//The Wire//2300Z January 23, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: TRUMP ORDER ON BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP BLOCKED BY JUDGE. GOVT AGENCIES ATTEMPT TO SUBVERT COMPLIANCE WITH DEI BAN. IMMIGRATION ISSUES CONTINUE NATIONWIDE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- United Kingdom: The sentencing of Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana took place today. He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum sentence of 52 years. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Hostility to President Trump's initial executive actions is mounting, with Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle issuing an order to block Trump's order pertaining to birthright citizenship. Following President Trump's orders to dismantle all DEI programs from federal agencies and organizations, many entities (to include military organizations) have been observed to take measures to camouflage DEI positions and programs by simply changing their name, but not actually changing the content of a program or firing any staff. AC: This sneaky move will probably not work in the long run, as the internet has a long memory. The definition of what qualifies as a "DEI" position can be based on what a person was initially hired to do, not what their title was changed to be. As such, a simple name-change won't really slow down counter-DEI efforts that much. USA: Immigration raids continue in many major cities. Approximately 1,500x active duty troops have been deployed to the southern border. A major raid in Boston has entered it's second day, as primarily Haitian illegals are being detained and deported. In Providence, Rhode Island, the law offices of Joseph Molina Flynn were raided, which is a major law firm that is well-known for primarily representing immigrant clients and generally being involved in immigration issues. AC: This raid was likely conducted in conjunction with various human-trafficking operations. Somewhat interestingly, Flynn is both an immigration lawyer, and a municipal court judge in Central Falls. As such, the mayor of Central Falls announced the resignation of Molina Flynn this afternoon. California: This morning a hiker was shot multiple times in Jacumba during a mugging by suspected Cartel members, who are assessed to have crossed the border to conduct extortion operations in the local area. AC: These types of Cartel operations are relatively common, but likely will increase in intensity for the foreseeable future. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Regarding the pardon's issued by the White House prior to President Trump being inaugurated, even more questions have emerged. For instance, Anthony Fauci's pardon has been back-dated to cover any and all crimes he committed since 2014. This has led many to raise the question of what he was doing post-2014 that might require a pardon in the first place. After all, if the previous regime was scared Fauci might be unjustly targeted for his work during COVID, why backdate his pardon all the way back to 2014, during the Obama administration? This has raised more questions than answers, and reignited scrutiny as to how this pardon may be linked to other pardons issued with the same date. Regarding remigration efforts, most ICE raids have only resulted in the arrest of a few hundred illegals, however what is being observed now is likely the rapid action on heavily-populated encampments of illegals that are the low-hanging-fruit. Most likely, larger, more logistically-intensive operations are being stood up right now. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the Intel update for July 4th, Independence Day, 2026, and the recognition of the 250th anniversary of our nation's birth. I'm going to keep things light today, so that we can all take some time and really reflect on the meaning of the holiday, but there are a couple of events worth diving into, so let's get right to it. Around the world this week, the main focus has been on the crisis in Venezuela, as well as the growing war in Ukraine. The conflict in the Middle East has remained fairly tepid as the Ayatollah's formal state funeral has begun this week. So, all sides have really kept things to a minimum, as demonstrated by the rather lackluster negotiations in Doha this week. Within the homeland this week, Washington, D.C. has been host to the series of events that celebrating our nation's 250th anniversary. On that note, the America 250 Committee announced last night that the parade today has been canceled due to extreme heat, as the temperature is expected to hit 110 to 115° F today in Washington. No alternative date or time has been provided, but I will keep monitoring the situation, as always, to see what events are actually going ahead despite the heat. The parade itself was supposed to be sort of the crescendo for all of the events that have been ongoing for the past couple of weeks now, but it looks like that might not happen due to the uh extreme weather event. Moving down to Venezuela this week, rescue and recovery efforts continued despite significant challenges on the ground. The disaster zone is incredibly large and spread out over dozens of miles in what used to be heavily urbanized terrain. The road network linking most of the hardest hit cities is mostly okay, but there are transportation issues, and some of the terrain deformation has definitely destroyed uh some of the sections of the coast roads in Catia La Mar. In the cities themselves, there simply is not enough space for the tens of thousands of people who now find themselves without housing, and clean drinking water and medical care is pretty minimal. At this point, we're looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of additional casualties, simply caused by lack of access to clean water and the spread of disease over the next few months. As a side note, one of the reasons for focusing on rescue at this stage still, even a week after the incident, instead of shifting into recovery at this stage, is due to the potential for people to still be alive in void spaces under the rubble. In every search and rescue situation, there is a time limit when a rescue operation transitions into a recovery operation as in a person has been missing for long enough that they could not have survived. So, your risk management is going to be tailored appropriately for that. For instance, if someone is still alive, your rescuers and first responders might be willing to take a lot more of risk because there's something you can still do. However, if someone is deceased, there's not a whole lot you can do and going all out to risk your life to recover remains is not something that is normally done, right? And in urban disasters such as this one, that period of time is going to vary quite a bit, but normally it's going to be increased somewhat based on the circumstances of each individual building. This is why it is important to assess each and every single structure independently because every building collapses differently and some might be more prone to having void spaces where survivors might be alive, but still trapped under tons of rubble. Another factor to consider for Venezuela is the weather. It has been raining for a couple of days throughout the disaster zone. Normally, this is terrible for rescue efforts because it makes everything harder, but it is extremely common for victims to be pulled from rubble many days after a disaster because rainwater trickled down to them through the rubble providing a water source while they are trapped and awaiting rescue. It is of course most certainly a long shot, but among those few who have been rescued alive from similar building collapses either in Central and South America itself or even as far away as Korea, these survivors have reported rainwater being a benefit to them while pinned under debris. Looking at the environmental conditions in Venezuela since the earthquakes, this disaster has been a good candidate for continuing to prioritize rescue operations for longer rather than just switching to recovery efforts after a few days. Uh even last night, uh locals were reporting that victims are still being recovered alive after being trapped in the rubble for over a week. In terms of the administration of the disaster and what groups are coordinating disaster response, I am aware of only a small handful of groups which are heading down there. The biggest effort from the United States is being led by a task force called USA 01, which is a government-run task force, uh interagency kind of organization that is made up of professional first responders from various government agencies, mostly in Fairfax County, Virginia. And these guys have been airlifted into the disaster zone. They were put there uh boots on the ground pretty quickly. In terms of private NGOs which are doing their own thing, this so far has been pretty minimal due to the diplomatically challenging situation on the ground. Volunteers have been turned away uh due to either not paying bribes or not having the right connections or visas. So, unlike many other disasters around the world, this is certainly not a case of people just getting on a plane and going down there like we normally see. There is an unbelievable amount of red tape and administration on the part of the Venezuelan government. And suffice it to say that local corruption is utterly staggering. The biggest NGOs on the ground uh which are linked in with Task Force 1 are Samaritan's Purse, of course, which has provided a small field hospital at the Paseo La Guaira Mall. This looks to be like a Role 1 field hospital, mostly for triage and a staging site for further surgical intervention outside the disaster zone if necessary. Other NGO groups that are involved are Project Hope, uh Team Rubicon, Doctors Without Borders, Catholic Relief Services, UNICEF, and a few others. I will provide updates as best I can for those of you who would like to help, in addition to providing some of the lessons learned regarding the response so far. Every disaster is a learning opportunity, and hopefully now that the disaster response community is starting to use more tools such as better drones, portable seismic sensors, thermal optics, and many other resources which have gotten a lot better over the years, we can learn from what works and what doesn't work to improve the response moving forward. In this case, it's going to be pretty tough uh due to the sheer scale of the devastation, but also due to the current diplomatic situation with the Venezuelan government. So, not exactly an easy uh situation to help with, but we'll do what we can, and more to come on this crisis later. Jumping over to the war in Europe over the past few weeks, but this week especially, the war in Ukraine has heated up. And the impacts of the war in Iran turning in Iran's favor have directly resulted in the dynamics changing with other conflicts around the world. Think of this as a textbook case of the big tough kid on the playground being a source of common fear for all of the other kids, and as such, a sense of order blankets the playground. Well, if the smaller kid suddenly breaks the big kid's nose one day, suddenly that big kid doesn't look so tough, and the perception of his power is gone. This results in a lot of infighting among other groups of kids, all vying to establish their position on the playground. Before the incident, all the kids in the schoolyard had the bully to fear, but after that incident, the perception of toughness is weakened, and power dynamics shift. This is what is happening in Ukraine right now. The United States has unfortunately lost the war in Iran, and as a result, both Ukraine and Russia both know that the US has no hope of settling their war militarily. So, Ukraine is motivated to fight dirtier than they already do, and Russia is motivated to more directly confront NATO now that the main backer of NATO, the United States, has lost a lot of prestige. Now that Ukraine has begun to more routinely strike oil infrastructure in Russia, along with Moscow itself, the potential backlash from Russia has largely not been considered. Remember, here in the US, we really only hear the Western European pro-Ukraine side of things, and unfortunately, that has become a major blind spot for a lot of people who might not understand what's coming next. Ukraine, in defending itself from invasion, has found itself relying on a nearly total support from Western Europe and the United States. And in doing so, Russia has found herself fighting a war against NATO, which is becoming more and more open by the day. Internally within Russia, Russia does not consider the attacks on her oil infrastructure as solely coming from Ukraine. Russia blames NATO for these attacks, because nearly all targeting data comes from NATO. Just like within the United States, there are warhawks in Russia, too, and many of these voices have been encouraging escalating the situation by targeting a NATO member as a means of warning the West against waging their shadow war against Russia. In short, many of the big voices in the Russian national security apparatus are arguing that they should strike a Western city outside of Ukraine with conventional weapons, and if that doesn't work, a nuclear device should be detonated at some abandoned area of Ukraine as a way of showing how serious Russia really is. Now, when we drop the N-word on the timeline, not that one, the other one, nuclear, there are normally two main responses to this. First of all, influencers will usually try to sell you freeze-dried food, and secondly, many others will say that Russia normally talks about nuclear weapons on a daily basis, so this isn't exactly new. With either approach, the result is usually the same, people ignoring what Russia is saying, because Russia has a tendency to over exaggerate a lot of the things that they say, especially when it's clipped and translated for the Western media. However, at this point, it would be wise to consider them to be quite serious about at least their aspirations toward perhaps escalating the war more directly in terms of at least conventional munitions. Overnight, I saw that a couple mainstream media outlets in the West have picked this up by saying, "Oh my gosh, Russia's going to strike something like Poland or something." I don't know. You can There is no balance, and there is no mitigation, and there is no nuance with any mainstream media anymore, so it's challenging to describe how real of a threat this really is, because in the West, the mainstream media wants to use this as proof of saying, "Ah, see, look, the Russians want to strike us, so we need to strike them first." Like, no, we need to have more nuance than that, and we need to understand where Russia is coming from. There is a lot of talking past each other in the international space, but this is what the war hawks in Russia are saying, and nobody in the West is really listening to what they are saying. They're just taking the sound bites to use that as justification for whatever they want to do. They're not actually taking what Russia says seriously. But nevertheless, this is indeed a rather serious idea, and the wisdom of allowing continued deep strikes into Russia from Ukraine, this has simply not been considered in terms of preventing Ukraine from dragging Europe into a larger conflict. Ukraine has been in a rather unique spot for a while, namely that they have only considered if they could, but not if they should conduct certain targeting efforts in their attempt to halt the invasion of their country. From the Ukrainian perspective, it makes perfect sense to use every single available tool in order to make the conflict as costly as possible for Russia. However, if Ukraine keeps hitting Moscow and oil infrastructure throughout the country and Putin responds by slamming an arresting ballistic missile into the Ukrainian parliament building in Kyiv, it might not have been worth it. Similarly, if Russia responds by dropping a ballistic missile into a German factory building that makes missiles for Ukraine, the situation might get out of hand rather quickly. It doesn't make it morally right or even fair, but that's the raw deal of the war. Russia is a nuclear-armed superpower and Ukraine is not. All roads will inevitably come back to this basic fact, no matter how much this reality will be ignored. Even though Russia started the kinetic phases of the war for reasons that seemed to legitimate to them, if NATO keeps using Ukraine as a proxy to strike very serious targets in Russia, Putin is going to respond in increasingly more serious ways. We saw this during Operation Spider Web when Ukraine started targeting the Russian nuclear bomber fleet. I said back at the time that was probably not the best idea because of how serious that could have been, and Ukraine in, of course, doing what Ukrainians are supposed to be doing right now. I get it. I truly understand Ukraine's perspective. I really do, but the United States and NATO are letting them do things that are very, very serious. It sucks all around. It's not good. It's not a good situation. Pointing fingers doesn't really help when there's a bright flash on the horizon, right? So, this is why this year, especially, every year there's some kind of new development to the conflict, and this year, especially, peace would probably be a very, very good idea because just like with the war in Iran, the international stage is changing, power dynamics are shifting, and despite how much of a tough situation it is, it would be wise to tread carefully when there is a major superpower involved in a land war in Europe and I think a lot of Europe seems to have forgotten that. This is why Ukraine is back in the news and why this summer's fighting season will be more important than in years past because now that Ukraine strikes have resulted in fuel shortages in Moscow, Russia will be less motivated to keep holding back their bigger weapons and we are entering into another window where things might get rather serious. So that will be something to watch out for over the next few weeks for sure. >> On the home front this week, there have been several high-profile incidents but one in particular that is worthy of mention. In North Carolina this week, a potential terror attack was thwarted in High Point after a suspicious person was intercepted by the security team at Wesley Memorial Methodist Church. One suspect was discovered arriving at the church parking lot during services wearing body armor and camouflage clothing. Upon seeing this individual sitting in his truck in the parking lot in tactical gear on a Sunday morning, one observant member of the church called 911 to report the suspicious person. As it turns out, an off-duty officer was working at the church at the time in some capacity, either in a security role or in another capacity, I'm not really sure. But either way, the suspect was immediately confronted to figure out what he was doing. The suspect stated that he was a police officer himself, which the real police officer knew to obviously be a lie and so the assailant was detained immediately. After backup arrived and a search of the individual's vehicle was conducted, a series of weapons was discovered including a few knives, two crossbows, two flamethrowers and a few hundred rounds of ammunition and an assorted collection of drugs. There did not appear to be a weapon associated with that ammunition but that's at least what the mainstream media is saying. During the press conference a couple of days ago, the mayor of High Point added in more detail stating that the suspect had a notebook in the vehicle which contained the names and addresses of a series of churches and schools throughout the area. Most official statements also surmise that the suspect had mental health issues and not many details have been provided on the suspect but he has been identified as William S. Milliken III. In this case, the probable attack was interrupted before the suspect could act, so there is an intelligence gap and unknown regarding what the individual actually plans to do. So, this will take some time to figure out. It could have been just a mentally ill individual pretending to be a cop, or it could have been a full-blown attack which was stopped before it even began. Either way, it is a good reminder to stay vigilant, especially around potential attacks on religious institutions. These threats have been on the horizon for a long time. We all know we've been covering these for a while now, but it is always a good reminder to applaud the efforts of those who pay attention and have the courage to take action to prevent a tragedy from taking place. Sometimes all it takes is a prepared citizen in the right place at the right time, and a lot of good can be done. And on that note, in closing things out today, I wanted to again wish everyone a happy Independence Day, even our friends across the pond. No hard feelings, guys. We have found ourselves in a similar boat these days, and even though things are a bit heavy this year, every unfortunate problem that we have to handle is an opportunity to do good. You can look at stuff like this in two ways. You can say, "Oh my gosh, how terrible it is that our society is collapsing. The United States, Western Europe, it's all just it's all just falling apart." Or, you can look at this as an opportunity to finally shape the future ahead. There are a lot of questions and uncertainties going around this year. What does it mean to be an American? What do we want our future to be? And how do we get there? Clearly, there are a lot of hostile forces working against our future at all levels and from all angles. Betrayals are disappointing, and the refusal to stand up and say no to these dark forces is equally shameful for each and every one of us. But, as we are trying to forge the path ahead, I wanted to end today with a quote from Samuel Adams, continuing the tradition of the day. This quote is often falsely attributed to a variety of sources, but I found a microfilm copy of the original letter, which was written by Adams to his friend James Warren back in 1772, years before the war began. I will link for you guys who want to read it, the original document below. But, if you will permit me, I would like to read most of it, as I believe that we can all benefit from these words, especially today of all days. The letter begins, Boston, December 9th, 1772. My dear sir, I had the pleasure of receiving your letter of yesterday's date this morning by the hands of our friend Mr. Lothrop, and much obliged to you for the pains you took in distributing the letters sent to your care. I am very sorry to find in your letter anything that discovers in you the least approach towards despair. Nil desperandum. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead, and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will enkindle it. Say you that the Tories spare no pains to disparage our measures. I knew they would, and should have greatly doubted of the importance of the measures, if they had not been much nettled. Nil desperandum, a Latin phrase meaning never despair. Even 254 years ago, the order was clear. No black pilling. And what's more, the full letter tells us that the contest was even more powerful and even more timeless for us today. No black pilling, even when our enemies seek to divide us by pretending to be on our side. Adams reminds us that if you're upsetting the enemy, you're doing the right thing. And what's more, this effort doesn't have to be flashy. It doesn't have to be entertaining. As such, the most interesting parts of the letter are even less famous than the opening parts. The letter continues on. The select men of Medford have unanimously agreed to call a meeting of their town. Charlestown have met and appointed a committee to consider the independency and report 3 weeks hence. Our pamphlet was read, and upon the motion of your cousin, the consideration of it was referred till March meeting. I expect every moment to hear from Marblehead. They had their meeting the day before yesterday. It is reported that they have appointed a committee to write to ours after the good example of Plymouth, and that Colonel Orne and Mr. Gerry are of the committee. Two gentlemen whose such sense and integrity, as well as firmness, I think may be much relied upon. Roxbury, I have reason to hope will terminate matters well at their adjournment next Monday. There has been no dissension among the friends of the cause here, none between my brother Otis and myself. It is likely this is one of the Tory lies at Plymouth. It may arise from some of the Whigs refusing when nominated to be of our committee, but I believe most of them were then unaware of the evil tendency of their conduct. Mr. Cushing has frequently met with the committee and appears to be hearty in forwarding the measure. I am informed that your own minister refused when desired to read the letter of this town. You will excuse me if I whisper in your ear that in my opinion it would have done as much good as one of his sermons, the benefit of which, however, you would not have been deprived of. The Tories are determined to play a poor hand to the best advantage. They are therefore for instructing the representatives to prevent the independency of the judges taking place, but it must be done by enlarging their salaries, which would be a tacit acknowledgement of a right in the crown and making a mean bargain. This maneuver, in my opinion, is most to be apprehended. I rest with esteem, yours affectionately, Samuel Adams. This letter is merely a footnote, one of the many letters that Adams wrote during the era and is not really treated with any consequence. It's just a boilerplate administrative letter and these words are not etched onto any building in our nation's capital, nor is this letter on display anywhere. Just a copy that was scanned in and stored on microfilm many years ago for some random researcher to come across at the Massachusetts Historical Society. That, my dear friends, is why this letter stands out to me. 254 years ago there were problems and this letter has it all. Cities and towns expressing their intent toward independency, at least the independency of judges, and dissension in the ranks by people spreading lies among them. Community churches being involved in their common goal and pamphlets and, dare we say it, memes were being distributed all over. And perhaps most aptly, judges and their supporters in the colonies were being paid off by the crown to side with the British Empire and their objection to the question of impartial judgments. Even back then it was important to figure out who one's friends were because there were people pretending to be of the cause only to sell out their people and their country for personal gain. There were honest men who were tricked and deceived by these enemies, but not all were deceived. We might consider this an allegory for where we find ourselves today. Quite a lot has changed in 250 years. Our republic is barely recognizable by the original standards, and the centuries have helped highlight to us that while many great men started this great experiment, they were not perfect. Some sentiments have withstood the test of time and others have not simply because the sheer incredulity of how we find ourselves now was not considered at the time. And those decisions way back then are being felt today where the tyranny we are experiencing now is orders of magnitude more substantial than at our nation's founding. As we move forward into another era for the United States, it is my sincere hope that we can hold fast in our convictions and have the courage to do what's right even when it seems like everyone is against us. No, we will not all just get along, nor should we. But there is an indescribable element within this land that makes us a nation. It is not magic dirt, nor a stamp on paper. It is us. We are America, and we shall do the best we can to preserve it, persevering with honor and integrity. And when we win, magnanimity will be our watchword in victory. This will require sacrifice from everyone. All of us will need to approach the challenges ahead as if we alone were the single deciding factor. Samuel Adams was writing to every single American, and it is now up to us to take up the challenge of figuring out what kind of future we want to pass down to the future generations which will inherit our actions or our inaction. So, let's do the best we can with the time, energy, and resources that we have even if we have to, for the moment, fight in the shade.

hello again everyone welcome back to the underground this is the briefing for tuesday september 28 2021 and it is being recorded the day prior on the 27th so let's get right to it with the weather weather over the next 12 hours is going to be quite significant on the west coast with lots of systems bringing in a lot of precipitation of all different kinds and all kinds of cloud ceilings that are going to be really low to the ground so for any kind of asset aviation unmanned or otherwise it's going to be not good flying off the west coast for the next 12 hours and remember as we move forward into the later parts of the year the days start getting shorter and we have more hours of night time to play with so for the at least the east coast for tonight the uh end of evening nautical twilight is going to be at 7 52 p.m we're also going to have pretty good lunar illumination for this cycle we're at a 65 illumination level and throughout the rest of the country really the only other place that's going to have some trouble with some low-level clouds is the northeast as they start to get some of that winter weather coming their way and as we can see here moving into this slide i change it just for this week just to show the uh precipitation off the west coast is going to be really bad for any kind of aerial operations as well as little spots up there in new england which are going to prohibit or be very unlikely for any kind of aerial surveillance operations again if it were to be a factor just to get everybody in the mindset of seeing wind directions and and how these prevailing winds actually work out moving into no tams really nothing significant to report for this brief uh it's not the weekend so we don't have the presidential one to talk about and there's really nothing else going on there are a few standard ones that have been up but you can go check them out if you're interested in learning more about no tams and for our civil unrest forecast for this briefing there's really not that many changes really the only one i wanted to highlight is number four there in phoenix arizona where the election audit is ongoing that election audit as everyone has probably heard by now is heating up quite significantly and i'm personally guessing that the results of the forensic audit will be released in their entirety after this brief goes out but probably before the next one so that's something to be aware of as uh we're gonna have to come back to once things become a bit more clear on that front and for logistics a quick rundown of the shortages from last time uh as always over here on the left side of the map you can see the list of shortages that are impacting the nation as a whole are really no major changes on that front and again from last brief we're still tracking school bus driver shortages in the states depicted on the map we're also tracking the microchip shortage as is starting to impact things about the same as it has been over the past few weeks and months which is to say quite significantly we're also seeing public transit driver shortages in the states that are depicted same thing from last time really the only thing new to add is costco shortages so costco the company has restricted toilet paper and bottled water again they're saying that they're facing shortages in those arenas so it's unclear as to where in which stores they're going to be having shortages that but my guess is since this has now hit the news probably all of them so costco claims that this their shortages are due to both inflation and supply chain issues um which is a you know good excuse but we here don't know if this is true or not uh this could be a case of a company claiming that there is a shortage to cause a run on their products and drive demand up in the short term so of course we've been tracking inflation seriously affecting things along with a widespread paper shortage but nothing has specifically indicated to us that there was a shortage looming for costco specifically so again like last time the shortage of bottled water and toilet paper we predicted that one quite easily along with a lot of other people because it was very easy to see because news media articles were spinning a story that the virus that cannot be named caused digestive issues so that was the reason which spun up all the news media over the toilet paper shortages and then once they started uh reporting that well then it just became a snowball a logistical nightmare so we're not seeing that this time other than you know a normal paper shortage that we've been dealing with for months now we're we're not seeing a specific coherent you know event that is resulting in costco being completely out of all their stuff sure shortages have been happening but it's not like there was one really inflammatory thing event that occurred to cause costco to have these widespread outages so until we get more information on that i guess it really doesn't matter in the long run because there are shortages now so who knows the chain of causation here isn't really determinable because we just don't have inside access to costco supply data so just know that if you shop at costco there will almost certainly be shortages on random things probably toilet paper and water and other things as well as people go there to stock up on stuff so there's going to be shortages now and other stores are almost certainly going to be affected as well as these shortages spread to other big box stores from the demand being so high and moving into critical infrastructure concerns really the biggest one to talk about is the crystal valley ransomware attack so the minnesota-based crystal valley agricultural co-op was hit with a ransomware attack a few days ago actually almost immediately after the new cooperative the new cooperative was hit down in iowa much the same way as far as impact uh this attack has shut down operations for the co-op and is affecting about 2 500 farmers in minnesota and in northern iowa in various ways that you know we can't really get a feel on for for instance uh this co-op maintains fueling stations for agricultural vehicles and things like that uh which are having issues taking payments from credit cards so so far that's really all the info we have regarding impacts this co-op has been really tight-lipped about exactly what systems are currently offline or were impacted but we expect to know more as this incident continues the ransomware attack actually occurred back on september 19th and the media local media at least became aware a couple of days after that so so far there isn't any indication as to if their systems are back online or if anything's been resolved or what we haven't seen a statement either way at this point so again just like last brief this cyber attack highlights an increased effort for ransomware attacks and other kinds of cyber attacks against our critical infrastructure and with the highly computerized nature of agricultural operations these days these attacks broadly speaking will be a significant threat in the near future a lot of people don't know how advanced agricultural operations have become which is both good and bad but these cyber attacks quite clearly highlight the vulnerabilities when a farmer can't even turn the ignition and start up his tractor without the tractor having a gps or cellular connection and when a field cannot be irrigated without the automated management system sending the data through some server halfway around the country and this presents a lot of vulnerabilities for our food supply especially in an age of cyber attacks moving into significant governmental actions first up is delta airlines so delta airlines has made themselves a no-fly list which is separate from the national no-fly list which honestly itself warrants further investigation if you want to go down the rabbit hole and get extremely angry in the process because it's really infuriating to realize the details of no-fly lists in general but delta has been keeping their own a separate no-fly list for political reasons they have been kicking people off flights for not complying with their mandates which again make absolutely no sense if you actually read them but since the federal government hasn't put people on their national security no-fly list for these mandate violations delta has again proven themselves willing to go above and beyond to follow laws that do not exist and even make up their own no-fly list that is just for them and delta wants other airlines to share their lists too if they have them to create a national no-fly list that is separate from the federal no flight list this is just among the airline companies themselves right so as infuriating as this is it is also quite an interesting look into the strange field of certain kinds of companies and airlines are a fantastic way to learn a lot of information for instance we have talked a lot in the past about private companies that are technically private companies but they go above and beyond to follow laws and rules that do not exist simply to gain favor with the federal government a good example of this in the past has been companies that sell night vision devices some companies make you sign a stack of waivers scan a copy of your driver's license and a bunch of other stuff none of which is federal law by the way all you've got to do to own night vision in america is just follow itar rules which basically means don't export it but other than that there really isn't that much regulation right so other companies don't make you sign anything at all and you just click the you know add to cart button on the website and check out like normal like you're just buying something like normal federal itar laws say nothing at all about scanning a driver's license it is on the consumer not the company to comply with itar laws but some companies go above and beyond to require things that are not actually required by federal government thus the airlines airline companies were the first ones to require medical passports even before the federal government got involved they did that on their own so again this is infuriating i get it but it's also a great opportunity to see exactly which airlines and companies will go down this unique path and eagerly be the tip of the spear when it comes to medical mandates and not just a hesitant complier who's complying because they have to or the government will shut their business down it really just highlights the spectrum of of willingness to comply with the federal mandates and it looks like especially delta airlines is right at the tip of that spear and speaking of medical mandates moving on to number two the biden regime has stated in various cryptic press statements that they are mandating the medical procedure for all federal contractors again we don't know exactly how this is going to go down because we haven't seen the exact wording of these mandates and we might not see it for a while the biden regime is clearly full steam ahead on using tactics like regulations instead of full-on executive orders executive orders are clear and concise and can easily be overturned by a court but getting some minor regulatory agency to verbally pressure the companies they regulate that's a lot harder to battle in court that's why biden is going through osha to mandate the jab for private businesses if that were an executive order a federal judge could easily stop it at least temporarily but if it were a rule change which by the way biden is extremely famous for during his tenure in the senate if you followed his career before he even became vice president he was very famous for this it's a lot harder to sue and it's a lot harder for a judge to stop because it's not as simple as placing a hold on something right so again this incident is interesting because we don't know how many federal contracting companies have already many months ago gone above and beyond to comply with a medical mandate that didn't exist yet but now does right so we might have some companies have very little change to their workforce because they already thinned the herd months ago or we might have some companies quietly not push the issue because they can't afford to lose their workforce especially with gigantic federal contracts on the line so again we have very little data on this so i guess we'll just have to see how it goes but it will certainly be interesting to follow and moving on to number three uh so far we have had several incidents involving afghan refugees at two u.s bases uh fort mccoy in wisconsin and fort bliss in texas there have been other incidents that are not yet public so we can't comment on those just yet but two afghan refugees that were brought here as part of the afghanistan evacuation have been indicted federally at fort mccoy one for attempting to force himself on a child and the other for attempting to suffocate his wife these are two separate incidents with people that they're not related or anything there's also been a third incident that is currently under investigation by the fbi in which a female u.s service member was assaulted by several afghan males this event occurred in the refugee tent city in fort bliss texas as far as commenting on this there really isn't that much intel value except to point out that this is a direct side effect of the hectic nature of the evacuations so for those of you that did not follow our briefings during the afghanistan evacuation one of the unfortunate things that happened was the evacuation of unvetted people and this is kind of a delicate thing to talk about but it turns out that a lot of people that we evacuated weren't super great people a lot of the people that we evacuated happened to be what would be even for afghan society considered to be freeloaders who just wanted to get a handout from the us government and weren't actually in threat of being killed by the taliban for those of you who have been to afghanistan and you know what we're talking about here we all know that there's a certain group of any real society i guess no matter where the military base is at in the world but it just happens to be in afghanistan as well people that hang around the base try to get as much free stuff as they can from the government while they can and those people were a lot of those people were the people that ended up on flights so plus there is the completely atrocious parts of afghan culture that we cannot talk about here because we try to be as family friendly as possible in these briefings but every soldier again who's been to afghanistan knows exactly what i'm talking about so when you combine all of this stuff together the culture the evacuation the the the need for the biden administration to pump up numbers even people who might not have deserved a trip out of that country to here uh all of these things adding up together mean that you're going to have incidents like this we saw this coming we saw this we saw this and talked about it during the evacuation and now we're now we're seeing the results of this moving on to number four uh new york is in a pickle uh the state government has created a worker shortage in the health care industry by mandating the jab so what nor what new york is dealing with right now is a medical crisis of their own creation which they freely admit to creating this is not some this is not just me being biased this is something they admit to they mandated the jab for health care workers a lot of health care workers left the job or they were or they quit um and now there's a shortage of health care workers allegedly so much of a shortage that the governor is planning to call up the national guard to staff hospitals now one might ask instead of calling up the national guard why not just get rid of the mandates and bring those people back that quit well that would certainly be the preferable option from a strategic standpoint but the past couple of years have certainly been a time for governors to use the national guard as they see fit so who knows i just wanted to point this out in case you end up needing medical care in new york you might find that your doctor is a soldier in the near future due to the shortage of health care workers and moving on to number five kind of moving back to afghanistan too the fbi is publicly they've publicly released that they are investigating certain veteran groups who were working to rescue people from afghanistan that the u.s government left behind the fbi has launched an official investigation and made visits to individual residences of people and groups who worked to get americans back home for us this is completely unsurprising as we have stated many times in our afghanistan series the us government is trying to cover up leaving americans behind and is targeting anyone who tried to help get americans out no witness is no crime right so the u.s government is working around the clock to make sure that as few people make it home as possible again something that we pointed out as as being a huge problem in our afghanistan series and number six i briefly wanted to touch on the border crisis just to remind people that it does in fact still exist it's still a huge problem we have observed a significant propaganda effort to slander the border patrol agents down there you know with the whole photo scandal that was completely fabricated uh border patrol agents never whipped anybody and the video and other photos of the event have shown that this is a complete and utter lie even the guy who took the photo that the white house has been pushing and their minions have been pushing on social media the dude who took the photo said he never saw anybody whipping anyone so that's really pretty much the update on that just to kind of dispel that that never happened right uh and a lot of there's a lot of propaganda um and the fact that the illegal immigration problem uh this immediate crisis as specifically is still a massive problem and the byte administration has been quietly letting in the very same people that they said they would send back to their host nations so pretty much the status quo on that front and moving into a new slide i wanted to briefly talk about some developing technologies i know this is going to be kind of hard to work into the normal rotation of things but i did want to talk about it because there's a lot of new gadgets and technologies that are coming out that i think are worth knowing about at least the first one is this new satcom detector so this is a new detector that is you can read all this technical data about it at least the technical data that is public about it in the sources but this is a new detection device that can detect and pinpoint sat phone calls from the iridium network the thurian network and the inmarsat network now of course sat phone interception tools have been used for years so this is nothing new it's just this particular one is new so that's kind of interesting um moving on to number two is the shadow dragon surveillance software uh so this again is something that is currently being used it's actually kind of old this has been around for kind of a while but i didn't want to mention it because it's gotten a lot of um a lot of press lately actually the article that is the source for this the primary like company that is like you know outraged about this software is the intercept and if you read the article it is it is full of very uh very biased language i'll say that i'll say it like that um but in any case basically the shadow dragon surveillance software is just a suite of software tools that's like palantir for those guys out there who have used who like who are analysts and have used this stuff it's like palantir it's actually more closely aligned to like analyst notebook from way back in the day but yeah it's just a social media aggregator it has a lot of different sources and tools very powerful tool and it turns out our police most police groups in the united states are using this or something like this so yeah something to be aware of it's very interesting how if how the whole thing works and uh the intercept article's got some interesting stuff about it but again just be advised it's not really easy to read um so yeah i thought that would be kind of interesting to talk about also the mark 22 sniper rifle continues this development the fort bragg pao just put out a a few pictures of it so it underwent some airborne testing a couple weeks ago in which they wanted to make sure that it actually maintained its accuracy after uh the the jostling of a of a jump you know static line deployment so um that's kind of interesting it's going to be probably fielded pretty soon if it isn't already in the hands of some special dudes doing special things as it already has been for at least a couple of years now i think and one of the more cool ones i think to talk about is the new mc130 juliet variant the commando 2 amphibious variant specifically of the c130 airframe so basically this is a c-130 hercules or really the the mc130 that they're going to put some gigantic floats on so that it can be amphibious now this is kind of interesting because this is afsock requesting this of course but the fact that we're trying to shift uh to the pacific you know the great pacific pivot right that a lot of military analysts are talking about this is one of those things right being able to land at some of these smaller atolls and we're trying to repeat a lot of the doctrine we're kind of going back to that world war ii uh conflict against japan right the war in the pacific there and looking at a lot of the lessons learned and geography hasn't changed at all since world war ii so uh technology has to uh has to change in order to provide the capabilities we need for that conflict so i thought that was kind of interesting also it's in really the the later stages of development they're they're actually going to have this is going from drawing board to full scale demonstration in 17 months so that's uh that's a fast track program that's that's why i wanted to talk about it this is this is moving quick uh for such a program so you know again the special forces community has been very uh very interested in using the c-130 airframe for very specific things in the past and they have fast-tracked other airframes as well but this is an interesting one to to keep in mind and to be on the lookout for if you happen to see one in testing and moving on to number five uh this one is really kind of uh the cat's out of the bag so i guess we can kind of talk about it now considering it's all over the internet at this point a huge a gigantic optic violation resulted in a worker or some personnel or somebody taking a video and posting on tick tock of one of our stealth aircraft that was undergoing testing at the helendale radar cross section facility so yeah nothing is known about it other than this video coming out but it is very interesting design and it it's raising a lot of eyebrows around the internet just because of how futuristic it looks but again this is probably not something that is anywhere close to being developed if they're still undergoing the radar cross-section analysis then it's probably early on in its phase of development but interesting thing to note uh moving forward i guess and finally is something that is sure to creep a lot of people out this is a flying microchip so northwestern university has created the smallest ever human-made flying object which is essentially a flying microchip so i'm not sure if you can actually see it or not but there is a whole pile of these things right here and this is of course inside reference to a carpenter ant they're smaller than some of these grains of sand so there's one there there's one there there there and there yeah very interesting uh now i know this is talking about anything that's small and flying and potentially a collection asset is surely to ignite the most interesting parts of the internet i guess i'll say it that way but this is purely conceptual sure they've made them and it does appear to work but again i'm not exactly looking around the room for these little particles of dust that are flying around with cameras on them just yet so yes there is a demonstration yes this is a proof of concept essentially but it's not like this is going to become a mainstream thing uh even within the next year or two this is a long-term thing as we try to make sensors that are smaller and smaller and smaller you know the government agencies making these are going to have a harder and harder time uh getting things as compact as possible so again something interesting i thought i'd touch on and uh yeah i guess we'll keep an eye on some of these developing technologies and see how they how they shake out over the next few you know weeks and years i guess moving on to the public school attendance mask mandate tracker map so really there have been a couple of updates not too many but really the two biggest ones are florida and texas so florida most large school districts now require masks directly going against the governor's orders which is a trend that we've been observing for a long time it seems that on the government level particularly when it comes to these mandates that politically liberal officials and agencies in conservative states are 100 percent willing to fight their conservative governors and openly not complying with their orders but the reverse is not true so conservative officials local governments and agencies and entities uh in liberal states are certainly not willing to fight their liberal political leadership in in the more liberal states uh certainly not as much as liberals are willing to fight conservatives on issues like this so um i wanted to point this out because it's something to keep in mind as these maps start getting blurry over the next few days and weeks right same situation in texas mass mandates are banned right but that ban was overturned by a court or by a judge who's put a temporary hold on it and also about 85 percent of all the school districts in texas require masks so there you go and that trend applies to pretty much all states right now this slide isn't great i don't like the way this slide is depicting things because it looks like the states that are gray it kind of looks like there's nothing going on there but just as a baseline almost all states actually i think every state at this point has a mass mandate in their most populated cities uh in their capital cities or really even just their largest school districts so i just wanted to point that out that even though there might not be a mandate on the state level every single state has at least one very large school district usually the biggest school district in the state in which masks are mandated so and as far as other changes from the last brief tennessee two judges teamed up together to block the mask mandate ban and the same thing happened in oklahoma a temporary injunction was issued there to stop their mandate ban on the other end of the spectrum south carolina is actually doing pretty good there there look like they're charging forward ahead um faster than anybody else uh their supreme court upheld the ban on mandates at the state level so that will deal a significant blow to the mandate makers in south carolina for a while although local districts can and still do mandate masks on their own it's just it's prohibited at the state level and it's backed up by the south carolina supreme court moving on to the jab mandate tracker really no updates at all to this slide california is still the only state where it's mandated for students k-12 to receive the medical procedure so i'm just going to push forward into the medical resistance tracker uh really there's only been a couple of updates really arkansas is the biggest one again arkansas is in that weird situation where the governor has verbally stated that he is in favor of medical mandates but he's just upset that it's the federal government doing it and not anybody on a lower level such as himself or company by company i guess so we expect similar sentiments to work their way out over the next few weeks as we see what other mandates are coming down the pipeline remember we still haven't really seen anything tangible to give us an indication of the exact wording of these mandates that will be coming from osha so right now a lot of the states that are claiming to resist don't really have anything to grab onto with a lawsuit just yet everybody's pretty much in wait and see mode for now with only a few states going out of the way to provide a blanket of laws that will prevent whatever the regime comes up with from being enforced and moving on to international issues i'm going to move through these quite quickly because there is a lot of stuff to talk about so first up is the medical stuff getting that kind of out of the way so australia new zealand and france uh they're we're seeing significant resistance to the medical mandates and really government overreach at this point and those demonstrations are certainly escalating uh as the days go by some nations such as sweden denmark and norway have actually backpedaled sweden and norway announced their recovery from the the pandemic and denmark has actually done the same but also reclassified the virus as something that is no greater threat than the flu so for some nations their governments are doubling down on the restrictions and in other nations they are treating it like it's like it's over so that's interesting as time goes on moving over to southeast asia the coup in myanmar is escalating quite significantly as a military junta there tries to drill down its control even further there's been quite a quite a bit of resistance in burma throughout the past few months but this military coup situation will probably have follow-on effects for a long time and moving forward into africa into the sahel region specifically mali the long-range reconnaissance group is at it again most people might know them as the lrdg of the long-range desert group the ses has been very active in north africa and the long-range reconnaissance group has specifically been conducting a lot of long-range missions that are very much an homage to their heritage throughout north africa really and this is due to the fight against isis being quite significant in throughout mali and niger as we move forward into the winter season although lately the past few years we've seen a pretty significant fighting season continue throughout the winter basically a year around fighting season uh for for most of the isis militants that try to maintain control of africa now i know a lot of people are saying why are you talking about africa constantly well because it's a huge theater and because a lot of people have a lot of interest in africa china has built a a lot a serious amount of bases there they've built a lot of roads in exchange for mineral rights it is a next it's not the next frontier but it is a major goal for a lot of powers around the world and you know we keep constantly having green berets get killed in africa in places where the american public isn't even aware that that's where we are so the united states has a presence there obviously the brits have a good presence there the french actually just had one of their soldiers killed in the same theater so africa is certainly relevant mostly for the mineral wealth most of the minerals that are required to make things like smartphones were things like colton and nickel and cobalt and bauxite and things like that those elements have to come from somewhere sure the devices are made in china but the the elements that are used to make the devices come from africa for the most part so that's why africa is such a huge deal and that's why china wants to invest heavily in africa as much as they can a lot of mineral wealth they can export back they can avoid the natural resource curse that pretty much every african nation has suffered from nations with large amounts of mineral wealth tend to tend to do pretty poorly economically even though it sounds counterproductive this is called the natural resource curse which you can read more about on your own but the case in point is that a lot of these nations are exporting their stuff so china is very much interested in africa and so is everyone else jumping back to europe the united kingdom uh our friends across the pond are not doing so well when it comes to shortages of things now everyone has that magic b word right brexit on their on their minds these days uh and it seems to be like a lot of the logistical problems are kind of caused by brexit but also not not really so you know driver shortages yeah you could point it back to brexit at some point uh everything it comes back to any kind of shaking up of the logistical supply network of a nation is going to be it's going to have results so that's why you have things like driver shortages they have you know gasoline shortages gasoline rationing is still happening uh from last brief that's still going on you've got a co2 shortage so um in the uk they use co2 mainly for the creation of things like of course beverage production but also for uh the humane killing of uh animals the slaughtering of animals for uh meat and that's that's already hitting the meat industry so it's not that there's a shortage of beef it's just there's a shortage of the chemicals needed to you know humanely dispatch those animals right so which drives production down and there you go so the united kingdom as a whole we know they're not doing super hot when it comes to logistics right now and jumping back to south korea uh they have of course as almost immediately after the last briefing work in which we talked about their new launches in the you know the sort of mini arms race that's going on between the north and the south right now they have released or released footage of their new anti-ship cruise missile so it's a hypersonic missile so huge technological development for them of course uh they got outside help so if you actually look at the missile itself it looks very similar to some russian uh russian missiles so interestingly south korea is continuing their uh continuing their missile tests we'll of course see something from the north if we haven't already that we just missed uh something from the north is going to happen uh probably another missile test or something you know it's how an arms race works so something to keep an eye on if you happen to see north korea has done something this is probably why and moving forward to russia so for those that don't track russian politics russia recently had an election and if you look at a lot of the things that are being said online a lot of people are saying that it could not have been more fraudulent if they tried so we're talking about all kinds of things like people recording the actual digital voting screen thing changing their vote uh the number of votes being changed so so um alexia navalny's old political outfit was like hugely in the lead uh at one point and then like 60 seconds before the voting polls closed uh putin's party jumped to the lead with like 90 percent of the vote so you know the classic stuff we keep hearing and uh stuff that eerily rings true here in the united states as well as we question our own uh electoral process so very interesting it's kind of hilarious to see the kind of the things that are coming out about the russian election but uh you guys can go check that out on your own i just think it's quite interesting to to to note that uh uh russia and the ruling elite are still uh still up to their old tricks just like just like expected and moving to austria or really i suppose technically the united states as well so u.s and austria the cia station chief in vienna has been ousted from her job among accusations that she did not report any sort of incidents involving havana syndrome so for those of you who have not been following our discussions on havana syndrome this is a it is an illness that was first thought to be a myth a few years ago it's been around for gosh i think the first time i heard about havana syndrome was about 10 years ago um but basically it's an it's a mysterious illness with no it's got symptoms like nausea headaches tinnitus things like that so people are exhibiting real symptoms but you there's no uh indication there's no tox no toxins in their system they pass a full medical evaluation and so havana syndrome is very much a uh mysterious thing even among the highest levels of our intelligence agencies they've gotten a lot more evidence about what they think it might be now but back in the day what's become public knowledge i suppose and safe to talk about is it is most people think it has something to do with some kind of electromagnetic weapon some kind of uh ray gun or some kind of directed energy weapon you know dew uh that is causing these kinds of things we don't some kind of microwave weapon is what was theorized at one point uh others think it's some kind of x-ray or something to do with the electromagnetic spectrum so um that's kind of the general thinking about havana syndrome right now and a lot of diplomats have reported it because it of course surfaced in havana cuba of diplomats you know not every diplomat who lives in a country you know is a representative of the united states they don't all live inside the embassy they live outside the embassy so workers would report getting sick and this started happening all over the planet and it turns out bringing it back to austria in vienna they had more cases than anywhere else combined so there you go and the cia station chief there was covering that up or down playing down playing it like so many uh diplomats have downplayed it over the years but it's clearly a real thing uh people are really getting sick as to who is doing this the classic finger pointing is of course russia our number one diplomatic adversary um it's it sounds like a russian thing to do that's kind of along the thing kind of along the lines of the cold war tricks they used to do but then again the united states is also perfectly capable of doing these attacks on ourselves as well so who who really knows right unless you're the director of the cia you're not going to know the full story of any of this stuff and even then you might not know so i thought it was kind of interesting it brings back this havana syndrome uh medical thing in back into the press for people to to kind of sink their teeth into and it's sort of from our side of things um it kind of triggers us even here as a civilian group right um it triggers us into thinking okay well well is this this is going to be a huge deal a few years down the line because we've already seen how in just a few short years it's gone from being a myth to a very serious thing and we're trying and it's one of those things that like once you get down into the weeds of well how would you how would you stop it how would you prevent something like this it gets very difficult to do so i just wanted to point that out for those that are interested in havana syndrome and moving on to china so china not doing super hot they're still working through the problems with the evergrand crisis their economy is is seriously in trouble i guess we'll see how this plays on the asian markets which are not doing super hot right now either way but it looks like uh china is going to have some serious economic problems for the foreseeable future finally ending on bahrain sorry it's too small to show on the map but i just wanted to briefly mention the new cooperation the new partnership between bahrain and the us navy in which they're going to start patrolling together a lot more so for those that don't know bahrain's a small little island kind of nation out there next to saudi arabia off the coast there and it's it's really just a big u.s navy base it is its own nation they have their own stuff but it's really one of those diplomatically weird places to describe uh but they do have a navy they do have a coastal uh you know coastal defense thing and they have quite a few ships um so we're going to be uh the united united states is going to be conducting a lot more exercises with them throughout the rest of the gulf region uh quite soon and that's pretty much all i've got for today uh thank you again to everyone for watching and a special thank you to all of our supporters on patreon i know we've gotten kind of a burst of people supporting us over there so just wanted to thank you all again for that it really does help with our rising costs here as we start to put out more and more content and moving on to our sources kind of got a lot for this week so there's slide one two three four and five slides on sources so you guys can pause and either manually type these in or you can check out the link below which will have the pdf of these slides uh uploaded to odyssey where you can actually get the clickable link so if you wanted to research more which we would recommend so once again thank you everyone for watching and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. Today we're going to continue our series on structured analytic techniques by covering everyone's favorite link analysis. So get ready to channel your inner skitso and let's get started. So what is link analysis? Well, in simple terms, this is just a way of visualizing relationships between entities. So a very broad definition. You can think of this as more along the lines of the game six degrees of separation but for nerds, right? Every time The Field of Intelligence is featured in Hollywood, we inevitably have that one scene. One of the main characters standing alone in a dark room brooding over pictures or pieces of paper that are tacked all over their wall. All of course connected by red string or some other kind of uh fairly messy arrangement. And that's generally what we think of when we think of link analysis. And to some degree, this is a general rough idea of how it works. The main discrepancy is that link analysis is not really the face of intel work like it is in Hollywood. So, of course, Hollywood tries to play this up and try to make it out to look like link analysis is way more important and way more of a central focus point than than it actually is. But having a super spy scroll around Microsoft Word all day doesn't really look too good on camera. So link analysis, even though it's just one of the many tools that are used, tends to be the face of intel work in Hollywood. And because of that, even intel guys can sometimes place a little bit more importance on link analysis than there should be. So what are the main advantages of conducting link analysis? Well, for one, link analysis is a fantastic way to determine what you have already researched. It is easy to look at a graph and see, oh well, this one point here doesn't have any links to it, so maybe I should research that and see if I can link some of this stuff together. It's very easy and quick to see these missing links and either make the links yourself or conduct research in other ways, which we'll get to. Because of this, it helps to identify details that may have been missed earlier. It's really, really easy when you're juggling around a lot of random information. It's really easy to miss something. So, if you start off by organizing your thoughts and kind of doing a mind map, which is a form of link analysis, if you were to put all of this information just right onto a graph, even if you're not making any links, if you just put it down on paper somewhere, it makes it a lot harder to miss something later on. And as we know, investigations and intel work and even just research is not necessarily a linear path a lot of the times. And a lot of times, you're going to circle back around to details that you may have missed in the beginning. you're going to have to adjust priors, right? Such as in the case of more basian thinking. And link analysis is a way to reduce bias by putting everything down on paper so that we don't just ignore details that we haven't figured out. Often times during the investigative process or the intel cycle or whatever, often times we will have information or pieces of the puzzle that we can't really fit in just yet, right? We're trying to assemble a picture. We're trying to put together a puzzle and sometimes we've got to set pieces aside for a second because we don't know how they factor in just yet. Well, if you were to use another analytic technique, it may be easy to forget details or subconsciously or even intentionally forget details that you haven't figured out. Human beings naturally want to be biased in this way. If we can't see how something factors in, we just ignore that detail. And when it comes to investigations, that's maybe not the best way to do it. So link analysis forces us to keep details that we don't understand yet right in front of our faces until we can figure out a link later on. So what about the disadvantages? Are there any reasons why link analysis wouldn't work or maybe isn't the best fit? Well, it really depends on the type of data that you're working with. So if you have the wrong kind of data, then maybe link analysis isn't isn't the right solution. But one of the main disadvantages that I have come across personally over the years is that link analysis because of the Hollywood factor like I mentioned even professional intel analysts want to look at stuff like this sometimes and they might not understand that this is not the right tool. Sometimes it's better to understand that link analysis is not the tool that you need rather than try to spin your tires and just bog down and not actually get any work done at all. And we'll talk about that in a bit as it becomes a little bit more clear how it's very very easy to go way down deep in rabbit holes that aren't necessarily the most useful. But we'll talk about that in a moment because it's easier to have an example in front of us. Just know that for right now, one of the main disadvantages for link analysis is it's very easy to get trapped and sucked into one rabbit hole and go all the way down and follow that rabbit hole all the way to the very end only for you to have wasted a lot of time investigating something or researching something that actually isn't very helpful at all in the grand scheme of things. So that's the basic definitions of what link analysis is and the advantages and disadvantages of it. Now, when it comes to actually conducting link analysis, we don't actually use paper and string a lot of the times like in Hollywood. It's pretty rare these days, but I have done it the old-fashioned way. What is a far better solution, however, is to use software. And to broach a very highly controversial topic, here are two of the main software solutions that are used by the open- source community for link analysis. The first one is Maltiggo. This is usually what I prefer to use myself simply because of one little known detail. Maltiggo is basically identical to Palunteer, specifically Palanteer Gotham. Now, I know that this name will be very, very inflammatory to even mention because of the recent context of data security and data privacy and it's a very inflammatory company and I get it. It's not without good reason. But hopefully today by using Maltiggo a little bit, I can show you exactly what Palunteer is all about. Palanteer is a company that was built around one idea, link analysis and linking together a lot of databases. So if you want to be concerned about Palunteer, you absolutely should be. But you can only understand how and why to be concerned if you understand how the system works. Palanteer is of course a closed uh ecosystem, right? They only uh sell their product to government and military sources, law enforcement, things like that. And because of this, the only people who know what Paler actually is and what it does are people who have used it professionally. And trust me, that's a pretty short list. And I can tell you that as of 2025, Maltiggo is it's very it's much simpler. It doesn't have as many databases to pull information from. And it's obviously not tapped into the feds or anything like that. Maltiggo is basically just an open-source version of a lot of the feeds that Palanteer has organic to them. This distinction is important because of the extreme levels of fear surrounding Palanteer and people not actually understanding what it's all about. Palanteer Gotham is their version of a link analysis software suite. That's what it does. It was always suspected by myself and those who I knew who were Intel analysts at the time that Palunteer actually stole the idea from analyst notebook, which is the same thing, right? It's basically just a graphical software program that allows you to put dots on a chart and link them all together. It's a little bit it's a little bit antiquated nowadays, but you have to understand that's what Palanteer makes their bread and butter off of. They make their money. And the reason that they're such a a very influential company is not because they've developed Skynet, at least not yet, but because they're able to take a 20 or 30year-old software program, modernize it, make it slick and easy to sell to the government. Now, of course, this will change. They'll get better feeds. They're going to start incorporating AI into it, which is what Maltgo, I think, is going to do as well, but you see how it's all about building relationships and building links between entities. That's where the real fear comes in, not just with Palunteer, but Maltiggo and Analyst Notebook and some of these other platforms that are getting started, such as the other open-source alternative called Link Scope. I wanted to mention this one because one of the main benefits to Maltiggo is that it's commonly used. It's fairly uh available for everyone to kind of download for free. However, Maltiggo has gone the way of the government contractor idea, which is basically to jack up your prices by like 5,000%. A professional license to Maltiggo used to be pretty cheap. Now, it's over €6,000 a year just for a basic professional license. That's not even all they have to offer. So, it's out of the range of everyone, including myself. So, I just use the free version of Maltiggo. Now, understandably, there's a little bit of a social factor here. If you don't like what Maltiggo is doing, if you think it's pretty dirty and you want an open- source alternative, there is one. It's called Link Scope. There hasn't been that much development on it lately, but it's very similar. If you install Maltiggo and you install Link Scope and you compare the two, you're it's going to be very familiar. Once you learn how to use Link Scope, Maltiggo, Palunteer, Analyst Notebook, they're all basically within the realm of the same kind of ecosystem with each other. So, for my link analysis software of choice, I prefer to use Maltiggo when I do uh link analysis, which is not often, but I think I'm probably going to start getting more into it simply because I think that Maltiggo will work very very well with the notetaking and research application that I use, which is uh Obsidian. They don't talk together and they don't work together. It would be great if there was a plugin for either one that would allow you to bring in notes or search a database of notes. There may be. I haven't looked into it, but anyway, I use I like to use Maltiggo for more visual representations of links and link analysis and things like that, whereas I prefer to use Obsidian for roughly 99% of what I do. So, that leads us to the best use cases for using something like Maltiggo to visually represent networks on a map. For me, there are two main ways that I use Maltiggo. The first way is the most common way, which is just simply visualizing research in real time. I can throw a bunch of ideas on the graph. I can throw a bunch of entities, names, locations, addresses, phone numbers. I can throw it all on the graph and start working uh the network from there. And like I said at the beginning, it's also helpful for knowing what I've researched already. So if I've got a list of names and associations, and I have one on the list that hasn't been researched, I can very quickly see that uh both in a list format and also on a on a graph like you can see here. The second use for using Maltiggo specifically goes back to why it's important to understand what Palunteer does and what Link Scope does and what Analyst Notebook does, right? All those other platforms because Maltigo is not just a big whiteboard that you can scratch uh notes on, right? You can actually highlight things and use what they call transformations to conduct analysis of data points that you've put and an analyze relationships between the two, pull in information from the web and things like that. Again, this is why it's important to understand what Palunteer does because Maltiggo really relies on third-party API access. So, if you want to conduct a lot of research and you want to use specific tools, there's probably a plugin for it on Maltiggo. It's got a lot of resources, but you need to bring your own API key in a lot of a lot of cases. Once you've done that and once you have accounts with these other commercial companies, you can then ingest their data into Maltiggo. I know a lot of cyber security guys love this kind of thing and you can look at the plugins that are on Maltiggo and see that it's really heavily invested in the cyber security crowd. For me, I really just like visualizing the data. So, I don't use transformations as much as I probably should for a couple of different reasons. One, uh most of the links that I need to make between entities are manual links. So, I'm not really using Maltigo to its fullest potential, which is okay for now. We'll talk about the basics uh today and get into more of the advanced features at a later time. But the second reason is because it's not free. Uh you're going to consume credits. They have a credit based system, right? Like a lot of software companies are going to. They have credits that you get uh in your account. If you have a free account, you get I think 200 credits a month, which is not a lot. Anyway, that's more of an advanced thing. Let's stick with the visual stuff today. Let's stick with the documents and photos on a on a wall with string connecting them all. uh use for this platform which is fairly fairly helpful by itself. And to do that, let's get to a practical example. But before that, let's spend a little bit more time outlining the way that we need to think about things. I know it's annoying. Why don't you just get right to the chart? Well, this is important to understand because in the world of intelligence, there are few things more important than staying organized early on. You really want to organize your information early on so that you don't waste a lot of time. Time is not necessarily money, right? In the world of Intel, time is security. Time could be someone's life on the line. So, you want to make sure that you're approaching this with the right framework. Again, to prevent that disadvantage I listed way back at the beginning, going down rabbit holes that are not going to be helpful and may waste your time. You want to have a good starting framework and understand what you're doing before you get into it. more than any of these other analytic techniques. You really need to be cognizant and self-aware of what you're doing here. Trust me on this. I have wasted so much time myself going down endless rabbit holes that have been completely fruitless and now the day is gone and you know, you don't have anything to show for it. So, the starting framework that I like to use for link analysis is generally one of two things. In the Intel world, you're going to get two you're going to get tasked with things in two main ways. One, you're going to start with a question that needs to be answered. That's the easy one, isn't it? Somebody comes and asks you a very specific question, maybe even a vague question. Who knows? But they're going to ask you a question and you need to provide an answer for that. That's what the field of intelligence normally does. But more often, more commonly, is you're going to have a starting point that is not really tied to a specific question, but that starting point is going to allow you to find the answer later on. Raise your hand if you have ever been told by your boss, I don't know what I need to know, but I need you to figure it out kind of thing. So starting from a you don't know what you don't know perspective that's like your whole intel career for the most part or at least for most people your customer your client your boss whoever you're working for in the prepared citizenry community even you know your close family members or your community itself they're not going to know what they need right so you have to start with a lot of loose assumptions and bring that stuff together to kind of formulate the importance of what needs to be asked later on again this will make more sense when we get to the graph now you need to have a little bit of intuition here. I'm sorry. This is just something that you can't really teach. Uh the only way that you can figure this out is experience and and just working on this and working through this. You need to understand and you need to be able to identify when link analysis is beneficial to use. Otherwise, you're going to want to use link analysis for everything and it's a slow process and honestly from for a lot of the stuff you need to be researching and a lot of the information and intelligence you need to be processing, it's going to be a waste of time. So when is link analysis not a waste of time? When is it beneficial to do? Well, really anytime you have networks of people, places or things that can be linked together? If you've got a person and a business and a business address and a phone number and you've got a lot of that type of data, you can run it through your link analysis software. If you're tracking a terrorist, if you've got a terrorist and his buddies and their phone numbers and you've got it all tied to an address or a series of addresses, these kinds of data points are very very helpful. It doesn't necessarily need to be tied to a specific geographic coordinate. That would be helpful, but it's not necessary at this stage. Just know that when you see a lot of, you know, names, addresses, phone numbers, contact information, uh, data points that we can put on a map, lots of different numbers that you may not see any pattern to, but there may be a pattern, right? That kind of stuff. Uh, that's when you're going to really get the most bang for your buck out of link analysis. When you don't want to use link analysis is when you're just doing a basic research project where there's going to be very very complex ideas, theories, concepts, philosophy, anything to do with that, that's really not going to be useful for link analysis because you're going to put one point on your graph and then there's going to be everything linked to that one point. Right? If you're trying to examine who's this guy's friends and who are his friends and the friends of friends and what about their family and where they work, do they work in the same building? You see how we're starting to think analytically and think along the lines of making links? Yeah, remember when I said that uh link analysis was pretty simple? Well, it can get pretty complicated. So, if that doesn't scramble your noggin enough, let's actually look into the specific example I wanted to cover today, which is the Harender Singh murder investigation. So, let's walk through this. I'm going to walk you all the way through this and show you what I have done over a period of I don't know 8 to 10 man hours and we'll see exactly what information I can do and how I can develop out this problem set. So for those of you who are watching this in the future, uh the brief summary of this incident is that last week, last Tuesday, this individual was involved in a fatal traffic accident on the Florida Turnpike. Three people were killed due to his uh negligent driving tactics where he was trying to pull a U-turn on on the interstate and a minivan was not able to stop in time. Three people uh dead at the scene. Now, right up front, I personally identified this case as a good candidate for a link analysis due to a few different reasons. Right. So, overall, I have quite a few questions that I am very interested in investigating the answers to with regards to this case. I want to know what's this guy's history? Was this a preventable accident? Can we prevent similar things from happening in the future? Things like this, right? And the way to get to a lot of the questions that I may not have answers to is to start somewhere. So, what is the starting information? Well, we know the individual's name. Harender Singh. So, we have a name. We already have an advantage, right? You would not believe the number of times I've had to start a link analysis by using John Doe, right? The fact that we have a name to start with is something. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a lot. And from there, we also have crime scene photos in this case, which give us the ultimate jackpot, a US Department of Transportation number. For those of you who are not aware, semi-truckss all around the United States are required to have a US DOT identification number. Usually, it's going to be stencled or painted on the door. And this number identifies the company that uh this individual or this truck belongs to. So, right up front before we touch any kind of link analysis software, what do we have? We have the driver's name. We have the name of the company that uh he was driving for and we have the US DOT number. In this case, we also have the MC number. MC numbers, they're an old system. I think they're going to be replaced by US DOT numbers. So, you can use that. We'll put it on the chart. But really, we just need that US DOT number because then we can run that number through a bunch of databases and start to develop out this network. So, now that we have the starting information, let me go ahead and bring up Maltiggo and we can run through this investigation in real time and see what we come up with. All right, everyone. Here we are in Maltiggo. So, I want to state right up front, this is not really a tutorial on this. This is more of kind of an overview, getting our feet wet with this uh type of platform. We just want to have a general framework for understanding a general overview for how OSENT software, which is usually just link analysis software, works when it comes to conducting investigations. So, I've got Maltiggo installed. Everything's good to go. I've logged into my account. You've got to create an account with them even just to download this software, but don't worry, it's all free. You don't need to put any personal information in. You can just uh put, you know, anonymous information and you can still download it. But the reason that they have uh that login feature where you have to log in to use this platform. The reason for that is because all of these tools that you see here are going to be consuming credits when you use them. But don't worry about all of this. We don't need any of this today. We're just going to be creating a new graph. So we're going to go ahead and open up new graph. And we're going to want to save this project. So I'm going to save as. Wait for it to load. Unfortunately, this is the downside of using a Java based system is that sometimes it takes forever to load. Uh, so you just kind of got to wait on it a little bit. So, I'm going to name this one Harender Singh investigation test. I have a legitimate investigation folder. Every investigation that I do, I try to put in a folder. And this is because uh I like to organize things based on investigation names, sometimes dates depending on what it is. But for this case, this is going to be a named investigation for me. And if I'm going to use a tool like Obsidian or some other kind of tool, if I need to download PDF documents or images, I need somewhere to save them. So, I like to keep it all in the same folder. In this case, I also want to add to that same folder my Maltiggo products. Again, Maltiggo is not a one-stop shop for everything. Uh, you're going to need probably a lot of other tools which need a place to save files, too. So, I'm going to go ahead and save that. And here we are. We have a blank page. Now we can get to work. We can start our investigation. And the first step that we're going to do is vomit all of the information that we have onto this page. Right? We're just going to data dump all of the information that we have right up front. It seems complicated, but it's really not. And in this case, what we're going to do is add a lot of entities, add a lot of things that we know to this blank page. And to do that, we're going to be using the entity pallet right over here. Uh now in the case that you accidentally close this out uh a lot of the things in Maltiggo are not very intuitive. So what you need to do if you accidentally close out a window is then go over here to windows and then you can bring it back. So just bring back the entity pallet here. Remember entity pallet is all the things that you can put on your uh graph here. One of the very first pieces of information that we have is the man who we're investigating. Right? we have his name and he is in fact a person. Now once you start putting these in here, you will have a recently used uh category here in your pallet. But let's just say you didn't have that. We can just search for person, an entity representing a human. So we're just going to grab that and drag it right to our graph. Now, before we go further, uh just as a point of clarification, again, one of those little sticking things is not very intuitive unless you play around with it and figure it out is your selection tool here. So, just like selecting anything on any, you know, PC or Mac, right? You're just going to grab and drag to select things. Well, in Maltiggo, you have the option to select entities or links. So, sometimes you might find that if you click the wrong thing, wait a minute, why is my why is my thing not working here? I can't select Mr. John Doe here. Well, it's because you have to go to the investigate tab and toggle back uh to entity selection. Same thing with links. We'll talk about that in a minute. But just as a little point of frustration for those of you who recently installed this, uh that's kind of how it works. But we've got a John Doe on our platform here. And what is John Doe going to be renamed to? Uh, we can do this one of two ways. We can just double tap the name here, Harender Singh. And we've simply named it. This is very handy if we're just, you know, hand jamming in a lot of people's names if you if you have to manually add a lot of different people. But you can also doubleclick this and you can see here that is subdivided by first name, surname, and you can actually add the guy's picture, which is exactly what we're going to do because we know what he looks like, don't we? So, clicking this plus down here, we're going to navigate to the file path where I have saved his image. And again, it's Java, so it's going to take us take it a little while to come up. Uh, but now we can go ahead and select his picture. Let's see if I've got it still. Yep, there he is. And we're going to attach. And boom, there he is. Now we can click okay. And his picture has been updated. So, we actually know what the guy looks like. And we can even add notes and attachments if we want to. And I do want to add one note here. Let's add the context for why this person is being added to the to to the chart here. It's always good to add context, right? It's it's helpful especially when you've got hundreds of points on your graph here and you're trying to think and wonder why did I put this guy on here again? Well, if we have uh before we find a link to a person, we can put a note which helps us figure out exactly what this guy was doing. In this case, I'm just going to put that he was involved in a MVA, motor vehicle accident in Florida on August 12th, 2025, which killed three people. So, he is our central point of focus for now. So, let's go back to our entity palette here and let's start adding some more stuff. So, he wasn't uh just joy riding around. He had a company, right? So, we're going to drag a company. We can again, of course, search for the word company and it comes up there. But again, I've been adding a lot of these lately. So, now one thing that I like to do if you've got multiple monitors, if you like to nerd out like that, you can resize your monitors, uh, which is what I like to do. I like to kind of squish everything together and then add in a web browser, uh, right next to it. so that I can have a better workflow here. So, let me go ahead and do that. All right. So, I've got my web browser up and running. We've got a a good internet browser here to use to Google stuff and do some research. Uh we've got Maltiggo up and let me bring up one more uh just kind of minimized and that is Obsidian. So, uh again, this shows the actual investigative process. I started off in Obsidian just taking notes uh regarding the carrier this guy worked for and uh the number and things like that. and a lot of those details regarding the companies and I I rapidly realized hey this would be a good job for Maltiggo. So having a canvas in uh Obsidian or even just a text note as well that's very handy for starting your initial brainstorming and then once you realize the type of data once you're able to identify that link analysis is a good candidate for your investigative process you can then transfer over. So, I've done some minimal research here in Obsidian. But before we get ahead of ourselves here, let me go ahead and finish putting in what I know. We don't want to uh start the investigation just yet. We don't want to start looking for links just yet. We want to put down all of the information that we have. And there's two things missing. One is the company name. In this case, we know that it is White Hawk Carriers Inc. And we know that this company employed Mr. Harender Singh. So now that we have clicked off of everything right uh we don't have any entities selected we can now drag uh click and drag to draw a link between uh this company and Mr. Harender Sync. Now how you want to run the links depends on you. In my case since this company employs him he is an employee of this company. I'm going to draw it from the company to him uh just in case we have any other co-workers or any other kind of uh employees that may come up. And in this case, I'm going to label this link employee. Okay. Uh I can just leave the color the standard default color. What I like to do personally, it's all just personal preference, right? And I personally like to leave it a sort of gray color just for a routine link that I'm not quite certain yet. Uh we can see now that we have uh Mr. Hargender Singh here. to again to move uh these items around on your graph, you have to click to select it and then you can click and drag to move it around. Otherwise, you're going to start drawing links if you just grab it like that. So, uh the same thing for uh the White Hog carriers here. Click, select it, and move it around. So, uh this is how we can or start to organize things. So, what other information do we have? Well, we have that very important DOT ID number, don't we? Well, unfortunately here in the Maltiggo pallet, there is no such listing. There is no entity for DOT ID number. So, we need to create one, right? And it's very simple. All we have to do is go to entities, new entity type, and put in all of the information. In this case, we're going to make it a US do number. And you can put a description, whatever you want. And then you can choose an icon. In this case, let's click browse here to choose some of the internal icons. Let's go with transportation. Looking for a truck. Let's make this one a truck. Ah, here we go. We'll make it a truck. And then we can uh click next. And you just click through all this stuff. You don't really need to put uh any of this information. You can bring in properties from other icons. So, basically, if you have a uh an icon that that's already on your chart or graph, you can copy all those features. We don't need that. All we need to do is click finish. Now, I've actually already done this. I'm going to click cancel. And what we're going to do is search for US DO. And there it is. We're going to drag in US DOT ID number with our icon that we just chose. And now we can put in the information. So, in this case, the number, let me grab it right quick uh from my PowerPoint here. And we'll put in this number right there. That's all I need to do. You can put in other details if you want, but it's not necessary. So, now we can start making links, right? How is this truck here linked to both of these things? Well, this company owns this truck. Owned by and we can say uh this person was driving this truck driver. So now we've got a sort of three-way link here. And from here we can start to get vastly more complicated because we can now take this link and go over here to our web page and check all of the safety measurement system data for this DOT ID number. So, we put it in the search box over here and we can search. Now, look at that. White Hawk Carriers Incorporated. It has the DOT ID number there. And would you look at that? It has a mailing address. So, we can go over here to our entity pallet and we can just go to town here. In this case, I like to use location. Uh, the default is Germany. You can change that preset if you want. Now, you may be tempted to just grab this address right here and uh just put it right into Maltiggo. And I'm going to do that. But what I'm going to do first is something that I have uh learned through over the past few years of doing this, which is if you have an address, just take a peek. You don't need to do much. Just take a peek in Google Maps. It doesn't need to be much, but this again if we're bringing in some of the other things that we have learned, this is just me getting a feel for terrain analysis, right? Oftent times the analyst has to work on a lot of different things at once. And you want to start building familiarity with some of these things that you're working on, right? And one of the things that I find helps me quite a bit is just because I'm slightly paranoid, drop that address into Google Earth and or Google Maps and just see what's there. In this case, nothing out of the ordinary. It's a residential address on a corner lot. But what is right next door? A church. Church is right next door. And uh this may uh come into play later on. Maybe, maybe not. Hard to say. It's also across the street from a high school. So, you see, we don't need to put this down. We don't need to write it down anywhere. You can if you want. We don't need to be that uh crazy about it, but just take a peek and see see what's there at the address. Also, when when you drop these addresses into Google Maps, uh you get the Google coded uh street view here. So, a lot of times when some agencies or companies in other countries will put addresses in the the address won't actually be accurate and you may have to use uh the special geolocation code here. Um, but in this case, it's perfectly fine. And I can grab this, copy it, and uh double tap here in Maltiggo, drop it right in. No problem whatsoever. Right. And if you want to double double check to make sure that this address is correct, uh you can of course double click on it, see the information that is uh in there with it. And yeah, it's you don't really need much more information. You can break it out like this if you wish. Um that might be helpful for more data analysis, but for now again, we're keeping things simple. So what is the context for adding this address to this chart here? Well, again, we're starting to add links. So this is the mailing address and in this case uh it's a residential address. Isn't that very interesting? So a trucking company is registered to somebody's house. Not entirely uncommon, exceptionally common for a lot of LLC's and businesses, especially out in California. Uh but we can start to see that maybe that might become a factor later on. So if we just take a step back here, we can already start to see how how our investigation is progressing. Right? We started with this information. From that starting information, we have created links and we have conducted research to start to build out the network. Now we can add in even more information because obviously Mr. Hargender Singh here does not own this company. Who does? Well, what I can do is grab the name of this company here using the analyst favorite. Ctrl C to copy and CtrlV to paste on your keyboard. And where do I want to put this name? I want to put this name in bisprofile.net. This company, this agency allows us to search to see who owns this company. So, let's go ahead and controlV to paste it in the box. Search. And would you look at that? This is our company. Now, we want to prevent bias, don't we? We want to make sure that this is in fact the correct company. So, take a look at this. you've got the same name, but there's also, you know, other companies that may or may not be affiliated. But we can cross reference this with the registered mailing address. And as we can see here, in this case, it's 2521 Acorn Lane, the same that was registered with the DOT. So now we know that this is the right company. And would you look at that? Navit cower. We have a new person to add. So let's go ahead and drag a new person here. Navnit cower cur cower don't know how to pronounce it but either way now we have a person to draw this to now from this person we can draw a link because they are the registered agent for this company we're starting to add things out and this mailing address is associated with them so they are associated with this company at this mailing address in two different places. Right? So now we've got a this company is registered at this address and this person uh is linked there too because they used this address when they filed for uh creating that company. So maybe redundant, maybe not, but it's about making links, right? So So from here, we've got a few different options, don't we? It's all based on personal preference. Well, in this case, what I want to do because I'm more concerned not necessarily about the employee who started all of this. I'm more concerned about the person who they were working for because this guy this guy's in jail, right? And why is he in jail? Because it is assessed that he killed someone. So I can even put a crime in here such as murder. Let's see here. The template is Germany Florida Turnpike MVA and that can be the let me give it a name. It is it is being investigated as a vehicular homicide which for categorization purposes is murder. So uh we'll we'll list it there. It sounds kind of harsh but that's the way that it is right. So we will call this one involved in incident. Okay, just to draw that link there. So you can see how we have a lot of different uh things we can add to the map. Now let's turn our attention to Miss Navit Cower here. C I think is how you pronounce it. Let's grab that name and let's do a search because uh this wonderful website called Biz Profile will let us search by name as well. And when I do a quick little search like this, you can see that this person has a lot of uh businesses registered in their name. Now, this could possibly be a red herring. So, we got to we got to tread carefully uh because again, let's do this uh the analyst trick here of just googling something and see what comes up first. Yeah, a lot of people. We've got doctors, College of Agricultural Sciences, uh somebody on on Instagram, and apparently an actress. Okay, so this name is fairly common. I would assume or I can surmise rather from this Google quick little Google here that this person that this name is a very common name. So we want to use a little bit of analytical discretion, right? Use that old gut feeling that we have here. And we can see that uh the person who registered this company, White Hawk Carriers, there's somebody with the same name registering an awful lot of other uh transportation and cargo companies. So, we can see where we're going with this. From this one person, we now have a lot of different links to investigate. And you can hand jam all of these in and cross reference them. Uh but really what you're probably going to want to do is use a little bit of analytical discretion in determining which ones go on here. Now, of course, you're interjecting yourself. You're interjecting your own uh analysis and bias potentially. So, you want to make sure that you're making a good decision here, but remember, human beings are not perfect, right? So, we've got to use a little bit of analytical discretion from time to time. And for instance, uh this person here who is a registered doctor in San Diego, uh they may be the same person. Um but maybe not. I don't know. Uh this freight company in Union City, California. H that's probably more likely. American Auto and E Solutions. H probably probably more more along the lines of what we're looking for. But let's go ahead and just add the first one in here, which is another company called Schube Express. Let's see if we can just add this in real quick. Shou Express Incorporated. And again, we can add a link registered agent. There we go. And again, Shub Express Incorporated. Look at that. They have an address. Quick little uh analyst tool here. Take a look at it on Google Maps. All right, let's take a peek. Yeah, residential uh looks like single family dwelling maybe. Yeah, single family residential business here in central Oh, yeah. Central California, just south of Sacramento. So, all right, we're starting to kind of get a better picture here. So, let's go ahead and grab that address. uh drag a location over, paste the address and mailing address. Now, I know that for Maltiggo users who use this quite routinely, I may be annoying you greatly. Uh because this is all just personal preference, right? Most of this, all of this actually, I'm hand jamming in. I'm I'm putting this in my hand. I'm doing all this manually. You can, if you so choose, use Maltiga more as an investigation platform. So for instance, this is a person uh named Nevnit Cower. And if I select their name, rightclick, now I have all these transformations. I can search Google with their name. I can try to find email addresses associated with that name. I can do all this kind of stuff from within Maltiggo. Now, we'll get to that. I don't want to downplay those features of this platform because that's kind of what sells this platform and warrants the uh you know thousands of dollar subscription to this per year for big companies. But for now, let's keep things simple. Right? Let's just do some link analysis uh the old school way, just digitized. Right? Now, as we can see here, I've gotten uh quite a few links here just from based off of our starting information here. I've gotten a few different things uh that we can link to. So, uh what I can do is change the way this data is visualized by clicking these layout uh things over here. And I can choose different ways of uh organizing the data. See, I can make it seem a little bit more organized here. This is great for sharing your information. Remember, Intel is a client-based structure, right? Career. So, you've got to make your information uh disseminatable or presentable to somebody who's not an Intel person. So, if I were to, you know, uh move these things around here and kind of make it messy and uh not really professional, like what is this? This is this is stupid. Like, this looks horrible. But I can go ahead and click these different ways of visualizing this data. And depending on what the client wants or what they need, uh you can you can flex it that way. Uh so really it's just kind of an easy way, one click to kind of do this sort of stuff. What I what I like to do is leave a nice clear space over whoever I'm working on. So in this case, I'm trying to add in Nev Neat Kors businesses, right? So uh I want to uh leave some open space here. So I can just drag over and then make the links. And then every now and then just tap that uh tap the organize button to kind of put everything into perspective here. But now again uh we can just continue on because I'm trying to put in the businesses for Neav and I can show you what I' I've come up with over the past few hours uh of doing this. But again, we want to make sure that we're keeping the right perspective here. We want to make sure we're not wasting our time and just going down needless rabbit holes. If you're trying to develop a hierarchy to find out who really owns something or who's really in control, you see how the news the news media might be tempted to just stop at the driver. No, he's not. He's the end of the he's the end of the line, right? The the actual person calling the shots is probably higher. And we haven't even gotten uh past this person yet. So this is why all of this emphasis on organization and why it's necessary to talk for so long about being aware of rabbit holes because you can go down and you can start researching every little bit here, every little icon, every little thing and then just waste a lot of time, right? So what I'm really trying to find out is who's ultimately responsible for this guy and what's the deal with this? Because I've already identified many different companies. I need to put all of these in. But check this out. I can grab that address for the for the other company and say Shub Express Incorporated. Let's grab that address and put the address into Biz profile and let's see if there are any other companies registered at this address. And as we can see, yeah, there are quite a few companies registered at this address. So if you recall uh when we were searching uh Miss Navit Cow's name, American Auto India Solutions came up, right? and it was associated with her and now it's registered at the same address. Check that out. Is that not interesting? So, now we have we're starting to develop these uh companies. So, let's go ahead and drop this in American Auto and E Solutions LLC. Sounds like a board here. And and some of you may know where I'm going with this as to why this is worth doing uh here in just a second, but let's go ahead and drop in the location. It's the same address actually. So, we don't actually need a new one. They're at this address. So, the mailing address for American Auto and East Solutions and the registered agent is Navnet Cower. So, there we go. Now, we're starting to build these links here. Now, let me go ahead and click the organize button again. Do you see? We may be starting to map an enterprise perhaps. And maybe those of you who look into this, you'll know exactly where I'm going. What do we have going on here from this one guy who got into a car crash with this number on the side of his truck? We have identified, ladies and gentlemen, what I suspect to be the classic LLC shell game. That's right. It's probably a bunch of companies running under a bunch of different LLC's so they can get different DOT identification numbers. And to confirm that theory, let's just grab a name of one of these companies here. Let's uh yeah, let's grab White Hawk, the original company we started with, and let's um I want to check something really quickly. Let's instead of checking it in SMS, let's check a different database, the SAFER database. The US Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Safety and Fitness Electronic Records Safer System. Wow, what a mouthful. Anyway, this is the DOT database that you can search for US DOT ID numbers. the MC or MX number again which is being phased out I think but also the name if you don't know the US DOT ID number uh you can search by name which is pretty helpful uh for those people who may not be in compliance with making their US do number very visible on the side of their trucks. So if you have an investigation to conduct into a you know logistics or trucking company and you you don't know what their DOT number is but you know their name you can search by name which is helpful. So, let's see here. We have White Hawk Carriers Incorporated out of Steras, California, which jives with the address uh that we have registered here. But there's also another one registered as Sparks, Nevada. Hm. Maybe that's something else we can look into, right? Well, let's start with this one for instance, and let's see to confirm here. Is that the same DOT identification number? It is 286642. Uh, and we can see uh all of the information about this particular carrier. So, we can confirm. Yeah, same address. Uh, we can see the number of mileage that they have, what they're authorized to carry. A lot of stuff is not particularly useful, but we've got some other names to check, don't we? And I don't know the uh DOT identification number for SHU Express Incorporated. So, let's go ahead and drop that one in. Okay, there's one in Lup, California. All right. So, there we go. Now, we've got some stuff to put in there. All right. Check it out. The address, the physical address for this company, 1793 Holborn Drive. Look at that. Same address. And now we have a US DOT identification number. Check that out. So, we can add another one. And we can give this DOT number. Oh, and look at that. We've got a phone number, too. It's pretty helpful. Got a phone number. Not a physical handset. Just the number is fine for now. Check it out. Got a phone number. What do you think the chances are of this being a cell phone number? This is just some driver's uh phone number that they've probably used for other things, too. Interesting. Uh but anyway, yeah. So, you can see how we can start adding these these things in. Let's try American Auto and EC Corporation just to see if this one comes up. It does not. So, my suspicion is that it probably has that and symbol impacting the system. Yeah, it's not there. Interesting. So, they are not a registered carrier. They may be actually like a repair place or something to do with trucking. But you can see how we're starting to develop the network now. It's getting bigger, isn't it? So, let's just take a break for a minute here. As fun and as interesting as this stuff is, we got to remember or we've got to take a step back occasionally and ask ourselves, are we getting closer to the truth or are we getting further awa

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 so today i wanted to offer a quick update on the situation in afghanistan as we see it uh right now obviously the situation is very fluid things are changing by the minute so chances are by the time this video even gets out things will have changed quite significantly most likely however i did want to throw together some slides really quickly and show what the situation is on the ground from a strategic level all the way down to what is happening on the ground level as best we can now some things we cannot talk about but we will do the best that we can to get the information out there for those of you who have not been following what's going on so let's start right with the top right at the strategic level with the political situation so as one might expect the situation has gotten quite intense in the white house as over the past few days the situation is not good clearly and a lot of american people are looking to the white house the the voice of international diplomacy for the united states for some sort of guidance or or any re uh any leadership really and that's not really happening at the moment so there's a lot of internal conflict right now within the united states political system which is compounding things overseas particularly when we get to what units are actually going or actually being allowed to do on the ground as well also as of a couple of days ago it's it's come out it's become public knowledge that the state department is charging uh or planning to charge uh american citizens up to two thousand dollars per person to be evacuated from the country um now this is not a new policy this has been around for a very long time uh but it looks bad it looks very very very bad because americans are now asking wait a minute where's our tax money going uh you're freely flying in you know immigrants from the u.s southern border and they're not you're not charging them a dime but you're charging american citizens uh who are over there at the behest of the us government uh you're charging them uh money to you know ex-fill them from the situation it doesn't really look good and again points the internal conflict of the united states government also we're having international concerns as well china has openly and directly threatened taiwan with an invasion due to the u.s quote unquote abandoning china which is or sorry abandoning afghanistan which is china's words whether or not that's true remains to be seen most likely this is just political you know word play and things like that it's just posturing is really good at taking advantage of a weakness in the united states to make themselves stronger so this was to be expected and it's i would not necessarily classify it as a a serious threat at this time however i would fully expect to see a lot of chinese aircraft to uh fly into taiwan's air defense zone which is usually usually is what china does in situations like this so be on the lookout for that it doesn't mean the war is going to kick off between you know taiwan and china any day now but it does mean that the situation is tense this afghanistan situation reaches far beyond the borders of that beleaguered nation as we're finding out right now also pointing to the uh the recent um woes within the united states military these are coming to a head right now general milley has claimed he he is going with the i nobody told me i didn't know excuse uh which is a basically he is saying that there's no way that any of us knew that the the uh afghan national army and the afghan government would collapse as quick as it did and this is an absolute and complete lie every anyone who has ever been to afghanistan knows that this is a complete bs and many many many many many documents are coming out right now that confirm what literally every human being on the planet knew which was that the a a was incapable of even basic defense against against the taliban so there you go politicians in uniform aka our senior united states military leadership getting caught up in their own words yet again is coming to coming to fruition and also getting into the lower level stuff uh the taliban has already begun breaking their promises um the general attitude in the beginning a few days ago when this all started the general attitude was that it kind of makes no sense for the taliban to attack americans now um the u.s is leaving with its tail between its legs and in a very dishonorable fashion and the faster the that the taliban can facilitate that movement the better um remember the taliban are are patient like these guys have waited decades and they are very very patient so they can wait a couple more weeks um before they you know start their bloodshed throughout the country again but that patience is running out in a lot of areas all right so moving on to more afghanistan specific information as i mentioned the situation is rapidly deteriorating with every day that goes by some people might have noticed that the situation has kind of stabilized just a little bit with the addition of thousands of us troops on the ground at hki the airport there in kabul but there are still tens of thousands of americans stranded throughout the country uh not just in kabul but in other places uh throughout the country which have completely and totally fallen to the taliban really the only places uh that right now that are not being held by the taliban are the actual airport in kabul and some more tribal regions up in the north where the northern alliance has uh they've gotten started again uh so the boys are back in town when it comes to the old northern alliance but we'll see how that goes when it comes to the airlift the evacuees have been the traditional process is that when the aircraft takes off right those pictures that we're seeing with all the afghans on it that are leaving afghanistan they're not coming directly to the united states no they're they're going to qatar or qatar however you want to say it um that's where they're being evacuated to uh for uh more in processing well there's only a certain amount of capacity there on u.s bases so other us bases are having to be opened up throughout the throughout the region to uh house house these you know thousands of people that we're trying to get out but you know spaces space is running out um capacity is uh is filling up and yeah so that's going to be a pressing issue over the next next few weeks at least also is the rather shameful reports we're seeing from u.s forces not being allowed or the united states as a whole is is refusing to leave the wire that's the kind of headlines that are getting out there uh all of the other nations that are taking part in these airlifts out of kabul they're running rescue missions like ever like several an hour right they're running rescue missions 24 7 all over the city to get people out of safe houses and get people out of out of harm's way and back to the airport to get out well the united states is not doing that in uh any significant numbers now we do have uh confirmation that a lot of um secret squirrel stuff is going on um and so we can't talk more about that so that we don't want to endanger any lives on the ground there but suffice it to say uh pictures uh tell tell a thousand words and videos even more so and uh u.s forces uh have not been utilized to their fullest potential despite the fact that we have a lot of motivated uh young men on the ground there that are willing ready willing and able to go complete the mission they are not being allowed to by their superior officers which is um a lot of adjectives but disappointing among the most and then finally we're also running into logistics issues a lot of people have started raising the issue of where the aircraft getting re refueled at this is the large one of the largest air air lifts of modern history and uh these aircraft are thirsty and they're not they're not having the fuel capacity and when it comes to military logistics this is being handled so this is not a crisis at this point i would say however logistics always add a level of complexity to an already emergency situation so that is yet another way that this situation is deteriorating logistically it's it is a nightmare and also this airlift could take weeks uh at the current rate we can do the math and we've looked at the satellite imagery and we can count pretty well uh here and at the current rate the the airlift of not just uh american citizens but all the afghans as well is say say that we're only just going to take the people inside the airport uh that could take weeks based on the number of aircraft we have and the number of aircraft that other nations have contributed uh that could take a very long time so this is uh this is not uh this is not something that is going to be solved overnight this is a situation that is going to take weeks possibly at best and that is not a that is not including um or considering any rescue missions that would require aircraft to fly around the country afghanistan's a pretty big country and helicopters don't have the range to just fly from one side of it to the other they've got to refuel somewhere so there you go you know logistics again very very important so let's take a look at what's actually going on on the ground outside the airport right now as best we know it okay so here's the situation on the ground in the vicinity of the airport as best we know it this is the general perimeter of hamid karzai international airport known colloquially as hcaya the northern part of the base or airport is under military control that's where the united states is setting up their stuff and uh to the south is the civilian side is under civilian control uh traditionally so normally when the afghan war was going on military dudes are on the north side civilians are on the south side it's kind of a crap shoot right now as to who's where but most civilians that are inside the airport perimeter are being held on the south side so that we can more efficiently load them via the normal pax terminals there the main road into the airport is conveniently called airport road and this leads to the main entry control point or ecp now this is where you're seeing most of those videos come from the video that's going around is kind of viral where the the taliban are firing into the crowd that occurred right there um a lot of the the pictures and videos coming off of of american soldiers helping people over t walls and things like that that is there at that main ecp um so yeah that's where most your content is coming from if you're seeing a video chances are it's from there uh also most afghans are coordinated or at least stacked along airport road along the main stretch into that main ecp and also along the road to the west as the road continues west around the airport this is where a significant number of afghans are gathered this is where we're seeing the the videos of people climbing over t walls the wall there along that western portion is very tall so it's hard for people to get over but yeah it's still where a lot of people are are gathered trying to get into the airport all right so moving on to friendly composition and disposition so we cannot and will not talk about the friendly disposition at this time for opsec reasons but we can give a rundown of the current composition of friendly u.s forces so uh right now we're seeing on the ground being confirmed by the us government is the first battalion eighth marines uh second battalion first marines first battalion of the 194th field artillery which is from the iowa army national guard as well as elements from the 82nd airborne which are kind of scattered throughout theater at this point as far as we know also there are other various units that are there we cannot confirm or deny that they're there the us government cannot confirm or deny it there but we've got videos of these guys being there on the ground so there you go also left out from the slide are uh various special forces teams from other like non-phi by nations that are scattered scattered throughout the whole place so it's just too many icons there's too many people on the ground there to kind of track them all and most of these guys are out in the city as well so there you go now as far as enemy disposition as one can probably guess by now the entire city has fallen to the taliban who control virtually every part of the city particularly among along major roads which are easier to traverse for with their equipment that they've captured so significant numbers of enemy forces throughout the entirety of the city surrounding the airport on pretty much all sides also we're seeing significant amounts of taliban activity roving roving patrols of of lightly armed but still decently heavily armed considering most civilians are unarmed arms taliban patrols along airport road to the west there and also along the main stretch which are looking for any sort of opportunity to take i guess is the best way to put it for youtube censorship i guess also there are checkpoints that we have been able to confirm via social media videos um we don't really know exactly where these are at but we do know that one is at least out in front of or across the street from the interior ministry which has been taken over by the the taliban and is now serving as sort of a government building for them for their uh for their government uh so yeah taliban checkpoints pop-up checkpoints these things happen everywhere it could be something as simple as just a dude stopping his vehicle in the middle of the road and boom he's now the checkpoint so as anybody who's been to afghanistan knows these these dudes are really good at setting up checkpoints um between a a checkpoints and in other places really really quickly to extort citizens they've been doing this for the past couple of decades and they're really good at it and those skills are coming to fruition right now especially considering a a is nowhere to be seen so that is the current situation outside the airport now looking at this image if we were to shift the uh focus a little bit to the south uh we're going to push south and show what's going on or sort of where things are at just give people an understanding of where things are at in the city uh the us embassy in the green zone are or the former former green zone are to the south so if we look if we shift the camera the the imagery down a little bit to the south we can see there's the main ecp there's that uh main airport road there of course taliban has maintained maintains control over most of the city and that's where the the former u.s embassy was located is now currently in taliban hands along with the presidential palace now along with all of that like these icons indicate these icons are not specific to anything but there are civilians everywhere uh there are also american citizens everywhere throughout the city it's not a small city by any by any means and it is very difficult to traverse this terrain with the taliban at every corner and on every uh every street so there you go that's a that's a about as good of a rundown as we can give in the short time that we have and hopefully this was helpful at knowing what is going on and where everything is at right now the things are subject to change we could put down each individual tile bench hook point that we know about and honestly it'll probably be gone or changed or moved or something like that so this is a good broad overview of very specific and tactical level situation so moving forward into what people can do about this if you are looking at this like we are here in the united states and you are feeling a lot of things about what's going on i just know that you're not alone the situation is very tough tough to watch tough for a lot of people people who've been there people who haven't been there people who are concerned about the state of humanity are are very upset about this right now and uh rightfully so but but we can do something about it um so if you're looking for ways to help or things that you can do to help with this unfortunately there's not very much you can do but you can absolutely call your representatives i know this is going to turn a lot of people off because a lot of people dislike their politicians right now but phone calls in america are practically free and it doesn't take a lot of time to get through to your local representative and at least leave a voicemail that some staffer or unpaid intern has to listen to and catalog that can at least maybe do something and it's very helpful i'll always make make sure to of course you know be as as calm and collect as you can be um the messages for representatives that are just shouting into a voicemail box don't tend to really get anywhere and uh you you tend to get on a list anyway so if you if you feel uh called to do something you can at least call your representatives and maybe just maybe enough pressure will uh will force some action on the united states political leadership maybe it's a long shot but hey it's it's worth some it's worth it's better than doing nothing at this point also if you happen to see any photographs or or stories of family members or or or people that are stuck on the ground that are trying to share their story to get out of the country um please unless you have specific knowledge and are weighing the the costs and and the the benefits of this of doing something like this please refrain from showing the faces or or retweeting or reblogging or sharing uh the faces of of any locals that might still be trapped there that might be targets for the taliban we do have confirmed reports that the taliban are watching social media like this and they are hunting these people down already so this is happening it might not be happening on a widespread scale just yet but just give it time remember if you put something on the internet it will be there forever uh the internet is forever and um that's something to consider especially if uh you might be trying to do some good but you might end up hurting someone in the process so please consider that moving forward as we go forward into this and third if you feel so so called to do so charity is is another option there are a lot of not genuine charities out there that will certainly try to exploit this situation so please be careful if you choose to go and contribute to a charitable organization that tries to help the situation out either helping refugees or helping afghans or helping interpreters or even helping u.s citizens that are stranded there there are a million charities for each of those so just please be mindful of the ones you choose and please please be aware that there are some there's some sharks out there that are trying to take advantage of this situation to make a quick dollar so please be mindful of that but that could also be an option if you if you are or know of a charity that is honorable um and is is doing good work so that's another option as well and fourth i know it's hard to hear these days but um and it doesn't sound like much but uh being kind to another human being really does go a long way especially in the world today there are a lot of bad things happening and uh just being kind to someone else is a uh is a good way to make sure that we've got good things still happening at least on some level so that could be very helpful as well and if you or anyone that you know personally is in need of help here is some contact information that can help you if you have you have different options based on your status so american citizens obviously have have higher priority for us government flights so there are a few things you can do if you're an american citizen there's always a step program that is absolutely a great thing granted yes it has become very much aware that the united states government is not willing to help its own citizens in afghanistan at this time but this step program will at least put your name in their database that says you are there and they're going to have to answer for why they didn't get you at some point in time also following the the u.s embassy in kabul on their social media and also the state department on social media helps as well they're pushing out a lot of updates um via via the internet and a lot of times if the internet is hard to load in afghanistan the internet is garbage there right like we all know this you might not be able to load a full website page but you probably could load twitter right so that could be very helpful as well also also make sure please to follow the other nations the united kingdom france and germany those embassies are helpful as well we have confirmed reports that the united kingdom france and germany are out in the city and they are they're putting in work and they're getting stuff done and they are picking up as far as we know this might not continue but we have reports that they are picking up people whoever they can um it doesn't matter if you are a citizen of their nations um despite what the united states is doing right now that uh you might actually have a good shot if the united states can't get you out the united kingdom might be able to get you out if you are an american of course no guarantees but hey at least we know that they're doing they're doing some good work number four kind of obvious and get to the airport as quickly as you can as fast as you can avoid the main roads don't travel alone we're seeing the taliban along that main airport road extorting citizens and even murdering people left and right despite what the western media is telling you uh the videos on social media that they cannot censor are uh are proving otherwise and there at the bottom of that column are some contact information we'll we'll put this information also in the description box below if it helps also if you or chances are if you're afghan you're probably not watching this video but if you know someone who is an afghan and they're having a hard time they have two options really that we know of the special immigrant visa the siv process this is something that has been a broken process for many many years now but there's the website for the paperwork and also if you're not eligible for the siv process you can apply for a p2 visa and there's the website for that paperwork as well that website is affiliated with the us department of state even though it's a dot org website so there you go i'm afraid we we can't help but so much but hopefully this has been at least somewhat helpful for for those that are trapped uh in a very bad situation so yeah hopefully this was helpful for everyone please please keep afghanistan in your thoughts moving forward and if even if you cannot do anything about the situation the best you can do is remember like i mentioned earlier there's there's a lot of bad stuff going on there's no doubt about that and we can rewrite the history books the the powers that be can uh can change that 24-hour news cycle to be something else and you know we can go on and eat ice cream another day right but some of us are never going to forget and that's sometimes that's all you can do so years from now when everyone else has forgotten about what's happening right now we can remember and sometimes that's enough so let's not forget what's happening here let's do what we can and uh let's continue moving forward as best we can through these tough times so thanks for watching everyone hopefully this was helpful and we'll see you next time and always remember to fight in the shade

[Music] [Music] we all know the scene Krusty General's stand hunched over a map table contemplating their next move while their team buzzes about shoving the latest Telegram in their hand and constantly updating the little Flags marching across the battlefield much like the concept of the Tactical Operations Center Hollywood has put these images in our minds to demonstrate a very important task of a higher headquarters element battle tracking so what is battle tracking and is this something that might be helpful for the average citizen living in today's strange and confusing world let's find out at its simplest battle tracking is simply putting information on a map mostly pertaining to tracking military units as they move across the battlefield going back as far as Antiquity to the origins of warfare itself battle tracking was quite literally done in person from a Hilltop adjacent to the battlefield the generals could use to visually see the battle space below of course as time went on and we moved through the generations of warfare commanders who might have been at a disadvantage in numbers began to use terrain to even the odds the cunning use of terrain is one of the major reasons why Alexander the Great was able to conquer most of the ancient world terrain was also the main reason that Wellington outfoxed the emperor himself in defeating Napoleon Bonaparte at the infamous Battle of Waterloo so terrain is very important but from a command and control perspective using terrain can lead to a lot of problems in short if your general cannot sit on a hill and directly see your unit's Penance your general does not know where you are or how things are going so what else is therefore a general to do but use Ford observers to find out where his own troops are where the enemy is and plot all of this information on a map over time as more and more battles began being fought in terrain that restricts direct view of troops Maps were used to show where everything was on the battlefield as the technology of warfare developed and World War One brought strange new Horrors to modern war maps increasingly took a much larger role over over the direct observation of troops and thus the concept of the General's camp on a Hilltop shifted more to an underground or fortified Dugout from which generals could use maps and telephones to conduct the war away from artillery from this we can see the beginnings of the Tactical operations center and really starting with World War one we can see the battle staff emerge with various staff members being tasked with updating the General's map constantly as the front lines shifted during battle though this is certainly more of a military subject as we have seen over the past few years of riots and actual open Warfare in the streets the concept of battle tracking is desperately important for local citizens to understand this is something that every prepared citizen needs to be capable of Because by the time the average person needs to battle track life-changing events in their area it will already be too late to learn these skills as such one might think that the first step to modern day battle tracking is to get a map which is actually the Second Step the the first step is to memorize a lot of boring stuff mostly the symbols you're going to put on the map right up front before the crisis know your symbology this is the hardest part because you basically have to memorize a lot of different shapes markers and icons but as boring as it is you need to know at least the general outline of how things work your battle tracking skills are of no use if no one can understand the information on your map generally speaking here are the basics of the American Mill standard 2525 this is the most common set of standard shapes and markers that are used throughout the world this standard has been in place for many many years generally speaking blue rectangles are friendly units red diamonds are enemy units green squares are neutral units and yellow Clover shapes are unknown or sometimes civilian units as we can see there's a few things going on here we've got the shape and the color and they both matter this is important to remember as we move along because even though this is a rigid standard in practice there is a lot of variation to these symbols within the shape inside the shape we have indicators of what kind of unit this is the most common are infantry units which are designated with a large x in the middle of the shape and of course this can change this is what a medical unit looks like and here is an armored Cavalry unit and so on it's up to you to memorize these on your own which is why I would highly recommend purchasing a physical copy of the battle staff smart book this book has all of the major symbols within it and it's very easy to study but anyway we can see that the interior shapes whatever they are do not change based on Allegiance for instance here is a friendly mechanized infantry unit and here is an enemy mechanized infantry unit same symbol on the inside but the exterior shape and the color has changed now here's something that complicates things a bit more that shape that that rectangle that we've been talking about that is meant to designate Ground Forces but what about aircraft or naval ships or spacecraft well the shape changes for that too so here are a few examples as we can see the top of the shape reminds us of whether the unit is hostile or not and the bottom of the symbol helps us remember whether or not it's a ground force Aviation navel or whatever and of course remember the interior symbols remain the same no matter how the exterior shape or the color changes this takes a while to get kind of used to but it's pretty simple once you understand the basics of it but let me throw another wrench into the engine here and we'll confuse you a little bit more speaking of that exterior shape sometimes military battle trackers break the rules and confuse things so let me explain in case you happen to see something different we already know that a blue rectangle with an X in the middle is a friendly ground infantry unit pretty easy right now what about this unit what's going on here well in practice it's sometimes easier or it's usually easier to draw a rectangle instead of a diamond so throughout many military Publications and throughout a lot of historical Maps as we can see you will find all ground units being designated by rectangles with their color designating Allegiance therefore the rule of thumb is no matter the shape the color always takes precedent if it's red it's bad guys if it's blue it's friendly I personally always try to go by color and shape the way you're supposed to based on the standard but a lot of US Army Publications don't do this so just be advised that if everything on your map is a rectangle you have to go by color so let's practice a little bit you can pause the video now and we'll begin talking about each of these symbols so first up we've got kind of a familiar shape right we've got the the blue rectangle with an X in the middle so we already know that this is going to be some kind of infantry unit net that's friendly but down here in the center uh center of the shape at the bottom we have what's called a modifier so we know that this is a friendly infantry unit but what kind of infantry in this case we have the little uh seagull shape a little bird shape right so we know that this is going to be a friendly Airborne infantry unit and if we're looking for size we can look at the very top and see the echelon modifier which tells how big this unit is in this case uh the two vertical lines there dictate a battalion so this is a friendly Airborne infantry battalion up next is a little bit of an easier one uh this one we have a square which is green so we know that this is going to be a neutral unit and the symbol in the middle is just the letters MP so this one we can kind of easily remember as military police so this is a neutral military police unit of ununknown size because we don't have an Echelon modifier moving on down the line the next one is a little bit more difficult we know that this is hostile right because we have the diamond shape and the color red so we know that this is a hostile unit of some kind but what is this symbol what is this this large m shape or a zigzag line however you want to describe it this one you're really just kind of have to memorize this is a pack animal like a mule or a horse or something that's going to be transporting cargo so this is a hostile pack animal and finally we have another kind of confusing one that ordinarily you would never be able to really see but if you followed our briefings on a recent incident of geopolitical Interest this one might be a little bit more familiar to you so we know for instance right up front that this is a hostile unit because it's red so it's going to be hostile no matter what right but it's not a diamond shape or rather the diamond shape is on the top so we know it's not a ground unit from the vertical lines going down to the bottom of the shape and the lack of a line on the bottom just kind of like an open bottom we know that this is going to be an aerial unit so this is an enemy aerial unit and you might have guessed from the symbol on the inside this is a lighter than aircraft a a balloon so this is a hostile aerial balloon pretty neat little symbols that uh have gotten a lot of use slightly once you practice this a bit it will become second nature of course keeping a guidebook on hand is important just in case you stumble upon a really weird or rare symbol that you haven't memorized yet as a side note if you happen to use really rare or obscure symbology I would recommend writing a note in plain English next to the symbol helping people know what it is combat is not the time to be playing Stomp the chomp and nobody is going to be impressed with you for knowing an obscure symbol the goal is to have a transparent view of the battle space with no confusion and you don't want your commander to have to break out a book and look flip through pictures to figure out what the symbol means so if you have to bend the standardized rules a bit by placing a few labels so be it but now we can move on to the map which is how we're going to start tracking now we can can see why having good maps is important we need maps of a scale appropriate to the area that we're trying to battle track in if there's a riot in a city we need to have a map of the whole city if there's an invasion of some kind or some kind of lockdown scenario throughout a region we need a map of you guessed it the whole region even if we're in a small observation post we can use a spare range card to battle track if need be but at this small level we probably should be focused on observation and security but again it depends on the mission at hand this is why I like to have maps of varying scales available like clockwork Murphy's Law strikes win least desirable so whenever you need a map you either won't have one or my personal favorite it will be at the wrong scale so we've got our map but before we get into the meat and potatoes of battle tracking a quick note on ipv or intelligence preparation of the battle space A lot of times I would say probably most of the time an event is going to go down somewhere in the world that's going to require you to battle track it and you're not going to have any ipv products pre-made for that area you can get your map set up but you are probably not going to have studied this area before so quite literally all you have is a blank map if you have that that's okay we can build this out as we get familiar with the area we don't necessarily want to use the cop for our ipb work but we can make helpful additions as we find out information to the situation at hand but for now since we're probably in a hurry let's move right to Blue Force tracking this is exactly as simple as it sounds tracking blue forces tracking friendly forces it's just putting all of your friendly units on the map and constantly updating their positions as they move across the battle space back in the day this was done automatically on a completely dedicated system called a blue Force tracker basically a computer system installed in vehicles and command posts that allowed units to track each other this system is still very much in use today but back before the days of modern system items the bft was an impressive development in the field of warfare even if soldiers remember it being a constant headache to work with these days the high-speed low drag tactical solution is ATAC ATAC has replaced traditional bft systems in a lot of units but a lot of units are still using old-school bft trackers for the most part but the future is definitely ATAC which automates Blue Force tracking so that nobody has to physically move an icon across the map so Blue Force tracking sounds pretty simple just put your guys on the map right well in the real world it gets a bit more difficult than that which we'll get into in a moment the other side of the coin is red Force tracking This Is The Stuff Intel guys should be doing this is why having an intelligence function is important and by default why it's important to have reliable information sources think about how many people on the internet have been battle tracking the Ukrainian war and how many of them have been incorrect myself included that's because open source intelligence can only get you so far and that is the only type of intelligence that is going to be available to the general public so battle tracking an event where you don't have reliable information is kind of a farce I get it it's not easy especially in a world where most open source Intel is heavily skewed if not outright faults no matter the case sometimes our best simply isn't good enough so we have to account for that when battle tracking when battle tracking more local events things that you have you know more of a stake in things don't necessarily become easier but the ability to collect information yourself it's on the table now collecting your own information via radio scanner software-defined radios or sdrs or even small quadcopters or other drones or even just a straight up observation post this organized intelligence collection is usually a lot more accurate than anything you'll find on the internet again in every single operations center I've worked in both Blue Force tracking and red Force tracking fell on the S2 shop because Ops didn't want to do it since Intel is regrettably sometimes a redheaded stepchild of the the battle staff the S2 guys get saddled with work that isn't technically their job but anyway though my team constantly grumbled about it I never really minded this personally because if the S2 shop didn't track everyone all at once the S3 would task a random soldier with it who probably wouldn't do it right so tracking everyone all at once was pretty much what I've had to do in the past this is important to mention because tracking red forces is not easy the bad guys don't radio in their position to your talk you have to go find them or at least guess where they're at or what they're doing that's why that big purple K tends to get slapped everywhere on maps the icon for key terrain though key terrain gets way overused and used improperly it's a very quick way to say hey this would be a great spot for activities either for the bad guys or for us this terrain is key now let's break this down a bit further when it comes to physically putting things on the map there are a couple of ways you can do this what we do not want to do however is draw directly on the map for many reasons I guess technically you could use a pencil and just erase your markings if you need to move something around this is historically what has been done many many years ago before we had the invention of things like Plastics right historically using a pencil to write on a paper map has been done however we've got better ways of doing things today usually what we want to do is use an overlay of a thin sheet of plastic like I mentioned earlier this is mostly what the military does overlays the map with a clear sheet of plastic so that your nodes and scribbles can be erased and it allows you to use colored markers as opposed to using just a pencil which is going to be you know just one color if you're going to draw on an overlay there are a couple of things that can help for one you can get yourself one or two of these kinds of stencils you can find these online rather overpriced but they are quite handy for drawing neat little boxes this one right here even has the features of a goo horse stick for all of you old school folks out there who remember those one thing to remember when buying a lot of this stuff is that terrain model gear tends to be Chinese made and in classic fashion the Communist manufacturing sector is almost entirely based on stealing other people's designs this becomes hilarious because they don't often know or understand what something is used for when they copy things so for instance sometimes the stencil shapes will be backwards or the labels will be on the wrong side so you've got to constantly flip back and forth if you're trying to make everything be correct a lot of times the proportions will be wrong or the stencil holes will be too small for any riding Implement because remember they are making these off of bootleg photos from products that were originally issued by the government or sold in the PX on base so just be aware of that when you're looking around you might have to buy several of these until you find one that actually works as for me my bootleg Chinese grade stencils work okay enough for me another helpful thing you will obviously need are markers for battle tracking purposes I prefer wet erase markers so that the riding is a bit more durable and just won't wipe away I also like to either write on or use a label maker to label the colors of each marker so that I can pick them out under red light conditions speaking of red light conditions you might want to select a marker for red forces that is a bit off red or just use black because under red light red text is invisible right so if you're going to be switching back and forth between normal white light and red light your map icons disappearing can be pretty frustrating for flexibility purposes I usually prefer the other main way of putting icons on the map unless of course I've got to remain mobile if I'm working you know out of a vehicle and I've only just got my map board to work from of course I'm going to be drawing on that map board drawing on the Plexiglas you know like like you're supposed to right but for a fixed position where you can lay a map out on a table I like to use laminated icons that I print out myself any good S2 shop should have a shoebox full of these but you can easily make your own on the back of each little marker I like to glue either a penny or a small magnet the penny helps weigh down the small slip of paper so that it won't blow away easily in the wind or in case you know somebody walks by the map table and like their shirt catches the edge of the map or something you don't want all of your your symbols just you know kind of blowing away gluing a magnet on the back will do the same thing but also make it so that you can stick these symbols to a magnetic white board this is pretty helpful for wargaming or for practice or whatever the reason you might want to go with a penny instead the the non-magnetic option is if you have to place a lot of these symbols right next to each other the magnets might want to stick together and generally just might be kind of frustrating to use whatever you choose both the magnet or the penny help Elevate the symbol so that it's easier to grab and pick up off the table instead of laying flush on the surface seems like it's really not worth mentioning but man and this is frustrating and so really putting anything on the back of these pieces of paper adds a little bit of thickness so they're easier to to pick up I also keep a lot of plain symbols without anything on the back just in case I need to improvise something on the Fly it's easier to staple these to a popsicle stick and you know stick them in the ground rather than having to peel off a magnet or something I like to keep these stored in my map case which has a three ring binder to accept these sheet protectors that are meant to store like baseball cards I use a label maker to label each pocket so that if I have to yell across a talk for somebody to hand me a symbol they can find it easily it also helps me when I'm not thinking too clearly or are super tired you know the drill gross motor movements are key and labels help prevent any confusion you don't need to make thousands of symbols just a couple of sheets of the most common symbols will do you don't need to go absolutely crazy and print out all you know 50 000 of these symbols anything special can be improvised on the Fly by drawing on blank symbology icons this is what I do most of the time anyway if I'm not making custom symbols myself I usually just use the blank ones and then fill in the interior as needed so you might ask okay where do I get these symbols hasn't somebody already done this the answer is yes uh active duty folks have access to what we call the moag the mother of all Graphics this is a rather Infamous PowerPoint file that has pretty much every battle tracking graphic pre-made this makes it easy to cut and paste into your own PowerPoints now if you search around the internet you will probably find various versions of this PowerPoint but it's not widely available to we lowly peasants you need to have a login to be able to get to get to this PowerPoint it's mostly just hosted on nippernet sites so unless you're you know in the military you're not gonna have access to this the good news is that we have something better I prefer to use this website spatial Illusions this comes from a soul developer who has created an online tool to generate symbology icons all for free if you want you can support the developer by donating and if you donate 40 Euro you get a license code to run this entire website offline very handy for non-networked computers so that's basically where you can get your symbols to print out at home you can find or make your own version of the moag or you can use the free spatial Illusions tools it's up to you I use the spatial Illusions generator and just paste the icons into a PowerPoint slide so that it's easy to print out and so that I have it for the inevitable PowerPoint briefing anyway other stuff you might want to have in your terrain model kit includes the following like I mentioned earlier popsicle sticks are pretty handy mostly for terrain models so that you can stick them in the ground but you can also use them to outline roads show points of interest and so on various kinds of string or yarn can help delineate front lines key terrain fields of observation stuff like that usually you're going to need at least red or blue probably black as well to outline stuff like roads and purple for key terrain sometimes you'll see yellow for fires kind of stuff you know for targeting sort of stuff and orange as well for stuff that are like obstacles but there's really no standard for what different kinds of colors mean other than kind of like the generic red and blue so just get a multi-pack of whatever kinds of yarn you want and just be clear to delineate what these are you can use Little slice of paper to to label what the yarn means once you have it on your map some kind of pointing device so that you don't have to you know lean all the way over a map and point with your finger at something I used to love laser pointers uh these used to be the industry standard when I was working professionally as an analyst everyone had a green laser pointer in their pocket nowadays and towards the end of my professional career I found that laser pointers are just too distracting for the masses these days uh basically I started having an entire audience of cats with zero attention spans so since then I have switched back to the old standby and now use just regular collapsible pointers a map protractor is pretty helpful uh just because nobody tends to have an extra one on them when it comes time to make the map or make the terrain model so having an extra is always handy make sure you get the ones with dual scales for one to twenty four thousand and one to twenty five thousand uh so they work with civilian Maps as well as military Maps remember in the civilian World we're probably not going to be using military Maps we're going to be using like USGS maps which are one usually one to twenty four thousand various construction tools like nails screws push pins thumbtacks duct tape stuff like that all of this is very helpful to improvise various things on the fly or to help attach Maps or markers of some kind to a you know wall if you wanted to hang things vertically I also keep a stapler handy just because you're going to need one and even this tiny one is a little bit too bulky for my map case so it kind of lives in the terrain model stuff it's also really handy for stapling icons to popsicle sticks if you wanted to do that for like a Terrain model spare range cards are pretty handy to have because you can ask your dudes to bring along their range cards for from their positions and you can copy down that information to your own range cards which makes it really helpful to be a lot more accurate when depicting fields of fire on your map a rather odd Edition are random blocks of wood these are basically squares of two by fours cut off to make blocks that represent buildings obviously this is for a large scale terrain model and not so much a map table so I personally do not use these often at all but we do have a box of these in the office just in case I need to make a larger scale terrain model on the ground or something like that this is really more of a special case thing that I keep separate from the rest of my small scale terrain model stuff and finally a lot of pre-made icons have usually found a home in my kit over the years you can buy terrain model kits online and for the military guys they are sold at every PX at least the small scale ones are these are way way overpriced and I do not recommend them it's better to just make your own but despite this I have found myself sometimes unprepared over the years and needing to buy a pre-made kit so I tend to have a lot of leftovers from Scavenging other kits you don't need to nerd out on this stuff too hard you'd be surprised at how little you need to battle track a small Ziploc bag of small laminated paper icons will get you a long way and it takes up almost no space or weight these are a great addition to pretty much any map case now we can see that a plan is coming together we should have a fairly full map that is constantly being updated by all parties involved a map showing where the good guys are and where the bad guys are likely to be but battle tracking is a little bit more than just that in addition to doing this stuff on a map you might want to consider having an event log if you have the time and Personnel to dedicate to this it would be a really good idea to have a chronological log of events this is usually super simple it can be an Excel spreadsheet or it can be a physical paper log like a deck log or a staff duty log all that goes into this is the time of day and whatever event occurred you can be as in-depth or as simple as you like but really this event log is used for two purposes one so that commanders and people in leadership positions can at a glance see what has happened since they stepped out of the talk the other main use is to remind people in the talk of what time something happened it sounds stupid simple and it really is but you'd be surprised at how many people will forget when a Medevac call dropped or when an engagement happened in the Heat of the Moment nobody is looking at their watch so it's helpful to dedicate one person to write all this stuff down as it happens another use of an event log is more forensic in nature sometimes when things go sideways and there's going to be an investigation later we need to have a detailed down to the minute log of exactly what happened we need to know what everyone knew at that time and how information flowed throughout the operation usually the person dedicated to do this will be the assistant to whomever is on radio watch usually you want at least two people manning the radio so that one can do the talking and another can do the riding so it's not too much extra work to just keep the log and a format that everyone finds useful not just for radio stuff however again in the real world this often doesn't get done and a lot of time the operations out of the house can't or won't spare an extra person to keep an event log so sometimes this job falls to the Intel dudes who usually have a lot of extra white boards and large format paper to display the data anyway so we can see that this is a very fluid process it's constantly changing and it is going to change a lot based on the skills of the people that you know you have around you right if people are just not really up to the task of doing certain things it doesn't matter what the manual says it's got to get done somehow and sometimes the people who are not best suited for a job have to do the job anyway everyone has their own personal battle tracking habits but I will share some of mine in case it helps one of the major things that I do because very few other people do it is constantly search for hlz's or helicopter landing zones even though this is part of the mission planning process as part of met TC right I am always on the lookout for helicopter landing zones as close to the Ground Force as possible of course you need to have a lot of knowledge on this it's not as simple as finding a large open space that you think a helicopter can land at you need to consider altitude above sea level and know the general characteristics of your helicopter's engines to know if it's even possible to fly there with a certain amount of weight and fuel you need slope analysis of the potential hlz to determine if a bird can land there or if this is going to be a pinnacle Landing or even worse a hoist if it's a hoist Mission you need to consider obstacles visual aids for the pilots to to look at as they're trying to hold hover and as an Intel guy you need to consider line of sight analysis from the altitude above ground that the helicopter is going to hover at so that you can tell if they're going to hover at this altitude at this location at this grid who's going to be able to see them or shoot at them if it's a small hlz you need to think about the security of the orbiting sister ship that's going to have to orbit are they going to get shot at because they're you know doing donuts in the sky up there and they're a fat juicy Target so are they going to have to hold station a couple miles away that adds in more fuel consumption adds in more time and it's another place wherever they're going to have to orbit that's a whole other place that you've got to do analysis for to figure out where the bad guys are at on the ground I'm constantly thinking okay once the ground force gets to this tree line here the only Medevac that can be done is Hoist if that but if they take contact from this building over here that Medevac hlz that we plan for can't be used so we need another one like right now as we can see this is a very big thing to think about and it happens quite a lot this is a constant thought process and I personally tend to obsess over finding suitable hlz's it's just a habit that I've developed that probably isn't that useful for me anymore but now I also do the same thing with eager address routes by land we've all heard the phrase never enter a room until you know how you're going to get out of it again same thing applies in the woods or really any place where World War III is currently being fought so this is always at the front of my mind to update as a ground force makes their way through an area always keep looking for a way out just in case you need it directly related to the previous bullet point always keep Medical on the line nobody keeps the medical folks updated on the mission as it goes on so if you are in a talk and you have dedicated medical personnel that need to be informed get your rear end out of your seat and go brief them intelligence and medical needs to be in lockstep with each other and I honestly don't know why this relationship always tends to get neglected in the military but it does many times I've had to run out to the parking pad to give dust off Pilots a heads up that the ground force is getting ready to go into a pretty hairy area they always appreciate the heads up because most of the time the Intel picture that the medical guys have can comes from monitoring the radio which is not even a fraction of the whole picture during an operation when the operations guys go to work the Intel guys for the most part are pretty much done except for battle tracking and stuff like that unless something goes sideways really badly Intel should really be just invested in monitoring changes because the bulk of the S2 Shop's work is done since this is the case it makes no sense to neglect medical these guys need to know what's going on which routes to take where the bad guys are at if helicopters have been a priority for them do the bad guys do we think that they have night vision now or thermal or stuff like that and so on from my own experiences overseas many lives have been saved by simply an Intel guy walking out of the talk and out to the Medevac birds and casually chatting with the pilots and the crew chiefs for a minute or two it sounds like it wouldn't be that big of a deal but in the medical world seconds count and these guys can use all of the advanced warning they can get on the prepared citizen side of things this is even more important I don't know about anybody else but I don't have a Medevac Chopper on standby for when I go out into the woods so everything becomes more casual and simple but even more important if you are planning for a riot to break out in your city or even a major military action like a lockdown or something a key part of your team will be medical personnel and by that I mean anybody that isn't fighting but is otherwise physically capable is a stretcher Bearer again pointing to the importance of those whose role is not in combat friends and family who aren't physically able to fight or they have to care for children or otherwise are not on the front lines these people can certainly feel very important roles like medical as we can see this goes beyond the scope of battle tracking as medical personnel need to be kept in the loop regarding enemy tactics too if enemies in a local area are known to use certain kinds of weapons like chemical weapons white phosphorus red phosphorus or even incendiary Munitions cluster Munitions things like that the Medics need to know this so they can plan and equip themselves accordingly so that they have an idea of what kinds of wounds or injuries to expect so if you've got an improvised Clinic set up in your kitchen it would be a good idea to keep everyone including those tasks with medical needs on the same page moving back to the more battle tracking side of things it would be very very helpful to make notes reminding yourself to check positions of units if you don't have any way of tracking units automatically a lot of times friendly units will not explicitly State their position and they get annoyed when some Pogue back in the talk asks them where they're at on the radio what they don't know is that Pogue in the talk is plotting their grid pre-planning a Medevac hlz for them as they move in case something happens a lot of times talk people look out for the ground force way more than the ground force realizes and all of this is dependent on the ground Force's location I've seen some pretty bad stuff happen to units who did not report their position for a while and suddenly they're in a troops in contact or a tick situation equation now back in the talk we've got to figure out where they are find them a Medevac route let the Medevac people know the Hasty situation and generally be more unprepared than we otherwise would have been if the dang Ground Force told us where they were considering most prepared citizen groups will not have blue Force trackers and probably will not be using ATAC in a network keeping the talk updated with position data is very important and since that probably won't happen anyway it's the Talk's job to pull that information whenever they can you don't need to annoy the ground force every 60 seconds asking for a position report but hey if you know 10 minutes goes by and they haven't said anything you need to figure out where they're at another thing to remember is to not forget other domains looking at a map of the Earth's surface it is easy to forget the air sea and even space some information relevant to battle tracking it cannot be tied to a specific GPS coordinate so having a supplementary information board off to the side of the main map this can help with a lot of pertinent but generalized information so you can have your main map and then off to one side you could have your event log and on the other side of the map you could have just like General stuff that people should probably know this is especially important for keeping tabs on what we call the enemy electronic order of battle or EOB unlike a traditional order of battle which is basically just a list of all of the equipment and forces a unit has and EOB is more capabilities focused jamming GPS spoofing and other electronic warfare capabilities they need to be accounted for here too even if we can't physically put them on the map another topic which is honestly more of a debate but it needs to be addressed when we talk about battle tracking and that is the idea of decentralization generally decentralization can help but be careful right up front I want to say the decentralizing battle tracking efforts is generally a bad idea and can lead to very very bad things happening but it happens anyway and it might not be all that bad in the end this is pretty confusing so what does this mean decentralizing a common operational picture into several different maps in different areas sometimes happens generally you want a common picture right literally everybody sharing one large map if you've got multiple tracking Maps one map for blue forces one map for red forces it is easy to get confused and for unit positions to be out of date or be called into question it's just a horrifically bad mess but decentralizing the battle tracking happens anyway for instance people in different observation posts might be off the hook for what event is going on but they might start tracking the battle from their position I know that for me due to my role I battle track from wherever I am sometimes it's not effective but I do it anyway if I don't have a job to do if I'm stuck in the back of a vehicle away from the Talk's main Maps I'll battle track on my own map boards sometimes even a handheld GPS back in the day Garmin GPS unit served as my my team's own personal little battle tracking tool far more than I'd like to admit if you're going to decentralize battle tracking efforts to spread around the workload I would strongly recommend against splitting up red and blue forces this is something I saw in the Navy an awful lot and I understand why they do it it's just something that I personally just kind of Revolt at I always keep red and blue forces on the same map no matter what if you split them up you're going to have a bad time if you're going to split things up here's how I would recommend you do it you can track operations at different levels for instance if your city if your whole city was being invaded or locked down or whatever the talk can track the entire city the keeping you know larger unit sizes on the map so the talk is not going to track anything lower than like a battalion maybe a company right but if your cop is the size of an entire city you're not going to be putting down icons of individual vehicles or individual tanks right but the Hasty talk that's being run from somebody's living room they might want to take note of that because at their level their map is going to Encompass probably just their street and maybe the immediate surrounding area this is where decentralizing can be helpful and why we have talks at multiple levels of command a higher level very high level talk is not going to have some of the smaller units and a talk at the very lowest levels of command they're going to have a smaller area of operations a smaller talk at a lower level even if it's just one guy like me in the back seat of a car that one-man talk or observation post can report back to the larger higher level operations center they can report back with anything pertinent while at the same time battle tracking their very small view of the world nowadays I've upgrade related to various map boards to help my effort in addition to computerized options this way I can walk into any sized Operation Center from a from a very large headquarters element with hundreds of people in the talk down to a small Squad level room in somebody's house right so I can Flex depending on which size of operation I'm going to be working with right most of the time nowadays you know as a ordinary citizen I really go with much smaller level operations but I'm always prepared for if somebody out there is more organized than me I can easily plug into their system like With Disaster Response or something so all in all we can see that this decentralization may have a lot of use even if we don't want to admit it sometimes the people in the seat aren't the best people for the job and sometimes the talk the big headquarters talk just doesn't battle track very well water Finds Its Own level and I've seen people migrate to specific individuals offices because one guy in the back of the headquarters building was tracking the battle all better than the entire talk it sucks but it sometimes happens for me I tend to keep a sip a common intelligence picture separate from the main cop this is probably actually this is almost certainly a bad habit on my part but it's often necessary because I have so much information that is not necessary for the main tracking map my maps are a mess they tend to be quite cluttered I mean organized but still very cluttered with information and notes which isn't the best for a battle tracking map that should be as simple and accurate as possible but again you must remember that if you keep a separate tracking or planning map you cannot forget to update the main cop if you have something operationally meaningful too many people have died because some Intel weenie forgot to share life-altering intelligence don't be that guy that knows about the machine gun on the ridge but doesn't put it on the map another big debate in the battle tracking world is the idea of analog versus digital battle tracking with all of the tools at our disposal in today's world the question often comes up can we do all of this on our computers or phones in fact a lot of modern battle tracking has to be done on a computer or a phone because of how constantly data is updated a great example of this like I already mentioned is ATAC which takes care of Blue Force tracking automatically this can't be done on a map with a marker I mean it can but it requires a human to do it you know every 60 seconds dropping a new PIN right the dod at large has spent a lot of your tax dollars investing in Technologies like the old school Geeks dcgs palantir Gotham or palantir uh spin-off Gaia all of these are used to battle track among other things the dod is trying to make paper maps a thing of the past which in today's world is perhaps not entirely a bad idea except that in today's world it is a very bad idea as technology becomes more of a component of War Fair it also becomes a vulnerability yes stuff like ATAC is a huge benefit on the modern counterinsurgency battlefield but in GPS denied environments or places where a radio signal results in an artillery strike these tools that have so much power in the counterinsurgency world might end up getting us all killed if the situation is a little different as always everything is a balance and we don't need to completely change our entire Doctrine based on a case study or two I personally prefer to use both methods if the battle space permits and most importantly if people are actually using it ATAC is a great option I can tie a whole team together and know where everyone is at a glance that makes it easier to automate Blue Force tracking so that I can just focus on where the bad guys are however I also keep my physical paper maps updated too that way if I have to ditch my phone for some reason or if I have to go into a controlled space where cell phones are not allowed or it would generally be a bad idea to bring one in paper maps allow me to take my data wherever I need to is this duplication of effort yes is it necessary also yes a lot of the time I prefer doing things the old school way if possible not really for Nostalgia reasons but for the reasons that look if there's an old tactic that you still know about and is still you know decently popular the reason that that tactic has remained a commonality for such a long period of time is because it's it works of course we can't let Nostalgia let us make bad tactical decisions or lose capabilities simply because we want to to use an older way of doing things that may not be the best but I found that on the civilian side of things on the prepared citizen side of things where everything is analog anyway battle tracking with a map and a marker is about the same Effectiveness as some of the more high-tech options and sometimes that's all you've got even in 2023 it is like pulling teeth to get any prepared citizen to buy a radio and if we add in stuff like meshtastic and ATAC which is a little little bit more advanced than just you know buying an FRS radio or something like that that's just a bridge too far for a lot of people for for many reasons that are perfectly understandable like you know stuff breaking or not really being easy to set up but some reasons are really just laziness either way it's a reality and tracking an incident using digital methods while obviously offering a lot of capability they're just sometimes not an option in the civilian world as much as we might want them to be as a prepared citizen we have to work at the level of the lowest common denominator and sometimes that requires giving up capabilities it sucks but until more people become serious about being a prepared citizen in today's world until more people start stepping up we have to accept that the tip of the spear is sometimes a lonely place as for me I would recommend using technology as much as you can but don't let it become a liability and of course always be prepared to revert back to simple tried and true methods in case you have to all right everyone let's take a look at what a lot of these processes and stuff might look like in the real world using a real world example in a more unfiltered and raw kind of way so many of you understand and kind of know about what's going on in Niger right now uh and uh really throughout the whole West African region but I wanted to take this as and use this as an example because it's something that people are very unlikely to care about and it's something that is a little bit easier for me to both learn myself and test some of my own skills but also it's an easier way to show what a lot of this looks like in real time basically this is also a great example because I myself know very little about Western Africa I'm not an Africa expert by any means I uh only barely know about the United States involvement in Niger from a counter Insurgency perspective you know a lot of counter Isis counter Boko Haram actions going on in the north of the country and we have a very large uh drone base there but other than that it's a foreign topic to me so again I thought it would be a very good exercise to see for me what this more organic battle tracking would look like and and uh see if we're going to give up any capabilities so as we can see this is really just a good exercise all around and one of the ways this is a really good exercise is that I don't have the resources I need in typical fashion we have to sometimes battle track with the with the resources that we have and I don't have even half of the gear that I need my maps are not correct I don't have a lot of the instruments that I need to be a little bit more professional looking so this is exactly what somebody like me might do if they just grab their map case out of their rucksack and they're forced to kind of sit down and battle track an event especially one that is as large if we're talking like an international kind of event like this so so let me explain what I mean uh as we can see starting out fresh I have uh basically just my West African road map here now this is just as simple Michelin road map it's not the right scale this I don't even know what scale this is but it's in the millions I'm sure either way it's a very large scale map I need a much closer scale of a much smaller scale so that I'm not looking uh that this entire map is basically the battle space uh right now most of my icons and battle tracking efforts are

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground uh so today we're going to take a look at a sort of uh yet another uh controversial topic of ours uh but it's a topic that we feel needs to be talked about now um so today we're going to be taking a look at the different sort of factions or social groups or perhaps faction is too strong of a word in some cases or some of these groups but basically we're going to be laying out a lot of the key players and and power groups within the united states right now now we're not going to cover all of the uh groups that we have found and all of the groups that we're monitoring and and interacting with and tracking and things like that but we are going to talk about some of the major players this is one of those uh videos and for our podcast listeners this is one of our episodes that um is more about speed rather than quality so we're not going to be able to talk about all the groups just the major players and sort of what we think about them now obviously that being said our usual disclaimer is that this is going to um be kind of an inflammatory topic all right so a lot of people are probably going to be either offended or um disagree with this in some way and that's perfectly fine you know we're not in the business of keeping you know feelings uh un unaltered because you know honestly yeah a lot of this stuff is is not pleasant to talk about uh and when it comes to disagreeing with us that's perfectly fine too we we actively encourage that um it's just that we're trying to give a good broad overview for the people who have uh for lack of a better term have sort of had their heads in the sand over the past year and haven't seen these groups come to power and so suddenly when they read an article of you know with these you know people in it or or these groups that are that are mentioned and they're like oh well what is this group or you know what are they that's what we're hoping to tackle today so we're going to be talking about uh groups that are powerful in the united states and we're going to do it as objectively as we can so moving on to our first one it's probably the most controversial one so the first group we're going to talk about is antifa or the anti-fascist coalition or anti-fascist action group or their their name changes based on you know who's uh who's talking about them but their main goal that they claim is anti-fascism however we and most other people that have seen antifa at work have seen that they are very pro-fascist in their actions they are also very very prone to using violence as we all know you know antifa this is one kind of a a radical group to be sure but their views are very um violence oriented even if they don't have a specific goal a lot of times especially in portland in the pacific northwest where they sort of got their start they'll just resort to violence or violence at sake you know they claim that their goal is anarchy and you know as a side note we know that what antifa is doing you know burning things down destroying a city your sort of mad max anarchy definition is not the true definition of anarchy we know this but for all intents and purposes when normal people hear the word anarchy they think of mad max so that's sort of what we're going to define it as for the duration of this video and how we kind of how we kind of treat that um but yeah antifa is definitely pro anarchy for for a lot of their actions they're also there a lot of um uh actors within their organization are uh very pro-genocide when it comes to statements they make so we'll see a lot of times on twitter when we're following these these riots going on i will see you know them pro genocide of a certain group like you know kill all capitalists or kill all you know uh people that are anti-us essentially right so they're very much a pro genocide agency even though they don't they haven't really had the resources capabilities or tactical skills to make this happen so the movements that they're affiliated with are you know of course the blm the black lives matter movement along with socialism and communism those two latter political ideologies and economic ideologies they are heavily rooted in antifa they are very much a communist agency if you're looking at them on the political compass which by the way we don't really think is accurate anymore uh for describing the events of 2020 but antifa definitely falls into the political left um the the militant left so that's sort of where they're aligned and the groups that they're the camp that they're in you know um and just sort of reading off the slide here for our for our podcast listeners you know antifa is definitely a long-standing agency but they're also loosely organized they're a collective of individuals that you know allegedly you know like i said try to combat fascism but they try to do it violently um you know most antifa members align with some sort of extreme liberalism on you know the political compass like we just said but a lot of times we'll see more casual followers be more center left leaning and those people are like professors college professors politicians you know will will be sympathetic towards antifa means but only because they're in this their their similar ideology not because of their actions right um so most of antifa's actions now have tended to target conservative political enemies or most importantly capitalist political enemies however as recent as 2018 some antifa elements have begun deeming political moderates as enemies and therefore prone to violent attack so yeah that's something we've seen recently antifa has has declared basically if you're not with us you're against us and but some of their ideology is very confusing such as you know antifa has been known to spray paint the words liberals get the bullet too during violent riots and violent actions which sort of shows how unique of an agency they are sort of an entity they're they're extreme extremely liberal comprised of members that are extremely liberal but they also say that liberals get the bullet too perhaps implying that liberals traditional liberals are not liberal enough right and you know so antifa is kind of a definitely a very uh very unique organization so moving on to the physical description uh this is just for people to help people kind of identify you know what these groups look like and fortunately for the most part most of these groups do have some sort of rudimentary uniform such as antifa here antifa members can readily be identified by black block clothing they usually wear all black you'll see a lot of times red bandanas covering their faces you know antifa signature signals and insignia flags the anarchy symbol you know guy fox masks as well as really numerous like counter culture symbols such as you know tight fitting you know skinny jeans are definitely a huge thing with antifa and it's not to to insult them it's just that they you'll see in the image here in a second it's definitely a factor when it comes to to a lot of um antifa things as well as non-traditional sort of body piercings and sort of alterations like you know ear gauges you know different kinds of piercings in different locations uh facial tattoos things like that as well as unique you know hairstyles like your your very vibrant uh colored uh hair for your females and and things like that um yeah so let's look at an image here of what what normal like antifa stuff looks like and as you can see it's you know very much black block clothing uh not a whole lot of tactical gear um usually it's all just all black clothing um but you can definitely tell that this is there's a theme here with it with the dress and then the attire that they use and um uh yeah definitely you can like for instance if you google like antifa mug shots you'll pull up and you'll look and you'll be able to instantly tell even though you have no context as to what a person was arrested for you can definitely you can look at an image and tell you that person's antifa which is weird because it would be a mug shot which doesn't have these uh you know facial coverings or things like that you can definitely tell a lineup of mugshots that's all antifa members as opposed to some other political group and so some of the more notable actions there there have been known to do mostly just riots you know the berkeley university riots they were also present in charlottesville during that uh that whole scandal of charlottesville riots in 2017. they were also responsible for doxxing efforts against ice agents in 2018. they also were responsible for attacks against jewish population in the jewish population in new york city as part of some of the riots there which was kind of weird it was kind of a unique thing they're not really an anti-semitic group however some elements of them are they also attacked people at the dallas children's hospital in 2020 this is some more you know recent stuff this year they've gotten more definitely more violent the washington dc riots as well as the chas or chop occupation of seattle which is earlier this year in 2020 and so basically our analysis is you know despite the fact that antifa claims to be anti-fascist they are in fact very very supportive of fascism communism socialism all of which are technically on on paper very different ideologies but they definitely support them they are even though these things are attributed to totalitarianism antifa is all for totalitarianism as long as the antifa ideology is the totalitarian entity right they are also known to organize information operations so information operations is our but we in the intel community it's sort of a soft a soft code word for psyops right we don't do psyops anymore we conduct information operations right and antifa does these as well they're usually quite effective because they'll put together posters of videos they'll doctor uh documents and scan them um basically all in an effort to organize them against a political enemy um yeah so you know despite what antifa leadership may say about their own entity their true end goals right are purely destructive right there's there's no cohesive pattern to the attacks with the exception of targeting anyone or group who doesn't support them but you know antifa's violence is not a means to an end antifa for antifa violence is the end right that is the end goal right so as a result of all of this you know we highly highly recommend that um uh for people to avoid antifa actions right we assess with high confidence that antifa or anyone who identifies with antifa ideology is a very high threat to individual safety right so anytime you see antifa head the other way there is no winning for them violence is their goal violence is their tool so just keep that in mind and sort of trying to keep this quick we'll move on to the next group which is black lives matter blm and this is one where we will get a lot of flack i'm sure and probably get a lot of attacks and and things like that um but their state of objectives vary widely right the blm movement is a very extremely it's an extremely varied organization right their stated objectives depending on which cell and group it is um they they broadly started with a group with a message of equality right equality for all right but lately we've seen a lot of black nationalism black supremacy and and um things like that come out of of their official rhetoric right not just some somebody on twitter trying to troll um it's been their official doctrine right so lately in 2020 they're also a heavy heavy supporter of the reparations movement right so you know continuing on their observed objectives they also align with a sort of anarchy ideology much like antifa but not quite so much it seems like uh from where we're sitting you know broadly speaking blm will use anarchy to get their end goal of black supremacy some groups of course but other groups will not so it's it's extremely varied you know some groups just like i have here on the slide some parts of blm are 100 proponents of genocide against you know whites and you know other uh non-uh african-american or non-african descendants so but other groups aren't so it's a huge huge varied uh thing um so some of the affiliated movements with blm are the nfac the not effing around coalition um despite the fact that the blm and nfac say that they're not they are staunch enemies that's what they say that's not true they are definitely affiliated with each other however the nfac is far more radical we'll talk about them in a second some of the more older members of the group will remember the black panthers and the blm is is definitely bringing back some of the black panther's uh tactics and ideology even though the black panthers technically weren't quite what people remember them to be and also blm is very very heavily intertwined with antifa mostly because they both you know blm and antifa use violence in their riots right riots are their thing right um so the characterization of the blm movement is extremely extremely varied right you know originally blm was a large uh largely decentralized civil rights you know oriented agency but you know other you know but recently you know other peaceful protests have been organized with the purpose of rioting and destroying public infrastructure so you know originally back you know a few years ago when uh really back in 2014 when the blm movement started getting notoriety most almost all other protests were peaceful they were legitimately peaceful protests however the the blm infrastructure and entity and sort of organization has changed right now they are organizing peaceful protests that they're calling peaceful but they're telling people to bring things like bats bring eye protection bring helmets br you know bring things that will help us destroy things but they're not outright saying it a lot of places and a lot of places they are outright saying it you know some of the more radical elements of blm are huge proponents of a sort of anti-white genocide and have frequently called for whites to be murdered in the street and we're seeing that actually happen uh portland washington dc you know you know kenosha we're seeing uh the the the flavor of sort of killing people based on their race uh to be a definitely a a part of blm protests and riots right uh most of the official blm senior leadership are supporters of reparations for slavery you know monetary payments right which they believe should take the form of you know uh money but not not only money but also a land right sort of like how native americans were granted you know reservations however if you go to even just the blm website which is the the you know run by their senior leadership they continue to make statements that say that they will not stop the violence until their demands are met that's something they put they plainly and clearly say they're going to do so the blm movement is 100 a non-peaceful organization anymore and you can even make the argument an analytical argument that they weren't peaceful in the beginning so the physical description it once again extremely varied it's you know obviously by the name of it it's going to largely be african-american however um yet previously and even currently a large amount of of whites are also part of blm so you can't really say that the blm movement is purely about race even though it technically is on paper if that sort of makes sense um you know some of the most notable actions are you know going back in time the summer of violence which is what we're kind of calling the the the rash the the um spreading of rioting around the united states following minneapolis in 2020 they're also known for destruction of minneapolis kenosha they're also known for the assault siege on the white house the siege of white house is pending that's not that's going down in about seven days we'll see if that happens for those of you listening to this episode in the future we'll we'll see if the siege actually goes down but they they've been known for the assault in the white house following the destruction of minneapolis and the riots that kind of picked up after that previously to that they had a few years where they didn't really do much and were just mostly a community-based you know civil rights entity but they were also heavily involved in the ferguson riots following the shooting of michael brown in 2014 and also the new york city riots following the shooting or the death of eric gardner in 2014 he wasn't he wasn't shot but i don't i don't think um but yeah so let's let's take a look at the physical description and you know we tried to pick the most non-biased images to display uh talking about a a blm protest but even if you google even if you google which we know google is controlled by the these entities or at least caters to them a lot even if you google blm protest and then clicking images it's hard to find a blm image of a peaceful protest the only one that we could find was one in the top right but even then we found four or five other images that showed that these exact people in this image were breaking things at their own molotovs and stuff like that so this is what your typical blm protest looks like i'm sure everybody's seen it in the highly inflammatory and dramatic movie action style uh news footage that has been around and been assaulting our news feeds over the past few months but yeah for those of you who don't know this is what a blm riot or protest looks like and then so for our analysis and yeah i know this one is once again very inflammatory but you know we have to call it like we see it and blm is not a peaceful organization you know despite an initial you know message of peacefully protesting and civil disobedience which is fine you know that that you know echoes the original civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s right but despite this the blm movement has become increasingly more radical over the years blm's common they have a common tactic right they like to use um force random citizens to be uncomfortable right in order to make them see their message so for instance screaming at restaurant patrons you know stomping traffic assaulting cars you know this has become exponentially more aggressive in 2020 and people are just being instead of being screamed at while trying to eat their dinner at a restaurant people are being swarmed in their vehicles right [Music] so you know in 2020 you'd be very hard-pressed to find a blm protest that did not dissolve into a riot at some point you know in early 2020 an observed tactic that we did see was for a genuine blm protest to break out for instance in minneapolis before it got bad on that first day this was a good case study there was a genuine peaceful blm protest in minneapolis in a sort of little march through the community as well they had speakers from churches they had speakers from politicians they had high level leadership from blm very prominent uh celebrities come in and speak and then you know after that sort of main rally or protest was kind of winding down and all the senior leadership was gone then the writing broke out so at that point things switched almost instantly and then um the rioting started right so we're seeing that be a tactic with blm protest that's why we say for no that's why we recommend for people to not go to any blm activities because you know now that at some point that's going to turn into a riot at some point that's going to turn into something bad that's just a fact of life now in 2020 you know and i know that people are going to probably get upset with us but about you know us calling it like we see it but hey we we have to uh we have to call it like we see it for you know safety's sake you know um also it's kind of a side note going back to the whole genocide thing you know many of the speakers at recent blm protests and riots have publicly and openly called for a genocide against whites you know and actively encourage the targeting and and killing of whites blm senior leadership historically has distanced themselves from this but they're not doing that anymore they have not downplayed or distanced themselves from these sentiments they've just kind of let it happen which to us signals a de facto approval of this behavior even if they don't believe that that's a rightful thing to do they're letting it happen anyway you know so consequently you know in conclusion we assess with high confidence that the blm movement has become a radical sort of fringe movement despite the previously wide-ranging spectrum of opinions and viewpoints and ideologies you know as such we recommend avoiding all blm activity and demonstrations as there is a high chance that a seemingly peaceful protest will instantly become a violent riot so hopefully that sort of is is helpful on on this slide and um yeah so we'll move on to the next one which is the nfac the uh not effing around coalition now these guys are far more radical than blm they actively say that they are not blm but their stated objectives this is what they claim to support um they claim to support black supremacy the mass murder of whites uh reparations and and black separatism they're different in the terms of black separatism is different from black nationalism but they are supporters of both mostly black separatism and of course their observed actions are quite the same they're what what they say and what they do is very very similar so some of the more affiliated some of the movements they're affiliated with are of course blm like we just mentioned they're also loosely take some of their membership from the black panthers but also the nation of islam but mostly they're aligned with nation of islam because of the older members of the group who are around to remember the nation of islam as well as the fact the nfac is very anti-semitic and their their leader grand master jay was heavily involved in the nation of islam movement growing up so for those that have not heard of the nfac which would be surprising but in any case the nfac is a militant black separatist group which is comprised of roughly three to 500 members whose stated goals have changed considerably over the years but they're still they've still always been a radical group it's not like they've become uh radicalized every time they've always started as being radical and they're sort of their leader there has a has an air or flavor of of occultism um he's he calls himself the real grandmaster jay and uh he's made increasingly just plain weird and uh also radical statements over the years um regarding his you know role within the organization uh so recently the nfac they've included uh amongst their goals uh the goal of giving the entire state of texas uh to black americans as reparations for save of slavery um they've also which is going back to the weird comments they've also made extremely anti-semitic stigmas over the years you know with senior leadership including grand master jay often praising adolf hitler and other nazi leadership which is just plain weird which kind of shows the the fringe movement that these guys really are um you know they also claim to be highly trained uh ex-military members they only they claim to only let veterans in who are you know seen multiple combat tours however this is extremely false all of their demonstrations and actions have indicated that their tactical and technical proficiencies with weapons and combat is extremely lacking and basically non-existent nfac riots or gatherings have had multiple negligent discharges and a lot of the when they did their march on stone mountain the nfac a lot of the guys have obvious weapons malfunctions like stove pipes and their weapons and you know magazines being inserted backwards uh weapon sights being installed backwards foregrips being installed in the wrong position or weapons without sights altogether so that's kind of a sort of characteristic of their organization so physically we'll bring up some images here in a second but the nfac standard uniform they actually do have a standard uniform which is basically just a loose collection of black block clothing once again same as antifa but they also wear the black berets of the black panthers if anybody remembers them and also you know in a departure from antifa these guys also wear they basically dress like your cheesy video game character from the 80s of any sort of first person shooter with as many chest rigs rifles drop leg rigs you know all kinds of tactical gear as well as a random assortment of ammunition like bandoliers you know for shotguns you'll see a guy carrying a shotgun with five or six bandoliers on you know all of which is randomly slung in a very poor military fashion they also like to attempt to march in a loose formation up and down roads and things like that so let's take a look at some of these guys from the nfac so in the upper right hand corner with the uh the ar-15 there is uh grand master j and uh as you can see they're using um bowel fangs for their comms so they're probably you know running uh unencrypted comps that you could easily easily intercept and and overpower if you needed to but you can see the weird collection of of um of things you see people with you know some people have custom ars and other weapons other people don't so um yeah that's just sort of their their uh organizations what they look like when they riot or march or whatever um and the nfac is a relatively new organization they have not been around for very long despite the fact that they're you know the real grand master jay likes to claim they've been around for a long time really they're they only gained notoriety from their march on stone mountain earlier this year in 2020 however they also made the trip to louisville kentucky and uh commenced to destroy a lot of stuff there so um you know moving on to our analysis you know many people have sort of lampooned their their actions many people made fun of them because of their obvious obvious uh downfall of not being tactically or technically proficient despite this they still remain a current threat you know you know they don't really meet the label uh they don't really meet the criteria of being a a traditional insurgent threat but their ideology and previous actions indicate they still fit the quote-unquote terrorist label which we of course don't like to to throw out but they're definitely that's their goal they're they say it so that's what they claim to be you know their statements have called for the genocide of whites you know that that sort of that's made their message extremely clear you know and despite the fact that they this has all been talk for the nfac a lot of people trying to say the nfac is nothing but just they're all talk they're just they're not really a threat you know it's only a matter of time before they you know they continue people uh and law enforcement agencies continue to allow this type of behavior and it's only a matter of time before they take their ideology in earnest you know and start acting on uh some of those sentiments that they've been uh portraying so consequently despite the fact that these guys don't seem to be the you know the sharpest tools in the in the drawer we assess with high confidence that the nfa presents a genuine threat uh to individual safety and we recommend avoiding all nfac functions and demonstrations you know just be aware of what's going on be aware of where they're at and take take steps to avoid uh them at all costs if nothing more than the the the the accidental negligent discharges that they have at their their famous fourth or rallies all right so switching gears for a second uh but still talking about an equally inflammatory uh group up next is the boogaloo boys so uh the these guys this uh movement is also known as the big igloo large ice house whatever we all know everybody knows what you're talking about when you talk about the boogaloo nowadays so this group is once again not really a solidified group they're not really a a succinct set of ideology however they do have a few different state of objectives so for one this group is largely anti-government they see larger government as a problem a lot of the people within the group would would support no government at all some of the members of most of the members are actually pro second amendment very very heavily invested in the second amendment and the protections it provides and also uh there's a large sort of flavor of anarcho-capitalism from the early onset in when this group was sort of came to fruition in 2019 lately a lot of the sort of boogaloo enthusiasts i guess we could call them are mostly you know largely anti-law enforcement and once again you know a lot of their state of stated objectives are pretty much the same as the objectives that we observe from them however with the flavor of so the boogaloo members or the sort of people that portray that ideology tend to be more far right than far left so however however far right that is is it depends as we can sort of see by the affiliated movement so the bugaloo movement is very heavily steeped in libertarianism however over time they have been sort of linked and associated with movements such as the proud boys and various other militia conservative groups so characterizing the boogaloo movement is is kind of a difficult task um so the the term originates from the depths of you know 4chan internet memes really just you know instagram memes uh in 2019 um but the boogaloo movement is very is a it's a movement that's representative of a very wide ranging set of ideals the term itself is a reference to the coming of a second american civil war or another war for independence is sort of a tongue-in-cheek reference to that however while some boogaloo enthusiasts are quite serious about preparing for a civil war and you know and actively trying to encourage that um other sort of boog boys you know don't view the movement as a true sort of insurgent group and identify with the boogaloo movement out of solidarity for liberty you know and not to engage in a true civil war they don't really you know there there are definitely moderates within this group you know and once again while it's not exactly a solidified group you know participants and you know ideology um it is largely shared by a certain uh set of society right you know anti-government sentiments run deep within this you know within this movement you know as well as anti-law enforcement uh sentiments you know some of the more radical members of this movement are you know aligned with more traditional militia type movements you know even with white supremacy groups which is interesting considering that the the boogaloo movement and prominent names within the boogaloo you know movement have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from white supremacy but despite that there are there is a flavor of white supremacy to some of the boogaloo movements along with some of the more you know anti-semitism you know racism things like that are definitely prevalent within the boogaloo movement now uh in some very limited aspects how wide ranging that is who knows you know uh also you know many boogaloo boys have been observed to be protesting alongside antifa and blm who technically are ideologically opposed to them it doesn't really make any sense you know blm and antifa are very heavily socialist and communist and the boogaloo boys are very libertarian very very conservative and things like that to you know broad speaking broadly however the you know hatred that the boogaloo boys have for government you know it's sort of in uh helps helps them be sort of affiliated with antifa in some some aspects you know if antifa and blm are going out there to protest the government yeah sure the big boys will show up and support them but the big boys don't quite realize that antifa blm are their enemies they're they're they're sworn mortal enemies essentially right so it's kind of a very complex and and hard organization to define because it's not as solidified as blm or nfac or anti for any of those other ones but physically the physical description is um hawaiian shirts and luau patterns are a common indicator the boogaloo movement you know nowadays you know same thing with more traditional 2a symbol symbol symbols such as you know don't tread on me flag you know if the you know boogaloo enthusiasts sort of show up at a rally or protest you're going to almost always see them wearing plate carriers helmets carrying rifles and wearing hawaiian shirts that's just they're just their mo that's what they're going to be wearing it's going to be pretty obvious what they're supporting you know some of the more notable actions that they have been engaged in um really most late uh you know uh the latest one they've got notoriety for was the the defense of salon a la mode that uh salon hair salon in texas that was being forced to be shut down and uh yeah they sort of laid a protective siege of that to prevent law enforcement from arresting the salon owner same thing with a lot of different bars in texas when texas political leadership decided to shut down the bars the boogaloo boys were there to try to prevent that they're also sort of linked to the sort of whiskey warrior 556 incident which if you haven't uh if you haven't heard of what that was that was an incident back in 2019 where a uh a guy was claiming that live streaming on i think i think it was i think it was facebook if i remember correctly he was live streaming that uh a red flag raid was being conducted on his house to come take his guns right and it went instantly viral because he had he was a very prominent 2a person and that turned out to not be the case but it did sort of uh result in the arrests of a lot of these boogaloo members because they came to his aid the sort of sentiment of a red flag raid going down to go confiscate someone's guns is there was a limited attempt for the boogaloo effort and boogaloo boys to set up a um a sort of uh notification network right so if somebody was in trouble they could send a qrf a quick reaction force out this was completely ineffective it did not work at all it's still people still try to do it but since the boogaloo boys have been labeled as essentially terrorists by the large um by the federal government it's uh that's sort of died down a lot they've been arrested and targeted even more so than blm which is interesting um but let's take a look at some of the pictures of these guys so these guys yeah were this is um pretty typical pretty typical for um the boogaloo boys to show up at a sort of rally or protest or something like that so if you see this this you can almost be certain that these guys are boogaloo boys just based on hawaiian print alone that's a very good reiki feature and you know sort of our thoughts on it we have you know we've had a whole um longer than an hour long podcast episode talking about this particular movement and our frustrations with it because you know obviously we um a lot of our members are have the very unique political ideals that are sort of um sort of aligned with a lot of the stuff that we talk about for instance you know the s2 underground project is very very liberty minded you know the boogly boy is also very liberty minded you know we're very you know 2a and and um constitutional rights oriented and so is so are the boogaloo boys so we have a lot of people in common and that's why a lot of people are probably going to be listening to this section a lot more than normal because you know we've we've talked about it in at length but you know just to get through our sort of analyst comments here you know while not as violent as their counter movements like blm and nfac and not quite fitting the description of a quote-unquote extremist group you know the boogaloo room is still a comparatively radical organization despite being a very loose ideology right you know while their message is positive you know we must recognize that other far far more militant and hostile groups are definitely using the boogaloo movement as a way to rebrand themselves and make their ideology more palatable such as for instance the the proud boys you know starting to to get involved with the boogaloo protests you know those two groups don't have anything in common but the proud boys are you know say you don't like the government right we don't like the government either so we're friends you know and that's not how it works right um you know we cannot ignore the fact that a significant portion of you know boogaloo enthusiasts have originated from white supremacists terrorists guerrilla or other insurgent groups within the u.s that's just a fact that has happened or it may not have started that way but it definitely is the case now as such you know we recommend avoiding all demonstrations and activities that are solely aligned with the bugaloo movement you know so if there's a sort of boogaloo rally or something like that which is going to be hard to see nowadays or if there's a boogaloo counter protest to a blm avoid that like the plague that's what we recommend now if you show up to something like you know a 2a rally or something like that you know we wouldn't even recommend doing that nowadays but if you wanted to that's that's fine that's not a a huge risk right to go to a a liberty rally or some kind of even like a trump rally or something that's not as it's not really a security risk i don't think but you know those guys these guys will show up to those conservative type political events and rallies as we get closer to election time and you know that's going to be a lower risk you know i would it's not like where if i show up to a political rally and i see the nfac there i'm going to leave immediately or you know but if i show up to a political rally and i see the boo some boogaloo guys there or guys that hawaiian shirts i'm not going to i'm really not going to leave immediately because they really haven't been they haven't been violent at all but you know events that are intended to solely promote the boogaloo are an extreme high risk for things like violent counter protests you know as well as threats from law enforcement and federal authorities you know let's not get to get misconstrued here the boogaloo boys are definitely targeted by law enforcement and federal authorities they are not friends at all and the feeling is mutual i think based on what we've been able to tell so these guys anybody who talks about this sort of thing i'm sure that just by talking about the the boogaloo we're on a watch list now or or some analyst in a government position is probably listening to this podcast and watching this youtube video because we're talking about it so we you know we might even get censored from youtube because we're talking about it so it's that inflammatory but if you want to learn more about this go go listen to our our uh our episode on that so we have we talk about that a little bit more in depth but moving on to what we've kind of mentioned already which is sort of we're going to lump these three agencies and entities together because they're kind of the same thing and kind of have sort of the same leadership and um numbers so the three percenters the proud boys and the oath keepers so for those of you that have been around for a while you may have heard these terms very loosely and you kind of know that they're sort of a militia movements and that's pretty much what they are their their goals are all pretty much the same you know freedom oriented anti-government but a lot of times they're pro-law enforcement which is odd um for some of these views that's what they say they are you know what we've observed them to be is very different right there a lot of these groups like the proud boys are very white supremacists um you know they're also very gov anti-government which they claim to be but they're you know also anti-lgbt they're they're basically far right extremist groups for the most part you know it did not used to be this way but they have over time become that way and some more than others for instance the three percenters are far less radical than the proud boys in some areas and in some areas they're not same thing with the oath keepers so the oath keepers are far more radical in some areas than the three percenters and then in other areas they're not um but affiliated movements you know obviously they're affiliated with each other but also loosely affiliated with the boogaloo movement which you mentioned before um but you know moving on to the characterization these groups and others like them that there's dozens of others that sort of have the same ideology um these have been some of the longest standing armed militia movements in the united states the three percenters the proud boys and the oath keepers you know over the years these organizations have had a very prominent uh very prominent members with varied ideology for instance you've had congressmen and and very high ranking politicians align and say they're members of or support the three percenters the proud boys and the oath keepers over the years however they have kind of distanced themselves from more radical elements like the proud boys you know over the years you know these um the the override the overarching ideology has loosely been based in defending the riots laid out in the constitution the bill of rights so they're very much a constitutional right-wing agencies you know some of these some of the more radical elements of these sort of align with the bugaloo movement in that they are enthusiastic regarding the potential for civil war so like for instance the proud boys a lot of times you'll see events where they're actively trying to goad or you know stoke that you know fan the flames of of civil unrest in the united states because they want to race war um so that's sort of what a lot of these agencies are you know many of these organizations are pro-military with several incidents being recorded of oath keepers and guarding soldiers from being attacked at recruitment centers so that was a big thing a while back there was a shooting at a a recruiter office a recruiting station and i think tennessee a few years back and uh in response to that because the military for those of you who don't know military members including recruiters cannot carry weapons uh personal weapons for defense uh on base or even in their offices if their recruiting station is off base they can't they can't do that that's a regulation and so these groups oath keepers of course saying that's a huge infringement on the second amendment we're not going to stand by we're going to go guard the recruitment centers well it turns out that that you know that would stand outside recruitment center is heavily armed um but uh yeah the the recruiters were issued statement you know issued guidance of hey don't interact with these guys because it's just kind of a complex situation right so a lot of times the recruiters didn't want them there but you know they're it's a free country allegedly so that was kind of the mentality back then you know you know that being said other members and other fringe movements within these movements have definitely engaged in guerrilla warfare and insurgency and terrorism within the united states carrying out attacks on governmental complexes and and things like your more traditional al-qaeda tactics of attacking government facilities right so there are definitely there's definitely a huge threat there and moving on to sort of their physical description um you can kind of see what their uh what they all look at you know the three percenter tabs and morale patches are extremely common basically if you if you see somebody at a rally with a plate carrier on with like 50 morale patches velcro to it that's pretty much going to be somebody like a three percent or proud boy or other keeper that's usually what their their mo is um uh they they also stick by traditional pro 2a stuff you know like the modified betsy ross flag like the icon we have in the upper right hand corner the the the stars from betsy ross flag but with the roman numerals uh for the three the number three in there um you know various versions the gadget and flag you know uh stuff like that and some some parts of these you know like for instance the the proud boys are specifically male only they do not allow women into the proud boys so that's kind of another recce feature there's other more notable actions like i mentioned uh earlier earlier this year the summer violence these agencies were there not in force and not really not really in significant numbers but for instance the kenosha shooting they were definitely there also the the violence at the charlottesville riots in 2017 was a direct result of these organizations also they had a huge a huge hand in the malachi refuge siege back in 2016. if you remember that with the bundys they were also heavily involved in the kim davis incident which is in 2015 which i think was a county clerk and i think kentucky who refused to sign a uh or refused to issue like a gay or an lgbt marriage license or something like that they're also a part of the ferguson riots in 2014 2015 and the original bundy ranch standoff it's it's cut off but it wasn't on the slide here but uh i'm sorry about that but the it was the bundy ranch standoff in 2014 they were also there and most of those guys were part of these organizations so let's take a look at what these guys look like and as you can see yeah very militant very you know military-ish you can kind of see that they they heavily armed with various accoutrements of tactical gear you know some people wearing um you know gas masks things like that uh military type uniforms but there isn't really a uniform standard we've seen multi-cam patterns be be very popular lately so chances are if you see somebody wearing a multi-cam uniform and they're obviously not a cop they're not obviously not a cop or members of the military then they're probably parts of these groups so moving on to a kind of our assessment these groups are you know extremely diverse in both ideology and membership you can have guys that are legitimate like like your you know county or city rotary group or you know like the your boy scout troop could have you know oath keepers in it but you know on the other hand you can also have literally domestic terrorists that claim to be proud boys keepers of three percenters right you know um and also due to recent events a shift towards extremism has definitely been observed especially as opposition groups like blm and the nfac have gained power right you know also the sort of perceived double standard of blm being allowed to attack cities has resulted in great discontent from these groups which in turn has resulted in greater participation and counter protests from these groups you know and this is something that we're going to you know watch out for in the future this is definitely a thing to watch out for as we get closer to election time these groups you know these groups specifically are going to show up in greater numbers when it comes to protests and riots so we're going to start see just like we started to see in kenosha there was in kenosha there's a large blm contingent and a pretty good contingent from these guys as well so just keep that in mind that these counter protests are going to happen a lot more often and these guys are going to bring the heat when it comes to conflict so if these guys and the blm guys are protesting in the same area um things could go bad very very quickly you know you know it's very rare for these groups on their own when they're holding their own rallies and there's nobody else around but them they're not gonna they don't riot right that's just not what they do um but the likelihood of conflict that one of these groups protests or rallies is high um if the likelihood of a counter press protest breaking out is high as well you know these days nowadays um if you put out like on the news there's going to be a 3 rally somewhere there's going to be a blm rally pop up right there same day and they're going to try to start start stuff between each other so you know as a result once again this is another group we say just avoid at all costs avoid these guys with the same fervor and uh expediency that you would avoid the nfac or the blm so moving on to a way more extremist group the kkk which is an agency that we have seen come back out of the woodwork when it comes especially as the blm has gained power so obviously this group is very transparent in their extreme ideology they state that they are for white supremacy and genocide of anyone who's not white and that's also what they stand for that's what we observe them to be um doing right their actions meet their meet their uh stated goals right they these guys are also heavily affiliated with the oath keepers supercenters proud boys boogala boys neo-nazis things like that now we don't want to lump in all of these groups together for instance we think that the proud boys are more far more radical than you know the three percenters but and the boogaloo boys probably don't even deserve to be talked about in terms of the kkk because there's really not a correlation there however they are linked right and i'll talk about that in just a second but character characterized the kkk the ku klux klan is is pretty much the oldest white supremacist group still operating within the united states they have a long long history of violent murders and lynchings just go on their wikipedia page it is there have been novels and novels written about the kkk you know most p

if you have spent any time conducting operations in the real world or even just like binge watching Black Hawk Down you might have learned about a critical part of any military operation and that is the Tactical operations center or talk so what is a talk in short a tactical operations center is a focal point a physical location where all Communications intelligence weather and command functions are conducted for any operation talks can vary widely in construction and Mission type based on the level at which the talk is situated talks can also go by other names depending on the agency or military group that they are for for instance in the US Navy most talks are actually called mocks or Maritime operation centers in a joint environment with different service branches operating in the same battle space the term often used is the jock or joint operations center these are all pretty much the same thing but technically these are all ever so slightly different entities for instance Navy mocks are often more strategic in nature with much larger areas of responsibility this is just due to the nature of a land-based command structure being responsible for large chunks of the world's oceans on the other hand some talks can be a small tent in a patrol base with only a couple of people Staffing them being responsible for a much smaller area of operations the concept of the talk is also present in civilian agencies as well fire departments Wildland fire Crews police departments even larger medical facilities all usually have some form of tactical operations center which functions just like their military counterparts albeit with obviously different missions there is even an entire incident command system a collection of civilian-based Doctrine to organize and command civilian incidents we'll talk more about that in the future but for today we're mostly going to speak of talks that cater more to military operations and speaking of operations what is a taka used for and why is it needed in most military structures the talk is the nervous center for operations in short it's the place to be if things are going down and operations are going on outside the wire if a person has any impact on the mission at hand but isn't actually going out on the mission chances are they're going to be in The Talk The Talk is the focal point for everything that might be needed during that operation due to Hollywood we thankfully have a pretty good idea of what a talk is used for even if we might not know it however if we crack opens of warfare Publications we can clearly list the six basic functions of a talk which are to receive information distribute information analyze information make recommendations to the commander integrate resources and synchronize resources to meet all of these objectives ideally a talk should contain representatives from all of the staff functions of a military unit so running down the list we should see commanded Administration intelligence operations Supply medical and Communications and sometimes other departments depending on what kind of unit you're supporting however a lot of times we will see medical and Supply not have physical represent presentation in the talk due to the nature of their jobs medical personnel will mostly be stationed at their medical facility and Supply Personnel will be at their staging areas and storage facilities both of which will have a direct line of contact via radio or field telephone to the talk this also applies to the six shop guys or the communications or signals Personnel who you can usually do their job of maintaining it networks from their own offices separate from the talk as well at minimum in any talk at any level in any military you will have operations staff Manning the radios and tracking the good guys intelligence Personnel doing their thing tracking the bad guys and some kind of command element orchestrating and directing everyone remember there are large volumes of military doctrine that dictate exactly what the functions and responsibilities of the talk are spelled out in excruciating detail so if you want to learn more check out the military Doctrine on the subject a lot of senior Ops guys absolutely salivate at the chance to talk talk about battle Rhythm turnover briefings battle staff functions battle update briefs Commander update briefs and endless other topics that most people have no interest in especially a civilian audience so here today we're not going to Deep dive into the world of operations we're only going to cover the highlights as well as the things that matter in the real world for most civilian operations centers so let's explore some of the roles a talk has during operations first up is Communications talks are the place where Communications are centralized so that the commander operations staff intelligence personnel and any other support staff can be kept up to speed regarding what's going on with an operation Communications are piped in from any relevant entity and available for use as needed in the days of old this might have looked like this a switchboard for various field telephones all routed through the unit's area of operations to each unit that needs to maintain a direct line back to the Commander in today's world however most military units simply place a radio watch in the talk with very various rtos or radio telephone operators Manning the radios Around the Clock 24 7. even when no operation is being conducted remember the talk is functional even if everyone is back at the base for coordination reasons we'll talk about next radio watch in the talk is usually looked down upon as a necessary evil a task that no one really wants because it's usually boring but is desperately needed in the event of an emergency or during an operation you never want to have a situation in which someone is screaming on the radio for a Medevac and there's no one there to hear them other than radios talks are usually going to have the fees for any sensors that are available to a unit as well as some form of shared network in military circles this is going to be the place where your nippernet supernet jwix nsanet or whatever Networks you're using all come together to be used however they are needed for a talk set up and being run by a prepared citizenry this is probably going to mean an internet connection you know how we have been talking about second collection and listening posts and observation posts some radio stuff the talk is where all of that information is going in other words your talk is your information Hub a place for multiple sources of information to come in all via different Communications methods another main mission of the talk is coordination talks serve as the coordinating entity for anything a team might need while out on a mission somebody gets shot and needs a Medevac that nine line request gets radioed directly back to the talk who then sends it to the kazavac or Medevac entity on call for that area of operations you could have observation posts with adsb receivers tracking aircraft all throughout the area and these observation posts could be spread out far enough to where they're covering a much wider area than just the talk could alone this information could be shared from talk to talk all across the nation or even the world or the talk alone could have the adsb plane tracking setup sending messages to operators in the field letting them know a suspect aircraft is approaching this coordination is also very helpful if you have different people operating in your area and you need to coordinate travel or Logistics or lodging any of these things can be handled from a talk and a pinch if a dedicated Administrative Office doesn't exist this is why a radio watch is so important and why talks function 24 7 even when no operations are actually ongoing you never know when something outside of your area of responsibility will suddenly be inside your area of responsibility this will directly impact battle tracking one of the main missions of talk staff is to battle track what is going on throughout the area this can be as simple or as complex as needed in smaller talks battle tracking could be as simple as a map on the wall a common operating picture showing the area of operations with pins for the good guys and pins for the bad guys and as the good guys move around on their mission talk staff update their locations on the map this is quite literally how generals have commanded their staff as far back as recorded history itself in more sophisticated role however we can see that this can be pretty easily automated the tax Suite of software and applications basically does this for you with every team member running ATAC and windtak being run in the talk from a computer with a projector we've got the ability to view the Battle space view where our team is located and if they find the bad guys and mark them we know where they are at too everyone in the talk being able to visualize this all at once on a common operational picture is very handy and is a standard of any Operation Center Battle tracking should also incorporate understanding what your Tactical neighbors are up to being able to understand what operations are being conducted in areas adjacent to you is also necessary remember the guys out on patrol or kicking indoors for you aren't going to give a flying flip with the team in the next grid Square are doing they are focused on their mission their City their street their house and their doorway but remember Warfare does not follow lines on a map it is the operation staff in the talk that must care about out what goes on around the team and what is going on around their aor this is something that the US military in particular is horrible about doing the most common fracture side incidents have occurred because the unit was unaware of a different friendly unit operating in their area this stuff happens but it shouldn't happen if the guys in the talk are doing their job and maintaining relationships with everyone who might potentially operate in their area again this is a huge failing of the military in general inter-service rivalries or the inability or lack of desire to even walk across the compound and shake hands with a different unit has led to a lot of good Americans getting killed by their own people so this is one of those things that we can try to correct from the perspective of civilian life like running talks in our own neighborhoods Switching gears quite significantly we come to another major use for talks and that is weather usually talks are where the weather nerds work for a very good reason as I myself have tried to drive home again and again weather is by far are the most deciding factor for military operations around the world weather is the most decided resource for a goat or no-go criteria for most military operations weather can ground a fleet of aircraft or it can stop an amphibious Landing the size of Operation Overlord weather can render billions of dollars of worth of sensors useless and whether it can prevent medevacs from being possible this is why weather usually gets a seat right up front in the talk because when it comes time to conduct an operational briefing the weather guy always goes first this is because if the weather is bad and the mission is a no-go nobody wastes their time going to a brief that's not needed next up is intelligence intelligence Personnel may spend a lot of their time scrolled away in Skiffs but when it comes to actually conducting operations in the real world you will find an Intel guy in every talk at all levels in a phrase echoed by Intel dudes as a way of remaining relevant intelligence drives operations or at least that's what's supposed to happen towards the end of the G watt era and certainly a major factor in today's military forces is often the other way around some general or Commander wants to make their mark on the battle space with their ego and the Intel guys have to scramble to retroactively find reasons to raid a particular Target or conduct a particular strike we have all seen what happens when revenge or an operation needs to drive the intelligence it's not pretty but in a more civilian role intelligence can do what it needs to do and have a lot more Breathing Room in a civilian talk intelligence reveals that bad guys are staging at location X well that's where the operation is going to go we get some Signet that indicates an adversaries setting up checkpoints in our area the operations staff can use their personnel equipment and platforms to get the Intel guys the information they need we don't need to pick a spot and figure out a reason to go there we can actually decide what we want to do based on the intelligence that we have in a civilian talk the adversarial relationship between operations and Intel doesn't need to exist especially if the talk is not under direction from higher for intelligence person now that talk is where most work gets done remember if the goal is for intelligence to drive operations intelligence staff need to have a pretty large role in every talk as an operation goes on Intel staff are right there to help guide the operation in many cases this is not necessary once Intel prepares the Target and operations staff figure out how to make it happen it's out of Intel's hands and the S2 shop can sit back and watch however in highly Dynamic operations where the mission is expected to change as it happens intelligence needs to have a more active role but again in real life this rarely works out this way in most military organizations so we've examined the roles and responsibilities of the talk now let's take a look at some of the equipment and features that make all of this possible first up you need a map a rather large one too or a computer with a projector that can be used to display your common operating picture this is basically just a map of your area with various information that you might need to know if you've got Personnel outside the wire that that information is going to go there if you detect surveillance sensors in your area or if you know enemy forces are massing in some location that location will go on the map as well it's just a shared map that everyone can dump their data on as needed a separate large map of the entire theater is also helpful for people operating in your area that might not be familiar with the geography so if you've got some dudes coming down to your area to work with you for a bit you can take them into the talk and show them the area of operations key landmarks stuff like that maybe even various Glenda telfa if that's something you implement in your operations up next radios and Communications of course one of the most important aspects of any talk is Communications talks are great Communications nodes due to the variety of communications methods housed within for instance the radio operator could get in a message from an adjacent District via HF radio and the operator can pass that communication to the rest of the talk as well as anyone who might need it out in the field via a different radio this is probably best illustrated by our video on warlord radio so go check that out if you're interested in learning about the communications needs of a headquarters set up in the backcountry anyway the communications Factor alone will turn any talk into a beehive of activity with everyone scurrying around contributing their part to the mission though this is something to be mindful of most people refer to talks as artillery magnets for good reason the nature of the talk with all of its communication signals whizzing through the air mean that talks are juicy targets for an adversary and are also very easy to find most of the time from the perspective of the US military who has gotten used to counter Insurgency in the Middle East keeping your talk from being leveled instantly in a war zone is a skill that certainly needs to be worked on a bit more this is why the bane of everyone's existence at NTC is when unit leadership says all right we're jumping to a new location but again from a prepared citizen perspective there are some things we can do to be a bit more secure than even the average military unit up next is support staff depending on the unit and the mission set this can vary widely if the unit is an air Cav unit the support staff might include senior maintenance staff or representatives from a recovery team in case an aircraft fails or crashes on an objective for infantry units you might have a couple of targeting guys working with the Intel guys to produce targets or you might have Logistics Personnel taking a larger role for units stationed in more remote areas where Logistics is the most hindering factor for operations in any case you're going to find support staff taking a seat in pretty much every talk depending on what the mission is up next is leadership leadership is an important part of a functioning efficient talk in the professional talk there is always one operations officer that is in charge of talk operations serving as the talks representative to outside units higher leadership and anything else that might be needed in military organizations this person is usually referred to as the battle Captain not necessarily due to pay grade but due to organizational Authority the battle Captain usually has a battle NCO who usually handles some of the more routine operations and helps things move smoothly the battle NCO is also responsibility for maintaining order in the talk which is important a lot of times if a high profile operation is going down a lot of Spectators will show up to watch and crowd the talk or make it hard to hear the radio stuff like that so it's the battle nco's responsibility to keep things running smoothly so the talk Personnel can do their job efficiently this really isn't an issue for smaller organizations but maintaining an efficient professional talk is something that everyone can benefit from no matter how small your organization is remember the tiniest bit of professionalism goes a very long way so if you have outside groups or people visiting your talk for joint operations you want everyone who visits to walk away thinking man they've got a slick operation here I wouldn't mind working with them again another major need is power a lot of electrical power generation capability is needed to power the wealth of electronics that are necessary for operations to be efficient technically you could build a talk the old school way with large printed paper maps and sheets of acetate to create overlays in our modern world we also have products like the Battle Board and even our homemade map cases that can make it easier to display a picture of the operational area without using computers or a projector however at minimum you are going to need power for the radios and for lighting and since the talk is a nerve center for any operation chances are you will rapidly find out that you never have enough power for your needs most of the time in military organizations these power needs are met with generators and that's that that can work for more civilian approach but for most people their power needs in the back country or even in just an urban area they're going to be met with solar panels and batteries and trust me as soon as those panels come out and the batteries are charging everyone and their cousin will show up saying hey man have you got somewhere to charge my phone or radio or batteries for night vision devices or GPS devices or headlamps the list is endless since talks are usually the central point in any encampment it's quite common for groups of people to contribute their solar panels to pitch to talk so if you've got 10 guys rucking into the Backwoods each of them carrying a solar panel and one guy carrying the battery everyone can daisy chain their panels together to power the talk though if this route is taken it's only fair to provide a charging station for everyone's devices so dedicating a small corner to a USB hub and a battery charger or two would be a very welcome addition to any talk up next are quality of life items seeing as the talk will be where various Personnel spend most of their time various quality of life items are handy to make the workspace more comfortable all of the pogi stuff like coffee pots snacks powdered drink mixes and other quick to eat food items frequently find their way into the talk one way or another in larger talks microwaves and refrigerators are also frequently found along with various canteen items like energy drinks snacks and other stuff being sold on an honor System now I must step back for a moment and comment on talk culture this is the exact kind of thing that brings about a lot of animosity for talk Personnel for understandable reasons in military organizations the Pogue stuff can get out of hand really quickly and the talk can become a cush office rather than a hardcore death dispensing watch floor imagine if you're a grunt who has spent the better part of a week sleeping in a hole eating MREs for months prior and you stop by the talk for a minute to find people sipping caramel macchiatos and microwaving food from cute care packages and wrapping themselves in sweaters because that air conditioning is just a little chilly understandably this is going to result in a lot of animosity being generated the number one cause of conflict between Grunts and talk Personnel is a lifestyle either real or perceived on the other hand people who do not work in talks often do not understand the talk Personnel often work really really long hours with 12 to 16 hour shifts being the standard guys out on the field see the talk as a nice comfortable office and that's quite true what they don't see is the strung out Personnel who've been working 16-hour days for weeks just to plan and execute that three hour mission they just went on living this lifestyle for years will break a person so as with anything there's give and take on both sides of the wire having a coffee pot in the corner or a box with some MRE snacks in it is perfectly fine but it is also the responsibility of talk Personnel to make sure that their work center remains a work center not their living room like at home so if you don't want to be made fun of keep the Pogue stuff to a minimum likewise it's the responsibility of the hitters that don't work in the talk to realize that just because a person works in the talk doesn't mean they don't work no dude with a rifle and cool pants will ever do their job without the dudes in the talk so an environment of mutual respect is required and having a lot of poke stuff cluttering up your work center erodes this respect so we can see how cultural social and personal issues can have a real impact on operations it might seem a bit trivial to talk about this stuff but it's real and these morale and social issues have impacted real world operations more than you could possibly know so it's worth getting this stuff out in the open now so that everyone is aware of how a simple microwave can cause a fist fight now all of that being said I myself usually maintain a secret stash of snacks candy coffee cups Cutlery baby wipes and so on all of this being purely for bribery purposes I guess this points more to my own career and experiences as an Intel guy than anything else but I myself have many times had to debrief Personnel in the talk rather than a dedicated briefing area most of the time people avoid the talk like the plague either for pogy reasons or because leadership is usually there so a lot of times your debrief is here's what we've got here are a couple of notes I'm out and then somebody like me has got to take the time to track down people all over the compound because I have questions about something so a piping hot pot of fresh ground coffee passed around by the team is a great way to entice Personnel to settle down and give me the information that I need from their mission also important to consider and similarly along these lines is the stuff that no one remembers or even wants to remember and that is housekeeping items at the risk of echoing every sergeant major ever a clean Talk is a happy talk sort of no amount of bleach and scrubbing will make anyone proficient at their job but cleanliness is still very very important if you have a coffee pot in your talk as is pretty much mandatory you will have spills you will have people just being generally messy if you don't have air conditioning with all of those server stacks and laptops running it's gonna get hot and the smell of feet and despair will fill the air if you let it if you are running a talk out of a tent in the middle of nowhere people are going to track in mud and dirt like crazy and since talks are high traffic areas a lot of dirty crusty dudes moving through it will make a great breeding ground for Filth and sickness you are going to catch the crud if you don't keep yourself clean again from a civilian perspective we living a civilian life don't have the luxuries of a military unit training for a week or two in the field a military unit who has 100 focused on their mission can be filthy for a week a month or even a year in the field if need be but we citizens who will probably be running a talk part-time over a period of potentially many consecutive years while having a full-time job and a family life being filthy and catching a field flu every couple of weeks is not responsible so at minimum you will need some basic cleaning supplies enough to keep your work center tidy some antibacterial spray and some wipes go a long way and are great for sanitizing desks computers radios light switches you name it an air freshener also goes a long way to keep the stank at Bay and are always a welcome addition to any talk recognizing the role a talk has as you aren't really going to be able to keep the floor clean if you are operating in a remote location so having things set up off the floor is going to be necessary not only for ease of use but to also make sure that your radios and computers don't get covered in mud in any case we really do have to accept that a talk especially in a remote location is not going to be spotless however we should really be looking to keep things as neat and relatively free of crud as much as possible something also helpful to have is a private area in a military sense privacy takes a back seat to literally everything but if you find yourself in a leadership position a private area to discuss things will be a godsend a dedicated briefing area adjacent to but not inside the talk would be very helpful for getting salute reports or debriefing team members or just generally dumping information after getting back to base having this area located away from the talk keeps the distractions at Bay for the guys and gals that are working in the talk a separate debriefing area might also be hand Andy for more delicate needs such as the need to debrief a team without worrying about the consequences of what anyone might say this is especially necessary for intelligence Personnel who need the truth and not the story dictated by the boss these examples which are totally not specific to my own experiences really illustrate the situations in which a more private area near the talk but also out of earshot might be handy to have if your team is big enough a private area off to the side of the main operations center might be handy for compartmentalizing information too information that is relevant to a unit but also might be something that not everyone needs to know has to be stored somewhere it is highly unlikely that a civilian team will need a skiff or a special access program area but who knows compartmentalization of information is arguably even more important for the prepared citizen so I just wanted to throw that out there and mention that a small tent or even just a curtain you can pull around a computer in the corner of a talk could be helpful for keeping eyes only information where it needs to be other stuff you might need are random support stuff mostly what I mean is stuff you need right freaking now and you cannot wait to retrieve from Supply or from a cache or whatever things like water batteries a set or two of binoculars office supplies like pens paper markers Maps other little Expendable stuff that you often need very quickly minor repair items like duct tape or zip ties or paracord will be very handy to have as well at some point somebody's going to come into the talk asking hey man you got something to fix this with right quick be very careful though you do not want to turn your talk into a storage area granted for a more civilian setup that's exactly what ends up happening and that's perfectly okay but you want to do what you can to provide a dedicated quick access Supply area that's not right up front in everybody's way and not distracting when people access it and finally a clearing barrel and or a weapons rack for larger talks and a more tactical environment having a dedicated weapon storage Rag and or a clearing Barrel will make everything easier and probably safer as well you don't want a rifle to slip off of a desk and negligently discharge or more likely you don't want some sharp part of a rifle to scratch your computer screen when somebody squeezes past you since talks are not supposed to be on the front lines all of the talk staff having their rifles in Iraq is usually perfectly fine makes it very convenient to walk around what is essentially a tactical office without getting caught up on stuff now that we know what a talk is what work gets carried out there what personnel usually work in one and the equipment that is needed to make all of this happen let's go over some things to think about from a civilian perspective as with most military Doctrine the idea of the talk isn't perfectly compatible with a prepared citizenry as usual when we try to cut and paste military Doctrine into a more citizen-based organization we find that things don't always fit perfectly and when that is the case we have a lot of of groundbreaking to do the military concept of the talk goes back to the origin of warfare itself but in today's unique situation both here in the U.S and around the world we are really on our own we simply have to develop a lot of this Doctrine ourselves so when it comes to the things you need for a civilian talk we here are learning along with all of you as well but all of that being said here are some things to think about if you want to set up one for yourself the first consideration is whether or not you even need a talk in the first place operations centers are usually pretty big by comparison just by the number of personnel alone even at the smallest level we're talking anywhere from 5 to 15 or so people working in the talk at any given time and these people are usually in the talk to track operations that again involve a dozen or so other people at a very minimum but talks can potentially involve hundreds of people managing very large operations in other words this talk staff alone is probably going to involve more people than most prepared citizens herbs even have so in that case is the idea a swing and a miss for the civilian sector is it even worth it to introduce the idea as something that might be useful for a prepared citizen I think the answer is yes the talk while mostly a military thing that involves a lot of people can easily be flexed to be a helpful addition to any operation whether or not you realize it for most neighborhood groups or even just a couple of friends neighbors or family members getting together they aren't going to need a full-blown talk at most you might need one location to operate out of and you might not even call it a talk you might set up a base camp with a tent specifically dedicated to holding your larger radios your HF radios your heavier laptop if you need one and stuff like that that could be your talk you could merge the functions of a talk into an observation post or a listening post any fixed position that serves as your kind of base camp but rest assured we will be talking about smaller operation centers and and even one-man operation centers in a separate dedicated video so if you have established that you need some of the functions of a tactical Operation Center there are some things to think about first up is dispersion remember the nature of running all of your Communications from a fixed site makes for a fat Target for any adversary the military solution to this is many fold but the major way of ensuring a survivable talk is constant movement constantly moving the talk to new locations ensures that by the time an adversary figures out where you have moved to you've already moved somewhere else granted with all of the things we have learned in just the past couple of years regarding how Modern Warfare has changed we really do have to wonder if the concept of centralized operations centers is survivable at all in today's world either way that's for people with a lot more military industrial funding to figure out all I know is that for our civilian talks decentralization along with const movement might be a bit more effective if you can swing it for instance pushing out some of the capabilities of a talk to outposts or multiple sites might be helpful or rather not really helpful per se after all the point of talks is to have everything in one centralized place but rather giving up some of the centralization might be preferred for survivability reasons up next is security security is a huge concern especially for any situation in which a more prepared citizen audience might need to centralize their Communications in a talk security is often directly at odds with dispersion the more dispersed your base camp or patrol base is the harder it is to secure and the more people it requires to provide security for that site however security is relative if your threats are mostly ground-based then absolutely you can use the standard patrol base setup that we all know too well that is statistically the best way to provide 360 degree Security in the most types of terrain with the few people but what if our threats are mostly from aircraft or from persistent surveillance devices well in that case everyone dispersing their positions more than as comfortable might be a better option this is especially true in locations where either you completely control the ground or it's so remote that adversaries are many many miles away but you do not control the airspace over you this Rings true from Vietnam and Afghanistan to Appalachia and Alaska security is such a large topic that a lot of other more experienced people have already covered in great depth we can talk more about this in the future but for right now security is very strongly linked with concealment concealment is a massive concern even more so for a prepared citizen since we do not have a battalion's worth of troops or air cover or artillery to back us up in most cases we're going to have to rely on concealment and camouflage a lot more seriously than anyone else camouflage and concealment is some something that is gaining a lot more traction in the Tactical civilian Community which is absolutely awesome we need to encourage this as much as humanly possible because the average American citizen even right now is living in the most high-tech sensor dense surveillance state that Humanity has ever conceived this is nothing to shake a stick at this is quite serious 99 of this surveillance we will not be aware of until it's too late for me personally my role is in the information space I do not shoot people or kick indoors for a living and even if it was my job in a fifth generation War I think a lot of people will spend a lot less time shooting than they think either way I myself dedicate a significant portion of my equipment to concealment gear both for flexing to be concealed in various environments and also for scaling camouflage as needed as we move the camouflage you use when moving through a swamp is going to be different than an open Forest camouflage for a static position is going to be very different than what a person would use on the Move we have talked a lot about camouflage and concealment already and will continue to do so in the future the bottom line is that camouflage is a lot more important than people think even for professional forces so what might all of this look like in the real world well before we take a look at a couple of Civilian setups let's recap what a typical military talk might look like so here's what the structure might look like it's just this large room a conference room if you will that can house the various desks and chairs to everybody to work in an office setting right up front we've got a projector screen and some large maps on the back wall that everyone is facing so that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the common operational picture right up front next to the screens are areas for briefing Personnel to stand so that when you're conducting turnover briefs or Commander's update briefs or whatever kind of briefing needs to go on in the talk you can conduct that from the front up there so everyone can see you and it's a little bit easier to point at things on the map as we look down from the top we can see chairs for a seating area for any Personnel that might not work in the talk but still need to get briefing and still need to get some information right so if you're having a brief once a day or once every shift change these people can come into the talk have a you know 10 15 minute brief then get out having a nice little seating area down in front or in front of the desks where nobody's really kind of you know working or walking is a good area also the area keeping the area up front the little briefing area where you can stand and stuff like that that's a nice little area to walk back and forth across the front of the talk so that you're not walking in between everybody's desks and kind of being you know in the way of things like that as far as the physical layout of the desks of talk Personnel right up front you're going to have your rtos usually your comms guys running your radios now these guys can be situated wherever the radios are at but usually they're going to be up front this is so that the battle Captain the central person who's kind of running this you know organization who sits in the middle of the talk or even kind of the middle back portion of the talk they can see their radio personnel and they can talk to the radio guy as needed same thing with the weather guy the weather guy is going to be up front so that they can well more easily get to the briefing string to talk about weather maps and charts and data and things and also because they're the one who is going to be hounded the most by Personnel outside of the talk that's why the weather guy's right up front because they're going to be hit up by the commander any kind of operational staff anybody outside the talk they're going to be coming in that talk at the top right door if we're keeping this kind of layout they're going to be coming in that door and worrying the weather guy of asking them you know when's the next update brief why is the weather looking for the operation tonight stuff like that you don't want your weather guy to be situated in an area that's hard to get to you want them in kind of a high traffic area because the traffic's going to come to them one way or another just like the weather Personnel your intelligence Personnel or your targeting guys are going to be very busy as well so they're going to be located in a decently Central spot of next to the battle Captain for sure and usually located right next to the weather guy this is mostly because again like I mentioned in most update briefs weather always goes first Then followed up by Intel that way you can say all right cool if the weather's bad the weather guy can get up in front of everyone get up and brief and say all right the weather's bad nobody's going anywhere tonight all right cool then everybody uh everybody's time isn't wasted likewise if the weather guy gets up there and says hey the weather's cool we're good to go for it tonight then the then the Intel guy gets up there and says oh well the target's not there tonight or this operation is going to be kind of a waste of time because there's you know nobody there or the target shifted or we've missed our window or whatever once the Intel gets up there and confirms whether or not the mission is kind of a go or a no-go we can move from there A lot of times military units on the on the military side of the house are not going to have dedicated weather guys they're going to have your Intel component handling the weather and this is usually a very bad thing because Intel guys are not weathermen and it takes a lot of skill believe it or not to actually be really uh good weather Personnel weather is one of those really highly underrated jobs throughout the entire military and it is absolutely crucial and is very hard to get right you might not ever know it if you've got a good weather guy because the things just happen and you don't ever you don't ever notice and you kind of take it for granted but you will absolutely notice if you have a bad weather guy so just something to keep in mind so those are kind of like the central talk Personnel your radio guys up front your weather guys up front your Intel kind of off to the side there and your battle Captain kind of tracking it all now all the other support staff to kind of make it happen can vary based on the mission so for instance off to the left on this on this particular layout off to the left of the battle Captain is the battle NCO and various operational staff that might be needed for whatever Mission it is usually a person from the Ops department is going to be you know your battle NCO kind of an NCO bill it's usually what it is uh and you can also have a spot for operations staff that might be needed for whatever operation it is so if there's a key planner or somebody like that who's planning an operation and uh that that you know there is their baby right they're the ones who have planned it for the most part and it comes time to conduct that operation they might have them so ourselves a temporary desk out on the top floor to actually watch and you know make sure their operation goes as they had planned it kind of in the back side of things kind of behind the battle captain and more of a supporting role you might also have legal representation to make sure that if you're conducting any strikes that the strikes are legal uh and that everything's you know copacetic on that on that angle you might also have medical personnel kind of you know sitting alongside legal uh not necessarily because they're related but because you know medical personnel you know might need to be in the talk as well depending on how big this whole thing is right this is a very large talk so chances are there's going to be a medical representative on The Talk floor who can either serve as messenger or ensure that medical interests are being met if something's going on in the talk you know the weather guy says something or Intel says something or you know Intel guys are predicting hey there's like an ambush getting ready to go down in 15 minutes that's something that medical needs to know and if the medical guys are you know squirreled away at their clinic or at their casualty collection point they're not going to know that because they're not in the talk right so keeping a medical staff person in the talk is a way of keeping their foot in the door and kind of their you know ear to the ground with regards to what's going on with operations you don't see this all the time but it's usually a pretty common thing that's done in most military talks and then of course some of the more transient Personnel that you might see are various support staff various Liaisons of different service branches if you've got some kind of joint operation going on and this technically becomes a jock you know you're going to have to have desks or places for them again keep in mind this is for military organizations you're going to have a lot of different kinds of units being you know working together in a lot of the a lot of cases also additional Personnel that might not have a specific like place to sit on the top floor or they might not have a desk in the talk but are nonetheless going to be in and out of the doors all the time or or heavily spending a lot of their time in the talk our various Personnel off to the side there so your fires Personnel your targeting guys your your um whatever kinds of weapon are being used those kinds of personnel are going to need to have a foot in the talk a lot of times because it's going to be you know your military unit right that's kind of your job other Personnel are operations and plans uh usually they're separate departments but in a lot of times you'll see you know Ops and plans kind of get combined to share a workspace in any case you're going to have a lot of operational Personnel a lot of op staff usually having their own staff room outside the talk but usually really quite close to the dock up next is the command Suite now the command Suite is usually just the office building for the senior staff senior operations staff your unit Commander your executive officers your senior enlisted uh Personnel even senior civilian Personnel if that's the kind of you know agency you're working with the high ranking Personnel are going to have offices separate from the talk for whatever reason either command privilege or just due to the nature of their job they're not going to have a specific office in the talk however the commander of the unit is going going to be in the talk constantly along with senior operations staff you know it's it's the central area for a unit usually the command Suite usually incorporates the Commander's living quarters along with the senior staff living quarters and their you know aides as needed and while we're talking about building you're going to also have to have billing for the talk staff remember you cannot stand watch 24 hours a day no matter how much you know we may want to or how others may want us to so you're going to have to have shift work being done right usually two shifts or three shifts depending on what kind of situation it's in if this is more of a high speed unit kind of thing you're probably going to see more 12-hour shifts being done is the norm you know one guy working for 12 hours then they switch that's kind of the way things work for for the most part but in any case the people who work in the talk are going to need to live and spend their time pretty close to the talk usually if you're in a military unit and you're conducting a lot of your operations at night time or some of the more kinetic operations are being done at night your more experienced staff are going to be working at night and you're more administrative you're more um maybe maybe more inexperienced Personnel are going to be working during the daytime when you know the risks are kind of minimal either way you're going to have on any shift be it the radio operators or the Intel guys the weather guys you're going to have a most experienced person on any of these teams and you're going to have to know where that person sleeps in the event that you have to wake them up so something happens you get attacked there's some kind of Base security thing or some kind of raid going down and you don't know what's going on those staff are going to wake up and go to the talk uh to to make sure that that's you know kind of like their Battle Stations right for lack of a better term so having everyone's tent kind of set up next to the talk you know of course dispersed for security reasons but uh still quite close to the talk would probably be a good idea also located near the top would be maintenance Personnel you're going to have a lot of Maintenance Bays they're they're going to be where the maintainers are going to be where the vehicles are at be it helicopters be it fixed-wing aircraft or just ground Vehicles you're going to have your maintainers and your maintenance Personnel where those vehicles are located but they still need to know what's going on in the talk so you might have maintenance Personnel either have a direct line or even sometimes in some cases they might actually have a seat on the top floor just in case something's going on this happens kind of a lot because with military vehicles especially they break down kind of a lot and they break down usually in the worst possible at the worst possible times so if there's a high profile Mission going on and you want to make sure that your vehicles have you have a plan you've got a jump plan to move to a different aircraft if this aircraft is broken you've got a another plan uh just in case this this vehicle hits an IED who's going to replace them this kind of thing this gets really really in-depth depending on what military unit you're you're talking about right but we can again break this down a little bit more simply in a separate video similarly to maintenance is medical like I mentioned medical is going to have their own specific facility they're going to have their own either casualty collection point or a roll three or a roll one or whatever level of of Medical Care Facility is at this location they're going to have their own little spot right so they're not going to be clitoring up the talk with their stuff they're not going to be bothered they're going to have you know their casualties being collected and you know treated in a field hospital or some kind of medical f

Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for January 18th through the 23rd, 2026. Yes, you heard that correctly. I'm a day early because I'm right in the path of some pretty gnarly winter weather, and I fully expect it to be needed for other stuff tomorrow. I may end up doing a standard wire report tomorrow just to keep coverage, but I haven't decided yet. It really just depends on how this weather system develops. Either way, it's been a busy week like always, so let's get to it. Around the world, the general focus has been on the boring world of diplomacy, mostly centered around the World Economic Forum, which has taken place this week. As most world leaders have taken part in this event, not much else has been scheduled, and it will take a while to comb through all of the speeches of what's been covered at the summit this year, but it's always a good idea to keep an eye on what the Bond villains of the world are planning, so more on that later. Separately, American aspirations for Greenland continue amid the Europeans getting a little squirrely about the entire affair. There has been a lot of rhetoric back and forth on the issue, and Denmark is getting a little annoyed that they aren't being taken seriously, but if they didn't want that to happen, they probably shouldn't have been Danish in the first place, but anyway, the United States is looking to either purchase Greenland outright or bring the landmass under some sort of American ownership situation in exchange for something, probably NATO funding or some such. Either way, the talks continue, so we'll see how this develops because the United States is getting Greenland one way or another. The question is what we give up in return and how this will impact the relationship with NATO. Otherwise, around the world, the attentions in the Middle East remain the same as before as demonstrated by the strategic movement for this week. Generally speaking, it's not a terrible idea to keep an eye on the massive forces that are staged around the world, and in this case, the United States is moving a carrier strike group into the region of the Arabian Sea, which is pretty standard, but if the United States wants to conduct strikes in Iran, this will be something to keep an eye on. As far as strategic aviation for this week, it's pretty much the same as last week, a steady increase of forces in the region, but nothing really major to be worried about at the moment. Now, moving back to the United States this week, again, the focus is once again on Minneapolis, but mostly in the context of how things are going to develop in Maine. And in Minneapolis, there are many different things that are helpful for assessing what's going to go on in Maine, at least when it comes to funding and organization. Some of you have asked me to cover some of the groups in play in Minneapolis, which are driving much of the unrest, which I'll cover today. Now, right up front, this is a much taller order than you might think because there are dozens of groups in Minneapolis alone which are driving a lot of this unrest. Even if I had a whole team of 100 people, I couldn't even scratch the surface, so here is a brief overview of some of the groups that are more kinetic than others. One of the biggest groups in play is actually the local government of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota at large. And we have to be very specific with our language here because this is not a case of the local city and state government simply not enforcing laws or something like that. This is happening, to be sure, but we must be aware that this is not simply intentional negligence. City officials are directly driving a lot of this unrest and chaos. They are not simply standing back, fanning the flames, and refusing to arrest anyone. They are directly on the ground participating in these events themselves. For example, one of the individuals who conducted the raid on City's Church is also a government employee. Jamal or Jamaal Lundy was identified as one of the members who occupied the church, and he actually identified himself in the footage of the incident because he is currently running for public office. Currently, Lundy is not only married to a city councilor, Anika Bowie, but he is also currently an employee of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, the same law enforcement organization that is in charge of the investigation of the crimes that took place at City's Church. This is why no arrests have been made by local law enforcement. Their own employees took part in the attack, and the attorney general himself was interviewed on the ground a short distance away from the church itself on the day of the incident. And in interviews after the incident, he gave his approval for this type of targeting. So, in short, the direct and self-admitted involvement of government officials specifically now makes the targeting of City's Church, for example, a textbook case of state-sponsored terrorism as per the current definition of terrorism set forth by US Code Title 18, Section 2331, which specifically includes acts that, quote, intimidate or coerce a civilian population. Per the law that was passed, which in this case is actually the Patriot Act, ironically, terrorism does not have to include the use of violence. Coercion or the threat of violence is good enough to get a criminal charge. I know before everybody jumps in the comments, this is probably going to be a Pam Bondi special where nothing of substance is going to be done. You may get two or three arrests like we've seen already, but it's really going to be for show, and probably 6 months down the line, the charges going to be dropped. That's my personal guess. But, government employees themselves being directly involved in the crimes that they are committing and also being responsible for investigating themselves, you know, this is a bit of a sticky situation now. But, government agencies and government personnel and elected officials aside, what about the other groups that are not explicitly controlled by government agencies? The two main lines of effort in Minneapolis that are organizing the more regular and routine protests are the Defend the 612 and ICE Watch organizations. Now, it must be noted that tracking these groups is easier than most because they all use their real names and post openly on social media, but when it comes to categorizing insurgent groups in general, it's like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall most of the time. These are really amorphous blobs of organizations, and they're not really as solidified as we might want to think that they are. They're more organized than you think, but they're also not organized enough to make this easy. In the case of the Defend the 612, these guys are responsible for the Soylent grade efforts to follow around ICE and directly interfere with arrest operations. ICE Watch is the more overarching national level initiative to do the same, but because it's more of a strategic effort, ICE Watch focuses mostly on intelligence and reconnaissance, such that it is. So, chances are if you see an overweight pronoun user blowing a whistle on the street, it's because they're linked up with ICE Watch and feeding information into their databases. Again, it may be laughable to call a lot of these efforts reconnaissance and intelligence collection, but that's really what it is, even if it is kind of silly and a little bit laughable in in most cases. Definitely don't underestimate these groups. They can definitely learn a lot, and they are learning a lot every day that goes by, so don't underestimate that for sure. On the political fronts, no domestic insurgency would be complete without a political arm, and in the case of Minneapolis, this is mostly the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. Under normal circumstances, this organization is again a complete joke. They don't have a physical address, and all of their meeting locations are basically just public libraries where a dozen or so members get together to muse about communism and not showering. However, with the unrest ticked up a notch throughout the city, these groups are capitalizing on the labor unions, which are also quite upset about ICE conducting operations throughout the city. So, whenever you see a labor union strike in Minneapolis, take a closer look at the photos because I guarantee you you'll find a DSA representative there or some signage promoting a communist revolution. So, when we say that these are liberal commies, that is quite literally their own description. Their main campaign goal is to seize power, eradicate capitalism, and put most of us in labor camps. That's what they say themselves. But again, as amateurish and silly as it is, one of their main ways of doing this is to link up with the Socialist Rifle Association, or SRA. Once again, under normal circumstances, this is kind of a laughable effort, but this is the main communist firearms organization that works to promote firearms training in more leftist areas and among leftist groups. Now, I know that many people, mostly libertarians, are inclined to see rifle and think friend, but rest assured, these people openly state that they want to kill you. This is not a Second Amendment group. They are wanting to get firearms to commit terrorist attacks with them. This is a lot different than 2A advocacy or, you know, gun rights in general. Their goals are violent, and I'm personally rather interested in why this group has not been designated as a terrorist organization by now. But anyway, these guys are the ones linked to most of the attacks on ICE facilities because nine times out of 10, whenever some redditor shoots up a school or an ICE facility, you look at their social media accounts, and they're usually a member of the SRA. Once again, this group is generally goofy most of the time, but this organization is also the recruiting pool for more deliberate terrorist attacks around the United States, so that's something to keep in mind. Separately, but importantly due to the recent arrests, Black Lives Matter is also a substantial force on the ground in Minneapolis, but this is mostly due to funding. BLM is a very large organization that dominates the NGO scene throughout the city and has gained positions of power in most government agencies after the George Floyd bend the knee years, right? However, BLM has a big caveat. They don't get along so well with the other demographic in the city, the Somalis. It may be surprising to those who have been living under a rock, but turns out just because they're black doesn't mean that they get along. And in Minneapolis, the population of African Americans does not get along at all with the Somalians. So, that's always a point of friction because in most cases, they are competing for the same fraud money via aid programs. This is demonstrated by the rather sketchy businesses owned by the people who have been arrested so far, the BLM activists who were arrested in conjunction with the City's Church incident, so yeah, they're all kind of trying to get their piece of the pie, and in a lot of cases, they don't really get along so well. And this isn't made any better because as of late, the BLM movement in Minneapolis has been kind of sidelined as a voting block because the politicians have realized that they can just import Somalis and have an easier time in laundering tax dollars back to their own re-election campaigns. But this is a whole other abyss of corruption, so suffice it to say for now that when it comes to the civil unrest in Minneapolis, there are a lot of competing interests. And there's also a pretty good chunk of the black population in Minneapolis that doesn't like either side. The Somalis are generally well disliked because they are turning the city into a moot issue, but also, a lot of black citizens in Minneapolis don't like BLM because of how they burned the city down after George Floyd, which, as we all know, turned out to largely be for nothing, so there's plenty of friction all around. And of course, on a national scale, we cannot forget to mention the overarching organization that has their talents in everything, Antifa. Now, for the most part, Antifa's presence in Minneapolis is purely on an individual level. Unlike in Portland and Seattle, Antifa does not have sections of the city that are their turf. They don't dominate the terrain here like they do in Seattle and Portland. However, their presence is growing and like all the other groups mentioned so far, they are trying to take advantage of the crisis to get a bigger foothold in the city. Now, that wraps up the more foot soldier efforts that are present in the city. There are a bunch of other smaller groups and clubs that are active such as student organizations at the university, but really the biggest player in all of this by a long shot are the NGOs or non-government organizations. In Minneapolis, there are thousands of NGOs and these are the big ones to watch because the NGOs are the ones that handle nearly 100% of the funding for these unrest operations. So, we have a deadly combo here. They provide nearly all of the funding, personnel, and organization, but they are also basically immune from prosecution because no politician or government agency wants to go after NGOs because of who is running most of these NGOs. And in the case of Minneapolis, turns out there are a lot of different groups. As a matter of fact, if you go to my border crisis map and zoom all the way out. If you're wondering what all these yellow diamonds are, these are safe houses and organizations that are actively working to conceal illegal immigrants and protect them from detention. That's why the icon for these is a suspected safe house, right? Because these uh locations need to be investigated. And it turns out almost all of these points are also trying to help fund a lot of the unrest when it comes to targeting ICE. So, they're not just providing resources and benefits and stuff like that to illegals in the area. They're also funding and helping to provide manpower for a lot of the demonstrations against ICE. So, tracking these thousands of groups like this is is just so pervasive throughout the country that it's just too much for one person to log. So, please don't think that this is the complete picture. I have really just scratched the surface and I've got almost 2,000 on my list so far. So, the situation is much worse than it seems by just looking at the map even though all these icons are literally covering the land mass of this country, I'm still only scratching the surface. So, this truly is a case of opening Pandora's Box in that tackling these NGOs is such an insurmountable task that no one wants to even acknowledge that it's a problem. The budget for the coffee machine at most of these agencies is more than I make in a whole year and they have whole teams of attorneys on retainer that have funding akin to the GDP of Greenland just for the city of Minneapolis alone. And another concern is just how pervasive this is nationwide. Minneapolis is no special case. They're not even the worst when it comes to the cities that are uh helping to conceal people from ICE. New York City is probably among the top. Uh Los Angeles is another one. But these are just the cities that I've started to to look into a little bit more uh a little bit more intensely. And as DHS surge operations move to Maine, these Norman Rockwell small towns throughout America tend to be host to a significant uh counter ICE operations. Just like I wrote yesterday, I found one immigrant aid group, one NGO, which has a network of other NGOs and on their own website, they have a list of 112 different partners and members within just this one organization for just the state of Maine. There are only 32 Starbucks coffee shops in the whole state. So, there are three times more immigration support centers than there are Starbucks, which are on every street corner in America. So, we've got a bit of a pickle here, don't we? Uh we have a bit of a data problem and just typing out the names of all these groups is just too much data. It's just too much. There's not one, there's 10,000, right? And we also have a policing problem because these groups have been allowed to develop doctrine that rivals even a lot of military units, right? At least in terms of scale. Now, we may be tempted to look at these activist groups and chuckle at how they view the world through the lens of Reddit, but make no mistake, these NGOs are one of the biggest problems that the United States faces today and so far, no one left or right has wanted to even mention the problem because it would implicate very powerful donors. So, that's the strategic wave top overview of the organizational situation as it stands right now. In terms of the tactical situation on the ground in Minneapolis, it's pretty much status quo. I'll have to uh summarize the more uh kinetic events in a wire report, but strategically, for me this week, it's been incredibly data heavy as I've been putting a lot of man-hours into working on my maps. So, for those of you who want to take a look at the more boring side of what I do pretty much every day, check out my mapping products at the links below. I have two main maps on ArcGIS, the common intelligence picture, which is probably what most of you want, and I also have a separate map called the border crisis map, which is solely dedicated to tracking immigration issues. I would like to have all of this data on one map and just call it, you know, the map, uh but there are so many data points that it's actually kind of hard to load in a web browser sometimes. So, I've had to keep it separate for now. And of course, for those of you who might like to bring this data into ATAC, uh such as for conducting your own risk assessments and analysis and stuff like that for your local area, I have KMZs on my GitHub page for those who want them. Now, these KMZs are not auto-updating. They're not network link KMLs uh for now. So, I would say maybe once a week or so, if you want to get a fresh KMZ, uh just go into GitHub and download it and throw it into ATAC if you want. I know GitHub is not the easiest thing to use for the layperson. It's kind of it's kind of dumb if you're just trying to use it for downloads, but it works for me really well because sometimes I'm updating these KMZs several times a day and it's easier for me to just uh push the updates to the website. So, so that's pretty much what I have for now. I'm sorry if this isn't as uh in-depth as I wanted to go today, but I've run out of time and uh you know, we've got storm preparations to make here. So, with that, let's wrap up today with this week in history and I need to come up with a catchier name than that, but anyway, this time last year, we were still working through quite a few issues that kind of just fizzled out. So, firstly, we were working through the Palisades fire crisis and President Trump was being inaugurated. So, it's been 1 year since President Trump assumed office and it has been a crazy year, hasn't it? All the way around. So, looking back to 2025 around the world, much more sinister plots were unfolding such as the coup that never was, which was uh continuing in South Korea. There was a little bit of a spat there for a couple of months. It looked uh pretty dicey, but South Korean politics is pretty crazy as usual and uh this this case was no exception. So, that was kind of exciting to track for a little while last year. And also, a little bit more sinisterly, the trial of the Southport killer was ongoing and at the time, the gag orders on the details of that trial were just coming to light for the very first time and in hindsight, that was a watershed moment which changed the fate of the United Kingdom forever. So, we were just starting to figure out just how bad that um murder spree was back then and things have kind of snowballed from there, haven't they? Over the past year. So, personally, I find it quite interesting that 2026 started off much the same as 2025 did. A lot of very, very horrific things coming to light, but also a lot of hope to change things for the better. And that's a good way to look at things, I think. Acknowledge the challenges, but always end on what you can do to change things even if that's just changing yourself. And with that, let's finish up with the Ghost Net reports for today. This week was a really good net. I got a lot of messages, saw a lot of new check-ins, a lot of uh message traffic back and forth, a lot of news reports being exchanged, which is fantastic to see. And this week is a little bit more important than usual because at least for those of you who are in the same region as myself, we have some once-in-a-lifetime winter weather that is supposed to sweep across the nation from Texas to Virginia. So, a good chunk of the country and I would imagine that most of us will be losing power for quite a while. So, we've got a lot of snow and ice scheduled to descend on the region on Saturday, but also next week, temperatures are supposed to not get above freezing for most of the region for many days. So, the snow and ice won't be melting anytime soon. Oh, and high winds are also forecasted too, at least for where I'm at. So, definitely be safe out there. This storm is no joke this time. Uh I know the local media chop at the bit to sensationalize this kind of thing, but I've been looking at the raw data myself and this looks like a big one. So, definitely do what you can, remain as flexible as possible, and uh for the Ghost Nets specifically, I myself I'm going to be leaving my radios on and running throughout the whole uh crisis just in case uh anybody needs to send a message or exchange some information. I'll I'll be monitoring the whole time. Uh so, otherwise, other than radio stuff, I have the capability to stay online in some way no matter what happens. So, I I plan to keep wire reports flowing as best I can, but it'll be pretty annoying to be snowed in for a couple of weeks, I think. So, I guess we'll have to see how it all works out. It might be nothing or it might be calamity. There's really no telling, but personally, I'm making the last-minute preparations for a more widespread disaster situation. So, and staying prepared is always a good thing. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you again, everyone, for your support. I don't say that nearly enough. I really do appreciate it as it's what keeps me going and able to build all these daily reports, products, and maps, and stuff. So, could not do it without all of you, that's for sure. So, thanks again and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground I know it has been a long time since we've been online so I wanted to make a quick podcast letting everyone know that we're all right and the reason for the absence so jumping right into things for those of you that are unaware we have moved I've tried to keep some of you in the loop during this process but I haven't been able to have as reliable communication as I wanted I had not planned on ghosting everyone so to speak but to put it simply we had to get the hell out of Dodge and we had to do it quickly some of you might remember me briefly mentioning in a previous video the idea of grabbing a backpack and heading for the hills in the dead of night it's funny because I said that to make a point about logistics and a lifestyle of Readiness I had no idea that I myself would basically be following my own advice because that's pretty much how things worked out I can't get into the details too much because I don't want anyone figuring out exactly where I lived for obvious reasons but me and my family pretty much immediately made the decision to move and move quickly reasons for the move are basically what many of you are also experiencing extreme violence in cities made worse by entities that encourage the violence high costs of goods High theft rates extraordinarily bad racial violence and in my personal case a decently nice neighborhood made into an absolute ghetto in every possible way by leftist politicians and entities granting free money to people and allowing Section 8 applicants to rent a quarter of a million dollar houses so after a few more rather specific events in my area and having long tired of seeing squad cars I and my immediate family have moved to an extremely remote area in eastern Appalachia the reason for being so quiet during this move is rather simple we had to move a really long distance by ourselves without getting any Moving services or even a U-Haul because well number one moving trucks weren't even available and due to everyone like ourselves fleeing the cities at this point and two the locals in my area have been known to rob people at gunpoint or launch a home invasion when they knew people were moving their valuables so this move is quite literally echoed the Allied withdrawal from Gallipoli over a century ago all the be it with much less Bloodshed so over the period of a couple of months we basically disappeared into the night with the neighborhood thugs learning of our absence only after we were long gone I know that may sound a bit extreme or a bit over dramatic especially since I can't really elaborate on the specifics of my old local gangs but what's done is done perhaps I will go into further detail regarding some of the issues that we faced in the hopes of helping others get through a similar situation but I'm not going to pretend to have the answers to our nation's socioeconomic problems my immediate solution was to leave and trade space for time time to think prepare and get myself and my family from the violence including state-sponsored violence as fast as possible as far as the new place there's good news and a bit of bad news the good news is that it's much safer Far From Any City and very good for expanding the underground here as much as we want we specifically chose this particular place because of the filming potential and after taking a look around property this place will be excellent for that the bad news is that these sellers pretty much destroyed the primary residence on the property before the sale both intentionally and through their own neglect over the years it's not a foreclosure but it almost looks like it based on the things we have to fix I'm not entirely sure why they did this though the deal did go sour pretty fast at least on our end everything about this sale went sideways from the bank requiring absurd things for a simple conventional mortgage to the realtor actually breaking the law quite seriously and forging documents so who knows what the sellers were up to or what they were going through all I know is that this simple Fixer-Upper has turned into a complete gutting and overhaul and since we're going to have to do all the work ourselves we're going to be quite busy for a long time but we will still be able to meet our quasi-regular content uploads we'll make that work for sure and of course show some of the projects that we'll be working on because we're going to be building a headquarters from the ground up speaking of uploads the other main downside to the location we've moved to is internet access it's simply non-existent so we're having to work around that which is challenging but we'll make it work we might not have 4K videos for a while but you all shouldn't notice any difference with most of our stuff the frustration is all on our end with uploads taking forever but again we'll make it work if I have to drive to town to get some Wi-Fi at the library we'll we'll do that we'll make it work all in all we are certainly changing one set of challenges for another but now we've got enough land to feed ourselves with and hopefully many others if the political economic and social situation nationally takes a serious turn for the worse things are getting spicy these days and I think that a lot of people are about to learn what true hardship really is so even though what we've got here is far from perfect I am very happy that we have what we have we have some serious potential to do a lot of good things and I can't ask for much else moving forward the next couple of weeks are going to be kind of Rocky as far as content goes I'm going to prioritize getting an Intel update brief out as soon as possible I'm sure everyone has noticed that the world has gone completely insane since the last Intel update so I really need to change the format again to better represent the issues that I think are important and the things you all might want to know about I haven't even started on that just yet so the next brief might be the old format until I can decide what to go with or whether or not I need to split things into smaller more topical briefs but again we'll figure something out for the more educational stuff we do the more doctrinal Style videos we're looking into greatly expanding things both on the main channels and in the war kitchen and some non-video based stuff as well some of you already know the behind the scenes stuff we've been quietly working on and and those projects will be put into overdrive to get something tangible out to the public soon on the communications front we're also looking at revamping that as well at some point we need a new com card for one and I really want to get a more reliable and secure Communications infrastructure that's easy for everyone to use you all know how long we've been working on that issue with no real solutions being super great or reliable in the long run but we're going to be looking at that more seriously nonetheless so yeah lots of big plans already in the works and lots of big challenges to overcome though things seem overwhelming in the short term over time we'll get into the swing of things and I hope we can begin to help all of you as much as you have helped us I thank God for putting people like you in our path to make all of this happen again I know a lot of people say this a lot though I myself am tragically lacking and reaffirming this but we here I especially would not be here if it were not for all of you watching our videos engaging with us in our chat servers helping out others within our ecosystem here and taking the ideas we've taught and improving on them to make everyone a bit more capable none of the good work that we have done or started would have been possible without all of you without the S2 underground project becoming as successful as it has been I know that I would still be locked away in some skiff doing the devil's work for a government that is looking to erase every honorable person from existence people always say to be thankful for your challenges because they prepare you for the next ones I've heard that and I've even said it many times myself over the years but I have truly embraced that idea fully now we've certainly got our work cut out for us I know that all of you out there watching this are also taking things day by day as well and for those of you who are having a rough time or are starting to have a rough time and it seems like life just keeps throwing punches at you I want you all to know that I hear you and know exactly what you're going through and we're going to get through this together things always seem to be way worse than they really are when you're in the thick of a problem but once you overcome it it doesn't seem like it was that big of a deal at all that applies to everything from small problems to the big problems we're facing as a nation we'll get through it whatever happens so let's get to it and see what we can really do I'll be back again with another update soon but until then fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the intel update for wednesday the 10th of august 2022 and as usual it is being recorded the day prior on the 9th so let's get right to it so for today this is going to be more of a quick and dirty brief i didn't really have a whole lot of time for research this week due to working on a lot of other projects so unfortunately i'm going to have to skip pretty much all of the infrastructure incidents and concerns i know that's like the main meat and potatoes of these briefings here but i haven't really had a whole lot of time to run a lot of these things to ground so it's not that there hasn't been anything that's happened it's just that it's getting a lot more difficult to figure out what is a legitimate infrastructure concern and what isn't in like an actual attack on infrastructure uh this briefing was really is really right on the cusp of my own personal goal which is to not put a brief out just for the sake of putting a brief out but we have just enough stuff to talk about that's occurred in the past few days really that's worth putting a brief out so just wanted to kind of mention that for everyone and i guess we'll go ahead and quickly move to suspicious fires so really only one to add this time around and this is in birmingham alabama new mount moriah baptist church uh was basically burned to the ground actually two days ago so on the 7th into the 8th of august if i remember correctly again like pretty much all of these other church fires there's really no indication of whether or not this was arson or not this one i added to the slide because out of the five or six church fires that have occurred in the past 48 hours uh this is the only one that did not specifically mention a cause so i wanted to kind of put that out there moving on to kinetic incident tracker nothing for the northeast just yet there have been a lot of things that have occurred in new york i still haven't really figured out what my own personal benchmark is for these kinds of events because quite literally there is what you might consider a domestic terror attack occurring in pretty much every city in the united states every single day so i don't know what to include as just general violence now that the the bar has shifted so far uh that generalized street violence is now to the level of what we might have considered a domestic terror attack 10 years ago i really don't know where we're at with this so i'm just going to for the moment leave these leave high profile events on this on this series of slides so moving down to the southeast region really there was only one item of note and i think this is less of a domestic terror thing and more of a personal dispute and that is in arkansas we don't really hear a whole lot coming out of arkansas with regards to kinetic incidents like this but this took place in randolph county arkansas specifically at the home of the randolph county sheriff someone who apparently had a beef with the sheriff tried to attack his home with an improvised explosive slash incendiary device uh the device actually set fire to his home while the sheriff and his family were sleeping there in the middle of the night around 1 30 in the morning or so uh the sheriff did get a tip off before uh the the assailant actually got to his property because the person who committed the attack was a is a well-known uh felon in the area and he was wearing an ankle monitor so for those that don't know in many jurisdictions around the country uh these ankle monitoring services they're not just monitoring someone to make sure they don't leave a certain geographic area they're also monitoring where a person goes so in this case the law enforcement branch there the county sheriff either i don't know if it's internally or some kind of third party company or whatnot but anyway the the monitoring service that was monitoring this guy's anklet noticed that he was headed towards the sheriff's home so the sheriff got a phone call got an advanced warning uh things like that so just just so everyone's aware that's that's why this is kind of a unique incident because this guy obviously was caught quite quickly there's no real motive on this one obviously a firebombing is kind of a high profile thing but this looks like this was more of a personal dispute between this guy and the sheriff so i'm just i'm going to leave it on there obviously because it's a high profile event but we'll move on to the midwest specifically the east central midwestern region and really there were two incidents that have occurred both of these new incidents are kind of similar but the first one i wanted to talk about occurred in chicago illinois uh actually this was a suburb of chicago uh this occurred just a couple of days ago on the 7th of august at the uprising bakery however this was specifically targeting a drag queen brunch so this bakery uprising bakery is seems to be from like the stuff i've seen on social media an extreme leftist um bakery and uh it looks like they were hosting an event called drag queen brunch in which case there were performers that came in and do the stuff that we all kind of know they do now well people showed up and graffitied their bakery up pretty good calling them groomers and such so yeah pretty pretty standard they actually broke a few windows front door things like that um but as far as emotive and like a claimant it's probably a solid guess this was done by people that have kind of had enough of this kind of behavior we don't often see conservatives or traditionalists i guess you should say uh conducting these kinds of operations but my guess is this kind of thing will probably continue well into the future such as in the case of number seven so moving on to number seven there in kalamazoo michigan this was a planned parenthood that was attacked via arson so apparently a pro-life individual tried to set fire to a local planned parenthood in kalamazoo michigan on the 31st of july the facility wasn't damaged too much and this guy left a very long trail of evidence and so he was arrested pretty quickly but yeah i again would expect these kinds of reactionary attacks moving forward into the future moving on to the west central midwestern region only two items of note in lawrence kansas something we don't normally see too often in kansas this was again vandalism most likely by jane's revenge the victory bible church and the calvary temple assembly of god uh both in lawrence kansas both located kind of close to each other i guess both were vandalized in the classic james revenge faction so unfortunately as unfortunate as this event is it is not uncommon whatsoever at this point thus even talking about in the first place i guess uh so i guess we'll move on to the southwestern region again i haven't really found any number of kinetic events that have occurred within the last 90 days with regards to the southwest i think it's due to population density and maybe perhaps my own benchmark and search parameters i'm sure stuff has occurred i just haven't found it we'll keep an eye out and i'll make sure to dig a little bit deeper next time so moving on to the western region again only one significant item of note but just to mention uh the one item of note that i thought was very interesting number seven there in los angeles california an ied attack occurred at a convenience store by unknown assailants so this is a very strange one so that's why i wanted to mention it so some guy entered a small convenience store with a backpack set the backpack down on the ground and ran off the backpack then ignited slash partially exploded uh this caused a fire in the store obviously but it didn't seem to do much damage otherwise i didn't see too many windows knocked out or anything like that nothing is known about the device itself as usual literally all we have to go on are witness accounts and the completely ignorant local news media so i'm not sure if this counts as a true ied attack but yeah i did want to mention it so just based on how weird it is you don't normally see this kind of thing but i guess in los angeles anything goes these days and moving on to the meat of the matter for this time which is significant governmental actions first up is the ups fiasco so right now i don't really have a lot of new details that i can talk about uh just yet still kind of working through the the process to figure out what is actually uh going down with that but um maybe i'll have some more information next time of course as you might expect a lot of people are kind of you know anxious to figure out what's going on with this ups stuff is ups banning or trying to seize packages are they going after individual consumers uh the only thing that i can say at the moment right now just from you know my basic analysis is that it's more complicated than you think but this again does not set a great precedent moving forward with regards to shipping and online firearms dealers or firearms parts dealers things like that so when i have some more information i will bring it but for right now i just wanted to remind everyone that this is still going on and did not forget about it because as we all know once something gets out of the 24-hour news cycle we tend to forget about it and the ups potentially cracking down on firearms parts distributors is kind of a big freaking deal so i don't want to let this one slip into the abyss of you know last week right so we'll just keep that one on the slide for now up next is the fbi document leak which is interesting i'm sure everyone on the planet has heard about it by now to me i am i don't want to be condescending but to me this is not really exciting news because we've already kind of seen this much of what was leaked in the fbi's uh domestic terror brief right much of what was briefed in that document has already been circulating throughout law enforcement communities for gosh at least over a year now we remember the dod's extremism stand down most of what was in the fbi paper that was leaked was also in that saying that anyone who is a fan of american history anyone who has a betsy ross flag is an extremist uh that's none of that's new so i don't know why the sudden outrage over this uh other than you know just i guess people maybe not keeping up to date with what the federal government has been doing i don't know again i'm trying not to be super condescending but when i saw this it was like okay you know okay we now have it formalized that the fbi has been doing this i mean we formalized this last year i thought so anyway uh yeah the fbi document leak happened uh and all of that being said the the the most interesting thing to me which i've seen a few people online mention as well is that the the groups that were not listed on the fbi's extremism brief right so the groups that were not mentioned were any kind of imagery or symbology tied to antifa or blm which again is to be expected because the fbi is well they're they're what they are we all know what they are now uh but what was also interesting to me is that the patriot front was not listed so the patriot front is all about symbols they're all about nice uniforms and interesting little you know formations and things like that but the patriot front was not listed very interesting i don't quite know what that means just yet and i'm not trying to imply that the patriot front is entirely the fbi but i think that there's probably a good portion of the patriot front who is either willingly or unwillingly serving the fbi in some capacity either with informants or just being stupid either way i'm not entirely certain but all the memes going around about the the patriot front are at least kind of entertaining and i just don't have enough information to say what that group is either way maybe we'll do a deep dive on on that group in the future but for now i think that's really all that kind of i have on that up next is the irs so as many people are finding out now after the fact congress just passed a bill to to more than double the size of the irs this will mean that the irs when this becomes law which it most certainly will this will mean that the irs will have more employees than the fbi the pentagon and customs and border protection so that's very interesting to me right the irs is specifically going to be targeting middle class taxpayers which is not just something that conservative pundits have been kind of bringing out right this is actually what their history is less than nine percent of people making over five hundred thousand dollars are to be audited right because that's what they did last year so this bill also increases the irs's budget by over six times at least by my math uh from reading the bill this is a they're going to increase their budget by 600 percent from just last year which it was already increased uh for last year so yeah um the democrats and republicans in congress who supported this bill claim that the bill will not increase audits on people who earn less than 400 000 a year uh and i'm just going to say this is an outright lie this is the most false thing i have heard today because last year 51 of every single human being audited by the irs made less than 75 000 last year over half of who the irs targets is the middle class so what's the deal here 4.8 percent of all the audits irs did were on people making over 10 million dollars so less than five percent are going to be millionaires right and the interesting part is that in this bill 57 of this new budgetary increase has already directly been allocated to targeting americans so the irs has targeted the middle class uh lower classes always always always which is something that i cannot shout loud enough to anyone who will listen i guess but oh well i've contained my rage on the irs for as long as possible so let's move on to something else before i say something that will get me in trouble uh like talking about the raid that occurred in florida so i am sure that by now uh everyone has realized what has happened last night as i'm making this brief right now donald trump's compound down at mar-a-lago in palm beach florida was raided by the fbi last night it is unclear as to what the fbi was doing uh however there have been several rumors that have been floating around uh i will that the main rumor that's been floating around is that the fbi has been uh trying to investigate slash c's documents related to the donald trump's potential or alleged removal of documents from the white house uh following uh his uh you know tenure in office right so they're saying the fbi is trying to say that donald trump illegally took documents and is improperly storing classified material so i don't know if that's going to hold water because here's the interesting thing that a lot of people might not understand about classified information is that the president of the united states is an original classification authority this means that the president of the united states has the ability to say they have the ability to change the classification level of anything so they can declassify whatever they want so i'm not entirely sure how the fbi is going to try to justify this but really again this just occurred this just happened last night so i haven't really had time to think about it and as usual this points to this brief being more haphazard than normal but i think that one of the things we need to consider is the potential for the fbi to use this as an intelligence collection opportunity obviously obviously obviously people were going to flock to mar-a-lago once they realized the fbi had raided it donald trump has a lot of supporters right either passively or very very actively and you have to admit that his his people will most certainly turn up and they did they immediately flocked to mar-a-lago me just looking at the tweets of that and the the video of that uh last night my first thought was okay where's the fbi surveillance van collecting intelligence on their cell phones uh because you've got live streamers showing up to mar-a-lago like dude the fbi is there collecting intelligence on you so i think that they're going to get a lot more intelligence on this from the actual people who showed up rather than donald trump himself and the same thing applies online the we we know for a fact that one of the fbi's main tricks is to see who is outraged about something they did online so someone gets online they get really angry they say something they shouldn't online and that stays online forever yeah i think that's some i think that's probably the biggest lesson the average american can can take from this in this incident so far again this is not an unexpected event we were expecting donald trump to not just be raided but most likely arrested at some point they're going to have to whatever one's feelings are about donald trump i think are kind of irrelevant at this point with regards to this specific kind of raid and for whatever reason i feel the need to caveat once again that i'm personally no fan of donald trump either uh for for many different reasons um but the the fact of the matter is is that this is a president of the united states who has been raided his personal residence has been raided by the fbi now when i look at that i see a lot of different things for one i wonder okay was the secret service in on this as well because donald trump still writes secret service protection so that the secret service agents on his personal detail cooperate with the fbi i also question whether or not donald trump himself got the tip off somehow my guess is he probably did the the man was president of the united states he's got intelligence collection networks working for him no matter where he goes he's got friends in very high places right so i find it very hard to believe that he would not have been prepared for this raid and that shows the naivety of the fbi that conducted the raid it's not just a political move to target the president united states but but look like even andrew cuomo has figured out that this was going to hurt the liberals more than it's going to help them because now you just made the man a martyr even you know even if not literally you've made him a figurative martyr in the political game and even andrew cuomo has taken to twitter to mention that this is going to decrease the legitimacy of the other extreme leftist stuff they're doing which in fact it will my guess is that donald trump if he has any brain cells left would never never never keep anything incriminating at his house like that's the most like junior level stuff right so the fbi raiding his residence did they actually seriously think they were gonna find anything maybe they did i don't know either way a lot of ecos got involved of a very important decision-making process and that's dangerous because as we're getting ready to as i'll talk about when we get to international issues i think that incompetence and and egotistical thinking is is going to get a lot of people in trouble inside the federal regime at this point when it comes to thinking about how government works i'm trying not to take a side with regards to how i know internal federal agencies work i'm trying to see things as objectively as possible and i tell you that like look raiding the home of a former president is not good you're talking about things like invoking executive privilege privilege concerns you're talking about watergate level stuff like matt you're it's it's a huge deal and as if these concerns were not strong enough uh we're finding out this morning that the federal magistrate judge which authorized the fbi raid into donald trump's personal residence has a history this guy is the same guy who left the u.s attorney's office about 10 years ago or so to represent legally employees of jeffrey epstein so yeah this is quite literally something that even i don't think even hollywood could come up with uh the levels of corruption that we're seeing here which again is not surprising but i think that the larger lesson for all of us here is that we should most certainly expect more political persecution by federal agents i mean if they're going to raid donald trump's house and not be afraid of what's going to happen to them then what do you think they'll do to you and me so i think that's probably something that we should be mindful of but to bring my sort of disorganized rambling to a close uh i think that this event is really just for most people going to be a an indicator of just how serious the situation is like i mentioned if they're going to raid donald trump's house what are they going to do to you i think that for most people in the country this is really just going to be a solidification of how serious the situation is i think this event is going to wake up a lot of people to what's going on this is not just some conservative pundit right saying uh the fbi did this the fbi is doing that no this this is this is real here uh the the president of the united states the former president united states uh had his home raided by the current administration's fbi you know that that is really hard to deny and the fact that that even occurred i don't i don't care what the raid was about right the fact that that occurred is is pretty shocking um i can guarantee you that this is an event that is going to live in infamy for a very very long time and i think that this is not going to be the last one for whatever reason the current regime has decided to target donald trump in any way possible using any resources possible again regardless of whatever your feelings are about the man i think that it's very interesting to to see that the biden regime is so terrified of him that they're willing to risk all of the the the the fallout from raiding his opponents home uh they're willing to risk that fallout simply because of how scared they are of him i don't know if that is a i don't know if that fear is misplaced or not uh but in any case it's what's happening and i would expect it to continue quite seriously at first i thought when this stuff kicked off i thought you know what they're probably going to just go after his chief his chief people right his leadership his chiefs of staff things like that but no um we're here now they've raided donald trump's house so there's no coming back from that and i think that the only way forward for the biden regime is to continue on forward and double down because that's what they've been doing with quite literally every single event they have done every single thing they've done so far so so yeah i'll i'll shut up talking about that for now and we'll kind of see what the fallout from this is i'm not really going to pay attention to what's going on in congress with regards to congressional republicans because i think it's going to be interesting to see which republicans do not denounce this raid that's going to be interesting but i think that really any actions that congressional republicans are going to take is mostly going to be political theater and i don't think it's going to be any kind of effective you know whatsoever so anyway i guess we'll have to see what happens so let's go ahead and move on to international issues so again this brief is quite haphazard this time i haven't really had time to talk about sri lanka or india just yet but it looks like the famine that is underway in sri lanka uh has started to either affect india or it's more of a correlation not a causation type thing basically india is having some trouble with rice so the main manufacturer distributor for rice in india has expressed that they're it's kind of confusing i've seen headlines either way they've said that either they're having trouble or they're going to have trouble in the near future again i haven't dug into this too much and probably by the time that we figure things out it's going to be too late anyway but yeah food shortages are certainly uh on the menu or or would it be off the menu either way for the world for this winter so that's going to be something to follow i will let you know again rice is not a huge dietary thing for the united states we don't really consume that much rice as part of our diet and we have a lot of corn which is in the same kind of nutritional class i guess you'd call it it's a staple good right most people in the united states have corn as a significant part of their diet however a rice shortage is going to affect southeast asia like you would not believe because most people in southeast asia you know shocker eat a lot of rice so india most of india's exports go to the rest of southeast asia so that's going to be the market that's going to be hit the most with this i would guess but i would also expect you know rice shortages to kind of pop up in random places as is typical by now moving on to russia this is a very interesting one and something that i would keep an eye on in the future if you're interested in uh foreign defense stuff and that is that the fsb has been arresting scientists uh throughout many of their programs over the past few uh weeks actually so the latest guy to be arrested is alexander shiployok who was arrested by the fsb on charges of treason so they're not messing around uh he was the director of the institute of theoretical and applied mechanics of the siberian branch of the russian academy of sciences what a job title this entity the the institute has been leading russia's efforts to produce and improve their hypersonic missiles which they have announced are supposed to be implemented uh the newest hypersonic missiles they have uh they're supposed to be implemented on their naval vessels or deploy on the naval vessels sometime this fall yeah very interesting this is the third scientist that has been arrested in the past month from the same exact project area the institute's lead researcher and another researcher in the laser physics department have also been arrested again on charges of treason so when i look at this i think oh there's some international espionage going on either these guys were working for the cia and spying for the united states or maybe even china who knows my guess is that russia has have found out about it and they're cracking down on some kind of spy network they've got going on in their technology divisions so again this is not uncommon the united states has people leaking secrets to china basically daily at this point but yeah russia also has the same problems so i would be very interested to see what their hypersonic missile program looks like and whether or not these hypersonic missiles actually work and finally let's talk about taiwan for just a second as many of you have already seen many people are kind of freaking out over the recent escalations of tensions between taiwan china and the us nancy pelosi's visit to taiwan to check on her insider trading investments increased tension sharply for a couple of days but for the most part we haven't really seen anything beyond posturing and saber rattling many volumes can and have been filled by discussing the highly complicated and intricate balance of diplomacy in southeast asia so right now let me just take a couple of minutes and alleviate some concerns really really quickly as for me i'm not really worried about china right now i'm not really super concerned about world war iii breaking out with china over the next few weeks or months uh no matter how much some people on the planet seem to want that uh my my own personal opinion is that china they're going through a lot of domestic concerns right now that would make war not really an option at the moment ukraine has shown that a major superpower the former soviet union can't even reoccupy one of their former republics in the exact same terrain that their military their entire military was built for china you know looking at the mountainous hellscape of taiwan's terrain and the fact that they're an island uh would pretty much expend the entirety of their military invading taiwan or at least enough to where they're going to be in some serious trouble if they try to go for taiwan plus we we may be outraged at the hundreds of billions of dollars of you know our tax money that's been sent to ukraine but but we must remember that our recent funding of ukraine does not hold a candle to the mountains of funding that we have given to taiwan over the past few decades again i'm certainly no southeast asia expert i'm reading up on the region i'm trying to get smart on that but at the moment i will 100 say that every day that goes by i distrust military strategy analysts more and more uh the china boogie man is big business both for the defense industry and for the private sector as well very rarely will defense blogs talk about china's problems which is important to understanding the whole picture and china's problems are numerous like their starving military their almost complete lack of any adequate electrical grid they're failing financial structures they're laughably substandard naval vessels their failing banks the massive drought and food shortages throughout the nation and the hydroelectric dam that is upstream of 15 of the entire world's manufacturing capability the same dam that has been forming 10 meter long cracks in it since 2003. the us defense industry is certainly drooling over the opportunity to do everything they can to start localized conflicts uh the powers that be would be very happy to start some of those small wars that have been the standard for a while but they also don't understand that big wars as in thermonuclear wars won't do too much to pad their wallets and will actually make their bank accounts kind of irrelevant if they were to occur so the ultra short bottom line is expect lots of saber rattling by china and the united states china will seek to maintain their dominance over southeast asia and the united states will seek to keep poking the dragon as a way to increase the potential for another series of forever wars which will benefit the us defense industry however with inexperienced and incompetent people conducting diplomacy in southeast asia we average citizens have to be mindful of these sheer stupid mistakes that could be made with potentially irreversible results we can't expect and plan for corruption but we cannot plan for stupid mistakes are always what make me nervous and the current us regime is most certainly playing with fire with their flippant egotistical attitude towards issues bigger than themselves so i don't want to dismiss china as completely not a threat they most certainly are and china's national aspirations are quite clear they you know for lack of a better term have expressed they want world domination or at least domination in southeast asia and i think that that's a little uh a little concerning for everyone even if china is not able to to meet a lot of those goals so now on the other hand the united states gave putin permission to reinvade ukraine we all remember maybe some of us remember the small minor incursion uh scandal from the early opening days of the the reigniting of the ukrainian war and that's something that china has noticed too so my guess is that if china were to somehow get the gumption to invade taiwan the u.s response would probably be the same if not much less than the situation in ukraine the reason for us politicians funding ukraine with so much of our tax money and just printing printing billions hundreds of billions of dollars is mostly due to corruption and not defense but with taiwan the roles are reversed a bit sort of half of our politicians are quite literally in bed with chinese agents daily so i don't think the dynamic is going to be quite the same with the china taiwan conflict as we have seen in ukraine either way the u.s can do all the poking it wants but at the end of the day china is going to have to be the one to launch the invasion and i don't know if they are militarily capable of doing so at the moment but again stupid exists on both sides of the aisle and china's leadership might think they have a chance at taking taiwan right now maybe they think they're pushed up against the wall with their failing economy and they have to do something although i'm not really sure what they would get from taking taiwan other than national prestige and the potential for further invasions down the line but again i think this is a pretty remote possibility considering the domestic issues china is going through right now of course i could be wrong and probably am but out of all the issues we're dealing with in the united states right now china is pretty close to the bottom of my list of concerns so it's already kind of disappointing anyone out there expecting an in-depth analysis of the situation with china in years past i know myself would have been fascinated with stuff like this but these days i'm just having a really hard time caring about the intricate details of diplomacy in southeast asia but again we'll keep an eye out and if anything squirrely starts going on we'll we'll do what we can to keep everybody informed as to what's going on so that's pretty much all i have for today again thank you all for watching uh sorry this is more of a haphazard one than normal but that's the case when things seem to happen very very quickly it's almost like every single day we find out of some milestone groundbreaking event that's never occurred before in history so again it's not it's not easy to kind of keep up with these kinds of things but that's okay we'll do the best we can and thank you again to all of those who support us on patreon and nutrient you guys have really helped us out a lot and you're continuing to help us make these briefs a possibility well into the future so thank you so much for that and we will 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 August 24th through the 30th of 2025. It's been a busy week as usual. So, let's get right to it. Starting off with a global overview. There haven't been really that many new events going on around the world this week. Just a lot of continuation and increasing of severity of things that have already been going on in the Middle East. Tensions are increasing once again as Israeli forces make their advance into Gaza City once more. There has been a lot of conflicting information on this. Some sources claim that Israel is continuing their push into Gaza City just like they did the last time. Whereas other sources are claiming that they've suffered fairly severe losses so far, so they've decided to withdraw, regroup, and try this again in a few days. It's really hard to say. None of the sources involved in any of this are reliable in any form or fashion. So getting to the truth is not really possible in in many cases, but just know that things are still pretty hot in the Middle East, especially with regards to what's going on in Gaza and also what's going on with the Iranians. Several European nations have decided to reimpose the formerly withdrawn sanctions on Iran. So that could be a point of things escalating over the next few days and weeks. So far, there really hasn't been that much of an indication, but European uh leadership seems to be quite uh concerned with that being a possibility. So, not entirely out of the ordinary, but just something to keep an eye on. Similarly, the US Navy continues their deployment down off the coast of Venezuela, which we'll talk about in just a moment. But just at a high level, there's been a lot of speculation that war with Venezuela is imminent. I don't know about that. There's just a whole lot of discussion that needs to be had regarding what's the point of all of this. Strategically speaking, I'm not entirely certain what is the plan here other than just posturing, which is where it's uh mostly stayed right now, but just at a high level, uh just know that there are a substantial number of military forces deployed down to South America, which again we'll talk about next. And finally, here in the United States, we of course had the Minneapolis church shooting, the the shooting at the Church of the Enunciation in Minneapolis, which we'll discuss in greater depth in just a moment. Moving on to strategic movement. Like I said, there have not been a whole lot of changes from last week. There are still a lot a lot of forces deployed down off the coast of Venezuela. I know that slides like this can be a little bit sensational sometimes. So, it is important to remember that moving navy ships around is a fairly cheap way or at least a comparatively cheap way of posturing and threatening other nations and trying to bully other nations to do what we want. Every nation since the dawn of time that has had a very powerful navy has done the same, right? The British are kind of infamous for doing this as well over the past few centuries. So just because there are a lot of navy ships in any one place doesn't necessarily mean that something's going something is going to happen. But it is something to be aware of especially in the context of this just kind of appearing out of nowhere. The US Navy has really engaged in counter narcotics operations along with the Coast Guard especially in the Caribbean over the past few decades. So this is not new by any stretch of the imagination. But once again, wavetop level. It's 2025 and we don't want to obsess too much over this sort of thing because this is how the White House wages diplomacy. Put some very, very expensive hardware someplace around the world. But again, a lot of times it's not a bluff, right? We everybody was utterly and completely convinced that the B2 deployment to Diego Garcia was a bluff, right? And it wasn't a bluff. It was a threat. It was literally what was going to happen. They were training at Diego Garcia so that they could launch from there if need be. if this became a wider campaign. In the end, we of course know that they did not end up striking Iran using Diego Garcia as a base. They just took off from Missouri like normal. But in hindsight, we have to remember, yeah, there were indications and warnings. And I think that if war breaks out in a couple of months with Venezuela, we're going to look back at, you know, today and say, well, yeah, there were signs. Of course, there were signs, right? So, this will be something to remember moving forward, but right now there's just not a whole lot to go on. Moving to the United States, the kinetic events for this week are largely centered around um I've I've chosen to focus mostly on the mass shooting in Minneapolis. It's been a pretty kinetic week. I've still tried to find out uh from last week where these 1700 National Guard soldiers have gone or where they're going to go around the country in all of these states that have said that they're going to be deployed to. I haven't found anything so far. I don't think any of these soldiers have actually moved. And of course, 1,700 soldiers spread around 19 states is not a lot. So, you're not exactly going to see them standing on street corners and, you know, like they are in DC around the country. There's just not that many of them yet. Ever since that was announced, of course, everyone just kind of forgot about it, but I just wanted to keep it fresh in everyone's mind cuz I haven't forgotten about it. And if this is the plan, then you know, something to be aware of, especially for places like Chicago and New York, which of course are being touted by the White House as being the next big pushes for National Guard deployments. So Chicago and New York City are definitely the two to watch next. But if we're going to be sending National Guard troops to Nebraska, then that's something to be aware of uh as well. And speaking of Nebraska, unintentional segue there. Uh the two other hotels that were implicated in the Chadari family human slavery, human trafficking operation. Uh those other two hotels have been closed down. At least what that's what local media are reporting. And local journalists who are now a full month behind the story have decided to actually start investigating this a little bit more. And they found out that it's not just hotels, but it's also nail salons. So around half a dozen nail salons throughout the city have been shut down due to this similar uh activity being undertaken there. I don't have much context and I don't have a list of addresses just yet, but I'm I'm going to be updating the map uh as usual from from this as best I can. Just something to keep in mind because again this is Omaha, Nebraska and it's it's not somewhere where you'd think this kind of thing happens, but this is what Heartland America looks like in many cases. A lot of the time you've got very large criminal enterprises being waged in the middle of places which are basically just a Norman Rockwell painting. Right? Just to keep it fresh in everyone's minds. Just wanted to remind everyone that this investigation is ongoing. So jumping to the regions this week there have been a lot of things coming out of Washington DC. So this week the executive orders which have garnered a lot of attention. Again the current White House is using a slightly different vernacular. They're calling these executive actions and they're not numbered. I don't I think they will be numbered later on, but for right now, these are just posted on the White House's web page as executive actions, but they're really executive orders. The executive order that has gotten a lot of press this week is the one which bans the burning of the American flag and sets a penalty of one year in prison for burning the American flag uh as part of a demonstration. Now, the interesting part about this one, of course, I think this one's going to go to court because the American legal system has really examined this question of whether it's legal, illegal, free speech, not free speech to burn the American flag. So, I'm not going to get into that part of it because this has already been argued to death and it's already being reargued again by this executive order. What's interesting to me is the way that the White House is coming at it and that kind of gives you this indication and warning of how the White House is thinking about similar types of issues. For instance, the White House knows that the Supreme Court has ruled many, many, many times that it's okay in its free speech to burn the American flag. So, what are they doing? They're coming at this, and this is why I've highlighted this paragraph. They're coming at it from a perspective of hate crimes and it is an incitement to commit conspiracy to commit a crime. So, this is very much in the gray area of pre-rime policing kind of thing. So, I thought this was kind of an interesting way of of coming at it. So, yeah, I know this has been a tiring debate on social media. I'll just kind of leave it there. But another thing that that the White House has done, another executive order, is the establishment of a National Guardbased QRF or quick reaction force. I don't know how this is going to work out administratively, but it seems like this is definitely an effort to have a permanent active duty force, even if it's on paper still national guard, to serve as a military police for the United States. So, I would encourage everyone to just read this for yourself and see if you can figure out what is going on here because it's it's a very concerning thing to see and uh there hasn't really been a whole lot of talk about it. No one seems to have figured out that the White House is trying to get around the federal regulations and the constitutional regulations regarding a standing army being used for police forces. So again, I thought I would call everyone's attention to it and maybe we can get to an answer at some point with regards to what this actually means. And of course, the White House would not be the White House without a scandal this week. And this week it has been the Chinese visa scandal. So, President Trump and uh Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik made very clear statements a few days ago regarding the import of 600,000 uh Chinese students. At the time this was announced, it was roughly a doubling of the Chinese uh visas that we give for students to come to the United States to study every year. As we can see by the chart from last year, India is of course the top visa holder for student visas, but China is a close second at around 277,000 visas per year, or at least that was last year. China's visa applications went down 4% last year. Uh but India's went up 23%. So of course, well, you know, we know what that's all about. But sticking with the China scandal, the White House made very clear statements. They were look seeking to double the number of students allowed into the United States. And then what happened? Everyone, including uh President Trump's most ardent supporters, said this is a horrifically bad idea. You have not even deported this many illegal immigrants yet. Uh this is kind of a big problem. So, what did the White House do? Well, I'll tell you. The White House did exactly what the previous administration did, which is float the idea. Everybody gets upset about it and then in a few days they pretend like that was never their plan. It was all just a misunderstanding. And then they backtrack on it quietly and say, "Shame on you forever thinking we might do that." It's literally the same exact playbook from the past four years. So, I know people might not want to hear that, but it's kind of entertaining to see sometimes, but the White House is backtrack on that for now, especially considering what we'll talk about in a moment, which is the uh Chinese spying thing down in Texas. Another Chinese spy has been outed. So, this all happening on the same exact day was kind of concerning and it was probably something that the White House could not easily defend. So, they shelved the plan for now and we'll see how it works out in the future. So, that's it for what's been going on in Washington this week. Let's move over to the Midwest and talk about the church shooting at the Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Most important stuff right up front. So, prayer requests for this week. Harper Lillian Moi and Fletcher Merkel have been identified as the two children who were killed during this horrific attack. And prayers have been requested for all of the other wounded. There are still five children who are in the ICU from this uh incident and one adult is also still hospitalized due to wounds sustained during the attack. So, I've also posted a message from the principal of the school and the priest at the church and also a reminder that one of the children was actually from the Greek Orthodox community. So, uh she was not Roman Catholic, but she was attending the Catholic school there. So, for those in the Greek Orthodox church, prayers have been requested for Sophia, uh who remains still in the ICU. There have been a few prayer vigils at the church over the past few days and I don't know if I'll I'll make it timing wise with this update today, but Saturday there is five o'clock mass uh this evening. So, just as a reminder uh for those so inclined. Now, as far as the details of the shooting itself, the killer has been identified as Robin Westman. That is the person's actual legal name. Unlike a lot of the other uh transgender murders that have taken place, this person actually went through the effort to change their name. So, they were formerly Robert Westman, but in terms of their actual legal name, it is Robin Westman from what I've been able to determine. There has, of course, been a lot of speculation regarding what's going on with this case, and I will try to leave a lot of that speculation at the door for now, with the exception of some of the things that might be more time-sensitive for preventing further shootings. So, the only things that are very, very clear is that there's a lot of suspicious behavior here uh with regards to the individual who conducted the shooting, but also the family as well. I don't know how much of that is understandable suspicion or just a reaction to the media blitz on this. I will let you decide on that for now. We will probably have more details again in a few days. But for right now, the family has not been cooperative with authorities at all. At least that's what local authorities have stated and federal investigators have stated. The mother of the shooter has lawyered up uh with the same lawyer who represented uh Colin Capernick. That's kind of an interesting detail. uh investigators will definitely take that into account when it comes to trying to figure out were there signs that this could have been prevented and from my own investigation. Absolutely. Another thing that I wanted to mention because it's again this is just spiraling out of control on social media. This one's way worse than many of the other mass shootings that we've seen in that regard. But a lot of people are trying to draw the link between this individual, this shooter, and the Order of Nine Angles and the 764 network. Uh, this is a rabbit hole that I would encourage everyone to not go down because it's just horrific. These are two online groups which are I don't know if you describe them as cults, but they're definitely like satanic organizations and they have a lot of links to other mass shooters. So, some of the common things that you tend to see with these people associated with these these two groups, which are separate groups, but they're kind of linked together, is the way that the shooter will mark their firearms, the way that the symbology that they will use in their manifestos and stuff like that. So, very, very horrific stuff uh that I I wish no one had to see, honestly. But, there's a lot of people that are claiming that maybe this guy was affiliated with 764 or the 09A guys. So, I don't know about that just yet. if we I'm sure if we dig far enough, we'll probably find a link. But at at what point does a link become not necessarily that valuable to to make, but at the risk of digressing too much, let's talk about some of the tactical lessons learned so far in terms of trying to prevent other and future attacks. Again, we can go down rabbit holes all day long, but my main focus, my main goal here is to bring awareness and also prevent future incidents. So, if we cherrypick the details of this story to focus on, let's uh let's focus on the things that can actually maybe save some lives here. One of the main key takeaways so far is that Westman decided to target this church, not necessarily because this was his former church and the his mother worked at the school next door. Not necessarily because of that personal connection, but because he knew based on his connection to the church that the church was vulnerable. This is the rantings and ravings of a madman. So, we can't exactly get too much uh benefit from this sort of thing, from the diaries of a of a psychopath, right? But that's the very wavetop level of of a consideration that this the shooter undertook when this person was conducting his attack planning. So, this guy actually sketched out a sector sketch of the inside of the church inside the nave and the narthx. So, you know, this this shows that this person was thinking tactically for a very long period of time. It's something to consider. It's something to be aware of. But again, you also have to remember that when we're undertaking these risk assessments to try to prevent this from happening somewhere else, there are survivors here. There are people who are going to be watching this and be aware of all of this discourse surrounding the things that maybe they could have done better. So, we need to tread carefully here, right? We need to be as respectful as possible. And I think that when these shootings happen, that doesn't tend to be a point of consideration, right? So if we're trying to wargame this and trying to prevent the further loss of life, we have to be aware that this shooter was planning this attack for a very long time and there were perceived vulnerabilities here on the part of the shooter. Though with that caveat that there also may have been nothing that could have been done to prevent this, which we'll touch on in just a moment. Perhaps more concerningly, right, this shooting is over. The shooter is is dead and this incident has reached a conclusion. However, online things are not doing so well. When this shooting occurred, there was an outcry of support for the shooter. Uh, this has become unfortunately quite common when there is a transgender shooter anywhere in the United States or around the world or for that for that matter. But when it happens here in the United States, when a transgender person conducts a horrific crime, there is an outpouring of support for the killer. I know that's shocking. I know that's going to make a lot of people very angry, but this is the reality of the situation. There's even one vendor on the internet which has decided to sell t-shirts with the killer's face on the t-shirt. You know, uh that's something to keep in mind, especially considering that if we go back and see the link analysis chart here, this person chose to idolize other shooters as well. So, if we're talking about risk assessment and trying to prevent future shootings, that's not a good thing. uh from a risk assessment perspective, from any perspective, it's not a good thing and I'm very concerned about that. So there are other future killers out there right now who are planning attacks and they are watching the internet. They are reading Reddit posts. They are reading Discord. That's what all these people are on, right? These people are are classic Reddit tier human beings and they are reading all of the positive support for these mass murderers. the chance of a copycat is extraordinarily high when you've got a pretty good part of the internet which is supporting this kind of behavior and uh trying to support the killer, right? So, from a riskmanagement perspective, we're talking it's extreme. Okay, so head on a swivel the next few weeks. I don't want to raise too many alarm bells, but this is the thing that you need to definitely be mindful of and aware of as we move forward. Now, on the flip side of that, we also have to be mindful that everything is a balance, right? We know that the risks of copycats is extremely high, especially now that people are supporting the killer online, right? Uh and especially since politicians are giving that nudge nudge wink wink uh sort of approval for the transgender community to kind of do whatever they want to do, right? Even if it hurts people. Yes, it is good to be aware of these things and to do what you can to prevent further loss of life, but at a certain point, a lot of this is going to be out of our hands. So that's the best that we can do and that's what we will continue to do. So, as more information comes out, we'll uh see if we can draw any lessons learned that might be helpful in the future. But for now, that's really all I've got on this uh horrific horrific crime. Moving down to the southwest region, I wanted to briefly mention the story of Yhai Lee, who was a researcher who was recently arrested at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for spying, or really just the theft of proprietary research. The short version of the story is this guy was employed by this university's medical school and he stole a lot of data and was trying to head back to China where he was actually currently working. So, this is kind of an interesting case. It's it's not really that out of the norm. This happens all the time, but what I found to be kind of entertaining is that this individual was publishing research papers for his home university in China this entire time using his real name. So, I pulled up his uh Google Scholar page using his real name. He wasn't even trying to hide it. And you can see all the research papers that he's been publishing over the years, including one as recently as just a couple of months ago. So, I don't know how they didn't catch this. Maybe they just didn't care. But he was definitely double dipping. He was working for a Chinese medical university this entire time and stealing all of the intellectual property and uh medical research that was being conducted at the University of Texas. Now, interestingly enough, he was also getting Department of Defense grants and National Institute of Health grants uh to conduct his research. And nobody even thought to just Google this guy's name because this came up like the first thing. I don't know, maybe maybe we should add in a criteria. If you're getting federal money, just Google the person's name first. May maybe that would be a good idea. I don't know. But anyway, I found that to be kind of interesting because uh this is just the latest in a long series of uh Chinese researchers being very heavily embedded in the United States uh and stealing intellectual property for the homeland. though. Now, moving over to the United Kingdom, I briefly wanted to touch on what's been going on in Britain over the past couple of weeks, which has not gotten any better. Of note, two things this week. Of course, we have the highly inflammatory and very viral Hatchet Girl from Dundee. Uh, so I have not had enough time to do enough solid research on what's going on with this case. All I can say is that it's a lot more complicated than we might want to think. I'm digging into this myself because I'm very interested in the situation itself and I I think that really this has just become kind of a catalyst for more protests and demonstrations and things like that. Another catalyst has been the Eping Court which has decided to keep the Eping migrant center which is again another inflammatory or very controversial uh migrant center in Eping. They were going to close it down because obviously it was creating a lot of problems for locals and then the court reversed their decision. This red poster here is one of the notices for enduring protests. So there are now basically going to be protests pretty much every weekend as there have been over the past few weeks. Flagging continues. Flagging operations continue. Marches continue. Uh there's a lot of demonstrations outside migrant centers now. It's uh it's it's approaching a very widespread case of civil unrest nationwide. Again, I I need more time to to dig into what's going on with our friends across the pond, but suffice it to say, it's been a very busy week for the English, and I think that sentiment is spreading throughout uh the whole British Isles at this point. But where it's going to go, I don't know. But the people are making their displeasure known. So, we shall see how this works out. So, that's all I have for today. Uh, I was going to roll up with the intercepted ghost net reports as usual, but this week catastrophe struck. I had not only internet outage, but I also had thunderstorms roll through at the exact time of the ghost net and I was unable to safely use my radio equipment. So, I was in the dark during the exact moment of the ghost net because, of course, that's how it worked out. But, sometimes that happens. It's all right. It tends to tends to be one of those things. And I hope that good information was exchanged this week even though I was absent myself. So, thank you again for all of your support. Here are the sources as usual and all the research links if you want to dig deeper yourself. And that's all I have for today. So, thanks again and I will 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 the 3rd of July 2022 and as always it is being recorded on the 2nd of July so let's get right to it up first are some infrastructure incidents and concerns I know not exactly the most entertaining thing but this stuff's very important and we're going to break it down by a region just like last time so so this slide and the slides following will be just the incidents and concerns that have occurred since last briefing so first up is Pennsylvania and this happened on the 27th of June uh wabtech or wabtech Corporation in Erie Pennsylvania so these guys are a major conglomerate of railroad manufacturing companies they do everything from running the software packages that kind of help the manufacturing process of locomotives and things like that and they actually own companies that manufacture locomotives and and parts and things like that as well so this was a pretty big deal uh it brought a lot of their systems offline and they had to shut down production for quite a while uh and they're as of today there isn't any ETA for Recovery that I have seen but again this is kind of a lesser known thing but local media picked it up so I wanted to mention it moving to the southeast in Florida on the 30th of June Geographic Solutions Incorporated uh suffered a major Cyber attack now Geographic Solutions Incorporated this is more more of a a national level problem because these guys create and manage the software Suites for Most states unemployment benefits so as of right now over 40 different states around the country are impacted by this so this is most certainly not just a Florida thing this is a nationwide problem uh a whole of the most States use this one company's software systems for managing and applying for unemployment benefits so again classic case of state governments putting all of their eggs in one company's basket moving to Louisiana on the 30th of June as well there was a very large natural gas well fire slash explosion this was again picked up by local media in arnoldville Louisiana and right now they're not releasing the company's name although it can only be like two or three companies and again the cause is unknown for this but again in the LNG world and the natural gas Community accidents like this are not particularly rare uh it's just I wanted to mention it because we're trying to keep an eye on things like this moving up north to the East Central midwestern region uh in Michigan the Abbott Laboratories thing is still happening so I kind of wanted to to keep mentioning that Abbott Laboratories of course being one of the largest suppliers of infant formula in the U.S their factories are still offline due to be uh cleaning and repairs from the severe flooding incident this has actually been kind of suspicious uh the factory themselves they have been pretty tight-lipped about their status they really haven't issued too many press releases they're being very quiet about the whole thing so I don't know if that's because of all of the the issues they've they've been dealing with they figured that you know legally it's probably best for them to just kind of stay quiet and handle things in-house but you would think that a company that has this much uh importance in in the in the country and in the world would be you know having press conferences every hour to update people but really they've been you know tight-lipped and like company spokespeople have been you know pointing to press releases from two three weeks ago uh for like updates it's like well we're not what's the deal here with this so I don't know what's going on I thought it was kind of unusual that ever Laboratories has been very quiet about this whole thing uh understandably they're having a tough time uh and I'm sure that there's a lot of legal liability uh still stemming from their uh potential bacteria contamination incident from a few months ago uh but I just want to kind of keep it on the slide because it's still going on moving down to Illinois we have some uh sad news for the steel working Community U.S steel Corps has decided to shut down and sell two of its blast furnaces amid a rash of layoffs and changing policies at the company U.S steel has decided to shut down a pretty good chunk of its operations in Granite City and shift other operations from steel finishing to producing raw materials so instead of making so much finished steel at this facility they're going to be focused on producing pig iron at this facility which is a raw component used to make steel according to the union United Steel Workers about 1500 people work at this facility and only about 550 will still be on the job once those blast furnaces are sold to a different company as far as the reasons behind this move U.S steel has made the decision to shuffle around their Investments and is moving toward electric Arc furnace operations rather than the traditional Blast Furnace operations of course the union and the steel workers themselves are utterly Furious as this looks like it is yet another another betrayal in a long line of abuses from the company I don't mention this one because it has super wide ranging consequences for steel production but rather sort of what it means U.S steel shrinking operations in Granite City Cuts deep and this is most certainly a metaphor for how industrial manufacturing has been impacted over the years and politics too rightly or wrongly people are going to feel some kind of way about things like this people remember Trump coming to this facility back in 2018 as a way of showcasing domestic American steel production and you know now look at the state of things again I know that's not really how things work and I'm not sure who's correct to point the finger at is this a governmental thing is this an economic thing is this a company thing I don't know obviously U.S steel Corps has been having some issues for years with the steel Market even before Trump was President so politics probably don't play too much into this one and they of course still remain a very large supplier of Steel and they're they're building a actually a very large Next Generation steelwork Plant in Arkansas right now so again this isn't going to put too much of a dent into the Global Steel market and on top of all this U.S steel specifically has a history of layoffs and furloughs at this exact facility back in 2009 and 2015 so it's not like this is particularly new but I tell you emotions have been running high in various Industrial Circle vehicles for for years now especially of the past few months which is palpable for even someone like me who has nothing invested in things like this I myself think there's just something tragic and kind of sad about seeing the shutdown or the sale of heavy industry and I think that mood is resonating throughout many industrial Fields these days these are the same blast furnaces that made the steel for the San Francisco Bay Bridge and for the Empire State Building and for the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center these are the same blast furnaces that churned out steel to build 119 ships that landed our troops on the beaches of Normandy these guys cut the manufacturing time for an entire tank Landing ship to less than 30 days and utter engineering Marvel just think about the stories these blast furnaces could tell if they could talk being part of the industrial rise of America and building the backbone of this nation I don't know maybe I'm being needlessly nostalgic about a simple Blast Furnace but I just look at this event and think you know that's a shame and right now this one event highlights the latest chapter and the troubles that we're going through as a nation but that's okay hopefully one day we'll be able to start putting America to work again and give those blast furnaces some more stories to tell we've been through tough times before and come out the better for it on the other side and wrapping things up for this region uh in Ohio the Quasar Energy Group in Wooster Ohio had a pretty large explosion at their biosolid processing facility this again facility produces uh or really processes organic material to produce biosolids for various projects or for disposal right so three workers were injured in the explosion with non-life-threatening injuries uh and I just kind of wanted to wrap things up by talking about that one out in the West Central midwestern region really the only thing to talk about is the Amtrak Collision that occurred on the 27th of June so this was a derailment of an Amtrak train in the vicinity of Minden Missouri three this was an Amtrak passenger train of eight cars and two locomotives which derailed after colliding with a vehicle that was located on a uh Crossing so for those of you who don't live in rural areas it is very very common most railroad crossings in this country are actually unattended they don't have the nice Crossing arms they don't have sensors or anything for vehicles it's just literally a road that goes over uh the the train track right and this appears to be one of those Crossings so uh I don't know if we don't really know if the vehicle was stalled on the tracks or what the situation was but four people in that vehicle including the driver of that vehicle were killed when the Amtrak train hit it going about 83 miles per hour so so most certainly a very sad story for sure no one on the train uh was seriously injured there were a lot of minor injuries uh bumps and bruises and things like that due to the train completely derailing due to this Collision but again this one doesn't look intentional there's no real hint of that but the investigation's still going on and as usual we want to keep an eye on everything to do with train derailments so I just wanted to mention that moving down to the southwestern region nothing really new to report on that just wanted to leave the Freeport facility on the slide because that that uh situation down there is still ongoing Freeport LNG will of course not be online until later this year they cited September earlier uh now it's they're not really so sure it's what it sounds like from recent press releases but I guess we'll see when they're able to come back online fully and Out West sorry nothing really new to report since last briefing I know there were a lot last time but uh I haven't really found any worth talking about this time so we'll go ahead and skip to the suspicious fires slide so I changed this from church fires because a lot of these suspicious fires are going to be occurring at places that are not specifically uh places of worship or things like that so let's go ahead and run down the list list of just the fires that have occurred since last briefing so the first one is on the 29th of June in Lufkin Texas at the triumphant Life Church uh this one the fire started in the attic and I think it was in the middle of the night or in the early hours of the morning so I think the local like atmosphere via the uh local media seems to think that this one's kind of accidental uh I don't know so I just wanted to leave it on there just in case but moving down to number two uh this one was a lot more suspicious this occurred the day prior uh just up north on the 20th of June in McAlester Oklahoma at the First Assembly of God Church this church actually served as a polling place for a local primary election a local Oklahoma primaries and it burned down uh quite significantly on the primary day just a few hours before the polling had begun so I pick some the Pittsburgh County election board so the local County election board the Pittsburgh County election board was declared as the emergency polling place and the uh the the election went through but uh man anytime you've got a fire occurring at an election place on Election Day uh that's very suspicious to me so I kind of wanted to leave that on there even though officially uh the cause is still unknown moving down to number three in Dillon West Virginia at the Saint Coleman Catholic Church uh this one local authorities are calling it arson and they're looking for any information people might have about it this church was basically located in the middle of nowhere it's a very very rural area and the church had already completely burned all the way down to the foundation and was basically just smoldering by the time the the fire department was notified and actually got out there to it so this one is currently being investigated as arson moving to number four on the 26th of June the Revival Center of Cadillac in Cadillac Michigan was discovered to be on fire again there's hardly any information about this one on the internet so we're just kind of left kind of you know with calls unknown for this one unfortunately but for number five uh this one was a lot more deliberate on the 28th of June the St John Newman Catholic Church in Reston Virginia uh was set on fire uh by arsonists deliberately as a result of Roe versus Wade being overturned we know this due to church property also being vandalized with graffiti and spray paint and things like that referring to the river versus Wade judgment so this one was again a deliberate attack moving on to number six on the 26th of June in Memphis Tennessee the new life Christian Center also burned this one there's no official assessment by local authorities as to whether or not this was arson however my guess is that arson is highly suspected because locals have been encouraged to call the local Crime Stoppers hotline with any information regarding this fire so by my count this is the second suspected arson event involving a religious institution in Memphis for the month of June so that's quite interesting moving on to number seven on the 23rd of June the Siloam Methodist Church fire in Martin County North Carolina I mentioned this one last time but following up we've got some more uh amplifying information uh it turns out that there was actually another fire event that occurred close by on the same night in the same time frame a camper caught fire about three miles away from this church about two hours prior to this church Catching Fire there were storms in the area on the night of the fire but meteorological data does not indicate thunderstorms which kind of puts to rest the concerns of lightning strikes which are very common causes of church fires right but there was a decent amount of rain which makes the whole story sound kind of fishy so even the local sheriff has stated that it's kind of suspicious again it's not known if this was an arson event or not or what investigation can actually be undertaken on this one but I just wanted to kind of Mark this one as arson suspected just because of the the comments of local officials moving down to number eight on the 28th of June in Fort Myers Florida Mana Ministries another church fire again not much information on this one really other than just it happened no real details from from any local officials so far on that one and moving on to number nine on the first of July in Patterson New Jersey the greater assembly House of Prayer caught fire as well this one is maybe a little bit more accidental the cause is of course unknown but this one was the the church was actually closed it was non-operational it closed earlier this year in March so it was in a basically an abandoned facility and as we all know abandoned facilities tend to tend to draw people doing you know bad stuff these days so I don't you know want to exactly attribute causation to this one but I just wanted to point died out that this was not a functional church at the time it was set on fire moving to a new separate slide on the kinetic incidents that have occurred around the around the country in the past 90 days I think there have been enough of these kinds of incidents that it's worth uh kind of cataloging the more terroristic attacks that have occurred around the country so you're going to notice a trend with most of these but let's go down the list very briefly first Up is on the 7th of June in Buffalo New York a pregnancy center was firebombed by the group called Jane's Revenge as a result of Roe versus Wade being overturned same thing on the 31st of May in Seattle Washington a pregnancy center was vandalized there was and possibly uh the people who were vandalizing it possibly tried to set it on fire but it didn't really work hard to tell on that one but more deliberately on the 9th of May in Madison Wisconsin another Pregnancy Center was firebombed again with Molotov cocktails on the 4th of June in Washington DC another Pregnancy Center was vandalized with paint thrown on the front door and uh vandalized with graffiti as well on the structure of the building on the 3rd of May in Peoria Illinois another Pregnancy Center was uh set fire this one is a little harder to tell what the actual deal was I don't know if it was affiliated with the James Revenge group officially or if they haven't claimed it as far as I know uh it might just be you know random people again uh carrying out attacks in a similar Vein on the 9th of May in Manassas Virginia another Pregnancy Center was vandalized again with graffiti similar to the Jane's Revenge kind of uh Mo uh just yesterday on the first of July in Nashville Tennessee another Pregnancy Center was firebombed again it looks like it might have been a Molotov cocktail thrown into the window just like most of these other ones and in a similar vein uh back a couple of weeks ago on the 13th of June in Gresham Oregon same exact uh tactic same exact Mo firebombing of a pregnancy center so again move through these really kind of quickly but they're all kind of really the similar style attacks or have been ate by my count over the past 90-ish days so we're going to keep an eye on these of course there are more that I haven't put on the slide these are just the kind of the ones that have made big headlines I'm still kind of working through some of the more lesser known and more unknown style attacks and I wanted to call this you know like a terrorism tracker uh but it's it I don't know if I wanted to make it a little bit more broad than that so I'm just going to call it kinetic incidents that have occurred over the past 90 days so just wanted to kind of touch on some of these and start tracking some of these incidents because I'm not really sure how uh federal law enforcement is so I just want to make the average citizen very well aware that there are a lot of deliberate attacks under being undertaken right now against various pregnancy centers so this is this is not a joke this is not a drill this is most certainly a deliberate uh Nationwide effort to Target various facilities religious institutions pregnancy centers uh as a direct result of Roe versus Wade being overturned so again just wanted to bring that to everyone one's attention and speaking of the Roe versus Wade complications I wanted to make an entire slide on the Strategic implications of that ruling and represent weight being overturned and some of the more interesting things that I'm seeing with regards to how governmental assets are being utilized so so again there's been a lot of shouting and gnashing of teeth all over the internet from a lot of different perspectives regarding the road versus Wade thing and you know my own thoughts on the Judgment itself are irrelevant at this point so I'd rather just focus on the more interesting interesting little tidbits that are happening that not a lot of people are kind of focusing on and the first two items I wanted to talk about here are data privacy so the first one which I want to preface this by saying I think this is a fake story I think this is all made up but I want to mention it anyway because it's kind of made the circles circle around and um it's very interesting and this is a story that Anonymous the the hacking group Anonymous has allegedly really hacked various Fitness tracking apps and data mostly female Health apps that are intended to track things like pregnancy right so Anonymous has allegedly again deleted unspecified data from unspecified apps with the goal of making it so that this tracking data cannot be used by certain States law enforcement in certain states to bring murder charges against a woman who was was pregnant right and sought out an abortion in states where it's now illegal again I think this story is fake because the accounts that I have seen kind of portray this are very circular reporting meaning that everyone that's talked about this kind of points back to the same Twitter account which has a lot of followers but it's uh it's very unclear as to if this is a real thing or if this is just some guy with Anonymous trying to claim something to get some notoriety on the internet I think that's more of a clear I think that's more of what this is in this case but the next case is a lot more uh a lot more clear and that is the second point there which is Google deleting location history of abortion clinic visits so Google is going above and beyond to delete evidence uh from their servers regarding women who travel to abortion clinics so for instance if someone in a state where abortion is now illegal they went on to Google Maps and did so you know tried to use their phone to navigate to an abortion clinic that would now at least according to google be able to be used by a court uh used by law enforcement to bring potential uh murder charges against someone in a state where abortion is now illegal so again I think you know I'm of course not a lawyer but I think that's legally reaching I think these incidents are very interesting because suddenly all of a sudden data privacy matters Google is now going out of their way to delete evidence that might be used by state law enforcement in areas where abortion is now illegal but but they will not hesitate whatsoever to cooperate with federal law enforcement or even state law enforcement to put people like you and me in jail for just having a different opinion than they do remember the whole prism program the whole Edward Snowden thing it's almost like we forgot how much Google cooperates with national spy agencies when courts are saying that it's illegal to do so but no Google is going to go out of their way to protect people who are having abortions illegally moving on to number three New Jersey has begun the sanctuary movement uh the west coast is of course going to be doing something similar but New Jersey is the first one to kind of put it in writing a whole stack of documents allowing easier access for out-of-state abortions to occur so so my guess is that a lot of states are probably going to kind of you know create some of this kind of Union together I guess uh with regards to abortion and allow a lot more easier access to that so that's my guess is what's going to happen on the state front but what's more what's more interesting to me is the things that are happening on the federal front and that's what the last two bullet points are today the Department of Health and Human Services the federal uh HHS they have created a new website for uh depending on what language you wanted to use uh it do it gives resources quote unquote resources to people seeking abortions right so the HHS has created in light of Roe versus Wade being overturned created uh tried to go around the Supreme Court really and uh stick their Federal noses in the Roe versus way debate even though the Supreme Court has you know clearly overturned Roe versus way due to Federal interference right so um again this is a whole complex issue but I find it very interesting that the Supreme Court sends Roe versus Wade back to the states to decide and yet the federal government is trying to encourage abortion at every possible moment right very interesting and this you know Department of Health and Human Services is creating more resources for that kind of thing to help States get around abortion laws if they're if they have like laws on the books preventing abortions they're going to try to do everything they can and they already are doing everything they can to encourage people to break those state laws another interesting thing is the last bullet point there which is the HHS walking back a lot of the data privacy issues that they themselves caused with the virus that shall not be named again this is the same freaking government that stole all of your private data used your cell phones to track your movements right sent federal agents out to door to door to make sure that you are staying at home and quarantining right this is the same government that did all of that is now try trying to walk back those and walk back those things and now suddenly data privacy again matters it's very very interesting because we've had two years of the government saying oh no we're not spying on you and your health choices whatsoever to now oh my God we're spying on you and your health concerns and now that data can be used by states to prosecute you so that's a very interesting thing and that's why I think uh Google and Anonymous are kind of popping up in the news private companies uh trying to say all right hey all this data that we collected is now now the shoe is on the other foot is it not well well well how the turntables so I think it's very very interesting that now all of this data stuff suddenly matters to people and I think that it's very very interesting to see where this is going to go now my bet is kind of coming back to the the websites that the uh government the federal government is creating to offer these quote-unquote resources right my guess is that the federal government and this is just a spitball on my part just a total guess my guess is that the federal government is going to start mailing uh it might be a federal program it might be HHS creating their own sort of online pharmacy thing I don't know but my guess is that they're going to start mailing abortion pills to states where abortion is illegal because I'm already starting to see that with a lot of these more leftist opinion posts by mainstream media on the internet you can clearly see how they would do it and I think this is very interesting thing to think about see what the what the Department of Health and Human Services at the federal level can do is they can create websites right to start mailing out abortion pills to people who want them all they got to do is sign up you know just like they did with the um the virus tests right you go to a federal website sign it sign up for it and they'll mail it out to your door right I think that's a very interesting way for the federal government to do that because what is the United States Postal Service it is a federal agency right so States cannot stop the United States Postal Service from delivering mail and I think that's a very interesting way that the regime can encourage people to break state laws and again it's very very interesting to see how this might play out of course this is just a speculation on my part but if I'm gonna play devil's advocate here if I'm gonna red team this a little bit that's my guess as to what's going to happen is that the federal government is either going to directly allow or they're going to set up direct agencies within the federal government to do so or they're going to allow companies to start mailing abortion pills to states where abortion is now illegal and they're just going to say what are you going to do about it because as we all know when it comes down to it there's always been this battle between state law enforcement and federal law enforcement and it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out so that conflict between federal law enforcement and state law enforcement and the federal Congress and State congresses that's going to be interesting to see how that works out because we've now we've now entered into this new age where this is not a you know your Watergate Nixon era where you're you know federal law enforcement and your your Federal presidency right there you know breaking laws behind people's backs and things like that no we're not we're not in that area anymore we're now in the area where the White House Press Secretary can get in front of a live TV uh camera and say that they're not going to follow the Supreme Court's uh decisions they did that with the federal job mandates people seem to have forgotten that just a few months ago the federal regime made it very clear that they're not going to follow that they did not follow the Supreme Court's mandates on and judgments on the job mandates right and the mask mandates and things like that so um you know what was the quote from the press secretary we see it differently right what I think is that the federal government this particular political regime that is ruling the executive branch at this particular moment in time I think they're going to do whatever they can to break state laws or encourage other people to break state laws and create that conflict between the state government and the federal government so very interesting time and I think that right now there's a lot of stuff in the news about this Roe versus Wade thing and there are a lot of implications for uh what this judgment uh has done and is doing and uh what people will do in reaction to it I don't know about anybody else but just seeing the reactions that the leftists have to this River's Wade being overturned it's it is utterly shocking to me it's quite surprising the level of depravity that's out there in the world and um so yeah it's uh things are kind of crazy uh and I don't think they're gonna be um any less crazy anytime soon now I will briefly mention uh because people have asked about it and they've been kind of wondering what's the overall threat like is this going to be another you know 2020 Summer of Love type situation with regards to this you know reverse this way being overturned um generally speaking I will say I don't think so and here's why uh when we saw the when we've seen the violence in the past it's been due to agency uh terrorist groups like BLM and some of the more lesser known like pan-african groups that kind of you know militia groups that kind of get together like nfac and people like that who kind of got national press uh some of the more smaller groups uh which are like Regional or state-based groups those are the guys who are who are most likely to Riot about things right I just don't think that BLM and other uh black separatist groups like that are motivate aided in the same way that white liberal groups like antifa traditionally are motivated they're just not motivated by the same things right so when we saw a lot of the violence uh last year or uh year before last in 2020 that violence was mostly centered around uh BLM issues and sort of pan-african issues and police shootings right that's where the most of the violence came from and I just and of course antifa was more than willing to participate in that violence in areas where antifa has a good presence like you know your Seattle Portland places like that New York places like that so but when it comes to the Roe versus Wade thing really this I I don't think you're going to see Mass rioting you're going to of course see Mass protesting really disgusting and grotesque uh protest actions around the country but it's not really going to be Mass looting and rioting and violence like that of course I could be all wrong but I'm gonna go out on a limbs say I don't think there's going to be a tremendous amount of of rioting following the Rover versus Wade thing especially we've since we've seen that the judgments come out it's been um what a couple of weeks since it came out and uh of course the the leaked documents came out months ago but the official judgment has come out and we haven't really seen a whole lot of mass like complete Burn the City down style rioting and I just think it's because you it's not something that's motivating for a lot of the groups that are well known for rioting right like BLM that's just what I think I just think that that mass rioting is not going to be really on the menu so much for this road versus Wade thing now that doesn't mean we're out of the woods just yet uh I do think and as evidenced by what I've already talked about with our kinetic incidents uh you are going to see we are going to see throughout uh probably the rest of the summer a lot more firebombings of pregnancy centers a lot more kinetic actions being taken against churches religious institutions places that offer Pregnancy Resources that are not abortion services and things like that so my guess is that's what we're going to see a sharp increase increase in that as we have seen over the past 90 days my guess is that will continue isolated attacks probing attacks Skirmish style actions uh against soft targets that are available now the flip side of that coin is I think that in some of the states which are going to start increasing abortions more uh some of your more leftist States you know again some of the states that have been championing extreme late term abortions or even post-birth abortions the that kind of activity is going to increase people who are living in those states to commit attacks against places like abortion clinics so the other side of that coin again is that places where abortion is being championed even more are going to anger the populace it's not like the only people who live in these states are leftists right there are people who oppose abortion that live in pro-abortion States so my guess is that we're also going to start seeing very limited attacks on abortion clinics as well so something to keep in mind is that if you know you live near one of these locations either an abortion clinic or a pregnancy center that helps people avoid abortions uh either side of the aisle on that is that those both of those places are going to be pretty good targets so again either one of these facilities religious institutions pregnancy centers any kind of uh Center that offers medical care but does not uh but but does not offer abortions whereas against abortions those kinds of places are going to be very very soft targets for the foreseeable future so that is something to most certainly keep an eye on especially considering the federal government's stance on this right we're already seeing the federal government use its executive branch agencies to help people have abortions in states where abortion is illegal so my guess is that I would not be very optimistic in federal law enforcement investigate getting crimes against a a pregnancy centers and things like that in states where abortion is legal right that's just my guess again like I mentioned I think I mentioned before when it comes to church fires uh when I was talking about church fires last time and this time as well uh the lead Agency for investigating Church fires you want to guess what agency that is it's the ATF so again are do you trust the ATF I know I certainly don't so just getting that all out in the open uh talking about things as honestly as I can I do not think that uh federal law enforcement is going to do a whole whole heck of a lot they're certainly not going to pull out all the stops when trying to combat these more uh more solidified groups like Jane's Revenge uh like antifa people like that especially the groups that are funded by people outside this country or by prominent politicians in the country so again I know that's a lot of information to take in so I just kind of want to let that soak in for a bit and hopefully that encourages uh some thoughts and hopefully this encourages everyone to to please be vigilant out there because violence is most certainly a tactic that is used by both the federal government and by certain factions in society of all walks of life right so uh just be careful out there and realize that uh right now as a suit is a pretty tense time right so let's go ahead and move on to significant governmental actions and I don't really have a whole lot today as a matter of fact I don't I've been doing a lot of research on other stuff so I haven't had time to kind of figure out what the federal government has been doing over the past week or so but I did want to mention that uh today or more accurately July 1st was recession day so happy recession day everyone we have officially met the textbook definition for being in a recession me think somebody made a boo-boo maybe we didn't know how to use Quicken yeah that could be it and a recession an economic recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth and we met that criteria uh for quarter one and Quarter Two of 2022 uh yesterday on July 1st so we are officially in a textbook recession according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta which is the agency that tracks this kind of data so again I just wanted to point that out for everyone out there who's probably going to see a lot of mainstream media try to spin this is that oh recession's a good thing or we're not technically in a recession or we're technically in a recession but it's not really how the data Works no we're technically in a recession we've had two quarters of negative GDP growth that is a textbook definition of a recession so I just want to get that out there for the record uh for when this brief stays on the internet forever that that we recognize that we're in a recession now as of July 1st and wrapping things up with just one international issue this time I again didn't have time to research much else but I did want to talk about the Netherlands uh this time around and this is the protesting that has been going on around the country so thousands of farmers across the country have been protesting this week as the Dutch government goes ahead with their extremely radical climate agenda and I say radical because that is exactly what it is we here in the U.S think that we have it bad but man the Dutch government is enacting policies that restrict the ammonia emissions from livestock operations and enacting other population control measures that ensure that many farmers simply will not be allowed to grow food or raise livestock so yeah I hardly think that the Dutch government is going to take this Sri Lankan approach and basically create Mass starvation with a stroke of a pen after all it is really hard to picture starvation being a thing in the heart of Europe but in a time of Global Food and fertilizer shortages I think that any attempt to stop Farmers from doing their job especially under the bogus claims of climate change this should be looked at as a clear and present danger and a deliberate attack on our Global food supply so I guess we'll see if the Dutch government goes ahead with these policies but Dutch citizens uh from my from what I understand don't protest very often so you know when the Dutch get upset you know that there's something going on here so I guess we'll have to see how this affects the European food supply when and if some of these more Draconian emissions policies come into effect so that's all I have for today everyone thanks again for watching uh here are the sources for this brief there are three sources slides and you can of course get all of these sources from the PowerPoint slides that we drop in PDF format on Odyssey and on YouTube on so thank you again for watching everyone thanks for your support we're going to continue to track some of these more kinetic events as they pop up and kind of hopefully give everyone a lot of stuff to think about as we move forward into this uh into this hot summer right so thanks again for watching thank you again for all of your support out there and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to another intelligence briefing with the s2 underground uh now right to start with right to begin with many of you might have noticed that this briefing is not live this is not a live stream this is a pre-recorded video and this is for two reasons or a couple of reasons for one my personal schedule right now is not very conducive to doing this particular briefing live or at least in a time of day where most people would be able to watch it and two these live events are people seem to find that that it's difficult for them to find afterwards so if you missed a live briefing it's not very easy to find it on our channel um and it's difficult for us to manually upload to other sites like odyssey and things like that whereas a normal video seems to reach many many more people and that's really the goal i suppose and on top of all that we can easily see if youtube is going to censor us when we upload the video we get little flags on our end if things are not like fit for advertisers or things like that and so yeah if we did a live stream that youtube you know didn't like uh they would shut it off and would lose all of that footage and just kind of be wasted effort right so in the interest of continuing to speak freely with kind of one of our more one of i know one of my more spicy briefings uh we thought it would be a good idea to just try putting this out as a normal video and see what happens so this video may seem to be live as i have instructed our editor to edit this as little as possible which he was all happy to to oblige me on so fear not as usual this briefing will be complete with all of my own unique speech patterns and general lack of professionalism so with that out of the way let's get right to it with the weather so as one can see weather for the american southeast really the whole east coast and a significant portion of the midwest is going to have really low cloud ceilings over the next 12 hours which is really great for avoiding things like visual surveillance releases surveillance packages that are going to be available to lower levels of authority right like we mentioned in our recent uh synthetic aperture radar video that we put out um certain assets can punch right through weather so it doesn't really matter however most of the time we're talking full motion video just a normal video camera on a really expensive drone they're going to have trouble seeing through clouds so for those of you that have been asking us in dms and emails and things like that why are we talking about the weather well this is kind of a taste as as to how normal military briefings go go down normal military operations briefings almost always start with the weather and then they push over to s2 do the intelligence part and then push forth into operations and things like that so that's why we're talking about the weather just to get people kind of used to hey maybe looking up and saying you know realizing hey this is really good surveillance whether if i were to be surveilled or looking up and saying hey you know the cloud's overhead probably not going to be surveilled today so that's why we're covering it also just want to briefly mention on the bottom right hand corner of the screen you can see that the lunar illumination the cycle is 7.8 so we are in a what's called a red aluminum cycle meaning it's going to be a dark dark outside at night time more dark than normal because the the moon is is going to be very very dark so this means that if you were using night vision devices outside you're still going to have trouble using them in a lot of areas particularly if you have cloud cover so if you've got really strong cloud cover and really no moon no lunar illumination it's going to be hard even with some very nice night vision goggles to be seen so something to keep in mind for planning purposes and just to get people in the the mindset of seeing weather um also likewise moving forward over the next 18 hours these are where your clouds are going to be as you can see overcast skies in the pacific northwest right on the coastal region basically where everybody lives and um also in the american north east so the uh new england area is going to have a lot of cloud cover as well really really spotty stuff throughout the rest of the american southeast and the american southwest so yeah there you go low-level clouds are going to be in mid-level clouds and as you can see on this slide higher level clouds as well all right so enough about the weather let's push forward into no tams and this is a short one nothing uh nothing really major to report i did see that there was a there were a couple of vip ones a couple of presidential ones for you know the president or vice president moving to their homes for the weekend so um didn't really feel like you know putting those on the slide because honestly doesn't really matter because they do that every single weekend but other than that nothing really major you can go check it out yourself if you're in an area where no tams might be of interest but i didn't really see nothing really caught my eye as being important for at least the next couple of days now of course no tams change right so and we don't do these briefings every single day right so chances are if you're reading this you probably if you're watching this after it you know premiered or after it went live you're going to want to check just to make sure nothing popped up five minutes after this briefing was over so because no tams come and go very very quickly and again if you don't know what i'm talking about with no tams don't worry we have a specific video on no tams on our channel so check that out and that will explain everything about that moving forward into the civil unrest forecast made a little bit of a change to this slide as you can see california and new york are kind of scary red right now and i did want to put that highlight that on this particular slide because we are seeing since those two states have instituted a passport system for the um the the v word that we cannot mention on youtube without being censored um we're starting to see a lot of resistance to that maybe not enough to matter but certainly not enough to change the way their these totalitarian states work but enough to be like i need to be aware of what's going on so if you're in california or new york make sure that you're aware of any demonstrations going on or things like that because you might have trouble navigating now granted the types of people that are going to be the the demographics that are going to be protesting against the passport system are not the kind of people that will drag you out of your car and beat you to death in the street unlike literally all these other cities that are on the slide um so that's something to keep in mind but you know just also i just wanted to throw that out there that california and new york are they're um they're not a great place right now but you know as we all as we all know so there you go on that all the other states no major change pretty much status quo for how you know violence is skyrocketing in most american cities so there you go on that um so yeah that's pretty much all we have for civil unrest forecast if you're in a major american city you already know this already so there you go moving forward into logistics uh so right to start with i'd like to mention that the chip shortage these the global semiconductor computer chip shortage uh is still very severe it's gotten worse um but it's also gotten slightly better in that electronics manufacturers are starting to retool to work around it so they're able they're innovating around the problem which is good um but i'm i'm not entirely certain i'm certainly not an expert on this uh but a lot of people aren't it's quite clear that this retooling is not going to be everyone's savior for instance samsung just announced i think today or maybe yesterday that they are launching an investigation an internal investigation to try to figure out what's the deal because they're reporting quarterly losses due to sales dropping due to their prices going up so there you go on that also apple is reporting the same thing apple is is projecting that they're going to not have losses so much as not have as many gains as they were expecting in the next quarter due to this chip shortage driving prices up and things like that so and driving availability down also as we can see the lot of red dots on the slide today the water shortage out west as quite literally everyone has predicted months ago the shortage has gotten worse it's it's becoming a reality it's coming into fruition right now so if you are in if you're located in any of these affected states but especially california i personally would be pulling out all the stops to make sure that you have a way to stockpile a good amount of water a way to collect rainwater if the government officials don't arrest you for trying to collect rainwater like they will in california you know things like that because as we have found out from the recent sort of communist overlords that control pretty much everything in states like that when emergencies happen like legitimate genuine emergencies not ones that are planned right but like things like natural disasters when they happen they're so much worse than we ever could have expected because of the way the situation is right so it's also important to remember that california did shut off utilities to people who were accused of violating social distancing mandates last year they shut their water and the power off uh so you know again as with most things in today's presentation this is not a conspiracy theory this is not even a conspiracy this is undeniable history we've passed into history this stuff has already happened this stuff has actually happened um so we're not even talking about preparing for things that might happen uh no we're talking about uh preparing even more for things that have already happened right so um water is going to be on everyone's minds out in the in the west uh moving forward it really depends on how these other states control things like the the waterfall in the colorado river it's hard to say how this is going to turn out but i can guarantee you that the politicians in some of these more totalitarian places like california will seize every single opportunity to restrict water as much as they can so there you go if they need if the and this is the perfect excuse for them to do so so there you go also in a similar vein but not quite nearly as important as drinking water is the liquor shortage in vermont north carolina and ohio so for those of you that don't know all three of these states i believe i know north carolina and ohio are i don't know about vermont they are abc states so the government the state government there is a commission called the alcoholic beverage commission where government controls the distribution of alcoholic beverages which is almost certainly the root cause of this liquor shortage right because after after all we know how state control of the means of production work out so sharp increases in demand um which is what this is supposed to be allegedly from news sources which you know how trustworthy are they the word on the street allegedly is that demand for alcohol in these particular states rose just like every other state in america but because they have abc mandates you can't just go to any normal store and there's no liquor store in the corner it's it's going to be an abc store that's government-run owned and operated and then the government orders the amount of alcohol they don't understand how and they're not able to keep up with a capitalist system like buying and selling goods and services right so of course systems like this fail when demand increases sharply um but honestly even i know i've been to all three of these states and i can tell you that even just on a normal day they're probably going to have shortages just that's just how the system works right in those three states so there you go if you're in vermont north carolina or ohio you probably already know about this but this is something a little taste for those of you who don't you know like us don't live in those states it's interesting to to kind of observe how that works right also i briefly wanted to touch on plastics i don't really myself understand a whole lot about this but the the sort of tweet headline sound bite is that plastics manufacturers and the makers of composite materials and things like that in the gulf states are having a hard time uh producing those plastics and and composites uh the article that i'm sourcing for this is a very interesting article from a market research analyst in that field highly technical well it's not really that technical but it's technical enough to where um it's worth a read so check the sources slide out at the end of this briefing if you wanted to read more and uh yeah so you know bottom line is i don't know how this is going to affect the rest of the country i'm not i'm not really seeing you know none of us here who have uh helped me kind of look out for for shortages on this have really seen plastics being in short supply like we saw last year with plastics from china being in short supply like the packaging you know plastic and and sort of foam packaging uh shortage during covet last year um not really sure how that's going to shake out here in the united states it might not be severe it might be really severe but i just wanted to bring that to everyone's attention and to you know encourage everybody to go read that article because it's interesting um also something that is not nearly even worth mentioning but i thought i'd mention it anyway is that starbucks or starbucks places around the country are having trouble with their inventory so things like syrups and artificial sweeteners are in low supply at random places around the country i can't really get a beat on where it's at because it seems to be kind of random which makes sense for a franchise that sends their supplies you know through different networks and things i don't really know much more than that because i don't really support starbucks at all and let's be honest the demographic of people that would get on twitter to scream about how their soy latte doesn't have enough splenda in it uh is also the kind of people that you know would make a mountain out of a molehill so i don't know if this is genuine or if this is some some sort of indicator for how things are going to go for other restaurants or eateries or whatever in the future so just wanted to point that out there who knows not really that interesting but there you go all right pushing forward into critical infrastructure and concerns so this is a critical infrastructure slide all four of these things are really nationwide so i didn't really put them on the map and the first one is something i'm going to talk about in in great detail here in a minute but i did want to mention that with the institution with with several states instituting or planning the institute or trying to institute uh passport uh controls for medical passport controls right i would be willing to bet this is just kind of like one of those analytical hunches where i would be willing to bet that in the very near future we're going to start seeing medical care and food service is being denied to people who don't have such a medical passport right that's exactly what's happening in new york and california the places that are being targeted are food distribution centers places where you can go get food are the number one places why this passport system is being instituted you control the food you control people's access to the food you control the people right so it kind of makes sense so i'll talk about that a little bit later but sort of in a similar vein i didn't want to mention that as sort of a personal anecdote which has almost zero analytical value but i did want to share that inflation at least in our local area here where both i myself and a few of our staff members live here in the mid-atlantic region of the united states inflation is most definitely a factor just to give you a personal anecdote i knew this doesn't really mean jack at all especially from an analytical standpoint one person's story doesn't really matter uh is that i went shopping for groceries two weeks ago and i went shopping again today and i paid double almost exactly double the price for uh meats all meats and you know beef chicken and pork and uh almost double for certain certain kinds of vegetables so that's concerning um i was my literally i i paid more for groceries today than i have in my entire life and my needs have not expanded at all um you know sure every time i go shopping i try to to stock up you know like you know prepping in the long term right make sure you get just a can an extra can of everything right so we're not talking like i'm going out and buying you know tens of thousands of dollars worth of groceries i'm just like a normal you know family's worth of groceries right and it was double um so that's kind of shocking very shocking to me uh even though it's something that literally every single person with a fourth grader's [Music] knowledge of economics understands so just keep that in mind i know a lot of people right now are kind of freaking out on the interwebs talking about food shortages and things like that um but i just did want to share my own personal anecdote of inflation and how it is most certainly a a thing uh moving forward so yeah not super great i know this this might not be a thing you know again one person's story is probably not indicative of the rest of the country um but i you know if for anyone out there who's in a similar boat uh you know there you go you've got your confirmation that it is happening to at least one other person right so there you go uh moving for switching gears quite significantly is number three uh which is the joint cyber defense collaborative and this is um some quite terrifying stuff not necessarily because it's anything new but because of how it's branded essentially the pentagon the department of defense is partnering with private companies like netflix amazon google uh other companies like that to essentially spy on a lot of stuff uh essentially remember how when edward snowden leaked everything everybody was shocked you know shocked shocked i say to learn that um google and facebook were collaborating with the fbi and the nsa illegally right people were shocked to learn that out well guess what the joint cyber defense collaborative which uh the official press release i have linked in the sources source documents for this episode um they're touting it like it's a good thing like companies are not going to help the federal government prevent cyber attacks but if you read the fine print it's basically just they're freely admitting openly mockingly to your face that they're spying on you once again illegally so there you go and then also switching gears quite significantly as well there was a report i saw that came out a couple of days ago specifically referencing hospital systems the digital systems and the the cyber you know networks and things that are in most north american hospitals apparently this is the statistic grab line from the whole study is that apparently 80 of hospitals in north america are at quote an extreme risk of some kind of crippling cyber attack now again this is one of those very highly technical documents i would highly suggest you read the sore stock in this on this but you know this is one of those uh things where you're like okay well no duh that's exactly you know what we could we could have guessed that well you know there you go there's at least some experts in the cyber security field are screaming about this now as well so there you go on that so pushing forward into significant governmental actions i've got two slides for you today on this so here we go uh first and foremost again the source dock of which is in the sources there has been a this is a couple of weeks old but there has been a significant amount of um consternation surrounding the dhs training for mass vaccinations so here here's the skinny um for those of you that have had a history in like like i have i have a history of uh you know defense defense and and um natural disaster preparedness things like that you know working for like the county guys or something like that for you know disaster preparedness they have these online courses i mean you can go online and learn how to be a certified national weather service weather spotter you know it's free you take like a 30 minute course and there you go stuff like that one of these courses popped up on one of these websites where you can do this online training stuff or even physical training that you can register for in which the training subject was teaching local volunteers how and other federal or federal local state whatever agencies how to conduct quarantine operations in rural areas so obviously people got a lot you know very freaked out about it um honestly i'm in the in today's age i would be concerned about it as well however if this kind of thing happened 10 years ago nobody would really bat an eye because yeah of course you're expecting your county that's that's what happens you know think if if ebola like like legit like like a legitimate a highly contagious disease broke out in the united states you'd expect you know some kind of you know county or local assistance right you know maybe not everybody but at least that's what governmental agencies are supposed to be for i know this kind of an oxymoron at this point but uh point is is that this exact training course if it were to have appeared online 10 years ago nobody would have batted an eye but because of what it means today with everybody including ourselves being very concerned with soldiers kicking in our door in the middle of the night to shove a needle in our arm um it doesn't look very good for the department of homeland security and considering the department of homeland security is um uh a complete joke now uh as really they have been for you know since they were created uh it's very concerning so there you go on that i'm not sure if i'd be you know be a panic level over it but i just didn't want to point that out that that did happen uh also uh when it comes to election stuff um twitter uh you know good old jack is back at it again uh purging several accounts that were covering and exposing the um inconsistencies i'll say it that way so youtube doesn't ban me the inconsistencies in the election audits of arizona wisconsin nevada and georgia the all four of those states which by the way are having some very interesting things coming out about them that i don't really want to delve into because i don't really know how um i think it would take a lot of time to dig into that and then would probably just get banned anyway but there's a lot of people talking about it already so it's not like it's it's being you know ignored um conservative twitter and conservative sites are really are you know putting it right at the forefront so go there if you want to learn what's going on with the election stuff third i just wanted to have this kind of on record for when social media and really all media kind of forgets this happened but uh cuomo um has gotten is gotten uh gotten in quite a bit of trouble even as even his own attorney general released a report against him basically the report that was released that confirmed that the sexual harassment complaints against him were in fact true um and even the the federal regime is saying that he should resign so very interesting stuff i'm sure we'll probably see something in a few days but i would be highly surprised if he goes away that quickly cnn is interestingly refusing to cover the story which is actually not that interesting considering that his brother is a cnn reporter so there you go also number four the white house is now openly censoring social media so this happened a few weeks ago as well uh the white house through their press secretary and and basically through a lot of their spokespeople is now clearly openly and not even trying to hide the fact that they are ordering social media websites to censor their enemies this came out when it came to during a press conference in which the the white house press secretary confirmed that they were directing facebook to delete certain content from their platform so there you go um if you didn't take anything away from this briefing i feel like this briefing has like five or six like every bullet point in it is like hmm that's uh yeah that's not good um and yeah this is one of those where it's like we're talking i'm talking about it quite casually but it could not be more serious um so yeah there you go white house is now openly censoring social media and directly ordering them if that doesn't show you that's media all media in the united states is now working for the federal government i don't know what will so yeah uh and also number five this is an interesting one um and the universities are requiring uh the the medical procedure that shall not be named right uh now this is interesting this is how they're doing i've seen this in a few different universities a few different people who are who are sadly college students right now and kind of can't get out of it without having to pay back a lot of either student loans or something like that they have sent us a lot of information and oh man this is so sneaky so what they'll do is for those of you that don't understand how you know college works i hate to be condescending but there is a registration period and then a period goes by um it depends on what university is but you register for classes then classes begin then there's a drop date for classes so what people are seeing is that the universities are waiting for the the our registration to complete and then they're saying they're they're saying before you know the semester even starts hey we're not going to mandate masks we're not going to mandate any of this if we're not going to mandate medical procedures and things like that to get students to register and then once students are registered uh and or past the drop date for the class they're saying oh well you know now we're going to mandate mass for everyone oh now we're going to mandate you get an experimental medical procedure that kind of stuff so they're waiting until students are financially obligated to finish the term or else lose a significant amount of money and potentially void their their student aid federal aid and things like that so they can control them i think that's just you know just completely dastardly but it's genius it's like a genius and how evil it is but it seems like most universities are trying to do that is because we all know how universities work now so i thought i'd mention that for anybody who's who's out there who might be a student or is registering for classes if you if your university has come out and stated we're not going to mandate this we're going to not make it we're we're not going to mandate that just watch and see what happens after the drop date for your course or after courses have begun um and the the ad drop period um has passed right so that you can't drop the course without losing your money just wait and see what happens i i guarantee you you'll be in for some nasty surprises there uh so continuing on with uh this uh series of significant governmental actions um keeping in theme with the the experimental medical procedure that shall not be named uh number six here is that the is what um the military uh community has been talking about and rightfully freaking out about for a while now which is the secretary of defense seeking approval to mandate uh this experimental medical procedure before its fda approved so yeah soldiers everywhere who have a heart and realize what's going on are freaking out over this because they really have no option for those of you that don't understand how the military operates there you have no choice the choice is either get out of the military and accept an other than honorable discharge or maybe even a general discharge or some kind of discharge for refusing to get a medical procedure like i personally know a lot of people who got kicked out of the military for refusing to get the flu shot and um yeah that's a shame uh that the military's like that but that's just the way it is and unfortunately service members are put in a very bad choice between having to choose between two very bad choices so i did want to mention it because it is going on it is happening and for posterity's sake i just wanted to have it on the record that this is the day that we're talking about it essentially so there you go switching gears quite significantly but still keeping in the theme of a significant action is apple has decided that they are going to be scanning your personal photos yeah even more so than they already do now i did put this here because apple is according to the other bullet where which i just briefed that companies are now starting to partner with national defense entities you now see why this is why apple is now considered by us to be the government now apple is doing this under the guise of something quite noble they are pretending to develop this technology and institute it on iphones uh to scan your foot to scan a person's photos and determine and detect and report uh child abuse and and um illicit content like that however as literally every single human being on the planet can obviously see it's that's most likely going to be either a a lie or two a uh a diversion to be able to spy on your devices even more so than apple already does so there you go yet another reason to avoid smartphone usage as much as possible so you know something to to definitely keep in mind keep your eye on it because apple loves sneaking these things in all tech companies love sneaking these things in so there you go all right number eight is something keeping you know moving back to the military category uh the military has announced that they are stockpiling 500 million doses of this experimental drug um allegedly now this is from an army times article that again is in the is in the sources for this even the army times like based on their la based on their uh the way it's written maybe i'm biased and i'm reading between the lines when there's nothing there but it seems like whoever wrote the army times article is even thinking that the army's excuse that oh these are for internationally used like they're going to go to people in africa even the harmony times writer thinks that's bs so yeah it's most likely going to be used for something more nefarious than simply helping out another developing nation um and combined with you know the military lust or the senior military lust for going door-to-door yeah well we can we can put two and two together quite quickly it doesn't really take a genius to figure that out now as far as again on the freakout meter how much to freak out i wouldn't necessarily completely freak out just yet but i mean geez there have already been like eight things i've already talked about in this briefing that are worth freaking out over so i don't know take that for what you will i guess another one of those freak out things is number nine which is the michigan air national guard in upcoming exercises will be intentionally closing a highway and a public highway interstate and using it as an improvised landing strip now the military analysts out there will tell you that this is not necessarily a bad thing this is kind of a national defense thing it makes a lot of sense to be able to to train and things like that for foreign invasion and stuff like that here's the deal though uh out of all of the with every single state's national guard um reporting funding problems right to where they can't even get basic very basic infantry training level skills and things like that we cannot even develop basic soldiers skills why then is the michigan air national guard of all places the national guard for freaking michigan right why are they training to land on an improvised landing strip oh by the way which will be the very first time in us history this has ever happened yeah interesting um i don't know if this is more as nefarious as a lot of uh conservative sites are making this out to be um but i do think that it's uh it's there's something fishy going on either somebody's trying to dump some funding uh so that they can get uh at the end of the fiscal year which were coming up on the end of the fiscal year right so they're trying to dump some funding so that they can get more next year or they're just incompetent or some general wanted to get their pet project across and made a deal with the governor for more funding who knows or it could be what everybody seems to think it is on the internet which is something to ferish training for the american military to target uh americans which we think is a thing but i'm just not sure if this is going to be a a representative representative situation of that i don't know but i did want to mention it you can research it on your own so yeah there you go on that and then for number 10 i made a mistake i made yet another mistake on these slides there's a mistake in every slide i put the joint cyber defense collaborative on there twice so i already talked about that so we'll just go ahead and skip that last one because i already talked about it now moving forward into what we get asked a lot understandably a lot of people out there are asking at what level should we be freaking out or or something like that or um what what kind of concerns should i have and things like that like i cannot tell you how many like i'm sure the guy who man's our instagram account just gets bombarded every day i know when i check our email account we get bombarded every day and you know don't don't get this wrong we're not trying to say don't contact us we're just saying that a lot of people are very upset and i i completely understand it i really do i'm very upset um but here is where i wanted to spread a little bit of optimism okay and i wanted to do that via this sort of format and we can do this with every single with a lot of different issues but i just wanted to show you uh what how i'm trying to think about things when i see something really gargantuanly bad happen in the news or something like that and i think oh my god the the end is not right uh this is the thought process i go through so i go through a three-step thought process for a lot of this stuff that i see that's just horrifically bad first of all is what what happened okay and second is what would if i were looking through the lens of a totalitarian dictator if i wanted to be king emperor of the universe what would i have to do in order to make that original thing more effective right and lastly i think because of those mistakes how can i take advantage of a person who isn't as effective as they could be so here let me let me run through the first one and show you what i'm talking about so what the regime did was recommend masks slash the experimental drug that cannot be named right so they've recommended it okay they didn't they haven't mandated it yet right they haven't mandated it yet for for citizens okay so what a totalitarian dictator would need to do in order to get compliance is mandate that stuff immediately for every person and go door to door and make sure that it happens right and you know that might happen one day uh every day that goes by it seems like we're creeping towards that um but right now we have to admit that if resistance to this kind of stuff is possible in the first place if they're giving us a choice right recommending is not recommending is coercing but it's not mandating right they're giving us an option right and if that's possible then it will lead to resistance in other areas you know if they were to come out and say masks and the experimental drug are mandatory for every u.s citizen to get your resistance would fall sharply because people just don't see a way out well now they're offered a way out people are offered a way to not participate in that and since that happens uh that resistance can spread to other areas so there you go they're just not as effective as as they as they can be right same thing with coercing people into staying inside right stay indoors save lives right yeah all that bs right well here's the thing they're just coercing people right they're tricking people using propaganda and things like that a totalitarian dictator in order to be fully effective would have to order this at you know at gunpoint like in australia right people are literally having to show their papers to the police to leave their freaking houses right that's what would have to happen in the united states right and since that's not happening we can take advantage of that every minute of freedom that we have is a minute of freedom that we have to stockpile you know collect and collect intel you know prepare for the lockdowns for when they for when you know the gun point does come right if that does happen right so there you go we can take advantage of that even though it seems like that first event right you know the government's coercing people into staying inside their houses well we can turn that into a positive thing um without too much effort at all just by looking at the other side of the coin right they're not as effective as they could be likewise this is for the military guys out there purging the military of dissidents like we remember hey you know the us government is now looking at your facebook page soldier you know that's how it works right well here's the thing though they didn't purge everybody they did not purge every single person in the united states military that does not agree with the regime or senior military leadership in fact quite the opposite has occurred right whoever is left in the military right those only a handful of people have been kicked out of the military for being quote unquote extremists right i.e they liked the wrong thing on facebook and their command found out about it right the majority of the military that's left right is now covertly operating with the same beliefs that they had before so now they're getting used to operating in a covert environment they're getting used to hiding their beliefs from their command because there you go and if they're willing to hide their beliefs from their command they're willing to hide other beliefs from their command you see how that works and you know in classic fashion right classic us history right the us military has created more adversaries within its own ranks than it has stopped outside its ranks right so there you go by trying to purge but not being completely effective right which is not something the regime could have done in the first place right by purging as many by purging just a few people they have ticked off everybody else right or or mostly everybody else and now they're underground right so there you go on that likewise with the thing that everybody's concerned about is infringing on gun rights right the regime has of course infringed on pretty much every human right that there is but especially gun rights but but what a totalitarian dictator would have to do right in order to be fully effective is literally a surprise raid on every single human being who owns a gun in the united states at the same exact time right it's going to be coordinated at every level federal state local and even like sub-local groups would have to be coordinated to all strike at once to get every single gun right this is not australia where you can have a gun buyback program and every person in the entire country shows up and gives up their guns willingly this is america we don't do that here granted there are a lot of you know flood types out there that would gladly hand in their guns um because daddy government told them to uh the fact of the matter is is that the resistance to this kind of stuff has never been stronger than it is today right so the the interesting tidbit that a lot of people have mentioned this is not just you know me trying to be an internet you know um professor or anything the interesting part that a lot of people have noticed is that the regime has infringed so much that ordinary people ordinary people who um don't who don't um who think that you know some gun laws are good and things like that those people are now openly and regularly violating laws you know just a couple of years ago people would be terrified to even have a stock and an ar pistol in the same exact room because they were terrified that the atf would raid them and say ah you're you have the capability of doing so well you know now the vast majority of gun owners simply ignore most gun laws so there you go um i guess the moral of the story for talking about this particular issue is that every single day that goes by and this middle column here right this this list of stuff that a total dictator would have to do every day that goes by and this middle column doesn't happen is a day that we can use to our advantage right so that is a bit of good news i know that not a lot of time we don't talk about good news a lot but it's really important to keep things in perspective keep things grounded and stuff like that and up next is something that i wanted to talk about um because this is something that i just you know on a whim one day created because i i we we kept getting a lot of dms for this and you're going to get a different answer if you ask every single person here what books would you recommend so i created on goodreads a reading list if you're interested in learning more or you want to figure out where to begin or if you're interested in the field of intelligence or military history or things like that if you want a list of books to read to that we think that i think would help get us out of the situation that we're in this is where you need to go now i will be the first to admit that i do not like this platform since it's owned by amazon but it's the easiest thing to use it catalogs it's able to catalog our books here the literally stacks of thousands of books that we have here in our shop it's really easy to transfer them over to this platform and most importantly you don't need an account to view the books that i've dropped on here which is nice i would also mention that this list is far from com really far from complete i've only got a couple hundred on there so far i'm trying to progressively add books as i can get to them and they had you know ads specific shelves for specific topics um [Music] so yeah like i mentioned we're often asked what books would recommend for people that are new to the field of intel and stuff like that so we've got a specific list for that you know and if you got the basics down and you want something a little bit more advanced well you know we've got a a higher level more challenging advanced intel bookshelf as well so check it out if you're interested uh you know we are always reading new books here and so i'm you know i'm really the main person who is adding books to this list most of our staff here is constantly sending me books to add to the list that i either totally forgot about or even haven't read yet so i will completely and be grateful for any books that anyone can recommend i'm absolutely opening the floodgates and requesting that if you've got a book that's really good and you think is is very handy to to to know uh please send it to us or or drop it in the comments below we've got a channel on key base and i think element as well for reading list recommendations and things like that so that would be very very handy so we can add to the list so yeah and pushing forward into international issues the bottom line is there's a lot of stuff going on in the world and i did not have enough time or the bandwidth to find the hundreds of things that are going on in the world to add to this slide but i will briefly mention that the china the chinese nuclear power plant that's leaking is still leaking and shocker is leaking worse than what they told us um surprising for communists i know right um and a lot of experts are now warning that uh it might actually melt down i don't really know about that um i think that the chinese would absolutely sacrifice their people in order to make sure it didn't melt down because a meltdown is something that's hard to keep within the confines of state control especially with western media having an eye on it but who knows we might uh wake up one morning and see uh see a plume but i don't know we'll see i guess also france france is not letting us down with their um uh massive anti-anti-lock down protests which are currently underway in the country they know how to do it right the the friendship really people knock the french for well being french i suppose but uh they really know how to protest so i i think it's been kind of entertaining to at least watch some of the stuff they're doing and it's it's very helpful to know that at least some people in europe are willing to resist so that's very good to know because europe is um europe's dealing with a lot of stuff right now um so yeah also iran if you wanted to um look this up iran has allegedly hijacked another oil tanker there's really not much information on this right now but the united kingdom that's why i have the same bullet for each each one is that the united kingdom is heavily involved a counter piracy company in the united kingdom was heavily involved trying to say uh hey iran just stole another oil tanker we think now in a few days we'll probably know a little bit more but it would not surprise me at all considering israel has been very very much all about targeting iran shipping oil to syria so it would make sense that iran is having to confiscate or or hijack more um oil tankers so they can that's just what iranians do right the the irony regime i should say uh and then finally the united kingdom is in uh some hot water of their own because uh apparently there are mass food shortages and resource shortages in that country which is being blamed on brexit it's that sounds about right to be honest because of logistical complexities that come with brexit if you haven't been following brexit it's too much to get into right now but uh just suffice it to say that people in the united kingdom are are reporting shortages of pretty much everything um either as a legitimate shortage or there's a driver shortage because of brexit uh people are certain people aren't allowed to you know drive for things like that and um food is you know rotting in the fields and things like that in a few select areas so uh yeah not super great for the uk um it's not i would not classify it as quite an emergency level yet but it is interesting to see that food shortages are most certainly a theme on the international front at this time so before i uh i ended today i just wanted to do like a little mini a little mini podcast and take a minute to check in with everybody and see how everybody's doing and really just to say keep on keeping on and try not to let things get to you too much like i mentioned earlier pretty much everything in this briefing today is worth panicking over even though we're not panicking it's just people everywhere are getting burned out left and right and i find even myself well especially myself just without the energy to view things as they really are anymore in a lot of cases there are a lot of dudes on the internet screaming about this or that these days and unfortunately a lot of them are right yes we are living in unprecedented times times yes our government is legitimately trying to use communism to usher in totalitarianism or whatever it certainly seems like it right you know you know things are not going super great right now we're not confused as to what's going on right i think most people know what's going on to some degree right at this point anyone who doesn't even see the tiniest bit of what's going on i can't help them like none of our staff here can help them there's nothing we can write there's nothing we can produce that can help people like that um they are beyond saving at this point um at least at this time right it may change in the future but you know it's unfortunate um at least the effort required to help a person dig themselves out of the ideological hole they've dug would be disproportionate to the number of people that we could help right so yeah i mean if you go back and you listen to a lot of our previous content really mostly our original og podcast you'll notice how much we've all changed we here try to be as analytical as possible neutral will be the wrong word because neutrality is what journalism is supposed to be and we're not journalists right analysts are supposed to use their skills and experiences to advocate for a certain course of action that's what analysis is right and the very definition requires that analysts be continually at odds with each other um a team of analysts that all agree on everything you know all the time they're that's that's a worthless team right now that means that you might have people um you know this doesn't apply just to analysts like us but you you know normal people as well so you might have people who have different freakout points right like i was mentioning earlier if that that makes sense you know like for instance if i see a a bomb disposal technician running right you know i'm going to break h

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 31st through June 6th, 2026. The summertime is already cooking pretty quickly, so let's get right to it with the events that mattered this week. Around the world this week, the Anglosphere has been working through some domestic issues with both the Henry Noak and Austin Medaf murders being the catalyst for the English-speaking world being fed up with the stuff and because of how things are developing, civil tensions will remain on the menu for the next few weeks. Otherwise, the familiar aroma of tear gas and body odor has wafted down from New Jersey. As the usual, suspects have remained protesting at the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark and generally trashing the place more than it already was. Overseas, the Israeli style ceasefire remains in place with kinetic engagements remaining daily occurrences throughout Iran and the Persian Gulf this week. In Lebanon, the war continues as before with the IDF continuing to push north into Lebanon and air strikes have remained common throughout the Lebanese countryside as well as a few targeted assassination strikes in Beirut. Otherwise, the Russians have been fighting a pretty hot war down in Mali and the General Sahel region of Africa with FPV drone attacks being used by various insurgent groups. This week, the Russian Africa Corps has also started to use FPV drones to take the fight to JNIM insurgents. Likewise, JNIM and the FLA insurgent groups are also learning quite well with JNIM militants starting to use drones for real-time forward observation to walk mortars onto Russian positions throughout the country. So, the wars in Africa remain pretty hot and a lot of al-Qaeda linked groups are learning how to streamline the use of drones for offensive attacks. All of the current conflicts taking place around the world continue to heat up, which is to be expected this time of year. But the global energy crisis and the oil shock that is originating from the war in the Middle East is raising the stakes for all of these different conflicts. Here at home around the United States, things are just as spicy as last week, both on the civil unrest front and the political front. I've not mentioned it throughout the week because I didn't have a good spot to put it in a report, but this week, legislation has been introduced within the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act to allegedly merge the Israeli military with the United States Armed Forces. Section 224 of this bill is the problem. And I've been trying to figure out how bad this really is because it sure sounds like Congress is trying to unify the Israeli military industry with our own. As in, when it comes to military technology and intelligence, they will be considered the same as America. Once again, I have not had enough time to look into this myself. And to be honest, this is completely unsurprising and probably not that much different than how things are right now. But I did want to mention it for those of you who want to do some more research on your own. It looks to be another step towards the United States losing a lot of autonomy at the behest of a much smaller foreign nation around the world. And that's pretty concerning, especially considering this involves military technology. So, we don't have to worry about the Israelis stealing our military secrets if we just unify them and make them part of the US armed forces apparently. So, that's the concern with this and I'm going to look into this a little bit more. But, they've been trying to do this for a few years. A few representatives have been trying to uh put this in various NDAAS over the years. Either way, something to keep an eye on. I did want to mention it because it's kind of important. Otherwise around the country, the other main concern this week has been the discovery of new world screwworm in the southwest, which has been spreading throughout South and Central America for many months now. This disease is known to absolutely devastate cattle herds as the flesh-eating parasite causes festering wounds that usually lead to the death of the cattle due to infection, blood loss, and all kinds of bad stuff. So at the wavetop level, this leads to pretty harsh economic losses, potentially in the billions of dollars if this hard to eradicate disease spreads throughout the American cattle herds. Right now, there's not much that can be done uh by the average person to mitigate this disease. But being aware of what's going on in the agricultural community is important, especially since beef prices keep going up. And if this disease spreads more widely, this is going to cause a lot of losses that drive beef prices up and availability down even further. So definitely something to be aware of as we await the latest data from the USDA regarding how bad this crisis is. Right now, a lot of smaller farmers are trying to get a federal disaster declaration regarding this disease. I don't know if they've actually made that happen just yet, but they're trying to pressure the White House to make that happen. Texas has already declared this to be an emergency and various forms or other to unlock funding and research bandwidth and all kinds of resources to try to combat this disease. But again, hard to say how this is going to work out. This is more of a strategic concern. Of course, we first mentioned this uh last year, actually. So, now that there have been two confirmed cases as of this morning, we're going to have to see how this works out over the next few weeks. Also, around the nation this week, civil unrest has been a concern for two locations. The Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark and also the ongoing Carmelo Anthony murder trial that began this week in Texas. In New Jersey, the civil unrest surrounding the Delaney detention facility has continued to escalate as activist groups have begun to organize riots more effectively and persistently. The New Jersey State Police have been deployed on and off at the site. However, over the past few days, it's really just been the ICE erro teams which have been defending the compound. Riers have begun attacking vehicles entering and exiting the facility and generally causing mayhem as usual. They're actively trying to get ICE agents to shoot them as most of them are screaming uh to be like Renee Good, the woman who was shot in Minneapolis for hitting an ICE agent with her car which contributed to the riots there. So, they are most certainly trying to take a lot of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that they learned in Minneapolis and apply them to Newark. Whether or not things are going to escalate that far is anybody's guess. Uh, right now, Delaney Hall is certainly progressing toward that level of riots. Though, for now, these riots are mostly confined to the area immediately adjacent to the detention facility. So, we're going to have to see how this works out over the next week. But, this is most certainly a war zone around this little area in the industrial part of the city. So yeah, not looking good on the civil unrest front when it comes to anti-ICE riots and demonstrations. Back in Texas this week, the Carmelo Anthony trial began earlier this week, much to the anger of local groups. Jury intimidation has been a mainstay with efforts being made to stalk and track down jurors during the initial selection process. This is to be expected to some degree by journalists who are rather unscrupulous sometimes with the ways that they try to figure out who's on the jury and is mostly confined to the fairly low-level attempts at the moment. But it's something to be aware of because a jury has not been sequestered during this case and the crowd outside the courtroom is already calling for the murder of white people. So that's not super great. Not to be unexpected, but still not super great considering the security threats that are present. And this could get out of hand pretty quickly. Right now, there are a few different factions on the ground getting rowdy outside the courthouse. So I'll just mention them now. The first main faction are various Pan-African elements, which is more of an ideology than a strictly organized group. Along with them, uh, various Black Hebrew, Israelite organizations have been observed on site. They're mostly confined to blowing horns in the parking lot of the courthouse, but they're definitely on site. A few of you remember these, uh, groups, which have become rather interesting over the past few years, but the black Hebrew Israelites are there. And these guys are much smaller in numbers, but they're also more organized. And this is also more of a national group as well. So again, it's it's more of a militant style organization. usually pretty harmless and just strange, but you never know because adding fuel to the fire, Jake Lang has arrived on scene. Yes, the infamous Jake Lang is in Texas uh causing a little bit of a ruckus. He showed up to do what he always tends to do, which is further stoke up the unrest and the overall situation remains tense because the clashes between his group and the black separatist group, well, that didn't go so well and they're pretty much the standard textbook definition of a powder keg waiting to be ignited. So, based on the trial beginning on Thursday, uh, and the evidence presented so far, it's hard to say when a verdict will be reached, but I'm guessing that it will probably be this coming week that we enter into the period of more potential for unrest. I think riots are going to happen no matter what, but if Anthony is found guilty, this is probably not going to go over so well. So, two big points of potential unrest on the horizon in New Jersey and in Texas. And depending on how this next week goes, these hotspots may stay localized or there may be more concerted efforts to expand to other areas. It's really too soon to tell at the moment, but we'll be on the lookout for any unrest popping up as usual. Moving to the Middle East this week. My oh my, it has been rather busy. Bottom line, everyone has been shooting at each other, but it's not as severe as before. Almost immediately after I released last night's report, more engagements took place, which at the moment appear to be the most significant strikes since a ceasefire, alleged ceasefire went into effect. Throughout the week, the United States has been conducting routine strikes on Keshum Island as well as on the mainland up and down the eastern side of the street of Hormuz. This targeting has mostly continued the trend from last week where the US strikes something and the Iranians retaliate and then the US pretends like we never started it in the first place. So, they retaliate to the retaliation. All the while, Sentcom is starting to lie a little bit more openly about Iranian munitions being intercepted because there have been several instances this week where Sentcom claims that the Iranian missiles were intercepted, but we have highresolution imagery of impact craters. So, just to recap, let's go through the list of targets that have been hit this week, which should help illustrate that the war is actually back on and everyone is just lying about it. On May 31st, an American MQ1 drone was shot down by the Iranians in what they claim is their airspace. Sentcom claims that it was flying over international waters, but the wreckage washed up on the beach in Iran. So, you can decide what the truth is. On the same night, a few hours later, or maybe even a few minutes later, I don't really know. Uh, Sentcom conducted strikes on Keshum Island and also near the town of Geruk on the eastern coast of the Straight of Hormuz. Later on that same night, still on the night of May 31st, the Iranians counterattacked by launching ballistic missiles and drones targeting Kuwait. From here, one whole day elapsed. And on the night of June 1st, the United States targeted a ship in the Gulf of Oman which was trying to run the American blockade. This ship was struck kinetically and disabled. Later on that night, moving from June 1st to June 2nd, another round of targeting took place. The Iranians launched missiles at Kuwait International Airport as well as Ali Al- Salm Air Base in Kuwait. In addition to strikes in Bahrain, which I have not geoloccated just yet. Similarly, the United States conducted strikes on Keshum Island and also possibly on the eastern coast of the street of Hammuz. Once again, I don't know which side fired first on this specific night, but by now the strikes were becoming more routine instead of being classified as an attack and then a subsequent counterattack or an attack and then a retaliation. Things were moving toward a more routine and steady targeting effort even by Tuesday of this week. However, this series of strikes in Kuwait was heavily lied about by the United States, and we've got the receipts. Sentincom directly stated on June 2nd that all the missiles failed to hit their targets and that three were intercepted successfully by the United States. Furthermore, in this post, Sentcom also stated that the US shot down several Iranian drones and also conducted more strikes on Ketchum Island. A few hours later, Sentcom got caught lying because at the same time, they also published one of their hilarious fact checks which confirms that Iran successfully hit Kuwait International Airport. As if that wasn't enough, we also have the actual video of the drone hitting the roof of the airport and the engine of the Iranian drone was recovered from the debris. So, Sentcom is stepping on their own selves uh by confirming that they lied about all of the missiles and drones being intercepted. Even more so, we also have fresh satellite imagery of Ali Oselum air base showing that one of the drone hangers was taken out by the Iranians either by a missile or a drone strike. So, Zentcom is once again caught in another blatant lie which the internet figured out in 5 seconds and they also contradicted themselves on their own social media page within a few hours. Once again, the Iranians knew exactly what they hit. They had pretty good battle damage assessment from their own satellite which they owned themselves. So, the only people that sitcom was trying to fool are the American taxpayer. continuing the trend we've been observing since this war began. But anyway, from this point on, strikes continued fairly regularly, and on June 3rd, the war on the high seas continued as the United States Navy was engaged by the Iranians in the Strait of Hormuz. As usual, engagements that take place over the water are nearly impossible to geollocate. Unless we see a sinking ship or an oil slick in a satellite image, but on the night of June 3rd, the US possibly tried to do something in the straight, we're not really sure what. Speculating a bit, my guess is that the Navy tried to escort some more civilian ships, but the Iranians fired upon them with drones and cruise missiles. Sentcom expressly stated in one of their infamous fact check posts that they were not driven back out of the straight by Iranian missile attacks. So, I'll let you make the decision on what the truth is for this engagement. Nevertheless, this brings us through the night and into the next morning, June 4th, when the Iranians struck the Omani oil terminals at Mina Alahal. According to the Omanis, this caused them to have a bit of downtime before coming back online later that day. I don't know about all that, but that's what the Omanis claim. And finally, we arrive at June 5th, yesterday, when the United States and Iran launched the largest attacks on each other so far during this ceasefire that isn't really a ceasefire. Munitions were absolutely zipping through the sky last night. And I'm not exactly sure of who hit what, but throughout the evening, the Iranians launched several ballistic missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain. and the United States struck two radio towers, one on Keshum Island and another at the IRGCN base in Giruk. This is the first footage that Sentcom has provided this week regarding the strikes they have conducted. So, we were able to geollocate these two strikes very easily. As for the others throughout the week, I don't know where they impacted exactly. We're just going to have to wait for another good satellite pass that doesn't have so much cloud cover to figure out maybe exactly what the US hit. It also could be that the US hit stuff that didn't really leave a crater. But nevertheless, we arrive at this morning and using the Kuwaiti army's figure, a total of seven Iranian ballistic missiles were launched overnight. Of course, they claimed to have intercepted all of them, but we know how that goes. Similarly, in Bahrain, missile impacts were reported and something is currently on fire inside the perimeter of what used to be the headquarters of Fifth Fleet, which was almost completely destroyed during the early stages of the war 3 months ago. Now, shifting to the more important part of this equation, at least for those of us in the United States who are just trying to get by these days, the status of merchant shipping through the straight. So far, the situation remains pretty tense, and it seems to be a mostly free-for-all situation most of the time. There are conflicting reports on how many civilian ships are trying to make their way through the straight along with the circumstances of their crossing, which seems to matter quite a bit. For example, there are non-American aligned ships which are transiting the straight via the Iranian route. This has been taking place since the ceasefire went into effect weeks ago. And these ships have no trouble. Uh they pay the Iranian toll fee and the cross without being targeted. If they stop in an Iranian port or if they are linked to Iran in some way, maybe even arbitrarily, the US is going to pick them up once they cross into the Gulf of Oman, though. So counting these is a little bit more challenging. But for the most part, the third party uh I guess you should call them neutral maybe vessels, they're trying to get out and they're having no problem as long as they pay the Iranians. Separately, there are American aligned ships which are attempting to transit through the minefield which are actively being targeted by the Iranians. Even today, there are reports that a total of four merchants attempted to make the crossing under the cover of darkness early this morning, but one of them was struck, prompting the other three to turn back. I haven't confirmed that or not. I just saw that this morning uh making the rounds. But this would jive with what we've seen so far throughout the week for throughout the past few weeks actually where there tries to be a small convoy. They try to get one or two vessels out. Some seem to make it through uh but others tend to get targeted. On the flip side, some American aligned merchants have been able to sneak out, presumably sneak out, which we can confirm rather easily, but this does take a lot of time. It's not like a super tanker can just disappear. It's going to be really easy to beam count and figure out where these ships are located eventually. They're not just going to disappear. So, if we have a ship that was supposed to be inside the Persian Gulf by our last tally, but suddenly it pops up off the coast of Malaysia a few days or even weeks later on, well, we know that they made it out somehow. Now, how did they make it out? Did they take the southern route through the Omani waters and sneak out? Or did they go through the Iranian route and pay the toll or did they take the Omani route but secretly pay the Iranian toll in Bitcoin? That I do not know. But I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a little bit of a complicated situation and it's not as simple as toll route, no toll route, or sneaking out or not sneaking out. I think that there may be a little bit of play in both sides to get some ships through, which is perfectly fair enough for a lot of companies and ship captains that are trying to make their way through. They don't want to get hit with an Iranian missile, but they also don't want Marines coming and stealing their boat. So trying to play both sides to some degree and cooperate to the point to where both sides feel that they wouldn't target a ship is this seems to be a conversation that's happening quite a bit throughout the maritime world at least in the region. Again, this is all just a personal guess, but it would make sense for some of the smaller vessels which are trying to keep a lower profile and just get out of the area unscathed. So all of this really results in the war dragging on as before. We're over three months into this and all sides remain very far from a peace deal, at least in terms of the general points of agreement. From all the talk and statements from diplomats on both sides over the past week, it's not like they're very close to a deal. There have been really no direct meetings for a few weeks now, and all diplomatic efforts are being carried out through a grand game of telephone through intermediaries. So, none of this bodess particularly well for the global oil crisis. In fact, things are probably going to get rather serious for us here on the home front rather soon as our fuel prices continue to remain high. Even though the United States is draining the strategic petroleum reserve just to keep prices low. As far as where we go from here, uh the options for the United States are fairly limited. The longer the war goes on, the more power and advantage the Iranians have. This is just a basic fact. I mean, there's really no getting around that, unfortunately. Much like getting involved in a land war in Asia, entering into a war of attrition with Persia is probably not the best idea. But this week, the United States has continued the Israeli tactic of mowing the lawn and conducted regular strikes every few days so as to slowly fight the war without breaking the threshold for a major offensive campaign. This is exactly what the Iranians themselves said that they did not want to slip into. Aragi has talked about this many times over the past few weeks. They don't want to slip into this situation where their nation is subjected to an operation midnight hammer every six months or so just so that the US can keep their thumb on them. From the Iranians perspective, that's perfectly fine. I don't think they're going to be able to avoid that. I think we're just going to continue doing that forever. But they also don't want a peace deal where the Iranians stop shooting, but the US bombs them every month or so, every time BB makes a phone call. Personally, again, I think this is a bit of a pipe dream on the part of the Iranians. And they've already found themselves in a state of getting mowed down, so to speak, for no reason on a Tuesday, which we've even seen during this ceasefire. So, but that's their business to sort out however they want. And how long they are willing to put up with this and whether or not they're willing to cross that threshold and start conducting more serious attacks, well, that's going to be up to them. So, the US is most certainly trying to target them to uh start the war back again. and we'll see if they take the bait and we'll see if they feel like they're forced to take the bait, which they might be. I don't know. We'll have to see. So, that's pretty much where we find ourselves for today. Summertime civil unrest on the menu for the homeland in both terms of immigration riots and also criminal trials that are driving social disscent around the nation. And since high gas prices also have a way of making everybody a little bit more insane, this makes everything worse. And high diesel costs also drive up prices for literally everything. And there's really no end in sight, at least not uh readily available at the moment. So, pretty much a standard summertime situation at this point. Not a whole lot we can do about the grand strategic things, but we can most certainly try to be as best prepared as we can and be aware of the long-term effects of all this stuff coming to a head in a few months. And with that, let's go ahead and wrap up today with the intercepted ghost net reports for this week. This week was fantastic once again. lots of people exchanging information on the off-grid radio network and getting some really good use out of it. I'm working on some things behind the scenes on the communications front which I hope will supplement our more decentralized communication capabilities and help us be a little bit more prepared in the long run. Lots of cool radio stuff has become a lot more feasible and easier to use. But more to come on that. And I hope that in the meantime, we can get some really good use out of the ghost net as a way of not just having an emergency communication plan already built just in case we need it, but also to use that plan in a more routine way to exchange information every week to keep our skills sharp. So, that's all I have for today. Kind of a short week, I think, but that's okay sometimes. Thank you to all of you on Patreon who keep this project going. Thank you to all of you for watching, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

//The Wire//2300Z January 26, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: VIOLENCE ESCALATES IN MINNEAPOLIS AS COUNTER-ICE GROUPS CONTINUE TO OPERATE FREELY. UNREST EMERGES IN MAINE AS ANTI-ICE PROTESTS CONTINUE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -HomeFront- Maine: Anti-ICE demonstrations have begun to increase in Portland, which have continued in the same manner as observed in Minneapolis. Friday night, activists conducted disruption/noise-making efforts outside several hotels in Portland, which were suspected of housing ICE agents. Minnesota: The situation in Minneapolis has continued to deteriorate, as riots became more violent and more organized over the weekend. In the vicinity of the shooting site along Nicollet Avenue, civil unrest remained constant throughout the day of the shooting, with many different roadblocks being emplaced on the cardinal points surrounding the site. Similarly, every business on this street that had outdoor decorations, dumpsters, or anything else, found their property stolen so as to emplace the ANTIFA-style roadblocks that are customary of that organization. These roadblocks prevented the free flow of traffic, and remained in place until local police cleared the roadway in the early hours of the next morning. Throughout Saturday night, instances of vandalism were reported, such as graffiti being spray painted at a Pizza restaurant on the corner of 27th and Nicollet. This restaurant is currently abandoned (and is therefore undefended Key Terrain) after closing down last year. Across the street from the Black Sheep Pizza Reference Point, two armed representatives of the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA) were observed posted up at the intersection of Nicollet and E 27th Street, conducting a short Presence Patrol operation. Sunday morning, Area Denial operations were also noted around the city at large. At least one individual was arrested after emplacing homemade caltrops on the roadway, which were set up as vehicle obstacles in areas where federal forces were conducting patrols. On the Civil Unrest front, Sunday evening riots were reported at area hotels, which have also become increasingly more violent. Several situations have been reported involving federal agents being swarmed. Overnight, federal Division of Prisons officers were attacked and wounded by rioters who attacked them at the Hilton Home2 Suites east of the University. Concerning the composition and disposition of other forces, National Guard troops under the command of Gov. Walz have established a position adjacent to the Whipple Federal building, which is serving as a support site for protesters. Over the weekend, Walz's soldiers provided materiel aid to the protest group outside the Whipple Federal building, which took the form of handing out free hot chocolate and donuts to the demonstrators. This was mostly a squad-sized effort for PR purposes, and not a persistently occupied position. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In addition to the tactical situation on the ground in Minneapolis, one of the group chats used to coordinate the unrest activities was leaked over the weekend. This group chat is being used to dox and harass ICE agents, plan violence at riots, and coordinate and liaise with ICEWatch and Defend612 cells throughout the city. This Signal chat leak also identified several businesses which are specifically working with ICEWatch to host space at their venues for Observation Posts to be stood up. Most restaurants and storefronts in Minneapolis have signs on their doors banning ICE from entering, but the active steps to provide materiel aid to ICEWatch personnel is another point of escalation that has been occurring for some time, without much notice. In terms of other forces on the ground, local law enforcement and National Guard forces are either being ordered to stand down and not assist federal agents, or are being given menial taskings far away from the actual conflict zones, and therefore are combat ineffective. For context, Gov. Walz has also ordered his troops to change their uniform posture for identification purposes. Forces under the command of Gov. Walz are wearing Yellow Vests, separating them out from any Federal troops that may be deployed to the area. More broadly, rioters have transitioned out of the phase of only causing civil unrest, and are getting more powerful and organized as directed by the State. Politicians at the city and state level are doing everything in their power to stoke up the violence, which now includes directly leading and liaising with the groups responsible for the unrest, as indicated by the Signal chat leaks. It is this organization that sets the Minneapolis situation apart from other instances of civil unrest, and it is also why the use of Lethal Force will continually be applied when all other options to control the situation have failed. Federal agents cannot (and should not) be expected to allow themselves to be dragged by a crowd and beaten to death in the streets, and if there is a reasonable perception of that being a possibility the use of force will be justified. Therefore, more small arms engagements are a certainty as long as the attacks on ICE agents are being directed by groups linked to State officials. However, even though Minneapolis is grabbing all of the headlines right now, other efforts are underway in other areas. Large-scale protests are growing in nearly every state, from Utah to Georgia. Due to the increased ICE operations, Maine is likely to be host to an elevated level of unrest for some time as demonstrators use the same Minneapolis playbook in other areas. As such, many other states are likely to witness increased protest activity by proxy, as long as the situation in Minneapolis remains hot. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//1800Z August 1, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CHRISTIANS AMBUSHED AT CHURCH EVENT IN SEATTLE. MULTIPLE FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS LAUNCHED INTO STUDENT ALTERCATION AT FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -HomeFront- Washington: An ambush was reported in Seattle at a Pursuit Northwest Church event last night. One person was killed after unknown attackers opened fire on them, while laying in wait inside a vehicle parked on the street. The attacker(s) fled the scene after the shooting in a white Hyundai Elantra, which has a broken window. The Seattle Police Department has confirmed that the shooting was a deliberate ambush targeting churchgoers. Analyst Comment: This is the same Church at the center of recent controversy in Seattle, and the same Church that was berated by Seattle police for having the audacity to express their faith in public. This Church was condemned by the Seattle police union a few months ago for holding an event at a park deep behind the lines into ANTIFA-held terrain, with the police complaining that they had to protect the churchgoers from violent criminals. Following this incident, it was made clear that the city itself not only approved the permit for this event, but specifically suggested that exact park. Now, the violence continues, not only by parishioners being beaten by the crowd, but now including murders of people trying to go to Church. From a risk management perspective, this is one of the most clear cases of violent religious persecution in the United States, and the city is very obviously not interested in combating the violent militants which are now shooting and murdering Christians in the streets. The federal Department of Justice has not commented on this incident, nor is there any indication of federal interest in Christians persistently being attacked (and now murdered) in Seattle. Florida: The Department of Justice has responded directly to an altercation between two students at Florida State University. The FSU Police Department has launched a full investigation in to the incident, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered US Attorney Jack Heekin, the US Civil Rights Division, and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon to launch a full federal investigation into the incident as well. Florida Congressional Representatives have also gotten involved, and FSU has brought in third-party therapists to provide free trauma counseling services for students who may have indirectly heard about this incident. Analyst Comment: This event, which warranted the involvement of multiple federal law enforcement agencies, revolves around verbal anti-Israeli comments a woman made in the gym toward another student; this entire response stems around a woman saying mean things to a man in the gym. Of course, a response to this would normally be carried out by a university as harassing someone in the gym in this manner is counter to good social order. Normally this type of behavioral incident is handled in-house (usually with something like a brief suspension from classes, if even that). However, as a particular foreign nationstate was mentioned this incident is being responded to as if a murder took place. Consequently, as it's very clear that these types of statements are by far the most heavily-policed speech crimes in the United States, the woman who made the comments has already been doxxed, suspended from classes, and banned from campus, pending the multiple federal investigations that are now underway. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In Washington D.C. politics continues as before, most of which isn't immediately pressing but worthy of note. Talk surrounding the potential pardon of both Diddy and Ghislaine Maxwell continues, with no indication of whether or not a decision has been made on either front yet. The Epstein scandal continues to develop by the hour, most of which has been concerning to the point of sheer incredulity. Most people are still trying to figure out what President Trump actually meant when he stated that Epstein was outcast from Trump's circle for poaching the workers at Trump's own resorts. The implications made by this direct statement don't leave much room for interpretation and the reality of that logic is rather sobering for many. The developments in this case alone have cast a shadow over what probably should be a much bigger scandal: the various developments regarding the targeting of President Trump by previous administrations. If the Epstein scandal had not been handled as poorly as it has, more attention would probably be given to the evidence of prior administrations' corruption. However at this point, trust has faltered to the point that even smoking-gun evidence of collusion by intelligence agencies to spread fake information is not met with the intended response...even just a year ago this would have been an earth-shattering story, but compared to everything else that is going on it's not as groundbreaking as one might expect, especially since most people already knew this information or at least assumed as much. Plus (to be brutally honest), when many people are broke, being replaced by H1B-hires, censored everywhere, and federally investigated for criticizing a specific foreign nation, they are not going to care about what happened to Trump. And the White House has burned through a lot of the goodwill that got them across the finish line (mostly from younger conservatives), which for many people has washed away a lot of the good things that have happened, rightly or wrongly. Everyone wants "their guy" to win. And everybody thinks that when "their guy" wins, everything will be vastly better than it was before. In reality, the situation is often only marginally better than the other paths that could have been taken, which is regardless of political party. This "grass is always greener" phenomenon has always been true, but it's still a hard pill to swallow for many, and it's important to remember when it comes to both expectation management and risk assessment. Most of Trump's supporters thought that the crackdown on speech would end when he got elected. But now (in many ways) it's just as dangerous to have certain opinions as before, just in a slightly different way. This is most heavily demonstrated by both the global crackdown on speech and privacy, and also the White House launching headfirst into the same data concerns. Red or blue, it doesn't matter: a future where nothing is private and every bit of personal data is monetized and analyzed...is not exactly a comforting thought for many. Nevertheless, the newly-declassified documents really are an important milestone in the political realm. But despite this importance this situation may fall victim to the age old lesson of politics: if someone alienates a good chunk of their supporter base once they reach power, their supporters may return the favor in kind one day. Whether or not this idea will truly come to fruition is anyone's guess, however this will be important in the context of the challenges faced by Americans over the next few years, especially as speech crimes and censorship efforts continue to be a very significant bi-partisan efforts. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z March 16, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: IRANIAN STRIKES AND AMERICAN BOMBINGS REMAIN CONSTANT AS GULF STATES MORE OPENLY CENSOR DAMAGE REPORTS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Persian Gulf: Over the weekend Iranian strikes on Dubai have continued, with the fuel point at the airport being hit early this morning. The Fujairah Oil Industry Zone in the UAE was also hit, and burned throughout the day. American positions in Baghdad have also been under constant attack over the past few days, to include the first documented operational use of an FPV drone for an attack, which was conducted at Camp Victory a few days ago by pro-Iran militias in and around the capital region. Ali Al Salem Airbase in Kuwait was hit again overnight, with the Italians reporting one of their hangars (and the MQ-9 housed within) being destroyed. -HomeFront- California: Last night a shooting was reported at a Spring Break event in Santa Monica. Two people were wounded during the shooting, both of which suffered non-life-threatening wounds. The suspect was identified as Jaysawn Williams, who was arrested after being wounded in the attack. Analyst Comment: Despite initial media reports implying terrorism, right now this shooting looks like a gang shooting, rather than a more deliberate attack. However the investigation continues, and more details are expected as victim testimony becomes more public. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The war in the Middle East has shifted into the phase where numbers alone do not accurately convey the situation. Perhaps this was never the case, however at this point, describing the number of bombs dropped and drones launched is not exactly representative of how the war is going. For example, if the reports by various nations in the Middle East are accurate (which at this point is not a guarantee) the total number of drone and missile attacks by Iran has decreased. According to the UAE (which has been caught manipulating their data), only 6 drones attacks were reported last night...but the effectiveness of these strikes has sharply increased. That "6 drone" figure might be misleading or it may be ignoring the Iranian strikes that were successful. Either way, at least two drone strikes were incredibly effective last night, with one direct hit being reported on the fuel point at the Dubai airport, and another at the Fujairah Oil complex. At the northern end of the Persian Gulf, at least the Kuwaitis are being honest about their failed interceptions, with their latest report admitting that of the four drones launched at their nation last night, they only intercepted one. Considering this development, two polar opposite analytical positions can easily be arrived at, depending on how one reads the raw data. It's possible that the Iranians are decreasing the numbers of drones launched because they are running out or American targeting has been effective. Or, one can surmise that the Iranians are now able to conserve their resources, because they now have their targets dialed in and their Command and Control (C2) systems have now recovered from the decapitation strikes that started the war. Either theory will be largely opinion based, as the intelligence gaps regarding the war are very significant at this point. In war, nothing is certain, and right now all sides are attempting to over-estimate their gains, and downplay their losses. As unfortunate as it may be to observe, in a war where the grand strategy of all belligerents is based on hubris, the scale often tips in favor of the defender, or at least the fight for the attacker becomes much harder than it otherwise would have been. This would be wise to consider as the war enters it's third week, and neither American bases in the region nor the merchant vessels in the Strait appear to be granted any reprieve anytime soon. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z June 14, 2025// //PRIORITY// //BLUF: CONGRESSWOMAN ASSASSINATED, SENATOR WOUNDED IN MINNESOTA. ASSAILANT REMAINS AT LARGE. NATIONWIDE 'NO KINGS' PROTESTS REMAIN LARGELY LOW-INTENSITY DURING DAYLIGHT, THOUGH SEVERAL INCIDENTS REPORTED. NATIONWIDE COUNTER-ICE PROTESTS REMAIN MORE KINETIC.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Middle East: The Israeli/Iranian War continues as before, with both nations continuing to trade missiles overnight. Israeli forces have conducted more strikes targeting Iranian Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricant (POL) production facilities, and Iranian forces have responded by striking the POL refinery in Haifa. -HomeFront- USA: Most of the "No Kings" protests did go ahead as planned, though as expected turnout was comparatively low throughout the morning in most areas. During the daytime protest events, most of the participants at most of the "No Kings" protests have been elderly, which resulted in most of the No Kings events remaining relatively low-impact. However, many Counter-ICE protests were conducted separately around the nation, many of which became kinetic. Standard cases of vandalism, civil unrest, and violence were reported in Los Angles, Chicago, NYC, Seattle, and several other major cities. Minnesota: Overnight, an individual posing as a police officer conducted multiple assassination attempts at the homes of two local politicians in Minneapolis. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were ambushed at their home in Champlin by a gunman who posed as a police officer. Both were wounded during the attack. Later that same night, State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were ambushed in their home in Brooklyn Park. Both Hortman and her husband were killed in the attack. Due to the similarities in their names, and these incidents taking place in close proximity to each other, the full casualty count regarding these attacks is as follows: Senator John Hoffman - Wounded at the scene in Champlin, expected to survive Yvette Hoffman (his wife) - Wounded at the scene in Champlin, expected to survive Representative Melissa Hortman - Killed at the scene in Brooklyn Park Mark Hortman (her husband) - Critically wounded at scene in Brooklyn Park, later died at the hospital. The assailant remains at large, and a manhunt is underway in the Brooklyn Park area to locate the suspect. The suspect's vehicle (which was camouflaged to appear as a police cruiser) was recovered at the scene of the second series of murders. Inside the vehicle, were stacks of handwritten leaflets marked "No Kings", referencing today's planned protest events. Also found inside the vehicle was a hit list referencing targeting efforts of other politicians, however the details of this document have not yet been released. Texas: This morning a fire was reported at the Marathon Refinery in Texas City. In Austin, the State Capitol was evacuated this afternoon, after an unidentified threat was presented to lawmakers. As of this afternoon, no amplifying information has been released regarding this incident. Virginia: A vehicle ramming attack was attempted in Culpeper, as an individual drove his vehicle into one of the "No Kings" protests that was dispersing. Local authorities state that Joseph Checklick Jr. intentionally accelerated into the crowd, striking one person in the process. The assailant was arrested at the scene. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: At the moment, the assassinations (and attempts) in Minnesota are highly controversial topics and speculation does not often make the situation any better. However, in this case some speculation is needed to convey the potential future threats that may be ongoing due to the fugitive remaining at large. When time is of the essence, speculation that aids in the success of an investigation is doctrinally acceptable. As such, the possibility must be considered that this may have been the actions of not just a lone gunman and/or a mental case, but rather a deliberate assassination at the behest of significantly powerful organizations and/or populations. A few days ago, Rep. Hortman crossed party lines to be the only Democrat that voted with the Republicans to support a bill that would ban illegal immigrants from receiving Minnesota state welfare benefits. Most notably, Rep. Hortman participated in several media interviews being visibly upset for begrudgingly supporting the bill. Clearly, local authorities also suspect the link to be related to a political issue (since Hoffman and Hortman worked together). After the report of the shooting at Hoffman's home, authorities raced to Hortman's home a few miles away to "preemptively check on" the Congresswoman. After arriving at Hortman's house, police ran into the shooter, who was exiting the structure having already committed the shootings inside. After a brief small arms skirmish, the suspect evaded capture and departed from the area, prompting the large manhunt. Regarding the shooter's identity, authorities claim that the individual is Vance Luther Boelter, a senior advisor and political activist who was appointed by Gov. Tim Walz to serve on the Governor's Workforce Development Board back in 2019. However, details surrounding the suspect's connections will be confusing until more information becomes public. While it's easy to assume the connection to Hortman due to her voting history, at the moment it's possible she wasn't the primary target...Hoffman and his wife were targeted first. Considering that a hit list was discovered at the scene, it is extremely likely that the officers who had the idea to check on Hortman saved lives. Unfortunately, Hortman and her husband did not survive the assassination attempt, but the officers engaging the suspect (and thus causing him to flee on foot) very likely prevented the shooter from continuing down his hit list to the next target. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground