This is Wire 4 2300 Zulu, May 4th, 2026. Precedence is routine. Information cut off is 2200. Bottom line up front, VBIED attack conducted in Oregon. NAVCENT publishes transit plan for vessels in Strait of Hormuz with mixed success. Iran claims to target US Navy patrol boat in Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM claims to sink six Iranian gunboats in Gulf. Vehicle ramming attack reported in Germany. Beginning with international events in the Strait of Hormuz, major developments have taken place in the Strait over the weekend. Last Trump announced the creation of Project Freedom, a plan to allegedly guide third-party commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf so as to at least get non-affiliated ships out of the combat zone for humanitarian reasons. Today, the details of the plan became more clear and it also became clear that the Iranians did not agree with this plan, nor were they notified ahead of time. Early this morning, the United States revealed that the plan was actually the publishing of an alternate traffic scheme for merchant vessels to transit the Strait using Omani territorial waters. Immediately after this plan was published, two merchant vessels made the crossing attempt, both of which were either struck with Iranian cruise missiles or drones. Later on, a third vessel was reportedly on fire in the Strait, though the cause of the fire is not yet known. Following this incident, the IRGCN released a new map of the Strait with two no-go barriers depicted to the east and the west, further stressing that the Strait is closed. At some point throughout the day, the United States has claimed that two unidentified vessels were able to make it out of the Gulf, though the names of these vessels have not been released yet. Separately, kinetic targeting between the United States and Iran appears to have resumed on the high seas. After the United States announced the implementation of Project Freedom, US forces conducted kinetic strikes on six Iranian gunboats patrolling either the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf itself. On the Iranian side, the IRGCN have claimed to have targeted what they describe as an American patrol boat with two cruise missiles during the earlier strikes on merchant vessels. The Iranians claimed that these missiles were not targeting the vessel, but were serving as warning shots to prevent the US vessel from proceeding further. Analysts comment, "Due to the linguistic and cultural barrier, all Middle Eastern nations tend to use doctrinally incorrect terminology when referring to American warships. In this case, patrol boat might not refer to an actual riverine command boat, but might refer to a destroyer or maybe a littoral combat ship." CENTCOM issued a carefully worded statement confirming that a ship had not been hit, but did not address the claims directly. On the other hand, the Iranians have been known to make outlandish claims regarding the targeting of American warships, so it's equally possible that the Iranians tried to sink the vessel then claimed that the missiles were warning shots so as to save face from successful interceptions. However, last night the sky over Hormuz was filled with munitions and multiple holes are burning in the strait as of this morning, so out of all of the prior claims made by the Iranians, this one is the most plausible situation where the Iranians might have actually come close to hitting an American vessel. In the United Arab Emirates, after this morning's scuffle in the strait, four Iranian drones or cruise missiles were reported in Fujairah as Iranian forces targeted the large oil refinery complex which has been used to circumvent the need for merchant tankers to transit the strait. The UAE indicated that three of these munitions were intercepted, but one made it through to its target with several large fires being reported at the refinery this afternoon. In response to these attacks, the UAE has begun to reclose their airspace for the next week. In the Southern Atlantic, an outbreak of hantavirus has been reported on board a cruise ship which is currently moored off the coast of Cape Verde. Three passengers have died from the virus so far and two other passengers are reportedly symptomatic. The vessel remains under quarantine while the extent of the illness is investigated. The vessel had previously departed Argentina and the full ship's itinerary included stops in the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and a few other smaller islands as part of an Antarctic tour. Roughly 150 passengers and crew remain on board the vessel. In Europe, this afternoon a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Germany after one The rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Leipzig near a strip mall at the southwest corner of the main town square. Two individuals were killed immediately during the attack and three others remain in serious condition at a local hospital. The assailant was detained at the scene but has not yet been identified other than authorities stating that he is a 33-year-old male from Germany and at the time of his detention was verbally incoherent. On the home front in Oregon Saturday morning a vehicle born IED attack was conducted at a gym in Portland. One former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club rammed his vehicle into the main entrance to the facility before detonating a series of explosives inside the vehicle. The explosives were comprised of several propane tanks along with unidentified materials. The devices failed to produce a high order explosion and instead mostly burned consuming the vehicle. The suspect was the only person killed during the attack and several other explosive devices were discovered in the vehicle that did not detonate during the fire. Analyst comment, "Local authorities have specifically stated that they are not treating this incident as a case of domestic terrorism even though this incident meets most traditional criteria for a complex coordinated attack due to the attacker using multiple weapons during the attack, the vehicle ramming and the IED detonations." Around the nation fuel prices increased substantially over the weekend once again with a total of eight states reporting diesel prices over $6 per gallon. Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, and California. Nationwide only two states are below $5 per gallon for diesel, Texas and Georgia. Analyst comment, "While many citizens are beleaguered by high gas prices keeping an eye on diesel is even more important. Diesel prices are directly tied to the consumer market as everything from food to medicine is transported on trucks and trains that use this fuel. Many commercial goods companies instituted price control measures two months ago when the war in Iran first began with Amazon for example instituting a 3.5% surcharge for all third-party sellers on their platform to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. As the price of diesel and other distillates climb higher these fees are certain to increase as well. Analyst comments for this wire: In the Persian Gulf, wishing does not make it so. It is unclear as to what decision-making process has been used by CENTCOM in the creation of Project Freedom, and it is hard to imagine that the plan really is indeed what has been implied. It's always easy to armchair quarterback the war, and criticism of the operations so far has been plentiful all around. However, there's no way to sugarcoat this situation. Intentionally putting civilian lives at risk without offering sufficient protection is something. Telling ships that the US will guide them through, but this guidance essentially just being a roadmap and no substantial support is hard to believe, but it sure looks like that's what happened this morning. As with this entire war so far, every single event will be analyzed and debated, not just in terms of effectiveness, but also of intent. On the more nefarious end of that scale, one of the more plausible theories for the events of the day is that the goal was to not really open the strait, but to get the Iranians to fire first, break the ceasefire, and thus justify a resumption of the bombing. Granted, the US doesn't really need a reason to continue the war, but sending a couple of destroyers into the strait, if they actually did that, which isn't confirmed, to provide the bare minimum security in order to convince a handful of ships to cross, is not in accordance with traditional naval doctrine. Especially since the wording of the notice announcing Project Freedom confirms that NAVCENT clearly stated that they haven't cleared the mines, but that they're route to take ships through the minefield. Consequently, using merchant vessels to clear a minefield by driving through it is an interesting choice that will result in cost savings for the US Navy, but is not likely to result in companies trusting the United States. CENTCOM claims that US Navy vessels are in the strait and protecting merchants from Iranian targeting efforts. But if they are indeed in the strait, they are sailing with their transponders off, which is not exactly indicative of a safe situation. Plus, the two, possibly three, successful Iranian strikes in the minutes after Project freedom began cast out on the success of those escort efforts. One of the critical requirements for warships escorting merchant vessels is to actually protect merchant ships from harm, and if this cannot be guaranteed, there's not much confidence in the overall mission. As with any war, there are knowns and unknowns. Deception and obfuscation are critical parts of all warfare, and in this case, military deception has been used on all sides to achieve military objectives. Granting CENTCOM leadership as much charity and leeway as reasonable in their planning efforts, it is possible that what is transpiring in the strait cannot be observed with total certainty by outside forces. It's possible that one or two ships are sneaking through with their transponder turned off. It's also possible that a larger operation is brewing. The US has a lot of tools in the toolbox of deception, but the grand question is how much deception can actually work in such a tight space. Maritime choke points and the terrain of the battle space offer finite parameters to work within. It's a small strait, and a dude with binoculars perched on any point of 500 miles of Iranian coastline can clearly see any merchant shipping attempting to cross it at any time. Weather is nearly perfect in the region year-round, and day or night, there is zero way to conceal a large vessel's transit through the waterway. Considering all angles, it's theoretically possible that the US Navy has actually secretly cleared or at least marked many mines, if not from above the waves, then from below. The US certainly has the technical ability to get one or two ships out, but getting traffic back to the pre-war numbers of 100 plus merchant ships transiting the strait every day is not going to be possible without the Iranians cooperation. Sneaking two ships out successfully while also losing the same number to missiles is what most would call a pyrrhic victory at best, and since there are roughly 2,000 merchant vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf right now, this project has gotten off to a rocky start. From the perspective of the commercial maritime industry, there's simply no way to know beyond all doubt what threats remain and what the United States and Iran will do. But, therein lies the problem. Insurance companies and merchant mariners alike don't make decisions based on all doubt, but rather reasonable doubt. And right now, it is very reasonable to not want to transit the strait due to the risks, which remain insufficiently mitigated by Western forces. This concludes the wire for 2300 Zulu, May 4th, 2026.

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.

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

//The Wire//2300Z February 6, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: IRANIAN FORCES HIJACK TWO VESSELS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ. GRENADE ATTACK REPORTED IN FRANCE. RUSSIAN GENERAL TARGET OF ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT IN MOSCOW. DETAILS EMERGE REGARDING TERROR ATTACK IN GURNEE, ILLINOIS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: Yesterday Iranian forces seized two tanker vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. These vessels have not officially been named yet, however the footage provided by the IRGC-N indicates these were smaller, more-regional tankers carrying fuel to other locations around the region. Otherwise, on the diplomatic front, the talks between Iranian and American officials concluded today without much note, other than mainstream media sources claiming that the Iranians have refused to halt the enrichment of Uranium. Analyst Comment: The Iranians say this quite literally every time, and today was only the first day of negotiations. The positive news is that neither side flipped the table and walked away; all parties have further talks planned after today's meetings in Oman. Russia: Overnight, a high-ranking General was the victim of an attempted assassination in Moscow. The Kremlin states that Vladimir Alekseyev was shot several times by an unidentified assailant, at his apartment near a pizza restaurant in northwest Moscow. LTG Alekseyev is serving as the deputy chief of Military Intelligence for the Kremlin. France: This morning an attack involving explosives was carried out in Grenoble, after two assailants threw a hand grenade into a beauty salon near the downtown area. The suspects recorded a video of the attack, and provided a video confession as well, which linked the attack to Fenec38, an Algerian gang/criminal group. Analyst Comment: Details on this exact criminal group are hard to come by, at least in English-speaking publications, so it's possible that this is a smaller group trying to improve their standing in the web of criminal groups that now completely dominate the city of Grenoble. This attack also bears striking resemblance to another attack, carried out in the same manner, on a similar target, in the same city, using the same weapon. Back in February of last year, a hand grenade was tossed into a bar/lounge in Grenoble, near the old Olympic village. Concerning today's target (the beauty salon), it's not entirely clear as to why this target was chosen. However, as per the Google Maps listing for the site, some sort of home health company is also registered at this address. While no direct causal link can be established between the two incidents beyond the similarities already observed, it must be noted that these individuals are ruthless killers. In both cases, soft targets were chosen to inflict as much violence on innocent people as possible, with the attacker today throwing the hand grenade quite literally at the feet of a child in the salon. It is only by sheer miracle that the six people inside the salon only suffered minor wounds, and were not immediately killed outright. Instead, the shrapnel from the grenade missed every person in the salon, and none of the victims even required hospitalization, at least according to local media reports. Nevertheless, the attackers attempted to carry out the mass murder of innocent people, continuing what has become a trend throughout France, as ordinary street gangs and organized crime groups alike continue to wage war on the nation. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In Illinois, more details have come to light regarding a vehicle ramming attack and stabbing incident that took place in Gurnee on Monday. At the time, local media initially reported that the incident was an accident involving two people struck by a car in the parking lot of Gurnee Mills Mall. However, after the details of the arrest that was made became public, the suspect's name was posted and the full story became clear. This incident was not an accident, but rather a deliberate terror attack, as confirmed by social media posts made by the attacker after the ramming attack. The suspect, who has been identified as Katelyn Harmon, initially rammed two people with her vehicle in the parking lot of Hobby Lobby at Mills Mall. After conducting this attack, she fled the scene in her vehicle, parking behind a strip mall a few hundred yards to the southwest of the initial attack site. At this location, the suspect recorded a video for social media, claiming credit for the attack. Shortly after the video was taken, a man parked his vehicle next to the suspect, in the adjacent parking space. The suspect then exited her vehicle, and the second phase of the attack began, with the suspect using the butcher knife that she showcased in the social media video to slash one of the man's tires, and stab one of his windows. A physical altercation developed between Harmon and the man, which resulted in the man being stabbed by the suspect as he attempted to gain control of the knife. The unidentified man was able to restrain and disarm the suspect, before gaining the attention of a police officer who patrolling the scene of the earlier ramming incident. As the officer attempted to intervene, Harmon grabbed the knife and approached the officer, who used a taser to bring the third phase of the attack to a halt. Concerning motive, the attacker appears to be either transgender or of questionable status in the video confession posted on social media, and several references were also made to contradictory religious ideology, in addition to homelessness. In any case, this attack meets the criteria for a Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA), as multiple weapons were used during the phases of the attack (the vehicle and the knife). Harmon is currently in jail awaiting trial. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

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

[Music] [Applause] ever since the concept of total global warfare came about in the early parts of the 20th century militaries around the world have made attempts to camouflage their troops and equipment the entire concept of camouflage really did not even exist in widespread military usage before world war one but by the end of the first world war not only were nations trying to figure out how to hide individual soldiers and equipment but also entire civilian cities one little-known example is that the entire city of paris was camouflaged against nighttime bombing raids by instituting a strict blackout policy for all citizens in the city while at the same time erecting gargantuan massive scale electric lighting structures meant to fool german zeppelin pilots into dropping their bombs into unused farm fields just outside the city granted this project wasn't completed before the end of the war so it really didn't come into full usage but as nations in europe muddled through the inner war years of the 1920s and 30s military tacticians were hard at work in the field of camouflage jumping forward just a bit the u.s and other commonwealth nations that saw service in the middle east and southeast asia learned quite a few lessons the hard way as well the u.s was entering a new phase of warfare urban close quarters fighting where the camouflage tactics of old were all but useless an adversary with little to no aerial combat power an environment that is heavily urbanized and with a populace that knows the terrain and isn't particularly friendly towards the us invasion this is the story from hue city to baghdad to arnhem to seoul and every conflict in between the us military has learned almost all of its lessons the hard way and has most certainly gained more collective combat experience over the past century than any other military before it the current vast and widespread us doctrine of military operations in urban terrain is most certainly a major part of all military operations today however when it comes to camouflage very few militaries around the world have actually figured out how to camouflage men and equipment in the urban environment this isn't for lack of trying billions of dollars over the years have been spent attempting to research and develop some kind of urban camouflage doctrine but all attempts have either outright failed or not exactly been feasible or effective and when one dives into the study of camouflage doctrine one rapidly realizes that this subject is quite multi-layered requiring a lot of background research to understand the basic tenets of camouflage as a reminder we have briefly touched on this topic in a previous video so make sure to check that out if you're new to studying the field of camouflage so breaking down just one element of camouflage some camouflage patterns and colors have had pretty good success like this block style camouflage that was used in a few european urban areas during the cold war but all in all every camouflage pattern has its downsides as much as the us military wants to make a single camouflage pattern for every environment this is simply not feasible or even possible which is why many experts in the field or rather real experts who also don't happen to be dod contractors selling uniforms have tried to make the case for a family of camouflage patterns instead of one pattern to rule them all that is intended to blend in everywhere and when it comes to urban environments in most cases the achilles heel of urban camouflage development is the very first step defining the operational environment what does it mean for a camouflage scheme or doctrine to be urban generally speaking this could be very wide ranging depending on so many factors for instance a highly urbanized city center in iraq looks very different from what we might call an urban center in the united states various micro terrain is also a major barrier to the effectiveness of urban camouflage for instance a soldier can be standing in front of a bush or some shrubbery then take two steps and be in front of a brick wall and then take two more steps and be in front of a large reflective glass window or a brightly colored car this presents significant as yet unsolved problems in the field of urban camouflage the operational environment also has size considerations as well such as what are the boundaries of what we might call the urban environment anyway does that definition cover an entire city from the downtown area to the outskirts or even the suburbs what defines the transitional areas or the areas where the city starts becoming the countryside these questions have yet to be answered by most military experts the u.s marine corps military operations and urban terrain manual for instance defines an urban environment as quote any environment where man-made construction is the dominant feature which one can see is a pretty wide-ranging blanket definition that is of zero help when it comes to camouflage methods so there are a lot of problems right to start with considering that we cannot even adequately define what the urban environment is and this directly translates into camouflage difficulties as i mentioned the various differences in micro terrain within western or european cities is a major challenge for camouflage doctrine even small cities are quite large in terms of developing tactics and techniques and have a very wide variety of highly diverse color schemes for instance you can give a soldier this uniform which would work quite well within the industrial sector of a city where the most dominant colors are gray dark gray light gray and more gray this particular pattern also addresses the camouflage principles of sheen and texture as well which is great but if you go into the residential suburbs where there is a lot more scenic greenery but still a blend of black tarmac red brick gray concrete and other vibrant colors this person would most definitely stick out another major consideration that directly applies to our current situation is that all urban camouflage attempts every tactic and technique that has been developed has been focusing on urban warfare think about it almost all traditional camouflage including the very first camouflage efforts conducted by human beings were taken from nature such as artists observing how animals evade detection by predators even today the civilian market has hundreds of camouflage patterns that are intended for hunters or wildlife photographers so when it comes to traditional camouflage for natural environments there are many different avenues of development with many different communities developing camouflage for their respective purposes but in the urban environment things are different there isn't really any community surrounding urban camouflage it's not like most photographers in the city need to set up a hunting blind to hide from their subjects the core tenets of urban camouflage may be the same as traditional natural camouflage but the individual basics used to achieve these goals are vastly different in the urban environment most of our doctrine comes from combat a situation where one can easily knock holes in a building or cut a loophole in a rooftop for an observation point or sniper nest or something but what about an urban cold war or a situation much like our own where we are not so much concerned with urban street combat as we are about easy consistent camouflage efforts that can be used in a society that hasn't devolved into like a total war sure it would be nice to be prepared for a military invasion of your local area but at the same time we prioritize things like logistics observation intelligence gathering preparedness training and underground networks over stuff like open conflict setting up a machine gun nest in your driveway might be great for defense but it's not practical when there's a riot going on in your neighborhood and all you need to do is keep an eye on things from a concealed position so the challenge is not necessarily to create a camouflage pattern that works in a specific area that's quite easy to do the real challenge is to create a camouflage pattern that works in a wide variety of cities districts and even suburbs the catch is why most urban camouflage doctrine is lackluster most doctrine really just encourages soldiers to do their best when it comes to camouflage in the urban environment or rely on things like cover is the primary form of concealment by and large most militaries have more or less completely given up on the pursuit of urban camouflage some militaries but not all enter taiwan taiwan as an island nation is quite small and based on the complex and tumultuous history between taiwan and their not so friendly neighbor china taiwan has been forced to think outside the box as one might imagine taiwan's military is miniscule compared to the billion person fighting force that china can bring to muster so when it comes to defending taiwan against the always pressing threat of invasion the taiwanese military has always had to rely on brain power to even the odds against a far more numerically superior invasion force and one of the ways that they have done so is by becoming pioneers in the field of urban camouflage rather than adhere to the normal traditions of camouflage some taiwanese armored divisions have been observed to disguise their equipment in unique ways in this case this vehicle is disguised as a crane or some other construction equipment this specific tactic is drawing on the doctrine of mimicry which itself is directly taken from nature bugs and other animals that don't even try to camouflage their existence but fully show themselves to an adversary but pretending to be something they are not in this case this cm34 infantry fighting vehicle is disguised as a harmless construction crane which is an extremely common sight among the urban landscape of taipei and most certainly not directly threatening obviously it's not perfect but total concealment is not the goal the goal of this type of camouflage is to cause gunner hesitation to make a chinese tank commander second guess his target and react just a second too late a second that the taiwanese commander has to get a shot off or evade if he so chooses same idea with this main battle tank with the exception of the barrel one cannot even see the tank even when you are told that there is a tank hiding in this scrap heap and let's not forget the traditional camouflage tactics too cities particularly in wealthy and well-developed nations actually have quite a lot of greenery in the downtown area so as the taiwanese defense forces have discovered there are small pockets all around a city in with which to take advantage of natural foliage camouflage such as this line of apcs parked under a bridge that are ready to roll out to a city park nearby maneuvering into positions with this type of foliage-based camouflage would be risky but once these vehicles take up positions in a folius dense part of the city these camouflage efforts become vastly more effective so as we have shown the field of urban camouflage is massive but not something that is heavily developed when it comes to warfare and when it comes to that weird situation that we find ourselves in these days in many cities which is not quite a total war but it sure feels like it sometimes the concept of camouflage isn't really talked about at all because not very many people have figured it out sure the idea of the gray man is very popular these days but it's become more of a fashion statement than a real camouflage attempt and even when one's city isn't burning simply surviving and going about daily life without being spied on to an insane degree is not something that's really possible in most major cities also taking into account that the field of urban camouflage will require pretty shocking departures from traditional normal activities and require the changing of one's lifestyle urban camouflage tactics and tools are not something that everyone will consider to be viable options but with all of that being said we wanted to kick off our own ideas when it comes to the massive field of urban camouflage with five tools that can be used to increase one's concealment capabilities in urban environments we will admit up front these tools are not for everyone and might seem a bit extreme or labor intensive but we think that if you have a certain mission to complete these tools and tactics might be of some use so first up is a tool that helps us with one form of camouflage mimicry just like insects and animals can pretend to be something else entirely we ourselves can take advantage of an unfortunate reality of urban areas homelessness it truly is unfortunate but homelessness is common in every single urban settlement in the world so much so that most people going about their day turn a blind eye to homeless people as a result possessing a small ragged looking cardboard sign such as this one would be a great way to hide in plain sight in most urban areas again this is not something that everyone would be okay with doing things would have to be pretty extreme for one to pretend to be homeless in order to conceal oneself in an urban environment or one would have to have a very specific mission but it's not as crazy as it sounds police departments all over the country dress officers up like homeless people and really get into character in order to catch people speeding so having a pre-made cardboard sign like this one doesn't take up too much space in a bag or a pack and offers a lot of capabilities as one can probably guess it takes a lot more than a cardboard sign to really blend in as best as possible in other words it would look pretty suspicious for a normal looking person to be holding a sign on the street so being able to dishevel one's appearance very quickly is also a very important thing to do as well up next is a classic in the military world with this neat trick being used by soldiers for decades and this is the common bug mesh or window screen trick here's how this works you take some bug mesh or any ordinary window screening material and you either hang it up in the back of a room or drape it over yourself when you are concealed inside a room this way any observers looking through the window will see the mesh and not you mesh either the window screen stuff or ordinary bug mesh has this unique ability to look like a solid fabric from a distance also color matters quite significantly too there's a reason that almost all bug mesh and mosquito netting in the world is black in color if the bug mesh were to be white it would be very difficult to see through whereas bug mesh that is black is pretty easy to see through even if the little holes in the mesh are all the same size right very interesting phenomenon considering the nature of light reflectivity so when it comes to setting up an urban observation post the classic tactic actually one of the only tactics that is actually written about in doctrine is to hang this mesh up or the screening material hang it up to make it look like a wall behind an open window concealing your observation post quite nicely there are several companies out there that put together commercial mesh screening kits for the military but most of these companies will not sell bug mesh to civilians in classic tyrannical company form but that's okay because it's easy to make your own simply order whatever bug netting you like from most fabric or diy websites and that's really all you need if you wish you can sew in a hem to increase durability or add in some loops on the corners to more easily tie it down or hang it up but yeah that's pretty much it having some stick on command hooks or other hanging implements like paracord would be handy but these really can be improvised as you need them and since a sheet of bug mesh is really lightweight and small it's easy and inconspicuous enough to carry around pretty much wherever you might need it we don't mean to knock religion or anything but one of the most annoying things that a person can experience is a person standing on a street corner handing out religious texts or even worse coming onto someone's property to talk about their particular religion however people who tend to do this are also largely ignored by society especially in public if anyone ever wanted a bit of peace and quiet and solitude all you've got to do is grab a clipboard and stand on the street corner people will avoid you like the plague well for the most part see if you do this in order to surveil a target or something and you pick a random cause to stand on a street corner about make sure it isn't a cause that people might actually be willing to talk to you about the first time i did this personally i made the mistake of choosing an issue that was of particular interest to the area i was in i had simply printed out a change.com petition for like save the whales or something honestly i don't even remember looking at it before printing it out which was a mistake because i was conducting this operation in the pacific northwest hordes of unwashed hippies surrounded me all day long and would not leave me alone here i was trying to conduct a surveillance training mission and people would constantly come up to talk to me about the whales i got over 300 signatures in like two hours so yeah be advised that in some parts of the world this might be a magnet for attention but in some situations this could be a quite handy way to loiter in an area without arousing suspicion one of the more interesting bits of kit that we have come across over the years is the concept of the undercover policeman's cap the idea behind this is that this hat is a way to quickly and passively identify undercover officers or off-duty police officers in the event that something goes down now obviously we don't want to impersonate a police officer and go directly to jail without passing go or collecting 200 so we can use patches that say security in most cases it's perfectly fine to wear security personnel gear but obviously check with your local laws you can buy these kinds of hats online but we will not be advertising the company that makes this particular hat because they refuse to sell the ones that say police to civilians even though it's perfectly legal to own patches that say police on them granted it's not a swell idea and we would never do that but we've had it up to here with tyrannical companies making our decisions for us when it comes to their products so we don't want to support them fortunately it's really easy to either make your own soft hat or just use a normal baseball cap that you squash down in a back pocket or something when it comes to potential uses for a hat like this the intended usage is pretty much the same as everywhere else in the world let's face it when shootings happen in the united states and there is a good guy there with a gun to stop the bad guy the sad truth is it is becoming all too common for law enforcement to show up to the scene and immediately shoot first asking questions later so this hat could be used in the event that you have to use your defensive tool the hat with its reflective security patches comes out and goes on your head then when the police show up to the shooting seeing this hat could cause hesitation on the part of the police officer and potentially saving your own life from a case of mistaken identity think about it an officer shows up and sees a guy with a gun he is extremely likely to just start blasting away but an officer that shows up and sees a guy wearing a hat that says security well he might still blast away but it's much less likely at least in theory in any case i can't think of a situation in which this tool or tactic would be harmful but again don't listen to me or even the comments section on this video make sure to check out your own local laws but i personally carry one of these kinds of hats every time i carry a defensive tool and thankfully i've not had to use it yet and again this kind of thing might seem a bit mall ninja-ish with a one in a million chance in actually it getting used and even then it's not a guarantee that you won't get shot but if you have the unique considerations that we have something like this might be right up your alley this gadget might not be a traditional form of camouflage but this is a great example of a situation in which we can take advantage of the tenets of camouflage in order to cause hesitation at the scene of a significant event which can potentially save your life and if other law enforcement agencies around the world use this exact tactic to avoid shooting their own officers it might be a great thing to add to your toolkit even if it might seem a bit odd or not be common at all in the united states just yet and finally the one item that by now most people already know about the high visibility construction vest now we here in the shop are not particularly fans of this kind of thing but i'll go over the idea anyway just in case you're interested the concept of having a high visibility vest on hand is in order to take advantage of a long proven psychological trick in order to blend in taking pages out of the milgram experiment research has strongly indicated again and again that a person wearing clothing that implies authority often has authority granted to them solely based on this clothing so in other words by wearing a high visibility vest people who see you will simply assume that you're supposed to be there which can be great for surveillance missions or for egressing from an area and there have been lots of people all over the internet using this kind of camouflage to do things like urban exploring and gaining access to areas that they really shouldn't have access to in normal situations so on the surface this seems perfect you just pop into a storage closet put on this reflective vest and boom you have the keys to the city well it's not quite like that remember you are not agent 47 and life is not a hitman game it doesn't work like that in real life at all for this kind of camouflage to work there are several criteria that must be met for one the rest of your clothing must match how many times do you see a construction worker wearing a suit and tie or even normal street clothes so for this camouflage to work you will have to carry dirty looking work clothes anyway and in our opinion if you are going to carry a full change of clothes anyway just carry a different set of clothes than what you're currently wearing going into a bathroom and changing from one set of street clothes into a completely different set of street clothes is way more effective than changing from one set of street clothes into construction clothes at least that's been our own experience also again you will need to carry extra gear with you you will need to have props in order to sell the image how many times do you see a person wearing a reflective vest without wearing a scuffed up hard hat so again this is possible but once more you're adding more and more stuff that you will need to sell the disguise if you've gotta carry around a suitcase full of disguise materials for the one in a million chance you might have to use it you might as well take along just a simple change of clothes which will be much more useful in everyday life and be just as effective in the end also to sell the construction worker slash maintenance personnel camouflage you're going to need some kind of tool or something and actually be engaged in work one does not often see a single solitary construction worker just standing around doing nothing unless you work for the department of transportation i guess but again the point is that in order for this camouflage to even be partially effective you're talking about bringing along a change of clothes a hard hat some kind of tool and maybe even work boots as well by the time this disguise or camouflage attempt begins to even be kind of effective you could have simply changed clothes or egressed from the area or if your mission is surveillance you could have just used any number of surveillance techniques that are more effective and don't have you dressing up like the village people and if you get caught or questioned by governmental agents while wearing this get up you will certainly have some explaining to do so hopefully this was helpful in breaking the ice into the ocean of urban camouflage even though this subject is kind of counter-intuitive to this particular series in that there's no one gadget that you can buy to make yourself invisible in the urban environment little tips and tricks can certainly be of help in the event that you have to wade through the waters of overwhelming surveillance in the modern world [Applause] you

//The Wire//2300Z October 16, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: MULTIPLE IED ATTACKS STRIKE ECUADOR AS CONFLICT COMBATING ILLEGAL MINING INTENSIFIES. MIDDLE EAST PEACE DEAL ON UNCERTAIN GROUND AS TENSIONS CONTINUE RISING ON ALL SIDES. VENEZUELAN MILITARY SHIP REPORTEDLY BECOMES GROUNDED DURING TRAINING MISSION.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Ecuador: The situation continues to deteriorate following a crackdown initiative targeting illegal mining operations. Many explosions have been reported over the past few days as mining groups affiliated with the Los Lobos cartel have taken to using their mining explosives in order to create IEDs targeting people and critical infrastructure. Two bridges were blown up yesterday in Guayaquil, and a Vehicle-Borne IED (VBIED) was detonated in the same city targeting the city mall. After this blast, another large IED was discovered in a vehicle somewhere in the city, which failed to explode. Analyst Comment: These IED attacks are the latest in a long series of woes in Ecuador. The situation sharply deteriorated back in 2023 with the assassination of Fernando Villavincencio, a Presidential candidate that was murdered just a few days before he was expected to win the election. This made a bad situation worse and Ecuador spiraled down into a defacto state of civil war, with belligerents mostly being aligned with the Los Choneros cartel and government forces. Over the past few months, prison riots, mass killings via gangs, and now IED blasts have become more common. The connection to why this matters to the US, is that back in 2018 one of the main power-players in Ecuador was the Tren de Aragua criminal syndicate. Venezuela: Yesterday a Venezuelan naval vessel ran aground off the coast while conducting a training mission. The ARV Capana (an amphibious landing ship) was observed by locals running aground on a sand bar, which resulted in her becoming stuck for a few hours. Middle East: The situation has remained both tense and chaotic as the return of captives' remains to Israel and various other developments continue to be a sticking point for lasting peace. Hamas officials have stated that there aren't any more remains that they can get to at the moment, which has caused tension. Analyst Comment: Major offensives remain tabled by both sides for now, however Hamas has conducted many mass-executions of alleged collaborators and/or spies, which has drawn the ire of President Trump who went as far as to threaten direct American intervention in Gaza (comments which he reversed-course on during a later press call). While that possibility is probably more of a knee-jerk threat than anything (after all, Hamas executing their own people for allegedly being spies doesn't really violate the peace agreement itself). Nevertheless, no one is out of the woods yet on this accord, and the situation can certainly flare back up into a big problem once again at the slightest provocation by any party. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - This morning the White House announced that President Trump spoke with President Putin by phone, and that the conversation was very long and productive. Based on the description of the call as posted to President Trump's social media account, the call was positive and resulted in the scheduling of direct talks between the United States and Russia regarding the ending of the war in Ukraine. Analyst Comment: The implementation of higher-level direct talks with Russia is a positive sign, which has come about after weeks of decreasing relations regarding the war. The implementation of these talks also casts a bit of doubt on President Trump's previous statements regarding pushing Ukraine to conduct more offensives. Lately, there's been a lot of talk on the war by everyone involved, so it's anyone's guess as to whether or not all parties are interested in settling this war, but this will be a situation to monitor closely as talks continue. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: As one might expect, Venezuela has not acknowledged the Capana incident, nor are they likely to do so. Due to the nature of the information, at the moment all we have to go on is the standard shaky-cam footage provided by eyewitness observers, along with some aerial footage which does seem to show the vessel sitting lower in the water than she normally would. Considering that embarrassing incidents like this are often played up for effect by Venezuela's adversaries, the reports that the vessel has sunk are probably not true, at least not yet. Nevertheless, this does highlight the high-stakes nature of the fight, should war be the chosen course of action. As comedic as it sometimes is to see a nation flounder their opportunity to act tough, Venezuela is indeed preparing for war at a breakneck pace. Many coastal roads have been fortified to prepare for amphibious landings, and many border crossings are now impassable due to checkpoints. Clearly Venezuelan naval forces think they have a chance, and various army units have also been featured on local TV stations demonstrating their rapid-deployment capabilities. Most of Venezuela's uniformed armed service branches have been in a constant state of exercise since the American flotilla arrived off the coast, and even though war is still not an absolute certainty, Venezuela is certainly preparing for the worse case scenario. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

foreign [Music] now that we have a broad understanding of intelligence preparation of the battle space we can dig a bit deeper into the first step defining the operational environment specifically what if your operational environment is a civilian city today we're going to cover a scope and pamisi two processes that are used by military intelligence to analyze a largely civilian populace this process can be useful to a civilian group as well but in my opinion the biggest value that this has has to be the prepared citizen knowing how the whole process works just in case you need to know this information in the future once we go through this process you will hopefully understand what I mean and things will become a little bit more clear but first what is a scope and pamisi a scope is an acronym intended to categorize the more human attributes of an operational environment usually from a counter-insurgency perspective pamisi or pomeessi however you want to say it is a way of expressing these six different domains of operational variables for a specific Mission now to me that's a whole lot of work that don't really say anything at all fantastic for a staff college but not so great for understanding what it actually means so let's break this down even more simply a scope stands for areas structures capabilities organization people and events pamisi stands for political military economic social information and infrastructure these are two acronyms that are technically completely separate processes that can be conducted on their own you can do one or the other or both but more often than not we see these two combined to form a type of Matrix that looks like this from here we can begin filling out the first blocks with some more specific information for example in this first block we need to consider areas that are related to politics this would include things like political boundaries and party affiliation areas as we can see this whole process is really just a way to help us organize our thoughts so that we don't forget something as we have learned from the Intel cycle and ipb most analytical tricks are pretty much just simple ways to organize stuff so that that you don't forget something a scope and bemisi is no different just one way to make sure you've got everything covered so let's continue and fill out the rest of the chart with some things you probably want to include in your own Matrix if you're using this yourself starting off with the first one we've already covered that the first block is political areas such as political boundaries and party affiliation areas this helps us understand what the voter demographics are like in a particular area where a particular block of Voters is concentrated stuff like this on a personal note right up front as an analyst that left the game many years ago I personally can't really see much military value in voter registration areas but it's on the chart and cemented in military Publications so you can form your own opinion on that a far less dubious use of this block is to delineate political boundaries such as the lines on a map these are technically called political boundaries since this Doctrine was developed with a middle east counterinsurgency in mind this also applies to tribal areas and territory things like that moving on to the military areas block we're looking for things like bases staging areas firing ranges testing areas for weapons and things like that really any large area that has a military use this block is also used to designate historic Ambush sites and IED locations again pointing to the counter-insurgency uses of this process from our wars in the Middle East the US military learned far too late that insurgents would frequently use the same sites again and again for IED attacks and ambushes this is usually because that particular spot kept being fruitful so as long as Americans were willing to step into the Kill Zone the insurgents would keep using that same exact site these are the things we need to think about in terms of areas key terrain things like that moving on to economic areas we're thinking large concentrations of an economy right large shopping districts large marketplaces malls not a specific business per se but an actual like commercial area of a city it's simple enough any location that has an impact on the local economy or where Commerce is conducted every city even from the smallest Village all the way up to the largest just mega cities in the world have a commercial District right the reason we need to know this is both for Noble and kind of Nefarious means if we want to wage war in an area we may want to avoid bombing civilian economic zones so that when the war is over civilians aren't left with nothing this was a huge part of World War II if we remember and exactly why at the end of the war Adolf Hitler ordered Albert Speer specifically to destroy everything that could be useful to the Soviets regardless if that would mean the mass starvation of the German people now historically we know that our spirit did not end up going through these wishes so a lot of the German economy that Hitler specifically ordered destroyed but was not actually destroyed but you get the point in a case of Total War things change but in terms of a very limited war or a small Invasion or something like that or a counter Insurgency we need to know where the economic areas are of a Nation so that when you know the insurgents are ousted or when basically the bad guys are are no longer a factor anymore civilians can return to normal self civilian life on the other hand and again the more nefarious reason is in a situation of Total War if we need to go scorched Earth and basically destroy everything vital for life in an area the targeting guys need to know where the main economic hubs are to more easily strike them so again a dual use for this particular block as we will find out as we go along through this process a lot of these blocks can have a more benign use and a more nefarious use the the Dual use nature of a lot of this information can become a point of consternation for analysts so so we'll get more into that at the end and I'll share my thoughts on that but I just want to make it clear that despite what the manuals tell you there is always a more nefarious use for pretty much all of these boxes moving on to social areas we're thinking things like Parks public spaces Gathering sites large places where large groups of people gather again a very broad category but useful for understanding the local Hangouts in a particular area this is again helpful for determining soft targets that insurgents or anybody else is likely to go for moving on to information areas we're talking really any physical location where information is exchanged again this can be a public place as well so there's a lot of overlap and in the third world this may be a little bit easier to Define but for the Western World usually what we mean for this is stuff like Radio Networks TV and news sources local newspapers or propaganda production facilities and of course social media a lot of this can be put in this box or the next one which is infrastructure areas for this one we're thinking more along the lines of Pol or petroleum oil and lubricant production facilities Rail Yards pipelines industrial large industrial districts right even large medical centers can be put here as well a lot of cities in the United States at least have like a medical quarter right where if there's a large teaching University there a good chunk of a city will actually be like a teaching hospital and that can Encompass an entire District right the reasoning behind why we care about these types of areas both the information and the infrastructure ones is just basic War Fair stuff if you're going to invade somebody take out or capture the information sector first preferably with the local power grid too remember during the Gulf War January 17 1991 four F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft were used to conduct surgical strikes in Baghdad taking out the power to the city and by default the radio and television broadcast capability it's pretty hard to issue a general Call to Arms and coordinate a city-wide defense if the utilities are out thus knowing where these places are located and the areas the whole District it kind of supports these sites is important moving on to structures first up we have political structures this is really easy basically Town Halls administrative offices it really any government building the importance of this is fairly obvious but pretty much every military operation that has ever been conducted has targeted governmental structures due to their importance speaking strictly of Civilian governance structures that have little to no military value these places are also frequent targets due to being centralized points of power and control for a region or a city up next are military structures for this one we're talking physical buildings on a military base or in a civilian City things like military police checkpoints physical pinpoint locations like headquarters buildings and things like that you could even put airfields if you want note that in this box we're being a lot more specific in the military areas box we noted entire bases or entire physical areas right whereas here we're talking pinpoint locations that can be designated by a single grid coordinate but of course there's a lot of overlap such as like an Airfield right would that be a point location or a military area you know it's kind of a big Target but there are specific buildings on an Airfield really that's up for you to decide how you want to put it on the chart up next are economic structures for this we're thinking things like stock exchanges Banks and markets also in today's world data centers where financial data is stored again we're looking for specific buildings where this activity is conducted physical server location patients or physical buildings not just a whole commercial District if you're feeling froggy this could also include websites and other stuff from the Cyber realm but again it's up to you moving on to social structures for this we're thinking things like churches bars and clubs Cinemas or movie theaters large auditoriums or large venues even stadiums if you want really any physical structure that is primarily used for social reasons again the reason for knowing about these places can be innocent or nefarious we can list these in order to avoid striking them or we can list them to eventually strike them specific locations like individual buildings are also preferable for intelligence collection it's easier to get a few minutes of Drone footage of a specific building than it is to scan an entire public park it's easier to park a surveillance van outside of a church than it is to surveil an entire District right it can be and it has been done but it's a lot easier to go for pinpoint targets versus entire areas up next are information structures for this we're thinking cellular or TV Towers internet data servers or data storage sites even things like old school print shops right like your old school Kinkos right television or radio Studios the specific places where that content is recorded or distributed from again there's a lot of overlap with the information areas category so pick and choose what best exemplifies pinpoint locations and physical structures that are primarily used for the exchange of information in this block we can also start to think about a line of site analysis for specific radio towers or repeaters like who can actually hear a radium message that is being transmitted by this specific Tower we can even select certain Towers to preserve from being struck so that we can collect intelligence from those Towers this of course is a separate process but we can plant the seed here during this step moving on to infrastructure structures again a lot of overlap with the previous infrastructure block like other categories I prefer to use this block to delineate specific structures instead of entire areas for instance a city's industrial district is pretty big stick so that would go in the area box but a specific Factory that is used for a military purpose well that can be described by a single grid coordinate so it goes on the map for this block exact grid coordinates of crude oil wells or actual like pumping stations along a pipeline or even the pipeline itself that's you know a line it's not exactly a point target but it could easily be put on a map as well same thing with electrical substations or power generation facilities roads Bridges tunnels large walls or dams basically anything that is important to infrastructure can go on the map using this block moving on to capabilities uh first off we're going to start with political capabilities this one's a little bit more abstract really we're looking for stuff like dispute resolution capabilities if a conflict were to start like a social conflict were to start in an area How likely are local politicians able to kind of wrangle the the issue and kind of you know resolve that dispute this kind of goes into the the flavor of counter Insurgency again in because we can also use this to start talking about Insurgent motivation and ideology right what do they believe in what do they think why are they motivated to be insurgents stuff like that here's where we can also start to think about specific power players in an area and the political weight they carry not necessarily a specific person we'll get to that in a minute but we're talking about local political parties like are the local politicians as a whole are they loved or they hated by the populace basically if a local political movement were to resist military action against them How likely would they be to be able to raise a military force of their own that's that's mostly what we're trying to get at here this also helps to determine which political parties or movements will be able to be influenced by the US Military and by default it also helps to determine the political movements that will not be friendly towards U.S military policy and influence moving on to military capabilities basically how capable is the military force in this area what are their strengths and weaknesses and what is their local military security posture remember this is a very basic overview not a complete rundown so feel free to keep things at the way of top level very very broad what kind of force are we dealing with here is it a local warlord in a third world country or maybe a small corrupt government in Eastern Europe or maybe even a near peer threat this is kind of the broad topic that we're looking for here we could spend a lot of time getting down into the weeds in this category but we don't need to for now moving on to economic capabilities we're trying to find out is this area host to a thriving economy or is it in the gutter how easily can citizens access their Banks and and withdraw cash what is the value of the local currency or is inflation a huge part of daily life for local citizens is a large portion of the population out of work or is forced to work abroad to send money back home knowing and listing this information is important for stuff like stability operations basically if the US military has to come in and keep everyone from killing each other a lot of the conflicts around the world are the result of a poor economy so no one about the economic situation on the ground is important a bit more nefariously the other side of that coin is that knowing about the economic capabilities of an area makes it easier to take a bad economy and utterly it if the economy is in an area that is barely hanging on by a thread a single air strike on a power station or a factory can decimate a local area and force all of the locals to leave to prevent starvation it's a bit horrific to think about but this is modern war moving on to social capabilities again a more dubious category but how strong is the local cultural identity what is the nature of the local identity is it nationalistic tribal more more religiously motivated or some kind of other ideology right are the locals strong and cohesive behind this local identity are they United together with a shared sense of purpose right we're mostly looking to generally understand a culture at this step but in doing so we're always keeping the military objectives in mind are there vulnerabilities in this social identity that can be exploited can tribe be turned against tribe can a social identity be fractured along fault lines established by historic differences in culture race or tribe will people band together in this area to resist military action against them or will they remain divided along cultural lines militarily speaking a divided population is great for military action but a strongly United populace with a strong and independent culture these are the people that have toppled Empires so that's important to understand moving on to information capabilities how easily can citizens access true information what is the literacy rate for the local populace and How likely is the population to seek out alternative media sources do citizens possess counterintelligence capabilities and if so how advanced are they in this category it's important to understand what cultural differences make it difficult to influence the information space if we again remember back to World War II Germany had a really hard time getting intelligence networks up and running in the United Kingdom meanwhile the UK had little trouble sending Spies all over german-occupied territory and in turn the Soviets were able to infiltrate the highest levels of the British government relatively easily as well the reasons behind this rather interesting history are many and widespread but one of the main reasons is that local populations were simply able to pick out Spas more easily the more well-known examples of this are America's forays into southeast Asia from Japan to Korea to Vietnam it is pretty hard for a six foot white guy to blend in and pretend to be a rice farmer in Asia it just didn't work out that well this is why during the Vietnam war in particular the success rate for a prisoner of war who escaped and actually getting back to American lines that was uh that was very hard to do right so this is the kind of thing that we need to consider for this block as well how well how easily can a local population spot a lie and how easily can they access true information moving on to infrastructure structure capabilities how capable are locals when it comes to maintaining their own infrastructure can they build their own roads or do they need someone to come in and do it for them also if Bridges and roads were knocked out militarily how capable and how quickly can they be repaired by locals on a good day does every local citizen have access to electricity or is it only parts of a community or people along major roads if the power were to be knocked out would people even recognize this as a hostile act or would they just think it's a regular Tuesday moving on to organization first up we have political organization in this phase we're going for broad brush Strokes right we'll get to individual people next for this step we need to know about the networks themselves what are the primary political parties or political movements within an area and what do their networks look like what are the large power bases what are the powerful institutions supporting large groups of people right remember we're looking to keep things relevant to a military operation it really isn't helpful to list basic political facts like how each chamber of a parliament is laid out that doesn't really help us that much what we're really looking for is points of future exploitation vulnerabilities or even preconceived notions that can be taken advantage of for instance if one political party is well known to be corrupt and unlikable maybe finding an alternative party to clandestinely support would create enough conflict between a government to divide military forces in other words if a dictator is having to deploy significant numbers of troops to intimidate voters on Election Day then those troops are not doing something else right opportunity cost which leaves vulnerabilities elsewhere all of this can stem from Simply knowing the culture of local politics so again planting the seed now during this step is worth thinking about up next is military organization we're looking for again broad brushes the the type and composition of military units what is their ration strength how many troops are they supposed to have and what is their current strength how many troops do they actually have we can really get into the weeds here so we got to be careful to keep things light for now most of your time spent during ipb or ipoe or whatever will be focused on this anyway but remember for now we're thinking about the civilian populace of a particular area moving on to economic organization what are the local business alliances are there any trade unions or any other ways that businesses are banding together like in a Coalition in an area same with Finance are there any Financial clubs or institutions that have a hierarchical organization and if so what is that organization how does it set up what is the arrangement of wealthy landowners in an area are they wealthy due to Something in the community which is a commonality such as agriculture or mineral wealth and is this something that can be exploited to cause divisions among civilian leadership these are the things we're thinking about for this category moving on to social organization it's a similar category but more along the lines of social influencers instead of Finance we're not really looking at this phase for specific social media influencers or local celebrities but really the networks that they operate in things like prominent local families tribes and clans even youth groups which might be important to know about for Warfare reasons such as the Boy Scouts as horrific as it sounds the unfortunate truth is that youth groups have historically played a role in situations of Total War religious groups and leadership are also considered in this box how are religious groups organized and what is their sense of Duty to each other several religious groups Place great value on preparedness autonomy and living off the land can these groups be exploited in some way or would they be a threat to military forces in the area by and large do any of these people have any substantial organization which can be exploited militarily or which may be a threat to military operations down the line again I personally have many thoughts on this particular process but we'll get to those later up next is information Organization for this one we're talking again social media networks but mostly things like group texts and Communications Networks how are Radio Networks and area set up are there large amateur groups that we can exploit and take advantage of and and get to work for us right are there different kinds of influencer created networks so we can also lean on right social media influencers that can create their own communities and do what we want we can also consider traditional media TV news radio things like that that can do our bidding as well moving on to infrastructure organization we have things like government committees City councils County Commissioners even large construction companies and conglomerates that are very heavily embedded in government things like real estate development usually throughout the United States at least a large portion of City Council Members County Commissioners are very heavily invested in the real estate community so that's a huge thing to consider as well how how the organization of these is all set up next we move on to people the movers and shakers of each domain of warfare so very quickly we can start with political people against specific politicians their families and their staff their staff is very important as well in more tribal communities Elders or other respected individuals in a community or even things like wealthy influencers right or military people we're thinking military leadership uh generals a general staff officers and ncos and in more third world situations even religious clerics that may take on a more military role right for economic people we're thinking bankers and financiers uh wealthy landowners merchants and shopkeepers or even small business owners right for social people we're thinking religious leadership social media influencers celebrities this is sort of related to the next one which is information people I know a lot of people get their news from celebrities so there's a lot of overlap there right but for this one we're thinking specific people again not just a news network but actually the face that's in front of the camera prominent news anchors independent journalists are a big one here uh also religious clerics uh celebrities podcasters really anybody with a large social media following that is a an individual visual person and finally infrastructure people basically the people that keep infrastructure from crumbling Builders construction workers Engineers uh maintenance Personnel uh even emergency service Personnel can fit here as well for the people category the the overall theme is pretty simple from a military perspective all of these people are potential Targets later on down the line either straight up kinetic targets or targets for collection deception propaganda or other means of exploitation the manuals leave this part out but the implication is there military forces are not learning about a civilian populace they're not learning about key leaders in an area to better understand their culture to hold hands and sing Kumbaya no militaries conduct Warfare and if we do away with the political correctness military leaders need to keep tabs on individual local civilians to know who's going to help them and who's going to get in their way and who's going to be a potential Target later on down the line again not pleasant at all to talk about but it's the truth wrapping things up with events we've got political events which are things like elections obviously Council meetings town halls or even things like political holidays or Seasons we also have military events things like military exercises military holiday parades you know Grand displays of of power projection right uh even things like mobilizations or unit training schedules or deployment rotations or even the schedules of operations we also need to consider economic events uh with this one we're thinking things like droughts and floods or even Harvest and planting Seasons we can also think more broadly like economic recessions and depressions for a for a whole region really but we can even think as small as operating hours for merchants or banking holidays remember a lot of events have occurred right before banking holidays or right before major holidays remember the colonial pipeline was taken offline right before Mother's Day weekend right a big travel holiday for the United States where a gasoline shortage was created so this is the kind of thing that we need to think about and that's why it's important important also social events like holidays weddings religious Seasons or events these are great times for military targeting of particular targets right because we know where a person is going to be also information events like propaganda campaigns deception operations even things like bad press events or or intelligence leaks these are things that are are very important to keep uh to keep the tabs on and finally infrastructure events things like Road or Bridge construction or destruction scheduled or unscheduled maintenance or or even things like infrastructure attacks by keeping tabs on all of these kinds of events it's pretty handy to know if a detectable pattern emerges speaking from a counter-insurgency perspective a lot of times completely benign civilian practices can be misinterpreted as the lead up to an attack fighting seasons are usually focused around Harvest times or local holidays and other local holidays like the anniversary of an invasion can be a common time frame for an attack keeping tabs on local events is also helpful for offensive roles as well if you know everybody in town is going to be at a certain place at a certain time on a certain day that's militarily useful even the Taliban in Afghanistan use this to their advantage during that war they knew that the a a the Afghan National Army celebrated Ramadan which meant that the a a dudes would be fasting throughout the day as part of their Islamic fate that's part of their their observations of the holiday therefore the Ana and most government workers within Afghanistan would be fasting and in a physically weakened State standing at a checkpoint in the desert in the boiling Sun without eating all day that's that's pretty difficult work right it's going to be very tiring but the Taliban since they were technically on Jihad they did not have to abide by the fasting rule so attacks on a a outposts were very common during Ramadan thus keeping tabs on even something as simple as a local holiday dietary restriction that's militarily important so that's the broad view of the whole process but there are a few Variations by service branch that are worthy of note as usual military service branches interpret Doctrine differently as each service branch has a different mission one of the more helpful differences that I personally have observed comes from the Devil Dogs themselves the US Marine Corps places a scope before pamisi this is because they believe that a scope should be the absolute bare minimum in the event that you don't have enough time to run through the whole chart it's easy to run through a scope in your head and drop down some thoughts on a notepad five minutes before a briefing the Army also does this but in my own experiences the Marine analysts I've worked with have separated a scope out as its own thing more often than the Army does but your experiences may vary it's really just personal preference another difference to Marine's stress is within the capabilities category they use the acronym sweat MSO to describe the capabilities of a civilian populace this stands for sewer water electricity academics trash medical security and other this is pretty handy if you don't have time to work through each block when you land on the capabilities block of a scope you could just list each item in This Acronym and be good to go in the short term this is actually kind of easy if all you have is literally a three by five notebook in your hand you can literally just write sweat MSO on down the side of the paper and start writing out some things that you need to think about same thing with a scope you can do the same thing and for just a small bit of paper in your hand you can actually have a fairly good intelligence picture of a local area or at least you can get the ball rolling right Switching gears to talk about the differences the US Army brings to the table they sometimes do the opposite and go over panici first not a scope it should be noted that there are very wide variations in this I have seen some units only use a scope and I've seen other units only use pamisi and other units have used both using the chart that I've shown here so my own observations have been a kind of a mixed bag also something that the Army does a specific to just the Army is ADD PT to pamisi to become pamisi PT as if this acronym wasn't nonsensical enough the P stands for physical environment and the T stands for time obviously we're meant to use these boxes as a way of kind of thinking about how does each one of the prior boxes change based on the physical environment and how does it change over time right so these are two more variables of warfare for you to consider and add to your chart if you are so inclined sometimes it's helpful sometimes it's not really but it's up to you if you want to do that but as always there are downsides to every process for those who don't understand how big of a deal this process is a scope and phamisi in particular are the lifeblood of the Army staff officer pamisi is to military staff officers as meetings about Synergy and vision are to corporate Executives in other words to a staff officer pamisi might as well be the word of God same thing with mdmp and other processes I say this is partially ingest because a lot of people take this process way too seriously and they elevate this process to some mythical level like it's magic or something so some of the disadvantages I'm about to suggest some people might not agree with I don't mean to put so much weight on premisi as a process and I personally don't intend to take it that seriously but since everybody else does take it way more seriously than I personally think it should be I have personally witnessed a lot of people go obsessively overboard with this process so I kind of have to point out some of these downsides and kind of treat it like everybody else is treating it which is you know way more seriously than we probably should but here are some of the ways that this process sucks for one there's too much overlap uh it's too complicated and it tries to do too much A lot of times it feels like an acronym for an acronym's sake are we conducting an area study ipb or ipoe or whatever buzzword is next all of this stuff tends to blend together and it gets really confusing and this process is not helpful for that for instance remember the debate about area versus structures what do I put in each box if I'm using each box as a metric for what to put on the map right because remember this is the first step of ipb this whole chart is being used to find things to put on a map so if that's the case what counts as an area versus a physical structure like an airport same thing with information structures or people like you you know there's so much overlap between most of these boxes that you really have to wonder if it's worth it in the long run sort of along the same lines there's just too much variation normally I would applaud the Department of Defense for creating a process that allows for variation however if the goal was to create an acronym that everybody can follow that mission failed everybody does a scope and pamisi so differently that it's not really accurate to even Nestle these processes under the same acronym it's like going to Italy and ordering pasta you know well there's like what hundreds of kinds of noodles to choose from you know it's the same kind of idea here with pamisi granted defense leadership is trying to Grapple a really tough subject so I kind of feel for him there the dod is trying to take a subject which is really just basic critical thinking and they're trying to turn it into something that everybody can do even somebody that isn't great at critical thinking which is a respectable effort albeit a forlorn objective either way if you come at a scope or pamisi with the idea that this is a standard like the manuals tell you it is you will be sorely mistaken as this process in the real world is often not recognizable from one unit to the next another con is that it's slow it is true that proper analysis takes time and work expands to fill the time allotted right if you have an hour to work on this process it will be a lot more Bare Bones compared to the dissertation you might end up with if you were given two weeks to run through this process right some might say this is not really disadvantage this is just how the process works you know not every process that is in the Intel world has to be capable of being conducted from a foxhole some of this is okay to do at a headquarters right some of this a lot of this work has to be done from a higher level than say the Tactical level say like at the operational level you know so that's kind of okay if things are a little bit slower and it takes you a couple of weeks to get to a Target right but no matter how you slice it this process is just really slow and it's tedious and it's something that not really a lot of people want to do especially considering that you a lot of times don't really end up getting the gain that you hoped you might another problem is tunnel vision sometimes you might see this referred to as the silo effect right if you only focus on one attribute on the chart you tend to ignore the relationships and the overlap between each block this is most notable if you're working with a team and divide the workload up amongst yourselves now sometimes this can be a benefit sometimes one person is going to think of things that another person didn't so for for blocks that you have a lot of overlap with like for infrastructure areas versus infrastructure structures if you have two people working on a very similar block but they're technically working separately you might have people come up with things that the other guy didn't think of right so that's kind of an advantage however more often than not this ends up being a disadvantage because if you task one guy with the political stuff and another with military and another with economic and you work down the acronym right tasking out each letter each category to a different person you are not going to have a full understanding of how this stuff is linked together you're going to get a middle school level group project where everybody did their own thing but when you add it together it's nonsense and not useful imagine if a major Blockbuster movie had a different director for every single act of the movie right it would be a disjointed mess and that's a lot of times what you end up with if you end up dividing a workload so you will have put your entire team offline working on this BS process for very little gain and for a disjointed product that isn't helpful also sort of related to this idea is that if it doesn't have a a block on the chart you tend to forget about it this is a downside of pretty much every colorful chart that the dod uses if it's not on the chart it ends up being ignored or forgotten which is kind of a bad thing because this whole process is intended to help you remember things so you know that's not really a great outcome another con is that it's really tailored for counter-insurgency operations amongst a civilian populace as a result this process is assuming a lot if you are trying to get out of a counter-insurgency mindset or at least trying to not let the experiences of the past desert Wars influence your analysis too much this process will make it very hard to do that if you are conducting counter-insurgency operations in a third world Middle Eastern country this process works wonders but if you are countering divisions of tanks from a nation state or otherwise fighting a near-pier war this process will not help you with the first step of ipb that much in that case you might even say it's a waste of time when you could be working on other analytical lines of effort other processes that we haven't talked about yet I don't care what the battle staff handbook says when you're stationed along a 12 mile front with only a single tank Battalion to hold it this process gets thrown right out the hatch another con which is kind of related to the purpose of the the whole process is that it's light on Military topics as this process largely centers on a civilian populace military topics tend to be less emphasized sure there is a military column but again it tends to be pretty broad you could pretty much apply every single block on this Matrix to a single military base and spend days doing it but that's not usually how this process is used this process is mostly used to analyze a civilian city which leads to the next issue which is that it's hard to scale technically you could apply this process to a region or even an entire nation but really this is meant for an area of operations that is the size of a single city or town it's not as helpful for remote locations or super large cities but for a city like say Fallujah this process works pretty well but this makes it difficult to scale as needed if you have two cities in your area of responsibility you need to conduct this whole process separately for each town this can slow things down quite a bit especially if you're short on time another con which comes up quite a bit here at the end is relevance just because it's on the chart just because the chart tells you to put it on the map doesn't mean it's important you can put raw facts on the map all day long and you can use this nice little chart to do so but if they're not relevant to the mission what's the point of putting it on the map you can put raw facts on the map all day long and you can use this nice little chart to help you remember what to put on the map but if these facts are not relevant to the mission what is the whole point and to follow this Logic for a second if you are using critical thinking to reason and determine what's relevant to put on the map what's the point of the chart in the first place you've just used critical thinking to put something on the map that is meant to help those who don't necessarily have critical thinking skills it's the chicken versus the egg right so that's it a long drawn out overview of what a military analyst needs to think about when it comes to civil operations when a military force is going to conduct an operation in a civilian area this process is what is used by the military analyst during the first steps of ipb for that particular area this process also ties into met TC as well for Mission planning in that case this process is where non-intel Personnel can fill the role of an analyst if a military unit does not have any intelligence capability at the local level if they don't have an analyst in their unit this process allows them to at least have something to work from when operating in a civilian environment the main use of this process is to supplement other stuff you're working on it's a not horrible way to start ipb if you're working in a purely civilian environment and not explicitly conducting combat operation if you are working at a really low level like if you are the Intel guy for a company or even a platoon-sized element this process can help bring a more strategic overview to what you're doing so instead of chasing bad guys from building to building uh you can bring a bit more strategic organization to your efforts this can also help identify larger more General topics and and targets to plug into the Carver process if you're trying to narrow down where an adversary might attack or something like that it's really just another tool in the toolbox that can generally be useful to use in a civilian environment it's more of a means to an end rather than the end goal itself and no one is ever going to ask to see your a scope or permisi charts right all in all it's helpful in some situations and if you have to it's easy to cut from your workload Without Really harming anything too much I personally just think that a lot of times this process suffers from a sort of usage Paradox like I hinted at before relevance is a problem this process is supposed to help with the first step of ipb however you pretty much have to conduct a good chunk of ipb to get the information for this process the books tell you that this whole process is just listing stuff on a slide or on a map but how is that any different from the bulk of ipb so is a scope or premisi the result of ipb or the first step of it on paper the difference seems very simple very clear-cut the book tells you that a scope and pamisi are simply lists of random facts no analysis just raw data but when applying this process in the real world when you get out of the classroom and you start actually working down this chart you find that you need to do an awful lot of analysis to figure out what's worth your time and what's worth putting on the map because the books also teach you to determine relevancy so the distinction between what's worth it and what's not is not so clear again the chicken versus the egg let me just break this down if I am in a tent in the woods and I'm running region-wide operations from a Mountaintop somewhere and I'm stuck in the the cold and in the rain with a real bad case of dysentery and I haven't had adequate food or water for months I'm not going to give a hoot about what anyone in a clean classroom environment has to say the process is developed in those kinds of environments tend to not be so useful I'm going to do what I need to do and figuring out the existential nature of The Human Condition just to make an acronym work isn't going to be high on my list of priorities I do not have time for a doctoral thesis but I also don't have time to make a complex situation on the ground fit nicely and neatly into a simple acronym some things can't be simplified and pamisi is one of those processes that ends up going by the wayside when things get real what we in the Intel World call overcome by events in other words it doesn't matter anymore because we've moved on to something else and all that planning analysis you just did is obsolete because the situation has changed I know that I have a lot of harsh words to say about this process but I really am resisting the urge to say that this process seems like a classic case of an officer creating this process for a resume bullet point it probably started out with good intentions but rapidly became death by acronym I'm not going to fully commit to that idea I will admit it the thought has crossed my mind but I don't fully believe that uh because I will admit that there is enough usefulness here that somebody might find this process very helpful for remembering stuff and that's perfectly fine it's sometimes handy for thinking of stuff to put on a map during ipb but for me that's about all I use it for in the rare case I do use it because I personally don't like the process that much it just doesn't really fit my needs for the stuff that I do day to day and I think one of the main reasons that I don't like this process is that it is developed entirely with the concept of counter Insurgency in mind and I get it I really do in the early days a lot of dudes got killed because they forgot how unfriendly the civilian environment they were operating in was and they forgot something that ended up being a huge Factor when in combat this process was initially a way of mitigating that by encouraging troops to not just think of about the dude with the rifle but think about the network and the environment that's supporting him however the desert counterinsurgency Wars are largely over and that Doctrine is looking for a new home which these days makes me a little nervous and this is why as much as I don't want to we have to talk about this for a bit these days any analytical process that is used by military forces to deal with civilians calculating the capabilities of a civilian populace and looking for exploitation opportunities ah that gives me the creeps and I personally don't like it I wish that wasn't the case but it is I mean if you did not feel creeped out by some of the things I've said today to describe this process I'm not sure what to tell you because some of this stuff is is it's pretty dystopian to think about right up front I fully recognize that the events of the past couple of years have colored my thoughts on this process but it's not something I can personally ignore at this point even five or so years ago I would not have this view on things I don't think I would look at things this way uh but today I do I would absolutely love to separate the doctrine from the reality of what's going on in the world but but I think that would be a disservice honesty is never a Bad Thing even if it's what people don't want to hear who knows honesty might just be one of the reasons that somebody chooses to do the right thing this process is one of those things that was developed for small Middle Eastern Villages that nobody cares about places where it's easy for soldiers to separate themselves from the population either intentionally or simply due to purely innocent cultural differences but when you superimpose this Doctrine on a domestic U.S population the table's turn don't they seeing as how things are going here domestically in the U.S right now uh I don't really appreciate how citizens are sometimes on the receiving end of this process though I hope this is not done it makes me quite uncomfortable to know how easily and seamlessly this process could be used to analyze my local community here at home though many military processes can potentially be used on civilians this process in particular was designed from the ground up for civil Affairs you can Church it up all you want but the unfortunate truth is that this entire process is assuming an adversarial relationship between a military and a civilian populace it just is and a lot of the analysis that is required for this process is quite unethical I mean war in general is unethical but man if you find yourself spying on religious leaders with the intent to figure out how much power they have in their community and how much they would be able to Rally people to defend that Community you really have to wonder if you're on the right side of History you can make it seem less nefarious by leaving out a lot of details right the military manuals only talk about the purely innocent parts of of this Doctrine but again the implication is there there is another side to that coin and the ground truth cannot be ignored if somebody won't refuse an illegal order in peace ti

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for November 30th through December 6th, 2025. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived once again at that magical time of year when holiday festivities are underway and we get to talk about everyone's favorite topic, operational risk management and general personal security practices. Oh, I know many of you are struggling to contain your excitement for the inevitable risk management chart this week. But first, let's start with global strategic concerns. Most of the events that have taken place around the world this week are fairly standard. Uh the UK is continuing to be more or less an example of a dystopia. Holiday cheer and diversity barriers have gone up all over Europe. Multiple terrorists have been arrested this week in the United States. Somali continue to defraud the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota. And the ground component of the war in Venezuela is about to kick off. So pretty usual week at this point. Uh I think our scale has shifted for what is considered to be normal these days. But either way, that's the general overview for what's going on this week. For strategic movement this week, all eyes again are on Venezuela, mostly because the president of the United States has confirmed that the ground war is to begin soon. On my end, the indications and warnings of an impending ground operation in Venezuela are continuing to grow. Of course, there are a lot of deception tactics being used to obuscate what is actually going on. So, we're not going to know the exact date and time of when the operation is to begin, and we might not even know what the operation consists of. It may just be initial strikes. It may just be more of a special operations effort to snatch Maduro. Who knows? I know we all get tired of mentioning Venezuela because, well, we've talked about it for months now and nothing has happened. But rest assured, I think that we're going to get an answer one way or another very soon whether or not this is a giant bluff or whether or not we're actually going to go into Venezuela. And personally, I I think we're going to do it. But again, this is all speculation and we're just going to have to see how it works out. Moving to kinetic events for this week, we unfortunately have a very tragically full map. This week has been very busy when it comes to extremely violent attacks and terrorism concerns around the US. But starting off with the terrorist attacks that were halted before they were conducted. There were two this week or at least allegedly two. You can never really be certain with these sorts of things. So the first one was in Dallas. An Afghan man was arrested after he hopped on TikTok in what I suspect is a drunken rant and said he was going to blow up a building in Texas because of this that or the other. It's not really clear as to what he was arguing for or about, but either way, somebody reported him. He got rolled up for making terroristic threats online. So, pretty standard arrest there. There was also the more suspicious arrest which occurred in Delaware. This was again another possibly Afghan, possibly Pakistani national. It's it's hard to say. I haven't been able to confirm that one way or the other. Either way, a man from that general region was arrested after a traffic stop revealed that he was planning a terrorist attack at the University of Delaware Police Department. Once again, details on this incident are kind of sketchy, so there's not a whole lot that we can go on to figure out what this guy's deal was. However, the gist of the story is that man gets pulled over or approached by police in some way. He becomes quite hostile, antagonistic, uncooperative. And what does that do in every single jurisdiction in the United States? Well, you get arrested. And that's exactly what happened. They searched his car, found a bunch of weapons. Well, not a bunch of weapons, just a couple of weapons. But in anyway, they found a notebook which detailed his attack plans and had sector sketches and uh the floor plan drawn of the UD police department. So obviously the investigation continues. They search his house, find a Glock with a switch and an AR, few mags here and there. Not a lot of weapons to be honest comparatively, but a lot for a potential Afghan Pakistani national who's going to UD, right? Once again, like I wrote in the wire, there's a pretty big uh disinformation campaign on that one. So I don't know what the truth is just yet. But I just wanted to kind of briefly mention that. Either way, that's another potential attack stopped before it began. Concerning the attacks that actually went through, there were several this week. Some were just general crime, some were more uh terroristic in nature. The more terroristic attack was, of course, the Molotov attack that took place in Los Angeles at the federal building there in downtown LA, which took the form of an individual throwing molotovs at the entrances to the building. This attack did fail. the suspect was arrested at the scene and the Molotovs didn't actually go off or they weren't lit or something like that. But this does go to show that the pressure continues to mount uh and we continue to have daily terrorist attacks around the around the country when it comes to things like immigration. We have sleptwalked into accepting terrorist attacks because they're against ICE agents and because they're against federal officials and federal facilities. And these attacks will continue because there has not been a very harsh crackdown on terroristic threats like this. And it's also uh something that's very hard to prevent from happening in the first place, especially considering the tens of millions of American citizens which are now taking the side of the cartels, taking the side of the gangs, taking the side of the illegal immigrants, and are now essentially insurgents. This immigration issue has been the catalyst to prod many people into accepting a lifestyle of terrorism. We all know that ICE can't go anywhere in this country in a convoy without some random soccer mom seeing them and ramming her vehicle into the convoy. These kinds of attacks have just slowly become accepted as norm now. And now arson attacks and molotov attacks are becoming just as common. So that's a big concern moving forward. The other two attacks that I focused on this week that were more high-profile incidents were the shooting in Omaha, Nebraska and also the stabbing on board the Charlotte light rail system once again that occurred a couple of days ago. The Omaha incident involved a shootout between police and what is now very likely to be an illegal immigrant, although that's that's a little bit unconfirmed at the moment. The short version is an illegal shoots a man right in the chest while he's shopping for groceries at a local convenience store. Manh hunt ensues, suspect located by police and shootout commences. Two police officers were shot during this incident and a third was wounded by shrapnel. All of which are going to be fine from what I can tell by local media reports. But the suspect was very heavily ventilated during the incident and he uh did not survive the encounter. And finally in Charlotte, there was another stabbing on the Blue Line light rail system throughout the city. Looks like it was a pretty kinetic event. And in the context of the whole Arena Zeritzka stabbing from a while ago, this has kind of put Charlotte back in the spotlight once again because even though that initial Zeritzka murder got a lot of attention because of just how horrific it was, this latest incident has shown that things have changed in Charlotte, but they've changed for the worse uh since that initial murder. Crime has not gone down on the light rail system. As a matter of fact, it's gotten worse. And the same very horrific concerns remain as before. Charlotte has become kind of the poster child for public transit violence. There were a couple of shootings and murders on uh the bus system as well over the past couple of weeks. So, this does highlight once again that Charlotte was a pretty nice city even just a few years ago, but now it's become an utter uh dystopian uh place to be. So, so that's gotten the spotlight put back on Charlotte once again. And speaking of dystopian incidents, yesterday an event came to light in Portland, which we'll talk about in a moment, which is definitely going to have more widespread concerns for public transit safety throughout the nation. And this is yesterday's acquitt of a suspect who stabbed a man, conducted a stabbing attack a couple of months ago. He was acquitted yesterday by a jury who stated that the victim's use of a racial slur after the stabbing attack justified the stabbing attack. So, yeah, you did hear that, right? uh we'll get to it in just a moment, but once again, very kinetic week. It's very likely to be a kinetic week as we move into the holiday season. So, we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along. Now, moving down into the regions for this week, I guess we'll start with the Southeast, although this is again a national issue. For those of you who did not know, CloudFlare went down yet again yesterday. It was down for a couple hours. This is the second Cloudflare outage to strike within just a very short period of time, taking down a good chunk of the internet while the uh issue was being worked. This time around, Cloudflare states that this outage was intentional. They had to briefly uh take things down to work a security patch, right? To to patch a security issue. I'm sure that the software engineers will come up with a very good logical explanation for why these things are happening. However, from my wheelhouse, the end customer, right? I'm not a software engineer, and maybe it's just me, but I think that it's probably a little concerning that we're now starting to have regular and routine, nearly total outages of the internet at large. Even if it's just for a short period of time, these things are fairly catastrophic problems that highlight a lot of stuff that needs to get fixed. So, the average consumer doesn't really care about the meat and potatoes of how all this stuff works. They just want their internet to work. And if Cloudflare is going to start having regular issues, even if it is something that they cause themselves, that's a problem, right? So, it also means that the average citizen is going to have to start thinking more and more about off-grid communications. And being able to have a plan, even if you don't have an off-grid communications method, like radios or something like that, even just having a plan of what to do in the event that communications go out, is probably a very good idea at this point because these things are becoming vastly more common than they used to be in the past. So, something to keep in mind for sure. Now, digging more into the North Carolina stabbing incident, there aren't a whole lot of details that have come to light yet because this just happened as I'm recording this on Saturday morning. Of course, anytime a situation is still developing, it's going to take a long time for the details of exactly what happened to come out. So, we are of course operating on a lot of speculation at this point, but this stabbing looks like a pretty serious one. So, eyewitness statements don't really help us understand what went on. We don't really know what took place on that train, but somebody was stabbed very, very violently, very brutally on the blue line, the same line that got a lot of attention from the Zerutka murders. So, all in all, we're going to have to wait and see what the details of this case shake out to be. However, personally, I think we have enough information to make a decision. I think we have enough information to conduct our own risk assessment and risk analysis to determine that it would be a good idea to keep your head on a swivel if you are forced to take public transit at this point. If you have the option of avoiding public transit in pretty much any city at this point, it would probably be a very good idea. I know a lot of people can't avoid it. A lot of people have to use uh public transit because that's their only option, right? And it may even be a little bit safer than walking uh the streets in some cases depending on the time of day in the city. But either way, keep your head on a swivel. I'm serious. Things are getting pretty spicy out there and we'll get more into that at the end. Right for now, just know these things continue to happen. Now, moving up to Washington DC, the big story, the hot ticket this week has been the arrest of the alleged J6 pipe bomber who has been identified as Brian Cole Jr. of Northern Virginia. Now, in terms of what we actually know about the suspect and about this investigation, the details are very few and far between. So, there's really not a whole lot to go off of. However, just to cut right to the chase to save some time here, this is incredibly suspicious. This is probably the most suspect case to come out of DC in at least an hour or two. So, uh, there's probably very little trust and faith in any kind of federal investigative effort at this point, especially when it comes to the timing of all of this. But personally, I think that based on the information that we have so far, which is not much, I think there's probably two different outcomes. Either Brian Cole Jr. is the guy and they've known as the guy for years and they've just not wanted to prosecute him for uh the terrorist attacks for some reason. Uh something something prevented them from going after him or the guy who they say it is is not the guy and it's somebody else. Either way, this entire thing smells like Washington and it stinks, right? If Brian Cole Jr. is indeed the J6 pipe bomber, then all right, fair enough, I guess. But that doesn't explain why suddenly everyone was prosecuted except for this guy for many, many years because it looks an awful lot like they had the evidence on this guy for a while. Of course, the other potential is that he's not the guy and this will come out in court or they're trying to burn somebody because the blaze got really close to identifying who really uh was the J6 pipe bomber and they had to give us a name. So, a name materialized and we can tie this up in a neat little bow and we can all forget about it, right? I guess it worked though. I mean, it still muddied the waters enough to where nobody really knows what exactly happened on that day other than there are fingerprints of the CIA and the FBI all over literally every part of the J6 fiasco, right? But especially the pipe bomber. So, I very strongly doubt that we're ever really going to know what the full story of that day was. So either way, have to mention it because it's a pretty groundbreaking development, but once you dig into it, it like, oh man, there's not a whole lot we can go off of. So, switching gears to move out west, we can talk about a different incident that occurred this week, which has a little bit more specific concerns for safety on things like public transit and just out in society in general. This is the acquitt of a stabbing suspect who just shanked a random guy on the street back this summer, but the jury acquitted him for a very unique reason this week. So, the suspect, Gary Edwards, stabbed the victim, Gregory Howard Jr., just on the street in Portland back in July. Once again, fairly standard stabbing attack. It's become kind of a common thing. Uh, but the defense council's argument was just absolutely mind-boggling. So, the criminal defense in this case is that Edwards, the suspect, who is a homeless man who is known for stabbing people randomly on the street. He has a long criminal history of doing this many times before. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and approached the victim and he wanted to trade that knife for cigarettes. Now, neither of these guys know each other and that's the criminal defense. Okay, that is ex that's how the defense attorney [snorts] says things went down. From there, a scuffle occurred in some way, and the story gets a little blurry until the cops show up, in which case the victim shouted a racial slur at the attacker after he had been stabbed. And the jury in this case a couple of days ago said that that was justification for the stabbing. So, the defense council story is that this the victim shouted a racial slur at the attacker that caused the man with the knife who already had the knife in his hand to stab the victim. And that according to the jury was a perfectly acceptable reason for self-defense. Now, once again, the stories diverge, right? The defense council, so Edward's attorney, argues that the slur is what caused the stabbing incident, which first of all is ridiculous in and of itself because shouting a racial slur at someone is not permission to murder them. But either way, leave that for now. But the evidence in the case, like the actual documented history of what actually occurred, only proves that the victim shouted the slur after being stabbed. So right now, not a single shred of evidence actually confirms that the victim started anything. So the truth of what actually happened is this crazy homeless guy ran up to a guy with a knife, stabbed him, and the victim shouted a racial slur back at the guy. And that's the truth of what happened. That is what all of the evidence confirms. But because it's Portland, right, the jury said that that was a perfectly uh acceptable self-defense scenario. So, for all of you who don't live in the crazy insane wonderland that is Portland, what does this mean? Well, the bottom line for all of us now is that the jury in this case states that if you're a white guy who gets stabbed by a black guy in the street and then you yell a nasty word at the guy after you've been stabbed, that is retroactive justification for that stabbing attack. So, yeah. uh pretty dystopian, but something you need to be aware of because these kinds of things are happening all over the place. Even in the worst case scenario, let's just say that in this case, the white guy did shout a word at this guy before the attack, right? And that's word is what prompted the attack. In no way, shape, or form does shouting a word at somebody justify stabbing them to death on the street, right? This is insane, right? So, even if this guy did do it, which no evidence points to him actually shouting a bad word at the guy, there's no justification for this. But a jury went above and beyond to say that there is, right? So, no evidence in this case shows the white guy doing anything wrong. He just minded his own business on the street, gets approached by a homeless guy with a knife in their hand, and the situation devolves from there. So, that's probably the best uh lesson learned that we can kind of glean from this story is that, yeah, tensions are pretty high. Yeah, people are pretty crazy out there and stabbing attacks continue, but you also have a pretty good chance now of the attacker not just being led out of jail before their trial by a judge. I mean, that's a that's a common thing that happens, you know, all around the US, but there's also a pretty good chance that a jury will do something like this and justify someone trying to kill you because you said a word, right? We can see how we're we're moving towards that and now a court has backed that up. So now that's all I have for the United States. Let's shift gears and talk about the United Kingdom for a moment. And I will expand a little bit more on some of the events that have come to light in the grand old UK this week. So first up this week, we have a man who was arrested for the possession of quote unquote extreme music, which allegedly violated terrorism laws in some way. So that was kind of a more of a dystopian sort of situation that occurred this week. separately. Another man was arrested this week for posting photos of of himself going to the United States to engage in the timehonored tradition of shooting stuff in somebody's backyard. Well, he posted these photos of his trip to the gun range of him firing, you know, shotguns and rifles and such. He posted those images on social media in the UK and got a visit, got a knock at the door, which turned into an arrest, as that always does. And finally, probably the more disturbing case this week is a woman who was arrested for using a slur in a private text exchange with a friend, former friend, who ratted her out to police because she called the man who attacked her a bad word. Right. So, regarding the extreme music arrest, the suspect in this case, the hardened terrorist criminal, the man who was arrested was identified as Norbert Gears, who was a collector and reseller of vinyl records. And he was arrested after at least one record from his several thousand record collection contained music that the UK classifies as illegal. So, this guy had a few thousand LP records in his collection. He's just kind of a buyer and seller of records, both for hobby purposes, but also probably more along the lines of kind of like a side hustle sort of thing. But either way, in the process of buying and selling a bunch of records, right? Turns out he had not one but two naughty records, right? They're songs. They're vinyl records of songs that were made by a professional recording studio. And when he listed these particular records online, somebody ratted him out. Somebody he probably listed it on eBay or if there was maybe a local version of uh British eBay. Somebody ratted him out and of course having no no records, having no no speech in the UK is uh very much policed. So they ransacked his house, raided his collection and found the two offending LP vinyl albums. And for this, for owning two music records, he got 40 months in prison. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison for owning music. Honestly, at this point, I'm very curious as to what records he had because I kind of want to buy them now. So, if anybody knows what music albums he had, I'm very curious as to what in the Sam Hill music is so bad. Like even lyrics-wise, like I mean there's some pretty bad music out there, but nothing you should go to prison for 40 months over. Good grief. Either way, that's a pretty dystopian case to come to light. But in the UK these days, it's completely unsurprising. This case, the forbidden music case, came to light after another, probably more disturbing case, to be honest, in which a woman who has been identified as Elizabeth Kenny was arrested and criminally charged for calling a man who had beat her a [ __ ] in a text exchange with a friend. That now former friend reported her use of the word to police and she was arrested. She used the word to describe the man who had assaulted her so severely that she required hospitalization. And what's more interesting is that the judge in her case, JP Robert [ __ ] specifically stated that he personally uplifted her sentence. He personally is throwing the book at her for personal reasons due to her alleged homophobia, which is a severely punished crime in the UK. Like that's worse than murder in many cases to be honest. But nevertheless, the man who attacked her, she was talking to her, you know, what she thought was a friend about a man who had beat her so severely she was in the hospital. But that man who was being described in the text exchange, nothing has happened to him. He has not been charged or arrested uh in any way for nearly killing the woman. So, if we read past the headlines in this case and we dig a little bit deeper, we can see that this is probably a textbook case of people using the criminal justice system to target others for personal reasons. Remember, Kenny was texting a person who she thought was a friend and discussing the brutal attack that the as yet unnamed man had conducted right at that time. She did not know that her friend actually took the side of the attacker. Uh so when Kenny sent photos of her wounds that she had uh sustained from this guy beating her, right? Her use of the word [ __ ] in that text exchange was her former friend's jackpot, right? That was that was the clincher. and the use of that word served as an easy way to get her arrested. So, the British authorities of course dutifully did their part as speech crimes are by far the most heavily police crimes in the UK right now. So, so that's kind of the situation we're at. Both the UK and the US have this uh problem here. In the UK, you say the wrong word to the wrong person, that's justification to throw you in jail forever. Whereas in the United States, if you say the wrong word to the wrong person, that's permission for that person to kill you. Very interesting times in which we live. But either way, continuing the trend, another case of speech crime policing has come to light. Uh, which occurred some time ago, actually, but it came to light this week because criminal charges were filed, which revolved around a man being arrested and criminally charged for posting a photo of himself holding some firearms during a trip to the United States. The man in this case has been identified as John Rishilu Booth and he was arrested by Yorkshire authorities after posting some photos from his trip to America. And we all know how this goes, right? Now, these types of events, the one where the guy posted some photos of himself uh shooting guns in America, these types of events are quite useful for understanding how the British and even American authorities operate. And digging into this case is kind of fascinating. So, Booth was initially visited at his home by police who hit him with the classically British, and I mean classically British warning, right, to be careful what you post online, right? The Br, for those who don't know, the British police love to do this. You You do something that they don't like, but isn't illegal. They will show up at your door and issue you a warning. Warning, citizen. And really, what they're trying to do is both intimidate, but also fish. They're trying to fish for something. They're trying to get you to talk. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself. And here in the United States, this happens all the time, too. Yes. Even in the land of freedom, uh we have the same exact tactic being used. something that's not illegal that's being done, but we're just going to come to your door and warn you about posts that you've made online. Right? This is a very common thing that happens. And in nearly 100% of cases in the UK, at least whenever someone gets this visit, this knock at the door by the the British police at their door, they're just going to show up a few hours or a few days later and arrest you anyway. So that's just the way things work out. And in this case, he was arrested for posting a photo of himself holding a gun in an entirely different country. So, he wasn't even holding a gun in the UK. He posted vacation pictures that were taken in an completely different country. But, of course, that doesn't matter to British police. They're just following orders, right? Somebody wanted this guy arrested and the police obliged. In the UK at least, it is a very, very bad idea to post a photo of yourself on the internet holding a gun because in the UK at least, the mere sight of a firearm, right, the mere photographing of a firearm, that is enough uh in many cases to catch that criminal uh intent to cause fear of violence charge, right? That's a very broad charge. The police love to to wave it around in the UK. A lot of laws in the UK are kind of like this right now. There's a whole class of laws where essentially they're if you make someone uncomfortable, if you make someone fearful, you know, like these very subjective things that there's no way you could prove it in court, well, guess what? It doesn't matter. Going to jail forever anyway. So, this is a very common thing in the UK now. There are a whole class of laws that uh essentially make it illegal to cause anyone any kind of offense or any kind of fear. Depending on the context, you could be arrested for basically anything in the UK at this point. I mean, you hit the brakes too hard. You put a letter in the mailbox aggressively. You say, "Excuse me," in the wrong tone of voice to someone in a grocery store, and you could get thrown in the slammer for life. So, treading lightly has become kind of a skill in the UK. Uh, it's just the way things work out. But these things are, of course, worth being aware of here in the United States. Not only because, well, we have a a bit of kinship with those in the UK, but we also tend to get a lot of the things that trickle down from the UK to us here uh sometime. So yeah, all around all of these issues are are just a culmination of uh things that are not super great. However, it's also something that I would not personally dwell on or focus on so much that you just kind of let it consume you, right? That's that's not something that's very productive. We want to acknowledge the things that are happening that are concerning, but we also want to take steps to move through some of this stuff. And today, like I mentioned in the beginning, I wanted to focus a little bit more on managing risk. Right? I know, I know. everyone's favorite topic uh when we talk about risk. But a lot of people these days are asking what can I do? What can I do to stop this madness or at least try to reduce it somewhat? And to be honest, I don't know. I don't know how to fix the world. But I do know some things that might help. And the these are easy things that you can do on your own. Things like risk management, right? That's a very easy thing to do. So when we say, you know, somebody's got to do something, well, this is what you can do, right? It's not very productive to sit there and doom and gloom about the situation you may be in and the situation that western civilization may be spiraling towards right without trying to do something and this is something that you can do right you want a solution here it is or at least one of them so when it comes to managing risk during the holiday season I think this is a very important thing to consider as we move forward through these very risky times right terrorist attacks in terms of like the classic you know jihadi style terrorist attacks are spiking or at least it seems like they are statistics-wise I don't actually No, because a lot of these are not classified as terrorist attacks because they want to skew the demographics of who's actually conducting violence. But at least here in the United States, we've had several high-profile terrorist attacks either being conducted, becoming routine, like with the ISIS stuff, the counter ICE stuff, you know, vehicle ramings, molotovs, those have become routine. But we also have things like general crime. Like I've said before, public transit in the United States is very much a death sentence in certain cities and at certain times of day, right? The chance of you being involved in a stabbing or a shooting in some parts of this country are astronomically high during certain situations. And because of that, we have to conduct risk assessment and risk mitigation from a very wavetop level. We have to both balance the way the world is today. We have to see the world for for what it is. We have to see the risks for what they are, but we also have to balance that with living our lives. On the one hand, we cannot ignore the extreme risks to our personal safety and the personal safety of those around us. But we also can't, you know, live like Rambo every minute of the day, right? Even if we may want to. On the one hand, risk aversion is not the answer, right? A lot of the classic prepper arguments are that, well, you should never do anything at all because you might have a bad thing happen at some point, right? Well, that's that's not a realistic view of the world. But on the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there are pretty severe risks sometimes and it's a very delicate balance, right? You have to assess the risk. You have to manage the risk as best you can, but you also have to not let things get too paranoid and too paralyzing so that you don't do anything at all. A good example is public transit, right? A lot of people are forced to take it. They don't have any other feasible option, right? Or it may be the least of two bad options. If you have to take a train or a subway into work and the other option is to walk, you know, a dozen blocks or so past all kinds of very very bad things on the street, you might be better off on the subway system. But that doesn't mean that you can't be a little bit more attentive. You can't be a little bit more prepared, right? You can't be a little bit more ready and aware just in case something does happen. And that's kind of hard to do sometimes because being responsible and assessing the risk and mitigating the risk as best you can is often very inconvenient. Like I've said a few times before, do you think that I personally enjoy carrying, you know, a tourniquet in my pocket everywhere I go? No, it's not convenient, right? Do I enjoy carrying around a lot of medical gear every day? No, I don't. But I do it because the alternative is to not have anything at all. That's not being paranoid. That's mitigating risk. But of course, everyone's going to have to conduct that analysis on their own. And one of the ways that you can sort of start thinking about this mentality is just look at what you did yesterday. Did you go to work yesterday and have the ability to render aid to someone or yourself who has been slashed in the face by an attacker? Did you have the ability to mitigate that situation? Where is the nearest tourniquet to you when you're sitting on the subway going to work in the morning? There is a lot of focus in the prepping and prepared citizenry and the serious citizenry world on things like firearms to stop threats before they get worse or stop threats before they begin hopefully. And that's all well and good. We do need that. We need all this gun content, right? We need this self-defense, concealed carry kind of stuff. We do need all of this stuff, but what we also need for a lot of people who that's simply not an option for, what we also need is a focus on risk mitigation in other ways, such as medical stuff. There needs to be an increased focus on a lot of this stuff. As important as these tools are, they are not the end all beall solution to everything. If we look around at the headlines for the week and if we look around at a lot of the incidents that have occurred, yes, firearms would have made a difference in many of these attacks. But we also have to remember that in many cases firearms would not have helped very much. Not to armchair quarterback or anything like that, but just to kind of solidify this idea looking back at the Arena Zerutska attack, having a firearm on her would not have helped that poor girl a whole lot. It just would not have. It would The attack was too quick. It was from behind. there's she would not have had time to draw. It would not have helped. You know, it's hard to say based on one case study, right? But it's also quite likely that medical supplies would not have helped her either. But in other cases, having the tools on hand to do what you can would have been helpful. And when it comes to the larger example of, you know, risk management, we see this in Europe as well, right? All over social media this year. People in Germany have been taking photos and videos of the diversity barriers, right? the big concrete ballards that they try to make a little bit more festive by putting bows and decorations on and such that are meant to protect a lot of these Christmas markets from vehicle ramming attacks. Well, what does that tell us from a riskmanagement perspective? You know, if if you're going to a Christmas market and there are D-Day level anti-tank fortifications surrounding the market, you've got armed police everywhere. There's metal detectors, there's all kinds of security in place, then doesn't that show you that at least somebody in government thinks that this this place might be attacked? And if that's the case, don't you think that maybe there is something that you can do to help assess risk in that situation? For instance, you can look at a lot of these fortifications and see, well, they're not going to be adequate. Such as this photo that I found circulating the internet uh with regards to the security practices at a few Christmas markets around uh around Europe. I think this one was uh in Germany. Now, anyone, but especially a terrorist can look at the these barriers and see these are not going to stop a vehicle by any means. So, what have the authorities done in this particular case? Well, what have they done? They have identified a vulnerability. So, they've pointed out, hey terrorists, look at this one particular area. We're concerned that you might drive a vehicle here and that this might be a a pretty good target for you, but also we're not going to take the efforts to mitigate the risk. So, we're going to identify which places would be good for a terrorist to attack, but we're also not going to take efforts to mitigate that because we have very inadequate barriers up. In this specific example, having a piss poor barrier in place is worse than having nothing at all. Because if you had nothing at all, a terrorist might not identify this place as being a target. But now that you've put the barrier up, you've pointed out that you're scared of an attack, but also that barrier doesn't do anything. These are the kind of things that we have to think of when it comes to managing risk during the holidays. Yes, it is very very good that in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the more traditional places where Christmas markets tend to be a a big thing. I mean, it's a [snorts] huge thing in Germany, right? So that's why I'm using Germany as the example because they're kind of the forefront of the the Christmas market, the town square that gets transformed into kind of like a winter wonderland for for every season, right? These things are amazing uh to go to and see, but they're also huge security risks and they're a good example for average citizens to be able to look at a situation and assess the risk on their own. And tying all this back to what I said in the beginning of we don't want to just live our lives being ultra paranoid for no reason, right? I'll give you the example, right? If I were to look at a Christmas market and I see a lot of vehicle barriers up, if I see a lot of police standing around, if I see a pretty big security presence, there's a double-edged sword there, isn't there? Because on the one hand, you see, all right, these are good risk mitigation efforts, right? I feel a little bit more safe when there's a concrete barrier beside me that I can hide behind and just in case something goes wrong when you're trying to pick out presents and stuff like that, right? But on the other hand, it does point out that there have been very little mitigation efforts in other ways throughout Germany that would prevent the attackers from being there in the first place. For instance, you can put up concrete barriers all day long and that'll uh that'll do something. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good mitigation effort, but an even better mitigation effort would be to deport the criminals and the terrorists before they even conduct the attack in the first place. Germany has not done that. Germany has not increased their counterterrorism investigations and their efforts. So all they are doing, they're putting all their eggs in one basket and putting a lot of concrete around a soft target. And that's their primary means. No, concrete barriers should not be your primary means of counterterrorism. Concrete barriers and vehicle ballers should be your last line of defense so that after a terrorist slips through all of your other mitigating u measures, they're stopped before they can have any kind of good effectiveness. Right? So that's the higher level thinking that we have to kind of adopt even when we're doing something as innocent and wholesome as you know trying to pick out stocking stuffers for people. And once again, I know I keep saying it, but we want to make sure that we're not being too paranoid sometimes. I have to keep telling myself this all the time because look at my wheelhouse. Look at my line of work. I sit here pretty much every day and look at the horrors of the world going around. And I'm not saying that's something that everyone should be doing. I am most certainly biased to looking to threats. I'm most certainly biased personally towards identifying counterterrorism concerns. Every time I go into a large venue where there's large crowds, I look and I see the risk. I'm not saying that everybody should adopt this position entirely because it tends to be a little bit heavy sometimes. I'm just saying it might be a good idea to have a more casual approach. If you're in a town square, in a big mall, in a big crowded venue or something like that, and you see that security is quite poor, maybe factor that into your own risk assessment. I want to most certainly continually pump the brakes on a lot of the fear that goes out there. There's a lot of money to be made in telling people to be afraid of terrorist attacks. There really is. Just scroll social media, scroll YouTube, and you will see every prepper on YouTube gets on there and says, "Ah, the end is nigh. We're all going to die tomorrow from some mass terrorist attack." That's obviously not true, right? There there's a lot of nuance here and that nuance doesn't really sell, right? Telling people, "No, there's probably not going to be a gigantic 9/11 style attack occurring in the United States anytime soon." Telling people that doesn't get clicks. It doesn't get monetization. It doesn't sell. So, people don't do it. telling people that there are 10,000 al-Qaeda operatives in the United States right now. Well, you know, that gets a lot of clicks, that gets a lot of monetization, even though, you know, these sorts of things are basically impossible to predict, right? So, all in all, be careful. Conduct risk assessment, conduct risk analysis, conduct risk mitigation as best you can. You don't have to live in fear at all, to be honest. You really don't. But that doesn't give you license to be stupid. And what you don't want to have happen is to be in a situation and something happen and you be powerless and you be helpless. Trust me, I have been in those situations before where I was not as prepared as I could have been. And I think back on those situations all the time. So, you don't want to have that retroactive guilt and say, "Look, you know, I I knew I was going into a risky situation. I knew that I was going into a packed venue. I didn't carry any medical supplies. I didn't conduct any kind of analysis to figure out where the exits are. My phone battery was dead, so I couldn't even call the police when an attack happened. You don't want this to be you, right? You want to be smart. You want to be prepared. You want to do what you can without going overboard, right? Don't go overboard with all this stuff, but you want to do the best you can. And I think that's probably a good perspective to have as we move forward into the holiday season. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. We'll call it a day. Rant done. Uh, here are the sources and research. As usual, I've been updating my online maps, my RGIs maps as we go along. I've been pushing fresh KMZs out to my GitHub page for those of you who want just the KMZ part to load into your personal ATAC instance, stuff like that. All this complicated stuff. I know I haven't gone into much detail on it yet. Um, but that's coming. I've just gotten uh quite behind. Been working on a lot of stuff that has just taken so much time to do. So, if any of you have messaged me or uh sent me something and I haven't responded for a while, feel free to ping me again. I get tens of thousands of emails and messages a week and I'm sorry I I just can't reply to all of them. But but I I do try. I really do. It's just man, it's just a lot sometimes. So, please forgive me if I haven't replied to you in a while. Uh it's just taken me a long time to get kind of caught up. Either way, that's what I have for this week. Thank you guys all for all of your support. Thank you for sticking with me uh today. Be safe out there. Do the best you can. Keep moving forward. Keep your chin up. All this bad stuff in the world just means you've got an extra chance to do good stuff. So look at it like that and I think we'll be all right. So thanks again and I will see you next time.

…On the home front in Washington D.C., the full criminal complaint regarding yesterday's shooting on the National Mall has been released, which provides a more clear picture of what happened. The suspect has been…

…CENTCOM did not convey the current status of the vessel, or the status of the crew. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - The full criminal complaint regarding yesterday's shooting on the National Mall has been released, which…

…Bottom line up front, shooting reported on National Mall. One suspect wounded by Secret Service. Project Freedom operation in Hormuz remains intense as a mass convoy of civilian ships stages to transit the Strait of Hormuz…

…CENTCOM did not convey the current status of the vessel, or the status of the crew. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - The full criminal complaint regarding yesterday's shooting on the National Mall has been released, which…

…controlling access to the Gulf. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Demonstrations and vandalism attempts have continued on the National Mall, as Pro-Algae activists have remained at the site of the reflecting pool renovation project. So far…

…controlling access to the Gulf. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Demonstrations and vandalism attempts have continued on the National Mall, as Pro-Algae activists have remained at the site of the reflecting pool renovation project. So far…

Continuing tradition, the largest demonstration was conducted on the National Mall, with thousands of protesters engaging in the traditionally anti-Capitalist protest actions customary of the holiday. AC: Most of these protests remained relatively docile (by…

…Limited protests have taken place throughout the National Mall over the past few weeks (in opposition to Trump), however today's electoral certification passed largely without incident. Idaho: The individual arrested last week for allegedly planting…

…SHOOTING REPORTED ON NATIONAL MALL, ONE SUSPECT WOUNDED BY SECRET SERVICE. PROJECT FREEDOM OPERATION IN HORMUZ REMAINS INTENSE AS A MASS CONVOY OF CIVILIAN SHIPS STAGES TO TRANSIT STRAIT OF HORMUZ. MASS SHOOTING REPORTED IN TEXAS…

Considering the high-profile nature of the event, the multiple attempts on Trump's life (specifically due to sniper threats), and the difficulty of securing the National Mall in the wake of the various proficiency concerns…

…SHOOTING REPORTED ON NATIONAL MALL, ONE SUSPECT WOUNDED BY SECRET SERVICE. PROJECT FREEDOM OPERATION IN HORMUZ REMAINS INTENSE AS A MASS CONVOY OF CIVILIAN SHIPS STAGES TO TRANSIT STRAIT OF HORMUZ. MASS SHOOTING REPORTED IN TEXAS…