Hezbollah. Yeah, of course Hezbollah did not agree to this. For those who are unaware, unlike in Gaza, the Hezbollah organization is not the actual ruling government of Lebanon, but Hezbollah does effectively control most of the terrain in southern Lebanon. Lebanese politics is always incredibly difficult to describe, but in general, the Lebanese government has always generally at every single step withdrawn to let the IDF invade their country over the past few decades, simply because they're just a small military. They're a small government. Hezbollah doesn't necessarily call all of the shots throughout the entirety of Lebanon. That's That's not true. Hezbollah has certain areas in which they operate and control. They certainly have strongholds, but to say that they control the entire country of Lebanon is is inaccurate. And the Lebanese government is kind of like the third wheel, to be honest, who doesn't get a lot of discussion these days because most people tend to think that Lebanon is simply just a failed state where Hezbollah runs supreme. And that's not true. The Lebanese government actually does wield most of the control in the northern parts of the country, certainly in Beirut. But down in the south, the Lebanese government, the Lebanese army, has mostly withdrawn from a lot of these southern border outposts and checkpoints, simply because they don't want their soldiers getting killed by the IDF, and they know that they're powerless against the Israelis because the Israelis have the American backing, right? So in fact, the signing of this document is the Lebanese government signing along to a deal that they can't enforce on their own. And they're essentially handing over terrain that they don't even control themselves. The people who actually control this terrain, Hezbollah, did not sign on to this deal and have not agreed to stop fighting the Israeli invasion. As a result, this alleged agreement is probably not going to mean much. So Lebanon is still popping off, no matter how much we want to, you know, declare victory and move on. It's still pretty hot. It's still going to be a point of contention. What the Iranians do in response to the signing of this document, how they treat it, and how they sort of feel about the Lebanese government is going to be very interesting to see, but all in all the Middle East is still on fire as always and even though the MOU has been signed, things are not getting back to normal fast enough. This was always on the menu. We have been saying this and expecting this for weeks now. Even during the height of the war, we knew this. But it is helpful to remember that once we transition from crisis to recovery, the process is still going to take a lot of time that the world simply does not have. And honestly, we have not even transitioned into recovery yet. It's still in kind of the amorphous pause between active fighting and recovery. The crisis is still going on and there really hasn't been a super solid solution for it yet. Now granted, this is what this 60-day period of negotiations is for. This is for ironing out the details of a more solid plan, which at the end of that 60 days, then that plan can come into fruition. But for right now, the crisis continues and unless there were 100 ships transiting the strait per day, this the very day that the MOU was signed, we're simply not going to catch up with the demand, so the crisis still continues. Going from 0% of normal traffic to about 10% of normal traffic certainly does not mean that the crisis is over. And since the shooting took place last night on both sides, both the Iranians and the Americans, it's not really clear where we go from here. The MOU is signed and in effect, but things are not returning to normal and only a tiny fraction of normal has been seen so far. And that's where we find ourselves at the end of month four of this conflict, a lukewarm peace with the occasional missile strike, very tepid traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, oil production remaining stagnant and everybody pretending like the impacts of the war are over. When in reality, we're still more or less in a similar spot as before the MOU was signed. Thankfully, some progress is being made, even though it's slow. But if the Iranians are correct in their assertions, it's unlikely that the global flow of energy will return to the way it was before the war. And now that some limited strikes are taking place once again, it's going to be hard to keep that fraction of global maritime traffic going over the next few weeks. So, wrapping things up today with the Ghost Net reports for this week, I have picked up quite a few transmissions on our little off-grid information exchange system. Lots of people, as usual, transmitting informational reports about their local area, which is fantastic. Summertime is usually the more popular time for radio stuff, and after the past couple of weeks of severe weather around the world, it's good motivation to make sure we are as ready and as prepared as we can be for whatever uncertainties lie ahead, whether it's severe flooding or earthquakes or even ballistic missiles. Maintaining contact with the outside world when an entire region is either devastated or locked down or both is incredibly useful. So, let's get at it and do what we can to have capabilities and options, no matter what happens. So, that's all I have for today. As always, all of my research and geospatial products can be downloaded at the links below. However you wish to visualize the data, there are different options available. Thanks again to all of you on Patreon. I could not do this work without your help, and thanks to all of you for watching. I really do appreciate it. And as always, fight in the shade.

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to The Underground. This is the Intel update for March 22nd through the 28th, 2026. Well, we are officially 1 month into the Gulf War, and not only is no end in sight, but this week has been host to major escalations on most theaters of the war. Today, I'm going to cover a lot of the topics that I have not had time to cover throughout the week, and more generally reflect on the strategic nature of the war. So, a fair warning, we'll be digging into a lot of discussion and debatable opinion today, which I hope will be helpful in getting to the truth of what is actually happening. We can bean count impact craters, and we can watch oil refineries burn, but to actually get to the meat of how this war is shaping the world, we have to dig up a lot of uncomfortable topics sometimes. So, we'll get to that in just a bit. But, starting at the very top, the 60,000-ft view, there are many hotspots for conflict around the world, and we are seeing a lot of smaller conflicts breaking out that seem unrelated at face value, but are very significant conflicts nonetheless. The war in the Middle East is, of course, largely centered in Iran. However, this conflict has spread to be a more regional war at this point as Iranian counterattacks are taking place throughout the entire region. Despite what the White House says, drone and missile attacks are continuing, and the Iranian ballistic missile attacks have been extremely devastating for Israel over the past few days due to the early warning radar sites that were destroyed on the first few days of the war. Separately from the Gulf War, the Israelis are fighting a ground invasion of Lebanon, which has made significant advances at significant cost. This conflict has been a little bit more difficult to track, so we'll have to get back to that next week. I'm still compiling a lot of the data for for the Lebanese war, but suffice it to say, that's a pretty hot shooting war as well, and I think this one's going to go on for a while, too. Bridging the divide between the West and the East, Turkey is becoming more involved in either of the two wars. I'm not quite sure. If that's confusing, I understand. What I'm referring to is the targeting of a tanker vessel in Turkish waters a few days ago. Initially, this attack was assessed to be related to the war in Ukraine because this tanker was carrying Russian oil. However, many people have also made the claim that this vessel was actually targeted either by Iran or by Israel as part of the Gulf War. At the moment, I cannot say what the actual truth is. It makes more sense for it to be Ukraine simply due to geography, but at this point, nothing is off the table, and the Israelis have openly signaled that for them, Turkey is next, so they may also be seeking to bring in Turkey into this little excursion in the Middle East. Still too soon to tell, though, so we'll have to get back to that once we get more information. This leads us to Europe, where other conflicts around the world also saw a resurgence this week, such as the war in Ukraine, which brought about an intensification of targeting efforts throughout the continent as the Ukrainians targeted oil terminals in St. Petersburg. Again, drone warfare is making the world a very, very small place, and to be located thousands of miles away from the front lines is no longer a guarantee of safety in today's modern world. Also far away from the front lines, the global impacts of this conflict, especially the war conflict in Ukraine and also the conflict in Iran, are impacting the entire planet at this point as the world tries to start functioning in a manner where global markets are being impacted. Famine potential in Southeast Asia is growing as fertilizer shipments have effectively been cut off, but even taking global maritime choke points out of the equation, we have to remember the transportation is not the only problem here. Much of the fertilizer market revolves around urea, which is created during the distillation of liquefied natural gas. And since many LNG facilities, such as in Qatar, have been totally destroyed to the point that it will take years to repair them, even if the Strait of Hormuz were freely available to travel through, the petroleum, fertilizer, plastics, and gas markets are going to take years to return to normal simply from the production side of the house based on stuff that's already been destroyed. So, again, these are two separate issues. We don't just have the problems with the Strait of Hormuz and getting cargo in and out of the Persian Gulf. That is a problem. Traffic has not resumed to normal levels just yet, and the Iranians definitely control the strait. But, apart from the transportation issues, we also have problems on the production side of the house because a lot of the refineries and facilities and factories, which produce these materials, the raw materials, they've been targeted and they've been destroyed or degraded heavily to the point where it's going to take months to repair them, if not years. So, again, stepping back, these are the hotspots that are worthy of note this week. The war in the Persian Gulf is devastating the region. There's a separate war going on in Lebanon, and of course, the Ukraine war is uh starting to heat back up again, at least in terms of H asymmetric warfare tactics, and all of the above are expanding substantially and escalating every day with no end in sight. So, this is most certainly a very, very busy time. On the home front, we have also had several items of note to take place this week. Out west, several different wildfires have swept through the state of Nebraska, which has reminded us that wildfire season is most certainly well underway. The Moral Fire and the Cottonwood Fire were initially more devastating with the Moral Fire being the largest wildfire in state history. Now, two more fires, the Minor Fire and Ashby Fire, are currently being worked in the central regions of the state. These wildfires in Nebraska have devastated the agricultural community, and a lot of this area is big cattle country. Ranchers from neighboring states have been trucking in hay and feed to donate to farmers in need with many other recovery efforts being underway. So, again, from the very wave top level, this is a good example of how important and challenging it is to balance out all of the concerns of the modern day. Yes, it is important to know about what's going on in the Middle East, but at the same time, a wildfire in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska removes the food sources for cattle, production cycles are thrown off, and suddenly you've got expensive beef or even beef shortages. Now, in this case, I'm not really sure how much the Nebraska fires will affect the food supply. I don't think it'll be that devastating, but these things are always hard to determine. Many people may not notice anything at all, but it's still a good example of logistical frailty that helps us understand which situations to monitor. Around the country, more direct threats have come to light regarding shadow warfare tactics that are being undertaken nationwide. This week, the hot topic on that front has been the indictment of two Chinese nationals who are alleged to be responsible for the attempted IED attack at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida a couple of weeks ago. I don't want to comment too much on this case just yet because there are a lot of contradictory details that don't quite make sense, so please forgive me. I need to do a little bit more research. But right now, this looks like this is probably the classic Chinese sabotage act undertaken during a time of war purely for the purposes of causing chaos within the American homeland. Remember, everybody is expecting Iranian sleeper cells to be activated in the United States right now, but the Chinese also know this as well. So, when we see an IED at the front gate of the headquarters of CENTCOM, we might be inclined to think the Iranians did it, when in reality, it was really a false flag carried out by the Chinese. Or at least, that's what it seems like at the moment. We can never really be too sure about these things. I just wanted to mention this one because it is most certainly false flag season right now, and the whole world knows this, too. So, while we argue on the internet about those pesky and elusive Iranian sleeper cells, what is undeniable and far more likely, in my opinion, are the risks associated with any number of unnamed groups and nation-states alike that greatly profit when chaos is sown in the American homeland. This will be something to watch out for over the next few weeks, and it would be a good idea to pump the brakes on immediately assessing blame for whatever attacks take place over the next few days, weeks, months. So, that's it for the homeland this week. I know, not a whole lot. Please forgive me. I was going to have another investigation that I had hoped to wrap up or at least get to a point to where I can share my findings this week, but I think I'm going to need some more time on that. Suffice it to say, there's a lot of fifth-generation warfare stuff going on in the homeland that I am most certainly aware of and watching. I just need more information before I can start drawing links and performing link analysis and going through all these structured analytical techniques to try to figure out exactly what's going on or draw some kind of causation, right? I love a good internet skitzo theory just as much as the next guy. However, if we're wanting to actually have some tangible effects on targets, so to speak, it's going to take a little bit more time for me to bring a lot of this investigative stuff to light. So, I'll dig into the MacDill stuff a little bit more with the Chinese IEDs. These things are occurring. I just need some more time to kind of scoop them up together in a in a succinct product. So, moving to the Middle East, how goes the war this week? Overall, I want to stress two words above all else, diminishing returns. It is true that the United States is continuing to bomb targets throughout Iran. However, evidence is mounting that they are running out of the easy targets to strike. This is most sharply evidenced by this short video clip of strikes that was posted by CENTCOM the other day. Now, when I first saw this clip, I did a Looney Tunes-esque double take because in less than half a second, so much information was conveyed. This video shows air strikes of at least two construction vehicles, one front-end loader and what looks like a bulldozer. And these short clips are very, very telling. Now, just right off the bat, you can argue about whether or not these are valid military targets all you want. From my experience as an analyst working in a targeting shop conducting strikes just like this, at least during my time, these would not have been considered a valid military target. But again, that's also subject to what the target engagement authority, or TEA, will authorize. So, the legality of it, that's kind of dubious at best. But more broadly, this video clip is, to use quite an ironic term, a shibboleth. This is a tell. This is an indicator that something's not quite right here. Just to let everyone in on a little bit of targeting culture, whenever a targeting shop starts striking bulldozers, they are running out of targets. And the PAO who was given these clips did not know that little bit of targeting culture. Again, when I was working in a targeting unit for some stuff in Syria a few years ago, I would get phone calls from the Marines at an adjacent targeting cell at a at a neighboring base making fun of us. Like, we would get mocked because one of our generals got a wild idea and authorized a strike on a bulldozer. And you know what? My shop deserved all of that teasing because that's how big of a cultural deal this is within the world of targeting. It's just embarrassing. Like, you couldn't find a better target? That's all you could find is some guy's bulldozer? And in the real world, it really does get played up kind of like that scene from Generation Kill where Captain America shoots up that guy's uh with the AK and his guys say, "W- What are you doing?" And he ends up saying something like, "Denying the enemy transportation." or something like that. It's the same idea, right? You could probably pencil whip it and justify it, which is what they're doing CENTCOM's doing in these clips. You could definitely pencil whip it and justify it under a target engagement authority. But again, professional to professional, it's embarrassing. I would not want my name on a targeting package that that had like a bulldozer on it. It's embarrassing. So, hopefully that bit of insider knowledge helps a bit with context and maybe maybe it helps understand how the war is going. Of course, we don't want to, you know, lean on one extremely short video clip compiled by a PAO as, you know, confirmation of anything. It's more of just an indicator, really. And at this point, if the figures are correct and the Pentagon has indeed run 10,000 sorties so far during this war, I understand that they're probably having a hard time finding valid military targets. Like I and many others have been saying since the first few days of the war, all the dumb ones were killed during the first few days. And now that time has elapsed, the targets that remain will be vastly harder to find, fix, and finish, as the Pentagon likes to remind everyone with a phrase that a super motarded lance corporal might write down in the margin of his write-in-the-rain notebook. But that's what they're doing, literally repeating the most ineffective measures of the GWOT. And the Pentagon is unaware that the relationship between bombs dropped and targeting effectiveness is an inverse equation here. The number of bombs dropped does not equal winning the war. And that's exactly what the Pentagon is telling the public, and it's probably what they're telling the president, too. "Mr. President, Mr. President, look how many bombs we dropped today. Isn't that totally rad and cool?" They're dangling the plastic keys in front of every decision maker, and it's working because there are no low-level analysts in the room telling the president that the targets they're bombing now are becoming less and less effective as time goes on. It's not disparaging against the targeting process. This is just how targeting works. Guess what? Put on your big boy pants. Targeting's hard. Finding the enemy is hard, and they're trying to say that just because they dropped some bombs on some guys, you know, goat shack, that we're actually reducing the Iranian military capability. However, let's make no mistake though in thinking that American bombing isn't doing anything at all. That's not true. We have devastated a substantial part of their economy, and it will take a century, probably, to recover from what devastation we have wrought throughout Persia. But when it comes to the real threats, the missiles and the drones, are we able to target the Iranians effectively enough to stop these types of attacks? Can we bomb the Iranians enough to stop the drone attacks and open the strait? The answer is undeniably no, or at least history does not indicate so. Going all the way back to Vietnam, Operation Linebacker 2, we have never really been able to launch a large-scale bombing campaign that bombs the enemy into complete and total submission without a ground force being part of that element as well. There is only so much that you can do from the air, and President Trump can get on TV all he wants and say that we've taken out all of their missiles, but the dozen or so warheads that land in Tel Aviv every single day and night are proof that this is just not the reality of what's happening on the ground. On the diplomatic front, things are tenuous at best, and now that the war is officially 1 month old, let's take a break for a moment and really reassess what is happening at the strategic level. We can take a look at the more tactical level stuff throughout the week, but today we're really trying to get a good beat on what's actually going on strategically, and this week it's been really crazy. President Trump initially stated that Iran had a 48-hour ultimatum to open the strait, otherwise we would bomb their energy production facilities. But the next day he extended this deadline by 5 days to yesterday, Friday. Well, this deadline came and went, and President Trump extended the deadline again by another 10 days. All the while this was going on, the Israelis were striking multiple Iranian nuclear facilities, steel factories, and other targets throughout the country. So, the war between Israel and Iran is definitely still going on, definitely still quite hot. And Netanyahu himself stated that a ceasefire between Iran and the United States does not apply to Israel, so they're going to keep attacking, which is just incredible. That like that's that's that's just something else. But what this mostly does for us is eliminate the chance for peace. And through our own actions, we have made it very hard to achieve any sort of deal without giving up a lot of stuff. Eventually, all wars come to an end, do they not? And you can have peace two ways. You can have peace through a negotiated settlement, or you could have peace by killing everyone on one side of the conflict. Considering the long train of human events, we very rarely end up killing every single person on one side of the war, so there's usually going to be a negotiated settlement. Again, unconditional surrenders, even though the US is openly stated that's what we're going for, unconditional surrender is very rare throughout history. Most of the time there's going to be some kind of negotiated settlement. And when if you know you're going to negotiate your way out of a war, shooting yourself in the foot and giving up a lot of your negotiating power is probably not a good idea. But we did exactly that. Remember, we started this war by using tactics that humanity has normally seen at the end of a war. So, we used late war tactics right at the start. We killed a religious leader and his wife and children during his religious holiday as part of the opening salvos of the war. Militarily speaking, I speculate that some people were able to convince the president the decision to take out the Ayatollah was a low-risk operation. They probably didn't tell him that killing a head of state would have consequences. They probably did not think this through, and even if they did think this through, they didn't really care. They gave him the play school, you know, plastic keys jingling in front of your face kind of answers to things, and we saw this confirmed more or less with the infamous lay down your arms speech that President Trump gave on the day of the strikes. Which in retrospect, now that we can look back on that event, we can look back on that speech, we can see just how utterly insane that was. That >> [laughter] >> That was so utterly ridiculous that they thought that was actually going to work. But anyway, again, you know, hindsight is 20/20, I guess. But even when we were watching these events happen in real time, even even then we knew this was a bad idea. We knew that this was not going to work. So, it's not like we had to wait a whole month of, you know, this this conflict dragging out to know that bad decisions were being made. No, we could see the bad decisions were being made before the decisions were made. Starting a sneak attack during peace negotiations is a low blow that makes it very, very hard to extract ourselves from because now we're trapped. And nobody told Trump that taking out the Ayatollah was a trap. Our diplomats, think about this, our representatives to the world openly brag about pretending to seek a diplomatic solution, but in secret they were really just stringing the Iranians along because they had no intent of seeking a deal. They just wanted war. It is very unpleasant to note these things. This is for sure. Like I don't take any joy in reporting this. But I myself I'm trying to think about what challenges I would have back in my old life as an NCO, right? And adopting that frame of mind, I would be furious that the Pentagon is behaving the way that they are because when you start off a conflict like this in this particular manner, it makes it incredibly hard to fight on the ground. For all of the NCOs and junior officers out there that are having to manage their guys during a time like this, I know that you guys are having a hard time. I really do. I do not relish the thought of having a bunch of PFCs or lance corporals under my wing who are watching what their secretary of war is saying and having to walk back his statements. It's probably quite tough to do that. As a military leader of any pay grade, it is your duty to be magnanimous in victory. Like that's what gets beat into your head and was certainly a very big part of the GWOT. You do your job with honor, integrity, and professionalism. We know that the war is not necessarily being fought on American terms or even for the right reasons in the first place. We know this and we can't ignore it. But you take the part of the war that's right in front of you, and you do the best you can with it. That's what anybody is going to do. You do not seek out atrocity, and you do the best you can to preserve your own honor day to day. You do not double tap rescuers trying to pull people from the rubble. If we are fighting a war based on bloodlust, we have lost the plot, and I am very concerned that a lot of high-ranking military officials have done just that. And my heart goes out to the low-level dudes out there who are just trying to keep their guys on the narrow path and out of trouble. I really do think and pray for you guys every single day because much of our military leadership are acting like psychopaths at this point and behaving in ways that are below the station that they hold. All warfare is based on deception, but treachery is not a virtue. We must remember that, even though our government has forgotten it. We do not worship death on the battlefield. A lance corporal making a crude remark about some drone footage is a lot different than the secretary of war doing it. We do what we have to do, but we cannot lose our humanity, and from what I see, we are in extreme danger of that happening if it hasn't happened already. We are Americans. We stop harm from befalling the innocent without hesitation, using violence to do so if need be. But once that enemy is out of the fight, we show them mercy and compassion. And now the Pentagon is trying to act like mercy is a bad thing in any context. And all I can say to that is, may the Lord have mercy on us for allowing this evil mentality to flourish and for not having the courage to call this out sometimes. We have got to change this, and I just don't know how. I just thought it was important to include these ideas for the record just in case we actually end up going into a ground fight on this because when and if we start putting boots on the ground, all of these ideas, all of these sentiments are going to get dialed up to 11. Right now it's just an air war. There's not that much risk, but when you start putting boots on ground, the risk goes up, and also a lot of cascading other effects start shaping up, too. Things get really complicated, and even right now, when it's just the air war component, when it's just a bombing campaign, we're really not fighting this war on good moral or just terms. And this is not to disparage the guys on the ground. I mean, we can definitely support those guys who have been, you know, put in a tight spot and are doing the best they can. But at the top, all we hear from the war department is death, destruction, and ego. None of that magnanimity that got beat into our heads during the GWOT era. None of that integrity or honor. None of that avoiding unnecessary killing. None of that healthy respect for the enemy or at least recognizing that they are defending their homeland. Even in Afghanistan, when we were getting shot at all the time, no one was considered a Taliban sympathizer, right, for realizing that the Taliban fighters were doing what they had to do. That was their job. We had our job, too. And there's a healthy respect there. And you can certainly have some level of respect for your adversary during a time of war, at least when it comes to the uh things they can do to you, right? And even so, having respect for your enemy is not something that's just a moral teaching. It's not really just a moral thing. It's also a practical thing. Having a healthy respect for your adversary prevents your ego and hubris from driving your own operations. You don't have to like them, but be very, very unwise to just think that they're all just goat herders, right? And the Pentagon is just going crazy, and they're they've lost all nuance with this kind of stuff, at least publicly, right? I don't know what the generals are saying to each other in private. I don't know what they're saying off camera, but I can tell you the media blitz with this is not good. It's not doing us any favors, and it's making everything harder. Of course, I'm not exactly saying that a hearts and minds campaign would work in this case. I don't think that would work. The reason that the Pentagon propaganda is the way that it is, and it's understandably the way that it is, is because really driving this war on a strategic level. We didn't go to war on our own terms, and because of that, their propaganda has to look a certain way, which is fine. That's their prerogative. But what is undeniable is that a kill everything and everyone approach, that's not really good, either. We're turning the whole world against us, and we're going to have nobody to blame but ourselves for allowing these events to take place. Look, guys, I hate it. And I personally have no sympathy for the Iranian regime, just like everybody else. I also have a very long memory, and I do not forget every EFP, every roadside bomb, and every rocket and mortar that the Iranians gave to insurgent groups to target Americans with. And I certainly hope and pray that America wins the war, because this is my country and this is my home. And that's what you do when you live in a place on Earth. But reality is reality, and through the actions of our leadership, we have given the Iranians the moral high ground for this present conflict, and that makes me absolutely sick. Again, I'm coming back to the perspective of the service members actually prosecuting targets during this war. And I'm imagining the targeteer opening up their joint publications, their JP360, to see that we cannot target civilian infrastructure because it's a war crime. That gets beat into your head all the time as a targeting guy. Oh, it's a war crime. That's a war crime. This is not just something the left loves to screech, you know, because they don't understand what a war crime actually is. No, I'm really talking about the CENTCOM targeting guidance, such as things like the CAT 1 or category 1 no strike list, right? All of the list of targets that we can't strike in war because of not just, you know, this frivolous thing called international law. Like, I mean, like our actual like laws that are meant to be adhered to by the United States, set in place by Congress, mostly for the purposes of making sure that we keep our humanity. That's what a no strike list is for. It's not really for international law. We don't care about international law. It's for keeping your humanity. And then the president gets on TV and says we're going to strike civilian infrastructure, the same targets that you could crack open a book and see like right at the very top, no, you can't hit civilian power plants. Can you imagine what that's like to sit there and having to be a targeting analyst where you're looking at targets that are completely war crime targets. Again, not in the leftist way of like, "Oh, war crime." No, I mean like actual like stuff that damages your soul kind of targets. And they're striking these things left and right. I have plotted almost 2,000 impact craters on my maps, and in my opinion, having worked in a CENTCOM targeting shop in the past, I've seen enough to let me know that they've thrown a lot of this doctrine out the window, and they are prosecuting targets against long-standing doctrine. We are dropping land mines in civilian towns at this point, which I don't think has been done since Vietnam or maybe even Korea. Land mines are indiscriminate killers, and the very minute that a civilian gets killed by an American land mine in Iran will be the day that America no longer has the right to complain about IEDs killing Americans. And at this point, we are speed running our way to violating every ideal that we used to hold dear. I don't like it myself, and of course, nobody in the West wants to give the Iranians credit for anything. But from a purely neutral perspective, during the lead-up to this war, it was the United States that breached international norms by pretending to engage in diplomacy while never intending to abide by a deal. And that trust being broken cannot be dismissed by anyone. It's going to take a lot of effort to build that trust back. Now, you can argue, "Well, we've got our aircraft carriers and our submarines and our missiles and our cool bombs and stuff." But look, man, as much as I would love to be a participant in a lot of American exceptionalism these days, there's a little bit more nuance to it than that, right? House cannot blame anyone for not wanting to negotiate with the United States right now, because American diplomacy has now boiled down to do what we want or we'll kill you and your entire family, which is fair enough in some circumstances, right? I mean, that's that's kind of what you have to do in some ways, right? I am a Roman citizen. I am an American, right? You have to bring that mentality to the world to some degree. But again, there is no crying in the casino of war, and the Iranians still hold quite a few cards to play, which means that the war has the potential to continue for some time if the belligerents so desire. The other factor that the Iranians are probably thinking about is that if they agree to any sort of peace agreement, the Israelis will just bomb them anyway, since it has already been demonstrated by the strike at South Pars that the Israelis are acting unilaterally in this conflict. Right now, sushi from a truck stop in Kansas is more trustworthy than an American ceasefire, and the Iranians are completely correct in assuming that our word means nothing. Granted, in a larger sense, none of the belligerents in this conflict are completely trustworthy, either. So right now, when it comes to potential peace talks, it's a wash. Most of the statements made by American officials have been easily verifiable lies, and President Trump has mostly been saying stuff just to calm economic markets. But also, the Iranian messaging is fairly unreliable, as well, because they aren't talking much. I mean, they don't really have to. All they have to do is survive, so they don't really need to have this propaganda campaign. But even so, most of their media, the Iranian media that is broadcast to the outside world, is mostly just the, you know, the low-grade Middle Eastern flavored propaganda that is very common for wars like this. So they're not really putting in that much effort. I mean, again, they don't have to. They're on the defense, right? When you're on the defense, you you have a lot of advantages. And of course, the Israelis are going to do whatever they want, which is fair enough from their perspective, but their targeting efforts will absolutely derail any potential deal the US and Iran want to cook up later next week during the alleged halt to bombing of civilian infrastructure within Iran. Even though, honestly, it's becoming a little bit dangerous within the United States to truthfully and neutrally examine the overall situation regarding the war. The Iranians have actually carried out relatively proportionate and reciprocal targeting during this campaign, with the exception being the first couple of days when comms were down and local commanders shot at basically everything in range. The ballistic missile strike again at Dimona, which the Israelis tried to amplify quite a bit with Prime Minister Netanyahu himself going to the impact crater, the impact sites there. This attack, while it was horrific, you know, it's always horrific anytime civilians get killed, this was actually a reciprocal attack targeting the Israeli nuclear program. Specifically, they were targeting a bunker that was allegedly being used by Israeli scientists, which was underneath uh the civilian city there. And this attack itself was conducted after the Israelis targeted the bunkers at Bushehr nuclear power plant a few days ago. So again, this is a tit-for-tat kind of thing. Similarly, various GCC states, mostly just the Arab nations of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, uh places like that, they've been complaining that Iran is launching unprovoked attacks into their nations. However, CENTCOM themselves frequently publish videos of HIMARS systems launching ATACMS missiles into Iran from these same nations. So once again, it's mostly a wash. You don't get to sit there and complain that, "Oh, the Iranians have hit our airports," when you've got ATACMS flying through your airspace, and you're letting the Americans conduct a war from your terrain. You're in this war. So again, this is just a mess all around. But again, let's not over-romanticize the Iranians themselves by any means. They are in this for the long haul, and they know that needlessly targeting things they don't need to will result in public opinion turning against them. What all of this means is that the targeting continues as before. The conflict, the war, the death, the destruction continues just like it has for four months now. And not only is the White House not looking for any off-ramps, but they are looking to intensify this conflict and escalate it as much as possible for the foreseeable future. I don't really care what they're saying. Our actions speak louder than words, and considering the contradictory words from the White House this week, I can't really make assessments based on what they say, only what they do. And so far, cargo flights have been increasing into the region, and advanced party from the 82nd Airborne is already in the Middle East to supplement the two MEUs, which should be arriving uh they should have gotten there by now. And within the homeland of the United States, there are indications and warnings of more units being deployed, as well. The shining example of pinpoint precise journalism that is the Wall Street Journal has leaked that the Pentagon is slated up to 10,000 more troops, regular army, to deploy, as well. Whether or not that's true is anyone's guess, but so far, the United States is making preparations for a more protracted ground fight. However, there are still a few indicators that I have been watching for that haven't really lined up just yet, so I don't think we're going to be invading Iran anytime soon, at least not within the next week. Or at least I certainly hope not, because the forces on station right now are not enough to occupy a Buckee's is a Friday night. So we have some more time before we freak out about Americans putting boots on ground. Maybe by the end of next week at the earliest, depending on how serious they are, but again, time will tell. So, all in all, 1 month into the conflict, the situation remains just as steady as before. The Iranian regime has not collapsed, and it will not collapse without a total occupation of the country. Whether that happens or not is anyone's guess at this point, but we will certainly be on the lookout for any indicators that may emerge over the next few days and weeks. And with that, that's all I have for today. I know kind of a short day, a little bit shorter than what I was expecting. So, let's wrap things up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, another fantastic week for taking the information space to the real world and to trying to exchange information with each other in a more off-grid manner. I know that it's a little boring and super niche, but I think this is a huge part of not just preparedness, but also the act of doing something physical helps a lot. This may sound really weird, uh but over the past few years, I've been working with radio, and especially since the Ghost Net has been working well, I have found that the information that I get via HF radio just it seems more real. It seems like the stakes are higher and or or maybe that there's much more investment in finding out the truth or something like that. I don't really know how to describe it. Maybe some of you know what I'm talking about. It's almost like the same piece of information has more weight when I see it coming in through my radio to my JS8 call screen as opposed to when I just doomscroll past it on my phone. It's almost like the physical act of getting outside, touching grass, and actually putting in some physical work to be informed is a major motivating factor for finding out the truth. Of course, we must always trust but verify everything, but still, in the days ahead, I think that getting involved in the world of radio is a good thing to merge a lot of this this online information space stuff with the real world to kind of help us balance out a lot of that stuff because I think that we tend to doomscroll way too much these days. I'm speaking for myself. I know I do it way too much each day, right? So, getting outside, or even if you have like an indoor radio or something, just you know, being involved in this kind of thing helps quite a lot, I think, even if all you do is receive the signals that others are transmitting. So, a very special thank you to all of you for contributing to the Ghost Net project. I think it's working great. I can't wait to see how this develops over time. It will It will get better. It will get a lot more helpful as time goes on, and I'm sure that there are a lot of other endeavors out there trying to do the same thing to bring a lot of informational efforts to the world of radio. So, that's all I have for today. As always, all of my research and source material can be found on my Obsidian page to trust but verify everything that I use to conduct my daily analysis, and the mapping data that you have seen today and throughout the week can be viewed online via my ArcGIS maps or downloaded offline as KMZ files for use in A Tac if you want to replicate exactly what I have here. All of the links are below as usual, and I hope to continually update all of these products throughout the week just like I do every single day. So, thanks again for sticking with me. Thank you for all of your support, and thank you to all of you on Patreon who keep the project going, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight the sheep.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 25th through the 31st, 2025. So let's get right to it. Around the world, the summertime kinetic activity appears to be in full swing this week with many conflrations arising and a few going away over the past few days in Mexico and really throughout North America at large. The cartel violence has continued as expected. Nothing really out of the ordinary. It's just that this week a couple of mass graves have been found or couple of body dump sites that have been a little bit more high-profile than normal. Again, the violence down there is not really uh it's hard to say if it's escalating or not. Most of this is really not that much out of the norm. However, again, due to local focus on things like this and a lot of local activism, there's definitely an increased focus on some of these uh very, very brutal attacks down there. Across the pond in Liverpool, the vehicle ramming attack suspect has been identified. This has been a rather contentious topic over the past few days. Ever since the vehicle ramming attack occurred, vehicle ramming attacks throughout Europe at large is is not really out of the ordinary. This is very much a standard thing, especially with the uh summertime weather which allows uh more cultural events, more you know, open street fair kind of things and uh you know, people trying to go out and enjoy the summertime and enjoy the good weather. Well, this means large crowds and large crowds always bring malign actors who uh seek to cause harm. In the case of the Liverpool attack, however, it is a little bit harder to slap that general, you know, terrorist label on this kind of thing. We will do so for now. We'll definitely call this uh and use language to refer to this as a vehicle ramming attack because that's what it was. And generally, that's considered to be terrorism. However, considering that this wasn't really a planned thing, it doesn't seem like it was. At least the street was just uh full of, you know, soccer fans, right? Football fans. So, I don't know if this is more along the lines of just a very aggressive and violent form of hooliganism or if this is a legitimate terror attack that we might see fairly commonly throughout Europe. Either way, British media has had a field day with this as the attacker's identity has been released as Paul Doyle. Depending on which sources you read, this is very contentious uh because a lot of people I I don't know what the truth is. I'll just state right up front. don't know what the truth is, but a lot of people suspect that the guy that they arrested and have identified as the attacker was not the guy. I don't know about that. Uh there have been some discrepancies with age. A lot of people were saying that the guy who committed the attack appeared to be much younger than a 53-year-old man who was arrested. There are also some indications that maybe a few uh uh rowdy fans uh who were trying to, you know, take the fight to the the terrorist, the the the attacker during this vehicle ramming incident. There's some speculation that a lot of those guys have been arrested as well for trying to get at the asalent. I don't know. It's a very very hard thing to assess right now. British media is no help. The authorities are no help. The authorities surprisingly or in this case very unsurprisingly released the guy's name rather early on uh in the investigation whereas of course people are drawing the the comparison that the Southport murderer his identity was withheld for months. Uh we didn't even we didn't even know what he looked like until after the conviction. So yeah, we're just going to have to see if we can get our hands on more media of the attack, more photographs of the attacker, more photographs of who they arrested, which so far I haven't seen any mug shot. uh haven't I've only seen courtroom sketches and those don't really those don't really help you that much. So, I don't know. Either way, I just wanted to point out that this is not your standard vehicle ramming attack. It it's a little bit more complicated than that and it's being made complicated by the follow on details of what's going on. So, when everybody hears a vehicle rams into a crowd, they immediately think jihadi kind of thing. They immediately think Islamic based terrorism. And so whenever that doesn't appear to be the case, it appears to be some uh what we might consider to be terrorism of some other variety, it's really hard to get a beat on sometimes. And I think that's what's going on here. So we'll see. But right now, there's not a whole lot to go off of. Similarly, much uncertainty remains in Iran with regards to the talks that are ongoing. Just like last week, uh in which I said there's been a lot of talk, but not a lot of action or any kind of verification that this talk has any credence. The same things happened this week. There's been a lot of talk that says that Israel is going to go to war with Iran one way or the other in the next few days. We've heard this many, many times before. I don't know how true this is. There's just not anything to go off of. So, but I'm not sure. All that seems relatively certain is that war with Iran is certainly still on the menu and it probably will be for a while. Uh, but in terms of figuring out, are we really going to do this? Is Israel really going to do this? Yeah, it's anybody's guess. Right now, they've got their hands full with Gaza. So, once that wraps up and they they finally achieved their goals there, uh my guess is that they'll have the ability to open up another front wherever they choose, whether it be West Bank, Lebanon, wherever. And that's probably going to continue for a while. In the South Pacific, things are both heating up and cooling down. Earlier this week, there was a brief border clash between Cambodia and Thailand in a very well-known disputed area. This happens occasionally. This is kind of a thing that's been going on for a long time, but for a few days there, it seemed like they were they were really getting ready to go to swinging at each other. This is something that happens quite often in this particular area. It's really just jungle, you know, just south of the Golden Triangle. So, you know, it's anybody's guess as what actually goes on out there in those jungles. But either way, both sides claimed that the other started it, and that's how border clashes usually go in this part of the world. Either way, both countries sent a few thousand troops from what I can tell to the border region before the leaders of both countries stepped in and said, "Hey, you know, cool it kind of thing." So, that's kind of how it remains right now. It's it's cooled off quite a bit, which is good. Uh, I don't know how much Cambodia and Thailand are are going to feel like going to war with each other. I don't think so. I think it's just a brief border spat, but you never know. Stranger things have happened. And it is most certainly the time where every other Tuesday you're just reading about two nations getting ready to go to war with each other. That's just kind of the way it is in the 2020s. So similar situation in China. Uh this week the United States and well China as well have been kind of trading rhetoric back and forth a little bit. The Pentagon the other day uh Pete Hexath the Secretary of Defense has made it clear that the Pacific pivot is definitely a military aspiration. Still, the United States is still very much considering China to be an adversary, especially when it comes to the use of military force in the Pacific theater. Now, I know that sounds like a lot of DC think tank talk, but this is generally true. Uh the United States is most certainly preparing for some kind of military aspiration on China's part. Mostly when we refer to uh this, we're talking about China invading Taiwan and the First Island chain. Not just Taiwan, but the whole first island chain, which includes parts of Japan, Okinawa, and uh the Philippines. So, is an invasion imminent? No, of course not. China's got quite a long time before that becomes uh viable, but they're working on it. China's getting a lot better at a lot of things, and it's going to sneak up on us. At least that's what the the Pentagon is trying to say. I don't know. There's a lot of rhetoric back and forth on that, but generally speaking, that's the kind of status right now. The dragon in the Pacific is definitely stirring, though uh things are not completely out of control just yet. It's still within the realm of diplomacy. It's still within the realm of posturing, power projection, things like that. We're not really getting into the military operation, operational planning phases yet, which is probably a good thing. And speaking of operational planning, uh strategic movement for this week has largely been relatively benign. The Truman Carrier Strike Group uh returned to Norfolk this morning. I saw they pulled into to port earlier uh today a few hours ago. The Carl Vincent remains in the Middle Eastern theater. That's going to be our carrier for there for a while. But now, if you guys will note, we're down to just one aircraft carrier in the Middle East again, which is a good sign. Generally speaking, for those of you who, you know, don't follow this kind of thing. Whenever the United States puts two aircraft carriers in Sentcom in the Middle East somewhere, that tends to suggest that we're either going to war or tensions are pretty high. It's hard to determine which. Maybe there's a intentionality behind that. But still, for the past few weeks, there have been a couple of aircraft carriers in Sentcom's AO conducting operations in Yemen. And now that the Truman's rather unfortunate uh deployment has come to an end, the Carl Vincson remains uh the only flat top in the Middle East theater for now at least. Similar story out in the Pacific. The Nimttz is conducting her final deployment to the Pacific theater. Really just kind of doing the status quo. So we're we're kind of back to a baseline of uh American aircraft carrier strategic movement around the globe, which is a good thing. So it just means that there's not really an increase in tensions to the point to where we feel like a a second aircraft carrier is needed somewhere. Moving to the kinetic activity tracker, there have been a lot of developments, but mostly on the border crisis tracking map. So you can see uh I've got a few riots in Seattle this week. Of course, it's it's Seattle, so that's kind of thing is going to happen. But mostly what I've been focusing on this week have been the events down in Mexico which I'm generally putting on the border crisis map. So it's a different different data set. So there have been two high-profile in incidents this week. Both of which involve the finding of human remains or mass graves. The more high-profile one that's gotten a lot of uh locals upset occurred in the town of Reosa, a border town right on the Texas border there. A local uh band was found murdered. all four members of the band plus their photographer uh that were found in a body dump site just in in a vacant lot there in Reosa because these guys were fairly famous locally. This has sparked local outrage and you know so we're starting to see a little bit more political activism with this kind of thing. This happens occasionally. Again, it's not out of the ordinary, but but because of this focus on a lot of the the cartel problems down there, we're starting to see this a lot more in local media than we have in years past. So, I don't know if this is out of the norm. I don't think it is. I mean, it's fairly violent down there anyway, but there are a lot more of these stories coming to light from within Mexico, such as the finding of a mass grave down in the small town of Iratau, which is in the middle of absolute nowhere. There is nothing there. Uh, I mean, it's it's a fairly, I don't know, moderatesized uh town for central Mexico. But in any case, if you look at the Google Street View of where I was able to geollocate this this uh mass grave to be, it's kind of in the middle of a town. It's right on the edge of a soccer field, right? So, there are houses built up all around there. Normally, when you see a kill site from the cartel, it's going to be in the middle of nowhere. I mean, occasionally it happens in more builtup areas, but my guess is that this whole town is in on it or knows what's going on or full of people who are terrified, but they know exactly what is going on in that town. So, that's a tale as old as time down there. Again, it's not new. In Mexico, you go to the house next door and find 17 bodies one day. That tends to be how it works sometimes. So there are a lot of indicators to help uh identify and start working the cartel problem but I I can just say it's a very big task. There have been a lot of people who have spent 30 40 year careers and they have not put a dent in anything even in their local area. So it's a big problem set. It's bigger than terrorism. It's bigger than journalism. It's it's a very big investigative line of effort. So, uh, please forgive me if if this is going to take me a little while to start getting a better beat on because right now we're we're not even scratching the surface here with the events that are occurring in Mexico. So, we're definitely not seeing the whole picture. We're looking at looking at the issue through a soda straw. But, I do want to focus on some of these more horrific things. Sometimes it's not pleasant, but I think it's important for us to to be mindful of, especially considering how much the cartel's influence uh runs here in the United States. So, moving to the United States specifically, let's talk about the Northeast region for a bit. Moving around the whole country, the general story is that the summertime fund is here once again. A lot of this doesn't really have a whole lot of intel value, but I'll go ahead and skim through it anyway. So, Pennsylvania, there was a mass shooting. It was probably more of a cultural or gang related thing because it involved this large-scale Memorial Day event in the park 10:30 at night. We all know how this goes. Anyway, multiple shooters. Two were killed, nine were wounded in a city park, Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. Not particularly surprising. Locals probably don't bat an eye at this kind of thing, but something to be mindful of being in a city park at night uh in any city of moderate size in the United States. That's a that's a risk these days. Moving over to the southwestern region this week, rather interesting cases of vandalism at various Islamic related sites. So there were two Islamic cultural centers that were vandalized with graffiti and a third site which was a mosque which is uh to the south of of these two sites. I found this to be kind of interesting so I thought I would mention it. Uh but yeah, vandal vandalisms are definitely going to happen a lot more often this summer. This is a very easy assessment to make. Anybody can guess that. But what I thought was quite interesting is when I was putting these uh incidents on the kinetic activity tracker, it looks like we're starting to build a little bit of a pattern here because both of these sites were located pretty close to each other, which is interesting. It kind of makes sense if somebody's foot mobile walking around with a can of spray paint, they're probably going to tag up any site that they can easily walk to. But more interestingly than that, you can see that this is right around the corner or just down the street from a Tesla dealership in which uh which was targeted with an incendiary device. So, we're starting to see, okay, well, now in this small geographic area, we've now got three vandalism incidents. So, again, it's very simple. I'm missing probably a dozen more vandalism incidents that have occurred in this specific area, but I think that now now that this data set is being built and I'm handpicking a lot of these and putting them on the map that it's not just a general crime tracker, we can start to see some of the some how some of these things are uh in the same area as other things. Of course, this doesn't mean that the same guy did all three, but it doesn't mean there's a link at all. I just find it to be kind of interesting that I'm starting to go through the map now and uh put icons on the map and say, "Oh, wait a minute. I already already got something in this area." Which is interesting. So, this is also very interesting to note when we get out to uh out west. So, for instance, in Seattle, the events this week, it's just been one continuous riot basically for the past week or so. Again, this is Seattle. This is the heartland of this kind of thing. It's not really surprising. A lot of the time it's not even worth tracking. Anyway, this week has been a lot more contentious based on the Christian rallies uh that have been held, protest events, prayer vigils, concerts, whatever. There have been a lot of things that have occurred this week. But anyway, Seattle is going to be working through a state of unrest for a while. I would very much urge caution for any of you out there doing research on the mainstream media with this because they're making it out to look like like these Christian groups are the ones who are, you know, beating people and that's that's not true at all. I have not seen media bias as sharp as this uh in a while, honestly, since uh the the Biden presidency. So, I find that to be kind of interesting. Uh it doesn't surprise me, but it's kind of interesting. Right now, for for those of you who are outside of Seattle, it's not really as as bad as 2020, but it could be. Right now, most far-left groups don't really have a lot of the punch that they used to have. a lot of their funding has dried up and a lot of their manpower has not they're they're just not around anymore or they're doing other things. So yeah, Antifa in Seattle doesn't have the mobility that they used to have. Uh they're they're starting to be able to latch on to things and this, you know, provided a convenient target for them. So of course they're going to be able to latch on to that sort of thing. Same thing in places like Cincinnati, Washington DC, New York City. you know, big places like this are uh are definitely anytime a a target is provided, regardless of funding, a lot of these far-left groups or groups that are have very questionable politics, they will seek to cause harm simply because they can. So, that's pretty much all I have for the United States. Uh before we close out today, I want to show you an image from Diego Garcia. That's right, everyone's favorite island that nobody cares about in the middle of the of the Indian Ocean. It's fairly busy. As you can see, we've got a lot of airframes stacked up there at Diego Garcia. This is actually from May 27th. Uh the latest commercial imagery is only partial. So, I don't have a really good uh paid commercial image to be able to identify these, but you can very clearly see that that F-15 squadron that that showed up to Diego Garcia is still there. And the B-52s are still there. So, so yeah, very very busy out there in the middle of the Indian Ocean and uh who knows what we're up to. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's roll through the Ghost Net reports for this week. Again, it has been very very good for propagation lately, which is fantastic. I haven't had much time to get on the air this week, unfortunately, uh due to thunderstorms. So, it's always good to get out and test and make sure you're you're uh you're not just a fair weather radio operator guy, but there's also that fine line between you don't want to, you know, get yourself hurt or struck by lightning out there. they're uh trying to operate in in adverse conditions. But but I was able to make the the calm window this week. And we got some good news coming out of Texas. Uh one one person says that the measles outbreak in Texas is subsiding, which is great. Uh so that's uh good to see. Also, somebody pointed out that there's the new CO variant. I guess we're going to have to see what that's all about. And also somebody who just wanted to see their own transmission on an Intel update. So I thought I would oblige and uh show you that I did hear you. coming in hot from Eastern Pennsylvania. So, appreciate all of you for participating in the Ghost Net. It's going to get a lot better very soon. You will see. And it'll be a lot easier for a lot of you to intercept and process and take in a lot of the the news reports that other people can send. I know there's a very high barrier to entry to HF radio, to high frequency or shortwave radio. I know that there's a long list of things you got to do. It's not easy, but uh I will find ways of ingesting this information a lot better and showing that it is a useful tool. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Here are the sources as usual. Again, clickable links everywhere. Um most of the the best ways to get the uh sources for all the information that I put out there is from my Obsidian page. Uh the link is at the end of every single wire report and you click that you'd be surprised as to how little people uh click that and and do research to look at all the sources and raw information that I'm processing to make these uh reports throughout the week. So so check it out if you want. It's there. This is a tool for you to use if you wish. But yeah, uh that's that's all I have for today. Hopefully next week will be a little bit less hectic than this one. And uh maybe we can get into the summertime and not be as uh kinetic as everybody seems to think it will be. So, thank you guys all for your support. Thank you all for watching and we will see you next time.

…to cause Mass uh problems for civilians after a conflict is over uh such as cluster Munitions and you know things like that uh Russia and most of Eastern Europe has really just not been intere

…to take also western europe these nations france germany belgium denmark and poland they have indicated that they are going to take some or they have already taken some also eastern europe czech republic and italy…

…russia doesn't invade look what she will have gotten she will have strengthened nato presence in eastern europe along a whole host of other things right we're talking new alliances forming more equipment flowing…

…the world increasing threatening rhetoric particularly in the United States and Europe United States carrier strike group 12 arrives on station in the Eastern Mediterranean the 101st Airborne is reportedly preparing to deploy to Jordan various…

…MASS WAVES OF MIGRANT CRIME REPORTED THROUGHOUT EUROPE. UNITED STATES CONDUCTS ADDITIONAL TARGETING OF IRAN, IRANIANS RESPOND BY TARGETING KUWAIT AGAIN. STABBING ATTACK REPORTED ON TRAIN IN ATLANTA. HENRY NOWAK MURDER BODY CAM FOOTAGE RELEASED.//  -----BEGIN…

…MASS WAVES OF MIGRANT CRIME REPORTED THROUGHOUT EUROPE. UNITED STATES CONDUCTS ADDITIONAL TARGETING OF IRAN, IRANIANS RESPOND BY TARGETING KUWAIT AGAIN. STABBING ATTACK REPORTED ON TRAIN IN ATLANTA. HENRY NOWAK MURDER BODY CAM FOOTAGE RELEASED.//  -----BEGIN…